Clay's Weekend Movie Review

I've color-coded the better movies:

   Green - worth seeing.
   Purple - fuck yeah.  Stand in line for tickets.

16 October 2011

Insidious - I’m trying to find a way to use the title of the movie in my description, but to be honest with you, I’m not entirely sure what it means. It’s one of those words that I might even use, though now when pressed with the issue, I’m pretty sure I’d be a little off in my understanding of the definition. I could look it up, but it seems like that would suck out some of the poignancy of my statement. So I’ll let it go. As long as it took me to get past that, I could only wish I was able to get through the movie in the same amount of time. In fact, it took me many hours to get through, watching a few minutes at a time, then wandering off to spaz out on the Internet, or make a delicious snack, or fold some laundry. Or log into work, and start looking up menu paths for objects that are scheduled for deletion. That’s how good this movie is. But here’s the quick rundown: a family moves into a house, and their son falls down and goes into a coma. Soon, the mom realizes the house is haunted, so they move out. But the haunting critters follow them, because it turns out it’s really the kid who’s haunted, not the house(s). So Dad has to stop being a major pussy, and go into the netherworld to save his son from a demon. And fight some ghosts. And walk around in mist. All the while, his body is flopping around like a fish in the living room, while the family watches on. Horrible stuff.

25 September 2011

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines - Ahh-nold is back. This time, again, he comes from the future to protect a now-grown John Connor from the other terminator sent by the army of the machines to destroy him.

Here's what gets me, though. If these things can come back from the future to any time in the past, why does the "friendly" one always come back just moments after the "unfriendly" one shows up? Couldn't it be there, like a year earlier? Maybe build some shelter or some super weapons? Or couldn't it bring a hundred of its friends, so they'd have an army to battle the unfriendly one? Seems like it would be a lot easier that way. I don't know, maybe from now on, I should be in charge of time-travelling cyborg/machine thing planning.

11 September 2011

Outsourced - Todd's department is outsourced to Indaia, and everyone is out on the streets. Everyone, except Todd, who gets to journey out to India to train the new staff to sell garbage knick-knacks to Americans. He stumbles on the Indian culture a few times, and then meets Asha, a cute little Indian girl who works for him, who he convinces to sleep with him. Awww, isn't that sweet…. The whole story's bothersome on so many levels, and really I just wanted to see the movie that was the inspiration for the series, that also started off very offensive, but eventually found its groove. I don't know, I guess you could see this as a love story, where two young people in love go to battle against the world and their love wins out, but really I just think that's applying a Western dynamic to an Eastern scenario, and at some level, it's a warfare that eventually sends the message that Whitey is always right. I don't know, whatever, the Bucks lost tonight and I'm in no mood to be writing about this stupid chick flick anyway.

04 September 2011

Cyrus - John is an everyday schlub, who one day encounters the raging beauty of Marisa Tomei, embodied in the character of Molly. That she even looks at him twice is a miracle in its own right, especially considering that upon their first meeting, he's a drunken fool, pissing in the bushes. She seems too good to be true, though there's something a little secretive about the way she sneaks out of his house in the middle of the night, doesn't let him come over, and generally pushes him off while she's pulling him in. So John does the logical thing - he tracks her one day, and stakes out her house, then breaks in the next morning, only to be met by her 20-year old son, Cyrus. Molly and Cyrus are close, like "you shit while I shower" close, and when Cyrus gets it in his head to drive John away, the poor old guy never had a chance. But he's up for the fight - it's Marisa Tomei, after all. It's cute, funny, and at least a little unsettling.

07 August 2011

The Fighter - The Story of boxer Micky Ward. I'd seen Micky fight on a couple occasions back when boxing didn't suck so much, but I never knew much about the fighter. I just knew he had some god damn wars with Arturo Gatti. But here we have the story of Micky and his brother Dicky, a once-rising star in his own right who once squared off with Sugar Ray Leonard, even scoring a knockdown, though it was widely recognized as a slip. Dicky now struggles with a crack addiction, and spends more time being an allaround jerkoff. Likewise, mother Alice worships Dicky and sees Micky as just one of the other 8 kids. But Micky is fiercely loyal to them both, until a voice of reason in the person of Charlene - bargirl, drunk, former highjumper, MTV-girl, and no-shit-taker, played brilliantly by the wonderfully nasty (this time) Amy Adams. When Dicky is arrested after a failed prostitution scam, Micky tries to stop the cops from pounding the fuck out of him and he takes a few brutal whacks of the baton to his hand. This gives Charlene the impetus to convince Micky that he needs to train with someone other than the pack of losers he's surrounded himself with. But Micky's loyalty to his family may be his own worst enemy.

31 July 2011

Youngblood - Dean Youngblood (how about that name!) is a prodigy hockey player from the farm, who gets a chance to try out with a semi-pro team way up in the great white north of Canada. He's a little dude at 5'10, 160, but he can skate like the wind, so he makes the team. He immediately winds up boffing the landlady, a horny little thing name Miss McGill, and then getting his balls shaved by the other fellas on the team. Then he meets the coach's daughter, and despite the scare factor of Coach Chadwick, he falls in love. Cynthia Gibbs plays Jessie, who's cute, albeit in a boyish sort of way. Paired with Rob Lowe and his feminine good looks, the two make quite an attractive androgynous couple. But it all goes on hold when Dean's buddy Derek (Patrick Swayze!) gets knocked out cold on the ice by league bully Racki. And Dean has to decide his fate: will he stay with the girl, or run home and cry, or beat up the bully, or make some pouty faces? Probably all of the above. Thanks to my buddy Brett for clueing me into this almost-missed gem of an 80s flick. Keanu Reeves' attempt at a French Canadian accent is worth the price of admission.

26 June 2011

Sex Magic, Manifesting Maya - Baba Dez is a shaman, a dhakini, a sex therapist who uses Tantra to heal his subjects. His beloved is Maya, an athletic woman who's become quite the little dhakini in her own right. Sounds awesome, right? But one day Maya decides she can't deal with Dez sticking it into everything that walks by, and she bails. So Dez goes through the classic stages of grief: crying hopelessly, scheming, conniving, and rationalizing. In the process, he declares himself celibate, then moves in with two chicks to do "research" on his sex book. Finally, Maya comes back, and Dez is ecstatic. At least until she changes her mind because he can't keep it in his drawers. Also because he's a little creepy. Oh well, it's a hell of a life. It's an interesting story, with a handful of naughty bits.

19 June 2011

Catfish - Nev is a photographer who finds fortune with a great shot of a woman and man in a field, that gets picked up on a magazine campaign. Out of the blue, eight-year-old Abby sends him a painting that she's done of his picture, and it's surprisingly good. They form an odd relationship, trading messages online and sharing their work. When he suspects that things are getting a little strange, Nev decides to go out and visit her. This much you'll hear in any review. It should be enough to make you feel a little creepy, especially when people decline to tell you what happens next. Let me shed some light. This is a documentary, shot from Nev's point of view, and pervtown never comes into play. He does find some surprises awaiting, but it turns okay, surprisingly sweet, even, all things considered.

Serenity - You could call it the season finale of the single-season Firefly series. It's a nice little wrapup to a wonderful series that wasn't ready to wrap up.

12 June 2011

Let Me In - Having seen the original Swedish version, I boycotted this American remake for a while, until I kept hearing that it's really not bad, and I should give it a try, and so on. So I relented. Yeah, it's not bad, but it's really kind of pointless if you've seen the original. It doesn't really bring anything new to the table other than lack of subtitles, so I guess if you're too lazy for that, this is your film. The story is the same - little dude meets a girl, who teaches him to stick up for himself. Then she eats a few random strangers. Not bad, but seriously, why does the American film industry feel so compelled to constantly remake and ruin decent films? Oh yeah, money.

05 June 2011 - A Night with Adam Sandler

Bedtime Stories - A cute little story for the whole family: Adam Sandler dials back into his Big Daddy vibe, playing Uncle Skeeter to his sister's kids, keeping an eye on them while she's out of town, and weaving wild bedtime stories. Over time, the stories start to take root, and Skeeter notices that elements of the stories are starting to play out in his real life. So he does his best to guide them in a direction that's favorable to his outlook, including a little slap and tickle with the local socialite (a sweetened Paris Hilton prototype), and the no-cost ownership of a sweet ride. But it doesn't really work that way for the Skeet-man, because it's the kids who are really crafting the story, and instead of the socialite hottie, they have him pegged for the girl next door. Awww.

50 First Dates - Henry meets this cool girl. They hang out for a little while, and he even gets the look back when he walks away. So the next day he sees her again, plops down at her table in the same restaurant, and she freaks the fuck out. The townies fill him in: Lucy is suffering from a bout of amnesia, and she forgets everything about the previous day every night when she goes to sleep. So he plays his Ground Hog Day routine with her, meeting her every day, and trying different things until he becomes a pro at picking her up. Then Dad steps in. "What the fuck are you doing with my daughter?" he says, or some such thing. Actually, I think it's more like, "She really likes you, so please keep picking her up." Or I don't know, I forget. But anyway, somewhere along the line, she decides that he should go on with his life, so she breaks up with him. So now that he's free, will he go one to pursue his life dream of sailing around the world, or will he try to win her back? If you've ever seen a chick flick, you already know the answer, but still it's a pretty cute take on the old story.

15 May 2011

Broken Embraces - Penelope Cruz plays a young untalented actress who hooks up with a much older sugar daddy film producer. I really can't remember the plot because I watched this like three months ago, but I'm pretty sure it's exactly what you'd come up with on your own: she cheats and gets caught. I don't know. I'm pretty sure she's topless a little bit, which is very nice. A number of years ago a friend of mine told me he didn't get what the big deal is about her, after seeing some pictures of her. And true enough, she has kind of a big nose, and doesn't look all that special in pictures. She's pretty, but not like heart-stoppingly pretty. But then I realized that you have to see her move, talk, breathe. She's a very intriguing little creature, and it's all in the way she moves and laughs and speaks. So. If you want to see her move, and see her boobs to boot, see this movie. But I really don't want to talk about it afterwards.

27 March 2011

St. Elmo's Fire - Another film that I've held an emotional attachment to for years, St. Elmo's Fire disappoints upon a second, post-puberty, post-80s viewing. I originally saw the film in college, with a slew of friends and my trusty girlfriend by my side. We were nearing graduation, and St. Elmo's Fire tells the story a group of kids who've just graduated and are struggling to find their way in the world. We sensed the trouble looming in the future, but Rob Lowe was there with a sparkling smile and a magical fireball from a can of hairspray to show us it would all be okay. Now on the back end of that curve, I'm forced to conclude that they're all a bunch of whiny babies. Though I still have an emotional attachment to the film, it's not nearly as poignant as I'd thought. The characters are shallow and the dialogue is cringingly laden with 80's pop culture. Oh well, I'd still watch it again.

03 April 2011

The Wild One - Johnny's the leader of the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - a crew of ne'er do wells who crash the local motorcycle race and steal the second place trophy, then pop over to the nearest town to raise hell with the bumpkins. There he meets Kathie, the shrinking violet beauty of a waitress and barkeep who reminisces about the one time she almost got away from it all - to go fishing. While Johnny's there to tear things up, he never realized it would be Kathie who would challenge him to look into himself and put a little fear back into him. Brando is beautifully Brando, in a role that cemented that slightly feminine machismo that both Brando and Dean pulled off so well.

I Spit on Your Grave (2010) - Jennifer Wells is pretty little thing - a writer from the city who rents a cabin way back in the middle of God knows where to work on her novel, throw a few back, and run around in her skivvies. But she makes a mistake when she embarrasses the local self-proclaimed stud Johnny. So he shows up one night at her cabin with his idiot friends and they torture and rape her, leaving her for dead. But she's not. She comes back to torture them right back. There's no surprises and no little plot twists to be found - that's what it is. And for what it is, it's a well made film, but there's really no joy in it. And Sarah Butler is a pretty little thing, despite the brutality of it all.

Dark Country - Pointless film about a newly married couple in Vegas who drive across the desert overnight and encounter weirdness. The green screen effects are so obvious, they make me wonder if it's a deliberate effect, and if it is, I don't get it. The plot is predictable, the characters are irrational and erratic, and the entire thing is just sort of blah. With all that, you'd think they'd sex it up a bit, and when the pretty little wife rubbed one out in the car while hubby was doing 90, I was encouraged. But it was all downhill from there.

19 December 2010

The Fourth Kind - The true story of Abigail Tyler, a psychologist in Nome, Alaska. She worked with her husband prior to his mysterious death, on the problem that was apparently plaguing the city -- a stream of disappearances, and the oddly similar stories that some of the people report. She continues that work on her own, after his death. Three of her subjects are reporting dreams of an owl, watching them all night, then maybe (or maybe not) appearing within the house. The turning point comes when Abbey hands off her recorded notes to her secretary to transcribe, but when the secretary plays them back, she notices that the recording apparently captured Abbey's abduction by an alien entity, including its declaration of itself as "God", and various pronouncements in both English and Sumerian. The film is augmented by audio and video archival footage, captured mostly by Tyler herself in hypnotherapy sessions, but also by police cameras. The archival footage is the creepiest bit of it, nearly capturing the levitation of one subject, the speaking-in-(alien)-tongues of some others, and the apparent abduction of Abbey's daughter by the aliens. Unfortunately, the cameras all begin to distort right at the key moments, when anything other-worldly begins to take place, so these scenes are also played out in the re-enactment. But the archival footage is clearly very strange, and if nothing else, proof that something very creepy took place in Nome Alaska during this brief period of time in the year 2000. Or is it? Set your bullshit alarm and see what you come up with -- or, as Milla Jovovich herself says, "what you believe is yours to decide."

Inception - This is a big film, from the size of the concept to the production value, to the talent assembled in the cast. Dom Cobb is a professional spy with a cool machine that lets him intrude on people's dreams and extract information. He's wanted in the US after the death of his wife, so he can't go home to see his kids. He's hired by a corporation one day to perform an "inception," which is the planting of an idea within the mind of the subject, which, in this case, will cause that man to break up his father's empire into little pieces upon the father's death. So he hires a crack team of dream programmers and whatnot, including dream architect Ariadne -- played by Ellen Page, who I'm starting to like more and more because she's so tiny and spinnerish. They grab the dude and go three levels into the dream, and then even lower, so they can plant the idea and let it grow organically. Writer/Director Christopher Nolan does a nice job inventing the mythology of the world in which the story takes place, including the netherworld of unstructured dream space (which is not entirely unlike the non-contiguous segments of space-time that I invented in my novel, The Fantastic Machine.) There are a few holes, but in general, most of the bases are covered. But pay attention, because it gets a little twisted.

12 December 2010

[REC] - They pitch it as the inspiration for Quarantine, but from my recollection, it seems more like Quarantine was a scene-by-scene reshoot, with translation to English the only modification. In that regard, [REC] seems like a tired retread, which is sad, because it's really the other way around. Same story: a reporter goes on a ride-along with a firetruck, where apparently some lady's gone nuts. When they get there, the police lock them inside, and then everyone starts turning into zombies. The reporter girl's a hottie, and I love that Spanish accent.

Friday - Craig and Smokey live in the hood. Smokey is down with the chronic, and when his supplier, Big Worm, cruises by looking for his money, Smokey fesses up that he smoked all the merchandise. So Worm gives them both until 10:00 to pay up or git smoked. Meanwhile, neighborhood idiot/bully Deebo is terrorizing everyone, and when pretty girl Debbie stands up to him, Craig has to step in to defend her honor. A lot of this flick is silliness lifted from the likes of Mad TV, but it's not a bad little comedy, and in the end the good guy wins, so yay for that.

Afterlife - Anna's not having a great day; actually, she's not really having a great life. Her boyfriend takes her out to dinner to pop the question, but instead, she thinks he's breaking up with her, and she storms out of the room in a flury of profanity. Women, I tell ya'. So on her way home, she's popping some happy pills when she crashes her car, and the next thing you know, she wakes up dead in the morgue. She's like, "what the hell?" and the motician's like, "you're totally dead." So the rest of the movie is her trying to get out of the funeral parlor, while the motician sticks her with some secret drug everytime someone comes by to check her out, which either knocks out her living body, or "relaxes" her dead one. Now, I'm not a doctor, but I'm pretty sure dead bodies don't need a lot of relaxing, but whatever. There are clues that lead you in either direction, that she's either dead or alive, and you have to decide for yourself which it is. As an added little bonus, Anna - played by my girlfriend Christina Ricci - walks around naked for like half the movie. So I'll probably watch it one more time, just to figure out the mystery - and maybe look for covered up signs of that stupid bird tattoo she got, after the breast reduction (boo to that!) It's not the greatest movie in the world, but God damn, I love me some Christina Ricci.

05 December 2010

Kill Theory - Eight kids go to a summer home to party over the weekend, when a madman takes over the place, and instigates a game in which he declares that if they kill each other, he'll let one survivor leave the place in the morning. "Uh-uh, no way!" the all say, then they all start to kill each other. It's just stupid.

Facing Ali - The story of Muhammad Ali's rise and fall, told by the men who faced him in the ring. Most are sad stories - the retirement years of most professional fighters doesn't seem to be the wonderland you might think. Through it all , the specter of Ali lingers in the shadows - a man who dared to defy.

Troubled Water - Thomas was convicted of the murder of a young boy. He did his time, and got out a little early, on the promise of a job playing organ at a local church. He seems repentent, and he's just trying to keep his head down, but when pushed about the murder, he becomes defiant, insisting that he didn't do it. One day, Agnes walks into the church. Agnes, the mother of the murdered boy - Agnes, who sat in court for hours and stared at the face of the man who killed her son. Then it all goes very badly for Thomas. The story is told in two parts, from the perspectives of Thomas and Agnes, individually. In the end, it comes together. Troubled Water is a gripping story of tragedy, at moments utterly breathtaking in the quiet grasp it exerts. And it features - honest to God - some awesome organ music.

28 November 2010

The Lovely Bones - Susie Salmon (like the fish) is the victim of her neighbor/killer. Instead of going off to the great beyond, she lingers around in a world of her own creation, while she watches her dad catch the killer. Despite the fact that it's a revenge story, it's still pretty girly.

A Single Man - George is a British college professor living in the US in the 60's, trying to get over the death of his partner, sixteen years earlier. He sluts around a little with some dude he meets in a parking lot, then some more with one of his students, then some more with his longtime BFF Charley, who would have gladly settled down  and made babies with him years ago if he wasn't such a poof (love that line.) Then he spends the rest of the film trying to avoid killing himself. The script is first rate, and it's a nice little period piece - a little black comedy, a little bit melancholy.

21 November 2010

The Girl Who Played With Fire - Lisbeth Salander returns in this story that's just a little better than the first. This time around, investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist is publishing a story on child trafficking, when his two informants are killed, and his old friend Lisbeth is fingered for the murder. There's a great big blonde guy who keeps beating everybody up, and some bad guy named Zala. This one goes a little more into the character development of Lisbeth, so I think it's better than the first one, but still my general impression is "meh."

Goya's Ghosts - During the Spanish Inquisition and French Revolution, a painter named Goya gets caught up in all the controversy, and so does a pretty little girl named Ines. She's the humble daughter of a merchant who finds herself arrested by overly ambitious Brother Lorenzo, who's trying to make an example of her because she didn't eat pork one day, so she must be a Jew. She's held and raped by Lorenzo for 15 years, until Napoleon blows into town and overthrows the regime. But by this time, Lorenzo is outcast, and he manages to return, on Napoleon's side. But now, Ines is apeshit crazy, and not looking too hot, but Goya tries to rescue her and her fifteen year old daughter. I confess, my primary motivation here was to see Natalie Portman, and the little whisper of nudity that she brings to the role. It's not joyous nudity, but I checked it out just to make sure. She does a great job as the sweet Ines and even better as the apeshit crazy version of Ines.

14 November 2010

Gigli - I'd been wanting to see this train wreck for a while, but rather than a Showgirls-level of audacity, Gigli was really just a showcase for mediocrity. Here's the deal: apparently, this guy named Gigli works as a dirty deeds sort of guy. He's hired to kidnap the special-needs nephew of a federal prosecutor from some sort of an institution, so he does that by walking into the place, asking the woman in charge where he can find Robbie (or whatever), and then he walks out with the kid and takes him back to his apartment. Shortly, Rickie shows up at his doorstep, and tells him she's there because the boss thinks he's a fuckup, and can't be trusted. Affleck and Lopez are so unbelieveable in their roles, and the little romance that develops is completely beyond comprehension and more than a little nauseating. By the end, they decide to buy a house with a white picket fence and skip around in the daisies. It's shitty, but not fun-shitty, so don't waste your time. The only saving grace is Al Pacino, who slays in his minor role.

07 November 2010

Triangle - I honestly watched this all the way through two nights in a row. It deals with the concept of time loops, and I happen to be writing a novel about that very topic right now, so it seemed a bit serendipitous. Here's the deal: single mom Jess gets a day off to go boating with a rich guy and his friends, but when she gets there, she seems a little off, though no one knows why. Everything's going great, until a big storm blows through and capsizes the boat. One passenger is lost at sea, and the others are marooned on top of the overturned boat, until a luxury crusier comes along. They climb on board, but there's no one on the entire ship, even though it's chugging along. Walking around for a little while, Jess starts to get freaked out, saying she's been here before. Then they start dying. Turns out there's a killer on board, picking them off one by one, and pretty soon, Jess is the only one left, after she goes one-on-one with the hooded assassin. So she's a little bummed, but doesn't have much time for that because then she hears something on the water. When she looks over the rail, she sees a capsized boat, waiting to be rescued. But it's her capsized boat, and in fact it's her and her friends. So now another round of them comes on board, and while she's trying to figure out what to do next, she begins to realize that she's woven into this plot. She drops her keychain, which is found by her new self, the same as she found a little while back. So now she goes out on a mission to save the new versions of her friends, which seems easy because she knows what's going to happen. So she tries to screw it all up, but still the killer gets them. I love that there are open time loops in this movie, like the keychain. Somewhere along the line, she had it. But in the timeloop, she only finds it when her previous self drops it, then she carries it around until the next round shows up, and she drops it so it can be picked up by the new arrivals. But if you follow the world of just one of her, she would never have lost it. There are othe loops like this that don't really make sense, and, because I'm also wrestling with these same sorts of loops, and I'm intending to leave them open, I feel that much better about my decision. Not to mention the fact that Melissa George does a great job of running around, bouncing a little bit, and looking awful cute. I could spend an hour and half doing that any day. Maybe even a couple days.

Bad Boys (1983) - Sean Penn runs over a little kid, squashing him flat, so they send him off to juvie. The head fuckwad is this tall dork they call "The Viking," and he pushes Penn around for awhile, until he's had all he can stand. So he sticks a couple cans of pop into a pillow case, and pounds the crap out of the Viking, and he assumes the role of head fuckwad. Meanwhile, the squashed kid's brother is on the outside, and he rapes Penn's girlfriend (actually, MY girlfriend, Ally Sheedy) as revenge. When the brother gets sent to juvie, they all take bets to see who will win the inevitable showdown. Whatever. The introduction of Ally Sheedy, although in a fairly small part.

A Prophet - Milak transfers from Juvie to the Big House, where he has no friends. The leader of the Corsican gang fingers him to hit a guy who's scheduled to testify against some of his friends, and the next thing you know, Milak is an honorary Corsican. Which is weird, considering he's an Arab, and they have their own gang. BTW, I have no clue where this is set, but it ain't Cleveland. Over time, Milak get some passes, which allow him to get out of prison for 24 hours so he can kill people and make drug deals. It confused the hell out of me, since I watched it on two separate nights, and didn't really follow all the names in the first place.

31 October 2010

Dark Ride - Five kids decide to spend their spring break at an amusement park where the "Dark Ride" has been shut down for 15 years because a psycho killer killed 16 people in there once. Coincidentally, the madman breaks out of the insane asylum on the very same weekend (because his handlers got a little loopy and smacked him in the face with a steak). So the psycho shows up at the ride, and the kids show up at the ride, and you know the rest. Jamie-Lynn Sigler is the main attraction here, and she's cute, but awful annoying. Blech.

Winter's Bone - Set in rural Missouri, Winter's Bone is the story of teenager Ree Dolly, who's trying to raise her brother and sister in lieu of her mother's inability to function. It's not going too badly for them, until the law shows up and informs Ree that her father Jessup had put the property up for bond when he was busted for cooking meth, and now that he's skipped, they stand to lose the property unless Ree can bring him in. So she sets out to find what happened to her estranged father in this world where everybody knows everybody's business, but no one's going to talk about it. She goes from kinfolk to kinfolk, narrowing in pretty quickly on the truth that she already suspects, but still needing positive confirmation. It's a nicely told story - not a big story, but one with a heart, that seems told from a position of familiarity, that cuts to the core of the meth infestation that's taking over in the rural midwest and the impact it's having on the children.

Martyrs - What's impressive here is the way this film moves from story to story, without ever acknowledging that it's doing just that. In the beginning we have a young girl, making her escape from a horrific imprisonment, running like all holy hell down the street in her skivvies. Lucie winds up at an orphanage, where her beat-up appearance scares most of the other girls away, save Anna, who gloms onto her like her best friend. Fifteen years later, we join the Belrond family, sitting around the breakfast table. Sis is teasing Brother about his girlfriend, Mom is (inexplicably) tweaking the house's water pressure, and Dad is being a dad. Then Lucie blasts through the door, confident in her belief that this was the family that turtured her as a child, and she exacts her revenge. She calls her horrified friend, Anna, who immediately shows up to sort through the carnage and figure how to get her friend out of there. Meanwhile, Lucie is battling the demons of her previous imprisonment who have come back to haunt her, in a fashion that will ring familiar to fans of Asian horror. And then it gets crazy, lapsing from murder to monster to something else entirely, becoming the story of Anna and the strength of her will, and the brutality of man against man. This is one of the most violent movies I've ever seen - not because of the bloodletting or shotgun splattering, but because of the overwhelming brutality that comes out near the end. An unforgettable film, but it takes a strong stomach.

23 October 2010

The Secret in Their Eyes - A guy retires as prosecuting attorney (or something) in Argentina, and he decides to write a book about the one case that's always haunted him: the death of a young lady. So the guy goes back to his old office and tracks down his old boss (or whatever), who he's always been in love with, so she can help him work out all the details. And she's like, "what are you writing about?" And he's like, "hello? The Coloto murder? Duh!" It seems a bad guy raped and killed a young woman many years ago, leaving her husband and family heartbroken. So he spends the whole rest of the movie flashing back and forth between then and now, showing us how they caught the guy, but then there were problems and another guy got killed, and whatever. With all kinds of wreaths all over the DVD box, I was expecting big things, but really I found it just sort of average. It pretty much lost me at hello.

Please Give - Kate and her husband run a furniture store, selling used furniture they buy cheap from grieving families. Unfortunately, Kate's losing her killer instinct, and finds herself giving money to people on the street to ease her conscience. They've purchased the apartment belonging to the lady next door, and they're just biding time until the mean old gal kicks off before they can knock down the walls and expand. Meanwhile, the old lady's granddaughters are trying to get through their lives, with stereotypical hottie Mary acting the big sack of bitch, while Plain Jane Rebecca has a heart of gold.

The Human Centipede - No surprises here. Two annoyingly self-absorbed party-girl tourists find themselves in the middle of Bumfuck Germany when their car blows a tire. They pout for a while, bitch a lot, and eventually find themselves at the doorstep of rural-dwelling Doctor Heiter, a retired surgeon who specializes in conjoined twin separations, who's now finding himself enraptured by a new passion: the reconjoination of previously unseparated individuals. He wants to make a human centipede by joining ass-to-mouth of three unwilling participants, and knocking out a few knees, as well. Welcome, segments two and three, er… ladies.

It proceeds as you'd expect, with the crazed doctor detailing out the steps before taking the first stitch. The boys at the video store had told me, with a disturbing bit of giddiness, that the medical details are highly accurate, but that seems to be a bit of grassroots marketing revealing itself. While the details are there, it's hardly technical enough to put into action, so you're going to have to practice a bit. But Doctor Heiter - played maniacally by Dieter Laser - gets it all in his first try, creating the world's first six-legged human-ish critter.

Fortunately, the biggest gross-out of the whole affair is one that remains unseen - the specifics of the newly joined digestive system, particularly the passage from one to the next. The rest of the film is sort of cat and mouse-ish, with the three trying to escape. But seriously, what are you gonna' do? It's not as unbelievably gross/scary/technical as we've been led to believe. But not too bad, as B-rate horror.

17 October 2010

Brother's Keeper - Either Delbert Ward conspired with his brothers to to end the suffering of eldest brother William, who was struggling with stomach problems and chronic pain, and one night he clasped his hand around Bill's mouth and snuffed out his life - a story that was corroborated by the other brothers and even by Delbert himself, shortly after the death, OR Bill died in his sleep and the New York state police department and the entire justice system are conspiring against these guys because they're backwoods bumpkins. Odds are good the first scenario is truth, but the whole town of Munnsville rallies around these otherwise outcast brothers, and lends the weight of the community to the proceedings. Filmmakers Jow Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky spend a year inside the lives of the remaining three brothers, as they grapple with the growing public attention and the light it shines on their simple lives. Like any court case worth consideration, the pros and cons stack up against each other, and it's anyone's guess what really happened that night. It seems most plausible that Delbert committed the crime, and therefore it's interesting to find everyone, myself included, pulling so hard for him. It gives you something to think about, in case you're short on topics.

Shutter Island - One of the inmates - er, um, patients - is missing from the facility on Shutter Island, and US Marshall Ted Daniels is on his way to investigate the mental facility. He's accompanied by a partner he's just met, and feeling a little queasy on the way there. When he arrives, he meets with administrators who are less than enthusiastic about complying with his authority. Still, he perserveres, sneaking into all of the hidden little areas on the island, uncovering the whereabouts of the missing patient (twice), and also digging in deeper into his own past, eventually come face to face with not only the man who killed his wife, but also with the man he used in order to get assigned to the case in the first place. That's a strange coincidence, but all is not what it seems in the world of Ted Daniels. But you'll probably pick up on that pretty early. The wrapup is a little extensive and dumbed down, a ham-fisted explanation for the remaining percentage of the audience that still hasn't figured out the catch - a fact that left a little metallic aftertaste in my mouth. Not a bad little flick, though.

Splice - A gene-splicing couple decide to create a half-human, half-slug creature, just to see what comes out. Enter baby Dren ("Nerd" in reverse, like Joanie called Potsie.) Dren's a pretty gruesome character at first, with eyes on the side of her head, and creepy ostrich legs. But she grows into a babe (with backwards knees and wings that come out when she's horny.) They spirit her out of the research facility because The Man's coming down on them, and they take her out to the farm, where she can run around and eat cats, like Alf. One night, the guy gets a little carried away with his science experiment/adopted child figure, and they have hot monkey sex. And then (and then?) it gets weird. If you've seen the commercials, you've seen the movie, but it's still kind of interesting.

10 October 2010

The Killer Inside Me - Lou Ford is a small town sherriff's deputy in Texas - a "yes ma'am, no ma'am" kind of guy who tips his hat to strangers on the street. One day, he shows up at the local prostitute's house and tries to run her out of town. She smacks the crap out of him, and he returns the favor by throwing her on the bed, pulling off his belt, and whipping her perfect little ass with it. They begin a torrid affair, and plot to get the hell out of town, once they pull a blackmail heist on one of the yokels. But at the last minute, Lou decides it will be just easier if he pulls on a glove and beats his pretty little hussy to death. From that point, Lou finds himself in a hole, and the only way he can dig out is to dig deeper, knocking off more of his enemies at every turn. Before long, we learn of Lou's past, which cements the fact that he's never been the boy scout that he appears to be. The point of disbelief doesn't lie in who he is, but rather in the fact that, from age 13 to 29, he was able to live the boy scout life long enough to rise to a position of respect in the community, as a gentleman and a sherriff's deputy. So it's still pretty hard to fathom in that regard, but the "Holy God, what-the-fuck" moment when he kills his pretty little whore is worth that bit of disbelief.

The Killing Floor - A book agent - a pricky little bastard, and probably Gordon Gecko's son - buys a penthouse apartment in New York. Shortly after moving in, a dude shows up with a cop, saying that he really owns the building. Then pictures show up under his door, showing some dead bodies in the apartment, but there's no such crime on record. Next up are the videos, taken of the guy while he was sleeping. So he freaks out, trying to track down the guy who's doing all this, and before it's over, there are some brand new dead bodies. Believability is hard to come by here, and the character is pretty annoying. For some reason, I thought this movie was supposed to be a little bigger and better than it turned out to be.

03 October 2010

Rise of the Dead - A baby is adopted by a set of bible-thumping parents who put a curse on him because he's adopted and therefore evil. They put him back up for adoption, and his second set of adoptive parents leave a loaded gun for him to play with while they argue over the gun in the kitchen, and Baby Cade - just about two years old - kills himself with it. This sad turn of affairs turns the boy into a demon, who possesses all of the people around his former families, including his birth mom, who's the protagonist of this ridiculous tale. She's not very interesting or likeable, the plot's utter nonsense, and the acting mediocre, so this fails on so many levels. Please don't waste your time here unless you're really bored.

Dead in 3 Days - Five kids graduate from high school and they're out joyriding, while playing a little grabass and huffing dope, or whatever kids do these days, when they run over a deer in the road. Then they all get text messages telling them they'll be dead in three days. One by one, the mysterious killer knocks them off and they all cry and do whatever it is kids do when a maniac kills their friends for running over a deer. An obvious I Know What You Did Last Summer knockoff, and not nearly as clever as it tries to be.

26 September 2010

Hot Tub Time Machine - My friend Corey says I'm a fucking Communist if I like this movie, which is fine with me, because like Corey says, this movie sucked! Hey Corey, what's that shiny thing over there? Go check it out!!! Okay, while he's distracted: this wasn't so bad. It's the silly story about 4 guys who try to travel back in time by going to the ski lodge they went to 25 years ago, only to find themselves actually travelled back in time to that very week. Apparently, spilling some Russian energy drink on magic hot tubs will do that. So they have to make everything right in their past so they can come back to their present. It's silly, but whatever. Oh hey, Corey, you're back. Like I was saying, comrade… er, I mean, "my friend"… you're right, that movie sucked.

Brüno - Sacha Baron Cohen pulls his latest zany character out of the closet and unleashes it on America, in the form of Brüno, a gay fashion designer from Austria who's down on his luck. Like any of Sacha's movies, the fun is in watching the crowd and trying to figure out who's in on the joke. And like many of his movies, the answer is "just about no one." I believe this film features the most gratuitous, full-frontal nudity I've ever seen in an R-rated movie, and it's absolutely hilarious. Save it for after the kids are in bed, though.

19 September 2010

Dead Snow - Some kids go up to a mountain cottage in Norway. A creepy old dude shows up and tells them that there were some Nazis here once, and then the next thing you know, Nazi Zombies are running all over the place, killing these kids. So they fight back. It's a nice little tribute to the Evil Dead series, but the Nazi/Zombie thing is getting old.

12 September 2010

Dead & Breakfast - A vanful of kids are on their way to a wedding when their car breaks down and they have to pull over at the nearest hotel in the small town of Lovelock. Somehow, the prick waiter winds up murdered, and the innkeeper has some sort of devil box that he's just started worshipping. When one of the fuckup kids climbs a ladder and breaks into the dude's bedroom, he knocks over the box and the whole town turns into zombies. Whatever. Stupid.

Survival of the Dead - Romero's latest entry in the zombie series picks up roughly on the storyline of Diary of the Dead, spinning off the story of a paramilitary group that works their way out to Plum Island, where the stress of the zombie appocalypse is augmented by the clan war between rival families. The Flynns have been ousted from the island for their belief that the walking dead should be taken down, whereas the Muldoons want to chain them up and wait for a cure, perhaps by teaching the dead to eat animals instead of people. The inevitable showdown is eternal. I'm not sure what to make of this ongoing series; since Romero sets all of his films in present day, the timeline is shifted in every film, making it difficult to comprehend the continuity. He sticks with his motif of addressing society in the context of a post-zombie world, this time taking on clan warfare, whereas his previous films have taken on racism, consumerism, the growing military complex, military corruption, and the Internet/Youtube generation. You just have to deal with a little time travel to cover all the ground. Not a bad zombie flick, but nothing that will rock the world.

05 September 2010

Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father - When Andrew Bagby died, his best friend travelled across the country, interviewing the man's friends and family so he could leave a tribute for Andrew's unborn son, Zachary. The footage pulls together the story of Andrew's tragic death and the impact that he had on so many people around him. We also learn the story of Zachary, and Andrew's parents' struggle to keep him in their lives. And by the time it's over, it hits you so hard, you'll want to crawl into a corner and cry. Be forewarned: this is a very moving story about some wonderful people, but it will brutalize you.

29 August 2010

Pandorum - I thought this might be a nice little atmospheric horror, set on a spaceship, where a couple of travelers are trying to save themselves from monsters or ghosts or whatever - sort of like the excellent Solyaris. Instead, I found a SyFy channel reject - cheesy in its depiction of space travel, set aboard a giant spacecraft, where monsters roam the decks and a mysterious disorder called "pandorum" brings about space insanity. When our hero, Cpl. Bower, wakes up, he decides to head to the bridge because the reactor needs to be rebooted (whatever), and if he doesn't get it done before it shuts down, it will never restart. Kind of like Ultraman used to face in every single episode. On his way, he has to avoid the space critters (which look a little bit like leftovers from Mad Max), and he also has to make friends with some of the warring humans. Blah.

The Grand - I admit: I was trying to watch Amelie, which had been waiting on my DVR for months, but I'd been putting off watching it because I was afraid it would quickly go into cutesie overload, and I'd only be able to watch a few minutes at a time, cutting the cutesie with interwoven moments of boobs, zombies, and/or F-bombs from skinemax, HBO, or my vast collection of zombie cinema. But in a serendipitous moment of DVR technology glitchery, what was recorded turned out to be The Grand, a fairly harmless flick about a poker tournament. F-bombs galore, Larry David's wife looking hot and a little slutty, and nothing cutesie about it. It didn't change my world, but it saved me from Amelie, at least for a little while longer. Eventually, I'll have to venture into those waters, so I have my Mortuary of Madness collection on standby.

22 August 2010

Greenberg - Roger Greenberg spends a little time in the psyche ward, and when he gets out, he goes to his brother's house to watch the place while the family is on vacation. He meets assistant Florence, a cute, slightly awkward girl, who's just a little too accommodating. He tries to reconnect with his past, but he's burned a lot of bridges, and now sober, he lacks the social skills to connect with a future. But he engages in a cycle of chasing Florence and then weirding out on her, and she seems to take to his insanity. It's an interesting film, but my bullshit alarm was screaming over the ongoing attention that cute, young, perky Florence gives to old, creepy, awkward Roger. With Jennifer Jason Leigh and Ben Stiller, all we need is Winona Ryder or Bridget Fonda and we're back in the 90's.

Kick-Ass - What a fuckload of fun. Dave is a high school reject who wonders aloud why there aren't any real superheroes. So one day, he buys a scuba suit and turns himself into the superhero called Kick-Ass. But with no superpowers, he gets pummeled senseless on his first crime-fighting endeavor, which leaves him with some nerve damage, making him impervious to pain - his true superpower. So he goes on to fight crime, and becomes somewhat of an internet sensation, though he's really sort of a spaz. Then along comes superhero Hit Girl, a scene-stealing little sweetheart with a foul mouth and a thirst for violence, and she takes the would-be crimestopper under her tiny wing and shows him how to dispatch the baddies, with extreme prejudice. Kick-Ass is raucous silliness - a little escape from all the other bullshit in the world.

15 August 2010

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - The Vanger clan is a family of assholes living mostly on an island and controlling a big chunk of cash. One day, 19-year-old Jennifer disappears. Forty years later, her uncle decides to look for her, so he hires some journalist and a punky tattooed chick to find her. They investigate the family, who turn out to be a bunch of pricks. I was expecting a lot more from this.

Deadline - Alice needs some time away from her life and from her convict boyfriend who nearly killed her. So she rents an old house in the country, so she can finish her screenplay before the "deadline," whatever that's supposed to mean. But instead, she finds some video tapes left by the previous tenants that show newlyweds David and Rebecca, going through all sorts of marital discord. Then ghosts start running around the place, and so on… Kind of a lame little flick, and definitely not one of Brittany Murphy's best, but I still miss her.

08 August 2010

The Crazies (2010) - A plane crashes into a lake in a small town while carrying an experimental government virus, and the townspeople all go apeshit when they drink the water. The sherriff, along with his deputy, tracks down his wife, and they battle the army and the zombie critters. The story has a definite Romero feel to it, but unfortunately, it's really not all that interesting.

Up - Carl has lost his wife and his will. He's putting up a hopeless battle against the city's eminent domain, and on the day he's scheduled to abandon hope and check into a retirement home, he makes one last ditch attempt to change his life: he attaches about a million balloons to his house and floats it away, toward the idyllic waterfall in South America he dreamed about as a boy. A stowaway Wilderness Scout, on the verge of earning his "assisting the elderly" badge, threatens to derail Carl's plan, but the hitch is that there's not a real good way to steer a house hoisted by balloons. So they land a little short of the target, and have to drag the house on foot, while encountering various creatures of the jungle. A cute little animation that the kids will love, but it carries some deeper themes of love, loss, and dreams, that will resonate at older ages. Touching and beautiful.

01 August 2010

Dazed and Confused - It's the last day of school, and the juniors are already calling themselves seniors, so they show up at the local junior high, and wait for the kiddies to come out so they can whack the crap out of the new "freshman" with paddles made in shop class. Some dude has a party and everyone gets wasted. Meanwhile, quarterback Pink doesn't want to sign the sobriety commitment that the coach has passed out. There's way too many characters, and way too many unresolved storylines, but it's harmless druggie fun, and interesting to see so many up-and-comers like Ben Affleck, Jason London, Milla Jovovich (who, unfortunately, does not kick anyone's ass), Adam Goldberg, Matthew McConaughey, Parker Posey, and Joey Lauren Adams (who brings that voice that makes you stand up and take notice.)

The Uninvited - Two teen girls catch onto the fact that Dad's new girlfriend killed their mom while she was her nurse. Their evidence is the fact that Mom shows up as a ghost, and says, "hey, that bitch killed me." So they log into one of the Interwebs, and find out that the girlfriend's really a chick named Mildred Kemp, who killed a family and went on the lam. Their evidence is that some creepy little kid ghosts show up and lead the younger sister to their grave - and of course it's true, because the Interwebs are founded on a basis of truth. So they hatch a plan to steal the girlfriend's pearls and go to the cops, but when Dad leaves the house, it's a big showdown, with knives, hypos, and a bit of undressing. Rowr. A lifetime channel original, no doubt.

25 July 2010

Gone with the Wind - Honest to God, I felt like this was a penance - three and a half hours of drawn out story, with these God-awful droning violins playing sappy bullshit whining through every last fucking second. I'm happy that I made it through alive, without killing myself, or somebody, anybody, the nearest body. So look: Scarlet is a little pain in the ass, in love with a fancy man who marries his cousin. The rest of the film is about Scarlet stepping on people to get what she wants. Rhett Butler calls her on it. Three and half God damn hours just to hear that one line. Holy fuck.

11 July 2010

Orphan - A couple loses a baby, so a few years later they adopt, adding a creepy-ass chick to their stable of otherwise well-adjusted youngsters. The girl always wears these funky things around her neck and wrists, and she's about as precocious as they get. In short time, she learns to play Daddy against Mommy, and mangles the schoolyard bully in the playground. Then she gets really violent. Not a bad little twist at the end, though you can see it coming a mile away. Still, it's a cruel little bit of fun.

04 July 2010

Quarantine - A reporter (of some sort) is doing a piece on the local firefighters, flirting her skinny little ass off, when the alarm goes off and she goes on a ride-along. They wind up at an apartment building, where there's some sick old gal, spewing pea soup and what have you. While they're on their way downstairs, the cops promptly board the place up from the outside, locking everyone inside the building. Turns out there's some creepy virus going around, turning everyone into zombies. God damn, I hate the zombie virus! I wish we'd find a cure, already! So they spend the rest of the time fighting the zombies and fighting amongst themselves, and fighting the cops, and fighting those evil bastards of the CDC. Through it all, my pet peeve: her cameraman keeps filming the whole thing, because of course, if he didn't we wouldn't have a movie to watch. But seriously, at some point, when a zombie is gnawing off your leg, I'm thinking you'd take a finger off the button.

27 June 2010

The Messenger - Staff Sergeant Will Montgomery returns from Iraq to receive his assignment for his last three months in the army: Casualty Notification. Holy crapbasket. His CO is a hardass who gives him the rules: deliver the message, be formal, don't touch the recipients, and get the hell out of there if they try to kill you. And definitely don't try to fuck any of the widows. But Montgomery brings a human spin to it, and when he encounters a grieving widow with low-hanging fruits, he suits up for the conquest. While the reviews led me to believe that was the crux of the movie, in reality, it moved well past that, only lingering on that plot point to help flesh out the dynamic between Montgomery and his CO. In the end, it becomes a very human story, well told.

The Bourne Supremacy - The second entry in the Bourne trilogy. This time, Jason Bourne is chilling out in Thailand when he's set up by some bad guys, and then hunted by the CIA. Not a very good entry in the series, looking forward to the next one. Maybe.

20 June 2010

Girlfight - Michelle Rodriguez is Lucy, the girl from the tough part of town who likes to beat up other girls. Once she discovers boxing, she goes to no end to support her training, and steals the money for lessons from her dad. But then she meets the man of her dreams, which is a stretch, because Michelle Rodriguez into guys is about as easy to visualize as Clay Aiken into girls. But I digress. It's supposed to be a Rocky-like film, but Rodriguez just stumbles her way through the acting. I wanted to like this, I really did, but sheesh. Props to her for body transformation, though - starting the film as a chub, and ending as a buff little biscuit. Well, buff, anyway.

13 June 2010

Hackers - Zero Cool is a computer hacker who gets busted at age 11 and sent off to juvie until he turns 18. When he gets out, he shows up at a new school, where he falls in with the local hacker crowd, which includes Angelina Jolie with a Spock haircut. They decide to take down the man, or something, I don't know. Brief moments of misplaced gratuitous nudity from Jolie are nice, but weird and way the hell out of context. The funniest thing, just like Tron, is a belief that the inside of a computer is like a downtown, with highrise data and beams of light zipping around. Believe me, I've been in there - it's dust, spiderwebs, and cables. Tons of fucking cables.

06 June 2010

Deadgirl - An interesting entry here in the horror genre. Two slacker dudes break into a deserted hospital, and down in the basement they find a girl, who's been chained up for 20 or 30 years. She's not dead, but she's not really alive, either. So they do what any two dudes would do in a really dark film: they start fucking her. Then they bring their budddies in and everyone starts getting a little of the old in-out. But before you get a chance to start throwing up in your mouth, she starts killing them - with her teeth. She's not really alive and not really dead, but that's because she's not really human, either. Weird and dark, but well done for a low budget flick.

The Road - A dude and his son are cruising around the country, meeting a lot of interesting people and staying in a lot of different places. Problem is, it's the end of the world, and they're just scraping by. Every day is a struggle to avoid the bandits, and salvage food, and twist up their courage long enough to just stay alive. Definitely not an uplifting film, but still nicely done, and worth a view as long as you don't have a knife poised above your wrist. Viggo Mortensen shows his range as the father, who has just enough courage every day to keep his son alive and teach him about life. But every once and a while, the favor is repaid. The only qualms I have with the story are technicalities: whatever the cataclysm was, it was powerful enough to kill all the trees, animals, plants, and even bugs. But somehow, people survived. I don't really think so...

The Bourne Identity - Jason Bourne is pulled out of the sea with two bullets in his back. Amazingly, he's still alive. But he has no clue who he is. A little laser capsule shows him an address, where he finds a safe deposit box with a bunch of passports, stack of cash, and a gun. Uh-oh, it looks like Jason Bourne is a super spy! He recruits a pretty girl to drive him to his apparent home in Paris, all the while trying figure out who he is. Meanwhile, the bad guys have gotten wind of his survival, and have dispatched a crew to knock him off. A fun little action ditty.

30 May 2010

Two Mules for Sister Sara - A dude named Hogan is cruising around in the desert with his six-shooter when he stumbles on a few dudes about to give a little of the old in-out to a naked young lassy who's not real into the idea. So he shoots them all, eats their beans, and I'll be fuck if she's not a nun. And he's all like, "damn, baby, I would totally hit that if not for the funny hat and black robe, and what with Jesus and all." And she's all like, "well, how about if we kill a bunch of French people instead?" And he's all like, "yeah, I'm down." So they hatch a plan to overthrow the French outpost because she fucking hates those guys, and because he stands to get a big chest full of gold from the deal. Actually, it's a pretty good film, that lands somewhere in the pantheon of the spaghetti westerns, but it leaves a ton of questions unanswered, like, what exactly is her deal with these French guys, and what's with this getup of hers, and what does two mules have to do with anything, and wait, what now? The surface story is interesting, but the backstory just seems to be completely missing. Maybe it's just me. But I doubt it.

The Unborn - It's a PG-13 horror about a girl who's battling a ghost. The shocks all come from the editing: loud bursts of noise and scary faces. But the real star of the show was exhibited in the poster and featured prominently in the first 15 minutes of the film: Odette Yustman, a Megan Fox lookalike, perfectly wrapped in a pair of tight white skivvies, who spends ample time staring in the mirror, with her better half staring back at the camera. I remember the shitstorm (sorry) around this movie - that the story itself was idiotic, but what a glorious ass - and now in hindsight (sorry), I have to agree that it's all true. Fucking glorious.

The Girlfriend Experience - Sasha Gray, perhaps the last great porn star in a world where they're as easy to find as your neighbor's video cam, stars as Chelsea, an elite escort who's trying to improve her craft by speaking to mentors and giving interviews. She has a boyfriend, but when she meets a client whose birthday falls on the proper date, according to her numerology studies, she's prepared to throw it all away. Or whatever. Sasha Gray's pretty, though.

The Royal Tenenbaums - Bizarro dysfunctional family tries to pull it all together under the direction of their sociopathic patriarch.

23 May 2010

Legion - Michael and Gabriel cruise down from heaven and battle it out at a diner over a baby. Dumbass rehash of The Prophecy, which was like a billion times better. The old granny crawling around on the ceiling was cool, though.

The Cove - The city of Taiji, Japan harbors a secret that stands in stark contrast to its public reputation as the city of dolphins: fisherman slaughter up to 25,000 dolphins every year in a hidden cove, so they can sell the dolphin meat to grade schools, despite the fact that it's laced with toxic levels of mercury. This is the story of a small group of American activists who risk their freedom and perhaps their lives to set up covert cameras that capture what really goes on in that cove. And it's absolutely horrific. While those residing on the lower levels of the evolutionary ladder may find themselves indifferent to the violence, I don't see how anyone with a soul can watch the sea literally turn red and not feel sickened. Please sign the petition and speak out.

It Might Get Loud - Jimmy Page, The Edge, and Jack White talk about the influence that music, and particularly the guitar, has had on their lives. It's an interesting group, and Jimmy Page is amazing, though a little sloppy. The Edge is a technology master. And unfortunately, Jack White is Jack White.

16 May 2010

Avatar - A marine is assigned to the remote unit on Pandora, where he regularly climbs into a coffin, and his consciousness is transported into the constructed body of a Na'vi, one of the 10-foot tall, blue-skinned, indigenous inhabitants of Pandora. The natives recognize him right away as a "dreamwalker," but they welcome him into their tribe anyway, teaching him their ways. What they don't understand is that the Imperial forces of planet earth are trying to force them out of their land so they can mine out the unobtainium that's buried underneath. What follows is war, and Jake is forced to make a decision on his alliance. Stunning visuals.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf - I am, if she's anything like these crazy people. George and Martha are a middleaged couple, returning home drunk from a party at 2:00 am. They fight for a while, then Martha tells George that the young couple Nick and Honey are on their way over for a nightcap, because Martha's daddy, the president of the University where they all work, said they should. So pretty soon, Nick and Honey knock on the door. They come in, and our happy hosts fill them up with liquor, and then they all begin to brutalize each other for the next 2 hours. Holy crapbasket, what a trip. Be afraid; be very afraid.

The Butterfly Effect 3: Revelations - Sam sits in an icebath, which enables him to jump back in time, where he keeps trying to solve the mystery of his girlfriend's murder. But each time he goes back, things just get that much worse, and pretty soon he's the prime suspect in a serial murder case. It's an intriguing concept, but the execution ignores whatever bit of common sense you could apply to this sort of thing. Sometimes he's a third party observer, and sometimes he goes back into his previous self. And however he does it, apparently all he needs to do is sit in the bathtub with a bunch of ice -- or sometimes even just squint. And even if he dies in that bathtub, it's okay because he comes back to a different present, where he's just riding around in his car. What a waste of time.

09 May 2010

Apocalypto - Tribal warfare wracks the Mayan community, as a warmongering tribe raids the village of young Jaguar Paw, killing and enslaving its inhabitants. The slaves are bound for the temple of Kukulcan, where they'll be sacrificed to the gods, when a serendipitous event saves Jaguar Paw from the block. He escapes and runs like hell through the jungle, pursued by the bad guys. My recollection of this movie, from the trailers, was about a dude running through the jungle, and for the second hour, that's exactly what it is. But not nearly as stupid as I thought it would be.

Sleepwalkers - Giant cat people attack virgin girl. Neighborhood housecats jump on giant cat people, causing them to burst into flames. Stupidest Stephen King movie ever.

Daybreakers - Vampires have taken over, and they're farming the remaining humans for their blood, but the supply is dwindling. A small band of humans is trying to fight back, by developing a means of rehumanizing the vampires. It seems that there was the opportunity to play this story out on a couple levels, by making it a metaphor for genocide in general, but the filmmakers seemed happy enough with the glowing eyes of their vampire characters, so they left it at that.

02 May 2010

Pontypool - A shock jock, apparently drummed out of the big city, now works in the basement of a church, hosting talk radio for a tiny little town called Pontypool. One day, they pick up on the police radio a story about a mob of people going crazy. The first half of this film is extraordinary suspense, with the trio in the basement, learning what they can about this behavior that's inexplicable. Then it takes an interesting turn - a completely non-sensical one, but interesting nonetheless. Apparently the town has been infected by a virus that spreads by spoken word. The rules of this new type of infection are fairly murky, so they tapdance around the issue a bit, with our heroes becoming infected, but then again not quite. They find a cure, but it's just as silly as the concept itself. Oh well, nice try.

Slaughter - A girl meets another girl in a bar, and they become fast friends. They move in together on the the girl's farm, in the house next to her father, who kills the girl's boyfriends, and bones his daughter from time to time. When the new girl gets wise, Daddy takes it out on her, but then it takes a different turn - a ridiculously stupid turn that makes no sense whatsoever. Bleh.

Crazy Heart - Bad Blake is an aging country music singer, bitter over the recent success of his former partner, Tommy Sweet, who's living a large life, while Blake's barely getting by on bowling alley gig pay and the kindness of strangers. One day, a small town reporter blows into his life, and she's a cute little thing (or cute enough, anyway,) and sure enough, he falls pretty hard for her and her little boy named Buddy. But the nickname isn't too far off the mark, and "Bad" screws up, losing the trust of his new love. Oh, it's a bitch being Bad.

25 April 2010

The Escapist - A handful of prisoners decide to escape from prison, so they hatch a plan and do just that. They don't all make it. Boo-hoo.

An Education - I was prepared for the inevitable creepiness of the story: a high school girl is picked up at a bus stop by a charming grown man, and she becomes his girlfriend: going to clubs, traveling internationally, and losing her virginity, all with the consent of her parents, who are charmed to the teeth by the man. But amazingly, the story sidesteps a great deal of the creep factor, perhaps because actress Carey Mulligan is 23 when she plays the 16 year-old Jenny. In fact, the story becomes something entirely different - a love story at first, complete with touching sentimentality, then it gets a little darker, and then it becomes something else entirely - the story of a young woman searching for redemption and her place in life. Mulligan takes us on a ride, from wide-eyed schoolgirl to wizened woman, in the time span of 100 minutes. Touching, beautiful, and surprisingly not creepy.

Sleepaway Camp III - Angela Baker returns to camp and kills people. I'm not sure why this bugs me so much, but the "teenage campers" theme always gets to me. The only time I ever went to - or worked at - summer camp, the campers were kids and the counselors were adults. But in every camper movie you see, the campers are overaged teens, indistinguishable from the twenty-something counselors. While this gives the film-makers freer reign to embark on the typical "sex, drugs, and death" theme, it sends my bullshit alarm into overdrive. There's some nice boobs here, though. Camper boobs, sure, but relax: the actresses are well into their twenties.

18 April 2010

Funny People - George Simmons is a well known comedian whose recent performance has included starring roles in stupid movies, dimming his star light, but padding his bank account. One day, he finds out he has leukemia, and he's dying fast. He tries to resurrect his stand-up career, but crashes horribly onstage when he can only talk about mortality. Following him is Ira, a sad sack who can't tell a joke to save his soul, but he's still trying. His roommates include a fat funny kid, and another guy who does a stupid bullshit sitcom, which nets him a boatload of cash. For some odd reason, George takes Ira under his wing, hiring him as his assistant, and introducing him to the good life. But when Ira finds out that George is dying, he becomes caregiver and sounding board, eventually convincing George to bring his old friends back into his life, including the One Who Got Away. Adam Sandler gets just enough comedy to suit his style, but he throws in enough sorrow to bring out a completely different side. Whereas Punch Drunk Love was a ridiulous portrayal of an unlikeable character, here we have grade A sorrow, and Sandler is perfect. The problem with the film is that it comes to its logical conclusion, then goes on for another 45 minutes of what-the-fuck-itude.

The Men Who Stare at Goats - Bob is a writer down on his luck, when he stumbles across a whack-a-doo named Gus who claims to have worked for the CIA as a Jedi warrior. So he heads out to Kuwait where he meets up with the supreme whack-a-doo in a guy named Lyn Cassady. Cassady is in the army, and learned his trade as a Jedi Warrior - to read minds, influence the actions of others, burst clouds, even kill goats just by looking at the poor little bastards. Only problem is, he can't really do any of it. So when Bob and Lyn are picked up by enemy fighters, it just keeps going further downhill. Clever, funny, and completely pointless.

Red Dawn - The Russians have joined forces with the Cubans, and they've invaded America, taking over a chunk from the Rockies to the Mississippi. A group of about 6 high school kids escapes into the mountains, after first cleaning out the local gun shop/party store. They hide out and cry a little bit, and meanwhile all the goddam commies have rounded up all the adults into concentration camps, and they're pumping them full of lead for just the amusement. So then the kids get pissed off, and wage a war against the commies, and save the entire country. How? By shooting at the commies, which they've never prepared for, apparently. It's a totally preposterous story, but good fun nonetheless. First, the Cubans conquer America? Hm, yeah, that could happen. Second, high school brats become the biggest threat to the Cuban army because they have a couple shotguns? Makes sense. Third, the whole friggin's country is saved because Bojo Jones pops a couple commie soldiers. Absolutely. But Red Dawn features a great crew of pre-brat packers, including Patrick Swayze, C. Thomas Howell, Charlie Sheen, Jennifer Grey, and a barely recognizable, smoking-hot Lea Thompson, just 23 years old. USA! USA!

11 April 2010

The River Wild - A woman goes out whitewater rafting with her son on his ninth birthday, and hubby can't go because he's a little too obsessed with his job, and kind of a prick. But at the last minute, he shows up, and everybody's kind of happy, except maybe mom, who'd already met young stud Wade, who was also going out on the river. Wade gets all buddy-buddy with the kid, and then with mom, but dad realizes he's a psycho trying to kill them, so they make a run for it. And it turns into a big thing. Kind of a predictable thriller.

The Basketball Diaries - Jim Carroll was an aspiring poet and high school basketball player when he discovered heroin. So he became a junkie, kicked out of school and home, did some time and then was saved. Hooray!

04 April 2010

The Road Warrior -In the first story, Max was a cop, working in a somewhat wasted countryside, chasing after motorcycle hooligans. There are cops, lawyers, and a court system. In the sequel they begin by explaining that there's been some sort of war or something, and now everyone dresses in leather and spikes, like they're at a Judas Priest concert. So Max stumbles on a refinery just as it's besieged by a crew of lunatics, and he helps the people out by driving their big tankerful of gas down the road toward the promised land, 2000 miles away. There's a few crashes along the way.

Big Fan - Paul is a New York Giants fanatic, who calls in reports to the local radio station, praising his heroes. With his buddy Sal, Paul atttends every home game, but without the cash to buy tickets, they sit in the parking lot and watch the TV. One night the boys spot their hero, Giants linebacker Quantrel Bishop, so they follow him around town. Then it goes bad for Paul, and the outcome could change Quantrel's future. It's sort of a dark comedy, but it also delves into the mania of hero worship, and even into the nature of humanitiy's need for continuity.

Terminator: Salvation - Too much transformers, not enough terminator.

Ping Pong Playa - Chris Wang, aka C-Dub, is a smack-talking Chinese American basketball player. His problem is that his competition is about 10 years younger, and when anyone a little older shows up, he's best left on the bench. But his family is big in the ping pong world, giving lessons and running a shop. They use the annual Golden Cock tournament, and C-dub's brother's position as reigning champion, as a means to publicize the store and bring in business. But when Mom and Brother are hurt in a car accident, Chris has to salvage the family's name by taking over the lessons and even the contest. But it turns out to be a chance to redeem himself. Hooray!

28 March 2010

The Basketball Diaries - Jim Carroll was an aspiring poet and high school basketball player when he discovered heroin. So he became a junkie, kicked out of school and home, did some time and then was saved. Hooray!

Jennifer's Body - Jennifer's a major hottie (duh, it's Megan Fox) whose best friend Anita ("Needy") is a little bit of a dork. One night, Jennifer sluts her way into a bar and drags Needy along for the ride. The demonic bar band sets the bar on fire, kidnaps Jennifer, and in the attempt to sacrifice her to their dark lord, instead turn her into a demon-possessed demonette, who can only restore her life force with the occasional meal of boy flesh. There's something just a little bit off here - perhaps a mean-spiritedness that permeates the story. There's no remorse for the slaughter of innocents, and in fact writer Diablo Cody seems to justify the acts on the basis that the victims are boys, rather than girls. She also needs to pull back a little on her cooler-than-thou dialogue - it worked in Juno, but it's starting to sound like hipster bullshit. Megan Fox is stunning, however.

The Telling - Playmates pretend they're sorority girls and tell ghost stories. Three short ghost stories within the context of a third. Just like watching the Twilight Zone or Outer Limits. With Holly and Bridget, no Kendra.

The Haunting of Molly Hartley - Teen horror; Rosemary's Baby with an 18 year grace period. Total crap.

The Breakfast Club - One of my all time favorite movies, and aside from any long-winded discussions about the dialogue or the importance of the film to a generation, or the brilliance of the premise, I'll just simply point out that it's suprememly watchable. Even the cringe-worthy moments (and they exist) are tempered with an overwhelming watchability, and I'll watch this front-to-back every time. Now, on to the long-winded discussions.

Arguably the centerpiece of the brat-pack collection, John Hughes crafted a film here that accomplishes what none of the others in the genre did: it tells a story that wraps around the teen angst and societal segregation that's universal in nature, but specific in this example to the generation of the 80's. Whereas the other entries in the genre tell a more linear story - girl likes boy but boy doesn't like girl, for example - The Breakfast Club doesn't really have a story. The entirety of the film is focused on the relationships of five kids sentenced to detention on a Saturday. The only action is a little running around in the hallways, and a (stoned out) dance number, which (gloriously!) brought the Molly Ringwald dance to national attention. The pinnacle of the movie is the extended scene at the end, with the five kids lounging around the balcony in the library, talking about the troubles that brought them to this place, as well as their common desire to break free from parental torment and peer pressure anxiety. In the process, they break down stereotypes, showing universal concerns amongst these very different five people. That the film carries along so well on dialogue alone is tribute to the brilliance of John Hughes, and to the excellent performances turned in by these awkward beautiful actors. Make no mistake - I love this movie.

21 March 2010

Oral Fixation - Rachel Marks has a hard-on for her dentist. She fantasizes about throwing herself at him in his office, and takes a chisel to her teeth when he rebukes her. On paper, the story seemed edgy, but when it came to fruition, it was just silly. Rachel is the daughter of a prominent psychologist, who rewired her brain, swapping the pain and pleasure centers, so now she obsesses and self-mutilates every time she meets a guy who looks like her dad, because it gets her off. Yuck.

Up In the Air - Ryan is a professional traveller, a consultant who's paid to fire people. He has all the answers worked out: he has the travel down to a science, and he even gives speeches about how to cut loose all the detritus and reduce your life to a tiny little bit. But he doesn't seem to understand how hollow his life has become. One day, he meets Alex, who proclaims herself to be him with a vagina. They swap travel stories and strategies, arranging for one-day hookups all across the country. Then Natalie is thrust into Ryan's world. She's a twenty-something idealist who tries to revolutionize the industry by founding the termination via webcam approach. The threat to Ryan's treasured lifestyle causes him to react, and he teaches the girl a thing or two about life. Then she teaches him a thing or two as well.

Ink - A low budget sci-fi-ish fantasy thing here, about a world in which the storytellers and incubi battle at night for our souls. John is a Wall Street roller, who's sold his soul for the almighty dollar. One night, an apprentice incubus steals his little pumpkin of a daughter and takes her away to the unknown. So the storytellers mount a counterattack, trying to rescue the girl before she's thrown into the abyss (or whatever.) Back in the real world, John is trying to decide whether to get involved, as his daughter was taken away from him by his in-laws after the death of his wife, and now he's too bitter and self-absorbed to show any concern. But then the pathfinder shows up, and alters Leo's life in a way that makes him realize the importance of family. All this while, a storyteller named Liev has taken up with the kidnaping beast and the pumpkin, and she's slowly reminding the monster (named "Ink") of his forgotten humanity. When the final battle comes, it's for all the marbles - souls hang in the balance and there is some serious ass-kicking. In all, a pretty good little venture considering the budget. I actually watched it twice.

A Serious Man - Larry Gopnik is a physics professor in the 60's who endeavors to do the right things - to be a serious man. But it all goes to hell. His wife leaves him, and sticks him with the tab of the divorce and the house, all the while she's still living there. His brother flips out and brings the wrath of law enforcement onto the scene. Meanwhile, his kid is messing around with drugs, and so what the hell, Larry gives it a little try as well. I think there's an underlying story about the advice he recieves from three different rabbis, and how that advice shapes the direction of his life. I think that theme would help to explain the ending a little better, but honestly, I didn't have the patience to watch it more closely. Not that it's a horrible movie, it's just kind of, meh.

14 March 2010

(500) Days of Summer - Joseph Gordon-Levitt is awesome and Zooey Deschanel rules, but I'm pretty sure I hated this movie. It's not that there's anything specifically horrible about it, it's just the overall theme: he falls crazy in love with her, and she thinks he's kind of nice to have around. The inevitable happy ending never happens, so it's a fairly brutal telling of what is, at its core, a chick flick. A good one, though. Despite the fact that I hated it.

Zombieland - The zombie appocalypse has arrived, and nerdy Matt is the only survivor, which he attributes to the rules of survival he's constructed: ditties like "Cardio" (#1), "Double Tap" (#2), "Wear Your Seatbelt" (#4), and "Don't Be a Hero" (#17). He's cruising along when a badass black Caddy cruises by and out pops Tallahassee, an asskicker who only allows destinations for proper names. So Matt becomes Columbus, and hops in the Caddy. They come across two girls - a couple of streetsmart little things - and join them on the road. They kill zombies, hang out in Bill Murray's house, and kill more zombies. But when the girls get in trouble, Columbus has to challenge his belief in number 17.

Towelhead - A coming of age story about Lebanese-American teenager Jasira, whose ancestry, burgeoning sexuality, and difficult parents combine to make her life a confusing mess. Given the setting - early 90's America during the first Iraq offensive - Jasira is an easy target for the bullies at school and racists in her community, which is offset by the fact that she's a pretty girl who gains the attention of some of the boys, as well as the perv two doors down. She takes up a job babysitting for the perv's son, where she discovers adult magazines in his closet - a revelation that leads her into discovering her own sexuality, which pleases school boy Thomas to no end. He's a nice enough boy, who takes an interest in her only after calling her a "sand nigger," with obvious irony because Thomas is black. But when Dad finds out about Thomas's racial makeup, he refuses Jasira to associate with him. Meanwhile, jackoff adult neighbor Travis is all about trying to get his hands on Jasira, which he does on at least one occasion. Throw in a crazy self-obsessed mom, and Jasira's life is a box of crazy, with neighbor Melina as the only beacon of sanity. An interesting story, disconcerting though it is.

Mortuary - Denise Crosby (Tasha Yar!) plays the mother of a family that inexplicably relocates to a small town, to move into a funeral home that is beat to hell, where she's taking up a practice as a mortician. Her justification: it's an "opportunity," and she couldn't pass it up. Seriously, this place is beat to hell. Her teenage son Jonathan goes into town, gets a job, meets the town hottie, and gets into a fight with the town bully. Then he learns the history of the funeral home: until recently, it had always been inhabited by the Fowler family, until the young son, freak Bobby, disappeared then reappeared 10 years later to kill his parents. Or so that's what they say - Bobby Fowler is really just the town legend, reportedly living in one of the graves. So then all hell breaks loose. The thug who tussled with Jonathan brings his two skanky girlfriends to the cemetery to desecrate some graves and have an all-around good time, but they find themsleves attacked and turned into zombies by Bobby, who's living in the morgue. This unleashes the wrath of hell on the house, and the teenagers have to fight the devil to escape. It's pedestrian, but not entirely unwatchable. A nice convincing performance as hottie teenager Liz, played by 34-year-old Alexandra Adi.

07 March 2010

North by Northwest - Roger Thornhill is an advertising executive who raises his hand in the bar at the wrong time, causing international spies to kidnap him, carry him away, liquor him up, and stick him in a car that they're about ot push off a cliff - which seems a little Bond-ish, when they could just shoot him and throw him in a ditch. But it gives him the chance to escape by driving away, drunk off his ass, and crashing the car. When the cops take him away, he explains the plot, which doesn't really go over very well. As he begins his own investigation, he finds that the spies think he is a guy named Kessel, who is supposed to be working with a mole in their organization (which is supposed to be Russian KGB or something.) He meets a girl, who sells him out, and then he's on his own to save the world. Not bad - a little hokey here and there, but not bad.

07 February 2010

The Hurt Locker - Sergeant James has just about the shittiest job in the world: he straps on a big old suit and blows up IEDs in Iraq. His team doesn't really trust him, but that's because he's a little nuts.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail - King Arthur and his knights are set on a quest from God to find the Holy Grail. Nee!

31 January 2010

Observe and Report - A dark comedy about a mall cop who lives with his mom. His entire life revolves around policing his little community of mall rats, but it all goes to hell when a flasher shows up in the mall parking lot, terrorizing the patrons. So Chuck takes on the case on as his personal mission, as the one that's going to be his big break in the field of law enforcement. The comedy here runs fairly dark, with Seth Rogen passing over his usual doofus antics in favor of a more troubled take on the character. Jones exhibits anger issues, and relies on clozapine for some undisclosed mental condition, perhaps to quell the paranoid delusions that plague him. He gets the girl of his dreams, but does so in an unsatisfying and fairly creepy way. This is definitely not one for the kids.

