Watched The Last Samurai on Fri night. Standard Hollywood fare; albeit very pretty Hollywood fare. Gorgeous panoramas of lush mountain slopes and cloud-filled skies. Rousing mass battles. 2-D villains and an emperor that�s only � more. Cool, heroic heroes in a rose-tinted conception of pre-industrial Japan � the one that too many Americans think Japanese culture should have been like.

I liked the camerawork and the high level of detail on the armour and costumes. The ninja attack on the village was excellently done imho. Of course, the heroes could not die halfway through the movie, but the ninja were silent, swift, deadly and coordinated.

Irreversible, on Sat evening, was completely different from the Oscar-grist above. Certainly more thought provoking and disturbing. The reverse narrative brings to mind the well-crafted Memento, but Irreversible has no mystery, no suspense. Instead it throws violence in your face for the first half, with the infamous rape in real-time scene becoming the frame of reference for the rest of the movie. The second half milks irony a little too much (for instance, Alex dreams the night before the rape that she�s walking in a red tunnel and it breaks in half. Her rape occurred in a red underpass), but provides valuable background and a glimpse into the sexual undercurrents just under the ties between Alex, her ex-lover Pierre and her present squeeze Marcus. These ties are placed under much scrutiny after we have seen what happens shortly after, especially with regards to the connections between violence, sex, and the objectification of women.

It�s not that Irreversible has a moral message. On the contrary, there is no room for morals � not in that urban hell that ticks along a linear progression. As the ex-con at the beginning of the movie (which is really the linear, eventual end) claims, "Time destroys everything."