Mini-Review: This movie definitely exists.

Mini-Review: The Order of the Phoenix may be my least favorite book in the series, and now I remember why. So many things here are, in a word, irritating. Harry's constant whining is irritating; the Ministry of Magic's unwillingness to admit that Voldemort has returned makes no sense, and is irritating; Dolores Umbridge is an irritatingly bad character. Another problem is that the film feels very rushed. It's still Harry Potter so I still enjoyed it to an extent, but for me it's a bit of nadir in the series.

Mini-Review: I guess you can't really discuss this film without dealing with the political content. The film seems to be advocating the controversial view of anti-dystopianism. We're talking about a film that dares to suggest that it's bad when a government kills its own citizens. Flippancy aside, V for Vendetta is entirely unsubtle but still quite compelling. And frankly you don't really need to think about the political content, since the film is watchable enough to watch just for entertainment's sake.

Mini-Review: Primer is an attempt to do time travel as "hard science", with no logical flaws. Does it succeed? I'm... not sure. I understand the main idea behind the Primer time machine, but the details are so complicated that if there were any plot holes, they may have flown right past me. I dare you not to find this film even remotely intriguing, but I won't exactly blame you if you don't buy it, or don't care. I do care, but not enough to do the amount of thinking about the film that it requires.

Mini-Review: This is a weird movie that's hard to fully understand, but it's very rich and intriguing. It touches on sexual repression, the intersection of pain and pleasure, the Oedipal struggle, the importance of the sense of touch, and of course... blindness. I think blindness is a pretty interesting topic in general, and my favorite scene in the film was the one where the sculptor Aki deftly chased the model Michio around his surreal studio at high speeds, despite being blind.