here's a rundown of what i netflixed this month. this review is a bit earlier than usual because i'll be spending the last few days of the month out of town for the thanksgiving holiday and won't be watching any netflix at all.

"mafalda la pelicula" - i only heard of mafalda within the last year. it's one of those things that it seems all who grew up in latin america know and in order to understand latin america better from a pop culture perspective, i just had to watch this. um, yeah.. no, it's not for me.

"mishima: a life in four chapters" - my impression of mishima is this: japanese think he's a freak, a taboo subject due to his suicide; westerns on the other hand adore him. in high school i was a TA for japanese class one year and the teacher showed a few films in class. i didn't like any of the films but i remember he showed a mishima documentary. this however was not it. mishima is for me, well, i don't know. i have only read one of his books and i wasn't that into it. i read this film is not allowed to be exported into japan. makes me just want to talk to japanese more about this guy.

"wall-e" - damn this was a long movie that kinda goes nowhere for a long time then suddenly moves really fast so that threw me off. it's not 5 stars but it's got pixar quality so i can't give it 3 stars. yet i feel uncomfortable giving it 4 stars. i can't picture myself watching this again anytime soon. all i know is, after i watched this, i started talking like wall-e.

"the quiet" - i believe this was one of the movies netflix recommended to me based on how i've rated other movies. um, well, it was just ok. the father has sex with his daughter and she kinda likes it. 1. that is disgusting, repulsive, sickening. 2. i cannot stand such things AT ALL. 3. i don't believe when the other parent says they didn't know what was going on. maybe sometimes they don't know but when it goes on for years and years, they've just got to know! the other parent in this one, the mother, she knows, but she'd rather just ignore it by self-medicating. ai yai yai!

"head-on" - there was a trailer for this film on one of the other movies we borrowed so we decided to add it to the queue. but now i'm not sure why we did other than perhaps for the 80s music used in the trailer and that the main character has a siouxsie poster in his room. given the basic plot, there's a lot of damn blood in this movie. it might start off a bit slow but it's good to watch if you have 2 hours with no other distractions.

"testosterone" - this would be the other trailer on the film that i can't remember but where the trailer was intriguing so it got added to the queue. largely filmed in buenos aires which offered a couple moments "oh yeah i've been there" moments but other than that, a huge disappointment. the only thing good about the movie was that it introduced me to the lovely celina font who is cute like laura harring. it was hard to find information about her but i did some googling and found some photos, her resume, and learned that she was born in rosario (might be my next vacation spot). the worst part is that i cannot feed this new crush because it seems that she's more of a novela actress and so there's slim chance of me getting hold of anything else she's been in. *sigh*

"kung fu panda" - talk about disappointment. i know someone who gushed like it was a 5 star movie. i give it 3 stars. some of the animation was cool but it just didn't have enough wow factor. jack black is annoying, even when it's only his voice. the only time he's not been annoying is "shark tale" and that's a terrible movie but it's worth it to watch his character. and that coming from me, given how much i dislike jack black, is saying a lot. but back to this panda thang. it's not just his voicing. i could look over that if the plot and characters were solid enough to hold your attention for the entire film but they just aren't. the furious five are supposed to be 5 aspiring masters in the film. they are young but awesome or are supposed to be awesome. unfortunately they are not. a couple ok moments with them but overall disappointing. the one character i liked was james hong as the father of the panda. he's a duck. they never explain why a duck has a panda for a son and that's part of the joke. i really like hong's voice in this, his character's idealism and dreams, etc. it just fits so well. hong's character runs a noodle shop and hopes for his son to take over one day. all that footage of cooking noodles and eating noodles, despite it being animated, made me damn hungry for noodles so i got up and made me some soba soup. that was the tastiest part of the whole film.

"placebo: once more with feeling" - since i like various english bands, placebo is a name i've come across often but am not familiar with their songs. i was going to wait for this dvd to arrive to get myself acquainted with their music but i couldn't help myself and listened to the album version of the dvd (it's a singles collection) as well as another album. while i didn't get that into the regular album, i really dug the singles collection. some of the sound reminds me of ned's atomic dustbin, especially the song "teeange angst". when i heard a couple songs they sounded familiar to me and they've been used in movies but i've never seen those movies so i'm not sure where i've heard them! now that i'm really digging some of their tracks, i couldn't wait for the videos to arrive. i didn't cheat and watch them online either. now that i've seen the videos, it's like, "uh...." as the videos are not so great. i also know a lot of ladies like the singer and i'm watching the clips wondering how that could be. he looks like a dyke, a kinda ugly dyke. perhaps his fans are closet lesbians.

"the golden compass" - when this came out, the trailer looked good but i wondered if it wasn't copying "the chronicles of narnia" or "the lord of the rings" somehow. maybe those films just opened the door for more fantasy fiction to be turned into films for children. well, the film was very boring. i'm really not sure what the fuck was going on either because i just couldn't care enough to pay attention. the only thing i learned is that nicole kidman is starting to change my mind about blondes and blue eyes. i detest it but it becomes her. especially with glasses on.

"scary movie 4" - i've added a bunch of spoof films to my queue after watching so much serious stuff because i just need to wind down and relax with things that require no thought, just laughs. this film didn't have many laughs though.