Mad Max - At some undisclosed time and place in the universe, presumably on planet earth, the cops are just a crew of gearheads who specialize in chasing down gangs of roaming thugs, and running them off the road. One day cop Max takes on criminal Night Rider, and when he takes him out, the thug's crew comes gunning for Max. He decides to just give it all up and go out on the road when the bike gang kills off his partner, so Max takes his pretty girlfriend on the road and they lead a bohemian life. But when they run into the crew again, there will be one last showdown. I guess it's an interesting film, but it just seems so random, like where is this place, and why are the cops such douchey gearheads?

24 January 2010

Halloween 2 (2009) - Couldn't finish it. Despite director Rob Zombie's obvious film-making prowess, the darkness of his subjects can overwhelm. Here, there wasn't much to look forward to - Michael Meyers kills everyone in sight.

Into the Blue 2: The Reef - I know, I know. But it if falls into the Into the Blue franchise, you would have to assume it features pretty girls in little bikinis, swimming around prettily underwater. And it does. The second half of the movie becomes the same basic boring plot as the first, with action substituting for flesh. Bad decision.

Inglourious Basterds - Yet another fantasy piece, this one takes a real setting (German-occupied France, during World War II), and applies a fictional story to it, with an intended end result that would have changed the course of history. It's mostly the story of Fredrick Zollner - a German war hero who stars in his own war story movie. For the premiere, he convinces the Gestapo to hold it in the theater owned by a little hottie he's taken a shine to, despite the fact that she hates his Nazi ass. Meanwhile, a badass troupe of Jewish American soldiers have branded themselves "The Basterds", and are marauding about France, killing and scalping Nazis. For the movie premiere, all the stars align, with the Basterds, the Nazis, and the hottie convening upon the theatre, and bloodshed on the agenda. This Tarantino film, while watchable, lacks that certain magic that is typically characterized by that glourious Tarantino dialogue -- due to its translation into German and French. It's not bad, but it's like Keyra Augustina working as a face model - it's cute, but fails to capitalize on a huge selling point.

The Invention of Lying - Mark Bellison lives in a world where there is nothing but truth. There is no fiction, no "little white lies", not even a word for "truth" or "lie." He's a dumpy guy with a stubby nose, and the love of his life tells him so repeatedly, offering that fact up as the reason that she won't be going on a second date with him, much less participating in any other extracurriculars. Then he learns to lie, and the world becomes his oyster. "The world will end if we don't have sex right now," he tells one lass, and she's on her back without even thinking. But when he sits next to his mother's deathbed, he attempts to relieve her suffering by telling her about the afterworld that she's going to - one that no one has heard of before. And then the movie turns on a dime, becoming an indictment of religion as a pack of lies. The world beats down Bellison's door to find out about this afterlife, and he concocts a story about the man in the sky who controls everything, thinking he can convince everyone to behave by creating religion. It's fairly clever, but also a tiny bit mean-spirited, and I'm not a big fan of that.

Star Trek - Having grown up on the Star Trek franchise, I was thrilled and a little nervous to see the release of this prequel. My dad and I used to watch the show in the early 70's, and I have a very distinct memory of taking notes while watching the episode where Spock has a beard, because I was instructed to do so while my dad was out of town on business. I learned many life lessons from the behavior of James T. Kirk, who knew how to kick ass, as well as show great compassion. The myriad of sequels and spinoffs since then have ranged from interesting to awful to not-so-terribly-bad to greatest-episode-of-anything-ever-in-the-history-of-mankind ("Bounty"). So while the critics gave fairly favorable reviews to the movie, I was still a little cautious until I finally popped in the BD, turned off the lights, jacked up the sound, and immersed fully in the world of Star Trek.

Holy Crap.

What an awesome film. The writing is great, building a backstory about these characters I've known longer than just about anyone, and establishing the building blocks of those relationships between the crew members that carry them through their resulting five-year missions. We understand why the crew is so fiercely loyal to Kirk, and why he's seen as one of the greatest captains ever in the history of Starfleet, with his heroics established from the outset.

The story deviates from some of the established "facts" of the Star Trek genre, but explains that off neatly with a time-travel theme. Okay, fair enough. But then how did the Kirk that we all know and love get his start? Maybe it doesn't matter, because we'd have to assume whatever heroics took place in one timeline had analogs in the other timeline(s). Anyhow, I loved this movie. Can ya tell?

17 January 2010

Into the Blue 2: The Reef - I know, I know. But it if falls into the Into the Blue franchise, you would have to assume it features pretty girls in little bikinis, swimming around prettily underwater. And it does. The second half of the movie becomes the same basic boring plot as the first, with action substituted for flesh. Bad decision.

Paranormal Activity - Micah and Katie have just moved in together, and Katie has decided to tell him about the (literal) ghosts in her past. So Micah picks up a video camera, and indulges his curiosity by taunting the ghost, who happens to be a little nastier than a mere ghost. What follows is a documentary of their relationship, with all its missed cues, in the midst of a crisis. The film builds on the current vogue of ghost hunting documentaries, and brings a Blair Witch angle to the mix. While Death of a Ghost Hunter attempted a similar approach, Paranormal Activity does it better, and scores a win. Though not necessarily the scariest movie ever (as advertised), it's still a pretty fun ride.

The Hangover - Four dudes go to Vegas for a bachelor party, start the night off with a shot a Jager, then wake up in the morning with a tiger in the bathroom, a baby in the closet, one missing tooth, and a missing groom. The rest of the story plays out with the three groomsmen trying to reconstruct the night and find the missing bachelor. It's a cleverly built story, with nice characterizations from the cast, but I'm not entirely sure it deserved the Golden Globe. But whatever. Heather Graham is awesomely cute as the sweetest hooker ever.

10 January 2010

The Seven Year Itch - Watching older movies sometimes feels like a penance - I have to watch them just so I can say that I did, to log that experience. But The Seven Year Itch conjures the word "delightful" in my brain - a story that's timeless, wrapped inside a quaint little time capsule of a setting. Marilyn is adorable but not overpowering, in this story that's primarily about fantasizing married man Richard, who sends the family off to the lake to vacation over the summer. Then he meets his bombshell neighbor, a platinum blonde with oozing sex appeal and a sweet manner. And while he's scheming to spend time with the pretty girl, he's also wrestling with the guilt of his actions. It's everyman's story, nicely told.

03 January 2010

My Fair Lady - Eliza Doolittle is a street-dweller - a common girl with a basket of flowers and a crude accent, who stumbles across Henry Higgins, a foppish old fart and phonetics fan. He makes a bet that he can change the girl into quite the little lady just by teaching her to pronounce her vowels correctly. His eventual success is tempered with a bit of tragedy when he neglects to see the woman that's been inside of Eliza all along. This is a cute story, and Audrey Hepburn is such a little jewel, but I just find musicals so completely disturbing. In addition to the random outbursts of song, the believability is further reduced by the love story that develops - that a striking little beauty like Eliza would fall in love with a creepy Henry just because he dances with her, is nothing short of preposterous. But still, it's Audrey, and she makes me smile, and also makes me a little sad that she's gone.

Autopsy - Kids out partying crash their car, running over some fat guy in a hospital gown. Along comes a creepy ambulance to take the guy away, and it offers to take the kids along. Or whatever, they're pretty nonchalant about it. So they go to the hospital, and find themselves hunted by some weirdass doctor and his ghoulies. It's pretty much a rehash of a tired theme. The only redeeming scene is when pretty girl Emily finds her artistically disemboweled boyfriend, and pulls the plug. Otherwise, I've seen it all before.

27 December 2009

District 9 - One day an alien spacecraft parked itself over Johannesburg, South Africa, and just stayed there as all its creepy crab-like occupants shuffled down to the planet surface. As a bunch of murderous rowdies, the aliens need to be quarantined in their own area, where they can carry on as they wish. The newly-formed Department of Alien Affairs is responsible for their general oversight, and underling Wikus, who married the boss's daughter, has just been put in charge of their big move from District 9 to District 10, way outside the city. Their first step is to serve eviction notices to each of the prawns (as they're called) individually, killing off the occasional prawn citizen here and there. But there's a secret plot developing within the prawn community - a plan to get back to their ship and to their home, and when Wikus stumbles upon the plan, he has to make some tough decisions and go to battle with his enemies. Set in South Africa, District 9 is clearly a metaphorical story for the injustices the South Africans have heaped on their darker-skinned natives, but with all the martians and gunplay, it gives the kids something to enjoy as well. Fun for the whole family!

20 December 2009

Cat People - Nastassia Kinski stars as a girl who comes home from somewhere in Africa to live with her brother in New Orleans. Apparently, she doesn't understand that she was in Africa because she's a cat person, with a habit of turning into a leopard from time to time. Big bro, however, embraces his catitude. When he turns into a cat and tries to eat a hooker, he's captured and taken to the zoo, where little sis shows up to stare at him all day long, giving the caretaker plenty of time to check out her sweet form. But when bro comes back to human form, he tries to explain to sis that because they're cat people, they can only do each other - otherwise, they get confused and turn into cats and start eating people. Needless to say, this seriously cockblocks the zoo caretaker, who's dealing with a couple random leopards running around town, a weird chick with a semi-mullet, and her brother who's trying to do her. The good news is that Kinski walks around naked for a while, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Cruel World - I believe the title was intended to be a takeoff on "The Real World," as the presentation here consists of a number of college kids who sign up for a reality show, hosted by the greasy, doughy outcast from some previous show. But this time around, he has an ulterior motive - to kill all the participants. So the pretty girls run around in their pretty bikinis and their tight little jeans, trying to avoid the random gory death, and disappoint completely with their lack of nudity. I stuck around for the full duration, on the constant hope for a little stray boobage, but, like Godot, it never showed.

13 December 2009

Too Hot to Handle - Couldn't finish it. On top of the crappy plot, Jayne Mansfield looks like hell.

06 December 2009

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day - Miss Pettigrew works as a personal assistant but has a problem holding a job because her frumpy ways don't wash well with her clients. In a last act of desperation, she steals a lead from her former agency and shows up at the doorstep of Delysia Lafosse, a scramble-brained socialite with too many men, but a good heart. The grounded Pettigrew is just the perfect antidote to the flighty Lafosse, and the two get along famously, with each gaining a more central perspective from the interaction. The real story here is Amy Adams, who turns up her adorableness knob to ten (I swear hers goes to eleven), and shines in a role tailor made for her charms. She is - as always - absolutely captivating, and worth the price of admission.

Brokeback Mountain - It took a long time to get past the old homophobia and sit down to watch this. A couple dudes work on a mountain herding sheep, and they wind up doing it. "I ain't no queer," says Ennis, just before whipping it out. Uh-uh, whatever you say. So the two go off their own ways, get married and have kids. A few years later, they meet up and start arranging "fishing trips" that never get past the hotel room. Needless to say, that kind of behavior has somewhat of an impact on their marriages. Look, once you get past all the man-on-man action, I still have a problem with believability of this story, especially considering how it's been presented, as two guys who aren't gay, but fall in love. It's not about that at all, it's about two guys who are gay and leading double lives. But really, with characters named Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar, did anyone not see that coming? Problem is, with all that mumbling coming out Heath Ledger's mouth, you can forget trying to understand anything he says in the first half of the movie. So, meh.

29 November 2009

The Incredibles - Mr. Incredible goes into witness protection when the world changes and superheroes are no longer the vogue. He marries Elastigirl, and they become Bob and Helen Parr, raising three kids in the suburbs. Bob's job as an insurance adjuster pains him daily, so when he's given the chance to fight one more evil enemy, he jumps at the chance, making three years' salary in the process. Having thrown his boss through 10 walls, he's lost his job, but hasn't told the little missus. Instead, he gets deeper into reviving his superhero career. But he's soon sucked into a setup, manned by his new nemesis, Syndrome, and it takes the combined powers of the Incredible family to get out of it and (once again) save the world. The story's predictable, but still cute as hell.

Bring It On: All or Nothing - Yeah, I know, I know, but it was on when I turned on the TV and there were all these little things in little outfits, wiggling around. So look: Britney is the cheerleading captain, but she has to leave in disgrace because of some sort of cheerleading coup or something (I don't know, I missed the beginning.) So she's relocated to the ghetto, where all her new cheerleader friends call her "White Girl" and threaten to cut her. But the big cheerleading competition is coming up, and White Girl has a plan to win it, but she'll have to beat out her old squad, whose new leader has decided to invoke the stripper approach to cheerleading (which is where I tuned in and why I stayed.) Rihanna plays herself as the host of the big competition, and fortunately she just stands around looking pretty rather than opening her mouth to let out that squawky noise she calls "singing." Honestly, that girl is so hot, but her voice is rank. On the AMA's, she started her number with a video in which she was strapped to a table, naked, glistening, and tortured. She cuts to her live act, which featured a skintight outfit consisting of strips of leather covering only about half of her body. All of which still didn't distract from the horrible sound spewing from her mouth. It makes me think twice about the merits of lip-synching.

Black Hawk Down - US troops in Somalia hatched a plan to capture a couple of the top officers of warlord Farah Aidid. They landed troops all around the target hotel, and took all the residents as prisoners, but it all went to hell when the bad guys fought back. One of the black hawk helicopters is shot down, and the mission turns from capture to rescue, as the soldiers try to make their way to the wreckage. In all, 19 are killed and two black hawks destroyed.

22 November 2009

Rescue Dawn - An inexplicably titled story about a flyboy who's shot down over Laos just prior to the Vietnam War. After getting kicked around for a while, he's thrown into a prison camp with five other dudes, who have already been there for a couple years. Then he begins to plot an escape, which requires the cooperation of the other dudes. Problem is, they're all pretty flaky. When the time comes, Dieter teams up with Duane - the only moderately trustworthy dude in the bunch. But when they get outside, their real struggle begins, as they work their way through the jungle toward freedom.

From Within - Teen horror about a town that develops a rash of suicides. Turns out that kid is back in town. The one whose mother was a witch before the townspeople killed her… er, I mean, before she died in that horrible accident. I don't know, something about a book of spells that makes you see yourself, and your fake self makes you kill your real self. So the town tries to get rid of the weirdo by killing him, so they're really the evil ones, even though the whole town is based around the ethos of rockstar preachers. Whew. But that kid's in it. Who is that kid? Oh crap. I had to look it up. John Connor! John fucking Connor, the savior of mankind in the war against the machines. John Connor, the dude who fell in love with a hot robot girl from the future, so he sent her back in time to do his younger self, in the greatest television show ever. That fucking John Connor.

15 November 2009

Gomorrah - Italian mafia in the slums of Italy. Drugs, guns, thugs. Oh my.

08 November 2009

Dying Breed - A couple goes to Tasmania to find the Tasmanian Tiger, an animal that is extinct but reportedly still roams the jungle. The girl's sister was on the same mission eight years earlier, and she died mysteriously in the jungle. And now they're going out on a mission to find the same critter, in the same jungle, and they're bringing the dead sister's old boyfriend and his new girlfriend along, and there's plenty of townies about to leer at all the tits. What could possibly go wrong?

Barely Legal - Couple little dudes decide to make a porno. I don't know, I was slumming on Comedy Central.

Tron - Oh man, what a fun little slice of the 80's. Apparently there's a dude named Dillinger, and he's about ready to take over the world because he installed the Master Control Program in some sort of computer that seems to run the entire world. The MCP, as it's known, has decided to lock out all of the users, so it can take over. Meanwhile, a programmer named Flynn is trying to find evidence that he was the creator of the world's greatest video game, rather than Dillinger, who stole the game in his rise to power. So Flynn hooks up with a couple of programmers and tries to break into the system, but the MCP catches him and transports him into the computer, where programs cruise around and get tortured and killed by sentinels in red suits. But then along comes a program named Tron written by the dude that was helping Flynn, and together they defeat the sentinels and make their way to the communication bus. Wow. You have to admire the concept and the early-80's computer graphics (right around the time I was learning 3D modeling too.) But the story is hard to stick with because even if you only have the slightest little tiny bit of sense about how an operating system works, you know it's nothing like the wild west portrayal shown here. But you can't really push yourself away from the premise because they keep shoving your nose back into it. Oh well, no worry. Just take a deep breath and dig those crazy graphics. I love this movie and I have no idea why.

01 November 2009

Drag Me to Hell - Chris makes a big mistake when she lets her ambition get the better of her, and she turns down a creepy old gypsy lady's loan extension. So the old lady lays a hella curse on her, and we're off to the races. In anybody else's hands, this might be mediocre, but here we have a story scripted and directed by the brilliant Sam Raimi, in a long-awaited return to the horror genre. His timing is spot-on, with gags that reckon back to the Evil Dead II days. I'm still not sure I understand the whole story, because somehow the old lady's been dead for a long time, and it's really some random demon leaving the curse on our hapless heroine, but no bother. Sam. Raimi. Hot damn.

Man on Wire - In 1974, Phillipe Petit strung a wire between the World Trade Center buildings and spent 45 minutes walking back and forth. 110 fucking stories above everything. If he fell, he could eat a sandwich before touching down. This is a pretty good documentary of that story, including plenty of archival footage, and a heavy focus on the planning and execution of the event as a caper.

Seventh Moon - Low budget horror. Newlyweds are in China, and today just happens to be the annual holiday of the seventh moon in which monsters eat people. So they get lost out in the country, and guess what? You got it, monsters try to eat them. Shaky cam overload.

25 October 2009

Kiss Them for Me - Three Navy flyers finagle a four-day trip to San Francisco, which they pose as a pass, but really, they're just AWOL. They check into a hotel, and talk their way into the best room in the house. When they pass out cards in the lobby indicating that there's free stockings in their room, the kitty pours in and the party's on. Enter Alice, a blonde bombshell played poorly by Jayne Mansfield, looking for a sugar daddy. But lead finagler, Cmdr. Crewson, only has eyes for one gal, who happens to the be the fiancee of local tycoon Eddie Turnbill, who wants to hire the boys to hock his company -- a military supplier -- which will give them a permanent leave. But Crewson can't bring himself to do it, so he spends his time wooing the dude's chick instead. Hijinks ensue.

In Bruges - A couple of chirpy hitmen are sent to Bruges to see the sights and relax after the youngest, Ray, fucks up a hit by killing a little boy. When the senior hitman, Ken, receives his next assignment, he knows that Ray isn't going to like it. But meanwhile, Ray's hooked up with a cute little actress, who turns out not be so much an actress as a drug dealer and all-around thug. Cute as all holy fuck, though, so you take the good with the bad. So when Ken refuses the job, ill-tempered bossman Harry has to fly out and take care of business personally, which does not make him happy at all. There's also midgets and Armageddon, both of which up the awesomeness quotient. Colin Farrell is pretty good, but his eyebrows become rather unnerving.

18 October 2009

Cape Fear (1962) - Sam Bowden is a lawyer - a member of society with a pretty wife and a pretty daughter, who makes a living being a good citizen. But the day he testified against stiff Max Cady has come back to haunt him, as Cady has been released from prison and taken up residency in Bowden's hometown. If only he were there to make amends, it wouldn't be so bad, but Cady's chosen to take up stalking the good lawyer, to make his life as difficult as he can. In fact, he wants to push it to the limit, to make Bowden's life as unbearable as possible, to the extent of popping his thirteen-year-old little cherry. So Bowden hatches a plan to kill the guy off, but not to worry, he clears it with the chief of police first, who even loans him an off-duty officer. Apparently all he needs to do is lure Cady in, then kill him off and claim self defense. The chief even says something cheesy, like, "boy if anybody finds out about this, it will be the end of me." So I don't know. It's hard to watch without channeling De Niro, whose remake defined the role. But still, not a bad little ditty.

Away We Go - Burt and his wife Verona are pregnant, and when they find out that his parents are moving away to Amsterdam, they decide to take off and tour around the country, looking for their next place to live. What sounds on the surface to be a breezy little chick flick turns out to have a lot more meat on it. Each little trip is a tiny vignette that introduces us to some fascinating characters, and along the way, we learn that it's not so much where that the couple is trying to decide upon, it's who, as in who it is they want to be as people and a family. There is surprising brutality in the beauty of some of these scenes, and Burt manages to stay about a million miles from Krasinski's slacky Jim Halpert character. A surprisingly touching, moving story.

11 October 2009

The Broken - Lena Headey (Sarah Connor, woo-hoo!) as a radiologist who goes to her dad's birthday party along with her brother and their SOs. A mirror breaks, and then all hell breaks loose, as the members of the family are slowly taken over by their mirror-image doppelgangers. The premise is kind of weak, but the film itself is well-made, and Richard Jenkins is great as Dad. It's a little spooky, but not overwhelmingly so.

The Burning Bed - Fran Hughes married the wrong guy, and he pounds the crap out of her. She tries to leave, but doesn't have too much luck, with their children being one excuse that he uses to track her down every time she gets away. His mother, and even his whole family, turns a blind eye to the constant pounding he doles out, leaving her no escape. So she lights the bed on fire while he's passed out cold, and she heads for the hills with the kids in tow. This might have passed as a Lifetime movie in the beginning, but by the end, it's fairly brutal, with Mickey pounding the holy hell out of Fran, on a pretty regular basis -- it's hard to watch. Farrah is wonderful as the woman with no recourse. She was such a sweet girl.

04 October 2009

Sunshine Cleaning - Rose is trying to get by in life, working as a cleaning lady and fucking her high school boyfriend, while his wife and all the other girls she knew from high school have gone on to more successful lives. So when her shithead boyfriend points out the kind of money she could make cleaning up crime scenes, she balks at first, but eventually warms to the idea. She drags her fuckup sister into the deal, giving her some little bit of focus. They struggle and make bad mistakes and bad decisions, but pull through. Amy Adams, as always, is captivating.

Anvil! The Story of Anvil - Lips Kudlow and Robb Reiner formed the band Anvil, and they had a run in the 80's. Not as pretty as Bon Jovi, or cut from the same cloth as Cinderella, they never rose to the level of their contemporaries. But God bless 'em, they're still trying. This is the documentary of the band, the true-life version of Spinal Tap, now in their 50's, but still trying to find that big break. While it's laughable from the opening scene, where a confused Lips is trying to describe the weekly meal rotation at the children's catering company where he works, it's also oddly touching in the devotion that Lips and Robb have to the band and to each other. You root for these guys, even against your better judgement. After watching, their latest album went right on my Amazon wish list. It may totally suck, but I'm buying it.

The Haunting in Connecticut - This is slowly becoming one of the better known ghost stories, ranking up there with Amityville Horror. Originally a book, then a documentary, then trimmed back to a cable TV pilot that spawned a series, and now presented as a feature "based on true events." A family has a sick son, so they rent a house near the hospital so they don't have to drive 8 hours for his treatments. They move in, and then discover the place used to be a funeral home, and their sick son is living in the basement, right next to the morgue. Ew.

27 September 2009

Voices - I saw this a week ago, and honestly, I don't remember what it's about. Some kind of ghost story. Little Korean girls in schoolgirl uniforms. Oh wait, now it's coming back… there's a curse on this family and they all eventually turn on each other and kill. The high-school-aged daughter is next. Everybody tries to kill her. Her whole family dies and the house burns down. The end.

Tyson - Mike Tyson rode a rollercoaster of a life, and at the end of his boxing career, when he lost out to a fat, slow journeyman named Danny McBride, Tyson said, "I'm just sorry I let everybody down. I just don't have this in my heart anymore. I'm just fightin' to take care of my bills, basically. I don't have the stomach for this conduct no more. I don't have that ferocity, I'm not a animal no more. Most likely, I'll never fight again." That's the moment I regained respect for the man, and that's the Mike Tyson we find here. He makes no excuses, and lays his life on the line. This is a must-see if you were ever a Tyson fan, and a pretty good watch otherwise. If your only recollection of Tyson are the negative points: the loss to Douglas, the Robin Givens fiasco, the Holyfield biting -- you'll be surprised to see Mike in his prime. We remember a fighter who hit hard as a train, but we forget about the blazing speed of this guy. He was truly unstoppable in his prime -- a pinnacle of brutality -- and now a much better man since he's grown up -- and just brutal in his honesty.

20 September 2009

Metropolis - It reportedly cost 20 times as much to make this movie as others made at the same time, and it certainly seems to stand in a world of its own. Unfortunately, there is not a complete version of the film in existence, so it's been pieced together from the surviving copies. The story is set in the future, when the world is divided between the haves, who live amongst the clouds, and the have-nots, who toil down below, running the machines that make everything work. There's a woman who's trying to get the workers to rise up against the man, and when the son of the mayor sees her, he falls dead in love, trading in his life of privilege for one under the ground. But an evil scientist creates a robot and makes it look just like the woman, and she causes the worker to revolt, and the city burns. An interesting piece of work, but not nearly as many robots as I'd hoped.

13 September 2009

River's Edge - The based-on-a-true- or moderately-true- or imaginary-true-story about a group of kids who learn that their friend killed his girlfriend, and do absolutely nothing. Except for Layne, the psycho spaz with a killer mullet who mobilizes the crew into action, to protect John, the killer. Crispin Glover defines himself and Keanu Reeves plays it cool. Also the introduction of Ione Skye.

06 September 2009

Lars and the Real Girl - Unlike the quirky and slightly creepy story I was expecting, this turned out to be much more interesting. Lars is an awkward little fellow who resists contact with others. One day, a coworker shows Lars a place where you can get lifelike sex dolls, and in just a few weeks, his new girlfriend arrives in a crate. The hitch is that he takes her on as a girlfriend rather than just a casual fling, showing her off to family, church, and the whole town. Then the story becomes less about a dude rubbing up against a sex toy, and more about the struggle with a mental illness, as Lars tries to compensate for the loss of his mother as a child. It's an oddly touching story, considering it features an open-mouthed sex doll in nearly every scene.

30 August 2009

Summer of Sam - David Berkowitz is out there whacking young girls, and a gang of douchebags in Jersey are trying to figure out who it is. They narrow it down to their friend Richie because he has funny hair, and they pound the fuck out of him. Fucking douchebags.

The Terminator - What great fun. It's 1984 and the robots of the future send a terminator back in time to kill Sarah Connor before she has a chance to give birth to John Connor, who will eventually lead the humans in their effort to survive the robot uprising. So the humans send Kyle Reese to protect Sarah and defeat the terminator, who happens to be one Arnold-tough-ass-motherfucker. The interesting thing is watching the evolution of the Sarah Connor character, who's a full-on eighties ditz at the beginning of the flick, but by the end, she comprehends the nature of what is to come. Which led to a killer sequel, where we find Sarah Connor as a badass survivalist chick, muscled and brutal. But you have to wait for that, as this one lays the groundwork and gets the story rolling.

23 August 2009

A Fistful of Dollars - The Stranger rides in to town, where he finds two rival gangs in charge. The Rojos seem to have the upper hand, but the Baxters can give as well as they take. So the guy comes up with a way to screw one side against the other, collect some cash for doing it, and paying off some innocents with the proceeds. Eastwood's first spaghetti western.

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner - Joey Drayton is a white girl of privilege who brings home her black boyfriend and announces she's marrying him. He's a gangster rapper who did a couple years for dealing crack and for popping a cap in some motherfucker's ass who didn't show him respect. Oh wait, I think that's what it would be about if it were filmed today. No, in 1967, the boyfriend was an accomplished doctor with international fame. And his only flaw was to put too much faith in the girl's father to bless their pending marriage. So this was a pretty controversial film in 1967, and it would probably raise a few eyebrows here and there in today's society. But unfortunately, I think it plays more like a statement than a story.

Changeling - My mom called this "The Changeling" and received a world of shit from my nephew for her glaring faux pas. The boy needs to chill with that shit… So anyway, Christine Collins is a blazing hot chick in the 20's with a little kid. She leaves him at home one day and he disappears. Months later, the cops find him, but she claims he's so different, this isn't her kid anymore. They throw her ass in the psyche ward for that one. That's how I remember the story being pitched, but the real story is a little more slanted. The cops are major fuckups, and instead of finding the kid, they find a different kid and dump him on her, in a publicity campaign that allows them to cover up the fact that they don't have the first fucking clue what happened to the kid and 20 others just like him. Eventually she makes it to court, where she takes down the detective, the chief of police, the mayor, and also the deviant prick who killed her son. In all, the story drags a little through the first half, but it's buoyed up by Sweet Holy God Angelina Jolie and her crazy ass lips. The second half brings a bit of ass-kicking and cheering and feel-good righteousness. And still with the lips.

16 August 2009

High Plains Drifter - This was always my favorite of the Clint Eastwood westerns, probably because it was the first I saw. Whereas the spaghetti westerns had a very distinct feel, High Plains Drifter, not truly belonging to the genre, drifted into an area that bordered on the supernatural. Look: a stranger rides into town, and seemingly begins to punish the whole town for some unknown transgression. Soon we realize that there is a dark past in this town -- three hired hands murdered the sheriff while the townsfolk watched, and then they buried him in an unmarked grave. The three men are about to be released from jail, and they stand to take out some anger on the town, who turned them in for the murder. So the town turns to the stranger to protect them, which he agrees to do, on the condition that he can have anything he wants. Clint Eastwood is awesome and this was his first directorial effort. So it's awesome.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - Benjamin Button is born an old man, then ages in reverse until he dies as an infant. Along the way, he meets a girl and they pass each other the middle of their lives. Once you get past the premise, which is never really explained, it's a love story. Read: chick flick.

Perkins 14 - Some random dude kidnaps a bunch of kids and he's never caught. Ten years later, he's picked up for income tax evasion or some such shit, and the cops go to his house and unleash these kidnapped kids, who have now magically turned into zombies who roam around the city trying to kill everyone in sight. Seriously, what 12 year old stoner wrote this piece of shit?

Premonition - I never really intended to watch this movie, but I flipped past it while it was on, and Sandra Bullock is such a major eye-catcher. So Linda Hanson's husband dies in a car accident and she's all sad, and the next day she wakes up and he's there because it's a week earlier, and then she's all happy. Then shoe goes to sleep and the next day she's at the funeral, then the next day she's meeting him at his office just in time to meet the secretary that he's boffing, and on and on. Sandra Bullock walks around confused -- hmm, never seen that one before…

09 August 2009

Midnight Movie - Some college brats, along with a biker dude and his chick, are the only attendees at a midnight screening of a horror movie, filmed 20 years prior by a dude who wound up killing a bunch of people or something. Oh, there's a couple cops in the theater as well, because they think the filmmaker might show up, and he's a wanted fugitive. Then the movie starts blipping out, and it's intercut with scenes from the theater, where the killer is killing off the audience one by one. How he gets that video is a mystery. Then it turns out they can't get out of the building, the phones have stopped working, and even when they stand right in front of the door, the cop on the outside can't see a single one on them. So it's just this ridiculous ripoff of an Elm Street concept, but lacking any sort of explanation. The only saving grace is that the star looks just like a girl I used to date, and I loved the way that girl looked.

Assault in the Ring - Luis Resto was a journeyman fighter in 1983, when he climbed into the ring against a rising star named Billy Collins, and, against all odds, pounded the hell out of him. Immediately following the fight, it was discovered that the gloves had been tampered with -- with much of the padding removed from the knuckles. Collins suffered a detached retina, massive depression, and eventually self-destructed in a car accident. This is the story from Resto's perspective, now 52 years old, and every day repentant about his part in the debacle. At the center of it all is trainer Panama Lewis, who took the gloves into the bathroom shortly before putting them on Resto. For his part, Resto claims no knowledge about what happened to the gloves, until midway through the film, when he finally makes a confession and then begins a round of apologies to everyone that will pay him the attention. While the story of Resto is truly sad -- this is a man who regrets that night every day of his life -- the true tragedy was caused by father figures: a manipulative Panama Lewis, who's none the worse for wear, and Billy Collins Sr., who repeatedly talked his son out of a return to the ring, because it would impact his lawsuit against the athletic commission. Assault in the Ring is a moving story, that finally brings a little peace to a man who's paid his dues.

Ninja Cheerleaders - Not only are they ninjas and cheerleaders, but strippers to boot! I enjoyed this campy mess, which starred George Takei (Sulu!) and Trishelle, that drunk horny chick from the Real World. So these three girls are attending a community college while working as strippers and going to ninja school. But when the ninja master/strip club owner is kidnapped, the girls have to rescue him. This is just a stupid film, and great fun, to boot.

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story - Ever since chopping his uber-talented brother in half, Dewey Cox has been trying to be twice as talented, becoming an international music star. Along the way, he goes through every imaginable musical phase, ending up broken and alone until he rediscovers the joy of family and his 22 kids.

02 August 2009

Die Hard - Normally, I'm not a big fan of action movies. They blow a lot of shit up in lieu of storytelling. But I fucking love this movie. Badass John McClane takes on the Germans (or Austrians or whatever) who are staging a terrorist act, but really just want to steal a shitload of cash. Yippee-Ki-Ay, motherfucker, don't mess with John fucking Wayne -- er, McClane.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning - There's no redeeming value whatsoever in this film. A lot of people die, and it's brutal, and it makes me sad.

Spartacus - I am Spartacus! The epic story of the slave-turned-gladiator-turned-escapee-turned-general who freed the slaves and put Rome on her ear.

26 July 2009

Doubt - Three of the greatest working actors in one film, about the inner politics, misbehavior, and moral decisions inside a 1950's era Catholic School. Father Flynn is suspected by crotchety old Sister Beauvier of rubbing up against one of the boys, and despite the fact that she has no evidence whatsoever, she mounts a battle because she just doesn't like him. Meanwhile, Sister James is a wide-eyed innocent who only looks to the good in people, and struggles within her own spirit to rationalize the evil within man. Solid acting in this story, that's really just supposed to make you ponder.

Baby Doll - Archie Lee made a deal with Baby Doll's father before he died: in exchange for Baby Doll's hand, he'd promise to put her up in the nicest house in the county. So now they're married, but Baby Doll isn't putting out until her twentieth birthday, which is fitting because the house is a piece of crap. But guess what's coming up in two days! Woo-hoo! Time for Archie Lee to get his freak on! But his other problem is that he's quite the boor, and with his company falling on bad times, his house is a junkpile, he's drinking on the sly, and screaming at the little missus. That's no way to skin a kitty, mister. So when Archie shows up at the competitor's cotton gin, he finds just the perfect opportunity to burn the place down, which puts his business back in business. But Silva Vacarro doesn't take it lying down, and he vows to take everything he can from Archie, including his dignity, and his little blonde bombshell temptress. It's quite a drag of a film, with a huge focus on the relationships rather than the story itself, and I'm not sure I would've made it through the whole thing if not for the supreme fuckability of Miss Baby Doll.

19 July 2009

The House Bunny - Anna Ferris is a Playboy mansion live-in who gets her walking papers after turning 27. So she finds a nearby college campus, and moves into the worst sorority she finds, taking a position as the housemother to the nerdiest, weirdest, ugliest girls you've ever seen, with a mission to recruit thirty new pledges or face closure. Hm, do you suppose she's going to turn the girls into hotties? Do you suppose they're going to bring her down to earth? Do you suppose the newly-hot girls are going to become snottier than their ultra-snotty rivals until they remember their roots? There's no surprises here, just the fun in watching a brutally hot Ferris clown her way through 90 minutes of high jinks. I'm in.

Phoebe in Wonderland - Praise be to the Fanning family, and whatever magical elixir went down the gullets of that crew to produce such amazing talents as Dakota and Elle. By now, we all know that Dakota Fanning is a freak of nature, a girl with poise well beyond her years and the acting skill to parallel the top veterans in the business. At six, she had more composure than I do at 40 (or so), and she has an entire incredible career ahead of her. The only problem with watching a Dakota Fanning film is that by now, she's already become iconic, and, like watching a Meryl Streep film, you can't shake the recognition that you're watching a Dakota Fanning film. Enter little sister Elle. Elle has all the talent of her big sis, but what she lacks in composure, she makes up for in pure unfiltered charm. Elle is a wide-eyed dream, a lesser known but completely captivating vision on the screen, and Basinger to Dakota's Uma. Here as Phoebe, she plays a little girl with one foot in the land of makebelieve, but when her life starts to change for the worse, the fantasy world of the school production of Alice in Wonderland may be her only rescue. A good film, with strong performances all around, and the glory that is Elle Fanning.

Big Trouble in Little China - East meets West in this action farce comedy that smacks of The Golden Child. Jack Burton is a trucker who finds himself suckered into going to the airport to pick up a friend's fiancée. When the girl is kidnapped, he finds himself dragged into a battle between the two toughest gangs in Chinatown, but that ain't the half of it. Pretty soon, three dudes with big hats show up and start flinging magic all over the place. Jack decides to hightail it out of there, running over a crazy guy with glowing eyes in the process. It turns out Mr. Glow Eyes is none other than David Lopan, a millenia-old soul who's trying to marry a green-eyed girl as a tribute to his demon master so he can regain his youth. So Jack and his new buddies throw down with the creepy old dude and rescue the girl. It's camp ambrosia.

Role Models - Two dudes works as spokesmen for an energy drink, where they cruise around and try to convince teens to stay off drugs and drink their swill instead. When a bad day is met by a tow truck and some bad decision-making, the pair find themselves facing a mandatory community service sentence working with a Big Brother-type organization. One guy gets a little terror who's totally into boobies, and the other guy gets the oldest little brother in the program, a teenage role-playing outcast. But they make it work. I never saw this turning into as big a role-playing feature as it did, but it was pretty funny. With a couple handy little tributes to KISS.

Suspiria - Dario Argento's first of the Mothers trilogy, and the third that I've seen. A girl travels to France to attend a dance academy. She finds the place run by a bunch of wackos who happen to be witches. The red and blue lighting grows tiresome quickly.

12 July 2009

Eddie and The Cruisers - There used to be this movie theater less than a mile's walk from my house in Columbus whose lobby was a bar. You could sit at a booth and watch the movie through the window into the theater, or you could take your drinks into the theater itself. I lived in a fraternity house, and my girlfriend was not only a constant figure there, but also a master at organizing a group into action, and it wasn't uncommon that she would mobilize a crowd of fifteen or so thirsty young men to attend the evening showing on an otherwise slow Friday night. On one such occasion, we attended a showing of Eddie and The Cruisers, which turned out to be a joyous, drunken affair. The film is a typical 80's joint, which I find oddly reminiscent of St. Elmo's Fire and The Big Chill -- both of which I attended with Pam, and both of which she absolutely adored. But at the end -- and after a handful of beers down my gullet into my 125-pound wisp of a body -- I was a bit nonplussed with the ending. And at the risk of giving it away (since I know you all have this scheduled in your Netflix queues), I'll attempt to obscure the actual details. "That was kind of stupid," I said. "Big deal, the pink donkey is listening to the radio." And Pam said, "Don't you know who that pink donkey was? That was the same donkey that pulled the cart in the first scene when the guy rode into town and shot the clown with the fire extinguisher." (Or something like that, I don't want to give it away.) "Oh," I realized. "That was the same donkey…" I love that she explained that to me. I usually did most of the explaining, but I loved that I could just be the dumb guy who didn't get it sometimes with her, and she wouldn't make me feel bad about it. I loved the way we could trade off roles and she could be strong for me and I could be strong for her. I loved everything about her…

I married her a couple months after we graduated, but I guess I sucked as a husband because she left me and moved on with her life without me. I don't hate her for that, but sometimes I still find myself angry with her because she gave up on us so quickly after we'd both invested five years of our lives in each other. I'm angry that she never gave us a chance, despite the fact that everyone told her she was being rash. I'm angry because everything I ever wanted was with her, and now I can't have those things that I had all planned out, and so I move on with my life toward some eventual end, but with no plan whatsoever, because I don't know anymore what that plan should be. And I watch the days go by.

The Reader - Hanna Schmitz is a tram toll-collector in Germany during the Second World War. One day an awkward teenage boy shows up and pukes on her porch, so she does him, because what's hotter than a pukey sweaty awkward teenager? Over the next couple of months, she's alternating between teaching him the manly art of boning a woman twice his age, and being a total psycho bitch. One day she takes off, and then joins the SS, where she kills Jews. Years later, she's on trial, and her little boyfriend shows up. And it's heartbreaking, or whatever, because she used to do him and now she kills people. And he's sad. God, I hated this fucking movie. The behavior of these people is completely senseless, and I think the story is trying to be a touching romantic tale, but in reality it just made me want to kill these fucking morons. Hanna is a horrible insufferable bitch, and just about the stupidest lead character ever seen in a film that's not intentionally vying for dimwit sentimentality. And the kid only becomes stupider when he becomes a man. Here's the thing: I love strong women, but I just can't stand stupid people, and this story panders to the emotions of women, while trying to paint a story of two fucking morons who deserve to suffer, not for their lot in life, but for their idiotic behavior -- for the stupid fucking decisions they continue to make. It tries to craft a romance from idiocy, and for the life of me, I hate that women are watching this and thinking it's romantic, because it's the worst of all of us.

Day of the Dead - Romero's third film of the zombie quintology (so far). So, hmm, what to say about Romero's third? Um, it features zombies. It takes a critical look at the military -- though it's really more an indictment of mankind itself, rather than the military per se. The story is that a crowd of military guys and scientists are living in an underground bunker, where the scientists are doing research on zombies and the military are there to protect them. But they wind up fighting each other, mostly because kitty's in short supply, with the only woman hooked up with one of the weakest soldiers, whereas the others are just partying with Rosie. Meanwhile, the crazy-ass doctor is trying to teach a zombie named Bub how to be civilized. Mayhem ensues. Like all the Romero films, the zombie context gives him a platform for tellin us about ourselves -- in this case, it's a pretty pessimistic story that touches mostly on the politics of small group dynamics. With Bub, the Shaving Zombie!

Taken - Liam Neeson is an unlikely ass-kicker in this revenge thriller about a former Special Forces (or whatever) soldier whose daughter is abducted by a pack of traders in white slavery. Within minutes, he knows who the guys are, and he wages a one-man war against this pack of Bobby Badasses, ever confident that he's going to bring his daughter back home. It's Rambo-like silliness, but the joy is in the unlikeliness of this guy as an ass-kicking action star. He looks more like Dad. And I guess that's the point.

05 July 2009

Run Fatboy Run - Dennis runs from the altar, leaving his pregnant bride behind. Years later, he struggles to understand what he left behind -- and considering that his bride was Thandie Newton, I struggle as well. His son -- now a young boy -- is starting to idolize Mommy's new boyfriend, who seems to have the world by the cocksack. Whit is an investment banker or some such shit, and he runs marathons casually. Fuck it, says Dennis, and next thing you know, he's training for the marathon. The rest of the story is about his attempt at redemption to his wife and son -- his drive to prove himself worthy by running purposefully, rather than away.

Dawn of the Dead (1978) - In Romero's first sequel, the virus is spreading and zombies continue to walk the earth. Two soldiers hook up with a helicopter pilot and a TV producer and they go to the mall. Inside are zombies all walking around in search of brains, but the group minds their P's and Q's, then block off the outside doors before killing off all the goons to make the place safe. They get ready to leave, then decide "hey what's the point of that, we already have a zombie-free zone, so they settle in and chow down on the unexplainable boxes and boxes of rations stored in the upstairs room. But then along comes a motorcycle gang, and they decide they'd like to camp out for a while, so they turn the mall into a motocross. But out heroes can't just lay low until the heat is off, they decide to open the doors and open fire, thereby ensuring their death. Romero broke a lot of ground, but he veered from the course quite a few times as well. While clearly a poke at consumerism, there are still a lot of problems with this film -- the elephant in the room being the zombie virus itself. It seems to have turned the whole planet into zombies who are eradicating the human race, but all it takes to put one of them down is a bullet to the head. And only the recently dead are susceptible to the effect, so really there can't be all that many of these flesheaters walking around. And have you ever been to the mall? It's friggin' packed. So if only one in ten people has a gun, and they shoot one zombie apiece, the epidemic is still avoided. It's sad to shoot holes in the master, but let's just credit him with a vision, and leave the details to the technicians.

28 June 2009

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas - Bruno is pretty proud of his dad, and well he might be, with dad as a high-ranking soldier during the war, with huge mansions paid for by the government. He's not so happy when he finds that dad is being transferred to another assignment, out in the country. But he's a kid, so he doesn't have much choice but to make the best of it. One day he goes out exploring and he meets another kid, who lives on the farm next door. The kid is a little different, but Bruno's still learning a lot about the world, so he takes it all in, bringing the boy a sandwich every now and then and learning about his life. One day the boy shows up at Bruno's house, as he's been hired to clean the glassware. Bruno gives the hungry boy a cookie, but that turns out to be not such a great idea because the boy's a Jew and Bruno's dad is a raging Nazi. Poor Bruno -- the world is so simple through his eyes, which are slowly opening to reveal the painful truth, and we're along to see every terrible moment of it.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - Sergio Leone's classic spaghetti western -- the story of three men's hunt for treasure. Tuco is The Ugly, an established criminal who's wanted throughout the west. He makes his living with his cohort Blondie (The Good), who turns Tuco in for the ransom money, then rescues him from the hangman's noose by shooting the rope. The boys have a love-hate relationship, which includes numerous attempts to kill one another. One day they run across dying thief Bill Carson, who has buried a fortune in gold in a grave. In an attempt to barter his life for information, he tells Tuco the name of the cemetery, and Blondie the name on the grave, and then he promptly dies. Carson is also being tracked by mercenary Angel Eyes (The Bad), who's been after the stolen gold for a while. With the three men now on a mission to find the site of the gold, their paths cross and re-cross, leading them to the eventual showdown where only one man can win. A fantastic film, gorgeous and groundbreaking.

Gran Torino - Walt Kowalski is the last holdout in an aging neighborhood that's seeing the infiltration of gangs and the white flight being replaced by a population of Hmong immigrants. Kowalski is a Korean War Vet, who sees enemy Korean faces in everyone he sees, including the black and Mexican gang members. He's pretty much had it with his Hmong neighbors when son Thao attempts to steal Walt's prized Gran Torino as admission into the gang that he really doesn't want to join. But when Walt saves Thao's sister Sue from some of the local bangers, she sees a little light in his soul, and she doesn't let him deny it. Eventually Walt sees the good in Thao, and when the gang violence escalates, Walt jumps into the fracas, joining sides with his neighbors, who he decides aren't so bad, despite the non-whiteness of their skin. Classic Clint Eastwood badass stuff, though he makes a turn toward the light.

Young People Fucking - Four couples and one threesome, fucking. Not porn, but definitely not one for the kids. Not exactly life-changing.

21 June 2009

Night of the Ghouls - An Ed Wood Jr. production about a house full of scam artists who hold fake seances to scam innocent grievers out of their money. A cop is dispatched to get to the bottom of all this ghost business, but it takes the assistance of some real ghosts to bring down the false prophet. It's a silly mess like every Ed Wood flick is, but it lacks the giddy joy of a classic like Plan 9 from Outer Space.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall - Peter's high maintenance girlfriend is the star of a dorky TV crime show, where he works as the musical director, creating ominous sounds to back the story line. She dumps him cold one day, and after about a week of crying, he takes off on a vacation to Hawaii, where he runs into his girlfriend and her new boyfriend, who are staying at the same hotel. Fortunately for him, Peter meets a knockout in Rachel upon checking in, who's more than capable of bringing him out if his funk. After a few more nights of crying on his balcony, Peter begins to spend a bit of time with Rachel, and also becomes a man about the island. Meanwhile, ex-girlfriend Sarah is beginning to learn what a jackhole her new boyfriend is. With Peter seemingly wanting nothing but to have Sarah back, will Rachel and the beauty of island life be enough to clear his head? It doesn't take a genius to figure the outcome, but Forgetting Sarah Marshall is still a funny little entry, that's oddly touching. I must admit, Kristen Bell is a cute little thing, but Sweet Fancy Moses, Mila Kunis is a knockout raging beauty with the most striking eyes I think I've ever seen. And Russell Brand is just about perfect as new boyfriend Aldous Snow, but admittedly when the role is that of the world's biggest douchebag, you can't really call it acting if your name is Russell Brand.

14 June 2009

Powder Blue - I'll begin with a confession: the only reason I rented this is because I knew Jessica Biel plays a stripper and shows some of her naughty parts. So that's one thumb up. A quick review of the supporting cast -- Forest Whitaker, Ray Liotta, Kris Kristofferson, Lisa Kudrow, and a killer turn by Patrick Swayze as the nearly-transvestite strip club owner -- and we're cruising along with two thumbs up before the opening credits even roll. Then the movie starts. And unfortunately, it all comes apart. As pretty as she is, Jessica Biel just doesn't have the chops to cut this heavily dramatic role, and in fact she's just downright boring -- making "hot, naked, and boring" one of the most amazing paradoxes I've encountered. The story tries to be one of those in which many storylines converge, making the viewer say, "ahhhh," but instead I found myself saying, "meh." Not only does the writing miss the mark, but it's also downright ridiculous in places -- like when stripper girl Rose Johnny meets an awkward, ugly, weird mortician named Qwerty, and immediately falls in love with him. Happens all the time. But considering that Swayze slays every scene, and that Biel regularly packs ten pounds of girly goodness into a five pound bag, I'd have to go fifty-fifty on whether it's worth the investment. Flip a coin.

The Wrestler - Mickey Rourke is a different cut of cat. From the nearly softcore-porn of 9-1/2 Weeks and Wild Orchid (which barely squeezed underneath an X rating), to the disturbing horror of Angel Heart, to lost abandon in drugs and boxing, only to emerge years later in the role of a lifetime as a professional wrestler beaten to the ground, struggling to prove his place in the world. So here we have The Ram, a legend in his world, who fought (what we now know publicly to be faux-) battles in the ring, with the beating on his body and psyche taking a heavy toll. In the real world, Ram is a guy named Robin, who works at the corner grocery store, and finds himself browbeat by his manager, and barely able to pay the rent on his trailer. When his health diminishes, he reaches out to his estranged daughter, but despite his best intentions, the allure of his public Ram persona sabotages his effort to make a real connection. Paralleling this story is that of stripper Cassidy, who resists her need to connect her real life Pam persona to Robin until it's too late. It's a sad story, one that cuts deep.

Wendy and Lucy - A slice of life here, with Wendy as a woman on a journey, with only her yellow dog Lucy to keep her company. She's on her way to Alaska for some unknown reason, and she has some $500 to work with, but apparently she's got it all budgeted, so she's living out of her car, hand to mouth. When she gets busted stealing dog food for the hungry Lucy, she's sent to jail for long enough for her dog to loose herself from her restraints, and wander off to parts unknown. With Lucy as her only friend, Wendy is frantic, but with no resources, she doesn't really have the means to mount a search. This is an interesting film, and a nice turn for Michelle Williams, who tones down her natural appeal just far enough to be believable as regular Jane. The story picks up in the middle and leaves before the end, with no apologies -- an approach that mirrors the events it's portraying -- people pop in and out of our lives, with rarely a beginning and end, much less a conclusion.

07 June 2009

To Have and Have Not - Humphrey Bogart plays Harry Morgan, the captain of a fishing boat in Martinique after the island has fallen under the rule of the Vichy governement. His first mate is an old-timer boozer named Eddie, who suffers the shakes if he goes more than a couple of hours without a pop. Morgan is minding his own business at the bar in the hotel where he stays when in walks Slim, an American woman with smoky eyes and a smokier voice, and together, they make a smoking couple. Seriously, they smoke through the entire movie. So Slim (that's Harry's nickname for her; we never know her real name and she calls him Steve) is a pickpocket, who finds herself in Martinique only because she doesn't have the money to book the flight home. Harry is about to get paid for the two-week fishing client he's been entertaining, when the man is killed in a shootout between the government forces and the people's resistance. So a local corrupt lawman takes the dead man's money in the investigation, and also sees fit to take Harry's cash, leaving him no option but to hire himself out to the resistance, and ferry a wanted "soldier" out of harm's way. Harry pays Slim the money she needs to get back home, but she doesn't want to leave him, and she joins him in the fight instead. It's hard to shake the feeling that this isn't Casablanca part 2, and even though I read the Hemingway novel, for the life of me, there wasn't a single scene that struck a chord. But the film is a nice piece of history which features that "put your lips together and blow" line. And Lauren Bacall is absolutely fetching until she opens her mouth to sing, then Sweet Holy Moses, I thought my head was going to fall off. What the flying pink fuck was that?

31 May 2009

Hostel Part II - I wasn't really jumping up and down over the first film, but I stumbled across this one on one of my new HD channels, it was late, I'd had a couple beers, and I was in the mood for some hot naked chicks and brutal violence. Here we have three American girls who go off on holiday to Prague -- two of them are major hottie party girls (woohoo!), and the nicer of the two brings along her wallflower classmate. There, they stumble into the Hostel organization, where rich clients pay huge dollars to kill people -- and the two pretty girls (and the one not-so-pretty girl) bring a hefty fee. Clients Todd and Stuart are moderately wealthy Americans who sign up for the program, with Todd as the gung-ho douchebag ringleader, and Stuart as the reluctant pussy who finds peer pressure alone to be sufficient motivation to kill pretty girls. But when he meets his target -- the smart, pretty, and stinking-rich Beth -- he has second thoughts, and may have met his match. Hostel II is a bloody affair, and Lauren German as Beth is a stiking beauty. But I was disappointed with the lack of nudity. Let's try a little harder next time, shall we?

24 May 2009

Saturday Night Fever - Tony Manero is the local hero of his Brooklyn neighborhood because he can dance his ass off at the local disco -- a fact which garners him the admiration of all the dudes and quite the plethora of ass. When uptown girl Stephanie rolls onto the scene sporting a slick two-step of her own, Tony knows that his ticket out of town rides on winning the dance contest with Stephanie. But meanwhile, groupie Annette is puppying him around town, and his brother is returning from a failed attempt at the priesthood. He and his gang go and beat up some guys but it turns out he really shouldn't have, which makes Tony so mad he could just dance. Here's the thing -- this is a pretty good flick, about a nearly-universal desire of youth to get away from home and find a better place. You just have to get by the gayness of the dancing. True enough, I know that a lot of guys went to the disco in the seventies, and I myself even won a dance contest at a local disco in my youth. But that was only because I could jump up in the air and touch my toes, and the victory didn't turn me into a local hero. Maybe if I'd gone full-on white-suited, pointed toe pomp like Tony, but that just wasn't my gig. I remember watching this film in the seventies and thinking that Tony's homelife was brutal: getting yelled at and smacked by his dad. Thirty years later, I realize that was a comic scene. Ah, youth. Still, Fever is probably the most iconic film I can think of -- you want to know what the seventies disco scene was about? Watch the movie. And shake your ass.

17 May 2009

Fear[s] of the Dark - Black and White animations about scary stuff. Spoken in French, subtitled in English. Meh.

10 May 2009

Last Tango in Paris - An American dude living in Paris suffers the loss of his wife, so he shows up at a random for-rent apartment at the same time as a hot little French girl, and he promptly bangs her. Then he declares the place to be the fuck-only zone, with no outside distractions, such as names, allowed. Over the next few weeks, they meet there and hump. The ending is an ironic twist, but not too hard to see coming. I suppose there's some allegorical story going on here, aside from the surface story of sexual healing and the associated moral -- to be careful what you ask for. But the real joy here is watching Brando, who is at times cringeworthy, and at others sublime. His little round-faced girlfriend ain't so bad, either.

Rachel Getting Married - Kym gets a weekend pass from rehab to attend her sister's wedding, and everyone better hold on for the ride. Kym is a walking mess, who loves swirling attention around herself, though she's not entirely conscious of that fact. But it doesn't wash well with Rachel, who, despite her devotion to her errant sister, decides she's had enough of her "look at me" antics, and so she calls her on it. Somehow, they manage to throw what might be the coolest wedding ever. In all, Rachel Getting Married is a fairly brutal tale of a fairly messed up family, dealing with the impact of tragedy. Sort of like Steel Magnolias, but with sex, drugs, and massive dysfunction.  Anne Hathaway throws her priss image out the window, in a performance that hurts and inspires.

Whatever It Takes - The outcast kid has a thing for the popular girl and the jock kid has a thing for the quiet girl, who just happens to be the outcast kid's neighbor and best friend. So the two guys make a deal, and set each other up for success in their respective conquests. From the start, the quiet girl is clearly hotter than the popular girl, and given that the jock kid is a total douchebag, it's pretty obvious what's going to happen. But I don't know, it was on one of my new HD channels, and the quiet girl had a nice rack. And for the life of me, I couldn't figure out who that outcast kid is. It's Ray, from ER. Well, I'll be crikey.

10 May 2009

Zombie Strippers - Somehow, a zombie gets into a strip bar and turns the strippers into zombies. All the dudes go crazy over the zombie strippers, because who doesn't love peeling flesh? You can't even call this camp because it tries way too hard.

The Wackness - Set in 1994 with a whole bunch of "peace out" dialogue, this is the story of a sensitive drug dealer who befriends a basketcase shrink and falls in love with the guy's stepdaughter. His problem, according to the girl, is that he always sees the wackness, whereas she always sees the dopeness. But when he veers a little too close to dope, he drops the big three on her, and she bugs out. Yo.

03 May 2009

Conjurer - A couple moves out to the country and finds themselves haunted by the ghost of a witch living in a cabin on their property. Boo.

Slumdog Millionaire - Jamal grows up in the slums of India, literally fighting for his life nearly every single day. As an adult, he finds himself on the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire, and amazingly, every question somehow relates to his tortured childhood, during which his parents were killed and he, along with his brother Salim and orphan girl Latika, scraped by on their wits, from the tender age of about 8. As we go along, we learn that Jamal's life has been a long chase after Latika, who's now grown into a beautiful woman. At its core, Slumdog Millionaire is a love story between the two kids, from their first meeting over the tragedy of their parents' death, to their eventual reunion, and while it's not a groundbreaking story, it's not bad. But the beauty of this film is the literal beauty of the film itself -- the images, the motion, the color. It may well be the most perfect piece of film made in that regard. And honestly, I can't imagine a more beautiful woman right now than Freida Pinto.

Zack and Miri Make a Porno - Zack and Miri are a couple of stoner best buds who run out of cash and come to the only logical conclusion: they have to make a porn movie to pay their bills. Hm, let's see, best buddies, living together, at odds with the world, making porn. Hm, I wonder if they're going to begin to see each other in a different light and fall in love… The problem here is that the story is one without a target demographic. It's a chick story, with a heavy porn content: weepy sighs and flopping tits. I have no idea who this movie is supposed to appeal to. For my money, way too many weepy sighs. Others may feel differently.

26 April 2009

Old School - Mitch comes home to find his wife in the middle of a threesome and he wasn't invited. So he moves into a house near campus, and his pushy friend Beanie decides to turn the place into a party house, bringing party animal Frank the Tank along for the ride. When the dean, who happens to be an old nemesis of the trio, threatens to shut the place down by bribing the nerdy student council head, they turn the place into fraternity, which apparently is a loophole in the campus legislation. Okay, look, don't even think about taking any of this seriously -- it's as dopey as it looks from the trailers. Will Ferrell is Frank the Tank, a reformed party animal who becomes unreformed. It's silly fun. With Elisha Cuthbert's ass.

Meatballs - In keeping with the whole genre of summer camp films, you'll have a hard time distinguishing the campers from the staff, which is really the downfall of the genre. But no matter. Bill Murray is the head counselor or whatever, and he's wacky. He befriends the shy kid, and they pull off an upset of the hoitey-toitey camp across the lake in the annual Summer Camp Olympiad. Or kind of. Nevermind the plot because it doesn't really matter. The joy is in watching Bill Murray.

A Christmas Tale - This is supposed to be a black comedy about a dysfunctional family trying to mend their wounds over a Christmas holiday. Which is just about right, if by "black comedy" they mean "melodramatic whining." I don't know. First of all, it's French, so it takes itself way too seriously. And when the only likable woman in the cast decides to bone her husband's cousin, and the husband just waves it off in the morning, like "Hey you two crazy kids," I think I've had enough. I don't get shit like this. Two and a half hours is way too much time out of my life.

19 April 2009

Nightbreed - A dude has some bad dreams about monsters so he goes to see a shrink who gives him pills that turn him psycho and land him in the hospital. He escapes and heads out to a cemetery where the monsters live, and the police and shrink all find him there at the same time, but the cops shoot him dead when the shrink yells out, "he's got a gun!" But in the morgue, he comes back to life and returns to monster land, where he joins up. When his girlfriend and the crazy shrink come looking, the monsters are exposed to the real world, and a battle ensues. An interesting adventure in cheddar.

Synecdoche New York - If you thought Charlie Kaufman was a little nutso as a writer, imagine what he'd do with full directorial control. Here he weaves a little story about a man into an incredibly huge production, full of less-than-realistic-but-oh-so-meaningful little trifles. Let's see if we can follow along: Caden Cotard is a stage director who's married to a woman no longer in love with him. She leaves him and takes their 4-year old daughter with her, right about the time he starts coming down with mysterious illnesses and also at about the same time that he receives a huge government grant, giving him the means to put on any size production he wishes. So opts for the biggest production imaginable -- a simulation of New York City, complete with hundreds of citizens, each living an independent life. As Caden continues his folly of a play, he begins to realize that he needs more realism, which he brings in by casting actors to play the parts of his crew, including a man named Sammy, who plays the part of Caden. Before long, Sammy is giving direction, and Caden is walking along behind, commenting on Sammy's performance as the man doing the job he should be doing. Then he takes it one step further, casting an actor to play the part of Sammy, who's playing the part of the guy playing the part of the director. All the while, Caden has been secretly following his ex-wife around town, going to her art shows and hoping to rebuild a relationship with his estranged daughter. And he plays out the typical work-girlfriend story with assistant Hazel, even going so far as to hire an actor to play her, and then sleeping with the actor. There' so much symbolism going on here, that you probably owe it to yourself to give it a couple runs through, but at its core, it's a story about a man who sees the opportunity to fix the mistakes he makes in his life, but the best he can do is just to repeat them. A bizarre work from a genius of a writer and a pretty good film-maker.

12 April 2009

Pride and Glory - Nepotism runs deep on the police force in Boston, with Ray as a disgraced detective, brother Francis Jr. serving as commander, brother-in-law Jimmy walking a beat, all under dad Francis Sr., who's the chief of police. One day a couple cops are killed by a local bad guy, but something about the whole deal smells bad. Dad talks Ray into participating on the investigation, and wouldn't you know, it's dirty cops, led by Jimmy. So they do their cop stuff, and there's a big showdown.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington - The paid-off senator from Kentucky dies of a heart attack, and the governor is torn between his benefactor and his sense of morality when making the appointment. His kids declare that the best candidate for the job would be Jeff Smith, a bumpkin and the leader of the Boy Rangers -- a fictional analog for the Boy Scouts. Upon further consideration, the governor figures the wide-eyed bumpkin would a pushover on the nuances of dirty politics, and he sends him off to Washington. But when Jeff gets his arms around what's really going on, he learns the game from his wizened secretary and he filibusters with the best of them. Wanna bet the weary secretary falls in love with him? The ending comes on a little too fast and easy, but for the most part, Mr. Smith is an exercise in feel-good optimism that we're a little short on these days.

05 April 2009

I've Loved You So Long - When Juliette is let out after a 15 year stint in prison, she moves in with her sister Lea and has a hard time adjusting to life in the world. The DVD crapped out at the end, and I have no idea what happened in the last 15 minutes, but it wasn't really rocking my world to begin with, so whatever. Update: I rented it again because I read that the last 15 minutes is really intense. She yells. Whoopee.

Happy-Go-Lucky - Poppy is a rather annoying girl, peppy and full of spunk, with a chipper outlook, and always with a cute little comment. Through the course of the film, she has run-ins with some characters who are dramatically different from her, which change her worldview, bringing her back down to a level of normalcy. Or at least, that's how the picture is portrayed. I'd like to think differently, though. I'd like to think that the goofy girl we meet at the beginning of the film is the same woman with the thoughtful viewpoint at the end of the film, but just showing us a different side. Then what we see through the course of the film is not so much a metamorphosis, but just a response to circumstance. Otherwise, the whole thing is just a little to self-serving: that Poppy would find herself well into her twenties with a case of boundless optimism, only to be brought crashing down to reality upon meeting a depressed driving instructor is just a little suspect in terms of believability. See it as you will, it's an oddly touching story nevertheless.

Sex Drive - Little Ian desperately wants to get a little piece of action. He's been IM'ing with Ms. Tasty, convincing her that he's a High School football star, when in reality he's a kid who works at a donut shop, and spends part of his time dressed up in a giant donut costume, passing out coupons. His chubby friend convinces him that he needs to take a roadtrip and meet up with Ms. Tasty, so they steal older brother Jake's '69 GTO, and hit the road, taking Jason's mad crush/BFF Felicia along for the ride. Imagine the rest, and you'll probably hit it about 95% right: repressed teen, road trip, secret crush, fat kid, high jinks, stolen car, and the Amish. Honestly, what drew me in here was the donut costume because it is quite funny. The rest was as expected.

29 March 2009

Let the Right One In - The normal reaction when a vampire moves in next door is to run around a lot, maybe flap your arms, and adamantly request a hammer and some sort of wooden spike. Oskar, on the other hand, sees it as an opportunity to hook up, but he's sadly disappointed at every turn. See, Oskar's a little twelve-year-old who gets picked on a lot at school, and he's generally pretty mellow, though a little sulky from all the bullying. When he meets Eli, the vampire next door, his world lights up. He follows her around and tries to convince her to be his girlfriend. But she's not really a girl, which Oskar finds out when he sneaks a peak while she's changing -- she's really something else. This film didn't really rock me, and didn't scare the bejeezes out of me, but it did ring around in my head for quite some time afterward. It's caught somewhere between horror and coming-of-age story, and you might even consider it a love story. It never goes for the easy scare, and screams "Indie" from the rooftops. Nicely made, and definitely one to be re-watched.

Xanadu - So Kira is a muse who comes down to earth on roller skates to convince Sonny Malone and his newfound friend Danny McGuire to open a club called Xanadu. That club will feature big-band jazz, 80's glam-metal, roller-skating dancers, and muses. That's about the whole story. The rest is a showcase for musical/dance numbers, some of which are frightful (the glam-metal schlock) and some of which are sublime (Gene Kelly and a gorgeous Olivia Newton-John in a very classic dance number.)

22 March 2009

Son of Rambow - Will is a little guy who's not allowed to watch TV, but he invents stories in his head that are a million times bigger. He meets up with Lee Carter, who is the school troublemaker, with a silver spoon in his mouth. The two unlikely friends decide to make a movie, based on Will's drawings of the snatches of TV that he's manage to steal in his 8 or so years of life. So they decide on a film called Son of Rambow, about the spawn of Stallone's John Rambo, who goes back into the jungle to rescue his dad. Along comes French foreign exchange student pomp Didier, who's the total shit in cat's pajamas, bringing a distinct flair to the production, not to mention a gaggle of sycophants and groupies. But will the newfound fame overpower Will's fledgling friendship with Lee Carter? And how will it all wash with his Mennonite-like peer group? Son of Rambow is a silly affair, but still touchingly sweet in its ability to dispense with pretense and reveal Will in all his boyishness, and brat-boy Lee Carter, who is really just looking to find a friend.

Dead Like Me - I did not know this was a TV series, but I was stricken by how much the movie played like one. Let's see… apparently some people die and instead of going off to wherever, they go instead to Chicago (or wherever), where they take on an assumed identity and moonlight as grim reapers, leading the souls of the dead to their great beyond. But one day their boss gets a promotion (or whatever) and a new boss takes over, and it all gets crazy. So um, this really played more like a second rate movie for fans of a second rate show than anything else. While the story line is certainly original, there are just too many oddities left unexplained, leaving me a little dazed, and it's all just a little too winkingly cutesie. Ellen Muth brings her best Laura San Giacomo voice and fluffy eyebrows.

Sunset Boulevard - Joe Gillis is a down-on-his-luck writer in Hollywood who's running from the repo man when he has a blowout and pulls into the nearest mansion to hide out. Turns out the place is populated by one Norma Desmond, a silent film star who still thinks she's the cheese, and the world is waiting at her doorstep. She's plotting her return to glory, which includes a screenplay that she's written. Problem is, it's a piece of dreck, and Joe doesn't have the heart to tell her. In fact, considering the repo man beating on his door and his empty bank account, he signs on to fix up the old gal's script. So while he's in the process of becoming a kept man, he's sneaking out at night to work on his own story with his buddy's fiancée -- while his buddy's off in Arizona. Hm, do you suppose he's going to fall in love with the girl? Do you suppose crazy-as-a-loon Norma is going to raise all holy hell? Hm, I wonder.

15 March 2009

Body of Lies - Roger Ferris is a CIA agent working in Jordan, trying to find Al-Saleem, the leader of a primary terrorist organization. Roger's boss is a guy named Ed Hoffman, who is fat and soft and stationed in the US, and the two of them don't always see eye to eye. Roger moves into Amman, where he strikes up a working relationship with the Jordanian Director of Intelligence, based on the premise that he will never lie to the man. But when Roger hatches a plan to create his own terrorist cell, framing some innocent schlub in the process, thereby fleshing Al-Saleem out of the brush, he puts that relationship at risk. He also takes up with some little doctor honey. When it all goes to shit, Roger has to come up with a plan to save the dude and keep his girl out of trouble, while working around his boss, his liege, and everyone else. Here's what gets me about movies like this, though, and it seems to be a recurrent theme with DiCrapio. The guy's a CIA agent. He knew he was going to get an innocent guy killed. He took up with a civilian -- and he knew he was a major target, thereby putting her in harm's way as well. He knew he was lying to the guy he promised not to lie to. But for some reason, we're supposed to see this menace as a hero. He's a fuckup, not a hero, and even worse, a fuckup with power. Like George Bush.

08 March 2009

Hamlet 2 - Dana Marschz is a failed actor and high school drama teacher who's on his last leg, with his drama class cancelled, and his class infiltrated by students who got no place else to go. His wife is trying unsuccessfully to get pregnant, and his constant roller-skating to work on account of his lost license is getting on his last nerve. When he's locked out of the cafeteria/drama room, he's forced to share the gym with the volleyball team, and when he's kicked out of there, he's on his very last leg. But fortunately, he's decided to produce his own play, called Hamlet 2, in which Hamlet time travels, picking up Jesus along the way, and the pair of them try to stop the tragedies of Hamlet before they happen. It's ridiculous, completely irreverent, and very funny. Elizabeth Shue is awesome as herself, and Amy Poehler is cute and crazy. The comedy here tracks along at a different comedic timing than we see as the current vogue -- the standard Apatow genre of self-aware comedies with funny fat guys. Hamlet 2 has a completely different dynamic, which is fresh, clean, and a lot of fun.

Eden Lake - A couple go out to an abandoned quarry to camp out for the weekend. They're greeted by a pack of foul-mouthed kids with a smelly dog and a boombox. The dude makes the mistake of confronting the kids, and the next day when he gets his car, he runs over a beer bottle wedged neatly under his tire, blowing it out. So he goes into town, where he finds a house with a bunch of bikes out front, and he does the only obvious thing -- he breaks in, looking for the kids. When dad comes home, he high-tails it out, and they go to a local diner, where he tells the waitress what a pack of fucks these kids are, only to find out she's their mom. So then, their next improbable act is to return to the lake, where the kids steal their car. Then it just ramps up further. Pretty Jenny is a trouper, but at some point they should have just folded and left town. I mean, come on. Seriously Funny Games could have been a direct critique of this very film, in which the protagonists do exactly the wrong thing every step along the way. And it's not too much of a stretch to see a heavy influence from The Descent. Eden Lake is a good suspense film, but just a little too much for my taste.

