it's a strange world...

Alright people. Those of you who know me well know how behind the times I am in terms of must-see movies. Hell, I only saw the Graduate this summer. That being said, why did no one just sit me down and force me to watch Blue Velvet? How is it possible that this is the first time I've seen a David Lynch movie? I'm not going to go into a lengthy discussion of why I loved it so much because this is probably old news to all of you, but if you haven't seen it, I strongly recommend it. Preferably on a movie theatre screen.

Paris has literally hundreds of movie theatre of all sizes. And the smaller ones organize mini movie fests once a month, so that they can compete with the large Silvercity-esque complexes. This means that you can see some of your favourite classics on the big screen again. So maybe it's a good thing I got to see Blue Velvet for the first time in a movie theatre... Did you know that he considered making it in black and white at first?

I've been on a bit of a movie binge ever since classes ended. In Spanish class last friday our teacher showed us Alejandro Amenabar's first major movie, Tesis. I'm usually pretty indifferent towards horror movies - at least more recent ones - because I'm always disappointed at the lack of suspense...and overall scariness. But this movie was terrifying. The basic premise: a university student in Madrid is writing her thesis on the depiction of violence in movies. She discovers a snuff movie in which a girl is being tortured to death. She finds out that the girl in the video was a former student at her uni and she decides to try to figure out who did it.

The real genius of this film is that you don't know who made the snuff film until the very last scene of the movie. And while the protagonist in the movie has a morbid fascination with violence, Amenabar is also trying to push the boundaries but never in a gratuitous or campy way. The end result is a truly scary movie that you will not be able to get out of your head.