Not very healthy
Jun. 23rd, 2008 03:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zustiferCoffee and Cigarettes (2003), Jim Jarmusch. June 19, 12pm. View count: 1.5.
Permanent Vacation (1980), Jim Jarmusch. June 20, 2pm. View count: One.
Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992), Anthony Hickox. June 20, 8pm. View count: Two.
Coffee and Cigarettes I watched so as to vet it for Rone, but too late I realized that my taste is different from his. I found it to be not Jarmusch's best work; the shorts that make up this film are cute, but seldom more than that. There is no time for more complex plots or any serious character development, which is what I like about Jarmusch. I watch his movies for their leisureliness and subtlety, neither of which really compresses down to shorts a few minutes long. Strange character traits, condensed, become merely gimmicky; rambly conversations, in the choppy context of a series of shorts, feel bloaty and pointless. Probably the most fun I had was spotting actors from other works.
Permanent Vacation I enjoyed rather more, for the above reasons. The protagonist, a friend of Jarmusch's when he was at film school, almost played himself, which made the sometimes stilted dialog delivery more acceptable (since he was pretty at-home in the role otherwise). He's a rootless kid who just kind of walks around New York most of the time; very low-key and harmless. One of the best character details was his propensity for asking people if he would like something, which was a clever little abdication of responsibility. It's definitely got the earmarks of a student film, but it's not inaccessible.
Hellraiser III is pretty horrible. I remember in high school we reviled it for being disrespectful to Pinhead, which it is, but it's worse than that: it's an almost totally soulless cash-in. It's got the set-'em-up-and-knock-'em-down attitude that the third X-Men movie adopted (introducing a bunch of new characters merely so they can be killed off), which is bad enough, but it's also totally devoid of likable characters, interesting gore, or dignity. The lady who plays Jadzia Dax in DS9 is the protagonist, and she plays the role not dissimilarly (this isn't a mark in the movie's favor because her character is so blandly goody-goody that she just kind of washes out of one's head).
This movie makes the second Hellraiser look decent, much as the second one makes the first one look better than it is. It's all very sad (although sadder is the fact that there are now EIGHT of these damn movies, and I'll probably have to watch them all now). I think the only place for the franchise to go at this point is to Bollywood.
Permanent Vacation (1980), Jim Jarmusch. June 20, 2pm. View count: One.
Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992), Anthony Hickox. June 20, 8pm. View count: Two.
Coffee and Cigarettes I watched so as to vet it for Rone, but too late I realized that my taste is different from his. I found it to be not Jarmusch's best work; the shorts that make up this film are cute, but seldom more than that. There is no time for more complex plots or any serious character development, which is what I like about Jarmusch. I watch his movies for their leisureliness and subtlety, neither of which really compresses down to shorts a few minutes long. Strange character traits, condensed, become merely gimmicky; rambly conversations, in the choppy context of a series of shorts, feel bloaty and pointless. Probably the most fun I had was spotting actors from other works.
Permanent Vacation I enjoyed rather more, for the above reasons. The protagonist, a friend of Jarmusch's when he was at film school, almost played himself, which made the sometimes stilted dialog delivery more acceptable (since he was pretty at-home in the role otherwise). He's a rootless kid who just kind of walks around New York most of the time; very low-key and harmless. One of the best character details was his propensity for asking people if he would like something, which was a clever little abdication of responsibility. It's definitely got the earmarks of a student film, but it's not inaccessible.
Hellraiser III is pretty horrible. I remember in high school we reviled it for being disrespectful to Pinhead, which it is, but it's worse than that: it's an almost totally soulless cash-in. It's got the set-'em-up-and-knock-'em-down attitude that the third X-Men movie adopted (introducing a bunch of new characters merely so they can be killed off), which is bad enough, but it's also totally devoid of likable characters, interesting gore, or dignity. The lady who plays Jadzia Dax in DS9 is the protagonist, and she plays the role not dissimilarly (this isn't a mark in the movie's favor because her character is so blandly goody-goody that she just kind of washes out of one's head).
This movie makes the second Hellraiser look decent, much as the second one makes the first one look better than it is. It's all very sad (although sadder is the fact that there are now EIGHT of these damn movies, and I'll probably have to watch them all now). I think the only place for the franchise to go at this point is to Bollywood.