01 March 2009

Pineapple Express - Dale is a process server with a high-school girlfriend and a major weed habit. He goes over to see Saul -- his dealer and a total stoner -- and he picks up some special stuff called Pineapple Express. Then he goes off to work, where he attempts to serve papers to a guy who just happens to be his dealer's dealer's dealer, and he witnesses a murder. So he hauls ass out of there, mistakenly leavintg behind a roach, which the dopedealer immediately identifies, and in so doing, launches a manhunt for Dale. So Dale and Saul are now on the run. Hilarity ensues. The biggest mystery for me was the constant homo-erotic vibe that ran throughout, but was never realized in the end. It seemed to be leading toward a "bros before hos" dynamic, despite the fact that there weren't really any hos to speak of. I suppose it was intended to point out the fact that Saul and Dale are really just looking for love. But it's also quite likely that it was just an excuse to make fun of some gaybait antics.

Choke - A brutal novel by Chuck Palahniuk is made into a movie that thoroughly disappoints. Look: Victor Mancini is a sex addict and pretty much a jerkoff (too easy) who goes to his sex addict meetings to bang the little pieces of ass who hang out there. But really he's a mama's boy, working his way through his mother's declining years. He meets a nice doctor who may just be his savior, but she may also be crazier than he is. Let's see, he also has a best friend who is building something out of rocks, and he likes to fake choking at restaurants so he can garner attention from those who eventually save him. It's crazy like the book, but somehow misses the mark from a story that was brutal in its unfiltered form. On screen, Victor is more sad sack than lunatic, and without the lunatic, Palahniuk is just looney. I love this guy, but the film is just lame. Generally, the problem is that Palahniuk is such a distinctive writer, and unless you go to screen verbatim, you lose the magic that is Chuck. Choke did just that, and therefore it did just that. Next.

22 February 2009

All the President's Men - Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein are two reporter for the Washington Post who get word of a break-in at the Democratic National Committee office. Turns out the perpetrators are all Cubans, and a little digging reveals that they're CIA. Then they find out that there is a money trail from a check that was cashed by one of the men, leading back to the committee to re-elect President Nixon. They dig deeper and deeper, eventually revealing the corruption all the way up the chain into the White House. Nixon was a reprehensible boob who thought that the actions of the executive office were above the law of the land. But the unfortunate part of that story is that it taught his 28-year successor that he couldn't blatantly flaunt his disregard for the Constitution, but instead when he wanted to turn the country over and fuck it in the ass, he'd need to come up with some bullshit boondoggle that he could wrap redneck patriotism around before running up the country's debt, stuffing the pockets of his millionaire cronies, killing off hundreds of thousands of civilians, fucking the environment, destroying the American economy, and decimating our position in the world community. And on a personal note, as an American, I'm somehow lumped in the same boat with that stupid arrogant fuck, and I will forever run the risk of guilt by association in the international community just for that reason. He's a fucking worthless, stupid, pathetic, egomaniacal, childish, cocksucking buffoon who should suck shit through a steel straw.

Good movie, though.

15 February 2009

Charlie Bartlett - An oddly touching Ferris Bueller-esque story about a kid who just wants to fit in. When Charlie's transferred from his upper-society boarding school to a public school, he finds himself getting beat up by the class bully so he hatches a plan, quick. His shrink puts him on Ritalin, which blasts him into space, and he decides to go into the drug dealing business, enlisting the bully as his muscle. He expands the business into a full-service psychiatric clinic that he runs out of the bathroom. Meanwhile, Principal Gardner seems to lack the basic abilities to deal with the students, and eventually finds himself fired due to his botched dealings with Charlie, who, in turn, is becoming the de facto leader of the school. With Charlie banging his daughter, Gardner launches into a downward spiral, and only Charlie can help.

Vicky Christina Barcelona - Vicky and Christina fly out to Spain for a couple months that feel like years. They stay with some friends, and go out one night, where they bump into Juan Antonio, who totally macks all over them. They wind up flying off to another city with him, a fact that amazes Vicky, whose grounded sensibilities don't jibe well with the Artist in Juan Antonio. But Christina's a free soul, so she winds up in his room long enough to puke on his shoes. So he does Vicky instead. But later, Christina moves in with him, which is all well and good until his ex-wife, a crazed Maria Elena, shows up, spewing crazy all over the place. So it's like a love quadrangle, which always turn out well. The funny thing here, is that if you close your eyes you can hear Woody Allen in the delivery of much of the dialogue. Which is notable because the dialogue sounds entirely scripted, with characters saying lines that real humans never would. The infamous kiss between Penelope Cruz and Scarlett Johansson is not nearly as hot as is should be, and the entire story makes me think what idiots these fucking people are. I guess it's a chick-flick, so whatever.

08 February 2009

Drugstore Cowboy - Bob is a small time crook who specializes in robbing drugstores and stealing their pills. He works with a crew of four, consisting of his old lady, his muscle, and his muscle's old lady. In exchange for his tutelage, he demands a few simple rules: no one talks about pets, looks at the back of a mirror, and -- God forbid -- no one ever puts a hat on a bed. The problematic Nadine -- the muscle's old lady -- flubs up a hospital job, and when Bob chastises her, she puts a hat on a bed. They find it the next day, next to the girl's dead body -- an apparent suicide or perhaps murder-by-hex. When he finds himself trapped in a hotel room with a corpse to dispose of and a sheriff's convention checking in, Bob realizes it's time to quit the life, go back home, and enter a methadone program. Then it's a struggle against the mundane to stay alive. Drugstore Cowboy is a key film in the genre of hipster druggies, with filming style that set the standard for obvious derivatives like Requiem for a Dream (which was very good) and Spun (which was crazier but not quite as poignant.) The high point is William S. Burroughs as Father Tom, a crazy-ass junkie, and the low point is Kelly Lynch, who turns in B-movie chops from FADE IN to FADE OUT. A quintessential Matt Dillon role, however.

The Dead One - Okay, to begin with, the title is a fairly unimaginative English translation of a much better Spanish title, "El Muerto." Fez plays a dude who's pwned by an Aztec god as a little kid, and when he grows up, the god comes a-calling. Fez crashes his car and dies, but he really wakes up as a ghost, and then goes out cruising around, indiscriminately killing some people and bringing others back to life. Then some old dude in drag also gets zapped by the god, and they throw down large.

01 February 2009

Hotel Rwanda - Paul is a manager at a swanky hotel smack dab in the middle of the Rwandan civil conflict between the Hutu and the Tutsi. Paul is a first class wheel-and-dealer, paying off the appropriate authorities and lubing up his high-powered guests with expensive cigars and drinks. When the conflict strikes home, neighbors turn to Paul, and he takes in as many refugees as he can, providing them shelter in the hotel, and calling back as many favors as he can muster to keep everyone alive. And eventually it's only the will of one man that saves so many lives. It's at once terribly sad and deeply uplifting.

The Ten - Silly farce consisting of ten shorts that skewer the ten commandments.  Winona Ryder is a dream as a woman who falls in love with a puppet and does dirty stuff to it.

25 January 2009

Mother of Tears - Dario Argento's third of the three sisters trilogy. The sisters were nasty witches who lived in different cities, in special houses designed by a single architect. Here we have the Mother of Tears, who is the most beautiful and vicious of the three, but she's been put out of commission because a little box containing some statues and a knife and her favorite blouse (it's bedazzled!) has been buried. Well guess what? Some dudes dug it up, and now all hell's breaking loose. A worker in the museum accidentally says the names of the three statues, and then it's on -- the statues come to life and deliver her a pretty nasty death. Her friend runs like hell, and escapes the little screech monkey that's tracking her. But by now, the sister has her special shirt on, so she's convening a meeting of all the evil witches in the world, and ushering in a new era of evil. So the chick runs around a lot, and eventually winds up at the witch's house, where we happen to see her putting on her special shirt, and parading around in stripper heels. So the chick comes up with the idea to rip the shirt off the evil witch and throw it in the fire, which is brilliant because the whole house falls down, ending the reign of terror, and also because the witch looks absolutely awesome naked. Seriously, she was the weak point because she was just a little too hot to be believable -- more like Satan's cheerleader than the queen of all evil.

Spirit Trap - Five college kids find themselves housed in a huge mansion, and while it seems a little improbable, they go with it. But it turns out the house is haunted, and there's a grandfather clock that's kind of evil, and a dude who's dealing drugs. And some ghosts, and a psychic girl. And um, whatever.

The Professionals - Rich guy Joe Grant gathers four professional soldiers during the Mexican Revolution and sends them into to Mexico to retrieve his wife, who was kidnapped by a freedom fighter named Jesus Raza. The four amigos include a lifetime soldier, his sidekick the dynamite expert, a guy who loves horses, and a guy with a bow and arrow. Eventually they make it down to Raza's camp, but things are not always as they seem, and when they find the kidnapped Maria, she's anything but ready to go home to her gringo husband. Turns out she was sold into slavery, and she was never kidnapped, but instead she escaped back to her homeland. Oy vay, now the team has to figure out what to do. But they set their minds to fulfilling the contract and even a pretty heavy-handed overture can't force dynamite-boy to change his mind, though I bet he was packing a stick of it afterwards. Oh, did I mention that Maria is played by Claudia Cardinale, who may have been the most beautiful woman on the planet at that time? Holy hot damn, what a girl. I'd do whatever she wanted. Well, almost.

18 January 2009

Burn After Reading - The Coen brothers do a nice little sendup here, with assorted federal employees, jerkoff gym rats, and a whole bunch of sad people. Osborne Cox quits his job with the CIA, and decides to write his memoir. His wife is boning a jerkoff ladies man played by George Clooney, and she steals Osborne's files in preparation for a divorce, but her incompetent attorney loses them at the gym. The CD is discovered by Linda and Chad, two sad employees, who undertake the blackmailing of Osborne. The story weaves from angle to angle, painting a pathetic picture of everyone involved. While the story is clever and original, the Coens' greatest feat is probably painting George Clooney and Brad Pitt as such pathetic dorks. It's a howl.

From Here to Eternity - Private Prewitt shows up on base in Hawaii, having transferred from his previous post because he wouldn't box anymore after blinding a man in the ring. The company's boxing team makes his life pretty rough, and he takes up with a gold-digging prostitute to drown his sorrows. Meanwhile, Sgt. Warden has decided to start slipping the noodle to the Captain's wife, and private Maggio is taking on the entire world in his own personal battle. Warden and Prewitt find themselves in the same boat when both their women insist that they won't marry anyone but an officer. Maggio goes to the stockade, where he's beaten senseless, and most of the other guys spend an inordinate amount of time drinking. Then BAM! -- the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor and they have to sort out who's going to be a hero or a coward. There's some unintentionally funny scenes in the middle where a latent homoerotic theme starts to emerge, but other than that, it's tough guys drinking, fighting and banging babes. Clearly a forerunner to An Officer and A Gentleman (though missing the line "I got no place else to go!"), From Here to Eternity is a mostly-predictable flick, though to be honest, I wasn't expecting the Japanese to play in the story.

11 January 2009

Zombi 2 - From what I understand, Night of the Living Dead was released in Italy under the title Zombi, so Lucio Fulci filmed this feature as a response, releasing it as Zombi 2, which became Zombie in the US release. So. Here we have some dudes on an island, where some inexplicable thing has started turning the residents into zombies. The American daughter of an early victim and a crack reporter hop a boat out to the island, accompanied by the boat's skipper and his nearly naked girlfriend who has Barbara Streisand hair. On the island they get attacked by zombies and they shoot them in the head -- pretty much standard zombie fare. I suppose this is an important film in the genre, but not really one of the best. And Fulci's approach to dialogue is a little maddening -- it's all overdubbed, so he leaves the actors to speak whatever language they want on screen. It's impossible to put the effect out of your mind.

Baghead - Four struggling actors spend a long weekend at a truly awesome cottage in the woods, with the intent of writing a movie that they all will star in. But that's going to be a challenge, because Catherine is still in love with Matt, but she's stringing him along by dangling sex in front of his face. Meanwhile, Chad is hopelessly in love with Michelle, but she thinks he's her buddy, and she wants to sleep with Matt. Maybe they should write a movie about a love quadrangle. So in the middle of all their drinking and not-writing, they come up with the idea to write a horror movie about a guy with a bag over his head who scares people at a cottage. Then along comes a guy with a bag over his head, scaring them while they're at the cottage. But they can't really figure if it's really happening, or if one or more of them is just enacting some revenge. Baghead is an ultra-low budget flick, but a gem of the genre. It's not really horror, as it deals much more with the relationships of the people than with a spooky bagheaded specter. And when it's all said and done, it's really quite touching -- a very human film that smacks of real people. I was powerfully reminded of Sideways without the sheen.

Into Great Silence - Documentary about a monastery. Actually, it's less "documentary" than "footage". Slow, repetitive, and pretentious, I only made it through 40 minutes of this 2:42 film.

04 January 2009

Shampoo - Warren Beatty plays George, a Beverly Hills hairdresser with a floofy doo who's totally ruled by his dick. Golide Hawn is cute as button, and she gets screwed over, while Julie Christie wears a terrible wig. The DVD cover calls this a farce and a comedy, and I saw it as neither. I only saw a bunch of pathetic idiots and I just hated this movie.

Wanted - As movie-making technology evolved, the action genre capitalized heavily on the capabilities of the technology, and today it's commonplace to find movies with utterly realistic -- though impossible -- camera shots, time-bending madness, massive explosions and super-human feats. Wanted sits right on top of that genre -- a total spankfest of visual delights, not the least of which is Angelina Jolie strutting her naked tattooed ass. The story is the stuff of fantasy -- a group of assassins has survived for a thousand years, taking direction from a loom that knits some mistakes that spell out the next person on the hit list -- sort of like a Bible Code written in linen. Dorky little Wesley is one of the group, though he doesn't know it until he's invited in to kill off the man who killed his father. So he learns how to jump onto moving trains, and "curve bullets" -- a feat which I'm sure has more than one idiot out in a field somewhere firing off a handgun at the apex of a roundhouse swing. Wanted is a fun little diversion, and Jolie probably only has a few more years left to play the major hottie, and holy hot flaming fuckbasket is she ever the epitome here.

Step Brothers - Brennan and Dale are two of the biggest losers in the world; both are 40-year-olds living at home, not working, and acting like 10-year-olds. Their single parents meet, hit it off, and get married, and the four of them move in under the same roof. First the boys fight, then they become best friends. When their parents go through some rocky times, they do their part to keep things together. It's exactly what you'd expect if you've seen the trailer. It's funny, but not amazingly so. Killer scene: Younger brother (and major asshole) Derek and his family, performing an a capella Sweet Child o' Mine in the car.

28 December 2008

American Teen - This documentary follows the lives of 5 high school seniors in Middle America, all neatly packaged into the appropriate stereotypes: Rich Bitch, Basketcase, Nerd, Jock, and Popular Kid. Then it plays out just as you'd imagine. Here's what happens: The Basketcase struggles with a family history of Bipolar Disorder, and sure enough, she goes MIA, locked up in her bedroom for like a month. The Nerd kid tries hard to find a date, but even his best plan -- to tap into the cute freshman transfer before anyone else sees her -- goes wrong when she looks around a little. The Rich Bitch is a raging nightmare -- a chubby rude chick who thinks she's prettier and cooler than she really is.  She ruins the life of her gal-pal who makes the huge mistake of rubbing up against the chick's BFF then sending him a topless photo afterwards. Bitchie gets her hands on the photo and ensures the entire school does too -- OMG, can you believe it?  Popular Kid hooks up with a girl outside of his social strata, and has to fight peer pressure. And Jock is just trying to get a scholarship. There's one point in the middle where the storylines converge, highlighting a shared concern of all five, which is a nice moment. But there's something odd about the whole presentation, and the big basketball game at the end brings it front and center: the footage of the game is more like a choreographed shoot than an actual high school game. Which makes me think: it is a choreographed shoot. The entire film plays like an episode of Made, but without the "made" part. I'm quickly getting tired of two new emerging genres: the cobbled together camcorder film and the faux documentary. Add to that the fact that my high school just wasn't like the one featured, and the film failed to resonate with my sense of nostalgia. The biggest thing I took away was that these kids have a lot of zits. An interesting side note is that the DVD extras include a DNA test revealing that Rich Bitch girl is in fact the spawn of Satan. Amazing what they can do with DNA these days.

The Expedition - Low budget crapfest about 5 people who break into an abandoned hospital to film a documentary of some sort. They all fall asleep and in the morning one of them is missing. The entire mess of this film is these lame-o's walking around looking at empty rooms, then walking around the same empty rooms looking for the missing guy. Pathetic.

Soylent Green - The quintessential line from Soylent Green is one that really can't be said, as it gives away the ending. Shucks. So look: Thorn is a cop in the year 2022, a time when the world is completely overpopulated. An old rich guy named Simonson gets killed, and Thorn is on the case. He starts by showing up at the dead guy's apartment, and taking everything he can get his hands on, including evidence, food, and booze. One of the key pieces of evidence is a pair of books that he takes home to his live-in research assistant -- also known as a "Book". The Book reads the book, and finds that Simonson was a former board member of the Soylent company -- the sole provider of food cakes, who has just come out with their Soylent Green formula, made from plankton. Thorn goes back to the apartment, where he beds down with the live-in whore that is attached to the place -- also known as "Furniture." He stirs up some trouble, shoots his gun a little, and finally decides to figure out exactly what's going on with this Soylent company that got this Simonson guy killed. Soylent Green paints the future (just 14 years away) as a bleak, crowded, low-tech existence, with only the occasional beautiful whore and ass-kicking cop (with a spiffy neckerchief) to liven things up. Seriously, what was up with that neckerchief? Holy crap.

Empire Records - In what comes off as a John Hughes movie for the nineties, the cast of Empire Records stake their claim as the It Kids of the decade. But that's just not going to happen without Bridget Fonda. Look: Joe is the manager of the Empire Records store -- one of those places where the cool kids hang out and everybody has fun. On his first chance to close the store, Lucas takes all the cash and blows it in Atlantic City. The next day is Rex Manning day -- dedicated to an over-the-hill cheese bag with stupid windblown hair who's doing an in-store appearance. Corey's ready to give it up to him, while AJ is ready to confess his love to Corey. A pre-squint Renee Zellweger plays slutty girl Gina, dancing in a crappy orange smock in a scene I won't soon forget. There are also a group of random stoners and a suicidal girl who shaves her head -- it's totally Breakfast Club meets FM meets High Fidelity meets any other movie about a record store or radio station. It's a cool fun ride, and Zellweger fuels a fantasy or two.

WALL-E - Every new Pixar film seems to push the boundaries of animation, and here we have no exception. The film opens with robot WALL-E and his pet cockroach as the only inhabitants of a desolate earth, which is inexplicably covered with garbage -- and WALL-E is inexplicably cleaning it up. At night, he tucks himself away into a trailer which serves as his home -- a fact that seems rather strange, but somehow WALL-E has developed the capacity for human behaviors and emotions. This comes to the forefront when one day a spaceship touches down and deposits a gleaming white, smooth little droid that rockets around the city, blasting any perceived threats with a super-power gun, while mysteriously searching for something. She is power, sophistication and intrigue wrapped up in one package, and WALL-E is immediately in love. Her name is Eve, and she's on a classified mission, but she finds time to spend with WALL-E, who's turned into a puddle in her presence. But when he presents her with a gift, she immediately shuts down until her mother ship returns and takes her away. Tenacious WALL-E won't give up so easily, and he finds a way to save her, and finds himself in a battle to save the very planet. WALL-E runs the gamut from desolation to joy to heroism to silly comedy to love -- a veritable tour de force in animation.

Funny Games - Two kids show up at a family's lake house, and begin to torture the family, betting them they'd be dead by morning. From the outset, the behavior of the boys is otherworldly, and even the family is behaving in a maddening fashion -- so you know that there's really something going on here that resides on a metaphorical level. The boys consistently revert back to discussions regarding storytelling and what "should" happen, rather than the situation at hand. Throw in a couple direct addresses to the camera, and a reversal of time, and clearly we're not set in the world of the now, forcing us to dissect what is real versus fiction. My nephew tells me that the director was going for the film as a satire on the horror genre, with those little conventions expanded to a point of ridiculousness, and I could even argue that the whole story was possibly nothing more than a discussion that took place on a fishing trip about a fictional family. In any case, if you miss the deeper level, and try to watch Funny Games on just a literal level, you're going to be confused and angry, and you'll definitely be missing the point.

Death Race - I remember the original Death Race 2000 as a story about a futuristic race (it was filmed in 1975) in which the participants scored bonus points for running over random bystanders. That concept appalled my 10-year-old mind, and considering the R-rating, I never saw it. But a sense of misplaced nostalgia made me think I should watch the 2008 update. Big mistake. Death Race is a shitty stupid action movie starring that dumbass one-dimensional Transporter guy. Shit blows up. There's an evil warden. Blah blah blah. Filing your nails would be a better use of your time than watching this drivel.

21 December 2008

Arsenic and Old Lace - Clearly a stageplay adapted for the big screen, Arsenic and Old Lace is the farcical story of Mortimer Brewster, a professional bachelor who finally marries the girl next door. When he comes home to tell his two sweet aunties his good fortune, he finds that the two crazy old hens have been poisoning lonely old men and burying them in the basement. His uncle provides no help whatsoever; he just runs around thinking he's Teddy Roosevelt. If that wasn't bad enough, long lost cousin Jonathan comes home, with a mug like Boris Karloff and a body of his own to bury in the basement. For good measure, Jonathan brings his plastic surgeon along to do a little casual hacking in the spare room. Arsenic and Old Lace plays exactly like an old Abbott and Costello flick, with plenty of highjinks and wacky characters. Set almost entirely in a single room, it plays more like a filmed stageplay than an adaptation, and it's a pretty funny one at that. Cary Grant is the goofball Mortimer, and Peter Lorre is the forlorn doctor. Good stuff for casual Halloween viewing.

Elf - Buddy is an orphan who sneaks into Santa's bag one year, and finds himself adopted by the elves. When he grows to be a man, he sets off to the human world of New York City to find his real dad. Trying to fit into that world, he runs into all the crazy things you'd think he would, including a bleach-blonde Zooey Deschanel who looks absolutely stunning in her goldie locks. Buddy finds his dad, and works hard to win his heart, and also to save Christmas with his overwhelming spirit. On the surface it's a clever idea, but the execution comes off a little predictable, but sweet nevertheless.

The Dark Knight - I really wanted to pan this film as overwrought sentimentality for the dead guy, but I have to admit, Heath Ledger is really fantastic here. Normally I'm not a big fan of action movies, and when the story is about a comic book hero, I generally have to fight off the giggles and eye rolls. But Heath Ledger shows up here as The Joker in a turn that sidesteps all traces of camp, building a story about a tortured villain who despises himself almost as much as everyone around him. He wages a war against the city, which turns into a personal vendetta against the Bat himself, who turns out to be the weak point of the story, with his pussy moanings about whether he should hang up his bat tights and settle into a humdrum life of billionaire mogulry. Silly toys enable him to do miraculous things, but every time he does some sort of silly wizardry, The Joker shows up to ground us all in his self-torture. In a genre that passes off the very existence of Batman as not only non-deviant but in fact commonplace, it's easy to lull oneself into a mode of willful suspension of disbelief. But I wonder if it couldn't have been a better story if they'd placed The Joker in the real world, and pitted him against an adversary who can't fly and doesn't command the world of tech to his beck and call. Batman was a little tired; The Joker thrilled.

The Last Temptation of Christ - The preface tells us that this story is not based on any scripture, but rather on the author's fascination with the God/human dichotomy that Jesus must have felt. And what a way to tell that story: by painting Jesus as a confused pussy who gets bullied around by Judas before finally deciding maybe he should try his hand at being this Messiah character everyone keeps talking about. And apparently the shoe fits, so he goes around telling everyone he is the savior. The problem is, he doesn't have too much luck convincing them. I can't really blame them though, after all, Jesus is played by Liam Neeson. Wait, it gets better… Judas is played by Harvey Keitel. I know, I cringed too. I kept waiting for Tarantino to make a guest appearance as a smart-mouthed Pontius Pilate. I can appreciate the need to take a slightly different direction in telling the life of Jesus, but I'm pretty sure portraying him mostly as a confused fuckup isn't the way to go. If nothing else, Jesus was a powerful leader who campaigned actively for reform of the church, and to make religion available to everyone. I'm pretty sure he wasn't the crybaby we see here. A twist at the end, though visible from a mile away, rescued my attention from the doldrums.

Airplane! - Such a great, original comedy here, that features no message, no social redemption, no lessons learned. It's just an unapologetic vehicle for sight gag after play-on-words after blatant silliness, the net result of which is absolute brilliance. As for the story, it's almost incidental to the constant gags, despite the fact that it's front and center. Look: Ted Striker books passage on a flight because his former love, Elaine, is working as a stewardess on the flight, and he's desperate to win back her love. But he can't let go of his past, when his poor performance as a fighter pilot led to the deaths of his men. When bad fish infects the crew and most of the passengers, it's up to Ted to bring them down alive. There are a handful of comedies that are truly quintessential, and Airplane! is front and center. I can't imagine anyone who wouldn't be able to pick out something to tickle their funnybone, and I believe the vast majority of life on the planet would find it an absolute howl.

14 December 2008

Final Draft - Paul wakes up freaked out one morning, remembering an experience he had as a boy with a scary clown who lit himself on fire. As an out of work writer (is there any other kind?), he decides to turn the story into a script. He locks himself into his apartment, and starts to flesh out a story where a dead clown returns from the grave to avenge himself of all the people who laughed at him. To help him with the story, he conjures up the people in his life who deserve that vengeance, and he slots them into the story, killing them off one by one. The problem is that Paul is losing his grip on reality, slipping in and out of psychotic spells in which his characters visit him and re-torture his soul before he kills them off in the storyline. But will the damage that he does to his soul in the process turn out to be more than he can manage? Though Final Draft lapses into moments of self-indulgence, it also tells a story that speaks to me. I find that it's not unusual for characters that I'm writing to come to life and speak to me, and (oddly!) to even surprise me with the things they say and do. As a story about writers, it's not surprising to find that theme coming up, though it will probably come off a little too much of a stretch for those that are looking for something that is nice and linear. James Van Der Beek shows us the other side of Dawson -- a dark and tortured side.

The Thing - An American research team in Antarctica is thrown into turmoil when the Norwegians show up and try to kill their dog. As the Norwegian assassin gets a little overzealous trying to kill Fido, he lands a bullet in one of the Americans, and they respond with return fire, killing him cold. When they trek over to the Norwegian camp to find out what's going on, they find the team all dead, and apparently they've discovered a spaceship buried in the snow, thousands of years old. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Fido's turned into a shapeshifting demon dog from hell, so they barbecue him with a flamethrower, but not before he escapes through the ceiling and flies away. So they're all like, WTF, until the doctor does a little research and figures out they're all screwed. Turns out there's a shapeshifting alien loose amongst them, who likes to kill people in a very messy fashion. The spooky part is that the alien can take the form of anything it comes into contact with, so the team never really knows who's real and who's an alien. Kurt Russell stars in this 1982 film that appears to be paying some homage to Alien.

Inferno - Dario Argento's story about a book called The Three Sisters. Inside the book is a riddle about the buildings that the witch sisters live in. When a lady reads the book, she goes into a basement, where she finds a water-filled underground room with a body floating around in it. Then she dies. Her brother's girlfriend is a college student who lives in an apartment the size of a coliseum, whereas my room in college was 10x8, and I shared it with a fraternity brother named Johnny. So anyway, the girlfriend is killed by some fiend -- or maybe by cats, I don't remember. Then the brother goes out to see the sister -- where a bookstore owner gets eaten by rats -- but then he finds a secret passageway that takes him to the home of an old guy who can't talk. A witchy lady shows up and breaks a mirror and suddenly she's wearing a skeleton costume. All the while, Argento is beating us over the head with a constant oversaturated red-and-blue motif that reminded me so much of Star Trek. It's just a rambling mess that bored the hell out of me.

7 December 2008

The Godfather Part II - The continuing story of the Corleone family, with Michael at the lead. He struggles with family and gets into a paranoid snit when a hit is put on him. He cruises out to Cuba and brokers a deal with the Cuban government just moments before it's overthrown. Also, we see the life of father Vito, as a boy and a young man. For my money, the first film was better.

Sukiyaki Western Django - Japanese filmmaker Takashi Miike counters the spaghetti westerns with a takeoff on Django, shot with Japanese actors and a Japanese theme. That explains the title (sort of) but still doesn't really rationalize the project. When it opens with Quentin Tarantino playing cowboy against a clearly artificial backdrop, you immediately get the sense that this is going to be film nerd heaven, and as a result, a lot is going to go sailing over your head unless you're versed in Kurosawa, Sergio Leone, and their contemporaries. What happens here is that a mysterious stranger shows up somewhere in a western setting where there is a war between two factions -- the red Heike and the white Genji -- offering his mercenary services to whoever will pay him the most in a clear homage to A Fistful of Dollars and Yojimbo. Then they all fight for the next hour and a half. While beautifully filmed, the concept is a little rough, and the stilted phonetic dialogue forced me to turn on the subtitles, which left the whole thing more of a reading exercise than an immersive experience. Takashi is awesome, but sometimes he doesn't quite hit the mark for me, and this was one of those times.

30 November 2008

Death of a Ghost Hunter - It's not going to win any Oscars, but it's still a cute little spookshow. It pays a deliberate and an implied homage to Blair Witch, and in so doing, gives away its premise: that this story is not really based on the journal of a dead ghost hunter, it's all fiction. The story is that Carter Simms was a professional ghost hunter, hired to investigate a potential haunting where a family was mysteriously killed. The benefactor provides a video guy and a smartmouthed writer to assist. Unexpectedly, Mary Young arrives, which is no real treat for anyone, because despite her little spinner frame, she's a total fundamentalist headcase. They see some chairs move around, and even some spirits of the dead family. When they find out the boss doesn't even know who Mary Young is, they throw her out on the street, but like a good little nutjob, she comes back with a vengeance, and now the crew has to fight off ghosts AND a psycho. Look, modern horror movies generally have a big budget and serious CGI, and though Death of a Ghost Hunter isn't the best-acted movie ever, it does go to show you can make a pretty spooky movie without monsters flying around all over twisted holy fuck.

Dead Mary - Seven kids go out to a cabin in the woods, where they get drunk and decide to play a spooky game where they bring Dead Mary to life by looking in the mirror and calling out her name three times. Oh God, that movie again? But there's something here that works, that could easily put off other viewers. The spin on the concept this time around is that it plays a lot more like Big Chill drama than a horror film, with the characters spending a lot of time hashing out the relationships between them and around them. That very fact draws you into the lives of these people, which allows them to spend more of their time behaving in realistic ways -- pondering what in the world is going on, how it happened and how to get to safety -- whereas the traditional approach is to throw nameless faceless pretty people into the woods and let them run and scream. But this same plenitude of exposition could easily frustrate the viewer who is accustomed to the run and scream standard, so it all comes down to your mindset. For me, on a snowy quiet Sunday afternoon, this was just about the right mix of slow buildup and spooky ambience.

Iron Man - Tony Stark is the CEO of Stark Industries, with the world on a string. The boy genius is the mastermind behind complex weapons, that he sells to the US government to fight its enemies. When he goes over to the Middle East (presumably Iraq, though we never know for sure), his convoy is attacked and he is captured. The shrapnel in his chest is extracted by the friendly doctor that he shares a prison cave with, and a Coke can is installed in his chest, with room for a glowing Arc Reactor battery, which powers an electromagnet, which keeps the remaining shrapnel from entering his heart. While in captivity, he creates an iron man suit, then uses it to break out of captivity. Once free, he decides to use his powers for good, ending his weapons research and creating a much more refined suit than the one that was destroyed in his escape. Then he's off to battle evil, including the fuckers who captured him in the first place. What could easily have been a kiddie script turns out to be a fairly decent film, though it never escapes from comic land, with battling flying robot suits, hand-pulsing thingees, and whatnot. But Robert Downey Jr. does a nice job here, not looking nearly as fragile as he did 10 years ago on Ally McBeal.

The Godfather - Don Vito Corleone runs the Coleone crime family in 1940's New York -- one of the five families of organized crime. Fredo is the number one son, but a lost soul, who floats on the fringes of the family business, not really able to grasp it all. Sonny is the heir apparent, a hotheaded young man who lacks the cool calculation of his father. And youngest son Michael is a war hero, removed from the family business, and on a path to be a useful member of society. But when Vito is gunned down in the street, it is Michael who takes on the job of executing the two behind it. Vito survives the attack, and Michael moves to Italy while the furor calms. Eventually, Sonny is killed in a roadside ambush, and Vito steps down, leaving Michael to run the business. The Godfather is a lot of things, but in my mind, it is mostly the story of the transition of Michael, from son of society to ruthless crimelord.

The Slaughter - Six kids go to a house out in the country to clean it for some ridiculous investment banker wannabe. They find a book made of skin, and the brainy kid uses his laptop to figure out that there's a demon running around the house, waiting to take over the planet, but as long as nobody does anything immoral, they'll be just fine. Oops, too late; the horny kids just fucked. So now there's some wrinkly-ass old demon chick with big tits running around killing people. I'd like to call it an homage, but I think it was truly more a blatant ripoff of Evil Dead, and not nearly as good. All the characters are stereotypes, and the few interesting ones go through such radical personality shifts halfway through, leaving nothing really interesting to hang onto. The DVD markets itself as comedy horror, in the vein of Shaun of the Dead, but I don't think the filmmaker intended that comedy aspect.

23 November 2008

American Gangster - Frank Lucas was the driver and confidante of a major drug distributor in Harlem. When the boss dies, Frank makes some changes and eventually takes over the entire business, by eliminating the middleman and dealing directly with the heroin manufacturers in Thailand. His use of military transport during the Vietnam War makes for the secure shipment of a pure product that puts all the competition out of business. Meanwhile, Richie is a cop who's been ostracized because he's so honest he turned in a million dollars that he found in the trunk of a car. So he's tagged to head up a special drug enforcement agency, where he gets to call all his own shots and staff his own positions. Eventually, the two of them butt heads, and the only way Frank can feel good about himself is if he takes every last dirty cop down with him, and that suits Richie just fine. Denzel Washington is scary and noble as crime boss Lucas, though a little too charismatic to be all that bad.

Tropic Thunder - A crew of corny actors is trying to make a war movie under the guidance of a novice director. When he can't get them to focus, he decides to shoot the movie Blair Witch style, by dropping them off in the middle of the jungle, amongst hidden cameras. When he steps on a land mine and blows himself to little tiny bits, the idiot actors think it's a stunt, and that they're still in the film. But really, they're being stalked by a crew of drug dealers who kidnap them and hold them for ransom. Robert Downey Jr. is awesome as Kirk Lazarus, in a role that defines method acting. And Tom Cruise is a scream as sleazeball douchebag producer Les Grossman.

Rosemary's Baby - Probably the best ever horror movie that wasn't really much of a horror movie. Rosemary is a cute little thing with an actor-husband who moves into a big old spooky apartment building in Manhattan. She gets pregnant, and finds herself overrun by her domineering crazy old neighbors, who habitually drop in unexpectedly, and eventually force their high-powered doctor on her. The doctor prescribes special drinks, coincidentally made by the crazy lady next door, and eschews any type of traditional care. Rosemary enlists the help of an old friend, who develops the theory that all of the people around her are witches, conspiring to hurt her baby. But at every turn, Rosemary can't find anyone to help her. The thing that's notable about this film is how supremely watchable it is -- I didn't find my attention wandering for a second. What I remembered from the first time I saw this -- a long time ago -- was a plain-looking lady with a boy's haircut, but what I found this time was a delightful little Mia Farrow, who's cute as a button until midway through when she adopts a Spears cut and chops her hair off. A tragedy, certainly worse than the whole devil-child thing.

The Apple - I'm not sure what got into my head that made me want to see this film, but holy friggin' cow. The Apple is the 1980 incarnation of a futuristic 1994 -- a glam explosion in which the United States is ruled by the Boogalow International Music company, headed by Mr. Boogalow himself. He runs a music competition, and when his number one song is about to lose the top spot, he puts on the secret tape that makes bloops and blarbles, causing the audience to boo and the competitor's score to plummet. He immediately tries to hire the act, but only scores Bibi, because Alfie holds out against a contract written in blood. Bibi becomes a star and Alfie becomes despondent, but soon she realizes the error of her ways. The Apple starts as a blatant ripoff of Rocky Horror, morphs into Xanadu, then Hair, and finally Jesus Christ Superstar. It's quite a cringeworthy mess, but at the same time, a rather fascinating view of 1980 looking forward with fear to 1994, and looking back wistfully at 1967. As for the apple itself? It's the same one the serpent used to lure Eve from the Garden of Eden -- a bit of not-so-subtle symbolism, which runs rampant. And how about the prescient vision of American Idol, twenty years before it was finally realized?

Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson - As a longtime fan, student, and gourmand of the late great Good Doctor Hunter S. Thompson, I found most of this excellent documentary a re-hash, making it difficult to come to an objective opinion regarding this film. Those unfamiliar with the Good Doctor will likely be shocked and amazed, and those who only know him from Las Vegas will probably be surprised at his run at the mayorship of Aspen and his intense hatred for Richard Nixon. Fans of the Gonzo king understand that to know him is to love him, and holy crap, what a screaming maniac he was. It's a shame he's gone.

Night of the Dead - Low budget schlock horror about a doctor who invents a serum that brings people back to life. The only redeeming quality is this line of dialogue:

  Girl: You're insane! 
  Doctor: Yes I am.  (beat.) But who gives a shit!

I can't believe I paid money to rent this. (Actually I didn't, because of a mistake the cashier made, but still, there's an opportunity cost. Look: I used to know this girl who had this amazing sexual ethic, in that she always finished whatever she started, no matter what. For some reason, I tend to have that same ethic, but in my case, it's applied to watching movies, which doesn't turn out nearly as fun for me. Case in point, I'll never get back the hour and a half that I wasted on this mess.)

16 November 2008 - Sick Sick Sick

Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden? - Morgan Spurlock does a nice little half-hearted documentary here, where he travels around the Middle East asking people where he might find Osama Bin Laden, while remaining relatively unoffensive. What he winds up with is an engaging look at the people from many different countries in the area, and their views on the US and terrorism. The end result is surprisingly optimistic. Oh, and there is also a pretty good consensus that Osama's in Pakistan.

Believers - Two paramedics are dispatched to help a lady having a heart attack. When they arrive, they're kidnapped by cultists modeled after the Heaven's Gate sect. The cult believes that they've discovered the mathematical truth to the universe, and that they're going to be taken away within days. For some reason, they have to convert the paramedics to their belief, a fact that seems entirely too coincidental to the plot. In one scene, a dude gets boinked by a hot dead chick with mathematical formulas tattooed all over her body, which is cool if you're a biker geek necrophiliac, but otherwise, nothing really original here.

4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days - The way everyone was jumping up and down about this, I figured it must be the best movie ever. A Romanian girl is pregnant, and her friend arranges a black market abortion. They don't have enough money, so they have to pay the guy in a different way. Then the friend bitches at her boyfriend like it's his fault. I don't know, whatever. Generally I like independent films, but fucking hell. Let the wrist-slashing begin.

Footloose - Ren McCormack moves from Chicago into a little hick town to find himself the target of the local kids who don't like his spiky hair and skinny tie. But when he finds out the town doesn't allow dancing, he's really had enough, and he mounts a vigorous campaign against town hall. He slowly wins the town over, but when he gets cut from the gymnastics team, he gets so mad he could just dance. You've gotta love anyone who thinks that's within a million miles of reality, though I'm pretty sure Patrick Swayze had a few of those scenes in his career, as well as John Travolta. Ren eventually wins over the school hottie, beats up the school bully, and stages the first ever school dance, even leading us all in a snappy little two-step. In the mid-80's, a buddy told me he never really understood the way I danced, until he saw Footloose, and then he know where I got it from. For the record, I've only just seen Footloose for the first time; so clearly Kevin Bacon got his moves from me. Nobody puts Baby in a corner.

The Andromeda Strain - A space satellite crashes in a rural town, and everyone falls down dead. Two guys in space suits go in to look around, and they find a baby and an old drunk still alive, but everyone else is dead in the streets. They retrieve the survivors and take them back to Wildfire -- a supersecret research facility buried in the desert (perhaps the inspiration for Resident Evil's "The Hive.") A team of four have to figure out what kind of critter was released from the satellite, and how to stop it from killing the planet, while negotiating the labyrinthe of Wildfire. I thought this was the coolest movie when I saw it in the early 70's, but in retrospect, it rings a little hokey. The book is better, written by a young Michael Crichton, RIP.

The Air I Breathe - Mr. Accountant overhears about a fixed horserace, and he tries his luck. When it goes bad, he plans a robbery to dig out of the $50k debt. The loanshark's righthand man can see into the future, until he runs into Trysta, the pretty little singer that the loanshark acquired. He tries to rescue her from her destiny. Meanwhile, a doctor is trying to save the life of a researcher that's married to his best friend, and only Trysta has the right blood type. If you hadn't guessed, this is one of those "Thousand stories in the naked city" plots, where all the storylines interweave. The performances are good, the cast is great, but the script is mediocre. Target demographic: fans of Gray's Anatomy.

09 November 2008

Some Like it Hot - Jerry and Joe are a couple palookas playing in a jazz band, trying to figure out how to make ends meet. When they accidentally witness a mob hit, they decide to take the job they'd heard about in Florida -- in an all-girl band. So Joe and Jerry become Josephine and Daphne, when they run into Sugar Kane -- the platinum blonde goddess and ditzy lead singer of the band. Joe uses his relationship as Josephine with Sugar to turn himself into her dream man, while Daphne goes gay and hooks up with a goony rich nerdy guy. Let the farce ensue. I was constantly reminded of everything by Abbott and Costello, and let me tell ya', boy howdy, is Marilyn Monroe some kind of a dream. If you only know her from the stories and the "Mr. President" and the scandals, spend some time and watch her on the screen. I've never seen such a captivating, perfectly beautiful woman.

Bullitt - Lieutenant Frank Bullitt is assigned to protect the key witness in a mob trial, so he brings along his two best guys. When the bad guys break into the hotel, kill the witness, and injure his partner, Frank goes on a personal mission to catch them. This leads to the eventual car chase that defined the genre -- big throaty V8's in a Dodge Charger and a Ford Mustang, hauling ass through the streets of San Francisco devil-may-care. Sure the script has some problems, like a subplot about Bullitt's reluctance to pull his gun, and the silly behavior of his girlfriend, and his apparent reputation about town as both party boy and socialite. Also, there's a power swap in the first 10 minutes with his partner that doesn't make a lot of sense. But that car chase -- wow. In fairness, I think it was eventually outdone by Tarantino with Death Proof, but Bullitt defined the genre, and it is totally kickass.

02 November 2008 - The Long Vacation Weekend

Dance of the Dead - This looked like a pretty spooky little flick, but turned out to be an entry in the horror comedy genre. Look: a stereotypical cross section of high school kids crosses paths when the town's nearby nuclear plants leak radioactive goo into the sewer system, turning many of the residents into zombies. So this was cute, but it didn't really bring anything new to the table. And I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm really not into a zombie movie just for zombies' sake. If you're itching to see a zombie comedy, there's Shaun of the Dead (first), then Dance of the Dead. But for my money, I'd probably prefer something with a little more teeth, if you'll excuse the expression.

Into Thy Hands - Perhaps the darkest, weirdest movie I've ever seen, Into Thy Hands is an unapologetic 72 minute rape / torture / kill fantasy. Apparently the guy thinks he's avenging Jesus by pounding nails into hot chicks and killing them. With no audio other than a goth/metal soundtrack, this flick is most likely x-rated and about as close to a snuff film as I've ever seen. Listed under an even more offensive imdb name, this "censored" version plays like the thing that devil-worshipping bikers are watching on TV when the hero comes to rescue the girl. I feel like I've ventured to the dark side, and now I need a bath.

Cadaverella - Wow, "Cadaverella?" Really? Yeah, I was slumming on my Mortuary of Madness DVD again, and the intro to this didn't seem too awful. There's this girl, and she's really kind of mean and snotty. She's a total bitch to her boyfriend, and her stepmom's a nightmare. She really has a thing for the gardener, who kills her one night, then she comes back from the dead with the help from a little statue (I don't know), and she kills them all. When you know it's awful going in, you can't be too critical, and by those standards, I didn't hate it. There's a funny scene at the end after she's dead, when she puts on her shirt, only to find it ripped open and her boob sticks out, and she's like, "Great, what now?" Imagine if you've been strangled and buried, then had to dig your way out of the grave, only to fund out you had to walk around for the rest of eternity with a tit hanging out -- the indignity. I have no idea what the title means, however.

Strangeland - In the interest of full disclosure, I admit that the only reason I rented this was because I'd heard rumor of some Linda Cardellini nudity, and I found myself very interested in that prospect. Oh, sad day. If you look closely and quickly, and maybe squint a little bit, you might see some good parts in the first half, but there was really no joy in the nudity. And truly, Linda has the face of an angel, but it was only on display only for the first scene, before they disfigured it, and she all but disappeared from the rest of the movie. As for the rest of the mess, Dee Snider wrote, produced, and starred in his brainchild, and despite the fun he brought to the 80's, he really can't write or act, making Strangeland a stupid, self-indulgent mess. Look: Captain Howdy is an Internet predator who meets chicks on IM, invites them to a party and then tortures the living fuck out of them, all while reading his crappy poetry out loud. One girl's father is the detective assigned to the case -- because police departments strongly encourage the father of a missing girl to be the lead detective on such a case -- and he finds it ridiculously easy to capture Howdy. He just kind of shows up. Then the freak pleads insanity, heals himself, and gets released four years later. Gosh, I wonder if the bible-thumping redeemed Howdy will backslide… What's even better is how they catch him the second time around -- they show up at his house. Brilliant fucking police work, there. Gentle viewer, do yourself a favor and go to 1:13:20, watch the next eight seconds, then spend the rest of your day reading a book. Though I doubt you'll be able to rejoice in a severely disfigured Linda Cardellini, as least it will give you something to think about the next time you watch ER. But don't get me started on Neela.

The Usual Suspects - After a massacre aboard a yacht, the only survivor is a guy they call Verbal, because he tends to run at the mouth. So he tells the story of what happened. Verbal and four other guys get picked up on a bum rap, but it's a good reason for them to team up on some crimes. When one of them goes bad, they're called into the office of the man in charge, and told that they have to pull a $91 million job or they're all dead. The man doing the ordering is a mythical figure named Keyser Söze. Four of them do the job, and only one survives. But the DA really wants Söze, and thinks he can coax enough out of Verbal to get to him. A very good cast and some nice twists. Pay attention.

The Strangers - I'm not sure why this movie was made. From the start, they tell the viewer it's based on true events, which lends the impression this is a true story, which goes like this: Kristen and James return from a friend's wedding in a foul mood because James proposed and Kristen declined. At 4:00 in the morning, there's a knock at the door, and it turns out to be a creepy hot blonde chick. Over the course of the night, three weirdoes wearing masks break into the house and terrorize the couple and their friend -- who shows up to drive James home. The thought rolling around in the back of your head -- that this is a reconstructed but mostly true story -- leaves you feeling queasy, with three bodies on the floor and no hope for restitution. It's disgusting, and I hope they catch those bastards and kill them. Then you find out the real deal: the "true events" that the story was based on include some robberies that took place in the writer's neighborhood when he was a kid. Apparently, the bad guys would knock on your door and if no one answered, they robbed the place. So the movie is a totally fictional story about torture. Nice.

The Happening - Out of the blue, New Yorkers stop in their tracks, mumble some senseless crap, then grab the nearest weapon and off themselves. When the trend starts to spread beyond Greenwich Village, people start to worry. Soon it's the whole northeastern coast, and the survivors decide to get the hell out of town. When their train stops, they start to hoof it. Science teacher Elliot and his almost-estranged wife wind up with their friend's little girl when the friend decides to go back and try to save his wife. Eventually, Elliot comes to the obvious conclusion that the epidemic is caused by plants -- just your garden variety oak tree and swatch of switch grass. But they're targeting the humans who congregate in groups, so Elliot takes his funky wife and new orphan daughter, and they try to hide out away from other people. But they find themselves joined by two boys who are completely extraneous to the story, so how might they get rid of them? Not to worry -- a gun sticks out the nearest porch window and blam! blam! Problem solved. Repeatedly, we hear from the experts that sometimes nature just does things that can't be explained, so there's the easy copout. I get the whole global-warming/Gaia's revenge concept, but oak trees that make a suicide gas? Really? That's the best that M. Night can do? Murder by Ficus? It was bad enough when he did the thing about the aliens who came down this planet that's made of 70% water, but forgot they were allergic to it, and therefore highly prone to death by bucket. The Happening is just as bad, but lazier. I adore Zooey Deschanel, but WTF? And for the life of me, I couldn't get past a moment of Marky Mark onscreen without thinking of Andy Samberg's impression on SNL. "Hey goat, I like your beard. Say Hi to your mom for me." In all, this wasn't a bad movie, but a horrible story.

26 October 2008

Sergeant York - Alvin York is a ne'er-do-well hillbilly from Tennessee. He gets drunk instead of going to church, and he likes to fight in bars. But he works hard to farm a crappy little piece of land, and when he meets a little cutie named Gracie, he decides to work harder to buy a better piece of land. Eventually losing the deal, he's struck by lightning on his way to kill the man who cheated him, and he finds religion instead. But here come the Germans, and York's proficiency with a rifle earns him early praise despite his status as a conscientious objector. When they get into the thick of it, his downhome senses serve him well.

Drawing Blood - Low budget horror flick off the Mortuary of Madness collection -- this one had the highest imdb rating I could find, which was 5.0. It's about a dude who lives in a house in the suburbs surrounded by idiotic neighbors. An insane murderer escapes the mental hospital, and comes home to the house where he grew up. Guess which house it is. All at the same time, this guy's ex-girlfriend-crack-whore decides to show up, and then along come her crack-head friends, to rob the place. Gosh, I wonder if the bad guy kills them. Gratuitous nudity is the only savior of this mess, which otherwise didn't need to be made.

19 October 2008

Once Upon a Time in the West - In this Dario Argento-written, Sergio Leone-directed spaghetti western masterpiece, we see a timeless story about progress, greed, and revenge. Starring Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, Jason Robard, and featuring an unbelievably beautiful Claudia Cardinale, Once Upon a Time in the West is Leone's jewel of the genre. He takes the formula that he honed so well in his previous efforts and adds a more human element, bringing a story to life that stands the test of time. Look: a mysterious stranger (the Leone trademark) arrives in town, where two baddies seem to be ruling things. There is the outlaw Cheyenne, who has just sprung himself from prison, and the infinitely worse blue-eyed Frank, who makes his screen entrance dispatching a family of red-haired children. When the newly widowed Jill arrives from New Orleans to live with her now-deceased in-laws, the paths of the mysterious Harmonica man, Cheyenne, and Frank cross and intercross repeatedly. I was constantly reminded of the Ayn Rand epic "Atlas Shrugged", probably because of the constant influx of the railroad into the story. I was also stricken by Cardinale, who looked in 1968 like women didn't look in 1968 -- and bore an amazing resemblance to modern day Britney Spears. The story itself is consistent with the spaghetti westerns: a little convoluted, with just enough crazy twists to keep you watching.

12 October 2008

The Foot Fist Way - Fred is a fourth degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do and a major fuckup otherwise. He takes his discipline seriously, to the extent of bullying his kids and elevating himself way above his natural station. But this is a comedy, so it never ventures fully into a mean-spirited place, and comic relief is provided by Fred's wife Susie, who emasculates him at every opportunity. Physically, Susie is about a billion notches above Fred's natural station, but she's also a total whore, so maybe that's the great equalizer. So when Susie gives a close-fisted wave to her boss at work, Fred decides he's had enough and he takes off with some of his favorite students to see Tae Kwon Do film star Chuck "The Truck" Wallace. On a whim, Fred is invited to party with Chuck, and eventually returns the favor, inviting Wallace to come and witness Fred's class promotions. But will it be enough to dig Fred out of his funk and back into his wife's good graces? You'll have to watch to find out, and aside from Susie's stilted acting, I'd say it's worth the watch. Fun comedy with characters who don't change the world.

The Diary of Anne Frank - During the Nazi siege of The Netherlands, young teen Anne and her family hide out in the attic of a spice factory with another family for two years. By day, they tread softly in their socks, and at night, they squabble. Precocious little Anne keeps a diary, in which she shares her innermost thoughts, which are pretty much what you'd expect of a precocious 13 year old girl. She falls in love with young Peter, and eventually they're found out and captured by the Germans, shortly before the Allies defeat the Germans. And by the way, if you want to read something really confusing, try to figure out the difference between the Netherlands, Holland, and the Dutch. It's kind of like England, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom. Ugh. I'm feeling very lackadaisical today. I feel like I'm eating way too much, but I just don't feel like doing much of anything. Last night I sent out a letter to the editor of my local paper, and in the middle of the night, I realized I'd made a huge factual error. So today I had to send a correction, and now I'm really bummed about that because I'm pretty sure they won't print it because I'm a total bozo, and all that work is for nothing. But at least Ohio State won today, though the offense wasn't very impressive, and freshman quarterback sensation Terrelle Pryor showed some considerable areas for improvement. Frankly, I was a little surprised they didn't bring Todd Boeckman back into the game, but coach Tressel frequently does things that surprise me, and his record speaks for itself, so who am I to judge? Tomorrow I'm going to go out and cruise in the Vette a little bit, and probably cut the grass, and hopefully it will be a little better day for me.

05 October 2008

City of God - Rocket is a boy growing up in the City of God, on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, where all the poorest residents of the region have been located. Crime is rampant, and mostly it's just a struggle to survive. A particularly bad kid by the name of Lil Dice grows to be a young man named Lil Zhe, and he takes over the major drug traffic in the city, becoming its lord. Rocket crosses paths with Zhe constantly, but always avoids the life of crime that kills off so many around him. Eventually he becomes a photographer, capturing a winning shot of Zhe and his crew, which earns him fame and a career. It's really a lot better than I make it seem, but I think I'm getting bored of writing these stupid reviews.

3 Extremes II - This is the second edition of a 3-part compilation of horror shorts that are way out there. Get it? In the first short, we have Memories, which features a ghost girl who's walking around town and can't seem to find her way home, and her husband doesn't seem able to figure out what in the world happened to her. Thank God the American film industry will never make movies like this because you know if they tried, they'd mess it all up. Memories is a cream-of-the-crop Asian horror flick, and though you can see the story coming a mile away, the use of imagery and camera angles and long long long lingering shots achieves an effect like you'll never see in American film. Next is The Wheel, about haunted puppets. Just like Puppet Master, but with less irony. The final flick is Going Home, which is a creepy story about a dude who's trying to nurse his dead wife back to health. Can't say I blame him -- she is hot for a dead chick.

28 September 2008

Ultraviolet - Comic book silliness about a future when humanity is divided between those infected by a virus that turns them into light-sensitive super-powered short-lived snaggle-toothed dynamos vs. ordinary Joes like you and me. Violet is a hemophage who is posing as a courier to pick up the super secret package from the humans, but when they find her out, it's all-out carnage for about an hour and a half. I love Milla, but this is just so far over the top into the land of silliness, I just couldn't deal. On the upside, it's visual ecstasy, with uber-saturated colors, massive effects, and wanton splashes of gratuitous skin from Milla, queen of all that is kickass. On the downside, silliness.

Bus Stop - Pretty much awful all around, this is the story of Bo Decker, a hayseed from Montana who goes to the big city of Phoenix to win the rodeo. Along the way, his buddy Virge tells him he needs to find a girl, so that's just what he sets out to do. Enter Cherie, played poorly by Marilyn Monroe, a hillbilly girl who's on her way to LA to be discovered. Bo kidnaps her, and throws her on a bus, because that's the way to get chicks to like you. The story is simple and even offensive, the characters are maddening and simple and terribly overacted, and generally the film is pretty much unwatchable. But then there's Marilyn, and despite her idiotic accent and stilted acting, she's absolutely riveting. I don't know how to rationalize that, other than to say that she was just that captivating -- platinum goddess and sweet little girl all wrapped up in one.  When it was all said and done, I really just wanted to see her in something else, in a role that was a little better suited to her style.

The Band's Visit - A touching story about an Egyptian police band that shows up in Israel for their gig, only to find out that their directions are all wrong and they're stranded out in the middle of BFE, so to speak. The whole story is about character development and dialogue, and quite often a lack of dialogue, in the form of poignant silences. They stumble into a diner, only to find they're miles away from their destination, so they have to rely on the kindness of the few people they meet. So mostly we have the story of Tawfiq, the band leader who's just a little too strict. The Israeli girl who owns the diner takes an unexpected liking to him, working hard to draw him out of his shell. Meanwhile, young Haled is just a little too slick, but his charms suit him well, as he takes a young man from the diner on his first date under his tutelage and teaches him the ways of the world. But no one's perfect, least of all Haled, who demonstrates a near sociopathic disregard for Tawfiq's ego. When all is said and done, I think there are some things here that I didn't quite get because I didn't recognize all the musical references, nor can I fully comprehend the nature of the relationship between Israel and Egypt. But still I found this a touching little indie comedy that has a lot to say about people and relationships and cultures and life.

21 September 2008

Beach Party at the Threshold of Hell - You'd never really know this is a National Lampoon feature if they didn't emblazon their shit all over everything. It had a little bit of the feel of A Boy and his Dog (from what I recall, I saw it like 30 years ago). It's the year 2097 and we're in the country of New America, after a nuclear attack (?) has blown the holy hell out of Old America. The survivors stay underground for 20 years while it's not safe to come out. When it's finally safe, Tex Kennedy sets about finding the appointed heir to the throne of New America -- Benny Remington. So he heads off for the Threshold of Hell -- which is Florida, by the way -- where Benny is holed up in a cave. When he finds Benny, he has to get him to the giant broadcasting tower, so Benny can address his constituents. But first, they have to knock heads with the Son of Satan and his crew of immortal spring-breakers from hell. It's going to take all the powers of Tex, his girlfriend Cannibal Sue, and his two robot guardians, to defeat the defenders of the tower and bring Benny to power. Whatever.

eXistenZ - Jennifer Jason Leigh (love her!) stars as Allegra Geller, the supreme game designer of the future who takes a crew of beta-testers on a ride. They jack-in to their game pods using their bioports -- which are gnarly little gaping holes at the base of their spines -- and before the game begins, a boy jumps out of the audience and shoots Allegra in the shoulder with a bone gun that has bullets made of teeth. She scrams with her security guard, and they drive out into the country, where they jack-in again (love that term), and find themselves immersed in a game of corporate espionage and spies and murder. In true Cronenberg fashion, there is a creepy obsession with inanimate objects that are made of flesh and bone, that writhe and squirm and bleed. And now that I think about it, Leigh does her share of writhing, squirming and bleeding as well, which is like a billion times hotter than the pod-things -- maybe a trillion. I swear to God, that chick has to be about 50 now and I'd do her in a heartbeat. She still looks exactly like Stacy Hamilton of Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and that was 26 years ago -- and Stacy Hamilton was hotter than a cock-fuck. But I digress, and I shouldn't, because eXistenZ is a really great offering in the Cronenberg oeuvre, wrapping his social commentary neatly inside a sci-fi creepshow piece of brilliantry. And thank God for Jennifer Jason Leigh.

14 September 2008

Glitter - I'm really kind of disappointed because this wasn't as terrible as I'd expected. With a silly script and really poor acting, it was never destined to win any Oscars, but it's nowhere near a Showgirls-level debacle. Maybe that's the difference between overacting and underacting, but while Showgirls was a giddy mess, Glitter was just predictable and boring. Look: Billie Frank is a backup singer who starts "ghostsinging" for some little starlet who can't carry a tune. A local DJ finds her out and pays $100,000 to buy her from her manager. Then it's off to the big time. She makes it big, they fall in love, they have a fight, he gets killed, and she makes it all better by singing really well at Madison Square Garden. I never had Mariah Carey pegged as a botox-queen, but I swear to God, her face never moves in this entire film. It's weird. Scary, even. And she does have some acting chops that she's shown in other films (WiseGirls), but clearly her little diva-self got in her own way here, leaving her sycophant director too scared to provide any real direction, and the story just plods along on its own volition. Oh well, don't go out of your way.

Choking Man - Jorge is a dishwasher in a little diner who happens to be suffering from morbid shyness -- a pathological disorder that prevents him from doing or saying pretty much anything. One day, he sees Amy, a sweet perky little Chinese girl who's hired in as a waitress. Even the guy living inside of Jorge's head thinks she's a pretty cool chick, and that's quite an endorsement, because that guy's pretty much an asshole, as imaginary friends go. But smartass busboy Jerry gets in the middle of Jorge's little dream when he too finds himself smitten by sweet little Amy, and Jorge has to figure out how to get the girl of his dreams from under Jerry's nose. So, I don't know. Morbid shyness paired with delusions? And he's functional? I don't know. Arty though, and not bad. And I dig Chinese girls.

Lost Boys: The Tribe - From what I remember of the original, the Coreys moved out to LA, where they ran into a group of vampires, led by Kiefer Sutherland, who flew. They got in some 80's skateboard chase at the end, not to be confused with the roller blade chase they got into in some other movie. And wasn't PeeWee Herman in it? Or was that just Buffy? Because he was definitely in Buffy. I mean, not like in her, though I guess you never really know if he got a little bit of Kristy Swanson lovin'. Anyhow, here we have Chris, a skinny, unathletic-looking dude who is supposedly one of the top surfers in the world, and his blazing hot sister, who barely looks the 17 years of the character, though she's played by 28-year-old Autumn Reeser. Hot. Blazing hot. So their mom dies or something, and they go out to LA, where they immediately bump into a bunch of washed-up world-class surfers who also happen to be vampires. So the vampire leader falls for Nicole -- because she's hot -- and begins the process of turning her into a vampire. Enter Edgar Frog -- Cory Feldman -- who offers up his vampire-killing services. It was kind of funny seeing Feldman as the froggy-voiced Frog, and as you'd expect, the story in general was pretty stupid. The weirdass capper comes at the end, where Corey Haim makes a cameo in a scene totally disconnected from the rest of the story. But did I mention the sister was hot? Blazing hot. Know who's hotter? Summer Glau.

07 September 2008

Boy Eats Girl - Nope, not porn. Just a cheesy zombie story. Look: Nathan fancies his best girl, Jess, but he's too scared to tell her. When he cranks up his courage, the appointed time comes and goes, and he sees her in a car with the school man-whore, so he goes back to his room, drinks a bottle of whiskey, and sticks his head in a noose. His mom -- played by Sarah Palin, I swear! -- comes in the room, knocks him off his chair, and kills him. Fuck. Good thing Mom happens to know where to find a book of incantations used to reanimate the dead, written by ancient monks. So she whips up a spell and brings Nathan back to life, but in her haste, she misses the fact that there's a page torn out of the book -- which in turn causes Nathan to turn into the walking dead. (I'm not making this up.) So at the big school dance, he bites everyone and the whole town turns into zombies except for his loser friends and girlfriend Jess (who is hot, by the way). A nice little homage to Dead Alive pops up near the end, with Jess mowing all the zombies into mulch with a big piece of farm equipment. But will Mom get there in time to save Nathan with a bite from the magic de-zombifying snake? Bet you'll never guess. But there's no telling, because Mom is kind of a fuck-up, and this is the person you Republicans want to elect as Vice President. I threw away my Republican card, by the way, after eight years of the biggest fuck-up president this country has ever seen; an embarrassment to all Americans, and in fact, to all of humanity.

31 August 2008

Innocent Voices - During the civil war in El Salvador, eleven-year-old Chava is forced to become the man of the house when his father abandons the family. Coming up on the age where boys are "recruited" into the army or alternatively into the guerilla resistance, every day is a constant struggle for survival for Chava, who's doing his best just to be a boy in the world, much less a soldier or prisoner or corpse. Young Carlos Padilla grabs hold of you about half-way through, and never lets go, in a performance that sets a benchmark for child actors. An amazingly powerful gripping drama that hurt me to my soul. Fucking hell, what is wrong with this world we live in? Sad sad sad.

24 August 2008

Doomsday - In the future, a viral plague breaks out in Scotland, so the Brits wall the whole damn place up, and leave them to die. Twenty years later, the plague shows up in England proper, and coincidentally, the Brits discover survivors in Scotland via satellite photo, clearly indicating that the Scots must have invented a cure. So they send in a blazing hot soldier chick to find the cure, giving her 48 hours or death. There, she meets a crew of renegade survivors and has to fight for survival. So yeah, it's exactly like Escape from New York and Mad Max, with a little trickle of Resident Evil thrown in for good measure. Rhona Mitra never gets naked, but is easy enough on the eye to justify the time spent, despite the derivative story and the fact that her fight scenes leave a bit to be desired -- Milla would tear her to holy shreds. But her name reminds me of a lady I used to know named Rhona Butt-Luck. I swear to God, her name was Butt-Luck. I can't even think of a clever line for that one, but I'm pretty sure I don't even need to. Butt-Luck. Heh, heh. Heh, heh.

All Quiet on the Western Front - Perhaps the first anti-war movie, made in 1930, but to cut the sting, they set it from the German perspective in World War I. But even still, they chose to remove just about every last German artifact from the lifestyle and behavior of the characters, making them about as American as you could imagine. We trace the military service of company 2, from eager young enlisters to disillusioned soldiers to wounded boys to dead men. We learn that the Germans are just like us, and that they can even love their enemies, as long as the enemies are hot French chicks. We learn that they don't have the first clue what the war is about, and that an older generation of civilians don't have the first clue what war is really like. The acting is a little over the top, in the way that it was back then -- with a young Lew Ayres showing shades of James Dean, Marlon Brando, and Paul Newman -- so you just accept that fact and move on. An important, though fairly odd, piece of film.

Sweeney Todd - Benjamin Barker was a barber with a cute little blondie wife and a little baby girl. One day the local evil judge took a liking to Barker's wife, so he bonked him on the head and sent him off to prison for life. Eventually, Barker escaped and renamed himself Sweeney Todd because he always hated all those B's. When he returns to London, he finds a delicious nutball in the form of Mrs. Lovett, who bakes cockroach-infested meat pies just downstairs from Todd's old barber shop. Together, they hatch a plan for revenge, which includes a lot of throat-slashing and meat pies with some dubious ingredients. Helena Bonham Carter has entirely too many names, but she's stunning as the pale raccoon-eyed goth scuzz who falls in love with Todd, who, for his own part, professes to want his family back, but in truth he's really just bitter. The real story here is all the singing, which had me just about to give it up after the first minute, but I stuck it out. Still, it's hard to make out half of what's being said, but whatever. Todd scowls, Lovett pines, la la la.

10 August 2008

The Mist - Heavy fog rolls into a small New England town, trapping a number of residents inside a grocery store. They're trapped because local bumpkin Klem comes running up, screaming about some sort of monsters, and telling everyone to lock the doors. So fine, they do that, then get brave and decide to venture out a little bit. Whack! Yep, sure enough, there's monsters out there. So they go through the inevitable WTF, then some planning and some heroics. But the real story takes place in the politics inside the building as holy-roller psycho-bitch Mrs. Carmody slowly wins over the masses to her story of apocalyptic redemption. Meanwhile, everyday dad David Drayton is leading the others, who eventually decide that an escape is their only salvation. A strong and gripping ending, but as we've come to expect from Stephen King, it wanders just a little too far into the WTF realm. Marcia Gay Harden is awesome as bible thumping freak Carmody.

03 August 2008

Army of Shadows - During World War II, a group of French freedom fighters work underground during the Nazi occupation. The man they call Chief is an everyday sort of guy, one who looks like your barber, or maybe your accountant. He starts off in jail, from which he escapes, and finds himself giving orders and even once killing a traitor. Like other excellent films of the genre, Army of Shadows makes us think about the costs of our action, and asks "at what price freedom?" When longtime underground soldier Mathilde is caught by the Nazis, the boys have to make a tough choice, which challenges the very ideals they're fighting for. The problem with this film is that it lays out very little in terms of the operations that these men perform in their line of duty. Mostly, you see them operating on one another -- one guy gets caught, so the rest have to bail him out; yet another guy sells out to the Nazis so they have to get rid of him. All of which leads us to further believe that "French Resistance" is an oxymoron.

Shutter - I screwed this up, and watched the American version of what I'm sure is a fine Asian horror film, before the original Asian version. I've said it before, but nothing screws up a good Asian horror film like remaking it for an American audience. Asian horror is in a category of its own, with certain themes and lapses of reality and holy flying WTFHF moments that make you crap all over the floor. The American film industry comes along, and turns that weird-ass creepiness into a more literal view, with CGI ghosts and linear story-telling, which invites viewers to gaily poke holes in the story. As for Shutter, it wasn't bad. A dude gets married to a sweet little honey of a wife, and he immediately takes her off to Japan, where he works as a photographer. Moments after they arrive, they run over a girl on a dark road in the middle of the night, but never find her body. But her ghost pesters the shit out of them for the rest of their stay. It's only when we find out more about the couple's past that we understand who the girl is. Like I said, it's not bad, but my guess is that the original Thai version is about a billion times scarier.

Experiment - A man and a women are thrown out on the streets of somewhere in the Czech Republic, and they have no clue who they are, how they got there, or what in the Sam Hill is going on. They find each other, and wander around together. Meanwhile, a group of bad guys is watching them because they've planted chips in the heads of these two wanderers and they're observing them to make sure they follow the orders that are transmitted directly to their brains. Or something like that. Mostly, the chick walks around talking like Frankenstein and screaming a lot, seeing visions of people with whited-out eyes. The bad guys are using them in a test run to see if they can control their brains before they turn loose their plot to overthrow the Russian government. Really? This got boring pretty quickly, and ventured from far-fetched into nonsensical at about the same pace. Experiment failed.

Botched - Ritchie tries to pull off a heist of some serious diamonds, but winds up spilling them all over the street. Jackhole. So the crime-boss who hired him gives him one last assignment, which is to steal a cross that used to belong to Ivan the Terrible from Ivan's descendents. After pulling off the job, the elevator stops at a floor in the middle of the building, and Ritchie, his cohorts, and a random group of strangers, find themselves trapped on the floor. But then they realize that they're being stalked by the crazed lunatic family who want their cross back. It's wacky, and not very good.

27 July 2008

House on Haunted Hill (1959) - Vincent Price plays a creepy old guy (shocker!) who rents a haunted house for his wife's party. He invites five people that he thinks will be hard up for cash, and offers them ten thousand dollars each (it was 1959!) if they can last through the night. But before anyone has a chance to refuse the offer, the weirdass servants leave, and lock the door behind them. One of the partiers is the guy who actually owns the place, so he tells all kinds of crazy stories about the place, including the convenient acid pit in the basement. Eventually the old guy's hottie wife comes down and joins the party. Then the dude passes out guns to everyone, because that just sounds like a brilliant idea. They all run around for while, some people die, and then the weird owner guys says something spooky. Campy fun.

