A Simple Plan and Various

So, I haven't posted in a while mainly because I was at my brother's graduation since Saturday and I didn't really have the time or ability to post. However, another reason I haven't blogged in a few days is that I really don't feel like I have much to say.

To start, Memento was a great film and had a brilliant twist ending which I must admit completely shocked me, but much like Mr. Bennett said during our "Great Discussion," I just wanted to move on to the next film because I had nothing to really say about it. Beyond a great storyline and twist, and of course the chronlogy, I didn't see much about styling or things like that, which truly impressed me in the film. I'm not sure, but I just didn't get the right feeling from the movie and just felt something was lacking, but that's probably just me.

Maybe it was because Dark City impressed me so much and made me think so deeply, but I just felt like Memento was going for the same message and missed it, and just relied on the storyline but really didn't have any deeper meaning to it. Also, when watching Dark City, I felt like John Murdoch was the every man, trying to figure out what was going on, and just acting like a regular guy who really cannot remember anything. He is going through the same search as us because we are just as confused.

Then, in Memento, I just felt like Leonard Shelby's story was his own, it was a unique story that no one else was going through, so it was a much narrower perspective. In Memento, it was one man's search for revenge of something that didn't even happen. In Dark City, it was one man's quest to discover what has happened to the planet Earth as a whole. It just struck me better and maybe I'm the crazy one.

Now on to A Simple Plan. After class yesterday, I had a short discussion with Mr. Bennett on some of the issues I had with the film, most specifically I wasn't quite sure how Hank's wife was able to figure out every twist and turn in the path and predict everything ahead of time. I felt it was a weak point, but he countered that it was strong because even when a person knows exactly what is going to happen in a situation like this, they still can't stop it, hence the ironic title A Simple Plan, when no plan is truly simple.

My main point to him was that I felt it was unrealistic that she could have known that the FBI Agent could have been false without even knowing about him and just assuming that it was the guy based on a picture where the two looked nothing alike. Also, maybe I'm naive but I really doubt that the FBI would either a) give away information that simply about the names of their agents or b) she would be able to speak to someone from the FBI and even know how to contact them that easily, I mean honestly, it takes 6 months to get a passport but 15 minutes to find out the name of an agent and then to say with complete certainty that it is the guy.

Now, personally when I first saw the FBI agent I did think that he was crooked and knew too much and therefore was a con artist just looking for the money so maybe it was not a difficult thing to figure out if people were able to see it coming, but some of the events in this movie just strike me the wrong way.

I missed the 2nd day of watching the movie, which was Monday so maybe I missed some key points that makes these things rational.

Finally, my last point, I know how we all enjoyed when the Lou's wife got blown apart by Hank and launched into the window, but that point, although hilarious (and she probably deserved it), greatly annoyed me because if a movie is going to take itself seriously, handle the killing of people like you handled the killing of Lou and the guy and the guy on the snowmobile, with class and realism, not with her being blown into a window and looking like a blow-up doll, which it was. It angered me at the stupidity of that murder and how the cut between the two shots of her being launched into the window and then laying on the ground, the continuity was absolutely terrible.

If it was done for laughs, that is a different story.

I still need to catch up on the 2nd day of watching but I hope it ends well because it has piqued my interest, although I feel that it is a slightly flawed movie in my eyes.