PATRICK has been repeatedly mentioning that I need to go to see There Will Be Blood and he is entirely correct in this. 7 PM showtimes mean I need to find some point where I can mosey on down to the theatre and – having deposited my ass in the plush theatre chairs – enjoy the movie. It has, after all, won a bunch of awards that I don’t know the names of, never having put much stock into film awards beyond looking at how many it may have bagged while deciding whether it’s worth it to go. With the ridiculous amount of recommendation for this though, I hardly see the point in not going. There will be enjoyment.

Of course, I’d been checking out the various films floating around the local indie theatres during this conversation. My list of films that I need to see is six movies long. At a going rate of 7 bucks for a ticket (let’s be conservative for a second here) I’m spending $42 on movies, assuming I actually watch all of this. Ouch. But it’s a good pain. They’re all really good looking movies and as far as I saw they all performed fairly well at whichever film festivals they played at.

The movies in question are as follows:

• Persepolis
• There Will Be Blood
• The Savages
• The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
• 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days

Persepolis is an animated film based off of a graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi, an Iranian woman whose childhood played out during the Iranian Revolution, until at 21 she emigrates to France to escape the persecution. I’m a sucker for good animated film, since it seems like a medium that no one’s willing to explore seriously. Disney of course corners the market, and there’s the recent explosion of CGI films, but it’s largely targeted towards children. Animation though is an interesting medium because it allows for a great deal of expressionism in the actual production of the film through the actual stylistic choices the animation team makes – or in this case, that Satrapi made, since the film is based off of her graphic novel. The film is animated primarily in a stark black and white. The linework is all strong black and the colors are split pretty well into black and white, with more grays in the background, at least from what I’ve seen in trailers. According to Wikipedia, scenes in the present are colored to provide a visual differentiation. The art looks really great and I really am pulled to the film almost as much by the art as by the actual story.

There Will Be Blood, the second movie on the list, has actually been here for a while and I haven’t gotten off my ass to go watch it. Frankly, from the trailer and synopsis it didn’t strike me as the most grabbing movie, but apparently it’s really good. Tons of critical acclaim and everyone I know who watches movies has both seen it and told me I should see it. So just Patrick. But still, that’s enough of an endorsement for me.

The Savages is one of those movies that I see and go “man, I bet that’s going to be great” but no one else that I talk to seems to have heard of. It’s a story about two estranged siblings having to meet up again as their father gets progressively more senile and closer to death. The movie’s a comedy, which is always good, and the theme is out there enough that assuming there’s a good writing team, it should be pretty funny. It seems like a more thoughtful comedy as well, so not the laugh riot that, say, Superbad was. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney star. I like how Hoffman carries himself and the role he’s got in this – the slob of a brother – seems like something he’d work wonderfully in. This is one of the three that’s currently running, so I should probably go catch it this weekend.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly has a really cool story. It’s a film version of the memoir of Jean-Dominique Bauby, a man who had a huge stroke that left him paralyzed as all hell. He wrote the memoir by winking. Wikipedia says it took over 200,000 winks to write the novel, each word taking about two minutes. Apparently the film blacks out periodically as he communicates by winking, showing the world from his perspective. This is cool really just for the premise, but the film has apparently done well among the critics as well.

4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days is the third foreign film in the five. I have a fondness for foreign film, as you can tell, at least the stuff that gets imported into the weird local theatres that stink of bad pot. The story is about two girls in communist Romania, facing the day to day repression put down by the government. Complicating matters is that one of them is pregnant, and they find one “Mr. Bebe,” who they have to meet in a hotel to perform an illegal abortion. Reviews are positive regarding cinematography and writing, and the plot is interesting at least. I’m also curious how they portray communist Romania. Films set in the Eastern bloc have always been very interesting.

That is where I am in film right now. I also really want to delve more into Werner Herzog’s work after seeing (and loving) Stroszek, but that’s more of a “let’s rent some DVDs” thing, and frankly he’s not the only director whose work I need to catch up on. He has, however, redoubled my interest in German cinema. Any recommendations outside of him would be very much appreciated.