Ask the Dust - Colin Farrell is Arturo Bandini, a fledgling writer who goes out to LA in the 30's to find fame. Then he locks himself up in a hotel and mails his submissions off to the magazine he freelances to. Seems to me he could have just stayed in Colorado, but then he wouldn't be a starving writer, and this is clearly a chick-flick, so just go with it. He doesn't know anything about women, so when he sees Camilla -- a scorching hot little Mexican mama -- he tries to pick her up by laughing at her shoes, calling her a Spic, and telling her to mop the floor. And I'm just thinking if you're walking around looking like Colin Farrell, you're definitely tagging some ass here and there, but that would ruin the story if the guy had any game whatsoever, so just go with it. Of course, he wins her heart, and they frolic in the ocean. Seriously. So look, on top of all that bullshit, the story is sprinkled liberally with narration, which I just hate. So this is turning into the worst movie ever made, then boing! Salma Hayek naked! Then another half hour of garbage -- he says some stuff, she says some stuff -- and boing! Salma Hayek acting slutty! This is either the worst movie or the greatest movie ever, and I'll be fuck-all if I can figure out which. I absolutely adore Salma Hayek and her nasally accent, and I'd do anything, even sit through a shithole movie, to see her prance around naked, and I did both.

20 July 2008

Maria Full of Grace - Maria is a seventeen-year-old thorn-trimmer at a rose plantation in Mexico, who finds herself sufficiently pissed off at her jerk of a boss to quit her job. On the hunt for a new job, she stumbles across a slick little fellow who introduces her to the world of international drug trading with an entry level position as a "mula" -- ingesting 60 rubber-wrapped "pellets" of packed cocaine, and boarding a flight to the United States. Her mentor, a girl named Lucy who's also carrying a gut full of drugs, gets sick during the flight, presumably because of a broken pellet, and when she disappears from the post-flight hotel, Maria panics and absconds with all the drugs. Now she's alone in New York with a suitcase full of coke, a contract on her life, and no place to live. Perfect pacing drives this poignant Spanish-language drama.

13 July 2008

30 Days of Night - Way up in Alaska, the sun sets in the middle of winter and doesn't come back for a month. So a pack of vampires seizes the opportunity to kill off all the poor saps who have decided to stick around in the town of Barrow, while a small group of survivors hides out and tries to evade the monsters until the eventual sunrise. Here's the skeptic's list: 1) If these vampires are at the top of the food chain, you would expect them to be significantly evolved, but these guys are just goons who speak some sort of "lok-tok-chok" language. 2) They appear to have no sensitivity to cold, but in thousands of years of existence, this seems to be the first time these geniuses came up with the idea to attack a far-northern town that blacks out for 30 days at a time. 3) They kill about 140 people in this town, so they have a ravenous appetite. But we've never heard of this sort of onslaught before. They try to cover their tracks by burning the town, but come on. 4) No one even thinks to contact Santa to see if he has any ideas, or could help fight the vampires. That's just lazy. But anyway… Pretty girl Stella (Stella!!!) breaks up with her boyfriend and never tells us why, but by the end of it all, she's back in love with him again. Which offers us some practical advice: if your girlfriend breaks up with you in an Arctic town, a little vampire-ass-kicking will bring her right back into your arms. Just a tip from your Uncle Doggie.

The Ruins - Four college kids are partying in Cancun, and they meet a German guy whose brother knows of a secret Mayan temple in the middle of the jungle, and he offers to take them out there. Sounds like a brilliant idea, what could possibly go wrong? But these 18-year-olds have the decision-making skills of a family of squid, so they hop on a bus, then a cab, then hike a few miles to the middle of the fucking jungle. There, they find themselves surrounded by angry Mayas when they start to climb around on an ancient pyramid that's overgrown with weeds. So they high-tail it up to the top of the structure, and try to figure out how they're going to get out. But then they find an even bigger problem: the weeds growing on the pyramid are not only carnivorous, but they're also aggressive little buggers. And the locals aren't so much pissed that these guys are climbing around on their temple, as they are scared of the vines from hell growing all over it. So the tribesmen walk around all day and salt the ground to keep the vines from growing out and taking over the jungle. Mr. Know-It-All Jeff is the main leader for the kids, volunteering his amateur doctor services by chopping off his buddy's legs with a bowie knife and a big rock. Eventual death looms for all, and it's rather gory and creepy. The obvious questions are never answered: where did these vines come from in the first place, and why are they confined to this Mayan pyramid? The Ruins seems like it was designed in its marketing approach and some thematic elements to take advantage of a similarity to The Descent, but it never really reaches that level. Little blondie Laura Ramsey is delicious, and according to the DVD extras, a number of copies of her body parts were made so they could be chopped up. I wonder if they still have any of the good parts…?

06 July 2008

The Seven Samurai - Widely believed to be one of the greatest movies ever made, the significance was mostly lost on me. I found it to be an interesting, though rather long, story about a Japanese village that is being raided by a troupe of bandits. They hire a group of samurai to defend them against the horde, and they do battle. You have to be a film student -- or at least follow along with the DVD commentary -- to understand that the director was telling us a lot more, about the class struggles, and value of the collective, and the significance of the wipe as a transition, and diagonals within the frame representing conflict, and so on. To me, it was a story about a village that hires seven samurai. Not bad, but really fucking long -- and overacted, though that may be a cultural nuance, as evidenced by the crybaby passion exhibited in Japanese porn.

Otis - Dark dark dark comedy about a family trying to rescue their daughter from the grips of a serial killer. Otis is a socially awkward fat guy who fantasizes about being the popular kid at school -- the star football player with the cheerleader girlfriend -- ie, the image he carries of his brother. So he kidnaps pretty blonde girls and stages his own prom to relive the days he never had, referring to each girl by his sister-in-law's name, based on his idealization of her. After five such events, he acquires Riley, who plays along for a while and eventually escapes due to a serendipitous visit from Otis's big brother. But what Otis hadn't accounted for is the ferocity of the girl's family, who choose to conceal the identity of the killer from the goofball cops so they can go over there and fuck his world up. Don't even try to pitch the story to your girlfriend -- I guarantee the humor of it all will be totally lost on her.

Murder Party - Chris is a lonely guy with not much going on, so when he finds a party invitation blowing around on the street, he's thrilled to have something to do. He goes home and makes a costume from a cardboard box, bakes a little loaf of pumpkin bread, and goes to the party, alone as instructed. When he gets there, he realizes that the invitation specifically called out a "murder party", and he's now the guest of honor. A group of dysfunctional artists is competing for a grant from benefactor "Alexander", who's staged this event for the artiness of it, and whoever gets the most artful with the murder becomes the favorite for the grant. What follows is an hour and a half of cat-and-mouse, pratfalls, quibbling, and drug use. It's silliness, really, and never takes itself seriously. Heavy nods to British humor.

29 June 2008

The Dead Girl - A girl is killed and left in a field, and these are the stories about the women who are involved: the stranger who finds the body, the girl who works in the morgue, the wife of the killer, the mother of the dead girl, and the girl herself. Brittany Murphy plays a drugged out whore (again!), and Toni Collette plays a closet freak (again!). Unlike standouts in the genre, Crash and Babel, the stories here never really come together, they live independently of each other as separate vignettes, which is an interesting, and perhaps welcome, twist on the genre. The result is a commentary on womanhood in general. Not bad little stories, definitely chick-centric.

Escape from New York - 1981's view of what a futuristic 1997 would look like is rather charming in its similarity to 1981. Here we have Snake Plissken, a military hero and now criminal (?), who's been sentenced to life on the island of Manhattan, which has been turned into one giant prison. But wait, out of the blue some random terrorists have kidnapped Air Force One and flown it right into the side of a building in Manhattan (seriously! It's eerie as hell.) But the President was able to get into his escape pod (!) first, and he wound up somewhere down there. So the government grabs Snake and offers him time off for good behavior if he rescues the President. So he takes his glider and lands on the top of the World Trade Center, then hops an elevator to the street. Down in the shit of it, he runs into his old buddy Harold and his wicked awesome girlfriend, played lusciously by Adrienne Barbeau and the twins. Turns out a guy named Duke runs the whole place, and he's got the President and even dressed him up in a funny little wig. So now Snake, along with Harold, Maggie, her twins, and a random cab-driver have to go head-to-head with Duke -- who rolls with chandeliers hanging off his fenders. It's camp perfection.

Zombies Anonymous - Angela is a cute little thing whose boyfriend puts a bullet through her head. Normally, that would make for a pretty rotten day, but for some reason, people have stopped dying, and now Angela gets to experience life as one of the undead. With no explanation why, the dead are simply refusing to die, and carry on with their day-to-day activities: shopping at the mall, and busting their humps for the man, all the while rotting and turning brown, and exhibiting some nasty death wounds. Of course, a contingent develops that finds the walking dead repulsive, and they organize loosely into factions of vigilantes. The story carries on along these lines, touching allegorically on issues of hate, prejudice, and equality. It's a clever idea, perhaps poorly executed in this clearly-low-budget flick, which starts out rubbing up beautifully on the concepts, but then loses itself in the all-out slaughter in the second half. By the end, not only has it morphed into a full-on gorefest, but it's all become mostly senseless, with random characters appearing in apparently crucial roles, and a battle royale unexplainedly breaking out amongst allies. It's like they lost a reel or two. Anyway, Gina Ramsden is cute as hell for a dead chick, and demonstrates that zombies can wear pink panties. See if you can spot the continuity error when they switch to white.

22 June 2008

The Low Life - John is a sulky little bastard from East Bumfuck who comes out to LA to be a famous writer. He meets up with his college buddies and they take jobs through a temp firm separating the carbons from credit card purchases. He lives in a craphole apartment, and his roommate moves out unexpectedly to join the Peace Corps or some such shit. Along comes his new roommate Andrew, who's a socially awkward little guy -- the stereotypical small town bumpkin who just wants to make friends. They meet a pretty waitress at a bar, and John meets a pretty slacker-chick/gold-digger, and they all slack together. Only Andrew shows any heart or ambition, but he's so awkward, he doesn't really get anywhere. The rest of them just jerk off in their little slacker worlds. Sean Astin shines as Andrew, and Ron Livingston auditions for his part in Office Space. It's okay, whatever.

The Onion Movie - A thinly-veiled excuse for very clever sketch comedy. Newsman Norm is the anchor of news channel The Onion, where he reports ridiculous stories with a deadpan straight face. Along comes parent company Global Tetrahedron, injecting their little animated penguin into Norm's broadcasts to pitch the upcoming Steven Seagal blockbuster, Cockpuncher, about a guy who punches people in the… well, you get it. So Norm pitches an ultimatum to his management, who wants him to lead off on Friday with the Cockpuncher story, whereas he wants to lead with the history treaty between dueling countries Polravia and Ubleckistan. When the appointed day arrives, all hell breaks loose. Heavy on satire, playing on stereotypes and social morés, The Onion Movie is funny as hell.

15 June 2008

Control - Ian Curtis was the singer for the post-punk UK band Joy Division, and this is his story. He married a girl on a whim, knocked her up, and suffered from epileptic seizures. He strutted around real funnylike on stage. Then he killed himself. And it's all in black and white, because it's all a little more realistic that way. And gritty -- oooo! so gritty!

The Night Listener - Robin Williams plays Gabriel -- a talk radio DJ with some problems. One day his buddy hooks him up with a manuscript that his publishing company is about to print -- a story written by a 14-year-old boy who was abused when he was even younger. But Gabriels's boyfriend notices something funny as they're talking to young Pete and his adoptive mother on the phone: that the two of them sound just alike. So now Gabriel needs to meet the boy because he fears that mom Donna might be perpetrating a fraud, but out of the blue she disconnects her phone. So Gabriel flies out to her hometown and starts to poke around, eventually meeting crazy-ass Donna, and trying to figure out if the boy is really sequestered in some hospital and dying of AIDS, or if he's being scammed. The intro says "based on true events", which makes me think this is about JT Leroy, but the closing credits indicate that it's about boy who was never found. Hm, well I'll be.

Tooth and Nail - The world's oil supply ran out, bringing about an apocalypse. The few survivors scattered, banding together in small groups. A few members of one such group are out scavenging one day when they come across a bad guy who's about to kill a girl. They rescue the girl and take her back to their camp, which is in a hospital, nursing her back to health. This is a fairly timid little group -- whose members are all inexplicably named after cars -- who are trying to eke out a living and begin the repopulation of society. Soon, the Rovers show up -- a badass crowd of mad Max rejects who kill everything in sight. Turns out they're cannibals who prey on other groups like this one for food. So the second half of the movie turns into a battle between these timid little people and the Huns, even morphing into that weird action movie dynamic where people start killing and dying left and right, and the others start tossing off clever quips like "yippee ki-yay" or whatever. Fairly predictable fare, but there's something a little satisfying about the beginning sequences, which breaks down when it turns into a battle royale.

08 June 2008 - The "Not for Everyone" Weekend

Night of the Creeps - Slumming on FearNet again... This time around, I found Night of the Creeps, a mid-eighties horror flick about two social rejects at college. When one of the lads sees the girl of his dreams, he realizes that she'll only go for him if he becomes a Beta, so they immediately sign up. The condition for pledgeship is that they have to steal a corpse and leave it on the porch of the Phi Mu house, or some such shit. So they break into someplace (?), where they find a body in suspended animation. Turns out that 30 years earlier, aliens sent a science experiment down to earth, where it infected a dude who was taking a break from parking with his girlfriend while she was being killed by an escaped mental patient. This movie has it all, I tell ya'. So these guys release the body, because why not, and it takes off on a killing rampage, where it releases these slithery leechlike critters that get in your mouth and turn you into a zombie. Meanwhile, Cindy Cronenberg (the girl of geek boy Chris's dreams) is dumping her fratboy boyfriend Brad because he's a dick, and she's hooking up with Chris because he's nearby, but first they have to kill some zombies and some leeches from outer space. Shades of Shivers and Slither, with the obvious nod to Cronenberg being Cindy's last name.

Kurt Cobain About a Son - If you're not a fan of Kurt Cobain, or a student of the impact that Nirvana had on the world, you can probably pass this one by, as it probably comes off a little self-indulgent and arthouse. But for those of us who are fascinated by the story about the Buddha-man who unwittingly changed the world, this is a gem of a story. It's the story of Kurt's life and career, as told by Kurt himself, culled from 25 hours of taped interviews with biographer Michael Azerrad. For someone who's become such a legendary figure, the workings of Cobain's mind are largely unknown, and this story delves a bit into that abyss that makes up this enigmatic contradictory individual. The graphics are mostly throw-away, but if you watch any of the supplemental material, you'll find that the graphics follow along with the story, telling a visual version of Kurt's life, with no Kurt to be seen. It's interesting and kind of sad. We miss you, Kurt.

Wristcutters: A Love Story - Zia cuts his wrists and dies. But then he finds himself in a purgatory of sorts -- a place just like ours, but a little bit weirder and a little bit crappier. And all the inhabitants are suicides. He meets up with a Russian dude, and when they find out that Zia's girlfriend Desiree is also lurking around in this world, they set out on a mission to find her. Shortly into that mission, they take up with Mikal, a cute little thing who's looking for the People In Charge, because she claims she never meant to commit suicide -- her case was an accidental overdose. Along the journey, we quickly realize that Desiree's a pretty crappy girlfriend, and that Mikal is a pretty cool chick by comparison. Guess what happens. But the predictability of that storyline is contrasted by the utter insanity of the setting, so it's still pretty fresh and original. Cheers to writer/director Goran Dukic for taking a risk on this dark little love story that's not for everyone.

Solyaris (1972) - Solyaris isn't for everyone, but neither is 2001: A Space Odyssey. You have to think there's some bit of cross-pollination going on here between Stanislaw Lem and Arthur C. Clarke, who are a couple of the greatest science fiction writers ever, because they wrote stories with very human themes, that happen to take place in very strange settings. Here, Dr. Kris Kelvin is dispatched to a space station that's locked in a geosynchronous orbit around a liquid planet, because the inhabitants of the station are acting a little strange. When he gets there, he meets up with two of the staff, and learns that the third has died. But that's not the weird part. That happens when his dead wife shows up. Apparently the ocean has the ability to tap into the subconscious minds of these cosmonauts and produce apparitions from their memories. But rather than leave the spectral Hari as a flimsy bit of ectoplasm floating around in the ether, the Ocean constructs her as flesh and blood. She knows she's Hari, but over time she realizes she's not quite Hari and not quite human, and this scares her to no end. Lem and director Andrei Tarkovsky take on so many existential issues under this context, from the nature of the soul to the meaning of life. Solyaris is slow and purposeful, but quite brilliantly made and darkly thoughtful. But clearly not for everyone.

01 June 2008

The Sick House - Boring horror flick about an archeologist who breaks into a condemned hospital in the middle of fucking London to study the Bubonic Plague. I had to read that sentence back myself, to see if it made any more sense the second time around, and it didn't. While she's in there poking around and releasing the demon of the Black Priests, a car full of kids crashes outside, so they wander in. Now the five of them have to team up to battle the demon. In addition to everything else you could come up with that's wrong about this movie, the whole fucking thing is washed over in a green glow, like they forgot to color correct for the fluorescent lighting, and then decided to make it a "stylistic element." It took me like forever to get through this crap pile.

Grace is Gone - Stan's wife is serving in Iraq when he gets the news that she's been killed in action. He doesn't know how to tell his two daughters the news, so he takes them on a cross country journey while he figures it out. That's all there is to it, but it's expertly written and brilliantly acted -- a brutally sad story that's guaranteed to melt you in two. You can see why this never made a big mark on the big screen, but at the same time, that's just such a shame. All three principal actors are brilliant here.  John Cusack takes on the role of a lifetime by becoming absolutely ordinary, and the two girls play off his dilemma nicely, with older daughter Heidy smart enough to know something's going on, but not quite getting what it is, and youngest Dawn is little enough to be oblivious to the drama.  Perfect characterizations punctuate this sad story.

The House on Haunted Hill (1999) - Remake of the classic 1959 campfest. Four random strangers are invited to spend the night in a haunted house, with the survivors receiving a split of 5 million dollars. They are joined by the driver and the party's host and hostess -- a couple long out of love -- when the house shuts down its steel doors and traps them all inside. It used to be a hospital for the criminally insane (of course) until the residents overthrew the staff and everyone inside died. So now the house and its ghosts are pissed, and everyone has to die. The story sticks true to its campy ancestry, with kinetoscope-looking films and shadowy figures and creaks and groans. Boo!

Teeth - Dawn is a cute little high school girl who serves as the spokesperson for the teen abstinence club -- she's a prim and proper little thing with a cute smile. She also has a condition known as vagina dentata. That's right, teeth... there. It sounds pretty bad, but they actually serve her pretty well, considering the crowd of losers she surrounds herself with, from her innocent little prick of a boyfriend to the dirty doctor down the street. Teeth is mostly black comedy, a fact which is tipped off from the very start with the shot of a nuclear cooling tower looming over sweet Dawn's house, providing us with just the tiniest bit of speculation that there may be some genetic finagling going on here. But from time to time, the story lapses into a fairly serious treatment of this young lady dealing with a horrifying realization about her health and her burgeoning sexuality. But then it's right back into the camp camp, with random caricatures and over-the-top performances. Clever, and more than a little unsettling. Dick count: 3. Finger count: 4. Chomp, chomp.

25 May 2008

The Haunting - A classic black and white spookshow from 1963. There's a big haunted house, and a pretentious pipe-smoking dude who claims to be a supernatural investigator -- or some such thing -- brings three random people into the house to do some investigation. We never really find out how he settled on these people, who represent the stereotypical smartass dude, glam girl, and homebody chick. And we never really see any investigation per se, either. Truly, the holes in this story are just simply enormous, offset only by the overacting and ridiculous posturing they did in those old movies. All of which make it that much more joyful to behold. Turns out there's the ghost of this castle's builder walking around, and he doesn't want to let sad sack Maria go home. So he thumps and whumps on the walls until she goes mad, I tell ya', mad! Good stuff here, unintentionally funny and just simply classic.

Things We Lost in the Fire - Audrey's husband Brian is taken from her unexpectedly, leaving her as a young, pretty widow with two kids and, until she can get her head put back on straight, not much to look forward to. Brian always stood by his childhood friend Jerry -- a fact which Audrey found maddening, considering Jerry's heroin habit. But when Brian dies, Audrey is searching for meaning, and in a desire to find some way to connect to him, she reaches out to his friend Jerry, who uses the death of his only friend as a means to crawl up out of his abyss. She invites him to move into her house, where he straddles the line of appropriate behavior within what their relationship becomes. But when Jerry gets too close to Audrey's kids, she throws him out, forgetting that he is her only lifeline. The script is solid and honest, the acting is first rate, and the cinematography is beautiful. Just don't expect a feel-good movie or extensive explosions. Or zombies, there's no zombies.

Diary of the Dead - Romero's first four zombie movies were an ordered progression of the story, though their timelines were skewed by real time. So the first was made in 1968, and the last in 2005, though one falls, storywise, on the others heels. But in this fifth entry in the series, he steps back to the beginning, but this time he sets in the present day -- roughly 2006 -- and the participants are obsessed with their video cameras and cell phones. It's a clever idea -- to pretend the whole thing was shot by film school students, then assembled later as an homage to that group -- but unfortunately The Blair Witch Project beat him out by about ten years. And here in Diary, Romero suffers from the same problem they had with Blair Witch -- how, in the middle of this unbelievable unexplainable tragedy, would you be concerned in the slightest with rolling film? While literally watching your best friends die. And Romero tries the same explanation, which rings just as hollow, claiming to some nobility to the truth, or perhaps an escape from reality. Either way, you can't help but feel that Romero is being derivative, which is so incredibly ironic.

The Last Winter - The North Industries company is drilling an oil well in Alaska to decrease the USA's dependency on foreign oil, but something strange is going on. Watchdog reporter Jim is up there taking a lot of measurements, and finding that the weather just keeps getting warmer, which is thawing the permafrost and releasing whatever's been frozen for 10,000 years. In turn, that's having a crazy effect on the small team that's up there, the animals around them, and everything else. People start flipping out, then dying, then killing. This is a well-made flick, which is less horror than suspense thriller, but it touches on an other-worldly theme, which may have to do with hydrogen sulfide poisoning, the Wendigo, global warming, pibloktoq, or demon crows. Meticulously filmed and edited, it carries the same sort of isolation and plodding terror as The Shining, though the horror doesn't run as deep. Nicely done.

18 May 2008

Help! - I've never seen one of the Beatles movies, but I grew up on the Monkees and now I understand where that all came from. The plot is silly, contrived, and well-established within the first ten minutes, then it plays out for the next 90. But no one tunes in for the plot, this is all about those four wacky Liverpudlians who changed the world. In the remastered version, both audio and video are striking, and the audio in particular brings a new life to standbys that we've heard a million times. As for the silly plot, here it is: somehow, Ringo got a hold of a big ruby ring that looks like one of those suckers the kids and ravers are all crazy for. He put it on his finger but he can't get it off, which is a shame because it's actually the sacrifice ring worn by the next intended victim of some random (foreign) cult. I don't think they put too much thought into figuring out where the cult was from, they just referred to it as "Eastern". Fair enough. So the Easterners track down Ringo and are trying to paint him red -- as is their custom -- and kill him. That's the entire plot. Tune in for the music and the chance to see the four men who changed the world forever.

Revolver - Guy Richie apparently took a lesson from Joe Carnahan's Smokin' Aces. Both films feature highly saturated colors, Ray Liotta, and an attempt at an edgy script. But while Carnahan mostly succeeds at the latter, Richie mostly falls flat. On the surface, it's the story of Jake, who gets out of prison, and decides to repay his nemesis by taking everything he has. But the guy's seriously connected, so Jake quickly finds his life in danger. Before he knows what's going on, he runs into two mysterious loan sharks who promise to protect him, cure his just-diagnosed disease, and take all of his money. Underlying all of this is the concept of the victory over one's own ego. But the problem is that the surface story is entirely too literal, and therefore its deviations from reality are just a little too hard to swallow. Sure it's an allegorical story, but Richie simply abandons all hope of pulling together the loose ends, and he cops out in the end by explaining that it was never really meant to be a literal story. Which is sloppy and lazy, as far as I'm concerned.

The Guns of Navarone - …have a caliber of, like, 18 inches, and the Germans use them to blow the holy hell out of any Allied ships that try to cross over into Turkey or Greece during World War II, or something like that. There are 2000 refugees on the island of Kheros, which is about to be invaded by Germans, which will surely throw Turkey into the war on the side of the Axis forces. I'm not entirely sure about any of that, but the important part is that Captain Mallory has been given the assignment of blowing the crap out of those guns so the Allied forces can save the refugees. He was given that assignment because he knows how to climb mountains. He gets to take his old buddy along with him, and also some crazy old fucker who wants to kill him. And a wacky professor who refuses to accept an officer's commission, but knows how to blow up anything, and two hired killers. Along the way, they hook up with a couple of local village chicks. Aside from a couple of unintentionally gay scenes ("that's quite a man you've got there," said one dude to another), the primary message of the film is that it forces us to ask the question, "at what price success?" which seems to be a pretty universal concept, especially these days. Gregory Peck shows a ruthless side, running up a decent body count, and almost tagging a schoolteacher babe before shooting her in the head.

11 May 2008

Charlie Wilson's War - Charlie Wilson was a boozing, womanizing congressman from Texas, who happened to sit on enough subcommittees to have a huge role in determining our nation's involvement in foreign affairs. One day he doubled the funding to Afghanistan, and some rich broad from Texas invited him to tour the Afghani refugee camps that were set up in Pakistan in response to the Soviet invasion. Upon seeing the mess there, he committed himself to action, and undertook plans to covertly fund the Afghani defense, which eventually led to their victory and dissolution of the Soviet regime, which was truly one of the more amazing events in recent history. Hooray for Charlie! The producers of this mostly-true story had the wisdom to take the story one step further, explaining how Charlie tried to continue the funding to improve the lives of the recently-freed Afghani people, but all the dirty rotten cocksuckers in Congress told him to go suck an egg. It was that lack of vision that led to the creation of Al Qaeda and their reaction to the United States a decade later. Nice goin', fuckers.

Unearthed - While Unearthed isn't the worst movie ever made, it certainly ranks up there as one of the most unwatchable. It's just a rambling stupid mess about a lizard creature that's unearthed in the desert, and the alcoholic sheriff -- who happens to be a 20-something Native American babe -- is trying to kill it, while hiding out with a handful of civilians. There's some bullshit back-story about the sheriff killing some little girl, and about this other dude named Caleb who dug up the monster, and about some 900-year-old civilization, and supposedly the monster is really a probe from outer space that's collecting DNA, and sometimes it shoots little baby lizards into people, and their insides dissolve, and there's this herbal lizard poison, and holy shit! That's Charlie Murphy! Charlie Motherfucking Murphy is in this movie! What up, Darkness!! If you never saw the Chapelle show where they devoted the whole show to the story about Charlie Murphy (Eddie's brother) and his relationship with Rick James, you've missed a beautiful classic bit of television comedy. You should get the DVD and watch -- in fact, find the whole season because Dave Chappelle was such a clever comedy genius, until the $50 million deal knocked him off his gourd, which was really a tragedy. Anyhow, Unearthed is boring.

04 May 2008

Enchanted - I'm a little embarrassed to admit I loved this movie, but I absolutely loved this movie. It starts off as a classic Disney animation -- a story of a lovely girl who sings to the little animals who twitter and chirp and help her dress and clean her house. She meets her prince, but his evil stepmother doesn't care for the competition for the crown, so she banishes sweet Giselle to the real world -- which turns out to be New York City. Here we meet the flesh and blood Giselle, played splendidly by Amy Adams.  Befuddled by the workings of the big city, Giselle quickly learns her way around, and uses the magic in her soul to make friends with everyone around her, particularly the cynical divorce attorney Robert and his lonely daughter, who rescue Giselle from the streets. Meanwhile, the prince has come looking for Giselle, eventually finding her and nearly taking her back to the magical land of Andalasia, until the evil stepmother shows up to foil those plans. If you've ever seen a love story, you know right away how this is going to end, and you won't be disappointed. But the real story here is the journey, and this journey is helmed by Adams, who is an absolute dream, and captures a substantial bit of magic in this very special film. As soon as it was over, I wanted to watch it again.

Nightmare Man - The batting average of the "8 Films to Die For" is pretty low. Here we meet Ellen, a chesty babe with an equally chesty husband, but neither of them can get pregnant. So she sends away to Africa for a demon mask, in the hopes that it will knock her up. As soon as it arrives, the demon starts to haunt her dreams, so her husband has her committed. On the way to the loony bin, the car runs out of gas, and while her studly beau is walking to the gas station, Ellen bumps into her demon, who tries to kill her with a knife. So she goes to the nearest house in the woods, where there are two couples playing truth or dare, drinking, and stripping. She goes into the house, and now the demon attacks them all. Blah blah blah. Hot chicks can't even save this one.

Killer of Sheep - Stan is depressed. He lives in the ghetto, works in a slaughterhouse, barely sleeps at night, and doesn't fuck his wife anymore. He has two kids, and a bunch of people around him are wacky characters. The end.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - Jean-Dominique Bauby was the editor of Elle magazine, with a hot little girlfriend and a hot little baby-mama, and one day he inexplicably had a massive stroke, which took away his control over everything but his left eye. When he wakes in the hospital, he gets the bad news, but the silver lining is that his speech therapist and his physical therapist are also a couple of hot little things. So his speech therapist teaches him how to transcribe to her by blinking as she reads letters of the alphabet to him, and before too long he's writing a book. So he needs a full time transcriber, and I'll be darned if she's not a hot little thing, too. So here's Jean-Do, with his left eye as his only claim to fame, and he's swarming with hot chicks, and not a thing to do with them. He falls for one of them, but honestly, I couldn't tell them apart because they all speak French and look pretty cute. As for the story itself, it's what you'd imagine, but nicely told, without leaving you wrist-slashingly depressed for the viewing.

Mulberry Street - I rented Mulberry Street and Lake Dead over the same weekend -- two entries from Lionsgate's "8 Films to Die For" collection, and I'm shocked by the differences in quality between them. Mulberry Street is the story of an outbreak in Manhattan spread by rat bites, that causes its victims to turn into half-zombie/half-giant-rat mutants who attack the uninfected indiscriminately. Shot documentary-style, with moderate doses of shaky-cam and grainy film, Mulberry Street is infused with a gritty realism -- or as much as possible, considering the theme. The tradeoff is that it's fairly low on plot points: people get infected, the government responds, there's chaos in the streets, and some of our heroes survive. But the actors go about their work seriously, as do the editors and directors, resulting in a satisfying film that borrows a great deal from the mood of 28 Days Later and small-time production The Ghouls. In contrast, Lake Dead was just shit.

Lake Dead - Brielle, Kelly, and their skank-whore sister Sam inherit a hotel from a grandfather they never knew they had. So they take some slutty friends and douchebag dudes and go up there to take a look at the place, but instead of staying at the hotel, they camp near the lake, where they can be more easily killed by the gooney hilljacks ambling around the countryside. Brielle's husband is the surviving male, and the bad guys like to play the James Bond game with him -- leaving him behind to be finished off by one of the random redneck brothers, only to find our hero getting the best of him. "Damn, he did it again. You go poke him with a stick for a while, Caleb, while I drive away." Turns out the girls are kin to the hilljacks. Shock. Horrible acting, boring plot, one-dimensional characters. Just stupid all around.

27 April 2008

Crazy Love - Burt Pugach was a self-absorbed little prick of a lawyer in the fifties, and he fell hopelessly in love with a hot little girl on a park bench named Linda. They dated for a while, but she threw him off because he was married and lied about getting a divorce. So he hired a thug to throw lye in her face and burn her all to hell. He went to jail and she went blind. Years later, they got married. Wacky. Promoters get paid to hype movies, and while this was a fairly crazy story, it's not nearly the insanity trip that everyone made it out to be. A couple of pathetic people do stupid things, and wind up with each other. Whatever. Next.

Into the Wild - Chris McCandless graduates from college, then decides to go off the grid, burning his money and credit cards, hitch-hiking across the country, and renaming himself "Alexander Supertramp." His ultimate goal is to wind up in Alaska, where he'll live off the fat of the land, or some such thing. He kayaks, finds himself in Mexico, hooks up with some hippies, kills a moose, hooks up with some more hippies, and eats some bad berries. Meanwhile Mom and Dad are sick with worry. It's a neat little story, with glorious cinematography.

Fellini Satyricon - Holy shit. What in the name of God's green earth…?

The Savages - Jon and Wendy Savage are siblings -- he teaches college and acts a little hoity, whereas she's self-absorbed and having an affair with a married man. Their elderly father has an episode, and they have to take over his care. Imagine the rest yourself. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney work nicely together.

The Deaths of Ian Stone - A rare clever concept is featured here, in which Ian Stone finds himself being brutally killed by a monster, only to wake up at his desk shortly after 5:00; apparently that was all a dream. Later that night, he's brutally killed by a monster, only to wake up behind the wheel of his cab shortly after 5:00; apparently it was only a dream. He meets a stranger who attempts to tell him what's going on, which he starts to piece together from one dream to the next. He can't really die, but these creatures have the ability to invent realities, and they kill him from those realities, but he comes back every day at the same time. Apparently he figured something out and they have to keep doing this until they can figure out what he figured out. The concept breaks down from there, and the second half goes into monster violence silliness not unlike Blade. But for the briefest moment, it's fairly clever. The secret to what he learned? It has to do with love. Awww!

20 April 2008

The Orphanage - The hype around this film was that it's extremely scary, with twists and turns, and it's really a crazy ride. In that regard, it's a huge disappointment. Here's what happens: Laura lives in an orphanage for a number of years before she's adopted. As an adult, she finds the place up for sale, so she buys it and plans to reopen. Her son has a penchant for imaginary friends, and he finds some new ones at the orphanage. But when he turns up missing, Laura loses her mind and eventually bumps into the ghosts of the kids she grew up with. So I guess if you're thinking this will be a sad story about woman's missing child, you might find the ghosts a little off-putting, but if you're expecting a spook show, it's only about average. No need to sharpen up your pencils, because there's nothing here to write home about.

Southland Tales - Holy crap. This started out looking like a serious drama for about two minutes, with a nuclear attack setting the stage for an apocalyptic story, only to turn into satire manned by SNL alumni, then finally to morph into The Repo Man. I can't even begin to get into what goes on here, but it's a ride. The cast is huge and littered with stars, both major and minor. I'd be lying if I said I enjoyed this all the way the through -- in fact, I nearly turned it off about 30 minutes in, but now I'm glad I didn't. Strong hints of Donnie Darko, which only makes sense because both were written by Richard Kelly. The brief synopsis is that this is an action sci-fi satire comedy drama about the end of the world. Um, wow. Amazing.

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead - Brothers Hank and Andy hatch a plan to rob their parents' jewelry store. The old lady working there won't get hurt, and the insurance will cover the costs. But it goes all wrong. More interesting than the story itself are the interactions between the family members. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays older brother Andy, adding yet another performance to his extensive highlight reel with his portrayal of the manipulative, complex elder sibling. Ethan Hawke plays the wimpy younger brother Hank -- always the baby of the family, never really able to be a man. Then there's Marisa Tomei, who spends the entire first half of the movie mostly naked. Yowsah, one might say. Or huminah, huminah. At 43, her lazy drawl, gorgeous face and perfect body are a dream. Not a story for the kids, or for escapist chicks, or for escapist dudes. People die, but not in the joyful way they do in a Stallone flick -- it's dark and disturbing.

Juno - I had planned to be thoroughly annoyed by this indie dittie about a precocious pregnant snot, but instead found myself pleasantly surprised. Sure enough, it starts off on a bad note, with cooler-than-thou brats using words they couldn't possibly understand, but as the title character begins to deal with her knocked-up self, she starts to show a little maturity, making the story more bearable as we go along. By the end, we've invested ourselves in the characters and are fully rooting for every last flawed one of them. Well-written and performed, Juno is a keeper.

Crazy Eights - Eight kids used to hang out together, so they called themselves the Crazy Eight. One of them dies, so six of the others show up at his house, where he's left a treasure map. But wait, who was the eighth? No one seems to remember, until they open the treasure chest and find her body. As they try to drive away, they find themselves trapped in a paranormal house that shifts and changes, revealing to them their past: they were actually lab rats -- the subjects of some weird experiments by creepy doctors. One by one, they die, apparently from the hands of the dead girl's ghost. They hatch a cockamamie plan, which is to burn everything that had to do with their childhood, and then the past would no longer exist, and they'd be able to escape. What is this, Scooby Doo? Kill 'em all. Crazy Eights reminded me a lot of Session 9 (which was fantastic), Thirteen Ghosts (which was not), The Abandoned (which was) and Gravedancers (which was just stupid).

13 April 2008

Jail Bait - After the silliness of Ed Wood's debut, the sexposé Glen or Glenda, Wood tries his hand at dramatic story-telling, and it's just as bad as everything else he ever did. While this has all the hallmarks of a great bad film -- horrible acting, insipid storytelling and idiotic character development -- it still lacks the charm of a truly wonderful awful film like Plan 9 from Outer Space, with its vampires and zombies and martians and death rays. Instead we're introduced to a pedestrian tale of a son gone bad, who carries a gun (which is the inspiration for the film's title, rather than a trampy little teen), then uses that gun to kill an ex-cop-turned-security-guard. He spends the rest of his time sulking around until his partner kills him and blackmails his father -- a famous plastic surgeon -- into performing an operation on his face so the coppers will never recognize him. Horrible, and not really all that much fun.

Atonement - A little girl intercepts a note to her sister from a suitor that uses a dirty word, and later catches him giving her the old in-out in the library. When her young cousin is assaulted by a pervy friend of the family, she fingers the sister's boyfriend, because clearly he's shown himself to be some sort of sex pervert. He goes off to prison and then to war, and both sisters become nurses, with younger sister Briony trying to find a way to redeem her lie. It's a girlie film -- not really a chick-flick because it's definitely not a romantic comedy, but clearly targeted to a female demographic. The saving grace is Keira Knightley dripping wet in a flimsy slip. Yowsah.

12 Angry Men - A Puerto Rican teen is on trial for murder and the jurors retire to their chambers. Upon an initial vote, 11 find guilty, but Juror #8 isn't convinced. He mounts a defense, and campaigns to find the man innocent. While it's an interesting character study of the men in the room, it's also a fairly flimsy discounting of the witness testimony. Like this exchange -- Bad Guy: "He's Puerto Rican, so he must be guilty!" Good Guy: "Well you're prejudiced, so he must be innocent!" Everyone Else: "Hooray!" So while this was probably a triumphant carriage of justice in the days when no one really knew what happens in a jury chamber, today it seems a little off. There are two eye-witnesses, but Juror #8 convinces everyone they didn't really see anything -- they just said they did, because they're old, you know how it is. Interesting character study, but unintentionally a little scary.

There Will Be Blood - Daniel Plainview is an unscrupulous oil man, but he is what he is. One day, one of his men is killed on the job, so Plainview raises the the man's son as if he were his own, calling him "H.W.", which is presumably not short for Herbert Walker. Daniel and H.W. become partners in business, and stumble upon a field of untapped oil on the Sunday's family ranch. It's there they run into the young son, Eli Sunday, an impudent little prick of a preacher who does his best to serve as the thorn in Daniel's side. On the day they strike oil, H.W. is injured, which takes away his hearing and leads Daniel to eventually put the boy on a train and walk off. It goes on and on, and in the long run, we find this is the story of Daniel and his relationship with H.W. and his relationship with Eli. We see the trials of humiliation that Daniel and Eli put each other through, which leaves both men dirty and tainted. An interesting story, a tour de force for Daniel Day-Lewis as Plainview, and the start of my random cries, "I've abandoned my child!" apropos of nothing.

06 April 2008

Day of the Dead (2008) - Not really a remake of the original third film of Romero's series, this telling was "inspired by" the Romero film. Romero's version was the most panned of his series, set in an army bunker where scientists are trying to train the zombies, quite possibly providing the inspiration for the underground black comedy Fido. In that regard, this direct-to-DVD release picks up the torch with a cringe-worthy offering that does little to tell a story within the context of the whole, and plays more like a game of Doom. Interestingly, the production value is top-notch, making this a case study of big studio Hollywood movie-making. While Elf Queen Mena Suvari should have pulled out the big guns, instead she tries to act her way out of a paper bag, and doesn't quite succeed. It's silliness -- a mess that's unfit for human consumption.

Borderland - Three college students go to Mexico to party. One hooks up with a blazing hot bartender (which is totally realistic because no one ever hits on hot bartenders), and another one hooks up with a random hooker because she lets him hold her kid. The hooker-lover gets kidnapped by some bad guys, and it's Hostel in Mexico, with a sprinkle of Palo, a Santeria-like religious practice. Did I mention the bartender is blazing hot? Scorching.

In the Valley of Elah - Mike comes home from Iraq and goes AWOL. His father, Hank, is a former military investigator, so he travels out to the base, and begins to investigate the case. The local police think it's a drug deal gone bad, so they're not overly excited about it. But Hank has a nasty suspicion it's something far worse, and we get the distinct impression throughout that this had something to do with what happened in Iraq. As the story moves along, we discover some things about Mike we didn't expect, and some harsh truths about this stupid war are revealed. The timing just isn't good for this film, which takes its name from the valley in which David slew Goliath. It touches heavily on the impacts of post-traumatic stress disorder, and the inhumanity of people who are asked to suspend their humanity -- all of which are brutal realities of what we've done to our sons and daughters in Iraq, just to line a lying idiot egomaniac's pockets and jerk off his ego over his father-complex. Good movie, but it made me sad -- not just about the story, but about life and the world in general.

Easy Rider - Wyatt and Billy do a big coke deal, then they set out on their bikes for Mardi Gras. It's 1969 and the two are fallout from the hippie movement -- not quite hippies and not quite hardcore bikers, but something in between. Like a little more beatnik than hippie, if I understand my 60's counterculture correctly. Anyway, they get high a lot and spend a little bit of time at a commune of sorts where they swim naked with some hot chicks. Then they wind up in jail after crashing a parade, where they meet George, a child of privilege and an impish character just dying to break out. Jack Nicholson leaps off the screen as George -- he is as striking in his charisma and flat-out beauty as Peter Fonda is in his coma-inducing death-trance acting. Anyhow, George joins up with the boys and eventually they run into trouble from hilljack rednecks who don't like the length of their hair or the cut of their jib. The first half of this film really put me off, with Fonda's ennui and weird cuts between many of the scenes. And I could never really get my arms around the characters because they seemed so inconsistent and inactive. But when Nicholson shows up, he drives the pace, which ramps up dramatically moving into the last couple of scenes -- which I don't really understand, either, but no worry. Just chalk this up as an interesting adventure in beat film. With Toni Basil -- the Mickey chick -- looking fairly cute. Go figure.

Shrooms - Five kids travel to Ireland to meet up with a dude who takes them out into the woods to eat psychedelic mushrooms. The girl eats a bad mushroom that kills her for like a second, and gives her the ability to see premonitions. The dude tells them a ghost story about some kids who were tortured in a monastery, and they go to sleep. The next day, the ghost story comes true and the girl has premonitions about it all. Coming in at 84 minutes, Shrooms is about 80 minutes too long, with those four worthwhile minutes consisting of random shots of the two gorgeous dark-haired actresses playing Holly and Lisa. Which is a terrible disappointment, considering how the trailer looked so promising -- a story of terror wrapped up inside a psychedelic haze, where no one knows what's real and what isn't. Kind of like The Tripper, if that had been worth a shit, or even Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, which really wasn't all that bad.

Videodrome - Max runs a cable TV station in the mid-80's, and one day his tech guy runs across a video feed from Malaysia called Videodrome, where some gooney dudes are torturing naked chicks. So Max figures this is clearly the future of television, and he has to get his hands on it. The more he finds out about this station, though, the less he wants to know. Turns out Videodrome is really a mode of world conquest, that induces hallucinations in its victims and sabotages their minds. Max gets totally caught up in the mess, and it ruins his otherwise sleazy life. I would have to take a step back from this to analyze what Cronenberg was really trying to get at in this metaphorical story that is typical of his mid-era efforts such as Scanners, Naked Lunch, The Fly, eXistenZ, and They Came from Within. There is an obsession with twisted gnarly flesh and life brought to inanimate objects. Here, he's trying to tell us something about the mind-numbing dangers of television, but I'm not sure I followed his entire message. Instead, I was just staring dumbly at the screen, waiting for a commercial to come along and tell me how to be happy.

30 March 2008

Dan in Real Life - Dan is a widower with three daughters who meets a cool chick at a book store, but her boyfriend calls and she runs off. When he goes to his family reunion, his hipster brother shows up with a date, and what do you know if it's not the book store chick. So Dan decides he's in love with her, and it gets all messy. If you've ever seen a chick-flick, you know how it ends (hint: she's happy and everyone cries.) Dan in Real Life comes on like a stealth chick-flick, because I never saw it coming -- I thought it would have more angst or ennui, or general smartassery. I didn't hate it, but I must admit: the blatant lack of zombies really threw me off.

Resident Evil - Alice wakes up sprawled out naked on the floor of her shower with no recollection of her name or identity. Sounds like a Saturday night to me. She gets dressed, and within a few minutes she discovers that she's some sort of ass-kicking soldier, and the mansion she's living in is the guard house for the enormous "hive" -- an underground complex owned by the massive Umbrella Corporation. She knows this because a troop of soldiers drag her down there to resolve some sort of emergency and rescue survivors. When they get there, they have to battle the Queen -- the compound's main computer that went nuts and locked everyone in, dumping halon and water all over twisted hell. Eventually they shut down the Queen and release security, which brings about another problem -- it releases all the zombies that she had locked up. Turns out the Umbrella Corporation was doing some R&D into a virus that turns living people into the walking dead. Now Alice and her crew have to fight the undead and get the hell out of the hive. Milla Jovovich is a major ass-kicking babe who grants us just the slightest brief glimpses of her naughty parts. Thank God for freeze frame.

I Am Legend - Lieutenant Colonel Doctor Robert Neville, research scientist, is the last living man in New York City. If it were me, I'd probably call myself all that, and throw in "Lord Long Dong" just for good measure. So Neville cruises around with his dog and they hunt deer in the city (note to self: a German Shepherd is not a good hunting dog.) He spends a little time at the gym, and shops for music at the local record store. Sometimes he hits on a hot mannequin chick, but he never quite hooks up -- which is understandable, unless you consider a power drill as a tool for foreplay (though my friend Kristin tells me a story of a dude who got arrested for boning his patio table, so go figure.) Anyhow, it turns out the good doctor isn't really alone; there are a ton of "dark seekers" around -- former humans who were infected by an engineered virus that turned them into pigment-free mindless freaks who fry like vampires in the sunlight. You can imagine what nighttime is like, but Neville is fortunate to have steel plating on all his windows -- oh, and also a world class research lab in his basement. Legend is an updated telling of The Omega Man, which was silly but a little spooky, and correspondingly, it's also silly but a little spooky. But there are holes a mile wide in the story, and despite that, still a little too much explanation by way of flashbacks and outright storytelling. Subtext, people, subtext! Definitely made for the masses.

23 March 2008

Midnight Cowboy - Cowboy-wannabe Joe Buck takes the bus from Texas to New York city, confident that he'll be able to swing his dong around in the air upon arrival and convince beautiful women to pay for its services. He meets Rico Rizzo, a smalltime con-man, who sets him up with a pimp who winds up being a Jesus freak. When Buck finds his plan isn't working out to his expectations, Rico takes him in, and the two take up a ramshackle existence in an abandoned building. They eke by on whatever they can steal or con, with Buck even making a few dollars with his stud services, but most of it he earns as a petty thug. But Rico is sick, and wants only to make it to Florida, as the Utopia he's constructed for himself surely awaits. Jon Voight plays Buck, opposite Dustin Hoffman's Rico -- both as damaged souls trying to find a paradise that always seems to be just out of reach.

Driving Miss Daisy - One day, Miss Daisy goes out for a drive, gets confused, and stomps on the gas when she meant the brake, sending her car careening into the neighbor's azaleas. So her son, being a man of decent means, hires her a chauffeur. But this cranky old southern Jewish woman will have nothing to do with it. Eventually, she gives in, and forms a friendship with Hoke, her kindly old black chauffeur. Over time, they confront all kinds of stuff, she grumbles and he laughs. They get old. The end.

The Woods - Heather's self-absorbed mother ships her off to a boarding school, where the woods call out to her at night, and by day she fights for her life against Samantha -- the queen bitch of the senior class. She makes friends with a little girl, but that's of little solace, considering that the place is haunted by the ghosts of three witches who killed a bunch of people a hundred years ago. Soon, some little blonde girl disappears, then Heather's friend Marcy shortly thereafter, and Heather starts to get a little suspicious. Then Samantha beats her ass some more, and the woods themselves start to attack her. Fuckin' hell, what's a girl to do? The Woods reminded me a bit of that movie where the two girls hook up and play with a falcon, and it also reminded me of Evil Dead and The Craft. Agnes Bruckner plays Heather, and she's a talented little hottie.

Note: the girls taunt the hell out of Heather, who's a fiery redhead. They call her "Firecrotch". Does it surprise you that Brandon Davis was merely repeating something he saw on TV?

The Darjeeling Limited - Controlling older brother Francis Whitman has scheduled a trip for himself and his brothers Jack and Peter on a train through India called the Darjeeling Limited so they can reconnect with each other and experience a collection of spiritual spectacles along the way. But it turns out the Whitman boys are just a little too shallow to benefit from the adventure, not to mention the fact that the spiritual outposts they've chosen are little more than tourist traps. But this film's all about the journey, and along the way we come to understand what drives these three to their fairly bizarre interaction. Eventually, it takes a happenstance tragic accident to bring the boys back to a place where they can work from to resolve their issues. A dark comedy that includes the added benefit of a nice view of Natalie Portman's cute little butt if you watch the accompanied short film, Hotel Chevalier.

Nikita - Nikita is a troubled youth, who puts a bullet through the skull of a cop at point black range. So the prison authorities fake her death and draft her into a cloak and dagger organization that assassinates foreign nationals. You know the story if you've seen the American remake, Point of No Return, which is nearly a scene-to-scene reshoot. Interestingly, the remake is better. Nikita features Anna Parillaud in the title role, and she's a mostly unlikable character -- I sometimes found myself rooting for the bad guys who were trying to kill her. And with the main focus of the story being the growth of this girl, we're supposed to like her, but that's nearly impossible. Instead, we find a girl who effectively gets out of a three year stint in prison, jumps on the first weenie she finds, then pouts her way through her penance missions, punctuating her time off with spastic outbursts of nonsense. It was a clever story though, and thankfully the lovely Bridget Fonda came along to grace the role with some heart in the American remake. Director Luc Besson is brilliant, but he missed the mark this time with his French cast.

16 March 2008

Michael Clayton - Michael is a fixer in a high-profile law firm -- he shows up to bail out big-dollar clients when they make colossal mistakes. One day he gets word that his buddy in the firm, who is defending a huge chemical corporation in a wrongful death class action suit, has lost his fucking marbles, stripped down to his nothing, and declared his undying devotion to the plaintiff right in the middle of a deposition. Michael gets sucked into the case until he's up to ass with bad guys and assholes, but they've underestimated the fact that he's made a career of digging out from nasty problems. Is it as righteous as they make it seem, with that one scene where he says, "Does it look like I'm negotiating?" No, but still it's a good ride. Clooney needs to stick with this kind of stuff and get away from that God-awful Ocean's crap, if he wants to make a serious political run.

No Country for Old Men - A drug deal goes wrong out in the middle of the desert, and Llewelyn, an everyday dude who's just trying to kill some local wildlife, stumbles across the carnage. He finds a handful of dead bodies, a truck full of drugs, and a suitcase full of money. He takes that, along with a snappy little nickel-plated handgun he finds on one of the dead dudes. But it turns out they're not all dead, and one poor slob is just begging for water, which Llewelyn doesn't have, so he leaves the guy to die. Later that night, his conscience gets the best of him, and he goes back with a jug of water for the dying man, a decision that underlies his fatal flaw -- he's just a little too nice to be a total badass. Enter Anton Chigurh -- the killer who's been hired to retrieve the money and the drugs and whatever the fuck else he feels like. In short time, he finds our hero, and the cat-and-mouse begins, with old man sheriff Ed Tom Bell joining in as the dog. The fun is Chigurh, who's innovative, quirky, and most likely insane. Or perhaps he's just pissed off about that really shitty haircut he got -- and he should be, because it's worse than mine. The chase plays out all the way through.

09 March 2008

Just Friends - It's a chick flick, I know, but I was swapping out the CPU fan on my PC and it came on HBO. Chad is a fat boy in high school with a major Jones for Jamie, but she just wants to be friends. Ten years later he's thin and successful, and he finds himself back at home because the headcase of a recording star he's escorting blew up the microwave on his plane -- happens all the time, you know. So while he's at home, he tries to win back the heart of his high school sweetheart and he fucks it all up. Does he get the girl in the end? They don't really show that, but I would have to presume he only gets her in the front.

Across the Universe - A basic-themed love story, built up from some of the greatest songs written by the greatest songwriters ever. Across the Universe follows the story of Jude, a Liverpudlian who comes to America in the mid-sixties and meets Max and his cute sister Lucy, and settles into a rather Bohemian life in New York City. The story loosely follows the path of The Beatles themselves, from the madcap antics of their early days through psychedelia, into the protests against the Vietnam war. Oddly, it reminded me of Born on the Fourth of July for that reason, but the similarities really end there. Along the way, we meet characters based on archetypes drawn from the period and from their lives: Timothy Leary, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Yoko Ono, and surely a host of others I didn't quite get. Through it all, a sweet love story, with Jude as a struggling artist and Lucy as a struggling idealist. The visuals are captivating and the music is absolutely stunning, as should be expected, considering the authors and the obvious care that went into this tribute. I'm buying the DVD, and also touching up my Beatles collection on CD.

Let's Scare Jessica to Death - Old-time spook show about a lady who's just been released from a mental hospital, and her husband and some other dude (?) buy a house out in the country where the townies are weird. It's just moments into the story before Jessica starts having some breaks from reality, but she convinces herself she needs to keep her mouth shut. When the group arrives at the house, they find it occupied by a squatter, and they do what anyone would -- they ask the homeless wretch to move in with them. Jessica continues to see some crazy things, and before long, they find out the house was previously occupied by the Bishop family, and supposedly the daughter was killed on the property but never found. And I'll be darned if that Bishop chick doesn't bear a striking resemblance to the girl they've asked to live with them, and now it's up to Jessica to save her family, and herself. I had this weird déjà vu through the whole thing, because I remember seeing it, but I must have been a teenager at the time. The acting is a little off, but the story is spooky simply because it's not over the top. And I think it got to me back when, and I can still see why.

02 March 2008

Gone Baby Gone - A little girl is abducted, and in addition to the entire police force, the family of the girl hires some dude and his girlfriend to investigate the case. The dude doesn't seem to know much about what he's doing, and the girlfriend sure is pretty, but aside from the fact that she's in nearly every scene, she's all but missing from the movie. As you would expect if you watch a lot of movies, the dude is able to make much better headway than the cops in finding the girl, but the whole thing's a little weird because the mom is a total fuckup to begin with. Gone Baby Gone has an excess of improbability baked into the story, but still it's nicely told, and brings us to a key question at the end -- one of those water cooler questions that concerns our society and liberties and responsibilities. It's a good question -- one which can't be asked without giving away the ending -- but makes it worth the journey.

Rocket Science - A stuttering boy is recruited by an aggressive, moderately cute girl to join the debate team. He falls in love with her, and she casts him aside. He gets revenge by throwing a cello through her window. Then he tries to beat her in the state debate championship, and fails miserably. He's got a cool name, though: Hal Hefner.

Beowulf - The animated telling of the classic Old English poem from the 5th century AD. It's an epic adventure, with dynamics not unlike Peter Jackson's gorgeous Lord of the Rings trilogy, but Beowulf uses that weird animation from 3D video games, that gives us very realistic characters with dead eyes. The story deviates from the original poem, with Beowulf forming an illicit alliance with the mother of the monster Grendel, rather than simply dispatching her outright. Which is understandable, considering that Grendel's demon mother is played by Angelina Jolie, and lovingly animated in a fashion that makes the animated demon either a DILF or an AILF, depending on what level of abstraction you wish to apply to your fantasies. But I digress. Not a bad story -- Beowulf kills a monster and saves a kingdom, but makes a deal with the devil in the process, which becomes his undoing. The theme of pride runs throughout, reminiscent of the hubris found in a Greek tragedy. While I enjoyed the film, I must admit the extensive animation made me a little nervous for the future of filmmaking.

24 February 2008

Four Rooms - Four vignettes from different filmmakers, all set in the same hotel in the span of one night. Uniting the stories is the bellboy, who is drawn into each oddball story. Most notable is the piece by Robert Rodriguez, who pulls astonishing performances not from one of his usual crew, but from the two tiny children who debut and star in the segment. Overall, the film is a catchy little thing, a showplace for these filmmakers, that demonstrates the skills and technique of each. Most disappointing, however, is Tarantino's acting, which normally I relish, as it's only the T-man who really knows how to speak a Tarantino line. But this time around, he comes off just a little… off. No bother, Four Rooms is still an enjoyable little romp, though it won't change your life.

Children of Men - It's the year 2027 and the youngest person on the planet is 18 years old. No one knows why we can't have kids anymore, but it doesn't spell good things for the future. Probably as a result, anarchy is rampant throughout the world, and Great Britain is only maintaining order by aggressively deporting non-citizens. Theo works in a job that he doesn't much care about, when one day he's kidnapped by one of the anarchist organizations, which turns out to be his ex-wife and her crew. They're trying to get a girl out of the country and they need some official papers to make that happen, and counting on Theo to bribe his brother. Before he knows what's going on, Theo is in this thing up to his neck, fighting for his life and to save the fate of the world. Children of Men starts off looking like a sci-fi futuristic romp, but ends up a totally immersive action/adventure story that's more about survival than cool gizmo's from the future. One of the most impressive scenes I've seen in a long time is a continuous shot near the end that spans many minutes, and encompasses street warfare, explosions, flying bodies, huddling masses, and a little tiny baby. A nicely told story from a filmmaker who took his work very, very seriously.

Right at your Door - Brad is a stay-at-home slacker sponging off his pretty wife, and when bombs go off in LA, the whole place turns into a madhouse, so he decides to take off and drive around the city looking for her -- which makes sense, because LA's a small town, and I'm sure no one thought of the same idea. When he blows out his tire, he stops at the local hardware store to pick up some tape, then goes back home to re-evaluate his plan. In comes the gardener from next door, and they listen to the radio, to find that the explosions were caused by "dirty bombs", and they are instructed to seal up windows and doors. Then the rain of ash comes down, and it's supposed to be deadly stuff, so they hunker down in their duct-taped bubble. But along comes Brad's wife Lexi, coughing and wheezing, and all whiny, like, "let me in, let me in!" And he's all like, "no way, 'cause then I'll die." And she's like, "you dick!" And he's like, "sorry Babe, but like BTO said, 'I'm lookin' out for number one!'" So it goes on for a while like that, until her boyfriend shows up (!) and convinces her to make a run for the hospital -- which turns out to be a bad idea, so back she comes. The ending gives the story a twist, but it's predicated on some ridiculous circumstances -- that the "authorities" have the resources to go house-to-house in Metro LA, and to carry around an obscene quantity of supplies to eradicate problems on this same house-to-house basis. But whatever.

17 February 2008

Weirdsville - Two stoner dudes get in a little trouble when their friend OD's in the apartment, so they do what any of us would - they take her to the local drive-in and bury her in the basement. At least, that's their plan, until a crew of Satan-worshippers show up to sacrifice some random dork. But the dork's blood flows into the dead girl's mouth, which reanimates her, so she runs around all apeshit crazy until her buddies throw her in the car and take off. Meanwhile, there's some sort of oddball loanshark after these dudes, so the (dead) girl hatches a plan to rip off the local rich dude by breaking into his safe. She knows the combination because she's done a few professional dates with the guy's son, and she's pretty sure the safe is loaded with cash. So they take the girl home and let her sleep off her death, while they break in to the house and hunt for the safe. All the while, the (dysfunctional) cult is tracking the guys and trying to find the (dead) girl because her blood is super powerful. Then along come a pack of medieval dwarves to beat the holy hell out of the cult members because they think they're Moonies rather than Luciferites (or whatever), and medieval dwarves just hate the hell out of those freakin' Moonies. Eventually, they all convene at the New Age Center where the loanshark gets his money, the rich dude gets better, and the cult gets their comeuppance. Funny, goofy and weird, with beautiful cinematography.

Tales from the Gimli Hospital - Surrealistic adventure, as told by a woman to her grandkids while they wait at their mother's bedside. The story is about two men who spend time together in a hospital; Einar is young and vibrant, while Gunnar is fat and boorish. But for some reason, all the hot nurses go for Gunnar, which drives poor Einar up a wall. One day, they start telling stories and Gunnar tells the story of his true love Snojfridur, who died in their wedding bed. Einar tells the story of a funeral he stumbled upon, and the goodies he took from dead girl -- yes, even those goodies. You guessed it, same girl. Eventually, they fight. Back in the hospital, the mother dies, and so grandma starts into another story. There's so much going on here -- the Einar/Gunnar story itself plays like a child's interpretation of a grandmother's story, with nonsensical goings-on and abundant non sequitars. The story is rife with symbolism, and you could probably spend a lot of time trying to nail down all the little possibilities. While it's fairly non-linear, Gimli's not absurd to the point of nausea, like we find in other such ventures, like Eraserhead. But if you're bummed because Die Hard and Jackass are all sold out, don't think you're going to pick up Gimli instead and find it makes the same sort of sense -- it's not even in the same universe.

Smiley Face - An unabashed stoner story about a girl who eats her roommate's pot cupcakes, then spends the rest of the day trying to pay off her dealer and go to an acting audition. Hilarity ensues. In what amounts to a one-woman show, Anna Faris may be just about cute enough to pull off this sparse story, but not quite. The charm wears off about half way through, after about the billionth stoner joke. If you're looking to get baked and totally dig on the most awesome story about your people, this might be the film for you. Otherwise, no.

Population 436 - Census taker Steve Kady notices that the town of Rockford Falls has been boasting a population of exactly 436 for the past 100 years, so he travels out there to teach those stupid country bumpkins a lesson for lying to the census bureau. Right off the bat, he notices the town is a little strange, with their own traditions, which he's sternly asked to respect. It's not long before he figures out that the townspeople are running an oppressive regime, in which no one is allowed to leave. The population stays right at 436 because that's the way a numbers-obsessed God likes it. So now that Kady has taken up residence, one has to go, so they hang her during the town festival. If you've seen Children of the Corn or The Wicker Man, or probably any number of Twilight Zone episodes, you know the story.

10 February 2008

Reno 911: Miami - The gang gets tickets to attend a law enforcement convention in Miami, but when they get there, they find that their reservation didn't really go through, so there's no admission tickets, laminated lanyards, or hotel rooms. Eventually, they secure a handful of rooms in a rundown dive, and go out to experience the Miami nightlife, winding up in the way that best befits the motley crew: all jerking off in their hotel rooms. The next day they show up at the convention to stand around outside or something, and their fortunes turn 180 degrees when they find that a terrorist has infected all the real law enforcement personnel with some deadly virus inside the convention, and they are left as the only law enforcement in town. So they have to patrol the town and somehow catch the terrorists, both of which they pull off, somehow. Like The Office, Reno 911 as all but dropped the premise that they are playing for a camera crew that is filming a reality series, which kills a little bit of the fun, but sidesteps all the questions about the inevitable show. But the franchise seems to find a nice home on the silver screen, as those bits that are censored-out even off-network, play so well in an R-rated venture. Reno 911: Miami doesn't venture far from its TV roots, wisely, and fans of the show will enjoy it just as well.

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind - The jury is out on whether or not this is the true story of Chuck Barris, television producer, creator of The Dating Game and The Gong Show, and contract killer for the CIA. As a young man, Barris heard the clarion call of television, and moved out to New York to be a part of it. Struggling to get by, one day he stumbled on an idea that would become The Dating Game, and his career took off. But while he was still down on his luck, he was approached by a mysterious dark figure purporting to be a member of the CIA, who wanted to hire and train Barris as a contract killer. In the course of his career, Barris hosted the wildly irreverent Gong Show, and killed 33 people. So, is it true? All credit to his associates who try to load on the mystique, but no, Barris leaves enough bread crumbs for us to understand that this is an allegorical story. The mysterious stranger first shows up when Barris is down on his luck, getting into barfights, and he sees something in the future mogul that could make his unique talents invaluable to his country. When his life becomes boring and mundane, the stranger is there to enliven it. It's likely a fantasy that Barris lived during this time of his life, and revisited it in the form of an "Unauthorized Autobiography." It's still very clever, and great fun to relive the craziness of The Gong Show.

03 February 2008

Big Bang Love, Juvenile A - Takashi Miike's heavily symbolic story of two men in prison. One of them dies, and he blasts off into outer space, while the other climbs a pyramid to heaven -- all because of a triple rainbow. I grabbed this one because Takashi Miike is a master of the bizarre, and, as advertised, it's way the hell out there.

Sid and Nancy - Sid Vicious was a founding member and occasional bass player for the Sex Pistols. He met a heroin addict named Nancy, and the two of them spun off on a wild heroin journey. Eventually, Sid killed Nancy by stabbing her, then he OD'ed sometime later. Sid and Nancy could be a compelling story, if not overacted to the point of nausea by Chloe Webb, who played Nancy way way way over the top, as a screaming New-Yorker who reminded me quite a bit of Cindy Lauper. Sucked the life out of the whole thing.

I Know Who Killed Me - You can't really blame Lindsay Lohan for this piece of crap. You could, however, question her judgement on the decision to star in it, but she's been giving us reason to question her judgement for quite some time now. And it's that poor judgement that not only leads her to make shitty movies and bang multiple random dudes on a daily basis, but also to give me hope -- hope, that I too, may one day bag that ass, as I have a fondness -- a soft spot, if you would, or perhaps a hard spot, depending on where you choose to localize the metaphor -- for husky-voiced, big-titted, stupid women who spend most of their waking hours either drunk or bent-over, or perhaps a bit of both. But I digress -- and widely. So Aubrey Fleming is either a good girl or a slut; a pianist or a writer, but in fact the piano-playing is dubbed and the writing is cringe-worthy dreck -- facts which only we -- the forlorn viewers -- know, while those around her believe she is a talented star in the making. So when she's kidnapped by the local serial killer, it causes a lot of turmoil to the community, and they set up big dragnets and command centers. Days later, her body is found, and she's alive but missing an arm and a leg (not to worry, they soon fit her with bionic replacements), but "wait," she says. "I'm not Aubrey, my name is Dakota and I'm a stripper with a dead crackwhore mom." Of course no one believes her because she has that snarky, smartass, Lindsay-Lohan tone, but eventually, thanks to one of the handy Interwebs that all the kids are talking about these days, Dakota discovers that she is in fact an identical twin, separated at birth from Aubrey, and the loss of her arm and leg were examples of non-religious stigmata -- a sympathetic sharing of pain with her long lost sister, who is still missing and may be on the verge of dying soon. "Yeah, right," everyone says, but Dakota sticks to her guns and she bones Aubrey's boyfriend to prove her point. Before the sweat dries, Aubrey's mother shares the story of Aubrey's birth with her -- and the corresponding fact that there were not twins exuding from her womb -- and it seems like a locked down story: Aubrey-cum-Dakota is really just suffering from the post-traumatic stress disorder. But Dakota is one tough whore, so she sneaks out of the house, and goes to the grave of the last girl who was killed by the mystery serial killer, where she finds a blue ribbon, which proves (conclusively, mind you) that Dakota and Aubrey are sisters, and that Aubrey's piano instructor is the killer. So Aubrey's dad apologizes, because of course he should have believed her, and they walk over to the killer's house to catch him and rescue Aubrey, who's buried in his yard under some stained glass. Fuckin' hell, what will they think of next?

Phantasm - The caretaker at the Morningside funeral parlor is a huge creepy old dude who nabs the recently deceased (sometimes after having them killed by his succubus in lavender), and squashes them down to half size before they're reanimated and dispatched to work as slave labor on his home planet. So teenager Mike stumbles onto this wicked plan by spying on the old coot at the funeral of his brother's friend. When Mike breaks in and looks around, he finds a crew of those little dwarfish things, and a silver sphere that cruises the mausoleum, just itching to stick its claws into some flesh so it can launch its drill. Mikey hightails it out of there, and recruits his big brother and his friend Reggie to help destroy the aliens and send them back from whence they came. Phantasm is a fairly spooky low-budget horror/sci-fi joint that spawned about a billion of its own sequels, and stands the test of time fairly well. I'm pretty sure I first saw this at a drive-in, accompanied by about a million beers, in my teen days. Funny I don't remember it better…

27 January 2008

The Number 23 - Walter Sparrow is an everyday dude with a hot wife who looks just like Virginia Madsen. One day, his wife picks up a cheap little book called The Number 23, about a dude who's obsessed with the number. In the throes of his obsession, the main character kills his girlfriend. So Walter begins to read the book, and he finds that his life, too, is wrapped around the number 23, and that so much of the character's life sounds like his own. His wife thinks he's nuts. His kid plays along. Then there's a big surprise ending. Wowee! This retread-of-surely-something never really takes off, and it follows so predictably, the viewer can be excused for the occasional catnap. Just don't tell Walter, because he's an animal control officer, and he just might… oh, I don't know. Whatever. Don't waste your time.

The Simpsons Movie - Groening and company made a calculated decision to stay close to what makes the series so clever, and he comes up a winner. Here we find Homer Simpson dooming the town of Springfield to destruction because of his wanton disregard for others, and his love of donuts. The family escapes town, only to find that they must return to save their friends and neighbors. As in the show, the subtle details shine.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - It was probably a mistake to make a movie of the seminal gonzo work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, but on paper it sounds like such a great plan. While I'm sure Johnny Depp's portrayal of HST garners kudos from friends of the good doctor, on film it leaves the viewer with the inescapable sense that this is Depp doing an impression -- one not really well-suited to his talents -- and therefore the whole thing comes off lacking a certain genuineness that was inherent in the book. Thompson conceded that the vast majority of the work was based in fiction, but still it rings of the purity of the voice of a man who knows such things, and that voice was absent from the film. You should read the book instead.

20 January 2008

Solstice - Her twin sister died a few months ago, but Megan's trying to get on with her life, so she spends Senior Week with her friends at her parents' lake cottage, because it's "tradition." Wait, tradition? How can it be tradition, if she's celebrating her senior year? And why do her friends all know this house like it's their own? And why is it a mansion, rather than a cottage, which apparently stands empty most of the year? And why do they all act like they don't know anything about the neighborhood and the neighbors? What a jumbled mess. So anyway, she starts to see some creepy stuff, like visions of mud, and a little teddy bear keychain from hell that follows her around. So she calls in the local cajun kid to do a séance -- and he just happens to be that creepy kid from Seventh Heaven who was all high and mighty about being a virgin until he knocked up Haylie Duff -- and then the shit really hits the fan. Aside from a little twist at the end, you could see every scene coming from miles away, but it's a PG-rated horror film cast with teens, so you shouldn't expect much more.

The Hamiltons - A family of kids are orphaned somehow and they move into a new house. The twins like to make out with each other, big brother's trying to hold the family together while having secret gay sex with homeless transients, and junior is just trying to fit in at school. Oh, and they kidnap people and kill them. It's like Party of Five, with torture and murder. Actually, I don't know, I never watched that stupid fucking show. And really, I kind of wish I'd never seen this one. The premise and the trailer were great, but the movie itself left a lot to be desired.

Jackass Number Two - Exactly what you'd expect.

