Moon

(The following post is bloated with spoilers. You've been warned.)

Is it a spoiler when most people know that Moon has, like, one actor?...True, there is video feed of other actors who are supposedly in the film...but you must know that the lead character played by Sam Rockwell plays multiple roles...I love twist endings...but what about a twist middle? Moon has that...you get the twist in the middle and then the film dares you to watch and see how this new information is dealt with...imagine if you knew that Bruce Willis was dead about 35 minutes into The Sixth Sense. Would it hold your attention?...Probably not the same...because Shyamalan had no true end to that story except for that one realization that Bruce Willis was dead.

In Moon, director Duncan Jones gives you the twist, then shows you the product of this twist...you have to accept the twist and see the consequences...The ending was satisfactory but the consequences to that Middle twist at one point made me well up in tears. I thought of other movies with twist middles...there just ain't very many of them that are good or come to mind. What if you knew that the chick from the Crying Game was a guy in the middle of the film?...Would Stephen Rhea's character then go out on more dates and court the guy/gal? Twist endings are easy...they have an ending that is easy to digest...you shock the audience and there is a satisfactory feeling in "aha I see where this is going"...feeling...I like twist endings but they have become too easy...its a cop out now a days...Give me the twist middle...show me something that I never saw coming and then let me stew in it for a while and allow the director to punish me for the next 45 minutes and deal with the consequences of the film...that's why I loved Moon and that's why Duncan Jones should be a Director that we pay attention too. PLUS

City of God

The end of any period of time brings with it lists reviewing, ranking, commemorating the opinions of whomever is making the list. Sometimes these people actually know what they are talking about and like to refer to themselves as "critics" or "people with jobs as professional writers." Truth be told, I'm grateful they exist because there's just so much stuff out there.

For example, reading Paste Magazine's Best of the Decade list I was surprised to discover that I had not seen their #1 pick: Fernando Meirelles' 2002 Brazilian film, City of God (or Cidade de Deus, for you elitists). I'd heard of it, of course, had picked up on the buzz from time to time since its release, but like I said, there's a lot of stuff to see. So, I saw it. And it was good.

The titular locale is the hardcorest of the hardcore Rio slums and the story--which is based on real events--is about the devastating drug trade of the 70s and 80s. There are obvious parallels to John Singleton's Boyz n the Hood, but it's all in the timing, I suppose, because what struck me more were the similarities to The Wire, the amazing HBO series that I am 4 episodes from completing as of this writing. Both feature kiddie criminals--City of God's Runts and The Wire's Baltimore corner boys--as the backbone of all-encompassing drug empires. Yeah, I get that one takes place decades ago in a third-world country and the other is in a modern-day major American City. They don't call it Bodymore, Murdaland for nothing. PLUS