[After a brisk nap]

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly is a masterpiece, but there's no point arguing about it, I suppose.

I watched The Host, the Korean monster movie, this weekend. Combining people-chomping and general destruction worthy of any summer blockbuster with social satire and Little Miss Sunshine-style family farce, it is some kind of demented masterpiece, I suppose. Unfortunately, the pace was uneven, with some parts frustratingly dull, and occasionally it seemed like the director was so determined to defy expectations and break convention that he didn't care about creating a satisfying story.

Netflix sent me The Killing, one of Stanley Kubrick's early movies. I found it disappointing. Billed as a film noir, it was really nothing of the sort (though it contains some of the tropes, such as a scheming femme fatale, and much of the characteristic visual style); it's a heist movie. Most of it has been done better in later films. Maybe it would have worked better (certainly on a plot level) if the deadly woman had been better-looking. I would also lose the pointless voice-over and the pointless jumps in chronology.