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Date Viewed	Movie	Director	Notes
11.10.24	The President's Analyst	Theodore J. Flicker	I learned of this thanks to the Movies That Made Me podcast. Joe Dante and Josh Olsen screened this in LA and they sold it pretty hard without saying anything about what it's about so that sounded well worth tracking down. Wow this was pretty wacky. James Coburn plays a psychiatrist who's enlisted by the CIA and FBI to offer his services to the president. At first he's overjoyed to get such an exciting client, but then security concerns (like he talks in his sleep) quickly lead him to feel isolated and paranoid like everyone around him is a spy. Uh, the story goes on from there but I feel like part of the joy of the film is discovering which twists and turns it takes. I'll recount everything for my own memory down below in a spoiler section but before then, I can say in a spoiler-free way that this movie really does take some turns. But with a late 60s, pre-watergate, swinging swanky Lalo Schiffrin score, young-ish James Coburn kind of light-heartedness that we'd never get today. Things are much too dystopian now for such frivolity. Even in the 90s we got Will Smith in Enemy of the State. This is still infused with a wackiness akin to James Bond spy spoofs. It's really fun. Instead of a Checkov's Gun there's a Checkhov's Gong. The one weird part is that I guess they couldn't call the FBI and CIA by name so they put up a title card talking about the "FBR" and "CEA" and all through the movie whenever anyone says the acronym it's ADR'd in, often very clunkily. I suppose the phony initialisms add to the 60s surreal comedic nature of the movie, but it's an odd thing. My favorite part is the family that James Coburn meets on a white house tour. They'd ironically be right at home today. "By 'liberal' I don't mean left-wing." Damn, I really can't say anything without spoiling. BEGIN SPOILER SECTION Ok here's the rest of the plot. Feeling overwhelmed, Coburn wants to stop being the President's Analyst so he convinces a tourist family to take him home, but the dad is a gun nut, the mom is into suburban karate, and the kid is an aspiring spy himself. In the meantime, all of the actual spies who have been surveilling Coburn (including his girlfriend) learn of his defection. All the international spies want to grab him and take him back home to extract all the secret info that he now knows thanks to being in the president's confidence. In order to keep that from happening, the FBI orders his assassination. The CIA learns of this and is a tiny bit more sympathetic but recognize that if they can't get to him first they'll have to kill him too. So he's basically on the run without knowing it at first until he's accosted outside a chinese restaurant. Thankfully the gun nut dad and his karate wife mistake them for muggers and start shooting them dead and kicking the shit out of everyone. From there, Coburn hides out with a hippie band that was supposed to be The Grateful Dead. He makes love to a hippie chick in a field and there's a fun sequence of all these different spies sneaking up to him in the tall grass while they're doing it, but the various spies keep taking one another out so they can grab Coburn. It goes on so long that the love-making ends and there's a pile of bodies in the grass. Someone finally gets him when he's on stage with the hippie band playing the gong, but then he uses his powers of psycho-analysis to win the russian agent over to his side. However, they stop at a phone booth (after disembarking from the boat via a hilarious hydro-car) and Coburn gets locked inside and abducted. Turns out, the phone company (TPC) was a player in all of this as well, listening in to every phone in the country. They have an idea to implant a phone into everyone's brains. But then the CIA and Russian agent storm the place, Coburn is shooting phone company employees with a machine gun all of a sudden as they save the world by killing the phone network and the movie ends with everyone having a jolly Christmas party but the phone company, as always, is watching. Whew. END SPOILER SECTION So this was quite fun. I really went into this blind so it took a minute to figure out what kind of movie it was but once Coburn pretended to be shot in a restaurant and literally everyone in the place pulled a gun on each other I figured it out and sat back to enjoy the ride. But I think I'm calling it here. I have to wake up for work in the morning and there's a DnD game scheduled so It'll be hard to fit more movies in tomorrow. That makes this a pretty short DVRfest but I knew it was compromised from the start anyway. There's always next year. Ok let's do the numbers. 12 movies in the past week (1.71/day), 32 in the past month (1.07/day), 74 in the past year (0.2/day), and 3522 in the past 20 years (0.48/day). You know, for not being in top form since 2007 when my daily average was up to 2, watching a half a movie every day for the past 20 years still sounds like an achievement to me! I think I'm past the guilt of not watching so many movies anymore. Maybe I'll get back into the hobby in retirement or something but the truth of the matter is I'm working, I play a bunch of video games, I watch a decent amount of TV, and I've got other shit going. Back in 2006, 2007, all I did was watch movies. Can't sustain that even when you love it as much as I do. Now that I'm not doing Fantastic Fest either, that's ~30 movies/year that I'm not seeing which used to be my saving grace, but on the flip side I still have so many movies on my hard drive and virtually everything is available now so when I hear about a movie I can watch it whenever I want. The world is different. The state of Hollywood might be dire but there's a hundred years of great movies out there, still stuff I've never heard of like The President's Analyst and A Man Escaped. And even bullshit hacks can make decent movies like Split and The House of the Devil, so movies as entertainment, as a hobby, aren't going anywhere. Even my "unwatched" shelf, the single-disc criterion releases were just one small part of it. I think as long as the Internet exists and I can host this site I'll still be doing DVRfest. And maybe more. I'm already thinking of some kind of sister-fest where I can only re-watch movies I've seen. Nothing new. We'll see if that comes together. In the meantime, I gotta go to work!
11.10.24	A Man Escaped	Robert Bresson	I think this is the first Bresson film for me. I learned of this thanks to Bill Hader bringing it up in relation to No Country, apparently the Coens really like this movie and took a lot of that silent process-oriented direction from this. Since that's my favorite part of No Country I figured I should watch it. Didn't even realize it was on Criterion! I recently subscribed the The Criterion Channel, mostly in a weird effort to give them more money. I do think they're physical releases are overpriced and pretty much only buy their discs during 50%-off sales, but I never subscribed to Film Struck and in a perfect world that streaming service would still be around and going strong. Instead we get like 5 old movies on stupid-ass Max and Criterion had to scramble and start their own streaming service. I actually got to use it for this though which made me feel very good. This movie is a French prison break film set in Occupied France during WWII. It's mostly told through voice-over with small amounts of dialogue, usually followed by a guard yelling "No talking!" in German. It follows the same format as your typical prison escape story, but with the same feel of authenticity as Escape from Alcatraz. According to the Imdb trivia they even had access to the real makeshift hooks used by the real guy to escape the same prison they shot at. I loved this. I'd like to have something clever to say about Bresson as a director but I spent the whole movie caught up in the story. It's got exactly what I love about prison movies and heist movies now that I think about. I mean what's a heist sequence if not a reverse prison break? Chipping away at stuff, formulating plans, fashioning rope... all great. Nothing extraneous, but you can easily follow what's happening. Very clear storytelling. Love it. It's late now and probably a work night but I gotta try and fit one more. I'm still on the fence if this is the end or if the fest continues tomorrow... but if not there's another movie I've been holding off watching so I could include it in the fest.
11.10.24	Split	M. Night Shyamalan	Rounding out this second chance triple feature is A number 1 on the list: M Night Shyamalan. Yes, I liked The Sixth Sense when it came out; the twist totally got me and I thought it was brilliant. But I didn't like Unbreakable, and Signs pissed me off, and The Village pissed me off even more, and as I recall I refused to pay to see Lady in the Water, I made Jarrette pay for my ticket because he wanted me to go see it with him, and as bad as I thought it was, my opinion lowered even further when I read that book about the making of the film. I think morbid curiosity led me to watch The Happening and it was as bad as everyone said it was. At that point I decided to add Shyamalan to the list and forget about the rest of his career. And for a long while that seemed like a wise decision. But then he made Split. It was a secret screening at Fantastic Fest a year I didn't attend and people said it was surprisingly good and the big twist is that it was a return to the Unbreakable universe. And since this movie he's more or less had a career again. People see his movies like they're not frustratingly terrible, the world forgave him for Lady in the Water. So... I'm trying my hardest to keep an open mind here. I like James McAvoy, it's always fun to see actors chew on multiple personalities. Let's give Split a watch. Well... ok so the reason why Shyamalan is on the list isn't because he's a bad filmmaker. I think he has a great control of the craft of making a movie. His frame is interesting, he's very effective with his camera movement, he pays close attention to color and costume and production design. My problems with him come mostly as a writer where he doesn't mind consistently detaching from reality in order to deliver some bullshit surprise. It worked once so he made a career of it and failed every other time (to me, I know his movies have made a lot of cash). So his movies that bug me the most - Signs and The Village - bug me so much because 60-70% of them are really fucking good movies. Then it all comes crashing down in the most infuriating way. And the ego of putting himself in often pivotal roles also irks me. And many of the performances he gets out of his actors are terrible. But mostly it's the story stuff. It got to where I could count on laughably ridiculous things happening that ruin any vibe or immersion that I had with the movie, so why bother. Split. Great performance from McAvoy. I firmly believe he brought all of that with him. It's a standout performance. Also Anya Taylor-Joy which I didn't realize was in this. This is part of her ascension. She has less to do than McAvoy by a mile but she's still good. And for the most part the story is good. You think it's a psychological thriller until it becomes a horror movie in a pretty nice turn. But then the twist has to come and we learn that no, this can't just be a good movie, it's gotta be a bullshit origin story for a super villain in the Unbreakable universe. Couldn't leave good enough alone. Granted, I thought it was a better origin story than Unbreakable so there's that. As far as world-collapsing shitstorms of endings goes this one isn't nearly as terrible as most of his others. It's really the closest I've seen him do without a huge twist at the end. I guess that's why people liked it. For me it was mostly McAvoy's performance that made it worth watching. The relatively low Shaymalan-ness also worked and, like I said, I believe he can make a good movie. He knows how to put scares in the frame, how to bring the audience along on the edge of their seat. This was a grudgingly good movie. Still not interested in seeing more though, unless people talk about how great it is like they did with this. OK, that concludes the Second Chance triple feature. To be honest, from here on out I don't have a plan. I'm still not sure if I'm taking off work tomorrow so the next one might be the last? I have a ton of movies still on the HD though so let's see if we can cherry-pick some fun ones, eh?
11.10.24	The House of the Devil	Ti West	Next up is Ti West. I saw The Roost and hated it but his name kept popping up as part of that late-2000s class of horror like Adam Winguard and Simon Barrett, intertwined with those mumblecore directors (another genre I hated) like Joe Swanberg and the Duplass brothers. Plus many of those guys found a modicum of heat from Fantastic Fest so they came to Austin a lot around that time and I didn't really like any of their 'tudes. It further reinforced my decision to not bother with the actual movie industry and just keep my love as an audience member. I think I liked Ti's performance in You're Next better than anything I saw him direct. He made a thinly-veiled Jonestown movie that would've been decent if he called it Jonestown but as such it came off feeling kind of fake. And did I mention how much I did not like The Roost? But then he made this damn movie which everyone said was great. Then The Innkeepers which people kinda liked, and now he's found success on Netflix with these Mia Goth movies so I figured what the hell. Let's give this a try. The one thing I'd heard about this was that it was a slow burn. Yeah right. More like absolutely nothing happens for 80% of the movie. He's going so hard for a 80s slasher vibe here but without the slashing. Going for Rosemary's Baby, getting Rosemary's Cousin. I will say I thought it was ok. It was fun to see Greta Gerwig again pre-Frances Ha when I thought she wasn't that great (I thought she wasn't that great here as well, but I did like Lady Bird and her career as a director has really taken off thanks to Barbie). It's also great casting. You can't ask for a creepier couple than Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov. AJ Bowen I went to Salt Lick once and he was very personable, always struck me as a genre version of Ryan Reynolds. And a cameo from Dee Wallace is always welcome. Lead Jocelin Donahue also delivers a good performance, there's just not enough going on for me story-wise to really engage me. Thanks to the title and the movie's existence I know the creepy couple is up to something creepy so it's just a lot of waiting around until it finally happens. The ending is decent but still falls into a few logic traps (why didn't she take the gun? why didn't she shoot Noonan first? the audience wants more! As I recall, that's what made You're Next better than it should've... a lead character who's not a complete idiot). Better than The Roost, but what isn't. I'm in no hurry to see X or XXX or Pearl.
11.10.24	Mysterious Skin	Gregg Araki	I'm starting Day 3 with a triple feature I'm calling Second Chances. These are movies I've heard are good but they're from directors I've more or less dismissed. I do have a few people where if I see their name in the credits I opt out. I don't watch enough movies nowadays to waste my time on stuff I know I'm not gonna like so these directors are all on that list for one reason or another. I recognize that's kind of harsh though and sometimes peoples' tastes change and my tastes change and it seems petty to hold to some grudge if they're making good movies now. First up is Gregg Araki. I attribute him being on my list for largely a misunderstanding. I rented a bunch of his movies as a teen because he was putting music and band members that I really liked at the time into his movies. I remember seeing parts of The Living End on cable and seeing that one of the characters wears a Ministry t-shirt, and Skinny Puppy make a cameo in The Doom Generation. So I rented these movies and watched them for the music and cameos and wound up exposed to Araki's world which I did not sign on for. It was my first exposure to queer cinema other than the time we watched half of Rocky Horror because my friend and I thought it was an actual horror movie. So the more Araki movies I watched the more I thought his movies were actually crap and they weren't saying anything but just trying to be shocking. I think I watched half of Splendor on cable as well because I thought Kathleen Robinson was hot but found that the throuple movie was largely frivolous and, like all his others, more style than substance. So I skipped out on his next one which got rave reviews and for 20 years I'm the only guy in the circle of friends who hasn't seen Mysterious Skin. Not anymore! Watched it. It was as good as everyone said. I'm most struck by the maturity that Araki handles the material. It's the most intense and authentic look at child abuse that I think I've seen. Very frank, brutal in its honesty. And unexpectedly restrained. It's very possible that I'd like his earlier movies more now that I'm older and seen lots more movies and can place them back in their 90s indie scene context, but this one is the work of a confident director. No need to be flashy with the camera, no over reliance on music-video editing. Perhaps the script was source material was strong enough that he knew he couldn't rely on his normal bag of tricks for this one. Whatever it was that made him make these choices for this film, it worked. I can't say it's a pleasant watch, but super affecting. Very good movie. So After this, I'm kind of curious to revisit more of Araki's work and see how I react to it. It looks like he's mostly doing TV these days so I guess it's good that he's working but this seems like the pinnacle of his film career.
11.09.24	The Scarlet Empress	Josef Von Sternberg	roll: 1 spine: 109 And we come to the last movie on the shelf. This movie, along with Salo and Wild Strawberries, is the reason why the Criterion Random Roll exists. I've owned this movie for more than 20 years and never watched it. It's sat on three different shelves in three different houses and apartments and never made it to a DVD player. I think I bought it when I was reading Bogdanovich's book of director interviews and his short interview with Von Sternberg picqued my interest. I'd read about his famous pairing with Marlene Dietrich and their intense working relationship and figured I should educate myself a bit more and check some of them out. Fast forward to today, I've seen Dietrich in a few movies (Touch of Evil, Rancho Notorious, maybe Witness for the Prosecution or Stage Fright, Destry Rides Again) but still no Blue Angel, no Shanghai Express, no Blonde Venus, no Devil is a Woman, no Dishonored, no Morocco, no Von Sternberg movies at all. I don't know why I never watched it, I just didn't. Until Now! Well that was a movie alright. I don't really know anything about Catherine the Great and russian history is not super high on my list of interests and it's been quite a while since I've seen a movie from the 30s and that early-sound pacing... all of which to say I didn't like this. Watching it felt like a chore. But, I will say there was some great shot design here, some great double exposure montage work, some great sets and costumes and production design and all the non-screenplay elements were vivid and ornate and impressive. So I think I see why this film is notable to some, but I bounced completely off the story. It was almost like a silent picture with all the title cards explaining the plot, making all the dialogue feel mostly needless. I guess it wasn't torture like Tales of Hoffman, but I didn't love it. But I watched it! And that's that. If you're wondering what I'm gonna do now that all the criterion discs are cleared from the "unseen" shelf after nine years of doing this, I've got two words for you: BOX SETS
11.09.24	Barcelona	Whit Stillman	roll: 2 spine: 807 After I liked Last Days of Disco more than I thought i would, I picked up Stillman's other two so-called "doomed-bourgeois-in-love" series and it's been nice seeing them over the past few years. They're so similar I'm not sure how a triple feature of all three would go, but one a year makes for a pleasant enough endeavor. I think I wound up liking this one the least of the three but it was still fine and indicative of Stillman's unique voice. The 90s indie scene really was something and I still associate most of these actors with that time. I guess I also know Taylor Nichols from Mike Binder's HBO show too but Chris Eigeman for sure. One stand-out here is an early pre-Mighty Aphrodite performance from Mira Sorvino who plays a Spanish girl. Most all of the women in this are gorgeous but she does stand out... hard to tell if it's just because I know her face or what but I think it's evident even for 1994 audiences. So the setting has changed to late-80s Spain here with some political turmoil as a backdrop but the story is still about intellectual precocious white dudes overthinking their search for love. It's kind of a typical sequel-not-sequel to Metropolitan in that it just kind of delivers more of the same with a tiny bit more money for a special effect explosion and a camera mount for a forklift shot. Pleasant but the minor note between the first and the third for me. Next!
11.09.24	La Haine	Mathieu Kassovitz	roll: 2 spine: 381 This has been on the shelf a while. I'm familiar with these french guys as actors but I don't think I've seen any of Mathieu Kassovitz's work as a director. Seemed like it looks cool and sounded interesting though so let's see. I liked this ok. It's interesting to think this came out the same year as Kids. This is much more politically charged though with flashy camera moves and a heck of an ending but it's also about some kids with nothing to do all day getting into trouble. Although if they were supposed to be teenagers all three main actors looked way too old. The story plays a bit differently if they're supposed to be in their late 20s but I think they're supposed to be teenagers? I'm not sure now that I think about it. Anyway, this was ok. Worth watching for sure but It didn't totally grip me. I think I'm seeing it too late. If I saw this along with Kids and Clerks and Reservoir Dogs I bet I'd have loved it. How'd it get so late so quick? I don't know if I can fit two more in but leaving one on the pile is not an option. Next!
11.09.24	Something Wild	Jonathan Demme	Day Two! As has become custom, today will be another edition of Criterion Random Roll. The thought here is I have a bunch of Criterion discs that I bought with good intentions but have failed to get watched over the years. Some are DVD, some are Blu, all have yet to be watched. Some of them I bought because I felt like I "should" see them, others I do want to watch but my habits never draw me to the physical shelves anymore, still others are worthwhile views but something makes them difficult to decide to watch. So this is a way to force my way through that section of my shelf via rolling dice. I have them sorted by spine number and whatever position I roll I have to watch. This year, the list is down to four! That means that I will watch all these movies today, it's just a matter of which order. Nine years ago I started this experiment with 30 films on the shelf. Now I'm down to four! The end is in sight! Let's do this! --- roll: 3 spine: 563 This is one of those movies I should've seen a long time ago but it just fell through the cracks. I wonder if this is the first of this micro-genre of uptight guy meeting manic pixie dream girl who injects chaos and excitement into his staid life. Madonna did it to Griffin Dunne, Sandra Bullock did it to Ben Affleck, Jen Anniston did it to Ben Stiller, Zooey Deschanel did it to Jim Carrey, even Strange Darling plays on the genre trope but I think my favorite take is a 90s Tom DiCillo movie called Box of Moonlight where John Turturro gets lured by a mixtape even though Catherine Keener and Sam Rockwell and several others also help him along so it's not always the allure of sex with a wild woman is the catalyst... although... I mean... mostly it is. And who could argue with 1986 Melanie Griffith right? There's a shot when she gets in her car and she hikes her dress up to give her legs some room and we see the tops of her stockings and that's it. We're along for the ride just like Jeff Daniels is. Super young Jeff Daniels, super young Ray Liotta, and not-too-young Melanie Griffith are all so electric on camera. Blue eyes everywhere. Also though, I think even more than the actors, I feel an excitement from Jonathan Demme. The little bit of New York City fits right into that golden era of NYC character but then the movie becomes a road trip and we see New Jersey and Pennsylvania and Virginia. We see Daniels' life really take a vacation as he's swept up by Griffith's charisma, but she's a super chic east village new wave musical taste girl so the car radio is always some top-form reggae or David Byrne or X track. It's such an interesting facet of 80s music that things can be so Valley Girl new romantics synth pop stuff but it can also be so many other things. The music here is credited to John Cale and Laurie Anderson which is just... crazy. It's a version of 1986 that is so much cooler than many others. And of course, I think the reason why this movie's on criterion is Ray Liotta. The movie takes such a tonal shift as soon as he appears. You see the menace in his eyes. It's a party that goes on too long, or when the weed stops and the coke comes out, or when shit gets real. I bet it was even more of a shock based on the poster and trailer for the film. I kinda knew it was coming but I still felt it when it happened. God I loved the dog on the motorcycle. There's so much vibrance and character on display around the edges of the frame. Kids on bikes, shopkeepers with a Sherlock pipe, the gas station attendant that dresses Daniels in a Virginia is for Lovers t-shirt, New Yawkers gabbing in the restaurant, they all complete every frame as a painting. So I thought this was great. Lots of talent showing what they got, even for the story being potentially archetypal for what was to come there were still lots of interesting twists and moments augmented completely by the performances. Plus it's got Charles Napier playing "Irate Chef." So many movies would be improved by the inclusion of Irate Chef. ok, the day's gotten behind me. Gotta bust these next ones out before I fall asleep. Next!
11.08.24	Zodiac	David Fincher	No real justification for watching this again other than I wanted to see it and I guess it came out in 2007 like No Country. This makes the 7th viewing of this movie. I first saw it at a preview screening I think mostly for Aint it Cool folks that I learned was happening through a friend but was told I'd need a cover to explain my presence there lest this friend get in trouble or something. Some usual aint it cool bs nonsense. So thankfully Kier-la was going to watch it too and Lars let me in. Looking back, I find it pretty funny how a love of movies cultivates this fandom for every level of the industry. I'm not sure what had to happen to line up this early screening in the first place but I'm sure several emails or phone calls had to be made. I don't remember it being a normal press screening (I snuck into a few of those too back in the day) where the studio set it up and hit up their local press lists. I remember the only folks in the theater being Alamo and Aint it Cool people... although that was still when Harry had some clout so maybe he made it happen. But certainly that would not have been business-driven... almost certainly the screening happened because Harry wanted to see it before everyone else. And so did I. I was rabid to see it the first chance I could. But for the Alamo folks I got the sense that it was more like a break from work for them. They were already in the building, why not? I'm sure Kier-la thought it was funny in a puppy dog way or something how excited I was just to watch the movie. I remember her thoughts afterwards were that the music was too on the nose for the era and that it was just OK and that she could have a career as a music supervisor because she'd be able to come up with deeper, more evocative and interesting cuts. In any case, that was back in 2007. Since then a DVD came out with a typically-great making-of doc on it. I really miss those days too. Fincher discs were always so meticulously put together. Releases for movies I didn't even love like Panic Room and Benjamin Button came with hours and hours of produced-content. I suspect his more recent work for Netflix would also be great if anyone bothered to do that anymore outside of boutique manufacturers like Criterion and Arrow. I think I'd wind up liking The Killer a lot more if I saw the attention to detail that went into everything. Do I have anything new to say about the film itself? Probably not. I love it. I think it's still super interesting. It's full of odd details that only come from real life, like how the kid at the beginning is wearing a lot of layers because he's cold even in July. I love the enduring mystery of the finger print and the hand-writing despite these suspects and how the movie doesn't answer them. It points pretty directly at Arthur Leigh Allen but also what's up with the movie poster guy? What's up with Rick Marshall? Were there multiple people working together? Also, how hard would it be to beat handwriting analysis back then? If you deliberately changed the way your wrote your Ks... but also why bother if you could type it out? There's definitely an element of ego there, daring the cops and the public to catch him/them that is so interesting. And serial killers in general in California in the 70s and 80s were such a rich time (narratively speaking, I'm definitely glad they're not still running amuck these days. or maybe they are who knows with the state of news media). Ok that's enough notes I think. I fell asleep for the last half hour of this so I'm writing on Saturday and eager to start watching the next day's movies.
11.08.24	No Country for Old Men	Joel Coen	I believe I've only seen this once and not only was it in the theater but it was opening night at the Alamo Ritz. I sat in the (unfinished) balcony for it which was an experience unto itself and I remember loving the movie but also expecting to love it because I'd read the book but also the first experience in a new Alamo Drafthouse was a huge thing for me at that time. Since then it feels like I've seen this movie multiple times because I've seen clips so much and most recently I watched some youtube videos of Bill Hader talking about the film which put me in mood to see it. hey! I just checked my notes here and I've seen this not once but three times! I guess I went back to the Ritz to see it in a normal screening then watched it again when I got the DVD. Ha! No memory of that, but I guess that's why the whole dang thing was still familiar in my mind. There wasn't a scene I had forgotten. What this movie does a heck of a lot of is showing people figuring stuff out without dialogue. I am such a sucker for that. Scenes where people are crafting something or showing some kind of skill or especially if they're detecting, like the "fuck" scene in The Wire... To me that's as close to pure cinema as you can get. No words, just the images and editing tells you what's going on. That really engages my pleasure centers. And this movie does a ton of that. I don't think the story is ever moved forward via dialogue at all in this movie. Lewellyn and Anton are on their own silent missions, the mexicans are a wild card, and by the time Stephen Root brings Woody Harrelson in they've already decided what they want to do with Anton. But we have Tommy Lee Jones coming in after the fact, doing their own detecting and picking up the pieces but they're always behind both the other characters and us the audience. The one time he's not makes for such a gut-punch. It's a huge moment and SUCH a choice for the movie to throw away the main protagonist how it does. Oh it's so so good. This is basically a perfect movie. I can't remember anything about the book so i don't know what was changed or omitted, but this is the Coens at the top of their form. I remember it was such a comeback for them after Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers and since then they've delivered mature but more niche vibes or genres. This is them adating stellar source material that plays right into their strengths. Maybe their best movie? That would take some thought but it's up there. Up next is... an audible. I'm watching Zodiac again.
11.08.24	Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood	Quentin Tarantino	Well folks, it's that time of year again. DVRfest! Out of the blue!!! This is the 20th DVRfest, which means this site is 20 years old. I had loose plans to really do it up this year, take a full week off work, really jam a ton of movies in, but then two things happened. 1: I had to semi-emergency take two weeks off work to go to Arizona which ate up all my time off, and 2: I got the flu about two weeks ago so I spent several days sitting here in front of my computer with not enough energy to play video games so I watched a bunch of movies. Movies I had kinda-sorta earmarked for DVRfest. So... in the end, this very round number 20th anniversary festival has been hobbled to the normal length if not a little shorter since I didn't even take Veteran's Day off... with any luck, next year I can do it up. When this site turns 21... or 22 or 23... one of these years I will really do it up. This year would've been nice but what are you gonna do, ya know? I still have a few things lined up of course so it won't be as casual as a few years have been, but also since We've now hit 20 years I figured it was time to lift the already-super-light rules a bit... so I'm starting off the festival this year with a double feature of movies that I've seen before. Gasp! What's that you say? We all know the rule is I am only allowed to re-watch one movie per year! The Spirit of the fest is to catch up on movies that I've been meaning to watch, clear out the titular DVR (which has long been replaced with my hard drive and multiple text files filled with lists of movies available on random streaming sites), so what am I doing re-watching stuff? Well, it's my festival so I get to do what I want. Part of the purpose for this site was to document how my feelings about a movie evolve or change on repeat viewings so I do feel like it still somewhat applies. And I don't really re-watch movies that much anymore which I miss. In the heyday of my movie-watching hobby, I'd watch a movie in the theater, again when I bought the DVD, kinda-sorta again when I listened to the commentary, and maybe again again if I picked up the Blu-Ray. Nowadays, even movies I love I only see once, unless it's some random craving like Goodfellas or Zodiac. Damn... I could watch Zodiac again right now. Hmm... no, no, can't get side-tracked. No, we're starting with Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon A Time... in Hollywood. I've only seen this once in theaters with a group. I read and disliked the novelization, I've heard Quentin talk about it ad nauseum on random podcasts, and even his own podcast he dedicated two fake episodes to the death of Rick Dalton and watching his movies. I was keen to see it again because the first viewing has this massive weight of destiny with the story... I basically spent the whole movie waiting for the inevitable events of the end. So seeing it again, knowing the plot, I suspected any suspense or tension around expected real life events would be traded out for reveling in late-60s Hollywood and just hanging out with Rick and Cliff. I found that to be mostly true. Some sequences like Spahn Ranch and shooting Lancer deflate rather quickly when you know how they resolve, but all the driving shots and movie / show inserts and format changes are more fun this time around. Also the ending is a real hoot so it almost has an opposite effect of you're looking forward to the ending rather than dreading it. Stuff that's become memes like Rick Dalton pointing at the television with a beer in his hand is more fun the second time around, hearing their chatter while we all watch Dalton's episode of The FBI together. Plus Austin Butler and Sydney Sweeney were in Charlie's Kids! I didn't know who either person was in 2019. Great music but I feel like the real star of the soundtrack are the radio ads and commercials they lay in. Even the end credits has Batman and Robin Adam West and Burt Ward doing a promo spot for a local radio station. That kind of stuff puts you in the era just as much as the vintage decorations on Hollywood Boulevard and the Van Nuys Drive-In (I still can't remember if that's the drive-in we went to when I was a kid or not. I think most of my drive-in excursions were when I lived in Boulder but I do remember going a couple times in LA as well but have no clue which. Anyway, the scenery is arguably the most effective element of the movie. The short montage of neon lights turning on as evening turns to night is perfect. I was not alive in the late 60s but much of that stuff was still around in the early 80s. It wasn't on Hollywood Boulevard but I remember us driving by a Pussycat Theater all the time in the valley. I never went to Musso & Frank but my family did go to Lawry's Prime Rib so I remember seeing similar signage the one time I was allowed to go. So that stuff really did it for me. It's not quite showing Cupid's Hot Dogs like Licorice Pizza did, but they are sister films in many ways. I did still enjoy myself. It did have a bit of a hang-out vibe... not as potent as Dazed and Confused but still there. Mostly you can tell so evidently how much Quentin loves movies and television and show business in general. Ok next up, another movie that's crazy that I've only seen once.
11.03.24	Miami Vice	Michael Mann	This is a... I guess you'd call it a fan edit that cherry picks aspects of the director's cut while keeping the theatrical opening and swapping out the cover of Phil Collins' In the Air Tonight with the original, aka the "Miami Nice" cut. There may be more changes too but I didn't catch them. I'm aware that there are fans of this movie who passionately feel strongly about specific elements of this movie... I just thought it would be interesting to see, like, the "best" version of it. I still remember my disappointment when it came out at the look of the film. I wanted high gloss and saturation, classic filmic look like Heat. I got early-digital mud. So it took me quite a while to get past that... I think maybe also I still thought Mann had another Heat in him and this wasn't it. But now it's much later and I've read Heat 2 and I don't think it should be a movie and Miami Vice is the closest to another Heat that we got and I can appreciate that now. The look of the film is not what I wanted, but now I do 100% appreciate how "inside" the film we are with all these crazy camera rigs. When Sonny is dancing with Gong Li, we're, like, in the middle of them. We see Miami at night, lightning firing, rain on the water, zero light, inches from your face view of everything. As nice and classical as Heat looked, you never got that. You never got a shot with blood all over the lens running up right next to a dude spraying automatic fire across a yard at another car. Now, is it as good as the downtown shootout scene from Heat? We know the answer, but also what is?? This still works. It is a little sad to not see the boat race footage, but the jay-Z/Linkin park song is so undeniable and getting thrown right into this nightclub and grokking what's going on and seeing everyone sharing looks is undeniably better. Just like the photography, the story throws us right into the middle of everything and leaves it as an exercise for the viewer to figure it out. So I think I liked this the most I've ever liked it. I was thoroughly entertained and never thought it dipped. Also I don't think I hated the cover version of Phil Collins too too much but hearing the same director's cut scene with the original song made it thirty times better.
11.02.24	Oddity	Damien Mc Carthy	Never heard of this one before either and wound up loving it. This is an Irish horror movie about a Doctor's wife alone in an old house that they are renovating when a patient appears at the door telling her to let him in because he saw that someone's inside with her. Later, her blind psychic twin (i know, but wait) visits to suss out what really happened. She brings a man made of wood like a golem to help her. So it's a little bit ghost story, little bit witch story, little bit horror, little bit revenge. And that's all in basically one location with basically three or four actors. Very economical, very efficient, very effective! It ends well too which is great. They're very different movies but I was reminded of when The Descent started at one of the Butt Numb-A-Thons that I attended. No pomp or circumstance, the movie just started and entertained the crap out of us. This was the same way for me. It's the best possible outcome for an event like this. I don't know if I just missed this or it hasn't had a ton of publicity... oh I see, it played sxsw this year and won the midnighter audience award. Cool. Anyway, I liked this quite a bit. It lets the audience get ahead of it a tiny bit (basically my metric on that is if i "figure it out" or what have you, then it's pretty blatant because I'm usually a dud about that stuff while I'm watching the movie. I still have shame for spending, like, the entire movie not realizing that one of the kids in Goodnight Mommy was a ghost.) But ahead in a good way. SPOILER WARNING I love it when movies position the audience to root FOR the ghost. It's so much fun and there's nothing quite like getting revenge from beyond the grave. This one's a tiny bit different because the ghost is actually more forgiving than the blind witch twin sister but it's the same vibe. So delicious. And the ending of this is great, him getting the haunted service bell, knowing he can't not ring it. Just so great.
11.02.24	Shocker	Wes Craven	I haven't seen this since 1989 (or whenever it hit home video). I remember I rented it and watched it twice because I was an idiot kid. I didn't even love it the first time, I just remember being like "well I rented it, might as well give it another run." All I remember is the plot being all messed up because there has to be a whole mini-movie before he dies then a whole mini-movie after he dies so it was like two movies in one. I did not remember that it basically becomes The Hidden for a while. My memory was he went straight to electricity-town... but I think i'm thinking of that one Gremlin in Gremlins 2 instead. Getting ahead of myself. This movie is about a serial killer who is sentenced to death via electric chair, but as a last request he gets a TV in his room and with some black candles and jumper cables makes a deal with... the tv gods: killer: "Come on! Give it to me!" TV God Lips: "You got it, Baby!" So he doesn't die after he fries and instead keeps killing semi-indiscriminately via Hidden-possession for a while then he beams into a TV satellite and... I dunno, I guess he dies after the whole town's power goes out and the main kid turns off an exploding burning tv with a remote. Oh, and he blows on it like a smoking pistol. I would say this movie is a textbook examples of going off the rails but it at no point was ever on any rails for it to go off of. This is a rails-less movie through and through, a complete mess. I remembered it being goofy but... yeah. I think the only scene I liked was when Peter Berg calmly explains the rules to the possession-hopping evil spirit of the shocker guy to his college football coach as the assistant coach (Ted Raimi) dresses his gunshot wound. That's at the 1-hour mark. Everything else is kinda ridiculous. This is a cocaine movie right? I mean 89 is pretty late but it's still technically the 80s. I'm just kidding... i think this just goes to show that even a Wes Craven, who made the shocking and vile Last House on the left and clever iconic Nightmare on Elm Street and postmodern milestone Scream can both write and direct a steaming pile of shit. "It's like Elm Street but with TV!" I think the whole movie was made just to do the sequence where they're fighting amidst the content of the channels, which admittedly is a novel idea and they put them in Headbanger's Ball heavy metal type footage of nuclear test bomb footage and riots and whatnot. I think that idea was more cleverly explored with more humor a few years later with a John Ritter movie called Stay Tuned (I should re-watch this. it could suck now. I haven't seen it since it came out) and a few years after that with Pleasantville. It's a stand-out here though... you just have to slog through so much stupid shit to get there. A barca-lounger coming to life, John Tesh, Peter Berg oh man Peter Berg. I forgot he was the main kid in this. This was very much still actor-berg and I really can't stand him here. So much berg. It's hard to believe he's only 5 years away from Last Seduction here. Ok that's enough Shocker. It was a fun spectacle to marvel at. Probably didn't need to see it again but that's ok. Maybe I'll watch it again in another 35 years. The one I'm actually curious to give another watch is People Under the Stairs. I remember that one being really crazy.
11.02.24	The Appointment	Lindsey C. Vickers	It's pretty fun to just get a movie and a "watch this" and go in completely blind. Doesn't happen too often for me... I suppose you could do it any time you wanted by picking a random title on Netflix or something like that... the closest I used to get was picking something up from the video rental shelf but even then I had a box and a title to go from. Here thanks to Grant and his friends I get to do that four times today. The first, out of order by accident, was a chance to see a movie I'd liked the first time again after a decade. This one, supposed to be first, I knew absolutely nothing about. It's British, 80s, pretty low budget. It felt like a TV movie at first but I think that's more down to the 1.44:1 aspect ratio and quality of acting from the girl, but anyway the movie stars Edward Woodward (the police inspector from the OG Wicker Man) and... the premise of the movie is that he has an appointment and therefore has to miss his daughter's recital which she is very upset about. But... I guess she's also gifted and so MOST of the movie is the night before where both parents have strange dreams and dogs appear in the house and then the next day Woodward takes just the most relaxed long commute I've ever seen. Maybe I missed details about how far he had to go or why he was going wherever he was going, but dude pulled over to read the paper in a restaurant, pulled over to phone his wife, lost his watch and turned around to go get it. And we are subjected to all of it. I guess you call it atmosphere, and this is one of those movies where, at the end of it once it's over and the is-it-really-just-ninety minutes is over you can distill the movie down to a few scenes and think back fondly. For one, the beginning is quite nice with this official-sounding voice-over talking about some terrible crime and creepy ambiance as a girl walks through the woods before a dummy of her is pulled so violently and forcefully into the woods that her shoes come off. They really yanked that thing! It kind of reminds me of the end of the first Nightmare on Elm Street when Freddy yanks a dummy of Heather Langenkamp's mother through the window of a door. You know it's a dummy, but just seeing something move that fast is still enough to startle you. And similarly, at the end of the movie when the event you've spent all movie waiting for, trying to stay awake for, when it finally happens it is pretty intense! Probably makes up for the seventy minutes of droning and sleeping and pacing and checking of watches that precedes it. There's not a ton of movie here, which is not uncommon at all with most low budget or exploitation movies, so that feeling creeps in. If I was watching at an Alamo I'd be waiting for the wait staff to drop checks to let me know there's only forty-five minutes left. The actress who plays Woodward's wife is ok but the daughter is agonizing. Every line of dialogue is just painful, contributing more to a made-for-tv vibe. And I'm not joking, really this movie is a dinner, a couple dreams, and a car ride. But, it does end well and that's the most important thing. Between the first few minutes and the last, there's enough here to like. I don't think I would've chosen to see this but that makes it all the more fun to sit down and watch blind.
11.02.24	Sightseers	Ben Wheatley	Grant graciously invited me to his virtual all-night horror movie marathon tonight. He and his friends did it up with putting a handful of movies on google drive sans titles and providing a zoom/slack to watch together and discuss each movie. I thought it was a cool idea then immediately fucked it all up. I downloaded the movies then decided to start early because there was no way I was gonna stay up long enough to watch them in sync with everyone else, except I clicked the wrong file and recognized the movie as this, then realized this was supposed to be the fourth movie not first. So then I started the first film which I didn't recognize but I kept thinking about how I knew this one and would have to make it through three others before watching it, which would likely make me pretty tired which is how I saw this to begin with... so like I said. Fucked it all up. So now i'm writing this in a text file so I don't post it to my journal and spoil anyone else (not that I think anyone else reads this)... sigh. Anyway, now that I've seen a bunch of Ben Wheatley's other work and his career has kind of taken a turn, I always thought back to this as his best movie. Maybe this is just the one that most closely matches my sensibilities though since his more overt psychedelic stuff never really landed with me. It also didn't help that I saw most of his movies at Fantastic Fest where nothing put me to sleep faster than a slow-moving movie with psychedelic music. Hah, I remember trying so hard to stay awake during High Rise just to hear that Portishead cover of Abba's SOS. So it's good to see this again like a normal movie on a Saturday afternoon. I still liked it although it didn't blow me away. I think much of the charm of the movie is the surprise during the first watch of discovering what the film is. I didn't remember any of the details of the film really, didn't remember how it ended, so I was along for the ride for sure. I also picked up this time Tina's dog training skills come into play a couple times dealing with Chris. I liked it... but I dunno, you can see Wheatley's psychedelic stuff start in with the drum circle and once you get it then the movie kind of turns into a comedy version of Natural Born Killers in a way. Something's keeping me from singing its praises too loudly. It's probably down to it being my second viewing.
11.01.24	Strange Darling	JT Mollner	This is another one where the less said the better. I'll have a lengthy spoiler section below. I liked it pretty good. It certainly held my interest. I heard about it on a podcast talking to Giovanni Ribisi (who shot the film) so I thought it might've been some bs indie movie he produced just to get to DP something but then I heard from another person that it was actually good so... here I am. It is good. It does still remind me of other indie fare... no surprise here that it premiered at Fantastic Fest last year. I'm kinda reminded of a movie called Too Late which also touted its shot-on-35-ness, but that one was more of a neo-noir told in long takes vs. a thriller told non-linearly. It does come off as a reel for Ribisi's new title, but it also serves the movie because it's that kind of movie and allowed to be showy. SPOILERS BELOW The movie does a good job leading its audience through each twist and turn. The reveal that we don't start in chapter 1 was nice right off the bat. The only bit I found a tad too manipulative was calling the characters 'The Lady' and 'The Demon' in the beginning titles. I'm not sure how the dude is a... oh I get it now. Never mind, the movie earned that. Somewhere around the start of 'Epilogue' I felt a little fatigued but I guess they want you to feel like she's about to actually get away. Ed Begley Jr. and Barbara Hershey were welcome, their performances were all too brief. They sure loved butter! I was mostly with them until the jam came out. I also thought this movie was just wild enough to throw Sasquatch into the mix but alas. It also took stylistically and photographically from a bunch of horror movies which lent to its topsy turvy nature, like with a Texas Chainsaw intro you're expecting a dude hunting a chick and all the super-saturated Suspiria colors you expect a lady in distress (although also maybe other things). And I have to say, I freeze-framed the demon at the end and they did a decent job! Forked tongue and everything. Maybe it wouldn't have worked for more than 1 frame but I thought it was a decent-looking demon for what they had. I've seen a bunch of good movies in the last couple days. I feel like this flu right before DVRfest has drained the list a bit from what would've played great in the fest itself, but oh well! It's just me watching these anyway, and it's not like I don't have a hundred movies to watch during the festival weekend as well. It's just won't have the horror movies I watched now.
11.01.24	Longlegs	Osgoood Perkins	This is a serial killer movie that on the surface might look similar to Silence of the Lambs but thanks to a few elements winds up as a straight-up horror movie. I'd like there to be another Silence of the Lambs serial killer, procedural-ish, grounded in realism thriller of the same caliber but... still waiting for that one. In the meantime, after adjusting expectations about an hour in, I wound up really liking this one a lot. I hesitate to talk about spoiler things. Guess that'll be at the bottom, but spoiler-free things that I can say is that Nic Cage is in the movie, giving an amazing performance. The main girl (she was in It Follows) is kind of the weak link in the movie... she's a little too blank for me, but she doesn't ruin the movie or anything and I guess it creates a nice link to A24 horror which I think this fits nicely in. Not too long, good music, very atmospheric photography (if not sometimes a tad underlit but what kind of idiot complains about a horror movie being too dark), and I thought the story was pretty satisfying. I also like horror movies that take place in the 90s. What was that one from an earlier fantastic fest called? Not Very Bad Things... one sec... Super Dark Times. I liked this more than that but I like how both these movies evoked my high school days which I find to be suitable for horror. SPOILERS BELOW Ok, so just for my memory, Nic Cage plays a satan-worshipping weirdo under a ton of make-up but his performance is also legit spooky. Alicia Witt is also great here as the main girl's mom / accomplice. And the movie pulls a Fight Club by having a dark goat satan figure in a bunch of shots almost subliminally. I caught a couple during my watch (in the woods, outside the window of the library) but there's an imdb trivia note outlining 10 of them. I went back and found them and am really impressed by the subtle imagery. A few shots in particular really highlight the presence in her life. I think if I would've seen this in a theater I could've caught more but on my LCD monitor with my view angle some detail gets lost in my blacks. I also like that, since the satanism aspect is real in this film, these creepy dolls with the weird spheres in their heads can actually be a viable answer to the mystery. It doesn't feel tooo cheaty for me to have an evil doll make the families kill one another. Kinda even more creepy in fact since I find possession spooky. Blair Underwood at the end sells it great. The red eyes under the black sheet is great. the name "Mr. Downstairs" is great. So yeah, really liked this one a lot. Not too often you watch a new horror movie that's good so gotta celebrate that.
11.01.24	Beetlejuice Beetlejuice	Tim Burton	I watched the Beetlejuice sequel. It's ok. There's no touching the original but this isn't the end of the world. the actual bits with Michael Keaton were great, wish there was more. The original was Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis' movie with support from Winona Ryder and Keaton so Beetlejuice got to be wild in that movie because he was barely in it. With the sequel it falls to Winona Ryder and Jenna Ortega to do the heavy lifting which isn't as fun. So it comes off a little like busy work and the actual Beetlejuice stuff felt rushed to me, but whatever. Like I said, the world isn't over now that they made a sequel to Beetlejuice. The title alone kind of demands a third one now.
10.31.24	The Substance	Coralie Fargeat	Well it's Halloween and I'm quarantining with the flue. Pretty awesome. The one silver lining I guess is I can watch movies with my headphones on and not bother anyone with my coughing. So I thought it fitting I should watch a horror movie. I'd heard some pretty extreme stuff about this movie, like how audiences were walking out during the first fifteen minutes. It was surprising to me since it starred people like Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley. Really intense stuff typically doesn't attract Hollywood talent, so that got my interest. Had I checked the director that would've gone a long way to explain it. This is a body horror movie from the woman who made Revenge. Seen through that lens it makes total sense. She gives this genre the same treatment she gave the rape revenge genre in her previous film. It's not quite reality and style is much more important than substance but she revels in the genre and has fun stretching it to fit her fantastical worldview and what you end up with is, yes, pretty intense but also far too departed from any semblance of reality to land home in a nightmarish way. The audiences who left at the first sight of skin breaking open probably didn't fully realize that, although they should've with that shot of Dennis Quaid entering a restroom and using a urinal while talking on his phone. If that hallway and that restroom and that outfit don't tell you everything you need to know about the movie, then I guess maybe the body horror stuff is too intense. The premise is an aging star hears about this drug that creates a younger, more perfect version of you. She signs up, births Margaret Qualley out of her back, then the younger clone proceeds to gain popularity as older/Demi's replacement. There are simple rules which immediately get broken and by the end it turns rather phantasmagorical. So, two things impressed me most about the movie. Well, three. One: Demi Moore is really really naked in this movie quite a lot. And like close-up on her naked butt levels of naked. Gotta give her credit for sigining up for this movie... the tragedy of this movie and (I suppose) the whole point is that even though hollywood and society has thrown her away due to her age, you probably can't find an actress in better shape for her age than Demi Moore. I mean yes you can see that she's had some extensive work done but there's almost no fat on her body and she's like 60. It's remarkable. She and Brad Pitt must have similar luciferian contracts. Two: this is a side note but they really shoot the hell out of Margaret Qualley's figure as well. The source of her fame is basically that music video for Benny Benassi's Satisfaction. look it up (when you're not at work). I bet they spent two weeks just getting close-ups of her ass. I know this movie has a feminist message but there were times when I pondered if the amount of lingering close-ups framed on Qualley's swimsuit-clad crotch had escalated to Roger Vadim territory. It's a lot! Three: the package design for the titular Substance is fantastic. It's got a little nod to The Re-Animator in there but mostly I got a twisted sci-fi Hello Fresh. Everything in it's nice little servings, neatly adorned, clear instructions. It's a total post-pandemic take on a macguffin. I do have to nail home once again what a weird french movie this is. Like she can't even be bothered to make up fake names for shows. it's just from The Morning Show to New Years Eve. The idea that one taping of an exercise show is enough to propel anyone to stardom... these bizarre interiors... and everything about Dennis Quaid. I think they found a few palm trees in Cannes or something and shot Demi walking down a street a dozen times and that's what passes for California. The diner, the weird alley, everywhere else looks a thousand percent French. I'm not criticizing here, this is just my way of trying to say that I have to take this movie for what it is. You don't get the hardcore fire hose of blood at the end without all this other stuff. As someone who usually appreciates when movies have their plots follow some kind of logic (even when it's their own), I would've liked the movie a lot better if this same story was told by someone with a more realistic touch, but that's now how it works with writer/directors. I still liked it, certainly parts of it I thought were fantastic, but it was just much much too long and far out in wackadoo land for me. For the record: I do realize me complaining that a movie about clones is not realistic enough sounds pretty absurd, but there is a difference. anyways, Happy Halloween!
10.31.24	Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga	George Miller	I'm not sure why people didn't go see this as much as Fury Road, although I do think I understand why word of mouth seemed to be more "oh, it was good" than "oh my god you HAVE to see it!". It's paced and structured more like an epic with chapter titles and extended prologue and whatnot. I can't say it feels overlong but it is damn long, with many scenes (especially in the first hour) playing against odd score choices that reinforce that you are not watching just an action film. Fury Road was built as an action movie that never let up. this one expands the world, gives character back story, connects dots... typical prequel stuff. Not to say there isn't amazing set pieces, most notably the stowaway sequence right in the middle. That sequence fits right into Fury Road (actually I think it's literally on Fury Road). and the rest of it fits right into Mad Max as well, it's just a bit more Thunderdome vibes than Road Warrior. So I liked it quite a bit. The Mad Max world continues to be the best post-apocalyptic setting ever put on film. I think signing up for a 2.5 hour helping of that might feel like a lot but once I had started it I was completely along for the ride. All the characters and locations are amazing and full of little thoughtful touches. There is more blatant CGI here than Fury Road but I guess that's the reality of the times especially when you need very specific land formations. And even though the movie's pacing gets a little "novelistic" each chapter was still interesting and well-presented. Maybe a tad bit much of Hemsworth at the end but nothing to bring the whole movie down. Yeah, liked it a lot.
10.30.24	In the Loop	Armando Iannucci	This was mentioned on a podcast I listened to and I had kind of forgotten I'd seen it. I know I haven't seen the tv series In the Thick of It, and I know that at the time this movie was on IFC or HBO all the time and I constantly caught clips of it which were memorable due to the absolutely caustic dialogue, and I know that since then I've enjoyed shows like Veep and Succession and Death of Stalin. So watching it again felt familiar both because I knew I'd seen parts before and I'd just heard a podcast about it but thanks to this journal I'm now learning I actually did see this ten years ago. If anything this is a bit tame now Post-Succession and Death of Stalin and all that. You can see the blueprints here but over the years everything got cranked up faster and faster. This didn't hit as overwhelming as it did ten years ago. Still good though. It got me lol-ing when Tom Hollander calls Zach Woods "the boy from the Shining" which is saying something because I have the flu and laughing hurts.
10.29.24	Alien: Romulus	Fede Alvarez	complicated thoughts about this one. Good: It's a good Alien movie. Can't deny it. It's not the best, but it's probably third best? Unless you're a Prometheus lover which I am not. So for everything I talk about below, I thought it was an effective Alien movie. The world and visual design of this universe is so well-defined at this point that it seems like, similar to Star Wars or Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings, getting the the look and feel right is now a must. It's probably the easiest part though since there's a whole generation of sci-fi nerds who do what they do because of movies like Star Wars and Alien. So this movie hits all the lights and klaxons and UI screens and corridors and derelict labs just right. I'll say it's also got an interesting introduction where a group of young adults fly up to a decommissioned ship in search of cryo-pods so they can sleep the requisite number of years to get off the mining planet that they're stuck on. I liked what we saw of the mining colony and thought it was a good enough reason to explain why near-teens are in space with the xenomorphs. Bad: Nailing the look and feel is required but I think the hard part continues to be coming up with a story. You still feel this urge to hit all the key words in the script. Gotta have face-huggers, gotta have a chest-bursting, gotta have the synths, gotta have the pulse rifles... it's more checklist than story. And the movie REALLY lifts those bullet points straight from all the other movies in the franchise (and the game Alien: Isolation). At times I thought it was almost a clip show or remix of a movie or something, just plucking shit left and right and presenting it. And so who's that for? Because it's clearly the middle-aged guys like me who recognize it but I'd imagine we don't love that. Is it like the studio giving the movie its best possible shot at capturing new generations of viewers? like "you'll love this one! It's got all your favorite moments, but everyone's younger and hotter! Please subscribe, please!" The most confusing example of this is using uncanny valley CGI to recreate Ian Holm for a synth. Anyone who never saw the first movie just thinks it's some terrible cgi, and anyone who did see the original is wondering why you had to resurrect the poor guy in a digital afterlife rather than hire another actor to play the synth! The synth characters are always the most interesting anyway, why not give someone else a shot at it? Very questionable! So what even is a good Alien movie anymore? What would it even look like? I think it's this. When Ridley Scott tried some new stuff with Prometheus, it got mixed results. People want the bullet list. Even the black goo talk in this movie I somehow found the least believable and while the climactic events of the movie had some interesting facial reference, it was also a 80% lift of Alien: Resurrection so... nothing new. So I don't know. I will say as far as these confounding reboot/remake/sequels go I actually enjoying watching this (vs. others like Halloween). But - familiar territory from me, here - I would absolutely question whether I'd have a better time re-watching the first two movies. Those movies didn't go anywhere, they're still right there on the shelf.
10.29.24	Fletch Lives	Michael Ritchie	In the book series, Confess, Fletch! Is book number two. This follows one of the differences between the first book and its adaptation so I kinda get what 80s hollywood was thinking in wanting a more straight-forward sequel, even though all it took was a single phone call to get Fletch away from the paper and in Louisiana so I'm not sure how hard it would've been to pick another book. I bet the whole disguises thing had something to do with it. Fletch using fake names while talking to people in conducting his investigation was a big hit in the first film - even used in trailers and the poster - so this one really doubles down with fake hair and teeth and accents. I think at least as far as the four books that I've currently read, all three sequels were too foundationally different to make a good sequel movie. I guess part of the charm of a sequel is checking back in with characters you loved the first time, but that can have a SNL quality where the same people are doing the same gags over and over again which... I guess is safe movie-making? So making a Fletch movie without the disguises wouldn't fly? So we wind up with this mystery involving an inherited antebellum plantation that aa mystery client is offering way too high a price for. It made for a great poster spoofing Gone with the Wind but also meant taking a big swing with moving Fletch to Louisiana. The racial humor starts off borderline questionable but ends up surprisingly straight-forward on this viewing. It was so refreshing back in 1989 when you could make fun of the klan and not worry about offending them, because it was clear their values were not worth their consideration. Same goes for nazi bikers. And even though Cleavon Little plays almost a sterotype, no one shows overt racism toward him. Now this could be because it's a fucking comedy and not Mississippi Burning, but it's still a nice reminder of how even a comedy could rely on audiences getting that context. That said, it's still not as good as the first film. However, I remember seeing this when it came out - I believe I watched it in a drive-in - and I thought it was terrible. The only thing I remembered about it was a dilapidated old house and something about mud. So watching it again I didn't think it was THAT bad. Maybe my memories had elevated the first and lowered the second but I found them to be more like a 7.5 and a 6.5. No question not as good as the first, but not terrible either. Some of the disguises were kinda funny and R. Lee Ermy playing a Gemstones-esque TV Preacher funding a theme park called "Bible Land" was great. There's not even an inkling of gunnery sergeant in there which I think wound up being rare for his career. He pulled off the televangelist with aplomb and probably the funniest scene was Chevy staring at Ermy's shaking hand waiting to get the healing "demons-begone!" touch. Pleasantly surprised.
10.29.24	Fletch	Michael Ritchie	I've been reading the Fletch books which put me in mind to re-watch this and the sequel. I'd forgotten most of the plot of this movie which served me well reading the book but I was curious how they managed to end it considering the end of the book factors heavily in the drugs on the beach storyline (which in the book is totally separate from the Alan Stanwyck story). It's a pretty clever ending in the book that I think gets pretty clunky in the movie as a result of their adaptation choices but I have to say that, for the most part, I think this is a great adaptation. Many side characters are cut for clarity, the character of Fletch himself is softened, particularly his pulpy "male nymphomania" and how he's sleeping with a 15-year-old junkie on the beach. It's not too much of a leap to make Stanwyck more simplified antagonistic by connecting him to the drugs story, and they cut the locations down to just California and Utah. The strength of the character still comes through and is perfectly suited to Chevy Chase's talents to so strongly define the character that even though I hadn't seen this movie for at least 20 years (probably more like 30), I still pictured him in my head as I read the books. I'd also forgotten about the main theme, which I think is almost as iconic as the Beverly Hills Cop theme in the pantheon of 80s synth score melodies. The original songs made for the film are just as terrible as the theme is good though, coloring all over this film in permanent neon mid-80s marker and dating it forever. It's a bit of a shame this this film didn't win an invisible lottery to wind up avoiding some of the more dated elements of filmmaking at the time like still frames of Chevy over the end credits and these garbage songs blasting at full volume during an otherwise competent car chase. So it's not exactly timeless but it's still a good example of Chevy at the top of his game, a good pulp mystery book adapted well into a funny romp through LA. It's a fun time.
10.28.24	Will & Harper	Josh Greenbaum	This is a road movie doc about Will Ferrell and his SNL writer friend, recently-transitioned Harper Steele. I think the intent of this film is clear but I was worried that it would come off as virtue signalling, like whoa look at what a nice guy Will Ferrell is to support his friend. I didn't find that. For the most part I found it genuine and heartfelt and affecting. I will say though, several times in the film they talk about how they feel like they're the center of attention. There's even a disguise at one point to avoid the celebrity aspect, but unless this movie was shot on a phone then maybe the people in the restaurant are curious about the people with a camera crew following them around? That might be a little conspicuous? So... I don't know if acknowledging the filmmakers would've made the movie better but I do kinda wish there was a line or something saying "...and we decided to make a movie out of it." Everything else was very insightful and educational in my opinion. It seems like one little side note of the film, especially with some folks in Oklahoma and Iowa, is that political rhetoric aside this country's still full of compassionate kind people just trying to get by (Not Texas though, as usual we come off as the worst). So maybe there's a little unifying spirit to the film which I agree with but also don't see anyone not ok with trans people ever watching this. Instances that quickly come to mind where entertainment has had a sway on broad opinion are usually more of a sneak-it-in approach, like Sydney Poitier in otherwise white-only casts or Pedro Zamorra on season three of The Real World. A whole generation of MTV-watchers got a compassionate view of gay life and saw right to the end what AIDS can do. Not to say projects like this aren't worth doing, I just have a pessimistic view of my country's division at the moment. Anyway, this is good.
10.28.24	Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Fall Off	Sam Jones	One day not too long ago, youtube decided I should start watching Tony Hawk videos. It's an odd thing when something like that pops up on your homepage and I mostly resent what a vicious cycle it is where youtube's like "you should watch this, you should watch this" and when I finally break down and click on the video it's immediately like "you watched this! you must love it! HERE YOU GO!" So consequently I've been watching Tony Hawk videos recently. He has a podcast with an Australian skater and he somewhat recently broke his femur and he has a full skate park in his back yard and skateboarding in general is what I'd call "well documented," probably because getting tricks on film is so important. With that in mind, I saw that Sam Jones made a doc about him so I figured it was worth a watch. This was pretty good. It managed to distill everything i'd learned in ~a month's worth of podcast episodes into a couple hours while showing all the pertinent footage. I only have a few nitpicks. One is that the movie shows Tony visit his mother who was suffering from Alzheimer's. Maybe Tony was cool with that because she passed in 2019 so she got to be a part of his doc but to me it was too personal. My other complaint is the score. The soundtrack is pretty great but the space between needle drops is filled with the most basic documentary emotional manipulation nonsense. There must be a stock library somewhere of "sad guitar", "contemplative strings", "heavy weight pads", etc. Otherwise, it was interesting to see a Sam Jones piece in color, and having seen a bunch of these now (thanks to youtube I watched bits of Animal Chin, the animal chin reunion, a 20-year dogtown + z-boys mini-doc, and did I mention the podcast?), I'm pretty impressed with Stacy Peralta. I mean, I'm a fan of Tony Hawk as well, but Peralta's story and career is also pretty great, and the dude's interview footage is on point. Almost to where it sounds too rehearsed. No umms or ahhs whatsoever. For the z-boys retrospective they interviewed him standing against a wall of his garage and it was the same thing. Well-formed complete thoughts conveyed with passion. Is it his time behind the camera? Is that just how he thinks? Dude has some serious media training. Anyway, this was good.
10.28.24	¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!	Arthur Bradford	So, I'm a fan of South Park. I'm also susceptible to a terrible bit of fantasizing where I think about whether or not people would be cool to hang out with. This is folly for several reasons but whatever... I think Matt and Trey would both be fucking cool to hang out with. They put out an hour-long special on comedy central years and years ago called Seven Days to Air showing how an episode of South Park gets made (crazy that they can do it in a week), and now we get another glimpse behind the scenes, this time around them buying Denver restaurant Casa Bonita. It follows a somewhat familiar story arc where the building is in shambles and they have to spend a ton of money to get it back open, but the real joy of the movie for me is getting to hang out with Trey and Matt, which is pretty cool.
10.28.24	Deadpool & Wolverine	Shawn Levy	I'm just about done with Marvel and Star Wars. I'll watch the last season of Andor and this was the last shot for Marvel unless the next Spider-Man looks good. This could've been great, should've been great, and if you go by box office it was great. I thought it was just ok. For all the CGI and cameos and easter eggs and in-jokes, this movie had the story of a scooby-Doo episode. Just mentioning that you are inspired by 48 Hours and Planes, Trains, & Automobiles and Midnight Run doesn't automatically make your movie as good as any of those. That's what this movie should have been, sure, but it wasn't. I did like some of the easter eggs and cameos and in-jokes. They were all spoiled by me not seeing it opening weekend but ever since No Way Home you could basically guess at the pool of characters they could bring back depending on scheduling and making their deal. It was fine.
10.26.24	Rebel Ridge	Jeremy Saulnier	I picked this next one. I'm on record here for how much I liked Saulnier's earlier movies Blue Ruin and Green Room. Hold the Dark didn't quite come together (at least not in a festival atmosphere) and his True Detective work sounds like there's drama behind it, but I think he's kind of returning to form with this thriller about a guy who gets hassled by small-town cops. In many ways you could call this First Blood (the first Rambo movie) in 2024 Louisiana. It's not exactly beat for beat but... feels pretty similar! The guy (I'll just call him Rambo because "Black Rambo" doesn't sound right) is some decorated marine with expert hand-to-hand skills, the cops find out who they're messing with and try to clean up their mistake, he camps in the woods and catches fish with his hands. You know, Rambo stuff. The main difference is he doesn't kill anyone. He's a little like... Black Rambo Batman. As someone of my generation who grew up with First Blood: Part Two where dudes take exploding-tipped arrows and literally fly apart into bits of rubber and fake blood, I did find myself wanting a little more come-uppance for the egregious dirty cops who plague Batmbo for literally the whole movie. I'll take what I can get though, which is a super tense paranoid nightmare that you can't guess where it's going to go (mostly). Also, you got Don Johnson as the corrupt police chief and Roy from the Office as one of the dirty cops and Steve Zissis filling in for Macon Blair I guess. The whole movie falls on Aaron Pierre's jacked shoulders though since I think you're with him for almost every shot. He's good though, I totally buy him as Black Rambatmanbo. He exudes 'don't fuck with me' energy which makes you wonder when in the movie he's going to go Tom all Billy Jack on people's ass. He's kinda like a black rambo batman Billy Jack.... Batmambo Jack Similar references aside, I liked this quite a bit. Maybe not as much as Blue Ruin and Green Room but definitely more than Hold the Dark.
10.26.24	The Stone Tape	Peter Sasdy	Well I caught a cold. Since the pandemic I think I've been sick 3 times. I very much enjoy not being sick, so this sucks. At least the test says it's not covid or the flu but I've got a hell of a cough. So I played Factorio all day until my head got to killing me so I switched over to movies. This is an early TVs British TV movie most notable for the script by Nigel Kneale of Quatermass and the Pit fame. If I'm being honest, I didn't choose this film but a twitch streamer that I enjoy watched it on his stream with frequent pausing to pontificate on random stuff. He's an Anglophile so it was a bit like watching the movie with an amateur commentary track on, but that's fine because the TV-movie nature of this film didn't exactly demand my full attention. The deal with this one is that a tech company full of early computer nerds conducts research in an old mansion and sees a ghost. Like typical nerds, they decided to do research on it and conduct experiments and whatnot, not letting the supernatural element stand in the way of their hubris, I mean confidence in the scientific method. So It's kinda like a precursor to Carpenter's Prince of Darkness or that scene from Poltergeist where the scientists capture an apparition with their gear. It was a fun enough way to spend a couple hours, but I do think it really felt like a TV movie rather than a theatrical film. Quite a lot of talking, really, but there were a few scenes with some charming optical effects that lent it some spookiness as well as a bit of experimentalism with the sound design. Lots of machinery sounds and repeated screams... over and over and over. Mostly talking though. It didn't quite have a filmed play vibe due to the location stuff in the old mansion but I'm not surprised it was remade as an audio-play in the 2010s. Not bad!
09.02.24	The Fall Guy	David Leitch	I knew this was going to be not good but I was hoping for not good in a comforting way, like a slick action movie to carry me along for a couple hours. I think I got that. If you accept the fact that it's not reality that they're living in then it's fine. I think most of the dialogue is actually very smart and inside baseball but Gosling has to deliver them like normal snarky action movie lines for the majority of theoretical audiences who don't know anything about the movie industry. All the product placement stuff and the blatant Chekhov's guns and weaponizing the stunts at the end all point to the film's creative team having fun with itself. I think the unfortunate outcome for the audience though is nothing feels remotely authentic. It's all tongue in cheek. Gosling and Emily Blunt only feel like they actually talk to each other once during the whole movie. The rest of the time they're dialogue with one another is more like verbal choreography. But you know, Bullet Train wasn't real. Deadpool wasn't real. Even John Wick wasn't real, so maybe this movie doesn't need to be either? It's hard to say because when I was a kid I loved the F/X movies with Brian Brown and Brian Dennehy and those are basically 80s versions of this movie. So maybe if I was born in 2008 I'd love this? Probably if I was born in 2008 I'd never watch this because I'd be more into Mr. Beast and skibidi toilet or whatever, which is maybe this film's problem. Anyone old enough to get name recognition from the OG TV Show (much less Burt Reynolds' Hooper which influenced Fall Guy) might want less drug-induced-unicorns. In the end, I thought this was fine. It's missing the rock from Stunt Rock, missing the paranoia from The Stunt Man (although Gosling is a major improvement over Steve Railsback for me but Blunt can't hold a candle to Peter O'Toole), missing the 70s from Hooper, but fits in nicely with the F/X series and has better dialogue than Death Proof (gasp!). I honestly didn't think it was terrible. Not great, but not terrible.
07.29.24	Bottoms	Emma Seligman	After The Boys in the Ding-Dang Boat I had to pick a 90-minute movie to finish before we landed so I gave this a shot. It's a Gen Z Lesbian Highschool comedy. I still haven't seen Bodies Bodies Bodies but I imagine that to be a Gen Z slasher and I liked Rachel Sennott in whatever youtube video I saw her in where she and Ayo Edibiri are single. What I liked maybe most about this movie is how unhinged the world is. It's like a high school comedy set on a wobbly warped record where the very foundation of reality is constantly distorting. Yes that undercuts any moments where they attempt to have real emotion, but allows for whatever batshit crazy thing they want to do with the comedy. This is probably a weak metaphor but if Heathers is a prototypical Gen X comedy and Hot Rod is a prototypical millenial comedy, this might be a prototypical Gen Z comedy? Maybe? What do I know, I'm old as shit. I didn't love this movie (I'm in no way saying it's as funny as Hot Rod or as acerbic as Heathers) but I did enjoy its sensibility.
07.29.24	The Boys in the Boat	George Clooney	Airplane movie on the trip back. After Repo Man and North by Northwest I had a large selection of movies that I was mildly interested in, but some of them I didn't really want to watch on a plane. Plus depending on the film's aspect ratio they pan&scanned to fit their 1.85 screen so I started a couple movies then immediately bailed when I saw a message saying the film had been modified from its original. Side note: I give Delta points for offering these movies to begin with for everyone on the flight. I don't fly much anymore but the last times I've flown other domestic airlines (looking at you, United and American) you're on your own. But do you have to play an ad for Delta before the movie starts? I'm sitting in your airplane. You got me. You already have my money. You don't need to show me a commercial for the one product you absolutely know i've already chosen. You'll notice that I'm not complaining about the ad before the safety video where you say that Delta is the official airline sponsor of the Olympics. I understand that. I even kind of understand the bizarre and unsettling safety video where people are acting out the instructions in a pseudo resort facsimile of an aircraft where everyone has cold smiles and dead eyes. I'm not complaining about that either. But an ad before the movie, while it's better than ads during the movie, is worth a minor nitpick i think. Anyway, after trying several movies and bailing on them, I figured since I was just in Seattle and have taken an interest in rowing in the past couple years I should watch this movie. Once upon a time seeing "directed by George Clooney" piqued my interest. It's been a while since the days of Good Night and Good Luck but hey, worth a shot. Unfortunately, this is the worst version of this movie: completely mediocre. It does exactly what you think it's gonna do, goes where you think it's gonna go, and accomplishes nothing more than it has to. You've basically seen better versions of this movie if you've seen Seabiscuit or Cinderella Man or Miracle (and I never watched Miracle but I'm still confident that's better than this). Even if you know nothing of the true story that's depicted here, you can infer that they wouldn't make a movie about a losing Olympic team so you know they're gonna win. In lieu of any dramatic tension I was hoping for some beauty shots of rowing itself and some good meat about the sport and why it's so goddamn hard and why this team was as incredible as it way. I don't feel that I got any of that. I never understood that it was difficult to begin with, why the team didn't cohere at the start, what happened to make them cohere, and how much they excelled in order to win the matches they won. That's the real let down for me. According to the imdb trivia they trained the actors hard enough to get their stroke rate up to 46 strokes per minute (which is what the team did during their Olympics final). That's fast as shit. The only sense you get of that watching the movie is a few taps on the side of the boat and a callback to a song the team sang earlier. Milquetoast.
07.27.24	Speed	Jan de Bont	Pop Quiz, Hot Shot! For longtime readers (read: me) this entry will be a throwback. For one, I saw this in a theater, and there's experiential stuff surrounding the screening that's also worth noting, so buckle up for a journal-style entry. This year for my birthday we took a trip to the pacific northwest. Part of this was because it's always nice to escape the Texas heat this time of year, but this time was compounded by my work wanting me to drive to San Antonio the friday before and Molly's parents offering to meet us out there because they were keen to see the area as well. So everything melded together into a road trip where we flew to Seattle, met up with Molly's parents, drove down the Washington coast, cut across northern Oregon to Mount Hood, then back up past Mount Rainier. For my own interests along the way, we stopped in Astoria to see the jail where the Fratelli's escaped in The Goonies (it's now a film museum with the Jeep used in the film parked outside), Down the coast was Haystack rock (the rock that fits into the coin in The Goonies and also I think where the ship takes its last sail at the end of the film... I'm not sure it's been quite a while since I've seen it). Near Mount Hood we stayed a night at the Timberline Lodge AKA the exteriors for the Overlook in Kubrick's The Shining. Then back up in Washington we drove by the RR Diner (now Twede's) in North Bend as seen in Twin peaks and stayed a night at the Salish resort AKA the exterior for The Great Northern from the show (the one near the falls seen in the show's intro). Oh, and we also stopped at the spot in the road where the "Welcome to Twin Peaks" sign was and saw the rail bridge that Ronette Pulaski walks across in the pilot episode too. All of this was great (and expensive, thanks to Molly's parents!). In the middle of that, I spent an afternoon in Portland visiting my friend Grant with whom I share a birthday. It actually worked out great; he rented a cool single-screen theater for a private screening with his friends and invited me to join. It's been since the pandemic that i've hung out with movie geeks in person so that was quite fun. The theater is called Cinemagic and looked to be an independant theater programming cool rep screenings. Grant's original plan was to run his 35MM print of Fight Club but due to logistical reasons he had to choose between two films the theater already had built up: Total Recall or Speed. He chose Speed. I'd have willingly watched anything since Grant's tastes in movies generally aligns with my own, but Speed was a fine choice. I must have seen this since it's original theatrical run - I own it on DVD - but can't remember when I last watched it so it's been at least twenty years. What struck me about the film was how much action movies have changed since the 90s. Some of the things in Speed are laughable by today's standards but other things are remarkable. For instance, the one-liners and pat patter between Reeves and Jeff Daniels is borderline insufferable to my modern ear, but it also plays directly into that post-80s machismo. It's a little early Tarantino, a little Simpson/Bruckheimer, a little Joel Silver. But so telegraphed in terms of foreshadowing and Chekov's guns that movies of today would probably not be so bombastic about. Like Dennis Hopper's villain is arguably more nuanced than his Waterworld character... arguably. Also, the beginning credit sequence was wild. It was like 8 minutes of staring at an elevator going down. It felt to me like an overture to a David Lean epic where we listen to all the themes in the score before the curtain raises. You'd just never see that today. On the other hand, all the action came from a pre-cgi era of practical effects that seems exorbitantly expensive to today's eyes. Like extras scaling buildings or helicopters flying through highways or explosions in public areas, shutting down Hollywood Boulevard to make a sparking subway car slide to a stop right in front of the Chinese Theater. The distinct lack of CGI dust to cover up the seams on clearly digital shots is jarring to me even though I remember this movie not especially standing out as groundbreaking or innovative in its day. This was the state of the industry back then. Not to say this was a B-movie or anything. I remember being psyched to see it on opening weekend, wondering how they could stop the bus without it exploding like the premise of the movie was a kind of puzzle or riddle to be solved. Vivid memories of being in the mall theater with the center aisle, chomping oil-soaked popcorn while pre-digital speakers blasted the theme. Peak teenager shit. So it was an A-movie and it made a ton of money as I remember, certainly redefined Keanu as an action star (after Point Break set him up... can't forget Point Break. I should watch Point Break.) and this movie broke Sandra Bullock out into stardom (although she was memorable in Demolition Man... can't forget Demolition Man. I should watch Demolition Man). It just wasn't a phenomenon like Terminator 2 or Independence Day. I found that I liked it all these years later. The ridiculous bits worked on me as humor, the funny bits really worked on me - Alan Ruck as the tourist especially - and the action was engaging enough. Jan de Bont's dizzying "action guy" camera circling everyone and constantly moving also proved somewhat prescient, giving hints of visual ADD that folks like Tony Scott and Paul Greengrass would go overboard with 10 years later. I also thought the archetypes presented by all the character actors on the bus were great. Loved when Keanu called the one guy "Gigantor", knew that Beth Grant, whose made a career of being nervous and cagey, would be nervous and cagey. They did a good job of filling in blanks with solid character actors. It's almost like a comfort when we see everyone on the bus and can instantly identify all of them. Would it have been better if Keanu hadn't said "He lost his head" when Sandy Bullock asked her what happened to Dennis Hopper? Absolutely, but it is what it is, which is Speed. Afterward everyone went to the bar next door (also owned by the guy who owns the theater) and Grant had gifts and cupcakes while everyone discussed the film, other movies, movies in general, etc. At first it was funny hearing people discuss Speed as they would any other rep screening like 2001 or Lawrence of Arabia, but I get it. I met a few of Grant's other friends which was great. They have a film club that I'd known about previously because Grant shared some trailer reels they'd put together during the pandemic when everything had to be digital. It seems like if I was local that'd 100% be a thing that I'd attend, or want to attend while I sat at home playing video games. In any case, it felt good to be a small fish in this particular pond again, with many of Grant's friends knowing more about the industry (both production and exhibition) than me and still up on trends and seeing all the latest releases. Joe told me that Wolverine vs. Deadpool was devoid of identity which is a real shame. On paper that film should be a home run but with Shawn Levy directing... I guess these thoughts will have to wait till I watch it myself and it gets its own journal entry. We also talked briefly about a "Miami Nice" cut which combines favored elements of both the theatrical and director's cuts of Michael Mann's Miami Vice into one bootleg edition which also replaces the nu-metal Phil Collins cover with the original. We were talking about how crazy and cool it was that the cut exists and apparently Mann's camp knows about it and they mentioned the titular podcast has also adopted it as their preferred cut (i haven't heard any Miami Nice podcast so I didn't know what they were talking about but i guess it's a podcast and it has that name and they like this cut even though they didn't make it). I write all of this out because it brought to mind the Star Wars 4k77 cut (and the Despecialized editions that preceeded it) and the general possibility for fans to re-edit and re-mix movies now to a quality comparable to the original and there also exists means to distribute it better than bootleg VHS dupes. Since the industry itself is kind of imploding nobody's really minding the register either so it's creating an exciting foundation for fans and cineastes to really go wild if they want. I find that pretty cool. After a while I had to go so we could continue our trip, but this was a great little blip of movie geekdom to have that I enjoyed quite a bit.
07.25.24	North by Northwest	Alfred Hitchcock	After Repo Man I chose this to watch to finish out my flight. It was somewhat compromised by low volume and no subtitles so some of the dialogue was lost on me but I'm familiar enough with the film that I didn't mind almost not hearing it. Truth be told I'm surprised to see that this title is already on the site. Looks like I watched it back in 2008 when I bought a DVD box set or something. I didn't go into too much detail though so I'll talk more about it this time. These days when I tell people that I'm into movies it often causes a moment of self-reflection. While I suppose it's true that I am still "into movies," my level of consumption is nowhere near what it was earlier in my life. This journal existed to see the height of my hobby (which would be 2006, 2007) and since then it's been a steady decline to now when I sometimes go months without watching anything. So you can go on Letterboxd and see a ton of accounts that watch way more movies than I do... people that still regularly go to the theater to see whatever's new, actively look at the Paramount's summer series calendar or Alamo's Weird Wednesdays or Terror Thursdays/Tuesdays/whenever it is (if those series even continue). Old friends like Jarrette and Chris and Daniel and even Grant put my current habits to shame. Yet, I do still have a wall full of DVDs and Blu-rays in my home office and I do still keep this journal going (which predates letterboxd) and my memory is still full of great films which I love. My current retirement fantasy is to devote days of time to watching all kinds of movies... revisiting old favorites, exploring directors' ouevres, going down internet-fueled rabbit holes. My free time is just going towards other things at the moment. All that to say, I had a major Hitchcock phase in late high school / college. A friend of mine (Jim) wanted to be a filmmaker and would graft on things he loved and talk about them to everyone. I think, looking back, that his greatest gift was conveying enthusiasm for that which he loved. He turned many a friend on Jimi Hendrix via mixtapes from his extensive bootleg collection and I think he got his hands on Hitchcock/Truffaut before me and started talking about each Hitch movie that he saw. Thanks to my mom who had a habit of taping movies off cable (we had a massive collection of VHS tapes, each holding three movies, with numbered spines referenced in a stacked rolodex), I'd seen Psycho already and maybe The Birds because that was my mom's favorite. With an enthusiastic friend however, I started examining each week's TV Guide, looking at the movie listings in the back for anything directed by ol' Hitch. That book coupled with a programmable VCR meant I caught a shitload of his catalog thanks to TCM. So I think that's how I first saw this movie and both Jim and I loved it. I remember feeling that it was top-form Hitchcock with grand movements and action told with peak efficiency and aplomb. So that's kind of how it's stuck in my memory. If people come up to me today and ask me which Hitchcock movies they should watch North by Northwest is invariably in the top five (Rear Window being number one, Shadow of a Doubt, Psycho, and Notorious rounding out the other 4). However i realize it's been quite a while since I've actually watched these movies, so seeing it on the plane's list made for an easy pick. I'm pretty surprised, I was not head over heels this time! Now, it's easy to list qualifiers. It was on a tiny back-of-seat screen with volume so low I could barely hear the dialogue, physical discomfort from sitting with my legs tied in a pretzel, etc. etc. but also the movie has some pretty weak moments. Like if James Mason is convinced Cary Grant is the guy he wants, why's he trying to kill him? or if he only wanted to kill him isn't there an easier way to do it than get him drunk and put him in a car? And how does James Mason have a whole gang of thugs if he's a covert spy? Not to mention Eva Marie Saint, who Cary Grant has no problem wanting to fuck at first glance but then gets to slut shame her for being willing to fuck him out of the blue for some ulterior motive. And the action itself is fairly ridiculous. The sets for the top of Mount Rushmore even though you can clearly see no trees on the top of that mountain much less a plateau of flat wooded ground followed by random shots of them rolling around on a set and cutting instantly to the end of the movie. It's all stuff I think I read about being genius in Hitchcock/Truffaut and took for granted as being great when I first saw it that falls apart with a modern look. And ultimately, I think what that's what I'm feeling: an even greater disconnect in time. I first watched this movie when it was ~40 years old and I watched it in the context of a bunch of other movies from the 40s, 50s, and 60s. And compared to those, Hitch's style DOES stand out. His views on montage and suspense have proven correct. However, now the movie is ~65 years old. It's harder to put myself back in a space where, forget CG, this movie was made before there was even an "action" genre! Decades before Stallone and Schwarzenegger, years before Bonnie and Clyde and The French Connection, a sequence like the crop duster was INTENSE! Sure, nowadays we have stuff like the extraction scenes from Extraction 1 and 2 but back then this was novel. Similar things can be said about women's lib and cold war politics and gun violence. So... I dunno. I shouldn't be surprised that a movie like this continues to age, but it was a little shocking to see the pedestal under Hitchcock crumble a bit in my eyes. That score though. And that silence leading up to the crop duster scene. And the speed with which Hitch gets a random dude into trouble. I think it's one of Pixar's rules of storytelling now but never more evident than in Hitchcock films: Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating. This describes at least half of Hitch's films, and North by Northwest is maybe tied with The Man Who Knew Too Much and The Wrong Man as most exemplary. Anyway, I should note that I still liked the movie. At this point it feels like a nostalgia trip for me, but I think and would hope that it still holds first-time viewers' attentions. I was just surprised to find it short of perfection like I used to see it.
07.25.24	Repo Man	Alex Cox	We took a trip to the Pacific Northwest. It was great, but I had planned on listening to music and/or reading because the airlines we usually take are dogshit (looking at you American and United). However, this time we booked through Delta and the plane had a decent selection of movies and tv shows in the back of every seat. I figured I'd be remiss if I passed on this opportunity to watch some movies. I was most surprised to see Repo Man on the list. Whoever's in charge of in-flight entertainment gets a solid head-nod from me for putting a movie like Repo Man in the mix. I somewhat recently watched a youtube video showing what the shooting locations looked like today so... why not watch Repo Man!? I can remember the first time I saw this movie. I was somewhere around 10 and had a friend named Danan. My mom liked movies and so I liked them and I remember I'd already seen plenty of stuff. My first theatrical memory is waiting in the lobby for a screening of Temple of Doom hearing the Indy theme blasting over the end credits of the previous screening while we waited. I definitely remember seeing the trailer for Ghostbusters in the theater but I'm not sure if I saw the actual movie as well or if that came via video. But I was certainly watching stuff like Predator and Nightmare on Elm Street by this time. But I remember my friend Danan's mom recommending a rental for a movie night and laying on the floor while the 4 of us watched Repo Man and I did not get it at all. I remember feeling the sense that my mom also didn't get it because Danan's mom was kinda defensive afterward, saying she loved it and thought it was hilarious. As far as I recall, Danan and I just shrugged and went back to comic books or whatever. I'm a little bit older now, more mature, seen it a few more times, and I can now claim that I legit like the movie. Something about that mix of movies I saw back then and places I lived and friends I had all mixed together to make up my current taste in movies and this is now right up my alley. Off kilter, original, filled with spirit, this movie feels in some ways like hanging out with these guys as they ad lib shit driving around downtown LA stealing shots. There's clearly a script, but I think part of what gives the movie its charm is that the story itself is often obfuscated or told indirectly either by budgetary limitations or perhaps filmmaker naivete. Like you see the government agents and the lady with the metal hand and it feels like there's a movie there centered around that stuff but the problem is that we're following Otto instead and Otto's a punk who doesn't give a shit so the alien story is shoved to the periphery. Like there's a scene where they try to appeal to Otto but the scene already happened when we cut to it. All we get to watch is Otto's punk / bandit friends coming in and teasing him and them leaving. The car itself, the film's macguffin, floats in and out of the movie and even when in Otto's possession all he does is lock it up in the repo yard and leave it because he's got a party to go to. I suspect the net effect of this stuff was not planned so much as winding up a happy accident. Movies that try to do this by design mostly feel arduous and overworked to me. This one strikes me as a perfect mix of Slacker-esque wandering independent cinema and Kiss Me Deadly apocalyptic noir. It's a formula that would later be perfected in The Big Lebowski, but works pretty well here too.
07.06.24	Men	Alex Garland	Rounding out the Alex Garland Ouevre. I can understand why I didn't hear much about this one. Just like Jordan Peele's Us, this is a misfire. While I had some issues with the story in Civil War, I did enjoy the setting and worldbuilding. This one, ostensibly a horror movie where a lady rents a house in the country and finds something odd about the local townsfolk, felt like Garland had a fragment or two and tried to stretch it into a movie by ripping off Ben Wheatley. The final sequence is probably my only takeaway from the movie and it's one i hesitate to mention because having it spoiled ruins the entire movie, but for my own memory's sake I'll describe it below. SPOILERS So all the men in the town are played by one actor, even a teenager via not-great CGI face-replacement. But in the end they all... give birth to one another in a chain, starting with this "green man" figure who has a vagina but ending up with fully-grown actor coming out of an orifice in the back of the neck or other random places. It's laden with CGI so you never, like, "believe it" believe it but maybe on the page it sounded cool. But then the final offspring of this cycle is the dude from the beginning of the movie, making this less a supernatural horror film and more a... allegory for overcoming guilt? i dunno. Overall, a pretty thin movie.
07.06.24	Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F	Mark Molloy	Eddie Murphy's latest IP revival, this one was better than Coming 2 America but still asks the question wouldn't you rather just watch the first movie again? I mean I guess it worked in that it got people like me to watch, and as far as sequels goes it's better than my memory of the third one. By all accounts this is a decent movie, except I have a hunch that you have to be my age and find a certain satisfaction in seeing actors like Judge Reinhold back on the screen to make this any different from the other straight-to-streaming action movies coming out these days. I liked it ok but it is basically a two-hour reminder that I'm old now.
07.05.24	Windy City Heat	Bobcat Goldthwait	This popped up on Youtube remastered in HD and it's been since original airing since I've seen it. I remembered thinking it was hilarious. In short, this was a documentary/film from the Man Show crew about these two guys who've been pulling pranks on their friend Perry for years. With Kimmel and Carolla's help they set him up in a "real" hollywood movie that's an excuse to put Perry in funny circumstances. It's still hard for me to believe that Perry didn't pick up on any of it but he's oblivious in a many funny ways. Even moreso since people like Dane Cook and Laura Silverman and Tom Kenny play roles like the film's producer, a PA, or a costume designer. Plus they all have blatantly famous names that Perry never picks up on. Actually, the level of absurdity that Perry never picks up on is basically the entire movie. Like when Adam Carolla runs into them on the lot wearing a gladiator outfit saying he's doing a gladiator dog buddy comedy called Air Caligula. Alas, I didn't think it was quite as hilarious as my memories of 20 years ago. I did laugh when they hit Perry in the face with a basketball out of nowhere but I attribute that to a much lower brain stem reflex that never tires of farts and groin shots. I suspect seeing it for the first time is key since so much of the stuff they put Perry through is so unbelievable and the stuff he goes along with is crazy, but even half-remembering the gags... I remember them more crazy somehow. Like I thought the shit in the garbage bin was like sewage not just manure. Maybe it's a SD/HD thing, probably it's my brain juicing the memory. I think it's still a good movie, I just didn't laugh as much as I did 20 years ago. Maybe that says more about me than the movie though?
06.15.24	Civil War	Alex Garland	Hmm. For the most part, I liked this quite a bit. I think the setting part is super effective and sad and hopefully doesn't happen in real life. The characters and story that the setting is hung on are good but not as good as the setting. Unfortunately, as soon as you get that these four people are in a car together you can guess exactly what's going to happen to them. I agree that following journalists is a great way into the movie but their arcs were the weakest point of the movie for me. I'd have been thrilled if the ending was slightly different. It would make the movie more about the interesting part. I liked Wagner Moura a lot, I'm mainly talking about the other three main characters. That stuff aside, I thought it was great. Great soundtrack (both needle drop songs and Geoff Barrow's score). Great world-building. I liked how carefully they chose that the Western Forces were California and Texas. With the barest mention of that and a few leading questions (along with a great intro) you get the gist of what's going on. And all the individual scenes are great. With this setting you have a thousand different options for what to show and I think they did a good job of selecting some. Each scene you don't really know what's going to happen. I guess I need to go back and see Garland's Men.
06.09.24	Voyage of the Rock Aliens	James Fargo	This is a musical about rock aliens... voyaging... I guess they're searching the galaxy for something rock-related? and they come to Earth and the main alien gets infatuated with Pia Zadora but she's dating a surly rockabilly leather jacketed Craig Sheffer. The eighties were a weird time. This one felt like it was aimed at B-movies (kind of like Amazon Women on the Moon meets Streets of Fire) but it's all over the place. Jermaine Jackson's song for one seems particularly out of place. But I think the joy one finds from watching this movie doesn't come from a place of cinematic accomplishment. You could say it's campy or so-bad-its-good or how-did-this-get-made... there's almost Troma vibes to it. Yet in the middle of this nonsense are a couple scenes I actually liked. For one, I like the "You didn't know? We didn't know? We Didn't think at all" song. The Alamo used to the play the trailer for this all the time in pre-show reels and that song always stuck in my head then... still does now. And Craig Sheffer's "nature of the beast" song is pretty good! Helped quite a bit by his crazy lip sync performance slash music video with the cougar and him gyrating on rocks flexing his muscles. That scene alone is probably worth the price of sitting through the rest of it. I suppose some people like some of the other songs as well. The rockabilly "Justine" isn't bad... and the fact that these kids/adults hang out in a malt shop named "local teenage hangout" (in the town of "Speelburgh" no less) and they're all sort of 80s exagerrated 50s style? but with acid rain and toxic waste and a mutated lake monster. Like I said, all over the place. I didn't love it but I didn't hate it either. Better as a trailer but I'm glad I finally got around to watching it.
06.09.24	Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains	Lou Adler	This is an early 80s film about an all-girl punk band's rise to success out of rural Charleston, PA. They're hired on as an opening act to an aging 70s rock band called The Metal Corpses after the singer of their original openers The Looters, a british punk band, mouth off. There are several musicians in the cast actually, with The Metal Corpses basically being The Tubes, The Looters comprised of Steve Jones and Paul Cook (of The Sex Pistols), and Paul Simonon (of The Clash) backing up a young Ray Winstone. Also, surprisingly, the Rastafarian bus driver slash manager also wrote and performed the various reggae tracks used over travel montages. The stains themselves include Laura Dern on bass and Diane Lane as the vocalist and star of the movie. I don't know how to say this without sounding like a pervert, but Diane Lane was 15 when she shot most of this and is distractingly beautiful. She has a really skimpy outfit through most of the movie and even a brief nude shot of her getting into a shower which is not necessary (strikingly similar to Melanie Griffith in Night Moves actually). But even with loud punk make-up and a skunk-stripe wig she is absolutely gorgeous. Again, not in a perv way! Like from the neck up I'm talking about. I'm sure I said similar stuff in my Streets of Fire note but at least then she was 18. Ugh. Anyway, I only mention it because the whole movie basically rests on her shoulders and she completely kills it. Kills it dead. The movie itself has a couple weak links but Lane is such a powerhouse that it doesn't matter. The one part I didn't love is the ending. Reading the imdb trivia they went back and shot the last scene two years after principal photography to try and salvage the movie after low preview screenings so it sticks out like a sore thumb that everyone is two years older with different hair and a growth spurt and everything. It's ok but everything else about the movie felt like it was heading toward a more late 70s bummer ending. It was written by Nancy Dowd (Slap Shot, Coming Home, Straight Time, Ordinary People) so I could totally see Corinne back in Pennsylvania still full of the same rebellious attitude but beaten by the music industry like so many others. Instead, you get a vague sense that the band succeeds with a MTV video for the song they stole. I suppose that supports what we might take away from the film now: a feminist musical voice predating riot grrl bands and stuff like that, but I think That Thing You Do served up a better ending to this type of story. Aside from that, I really enjoyed this. It was cool to see Ray Winstone so young and his voice pitched so high before he smoked all those cigs and swallowed broken glass to sound like he does these days. The music's good, the story - a kind of back and forth escalation between musicians - played like what that show The Idol tried and failed to do. You get a cameo from LA Punk band Black Randy and The Metrosquad (which was probably broken up by the time this movie came out). Well worth watching for fans of fictional movie bands or Diane Lane.
06.09.24	Godzilla Minus One	Takashi Yamazaki	This was very good, and the reason why it's very good is because it has a story. This might be a pessimistic take but it saddens me that all this movie had to do in order to generate all kinds of great reviews and word of mouth is have some kind of thematic statement. How far has Hollywood fallen that actually caring for a character is noteworthy. Retracting the hyperbole a little bit, I'm aware of all the other ways this movie didn't fuck up in order to achieve quality and I'm aware of all the reasons why Hollywood's not incentivized to care about things like story and characters anymore, but this isn't a review - it's just my thoughts - and this is what went through my head as I watched. There's nothing crazy about why this movie is good. It doesn't show me something I've never seen before or invent a new genre or bring some techno-novelty to bear like 3D or high frame rate or whatever. It's a good movie because it has a story! The main character has an arc! There's a beginning, middle, and end! holy shit! On the American side, I do remember liking Gareth Edwards' take although in memory that still felt like a soul-less thrill ride. Like, I don't remember who was even in it, just that the scenes depicting Godzilla were well-conceived and shot in an immersive way. I don't remember if I've seen any of the other godzilla movies since then, I'd have to check this site! But I know I've skipped the last couple because they're largely the same. If the spectacle of the monster scenes is not worth sitting through everything else then the movie is a failure. It's a formula that all the marvel movies have succumbed to, the same formula typical action fare these days like The Gray Man or Extraction follows, and most other movies follow suit. Movies made for tiktok excerpting. I'm tired of complaining so I'll leave it there. I did enjoy the scope and excitement of the monster scenes here too, but they had a lot of stuff going on in them. For one I liked how they basically made a CG version of a guy in a suit. Godzilla's design is a pleasant throwback I thought. And his scenes of destruction also felt nostalgic: getting at the essence of what people liked from the original. The atomic angle is also still there (although that message i thought was not really dwelled on, perhaps because everyone's already familiar), but so is a huge comment on Japan in WWII. I'm now culturally aware enough to fully comprehend what the movie is saying, but to me it expressed regret at its country's behavior. I thought I heard some governmental denial somewhat recently so I don't know if this movie's stance is fully embraced in Japan or what but to me, making the main protagonist a failed kamikaze pilot is super rife with meaning. Also seeing fire-bombed postwar tokyo, how their late 40s went, how their veterans felt. Godzilla - rightly - takes on a greater symbolic meaning. Like they are trying to kill the sins of their past that are literally haunting them. It's kind of like a version of Halloween's Michael Myers that I can actually understand. I might be off base with some of that, but I can tell that it's there. Something is there. There's a reason beyond box office why that script was written. Not having seen the original is many many years, I imagine this film strikes modern audiences in a very similar way that the original struck people in the 50s. And that movie resonated so much it spawned like a hundred ridiculous sequels. Good stuff.
05.12.24	Babylon	Franco Rosso	I stumbled across this when I was looking up info on Rockers. It's a 1980 British film about the sound systems in Brixton and South London and the racial tension and police brutality that oppressed them. It's a little bit Juice, a little bit Do The Right Thing, a little bit Boyz n the Hood, set to dancehall and dub reggae. According to the Internet, it was pretty hard to see prior to 2019 when it finally had a re-release since it didn't open in US back in the day due to controversy and fears that it would incite riots. Maybe because we're now post- all those other movies I mentioned but I felt like the level of riot-inciting-ness was relatively low here. Yes it has a handful of gut punch scenes dealing with racism and the end scene (definitely the best scene in the movie) ends on a blistering note, but I feel like other movies have been more overtly provocative in that regard in the years since (not to mention a bunch of 70s movies that, while not dealing with race per se, still had super fucking bummers of unfair endings jamming their thumb in your eye as you left the theater or drive-in. And also, early 80s audiences may not have understood enough of the patois to get enraged enough to riot anyway. I don't want to devalue the power of the film though. It's rare that a movie delivers such an honest and raw take on a scene. All but one white role in this is openly racist (even the albino from Princess Bride) and the movie really puts you in the shoes of the main character feeling the frustration and desperation come to a boiling point. And it's got some great music. So this one's not quite as feel-good as Rockers but no less worth watching. I took my own advice from last time and turned the subtitles off to good effect here. I was worried I'd have heavy Bri'ish slang to decipher along with the Jamaican patois but I got the hang of both before too long at all. The music is still the star though, with a handful of dub tunes and a score by Dennis Bovell (AKA Blackbeard). And for the end scene when they have the sound clash you get some footage of Shaka in full effect. For someone who's clearly not of that culture, it's a brief glimpse of how cool it must've been to be there. All those home-made speakers booming and effects boxes layered over the music with the controller toasting over everything. Very cool. So yeah, I enjoyed this quite a bit. Maybe a harder watch than some others but what feels like a real glimpse of the early 80s brixton west indian culture.
05.12.24	Border Radio	Allison Anders, Dean Lent, Kurt Voss	This marks the end of my little journey through the world of the LA punk scene. It's Allison Anders' first film and takes place in punk-vibes la and a beach in mexico, starring John Doe and Chris D (of The Flesh-Eaters) with appearances by Dave Alvin (The Blasters; Alvin also did the music for the movie) Texacala Jones (Tex and the Horseheads), and scenester Iris Berry (shot in her bedroom at Disgraceland where The Runnin' Kind was also shot). The story is an attempt at noir where a musician (Chris D) is hiding out in mexico after a robbing a record producer and his wife is looking for him and trying to figure out why he left via his bandmates. Some affairs are had, there are a couple goons in a jeep, and then the musician comes home. On a story level it never came together for me, but I suspect the value of this movie (and the reason why Criterion released it) has more to do with the punk DIY vibes and musicians' early performances and whatnot. It's kind of like a west coast version of Jarmusch's Stranger Than Paradise (although I like that film more). That's all to say that I didn't love it. Guess I'm glad I saw it, but I was kinda playing solitaire a bit on the second screen while watching. I will say that the footage in Hong Kong cafe was shot really well. I feel like that's the most I've seen of any of the punk venues where I can feel like I know what it's like inside, and even though many of the scenes feel almost improvised due to everyone's lack of experience acting in front of camera, there's also an indie charm to that. And just seeing the various posters or flyers on the walls was cool, to see all these band names I've spent the past couple months reading about. But as a narrative, as an engrossing movie? ehh.... not so much. For anyone wanting to skip the riff raff and do the same journey as me but with actual good movies, I'd do a triple feature of Decline 1, Suburbia, and Repo Man.
05.05.24	Rockers	Ted Bafaloukos	I'm like a steppin' razor, don't you watch my size, I'm dangerous, dangerous. This is a late 70s movie shot in Jamaica starring a bunch of reggae artists. There are a couple performances here but it's a narrative film loosely inspired by Bicycle Thieves. The only thing I've seen that I can compare this to is Harder They Fall and I like this better even though I'm sure that other movie laid the ground work for this film. I must admit, even with subtitles on I couldn't follow the patois at all. I think I should've turned them off though because you can still get the gist out of context and it's wall to wall music anyway so me understanding every word out of the actors' mouths is pretty low on the priority list. The subs just distracted my eye. The charm and value of this movie lies largely in capturing the vibe, spirit, and locale of Kingston smack in the middle of roots reggae era. The star of the movie, Horsemouth, is an actual drummer so this is in rarified air of having the star of the movie play drums for real and syncing with what they're supposed to be playing. All his friends are real musicians (they're all in the band that recorded the score!), everything feels documentary-level authentic. The little shops, the sound systems, the rastafarians up in the hills, all of it. My favorite scene is a montage late in the movie as they plan a heist of sorts to get back at the rich guy who stole Horsemouth's bike, Peter Tosh's Steppin Razor plays over each of the main players walking toward the camera with their mafia strut. It's more rough around the edges than the beginning of Reservoir Dogs but no less awesome. I liked this one quite a bit. great music, surprisingly natural performances (for all I know), just as much of that Jamaican culture on display as Harder They Fall, but I'd never heard of this before a month or two ago. There's a fantastic 1080p transfer on internet archive, highly recommend for any fan of roots reggae.
05.04.24	Dudes	Penelope Spheeris	A group of new york punks (John Cryer right in between Pretty in Pink and Hiding Out, Daniel Roebuck a year after River's Edge, and Flea) decide to road trip to california in their VW bug but get... ambushed one night while camping in the desert and harassed by a group of... militiamen? rednecks? antagonists led by a guy named Missoula (Lee Ving). They kill Flea so the main dudes vow revenge and go on a weird spirit journey where they sort of become a cowboy and a Native American. Oh, and Jon Cryer sleeps with the girl from The Last Starfighter along the way. In my mind, this is always a prime example of why I loved cable growing up. When we got HBO and Cinemax, practically every weekend would be spent watching something super fucking random late at night or during the summer when the network shows were between seasons. And I don't think I got cable until the early 90s... certainly didn't have my own tv until then, but movies like this would be on and they soaked into my psyche by osmosis. Now that I'm old, the dots start to connect and I see new stuff to clear up hazy impressions I had in my mind. I could've watched Suburbia again since this came back to mind thanks to the books I'm reading on the LA punk scene, but I think I re-watched that one not too too long ago whereas I haven't seen this since I was a teenager. This one is bizarre. It's not quite a comedy (although it starts like one), not really an action movie (although it ends like one), not really a road movie (even though they go from Monument Valley up through Utah) and not quite a western (even though there are horse chases and jailbreaks and flashbacks to native american genocide). Mostly I had an issue buying the premise, that this aimless punkers would want to hunt the bad guys down and kill them just because the local cops don't believe them. A couple scenes attempt to smooth this over but the climax of the film feels divorced from reality and ends in a really strange spiritual attaboy? It might've made more sense if they had leaned into the spirituality of the story a bit more, like parallel lives inferring that Missoula was related or a reincarnation of the soldiers that massacred the native americans (the same actors are in the flashbacks so it kind of makes this point in the subtlest of ways), but as is I never quite bought that they'd immediately going to shootouts and stuff. Other than that though, it matched my memory pretty well. Lee Ving's a pretty decent actor in these type of villainous roles (perhaps most well known for Mr. Body in Clue) and you get a bit of footage of The Vandals playing at the beginning and... that might be it. Truthfully it's not a good movie but it's enough to hold your attention if you're flipping channels late at night.
