I watched Monster last night. Excellent movie, great performances… and I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it to anyone, and I’d certainly never watch it again. It’s great, though.
I sort of knew it was going to be one of the most intense movies I’ve ever seen, so it took me a while to find myself in the right mood to watch it. I got it from Netflix on December 31st, 2004… easily the longest turnaround for any film they’ve ever sent me. (I didn’t even join until July 2002.)
I am also totally already in line for the next Charlize Theron film, Aeon Flux, even though it’s going to be, how to put this… awful. I can tell already. The original shorts are pretty much my favorite piece of fantasy science fiction. The series on MTV altered the tone by a few degrees, and basically ruined it. And now you’ve got Charlize Theron doing interviews where she’s trying to justify how the skimpy outfits weren’t really necessary to the story. Okay, sure, but the minimalism, sudden death, quickly shifting moral landscape, and absurdist tone of the story really are necessary… and I imagine they’ve all been sacrificed long ago.
But that’s all got nothing to do with Charlize Theron, who is both beautiful and clever.
