From the Brain of Matty

movies (01.10.04 4:45 pm)

Last night we got out a bunch of DVDs. Let me just say, The Cat In The Hat was pretty much exactly what I expected. But I watched it to the end anyway. I'm patient like that. It did seem to get better as it went on. I think the brain starts to shut down after a while, and you just get desensitised to how bad things really are.

On the other hand... The Butterfly Effect was brilliant. It goes on the same list in my head as Twelve Monkeys and Memento. If you haven't seen them, go and see them. Right now. They're brilliant. (Incidentally, I just read on IMDb that Twelve Monkeys was directed by Terry Gilliam - says it all, really, about that one.) That's the list of movies that really makes me think. Also, by the way, the ones with endings that leave a funny taste in my mouth. It's not quite a bad taste, but I hate and love the endings at the same time. Memento just plays everything backwards, and in doing so tells us how reliant we are on the apparent arrow of time. Twelve Monkeys ends.. well.. unexpectedly but so obviously, and it tells us of the permanence of events. Wheras The Butterfly Effect.. well, the ending we got (the stillborn ending) really opens up a can of worms. It tells us that it's impossible to predict the results when you change the initial conditions (that is, chaos theory). But in my mind it also asked some really big questions about my idea of god and the nature of reality. [In brief: reality is only apparent, and for each person reality only exists inside their mind. Therefore each person has their own reality. If reality is just a mental perception of some 'true' reality, does there have to be a 'true' reality to base it on? Can't we just be making it up? And so, if we all have our own realities that seem to line up really well, does that mean that either everyone else doesn't actually exist except in my reality - and their realities are just fictions in much the same way that you can write a book about a book that never got written, or that we are all separate but overlapping parts of some greater reality that is actually the thought of a thing that is bigger than all of us - that is, god?] I mean, what happens if someone breaks the old adage and kills their own grandfather?

I love paradox.

The other movie was Kill Bill: Vol. 2, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Shell said she really liked it but preferred the first one (she liked the squelchy noises and the unnatural, almost parodic violence). I can't remember. I liked them both.

Matty /<

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