05.04.24	Dance Craze	Joe Massot	This is a concert film around the 2-tone, or second wave ska scene in late 70s/early 80s UK, so bands like The Specials, Madness, The (English) Beat, The Selecter, an all-girl band called The Bodysnatchers, and Bad Manners. I watched it because it was mentioned in the book I'm reading where Fishbone bassist and co-founder Norwood Fisher mentioned an inciting incident for their band being a double feature that he saw with Decline of Western Civilization and Dance Craze. I'd never heard of Dance Craze but, thanks to the power of the Internet, I have now seen it. This is great, with the caveat common to all concert films that you have to like the music. If you think ska is dumb as hell then seeing a bunch of sweaty speed-riddled brits skanking around the stage for 70 minutes won't do anything for you. I happen to like the music so even internet archive's VHS rip with a few songs cut out (that you can see in 360p on youtube) was enough to get me rockin in my chair with my headphones on. Plus the crowd! I barely saw them in the muddy transfer but the glimpses I got were of a jam-packed throng of kids moving as one. It never struck me that this (and all future) waves of ska were so influenced by punk but in the context of the books I've been reading and movies I've been watching it's like the most glaring thing possible. It's a total mash-up of reggae rhythms with punk tempos. The singer from Bad Manners looks like a stereotypical punk skinhead, except he's singing Wooly Bully. I do wish there was some kind of interview footage with the bands in addition to their pure performances, but what are ya gonna do... sometimes you get Decline, sometimes you get Urgh! The music itself is the draw here, and it's good stuff. Ska music's alright... if you like SAXOPHONES Notes on the film aside, I came to ska with what you might call the third wave. It had a moment in the spotlight in the mid-to-late 90s with groups like No Doubt and Mighty Mighty Bosstones, and I spent a couple summers around my senior year in high school going to ska shows in DC. This was the era of The Pietasters, The Pilfers, The Scofflaws, Skavoovie and the Epitones (who did a ska-ified version of Danny Elfman's Batman theme). They were very fun shows and the first time that music made me feel like dancing. Prior to that, the industrial and hardcore stuff felt all about releasing aggression to me, which has its place in any teenager's life but wasn't exactly about feeling good. The skank is a super easy dance that your body kind of does automatically when hearing that music and you're surrounded by a crowd full of kids looking equally stupid so any self-consciousness goes out the window. For me it was a precursor to that Louis Prima GAP commercial and the swing revival. Anyway, the fashion and whatnot is pretty easy to mock these days, but I can't deny that the music is still fun to listen to and I really liked having a dozen people on stage sweating and blaring horns. It felt so organic coming from stuff like KMFDM where it was two dudes in black behind synths and a weirdo screaming into a microphone. I suppose that phase also led me to exploring dub reggae in the early 2000s with stuff like The Scientist and King Tubby. I think we could do with a fourth wave today to rebel against this pro-tools ai-music shit. Let a sweaty guy in suspenders blow your ears out with his horn while a guy in dark shades says "chk-it-up" over and over. It'd be good for people.
05.03.24	Unfrosted	Jerry Seinfeld	Seinfeld's movie about the space race between Kellog's and Post to invent the Pop Tart. I can see why this movie is kinda getting trashed... it doesn't even approach reality. 100% unadulterated goofiness. There's no frame of reference, no grounds of relatability, no approximation of the real world at all. It reminded me a lot of the Acura commercials that Seinfeld made in the early Comedians in Cars days... with the astronauts leaving potato salad in the trunk as they blast off into space. It's such a bizarre construct of 60s what-have-you... not exactly funny but it is a vibe. I laughed quite a bit in a few scenes. It's kind of like the absurdism was rain and my head was one of those buckets that fills up until it tips over and dumps out then right-sides itself again. At certain moments the ol' brain was full and I couldn't help but laugh, while other scenes didn't rain quite hard enough to get me there. I have to applaud the execution of making this bizarre world. I definitely liked it more than Bee Movie, which I remember feeling like it dragged when it tried to bring in more conventional shit like story and conflict. This avoided all of that. Instead you get this kind of... I don't even know. It's like the jokes are old and artificial but also charming? I think the most tired gag involved a couple characters from a tv show that ended like 10 years ago but I even chuckled at that because it was like Seinfeld himself was in the room calling attention to the gag. So... I guess by rule of comedy, I laughed so I liked it? I'm honestly a little confused on how I felt about it. I certainly wanted to like it, and I did laugh. It's definitely better than other Netflix comedies like Apatow's The Bubble. But I can... definitely see how it doesn't work for many people.
04.27.24	Dune: Part Two	Denis Villeneuve	Dune: Part Two AKA The Second Half of Dune. As reported by everyone else, it's good. I liked it. It does feel like the meat and potatoes of the story and even though it ends setting up another movie I still felt it had an actual ending with some story threads being resolved. It also feels like a ton of stuff happens in this movie compared to the first; it really makes the first film feel even more like a prologue. The big thing that I appreciated here though, especially compared to Lynch's film, is that you actually feel progression as Paul becomes the leader of the Fremen. You see him earn that stuff in many scenes where Lynch's film felt the most rushed. So I get it... you have to eat the veggies of the first one to be able to savor the steak of this one. All the fighting scenes I thought were done well. The Harkonnen stuff was great, Austin Butler as Feyd-Rautha I thought was great, how he talked like Stellan Skaarsgard kind of. The Bene Gesserit stuff was good, you really get a sense of them being witches playing the long game. The dynamic amongst the Fremen I thought was good. Chani, Stilgar... all the ships and machinery and technology I thought was good. The worms were well handled, the scene where Paul rides was a standout. The desert felt much more desert-y this time around. I got a sense of the vastness and desolation of Arrakis that I didn't before. I kind of remember more Thufir in the book though, and while I did think the score was better, that messiah wail still took me out of it every time it happened. I guess I see why there are so many visions in the first movie now as there are even more here but I guess that's just what life is when you're Paul and you have them. I did feel like Lady Jessica was sidelined but I kind of remember the same thing happening in the book. Certainly Lynch's movie she's barely in the second half. And the baby stuff wound up being a spot of humor which I think it welcomed for its weirdness. Christopher Walken was mis-cast as the emporer though. I love Walken but he's too old. I remember thinking from the book that he was a crafty politician who was basically caught by the impossible odds of Paul being Kwizatch Hadderach (however you spell that) but here he feels like he's too old and become clueless to all the machinations happening around him. I don't feel any power in him even when the script seems like he tries to use his position as one last bluff against Paul. In the movie it feels more like a muttered delusion. Anyway... Design-wise, I feel like since we get to see a few other planets not everything was just brutalist and bare. I guess this is more with the costumes than the sets but the infrared stuff on Geidi was cool as was their weird fireworks. The ship designs were also different, not like House Telvanni in Morrowind different but I guess different enough... Harkonnen ships being bulbous and the emporer's ship being a big chrome testicle. Cool... maybe not as batshit crazy cool as one might hope but still cool and i don't think disappointing. This note has felt pretty all over the place, random thoughts. I did enjoy the movie quite a bit. Didn't fuck a popcorn bucket or anything, but I liked it. I think because of being the end of book 1 it didn't have that "middle movie" vibe like The Two Towers where everything just carries on. The next one will be interesting because I haven't read any of the sequels and the movie will have to actually end. From what I hear the sequels get pretty weird so I'm not sure if there's a natural end to the story at the end of the second book or what, but I'll be curious to watch and find out. As such, I think this one makes the first better (if slow comparatively) and has the makings of being a remarkable trilogy of movies. A real treat for modern audiences used to marvel and star wars bullshit.
04.26.24	Dune	Denis Villeneuve	I watched this again because I'm about to watch Dune Part Two and I want to give it the best possible chance. I would've watched them back to back but they're too damn long so instead I'll be watching the next one tomorrow night. As such, I imagine most of my thoughts about this viewing will be in the next note, but I'll just say that now, knowing that Part Two exists, hearing that it's good, and seeing news that there will be a third movie making this the first in a trilogy, I'm a little more lenient toward it being incomplete on its own. Yes, it's all setup if you look at it from a story perspective, but there's other stuff to like once you accept that. For one, I spotted a shot where Duncan Idaho flies his ornithopter down a street in Arrakeen during his escape, giving me a glimpse that it is indeed a place where people live instead of some random greebly miniature diorama like I thought last time. I do still wish we got more time with the Atreides folks pre-battle, and I also still feel like all the supporting cast get like 2 scenes which is nuts considering the runtime of the movie. I probably could've done with 5 less minutes of visions and more Harkonnens or Thufir or Gurney or a shot of spacer's guild's navigators instead of dudes in red-tinted helmets. I did enjoy some of the other costumes more this time though... and found the score just a tiny bit more tolerable (still didn't love the vocals especially when they're saying things like "bene gesserit" like wtf are they singing about? are they trying to explain the scene I'm watching or what? I'd actually prefer the nondescript messiah-yowl to the weird words with proper nouns thrown in to distract me. I guess now that I'm writing it out the score DID still bug me. ha! I do feel like I generally enjoyed it more than the first viewing though, and if I had more hours before sunrise I'd try to watch the next one now but I guess I should go to bed instead.
04.20.24	X: The Unheard Music	W.T. Morgan	This is a documentary about the LA punk band X. It's very good. A lot of times when I watch some of these documentaries about a specific band or subject or whatever, there's more or less a template that people follow. When they're just ok they feel a lot like the Laurent Bouzereau special features on the old Universal DVDs. Informative sure, but it's some talking heads intercut with some archival footage or stills or whatever; they run through the movie (or career or whatever) and then it's done. On one hand you can't really complain because you got what you were supposed to get out of the thing, but on the other hand it's not memorable, nothing elevates the form... it's basically an easier version of reading the wiki page. Then there's documentaries where filmmakers got lucky. they met incredible characters like Grey Gardens or had incredible access like Paradise Lost or spent a crazy amount of time like Hoop Dreams. These movies you watch not so much because you're initially interested in the subject matter but more because the movie itself is good so you learn what you're gonna learn as a byproduct of watching the good movie. And then there's a third kinda doc which takes the subject matter and makes a movie in the style of that subject. The Kid Stays in the Picture, narrated by the subject himself, basically an autobiography. Get Back, spending over 7 hours as a fly on the wall as The Beatles record an album. The Act of Killing, watching these guys that conducted genocide re-enact their actions. F for Fake, Orson Welles telling you stories about magicians while doing magic tricks with film itself. This is in that third category. It's about the band X, has some live footage that they shot in 81, but they took so long to make the movie that you also get them signing to a major label, finding success, touring, and the movie comes out months before the guitarist leaves. So some songs are performed live, some songs are in music video format, some songs are over photo montages or cinematic sequences. There's a character in the film portraying the subject of one song... cut with old news archival footage, old commercials, miniature model photography, rough animation, and interview footage of the band. It's all a big messy hodgepodge of punk DIY style that vibes off the scene very well and keeps the movie rolling and interesting as you listen to a bunch of X songs. All in that 80s LA vein. I liked it quite a bit.
04.20.24	The Runnin' Kind	Max Tash	This late 80s comedy is about a boring kid who goes to LA and gets wrapped up into the world of punk rock. I watched it because it's mentioned in the book I'm reading as being shot in an infamous punk apartment called Disgraceland and has footage of bands like tsol and the screaming sirens as well as starring and co-written by Pleasant Gehman. As it happens so often in these cases, the movie is not good but I guess worth tracking down if you're weird like me and want to see the interiors of some of these 80s LA punk clubs and settings. This is like a prime example of why Zack Carlson and Bryan Connolly wrote Destroy All Movies!!!. I think the same happened in the new york scene but I feel like part of what made LA's punk scene more visible is that there were filmmakers there. On top of docs like Decline, Spheeris also made Suburbia and Dudes. Lee Ving was in a handful of movies, John Doe was in a handful of movies, stuff like this somehow got made. And thanks to youtube, it's available to watch (albeit in artifact-y 480p form but still). And I did think there was one good scene. In the third act, after the main character returns home with his punk rock hairdo wearing a cowboy hat and talks to his mom, she tells him that his dad is in his study and will be happy to see him. Cut to the study where the dad silently looks at him (the story is framed around dad having a lawfirm that he expects his son to inherit but the son blows off a summer internship to go to LA after going to a local punk club). After a moment, the dad says "take that hat off." The son does. The dad sees the haircut, very still, no reaction. He then says "hat back on." That wasn't bad! The rest of it... eh, let's not dwell on it.
04.14.24	We Jam Econo: The Story of the Minutemen	Tim Irwin	As mentioned in my Decline notes, I'm reading a couple books on the LA punk scene and so I've also been listening to some of the bands mentioned therein. I'm not typically a huge hardcore punk fan. Clutch started off in the DC hardcore scene so I got a taste of that growing up (this is the mid-90s scene so not the same but similar enough) and I'm... just not that angry. I got all that angst out with Industrial music instead I guess. So a big revelation for me is a lot of the earlier LA punk bands didn't really play hardcore music. X is kind of sped up rockabilly, The Weirdos and The Screamers are artier, The Blasters are straight up rockabilly. Yes The Germs fit the bill but I still found their album more interesting than stuff like Black Flag and Circle Jerks and Misfits and whatnot, although the power behind Black Flag's logo is undeniable, but I digress. Except there's this band called The Minutemen. They were on SST records (started by Black Flag guitarist Greg Ginn) and a lot of their songs were up tempo, but the music wasn't so simple. The basslines are melodic and interesting, the guitar firmly in the treble and kind of funky, the drumming frenetic and complicated. I listened to their first EP and a lyric in one of their songs is "I try to talk to girls but I keep thinking of World War 3." And all the songs are like a minute long. No shortage of musical or lyrical ideas, but the songs just say what they want to say and end. Their first full length is 18 songs in 15 minutes. The guitarist wrote some songs, the bassist wrote some songs, and the drummer wrote some songs. The guitar player sang, the bassist sang. And the guitar player was chubby. So this band really caught my attention. A youtube playlist has their entire discography (minus their most well known double album for some reason) so I've been going through it and really liking it. Plus (i go into this more in my note for the book) Mike Watt's chapter in John Doe's book had such a strong voice that led me to revisit his first solo album that I bought back in the 90s and really enjoyed that as well... so I've been searching youtube for more minutement/mike watt content and found this feature-length documentary. The movie has interviews with all the LA punk guys saying what I just wrote but in a more interesting way, plus the movie has the luxury of being able to show entire live performances of songs because they're so short. There's several songs from a taped set at the old 9:30 club taken from the crow's nest. It was definitely made in 2005, early days of digital video so all the interviews look terrible, but I think it says something that so many people from that world wanted to contribute to this project and talk about this band. It more or less sticks to what's now on the wiki page so there's no shocking twists or really crazy footage of any kind, but it is a nice collection of video from early gigs and hearing from all involved and a good education on the story of The Minutemen. About as much as you can ask.
04.06.24	The Decline of Western Civilization	Penelope Spheeris	I'm reading through John Doe's books documenting LA's punk history and it's got me listening to a lot of music and queue-ing up some docs on the subject to watch. Might as well start with the best. My first concert was Lollapalooza 1992. It was almost too good to be true. I was a massive Red Hot Chili Peppers fan at the time, along with Pearl Jam and Soundgarden and Ministry, mostly thanks to being friends with my neighbor Camron. I can't be sure but I think a lot of his musical tastes came from his stepdad Lionel who seemed to be plugged into the DC music scene since forever. So we all went as a group and it was great. There's even footage on youtube of Pearl Jam's set. I remember they made us all scream "Eddie where the fuck are you?" or something like that because he was nowhere to be found but when he finally came on, Chris Cornell came out and they played a Temple of the Dog song. Later on I was watching an episode of Headbanger's Ball and Lonn Friend had a segment where he said Vedder was actually stuck in traffic or something and had to ditch his car and run to the venue and that was why he was late. And he was so winded that they played that Temple of the Dog song to give him a breather, which apparently was not part of the usual setlist for that tour. So that was cool! You can watch it here (although I don't see myself anywhere in the crowd... except like a 1% chance that's my head blocking frame at 40:55) ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKYMeZh0FM0 ). I digress. While we were waiting for the Chili Peppers to take the stage - that excruciating time in the show where the crew is changing the stage but you can't really move or you'll give up your spot for the headliner - Lionel took note of one of the songs that they played while we waited. It was Beef Bologna by a band called FEAR . He seemed very impressed that they should play such a song (The only other time I remember him being so energized after a show was when Helmet played a cover of Killing Joke's Primitive off their first album. Helmet actually recorded that and it's on a b-side of one of their singles. Very close to the original, another digression). So later on I went looking for this band FEAR and this song Beef Bologna. All I could find is a live album called "Live... for The Record" so I bought it and then I liked FEAR. I was always looking for "The Record" like those were the official versons of the songs but now, looking back, I'm so glad I got the live album instead. The studio recordings are alright (now that everything in the history of music is readily available things like going to the record store and living with what they have is less of an issue) but the true energy and vibe of that band (and all of their peers) lives with live performances. Sometime around then, Camron and I rented this movie. I think it was to watch FEAR play but I remember another selling point (Camron had seen it before) was when the movie puts lyrics on the screen and how funny it was that some of the singers barely sang anything. The movie didn't mention that the guy who was too loaded to sing died of an overdose months after the footage was shot. In any case, watching the movie made some indelible mark as plenty of other stuff did during that period. Movies I watched on cable around then, music I listened to... all of it is burned pretty vibrantly on my psyche, to the point where even though it's been 30-ish years since I've last seen this, I remembered it pretty well. At least the interview snippets and general vibe; I did not remember who many of the other, non-FEAR, bands were because I hadn't heard of them then. the quiet guitar player saying he's punched a lot of women had yet to resurface as Nirvana's second guitar player, much less join the Foo Fighters. I had not yet seen Roadside Prophets or Boogie Nights or any of the other movies that John Doe's appeared in to recognize him here. I had definitely seen Clue but I'm not sure I'd connected the dots on Lee Ving yet. Well, now that I've read Doe's first book, I recognize EVERYONE. It's like the book is an unofficial companion for this film (or vice versa). All the clubs, the bands, pre-Rollins Black Flag, Claude Bessy, Alice Bag, Brendan Mullin, Chris D. They all pop up here. It's not a complete catalog (the book mentions a ton of bands) but all the people in this movie are also in the book. So in that regard it's a perfect companion. Have my feelings changed on the movie watching it again after so many years and with Doe's book fresh on my mind? Definitely. For one, I liked the music more. It feels much less like a gag or judgement on the scene (something I'd always thought was the title digging at the subjects which I think proves more true of part 2. Aside from The Germs' on-screen lyrics I feel this is a pretty straight-forward and judgement-free document, and now knowing the full context of Spheris' career with Suburbia and Dudes and the third Decline movie, this feels much more sympathetic). Mostly this felt like a great documentary. If you like the music then it's great and if you don't like the music then the crowd and performers are interesting to study and scratch your head at. It doesn't 100% rely on performances like Urgh! so you get some down time with most of the bands... more than a Wattstax or Woodstock, but the performances are also well captured. it's good i liked it a lot!
03.23.24	Road House	Doug Liman	Uhh well... I'm not sure what I was hoping for with this. I guess maybe a glimpse of what a fun dumb action movie could be in 2024? I am certainly not one of those OG Road House fans... I remember renting it back in the day and finding it just one of many tough guy action flicks on the video store shelves. I basically remember "pain don't hurt" and them doing it standing up against a wall which looked logistically challenging. But here's the thing: I like Jake Gyllenhaal and I think Doug Liman often executes well with interesting projects so... maybe this was something? It kinda is. I feel like I don't have much of a leg to complain too much about this but I can't shake a few really head-scratching things about it. One is Gyllenhaal's character and demeanor. I like that easy-going practical thing in the beginning but it doesn't amplify when i think the script calls for it. When he's supposed to feel betrayed or angry he just still does this low-energy aww shucks thing which I don't get. Certainly whoever his personal trainer is deserves some kudos, as does Gyllenhaal's commitment because dude is ripped, but I wonder if he spent the whole time eating chicken breast and working out instead of working on the character. harsh I know but compare this to Southpaw (made by a director I don't much care for) and there's a real character there. I would say he's phoning it in here except he obviously worked hard to get that ripped. The second big negative for me is Connor McGregor. I thought every second he spent in the movie was laughably bad. It was definitely stunt casting from the start but he never lives up to the wild craziness he's supposed to embody. He's got the same weird smile on his face the whole time and (this is a script problem not a performance problem) his role is on auto-pilot. You know exactly what he's gonna do, which is sometimes fine if the actor can sufficiently chew the scenery to make it fun but I never felt anything other than him trying to act cool. The last big thing was how most of the fights were shot. I think they paid particular attention to try and show blows actually landing which would've been great if the camera was also not freaking out and flying in and out of peoples' heads and speeding up and slowing down and calling more attention to itself than the action. The beginning fight with Post Malone was the worst of this to the point where I think they were 100% digital people. None of it looked real in the slightest, which defeats the purpose of showing hits landing! Most of Gyllenhaal's choreography was better but he's still surrounded with people flipping and face-planting on the bar or suplexing onto concrete or whatever else. If the movie wants to be a cartoon that's one thing, but then why have Dalton be a meticulous precise fighter who knows exactly what he's breaking with every punch? You can't ask me to take a broken finger seriously then fling a guy 50 feet into the air and have him be fine. But I'm willing to accept the swings in tone because we're here watching this movie to see rowdy bar fights because it's Road House so... fair. I just wish everything wasn't so digitally manipulated to leave any chance of me suspending my disbelief. Even the interior of the bar has to always be these vaulted cathedral ceilings with god rays and shit. So maybe all this digital bullshit IS what a dumb action movie looks like in 2024!? Maybe in thirty years we'll look back on this movie and laugh and say "oh remember back when movies were so bad they were good before AI learned three-act structures and smell-o-vision implants really took hold? Those were the days." Guess we'll have to wait and find out, but right now it's just not as fun as the cocaine-fueled scripts, gratuitous nudity, throat-ripping generation of before
01.29.24	The Great Buster	Peter Bogdanovich	Bogdanovich's doc on Buster Keaton, which also proved to be his last directorial effort. My feelings on Bogdanovich have somewhat changed over the years from a place of pure admiration (heck, this journal is inspired by him) to a more complicated gray area of strengths and weaknesses. This doc exposes both ends of that spectrum for me. on one hand, you have that background of the critic bringing out smart insightful showcases of Keaton's best work, but on the other hand you have stuff like the usual suspects (Orson Welles, Louise Stratton, Cybill Shepherd) making appearances and starting your doc with archival footage of yourself that reminds me of his ego. It's all good though... you watch the movie to see what the deal is with Buster Keaton and I feel that you get what you want out of it. I think for me an interesting thing here is the structure of the film where Bogdanovich speeds through the typical life arc doc structure, then goes back to spend the last 40% of the film talking about his best movies. You wind up ending the movie on a positive note rather than a somber one which is great. I thought I knew an alright amount about Keaton. In the early netflix days I rented anything they had in stock at the time. I took a film history class in college where we watched Chaplin's The Gold Rush and Keaton's Sherlock Jr. together and I was struck by how much better Keaton's stuff had aged over Chaplin. But the years between Steamboat Bill Jr. and his cameo in Sunset Blvd were blank for me, as was anything he did afterward. So I was happy to learn that his life story was not just that MGM ruined him and he drank too much but that he had a real third act with tv and commercials and whatnot. So I learned a bunch about him which is great. All in all a decent doc if you're interested in why film snobs say silent movies were superior or whatever.
01.06.24	Night Moves	Arthur Penn	After The Holdovers trying so hard to be a 70s movie I figured I should watch a real one. This neo-noir has Gene Hackman as a PI going from 70s stuntman film sets to 70s south florida with a teenaged Melanie Griffith naked and a traditional you're-fucked ending. It was pretty good. Very much in that Long Goodbye, Body Heat type vein. Hackman's performance is actually pretty passive; his character is supposed to be an old football player but i don't suuuuper buy him being tough even when he's roughing up a young James Woods. I think that's the point though? Like, this is a soft-boiled PI who everyone says he loves following clues but doesn't really feel or do anything with where they lead. He doesn't really rage when he should rage, doesn't really care when he should care. It's not until a plot event does he finally start to engage, which of course leads him to a series of betrayals and murders. I liked it pretty good. Still processing where it will fit in relation to other mysteries or other 70s movies but it definitely wasn't bad. Definitely kept me watching. Oh, at one point there's a line of dialogue that struck me. There's a kind of lecherous character at one point that talks to Hackman, then after he leaves another character says "he'd fuck a wood pile on the chance there was a snake in it." What does that mean? does he want to fuck a snake? Fucking a wood pile does not sound fun, with or without a snake present. that and Hackman yelling "Erect nipples!"
01.05.24	Underwater	William Eubank	After so many long oscar movies i was in the mood to watch something short and to the point and fun. A co-worker had recommended this a while back so there you go. This fits well in the wave of Abyss knock-offs (Leviathan, DeepStar Six... Deep Rising some years later) in that the horror comes from being at the bottom of the ocean in an environment that is deadly to humans. Alien under the sea. Things I liked about it: 90 minutes long, knows what kind of movie it is, doesn't feel overly cheap or compromised, decent cast of mostly good actors, lovecraftian influence. Things I didn't like about it: it doesn't really try to transcend or tweak the formula that it follows, the characters are basically archetypes instead of people, never gonna beat The Abyss. I found it funny that the girls had to take their pants off because "they won't fit in the suit" but the guys have no problem being fully clothed. You could correctly argue that it's exploitative but... that's what this movie is. I did like how the horror elements were treated. I was reminded a lot of the game Soma. Mostly, I liked this one. It was exactly what I was in the mood for. I kinda wanted to get to know people a bit more or see the station pre-calamity but not at the expense of the run time. I'd also have liked a different, bleaker ending... but that's just me. The ending suits the movie just fine. You can't just watch Abyss or Alien or Predator over and over and over so movies like this are worthwhile to scratch the itch.
01.01.24	Maestro	Bradley Cooper	Bringing in the new year with another oscar movie. This one I think I actually liked more than the imdb ratings suggest. Yes it's a biopic which I typically don't love, and it's about a figure that doesn't hold particular interest for me, but I liked that Cooper clearly wanted to showcase Carey Mulligan's performance as much as he could. Typically the wives of all these biopic subjects are just kinda there or serve as nothing more than a moral compass. I think you could describe Mulligan's part that way too, but the performance itself is good enough to set her apart from the others. Cooper's performance is also good and transformative... now that i'm writing this all out, I think I feel the exact same about this movie as I did with Cooper's Star is Born: didn't expect to like it, he transformed into the role, he showcased his leading lady, better than I thought! That said, I shouldn't dismiss the common potholes that most biopics run over. It's a two-hour encapsulation of this guy's life so it feels like we're breezing through like cliff notes just hitting bullet points... while Bernstein's drama is affairs with guys (wiki says women too but the movie doesn't mention that) instead of drugs or mental health, it's still the same exact dramatic arc. The stuff where he creates the music I guess he's known for is never rewarding enough (the montage in the Brian Wilson biopic is the only scene that comes to mind which truly does deliver in that regard), and all this film format switching has become de rigueur but I found it a bit distracting. That said, the cinematography is pretty great, the make-up I thought was really good (in the scene where he's conducting, he's sweating on all that prosthesis and it looks so great), and all the other craft of the film is clearly aimed at oscars. So it's firmly in that category where you can't really say the movie is BAD, it just comes down to whether you like it or not.
12.31.23	Killers of the Flower Moon	Martin Scorsese	One final oscar movie to close out the year. I have complicated thoughts about this one so hopefully they make sense to future-me if I ever go back and read this again. Also I think I have to have spoilers so... SPOILER ALERT On one hand, I think there's a fatal flaw with the structure of the movie in that it's a real buried lede sort of deal where... I dunno maybe I'm just dense but to me the most insidious thing is that these killings were endemic like there were 30 of them and basically all the white folks were in on it in an almost-government sanctioned annihilation in order to "legally" get this oil money, but I didn't get the gist of the scope of it until reading the book's wikipedia entry afterward. It makes me think back to the random scenes of violence early in the movie and now they make sense, but the movie almost presupposes that you've already read the book or something because it takes such an awkward focus in telling the story. I get that these roles that De Niro and DiCaprio play are good meaty roles, probably more meaty than playing a straight-arrow investigator (indeed Jesse Plemmons' performance is basically just standing there), but I spent most of the first hour wondering what the hell kind of movie this even was. I suspect De Niro basically in his first scene but to me the dramatic tension of the movie is wondering the balance of malice and stupidity in DiCaprio's character. In the lens of a thriller, this movie is pretty good because DiCaprio does play it real well where sometimes you believe he's being sincere, other times you believe he's lying, and other times you believe he's being manipulated. But that's one specific person in a scene of much greater injustice! It's like "yeah aliens are landing in the background but let's focus on this gas station attendant doing a crossword." OK that's not entirely fair because I guess the sisters and family dying are noteworthy and it's hard to cover things in generalities, like learning about every poisoning and murder I guess. you have to focus somewhere, but I just felt like the larger story didn't get any attention. The movie relies on two narrative devices to deliver exposition - the silent film at the beginning and the radio play at the end - but both feel lazy and inadequate at the same time to me. I've liked the format of a radio play ever since the trailer for a film noir called The Big Clock so I liked seeing it here, but when the director is literally on screen wrapping up the story... ugh. Now, some of my feelings might be due to me working as a subcontractor for the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the early 2000s. This was right after a lawsuit was filed where untold monies were missing from the trust fund that the bureau is charged with managing. Basically, no one knew who took it, when it was taken, or how much got took. The judge ordered the entire bureau to be cut off from the internet until they could get their ducks in a row. It was eye-opening for me personally to see a glimpse of how government works (or doesn't) but also how the US government has taken every opportunity to screw over indigenous peoples. So to connect the dots and learn that the Osage oil money was the basis of BIA's trust just reignites all those feelings from 20 years ago for me. Even when given a lucky draw, predators invented laws and mechanisms of which they could exploit to swindle what they could behind cover of law and politics. The problem is I got all that from wikipedia not this movie. Basically I guess I need to read the book. Maybe once I read the book this movie will make a good companion piece, if I ever care to sit through it again. It's so long. It's even structured like a miniseries. Ok so that's a bunch of bad. Now for some good. I really liked the last hour, basically once the feds show up. That's when De Niro is basically a gangster and Scorsese shoots that stuff so well. Setting up accomplices to tie up loose ends, Brendan Fraser's lawyer character. The shot of all the old white guys staring at the camera where the teaser puts the voice-over "can you find the wolves in this picture". All so great. And maybe the first two and a half hours is also good now that I know what kind of movie it is and I can watch without trying to follow the plot so hard. And I'm writing this the next day because the movie was so damn long that I couldn't stay up to write this note immediately afterward, so I should also note that some scenes have really stuck with me and affected me, dredging all this stuff around. The scenes of violence are so sudden and brutal and well-depicted that putting the pieces together and, like, realizing that the scene of the guy shooting the mother from the window and taking the baby was probably a husband who murdered his wife now that they had a baby, making it look like a suicide to get the headrights... so disturbing! And all the millieu stuff of Fairfax as a western town was so well done. I'm guessing that's where the budget came in... it looked like they basically made a main street and train station and filled it with wonderful casting and wardrobe to have them all look so scheming and conniving in Mollie's eyes. So I do think it was a good movie... I just think there might've been a better movie hiding in there, or a 6-part mini-series where we get the human, insidious reveal of De Niro's and DiCaprio's characters but we could also get a little more scale from the feds side of things.
12.31.23	A Christmas Story	Bob Clark	Now somewhat beyond xmas tradition, parts of Elf, Christmas Vacation, and this movie were on the tv this season as we did holiday stuff. I'm adding a note for this because I actually watched it from beginning to end, although I'm not sure I have anything more to say about it. Gotta watch that sequel to be disappointed by it... but this is still a classic.
12.30.23	The Holdovers	Alexander Payne	Another Oscar movie getting checked off the list. The trailer for this had a very 70s throwback vibe but mostly it looked like a vehicle for Paul Giamatti to act. The trailer turned out to be very apt because this movie adopts every artifice of an early 70s movie that it can. I'd say it tries too hard to be a 70s movie actually, trying to fit into Hal Ashby's oeuvre. The result is kind of weird in that I guess it does work as a 70s movie but it's also kind of beholden to that formula. The performances are all great so the movie's not boring (really I liked it pretty good in case I'm sounding too negative here), but it's also staid and a little familiar, especially the last act. The snowy scenery is nice though so it's like a comforting movie to watch except you know a somewhat bummer 70s ending is coming and it's more than two hours long for some reason. Giamatti is good though. His eye work is great. And the kid is good. His mouth work is great. And the lady from Only Murders in the Building is pretty good except her accent is a little shaky. It does fit in nicely with stuff like Nebraska and About Schmidt and Sideways though. None of that Downsizing bullshit. So yeah, I liked it even though seeing a retro version of a Miramax logo is really bizarre.
12.29.23	Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny	James Mangold	Crossing some of the bigger titles from this year off the list as I have a few days off here, I was actually pleasantly surprised with this one. I've only seen Crystal Skull once and my overriding memory is the whole "knowledge was their treasure" line making me groan (and the giant ants, and the fridge, and Shia)... so yeah not really positive memories of that one. This, though. This, to me, felt pretty good! I mean there are some glaring artifacts of 2023 filmmaking here where everything looks too pristine to be real and Ford's face is pasted on what feels like half a dozen stunt actors' bodies, but mostly I thought it acquitted itself pretty well. I felt adventure, I felt lore and puzzles and racing against nazis feels canon. The film does basically go off the rails at the end, but conceptually speaking it doesn't feel too far off from ghosts melting faces or everlasting life or aliens. I guess you gotta go somewhere strange for it to be an Indy movie. Can't be like, Indiana Jones and the Grocery Store Coupon. I'll touch more on the ending below in a spoilers section. So yeah... I'm not sure if i'm with the people on this or not, but I thought it was pretty good! Still probably below Temple of Doom (which has some serious issues as well) but a lot better than Crystal Skull? SPOILERS AHEAD More about the ending. When they went through the fissure I thought they were going to be in 2023 and was real bummed out about that. Son in that regard I liked that they went back instead... closing the loop of the frieze and the watch and stuff like that. But I did think it was weird that there was like a cadre of 1969 nazis ready to cosplay in their new uniforms and totally on board to time travel back, kill hitler, and... win? the war? without hitler? I generally like when the bad guys' plans implode on their own (which is also a very Indy thing, or at least a Raiders thing) but this one seems particularly stupid. I suppose including a "nazis are bad" message in 2023 is regrettably topical so maybe that's why they did it, but I feel like 1969 had a notable lack of nazis, right? Like that's maybe their nadir. Maybe I'm wrong... they definitely popped back up by the early 80s... still seemed odd that they were marching in formation and everything. I guess that's not the biggest plot hole to point out in a movie where a plane crashes in ancient greece but it's the one that bugged me the most.
12.11.23	Ferrari	Michael Mann	I have to say, I much prefer Mann's take on a biopic where we really just get a slice of time rather than the typical structure. I didn't think much of it with Ali but this follows the same pattern and I wound up liking it much more than I thought I would. Similarly, I'm thinking back to Tom Hanks playing Mr. Rogers and Walt Disney. Both of those movies also avoid the Walk Hard tropes but still allow us to get the essence of the character. In that vein, I think Adam Driver's performance here is a success. That said, it's not... I dunno, it's not amazing. The racing scenes are good, going for more of an in-camera vibe following these old cars around (I would say they might've tricked me a la The Killer where mundane shit like Fassbender scootering down a street is rife with vfx for some reason, but the instances of actual cgi here - namely the crashes - are clearly cgi so I buy that the real-looking stuff is real) so it has a different vibe from, say, Ron Howard's Rush or even Ford v. Ferrari. But that's just a couple minutes of a two-hour movie. Similarly, the scenes between Adam Driver and Penelope Cruz are great... and again I think Driver's behavior through the whole movie gives me a sense of Enzo Ferrari the character without having to endure too many flashbacks to his childhood and other formative events. But just like Ali, since we are just dropped in for a few days in this guy's life, some of it seems pretty random, other parts feel unresolved, and the movie ends somewhat abruptly. Did I like it more than Blackhat? Hell fucking yes. More than Public Enemies? Yeah? I think so? More than Mann's 7 movies previous to that? Nah. It's good but not amazing. Now... a few spoiler-y comments: spoilers ahead I had a few thoughts about the two crash scenes in the movie. Now, I watched this on a DVD screener so the detail was pretty low, but both crash scenes attempt to show the raw carnage that happens when a tiny car going very fast decides to fling into the air. I love the ambition of showing something that's traditionally done in a series of slow-motion close-ups that manage to dissect what's happening but also remove us from the shock of the moment. Here, the first crash comes after a series of extreme close-ups showing the transmission catch, the tires lock, then a slow-motion shot of the tires hitting a curb then 3 shots total showing the car flying through the air (the driver also flying like a ragdoll) and crashing into empty bleachers. The second, bigger crash slows down to show us what caused it, followed by a few quick cuts then one long shot as the flying hunk of metal tears through a line of spectators. Then we get a long dolly of special effects make-up of the victims culminating in a gruesome bottom half and top half of, i think, the driver? Super shocking, super brutal, juuuust a little too fake. The CGI doesn't cut it. It's not fast enough or there's not enough blurring or dirt clods or something because it looks like the car and mostly the bodies don't pass the test. It's a real shame because... well, it's still a heck of a shocking moment and I imagine it will cause gasps in the theater, but people watching closely, and everyone when they watch at home and can pause and rewind, will see that the illusion doesn't hold. It doesn't help that Ferrari has like 0 reaction, but I guess that's the point; that's his character. So If they flopped around a little more, maybe a little heavier sound design, a couple dozen more hours honing the physics and it would be a real stand-out. But I think mostly people are going to talk about how the cgi looks bad.
12.03.23	Oppenheimer	Christopher Nolan	The other half of the year's biggest weekend. There was a Paul Newman movie that I liked growing up called Fat Man and Little Boy. I probably liked it mostly because John Cusack was in it and there was a scene where he died from radiation poisoning (In that same morbid 80s-kid cold war fascination with nuclear radiation as Troma movies and the guy from Robocop falling in the chemical waste). But I remember the rest of the movie being pretty good as well although mostly from Newman's / General Graves' (Matt Damon's character here) perspective. What I was fearful of with this movie was that it would lean more biopic and have some childhood scenes with little J Bobby fascinated with grade school science experiments or whatever. What I got was much more centered around The Manhattan Project, only delving into backstory enough to give context to what would happen in New Mexico. This is good news to me. I quite liked this. Yes, there were still times where, listening with headphones, I couldn't hear Cillian Murphy's low voice or Robert Downy Jr's. low voice over the screaming strings of the score. And I can definitely see why so many summer movie-goers who believed the hype and queued up or even drove hours to see this in 70mm projection IMAX left scratching their heads at the lack of breath-taking explosions and maybe Japanese cities blowing up (especially since the poster is mostly the bomb on fire). I get that the state of the movie business is such that directors with clout like Nolan basically HAVE to champion the cause and try their damndest to get butts back in seats, but staring at Cillian Murphy's cheeks for 3 hours is not exactly the best use of the IMAX format. There's maybe 2 minutes of beautiful visual effects? And the score is great but blasting it in that theater must've been grating by the end. On home viewing though, where the film will live for 99% of its life, it's great. Jarrette tried to get my butt in a seat by saying it was a lot like Oliver Stone's JFK: a movie I love (arguably Stone's best movie, certainly in his top 5?). Unfortunately, I didn't see that from the trailers but now I definitely agree. Not just the color/black-and-white thing but mostly how there's a hell of a deep cast chock full of familiar faces and the movie saves itself with rapid-fire scenes and throwing so much information at you that you're constantly trying to keep up, identify who's on the screen, understand what they're talking about. I'll say not as revolutionary with using different film formats (even if they did "invent" black and white imax stock for this), but still satisfying in the same vein as Stone's film. It is a bit of a shame that this is like, one of some single-digit number of new movies this year that didn't rely on spectacle CGI superheroes or monsters. Back in 1991 I remember JFK's release being notable for its controversial content and longer-than-normal length but otherwise just another weekend. Now, when there's some actual good movie for adults it has to be sung to the heavens. So anyway... yeah. I liked it. Wish the dialogue was mixed a bit higher, but otherwise I thought it was very good.
11.13.23	Fort Apache, The Bronx	Daniel Petrie	Trading the dangerous territory of the old west for late 70s/early 80s South Bronx, this cop movie stars Paul Newman as the experienced cop and Ed Asner as the new hardass captain. Other than that, the two films aren't really related except where the cops decorate the precinct with native american stuff because the neighborhood is so tough that it's like a fort in enemy territory rather than a normal police precinct. I liked this a lot, but I suspect that's more because it fits into the genre of grimy-nyc 70s movies than anything else. Lots of location photography, lots of local extras and bit roles. Young-ish Danny Aiello as a creepface cop, and Rachel Ticotin (who I mostly know from Total Recall) as a nurse/love interest to twice-her-age Paul Newman. It bears resemblance to Across 110th Street but probably a higher budget and this largely feels a little late in the genre. It definitely has more of a 70s vibe than 80s although post-apocalyptic stuff like 1990: Bronx Warriors is only a year away... Yeah now that I look a few movies up, Warriors was 79, Cruising was 80... I guess nyc was definitely still a shithole in 1981. I also want to note for the record that at one point in this movie, Newman has both a cigarette and a toothpick in his mouth. That's a move that even Paul Newman can't pull off. So yeah this was fun. Cops and drug dealers, pimps, riots, roof-jumpers, and Pam Grier as a dusthead maniac. What's not to like? And that's it! Another year down. I didn't fit as many movies in this year as I'd like but what else is new. Maybe if I retire some day I will really go all out and have this last 10 days like a real festival. Judging by the amount of junk food I've eaten over the weekend I'm not sure my colon could survive that long, but there's only one way to find out! In the meantime, this will have to do. I still had fun and since I didn't go to Fantastic Fest this is probably the most movies I've watched in a week all year. Speaking of, here's the rundown on the numbers. Movies Seen: 14 in the past week (2/day), 14 in the past month (0.47/day), 77 in the past year (0.21/day), and 3454 since the site started (0.5/day). Ouch. Not my worst year but that doesn't mean it's good. Yet this journal continues... Best not to dwell on these, we'll see how next year goes. It's always fun how whatever random films I watch, patterns and connections still emerge. Like how Peter Carey wrote both Until the End of the World and the short story used for Dead End Drive-In, or how both Metropolitan and Quai des Orfevres use the term "egotist." I do think there's a little bit of magic in here and I hope to be able to continue this tradition indefinitely. There's always more movies - more good movies - to discover, cross off the list, or dredge up from childhood and revisit. Maybe one year i'll dedicate a day to my mom's favorites or my dad's favorites since I got my love of movies from them. Maybe one year I'll have someone over to watch with me so it won't be a one-person festival. Nah...
11.13.23	Fort Apache	John Ford	I took today off so I could stay up late last night but I've got time enough for one more double feature I think to wind this... ragtag DVRfest to a close. This pairing was 100% title. One of those stupid programming ideas which is probably why i'm not an actual film programmer. Fort Apache is a John Ford western starring John Wayne (looking young even at 40) and Henry Fonda as a hard-assed general custer type. It's full on John Ford: Monument Valley, rousing score, dinner tables, dances. This is also the first in what's considered Ford's "Cavalry Trilogy" along with She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and Rio Grande. As with most movies from the golden era of Hollywood, you kind of have to slow your pace a bit and try to put yourself back in a time before the internet when people actually had attention spans. But it's also fun to think that this movie was made as long ago as the events of the movie were when they made it. That's part of the magic of movies... to see these glimpses in time both in the storytelling and the artifice of the craft of moviemaking. Also, you know when a movie is good when it's two hours long made by a bunch of dead people and you aren't bored by one minute of it. While much of this I'd consider a classical western, perhaps the very definition, the story is still pretty nuanced and complex. You've got Fonda there being a hard-ass but it's all mixed up between military etiquette and him being a father and also him being naive to his post and searching for glory. You've got Duke Wayne the wise captain who still must abide by command, you've got a somewhat typical romeo and juliet romance (made interesting on a meta level because they were played by grown-up Shirley Temple and her husband... she was pregnant while filming but John Ford gave him a such a hard time that he almost quit were it not for Wayne's help and acting tutelage... but the couple would soon go through a public divorce with mention of alcoholism and abuse (all of this is from the imdb trivia so hopefully it's true)), and you've also got the meat and potatoes entertainment engine of these experienced seargents training new recruits. So it's a drama, western, war movie, and little bit of romance all rolled into one. Then you have the portrayal of the apache peoples (many actual navajos but speaking roles going to mexican actors) as more formidable and complicated than just a convenient faceless enemy. The plot isn't complicated but the story is made complex by the characters. To me it so represents how good hollywood used to be at manufacturing dreams. So it's not like some huge revelation that this movie is good but I'm surprised by how much I enjoyed it. When I was a kid, John Wayne was my mom's (and her sisters') favorite movie star. They'd make up quizzes to test each other with trivia. As such, I was never interested in being told what was good so I avoided watching/liking all his movies for most of my life. Well, as it turns out, there's a reason he was so beloved! He's pretty damn good here, and not as the swaggering drawling older leading man but an actual doing-the-work supporting role where he totally shines among an entire cast of interesting characters. Who would've thought! Anyway. Time for one more.
11.12.23	Dead End Drive-In	Brian Trenchard-Smith	This has been on the list ever since seeing that Ozploitation doc way back when at Fantastic Fest. From the visuals it looked like a post apocalyptic thing but it seems more like a bizarre future of gearhead punk rock and the drive-in is less of a fort or outpost or whatever I might've thought and more of a surreal prison where people can't leave. I liked it ok although I do have to say that I had a problem with the logic of it. The whole premise is this guy takes his brother's(?) car to the drive-in on a date with his girlfriend but the cops steal two wheels while he's fooling around. He's got one spare but without that second wheel he's stuck. Except there's like a drive-in's worth of cars there and many obviously have wheels. He says he needs a Chevy wheel, I guess to return it in good condition, but pretty quickly the car gets tagged with graffiti so... just get out of there, man. But then he gets a chevy wheel off a different wreck but he's run out of petrol. Same deal. He's gotta gas can and a siphon tube and there are cars literally all around him. One of them has to have gas? Just get out of there, man! Then his brother's(?) tow truck shows up in the drive-in to drop off wrecks! Wave him down! Hop a ride! Just. Get. Out of there. Man!? To be fair, I think they used that red and white tow truck more out of budget necessity than story, and really the mechanics of why he's stuck there I think are not supposed to be paramount compared to the commentary that's being made about society within the drive-in... i get all that, but I still couldn't help but see all the wheels everywhere constantly all around him. I will say, this was a pretty bizarre and ambitious aim for a genre picture. I can see the meeting with the financiers: Brian Trenchard Smith: "So yeah, we're gonna have weird hacked vehicles with roll-bars kinda like Mad Max and they're gonna be in this crazy future where tow trucks race to pick up the carnage of wrecks while roving gangs of gearheads swoop in and raid cars for parts, but then it's gonna be this great allegorical purgatory that they get stuck in and these immigrants will be bussed in and there will be racial tension." money men: "will it have two sets of tits and a car chase?" BTS: "...yep, it'll have those as well." MNM: "sold!"
11.12.23	The Night Strangler	Dan Curtis	So according to imdb trivia, Kolchak started as a TV movie that did very well so they made another one. A third was in the works but ABC turned it into a series instead. Now, I'm not gonna track down the entire series but the internet did provide both movies which is great. This time it's Seattle rather than Vegas and other than the newspaper boss the rest of the cast has been swapped out. Al Lewis instead of Elisha Cook Jr., John Carradine instead of Charles McGraw. The killer is also a bit less iconic albeit still supernatural. It's also clear that there's a bunch of back-lot and studio photography here with just bits of Seattle location footage interspersed. Which was still cool by the way. I'm not sure I've seen a movie shot in Seattle around then, it looked pretty cool. I also hadn't heard of the Seattle underground which I guess is a real thing. It was still fun, but not as good as the first. Still, it's good to finally know what the hell this show was about, and it seems like a pretty cool concept, a little bit like the Friday the 13th series or, I don't know... was Psych like this? I didn't watch Psych. Well somehow the day has gotten away from me. It's already past midnight and I was feeling it by the end of this. I'm going to ditch another double feature and just try to get one midnight movie watched before passing out.
11.12.23	The Night Stalker	John Llewellyn Moxey	Darren McGavin is Carl Kolchak, ace reporter on the Las Vegas beat circa 1972, following a mysterious case of girls showing up dead that "have lost a lot of blood." I've heard about this movie/series on and off for years so I finally decided to give it a watch. I didn't know it was a TV movie but damn is it a good one. You've got early 70s OG vegas footage, you've got a cadre of old noir faces making up the supporting cast, you've got that groove-heavy 70s TV movie score, and you've got a Richard Matheson script. All in a tight 74 minute runtime. I quite liked this. Yes, it's a little rough around the edges, like some shots are just out of focus and the act breaks come out of nowhere, but there's also a lot of charm and style going on. It definitely has that 70s vibe that stands alongside stuff like Duel. and Don Siegel. I really only know Darren McGavin as Ralphie's dad from A Christmas Story (and his performance there lives on forever) but hs same shtick kind of works as a reporter too. Mostly it's just a great premise. Something akin to a Stephen King story (in fact, his short story The Night Flyer feels borderline homage). A very fun watch. Actually, let's keep this train rolling and turn a double feature into a triple feature.
11.12.23	The Private Eyes	Lang Elliott	Sticking with a Sunday Matinee theme, I figured I'd start with a double feature of crack investigators, starting with this Tim Conway / Don Knotts mystery in the vein of Murder by Death or Clue. I saw this as a kid and remember loving it. Like LOVING it. There's an animated intro a la The Pink Panther, starring the dude from Three's Company and Dorf. What's not to like? I remember my mom saying it was "slapstick" humor and thinking "ok, i like slapstick." Well... having seen it again as an adult, I can say that this is not slapstick. It's also not funny. What was I thinking? Dumb kid... I guess I'm being too hard on my past self. I remember thinking it was so cool the bit with eyes cut out of paintings and secret passages and stuff, but whereas I think Clue has stood the test of time this really didn't. Maybe it's just Conway's brand of humor that I don't really connect with these days. I'm sure I might think Dorf is pretty dumb too but I definitely loved it as a kid. I never really watched Carol Burnett though so... I dunno. I'm a little disappointed that this wasn't more fun. Kinda feel like I squandered my one slot of the weekend to watch something I've seen before. Hopefully the next one will be good!
11.11.23	Quai Des Orfevres	Henri-Georges Clouzot	roll: 2 spine: 193 I can't remember when I bought this french noir from Henri-Georges Clouzot. I remember renting Diabolique after hearing Clouzot was like a French Hitchcock and not liking it much, but I think Wages of Fear is a legit masterpiece. Which side will this film fall on? let's find out. Well, I fell asleep. Being drowsy doesn't really work when you have to read subtitles. AKA Jenny Lamour (i think the original title is the location of police headquarters), this must be a pretty early french noir if the story holds true that french filmmakers didn't see any 40s american pictures until after the war. The plot is pretty straight-forward in a kind of Hitchcock vein, where a jealous husband sneaks out to murder what he thinks is a tryst but shows up to find the guy already dead. So the cops think he did it because he set up an alibi with holes in it, but meanwhile it was the wife who actually did it and her alibi is shaky as well. At that point, it becomes the police inspector's movie as he tries to put all these pieces together. It was a pretty fun watch, but no Hitchcock in my opinion. No Wages of Sin either, although I guess this shows the seeds or something, being one of Clouzot's earlier hits (or perhaps his breakout hit as the back of the dvd case suggests). It would've made for a fine midnight movie but makes an even better Sunday matinee. And that puts a button on another year of Criterion random rolls. I halved the pile down to 4(!) which mean next year (assuming I don't go making a bunch of blind buys this year) I'll finally reach the end of the list. What happens then you might wonder? Well I know the answer but you'll just have to wait and see. As for tomorrow (today), we're diving back into my list of double features from earlier this year to make some room on the old hard drive.
11.11.23	Until the End of the World	Wim Wenders	roll: 6 spine: 1007 Well I suppose it had to happen sometime. At least it's not midnight. Really if I was PLANNING to watch a nearly 5-hour movie this would be the best time to start! I've more or less liked the other Wim Wenders movies I've seen (Paris, Texas; Wings of Desire; Buena Vista Social Club; the documentary for making of Million Dollar Hotel), and a sci-fi road movie sounds fun!Iincidentally, this is the only thing I know about this movie; it was a complete blind-buy. So... See you on the other side??? Ah ok this is the director's cut. The theatrical cut was around three hours. That makes more sense, like how Ridley Scott's talking about his 5-hour Napolean cut. In that context, it's still a really fucking long movie but at least there's some context. And to be honest, sometimes the length helps a movie to feel suitable epic or momentous. Then again, sometimes not. This was a bit of both. When I try to imagine a three hour cut of this I'm not sure what they would cut. Certainly there's plenty that can go, but they can make a broad range of different movies there. If they tried to fit everything in - all the locations and all the stuff in the second half - that'd make for a pretty abreviated experience to be sure. However, you could make an "ultimate road trip" movie with just the fist half of the film, or you could make a sci-fi movie with just the second half. The road trip stuff really comes to a screeching halt when they reach Australia and kind of becomes a different movie. They work together... kinda... in a few ways that are nice, but I kinda think Wim Wenders had an idea to make a movie in Australia and conned the producers into letting him travel across the globe for a while too. Did I mention that it's fucking long? It's past midnight now. It basically killed the day. And I'm not afraid of long movies... I watched Intolerance, I sat through Snaked on a Plane for an entire day... if it was available when I was watching silents I probably would've seen the 8-hour cut of Erich von Stroheim's Greed. Part of me couldn't help but compare this to Fassbinder's World on a Wire (which was technically a TV movie like a 2-night deal) which isn't fair. For one this movie came out in the early 90s which feels odd to me. I wasn't expecting so much early CGI, although picturing a future where search software is called "Bounty Bear" where a 3d-model of a bear walks along a digital street looking in buildings saying "I'm searching... hold on a minute... found him" is pretty hilarious. Although I should say they nailed the car dashboard maps and video calls... so all the future stuff (the film is set in 1999) is pretty fun. Like most of the cars are these boxy 80s things then there's a random buck rogers rocket-car out of nowhere. There's not much actual speculation in setting the film in the future though... mostly I'm surprised they had budget to production design these future props and wardrobe and still go literally around the world to shoot. The stuff in Australia is really where it enters Altered States territory, but with early digital imagery that looks like stock CG effects now but was probably pretty novel back then. And the soundtrack is also pretty great. Stuff like Julee Cruise and Can mixed in with U2, REM, and Lou Reed. In the end, I'm not sure how I feel about it. I'm glad I watched it, and there were segments which I found captivating. But there were also times where I'd check the time and think "it's been 80 minutes and I have no idea what this movie is" or "well, only 3 hours left." The ending also definitely keeps going to the point where I was like "end already geez." Minor spoiler alert (it's in the damn title) but there's a sorta-kinda apocalyptic event in the movie and I thought "oh, poetic ending. nice framing device." but there was 2 HOURS left!!! There was a whole movie's worth of movie after I thought it was ending! Those last two hours were the most interesting to me. ok. 1am. The bad news is I'm not getting through this pile today but the good news is I have time for one more. Next!
11.11.23	Metropolitan	Whit Stillman	roll: 3 spine: 326 Last year I watched Last Days of Disco and liked it so I picked up this and Barcelona to complete the "set." Depending on how I roll I may get to watch both today, we'll see. For now, let's watch Whit Stillman's first movie. I don't know about you, but every once in a while a movie comes along that so perfectly describes your own life experience that it's not only like the movie is about you but it's also like the actors are playing people you knew. You know... late night black-tie after parties, talking about social mores and discourse, sipping tipples in upper east side apartments. giving your tophat to a new friend. That sort of thing. I suppose if I were Whit Stillman then all of that might be true, but for the most part, watching this movie, I was astonished at how foreign this scene is. Beyond foreign. Alien. How crazy was the birth of 90s american independent cinema that you had these kids, Do the Right Thing, and King of New York all happening at the same time? People talk about the magic of New York City... it's right there. How can one metroplex contain such drastically different viewpoints!? Throw in Night on Earthk, Johnny Suede and In the Soup a year or two later and you have quite the cinematic stew going. It's funny, having watched it first, to think about Last Days of Disco being the polished bigger budget version of a Stillman film, but I suppose it makes sense. At its heart this movie is the same - it's about a group of friends hanging out and talking - but the sets are more modest, the photography less slick, and the actors a few years younger. I can't help but think of this whole graduating class of actors coming from this era... the post-modern educated upper/middle class white kids... as one body, and then I watch this movie and find out that it's literally true. I think of them as all the same because they're all in every one of these movies! Just a moment of appreciation for that early wave of 90s indies that hit video store shelves. None of them played local theaters for me, but thanks to the previews in front of rental VHSs I feel like I knew about all of them. You'd rent Reservoir Dogs and get a trailer for Barcelona, Gas Food Lodging, and Bad Lieutenant. Watching Miller's Crossing would let you know about Roger & Me, Drugstore Cowboy, Sex, Lies, & Videotape. That was the start of what became late-decade shit like Pi and Rushmore and Kids, Swingers, Welcome to the Dollhouse... culminating in 1999: arguably the best year for movies since my birth. It was a hell of a time to come of age and spend hours in a video store staring at box art wondering if Lair of the White Worm was gonna have naked women in it or not. Anyway, back to the deb parties and preppy kids (sorry, Urban Haute Bourgeoisie). I liked this more than Wild Strawberries which is funny because it's no faster paced or more exciting... I think just by virtue of being in English and made thirty years later I found it more palatable. For all of there homogeneity I do like actors like Chris Eigeman and Taylor Nichols (who I most closely associate with an early 2000s hbo show called Mind of the Married Man) so it's fun to see them so so young. So evocative of its time and place in cinematic history, but also tinged with a bit of nostalgia for me and right in my strike zone for witty dialogue that borders on too arch (is that my strike zone? huh!). So basically exactly what I thought about Last Days of Disco a year ago. I have a hunch that I'll feel the exact same for Barcelona. Next!
11.11.23	Wild Strawberries	Ingmar Bergman	As has become tradition, today will be devoted to two gods: Fate and the Criterion Collection. I'm down to 8(!) criterion dvds/blu-rays that I've never seen, a couple of which have been sitting on the shelf for like 20 years. The good news is that a huge chunk of these (probably not all) will get watched today! The bad news is that there's one movie here with a running time of 287 minutes so if that one comes up my day is pretty much set. So I've got my d8 at the ready... let's see what's first? roll: 2 spine: 139 I can't say that I'm the biggest Bergman fan. I saw (and own) Seventh Seal back when I was going through those top 100 lists and of course didn't love it. Since then I've more or less avoided following up even with the films I hear mentioned more nowadays like Persona and Virgin Spring. But back then when I was in my film snob phase I bought this disc thinking "i should see this" and it immediately felt like homework. 20-some odd years later and I finally cross it off the list. There were many such purchases by the way. That's largely why this tradition exists. I'd probably never watch this movie if a made-up rule and a roll of the die didn't bind me to do it. I must admit I did more or less sit through this one. I get that it's really well regarded, and think maybe some of the dreams were pretty new and inventive back in the day... and maybe, like Ozu lovers, Bergman fans like to settle down and slow their roll and lollygag through a film as contemplative as this one but I had a hard time focusing. So now I've seen two Bergman movies. Am I motivated to watch more? Probably not. I'm not saying this was a terrible movie, but it's not for me. Once upon a time I'd have felt pressure to like it but these days I don't care. Bergman has enough fans, I don't need to force myself into that club. Maybe someday I'll watch Persona and that will change my mind... but until then, Next!
11.10.23	Reptile	Grant Singer	Benicio is looking pretty low-energy in this police procedural mystery, but more in a haggard Richard Price way than phoning it in. This actually reminded me a lot of the first season of True Detective and Prisoners although not as weird or brutal. Instead it was just a solid thriller that kept my attention and did some interesting stuff. There's some Jonathan Demme-esque looking straight at the camera in there, some hints of Robert Towne or James Ellroy with the twists and turns, and solid performances throughout. I got everything I was hoping to get from this, which was something akin to the late Philip Seymore Hoffman's movie A Most Wanted Man where you get to watch a smart guy be good at his job. I suppose you could describe The Killer in the same way, but I was less sure about this one so maybe more pleasantly surprised. I'd write more but it's late and I'm tired. Plus this is just the beginning. Tomorrow is going to be interesting.
11.10.23	The Killer	David Fincheer	New David Fincher!!! And it's not Mank! It's about a hitman! That's cool! Actually, the plot is 100% what seemingly every movie about a hitman is about, but this movie is more about execution than innovation. You're watching Michael Fassbender and in his head via the narration with a cold methodical precision that could just as easily have been about David Fincher if the movie was about making a movie rather than killing people professionally. So the pairing of directorial style and subject is just about perfect here, enough to make me forget about the familiar plot and go along for the ride. In that mode, I really enjoyed it. I like a movie where the hitman listens to The Smiths. I do with the plot was a little different, but I guess that came from the graphic novel source material. I also kind of wish for a version of the film without the voice-over as then it would be nearly dialogue-free. In that way it reminded me of the George Clooney movie The American, or at least the first half of it. The voice-over definitely adds color and I think the movie needs it, but it's also great that the film is so visual that we spend most of it watching Fassbender work in silence. I'd still trade it for a third season of Mindhunter in an instant, but oh well. I'm happy with this. I think there's time left for one more recent movie and I think we'll stick with the Netflix thriller genre and give this Benicio Del Toro movie a try.
11.10.23	Barbie	Greta Gerwig	Oppenheimer is not available for home viewing yet so I couldn't do the double feature like this summer but... that's probably ok because I think the movies have nothing to do with each other anyway. Instead, this is kind of an examination of the toy line in an entertaining and girl-empowering way. I can see how the entire right hates the movie because it says words like patriarchy over and over again which I guess is triggering for some, but really let's be honest: this is a movie for young girls. As such, there are some jokes in here for the parents but just like any pixar film or other kids movie you can't be upset if there's some actual moral behind it. Although... I mean it's cool that Mattel could poke a little fun at itself (although I noticed they had a perfect part in the movie for one of the Barbies to say "math is hard" and they didn't... guess that one still stings) but I also bet a new generation of girls wants some damn barbies for christmas. I guess similar to the above paragraph, you can't go to a movie called Barbie and also be outraged at the marketing. In terms of what I thought of it... I liked it alright. Didn't love it, it felt a tad too long, but I didn't dislike it either and I can't imagine a better Barbie movie so there's that. Parts of it were fun. I hate to say, but Ryan Gosling kinda stole it. Ken's journey was much more interesting and entertaining than Barbie's. Without Ken, this movie would've been really not great. ok! So, my website shit the bed trying to add the last entry and I'd rather watch movies than try and troubleshoot or engage with support on a friday night, so who knows when these notes will make it online but rest assured I'm writing them in realtime. Next up is a movie I'm legit psyched to see.
11.10.23	Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse	Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson	Hey this site still exists! I watched a movie, everybody! Not only that, It's a whole weekend of movies! Yep, DVRfest 2023 is officially started! It's no secret I have not been watching much lately, didn't go to Fantastic Fest this year... so there's plenty to pick from for my own personal fest, plenty to catch up on. Tonight is catching up on "new" movies, or maybe "big" movies that I missed, or maybe "the glaring ones I have to get through before diving into more interesting picks." Whatever you call it, the fest started with this animated sequel to the pretty Spider-Man thingy. Spider-Man was one of my favorite books as a kid when I went through my comics phase. I've probably mentioned that a dozen times on this journal as I've sat through bleh Spider-Man movies, terrible Spider-Man movies, decent Spider-Man movies, and good Spider-Man movies. My most common complaint is that with each reboot comes this need to tell us all about Uncle Ben and Aunt May and this origin story that takes half the movie. But then a movie came along that leveraged that trope into a fun multi-verse story taking wild comics-only Spider-people and mashing them together and everyone was surprised because it was really good and the animation was great and changed from universe to universe and everyone was impressed. Then they basically did the same thing but with the film Spider-Men and again everyone was surprised and impressed that they took all these struggling rebooted franchises with good actors in varying degrees of crappy movies and mashed them together and it was great. But then this movie comes along and does the same thing... a third time... with even more Spider-people from increasingly obtuse storylines and uses kinda the same plot as the previous movies... and is super long, then ends on a cliffhanger and a promise of a third... third movie. It's kinda... I mean there's only so far you can go through the looking glass before the novelty wears off and you're up your own ass. Yes, this movie was gorgeous and it's so dense you have to pause to see everything and it's really slick and colorful and vibrant. It's still good, and I liked it... but I do think it falls victim to the typical sequel thing of "the same but MORE!" And now I don't even get a resolution? So there's the MCU I gotta remember (side note, Loki season 2 is like the same EXACT plot), and the non-MCU Sony Spider-Man live-action universe of Venom and Kraven and Morbius and shit... AND the animated Spider-Verse Multiverse? Which acknowledges the others but is also separate from? THat's a lot of shit when I just want to watch a movie for a couple hours. Again, I can't stress enough how pretty the movie is. The art and animation styles are once again so expressive. I did have a good time watching this. I guess not knowing it was a part-2-of-3 was a little jarring though. Guess I'll be prepared for the next one. So that got the palate activated, but what's next? Well, the biggest movie of the year!
09.12.23	Happy Happy Joy Joy: The Ren & Stimpy Story	Ron Cicero, Kimo Easterwood	I stumbled upon this thinking it was an amateur youtube essay but it wound up being a feature film, and a rather decent one at that. Filmmaking-wise it more or less follows the established documentary formula but you hear from most everyone you'd want to hear from (including a lengthy and candid interview with John K. himself) and it gives some nostalgic perspective to a thing I liked when I was growing up. I remember John K. came to the Alamo somewhere around 2006 or 7 and showed some of the random shorts he'd done as well as some of the "adult" reincarnation of Ren & Stimpy that he did for Spike TV and they brought the house down. Of course, now that we know the inappropriate relationships he was engaging in you can't help but have that feeling sour since the adult stuff WAS overtly perverse in a way that was only hinted at during the original show, and the doc does a good job of crediting a series of people who contributed and acted as checks and balances to make that original show lightning in a bottle that all of John K's subsequent solo work missed. It also talks about that effect in general... whether the work itself suffers after learning something negative about its creator. There's really only a few minutes of this at the very end but I thought it was a revealing and surprising ending to have John talk about it and his somewhat forced retirement because of it. You could say it's a pivot since 85% of the movie deals with the rise and fall of the Nickelodeon show, but on the other hand one of the credits that the film attributes to the show's legacy is bringing the creator back into the forefront in animation so not discussing what the creator is arguably more famous for now would lead the film toward bordering on misinformation. So yeah... I do remember loving that show when it came on... and I do feel more conflicted about it now. Good doc if you were similar to myself and want to hear more from the people who made it.
08.13.23	Asteroid City	Wes Anderson	Huh. On the one hand, I'd say Wes Anderson has all but invented a genre with his career and it's pretty remarkable that he's managed to make 11 of these movies with singular voice and vision. But then I watched this, and... I feel like I say this every time but he's pushing this precocious artifice further and further with each endeavor and the films get prettier and prettier but the stories get more and more disconnected from human emotion. This one is just a giant onion of posture, like it's a child playing with dolls or a miniature train set or a video game or diorama. For me, the story didn't penetrate he formalism. Not to say that it was bad. I think it was a successful execution... certainly fun performances from a gigantic cast and the sets look amazing and the camera is so locked in on those dolly tracks you can all but see the bubble level just above the frame. And there are a few moments which struck me as clever, like Brian Cranston's character and hearing Rupert Friend's british accent, but mostly I think I hit the tipping point of where Anderson's style folds in on itself too much. It was quite pretty to watch though.
08.12.23	Blackberry	Matt Johnson	This was decent. A bit less of a comedy than I was expecting, but still engaging. I dunno, it was decent, alright? get off my back!
08.12.23	No Hard Feelings	Gene Stupnitsky	The search for a good comedy continues. I gave this one a shot due to seeing a pretty funny nude fight scene online, but unfortunately that and the jokes in the trailer were pretty much it. It's not terrible, just another movie that relies too much on a by-the-numbers story with not enough jokes hanging on the branches to make it memorable. Oh well. Maybe the next one will be better.
07.30.23	The Out-Laws	Tyler Spindel	This was ok. Decent first act, lousy second act, ok third. I guess I watched this for the same reason that I watched that Jonah Hill Eddie Murphy movie which is that there's a dearth of funny movies lately. I knew this wasn't going to be amazing but was hoping for entertaining enough, which I think I mostly got. Good cast, no surprises.
07.29.23	Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3	James Gunn	keeping up with the Marvel stuff, I thought this was pretty good. That came as a surprise considering I thought the Xmas Special was a waste of time and I just finished Secret Invasion which I thought was slow and underwhelming. This was well paced and flowed pretty well considering its runtime (2.5 hours). Mostly they got me by making little cg animals sad. The whole Toy Story flashback stuff with the misfit animals put a little dust in the air and made the villain's inevitable fall very gratifying. Let's see, what else. I dunno. it was pretty good. We've gotta be at like a hundred hours of MCU content at this point so it's a nice surprise that a movie like this can still be pretty good, but I do continue to wonder where it's leading and how long it will go on. I mean, the hard part of the first Guardians film was that not many people were familiar with the characters, but now along with an evolving Avengers line-up, you have some truly random characters donning the Guardians outfit here. I'm not sure so many people are gonna be interested in Adam Warlock and Black Knight and Hercules... but then again, now that they own Fox if they can not fuck up the fantastic four and x-men then maybe they've got another hundred hours of content ahead no problem.
07.23.23	They Cloned Tyrone	Juel Taylor	This is a weird fun movie that harkens back to blaxploitation movies like The Spook Who Sat by the Door and 90s black movies like Undercover Brother mixed with more modern sci-fi stuff like Jordan Peele. It goes pretty heavy with style, sometimes to an almost distracting degree with film grain and cigarette burns and a displaced time and place but at its heart I feel like it's a fun movie. The message gets a big muddy for the sake of entertainment, but in my opinion that's how it should be. It was funny, good performances, interesting story, and lots of good music. I liked it quite a bit.
06.24.23	Baby Driver	Edgar Wright	The opening scene set to Bellbottoms by The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion popped up on Youtube and reminded me that I've really only seen this movie once and it was during that Alamo throwback night that was so cool for many reasons. It put me in the mood to watch it again. I liked it still. Probably not as gushing as my recounting of that original viewing, but still quite a bit. The choreography and alignment to music is really cool. It's definitely more intricately laid out in the beginning scenes both with Bellbottoms and the credits song where the words are graffitied on the scenery, but even pretty deep into the film the gunfire is still in synch. You have to admire that attention to design. I do think it suffers... I don't know if "suffer" is the right word. I think I'm just not a big fan of most third acts. When things escalate to stand offs and fake-out deaths and explosions it feels less in form with the rest of the film, but I also understand why most people probably like that stuff. It's also a shame that Kevin Spacey turned out to be a bad guy. I think this is the last movie to come out where his name in the credits got a solid nod from most folks instead of vocal disgust. The other supporting cast here is pretty great so it's a shame Spacey's presence has to throw a shadow on it. I guess Ansel Elgort's performance is also not super great but it kind of fits the role
06.20.23	Extraction 2	Sam Hargrave	Really I watched the first Extraction last night because my co-worker recommended Extraction 2 but I felt like I should see the first one first. And because I did, I get now that the "extraction" part of these movies is what deserves the super long stitched together "single" take sequence that is a stand-out in both films. This one, being a sequel, is twice as long and more than twice as ambitious, involving a ton of stunt people and extras, some digital flames, and a nicely escalated final bit involving different kinds of vehicles. According to the Internet it's 20 minutes instead of 10 in the last one. So that's the scene that stand outs, but I actually thought the other action with normal editing was better in this one as well. The story is a tiny bit more layered which is kind of nice and mostly it knows not to overstay its welcome. Tight 100 minutes with like 20 minutes of credits. Overall, I liked this one more than the first, and I liked the first ok! I'll watch the next one, since I guess this is a franchise now.
06.19.23	Extraction	Sam Hargrave	Watched this on a recommendation from a co-worker. I initially gave it a pass because it looked like a generic by-the-numbers action movie with nothing new to say. That's pretty much what it is but I'll say this: I liked it more than John Wick 4. When the dude gets hit by a car, he's sorta kinda messed up for a bit. I mean the cloth sling that immediately comes off when it has to isn't much, but it's better than Keanu just standing up from that shit. So, I guess all action movies are now are set pieces, and this movie has one that's a stitched-together long single take of a car chase, foot chase, action scene type thing that's pretty cool. That one scene (which is like 10 minutes long) and the fact that the damage was somewhat realistic made it enough to get through being entertained. It's not like some great shock that the story has been done a thousand times before, I was in the mood for a no-brainer action movie and that's what I got. And the is-he-dead-or-not ending was also done better than John Wick 4.
05.27.23	John Wick: Chapter 4	Chad Stahelski	I was pretty meh on this. The good: I like Keanu and I'm happy people want to see him in movies. A couple of the action sequences were great: That video game-esque floating ceiling shot was really cool, some of the driving around the arc de arc de triomphe was cool, some of Donnie Yen's fight choreography was cool. I really felt for John Wick when he fell down all those stairs. The bad: why was this movie three hours long? why did the german club-goers KEEP DANCING when people were dying and shooting all around them? Same for the cars around the arc de triomphe? After a while all the fights seem the same. It doesn't matter if he grapples then shoots in the face 5 guys or 120. I'll just say it, the bulletproof suits are silly. The music felt largely generic and not thought out. Much of the photography felt digital-fake even when it should've felt real. I ONLY felt for John Wick when he fell down all those stairs! SPOILERS The ugly: If John Wick didn't die then this was a very weak ending. If he DID die then this was a SUPER weak ending. He could either be dying or sleepy? Donnie Yen got shot in the exact same place and shrugged it off, AND he bled more digital blood! Also, what are the stakes? Why are we even watching? Is John Wick's plan to kill the entire table? the whole world? Who is the guy with the dog? Where'd Halle Berry go? Why does no one in the entire world speak to each other like human beings? How does John Wick travel so easily across the atlantic ocean but can't get across a city? The bulletproof suits are fucking stupid because now nothing is even approaching realistic. How are his hands not all shot up? Not one scratch through the entire movie until Donnie Yen stabs him in the hand? At times, Watching this felt like watching someone else play a video game: it made no sense and it was exhausting.
05.20.23	Air	Ben Affleck	The story of how Nike signed Michael Jordan. This was touched upon somewhat briefly in the HBO show Winning Time which takes place a few years prior to this, but still shares a vibe in a lot of ways. I hate to say it but Winning Time is more entertaining. I liked this one ok, but there were a few things that bugged me, like the onslaught of 80s references that sets up the film, super on-the-nose source music, general lack of energy, and a lack of surprise about the story. I mean I don't want them to make shit up, but it's kinda a whole movie about a couple people working over the weekend. As a non-sports person who was a kid at the time, the charm of Winning Time is learning the details that I didn't know before. With this, it's just kinda like a not as good version of Jerry Maguire or something. I dunno. Maybe my hopes were too high with Affleck and Damon reunited. I still haven't seen that mullet movie they just did, maybe I should watch that too, but here they kinda just sit around. The one real dramatic moment we get (where Matt Damon gives a speech to sell Jordan on signing), they cut to archival footage that just serves to remind us that he obviously says yes. So it's a tough one... I don't know how they could make it better, but it's also a bit of a snoozer.
05.20.23	The Super Mario Bros. Movie	Aaron Horvath, Michael Jelenic	I guess this is the year of generational fan service with both a good DnD movie and a good Super Mario Bros. movie coming out within weeks of each other. This one was fun but very much still a kid's movie. I'm happy that newer generations have this and the theme park and everything else to serve their fandom but I'm also feeling pretty old. It doesn't seem like this was an impossible task to get right. It's a pretty standard plot with a bunch of references and it looks good and they didn't screw it up. Glad I saw it but since I'm not a huge nintendo guy I didn't freak out over it. Although I do feel a need to specifically call out the animation of the dog. That's some S-tier dog animation. I loved his expressions both when he had to still lick his owner while shooting stink-eye at Luigi and how he pushed his snoot down against the shower door with his paws up on the glass. My dog does that move with her long snoot when she looks out the car window and it is cah-YUTE and the animators captured it perfectly here.
05.03.23	Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Amongst Thieves	John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein	I watched the D&D movie! I think I've mentioned several times on here that after many dormant years my D&D itch started up again about ten years or so ago. For a while I tried to scratch it a couple different ways (mostly with play-by-email games that became long writing projects) but eventually started playing again with co-workers about six years ago and started a home game in 2020 with college friends thanks to the pandemic. For several years in my youth, my high school friend group had a regular game for years that I really enjoyed. Looking back, I count myself lucky that the friends I found back then were on the cool side but also rather gamed than drank or did drugs for a hobby. We weren't really as nerdy as the kids sitting around the table in Freaks and Geeks, but we definitely played in the same way. Of course, there were a couple odd things... the guy who mainly ran games was in college so we'd play with his roomate sometimes which I think is mostly ok, but there was also a full-on adult who sometimes came by to play para-military games like Twilight 2000. That's... pretty odd. Nothing untoward happened or anything like that, but I'd feel pretty weird playing with high school kids now. Of course, there was not a female in sight in my main group, although someone's girlfriend played in the cooler, more goth Call of Cthulhu game that another friend ran. But I digress. So through the years I've always wanted some kind of cinematic representation of the cool art and imagination-fueled stories that filled my mind during those years. I remember we got a VHS-assisted boardgame at one point with like 15 minutes of piss-poor video sequences that were supposed to be triggered by the game (There was a wave of these during the fad, which eventually morphed into the SceneIt series in the DVD era, and now I guess lives in Jackbox games). Even attempting such humble things as sneaking past a guard or scaling a wall looked laughably terrible. All the 80s and 90s fantasy movies were also mostly low-budget trash. The Conan movies were good but it was a slightly different fantasy and the effects were minimal. Really, we just had one movie that felt like it got close to what we were imagining in our heads and that was Dragonslayer. Really just the one or two scenes featuring the Dragon; the rest of the movie wasn't great. Dragonheart came out once CGI was a thing but once again we got a shit-poor movie. The first official D&D film is now notorious for how crap it is. That was just the way until Lord of the Rings came along. Game of Thrones as well, but you can't mention that show without cringing at the end. And finally we have this movie which I think is actually good. I liked it quite a bit! There are a bunch of IP-related references and easter eggs which nerds like me appreciate. Stuff like the Axe Beaks and the locations, more exotic player races, actually seeing game-specific spells in use. All that stuff is exactly what I wanted to see in an officially-licensed D&D movie which is fantastic. Just with that stuff, the story and performances could've been completely mediocre and I still would have enjoyed myself but really I think this would be a good movie even without the Wizards of the Coast IP. I didn't find any character annoying at all. They all played their classes really well I thought! I think it comes through that the writer/directors have actually played the game. And how perfect is it that one of the co-writer/directors WAS Sam in Freaks and Geeks!? I love how his career has developed. So... I can see how some hardcore game nerds would complain about the movie not being 100% rules-as-written, but these people don't know the pain of waiting 30 years for something like this. Who gives a shit if the druid can't wildshape into an owlbear in the game? Or wildshape six times in a row. Those scenes are cool as shit and really they should be complaining about the game not letting them do that instead of the movie "making stuff up." So yeah, I thought this was good and had a great time with it. It nails the tone of playing the game very well, showcases a lot of what's cool about it, and has the luxury of directly representing a lot of iconic stuff from the brand. I'd be watching this on repeat if it came out in 1994.
05.02.23	Ambulance	Michael Bay	I decided to watch this after seeing Jake Gyllenhaal do Hot Ones. I watched Prisoners again... I hated Michael Bay's last movie but I thought "why not." I should've paid more attention during that interview when he said Bay told him not to bother memorizing lines from the script and that they would make it up on the day. This movie is terrible. Michael Bay saw the original film without subtitles on and thought "what this needs is drone shots." That's what we got. He may think he's advancing the form by not worrying about things like continuity, character, language, logic, etc., but really he just made a shitty movie. I mean, he quotes his own movies in here. The characters in this movie have SEEN Michael Bay movies like The Rock and Bad Boys. Speaking of watching Michael Bay movies, I think this is the last one for me. I don't watch enough movies at this point to justify spending time on stuff like this. To be honest, I really only finished this one so that I could write this note. I should've watched the other Gyllenhaal hollywood remake instead.
04.22.23	Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania	Peyton Reed	Latest marvel. I think the previous films have felt "minor" where they were fun but didn't really affect the MCU much. This one seems more central, but still due to the nature of setting up the next big conflict or whatever it has to end on a bit of an unknown. I dunno, this was fine. I like Paul Rudd. I like Michael Douglas in this role. I thought this was better than the last few I saw. I liked how weird everything was. Yes it was cartoony and childish but hey, so are comic books. This is the level of weirdness and randomness that I wanted from the Dr. Strange Multiverse movie. There are still some pretty major logistical leaps (they can breathe oxygen? what do they eat? If it's outside of space and time then why did Michelle Pfeiffer age 30 years?), but whatever. I have an easier time looking past that stuff when there's a guy with a laser gun for a head. In that mode, I thought MODOK was funny and didn't upset me with his tone. Jonathan Majors was a decent Kang (we'll see if this is his last appearance). But Bill Murray was just kinda there. the protracted exposition stuff was slow and clunky, the rules felt made up about whether they're stuck there or whatever. There is ZERO chemistry between Rudd and Evangeline Lilly. Really her presence in the movie felt strained, which sucks for her. I dunno what's going on there but she didn't seem to be having a good time at all. so yeah, it was fine.
04.10.23	Prisoners	Denis Villeneuve	It's been long enough to where I don't remember what happens in this and I was watching one of those youtube videos where Roger Deakins talks about some of the movies he shot and they showed the sequence toward the end where Jake Gyllenhaal's driving through the rain and the photography there is really well-done. Plus now Denis Velleneuve has made quite a career for himself, I think this is the first movie of his that I saw so I thought it'd be fun to revisit. Very good. Liked it very much. Very dark.
04.09.23	Smokin' Aces	Joe Carnahan	This movie popped up a few times lately. I'd forgotten Jason Bateman was in it, I'd forgotten Chris Pine was in it, Tarantino mentioned it as basically a whole movie about the end of True Romance, and Joe Carnahan was on Joe Dante's podcast. These together made me interested in seeing it again. Funny enough, I only remember seeing this at a Butt-Numb-A-Thon years ago and halfway sleeping through it, but checking my notes I actually watched it a year later because I didn't trust my BNAT experience. It seems like I liked it in those two screenings. Less so tonight. It does have quite a cast that has only grown with time. Taraji P. Henson, Ben Affleck, Peter Berg, Tommy Flanagan, Joel Edgerton, some before they really broke out. And the structure of the film is quite fun where all these groups of bad hombres converge, but it seems like last time I liked the action and this time I didn't. They don't REALLY converge much. A couple random things happen and there's like two or three minutes of mayhem but this time around I saw it more as a missed opportunity than this clever climax. And my previous criticisms still stand. The ending with its weird forced twist is a thousand percent telegraphed with clunky exposition that stands out amid the sea of exposition that is the first act of this movie. I kept waiting for more intersections between these groups of people and got some knockoff Usual Suspects bullshit instead. And Andy Garcia's accent goes on a road trip throughout his speech while Ryan Reynolds acts as much as he can. In the end, it's really just a missed opportunity. Great cast, fun concept, disappointing.
04.04.23	The Bad and the Beautiful	Vincente Minnelli	The second half of a movies-about-movies double feature in reaction to watching Babylon. I started this the same night but kept falling asleep so I'm kind of stretching the definition of "double feature" but it's there in spirit. This is a Hollywood studio movie about itself with Kurt Douglas (the Bad) playing an ambitious producer and Lana Turner (the Beautiful), Dick Powell, and Barry Sullivan playing successful figures in the business who refuse to work with him again. The movie is a series of flashbacks explaining each character's history with Douglas, how they came to know him, how he helped them develop a career, and what he did to piss them off. I saw this is pretty similar to the progression of Babylon's main characters although now that I watch this again it's not an exact 1:1 relationship although the fact that each of these characters are loosely sourced from real people is still similar enough to bear comparison. I learned of this movie because of... I want to say one of the Martin Scorsese documentaries about movies that came out around the same time as AFI started putting out lists. He included the scene where Kirk Douglas is basically channeling Val Lewton in designing Cat People to not show the shoddy costumes but instead play on the psychology of the unknown. Douglas' character is not 100% Lewton in this (I think most people consider him to mostly be pulling from David O Selznick) but in that scene he is and you can imagine it playing out in real life not too dissimilarly. This one's interesting because it was made at the height of the studio system so us watching today get to double dip in a way, both in how the seeing fictional films getting made using the same equipment as the film itself was made. Lots of crew characters strongly resemble real people filling that role at that time. It's nowhere near as meta as a film like Adaptation, but I imagine for its day it was quite novel. The movie itself I thought was very good, but good in a classic Hollywood way. The ending feels false, most if not all of the scenes are shot on soundstages, the script is very polished and convenient, and the music, while good, is pretty heavy-handed. But those things are not necessarily a negative depending on how much you might enjoy the experience of a classic hollywood picture. So this is nowhere near as graphic or frenetic or pessimistic as Babylon, but I do feel like it covers somewhat similar ground through a much different implementation, and the aspects of Babylon which I found confusing are presented in a totally clear way here. I do want to note, there's a scene with Lana Turner driving in the rain where she spins out that's shot in some kind of crazy rear projection rig that I found very effective. You can definitely still tell that it's rear-projection, but the way the camera moves and her performance really evoke something that normal process shots don't. Pretty cool shot. So anyway, I don't think I LOVE loved this, but I did enjoy watching it again after so long and I think it holds up with the qualifiers mentioned above.
04.02.23	Nickelodeon	Peter Bogdanovich	Tonight's double feature is a couple movies about movies that I mentioned in my notes on Damien Chazelle's Babylon. I said these two movies were better than that movie but it'd been a long time since I've seen either so I figured why not revisit them and see if I was right or not. The last time this happened, where I watched True Lies after The Gray Man I was really surprised at how not great True Lies has held up! Will the same hold true for these? Let's find out. Nickelodeon takes place about ten years before Babylon, before Los Angeles was where movies got made. Ryan O'Neal stars as a lawyer cum director who looks like Harold Lloyd and Burt Reynolds as a cowboy drifter who becomes a leading man. Tatum O'Neal is also in it along with a young John Ritter as a location crew making these early one-reel movies that would play at the titular venues (way before the kid's cable network). I saw this movie in the early 2000s right after reading Bogdanovich's tome of interviews Who The Devil Made It where he talked to Allen Dwan and Raoul Walsh (among many many others) and got great stories of the very beginning of the artform. So when those stories showed up in this movie, I was pleasantly surprised and my lasting memories of the movie are positive. The film has a pretty dreary reputation however. It was a huge flop for Bogdanovich in a string of flops that was a momentous fall from grace after his early career. Watching it again, I can see how this wouldn't have fit in the zeitgeist of 1976. I mean that was the year of Taxi Driver, Rocky, Carrie, All the President's Men. Pretty much right in the middle of that miserable malaise of gritty 70s filmmaking, and here comes this bright almost slapstick love letter to silent film, I think the same year as Mel Brooks' send-up of them! So to me that would account for some of the negative reactions. I also get the sense that it was fashionable to hate both Bogdanovich and his then-wife Cybil Shepherd because of their outlandish earlier success. But what about the movie itself? Well, it's not great. It's not terrible I don't think, but it's also not without issue. It's about a half an hour too long, takes way too long to get going, barely has enough time for this love triangle which is really the only plot hooking these fun anecdotes of early filmmaking together, and this is weird but Ryan O'Neal and Burt Reynolds don't have that much chemistry, either with the leading lady or each other. The passage of time and title cards also give the story a disjointed vibe, and lastly it hooks into what was cool back in the 1910s, which is apparently the ku klux klan. It gets harder and harder to see the historical significance of Birth of a Nation these days when shit like Friends is getting criticized for its cultural insensitivity. But you know... there's a lot of it that I did like. For one, having most of the music be diagetic from the guy in the crew with a harmonica or squeezebox is great. Loved seeing it in Life Aquatic; it's way more believable here than dragging a full orchestra out into the desert (that's a dig on Babylon). You see the same reproductions of early sets all in a row, re-cutting dramas into comedies by the studio men back east, early stunt work, all basically right out of the interviews with Dwan and Walsh and to my memory faithfully and entertainingly depicted. You also get a good sense of wonder of going to an early movie palace with the orchestra and sound effects behind the screen and that thrill of seeing something you'd never seen before. I loved the wide shot of Griffith coming out for a curtain call. I feel like you get a great sense of how wild west it actually was without need for over embellishment or fabrication. A quick note on how I watched this. I guess it's kind of a hard movie to see? The imdb trivia says that Bogdanovich owns/owned the rights so it's never had a real home release. I caught it on TCM way back when (they have films that are otherwise unavailable and they'll play them like once a year with no fanfare). But thanks to the age we're living in, I found two copies of it online. Archive.org had a copy that was broadcast on TCM in 2020 and it was a black and white version which I thought would be better, but somehow it was a low-quality rip of a VHS recording. I don't know who's still rocking a VCR with blank tapes and taping shit off TCM like they don't have a DVR in 2020, but it gave me a hell of a nostalgia wave since that's exactly how I first saw this movie 20 years ago. It was Ben Mankiewicz instead of Robert Osbourne but I love how they intro the film and give it a little context at the start. This one also had a plug for TCM's podcast series where they talk to Bogdanovich about his career (which I'll need to check out at some point). However, the source material was full-frame 480p and the bitrate of the rip was low enough to where I couldn't read words on screen or really discern faces. Plus there was a VHS-era buzzing on the audio that proved too annoying to slug it out through so I found a cleaner digitization on another site to watch the second half. It was still standard definition and it was the original color version but at least the sound was clear and it was the original aspect ratio.
04.01.23	Babylon	Damien Chazelle	Oh boy, what to say about this one. This is a... kind of epic maybe, about the excess of 1920s Hollywood, or rather about the introduction of sound in movies, or rather about how Hollywood will corrupt and ruin everything, or rather about the magic of movies. Somewhere in there are like three and a half protagonists and a bunch of money on the screen and a clip of Avatar at the end. This should be a movie right up my alley, but I think it's because it went into such niche territory that I wound up having more problems with it compared to if it were more generic or whatever. I suppose a stronger reaction is better regardless of whether it's positive or negative, but I definitely had a negative reaction to this movie. I think my major problem with it is tone. I am not sure what Damien Chazelle is trying to say with it. At times it feels like an indictment, at others a celebration. Sometimes it's fantasy, others realism. The characters feel like excuses to say these speeches that feel straight from Chazelle himself. The plot is clunky and meandering. But most of all, the movie feels like a modern-day example of the thing it seems to be criticizing. Backing up a bit, I liked Whiplash, didn't love La La Land, and didn't see First Man. I like Chazelle's love of the drum and music in general but here I felt like it was anachronistic not to make a statement but just because this is the music that Chazelle likes. I liked the music but now way was Leo P's Too Many Zooz baritone sax style in vogue at that time. And if it's not supposed to be real, then why base the story on real people and real-life events? Why play goddamn Singin in the Rain (a movie that tells the same story more or less but much much better) at the end? It's all very confusing. For as raucous and chaotic a vibe that he's going for, comparing it to a similar movie like Moulin Rouge's opening makes this look glossy and expensive and cold. Josh Olsen on the Trailers from Hell podcast said something that I very much agree with, which is that these Gen Z directors are weird about sex. This movie shows almost pornographic levels of debauchery, but it's almost like wallpaper because the camera doesn't know what to do with it. In more assured hands, it can be erotic (like a Jess Franco film) or dirty (think David Lynch's Fire Walk with Me) or bizarre (Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut), but here it's actively uninteresting. I've gotten a similar vibe from other movies coming out of this crop of directors, like the It Follows guy's Under the Silver Lake. There are plenty of tits but no sensuality. And you know, it'd be fine if that were the point, but I suspect we're meant to be overwhelmed and whisked away by this excess since a couple of the main characters are, but I was definitely not. I was watching one very pregnant lady trying her hardest to act like she was dancing with wild abandon and thinking "that looks uncomfortable." Joe Dante called the film grotesque. I suspect his feelings stem more from the unfair characterization of Hollywood in general (like having multiple people die per day on set), but the vibe is there on multiple levels. Anyway, let's talk about what I liked. I liked some of the sweeping location photography stuff, with the musicians on set for the silents and the different sets right next to each other and them inventing the story in the dialogue cards. Basically everything that Bogdanovich's Nickelodeon tried to cover except he stuck much closer to stories he heard first-hand from the early directors and his movie suffered for other reasons. Really this movie is like Nickelodeon meets The Bad & The Beautiful with the setting taken from one and the plot from the other. Oh right, stuff I liked. I did like the music. It's much too modern but I liked Leo P's inclusion and how rambunctious it is. I do feel like Chazelle likes drums and you feel it in both the music and his editing. It was fun to see who played the German director and the studio exec and I thought Brad Pitt's part was going to be more like Clooney in Hail, Caesar! but it was a real leading role which is nice since he's one of the few remaining movie stars that we got. I think they should've, like, explained more about how his story develops. If you read the imdb trivia about John Gilbert, his story is much more interesting than what happens in the film. Pretty much everything else I had one problem or another with. It doesn't help that the biggest head-scratcher was right at the end with this AFI top 100 type montage epiphany from the guy who worked on them for like 5 years. I guess that one coked-up conversation really stuck with him. That really bothered me because the rest of the movie really seems very anti-hollywood. I guess the theme is that movies are great despite the people who make them? Hollywood will turn you into a monster but it's worth it for the movies that get made? Meh.
03.27.23	Avatar: The Way of Water	James Cameron	I know I'm insulated in the bubble of my own taste, but did this movie really make that much money? I feel like those numbers are the result of bot farms or something. I haven't really heard anyone say anything about it. I know the first film had a kind of rabid fanbase of people who'd watch it over and over again to pretend that Pandora was a real place where they could live, did those same people live in the theaters for this one? I don't really get it. Uhh, I found this movie to be like a video game that someone else was playing. The visuals were very pretty and the water effects were... basically I have no idea how they did anything because the water looked real even when the landscape or plants or characters didn't, which was rare. I'm sure it was even better in the theater so maybe anyone who had any interest in this made a point to go out to see it and that's why it made so much money. I saw the first one in IMAX 3D and pretty much my only memory of it after all these years was that I stopped noticing the 3D after a half hour and that I didn't like the villain character. Well, probably a mistake but I made a point to wait on this one until I could watch it at home. Without the 3D or IMAX screen it was still pretty but not distractingly so. I also heard that some theaters had like a variable frame-rate? like the actions scenes sped up to 60 or 120fps then slowed back down to 24 for dialogue scenes? That would annoy the hell out of me. Unfortunately, with this ability to admire the visuals but still pay attention to other elements like story, I was, well, in parts I was bored. I think at my lowest interest level, I checked the time and found I was only half way through the movie. Thankfully, stuff started blowing up which got me through an hour or so but by the end I was very ready for it to be over. Practically all of my problems are story related, so I'm dipping into spoilers from here on out. The gist is that I didn't love it. SPOILER ALERT Ugh. I mean, are these even spoilers? The story was practically the same as the first movie, or at least what I remember of it. Space people bad, blue people good. Industrialists threaten the balance of nature, natives fight back, win battle, leave it open ended enough for a sequel. It's just water instead of floating mountains and jungle. Oh, except the one-note villain who died at the end of the first movie is brought back as a friggin clone even more one-note than before. It doesn't even make sense why he'd still care to hunt this guy. It seemed like when they went into hiding, the resistance guerilla attacks stopped, so... what's the problem? He's obviously not there still leading attacks on supply lines or whatever. But he's a clone with memories of hatred toward this guy and he finds out that they killed him (side note: what does it say when your clone crushes the skull of yourself? Nuance? Depth? Humanity?) so I guess I can accept the personal vendetta, but requisitioning a fantasy whaling ship? Burning hooches like it was Nam? It seems like he's got about 400 soldiers under his command hell bent on taking out one dude and his wife. Better scan the entire planet for airship activity on the off-chance that he's hiding 400 clicks away. Maybe Jake Scully must be eliminated because he's the only navi with facial hair? I don't get why they gave him shave-face when everyone else is play-doh blue. Other than that, there is no real story. It's basically whatever basic familiar thing can get us from one set piece to another, but the set pieces are familiar. He's gotta bond with an ornery animal again, and he's gotta go to the world tree again and they're gonna attack a huge ship with mech-suits again in order to defend a different super-rare natural resource. I'd say the only new element are these fantasy whales but that whole sequence is super strained by basically setting up the rules and lore of them IMMEDIATELY before cashing those chips in, like in the very next scene. And then there's the subjective drownings at the end and a by-all-accounts stretch to keep the villain alive for the next one. It's just all so bland. But pretty. The creature design reminded me a tiny bit of the Subnautica games. There's no doubt that the world itself is pretty and again the animation and visual effects work is top notch, but is that surprising? I just think this movie is exactly what I thought it would be, like to the point where I'm actually not sure I needed to watch it.
03.26.23	The Great Waldo Pepper	George Roy Hill	The second half of a Robert Redford / William Goldman double feature. This one has the added juice of being directed by George Roy Hill. When I endeavored to watch "the classics" during the latter half of my college tenure and the limbo years that followed, I of course watched Butch and Sundance as well as The Sting. I didn't know it was him who directed the Chevy Chase comedy Funny Farm and didn't see Slap Shot until a few years later, but found his work in the Newman/Redford movies to be mostly great. Something about this one though... I think I was always more of a Newman fan than Redford and the title sounded odd so I didn't bother to track it down. Perhaps if Newman had agreed to do it (as mentioned in the imdb trivia) it would've had a different fate with the box office and my viewing. But I'm glad I didn't see it then because it means I get to see it for the first time now. As mentioned in my notes for Don Siegel's The Lineup, I feel like I've seen enough movies to where most of the ones I watch for the first time are a little lesser known. I'm sure i haven't seen ALL the movies that are considered great, but I do think I've seen a large percentage of the ones that fit my interest. So when a movie like this comes along, much like The Hot Rock, I'm happy to find a couple good scenes or elements but most often wind up saying stuff like "it was decent" or "i liked it well enough." With all that in mind, I'm happy to report that I fucking LOVED this movie. The world of 1920s barnstorming is probably more interesting to me now than 20 years ago. I found it interesting that all these flying aces were war pilots, and in some cases even Germans flying in the US to make a living, so there's like a professional respect mixed with old enmity going on. But really... the biggest draw of this movie was the aerial photography. These old biplanes were great for showing pilot's faces and Roy (again, according to the imdb trivia) was a navy pilot so he flew the damn things and put his actors right up there with him. Like you can see Redford and Bo Svenson (this came out the same year as Part 2 Walking Tall did) walking on the wings and whatnot. I'm sure there's a deft mix of movie magic for a lot of the close-ups (i don't imagine they'd take the plane up just to get a shot of Bo's leg pushing through the wing), but a lot of the shots are clearly the actors up in the air. I mean, that's the only thing the new Top Gun has going for it, and this outdoes that in spades while also having a good story! Eat your heart out, Tom! Ok, There is one scene. It definitely looks like Susan Sarandon or a double got out on the wing once wearing nothing but a silk slip, but even at 720p it's clearly a mannequin strapped to the wing for the majority of her shots. That's the one time I really broke immersion, but at the same time you can see it's really Redford out there reaching for it which is dazzling. A handful of sequences had me, like, leaning forward. They are very well choreographed, very well shot. The sequence with the open loop, there's a shot mounted to the plane showing the ground coming up that is just fantastic, and it looks like Edward Herrman (Dianne Wiest's boyfriend in The Lost Boys) is doing those loops. And the ending of that scene is SO effective! I read the imdb trivia too damn early and got spoiled and was STILL surprised. At the end of the movie, when Redford and his scene partner take off their parachutes and the girl asked "What's that mean?" I actually said out loud "It means we're gonna see some shit!" I was invested. So... falling somewhere between Paper Moon and Top Gun, this movie really delivered for me. I haven't seen Roy Hill's entire ouevre but judging by his "Story by" credit I'd say this was a close one for him and it really shows. It manages to display what the early wonder of flight must have been like and pay tribute to these barnstormers (all of which didn't live past their early thirties if you do the math in the intro). Great movie.
03.26.23	The Hot Rock	Peter Yates	Tonight's double feature is a pairing of Robert Redford movies written by William Goldman. I read Goldman's book Adventures in the Screen Trade in college and, like everyone, found it to be amazing. Both that and his follow-up, Which Lie Did I Tell? both give a candid look behind the scenes of his biggest hits and hollywood in general. It's been quite a while since reading those, and I remember him saying a few things about the second movie in this double feature, but I don't remember him even mentioning this movie. It could be because it was a huge bomb when it came out, but to be honest I didn't realize this was even written by Goldman when I added it to my list. Redford and Peter Segal are kinda like Clooney and Pitt in the Ocean's 11 remake, where Redford gets out of jail and immediately starts a new job: to steal some Saharan diamond. Where the movie departs from a typical heist is that the theft itself happens relatively early in the movie, but complications lead to a series of other capers that the crew has to do in order to retrieve the diamond which keeps eluding their grasp. It's a solid enough little movie. I don't think it's quite funny enough to stand out as a comedy, quite thrilling enough to stand out as an action, or quite clever enough to stand out as a heist movie but it has a good pedigree (Redford and Segal, Peter Yates directing, the Goldman script based on a Donald E. Westlake book, a Quincy Jones jazz score), and the early 70s NYC location photography is fun to look at. There's a helicopter sequence where you see some good footage of the World Trade Center towers still under construction. Also, this is I think the second or third time I've seen Zero Mostel in a movie, playing I guess himself as usual. Also, there's a tiny role of Redford's sister played by a stunning 70s lady named Topo Swope. What kind of name is that? I'm definitely using that in my D&D campaign. Also, we know she's supposed to be his sister but the coverage of the scene makes it seem like he's interested. Very odd little scene in a movie that similarly doesn't quite add up to the sum of its parts.
03.25.23	Ad Astra	James Gray	I'd seen some stuff about this and thought maybe it was worth a watch. I'm glad I did! It's definitely in the slower meditative vein of movies like Solaris and Oblivion, it also has some cool sequences and they picked a fun version of the near future where we focus on space travel but it's not quite star trek so there's still crappy airports on the moon and stuff. I definitely liked the first half more than the second, but you know... still... decent movie.