13 January 2008

Zodiac - The zodiac killer did his work on the West Coast from 1969 to whenever, killing maybe seven people or so. The cops never caught him, and the closest anyone came was a little cartoonist dude for the newspaper who became obsessed with the case. The prime suspect died, and then everything stopped, so you figure it out. Fade to black.

Once - You would have to call this a musical because of the pivotal role that music plays in the story, but it never ventures into the territory of West Side Story, with people randomly breaking into song. Instead, the music grows organically from the story, which concerns a guitar-playing street musician who meets a girl. They start to collaborate, and a little tiny love story develops. But he has a girlfriend -- estranged -- and she has a husband -- estranged -- so they struggle with trying to do what's best. But it's the music of Once that's so captivating, from the opening shot in particular, all the way through to the end. This guy can play, and he can sing, but it's the emotion that comes through in his performances that's just so moving. Once isn't a story that will change your life, although the music may do just that. If you're a musician, you'll wish you were that guy, and if you're not a musician, you'll wish that you were.

06 January 2008

Halloween - Basing his film off the original 1978 blockbuster that kicked the slasher genre into high gear, Rob Zombie had little to gain by simply remaking a brilliant piece of horror, so he landed on a different approach. He spends the first half of the movie telling the story of Michael Myers -- how he wound up a crazed inhuman killer -- and then he spends the second half of the film re-telling an updated version of the classic. I still contend that there's very little joy in his life, but somewhere along the way, Rob Zombie turned into a pretty decent filmmaker. The newly added exposition explains the character -- how he went from bully's victim to merciless killer -- and sets the stage for the carnage to come. Zombie stays true to the original, with liberal sprinklings of nudity, teen sex, and sudden violence, and the Laurie Strode character is once again a diamond in the rough -- but lacking the lungs of Jamie Lee. All in all, a well-made slasher that won't leave you wanting to skip around in the daisies.

Rabbit-Proof Fence - In 1931, the white settlers in Australia had gained control over the entire region, even the aboriginal people who populated the area. In their infinite wisdom, they decided that any child born to mixed parentage -- referred to as "half-caste" children -- were to be removed from their villages and indoctrinated into white society via an internment camp. Man, I hate Whitie sometimes. So one day they find three such half-castes -- Gracie, Daisy, and Molly -- and they abduct them and ship them off to camp, 1500 miles away. After a brief stay, 14 year-old Molly decides she's had enough, so she and the other two take off and hike their way home --1500 miles back to their village, mostly following the rabbit-proof fence built by the government (which strikes me as yet another astonishingly stupid idea.) Along the way, they outwit police, trackers, and random strangers, and they make the entire journey on foot, save Gracie, who gives up and is captured at a train station. Crazy thing is, it's a true story. As a postscript, Molly is captured years later and once again returned to the camp, and she once again walks the 1500 miles home. These are hardcore chicks. Rabbit-Proof Fence is more inspiring than captivating, but inspiring it is. And yet another bit of shame to reveal from Whitie's past.

Glen or Glenda - Ed Wood Jr. established himself as an extraordinarily good bad filmmaker with his pièce de résistance, Plan 9 from Outer Space. Here, however, we find his first piece of work, which is a semi-documentary, partially autobiographical story about a cross-dresser named Glen, and the plight of cross-dressers worldwide. While I'm sure Mr. Wood was attempting to air out some demons, he does so in a way that misses the mark, because of the pompous delivery of the narration. There are plenty of hokey mechanisms to enjoy -- like the interjection of Bela Lugosi throughout, spouting nonsense about snails and puppy dog tails, crazy overblown dialogue, and also a random insertion of bondage / S&M / rape / lesbianism footage that has absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand -- but unfortunately the title overall lacks the charm of a classic like Plan 9. Still an interesting view into the skull of a madman genius, but not my favorite Wood joint.

Resident Evil: Extinction - The third in the Resident Evil series, this one picks up with the majority of the world turned into zombies -- kind of like the fourth in the Living Dead series. When I saw the second installment, I was a little confused all the way through because I didn't remember the details of the first, and it seemed there wasn't adequate exposition to get me back into the story. The third installment suffers no such problem, as it stands fairly well on its own -- Alice is out cruising the countryside and killing zombies and eventually she runs into a small clan of survivors. She saves them from man-eating crows (really!) and then they looked at each other and said, "we might as well join up." They become the Thamesmen at that point. Meanwhile, the evil corporate dogs of the Umbrella Corporation are trying to find an antidote to the virus by cloning Alice ad infinitum, and experimenting with captured zombies -- not sure I really get all that, but whatever. For her part, Alice has been developing psychic powers that allow her to move things with her mind -- kind of like when I was in college, me and my buddy would fuck girls with our minds -- but I digress, and widely. The showdown between Alice and the goons of the Umbrella Corporation is inevitable. I felt the pacing here was nearly perfect, and I didn't zone out for even a second. If you're a fan of zombies, or Milla Jovovich, or Mad Max, or nipples of steel (seriously, wow), I would recommend this flick. It's a mindless zombie thing… but kind of cool. And told so much better than the second one.

30 December 2007

Brothers of the Head - Mocumentary about conjoined twins who are sold into the music business, and form a punk band. Throughout, you never really know if this is a true documentary or a work of fiction, because the subject matter lends itself so readily to the premise of an onsite documentary team. I cheated and consulted my super-brilliant best friend, the Interweb. So anyway, here's what happens: daddy sells the boys out to a sleazeball manager who does freakshows. So he gets one of the brothers to learn the guitar, and the other -- the angry one -- becomes the de facto singer. They start making music. Along comes a love interest who falls for, and sleeps with, the guitar player. Eventually, drugs arrive on the scene. Mayhem ensues. Cool soundtrack.

Superbad - I saw an early trailer for this, and I've been dying to see it ever since. Three high-school dorks are scheming to acquire alcohol for a party, so pretty girls will be grateful enough to do them. Meanwhile, they're also fretting over their pending separation anxieties, as they plan to attend different schools. So far, it all sounds like a rehash of every other teen comedy, but Superbad excels in the details of its characters. Jonah Hill plays the lead role of Seth, picking up where he left off in Knocked Up -- with a rapid-fire wit and an overriding insecurity, borne right from the mind of writer Seth Rogen. Evan -- played by Michael Cera -- is Seth's sensitive friend, the one with the conscience -- and then there's their casual friend, Fogell, who acquires a fake ID under the single moniker "McLovin". Hill's rapid-fire comedic timing plays so well off Cera's take on the sensitive Evan, and McLovin is just comedic genius. Like all Apatow films, Superbad has a heart at its core, which tempers the otherwise crude material. Superbad isn't super great, but it is super good.

Exiled - Wo is a former gangster who decided to leave the gang and raise a family. Somehow, he wound up taking a shot at the boss, and now Boss Fay wants him dead. So four guys show up on his doorstep -- two who want to kill him, and two who are there to protect him. And what do you know if they aren't all childhood friends? So they have a nice dinner together, crash at his pad, then set off in the morning to find work? Wait, what? That's kind of how the whole deal goes -- I think it would have made more sense if I spoke Cantonese, but -- alas -- I don't. So they wind up trying to kill Boss Keung -- a hit that was ordered by Boss Fay -- but the real hit was on the goofy ass captain who contracted the deal. But they wind up in a shootout with both bosses, and Wo is mortally wounded. On and on it goes, with plenty of guns a-blazing and such.

23 December 2007

Letters from Iwo Jima - The story of the Japanese troops who defended Iwo Jima, particularly the commanding officer, General Kuribayashi, a westernized leader whose ideas didn't necessarily fit well with the Japanese troops. But he does his best to defend an island that he knows is indefensible, and tries to keep his men as safe as possible. A nice companion piece to Flags of our Fathers, the film takes its name from the many letters that soldiers, and especially Kuribayashi, sent and received. In a pivotal scene, an American soldier dies and the troops find him holding a letter from his mother. When they read it aloud, they realize that these American dogs are pretty much the same as they are -- with mothers who cry and families who worry.

Lord of the Rings - The only reason I wouldn't consider the Peter Jackson trilogy as the three greatest movies ever made is that I believe they must be considered as a single film -- the single greatest movie ever made. His adaptation of the Tolkien classic is spot on, telling the story in a huge way, as I would have to think would have made JRR proud. Tolkien crafted an entire world, which he called Middle Earth, and here we see the pinnacle story of that world. You could call it fantasy, but that depiction brings to mind just dragons and swords and overblown animation, whereas here we have a story that is nothing short of epic. It reaches far and deep into the lives of the characters, from the lowest swamp rat to the highest blessed kings, and tells us the story of the hearts of every last one. Read the books; watch the movies; it's worth it.

The Man Who Wasn't There - Billy Bob Thornton stars in this bleak portrayal of 50's-era barber Ed Crane, who suspects his wife of cheating on him, so instead of confronting her about it, he chooses to blackmail her boyfriend anonymously, netting him a cool $10 grand to finance a crazy new technology called dry-cleaning. But it goes all wrong. There are a couple humorous moments, but in general, don't expect an uplifting experience. Shot beautifully in black and white, The Man Who Wasn't There is the visually stunning, drab story of the quiet desperation of one man who makes some bad choices in life and must live with them.

Sophie's Choice - If you've ever wondered what the big fuss over Meryl Streep is all about, watch Sophie's Choice. Streep plays World War 2 survivor Sophie, with a Polish accent that's a dream -- it's a portrayal as effortless as Brando used to turn in. And while it's dificult to get past the understanding that this is Meryl Streep you're looking at, you'd otherwise swear it was a little Polish girl, who not only speaks with broken English, but also with the stops and starts of someone struggling with the language, all the while nailing the gripping emotion of her character dead on. So here's the deal: Stingo is a fledgling writer who moves from the south to Brooklyn, where he takes up residence in a boarding house, only to find Sophie and her unbalanced -- but very fun -- boyfriend Nathan living upstairs. They quickly become a cozy threesome, with only Nathan's occasional paranoid delusions fucking things all up. Over time, we hear more and more about Sophie and her past, and her survival in the concentration camp at Auschwitz. So the whole story plays out half in the present (well, 1940's-era, you know what I mean), and half in the past. Eventually we learn of the choice she was asked to make -- which I won't divulge here -- but it shapes her life and her future and everything else.

16 December 2007

The Invisible - I really didn't want to see this one, but I felt I had to, as it seemed to borrow some themes and scenes from movie I wrote, called Where's Mike? Now, having seen The Invisible, I feel my initial assessment was right -- I was justified in not wanting to spend the time. Here's the scoop: Nick Powell is cool, good-looking, smart, and rich, so of course he's the outsider at school because those kids always are. He gets caught up trying to save his friend from a loan shark -- who happens to be a petite pretty little girl -- and she kills him. So then his spirit comes back to life and follows her around. But wait! He's actually still alive, and just needs to get someone to find his body before it dies. And with all the incessant haunting, Annie -- the would-be killer -- falls in love with Nick, and goes to all ends to save him. For the 12 and under crowd, this could be, like, OMG the most awesomest movie totally ever! But for those of us even a year beyond that cutoff, you'll find the story line trite, the soundtrack annoying, and the character arcs improbable at best. Where's Mike? is much much better, and it hasn't even been made yet.

Paycheck - Ben Aflac stars as Michael Jennings, a reverse-engineering specialist who copies another company's product, then makes it better. When he's done, they wipe his memory clean of the transaction, for some reason. One day he takes on the assignment of a lifetime, which consumes three years of his life, which is erased from his memory. When he tries to cash his 90 million dollar paycheck, he finds his cupboard is bare, and to make matters worse, the FBI is interrogating him because of the sensitive nature of the work he supposedly did. All he has as a remembrance is a bag of stuff, which, as it turns out, he left to himself so he could put the story back together and save himself from the FBI and the goons in the company he worked for. Paycheck takes on a sci-fi angle, and gives off the distinct aroma of Minority Report or Vanilla Sky. Coincidence? Not entirely -- both Paycheck and Minority Report were written by Phillip K. Dick, and Vanilla Sky was Tom Cruise's training ground for Minority Report.

09 December 2007

Fuck - a documentary surrounding the history of the greatest four-letter word in the world. Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a huge fan of the word, so I looked with great favor on the idea of such a documentary (from the same people who brought us The Aristocrats.) While it's terribly cute, and full of celebrity commentary on the f-bomb, it drags on just a wee bit too long, and I found my mind wandering. They do take some nice stabs at the Bush administration (those fucking fuckers!), and at the more prudish amongst us (like the fucking PMRC, led by Tipper fucking Gore.) They even show a bit of the old in-out, albeit amongst cartoon characters, punk rockers, elephants and rhinos.

The Raven - Total shit. Worst movie ever.

Captivity - A Saw ripoff, in which a girl is abducted, and when she wakes up, she finds herself in a basement, where she's forced to do the bidding of her abductor. She meets a fellow captive and together they try to escape. Then they bone for a little while, then some other shit happens. Elisha Cuthbert is delectable, but the movie is a tired ripoff.

The Tripper - David Arquette film about a Reagan-loving slasher at a hippie festival. Whatever.

25 November 2007

Doctor Zhivago - We learn from the start that a random peasant girl may be the daughter of Zhivago and pretty girl Lara, so when we flash back into the story of Zhivago, it's already a given that he's going to hook up. What's not cool is that he marries a different girl, so you gotta figure somewhere along the line he's got some 'splaining to do. Despite that seemingly lurid intro, the movie is mostly a story of people caught up in the middle of the Russian Revolution -- the Reds versus the Whites -- and the futility and rhetoric of it all. So Zhivago was orphaned as a young lad, and he moved in with some friends of the family. Years later he marries the girl who was raised as his sister (ew), but he keeps crossing paths with another random hottie. With the Reds eventually in power, the Zhivago family sets out to find refuge, and never really does. It's an epic story, and good to know about if you dozed off in history class like I did. See also: We The Living, by Ayn Rand.

18 November 2007

Knocked Up - In case you've been hiding under a rock, here's the premise: a fat slacker pothead named Ben gets extraordinarily lucky and hooks up with a major hottie in Alison one night in a bar. After a bit of the old in-out, she wakes up the next day horrified, but that's nothing compared to what she feels when she finds out she's pregnant. But then she decides she really likes him, and makes him her boyfriend and baby daddy. Two things I like about this movie: 1) It's smart. The humor is obvious, but there is so much more under the surface, such as Kristen Wiig's passive-aggressive subversiveness toward Alison. 2) It's loaded with detail. Every character comes from a different angle and is 200% over the top. That makes for unrealistic, but very funny interchanges. What I don't like: 1) Come on, get serious. Look at her and look at him -- she would never, never, never fall for him. 2) The main story line is really predictable. 3) There is absolutely no chemistry between Ben and Alison. 4) Not once does Katherine Heigl get naked. I mean, come on. But the good far outweighs the bad, and I would even consider buying the DVD.

A Streetcar Named Desire - "Stella! Stella!" So Blanche DuBois shows up to visit her sister Stella, and like many family members do, she winds up moving in, much to the dismay of Stella's bruiser husband Stanley. Stella and Stanley are not without their faults, but Blanche is a total mess, and Stanley picks up on that fact from the start. She puts on airs, covers up a past as a prostitute, and reveals that she lost the family property. When she finally hooks a man named Mitch, everyone can see that he's making a huge mistake -- everyone but Mitch, who has his pussy goggles firmly attached and focused on home. So Stanley sorts it out for him, cause he can't stand the nasty ho. Brando is just a dream as Stanley, who's more than a little rough around the edges. And the famed "Stella!" was all about Stanley demonstrating his love and Stella her commitment. My bullshit alarm went off near the end when Stanley was alone with Blanche, and he decided to cut himself off a piece of that. I lost all sense of who the character was at that moment, because Blanche was clearly a foul beast and Stanley clearly hated her, and I just didn't get that spin on it. But Brando was a dream.

I (Heart) Huckabees - First of all, shame on the producers for stealing a page from the Prince manual and coming up with an unprintable name -- or at least it's unprintable using the 90's html editor that I use, so maybe the blame's all on me. I'm a little surprised that this movie didn't take off the way some of its peers did -- it's cut from the cloth of any Charlie Kaufman film, and it's just as entertaining. Here's what happens: Albert Markovski is the director of a group that is trying to save a marsh from the retail giant Huckabees, represented by smooth-talking Brad. He is experiencing a life crisis when he randomly bumps into the same guy three times. Believing this to be at the root of his life-dilemma, he heads off to the nearest existential detectives to see if they can decipher his coincidence. Instead, they dig deep into his life, uprooting his mommy-issues and his job and everything else, even pairing him with his "other", a firefighter who's also experiencing an existential crisis. In the middle of Markovski's case, rival existential detective Caterine Vauban shows up, and the process is thrown into disarray. Huckabees features a highly talented cast, including Lily Tomlin, Dustin Hoffman, Markie Mark, Jude Law, Naomi Watts, Isla Fisher (in a small part but I love her), and Jason Schwartzman in the lead role as the wishy-washy Markovski. The cost of admission is a tolerance for nonsense in this wacky adventure, which is really taking a less-than-subtle poke at the psychiatric industry. Clever and innovative, Huckabees isn't for everyone, but it kept me in giggles.

1408 - I think it's been a while since Stephen King came up with something that really made sense. Here, professional skeptic Mike Enslin checks into room 1408 of the Dolphin Hotel after much protestation from the manager, who tells Enslin that some 50 people have already died in that room. But quoting some random innkeeper statute that guarantees him the room, Enslin checks in and buckles down. There, he encounters all kinds of strangeness -- the typical crap we've come to expect from a Hollywood portrayal of a haunted room. We're left with confusion, never knowing if there really is something wrong with the room or if it all has to do with the guy. And the behavior of the room itself is inconsistent -- sometimes the outside world can be impacted from within and at other times it's totally isolated. There are some clever mechanisms, like an alarm clock that counts down through 60 minutes of hell, but way too many unanswered questions. File this in the WTF file.

11 November 2007

The Hoax - Story of Clifford Irving, a down-and-out writer who, in a moment of misplaced bravado, declares that he has the story of the century, which he's going to reveal in a couple days. So now he has to come up with the story of the century, and this is it: the exclusive biography of Howard Hughes, as told by the recluse himself. Only thing is, Clifford's never met the guy. But on he goes anyway, stringing along a line of bullshit that only the truly inspired could hope to achieve, fooling his publisher and even the world at large. For his efforts: one million smackaroos in 70's dollars, and an eventual 17 months in prison. Richard Gere portrays Irving as a charismatic swindler -- one of the good guys, who told a fantastic fib and almost got away with it -- but if you watch closely you'll realize he's a petty con man who cheats on his wife, fucks over his best friend, and lies to a nation. A fascinating story though, with Julie Delpy's cute little boobies thrown in for good measure. Woo-hoo!

Planet Terror - The Rodriguez half of Grindhouse. In this feature, there's some sort of chemical spill that turns people into zombies, and it's up to this character mysteriously named "El Wray" and his go-go dancer girlfriend to save the planet. There was so much going on here that I didn't really follow, what with government plots and this dude's alter ego, but Planet Terror was still fun for its sheer depth of exploitation of the grindhouse genre. Exploding bodies, gunplay, exploding cars, exploding trucks, exploding parking lots, hot chicks, zombies, chick-fights, evil doctors, secret sauce, and multi-colored hypo needle fu. The dialogue is a little stilted in places where it isn't really supposed to be, but what the fuck? Rose McGowan flashes her butt around in the first 2 minutes and I was hooked immediately. She still comes off like adopted little sister Paige on Charmed, but again, what the fuck? How do I know that character's name? Um, I don't know... I never watched the show...

04 November 2007

Fido - It's the mid-fifties, and Ward Cleaver is spending some quality time with the Beaver, and Lassie is out somewhere yapping her happy ass off. And there are zombies -- a shitload of flesh-eating zombies cruising the countryside, made that way by dying and then being infected by zombie space dust. But fortunately for us, the ZomCon company has come up with space-age chainlink fences that they've wrapped around every city to keep the creepy crawlies out, and they've even invented a nifty collar that turns blood-thirsty zombies into complacent little conscientious objectors who make excellent servants or pets or whatever. So the Robinsons, in their desire to keep up with the neighbors, pick up a zombie servant and promptly name him Fido. Little Timmy discovers that Fido is a good playmate and protector, and when Dad comes up lacking, Mom finds Fido to be a pretty good playmate as well. But Fido's collar goes on the fritz, and even though he eats the bitchy old neighbor, he turns out to be an okay guy underneath all the rotting flesh. But then the ZomCon bad guys kidnap Fido, and Mom and Timmy go on a rescue mission, aided by their spazzy neighbor -- a former ZomCon employee who's actually boning his zombie girlfriend (because she's hot. Dead and rotting, but hot.) The whole mess of it sounds stupid, but it's a black comedy that never takes itself seriously, so it manages just the right feel. There may be a deeper message buried in there somewhere, but you won't feel bad for not looking.

28 October 2007

28 Weeks Later - The rage virus has taken over England. When you become infected, within 20 seconds you turn into a being that's so full of rage, it only wants to kill everything in sight. 28 weeks after the initial infection, the majority of England has become infected and died off, and now, with the virus purged from humanity, the US-led NATO forces have arrived to clean up the mess and repatriate the survivors. The only rule is that they have to stay inside the green zone -- the safe boundaries of the city. Well, what do you know if a couple wiseass kids don't sneak out to visit their old home, where they find their mom still alive -- like Charlton Heston in The Omega Man, she somehow has an immunity to the virus and may hold the key to serum. But that means that she's also the only living carrier, so when she kisses her husband, he becomes infected, and we're back at square one. Now the military has no choice but to exterminate every living being in the area, and our heroes -- a soldier, the two kids, a doctor, the professor and Mary Ann -- have to escape from the military and the zomboids. It's not bad -- didn't change my life, but it's not bad.

A Mighty Heart - The story of Mariane Pearl -- the wife of Daniel Pearl, who was executed by terrorists in Pakistan following the US invasion into Afghanistan in 2001. The story follows a fairly linear path, and we all know what happens in the end, but what's so surprising here is that the lead role is played by Angelina Jolie, who tucks away her extra-large boobs, puts on a sad face, and renders herself almost unrecognizable. Even in her Oscar-winning role in Girl, Interrupted, she was still recognizable as Angelina, but here she puts on surprised eyes and a French accent, and it's only those pouty lips that betray her. But she's marvellous as the courageous wife of the martyred writer, and the story is worth a watch.

Penny Dreadful - I have a feeling the original title of this film was simply "Penny", but they changed it after the initial reviews recommended that the film should be considered "Dreadful". In short: a girl is on a road trip with her therapist, trying to get over her fear of cars after her mother was killed in a traffic accident. They hit some random freak wandering on the road, and then give him a ride to a deserted camp nearby. (A crazed killer in a deserted summer camp! There's a clever concept!) So of course, their car breaks down on the way out, then the dude kills the therapist, and traps the girl inside the car by wedging it between two trees, where he terrorizes her for the rest of the movie. It should come as no surprise that two teenagers who have sex in the woods get killed, along with the hilljack living in a rickety cabin. In the beginning, it was possible that the girl herself was the killer, but as that possibility dried up, so did my interest. Penny Dreadful is mostly unwatchable, but I'm really trying to get through all of the 8 Films to Die For, and this is number 6 on my list, dreadful though it is.

21 October 2007

Bug - Aggie is a waitress in a honky-tonk bar, just barely making ends meet, and hiding out from Jerry, her abusive parolee ex. Then Peter walks into her life, bringing some normalcy to the craziness. He's shy, brainy, and a little odd, and she likes having someone around. After their first night rolling around on the sheets, he's awakened by a stray aphid that bites him on the arm, leaving a little puffy red mark. In short time he reveals to her that he's been in the army where he was the subject of medical experiments that have gone wrong. The CIA is tracking him and the bugs are eating him alive. In fact, he's totally ape-shit crazy. Aggie descends into the madness with him, and they hatch out a story (sorry) that explains why they wound up together. In fact, they're both totally ape-shit crazy. That Peter is a nut is apparent from the start, but Aggie is a thirty-something woman who's been living in the world for a long time, and even though she does a few lines and blazes the random bowl, it's not really too likely that she'd descend so completely into psychosis. But suspend the disbelief and go along for the ride, because it's a crazy one. A toned-down Ashley Judd and creepy-ass Michael Shannon put in brilliant and intense performances as total wacko shut-ins, and Ashley, true to her nature, spends a fair amount of time naked or nearly so. Naked hot crazy chicks. Love 'em.

For the record: I never used to confuse Ashley Judd and Charlize Theron until my friend Carmel told me that she did, and now I get them mixed up all the time. Chalize is the stunner who got naked and crazy in that movie with Keanu Reeves where he becomes the Devil's lawyer (or whatever), and Ashley is the Judd girl who got naked and crazy in that movie with Luke Perry where he gets locked up (or something.)

Flight of the Living Dead - An unscrupulous medical company has created a retrovirus that reanimates dead flies, organs, and even whole human beings. They've tried the potion out on their own Doctor Kelly, and packed her on ice aboard flight 239 to Paris, with a machine-gunned guard standing by in the cargo hold. And what do you know but something goes wrong with that plan -- apparently they didn't plan for weather. So when lightning strikes the plane, the chick wakes up, the guard shoots her, she mutates into a zombified killing machine, then kills the guard, and the two of them go on a rampage. The remaining passengers squeal, scream, and kick some zombie ass. There's nothing terribly original here, but considering that any zombie movie is better no zombie movie, it's pretty entertaining all around, landing a comfortable middle ground between Night of the Living Dead and Shaun of the Dead. Which is to say, it's not quite serious but not quite lighthearted. Just good clean zombie fun.

Road House - The original, with Patrick Swayze, who stars as Dalton -- a "cooler" of renown -- a lead bouncer who cleans up bad bars. He's called in to the Double Deuce, a dive joint in East Bumblefuck, Kansas with blood on the floors and chicken wire around the stage. After clearing out all the bad element from the staff, he teaches the remaining crew to "be nice," and what do you know if the place doesn't just turn around on a dime. But he soon learns that the real trouble in town is with the rich guy on the hill who owns most of the town and also a decent percentage of the people in it. So Dalton calls in his buddy Wade Garrett, played in classic fashion by Sam Elliott, and the two of them take on the bad guys, bang some hot doctors, and make the place safe for the townies. Okay, so nearly twenty years later, it's exceedingly difficult to get past Swayze's haircut and the feeling that he's about to break out into dance at any moment. And once the threats start to ramp up, both sides begin to murder each other, with the only law enforcement intervention coming at the end when the sheriff is dismissed with an explanation that "no one saw anything." While there are six or seven bodies lying on the floor. But Garrett explains to Dalton, and to us -- those bewildered last few who believe that murder may not always be the best way to deal with life's problems -- that once a man points a gun at you, you're obligated to kill him. I'll have to check on that statute. Road House is dated and awfully silly, with every last action movie cliché you can imagine, but still there's something satisfying about the whole venture -- the good vs. evil dynamic and the superhero characterizations. Nobody puts Baby in a corner.

Mysterious Skin - Not at all what I was expecting here. Two young men -- one a male prostitute and the other a mama's boy UFO freak -- share a common past, and spend the whole movie before getting to that point. Once there, we find it's what we thought it was all along. I imagine this movie might have an audience with those who were molested as children or something, but for me it was just entirely too much gayness and man-on-boy action.

14 October 2007

Black Christmas (1974) - It amazes me that the 2006 remake was so bad, whereas the original was a rarely-seen gem of a horror movie that predated and presaged Halloween, When a Stranger Calls, and Slumber Party Massacre. Look: a handful of girls are staying at their sorority house over Christmas break and find themselves plagued by prank calls. When some of the girls turn up missing, the others wonder if there may be foul play at work, and they begin to suspect their rich and snooty boyfriends. They have to deal with the idiot cops, bumpkin townies, and their drunk-ass housemother, all the while trying to catch a killer. The story never degrades into horror movie cliches, with the girls dressing up in their nighties or smoking weed or splitting up to see what's going on -- though a couple of the girls drink way too much. Black Christmas leaves questions unanswered and ends untied, but it's a clever, well-made flick that may have started a handful of genres.

07 October 2007

Reeker - Five college kids set off for a rave in the desert. On the way there, they run out of gas and find themselves at a crappy motel with all its inhabitants missing. Their radio and cell phones stop working, and dead people start to show up. Then Death himself swings by, with some sort of power saw attached to his arm, and he's wearing a gas mask because he smells so bad. But apparently you can shoot at him with a gun and make him run away. So one by one, the kids die off, and the others can't figure out what to do. Eventually one chick decides to drive away with her blind friend who's been stuck in the neck with Death's drill, and they've finally found their freedom -- or have they? Reeker is derivative of Rest Stop (and that's a desperate move!), Wolf Creek and High Tension, with a little bit of Identity thrown in for good measure. Overacted and stupid, with a soundtrack sporting excessive low-end rumblings that threw my sub-woofer into overtime, Reeker had a couple of surprisingly funny moments, but for the most part, it was just dreck.

Private Lessons - My only motivation here was that my fraternity brother played the part of Sherman, and I'd always wanted to see this flick out of a morbid curiosity. Private Lessons is the pretty-awful story of a fifteen year old boy (who acts more like ten), who is pursued and eventually boinked by his 28-year-old housekeeper, played by Sylvia Kristel (who's cute, by the way, but I don't really see what all the fuss was about.) In 1981, this played like a teen coming-of-age fantasy, but in today's world, the exact same story would constitute a criminal act. So anyway, immediately after the inevitable exchange of body fluids (which was creepy at best), the housekeeper fakes her death, so young Philly does the obvious thing and buries her in his yard. Come morning, she's disappeared, and there's a ransom note in her place -- turns out the whole thing is a diabolical plot put together by the chauffeur (never trust those guys!) So Philly has to figure out a way to outwit the chauffeur, or give up his dad's cash. Stupid. And then if the May-December romance didn't make you queasy enough the first time around, they fire it up again at the end. As for Sherman, although he was about five or six years younger than when I knew my fraternity brother Patrick, he was pretty much the same person -- fat and obnoxious.

The Lookout - Chris Pratt was a high school superstar with a pretty girlfriend and a family with a big bank account -- the world by the tail. One night, he gets careless while driving and crashes into a parked combine, bringing his current world to an end. As a recovering victim of traumatic head injury, he takes classes to learn about dealing with life, and he works as a janitor in a small town bank. One night, he meets a pretty former stripper named Luvlee and a grifter by the name of Gary, who slowly pulls Pratt into a scheme to rob the very bank where he works. As Chris struggles to reconcile his past with his future, he's also trying to work out his place in the world, and deal with the daily confusion of life, in particular who his friends are and whether he should go through with the heist or not. Joseph Gordon-Levitt (from Brick and "3rd Rock from the Sun") plays Pratt like an updated Keanu Reeves -- a slouchy hero with a quiet grace -- he's one to watch. Isla Fisher is lovely as Luvlee, and for the record, my bank account would be empty if she were, in fact, the featured attraction on the pole. Scott Frank pens a gripping screenplay that impacts on so many levels -- and nicely so.

30 September 2007

Severance - The office staff of Palisade Defense company goes off on a retreat to the backwoods of Hungary (!) to strengthen their teamwork. While it's a little disconcerting to think that the staff of this international defense company is composed of a handful of dorks, a wise-ass, a hot chick, a stoner and a butt-munch manager, it's all in good fun. From the start, things aren't quite right, including the rundown shithole of a house they find and convince themselves it's their destination "lodge". But once they start to die off, the others come to the realization that they're in for a struggle. While it sounds like a hokey overdone mess, it's really quite cute, with irreverent humor throughout, directed at the various dorks and the butt-munch manager. By the end, Severance has morphed into an action suspense thriller, complete with a topless machinegun-blasting babe, but finds itself cut just a little too close from the Hostel cloth. And the basic premise was never explained -- unless of course I'm too dumb to get it -- but we never find out who the bad guys really are. I have a theory, but I'll leave it to the gentle viewer to deduce his or her own. All in all, Severance was entertaining and funny, and an amusing waste of time.

Where the Heart Is - Natalie Portman is Novalee Nation, a pregnant country bumpkin from Tennessee who's left by her sleazebag boyfriend at a Wal-Mart in the middle of Oklahoma with only $5.55 to her name, where she tries to find a way to make a life for herself. Along the way, she's taken in by the townfolk after giving birth to baby Americus inside the Wal-Mart, and she falls in love with the sensitive library caretaker who really belongs back home in Massachusetts. But will she find the courage to tell him how she really feels, or will she send him back home where she knows he really belongs? Sure, it's a chick flick, but it's also Natalie Portman, and yes, she's a dream. The cutest pregnant chick I think I've ever seen, except maybe for my friend Kathy, but that's a different story altogether.

Death Proof - Wow. Quentin Tarantino took a little time off to try his hand at producing the Hostel franchise and other drivel, but he's back full force with Death Proof -- a film that exudes the Tarantino touch from beginning to end. Stuntman Mike is a sociopath behind the wheel of a hot rod, who likes to terrorize beautiful young women, and this is the two-part story of two such conquests. Tarantino's pacing is absolute perfection, and his voice rings loud and clear in the first segment -- as four (or so) chirpy trash-talking divas hang out in a dive bar before their eventual date with Mike. In the second segment, four more chirpy trash-talking divas meet up at a diner before their eventual run-in with the lunatic. And for the price of admission, you get that beautiful Tarantino ping-pong dialogue, plenty of trash talk, a great soundtrack, a little bit of lap-dancing, glorious camera shots, hot fast cars, a sprinkling of Kung Fu, and the craziest fucking car chase you've ever seen. Right now I want to be Tarantino. Holy fuck shit wow.

Wind Chill - A snotty college girl needs a ride home from school over winter break, so she finds a dude on the ride board and off they go. But he's sullen and moody, and she's a little snot, so it's not exactly a match made in heaven. When he takes the shortcut from hell, she starts to freak out a little bit, and soon a car runs them off the road. With no one in sight and a projected wind chill at thirty below, they think they're in for in for a big challenge to make it through the night. Then a bunch of creepy ghosts start walking by, and things get really bad, with evil cop ghost playing the role of bad guy extraordinaire. There were a lot of holes in the story, which led to reduced believability, and the story wasn't really all that good to begin with. In all, I give it an "eh".

23 September 2007

Yojimbo - Perhaps the first Samurai movie. Sanjuro rides into a small town, where he finds a battle going on between two families that are trying to take over control of the town. He shows off a little and gets the warring families to bid against each other for his services. Eventually, a really big guy figures out that if he takes away the Samurai's sword, he can beat the hell out of him, so he does just that. Sanjuro escapes the town, heals up, then comes back to exact his revenge. This film took me forever to put it in, then forever and a day to get through the whole thing. A lot of people really like this movie, but it just didn't grab me.

Maxed Out - Documentary that tells about the lending and credit industry. In a nutshell: we're all fucked. Cut from the Michael Moore cloth, Maxed Out is enlightening, but ultimately it reveals itself to be whiny and unresolved. Solutions aren't offered, opposing viewpoints aren't considered, and there is just this great big evil hanging out there. This is why I hate Michael Moore, and even more so now that he's apparently influencing a new generation of film-makers.

Unrest - I really wanted to like this movie, and for about the first hour, I did. Medical students in a gross anatomy class start to dissect a cadaver, and from the start, a cute little thing named Alison has a bad feeling about it. The woman who died was young, and apparently cut her own face and body repeatedly. Alison is convinced something bad is going on with this dead chick, and despite being an agnostic, feels that her spirit is not at rest. Then, when the members of Alison's team -- along with various lab assistants -- start to die off, she goes on a mission to figure out who the dead woman is. Now, most horror movies avoid the cops like the plague -- people die off left and right, and no one stops to think there's going to be crazy hell to pay from the authorities. But usually, those murders are happening in a short time span, and there's no time for investigation. In this case, the cops show up, but apparently don't stop to look around much, as bodies show up indiscriminately in and around the lab -- and that's just the beginning of the inconsistencies. Cute newcomer Corri English plays Alison, and teases constantly as she strips off her scrubs repeatedly, but stops short of losing the Victoria's Secret fashions every last time -- even when boinking her boyfriend -- which tested my patience regularly. But when she goes scuba-diving in the formaldehyde tank, I completely lost my ability to suspend disbelief -- wait, she has to take off her shirt to go scuba-diving in the formaldehyde tank? Maybe she'll lose the… no. Okay, that's it, my disbelief is at maximum suspension, with no relief in sight. She's terribly cute though.

16 September 2007

Tsotsi - Set in the rough streets of South Africa, Tsotsi is the story of a young thug who accidentally kidnaps a baby that changes his life. Tsotsi is the brutal man-boy leader of a small gang of street thugs. One day during a routine carjacking, he drives away and crashes the car only to find a baby in the back. When he takes the boy home and tries to learn to care for it, the effort takes him back to the days of his youth and the love he had for his mother that was taken from him. It's a touching story -- brutal, but sweet.

09 September 2007

The Lives of Others - Set in East Germany prior to the falling of the Berlin Wall, The Lives of Others tells the story of Wiesler -- a man who works for the Stasi -- the government's secret police. He is assigned to spy on a playwright named Dreynman who lives with Christa-Maria, a famous stage actress. Dreynman is suspected of some sort of subversive behavior because a big muckity-muck in the government has fallen for Christa-Maria, and he wants Dreynman out of the picture. But as Wiesler engages in his scrutiny, he develops a liking for Dreynman and especially Christa-Maria (who isn't really as hot as you'd think, considering everyone's going all ga-ga over her), and he finds it hard to stick to his game plan. The Lives of Others comes highly rated and reviewed, but it just didn't grab me. Next.

02 September 2007

Wild at Heart - David Lynch's most normal film only veers into neverland a few times, with some corny characters and Wizard of Oz imagery that's clearly hallucinatory. Which is to say, it fails miserably. Sailor is a manslaughterer and Elvis-wannabe and Lula is a cute ditz with a major thing for Sailor. When he gets out of jail for killing the man that Lula's mom hired to do the same to him, the pair take off to break parole and see the world. Meanwhile, Lula's mom has put another contract out on Sailor, and the bad guys are on the trail. I'm not sure where Lynch was going with this thing, but it doesn't venture far enough into obscurity to be considered totally avant garde, and it's not normal enough to be considered, well, normal. Instead, it's just a tepid love story that's too cornball to be interesting. I'm glad he got this shit out of his system.

26 August 2007

Hot Fuzz - The same guys who brought us Shaun of the Dead show up here with Hot Fuzz, and in the same way that Shaun of the Dead was a nice little zombie movie by spoofing the genre, Hot Fuzz turns out to be a clever little action film by way of parody. Nicholas Angel is a supercop in London -- so much so that his department sends him off to the tiny little village of Sandford, because he makes them all look bad in London. So he becomes a fish out of water -- the tough, super-efficient robo-cop amidst a village of local yokels. In his journey, Angel learns to lighten up a little while the townsfolk learn to toughen up. But when a string of murders goes down, it turns out the tough city cop is just the ticket to solve the crime. Sounds hokey, and it is, but the clever parody throughout gives the whole thing such a great comedic spin, which morphs into a fullblown action dynamo by the end. Clever and entertaining.

19 August 2007

The Gravedancers - Three friends celebrate the funeral of a fourth by spending the night at his gravesite, where they drink a lot of wine, and bust out some dance moves. A few days later, they find their lives apparently haunted. So they hook up with the local paranormal investigators who explain that they've cast a spell called the Gravedancer's Lament, and the spirits that are haunting them are the souls of the people on whose graves they danced. Also, it turns out they have one month of this, by which time those spirits will kill them. They do some research and find out the tormentors are a pyro-kid, a murdering school marm, and a torturing judge. They come up with this great plan to re-bury the bones, so the gravesites will no longer be desecrated, but that doesn't work worth a shit. So they lock themselves up inside the paranormal house to try and last out this one last night. It's a clever premise, but there are too many holes, and it goes way too far in the end. Some cute girls, who remain fully clothed.

Rain - Okay, so try to keep up here: Patsy's fucking Paul, while her stepson Richard watches from a distance. Paul's married to Ellen, who used to be fucking Patsy's husband, Tom, who's now running for mayor. Stepson Richard is busy fucking Ellen, while his friend Eric gets off on squeezing his friend Jenny's boobs while she stares at him blankly, because she really wants to be fucking Richard, which would be fine with Tom because he'd just as soon take over the fucking of Ellen. Oh, and I almost forgot: Ellen shoots Paul in the head with a deer rifle in their kitchen. That's pretty much all these stupid fuckers do in this movie -- fuck each other and kill from time to time: typical small town life. You'd think one of them would think to wash the blood off their hands, but they don't seem to be very good at that, walking around for an inordinate amount of time with blood stains all over themselves. Martin Scorsese produced this film, which should not be confused with a Scorsese-directed film -- it just means he put up the cash. I don't know, maybe director Katherine Lindberg is married to Scorsese's little brother but wants to be fucking him, even though his sister wants to be... I don't know. It's a soap opera. The DVD cover and writeup were so much better than the film itself.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse - I hate sequels like this. Regardless of what happened in the first movie, a sequel should be a story that can stand on its own, and this one clearly does not. For the first half hour, I struggled with trying to remember what's going on here -- who the chick is, why there are zombies running around all over the place, and what's up with this walled-in city. I don't think I ever got there, but roughly, here's the deal: the Umbrella company is located in Raccoon City, which is completely walled up -- much like Detroit or Cleveland. They created a virus that turns everyone into zombies, and now there's a blazing hot chick named Alice who's been turned into a fighting machine, and she appears to be our only hope. How? Why? I don't know. But a shitload of zombies get shot in the head, stuff blows up all over the place, and Alice runs around looking smoking hot. The first Resident Evil was so much better -- this was just gratuitous fluff.

12 August 2007

The Host - Gang-Du is kind of a fuck-up, but he's totally in love with his daughter, so he's not all bad. One day, he's watching the company store (sort of), when this giant lizard-salamander-dragon thing comes out of the river and tears the whole place apart. Before diving back into the water to return to wherever it came from, the beast picks up daughter Hyun-Seo in its tender grasp. Along comes the Korean government and quarantines everyone involved, and slowly a story arises about the beast being host to a dangerous virus, so now the entire Park family is being detained as a biological risk. But Gang-Du receives a garbled phone call from Hyun-Seo -- she's still alive! -- who's being held captive by the beast in a big sewer. So now the Park family has to escape from government detainment to battle the beast and rescue the girl. This is a nice tight little monster movie that incorporates ample doses of humor and intrigue into a story that is fresh and new. Fun for the whole crazy fucking family.

Dead Ringers - Twin brother whiz-kid gynecologists get wrapped up with the same (somewhat crazy) woman, which leads the younger brother Beverly off into the world of drug use and depression. Meanwhile, Elliot is riding the wave of publicity that the pair is getting for the innovations that Beverly is making in the field. As Beverly sinks deeper and deeper into psychosis, Elliot must find a way to reconnect with his brother and pull him out. Jeremy Iron does double duty as both brothers, and does an excellent job of differentiating the two.

5 August 2007

Waterborne - Amateur flick that explores the possibility of a poisoned water supply in the LA basin in a post 9/11 society. It features the coinciding stories of an Indian family-owned carryout, two stoners, and a military reservist and his family. Waterborne tries to tread the waters of Crash -- bridging the worlds of these survivors of a flood of terror -- but finds itself a bit too self-indulgent. While I have to applaud the film-maker for creating his dream on a shoestring budget, I still don't have to like it. The problem is that the story is highly improbable: someone puts some "biological" agent into the water supply, and everyone starts acting like it's the end of the world. Nevermind the fact that you could drive an hour and pick up a hundred gallons or so of bottled water -- and couldn't you just drink anything in a bottle? No, because (mysteriously) they point out that even the beer is unsafe -- beer bottled halfway across the country. Waterborne tries to cash in on a post-9/11 hysteria and tell a story of coming together, but it tries just a little too hard, and comes off trite, preachy, and somewhat senseless.

The Good German - Shot in black & white and emulating an old-style movie, The Good German is the story of a man who gets wrapped up in a murder mystery in post-World War II Germany. He dispatches out to Berlin, to find that the man assigned as his driver is boning his old girlfriend -- the one he came to Berlin to find. Small world. When the driver (who's a prick, by the way) turns up dead after trying to scuttle the chick out of the country, Jake finds himself wrapped up in the middle of it all. The homage to old-time cinema is clever, and one can't help but to think this is a retelling of Casablanca.

Reservoir Dogs - The flick that started it all for Quentin Tarantino. Reservoir Dogs is classic Tarantino, with chirpy dialogue and uber-violence, which centers on a group of dudes hired to rob a jewelry store, and the resultant hot water they find themselves in. Attired in black suits and ties, with the according contrast of color-oriented monikers, Tarantino's crew is a study in narcissism. Somehow the deal goes wrong, and everyone is in scramble mode to figure out who the stoolie is. And it wouldn't be Tarantino if it didn't start somewhere near the middle then flash to the end, then to the beginning and all around. You can clearly see the seeds of Pulp Fiction here, and it further confirms that there is nothing -- nothing -- like a Tarantino page of dialogue, as he delves in full bore into the nuances of the penis-size of Madonna's lover, based on the phase of her musical career. In lesser hands, it wouldn't be genius, but this is Tarantino.

29 July 2007

Scanners - Scanners are people who have the ability to read and control other people's minds. They just appeared one day, and don't nobody know why. One day, one scanner in particular kills a guy by making his head blow up, which causes all the other scanners to go into hiding. Consec is a company that is suspiciously interested in the plight of these scanners, and they produce one last scanner guy and tell him to go find this bad guy. So it becomes cops and robbers with these mind control dudes. A lot of stuff blows up and burns, including people.

Naked Lunch - Exterminator Bill Lee finds his wife shooting up his big powder, and after joining her in this endeavor, he accidentally shoots her in the head. From there, he launches into a world of psychosis, in which an armadillo-sized beetle advises him to go to a north-African country called the Interzone, to become some sort of a spy. A giant pale amphibious-looking thing called a mugwump gives him the ticket, which may really just be a vial of bug powder, and off he goes to this strange land -- but not before meeting Dr. Benway, who gives him an antidote to the bug powder -- a black "meat" created from the carcasses of giant African centipedes. Once in the Interzone, Lee becomes immersed in the business of espionage, taking regular orders from the typewriter that turns into a beetle, and trying to get to the bottom of whatever it is that is going on there. His entire time in the Interzone is one big psychotic break, characterized by the paranoid dreamings consistent with heavy drug use. My best guess is that this is supposed to be about the drug-induced psychosis that Lee goes through while writing a novel after the accidental death of his wife, which touches on the paranoia and guilt of that event, while delving into his latent homosexuality and anxiety over the writing process itself. But unlike a Lynch film, in which the viewer gets the feeling that there is something at least coherent going on, Cronenberg seems to be just weaving one big hallucinogenic world, coherence be damned. I wanted to like this film, but I'm just a little too puzzled by it, and I sense that it has no real meaning.

22 July 2007

Fear No Evil - Early eighties Antichrist story, featuring a sullen high school kid who's got to be at least 25, facing off against the bullies in his school and also against a trinity of Archangels: Gabriel, Michael, and Rafael. Apparently these three angels are reincarnated from time to time, and then they just have to lump around for quite a while before they figure out who they are so they can stop the uprising of Lucifer, and hopefully they manage to meet up at just the right time with their shiny cross that shoots laser beams. Well, gosh, I hope I didn't give too much away. Fear No Evil is mostly a senseless disaster of a film, both over- and under-acted, with a ridiculous script that features angels, demons, bullies, zombies, girl-gangs, animal mutilation, a laser-spewing cross, and the tribulations of a stunted home-life. Oh, and a gay shower scene, did I mention that? Sheesh, what a mess.

15 July 2007

Black Snake Moan - Christina Ricci scampers around in her whitey-tighties and little else for the better part of two hours -- that's enough to justify the cost of admission. Rae is a trashy little white girl with some sort of nymphomaniac thing going on inside her head. One night she gets beat to hell and thrown on the street just outside the front door of Lazarus -- an aging bluesman who's lost his faith in life. So he takes her in to heal what's wrong with her, and in the process, he chains her to his radiator -- because that's how you heal little half-naked tramps. For the next hour, she parades her gorgeous little butt all over the screen in those eternally-white skivvies, and brother… it is music to my soul. That it's a story of redemption is apparent to anyone with a cursory knowledge of the film, but credit writer/director Craig Brewer for coming up with something so very original. By the end, the redemption story has become a little trite, but still… after spending an hour watching Christina Ricci scampering around in her skivvies, a near post-coital bliss finds all sins forgiven.

The Shadow Walkers - The DVD cover blurb makes this sound pretty interesting: "When a group of scientists awaken in a subterranean laboratory with no memory of who they are, they quickly discover that they are sealed in…they uncover a hive of genetically mutated creatures that are stalking them from the shadows…" The truth is that this may be one of the worst movies ever. When the aforementioned scientists of the female persuasion peal off their lab coats, they reveal short skirts, stiletto heels, and plunging necklines, whereas the dudes are all karate masters dressed in flak jackets with machine guns under their lab coats -- all the better to look cute while beating the holy hell out of mutant zombies. With stilted acting, an idiotic script, beginner's makeup and a plethora of plot holes, this is really, really, really, really, really, really bad. With some awesome boobies at 46:14. Go directly there, observe said breasts, then return the video -- trust me.

The House by the Cemetery - A gorefest from famed Italian spookshow director Lucio Fulci. A family moves into a house for some reason having to do with the dad's research, and they hear strange noises and then their real estate agent and babysitter turn up missing. I guess it's the fault of the corpsey dude in the basement who needs to kill living people to regenerate his cells. This Italian film is dubbed into English, which gives the whole thing a comic feel, especially since the voice of the 5-year old kid sounds like a teenager. I had thought this would be about teenagers who break into an abandoned house to fuck and wind up dying, and sure enough, it started out exactly like that. But then it went downhill quickly. I still have no clue why the old dude is zombified and killing people from the basement. There are other mysteries. I wanted to like this, but… it's pretty bad.

08 July 2007

Driving Lessons - Harold and Maude, set in England. There were some very nice scenes, but overall, it was a chick-flick about a boy pulled between his domineering mother and his grandmotherly friend/employer/romantic interest.

Alpha Dog - The quasi-true story of a bunch of small-time gangster punk-ass bitches who kidnapped a little dude because they were a little pissed off at his older brother, and then they couldn't figure out whether to kill him or party with him. I rented this because I'd heard Justin Timberlake's performance was good, but the movie itself was rather so-so, and I have to say, I must agree. And although Justin's performance was good, his character was an annoying spineless wuss, and quite deserves a life sentence for being a pussy. Bruce Willis and Harry Dean Stanton were standouts, but Sharon stone, who happens to be a verified genius off-camera, apparently must be coached heavily while on-camera in order to get a decent performance out of her -- a fact which dismays me, but stands front and center here. Overall, she was cringe-worthy, with some random splashes of brilliance early. Then there's the story. The main tough, Johnny Truelove, is just a pussy limpdick gangster. Back when I was dealing drugs, I would occasionally beat the holy hell out of the random member of my squad just to prove a point, and they were all badass dudes. But this guy's crew is a bunch of little crying girls and he's the biggest wuss of them all. For the record, I would beat the holy hell out of Johnny pussy gangster wannabe Truelove bitch. Just so you know.

01 July 2007

The Abandoned - Crazy scary movie here about a lady who discovers that she has inherited a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere in Russia. Upon arriving, she finds that no one has been there in forty years, so the place is a little run down. Except, of course, for the freaky blind lady walking around who looks just like her. And, of course, a guy who turns out to be her twin brother. And his crazy freaky doppelganger, as well. That's just the start of it. Turns out the two are descended from a murdering father and his victim wife, and all that went down about 40 years ago in this very house. So now, the house doesn't want them to forget, and no matter what they do, they can't get away. Unlike most horror movies in this genre, it's clearly apparent that the protagonists here can't simply walk away. They try -- they really try -- but find the rules keep changing, and there they are once again, trapped inside the house. This is truly one of the scariest movies I've ever come across -- it's immersive and atmospheric, disorienting, and chilling. It has just enough of the creepy crawlies to spook you out, with a strong human element running all the way through. Scared the flying fuck out of me.

Talladega Nights - Ricky Bobby is a Nascar driver who crashes and loses his heart, then makes a comeback. If you've seen the previews, you've seen the movie. It's just like that Anchorman thing he did -- some clever gags, but a highly predictable story line that wasn't really all that funny. Amy Adams is a dream as Ricky's assistant Susan, and cameos from Junior, DW and BP will amuse the Nascar fans.

24 June 2007

The Mangler - Um, it's about a laundry machine that's possessed by the devil. I've been slumming on FearNet lately. I'm sorry.

The Graveyard - A group of teenagers goes out into a cemetery to play a game of grabass, during which one of them impales himself on a random steel spike sticking out of the ground or fence or something, and dies. Naturally, the courts determine that one of the kids is guilty of manslaughter and the rest are perfectly innocent. Five years later, when the dude's up for parole, one of the hot chicks shows up and states that if the dude is paroled, they will immediately take him out to the scene of the crime so he can be healed or something. The parole board thinks that's a really great idea, so they turn him loose. It turns out the cemetery is bounded by some kind of abandoned summer camp, so they all show up to party at the camp, have lots of sex, and maybe heal the parolee or something. Then they all start to die, and they're all like, "gosh someone's killing us, who could it be?" But of course it turns out the convict is innocent, and really there's some other fucker running around killing people because that only makes sense at an abandoned summer camp next to a cemetery. Stupid movie, only watchable for the gratuitous nudity and the girls with cute butts.

Jarhead - A dude joins the Marines and is dispatched out to Desert Storm, where he spends most of his time hating it and thinking about what his girlfriend at home must be doing without him. War is no fun, but any news on TV from Iraq in the past few years makes this look like a holiday. A nice turn for Jake Gyllenhall, and Peter Sarsgaard shines.

17 June 2007

Smokin' Aces - Buddy "Aces" Israel is a Las Vegas magician who has ingratiated himself with the local mafia, and in so doing, he's learned a lot of dirt. Boss Primo Sparazza is on his deathbed, so he wants Buddy's heart on a platter before he dies, and he's willing to put up a cool million dollars for the prize. Admittedly, I've had relatively minimal dealings with the mafia, and I've really only done a handful of contract killings, so I'm a little fuzzy on the etiquette, but apparently when a dude hires another dude to whack a third dude, it becomes all-out open season on that third dude, and any random fucker with an instrument of death can claim the prize if he offs the bastard first. Pity poor Aces because that's exactly what happens to him -- every hit-man, hit-woman, and set of hilljack hit-brothers shows up to take Aces out, and the insanity ensues. Director Joe Carnahan borrows extensively from Tarnatino, from dialogue to story to whacked-out shots to WTF quotient, and the result is something I think Quentin would be proud of. Ultra-saturated colors and crazy characters dominate.

The Messengers - A family moves into an old farmhouse and finds out it's not only haunted, but also plagued by crows. Predictable PG horror fare with a lot of plot holes; cute teenage girl.

Wicked Little Things - In a story similar to the one above, a family moves into a creepy old house out in the woods not knowing what they're getting into, and finds it infested by a pack of man-eating freaky dead kids. Apparently the kids were killed a long time ago in a mining accident, but they still try to get together at night, catch up on each others' lives, and slaughter the random stranger or farm animal. I so wanted to like this movie because of its absence of big-studio feel, and in fact, it started out great -- spooky, weird and disorienting. But when the little kids finally showed up, it became just ridiculous. So... hm. A nice start but a silly finish.

10 June 2007

Pan's Labyrinth - Ofelia's mother has married a captain in the Spanish army during the Spanish Civil War, and apparently those guys suck, with Ofelia's new daddy being no exception. Fortunately, she's discovered that she's actually a lost princess of the underworld, and she only needs to complete three tasks to regain her kingdom. The combination of horrific violence above ground and wild fantasy below ground keeps Ofelia always doing her best -- challenging herself to rise above. I was constantly reminded of Natalie Portman's spin in The Professional -- though newcomer Ivana Baquero doesn't rise quite to that level -- due to the pre-teen protagonist theme in this fairy tale that isn't for kids. I was also constantly reminded of Ernest Hemingway because of the Spanish Civil War setting, and I think: Natalie Portman and Ernest Hemingway are darn good company. Immersive and beautiful, Pan's Labyrinth is a thrilling, frightening, uplifting story of salvation. Hermosa.

The Last Supper - Creepy Japanese story about a plastic surgeon who picks up on all these hot chicks, and then he's like, "I totally want to eat you," and they're all like, "um, yeah, that works," and then he's all like, "I'll be right back," and they're all like, "cool," and then he comes back with a machete and a sauté pan, and they're all like, "uh-oh." So he makes chick-fricassees and chicken-fried chicks, and chick-bacon, and filet of chick, and cream of chick with chick-lickin' chicken sauce au poivre. Mm-mm, tasty eatin' at the Kotorida house, that's for sure. So he's got this rule about not eating the women he works with -- which is also one of my cardinal rules -- when one of his patients and one of his nurses get into an all-out pier four at his joint, and the nurse kills the patient. So like a good mentor, he shows her proper hacksaw technique, and they slice off a tasty meal. And I'm thinking, "Dude, you got a girlfriend now!" But it turns out she's just a young thing, and better off braised than poached. Not really horror, The Last Supper is more of an overall creepout, and yes, it's pretty darn creepy.

Casablanca - "Of all the gin joints in all the towns of all the world, she walks into mine. Dagnabit!" Okay, so I'm not so sure about that "dagnabit" part, but the rest of it pretty much sums up the film. Rick Blaine is an American expatriate club-owner in Casablanca, French Morocco during World War II. He's just being a dude and minding his own business when in walks Ilsa, his former squeeze from Paris before the Germans invaded. But now she's kickin' it with political hero Victor Laszlo, and Rick is all bummed out, because even though he wants to hook up again with Ilsa, he also has a hetero-crush on Victor because of his ongoing battles against the man. So Victor and Ilsa need to get out of Casablanca to Lisbon to America, but the German Gestapo dudes that are crawling all over the place will never let that happen. But Rick just happens to be in possession of some super-powered papers that will let anyone do anything -- kind of like 007's license to kill -- and so Ilsa gives it up to Rick so he will turn over the papers and let Victor escape. But instead he plots to snare Victor and take off with Ilsa, and she's cool with that too because she's a broad in a movie from the forties and they weren't capable of thought back then -- they left that to the men. In the end, Rick struggles with weighing self-preservation and a lifetime with a supreme little piece of tail against his desire to do the right thing. Bummer to have a conscience. Shame I didn't have one while writing this.

The Good Shepherd - Surprisingly, this isn't a story about goats or sheep or dogs -- it's perhaps the longest movie ever made, clocking in at 2:45, which tells the life and times of Edward Wilson, a CIA agent who may have been the one to botch the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba. We start at right around that time, then bounce back into the past to see how Edward was an uptight Yalie who joined Skull and Bones, then accidentally nailed a hot chick named Clover. When she became pregnant, he did her right by marrying her, then ran off to England to be a super secret spy. When he came back to the United States, he formed the CIA and started going head to head with a soviet spy named Ulysses. The whole thing focuses on a mysterious tape and photos that are supposed to explain who botched the Bay of Pigs, and the journey through history helps us understand how Edward wound up where he did. It's a well-executed story if you have three hours that you'd like to find something to do with. Matt Damon is good but boring playing the character who is himself rather boring, and more than a little difficult to nail down. Supposedly he's a man of incredible control, but when Clover blows in his ear, he immediately forgets all about his girlfriend at home, whips it out, rolls her over, and does his thing. Hm. Damon suffers from these occasional lacks of consistency throughout, and at just a smidge under three hours, that's ample time for consistency.

3 June 2007

Flags of Our Fathers - Story about the battle of Iwo Jima, and in particular the soldiers who raised the American flag in that memorable photograph. The battle actually lasted 35 days after the flag-raising (kind of like Georgie declaring "mission accomplished" before 3300 additional lives -- to date -- have been lost), and there was swirling controversy about who the men in the picture really were. Flags of Our Fathers doesn't focus entirely on the "war is hell" theme, but that's difficult because war is, in fact, hell. Instead, it follows around three flag-raisers, both before and after the fateful event, telling us of the impact to their lives because of the war and the photo.

27 May 2007

Collateral - Max is a responsible articulate LA cab driver with dreams of one day owning his own limo company. So he's cruising along minding his own business when he picks up Vincent, a sociopathic contract killer, but hey, a fare's a fare, so WTF and off they go. First stop, Vincent kills a dude and throws him out a window on top of Max's car. Oh man, he just washed it! So they throw the body to the curb go off to the next stop. The theme here is supposed to be that Max is totally captive, with no chance for escape, so he has to go along with Vincent's plans. But really, there are ample opportunities for Max to bail out, but that wouldn't be much of a movie, so there's a bit of disbelief that needs to be suspended. Then, I think there's supposed to be some subtheme about the maturation of Max from timid guy watching his life go by to active participant who makes things happen. But I found it really tough to get a good read on the guy -- it seems he's waffling all the way through. Nevertheless, it's a catchy action film which reminded me constantly of Die Hard.

The Forgotten - Telly Paretta is pretty sure she popped out a kid once. She remembers everything about him, including the day he disappeared on a flight of some sort to somewhere, but the rest of the world denies the existence of this kid, claiming she once had a miscarriage and has since invented his entire life while on a psychotic break from reality. Personally, I don't get what the big deal is -- the kid's kind of funny-looking, and she's probably better off trying again, hopefully with a better-looking kid the second time around. But I digress. She's convinced she's not wrong, so she stalks her neighbor -- a former hockey player whose daughter was killed on the same flight -- but he doesn't believe he ever had a kid. Until she rips down his wallpaper. Then the two go off on a tear, running people over, blowing up buildings, and shacking up in sleazy motels while on the lam from the fuzz. All the while, they're trying to track down the mysterious stranger who kidnapped their kids, and who keeps sucking people up into the sky when they get too close to our heroes. The Forgotten is a groovy little sci-fi spooky-lookey deal, with some Kay-Ay special effects and -- I swear -- that molten metal cop dude from Terminator 2. Julianne Moore strips down to her skivvies, but nobody humps in this entire film, which reminds me so much of my own life in that regard.

Plan 9 from Outer Space - Aliens have come to earth to stop humans from developing a weapon called solaranite that they haven't yet developed (but the aliens have), because the weapon will cause the destruction of the universe. It has something to do with a can of gasoline and exploding sunlight. Anyway, the people of earth have been ignoring the aliens' transmissions, so they have no choice but to resort to plan 9, which involves using their electrode guns to resurrect the dead, apparently turning them into vampires. Resurrecting the dead will surely convince the humans not to invent solaranite, or something. When the humans refuse to die of fright (perhaps because only three bodies have been resurrected), the aliens decide to use their decomposure ray to turn one of the bodies into a skeleton, which will certainly accomplish their goals. But the aliens didn't count on plucky airline pilot Jeff, who socks the main alien in the noggin and saves the planet. Fortunately, humanity was saved this time, but narrator Criswell tells us these are all true events from the future, and we are destined to repeat them in the future because that's where we all live, because they happened in the past, or something. Plan 9 from Outer Space is the classic bad movie: senseless, rambling, poorly acted, and crudely shot, with cheesy effects and a cheesier script. And it is absolutely wonderful.

20 May 2007

Clean - Yuck. Yet another movie about a junkie mom trying to clean up and get a job so she can get her kid back. With Nick Nolte, some crazy-looking skinny little Asian chick and a slew of little wreaths on the cover, I thought this would be pretty good. Negative -- same old junkie mom story. In this case, she's a former MTV announcer who's burned her bridges by being a little too bitchy when she was on top of the world. Now no one will cut her a break. Nolte plays the weary father-in-law, and almost saves the story with his compassionate portrayal, but not quite. I think there was supposed to be some big emotional turning point at the end when she sang some song, but I don't know. Snoozefest.

Fast Food Nation - I'm not sure if this was a movie or a platform. What starts out as a story with a few parallel plots about a guy on a mission to find the source of the shit in his hamburger and a crowd of illegal immigrants working at a packing plant ends as an indictment of the entire world. And in so doing, it completely loses its coherence. Fast Food Nation comes off as a movie written by activists, and this is what I hate about activists: they don't offer any solutions. Cows are bad, and cow-killing companies are bad, and McDonalds is bad. Waah. There are 6.5 billion of us living on this planet, and we all have to eat. We've fished our oceans out and our cows are farting the ozone layer away. Meanwhile, our SUV's are turning the planet into a greenhouse while entire nations are starving. The problem has nothing to do with a particular industry; the problem is us. And until we can figure out how to live here better and not fuck the place up completely, well, we'll fuck the place up completely. I thought this film was amateurish in its diatribes and celebrity cameos. No, Avril, you're still not edgy even though you freed some cows in a B-rated movie. Maybe if you got a tattoo. Or burned your bra. Whatever. I'm in a bad mood.

13 May 2007

Reincarnation - A hot little Japanese horror flick here -- yeah, ugh, subtitles, but holy fuck wow, what a great horror film this is. A movie is being made about a killing that took place in a hotel about thirty years ago. One young girl is cast in the role of the star -- the child of the killer -- and she starts to relive the events that took place there. Other people also find themselves drawn to the hotel, and reliving the gruesome tragedy. When they all convene there together, they're forced to play out a drama like puppets, because they're the reincarnated souls of the original participants. Well written, acted, and filmed, Reincarnation is a terribly clever piece of horror -- it's weird and atmospheric -- as most Asian horror is -- but also linear enough to satisfy an American perspective. And clever -- terribly clever. Spooky.

Little Children - Stay-at-home mom Sarah finds herself more and more isolated from her husband, especially after she finds him walking his dog to pictures of Slutty Kay on the Internet. So she hooks up with "The Prom King" -- a Mr. Mom who plays with his kid at the same park, and finds himself emasculated by his big-shot beautiful wife. So they hang out at the pool and have play dates with their kids and eventually start bumping uglies. Meanwhile, sex offender Ronnie has served his time and moved back into the neighborhood, and there is a substantial backlash, led by the slightly unstable former cop Larry. When Ronnie shows up at the neighborhood pool with his mask and snorkel and takes a long leisurely review under the water's surface, things really heat up for him and his roommate mom. So Sarah is trying to figure out whether to leave her husband while Prom King is trying to figure out whether to leave his wife, while Ronnie is alienating his date by rubbing one out in her car, while Larry is trying to come to grips with his own past. It's okay, I suppose. I think I found Ronnie to be a little humorous as sex offenders go, which is a little disturbing in its own right. And Prom King is either a major stud -- a former college football quarterback and law school graduate -- or he's a major pussy, with borderline pervish tendencies of his own -- a dichotomy that I doubt was intentional.

06 May 2007

Network - It's the movie where the dude yells out the window, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!" But what was the rest of the movie all about? It's the story of a newscaster who's been on the air for a long time, and he gets fired, then he gets pissed off and goes on a rant, on air. His rant produces ratings, and soon the network gives him his own show where he sounds off and eventually collapses, onstage. And he does that every week. This 1976 pre-Springer film is prescient in its depiction of the freakshow that was yet to come, but it's also very dated, with its numerous references to mid-seventies pop culture. And a May-December romance between a thirty-something Faye Dunaway and a smelly-old near-sixty William Holden is enough to give you the willies. As for that "mad as hell" scene, it's pure gold, but unfortunately, the rest of the movie tries to be an indictment of some evil that must have been very present, but also very fleeting in the mid-seventies. Like a denouncement of communism, Network is cute in a historical way, but the relevance is all but lost in the modern day. And just the thought of Faye Dunaway and William Holden, is… eww.

29April 2007

The Thin Red Line - the first couple hours of this film are highly watchable -- set in World War 2, an army company or battalion or legion or something is charged with taking a hill, and eventually they do so. There are all sorts of characters involved: the overbearing colonel, the ineffective captain, the gung-ho sergeant, and a bunch of scared underlings. Together, they play out their roles, and eventually take the hill, and for those two hours I sat transfixed, taking in this long journey. From there, they're given some time off, and they party, and then walk around for a while, then they wind up back in a battle and some people get shot and I don't really know what, because to me, the whole thing just completely lost its focus. Maybe that's the point, and I just missed it. I've wanted to see this film for quite some time, and now I'm just a little disappointed. And frankly, I still have no clue what the title means.

The Breakfast Club - I love this movie. The quintessential brat pack movie of 1985, it stars five of the definitive brat-packers and two other guys playing the evil principal and the wacky janitor. For the most part, the movie is an exploration of teen angst and stereotypes -- represented are the princess, the jock, the brain, the criminal, and the basketcase. While the dialogue is occasionally cringe-worthy, it is quite often brilliant, and dialogue is really the entire crux of the story. I have to admire writer John Hughes for his approach -- stick five kids in a room and tell the story through their interplay -- the business of dispelling stereotypes and finding common ground. The plot is this: five high-schoolers have been given detention, and are sentenced to serve it over a nine-hour stretch on a Saturday, marshaled by the aptly named principal, Dick. Being different from each other, they immediately clash, and set to work on fighting it out and hashing out their differences. Aside from the occasional romp in the hallway or impromptu stoned dance-off, they're just sitting on the floor and telling a story through their dialogue, and it's absolutely brilliant.

Stranger than Fiction - Harold Crick is a boring fellow, who works as an IRS auditor and counts things like steps and floor tiles as a hobby. One day, he's brushing his teeth when he notices a voice narrating his life to him, and he sets out on a venture to figure out what's going on. A shrink explains that he's schizophrenic, but that doesn't make sense to Harold's logical mind, so he pursues another course -- to find out who the voice belongs to. He begins his journey by finding a professor of literature who joins in the hunt. But when Harold finds out the voice has in mind that he will die at the end of the story, he decides that his best course of action to derail the story is to spin his life off in an unpredictable direction, and he winds up falling hard for a funky tattooed chick played gamely by the very cool Maggie Gyllenhall. Despite the quirky sci-fi-ish overtones of the story, it's still terribly cute and touching. This is the Will Ferrell that can deliver genius - ratcheted back a notch or two from the full-bore goofball antics of Anchorman or Talladega Nights.

Volver - Raimunda lives in a village in Spain with her daughter Paula, and husband Paco. Her sister Sole lives nearby, as does her friend Augustina. One day her Aunt Paula dies, her husband disappears, and she finds herself running her friend's restaurant. Which is all well and good, except for the pesky rumors about her mother's ghost knocking around town. So I guess the focus of this story is that our girl Raimunda is too self-absorbed to worry about anyone else, and it takes her mother's ghost to straighten her out. But for two hours, I couldn't stop thinking about what a self-absorbed little shit this girl really is, who probably wouldn't have a single friend if she didn't look exactly like Penelope Cruz. And here, also, is a case where I think the whole thing would have played better had I spoken a word of Spanish, because a) the stinking subtitles only show up if you watch in 4:3 mode, which is really a bummer on a widescreen TV, and 2) they talk so fast, you spend more time reading than paying attention to the story, and C) you miss out on a lot of the nuance of the story, and I do believe there is a great deal of nuance. The tradeoff is that you get to stare at Penelope Cruz for two hours, which is worth the price of admission.

22April 2007

The Last King of Scotland - Nicolas Corrigan graduated from medical school and decided to go to a little country called Uganda to practice medicine away from the middle class he's grown up in. Shortly after arriving, he meets Ugandan president Idi Amin, and makes such an impression, the Ugandan turns Corrigan into his personal physician and closest advisor. Over time, Corrigan discovers that the Ugandan dictator, while a jolly old fellow on the outside, is actually a ruthless political character, responsible for the deaths of 300,000 Ugandan citizens. Over time, the doctor must weigh his feelings of devotion to the kindly president against his growing suspicion that his friend is really a cold-blooded killer who will stop at nothing to secure his place as the ultimate ruler of the nation. It's an amazing story, and entirely fictional -- there never really was a Scottish doctor wrapped up in the middle of the whole Idi Amin story. But the clever insertion allows us to watch Amin from a fly-on-the-wall vantage point, as we discover, along with the good doctor, the extent to which this cuddly jokester of a brutal man will go to save his place. It's amusing and chilling and touching.

