I did not expect The Hours to be this good. Nicole Kidman plays Virginia Woolf, none of whose work I had to read in high school, Julianne Moore a 1950′s housewife, and Meryl Streep a 21st century lesbian poet. That sounds like a bad T-Rex song, but bear with me.

The movie runs three parallel plots, jumping in and out of all three until the end. Virginia Woolf, in her manic-depressive self, writes her famous Mrs. Dalloway while Moore’s character is inspired by it to attempt suicide, while Streep’s character is somewhat of a real-life version of Mrs. Dalloway. As always I’m going to stop myself here before I bore myself describing the plotlines, but the movie is chalk-full of metaphors, parallelisms and concurrent motifs – it is a great thinking movie. Every line is painfully meaningful, and when the movie finished I had to devote a good amount of time just thinking about all the elements. It is a wonderful refreshment for all of us who feel like we were forced into lives quite different from our desires; obligations and responsibilities that the adult life represents. In the face of death, one can appreciate life so much more, and the themes are well-contrasted in the three plotlines, each in its own social frame.

I forgot all about Nicole Kidman winning an Oscar for her role in this, but all acting in this film is superb. All the requirements of a great movie are there: script, acting, cinematography, and score. The eerie, Danny-Elfmanish music runs consistently through all three plotlines, and gives otherwise neutral images a somber air. A must see, and I’m glad I got to.

Perfume is a Japanese technopop group made of three girls, each one uglier than the next. Listen to them once, you’ll hate it. Listen to them twice, you’ll hate it. Listen to them a third time, and they will get stuck in your cerebral cortex and come back to haunt you every time your neurons are idle. Their music is really what their name suggests: hypnotizing, volatile (as in high vapor pressure) and frankly, a little bit annoying.

Asia has always been at the forefront of creating no-talent pop groups based on looks alone, but with Perfume, they failed in even that. The girls are not even close to being as attractive as say, Wonder Girls (of Korea), and from what I can tell from their interviews they’re dumber than my left toe, but whoever’s writing the songs for Perfume is a synth genius. It hasn’t been too many years since I started appreciating processed music (largely in thanks to Daft Punk and Infected Mushroom), but man, the vo-coded harmonies of Perfume will get stuck in your head faster than Come On Eileen.

Which makes me wonder: how did they pick these girls? Perhaps they had to pick the most bland voices so they can vocode them more easily. Now that would be quality casting.

I was down in St. Louis last weekend and because that city does not have enough things to do/see over a 4-day weekend, decided to go see Prince of Persia.  Coming from Chicago, I couldn’t really pass up paying mere $ 6.50 for it. Anyway, I had been extremely disappointed with how this “summer of blockbusters” was turning out to be after seeing Iron Man 2 and Robin Hood. The latter was my mistake, I probably should’ve accepted how bad it looked, and not seen it. But I did and after the 2+ hours of boobless, anachronistic, culturally-confused wannabe epic, let’s just say I have a newfound appreciation for “relatively well-made” movies. Prince of Persia turned out to be one of these.

Being a Disney film, its protagonist Dastan severely lacks the badassity all of us who have played the video game were looking for. That and it’s played by Jake Gyllenhaal, who Heath Ledger would’ve agreed is prettier than his sister. His onscreen brother – the future king of Persia – looks so Scottish he belongs in Braveheart. With all the Disneyesque suspension of disbelief aside, this film is entertaining for sure. The action sequences are not cliche, and faithfully reconstructs techniques and styles from the video game (fortunately not the one pictured above). The exotic nature of all things Persian (not the weird shit they showed in 300) kept me engaged throughout the movie, from the Scimitars to the gorgeous CGI scenery of ancient cities.

See, this is why I can never be a film critic, because I don’t know how to provide a synopsis of the plot without giving things away. There’s so much to make fun of in this movie – like how ugly the “princess” was and how everyone seemed to be denying it – but before I know it, I’ll be spilling the beans on how the sands of time sends Dastan back in time to kill his evil uncle or how the best scene in the movie is when he’s climbing up the walls as his minions make him steps with crossbows.

I wonder how much the creator of the game got paid for this? I remember playing it for the first time on my cousin’s 386 computer. The original is a tough game, much more difficult than the new ones on Playstation. No dagger of time to cheat death with if you miss a ledge and fall onto white impaling spikes. Revolutionary game, though, and I’m glad it’s gotten the credit it deserves. At least the movie kicked the Mario movie’s ass.

Worth $ 6.50 for sure. Now if all the other movies for the rest of the summer didn’t suck camel balls…