03.18.23	Triangle of Sadness	Ruben Ostlund	The second half of a movies-i-missed-at-Fantastic-Fest double feature. Force Majeure was a pleasant surprise when i saw it at Fantastic Fest. It's a decent movie built on an amazing scene where a family having a meal on the deck of a ski resort has a close call with an avalanche and the father completely ditches his wife and kids to save himself when he thinks the snow is going to overtake the deck. The avalanche subsides and everything goes back to normal but the rest of the movie is emotional fallout for the husband, his family, his friends, etc. I believe it was remade starring Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus and with Nat Faxon and Jim Rash (familiar to fans of The Way Way Back), but I think that's pretty terrible casting for this kind of black comedy and it's no surprise that nobody saw it, myself included. Anyway, Ostlund was back at the fest for his next movie The Square which sent up the world of modern art and had a weird story of an entitled guy finding himself meeting reality that he's not prepared for. My memories of the movie are pretty fragmented however because what I remember as the main story didn't have much to do with the stand-out scenes which involved a person suffering from Tourette's or the guy who did the ape movements for the Planet of the Apes movies taking his performance art too far in a dining room full of rich people. That one won the Palme D'Or at Canne but I dunno if it made waves here due to mainly non-english speaking cast. This movie feels like a lessons learned document about The Square. It's in English, it's just standout scenes without, like, a traditional narrative, bit it keeps the same kind of uncomfortable brutal humor of his other films. The result obviously worked since it not only won the Palme D'Or but also garnered a Best Picture Oscar nomination. In terms of Fantastic Fest, this was like a no-brainer to play. It matches the fest's sensibility perfectly, not to mention it's distributed by Neon which Tim League co-owns. In terms of the schedule, this would've been one of those movies that everyone knows will be good so it's a safe bet to see. For some more adventurous types they may skip it because they know they'll be able to see it. For people like me, it would be a must-see because the chance of it sucking is low and sitting through bad movies at a festival is its own kind of painful experience. The movie itself. I mostly thought it was ok while I was watching it, but I liked having seen it. The structure and pacing of each scene kept me in a place where I didn't know what the movie was until the start of the third act. Generally speaking, I enjoyed it more and more as the movie played out. The beginning argument with the elevator door had me fatigued, because both of Ostlund's previous movies were funny in a very stressful way and I thought if the whole movie are these two characters arguing with each other then I was in for a bad time. Thankfully, the movie opens up and becomes a clash between the tv shows Below Deck and Armando Iannucci's Avenue 5, with some Lord of the Flies thrown in for good measure. By the end I was having a moderately good time. Not as into it as The Menu, but I wound up not disliking this at all. SPOILERS AHEAD My favorite scene is probably everybody's favorite scene: The Captain's dinner. Very well done. In particular... I don't know if there were some fancy effects or if they really made the cast vomit because that did not look like they just put soup in their mouths. One shot in particular shows a poor lady expelling from both ends. It's such an effective shot! But I really hope they used some movie magic on that because to have to go through that in front of cameras would be tough!
03.18.23	The Menu	Mark Mylod	Tonight's double feature is a couple movies I missed at this year's Fantastic Fest. As my nonexistent movie journal readers know, Fantastic Fest is a film festival put on by the Alamo Drafthouse here in Austin every fall showing "genre" films which usually means horror, sci-fi, or fantasy but in practice wound up being off-kilter world cinema or whatever hollywood movie they could get to drum up publicity. I went to the first 10 or 11 in a run then had to skip a year so now I don't remember how many I've been to total, but covid disrupted things so my 2020 badge wound up being forwarded to 21, then to 22 where I didn't feel like I would have any fun going due to the crowds and memories of how I used to catch a cold every year before covid so I don't imagine things would be any different last year. And in a potential final nail in the coffin, the festival did a couple things to make more money which make it feel less special to me, not the least of which was putting 2023 badges on sale last december in the midst of christmas shopping and travel season. Now, it seems like me not getting a badge was wise because I've had to burn a lot of my PTO this year and probably won't have a week to take off when it comes around. But a couple interesting things have happened over the dozen or so years that I've been attending the festival. In the early years, the movies were mostly crap because they weren't established and fell right after Toronto's (much larger) festival and they really had to stretch to fill the schedule out. But then I feel like the programmers made a few discoveries and for a few years it was really fun, like to the point where several filmmakers said they made a movie just to come back. But there was a shift where in those early years you felt like you got to see movies that were otherwise unavailable, but as streaming services picked up they became a new kind of direct-to-video platform where I'd start to see all the FF movies wind up on Netflix. And lately, as is the case with this movie, I guess enough people saw those types of netflix movies that the filmmakers or subject matter is inching toward the mainstream. So this movie actually caused a stir when it didn't get any academy awards nominations, which I find bizarre. Because the subject matter hasn't changed. There was a movie called Estomago in like 2007 that dealt with a chef dabbling in cannibalism. I think it was Spanish and not great but it fit the Fantastic Fest bill perfectly, and this movie is basically the same thing. The demented sensibility of this film fits the fest perfectly, except you've got A-list actors like Ralph Finnes and Anya Taylor-Joy starring. And the next movie tonight is the same story. It's the third film from that director to play the festival, but this time it was nominated for Best Screenplay, director, and best picture(!) So is the world catching up to Fantastic Fest's genre sensibility? Or is it because these types of low budget genre pieces are the last movies standing other than Disney or Top Gun? I'm not sure, but it's a bizarre feeling to have your deviant film festival showing Best Picture nominees. But I digress. I liked this movie a lot. The humor of it is in my wheelhouse, I had no problem buying the twisted logic of it at the end, and I thought it was a wonderful send-up of the food porn genre clashed with class warfare. I was surprised to see Aimee Carrero in a supporting role as John Leguizamo's assistant. I know her from a friggin D&D stream so all my worlds are colliding right now. She was also in what I thought was the funniest scene of the movie, which I'll describe at the end in the spoilers section. The closest reference I have for this movie is Richard Bachman. To me, this movie is like a Bachman book. I believe I said the same thing about a Spanish(?) movie called The Platform from a few years back which wound up on Netflix, but it has a few trademark Bachman-isms: - a weird high concept that requires a tiny bit of suspension of disbelief - a macabre element on the concept - a strict adherence to the format it presents - a questionably terrible ending. So for those not versed in Stephen King's pseudonymous work, the idea that there's a contest where the person who can walk the longest distance gets all this fame and fortune but everyone else is executed as soon as they stop walking is a Bachman book. Same goes for the book of The Running Man where, instead of Arnold in a bizarre playground with WWF-type enemies hunting him, it's a normal guy who wants to feed his family forced to be hunting by the entire viewing audience as well as professional hunters tracking him. Or a story about a fat guy given a romani curse that he gets thinner. He also wrote a story about a school shooting but that one's proven to be too topical so I think it's been pulled from reprints. In any case, just because I read these books (collected in a tome simply titled "The Bachman Books") as an impressionable age, I find anything with that sort of arch premise similar. Like The Hunger Games. That's totally a young-adult Bachman-type story. Or Battle Royale for that matter, the movie that defined the genre. But I digress again. Anyway, The premise of a bunch of rich asshole archetypes trapped in a gourmet tasting menu by a maniacal chef appeals to me. I didn't worry about how realistic it is, and I think that's why I liked the movie so much. It doesn't have the it-can-happen-to-you terror of Hostel or the trapped-in-crazytown vibe of Nothing but Trouble. It's really closer to a Seven or Canterbury Tales, closer to a fairy tale. It works for me! SPOILERS AHOY! Back to what I thought was the funniest scene. The movie plays on the archetype of the chef as much as any of the diners. Finnes' character is beholden to his rules as much as any of the guests are to theirs. That's the logic that plays at the end which allows Taylor-Joy to escape (a la Ratatouille), by leveraging those rules, sending the food back, requesting the food he was happy making, asking for a to-go back, etc. But my favorite scene was when John Leguizamo's actor character basically asks why he's there and we learn it's because he was in a shitty movie that the chef saw on his day off. For the sin of wasting his one day off, he's condemned to die. But then! Then he asks about his assistant (Aimee Carrero) and the chef asks: "Which school did you go to?" "Brown." "Student loans?" *shakes her head no* "You die too" That's the class warfare theme of the movie in its most naked and hilarious form. Like, he had to do a little back-of-the-napkin math on whether to let her go or not. Perfect.
03.13.23	The Whale	Darren Aronofsky	Very good. You know how I know it's very good? It's a filmed play where I didn't get bored out of my fucking mind, that's how. I mean it's not the subject matter I'd love to be watching tonight, but with the Oscars and all I figured I'd finally give this a watch. It all takes place in one location and it's all people talking just like every other filmed play, but Fraser's performance and make-up are good enough to make it interesting. I guess the direction has something to do with it as well. I get why they went with the full frame aspect ratio and I must admit it was effective, but I think it's also a tiny bit... i dunno, pompous? Also, story-wise, it does bear some resemblance to The Wrestler. I guess there's room enough in the world for both but I wonder if a tiny part of Aronofsky felt like this subject matter was safer territory after his last couple movies. Considering how vibrant his first three movies were, he seems to have taken a more naturalistic turn with his later work (although I still haven't seen Mother! so maybe I'm wrong about this). Anyway, I liked this. I doubt I'll see it again, but I liked it.
03.12.23	Empire of Light	Sam Mendes	Sam Mendes can make a good movie, and this had some things going for it which made me want to see it, like a score from Reznor and Ross and the setting of a movie theater. I tend to love movies about movies, but movies about movie theaters can be a mixed bag. Sometimes the filmmaker's clear love for a movie theater takes you the highest heights of a celebration of all the magical church-like qualities of the place like Cinema Paradiso, but sometimes it's just thrown into a movie really about something else and it feels like a saccharine diversion (like Frank Darabont's The Majestic). This is more the latter unfortunately. Everything about the theater itself, like as a set, is so lovingly produced and photographed that it feels like a literal heaven or something with the golden art deco lighting, but then you've got a frankly Oscar-bait-y story with like a checklist of progressive topics. The craft of the film is spot on but even very good actors can't totally make the may-december interracial mental illness relationship work. It's like one too many things. I was a bit disappointed with the score as well. I think those guys are falling into a whole with happy-piano, sad-noise and it took an already disjointed and meandering pace and made it feel even more drawn out. The movie looks incredible though. Many shots of the building and the beach remind me of some artist that's not coming to mind. Very clean, colorful in a constrained way. The alternating blue and orange tint to the ballroom windows look lovely. It's all very clean and pretty for sure. I also liked all the supporting cast. Just a shame the story didn't connect with me. I wanted this to be like a John Carney movie set in a theater, but I got more Revolutionary Road. oh well.
03.09.23	Black Panther: Wakanda Forever	Ryan Coogler	these movies keep getting longer and longer. Or maybe this one just felt super long because it was honestly pretty boring. I was never the hugest Namor fan in the world but I don't remember him being this militant. Maybe I'm wrong or maybe he was rebooted or something and that's the source they used but it felt to me like the story was nothing. Like oh they really shouldn't fight, but then they do fight, but then they don't fight. Big whoop. And where's the giant hand in the ocean? It's like The Eternals never happened. I have to say... i know there was no way the marvel movies would stop with endgame, but since then it's really lacked the cohesion and consistency that they built this universe with. Like I feel like the nerds who put that timeline of a week together between all the phase 1 movies would be completely lost with this phase. I don't even know if this is still phase 4 or 5. And I'm not watching the tv stuff so i can see them all in order but more and more it doesn't feel like that matters anymore. This didn't have anything to do with the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special. One thing I do remember from back when I was collecting and reading comics was that whenever there was a crossover event, they were pretty damn clear about telling you. I feel like events like Inferno and Mutant Massacre even had like a checklist on the inside cover or something telling you to go read Daredevil this month or that this story dealt with Fantastic Four or whatever. Maybe they should start doing that with the movies? so we can know that Shang-Chi is a one-off but definitely watch Ant-Man because Kang's in that shit? I dunno, I guess that's basically saying some movies are more important than others, but there's been like 50 of these things now. Anyway, I wonder how the development of this movie went. It's definitely Ryan Coogler's weakest movie, and I'm sure that it was completely derailed by Chadwick Boseman's death. Oh well. It was still a nice enough diversion I guess, just surprisingly mediocre.
03.08.23	Den of Thieves	Christian Gudegast	I believe this hit my radar via Joe Dante's podcast where his co-host Josh Olsen seems to love pulp crime movies. I don't really remember anything about the recommendation so I went in knowing Gerard Butler was in it and that it was maybe a thriller. It's no secret i love the movie Heat. Throughout the years, I'd watch Heat and think "man, why aren't there more movies like this?" Then eventually Michael Mann wrote Heat 2 as a novel and I really liked it, but the idea of him making that book into a novel I don't like, for various reasons mentioned in my notes on the book. But except for that, I never really saw a movie blatantly trying to follow the Heat formula. Until now! Now that I've seen this, I understand why nobody's tried to do a movie like Heat: it's hard and it won't be as good as Heat! I liked this movie alright but Gerard Butler is no Al Pacino! And Pablo Schreiber is no Robert De Niro! This is like a b-list version of Heat except the writer-director's trying to be cute so he's throwing every movie into the blender. Some scenes it's a heist movie, other scenes are from The Shield. One scene's from Bad Boys 2, but I think mostly scenes are from Heat. Now... all that being said... a low-rent version of Heat can still have its moments. Yes it's like a half hour too long and all the Gerard Butlers scenes are pretty terrible, the pacing is WAY off, and there are some downright bizarre scenes trying to be the scene where Pacino and De Niro sit down in the diner booth (one-upping each other at the shooting range is corny but the scene where I guess Butler targets Schreiber's wife at the strip club? like she wouldn't remember him badgering her at the hibachi grill? Like he's gonna fuck the information out of her or something? what?). But also, I've always liked Pablo Schreiber (Nicky Sabotka in the house) and the competing crews are kinda fun (not as fun as the Heat crews, but still kinda fun) and while the action scenes are flat and lack momentum, they're also still kinda cool. I guess I'm trying to say that I was never bored. Yes it's a knock-off film but it's still kinda fun to watch and I mean, there really are no other movies like Heat so having another one around, even though it's not as good, is still something.
03.06.23	A Man Called Otto	Marc Forster	I was in the mood to watch an easy Tom Hanks movie but this was probably the wrong movie to watch after spending a week taking care of my dad. For a dramedy it's pretty sad. Tom Hanks is looking old. I think he will be... maybe the only actor who's passing I really feel for. It will not be a fun day.
03.03.23	Escape from Alcatraz	Don Siegel	This Don Siegel marathon ends with his last collaboration with Eastwood, the only movie today that I've seen before, and my favorite. I've seen this movie a bunch. I remember renting it with the cool poster of Clint's trademark grimace peeking out from a crack in a stone wall, catching it on cable, wherever... it was one of those movies that if you were flipping channels I'd wind up seeing the rest of it. It's the longest movie I watched today but it felt like the shortest. The economy of storytelling here is so on point. I don't know if this is Siegel's best movie but it's definitely my favorite. It's so well crafted. The script is sharp and clear with minimal dialogue, the direction is super tight, conveying everything that makes Alcatraz such an alluring location as well as clearly showing all the process involved with the escape itself. It feels like more than half the movie is just watching dudes do stuff. I'm such a sucker for that when it's done well and this movie is pretty much a text book for it. Then there's Alcatraz itself. I went on the tour in... probably the early 90s? There's a scene in So I Married an Axe Murderer which kinda summed it up but it was a great tour for a teenager to take, complete with a self-guided walkman headset audio tour. I remember a quote on that tour from someone saying that when the wind was right you could hear voices from the city, like on new years you could hear the celebrations going on and that's what made doing time there even harder. You see that on the film sitting at the top of the yard able to look over the walls at the city beyond but still so far from it. As a kid the novelty of having a prison island was like something out of a comic book or movie like Escape from New York. That it was real was fascinating, along with the logistics of how expensive it was to operate and all that. Plus it was like a super prison where they sent the worst of the worst, so it's like Arkham Asylum or something with the rogue's gallery. You had Al Capone, you had the birdman, you had machine gun kelly, Whitey Bulger, Mickey Cohen. All these gangsters and bank robbers they made movies about. And it happened. The audio tour went into previous escape attempts and riots including, i believe, a shoot-out in the library, but you can see the cell where one of the guys dug out! I think they have a head there too (or recreation of one). And the movie sticks impressively close to fact there. I think as I was growing up there was a short burst of prison movies in the late 80s / early 90s. It felt like all the macho actors had to go to jail for something or another, like Tom Selleck in An Innocent Man, Stallone in Lock-Up, then HBO put Kyle MacLachlan in Attica and Sean Penn went to death row and Daniel Day Lewis was a political prisoner or whatever. Kevin Bacon went to court for being in the hole too long (in Alcatraz!), Sleepers had something to do with jail i think? Not to mention Oz! Maybe there's always been a steady stream of prison movies but when I was growing up it felt like a lot, yet all of them couldn't compare to this one. I think many credit Riot in Cell Block 11 as the quintessential prison movie, but I didn't see that till this year! For me it's this one. Either way, Siegel is responsible. Ok, I've typed enough. Covid movie marathon complete. I'm so glad I could do this. If I won the lottery or ever get to retire I think this is basically what I'm going to do with my time. Even with my christmas break spent watching double features I'm still only like a quarter of the way through all the movies I have ready and waiting. Maybe some day.
03.03.23	The Beguiled	Don Siegel	"How old are you, Amy?" "Twelve, thirteen in september" "old enough for kisses" Uhhh... I guess the unique choice of how to open this movie identifies it as the odd duck of the night, and maybe of Siegel's career. Certainly a civil war era gothic tale in an antebellum south mansion is a far cry from the cops who don't play by the book or body snatchers or prison riots, but I guess there is a thematic tie in that Clint Eastwood a likes a da ladies. On that note, I went down a tiny rabbit hole and saw that not only did he have an affair with a young actress from this movie (half his age but in her early twenties at the time), but that he has also had many many affairs with I guess everyone he ever met. He's like Nick Cannon and Elon Musk's inspiration in regard to kids. And I don't all-the-way judge him for it. I mean, who in the world should be sleeping with people 35 years younger than them if not for the Clint Eastwoods and Leonardo Di Caprios of the world? Anyway, Here he plays an injured Union soldier taken in by a southern girls' school where he tries to seduce his way out of the house by flirting with everyone older than 16. That... leads to some stuff which I feel like needs a spoiler warning so before we dive into that I'll just say I wasn't really into the first half but the second half really grew on me and I wound up liking the film a lot. Like a lot. Spoilers ahead! beware! The movie is more interesting than Eastwood trying to fuck girls for a hundred minutes!!! Ok, so I wonder if Stephen King saw this. He had to have, right? I also can't imagine Takeshi Miike not having seen this. Maybe Paul Thomas Anderson too. The last half hour or so goes into such satisfying territory with Clint going full High Plains Drifter and the girls all eating at dinner and everything. The weird gothic flashbacks are never fully spelled out but you get enough to know why they're there as soon as we see that hacksaw. It's been quite a while since I've seen Play Misty for Me but I feel like it goes into similar territory in a more modern setting... but with a story like this you need that first hour to really build the scaffolding and make you wonder where it's going to go before pulling the lever and letting the audience bath in macabre satisfaction. Like the meme from Survivor or whatever of the girls being grossed out while the one dude just stares and smiles. I love a movie that delivers that vibe which I did NOT expect this to do. It'd be one thing if I was at Fantastic Fest or something but this came out between the silly Two Mules for Sister Sara and Dirty Harry! Such an oddity in the oeuvre! Anyway, just to state it plainly. They cut off his fucking leg after catching him in bed with the 17 year old, then he goes nuts, gets drunk, threatens everyone, says he'll sleep with whoever he wants, and kills a turtle. So they poison him with mushrooms and that's that. So awesome.
03.03.23	Coogan's Bluff	Don Siegel	Next up is what I believe to be Eastwood's first picture with Siegel. Clint plays an Arizona deputy sheriff come to New York City for a prisoner transfer. The titular bluff happens when he attempts to cut through the big city red tape and his prisoner gets away. Imdb trivia tells me it's also a cliff, which I did not know. I liked this better than Madigan but mostly found it interesting that they were released the same year. I don't know what the production schedules were like but they share some cast (Susan Clark and Don Stroud) as well as that damn plastic bead curtain and what looks like a "city" backlot somewhere. Put together as a double feature, I actually like Madigan a bit more. Couple more things about this one. There's a late-60s hippie night club that fish-out-of-water Coogan visits in search of his prisoner called Pigeon-Toed Orange Peel. There's a cool sign and everything but there's also some band playing a song of the same name? Like the club has a theme song? I've never been there but I doubt every night doesn't start with some guy singing "SssssSsss We're in the Viper Room, baby!" I loved the dip into psychedelia there (this is my happening and it freaks me out!) and it's hilarious to see chisel-jawed Clint in his cowboy hat catching a flying naked painted hippie chick. Speaking of chicks, Eastwood is tenacious toward every uterus in the movie. I thought his first scenes with Susan Clark were not quite "cool" today, but then again that was probably his charm circa 1968... but then he sleeps with another character and I have to say that one made me scratch my head a bit. I guess his character is introduced as a scoundrel in the first scene with the beautiful Melodie Johnson ("Need a bigger target?" - "There ain't none in this county, Baby"), and I guess he was a major cocksman in real life too... but damn dude let a girl take a breath. Also, there's a pretty cool shot at the very end of the film taking off from a helipad on top of the Pan Am / Met Life building. Cool shift of scale as Susan Clark gets lost in the film grain. The motorcycle race at the end felt a little more like two dudes trying not to fall off than one trying to catch the other, but I suppose it was still cool enough. Overall, yeah I liked it. Didn't absolutely love it, but didn't get bored with it either. Alright, two more.
03.03.23	Madigan	Don Siegel	From The Lineup, we're jumping 10 years and trading San Francisco for New York City. This one stars Richard Widmark as the titular cop as well as Henry Fonda as the police commissioner who... kinda knows him? I didn't like this one nearly as much for several reasons, but a big one was Fonda's scenes. This felt much more like a tv movie to me where there was an A story with Madigan and his partner given 3 days to find the murderer who stole their guns, and a B story with the commissioner finding out his friend and chief of detectives is morally compromised. I did think it was cool how they had both characters talking about each other as a gauge of respect or suspicion, but mostly... I mean the movie's called Madigan, right? I don't care about the commissioner's affair. The movie is really split because of how much time Fonda gets and, to me, it made the film feel twice as long and half as interesting. My favorite moments came from day players with hilarious single lines like "what do I want a lawyer for?" and "nobody tells me I look like a guy from Cincinnati". Other than that, it felt a bit stagnant. Never mind Widmark's age as both a detective and a husband to this swedish blonde model twenty years younger than him. Otherwise, I suppose it's notable for the ending and for being a kind of proto- Dirty Harry where Madigan alllmost doesn't play by the rules. As usual, the location scenes feel great but there's a lot more sets here that feel kinda cheap and dated. In particular there's a "night club" where I guess the stage is obscured by hanging plastic bead curtains? In the end, it just didn't pop like Siegel's best work. Now having seen both, I'll probably continue to get this confused with Brannigan. Halfway through our marathon here, we're getting on the Clint Eastwood train and riding it for the rest of the day. But... not in a gross way or anything. Bad metaphor.
03.03.23	The Lineup	Don Siegel	Some time in my latter high school years, I read a book called The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy. I think at the time I'd heard that David Fincher was going to make it into a movie and I guess I saw it at a book store or something. This was around when I was exploring a bit more with authors. At first it was just Stephen King, then my grandfather read Jurassic Park when it came out (before the movie) so I read all of Crichton's stuff, then it was a shitload of D&D and Lovecraft stuff, but around this time I read Snow Crash and Neuromancer and was looking for more "adult" stuff to sound cool talking to my friends about and this one seemed pretty cool. It blew my mind. Ellroy did a couple things in that book that I didn't know you could do in a book, and it was the first in a quartet! So I read the next one, The Big Nowhere, and it blew my mind even more. That one in particular was like whoa, ok, what now? This exploration happened through the end of high school and into college. At some point the movie LA Confidential came out. I can't really remember whether I saw it before reading or not. My book's cover is the movie poster so I'm guessing I saw it first, but I remember having a visceral dislike for the screenwriter of the film when I read the book around the same time because his contributions (made with good intention to make this sprawling 600-page book into a 2-hour movie that made any sense at all) dumbed the shit out of the story. I HATED that Buzz Meeks was like a cameo in the movie when he was a goddamn point-of-view protagonist in The Big Nowhere! Anyway, I write all this to say, I think Ellroy's writing got me into film noir around that same time. In college I remember renting what I could find from video stores but it wasn't until I moved back home and started going through tv guides to set my vcr to record stuff off of tcm that I really got into the genre. I remember somewhere along the way, James Ellroy published or mentioned a list of his favorite film noirs and those went on the list to track down. Of course, at that time they were not all readily available to someone living in the boonies, but TCM did an admirable job of playing a bunch of films once a year so if you were vigilant and eagle-eyed you could catch some good stuff. But a few films on that list still fell through the cracks, most notably a move called The Prowler (i had no problem finding the 80s slasher film of that name but not the noir), and a movie called The Lineup. Well, I believe noir-scholar and Ellroy-friendo Eddie Muller found and restored The Prowler some years ago for his Noir City event but I haven't tracked it down and watched it yet. To be honest, I went through so many at that time... then a few years after that different studios put out competing noir series' on DVD that I bought pretty much all of (I still have a pile of Fox noirs that I haven't gone through), but I moved to Austin and discovered exploitation cinema and kinda considered my knowledge and exploration of noir "complete." But as we all know, nothing's ever complete in the world of fandom, so whenever I have occasion to dip back into this inky black world of nihilistic worldview and post-war malaise, it feels a bit like putting on a pair of well-worm comfy sweatpants or something. Except I've seen all the best-known and most talked-about of the genre so it's usually movies like Private Hell 36 that are interesting but not elevated to the thrill and pizzazz that originally drew me in with movies like Pickup on South Street, Odds Against Tomorrow, White Heat, Out of the Past, Sunset Boulevard, Gun Crazy, Detour, Kansas City Confidential, and the "Big" movies (The Big Sleep, The Big Heat, The Big Clock, The Big Combo). This one though. This is a fantastic movie. I felt like I was getting to see one of those movies mentioned above for the first time again. It's so good! The police side of things plays as straight and procedural as Call Northside 777 but it's just an entre into the heart of the movie which is Eli Wallach and his crew rolling around 50s San Francisco doing work and being dangerous. The actual line-up scene (which is a hundred percent inspiration for that other movie with the suspects that are usual) looks fantastic. The whole movie looks fantastic. It's such a change from 4 years earlier with Private Hell where everything was basically sets and standard framing. Here, Siegel's on the street, shooting widescreen, things are fast, the beginning scene is fast. You kinda root for Wallach but you kinda also don't. Mostly you just have a hell of a good time watching this movie! It's so good. Reading the imdb trivia, it was actually a movie from a tv show, which is even crazier to me. I mean, I like the Breaking Bad and Deadwood movies, but there's no way they'd make any sense without knowing and liking the show first. Plus that explains why the cops are so good in the first act! Ten minutes in I checked the credits because I hadn't seen any of the top billed people yet but these cop actors are absolutely carrying the story, but then Wallach shows up and they take a back seat for the rest of THEIR movie. It's not quite as egregious as Optimus Prime dying at the beginning of the Transformers movie but it's pretty close. But that's what makes it work as its own piece I think. Seeing it through the lens of the tv show, the beginning and ending make more sense but really the movie is about the criminals. And they are super good criminals. Richard Jaeckel, normally pretty bland to me, is great as the alcoholic young driver ("your prescription's just been cancelled, dipso"), bleary-eyed character face Robert Keith is super creepy as the psycopathic mentor who collects peoples' last words in a book, and Eli Wallach, normally taking beefier "theater-y" roles that I don't care for, brings that training to real depth and edge here. I really liked seeing him in the role and you can tell he's got something. Then of course all the supporting cast is also great. I particularly loved the look of the guy in the wheelchair at the end. And what a tough send off! "Maybe you'll make it to the airport, maybe you won't. But your time is borrowed. You're dead. NOW GET OUT!" with his smug grin. Man... Alright it's time to move on, but I'll just also mention that the SF location photography is great. They shoot in the Sutro baths at the end, and the embarcadero freeway still in construction. It's also worth noting that the rear projection photography is top-tier. The car chase at the end made it look like the camera car recording the rear projection footage is really who we should be watching. So, yeah. An A-tier new noir after all these years. It's really experiences like this that remind me why I love watching movies so much.
03.03.23	Private Hell 36	Don Siegel	Well, I got Covid. It's kind of a long story I don't feel like getting into, but the net result is I'm slacking off work for a few days and stuck in my room all day with no distractions. I don't want to say I'm happy about this? But It does allow me to do a thing I wasn't sure how I was going to do: A Don Siegel marathon! Back to that QT book, he mentions a bunch of Siegel movies and talks about a couple of them in depth. I've already revisited Dirty Harry but there were a bunch more that I'd never seen so I thought it would be cool to put them together and take a trip through time, also seeing how his trademark brusque macho efficient style developed. So let's do it. The day starts with this 50s cop noir starring Ida Lupino, her husband Howard Duff, and Steve Cochran playing Duff's partner and Lupino's love interest (according to imdb trivia, they were also having an affair at the time, which I'm sure wasn't complicated at all). It's a pretty run-of-the-mill cop story for the first half with Lupino being a nightclub singer who can identify a robber passing hot money so Duff and Cochran force her into a stake-out. But then halfway through, the plot shifts a bit and enters prime noir territory. The movie is short already but feeling like the first half is all set-up means there's no time at all to develop the more interior struggle going on. The noose tightens almost instantly, there's a weird ethical tag at the end, and we're out. I'm finding it hard to dance around what's going on during the second half. Plus, it's like the synopsis of the movie on imdb so it's really only that I started watching this movie completely blind that it wound up being a twist for me so... from here on out: ARGUABLE SPOILERS AHEAD. So the twist is that the cops catch the burglar and take money from his stash, but one cop has a conscience about it that eats away at him. I'm not sure if this is the first time it's happened in film but it's definitely become a little niche genre of its own since then. As such, all this stuff felt rather simplistic compared to how evolved the premise has become over the years... so in that regard I still had to put myself in a 50s-audience mindset I guess to try and enjoy the story, but it still made it more interesting than the first half which is essentially a not-as-good version of Pickup on South Street. The title is also very good I think. I was starting to think the number at the end was random like Aeropostale clothing in the 90s but eventually it comes around. Good title.
01.30.23	You People	Kenya Barris	This was half Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and half Meet the Parents. I wanted to see it because of the cast. I thought Jonah Hill and Eddie Murphy would be funny together, which they were. There were some strong scenes (most of which played in the trailers) and I'd say I enjoyed myself well enough, but it didn't rise beyond the trappings of its format. The end scenes were a little bizarre to boot. Really, if I'm completely honest with myself, I also found Jonah Hill's schtick to not work nearly as well when he's looking like whatever this look is. For me it's hard to think it has anything to do with the part and more to do with surfing or whatever he's up to these days. So while Julia Louis-Dreyfus and David Duchovny were good with their 1 thing to do and Nia Long was fun to see for her 1 thing to do (along with a cadre of other funny people), Eddie Murphy was the only one that really had stuff to do other than the two leads. Could've been better.
01.05.23	Little Darlings	Ron Maxwell	Back half of a Video Archives Podcast double feature. This one has come up over and over through the years so appearing on the podcast was a final push to go ahead and watch it. It stars Tatum O'Neal and Kristy McNichol as they try to lose their virginity during summer camp. It sounds pretty questionable and the trailer make it look like a female Bad News Bears or something but really it's very tastefully and emotionally handled so it's less Porky's and more Say Anything. Tarantino and Avary quite liked this one. I did too. It's not exactly a movie I would be actively interested in (which is why it's taken me so long to finally watch it), but I think the performances are pretty effective (especially McNichol and an early Matt Dillon) and the supporting cast of girls in the cabin are also very good. For a movie that could easily go wrong in so many ways, the fact that it maintains its heart and ends on some quite tender moments makes it a success. I liked it more than I thought I would.
01.05.23	Busting	Peter Hyams	Tonight's double feature is from this week's Video Archives podcast. QT's podcast seems to be doing well because the "related" movies on the imdb page for this are all mentioned on the pod. In any case, I'd never heard of this before but, like QT, I am a fan of 70s cop movies. Really, a movie called Super Cops is one of the first times I realized that just because a movie is good doesn't mean it will be held up as a classic and always available. I think I watched it on 16mm at a friend's house and thought, like, what the fuck. This movie is better than half the crap coming out today, it's Gordon Parks' follow up to his Shaft movies, why do we have to buy a 16mm print of it in order to see it? Of course, now it's probably on Amazon or otherwise available, but the point I was getting around to making is that 70s cops movies aren't just limited to French Connection and Serpico. The Super Cops. Freebie and the Bean, this one, Electra Glide in Blue, Mitchell... not even counting the Dirty Harrys, blaxploitation, and Italian stuff. There's a lot of good 70s cop movies out there. And this is one of them! My thoughts largely mirror Roger and Quentin's from their podcast. I definitely see the love of this dolly which gives the action scenes a really dynamic and kinetic feel that can't help but engage the viewer. There's lots of attention paid to composition there where each shot moves from beat to beat and conveys a lot of action and information with each setup. And both Elliot Gould and Robert Blake are great together. Another reason why I wanted to watch this was because everyone on the Video Archives podcast is a pretty big Peter Hyams fan and I only know him from pretty crappy 90s stuff like Timecop and Schwarzenegger's End of Days. They talked about The Relic on a previous episode which I remember enjoying the book way more than the movie, and now with this they're saying he's like this action maestro so I wanted to see if my previous opinion was wrong. Well, I stand by his 90s work being mediocre but I didn't realize that he made Stay Tuned which I was a fan of (and had a long-standing idea to remake except with old film noirs instead of tv) and 2010 (which I remember being good albeit a "normal" sci-fi film rather than the experience that is 2001). I guess Capricorn One is the movie of his to see but his work here is pretty impressive. I don't know how it compares to the car chase in Freebie or the building demolition in Super Cops but this was a solid fun movie that fits into the 70s cop genre really well.
01.05.23	Turkey Shoot	Brian Trenchard-Smith	AKA Escape 2000 AKA Blood Camp Thatcher This is the back half of a Brian Trenchard-Smith double feature. This is a dystopian futuristic prison camp movie that's also a Most Dangerous Game movie, two genres that I am a fan of. Stuff like Escape from New York, No Escape, Fortress, Deadlock, Surviving the Game... all very fun. Unfortunately, this shows its budget quite a bit with the prison camp angle, and while I did enjoy the Australian wilderness location photography, I didn't care for either lead (Steve Railsback who I haven't liked in anything I've seen him in, and Olivia Hussey who didn't do much at all here). I found the bad guys more interesting, and once the prisoners leave camp and the hunt begins, there's a pretty steady score that reminded me of NES games like Commando. There's not quite enough here to keep me engaged with the world-building or the survival aspects. I didn't think it was terrible, but compared to Man from Hong Kong I thought it was a step down. There was a wolf-man though, which was nice.
01.04.23	The Man from Hong Kong	Brian Trenchard-Smith	Tonight's double feature is a couple from director Brian Trenchard-Smith. A while back, Fantastic Fest ran a documentary about the Ozploitation era of 70s and 80s Australian filmmaking that enjoyed worldwide success. In conjunction, they brought BTS in since he was a huge part of that movement and they showed this double feature. I watched the doc but for some reason skipped the double feature (I think it was because these were at the Paramount or something? they did that for a few years). Since then, my friend Micah went on a BTS tear and really liked most of what he saw but I think the only things I've watched were Stunt Rock and BMX Bandits. Well, tonight i'm recreating that double feature so I can finally get another taste of his sensibility as a director. This first one is a kung-fu co-production between Australia and Hong Kong, and according to imdb it was supposed to start Bruce Lee. Sammo Hung provides the fight choreography as well has having a chase/fight sequence up the side of Ayers Rock(!), and Immortan Joe from Mad Max Fury Road plays a cop while George Lazenby is the heavy. While I'm picking kung-fu as the genre, it really feels like it's trying to be a Bond film to me. There's not just fight scenes but also car chases, foot chases, hang gliding, and some love scenes thrown in for good measure. All shot in what looks like a more slipshod and dangerous method than Hollywood fare. This movie is like 90% action. The story is minimal to say the least. Once the titular man from Hong Kong gets to Sydney (we get some cool location photography of the opera house and the bay in general at the end when there's... more hang gliding), he's basically kicking ass the entire time. I must confess I was fatigued by the end (a phenomena I often experience with kung fu movies), but have to give it credit. Lazenby himself gets set on fire and it shows him struggling to take his jacket off which looks like real panic. The car chase in particular is pretty massive. Dude gets his van exploded by a bomb which kills this woman he just fell in love with, drives through a house, rams a car in half, pushes a car into a ditch so hard it explodes, and launches a motorcycle into a river. There's one shot in particular where one of the cars bangs into the hero's car and you see the glass of his windshield completely shatter. Another shot shows a car rolling while the driver is flopping around inside. That seems like something that's way cheaper and faster to do for real than set up an elaborate stunt. And the scene has a perfect button where we see him driving back to town with the car completely beat to shit. Impressive stuff. Really the only thing I didn't love about the movie was the lead. I mean, I can't imagine what this movie would've been with Bruce Lee as the star since I'm not sure he would've let shit get this fast and loose, but he would've delivered a much better and more charismatic performance on the acting side. This dude Wang Yu has been in a bunch of other hong kong kung-fu movies so maybe it's just me but I don't really feel him here. Some of the fight choreography is also a little sloppy where you see some hits not connect and things like that, but there's just sooo much of it that you can forgive little nitpicks here and there. Really, seeing the illusion crack during some of the fights just makes all the other stuff feel more real and thrilling. Also, the dude from Stunt Rock popped up as an assassin here and had an intense chase/fight. Makes me think that's also him on the hang glider and the zip line when it's supposed to be Wang Yu, but I'm not sure. The action here definitely had a Stunt Rock vibe for sure, just with less Rock.
01.04.23	Student Bodies	Mickey Rose	"Last year 26 horror films were released... None of them lost money" "Julie, you're not responding to my male-ness" "The swine flu really affected my mind!" This is the back half of a slasher spoof double feature. I actually saw this about 9 years ago and have a note for it on here, but mostly I remember catching it on cable late one night and being taken by the spoof nature of it. I still think the first act is legit quite funny, but the jokes per second count goes down a bit as the movie trudges forward and it runs out of steam by the end. But still, it's notable that this came so early as the slasher genre was basically at its height and proved to hit many of the tropes right on the head. This movie also has an Alan Smithee credit, which imdb tells me belonged to Michael Ritchie who produced and directed but took his name off due to a writers' strike or something. That makes sense because the credited director was mainly a tv comedy writer who also worked on Woody Allen's early movies and this is his sole directing credit.
01.03.23	April Fool's Day	Fred Walton	Tonight's double feature is a spoiler. It starts with this late-stage slasher that I remember renting and seeing on cable after it came out. As with all slashers, the most interesting thing is the ending so... SPOILERS AHEAD I guess what stuck in my mind is that this was different in that the whole movie was a trick on the audience and well as the characters. Even now as I watched it back I spent most of the movie thinking that it broke all the rules to achieve this, like why are the kids playing along this whole time? But the end explains all which makes it just believable enough to pass for movie logic. The trick probably doesn't hold up for new audiences today because we don't see anyone die on-screen, but I remember being tickled by it back then. It's not a particularly great slasher, but Biff is in it and it's a fun take on the then-saturated genre and the poster with the girl's hair tied into a noose and knife behind her back is pretty iconic to me. I'm glad I revisited it. Oh, the double feature is Slasher Spoofs, but the next one will have to wait until tomorrow. I should probably start watching these before midnight huh.
01.02.23	Kimi	Steven Soderbergh	latter half of a thrillers double feature. This one is David Koepp's take on Rear Window with some Conversation mixed in. I am usually not a huge Koepp fan but found this script to be mostly decent. I feel like the Checkhov's gun was, while satisfying from an audience's point of view, probably a movie invention. And it's not the most twistiest of thrillers. Pretty straight forward. But, I thought Kravitz gave a good performance and Soderbergh had some fun with both the sound design and some weird effect they did when Zoe Kravitz goes outside. I'm not sure if she's just walking weird or if they did some weird speed trick. Sometimes it looked like maybe everyone else was going slow and they sped the film up, but maybe I'm just making that up. In any case, for a straight-forward Hitchcockian type thriller this wasn't bad. I didn't fall asleep during it which is saying something because it's damn late now.
01.02.23	The Bedroom Window	Curtis Hanson	Tonight's double feature is a couple thrillers. This one was mentioned by QT on Fallen when Jimmy asked for a recommendation. It fit well into another element to this cache of movies that I've amassed and am attempting to get through in that I THINK I saw this when it came out either as a rental or a random night on cable, so I wanted to watch it just to make sure. The late 80s was awash in thrillers, both erotic and otherwise. To be honest, I have a memory of Steve Gutenberg seeing a crime through his bedroom window but it may be confused with Jagged Edge or Morning After or Kiss of the Spider Woman or A Room with a View. I haven't seen all those movies but they're all lumped together in my brain for some reason so I wasn't sure that this was the movie in my head at first. It took about an hour until a courtroom scene where I was sure I had seen it before. In any case, the conceit is pretty good. A woman sees a crime being committed and gets a look at the assailant who winds up being a killer. The problem is that the woman is having an affair and was at her lover's apartment. She can't go to the police, so the lover decides to report on her behalf. It's a nice set-up, I also liked seeing Baltimore a good dozen years before The Wire. I actually think the killer in this movie lives in Nicky Sobotka's parents house. Hanson shoots all over town even shooting a scene in the aquarium. As for the bad, there are a couple things keeping this from being more memorable. Gutenberg's performance is probably at the top of the list. For the first half of the film he's alright since he's supposed to be playing a bit of an idiot anyway, but when the tension ratchets up and he's supposed to be on edge and desperate, I just don't believe it at all. A couple scenes I actually think he's really good, like when he asks the cops if he's a suspect, but by the end it's too much for him. It's a shame really because Curtis Hanson's adaptation and direction are pretty smart, well... mostly. Also, the music and photography are pretty standard 80s fare. I have a spoiler I want to talk about so let me wrap up by saying I liked this pretty well. I'm glad to connect one of these random movie memories floating around from childhood to a title and imdb listing. Like QT said, it's a solid thriller. SPOILER ALERT ok, the courtroom scene mentioned about is when the defense attorney wins his case by telling Gutenberg to remove his contact lenses. This is such a thing! I guess in 1987 contact lenses were exotic enough to be a total gotcha on the audience but it really seems dumb to me today. Dumb of Gutenberg to not think of the thing he has to do every night and every morning when he comes up with his cover story. It feels like a plot hole to me as a contact lens wearer.
01.02.23	White Noise	Noah Baumbach	the second half of New Shit I Want to See, Part 2, this is Noah Baumbach doing Don DeLillo's novel of postmodern malaise. I think it's right up Baumbach's alley since he's made a career out of navel-gazing intellectual humor. I'm sure this follows the book which accounts for its almost anthology feel but since I haven't read the book I believed the trailer which more or less deals with the middle of the movie. As such, I would've liked it better if it had ended before the third part started, but what can you do I guess when doing an adaptation. I think the movie is well produced and has the budget it needs, but I also bet the book is deeper and more impactful. This is somewhere between a mildly funny comedy and mildly dramatic drama. I did like it, and in particular I loved the second act, but the third act kinda lost me. I mean I get it, but it didn't really move me and took away from the effect of the middle. Who knows though, that could all just be due to expectations. Basically, I wanted a remake of Panic in Year Zero, and I got it for one third, but I also got an intellectual send-up of consumerism, academia, and family dynamic. I think the real star of this film is the production and art departments for making that early-80s dream of a supermarket. That shit was designed as hell and color-coded and brand-saturated and great. Seems like that team went buck wild with the house and trash and gas station and everywhere. Seems like every shot had some cereal or soda or something. And the new LCD Soundsystem song, which I thought was kinda weak listening to it on its own, is stronger over the end credits. Seems like they wrote it for this movie rather than it being some b-side or cut album track like what usually happens (and did happen with the vegas blackjack movie 21).
01.01.23	This Place Rules	Andrew Callaghan	Happy New Year! Today's double feature is called "New Shit I Want to See, Part 2" and it starts with this documentary that HBO bought from Andrew Callaghan who I learned about from Hot Ones. He has a youtube channel called Channel 5 where he goes around doing, I guess you'd call it amateur journalism? Citizen journalism? He talks to a bunch of people and often finds pretty crazy subjects which edit down to pretty funny segments. Here, he's covering the 2020 election fallout culminating in the Jan 6th riots. I thought it was great. I think his mission is to take an empathetic ear to all levels of humanity and secondarily show how mainstream media care more about profit than common good, which I completely agree with. With this subject he does a great job finding extremists on both the right and the left (not hard to find) and showing how radicalized so many have become. He also dips into groups like antifa, proud boys, alex jones, etc. Alex Jones. Quick sidebar about him. When I moved to Austin, he was like one of a handful of eccentrics driving around town with a loudspeaker on his car like in the movie Waking Life. I liked that this texas city had such a diversity of opinion and open-ness to let the freaks fly their flags. For the sxsw screening of Scanner Darkly, friends were saving me a seat that he tried to steal. From what they told me, he was like "but I'm IN the movie!" and they were like "sorry, guy." I went to a screening he booked at an Alamo where he showed footage from when he infiltrated Bohemian Grove and his intro started out with "So this is what a bunch of info wars listeners look like," like he was in on the joke. He then apologized in advanced for how crap the film was. A documentary that he shot and edited. So I always thought of him as an eccentric but ultimately harmless character that was just part of the American tapestry. Cut to 15 years later and in his own way he has also gone the route of "mainstream media" where it's more profitable to say stupid shit you don't believe just to get people to watch and who cares if the world burns while you do it. Of course he's talking about Globalist baby-eating deep state reptiles instead of immigrant caravans and tax returns but to his audience it's the same thing. Anyway, I thought this doc was great. Callaghan's main point seems to be that many of these people are basically being fleeced by hucksters. As an American it's very sad to see where we're at, but this also makes you laugh at how absurd all of us are, or can be.
12.30.22	Nobody	Ilya Naishuller	The second half of an "action heroes from different eras" double feature, this was originally intended to pair with Bullet Train for DVRfest, but now I had an idea that Bob Odenkirk can be Sylvester Stallone nowadays. That's maybe a bit cheeky since Odenkirk's image and dramatic chops have really come into focus via Better Call Saul, but I think it's still an apt observation. These days action is pretty much dominated by John Wick. Whether it's the writer or one of the directors, John Wick's blend of you-fucked-with-the-wrong-guy and we-made-this-actor-go-through-a-shitload-of-training has created a whole genre unto itself. I guess that's what happens when you make a good fuckin' movie. While all those that followed didn't have quite the same impact for me as watching that first John Wick that first time, they've typically all been decent with one or two stand-out sequences that are super fun to watch. Case in point, the bus fight here is surprisingly brutal. It's not over the top like Shang-Chi but definitely satisfying and it kicks the movie into the second act nicely. I actually liked this more than I thought I would. I was expecting something more by the numbers. While this did follow the formula pretty closely, it kept things moving very well and set up each gag nicely. Any time you have a montage in your movie with people setting booby traps, I'm in. Home Alone, Deadly Games, Lost Boys, FX, FX2, Nightmare on Elm Street, Predator... you name it, I like it. Doesn't matter if it's Arnie or Macauley doing it, I'm in! It seems a little odd that this guy would spend all his money to buy this company just to immediately destroy it but whatever! Set those traps! Skewer those dudes with your makeshift rebar cannon! Let's go!
12.30.22	Cobra	George P. Cosmatos	Tonight's double feature is gonna be like a case study between an 80s action movie and a 2020s action movie. At least that's the idea. It starts with this, which was Stallone's and George Cosmatos' follow-up to Rambo: First Blood Part 2. I always thought of it as Stallone's answer to Schwarzenegger's Commando, and I remember not thinking much of it when it came out. At the time I was definitely in the Arnie camp when it came to this particular rivalry although today I do recognize that a lot of Stallone's credits go to writing and sometimes directing his vehicles as well as acting which is worth noting. This is not one of his best. Reading the imdb trivia it seems like the first cut was 40 minutes longer with a lot of the gore and gags being on-screen and the story making a tiny bit more sense, but for various reasons they cut it down to 90 minutes to allow for more screenings per theater. I have to say... even though the best part of this movie is a pale shadow of the best part of Rambo (the part where he kills dudes over and over again in increasingly fun and ridiculous ways), the rest of the movie is probably not saved by another half hour. It would make all the Night Slasher scenes more interesting though. I don't know how there can be a satanic cult with knives and axes as their weapon of choice and we barely see ANY on-screen deaths. I mean, the garden shed scene of Commando alone has more murder and mayhem than this entire movie. The scene where the Night Slasher is chasing (a young and long-haired) Brigitte Nielson through the hospital he kills like 5 guys with his crazy-ass knife but we see almost none of it. Even the climax of the film, the one moment I leaned forward and though "oh damn, shit's getting real", gets deflated by an awkward shot of legs on fire then dissolves to random flames. I wanted to see the hanging guy enter the ring of fiery death! Give me the ring of fiery death! Jesus! So without the visceral surprise of decent kill scenes, what we're left with is an adequate car chase, some sub-par quips ("I'm the future!" / "No, you're history" *doesn't shoot gun even though he has his little laser site right on him*), the goddamn match in Stallone's goddamn mouth, and lots of bad songs. So, looking for something good to say, I suppose you could celebrate this film as a product of its era, right? Like, the same crowd that likes Tango & Cash and Commando and Road House can have fun with Stallone's Venice bachelor pad and cool car and leather driving gloves. And Seinfeld fans might like to see Poppie as a "garbage gut" cop sidekick. I think I still liked it about as much as I did back then, which is to say the poster is probably all you need. Now that I've seen it again, this maybe should've been paired with Dirty Harry. Stallone's Cobretti is clearly in that break-all-the-rules cop vein and he's hunting a serial killer modeled after a real-life guy (Richard Ramirez here, Zodiac in Dirty Harry), and both the guy who played Scorpio and Poppie were in both movies! It would also probably showcase what I'm going for tonight with how different the 70s take is compared to the explosion-fueled sheen of the 80s. As it is, next up is a more "modern" take on the action hero. Let's see how it compares.
12.30.22	Last Man Standing	Walter Hill	The double features don't work so well when I consistently fall asleep during the second movie. Oh well, This is the back half of a 90s crime/noir pairing with Bruce Willis in a telling of Yojimbo transposed to 30s gangster era. The 90s blues guitar score has fully blossomed into a Ry Cooder jam, Willis is in peak machismo whispering every line of dialogue and voice over in his best noir tough guy voice, and Hill is trying his best to make each gunshot impact like a cannon with some early wire work. This was a QTfest movie way back in the day so it's been in the back of my mind to give it a watch since then. I missed it when it came out but remember it not really making much of a splash to the point where I was kind of surprised that Tarantino would include it in one of his festivals here in Austin. Now that I've finally seen it, I can maybe understand why. It certainly fits well in Walter Hill's oeuvre, most notably seeing William Sanderson as a sniveling hotel owner. You can clearly see that he's basically auditioning for his role in Deadwood almost 10 years later. There's also a bit of a rogue's gallery of 90s and Walter Hill faces populating the rival gangs in town including a reminder that Christopher Walken was at his height of wildcard intimidation at this time. Seeing him with a scar down his face and growling his dialogue definitely works for me. But it does share a similar vibe as One False Move in that it kinda... I think in going for a neo-noir vibe both movies have a certain... lethargy I guess you could call it, where they are not cut like action movies at all. The plot may have action elements, but we're a little removed from it. I may be forcing that connection a little here since there are plenty of shots of Willis shooting his guns and getting beat up, but always with that whispery voice-over to soften the blows. The net effect for me is that they feel like movies I'd catch on cable. Not a ton of impact or memorable stuff, but they still fill the time decently well. I'm sure it's also that this was when I was doing the bulk of my cable-watching so all the little cues that give it a 90s feel also give it a cable feel for me.
12.29.22	One False Move	Carl Frankln	Tonight's double feature is a couple of 90s crime flicks that I've heard about over the years but never sat down and watched them. I thought i'd seen bits and pieces of this one because I remember seeing pre-Sling Blade Billy Bob Thornton playing some heavy in some 90s crime thriller but this wasn't it. I remember him having a rifle or something, running around more heavyset than he is here. Except for the terrible balding / pony tail combo he looks and sounds here more or less like he did once he became a household name, but really this movie should be known for prime Bill Paxton. His character is by far the only one drawn with any complexity. Mostly this is a cinemax type movie that's just a bit better than all the others which is probably why it's bubbled to the surface over the years. There are some precursors here to Franklin's later thrillers starring Denzel, but also some 90s blues guitar / harmonica score, loose editing, and shaky performances from the LA cops and Fantasia that put it a little below the top of this particular pocket genre like Last Seduction or Red Rock West. Still good though; glad I finally saw it.
12.28.22	Meet Me in the Bathroom	Will LovelaceDylan Southern	The second half of a loosely-themed "new shit I want to see" double feature. This is a doc based on a 2017 book which is about the 2000s nyc music scene and bands like The Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Interpol, LCD Soundsystem, and others. I read the book fairly recently and really enjoyed it so it was kismet that this doc was hitting festivals basically right after I finished reading the book (I think it screened sxsw like a week before I wrote my note on the book, not that I went to sxsw but still). Now it's finally available, having landed on Showtime and basically disappeared. Part of me wants to say it's a real shame, because there's some cool footage in here like a super early LCD performance and some early Strokes and Yeah Yeah Yeahs footage, but I also kinda see why it didn't blow up the world and play theatrically and get a bunch of awards. As a film without the context of the book, I'm not sure it's a cohesive piece. The main directors also made the LCD doc Shut Up and Play the Hits which I liked (although it was largely a concert film for a band I'm into so... yeah), and I feel that they really tried to paint a picture of this early 2000s era, but the format they chose (all archive footage in 4:3 with what sounds like interview audio recorded for the book cut in from time to time) makes it really hard to frame this as a story of a scene rather than just following a handful of bands for a while. Like, why these bands? Why this footage? Why am I watching this? I guess you either have to be a superfan of one of these bands and want to see early footage or you have to be a fan of the book who really wanted to see and hear the bands represented there in order to enjoy this. On top of that, the original score, for me, was the totally wrong vibe. It's all melancholic and brooding. They play Sinatra's It Was A Very Good Year for like 12 minutes and bookend the film with this kinda downbeat spoken word or poem about Manhattan that really confused me in terms of tone. Like, is it elegiac for a New York that is no more? Or is it a celebration of how cool New York is? It feels like both all mixed together but the book was much more successful in conveying that evolution because it had all the page count in the world to contextualize it. I feel like it's an unfair criticism to say that this 100-minute movie skimmed over stuff that the 700-page book delved into, but I can't help but think that the debauchery and fatalistic attitude of this scene was only hinted at. Lots of things in the movie feel hinted at. Now, because I did read the book, I did enjoy watching this. It felt like a supporting document though rather than a standalone product. I am glad to see all these people on screen though, especially those I was less familiar with when I read the book like the Moldy Peaches and Interpol. It's funny to see Carlos being interviewed about his shoulder harness thing and see the rest of the band laugh at him, remembering all the juicy detail that the book goes into their intra-band dynamic. So it's a little bit a shame, but I guess also to be expected. I'm a little surprised they found as much footage as they did, even if James Murphy is wearing the same t-shirt through the entire movie. I'd say this was still watching if you're a fan of any of these bands though. Seeing the long take of Karen O during the Maps music video shoot was pretty powerful as was seeing early early Rapture and Yeah Yeah Yeahs performances.
12.27.22	Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery	Rian Johnson	This was gonna be half of a loose "new shit I want to see" double feature but I started it too late. In any case, let's see what I thought about this. It was decent. I liked the first one more, but that's to be expected. Playing with the form of the whodunit mystery worked the first time but it's hard to hit the same nail on the head multiple times and have each hit be just as impactful... or something. I think I chose a poor metaphor there. In any case, I thought this one was missing a grounding in reality that the first had. It feels more like a game right from the outset. That said, I still had a good time with it. It was fun to watch, well done, not a waste of time or anything like that. These types of movies with large ensemble casts where they get to play off of each other are fun! Its just following a bit of a formula set by the first film is all.
12.18.22	The Fabelmans	Steven Spielberg	No double feature this time, I just wanted to see the new Spielberg film. I had no interest in his West Side Story remake but thought this might be interesting. I guess if there's anyone who gets to make an autobiographical film about his own coming of age it's Spielberg. This one really doesn't seem like it's for anyone other than himself. It's good but very long and, I dunno, maybe borderline dull if we didn't know the kid in the movie would become Spielberg someday? "Dull" is too harsh a word... all of the levels of craft involved are at peak performance here, but it has that sheen of an Oscar movie which makes it less-harsh-version-of-dull to me. I found three things interesting here. One is the recreations of these childhood films we've heard about like when Saving Private Ryan came out. I'm sure it was a blast to recreate these memories with actors and real equipment and then cut together the recreation 8mm film as well to match the real home movies. And it's always fun to me when movies show home-grown movie productions. The second is Monica, sam's christian girlfriend. It's obvious that Judd Hirsch's scene/character is all but engineered to earn him a supporting actor nomination and it's a good scene and all, but Monica's crazy Jesus-loving feels so eccentrically authentic to me, and you can feel Sam's whirlwind acceptance of whatever nonsense she's into for the sake of making out. The third thing, the best thing about the movie, is the final scene. The final set, the final actor, the final dialogue, the final shot. It's such a strong scene for movie buffs that I'll probably wind up remembering liking this movie just because of that scene. Lots of the rest about it is a bit more mixed for me. The interaction with the school bullies didn't completely land for me, all the family drama, while performed and written well, was still kind of familiar territory for a family drama movie. I did like the silent Blow-Up-esque scene of Sam at his editing bay cutting together the camping trip footage, but I thought most of the second act (if that's what we're calling it) made the movie feel long. Now, this is all just what I thought. I think at this point it's a safe bet that Spielberg knows how to make a movie, so I won't be surprised if it gets awards or whatever. And at least I found it interesting enough to watch (still haven't seen War Horse!), but I probably won't be seeing it again any time soon. Except maybe the final scene once someone puts it on youtube.
12.17.22	Sleepaway Camp	Robert Hiltzik	"Eat shit and live, bill." In childhood, let's say from 9 to mid teens, I spent a lot of time at the video store. Hours searching for some gem in the rough or new discovery somehow there in the shelves where it wasn't the last ten times I looked. Pre Internet and with limited options, it could be tough to find something that I hadn't seen before but also had a decent shot at being not terrible. That box art really made or broke a movie's chances. In the case of Sleepaway Camp, I distinctly remember seeing that shoe with the knife through it all the time, probably right next to all the sequels, and thinking it was just another by-the-numbers slasher; a Friday the 13th knock-off. It wasn't quite in the category of some other titles which I was interested in but knew I'd never get them past my mom who approved all rentals (such as Slumber Party Massacre or I Spit on Your Grave), but for whatever reason it didn't pop for me, so there it stayed on the video store rental shelf. Since then, I've filled in the slasher gaps a tiny bit and have more friends with reliable taste so it's no longer a random box amongst many but a supposed outlier of the slasher cycle and well worth a watch. Unfortunately, I didn't get to experience the end as I would have if I picked it up one of those days back in 8th grade, but that's ok because I still liked it pretty good. I credit most of that to solid performances. The main kid with the foul mouth is great, the cigar-chomping owner and his body-building assistant are great, the chicken-hawk cook and evil deb Judy are great, and most of the camp counselors are super believable in their 80s ball-hanger shorts and oddly high crop tops. The movie perhaps plays against type by showing male ass and dong without any female nudity? And... I don't know if this makes any sense or not but, it FEELS more like it's actually sort of about a sleepaway camp. Friday the 13th was like, they could be anywhere. The camp was just a setting for them to get killed off in. Even Meatballs I remember felt to me more like Bill Murray and some funny actors doing gags, like it was the same as Stripes but at a camp instead of the military. I dunno... maybe I just like the shots of the kids busting ass as soon as they get off the bus to run to their bunks and start having fun. I'm sure the ending set it apart for fans back in the day. Now it falls into the "problematic" category I guess, but it's also an interesting bait and switch. Spoilers ahead. If you haven't seen it and somehow don't know about the ending or who the killer and you want to see it then the gist is I liked it, had a good fun time with it, and some of the dialogue is fantastic. Ok, spoilers coming. So... from the outset, you know that Angela is the killer right? You must. Between the first scene and the truly bizarre following scene where the mother sends them off to camp, when she starts staring at Judy and won't talk we know she's the killer. There's one mild attempt at subterfuge with her mentioning not wanting the killer to get her but the people who die are the people who she hates and I never feel any inclination that the boy is killing people so... what's the mystery right? I think that's where the real power of the ending comes in, because you spend the whole movie thinking "it's so obvious that it can't be her, right? They're messing with us because it's so obvious, which means it will be really disappointing if it IS her so it must not be, right?" I mean, she acts like a killer through the entire movie and nobody else is even close. So the ending is kind of a have-cake-and-eat-it-too moment which I appreciate even if it draws some insensitivity in today's world. Even as I was reminded thanks to much more subtle foreshadowing laid down throughout, I still found the last shot to be jarring. And to end it there without any explanation or anything else is also great. And maybe gets it off the hook a little bit, since it's our job as the audience to infer the meaning behind it and that angela's upbringing is what caused her to be the killer... which may or may not be true! Friday the 13th was built on just the first scene where her dad is killed by negligent camp-goers so the killer is out for revenge. The movie doesn't definitively state her motive, although I do think it's a reasonable assumption that it was more about what happened after her dad died, which I can see why some people have an issue with today. But whatever, there's plenty of offensive shit in these movies, some of which was intended at the time and much of which wasn't. It's still a good movie, much better than most of its peers. It's no Black Christmas, but I'd say it's up there with Pieces and Torso
12.17.22	The Howling	Joe Dante	Tonight's double feature (although it's really this weekend since I fell asleep during this last night and will probably fall asleep during the next one tonight) is a couple early 80s horror that have slipped through the cracks. This one is a particularly egregious omission since I count myself as a Joe Dante fan. I think what happened is that I assumed I saw it with all the other werewolf movies of that era so I had my memories confused with Wolfen or something. But nothing came back from the hazy recesses while I was watching this so I think it's a first-time viewing. I liked it pretty well. Certainly the cameos and Rob Bottin's werewolf effects are the stand-out, but I thought the beginning TV production stuff was a nice reference or homage to Dawn of the Dead (it reminded me of it whether intentional or not), and the supporting cast at The Colony was decent as well. The movie does kind of all build up to the effects reveal so the first hour dawdles maybe a tad too long, but the last half hour definitely delivers in some quintessential 80s practical effects work. I'll also say that the face mask and silhouette of the full-wolf is still effective today. All the over-the-shoulder shots with his ears popping up and stuff is really great. I think Dante shot that stuff to great effect. The transformation stuff can't help but be compared to American Werewolf and I think Rick Baker just eked out a win there... it's a bit of a shame, if American Werewolf didn't exist this would probably be the movie everyone talks about because it's still really good. The bladders and latex are just a tiny bit more noticeable here. Still, the footage of the snout protruding and the nails coming down are good, although a kid today would probably say it's too slow because they're used to cgi, but having these shots focus on individual aspects of the transformation make it more pointed and impactful to me, if not less "realistic" than some smooth cg effect. Of course, the rest of American Werewolf is also great which helps. Before writing this note, I went down a bit of an imdb rabbit hole comparing Dante's career to John Landis, with them both doing seminal werewolf pictures on the same year and collaborating several times with Amazon Women on the Moon and an indirect connection via the Zucker brothers (Landis directing Kentucky Fried Movie and Dante doing some episodes of Police Sqaud!). that also includes the tragic Twilight Zone movie, but Landis' batting average is pretty astronomical up until the 90s where both he and Dante started to slow. I'm guessing Spielberg's association helped in the 80s and there's no obvious ill will since Landis contributes to Dante's Trailers from Hell (his episode of the movies that made me podcast is filled with entertaining old hollywood stories), but it seems like the ensuing trial and book of the trail over the twilight zone movie was a huge factor in stalling his career. But I guess I should watch a John Landis movie if I want to talk about him. I'm very glad to finally check this one off the list (especially since I thought it was already checked), and I don't think I need to see any of the many many sequels that this movie spawned across the decades to come. Instead, let's switch from werewolf to slasher.
12.11.22	Framed	Phil Karlson	I think this was mentioned most often in Tarantino's book outside of films that got their own chapter. In particular, it stuck with me that he made a point to say this is a particularly strong last picture from Phil Karlson, following after the first Walking Tall. I also know Karlson from one of my favorite noirs: Kansas City Confidential. So when Walking Tall got a sequel with Bo Svenson, Karlson and Joe Don Baker made this movie. Apparently this flopped and Svenson made a career on Buford Pusser even though Joe Don Baker originated the role. My note for seeing Walking Tall back in 2007 is minimal but I remember liking it quite a bit so I was very keen to track this down and give it a watch. Really, this was the first movie added to the list while reading QT's book. This is about a gambler who falls into some shitting driving home one night and winds up in prison for 4 years thanks to an unseen conspiracy who framed him. Much more direct than Pendulum, and honestly much better. It's loose low-budget sloppy feel keeps it out of the realm of a classic that should be taught in school or whatever, but it's a fun ride filled with interesting 70s faces and watching Baker's unique vibe of aw-shucks Texas with intimidating physicality and improvised rough-housing is easy to be fascinated by. Also his relationship with Conny Van Dyke is so odd. It's all over the place. Any foibles are quickly forgotten when the handful of fight scenes play out, some of which are surprisingly brutal, all well done. In the end, it's a solid b-movie that you can kinda see why it fell through the cracks but you can also see why QT holds it in such high regard. Throwing my own two cents into the ring, the poster is not doing it any favors. Why is there a bit "T" behind Joe Don Baker? And what pose is he in? Is he jumping? falling? dancing? The title is tiny and all they could drum up for a tagline was "That 'Walking Tall' man is back!"
12.10.22	Pendulum	George Schaefer	Tonight's double feature is about accused men, and it starts with this 1969 movie starring George Peppard as a cop, Jean Seberg as his wife, and Richard Kiley as a lawyer who gets a rapist out of jail due to Peppard's illegally-coerced confession. This movie has a pretty strange vibe, sometimes feeling more like episodic television than cinema, but the story that it's telling is pretty good. The first act is about Peppard suspecting that his wife is having an affair, but when she winds up dead in Peppard's bed the movie becomes a did-he/didn't-he mystery that doesn't have enough time to really get going. To me, the movie is limited by some things that also make it interesting. For instance, if it didn't take so damn long to get to the part where we're trying to guess whether he really killed his wife or not (the aspect which the poster doubles down on with the line "How far can a policeman go?" writ large), there's really only 2 suspects and all it takes is one line of dialogue to settle the mystery for the audience. However, the detailed, some might argue slow set-up with him following his wife, seeing her in her car through the window, her behavior made me question whether the affair was real to begin with, so something that probably should've been sped through to get to the story wound up being story in itself... so the murder scene is also a reveal which is kinda cool. The bigger example of this is George Peppard's performance, which starts off as terrible then becomes interesting in that you're only unsure of whether he did it or not because his performance is so bad as to be mysterious. It's like the opposite of Ed Norton in Primal Fear. I think if Peppard did a better job, you'd have no choice but to root for him (or against him), but as such you can definitely see it going either way just because he's so bored with the movie that he's in! Unfortunately, once that mystery deflates, it's a pretty unsatisfying climax and winds up feeling uneven and unsure of itself. It's not a super great movie, but it's on the verge. There's some interesting stuff going on here, and it's also an interesting mix of 60s breezy jazzy score and absolutely empty location photography of Washington DC's monuments (the imdb trivia section says this was filmed right after MLK was assassinated while riots were going on. I didn't see the smoke they mentioned but that era of the mall, capital, and the monuments looked so much less cluttered than when I saw it), with a taste of the more gritty anti-hero, bleak outlook, daring cinema of the decade to come. I can't remember in what context this was mentioned in Tarantino's book but I'm glad I noted it and watched it. It wasn't perfect, but it was interesting and I'd never heard of it before and I think/hope it'll pair well with the next one.
12.04.22	Death Wish	Michael Winner	Death Wish. This one's pure vigilante, but both films started increasingly ridiculous franchises that went on too long, both films feature a bleak worldview where the system impedes justice rather than encourages it, both from action mega stars who are better when they aren't talking. To me it's a natural pairing, if not a little too on the nose. I saw this one later than Dirty Harry (the entry should be shown below). My notes of interest are largely the same: Jeff Goldblum as one of the punks in the beginning, shooting in Old Tucson (as Old Tucson the tourist park), but also this time Jack Wallace popped out with his mustache and his big watery eyes and his supremely odd exit from the picture ("Weird!"). I think what makes this movie transgressive is that the character starts to like killing people. Like, when the police tell him that he's being watched, he could've taken a night or two off ya know? Instead, he snuck around to evade them just so he could get his gun and shoot more people. He's deeper and deeper into a delusion of this old west figure. I'm actually surprised that the movie isn't more heavy-handed with this, just including a few touches (most notably at the end when he tells the final mugger to "fill his hand" and "draw" before passing out). And just like Eastwood delivering his "Do you feel lucky, punk?" line again, having the movie end with Bronson pointing a finger-gun and smiling at some Chicago goons can't help but turn this movie into a franchise. Two characters who probably weren't intended to be looked up to instead drawing a generation of fans. I guess that's the fine line you walk in dealing with anti-heroes. There will always be a segment who don't get the anti- part and treat them as heroes. This movie also trades San Francisco for New York. I feel like New York in the 70s is almost a genre unto itself. Subway stations, graffiti, trash in the gutters, overcoats. It's such an evocative vibe. Just like Arnold in Total Recall, I do think this movie would've worked different and probably better with a more everyman actor in the role. Watching Bronson talk about housing developments and amortization is a little stretch but this does also work for him since he's older and not playing up his physique so much. I dunno, it's so hard to put yourself back before this was a staple. I can see why it was a hit but it didn't feel like a classic to me the way Dirty Harry did. But it's definitely still a great gateway drug if you will to many of the other double features I have lined up. Till the next one...
12.04.22	Dirty Harry	Don Siegel	I've got a bit of a dilemma. I gathered a bunch of movies for the year's DVRfest... too many, really; such that even after the fest I still have quite a list on my HD. Then I read Tarantino's book on 70s movie which generated a whole other list of movies I wanted to see. The ease in which I found most of those movies led me down a rabbit hole and... long story short: I have a shitload of movies I want to watch. Rather than try to cram them into another DVRfest or, you know, watch them one at a time when I'm in the mood like a normal human being, I fashioned the list into a long series of double features that I will hopefully spend the holiday season going through on nights where I stay up a bit. Many of these fit the DVRfest bill of movies I've always meant to see but they fell through the cracks; some I've seen before this journal started, and there are a few which live in far-off memories of late-night cable viewing which I found out their title and want to watch again. But all of that starts with tonight's double feature which I think is a good way to introduce this... series? schedule? phase? Whatever it is, it starts with this. Dirty Harry got the spotlight in QT's book where he talks about - among other things - how the film is political because the bank robbers that Harry blows away while chewing on a hot dog were black. He put a lot of words talking about whether the film was racist or the character was racist. I have to say, perhaps this is in the context of knowing the vibe of all the 70s films to follow, but the racism aspect of Harry in this first film is not much more than a joke involving slurs. He does kill some black guys but he also kills a white guy and he shoots at practically everyone. He's got one Travis Bickle line about throwing a net on all the scum of the post-hippie free-love sleaze around him but to me it just goes to paint that portrait of what became the archetypal movie cop who has to work around the harried lieutenant or mayor and nuisance laws that get between him and justice. It feels like this movie establishes all the tropes that would follow for this type of picture, but what I found more interesting with this viewing (I'd seen this years and years ago if you don't count the clip shown in Zodiac) was Siegel's committed use of location photography. So much of early-70s San Francisco is on display here. The limited interiors may be sets but the majority of the movie takes place outside and Siegel's direct, efficient, jostly camera is there for all of it. The night photography is like legit all black for some scenes, but often just for moments as Eastwood runs from lighting mark to lighting mark. The result feels gritty and authentic and often kinetic as we follow either Harry or Scorpio all over town. The story is also interesting in that the second half presents what I thought a stronger viewpoint than the subtle racism in the beginning. It's a condemnation of laws and rights that I think really imprints this as not only a cop movie but a vigilante movie (playing into the double feature tonight). Scorpio's vileness really comes out not when he shoots a kid with his rifle but when he cries for a lawyer and gets off due to an illegal search. In the end, Harry looms over the road in a way that always reminded me of Michael Meyers in Halloween for some reason. At this point he's a spectre of doom for Scorpio rather than a cop doing his job. For whatever reason my memory had changed it to him shooting Scorpio from the overpass through the bus windshield, probably because the final chase sequence, while showing another interesting location, is predetermined. And in a nod toward the franchise films 10 years in the future, him repeating that speech of "Do you feel lucky, punk!?" all but ensures a wave of fans similar to my friends and I all quoted "And you will know my name is the Lord" from Pulp Fiction when we were trying to act cool. So in many ways, this movie opens up the decade, opens up the other movies I got, and also sets the tone for a lot of what follows (just as it sorta did in QT's book). I liked it pretty good this time around, probably more than I did last time (it's hard when you're in your film snob period to watch a movie everyone loves and not feel compelled to be underwhelmed by it). On to the next one, which I think is very similar in many ways. Any guesses?
11.14.22	Mandy	Panos Cosmatos	Mandy. The movie everyone loves. The movie I should love. The movie I was afraid I wouldn't love. I had it confused in my mind. I know Beyond the Black Rainbow played at Fantastic Fest, but there were several films like that in the early 2010s and I remember watching some Greek art-meets-genre film where all the sets were wild and colorful but the story was a huge bore that didn't go anywhere. so I thought they were one and the same, I was hesitant to watch this because I thought it was by the same guy. The film I saw was actually called Norway by Yannis Veslemes, I haven't seen Beyond the Black Rainbow, so that clears that up. Mandy does play largely like how I imagined it would. The story is very simple, the pace is glacial (for the first half), the simplicity of its story is obscured by a heavy veil of color and lighting, it puts you in a trance-like state, etc. The difference, for me at least, is that the movie is actually good enough to pull it off. The colors and shot composition are beautiful to look at, the score is sweeping and evocative, enough to keep things from getting boring. The title treatments are very cool, i love how the movie's title comes up halfway through the film. Then there's one "normal" scene smack dab in the middle, between Nic Cage and Bill Duke, where there's actual dialogue and shit. After that, the last half plays out an incredibly satisfying revenge. Cage is great here. The scene where he screams is amazing. That sentence probably sounds funny if you haven't seen the movie, which I now have. So I liked it quite a bit. I was surprised by the quality of it and how I wasn't bored. I watching with my headphones on which probably helped as the score is such a huge factor. I now understand why so many people bring it up. constantly. Because it's really good. And that finally wraps up another DVRfest. This is the part of my notes where I typically list off the annual stats, mention how Peter Bogdanovich kept his notes for 17 years, and talk about the future of my movie-watching habits... ...but the numbers are crap (19 in the past week fora 2.71/day avg, 20 in the past month for a 0.67/day avg, 62 in the past year for a 0.17/day avg, and 3378 since the site started for a 0.51/day avg)... ...and Bogdanovich died this year... ...and this is the 18th birthday of this journal, so I have officially beaten him. Of course I didn't have a full career making movies including some amazing classic films, but whatever. So instead of apologizing for another lackluster year of watching more television than cinema and not going to a theater once, I am going to fill up this space talking about my movie-going habits BEFORE the journal started. If this site is to be the document of my cinematic experience, then indulge in a prequel of sorts. I was born in LA. The valley more specifically. I remember passing a Pussycat theater on my way home from and loving the huge marquee... not realizing it was a porn theater at all. Other than that though, I didn't see LA as the movie town. We lived in the valley, my mom worked for Western airlines (the airline that Arnold sneaks out of at the beginning of Commando), my dad did some vaguely business-y thing, our family wasn't connected to the entertainment industry at all. I remember we went to a drive-in a few times and I've been told that Temple of Doom was the first movie I saw in a theater. I was 6. I do have a memory of sitting in the lobby hearing that iconic theme play over the end credits of the previous show but nothing about if Mola Ram or the bugs scarred me for life or anything like that. I do remember seeing the trailer for Ghostbusters which showed the librarian and thinking that was scary. I also remember watching some movie with Dudley Moore about a tank and my mom asking the ticket clerk what gave the movie an R rating. She was alright with profanity but I guess didn't want me to see too much nudity or violence. As an only child I was spoiled. I loved Star Wars, somehow, so had those toys. I had a ton of toys. But as far as actually watching them I only have fleeting memories of Empire being on one saturday or something, watching the hoth battle in the living room. We had a Zenith floor model that I think was our only tv so it's not like I had any command over what we watched. I usually slept in too late to catch the Saturday morning cartoons although I did see them once or twice. We moved from LA to Colorado in 86. I remember the reception being terrible in the mountains; my mom trying to watch tv through the fuzz and snow. She was a movie fan. John Wayne was her and her sisters' favorite star. She had a habit of watching this mini-series called Centennial every year. It was like 20 hours long; she had a VHS box set that was like 12 cassettes, looked more like a log than a box. She also loved The Godfather and had "The complete saga" on VHS as well (that's the first two movies with Part 2 split in half to tell the story sequentially). She also loved Gone with the Wind and had a framed poster of it down in the basement. What I knew was that she liked very very long movies. Sometime during my short stint in Colorado, we started regularly going to the theater. My dad travelled a lot for business during that era so it was her and me for the most part. There were a couple multiplexes around so I remember seeing a lot of stuff. Lost Boys, Predator, Die Hard, Back to the Future Part 2, Batman, and we also had a drive-in where I saw Friday the 13th part 6 or 7, not caring about the other half of the double feature. This was also the time where a video store popped up. I remember they had these massively-wide boxes with the actual video cover centered between pillarboxes almost. That's how I first saw Stand By Me. Sometime around then we also got cable and the snowy barely-there image was replaced by bright vibrant stable colors. We had a tv in a basement room next to the garage (our house was on the side of a mountain so was multi-level) so I'd live down there, watching SNL and American Gladiators and the Friday the 13th series (which didn't have anything to do with Jason Voorhees). Somewhere around here, my mom also started recording movies she liked onto tape. I remember the earliest still being crappy over-the-air antenna quality but she recorded so many she had to put little number stickers on the spines and keep a record of which movies were on what tapes. In 89 we moved again, this time to Maryland. We got cable again not long after moving in and this is where my agency in what I saw started kicking in. We had 2 tvs (one in the living room, one in the fully-furnished basement) so I could usually get access to one. I also met my neighbor Camron and became best friends with him, who was into comic books and movies and video games like me. My mom's catalog begat a rolodex to keep track of, video stores proliferated including one just a mile or so from the house (B&B Video, soon to become Hilltop Video), we got HBO, our town had like 3 theaters to choose from. Not too too long after, I got a tv in my room (at first just to play games but eventually got a cable box attached). I saw a lot of stuff during this period. Cable also meant cinemax. My puberty was fueled by Cinemax after dark, picking movies to watch based on if anyone got naked in them, and... yes... I had a Boner Jams type tape where I would just record the sex scenes from the softcore flicks to watch back later. I'm sure it was laughable, spending more attention hovering over the record button trying to guess when the sex would start rather than actually exorcising the demons, but it made sense at the time. By the early 90s Camron and I were in the theater every friday, followed by a good hour of choosing what to rent from the video store for the weekend. I never worked in a video store but these were the years where I memorized all the boxes looking for some diamond in the rough. Sometimes it worked (Amazon Women on the Moon, especially Arsenio Hall's bit at the beginning really made me laugh), sometimes it was a bust (usually if it had Full Moon Entertainment on the spine). Still, I watched it all. And if it was good, I'd watch it twice before returning it. And if it was really good, I'd tape it myself when it hit HBO. This is how I spent most of high-school. The main difference was that I graduated to a deeper pool of resources in the form of Wonder Book & Video, a sprawling complex that was half dusty overburdened video shelves and a labyrinth of stacked and unorganized used books. My mom would get lost looking at the books while I spent hours scouring the shelves. I found a Night of the Living Dead / Reefer Madness double feature on one tape, Lars Von Trier's The Kingdom (thanks to a Stephen King quote on the box ("like ER on acid")), the two-tape Dawn of the Dead re-release just to name a few. As a testament to its quality, the place is still there today. Around now I began to do deep dives on directors. My friend Jim and I became preoccupied with Alfred Hitchcock. I got an assignment for German class to do an essay on Fritz Lang (my other choice was Fassbinder. I had no clue who either was). I started to wonder what the deal was with this Citizen Kane movie. So I began studying each issue of TV Guide and setting my vcr to record anything that looked interesting. Tapes and Tapes full of stuff off TCM... the intros were all over the place: early morning birds chirping, late night guy in coffee shop, so many Robert Osbourne introductions. I saw most of Hitch's films this way. For Lang's films I had to go to Wonder, who had Metropolis and Die Nibelungen in their silent section (seriously, we had no art-house theater in town but this video rental store had a silent section). I went away to college, where I got "serious" about movies. I fashioned myself a movie geek, having spent untold hours staring at the idiot box already, but soon met friends who actually worked at a theater, new stuff like digital sound and how the popcorn was made. A Cinemark Tinseltown opened outside the college town my first or second year there. It was the late 90s- a heyday of good studio stuff. I didn't rent much at first, instead going as a group at least once a week to the theater to see whatever was playing. My second summer, AFI came out with their first Top 100 list. A straight up Top 100 Best Movies to celebrate 100 years of cinema. A guy that worked where I was doing a co-op offhandedly mentioned that he and his wife were working through the list as something to do and that sounded like a great idea to me. I had already seen a bunch of them, probably 60% of the list so why not fill in the rest? Thus began my film snob period of the hobby. At one point I was so naively hypocritical that I was criticizing a roommate for reading a list of classic literature even though he wasn't liking them WHILE I WAS DOING EXACTLY THE SAME THING. Like gosh, why is he reading goddamn Siddhartha? Anyway, I'm off to rent Sunrise. To help in this endeavor, Blockbuster had a extreme-level membership dealy with a bunch of coupons like renting 2-for-1 on tuesdays or whatever, so I basically descended upon that store (which was nothing compared to Wonder Book & Video) and rented everything from their foreign and classics section over the course of one summer. I'm sure my roommates hated my ass. But by then DVD was also a thing. DC Was one of the test markets so I saw them show up at Suncoast Motion Picture Company and became an early adopter. Friends and I started a DVD review site where we offered 4 opinions on the same disc, including technical specs and commentaries and stuff like that. It was fun until we got sued for our domain. We tried a second iteration that didn't have the same energy and it quickly faded. But my collection was growing, this time with high-quality digital content that was more compact than VHS but way way cheaper than LaserDisc. My mom's collection of home-recorded tapes had grown to take up an entire wall of shelving in the basement: a uniform run of TDK or other VHS manufacturer's cases with orderly little stickers on the spine only spotted with official releases like Star Wars, and Fargo (which came with a fun little plastic snow globe), but my collection was a dizzying array of colors and typesets, dense and alluring as the films held within. One such class had an arrangement with the local arthouse theater (The Little) where the class would see a movie (in this case In the Company of Men) then the manager came out afterward to direct a conversation with the handful of people who stayed after. It struck me as something I wanted much much more of but it never happened again. Many many Q&As with lame non-questions later, i think it probably would never be that constructive again... so it's better than it just happened once. College ended with a burn-out. I had a tech degree but didn't want to use it. My senior year was spent taking freshman-level film courses. I wanted to double-major but it didn't really work that way and the shool told me i'd basically have to stay four extra years to do it. So I was a senior, firmly in love with the medium, amongst incoming freshman more interesting in partying and getting laid. I had a film history class with weekly screenings and the students wouldn't show up. Like, who doesn't want to watch Sunset Blvd!? "Oh, I'm going into animation. this live action stuff doesn't matter." Idiots! I wound up living back at home, basically in my room for a few years trying to figure stuff out. They had moved while I was in college so no more cable but satellite with Tivo and pay-per-view instead. And the DVD collection kept growing. I'd watch these documentaries on movies like Visions of Light or Martin Scorsese's personal journey through cinema and come out with laundry lists of things to see. I read Truffaut's biography and finally got into the French New Wave (predisposed to like him more than Godard). Criterion Collection was fueling my art-house queue while TCM gave me an education on film noir. I read Bogdanovich's Who the Devil Made It which sent me on more excavations. IFC ran interesting documentaries on Sam Fuller and for Halloween did programs on Cronenberg and Tom Savini. The movies were coming in on all cylinders. These 2 years after college was probably the height of my interest in movies in a vacuum. I had no one to talk to about these, not outlet to vent or share. I felt I had grown too big for my pond. And it's right about then that I created this site. My Aunt Suzy mentioned years beforehand that she had started keeping a list of books she read so she could remember since she'd started a couple books just to realize she'd already read them. This combined with off-and-on efforts I had made to start or keep a journal but never kept up with. The thought was to record initial thoughts - no format or expectation or pressure at all - and if I saw a movie again, I could compare my thoughts, like if I liked the movie more a second time or less or whatever. It was important for me to be able to say if I didn't have thoughts on a movie I could keep the entry short. Just make it and say whatever I felt, that's it. And that's what it's been. 18 years later and here we are. Unfortunately this wasn't around for my past forays into classic hollywood or Hitchcock or film noir, but it was here to record me moving to Austin, finding a community in the Alamo, living there for a few years, then having to get a job and slowly diminishing my viewing habits to the point now where I think about watching movies more than I actually do. It's been a long and varied journey but a few things have remained constant: there's always more good stuff out there to see, I've never known as much as I thought I've known, and the next great movie is always just over the horizon.
11.13.22	Weird: The Al Yankovic Story	Eric Appel	When funny or die was a thing and the fake trailer for a Weird Al biopic starring Aaron Paul came out, I thought it was quite funny. When I heard, years later, that they were going to actually make a Weird Al biopic, I thought it was cool that he's getting his due but it's going to be a boring movie because I've heard his story and it's much like mine (except for the talent, success, enduring career, huge group of friends who speak fondly about him, and generations of fans who still come out to see his shows). When the trailer for the biopic came out, I thought something was up because they totally stole that old funny or die video! Then the dots finally connected and I realized what this was... and that was when I knew it would be great and that I would love it. Well, actually I was a little iffy on it because it went straight to Roku, but i had hope! Now I've finally seen it and can say that it is great and I do love it. Daniel Radcliffe brings a real pathos to the role that I think Aaron Paul may have had trouble with. Evan Rachel Wood captures Madonna's essence perfectly, with just a soupcon of mischief behind her eyes. And Tommy O'Brien's performance was... well, it was as if John Bermuda Schwartz put down his sticks and picked up acting. I'm joking of course. Not that the movie is terrible, so I guess I'm not really joking. What am I doing? The format and content of this movie are exactly as they should be. It hits the exact tone of Weird Al's humor, that being largely childish and silly but with an extra layer or two to appeal to the big kids in the room. Never malicious, always ridiculous. My favorite scene has to be the Boogie Nights pool party. It's so perfect I don't even want to talk about it. I had programmed this movie to be the festival closer and I think it works beautifully as such, but there's that one movie that I ran out of time on last night... that one movie that's been sitting in the queue ever since it came out, and it gets constant mentions... constant reminders that I haven't seen it. So let's stay up a little bit late for a Sunday night and finally cross it off the list. Consider it a secret track at the end of the cd. This is the closer, but the next one is the afterparty.
11.13.22	Everything Everwhere All at Once	Dan Kwan, Daniel Scheinert	This was really good. Better than Swiss Army Man, waaaaaay better than Death of Dick Long. It's impressive to see what happens when the story is so nailed down and strongly envisioned that every element can be in sync. It definitely feels like a mosaic where every tile is placed with care, but the grand picture is also beautiful. And fun! I feel like this is the first multiverse movie that really explored some of its vast potential. I was trying to keep track of aspect ratios but either they got sloppy at the end or i missed some transition to where Evelyn's home universe shifted from 1.85 to 2.35... or maybe she left that one behind when... well whatever, no reason to go into spoilers about it. I particularly liked the nods to other films here. They really had a great time playing the the actors' experiences. All in all a complete and well-realized ambitious impressive movie.
11.13.22	The Ghost and Mr. Chicken	Alan Rafkin	Day four, last day, last few hours really before my time window closes. I wanted to start off with a classic Sunday Morning Matinee and this movie is about as Matinee-ish as you can get. Of course, since I slept in it's more like a mid-afternoon matinee but whatever. At some point in childhood, I saw this movie called The Private Eyes. it was basically Don Knotts and Tim Conway bumbling through a whodunnit. I laughed my kid ass off. My mom, somewhat dismissively, referred to this particular brand of comedy as "slapstick", intimating that it was on the sillier and more childish end of the humor spectrum (at the time i thought the comic strip Cathy and Doonesbury was at the opposite end being erudite sophisticated Frasier-type shit). I didn't care. I thought it was maybe the hardest I had laughed up to that point, but I didn't know the name of it and haven't seen it since. Well, I got a copy of that but in the process realized that I had never actually seen this classic ever, so what was going to be a Don Knotts double feature has turned into just this one because I picked 50 goddamn movies to fit into 19 slots. I knew pretty much nothing about the story of this film other than it was some venue for Knotts to do his thing. The story actually had a strong Preston Sturges vibe to me with the whole small town and cadre of supporting characters like the house tenants and the ladies' psychic league and everyone. Plus the guy saying "Atta Boy!" from off-screen like he's Rob Schneider. The ending gets a bit nuts but whatever, still fun. My favorite part was probably the speech he has to give. Just him shaking his notes in front of the mic cracked me up. All these bright 60s technicolors just scream nostalgia for me and I wasn't even alive. I think it comes from watching Disney channel as a kid with Swiss Family Robinson and the ilk. On a final note, I was very heartened to read on Knotts' wiki entry that he was a ladies' man. There's a chance for us all.
11.12.22	Nope	Jordan Peele	this movie is newer than Us so beware of spoilers in this post. The trailers showed something about aliens. This one was a little harder to avoid spoilers for... there was some article about some crazy lighting or photography technique used? That and this unspoken expectation that it's, you know, gotta be SOMETHING. Can't just be aliens or whatever. Hopefully if the story does rely on a twist it won't be telegraphed to point that i get it in 15 minutes. let's see. Hey it was just aliens! no twist! yay! I liked this one pretty well. Definitely more than Us. It kiiiiiinda gets loosey goosey at the very end... and the connection to the monkey tv show thing is kiiiiiiinda thin, but for the most part I thought it was good. I especially appreciated how Peele went ahead and showed the inside of the thing. It's definitely weird and alien and not good. I also liked Daniel kaluuya's minimal-as-possible performance to counterbalance Keke Palmer, but the Fry's guy was the standout for me. It still doesn't quite come together like Get Out did, so I can see why nobody talked about Us and this one isn't getting much chatter either, but I guess it's notable that the guy made three horror movies that didn't suck. Ok. it's too late to watch the last movie. I'm going to try and shift it to be the last movie of the fest. it will be hilarious and awful if it gets bumped because it's a movie I REALLY should have seen by now, but I can't control time.
11.12.22	Us	Jordan Peele	There be spoilers here for this movie. Ye've been warned. When Get Out came out, everybody talked about it. Like, Everybody. I feel like I liked it pretty good but maybe didn't freak out? But it was a good movie and it definitely hit at the right time and maybe it was a surprise from the funny Key & Peele dude? When Us came out, people didn't really talk about it. I took that to mean that it sucked. The trailer showed something to do with doppelgangers, so that's the only thing I knew about this going in. Unfortunately, that was enough for an idea to come to me 15 minutes in that I spent the entire movie hoping wasn't true. Like, I'm not one to go searching for christmas presents. I did that once as a kid and found it harder to pretend I hadn't seen it and act surprised on the day, knowing it was down there but inaccessible was worse than not knowing. But after I stopped looking I'd still literally run into them, like my mom didn't think that because she wasn't tall enough to see on top of the fridge didn't mean it wasn't exactly eye level to me. It's the same with movies. I don't spend the whole time trying to figure it out, really. If it's supposed to be a twist then I'm hoping it works on me, which is why it sucks when people say there even is a twist because that can't help but put your mind in a place to think about what it could be. So... back to this... i "figured it out" right at the beginning. not that it helped in any way. It doesn't really matter if it turns out that the main character is the double/clone/whatever if the whole concept of the doubles/clones/whatever doesn't make any sense. Like making up words. Ah hah! The jodhpur was the rigamarole the entire time! ok? so this underground tunnel network was home to an entire duplicate population subsisting on raw rabbit and mimicking their "surface" selves? How do they get the right clothes? what happens when the surface one dies? or has sex? It just opens a can of worms that is too much for me to extend my disbelief that far. Not even getting into who did the cloning? or where did they go? how do they have power? I mean an abandoned mineshaft is one thing but that had a working escalator. like a shopping mall. It's too much. But I will say this. I like that they shot in Santa Cruz. I thought it was a sly reference to a movie being shot on the carousel circa 1986. I liked Peele's style in having the main characters behave in realistic ways. I was never bored, the movie moved along with a tight pace, the horror/thriller elements worked well with creepy kids and whatnot. There was some stuff here to like. I didn't have a bad time with it. It's just that the premise demanded an explanation, like telling the audience that there's gonna be a twist then having that twist be that the people are fucking cosplayers living in some park the whole time. Unsatisfactory. Let's see if his next one is any better.
11.12.22	Is That Black Enough for You?!?	Elivs Mitchell	When I moved to austin and started going to the alamo drafthouse a lot, I was really opened up to a whole other world of cinema that I wasn't aware of (if this journal is good for anything, it's a document of that time circa 2005 - 2008). Of all the stuff I was exposed to, i gravitated toward the Blaxploitation genre as a favorite. I was really taken by the exuberant energy suffused in so many of them, where a lack of budget or resources didn't stop the movies from not only be important representation of a culture but also fucking hilarious. I still remember a screening of Human Tornado that brought a full capacity house down. They had a series on February that showed Tick... Tick... Tick, Penitentiary, and The Spook Who Sat by the Door... and every one of them really stuck with me. Since then, I went through a period and tracked a lot of them down online and have notes on here documenting how I felt about them, but I really enjoy them for the most part. Yes, the socially-conscious melodramas are harder to get through than the Jim Brown action movies, and the term "blaxploitation" is somewhat divisive as is how the black community sees that era, but with as much cultural aspect aside, they are really fun movies to watch. So when I learned that Elvis Mitchell had put together a documentary about the decade in which they flourished, it was immediately on the watch list. No question. Mitchell hosts The Treatment on kcrw, a show which I've been listening to in podcast form for years and years and years. I saw him one night for one of the QTfests talking to Quentin and fanboyed out more for him than Tarantino. Didn't go up and say hi because I'm a coward, but I definitely stared at him from across the venue like an idiot, so that's cool. Anyway, I'm really happy that it seems like Soderbergh and Fincher and some people got together to help him make this visual essay because he's the guy that I want this document from. This is maybe the longest movie of the fest but it didn't seem that way. I loved it. ...with just a few nitpicks. As a documentary about the films from years 1968 - 78, we spend a looong time getting to 68. Maybe he wanted to tell himself it was just about this decade so he didn't feel the weight of having to tell the story of the entire black history of cinema, but that's kind of what he did. You could argue that to understand the impact that these movies had you have to know the context of where they came from, but he's going back to Birth of a Nation! Gone with the wind. It's like a half hour to get to Putney Swope. which I have no problem with, except on the other side of the coin, representing all the movies made by black artists after 78 we get like a 7-second montage of random film posters. I mean I know I just watched Deep Cover so it's fresh on my brain but how are we not gonna get more than a literal afterthought for the various waves of black movies from the decades after the 70s? Trying hard to avoid Tyler Perry? whatevs. Also, even with the scope tightened to a decade, some parts of the film start to feel like a laundry list with each movie getting one, maybe two sentences of narration before moving on. It reminded me of when i tried to do a mix cd of rock songs and have them completely mashed up together and I wanted to call it "30 rock songs" but I don't know shit about music theory like which songs are in what key so in the end it was more like "the beginnings of 30 rock songs." I know it's a hard choice in which movies to spotlight, which to include, and which to exclude... but a few of these films are like "then this came out." And lastly... I'm not trying to say I know more than Elvis Mitchell here, but for all the pivotal films and independent stuff he included... no Welcome Home, Brother Charles? Jamaa Fanaka was another ucla student like Charles Burnett who released his thesis film except for instead of a poetic family drama it's about a wrongfully-imprisoned guy who gets revenge by strangling people with his huge dick. No room for that in your doc, Elvis? So those three admittedly minor nitpicks aside, I thought this was great. It's cool to see so many good movies in one place, see the genre blossom, and special shout out to Odds Against Tomorrow which is one of my favorite noirs (a 50s noir, connecting it to my Brute Force notes, where the protagonists' plans come apart due to Robert Ryan's racism). And putting footage of Once Upon A Time in the West set to Isaac Hayes' Walk on By? Perfect. ok. I don't know where the time went. It's already 11 and I have 3 more movies planned for tonight. I may have to do some shifting but let's see what we can do. Next up is a double feature from a black director, both of which were acclaimed but I haven't seen.
11.12.22	True Confessions	Ulu Grosbard	I didn't know this movie existed until the Movies That Made Us podcast brought it up. Apparently, Dustin Hoffman was going to direct Straight Time himself but realized it was too much and brought in Ulu Grosbard to direct him, who then went on to make this picture with Robert De Niro and Robert Duvall about the Black Dahlia murder. What? How had I never heard of this movie!? And that was my mistake. In the festival circuit, if a film hits the schedule with a bunch of bankable stars and it's not the opening night film, it's usually a bad sign. It means that movie sucks so bad no one wants to distribute it even with Robin Williams or whoever. It's one of the most reliable signs that a movie is terrible (another being if the studio pays for the audience's food and drink). Similarly, if there's a movie out there starring Robert De Niro and Robert Duvall right after Raging Bull but it's never come up in like 30 years of watching movies? That's a bad sign. I mean The it falls right in between Deer Hunter, Raging Bull, and King of Comedy, Once Upon a Time in America. It SHOULD'VE come up. This movie is a total snooze-fest. I don't understand, it's like the filmmakers wanted to make the slowest most boring version of an interesting story. They've got the body, meticulously recreated I might add, and a Brenda Allen stand-in and Duvall is a cop in the 40s with a priest brother (De Niro) who's involved with a smarmy Charles Durning. You've got the 40s sleaze of stag films and pin up girls. Yet it takes like 20 minutes just to get to the crime scene, and another hour to get around to any detective work. For some reason they thought all this nonsense with De Niro's monsignor talking to other priests about collecting money for some land deal and going to weddings and other random crap - all at 40% speed - and who cares? It's so drowsy you forget there even is a murder. This makes me think the filmmakers must have had some other idea in mind, like the rekindling of a brotherly relationship in the backdrop of a historical crime that everyone knows? I really don't know what they were trying to do. Now, it's entirely possible that I've just read too much James Ellroy to see any other version of this era as captivating. That's likely. And even when a director like Brian De Palma tries to tell the Ellroy version on film it comes out terrible so maybe it's just... hard? to make a movie about a girl found cut in half in a vacant lot? i guess? But so often this feels like the bizarro version of Ellroy's novel where every time it was cool or surprising or interesting, you get another seen of people whispering through a confession booth. I'd say... the last, 20 minutes? were engrossing? But it's a lot to sit through before you get there. Tough. This is the first film of the weekend that I have not liked. Hopefully it's the only one! I'm 100% sure that I will love the next.
11.12.22	52 Pick-Up	John Frankenheimer	Day 3! and also the only full day of intentional programming. There were about 30 movies I wanted to fit into today but let's try and get through 6, starting with this 80s Elmore Leonard adaptation starring Roy Scheider and directed by John Frankenheimer. I remember this video box having an exceedingly boring cover and I think this came out before we had cable so I don't think I've seen this before, but it fits perfectly in that HBO-era crime thriller that I remember watching a ton of. Also, my friend Grant recently turned me on to a movie podcast hosted by Josh Olsen and Joe Dante. For the longest time I swore off movie podcasts because I felt like it was one big echo chamber of the same circuit of guests answering the same questions, or geeks like me talking about how great John Carpenter's The Thing is. Well I already know how good The Thing is, I don't need other geeks to tell me. So for years the only podcast I listened to was Elvis Mitchell's Treatment, but even that has fallen off lately. However, with Tarantino and Avary starting up their podcast, I've found that hearing very knowledgeable people in the industry talking about other peoples' movies actually has some value for me, so I've been loving the Video Archives podcast and have tracked down and watched a few movies they've talked about there (without any self-applied pressure to watch everything they mention). Along those lines, The Movies That Made Us podcast on Trailers from Hell (Joe Dante's website) follows a formula of having a guest on not to talk about their own movies but... as the title implies, the guests' favorite movies. And of course Joe Dante has seen everything, walking encyclopedia-style so whenever he chimes in is always interesting to me. That's a long paragraph to explain that this movie popped onto my radar because I heard it mentioned on a podcast. This movie had me with John Glover's obscenely strong mid-atlantic accent that comes and goes throughout the movie. It was like he came to it via coke-fueled John Waters marathon or something. The mid to late 80s were for the most part a hard time to make a sincere thriller that didn't involve explosions or russians or exploding russians, but this movie tries pretty hard to remain in the realm of realism. The score dates it most heavily but I guess that can't be helped. But this does a good job remaining on earth as the story of a guy being blackmailed plays out in an interesting way that I found to be very satisfying. There's also a sleazy element here which I wasn't aware of, where the blackmailers are all in the adult video/porno world of LA so there are are cameos from vintage porn stars (including Ron Jeremy) and both Vanity and a super young Kelly Preston show some skin that was de rigeur at the time but probably problematic for today. The vibe still wasn't as grungy as something like Hardcore, more 8MM in that it's a soft-focus Hollywood studio look at the scene more than, you know, real. So I liked this. It's definitely an 80s movie but the story was smart and intriguing and the supporting cast was all entertaining. It's funny to see Clarence Williams III here playing more to his type (crazy psycho killer) right after his religious cop in Deep Cover, but he was great in both. So next up we're going to keep the podcast picks going with another movie I learned about from Joe Dante and Josh Olsen.
11.11.22	The Last Days of Disco	Whit Stillman	roll: 5 spine: 485 I've actually never seen a Whit Stillman movie before. I don't know why... just slipped through the cracks. So when Criterion put out that box set with this and Metropolitan and Barcelona I almost bought it but then decided I should watch one and see if I like it or not first. I'm a fan of Chloe Sevigny so...here we are! Ahh 90s indie... back to long dialogue-heavy scenes like the 30s talkies but now they're deconstructing Disney movies and talking about insecurity. Noah Baumbach, Nicole Holofcener, Kevin Smith, Neil LaBute... all sitting in diners or clubs or airports talking about snarky shit. That sounds dismissive, but I actually like most if not all of these movies and this is no exception. Plus it has a stellar soundtrack and - if you'll excuse my male-ness showing for a moment - absolute smoke shows in the forms of young Chloe Sevigny and Kate Beckinsale. I mean, jesus. Anyway, I can see how this might be misleading to those taking the title at face value. The disco element of this movie is strictly a background, used as a... i don't know, metaphor? for the characters' arcs. Anyone not ready for 100 pages of dialogue is probably in for a bad time. But thankfully, this is exactly what I thought a Whit Stillman movie would be like, so I'm happy with it. I'll probably pick up the other two at some point. And with that, Day 2 is over. I didn't fall asleep which means it's fucking late so hopefully Day 3 won't be postponed by sleeping in, but I managed to halve the random pool! We're down to d6 territory! Will next year be the end of this tradition? probably not but you never know!