Blood Diamond - Set in the diamond mines of Sierra Leone, Africa, Blood Diamond tells the story of Solomon Vandy, whose family is captured into indentured servitude, and who is forced to work in the diamond mines. He finds a huge stone, which he hides jsut as the camp is overrun by government officials. Meanwhile, Leonardo DiCaprio plays self-serving diamond smuggler Danny Archer, who picks up on the trail of the stone, and strong-arms Solomon into finding it and giving it to him so he can give it to his military buddy and make a boatload of cash. I think there were elements of this film that were very good, but it focused entirely too much on DeCrapio and his bullshit accent, whereas the real story is in the political unrest, civil war, and genocide encompassing that continent. Archer just represents the vermin feeding off the tragedy, and I found it reprehensible to make him a hero of the story. Vandy struggles to reunite his family, having a particularly difficult time reclaiming his son from the rebel camp, who have converted the 11-year-old boy into a murderous, drug-addled guerilla. That's the real story, not DiCrapio and his pathetic accent.

15 April 2007

Rebecca - A great story here from Alfred Hitchcock. A girl meets a rich dude and marries him, not knowing exactly who he is. So she shows up at his house as the new bride, only to find it the biggest frigging house in the world, with a staff of like a billion. The dude's previous wife - Rebecca -- just died a year ago, and everyone is still all hung up on her, including the dude. And his main housekeeper is absolutely still in love with Rebecca, so now the little chick has to try to make a home in this castle that's thoroughly haunted by this dead chick Rebecca. This 1940 film starts off with a lot of sappy violins and I begin to think I just can't relate to that kind of crap, but Hitchcock is just setting a mood that stands in contrast with the latter parts of the film. In all, this was a clever story, well told.

Something Wicked this Way Comes - The Ray Bradbury story translated to the screen: a crazed carnival from hell comes to town to devour lost souls, and it's up to two boys to destroy it. The novel was unique, and so I thought the movie might also be an interesting venture. And while interesting, it probably won't wind up on my top ten list -- in fact, it came off as a little bit odd and hard to figure. The story is that Dark's pandemonium shows up as a fall carnival, and the lost souls of the town -- the pervy barber, the greedy merchant, and the old maid school teacher -- are drawn in by their longings, and their souls are trapped forever. Boys Will Holloway and Jim Nightshade (love that name!) figure out what's going on, and find a way to defeat the centuries-old devil. But that's just the thing; they do so by -- get this -- waiting for lightning to strike the carnival. And in the meantime, Mr. Dark was dreadfully scared of these boys because, I suppose, he knew they could bring on the lightning or something. You really have to suspend a shitload of disbelief to follow along with this, but somehow, someway, it's still kind of a kick.

Black Christmas (2006) - I'd been wanting to see the original from 1974, so when I saw this remake at the store, I picked it up. I think that was a big mistake. The remake seems like it must be somewhat faithful to the original version, but missing that certain magic that lets it stand out. Billy Lenz is criminally insane, and he escapes from the mental institution on Christmas to go back to his childhood home -- now a sorority house -- and kill off nubile young maidens. He's yellow; the girls are stupid; he spies on them through pinholes. It gets pretty gory in that splattery way, but considering this is a sorority house, there are surprisingly few pillow fights, and not nearly enough nudity and shrieking. I'll still check out the original, because I have a sneaking suspicion it captures something the remake didn't quite get.

Nashville - I forget why exactly I was driven to see this movie. I think I was intrigued by the ensemble cast, and of course director Robert Altman is always a draw. In fact, I believe I read somewhere that Nashville was Altman's "masterpiece", but I'm afraid I have to differ. While there certainly is a large cast at work here, I struggled to put all the pieces together. And many of the stories were just -- well -- uninteresting. There are some nice ironies and touching moments, but, gosh, it's 2-1/2 hours out of your life and that's a lot to ask.

08 April 2007

Bandidas - Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz as bank-robbers. Admittedly, I rented this one just so I could look at these two chicks. I wasn't expecting anything aside from eye-candy cuteness -- no groundbreaking stories, no life-changing events, no gripping emotional turns. Just two of the hottest chicks in the world, vamping it up a bit, and playing off each other just a bit less than my imagination had them in for. And Bandidas totally delivered on that promise. Look, these are blazing hot girls, and no strangers to my friend Jack Hoff. You can be forgiven your embarrassment renting the lowbrow video. Just don't try to sell the wife on the artistic merits of the film because it's a useless charade. Save it 'til she goes out shopping, then open that mental camera wide, pop in the show, and snap shot after shot, burning the images into your brain, and storing them in that dark place where you can retrieve them late at night when everything's quiet and alone. The movie? It's about a couple Mexican chicks who do something or other. I don't know. But I'll probably buy the DVD.

Sublime - Tom Cavanaugh played that Ed dude in that stupid television show, and now he plays a guy named George in this stupid movie. It's a Jacob's Ladder knockoff, but where Jacob's Ladder was a brilliant piece of psycho-drama horror suspense, Sublime is just crap. George goes in for surgery, then everything gets all screwed up. He gets to bone the hot nurse, but otherwise things aren't so rosy: he uncovers a hospital conspiracy and a secret ward and immigrants being tortured. His wife is boning the doctor, and his daughter is dry-humping the local goth-dyke. The orderly is the devil in a bowtie, and even his attorney can't get him released. In the end… it's all a dream. Ah, fuck. What a waste of time.

Rocky Balboa - If you were born in 1965, the original Rocky movie came out when you were 11 years old, and it told a story of an underdog -- underrated and unappreciated -- who defies the odds and does the incredible, by virtue of his hard work and his desire to do the right thing. Such a story would strike that 11 year old mind as the greatest story ever told, and being that now-grown 11 year old boy, I still believe it may possibly have been the greatest. So when along comes the latest entry in the franchise, and it tells a story of the nostalgia the character has for his glory days, it speaks equally to that 11 year old boy of the nostalgia for those days when the Rocky movie was the greatest story ever told. The majority of the film works on that level, building on the longing Rocky feels for his past, with the only love of his life now gone. But it becomes inevitable that the sexagenarian climbs back into the ring to regain the glory he once had, and at that point, the story becomes just a little bit beyond what you could reasonably expect anyone to believe. But that first bit is golden, with gorgeous cinematography and a script from Stallone that is first rate. I love that he built in a love story but didn't take it so far as to make you cringe. I love that he let Rocky grieve forevermore the loss of his wife. I love that he left Rocky as an everyday stiff who still garners the affection of the public when he's out. I love that the turtles -- Cuff and Link -- are still alive. I love that he pulled up storylines from 30 years ago, and brought them into the present day. I loved this wrapup of the franchise.

01 April 2007

Spun - A wild-ass drug-fueled saga of junkies, strippers and dirty cops. Reminiscent of Requiem for a Dream, Spun is even more over the top, as it chronicles the lives of these junkies in a dark comedic way. Brittany Murphy is deliciously deranged as stripper Nicki, who lives with the decadent Cook -- the chef of meth. Burgeoning junkie Ross becomes the driver for the pair, making the occasional delivery to a freaked out dealer named Spider. Meanwhile ,Spider's, girlfriend Cookie, a never-nastier Mena Suvari, is constantly freaking out, and always just on the verge of a major freakout, when neighborhood spas Frisbee gets picked up by some junkie cops and sent in to Spider's place as a narc. Through all of this, Ross either wants to find love with Amy, or at least get back to his apartment long enough to untie his naked girlfriend April. Spun is a fast-paced, totally off-the-wall rant of a film that features some fine young talent at their best. And through it all, I had this strange feeling that I'd seen it before -- maybe I was just really tweaking the first time around… Overall, Spun is enjoyable, but only if there's a little darkness in your soul.

Running with Scissors - I was really expecting something different, but this is what I got. I had planned for a black comedy about a dysfunctional family -- one of those quirky indie things I like so much. Instead, this was a story based on the personal memoir of a dude that came from a severely dysfunctional family, and as such, it played out more along the dramatic lines than the comedic ones. But I suppose there were some nice performances here, along with a kickass soundtrack. It's the story of a little dude whose mom is a self-involved mess, who meets a freak-psychologist and engages in a regimen of massive chemical intake. In her stupor, she gives the kid, now a teenager, away to the crazy-ass doctor to live with his nutcase family. Insanity ensues.

25 March 2007

13 Tzameti - If you've seen any of the trailers for this, you've pretty much seen it all. A dude in need of cash stumbles into this high-paying gig, only to find out it's a high-stakes game of daisy-chain style Russian roulette -- a circle jerk gone horribly wrong. And that's about it. But still it's absolutely horrific -- nicely shot in black and white, 13 Tzameti is equal parts Eyes Wide Shut, Saw, and The Deer Hunter -- and evokes those same primal emotions.

Borat - Clever "mockumentary" from Sacha Baron Cohen as Borat, a television personality from Kazakhstan, who travels across the United States in search of his true love, Pamela Anderson. Cohen follows in the footsteps of Christopher Guest here, pretending the story is real, and leaving the dialogue mostly unscripted, but he ups the ante by not letting anyone else in on the joke. The result is a humorous and often disturbing view of backwards America -- in many cases not even flinching at the suggestion of killing the Jews or making the "sexy time" with animals or sisters. Knowing the joke going in, however, I had a hard time purging the analysis from my head -- what sort of stories did they tell these people to get them to behave just so? Borat features some truly awkward views of America, including an in-your-face indictment of the war in Iraq on the bible-thumping Republicans at a rodeo, and some of the gnarliest naked wrestling you've ever seen. It's funny, clever, and (hopefully) destined to make you squirm at least a couple times.

Grand Canyon - Aggie recommended Grand Canyon to me after I fell in love with Crash, and though I love Aggie, Grand Canyon is no Crash. The overall stories are similar, however, with LA as equal parts setting and character. In Grand Canyon, we have a dude whose car breaks down in the wrong part of LA, where 911 just hangs up. He is rescued out of a nasty situation by Simon the tow truck driver, and practically dedicates his life to the man, even choosing to quit boffing his secretary as a sign of his repentance. Meanwhile, his wife is dealing with empty nest issues with her son off to camp, and she finds a baby in the bushes, which she hides away in her closet for a while. Said camping son has found a girlfriend and is learning to be a man. Their friend the big movie producer gets shot in the leg in a silly exchange, and experiences a similar second heart. There's some other random stuff: Simon's nephew is a reluctant gang-banger trying to deal with a new neighborhood, and his daughter is an off-screen deaf girl. Grand Canyon means well; it tries to tell a big story -- the story of humanity and redemption -- but really, it comes off just a little too preachy and shallow to meet that mark.

My Name is Nobody - Terence Hill stars as Nobody, alongside Henry Fonda as gun-toting vigilante extraordinaire, Jack Beauregard, in this takeoff of the Eastwood-era spaghetti western. Seems Jack is the fastest gun in the west, until along comes Nobody, to challenge his title, secure his legend, or both. My friend Neil and I loved this movie as kids, mostly because of Nobody's slapstick antics embedded throughout, and even today, it still stands up as an offbeat entry in the western genre. Filmed in the US and Spain, it's technically not a true spaghetti western, but it clearly has the same feel, even with a dialogue track that's slightly out of sync from the video, to suggest a foreign language dub. And speaking of audio, the soundtrack is a classic over-the-top score, spoofing director Sergio Leone's own rich heritage in the genre. The formula is just right, and little kid or not, I still totally dig this movie.

18 March 2007 - My Dad's Birthday

For Your Consideration - Christopher Guest breaks out of his usual "mockumentary" mold and comes up with this scripted ditty that generally achieves the same satirical goals that he typically sets out for. In this case, the actors on the film Home for Purim get word that there's a possible Oscar nomination for one or more of the cast, and it throws their lives into a spin. Ever since appearing as my favorite guitarist Nigel Tufnel in the classic This is Spinal Tap, Guest has perfected the art of the mockumentary, working with his seasoned cast of improvisational actors in a mostly unscripted environment. Working now out of the scripted world, the story plays pretty much the same -- the scenes have that same improv-feel -- except there is no pretense of a camera in the face. And while the storyline becomes very predictable -- skewering Hollywood at every turn -- it's the execution rather than the story that makes it fun. If you're a fan of Christopher Guest, this entry won't disappoint. If you're not… you really should be.

The Departed - Jack Nicholson stars as Frank Costello, a king of organized crime in South Boston. Within his realm are Billy (Leonardo DiCaprio), an undercover cop, and Sully (Matt Damon), a outright cop but undercover crook on Costello's payroll. As the suspicions begin to fly on both sides of the fence that there are moles in the respective organizations, it becomes a race to find who's who. It's a great cop story -- easy to follow, with plenty of aggression and alpha-male struggles. Aside from the characters who breathe and talk on screen, we find that some of the additional characters include the neighborhood of South Boston itself, and an army of cell phones. And despite the fact that Leo is all grown up, I still had a hard time putting the expression, "The De-farted, with Leonardo Di-Crap-io" out of my head. A good flick, but I don't really understand how it beat out Babel for the Oscar.

11 March 2007

Babel - A couple young boys are goofing around in the desert hills of Morocco, when they make the unfortunate choice to shoot at a passing vehicle in the distance. When the bullet hits an American tourist in that vehicle, it sets into motion a series of stories that span nations, cultures and languages. In Morocco, the tourist's husband works desperately to keep his wife alive, while the other passengers on the bus plot to take the bus and leave. The Moroccan authorities begin a manhunt for the supposed terrorist who attacked the American bus, and leave a trail of suffering in their wake. Meanwhile, a Mexican nanny in the United States makes the unfortunate decision to take her little blond-headed charges down to Mexico with her to attend her son's wedding, only to encounter a world of trauma trying to get them back into the country. And a little deaf Japanese girl struggles with a world that she is forced to believe doesn't love her enough -- so she flashes her Britney-bits around town and makes inappropriate advances to strangers. These stories -- mostly loosely related -- though not ground-breaking in nature, are heartbreaking nonetheless. I'm reminded of the writing of Hemingway, who could tell a rather mundane story, but tell it so incredibly beautifully. Babel captures that essence of storytelling -- it is Hemingway translated to the screen. No big stories, but -- wow -- I am so utterly touched and moved.

The Quiet - Deaf girl Dot is orphaned, so she moves in with uberbitch Nina and her fucked up family. Edie Falco plays the drugged out mom, looking quite mannish with cropped hair and her mannish face. To compensate for his ugly wife, Dad decides to stick it to his little girl -- again and again. Meanwhile, it seems that everyone likes to corner the social-reject deaf girl and pour their heart out -- a poor man's psycho-therapy. Dot wins the heart of jock Connor with her blank stares and plain appearance, and he takes to telling her all about his masturbation history. I'm thinking it's always a bad idea to tell a chick about your masturbation history, even if she is deaf. School villain Michelle plots against the world, which just might be driving Nina and Dot closer. I was really looking forward to this Poison Ivy-ish flick, but I don't think I've ever been so disappointed. The characters are one-dimensional and senseless yet somehow shallow, and the story line is predictable and base. There was one killer line, though, from Nina to Michelle in the lunch line: "Michelle, take it down a notch; the whole world already knows you're a cunt. There's nothing left to prove." Doubt that I'll ever have the opportunity to use that one, but still it makes me smile.

Chinatown - Jake Gittes is the quintessential gumshoe, circa 1935, who comes across a case of marital infidelity. Barely does he get his nose into the case before it turns into a story of murder and political corruption and greed and incest. The water commission in Los Angeles is struggling with the decision to build a dam that will provide the necessary water to a community in drought, but, according to the commissioner, it will also endanger the whole area. But Jake believes the city is dumping water into the ocean because some higher ups have a different plan altogether. Chinatown is nearly a perfect story, with ongoing twists to keep you engaged, but not enough to leave you scratching your head. A nice job all around, in this classic film that truly has nothing aside from reference to do with its title. And of course, that last line: "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown."

A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints - Dito Montiel pens the story of Dito Montiel penning the story of how he left his friends and family in New York while he pursued a career in Los Angeles, only to return fifteen years later. I'm not sure what the point was in the self-referential nature of that detail, aside from simple self-gratification. But once you set that aside, you come across the story of a boy growing up in a tough neighborhood, embroiled in violence, who eventually escapes, leaving behind the bloodshed and murder and little hottie girlfriend. When his father becomes ill, he returns to face down his demons, or recognize his saints, as it were. I had a really tough time nailing down the timeframe, as we're led to believe Dito's return is in present day, after being gone for fifteen years. But the soundtrack is clearly from thirty years ago, and no way you're going to try to convince me that Robert Downey Jr. and Eric Roberts are only thirty years old. So it's a little fuddled and self-indulgent, but it means well, and by the end, Downey and Rosario Dawson turn in gripping performances that light up the screen. This really reminded me of Kids, which also starred a very young Dawson, with the difference being that I absolutely hated that unredemptive mess, whereas this was entirely tolerable. Keep an eye on Dawson, because she's poised for a big breakthrough.

04 March 2007

The Gathering - Cassie is out walking around, minding her own business, when blam! she gets hit by a passing car. When she gets out of the hospital, she has a touch of amnesia, so the lady who hit her asks her to become her nanny. Sounds just like a story out of Seinfeld. But meanwhile, some dudes have uncovered what they think is the first Christian church, and it has these creepy faces sculpted into the walls. What does that have to do with anything? A lot, when nanny Cassie starts entertaining visions of the local townspeople dying. An interesting light-horror movie with an original concept. Christina Ricci is curvy, petite, and delicious, and her head only looks weird in a couple shots.

Murder Set Pieces - Pointless film about a murderous narcissistic nazi photographer. If the story and acting aren't bad enough, the physical DVD makes it even worse, with the audio blipping out every few seconds. The whole thing's a complete waste of time.

SherryBaby - Maggie Gyllenhall stars as Sherry Swanson, a just-released parolee who's trying to get back on her feet and win back the love of her daughter. She spends a lot of time naked, which is all good, but as far as the story is concerned, she's kind of a waste. She bones indiscriminately to get the stuff she wants, then drinks and gets high, but always saying that what she really wants is to get her daughter back. Her bitch of a sister-in-law does her best to get in the way of that plan, but the real problem is voiced by the parole officer: she just doesn't want to do the work. So it's the story of a lazy-ass junkie whore. Thrilling. Tits and ass are the only saving grace.

25 February 2007

Sleepaway Camp - Somewhat of a minor classic, due to its crazy shock ending. Unfortunately, I knew what it was before I watched, so I wasn't really shocked. This is an entry in the genre of summer camp horror, which you really have to view with an eye toward "camp", though I don't believe it was intended that way. Almost from the start, there's a weird homo-erotic vibe present, with Aunt Martha clearly played by a voice-dubbed cross-dresser, followed by endless shots of teenage boys in too-tight shorts. And then people start to die. Could the killer be Angela, the introverted survivor of a childhood tragedy? Or her protective cousin Ricky? Or any number of aggressive under-clothed boys or girls? The logistics of the story are ridiculous - it appears that the counselors are hired based on their abilities to bully the campers, and that they are roughly the same age as the campers. As such, there is really no adult supervision: no curfews, no discipline, nothing. And villain Judy is so over the top, it's ridiculous. But all good campy fun. I won't reveal the shock ending here. But it's a good one. Enjoy.

Marebito - A cameraman ventures into subterranean tunnels and finds himself in an underground wonderland where a naked girl is chained up. So he does the only sensible thing -- he frees her and brings her back to his place where he traps her in his apartment and tries to raise her as his own. But when she won't eat or drink, and threatens to die, he realizes he's in really deep shit -- in fact, that's what the mysterious dark voice on the phone tells him, too. But then he discovers that she likes to drink blood, so all he has to do is offer her the occasional sacrifice and she's fine. Overall, this was a watchable film, but I found the use of voiceover narration to be as annoying as the constant obscure references tossed into the script (Madame Blavatsky, Richard Shaver, Hollow Earth theory, Mountains of Madness, Detrimental Robots, and Kaspar Hauser.) And as is common in Japanese horror, it's mostly a metaphorical story, which is really about a guy who kills his wife and tortures his daughter because he's in search of ultimate terror. At least that's what I think. I dunno.

Shivers (They Came from Within) - Doctor creepy old fart created a parasite that lives inside the human body and turns its host into an unthinking, sex-crazed freak. I suppose he made it out of baking soda, play-doh, and some eye of newt or something. So he turns this thing loose in what is toted as an "idyllic" apartment complex in Montreal, where it slowly takes over the residents, multiplying in the process. The resident pretty-boy doctor is on the case to stop the infection, so he and Nurse Nipples (they're spectacular, really) set out to get by, or stomp on the worms, or take us back to morality, or something… before these nasty critters take over the world. This 1975 horror flick asks us to think twice about the sexual revolution that was bubbling through our society at the time, illustrating for us the graphic horrors of a sexually transmitted disease that destroys a community due to its low moral standard. With gory nasty slimy worms.

18 February 2007 - A French Film Extravaganza! (mostly)

The Science of Sleep - Stephane Miroux lives a better life in his dreams than when he is awake, but like all psychotics, he confuses the two. To us, that means we can revel in his lapses, though we're cursed with his same dilemma on occasion -- struggling to distinguish reality from fantasy. Stephane moves back into his mother's apartment, and falls for Stephanie, who lives next door. In his dreams, he's able to charm the love of his life into loving him back, but he's not so good at it when his eyes are open. This mixed-language film incorporates extensive use of fantasy, but it flows nicely between the two worlds. It's touchingly sweet -- a charming ditty. For me, it's my third French film of the weekend, second with Charlotte Gainsbourg, and second with a scene of someone crossing from one balcony to the next across the same type of barrier. Weird. And my French is coming along nicely.

Demonlover - The title caught my eye, and the description was interesting as well, promising a story about a big corporate deal with the intrigue of a torture website wrapped up in the middle of it -- sort of like a ripoff of The Net. What an extraordinary disappointment. So look: corporate mole Diane slips a mickey to Karen on a flight. At the airport, Karen passes out, then two burly guys grab her, lock her in her trunk and leave her for dead. Obviously, Diane is given her job, which is to oversee this big deal between her company and some Japanese company that makes animated porn. So the chick nearly kills Gina Gershon -- which is definitely a bad choice because Gina is clearly an F and maybe an M but never a K in a spirited game of FMK -- but not to worry, because she lives and now Diane is totally busted. So now that's she's been nailed for corporate espionage and attempted murder, they bust her down to secretary, where she has to get coffee for everyone. Then she spends a long rambling pointless dinner conversation with her boss before he nails her and before she kills him. Then she goes off to some horse ranch and winds up in a car chase, and some guy kills a couple dudes randomly. Meanwhile, a naked chick is playing video games in her hotel room, before flying off in a helicopter and giving black pills to the other girl and dressing her up in a tracksuit. This is like screenwriting by committee, and it results in a total endurance race of a movie: longwinded, pointless, and French.

The Village - Not really a bad movie, considering the pans I remember it getting. I think the problem with it is that it's difficult to establish a genre -- it masquerades as sci-fi, horror, action, drama, even period-piece. It lands somewhere between them all. Look: It's 1897 and Ivy's people live in a village that's roped off on all sides because there are giant red monsters living in the surrounding woods. So they've developed a series of rituals and watches to ensure that the monsters are kept happy and not interfered with. Ivy's boyfriend Lucius advocates passing through the woods to bring in medicine from the outside because he believes the red monsters won't harm him if they know his intentions. When he is mortally wounded, Ivy sets out on this mission into the woods to retrieve the only medicines that will save his life, challenging the big red monsters in the process. It's not bad overall, and the interplay between Ivy (Opie's girl Bryce Dallas Howard) and Lucius (Joaquin Phoenix) is sweetly sentimental, but in today's world of compartmentalization, the film is a little tricky to nail down, which probably frustrated the studio execs and fans of any particular genre.

Lemming - Alain Getty has a cute little wife with a tiny butt, a great house, and a cool job. Life is good. That is, until his boss's crazy bitch of a wife comes to visit, and their whole world goes to hell. She makes an ugly scene at dinner, then tries her best to rub up against our boy Alain the next day at his laboratory. Later, she shows up back at the house, decides to take a nap, then pops a neat little hole into her head with a semi-automatic pistol. That really fucks up Alain's day -- more than you'd think. His life embarks on a downward spiral, as his wife's behavior verges into unexplored territory. There's only one way out, and someone's going down. This French film is nowhere near as annoying as the moniker "French Film" would suggest -- in fact, it's downright watchable, with a clever plot and engaging characters. Some of the oddities are a bit ambiguous, in that I wonder if the behaviors are odd by French standards, or if they are merely odd. But overall, a nice immersive psycho-drama with a touch of the supernatural to keep you on your toes. And critters. There are some critters, as well.

Blackwater Valley Exorcism - A farm girl becomes possessed by a demon, so the family calls out the local veterinarian to shoot her up with horse tranquilizers -- and this isn't even intended to be a comedy. Eventually, they call out the local priest, who's just turned down a class in exorcism 101, and don't you bet he's kicking himself for that now. It turns out he used to be boning devil-girl's sister -- who's come home from college to watch her sister make horrible faces -- and he even slipped it to devil-girl from time to time. Given that she's just turned 18 now, and that in the time after he left, he went through the seminary and became a priest, she must have been about 13 or 14 at the time. Oh yeah, and he beat the holy hell out of the sister for a while, too. This guy's the hero of the story -- good job, Father. Okay, meanwhile, the jerkoff vet has accidentally injected himself with the tranquilizer and he's out cold on the couch for a couple days. Not to worry -- everyone just walks around him. Once he comes around, we find he's been fucking the mom because Dad can't seem to manage it. There's a former priest who once did an exorcism, and a stable boy who's madly in love with the devil-girl, but the two of them decide that it's a better use of their time to drink whiskey in the barn than try to do anything about the demon that's mind-fucking this girl. The filmmakers say this is "based on a true event" and if that's the case, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the demon in this house is a metaphorical one -- and perhaps they should have left out this whole demon-business and focused on the fucked up family. This shit-sandwich of a movie sucks on so many levels -- it's a shitty horror flick and a shitty drama with shitty characterizations and a shitty storyline with shitty copouts. I cheered when Dad killed the vet and then himself (yeah, spoiler, I know -- but trust me, you don't want to watch this movie anyway. So there's also this:  the demon is really named Belo Cruise -- Tom's brother -- and he's also been mind-fucking the sister.) If you're unfortunate enough to have rented it, but lucky enough to have read this before watching, go directly to 30:13 to watch the girl-in-the-shower scene. After you see the boobies, turn it off and send it back to the store, comfortable that you've saved yourself 1:28:31 of misery.

11 February 2007

The Last Kiss - An examination of relationships and everything that can go wrong with them -- one guy is getting married, the next guy is married with a baby but he can't get along with his wife, the next guy was thrown off, the next is nailing every little hoochie that steps into his bar, and the last guy has a pregnant girlfriend, but decides now's the time to re-evaluate the relationship. Zach Braff stars as that last guy, who meets a cute little temptress in Rachel Bilson, trips on the sidewalk, and lands about six inches into her. And the pregnant girlfriend? Her mom just left her dad -- for like the billionth time. This is anything but a feel-good movie, and I'm not really sure what you're supposed to take away from it, aside from the fact that Rachel Bilson is a very cute little spinner. It's kind of a chick-flick masquerading as a buddy flick, but if you take your girlfriend to this, believe me, she will hound you all the way home with a million questions about what you think, and how you feel, and what you would have done. In fact, aside from the gratuitous nudity, this movie may be the very work of the devil himself, as I can't see any good coming from it.

Dead Alive - Lionel's mum is a nasty old bat, and that's even before she's bitten by a Sumantran rat monkey and turned into the walking dead. This campy gory mess is brought to us compliments of Peter Jackson in this production which doesn't hint, even slightly, at the prowess he will demonstrate later in his career. Instead we find a zombie flick that tips its hat liberally to Evil Dead 2, but what it lacks in originality, it makes up for in sheer bloody mess. So once Mum becomes a zombie, Lionel locks her in the basement along with some of the friends she's made along the way, because he doesn't know what else to do. When Uncle Les shows up and hosts a raging party, the undead come out to swing. Nevermind the body count -- it's more of a big pile of bloody goo by the time we're done. Don't let the goofball overtone fool you -- this one takes a strong stomach.

Film Geek - Scotty Pelk is a film geek who loses his job at the video store and has no clue what to do with his life. He meets a beautiful girl who just happens to be an occasional geek like he is, and he follows her around incessantly and fruitlessly. While sometimes funny, this satire veers a bit too far from time to time into a mean-spirited realm, where the joke isn't quite so funny. Nevertheless, it's clearly a low budget flick, which is one thing I truly love.

04 February 2007

Ghost World - I'd seen this a few years ago, but I wanted to check back in on the girls now that they've become all the rage. Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson star as Enid and Becky -- a couple of cynical high school grads trying to find their place in the world. They pick on dork Seymour after finding his personal ad, but soon Enid begins to realize she has more in common with Seymour than she'd thought. Meanwhile, Becky is adjusting to life in the real world by working at Starbucks and dealing with the cranky clientele. It's interesting to see Miss Scarlett in her pre-bombshell days, but she still brings that lazy drawl that serves her so well. All around, this is an interesting film, with its ties to the comic book community front and center -- with vivid primary colors and dramatic characters. But for the life of me, I couldn't get that Barenaked Ladies song out of my head.

Near Dark - A dude gets bitten by a pretty vampire, so he has to hang out with her crowd, but they don't like him very much on account of he's a wuss. While his dad and little sister are looking for him, the vampire crowd is trying to teach him how to eat strangers, but he just wants to chew on his girlfriend, which really isn't such a bad idea. With a little imagination, you can work out the whole story. I like the fact that Near Dark doesn't waste a lot of time going into the mythos of vampirism -- we only know that sunlight is bad and that's enough. But otherwise, this didn't really rock my world.

28 January 2007

East of Eden - The beautiful, tragic James Dean stars as Cal Trask, son of Salinas Valley lettuce farmer Adam, in the movie lifted from the John Steinbeck masterpiece novel by the same title. Checking in at just under two hours, the story ironically feels a little short, with characters such as mother Kate and her housegirl Anne left underdeveloped. Or perhaps that's because I've read the novel, written by one of America's greatest writers -- a generation-spanning epic that holds up amongst the greatest stories in the world. And then there's Dean -- the generation-defining outcast who, as Cal, is always reaching for but never attaining his father's love. It's a story for the ages, told and retold countlessly, but never better portrayed than by this delicate tough who had so much more left to do before he was taken. The movie's good, but the novel and the movie's star are shining brilliance.

Thank You for Smoking - Nick Naylor is the spokesperson for the tobacco industry in this satirical comedy that never really apologizes for its neutral stance on the industry itself. Instead, it focuses on the mindset that is necessary for those individuals who are required to represent organizations of dubious moral ground. With a primary focus on the clearcut villains like tobacco, alcohol, and firearms, there is also applicability to the legal industry in general, and also to any of us who find ourselves in a moral dilemma, in which we have to do that which we know isn't just quite right. And we watch as Nick, who is a master of spin, struggles with his budding conscience, in particular as he explains himself and his shades of gray to his young son. Thank You for Smoking never really sells out, though it would be entirely too easy to do so, with Hollywood marketing to a public that likes redemption. But instead we find a way to maintain that gray -- just as every murderer deserves a fair trial, so does business deserve its right to spin. Katie Holmes plays the wicked temptress in a role that hints at her exceptional abilities, but doesn't put them on display.

Schindler's List  - Oskar Schindler was a charismatic member of the Nazi party in Poland during the Nazi occupation there, who was only trying to make a little bit of money. So he hired a Jewish work force to keep his operating expenses down, and it went from there. A select few films transcend the genre of cinema and become a thing amongst themselves -- a social statement as significant as any current event -- and Schindler's List is one of those few. At over three hours, it's clearly worth the time spent, and it tells a story that's as important as anything else in the world, which I won't trivialize by trying to encapsulate in my typical bullshit glib way. Just see the movie -- it may just change your life.

21 January 2007

Syriana - I think this is an important movie with strong points about the world and culture and the oil business and the dirty deals that define the direction we are heading. I'm just not sure I know what was really going on. And while I think that's appropriate, considering how screwed up our world is, it's always driven me crazy not to know the real scoop, and so here I find myself again and I'm not too terribly happy about it. I suppose that I'd catch more of the story if I watched again, but that just strikes me as exhausting. So here's what I think happened: a big oil company named Connex loses a big contract to the Chinese, and its competitor, Killen, gains a deal with the country of Kazakhstan (hey, Borat!), so Connex inks a merger deal with Killen. Meanwhile, George Clooney is a CIA operative, who's always a little on the outs with the higher ups, and now that he's lost a missile in Iran, he's freaking out. The emir of the oil-producing country is about to turn over his throne to his eldest son, who isn't nearly as prepared to rule as his younger brother, but seniority is everything. So the younger brother teams up with Matt Damon to scheme another way to gain control over the oil supply. There's also an attorney, hired by, it seems, everyone under the sun, who is assigned to figure something out associated with the deal. And by the time it's over, a whole lot of bad stuff has happened. I really took this seriously, and I suspect that I really should watch it again. But the off-and-on subtitles kept getting lost off the bottom of my HD screen, and I had to do a lot of rewinding and resizing. After all that frustration, I took a lot of breaks to do my laundry and stare at my PC, so my overall viewing experience took several hours and left me exhausted. So while I think the idea of this movie is important, I believe I've had enough.

A Prairie Home Companion - Fictional story about the last day's production of the non-fictional theatrical radio show of the same name. Garrison Keillor writes and stars in the movie about the show he writes and stars in, which never really came to an end. As confusing as it sounds, the film is quite understandable compared to the backstory. A tremendous cast is featured in this touching Robert Altman production, which is part drama, part comedy and part musical extravaganza. Briefly, this long-running radio show has been shutdown after the station is sold to a big company from Texas, and the cast of the show is dealing with the loss of that old friend on its final night. Companion is a typical Altman film, with valiant but flawed characters, and a story line that creeps up on your heartstrings and leaves you a little sad a couple hours later because it's over. It's touching and sweet, and a fitting goodbye to a brilliant filmmaker.

Blowup - a hipster photographer goes out to the park, where he photographs a couple. The woman freaks out when she realizes she's been captured on film, and tracks him down in his studio to retrieve the pictures. It's only after he sends her off that he realizes what happened in the park. While this is an interesting story that formed the basis of the updated Blow Out of the eighties, it's a little too self-indulgent in its exploration of the British mod subculture of the sixties. While the mods form a canvas for the story of the spoiled brat photog, the film becomes a little too self-aware, even including a musical performance by The Yardbirds. The contrast between the free-wheeling hipsters and the quiet desolation of the park is palpable, but still… some of those little bastards could use a good slap. Which is to say I find them a bit distracting. Then there's the mimes at the end; don't get me started on the mimes...

14 January 2007

One Night in the Tropics - Abbott and Costello's big screen debut features a story about a wishy-washy bachelor whose sleazy but well-intentioned friend insures the wedding of said bachelor to a girl he's not really in love with. Then the friend falls for the girl, while the dude falls for another girl, and the only thing getting in the way of everyone's happiness is that nasty insurance policy. The boys mark their debut as sideline players to the main plot, with pieces of some of their most famous bits, including Who's on First and Two Tens for a Five. Like many of the Abbott and Costello flicks, the main story is dreck -- a vehicle for occasional musical numbers and comic relief. But to my knowledge, this is the only flick where Lou gets the best of Bud (with the mustard bit), and where the characters are actually named Abbott and Costello -- in later films, they play characters named Wilbur or Chick, or other such names appropriate to a fat whiny guy and a fast-talking smartass.

North Country - Charlize Theron stars as Josey Aimes, a down-on-her-luck mother of two who's left her abusive husband and taken a job at the boys-club taconite (it's an iron ore) mine to make ends meet. Only one in thirty employees are women, and they're not too terribly welcome there, so Josey finds institutionalized abuse and harassment. Over time, she decides she's had enough, and rallies against the system to provide a safe environment for herself and her family. While predictable, it's still a nice story, cut from the Erin Brockovich / Norma Rae cloth. Richard Jenkins takes a turn as the worst father ever, and Charlize manages to look cute even in a chick-mullet, but doesn't quite nail the Minnesota accent. Come to think of it, none of them do.

Factotum - I'd waited a while for this production, based on the book by the same name by Charles Bukowski. In the book, we get the impression of Hank Chinaski as a lowlife, losing job after job as he drinks his way through them, and of his women as even nastier. In the film, Hollywood pretties things up for us, and we find that the derelict Hank now looks a lot like Matt Dillon, with his gal Laura bearing a striking resemblance to the stunning Marisa Tomei -- which is not at all what I had in mind when I read the book. Ah, Hollywood. So anyway, it's the story of a guy who is trying desperately to be a writer, while living a Hunter S. Thompson / Ernest Hemingway lifestyle -- going where the wind takes him, and drinking a boatload of hooch. Dillon does a nice job despite not being the Chinaski I thought he should be, and Tomei has a rather small part which unfortunately does not feature that laugh -- that bubbly Marisa Tomei giggle that immediately turns my knees to Jello and takes me back to the psycho sexy vixen she played in My Cousin Vinny who frequented my dreams for months. But I digress -- tune in the making-of featurette to hear Marisa laugh. Factotum is a cute little adults-only story -- strangely sweet in its debauchery -- that likely won't change your life.

The Descent - Six women explore an uncharted cave, and find themselves trapped when a cave-in nearly sqishes them. Upon searching for the way out, they run into a species of primordial carnivorous cavernous human -- and let the battle begin. From the start, this is clearly a quality production, with solid character development and excellent cinematography, and it makes a strong investment in storyline, which can be viewed on a number of different levels. From scene to scene, it is claustrophobic (which had me squirming) to beautiful to horrifying to invigorating. There is one hitch that bothered me a bit, which is that it's hard to get a handle on these "crawler" characters, who live off animals and people they pluck from the wild, and when they aren't voraciously devouring one of our heroines, they're getting the holy crap beat out of them any one of the other girls. So... which one is it? Are they viscous animals to be devoutly feared, or just suckers for a swift left cross? And just to knock it around a little more, they live in a cave so they're all blind, but their sense of smell, touch, and hearing appears to be total shit also, although you could bypass all such criticisms by taking a not-so-literal viewpoint. Having slagged it a bit now, I have to say that I was thoroughly entertained and disgusted by the proceedings, and would recommend The Descent to all comers with a stomach for uber-violent cave dwelling critters and tough ass chicks.

07 January 2007

Children of the Night - Cheesy 90's horror flick about a vampire and a small town and a pretty girl and a fat funny guy and a wacky drunk. The vampire is awakened from his underwater slumber by some swimming teenagers and he turns the whole town into vampires except our heroes. They kill the vampire and everyone goes back to normal. Ami Dolenz is cute as a bug's ear, but not quite naked enough to justify a front-to-back viewing of this flick. Peter DeLuise (remember him?) plays the funny fat guy.

Danika - Danika Merrick is having a rough time. This blazing hot wife and mother of three is slowly losing her connection with reality, and her reactions to the hallucinations she experiences are causing her to lose her job and attract the attention of the police. Her morbid mind is constantly turning up stories about dead children and whorish women who consume the innocence of her family. She goes to a shrink, but that bitch is out to get her also. She'll do whatever it takes to protect her family, but when her world falls apart, will she have the strength to save herself? Marisa Tomei (shwing!) is perfectly cast as a woman on the verge of losing her mind, and although you can see the ending coming from a mile away, Danika still satisfies -- in a rather unsatisfying fashion. Kind of spooky, kind of Lifetime Channel.

A Scanner Darkly - Bob Arctor is an undercover cop, assigned to surveil and eventually bust Bob Arctor -- that's either the easiest or most difficult job there is. As a cop, he wears a crazy-ass shape-shifting coverall called a scramble suit, so even his boss doesn't know who he is -- they all just call him Fred. And meanwhile, he's sucking down the illicit drug "Substance D" like crazy while he's trying to bust himself for doing drugs, all the while desperately trying to nail his girlfriend who positively will not put out. Rough being Bob. A Scanner Darkly features weird animation, drawn over top of live-action film. The effect is that you pick up on the nuances of the actors -- subtleties that no animator would come up with -- but it still plays like an animation. It's likely that the whole scheme was dreamed up as a mechanism to cope with the scramble suits, which ironically still smack of cheesy cartoondom. Despite the alleged necessity of the animation, I found it more distracting than anything else, and had difficulty taking the film seriously as a result. Winona Ryder is luscious, even in animated form, and you get to see her naked -- but those aren't really her boobs. Or maybe they are. Hallucinatory images abound in this film, which is surely a metaphorical story for something, but truly the only thing that comes to mind is, well, drugs -- making it a literal story rather a metaphorical one, animated though it is. In the making-of special, we find that the script itself was confusing to Woody Harrelson, who plays a main character in the film, though he just didn't get it. So be forewarned if you're dumber than Woody, you may not get it; but who's dumber than Woody, anyway?

31 December 2006

Heavenly Creatures - An exuberent Juliet shows up one day at school and captures the attention of her adolescent schoolmate, the sullen and introspecitve Pauline. The two become fast friends, dipping into an exotic world of fantasy, populated by living clay creatures who live in a castle and kill one another randomly. When Juliet becomes sick, Pauline's world crumbles, and while Juliet battles her illness, the parents of both girls agree that the close relationship between the girls is becoming unhealthy, and they take steps to separate them, prompting the girls to enact revenge. Director Peter Jackson gets deep into the mind and soul of these girls, in mid-50's New Zealand, bringing us along for the ride. The crazy thing: it's a true story. And what they did is absolutely horrific.

Pulse (2001) - This was the original Japanese version of the story, as its makers intended it, before the American film industry hijacked it and turned it into a run-of-the-mill forgettable bore. Japanese horror is an entity of itself, and Pulse is a standout entry. The dead have filled up their place -- wherever that is -- and have started to enter ours. People who come into contact with one of the dead lose their will to live, becoming cold and feeling isolated. Eventually, they just go away, disappearing in a cloud of ash. In time, most everyone has gone, but a few lone survivors, who are pressed to figure out how to get by. Pulse doesn't go overboard by trying to answer a bunch of questions -- by wrapping everything up in a neat little package the way we like things in Western culture, with our "p implies q" sensibilities. Instead, it presents itself as a spook show; a horror movie that grabs you because of the scary situation, rather than because of big ugly corpsey-looking things bounding all over the screen and a nice tidy explanation for everything -- sometimes the dead just want to kill you, and that's that. I hate what American cinema does to excellent Japanese horror, and Pulse is a prime example -- the original is spooky and impactful, and the remake is crap.

Stay Alive - Remember the name "William Brent Bell" -- he's the asshole who wrote this piece of shit. Yet another in this tired theme -- kids play a video game and then they start to die off. They have to use the game to figure out how to win, and to stop the evil ghost of an old woman who used to kill little girls and bathe in their blood. If only our heroes could find the hidden ten-story castle where the corpse of the old lady resides. Hm, where could it be? Wait, maybe it's that huge fucking castle over there... When I was ten years old, I made a ghost story on audio tape with the kids across the street. We adlibbed our way through it, and from front to back, none of it made any sense. That same feeling comes through here in Stay Alive: they have to put three nails into the body, and they can save themselves by dropping a rose (seriously!) before the ghosts eat them. Stupid. Frankie Munoz plays the same stupid little fucker he does on that stupid fucking TV show I never fucking watch. I hated this bullshit waste of time.

24 December 2006

The Wicker Man - Edward Malus gets a letter from an old girlfriend who tells him her daughter is missing, so he ups and flies out to this creepy island outside Seattle, where the whole place is overrun by Mother God women right out of the 1800's. Nothing's normal in this place, and as Edward goes about finding the girl, he just keeps uncovering more craziness. In the end, we find out what's really going on here, which brings together a number of the loose ends, but not all of them. Malus's reactions always seem to be a little off -- a little out of context -- and his little girlfriend, well, I never figured her out. She's either a concerned mother, manipulative witch, or coked-out whore. And while a number of the pieces come together, we're left to ponder the opening sequence, in which Malus tries to save a little girl, but then she's killed in an explosion -- or is she? It feels like a number of the plot pieces were thrown in for the sole purpose of providing a red herring to the viewer, and that's a little frustrating. Add to that the fact that every last kid looks exactly alike, and the whole thing's just a little too ambiguous. And here's the thing: when it's said and done, two people have gone to this island and dropped off the face of the planet, and we're supposed to believe no one ever came looking? Doubtful.

Little Miss Sunshine - Steve Carrell wanders miles from the obnoxious Office manager Michael Scott and plays the suicidal gay uncle in this completely dysfunctional mess of a family on a road trip to hell. Little Olive has just become a surprise contestant in the Little Miss Sunshine contest and the family has to get to LA. But Mom can't drive a stick so she can't take the microbus, and Grandpa has been training the little munchkin, so he has to go, and Uncle is on suicide watch so he can't be left alone, and somehow it works out that the whole famn damily piles into the bus and trudges off to the land of sun. The highjinks ensue, landing somewhere between Road Trip and Vacation, but with a black comedic tinge. This funny little film retreads every road trip/dysfunctional family/black comedy ever made, but does so in an unassuming way that somehow, strangely, makes you feel good.

Altered - A surprisingly not-so-bad creep show about a crew of rednecks who were abducted by aliens years ago and have been hunting them since, to pay back the death of their friend Timmy. Now they've caught one, who I'll call Milton, and they're trying to figure out what to do with the creepy bastard -- and he's one mean fucker as far as aliens go. If you forget that Predator was ever made, this might seem like a clever story, but really was just a little too derivative of that piece of 80's schtick. It also brought to mind Feast -- the Project Greenlight horror flick. Anyhow, Milton is not only a scary looking lizard-thing with fangs, but he also has the resilience of an insect and super ESP powers. How do you beat a guy like that? Blow the place sky high.

Pulse (2006) - I would think that, as accomplished a writer as Wes Craven is, he would be above tactics like outright theft of concept, but Pulse proves me wrong. Imagine if The Ring were about an Internet virus rather than a video tape. Poof! There's Pulse. The same lack of sensibilities apply as in The Ring, but magnified: apparently a dude was working on an "super wideband" program when he discovered frequencies he didn't even know existed. That provided a gateway to hell, which dead people come through and steal the "will to live" from anyone they get close to. These dead creepy critters cruise around, but only in places that have Internet connectivity (what?). And when you get infected, you turn all black and then become ashes. Somehow, our hero and heroine manage to escape the creepy crawlies, while most of the rest of the world has succumbed. They do so by... running fast? Or maybe looking over their shoulders? Um... this is just really horrible -- an embarassment to horror movie fans. Christina Milian looks hot as hell, and Kristen Bell will want to file this in her "try to forget it and hope everyone else does too" file.

17 December 2006

Last House on the Left - Wes Craven's first directorial effort, and it seems like he was still figuring some things out. It's the story of a teen party girl who is abducted with her friend, tortured, raped, beaten, and eventually killed. Then the bad guys stop by Dad's house for a visit. But Craven seems to have confused his enthusiasm for the story with a general feeling of joyful glee, as he peppers the story with upbeat early-seventies "chang-chicka-chang" tunes, and exploits the slapstick antics of the local bumbling sherriff. Meanwhile, baby girl is receiving a knife in her midsection, followed by a bullet in her head. I thought he may have been trying to drive a contrast between the brutal violence and... something, but I'm just not sure what that "something" is -- the film really only has a lighthearted feel for about the first ten minutes, after which it launches into its poorly acted theater of pain. Despite its shortcomings, Last House was interesting in that it provided a glimpse of what was yet to come in Craven, and the separate scenes of the murders of the two girls were absolutely horrific. Altogether, it left me queasy, which is at least something.

10 December 2006

Clerks II – Kevin Smith’s first film was an understated masterpiece – a black-and-white, stationary-cam exploration of the relationships between a group of fairly crazy twenty-somethings. He established a unique voice, and announced his presence into the world of cinema. With the sequel, he’s obligated to cast the original actors, but twelve years later we find they’re just not up to snuff. In particular, Brian O’Halloran’s original Dante was a prototypical picture of twenties confusion, but now he’s just a blubbering fat guy, overacted and underwhelming, and buddy Randal is just a longwinded boor. Smith has a tendency to substitute chattiness for funniness, and his dialogue-heavy script goes a notch too far here, giving us so much more of Randal and Jay than we really need. There are high points, though, the pinnacle of which is the surprise dance number, and there is the scene-stealing Elias, and of course every captivating vision of Rosario Dawson is a dream. The trademark spoken line from Silent Bob is a nice changeup from his typical denouement eloquence, and the notorious "Donkey Show" is an overhyped schtick. I absolutely love the holy trio of Smith, Rodriguez, and Tarantino, though I’m not always enamored with their films; and while I could probably take or leave this particular venture, I’ll still consider it a key part of the Smith six-part trilogy, and welcome it into the lore of New Jersey.

Straw Dogs - David Sumner married a very cute little tease of a girl in Amy, and moved into an old farmhouse in her hometown in rural England, where he intended to focus on the research he is being paid to do. But Amy demands his constant attention, and her flirty ways, coupled with his outsider-status in the town, bring a lot of attention from the local pack of goons his way. They kill his cat and rape his wife (which she enjoys with one of the two), and it only gets worse from there, eventually developing into a life-and-death battle between David and the goons. In the heat of the battle, his detestable whore of a wife sides with the attackers and doubts her husband's courage. And courage is what this story is about -- the evolution of David, as we see him as pacifist and bookworm; as a clumsy outsider; a bullies' victim, who decides he's had enough and draws a line in the sand where he'll fight to the death to protect himself, his home, and the people around him. The supreme irony is that, unbeknownst to him, the man David's protecting had just recently murdered a young girl. This is a powerful story that's very clearly set in a different time, but many of the themes are timeless. A young Dustin Hoffman is heroic in a touching and believable everyday-man way, and Susan George is cute enough to eat if I didn't hate her so terribly much. A moving film that grabs hold of you and shakes you around for a little while.

Rest Stop - Raw Feed announces their arrival as the premier movie production house with all the bravado of a rap group, and to much the same effect -- if you have to announce your own arrival, perhaps that's because no one else would care. Their debut is Rest Stop -- a transparent, mindless, patently stupid film about a girl at a rest stop running from a bad guy. Nicole has run away from home. The fact that she looks about 30 makes me think that's probably not such a bad idea. Along with her boyfriend, she stops at a rest stop where a dude starts stalking her, which is kind of mindless in its own right because she's terribly stupid. Eventually a cop -- played by Joey Lawrence (whoa!) -- comes along to save the day and it turns out he's terribly stupid as well (big surprise, it's Joey Lawrence). But he's not really there. Or so we think. She also runs into a family of freaks, and after driving with them for a handful of miles, they throw her ass out right where she started. The whole thing is idiotic -- poorly conceived and executed. Rooting for the killer may have a negative impact on your karma, but it sure seems like the right thing to do. Believe it or not, Joey Lawrence is the high point of this film. Go figure.

03 December 2006

Going the Distance - Formula piece from National Lampoon about an uptight college grad who goes on the road with his two wacky buddies to rescue his girlfriend from a horny big studio record exec. Along the way, they pick up a couple babe hitchhikers, and battle it out with the former convict who was hired by the dude's parents to stop their journey. The dude falls for one of the hitchhiker chicks, which makes him think twice about his future with his little muffincake. Boobs, bikers, pot, bears, rotgut whisky, a farmer's daughter, private jets, Avril Lavigne, land surfing, a train wreck, and a musical number (which is also kind of a train wreck.)

Kids - I bought this movie at Target because it looked like a gritty, documentary-style view of American youth. And I don't know if the filmmaker intended that I hate these fucking kids, but I find that I definitely do. Maybe I'm just a little too Cleaver, but I have no idea where these kind of kids are living, where 10-year olds are partying all night and talking about fucking, and where under-17 club kids do designer drugs in unisex bathrooms. Maybe that's the poetic license of translating an adult story to a teen world, but I just found it annoying. Anyway, this story follows a pack of these little fuckers around for about a day, during which they get high, possibly kill someone, hump all over each other, and -- constantly -- talk about fucking. Unfortunately, the nuclear bomb blast that levels the entire crowd of them never comes, and we're left with the disheartening knowledge that they're still running around in society. Hopefully we'll never see these little bastards in an adult film. If we do, pray for an explosion.

November - A concept piece, in which Courteney Cox plays a woman whose fiancé was involved in a convenience store shooting. We see three different views of how she deals with it. Or maybe it's her grieving process we're supposed to be watching -- apparently we have to work at this movie to figure out what's real and what's just some sort of mental process, and there's a bunch of symbolism and... well, I don't know, it just wore me out. And maybe the whole thing is really a mental process, because it's only at the end where the movie turns to true color -- previously it was bathed in a green glow, which I suppose was intended to anchor everything to that night's event under the green fluorescent lights of the convenience store. You see, fluorescent lights are actually green, but our mind doesn't recognize that fact, it converts our vision to a daylight palette, but you can override that effect by taking slide photos under fluorescent lighting and viewing the unfiltered shots. I also noticed it visibly one night when I was standing outside a trailer which was lit within by fluorescent lights, but the surrounding parking lot was bathed in high-pressure-sodium orange, and the contrast between the light flowing out of the open door and the overhead haze was palpable. It was beautiful -- like a shot right out of an art shop -- and somewhat shocking at the same time. And altogether more interesting than November.

26 November 2006

Single White Female - there are two things about this movie that I absolutely love: Jennifer Jason Leigh and Bridget Fonda. Leigh was the darling of my adolescence at Ridgemont High -- as Stacey Hamilton, she was the perfect naughty little next-door minx, and Fonda was... well, she was Nikita. The pair will forever define the nineties woman to me: strong, independent, and short-haired. The story here is that Fonda plays Allie, who takes roommate Hedy into her monstrously huge apartment in New York City. The two spend a decent amount of time naked, which is all good, but they stop short of pillow fights. But when Allie gets back together with her fiancé Sam, Hedy gets pissed off and starts killing people. After Hedy puts her purty mouth to good use on Sam, she follows the act by stabbing a stiletto heel through his eyeball, which drops him cold and pisses Allie off immensely. Finally, the two have a massive chick-fight, which is even punctuated by a little smooch. It's the perfect movie.

When a Stranger Calls (2006) - I didn't see the 1979 original, so this was all new territory to me - the telling of the urban legend about the babysitter who keeps getting threatening phone calls, and eventually the police find that the caller is inside the house. And it's not a bad outing -- I especially think the story just works better now with the proliferation of cell phones to explain the concept that just didn't work 25 years ago: how can a guy be calling from inside the house, on a single phone line? There was a secret number you could dial back then to make your own phone ring, but as soon as you picked up, you got dial tone. Still, it was a great trick. Anyhow, I could have done without the ten minutes at the beginning that show babysitter Jill Johnson running track and whining about a boyfriend. Just stick her ass in that house and let the fun begin. And while actress Camille Belle isn't exactly a darling of expression, her vacant stare evokes an all-too-familiar teen ennui, which works within the role. Overall, the concept is a little lacking, but it's borne of an urban legend, so what do you want? Not bad, not necessarily good, just kind of there.

March of the Penguins - I wonder about evolution sometimes. It can come up with the craziest schemes, and in this case, it forces Emperor Penguins to walk seventy miles across the ice where they hook up with some hot little penguin babes. When the honey pops out an egg, she hands it over to the dude, who carries it on his feet and covers it with his beer belly while sweetheart takes off for a tasty snack. He stands around like that for a couple months, where the temperature averages 58 below zero, until the egg eventually hatches. When his babe comes back, the kid gets a meal then dad takes off, again walking across the 70 miles. Meanwhile, mom, who has made the trip three times so far, hangs out with the kid, teaching him to walk before eventually leaving him on his own and walking back one last time. They do that every fucking year -- I get tired sometimes getting off the couch to find the remote. This was an interesting documentary but I feel like I could have seen it on Discovery Channel or something, where it wouldn't have gotten nearly the attention that the movie did. For my money, I think I'd rather tune in Meerkat Manor.

19 November 2006

Cinderella Man - I'm not sure why it took me so long to see this movie, but I imagine the Russell Crowe factor was in there somewhere. If you also have a similar aversion to Russell Crowe, you really should put it aside to spend some time with this film, because it's very moving and just wonderful. James Braddock, a people's-champion boxer and undoubtedly the inspiration for Stallone's Rocky, was washed up shortly after he began, and then hit rock bottom when the Great Depression took hold of the country. When he could, he worked on the docks to feed his kids, teaching them not to steal, and above all, keeping them all together. Then along came a one-time chance -- a tune-up fight with a heavyweight contender, and an opportunity to earn a cool $250 purse. And what do you think happens? It seems that the stars aligned just right to cast Braddock into sainthood -- he was the right man at a tough time who did the right things and accomplished a miracle. Kind of hard to envision a somewhat diminutive Crowe as a heavyweight fighter, but use your imagination. Paul Giamatti and Renée Zellweger hit right on the mark in supporting roles in this touching film that will give you hope.

Evil Breed - when I saw the listing for this horror flick starring Richard Grieco and Jenna Jameson, I figured I was in for a sleazy campy adventure, and even moreso when I realized the movie was cast with an entire bevy of porn stars. But as it turned out, Grieco (who is looking pretty gnarly these days with long stringy hair) only had a short scene, and Jameson had barely a cameo. What we're left with is a hokey story about a group of American college students who go on a class trip to Ireland, where they run into a pack of inbred Druids. It's hokey but not awful, and Ginger Lynn actually does a commendable job, even putting on an Irish accent. What's oddly out of place is that the gratuitous nudity always showcases spectacularly built women. But who am I to complain? A bullshit ending and a pair of stupid monster suits ruin it.

Short Cuts - I'm not sure where to begin with this -- it's such a huge venture. I guess I'd start by pointing out the irony in naming this movie "Short Cuts" when it runs over 3 hours, and I'd have to mention the cast, which is huge and well-known -- an ensemble cast to end all. Check the imdb post for specifics -- I'm not going to name them all here. I read the short story that was the basis for this movie -- a story in which a guy gets rid of his dog . It got into my head that I should see the much-longer movie, and I find it odd that I should finally do so today, on the day of Robert Altman's death. I suppose that you would have to take over three hours to tell so many stories, and that you would have to hire known actors so we could tell them all apart. But this is the combined story of a bunch of Los Angelenos -- interconnected, disconnected, and fucked up. Love stories, family stories, sex stories, even fishing stories. There are some sequences that will sock you in the gut and take your breath away, and others will be just a little too close to home. A tour de force that touched my life in some little ways.

Children of the Corn - An early Stephen King movie here, with Linda Hamilton before she was buff and scary, and that dude from thirtysomething (which I watched once by mistake for like 22 seconds back in 1988, before poking my eyes out with a hot butter knife.) And I can't believe I'm about to describe it this way, but my main complaint is that I found this rather hard to believe. Okay, so horror and sci-fi ask us to go out on limb and believe some fantastic things, but in exchange for making that leap of faith, they need to present us with an internally consistent world. We need to believe that the characters are behaving reasonably given their circumstances, and that the edges of the fantastic world have borders on reality that make sense. Here we have the town the Gatlin, Nebraska, where the kids have killed off every last adult on the direction of "He who walks behind the rows." Fair enough -- maybe even not a bad idea. But three years later a couple of adults show up, and find the kids still there all by themselves, well-fed, with fluffy 80's hair and clean clothes. Not a single supplier of goods or traveler has noticed that this town has dropped off the map. Not a single out-of-town relative has noticed that Gatlin doesn't answer the phone. For three years. So while it's perfectly reasonable to ask us to believe that a demon is lurking in the cornfield and ordering children to kill adults, it's not reasonable to believe that these same kids could get by just fine on their own for three years without a single soul intervening. Anyway, the visitors battle the kids then face off against the demon, and thirtysomething dude gets stabbed -- which is really the best part. A million sequels abound.

Strangers with Candy - I love smart funny beautiful women, and though Jerri Blanks isn't one of them, Amy Sedaris definitely is. In Strangers with Candy, Sedaris straps into her fat suit, puts on her stupidest face and wallows around in the lowest common denominator as 47 year old ex-con whore Jerri Blanks -- who's just returned from prison to find Daddy in a coma, Mommy dead, and Stepmom humping on the meat man. So Jerri goes back to high school and enters the science fair because that's the only way she can think of to bring Daddy out of the coma, so he can throw out his raging twat of a wife and her raging fruit of a son. It's cornball shit, really, just a boob-shot away from the series it was derived from, and while it's certainly outrageous, for my money I think Sedaris is better suited as herself rather than as the caricature Jerri. But what do I know -- I've done very little prison time.

Slither - The Faculty was a story about a creature that tried to take over a school, spread by wormy creatures that would get under the victims' skin and turn them into agents of the mother worm. Some said it was a ripoff of Invasion of the Body Snatchers -- if that's the case, Slither is downright robbery at gunpoint from The Faculty. An asteroid crashes and wormy things crawl out. When they infect local rich-guy-with-a-trophy-wife "Grant Grant", he starts buying meat, killing dogs, and impregnating the town slut. But then he does something strange, and turns into a giant squid. Soon the town slut explodes and a billion creepy slugs infect a billion creepy people, and the town sheriff is left to save the trophy wife and some random teen with really nice nails. While primarily a gross-out horror flick, Slither has its moments of comedy, and the ill-tempered mayor in particular had me rolling. I was expecting more comedy and more of Jenna Fischer, but all around this was fairly amusing if you like gory goofy crap.

12 November 2006

Rocky IV - the one with Drago. This was on Spike and I just couldn't resist. Coincidentally, I'd just seen a UFC match in which one of the contestants was nicknamed "Drago." Amazing how this 20 year old film, and but one in the series, still carries such weight. Stallone gets such a bad rap because of that lazy mouth of his, and surely his run of Rambo flicks didn't help him much in the credibility arena. But say what you like, the Rocky movies are gold. I still contend that the first one was a love story first and a boxing movie second, and I bet if you watched it again, you'd see what I mean. Here we find Rocko going after the Soviet Union, as he attempts to avenge the death of his friend, the show-boating Apollo Creed. But Drago is a construction of engineering and science, and he can hit nearly three times as hard as any other professional heavyweight fighter -- generating over a ton of force with each punch. But no worries for Rocky, as he leads with his face and eventually breaks down the Russian. In the end, he makes a sappy "why can't we all just get along" speech which surely was a key factor in the demise of the Soviet Republic. Okay, so it's cheesy, but overall Stallone just knows how to write movies that make you cheer and stand up and scream and cry. And honestly, if this were the first Rocky film, it would be getting highest marks because yes it was just that good.

Play Misty for Me - One of Clint Eastwood's first forays into direction, and here he stars as a radio DJ with a stalker. But being a guy, he doesn't really call the cops, he sleeps with the chick instead -- again and again. "Help, I'm being stalked! (poke, poke) She won't leave me alone! (boink, boink)" So the borders of reality are stretched a little, but this was 1976, which was a foreign world compared to the safe-sex, it's-wrong-to-kill-people society we live in today. Jessica Walter does a great job as the absolutely wacko psycho-stalker-girlfriend Evelyn, and Donna Mills plays dishrag to a "T". Then there's Dirty Harry, running around like a little girl with her panties on fire. I must admit, it was hard to envision Clint as a womanizing, smooth-talking radio personality -- the quintessential Clint will always be Dirty Harry and The Stranger of the Spaghetti series. But Misty had a nice flow, aside from the inexplicable jazz vamp three quarters of the way through, and it was chilly in its own "somebody kill this bitch" sort of way.

Feast - The third installment of the Project Greenlight series was the filming of this horror flick. I watched the show and read the script, so now it's time to see the movie. And it's not bad -- a nice little balance of horror and comedy. It's a story of a random collection of people in a bar, who are unexplainably attacked by a family of monsters, who look like the creatures from the Alien franchise. It's a bloody gory mess, and good fun. What's interesting is to see the vision of fledgling director John Gulager at work -- he has a distinctive eye, with plenty of motion and interesting vantage points. Handy cheat sheets at the beginning of the story help us understand who's who in this ensemble cast. Continuity errors abound, but it was still a nice little deviation from the tedium of my real life.

One Missed Call - the world of Japanese horror is a strange one indeed. Here we have One Missed Call, directed by Takashi Miike, who is the Dario Argento of Japan. What we find is that Japanese ghosts are different than American ghosts. In America, ghosts are disembodied people who are a little freaked out about being dead, and they usually want revenge against the bad guys, but they don't really go about hurting random strangers. In Japan, ghosts are a pack of pissed off motherfuckers who would just as soon mutilate and kill any one of us breathing bitches as have to stumble across our carbon-based space-occupying bodies twice. And so we enter the world of Yumi, whose friends Yoko, Natsumi and Kenji have each received a call from their future selves at the time of their deaths. When that moment arrived, sure enough, each one of them was killed. Then Yumi receives such a call, and hooks up with the brother of a girl who was killed previously in the same way, and strangely enough, all of the people who die wind up calling the dude's sister afterward (!) to check in or something - I wasn't so sure about that part. So Yumi and her little buddy find that the calls are coming from the mother of a little girl who suffered from Munchausen syndrome. The girl died from an asthma attack, and the sound of her ghostly puffer is what gave her away. So Yumi goes to the abandoned hospital where the little girl died, and there she finds the dried up corpse of the mom. Then she has a flashback because her grandmother committed suicide and her mother used to whip the crap out of her. Time goes backwards for a little while and everybody eats a piece of candy. Wow. I'll never fuck with Japanese ghosts.

05 November 2006

An American Haunting - a big-studio spookshow that gets its chills from shock scenes: loud noises and stuff flying around. It's set in the mid-19th century, and tells the story of a family that is tormented by an evil spirit who possesses the family's teenage daughter and sickens her dad, who committed the unconscionable sin of charging 20% interest to a neighborhood witch. Just like Citibank. I suppose the movie's better than a kick in the head, but it took me a full day to get through it because it didn't hold my attention for longer than five minutes at a time. But the multi-channel sound programming is excellent.

Hard Candy - Wow. I mean, fuck... Wow. Little teen Hayley hooks up with a thirty-something then goes back to his place for drinks and dirty pictures. Bad idea. For him. There are really only 2 characters in this whole film, but they pull off an intense and crazy drama that is as wrenching as you will find -- like The Crush gone bad. Really fucking bad. Holy fuck wow.

29 October 2006

Gothic - here we have the "based on a true" story of the night that Mary Shelley dreamed up the Frankenstein story in the company of Lord Byron, her fiancé and her step-sister. I was expecting a little more historical accuracy, but what we got instead was a horror movie in its own right. It turns out Lord Byron is a controlling prick -- a Svengali, if you would -- having an S&M relationship with the step-sister Claire. Or perhaps it's B&D or M/S -- I don't know about that crap. Anyway, they have a séance and create some sort of demon monster. Then they all fuck for a while, then Claire freaks out and froths at the mouth. Meanwhile the demon is stalking them and they have to break a skull while covered in mud and mostly naked to make the demon go away. The next day they're drinking wine and playing in the park. Somewhere in the midst of it all, Mary came up with the Frankenstein idea. This mid-eighties entry is pretty scattered but not too awful; I was really hoping it would have been less melodramatic and more factual, but I guess that's what you should expect from a movie called "Gothic."

The Green Mile - There's not a bad minute in this three-hour endeavor. Tom Hanks -- who is apparently destined to receive some really fuzzy eyebrows when he becomes an old dude -- plays a prison guard on death row, when along comes a gargantuan inmate by the name of John Coffey (like the drink only not spelled the same.) The guy's bigger, even, than my friend Todd, who almost had a bit part in Blade: Trinity but he couldn't get a work permit for the filming in Vancouver. Anyway... It turns out the dude has the ability to heal, which comes in handy for the boys on a couple of occasions. They're left to ponder how God could bestow that sort of gift into the hands of a murderer, and ultimately they're forced to contemplate the nature of sin and salvation. There's a villainous pussy of a guard, an evil inmate, a whimsical inmate, and even a circus mouse. If you've ever read a Stephen King book, you know there's a lot more going on in the book than ever shows up on the screen, and here you get the sense that this is a much more complete translation of King's work than most other attempts. You'll watch the whole thing, enthralled, from front to back. There's magic here.

22 October 2006

The Girl in the Basement - Dishwasher Alec has a screw loose. So he bonks the semi-hot waitress from his restaurant on the head, drags her back home, and ties her up in the basement. It's a good thing mom's out of town, 'cause she'd be so pissed... Over the next few days, he struggles to figure out what to do with her, and lands on the default -- he keeps her around while he tries to come up with a better solution. It seems the reasoning for this behavior has something to do with the evil Santa that keeps running around in his mind's eye. Eventually when he observes naked day at work, and then acts out a really fucked up family dynamic that has to do with kissing mama's coochie, we realize that young Alec is not only missing a screw, but in fact the whole damn set was never installed. And the only replacements are metric torx head, and he can't for the life of him find a driver. This low budget thriller starts off with really poor acting, but that character soon drops out of the main story, and the production value is really quite good throughout. A weird climax and non-preachy script make this a keeper.

Frailty - Matthew McConaughey grew up in a family of serial killers, spoken to directly by God, and instructed to destroy demons with three magical weapons before burying them in the rose garden out back. I knew there was something creepy about that dude! Always with his "yes ma'am, no ma'am" in that lazy Texas drawl -- he's not fooling anyone. Go kill someone, why doncha, ya demon-slaying, speaking-to-God freak! Here's the scoop: Fenton Meeks walks into the local FBI office and tells the main dude that his brother is a serial killer. So we flash back to Fenton's childhood, and he tells a long story about all the people that his dad killed, and so his brother must be doing it now too. Most of the story is told in this extended flashback, before we pop back into the present and experience a few twists and turns before the closing credits. This wasn't bad really, not at all. Surprisingly, Mac was able to keep his shirt on through the whole thing, and he buried his characteristic pretty-boy smile a mile deep. I was reminded of Fallen for some reason -- maybe the period or the light horror / weird supernatural theme.

Serpico - Al Pacino as Frank Serpico, the last honest cop in New York. Just like Dog Day Afternoon, I was surprised to see what this was really all about, as my perception from 30 years ago was something entirely different. From that time, I believed this was about an aggressive cop, busting bad guys and yelling a lot, as Pacino is so well known for. In fact, it was about a guy who fought a war within the system, refusing to play the games that every other cop he meets is playing: payouts, gambling rings, and protection schemes. As he's transferred all around the city, he's really just trying to do a good job as a cop, but when he continues to alienate his colleagues, he finds he has to go on the offensive to stay alive. With the corruption up through the highest levels of he city, it looks like he's on his own until he goes to press and leaks what becomes a front-page story. In a time that police corruption was controversial, this was a groundbreaking story, and even though we're used to really bad cops in these days of The Shield and Mark Furman, Serpico still speaks volumes about personal courage and ethics.

The Devil and Daniel Johnston - I was really looking forward to this documentary story about songwriter Daniel Johnston, who has struggled with the demons of mental illness for the majority of his life. While the story is compelling, the pieces really didn't come together for me. First of all, there's the music, and though it's easy to see there is some element of genius there, the performances and overall musicianship are pretty poor. And I've never really gotten that whole folkey Dylan/Bright Eyes stuff, which is what we have here. Then there's the story itself, which doesn't seem to take us very far: young artsy dude with lots of talent develops bipolar disorder and his future is forever altered. It's a sad story and there is a ton of video and audio footage to support the story, but it came off to me like, well, just another story in the naked city. Which is a shame because I totally dig mental illness.

