Other countries are sad

In honor of the contributions of Martin Luther King, I spent my day off watching foreign films at the Grove.

I saw Pan's Labrynth first. Do Not believe the previews. Why they are billing this as a fantasy-filled child-friendly romp in English is beyond me. It's in Spanish and it's extremely violent.

It's also amazing. Ofelia has come with her pregnant mother to live with her psychopathic military captain stepfather at some kind of army retreat in the forest during the Spanish Civil War. To cope with the horrors around her, the girl invents a world where she's a princess being tested by a faun to see if she deserves to return to her original fairyland home. The story is full of suspense and action and beauty and horror and graphic violence. And it made me cry because after it slapped me in the face with depression it backhanded me with hope. Damn that movie, because it made it impossible for me to put full concentration into Letters from Iwo Jima.

For the first time in my life I sneaked into a movie. After Pan's Labrynth I sneaked across the hall just in time for the start of Letters. I guess "sneaked" isn't really the word. I just walked. And I took up three seats with my purse and my feet and my body. And I hid Cheese Nips and Orangina in my purse so I wouldn't get hungry between movies.

Letters was also a great film. What's with American directors suddenly doing all these movies in foreign languages? Huh? English not good enough for you anymore?

Then again, the top two movies in English this weekend were Stomp the Yard and Night at the Museum. So nevermind. I'm only watching things with subtitles from now on.

And look, Japanese people, what the hell is with all the suicide?

If reading All Quiet on the Western Front didn't convince you that war was phenomenally stupid, watching this film certainly will. Needless, idiotic death all around on both sides. We die because we can. Because somebody tells us to. Because we've been brought up thinking that's the only option.

The captain in Pan's Labrynth would have fit in well with the Japanese military, come to think of it.

Both were fantastic films and will receive well deserved Oscar nominations this year, I'm sure. But if pressed I'd have to say that Pan's Labrynth was the better film.

So after watching bloody and vicious death all day I went out to my car and realized I forgot to get my parking validated. Karma's a dirty whore. I may not have paid for that second movie or any popcorn, but I paid $12 for parking. Now I'm really depressed.

Fortunately I can spend my evening watching Jack Bauer inflict more bloody and vicious death on Los Angeles. Yay.