11.11.22	The Earrings of Madame De...	Max Ophuls	roll: 5 spine: 445 The only Max Ophuls movie that I've seen is Lola Montes, which I didn't like much the first time I saw it and absolutely loved it the second time. This certainly follows similar themes both in style and story... I'm not sure if every Ophuls movie is about a lady with a heart problem who but the last two are. And while it's not the flashy spectacle of Lola Montes, Ophuls still whirls the camera all over the place with several impressive sequences through massive sets or locations. One in particular shows a burgeoning attraction between two characters as they dance at various functions with costume changes done with seamless cuts syncing with the steps of the dance. And there is this baroque level of detail pertaining to these characters' social standing. Like there's always some servant ready to hand them a hat or take a coat or whatnot. The costumes are lavish and sparkle in the lens. It's a very lush viewing experience. As for the story, it involves the titular earrings and how they change hands through the course of the film. It's not quite to the extent of movies like Twenty Bucks which follows the item from character to character but it does make a nice framing device. When it first kicks in I thought it would prove to be a light-hearted comedy of coincidence type deal but... nah. It's sad. However, it is pretty cool how the earrings hold different meanings to the different characters that change throughout the film. So, I thought it was interesting. I was engaged the whole time, but again I can't help but compare it to his next film which is just a filmmaking marvel, so that's hard to top. I am struck by the similarities between the two, and feel like this would be much more acclaimed if Montes doesn't exist because it showcases many of the same talents. This is also the first movie i've seen Vittorio De Sica in as an actor. He's pretty good! Ok. it's 2 am. I'm still awake. do i push it one more or call it a night? Looking through the runtimes of what's left, there's only 1 that's longer than 2 hours. As long as I don't roll a 7 I think I'm good for one more. Next?
11.11.22	Deep Cover	Bill Duke	roll: 9 spine: 1086 from one of the oldest discs in my collection to one of my newest! I just picked this up in the last 50% off sale after talking to my friend Grant about it. I think I saw this at some point when it hit HBO but have no memory of it and back then I didn't know the director was also the dude from Predator so it was time for a revisit. Also, part of me is feeling a yearn to return to these 90s thrillers that proliferated back then and I saw randomly on cable. My old neighbor and best friend Camron recently reached out and we've been catching up so the early nineties have been flooding back into my brain. Cable and HBO played a significant role back then, as did the video store, but more on that later. So now that I've seen it, I'm pretty sure my memories of this are just from the Dr. Dre music video. The movies on HBO were more like Light Sleeper and Bad Influence. I wasn't into hip hop back then but that "It's 187 on the undercover cop" was catchy and everywhere. The introduction of Snoop Dogg... even though I greatly prefer Eric B and Rakim's song from Juice, but this certainly sits up there with Ice-T's Colors. This was pretty good. It's a surprisingly mainstream pick for the Criterion collection, but I'm with it. This probably aged better than other black movies from that era like New Jack City (which I remember liking back in the day but even then i thought it was pretty over the top) and Juice (except the song of course). Boyz n The Hood and Menace 2 Society probably still pack more punch but for a crime thriller this was solid. It's nice to see Jeff Goldblum not play a wackadoo variant of his current persona, back when he could "act" "normal." Fishburne's also great, there's some great Hollywood scenery in the locations, and a nice breath of accessible air after a day full of reading subtitles. Ok, it's midnight. Let's do one more. Next!
11.11.22	The Testament of Dr. Mabuse	Fritz Lang	roll: 4 spine: 231 The rolls are getting lower and lower, the movies are as well. I thought this was a 2-hour silent film from Fritz Lang so I thought it was a real landmine that I've been putting off for probably 20 years, but now that I'm forced to watch it I realize that it has sound! it's the follow-up to M! Even with fancy sound to listen to, the movie takes a while to get going. And while there is some cool stuff with old-school visual effects like double exposure and even scratching the film for an explosion effect, it's also susceptible to a shitload of scenes where people are just standing around talking to one another in that early 30s way. It also took quite a while for me to figure out what the movie was about. It's something to do with crime, but it takes quite a while to really come in to focus. I know that the Dr. Mabuse character is one that Lang revisited several times throughout his career but it takes a long time for him to come on screen. Still, trying to put this film in context, it seems like it precedes a ton of psychological thrillers and crime procedurals, and I'm sure if you put it up against a typical Hollywood film from the same year this would really stand out. I mean there are car chases and it dips into expressionism and moves the camera a bunch, but it also has to explain stuff like ballistics analysis to prove that the same gun shot two bullets which is something the entire movie-going world has known for like 50 years. So I can't say I had a great time watching it, nor can I say I didn't get distracted a bit through the middle, but at the end of it I find myself wishing for more time to go through the special features and learn the backstory of this film, why Lang stayed close to the character throughout his career, and if Mabuse is supposed to be Hitler or something, because his criminal plans are pretty extreme. Also of note, the second disc on this ancient dvd release has a French version of the film that I guess Lang filmed at the same time. I know a few other movies have done this (notably Dracula) but it's wild to think, like, ok cut! let's go again with the French actors! Cutting together both films simultaneously. Pretty intense. where is the time going!? time for a pizza and hopefully 2 more. Next!
11.11.22	Brute Force	Jules Dassin	roll: 6 Spine: 383 Another noir, this time 40s American from heist-master Jules Dassin (who I believe was American but when to France when he was blacklisted?) and a prison drama written by Richard Brooks and starring tough guy Burt Lancaster. I don't know if this is a real thing or not but it seems to me that there's a clear difference between 40s and 50s noirs. While 40s noirs are still dark and bleak and pessimistic, they also have a kind of reserved etiquette that the 50s movies don't have. So a movie like this, while it's about prison conditions and humanity under oppression and all that, it still has a polite level of decency. Compared to a movie like Riot in Cell Block 11 it feels like a melodrama. And I'm not saying that's bad. Just a different vibe, less dangerous. But what it lacks in edge it more than makes up for in an almost romantic feeling of civility. Even the fearsome prison guard captain here is played by soft-spoken Hume Cronyn. He does still convey menace but in a classically-trained perfect-grammar sort of way. I'd say Cronyn is actually the stand-out here. And the ending does deliver, but the various flashbacks showing how each main character came to be in the prison feel pretty flat to me. After Le Doulos, this one doesn't quite stack up. Not to say I didn't enjoy it, just that it was only good not great. Next!
11.11.22	Le Doulos	Jean-Pierre Melville	Roll: 8 Spine Number: 447 So this is proof that Melville can make a movie under two hours! This is what I'd call a more typical noir which I guess stretched all the way into the 60s. I know they were making reactive noirs in the 50s as well so I'm not sure if this genre was still popular this late or if it was just Melville centering in on what would eventually become his trademark slow burn crime stuff like Le Samourai and Le Cercle Rouge. In any case, this plays like a classic noir with a few little touches that set it apart. There's a scene early on where the score rises with the action until Belmondo turns off the radio, making it diagetic. And there's still a very French vibe with the cigarettes and contemplative facial expressions. In one scene a character makes another character a sandwich on baguette and it looks so goddamn good... way better than the Goldfish I was munching on. But it still follows the format with trenchcoats and low key lighting and convoluted but ultimately tragic story. The movie does an interesting thing with its on-screen text at the beginning explaining the title as underground slang for "Hat" but also the man who wears it: a police informant! So right off the bat you're like ok who's the Hat? The problem being, of course, that every one wears a damn hat. So like 30 seconds in you're primed to expect this informant and that led me to expect maybe a proto-Infernal Affairs or something... but the movie knows what its doing. So... all these things are to mean that this movie is right in my wheelhouse. I liked pretty much everything about it. And while he's not wielding that pacing to expert effect like his later movies, Melville still has a strange effect where you start off thinking it's very slow and almost boring but soon enough you realize that you're completely engaged. I don't know if I'm giving Melville the benefit of the doubt because I've seen his other movies, or if it would work the same way for a newcomer... but that's how I experienced it. Ok, next.
11.10.22	Hellraiser	David Bruckner	To wake myself up, I started this last movie with a screening of Nine Inch Nails' controversial long-lost "snuff film" made in conjunction with the Broken EP. I remember back in the day there were always rumors like that where the FBI opened a case on the Down In It video or something and this film was too intense for release since it had footage of "supermasochist" bob flanagan. It was on bootlegs for a time but I guess Trent or someone with an official copy released it on the Internet several years ago so now it's available. I was about as big a fan of NIN as you could imagine back during this time so I'm familiar with the videos MTV played for Wish and Pinion which was all of 60 seconds long. Then when NIN released their "Closure" VHS box set with all the videos I finally got to see the video for Happiness in Slavery and it was indeed pretty intense. I think the videos for Gave Up and Help Me I am in Hell were also on there although I don't remember Gave Up being so graphic. That's probably the most intense moment in the movie with all the blood and guts of a horror movie. The rest of the "new" footage is just a few minutes of random choppy footage. It's mostly the videos. But still, glad to officially check that one off the list and it's on to the last movie of the night: Hellraiser. Why is this movie two hours long? I made it halfway through before passing out. But now that I'm done... why is this two hours long? There's not exactly a ton of story to get through and while the cenobite designs and make-up are pretty great, they don't have much screen time. I think this is the right call but most of the first hour dragged pretty hard for me. The second hour picks up a bit... I think they wrote themselves into a corner by having the puzzle box have like 7 configurations. I appreciated the deep exploration of exactly how the box works (I don't know if they've gotten into that in previous movies or not), but that box is like the star of the movie. Now, it should be mentioned that I haven't seen any of the shitty sequels past 4 so I don't know how bad the series has really become. I don't think this movie is terrible by any means, and it's probably a joy for Hellraiser fans to finally have a new movie with some kind of budget made by people who don't hate the franchise (thanks, Daniel for that phrase). So the fact that it's a half hour too long is trivial compared to what it could be. And it's worth calling out a second time how great the cenobite designs are. In particular I loved the dude with the flat face like a callback to the wooden pillar in the first/second films. So there's plenty to like here... but it does have the vibe of a tired sequel that's more interested in the gore and novelty of monster design than something fresh and deep. Can't be avoided I supposed, but they're never gonna top the first film. So that concludes day one (technically). Following DVRfest tradition, day two will be devoted to Criterion Random Roll, so I have no idea what's up next. I am down to 12 titles in the pool though, and I remember last year had some tough rolls. I think there are still a few mines in the field here but mostly it's good stuff I'm excited by so... let's see!
11.10.22	Arrebato	Ivan Zulueta	AKA Rapture. This was one some list of horror movies I think? It sounded intriguing since i like movies about movies, but really this is equal parts drug movie. I guess this has some connection to early Almodovar, but I haven't seen any of his early movies so that was lost on me. To be perfectly candid, I found most of this not for me. I didn't really understand what was going on and the droning music along with clicking camera timer actively tried to put me to sleep. I was hoping for something like the book Flicker. I got something like Godard. I will try and slap myself awake because I've got one more to go through... which thankfully should not be slow or hypnotic.
11.10.22	Tapeheads	Bill Fishman	I saw this at some point via the video store. I was a big fan of John Cusack due to Better Off Dead and One Crazy Summer and I think I liked Tim Robbins ok too. I don't remember how old I was but I remember not really clicking with it because it was too all over the place. I remember much preferring the music video in that movie The Big Picture instead. Then some years ago, my friend Micah discovered this and fell in love with it. Ever since then I've been meaning to give it another watch, which now I have! It's funny... I remember having similar feelings about both this and Repo Man. I liked Emilio Estevez from shit like Young Guns and Men at Work so I was not prepared for the galactic punk insanity of Repo Man. Watching this now, I still detect a share similarity... both in the setting of 80s LA with a bunch of punk musicians in roles but also a bit of the chaotic freedom that somehow got both pictures made. This is like the flip side of the coin, opting for blatant silliness rather than... whatever Repo Man is, but I still feel a kinship there, along with other stuff like Roadside Prophets (which has another gonzo Cusack cameo) which it comes as no surprise to see one of the writers on this film produced those others. So, with the wisdom of age and experience, I really liked it this time around. The music video stuff is fun in a dated way, the story feels very much of its time, but the sheer amount of musician cameos is pretty cool. I think I maybe also saw Bobcat Goldwaith in there for a minute? You can tell it was made for very little money, but they were clever with it and it comes off as cool. Plus... what a band name: Swanky Modes. perfection. So yeah, finally saw Tapeheads again. I'm glad to set that right in my memory. I'm hoping to fit 2 more in tonight. Next up is some random pic that I hope is good.
11.10.22	Confess, Fletch	Greg Mottola	Hey I watched a movie! And it's part of an event! and that event is DVRFEST 2022 *airhorn intensifies* Yep, it's officially back for one more year, back in its old time slot, and since I skipped Fantastic Fest this year it's probably the only blip of activity on this otherwise dormant blog. But let's not think about that! Let's watch movies instead! This year was kinda tough. I knew this was coming up so I started collecting movies I wanted to catch up on, but now I have like 2 DVRfests worth of shit. So The schedule is a little fast and loose this year, but I'm excited. I have a small mountain of snacks, the house to myself for the weekend, and nothing to do but watch movies until I pass out. I wanted to start with something easy and light and fun, like an apertif if you will. I'm happy to say that this movie fit the bill. I don't know if it's Knives Out that brought this resurgence of mysteries or what but I'm happy about it. I remember liking the old Chevy Chase movies way back when and feel like Jon Hamm is damn suitable to step into the role. I also like just about every Greg Mottola movie I see. I feel like it borders on too broad at times but for the most part stays in the pocket of charming. I particularly enjoyed the score which gave it a breezy jazzy attitude that is exactly what I wanted from this. So hooray for matching expectations! I liked it! Next up is a movie I saw so long ago I may count it as new. It was also down to the wire to find a copy so I'm happy to have it available in slot number two. let's go!
11.05.22	Bullet Train	David Leitch	DVRfest is coming up so I've started accumulating movies I want to watch... except when I put a rough schedule together I realized I have way more movies than I'll have time for during the fest. So I had originally planned this as a double feature with Nobody, but I felt like watching a fun movie tonight so here we are. The tipping point for my interest was Brian Tyree Henry who I think I've loved in everything I've seen him in... I really wasn't expecting Citizen Kane with this one, but in a Smokin' Aces / Shoot 'Em Up / Guy Ritchie type vibe it was fun. Actually, the story had more consistency and fewer idiotic turns than most I guess so it might deserve more than "fun" but at the same time I don't think it's aspiring to more than that so that's that. I did have a good time with it.
10.02.22	Copycat	Jon Amiel	I recently watched Ryan Murphy's Dahmer mini-series on Netflix and thought it was very good. Jeffrey Dahmer's one of the last and most extreme serial killers to be caught and I was old enough to remember news coverage and how he affected the culture when it happened. So similar to his OJ Simpson show (but with more gore), I thought this was a good deep dive and have been enjoying the wave of meta content on the internet about how close it stuck to the facts and that sort of thing. One such video was some serial killer expert rating movie clips. They started with the beginning scene from this movie and I realized that they had the actor playing the killer in the audience during the lecture. I also remembered that there was a scene where the killer mimicked Dahmer. That was enough to track this down and give it another watch. A little bit more precursor. Movies in the 90s... this was when i was a teenager so... many of these movies I saw a lot. I'd see them in the theater, then rent them when they hit the home video market, then sometimes record them when they hit HBO. Therefore, many of these types of hollywood 90s thrillers if they were any good at all I saw a bunch. So even though it's been at least 15 years since I last saw this, the story was very familiar. What did feel new was revisiting the era as an artifact. Somehow, 80s movies FELT 80s even when I was watching them new. Lost Boys or Masters of the Universe or even Back to the Future all had a vibe to me, but 90s culture seemed to manifest more on tv with commercials and mtv and whatnot, but looking back now this movie is riddled with stylistic artifacts that seemed cool and hip back then but now strike me as bizarre. Furthermore, I feel like the 90s was the last wave of "good enough" filmmaking where stuff like true facts and fine details didn't really matter because it was hard to look shit up and all you had was a CRT television with interlaced VHS anyway so none of that shit mattered. Nowadays it's all different. A show like Dahmer is ONLY good if it can faithfully recreate stuff exactly as we saw it on the news 30 years ago. This movie uses the subject of serial killers as Backdraft uses firefighting or... The Accountant uses accounting. Not only does it not compare to Silence of the Lambs (which this was probably greenlit in the wake of), but certainly in a post-Zodiac, post-Mindhunters world this falls way short. The names of the killers are real but the crime scenes and photos and all the expert knowledge that Sigourney Weaver babbles is all made up. Harry Connick Jr.'s portrayal is almost comical, and the film's ending - while I think it works in the context which its built for itself - doesn't make much sense. I hate to admit this, but one of the biggest things that bugged me about this viewing was Holly Hunter's performance. She's going for the slick senior detective but all that 90s snark didn't work for me at all. As I remember, this movie was kind of trying to have some authority talking about disturbing the scene and following evidence, so all the nonsense with Will Patton and whatnot just reeks of Keanu Reeves in Speed type stuff. Oh, and the computer shit. The movies have finally moved beyond the magical wonders of computers but this was a reminder of how bad 90s movies were with that shit. Using like a hacked version of Photoshop 1.0 to copy paste then with the double click of a Compaq mouse it's magically a blended animation, and these chat room windows... And Dermot Mulroney with the magical powers of knowing how to read English off a monitor. It's not quite as bad as "This is a unix system. I know this!" but just indicative of how new and mysterious the tech was at the time. heh heh. But... I mean... I didn't hate it. It's just amusing to see now is all. Now that "they're back," the 90s definitely had a unique style. I don't know that I could say the same for the 2000s though. I guess we'll see in 10 years when it becomes retro. So anyway, yeah this is total popcorn mediocrity these days, but I remember it standing out as being better most of its peers, along with stuff like Virtuosity, Bone Collector, Fallen, and of course Seven.
09.17.22	Thor: Love and Thunder	Taika Waititi	Keeping up with the Marvel films... this one felt rushed. The story is pretty laid bare, meaning as I watched it was pretty clear to me what each scene was. Like ok here's the scene where they act and kiss, here's the scene where they show a lot of cameos, here's the scene where they set up the story, and here's the scene where they beat the bad guy. Not a lot of nuance or surprise there, which I think could be attributable to lack of time. I'm really not sure how Waititi's doing all this work these days so I'm going on a hunch that my problems with this film all stem from it being rushed, maybe a bit of an assumption that since Ragnarok was good this one will be as well. But a few things bugged me. They involve spoilers, so... spoiler alert. I think I'm pretty much the last fan of these marvel movies to watch this so it may not matter, but still. For one, it seems like this movie's "Big Deal" is that Natalie Portman returned. Just to kill her off? Seemed pretty odd to me. Reading the "trivia" section of imdb I guess there was a comic line that they took this from, and i guess what an actor wants is a meaty role with a good death scene and not to be on the hook for 7 more like Chris Hemsworth or whatever, but still. And what's with the Guns n Roses? It's all over the place. Like a third of the soundtrack, posters everywhere, one kid wants to go by Axl. They even used Sweet Child twice? It's a lot. But even though it's disappointing after Ragnarok, it's still waaaaay better than the first two Thor movies. I think leaning into Hemsworth's comedy is the right move and it was never boring or a slog or anything... just a little bare-bones and inconsequential... which is honestly true to comics as well. It's not like every month is some huge payoff... some times Spidey's just fighting Sandman again.
09.02.22	Demonoid	Alfredo Zacarías	This was another one talked about on the Video Archives podcast where everybody liked it a lot. It's another possessed-hand movie (of which there are a surprising number), but generally executed pretty well. I'd go so far as to say the hand acted better than any of the actors. I didn't like this one as much as the last Video Archives rec, but it's hard to be too mad at a 79-minute exploitation with a few good scenes, some effective editing, and a surprisingly brisk pace. I've definitely sat through a lot of movies with the same running time that felt twice as long, so it's nice that this had enough movie to be a movie, if that makes sense. Just a quick plot synopsis because I doubt I'll remember this in a year or two. Spoilers ahead for sure! There's some ancient cult or something in Guanajuato, mexico where the devil's hand is in service to... the devil, or something. So these monks or something cut off this woman's cursed hand (after ripping the front of her robes open) and lock the hand in a special hand-crypt. Everything's cool until some american miner guy discovers it and... in a drunken stupor opens it. It's just dust inside but the malevolent hand-spirit enters his body and he blows up the mine with a bunch of miners in it then takes off to vegas because the devil hand is great at throwing craps. Unfortunately, his winning streak attract the attention of a goon who takes him out to a shack in the desert to find out how he can win so much. At threatening the dude with harm to his hand, the guy flies into a rage, crushes this lady's face, and then kills the host guy by burning him alive. So he gets buried in LA but he's not really dead so he literally jumps out of his grave, still all burned up, until the hand finds a way to separate itself from the body, which it does. It transfers its hand-spirit into a cop who, when he encounters the wife of the miner guy and now it, like, wants to serve her or something? so the cop busts into a plastic surgery center and says "chop off my hand or i'll kill you!" So that happens, but then the hand crushes the cop's face and... there's this priest... and the hand enters the priest and the priest is like "I have to kill you lady so i can hold the power of the devil hand" but I guess he was tricking it or something? because they stab through his wrist to get it caught in a door then he burns his own hand to a stumpy crisp with a blowtorch. And all is well, until it randomly shows up at the end and kills the lady then the movie is over like no pause or anything just OVER.
08.27.22	Top Gun: Maverick	Joseph Kosinski	A long-awaited Top Gun sequel, held back through the pandemic so Tom Cruise could show it in theaters, lauded as a success and the movie that put butts back in seats... now living forever on streaming or whatever. So... all the jet footage is undeniably awesome. Fantastic stuff. I'm sure seeing it in IMAX was literally thrilling. There's some absolutely bonkers photography of the actors in cockpits with the scenery all around them and... whatever that is when clouds form around the jets as they execute maneuvers or whatever... you can see that happening right behind Tom Cruise's face, which is awesome. They're flying low to the ground... they're dog-fighting, you can tell what's going on even though there's 8 cuts a second... it's all punching you in the brain boom boom boom boom and it's working. And there's probably like... well, it felt like there was a solid half hour of flying footage. The training stuff is great then when they actually run the mission it's also great. Anything involving jets is great. The rest of the movie is neutered dogshit, but I mostly can't fault it because it's definitely intentional. Using the same score and songs as the original, replicating shots or scenes from the original, having Miles Teller as Goose's son or a random F-14 just lying there waiting for Mav to fly it or any of the usual remake/reboot/nostalgia nonsense... that's what this movie is. I will say... it's not like the original was gritty or realistic but at least the enemy was from a real place, and at least the alluded-to sex was more than Jennifer Connelly laying down then them talking in bed. Just another engineered-for-maximum-profit move... I guess there was a "fuck" in there somewhere since it was rated PG-13, but otherwise I don't see a reason why this wasn't rated G. So I didn't like any of the parts that weren't in the jets, but the jet stuff was fucking cool.
08.13.22	Also Starring Austin	Mike Blizzard	I, once again, sat down to watch the movie I intended to watch last night then got completely distracted when I found this doc on youtube. It's kind of like a companion piece to that doc about all the movies filmed in LA except for the list of Austin-shot films is much shorter so it seems more exhaustive. There were one or two that I hadn't realized shot here (like Courage Under Fire and the second Texas Chainsaw Massacre) but also a ton of independent movies I'd never heard of. It's not like I'm keeping close tabs on the Zellner brothers and Andrew Bujalski though so I guess I shouldn't be surprised. In any case, this was decent. My favorite moment is when they intercut Future Kill with Blood Simple. I still remember the VHS cover of Future Kill but never actually saw it. This movie goes out of its way to say it sucks but part of me wants to track down a copy and watch it. For the most part though, it doesn't say a whole lot (similar to LA Plays Itself), but really what is there to say other than "hey look, these movies were shot here!" so it's satisfying but trivial at the same time. Fun for me since I live here and like movies, but I doubt it's so fun for anyone else.
08.12.22	Prey	Dan Trachtenberg	I've heard generally good things about this and felt too tired to watch my original pick for the evening. I was a bit dubious of the whole native american, prequel angle but I wound up liking it pretty well. Actually I think this falls into third place for me as being pretty decent for the most part. It's definitely the closest in vibe to the first, but I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for Predator 2 so it's not anywhere close to topping that. There's still definitely some nitpicks, but I'm just mostly surprised that it didn't suck so I don't want to spend too much time thinking it apart.
08.07.22	Delirium	Peter Maris	It's been forever since I watched an exploitation movie. It feels like the few movies I watch these days are new blockbuster comic book fare which I'm never totally in love with. Well, Tarantino started his podcast with Roger Avary and in the latest episode they talk about this movie. They both liked it and went on and on about going in blind so you're not spoiled by any of the turns that the story takes. So to anyone worried about that, I'll just say that I liked it a lot. It's a regional low-budget exploitation movie but the story is surprisingly good. SPOILERS It's ostensibly a kind of maniac killer type movie with this psycho guy on this killing spree and these cops on his trail, but we soon find out that the killer is a viet nam vet who's freaked out connected to a witness that the cops interview because the witness is secretly part of this weird vigilante group that goes after rapists and killers that escape justice by technicalities. The leader of this vigilante group was the killer's captain or sergeant or whatever in Nam and now he's in charge of making all these vigilante killings look like suicide. So the movie is actually a really sound investigation as the cops try to make sense of what they've stumbled upon while the vigilante board tries to cover their tracks with this one guy going nuts and killing a bunch of women. The acting is not great (for the most part) and the score is pretty typical low-budget exploitation fare ("you get one instrument at a time. You want a bass guitar? you get the bass THEN the piano!") and the actual murder scenes don't work on the horror/gore front (except maybe the first one), and there is maybe one or two extraneous scenes put in to meet the 85-minute runtime, but for the most part the scenes play at a normal clip and nothing is too tedious or boring which is usually what happens in movies like this. I was expecting some sort of twist so I had to temper expectations that killer robots wouldn't show up or they'd all be vampires or whatever, but I do like the whole vigilante angle and I actually was engaged with the cops' detective work throughout. It was a nice touch that the autopsies revealed that all the suicides had empty stomachs which makes sense since they were held captive before the kangaroo court sentenced them to death. It's definitely not fair to say that this was "better" than the gigantic slick comic action movies or whatever since there's so much about the production itself that is amateurish, but it does have that charm of a movie out of nowhere that could be about anything... you put it in and roll the dice and sometimes it's boring crap but every once in a while it's pretty good. And this was pretty good.
07.24.22	True Lies	James Cameron	OK so I was pretty tough on The Gray Man and thought it was basically a not-as-good version of True Lies and that I should've just watched True Lies because it's the best spy action movie out there. So I watched it. And I think my memories were helping it a fair amount. The short version of this note is that it hasn't aged perfectly, was never perfect to begin with, and is just as action-figure-toybox as Gray Man, just in a 90s way instead of a 2020s way. So... watching this basically reminded me of how much my buddy Jim loved the movie when it came out. Cameron's brand of humor hit him right in the sweet spot, and it is very effective in breaking up the action or putting a button on scenes. The humor really helps because without it this movie would've aged much more poorly. It still veers into "problematic" territory for the whole second act, where Arnie basically terrorizes and forces his wife into prostitution for laughs. It doesn't play that way of course, but it also kinda does. I do remember even when it came out that it seemed like a whole other movie just injects itself into the middle of the main move for an hour or so then it gets good again. Now it's even more so. Some of the action scenes also show their age. In my head this stands as more or less the pinnacle of pre-CGI action effects. This is after T2 so there may have been some digital assets snuck in there but everything I saw was just a ton of green-screen compositing work. However, these digital cameras just move faster these days. The beginning sequence of Arnie on a horse vs. the terrorist on a motorbike can't help but feel a tiny bit lethargic. Again though, the humor pulls it through. Arnie's stream of polite apologies as the horse gallops through the Georgetown Mall keeps you snickering. And Cameron's touches, like how messy Arnie's harrier piloting is... having the jet's wheel destroy one cop car then nudging into another when it lands are subtle touches that ground the effect (which I believe they had on a giant crane or gimbal or something that they may have digitally erased?). But there's still something to be said for the practical stuff. I was still totally on board for the end sequence with the harriers and the bridge as well as the stuff with the harrier and the building crane. I mean they actually blew up that damn bridge! They had to build a new one so they could blow up the old one. That's crazy. Tom Arnold and Bill Paxton were still highlights for me as the comic relief. As a kid, I was on the fence about Jamie Lee Curtis but now I see how incredibly fit she was for the role and, again, they make her do a strip-tease and all this action in a tiny dress and she just has to forgive Arnie for all this shit. But it's not that kind of a movie. Arnie is a total man-child (when she says "go do your job" or whatever after the nuke goes off he's totally "ok byeeeeeee"). So... yeah, not without its flaws. I still enjoyed it but I was mostly back in high school watching it in my memory so of course I enjoyed it. I still haven't seen the original French file that it's based on (La Totale!) but the trailer looks surprisingly similar. Anyway, I still liked it, although I do now thing I was a bit harsh with The Gray Man.
07.23.22	The Gray Man	Anthony Russo, Joe Russo	I was in a mood to watch an action movie that was hopefully decent. This wasn't as terrible as that 6 Underground Michael Bay piece of dogshit, so that's good... but it did make me wonder why I wasn't just watching True Lies again. It's been a while since I've seen that and I think James Cameron had the talent to pull this kind of spy action movie off better than anyone. It's a shame he's been on whatever Avatar 2 - 8 nonsense that's going to close out his career, because his pre-titanic career was amazing. Anyway, back to this one. There were a few stand-out action set pieces but for me it was all undercut by Ryan Gosling's super-powers combined with his plot-armor jean-jacket. Like, I guess everyone forgot what made Die Hard good? It's one thing if it's Arnold Schwarzenegger circa 1986 where he LOOKS like an invincible god, but Ryan Gosling? Even professionally-trained Marvel version of Ryan Gosling still looks like a somewhat normal dude, and they give him Ryan Reynolds smirk-fest dialogue for the whole movie so it all combines to feel like the whole movie is a 9 year old kid playing with his toys. I mean, that's what it made me feel anyway. So the last act had some real problems for me. At least when it's a kid playing with his gi-joes the bad guy blows up or dies in quicksand at the end... not some moral quandary CIA bullshit that immediately gets undercut. If Ryan Gosling can kill 40 more dudes to get to the end of the movie, why can't he kill 2 more and at least make it satisfying? I really wanted an after-credits scene with one more explosion or something. These are all lessons that the first couple Bourne movies laid out that this movie did not learn. So... yeah. it was ok. I know this whole note is me shitting on it and comparing it to better movies, but it actually was better than 6 Underground. The smirk-fest dialogue was kinda funny in parts and the pacing (for the most part) held my interest. There's a certain directness in the dialogue where the movie doesn't dilly dally which I can appreciate, even if by the end these racing-drone style shots of all these different cities gets a little fatiguing. Dang, I was trying to list what I liked about it. Um... it seemed like Chris Evens enjoyed playing the bad guy, although he too suffered from being an action figure rather than an actual human being. Um... I don't know I've written a lot. You'll just have to believe me that I didn't totally hate this, but I guess you can believe that I probably will never watch it again.
07.17.22	Crimes of the Future	David Cronenberg	Huh. To me this felt a lot like Jarmusch's Only Lovers Left Alive, where I guess it's more about the world than any kind of plot. In that regard, it's quite bizarrely intriguing. It felt in parts like Naked Lunch, probably because of the weird timeless and disconnected quality of all the sets and costumes, but with nowhere near the insane story going on. Instead, it's like... part of a story? I didn't really get where it was going and the ending felt VERY abrupt to me, like it needed another hour or something... although I guess the point was that... well, ok i guess the candy bar thing was the point? I'm not sure. In any case, this wasn't a great movie but there were interesting and new aspects to it which I appreciate. Certainly Cronenberg, like, reclaims the crown for weird biomechanical body horror type stuff. This one's right up there with eXistenZ (the most 90s title ever) and Videodrome (although I think both those movies are better than this) in terms of weird silicone organic gadgets. I just wish there was also more to it.
07.17.22	Mad Max: Fury Road	George Miller	It's been since the theater and I was in the mood to watch something good. I seem to remember watching this in 3D in the theater? Or it was very dim? The colors didn't pop or something. I can't be bothered to check my previous note... but anyway, it was nice to see this and really see those colors. There's only one shot that seemed to cater to no-longer-there 3D (the doof warrior's guitar comin at ya when the war wagon crashes at the end), but otherwise it's a real marvel of action storytelling. I think maybe not as perfect as Road Warrior, but still nearly unbelievable that they made it in the last decade. For the most part the visual effects are seamless and all of that... and there's no better post-apocalyptic world-builder than George Miller. The first 15 minutes are so batshit crazy... it's really the best that the genre has to offer for this-is-how-crazy-the-world-can-get design. I dunno what else to say. it was very good.
06.27.22	Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness	Sam Raimi	Sam Raimi back in comic book world, right after his Spider-Man trilogy is more or less paid tribute by that last Spidey movie. He uses a few things from his bag of tricks here which... I guess work alright? Super short lenses thrusting into actors' faces, some really obvious and frenetic camera movements, Danny Elfman... For about forty seconds this feels like a horror movie but mostly can't get enough out of Marvel-land to be anything but a CG-fest action movie. I feel like Logan is the only film to really transcend its characters to be a real drama for a bit. Labelling this as a horror movie feels pretty forced to me. I suppose I liked it ok. Certainly there was lots of spectacle and it held my attention and I only rarely thought it got stupid (mostly around Scarlet Witch and the made-up hierarchy of characters' powers). The multiverse aspect was pretty fun and a nice way to throw a few cameos in without them really "counting." I continue to be surprised by how canon that What If... animated series was. I think we're above 30 now if you count the TV shows... Feige has really created a juggernaut... you need a long box just to hold the blu-rays now. I mean, i think i liked it... but is it in the top 10? It's probably somewhere in the middle along with the first Dr. Strange and the Ant-Man movies.
05.20.22	Jackass 4.5	Jeff Tremaine	I'm not sure if this qualifies as a second movie or not, but it's basically a collection of interviews, behind the scenes footage, and "deleted scenes" (aka bits that weren't strong enough to make it into the Jackass Forever but are still worth watching)... but it's 90 minutes long and has its own imdb entry so... who knows. Unfortunately, my feelings about this exactly mirror my feelings for Jackass Forever. It's just like having that movie be twice as long. Really fun to watch, lots of dick, already can't remember some of the bits. Funny though, and not a bad time by any stretch. Glad I watched it.
05.13.22	The Northman	Robert Eggers	Something about Robert Eggers movies makes me feel like they're all in black and white even when they're not. My memory of The VVitch is that there's no color but I guess that's just the poster? The Lighthouse was black and white, at least as I remember today, and I could've sworn the trailers and poster for this was monochromatic as well. But instead it's a really crazy color grading where... I guess the thinking was that moonlight is basically black and white? So to photograph scenes lit only by the moon they drain all the color, but give it back with torchlight? Either way, it's a really affected desaturated look even when the reds intentionally pop to draw the eye. I'm sure in 6 weeks I'll think this was basically the same. So... Let's start with the good. There are currently a ton of viking shows on streaming but as far as movies not that many are coming to mind. Since I haven't seen any of the recent shows then I'm not sure how this compares, but compared to other movies I've seen this holds up as a very authentic, gritty if straight-forward revenge tale that maybe stands out for firmly embracing the mythology and belief of the time. The fantasy elements are welcome (to me) and everybody puts forward a suitably gruff and macho performance. Really the production design and all the physicality of the look and feel of the film are where the movie shines. Everything looks exactly as it should and you immediately feel immersed in this world. The part that I definitely liked the most though was the music. It's like a more ominous and intense version of The Witcher 3 soundtrack with antiquated instruments but with a modern mindset. Especially the beginning, I feel like the narrative takes a back seat to the music, letting it wash over us as we take in the visuals and set design of the Skyrim-like village or whatever. Pretty much every track would be amazing in the ol' DnD playlist. The weakest part for me was probably the story. It's pretty straight-forward and familiar. It felt to me like a smoothie made from Hamlet, Macbeth, and The Revenant, with the result being not as good as any single ingredient. It was executed well though, so I don't want to make it sound like I think the movie is shit. But some of the digital gore, while cool in design, looked too digital for me. I think maybe the color grading as well... these elements give the film a digitally enhanced look that goes against the organic simplicity of the setting and story. So that stuff kinda deflates my enthusiasm for the movie to the point where I'm not sure if I'm interested to see it again, but I do think it's still an interesting and cinematic thing that I'm glad it exists in today's theaters.
05.01.22	Forty Deuce	Paul Morrissey	This once super-hard-to-find film about hustlers trying to extort a john by tricking him into messing around with a dead kid is now available on youtube. I watched it because it was largely filmed on location on 42nd street in the early eighties. It's very rough, with all the actors using a specific kind of slang mostly made up of slurs and they're either filming in real locations with sub-par sound or a single room set where they're often talking over each other. But you definitely feel the sleaze and desperation that is that life so in that regard it's very effective. The play that it's based on really comes out in the second half but the first is pretty good with tons of locations like the port authority and up and down the deuce from all angles. Superman 2 was playing, as well as Neighbors, Cheech & Chong's Nice Dreams. The performances are generally good, both with a raw and young Kevin Bacon, Esai Morales, and the kid who plays Blow are all totally passable as street rat junkie hustlers. Objectively, it's not a very good movie, but it is an interesting artefact and both the movie and the play portray such a specific thing that it's cool that it exists.
04.30.22	Clue	Jonathan Lynn	I'm putting together a DnD one-shot based on an idea I had way back when to make a sort of fantasy version of a locked-door whodunit. Basically, now that I'm back playing DnD regularly, my mission is to revisit all the half-baked ideas I had back in high school now that I have the capability to actually make them fun. So anyway, I'm kind of pitching the game as based on this movie, so I figured I should watch it again for "research." Man, do I ever love this movie. This time, since you know I was being factual about it, I went back and looked at who wasn't there when Yvette screams in the billiard room or when Mr. Green finds the cook in the kitchen. It's a marvel that the film works as meticulously as it does considering there's also so much room for comedy. The fact that all three endings satisfy all the loose ends to be believable and also include bits that are memorable... it's just the last trick in a series of miraculous tricks. I mean to base a movie on a board game in the first place, but to also actually have the mansion match the geography of the board itself (complete with secret passageways) then to make a watchable movie on top of that... is remarkable. I also suspect that, since it all takes place in one house, they had the money to both attract the talent (this is post-Spinal Tap McKean, Back to the Future came out the same year but Lloyd was still hot off of Taxi, Kahn was already proven from all the Mel Brooks movies in the 70s, Eileen Brennan long been a star and five years after Private Benjamin, Warren already a seasoned vet back on a hot streak with Victor/Victoria, and Mull a mainstay comedian on talk shows and tv, not to mention Dr. Frank-N-Furter himself), but also had the money to make the sets of each room pitch-perfect. I mean you can't imagine a more iconic study or library than what you see on the screen. The house looks perfect. It's all perfect, really. I'm sure much of this is because I grew up watching this movie, but today I find it hard to come up with any criticism. I love it so much. Of course, my DnD game will not live up to this, but hopefully I can steal a few things that will make my players chuckle.
04.28.22	Almost Famous	Cameron Crowe	I'm reading a bunch of books about rock music in the 70s and it's got me in a mood to watch this again. The problem is, I remember the "Untitled" extended version of this to be far superior so, rather than dig out my old DVD I went searching and found a fan "Bootleg" edit where he upscaled the untitled scenes to match the Blu-ray HD scan. At least that's what I thought. As it turns out, "Untitled" has become "The Bootleg Cut" and is available in HD formats, while this fan edit actually re-inserts the deleted scenes from the original DVD. In some cases, it's kind of cool (Like actually having the movie turn into a 3-song concert film when they hit Cleveland or stop to play Stairway to Heaven in its entirety) but they all ruing the flow of the film and in some cases (like the "Leslie" scene or where Gram Parsons is singing in a Riot House hotel room) they completely take you out of the movie and it's very clear why the scenes were cut in the first place. Plus it put the running time up to three hours fifteen minutes, so it's pretty clear that my preferred version is the normal 2.5 hour Untitled/Bootleg/Whatever-you-call-the-non-theatrical-version. But as someone who's already a big fan of the movie, watching it again because I want to feel those 1973 rock star-dom vibes, I didn't mind the extra footage in there and the hiccups in flow. This is Cameron Crowe's best movie, right? While I'm sure Say Anything and Jerry Maguire still hold up but this is the one that defines his career. I'd still like to see him pull another gem from his hat but I think this also marks the beginning of his unfortunate creative decline. But, you know, I really feel this movie is fantastic. It doesn't feel 20 years old at all. Jesus I'm old.
04.18.22	The Batman	Matt Reeves	Another Batman movie. I thought this one was pretty good. About halfway through I thought it was really great, maybe the best Batman movie to date, but then typical 2nd- and 3rd-act problems crept in for me and now I think it's just pretty good. I did like a lot about it, but let's do the nitpicks first. It seems like about half the movie is lifted from other movies. I got Saw, Seven, Zodiac, Silence of the Lambs (although the deleted scene they released online is totally Manhunter), Godfather, maybe a little King of New York, maybe a little Death Proof, not to mention all the previous Batman incarnations (including the Arkham games). It felt a lot to me like a mixtape of sorts where it's like "what if Batman was in Seven, man? What if, like, Batman solved the Zodiac case... man..." And all that stuff is pretty fun to see - it's certainly executed well - but you know... those other movies are great without batman. But I really liked the cast. I thought Colin Farrell's make-up was amazing. Pattinson's emo, catatonic, ghost-like presence is a relatively new choice... It would've been nice to see...a LITTLE movement... but the movie supported that vibe really well. The photography did a much better job I think with the impossibly shallow depth of field shots and showing off Gotham's weird architecture better than Zack Snyder's movies did. Like I said, I was completely impressed with the entire first half, which is like a normal running time in itself. But once it moves to, like, sweeping shots of the entire city being affected by stuff and it's supposed to be a huge catastrophe but the PG-13 kicks in so you're not entirely sure how many people actually die (if any) and all of a sudden people are hanging by wires and this and that and indeterminant amounts of bad guys are dealt with in a deliberately confusing way to create false endings and lame turns and Batman's armor seems to have "Plot" rating because point-blank shotgun blasts don't do much compared to random green goo... it lost me. I did like the notion of how these members of Batman's Rogue's gallery get their henchmen, and we see some remnant Joker thugs in the beginning of the movie and see how Riddler thugs form. And the car scene was pretty good (would've been better if it wasn't a thousand percent in the dark AND rain and if he didn't stall it at the beginning of the scene). I also appreciate how we didn't exactly get an origin scene. I guess partly since they changed Bruce's Mom's maiden name ("MARTHA!!!") and made their death a bit more mysterious so they couldn't show the alley behind the theater with the dropped pearls and all that, but still this one gets points for saying "it's the 45th batman movie, we know his deal." So... yeah. Pretty good. Almost great.
04.01.22	The Bubble	Judd Apatow	Hmm. I'm still a Judd Apatow fan. Just want to put that up front because I didn't really laugh at this movie much. I thought the best scene - really the only scene with great energy - was the scene with the drugs, but even that had some echoes of Knocked Up when they go to Vegas ("Why are there so many kinds of chairs in this room!?"). Otherwise, this was a movie full of people that I like, made by people that I like... that I did not think was that great.
03.28.22	JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass	Oliver Stone	As time has gone on, I think JFK is maybe my favorite Oliver Stone movie. It stands in my memory as the first time I saw someone really go nuts with narrative style, using all types of crazy film stocks, intercutting documentary footage with staged recreations, with some sections flowing almost like cinematic essays or something. tons of actors, tons of exposition, tons of information flying around. And it built on Stone's reputation for incendiary filmmaking by adding a dose of conspiracy theory and outside narrative that he still carries today. So I thought it was interesting that he would do this documentary, which purportedly follows up on many topics from the film with since-declassified documents and accounts. A few more things before I get to my opinion of this. One is that Stone's documentary work has been just as controversial if not more than his feature films, mostly consisting of interviews with Castro, Putin, or south american leaders. I quite liked his alternate history show that he made for Showtime. Two: I understand that he's an asshole to be around and likes putting his actors in difficult situations and that it paid off with frenetic energy during his heyday, but three: he hasn't made anything really really good in quite a while. I want him to, I pull for him every time, but I think Any Given Sunday is his last good film. Ok, this doc. Where it really shines is when he's delivering information. Practically ever second is dense with shit on screen and narration or CGI recreations and historical footage (even though some of it is like, well here's a car turning a corner even though it's probably not THAT car turning THAT corner that's being talked about, here is literally A car turning A corner to let you see what it would've been like when, in fact, that car turned that corner). It took me three sittings to get through this because I'd have to back it up if I ran into any distraction at all. Where it falls for me is when he has lame shots of Stone himself walking through dealy plaza or filming him ask leading questions to set up his interview subjects to say what they're in the movie to say. In many of his docs, he takes a Nick Broomfield approach of making the movie about himself talking to this guy or going to this place, but here's he's more in the mode of showing historical footage and relying on narration to stitch his points together. So having him walking aimlessly around doesn't really fit. Now, my sneaking suspicion is that I've just watched the feature version of the 4-part doc that he also released about JFK, and this is kinda like The Trip movies where i've basically watched the highlight reel... in which case I suppose having Donald Sutherland take over as narrator and Stone traipsing around the tiny bit that he does make more sense, because there's probably more of both of those things in the longer version. When I track down where to see that I'll have to watch it to see, but this journal is about movies not 4-part mini-series' so you'll never know :) Overall, I mean I like the original movie, I do buy into this particular conspiracy theory, so I was engaged by this two hour version of Stone saying "Hey, World! I was right!" I do feel like it doesn't say much that his 90s movies doesn't say (except maybe a bit more on nefarious Allen Dulles CIA tomfoolery), but it was cool to see more footage of Oswald and JFK's autopsy photos and to hear from these guys (I thought it was funny that practically each subject had literally written a book about the specific thing they were talking about), but they're still preaching to the choir and I feel like Stone's re-treading a tiny bit to past hits to maybe try and get his mojo back or something. I mean he really got raked in the press for his Putin interviews and his response to the criticism was kinda odd to be honest. So maybe this is a way for him to get back to work or something who knows. I suppose there could be a different doc made that shows a bunch of evidence supporting Oswald as the lone gunman but from this angle is sure as hell looks like something was covered up. What happened regardless though - and this is something that was mentioned toward the end and resonated with me - is that it seems like the end of America's post-war bliss. I've been thinking about recent events and how it definitely seems like we are no longer gaining altitude in terms of civilization's progress... so if now's in the decline then when was the zenith? Because in some aspects things are better today than they have ever been so when did we hit the top? I suppose an argument could be made that it was the 50s (as long as you were white and straight) and JFK's assassination marked the point where disillusion in government started to grow, fear and warmongering dominated our culture, and things started to slide toward the shit show of today. Of course, according to any James Ellroy book that's bullshit because things were always dirty. Pre-war, post-war, 60s, 70s, 80s... it's all dirty. Maybe viewed through that lens there's still hope for humanity? will the 2040s be better? Who knows... this doc was good if you liked Stone's original movie. If you didn't, don't bother.
03.27.22	The Town	Ben Affleck	Images for this have been popping up on the netflix screen saver thingy on my fire tv that got me in the mood to watch this now that I know who Jeremy Renner and Blake Lively are. In many ways it feels like a decent-to-good Heat rip-off but hey, what isn't. I liked it pretty good even though it really throws Charlestown under the bus there... even with the unattributed "quotes" at the beginning. Either this movie is 100% truth or I bet Charlestonians are still pissed.
03.24.22	Jackass Forever	Jeff Tremaine	These are always a fun time but I do feel like... I'm pretty torn on the format. On the one hand these short snippets are like bits of candy and i'm like more more more more and I don't want the movie to ever end, but when it does end and I sit down here to write the note I'm kind of left with nothing to write about. The bits and stunts are pretty funny, very entertaining... I'm basically waiting for 4.5 to come out to watch the cut stuff... but I don't know... no real thoughts on the matter. A few of the bits were really inspired... there's a lot of dick in this one... most of the best singular shots were in the trailer... that's it! I really enjoyed watching it and now it's done.
03.11.22	Spider-Man: No Way Home	Jon Watts	This was really good. Not only is it the first time to manage a way to incorporate a ton of villains without losing the hero, but it also did all sorts of meta shit without having to re-cast anyone. I even saw in the credits that they used score/themes from the previous... incarnations... which is pretty cool. As a kid/pre-teen when I read comics, I was most into X-Men and Spider-Man. This trilogy has really fulfilled that dream of seeing this character done well... something they haven't been able to do with 46 X-Men and Wolverine movies. They really got that tone of a little serious, a little fun, a little ridiculous... and showed how cool all the villains could be, all in a framework plot that works well enough. I think maybe the best testament is that this movie was damn long but I didn't feel the running time once. The same cannot be said for me writing these notes so... yeah I liked this a lot; thought it was good fun.
01.17.22	Eternals	Chloé Zhao	This is another movie where it seems like the critics and people with agendas swayed public opinion on release but now that it's on Disney Plus and normal people are watching it, general consensus seems to be rising. For myself, I thought the trailer looked like garbage. Guardians of the Galaxy worked, in my opinion, because it had a real sense of fun in the world thanks to James Gunn's sensibilities. Otherwise, a group of superheroes that nobody's heard of was a tough sell. I think the MCU phase 4 slate has included some seriously big swings counting on the fact that so many people were there for Endgame that we will watch whatever they put in front of us. Sometimes that's worked, but it's not a given, as evidenced here. Whereas Guardians felt fun and lively, this movie is staid and boring. I'm not sure if it's because everyone's playing these timeless alien creatures or there's a lack of score or what but the pacing of most scenes feel awkward and overlong. Richard Madden in particular has a wildly unemotional take on his character that, intentional or not, comes off less like "alien amongst humans" and more like "actor acting poorly." Then each action scene is like the same beat over and over and over. Someone will fight a monster, almost get hit, then another dude will come in and save them. The creature designs are allllmost interesting but wind up being generic tendrils and googaws all over the place, and I have no real frame of reference of how powerful the monsters are or how powerful the eternals are so it's just a bunch of CG crash test dummies hammering it out. Like Ikaris is supposed to be the most powerful, but his eye beams seem to do roughly the same as one dude's punches and another dude's finger guns, so... ? And because they're introducing a dozen of these fools, we basically get two scenes with each one, even at this crazy run time. I have no sense of time or place. The movie hops all through history but so do the people in modern day. Like, doesn't it take a week to get from South Dakota to Iraq? Are these people flying economy? Which is the great shame of the movie for me. I totally dig the ancient aliens vibe and how these characters seed Earth's mythology and all of that. It's awesome in theory that the monsters they fight (Dementors? Deviants? I've already forgotten their name) wind up in history as mythological creates (akin to the Foo Dogs and Dragons from Shang-Chi). But the idea alone isn't enough to make me enjoy sitting through the movie. It needed like 50% more first act and 50% less second act. Then there's the unfortunate Game of Thrones meta connection. Having Madden and Kit Harrington share screen time over a character named Sersi is not great. And having each Eternal be a different checkbox of diversity feels pretty forced. It's a tough situation and I applaud the intent, but it seems like that was the primary intent of the movie rather than telling an interesting story. My usual wrap-up for Marvel movies is that it was solid and there's nothing really wrong with it but that I'm feeling a little fatigue at their onslaught. This is the first one in a long time (like, since the second Thor movie) that I think is not good. Hopefully it's a hiccup rather than an indication of how things are going. It seems like everyone loved the next Spider-Man movie and I have it on good authority that the art direction of the She-Hulk series is top notch.
01.15.22	The Tragedy of Macbeth	Joel Coen	The thing that drew me to this - other than Joel Coen directing - was how stark the trailer looked. It looked like what I imagine every person immediately thinks of when they hear "art film." Like Bergman-esque lugubrious people looking right at the camera and speaking in code. So I thought that could be a fun take on Shakespeare. And it worked for a while, but the novelty of the aesthetic didn't sustain for me as the film went on and by the time it ended it seemed more like a workaround to covid... which it probably was way more coincidental than that but still. With all Shakespeare adaptations, the language was a hurdle for me. Reading it, I can go slow and there are even editions with inline "translations" like ongoing cliff's notes that I remember liking in High School, but in film the actors have to deliver it naturally so whatever doesn't convey through action and emotion I'm pretty lost on, especially when ol' Denzel is half whispering and mumbling his soliloquies to make it seem like he's talking to himself. So I'm left with an ok experience. As usual, the witches scenes were the most interesting. But with all these Shakespeare adaptations, I have to think that the real audience are Shakespeare fans who are already well familiar with the source material and looking for intricacies completely lost to me. In that regard, the film is probably pretty good. Also, I usually try to gauge my personal enjoyment as if this was shown in high school English class after suffering through the group reading. In that regard, the film is also pretty good. The photography alone sets it above the usual Kenneth Branagh affair for me.
12.30.21	Don't Look Up	Adam McKay	This wasn't very good. I think when the message overtakes entertainment, it doesn't work as either. It's not winning any arguments and as a comedy it's not funny. All you're left with is a bunch of mediocre scenes and oddly-chosen inserts of random Earth things weighing down the single-joke premise of the film. Maybe I'm biased and because I'm an American the jokes are more sad than funny, but this is destined to be one of many many many satirical Trump backlash movies in this era (assuming a comet doesn't kill us all). Basically I spent the movie waiting to see if they'd blow up the world or not, and was left feeling like the choice they made was an odd one. Oh well!
12.29.21	Last Night in Soho	Edgar Wright	It was a toss-up between this and Nightmare Alley for the last film but I thought this might be a little trippier and more appropriate for late-night viewing. I think I made the right choice even if I wound up liking Nightmare Alley more. It's kind of a shame because I'm an Edgar Wright fan and, like Tarantino, love to hear him talk about movies... but I think the balance in this one was a little off for me. At first I thought it would be kind of a thriller version of Midnight in Paris where the modern-day girl investigates the swingin'60s girl's murder, but instead it's more of a psychological thriller that falls into the trap where what seems like 60% of the movie is the lead actress running around afraid/crazy. Some movies can pull that off, but it's easy for it to feel old to me. The mystery aspect is quickly solved on a meta layer because there's only two older actresses cast and Terence Stamp is too on-the-nose. So that's kind of a shame, because I'm sure a lot of the technical aspects of seeing both actresses in reflections all over the place took a whole bag of tricks and the production design of the period stuff is great and the music is top notch. It's really just the story that let me down... but unfortunately that's a critical element. But you know, It's not terrible or anything. I enjoyed it well enough, and it's a decent enough film to be Diana Riggs' last (who's cast quite well I might add, as is everyone). And the Swingin' 60s bits are every bit as flashy and energetic as they should be. If it was just a tinge more of the beginning part and less of the chased-by-ghosts part I would've liked it 10x more. And thus concludes another DVRfest! I had more movies locked and loaded but 3 days feels right this year so those will have to get watched another time. It seems like it gets harder and harder to find the time to do these but I'm very glad that I still do. I'm not really sure what the future will hold for me and Fantastic Fest so this very well may be the only "festival" experience I have left! And to get them out of the way, here are the numbers for the year: 14 in the past week (2/day), 15 in the past month (0.5/day), 47 in the past year (0.13/day), and 3332 since the site started (0.53/day). 47 beats last year as my lowest view count since the site started (for comparison, I watched 61 movies in 2004 just from November 9th onward). The numbers are pretty tough to look at, and I'm not really in the mood to comment on them this year. Instead, I'm happy to report that I loved Licorice Pizza which helps affirm that great movies are still being made. I'm generally pretty pessimistic about that, not that the Marvel movies are bad but with all the changing factors it seems like we're down to a dozen directors with the ability to make an interesting individual experience anymore and the years where they put stuff out are good and the years where they don't are bad. To bring it around and end on the conversation that started this festival, Jarrette's opinion is that more people need to go to theaters to keep that primary revenue stream open to keep the machine working. Now, he's in the industry so I understand that 100% but I also think streaming is toothpaste out of the bottle. It's a shame that people aren't double- or triple-dipping on movies anymore (paying at the theater, paying to rent, paying to buy the dvd/blu) but just like music, the Internet has facilitated a world in which watching movies has to be easier than pirating them, same as Steam for PC games and Spotify for music. I don't know what that spells for exhibitors but it caused pretty massive change in games and music. I do think creators will still have avenues to show their content, but conventional movies seen together in a theater may not be guaranteed... which is sad but also, how many hobbies do we basically enjoy exactly the same today as a hundred years ago? Anyway, all this gobbledygook to say... I don't even know. I just figured I needed to end this note on some rambling nonsense :)
12.29.21	Nightmare Alley	Guillermo del Toro	Next up is the new Guillermo del Toro although I'm not sure what led him to remake this classic noir (excuse me, re-adapt the book from which a classic noir has already been made) although I suppose the freak show carnival angle makes sense. It's certainly a good cast doing good work, and the extra running time puts more space into the story for sure... On paper I should've loved this a little more than I did though... probably because of the source material. I suppose it's a decent enough noir but we've also had Carnivale and I've read Geek Love in the meantime. Definitely the first act is my favorite. It's very cool to see Ron Perlman and Willem Dafoe and Clifton Collins, Jr. together as carnies, but funny enough the whole femme fatale fatalism thing that's so iconic in noirs works way better for me in 40s and 50s movies than it did here. I love Cate Blanchett but seeing Bradley Cooper's character so clearly self-destruct felt a little tired where maybe it was novel way back when. Who knows. I still liked it. And there's a glimpse of Bradley's ween which is something I suppose. OK. I think we're down to the last movie of the fest, ending with what I hope is a great midnight movie. For whatever reason I've got the Girl from Starship Venus' theme song stuck in my head...
12.29.21	The French Dispatch	Wes Anderson	Whew. It really does seem like Wes Anderson is folding in on himself. This is either the best Wes Anderson movie or the worst, depending on how you view his particular... particular-ness. To me it was overwhelming dense. I felt like I should pause after each cut to fully absorb everything but that would've exploded the view time into next week. I remember when people were talking about different aspect ratios for Grand Budapest Hotel but this is completely out of control. Everything is cranked up, which again is a triumph and pinnacle but may be approaching Orson Welles levels of baroque-ness. Except where Welles' work was frenetic and layered, this is intricate and precise. Either way, it can be exhausting with its too-much-ness. So yeah... I mean there's not even one movie in here but like three and a half, jammed together better than any anthology I've seen, but I don't even know what to talk about. I mean there's like a thousand people in the cast, I probably didn't spot half of them. BUT, I did enjoy it. All this faux-complaining is to say that it's remarkable work that's probably made for repeat-viewing which beats 90% of the stuff coming out these days. I will just have to watch it again after some digestion to see how it flops out in the Anderson Oeuvre.
12.29.21	Isle of Dogs	Wes Anderson	Next up we're moving on to a Wes Anderson double feature! For whatever reason, I never saw this when it came out and now that French Dispatch is out I can actually see two new Wes Anderson movies in one sitting. I sometimes feel like Anderson has carved such a niche for himself that his movies have become formulaic, but on the other hand... when you like the formula, who cares? I drink Coke Zero like every day, I'm not sitting here thinking "I wish some cans would switch it up and taste like Pepsi." And it's also not like anyone else is doing Wes Anderson movies so... enough talk, let's go! I liked this. I don't know why but for whatever reason... maybe because this was semi-crowd funded or whatever, I thought this would not be as good as his usual films. I like Fantastic Mr. Fox quite a bit though, and I liked dogs quite a bit. Guess I was being dumb because this feels every bit as charming as Fox while retaining that insane formalism and symmetry that's in all of Anderson's work. This one does lean quite heavily into Japan, which makes for wonderful music and excuses to put even more words on screen. It is a little weird that if you squint your ears, Bryan Cranston's voice becomes George Clooney's and this is basically a sequel to Mr. Fox, but whatever. It's still good stuff. And I'm sure whatever I have to say about Wes Anderson's style can also be said after the next one so we might as well move onto the second half of this double feature and trade Japan for France!
12.29.21	Licorice Pizza	Paul Thomas Anderson	Day Three: Bangers Day. Every movie I watch today I'm pretty psyched about. So much so that I had a hard time picking an order. So why not start with the movie I'm most looking forward to seeing. Wow. Absolutely loved it. In terms of non-spoiler stuff, this is like a PTA Version of Once Upon a Time in the San Fernando Valley. Similar period vibe but with a PTA story rather than Tarantino. They will probably make an inevitable (but tonally incompatible) double feature. Ok spoilers ahead... First off, any movie that starts off at Cupid's Hot Dogs I have to love. While we moved away when I was around 8, I was born and did spend my childhood in early-80s LA right there in the valley. This movie takes place a good 5 - 10 years before my memories kick in but it's enough that the signage and vibe was still there, along with my family's beloved Cupid's. At first, we would have it every so often, but then as my various aunts and uncles moved further away from the valley (end definitely once we moved to Colorado), getting to go to Cupid's was a highlight of any trip back to the area. Their chili dog still stands as my all-time favorite hot dog even though I haven't had one in probably 25 years. My family's ritzy meal out was always Lawry's Prime Rib in Beverly Hills which was quite a todo and I only got to go a small handful of times, but Cupid's was the neighborhood spot like a mile from our house. Loved it. Nostalgia for a single shot of the movie aside, this is a real journey of a movie as it winds through all sorts of places as these two characters come to know each other. You never really know where it will go next but each stop along the way are just wonderful pieces of filmmaking. Not showy like Boogie Nights/Magnolia, not awkward like Punchdrunk Love, but mature and sure-footed and astute. It's what I feel Inherent Vice reached for but couldn't quite grasp. And practically every scene is a joy. I wanted to just list them off here so I don't forget but I wouldn't do them justice. All these worlds are represented though. The Valley haunts and restaurants, the crushing weird world of childhood acting, the novelty of 70s LA Japanese food, the bizarre insanity of old-world Hollywood, talent agents, entrepreneurs, waterbeds, pinball, fuckin crazy ass Bradley Cooper... Everything gets its attention in perfectly written, amazingly performed moments that are sometimes hilarious and sometimes heart-breaking. I can't believe how good the Bradley Cooper scenes are, or goddamn John Michael Higgins. Fred Gwynne, Harriet Sansom Harris as the talent agent oh my god. And these are just the players bumping off Cooper Hoffman and Alana Haim who are both so authentically unique and comfortable in their selves. Really the whole Haim household are better actors than I thought they'd be. I guess for whatever reason you assume Phil Hoffman's son has in his genes to be a great actor but that's a lot to live up to and he does a great job here. And just like Tarantino's movie, the plot is pretty loose. At times it seems like it could become Taxi Driver, or Dazed and Confused, or ... well, Boogie Nights, but you're along for the ride and are kind of bummed when it's over. To me, all the period stuff is done just as well as Tarantino's movie, and it's kind of a shame that they share so many similarities. One more thing to put on the record before I stop gushing and get to the next movie. PTA Shoots every time of day so wonderfully. There's some amazing sunset, magic hour, and post-sunset shots, some of which seem like they might be digitally-corrected because they are so well photographed. A lot of hubbub came up about Phantom Thread not having a DP but this movie really swings for the fences much more than the previous in my opinion, and it knocks it out of the park. Ok ok ok. Gotta move on. But goddamn was this a good movie. cupids hot dogs!!!
12.28.21	A Brief History of Time	Errol Morris	Criterion movie 5. Switching to a d12 since the pool is down to that many: 11. The dice rolled incredibly high all day!. Spine #699. In a way, this is a great late night movie. The Philip Glass score and Hawking's "voice" combined with Morris' unique documentary style makes for this meditative almost hypnotic vibe. I definitely fell asleep. You know, in a way... this is a great matinee movie. A bunch of very intelligent British academics talking in polite tones about Hawking's life, black holes, the nature of time, and a unified theory of the universe make for a very pleasant daytime experience. I very much like Errol Morris' "early" work and this was the one that always slipped through the cracks. I kinda thought it would be a dense head-scratcher with a bunch of close-ups of Hawking's face and voice-over. While it does have that visual style (along with trademark Morris beautiful abstract photography of things like teacups and clocks and whatnot), there's a surprising amount of interview footage from all manner of other people (none of which are identified on screen) to portray both the biographical stuff and the astrophysics stuff in a much more understandable and relatable way. So really this is just prime Morris which is a treat to get to see for the first time. An early statement stuck with me: that Hawking chose to study theoretical stuff because he had slacked off and didn't know many facts. Pretty funny, even in computer synthesizer voice. This really works on two levels. For one, there's the heady stuff that Hawking's book is about which is supremely ponderable and fun to think about, but then there's also the concept of Hawking himself, a genius brain perhaps trapped or perhaps formed by his ALS. How that limitation might unlock other areas, further limits of what the human body and brain are capable of... is also very interesting to think about. So any time whenever these Cambridge eggheads lose you, you can always fall back to "geez! Can you imagine doing all of this without being able to write anything down!?" Overall I liked this very much. I should look for Morris' later work... give his Netflix show another chance.
12.28.21	Irma Vep	Olivier Assayas	Criterion 4: stack 2, number 5. Spine #1074. I'm rolling very high today, and consequently getting a bunch of these recent purchases. This one I think I saw a few parts of on IFC or something but have never seen it straight through, so I'm pretty excited! And it's under two hours long so I'll be able to get one more in after this, which is great. Let's do it. As it turns out, I'd only seen the last few minutes, which is maybe a shame since it's quite different from the rest of the film. I didn't think the whole thing would be that experimental, but I also didn't know it was such a Day for Night type movie. I think I like movie-about-movie movies more than the average dude, but they can tend to become a little familiar after a while. This has enough of those 90s stylistic touches (not to mention a ton of latex catsuits with hilarious foley work) to give it an identity. There may be more to say here, but it's quite late and I want to roll the dice one more time.
12.28.21	Paris is Burning	Jennie Livingston	Movie 3: stack 2, number 5. Spine 1018 I actually bought this for Molly, who is a huge RuPaul's Drag Race fan, but since I haven't seen it and it's a criterion... it went in the pool. While I'm not really a super drag fan, what I do obsess with is 90s/80s NYC. I also was growing up during this time so I have vague memories of this movie coming out along with, thanks to MTV's House of Style (which I watched for... reasons) like Madonna's Truth or Dare and the Isaac Mizrahi doc and stuff like that... plus seeing club kids on Jerry Springer all that. It seemed like this culture was on the fringe yet still had small glimpses of visibility at that time. Nothing like today of course, but I think this stands as one of few seminal docs on the subject. Huh. This was pretty good. There's not a lot of exterior footage here but that 80s dirtiness comes through. Of course the movie's not really about that... it's just the setting for this subculture which feels portrayed without judgement or exploitation by the filmmaker to me (who has no clue). It does almost feel foreign at times, stepping into this world with its own rituals and lexicon, but just like that krumping doc Rize or Penelope Spheeris' third Decline of Western Civilization or I guess any other movies in this vein, it lives by presenting individuals that you grow to care about. It's also a time capsule considering most of the footage was shot in 1987 in a community deep in the midst of the AIDS epidemic. It's only lightly touched upon in the film but you have to imagine a significant impact just as or right after this movie happened. Some of this interlocks with other stuff I've watched regarding DJs and famous clubs like The Loft and Paradise Garage but mostly it's balls and vogue-ing and reading shade and a bunch of other words I now know about. And it was only 76 minutes! which means I'm on to the fourth film of the day before midnight. Let's see what it is.
12.28.21	Riot in Cell Block 11	Don Siegel	Second movie of the day: Stack 2, roll 4: Spine #704. After 4 Matrix movies in a row followed by a three hour plus French surreal comedy, this 80-minute 1950s prison movie by Don Siegel is like a breath of fresh air. Escape from Alcatraz is a near perfect movie in my opinion and it's been quite a while since I've seen a film noir (I went through a major phase just prior to starting this journal) so I'm totally psyched. This starts out with a total newsreel style intro complete with an interview bit with prison commissioner Robert McGee (who's thanked in the titles, presumably for access to shoot in Folsom). What follows is 75 minutes of lean tough filmmaking. It's not showy but feels extremely authentic for its time, and carries the bleak social commentary shared by many similar films (particular some Fox noirs). It flew by, and I liked it pretty well. I could watch 4 more just like it, but let's see what I roll next.
12.28.21	Celine and Julie Go Boating	Jacques Rivette	Day Two! Criterion Random Roll! This year the pool size is 16, which for now makes sense as a 1d2 followed by a 1d8. As always, these are Criterions I own but haven't seen, some of which I'm really psyched to watch and others will probably never see unless the fates tell me to do so (looking at you, Dr. Mabuse). First roll, stack 2 film 7. Spine number 1069. I've had this on my list to see since waaay back in college when I was going through all those top 100 lists and whatnot. Peter Bogdanovich wrote a list of essential movies and this was one of the few I could never track down a copy of. All these years later, Criterion released it and here it is. What I did not know is that it's more than three hours long... which is always tough when you're trying to watch as many movies as you can in one day. Oh well, maybe I'll love it!? I really don't know anything about it other than Rivette is generally a part of the French New Wave but I haven't really seen any of his movies. Let's see how this goes. The thing about this movie is that there's no boating. I started the movie, and I saw Celine and I saw Julie, but then I started waiting for them to go boating. An hour passes, half the movie, two hours in, three hours in! still no boating. All this stuff happens with this house and these people, but where's the boating? The only thing I know about this movie is that Celine and Julie go boating!!! Spoiler alert! They go boating. In all seriousness though, this movie was a slog for me. I liked the second half a tiny bit more than the first, and I liked the ending but the run-time killed me here. I could've gotten the same effect in half the time I think. I'm sure this has its place for those who love it, but for me it was slow. I had more than enough time to ponder the nature of making shit up and watching movies and all that, but I've also seen other movies do the whole surreal deconstruction thing (with shorter run-times). I will say I noted the Alice in Wonderland references and thought it was a nice transition from the white rabbit stuff in The Matrix to this. The dice are probably better festival programmers than I am. Perhaps this will be a film that sticks with me and my fondness for it will grow, but right now I'm ready for the next one.
12.27.21	The Matrix Resurrections	Lana Wachowski	This one's kinda weird. and I guess it's new enough to contain spoilers. I didn't think it was unforgivably terrible, but I also don't know that it's notably good. For one, we live in an age where sequels and reboots are getting mixed together in all sorts of weird ways. While this is certainly a sequel, it uses a few too many "flashbacks" for my taste. I liked the echoed usage in the Trainspotting sequel but here they use it both for us and in the fiction of the narrative as a video game that Neo created. I don't know how a bunch of old film footage passes as a video game but whatever. I think I wouldn't have minded if they did one or the other but doing both is not needed (especially if you've just watched the trilogy beforehand...). The fight choreography is ok but not incredible. Kudos to Keanu for holding his own with the younger actors but Carrie Ann Moss was probably like "one scorpion kick is all you get," which is understandable. But still... it's just another factor to put this movie firmly in the "ok" category. The first two films tried really hard to present top-tier martial arts fighting scenes augmented with CG and this one is back to relying a bit too much on editing and music. The story... I liked. It didn't answer the big question I was left with at the end of Revolutions, probably because it needed all of its exposition time to explain how Neo and Trinity were still alive. Laurence Fishburne's absence is very notable to me... I guess maybe if they do a 5th one he can come back Cobra Kai style or something but considering the lengths they went to answer some of the other continuity questions, a mere mention and a statue doesn't seem fitting given Morpheus' stance in the original films. And the new characters were good for the most part. I'm not sure how I feel about overt humor in the world of The Matrix... To me, one of the things that set that series apart was its unabashed epic-ness in tone. Sure there were laughs, but never a goofy sidekick or things like that. But again... I think maybe these days all movies have to have all things. So... since I made the mistake of rating the first three in these notes, I guess I have to say that this was like a solid 6.5? I think I liked it more than Revolutions but less than Reloaded. Mostly what I felt with this movie was that it was a reunion for the cast and whatever crew re-joined (the cameo from Chad Stahelski was a nice touch) and like the meta -comment at the beginning of the film hints at, if this was gonna happen no matter what with or without Wachowski input, then it could've been a lot worse). And thus ends Matrix Day. On to day 2!
12.27.21	The Matrix Revolutions	Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski	And now it's over. I think it's not so much that this movie is bad - in the time since, we've seen some legit BAD endings to things, like the last Hobbit movie and Game of Thrones - but more that this doesn't feel much like The Matrix to me. For one, it's barely in the matrix at all. There's the fetish wear club scene and a few scenes with the new Oracle (due to the original actress passing away I believe) but most of this movie is in the real life and leads toward a massive CGI battle between mechs out of nowhere and swarms of sentinels kinda Minas Tirith style. The problem is this becomes like a war movie with all the sigh-inducing war movie tropes like the recruit kid saving the day, lines of dialogue like "I made a promise!", "You can do it", and "Neo, I believe!" Gone is any trippy mind-fuck stuff, replaced by typical CGI spectacle that is now tired and commonplace in every Marvel movie. I will say that for some reason the CGI looks a little better here than in Reloaded, but that may be just because they're doing sentinels and other machines instead of humans. The Neo vs. Smith stuff still has that uncanny valley coupled with the scale being so big that it becomes less interesting. On one hand, I guess Neo has finally figured out how to be indestructible, but he's also still punching dudes. Now, My memory of the final scene between the Architect and Oracle is subtly different. I doubt they changed it so it must be my mind playing tricks, but I could've sworn they more explicitly acknowledged that everything would be reset, there would be a new One, and the cycle would start again, but this go around things are a little happier or something. Instead, I now understand their conversation to mean that zion still exists and the matrix kinda soft-reboots but the peace that Neo made a deal for (somehow the result of machinations by Oracle? like she set up that Agent Smith would start replicating?) would hold and anyone who wanted to yeet out of the matrix could do so without being hunted down. My big issue with that is that the ending as i previously understood it was that zion itself and the 'real world' was also a simulation, and that's what the Architect was talking about at the end of Reloaded. If it's not, it REALLY doesn't explain how Agent Smith could possess someone or how Neo could see without his eyes (or affect sentinels). The story kinda only works that way... otherwise we're talking about supernatural elements otherwise not present anywhere else. If my understanding is correct, it's not as explicitly explained as I thought it was. But mostly I think by the time people got to the end they were done caring one way or the other. And I felt the same way. This movie is much more of a slog than the last. I was pretty detached by most of the zion fight. and like there wasn't much left in the ideas barrel so it was all typical bombast and spectacle like the third Pirates movie (complete with a limbo scene at the beginning). If the second one was a 7, I'd put this at a 6, maybe 5.5. Not egregiously terrible and maybe the sequels' reputation is a little overly harsh, but they do turn a remarkable first movie into a somewhat more mundane trilogy. Or should I say Quadrilogy? After all this, I'm finally primed and ready to check out the new one. Unfortunately it's like 3AM and I'm guaranteed to fall asleep before the end, but whatever I miss tonight I'll finish up in the morning. Let's do it!!!
12.27.21	The Matrix Reloaded	Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski	It felt like much had changed between 1999 and 2003. I had graduated college. Was trying to figure out what came next. I was watching a lot of movies. And the gang of college friends had continued on in the form of a semi-annual weekend where we got together and hung out. Usually these revolved around some big movie release and this was one of them. I think I first saw this in some theater in Chicago as part of a whirlwind weekend where we also played through the entirety of Enter the Matrix. The first was such a huge hit that the sequels were one of the biggest budgets and all-consuming deals ever. Production took forever... I think the Wachowskis really wanted to get Jet Li to be in them, I think the dude who played Tank held out for more money and was replaced... so much was made about these two sequels being shot together that the release more or less dominated a year or so. Not only was there the movies but also the video game where you played as Niobe and Ghost, setting up the events of the second film. There was also The Animatrix which was an anthology of sorts of animated shorts told in the Matrix world... It seemed like every idea from the first movie was now exploded and any possible influence or inspiration was on full display for the world to consume in preparation of the all-mighty coming of the second and third movies. Maybe Phantom Menace was the only movie with more hype behind it. So of course everyone was disappointed. I do remember being a defender of this one at the time. Second movies are tough, right? They have to build on the first but also set up the third. The Two Towers had also just come out so it seemed like a few awesome set pieces and a lot of connective tissue was the template they were following. And I loved the second Back to the Future, so I was willing to give benefit of the doubt. If you considered the highway fight scene The Matrix's Helms Deep, you could kind of let the zion rave and all the clunky resistance politics slide in hopes that the third paid everything off nicely. I was also of the opinion that while some of the effects clearly didn't work, a lot of it really did. Watching it again, I'm not as convinced. Even the highway sequence, which was still the highlight for me, cut to really clear green screen when it was time for Morpheus to fight the agent. All of the car and motorcycle work still looks great, but it's super obvious any time they abuse the digital human effects they had. Neo and Agent Smith look completely video-game-y. This isn't helped by the cartoonish sound effects like bowling pins accenting the action. The level of effects fit so well in the first film but now it's clear they reached too far for the sequels. That kind of thing is polished now with the Marvel movies but didn't work back then. A major problem that I had at the time was wrapping my head around why Neo still needed to fight agents. Once you defeat death and realize that pain is a mental construct and stop bullets and fly around, why do you still need to kung-fu? Now I guess I see it like he's a superhero with specific abilities maybe? But it still holds true that if he's seeing The Matrix for the code that it is, he should be a MUCH bigger badass there. He should be not just able to fend off a hundred Smiths but to walk through walls and stop fists like they were really slow bullets. It still bugs me but I do understand that the intent of the movie is to be a cool sci-fi mixture of martial arts and technology and philosophy so the fighting's gotta be there even if they have to invent characters like Seraph just to put more fighting in. But it stretches the premise that the first film set. I guess that's what many of my story issues share. How can Agent Smith can infect a physical person with his personality? Wasn't he obliterated? Even if he has some of Neo's "code"... Neo can't do that shit, he's still kung-fu-ing. So a lot of that speaks to them having to make more story... set up some plot devices that allow them to carry four more hours of content. Where the first hour of the first movie is like a master class in exposition, this one feels like I'm watching Star Trek: The Next Generation or something. All that stuff in Zion felt so strained and uncinematic. Clearly the "easy" scenes to shoot quickly to make enough room for the hard shit. Side Note: The rave scene doesn't bother me so much as that there is exposed lava right where they are dancing. All those people would be boiled alive or asphyxiated right? And while I did understand more of what The Architect was talking about, I still have that vivid memory of being... almost pissed off that there's this chunk of exposition intercut with these action sequences... I remember understanding nothing of what The Architect said. Like my mind was dashing to keep heads and tails of everything going on, so much so that the dude's words one-by-one made sense but strung together meant nothing. Now I think it's just the Wachowskis thinking "how would a computer sound trying to talk to a human" and using some big words. And again. Neo can see in code right? Like, why are his conversations with both The Oracle and The Architect so stilted? For the most part I thought Keanu did a decent job of acting "different" in this one, more mystical or empowered or whatever... but he still reverts to "Whoa..." guy in these two scenes. So... final thoughts on the middle movie. I do appreciate the stuff with these rogue programs... TRON-esque exiles hiding in the nooks and crannies of back doors and hacky bits of the matrix. I think Neo stopping the sentinels is a good ending to a second movie (although again! if he can digitally start Trinity's heart... if he can stop the sword blade with his hand then why does it bleed! Shouldn't it be he either stops it cold or it lops off fingers? Why is there a middle ground?), and it's not really that bad I don't think. If the first movie is a 9, this is a 7. I guess it really is the next movie that shits all over the franchise like the last season of Game of Thrones. Let's find out.
12.27.21	The Matrix	Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski	As the year wraps up into another total shit show, some of you imaginary readers out there may be lamenting the fact that, for the first time in 16 years I did not do a DVRfest. PSYCHE! It's happening right now! This year, the weekend that I usually hold this ridiculous thing happened to fall on the first weekend after starting a new job. The beginning of November is already a pretty busy time of year so I figured it wouldn't be much fun to give up that weekend where i'd probably need sleep and video games to help get over that flood of new information. Plus, last year I did it in December when I had more time off and no DVR-police showed up at my door. One of the good things about a personal film festival is I do what I want, so this year I delayed until Christmas week when I knew I'd have stress-free time off to enjoy myself. As a side-effect to that, some of the year's Oscar-bait movies are already available. So if I can get the time, I'm going to plow through a bunch of hopefully good stuff. Starting with this. Usually my festival rule is to limit movies I've already seen to one, but with a new Matrix movie coming out I feel like in order to give it the best chance of me liking it, I need to revisit the original trilogy first. You could kind of make the argument that they're all kinda one movie? but not really... so I'm breaking my rule but again: I do what I want. Let's sit down and watch this Matrix stuff again, for the first time since before starting this site! True to form for recent years, DVRfest started already behind. This year, the fest really started with a three hour call to Jarrette, catching up and talking movies and how we're old and Austin has changed and everything is terrible. In many ways this represents cherished memories of attending festivals in person and was completely welcome even if it pushed back my start time to 6. I have no idea how I'm cramming all four of these in tonight but I can't waste time writing about it on here if I'm ever going to make it. So, what did I think about revisiting the first Matrix all this time later? Well... so much of it brings back memories of when it came out. If memory serves, friends and I saw this movie five times in the theater. Once with all of us, once or twice with Trapper and I alone, maybe once with my roommate Anthony, and definitely another round when it hit dollar theaters. It was amazing in ways that are hard to comprehend these days... probably similar to Citizen Kane or something now that we've had 20 years of CGI sci-fi mind-bending nonsense in its wake (not to mention the dampener that the sequels brought to this film, which I'm sure I'll get into with the next entry). But for starters, we had no idea what the movie was before we saw it. The trailer and tv spots were genius, playing up Laurence Fisbhurne's line of "nobody can be told what the Matrix is, you have to see it for yourself." matched with these slow-mo shots of the underside of helicopters or people jumping from rooftop to rooftop or whatever, all set to slammin' late 90s soundtrack. So the first half hour or plays straight in a way that I don't think anyone these days can experience, kinda like knowing what Rosebud is or the end of the first Planet of the Apes or something. It's seeped into society such that people just know what The Matrix is. But after that... plenty of movies try to pull a twist or a reveal, usually in the last act or whatever. And Lots of movies foreshadow stuff or make vague statements that make sense later, but I feel like this movie is the king of all of that. Watching the first half hour now makes a level of sense that felt impossible on first viewing. And to have this revelation spill forth like half way through the movie, really spending half its time trying to explain to the audience what the hell is going on... but to also make that entertaining is so crazy to think about. I have a distinct memory of sitting in the theater seeing Morpheus hold up the battery and completely having my mind blown. But fast forward to now, where I know everything going in, it's still fun to watch! The exposition feels super graceful and succinct and straight-forward. Even the Oracle stuff (which I suspected was deliberately obtuse to levels I'm preparing for with the Architect scene in the next movie) make sense in retrospect. I'm not sure there are many movies that pull the trick of having nothing make sense then having everything make sense more deftly than this. And on top of the ideas being presented, you also get top-tier kung-fu fight sequences. The training dojo scene alone can sit on the same shelf as any Jackie Chan or Donnie Yen movie. It's clear the actors trained their asses off, you can see them doing the moves, you can follow the fight through the edits, and everything is photographed as effectively as possible. Now the third element comes in: the visual effects. Maybe part of the reason this movie hit so big is because it presented ideas that perfectly leveraged new technology. There's probably a version of this movie using old-school film magic techniques that would also work, but bending reality through CG with bullet time and that building ripple when the helicopter hits it perfectly shows off the glimpses behind the curtain that they were going for. The one note here that hasn't aged is the real-life stuff with the hovercraft eluding the sentinels. Since those shots are pure CG they come off much faker than the Matrix stuff, which I guess could be a philosophical comment but I suspect is more a product of its age. And lastly, both the iconic horns of the score and the ultra 90s-ness of the source music used puts the musical atmosphere of the film into the category that all the other 90s techno-babble hacker shit like Lawnmower Man and Hackers and The Net to shame. The Propellerheads bassline when Neo and Trinity enter the lobby is like... a joke at this point. Or the Rage Against the Machine that closes the movie, or even the Prodigy and whatnot that blasts in the hacker/bdsm club at the beginning all work so hard for the tone of this movie. It really feels to me like a definition of film at the end of the millennium. I guess that's a lot of words to say I still liked the movie, and probably nothing a ton of critics haven't already said, but it's now on the record one more time as I bid adieu to this most perfect version of the story and its world and head into the sequels. I honestly can't remember many actual details about the second or third... but I'll get into those more in a couple hours.
12.11.21	Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings	Destin Daniel Cretton	I watched this movie because I don't know what's going on anymore. I know I'm getting older, but it seemed to me that this movie had a mediocre trailer, got review bombed before it even came out, apparently underperformed and seems like it came and went, but who knows what qualifies as a hit post-covid so I guess it still made enough money to justify a sequel and now the rotten tomatoes scores are in the 90s for both critics and audience. So... again, maybe this is just what getting old feels like but what the fuck is going on? And with everything I just said, the actual quality of the movie doesn't seem to factor in to any of it. So I watched it. It was fine. What I took from it was that they were trying to make a comic book version of a kung-fu movie, so you had some wuxia influence, you had some legendary Asian actors, but with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon type magical realism extended to typical MCU excess. The plot felt unevenly paced, which might just have been the weight of setting up all the characters and backstory with lengthy flashbacks, and there was a certain lack of propulsion throughout most of it which gave it a weird vibe for an MCU movie, but I think it also worked as a Kung Fu movie which all seem to share those traits as the audience sits through whatever story nonsense is going on in between the fight sequences. There is a certain meta going on with America's relationship with China, which I guess is what triggered all the Internet trolls to hate on this in principal, but if you hold it up to other Chinese movies I think it works alright. I did like the other MCU references (especially to previous incarnations of the Ten Rings) and how unabashedly fantasy the last act was. Better than the first two Thor movies for sure.
11.14.21	Eye of the Beholder: The Art of Dungeons and Dragons	Kelley Slagle, Brian Stillman	This is a kickstarter doc about the art of DnD throughout the years and editions. I didn't know it existed until I was browsing Amazon Prime's videos last night, which is a shame because I probably would've pledged. I did in fact pledge one history-of-dnd doc that never got made so I'm glad the state of the hobby is now popular enough to actually get stuff like this made. So I guess it's been over the past 8-10 years now that this interest in Dnd has re-emerged. I'm at the point now where i'm running 2 games, play almost every week, and have a shelf full of books to go along with a directory full of pdfs from which to draw inspiration. They came out with a history book a few years ago which represents a lot of the artwork discussed in this film, but it's still pretty cool to see interviews with many of the original staff and freelance artists that created the stuff that fueled my imagination through highschool and continues to do so now. Of course, this doc had one criteria for me that it lives or dies on, that being mention of Brom's artwork in the Dark Sun campaign setting which most prominently sticks in my memory as being a huge driver for what I loved back then. It got maybe a minute in here, but it did get mentioned and they did interview Brom so that checkbox is marked. The largest chunk of the movie seems to involve this core 4 artists that came on in the AD&D 1E days - really when TSR moved from the more basic stuff of the early days to full color paintings for their cover art - which I can't disagree with since so much of that stuff defined what most people think of when they hear the term 'fantasy art.' It's funny to learn that a lot of the chainmail bikini tropes that people looks down on today mostly came from one dude who liked painting sexy women. It kind of reminded me of some random TCM documentary I saw a long time ago about this one movie poster painter who liked painting women who's underwear just happened to fall down around their ankles while they were out grocery shopping or crossing the street or whatever. I guess sometimes the artist is also a perv and you gotta tell him "hey this is a screwball comedy so keep Katherine Hepburn's panties on" but in the case of DnD back then, when most of the audience was pre-teen and teenage boys, eh... so be it! She has "magical" armor in addition to that chainmail bikini! Yeah, that's the ticket! As one of those teenage boys back then, you can't tell me the DnD stuff was any worse than what was going on with comics like the X-Men (Psylocke... whew!), but it's cool that they brought it up (even though Satine Phoenix's personal opinion on the matter may not reflect most women or most people's today). So yeah... while this did have that feel of a lower budget kickstarter vibe (most notably with the music), I also thought they interviewed the right people, told a coherent story, and most importantly showed a lot of the artwork that people were discussing. So you get that showcase of what's so cool about it, but also the nerd deep dive that one would expect with this specific of a subject matter. I liked it.
11.05.21	Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy	Tomas Alfredson	I remember fully expecting to love this when it came out and then being slightly lost by the plot? I remember making a note about everyone rocking their long thinning hair 70s-style but that's about it. Since then, I feel like I didn't do the movie justice... maybe I watched it while tired or something? Anyway, I've off an on thought about going back for a re-watch and today is that day. I really liked it a lot. I'm not sure people like Tom Hardy and Benedict Cumberbatch were as big ten years ago as they are now? Certainly I'm more familiar with Ciaran Hinds and Toby Jones, so everyone's characters are that much more cemented in my mind, perhaps making the plot that much easier to follow (which I'm happy to report I did). Furthermore, I think everything about the look and feel of the film is just about perfect. It looks like it was shot in the 70s to me. The long lenses, diffuse lighting, muted palate, everything is spot on. And script-wise this is about as good as I can ask a spy movie to get. Almost no violence but every line is laden with meanings and the economy of Smiley's emotions and movement are astounding. So yeah... I think this is what I want James Bond to be even though James Bond is really an action hero, and that's probably why I don't love James Bond movies. I did love this though, very much.
11.03.21	The Harder They Fall	Jeymes Samuel	This is a movie where I feel like if I had seen it 10 years ago I would've hated it but seeing it now I thought it was decent. Yes it's heavily stylized and departed from reality and relies too much on flash and not enough on story, but I dig the vibe they were going through. I liked very much the few blaxploitation westerns that I've seen so I'm all for more, but this is mixed with that early 2000s music video style, even where some actors sing on screen (but not quite making it into musical territory), and riding across the range or walking down the street set to reggae instead of traditional Elmer Bernstein type stuff. I think the farthest they take it is going to this one "white" town to rob a bank, which kind of spells clear that we're in fantasy at this point... And surprisingly I'm cool with that stuff. What I don't love is the claim that although the story is fake the people were real. I did a 2-second google search and did indeed find some stuff about real historical figures with a lot of these names, but I also saw that the director's previous film used the same character names for what looks like another stylized The Quick and the Dead type western. So to me it looks like he's just taking these names and doing whatever he wants with them, which should not earn the claim that the characters are real. I won't say he's appropriating because of the cultural connotations associated with that word, but he's definitely not paying the real history any regard in using their names. So the good is that we see a bunch of actors getting to be in a western together, which they all seem like they're having fun, but the bad is it's a pretty shallow story and feels like it was more fun to make than to watch. I did enjoy the handful of cinematic shots set to interesting anachronistic music, but I also wish there was a tiny bit more to it. I can't help but compare it to something like Godless or the 3:10 to Yuma remake which both had a little more meat on their bones.
11.02.21	Army of Thieves	Matthias Schweighöfer	One habit I particularly don't like of myself is that I'll get in a movie to watch a movie and proceed to spend the next two hours browsing all the streaming sites, to say nothing of the 1200 dvds on the shelf 6 feet away, in search of the perfect movie that fits all of my vague-ass criteria. Gotta be new, gotta keep me awake, can't be obviously crap, can't be too thinky or require too much mental exertion... and by the time I get a short list of meh candidates (which are probably all fine films), it's already 2:30am and I won't be able to finish anything longer than 90 minutes. Such is the case last night when I found 3 movies on hbo max but made a last minute decision to watch this instead for... I don't really know why. I suppose I thought there was a slim chance that the weird offshoot prequel to the terrible movie would be better than the awful tentpole movie it's splintering off from? But really I should've known better. While this movie is technically competent, there's no reason for its existence. The one cool thing they could've done (really diving deep on safe cracking) they turned into a series of Fast and Furious CG close-ups of random gears and cylinders. While I did probably like this more than Army of the Dead, it doesn't mean it's good. Pretty much felt like a waste of time. I should've watched one of the others instead.
10.24.21	Doctor Sleep	Mike Flanagan	I originally gave this a pass because my lasting memories of the book are pretty mixed and I thought the trailer was pretty dogshit. But more than a couple people since then remarked that this was surprisingly good and I was a bit taken by Rebecca Ferguson in Dune so I thought I should give it a chance. Little did I know that the film was 3 hours long... longer than Dune! Ok, that's a tad bit unfair. While I didn't know while watching, what I actually saw was a director's cut that put 30 extra minutes into the film, which still means the theatrical cut was two and a half hours long! It's like some epic of supernatural thrillers or something. So... the movie adapts very closely to my memory of the book with one big notable exception (the ending). And I guess that's the correct way to even try adapting this into a movie, because the book has the luxury of being able to skip all over the place and not care about pacing or structure at all. Bringing that meandering plot into the movie is what made it three hours long but also what made it make sense without completely abandoning the story of the book. Before I talk about spoilers, I kind of want to say I liked this more than the book? I think some things just didn't work in my head when I read the book, and definitely were not scary whereas seeing them on the screen intensifies some things and makes them more visceral. The rest is spoilers. So the big difference is that Flanagan chose to bring in Kubrick's changes and make this a sequel to the Kubrick film (vs. the 90s mini-series which is more faithfully adapted from the original book) which I think is 1000% the correct choice. For me, I felt a tiny bit of agenda with Stephen King writing Doctor Sleep in bringing his book back to people's minds, but as a film fan as well as a Stephen King fan I think that Kubrick's film is better than the book. Jack Nicholson may go crazy way too soon, and the movie may skip over plot details about the hotel's history and what's really going on there, but in doing so he made a horror classic for all time. And what really works in the movie (which the book does not have) is all the references and recreations connecting Danny Torrance's childhood to where he is now. And since the hotel didn't blow up in the movie, they get to go back to it and relish in revisiting all that iconic imagery. In the book, if I remember correctly, the site of the hotel is where the True Knot hang out and bring Danny back to at the end, but the movie gets to turn the tables and almost weaponize the power of the hotel to Danny's advantage. I think it's a really elegant and clean way to show Danny finally facing his fears by being the one who decides to return there. The power of the book and the movie is seeing these evil antagonists outmatched by this more powerful kid, so by the time we see the hotel in the movie it's almost like getting the band back together or something, because you know Danny and Abra are going to somehow use it to their advantage and Rose the Hat doesn't know what she's walking into. And you know... seeing the set recreations and how meticulously they re-created the look and feel of the hedge maze and various parts of the hotel hits you right in the pleasure center. And in a way that feels more earned than what they did in Ready Player One. So in that regard, I think I liked this more than the book. It's still not perfect or anything, but actually quite good and certainly much better than the trailers show it to be. I'm glad I saw this.
10.22.21	Dune	Denis Villeneuve	AKA "Dune: Part I" AKA "Half of Dune." On one hand, I'm a big fan of Villeneuve. I think he's got a strong sense of confidence and vision with his movies that make them stand out which is increasingly rare these days (basically we've got Tarantino, PTA, David Fincher, Christopher Nolan, and Villeneuve able to play with AAA budgets and still tell interesting stories), but on the other hand I consider myself an 80s David Lynch Dune apologist. While that movie has some serious narrative flaws (namely you can't tell what the hell is going on unless you've read the book), it offers some iconic design and stellar scenes that, to me, represent the gold standard of how Dune looks. So I was pretty mixed going into this updated telling, firmly ready for it to either be great or a dumpster fire. Well it's not a dumpster fire, and I think it succeeds where Lynch's adaptation fails (in that it probably makes sense to people who haven't read the book) but at the expense of being incomplete. There's a huge assumption baked into this movie that there will be a sequel, it'll be just as good, and it will forever live in film history as basically one big 5-hour movie (like Lord of the Rings). If any of those things don't happen, I think this movie will fade away as another well-intentioned but fatally flawed attempt to adapt the classic novel. But all that said, I think it was a good move to not even attempt to tell the whole story. That's where Lynch's film really falters... but I think that given the fact that we're only covering half the book... the running time might be a tad indulgent. I mean I get that it's hard to show someone having visions without them acting all out of it, but it makes most of the movie seem a tiny bit like it's at .75x playback speed. And again with most of those visions you're writing checks that the second movie will have to cash. And with all this runtime he still had to cut down the dialogue in the Gom Jabbar scene? Stuff that was in the trailer? Maybe the most famous dialogue in all of the book!? And I could probably do with less singers in the score wailing every time Paul does something weird, but I guess you have to integrate the clearly-arabic influence that back-in-the-day readers took as exotic sci-fi lingo, but the music sometimes was too on the nose for me. Mostly it was great, just sometimes a bit much. But at the end of the day these are minor nitpicks. Mostly I think Villeneuve did a good job of bringing the (first half of the) book to the screen and it was interesting to look at and wasn't too confusing and makes me wish I could immediately watch Part II. If all those things mentioned above happen and we do get a worthy sequel then I think it will be a great and definitive adaptation. So I think that means I liked it quite a bit!
10.15.21	Free Guy	Shawn Levy	Ryan Reynolds is an NPC in a GTA-esque game who becomes self-aware, thus triggering an AI rebellion... kinda. In reality, it's a novel premise ground into the tiniest bits to be re-constituted into a formulaic hollywood movie... so in that regard, it's "fine." I wasn't really expecting anything else so I'm not disappointed, but I do think it's interesting that TRON is still probably the most informed and interesting version of this kinda movie and it's been like 40 years. Who knows what that means... but this comes off as kind of... 5% Ready Player One, 5% The Matrix, and 90% Ryan Reynolds Rom Com. Again, I suppose you can't hate the player, hate the game.
10.01.21	The Many Saints of Newark	Alan Taylor	The Sopranos prequel movie. There are spoilers in this!!! This is a weird one. As a Sopranos fan who has semi-recently re-watched the series (and am currently listening to a podcast about it), it was nice to get that David Chase feel again... the tension where there shouldn't be any tension just because you don't know what will happen next, the super close attention to detail when it comes to period New Jersey and music choice, and these gang of affable murderers who we now get to see portrayed lovingly by a new generation of actors... even if some of them only have like one line. You also get to see younger versions of Artie, Jackie Aprile, and Carmela... see when Junior gets his cane, see a re-creation of a flashback from the show... all these things that a Sopranos fan appreciates. And I guess a point of the movie is to show the formative events which turn Tony Soprano toward where we meet him in the show's pilot, but that thing is thrown into a pot along with several other things to the point where the film doesn't have a very strong narrative. I suppose you could say this is Dickie's movie and so he drives the film, but there are a decent amount of scenes which have nothing to do with Dickie. Having Christopher narrate the movie starts off pretty awesome but then kind of becomes forgotten... I guess what I'm trying to say is that the film felt meandering. BUT, I didn't mind it. Everything about the production is top-tier... the photography is excellent, costumes are perfect, production design etc. The film is super nice to look at. And like I said, it's almost enough just to be back in that world again, even if we're following someone we don't know do things that feel a little pre-ordained. Certainly I liked it far and away more than Chase's previous film, which I remember being meandering in a pretty boring way. So... I liked it. I enjoyed myself while watching it. It feels like it's more than another episode of the show. But I don't think it has a ton to offer outside the context of the show.
09.11.21	Killing Them Softly	Andrew Dominik	1) Some random guy on YouTube said this was a much better watch the second time around. 2) I was in a mood to watch a solid movie and not fall asleep like when I tried to watch Next of Kin and Lincoln. 3) I know I saw this around when it came out but I have no memory of it other than a general feeling of being underwhelmed. All that said, I probably liked this more than last time? It helps that I now know more of the cast like Scoot McNairy and Ben Mendelsohn, and now that Jim Gandolfini's been gone a while it's nice to see him pop up in one of these character roles he took after Sopranos. I think this movie shares a certain vibe that I appreciate and I've been thinking about what that is and I think it's that it doesn't cater to idiots. If there's a whiff of dropping into a world rather than having it presented to you or relying on you remembering a character's name even if you don't see him again then those are signs of this vibe I'm talking about. I feel like it manifests a lot in crime or noir movies where there are a lot of characters and a lot of plot happening but I guess it could happen anywhere. Anyway, while this movie doesn't have much of a climax, it does have that vibe which I appreciate, and now knowing it's based on a book by the dude who wrote Friends of Eddie Coyle, I can definitely see some similarities. I'll have to read my old note again to see what I thought 9 years ago, but for tonight I liked it pretty well. There's some interesting sound design work going on in a few scenes, one scene in particular with Ray Liotta in slow motion looks great, and there's a lot of character packed in to each performance. I'm still not sure I love the constant undercurrent of 2008 economic crisis stuff and Obama speeches all throughout but I guess it drives some message home... late stage capitalism or some such... with organized crime running like a corporation and nothing but skid row poverty and crime in the background. Watching it post-trump I'm kind of burned out on that pessimism and it's funny how long ago 2008 feels... I bet in 2012 when the movie came out it was a different zeitgeist for sure. Now it's mostly just a solid-but-not-fantastic crime movie.
08.21.21	Near Dark	Kathryn Bigelow	I watched this back in high school or maybe college when I was deep in the video store aisles and didn't love it. However, it seems to hold some esteemed status that has only grown over the years so I figured I should give it another shot. I didn't love it. I liked a few scenes and kind of see why it gets brought up in certain circles, but much of the movie feels pretty rough and tonally muddled to me. I get that it was an intentional mix of horror and western, but the Tangerine Dream score and lack of any real action give it this vibed out feel a little akin to Manhunter, a little bit Blood Simple... but way too 80s-slick to be as gritty as the pictures suggest. And yes the bar scene and the hotel scene are pretty great and Bill Paxton is pretty iconic, but not a lot happens and it's all so slooooow. But not like Only Lovers Left Alive where the whole movie feels hypnotic... this feels like it should be Thelma & Louise with vampires but instead it's more like The Straight Story with vampires. I think I can boil my dissatisfaction with the movie down to a couple points, both of which are perhaps unfair: -For a movie that revolves around sunrises, the timing and photography of such is all over the place. There's no sense of time, which maybe is intentional because these characters are so departed from the normal world? But in all the scenes where the sun is crucial (the beginning with Caleb and Mae in the car, Caleb in the field walking home, Homer getting Caleb's sister in the hotel, the ending of the movie, the title of the movie) it's super spotty as to when the sun is actually up. Sometimes it takes forever, sometimes it's very sudden. You'd think that these folks who are pretty much invincible (other than blowing up in a truck i guess) to everything but sunlight would pay more attention to it, and likewise you'd figure a movie where much of the tension revolves around that would also pay more attention. -I can't help but be reminded by the timing of this movie. With almost all of the cast coming from Aliens (and the title even playing in a movie theater in the film), I can't help but compare it to everything that it's reminding me of. The problem is Blood Simple is 84, Aliens is 86, Manhunter is 86. I mean this is the same year as The Lost Boys. It feels a good 5 years older than it is. So... I think both my hangups can easily be attributed to budget. I'm sure for Bigelow's first directorial effort she had to fight for every penny and you could say that - with what she had to work with - she created a unique mixture of genres that hadn't been seen before with a focus more on atmosphere than story. And all the comparisons to its peers are perhaps unfair because A) I'm talking about some of the best movies of the decade, and B) I'm sure she couldn't afford the effects that James Cameron and Joel Schumacher were working with. But it's still a bummer to see this amazing make-up of Bill Paxton half-charred - make-up that's on the poster - only show on screen for like 3 seconds before he's unceremoniously dispatched (granted in what's probably the largest-scale effect in the film, but it's still off-screen in terms of seeing his face). And it's kind of a bummer to see Lance Henriksen, supposedly a survivor for hundreds of years, bite it just because he can't take a u-turn and not drive into the sun? Maybe my issue is that I'm rooting for the vampires since they're so much cooler than the main dude (both in character and the actor portraying him)? I dunno... no matter which angle I come at it, I have the feeling that I'm not liking this as much as I'm supposed to. I will say this though. I was impressed with Tim Thomerson's performance as Caleb's dad. I only know him from Anchor Bay stuff like Trancers and Dollman so I didn't know he could deliver something subtle and authentic like he does here.