15 October 2006

Primer - I really have no clue what was going on in this movie, but I liked it nonetheless. Basically, it's about these two inventor guys who stumble upon a time machine. From there, it gets fuzzy. They go into the machine, but when they leave, they have to be careful to leave the machine turned on because they're still actually in it. Then they go to a hotel to hide out for a few hours, while their other selves are still walking around. By my reckoning, this pattern should wind up creating an infinite number of them in a pretty short time span, which I guess is one of the problems they're dealing with, as well as someone's girlfriend's father, and a guy who crashes a party with a shotgun. I think they actually killed their other selves a few times over, and somehow also wound up walking around with a set of headphones on that played three seconds into the future into their ears. This somehow allowed them to be heroes and stop the shotgun guy. I don't know -- told you had no clue. I was feeling bad about it, then I found this chart someone put together to explain the movie. Geez, if you need a chart to explain a movie, I think I'll need to try another time.

The Possessed - stupid, stupid, stupid slasher flick about a lame-o goth band whose singer kills herself then turns into the devil and possesses the other singer so she can kill all the remaining members of the band when they go back into the studio. I can't think of enough bad things to say about this piece of dreck, so I'll just leave it at that.  Perhaps even better (or worse) than the movie itself is its only imdb review, which I copy here verbatim:

I think this movie had to be fun to make it, for us it was fun to watch it. The actors look like they have a fun time. My girlfriends like the boy actors and my boyfriends like the girl actors. Not very much do we get to have crazy fun with a movie that is horror make. I see a lot of scary movies and i would watch this one all together once more, or more because we laugh together. If this actors make other scary movies i will watch them. The grander mad man thats chase to kill the actors is very much a good bad man. He make us laugh together the most. i would give this movie a high score if you ask me.

I don't know if the market has any more of the movies with the actors, but the main boy is cute. the actor with the grand chest has to be not real. they doesn't look to real.

I love that. Thank you "mickeydee from Italy", for bringing some joy to this viewing experience.

Down in the Valley - Edward Norton produces and stars in this suspense drama about an urban cowboy who crosses paths with a rebellious teen girl. She falls crazy in love, and he changes from odd outcast to sociopathic killer. Edward Norton is a dynamic, fascinating actor who brings an entire world to every performance (see American History X or Primal Fear or The Score or Fight Club), and Evan Rachel Wood is perfectly cast as the rebellious teen she plays so well. While there were some interesting turns, Down in the Valley generally follows a formulaic path: outsider disrupts an unhappy family and thug-turned-hero dad comes to the rescue. Any movie with a sympathetic sociopath will follow the same line (see Fear or, for a twist on the theme, perhaps even Poison Ivy.) And though I've always been better known for my brains than my looks, I still had a hard time understanding the significance of the ubiquitous freeway shots throughout this film. Rory Culkin and brother Kieran are doing their best to distance themselves from their face-slapping, monkey-loving brother, and Rory does a nice job here. And while Down in the Valley never really misses the mark, it didn't pick me up and swing me around by the balls, which is what you want a good movie to do, so I'd really only recommend it to the diehard Norton fans.

08 October 2006

The Witch's Sabbath - Supercheesy horror film about a coven of devil-worshipping strippers who can't act, who kill everyone they meet. I guess the deal here is that the coven of stripper witches needs to claim 666 victims by Halloween to please their master. Featuring a bevy of second-rate beauties, this entry into the T&A Horror category is clearly one of the worst movies ever made. From acting to writing to storyline to effects -- even to the grammar of the title -- everything checks in at simply horrible, and a Ron Jeremy cameo is just shameful. In the end, we find that the devil is actually HR Pufenstuf, who is somehow joined by the unwitting heroine whose backstory is introduced but never explained. At 5.2, the IMDB rating of this film is grossly exaggerated by family, friends and cast -- truly this is one of the worst movies ever made. If I were to take away anything positive, it would be the following: 1) The DVD cover is kind of spooky. 2) The girl on the back of the DVD cover looks kind of cute with her huge demon eyes. Shame she has the worst boob job ever. 3) A science fact: The human body is actually under tremendous pneumatic pressure (perhaps explaining the boobs on the girl in item 2), which will cause blood to squirt 10-15 feet when the skin is punctured. And finally 4) A petite little 5'2" witch can easily decapitate the average human if she's wearing a spooky glove. Proving science wrong. (A shoutout to Bree! w00t!)

Jesus is Magic - Sarah Silverman knows she's cute. And she knows how to exploit it in her comedy -- otherwise she'd never get away with what she does. Jesus is Magic is mostly standup, with a few music videos thrown in. Yes, she sings, and not just with her mouth. There's not much to say here that's not a rehash of what everyone in the world has already said about Silverman -- if you like her, you love her, and this movie won't disappoint. If you don't like her, she's not going to change your mind here.

Derailed - Jennifer Aniston has a surprisingly small role in this suspense drama about a guy who cheats on his blazing hot wife and winds up in really big trouble as a result. The shocker is that the blazing hot wife isn't Aniston, it's Melissa George, who looks like Linda Cardellini's older sister -- you should Google her if you don't know who I'm talking about. While you're at it, Google Cardellini as well -- make a day of it. So anyway, these two start to mess around and just before it comes out, a bad guy breaks into the room and beats the holy hell out of poor Charlie, and then bangs his gal. So now we're supposed to feel bad for the two, because all they really wanted was to swap some fluids, but now they've got all kinds of trouble. If the "innocent adulterer" theme annoys you as much as it does me, you'll be very tempted to turn this off and throw it in the trash, but you should stick it out because it does take a couple more funky little turns, and it's really not so bad after all. The body count racks up, and while the believability-quotient is fairly low, it's kind of cute in a "kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out" sort of way. And I have to commend Aniston, who, as she did in The Good Girl, deviates from her Rachel Greene safety zone, playing businesswoman sophisticate in this case. But seriously Chas, if you're married to someone who looks like Melissa George, you should know where to put it and where not to put it, and the right place is somewhere in the general vicinity of wifey, and the wrong place is everywhere else. Even an idiot could figure that one out.

01 October 2006

Sisters of Death - What struck me here was the brutal reality of the beginning scene, in which sorority girls were initiating two pledges, who only had to pass the "test of courage", which involved loading a gun and pointing it at the girls' heads and pulling the trigger. Meanwhile, the sisters were talking all monotone and silly, like robots out of Star Trek -- I know that's exactly what sorority initiation is like. Well, somebody makes a big mistake and puts a real bullet into the gun (whoopsie!), and splatters pledge Jenn. Fast forward 7 years, when someone calls a sorority reunion -- apparently there were only ever five members, and the sorority was known simply as The Sisters. They all show up at a house that's surrounded by an electric fence, so they cruise in and throw on their gratis bikinis and slam drinks, when the dead girl's father shows up to take his revenge. This late-seventies low-fi flick is like Charlie's Angels meets... well, it's like Charlie's Angels. They're dumb and pretty and trying to escape or solve a crime or something. I don't know... it's not even worth talking about.

The Amityville Horror (2005) - There's really no reason to have remade this film, and clearly a faithful rendition would be out of the question. What we find here is a story that takes a lot of liberties in its deviation from the original, which took a lot of liberties in its deviation from reality. The truth of the story, as we found out years after the first movie, is that George and Kathy Lutz did actually live in that house, but aside from that, all bets are off. The first major deviation that we find is that the actors playing George, Kathy, and even the friendly neighborhood babysitter, are entirely too good-looking for reality. As the story goes on, there are subtle reminders of the original, but the departures are everywhere: the pig Jody is now a corpsey-looking girl, and in the end, George makes every effort to kill his family with an ax and a shotgun. I was actually surprised to see how far the producers stretched reality and still tried to maintain that "based on a true story" crap. Like all the shots where they showed the demons watching the unaware family -- I highly doubt the demons provided an interview to fill us in on those details. I missed a big chunk of this because of some ongoing problems I had in Accounts Receivable and a nasty headache I was dealing with all day long. But they got away and lived happily ever after. Hooray for Hollywood.

Headspace - A dude starts playing chess. This makes his brain really big. He reads books really fast and learns a lot of stuff. Oh, and there's a monster in his closet that eats his friends. I suppose this is supposed to be somewhat of a cerebral horror movie, but really it's the same old thing we've seen again and again: a guy is the only one who can see scary monsters, and they're killing everyone he comes in contact with. At times, he sees his friends turning into these monsters -- or is he going crazy, and he's the killer? Yawn. Throw in a random surprise ending which may or may not answer any questions, and over all the thing's just very disappointing. The production value is good, so the journey is fine, but it would be nice if there was a little more investment made in the script. And if you believe the DVD cover, this thing won "Best Screenplay" at the New York City Horror Film Festival -- I don't even know what to say about that. Credit Pollyanna McIntosh for the gratuitous nudity.

24 September 2006

Into the Blue - The most beautiful woman in the world, bippin' around in a bikini for an hour and a half. Could it possibly get any better than that? Yes -- sometimes she's just barely in the bikini -- it's the perfect movie. Unlike Tim Story, who cast Jessica Alba in The Fantastic Four as the invisible girl (idiot!), director John Stockwell acknowledges Alba's greatest gifts and gives her character total visibility, as she runs around and swims around in the tiniest of bikinis, all the while strengthening her girl-next-door cred as her character maintains the moral high ground throughout the whole thing. Somehow, she also manages to pull in some of her Dark Angel skills, as she finds time to beat up the occasional bad guy, and swim, swim, swim. And while I still contend that I liked her better with a few more pounds in her early Dark Angel days, I have no problem conceding that she is currently the breathtakingly beautiful queen of the world. And Stockwell , who also directed Blue Crush, seems to have fallen upon a formula here, perhaps lifted from the Andy Sidaris "Savage Beach" series, in which a lot of pretty girls run around in little bikinis amidst awesome underwater photography, with some sort of story to prop it all up. This one? It's about drugs and treasure. With Jessica Alba.

Jenifer - Jenifer's not a pretty girl. In fact, she's just about the most gruesome thing you've ever seen, except that she's built like all holy hell - a description not entirely figurative in this case. I think we've all run across the type on some late Saturday night, and in fact I think she looks a little familiar… Detective Frank Spivey is no stranger to the scenario, either, as he stops a man from killing her, and then immediately begins a campaign of boinking the girl, who is the epitome of the proverbial "far away hot chick." And even after Jenifer eats his cat as well as a handful of neighborhood kids, he still finds himself about six inches into her, before he finally has enough of the killing and eating and bloody sex and decides to get rid of her. This entry in the Masters of Horror series, this time from Dario Argento, is silly, gory, and just plain weird. Not to mention oddly entertaining, in a perverse, what-the-fuck sort of way. You'll catch yourself saying, "Show her face! Eeww! Don't show her face!" And really, I think Argento stole a page from everyone's personal history book by taking the coyote-ugly girl out for a spin and jacking her up a notch or ten.

17 September 2006

The Visitation - A dude shows up in a rural town and starts healing people. Then he holds an old-fashioned revival at some tent on a farm. More people are healed, but former minister Travis isn't fooled. But surely this is a good thing, right? Oh, of course not. This is one of those "false prophet" movies, and if you've seen one, you know how they go. The "savior" is really the devil or the beast or the Anti-Christ or the son of some dead minister who made a deal with the devil or some such shit. The one thing we can take away from this is that when the Anti-Christ does shows up, he'll be a little chubby. Otherwise, he'll look exactly like Jack White. Wait, Jack White is a little chubby... Oh my God, Jack White is the Anti-Christ! Holy fucking shit, I can't believe Detroit's current favorite son is the fucking Anti-Christ! Aaaaaahhhhhhh! Aaaaaaaahhhhhhh!!!! Finally, something explains the popularity of the White Stripes! And Meg... is she his sister? Or maybe his ex-wife? Hell no, try unholy succubus! Aaaaaahhhhhhh! Aaaaaaaahhhhhhh!!!! But at least it was good to see Kelly Lynch again, for the first time since Top Gun, or Officer and a Gentleman or whatever the fuck she was in. And what we find out about the Anti-Christ is that he's really just a dude in a bad wig who got boned by his dad and made a deal with the devil so now he has to kill once every 3 years -- standard Satanic terms -- and all the little loose ends wrap up neatly. Just stay away from the next Raconteurs concert.

Dave Chappelle's Block Party - you probably know that Dave Chappelle is a very funny comedian and sketch writer, and you may also think he's a little nutso after his hideout in Africa and abandonment of his $50 million deal with Comedy Central. But what comes out here is that, at his core, there's something really just nice about the guy. Before returning to film his short-lived third season of Chappelle's Show, he organized a concert in the heart of Brooklyn -- booking his favorite hip-hop artists and passing out free tickets, including some that included a bus tour from Ohio. Throughout the whole endeavor, you get strong sense that this is just a good guy, and he's trying to give something back. It was great to see so many hip-hop acts perform with a live band, and Chappelle brought his comedy to the party as well. A nice little two hour feel-good experience.

Lonesome Jim - Casey Affleck is Jim, a failed writer from New York who returns to his hometown to live with his parents and sort our his life, which is, apparently, going nowhere. Then he meets a babe who falls hard for him, because chicks dig guys with no direction, no money, and no car who live with their parents. He winds up baby-sitting a girls' basketball team when his brother, the coach, rams his car into a tree (don't worry, the tree was fine.) This is basically a go-nowhere movie, but here's what I liked about it: 1) the lack of story is very encouraging to fledging writers. It suggests the bar is set low. 2) There were some funny moments -- laugh out loud moments in fact. 3) A number of the characters were really cool. Uncle Evil channeled John Goodman in a Big Lebowski or Raising Arizona vein, and Ben was wonderfully precocious. 4) Um, that's it. So it won't go setting the world on fire, but... I watched it. And there you have it.

10 September 2006

V for Vendetta - For the record, Natalie Portman is a beautiful, talented, expressive, stunning woman that I might just sacrifice body parts for -- depending, of course, on the body part and its relative necessity to the transaction. She's as beautiful to look at as she is moving to watch. She is equal parts beauty queen, girl next door, jerkoff fantasy, and beer buddy. And in lieu of any other motivation, I will always see a Natalie Portman movie simply because it is a Natalie Portman movie, and V for Vendetta is no exception. Having said that, this is a cute little movie that tries hard to be relevant to our current world situation, but mostly it comes off like comic-book-turned-Hollywood-film. I had a tough time nailing down the Evey character, as she really just seemed to be going along with the flow, while I believe the point was that she was supposed to be a brave heroine. Her action/inaction, bravery/cowardice, love him/hate him behaviors were maddeningly inconsistent. I think this would be a good story for pissed off left-wingers and disenfranchised youth, but I just didn't really get it. I mean, I got it, but afterward I think I ran the vacuum or something -- it didn't exactly change my life. And Portman -- as always -- was a dream.

03 September 2006

Hotel - At fifty-one minutes into this, the thought came to me: "What the flying fucking hell is this?" I get that it's a black comedy about the making of a movie, and I'm sure it's just chock-full of inside jokes. Though I'm sure it's not appropriate to call this movie "stupid", I'm afraid that's exactly what it is. While the presence of Salma Hayek and the label that warns "strong sexual content" are both big draws, unfortunately the two never meet, and we wind up with this overblown pretentious mess. It's constantly bouncing from splitscreen to shaky cam to night vision, interspersed with cuts from the "movie" being filmed, guaranteeing incomprehension. The actors are look-alike unknowns and there are so damn many of them. I was proud of myself that I made it through this whole thing, but it took training, discipline and hard work. I'd like to thank God, without whom none of this would be possible. I'd like to thank my family and friends, who constantly encourage me to go the extra mile. And lastly, a big shoutout to the boys in T-Town, hangin' at Rocky's. You know what I'm talkin' about! Whoop! Whoop!

Vital - If you've ever wanted to stick your toe into the waters of Japanese cinema but didn't know where to begin, this might be a good place. But first, let me offer a couple hints concerning that world of Japanese film. First off, it's weird as hell. Nothing is as it seems, and nothing really makes sense. Half of what you see isn't really happening and half of what happens, you never really see. Secondly, it can be uberviolent. There's a lot of cutting and stabbing. Thirdly -- and this goes for all foreign films -- never, ever, ever try to watch the dubbed version -- they make the whole thing play like a Godzilla movie -- stick with the subtitles instead. Okay, now we're ready for Vital, which would make for a nice little entry into the world of Japanese film because it's not too crazy, not overwhelmingly violent, and the dialogue is fairly sparse. The story is this: a dude and his girlfriend are in a car crash; she dies and his memory is wiped out. He goes to medical school and shows up for his dissection class, and guess who's there to meet him? That's right, it's girlfriend, but she's sprawled out on the slab -- small world, eh? As he works on the body of young Ryoko, played gamely by Nami Tsukamoto -- who's a beautiful little wisp of a girl -- he begins to time-travel and finds himself living a dual life -- part of the time in the drab world of med school, and the rest of the time in an idyllic world with beautiful vibrant Ryoko. That's about it -- the whole plot is right there on the surface, but the execution of the story is beautiful, artistic and atmospheric.

Silent Hill - Pretty much what you would expect here: a big-studio big-budget horror film that's big on shock scenes and special effects. A chick goes to a ghost town because her daughter has bad dreams. She decides to evade the police and crash the town borders, where she wipes out. Now her daughter's gone and in the process of looking for her she finds all kinds of creepy shit. Out of the blue, she just gives up, and goes back to her car to call her husband: "I think I know where she is." I do too, you stupid whore, she's being eaten by burnt-up mutant midget people, but your excitement level is about commensurate with a shopping trip. Then the cop shows up again, played by Laurie Holden, who's completely unconvincing as a cop but totally convincing as a babe -- clearly the prototype for Mel Gibson's "Sugarpants." The chick gets away, then out of the blue, she walks into a school building. She finds a flashlight and some keys and pockets them both, just before she finds a tied up corpse and decides to look in its mouth to find a little piece of paper with a clue. And it goes on and on. This forward-journey picking-stuff-up nonsensical mess dominates the first half of the movie, tying itself a bit too closely to its video game origins. Eventually it coalesces into a story that explains the overall concept but none of the specifics of all the creepy-crawly monsters and odd behaviors, but like the Pat Benetar song, it's a little too late. Not bad as far as creepy movies go, but yeah, I don't know. Whatever.

Brick - After the first couple of minutes, you might think this is a story about a high school kid whose girlfriend is killed, and he takes it upon himself to find the killer. It's not. It's actually an old-time detective story that happens to be set in the present day, in high school. The language and roles are a distinct throwback to those days when they said things like "doll" and suffixed every sentence with "see?" Oddly, it works, though it kept bringing back memories of Romeo + Juliet, which was Shakespeare's classic love story set maddeningly in present day LA. Tragically, Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes were perfectly cast for the roles of the star-crossed lovers at that time in their lives, but the endeavor was ruined by the ridiculous anachronistic setting. Here in Brick, the approach has a different effect, of transporting the viewer into this alternate world, where the behaviors are internally consistent -- it even becomes fun to map the events and characters into a vintage detective-style film. What happens is this: a girl gets mixed up with the wrong crowd and ends up dead. Her ex-boyfriend becomes the gumshoe who gets to the bottom of the crime by infiltrating the organization behind it all, pitting boss against crony. A clever little bit of humor halfway through where the mother of crime boss "The Pin" fixes breakfast for the crowd shows us that director Rian Johnson isn't taking himself too seriously. Prepare to crank up the sound because they tend to mumble, which gets frustrating in light of the invented stilted language. Then immerse yourself in a whole new world for about an hour and fifty minutes. It's worth a view just for the excellent implementation of the clever concept.

27 August 2006

Winter Passing - Zooey Deschanel is Reese, a lost soul twenty-something bartender in New York trying to find herself. Her father is a (former) writer of some acclaim, and a few months after her mother's death, a woman shows up offering her $100,000 for the letters written between her parents. She goes back to her childhood home to get them, where she finds Dad off in the twilight zone, living with two boarders -- a sweet sensitive little Brit girl, and wannabe-Christian-rocker Corbit. The cover of the DVD made me think this was going to be a black comedy -- a Eulogy 2, if you would -- but really the only comedic moments come from Will Ferrell, who never goes over the top in his portrayal of Corbit. In fact, much of the movie is really very dark, particularly the New York scenes in the beginning, where we find Reese fucking indiscriminately and unjoyously, and using pain as a medicine. And while we know how it's going to work out once the premise of the story is established, it's still nice to go along for the ride, as we watch Reese's cold heart melt under the tender sentimentality of Corbit and the growing love of family. As for Zooey, she channels her girl-next-door beauty into this little-girl-lost role so seamlessly, it pulls you into Reese's world completely. After I watched this I thought it was just okay, but then I kept going back to some of the scenes and reliving the pain. A nice thoughtful adult story about finding family.

13 August 2006

Match Point - Pretty people of privilege. A love triangle. Brits. A quadrangle, actually. One American. Scarlett Johansson -- the prettiest. We win. For the first 3/4 of this movie, I tempered my boredom with an intense dislike for all of these people. Snotty, shallow, self-absorbed, ditzy fucks. And then, bang! It takes a big turn, and makes you go, "holy shit...." Chris is a tennis instructor who meets a sweet but boring girl who can open doors for him. Then he meets American girl Nola, and it's, boing! Yeah, Scarlett does that. So he marries the rich girl and sleeps with the hot one -- who just happens to be engaged to his buddy -- who becomes his brother-in-law when he marries the rich girl. And of course, it gets complicated. Here's my advice: pay attention to the boing so you can make it to the bang. For the ladies -- well, it's kind of a chick flick anyway, so they'll probably dig it all the way through. All the while I kept asking, "where's Woody? Where's Woody?" Woody is not to be found. I'll settle for his ingenue.

Firecracker - My obsession with fireworks is well documented, but truly that wasn't my motivation here. Instead, the video package pitched this as "one of the most visually stunning, emotionally heavy films of the decade." Holy crap. So I plugged it in, waiting to be enthralled. It's a story about Jimmy, who has a pretty rotten family life: dad's a nut, mom's a holy roller, and big brother is abusive and even does him in the butt from time to time. Wait.... what? Yep. One day Jimmy discovers the singer from the circus side show (there are singers in circus side shows?) and he stalks her. Turns out she's getting socked around by her husband, and she strikes up a friendship with Jimmy, who just might be her nephew. And in fact, she may have gotten pregnant from her other nephew, David (Jimmy's brother, the boofer). One day David goes missing and Mom stops praying. The local cop is on the case. There's a lady in white with bottles in her tree (what?), a neighbor kid on a leash (what?), and extreme genital mutilation (what???). The writer clearly took a page from the David Lynch handbook, but he just wasn't able to sell it. Jak Kendall, as Jimmy, over-acted his aw-shucks portrayal that was tiresome after the first minute. And all the way through, the whole film glistened with pretentiousness -- never quite selling that weird-ass dynamic that Lynch does so unflinchingly. When twenty pieces of silver were handed over for the betrayal of Sandra, I was a little embarrassed for everyone involved.

13 August 2006

The Hazing - Silly horror fare about a group of pledges from a fraternity and sorority who are assigned to spend the night in a "haunted" house. But then they discover it really is haunted, and have to fight to get out alive. The major draw here is Brooke Burke, who unfortunately only appears in the first 2 minutes, before she's bonked on the head by an evil professor. Then it's all about the 5 kids and their pledge-trainer taskmasters -- a fraternity dick and a sorority ice-queen -- and the ghost of the professor dude, who possesses one of the kids. There's also a Book of Souls, because 5 college kids going through fraternity hazing on Halloween in a haunted house isn't cliché enough. But it turns out the dead professor isn't really dead, he's just injured (seriously!), and he can only rule the land of the living if he does die, but he can't just kill himself because then he'll be stuck in the land of the dead rather than the land of the living. So they have to find the doorway to hell -- conveniently located in the basement -- in order to stop the old guy, or maybe if they just all start to make out (seriously!), love will save them. No, that never works, so the ghost of the professor comes back again and possesses the chick, and they find the doorway. Then possessed girl falls through the doorway and the professor comes out and they hit a spot on the wall above the doorway to hell and it closes -- that's all they had to do -- and then the chick comes flying back from the land of the dead because she didn't taste good or something. And through it all, I kept coming back to the same thing: "Sweet Fancy Moses, Brooke Burke is just absolutely perfect." At least I took something away from this silliness.

The Pledge - Detective Jerry Black has like one more hour before retirement, and he's on his last case when he pledges his soul's salvation to the parents of a murdered girl that he will catch the killer. Bummer when that happens. So he embarks on his own mission to find the guy, even after his old buddies at the police station catch the wrong guy and watch as he kills himself. A coerced confession is good enough for them, but not for Jerry's soul. He finds a string of similar murders in the area, and moves out by a lake because… I'm not really sure. But it turns out the killer lives just around the corner. Jerry buys a country store and fishes a lot, and eventually hooks up with a semi-hot chick in town with a cute little daughter -- coincidentally about the same age and description as the murdered girls. So he tries to balance his life of fishing and store-tending and even parenting with his need to catch the bad guy and save his mortal soul. And he fucks it all up. Nobody wins in this sad story, and Jerry goes ape-shit crazy at the end.

Night of the Living Dead - I put this in to test my new center channel speaker, only to find out it's released in 2.0 only. But then I couldn't resist watching it anyway. This is the 1990 remake of the classic story that started it all. I like this version best because of the updated storyline -- the strengthening of the Barbara character, who was a dishrag in the original. Here in the remake, we find this is a story which not only features an empowered heroine, it is very much about that empowerment process, and while on the surface this is clearly a brilliant horror flick, it is more about the people inside the house than the people (or whatever) outside. In case you've been avoiding horror movies your entire life, here's the story: somehow, the dead start to come back to life, and begin to attack the living. Seven survivors wind up in a farmhouse, and try to live through the night and survive each other in the process, with each fostering his own agenda. Harry Cooper is the villain of the story -- a coward and a fool -- who is trying to protect his wife and sick daughter. Ben and Barbara are strangers, who have each landed here by accident. Tom and Judy are hick-kin to the (dead) owners of the farmhouse. The story is captivating because of the excellent interplay of the characters, and the character arc of Barbara as she transforms from squealing priss to toughass backwoods soldier. The ending is dark and telling, and is the most excellent lead-in to a sequel I've ever seen; it screams to you, "this is only the beginning." Brilliant.

6 August 2006

The Big Lebowski - Jeff Bridges stars as The Dude, the ultimate stoner/slacker. Some bad guys, thinking he's a different Lebowski, break into his house and piss on his rug (which "really pulled the whole room together"), so he goes off on a mission to replace it. He meets the other guy named Lebowski, who is a rich old geezer married to a hot little trophy wife. The wife has been gambling and is out some big money to loan sharks. Soon she turns up missing, supposedly held for ransom, though she may only be visiting her mother in Sheboygan. The Dude becomes the delivery guy for the ransom money, but he screws that up by bringing along his Vietnam vet psycho buddy, and they lose the money. There are nihilists, bowling bullies, porn moguls, Jewish converts, and naked performance artists -- and it goes on and on. A first class entry in the slacker genre, with bigger-than-life characters, a goofy story, and a legion of faithful followers who have memorized every single line. Not earth-shattering, but whatever.

30 July 2006

Undead - At first blush, this came off like Night of the Living Dead meets Evil Dead 2, with a splash of High Plains Drifter thrown in. While that sounds intriguing, if you just tell the same story, it's not worth the time. By 45 minutes in, Undead was telling the same old story, so I turned it off. Then along came a second wind, and I realized that I'd never live down the shame if I admitted that I made it through Blue Crush but turned off a zombie movie, so I tried again, and I'll be darned if it didn't spin off into one of the most original directions I've ever seen. So here's how it goes: some meteors crash into the small town of Berkeley somewhere in Australia, where they talk funny and drive on the wrong side of the road. Suddenly, the place is overrun with zombies, and a small ragtag group of survivors is trapped in a country house trying to defend themselves. The first half of this movie is heavy on comedy -- moreso than Evil Dead 2 -- as if excusing itself for the retread of the zombie story. But once the shut-ins escape from the house, they discover that zombies are only the beginning of the problem -- there are also aliens running around, taking people away into the sky. Then there's the acid rain. By the time it ends, it's become a dark story with an ending that matches the sense of foreboding in The Terminator. What in God's name is going on here? You'll get it by the end of the movie. I think I actually said, "ooooohhhh" at least once, near the end.

Blue Crush - Cute story with cute girls in cute bikinis who meet a cute guy and have to make decisions. Anne Marie is a surf-chick and the big surfing contest is coming up so she's working out with her surf-chick posse. They run around a lot in little bikinis and such, which is very cool. Then she meets an NFL quarterback on vacation, and she uses the chance to relax in the luxury of his expensive suite as an excuse to give up on the competition because really... she's scared of getting hurt. Will she find the courage to compete, despite the fact that she nearly drowned a couple years ago? Hm, I wonder... Okay, this is a fluff piece, but the girls look good, and the photography in the water is absolutely amazing, with camera shots from right inside the pipeline, that drop back into the wave and continue to follow from underneath. There's wipeout shots and underwater shots and a couple head-bonking shots for good measure. As far as the story is concerned, it has some problems, but it's a fluff piece, remember? But I still had a tough time buying sensitive 90's guy Matthew Davis as an NFL quarterback, especially once he took off his shirt and got roughed up by some random midsized surfer. But it's not really about that -- it's about cute girls and cute bikinis and awesome shots. Cute, cute, cute.

Basic Instinct 2 - Remember the first movie? Remember the twists and turns in the love/hate relationship between Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone? Remember how she was brazen and sultry and enigmatic, and then, maybe -- just maybe, a little bit vulnerable? Remember the steamy love story and the passion and the risk and the danger? That was the first movie. Now think of a flaming shit pile. That's the sequel. Now, I knew this was a bad movie when I rented it, but I quickly found out that it's not bad in a Showgirls sort of way, it's just simply shit. Sharon Stone reprises her role as Catherine Trammell, and she looks pretty good for a gal of 50 with fake boobs. But every last scene she's in reeks of this horrible stench of arrogance and overacted drama. She's a self-centered sloppy mess of pride and one-dimensional idiocy, and she absolutely ruins every scene she's in. I was reminded of the Madonna movie, Body of Evidence, but I was lucky enough back then to have fallen asleep on my friend Jennifer's living room floor halfway through that mess, but then I probably had enough wine or gin or kiwi margaritas in me to take me to that point, unlike now when I'm stone cold sober, and simply want to get down on my knees and pray to God Almighty to take away the pain of this fucking nightmare of a movie and make it stop, stop, stop! But I digress. Clever ending, but don't waste your time. Hi to Jenn.

23 July 2006

Subject Two - In case you're wondering, Subject One has a bullet in his head, and he's buried in the snow in the front yard. So we move on to Subject Two, by the name of Adam, a doctor-wannabe with an attitude problem and chronic headaches. He is enlisted by some weird dude way up in the mountains to work on a secret dark project. When he gets there, he finds that the project is reanimation, and the doc begins a cycle of killing Adam and resurrecting him with his secret serum. I thought this would be a low budget deal, but the look and feel are very much high-end. So while the pace moves along slowly, it's not an unpleasant slowness, and that, along with the snowbound setting and the weird resemblance that Dr. Vick has for Jack Nicholson, inspires a pronounced déjà vu for The Shining. But eventually the pace grows wearisome, as the good doctor kills young Adam and brings him back, again and again, ad boredom. There's a nice little twist at the end, but the main crux of the story, while it dances around the concept a little, appears to miss out on the much creepier possibilities that it could have exploited. It started down that path, after one of the first times Adam dies, as he pulls the doc close and whispers in his ear in a creepy little way, "You have no idea what's going on inside me right now." I was enthused, but the story seemed to drop that line, and instead Adam became a hapless zonked-out zombie-man. It could have gotten much deeper into the darkness of the character and the impact of repeated death on his psyche. It could also have dug deeper into the philosophical issues of playing with life and death, and the nature of the soul, and ultimately the concepts of God, Heaven and Hell. But alas, it stayed on the surface and dealt with just Adam inside his messed up head. This wasn't a bad film -- it was immersive and atmospheric -- but it could have been so much more.

Memorial Valley Massacre - I got this one off a "50 Chilling Classics" compilation, which is a cheap comp of mediocre films, mostly from the 80's. You get what you pay for, but there's also a certain lowbrow campy charm here. A new campground opens up, and it turns out that there is a caveboy living in the area who doesn't want the place to open up. So he starts to kill people. Fair enough , but it's especially silly because they make the kid out to be more Neanderthal than human -- he wears furs and doesn't speak. But somehow he knows how to drive a front-end loader (and I'll tell you what: I worked one summer at the park, and a front-end loader is no way to learn how to work a clutch...) Every last one of the campers is a ridiculous 80's cliché, which is fun but shallow, and it's generally an overacted mess. Throw in a wet T-shirt dance in the rain, and the whole thing's almost passable, but only if you're in the right mood.

16 July 2006

What's Eating Gilbert Grape - Lasse Hallström has such a talent for making excellent family-friendly movies, and Gilbert Grape is one of his best. Johnny Depp stars in the title role as a young man living with his family in rural Anytown, USA. His sister is his only partner in normalcy, as they struggle to deal with a mentally challenged younger brother, an embarrassingly large mother, and a snotty adolescent sister. When transient Becky rolls through town, Gilbert tries to figure out how to juggle his family demands, his new girlfriend, and the naughty housewife down the road who orders special deliveries from Gilbert's store. As with most Hallström movies, the characters are flawed yet valiant, and we suffer along with Gilbert's struggles and cringe at his transgressions. Leonardo DiCaprio garnered Oscar nominations for his role as younger brother Arnie and deservedly so, and Depp is perfect as the noble Gilbert. All around, a very moving and satisfying film.

09 July 2006

Corpse Bride - Tim Burton is getting closer. Like his previous animated venture, Corpse Bride has those maddening musical numbers that almost made me shut it off in the first minute and return it unwatched. But I suffered through the first couple numbers, and then they grew less and less frequent, and I was able to settle into watching the movie. Here we meet Victor, a timid little fellow, about to be married to a lovely doll of a young lady who he's just met. Practicing his vows, he accidentally says them to a dead chick who's buried in his back yard (nice neighborhood!), and she steals him away to the underworld. Now poor Victor is caught in a triangle between his living doll and his rotting corpse of a wife -- who looks pretty hot for a maggot-infested dead chick, by the way. Turns out Victor is as valiant as a puppet can be, as he defends his bride and keeps his promise and battles evil and loves his gal. And just, like, two less musical numbers would make this an outstanding film, but that would also cut it down to about an hour. But some of that crap in the beginning is just completely unnecessary, and nobody needs to see puppets sing.

The Warriors - I've been cognizant of this movie for a long time, and now I've finally seen the source of so much. This is where Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson got his shtick; where Michael Jackson got his Bad and his Beat It; where Twisted Sister stole their video, and where Spike Lee learned to Do the Right Thing. There is sweathog buried in here, a lot of Clockwork Orange, a whisper of Kiss, and traces of the musical Hair. And I even flashed briefly to Katie Holmes, if you look closely enough at the sleepy eyes of Mercy, the unlikely heroine. So dig it, cats: the story maps in really close to A Clockwork Orange -- a seventies dynamic overlaying a futuristic story about street gangs who all dress in themed costumes and stop just short of fighting in a West Side Story choreographed manner. There's a big peace summit during which someone kills the main man Cyrus and fingers the Warriors for the crime. Then they have to fight their way back home, and along they way they encounter all kinds of silly seventies clichés that you could imagine, even dealing in a surprising fashion with the issues of homosexuality. I liked this movie. Not just for the kitsch of it all -- though that was good -- and not just for the influence that it's had on our culture, but also because it was simply an enjoyable film -- a good adventure and a significant social statement. Warriors, come out and play-ayy. Love it.

02 July 2006

Caché - In this French film, a man and his wife begin receiving videotapes that show hours-long shots of their apartment, then the man's mother's house, and a hallway leading to a door. Accompanying the tapes are bizarre drawings of bloody kids. So they begin the arduous process of solving the mystery of this harassment, and as happens in this sort of film, they solve it all too easily. Turns out hubby has some dirty little secrets in his past. The thing about this movie is that I would say it needs some editing, whereas others might call the extraneous filler a "stylistic" choice. But many of the scenes go a handful of lines of dialogue beyond where they need to be.  Also it seems the French are in love with this business of shooting long pointless shots with no clear center of attention; there are a number of these, and when you're really trying to focus on the story, they just become maddening. In the midst of it all, there is one "Holy fucking shit" scene that caused me to yell out loud: "Holy fucking shit!" But the rest of the film seemed to meander along, with extraneous subplots and an unresolved ending. But what a scene - remember in Final Destination when the girl walked in front of the bus? Just like that.

The Hills Have Eyes - I remember the original as a concept more than as a movie that I saw, so this is my first entry into the franchise. And it's exactly what I expected -- in case you haven't seen just one commercial for this film, here's the rundown: a dysfunctional family vacation in the desert (whee!) meets a bunch of spikes in the road, causing them to crash into a big boulder. Then they're terrorized by a family of mutants, spawned from military nuclear testing in the fifties. The bad guys chase the good guys, the good guys chase the bad guys, gun fu, axe fu, death, death, death. The grumpy old man? Dies. The prissy cell phone salesman? Becomes a hero. The slacker kid? Grows up. Who wins? Good guys. Trick ending? Check. Think Texas Chainsaw Massacre on the road. Wait, I think that was on the road. So think Texas Chainsaw Massacre in the desert. But wasn't it? Okay, then just think Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Wicker Park - Josh Hartnett plays Matthew, who sees the perfect woman and stalks her until she goes out with him. Next thing you know, they're a couple, because chicks really dig guys who stalk them. Somehow, she blows him off and he hooks up with some other girl a couple years later, and he's about to get engaged when he crosses paths with the first girl, and realizes he's still all gaga over her, and we, along with Matthew, try to figure out what the hell is going on through a bunch of flashbacks. Turns out there's another girl in the middle, who's really throwing a monkey wrench into this whole business of love, and you'll just have to watch to figure it out. It's a clever packaging of the old "Boy gets girl" story, which for some reason, struck me as a paperback novel turned movie. Not bad, not great -- just Josh, a couple babes, and some goofy-looking dude you've seen like a billion times but still don't know who the heck he is.

25 June 2006

Hustle & Flow - Terence Howard stars as DJay, a philosophizing smalltime drug hustler and pimp, who suddenly discovers music and decides to be a rapper. He strong-arms old acquaintance Key into producing him, and he brings along Shelby, played by the scene-stealing DJ Qualls, who is making a career of playing the funkiest whitest geekiest dude you've ever seen. Together they turn out some kickass jams and prepare to pitch them to famous local rapper Skinny Black, played here by Ludacris, who once again gets his ass beat by Howard. Dude's gotta be getting a complex by now... I thought this whole story was supremely enjoyable and I'd recommend it to anyone but the kids. I just couldn't get past the fiction of the whole thing: I can't imagine many pimps smacking their ho's around, then all sitting down around the dinner table with the kids. When DJay starts laying down his rap, it was poor - it was poor all the way through until they dubbed in Three 6 Mafia. And when Key first hears DJAy, he falls in love with that shit, and we're led to believe he's always wanted to be a hip hop producer but has never had the chance. Come on, half the people on this planet think of themselves as singers or rappers or whatever, and a dude with that love of music and a little bit of equipment would have been doing this a long time ago. So it's fiction. But I really enjoyed it. And did I hear that right? Twenty dollars for Taryn Manning? In the front? Sold!

18 June 2006

The Dawn - I keep hoping to come across a little sleeper of a gem when I rent these small independent movies, but so far that plan isn't panning out so well. In this installation, we have The Dawn, a movie in which even the title is extraneous. At least it's a story that we can all relate to because it happens all the time: a college professor assigns eight of his students to spend the weekend with him at his ranch, so they can have a "pre-Christian" sacrifice ritual. As I understand it, that's a pretty common practice these days in the Universities, and in this case, it's very much warranted because dead bodies keep showing up outside this professor's class and everyone is under a lot of stress. So they go out to the ranch where they bicker and wander around aimlessly, then eventually they wander out into the woods. You'll never guess the next part: they get lost and can't find their way out, and someone starts killing them. The footage that you would normally see in a movie would make a 1/2-hour short film, and the rest was puffed up with filler shots and soundtrack. There was really only one scary scene, in which the professor does some weird prayer and the lesbian upstairs gets off. A lot of this movie was a Blair Witch ripoff, and most of it was silly and senseless. Even with all the filler, I believe it even ran shorter than the 88 minutes advertised. Did a handful of smoking hot chicks make it all worthwhile? It's a toss-up.

Tough Guys Don't Dance - This is an older film and happens to be one of my favorites. It's the story of this dude named Tim played by Ryan O'Neal, who has just about the worst month you could imagine. It starts off when his pretentious, horrid wife leaves him. That doesn't seem so bad, but he takes it that way. Then he meets up with a nasty rich broad and bangs her in front of her husband. The prick of a cop in town tells him to move his stash of pot, and when he gets there he find a head in a bag. Then his wife's ex-husband shows up, and he finds out his old girlfriend is married to the prick of a cop -- small world. It goes on and on -- two heads show up, and then we flash back a few times and everyone dies. I used to love this movie because it's so complex, but now I realize it just has way too much shit going on. I had to write out a timeline to understand everything that happened. And the dialogue is so stilted and odd. In the end, seven of them are dead, and the survivors live happily ever after. I'll always look on this movie fondly, but I don't think I'll love it as much as I used to.

BloodRayne - To be honest, I knew exactly what I was getting into when I rented this thing. It's the latest movie from Uwe Boll, who is the Ed Wood of our generation. And I rented it with that in mind -- that it would be a ridiculous, poorly acted mess with a stupid storyline and some surprisingly decent actors. So we enter the world of Rayne, who happens to be a Damphere, which is a half-human, half-vampire. Once she escapes from the evil circus lord, her mission is to find a shriveled up eyeball. Along comes the evil vampire, who might be her father. It's his mission to find the shriveled up eyeball too. Then there's this Brimstone group, and it's their mission to sword-fight. Rayne cruises into a monastery and what do you know if she doesn't find the eyeball, which immediately becomes a part of her, or something. The Brimstone people all have matching necklaces, and they capture Rayne, but she escapes by doing one of them. Then she fights and drinks blood and heals and eats a heart and fights some more and kills her daddy. Billy Zane plays some other dude who was clearly added to the story as an afterthought because he has two scenes and they're entirely disconnected from the rest of the story, like Chrissy Snow in her last season on Three's Company. In the end, Rayne fantasizes about geysers of blood, and then she rides off into the sunset. In all, I would summarize the whole thing as: "What the fuck?"

11 June 2006

The Curse of the Were-Rabbit - Cute animated story of Wallace and Gromit, who run a pest control company, providing 24 hour rabbit-catching services to their community. Wallace is a techno-dweeb, who invents a brain-wave modulating gizmo. When he uses the device to hook up to a rabbit's brain to teach it to dislike vegetables, he inadvertently creates a giant rabbit monster that terrorizes the town and threatens the upcoming vegetable contest. Along the way, he meets the town socialite and falls hopelessly in love, much to the chagrin of her suitor, a toupee-wearing fop. Eventually it's up to the dog Gromit to save the day, and return everything back to normal. This was a cute story suitable for any ages, but sprinkled rather liberally with adult humor, such as the two settings on the bunny-vac 3000: blow and suck -- we should all be so lucky. A fun little hour-and-a-half deviation from the real world.

Raging Bull - Robert De Niro as championship boxer Jake LaMotta, who wasn't exactly a subtle guy. I liked the fact that this wasn't the story of "the greatest boxer ever" or "the hardest puncher" or even "the biggest jerk" -- it was just the story of a guy named Jake, who happened to hold the middleweight title at one point, and happened to be a brutish thug to his wife and family. When he meets the girl of his dreams and throws aside his wife for her, he marries the dream girl and then begins to ruin her life as well, through his petty jealousies and a swift left hook. We learn that he had a years-long battle with Sugar Ray Robinson, and that he got punched in the head a lot. By the time his life was winding down, he got thrown in jail for making out with a 14-year-old, and then he launched a career as a mediocre performer. To his credit, LaMotta resisted the mafioso influences in his life, only bowing once in an unconvincing thrown match. Despite the fact that LaMotta and his brother resisted that world, Bull still features De Niro and Joe Pesche doing that mafioso thing that they do so well, and should be considered a must-see for any Sopranos / Goodfellas / Godfather fans.

The United States of Leland - Yet another story of disenfranchised youth growing up in the suburbs. In this case, young Leland kills a neighborhood boy, and we're left to figure out why. A strong cast and well-acted story hold our attention, but you can never get past the fact that this kid's personality and behavior are not consistent with the act of killing the other little kid. So it's never really explained, and it winds up inconclusive. Generally, the film comes off as preachy and self-righteous, as Leland (the murderer) questions the hypocrisies of his counselor and society in general. Maybe he's just pissed about his girlfriend, who's casually shooting up heroin, but playing it off by rolling down her sleeve when Dad walks in. Maybe it's Leland's dad, who he hasn't seen in years, who keeps sending him plane tickets to foreign countries which he tours as an unescorted minor. The whole thing just smacks of adolescent writing - full of sound and fury, but unresolved and silly.

04 June 2006

Dead End Road - this homemade horror movie tells the story of a dude who kills people using the motif of stories by Edgar Allan Poe. The local police have bungled the case for a few years, so now the FBI has taken over. They know exactly who the guy is, but apparently no one has thought to swing by his house, because that's where he's hanging out, running around in his vintage clothing and torturing the random locals. So FBI-chick gets kidnapped, which involves her father, the former lead investigator from the local police. To top it all off, a pack of wacky college kids have decided to camp out at the house and smoke a bunch of weed. Mostly, the FBI agent winds up shrieking and running around like a little girl, and not a single one of the burly college boys thinks to just stop and take a swing at the wimpy Poe-boy. Mostly overacted and sometimes underacted, Dead End Road reeks of a low-budget, cast-with-friends production that has silly points too numerous to cover.

Kalifornia - David Duchovny stars as Brian, a struggling writer who packs up his bitch of a girlfriend and travels across country to write a book about serial killers. But he doesn't have enough money for gas, so they take Brad Pitt and Juliette Lewis as Early and Adele along with them to split the costs. Turns out Early and Adele are the epitome of white trash, with Pitt nailing the mushmouth mumble to a "T", and Lewis, well, she's simply perfect as the sweet trailer park trash girl. Then I started to do my movie math and I realized something. Ladies, plug your ears. With Kalifornia, Fight Club, and Thelma & Louise under his belt, Brad Pitt is good at playing white trash. I think he knows a little more about the white trash world than those pretty-boy looks let on.... Anyway, back to the movie: midway through their trip, they find out Early's been killing people on the road, and Brian's all, "I'm a big pussy, don't hurt me" and Early's all, "fuck yooo, ya big pushy" and Adele's all, "I'm scared, I think" and girlfriend's all, "I fucking told you. Bitch bitch bitch." I'll leave it to the gentle viewer to figure out what happens next.

The Keeper - this was a Showtime movie production, and it came off just like you'd expect. Dennis Hopper plays a cop who kidnaps a girl and locks her in his basement because she's a stripper and it turns out his mom was a stripper, killed by his dad (oops, spoiler, sorry about that.) That's in the first five minutes, and the rest of the predictable story is about her attempts to free herself. There's no twists and turns, no surprises, no deviation from the inevitable conclusion: she kills him (oops, spoiler, sorry about that.) Hopper is exactly as you'd imagine, and even though Asia Argento tries to vamp it up a little bit, the character is far from steamy. Seems like it took 5 or 6 hours to get through this thing. Please don't make the same mistake.

28 May 2006

One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest - perhaps one of the most famous movie titles ever, and I have no idea how it relates to the story. Jack Nicholson stars in a classically defining role as R. P. McMurphy, a small time criminal who is sent to a psychiatric hospital because he acts a little goofy. There he finds Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched, a first class ball-buster. Hm.... Jack Nicholson as a crazy convict, and an uptight headnurse. I wonder if there will be some sort of conflict... The whole story plays out in the microcosm of the ward -- even when they are outside, the characters are still defined by their roles in the ward. But they don't get out much -- mostly they're locked up, acting and treated like a bunch of loonies. But it is McMurphy who sees past the labels, and draws them out, demanding to be treated as people rather than lost causes. From an external vantage point, you could look at McMurphy as a spoiled brat who got out of jail and now he doesn't even like that. He's constantly wanting what he doesn't have, and makes his own problems. But it's so easy to avoid that external vantage point, because you are so drawn in to the story and the myriad of fully developed characters. It is uplifting and sad and truly touching.

The Chumscrubber - the what? This movie gets its title from a fictitious video game featured within. In this darkly satirical view of suburban life, a kid who is the neighborhood drug dealer kills himself, and a ragtag group of teens, who need their fix, kidnap a boy they think is the little brother of the dead kid's friend. They wind up with a different kid altogether, but best friend and anti-hero Dean stays involved, to rescue the little dude. That's the main plot, and there are a handful of subplots at play as well, involving all the fucked up parents living in this neighborhood. For starters, the parents of the kidnapped boy don't realize he's gone for three days. -- they think he's just being quiet. The mother of the dead boy is compulsively telling everyone around that she doesn't blame them for her son's death. The town mayor is undergoing some weird sort of consciousness re-awakening. Dean's father is supplying him with drugs, and writing best-selling books about his psychological afflictions. And it goes on and on. An interesting social commentary, which brings to mind Donnie Darko and Teaching Mrs. Tingle.

U-Turn - I don't know how this movie slipped under my radar for so long, but I'm glad I finally caught up with it. Sean Penn, J-Lo, Nick Nolte, Billy Bob Thornton, Joaquin Phoenix, Claire Danes, Jon Voight, and short little stints from Laurie Metcalf (Rosanne's sister), and Liv Tyler -- all directed by Oliver Stone. What happens is this: Penn as Bobby has a radiator hose blowout (which happened to me once in my Vette -- it's a spectacular steamy mess) outside the tiny seedy town of Superior AZ. Walking through town, he notices J-Lo's ass, which belongs to the character Grace, and it's the beginning of the end for him (so to speak). Just when he's about to nail Grace -- who is a little Indian girl, by the way -- her husband Jake walks in and socks him across his noggin. So then Jake plots to kill Grace, and Grace plots to kill Jake, and poor sweet little Bobby, who owes some shark $15,000, is caught in the middle of it all, when an errant shotgun blast destroys all his money. Billy Bob plays Darrell, the hick mechanic, and he's just a scream. There's ass-grabbin' waitress Flo, teen crush Jenny, and her protector Toby. To top it all off, a blind old Indian gives sage advice. I picked up a little scent of Natural Born Killers and Desperado, and you can definitely feel the Oliver Stone influence. A cool movie with some nice twists and turns.

Demon Hunter - So apparently the Catholic Church has a backup plan when performing an exorcism. They bring this dude along and in case anything goes wrong, he goes up there and beats the holy hell out of the victim and stabs her through the heart with a wooden stake. You see, this demon Asmodeus, who has gray hair like Taylor Hicks, is cruising around and spreading his seed to a boatload of really hot chicks, usually while 80's style heavy metal is playing. So the hunter, who's like some sort of half-demon half-man, is out with a hot nun, who looks like Angelina Jolie's uglier sister, and he's trying to knock off all the recently seeded chicks while she's trying to save the world. It's a wacky pairing, like we saw in Lethal Weapon or 48 Hours. But truly, this reeks of a second rate The Prophecy, with a little hint of The Order. As derivative and silly as it is, there's a nice little twist at the end that makes it fun, and with heavy doses of Kung Fu and boobies throughout, it's a nice departure. The moral?  Sex is evil; just say no.

21 May 2006

Freeze Frame - My best ideas come to me in my dreams, so I can totally relate to this movie -- not because it's about dreams, but because it seems like one of those dream-created things. A dude is nearly wrongly convicted of murder, so he spends the next ten years video-taping every moment of his life with ninety cameras, so he has every second logged, and can't be mistaken again. Well I'll be cracky if the bad guys don't just find a way to finger him again. The fuzz show up and requisition his tapes from five years ago because some chick turned up dead. When he goes back to his meticulous vault, those are the only tapes missing and he freaks. The next day, he "produces" the missing tapes, but strangely there's a gap from the night before, which is especially bad because there was another murder on that night. Or was there? The whole thing starts off with an annoying montage of digital video blurbles and blarbles and you pray the whole friggin' movie won't be like that. But it's not, and it's really quite clever and other-worldly.

Tears of Kali - Three or four vignettes, full of blood and gore, about people who were involved with the Taylor-Eriksson group in the early eighties -- apparently a consciousness raising meditation group that also learned about killing people. Again, this is one of those times where I threw the dice at an unknown title and came up with snake eyes. The kicker is that this flick seems to open with some promise, with people huddled in piles on a floor and an old man (Eriksson) giving some devious advice to a naive naked lass. From there, it dives into the lameass vignettes. In the first story, a reporter goes to see a mental patient and everybody dies. In the second, a dude goes to a shrink and dies. In the third, a chick goes to a faith healer and everybody dies. In the cover story, a naked chick cuts off her eyelids and cruises around, naked and lidless. There's never really an explanation of this Taylor-Eriksson group, who appear to only exist within the context of reviews of this movie, and the stories here are related only anecdotally. The audio is dubbed, there are no English subtitles, and the dubbing artists are crappy actors. If you have some sort of psychological imbalance or if you're a 15 year old boy -- in either case, if you have a fascination with bloody gore -- this might be the vehicle for you. The rest of us should steer clear of this time-waster.

The Beast of Bray Road - Every once and a while, you come across one of these homemade horror movies that hits the right nerve and lands as a tight little horror or a delectable little camp-fest. This is neither. It's one of those "based on a true story" bullshit flicks with a ridiculous story line and worse acting. People start dying in Redneck, USA, and then enough people see the perp to id it as a werewolf, who looks like Swamp Thing on steroids with dreads. So everyone takes time off from boning the nearest town whore to go into the woods and track down the beast. But wait, first they'll need silver bullets, so it's fortunate that they've congregated at the house of Zeke (or whatever), who happens to have all the proper silver-bullet making equipment. So they whip up a batch in about three minutes thanks to a snappy little montage, and go out into the woods where they immediately bump into the brute. Dog the Bounty Hunter has a tougher time finding people. Turns out the werewolf is really the hot chick who owns the neighborhood bar, so they whack her and start serving free drinks. No, they don't -- that would be camp, and this is just trash -- they whack her and then drive off into the sunset. Utter crap.

Thumbsucker - What, porn now? Oh, thumbsucker... Here we have Justin, an awkward, thumbsucking seventeen year old who doesn't fit in his world. He's diagnosed as ADD and undertakes Ritalin therapy, which turns him into a type A prick. So then he goes off the drugs and turns into a stoner, and starts banging the neighborhood environmental-activist-turned-stoner-slut while blindfolded. Meanwhile, Mom's stalking the local Hollywood movie star and Dad's trying to relive his football youth. All of which reminds me of my youth, except for the drugs, ADD, stoner chick, movie star, and football dreams. Okay, so I did it once with a blindfold on, but you get the point... Look, there's a nice little indie feel to this flick, but despite the drugs and boozing and such, it's a little too After School Special, in particular the ending shot which is some weird cross between Igby Goes Down and Godspell. I appreciated what the filmmaker was trying to do, but it just didn't hold my attention. Keanu Reeves has an interesting turn as a dentist who's actually more fucked up than all the rest of them, which is a little hard to figure, considering that the theme here is trying to be "we're all fucked up and that's normal" -- sort of an "I'm okay, you're okay" for the millennium.

14 May 2006

Hostel - this entry from director Eli Roth starts out like Eurotrip and ends like High Tension. Executive-Produced by Quentin Tarantino, this features a more direct slashfest of gore, and clearly lacks the Tarantino voice that speaks so clearly in the films possessing his directorial stamp. Three dudes -- two ugly Americans and one ugly Icelander -- are touring Europe, when they hear of a secret hostel where you can hook up with some brutally hot chicks. The only problem is that the hostel is located in Slovakia. No worries for these dudes, as they catch the next train to Eastern Europe. Sure enough, they wind up with some blazing hot chicks who spend most of their time naked and humping. "We are never leaving," says one dude, and that's true enough, as suddenly they start disappearing. The film turns on a dime and becomes a cat and mouse story, with evil Slovakian torture lords slaughtering innocent (?) tourists at will. Definitely one for the guys, with blazing hot naked chicks and explicit gory violent dismemberment, but it sadly lacks that Tarantino magic.

The Shawshank Redemption - Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins in a classic story of prison life, circa mid-1900 -- a story of one man who belongs there and another who doesn't. It was upsetting to me that my primary focus while watching this was the condition of the DVD, which kept getting screwed up every time I stopped it, because I truly think this was a good film but I was terribly distracted. Anyway, it's the story of a good guy who does his time in a prison where the warden is a crook and the guards regularly beat the crap out of the guys. He's a former banker so he winds up keeping the warden's books and doing everyone's taxes. With his buddy Red, he laments over prison life, and wonders if he'll ever see another day of freedom, after which he chooses to either hurry up and start living or hurry up and start dying. Morgan Freeman narrates -- of course.

7 May 2006

The Fifth Element - Milla Jovovich in the title role as the Fifth Element -- a perfect being: a vulnerable half-naked nymphette who kicks ass and gets fully naked from time to time. Earth, air, fire, water, Milla. In this forerunner to Men in Black, which is part sci-fi, part comedy, part action, part love-story and mostly kitsch, Bruce Willis stars as military-hero-turned-cabbie Korben Dallas, who is assigned the task of saving the world from a huge-ass fireball from space. He can do so only with the help of Leeloo, a reconstituted perfect being wearing tape and silicone. Milla clearly studied the work of Darryl Hannah, as there are definite traces of Hannah's turns in Splash and Blade Runner -- she is cute and naïve as well as deadly. Chris Tucker does an annoying job at playing an annoying character, and Willis is, well... Willis. This something-for-everyone movie is entertaining and well-paced, and Jovovich, in her breakout role, is absolutely stunning.

The Nightmare Before Christmas - I figured this was either a movie about Halloween or Christmas, so I decided to watch it in May. That was a mistake -- this stop-action animation is clearly an homage to classic Christmas specials such as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, The Year Without a Santa Claus and even The Grinch. And while the animation is spectacular, the soundtrack and constant musical numbers are maddening. The story is quite original, though: Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King and lead celebrant of Halloween, decides to bring Christmas to the people of the town of Halloween, and out into the world. But Jack's version, despite his best intentions, is bound to be a bit twisted, and it's up to Sally the shapely homemade girl to set him straight and find the true spirit of Christmas. The people of Halloween go into the Whovillesque town of Christmas Land and kidnap Santa Claus so they can send Jack out in his place, distributing a frightful Christmas to the people of the world, where a Cindy Lou Who knockoff stops just short of asking, "Why, Santy Claus, why?" When Jack's sleigh is shot down by the military we learn that maybe Christmas isn't really about killing your neighbor -- maybe there's something more. The twisted animation and insane story could have made this a brilliant piece of work, but all the crappy singing brought it down.

The Cider House Rules - we see here how Tobey Maguire became Spiderman long before he ever became Spiderman. Maguire stars as orphan and so-called doctor Homer Wells, a shy and innocent character with a pure heart and huge cajones, as he confronts the partial-villain Mr. Rose: "Are you sleeping with your daughter?" These are words I can't imagine coming out of my mouth in a lifetime of Sundays. Having seen two Lasse Hallstrom movies now, I will recognize them forever into the future. There is a pureness and beauty to the characters -- a strength of soul. Here, Homer strikes out on his own to see the world. He picks apples, catches lobsters, and hooks up with a major babe in Charlize Theron. He questions his own morals and delivers a girl from the evil of incest. The Cider House Rules could do double duty as a marketing vehicle for Planned Parenthood, but aside from that little annoyance, it's a solid, touching, beautiful film that tells of the courage of leaving home while carrying it with you in your heart and mind.

30 April 2006

Land of the Dead - Romero's final (?) installment in the Dead series. Here's the concept: in Day of the Dead we saw how the army -- well, a single rogue doctor anyway -- was training Bub the Pet Zombie to use tools and be sensitive to other peoples' feelings. Here in Land of the Dead, there are only a few little outposts of living humans, and as any armchair sociologist would expect, there are Haves and there are Have-Nots. On the extreme end of the have-not scale are the zombies, who are slowly learning to think and use tools, led by Big Daddy -- the thinking man's zombie. Meanwhile, the humans are having their share of class struggles, as Cholo the zombie-killing thief steals the super zombie-killing-mobile so he can do whatever with it. Then it's up to Riley, the good zombie-killing dude, to find Cholo and return the zombie-killing truck (known as Dead Reckoning), with the help of a hot little street-wise hooker. And it turns out that one of Dead Reckoning's stock weapons is a barrage of aerial fireworks, which it uses to distract the zombies while the gunners mow 'em down. Yeah, there's a lot going on here, but look: we have post-apocalyptic class warfare, zombies, fireworks, and hookers. Oh, and Dennis Hopper. It's perhaps the greatest movie ever made... I'm a zombie fan, so I have to recommend it, but truly I'd say it's just okay.

Vertigo - Well, gee whiz, it's another Jimmy Stewart movie. (Read that line in your best Jimmy Stewart voice for maximum effect.) Here, Hitchcock tells the story of a cop who freaks out over heights. He retires or quits or something, only to find an old college buddy who wants to hire him as a private investigator to follow his wife. Seems the old ball and chain has become possessed by the ghost of a dead Mexican chick by the name of Alotta Falafel. So he follows her around for a while and what do you know if he doesn't just up and fall in love with the chick - his buddy's wife, that dog. Sooner or later, the old fear of heights comes back into play, and then the thing spins off in two or three more different directions. Every time I thought the movie was over, turns out it was just spinning off into a new direction, then by the time it was really over I was ready for another spin, but up popped the old Paramount logo and the end credits. There were some wacky sci-fi special effects, and the story was clever, but Jimmy Stewart is just a little too corny for me. And the eyebrows on that Judy chick -- holy fuck, I'll have nightmares for months.

Cigarette Burns - an entry in the Masters of Horror series -- one-hour films from the current master filmmakers in the horror genre -- this one from John Carpenter. Cigarette Burns draws its title from those little white circles that show up in the corner of actual old-time films to tell the projectionist it's the end of the reel. And in this case, the cigarette burn in question is on Le Fin Absolue du Monde, reportedly the most audacious movie ever made -- shown once, then reportedly destroyed when the audience erupted into spontaneous violence and murder. So a creepy old dude hires a creepy young dude to find him a copy of the movie, and the young dude runs into some creepy characters along the way. Finally (and pretty easily) coming across the movie, he delivers it to his patron, and things, as you might expect, don't go so well. Like the fictitious film in its story, Cigarette Burns will probably have a limited audience, but it's still a nice creepy gory mess. And if you're wondering what Le Fin Absolue du Monde is about, it's the documentary of an earthbound angel -- captured, tortured and mutilated. Leave it to the fucking French.

23 April 2006

Buffalo Soldiers - I did not know Johnny Cash was in the Army as a lad, but here he is. Joaquin Phoenix as a conniving US soldier stationed in peacetime Germany. He steals everything he can get his hands on, and sells it on the black market. Eventually a new Top Sergeant shows up and starts kicking ass and taking names. Meanwhile, Johnny is refining 30 kilos of morphine into heroin (is that how it works?), and boning the Sergeant's daughter. So umm, yeah, it's okay. But just about any other army film you can think of would be more interesting.

The Minus Man - Owen Wilson as your friendly neighborhood sociopathic killer who moves in with a family that just may be crazier than he is. Complex characterizations all around here, in parts that would generally be more one-dimensional in a more traditional handling of the story. Listen: wandering soul Vann is out killing random strangers indiscriminately. He lands in a small town and rents out a room from Doug and Jean -- a family that is trying to get over the death or disappearance or estrangement or something from their daughter Karen. Vann's Wilson-like charm is self-evident, but he stumbles in many social situations, nearly accidentally killing his new girlfriend Ferrin when she tries to roll around on the carpet with him. There is a definite David Lynch feel to the town and the story is creepy and weird. But I think that Owen Wilson brings just a little too much Owen Wilson to the table, and it's a bit of a stretch to get your arms around the complex Vann, who is all at once smooth, awkward, sensitive, callous, diligent and uncaring. But the film answers the never-before-asked question, "What if Owen Wilson did American Psycho?"

Rear Window - This had to have been the first voyeurs' movie ever made, although I never saw any of that Bettie Page spanking S&M stuff, so who knows? Here we have Alfred Hitchcock directing Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly -- who is pouty and cute as a button, and made me think of Nicole Kidman, by the way -- in a story of a dude whose leg is racked up so he watches the neighbors all day long. In the process, he keeps a close eye on the exhibitionist dancer, the foo-foo dog owner, the tortured songwriter, the lonely spinster, and the unhappy couple. Then suddenly the wife of that unhappy couple isn't there anymore, and to make matters worse, the husband leaves his apartment a few times in the middle of the night. Surely he killed her -- it's the only explanation. While it sounds a little light on evidence in today's world, back then it wasn't on the up and up, see? So the watcher's girlfriend, a high society gal, gets involved, and they get to the bottom of the case. It may please you to know that the spinster was about to swallow a handful of pills but she was saved by the songwriter's tune. I believe it was foreshadowing Elton John's spectacular ballad "Someone Saved My Life Tonight", but I'll post that elsewhere... Look, Hitchcock was a master, Stewart a legend, and Grace Kelly was so delectable, I'd eat her alive. ...or something like that. Even though the story doesn't fit so well in today's climate, it's still an engaging tale, well-told, with sprinkles of humor, romance and action to break up the suspense. Nicely done, and a testimony to Hitchcock's storytelling that he got by on just two sets for the entire film.

16 April 2006

Good Night and Good Luck - I'd always had a sense of the importance of the McCarthy hearings to our American heritage, but never a good feel for the courage of the individuals who opposed him. This is that story, and while it tells of the public importance and the impact to society of that brave move, it focuses more on the personal nature of the courage of the men and women involved. I knew this would be an important film, but I didn't realize how utterly captivating it would be. Despite the ubiquitous cigarettes and booze, these are heroes we can all look up to, and we absolutely must hold them in reverence for helping a nation define what its values truly are. Had McCarthy gone on unabated, our life would be a very different place -- a dark and scary place full of fear and subversion. Edward R. Murrow had the courage to stand up and put us back on track, and Good Night and Good Luck tells that amazing story in a fashion that sets the period, and holds you tight. It is outstanding, and completely captivating.

An Unfinished Life - Robert Redford as Einar, a tough old rancher whose outlook is softened somewhat by wise ranch-hand Morgan Freeman as Mitch. Enter Jean, played by J-Lo, with her daughter in tow, played by an engaging young newcomer in Becca Gardner. Einar blames Jean for the death of his son -- Jean's late husband -- but he takes her in because her boyfriend's beating the crap out of her. Will the old man come to care for his granddaughter, and will he ever forgive his daughter-in-law? Oh, and there's also a bear. At various times, you feel traces of The Horse Whisperer, My Girl and Million Dollar Baby, but all around, the acting is very good, and J-Lo never bogs the story down like you'd think she might. Freeman stops short of narrating, which is a welcome change. I don't remember this ever being in the theaters, but it really is a wonderful family-oriented film, with beautiful scenery in Wyoming and J-Lo -- a story of nature and redemption. With a bear.

Wolf Creek - three kids go out hiking in the Australian outback, and find themselves utterly screwed when their car won't start as they try to leave. But along comes a gruff old character who offers to help them out, but in truth he winds up fucking them completely. The look and feel here is much like High Tension, and though the dialogue is in English, you still may need the subtitles because of the Aus accents. Wolf Creek is a respectable little thriller/horror film, but it goes off track in a couple different places. First, when hero-girl has gone back to the mining shack to get a car so she can pick up girlie-girl and get the hell out, she finds a gun and even figures out how to load it. But then, she decides to go exploring in some little shed, and winds up dropping the gun down a mineshaft. When she goes down to get it, she falls off the ladder and nearly breaks her ass. Then, she gets out of the mineshaft after finding a big cache of dead bodies there, and decides to do more exploring in a garage -- a detective looking for clues. Sure, these scenes allowed the writer to give a little exposition, but they reveal a lack of editing discipline, and they're total hogwash as far as the story goes. Supposedly, the story is based off true events; there is such a badass who was released due to lack of evidence. The producers also cite a statistic that 30,000 people go missing annually in Australia, and only half of them are found. That's a shitload of lost souls, I'd say, and there's likely more than one badass psycho killer in Ausland. Glad my next vacation is in Sheboygan.

Stay - the video store guy recommended me to this time-warping, other-worldy film starring Ewen McGregor, Naomi Watts, and Ryan Gosling. Shrink Sam takes over for a colleague who's off on sabbatical and he meets Henry, a suicidal psychotic with an appointment with death in three days. While Sam tries to solve the riddle that is Henry, the good doctor sinks deeper into Henry's world, until both men are locked in a strange cycle of death and symmetry. The dead come back to life, the blind are healed, random events repeat, and passersby comment presciently and stare. You'll probably need to see this a couple times to put all the pieces together, because it follows a very trippy path to its eventual conclusion. Watts is competent and always easy on the eye, but it is the interplay between McGregor and Gosling that sets the tone. It brings to mind the same kind of time-tripping "what the hell?" stuff we saw in Jacob's Ladder, and inspires the same sort of uncomprehension. Overall: intriguing, thoughtful and clever. I would have to recommend it because it stuck with me for quite a while, and I looked forward to a second viewing.

3 Extremes - the title indicates there are three short-length films here, each on the outer boundary of civility, and all hailing from Asian directors. The first, Dumplings, comes to us from Hong Kong, and is just really a gross-out fest. Bai Ling stars as a woman who makes dumplings from aborted babies to feed to women wanting their youth back. Next is Cut, from Korea, a more cerebral entry in which a kidnapper forces a young movie director to kill a child to save his wife. I still don't understand the ending, but that's par for the course in Asian cinema. The final entry is Box, from freak-out king Takashi Miike of Japan. Box is a masterpiece of imagery, slight on dialogue, and nearly indecipherable -- the story of a woman whose actions brought about the death of her twin in their childhood. It is a well-crafted, gripping story. There is a strange minor theme of long tongues in the first two films , which probably has some social significance that's lost on this white boy from Ohio. Disc 2 contains a feature length version of Dumplings, which I avoided outright. If you rent this, make sure you catch Box, then Cut if you have the time, and Dumplings only if you must.

09 April 2006

Capote - You walk away from this film with a strong feeling for the dichotomy that Truman Capote lived while writing his masterpiece In Cold Blood. A fucked up dichotomy, but a dichotomy nonetheless. Screenwriter Dan Futterman has Capote himself sum up the storyline: "Jack thinks I'm using Perry.  But he also thinks I fell in love with him when I was in Kansas. Now how both of those things can be true is beyond me." Such is the story. Listen: Capote begins to investigate the tragic murder of a family of four in rural Kansas. In the process, he meets and falls in love with the perpetrator, but feeds him lies to get the story. In the end, he's just empty, and his work, while brilliant, becomes his last. Hoffman does such a wonderful job of putting on the affectations of Capote, a world away from the sad sack depressive from Love Liza, or the humanitarian caregiver of Magnolia. For years now, I've trumpeted Hoffman's talent, and campaigned for his Oscar, and here he is finally vindicated. The film itself, a nice biopic. And did you know Capote was buddies with Harper Lee? I didn't.

