Jeremy_Urquhart

This is one of the most obscure movies I've watched in recent memory, and it deserves to stay obscure. It's not very good.

Cleopatra's Daughter is like historical fan fiction, following - shock horror - the daughter of Cleopatra. It feels a bit like when the monster movies of the 1930s and 40s would do "Son of x" or something. But also, the big Cleopatra movie from around this time came out later, so that doesn't really line up. I've never seen that one, but I maybe would be morbidly curious if it wasn't also four hours long.

At least Cleopatra's Daughter wasn't long. I kind of half-watched it at a point, though. There is something interesting about the star, Debra Paget, but the same can't be said about all her movies. She retired from acting more than 60 years ago, and is apparently still out there somewhere, or maybe not? Who knows - being reclusive is fascinating. Her Wikipedia article is interesting, partly because of how it just stops at about 40 years ago. She's like the Thomas Pynchon of Classic Hollywood actresses.

Anyway, reading the limited information about her is more interesting than the movie; I think that's what I was trying to get at.

Anima Mundi doesn't quite do for the animal world what Koyaanisqatsi did for the human world, but that's okay. I still thought it was a good watch, and maybe an even better listen, thanks to Philip Glass doing the score, just as he did for Godfrey Reggio's Qatsi movies.

It feels like Anima Mundi is giving animals a chance to judge humans, and what they're doing to their environment, maybe? That's something I get from all the close-ups. I felt a bit judged, as a viewer. But it's also just interesting that you get almost no close-ups when humans are Reggio's subjects, but then you get them for what feels like half the film here.

There's some slow-motion, of course, but I don't think any time-lapse photography. Still, there are a handful of striking images, and it's all put together interestingly. Sounds great, looks good, but maybe it falls a little short of being entirely great. I could've happily watched this for longer, so maybe it's just this being under 30 minutes that holds it back from feeling a little grander, more sweeping, and ultimately moving.

This was being shown in a cinema near me on film, and though I am stretched for time, I had to take the opportunity to see it. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World is one of those movies that came out at a time when I was getting into movies a little (Spider-Man and the first Pirates of the Caribbean were the first slightly "adult" movies I saw, or at least they felt mature when I was only 7 or 8), but I was too young in 2003 for something like this. And so I really like seeing early 2000s movies in cinemas, finding it similarly exciting to see Gangs of New York in the same cinema earlier this year, given I was definitely too young for that one at the time, and probably remained too young for like the next decade or so.

Master and Commander is grimmer and more intense than I remember it being, having watched it on a TV about a decade ago. That might be the cinema helping, or it might be me not taking a movie like this for granted anymore. Now that another decade has passed, 2003 films do start to feel old-fashioned in good ways (at least the better ones). It is a true spectacle of a movie, and so much of it seems practical. On a technical and effects front, this movie is remarkable. Either the digital effects still hold up almost entirely, or there just weren't many digital effects. Either way, it's impressive.

I also forgot how great the climax was, to the point where I wonder if I fell asleep during the final battle the first time around. I don't think the film is quite perfect, though, being a little slow at times. And there is at least one section of the film that feels a bit divorced from the rest, like it maaaaybe could've been cut.

But otherwise, this is a really well-made war movie. It holds up now maybe better than it did 10 years ago, again, because we're now further away from movies at this scale being made in this way. Here's looking at you, kid - we'll always have 2003.