During his confirmation hearings, John Roberts caused a minor stir when he finally committed to something: his favorite movies. When he announced his faves were Doctor Zhivago and North by Northwest, commentators pounced on and dissected his choices, trying to determine what they revealed about his character. One pundit said that neither movie had anything to do with the law -- perhaps ignorant of the brief trial scene in North by Northwest, with the Chief from Get Smart as Cary Grant's lawyer.
What, then, would commentators say about my taste in movies? The flicks I've recently enjoyed range from 1967's action-noir Lee Marvin thriller Point Blank -- adapted from a Donald Westlake novel (the same one later remade as the Mel Gibson movie Payback), featuring the type of '60's cinematography that I love (lots of bright colors and dark shadows), and directed with tremendous style by John Boorman -- to Kamikaze Girls, the delirious comedy I watched at the Nuart tonight. Kamikaze Girls is a cartoony (to the point where it sometimes actually turns into an animated cartoon) film about the unlikely friendship between two teenage girls in rural Japan: The introverted daughter of a minor Yakuza (who makes his living selling Versace knockoffs in the street) who is obsessed with the Japanese Gothic Lolita style of clothing, wearing dresses out of the Rococo era; and a deep-voiced, scooter-riding girl-gang member, who talks incessantly, has a hair-trigger temper, and uses head-butts and rabbit-kicks to get her messages across. Not deep by any means, but fun. And the audience was full of American girls in their teens and twenties, dressed up in their own Gothic Lolita fashions.
Before KG, the Nuart showed a stunning trailer for the Neil Gaiman/Dave McKean/Henson Productions film Mirrormask. If it can live up to the hype, it may be one of the most visually amazing fantasy films ever made.
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