08.20.21	Stillwater	Tom McCarthy	Tom McCarthy usually makes movies worth watching, even if they sound pretty dumb at a glance. I haven't loved all of them but they still feel like interesting movies. I liked this one pretty good... I think mostly through Damon's performance and the way the movie progresses through its second act. I was invested to the point where I felt what they intended me to feel during the third act and was left the way they wanted to leave me, so in that way I thought it was pretty effective. It's probably not something I'd watch again, but I'm glad I saw it.
08.15.21	The Gentlemen	Guy Ritchie	This is more typical Guy Ritchie London gangster fare, but I liked this one as well. I probably liked Hugh Grant's performance the best as he had to basically carry the narrative of the entire film but managed to do so as a smarmy paparazzi type reporter. He seems to have the most fun playing against the type of romantic lead that he got famous for... kind of like Brad Pitt in that way. This one also makes the beginning titles of Wrath of Man make more sense as I guess Guy Ritchie just likes doing those James Bond intros for all of his films now? I remember his opening titles for Man from UNCLE also being like that. From the meta layer of this story, I wouldn't be surprised to learn the original title is Bush, which would work since this is a bit of a callback to Snatch and Lock Stock. The final title is pretty nondescript; Bush is much better. I think his first two still have more energy and fun to them, but this wasn't bad. I was never bored and had a good time with it.
08.15.21	Wrath of Man	Guy Ritchie	Hey this was pretty good! I guess I had somewhat low expectations, but aside from a few minor issues I liked this one. The horror movie score, opening credits, and methodical pacing all felt to me like it was half stylistic choice and half they didn't want to end up with a 70 minute running time. There's not a lot of story here, but the action is clear and engaging and it's a nice rogue's gallery of modern tough guys in the cast. Plus it's a refreshing move to be rooting for SWAT to get there (even though you know they won't). The characters are paper thin and you can't help but draw (unfavorable) comparisons to Heat and I don't buy that any of these tough guy actors are actually tough in real life, but whatever... you can't hold that against the movie I don't think. perhaps I need to give that Gentlemen movie a chance as well.
08.13.21	Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood	Quentin Tarantino	Coming off the novelization... it did help with the context of the Lancer show that they were shooting (I think my first viewing I just took all that stuff as random 60s TV western type whatnot and didn't put together that Timothy Olyphant and Luke Perry were supposed to be brothers. And it made explicit a few things that I liked how the movie didn't answer (like Cliff's wife, the half-billboard painting in Rick's driveway, the dog's attack training) but otherwise the book omits pretty much the entire third act, only mentioning it in passing. So odd considering how well the movie works. But i suppose the greatest strength of the movie is its atmosphere and how well they dressed the town as era-appropriate. The constant radio soundtrack and all the driving and these floating crane shots floating above everyone really make you feel like you're glimpsing LA how it was. I was actually wondering if I'd like it less this time considering my experience with the book but still enjoyed it quite a bit. Those performances, man... such juicy roles for both Leo and Pitt. All the other roles are pretty minimal but those two really get to do some stuff.
08.08.21	The Suicide Squad	James Gunn	I'd heard this was good. I think that compared to the first one it was fucking great, for a DC movie it was fucking great, for a normal ass no-context movie I thought it was okay. It fit James Gunn's style and I think he's getting better as a director and perhaps I'm a little harsh since I'm coming off The Wire, but I thought there were still some issues with the second and third act and - a common issue with ensemble casts like this - most characters basically get 2-3 scenes to fill out their story. I liked Idris but could totally tell he's replacing Will Smith and how is he so lethal except when he has to hit a gigantic target with a literal bullseye in center mass, John Cena's turn didn't make much sense to me, Peter Capaldi... was there, and a lot of the scenes either felt like typical explosion nonsense or kinda non-sequitur fillers (like the little fish things). The flower scene with Harley LOOKED cool but didn't quite land for me because I was thinking of how cool it would be to get a shot outside her POV with the hallway absolutely drenched in blood. The bit about Viola Davis having a problem with them saving innocents felt super forced and inconsequential. I feel like I'm complaining too much. Point is: not perfect. But there was a lot to like. Certainly it shared the style of the original's trailer which is what everyone wanted to begin with. I liked how Gunn embraced the goofiness of all these C-tier DC villains and didn't attempt to make them serious. It wasn't boring, and definitely succeeded in delivering an against-type comic book movie with a little more blood and goofiness. Still a comic book movie though.
08.08.21	The Wire	Various	Funny how, after a certain amount of time, all it takes is YouTube serving a few clips of scenes (like the infamous "fuck" scene with Bunk and McNulty investigating the death of a girl in her apartment) to get me in the mood to watch this again. Recently I've traded a few emails about the current status of movies vs. TV and I mentioned how a movie never gives me the sense of sadness when it's over like a great book or tv series does. It may not be a valid argument since I think a large proponent of that feeling is the sheer running time of a book or series that a movie can't compete with, this is always the first example that comes to mind when I think about TV shows that really harness the strength of its medium and raise the material above anything that a movie can do. While I do basically consider this a 60-hour movie, it accomplishes things that you just can't do without years of development. The actors age, the city changes, layers of story get built up... That's not something even a 4-hour epic can do. And in the final season, The Wire still does very show-like things like bring back familiar faces to check in with them one more time or call back to the first episode with locations and dialogue... it's very unashamed about its format. Yet I'm adding it to my movie journal. I've watched other shows that I've loved (Breaking Bad, Sopranos, Mad Men, Chernobyl, etc.) but you don't see entries for those in here, and I'm not keeping a separate journal for every episode of The Expanse or The Deuce that I watch... so clearly something about THIS show I hold as particularly cinematic... but I guess the truth of the matter is I've traditionally held movies to a higher standard than TV and this is the one show I hold in as high a regard. Not sure what I'm getting at... I guess it's this: movies are in a bit of a sorry state these days and there's lots of good TV, but even amongst the best TV, The Wire stands alone. Historically, I've used this space to record new details that I spot on this viewing that I hadn't before. While there were a few (which surprised me considering how many times I've seen this now), I was more focused on a couple things this time around: -I liked Treme, liked The Deuce a lot, and was pleasantly surprised by The Plot Against America, but Generation Kill and Show Me a Hero both left me a little meh. All of them though haven't come close to The Wire. Why is that? -This is my first viewing post reading the oral history book that came out a few years back -How does this show which I find incredibly authentic hold up to google maps? So first the new stuff. I caught before when they made a point of mirroring scenes or lines of dialogue between the worlds they were covering, but I never realized how much they did it sometimes between episodes or even as a season arc. It really drives home how these disparate institutions behave similarly (and how they are similarly corrupt) but I got more of a kick out of it this time, particularly in season 4 where the school kids, cops, and drug dealers are all basically in the same trap. A lot of lines of dialogue are mirrored between worlds but it's also often deeper or even communicated through direction (with camera framing or similar coverage). And I feel like i recognized even more faces... like Spider joining Michael's crew and finally running his own corner at the end of the show or grand jury dude Gary Di Pasquale (played by the real life lieutenant who gave David Simon access while writing his book) popping up throughout the series, not just at the end when they find out he's the leak. Next, how it compares to Simon's subsequent shows. I think if there's a weak spot in the show - something that identifies it as television vs. cinema - it's the scene structure. The scenes themselves are super tight and assume that the viewer is watching closely, but while some scenes feel very intentionally juxtaposed with others (like in the mirroring I mentioned above), many episodes feel like they are made up of X amount of scenes presented in a somewhat random slideshow. I feel like each "world" has arcs that are mapped out into scenes, but then the scenes are thrust together in whichever way works. Sometimes I feel like what would probably be one long scene in a movie is chopped in half and interrupted by whatever else is going on across town just for the sake of fitting everything in. That interruption might take 10 minutes of in-world time but then we come back to 30 seconds later of the previous scene. So, I don't know if this is the norm and it just sticks out to me here because there's nothing else wrong or perhaps it's just what happens when an hour-long show isn't shoehorned into a network 5-act structure, but it's a vibe I feel with all of David Simon's shows. I think it works with The Wire because every scene is so jam packed with procedure and nuance that it takes the viewer every second to make sense of what's being shown to them (hence picking up details on the 7th or whatever re-watch that this is), but in other shows not dealing with such dense subject matter this construction is laid a little more bare. So it is that I think The Wire is just the perfect storm of compelling subject matter mixed with serious social commentary but delivered with unsurmounted verisimilitude... a mixture that has never been quite right with Simon since. Treme had the nuance and character but not the driving thrill of cops vs. drug dealers, The Deuce had the sensational subject matter but felt like a skip along the surface rather than a deep dive, and the various mini-series' weighed much more heavily on message and commentary than entertainment. This though. This was the goldilocks show where everything was just right. That feeling of thematic consistency and attention to detail completely hides all of the turmoil going on with HBO and the fate of the show. On first run, I naively thought they waited an extra year for season 4 in order to get the changing seasons for the story (something which I think was pulled off very well. I feel like I saw the progression from summer through fall into winter), but little did I know that the show was so cancelled that the cast was released from contracts. That extra year was Simon fighting too and nail to get the time to finish his story as designed. If The Wire ended after 3 seasons it would have been along the lines of Deadwood: very good but incomplete. And maybe we would've gotten a The Wire: The Movie next year on the anniversary or something to hopefully give us the closure that the Deadwood movie gave, but it wouldn't have been what the show has become over the last 20 years. While Season 3 does feel like book 3 in George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series, it's similarly not the whole story. And just like season 2, season 4 and 5 are needed to paint the whole picture. Knowing now that each and every cast member came back, that Simon had to fight for every minute of what's on screen, and what was accomplished with so few people watching is a testament to HBO's programming leadership at the time but mostly David Simon and his team for willing this thing into existence. I half suspect that after the battles of this and Treme, part of the reason why we only see mini-series and planned 3-season shows from Simon is he doesn't want or need any more headaches. It all works on the screen though... except I still smart at those missing two or three episodes in season 5. So especially in Season 1 with all the surveillance teams calling out intersections and whatnot, I made a habit during this watch of keeping a map of Baltimore up on the second monitor. I considered it the ultimate test of authenticity to look up the streets they were talking about and compare them to what was on screen. I suppose that's something they got for free by shooting so much on location, but they still for the most part stuck admirably to reality. I managed to find several shooting locations (like where Gregg's and Orlando have their run-in with Wee-bey and Little Man) just by following the streets they were calling out in the show. Season 2 was also super easy to follow along with considering how the Grainery towered over Niko's house (which, yes, is now luxury condos). Some stuff is gone or I couldn't find it, like the building where Major Crimes works out of down near the docks or Hamsterdam itself, which gets demolished as part of the show (there is a marker on Google maps however, and the lot is still clear). For the most part though, the google street view on many of those corners looks remarkably the same 20 years on. Pretty sad if you think about it. In the city where I went to high school (Frederick, MD, about an hour west of Baltimore), areas that were (relatively) rough when I lived there have since been gentrified and the crime has migrated to different parts that were nice when I knew them. It seems like Baltimore has had no such growth in that regard, at least from the street view's perspective. There are also a couple "wire tour" websites from back in the day that are still up and still helpful for picking out landmark shooting locations, all of which are just a mouse drag away... which is pretty dang cool. I think the final thing I want to talk about this time through is once again Season 5. It still feels rushed to me, I could really use those extra few hours to pad out McNulty's rash decision, the world of The Baltimore Sun, and the epilogue of the final episode. I get that there was overlap with production on Generation Kill so Simon and partner Ed Burns had to split responsibilities. I also get that this was about the time that HBO's first wave of culture-defining shows were coming to an end (Six Feet Under and Carnivale in 2005, Deadwood in 2006, The Sopranos and Rome in 2007, The Wire in 2008) so there were probably many many factors in play (like originally getting a 13 episode order then having it reduced to 10). All of that to say, it feels rushed, I've always found McNulty's homeless serial killer to stretch the limits of believability and the paper stuff is maybe the weakest in the series. It's also the most compromised season for me since the first 7(!) episodes were sent out for press and wound up online. I couldn't resist the temptation and watched them having to skip episodes that I couldn't find and binged much of the season in one sitting, then watched again week to week as they broadcast. This time around though I was a little less harsh on the serial killer stuff. It had definite thematic ties to Colvin's Hamsterdam in Season 3 as well as the symbolic nuance of juking the system that we've spent 4 seasons watching fuck people over with merciless inevitability. Through that lens, it connects seasons 5 and 3 just as 1 and 3 are connected (hunting Avon & Stringer), and 2 and 4 are connected (the dock workers enable the supply through desperation, the corner kids distribute the supply through the same desperation, top to bottom). And the paper stuff isn't *bad* per se, it's just one story stretched through the season. It's total wishing for the impossible, but it would've been amazing to see a few of the reporters sprinkled through season 4 like they did with Bunny in season 2 and council president Nerese Campbell in season 3. That connective tissue is so rare because of the forethought involved and The Wire managed to pull it off several times, but all of these reporters are brand new faces. It's great to see them at crime scenes and press conferences in season 5 to get that hit of connecting the dots all the way up and down... I wish there was more of that. And so much happens during the last episode. I always feel like Freamon's meeting with Clay Davis and finally getting dirt on the lawyer Maurice Levy flies by way too quickly. There could never be a season 6 (even if it was still 2009 as I write this) because of how otherwise note perfect the show ended, but I do wish we could've gotten a little more time to watch Levy squirm. And yeah, what an amazing show. I'm sad that it's over.
07.17.21	The Invisible Man	Leigh Whannell	I initially dismissed this as a whole movie's worth of the rape scene from the Verhoeven Invisible Man movie, kind of like Invisible Man meets Sleeping with the Enemy. But I saw a random scene from it on youtube (the restaurant scene) and figured it might be worth watching. It's mostly not. There are a couple good scenes, the restaurant being one of them, but for the most part it's a mediocre thriller that has to throw out all logic and reason in order to justify the premise. I guess maybe this is supposed to be some metaphor for victim blaming? and that's why it should get a pass for not making any sense... but it doesn't make any sense. here's a short list: -can people in this world listen or smell? or is that part of this magic suit? -Is this guy a trained ninja in addition to having his magic suit? Why does he not make any sound? -so the guy goes from an abuser to a killer to like a mass killer shooting cops and orderlies willy nilly? But if his whole sceme is is predicated on no one thinking he's alive then he doesn't kill the one guard who saw him? -and why is the dog hanging out in the empty house? Poor Zeus! Wtf! So unfortunately these issues never let me get into the movie and enjoy the thriller aspect of it. It really should've just been Insidious 4 or whatever and actually been a ghost haunting her. This stupid evil Tony Stark guy is an idiot. I mean, how much cooler would it be if he was actually going around being a thief or villain using this crazy suit for, i dunno, an actual purpose? And she finds out about it so THAT's why he's coming after her. But I guess that would be a different (better) movie.
07.17.21	Summer of Soul	Questlove	(...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) One of the silver linings of 2020 Quarantine for me was that Questlove (drummer for The Roots among other things) took to doing these streamed DJ sets online. I wasn't into all of them, but the ones I was into, I was REALLY into. So now he's made a movie! and it's pretty good! This is about a "forgotten" music festival that was held in Harlem in the summer of 1969 that was documented but no one was interested in distributing it. It probably didn't help that Woodstock was going on at the same time. I could definitely tell the main tension of this film is trying to show these great concert performances that haven't been seen before and at the same time tell the story of this festival and what it meant to the people who put it on, who performed in it, who went to it, and why it was never seen again until now. I feel like it's a pretty consistent problem to have with concert films and I can recall different films that weigh that balance differently... to varying degrees of success. On one side of the scale is Dave Grohl's documentary Sound City. It's not a concert film per se, but he spends the first half of the film telling the history of this recording studio then the second half playing music with various people. It definitely comes off as valuing the story over performance and because he split it down the middle like that it feels bifurcated like 2 episodes of a tv show or something. On the other hand you have something like Urgh! A Music War or Stop Making Sense that's 100% performance and you barely even get shots of the audience. That obviously works on the music level but you really don't get any context at all... you may not even know which venue they're in. To me, the film that gets that balance absolutely right is Wattstax. These interstitial interview snippets with people around town give amazing character without needing a narrator to tell you what's happening and they're just long enough to not make the performances feel monotonous. Of course, it helps that all you really need to know about Wattstax is that it's Stax Records groups performing in Watts. If there's a problem with this movie, it's that there's too much story to tell. How did these tapes survive? Why could they never be sold? How were they filmed to begin with? It's a bit of a shame that you don't even see the guy's face during the couple minutes that they rush to cover this stuff. But I get it, Questlove was already at 2 hours and probably had tons more performances he'd put in if he could and tons more interviews he'd show if he could but he didn't want to make a 2.5 hour music doc (ahem, Sparks Brothers). It does feel like there's probably another movie's worth of extra material that should show up on the blu-ray though. So that small gripe aside, I really liked this. The concert footage actually looks incredible given its age and that it looks like tape rather than 16mm film(? I'm probably wrong about that). The interviews gave great flavor and context to the times, and I in particular loved how Questlove kind of sets up this format where each group gets one song... but then Sly gets on stage and boom! We get two! Then Stevie's back! more from him! Then Nina Simone shows up and it feels like we see her entire set! And there's so much to present that Quest has no problem sometimes filling each quiet spot on a song with a quick interview sound byte... just like his streaming DJ sets it feels like this Soul Music Historian sitting you down and blasting you in the face with a fire hose full of knowledge, but all in tune and on time so you're head never stops nodding.
07.16.21	The Sparks Brothers	Edgar Wright	I don't know anything about this band Sparks but I was interested to see how Edgar Wright takes on a documentary. My hope was something like Straight Story or Fantastic Mr. Fox where a director's drawn to new cinematic genres and the mixture of sensibilities really works. But then again, I found stuff like Eight Days a Week and Pearl Jam 20 to be pretty standard fare (did I even see Eight Days a Week? I can't remember). This lands somewhere in the middle. Wright's wit shines through pretty consistently in the editing and occasional planned interview bit and it's very very clear that he loves this band, but it's also too long. I don't think I needed to hear about EVERY album from a band known (I guess) for their long and prolific career. In parts I kind of felt like I was watching a cinematic equivalent of a wiki article. And it doesn't help that the music still doesn't really connect with me, so aside from a few Giorgio Moroder synths I felt pretty removed from how genius and influential this stuff is. But I certainly know that Sparks exists now, and a whole cavalcade of famous people and ex band members have told me how great they are, and they seem like interesting nice guys so that's good.
07.10.21	Black Widow	Cate Shortland	Pretty meh. David Harbour and Florence Pugh were good in an otherwise filler movie. Pretty glad this was delayed to where the tv shows happened first because I think this would've gotten some flack as the follow-up to Endgame. But whatever... just another comic book movie at this point.
07.03.21	A Quiet Place Part II	John Krasinski	I watched this because I thought there would be a good chance that it'd be decent. It was decent. Not as good as the first, but not a waste of time. Really, my problem with this is on a story level, in that there is none. For me, part of the reason why the first movie was good was because it managed to present a glimmer of hope at the end but then leaving the rest to be a fore-gone conclusion. In my mind, for this movie to be as good as the first it should've taken a jump in time to a point where people thought they had things under control. Like Day of the Dead vs. Dawn of the Dead, or how World War Z's perspective is that of an oral history. 28 Weeks Later vs. 28 Days Later. Having it pick up exactly where the first left off means you start with a glimmer of hope and end with a insignificantly larger glimmer of hope. It felt like either a filler chapter in a book or like a second act in a video game. It definitely felt like it needs some third movie to follow through, but I don't know what a good version of a third movie would be at this point. But as such, this felt like a proficient execution of a disappointing script. There was a lot more they could've done with this... who knows, maybe Krasinski planned out a trilogy when he took this on? I feel mixed about it... mostly, the first probably rated higher when it was a one-off. Which brings me to this thing that I've been thinking about with regards to this site and my movie-watching habits of the last decade or so. I'd say years 2008 - 2012-ish was me dealing with a new job, a new life partner, buying a house, playing more video games, generally doing other things with the time I used to spend at the Alamo. And I felt a little guilty about that, since I still loved movies and the magic that they're capable of... but then I think things started to shift. Now, I am well aware that there will always be an ocean of good past movies to fish from if I wanted to. World cinema, obscure forgotten gems, fleshing out filmographies of masters like Howard Hawks or revisiting classics to find new stuff in them... but when it comes to new movies... I think there's probably a 35% chance that I'm just not seeing the good new movies, but that means I'm 65% sure that feature-length cinema is in trouble. I feel like these days I'm watching a ton of TV... so much so that I have to keep a running list so I don't forget what's available. And almost all of it is good. And not good like ER was good but good like how Children of Men was good. Except these shows get 10 hours to develop their characters and end when they want to end so it never turns the corner to feeling like they're stretching things too thin. So when I watch a movie like this, I kinda feel justified in thinking this should be an episode of a longer series rather than some 200 million dollar tentpole release. Nothing happens! So I still every once in a while watch a movie that re-ignites that passion I once had, but more and more I'm feeling like the stuff I love doesn't qualify for my rules about this journal. Stuff like Chernobyl or Watchmen, Righteous Gemstones or What We Do in the Shadows, The Jinx or I'll Be Gone in the Dark... all better than most of the new movies I've seen in the last five years. I don't really know why I'm shouting this complaint or who i'm shouting it to, but I guess I'm just starting to get over my guilt for not watching so many movies anymore. Perhaps it was because it was a point of pride to begin with (which is probably unhealthy), but I've long had this sigh of regret when I make entries to this site like I should be doing more, but I'm now realizing that I've been pretty lukewarm on almost all these latest entries, and it's not that I am just getting older and grumpier (although I'm sure that's a contributing factor)... I don't FEEL like I'm hating everything I see... but I think this journal is no longer as representative as it used to be. Now, that doesn't mean I'm going to change the rules of this site. It's still a movie journal, not a TV journal, youtube journal, or anything else journal. And most of the shows I watch I don't necessarily have succinct viewpoints on that I'd like to record anyway, but I did feel like I had these thoughts bubbling around and it was time to commit them to digital paper. And as I always say, maybe things will change and this will be another trend recorded for the annals of random internet history. Or not. Either way, I feel better for exploring it in these last few paragraphs so there you go.
07.02.21	No Sudden Move	Steven Soderbergh	Steven Soderbergh with a fantastic cast doing a neo-noir set in 50s Detroit. Another solid genre offering that was very watchable. Probably not one to return to over and over again, but still super decent. I think it achieves that hard thing of fitting into an older genre without it being a comment on that genre itself. This felt like it could've been made back in the 50s (with the exception of whatever crazy short lenses Soderbergh used to get so much distortion on the sides of the frame). I got big Odds Against Tomorrow vibes casting-wise. Robert Ryan could easily have played the Benecio role, Belafonte replacing Don Cheadle, and Gloria Grahame swapping in for Julia Fox (who I'm sorry to say I thought was the weakest of the bunch here as the mobster's wife. Her delivery felt pretty fake, especially when compared to Amy Seimetz (it also doesn't help that they look pretty similar. For a minute I thought they were the same character)). SPOILER ALERT I really liked that the macguffin in this case was a catalytic converter and the Big 4 were the insurmountable evil empire that always ends. as a GM employee, I fully support this.
05.21.21	Army of the Dead	Zack Snyder	Snyder's Dawn of the Dead remake is certainly my favorite movie that he's made and arguably the only one I liked so I had some hopes for this. Not exactly high hopes, but hopes nonetheless. It was OKAY. It's a good premise, a good set-up... I liked how he kind of continued what he did with the end credits in DAWN here during the beginning credits which are great and manage to tell a story succinctly, but it falls pretty flat for me right after that. I found it an odd choice for Snyder to use whatever lens or digital effect he used to make the focus depth about as thin as a dime to wash most of the frame in soft focus. Considering he made this movie for Netflix it was a fantastic showcase of all the artifact-ing and shallow bit depth going on with streaming services these days. The effect became slightly less noticeable after a while but it did feel like my glasses were dirty for the whole thing. My biggest issue with the movie though was the story or lack thereof. Like I mentioned, the premise is great but the problem is that when you set up a heist in zombie-ridden Vegas, you actually have to make a heist movie. The meat of this movie felt a ton like Suicide Squad to me... all they could figure to do was shoot a lot of walking... walking down rubble-strewn streets, walking down hallways, sometimes running down hallways, running up stairs, and running down stairs. Maybe because the characters are so thin that the actors don't have much to do, but it dragged for me pretty hard. I also didn't really enjoy the zombie development at all. There was one cool detail (right at the beginning) but the rest of it was kind of typical what-can-we-do-to-spice-things-up nonsense. That said, there were a couple good gore gags that looked like quality CGI so I guess that's good. And in the sake of total honesty, this bummed me out a little extra because i've long had an idea for a vegas zombie movie where the bodies buried out in the desert come back, and this movie basically shits all over the horror and subtlety I had in mind with typical Snyder nonsense... but who am I kidding it's not like I'll ever make that movie so who cares. So yeah, not great... but not completely terrible I suppose. Just kind of boring, which isn't what you want out of a zombie action movie.
05.07.21	What Drives Us	Dave Grohl	In one of those kismet things, I've spent the last week or so going through old Nirvana videos on youtube... revisiting them and my memories back then... the official channel put up this mtv special they did as well as rehearsal and unedited footage from their unplugged show which led to numerous interviews, 20th anniversary retrospectives, archival footage, and what have you. It naturally segued to Dave Grohl stuff... I'd never seen this 40-minute documentary about a garage tour that they did after their one album recorded in Dave's garage... which got me in the mood to watch his Sonic Highways HBO show. I continue to be a fan of everything about Grohl other than Foo Fighters music, and kinda love that he did a doc about Sound City and this album about a list of cities and their musical history. Then all of a sudden he did a reddit AMA today in support of a shit ton of new content: a book, a new album, a paramount+ thing with his mom, and an amazon prime documentary about bands' early days touring in a van. Perfect! I liked it pretty good. I think there's a certain quality that he gets from his interviews with other musicians where its more of a peer-to-peer thing and the shared experiences allow them to go to more interesting territory. It helps that I watched Grohl's interview and Lars Ulrich's radio show right before-hand, which was conversational in the best possible way so I felt he was acquaintances or real friends with most of the subjects in this film. I half expected the next foo fighters tour to be in a van or from a van or about a van... something van-related, but I guess covid ruined that plan. I'm also kind of glad that this didn't end with foo fighters music like his previous projects so i don't have to qualify my enjoyment to exclude it. (I realize i am still going on and on about it but it's weird! how can i like the guy so much and like nirvana but not respond to the current music AT ALL? anyway...) So yeah, pretty good.
04.28.21	Bad Biology	Frank Henenlotter	I feel like it's been quite a while since I've watched anything interesting. And of course, by "interesting" I mean bizarre, depraved, and total trash. Even though my viewing habits don't really reflect it any more, I still do have a soft spot for late night cable movies and weird random oddities and crazy genre fare. And with the fate of fantastic fest still undecided (as well as my attendance), I'm feeling a pretty far distance between now and 2006-me. As such, I somehow wound up on Frank Henenlotter's imdb page and noticed he made a movie a dozen years ago that I never heard of or saw. I have fond memories of watching the first two Basket Cases on cable and renting Frankenhooker from my local video store growing up, so I decided to see what this was about. Much as I thought and feared, even with the best intentions, I don't think making a movie like this good is possible anymore. While you probably can make a decent movie on whatever budget this had, it would have to be some Primer-esque "cool" concept or something. Nothing approaching the level of bad taste of this... which is kind of a shame? I mean I don't remember Frankenhooker being high art, but I was entertained. Perhaps I might like this too if I was 13 again... That's when I was going for all those Full Moon and Troma movies and loving them. But the problems are soooo blaring. And (I mean this is the weirdest way) it's such a great concept... it's a shame that the movie can't deliver like it wants to. Like I think a late 80s video/drive-in market would allow. Basically, a girl has a monstrous vagina that makes her insatiable, and there's a guy who's mad scientist'd his penis into a monster with a mind of its own, and you spend the movie waiting for them to get together. I will say, the rap during the end credits - performed by the movie's producer - is amazing. It's all about how fucking hard it was to make this movie and all the shit they had to put up with. It's basically like reading the trivia page on imdb in hip-hop form. Did you know the main actor was found on myspace? Did you know the house where they shot had no water or power? Did you know the director shot this movie while undergoing chemotherapy? It's almost like an apology for watching... while you're still watching. So that's one great thing to cherry-pick out of this, which is why one watches these sorts of things. So...in a way, success? Another thing I haven't done in a long time is throw on some extra paragraphs to an entry because it's late and I'm in the mood to ramble and this movie triggered some memories. So I want to dedicate this screening to a guy named Cameron. Cameron lived next door to me when we moved to Maryland. He was a couple grades older than me but willing to be friends. We bonded over my comic collection (He was a good artist, mainly copying Jim Lee's style) and we wound up being pretty damn tight for several years there. I went to my first concerts with him, saw my first porn because he snuck it from his step-dad, and generally hung out quite a lot. I have to credit him with two pretty huge influences in my life. The first is music. I think that type of thing... was a bit of a right place/ right time situation. I was entering my teens... starting to grow into myself a bit... I think I would've gravitated toward music at some point, but he definitely kickstarted it. Before that, I basically had a vanilla ice tape and a ton of Weird Al, but he was into stuff like Fishbone and The Cult and most heavily Red Hot Chili Peppers. Largely because of him, Uplift Mofo Party Plan was the first CD I ever bought (I already had Blood Sugar Sex Magik on cassette of course). Pearl Jam's Ten was the first CD I ever heard (borrowed from a guy at school and played on my dad's boombox in the garage), and I still remember how hearing the intro of that basically sold me on cds forever, but for my momentous first official purchase it had to be the chili peppers. He was the first person to play Nirvana's Nevermind for me (I thought it was too heavy, which I wasn't into. It wasn't until Lithium was a single that I came around). He was the first to get into industrial, bringing Pretty Hate Machine and Ministry's The Mind album on a camping trip in our back woods one weekend and playing them on repeat until the boombox's batteries died. We went to Lollapalooza 92 to see both the Peppers and Ministry (with Pearl Jam and Soundgarden thrown in for good measure) and his tastes generally rubbed off on me and set me in a more mature musical direction. Music that I still connect to today. His Step dad Lionel was a musician (i think?) and had guitars around their house. I remember one day Cameron said that Lionel had, like, reverse engineered NIN's song Wish on guitar, and that it had taken him hours. I thought that was like magic. He took us to see a good handful of shows in DC. Probably stuff I was too young to get into or see, but I think he was a DC native. I remember him saying he was one of the guys who made the obstacle course that Jodie Foster runs through in the beginning of Silence of the Lambs. Anyway, the other thing Cameron and I got really deep on were horror movies. My mom loved movies and used to tape 3 to a vhs off cable when I was a kid. As soon as we got cable anyway. By the time I was in highschool she had like 300 tapes with a rolodex full of index cards to choose from, but those were old movies, John Wayne movies, that kind of thing. Stuff she liked. Cameron was into schlocky stuff. Since we were neighbors, we haunted the same local video store (B&B Video, which became Hilltop Video when the dude bought the place I think?, next door to a bar and a convenience mart). He got me into Evil Dead, Puppet Master, Hellraiser, and random stuff like Amazon Women on the Moon and Kentucky Fried Movie. Half of it I kinda had to hide the titles from my mom but she let us rent them anyway. Together, we (along with every other young man in the early 90s) succumbed to ninja fever and couldn't wait to go to the theater every friday to see the new Steven Segal movie, or even the knock-offs like The Perfect Weapon starring Jeff Speakman. We were both somewhat intimidated but driven to watch Faces of Death, Faces of Death 2, Traces of Death, Death Scenes, Faces of Death 3, Macabro, and pretty much anything else on the shelves that mentioned the word "BANNED." Some of that stuff I was definitely too young to see... one of them (I think Traces of Death) had a clinical vibe to it... showed a lot of medical footage and I believe some stuff that was much more real than anything in the Faces... series. But on the bright side, I was totally familiar with that dude who shot himself during a press conference when that Filter song came out. Totally got that reference. I feel like there's a lot of nostalgia now for people my age who did the same thing I did which was go to the video store practically every day on the way home from school, spend an hour looking at box art willing some hidden gem or new release to appear, then bringing it home and usually sitting through 90 minutes of crap. After a while though it became GOOD crap. While there were some titles I could never get past my mom (I Spit on Your Grave being the most notorious, but also flagrant stuff like Stripped to Kill and Slumber Party Massacre), I still saw A LOT of stuff, and for some reason even the stuff I never watched I can still remember box art for (Woody Harrelson in his boxers splattered with blue paint?) and I owe a lot of that to Cameron. Of course they weren't all hits. There was the time we picked Rocky Horror Picture Show because we liked Tim Curry from Clue and thought it would be scary. And I think we had to turn a movie called Subspecies off because it was like vampires but they were legit farting in every scene? Even as high school went on and we started drifting apart - him getting a girlfriend, graduating, starting getting high), my interest in movies and music carried over to my other friend circles who were more obsessed with D&D, Jimi Hendrix, and video games. Even after starting college, on breaks where I'd be home I would binge stacks and stacks of movies. By then I had graduated from the tiny neighborhood Hilltop video to the mecca that was Wonder Book and Video (W. Patrick street location). Much farther away, but almost mythical in my memory for their endless rows of towering VHS on one side, a labyrinth of stacked and cluttered used books on the other with a long ramp connecting the two. That place had everything. Want a Danish supernatural soap opera that you pick because it says "Like ER on Acid!" but you don't realize it's 9 hours long until you start watching? They have it. Need a silent Fritz Lang movie based on Die Nibelungen because you have to do a report on him for German class? They have it. Reefer Madness / Night of the Living Dead double feature on one cassette? Yup. A Deliverance knock-off starring Hal Holbrook? You got it. Dawn of the Dead 2-vhs special edition with a half hour of tv spots at the end? Come on in. I don't really miss much about Frederick (all my friends are gone, my old high school was torn down and rebuilt, all the old mall movie theaters have closed) but I do miss Wonder Book & Video and I'm happy that it's still around even in this streaming Amazon apocalypse. Isn't it funny how tastes form. I think I owe a lot of my cinematic sensibility to a video store and cable. Being a pubescent teen in the early 90s, I watched a lot of Cinemax at a time where they didn't really have Red Shoe diaries or whatever. So to keep the Friday nights interesting they wound up programming a decent amount of European movies that shows boobs and bush. Despite my ulterior motives, I wound up seeing some good stuff on there! 2069: A Sex Odyssey holds up (in my mind anyway) as being a crazy German/Austrian 70s sci-fi sex comedy! I can still hear the dubbing in my head ("I've never had machine head"). And just the other day Criterion announced their release of Lizzie Borden's Working Girls. I saw that movie like three times but its title had completely left my memory. There was some movie I quite liked that followed a pack of cigarettes around the world, passing from person to person in a totally pre-Slacker type meandering structure. All of these fragments of scenes still float in my head disconnected from any credit or titles... there was some movie where a woman got a run in her stocking and used lip gloss or something to hide it? What? Maybe they will pop up years from now and finally connect the mental circuit like Working Girls did. But I digress. I haven't talked to Cameron in probably 25 years. Like me, he has a pretty common name so googling him is tough. I have no idea where he lives or what he's done with his life. But I want to put this out into the ether just in case coincidence strikes and one of his mental circuits gets completed. This one's for you, Buddy!
04.25.21	Love & Mercy	Bill Pohlad	I'm not a particularly big Beach Boys fan, but I happened across a scene from this movie on youtube where Paul Dano's Young Brian Wilson directs some wrecking crew musicians during the making of Good Vibrations. That scene is basically all I want from biopics... I want to live in the moment where the band or musician or whoever gets inspiration or records songs that I love. I don't totally love Good Vibrations but the quality of the scene made me think the whole movie might be good. And it was! In particular, I love how "internal" the film is... Hopping back and forth in a non-linear way, the movie seems told from Brian Wilson's genius brain. I think this is helped tremendously by these musical pieces that Atticus Ross puts together... kind of like sonic soups of all these familiar beach boys tunes mixed together and simmered until they meld into one overall vibe. Watching with headphones really put me there, helped by both Paul Dano and John Cusack. Paul Giamatti's in this too, which surprised me. Had no clue, but I will say I feel like the last thing I saw him in was Straight Outta Compton where he's playing a pretty similar role. So overall I have to say it's a good movie if it's a biopic (which I don't typically like) about a band i don't particularly care for. Success!
04.16.21	The House	Andrew Jay Cohen	I was in the mood for a decent comedy and I remember hearing that this was better than everyone said it was... and I think this was a rare case where they were right! I mean it's not like curing cancer or anything but I laughed way more than Eurovision per se. There's a bunch of funny people here, generally being funny. It does feel like they are relying on performances rather than story or jokes for the most part, but I could probably come up with a handful of similar projects with worse results... if they weren't so hard to remember. I found this one pleasant enough. Fit the bill for tonight. spoiler! One joke in particular got me for some reason and that was when they had Sebastian Maniscalco performing for one dude who was super into it then did a spit take like right on Seb's shoes. Everything about that idea made me laugh.
03.20.21	Zack Snyder's Justice League	Zack Snyder	In the words of Griffin McElroy, "Who is Zack Snyder and why should I care so much about his cut?" What drove me to watch this was a curiosity in fandom. It's not so often that filmmakers get a straight-up do-over, but in the world of recent events like the petition to re-do the last two seasons of Game of Thrones and Joaquin Phoenix playing Joker 3 years after Jared Leto's performance, it seems like my generation of nerds and geeks are on the precipice of implosion. I'm not sure why people listen when we whine and complain so much, but it's turned the world of entertainment into an odd place. So I wondered what a take-two of this movie would be with twice the running time but only 3 days of reshoots. What helped was that I had practically no memory of the initial version. I kinda remember Batman recruiting people and there was a fight scene with Superman that made no sense but that was about it. So consequently, I had to read a bunch of blog articles about the differences afterward because there were several moments where I wasn't so much enjoying the action as asking myself if I'd seen it before. Like did batman have that weird spider vehicle thing? Or was Roose Bolton in it before? Were there Mother Boxes? And were they called that? Sounds like a joke out of Arrested Development. Turns out, I guess most all of that wasn't new, but with two extra hours Snyder could at least put together a cohesive narrative rather than a collection of trailer scenes. I don't know if the Lord of the Rings flashback was in there before but it seemed new to me, as was all the footage of Darkseid. Superman getting his memory back STILL seemed rushed even with literally all the time in the world, but I... think? the last battle was better? At least I understood the stakes. I will also say that it definitely felt more like the DC universe team-up event that it was supposed to, thanks to the inclusion of an army of notable actors who presumably signed on for larger roles in other movies. Seeing the cast go so deep was kinda cool, even if half the names were in one, two scenes max. It's still a Zack Snyder movie though. The music was terribly overbearing. It made me yearn for the days of early Michael Bay. This is the nightmare of all those critics who cried back in the 90s about music video directors changing movies forever. Of particular cringe was the female moaning whenever Gal Gadot got to stare vaguely left of camera in close-up. I get that each hero had motifs or whatever but ugh. I also spent the whole time wonder which Ben Affleck was 2017 and which was 2020. His weight and face-puffiness seems to vary quite a bit. I do think Flash and Cyborg got more screen time, a little more story depth, but you know... the whole movie feels like covered ground. Flash going fast with the world in slow-motion? That was the only good part of the last 3 X-Men movies. Joe Morton showing regret for exploring alien technology? T2. Lord of the Rings. The Dark Knight. And of course every Marvel movie already did all of this stuff. I get that Darkseid has his fans, but you can't show a cosmic dude with blue-gray skin and a square jaw sitting on a throne waiting to overthrow Earth and not tell me it doesn't sound familiar. So yeah, I think this was a better version than the theatrical cut, but it's probably also the last nail in the coffin for anything DC-universe related for me... except Batman maybe. and if that new Suicide Squad movie is any good. Goddamn it...
03.12.21	Coming 2 America	Craig Brewer	This is a tough one. I really liked Murphy's Dolemite movie... I'm generally a fan of Craig Brewer... it's great the see the band back together and all that... but it falls into sequel trope after trope after trope. Really the movie only exists as a reminder that these jokes were pretty funny 30 years ago. Everybody wants to see more of the barbershop, more of Sexual Chocolate, more of McDowell's. More Arsenio and Eddie cutting each other up, but the script only serves to connect those dots. And seeing characters again doing the same material isn't exactly the same as seeing more of the characters. It's all very safe and PG-13. Aside from a line or two by the barbershop guys, the only material I really liked was Wesley Snipes having fun and the Prince song. I wish it was better.
02.13.21	Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest	Michael Rapaport	I've fallen into a habit over the last couple of years of doubling my video game time with youtube videos or podcasts on the second monitor. As good as the Red Dead 2 score is, you can't do 70 hours of hunting without it getting a little dry. So I try to have a puzzle game or chill game that I can play with the music off so I can also consume a Sopranos podcast or live-play DnD like Critical Role. Well, over the past couple days, I've meandered onto a series of talks, mostly by Red Bull Music Academy, with people like Madlib, Questlove, El-P, Q-Tip, and Bob Power. Aside from all of them revering J Dilla, it got me thinking that I should really do a deep dive on groups like Tribe and De La, which I've enjoyed on a casual level but am not intimately familiar with their whole oeuvre. This popped into my head shortly thereafter. This is a good doc. Feels like we get intimate access but also a good encapsulation of Tribe's story. It's interesting watching this in 2021 knowing that they would get back together for one more album before Phife's passing... maybe provides a safety net that wasn't there in 2011. Hmm... not sure what else to say because it's late, so... i liked it! I'll probably hit up their records one by one sometime and get a deep dive.
01.03.21	A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood	Marielle Heller	My glorious month off from work comes to an end tonight so I thought I'd send the vacation off with a movie. Even after like 40 hits, I still think Tom Hanks is a great actor as well as a great movie star and this one fell through the cracks so I figured I'd go back and catch up with it. For whatever reason, the blatant emotionality and raw positivity of Hanks' portrayal of Fred Rogers really worked on me. The rest of the movie is good as well (Matthew Rhys is really the star of the film and he does a fine job as always) but the reason we all watch is for Hank's Mr. Rogers and I thought he did a great job. Ok then. Guess I have to go to sleep now.
01.02.21	The Midnight Sky	George Clooney	I imagine this is kinda like George Clooney's take on Gravity. He saw how Cuaron could do it and was like "maybe I'll do that too, but, like, sad and making a tiny bit more sense." Then ten years later the right book comes out and he's like "finally!" Ok, probably none of that happened, but this did feel like Gravity in a few scenes, The Martian in... many scenes, and most of all it reminded me of a Neal Stephenson book called Seveneves. That book is better than this movie, but that's because it's a 1000-page book that has time to explore all the stuff this movie only hints at. And unfortunately for this movie, I spent the last 15 minutes wondering if they had a CRISPR on the ship or something because things are pretty bleak if not. But really things are pretty bleak regardless. But I guess that's the point... to reflect on stuff or whatever. I did feel that sometimes the music was too overbearing to do that reflection because it was screaming at me to feel scared or happy or sad, but the music and the plodding bleakness were my only real complaints. Mostly I thought this was pretty good.
12.12.20	Hubie Halloween	Steven Brill	Here's where I'm at with Adam Sandler movies these days. They are somewhere between junk food and frozen tv dinners: They are very easy, in some cases enjoyable, and have their place in the cinematic landscape. And there's nothing wrong with them as long as they're not the only thing you eat. This was a perfectly pleasant good time of a film... not particularly funny, not particularly original, not particularly anything except it's clear, as always, that everyone is having a good time and it's fun to hang out with these people. Not that anyone acted particularly well, but Julie Bowen could've used a lot more direction in a lot of her scenes. And why a cajun had 5 generations of ancestors in Salem, Mass. is a little strange... but really who cares. Halloween is fun, yabba-dabba gobbledy-goo Sandler is fun, all the usual suspects are fun, Steve Buscemi, as always, is the best part, and after sitting through a 130-minute Charlie Kaufman exercise this was both more than welcome and a fitting end to the fest. I'm glad I watched it. And that's a wrap on the largest DVRfest to date, beating out the second one by one Hubie Halloween. And that's with a shit-ton of more-than-two-hour running times. It's almost comical how difficult it was to carve out this time though, and that's with being off work during a pandemic where we're not leaving the house. It seemed like every day would bring some new distraction that needed to be taken care of and I don't think there was a night where I got to my second film before 8:30. Of course, that's with sleping in till 2pm so... whatever. What I'm trying to say is that finding just 4 days once a year is difficult. That's not to say I don't have more free time than, say, anyone with kids... but it is still a far cry from the glory days of 2006. I think maybe I'm also beating Peter Bogdanovich by this point? I no longer remember how long he kept his index cards but this marks my 16th year keeping this site. At this point, I doubt that I'll ever make a Last Picture Show, but I'm alright with that. I still love movies and love watching movies, even if I do far less of it these days. Speaking of, without a Fantastic Fest to pad my numbers, I bet 2020 will be an all-time low in terms of stats. That's not all my fault though. I do think there is a trend that's happening with Hollywood where there just aren't as many attractive movies coming out for me. The Streaming/television landscape is booming and I'm watching 30-60 minutes of grade-A content every day during my lunch break. It's just TV which this journal doesn't cover. I do still have quite a pile of unwatched old DVDs and there's always a world of choices out there just waiting for me to want to watch them, but the ease, quantity, and quality of long-format options has gotten me out of that habit. Maybe the winds will blow a new direction in at some point and modern films will get more interesting again, but the studios are in a bit of dire straits in my opinion. Even huge tentpole franchises like Marvel and Star Wars are moving to streaming shows so studios can get that subscription money. It's like the movie industry is finally learning from the gaming industry and going toward its equivalent of micro-transactions now that the home dvd/blu market is dying out. There will always be the surprise hits every once in a while but I can't remember the last time average week-to-week releases had any consistent quality. The numbers: 21 movies in the past week (3/day), 23 in the past month (0.77/day), 58 in the past year (ouch. 0.16/day), 3033 movies seen 3285 times since this site started (0.56/day). Two months (january & October(!)) had 0 films, 3 months only had 1. That's basically half the year I didn't watch movies. We are a long way away from the 2/day average I once held. Sobering. But whatever... enough bumming out. This last four days was quite fun. I liked nearly everything I watched, and most of it was relatively new. Even if Fantastic Fest doesn't come back or I stop attending, DVRfest will always be here.
12.12.20	I'm Thinking of Ending Things	Charlie Kaufman	Ohhh the thing she's thinking about ending is a relationship! That's the only thing that makes sense in this movie. The thing I'm currently going with is that this is mostly an anxiety dream about commitment and aging. It doesn't all fit that hypothesis but it mostly does and that's good enough, unless I want to read the book it's based on or something like that. I do like the cast, especially the parents, but feel like the movie takes a little too long to get "weird," making the whole thing a bit too long. I was definitely ready for it to be over. And I guess it goes without saying that the dog was my favorite part. OK. It's... now very very late. I don't really want to end the fest with this though and I had one final film on the schedule. I figured a Charlie Kaufman movie would make me think pretty hard so I wanted to end with something where I wouldn't have to think at all.
12.12.20	The Perfect Weapon	John Maggio	Unfortunately for all the international kenpo star Jeff Speakman fans out there, this is not the 90s martial arts action film that leveraged the amazing jam by a band named Snap! for its trailer and opening credits (i loved that song back in the day... I got the power! duh-duh-duh Dat Dat Dat). This is also not the 2016 Steven Seagal / Johnny Messner vehicle about a... guy in the future who has amnesia? I dunno, that trailer doesn't make any sense. No, this particular perfect weapon is the vague ever-present existential threat of cyber attacks. I initially saw a clip from this movie talking about the Sony hack and thought it would have much more to do with that, but instead that was just one segment in a catalog of sorts describing the escalation activity of hacking maneuvers made by government-sponsored groups. They don't talk about email addresses and credit card numbers being compromised but instead stuff like nuclear weapon sabotage, election tampering, and power grid stand-offs. Pretty chilling stuff. What I find more chilling is the likelihood that the 75-year old white dudes running this country fully understand any of it. Hopefully I'm wrong about that in some respects... I have to think that the analysts who make up our workforce in that area are, to borrow a metaphor from someone in the film, "more West Wing than Veep," but judging from bits of hearing testimony that I've seen with tech leaders like Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey make them sound a lot like my dad when he asks me why his internet is slow. So this was a pretty informative encapsulation of recent events that fits nicely in the category of HBO Documentary. It doesn't have enough frills or sensation to play theatrically, but it's still a solid piece of filmmaking that I found worth watching. I'm not knocking HBO docs by the way... they've aired a bunch of fantastic stuff over the years (Paradise Lost comes first to mind, along with a film i can't seem to track down but can't remember the name of. It was made by the friend of a guy who had committed suicide and it was such an intimate personal film where this friend bared his heart and soul to the camera while telling the story of his friend and his grand dreams and gambling addiction I think? The ending has stuck with me for years and years and years. I wish I could remember the name). I just mean to say they can afford a more specific subject matter at a lower budget to fit their programming. Anyway, this succession of bummer movies has taken me to a very dark place. I guess I'm in the right mood for the next film.
12.12.20	Bad Education	Cory Finley	I don't know if it's just Jackman's performance or maybe it's after watching all the movies I've been watching but for whatever reason I really really wanted Hugh Jackman's character to be a good guy. I know the movie's about massive embezzlement in this school or whatever, but I still found myself hoping for the best. I think Jackman's performance, in addition to the solid script and competent direction, is what makes this movie pretty good instead of just another hbo film. Allison Janney is great as well of course as well as all the other supporting cast, but it's really Jackman's movie and he brings some real pathos to this character that's ultimate both good and bad. He saves and he rapes (that's a Dave Chappelle joke; there's no actual rape in this movie). In light of other scandals involving America's educational system, the blame of this story is probably shared among all of us in the swirling cultural soup that is life. You can understand parents wanting good schools for their kids, a town liking the real estate prices that having a good school provides, and a school board willing to look the other way as the price of that. But Mr. Holland didn't go buying extra houses with stolen funds, Mr. Lean on Me or Mr. Stand and Deliver... not even Ms. Dangerous Minds took any off the top. Mr. One Eight Seven did kill that one kid though so I guess they're not all paragons of morality and ethics. I think I'm losing my own point, which is that the schools are yet another thing that seems to be getting practically worse while we all tell ourselves that they're getting better. But anyway, this was a good movie. I enjoyed watching it. I guess the crime is what makes it interesting so why not. Next, we're returning to documentary-land to learn about the dangers of talking shit in e-mails.
12.12.20	The Act of Killing	Joshua Oppenheimer	Well... I know one intended purpose of this movie journal is to capture my thoughts about a film every time I watch it. That includes immediate first thoughts so if I watch it again, I can track how my feelings toward it change. But in this case I'm finding it very hard to put my feelings toward this film into words. There's just so much going on, both in the subject matter and the filmmaking itself, that it's hard to organize in my brain. Like, why did that one gangster dress in drag through most of the movie inside the movie? And was the movie they made during the documentary actually finished and shown in Indonesia? It seemed like they went on tv to promote it? And what kind of pick-up line is swearing you have a mole on your... never mind. This is a really... what's even the word? haunting? scary? bizarre? amazing? unbelievable? all of those? Mostly I feel like I am still very sheltered in terms of my own life and worldview to not know or understand how this can go on in other countries. There are so many scenes so laden with strata of emotion. The one that comes to mind was when the main guy's neighbor told the story of his dad while laughing, careful to explain that he wasn't criticizing... and the response he got was that his story was too complicated to make it into the movie? Then he became an unbelievable actor while playing a victim. And why was the fat one such a good actor? No other gangster cried like that. What the fuck is going on!? at least we got to see the main guy suffer the indignity of dry heaving on camera. no one wants to make those sounds, much less have them recorded onto film. Even if it took him 50 years to show a shard of empathy, his body physically betrayed his emotions like Robert Durst in The Jinx. I suppose I will have to see the follow-up, The Look of Silence, but not today. I knew this would be the emotionally roughest point in the fest so hopefully the next one will lighten the mood a tiny bit. Jesus.
12.12.20	Vice	Adam McKay	As we move into the fourth and final day of the fest, the programming takes an even more political tone. In this case, I figured this would be a good movie but the whole comedic-take-on-serious-matters genre of movies like Big Short, Recount, Too Big to Fail... they are all pretty similar in format and ultimately depressing because they point out weak moments in our near past. I suppose the reason for doing so is valid but I also think it's mostly preaching to the choir and they never result in any actual change. I'm sure there will be a Trump movie at some point, either in serious Oliver Stone or comedic Adam McKay style that points out how crazy things were but I also suspect it'll fall into the same bin as all these movies. Pessimistically, I fear that the problems we've made for ourselves will not go away any time soon and an entertaining movie will not fix them. But leaving all of that behind, this movie was pretty good. It is kinda like a melding between The Big Short and W, but in a well-done way. I like the few 4th-wall-ish jokes that they put in there like the Shakespearean scene and the fake ending and, as usual in this type of movie, the case is great and deep. It's fun to see so many good actors and actresses in the same project. I do feel like Amy Adams, Elizabeth Banks, and Joan Allen all have basically the same exact role in their respective movies, but I guess that's just what happens when you're playing the wife of the biopic's subject. This does paint a particularly bleak portrait of the guy and lays an awful lot of blame on his shoulders for just the sake of power. The brief direct address at the end (a la Goodfellas) wasn't enough for me to get any sense of his agenda or point of view. I suspect that was the hardest thing to find in their research (and the point of the previously-mentioned Shakespearean scene) so I can understand where they're coming from... but it's still a bummer that the best guess anyone has is that he's always been a piece of shit and just got very good at it. One final comment here. Where was the scene with Cheney slapping his belly? I guess that was the one piece of footage really selling how much weight Bale put on? But they didn't leave it in the final cut? I feel like they didn't just use it in the trailers but also whenever the movie was mentioned during award season? It's like the one shot I remembered about this movie going into it. I hate that. Anyway, next up is a doc that I kinda don't want to see but feel like I've heard so so many great things about it that I really should. I've been putting it off for quite a while but that's what this festival is all about, so let's do it.
12.11.20	Between Two Ferns: The Movie	Scott Aukerman	When this came out I wondered what a Between Two Ferns movie could possibly be. I like the funny or die sketches pretty good but... a movie? Even during this fest I was more or less thinking I'd put this on late at night so it didn't have to make much sense and I could maybe get a laugh or two. But then I saw Lauren Lapkus (Pete Holmes' ex in Crashing) and Edi Patterson (who absolutely killed it in Vice Principals and Righteous Gemstones) and though "oh, this could actually be good." It wound up just ok. There were a couple good laughs but the story's pretty tired and the actual Fern content is some of the weakest I think. More than anything I think it showed that the Ferns joke is kinda old at this point. Definitely one of those kinds of movies where the outtakes are funnier than the script. I wish there was more Edi Patterson though. She's funny as hell.
12.11.20	David Byrne's American Utopia	Spike Lee	I'm a reasonably big fan of Talking Heads but I don't really follow Byrne's solo career. Still, something about the presentation and photography of this show made me want to watch it and I figured this would be a nice musical interlude in the fest to lean back and let wash over me. It filled that purpose very well. I appreciate how they managed having all of the instruments hooked up wirelessly (however they did it. I feel like I saw mics on each of their shoulders? But at the very end they looked more like sensors?) It created a nice dynamic set-up where they could really play with the staging of each song. The music wasn't bad either. Now it's very very late, but I'm going to try and make it through one more...
12.11.20	The Trial of the Chicago 7	Aaron Sorkin	Aaron Sorkin writing a courtroom drama should be a no-brainer, especially with a cast as packed as this. I didn't know much about this particular moment in history and had heard a little about Abbie Hoffman but wasn't really familiar with his "deal." I wound up liking this quite a bit; I thought it was really well structured and paced to deliver so much context and information while still being fun to watch. I guess Frank Langella only plays infuriating villains these days. He is pretty good at it so I guess that's ok. I think this is the first role I've seen Sacha Baron Cohen in where I wasn't continuously taken out of the movie by memories of his characters (or him saying "Ricky Bobby" in whatever crazy french accent he used in Talladega Nights). I was also pleasantly surprised to see John Carroll Lynch ("gooodbyyeeeee") sitting along all these other heavyweights. Jeremy Strong also killed it in an unexpected way now that I know him from Succession. I guess all these great actors gravitate to a Sorkin script like moths to a flame. Sorkin will never be some cinematic maestro with the camera but if he keeps doing projects like this he doesn't have to be. I never felt a moment where the story or performances hit a false note and intercutting (presumably) real news footage and crime scene photographs gave the historical nature of the piece some grounding. Definitely a good one... it kinda makes me want to go back to some previous Sorkin stuff and give it a re-watch. Or finally watch the goddamn Steve Jobs movie. Maybe next year. Lastly, can't go without shouting out a Lt. Rawls (in the guise of AG John Mitchell) cameo. The Wire alums continue to represent! Next up is something musical.
12.11.20	Class Action Park	Seth Porges, Chris Charles Scott III	Documentary about infamously dangerous Action Park in New Jersey. This was really good. I didn't grow up in that area but I do remember Rikki Rachtman and Alice in Chains shooting there for a Headbanger's Ball and have since discovered it via random internet blogs and whatnot. I think there's even another mini-doc that this used for the owner's son's interview footage that I found somewhere... maybe a vice thing or something? Anyway, I think the allure of a storied local amusement park with zero safety regulations is correctly extrapolated here by the filmmakers and Chris Gethard's interview in particular, and that's that it kind of personified a childhood that I don't believe exists any more. My generation, growing up in the 80s, was maybe the last of the independent, "go outside and play" comings of age. And even then we were already hearing about razor blades in the halloween candy and rashes of serial killers, child abductions, AIDS, gang violence, and other sources of fear clamping down... but those of us who grew up in suburban or relatively safe neighborhoods still had that experience of being on your own, getting up to nonsense that you probably shouldn't have gotten up to, just a little too much freedom at just a little too young an age that I think Action Park distills. It was a place with outlandish rides designed by a guy with more sense of fun than common sense that let kids rule the kingdom. Kind of like the idea of Huck Finn Island but for realsies. The doc does a great job of laying out all the ways in which this place was crazy, letting us laugh at the absurdity, then reminding us of the actual human cost that resulted. While the death rate was undoubtedly very low compared to how many kids had great times there, it's still higher than 0 which is unacceptable. I thought I already knew "the deal" on this subject due to those previous google rabbit holes but this doc filled in all the details and did it in an entertaining way. Can't ask for more than that.
12.11.20	Prospect	Christopher Caldwell, Zeek Earl	Day 3 "starts" with this low-budget sci-fi film starring Pedro Pascal. It's another in the theme of a sci-fi film that's not filled with action, this one more of a survival thriller, almost post-apocalyptic bent where they are on a toxic forest planet (pacific northwest) sent to harvest gems from gross alien tuber sacks. I liked it for sure. It reminded me a lot of the Lovecraft story In the Walls of Eryx although I'm sure there are many more sources along the same lines that I'm not familiar with. Although this does deal with space-suits and alien worlds, there's still a retro vibe to the sets since it's all meant to feel used and lived in a la Alien. There are other nice touches too though like the foreign written language and slang terms and different styles of suits communicating different manufacturers, different purposes, etc. Plus it's got a few familiar faces (and voices) from The Wire which is always a plus. This is a great example of good modern-day sci-fi told without the benefit of gigantic budgets like Raised by Wolves. This was meant to have a Saturday Matinee type vibe but my days are running so late that it's already dark. I'm hoping the rest of the schedule tonight is filled with tight 90-minute gems to get me back on track, but on the other hand... who am I late for? I'm having fun, let's just keep it rolling. Next up is the first doc of the fest, about a theme park I've already heard much about.
12.11.20	World on a Wire	Rainer Werner Fassbender	roll: 9 Goddamn it. Totally jinxed. Technically, this is a three and a half hour tv mini-series, not a movie... but it feels pretty cheap to roll again. I knew full well what it meant to include (I also have Oliver Assayas' Carlos but chose not to include that due to it being five and a half hours), I want to watch it, time has proven that I never will unless forced to through some exercise like this... I'm just going to start it and watch as much as I can then finish the rest tomorrow. I think it's split into two parts so hopefully I can make it through half before passing out, and I guess if I rolled this earlier I wouldn't have gotten to see Ghost Dog. All day it's felt like this would come up. I think I watched the one before this in the list and the one after. So be it. The dice gods have spoken, let's dive in. Yep, had to watch the second half in the morning. Which is a shame because the first half is pretty much all set-up and the second half is where things get really good. Really good in a 70s sci-fi way, but augmented by several factors. For one, the story (which I think was adapted from a book) is very similar to the Westworld TV show (specifically the show's second season onward, with the first mostly taking inspiration from Michael Crichton's movie) and the Alex Garland show Devs. Like suspiciously so... although I guess once you get in this domain certain ideas are universal. Still, this is almost 50 years ago doing the same stuff as cutting edge sci-fi shows today. Another huge factor is its director. This is only the second Fassbinder thing that I've seen, but I'm totally getting why people hold this guy up so high. There's a real paradox going on with this movie in that certain aspects very much make it feel like a TV mini-series (which it was). It's shot on 16mm with dirty gates in many shots, many of the sets look kinda cheap and thrown together, there's not much action to speak of, and it's largely just a lot of scenes of people talking to one another. It feels like they churned out the production very quickly, yet every scene is so meticulously staged and photographed. Nearly every scene feels like it has at least one crazy set-up where the camera pans, zooms, and dollies to get two, three, four angles on the actors. It reminded me very much of some of Max Ophuls' work in films like Lola Montes. The scenes are made more interesting by these puzzling moves to frame people in mirrors or revolve around them to keep others in frame or even to rotate in 360 degrees as an actor walks through an entire house all in one shot. I can't imagine these orchestrations being easy or quick to set up... so I'm left kind of astounded at what went on during the making of this. Furthermore, Fassbinder's career is pretty famous for being a case of burning the candle at both ends. Something like 44 films in 20 years, dead at 37, work all day party all night. He made this when he was less than 30 yet less than 10 years before his death. It's also a 4-hour miniseries the same year he wrote and directed another 5-episode series and a movie. And all of this were his 'early years' before Ali: Fear Eats the Soul earned any sort of international acclaim. So the dude must have been a genius and a machine to have this output. So... since I'm relatively new to this Fassbinder style, the first half of the film seems very unreal. Yes it's people talking but the staging and acting is often so stilted and bizarre. I couldn't tell if that's this film or his style in general. People do weird things like spin around in chairs or dive into pools very poorly, all while we're in this ever-moving camera's eye that surrounds and gets into everyone's faces. It's very disorienting at first. Plus I'm not sure if the sets are meant to be a cheap version of the future or just how early 70s Germany looked. It's nowhere near as overt as 2001 or Logan's Run, but there are still touches like the amazing video phones and computer room set that were clearly not normal. One thing I liked about both this and Stalker is that they manage to tell pretty esoteric sci-fi stories without any visual effects or space-suits. They both deal with concepts more than aliens but still manage to transport the viewer to a different place entirely. This is a technique that Primer would get a lot of credit for much later. Anyway, once the second part starts, it becomes clear that all of these choices with the sets and mirrors and framing and acting are intentional thematic choices. They may also be Fassbinder's style but they happen to thematically fit the story perfectly. From there, it's a whole second movie's worth of unravelling and all the stuff we've seen in 3 seasons of a hit HBO show. By the time it's all said and done, it's a remarkable piece of filmmaking that is somehow at odds with itself and in perfect harmony. I still don't understand the environment that produced this, but I'm really impressed that it exists. I also suspect this will be the Fassbinder film I like most, since it seems like all of his other stuff are pretty intense social dramas. This is his only sci-fi film which is what engrossed me on a story level while he did all his genius stuff behind the camera. I do have another film in the random pool but that will have to wait for another roll. And that ends this year's Criterion Random Roll. Decent films for the most part but pretty brutal on run-times. I'm glad I watched all of them though.
12.10.20	Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai	Jim Jarmusch	Roll: 16 Sweet! Not only have I seen this before but I just bought this blu during the last 50%-off sale. I believe I've only seen this once and that was way back when it was released, but I have fond memories, listened to the soundtrack a bunch, and have since seen a bunch of movies where the actors playing gangsters here were much more tough and less funny, so I'm really ready to see an easy-to-watch good movie right now and this totally fits the bill. See you on the other side. It's born-born, young lord, raise your swords. Loved it this time around, being able to enjoy the moments and not have to worry about plot (however little there is). In comparison to Tenet, this movie features a French-speaking character who you don't really need subtitles for since Ghost Dog doesn't understand him either. Of course, there's not some dense plot with sci-fi elements and global espionage going on either... just some dinosaur gangsters clashing against an even older code. Some of the gangster scenes are legit very funny. The music's great, the vibe is super unique and interesting. There's no other gangster film like it, no other samurai film like it, and no other hitman film like it (although The Professional comes close). There's even a pre-The Wire Marlo sighting at one point, which was surprising and cool. Funny how I don't have as much to say about the movies I like. Granted, I've also sat with the memory of this one for 20 years so it's pretty well ingested. Ok. It's 2am. The die has been downgraded to a d12. Let's give this sucker one more roll and hope it's not a 4-hour film like Che that one year.
12.10.20	The Underneath	Steven Soderbergh	roll: 10 This is technically a bonus feature on the King of the Hill blu but I've never seen it so I left the disc in the pool after watching that film. I'm fine with this choice. I'm not expecting anything to blow me away but at least it's less than 2 hours and in english. Well there are a few nice surprises here. It was shot in Austin about ten years before I got here so there's some nice pre-boom shots of downtown and even a few of Fonda San Miguel (a mexican restaurant here in town). Rick Linklater has a cameo for some reason, along with a few other friendly 90s faces like Andy from Twin Peaks and Joe Don Baker (and Shelley Duvall in a head-scratching appearance). It's also based on the novel that Burt Lancaster noir Criss-Cross was adapted from, which makes it fits nicely in that mid-90s neo-noir moment along with movies like Red Rock West and The Last Seduction. It's not as good as any of those movies, but I guess it fits in with them. In the 20-minute interview about this film in the disc's special features, Soderbergh hits the nail on the head when he says the movie is too sleepy. It's like Peter Gallagher's been drugged for the whole thing... the movie is a collection of first takes by a distracted filmmaker, and all that's left is color filters and split diopters. I don't remember loving Lancaster's version but at least there he played up the sap. Here, I don't know what Gallagher is doing. Of course when you're given lines like "I love gambling!" you might be facing an uphill battle. Oh well. Next.
12.10.20	Stalker	Andrei Tarkovsky	Roll: 18 Man, I'm pulling some long movies today. It's for the best though, since this is probably the only way to force me to watch these supposedly amazing movies that i only know as being long and slow. This is a perfect example. It's... probably? my first Tarkovsky movie? Other than a 15-minute clip I saw in a video game once. I've heard nothing but amazing things about this movie. Let's see how I like it. ...I watched it. My immediate reaction is that I didn't get much out of it. I recognize that a lot of what the three people talk about... the whole time... made no sense to me, really. And even for a movie this "relaxed" in pace, there didn't seem to be much of a point... to anything, which really made it feel like time well spent. But I'm also maybe a little cognizant of the fact that this is my first taste of anything like this. I mean, I only have the Soderbergh Solaris remake and a 15-minute segment of Nostalgia to go on here... so Tarkovsky's cinematic lexicon is unfamiliar to me. So maybe I shouldn't be too put out that I found this impenetrable in much the same way that I find Satyajit Ray's work or Ozu. But still, it wasn't much fun to sit through. I will say that a lot of the scenery and compositions were striking. It made me wonder where it was shot so I looked it up and found out that Tenet shot in the same city, which is coincidental and cool. I still wonder how dressed these sets were... if they were found like how 1990 Bronx Warriors used Queens as-is to represent a post apocalyptic wasteland, or if they were meticulously constructed to have some soviet symbolic representation that I'm not aware of. I could really use a 90-minute doc explaining the movie... but I'm also ready to move on. Maybe some day. Ok, Next. and I have to say... after these two I'm really ready for something with pep. Looking at the possibilities, there are more land mines than ever.
12.10.20	Le Deuxieme Souffle	Jean-Pierre Melville	roll: 9 This year I've got spine numbers between 109 and 1057 to choose from, but after several years of this exercise I'm finally starting to winnow these blind buys down. However, it's also tradition around these parts to sprinkle in 1 move that I've seen before along with all the new-to-me films that I'm catching up on, so this year I've filled out the d20 with select criterion discs of movies I wouldn't mind watching again (it seems like the only physical purchases I make any more are criterion blus of movies I already like), so we'll leave that up to fate as well. There are still a few heavy investments in this stack like a silent film and a 4-hour opus so we'll see what we get and how many we can get through before the night is through. The first roll selected this Melville movie. I've really liked almost every other Melville movie that I've seen and it's been quite a while since I've watched a French noir so I'm excited. It also carries a typical Melville running time though so we'll see how that goes. Well that was long. I think that Melville at his best shows these deliberate nuanced portrayals of criminals and their procedure that slowly build to a very satisfying climax that pays off how deliberately paced the rest of the movie is. This one gets there but it's a bit shaggy... just shy of being perfectly focused. Maybe the adaptation from the novel was too faithful? Like, you kind of don't need the first hour of this film. Then 90 minutes in I thought "why is there an hour left in this movie?" But then the last hour is really pretty good. The last 90 minutes were really pretty good, but it's a formula that I believe Melville pulls off better with Le Cercle Rouge. Maybe had I seen this first I would've been more blown away since there is quite a lot of good stuff here. One thing I liked was how quaint and civilized all of the criminals were. I suspect this movie stands out because the character of police inspector Blot was maybe one of the first the play in the gray area between law and the criminals he's out to catch. It's a character that's basically in every crime movie these days and I think it might be illegal to make a Yakuza film without one, but here there's even a preface saying something about how Blot's actions are not indicative of all police. And it's funny to think that a taped voice recording is not enough to incriminate someone but a random scribbled note can somehow exonerate someone? This movie is filled with little touches of etiquette between criminals that I suppose created a fantasy of the honorable criminal that stuck around for quite a while. You can definitely tell it's 55 years old though. Much of the movie is very slow and very quiet, but it's still a Melville movie where sooner or later stuff happens and by then you've been watching these people for long enough to be invested with them. Having sat through his first film in a past DVRfest, I know this technique is something he had to find and hone. So if Le Cercle Rouge is an A+, this is the B+ precursor. Ok, Next.
12.09.20	Good Time	Benny Safdie, Josh Safdie	This was very good. It also very much puts Uncut Gems into context, and it's different from what I thought it would be. I thought this would be kind of more like Pattinson's character is super desperate and running for his life like Sweet Smell of Success or Training Day but instead it's all about Pattinson's relentless and resourceful will to make things work out. So it's less about watching the rat in the cage and more about admiring his ingenuity even as he does terrible things. I felt like the ending of the movie was more a sigh of relief than a tragedy. I'm glad I finally got around to watching this. And now it's very late. Today will have to be 4 movies instead of 5. And tomorrow... I'm not sure how many we'll get to because some are quite long and it's up to fate to decide what I watch. Yep, it's another round of Criterion Random Roll... coming tomorrow.
12.09.20	Tenet	Christopher Nolan	Huh. Well, I liked it more than I thought I would, but I still kind of feel how I thought I would about it. First off, the criticisms are totally valid about this being a music video with dialogue in the background. I watched in a quiet house with headphones on and still couldn't hear some of the dialogue. The music is mixed so goddamn loud that I had to twiddle the volume knob for half the movie. While wearing headphones! If this was a different kind of movie I wouldn't say it was such a big deal, but as a viewer i needed to hear and understand every goddamn word spoken to keep up with what the hell was happening and still there were moments where I had to stop trying to figure out what was going on and just go with it. So making it hard to hear what little explanations were there felt like watching this movie on hard mode. There has to reach a point where, if the entire audience says a thing then they are not wrong. The battle of winterfell was too dark. The dialogue in this movie is mixed too low. These are no longer subjective feelings on the part of the individual. My fear going into this was that this is Christopher Nolan unhinged. He's had one too many hits and is feeling like he can do no wrong and his opinions about what film is and how it should be made have become more than just tenets for himself as an artist but an agenda to be enforced. And since he's the savior of cinema or whatever, Warner Brothers gave him a blank check. That was my fear. I do find some of that to be true, like why was this shot in IMAX? The sweeping grandeur of some of his previous work is largely missing here and the one big sequence where I thought it would pay off was mostly cut too quickly to take in any fine detail of the frame. But while I did find the story very complicated and difficult to follow in some parts, I don't think it's like a "Lady in the Water" level of self-indulgence. This story certain fits in the same cannon as Inception, Interstellar, and Memento. While I wasn't blown away with it like I was Dunkirk, it's still certainly an interesting and engaging take on an action film along the lines of Miami Vice with a sci-fi premise. I don't think it's a bad movie by any means. I thought I saw John David Washington backwards-running a little bit but either most of it was seamlessly done or I wish it was more showcased. The fight scene in the hallway was interesting if not quite perfectly executed like a similar hallway fight in Inception, but still pretty dang cool. But I do think I saw the tower that explodes at the end wobble, betraying its miniature status. I think a lot of these effects, as hard as they were to shoot practically because Nolan didn't want to use visual effects, would probably be more effective and cheaper with some digital help. And of course, the message at the end. Gotta have that message. It's never enough to leave some mystery unless it's perfectly packaged like the spinning top. We gotta hear about WHY. ugh. So... in the end, I liked it. It's not my favorite Nolan, but neither is it my least favorite (Am i unfairly shitting all over the Insomnia re-make in my mind? Do i need to watch that again?). Lastly, I do have to state my one major point of confusion for the record, so... spoilers for this paragraph. The end fight sequence, with the red team and the blue team. The blue team was inverted, right? So why was stuff happening backward for the red team? And who were they fighting exactly? I'm not sure who either team was shooting at, but were there inverted enemy troops as well? I just don't understand that whole sequence very well at all. I was with it up till then, but I didn't even know what the tall russian guy was trying to do. Bury the algorithm? So the future could find it? So they needed to get it but still let the bomb go off... so the future would think it's there? But the future obviously wouldn't find it there so... OK spoiler alert for this paragraph too. I guess I'm also confused about Kenneth Branagh's timeline. If he was going to commit suicide on that boat... isn't that like ten days before he meets the protagonist? Did he invert himself to go back to the yacht? why would he do that? Why wouldn't time be going forward once he got all 9 pieces? I dunno... Alright. So it's already 2am. I'm definitely not gonna get all five films today, but that's ok. Hopefully I can slip an extra one in on another day. Instead, it looks like it's going to be a Robert Pattinson double feature because I refuse to let this next one slip through the cracks of another DVRfest.
12.09.20	Borat Subsequent Moviefilm	Jason Woliner	I originally also had a doc called 'Totally Under Control' on the schedule for this fest but decided I'd probably get enough of the 'for the mother of god and all that is holy please vote trump out of office so we don't descend further into hell' genre that seemed to pop up around September of this year. On the one hand, I guess it was a motivating factor for several artists to do something (like the surprisingly evocative West Wing filmed play) but on the other it seems like all these projects wind up saying the same thing. And maybe it needs to be said, so I'm not bashing them for having a message or anything... but I do wonder what audiences who watch movies like 10 years from now this will think when every project ends with messages like "GO VOTE!" or "PLEASE VOTE!" or "VOTE OR I WILL BE EXECUTED!" For me, the topicality hung over the whole movie for me. There were parts that were kinda funny (i laughed during the debutant ball dance scene) but it had a lot of factors working against it. I'm not sure why this was a Borat movie at all since he was so recognizable on the street that he had to use other costumes, and a lot of the comedy/story came from the actress playing his daughter. It feels like it might've been better suited as a different project entirely... except Sacha Baron Cohen knew more people would watch a Borat movie. I did kind of appreciate the ending though. And while I was never sure who was an actor and who wasn't, it seems like the film tries to show that while we are in a fucked up place in terms of education and media manipulation, Americans can still be nice people individually. But mostly this felt too topical to stand the test of time for me. Hopefully. OK. Next up is a movie that I'm excited to see although I suspect I might not like it. Let's see.
12.09.20	Mank	David Fincher	It's a tough thing to make a new movie about an old movie and try to make the new movie look and feel about as old as the old movie that the new movie is about. Normally I'd say that particular exercise always comes off as masturbatory on the part of the filmmaker and not of particular concern to most everyone else (except the film geeks who are eager to join the circle). However, as one of those horny film geeks I usually participate anyway because I love movies and it seems like a select few filmmakers also love movies so why not revel in what it is that both the film -maker and -geek love. Along those lines, Mank is maybe the ultimate move about movies since it's about a movie that only film geeks love. It's not even about the making of the movie (like the HBO film RKO 281) but the writing of it, and not about the star of said movie but the writer. If anything could make this enjoyable to anyone outside the circle jerk however, it might just be that distinction. Maybe they watch it not because they love Citizen Kane or like Orson Welles but because it's David Fincher's version of Trumbo or Gary Oldman's follow-up after playing Churchill. But again, how am I to know because I'm fully in the circle. So, How was it? I thought it was pretty good! In terms of the facade I'd say it was remarkably well done. You'd never guess it was shot on a RED, edited in Premiere, and scored by Trent Reznor / Atticus Ross. All the little touches like the title cards and key lighting and cigarette burns make it feel pretty evocative. The script also seems in that style with much witty dialogue and generally following the same narrative structure as Kane. As usual, Oldman is great. It manages homage without caring more about the period than the story (which is what I was afraid of). I was also surprised to find something in the story that spoke to what's going on today. It seems like politics were always dirty and those with the power of a following often abuse it for their own gain, both in terms of movie studios and newspapers. It's a message that both works because of Mayer / Hearst and Fox / CNN. All in all it was fun to watch. A perfectly fine film. Selfishly, would I rather have season 3 of Mindhunter? Absolutely. But Fincher's not a robot nor a slave to my whims and... like I proved earlier this week, Zodiac still exists and I can watch it whenever I want. Oh, and for you imaginary reader who noticed that mid-November came and went without a DVRfest, this is it right now. I delayed it for a month because of several reasons, most notably that it's my festival and I can do what I want with it. A month ago things were pretty busy but now I'm off work for the rest of the year and several big movies have become available and I have a solid 4-day line-up that I am perhaps the most excited for of any year's schedule. So it's happening now. A month late but that's 2020 for ya. And, as seems to be DVRfest tradition, distractions have popped up all day. It's already 9pm and I've just finished my first movie. I don't think I'm making it through all 5 films but then again, I've been staying up pretty goddamn late lately so let's see how many I can churn through before I pass out. Next up is... a sequel. Will it be 'vrrry niice' or 'my wiiife'?
12.08.20	Heat	Michael Mann	Another all-time classic crime film full of amazing performances, filmmaking, and story. I love watching smart people doing what they're good at and this cops n robbers opera is watching three hours of that. Like a lot of these male-dominated movies though, the female leads are pretty under-written. I'm not sure I understand Edie's "appalatch" accent other than I guess to say that no one that lives in LA is from LA? But otherwise... mwah.
12.04.20	Zodiac	David Fincher	I'm not sure I have any new feelings about this movie that I haven't already expressed... I just think it's great. So peppy and fast in the beginning, then spiraling out in the back half makes it feel so true and messy. The impenetrable box of mystery that we'll never know for sure. And the cast is so good for being so deep. Not a role in here isn't filled by a heavy hitter who's perfect for the part. I could watch it again right now. makes me sad that we're not getting any more Mindhunter. gooood byeeee.
12.01.20	Goodfellas	Martin Scorsese	I feel like I see parts of this movie all the time but it's been a while since I sat down and watched it all the way through. This is one of those movies like Fincher's Zodiac and Linklater's Dazed & Confused that not only do I love but I could probably watch it 2 or 3 times on a continuous loop. I think this viewing was partially brought on by a Sopranos re-watch podcast that I'm listening to with Michael Imperioli. He talked a lot about his experience as Spider (his breakthrough role) and all the other Sopranos faces who appear in small roles here. Just a great imminently watchable movie. I think a book on the making of it just came out? Might have to read that at some point.
11.02.20	Hamilton	Thomas Kail	Hmmm... do I make a joke about being the last person on Earth to see this or a joke about explaining this as if I was the first to see it. Neither would be any good I guess. I finally saw it. Since I wasn't so hardcore as Jarrette to fly to NYC one weekend to get on standby to see this during the broadway run, I've been waiting for some version of this Disney Plus version to become available. I don't love musical theater, haven't been much, and kind of figured hearing the Weird Al polka version of the songs would pretty much cover the bases. All that said, I liked this more than I thought I would. The arrangements and choreography were really well done and I appreciated the camerawork to give me a more intimate view of the performances. I did watch it in 30-minute increments which probably helped, but yeah I can definitely say that I liked it. And regardless of my personal feelings about it, I definitely recognize the phenomenal achievement that Lin-Manuel Miranda put together here.
09.27.20	The Devil All the Time	Antonio Campos	Well that was a downer. I did enjoy the sense of time and place and it felt very novelistic in how it progressed through the years. Also, all these british people did a good job of putting on vaguely southern or yokel accents. I don't really buy that any of them are actually from the place except Bill Skarsgard, but hey... still a good job that didn't take me out of anything. It's hard not to be affected by the parade of bad people though. The movie's pretty relentless in that regard. I think I liked it ok, but time will have to tell.
09.26.20	Enola Holmes	Harry Bradbeer	I was about to watch Devil All the Time but I wasn't in a mood for such a downer so it was this instead. I'd heard good things? It was alright. It'd be my favorite movie if i was a 13 year old girl. It definitely feels aimed at a young adult audience to me. I wanted a bit more of a Young Sherlock Holmes vibe with an actual mystery but I kind of got a Lemony Snicket type vibe instead. Not terrible, just different.
09.05.20	Bill & Ted Face the Music	Dean Parisot	Eh, huh. This wasn't bad but... I'm not really sure what I was expecting. I think it just felt like a very sequel-ly sequel. one of the things that makes the first two movies stand out is how bizarre and crazy the second one is, and how it defied a lot of expectations for what a Bill & Ted 2 should be. But with this one, it felt like they were only trying to satisfy those expectations instead of go into further, weirder territory. The stuff that Bill & Ted do kinda hints at that but there's not enough screen time to develop it further than a few make-up driven jokes. Meanwhile, the stuff their kids does is a total re-hash, then the third act is also more or less a re-hash. And then the very end looked like I was seeing a list of Kickstarter backers or something. However, I did like it ok overall. It's nice that this movie exists. I'm glad they didn't go over the top with a retro vibe, but still kept the same sensibility of the first two (even though the dialogue is no longer out of the ordinary and Kid Cudi is there for some reason). I think I'm just in a bad spot with movies lately. I think the changing landscape and comic-book tent-poles has really changed the market in a bad way. Maybe I'm just not seeing enough to find the good movies that go unnoticed.
08.22.20	Northern Soul	Elaine Constantine	Several years ago I read a book about the history of DJs. It was a great book, covering everything from radio disc jockeys to house music to the superstars of today (or 10 years ago whenever the book was written). I'd kinda known about all that beforehand but it was interesting to learn more about each phase. Two chapters in particular really jumped out at me though: one about the soundclash in Jamaica, and another about Northern Soul. I didn't know anything about Northern Soul, but it was a trend in Northern England that became fixated on rare and unknown american soul records from the 60s. It became quite a phenomena as people scoured the countryside and in some cases even flew to the states in search of the perfect 45 to whip the crowd into a frenzy. The movement seemed to be fueled by amphetamines so the most popular tracks were always upbeat, allowing the dancers, most notably at a venue in Wigan called Casino, to groove on their almost proto-breakdancing style of spins and floor maneuvers. It was sort of a inspirational pre-cursor to the Madchester scene of the 90s. There are a sparse few videos about it on YouTube, sort of the same amount as there are on the Paradise Garage in NYC, but other than that I couldn't find much on it at the time. Until I found out that this was a movie. Not a documentary but a narrative feature about kids in that scene. I figured it was worth a watch. The movie reminds me a lot of that old movie Swing Kids. In the late 90s, when swing dancing was "in" again, you'd watch that movie hoping to see some sweet moves or a recreation of the Savoy Ballroom back in its heyday or something like that. Instead, you get one or two scenes of actual dancing with a mediocre movie wrapped around it. Same here. There is the scene where they recreate Wigan Casino and show crowds of speeding kids swaying and twirling to the beat, but then there's also a pretty standard story of people who become friends, get in a fight, then get back together. Furthermore, it's shot in a naturalistic way that probably works for the drab atmosphere I've heard much about the north of england in the 70s, but also barely shows some actor's faces. All the main dudes look very similar and I barely catch their names. At one point, someone says someone died but i had no clue who they were talking about. So the story of the movie's not great. And really how do you hang a story around a few dance scenes anyway? At least there were a ton of tunes that actually played back then which was probably my ultimate goal. Reading the book, even if they give you artists and titles, they are super obscure so it's hard to imagine what the music actually was. So the soundtrack is pretty great.
08.21.20	The Trip to Greece	Michael Winterbottom	This is supposedly the last one of these trips that Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, and Michael Winterbottom are taking. My memory of the last film is being disappointed that I didn't watch the show version instead, so this time around I wasn't terribly keen on watching the film. Instead, I was very keen to track down all four seasons of the show to see what I missed in the other ones, then get the "full experience" of their Greek adventure. This proved more than a little difficult and I was only able to find SD versions of the first three and 720p versions of the fourth. Still, even in cloudy low-res, I very much liked every episode of the show. With a structure such as this (where we follow two friends on a road trip and watch them eat at fancy restaurants), the magic is in the atmosphere and air of the conversations... the subtle moments between them as they drive or sit and eat or do whatever. The lack of much plot is perhaps why they could re-cut each season into a film for US audiences but it's also why it works a thousand percent better as six half-hour episodes rather than a 100-minute movie. You might think the film versions are just "best-of" compilations of the show... and that might be true for some, but I suspect for most it also guts the nuance and discovery of the piece. In broad strokes, we're meant to think that it's Brydon putting up with Coogan, but I got a very different sense with the show. I think the movies undercut Brydon's insecurity that makes him a more interesting character, as well as occasional moments where Coogan's bravado relents. But I guess it's not hard to say that a thing that is good because you like hanging out with these two people is even better if you get to do it twice as long. It's just weird that, on the Internet anyway, the artifacts that will persist are the films and not the show. But... 24 episodes later, I came to a realization: that i would have to watch the fourth movie to be able to write these notes about it. After all, this is a movie blog not a TV blog. I feel like there's some irony in there somewhere. So tonight I put the movie on and basically re-watched half the season just to make this entry. I think most of this movie stands on the shoulders of the previous three. The most interesting stuff to me was seeing how Coogan and Brydon relate to supporting characters that we've seen in snippets throughout the years. Namely, Emma, Steve's assistant; Yolanda, the photographer; Sally, Rob's wife; and Joe, Steve's son. It's not only 10 years for the leads of these four projects but for the others as well, and they rarely get more than an episode's screen time to fill in their life. Whether it's editing or actual personality shift, Coogan laughs much more this time around, and seems to value the relationships that he has much more than in the past. And it's really these barest of story threads that the season hangs onto for structure because everything else is verbal sparring, imitation one-upsmanship, and travel photography. Which is great, because these movies are 100% hang-out movies. I doubt I could compete in any of their conversations, but nonetheless I feel like I've along with them on these journeys which is quite fun. I'm a bit sad we won't be getting together again in a few years, but I suppose you never know.
08.09.20	Dune	David Lynch	Arrakis. Dune. Desert Planet. Sometimes life seems to give you hints at direction. I stumbled upon this four and a half hour dissertation on YouTube about the 'true' meaning behind Twin Peaks that led to another two hours or so of follow-up from the same uploader. This inevitably led to re-watching several David Lynch interviews and a general urge to re-visit all of his films. Meanwhile, I was watching another video from a D&D content creator where he used Dune as an example of chaotic versus lawful societies. He also spoke of working on a Dune RPG back in the day and how easily it translated because of how distinct the classes were (Mentat, bene gesserit, fremen, etc.). Meanwhile, I listened to a podcast where the gang played various robots and cryogenically frozen patriots brought back hundreds of years into the future to sing for a cruise ship full of robot avatars. The characters in that podcast were Pepsi Liberty, Shoots McCracken, 48 (standing for the number of words in a certain Tim McGraw song), and Benny Gene Esserit. With all this swirling through my head, I remembered hearing about some extended TV cut of the film that aired on SyFy or something where they restored or added a lengthy prologue of exposition and generally expanded the theatrical version in an effort to follow the book or something. A quick google search later, I found a fan edit (in the vein of the Star Wars Despecialized editions) where some superfan had cut together a bunch of different sources to make what he called 'the complete saga:' a version closest to what he thought Lynch's vision was. With Denis Villaneuve's adaptation on the horizon, i thought it would be a good time to revisit this in a new edition to see what I had missed. It's three hours long. It's weird to say, but I feel like the prologue explains things too much. Maybe it's because i'm a little familiar with the story but i feel like things are said two, three times in a row throughout the prologue. While the superfan does an admirable job of assembling all these bits and pieces, it still comes off as janky and inconsistent, both in audio and visual presentation and narrative. There are some additions that seem integral and make no sense why they were cut, but others interrupt the narrative flow pretty harshly and probably only serve to show more footage, like watching a movie with the deleted scenes put back in. One thing I did really like was the length of the film and the novelistic approach of title cards throughout. I paused it at one point and was super glad to see that i still had an hour and a half left. I really felt like I was living in the world. With all this added stuff, the action doesn't really kick in until halfway through... doesn't really start shooting forward until the third hour and then the flaws in the theatrical cut come through with how condensed the timeline is. A lot of pretty disappointing voice-over from multiple sources tries to explain which random scene you're watching but after the detailed and deliberate pace of the first half, the second feels like it's on fast-forward. It might sound weird, but I think I might prefer the theatrical cut. The movie is flawed regardless, but at least the theatrical cut is properly mixed and looks great. Plus I'd prefer more mystery and having to read the book in order to know what's going on to a ten-minute exposition dump to start the film. I'm still glad I saw this version though, and I'll probably keep it around for posterity. Lynch brings up how displeased he was with this project in pretty much every interview he does. It's a bit of a shame though, because many many things about this movie are very good. Much of the costume and production design are exemplary and present a great mid-80s vision of fantasy. The optical and practical effects come off as charming to me now. The score is pretty great, and most of the actors kill it. I'm sure there was a better version in Lynch's mind that Dino De Laurentiis butchered in the name of the budget, but what we have is still entertaining... obviously some people love it enough to edit together their own cuts! It's also interested how independent so much of the design is from the stuff Jodorowsky had imagined. I think only that metal mouth on the Harkonnen planet would fit in his version of the film. Anyway, I enjoyed falling back into this world. I do with it was a little better, but what are you gonna do? Maybe this new one... maybe.
08.01.20	Game Night	John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein	Eurovision got me thinking if Rachel McAdams was any better in other comedies. This was... not so bad and she was good in it. It was fun enough and didn't fall into many of the pitfalls that it could have. This is maybe a false criticism given the genre but sometimes it felt like everybody was doing shtick more than existing in a real world. Sometimes it worked on me but other times it kinda took me out of it. And I love some Cliff Martinez synthesizers but this felt like the wrong kind of movie for that kind of score. But other than that, it was pleasant enough. Liked it ok.
08.01.20	Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga	David Dobkin	It's just so clear how much better an actor Rachel McAdams is over Will Ferrell. I think, as a comedy this doesn't really work that well but as a romantic comedy it works ok. The highlight is probably Dan Stevens who is great at being funny and a little empathetic while still being the antagonist which I can't imagine being easy to do. I watched this after I saw a youtube video where Laura Bailey said that McAdams was basically playing her character from Critical Role. I think that's an astute observation both in the accent and the childlike innocence that she has. I think with a.... hmm.. how to put this... I think McAdams is a really good actress but I'm not sure how funny she is... so her and Will Ferrell together were kind of like two actors trying to get to the same point from completely opposite starting places. For Ferrell, he's naturally funny so you see him stretching when he has to play dramatic and it's the opposite for McAdams. Because of that, I think maybe her character might have been ditzier and more out of touch on the page, but with McAdams' performance it comes off as an innocence that's more precious than humorous. Maybe that's what they were going for? Hard to tell. Like I said, the movie was more charming than funny so Ferrell's more broader stuff pulls it away from its sweet spot. All in all, I liked it ok. I was definitely hoping for more straight comedy and less fitting the mold of a RomCom right down to the stupid fake fight in the middle, but as I've probably mentioned in previous entries, the world needs these movies too and sometimes they are exactly what you want. I was hoping for something different but can't fault it for not being something that it wasn't.
07.19.20	Contagion	Steven Soderbergh	I've been meaning to re-watch this ever since the COVID hit. Now that we're about as far into the pandemic now as the film shows the entire thing lasting, it offers a somewhat interesting and mostly depressing view of the world. Thankfully, the real virus isn't anywhere near as fatal as the one in this film, but many other aspects of the film ring very very true. Unfortunately, I was hoping for the real world to have more Kate Winslets and way less Jude Laws, but it seems like we are adrift in Jude Laws. Jude Laws everywhere. The fucking president is a Jude Law. In some ways, that's more scary than the millions of people dying in the movie. Ugh, isn't it weird to watch this movie and be envious? I guess I should just go to bed.
07.18.20	Jungle	Greg McLean	I saw this because of one of those YouTube videos where they enlist "experts" to evaluate scenes in movie. The video in question has Survivorman Les Stroud talking about two scenes in this movie and i thought it had been too long since I've seen a good quicksand scene. As a child of the 80s I cannot overestimate how much of an issue quicksand was. I feel like some comedian even does a bit about this. I don't know if it was G.I. Joe or the influx of Viet Nam movies or Rambo or what, but quicksand was on our mind. A lot. Just like calculus, all the hassle was for nothing, but apparently the guy who this movie was based on did actually encounter it. And Daniel Radcliffe got all muddy filming it. Greg McLean also still holds some cache for me because of Wolf Creek so I thought I'd give it a watch. It's ok. Mostly, this gave me some weird nostalgia vibes for the time I went to Bolivia with an Austrian tour guide who was kinda sketchy. Nothing on this scale of course, but it did cause a weird passive aggressive dream after watching. So I guess there's a little power to this movie because it's stuck with me a little bit. I feel like movies like these are championed by young actors like Daniel Radcliffe because they're adventurous and healthy and want to divorce themselves from an image of Harry Potter so they go to extra lengths like all the farting in that one movie and getting super skinny and dirty in this. But at the same time, I can't imagine Bolivian rain forest in 1981. If there's anywhere in the world still capable of offering uncharted adventure it's gotta be there. I'm sure 1981 was more civilized than 1961 or 1941 but compared to 2020 it must've been crazy rustic.
07.17.20	Palm Springs	Max Barbakow	I suppose it's unfair but I'm watching this on the heels of playing a video game called Outer Wilds which also deals with a time loop, quantum physics type story. While I enjoyed that game more than this, it's definitely not an apples-to-apples comparison. I liked this ok... there are a few nice ideas in here but I feel like the script could've been a little more against formula and not feel beholden to the typical relationship beats. As such, it's like an average romantic comedy with a mildly more interesting premise. That said, both Andy Samberg and Christine Milioti are good, it's fun to see JK Simmons pop up, and they used a Khruangbin song early on to set the mood nicely. So it was fine.
07.12.20	Greyhound	Aaron Schneider	Tom Hanks WW2 Naval battle stuff. Pretty good. I very much enjoyed Hanks as a naval captain and feel like he had a hell of a lot of fun both writing the script and getting into the cadence and language of being a ship captain. I do wish the CG wasn't sometimes a bit too fuzzy and the story didn't get quite so... standard toward the climax. But I guess that's where this coming from a novel and not an actual event comes in. I think there's just not going to be a better portrayal of WWII on film than Band of Brothers and maybe it's unfair to judge other properties against that. Certainly I was all in on watching the action unfold. I felt like everyone had done their research and could imagine that's how the boats were actually run. The few faces I recognized I liked. I guess that makes this a good movie. I should give The Pacific a re-watch.
07.11.20	The Old Guard	Gina Prince-Bythewood	This was okay. Cool concept, but not developed in any interesting way. Terrible villain, predictable plot, but cool concept. Should've been better.
06.27.20	Bad Boys for Life	Adil El Arbi, Bilall Fallah	Well, there's good and there's bad. Good: this could have been a lot worse. Martin Lawrence can still be funny. There are a few decent jokes. Whoever the directors are do an ok job at biting Michael Bay's style. Bay makes a cameo... for some reason. It's good to see Joey Pants again. All in all, it could have been worse. Bad: It's still a bad, tired movie. Old people are old, the young people are annoying, the action is par, the story is dumb, the dramatic acting is not good, and, really... after the pinnacle of action filmmaking on display in Bad Boys 2, this should not have been made. I guess if Terminator can limp along with bad sequels then why not these guys? It's my fault for watching i guess. And why have Michael Bay do a cameo? Do people know who Michael Bay is? DJ Khaled I can understand... in some way... but the director of the first two who isn't even a producer on this one? wtf? Make Jerry Bruckheimer emcee the damn wedding...
06.23.20	Train to Busan	Sang-ho Yeon	One of the bad things about not watching so many movies any more is that I miss the niche gems as they pop up. One of the good things about not watching so many movies any more is that the niche gems tend to get talked about and rise to the top for me to cherry pick later. This is a movie that kept coming up in articles and conversations. I was initially weary of another zombie movie (zombies on a train, zombies on a plain, zombies in a boat) but this one was pretty good. It's the virus, fast zombie variety, but they are actually undead versus just "raging" or whatever they called it in the 28 Days films. They also can see through their milky white undead eyes? Eh, I'm fine with whatever rules they want to make up at this point. You suitably root for the good guys, despise the bad guys, and are (pardon the pun) along for the ride. Fun movie.
06.20.20	BlacKkKlansman	Spike lee	So Da 5 Bloods is getting good reviews. I don't really see it, so I thought I'd watch another Spike Lee movie that got universally good reviews to see if I'm missing something or what. Goddamn this movie is powerful. I don't know if it's just the state of the news making things much more prescient but much of this movie is hard to watch. I don't know why, whether it was the trailer or what, but I kinda sorta thought this was going to be, like, half comedy? Heh. Instead, the hate-speech and racism are played completely straight, illustrating how prevalent it was. Chilling really. I was reminded of that HBO doc in the 90s about the neo-nazi camp and, of course, American History X. Probably the best scene is Harry Belafonte's monologue intercut with the KKK initiation ceremony followed by a screening of Birth of a Nation. The character of the crazy guy's wife is perhaps most affecting... you'd think the completely over the top racism would sound false or too ridiculous to be real, but she sold it for me as also being one of those people who get WAY too into movies. Birth of a Nation is its own problematic case and maybe a great representation of American History in the context of cinema. The movie is credited as being the first blockbuster, the first "real" movie, a paragon of film-making and the best example of all the things D.W. Griffith brought to the craft. It's taught in film schools, I saw it in a classroom, but it's true that the KKK are the heroes of the story. So it's more than the case of Citizen Kane where the story is much more boring than the craft, Birth of a Nation is actually offensive and reprehensible today. So do you admire it for its historical importance? Or denounce it for its antiquated message? I'm not sure why it can't be both, but I'm in no hurry to keep a poster of it on my wall, or raise a statue or name a city after it etc., etc. So this scene where one group is chomping popcorn and applauding while another group listens in horror as they hear about its effect on America is particularly rich and layered. My one complaint, which is tiny, is that Terence Blanchard's score is mixed a little high. It kind of takes over every scene when it kicks in, makes it feel like a montage or something. So... I don't know what's going on with Da 5 Bloods, because it isn't good but this is.
06.19.20	Escape Room	Adam Robitel	I was in a mood to watch a dumb horror movie and I just saw Deborah Ann Woll playing D&D where she mentioned this movie. I'm a little sad that she wasn't, like, more of a lead. Otherwise, it's kind of a typical Saw / Cube / House on Haunted Hill type vibe updated to play on this escape room trend of recent years. It's about as dumb as it sounds, but that's alright. I don't think it really brings anything new to the table, but it fit my needs for tonight.
06.16.20	The King of Staten Island	Judd Apatow	I guess my main problem with this movie is even trying to call it a comedy. It's a decent drama about grief and loss starring people who might be funny in their own careers as comedians but aside from Pete's gang of knuckle-head friends I don't think anyone is even trying to be funny here. And even the friends don't stay funny for long. So... I guess I should have known that coming in? And if I had... I wonder if I would've liked it more. I dunno. It's not a bad movie, but not a great one either.
06.13.20	Da 5 Bloods	Spike Lee	A bunch of Viet Nam vets return to find the body of their old squad mate and the gold they buried with him. I wanted to like this, but did not. The flashback sequences were a problem for me. Many of them felt like they needed a larger budget, and using the same actors not even trying to be younger was an odd choice. And although it's good to see Delroy Lindo and he had a lot of weight on his shoulders for this one, many times he didn't quite get there for me. And while I'm as big a fan of The Wire as you could get, Isiah Whitlock saying 'sheeeeeeeeeeit' felt very forced. Really everything that happens once the guys get out in the jungle feels very forced. And the make-up appliance for what should've been a pretty horrific scene was laughable. I think I should've watched Blackkklansman instead.
05.10.20	Mission: Impossible - Fallout	Christopher McQuarrie	Recommended by a friend. Solid action movie but for some reason the third act still bored me a little. Weird to say considering it was, like, helicopter chase scenes and nuclear bombs and shit... and Cruise is one dude who's like "no, put hanging from the helicopter for real" but... still. I kind of marvel at how technically difficult all this stuff is, but part of me rejects anything once it gets to fate of the world stakes. Might as well be Captain America fighting Thanos or whatever. Mostly I feel like this just fuels Tom Cruise's weird superhero real life even more. Climbing mountains and jumping out of planes and... running... real fast... Like, I get it... the world is your playground. Cool for you. Ving Rhames continues to have the best part in these movies because he gets to go to all the places then sit in a van or stare at some prop talking to himself. Even Simon Pegg had a fight scene in this one. Meanwhile Ving's chilling at craft services. Propably the best part was the various car chases in London. Always love a good car chase. And that weird arm-cocking thing that Henry Cavill does in the bathroom fight scene. Loved that.