The Squid and the Whale - Quirky little story here about a dysfunctional family trying to deal with the separation of the parents. Pretentious dad moves out from philandering mom, and they share custody of the two kids: Walt (aka by Mom: "Chicken"), who wants to be just like dear old dad, and Frank ("Pickle"), who is learning to drink, curse and masturbate, sometimes simultaneously. Squid and the Whale is classified as a comedy, though the comedic moments are buried deep in the fabric of the dramatic portrayal of this family learning to cope. Can we identify with these people? Maybe, though probably not well, but the emotions still ring true: Dad is jealous of Mom's success; Mom is bored of Dad's snobbish ways; and the kids are stuck split down the middle, trying to learn to deal with the separation and all the associated difficulties it brings in understanding love and sex and relationships. I wouldn't take the kids to this one, unless you want them to start jerking off and drinking your Chivas, but it's a nicely told dark comedy, that wisely doesn't venture too far into happily-ever-after territory. Nice performances all around, including the underutilized Anna Paquin, and William Baldwin as scene-stealing tennis pro Ivan.

A History of Violence - Aragorn is back, this time as hometown coffee shop owner and everyday-man Tom Stalls, who just happens to kill off two would-be robbers in dramatic fashion. The resulting attention brings badass Ed Harris onto the scene, who thinks Stalls is actually some cat named Joey Cusack, brother of John and Joan, son of Arathorn. Then it gets into a whole thing where Stalls is trying to protect his family and his happy little life, while the wife and town sheriff are trying to figure out if he's really a crime boss from Philly. It's a clever little story, but once the premise is established, it follows predictable lines, including the scene where the socially awkward son Jack beats up the school bully and his buddy. It tries to play a little subtheme about where we draw the line in society between acceptable and unacceptable behavior, but it's just a little too condescending for merit. Credit Maria Bello here as closet-freak wife Edie, for bringing some spice into the deal.

02 April 2006

Rebel Without a Cause - you have to look past the melodrama that is the hallmark of 50's cinema, especially as we find it in the first scene: "You're tearing me apart!" was a classic line, but a bit over the top. Once you get to that point, though, you run into the delicate slouchy anti-hero that was James Dean, as rebel and victim, cool kid and outcast. It's a little hard to imagine Dean as a teenager, as he looks more like his true 24 years in this film, but you have to willfully suspend that disbelief along with the melodrama. What you find is a timeless story of disaffected youth -- kids who are trying to fit in, dealing with peer pressure and parents they hate and love, of walking that delicate balance between childhood and maturity and landing somewhere between. A classic scene is the chicky-race - one that's been copied and parodied countless times - with Dean as the guy who's doing something stupid because his honor is at stake - because it's "all he ever does", even though he's never heard of it. And sweet Natalie Wood as Judy, the girl who hangs tough with the cool kids, but has a heart of gold underneath. Both Dean and Wood left us too early, but at least we have this remembrance -- a gripping film that's equal parts hokey, humorous, touching, dated, timeless, and relevant.

26 March 2006

Chelsea Walls - 17 minutes into this thing, you realize the opening theme is still playing in the background, and it makes you wonder what multitude of sins they're trying to cover. I've always believed that a big huge score is the sign of a weak story, and generally I find that to hold true, other than the old Scooby Doo cartoons which featured a solid soundtrack as well as an engaging storyline. While we don't find Scooby and the gang here in Chelsea Walls,  we do find just about everyone else. Look: this is one of those ensemble-cast, thousand-stories-in-the-naked-city flicks; it tries to be a high-concept piece, but it just fails to connect. The characters are overblown, the score omnipresent, and overall the film is annoyingly self-aware. Some wonderful actors in this large cast, but director Ethan Hawke should get a big punch in the nose for making such an annoying piece of crap.

The Skeleton Key - I remember this one being pitched as a horror flick, where Kate Hudson goes up into the attic of this old house using a skeleton key, where ghosts trap her and scare the living bejeezus out of her. Well, that was a bit of a misrepresentation. It's actually a story of Hoodoo, which is the magical spells and chicken killing and all that crap we normally associate with Voodoo, as it impacts young little Kate Hudson who's only trying to make a buck and relive some Freudian daddy-loving guilt trip she has going on.. There's ghosts and guns, and gratuitous swamp rides through the bayou, and just about every stereotype you could associate with New Orleans. But this just might be set in Savannah. I don't know. Whatever. Best thing was Kate Hudson showing off her nice genes and her nice jeans. If you want to be really spooked by a Voodoo (or is it Hoodoo?) movie, check out Angel Heart, with Robert De Niro, Mickey Rourke and Lisa Bonet.

19 March 2006

Murderball - the documentary story of wheelchair rugby players. There's so much that makes this movie stand out as a documentary: first off, it takes the empowering stories of these men who have overcome tragedy and been able to turn their "disability" into a strength. Secondly, there's no cheesy plotlines -- it does follow a story, but there's not necessarily an unbelievable miracle at the end. Nor is it sadly depressing -- just touchingly real. Thirdly, these guys land somewhere between hero and anti-hero. That's life -- no one's a saint and screw the sinners. Lastly, as a film, the editing adds just enough splash to keep it out of the doco-doldrums, but not too much to fictionalize the story. Murderball is empowering and uplifting without being the least bit girly. This is one to see -- it's one for the guys.

The Constant Gardener - It's probably appropriate that "Constant" is in the title of this film, because that's about how long the movie seemed to be. Somehow, I managed to sit through the whole thing, hanging on to the one tiny little thought that kept telling me that surely there must be something to this story. Never have I watched the clock so closely through 128 minutes. Maybe it was the accents which put me off or maybe put me into a coma. I dunno. A guy whose wife dies. He finds out about an international conspiracy. A drug company. Or two. Tuberculosis in Africa. It's just too much random fiction -- who fucking cares? It just reeks of the kind of pop fiction that I fucking hate. Rachel Weisz was cute and passionate and a little bit naked, but not nearly enough so to justify the 128 minutes that this snoozefest took from my life.

House of 9 - Nine people are locked into a house by an unknown person and only one gets out alive. It's amazing that they talked Dennis Hopper into doing this blatant ripoff of the already lame Saw. Within hours of being trapped in the house, these people actually start killing each other off -- it's the stupidest thing I've ever seen. And do you remember in the Britney Spears movie, Crossroads, how every few minutes they would break into a musical number because there wasn't enough plot to kill the time? No? Never saw it? Umm, me neither... But here, in House of 9, they have two musical numbers -- dance numbers, yet -- right in the middle. And this is supposed to be a thriller. Horrible. Not bad enough to be good, like that Britney Spears thing (or so I hear), just really bad. Bad, bad, bad.

12 March 2006

Doom - you get what you expect here, as long as you're not planning for gripping cinema. But I've been a fan of the game since its introduction in 1993, and since the third installment is a re-telling of the original story, I thought it would be interesting to see the story presented linearly on film. I still think that would be interesting, but I'm still waiting. Instead of following the game's storyline, the movie stuck with the basic theme and settings, but twisted the story to better fit a movie-going audience. It almost seems that the intent was to make this a standalone action / horror / thriller, but in reality the vast majority of the audience had to be fans of the game with the same agenda as me. Missing was the whole plotline concerning the gateway to hell -- instead we find a race of people who tinkered with genetic engineering and made a mistake. The embodiment of evil in the game, Betruger, could have been an easy character to throw into the storyline, but he is also absent. The BFG does make an appearance, but oddly missing are the omnipresent PDA's. And instead we find new technologies like a nano-wall and the arc -- a portal between Earth and Mars. Late in the movie we lapse into a first-person shooter, but it's a little too late. And as much as I hate to say this, even the gratuitous nudity came off as simply gratuitous.

Madhouse - Doctor Pretty-College-Boy shows up at his internship -- a mental institution -- full of piss and vinegar, only to find the place full of a bunch of fucking wackos. In addition to the abusive staff and random nymphos, there's the megalomaniacal headmaster (or whatever), and the incompetent staff. Then there's the breath of fresh air -- the hot former intern with the smokin' body and gorgeous face. Oh, did I mention the ghosts? There's also ghosts. And then something starts killing off the staff members. Meanwhile, Doctor Pretty-Boy is making out like a schoolboy with Nurse (or Doctor or whatever) Hottie. Who's the killer? Is it her? Is it the evil Headmaster? Is it the mysterious resident of cell 44 who doesn't come out into the light? Is it the demonic ghostboy? You'll only know if you tune in. Oh, and the Nurse Hottie? Cheryl Ladd's daughter. Yeah, baby.

Zombie Honeymoon - I was at the video store with my cache of movies for the weekend, when I stumbled across this one, and how could I refuse? I thought this would be a delicious little black comedy, cut from the Shaun of the Dead cloth -- definitely a B movie, but fun. And so it starts out that way. Irreverent couple Denise and Danny have just married, and have begun their honeymoon when he is attacked by a freakazoid from the ocean. He dies in the hospital, only to come miraculously back to life. Over the next couple of days, as Danny begins eating random strangers, Denise is forced to make a difficult decision: does she run from the monster or stay with her (former) husband? She chooses to stay, and to endure the pressure of living with the undead, all the while he is munching on friends and neighbors. While it seems like this would be a black comedy, Zombie Honeymoon actually plays more as an allegorical story, in which you can substitute "becomes a zombie" for any other character fault, from alcoholism to drug abuse to wife beating to child molesting. So while the film is firmly entrenched in the world of zombie horror, it also plays very well along the lines of social commentary. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

5 March 2006

Me and You and Everyone We Know - quirky little movie about people trying to connect. There were some clever moments and interesting characters here, but I don't know. Most memorable was the little boy who did a great job as the little boy. I think this film was really admirable from many angles, but it just didn't do much for me overall.

Broken Flowers - My friend Kristin got it right when she said the pacing is all wrong in this movie. But there's so much more than just the pacing to worry about. Bill Murray plays a former ladies' man, on a mission to find the woman who left him a mysterious note telling him he's a father. This is NOT the Bill Murray of What About Bob? or -- God forbid -- Caddyshack, or even Lost in Translation. This is the Bill Murray who phones in his hour and 46 minute performance, although I believe frequently a mannequin stood in on some shots. Then there's the premise: this guy is supposed to be a former player and he has no game whatsoever. I'm sure this whole thing is supposed to be about lost youth or the journey to discovery or some such shit, but it just fails miserably, and comes off as indie crap. The only saving grace is the full frontal shot of Alexis Dziena in a cute spoof of Nabakov's Lolita, which is worth the fast forward to 38:12. Come to think of it, Sharon Stone does a nice job as well.

26 February 2006

Junebug - this is a little sleeper of a film, that doesn't tell a big story, but it tells one very well. Embeth Davidtz stars as Madeleine, an art dealer from Chicago, who marries a stranger in George. Then the couple road-trips to his family home in North Carolina, where Madeleine becomes a fish out of water in his Southern town. Superb casting and acting rule here, and the story line, while at times touching, heartbreaking, maddening, and ultimately very sweet, never veers very far into neverland. Amy Adams is delectable as the perky pregnant optimist Ashley, and you will absolutely fall in love with her. True-to-life performances, a splash of black comedy, and a sprinkle of magic will make this one stick with you.

Carlito's Way - I'd always thought of this movie as being a chick-flick, probably due in large part to the diminutive in the title. Recently, I read that it was an Al Pacino movie, about a gangster trying to get out of a life of crime. Then I heard about the cast:  with Pacino, Sean Penn, Luis Guzman, John Leguizamo, and a little short stint by Aragorn himself -- Viggo Mortensen -- how can you go wrong? Somehow, they managed. Pacino, in the title role, plays a Puerto Rican ex-con who wants only to buy a used car dealership, and settle down with the love of his life in Florida. The story line is a meandering mess, which never settles long enough into a specific genre to become interesting on any front. Pacino, who was so brilliant as Colombian drug lord Tony Montana in Scarface, phones in his attempt at a cringeworthy Puerto Rican accent, and at 145 minutes, that's a lot of cringing. Carlito's love interest, played by Penelope Ann Miller, is an unintentionally schizophrenic mess, veering from sweet to whorish to earnest to caring to driven to slackish. Overall, a waste of those precious 145 minutes.

Wedding Crashers - from the first scene of this movie, you can tell it's going to be different from most other movies, and also very funny. Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson star as Jeremy and John, or any of many different names they went by, as a pair of wedding crashing veterans. Their goal: eat crabcakes and tag babes. Then at the wedding of the century they hook up with two daughters of the Treasury Secretary. One falls in love with an unobtainable lovely played sweetly by Rachael McAdams, the other not so much in love with her psycho-sister, played gamely by scene-stealing Isla Fisher. Tune into the bathroom scene ("because I'll find you") at about 51 minutes into the "Uncorked" version to catch a glimpse of Fisher's comedic genius. I watched that couple-second performance about five times, and howled every time -- her expressions are priceless. Christopher Walken takes a nice turn here as well, as straight man Secretary Cleary. Wilson and Vaughn have beautiful chemistry, and the story, though predictable, is well-told. The only low point is the stereotypical doltish fiancé Zack, who's just a little too frat-boy and not enough interesting. Altogether a good little comedy, with Fisher's two-second bathroom scene (seriously!) worth the price of admission.

19 February 2006

Air Force One - I'm generally not big on action movies, but you gotta' love this one. Harrison Ford at his most Harrison Ford-ish as the President of the United States, personally kicking the crap out of terrorists aboard his Presidential jet. Gary Oldman is superb as the creepy Russian bad guy who masterminds the whole kinapping hijacking scheme, intended to bring about the release of jailed political prisoner "General Radek". Why that's so important really doesn't matter -- just tune in with a big ol' bowl of popcorn and watch the Prez kick the living crap out the bad guys. Features one of the best Harrison Ford lines ever: "Get off my plane." Pure escapist joy.

Saw - The concept is that there's this creepy bad guy who's locked two dudes into a room, and pitted them against each other for their survival. One of them is that guy who just barely escaped from Alicia Silverstone when she was fourteen in The Crush, and now look what he's gotten himself into. Turns out the creepy bad guy has a history of this kind of thing, and is a known serial killer. Here's the thing with this movie -- I believe it could have been much tighter and more powerful if the story had stayed mostly within the room, between the two characters. Instead, it deviates out into everydayland storytelling, where we learn of the personal lives of the cops that are trying to catch the bad guy, and blah blah blah. What could have been a tight psycho-drama playing out between the three men has instead become a standard-issue cops vs. bad guy flick. That valley of despair between those two concepts reeks of big studio influence. And I couldn't help thinking throughout that Cary Elwes should have just waited out Alicia Silverstone's demented adolescence, and lived happily ever after.

The Crow - this movie never fails to make me sad for a number of reasons. This was such a groundbreaking piece in the genre of graphic-novel-turned-movie, and it really captures the feel of the graphic novel format. In the story, Brandon Lee as Eric Draven comes back from the dead to avenge his own death, along with that of his wife. They were railing against the evil pack of landlords of a tenement penthouse, and were viciously murdered for doing so. Shot in sepia tones and set in a neverland of rain, darkness and despair, The Crow projects a pronounced sense of melancholy. And Lee's performance is so true to the grief that the character engenders, pulling off an excellent performance despite the comic-book theme and occasional goofiness of the role. All the more reason to ponder the backstory, and wonder what in the world went wrong on that set that cost Brandon Lee his life. Tragically, Lee, the son of famed martial artist Bruce Lee, was shot and killed on set by one of the guns used in the film -- one that should have had a plugged barrel, and been loaded with blanks, and supervised by an experienced wrangler. It's hard to watch the film and not translate the story to the backstory, and to not mourn the loss of this talented expressive brooding upcoming star. The film itself is dark, sad, powerful and beautiful -- a fitting remembrance of Brandon Lee.

12 February 2006

The Aristocrats - It's really a movie about a joke. Reportedly the dirtiest joke ever told, it's a staple of the standup in-crowd, which allows the teller free reign to be as vile as his wicked little mind can comprehend. And for the most part, the movie consists of a 90-minute telling of that joke. Having heard the press in advance, I waited for Bob Saget's moment in the sun, when he is supposed to dash his "Mr. Full House / Funny Video Man" reputation on the rocks. While his telling is raunchy (they all are!), he still carries it off with a golly-gee vibe, and he'll always remain Mr. Full House in my mind. Credit Sarah Silverman for not telling the joke and taking it in a different direction altogether, making a comedic accusation that can only land her in more hot water than she's already in these days. The mastermind of Paul Provenza and Penn Jillette (unfortunately, the fat one who does talk), The Aristocrats actually works, albeit in a strange way. Though after the viewing, you're somehow left with the feeling that you've journeyed a little too far into the dark side.

Meet the Fockers - you get what you expect in this sequel to the clever Meet the Parents, which really put Ben Stiller on the map. It's worth the price of admission just to see the interplay between film icons Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro, and even the surprisingly engaging Barbara Streisand. It's the continued story of Stiller as Gaylord Focker and his fiancee, this time coping w ith both sets of parents -- the free-wheeling Fockers, played by Hoffman and Streisand, and the stodgy Byrnes family, played by De Niro and Blythe Danner. The outcome is quite predictable, but Hoffman steals the show, particularly in one scene near the end when he tried to stretch out before taking care of some business. You won't see this film garnering any Oscar nominations, but it is a cute tidy little comedy.

05 February 2006

Fallen - On one of my rare journeys through the pay channels on my cable lineup, I stumbled across Fallen, and remembering it as a nifty little thriller, I tuned it in. Denzel Washington plays a cop who catches a murderer, played by that guy from Oz, and watches him executed. Then people around him start acting just like the killer -- whistling the same tune, and even killing others while following the same MO. We find out that the real bad guy is the demon Azazel, who travels from person to person by touch, and it's up to Denzel to figure out how to stop him. More creepy than scary, Fallen is a well-made, well-acted venture. Aside from Denzel and Oz-man, there's John Goodman, Donald Sutherland, Tony Soprano and his sister, and one chick I could've sworn was Sean Young, but she turned out to be someone else. Kind of like when you see someone in the mall and wave them down and it turns out you've mistaken them for someone else, then you have to play it off like you're not embarrassed even though you really are. Or like the time at the Ozzy concert when a really drunk hot chick thought she used to work with my friend Brian at a pizza place even though he never worked there, but he still said he did so he could try to hook up. But anyway...

29 January 2006

Dead Birds - A horror movie set in 1863, where a gang of bank robbers holes up inside an old house and things start to get very strange. One by one they disappear, die, become possessed, or just freak out. You'll want to see the movie rather than read here what the deal is with this house, so I'll leave it at that. What's special about this movie is that it's a competent horror film, but it's also doing double-duty as a period piece playing out a drama. The cast is largely unknown, but highly capable, and I can't help but think when I put all the pieces together, that something must have gone all wrong in the marketing of this venture. I can't for the life of me remember this movie being in the theaters, but it is such a better horror movie than most. I counted three flaws, those being 1) the gore was a bit cartoonish in the beginning, 2) I could've stood for seeing a bit more of the lovely Nicki Aycox in this R-rated venture (who, by the way, stole every scene she was in), and 3) the editors must have taken a page from Editing 101, instructing them to load the bottom end of the audio spectrum with an ambiguous rumble when scoring a horror film -- my subwoofer was pulling overtime pay by the time it was over. But otherwise Dead Birds is an outstanding entry in the genre.

22 January 2006

Happy Endings - I avoided this film in the video store for quite some time, because the cover makes it look a lot like Harold and Kumar Go to Spring Break, or The Real Real Cancun, or some such crap. Then I read a review, and decided to give it a shot. Turns out the cover was truly a misrepresentation, as Happy Endings is about as far from a spring break romp as they get. Instead, it is one of those nice, thoughtful, independent films with a heart and an awesome cast. Lisa Kudrow once again veers far from Phoebe Buffay, and stretches out her range. This is one of those movies that carries three or four independent plots, where the characters are moderately interrelated, and they all somehow come together in the end. Other outstanding films of this genre are Magnolia and Crash, and while Happy Endings doesn't quite have the mojo of those outings, it still has a lot to offer, and checks in miles above the vast majority of the drivel that's playing on the screens these days.

15 January 2006

The 40-Year-Old Virgin - A good solid R-rated comedy that doesn't drift too far into the absurd, but doesn't wander too far into chick-flickdom either. Steve Carell does a great job as the polar opposite of his character from TV's The Office -- in this case as Andy -- an awkward, action-figure-collecting virgin who rides a bike to work and plays the tuba for fun. In the process of his mission to become deflowered, he errs constantly by taking the advice of his co-workers, which lands him in a variety of very funny situations, not the least of which is a painful trip to the waxing salon. The weird thing about this movie is that there's this dude named Paul Rudd who plays a salesperson. You remember him as Alicia Silverstone's eventual love interest in Clueless. But the weird part is that this same actor also appeared in Beautiful Girls when his name was Timothy Hutton. And most recently, he appeared in Garden State under the name Peter Sarsgaard. And I could swear his real name is Andrew McCarthy or John Cusack.  Once you get past that little singularity in the universe, the film is movie-going fun. One of the problems with comedy in general is that despite the quirky themes, the storylines are fairly predictable. Virgin is no exception -- it follows a standard boy-gets-girl format, and you know in the end he's going to get the girl and wet his whistle, as it were. So in that regard, this is a nice safe comedy, though it deviates into the boobs, alcohol and swearing wonderland of R, and had more than a couple laugh-out-loud moments. All in all, a cute venture.

08 January 2006

Werewolf Hunter - this was a little hard to follow, especially since a "werewolf hunter" never emerged. The main character was the werewolf himself, though you never really saw him as the werewolf, and it also featured the chick that he screwed then screwed over then ran away from (played by the stunning Elsa Pataky.) It's the "based on a true" story set in 1851, of a traveling salesman in Spain who seduces and kills women and takes their body fat so he can render it into soap. When he is finally caught, he claims to be a werewolf, and the devil made him do it, or some such shit. Something is just off in this movie, and I can't really put my finger on what it is. It was hard to identify what the story was about, hard to pin down the main characters, hard to understand the motivations of the characters - it was just off. The saving grace is that when I looked up Elsa Pataky afterwards, I found some smokin' hot pictures.

The Beat That My Heart Skipped - A real estate thug rediscovers his love for the piano, and begins to practice for an audition. In the process, his love for beating people up and putting rats in their apartments and overall real estate thuggery goes on the decline while his playing improves. His father is a pitbull with no teeth who gets caught up with the wrong people and finds himself dead, and Piano-boy swears his vengeance. Clearly a well-made film, but I don't know. You know. Whatever.

01 January 2006

Dirty Filthy Love - what a great title for a porno, but in fact this is nothing of the sort. A dude is going through a breakup from his wife, and he meets a new chick. A two-minute review would tell the average stranger from the street that the guy has OCD and Tourette's, but it seems to be a big revelation to everyone around this guy, including himself. He spends most of his time trying to figure out what's going on with his head all of a sudden. I'm far from an expert on OCD and Tourette's, but I believe they are not afflictions that just suddenly appear in midlife, but that seems to be exactly what happens here. Aside from that little unbelievable tidbit, it proceeds like your average boy-meets-girl flick from the Lifetime channel. Shirley Henderson is an adorable wisp of a girl, and brings to mind images of a Scottish Danica Patrick (or is she Scottish to begin with?) -- and speaking of that, you might be best served having the subtitles turned on because the accents get pretty heavy. Or maybe not -- you won't be missing a lot. Average fare here, from what sounded like a great little film based on the 30 second read off the DVD cover.

High Tension - I suppose this movie gets its title from the emotional state that it intends to put its viewers into for the full 94 minutes of its runtime. In some regard, that sounds a little too self-aware for my taste -- like Scary Movie, with tongue removed from cheek. In any regard, I popped this DVD in, and after finding that it defaults to English-dubbed French, which is always a silly-playing affair, I switched it over to subtitles. The dialogue really only lasts the first 15 minutes anyway, so I could have waited it out, but no matter. In that first 15 minutes, we see two girls who travel to one's family home for the weekend to study for college exams. After they arrive, a madman breaks in and kills off the whole family, leaving the rest of the movie as a game of chase between the man and the two girls. It's an interesting concept to write an entire movie around such a plot -- but I suppose the entire script was not more than a handful of pages. Anyway, there is a little twist at the end that makes it a little more interesting, but I don't think I would still classify this as the "horror" film that its DVD package proclaims -- it's more of a thriller, and really a concept thriller at that.

25 December 2005

Boo - five teenagers break into an abandoned haunted hospital on Halloween. Previously, another group of kids had done the same thing, and the brother of one, who is still alive, has now come looking for them. A cop follows for good measure. They all meet up inside the hospital, where they find the place haunted by some old geezer of a ghost who burned the place down years ago. Demonstrating the complete inability to stay together as a group, the kids are killed off one by one, and we learn an interesting fact: when your friend dies and becomes possessed by an evil spirit, he will explode into a big pile of goop if you shoot him with a gun. I don't think they teach that kind of thing in Sunday school, but they really should. Eventually, pretty girl Jessie, played gamely by newcomer Trish Coren, utilizes her innate psychic abilities to challenge the ghost, which does absolutely no good. Somehow, they are never able to just break out a window or unlock a door and walk out, which is one of those crucial points of disbelief that you have to willfully suspend. The cop never calls for backup, which is another point. In fact, the movie doesn't really have anything new to offer, and is cut very closely from the Elm Street cloth. Having cut it completely to pieces now, I should add that it is still a spooky little movie that will leave you a little creeped out if you watch it alone at night. Expect a Boo 2 -- this one has low budget franchise written all over it.

The Exorcism of Emily Rose - clever combination of courtroom drama and horror flick. The part that doesn't ring true is underlying premise, which is supposedly lifted from the true story - a priest is being tried for negligent homicide because he recommended to a young girl that she go off her epilepsy medication, which (somehow) brought about her death. If that's the true story, we're just entirely too litigatious these days. Anyway, in telling the story, we see lawyer chick (who "even works while she's drinking") as she defends the priest in court, using the typical courtroom highjinks we've come to expect in these days of Law and Order and Ally McBeal and what not, but we also flash back to some fairly spooky scenes involving the (alleged) possession of one young Emily Rose. It doesn't really matter what happens in the end because we know from the start that the girl is dead, and as for the priest, oddly enough, we don't really care. Some other odd little story lines just don't seem to fit, like the ongoing suggestion of a drinking problem for our lawyer chick, but that never really fleshes out. Altogether, though, an entertaining little flick, with some nice little traces of spook.

18 December 2005

Acts of Worship - Aside from the drug use, prostitution, foul language, and death, this movie probably would have been better suited for the Lifetime channel. I looked forward to watching this film because it looked tough and gritty, with a heroin-loving heroine looking appropriately chic. Instead, it turned out to be rather hum-drum. A chick is into drugs pretty deep, and is living on the street. A reformed junkie takes her in and saves her. She cleans up then regresses. The savior regresses. The chick cleans up. The end. Not-so-surprising stuff from this first-time filmmaker.

Christmas Vacation - The Christmas season wouldn't be the same without a viewing of National Lampoon's seminal Christmas film. On my list, this has pushed out A Christmas Story, and I swear I could listen to that Chevy Chase rant again and again. Chevy stars as Clark W. Griswold, the goofy father figure of the Griswold family who wants only to have an old-fashioned family Christmas. That family Christmas goes on to include an exploding cat, external lighting overload, kidnapping, a rocket saucer, Santa-abuse, and the funniest black dickie you've ever seen. Credit screenwriter John Hughes for not only writing the decade-defining brat pack films of the 80's, but also the majority of the Vacation films, and a slew of other winners. This one's right up there with the best of them.

11 December 2005

The Edukators - in this German film, young Jule, her boyfriend Peter and friend Jan are liberal social activists, rebelling against whatever they can find. When Peter goes away for a few days, Jan breaks the news that he and Peter are "The Edukators", a criminal group that breaks into houses owned by the entitled, rearranges the furniture, and leaves a note. Jule insists that they visit a fat cat business man she is indebted to, and when they get caught in the house, they club him over the head and decide to take him to the country where they are joined by Peter to figure out what to do next. From there, the story spins around a few more times before coming to a nice little conclusion. In all, it's a story of social activism, crime, kidnapping, young love, youth vs. treachery, aging, and politics. Throw in a love triangle for good measure. Too much? Sounds like it, but this engrossing story pulls you in so completely, and the pacing is just about perfect. Because of the subtitles, this isn't a movie you can watch casually, nor would you want to. An excellent, brilliant piece of work.

Star Wars III - Revenge of the Sith - Surprisingly, I have to recommend this movie. It brought the franchise out of the muppet-like, whiny doldrums, and got back to the good-vs.-evil, slashing lightsabre story that marked the quintessential first and second films (now episodes four and five). And along those lines, it danced along at a fine pace and didn't disappoint. What I found lacking, however, was the enormous tragic possibility inherent in the story -- the fall of Anakin from the universal hero Jedi Knight to Dark Lord Vader. I believe this was due to the wooden, arrogant, snotty performance of Hayden Christensen, which engenders a profound sense of ennui regarding the character. "Oh, he burned to a crisp and became the lord of the underworld ? How tragic. Yawn." And sadly, Natalie Portman's considerable talents were squandered, and the story line was awfully predictable, though it's a pretty darn good story to begin with. But I must say there was sufficient action and gallantry to make this a nice little departure despite its shortcomings. I'd even watch it a second time.

04 December 2005

Schultze Gets the Blues - a German film about an accordion-playing retired mine worker who discovers a whole new world when he hears a sample of zydeco music on his tinny little radio. Lo and behold, Schultze finds his way to America and pokes around for a while. It never really becomes a story of a man and his music, it's just a story of an awakening. I was a little put off by the exclusive use of stationary camera shots, which I thought surely would have transitioned to more dynamic pans in the latter part of the film to express the transitory nature of the character arc, but I was disappointed to find this not so. I was also a little put off by the title, as zydeco is not blues, and truly this is a story about Schultze escaping the blues, but I suppose you have to grant a bit of poetic license. Nevertheless, a cute, sweet little story.

27 November 2005

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - this is probably a must-see for fans of the book(s), but will probably come off as a little too goofy for others. It's the story of Arthur Dent, earthling, in his adventures as one of the two survivors after the earth is destroyed. Wayward universal traveler Ford Prefect rescues Arthur from the destruction, and in the process they team up with the two-headed president of the universe, in search of... I don't really know. In the end, he finds love. If you've read the book, you've likely read them all, and you know that the story is never-ending and much too involved to tell in a single film. In fact, Adams's work would be much better suited as told in a series-format, as it was initially. Most characters were well-cast, including Zooey Deschanel, who is oddly beautiful in a girl-next-door sort-of-way as Trillian. I was interested to see how the producers would translate this story to film and, having seen it, my curiosity is satisfied. Beyond that, the movie didn't really do a whole lot for me, other than remind me of the brilliant irreverent writing of Douglas Adams, who left us way too soon.

20 November 2005

The Devil's Rejects - it must be tough being Rob Zombie. The obvious charms of wife Sheri Moon notwithstanding, there doesn't appear to be a lot of joy in his life. This is evidenced from the fact that there is not a single redeeming quality in any of the characters in this movie. The film is well-made, its characters coherent and consistent. It's a captivating story about bad people, but I feel its appeal will be mostly to disenfranchised male youth. Having said that, there are a few comedic moments, and overall Zombie's done a good job. It's the story of the Firefly family -- Baby, Otis, Mama Firefly, Tiny, and Captain Spaulding -- and the cop who's trying to bring them down. Set in the desert in the seventies, The Devil's Rejects features a kickass soundtrack and uberviolence. Not a really good pick-me-up, though, if you're having a down day.

Mean Girls - Cute story of a fish-out-of-water high school transfer student who's either trying to fit in with the In Crowd, or trying to overthrow them. If you've seen any teen movie in your lifetime, you can predict the rest: she destroys the popular girl, gets too big for her own britches, then eventually redeems herself because she has a good heart. The only thing missing is the "slow clap" at the end. Some clever comic moments, and nice to see Lohan in her pre-anorexic days.

13 November 2005

The Card Player - it's my understanding that Dario Argento is recognized as the king of ultra-violent Italian horror movies, and by that measure, The Card Player is a marked disappointment. Rather than horror, this film is closer to suspense thriller, and truly contains little of either. A killer is kidnapping young girls and playing a game of online video poker with the cops to decide if she lives or dies. The (somewhat) pretty young heroine is cold as ice to everyone she meets until she runs across just the right aging alcoholic washed up detective, then she hops right into bed with him. (Warning: puns ahead...) They find a young stud video poker player, and he acts as their ace in the hole to help defeat the bad guy. And just for dramatic flair, our girl's father used to be a big stud poker player himself, but he died from it, or some such shit. In the end, we find out it's all an inside job, and the bad guy ties the heroine to the railroad tracks (seriously!) and they play a game of video poker on a laptop (seriously!!) to determine their fate. Best part was when a techie was explaining how they knew that the bad guy wasn't cheating. "It's very hard to explain, but trust me, it's legit." A pathetic shortcut; a highly predictable film.

Dominion - I believe the back story here is more interesting than the film itself. There are two movies advertising themselves as the prequel to The Exorcist -- this is the first made, and last released. The studio passed on this one, got a new director and started all over again, ultimately finishing with Exorcist: The Beginning. Neither film will set the world on fire, but Dominion will give you a pronounced sense of déjà vu if you saw Exorcist: The Beginning a year ago. The rundown is that this explores the means by which father Merrin, the elderly priest who dies in The Exorcist, originally meets Pazuzu, the demon of the franchise, at an archeological dig in Africa. It carries the familiar theme of the priest who's lost his faith, and must find it to conquer evil. With as great and superbly scary as The Exorcist was, there will always be the desire to cash in on that success, and build out the story behind the characters. Almost always, that does a disservice to the original, and this is no exception to that rule. No matter which prequel you watch, neither compares to the classic. But nothing really ever will.

06 November 2005

Audition - "Holy freakin' cow." That's what I thought the first time I saw this movie, and the feeling just lingered for quite some time. Eventually, I decided I wanted the DVD, but it was out of print, and authentic copies were running for about $100. Then, a Director's Cut was released, and I snatched it up, once again able to revel in the joy of this film. Holy Freakin' Cow: a dude's looking for love so he holds a phony movie audition, and meets a nice little girl. Then it goes all wrong. This psycho-thriller, which runs heavy enough on the "psycho" to border on horror, builds slowly and sweetly, but ends with a wallop.  If you're interested in seeing a movie that will chew you up, spit you out, stomp you in the face, steal your girl, fuck you in the ass, come on your curtains, and call your mother a whore, this is your best bet. A screaming motherfucker of a film. Holy Freakin' Cow.

30 October 2005

Village of the Damned - vintage horror from 1960 in black and white. I remember seeing this once before and thinking it was an extended Twilight Zone - the style is very similar to that long-running creepy series. Village of the Damned won't have you jumping in your seat, and it probably won't keep you up at night. But it is a nice little spooky tale about an evil pack of children, spawned by aliens or the devil or someone, who exert mind control over adults and want to take over the world. In other words, these are just everyday kids. Briefly: the town of Midwich passes out cold for about three hours so aliens can impregnate the women (three hours! Ya' big alien studs!) Months later, twelve kids are born on the same day, each with platinum locks, flashing white eyes, and creepy demon-seed countenances. They congregate as a pack, communicate via ESP, and kill the occasional onlooker. In the end, it's up to Professor Gordon, the "father" of devil-child leader David, to save the world. Filmed in the days before CGI was a twinkle in your grandson's eye, Village of the Damned is a clever little spook show, with a pack of weirdass kids who definitely steal the show.

23 October 2005

The Revolting Dead - typically, I view any zombie movie as "better than nothing", but herein lies the exception. A grave-robbing family of funeral directors goes one step too far by robbing the sacred family amulet from dead Druid John Drue. His sister shows up to take revenge, and casts a spell that brings the dead back to life, who then take for-fucking-ever to seek out and kill the evil family, leaving plenty of time for high-jinks. Garage-boy Duke is in the middle of all this because his pretty, young girlfriend was killed six months ago, even though no one seemed to notice, and now he just happens to be poking the Druid Princess, who, by the way, can shoot lightning bolts out of her hands in scenes highly reminiscent of the seventies cult classic Phantom of the Park, starring all four members of KISS. Funeral home dude Sonny always seems just a step away from poking his plain though slutty sister, who sounds and acts much more like a Jersey girl than the backwoods bumpkin her character portends to be. Most laughable of all this mess is the editing, showcasing a clashing combination of film and DV, and some audio cuts that could be better done by children. Some very respectable boobies attempt to rescue this train wreck, but even Eva Longoria playing naked limbo with Pamela Anderson's g-string wouldn't have enough mojo to pull that one off. Another spooky DVD cover, but perhaps the worst movie I've ever seen in my life - and I've seen that KISS movie.

Prophecy II - first, let's talk about the original. Christopher Walken stars as the Archangel Gabriel. There is a war in heaven between opposing angel factions, and Gabriel has come to earth to retrieve the diabolical soul of a human war criminal to help him win the war in heaven. Walken is outstanding, the story is compelling and creepy, and the concepts are well thought out and solid. A really great scary movie. Then comes the sequel, which is, well, a sequel. In this case, it's pretty much the same story - Gabriel is on earth for some reason, and he's making fun of humans and trying to do something or other. All he needs is a wacky sidekick - oh wait! He finds one in Izzy, played by Brittany Murphy, a suicidal chick who is alive only because Gabriel forces her to be - another plotline lifted from the original. Prophecy is a great scary movie. The second one is a money-making venture and not much more. There's a third - haven't seen it.

16 October 2005

Desperate Souls - Spooky cover, but poorly written and badly acted. Kids escape from an orphanage and kill themselves so that years later they can possess the souls and bodies of anyone who steps into the area marked off in the middle of the forest that's reserved for demons only. Lo and behold, some campers come along and every last one of those bastards, save one, steps into the ring. Now the one is hunted by the four, until he is joined by the dude who actually killed the kids, his brother (oops, spoiler, sorry about that), and some other chick. Turns out the demon kids are after the book (hello? Evil Dead?), which tells them how to do something or other, and our four heroes have it. By the end, everybody dies and we're back where we started from again. The good news is that somebody got to write and make their own movie, and I'm happy for him for that. The bad news is that it's not very good.

9 October 2005

The Ring Two - this movie sat for a week until it was overdue, then it sat for another half-week until I worked up the energy to watch it. First thing I see is "this movie has not been rated" -- uh-oh -- a direct-to-video presentation. Naomi Watts (why, Naomi, why?) stars as Rachel, the chick from the first movie who went up into the loft and fell into the well and never killed the evil demon-girl. You know her character's name is Rachel because you hear it at least 35,000 times throughout the movie. Then it hit me -- this is a drinking game waiting to happen. You swig a beer every time someone says Rachel, and down a shot for every horror movie cliché. For every appearance of the creepy well-girl, you shotgun a brewser and by the time you're done, so is the movie. Getting back to it: chick and her kid escape the old city because of the demon girl. But now someone else has the video. Once they watch it, water starts flooding houses, and appliances act up, so she moves out and the kid gets really cold. Demon girl now shows up on film, and figures out how to possess small children and how to make your mouth really big. What she really wants is to be the kid -- no wait, she really wants a mommy -- no wait, she really wants to kill the mommy. So we go back to the house and find a book, then talk to a nun, but don't go into the tub, then into the video and then the well, then close the well then fall off the cliff... Oh good lord, what a cobbled-together piece of crap this turns out to be. The last thing we need is another Freddy / Jason / Michael Meyers franchise, but that's exactly what we have here. Don't be surprised if there's a Ring 3. Do your best to stay the hell away from it.

2 October 2005

Crash - I tried to watch this during my usual Sunday Night Crush of activity, in which my attention span averages no longer than a few minutes at a time. Big mistake. This movie demands to be watched; to be focused on. So I settled in and gave my undivided attention, and it delivered. Highly reminiscent of Magnolia, Crash is a series of interrelated stories that intersect and carry a common theme -- that of race. The storylines are tight and focused; the characters flawed yet valiant. A wide cross-section is profiled -- White, Black, Hispanic, Middle-Eastern, Asian -- and we explore the ugliness of the stereotypes and the beauty of the wisdom in each. Crash is a solid, touching, angry film that has the potential to impact along the lines of Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. It makes you think, while delivering a palpable sock to the gut.

25 September 2005

The Machinist - Christian Bale stars as circus-freak-skinny Trevor Reznick, a machinist by trade who is slowly losing his mind. The washed out color and drab environment highlight the dreary, though engrossing, nature of the story. The viewer is left to ponder, however, how in the world a skinny beat-up Trevor could score points with beauties played by Aitana Sánchez-Gijón and the lovely, lithe, unaging Jennifer Jason Leigh. Half of that question is answered, but the other half doesn't really track with reality, leaving you wondering how far you can willfully suspend your disbelief. Having heard bits and pieces about this movie, I bought it from Amazon, then found it at Blockbuster just a few weeks later. Now that I own it, it's unlikely that I'll watch it again, other than perhaps to review Bale's freakshow or Leigh's perfection. Having said that, this was a good smart film that resolved nicely, albeit painfully.

18 September 2005

Up and Down - I think this is the first Czech movie I've ever seen. Up and Down, cut from that mold of films that begin with multiple story lines that eventually come together, is a part black comedy, part drama affair that gains steam slowly and steadily. In this corner, a woman desperate to have a child buys one at a pawn shop, and surprises her hooligan husband. Problem is, the baby is Indian, which doesn't go well with hubby's racist crowd, and he becomes an outcast. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, an old professor dude is dying and wishes to divorce his estranged pain-in-the-ass wife so he can marry his young hotter girlfriend. He makes amends with his son, and we discover some other little twists and turns along the way. There are some petty criminals, goofy cops, and a light sprinkling of Kung Fu. Unfortunately, I believe a lot of the humor and references were lost on this ignorant American.

4 September 2005

The Black Gate - you'd think I would've learned my lesson about "Gate" movies from Hell's Gate. This one is really unrelated to the other, but both suffer from the same shit-movie syndrome. The Black Gate reeks of made-for-TV -- one step removed from the melodrama of daytime soaps. Briefly: dude and his buddy go to this hotel to purge the devil. Turns out dude #2 used to be in love with some ghost chick in a previous life, and she just happens to be staying at this hotel. They must free her, and cast out the demon that's haunting the place, and they do so with holy water, a Bible and some mysterious box. Yuck. Yawn.

The Ghouls - an extremely low budget horror movie, which looks like it was shot on 16 mm. The acting is not incredible, but the overall cost/benefit ratio comes out very good. Unknown Timothy Muskatell stars as improbable hero Eric Hayes, a ghoul in his own right who makes a living and gets off on filming violent acts in progress. During one such episode, he discovers that the perps in question are actually zombies who live in the sewers by day and back alleys by night, and feed off anyone they can trap. In the process of trying to document the act, his friend gets eaten, skinned and hung up for dessert, sending Hayes off on a revenge mission. This was a pleasant little surprise of a zombie movie which wisely doesn't go too far by trying to offer explanations.

28 August 2005

The Blair Witch Project - this is the one film that I have seen more than any other movie -- probably around seven or eight times. I love the completely immersive nature of this film, which I believe is due mostly to the improvised acting style. There's something to be said about telling actors to get into character and having them shoot their own resulting footage. And this one landed with perfect timing toward the beginning of the reality-TV glut. If you've been hiding under a rock, here's the premise: three film students embark out into the woods to investigate the "Blair Witch" -- a local legend. They become embroiled in that mystery, and ultimately they never return from the weekend. When their footage is found, it is edited down to the film we eventually see. We know it's just a movie, but it just plays so well, and I get lost in it every time.

Shallow Ground - a bloody naked boy shows up in a small town Sheriff's office, and all hell breaks loose. The pacing here is very good -- you have to stick with it all along the way to understand what's going on. Part horror movie, part murder mystery, part thriller, part WTF. The only problem here is in the continuity -- not just the trivial things like someone smoking a cigarette that's missing in the next shot -- the problems here revolve around the overall timeline and relationships, which are never adequately explained. And the deal with the blood going down, then going back up again, seems more like "fun with digital editing" than a legitimate plot point. The soundtrack is a bit annoying as well (my pet peeve). But once you realize there are two pretty blonde dead girls, things start to make a little sense, and you're drawn into the mystery/horror. Throw in a few quick boobies, and -- Woo Hoo! -- we're off and running. Overall, Shallow Ground is a solid outing -- a nice little indie ditty.

21 August 2005

Hell's Gate - I was looking for a really scary movie, and the back cover of this DVD looked promising. Unfortunately, the movie didn't live up. A chick whose parents were killed by escaped convicts is now all grown up and attending what is apparently the smallest college in the world. This college is so small, in fact, that the campus has a class bully, who regularly crashes classes and threatens the other students. When this happens, the "professors" say things like, "Oh Jake. What are you doing here?" Then there's the snippet of a class lecture, which is absolutely nothing like a real college lecture. Clearly the writers never attended a real college. Anyway, back to the story. She has super-duper ESP powers and an imaginary friend who is actually some sort of murderous ghost. There's some kindof apocalyptic prediction, and "11:11" keeps popping up. There are 11 gates, then dolphins start killing people, and the ending is so mundane, I don't even remember it from last night. Stupid, contrived... pure crap.

Sin City - hooray for Robert Rodriguez! Admittedly, I'm not a huge fan of Rodriguez's trilogy, though I love From Dusk Till Dawn, and call myself a fan of his work. In this adaptation of the Frank Miller comic book, Rodriguez finds a style that is so like the original, it must be admired for the sheer beauty of the cinematography alone. Consistent sidelighting and impossible motions tag the film directly back to its roots, with characteristic over-the-top performances highlighting it all. The story itself consists of a handful of individual tales with interrelated timelines, suggesting a heavily Tarantino-esque influence. The heroes are strong and flawed, and the women are beautiful. The violence is heavy and stylized, the audio deep and powerful. A really strong experience.

14 August 2005

MPD Psycho - you have to stick with this one for a while before it finally coalesces into a story line that you can follow. But even then, it's far from sensical. Director Takashi Miike, who brought us Audition, made this series of two for Japanese television. As such, there is oddly displayed pixelation covering the brief nudity and some of the gore. And what a weird trip: a killer is burying young girls in the ground standing up, with their skulls cut open and flowers planted in their brains. You see, it's really the work of the renegade personality of a former detective with multiple personalities. This one travels by touch, and occasionally by the internet. The second episode is just as trippy.

Overnight - as in "Overnight Sensation". In this documentary, a random dude writes a screenplay and suddenly a $15 million directing gig and a record deal fall into his lap. Then watch him self-destruct, as he destroys every tie he's made and loses every last friend. This treatise in how not to behave is the ideal satisfaction piece for anyone who believes that Mean People Suck -- and his movie probably would've sucked anyway. Surprising and shocking that his documentarian friends were given such universal access every step along the way. In this world of reality television, this is a fun little train wreck if you have the time.

7 August 2005

Dog Day Afternoon - my recollection of this movie was of Al Pacino, ranting and raving, rebelling against the world. Given that this recollection was filtered through the eyes of a seven-year-old, I may have missed the mark just a bit. Instead, it is Pacino at perhaps his most vulnerable, as would-be bank-robber Sonny, who is trapped inside the bank and endures a 12-hour standoff/negotiation with the police. There is some ranting and raving, but rather than Sonny as the rebel, we see Sonny the man - who has made a bad decision. This very-human movie reeks of the early seventies, which makes it that much more fun. Pacino as a young man. A great twist involving Sonny's wife. All around, nicely written, nicely acted - a good piece of film.

The Manson Family - This really seemed like an amateur filmmaker's first foray. It was a dramatic retelling of the Manson story, with documentary-style testimonial inserts. Missing however, was the positioning of the characters in the documentary context: why is one guy dressed like a priest? why is another guy wearing a fake mustache? Then, over top of all that, we have a poorly acted bit with two old geezers pretending like they're producing a TV segment about the Manson family, and modern day killers who are trying to kill them in Charlie's name. If there was grain of truth to be told, the filmmaker lost all his credibility by neglecting to establish the ground rules of his endeavor. So the result took on the lowest common denominator, which was poorly acted, pointless fiction. The explicit violence and prolific boobies almost saved it, but not quite.

31 July 2005

Hide and Seek - with Dakota Fanning and Robert De Niro, how can you go wrong? For the first two thirds of this movie, you can't -- De Niro and Fanning portray father and daughter dealing with the suicide of the family's maternal unit, played briefly by Amy Irving. What ensues is a nice tight suspense drama, with daughter Emily acting out against the loss, while father/psychologist David tries to decode the behavior. And her behavior becomes worse and worse, until the film turns on a dime and follows its logical (surprise) conclusion, in the process becoming one of those films. It's a shame that a slightly different screenplay could not have been found to showcase these performers as they were in the initial majority of the film. A disappointing, ridiculous conclusion to a promising beginning.

Anchorman - standard comedy fare from Will Farrell. Your basic riches-to-rags-to-riches story, with Farrell as anchorman Ron Burgundy, set in the seventies. The storyline was routine and predictable. The highlisghts were the truly original moments -- an a capella performance of Afternoon Delight, and the full-on brutal bloodletting and gang warfare of the opposing newsteams. Otherwise, the script followed the formula we've seen many times over pretty closely. Adam Sandler does a much better romantic comedy, and probably a better straight comedy as well. Not bad if you're looking to waste some time, but don't go out of your way.

24 July 2005

What the "Bleep" Do We Know? - Apparently nothing, based on the fact that we paid $3.00 or whatever to rent this piece of garbage. This pseudo-scientific, part documentary, part bullshit drama, part senseless animation rambles along for a full 15 minutes past its 90 minute runtime -- a fact that had me pulling hair -- and never really seems to touch on a coherent point. The contributors are mostly very credible, but their discussions of quantum physics and brain chemistry are so dumbed down, and then they even loaded the back end with gummi blobs. Think Discovery Channel for pre-school. The points are substantial -- the concept of a holographic universe, matter as field energy, quantum probability, and bio-chemical brain engineering -- but they are glossed over in favor of an idiotic storyline, featuring Marlee Matlin and her huge ass. If you're after the real science, spend some time at the bookstore or library, or even the web.

17 July 2005

6ixtynin9 - a Thai film titled "69" and it's not porn. Instead, it's the story of a young woman who becomes an accidental serial killer when a package is mistakenly delivered to her door, which has a drooping number six, rather than to door number nine down the hall. And the body count ensues. Black comedy. Cute if you have a sense of irony.

10 July 2005

Million Dollar Baby - Is it true? Is this really the greatest movie ever made in the history of the universe? No. I can see what its proponents like about it -- it's a Rocky-like sentimental story, fifty percent ass-kicker, fifty percent weepy tear-jerker. I was waiting for Hillary Swank to start screaming "Adrian!" But there are a ton of problems at play here, so here's a quick rundown: girl has been training as a boxer for three years and fights (and wins) on the undercard of a fairly decent fighter -- one with a world title shot. But she doesn't know how to hit a heavy bag or a speed bag, and she doesn't know how to move her feet. Trainer Frankie can't stand having her around, until he shows her how to move her feet, then he becomes completely infatuated with her -- because moving one's feet has that effect on men. Now that she has become mobile, she starts kicking the crap out of everyone, with gigantic, Balboan punches, because that's how women box. Later, Frankie describes Maggie's stubbornness: "She'd ask 'why this?' and 'why that?' and do it her own way anyway," but all that we've seen in the previous scenes is that she follows his instruction completely; her only deviance is that she works too hard and wins too easily. Then finally when he is in the you-know-where, and does the you-know-what to you-know-who, there's not a soul around to intervene, even though the doo-hickey is doing its thing like crazy. And the whole thing with his daughter, which I guess we're just left to ponder -- but we're led to believe that whatever he did to her, it's worse than murder, so ponder that. And by the way, why was Frankie learning Gaelic? Anyway, if you want to convince yourself that you're experiencing an amazing gripping story, and you're able to believe that this is one of them, enjoy. But I just couldn't find much reality at work here, and the story line was so herky-jerky, it just didn't make sense. Swank's butt did look cute, though.

Cursed - a run-of-the-mill werewolf movie. Dude and his sister are bitten by a werewolf, which turns them slowly into werewolves as well. In the process, they try to figure out who the master werewolf is. There's a ridiculous side story about a school bully turned gay crush, which is extraneous at best. No real surprises and no new mechanisms -- we've see this all before in the American Werewolf and Howling movies, and there were even some hints of Teen Wolf and Ginger Snaps. The only originality is the use of cameos -- Craig Kilborn and Stott Baio are featured as "themselves".

Carandiru - first off, let's answer the obvious question: "what in the hell is a carandiru?" Answer: nobody knows. But here's the synopsis: Doctor goes to work in a Brazilian prison. He listens to all the stories of the inmates, which provides the opportunity to show these short stories as a series of vignettes. That's about it for the first hour. Eventually it settles down into a plot -- with all the requisite killing, raping, drug-shooting and butt-fucking we've come to expect from prison movies -- but only for those viewers with the patience to have stuck it out this far. In the end, a bunch of mean nasty cops kill all these poor innocent rapists, thieves and murderers who were just minding their own business. At 145 minutes, Carinduru could stand for some editing, and took me two nights and three sessions to get through. If you're a left-wing extremist, you might get amped up at the Man while watching this movie, but otherwise I wouldn't recommend it.

03 July 2005

Dark Water - this was the Japanese version, currently available in the video stores. More and more, the American movie industry is ripping off these Japanese horror movies, and making the quick buck while sacrificing the quality of the story. Dark Water is bound to be a classic example of this trend. More ghost story than horror film, it's the story of a pretty messed up lady who moves into an apartment with her daughter, where there's water dripping all over the place. The daughter discovers an imaginary friend, and the mother slowly flips out. In the end, true to the genre of Japanese horror, you're left wondering "what the hell?" but it's good, man, it's really good. A nice little ditty of a ghost story, soon to be ruined by American cinema.

26 June 2005

Team America - everything you've heard about this movie is true. Puppets save the world from terrorist destruction, while destroying international landmarks such as the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower with "friendly fire". Creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker don't miss a beat, satirizing across all racial and ethnic boundaries. While the movie slows down into predictable segments, it is saved by punctuations of comedic genius. The soundtrack provides many of these cues, chief among them the main theme: "America! Fuck Yeah!" Then there's the much-discussed puppet-sex scene, which exhibits perfect comic timing. Don't expect a life-changing experience, but it's nice for a little ride. Fuck yeah.

On The Waterfront - I'm torn about this movie. I really want to love this iconic film, but I can't quite seem to find that depth of respect. I think it's quite possible that this movie is from a time that is so long gone, that we can't really find a comfortable niche for it in the present day. Consequently, it plays as anachronistic -- a cliché of those fifties movies, when it is actually the de facto fifties movie. Hard to gauge, for example, if Brando's Terry is intentionally funny, or if it simply plays that way because that was Brando and this is 2005. Nevertheless, it is entirely necessary to watch this film -- to experience this drama -- to hear these lines. One must look past the flaws in the story line, such as Terry's fractured character arc, and the superhuman ability of everyday thug Johnny to take a solid poke at a professional boxer. And I still don't understand the ending, but certainly it spoke volumes for character at the time, and that's good enough for me.

19 June 2005

Eulogy - a nice little understated black comedy here, about a dysfunctional family coming to grips with the loss of their father. Granddaughter Katie is tasked with eulogizing the patriarch, while her former child-star / current porn-star father, overbearing aunt, forgotten uncle, lesbian aunt, and suicidal grandmother all struggle with each others' pasts. Throw in a mute side-family, bratty twins and long lost neighbor boy, and that just about wraps it up. A fantastic cast, with Hank Azaria, Ray Romano, Debra Winger and Kelly Preston, this film slips neatly under the radar, and makes for wonderful escapist joy. Katie and her father sum it up -- Katie: "Is it too much to ask that we bury my grandfather with a little honor and dignity?" Danny: "I think it is, Sweetie, yeah."

Evil Dead 2 - I've seen this many times, but somehow I got wrapped up in the ongoing "remake vs. sequel" argument on imdb, so I had to give it another look-see. I must admit, I was thinking remake but it is truly a sequel. Also, having thought that this movie was on par with the first one was a bit misguided as well, though it is a delightfully clever little piece of work that possibly defined the genre horror-comedy. This sequel begins with a brief recap of the first film, in which our man Ash and friends go to a deserted cabin, discover the book of the dead -- the Necronomicon, as it were -- and become possessed by the demon of something or other. All but Ash die in the process, and that's where we pick up in 2. The daughter of the cabin-owner comes home with more pages from the book, and she brings a few others with her, and together they fight the demon, become possessed, and die horrible deaths. By now, the twenty-year-old plot is as predictable as they get, but the real joy here is in the slapstick action. A great horror movie which doesn't take itself too seriously -- unfortunately it leads into the juvenile Army of Darkness -- the worst of the trilogy.

The Girl Next Door - I admit it. I watched this movie with the sole intent of seeing Elisha Cuthbert, and she didn't disappoint -- she is absolutely stunning. Here's the rundown: little dweeby high school dude hooks up with a porn star who moves in next door. They fall in love and she quits the business because that happens all the time, then her ex-producer shows up and stirs up a bunch of wacky trouble for the young lovers. He steals a bunch of money, which they can only get back if they are able to pull off a plan that's just so crazy it's brilliant. It's cute, and reminiscent of Risky Business. And Elisha Cuthbert is absolutely stunning.

12 June 2005

Chasing Amy - I read the screenplay first, which I thoroughly enjoyed, but then when watching the movie, I was disappointed with the performances. I found this surprising because Joey Lauren Adams showed up loaded for bear with that voice, and Ben Affleck seems a natural for the role of Holden. What read well on the page somehow did not translate well to the screen, as Adams, playing Alyssa Jones, relayed ongoing missives explaining her station in life. People don't talk that way -- especially people like our girl Alyssa. It's like watching Dawson's Creek with your Funk and Wagnall's, and trying to figure out who in the world actually says words like "conversely" and "wherefore" in the real world. Interestingly, the best delivery was from writer/director Kevin Smith, which should tell me something, though I'm not sure what.

Devour - Ah, finally a horror movie that's rated R. That's all the more boobs and blood, and though minimal, it delivered in both areas. This film starts out as a disconnected jumble of things: dude has "waking nightmares" which become premonitions, Dad has a drinking problem, Mom is in a wheelchair, friends and fuck-partners are wackos, and then they all get involved with a video game that causes Satan to phone in orders from hell. A dude gets whacked, then everybody starts dying, and the devil himself shows up. Eventually, it all comes together, nicely but improbably. The very ending, however, just crash lands into the ground, leaving you lost and confused. Pacing, pacing, pacing. Devour stars that dude from that thing (honestly I have no clue, but he looks familiar) and Dominique Swain, a perennial pervtown favorite. Then there's that one chick at the end, and that other chick looks familiar too. The redheaded guy was really creepy, but what's with all the bruises, and when was the last time you noticed a tattoo artist's devil-with-horns tattoo, and felt compelled to open with, "hey, how's that 'worshipping the devil' thing going these days?" Devour wasn't horrible, but it wasn't all that good either.

5 June 2005

Tarnation - Wow. This is a one-of-a-kind effort from filmmaker Jonathan Caouette, who draws from a lifetime of footage to compile a powerful autobiographical documentary. Fundamentally, this is an editorial masterpiece, with frenetic cuts echoing the young man's youth in the beginning, and settling into the solid storytelling of a capable filmmaker at the end. If you're feeling a touch of the old homophobia, you're best to pass this one by, as the gay content is fairly heavy. The rest of us can rejoice in this fantastic culmination of a life effort. Remember the name -- we'll be hearing more from Jonathan Caouette.

Boogeyman - Remember the first Nightmare on Elm Street? Or even the first Friday the Thirteenth, or (gloriously) the first Halloween? Now do you remember the dread of the sequel to the sequel to the sequel, starring the same bad guy who can only be stopped if the heroes invent some increasingly ridiculous scheme every time? This is that movie. Starring Matt Camden and her highness, Xena, this film was trying hard but not quite delivering. The first half of the film is a tight psychological drama, which unfortunately falls apart when we discover that the boogeyman is not only real, but that he is also a poorly constructed CGI being. It turns out that you can only kill the boogeyman if you confront him where you first met him. And then, of course, you have to bolt a chair to the floor. Then he will only die if you smash all the crap that scared you as a child, and then you can kick him in the face, forever banishing him to the closet from wence he came. This movie was made to scare preteens, but unfortunately it's destined to simply bore the adults.

Bad Education - what, was it gay night at the Dogg House? Not really, though you'd think so from the selections at hand. This one came in with big critical acclaim, but to be honest, I just don't get it. Two grade school chums who once diddled each other in a closet. One goes away, the other is molested by a priest. Years later, one is a writer, the other a film-maker. But it's really the other guy's brother, who is now being humped by that same (ex-)priest, because the first one grew tits then died. This film was made by the same guy who did Y Tu Mama Tambien and Talk to Her -- both nice little films, but... I just don't get it. If you're looking for some hot man-on-man action, this might be the place to go, but otherwise, just keep walking.

29 May 2005

The Woodsman - "This is supposed to be disturbing, but pretty good," the pubescent video store girl told me. "Disturbing is good," I explained to her, while walking out and chuckling at her innocence. Then I got home and, Holy Crap, what a disturbing movie. Kevin Bacon as a child molester, released from prison, trying to get by without rubbing against the neighborhood tweens. It's a brave movie -- brave to write, produce and act. Bacon's sympathetic perv is one like we've never seen -- you hate him but you're pulling for him. There are a ton of holes in the story, but Geez. I mean, Geez.

Darkness - pretty girl Anna Paquin with freaky brother, psycho dad, who-cares mom, and devil-worshipping grandpa. House from hell, six ghost kids, creepy lizard things, hidden rooms, pencil-eating black clouds, and hell on earth. Oh yeah, and she's also on the swim team. Sounds good, but don't hold your breath. There's way too much stuff going on here -- the story never really coalesces, and we're left with a big bunch of spooky images with no real payoff. There are holes in this story that Anna Nicole Smith could squeeze her fat ass through. And no matter how much you root for it, Anna Paquin doesn't get naked.

White Noise - Michael Keaton as Jonathan Rivers, whose wife dies while changing her tire (!). Then some guy shows up who heard her voice on a tape that he made after she died, and we get all weepy and sad. Just when you're about to kick somebody's face in for making this pathetic piece of crap, evil shows up and, woo-hoo!, we have a movie. Rivers pops tape after tape into his VCR and records white noise (get it?), hoping to find his wife. There she is! Wait, that's a Golden Girls rerun. The tapes turn out to be a prophecy from hell, with the dirty work done by three shadow ghosts that show a penchant for trashing rooms and killing young girls -- good work if you can get it, but it doesn't really pay the bills.

22 May 2005

Blade: Trinity - I rented this only to see if I could figure out what role my friend Todd may have had if he had been able to act in it, as he was asked.Todd is a huge hulk of a man, and the only such character I saw was played by Triple H -- and I doubt very much that they wanted Todd instead of Triple H. Aside from playing "spot the big guy", this movie had little to offer. Wesley Snipes phoned in his two hour performance, and Parker Posey's considerable talents were squandered, but Jessica Biel is still a hottie -- the only saving grace in this otherwise dreadful waste of mankind's resources.

Alone in the Dark - Let's see: a secret government agency, giant lizards from hell, "photon-enhanced" bullets, a mysterious tribe of extinct native Americans, zombies, blah blah blah. Even the zombies can't save this one; it's total crap. Tara Reid's most memorable line, which she said more than once: "Hey you guys, over here." Yes, it's that kind of movie.

Sideways - Finally, something worth watching. Two guys spend a week in wine country as one's last fling. Tight, true characterizations, with a nice balance of comedy and drama. But would a Virginia Madsen really fall for a Paul Giamatti? Stranger things have happened, but not usually. And I found the use of score a bit much, but I'm like that. Otherwise, a nice little film that's worth seeing. For some reason, it brought to mind The Fabulous Baker Boys, though I'm not sure why.

8 May 2005

Garden State - the careful reader will note that I reviewed this movie once before, in February. I received a copy of the DVD over the weekend, and I fell in love with the movie all over again. Two things I really like about this movie: 1) The use of score – there is none. Music is used only over montage pieces, in the form of distinct songs, and is absent otherwise. This gives the film a good solid indie feel, and I love indie. 2) The dialogue rings so realistic. Most movies sound so… scripted. Garden State has a very fresh, natural sound. It's the way I try to write. In case you missed my overall impression, I think you should go see it.

1 May 2005

Prozac Nation - It actually took me about 3 weeks to watch this film, which was released, long overdue, direct to cable on Starz. Starring Christina Ricci as Elizabeth Wurtzel, it starts off with a bang, with Ricci butt-nekkid in the second scene. Call that the highlight of the movie. From that point forward, we see a self-absorbed bitchy little Wurtzel making horrible decisions and whining her way through life. Wurtzel's novel by the same title focused more on the clinical depression that has been the hallmark of her life, but the film deviated substantially from this. In so doing, it did a disservice to the disorder, as well as to the novel, which sucked to begin with. It took me the 3 weeks to watch this because I didn't have the patience to sit through more than 20 minutes at a time. If you hated the book, you'll hate the movie. If you loved the book, you'll probably still hate the movie, though I wouldn't know. Tune in for the boobies, then tune out.

24 April 2005

Joy Ride - Steve Zahn, the delicious Leelee Sobieski, and some other pretty boy get mixed up with the wrong dude when their practical joke goes horribly wrong. There’s hotel drama, truck-driver drama and CB-radio drama – even a little touch of sibling rivalry over the affections of Sobieski’s Venna. Overall, the story is derivative of Duel, but still worth the time.

17 April 2005

The Final Cut - There is some serious darkness in the soul of Robin Williams. Here, he reprises the same creepy weirdo character he played in One Hour Photo and Insomnia, only this is set some indiscriminate time in the future. I always find it compelling to see this side of Williams, which stands in stark contrast to Patch Adams and Mork. Williams stars here as a cutter, who assembles footage from the life memory “Zoe” chip implanted in the brain of selected individuals into a final homage. In the process, he uncovers bits of his past and chases down his demons. A little bit sci-fi, a little bit thriller, a little bit boring. Overall, not bad, but don't go out of your way.

Cube Zero - "Oh my God, they made a third Cube movie?" the video store guy asked me. "Was the second one any good?" "No," I told him and walked out. The Cube series consists of three movies telling the same story -- people trapped in a strange cube structure, moving from one room to the next, trying to escape without being killed. Compelling at first, routine by the third. Our third rendition bills itself as a prequel, and we get a view of the maniacal organization and technology behind the story. As far as the story goes, see the first one.

10 April 2005

The Grudge - I suppose you have to expect exactly what is delivered. This American remake of the Japanese Ju-On loses a bit in the translation, and the experience suffers for it. Part of the fun of Japanese horror is the immersion in the culture -- in this, that aspect is gone when the lead is taken over by the very-American Sarah Michelle Gellar. It's passable, but over-explained and not nearly as creepy as the original. Better to watch Ju-On, and spend the evening with subtitles.

Napoleon Dynamite - what a fun little film, independently made, and released by MTV productions. John Heder as the title character, whose distinctive moniker is never explained. Napoleon is a social reject, growing up in rural Idaho amongst his social reject friends. He never really changes the world; he simply survives -- which is probably good enough for all involved. When Napoleon uses his drawing skills to earn a date with popular-girl Trisha, I laughed harder than I have since Spinal Tap. A great movie for a lighthearted afternoon.

03 April 2005 -- A Natalie Portman Extravaganza

Leon - The Professional - Portman is a dream in her acting debut, as a twelve-year-old orphan who falls in love with a hitman, so that she might exact revenge on her family's killer, unsettlingly played by Mickey Rourke. The theme provides something for everyone, as it runs somewhere between after-school special and pedophilic drama, with liberal explosions and a high body count thrown in. While the story borders constantly on leaving the viewer slightly queasy for the May-December romance, Portman manages to pull off a sweet sentimentality, and establishes a high-water mark for child actors that will stand until the arrival of the Fanning sisters, some ten years later. Definitely worth the two hour investment.

Closer - Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Natalie Portman, and some other dude star in this story about the entangled relationships of two couples. It's a chick-flick at heart, with three saving factors: 1) strippers; 2) a well-scripted dialogue; 3) the fact that Portman, according to her birthright, is a dream as Alice – a New York stripper living in England. The central story has been told countless times before, most recently as We Don't Live Here Anymore – pretty girls and pretty boys play with their sexuality and destroy their relationships. A who-cares story, made worth the price of admission by Portman's performance.

27 February 2005

Garden State - this was really good. I think a lot of this movie's detractors may be missing the central theme of what is happening to the main character, which I won't disclose so as not to spoil it. But there are a handful of "Oh My God" moments in this movie, and Natalie Portman, as always, is a dream. Two thumbs up, plus maybe a couple toes.

Open Water - this movie was fairly compelling, considering the majority of the movie consists of 2 people in the water trying not to panic while the sharks circle. Most interesting were the deleted scenes, which are still in a digital video format -- an interesting contrast with the rest of the movie, which is converted to film. Also a very brave ending to this movie. Two thumbs up, but no toes.

Time of the Wolf - not now. This French film had an intriguing premise: families struggle for survival in a post-Appocalyptic world, but the delivery was just too slow and plodding. Case in point: the final scene, which is a two-minute shot of countryside going past, taken from a train window. I took about 4 hours to watch this 106-minute movie, because I found it difficult to endure for longer than 10 minutes at a time. Thumbs down, along with any other appendage you care to point in that direction.

31 March 1997
I believe these were my first documented movie reviews, which I sent to a friend in an email.

Trainspotting - very over-rated. It was a good film, but not great. The story line was predictable: a bunch of guys do drugs, then they get mixed up in crime, and a bunch of them die. We've seen this same story dozens of times, but set in the US, rather than Scotland. (And besides, I couldn't understand their accents very well...)

Fargo - a sweetly understated film that doesn't go too far, but lures the viewer into the characters very strongly. The story in this one, too, has been done many times, but the freshness of the characters breathes a charm into this film that makes it worth seeing. No super heroes, no submachine guns, just a down-home look at a part of the country where everyone talks in the cutest (midwest? Northern midwest? Upper northwest?) accent. Don'cha know, then.

Mission Impossible - I'd heard about this one, so I made an extra effort to pay attention, to try to follow the plot. Did I get it? Most of it. The effects were cool, and the spy-theme plot was cool, too, but the whole darn thing was just a little too contrived and goofy. Then again, that's what Mission Impossible has always been about.

The Cable Guy - was this a comedy? Or perhaps a drama? A little of both, I think. An interesting dramatization of the unwanted-friend scenario. Or a journey into the mind of a sociopath. A sad portrayal of a lonely man who's simply looking for a friend. Or a haunting tale of the terror of stalking. A little of both, I think. But worthy of viewing.

Phenomenon - a nearly-science-fiction film that tries to answer the question: what if it's really true that we only use 10% of our brain, and what would it be like if we could use the other 90%? John Travolta does a wonderful job of portraying the genius-in-training, while pursuing the only thing that he truly desires -- love. A wonderful tearjerker which is really simply a love story in the guise of a sci-fi-fantasy-what-if flick.

Jack - kind of cute, kind of predictable, kind of sweet, kind of silly.

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