Pat Jordan

I’ve watched more movies than lately. This is partially because the Wisconsin Film Festival was in town two weeks ago, but not necessarily the only reason.

I recently watched City of God about slum life outside of Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil. The movie was excellent: the videography, the story, and music all came together quite nicely. I enjoyed how they explained the life of the narrator and his situation through short biographies/stories of other City of God citizens. While the story seems to be about the narrator, Rocket, it is really about the ability of the slum to create success and destroy it in its various forms. Everything came together in the story to balance hope, reality, and pain.

I was very excited to see JCVD when it played as a part of the Wisconsin film festival. I had seen previews -it’s tapping into meta-fiction had me a bit excited. The premise: a movie about Jean Claude Van Damme as a washed up actor getting sucked into a hostage situation, starring none other than Jean Claude Van Damme himself. Not only is it commentary about his life as an actor, it blurs the line between his actual life and his action movies, but… it’s still a movie. Sounds like an excellent idea. Well, I wouldn’t know how it was. Why? Well, it was a midnight showing, and I had gone out with friends for a while beforehand. So I fell asleep about 10 minutes into the film and woke up promptly at the credits. It seems as though the general consensus was “great idea, poorly executed.” I’ll probably get it on Netflix.