As resident FV classical historian, I was assigned to review 300. But how much can a classicist say about hairless Abercrombie übermen battling an eight foot tall homogod for the sake of “reason and justice”? Fortunately, I’m also a total loser film buff so I’ve seen three movies in the past week - 300, Volver and The Curse of the Golden Flower. Frankly, I’m loving totally sick of all the boobs and violence.

300

By now you’ve probably heard all kinds of things about 300, the new collaboration between comic book artist Frank Miller and Morrissey video director Zack Snyder. The story is lifted from the The Histories of Herodotus and the gist is this: At the battle of Thermopylae the Spartan king Leonidas 1 led a group of 300 Spartans and a few thousand Greeks to die defending their homeland from millions of Persian invaders led by their emperor, King Xerxes. Surprisingly, Miller follows closely to history, albeit with innumerable fantastical embellishments.

But 300 is not about history. It is first and foremost about violence. It starts with violence, it ends with violence, there is violence everywhere inbetween. Beautiful, brutal, fantastic violence in dark comic book technicolor with post-Matrix CGI videogame flare. If you were stoked by fatalities in Mortal Kombat, then you should enjoy this movie on the violence alone. If you’re a pussy, then probably not.

I would estimate that the movie is around 70% raw violence. This might be disappointing, if you’re expecting something like 95%, but the non-violence is actually pretty cool. Every shot of this movie is beautiful. In some ways it feels like Amelie or The Wizard of Oz for D&D nerds. Miller’s messages on marriage, war, pride, culture, reason, passion, nationalism, etc are stupid ambiguous enough to stir a post-film weed conversation for at least a half hour. If you prefer sex to violence, this movie overflows with homoeroticism. If that’s not your bag, you’ll have to be satisfied with sprinklings of hot naked slave girls and an extended naked prophecy dance from a very slamming “oracle girl”.

Volver

Speaking of titties, I just saw Penelope Cruz in Volver. This ended my longtime boycott of director, Pedro Almodovar. In high school I found his film Tie Me Up Tie Me Down too artsy for my late night showtime purposes. A few years later I saw All About My Mother and it was retarded. Then I saw some older movie (forget the title) and it sucked too. So I started my boycott hoping to put dude out of biznass. But I couldn’t stop the beast. Over the next few years, he dropped Talk to Her and Bad Education. I heard a few good reviews but held firm to my boycott. When I heard about Penelope Cruz’s prosthetic ass in Volver, I decided it was time to give Almodovar another chance.

The details of the plot are fairly ludacris but the gist is this: Penelope Cruz and her mom both marry shitty dudes, kill their shitty dudes and live happily ever after in Anytown, Spain. The characters are a gay man’s wet dream of womanhood - busty murderers, hippy weed smokers, fat prostitutes, cute lil grammas, etc. You won’t actually give a shit about any of these people but it’s fun to watch them in this absurd fairy tale of incest and murder (ie. I couldn’t care less if Little Red Riding Hood gets eaten or not but I like the story). As for the prosthetic ass, it’s a bait and switch. Volver is all about Cruz’s titties.

Curse of the Golden Flower

Speaking of incest, violence and titties, I also saw Yimou Zhang’s latest film The Curse of the Golden Flower at the $2 theatre. Zhang’s previous two movies, Hero and House of Flying Daggers, were nothing special but Curse is fairly radical. The gist is this: Chow Yun-Fat plays a badass emperor in Ancient China with three sons, two babymamas and a shitload of babymamadrama. There are only 7 characters in this movie but their shit is so dysfunctional that it takes a while to figure out how everyone is related. Don’t let that discourage you. Everyone can enjoy the wierd imperial formalism, the intensely beautiful scenery, the ill costumes and the overflowing asian cleavage (I didn’t know it existed either). And, if all that’s not enough for you, this drawing room drama eventually erupts into a glorious bloodbath. Overall, Curse of the Golden Flower is pretty stupid but it’s got beauty and drama and sex and war. If that’s not worth your $2, you can always download.