04.29.20	Beastie Boys Story	Spike Jonze	A filmed version of the live show that Mike D And Ad Rock did in support of their book a few years ago. A book I still have not read because it's jam-packed with photos and interesting design but it's also a brick. From what I hear, I should probably listen to the audio book since reading on a kindle wouldn't do justice. The show is pretty good. Basically telling the story of the band up through Hello Nasty. I kinda wish it would've been an hour longer to go deeper into their later catalog but it's already two hours and I guess that's what the book is for. I enjoyed this immensely, but I'm a Beastie fan. I'm not sure there's much here for anyone not interested in them or their story. Is that even a valid criticism though? It's called Beastie Boys Story... what else is it supposed to be about? I guess I can say that most of the movie is them reading from a teleprompter with a slidehow of images on screen behind them. Much of the oration comes off a little stiff, like they're clearly reading from the teleprompter. Granted, they are not exactly actors... but I suppose if i were to close my eyes and envision the ultimate Beastie Boys documentary it would involve more long-form interviews intercut with all the photos and videos they showed on stage and maybe some slice-of-life stuff... maybe them revisiting their old studios and rented house with awkward conversations involving their current owners... some more intimate expression. But I don't know that they are like that. This might be the most we could ask of them without putting up a guard of humor or stand-off-ish-ness. So it's still very good and it's what we get and I'm happy with that.
03.20.20	The Hunt	Craig Zobel	Huh what a weird take on The Most Dangerous Game. Almost a comedy playing off political differences. I'd say it was almost pulled off were it not for Hilary Swank's character and the final fight. Both left me wanting pretty bad. Otherwise, I liked it! I love how quickly it moved and how capable Betty Gilpin's character is. As usual, it's pretty absurd for a movie like this to catch the controversy it did. It's obviously a dumb fantasy nowhere near rooted in reality (RIGHT!?) and plays out as such. I'd say any movie where you look through a bullet hole, be it The Quick and the Dead or The Frighteners or Death Becomes Her, it's a pretty silly movie that shouldn't be taken too seriously.
03.07.20	Bombshell	Jay Roach	Great make-up. Not being a huge Fox News viewer, I wasn't really familiar with this story or most of the major players, but Charlize is unrecognizable in every way here and Lithgow looks like a completely different person. I mean... this was good and meaningful and necessary and important, but this wave of Jay Roach/Adam McKay biographical political dramas makes me sad for the state of humanity and the country and the world.
03.06.20	Uncut Gems	Benny Safdie, Josh Safdie	Hey this was really good. Probably the best of the half dozen or so movies that Adam Sandler has tried to really act in. The music was a bit jarring for me but I guess I respect the bold choice more than if it was something bland and familiar. Otherwise great. I totally felt in that world. And holy crap... Julia Fox. I'll inevitably be seeing her in other stuff soon.
03.06.20	Bohemian Rhapsody	Bryan Singer	Rami Malek killed it. Some of the concert set pieces were amazing. The rest of it followed the same ol' biopic formula. It was good though. Queen made some good music. Good time.
03.01.20	A Star is Born	Bradley Cooper	Another one I thought I wouldn't like. Not a huge Lady Gaga fan, didn't love the previous incarnations of this story, and didn't really see any reason to watch. But then, you know, Sam Elliot and Bradley Cooper... and Dave Chappelle for some reason? So in the end, this was better than I thought it would be. I think Lady Gaga was alright, certainly playing to her strengths, but really this is Cooper's show. He brought tons more sympathy to the character over James Mason... I was much more on his side versus Judy Garland in the 50s version. And the music wasn't bad. Liked this one alright.
02.29.20	Ford v Ferrari	James Mangold	This was... ok. I guess on one hand it's kind of comforting that Hollywood can still make a Hollywood-ass movie that's safe and comfortable but also not really surprising or bold. Very technically capable and nothing really wrong with it but I also kind of didn't need to see anything beyond the trailer. But I think these movies have their place. i might call them Ron Howard movies... Josh Lucas is usually the bad guy, there's a large and decent supporting cast propping up one or two spotlight male leads. Supporting wife or two. Probably based on real life. Problem that you know they'll overcome or else why make the movie... I feel like Apollo 13 sets the gold standard for this type of movie... A Beautiful Mind, Frost/Nixon, Cinderella Man, Rush... you know, Ron Howard movies. So I'm not sure if this was as good as Rush, but the racing sequences are well done and I like both Matt Damon and Christian Bale so... it was ok.
02.29.20	Joker	Todd Phillips	So... I didn't really want to like this movie. I felt like Todd Phillips wanted to re-make Taxi Driver / King of Comedy so to get funding he threw a comic book villain in there. And while that may hold true for many aspects of the film, I must admit there's more depth here. I think mostly through Joaquin Phoenix's performance I found myself begrudgingly enjoying it for the most part. That laugh-crying... I have no idea how he does that. There's a lot of nuance in his portrayal... the typical descent into madness mixed with fantasy and grace and metamorphosis into super villain. Or not. The ambiguous ending is a nice touch. Plus I like pretty much the entire supporting cast so... yeah I liked it. Damn it.
02.28.20	Marriage Story	Noah Baumbach	I wasn't going to watch this because it seemed like such a bummer, but then I heard how good it was blah blah blah and something convinced me to give it a try. I won't dispute that it's a good movie but whoever says it's not a bummer is lying. this movie is so fucking sad. Quite good. Total Bummer. Amazing Performances... trying to make you sad. Humanistic and empathetic script... about sadness and heartbreak. you get it.
02.22.20	1917	Sam Mendes	Heyyy I'm still alive; I watched a movie and it was pretty good, but I don't have much to say about it other than it was well-made and I liked it and... this review was one continuous sentence, so GIVE ME THAT OSCAR!
12.28.19	Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker	J.J. Abrams	Huh! I don't know if it's just absolute minimum expectations or what but I liked this pretty good! Not only does it manage to undo a lot of what The Last Jedi made a point to scuttle, it also makes both the weird stuff in Last Jedi and Force Awakens make a little more sense! I see this as a nice feat of storytelling if nothing else. But I also liked a bunch of other stuff! SPOILERS. At first I was really nonplussed about them bringing the Emperor back but after a bit of exposition I was totally on board. We get answers for why: -The first order basically looks just like the old empire -how the first order could take over after the empire fell -why it's called the first order I also got satisfactory answers for: -How Rey and Kylo were talking to eachother with mind meld -Why Snoke didn't really matter -Why Luke had to die -Why they didn't kill Leia off in Last Jedi when they had two perfect opportunities -Why Leia did that weird fly-through-space thing I definitely felt like Abrams did a fair amount of clean-up after Rian Johnson. Like, wait no! I put a lot of work into designing Kylo's helmet! And you hired your buddy Noah Segan as a random X-wing pilot instead of MY buddy Greg Grunberg / Dominic Monaghan / Keri Russell! A little bit of tape here, cool welding sequences there, and voila everything's back together again just like how he left it. I am also a little softer on Last Jedi now. A lot of crappy and hard-to-explain things had to happen between the first and third so it was probably more of a thankless task than I thought for Rian Johnson to take it on. OR, he did whatever he wanted and Abrams did an even better job of wrapping things up than I already think. I wish there could be a candid book of interviews or something about both the prequel trilogy and the sequel trilogy after everything dies down. I wonder how much planning went into the trilogy at the beginning and how much of Colin Trevorrow's input remained on screen. I should say I'm also relieved they didn't do anything stupid with the droids. Giving Chewbacca a medal at the end felt a little like Abrams made a long list of popular internet fan gripes and tried his best to fix each one, like referring to the "Holdo maneuver" as being a one-in-a-million shot. However I think it's kind of unfair to criticize him for this since the movies basically belong to the fans now. It's not like we're going to find new depths of character and drama here... we're just hoping each movie plays with our action figures in a cool way and doesn't pull any shit like inventing new rules of play or breaking old ones. In that regard, I think this movie succeeds. I liked the new cast, liked the new worlds. Good to see Lando again. The beginning of the movie felt like it was on fast-forward... I guess to get under the run-time of Last Jedi. I liked all the symmetry built in with Force Awakens... again, I think they did a good job wrapping things up. I guess now we'll see how the movie ages in my brain and what I think of it whenever I watch it again.
12.28.19	Star Wars: The Last Jedi	Rian Johnson	We're about to see the new Star Wars and we realized we kind of forgot most of what happened in this. My memory of this movie is kind of weird. I remember having a good time in the theater, but since then I also remember not having any answers for all the people who hated it and my lingering memories are all the things that bugged me about it, like: -The dude tasting dirt -The Rose character's heavy messaging -The meandering second act -How they treated Luke -How they treated Leia -The weird mind link between Rey and Kylo -How they undid all the hard work the first movie did to set up a bunch of cool stuff like Snoke, Kylo's helmet, Rey, and Luke. So... with all that in mind, this second viewing kind of reinforced my memories. I will say there were some stuff I liked: -Chewbacca and the Millenium Falcon -Finn -The visual effects Kind of a shorter list. I don't know... it doesn't make me so jazzed for this next one. Let's see how it goes.
12.17.19	6 Underground	Michael Bay	Once upon a time, people could pass an argument that this wave of music video directors criticized for valuing style over substance did have something to contribute to the cinematic landscape. Much was said about Criterion including movies like The Rock and Armageddon in their collection. Perhaps this new school would grow to incorporate story and emotion with their bombastic visual flair to create something greater than the sum of its parts? Nope. Twenty years later we have this pile of shit. oh well! I guess you could say that parts of the first car chase scene have some cool moments of CG and gore with physics-y human models thrown around like a cool video game cut-scene, but the rest of the movie is trash. Since I'm not watching so so many movies these days I typically find myself seeing the good in everything I watch but this one was pretty hard. I thought maybe the cast and the fact that it didn't have giant robots might make this interesting but it really wasn't. Just a lot of flaming garbage shot from thirty different angles.
12.15.19	The Irishman	Martin Scorsese	Huh. Well... This was interesting. I'd heard this was good but boring, but I don't think it's boring so much as designed to be slow because it's the cinematic equivalent of letting your grandpa bend your ear at thanksgiving dinner. It's like a three and a half hour meander. It's an interesting choice to make, probably because everyone involved in that age. This is totally an old man's movie. So it feels slow while simultaneously delivering constant information through all of Scorsese's usual bag of tricks. It definitely took me a few sittings to make it through, but I can't say it was bad. While it's kind of nice to see every Italian actor in the same movie, it's also kind of a weird reminder of a bygone era, like watching The Rolling Stones play a live gig in 2019.
11.16.19	Hostiles	Scott Cooper	Christian Bale learns to respect native americans while people die all around him in pretty scenery. This was ok. Kind of expected more from Scott Cooper. I feel like either I missed some deeper layer of meaning or things were just kind of slow and mumbly.
11.15.19	Revenge	Coralie Fargeat	Didn't get around to this one during DVRfest... I actually have a bit of a list of films like this so I might try to clear these up at some point... have a mini fest or something... a DVRfest for DVRfest movies. Anyway, this was kind of an interesting take on the rape revenge genre just due to color palette and minimal dialogue. It definitely chooses style over realism as I had to actively ignore all the little nitpicks that are probably impossible. Also, the lead is very pretty but I'm not sure what kind of actress she is. She's definitely a sport for being coated in fake blood and spending the entire movie in her underwear, but I think there's maybe a reason why she almost never speaks? The movie kind of deflated at around the half way mark for me. By the end, things were so ridiculous... I was not into it at all. I respect the choices that the movie makes, but I'm not really into them. If we're going Peter Jackson overboard then let's go overboard, but that kind of gore is incompatible with real emotion.
11.11.19	Disorganized Crime	Jim Kouf	As per the rules of the fest, I'm allowed one movie that I've seen before. For this year, I chose an old favorite that remains fond in my memory but I've been interested to revisit and see if it still holds up. This is a late 80s comedy heist starring Fred Gwynne, Lou Diamond Phillips, Ruben Blades, and Corbin Bernsen as bank robbers and Ed O'Neill and the crazy dude from River's Edge as cops on their trail. It's a small town heist filmed in Montana mixed with some nice twists and ticks all the things I want out of a heist movie. Plus it's a great artifact of the 80s where there's no nudity or violence but they threw a few "shits" and "fucks" in there... just because? It really shouldn't be rated R except kids porobably wouldn't be interested in watching it? Except this kid was. I saw this a bunch on rental, HBO, and whatever. I'm happy to say that it still holds up! For me at least. Hard to tell honestly... I think it works but a heist comedy is kind of a weird tone but I think it's great. And that's it. Another year down. I wish I could've hit another film or two but I'm out of time. Let's cap it at that. Stat Time: Movies Seen: 14 in the past week (2/day avg.) 15 in the past month (0.5/day avg.) 78 in the past year (0.21/day avg.) 3225 in the past 15 years (0.59/day) Without this and FantasticFest, it sure looks like I don't watch movies anymore. May some day. Now it's back to HBO's Watchmen.
11.11.19	Midsommar	Ari Aster	Nope. Not a chance I stayed awake for this. Two and a half hours!? I mean Hereditary was good but jesus... two and a half hours!? And a 3-hour director's cut? Just to make a not-as-good version of Wicker Man? OK maybe I'm being harsh. I did enjoy this... many things about it good, the film has a level of cohesion that's admirable, and no doubt a lot of time and effort were paid toward little details that all serve the narrative. But to me the poster sums it up perfectly: flowers and crying. That main girl cried. And there were flowers. So I have mixed feelings about it. It's a good movie in that it's very well made and serves as an interesting horror movie that's not just, like, people mysteriously die when they install an app on their phone. Both on the other hand, it doesn't travel far enough away from its inspiration so I can't help but see it in Wicker Man's shadow.
11.10.19	Veronica	Paco Plaza	My boss recommended this to me a few years ago and gives me shit pretty regularly for not watching it. In the spirit of DVRfest, I am officially catching up and finally crossing this off the list. It's actually decent! Starts off pretty standard - don't mess with Ouija boards during an eclipse - but some of the gags are well done and the lead actress does a fine job portraying the growing torment as she gets messed with by spirits. The ending takes on a full 'based on true events' vibe which I thought was interesting. A google search later and apparently it is! And it's a very famous incident in Spain! That kind of paints the movie in a whole new light, making it more of a Spanish Exorcist than anything else. I guess I can no longer fault the film for staying close to the genre... OK room for one more tonight. The one I was planning on watching Friday night. Let's see if I can stay awake through it.
11.10.19	Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse	Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman	This... was really good. The animation was spectacular, so fluid and detailed. The music was great, story was great, various styles from the different universes were great, and the villains and fight scenes were just like how you'd picture them when reading the books. Quite an achievement I have to say... I think the only joke they missed was having the second Peter Parker have the Andrew Garfield origin sequence... but honestly that's probably in there somewhere and I just missed it. Every frame seems like some homage or reference to Spidey's past, I could probably spot new things four or five viewings in. But alas, who has time for that. The sun is down, it's time to start watching horror movies. This was great though. Loved it.
11.10.19	The Whisperer in Darkness	Sean Branney	I've been getting back into Call of Cthulhu for the past year or so, reading the source books and revisiting some of the original writing in preparation to run a few games for my work group. It's fun. I think maybe Lovecraft's fiction lends itself best to RPGs rather than movies in terms of adaptation. This one, by the "HP Lovecraft Historical Society" who made the silent-era Call of Cthulhu, a stellar prop kit for Masks of Nyarlathotep, and a sweet set of period fonts and stationery to use for prop creation, was supposedly pretty good. They present this as an early-30s talkie the same way they made Call of Cthulhu as a silent, but the resolution and acting easily mark it as a contemporary low-budget project. That, along with the main actor's passing resemblance to Alton Brown, gave the whole movie a vibe like it was a Good Eats sketch that I had trouble shaking. Still, it's nice to have the source material (which I have never gotten around to reading for whatever reason) feel faithfully adapted. Certainly the tone feels right... lots of talking in the beginning followed by an isolating trip to the country where bad things happen... a fitting ending... all these things feel 100% Lovecraftian to me. In that regard I suppose this is a success, although I'd hesitate to recommend it to anyone not already a fan of the author (or RPG). These guys now produce radio plays based on other Lovecraft stories. I haven't heard them but i bet they're great. I definitely applaud the amount of work that went into this. Period cars and visual effects and even a plane! I just wish it was a little softer focus, lower resolution. I guess in a perfect world they would've shot it like The Lighthouse with vintage lenses and special stock but who can afford that. Next up is... a bit of inventory as I see what from my list is available on which platform. It's nice to just write a list of movies to see and feel confident that I can get them, but I should've done this legwork before the fest started. oops.
11.10.19	Industrial Accident: The History of Wax Trax! Records	Julia Nash	This is a documentary about seminal industrial label Wax Trax! records. Well made, talks to pretty much everyone it needs to talk to with no notable exceptions, tells the story well. Good doc. My favorite scene was the woman who worked mail order talking about sending packages to kids in smaller towns who couldn't get this stuff anywhere else. i WAS one of those kids. I remember getting the catalog, sending my money in and months later, almost after I'd forgotten sending the order, getting a box full of random stuff. There'd be the stuff I ordered but also a few extra things. Posters, promos, stickers. The inside of the box even smelled like incense. It gave me this glimpse to a much cooler world that I had no access to since I was going to highschool in rural Maryland. We'd go into Baltimore or DC for shows but that was always a big ordeal, driving hours into the scary big crime-ridden city to see shows. Once or twice a year I'd get to go to Tower records or a place called Phantasmagoria to spend some serious cash on music. Japanese Red Hot Chili Pepper singles, special stuff that the mall music stores didn't stock, and old Luxa/Pan cds that weren't available anywhere else. We had one record shop downtown that had PTP on vinyl but alas... no record player. It's fair to say that Wax Trax!, along with Invisible records, defined my musical tastes during my most formative years. I wasn't around for the heyday of 87 - 89, but I was there 92 - 95 to revel and explore and also witness the beginning of the end. CDs started showing up with generic TVT cardboard cases around them. Releases were spotty, I went to college and heard The Prodigy and lost interest for a decade or two, but I still hold the record label up in the highest regard. My friend and neighbor played me Ministry's Mind album and Nine Inch Nails' first album The WaxTrax! sampler introduced me to Underworld. Those three bands were favorites for a long time, Underworld still is. So I am very happy and grateful for Wax Trax! to finally get a moment in the spotlight in this film. For as huge a fan as I was, I'd never once been to Chicago to go to their retail store. So I'm really glad to hear the whole story. Never mind that everyone was strung out the entire time. I guess it was a good thing I never went to the store. I got to retain my innocence until I read Chris Connelly's book. Up next is... oh, this looks good.
11.10.19	The Laundromat	Steven Soderbergh	Fell asleep halfway through this but it's not the movie's fault. This was like Big Short meets Fast Food Nation, halfway between separate vignettes and a TED talk. I liked this... but have mixed feelings overall about the whole Big Short type of thing where these issues in the news are now so complicated that it takes a movie to explain to people. On one hand, they're necessary and done well to explain issues in a way that entertains as well as educates, but on the other they're so damn bleak because it means the first world is in such a trash heap that people don't even understand how they're getting fucked anymore. But anyway, Soderbergh's fun to watch. Love the 4th wall breaking stuff. Meryl Streep is good, as is Gary Oldman (i know, shock). Lots of familiar faces in there... I like the Will Forte and Chris Parnell parts in particular... but it does feel like... 20% a homework assignment. This would be great to see in highschool on a day when the teacher's out sick, but kind of a drag for DVRfest. Speaking of highschool, next up is a documentary that I missed out on kickstarting but, years later, got the blu-ray when it finally went on sale on their website.
11.09.19	King of the Hill	Steven Soderbergh	Roll #5: 11 I haven't seen any of Soderbergh's "early" (meaning pre-Schizopolis) films aside from Sex, Lies, & Videotape. I didn't really know anything about this one so it was cool to not have it be terrible. I think Criterion did a great job with the packaging art direction, adopting a Norman Rockwell-esque painterly vibe to it because the movie does look really really good in its depiction of 1933. Lots of warm lighting and vibrant color. The story is kind of a midwest depression-era version of Empire of the Sun where a kid is basically left to fend for himself and figure out how life works. Umm... I liked this. It felt open and heartwarming and maybe a little sentimental but not in a bad way. Didn't love love love it, but it was a perfectly fine movie. I guess it's kind of hard to follow All That Jazz. Also, what's Adrien Brody been up to? Feel like I haven't seen him around lately. Incidentally, this goes back into the pool due to having The Underneath included as a bonus feature. Pretty crazy to have a whole other film listed along with interviews and deleted scenes. I could just double down and watch it but I had other Soderbergh films on my potential line-up so I think I'll end the Criterion random roll at 5 and finish up the night with his latest instead.
11.09.19	All That Jazz	Bob Fosse	Roll #4: 14 I believe the only Bob Fosse movie that I've seen is Star 80 which blew me away and kicked me in the balls. I recognize that Cabaret is something I need to see at some point but at least now I've seen this. This was really great. I appreciate Fosse's frenetic editing style and shot composition most of all. You really feel inside his brain from start to finish. Roy Scheider's great but he has a ton to do between the dancers and the comedian movie and the "backstage" mental space which are all great on their own. All those topless dancers don't hurt either. whoa. I also... so I'm pretty firmly on record as not caring for most musicals. My main problem is breaking narrative, where they're so happy they have to sing in a dining room or on a hilltop or in LA traffic, then the music ends and the world starts up again. The musicals I do like (mostly the old Busby Berkeley ones) felt like they were made before filmmakers figured out audiences would sit through that crap. So they set every musical on Broadway and the story of every musical was putting on a show. But when it came time to actually do the music numbers, film magic took over and you get to see more spectacle and flair than ever possible on a stage. I might be wrong but I feel like there's only two straight-up music numbers in this.. ok maybe two and a half if you count the girlfriend and daughter singing in the living room. The last one is forgiven because it's in his mind and works great especially at the end when he goes into the crowd and thanks everyone for being there, but my favorite is the sexytime one about casual relationships. That did that magic stuff a bit but still in the confines of the practice studio. It was so good. And I loved how everyone was sweaty. Another major peccadillo of mine is that nobody in movies sweats. If all I saw was movies then I'd be a climate change denier because I'd think the 70s was the only decade where it got hot outside. People sweat when they exercise, dancing is exercise, ergo dancers sweat. So great. So yeah, another great one. Glad I finally saw it. The sun's down now and I'm in the realm of maybe two more movies, maybe one more. It could be like Che last year with World on a Wire, or it could be a nice 90 minute French noir. Or it could be Dr. Mabuse and put me to sleep at 10pm. We shall see! Next.
11.09.19	Multiple Maniacs	John Waters	Roll #3: 15 I don't know of a better follow-up to Salo than this. Super early John Waters movie with all his regulars in full effect. I want to say this is his first "real" movie? It's great that A) Criterion loves and supports John Waters, and B) the die chose this after Salo. It knows what's up. I feel like this has some sort of parallel with Salo, but exchanging the condemnation for gonzo fun. Until she starts killing people, Divine and her gang of pervert circus misfits seem like a pretty fun bunch to hang out with. Plus I love how homegrown everything is... they just put up tents in someone's back yard right? Except for the cars, it felt like where I lived during my high school years. And with... all?... early Waters movies, the whole movie is basically just a dial for Divine to go from 1 to 100000000. It can be grating at times but it's also just so glorious to behold. And that lobster.... man. So I had a lot of fun with this. Not sure what that says about me... but I was smiling through most of it. Love Mink Stole and the scene in the church, love David Lochary's accent, love those printed out beginning titles. Doesn't watching this just make you want to go out and make a movie!? So two weird ones in a row. Let's see what's Next.
11.09.19	Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom	Pier Paolo Pasolini	Roll #2: 1 with a bullet Salo has been in the Criterion pool since it began. I've heard quite a bit about how extreme it is so it was never something to throw on for a tuesday night or whatever. It's kind of fitting that it took rolling a natural 1 on a d20 to select this and finally see it. So..... what to say... It definitely holds up. I've seen a bunch of fucked up movies so I had a feeling going into this that it would be tamer than people let on just because it's 45 years old now and we've had stuff like A Serbian Film and Martyrs and Taxidermia... but the feeling of descent that this film delivers is pretty affecting. By the final scene it's so unrelenting and ends so abruptly... and perhaps the music makes it even worse... the light jazzy piano over everything. It's clear that I didn't get 100% of the influence, context, and symbolism at play here. Particularly the fascist stuff went over my head unless it was just a statement that unbridled power allows for unparalleled depravity. I also guess this much blatant homosexuality made people's heads explode in 1975 in a way that I, today, don't fully grasp. All in all... glad I watched it. Definitely some indelible images. I definitely checked to see when it would end less than a minute before it actually ended. But I can't argue with the potency of the film, which is really extraordinary. Whew. ok. Next.
11.09.19	Le Corbeau	Henri-Georges Clouzot	Roll #1: 4 Predictably, the random number generator chose a great choice for a saturday matinee in this early french noir from Clouzot. Clouzot's falls in a weird place in my brain. I remember reading in Truffaut's auteur article that the new wave kind of shit on Clouzot and held him as a symbol of the old guard, but the dude made Wages of Fear which is one of the best thrillers... ever. I remember being not so enamored with Diabolique but this was very very good! So who knows. This one's about a "poison pen" writer who starts sending letters to everyone in town airing everyone's dirty laundry and putting the town in an uproar. At first I thought this would have something to do with Poe since the main actor looks kind of like him and has the same mustache and there's a scene where he holds a stuffed raven, but I was wrong. Instead, everybody's secret truths eventually get exposed and the town succumbs further and further into mob mentality to make it stop. Gorgeous high-contrast black and white photography, lots of dutch angles and proto-noirish undertones with a dangerous woman and an innocent man stuck in a trap and all that, but also still very French. Really my only problem with this movie is with the very very last scene, so: ... spoilers start Why the hell was he writing another letter? If Laura really was supposed to be the raven, then wouldn't another letter from the raven saying that she's the raven exonerate her? What the hell, dude? To me, this stinks of a studio note to give the ending a clearer resolution, but the movie would've been ten times as great if that letter didn't exist. We'd never know for sure if it was really him... yeah all signs would point to it and we'd still get that great beat of the widow doing her thing, but still... I loved how confusing and Christopher Nolan the movie got at the end with all kinds of possibilities blossoming out... having the real raven die in the middle of signing his last letter is too convenient... not to mention making no fucking sense. ... spoilers end Anyway, I really liked this a lot. I think I have another Clouzot film in the lottery so maybe it'll come up. Or maybe not. We'll see. Next.
11.08.19	John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum	Chad Stahelski	Well Today didn't go as planned. Too much video games not enough movie. Plus I'm already seeing a trend of movies that I thought were streaming legitimately somewhere only to find that they are not. I guess all these streaming services are good for their landmark shows but when it comes to tracking down a year-old movie they suck unless you have some genius brain devoted solely to remembering which services have which movies when. In any case, I had a triple feature of catch-up Hollywood films planned for my first day this year, but I dillydallied then procuring the last one took longer than expected so instead I wound up watching John Wick at midnight. This was ok. The action was great as we've come to expect... some of the gags were quite impressively brutal in interesting ways and there were plenty of set pieces to carry through the film. I do wonder if the world of John Wick, which seemed so marvel in the first one, is collapsing under its own weight now. The story this time around was a little strained. Never mind how the entire world is seeded with professional killers at every cafe, in every alleyway, even in the middle of the desert, and let's not forget about the army of tattooed ladies in uniform updating contracts and announcing stuff... to themselves, but John Wick spent the whole movie getting un-incommunicado-ed just to re-incommunicado himself at the end? Like, could've saved yourself a trip around the world, buddy. Or at least around half of it if he just killed whatever tabletop uppity-up that was in the desert? However, I appreciate that this started right after the last ended and these movies are notable for their action not their story so whatever... oh, one other little nitpick: that generic action scene music... I don't know if they all had it and I just happened to notice more this time, but at times it felt pretty stale. Still, I liked it. It kept me awake deep into the night, making a fun albeit short first day to the fest. That brings me to tomorrow and the return of the Criterion random roll. Let's see how many movies I can fit in. It could be a lot, or the dice could dictate that I watch World on a Wire instead. We'll see!
11.08.19	Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom	J.A. Bayona	I had no interest in this since I remember having kind of major problems with the last Jurassic World but for some reason people at Fantastic Fest said this was, like, almost the best one of the whole series? iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii don't know about that. It's basically a re-make of Lost World which is the worst of the series... it's not as bad as LW, but follows basically the same story with basically the same outcome. Just upgraded with no terrible scenes (but also no great ones). It wasn't bad... but nowhere near great either.... which is why I had no interest in seeing it in the first place. Oh well, scratch it off the list. Caught up on the franchise now. Oh, hey. It's DVRfest, y'all.
10.13.19	El Camino	Vince Gilligan	The Breaking Bad movie. This basically ties up the loose end of what happens to Jesse, so kind of similar to the Deadwood movie in that it's more an extended coda or closing chapter than any sort of reinvigoration or addition to the show. That's probably for the best. I enjoyed this but it did feel like an extra long episode of the show... which is kind of weird because Better Call Saul is still going. I don't really have much nostalgia for these characters because they still might show up in new episodes, so it's kind of an odd little addendum that probably isn't necessary, but at the same time it was fun to watch and didn't upset or disappoint in any way. In that case, I guess more content is good? I dunno... but I liked the show a hell of a lot, I like Better Call Saul a lot, and this movie let me write a note about it.
09.28.19	Spider-Man: Far from Home	Jon Watts	Caught up on the MCU movies once again. I liked this a lot. I'm very happy to finally see Spider-Man done right on film. Both this and Homecoming really do right by the character and the comic I think. With this one, I liked the angle they took with Mysterio... being a hero jockeying for an Avengers spot. In many ways he fits with the MCU Vulture as less some evil villain and more a regular guy who's just unstable. Both of them are not necessarily out for world domination. I also like the supporting cast here. Holland's scenes with Favreau are great. Good movie.
09.26.19	Knives Out	Rian Johnson	And that brings us to the final closing night film! Man, that was quick! It's a weird feeling where the first few days feel so long then the final week just flies by. Rian Johnson mentioned in his Q&A that he loves the whodunit genre but agreed with Hitchcock that all whodunit movies have a problem where there's basically one surprise in the entire movie. So he tried to fix that by making the film more into a Hitchcock-ian thriller but still keeping the framing of a whodunit and, most importantly, keeping the final scene where the detective lays out the whole explanation of who did it. I think he was successful with this. The movie feels very aware of what it is but plays with the audience as it unfolds so you often feel ahead of the characters but sometimes you're behind them and each plot twist isn't completely telegraphed. Or at least it wasn't to me. I liked this one a lot. It was really fun to follow along, but I never felt like anything was cheated or full of holes (ahem, Looper). Plus every single member of the cast is great. Some have more to do than others, but they all fill their roles perfectly. Johnson also mentioned taking inspiration for the house from the Michael Caine Sleuth which makes perfect sense. The movie feels like a celebration of the genre without subverting or changing any of its rules. Before watching, I was afraid he would "elevate" the movie by having some stupid shit happening like having everyone be guilty or no one or not having a murder or whatever. I was glad to see that not happen. Afterward, I did not go to the party so this is the end of my fest. I got out of there without crashing my car, breaking my phone, or getting sick so I'd say it's a clear upgrade from last year. Really I have very few negative feelings about this year. I had a lot of fun, spent time with good friends, saw some good movies (none of them really blew me away but I only saw 2 i outright didn't like), so I count that as a success. Top 3 -Dolemite is My Name -The Vast of Night -Knives Out Bottom 3 -Random Acts of Violence -Lyle -Blood Machines
09.26.19	Parasite	Joon-ho Bong	This year they kind of had two closing night films. Everyone wanted to see this because The Host played great at the fest and people love Bong Joon-ho and this won the Palm D'or at Cannes and there's only one showing at the fest which is on the last day. It's very good. I liked it very much. There's humor and heart and light parts and heavy parts. It's a bit Coen-esque actually in how it can go from kind of broad quirky comedy to serious pathos and emotion. There's also some message-y class stuff going on but everyone's pretty three-dimensional and sympathetic. Wish I had more to say about it but nothing's coming to mind. It was really good.
09.26.19	Lyle	Stewart Thorndike	Brian Kelley's intro for this was "I'm queer and I LOVE horror movies." They did a LGBQT series this year, most notably with a doc about the guy who starred in A Nightmare on Elm Street 2, but this is the only one I saw. I kind of wish I'd seen the other movies to understand why they chose to screen this. Maybe it fits in some weird thematic way (i mean, other than having gay people in it). Just as a random movie to see a few years after it was released, it didn't make any sense. Furthermore, I didn't like the movie at all. It's not just that it's inspired by Rosemary's Baby or uses that material as a launch pad or presents a modern-day take on it... this movie IS Rosemary's Baby if John Cassavettes was a woman. Nothing new is brought to the table. Is it for people who've never seen the original? Is it like a blaxploitation thing? Like The Exorcist and Abby? Is there a small niche genre of gay versions of popular movies? In any case, I largely felt like this was a waste of time. I guess it's a movie and I'm sure people worked hard on it but I don't understand why. It's just a not-as-good version of Rosemary's Baby.
09.26.19	The Platform	Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia	Day Eight! Last Day! This is a sci-fi film kind of a la Snowpiercer or Cube or a Richard Bachman book where the characters are in this bizarre environment where a platform full of food starts at level 1 and the two people on that level get a few minutes to eat as much as they want before the platform lowers to level 2, 3, etc., until the lowest levels have no food and have to resort to other means of sustenance. People sign up or get assigned to X amount of months in this complex in exchange for diminished sentences or accredited degrees and they get randomly assigned levels every month. The heavy message is that supposedly if everyone only eats their share then there's enough but human nature is such that those on the top indulge leaving those on the bottom to starve. Really though it's a maybe a comment on the system in general because we learn that the levels go down way beyond even what rationed food could supply so the whole system is corrupt in addition to people being shitty. it really did have Long Walk / Running Man vibes to me more than Snowpiercer. I appreciate the lack of context or explanation here. Things don't go particularly well, making it fit right in to the fest. My only complaint is that the second screening didn't get any novelty food pairing like the first screening is. One criticism of the fest as a whole this year is a general lack of little touches that made previous years special. Things like bringing out a food item at a particular moment in the film (like a hunk of meat during Texas Chainsaw Massacre or something like that) supplies a nice surprise and is a sign of thoughtfulness that make you feel special. The only thing like that I got this year was the free beer from Netflix for their films and a peach gummy in front of Parasite (which was just sitting there and wasn't addressed during the intro at all). I know it's a minor nitpick considering the scope of things they have to deal with to pull the festival off, but I did miss it. Anyway, I liked this.
09.25.19	Saint Maud	Rose Glass	This one was really good. It's about a home nurse who talks to god. She's paired with a woman dying of cancer then things go from there. I think this is the only movie that had a jump scare that worked on me... really there were several moments that were either legitimately scary or deeply unsettling. In an escalating act of contrition or self-flagellation or whatever, there's a scene where Maud puts thumbtacks in her shoes that made me feel a visceral body reaction. That and the ending is really great. And there was a lot of ESG and post-punk music that I dig. Really good. Afterward I had more than an hour wait before the midnight movie then the next morning was extra early to be done in time for the closing night party. i didn't feel like sacrificing that much sleep to see this movie VFW so I skipped it and went home. It's the only slot I missed. Had I known that I tied my movie count on this site with last year because of it, I probably would've stayed... but oh well, I got plenty of sleep, didn't get sick (for the first year in recent memory), and don't regret it.
09.25.19	Dogs Don't Wear Pants	Jukka-Pekka Valkeapaa	This one's about a dad who loses his wife in a freak fish net drowning accident then eventually overcomes his grief with the help of a dominatrix willing to choke him into unconsciousness where he gets brief reunions with his dead wife. For being a latex-clad bondage-y type movie I actually found it less titillating and more melancholy and sweet. There were a few odd tonal moments, most involving the daughter character I guess showing the dad's complete neglect? or something? But the actress who played the Dominatrix character was compelling and I think multi-layered in an unconventional way.
09.25.19	Limbo	Tina Krause	The final AGFA screening for me. This shot-on-video movie is from a woman who worked in what was referred to as "Wave cinema" (?) where people would basically send in a script and a check and these people would make the movie. As such, she said she was sick of all the boobs and blood 90s horror movies and wanted to make something more artistic and experimental. So... they kind of described it as a cross between a Nine Inch Nails video and David Lynch beforehand but I don't really agree with that. It's more like the random video footage I remember clubs like the 9:30 club running on their closed-circuit video screens in between bands: just random weird vaguely goth or underground stuff that I have no idea who made it or where it came from or what it was. Some of it is kind of abstract horror imagery based around the abandoned factory where the director was squatting at the time (she said she lived there for 10 years!), some of it is an almost-narrative of a woman who... doesn't know she's in hell? and a vampire has to tell her that she's in hell? or something? Then looooots of footage kind of set to music. Also very experimental and challenging to watch. I didn't intentionally set my schedule this way but this morning ended up being pretty rough. I don't know how I stayed awake. That said, I did find lots of artistic merit in this. I applaud the effort for sure, and probably consider watching this more valuable than Random Acts of Violence which was largely vapid, but it wasn't the easiest hour of movie-watching of the week.
09.25.19	Die Kinder der Toten	Kelly Copper, Pavol Liska	Day Seven! Almost there! I didn't really know much about this walking into it which is maybe for the best. If I realized it was a silent adaptation of an "unfilmable" Austrian novel I maybe would've slept in instead. This is one of those movies where I didn't enjoy watching it at all but found some interesting things in it afterward. I'm glad I saw it even though I didn't like watching it. It feels pretty random and not particularly interesting or good. The most interesting thing about the movie came from the Q&A afterward where I learned the following: -the filmmakers were not Austrian -the filmmakers had not read the book -the filmmakers didn't know who would show up when they went to Austria to shoot, ready to make the movie with just the two of them(?) but using all the non-actors that showed up -the filmmakers only followed a loose script then put together the movie based on the stuff they got So... the movie isn't really an adaptation or even what the filmmakers had planned to make... which makes the act of making the film a sort of performance art in a way... so watching the movie is really just a byproduct of their art, not the art itself? That's kind of how I thought of it anyway after hearing them talk about their process. Very challenging and experimental... kind of rough for the penultimate morning show.
09.24.19	Random Acts of Violence	Jay Baruchel	This midnight I probably should've skipped. I wanted to see it because Jay Baruchel directed it and is in it but I found the movie pretty muddled and not fun. The violence is not really a fun kind of gore and the story doesn't make total sense then the ending is bland and expected. This is the first movie of the fest that I didn't like. Even Blood Machines had some good things going for it, but this was a miss. It wasn't, like, hard to watch or anything... but I didn't like it.
09.24.19	The Deeper You Dig	John Adams, Toby Poser	This is a good thriller made by a family in upstate NY. The mom, dad, and daughter star, they wrote, directed, acted, and edited it, they shot in a real house that they were actually renovating, and the music was done by various bands that the dad's a member of. They said they made the movie over the course of a year for like $9500 or something crazy like that. It looks and sounds professionally done and, quite honestly, puts most other indie movies to shame in terms of production quality. On top of that, the story is actually good, the performances are good, it gets a little freaky and funny and has a satisfying ending. It's really just a good solid movie that looks like it costs five times what it did. I really liked it.
09.24.19	The Vast of Night	Andrew Patterson	One of my favs of the fest. This is a black and white low budget sci-fi film fashioned after a Twilight Zone episode (they even have a fake tv show in the same vein as the intro to the film) where a radio DJ and phone operator in a 50s small town encounters strange signals and sightings of something in the night sky. There are a lot of really long takes, some excellent steadicam or drone work and great performances by the two leads who have to say a lot of dialogue really quickly while using vintage technology like reel-to-reel players and operator switchboards. My only two nitpicks are that it goes in and out of the "you're watching this on tv" thing once too often and something about the quality of the black and white felt flat or dull. I think it was an intentional choice, again going for the feel of watching it on an old B&W tv, but it was a tiny bit distracting. There were also periods (during another long monologue where the audience and the radio DJ are listening to a guy on the phone) where the picture cuts out completely. It had a kind of hypnotic effect where at first I wasn't sure if it was the movie or my eyes taking long blinks or what, but it's kind of an odd choice. Maybe it's to treat it almost as a radio play? i dunno. Other than that, I really loved this one. I thought the characters were snappy and they handled an unsettling escalation really well with no CGI. Good stuff.
09.24.19	Homewrecker	Zach Gayne	This is a nice little movie where Tommy Chong's daughter plays a mentally unstable fast friend to a woman in her yoga class. There's lots of uncomfortable humor as she clings to this woman and keeps her from leaving then transitions to more physical abduction revolving around deep-seated psychological issues and the woman's husband, I'd say it's a very solid low-budget festival type movie but the score really makes it feel cheaper than it is. It's just a dude strumming along on his guitar... like they recorded him jamming while watching the movie or something and just went with it. Even if they still used it in key scenes and cut out the other 80% it would've been much much better. As it is, it makes the movie feel like a student film or something which is a shame.
09.24.19	The Peanut Butter Solution	Michael Rubbo	Day six! Another AGFA screening (there are so many this year! I didn't even see them all. I missed Tammy & The T-Rex). This is a "children's movie" made in canada about a boy who goes bald because he climbed into a burned out house and saw a ghost so then the ghost gives him this recipe for hair growth serum but the kid uses too much peanut butter so he grows hair like an inch an hour, attracting the attention of an evil art teacher who kidnaps 20 kids and puts them into child labor making expensive paintbrushes using the kid's hair that paint magical animated paintings. There's a lot to like here but maybe my main thing was how... disdainful most adults are to the children in the film. Even the kid's dad, like, barely cares about any of it. It kind of reminded me of those old Mr. Wizard shows where he was barely tolerable of the idiot kids helping with his experiments.Maybe it's a Canadian thing? or an early 80s thing? Also, the kid's friend puts some of the serum on his pubes and they grow all the way down his pant legs... but then the movie forgets all about it! Serious plot hole!!!
09.23.19	Bloody Birthday	Ed Hunt	Another AGFA screening for midnight. This one's an evil children movie about three kids born during an eclipse... so they're evil. These kids are so goddamn brazen with their killing! I don't know how they made it through their first 10 birthdays with the rest of the town intact because they go after everyone... parents, teachers, friends, strangers... you name it, they try to kill them. You think there might be some plan or something... but no, they just love to kill. Evil! This was a lot of fun. It made a great midnighter. I found no need for context or reason here... something about the simplicity of the premise and execution was just really really entertaining.
09.23.19	Jallikattu	Lijo Jose Pellissery	This Indian film is about a village that hunts a water buffalo on the loose. There's some great photography here with the entire village, mostly non-actors, coming into frame to hunt this animal through the forest/jungle. In particular, scenes of like a hundred flashlights descending down this hill are particularly impressive. The story is mostly "we are looking for the buffalo" but there's a rhythmic music through most of the movie that's very propulsive and, combined with these amazing steadi-cam shots of many may people all shouting and running and yelling, the film feels visceral and kinetic through the entire running time. It's not something I'd seen before, which is pretty cool. On one hand there could've maybe been a little more story but on the other I like that it's so pared down and focused.
09.23.19	The Lighthouse	Robert Eggers	The second secret screening. Don't really know why this was a secret screening. Actually I don't really know why Dolemite was either, but whatever. I'm on record for really liking The VVVVITCH. This I thought was just ok. The trailer is pretty great, Willem Dafoe is pretty great ("shouldn't a spilled yer BEANS"), Robert Pattinson has some memorable lines ("goddamn FARTS!"). It's suitably dreary and claustrophobic and goes to all the places the trailer makes you think it goes, but it doesn't quite live up to the promise of the trailer. I don't know if I wanted it to be not as weird or way weirder or what... but for some reason it felt flat to me. Not sure why, but the further I get from it the less memorable it is. Maybe it's just typical sophomore slump type stuff? I dunno. Willem Dafoe was really great.
09.23.19	In the Shadow of the Moon	Jim Mickle	This was the one I thought I was seeing two days ago. Still don't love Boyd Holbrook but I liked the premise... basically mixing any genre with noirish cop shit will get me interested. Like Predator 2. Anyway, this would up being pretty middle of the road. Again, not bad... but not blowing anyone away. I appreciate that Michael C. Hall tried a philly accent. Not sure it worked, but I appreciate that he tried. More than Boyd did...Ooh yeah let me wear this fake beard... great. Gah. So... yeah... this was like on the precipice of being pretty good. Maybe it gets too big at the end? Maybe I was bugged too much by the cell phone use in 1997. Maybe there were just a few too many plot holes or questions that distracted me while watching...
09.23.19	Vivarium	Lorcan Finnegan	Day Five! Second half! This is a sci-fi where Jesse Eisenberg and Imogen Poots look at a house in suburbia and get stuck in a weird alien dimension where they're forced to raise a child. It's pretty good! It works on the metaphorical level evident in the summary but also as a straight sci-fi where the alien kid is really creepy and the setting is pretty cool. I particularly liked the end where you get a brief glimpse behind the curtain at the larger alien world. Very well done, and good use of The Specials music too!
09.22.19	Trampa Infernal	Pedro Galindo III	This is another Morbido Crypt screening. This one is a slasher where the killer is like an amalgamation of Rambo, Michael Meyers, and Freddy Krueger all combined with a little Predator thrown in for good measure. That's kind of the only notable thing about it... otherwise it was pretty standard fare, if not five years later than what America was doing. Just a bunch of kids dying in the woods. Still, not bad...
09.22.19	Dolemite Is My Name	Craig Brewer	First secret screening! Thanks to the free beer available, everyone knew it would be something from Netflix. Of all the options, I'm happy we got to see this because it's a movie I was actually looking forward to seeing and feel like it played great with an audience. I like Rudy Ray Moore, Dolemite, and movies about making movies so this is right up my alley. I thought of it as a more enjoyable version of Badaaaassss! (that movie about the making of Sweet Sweetback's Badaaass Song). Eddie Murphy's great, the script is great, Craig Brewer did a good job making it, the music's great, most of the matching shots look very close to my memory of the original film. It put me in a mood to revisit the first two Dolemite films for sure. Really it was a highlight of the fest. The movie is so celebratory, it just makes you feel good. You feel like you're hanging out with friends watching them succeed. Good times.
09.22.19	She Mob	Harry Wuest	Next up was a lecture in conjunction with Kier-la Janisse's Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies which did the great Feminist Horror panel last year. This year it's The Morbido Crypt's guide to Mexican Fantasy and Horror Cinema by Abraham Castillo Flores, head programmer of Morbido Fest in Mexico City. I really liked Castillo's intros for Ship of Monsters and Trampa Infernal. This lecture was also very good, full of info about Mexico's genre film history. If I had one critique it would be that it went a bit fast, with a bunch of names and titles organized by decade. Usually with these things I try to absorb everything but take away one or two films that seem especially worth tracking down. With this one, the films went by so quickly that I didn't feel any reach out and grab me and make me want to see them. Still, it was very interesting and the sort of thing that stands out in the fest as being a little different. Yes, it means one less entry in this journal, but whatever. I hope they continue with this tradition and keep bringing Kier-la back with different guests every year. After that was another AGFA screening partnered with Something Weird video, this one being a sexploitation film about a lesbian gang that kidnaps a gigolo because he's bagged a sugar mama. The leader of the gang, Big Shim, also plays the sugar mama. Otherwise, it's one of those mystery films with fake credits because it was all semi-legal. The movie was mostly fun. Sometimes the boob scenes go on a bit too long for those in the theater not fapping but that's par for the genre. What was more interesting is the Q&A afterward where different film anthropologists in the audience chimed in with nuggets of uncovered information about the film and those involved. I love that people out there care enough to try and track this stuff down. Something about this part of film history is very alluring to me.
09.22.19	Memory: The Origins of Alien	Alexandre O Philippe	Day Four! This is (another) making-of doc about Alien. It's from the guy who did the doc about the Psycho shower scene. I liked this a lot but a couple things about the Q&A bugged me so let me get them out of the way first. The first is that he kept saying stuff like "another behind-the-scenes making-of doc would be fine but it's not what we do" I guess to try and say that this movie looks at Alien with a focus on the inspirations and mythology that the creative forces behind the film drew from, but you know it's also a behind-the-scenes making-of doc so don't pretend "it's not what we do." And the second thing is the last time he was at the fest for the Psycho doc he said not only did he do a whole movie about one scene, he could do a sequel too! Well????? Anyway, this was really good. You can tell that the movie was built around the chest-burster scene (not my own insight, he said as much during the Q&A) because that part of the film is built just like the psycho doc with different people watching the scene, pausing and breaking down shot by shot, photographing the subjects in a way that also shows the screen they're watching, etc. But the rest of the stuff draws from everything between mythology and Lovecraft. They pull in stuff that overlaps with the Jodorowsky's Dune doc, they pull in Giger's backstory, do a bunch of stuff on Dan O'Bannon (one of the coups of the film is that O'Bannon's widow agreed to be interviewed and open up the vault of Dan's records to be photographed). Overall, this fits nicely with the bevy of material already available surrounding the making of Alien. If you're obsessed or already very familiar with that movie, I doubt you get much new here but at the same time it's very interesting and entertaining to watch.
09.21.19	We Summon the Darkness	Marc Meyers	Earlier in the day there were autograph hounds hanging out across the street trying to get Michael C. Hall to sign their Dexter posters. Since I hadn't read the program too closely, I thought all those actors were here for this movie. It wasn't until I got in the theater and the guy doing the intro was all like "You guys ready for some heavy metal!?" that I realized I had been mistaken literally all day. This was neither the movie with Michael C. Hall in it (In the Shadow of the Moon) or the movie with Martin Kove in it (VFW), but instead the movie with Alexandria Daddario that was kind of like a slasher version of Heavy Metal Parking Lot. All goddamn day I was thinking it was that Shadow of the Moon movie. Oh well. I guess that's what happens when all these movies have random-ass names and I don't look closely enough to get their meaning. Over the years, it seems like there've been thirty films with similar titles... like "We Gotta Get Outta This Place" or "Why Don't You Go Play in Hell?" or "What's the Deal with Tuna?" They all run together after a while. I feel like you could make a horror movie set at a film festival and call it "What did you just see?" or "What are you seeing next?" Anyways, this was ok. Spoiler alert. This group of girls go to a concert and there are satanic panic-style murders going on and they meet a group of dudes in a van but the girls are the killers not the dudes. Except they kind of suck at killing people... and it's this church group doing it just to get more money and publicity... and the last half kind of gets by-the-numbers to me. It was ok, fun enough... but not great. I kind of think that Alexandria Daddario exec produced this just so she could star in a movie she didn't have to show her tits in. Which I'm all for... she certainly gets to act here... but it's kind of standard fare.
09.21.19	The McPherson Tape	Dean Alioto	Another AGFA screening, this one of a... I guess infamous shot-on-VHS alien encounter tape that was passed in bootleg form amongst the UFO community for years. Several notable things about this. The first is that the whole thing was filmed in one take with just a few cuts for time. The next is the complicated tale of messed up distribution which led to it being bootlegged in the first place, and the last was that there was a guy who didn't believe it wasn't real during the Q&A. Like, Joe Ziemba was like "oh shit" when he started going on about disinformation campaigns and stuff. So then the director says he can prove that it's fake and asks the guy to come up on stage. He asks for his wallet and reads his ID and says "Hey I know you, you were the main actor in the movie" and I totally didn't recognize him. So that was really fun. But yeah, he hired improv actors and they totally nailed it. It really felt like a real family to me. The aliens looked like kids in masks (which they were) but otherwise the film is really effective for such a minuscule budget! Plus it pre-dated Blair Witch by like a dozen years. Pretty crazy!
09.21.19	The Lodge	Severin Fiala, Veronika Franz	Spoiler alert. The new one from the people who did Goodnight Mommy. I'm pretty sure I liked this one better than that, although I wouldn't say I loved this. I did appreciate how they basically presented three options for what's going on rather than two in Goodnight Mommy, but I also felt disappointed that they went with evil children yet again. Even before the reveal though, this felt like a remake or new-and-improved version of Goodnight Mommy for English audiences. I guess it's fine that this just replaces their other movie for me, but it would've been cool if they just told a different story. That said, I did enjoy how the reveal happened earlier in this film and how the film develops a little past that to come to a nice and chilling conclusion, giving some come-comeuppance to those goddamn evil children.
09.21.19	Phil Tippett: Mad Dreams and Monsters	Gilles Penso, Alexandre Poncet	Doc about Phil Tippett. He worked on Star Wars and Jurassic Park and Dragonslayer and any other stop-motion film in the last generation. This was good in an expected way. Solid construction, telling me about his life (a little bit) and career (mostly). His work really is impressive. I liked the scene where he I guess explained how Go-Motion worked and I didn't understand a word he said. I guess that's why he's him and I'm me.
09.21.19	The Ship of Monsters	Rogelio A Gonzalez	Day Three! This is the first of this Morbido Crypt Mexican Genre series they programmed for the fest. This one is pure late 50s sci-fi with some humor and monsters and romance and musical thrown in for good measure. The Morbido Crypt guy introducing the film mentioned that many films of this era had so many genres packed into them in an effort to give something to each member of the family going to see it. This is something that I've heard to describe Bollywood cinema (and tend to agree with) so it's interesting to see another country take on the same strategy. Of course, this is like half as long as a Bollywood movie so maybe Mexicans aren't as patient as Indians I dunno. Anyway, this was really fun and actually funny. The monster designs, while very cheap, are still endearing. This is a great Sunday Matinee type movie, or Saturday as the case might be.
09.20.19	Deerskin	Quentin Dupieux	Day two ends with a new one from Quentin Dupieux. I think he's another one that just gets better and better with each film. While I liked Wrong, I feel like his mix of reality and surrealism is getting closer to Bunuel's best work as he goes on. This one is about a guy who's so enamored with this fringe deerskin coat that he basically reinvents himself, first as a filmmaker then as a murderer as he embodies the deerskin that he wears. The jacket starts to talk to him, telling him that it must be the only jacket in the world. It makes no sense, but it's funny! Maybe you could pull some social commentary out of it but mostly I think it's just fantasy juxtaposed with reality. I had a great time with it.
09.20.19	Color Out of Space	Richard Stanley	This was my most highly-anticipated film of the fest. I love Hardware to death, I find Richard Stanley incredibly interesting; the Lost Souls doc and his Q&A at the fest a few years ago stands out as a highlight in recent fest memory for me. Add to that a lifelong love of Lovecraft (me getting back into the Call of Cthulhu tabletop RPG also contributes) and I the idea of taking Lovecraft, Stanley, and Nic Cage and putting them in a movie together is magic. Plus the poster is stellar. So how's the movie? I'm happy to report that it's really good. It feels modern rather than like it's trying to capture the 1920s too hard, but the horror feels cosmic and strange rather than becoming a slasher halfway through. Nic Cage gets to be both understated and gonzo. Stanley has the budget to deliver a fully polished and gorgeous film that can play to mainstream audiences as well as Lovecraft-philes. In particular, I love how the effect of the color manifests in the surrounding landscape and nature. The flowers and trees... and also, the thing in the attic toward the end is like, right out of From Beyond. It's so good! Yay! I'm very happy! Also, the horse in this is named Comet. What are the chances that there are two movies in a row this fest with horses named Comet? Good thing no one fucked this one.
09.20.19	The Death of Dick Long	Daniel Scheinert	Spoiler alert on this one. Fair warning. This is ostensibly a dumb-people-trying-to-get-away-with-a-crime movie with the added layer of a mystery about what crime they did unfolding as the movie progresses. The dumb-people part is pretty funny in an Alabama version of Fargo sort of way but then about halfway through the movie you learn how Dick Long died. From having a horse fuck him. So... my immediate thought was that they probably thought this was the right audience for this film. That doc Zoo screened at SXSW a dozen years ago about a real guy who really died by having a horse fuck him. But I kind of feel like it played the opposite... almost exploitative of that real guy by making a dumb comedy about it. Plus the reveal makes the title into a terrible pun. So the reveal kind of deflated the movie for me. Not that I was offended by the horse fucking or anything, but I guess more that the movie had to go to such an outlandish place in order to justify itself. I guess you could say it left a bad taste in my ass. i mean mouth. I mean
09.20.19	Nail in the Coffin: The Fall and Rise of Vampiro	Michael Paszt	I don't watch wrestling but I do enjoy wrestling docs. There was that competition show on MTV back in the day too where people would train to be WWE stars. Basically anything behind the scenes about wrestling I enjoy way more than actual wrestling. As Noah said in his intro for this though, most wrestling docs are total bummers. This one has a bit of heart though, since it's not only about Candadian Luchadore superstar Vampiro but also his daughter and their relationship. It's mostly usual stuff: history, height of fame, drug use, career highlights, what's he doing now, etc.; but he's very charismatic and candid which makes for good viewing. He was in the theater; this was his first time to see the film. His repsonse: I didn't do THAT many drugs. His Q&A was great... very positive attitude. He even called out Noah for missing a guy who had his hand up for a while. "That's Vampiro coming out." Good stuff.
09.20.19	Reflections of Evil	Damon Packard	Day Two! First AGFA screening, this over-two-hours piece of "outsider cinema" is about a... homeless man? who... can't catch a bus? Honestly, I am not sure what this is about. The director stars in the film wearing crazy amounts of headphones and a pillow under his shirt to make himself look fatter. I guess the story is he used to be ok, just trying to sell watches on the street, but the evils of the world make him into a combustible ball of rage and over-eating? But there were protracted sequences of things like... dogs barking at him... and him running after buses as they drive away... and him vomiting on the street near an old nazi couple trying to watch television? Toward the end, he goes to Universal Studios and films the whole ET ride. He also freely uses television clips, commercials, Spielberg movies... dubbing his own name over a clip of Tony Curtis talking about some classic film. There are enough touches in here to make me think the guy actually knew what he was doing, but the film is so rough and hard to take that it's kind of a mystery as to what's going on. It KIND OF feels like a crazy person made this movie. So... that happened.
09.19.19	Blood Machines	Raphael Hernandez, Savitri Joly-Gonfard	This is like a sequel to a Carpenter Brut music video that had a nice visual-effects-heavy vibe and halfway story. I would've liked it more if it was like a long music video that made as much sense as Turbo Killer (the original video). Instead, there's a bunch of bad acting to try and sell a story that still didn't make any sense. The effects were pretty cool and I'm all for naked women but I did find a kind of misogynistic vibe to it which was kind of a bummer. And really I think my main problem is that there isn't enough music. It never cuts loose like Turbo killer does. I did like the weird laser gun where the lasers stick around and the miniatures of the ships are pretty cool. Just wish it either succeeded on a story level or didn't worry about narrative and delivered more of a visceral music video experience.
09.19.19	First Love	Takashi Miike	They gave Takashi Miike a lifetime achievement award and showed two of his movies. I saw this one, which is kind of standard Yakuza fare. I applaud him for being so versatile and prolific but have never been such a mega huge fan. This was good; no complaints. I'm trying to think of what sets this apart from Outrage or any other Yakuza film that I've seen though and I can't really... other than things getting a little bloodier at the end and there being a few good kills. I definitely liked it, but it didn't blow me away.
09.19.19	Jojo Rabbit	Taika Waititi	Ahoy Fantastic Fest! The fifteenth one, fourteenth for me! I didn't write any of these during the fest for the sake of sleep and having fun so unfortunately these will not be immediate reactions but oh well. So... Opening night film with Waititi and Stephen Merchant as guest. This was really good. I feel like Waititi gets a little better with each film. Here he shows a great balance of humor, pathos, message, and entertainment. Everyone gives great performances (including Scarlett Johansson who was actually asked to act for this, and both the main kid actors). Waititi also gave a charming and funny Q&A, clearly too wild for Evrim Ersoy to handle. I feel like Fantastic Fest has moved to a new era that more or less began when Tim League stopped being the person to introduce and close the festival. I really like Evrim's personality and his taste in film but it is a tiny bit less crazy, less unique, and i guess less edgy with Evrim and Annick at the helm. I like it a lot better than the years where these crazy Japanese Weird movies would play... certainly most of the logistics of the fest are now in a pretty good place (of course there are slip-ups here or there but for the most part it's been ironed out) and the tenor of the festival feels pretty assured. I like how few secret screenings there are, I like how much repertory programming was in this year, I like the scheduling and boarding process. The lobby still gets clogged and hard to move through - I feel like they should move to keep the back passage behind the press area as a dedicated entrance during boardings - but for the most part I feel like things have gotten into a pretty solid routine. Part of me misses the good old days but probably mostly due to nostalgia and a smaller attendance which afforded more spontaneity... but those days are gone and these are probably better.
09.13.19	It Chapter Two	Andy Muschietti	Played Hooky from work to see this in the theater. I figure with Fantastic Fest getting underway next week I need to get back into the habit of sitting in theaters... Although you know... the state of theaters these days. Both this Tinseltown (or whatever they call it nowadays) and the Galaxy Highland had comfy reclining seats with plenty of arm and leg room. I'm trying not to be pre-biased toward discomfort but something tells me that the stale beer smell of the Alamo won't be quite as nice and updated when I get down there. We'll see though... stay positive stay positive. Anyway, My lasting memories of the first It film are that it was pretty good except the part where they repeat the same scene seven times in a row where each kid gets scared by It in its various forms. I also remember thinking they were shooting themselves in the foot because the stuff with the adults wasn't as good as the stuff with the kids so the second movie was going to have a hard time. Well, imagine my surprise when a scene pops up where Mike says "hey everyone needs to go have a scene on their own where you get scared by It, then let's meet back here" and they proceed, once again, to have the same scene six times in a row. I guess it gives the films a nice symmetry? At least they had some flashbacks to the kids though. That brought the nice inter-weaving that I remember fondly from the book that was missing in the first film. And for the most part they used available CG to do a bunch of scenes that you couldn't really do back in the 80s so it was pretty cool to see stuff like the old lady and Paul Bunyan and things like that. I also like most of the adult cast with the exception of Ben. They changed the ending. Not only did they change the ending but they have a running joke about Bill writing terrible endings. I am definitely in the camp of agreeing that most pre-2000 Stephen King books had weak endings but it's a tiny bit self-referential for me here. Especially when you have James Ransone and Bill Hader being funny enough to supply the requisite comic relief. I think I remember from the book saying something like "you used the word 'fuck' 568 times in your last book' which is better. Actually, overall... not that much time is spent on the characters' success. It still comes through that they're all successful which I guess is all you need... but anyway, this new ending is probably better. Certainly more movie-ish (especially with Bev and Ben). I'm not 100% on my memory of the book but I feel like the Native American stuff wasn't in there? Of course - i think I mentioned this in my notes for the first movie - one of my strongest memories of the book is an anecdote I think Mike reads from the 1800s where the whole town shot down some bandit in the street. These little anecdotes to show that not only has It been there a very long time but It also has a seeping effect on the whole town, turning it Dark. I'm pretty surprised they kept the opening scene in. It seemed a little more topical when the book first came out but I guess it still works now. Ok, I've rambled on long enough. For the record, I liked it ok. I don't think it was as strong as the first movie but it's still one of my favorite books and I think they did a good job adapting it to screen. It felt a little long, especially at the end, but I guess that's fine. I'd rather that than have them rush stuff.
08.02.19	Avengers: Endgame	Anthony Russo, Joe Russo	Saw this. It was good. I like that it made some fun at Back to the Future then did exactly what Back to the Future Part 2 did for the whole second act. I also found the funny bits funny... the end battle was suitably epic seeing the whole ensemble of 98 heroes... The Internet didn't spoil the WHOLE thing, just most of it... so yeah... they didn't screw it up.
07.28.19	Deadwood: The Movie	Daniel Minahan	Over the past several months I re-watched The Sopranos. It was good, with the later seasons being better than I remembered. After that, I thought it would be nice to do something similar with Deadwood since the movie was coming out. Where I found Sopranos benefited from binge-y viewings of 2-3 episodes at a time, I found each episode of Deadwood so great and full of rich content that I limited myself to one episode at a time just to savor it. It's so... so... good. And the third season, which I remember watching week to week and thinking it was straining under the weight of its cast and ever-expanding scope, I found this time to be suitably concise and just as good as the others. Most notably, I remember not thinking much of the theater troop's addition to camp but Brian Cox's character is so great... he's just a joy to watch interact with the rest of the town. The one faltered note in the series is how the third season ends. There's a over-quick reveal of Hearst's travel plans and a rushed deception that moral anchors Bullock and Utter seem to have no problem with. Maybe my favorite thing about this movie is its attention to resolve the weaknesses of that finale and supply a much more fitting goodbye to the show and its characters. In that, I think the movie does quite well. I confess that I watched the finale and the movie on the same night since I was excited to finally consume new material all these years later (and after a pretty lengthy process of only watching 3-4 episodes a week leading up to this), but all of the cast and the town itself presented themselves as the same people and place that I loved being around since the beginning of season 1. Sure it's 10 years later, people have grown older, and the town looks more civilized with some actual brick construction, but it still felt absolutely the same. And I guess that's why this movie finally exists: to step foot in the muddy thoroughfare once more and spare a few hours for a final and proper goodbye to this extraordinarily well-written show brought to life by a large and uniformly excellent cast. I didn't need or want any new revelations or some twist on the formula... It's a victory in that this felt like another episode and didn't disappoint. And I was very glad to spot Garret Dillahunt in there as well.
07.27.19	Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood	Quentin Tarantino	I saw a movie! In a theater! it's my birthday! I'm old! I really liked this. For a movie lover, I feel like there's no working director out there who likes to show off his love of movies more than Tarantino. This one is just a buffet of cinematic delights. He got to make fake american western tv shows, euro-crime chase scenes, classic hollywood hullabaloo, a bevvy of amazing posters for fake films, and a bunch more. Plus he gets to make actual Hollywood into the nostalgia-soaked version of his dreams and drive around in it all day and night to 70 songs of the period... it all looks like it was the fantasy-fulfillment of a film geek lifetime. Going in, i had zero clue of the story, and I was pleasantly surprised there. Leo was fantastic, you want to hang out with Brad Pitt every day, Margot Robbie got more screen time than I thought, and pretty much everyone else was in it less than I thought they'd be. I guess with that much room for very small roles, they got to pad out the cast list with all this crazy talent and still have a movie pretty much centered on two dudes hanging out. The ending is pretty good too. so yeah... another great one I think. And it's not so heavy that I'd be hesitant to watch it again. soon.
06.29.19	Captain Marvel	Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck	Whoa, I watched a movie! Oh, a marvel movie... does this really count? I feel like these are basically one long tv series at this point which fits in nicely considering all I'm watching these days is tv and youtube. Anyway, I thought this was gonna suck at first because I really didn't like all the Kree bullshit, but when it got to Earth I was worried because it was trying to be funny like the first Thor, but I think this did a better job at being somewhat light-hearted than Thor 1 (not Ragnarok) did and in the end I liked it well enough. I probably liked the end the most when she has that Neo moment and it's like the end of Skyrim when you have all your skills maxed. I did spend a long time thinking about whether or not that grey-on-white NIN shirt actually existed in the 90s. I certainly don't remember it. I had a black-on-black and I remember a red-on-white Sin shirt and of course white-on-black but I don't think I ever saw grey-on-white. I think that's movie magic.
06.15.19	Rock Opera	Bob Ray	I stumbled upon this and wound up watching it... pretty much just to see some Austin circa 1999. I feel like it was sort of going for somewhere between Slacker and True Romance but it wound up just being a lot of scenes of dudes doing drugs. Kind of funny, this director Bob Ray would go on to create these absolutely bizarre... ads? shorts? collaborations with a controversial lawyer here in town named Adam Reposa which are pretty great. I definitely feel like people like Bob Ray and Adam Reposa and maybe Alex Jones represent the fiercely independent strain of Austin culture... and by that I guess I mean they're fuckin' nuts. This movie felt like an indie from the early 90s except it was made just a few years before I got here. Looking at imdb, it looks like this might not've premiered until 2005, just a month or two after I moved. It feels a lot older than that, with lots of key ignitions and pay phones and whatnot. Sort of as usual though, most of Austin's cinematic output hasn't been as good as it should be. This starts off slow and meandering then becomes low-grade psychedelia followed by amateurish thriller. But there seems to be a ton of local bands both on the soundtrack and acting in the movie, which I suppose has some value. Mostly it just felt like a super weird artifact of this city and I kinda liked it seen through that lens.
05.27.19	Game of Thrones: The Last Watch	Jeanie Finlay	This is a feature length doc documenting the production of Game of Thrones' final season. It's really well done, focusing on several crew to tell the story of this gargantuan production. Considering the current backlash against the ending, this goes a long way to humanize things... although it's a bit of a cheat because really every movie is very hard to make, every tv show is years of hard work and long hours... to know that something took a lot of effort shouldn't sway your opinions of the work. That's my belief anyway. But all that aside, the real star of this is the Stark extra guy. I liked the guy in charge of snow and the location manager who swore like a sailor but the Stark extra guy you just love immediately. So against the backdrop of this show, you get these human stories which are very endearing. To me, that elevates this above your average BTS doc.
05.11.19	The Predator	Shane Black	Meh. Even after hearing from... everyone... that this was bad i still for some reason had some hope that there was something good I could pull out of watching it. No such luck.
04.12.19	Bird Box	Susanne Bier	Probably unfair to call it a rip-off of A Quiet Place since it seems to be based on a book, but definitely severely coincidental to come out with the movie where monsters kill people who see them right after the massive success of the movie where monsters kill people who make noise. Still, i'd heard this was terrible and I didn't think it was. Maybe they're mad you never actually see the monsters? That it's just wind a la The Happening? But you know it was pretty terrible in Cloverfield when they added that shot at the end just to show more of the creature... Mostly i was interested in watching this because I'd heard it was very Lovecraftian. It was... more or less. More like Lovecraft-adjacent, but still many of the one guy's drawings were very familiar and I guess the whole concept of insanity recalls Lovecraft by default. Indeed the idea of just seeing something breaks one's mind is definitely right on the money, as is unfathomable beasts triggering the end of mankind. What I didn't quite get is what these monsters' deal was. By the end they seemed pretty malevolent and predatory toward humans but I guess they aren't really physical beings? I feel like if this were 100% Lovecraft then the monsters would've eaten everyone. I think the creatures here just exist to serve the conceit of the film... at least the creatures in A Quiet Place were explained to not have eyes or whatever. But still, not as bad as I'd heard.
04.06.19	The Highwaymen	John Lee Hancock	The story of catching Bonnie & Clyde. This was decent. Probably my favorite thing about it was the portrayal of the fugitives and how outside of their story that we were. Costner and Harrelson gave good performances but this movie did a good job of showing the brutality of Barrow's crimes in context of life in 1930s south. I feel like the documentary will probably be more interesting though? I dunno... it just seems like this and lots of movies like it... i can look at the... whatever you call the picture they show on netflix since it's not even a poster... i can look at one still of the movie and know exactly what it is. I almost don't even need to see it. Is that me being a dick? or me being not as into movies at this moment in my life? or the movies being boring compared to good tv? I don't really know what's going on, but I wanted to at least try to voice what i'm feeling. Because there's nothing wrong with this movie. I think it was very competently made and based on a good story that i'm interested in with good production value and performances and all that... but still i had to watch it in two sittings for some reason.
03.15.19	Triple Frontier	JC Chandor	Netflix continues to attract top-tier talent to do what seems like expensive and indulgent movies that wind up being just ok. There's nothing technically wrong with this, but it also doesn't do anything amazing. I had decent hopes that this would be a really solid military heist movie and it was sort of solid with some pretty scenery and that's about it. Have to say, I'm not really in a movie phase at the moment. I just finished re-watching The Sopranos which was better than I remember then to go to this... kind of boring!
01.12.19	Ocean's Eight	Gary Ross	This was alright. Not sure why they had to kill Danny off. Also, usually heist movies work by laying out a plan, having things go wrong and feeling that tension of the plan going awry, then learning that they had planned for the things to go wrong and it's all good. This one was more like they lay out the plan, execute the plan, then surprise! it went EXTRA well. Kind of a weird take on the genre that I'm not sure if I like or not.
12.30.18	Annihilation	Alex Garland	Finally getting around to this. I mostly liked it I guess... certainly I liked aspects of it: Things I liked -the music at the end. The instrumentation for the climax of the film was great and I found myself letting the credits play just for the music. Very good drone stuff that suits the vibe of the film -The ideas behind it. I liked that it wasn't just an action movie -the bear scene was pretty cool although it made no sense. Things I didn't like: -Something with the pacing felt very off to me. Maybe it was Jennifer Jason Leigh's performance but there was a lack of energy to the whole piece -The tone comes off as too similar to Arrival, which I feel was executed much better.
12.22.18	They Shall Not Grow Old	Peter Jackson	From the get-go, the intent of this doc is not to give a history lesson of World War I but to present the experience of a British soldier as it was back then. For all the fact stuff like which battle was which, when the tanks came in, where they were stationed and whatnot I couldn't help but think back to listening to the hardcore history series Blueprint for Armageddon. The stuff that Dan Carlin's podcast series can't give you though is what's so special about this. For the first half hour or so, it feels like a typical documentary constructed with audio interviews over old footage. A few shots are clearly enhanced or slowed down with computers which give the imagery a liquidy movement to it that I found both noticeable and offputting. When they start to talk about the trenches though, Jackson's crazy restoration footage kicks in and I'm watching colorized, framerate-corrected footage and it seems like the footage was captured ten years ago rather than a hundred. And what's crazier is that after a while I stopped marveling at how amazing the footage looks and just took it for granted. For the footage alone, this film is remarkable. The stories that the interviewed veterans tell are quite powerful but intensify a thousand percent when you're watching actual examples of what they're talking about on the screen. Not recreations, not animation, but actual footage of dudes sleeping in flooded trenches and fields of corpses strewn amongst barren craters and lines of barbed wire. And some amazingly bad teeth. Holy shit.
12.20.18	They'll Love Me When I'm Dead	Morgan Neville	THIS is the story of Orson Welles' last film. Not to spoil anything but the very end of this film summarizes my feelings exactly. This is a great doc that explores both the conception and details of shooting and trying to finish The Other Side of the Wind but also Welles' late career and life in general. While I bet a similar feature-length documentary could be made (and just as interesting) for each of Welles' projects, that doesn't diminish the quality of this one. Unfortunately, I feel like I've written out all my thoughts on the film in the previous two entries, so I'm left with not much to say about this other than it was very good, I enjoyed it very much, and I'm glad I watched them in the order that I did. Had I seen this first, I'm not sure I would've sat through the film itself and even if I did, I'm sure my reception of the film would be skewed by all the stuff talked about in this doc. There's a hell of a lot of Peter Bogdanovich in all three of these things, both as a young man acting and an old man giving interviews about the film. I'm not sure if I'd started this journal when I first explored Bogdanovich's oeuvre and was reading his excellent interview books but I feel like my opinion of the guy has been quite a roller coaster over the course of the last fifteen or so years. The quality of his early work and writing, counterbalanced by Easy Riders Raging Bulls and hearing other more personal stories from those who've had interactions with him, re-balanced again by his recent work and seeing him in stuff like this basically trading on his stories with more famous people but also humbled by life... I know he's just a guy who has good traits and bad like anyone else, but in some ways I feel like the maturation of my own tastes in film has been reflected in my feelings toward him. For a while I was a total fan, then rebelled, and now I take him on his own terms and limitations. I guess you could say the same of Orson Welles and his work. Can't argue with Citizen Kane, love F for Fake, but there's also stuff like The Other Side of the Wind.
12.20.18	A Final Cut for Orson	Ryan Suffern	This is a short (40 minute) doc telling the technical and logistical account of constructing The Other Side of the Wind and getting it finished in accordance with what Orson Welles had in mind. Watching it made me feel like my previous note (about the film itself) was pretty harsh. So much hard work went into restoring and completing this... but you know, every movie takes a lot of hard work from a lot of people to get made so my feelings on the film itself have to stand independently from how I feel about the making of it. I did find it interesting to see Frank Marshall and Peter Bogdanovich's reaction to watching the newly-restored work print. All of the interview footage here described the film as interesting and bizarre and unique but never "good." But still... I find it incredibly cool that such a talent pool came together in service of Welles' memory and influence to make his final work see the light of day. In general, for the half of his projects that were unfinished in some way, it seems like war more work has been done by people since his death to restore his vision than anyone offered while he was alive. And it looks like a shit ton of work was done to finish this film. Crazy amounts. Even though this doc feels like it would be a bonus feature on a blu-ray, i still enjoyed watching it more than the film itself. Now, for the feature-length doc.
12.20.18	The Other Side of the Wind	Orson Welles	To me, one of the major coups Netflix pulled this year is releasing this unfinished final Orson Welles film. Going into this, I felt like it should've maybe been left unfinished and stand only as a Jodorowsky's Dune type doc (which they also released and I'm looking forward to seeing sometime this week). But maybe the movie has some further glimpses of Welles' genius which would be worth experiencing. Unfortunately, I found this incomprehensible. At first I thought it was because I was tired so I saved the second half for when I was more awake. Nope. It's a complete mess. I think, if anything, it is worthy as a fitting end to Welles' career: one that started at the top and spent its duration fraying and dismantling itself; overcome by the burden of genius. I mean I could write all the same stuff I wrote about Mr. Arkadin a few months ago, but at least that film had a beginning, middle, and end. This one is just an editor's nightmare of random footage. Out of a hundred hours of footage, there must not have been a single master shot. Yet every frame is visually interesting. Many of the techniques on display here (different film stocks, overlapping dialogue, an unbelievable meta-narrative about Bogdanovich, Huston, and Welles) would've been ahead of their time had this movie come out in 1975 (or even 85), but I honestly wouldn't know what the movie was about were it not for the blurb on Netflix's pause screen or the imdb summary. And, the constant (i mean CONSTANT) cutting is super exhausting after about five minutes. But with such similarities between this and Mr. Arkadin and F for Fake and even The Trial, I feel like this is just how Welles' brain works. It's the level he thinks on. My guess is that, to him, this is cinema in its purest form. And it's true that there is just so. much. shit. going on here you could concievably pause it every few minutes and watch again until you absorb everything, but with this movie I think it would be a mostly academic exercise. There's so little story here that I can't be bothered to care about the shifting viewpoints and crazy mise en scene and gorgeous lighting on all the old guys' wrinkly faces. So... at least I got through it. Now I'm free to get onto the good stuff: the docs about the making of this thing.
12.18.18	The Ballad of Buster Scruggs	Joel Coen, Ethan Coen	A stellar anthology of all sorts of different tones and subgenres within the Western umbrella, all filtered through the Coens' sensibilities. I had to look up afterward if it was supposed to be a mini-series and they re-cut it into a single film and apparently that's not the case, but I couldn't help but wonder what it would've been like as one (perhaps it being released on Netflix where their algorithm apparently thinks all I want to do all day is watch tv shows and comedy specials), yet certain symmetries and thematic ties do exist between the disparate stories. I have to say, I loved this. I do kind of wish I could've taken each story in on its own and not felt a push to get through them all in one sitting, I'm having a hard time picking a favorite. Because they're so different in tone, they scratch different itches for me. The first one is like a send-up of the old Roy Rogers hollywood Western, the second has a phenomenal (and criminally short) performance by Stephen Root, the third one... yeah this one's not my favorite, but the fourth one is like a tour de force Tom Waits performance with absolutely beautiful photography. The fifth one is like a whole movie unto itself, and the sixth contains some of the most Coen-esque bestest dialogue I've heard in a long time. Particularly the speech by the dude from Major League as the trapper. Man, those Coens can write. But six is kind of a lot to sit through and anthology films have that fleetingness for me for whatever reason. I hope I can hold onto this one though... because there is a ton of good stuff here.
12.17.18	Roma	Alfonso Cuaron	So I'm on holiday break from work. One of the items on my list of stuff to work on while off work is to catch up on all these netflix movies that I want to see, starting with this. To me, this feels as much a love letter to Fellini as it does to Cuaron's childhood maid. Granted, this has much more of a story than what I remember of most of the Fellini movies I've seen, but the languid almost anecdotal presentation of scenes, the slowly panning wide shots showing as much as possible of the city and surroundings, and rather bizarre scenes of new years parties and training grounds led by luchadores all feel very Fellni-esque to me. I mean it's called Roma. Yet Roma also refers to the neighborhood in Mexico City which Cuaron grew up, and the movie is also mixed with quintessential Cuaron touches like the very long shots, setting grand action as a background to intimate moments of peril, achingly autobiographical details (and of course a visit to the beach). Really wonderful filmmaking. My only... the only thing keeping me from loving it more than I do is that meandering Fellini pace. It's been a while since I've watched a Fellini movie but I definitely remember the experience of them and how it's folly to try and look for any sort of plot. You have to let them wash over you and see which scenes resonate with you afterward. Kind of a polar opposite of a movie like Gravity. So about half-way through I had to tell myself to relax and not rush anything and sure enough by about three quarters through I was a hundred percent into it. Gotta respect these masterful cinematic expressions, even if I don't feel the need to re-watch this right away.
12.09.18	American Made	Doug Liman	Tom Cruise is drug smuggler Barry Seal. Perhaps I'm just too fresh off Narcos' fourth season where everything felt 95% truthful and authentic, but this felt too "inspired" and hollywood-fake for me. I feel like Blow told this story better, although i am interested to know if George Jung and Barry Seal and Mickey Munday (from that doc Cocaine Cowboys) all knew each other. I mean there couldn't have been too many american pilots working for the medellin cartel right? although maybe there was... who knows. Anyway, this was ok, but not great.
12.01.18	Solo: A Star Wars Story	Ron Howard	Putting this on felt more like getting it over with just to be caught up, but it wasn't as bad as everyone said it was. It wasn't fantastic, but there was some good stuff here. In general, I like the idea of "side mission" movies in the Star Wars universe. I suspect if Favreau's Mandalorian TV series is any good then it will scratch this itch more than having to hang it off of origin stories of characters who weren't designed to carry movies by themselves. But Woody Harrelson and Donald Glover were pretty good and I imagine a Star Wars movie - even an origin movie - is like winning the lottery for production designers and art departments. All that stuff felt right and was cool to see. And then there's one pretty big spoiler cameo, which I liked but am pretty sure it will never go anywhere right? Anyway, I liked this more than I thought I would.
11.11.18	Lifeforce	Tobe Hooper	Wow. I have to say, most films that gain some reputation never live up to the hype when you sit down and watch them. I guess it's just the subjective nature of art and how easy it is to let any preconceived notions affect your enjoyment. Lifeforce lives up to the hype. Mostly in its audacity of budget. I don't know that I've seen actual zombie movies with this many zombies, actual disaster movies with this much destruction, actual space movies with such complete and ornate spacecraft sets. Plus you have these puppeted shriveled dudes moving around and souls flying through the air and so much nudity and there's like a lazer gun? and a ritual sword dagger? and Patrick Stewart? It's like every 80s genre movie in one. Unbelievable that it exists. Quite a movie to go out on too. Really the only thing I didn't like about it was Steve Railsback, but what're ya gonna do about that... Also a nice thematic connection to Autopsy of Jane Doe in that there's a beautiful woman lying naked on a table for most of it. Gosh, not sure what else to say. I'll have to let that sit with me for a while I think. So thus brings to an end another year of DVRfest, another solitary weekend of catching up on movies. I didn't fill my one slot of seeing something old this year but just ran out of time. Let's dump some stats and call it good. 16 movies in the past week (2.29/day), 18 in the past month (0.6/day), 95 in the past year (ouch) (0.26/day), and 3153 since the site started 14 years ago (0.62/day). Netflix still reigns supreme in terms of venue with 776 movies seen, but 'Internet' is fast growing with 355. Granted, sometimes i use that venue as a general catch all for various streaming services like HBOGO and whatnot so it's not all nefarious, but it mostly is. And I can't finish my notes for this fest without the obligatory mention of Peter Bogdanovich and his note cards. I forget how long he did his - 17 years? 18? - but I'm getting close. Of course, he finished because he had made Last Picture Show and Paper Moon and was probably too busy to keep a closet full of note cards updated and I work in a cubicle all day. So maybe since I'm not doing anything interesting with my real life, I'll keep these going till I die. Of course, with sites like letterboxd out there now allowing everyone to do this without the labor of printing note cards or writing a crappy php website, I'm not sure even a 30-year collection of thoughts on movies is interesting to anyone. It still remains interesting to me however so I will keep doing it. Plus, it's not such a burden when you only see 95 movies in a goddamn year. If you take out 30 for Fantastic Fest and 15 for this, that's like two movies a month. Jesus. I blame the Golden Age of Television that we're in... Anyway, see you next year.
11.11.18	Ghost Stories	Jeremy Dyson, Andy Nyman	Honestly my draw to this film was based solely on the fantastic posters used to market it. Not knowing anything about it, I sort of thought or hoped it would be a throwback anthology similar to the old hammer or amicus films. I guess that's kind of what it was, with a little less throwback and more Martin Freeman. I liked it pretty well and thought the end was earned and not trash. I could've used a bit more development of each of the individual stories but I also like how it's a pretty lean 90 minutes so lengthening them probably wouldn't serve the movie as a whole. In any case, good stuff. Ok. It's quarter to midnight and I have one last movie on the program. A movie I've had to nod and hide the fact I haven't seen it multiple times. Hopefully I've saved the best for last because it's time to enter
11.11.18	The Autopsy of Jane Doe	Andre Ovredal	In the early days of DVRfest, a sizable contingent of what was in the backlog were horror movies taped for Halloween that I hadn't gotten around to yet. This year, there were a bunch of blog posts like 'best of the decade' or 'best of 2000s' and whatnot, typical clickbait crap. Of course I skimmed them, always on the lookout for hidden gems that I'd overlooked. This was on several of those lists and I procured it based on the cast alone. Mostly Brian Cox as a coroner was enough for me. It's pretty good! Quite a change from the CG-fest of Trollhunter but a good script, creepy yet new setting, and ultimately an interesting take on a familiar trope. I liked that Cox and Emile Hirsch were always on the same side, that the film never went to unsaid resentments coming out in some argument or whatever. I also like that at the first overt sign of weirdness they were both like 'fuck this shit.' Pretty good.
11.11.18	Gambit	Ronald Neame	This is another one of those classic Alamo trailers they'd show in front of any heist movie. It has a classic tagline which is something along the lines of "Go ahead and tell the ending but please don't ruin the beginning!" (spoiler alert: there ain't shit in the beginning, but I guess "we'd appreciate if you didn't spoil the first third of the movie" doesn't sound as good). This was quite fun. Michael Caine in his prime, Shirley MacLaine at her most charming, and a bunch of lavish sets meant to be some exotic locale. And yes there is a bit of a turn which probably worked in 1966, but the second two-thirds is just as, if not more, fun. A nice little late afternoon jaunt of a movie. Up next is... hmm, what's next?
11.11.18	24x36: A Movie About Movie Posters	Kevin Burke	This played Fantastic Fest the year I was in Peru, and I've been meaning to see it ever since. I didn't kickstart this one even though it looks like everyone else at fantastic fest did. The movie is like one long ad for Mondo. I was really hoping for like 50% history and at least a mention of movie posters from around the world but instead, it's like 10% history which just serves as context to talk about Mondo and the niche industry it created. That and the production value of the movie is pretty lacking compared to Nye's film. Not that it's a comparison really, but it was noticeable. So... yeah. This was pretty thin. Not much to hang a movie on. You might say it... i dunno, some other poster joke. It was nice to learn that the big guy I see at the Alamo every year is named Pineapple. I wonder how many docs exist because of the Alamo and how long it will take before every person I know from there is on screen. So odd to a) see Tim Doyle on my home TV, and b) disagree with what he's saying. Chris Popkoff and Daniel Kerr, if you sit for an interview on some Weird Wednesday doc, please let me know. So this is where my programming breaks down a bit. I still have a pile of movies but no real plan as to which I'll watch and when. I think I'll go purely by format right now and pick something else off the shelf as it's probably the last movie I have the house to myself for.
11.11.18	Bill Nye: Science Guy	David Alvarado, Jason Sussberg	Day three starts with this Bill Nye doc. A few things up front: 1) i backed this on kickstarter. I think it's the last movie I'm going to back on kickstarter. Even when it's successful and they finish the film, they shop it around all the festivals looking for a buyer before they let their backers see it (unless you happen to be in a town where they're already showing it, as was the case with this and sxsw I believe). So by the time I actually get the blu-ray that I pledged for, literally everyone else in the world has seen it. It's a flaw. and 2) I backed this before his latest netflix show, Bill Nye Saves the Universe, aired. I didn't love that show so much so I'm hoping this doc delivers a bit more of what I want: background on the guy and his history and some humor and maybe a little more dignity and less preaching that he does on his Netflix show. Ok all of that out of the way, let's watch. So maybe i was being too harsh. This was good and I'm glad my name is somewhere in those tiny credits as helping to make it possible. Plus I did get a cool shirt... so there's that. Anyway, yeah I liked this. It's pretty much exactly what I wanted. Some background, a little history, a little family, a little pathos, a little humor. It brought some interesting perspective to the Ken Ham debate and maybe a little scope to why Nye seems so outspoken about climate change these days. I'm probably biased because I agree with him (although not always. I think somewhere in my notes for when I read Michael Crichton's State of Fear or when I saw An Inconvenient Truth I was pretty skeptical), but to me this was an honest portrait of the guy. Of course he's no movie poster... if only there was a whole documentary about movie posters.
11.10.18	Che: Part Two	Steven Soderbergh	Huh. These/this was pretty good. It's harder than I thought to think of this as one singular movie. Not only are they separated by time and location but also the visual look and style of each film are different (not to mention getting two entries in imdb). I think maybe half of these notes belong on the other entry, but I watched them together so for this time my feelings about them are also together. It's much harder to make a movie about losing that people will like. I'm not sure if the Bolivian movie can stand on its own without the Cuban movie to invest you. It's also interesting how much of a war movie both of these are. I was really expecting more biopic-ishness, but you don't really learn much about Che's childhood or anything like that. I guess his worldview and personal code are the things he's known for today and those manifest in his actions in war so in a certain sense this tells the tale without having to overexplain. Benicio did great. I'm not sure what will serve as his best performance, but he killed it here. There are also other recognizable faces that pop up every once in a while, more in the second film than first, but mostly I was there with the revolucion. In the first film, I felt like Soderbergh couldn't help but look to Oliver Stone for inspiration, especially with the non-combat stuff like the interview and the UN, but maybe that's just because JFK and Nixon hold a monopoly on 60s-era politics films for me. That and the different film "stock" (I'm guessing they are just different filters that the video is run through these days?) but it's hard to credit Stone with that when Soderbergh also did it to great effect in Traffic. What feels like long notes for a long movie. I liked this. It certainly held my attention for all 4-ish hours. I certainly had an easier time getting through it versus Tales of Hoffman, and now that it's over I'm glad the dice decided this because I probably wouldn't have ever sat down and watched it otherwise which would be a shame. So that does it for the Criterion Random Roll and for Day Two of the fest. Day 3 will start with a double feature of documentaries that I have on the shelf.
11.10.18	Che: Part One	Steven Soderbergh	Stack 2 position 2: spine 383. Ok, confession time. I originally rolled Che. But there's no way I'm starting a 5-hour movie at 9pm! So... breaking my own rules... I get it... but come on. And to make matters worse? The second role also came up Che! The fates are shaming me! You know what... what am I afraid of? fuck it let's do it. Stack 2 position 6: spine 496 (notes on the movie itself in the entry for Part Two)
11.10.18	The Tales of Hoffman	Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger	Stack 1 position 7: spine 317. Woof. This is what I was afraid The Red Shoes would be: a full two hours of 100% unapologetic opera. There was a point, maybe twenty minutes in when the "prelude" ended, that I seriously wondered how I was going to make it through the whole two hours. Really the only thing that did it was marveling at the various cinematic tricks they used to augment the opera for the screen. I mean if you're going to film an opera then this is the way you do it. It's just a shame that I'm so averse to it as a genre. I think I don't have enough appreciation for the music so I need more story and the story is nowhere near fast or intricate enough for me. I mean, This movie is about three women this dude Hoffman loved: a puppet who comes apart, a possessed courtesan who tries to steal his reflection, and an opera singer (original) who dies of consumption. The end. And to make matters worse, the movie explains each act in text in the beginning! So from a story perspective, I was bored senseless. Again, I have the utmost respect for this film... it's masterfully made... opera fans should see it and own it (probably on blu, the dvd had vibrant colors but some artifacting), but it's not for me. That's a hard lesson learned. Ok. Dinner time. I'm hoping to fit two more movies in tonight, so I think I'll only roll the dice once more then switch to a horror movie for midnight. So let's see what's... Next.
11.10.18	Ministry of Fear	Fritz Lang	Stack 3 position 1: spine 649. There's another Fritz Lang movie in the stack and it's sort of my most dreaded roll. So I was happy to see this hit the player instead. As it turns out, Dr. Mabuse might have been more interesting even though it's a silent. This one plays out like a run of the mill wartime thriller with Ray Milland accidenting his way into a Nazi plot. It felt like Hitchcock lite to me, maybe most notable for precursors of much better noirs to come with Dan Duryea in a very small part. Next.
11.10.18	Mr. Arkadin	Orson Welles	Stack 2 position 1: spine 322. This is one of the bigger DVD boxes in the collection because Criterion, doing what they're famous for, packaged three different cuts of this movie along with the 240-page book that Welles wrote and adapted to film. I probably didn't love this movie enough to go through the commentary tracks and watch all three versions and all that... I just trust the folks at Criterion that whatever led to this "comprehensive" version that I watched were all in an attempt to appease the late Mr. Welles' ideal execution of his project. Welles is such an interesting subject from a cinematic archeology point of view. The back of the book even suggests that it was not exactly Welles who wrote it but "an uncredited English translation of a French text adapted and translated from Welles's writing by a friend and a ghostwriter." If this hadn't come up randomly I might've programmed a double feature with Netflix's newly-finished Other Side of the Wind and its accompanying doc to fully dive into the Welles rabbit hole. For now, though, I finally get to move this off the top shelf. The movie, much like the story of the making of the film, is nearly incomprehensibly complex. I feel like the most stand-out Welles films, much like Terry Gilliam's oeuvre, are the films where a certain elegance arises out of his baroque genius. While the frame and the narrative are still unbelievably staged with expert attention to detail, the film as a whole becomes understandable on a simple level (rosebud's his innocence of youth). The not-so-successful pictures wind up drowning in the maelstrom of thoughts and ideas that must be a constant state in his brain. Or at least that's what it feels like for me while I'm watching. This movie is like it's on fast forward. Every shot is so involved and jarring, but there's no time to take everything in before there's some new visual stimulus, some new idea presented. The dialogue and story are too complicated and delivered with overwhelming layers of noise and movement that nothing really makes sense, and even as the film goes on and I think I have an understanding of what's going on, I have to second-guess myself that it's really true because everything's so frenetic. But I don't feel like the freneticism is intentional. I think that's just Welles' brain and way of making a movie. Maybe it's just in how I read it... because I feel like every frame is interesting and probably has a deeper meaning but it's just so much that the dots never quite connect. What I will say is that this has to hit like a billion locations around the world. I can understand why he always had such trouble completing his projects because there's no compromise here. Pre CG, London is really London and those Spanish castles are really there in the background. You have to applaud the effort. So my reaction to this is pretty mixed. I don't think it's successful as a piece of entertainment, but I do think it's extraordinary in many ways. Sort of like getting glimpses of genius through a fever dream. Incidentally, I get the same exact feeling from his film essay F for Fake, except there I feel like he nailed that style and tempo. I think F for Fake may end up being my favorite film of his just because I so strongly identify every aspect of that film with what I think of Welles himself. Next.
11.10.18	General Idi Amin Dada	Barbet Schroeder	Stack 1, position 4: Spine 153. I probably picked this up around the time that Last King of Scotland movie came out even though I never got around to seeing that either. It was probably a great surprise to see a leader of a country boast and posture like he does in this film back in the 70s. Watching it for the first time today, I just see shades of Hussein, North Korea, Putin, and Trump, which makes it less funny. Plus when he's on the jungle cruise boat pointing out all the crocodiles, you can't help but wonder how many of his enemies wound up in those waters. So there's a chilling aspect of it too. Wound and crossed together like that, Dada does make a great subject as he's easy to laugh and dance while you also know he's ordered numerous disappearances. Plus the rough narrative nature of a doc during the 70s just presents these random scenes, leaving it for you to stitch together the overall story. I found it a little long at times but ultimately pretty interesting. Next.
11.10.18	Dead and Buried	Gary Sherman	I totally fell asleep for this so had to finish it in the morning. Not exactly great festival protocol but good thing it's my festival and I do what I want! I'm glad I saw the second half of this with fresh eyes rather than half-asleep because it's pretty good! O Bannon and Shusett definitely took a page from Ira Levin and the lead is basically Roy Scheider in Jaws but the ending reveal is pretty awesome and Jack Albertson as Dobbs the funeral owner is really great. I do kind of wish the whole film wasn't smeared with fog but maybe it's just the transfer? Anyway, I liked this quite a bit and am super glad to have seen it. Now the next time I see the trailer at the Alamo I can share the same smug grin as everyone else and nod along like "oh, yeah, this is a good one." And now it's time for my favorite new tradition at DVRfest. This being Saturday, I've refreshed my stack of unwatched criterions and have my dice at the ready. I've got 3d8 movies ranging from spine number 17 to 888 and that's including Che and World on a Wire. How many will I get through? Which ones will I see? Let's roll the dice and find out...
11.09.18	Raw Meat	Gary Sherman	AKA Death Line. I'm finishing tonight off with a Gary Sherman double feature starting with this thriller slasher hybrid thing about a trog type who eats people in an abandoned London underground. Aside from a great title theme (seriously, it's like Barry Adamson scored The Deuce), a snarky Donald Pleasance performance, and some decent gore... there's not a ton here. I thought I'd like it more than I did. It wasn't bad but did drag through the middle a bit. I'm starting to feel it but I've got one left. I've seen the trailer for this next one a bunch, remember the poster from video stores of my youth, but never actually sat down and watched it. That ends tonight.
11.09.18	Southern Comfort	Walter Hill	OK I picked a bunch of movies, for today at least. Next up is this Walter Hill movie that I've been meaning to see for at least a decade. No joke, I think I'm on tape somewhere circa 2007 wondering how to get my hands on this. Now, thanks to the Internet, everything's everywhere and all it took was me remembering that I wanted to see it. This... is pretty great. A group of Louisiana national guard (played by a lineup of great early 80s actors) goes on a routine... test? mission? Ok so I don't really know what the hell they're doing out in the swamp but they go out there and things don't go well for them. At all. It's kind of like Deliverance meets Platoon meets... Predator? It's kind of hard to have sympathy for these guys because they're all idiots and it's totally their fault, but instead I felt a sort of dark comedic vibe as these guys get worse and worse off. Almost like an anxiety dream or something right down to the ending. I've probably said this in my notes for all Walter Hill movies but he's made a career of solid dude movies with tough guys doing shit. I'm really happy to finally cross this one off my list. Next up... as the sun is now down things start to turn a little dark. This should pair nicely with dinner.
11.09.18	Phantom Thread	Paul Thomas Anderson	Oh shit it's time for another weekend of catching up on movies in the most gluttonous way possible, all in celebration of another year keeping this journal! This is the 14th one of these, making me old, this site old, this site's code VERY old, and this tradition officially respectable! As with the last handful of years, I don't really tape movies onto the DVR anymore, but that doesn't mean there aren't more than enough on all the various formats available for me to catch up on films that I've been meaning to see or that have fallen through the cracks of my viewing habits. So I invite you to follow along, dear phantom reader, as we spend the weekend rolling around in cinema. I figure there's no better way to set this year's one-person festival off than with PTA's latest, which I'd kind of been putting off because I'm afraid I wouldn't like it. I saw The Master at the Ritz in 70mm right before a Fantastic Fest and found a screener copy of Inherent Vice with bad color correction so I've been able to tell myself that certain circumstances hindered my enjoyment of those movies and that I'm really still a big PTA fan... but the subject matter of this one seemed like something in the alley on the other side of the city from the alleys that I usually hang out in (does this alley metaphor work? I don't think so I'm dropping it it's dropped). There's no getting away from it now. I have the house to myself, a pile of the most unhealthy snack foods they can legally sell, and the whole weekend of undivided attention ahead of me. Let's see how I like it. Hey! Maybe it was my low expectations but I actually really liked this! There are a few levels here. From a filmmaking perspective, the movie is gorgeous and everything in the frame is wonderful and the music is so good that I sat in the dark watching the credits just to hear the piano. Then there's also this thinly veiled possibility that this movie could just be PTA writing himself as a genius craftsman entitled to act like a baby and his wife as the woman who gets to put up with all his shit. But finally, there's the tone of this movie in that I was never really sure where it was going to go. From starting out the first logo screens with this dissonant screech, I was constantly setting myself up for a very dark turn (as There Will Be Blood showed PTA is capable). Yet the story and setting also lend themselves close enough to that classic gothic romance template of Rebecca and Crimson Peak with the manchild guy and the overbearing sister and the house that becomes a prison... I was constantly expecting there to be a secret basement that the girl stumbles into. But then, a certain tea gets made which kind of subverts all those expectations and the movie turned again for me, now building toward the final moments when, in a not untwisted way, the film resolves as a sweet love story. It really helped not knowing anything about this movie walking into it. It made me quite a fan. And while both lead actresses do a tremendous job, the most fun role was clearly Daniel Day-Lewis who gets to be amazingly cranky and dickish here. There are a few great eating scenes where you can read his annoyance so well. Just a wonderful job. So yay! I'm super happy (and a little relieved) to like this movie so much. It's clear that PTA has matured into a master filmmaker. My fear was that his interests were floating toward the super niche world of, like, Visconti and shit, where modern audiences don't even have a chance of liking his movies. While this one certainly appears that way, I found it a really nuanced and developed movie in every way. Probably some Visconti but also plenty of Max Ophuls (I'm guessing), and maybe some Resnais? Or not, what do I know... MOVING ON... Next up is... shit, what is next. Hold on let me make up a schedule real quick. We'll find out together!
11.04.18	Deadpool 2	David Leitch	This was pretty good. Funny, not trying to be too much, nice potrayals of Cable and Juggernaut, and still with that 4th wall humor. About as good as you could hope for from a Deadpool sequel I think.
11.03.18	Sicario: Day of the Soldato	Stafano Sollima	I was with this movie for the first half or so, then things started getting stupid. By the end i was pretty done with it. I guess it's just very very hard for things to make sense in movies, so when they do (like the first film), it's a notable achievement. I do like the look and music of the film, and Benecio's always great, but I wish it didn't shit the bed during its second half.
10.06.18	Ant-Man and the Wasp	Peyton Reed	Marvel had 3 movies this year. That's pretty crazy. I think this is probably the height of their popularity, right? Maybe next year when all the dead people come back? Anyway, I liked this one ok. I enjoy that there are lighter notes in the canon and not everything has to be about the fate of the universe, but that lightness also brings an air of frivolity like this one will gone from people's memories pretty quick. Kind of a shame but I don't know what you do about it. I liked all the playing around with scale, thought the way they handled Ghost's character was interesting and enjoyed everyone's performances. It doesn't stand apart though.
09.27.18	Bad Times at the El Royale	Drew Goddard	Closing night film. The only guest was a producer and video intro by Goddard. The movie was alright. I didn't care for Chris Hemsworth's part and the movie hit a slump when he came on screen for me. Also, the soundtrack reminded me of the video game Mafia 3. I wish it was juuuuuust a little better, but there was enough there to like. That's it. I had to get my car towed so I didn't go to the party. As always, the highlight was seeing all my movie friends again and stepping back into the life I led a dozen years ago. The lowlight was having to pay seven hundred bucks to do it. I'm not usually one to complain about prices (or maybe I am, who knows) but this year I felt it a little extra due to the price hike for this year's badges. The fantastic fest menu had a few good deals (the small popcorn, breakfast tacos) but also had a few duds (I ran out of chips for both the big and small queso. chips!). I was told several times that the price hike was because the festival lost sponsors after last years scandal-fest, but to me it did create an expectation that this year would be extra cool. While I can't complain about the programming (i didn't see anything terrible, I missed a few crowd faves like In Fabric, Chained for Life, Terrified, and One Cut of the Dead but that was due to my own choices), I do feel like there were fewer special little touches than I'd experienced in previous years. It felt very business-as-usual to me. Perhaps that's because many of the highball events were scheduled not to overlap with the breaks between movies so there was rarely anything going on over there, or maybe it's because i'm not really on twitter or facebook anymore so i just missed all the cool spontaneous whatevers that made the week special for people. I dunno. So, here's a top 3 -Climax -Mid90s -The Night Comes for Us I split out the rep stuff because I saw so much of it: -Sudden Fury -Mary Jane's Not a Virgin Anymore -Deadly Games And a bottom 3 -Overlord -Man Who Killed Don Quixote -An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn
09.27.18	Maniac	William Lustig	William Lustig was still here to show a second screening of his 4K restoration of Maniac. It was fun to see a real honest-to-goodness horror film with exploding heads and practical blood effects again. Checking the notes, it looks like I saw this at my very first DVRfest back in 2005. It's funny how my tastes have changed. This time around the inner monologues and whiny moaning that Joe Spinell does were a highlight for me. I also felt like the more extreme Savini effects (the head blowing up and the partial dismemberment scene at the end) were very intense. For all the gore that we get today in films like The Night Comes for Us or Green Room, there's something about the way they did it back then... and also the way they shot it, really lingering on that coverage - even going slow-motion to revel in it - that feels effective to me. And of course, a fantastic Q&A from Lustig himself. I wish someone would do an extended interview with him. Hmm, maybe they have. Let me look for podcasts. Oh, yeah there are a ton. cool.
09.27.18	The Man Who Killed Don Quixote	Terry Gilliam	At least it's done and over with. This wasn't as bad as other recent Gilliam but still not good. It really didn't feel very "Gilliam-ish" at all to be honest. At least with Zero Theorem you had that wild production design and camerawork going for it. This didn't have the story or the visual flair to make it that interesting. But it's a movie that has a start, middle, and end, so there's that. It wasn't hard to watch but it wasn't fun either.
09.27.18	Slut in a Good Way	Sophie Lorain	Day Eight (Final Day) The day started with a charming comedy about a teenaged girl who sleeps with all her co-workers. Very french (of course), but also funny and endearing while still following the typical rom-com structure.
09.26.18	Overlord	Julius Avery	I didn't love this one so much either. The beginning of the film was good but just made me want to watch Band of Brothers again. The middle of the film was long and slow, and the last third was by the numbers. I really expected a whole movie of Wolfenstein'esque supersoldier nonsense but you barely get any and that's right at the very end. I'm also not yet comfortable with Wyatt Russell's face on screen. It still looks like a wrong version of his dad to me.
09.26.18	Under the Silver Lake	David Robert Mitchell	I think this is the only movie I saw where all my friends liked it more. It's given me more to think about as to what bugged me about it. From the get-go, this one's aiming for a Big Lebowski / Inherent Vice / Kiss Kiss Bang Bang noirish LA-set mystery with Andrew Garfield as a slacker looking for missing hot neighbor Riley Keough. I think most of my problems with the movie speak to a perceived ego of the director. Maybe I'm projecting all of this but it feels like an indulgent victory lap of a movie with extravagant luxuries that the movie doesn't need but are thrown in there because it's what the precious genius director if It Follows wants. You could say the same thing about Magnolia, which I like, so maybe it's just a personal taste issue or that I feel like PTA isn't as obnoxious as Robert David Mitchell in person or something like that. Either way, I felt like the movie fell into similar traps as Matrix 2 or Southland Tales: too long, too many frayed edges, too much going on and not enough justification. I feel like the movie doesn't earn its excess, which sounds pretty pompous as I write it so that might be bullshit once I sit with it for a while. Anyway, all of this doesn't mean that I didn't have fun while watching it. I did feel like, with my first watch anyway following the plot, I enjoyed the moment to moment with an expectation or hope that the movie would end in a satisfying way. When the ending came, it made me take stock of everything else and I feel like much of it was unnecessary. Maybe that's the point? Maybe a second viewing would allow me to enjoy each scene and not worry about the story? Before the film, the director told the audience to not try to make sense of everything for their first time and let it wash over you. This rubbed me the wrong way, since a) don't tell me how to watch your movie, and b) you have a movie that's framed around a mystery but you're telling me not to think about the mystery. I am certainly fine with not having every loose end tied up in a bow, but that's much harder to do with a genre that is all about confusing details that make sense at the end. The Big Lebowski is stylish and character-driven as fuck but the core mystery still has a resolution that explains all the weird stuff throughout. Which gets to the heart of it I think. I think I just don't like the director's personality. Most of his answers to the Q&A afterward rubbed me the wrong way as well as his intro. Someone asked about why they added CG to obscure Andrew Garfield's penis when there was so much female nudity in the film and his answer was "to be fair, Andrew Garfield was naked for a lot of the film." I think there wasn't an actress in the movie that didn't show her breasts (not complaining about this. I repeat, I am not complaining about this), but you get like two quick glimpses of Garfield's ass. I don't want to be a nudity police or anything, but the gratuity felt a little pushed to me (and i'm all for gratuitous nudity). I just see the director saying to himself "and EVERYONE's naked!" as he wrote the treatment. So in the end, who knows how this film will sit on me. My first impression was that it was fun enough while watching but I walked out with several issues with the movie. Again, not to say I hated it, just didn't love it.
09.26.18	Donnybrook	Tim Sutton	Like Bloodsport except with methy rednecks and a total bummer and they don't get to the tournament until the last ten minutes. Too bleak.
09.26.18	Goliath	Peter Gronlund	Family drama except the family is criminals. It was ok. Not bad, just ok.
09.26.18	Mary Jane's Not a Virgin Anymore	Sarah Jacobson	Day Seven. Today started with an AGFA presentation of Sarah Jacobson's work. First up was a short called I Was A Teenage Serial Killer which was rough but not without charm. The feature though, Mary Jane's Not a Virgin Anymore, was really good. It fits in perfectly well with that mid-90s wave of independent film in that it's largely dialogue-driven and stars a bunch of 20-somethings in a workplace. In this case it's a movie theater. Surprisingly moderate for an AGFA title but pleasantly so. I liked it a lot.
09.25.18	Luz	Tilman Singer	A student thesis film shot on 16mm, this was pretty good for what it was. The atmosphere is nice, music is good if not too overbearing... the only problem is I have no clue what the fuck it was about. I didn't make any sense of the story at all. I mean I think I kind of do, but just barely. It wasn't bad, but I'm glad it was only 70 minutes long.
09.25.18	The Perfection	Richard Shepard	A late addition to the fest, I'm glad I got to see this as I think Shepard does interesting work and still remember seeing The Matador at AFF years ago and liking Shepard's candid and entertaining Q&A. Not knowing anything about this movie helped I think since I was trying to guess the genre even as the film played out. I had a lot of fun with it. I feel like the way the story develops is earned and every time I felt like something was off or someone gave a terrible line reading, the film quickly corrected itself. I do wish at the end we got to hear a little bit of the cello playing instead of music over the picture. That would have been a great final joke. The next slot I chose to see Tenacious D present their new album in the form of an episodic animated show that will run on Youtube. I think if I dig bag far enough I'll find some glowing notes for Pick of Destiny so I'm officially on record as liking that film a lot. This one has that same unadulterated D spirit but instead of a real film with real production values it's a bunch of crude drawings (done by Jables himself) set to extended "skit" tracks between songs. It's still pretty funny and very entertaining, but you can definitely tell they basically did this themselves. I liked it a lot though, don't get me wrong. After a good Q&A, they got on stage at the highball and performed three or four songs (Tribute, Pick of Destiny, Rize of the Fenix, Fuck Her Gently). Afterward they were like "that was a great rehearsal!" Not sure why the set was so limited.
09.25.18	The Blood of Wolves	Kazuya Shiraishi	Day Six. This is a throwback yakuza movie I guess made to look like it's from the 80s a bit. Reminiscent of Training Day except if Denzel was not as dirty and was more of a Japanese version of Al Pacino in Heat. It was decent. Tiny bit heavy-handed at times but not terribly so. I liked it pretty good. The next slot I opted for a class from Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies titled Ghouls to the Front: Rethinking Women's Horror Filmmaking. Basically, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas gave a presentation of some of the female filmmakers that she studied in writing her upcoming book, then played shot clips or trailers of their films. I'd heard of exactly one: Blood Diner (which has a hilarious trailer). Everything else was waay above my head which was cool. Basically, whatever Kier-la Janisse brings to the fest I will automatically attend. This was really cool.
09.24.18	Climax	Gaspar Noe	This was so good. Gaspar Noe, man. The only thing is that I kind of wish he would do a movie that didn't descend into hell. I should see Love, maybe Love doesn't end in a cacophonous journey down the river Styx. This one sure as fuck does. And those beginning dance sequences were so great. The music selection was so great. Noe's tendency to chop up the structure of the film is great. His titles: great. The theater applauded after the beginning titles ended. Then things got dark. But as usual, the technical facility needed to choreograph and pull off those insanely long takes... filled with visual or practical effects and impossible camera movements... just astounding. So goddamn good. Favorite of the fest.
09.24.18	Mid90s	Jonah Hill	This one really surprised me at how good it was. The poster and trailer said 'pretentious meandering fake shit from an entitled actor' to me but I have to say I was completely wrong. The movie feels so authentic and nuanced; all the kids give superior performances. It's not afraid to wear its influences on its sleeve but also delivers something new. I'm almost upset that it's so good. And Jonah Hill's Q&A with the cast was also super polite and eloquent and funny. He even said bless you to someone who sneezed in the audience. So yeah, loved this one.
09.24.18	The Guilty	Gustav Moller	I liked this as well. It's all told from the perspective of a 9-1-1 operator. I was a little ahead of the plot as it unfolded but that's just because i'm a genius so it shouldn't be held against the film. A nice concept that they succeeded at pulling off.
09.24.18	Ladyworld	Amanda Kramer	This was a girl's version of Lord of the Flies. I liked it with a few qualifications. I didn't love how EXACTLY it followed Lord of the Flies in terms of story and I had to make a conscious decision to stop thinking about the myriad of ways they could easily escape and focus on the whole Lord of the Flies thing. Otherwise, an evocative soundtrack, interesting performances, bold choices. It was not, like, the easiest movie I've watched at the fest but it did give me something worthwhile which is great.
09.24.18	School's Out	Sebastien Marnier	Day Five. Not exactly an evil children movie but it's kind of sold as one. I liked this. The kids were suitably creepy, the tension built nicely, and the climax wasn't stupid and overblown like us dumb americans like to do. Plus the ending is nice and ambiguous which I quite liked.
09.23.18	Deadly Games	Rene Manzor	This late 80s French film is like Home Alone meets Die-Hard. This crazy kid in this crazy mansion fends off a crazy santa claus trying to kill him. It's got a real... not sure how to put it... ephemeral style? Like I was never quite sure if the establishing shots were miniatures or to-scale sets and everything has a wide angle to it and there's lots of interesting POV work and the lighting in general has a kind of glaze to it. It really does a nice job in putting you in this fairy tale headspace in which this kid programs computers, has a prototype of an iphone strapped to his arm, and wakes up every morning to a weight training/Commando-esque gearing up montage. I had a lot of fun with it.
09.23.18	The Night Comes for Us	Timo Tjahjanto	This one kicked some fucking ass. The same dudes and stunt team from The Raid accomplished some of the most brutal action I've seen since... well, The Raid. Lots of great sequences here but the climactic fight is holy shit. Similar to The Raid, you kind of get inured to the broken bones and slashed throats by the end, but they did a great job of varying the fights to keep that monotony relatively low. Basically, any movie ever where there's a knife fight or someone hits someone with a sword and you think "shouldn't there be more blood?" This movie answers with "fuck yeah there should be. HERE YOU GO." A Highlight of the fest so far. Awesome stuff.
09.23.18	Suspiria	Luca Guadagnino	The secret screening this year was Suspiria. I was actually looking forward to this and think I liked it more than my friends did. I liked Thom Yorke's music when it was in there and all the dance stuff I thought was really good and the climax was pretty sweet as well. Friends' criticisms after the movie were valid however. I'm not sure why it had to be two and a half hours, I'm not sure why it had to be called Suspiria (it's really like an opposite take on the story), and I'm not sure why Tilda Swinton had to play two roles. Eh.
09.23.18	Blood Lake	Tim Boggs	This is a shot-on-VHS slasher restored by Bleeding Skull. It was pretty fun. Way more water skiing than slashing, but still. It's fun to get these glimpses of what could have been a home movie of a vacation. I guess youtube is where the equivalents of this are today but they don't seem anywhere near as charming.
09.23.18	Shadow	Yimou Zhang	Day Four. Started with this Wuxia from the guy who did Hero. I liked some of the monochromatic set design and the one major battle sequence was cool but otherwise it felt overlong and like it was actively trying to put us all to sleep. Seriously, constant rain, a soundtrack full of traditional Chinese... lute? stringed instrument? And I swore there was even a rhythmic inhale during some sequences. I thought it was someone snoring at first but it was coming from the speakers. Harsh trial for a morning show.
09.22.18	Between Worlds	Maria Pulera	This one was pretty crazy in a fun way. It's dominated by Nicholas Cage's performance as a southern truck driver. Pretty much every line reading drew applause. The movie is definitely in on the joke though and it goes some places that make it a nice fit for the festival. I had fun with it.
09.22.18	Hold the Dark	Jeremy Saulnier	Jeremy Saulnier's latest. I liked it but not as much as his previous two. There's some great stuff in it (as always, the action and gore are well done), but afterward as I thought about the story... I really don't know why any of it happened. I suppose that's a feature of the source material and it's open to interpretation or whatever, but it kind of feels like just a bunch of random events.
09.22.18	Savage	Vincent Mariette	Not as savage as the name suggests. This one... was ok. Not bad, but it didn't... there wasn't much to it. I guess that's underselling it a bit, but not... much... happens? I liked it ok? i dunno, NEXT!
09.22.18	After the Screaming Stops	Joe Pearlman, David Soutar	Day Three. Today started with a doc about a british boy band reunion. I'm not familiar with the band Bros at all, but I think the entertainment of this film comes from the relationship between estranged twin brothers who are in the band. I thought it was interesting and funny that the directors confessed so easily in the Q&A that they antagonized and played the brothers against each other for the footage. Also, one of the brothers has a bunch of stupid observations right out of Spinal Tap. It's not a bad movie, but there also wasn't anything in here that I couldn't guess. or haven't seen before. Maybe it has more weight for Brits who know the band.
09.21.18	Sudden Fury	Brian Damude	A lost gem Canadian suspense thriller along the same vein as Blood Simple or Dial M For Murder. This was really good really solid stuff. While the budget was low, you don't really feel it. The performances are surprisingly great and the film is put together with an expert eye toward pacing and editing. It's a shame Vinegar Syndrome didn't have any finished Blus there for sale because I think they would've sold. The best thing I've seen so far.
09.21.18	Apostle	Gareth Evans	Not exactly like The Raid films and actually further from Evans' segment in V/H/S 2 than I thought it would be. I liked it pretty good. There were a few interesting things about it, but also some stuff I didn't love. It also kinda gave me a headache but I suppose I can't hold that against it. I dunno, It certainly kept my attention but it's already fading from memory. That sounds harsher than I mean it to.
09.21.18	Border	Ali Abbasi	The write-up for this film included unfair amounts of hype. Comparisons to The Witch, It Follows, Hereditary, and Let The Right One In. I guess that's a way to get people to see the movie without telling you anything about it, but I don't think it does the film any favors unless it really is that great. EH... I feel like this is a quintessential Fantastic Fest movie. It takes a genre topic and treats it with humanity and compassion. If anything, I got more of a Big Man Japan vibe than any of the movies mentioned. It was not a bad movie, but I do feel like there's a twist/gimmick/"thing" about it and once you know what it is then the whole experience is deflated.
09.21.18	Keep an Eye Out	Quentin Dupiex	Day Two. I liked one of Dupiex's previous movies Wrong at a previous fest and feel like I am a little more in tune with his sensibilities now. As such, I enjoyed this pretty well. If anything, I think the surreal stuff is a bit of an unneeded add-on here since the fun anxiety fever dream of the police interrogation (which dominates most of the film) is strong enough on its own. Still, I liked it, thought it was better than anything I saw yesterday.
09.20.18	White Fire	Jean-Marie Pallardy	For whatever reason, there's a bunch of rep screenings in this year's programming. I chose a strategy of sticking to these pretty hard. My thinking is that someone loved it or thought it was cool enough to fight for it and add it to the schedule. Now I kind of see that Vinegar Syndrome is a sponsor so they probably got a few slots for whatever, but I think my idea still holds true because Vinegar Syndrome as a company restores and releases films that it thinks are worth seeing. Anyway, that was a pretty chatty way of saying that if I saw an older movie on the schedule, I put it on my list. On paper, this one sounds like it should be the best movie of the festival. There's, like, diamond smugglers? And they're in Turkey but it might be the future because they're wearing these weird onesies with helmets and the guns don't look right and then there's this whole Vertigo Face/Off angle to the main characters that is overtly incestuous... and Fred Williamson shows up. But truth be told, it's a little too random and disjointed to hold together as a movie at all. There are nice moments for sure, but there's way too much going on and none of it comes together like you want it to. And it takes like an hour for The Hammer to show up and I'm convinced there was never a script or anything because everything Fred Williamson says is... terrible. I think he was just making it up. The theme song is good though. I think my favorite scene was this montage where the main dude is falling in love with this other girl but he's doing it by yelling at her trying to teach her how to drive a jeep through sand. That's real love.
09.20.18	An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn	Jim Hosking	I didn't see The Greasy Strangler but heard it was bad. I wasn't going to see this but the cast is pretty good and... I dunno, man. I gave it a chance. I didn't really like it much, although I will say that it reminded me of Eagle vs. Shark in some ways that I do think Jim Hosking has a good movie in him... he's just not there yet. I'm hoping he makes a What We Do in the Shadows or Hunt for the Wilderpeople but this wasn't it. It comes off way too stilted and random, like just another guy trying to do what David Lynch does. Everything winds up feeling very forced. Although Jermaine Clement and Matt Berry still managed to be entertaining. Next!
09.20.18	Halloween	David Gordon Green	Boom it's time for another Fantastic Fest. I have to say, this year I haven't been 100% psyched for this. I think I need to work on improving my attitude a bit. Hopefully I'll see a good movie and my mood will lift but right now I'm kind of feeling like if the fest isn't amazing this year then it might be my last. I'm writing this down here now because I realize I kind of think this at the beginning of every fest and by the end of the week i've had enough fun to want to keep going as long as they have it. But we'll see! Anyway, I felt like I had to see the Opener just like I feel like I have to see the Closing night film, even though I've never been a huge fan of the Halloween franchise so a new entry is pretty whatever on my psyched-meter. Really though, the opening night ritual of sweating my ass off in an overly-packed lobby while waiting for them to open the flood gates and let the first films seat is the real opener of the fest. I feel like it's happened every year. I don't know why I think it'll be cooler inside. It's just not. Thankfully, this was the only time that it was miserable inside or out. Rain is in the forecast so let's hope things don't go too poorly. The movie... eh, I mean I guess it was ok? Again, I'm not a great judge. There were a few cool parts... a halloween night sequence in particular was really well done. I like that Jamie Lee Curtis showed up to work and didn't just phone it in like I kinda remember the last few that she was in feeling like. Certainly it wasn't terrible. The Q&A afterward was good. Danny McBride saying he was just up there because he went to college with David Gordon Green was pretty funny. Jamie Lee Curtis was funny. ok!
08.04.18	Avengers: Infinity War	Joe Russo, Anthony Russo	Bunch of people died. I mean spoiler alert. I dunno... This movie, which is supposed to be the culmination of ten years of Marvel movies, halfway didn't work for me because there were just so damn many people popping up... any time they had to do any sort of story or plot it felt super rushed and telegraphed because really that's all there is. new character new character, reference to past movie, new character, "thanos can snap his fingers," reference, character, cg explosion, "did you know thanos can snap his fingers?," character, character, reference, plot resolution, end. I mean.. it's cool to see everyone come together, all the universes collide, and all that stuff. But... ok here's my real problem. They're trying pretty hard to raise the stakes but these movies are so comic-booky and nothing is ever permanent in comic books so raising the stakes is ultimately pointless. They could kill off the entire cast and I'd still expect all of them to come back in the next one. So then it becomes more about the meta: who's contract is up, which sequels have been announces, which actor is popping up in some other project. At that point I'm totally out of any sort of narrative involvement and just wondering what the master plan is. At least this one felt that way. Maybe the smaller movies like Ant-Man and the Wasp will have more story... or not. I dunno. I see so few movies these days, these are starting to feel like a waste of time. The entire world watches them though. i dunno.
07.14.18	A Quiet Place	John Krasinski	Pretty good. I appreciate how they stuck to their guns and had almost no dialogue through the entire thing. It's kind of like a much better version of Signs. A couple few minor nitpicks here and there, but overall pretty good.
07.05.18	Hereditary	Ari Aster	Toni Collette is a mom... with a dead mother and a daughter and a son... i dunno, it's a friggin witch movie, alright? It's not called THE WITCH but when the first thing everyone says about it is stuff like "yeah you know it was reminiscent of that movie The Witch?" or "it really reminded me of that movie Rosemary's Baby" then you can kind of put two and two together right? But it's a GOOD witch movie. I thought it was really well done. If anything, the plot was maybe the most familiar or unsurprising thing about it. The whole motif of using small spaces and shooting the sets really wide to let you see the entire room was cool. I REALLY dug the soundtrack. they use this bed of relentless synthesizer loop but it's laid in pretty light - at first i thought it was bleed from another auditorium - so, like, any time anything remotely foreboding or creepy happens, this dzshdzshdzshdzshdzshdzsh kicks in. In other places, the score gets super in your face and kind of carries all of the horror just in the music which i thought got a little overbearing, but I also kind of think that's a trend. I definitely feel like the Insidious movies did that but I can't remember if The Witch did as well. I do kind of feel like the movie would've been more eerie if the music played it closer to the chest and really only opened up at the end (which it did beautifully), but for the most part I really loved the score. The acting was also great. That kid from My Friend Dahmer really perfected keeping his eyes and mouth open... he did a good job but Collette absolutely killed it. I really loved the "crazy woman" outfit that they put her in. All in all a good movie. Not a great movie to try to eat chips and queso in, but good.
05.19.18	Black Panther	Ryan Coogler	i guess i just watch marvel movies now. that or tv. anyway, this was good. Coogler and Jordan are killing it. Interesting soundtrack as well, going full dramatic strings and almost lion king levels of theater to hearing those Kendrick beats whenever Jordan's on screen. It seems like this movie ticks a lot of topical checkboxes: strong female characters, cultural sensitivity, rhinoceros armor, etc. But I guess to do all that and still maintain an interesting story is a real feat. nice!
04.02.18	Ready Player One	Steven Spielberg	SPOILERS Gosh I was so apprehensive about this movie. I liked the book a lot but felt that Spielberg was really old and might not get what's good about it because the book trades on nostalgia for a time where Spielberg was producing what Ernest Cline and his characters are loving. How do you have that kind of perspective and really understand this fan thing if you've always been the subject of it rather than a participant? So, I was wrong. I really like this movie. I thought it was a great adaptation, in many ways better than the book. I'm a little sad to not see the arcade planet visualized but other than that I thought they did a great job of bringing the Wonka-esque plot to screen and reveling in the references and callbacks to 80s and 90s stuff like the book did. Furthermore, I felt like Spielberg's way into this movie was to also explore things that he himself is a fanboy for. One of the most solid and successful changes from the book is choosing the step inside The Shining rather than War Games or Monty Python and The Holy Grail. You can tell what fun it was for Spielberg to recreate some of those iconic sets and scenes from the film as well as have a lot of fun gamify-ing it and making it enjoyable to an audience. So maybe you see less Star Wars and Indy stuff in there but there is still a shit ton to find. I'm sure I missed or didn't get the majority of references but the various OASIS scenes are chock full of stuff that we're all waiting for a blu-ray release to frame by frame and pick out everything. I know I saw TMNT, Battletoads, and Marvin the Martian, which are extraordinary. That brings me to my favorite aspect of the movie. The book's critics call it nothing more than a nostalgia-fest or checklist of geek references. It's kind of true in the book, where, if you're not familiar with the reference, you have no mental imagery to paint the complete picture. But this movie does that whether you know the references or not, and the result is an overwhelming wave of celebration for a whole generation's worth of creativity and ideas. Seeing all of this Intellectual Property rubbing shoulders with one another puts a spotlight on how much cool stuff exists out in the world and how much the world enjoys it. To cheer for the particular character or item or whatever that you recognize evokes that whole universe and pulls it into this one. It's just so cool. It's every "who would win in a fight between X and Y" debate, every toy line or fan fiction or saturday morning cartoon... everything you like about enjoying entertainment on display in one big frame. For me, it was the promise of LEGO Movie and Wreck-It Ralph and the South Park Cartoon Wars and Who Framed Roger Rabbit delivered by perhaps the one guy who could get approvals from the entire world. Although... the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were the Michael Bay designs instead of the 90s live-action suits, which is not cool. But oh well. So all of the Oasis stuff had a very overwhelming effect on me. The beginning race, where every fictional New York Movie Thing gets thrown at them, to the club where Harley Quinn dances with The Joker to Planet Doom (which needed just a tad of id software's Doom to be complete but again - oh well) where who knows what fights against each other. All of that, like, almost took my breath away. The other stuff.. the real world stuff... i think I still have some minor problems with. I don't get people in VR goggles running down streets... I wish the actual actors weren't quite so pretty... I found all the characters living in the same city to be stretching the boundaries of my willing suspension of disbelief... but it's all ok because that CG stuff is so great. Also, I actually liked TJ Miller's character because he connects a few dots which the books just gloss over. I am still sad to not get a glimpse of that arcade planet though. but oh well.
03.17.18	Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle	Jake Kasdan	It's good to see Jake Kasdan's name on another movie. He, along with a solid cast, make this funner than it should've been. Better than Justice League. Nice moments for all the actors to play against type for a bit. I liked it well enough.
03.16.18	Justice League	Zack Snyder	A boring mess. I don't know anything about Steppenwolf in the comics but here he's a totally generic CG fest of blah blah blah and cartoony fighting. except it's not even cartoony because the animation in cartoons is exagerrated to accentuate emotion. This whole movie is like a kid with a bunch of action figures just mashing them together because they only have four points of articulation. I think I'm done with these DC movies. I don't think I have enough room for any more of these in my diet. I should've watched Jumanji.
03.04.18	Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of National Lampoon	Douglas Tirola	The documentary companion film to Netflix's Futile and Stupid Gesture biopic about National Lampoon and Doug Kenney. This was great... in many ways more interesting than the biopic because you get actual footage with the real people. It also feels a little more exhaustive, especially in regard to the magazine after Animal House... although they really work well together and I'm glad Netflix got this on their service after their film aired. Pretty funny stuff... I was more of a MAD Magazine kid - probably too young for the boobs of National Lampoon - but.... hmm... I wonder if there's a MAD Magazine doc... anyway, this was really good.
03.04.18	Blackhat	Michael Mann	Made it a Chris Hemsworth double feature weekend by watching this director's cut of Blackhat. It's a tiny bit hard to judge because this copy was off a television broadcast with fades to black for commercial breaks, but the overall pace and tone felt much more procedural to me. Really I attribute most of the problems I have with this movie to Hemsworth's casting. The physical apsects of this role just don't fit for me and unfortunately, Hemsworth's good looks and unfortunate chicago accent really don't belong either. I guess it's hard because you still need a name big enough to carry the movie, but why have a Holt McCallaney there if Hemsworth can shoot and stab just as well? Parts of this movie (like the new beginning with the soy futures and somewhat decent but still occasionally idiotic computer UIs and jargon throughout the first half) feel like an earnest attempt to explore the world of cyber-terrorism with accuracy and intelligence, but then the movie turns into Miami Vice part 2, which I'm conflicted about. I'm all for Miami Vice part 2... but if you're doing that then why bother with the slower first half stuff? My (hazy) memory of the first viewing of this film was that it was just bad. Hemsworth was bad, the story was bad, everything was bad. With this viewing, I'm much more conflicted. Something about the quiet audio mix and procedural plot structure of this cut makes me like it more, but it also upsets me more because I see how this movie was almost good. There are certainly good parts... as always the shootout scenes feel real and tense and I don't know where they're going, I like how we don't hear the main antagonist speak for nearly 2 hours, all of the location photography is gorgeous in a now-hallmark gritty desaturated Michael Mann low-light way... it's just that... oh you know... i have it. if they're gonna play up Hemsworth's physicality, then let's spend more time with him in prison. I really liked how this cut brings him on almost as a secondary character... it feels like the Chinese guy and his sister and the main protagonists, but one shoddy speech about prison being a gladiator academy and doing your own time isn't enough to buy that this guy has combat skills. You need a good five minutes of him in the yard and showing that other people in there respect his strength. And not literal push-ups strength but actual prison-hard toughness. I don't know where that gets jammed in and if it makes the movie better or not, but whatever...
03.03.18	Thor: Ragnarok	Taika Waititi	Another Marvel movie down. Everyone's going on and on about how great Black Panther is... I'm getting to catch up with this Thor movie. You know... this is like the 17th Marvel MCU movie and there's been a lot of talk about how the connectivity is what's setting them apart and how DC can't catch a break and everything... but I think this movie proves a sub-point about how Marvel can dominate, and that is the movies are pretty good! They wouldn't be able to make 20 of these if they were all trash. This movie finds a comedic tone that feels like a breath of fresh air in the up-til-now stodgy Asgard Thor-movie setting. Chris Hemsworth has natural comedy chops, the script was great and most of the roles are populated with solid actors who can be funny and dramatic. Blanchett's great but so is Ruffalo, yet the movie still feels like it belongs to Thor (unlike Civil War). One weak note is Karl Urban's role... I like Urban as an actor but his part felt like one too many elements stuffed into the film. I get why he's there for the most part, but Blanchett could've talked to the dog instead. It was pretty rough seeing Thor's other buddies for such little screen time though. So...yeah, by far the best Thor movie, up there for all the marvel movies... I wonder if I could even rank a top 5 at this point? hmm... ok. So I haven't seen Black Panther and Infinity War's not out yet. 1. Iron Man 2. Guardians 1 3. Spider-Man: Homecoming 4. Thor: Ragnarok 5. Civil War I don't know if Spider-Man counts... but notice how 3 of the 5 of those are in the past few years. They're making good movies... which i guess is good because it seems like 40% of all movies that are coming out these days are comic book films...
02.24.18	Mute	Duncan Jones	Techno-noir in the Moon universe. I guess I'm getting more and more disconnected with society because I thought this was a pretty solid movie and enjoyed myself throughout then i check the imdb rating and see 5.4. I do a search for Marion Skene, one of the people to whom the movie is dedicated, and see a bad review in Variety. I don't quite get it. I mean the story isn't like some complete new thing that nobody's ever seen before, but neither is fucking Black Panther and everyone's going apeshit for that. The visuals are great, the design is great, the music is great, the performances are good, the story fits the mold for a noir and is suitably hard to follow. It's an interesting world that he builds, fun little tie-ins to Moon, decent tension, and you get to see Paul Rudd try and be a heavy. Justin Theroux is much better at it but still, not bad! I don't know about the rest of the world, but I liked this.
02.07.18	A Futile and Stupid Gesture	David Wain	Really good biopic on National Lampoon founder Doug Kenney. David Wain has a light touch here but still brings in an onslaught of funny people to fill out the equally impressive cadre of real-life funny people that Kenney worked with. I particularly liked Joel McHale playing Chevy Chase. Will Forte's great, Domhnall Gleeson's great, everyone's pretty great in this. it's funny, informative, and super easy to watch. Really good stuff.
01.25.18	Darkest Hour	Joe Wright	This held my interest mainly due to Gary Oldman's performance behind all that make-up. Mostly this reminded me of The King's Speech, not just because the king appears but in that it's a not-horrible movie that really should be relegated to highschool history classes so everyone wants to give it awards for it being so not horrible. It's also is funny that it deals a decent amount with Dunkirk the same year that Christopher Nolan released his film. Another great double feature presents itself. So I think that's it for screener season unless one final film shows up, and I'm not sure I want to see that in DVD quality anyway. I have to say that the Oscar movies were a lot better this year than last.
01.24.18	The Post	Steven Spielberg	Hanks and Streep and about 80 other great actors in this movie about The Washington Post publishing the leaked Pentagon papers. Really good except for the requisite schmaltzy over-the-top slow zooms on people espousing grand messages that seems to be a Spielberg trademark. Such a fantastic cast though. I guess when it's Spielberg everybody just stops what they're doing and calls their agent. I like how the ending perfectly sets this movie up to live forever onward as a double feature with All The President's Men.
01.23.18	I, Tonya	Craig Gillespie	This was also pretty good. Great performances from Robbie and Allison Janney. Also some nice fourth wall breaking which sets it apart from more typical biopic fare. It's maybe a bit too blatantly sympathetic toward Harding to pull off the whole he said/she said truth-is-subjective message that the movie tries to present at the end, but still good.
01.21.18	Lady Bird	Greta Gerwig	I got a real Rushmore vibe to this except from the feminine perspective. Kind of like Rushmore meets Frances Ha. It's really good. Everybody's good in it, especially Tracy letts.
01.20.18	Molly's Game	Aaron Sorkin	Jessica Chastain runs poker games and gets in trouble. I recently watched Sports Night due to constant mention on the West Wing Weekly podcast and I was kind of surprised how much of Sorkin's style was present right there in the beginning. A lot of what I thought was fresh and new in The West Wing was actually directly copied from a previous episode of Sports Night. So i feel acutely aware of Sorkin's tricks of the trade or tools in the chest or whatever you want to call it, and this movie has like 1000% Sorkin all over it. There is so much voice over in this movie... It's all interesting and well-written but it's just so SO much. It gives the movie a density that keeps it engaging but also sometimes gets in the way of any real emotion. Everything is just TOO much. I still liked it though. Also, who knew Tobey Maquire was such an ass!
01.18.18	The Disaster Artist	James Franco	My favorite time of year continues to pay off... This was pretty great. Franco manages to pull some compassion out of this bizarre story of Tommy Wiseau and the making of his movie The Room. That the film re-enactment scenes are done so well are an indicator that Franco has real love for the subject and I think that shines through for the whole movie. I hate to say this but, comparing to the other Franco-directed films that I've seen (The Ape and Child of God), having such a familiar structure with the script really helps. It's kind of like Franco's own version of a "real hollywood movie" in that it follows the standard making-of formula pretty closely. Maybe his more recent stuff is all more conventional like this but his earlier work was... not so much. So yeah, this was really good! It's an embarrassment of riches these days... my HD is on fire.
01.17.18	The Shape of Water	Guillermo del Toro	I really want to like Guillermo del Toro movies. I love him as a person and share most if not all of his interests and respect the hell out of him as an artist, but I just can't bring myself to love his films. This, along with Pan's Labyrinth and Pacific Rim and Hellboy and most of his others, falls just short of greatness for me. I love the design and idea and all of that, but there's a lack of nuance or subtlety that irks me in a minor yet meaningful way. I liked it, but didn't love it. Really I think I can say that for every one of his movies but Crimson Peak (which I have very fond memories of... I'll have to check my notes to see if I gushed over it at the time) and maybe Cronos which I saw a really long time ago. Man that Crimson Peak was good. This was good too; there was just a few things that bugged me. Like how very very similar the creature looked to Abe Sapien. Like it could BE Abe Sapien. I get that creatures from black lagoons are kind of a specific look and there's only so many ways your can make a fish-dude look, but i still couldn't get it out of my head. Or how the diner soda jerk guy went from all-the-way nice to all-the-way jerk in like 5 seconds, or how everything has to be so on the nose... but these are relatively minor foibles compared to the strength of design and performances and direction and make-up at work here. I just wish I connected with it a little more... liked it, didn't love it.
01.15.18	Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri	Martin McDonagh	Another interesting movie from Martin McDonagh. This one was really great. Great cast, surprisingly retrained direction, great story filled with guilt and anger and despair (perfect for awards season). I can get behind this one more than Manchester By The Sea just because there's a slight glimmer of hope at the end, and because of Sam Rockwell. Loved him way back in Box of Moonlight, love him now. Great performances all around though. I even liked that creepy guy from Twin Peaks and Get Out.
01.13.18	The Trip to Spain	Michael Winterbottom	Eh... I liked the first two of these but this one feels VERY similar. This one feels like they just got together and expected good stuff to happen and it didn't. When I found out these movies were re-edits of TV series' after watching the last film I was somewhat upset that I didn't get to see the whole story... this one I was glad to just watch the movie. I mean it was still occasionally fun hanging out with Rob and Steve again, but there was nothing new brought to the table.
01.07.18	The Brothers Grimsby	Louis Leterrier	This is some really bizarre comedy... truly some weird shit. I kept this movie on my list for a single clip I saw when they were promoting this movie and that clip turned out to be the most outrageous (and i guess funny?) thing in the whole movie. I wish... I guess i wish? they had more of that? I don't really know. Honestly at this point I'm reminded of Freddy Got Fingered... I just, every joke was terrible but the sheer audacity I guess? to string them all into a movie? I dunno...
01.06.18	Wonder Woman	Patty Jenkins	Finally catching up with this... was PERHAPS over-hyped by the legion of people going on and on about how amazing this was. I guess I can agree that it's the best post-Nolan DC movie... I would say that the battle scenes are too CG-heavy but I couldn't even type the sentence without yelling at myself that every frame of every one of these goddamn movies is like 800% CG so wtf... Maybe the super speed or something? I don't know what bothered me but something bothered me for the first few battle scenes. Other than that... it was pretty good. i was REAL hesitant about this Amazon goddess whatnot, but there was no absolute barf-worthy dialogue really... which is nice. i dunno... I just feel more and more burned out with each one of these comic book movies.
01.02.18	The Big Sick	Michael Showalter	Really good, strong stuff. Romano and Holly Hunter kill it, surprisingly soft touch from Showalter's direction. The family was funny. It's kiiiiiiiiiiinda sorta similar to Aziz Ansari's deal with Master of None? But still great. Also Zoe Kazan does a great job because her part is such that you have to fall for her then spend most of the movie not seeing her. It just works. Great movie.
12.31.17	CHIPS	Dax Shepard	My last movie of 2017 was this Dax Shepard TV remake. I think of it less as a TV remake though because I know Shepard loves bikes and stunts and whatnot and a lot of the driving felt a notch above standard comedy fare. It also seems like he and Michael Pena are good buddies because they share some great chemistry. I think maybe the best scenes in the movie involve them two just shooting the shit and talking to one another. Otherwise, meh.
12.30.17	Sicario	Denis Villeneuve	Between Wind River, Blade Runner 2049, the Soldado trailer, and seeing a youtube video about neo-westerns and Taylor Sheridan's part in the resurgance, it put me in a mood to revisit this film. I think I liked it more this time around. It's so incredibly dark and Emily Blunt's arc is so harsh, Benicio's character so dangerous... the whole film feels dangerous. And the standout scenes like the border crossing and the opening raid and the tunnel scene are shot so incredibly well. It's a really chilling depiction of how brutal the war on drugs have become, but feels very authentic. Really talented people on all levels here.
12.29.17	The Mountain Between Us	Hany Abu-Assad	If i'm totally honest, Even though I'd heard this was a romance, I was hoping it would secretly be more of a survival film. So I can't really blame it for treating the life-or-death situation of crash landing on the top of a mountain merely as a setting for blooming romance between attractive people, but it does feel like there are more romantic situations maybe? As a for-instance, there's a dog. And I just knew this dog would get it. I mean the dog was in the plane while it crashed. total dead dog right? Naw, I guess the dog felt the chemistry between Idris Elba and Kate Winslet because it was all like "i'm gonna fight this goddamn cougar and only get my ear hurt." so in a world where the dog doesn't die, everything else is just waiting until it happens.
12.29.17	Blade Runner 2049	Denis Villeneuve	Goddamn what a good movie. I think I like this more than the goddamn first!!! I guess the first will always deserve the credit for being first, but this one feels like a perfect execution of the Blade Runner experience: Visually and aurally stunning, a dark interesting world, wondrous yet worn-in technology, a hard-boiled cop story in a sprawling sci-fi dystopia. Gosling's great, Harrison Ford actually acts, not too much Jared Leto, and the beautiful Ana de Armas and Sylvia Hoeks, who play integral and interesting parts almost opposite each other. They are all just part of the tapestry though... the image itself feels like the star of the movie (although the score came in a close second for me. I'm sitting here now listening to the end credits on headphones as I type this). It all fits so seamlessly together... I don't know how they make THIS movie better.
12.22.17	Bright	David Ayer	This is like the perfect movie on paper. A Max Landis nerdy/cool about LA cops in a world where fantasy races like Orcs and Elves exist alongside gangs and corruption starring Will Smith in the hands of post-Suicide Squad David Ayer.... That equation sums up to automatic watch for me. The genre clash concept for the world is so awesome, all it could do was go downhill from there. At best, I was hoping for a better version of the classic Lovecraftian noir Cast A Deadly Spell; at worst it would be like... I dunno, Suicide Squad. I'm happy to say that I thought it was mostly great. I loved almost all of it. Really the only thing I had a problem with was one story beat involving a guy getting off the hook with a gang because he had coincidentally saved the gang leader's child from trouble earlier in the day. You already wrote that scene in Training Day, my dude... but aside from that I thought everything was damn solid. Although there's one landscape shot where they have a dragon flying over the LA skyline. What's up the that!? I wanted an another-wildfire-started-by-dragon headline on the news! Anyway, really liked it.
12.21.17	Kingsman: The Golden Circle	Matthew Vaughn	Well. I guess it makes sense that a sequel to an over-the-top spy movie that gets downright cartoonish at the end would be this thing that is basically a cartoon from the start. I can't really say that I'm disappointed, but it doesn't even approach reality. It reminds me a little bit of that Clive Owen Shoot Em Up movie except I think that's more realistic... and that's with him eating carrots and saying "What's up, Doc?." Also, this is the second Channing Tatum movie I've watched this week that loves John Denver's Take Me Home, Country Home. Odd. So... i dunno... what a weird thing.
12.19.17	Atomic Blonde	David Leitch	Huh, I thought this would be better. There was some stuff to like but the whole first like 80 minutes or so was very stilted and sludgy. Not lean at all. However, it's basically wall to wall good 80s music and a crazy muted neon aesthetic that made the era look cooler than it was and Charlize's outfits were worth price of admission alone and there is one fantastic fight sequence and the ending was good, so yeah... some good stuff. I think I just don't like James McAvoy. It felt like he was ripping off Tyler Durden for this whole movie but even in other stuff I just don't care for him.
12.19.17	Detroit	Kathryn Bigelow	Crazy tense documentary-shot historical drama set during the Detroit riots in 1967 and mostly a reminder of how long things were so bad for black people in this country. Great performances and wonderful direction on this... Another Kathryn Bigelow home run. It's pretty seamless integration between historical, news, and production footage. Not as showy as Oliver Stone's work but still some fantastic montage work going on. It's pretty late and I'm still unpacking it so I think that's all I got as far as first impressions go. I liked it a lot, although I doubt I'll be seeing it again any time soon.
12.18.17	The Hitman's Bodyguard	Patrick Hughes	I'm trying to take full advantage of my time off this year and part of that is running through some of these random movies I have... uh... added to my queue. So I'm trying to watch one a night, sort of a midnight snack before bed. Tonight I was in the mood for something light and airy. This mostly worked. I could've used a bit more meat on the bones but whatever... I guess I wanted RED 1 and got RED 2.
12.16.17	Logan Lucky	Steven Soderbergh	This was a lot of fun. It had that real Ocean's 11 vibe but without the weight of expectation. I'm really in love with Soderbergh's work these days. I think maybe his decision to "retire" led to shedding all pretense in his work and now he's just doing what interests him and working on his craft. It's resulted in a kind of tour de force across a wide range of genres leading up to his incredible work on The Knick and now this kind of return to the fun of his work from twenty years ago. The one weak note is Hilary Swank's choice of voice. Bit odd.
12.16.17	Star Wars: The Last Jedi	Rian Johnson	I'll keep this spoiler-free since it's so new and to be honest i'm still processing what I think about the plot. I will say that I liked this... it felt like a natural progression from Episode 7 but where that one felt like its mission was to reboot an echo of the first trilogy, this one seems to play against most of the expectations set forth. I thought everyone's characters progress and grow in interesting ways. The visuals are stunning, the Star Wars is strong... I have to say I felt like, an unconscious intake of breath when the star wars logo pops on screen and that fanfare starts. I don't know what it is, but it still works on me. It's still a franchise that holds tremendous power. I wonder how long that will last, but for now i still felt it. My main criticism is the heavy-handed-ness of its "messages" and mostly how they shoulder all these messages on one character's shoulders. I feel like I would've liked that character were it not for some super on the nose social comment that every line of their dialogue holds. Most everything else was pretty cool. Some characters don't get much screen time but there's a lot going on. The movie felt like a lot happened. All the new planets were also great... typical top-tier designs of Star Wars land. The same goes for the new creatures, who feel a tiny bit inserted just for some aww moments in an otherwise busy film. The moments of humor also felt like a signifier of this new trilogy. There were definitely a few jokes in the OT, but nothing felt so authored to be funny. Poe's character is like, a legit wise-cracker. Same goes for Finn. So yeah... good stuff. Liked it. Glad I saw it in IMAX 2D, even though someone next to me smelled like pickles the whole time.
12.09.17	Wind River	Taylor Sheridan	While I didn't think Taylor Sheridan's portrayal of Sheriff Whatshisname on Sons of Anarchy was very notable, I did like the stories of Sicario and Hell or High Water, which he wrote. This one he directs proficiently but mostly it's another solid, brutal script set in Wyoming. It's kind of like Hell or High Water meets The Grey. It's also the first movie that I've heard the Bureau of Indian Affairs name-checked. Ahh the good ol' BIA... blast from the previous workplace past. I liked this for the most part. There's a concerning flash...back? kind of two thirds through the movie that really muddies the narrative waters. I get why it's there, but maybe it would've been better to show later? or not at all (despite a certain actor who's so hot right now's appearance)... i dunno. I was with it up till then, then I spent the rest of the movie doing plot-math to make sure everything lined up. Everything else was good though...
11.16.17	Assassin's Creed	Justin Kurzel	Ugh. So, like the video game series, this movie spends too much time in the present and not enough in the past. I kind of admire the lengths that the first game in the series went to in order to justify the premise of itself, but all that clunky heavy lifting that sort of adds sugar to the game completely bogs down the movie. All this Abstergo Animus bullshit is not what people love about the series. It's running across rooftops in exotic historical time periods and killing dudes with hidden blades. this movie has MAYBE 10 minutes of that. That's 10% good, 90% boring unimportant nonsense. And there's so much filtering and visual effects haze that I could hardly tell what was going on, both in the present and the past. Really not a good movie.
11.12.17	The Myerowitz Stories (New and Selected)	Noah Baumbach	I feel like Noah Baumbach's capability for falling into this New York fractal of pretentious introspection is best when balanced by some external force. The lightness of Frances Ha or the whimsy of his collaborations with Wes Anderson resonate with me much more than these awkward dramedies. I feel like This one is Royal Tennenbaums meets Squid and the Whale, but I like both those films more. Great cast, decent performances, but I didn't care for the structure and mostly... I think maybe this wasn't as funny as I was in the mood for. Maybe I should have watched Office Christmas Party instead. Oh well. So that's it! Another year down. Time for the number dump: 16 in the past week (2.29/day), 18 in the past month (0.6/day), 125 in the past year (0.34/day), and 3064 since the site started (0.64/day). I guess the days of having a sustained 2/day average are gone for good, but that's alright. I started this just for me and, while it didn't go quite as I'd guessed it back then, it continues to be a source of pride and satisfaction for me. And thank you, invisible reader, for following along this weekend. I used to think sometime I would invite others into this tradition but these days I'm feeling not so much. It's pretty fun to hit pause on my life for a few days and fall into a movie hole. I'm already looking forward to next year.
11.12.17	Fruitvale Story	Ryan Coogler	So... the first 90 seconds of this movie told me I was in for a good time. I mean I know it's not all rainbows and sunflowers out there but damn. Dogs dying in the street and shit!? I know the movie is designed for maximum outrage and sorrow, and in that respect it's quite effective, but this is totally in territory where... who's excited to see a movie like this? "Oh it's great, it makes you want to jump off a bridge, totally great!" I guess you could take the stance of Molly's father, who commented on Hacksaw Ridge with "do not allow yourself the luxury of missing it" like it's a worthy truth to thrust into everyone's eyes... but still... damn. OK!!! Well I can't end on that one... I don't even feel comfortable making a Wire joke (which I'm sure is in my notes for any other Michael B. Jordan movie), so let's see if I can dig something lighter up, like Schindler's List or perhaps that Jonestown doc.
11.12.17	Y Tu Mama Tambien	Alfonso Cuaron	I haven't seen a Cuaron movie that I didn't like, but for some reason this breakout film of his has always slipped through the cracks for me. I suspect that it's because it was lumped in with Inarritu's Amores Perros and the Mexican film explosion of the early 2000s. I wasn't really an Inarritu fan until The Revenant so I think this one was always back burnered. Watching it now, it feels very influenced by Francois Truffaut in its use of narration and novelistic scope. Maybe that had to do with the love triangle, Jules et Jim angle? Anyway, I liked this... It didn't blow me away but I'd heard enough about it and have seen enough work by both male leads (whatever happened to that woman? You'd think she'd get a lot more work after this too) to pretty much know what I was walking into. Really the only thing that I hadn't heard about was the roving hand-held camera and the narration. I suppose all the stuff along the road that the camera glances at while the kids are talking about nonsense would make more of a statement or impact on me if I was more familiar with Mexico and its issues circa 2001 but compared to Narcos it seemed a little tame. A few scenes bordered on quite steamy though until the kids came too quick then it was just funny. Moving on, let's see another one that critics loved from a director who's done other stuff that I liked.
11.12.17	One Crazy Summer	Savage Steve Holland	As is tradition at DVRfest, I typically limit the schedule to just one film that I've seen before. This year, I revisited my childhood in a big way with Savage Steve Holland's One Crazy Summer. I'm not really sure why Better Off Dead has risen to cult status while this movie's been forgotten; in my head they are two peas in a pod. Equally as good, this one has great performances from Joel Murray and Curtis Armstrong as well as Bobcat Goldthwait (in full 80s persona) and a young Demi Moore. There's also a ton of Nantucket summer gags... this movie is basically a spiritual bridge between Better Off Dead and Summer Rental. It was on cable a bunch while I was growing up so I basically have it memorized, but it's still fun to go back and revisit the fond memories and see everybody again while they were so young and the world was so innocent (for me anyway). I really do love it. Love that animation of the rhino looking for love against the cute fuzzy bunnies and I think these two performances gave John Cusack a good 20 years of cache with me. Very forming in my brain. It's a shame it doesn't have a solid blu release or anything... Moving on, I think today will be potpourri in terms of theme. There's still a very long list of options but I'm not sure how many I can fit in so I'll have to play it by ear. I definitely wanted to include this next one though because it's been on the list a very very long time.
11.12.17	The Fisher King	Terry Gilliam	Stack 3, film 7: The Fisher King. I never saw this when it came out and it's fallen through the cracks since then. I find this to be about as fitting a final random Criterion film as can reasonably be expected. Damn, While watching The Hit I thought maybe the 80s was the most tacky era, but the "high fashion" Jeff Bridges wardrobe and apartment furnishings were the most heinous early 90s chic that I can imagine. And there's some total Lethal Weapon score going on... but other than that, I found this to be perhaps Gilliam's most conventional film... which makes his trademark camera and occasional gonzo flights of fancy stand out all the more. Jeff Bridges is great as always, Robin Williams perfect, Michael Jeter amazing... 90s nyc a little rough. All the mental hospital stuff feels like trial run for 12 Monkeys. Umm.. I liked this ok. Maybe I like it more than I think I do.. I can't think of anything bad to say... I dunno, I'm pretty tired. I'm going to sleep on it.
11.12.17	Fiend Without a Face	Arthur Crabtree	Stack 1, film 2 (same roll!) is now Fiend Without a Face. It's one of my oldest Criterion discs and I'm kind of not sure if I've seen this one or not, but it's only 74 minutes so let's watch and find out. Science run amok!!! It's been a while since I've seen a good ol' 50s sci fi horror flick. This one was pretty decent. Not amazing or anything - particularly when the scientist gives a solid 6 minutes of exposition explaining exactly what's happening - but still fun. Also of note is how pretty much all the actors are British putting on American accents unless they have to shout. It's weird to hear so many accents bleeding through. I think my favorite actor was the dude working at the nuclear power plant. it's like something straight out of Fallout with the rubber suits and everything, except this guy is so casual about everything, including nuclear meltdown. Love it. Ok, there's still time. I am now fueled by pizza rolls and coke zero. Let's keep going.
11.11.17	The Hit	Stephen Frears	Stack 2, film 7: The Hit. Moving ahead 30 years but staying British, this early Stephen Frears movie is kind of like Midnight Run but dramatic instead of funny. I found it pretty decent, but surprisingly 80s. The Eric Clapton title song and all the cars... even though they're driving through Spain, something about the film stock or filters that they use give it a flat bland look. Terrence Stamp, John Hurt, and a very young Tim Roth are all good in it but I didn't find it terribly suspenseful or, dare I say it, Criterion Worthy? It seemed like just a movie to me... I guess the supplements would tell me why they love it so. Ok, it's midnight... let's do one more. Let's see if this near-impossible streak of 5 Criterion discs in a row all in English will continue or not...
11.11.17	The Red Shoes	Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger	Stack 1, film 2: The Red Shoes. This is turning into Powell & Pressburger day here at DVRfest, and another one over two hours... Here we go! Wow. So, I know this is on a lot of lists and it's like one of Scorsese's favorite films and all that, but I kind of thought the reason why people freaked out about it was the early super-saturated technicolor and how the reds leapt off the screen. While that is true, the film also has amazing performances, crazy before-its-time technique, and an epic grandeur that made the movie feel timeless to me. I kept having to remind myself that this was made in the late 40s. Certainly the 15-minute ballet performance piece that sits right in the middle of the movie would inspire Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron in An American in Paris, but there's also fanciful magical elements that elevate the ballet out of the theater into the imagination. I am a total sucker for this (part of why I love Busby Berkeley so much). There's one scene that shows a couple happily sleeping in separate beds that seems so utterly out of place. This movie would be fantastic if it came out this year; I can't even imagine how it was received 70s years ago. I'm sure people have written books about this one so I'll stop going on, but I liked it a lot. The day is really flying by. Let's do another one right away.
11.11.17	Ride the Pink Horse	Robert Montgomery	Next up is stack 3, film 6: Ride the Pink Horse. Noir has long been one of my favorite genres but I kind of blanketed the usual suspect films in the early 2000s (I think juuust before starting this blog) and haven't really kept up with plumbing the lower depths looking for minor hits and forgotten gems like my buddy Micah has. Still, it's near and dear to my heart so anything remotely noir-ish that Criterion puts out gets an automatic purchase from me. I'm always interested to see what actors do when they finally get the clout/opportunity to direct their own material. Many times it fizzles but in some cases, such as Charles Laughton's Night of the Hunter or Ray Milland with Panic in Year Zero, you end up with something really unique and interesting. After looking up Montgomery's filmography I remember liking his Lady in the Lake although the whole first-person gimmick wore thin by the end. This is a more conventionally-shot revenge story of a guy down in fake-mexico to get revent for the death of his brother, or buddy, or someone I dunno. Surprisingly, the title isn't some euphemism for drugs or gay sex. Instead there's a literal pink horse (on a carousel) that the girl rides during a sort-of romantic scene. It's both quaint and painful to see all the fake-mexican stuff here, although the guy who plays Pancho is legit great. My favorite scenes are when Montgomery is drinking with Pancho and the tough guy act breaks down. When he's really playing it up, he seems kinda goofy and jowly. But still, there's some kind of bizarre stuff in here for a hard case crime movie, like when Momtgomery explains fruit salad to the female lead, who I guess is playing a Mexican by way of Mars. Still, there's plenty of bite in the Ben Hecht/Charles Lederer script and I found it very refreshing that Montgomery really goes down for the count after being stabbed in a fight. No tough guy act there. So this was pretty good... Always up for Noir... Let's see what's next.
11.11.17	The Small Back Room	Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger	For Day Two of this year's DVRfest, I'm bringing back a programming technique I used to massive success last year: rolling Dice. I have three stacks of Criterion movies, all of which I've never seen (although I suspect maybe one or two of these, like Mr. Arkadin, I actually have seen under different titles). I'll roll a 6-sided die to determine which stack I pull from then an 8-sided die (D&D nerd alert!) to pick which film to watch. Watch and repeat. Full disclosure: in the interest of making the stacks equal, I've pulled out the Fritz Lang silent Testament of Dr. Mabuse and Fassbender's 4-hour World on a Wire. Those, along with with box sets, tv shows, and other long movies like Che, will likely have to wait until I get through a few more of these. I mean, still. There are some super easy to watch things in there like All That Jazz and some that have successfully evaded viewing for more than ten years (I'm looking at you, Wild Strawberries). Let's see what fate will dictate I watch this year! The first roll was stack 2, movie 5: Powell and Pressburger's The Small Back Room AKA Hour of Glory. I have a bunch of P&P criterions although I think the only movie of theirs that I've actually seen (Peeping Tom) was a rental that I don't own. And now that I look that up, it seems that Pressburger wasn't even involved in that one! So how did I like this one? Let me watch it and find out! Eh, not so much. What I would guess was powerful and edgy at the time - a character study about an alcoholic veteran working in a semi-spy-like military intelligence unit dealing with bomb defusal - today feels pretty slow and plodding. There's one sequence of him fighting against his urge to drink manifested by the scotch whiskey bottle taking on monumental proportions and terrorizing him that gets pretty surreal and the very last scenes feel like precursors to The Hurt Locker but for the most part it's just this guy kind of walking around places and talking to people. I mean I guess that could describe most dramas? Maybe i'm just failing at describing why I thought the movie was slow and boring... but I did. But there you go. You win some, you lose some. On to the next one.
11.11.17	War for the Planet of the Apes	Matt Reeves	Goddamn these apes look real. Um, I liked this one more than the last... probably not more than the first. This one felt more like an episode in the further adventures of the apes... like they could make 18 of these now. I kind of thought this would be the last one, like they'd connect the dots more directly to the original or something, but I guess that would be foolish in today's harsh fiscal market. Why kill the series off when it's still making money right? Let's start a new trilogy with Cornelius! So, part of why I decided to sit down and watch these was that I thought they were done. As much as I didn't really hate the last 7 hours of my life (why do they have to keep getting longer!?), I'm not sure I'm in a place now where I'd rush out to see another one. I think Planet of the Apes just isn't my thing... Let's move on to something completely different. It's not quite midnight but let's start watching horror movies anyway. A nice double feature (unless I fall asleep) of films that I heard were actually pretty good...
11.10.17	Oculus	Mike Flanagan	This was good. A nice take on the old haunted artifact thing. Really nice editing. Creepy at times but also really pulling off the distorted reality. I kind of don't understand why she didn't just hang the mirror and leave the house for an hour until the weight fell on it though Maybe she thought she could beat it or something? Hubris. You'd think after the first go-round she would be more cautious? I guess it'd be a pretty short movie... anyway, time for sleep. Hope the mirror doesn't get me! Haha oh, what's that? DEAD I'M DEAD NOW SO DEAD.
11.10.17	The Void	Jeremy Gillespie, Steven Kostanski	I didn't know this was the Astron 6/Manborg/The Editor guys... I'm kind of glad that I didn't actually because I went in expecting a real movie. So from the Astrong-6 guys I'd say this is fantastic, but as a real movie I'd say it's ALMOST fantastic. The design is great, I love all the monster stuff, the practical effects, even most of the music. The movie suffers from a lack of budget and not great lead actors however, and there's still some of that amateurish shooting and editing that mires down the movie and keeps it from really clicking. The mosters seem like they have decent design but they either didn't have the money to really pull them off or didn't have the confidence to show them on screen. Either way, what comes out ends up looking fake because it's so obvious that they're trying to hide it. Also, the third act falls into typical horror movie walking down hallways that feels like filler. It's a shame though because the dudes with the black triangle masks and all the Lovecraftian influence is really great. The climax itself is pretty decent though and there are a ton of bad horror movies that don't make it this far. I'd say this shows the signs of real talent, on the verge of something great. So let's see if i can make it through one more movie tonight...
11.10.17	Dawn of the Planet of the Apes	Matt Reeves	I didn't like this one too much. It's like a half an hour too long, doesn't go anywhere you don't think it will, and reeealllyyy goes deep with the whole ape thing. Sorry, even baby apes are creepy to me. And, like... apes have balls right? Because these perfectly rendered matted-hair photo-realistic apes are all well and good until they stand up then it's even more creepy. Not that I want to look at ape dong all night but the absence is notable, right? It's not just me? Anyway, I'm invested now. Might as well power through till the end.
11.10.17	Rise of the Planet of the Apes	Rupert Wyatt	So... I was never a huge fan of the Planet of the Apes films. I remember liking the score and Charlton Heston's fuck-you attitude in the first film but never felt a need to see all of the original series and the less said about the Tim Burton remake the better. So I wasn't really in any hurry to see these new ones, but pretty much everyone says they're great so... I guess it's time. To me though, the idea of prequel-ing Planet of the Apes with photo-realistic CG apes doesn't really appeal to me. In addition to the movies, I'm not a huge fan of apes and monkeys in real life. They're close to humans but super fast and strong and smart enough to know what they're doing. Throwing their poop and ripping out genitals and whatnot... Not at the top of my cute cuddly animals list. So maybe the idea of seeing apes taking over the world isn't exactly on the top of my list... All that said, this first one was pretty good! Once I got over the whole Ape thing, the movie plays more like a prison break movie than what I was afraid of (Project X flashbacks). Similar to a zombie outbreak or disaster flick where you get to rooting for the ape overlord takeover (hail, bees!). I also appreciated the foreshadowing of the lost martian mission. So I guess I'm in it now, might as well keep it going.
11.10.17	The Bad Batch	Ana Lily Amirpour	oh, hey. didn't see you there, November 9th! I guess your arrival means it's time to spend another weekend catching up on movies that have slipped through the cracks but I still want to see so they linger on various lists, queues, and hard drive directories where they sit there waiting, silently stewing and cursing my lack of time and all the stupid video games and tv shows that i watch instead of them; their only hope: the one weekend of the year that they get a chance at vindication and sweet release: DVRfest!!!!! Since I missed Fantastic Fest last year, this weekend will make DVRfest (my personal film festival where I ignore life for a weekend and watch a bunch of movies that I've been meaning to see, usually pairing them with awful junk food) the longest-running and most populated item on my movie event list! It is also a commemoration of another year dedicated to this site, making notes of all the movies I see (which is usually not so many as when I started this venture, making this event perpetually bittersweet, but alas). Another year has come and gone so let's celebrate with two and a half, three days of movie debauchery. So come with me, invisible reader/confidant/only-friend, as We dive in with this crazy-looking movie that I missed last year! The Bad Batch! Huh, not exactly what I thought, but very interesting and there was a lot to like. Great music selection, wonderful aesthetic, interesting world. I'm not sure why... i mean i guess i understand why, but there seems to be this trade-off that most filmmakers feel where, if you want to be "artistic" then you have to slow your movie down and cut out all dialogue. I guess that leaves more time for audiences just to stare at the screen and think about what they're seeing? I guess it has its place in cinema but I can't help but juxtapose this style with something like David Fincher's work where just as much is going on visually but you also have a gripping story that propels itself forward. Or i guess a more blatant comparison would be Mad Max: Fury Road since it shares a similar setting and color palette. I guess this movie didn't have near the budget or inclination to go toward action, but I was expecting a little more conflict and climax than I got. As it stands, I still enjoyed it and found it interesting, but from what I got from the trailer I felt it could've delivered more. OK, next up is a triple feature of films that I've successfully put off seeing for like five years. I've finally reached the tipping point where enough people have told me how good these are that I will sit down and watch them.
10.14.17	Spider-Man: Homecoming	Jon Watts	Hey this was good. I feel like it's the first spider-man movie to get Spider-Man right. The humor and youth and tricky tone with the cool villain that could come off really silly but totally doesn't when you're a Spider-Man fan I think giving it a context of being in an Avengers-populated world helps, thank goodness we didn't have to sit through another origin story, and all of the supporting cast was solid. Keaton was great, I bought his motivation, and it didn't get too BIG at the end. I think this is one of my favorite Marvel movies. Feels like one of my favorites from my comic-book-reading youth is finally adapted well for the screen.
10.13.17	The Dark Tower	Nocilaj Arcel	I get that The Dark Tower books are hard to adapt, but this seems like the worst way to go about it. There's no mystique to McConaughey's character at all. Idris is good but kind of wasted, too much Jake too little everything else. Kind of a bummer.
10.08.17	Spielberg	Susan Lacy	A 150-minute documentary on Steven Spielberg and his films. They got an exhaustive list of interviews to pad out the love letter, went into his childhood and personal life enough to contextualize the themes in his work, but mostly it was like an overlong AFI tribute video to the guy. I mean, do we really need to know that his films are successful and popular? I dunno... the whole thing seemed pretty unnecessary to me, but it's weird because I like most of his movies and am typically a sucker for these docs. I think maybe it's the running time that got to me? But I should like that too, since it affords the time to talk about some of his films that don't usually get talked about like The Color Purple and Empire of the Sun. So I'm not sure why I didn't like this more...
10.06.17	Get Out	Jordan Peele	This was really good. I was expecting the Ira Levin-esque suburban horror of conformity type deal, but I was pleasantly surprised by the third act and thought everybody involved did a great job and felt like they were having fun with their roles. Bradley Whitford and Catherine Keener especially. Really well done. I also just heard that Jordan Peele is developing Lovecraft Country for HBO. That could be amazing. Also, a few actors are really popping up on my radar in here. For one, I just saw the Black Mirror episode starring Daniel Kalyuuya so it's cool to see him again so soon. And Lakeith Stanfield I used to know as the dude who played Snoop in Straight Outta Compton until he killed it as the friend in Atlanta and he killed it again in his small role here. I like that guy. Conversely, Caleb Jones was the weird creepy guy in Antiviral then the weird creepy snotty loser boyfriend in Twin Peaks this season and now he's the weird creepy brother in this. I hate that guy. I mean, I hope he's a nice person and all but I don't like looking at him or hearing him talk in movies or tv.
10.06.17	Kong: Skull Island	Jordan Vogt-Roberts	Well, I like the idea of doing a Kong movie set in Vietnam era military, and ILM did an admirable job with all of the CG. The mo-cap artist played Kong more like a half-dude than a full ape but I guess he was always kind of a step above being just a giant ape. Really the fault of the movie (aside from the last act which completely unravels, and the choice of writing Sam Jackson's character the way they did) was the... I don't know if "music video style" is even applicable anymore. It was like someone doing Michael Bay satire. I think I head every "Vietnam" song on the list. The photography was striking but was so stylized that the entire movie rang false (before giant creatures even showed up). I did enjoy all the monster stuff though...
09.28.17	Downsizing	Alexander Payne	The closing night film this year was the new Alexander Payne where people can be shrunk in order to extend the Earth's resources and save us from catastrophic climate change. The novelty of the conceit is cool. All the stuff they do that deals with scale was awesome and funny. There's also a surprisingly deep cast, with familiar faces popping up all throughout the film. Unfortunately, it pretty quickly leaves the scaling behind and gets pretty message-y... except then I feel like it delivers a pretty muddled ending. Overall it never really came together for me. It felt much more like About Schmidt than Sideways. OK, the closing night party was in an AFS sound stage, which I think would've worked ok if it was a bit cooler and hadn't rained. Instead, the roof leaked from a dozen places making the inside a muggy sweatbox with wet floors. There was an "arcade" or like 3 games, a food truck with bread-heavy tortas, a single carnival ride, and a stage for the band Itchy-o to use when they felt like coming out. It was a strain to stand around sweating waiting for the band to start, but I toughed it out to see the crazy mayhem that really impressed me two years ago. I did feel a tiny bit of diminishing returns this time since I'd kind of seen it before, but it was still cool and loud and crazy. I left just before the end of their set though. So that's the fest. Overall I felt it was a good-not-great year filled with good-not-great movies. The highlight was hanging out with Daniel and Chris and Grant and Justin and seeing old friends like Kayla, Eric and Aaron, and Austin again. Now, I'll spend a few long paragraphs talking about all the shit that happened this week that sucked. When the program went up online and we could read the film synopses, Devin Faraci's name appeared on a couple of the write-ups. George started a facebook discussion about this which lead to Tim League making an announcement that he had hired Devin back on to write copy for drafthouse.com (not Birth Movies Death). This news was picked up by The Hollywood Reporter which also used quotes from an unnamed ex-Alamo employee (we'll call this person "TS") saying that League's announcement was somewhat misleading because Devin had been on the payroll for months. Really it was more like instead of getting fired from Birth, Movies, Death, he was just transitioned to writing anonymous copy for drafthouse. This sparked more controversy which led League to first defend his actions by saying he believed in second chances but then quickly added that Faraci was now no longer employed at all. This (really it was the fact that Devin was re-hired without his knowledge) led Todd Brown to step down as a programmer for Fantastic Fest. This led Scott weinberg to say he won't be here. This also led to Fox pulling the opening night film (Three Billboards in... somewhere) and Grady Hendrix to cancel his planned 2 presentations. In some of the comments on George's facebook discussion, several people hinted that other people in the community had done far worse and it was time they were exposed as well. Coincidentally, the Alamo removed aint it cool news from the list of festival sponsors and it was rumored that they had asked Harry Knowles not to appear at the fest this year. Ex Alamo employee (who left in a contentious way I might add) Tim Doyle pounced on this and pushed it. A couple days into the fest, Jasmine Baker came forward and accused Harry Knowles of groping and other forms of sexual harassment in previous years. This led to Eric Vespe and the dude who went by Capone to leave aint it cool. A day or so later, another ex alamo employee posted on facebook a long history of having to put up with creeps in the audience, citing one person in particular as "creepy but harmless" and how Tim League had him sign some legal waiver saying he'd be banned from the theater if he did it again along with several other instances of her reporting issues and Alamo management doing nothing. Oh, also another person had saved a screenshot of an email they sent where they disclosed that Devin made some untoward advances and Tim League wrote back asking not to make it public knowledge. So also, several other women come forward and call Harry Knowles a predator. Jasmine also outs David Strong as the "creepy but harmless" guy and calls Eric Vespe a complicit creep for not quitting sooner. I heard David Strong, who had been at the fest while all this was happening, was asked to leave and escorted off the premises. Meanwhile, Todd Brown and Tim Doyle are harping on the fest playing movies like Bat Pussy and the Ed Wood film as bad form and bad optics. And Jasmine announces that she will start a non-profit to affect cultural change. Finally, the Alamo pulls a previously-scheduled screening of Blade 2 because one of Harry's old reviews (where he talks about Blade 2 by calling Guillermo del Toro good at eating pussy) is making the rounds and doesn't want to court any more scandal. So I think that's everything news-wise that happened. As a festival-goer, the net effect was that I didn't get to see several things that I wanted to see and ended up feeling a little exploited by all these people who were not at the fest twisting events out of context to suit their purposes. Particularly with the AGFA stuff... Todd Brown has been a programmer at this festival for 10 years, he's programmed stuff waaay more offensive in previous years. Maybe there's some sort of temporary sensitivity that should come into effect because there's currently a spotlight on the Alamo but that's bullshit too. All the people who threatened to boycott the theater at the first sign of bad press are probably the same people who've completely forgotten about their United boycott for forcibly removing that guy off their plane. Cancelling the AGFA and Blade 2 screenings scream of weakness to me. I guess it's a lose/lose for them but in the long run I thought fantastic fest was a festival with balls and those have just been snipped because people are afraid of getting more bad press. There's also a mob mentality on facebook that I can't stand. No one talked about Revenge which was a rape/revenge movie playing the fest this year that contained a lot more violence toward women than either Bat pussy or the Ed Wood film had. Tim League definitely made a few mistakes by tolerating intolerable behavior from friends over the years which he is paying for now, but I felt a "blood in the water" atmosphere all week where it seemed like every day would bring some new tragedy in the austin film community. I think some of it must be transference because of our current president and how terrible a lot of global things out of our control seem these days, but it put a weird cloud over the week that I selfishly saw no reason why it couldn't wait a few weeks to address. I'm a white male so all of this doesn't amount to jack shit but whatever. To conclude: my top 5: -The Death of Stalin -78/52 -Bodied -The Square -Brimstone & Glory and my bottom 4: -Juvenile -Applecart -Vampire Clay -Brawl in Cell Block 99
09.28.17	The Endless	Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead	SPOILERS My Second to last movie of the fest was this low-budget kinda-thriller about two brothers who return to the cult they escaped ten years ago to discover weird things going on. Basically, some unseen antagonist has put these time-looping bubbles all over this stretch of land that the cult is trapped in so they are forced to live out the same loop forever, never aging. It gets more confusing than that, with different bubbles having different loop lengths and a weird time-variable law that allows people to leave the bubbles or get stuck within them. Honestly, this stuff slows down the last half more than it should. It almost becomes like a video game where the characters have to follow a map to retrieve a gun for a guy in order for him to supply another map on how to find their car so they can escape before the time loop ends and they get stuck forever. I didn't love it, but I didn't hate it either. I liked how the two dudes basically made the movie on their own. They wrote it, directed it, starred in it, and did their own effects.
09.28.17	Bad Genius	Nattawut Poonpiriya	Next up was this story of Thai highschool students cheating on standardized exams. It was well made and easy to watch since it basically turned into a heist movie halfway through, but the ending seemed very mandated like American movies from the 50s where bad characters are not allowed to come out victorious. Also, presenter James Marsh's ability to pronounce the lead actress's name was really impressive (Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying, go on and give that a try).
09.28.17	Haunters	Jon Schnitzer	My last day at the fest starts with this documentary about haunted houses, particularly with McKamey Manor and the "extreme" haunts that basically torture you. I liked this doc but found that it covered a lot of stuff (maybe too much stuff) to remain focused. Compared to a previous fest entry called The American Scream, this seemed like less of a story being told and more of a shallow skip along several much larger topics. Justin called it right when he said it would make a better miniseries because the film basically focuses on two houses and all the other ones that are mentioned or appear very quickly kind of get left behind. I'd love to see an hour on McKamey Manor and Blackout and all the more extreme stuff then a separate hour on the high budget theme park events like Knott's Scary farm and Universal's Horror Nights, maybe an hour on the history and evangelical origins of the haunts themselves through Campus Life and Jaycees, then maybe a final hour on the homebrew stuff like The American Scream and Nightmare on Loganberry. Having everything stuffed into 90 minutes was a bit much.
09.27.17	Super Dark Times	Kevin Phillips	Described as Stand By Me meets River's Edge, this is about highschool kids in 90s new england who accidentally kill an annoying kid and fall apart trying to hide it. It would be ok but the last act really falls apart.
09.27.17	Good Manners	Marco Dutra, Juliana Rojas	SPOILERS This starts off as maybe a lesbian romance movie but then one girl dies giving birth to a werewolf baby and the other girl tries to raise it. It kind of has a Place Beyond the Pines structure where the extended last act takes place several years after the first. The werewolf effects kind of come out of left field and are pretty well done, but they don't quite develop it enough to fully make things resonate. I would've shortened the last half into a second act and put in a third act where the boy werewolf grows up after his mom sacrificed herself to the unruly mob and showed him as an adult now completely in control of his powers. As it is, it feels like a story and an extended coda that doesn't really go anywhere.
09.27.17	Applecart	Brad Baruh	I'd heard meh things about this but kind of wanted to see it anyway since AJ Bowen and Barbara Crampton were in it. It's a slasher that tries to be clever by intercutting a true crime tv show about the murders with the more typical slasher footage. It doesn't really work. You know all the deaths beforehand because the tv show tells you, so it's really all put on the shoulders of this reveal of WHY the murders happen, which i didn't find that interesting. Pretty bored with it, honestly.
09.27.17	Blue My Mind	Lisa Bruhlmann	SPOILERS This is kind of like that movie Thirteen except one of the girls turns into a fish. Well, a mermaid really, but she does it in more of a vampire way like having urges to drink saltwater and eat goldfish. It has a few great moments and, considering this was another student graduation film, is really impressive for a first effort.
09.27.17	Juvenile	Bradley Buecker	Day Seven starts with my least favorite film of the festival. This is about some idiot teenagers who carjack for fun until one guy has enough and runs away, but then another one of the crew gets shot and so the runaway kid has to go back and really it's the other kid who's a real psycho bully or whatever. And there's also a cute girl. Whatever. The writing was very poor and it goes downhill from there. It's the only film I contemplated walking out of. My note was going to be one word long ("sucked") but I want to remind myself not to see this ever again.
09.26.17	Anna and the Apocalypse	John McPhail	I succumbed to public opinion and chose this for the midnight. It's a British zombie musical set during Christmas. Really, it's like High School Musical with zombies. The songs don't have anything to do with christmas or zombies, the antagonist is not developed at all, the post-modern zombie humor was done way better in Shaun of the Dead... but it looked good and wasn't terrible and the director seemed like a really nice guy. All I wanted was a song with a zombie chorus though... If you gave me that, I'd like this movie ten times better.
09.26.17	Brawl in Cell Block 99	Craig Zahler	Prison, Baby, Prison! Vince Vaughn stars as a tough guy sent to jail then forced to fight his way into super max medieval dungeon prison in order to save his kidnapped pregnant wife. So... I liked Bone Tomahawk. But this was not good. For one, it takes forever for him to get to prison, so you're just waiting like a long time for that to happen. Then this cell block 99 thing, is not even in the realm of Earth. Don Johnson's prison warden is like straight out of a Human Centipede or Women in Prison movie. So really the only thing this movie has going for it is the gore. The violence is really brutal and explicit. They're quick cuts because i think it all looks kind of plastic and fake but the surprise of it works (just like it did in Bone Tomahawk, ahem). Vince Vaughn is clearly trying to be a tough guy here - Shaved head, head tattoo, worked his belly off, etc. - but he comes off as something like Superman. He breaks a dude's back by bear hugging him? So i don't know... The fighting was really the only good stuff, buried pretty deep in two and a half hours of Vince Vaughn's blank face and bad southern accent. Miss.
09.26.17	The Merciless	Sung-hyun Byun	Next up was this Korean crime movie along the same lines as the Infernal Affairs series. I love me some Korean action movies and there were two playing the fest. I could only fit this one in (I heard the other was pretty slow) but i'm glad I did. It kept me guessing in terms of whether a certain character was a double, triple, or quadruple agent and the action was slick, the performances solid and story engaging. I liked it.
09.26.17	Anyab	Mohammed Shebl	AKA Fangs. This is an Egyptian film that's basically a beat-for-beat remake of Rocky Horror Picture Show, except it trades the sexual dynamics of the original for vampires and social commentary on circa 1980-Egyptian society. I liked this. -There's a great disco/funk tune that I guess is analogous to the timewarp in the original film? I dunno, it's this instrumental disco jam where these partygoers in masks are doing a dance and the main vampire (named Dracula) rises from his grave. Oh man I love that bass guitar part. -What seems like the whole second act is the professor character going on a tangent to demonstrate how there are vampires in real life, giving example after example of real life situations where the Brad and Janet characters are price gouged or cheated in some way. Each scenario involves some unseen person that perpetrates the injustice such as a mechanic or real estate agent or doctor or merchant who revealed to be Dracula (with terrible fake vampire teeth, like the kind that come with kids' halloween costumes) and this crazy music cue (often completely stolen, like the Jaws theme, music from A Clockwork Orange, the James Bond theme, the Pink Panther theme, Ennio Morricone) then followed by the professor character laughing into camera. What makes this crazy is that it happens like 8 times in a row before the professor says "ok that's enough, back to the story") So yeah, I really loved parts of this.
09.26.17	3 Foot Ball & Souls	Yoshio Kato	Day Six starts with this Japanese story of a group of people meeting to commit group suicide but caught in a Groundhog Day effect until they decide not to. It was ok. To be honest, by this part in the fest I'm down to second or third choices for each slot. While I wound up taking a lot of chances to see things I might not have seen otherwise, I do wish the schedule was a little more thoughtful to not bunch so many things in the same slots over and over. I feel like there were fewer adaptable "buzz screenings" this year, and I'm sure having several films drop out of the schedule at the last moment didn't help things. Anyway, this was ok.
09.25.17	The Death of Stalin	Armando Iannucci	The fest's only non-AGFA secret screening. I didn't really know this movie even existed but could tell after about 15 minutes that this was a Iannucci joint. It's roughly the story of how Kruschev succeeded Stalin, but it's played in Iannucci political comedy style a la Veep or The Thick of It. All of the actors use their native accents which is a great choice. Jeffrey Tambor, Steve Buscemi, Jason Isaacs, Paddy Considine, Michael Palin, etc. It's very funny in a mostly dark dark way. Loved it. Incidentally, the AGFA secret screening turned out to be a lost Ed Wood film, apparently his final one which was a nudie cutie starring himself in full drag. Unfortunately, it was programmed against Kier-la's Nude Vampire screening and the second showing was cancelled due to public outrage at being tricked into seeing boobs. ANYWAY, I finished the night with the Fantastic Fued. This year, since Scott Weinberg stayed home in protest, Max took over hosting duties. He did a pretty good job; I felt like it was the most on-track that the feud's ever been. It was a bit too long though and I still contend that the survey questions are too hard to answer.
09.25.17	Under the Tree	Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurosson	This is an Icelandic movie about neighbors who engage in an escalating passive aggressive war because one neighbor's tree casts a shadow on the others' porch. It's pretty good but ultimately ends up where you'd think it would.
09.25.17	My Friend Dahmer	Marc Meyers	next up was this story of Jeffrey Dahmer in highschool. I guess it was based off a graphic novel from a guy who hung out with Dahmer back then. This was pretty good, if a bit minor in terms of importance. It doesn't really go anywhere surprising, but I did enjoy that they shot in the real town, the real house even that Dahmer lived in back then. There's a wooden shack in the woods that the director said they rebuilt in the exact spot of the original. So I feel like I got a pretty authentic glimpse of Dahmer's teenage years.
09.25.17	Tigers Are Not Afraid	Issa Lopez	The second half of the fest kicks off with this Mexican film about a group of orphans trying to survive amidst the cartel violence. It employs some Guillermo del Toro-esque magical realism mixed with more overt realistic horror as these kids try to survive. Kind of like Empire of the Sun meets Devil's Backbone.
09.24.17	Mom and Dad	Brian Taylor	This midnight movie was from the dude who did Crank. This stars Nicholas Cage and Selma Blair and it's about a mysterious signal or virus or whatever that makes parents want to kill their parents. Blair and Cage are great but the style was all over the place and I felt like it missed a few huge opportunities. There are some great Cage moments though.
09.24.17	Gilbert	Neil Berkeley	Next up was this doc about Gilbert Gottfried's life. Gilbert was in attendance, warming us up with 3 jokes before the film and providing a funny and candid Q&A wit his wife and the film's director afterward. This movie's really good. It gives a glimpse behind the performances and his voice into his day to day life as a husband and father and cheapskate who takes the bus to his gigs.
09.24.17	Bodied	Joseph Kahn	This is about a white Berkeley student diving into the world of battle rapping. It was really good. I think that since it dealt with what's politically correct, what's racist, and the relationship between offensive language and censorship that the movie was perhaps received with more energy and applause than it would in other years. But it was still good, funny when it needed to be and uncomfortable when it should've been. The guy next to me was straight up talking to himself during the climax, saying stuff like "no, man, don't do it" or "oh fuck that's harsh" to himself and the screen. During the Q&A, Evrim asked a real-life battle rapper who appeared in the film to perform a little bit and the guy said a few bars insulting Evrim's accent and mustache. I think he was holding back, but really admired Evrim's attitude about the whole thing. I think this is the year I really enjoyed and appreciated Evrim's presence and influence over the fest.
09.24.17	The Nude Vampire	Jean Rollin	Kier-la Janisse came back to introduce this screening of an early Jean Rollin film and to sell her latest Spectacular Optical book which is a collection of essays on Rollin written by different female film critics. I can't remember how many/which Rollin films I've seen at Weird Wednesday but I hadn't seen this one. I really liked it. It's true what people say how Rollin did these movies that were halfway between art film and exploitation sex film. In this, there's a bunch of hot European women dancing and walking around with their titties out, but there was also a lot of great surreal imagery and story. I was reminded of Lynch's latest Twin Peaks work a few times throughout.
09.24.17	Love and Saucers	Brad Abrahams	Day Four started with this doc about a guy who claims to have lost his virginity to a female alien. He tells his story of all the different kinds of aliens that he's seen throughout his life and the different encounters he's had with this female alien harvesting his sperm and hatching hybrid babies. For as salacious as it sounds, the film presents this guy with an admirable lack of judgement, leaving it for the viewer to decide how we feel about this guy. It was good. Also, before the film, a "new" Mark Borchardt short documentary played about some alien weekend up in Wisconsin where rednecks get lit and look for strange lights in the sky. It was great, and looked to be shot on VHS. I did not believe that it was made in 2017.
09.23.17	Jailbreak	Jimmy Henderson	I stayed for the midnight to see this Cambodian prison action movie which I wound up dozing through parts of. It was ok. I liked how some of the choreography heavily involved the camera operator, bringing a real up close and personal visceral take on the fighting. The story was forgettable though.
09.23.17	The Square	Ruben Ostlund	The new one from the guy who did Force Majeur. It's about a museum director and attempts to comment on art, art criticism, social awareness, and class struggle. It takes on a lot and ultimately I think suffers from the strain. Although there are a good handful of great scenes, the ending doesn't really come together and there's a muddling of what the film is trying to say. I thought Elizabeth Moss's scenes were good, I loved that Dominic West's character wears pajamas with blazers, and all the contemporary art stuff was funny and great. One scene involves a performance artist pretending he's an ape at a formal dinner party full of artists and benefactors. The guy (who I later learned was a mo-cap actor on the Planet of the Apes films) takes things too far and suddenly the whole room is full of tense silence. Right after the film ended, they brought out a special guest but it was that actor with his arm extenders acting like an ape. I've never seen a theater go so quiet so quick. He didn't really do much - menacingly paced a few rows, slapped a cup out of someone's hand, then flipped over a server's prep tray on the way out of the theater, but the feeling of tension was palpable. I was sitting up toward the back of the theater and saw people around me quietly moving their water cups off the bar tables. Afterward there was a bunch of bullshit because some pregnant lady felt unsafe or whatever, but I felt like it was a perfect meta layer laid over the film. Here we were, a bunch of movie-goers clapping at the message packaged in a nice safe movie up on the scene when, just like the benefactors inside the film, we were confronted with something out of our control. It was great.
09.23.17	Ron Goossens, Low Budget Stuntman	Steffen Haars, Flip Van der Kuil	This is the new one from the New Kids guys about an alcoholic who's willing to hurt himself in order to get back with his cuckolding girl. It was ok but not as good as the first New Kids movie.
09.23.17	Bat Pussy	Unknown	I followed up the Psycho doc with this satire porn that AGFA did a 2K scan of from Something Weird's 16mm print. I guess they have the world's only print of this film which is a total oddity. There are no credits, no title, nothing. It's a total regional amateur porn, made worth watching by a couple factors: -the two main performers spend the whole movie bickering at each other. I suspect the dude is too drunk to get hard and they both seem like bad improv actors trying to make a scene up out of the blue. They periodically get off-screen direction that they don't bother to edit out so you see them look off camera while the sound mutes for a second. -it cuts to this girl named Bat Pussy who's on a mission to... keep people from making fuck films in Gotham City i guess? She gets around with one of those inflatable rubber balls with handles that you sit and bounce on. It's extremely un-sexy... the guy's all over the place and never really gets hard. i suspect that this would be harder-core if he could, but as it is there's no actual penetration. It was a bit of an experience to watch with a crowd. Maybe it would've been more awkward if people actually got turned on, but it was still a little awkward.
09.23.17	78/52	Alexandre O Philippe	Day three starts with this documentary on the shower scene from Psycho. yep, a whole movie just on one scene. It's actually a lot better than it should be. I thought it would run pretty thin and have to stretch for time to fill out the 90 minutes, but it feels jam packed and well paced throughout. It tells a comprehensive story of the origin, planning, execution, and impact of the scene, using all the source material from various sources needed. They interview Janet Leigh's body double, use archival interview footage of Leigh and Hitch and everyone else, talk to the editor of the Gus Van Sant remake, show all the satires, etc... if you think it has anything to do with this scene, it's probably in the movie. It also deep dives on a few tiny details. The one that sticks with me in particular is getting an art historian to talk about the painting that Norman Bates uses to hide his peephole. As it turns out, the painting itself is about voyeurism and is quite racy and the subject has been painted many times over, each painting bringing their own perspective and take on the subject and the version that Hitch used had particular meaning in itself. The film also uses a great technique for most of its interview subjects. The director sits them down and lets them watch the movie (or at least the scene itself), getting reaction video-style feedback from everyone. Sometimes this feedback is funny, but more often it provides fantastic commentary because it's people like Guillermo del Toro or Walter Murch talking about it. So yeah, this was fantastic. In the Q&A afterward, the director mentioned wanting to do a sequel which I thought was pretty funny.
09.22.17	Brimstone & Glory	Viktor Jakovleski	For the midnight slot, I saw this documentary about this town in Mexico that celebrates the patron saint of firework making with a 2-day orgy of fireworks. The theater's AC was broken so it was pretty warm in there but I still really liked this. It's shot and cut very similar to one of the old IMAX educational docs that you might see of the space station or rainforest butterflies or something, following around almost-random people as they prepare these ornate and gigantic firework structures for the festival then introduces some amazing slow motion photography of the fireworks going off. Really amazing photography all around. At one point they put a gopro on this one guy's head as he climbs this rickety tower to tie a string of fireworks to one of the wheels. It's insane. And then the festival is even more insane. On one night, it's these huge towers that light up, sending fireworks everywhere in a glorious fountain of light. But the second night is even crazier with all these giant bull statues loaded up with explosives that teams of people push down the street, burning themselves while all the fireworks burn off. And it's right in the middle of the street with huge crowds all around it. So medics are on hand to handle all the burns that take place. Insane and beautiful. Really good.
09.22.17	Killing of a Sacred Deer	Yorgos Lanthimos	Then I saw the new Jorgos Yanthimos movie. I think I liked The Lobster a little more than this one (and I didn't really LOVE the Lobster), but this was pretty good as well. Everyone talks in the near-monotone way as The Lobster, but I think that style worked better in that film because the whole world was a bit off kilter. Here, these people are supposed to be actual humans living on Earth so the dialogue bothered me a bit. They had the kid from Dunkirk here for a Q&A and he mentioned that the style of delivery really came from the way that the lines were written in the script. It wasn't explicit direction from Yorgos, he said he just saw that Colin Farrell was doing it that way and went along, but it's also hard to say the dialogue any other way. Once the real crux of the film presents itself, I liked it more. It builds to a climactic scene at the end which was the highlight for me.
09.22.17	King Cohen	Steve Mitchell	Next up was this doc about filmmaker Larry Cohen. It's a well put-together doc that talks about all of Cohen's accomplishments and gives a good sense of his excitable personality. He seems like a true maverick idea factory similar to Sam Fully or maybe a less-exploitative H. G. Lewis. I liked this, but was happy to see Cohen in person because his intro and Q&A were really entertaining and candid.
09.22.17	Hagazussa	Lukas Feigelfeld	A film student's graduation film, this is about a maybe-witch in rural olde germany and how she is shunned by other townsfolk. It has some amazing photography and a good cello-driven score that's very drone-y and hypnotic, but the story is VERY close to The Witch and basically does the same thing as that movie, only slower and with less dramatic effect. However, I did like the Ben Wheatley-esque psychedelic scene late in the movie. Also, the Alamo served an apple with the film since there's a scene where a character eats an apple. I generally like when they pair up a film with a food item for dramatic impact, but this movie had MUCH better opportunities than the apple. Like mushrooms or baby stew... just sayin. Next I watched six episodes of a Canadian TV show called Letterkenny. It's much more precious about its language than Trailer Park Boys but still centers around a small hick town and the weirdos that live in it. I liked it a lot but found the repetitious meme-like structure of the scripts a bit much at times. I suspect watching one a week would help that a bit, since I think we saw the first, second, and last episodes of the first two seasons all in one sitting. I'll have to track down the rest of the show and give it a watch sometime.
09.21.17	Vampire Clay	Soichi Umezawa	This is about some possessed clay that eats people once it's dug up out of the ground and used in sculpture class. It's kind of like Bucket of Blood mixed with Little Shop of Horrors. Aside from a small handful of cool shots and a decent ending, I didn't like this one much.
09.21.17	Thelma	Joachim Trier	This one's about a girl who is discovering her superpower ability to make things happen. It's also a lesbian love story (sort of). It looks great, has a good ending, but is also a bit too slow. I wish it went faster and farther with the premise.
09.21.17	Dan Dream	Jesper Rofelt	Oh hey, I went to Fantastic Fest this year! I didn't write any notes on the day though so this is all in hindsight, and I'll probably speed through them since I have 35 to get through. So these thoughts come with anywhere from a day to a week of reflection. My first film of the fest was this one from the Klown guys. It's the based-on-a-true-story of how a group of Danish men attempted to make first electric car. This was pretty funny. There were some fun moments and I like the two Klown guys a lot. I don't think it was as funny as their previous efforts, but there was still plenty to like.
09.08.17	It	Andy Muschietti	So Stephen King's IT was the first "grown up" book I ever read. My mom described some of the story when she was reading it and something about the cover really hooked me so as soon as I felt I was able, I tackled the thousand-page monster. I was, like, 12. I think I first read It around the time that the TV mini-series aired. I thought that the show wasn't so great, but Tim Curry gave a great performance and the central story was still strong enough to bear a few repeat views through the years. Now this movie, swapping the 80s for the original 50s stuff and the promise of a sequel for the original 80s stuff. I heard a vaguely positive buzz. It was ok. Even chopping the book in half, it's hard to fit it all into one movie. The book has the luxury of making all 7 kids main protagonists (well, 6 and a half), but for this film they had to center on Bill. So all the other kids seem a little shallow in comparison. And the time push makes part of the film seem like you're watching the same scene 3 or 4 times as each kid gets creeped out by Pennywise. But they threw in more details about the town's history than the mini-series did and I'm very happy for that. They stayed relatively close in terms of plot and character... about as much as you can ask for, really. Maybe it's because i'm so familiar with the story already but it just didn't have that oomph for me. Again: not bad, decent, ok, they didn't completely fuck it up like I hear The Dark Tower was... but putting a lego turtle in one scene does not mean you included the cosmic scale of the book and for all the late 80s movie titles on the marquee it would've been really cool to see some replacement for the Tennaged Werewolf scene from the book. But still, for the most part I thought Pennywise was good. I really liked the travelling eye stuff they did. The mouth stuff was great. The voice... maybe a bit much? but whatever. It felt very "modern" horror... I did really like the final confrontation though. That was well done. Also, i sat near a teenage boy and his mom for this. Kudos to the kid for wanting to see it, but tell your mom to shut the hell up.
09.02.17	Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2	James Gunn	Another Marvel movie. I appreciated the colors and comic-book-iness of this one... also that it was the opposite of Civil War in that it seemingly had nothing to do with the rest of the cinematic universe... not even another Thanos cameo... I enjoyed the humor... thought Bautista did well. But it's already fading from memory you know?
07.30.17	Dunkirk	Christopher Nolan	So first let me say that this is like the third time I've noticed Nolan's scores and how he uses music in his films. This score is very loud and overbearing and feels constant but also super duper effective. Of course the ticking clock sound (this feels like some OP weapon introduced into a shooter that needs nerfing. it's like hitting an auto-tension button on your audience) and these long rising drones that are reminiscent of incoming planes. Then when the planes do come they are all but screaming at us. And when danger happens, these abrupt notes cutting off like a NIN song or something. It's really extraordinary and goes a long way in making this 106-minute movie feel like 318 minutes (in a good way). Also, the rest of it. Great great filmmaking. I didn't know anyone's name, I didn't care. There were like 30 lines of dialogue in the whole film, I couldn't understand a third of them thanks to british accents and whisper-talking, I didn't care. It's a story of evacuation and losing that still felt triumphant in the end. There's no paragraph of text explaining the rest of the way, no picture credits telling us this guy went on to open a hardware store and that guy died in a barfight. All these things are really freaking hard to do. The IMAX photography also stuns. Tom Hardy, face obscured, body un-moving, not saying anything, is still super fun to watch because 1) i can see his eyes through the goggles and 2) i can see the freaking ocean behind him outside of the plane! I mean not all the time but still, the dogfighting footage in this film is just incredible. I'm sure there's a ton of digital effects work going on here but it all feels authentic. The higher resolution of IMAX makes all the difference with that. And the framing... the freedom of having so much air above the actors even in medium shots because you've got this great big nearly 4:3 70mm box to fill up. The very first shot with a group of soldiers on a french street, and you can see every building and the street and the flyers floating down through the air and make out details of everything... is remarkable. And seeing the vast expanse of beach as you watch a couple guys running toward a grounded boat or through a line of troops or whatever. It's indicative of a complete grasp of what these images can do. Really I just had one nitpick which deals with the very end... and a character... and a plane... that I didn't understand. The rest of it was pure tense cinematic bliss.
07.16.17	The Diving Bell and the Butterfly	Julian Schnabel	So. This month I finally faced the music and cancelled my Netflix disc subscription. It's been a long time coming and I'm probably one of the last to even still have one but my time management and movie-watching habits have changed to the point where I would forget I even had discs sitting here on my desk. I thought it very fitting that the last Netflix disc I'd watch (for the time being anyway, you never know) was The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. I think I've had this disc in my hands two or three times, sending it back without watching it over and over then figuring I really should see it and re-adding it to my queue. Julian Schnabel is a pretty singular vision and his other films (Basquiat and Before Night Falls) got an amazing amount of critical praise. I liked but didn't love those films though, and the thought of spending two hours inside the head of someone completely paralyzed was just too much I guess. But - as usual with these films that I put off watching forever - it was so so good. I think the bulk of the credit goes to Janusz Kaminksi. I mean I'm sure it was a team effort and everyone should take credit for bringing this together but this has some of the most claustrophobic interior photography I've seen in some time. It's also kind of a love letter to film, right? To do the same thing with digital I bet would be very difficult. How they achieved some of this footage...man... Also, as a quick aside, i really love Schnabel's confidence. I watched the special features to see how they did some of the shots and there's some footage of him wading out into the surf wearing nothing but a torn skirt with the actor on his shoulders. For a large man, he seems very comfortable in his body and his fashion choices, totally ridiculous in some cases, are surprising attractive. I think if I showed my belly wearing an unbuttoned plaid shirt with the sleeves cut off it would not look so great, but I guess put me in a loft with one of my million-dollar paintings behind me and all of a sudden my exposed flab is more like unbridled masculinity? I love it.
07.15.17	Live Forever	John Dower	A documentary about the 90s britpop wave with bands like Oasis, Blur, and Pulp. I wasn't so into these bands back in the day but I was into the more dancey stuff coming out of England at the same time (Massive Attack, Portishead, Underworld, Chemical Brothers, The Prodigy, etc.) which makes sort of a cameo appearance in this film. I also enjoy Damn Albarn's work via Gorillaz so it was interesting to learn about where he came from. The most interesting part of this movie for me was seeing this fad from the British point of view. My memories are from MTV and them being imports in our market so it was cool to see how popular they were over there. It was also interesting to view this film 15 years later. The interview subjects take a past look at it but really in 2003 they were barely past it. Liam Gallagher still looks stuck in it. A lot has happened since then... particularly when they talk about Blur vs. Oasis... Gorillaz has made such a huge impact since then... I wonder if Albarn would've had perspective had he not "lost" that battle in the 90s. Anyway, interesting stuff.
07.15.17	Sing Street	John Carney	Showed this to Molly; she cried. Seeing this in a better atmosphere than on a plane was great. In my memory anyway, I think this is now my favorite John Carney movie. It feels so personal, but what really got me this time is that he dedicated the film to brothers everywhere. That makes me feel like he sees himself as the younger brother and made this movie to show appreciation for everything that his older brother gave him, which is so sweet. The older brother part is definitely the scene stealer here... it's so fitting. what the hell is all this dust doing in the air!? anyway, great movie.
07.09.17	T2 Trainspotting	Danny Boyle	These reunion movies are so fraught with danger. On paper it sounds like such a good idea to get the band back together but all too often it feels forced and tired and just doesn't work. This is a quite rare example of a sequel that feels fresh and familiar, nostalgic and new, looking back and forward. I think it's mostly due to Danny Boyle's direction and his editor. There's a constantly splintering narrative that keeps echoing the original, in one scene literally like ghosts running past us, while the characters today deal with the consequences of that first film. But it's shot beautifully, there's a vibrant thudding soundtrack, and all the actors are still really good. Ewan Bremner stole it for me this time around. But I still get the feelings from the first... maybe not that novelty and excitement but certainly the tragedy. I don't think anything can touch the excitement and exuberance of the first Trainspotting, but I feel like with this Boyle isn't really trying to. He's just doing what he's doing now, not twenty years ago. It still works, but it feels more mature to me. I thought it was really really good.
07.08.17	GLOW: The Story of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling	Brett Whitcomb	We watched and liked the Netflix series so thought this would be worthwhile. It mostly is. It's definitely in the vein of informative-rather-than-entertaining in that there's not much filmmaking technique on display here. Lots of talking heads intercut with old footage. Groan-worthy sad guitar when it's time to cry, etc. But it does what it needs to do... You catch up/learn about the real ladies, you learn how the show came together, how it was produced, why it died. You also see a nice reunion segment of all the oldies back together again. I got what I wanted out of it; i'm not sure what else there was for the movie to say so I'm glad it didn't stretch out or whatever. Good time.
06.23.17	Zodiac	David Fincher	I think this is turning out to be my favorite David Fincher movie. While I've enjoyed almost all of his films, this one seems the most watchable and to hold up the best. The cast is stellar, all playing non-showy roles (perhaps with the exception of Robert Downey Jr). And I think it's a rare film that shows the passage of time. I think the time lapse of the transamerica pyramid is one of the best ever examples of this. And I love how constrained the murders are followed by how unraveled the invastigation gets. And that look at the end. John Carroll Lynch in the hardware store. Murderous eyes. Dead face. SO GOOD. gooooood byeee....
06.17.17	John Wick: Chapter 2	Chad Stahelski	I thought this was a solid sequel. It can't replicate the surprise of the first one and it sets up a third one so the ending is a bit of a minor note, but the action is super solid and the odd world of secret assassin etiquette is still super interesting. It manages to do that sequel thing where they go to Europe for some reason but not have it be too forced or lame. I still don't buy Ruby Rose as tough... but that's ok. There was also a moment about halfway through where I thought maybe this world of assassins extended to where all people in the world know about it or something because there were gunfights and killings in very public places and nobody seemed to mind, but then they kind of addressed it in a funny moment so movie logic dictates that all is forgiven. So yeah, solid sequel.
06.17.17	Masterminds	Jared Hess	I guess I can't fault netflix for recommending this one to me. I like pretty much everyone involved. Except the movie isn't any good. It reminds me of an equally bad movie called Drowning Mona in that it's kind of based on a true story but it's so bizarre that it should probably stay a wikipedia page or something. I dunno.. so much talent here but it's all squandered. It's a shame too... I want another Jared Hess movie that connects like Napoleon Dynamite but this is like strike 4?
06.15.17	Snowden	Oliver Stone	Showtime is running Stone's Putin Interviews docuseries and he's making multiple strange appearances on TV coming off as pro-russia (which isn't going over so well), and I realized that I had never gotten around to seeing this. A couple things. One: I remember how Controversial Stone came off in the 80s and 90s when The Doors and JFK and Nixon were released. His reputation was such that he even made a (great) cameo in that movie Dave playing up that perception. Given his recent political stances and more reason interviews I think he isn't acting so different today, it's just that the subject matter and political climate has changed. What's weird is that he's seeming to hold his tongue more these days and not speak is entire position. It's weird to see him dodge "easy" questions like "Isn't Putin an evil guy" but then not go right out and say that he agrees with the things that Putin says and thinks that Russia is being made into an enemy by the American military, industrial, and political leaders. Maybe he's suffered enough defeats in his career just to be happy to keep working and doesn't want to stir that much shit? Or maybe i'm reading him wrong and he just really doesn't want to put his opinion out there... but this is like the fifth project that he's done now where he goes and talks to US-maligned political leaders to get their sides of the story (His Two Castro interviews, Persona Non Grata where he talks to Arafat, and South of the Border where he tours South America talking to leaders of Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Cuba,Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil) so it definitely seems like he has something on his mind. A second thing. I watch these projects because I like Stone's steadfast point of view and willingness to go against the grain to do his own thing, but the movies/shows just aren't that good. His Other Showtime series, an Untold History of the US, I thought was really good, but this other stuff feels like he's trying to be Nick Broomfield but with a softer touch in the interviews. Say what you will about the stories but The Doors and JFK and Nixon was some FANTASTIC filmmaking. Which leads me to Snowden. Let's just say for a minute that body snatchers are real and they've infiltrated Hollywood. I put Stone and Michael Mann at the top of the list suspected of being pod people instead of their former selves. I really don't know what happened to eye behind Any Given Sunday and U-Turn and Natural Born Killers. Did he stop doing coke? I thought that was his whole thing with Scarface in the 80s? Did he get bored (or too tired) to keep the whole mixed media collage style going? Wanted to point toward something more conventional? One too many projects killed by studios? For whatever reason, his last half dozen narrative features have been boring and run of the mill, which is something I never thought I'd say. Maybe he's too close to history with all these projects? I dunno... but it seems like he has more interest in the documentary work than the narrative stuff. Which is fine; look at Werner Herzog for proof of that. But it also makes me sad, because I really loved 80s and 90s Oliver Stone. Here, I thought Gordon Levitt was great (much like Josh Brolin nailed W), and he had a great supporting cast and went to all the locations but it just fell flat. Citizenfour is SO MUCH more gripping. It's just a shame...
06.10.17	Why Him?	John Hamburg	I thought this was pretty funny. I mean, it's a total disposable comedy in terms of story, but there's a good cast and the premise is decent enough to hang some good scenes on and I laughed quite a bit. Cranston and Mullally were highlights.
05.31.17	Lynch (One)	blackANDwhite	I stumbled across this on this Internet. I MIGHT have watched it at work. It's a circa 2007 direct cinema-style doc following David Lynch around during his website/Inland Empire/Transcendental Meditation Book tour days... which is great because that's when I encountered him in Austin and those memories just came churning to the surface of my memory because of seeing Sonja last week... so it's all connected. I've watched a lot of interviews with David Lynch but never really had a chance to see him working or in a candid moment when he's not on his guard. In some ways, These moments did a lot to humanize him for me. Seeing him cuss and deal with frustration, seeing him cutting wood with a cig sticking out of his mouth or physically putting paint on canvas, speaking freely with (presumably) his support staff or colleagues just like anyone else. But in other ways, it did more to build up the complete and utter freedom he has in life as an artist. Even though my memory of watching Inland Empire was pretty strained, I can't help but covet his confidence to do whatever the fuck he wants and construct this film in a completely experimental nature. And not only the movie but life in general. Painting, photography, wood... cutting... whatever it is he's doing here. He just does it. And that's what he gives off in interviews but I've never been certain if that's really how he lives life but it totally definitely is. This might mean I have to watch Inland Empire again. Damn it. As a film, this is kind of just a collection of footage. But i don't really need a story arc here... it's presented as raw intimate moments with Lynch and that's what you get. I mean, the footage they have in here of Lynch directing Laura Dern or the Polish actors is more intimate than I've seen of 98% of the behind-the-scenes stuff I've seen from other directors. and... I have to say... there's a goddamn treasure trove of amazing David Lynch quotes: "I'm in a hair of a funk." "I'm reading the bible... to get ideas... to figure out what this film is about. That's what I did on Eraserhead." "I want a one-legged sixteen year old girl. I want a Japanese girl who's Jap- who's Eurasian. I want a Eurasian. Like 23. beautiful. I want a pet monkey. A spider monkey. Pet."
05.29.17	Logan	James Mangold	After the drabness of Apocalypse comes this which is totally great. A fresh take on tired characters, an interesting near-future world, good story pretty well told. It's at once such a good endpoint for these characters but also makes me wish we could have a little more (as long as they're of this caliber). This is really how everyone's wanted to see the wolverine behave this whole time, right?
05.29.17	X-Men: Apocalypse	Bryan Singer	Meh. So I spent some time while watching wondering why I wasn't enjoying this as much as Doctor Strange... There are several reasons. For one, when I was a kid going through my comic phase, Spider-Man and X-Men were my favorite books. So maybe it's disappointment that these X-Men movies are wasted potential... or perhaps those books are harder to adapt? I feel like that's probably not the case... Doctor Strange, Ant-Man, and Guardians of the Galaxy disprove that because those books seem like a much harder sell. Maybe there are too many characters? Certainly, about half the cast doesn't have anything to do here except stand around in their make up and costume. I think the biggest reason though is the mindset. Bryan Singer is still making this movie like he made the first X-Men 20 years ago. There's a bunch of set-up scenes, some big bad tells us his plan, then a bunch of effects shots waiting for the good guys to win. The effects shots have gotten better but the stories haven't. It's always the origins. This is like the 4th time I've seen Hugh Jackman do Weapon X. There's something like 400 issues of the comic book but that's the one story they want to tell over and over? To be honest, I wanted to watch Logan but figured I had to see this just to keep everything in order. I'm pretty hopeful that Logan will tell a new Wolverine story. So... yeah... also... I feel like I have to mention that... the other night i watched a bunch of youtube clips about seedy Hollywood underbelly child predation and those videos called out Singer specifically. I have to say it's getting harder and harder to watch Bryan Singer's movies and not feel complicit somehow. Like, when there was controversy about Apt Pupil I was like "whatever" because I liked The Usual Suspects. But that movie was a long time ago, and it seems like in every movie since there's a lot of young twinkish dudes just hanging out in the cast not doing much on camera. Like how the kids cast as Iceman and Colossus in X2 look a lot like the guy cast here as Stryker... I dunno, I guess it's no different than any straight director putting a lot of hot blondes in their movies, but it's still a shame that this dark cloud has to be here now. It also seems like a new controversy pops up whenever a new Bryan Singer movie comes out. I'm usually one of the guys to fall on the side of the fence of not letting filmmakers' personal lives affect how I like their movies, but it still does enter into the equation and I have to say... Singer's movies are not as good as Woody Allen's or Roman Polanski's. Anyway, all that aside... I thought this was pretty dull. I hope they don't make any more of these.
05.28.17	War Machine	David Michod	I didn't like this one too much. I think for me it was an issue where, usually in these types of things... like in Generation: Kill we have misguided commanders and either the reporter is more present so we're seeing through their eyes or we have some sympathetic low-ranking soldier knowing how messed up everything is. In Generation: Kill you have both of those things, here you have neither. Instead, Brad Pitt's propped up in an effort to follow him, but he's also the misguided commander so i never really want to follow him. Both the reporter and the sympathetic low-ranking soldier are not around enough to feel anything for. So it's kind of like watching a guy you don't like do things you don't agree with for two hours. Not super fun. Although, this movie makes prominent use of a Jon Spencer Blues Explosion song too. Coincidence? Maybe Hollywood's finally catching on to the awesomeness of the Blues Explosion!?
05.27.17	Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull	Steven Spielberg	Someone at work mentioned that the Nazca lines were in this and I didn't remember that so I thought I'd watch this again now that I'm more familiar with the ancient astronaut theory to see if, somehow, I liked this better than I did ten years ago. Nah. I mean, i still WANT to like it, but there's just too much... Shia swinging from vine to vine, the ants, knowledge being the treasure... it's just too much. And instead of the Nazca lines helping it kind of made things worse since, now that I've been there in person and seen them, the whole sequence feels ultra fake to me because i know that area doesn't look anything like that. They used the fakest most CG composition of the lines I could imagine, like when a sitcom goes to Mt. Rushmore and they're all just standing in front of green screen with a postcard from Mt. Rushmore behind them. Anyway, still not good.
05.26.17	Alien: Covenant	Ridley Scott	Due to several factors (it being slow at work on a friday before a three day weekend, the general revelry still resonating from last night, and me hearing that this was actually good), I decided to cut out of work early today and see this at the good ol' Tinseltown Pflugerville. Not only is this the venue where I saw my first movie in Austin, it also holds a special place in my heart because it's where I used to go to see matinees when i was new in town. Since I'm kind of looking back with nostalgia at the good old days when I watched more than one movie every day, I thought it would be fitting to sit in a non-packed theater, get sick from eating too much popcorn, and enjoy this movie in a most favored movie-going way. That and Chris said he was working so I thought it'd be cool to catch up and chat with him more than I did last night. So... let me just get this out of the way. I feel like this is the third Ridley Scoot movie where i've seen pretty extensive footage in the promotional material that did not fully appear in the finished film. I would say that's cool, except more often than not I've found the promo stuff more interesting than lots of stuff in the films. -The one that stands out the most was those weird The Counselor short/ads, like where Fassbender goes lingerie shopping and Natalie Dormer's shopgirl helps him out. Natalie Dormer wasn't even in that movie! -All that Martian stuff where it's supposedly Watney vlogging the journey so far, introducing the crew, etc. I feel like none of that made it in. -The whole first trailer for this film shows the crew... I'm guessing before they enter hypersleep for the first time, which good bits of interpersonal stuff that sets up the characters and gives them all much more of a sense of actually being colonists. And the weird prologue that was put online right before the film released... it contained some pretty significant visual effects, not to mention a small cameo, that was partially cut for the film. -and this is like a half point, but the amount of deleted scenes from Prometheus that should have been in the film were impressive. I feel like I could've stood a shot at liking that movie if all those scenes had made it in. So I don't know, I just wanted to mention this trend. I don't know if it means Scott has the budget and freedom to shoot any and everything and kind of find the movie in editing or if it's some brilliant multi-platform plan that he has going into production or what... but while I find that I should be thinking it's cool that all his trailers aren't just giving away the best moments from the film, I'm almost finding it like a bait and switch (and news alert, the trailers still ALSO give up some of the film's best scenes so... great) Anyway, all that aside. I thought this was pretty good. It was definitely that missing link between Prometheus and Alien that I wanted/needed. It kind of makes me like Prometheus more in retrospect knowing that it wasn't all just a pointless exercise. There's some nice connective tissue in there that I enjoyed... to the point where I'm not sure what story there is to tell if they were going to do another movie set in between the two films. I think at this point my ideal next Aliens movie would be a sequel to everything where certain planets are just forsaken as xenomorph infestations. Or maybe finally a good aliens vs. predator with no humans and just subtitled dialogue between the predators. sigh... I liked the cast for the most part. I did feel like the story didn't develop much, but that's ok. With the amount of design on display and a handful of nice set pieces, you don't really need the plot to be that complex. Thinking back to Alien, it certainly wasn't a mind-bender. Wasn't most of the movie Ripley trying to get to one end of the ship then get back to the other end? So yeah... liked this one pretty good. Really enjoyed playing hooky and seeing it in a theater. Twas a great afternoon.
05.25.17	Baby Driver	Edgar Wright	Ok... it's been a long time since I've been to a really special Alamo Drafthouse event and it's been a long time since I've written a really long note on here so let's get into it and do both right now. This night started with an email from Kayla forwarding an invite from Tim League to an Alamo 20th anniversary party. In the note, he said he was trying to track down as many old staff members and "OG409ers" as he could. I sent him an email asking to be included and got an invite in return. The seat selection also asked for a t-shirt size. Oh, Austin traffic really sucks now. Like, people were complaining about it 12 years ago when I moved to town and I was like 'yeah uh huh i can still get downtown in like 20 minutes during rush hour' but I was trying to be downtown today at 6:15 and I think it took 45 minutes? that officially sucks. Sorry, back to good stuff. So right off the bat, I park in a lot and Zack spots me on the street corner. All of the Alamo crew I always felt like I was friendly with but never quite friends. Especially Zack who feels to me like his life is running on fast forward compared to mine. But still, he's super nice, I think he's great, it was great to see him, made me realize I was about to probably see A LOT of familiar faces. He had this crazy horn in his hands. Not a horn like a trumpet but more like that of an ox or a goat hollowed out. "You aren't supposed to be seeing this," he says to me. I offer to hide it in my shirt or down my pants. Stepping into the Ritz, Zack immediately disappears and I see Daniel and Chris: two best movie buds who I was sad I didn't get to see at this year's Fantastic Fest. Deeper in the lobby, Tim and Karrie League drink champagne and hold court greeting guests. Already I'm seeing a host of people I kinda sorta know. Old wait staff, old managers, old friends, old stalwarts of the Austin movie-going scene. But also many who I did not recognize. Folks hanging about, talking in clustered circles. After a few minutes, the three of us decide to head into the auditorium to check out the seating situation. After a whiff of familiar scent from the stairway, we were inside where even more people hung out. I spotted David Strong down in front, Daniel and Chris were both sitting in the front row, right next to John Carpenter as it turns out. I spoke with him a bit, asked after that Kevin guy he used to hang out with: major bummer of the night #1. Kevin died suddenly just shy of two months ago. My mini eulogy for Kevin: a guy I knew just shortly ten years ago but left a lasting memory for his open warmth and general excitement for all things cinematic. I don't remember when I first met him... maybe at the screening of The Descent out at Longhorn Caverns? Maybe before that at some random event. What I mostly remember him for is once Rodriguez and Tarantino started shooting Grindhouse. He was an extra on Planet Terror and regaled me with a few stories from his day or two on set. He played a zombie victim getting eaten in a toilet stall. The fake blood splashed into his eyes and I guess the sugar crystalized and scratched his cornea. He took it in good spirits - he was going to be eaten by a zombie in Grindhouse after all! - and had also somehow made friends with Josh Brolin during a smoke break. I saw him one night at South Lamar and he told me to show up downtown at midnight; that something cool was happening that he might be able to get me into. I'm sure I wrote all about this in a previous entry, but it ended up being the cast and crew screenings that Tarantino ran for a few weeks for those first few weeks of shooting. Sneaking into those are some of my most favorite 409 Colorado memories. So while I haven't been in touch with him for probably 10 years, it was a shock to hear of his passing and I'm sure I'm just a small pebble in the massive stone mountain of loved ones that have been grieving him. Back to the good stuff. Pretty soon Micah appeared and came down to say hi. Kayla appeared and greeted us. Megan popped up, said Emily was somewhere in the building. I caught sight of Aaron, Kaela, and Eric from across the room but they were too far away to talk to. Along the side were a bunch of old crew... people that I knew their names for some reason even though I had barely if ever talked to. Andrew the old IT guy, manager John, manager Mike, Kristen, chef John, along with a BUNCH of old wait staff that I found their names hazy and original rolling roadshow crew. It was really amazing. Really there were only a couple notable absences: Jarrette and Kier-la. I settled down in my seat to find that I was sitting next to Burnie. A moment of deja vu hit. The last (and maybe only?) time I met him was during the last Butt-Numb-A-Thon that I attended back when the Ritz was brand new. I sat next to him for that night, very close to where we were sitting now. To my other side, A fellow Brian (Brian Kelly) darted in to drop his stuff before disappearing to help with the introductory festivities. I didn't recognize him because he was so skinny. In each seat was a sword. At first glance I thought it was some plastic toy wrapped in plastic, probably for some pirate-themed thing. Upon closer inspection however, I found a heavy steel sword sheathed in thick leather brandished with the Alamo logo. Why the fuck do we all have swords!? Oh yeah, we also got shirts with the original Pam Grier BADASS CINEMA design along with a little "20 years..." text underneath. Also, on the table, are printed booklets for the night with a special menu made up of old throwback dishes of days past, gone but not forgotten, along with an anecdote from Tim about where they came from, why they went away, and why they're back tonight. Spanish Olives with Fino Sherry, potato skins, fresh-baked cocaccia with tapenade and red pepper dip, Enter the Dragon, Poultrygeist, original chocolate cake, La Dolce Vita, Black and Tan, and Veuve Clicquot were all back. Some of those dishes pre-dated me! I was unsure of what to get until Burnie ordered potato skins and the smell drove me to do the same. I know they're frozen but they're still pretty damn good theater food. Finally the lights go down. A spotlight rises and David Strong is on stage in only a black speedo and a viking helmet labelled with a "Chaos Reigns" sticker holding the goat's horn. He mimes along to an audio track and blows the horn. Dance lights come up, smoke has filled the room, confetti cannons spray over the entire theater, people with rolls of toilet paper attached to air blowers drape entire rows with TP, a pyrotechnic bar blazes with fire stage center. It was crazy. In the span of what felt like 15 seconds, they had thrown every party favor at us and added forty minutes of cleanup time to the staff. After everyone picked the confetti out of their drinks, Tim and Karrie took the stage wearing giant animal masks. Tim, in his trademark baby blue suit, had to manually move the jaw of his mask to match him speaking. Karrie said that she spent most of her time trying to avoid being up on stage but they both wanted to celebrate this occasion with a big thank you to everyone in the house for helping get to where they are today. Tim then admits that the bit might not be working and takes his mask off, revealing that he was dressed as Karrie! They both kind of laughed it off for a bit, Karrie mentioning that they had rehearsed for like three hours and Tim ruined the bit too early. It was funny and totally felt 10000% Tim League charm. Then the pyro bar sent another sheet of flame up and for a second we were all scared for his safety. Then Tim invited the very first Alamo employee up on stage (he was wearing the original uniform which I had never seen before including a tie with the old Alamo marquee on it(!)) to participate in an ongoing Tradition that Tim had of christening any new venture by opening a bottle of champagne with a sword. I remember someone on the wait staff saying he did this in a not-quite-ready-to-open Ritz during Fantastic Fest one year and apparently glass went everywhere and cut people. This time I think it went a little more smoothly. Hector cut the bottle on his second try and it was by all accounts a clean opening. Thus begins another twenty years of prosper and success for the coolest theater in the world. After the screening, Tim had us all hold up the swords and swear to never open champagne by mortal means again. Pretty soon Edgar Wright came up and, after a few jokes about watching Boss Baby, he introduced Baby Driver. Tim said he built up a nice trailer reel (later admitting that he had to cut it down three times since the original running length was fifty five minutes) from the AGFA archives... hmm.... I think that's not right since the A stands for archive. from the AGF archives? from AGFA? whatever... To the best of my memory (and Micah's) the trailers were Gumball Rally, Eat My Dust, Moving Violations, Grand Theft Auto, Death Race 2000, Watch Out We're Mad, and ending with Stunt Rock (along with the little interstitial bits like "coming attractions", "and now our feature presentation" and the like). The Stunt Rock trailer still gave me a few goosebumps. Baby Driver the movie. I thought it was great. Write referred to it as a musical but it's perhaps better described as a mixtape movie because something like 98% of the film is set to diagetic music that the world quantizes to whatever song is in the main character's headphones. The example that comes to mind most recently was the Suicide Squad trailer with Bohemian Rhapsody. Except this was the WHOLE movie. Usually I feel like people get that idea, do it for one song and figure out how much of a huge pain in the ass it is, then let it slide as the movie goes on. With this film, every scene had that musicality which is about as far up my alley as the alley goes. Couple that with a soundtrack that I could conceivably come up with myself because it so closely matched my tastes and you almost don't need a story or dialogue or anything else. I mean the movie starts with Bellbottoms by The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion (off the album Orange which is in my car RIGHT NOW). Bongolia from Michael Viner's Incredible Bongo Band, Hocus Pocus by Focus, Bear Witness 2 from Handsome Boy Modeling School, Easy by the Commodores (although in that case I'm more familiar with the cover done by Faith No More), and an Ennio Morricone track with some Italian title that I don't know, which I was just listening to three days ago! All of these feature pretty heavily (along with about 80 other songs along the same vein) and they are all sitting on my hard drive right now. So I loved the music. The cast was great. The editing and photography great, really the only thing I didn't absolutely love was what they're unfortunately calling the most attention to in the marketing which is this gimmicky thing where the reason why the main character listens to music all the time is because he has tinnitus and the music helps drown out the constant buzzing in his ears. This convention is not needed in my opinion (just have him like music? There are enough other reasons why he has an emotional attachment to music that you don't need some superhero kryptonite device) and brings an already stylized movie toward the realm of fantasy and works against the gravity of danger and violence that the film also deals with. But that's it. I loved it. Granted, there's about 5000 words of setup here which should firmly establish my bias. This was about the best possible situation to see ANY movie. I bet anything halfway decent would've gone over very well for me. After the movie, Edgar Wright gave a great Q&A. He talked about the logistics of shooting and planning such complicated scenes set to music (short answer: very carefully), getting Kid Koala to help out with some new music used in the film, the origins of the idea itself (when he first heard Bellbottoms, he got this vision of an action scene to accompany it and through the years he'd find similar songs that conjured similar scenes in my mind, so he started with a collection of these and framed a movie around it, careful to find the song he wanted for each scene before writing it). The most interesting answer for me was when he talked about consulting with real ex-cons for research. He had one great anecdote of talking to two guys who didn't know each other before and asking them if they play any video games like Grand Theft Auto. One guy said no but then the other guy says "oh you really should. It's the closest thing to the buzz," at which point Wright wondered if he wasn't triggering some regression in these guys. At the end of the meeting, Wright said that they bid him adieu then added "we have some stuff to talk about so we're gonna go hang out." Oops! The next step in the evening's agenda was to adjourn across the street to Parkside where the "after party" would continue on into the night. I went back to drop off my shirt and sword at my car. On my way back, I overheard one hobo yell over to another "Hey what's up with all these goddamn blades, man?" The other hobo looked back questioningly and the first continued "Haven't you seen all these assholes with the civil war confederate swords!? They're walking all around, they all got em! What the fuck is going on!?" I met up with Micah and accompanied him to his room at the Driskill to do the same. It was my first glimpse anywhere other than the lobby of the Driskill and I have to say the room was pretty small and the hallways smelled kind of old. I guess the fanciness of that place is all about the lobby. On the walk we got into the new Twin Peaks and how great it was to have new David Lynch material. Back at Parkside, we took in the lay of the land. A weird jungle/woods photo booth set up with "CHAOS REIGNS" painted in red on the backdrop. Upstairs, a fancy set piece of a fox eating itself that I didn't realize was a cake, and what I thought was a DJ booth playing loud music. For a while we tried hanging out there, yelling to each other over the music. With Twin Peaks on my brain I couldn't help but think of Fire Walk with Me and the scene at the bar in the pink room. Our conversation was considerably less unnerving. We ran into Lars and Sonja, talked with them for a regrettably short time before they meandered away and we went outside in an effort to cool off and hear each other. Micah and I wound up around the corner on the balcony behind the dance floor where we caught up for a while. Kayla found us, Marcus found us, Joe found us among others. Pretty soon this dude named Silvero started performing. We looked through the window and saw Nacho let loose. Silvero's music was kind of like punk meets dance music but more in spirit than guitars. It sounded a lot like typical euro-dance stuff to me but he was very energetic, slowly shedding his silver suit until he was just a sweaty latin body in a red speedo. He also had all his gear wrapped in plastic so people could throw drinks at him. I admired the frenzy but I was also kind of glad to hang outside. I meant to stay until midnight or so. Around 1:30 I started saying it was time for me to go. I finally got to my car at 2. There was a general buzz in the air for me of having this one night where everyone was back together like the old days. I remembered the one random night where the staff when to Beerland for karaoke after a music monday or whatever and Kier-la sang some country tune, or closing the theater down and moving to the old Ginger Man to talk movies for another few hours before heading home. Or just the countless times that we'd loiter in the lobby, form a conversation circle, and revel in what we'd just seen. Wednesday nights filtering out into empty streets, walking up to Ninth for my car, giving rides home.... how I lived to give Lars or Kier-la a ride home and get a little casual one-on-one time with them. The last night! With John Carpenter carrying out sections of the seating while the truck came by to take the marquee off the wall. Going backstage and Sonja stepping in a glue trap. Standing on the sidewalk across the street and palpably feeling the end of an era for myself at least. David Strong's gigantic digital camera from like 1998. This is when the sadness started to creep in, because for as much fun as I was having, I also knew it was just one fleeting night. Some friendships, once raging fires, had gone out. I barely talked to Aaron and Eric at all... just a hi. There was a time I was pretty close to both of them. Kaela, Jarrette, Aaron, Eric... late night meals at Jim's. Now just a hi. I guess when you stop hanging out for ten years that stuff happens. Other fires still had embers, just waiting for a little more oxygen to reignite. Micah, Kayla, Chris, Daniel... Sonja... I really feel bad for not talking to Sonja more. Old pre-terror-thursday coffees at Halcyon! Our David Lynch weekend where I passed out from low blood sugar while listening to him shill Transcendental Meditation at a Barnes & Noble. Sitting through the unique experience of Inland Empire, watching him interviewed in the old ACL Live studio. The third Fantastic Fest making an impromptu last minute change between the Moebius doc to see Mirageman instead... her idea of someone using a potato peeler to defend themselves with. For part of me - the part that pays bills and gets the oil changed in his car and worries about 401ks - much has changed in the last ten years. But for another part of me, i'm kind of still back in 2007. In stasis, wondering if i'll ever re-activate or if things will ever be that way again. It's sad to realize that they won't, but it's also heartwarming to fall back into these memories every once in a while and roll around in them for a moment. I'm thankful for these notes and being able to go back and read my typo-riddled tired ramblings after those old screenings... stuff like Turkeython where almost no one showed up and Tim was the projectionist for Ultra-Man. The blaxploitation series where I really got to know David Strong and Thomas just because we were all super early and were the only ones in the theater for a while. Meeting Micah at QTfest 6 because he was sitting next to Blake and I was reading both of their accounts day by day as I wrote my own. I saw Thomas tonight from across the room but didn't say hi. That happened a lot. I don't really know a great way to wrap this up. In reality I drove home, took out my contacts, and went to sleep. But the sentimental nature of this note seems to demand something a bit more romantic and grandiose. In my email to Tim asking to come to this, I went back and looked up my notes on my very first Alamo experience. It was Friday the 13th Part 3 in 3-D. It was a pretty rowdy crowd that night... I have several notes about how funny some of the stuff people were yelling out and about how I threw out an aflac joke when a duck appeared on screen (classic). I'm sure today-me (or even ten-years-ago-me) would cringe at how much talking there was. But Among that stuff there was also some terribly sappy proclamations about how amazing it was and how it felt like a new home and all that. I copied some of it out and included it to Tim because, while I have not by any means been the longest fan or the most hardcore fan or most omnipresent fan, for about two years there was in it 100%. Every day, every moment I was soaking up. One of the reasons why I wanted to move to Austin was for the Alamo. It has fulfilled all of the wishes I had growing up in smaller towns with only mall theaters and multiplexes where smaller movies never even opened. All the hopes I had in college of finding and falling in with movie fans who were as avid as I was. All of the dreams of a place where people congregate to enjoy and respect and discuss the medium and all that it gives us. I found all that and more with the Alamo, and it has forever changed my life. For that, I thank Tim, Karrie, Lars, Kier-la, Zack, Henri, and everybody in the room tonight.
05.20.17	Doctor Strange	Scott Derrickson	I liked this one pretty good. I liked that it was unabashedly magic that they were dealing with. not some science mumbo jumbo but all the way magic. It felt a little wilder, closer to the Thor movies than anything else, in the realism department but I thought they pulled it off better than the two Thors so far. There was kind of a weird tonal problem with the humor... it never hit just right with me. Actually, now that I think about it, Robert Downey Jr/Tony Stark. has been the only one to really get humor that works in the context of the action I think. The first Thor was much too goofy, the Captain America films much too serious. I guess there's hope with Spider-Man but I'd say fully integrating the levity has been a week point with Marvel films so far. Same goes for this... but other than that... I enjoyed the visual effect work, thought the cast was good, performances decent (even though some actors were given next to nothing to do (but I guess Rachel McAdams and Michael Stuhlbarg had to join the marvel club somehow along with every other living actor)... but whatever.. nitpicks. I liked it.
05.13.17	Green Room	Jeremy Saulnier	Man, so tense. I remember the gore in this being so surprising and realistic that the whole crowd at Fantastic Fest roared. Seeing it now here at home... some of those scenes play in silence! It makes for quite a different experience in that regard. The movie holds up though... (although I think I still like Blue Ruin more. I don't think i'm going to watch that tonight though so my Macon Blair triple feature ends here). A solid performance from Anton Yelchin too... although Imogen Poots' haircut... yeesh.
05.13.17	I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore	Macon Blair	I liked this one more, although I think it's because I had the whole previous movie to attune to the tone. Turns out, Macon Blair's brain is just that way... about 85% dark, 15% funny. To my mind, neither are as good as Blue Ruin or Green Room, but that's ok. I also got a few hints of Bobcat Goldthwait in here too, specifically God Bless America. And I definitely liked Blair's cameo.
05.13.17	Small Crimes	Evan Katz	I misread the tone of this one. I thought it was a dark crime comedy a la Headhunters or A Somewhat Gentle Man. Even Cheap Thrills was more or less equal parts dark and humorous for me... but this veered much more toward dark. I was more or less into it until the end where it lost me. Nikolaj's character or performance never had enough heart to make me side with him. I think I'll give Macon Blair's other Netflix movie a shot though... just to see if this is how his brain works.
05.12.17	Jack Reacher: Never Go Back	Edward Zwick	Hmm... I guess I liked this more than the first one. It still feels like they make better books than movies. And i have to give it to Tom Cruise for willing to go topless at age 80 or whatever... but I kept expecting him to hang out of the plane or rappel from some skyscraper, and this movie is more about riding coach and taking the elevator. I thought it might be interesting to see Zwick take on something more action-y but there really wasn't much here... lots of Cobie Smulders acting tough though... LOTS OF THAT.
05.11.17	Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them	David Yates	I liked the scenery and the world but didn't care for any of the main characters. Colin Farrel's good but I never believe him for a second that he's not evil. The beasts were cool but not enough to carry a whole movie. So... it was ok I guess? I dunno...
04.08.17	Star Wars: Return of the Jedi	Richard Marquand	Thus concludes our rewatch of the first two Star Wars trilogies. Like a broken record, I really appreciated these Despecialized editions and seeing the (closest available to) original theatrical cuts of the original trilogy. I still remember how bummed I was in the late 90s when they cut the ewok jub jub celebration song at the ending, not to mention messing up the Sarlacc and all the other nonsense that they put into those special editions. I liked this one a lot too. I feel like ILM really had a handle on the space battles by now and the Tatooine stuff in this movie still stands as some of my favorite of all the films. I never loved the emporer but i have to say I like him less now that the prequels exist. Why they went with some obscene butthead make-up over this original white aging is beyond me. At least he looks interesting here... or at least not painful to look at. But enough with the dead horse beating. It was good to see this again. I'll probably give Rogue One and Force Awakens another view before December but for the purposes of this journey... We finished the game today and our re-watch is complete.
04.01.17	Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back	Irvin Kershner	Another despecialized edition. This one not quite as impactful since I last saw this movie from a friend's original 35mm print at the Alamo. It wasn't quite as cool an experience sitting at home eating Torchy's in my underwear but I'm not complaining by any means. It's very cool to have a digital copy that's watchable and original. You can really tell the budget difference between the first and second film. I also noticed a lot of the Ralph McQuarrie matte work this time around. It's so fantastic... maybe not in a hyper-real way but in a 1980 fantasy way. One of my big problems with this movie in previous viewings was the Yoda stuff. I never really loved the Dagobah setting and found Yoda's performance to be too comedic. This time around, I really liked the performance - his voice, the puppetry, all the physical emotions and gestures they got out of the wall-eyed puppet - but the dischord between his performance here and in the prequels bothered me a bit. Again, this is not a problem with this movie... if anything, they should've exposed more of Yoda's playful spirit in the prequels since they were trying to hard to retcon every little detail. So yeah, I liked Yoda this time... but the temporal shift in the intercutting kind of bothered me. I guess this is the first time that I noticed that either Han's escape from the Imperial Star Destroyers took like 2 months or Luke's training with Yoda took about a half an hour. I mean, I guess you could say that they spent a day or two in the asteroid creature (but not really, those Mynocks probably zeroed in pretty quickly after they landed, especially if the Start Destroyers were still hanging out when they took off), or that it would've taken the Falcon a while to get to Bespin without their hyperdrive (they did say it was pretty far), but you'd also think that it takes Luke some time to clean off his X-Wing and whatnot. Eh, I bet there's some plausible middle ground somewhere in there, like 2 weeks or something. But I guess if I'm geeking out this hard about a tiny detail, it means I enjoyed the film. This is true, I really liked this. I think one of the good things about the prequels is making you realize how good the original trilogy was. Speaking of, I can't wait to see the last one!
03.17.17	Star Wars	George Lucas	This was the "despecialized edition" found on the Internet. I figure that I own VHS, DVD, and Bluray copies of this film... no one will mind that I also now have a fan-made version that stitches the original cut back together through various source materials to let me see what was originally released in 1977... but in HD resolution. The results are frankly glorious. With the current state of Star Wars as a brand and Disney owning the rights and what's going on with CG these days... you forget that everything started with this one film full of optical effects and crazy costumes and wonderfully-designed sets and matte paintings. The editing is a little rough, some of the effects stutter and whatnot but by and large the film does more than hold up for its age: it validates the super hard work and innovation that went on 40 years ago to make this movie. And reading the end credits... practically every name on that reel went on to storied and accomplished careers. And, seen in the context of this marathon re-watch, the ways in which the film is different from the "previous" three are all good. The script doesn't treat me like an idiot, the effects are grungy and feel worn in like they exist, the characters are vibrant and iconic, and the pacing is pretty tight. Yes, i couldn't help but wonder why Obi Wan didn't recognize R2D2 or why Darth Vader didn't feel any connection to Leia but you know, these problems are not THIS movie's fault. THIS movie is great. And incidentally, I believe this will be the version that I watch for here on out. These nerds did a fantastic job of restoring and matching different materials to keep it presentable by today's technical standards. I can't wait to watch the next two.
03.04.17	Moonlight	Barry Jenkins	Yep. About what I expected... Not to discredit the power of this movie or anything, but... not exactly a good time. And I prefer Mahershala Ali in stuff that he's actually in. I wonder how hard it is for him to literally spend more time accepting awards for this performance than actually shooting it. That sounds mean. I liked this ok, will never see it again, never realized that Janelle Monae had such a figure, and wish The Knick was still on.
03.03.17	Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith	George Lucas	This one sits in my memory the least. I feel like I've only seen this once, maybe twice? To be honest, I'm far more familiar with the Lego Star Wars video game levels that represent this movie than I am with the film itself. So this one... it really feels like the most interesting and important part of all three of these sequels happens in between episodes 2 and 3. By the time this starts, Anakin is, like, already evil. He's already wearing black, already tough and ruthless, already there... Or at least that's how he comes off. It takes like absolutely nothing for him to lop off Christoper Lee's head. The whole thing... the mixture of bad acting, bad writing, and bad direction muddle everything and I can't even tell if there's some version of this that I would like or if it's complete crap. I just don't know. What I do know is that Anakin goes from selling out his mentor to killing every jedi (including kids) in like 10 seconds. wtf. And as much as I like Ewan Macgregor as Obi Wan... having the high ground and nearly all his other dialogue really irks me here. And I also don't like how the creators liked Yoda and Sam Jackson (not Mace Windu, Sam Jackson) too much so they somehow gave them kinda-winning-but-also-losing battles to keep their dignity intact but EVERY other jedi goes down in like 5 seconds under the same blaster fire that they effortlessly deflect in the first two films. It's just all so irksome... like this whole movie is just connecting dots that have to get connected. I bet this was the easiest script for Lucas to write. There's barely enough time to get it all in there... Where was this urgency in the first 2 movies? So... as it stands for this viewing, I'm really torn which film i like the least. I think Episode 2's "romance" scenes are the worst, followed closely by the "heartbreak" scenes in episode 3. Compared to this one, Episode 1 is like this stupid little nothing that's just floating around not paying attention. Really this is the one that's the most disappointing because, while everything that needs to happen happens, it happens with rushed disinterest and occasional neglect. And what is General Grevious' deal again? I remember learning somewhere that he's like a semi-cyborg type deal but in this movie he's about as mysterious as Syfo Dias. Sigh. Anyway, I've made it through. Now I'm psyched for the next 3.
02.26.17	Star Wars: Attack of the Clones	George Lucas	I feel like it's been a really long time since I've seen this... The romantic scenes with Padme and Anakin are maybe the lowest lows of the whole series. There was more Clone battle footage than I remembered. Those five minutes lay out what became multiple games and shows. It's an astounding amount of design, most of which is very cool. Most of the movie seems to swap between Obi Wan doing somewhat interesting things and Anakin doing terribly painful to watch things. The Jedi arena battle would've been ten times cooler if every shot wasn't intercut with C-3P0 making some corny joke. Still cool to see Yoda fight. I really could swear that they went in and did some effects polish on these Blus. I could've sworn that Christopher Lee's composited head during the fight scene was WAY more noticeable. So much hate for Hayden Christensen. I don't really blame Jake Lloyd... i mean he was a kid. It's Lucas' fault for not pulling a better performance out of him. But Hayden is old enough to know better. He's still constrained by some really terrible dialogue though. As much as I like Natalie Portman, she has more costume changes than most movies have with all of their characters. It's like every shot is a different ornate Naboo-ian garb. I still hate that all of a sudden Boba Fett shares DNA with EVERY clone trooper. Take some cool tertiary character that fans love and ruin it by making him the center of the universe. I hate that. A lot of the sets look like straight up paintings. I think maybe Lucas just went too digital too fast. I really felt it. Who the fuck was Jedi Master Sifo Dyas?
02.25.17	Star Wars: The Phantom Menace	George Lucas	Molly and I are playing through the early Lego Star Wars games and it has us in a mood to watch the series again. It's been long enough and I've been looking for an excuse to watch these Despecialized Editions that I got. The only downside is that we figured it'd be better to go through the prequels first (lest we may give up halfway through otherwise). So what'd I think of episode 1 with ~17 years of added perspective? Whoa. Has it been longer now since Episode 1 came out than the time between Return of the Jedi and Phantom Menace? I don't really want to think about that... So, I actually liked this a bit more than expected. Maybe it's just knowing what to expect, maybe it's having the distance to see the good and separate it from the bad... who knows. Here's a list of things that I liked: -John Williams killed it with that Duel of the Fates. To take a score as already beloved as Star Wars and add something that feels like it fits while simultaneously bringing in something fresh and new must've been quite a task, and I think he really nailed it. The Darth Maul fight scene has about 30 seconds of actual cool fight footage, but the music makes it feel like an actual good scene with tension and everything. -All the Naboo and early-republic design; both costume and art or whatever you call the ships and weapons and stuff. Maybe it's the mastering on this Blu-Ray but the CG feels less fuzzy than I remember it being and straight up... the amount of interesting design on display here is super impressive. I think if I have to pick the absolute best trait of all of the Star Wars universe, it'd be the ship design. I mean it's no wonder that it spawned a whole generation of boys raised on playing with the toys of these great things like X-Wing fighters and Millenium Falcons and Star Destroyers. While nothing in this movie is quite so nameable and toy-worthy as in the original trilogy, it still displays a new yet fitting part of this galaxy full of different culture and design. -And in more of a general note, I feel like George Lucas deserves massive credit for coming up with all this stuff. I'm sure on this one he had an army of geeks raised on Star Wars grateful for the chance to add their hard work to the world but it still all starts with Lucas' imagination and a lot of this stuff is pretty cool. So that's the good. I'm not really going to list out everything that I didn't like this time around. That's a long list. The performances suffer, the dialogue's poor, the editing is uneven and stilted, we watch pod racing for like 20 minutes even though it baaarely has anything to do with anything, Jar Jar feels like he's trying to appeal to 6 year olds but then we get treated to a lot of boring scenes talking about trade blockades and senate bureaucracy, etc. etc. etc. Instead I'll just mention a few things that stood out for me this time: -Those accents. The Trade Federation dudes and the Gungans. Why are they not speaking some completely different gibberish of a language. It's not like anyone ever complained that Chewbacca's grunts aren't linguistically sound. I think the Gungan language bothers me the most because you could say that the Trade Federation dudes have their own language but they prefer to speak in English (or "common") with their accent (which pretty much everyone else does through all 6 movies) but this weird half-jamaican patois Gungan weirdness is really stupid and bothersome and sounds irritating and is like half the reason why Jar Jar is so grating. -the randomness still really really bothers me. Anakin hits a button and wins the battle. Ugh. I feel like I read somewhere - it either came from Pixar or... I think it was Pixar - where you could get someone into trouble through luck but not out of it. It makes total sense to me. 85% of Hitchcock's movies involved some innocent guy getting into trouble through no fault of his own... but 0% of Hitchcock's movies have him get out of it just as unwittingly. It feels cheap when that happens. Case in point right here. So that's that. We'll see how the next five goes.
02.18.17	Allied	Robert Zemeckis	Pretty mediocre. This could have been a real Hitchcock throwback thriller but instead it's just a stale drama... mostly due to the script I think, but Also Brad Pitt's lack of emotion. pretty blaaaaaah
02.11.17	Live by Night	Ben Affleck	This one was a total snoozefest. It reminded me a bit of all the slow episodes of Boardwalk Empire. And Ben Affleck's suits were like a size too big. He looked like Pacino in Dick Tracy. Kind of a shame but I guess they can't all be winners.
02.05.17	Nocturnal Animals	Tom Ford	This movie was very pretty and reminded me of Lost Highway in some ways. I liked Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Shannon's performance quite a bit, love that they used Isla Fisher as an Amy Adams stand-in, and really liked the idea of following a story (in this case a book) and simultaneously seeing how the reader is interpreting it and affected by it. Amy Adams was also good but harder to like because her character's not so sympathetic. Lots of people are in here for one scene... Something felt a bit off about Amy Adams's "current" life stuff... but that might be where all this pretty style comes in and the beauty makes things cold and disconnected. I was with it for the most part but the endings - both of the "book" and of the movie itself - left me a tiny bit wanting. I wanted more closure in both, and to get them right after each other kind of compounded the feeling. Mostly though, I thought it was good.
02.04.17	The Founder	John Lee Hancock	The story of how Ray Kroc got the rights to McDonald's from the original owners. This was decent. Maybe the most interesting thing about it, other than the details of the story, was liking Kroc less and less. Michael Keaton's charisma makes you like him in the beginning, but by the end I was pretty repulsed by him, so that's a well-done job. Also, I wish Nick Offerman and John Carol Lynch make four more films together... they are great as brothers. All in all, pretty decent.
02.03.17	Inferno	Ron Howard	So I think I sat through this because Tom Hanks and I want to believe that Ron Howard still has more good movies in him. I really didn't care for the book, and all these Dan Brown movies have been boring and lame. Why I'm still watching this... is a mystery. And just to add insult to injury... the ONE thing about the book that I liked - the ending - is like the one thing they changed for the movie. wtf. I don't understand why this movie exists.
02.02.17	Jason Bourne	Paul Greengrass	This movie lost me about 45 seconds in when someone said "use SQL to corrupt their database" immediately followed by a CIA supermodel/genius hacker Alicia Vikander typing "run predictive algorithm" into her computer with its nondescript futuristic UI. After that, I made a conscious decision to not treat this as realistic at all and just hope that it's better than the Jeremy Renner movie. It was hard though. I mean, the CIA lady literally says "enhance" while some faceless techie makes a jumble of pixels into Julia Stiles. Compared to Jeremy Renner getting dumber by the second as his super soldier pills wear off, I suppose this was better. But is boring really any better than ridiculous? I'm noticing that the film is co-written by the director and the editor. I wonder if that means there was no script and the film was put together in post or if the two guys actually sat down together and wrote. I'm sure there's a joke or two somewhere in there, like the script has 3000 shot descriptions in typical Greengrass "kinetic" style. Anyway... pretty blah
01.29.17	Arrival	Denis Villeneuve	I liked this one quite a bit. Loved the sound design on the aliens, loved all the process and realistic reaction to this scenario... Some of the flashback stuff got a liiiiitle much but I understand why it's in there. So yeah, Villeneuve can really make a movie. This was great.
01.28.17	Hidden Figures	Theodore Melfi	This fits firmly in Oscar territory, checking off a good half dozen things that the academy seems to love... but, unlike many of these types movies, I actually liked this one. Aside from a kind of ridiculous climax ("are the landing coordinates correct!? I mean he lived through re-entry but WHERE'S HE GONNA LAND!?") the story was interesting and all the historical accoutrements were fun. 2 for 2 for old Theo Melfi...
01.26.17	Manchester by the Sea	Kenneth Lonergan	Whew. It's not like I was expecting some big laugh fest with a Kenneth Lonergan movie (although I do contend that Rocky & Bullwinkle is not as bad as everyone says it is), but man this one was a bummer. I mean it's a really good movie full of good performances, but not exactly a feel-good romp. I did like this, in the same way that I liked You Can Count on me, but won't be in any rush to see it agian.
01.21.17	La La Land	Damien Chazelle	I didn't love this, but a few things kept me from hating it. Mostly the ending. great ending. And I'm not a super musical guy, especially of this modern type, so this is not some huge upset or anything. I'm actually kind of surprised that I liked it as much as I did... which still wasn't much. Definitely the presentation of LA was pretty interesting... and Gosling's character was pretty funny... some impressive long takes and cinematic execution... but, you know, it's still a musical. Maybe the reason why I don't like musicals is because i'm expected to listen and make sense of the lyrics, which is typically something i don't do when listening to normal songs or whatnot. Just a thought.
01.21.17	Hacksaw Ridge	Mel Gibson	I really love this time of year for movies... God bless old Academy members who can't be bothered to go to the theater to see the movies they have to vote on. ANYWAY, I thought this was really good. Really the only problem I had with it was, once the heavy-handed religious stuff started in I couldn't help but remember this was Mel Gibson directing and all his public shenanigans. I guess that's really on me more than him but it still took me out of the movie. But other than that, I thought it was great. Like, better than HBO's The Pacific, gaining ground on Band of Brothers type great. All the australians did great general-south accents (Hugo Weaving was legit amazing, the rest I'm kind of kidding about), all the soldiers were great, the war stuff was great, the love interest was smokin hot, and the real footage at the end was exactly what I wanted. whew.
01.14.17	What We Do in the Shadows	Jemaine Clement, Taika Waititi	Picked this up for myself in a recent wave of purchases; showed it to Molly tonight. I still thought it was great. It almost has me in a mood to revisit Eagle vs. Shark, but probably not. I am definitely intrigued by the next Thor though. This is up there with the other great mockumentaries.
01.08.17	The Accountant	Gavin O'Connor	I liked this one pretty good. The end gets pretty action-y but it feels deserved and not too barfy. I did like the first half more, but that's alright. I think that's because i'm still not 100% on Jon Bernthal. At this point I feel like I should like him, but I still don't. I can't really put my finger on it either... But other than that, I liked this. I was happily surprised to see John Lithgow and Anna Kendrick in this. I feel like they give the film a level of respect that might elevate it from a Jason Statham movie or whatever.
01.07.17	Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief	Alex Gibney	Molly and I have been watching Leah Remini's series which intersects with this pretty heavily. In some ways, Remini's show takes a deeper dive in specific areas of the cult but in others I feel like this film presents the information and tells the story of Scientology in a more effective and succinct way. I guess the next step is to actually read the book, but I'm never sure when this fascination with cults becomes obsessive. Perhaps it's this subject matter specifically that I'm wary about spending too much time with, since being obsessed with video games or Lego doesn't have any sort of potentially harmful connotations, but either way I'm wary of getting to know TOO MUCH about Jonestown or Manson or whatever. Scientology is extra fascinating/scary though because it's still active. One of these days, Miscaviage is going to get indicted or die and the whole thing will deflate in this crazy real estate auction and it will start to take on nostalgic mythical tones like the pre-RICO mob bosses and silver nitrate film prints. Looking into it now is kind of like seeing The Talking Heads at CBGB's in a weird sort of indirect way. Maybe I'll pick up the book on amazon... hmmm...
01.06.17	The Shallows	Jaume Collet-Serra	Blake Lively('s bikini) vs. an insanely begrudging shark. This sounds pretty petty considering what this movie is, but dang that was one mean shark. I don't know why the seagull gets to be nice and the shark has to be an asshole... With a whole dead whale all to himself shouldn't he be gorged for weeks? Wouldn't he lose interest? I guess the movie is positing the idea that he's defending his whale... which I guess I buy for the purposes of terrorizing Blake Lively, if not in real life. On the other hand, I thought this was pretty decently handled. It's not quite as stark as All is Lost (and it's certainly no Jaws) but it's not terrible either. It could've been a lot worse.
01.04.17	The Magnificent Seven	Antoine Fuqua	I was mostly with this movie until the last act. The pacing and shooting of the last fight scene, along with several choices (most notably the damn gatling gun's insane effectiveness) really deflated the balloon. How Denzel can emerge both without a scratch and with full ammo belts didn't help. Overall, extremely meh. Great art department coordination though.
12.30.16	Don't Breathe	Fede Alvarez	some punk kids break into the wrong blind guy's house and have a bad time. Stephen Lang (the bad guy from Avatar) was pretty good as the blind guy. I feel like this was pretty decent. A few times the evil Rottweiler did some next-level stuff and the blind guy has a bit of Michael Meyers in him that gives him the ability to travel so fast and withstand some punishment but it's not too unbelievable to ruin the fun of the movie. There was a bit of an sympathy problem... same goes for Panic Room and for People Under the Stairs where it's kind of up to the actors whether you root for them or not. I guess the idea with this (and moreso with People Under the Stairs) is that the homeowner is even more evil than the robbers so... I guess you root for the robbers? to steal from the blind guy? Eh, I guess who cares. This movie is a tension factory and we don't really care about any of the players anyway...
12.30.16	Suicide Squad	David Ayer	I guess this was the extended cut... it's was 135 minutes. I don't know if they added 40 minutes of the gang walking down deserted streets or what but it felt like 80% of the movie to me. For real, so much walking. So... I didn't really like this. The overall tone was not pleasurable for me. It's kind of like each character got different notes on what kind of comic book movie this was gonna be, so sometimes it's super camp talking to uber gritty. Like the flashback where Diablo's wife was somehow surprised that he was up to no good WHEN HIS ENTIRE FACE IS TATTOOED TO LOOK LIKE A SKULL... didn't really work for me. And I really didn't love Leto's take on the joker. I really didn't like his "laughing" affectation. The whole design felt skeevy and meth-y to me. All these on-the-nose tattoos and set decorations too. And I liked a lot of Ayer's previous work... it just seems like he didn't survive the big budget machine. It was all over the place and fell apart.
12.28.16	Sully	Clint Eastwood	I wanted to see this mainly for Tom Hanks. I really respect how Clint Eastwood has been steadily working behind the camera with a no-nonsense professionalism for the past 20 years or so, but many of his movies I feel like I don't actually need to see. It's not just him... really any of these AAA Oscar contenders. Before even the trailer is out, I hear Sully and picture the dramatic events trickled out throughout probably an overlong film, finally laid bare at the end with a climactic moment of success. Then the trailer hits and it looks like the movie's about the NTSB trying to find fault with his actions, so that fills out the other 80% in my head and before you know if I've seen the movie already. In some cases, like when there's no Tom Hanks to get me in the seat, I don't actually bother watching them. Here, though, I'm glad I did. While it's true that there were zero surprises, Eastwood told the story much better than I did in my own head, and with all the attention to detail that gives me the sense that this was as authentic a recreation as possible. And Tom Hanks, man. So I liked this. It's deserving of its accolades.
12.27.16	Hell or High Water	David Mackenzie	Great Texas crime movie. This is the first film that I've enjoyed Ben Foster and Chris Pine in... I feel like that's saying something because normally they both really bug me. Jeff Bridges kills it as usual, but really everyone does. Lots of nonprofessional actors like the old waitress and presumably the old-timers and locals. I just love a smart and lean crime thriller like this... I wish they could all be as good.
12.26.16	Legend	Brian Helgeland	Tom Hardy plays real world twin brothers that became bigtime gangsters in 60s east end of London. I had high hopes for this being a nice slice of exposure as to what organized crime was like in swinging 60s London but unfortunately the movie felt pretty flat from the get-go and plodded along for way too long. I mean, 130 minutes is about a half hour too long. It more or less ended up as another Goodfella's knock-off. I was also hoping for a powerhouse Tom Hardy tour de force but didn't quite get that either. Aside from bearing an uncanny resemblance to one of the twins, he's pretty garble-mouthed in one role and doesn't have much to do in the other... aside from one pretty brutal stabbing. Kind of a disappointment; it took me forever to come back to the last half hour.
12.26.16	Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping	Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone	It's a shame that this bombed at the box office. I would've thought if this were a new Lonely Island album and they released 8 videos to YouTube on the same day then the internet would've blown up, but somehow this just didn't click. I thought it was mostly hilarious. Certainly the limo window scene and the incognito make-up were instant classic scenes. The songs were funny, really the whole thing is a tried-and-true Lonely Island movie... way more than Hot Rod. I like Hot Rod more, but that doesn't mean this isn't great. Kind of like Method Man, where he can be great, but Wu Tang Clan is also great. Or GZA, how he can be great, but Wu Tang Clan is also great... or RZA... how he can be great, but Wu Tang Clan is also great.
12.17.16	Rogue One: A Star Wars Story	Gareth Edwards	Is this maybe the only movie I saw in a theater this year? ugh... Relatedly: Why does the Bullock only screen this in 3D? It was a pretty ideal theater-going experience except I had to wear dumb glasses that forced me to move my head to pick and choose where to focus. Also: The extended trailer for Dunkirk was great. I feel like anytime your musical score is made up of different clocks and timers, you could show a kettle on a stove and people would subconsciously start to feel anxious, but the actual footage shown was also great and gave a great sense of the dread and tension that the film will probably deal in. And the dogfighting footage scaled up to 70mm was downright amazing. You could see the ripple of the ocean and the glare of the sun and a tiny plane right in the middle as the horizon tilts and a little sparkly line appears with a BRRRAP of machine gun fire. Nolan is bringing it. I hope the movie follows suit, this footage was excellent. Now on to Rogue One: I really really liked it. It was pretty much everything I was hoping it would be. Yes, I could sometimes tell when the reshoots kicked in and I did miss a few notable shots from the various trailers, but for the most part I feel like the story never faltered or disappointed me, the ragtag group of soldiers on a mission were suitably ragtag and great, everyone got some good moments... once again Alan Tudyk kind of steals the movie, the battle sequences were stellar - at once fresh because of the scenery and totally calling back to the feeling of episode 4 - and the connective tissue that puts it between episodes 3 and 4 were mostly well done. I was surprised to see a few characters show up. Molly didn't notice the first CG character until I mentioned it at the end, so I guess that means it was well done. I couldn't help but notice it, but feel they did a good job. It was a little video-game-y at times, but that's also the writing a little bit. This is maybe the best space battle that we've had in a long time. Super thrilling. and man oh man that last scene was satisfying, like you finally get a taste of why that character has his reputation. I thought it was great. I feel like half the fun of making these movies would be coming up with new worlds based on where you want to shoot. I feel like we got to see quite a bit of the universe here. I think they did a wonderful job of matching the level of technology. All those old school 70s-era vector displays and cheap holograms fit seamlessly. gush gush gush. So I guess you could argue that this fits the men-on-a-mission genre pretty closely - to which I wouldn't argue - but watching a genre picture set in the Star Wars universe is EXACTLY what I wanted. It really opens the doors to tell any kind of story in the universe, even some side mission type stuff that doesn't have the weight or pressure of an "official" episode. I did feel like the changes in formula were very deliberate (especially the way the film opens), to which I'm a bit conflicted about, but if dilution of some of the formatting of the series like the score and the opening crawl is what I have to give up in order to see more facets of the universe then so be it. That said, I AM excited for Episode 8. Bring it on!
12.10.16	Eurocrime! The Italian Cop and Gangster Films That Ruled the '70s	Mike Malloy	Finally saw this because it popped up on Amazon Prime. This could not be more up my alley, and it joins a great collection of docs that feel inspired or at least influenced by the Alamo and its taste-making original staff. So I loved it, but the production is kinda cheap, they really over-use a few final cut filters, the quality of interviews is a little variable, and it probably goes on too long for normal people who aren't fanatic about movies... but then again I'm not sure a normal person who isn't fanatic about movies would ever see this, so I guess the length is alright. Also, I could've maybe used a little bit more editorial concentration. There are clips of like a thousand movies in here but you see most of them for less than a second. I get that the sheer amount of these films produced is part of the point being made, but some people (ahem) may have been keeping a text file open and running a list to track down and see later, and in that regard this movie runs too damn fast to absorb everything. And why not have Tarantino on here? I was missing a voice from an admirer. The last chapter of the film, dealing with revival, is much too short. I feel like everyone involved was ready for the movie to be over, but in that case just cut the whole thing, you know? But enough of my nitpicking. I really did love it. I loved learning more about the cultural context of early 70s Italy, seeing the dots connected between American successes like The Godfather and The French Connection with the Italian hits that took inspiration from those films, to the fad-based scene that sprouted up and flooded theaters with the genre. Italian cinema of the 60s, 70s, and 80s was pretty funny because you could point out those fads pretty easily. I'm sure to go to a theater in Rome during that time it was not so cut and dry but these days, looking back, there certainly was a progression. You also see how the genres lead into one another, which is something this film doesn't get into but a lasting memory I have of Tarantino's introduction to Tony Arzenta AKA No Way Out AKA Big Guns (which is mentioned in passing here). That film is like a police revenge film with giallo murders, and as you watch it you totally see the influences melding. I friggin love that stuff. ...sorry, got distracted with an image search of Rosalba Neri. Where was i? Oh yeah, I loved this.
12.03.16	Whiskey Tango Foxtrot	Glenn Ficara, John Requa	Tina Fey goes to war. Not as funny as I thought it'd be, and I'm not even sure if it was supposed to be funnier or maybe just had a bad trailer. Either way, I wound up with funny people not being terribly funny in a war movie that didn't add much to the genre. Oh well.
11.20.16	Hunt for the Wilderpeople	Taika Waititi	A charming funny melancholy tale of a guy and a boy running away from like into the New Zealand bush. I liked this quite a bit. Always a fan of Sam Neill, the kid is pretty great, and it's lovely to see the NZ wilderness as through a sort of magical realism storybook, almost a not-quite-as-ocd-Wes Anderson vibe. Maybe a sister film to Moonrise Kingdom? Anyways, I thought it was pretty great.
11.13.16	Into the Inferno	Werner Herzog	You know... some things just never get old. Staring at lava and magma is one of these things. In between the mesmerizing footage of roiling turbulent heat, Herzog and his Volcanist buddy go around the world to explore the science and the magic of some of the largest, and talk to the people about how their culture has reacted to this raw natural force. Some of it wanders a bit too far I think (all the North Korea stuff is interesting but kind of gets away from the volcanoes) but for the most part I was taken with what Herzog was showing me. I think I enjoy that he's taken on this non-fiction interest as he grows older, not just because I find his narration lovely but also because he mostly chooses interesting subject matter to explore. This wasn't as popcorn-entertaining as Grizzly Man but also wasn't as dry for me as Cave of Forgotten Dreams. I liked it. And that puts another DVRfest to bed. I'm pretty surprised and proud to have met my schedule this year, although it's definitely time to return to the real world or work and bills (as all film festivals must do). Looking back, I quite enjoyed my random Criterion marathon and feel like I will do that again, either for next year's fest or some random nights as we go along. Now let's dump some stats. These are gonna suck I know it, but I guess I have to do it. I'm at 18 in the past week (including this one) for a 2.57/day average, 22 in the past month for a 0.73/day average, 81 in the past year for a 0.22/day average, and 2949 since the site started for a 0.67/day average. Ouch. I mean, there's nothing stopping me from watching more movies. It's not like I'm the only one with a job and a girlfriend and other interests vying for my time, but part of me does get sad when I think about how few films I'm watching these days. I've been loving movies since I was a kid though, so I guess I have to take a long term view on things. Perhaps I'll trend heavier in the year to come and perhaps I won't, but I know I will always maintain my love for this medium and the joy and excitement that it brings me. Ok enough sappiness, time to watch the next episode of Westworld.
11.13.16	Into the Abyss	Werner Herzog	Well that was fun. I guess it's my fault for not realizing that a documentary about a kid on death row for murder would be depressing as fuck. Jesus. So this had some of the same rough mixture of thoughts and emotions as any true crime doc, especially as you watch the kid smile in the interview, complete convinced that he's innocent even though the evidence is pretty definitive. But here we also have the weight of the death penalty argument added on top. I mean I guess this was good but now I want to eat ice cream in a bath tub. All in all a good time. Ok, last shot. Let's hope that volcanoes are a little more uplifting than death row.
11.13.16	Real Life	Albert Brooks	This satire of the American Family documentary is also Albert Brooks' first film and sorta kinda the first mockumentary. I laughed quite a bit with this. A lot of the little jokes that Brooks is constantly throwing away were great but really also a few stand-out scenes in my opinion show the great strength of both Brooks' style and Charles Grodin's genius. The horse operation, the depression sequence, and the awesomely terrible zoo montage - all with the constant presence of these absurd head-mounted cameras looming around and movie studio / social scientist dissection and analysis - are all amazing. All of it seems like a prescient precursor to all the reality-based stuff that we're going through now. So yeah, This was great. I liked it more than Modern Romance, maybe more than Lost in America. And now I we come to the last double feature of the fest. I've had sort of mixed reaction to this director's documentary work in the past but I just could not pass up the opportunity for such a specific double feature. So now let's watch two Werner Herzog documentaries whose titles start with "Into the"!
11.13.16	Inside Out	Pete Docter	The third and final day of this year's DVRfest starts with a Sunday matinee that I can watch with Molly. I feel like I've taken a few years off from Pixar films. After Cars 2 (which I did not like), it feels like they've been churning out sequels mostly, but this one got a bunch of acclaim and it sounded like a good premise. I liked it a lot. It reminded me of how good Pixar films can be. It's so smart and attentive to detail and the animation is top notch and the voice acting is on point. Really good stuff. I particularly liked all the other heads we got to glimpse inside of. It makes me wonder if cat lovers like the same things about cats that I don't like, because to me it seemed like Pixar is full of dog lovers, but maybe cat people feel the exact opposite? Like look at that stupid dog just wanting food, meanwhile the cat is so crazy and messed up that it freaks out for no reason which is lovable and hilarious? I dunno... Anyway, onto the next movie.
11.12.16	Pan's Labyrinth	Guillermo del Toro	Yeah... I guess now I have to revisit Chronos and The Devil's Backbone as well. I mean I can't argue that the design of the fantasy creatures are bar none. If this whole movie was just the crazy dining room scene with that floppy old thing with eyeball hands then that would be enough to secure a place for this movie in history. The problem for me is that the rest of the movie is like a kind-of-good war story with a few good moments of gore and not much else. And I mean it doesn't have to be anything different... but I'd like it more if it were. So I've always said I liked Devil's Backbone more. Now it's time to watch that again and see if it holds up to my memory. Not tonight though; I'm beat.
11.12.16	Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion	Elio Petri	I'm not ashamed to admit that this purchase was based solely upon the strength of the film's title. I just thought it sounded cool. I didn't know anything else about it. What I got was a Kafka-esque spiral of a police chief who commits a murder just to see if his colleagues would possibly suspect him. It's nice to get an Italian vibe in the fest, although in some ways this reminded me of how I felt watching my first Fellini movie (Juliet of the Spirits). Everybody constantly talking very loudly, I'm not quite following what's going on, and a disorienting roaming camera with never ending pans and zooms. On one level it's quite a spectacle, but on another I'm not really sure if I should be laughing or intrigued or what. This main dude with his tiny suit to match his tiny body really gives a tour de force... I feel like he even looks directly in the camera right at the beginning, as if to say "ready?" before starting the whole ride off. I thought I was ready, but by the end it was clear that I was not. My takeaway is that I enjoyed it as an experience, but I won't be in any hurry to revisit. So it comes time for the last Criterion film of the fest, and the only not left up to chance. As is tradition, I get to watch one movie that I've seen before at some point in the weekend. This year, I'm choosing a film that I haven't seen since it came out a decade ago. I feel like everyone else loved it more than me when it was released, so let's give it a re-watch and see if my feelings change, shall we?
11.12.16	Le Trou	Jaqcues Becker	Finally caught a long one. I think this is the first film over two hour all weekend, but in some ways it also felt like one of the shortest. I mean I'm a sucker for a prison escape movie anyway but this film unfolds like a procedural wet dream. There's one shot where one of the inmates, one of the men involved in the real-life incident which inspired the novel and the film, lifts up the parquet floorboards(!) of their cell and turns a smooth plane of cement into a foot-deep hole. And it's riveting! There's like two full hours of watching these guys dig and explore and smuggle and solve problems all in executing their escape, and like 10 minutes of talking and whatnot. It's awesome. The whole cast is great too. Something about a good prison movie is all about that borderline-gay brotherhood of honor and friendship. Watching these dudes share their amazing-looking French prison food is really enjoyable for some reason. Also, why they have full suits and leather jackets in prison is a bit of a mystery for me, but I guess that was just the way. But mostly the one guy, the real guy who at the beginning of the movie walks up to the camera and says "My friend Jacques Becker made this movie and it's about me" is totally amazing. He's missing the tips of his thumb and forefinger on one hand, but still handles prison-tools like a champ. I got the same feeling from watching Danny Trejo in an Eddie Bunker movie like Animal Factory. I can totally tell that he has been there and done that. I totally believe that this guy has no problem pounding through rock walls, filing door hinges off, and fashioning makeshift hour glasses. I mean i believe that because they literally showed me in the movie, but still.. i totally believed. So yeah, this movie was great. I loved it. Le Trou, The Hold. So... it's 9:30. It looks like I might only have time for one more random choice before the pre-ordained midnight movie, but let's see.
11.12.16	Blast of SIlence	Allen Baron	Boom. This late-era low budget noir has everything that I love about the best in the genre. Amazingly hard-boiled narration, cool diegetic music, an insane amount of location shooting (in this case all over 1960/61 NYC), crazy subversive subject matter, and a pitch black ending. I mean it's really something, and judging from the credits it's a completely homebrew movie from producer/writer/director/star Allen Baron. I guess crime flicks like these were the horror movies of their day. A genre bankable enough to yield breakouts like Blair Witch and Paranormal Activity (floating in a sea of crap). To me, this really feels like Baron went out and tried to make a film, then got in the editing room and realized it BARELY made sense, so this layer of narration was poured on top, seeping down between the bricks like sensational grizzled mortar. You can see the stuff that Baron is taking from, the same stuff that the french new wave and Melville are taking, but still thoroughly american. Really great stuff. Wow. It's so exciting to see a "new" noir that's on par with the greats that made me fall in love with the genre so many years ago. Ok... so what's next?
11.12.16	Le Silence de la Mer	Jean-Pierre Melville	Whew. So... the dice did a great job in pairing subject matter. This one is about a French family giving the silent treatment to an occupying Nazi official. The tone however was drastically different than the previous film. I should've known going into it with such a title that there wouldn't be much dialogue, but really there was.. like... next to none. I suppose it made for a very "novelistic" approach to have a narrator and the nazi guy give monologue after monologue to these two people who refuse to talk to him, but in watching the film it feels like I was listening to the clock tick for an hour and a half. I mean it was pretty rough. Melville's always had a very deliberate pace, but usually there's some sort of amazing climax or release to the build up. Here it just feels slow. Thank goodness it's not as long as the other films of his which I've seen. So... time to shake this off a bit and hopefully roll something which is a bit more lively.
11.12.16	Night Train to Munich	Carol Reed	Welcome to Day 2 of DVRfest 2016! Even though I don't actually use the DVR to store movies on anymore, this fest is still in the spirit of going back and catching up on films I've been meaning to see. There is no more megalithic monument to that motivation than the top row of my DVD/Blu collection, which houses all of the blind buys that I have yet to get around to actually watching even though, in some cases, I've owned them for over a decade. Some would take that as a sign of me not really wanting to watch the movies. In a few cases, I'd say you're right (I mean, how much Bergman is enough Bergman?). In other cases, like the netflix rental from last night, there is still a reason why I want to watch the movie, even if I happened to have forgotten it. Of the monumental top row of my collection (which stretches across the whole back wall of my home office/game den here), the most monumental section is that of Criterion. I love the Criterion Collection; used to joke that if I ever got stupid rich I'd want to own the whole thing (a statement less logistically complicated back when there were only 200 releases, not the ~750 of today). I love their design, usually find their releases at least interesting, and owe my love/admiration of several favorite filmmakers (Jean-Pierre Melville, Sam Fuller, Akira Kurosawa) to their library. So what's become a recent development since the dawn of the streaming age is that I pretty much only buy Criterion titles still, and even then only once or twice a year during their 50% sale. So I have a ton of Criterion blind buys, so much so that it was hard to pick just a handful for today's programming. Therefore, like any good gamer, I am turning control over to chance. I have my trusty d6 and d10 here, ready to program today's festivities. There's only one movie locked in for midnight, otherwise I am going to try and fit in as many of these gems as I can. I won't lie, some of them are pretty scary choices (I left out the box sets and anything with a running length over 4 hours, but there are still some Bergman in there, some french nonsense, and at least one silent), but that's what makes randomness fun. So, without further ado, I am literally rolling the dice to see what's first on today's agenda. See you in a few hours! --- The dice could not have chosen a better Saturday matinee! This early war thriller from Carol Reed has that 40s British breeziness mixed with wartime patriotism and tension typical of Reed's thrillers. I mostly knew Carol Reed only by The Third Man until a screening of The Fallen Idol at the Paramount completely blew me away. Since then, I've been keen to explore more of Reed's work. This one reminded me a ton of Hitchcock's early stuff. Foreign Correspondent but also 39 Steps (I guess it makes sense considering the script was from the same guys who wrote The Lady Vanishes). A lot of the stuff here gives me the best feeling of old studio productions. Heavy use of sets, miniatures, rear projection, stock footage, British guys playing Czechs, Germans, and Poles... it's all so wonderfully cinematic in an historic sense. Plus a young Paul Henreid and even younger Rex Harrison... but to me the real stars of this movie are the two British chaps caught up in the middle Hidden Fortress / R2-D2 & C-3P0 style as they happen upon Harrison on the titular rail car. Those guys were amazing, chucking off old Brit slang left and right like Denholm Elliot in Raiders. Great stuff. Ok, so one down. what's next? Only the dice knows...
11.11.16	The Hunt	Thomas Vinterberg	So, this is what's great about DVRfest. I'd heard this movie was really good, but the subject matter seemed so dark and depressing that I've always put off seeing it. Now, I'm more or less forcing myself to watch a good movie, and it's for the best. It was great. But it was also depressing as fuck... although to be fair I thought the ending would be even darker than it is... because although this is my first Vinterberg movie I've seen enough of his compatriots' work to know that nothing ends on a high note in his country. But still, the filmmaking is undeniably great. This is what everyone's talking about with Mads Mikkelsen. As a guy, you are so with his character every step of the way. So full of rage... and all it takes is one jackass with an ipad. I'm glad I finally saw it. Can't say I'll be watching it again any time soon. And that brings me to the end of Day One. This might be a non-marathon daily best for me, eight films in one day. Sunday me will be thankful for the extra four hours though. And for tomorrow, I have something pretty fun planned, but first: some sleep.
11.11.16	Swiss Army Man	Dan Kwan, Daniel Scheinert	So... this movie exists. I'm honestly a little befuddled as to what I thought of it. I feel like... I was certainly entertained. I haven't really seen many movies like it before. But I also didn't love it. I liked parts of it, like all the built replications of real life things and the many quick jokes and things like that, but the overall tone was just a tad off center for me. So these notes are getting shorter and shorter. It might be me getting tired, or maybe it's just the run of really weird movies. It's midnight but I've already watched my midnight movie, so instead I'll poach another one from Sunday's line-up and hopefully stay awake for this one which has been on my netflix queue for years.
11.11.16	Murder Party	Jeremy Saulnier	I'm maybe the last paying netflix disc customer, and I've totally become the guy I could never understand 10 years ago. I've had these three discs collecting dust on my desk for probably 10 months. So long that I forgot why I added this to my queue in the first place. As it turns out, Murder Party was Jeremy Saulnier's first feature length film! I loved both Blue Ruin and Green Room so I was curious to give this one a watch. Several things right up front: Definitely a tiny budget, definitely made with friends/family (AKA mostly amateurs), definitely the sort of script you'd write as a college student. It's more a comment on art school and the art scene. But amongst all that, you can see a sensibility which carries through in his next two films. A love of humor, tension, and gore. So yeah, this was pretty fun. It reminded me a bit of Bad Taste, the first Evil Dead, and a tiny bit of the shit I used to do with my friends when I was in high school. So... up next... It's only 10pm so I'm gonna try to fit in two more movies tonight. so... let's go!
11.11.16	The Neon Demon	Nicolas Winding Refn	OK well... I guess maybe I have to come to the understanding that I am more of a fan of Refn as a person than I am of Refn's work. Again: very pretty, interesting music. And I was into it but then there was like a half hour there toward the middle that just completely zoned out in weird meandering whatever. Then it got super dark all of a sudden and probably made the movie worth seeing just in two or three scenes. So I guess that was cool but again, for the most part, just not quite enough substance there to sustain me. So, I'm already to my last scheduled movie of the evening, but I think it's still early enough that I can sneak one or two more in after that. We'll play it by ear, but for now it's time for a completely random netflix disc choice.
11.11.16	Only God Forgives	Nicolas Winding Refn	I didn't have much interest in seeing this when it came out, especially after everyone who loved Drive more than I did (I feel like I liked it, didn't love it more than life itself) suddenly went silent after they watched this. But then a year or two ago, Refn was at Fantastic Fest and they played his wife's documentary on the making of this film and I liked that so I felt I might as well see this just to say I did. As I could've guessed, this felt like too much style, too little story. It was pretty and the music was interesting but it felt too distant and static and was way too sparse to be interesting to me. It kind of felt like if someone took a DVD and watched it on fast forward, but then slowed what they saw down to a normal running time. Like, a lot of people just standing there. scenes float by i guess, but at any given moment it's just some people standing still not saying anything. So, whatever, I've now seen this. Really I threw this on the schedule just to set up the next film, which I do really want to see. Let's hope it's a little more lively than this one.
11.11.16	Winning: The Racing Life of Paul Newman	Adam Carolla, Nate Adams	I listened to the first couple years of Adam Carolla's podcast and just as I was losing interest he started mentioning putting interviews together for this documentary about Newman's racing career. Paul Newman seemed like an awesome dude. From all accounts of people who knew and worked with him, it seemed like he was just a great guy. Certainly, many of his movies are great. So learning more about this other side of him mostly just reinforced that. Since Carolla's a racing guy, I feel like he gave it more interest than if anyone else did this. Really my only complaint is the music, which is generic and pretty heavy-handed with its emotional direction. Oh, and they had this weird thing where each person got a little sad moment whenever they died. At first it was kind of jarring because it was about some other dude not terribly connected to the story, but it made sense as more people started dying off. Otherwise, they got interviews with everyone but Tom Cruise (probably for the best), and found a lot of footage to tell an engaging story. Still kinda niche-y though. I was ready for it to end since I don't really care about the cars so much. But mostly pretty solid. OK enough nonfiction for a while. Let's change gears (eh? eh? get it? cars?) to a double feature from a director who doesn't drive at all but somehow got famous for a movie centered around the activity: Nicolas Winding Refn.
11.11.16	Flyin' Cut Sleeves	Henry Chalfant, Rita Fecher	Well... I THOUGHT I was going to watch a doc about Frank Dux, famously portrayed by Jean Claude Van Damme in the movie Bloodsport, but I guess that video was removed from youtube since last night, so instead I watched another doc I've had saved for quite some time. Flyin' Cut Sleeves is about 1970s gangs from The Bronx... basically the source material for the movie The Warriors. The production is pretty rough/amateur but the subjects are real and the subject matter strikes that nerve for me so I liked it. I still find that era fascinating in a hard to believe way... like remember that time that the biggest city in America almost went bankrupt and whole parts of the city were neglected to the point where kids roamed the streets like wild dogs? haha yeah, good times. Up next is one more doc (this year is pretty documentary-heavy... A triple feature today and a planned double feature on Sunday), this one presumably flyin' long sleeves (man, i love that title) but also sporting a helmet.
11.11.16	Weiner	Josh Kriegman, Elyse Steinberg	12 Years ago, I was about 8 month in Austin and had just gone to my first QTFest, followed by the first Fantastic Fest, followed by my first Austin Film Fest. November hit and I was having festival withdrawal. I turned to my DVR, full of stuff I'd recorded off TCM and IFC, and realized that this site had been around a full year. Thus began DVRfest: a weekend of personal cinematic abandon meant to memorialize this journal and sitting in a dark room watching movies alone (which, as bad as it sounds to admit, is probably how I saw the bulk majority of films in my life). Throughout the years, my reliance on clearing out my DVR shifted more toward general catching up on anything and now stands as a throwback to those glorious years 2006 and 2007 when I had no job and just watched movies all day. Especially this year since I went to Peru rather than Fantastic Fest, it will be my only movie-related event of the year. So with all of that in mind, I've made a very aggressive schedule to try and get through this weekend, filled with mainstream stuff, stuff I missed in theaters, and even a few which I will possibly let fate decide. But it all starts with this political documentary about a guy's dick. Let's watch! --- Huh. So... huh. Well right off the bat I'd say this was a fantastic documentary. Toward the end, one of the directors asks Weiner "WHY are you letting us film this?" To which he shrugs without answer. The root cause, perhaps connected to some interview footage a few minutes before where Weiner ponders whether his need for fame forms an inability to connect deeply with anyone or vice versa seems to be the heart of this movie, and you can't help but wonder how many other politicians this doc COULD'VE been about if only they were the ones who got exposed. But it's also about the whole political system and how popularity and scandal intertwine with "issues" and what even matters in that world and the nature of media and how it feeds the whole thing and whether it's good or bad but feels like human nature regardless. And then there's the wife: Huma. A sphinx. Mostly Unreadable. This might be a spectacularly male take on things, but I kept feeling like this is a portrait of a good well-meaning guy who's just guilty of having a cock. I mean, the amount of stupid shit that guys have down throughout history just because they're horny... I can't help but feel for this guy. I'm sure a part of him felt like Mugatu, like Marion Berry gets to be caught smoking crack on camera, Bill Clinton gets to have oval office BJs, George W Bush gets to manufacture a war, but I get killed over a few dick pics!? Donald Trump gets to call me a pervert for THAT!? So yeah, a complicated swirl of thoughts and feelings about this, which again, tell me that this is a great film. I still haven't fully digested this but it's DVRfest so it's time to move on. Next up is another doc... this one I'm pretty sure won't generate such a mix of emotions.
11.05.16	Captain America: Civil War	Anthony Russo, Joe Russo	Finally catching up on this just as Dr. Strange is hitting theaters. Oh well. So I liked a lot about this one, but also there were a few things that kind of bugged me. Mostly, it felt the most assumptuous to date. Like, If i skipped Avengers 2, i'd have no clue who many of the characters are. On the other hand, I really love all the crossovers, how all these guys are interacting outside of their own films. My favorite bits involved Ant Man and Spider-Man, either because they were involved for the coolest (by far) scene in the film or because their tone were welcome reprieves from the gravitas of whatever else was happening. So it's really cool that, contractually, the type of stuff you often see in comics is happening in these films, but also it's kind of getting to the point where I'm starting to forget details that I guess I should just know when going into this. Also, I get that nobody's perfect and the movies can't inter-relate completely, but everyone seems much more somber and grieved this time around. Pretty sure that Iron Man was feeling pretty quippy as he was killing all the people he is now immediately ready to hang up his suit for. The turn seemed pretty abrupt to me. So... whatever. It's maybe the best avengers movie yet? It certainly looked good and the action was fun, but nothing surprising either.
11.04.16	Trainspotting	Danny Boyle	With the trailer for Trainspotting 2 hitting and actually looking pretty good, I found myself in a mood to revisit the first one. It's still good although this time around I really noticed how there was not much narrative to speak of. The scenes kind of float on their own for the most part rather than being led by any strong plot. Perhaps that's due to the adaptation? I've never read the book but if it was more of a memoir style then I guess that explains things. But yeah, also each scene - boom boom boom boom - really kills. There's not terribly much filler here at all. Some stuff seems a bit tame now whereas twenty years ago it was extreme... also I think this time I picked up more dialogue than ever before (who knows why, the accents are still crazy strong). I also never realized/connected the dots that Kevin McKidd was Tommy. I guess I'm used to seeing him older and with shorter hair. All in all I still enjoyed it although the whole film is so familiar that it felt more like revisiting a favorite album than rediscovering a faded gem, which is weird because it feels like I haven't seen this in quite some time... and I just looked it up on here and see that it's been 10 years. Wow. See, this is where this site really starts to pay off. What surprises me here isn't that it's been 10 years but how much I remember it despite the time. I mean it's not like I could've recited the thing from start to end but there were no parts of the film that I had forgotten about... I wonder if the movies I saw in my teens are just as heavily imprinted in my brain as the music i listened to. I wonder if the 90s are just going to be "my thing" for the rest of my life because nothing else sticks quite as well in the memory banks. makes you think.
10.22.16	Zoolander 2	Ben Stiller	So, yeah it's not as good as the first but, honestly, I'm not sure where all the hate came from. I found this to be a fine, occasionally funny sequel, that scratches the itch without being too boring or retread-y. Ferrell's great as always, I thought the story was appropriate, and, maybe this is just my low expectations talking but, it could have been a lot worse. The sexy fighting was pretty hilarious.
10.16.16	Mascots	Christopher Guest	I think maybe Best in Show will always be the best Christopher Guest movie, but that doesn't make watching this unenjoyable. It's nice to see many of the old crew back again, along with some new additions picked up from Guest's HBO show, having fun and riffing off each other. Still kind of forgettable, but pleasant nonetheless.
10.06.16	Now You See Me 2	Jon Chu	After getting home, I fought it off for a few days but now I'm sick again. It's done wonders for my work productivity but what can you do... just watch movies and try to feel better! Well, in this case I should say "just watch TV shows and try to feel better," but one movie slipped in for some reason. This was pretty bad. I didn't like it. It's kind of like Ocean's Twelve but if Brad Pitt and George Clooney don't always have to adhere to laws of reality. Like sometimes explaining magic via incomprehensible technology is ok, and sometimes not bothering to explain it at all is ok... like I would have enjoyed this movie more if they just told me that these guys were actual magicians as in using real magic like D&D magic missle type magic. The whole thing was one big mess.
10.02.16	Sing Street	John Carney	Two weeks of Peruvian and Bolivian touring later and I'm back on a plane shuffling through the menus looking for a non-R-rated movie that I'm interested in watching. I came upon this, which I figured wouldn't be too ruined thanks to my nice earbuds. This is the third John Carney movie that I've seen, so I'm not sure if all the others aren't as musically-minded or what... I'm actually wondering if Zonad and The Rafters and his pre-Once stuff isn't good or just not musical so someone thinks they're too Irish for American audiences, or maybe they're not as good because they aren't musically-oriented and that's really Carney's sweet spot so maybe he should stick to it? I don't know. For whatever reason, Once, Begin Again, and Sing Street are the only movies of his that have popped up on my radar. I've liked all three of them. This one feels particually personal since it's period and features kids in main roles, but who knows. I liked how the pop music of the 80s has such a clear influence on the main kid to form his style and music. I love the older brother, who's like an Irish Chris Pratt, there for him like Zooey Deschanel set the kid in Untitled off on his journey. Lots of good stuff here.
09.16.16	All Things Must Pass: The Rise and Fall of Tower Records	Colin Hanks	i'm skipping Fantastic Fest this year in order to go to Peru and Bolivia on an Ancient Aliens guided tour with Giorgio Tsoukalos. Yes, it's kind of unexpected, but whatevs... it was awesome. So because of this, two things are happening: 1) my movie total this year will probably be an all-time low, and 2) i had the opportunity to watch movies on an airplane for the first time in many many years. Things have changed. On my United flight, each seatback had a touch screen where i could choose from a flight of films, tv shows, and even casual games like Bejeweled to play while enduring the coach seating. The problem is that the system is wired to pause anything anytime a flight attendant or pilot gets on the mic, and, because it's on a plane, anything R-rated gets chopped to hell. So although there were an actually decent roster of films to choose from, I didn't want to spoil my experience of actually watching something like Captain America: Civil War by seeing it on a damn airplane. So that led me to this doc, directed by Colin Hanks, telling the story of Tower Records. A little personal history: My local Tower was not local at all. When I was "discovering" music in middle and high school, I lived in a redneck city in Maryland. About once every 8-12 months someone's parents (most usually my mom) would OK a trip into the city for some serious music buying. These trips consisted of a stop at Phantasmagoria, which at the time was a CD store somewhere in a basement in Wheaton, MD (and would later move to become a music venue but I was off to college by that time) specializing in rare industrial, techno, and other bizarre genres, then on to the Tower Records in Rockville, MD. Tower was like the ultimate music store. Not only did it have all the stuff that any Sam Goody or other mall music store had, it was also the place to look for the japanese import singles, the rare EPs that you had only heard existed third-hand, and I swear they even stocked a couple bootlegs. I had no illusions that the Rockville location, which I remember being in a strip mall or something, was the original (there were other far larger and more extravagant locations around the DC area even), but it still held the crown for me and my own personal realm of exposure. I spent a lot of damn money in that place. So, anyway, fast forward 20 years and now i have an interest in this doc. As a movie it's ok... kind of a by-the-numbers doc that you could probably guess the plot synopsis of... but the interview subjects are interesting and there's a few nice tidbits thrown in like the Elton John stuff and just in general it's a nice puzzle piece which fits in the overall picture of American rock and roll. I found it to be worth watching.
09.12.16	De Palma	Noah Baumbach, Jake Paltrow	An extended interview with director Brian De Palma intercut pretty well with the films that he's talking about. He goes through each one of his films, making this a pretty complete account of his career. So... I've been pretty vocal about not being such a huge De Palma fan. As a fan of hitchcock, it bothers me how his "homages" are just, like, actual re-tellings of Hitchcock movies. I mean, I respect that he's upfront about following in Hitch's footsteps, but I think maybe taking techniques, style choices, and even casting make much better sense than actual plot points or storylines. Like, Dressed to Kill is not a bad movie until it literally BECOMES Psycho. So that's really my problem with the guy's work. Well, that and how certain of his films I think are extremely overrated. But you know, hearing his side of the story... listening to him talk candidly about what worked and what didn't work with each picture, what he was going for, what he ended up with... I can respect the career. For a guy who's certainly had some really amazing flops, like on a consistent basis, he's always managed to bounce back. And there are aspects or moments of some of his films that I do appreciate... and I like how upfront he is about liking women in his movies. I definitely feel like his connection to Vertigo is telling in this regard. His films always have a slightly exploitative feel toward his leading ladies in a way that I feel Hitch was, for the most part, too repressed or polite to actually express. So I don't know. I thought this doc was interesting. I kinda sort of want to revisit maybe Blow Up, maybe Femme Fatale. It is remarkable that his group of peers became such luminaries in Hollywood. I really wonder what a Sidney Lumet Scarface would be though. damn.
09.11.16	A Lego Brickumentary	Kief Davidson, Daniel Junge	A well-produced telling of Lego's history and breadth of fandom. Some fun stop-motion and interesting exposure to some applications which the average person may not be aware of (like its use with autistic kids and the batshit crazy convention scene), but really I feel like I've seen hourlong episodes on TV which cover mostly the same ground. I mean that doesn't stop this from being interesting I guess, it just felt pretty familiar to me.
09.10.16	Sisters	Jason Moore	I like everyone involved with this so I guess it's no surprise that I liked the movie. True it's not at a Hot Rod or Step Brothers level but I didn't think it was unfunny either. There's always a conflict with me where sometimes I feel like I wish these comedies just had no story at all because i always think the "plotty" scenes are the worst... like the romance thread or the being-a-better-mom thread... but then again, if the movie isn't super funny AND it doesn't have any story then there's not really any reason to watch it... I'm sure there have been plenty of movies where I've said that I wished it had more character and story so... who knows. I liked this except the moments where it had to be a real movie which I didn't think were as funny.
09.09.16	The Conjuring 2	James Wan	James Wan has made a nice place for himself in the horror landscape. Sure, there have been misses (i'm looking at you, Death Sentence and Dead Silence), but with Insidious and The Conjuring I feel like he's exploring a modern take on the classical gothic horror and he's doing a pretty good job with it. These Conjuring movies work especially well mixing in authentic elements with fictional storytelling. I feel like both movies motivated me to take a jaunt down the wikipedia and google path afterward to seek out source material. That's probably helped a great deal by solid scripts and Patrick Wilson/Vera Farmiga's performances, but still. These are pretty solid horror movies. I liked this one pretty good.
09.08.16	XOXO	Christopher Louie	So... back when I was in college, a movie called Groove came out. In some ways it cashed in on the rave scene but in a lot of other ways, whether it was where I was in life or if the movie was actually good (I can't really tell), it stood as a document of the dance music scene and what it was all about. Almost 20 years later, we have this... which I'm presuming aspires to the same goal as Groove but updated for this generation. Seen as such, in some ways it's very telling but mostly it's kind of depressing. Things are much more stylized, sexualized, narcotized, and fragmented. Things are prettier but carry less meaning, shinier and shallower. Headliners are not to be idolized, stakes must be higher, but the true intent of music is to be enjoyed. All that lofty crap aside, that's how I read this film. As a movie, it's really not great. It feels like it could have been great (if it was a little more like Groove), but misses the mark on many levels. Which is a shame. Or maybe it's great and I'm just too old to get it.
09.04.16	Straight Outta Compton	F. Gary Gray	Watched this again with Molly. Still like it a great deal. I kind of want a three hour documentary companion to this a la Team Foxcatcher or that Whitey Bulger doc, just to see the real stuff and hear the real guys talk. But you know, not taking anything away from this movie which is really good. I could've done with more. And why was Suge Knight on the set of this? He really does not come off well at all. I'd think they wouldn't want anything to do with him these days. Maybe my fantasy doc will also cover the making of this movie. Get on that, filmmakers!
08.25.16	All the Way	Jay Roach	The flip side of the Trumbo coin: Jay Roach and Bryan Cranston telling the story of LBJ's first year in office, with a little MLK thrown in for good measure. The main difference here is the script. Since it's based on a play, I definitely felt moments where the scenes stretched out, the cinematic momentum slowed, and we were just watching Cranston work. It didn't feel 100% like a filmed play, but the pacing and structural issues I had with the film were definitely rooted in my aversion to that type of movie. Cranston did well though, even under a considerable amount of makeup. Anthony mackie less so. I think he didn't want to fall too out of his Marvel physique to match MLK's physicality. This is definitely an HBO movie kind of movie though. It's probably a bit too long, more focused on performance than rhythm. Watching this and Trumbo back to back has been an interesting study in what makes an Oscar type movie and what makes an HBO movie.
08.24.16	Trumbo	Jay Roach	Aside from Good Night and Good Luck, the only other black list movie that I remember is De Niro in Guilt by Suspicion, which dealt with largely fictitious characters and stayed pretty vague about the whole thing. So it was nice to see real people in what was probably close to true events going through this moment in hollywood history. It's still mostly for movie fans I would imagine. I can't see joe schmo getting excited about seeing Otto Preminger show up, but since i am one, i liked this pretty good. Good cast.
08.23.16	Club Paradise	Harold Ramis	It's been a long while since I've seen this, but I just read an interview with Harold Ramis where he mentioned this movie and how Jimmy Cliff was in it. Since all I could remember about this was Robin Williams making jokes and Rick Moranis looking for weed with Eugene Levy, I figured I'd give it another watch. Really I think Andrea Martin outperforms both Moranis and Levy here, although they're both great and it was fun to see Joe Flaherty as the pilot. Jimmy Cliff was indeed in it, performing several songs. And I had no memory of the whole, you know, plot of the film (which includes the requisite gunfight in the third act). All in all, I'd say it wasn't a full on success, but there were a few moments which I'm glad I saw again. Peter O'Toole was one of them.
08.23.16	DC Cab	Joel Schumacher	I've never seen this so I'm filling a gap. I get a lot of Car Wash in here, a lot of early 80s goodness. I love how six grand is the difference between the worst cab company in the city and mink coats, gold bumpers, and everything else. I feel like, for whatever else I might think about Schumacher's later career, he has definitely always had an eye for casting. Nearly everyone in here is interesting in some way. It definitely deflated in the third act when it got all action-y all of a sudden but whatever... i think in the 80s there had to be actual gunfire in every movie even if it was a comedy.
08.23.16	The Late Shift	Betty Thomas	It's been forever since I've seen this and thought it might be fun to revisit. I was kind of surprised to realize that letterman and leno were played by John Michael Higgins and Daniel Roebuck, who I guess I've come to recognize more since I was in highschool (although I always liked Roebuck in Disorganized Crime alongside Ed O'Neil). The movie still plays very well, and it's fun to have an added 20 years of history to follow through with, especially with everything that went on with Leno and Conan. It's kind of surprising how well this holds up actually. Usually HBO movies just kind of come and go.
08.21.16	The Nice Guys	Shane Black	I liked this quite a bit. It feels very much like a spiritual sequel to Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Maybe a prequel? LA in the late 70s, buddy buddy friendship, interesting tough guy characters caught up in a decent and suitably-complicated mystery. It's all there in the same way as KKBB was. Good times, for sure.
08.06.16	Star Wars: The Force Awakens	J.J. Abrams	We're playing through LEGO Force Awakens now and it put me in the mood to see the movie again. Watching it with the benefit of knowing the plot, this feels 1000% designed and planned to feel like a star wars movie. It's hard for me to say if the original trilogy felt that way since I was so young when they were implanted in my head... and i don't think it's a bad thing really, but I will say that the prequels didn't have that feeling to me. I feel like the prequels were just more stuff that Lucas felt like doing... adherence to the brand or canon or fans or anything like that took a far back seat to whatever it was that he felt like saying. Here, it almost feels like an amusement park ride in that it's SO calculated... but it works. There's new stuff too, mostly with the humor, and the new generation of characters feel just as cool and vibrant as the old ones did in the first few movies. I think they knocked it out of the park with Kylo Ren... he's powerful and menacing but also brash and impatient in a way that the prequels never pulled off with Anakin. And I enjoyed Han Solo a lot more this time around. He's like the third lead in this film which is great for many reasons.
07.09.16	Hitchcock/Truffaut	Kent Jones	Hitchcock/Truffaut was one of the very first books I ever read about film. I feel like it was late highschool, maybe 11th grade. I had seen a few Hitchcock movies, had no clue who Francois Truffaut was, and really just heard it was a good book. Afterward, I embarked on a VCR & TV Guide journey to watch all the Hitchcock movies; a journey in which I am still a few shy. It also led to reading a bunch of other interview books, a couple amazing ones by Peter Bogdanovich, and indirectly created my love for the oral history genre. So they made a documentary about the making of the book: a guaranteed love fest from me, right? Right. I loved this. I mean, as a film premise it's a bit thin so half the movie feels like it just becomes a Hitchcock documentary... but it's not like hearing directors such as Scorsese and David Fincher and Richard Linklater talk about Vertigo and Psycho is bad. Still, looking at stills and listening to the audio recordings isn't terribly much, but I'll take it, damnit. It makes me want to re-read the book (and re-watch all the movies).
07.09.16	Deadpool	Tim Miller	I liked this, although I do feel like I saw it way too late. It's actually surprising how many movies I can avoid finding too much out about until it hits DVD, but this one pretty much everyone talked about. A lot. I do appreciate how the leaked test footage and most of the trailers showed stuff from the first reel of the film, but I'd heard pretty much every joke from one person or another. I don't say this to whine about spoilers for a movie I didn't go see in theaters, but to say that my impression of the movie, while good overall, was somewhat dampened by already being familiar with most of it. There were a few nice touches that were new for me though, and the familiar stuff was still good. I love that Colossus (maybe my fav x-man) finally made a decent cinematic appearance, and it's nice to see R-rated swordplay in all its gory details. Working with a director so experienced with visual effects really helped I think. So yeah, good. funny.
07.05.16	Everybody Wants Some!!	Richard Linklater	Definitely a "spiritual sequel" to Dazed & Confused. As such, it's hard not to compare, which is unfortunate because D&C has had 20 years to marinate in its own awesomeness. I'm trying to think back to my first impressions of it and have no clue what I thought back then. So I'm trying to give this a fair shot. I definitely think it's a bit of a sausage fest. It took me about half the movie to settle in to what I was watching and actually start to like some of these guys. And I still didn't like some of them by the end. There were a few classic Linklater feels though, like when they're all sitting around smoking weed. That stuff feels 10000% authentic. But you know... also... I think maybe 1980 just wasn't as cool as 1976. Some of the music is great (like the new wave stuff, punk stuff, etc.), but that mix of early rap, disco, and rock is pretty jarring. I did like seeing Zack Carlson as a Sound Machine bouncer though. So I dunno. It definitely grew on me as I watched it. I liked the last half pretty good. I'll have to see how it sits with me going forward. I really... really could have done without that rap at the end though.
07.04.16	Hail, Caesar!	Joel Coen, Ethan Coen	Coens' latest, an ode to classic hollywood... I feel like it was a better script than movie. I dunno... it's just one of those things where all the individual elements are fine and good but the finished product is less than the sum of its parts for me. Maybe it's the way that the story resolves, maybe it's the thing where there are so many parts that no one other than Josh Brolin really gets to dig in. Maybe it's that they are playing with such well-known characters... Barton Fink's version of 30s Hollywood was much more mundane and interesting to me than this one. And what was up with Frances mcDormand getting choked? Anyway, in some ways this was warm and comfortable and scratched that fantasy Hollywood itch, but in others it left me wanting and didn't quite add up.
07.04.16	Midnight Special	Jeff Nichols	Another great movie from Jeff Nichols. Man, this guy is 3 for 3 in my book. I should check out his first movie. So... I don't really have much to say about this other than I liked it. Well done in all respects. Great cast, performances, direction, cinematography, effects, etc. Good times all around.
07.03.16	Everest	Baltasar Kormakur	I didn't know this was the same events that the IMAX documentary captured, but I guess it makes sense. It's been many years since I saw that doc but I remember it being riveting. Since I was kind of assuming this was a more typical hollywood mountain climbing story I got an unexpected downer of a tragedy. But it was good. I felt cold most of the way through it, and really felt for the guys along the way. And man, it's so chilling the way a few people go. Oops, no pun intended. So yeah, I'm reading wikipedia now and pretty bummed out, but also scenes from the movie are sticking with me. I liked the film more than I thought I would.
07.02.16	10 Cloverfield Lane	Dan Trachtenberg	This was pretty good. Very much helped along by John Goodman's performance, but the end was pretty satisfying as well. I also liked how it was loosely associated with the first Cloverfield without being a sequel or, really, even definitively in the same universe. Just kind of establishing a Twilight Zone-esque pseudo-genre of its own. Pretty cool.
07.02.16	Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice	Zack Snyder	I saw the Ultimate version or whatever... the three hour one. I'd heard this was pretty bad so, much like The Counselor, I was hoping the full crazy indulgent version might provide more context or something that could make it better. As such, I'm not really sure what was cut out... it seemed about as long and flabby as Man of Steel to me. I do think a lot of the criticism being leveled at this might be unfair. To me, the Marvel movies are just as indulgent and presumptuous as this was... the only difference is that Marvel has a tighter rein on their directors. Snyder seems lost in Michael Bay beer commercial land here. Pretty much every shot is either a filtered photoshopped magazine cover still or a motion-blur frenzy of CGI clutter. It felt a ton like the trailer for Pearl Harbor to me, except three hours of it. I didn't feel like a single line of dialogue would make any sense if a real person in the real world said it aloud to me. But I guess you either reject the whole movie or try to appreciate it for what it is. There was certainly some cool imagery. I particularly liked whatever the post-apocalyptic dream sequence was with Batman wearing a duster over his suit. I'm sure it was chock full of references that i don't understand but whatever. I don't see how the Wonder Woman and Aqua Man movies can not be laughably terrible but who knows. I guess we'll find out. I guess. I mean... 13 year old me would be in such heaven with all these comic book movies but... fatigue is definitely starting to set in.
06.05.16	The Do-Over	Steve Brill	Surprisingly ok for an Adam Sandler, still not a good movie. Luis Guzman as a shooter boy is pretty funny though. That's about it.
05.28.16	Pee Wee's Big Holiday	John Lee	I was really ready to love this. Aside from a few moments I didn't. I don't know... it's weird. To be honest, I'm not even sure what a perfect Pee Wee movie would be for me these days. I have so much love for the first movie... but I didn't religiously watch the tv show and the second movie, while I thought was funny and generally under-appreciated, was not perfect. I guess I'm happy that this exists, but a lot of scenes felt odd to me, and not in a good way.
05.04.16	Team Foxcatcher	John Greenhalgh	This was pretty interesting as a counterpart to the Steve Carrell Foxcatcher. It's a bit odd that Channing Tatum's role isn't even mentioned here but otherwise pretty good. Carrell's performance was so out there that I liked having an opportunity to see video of the real John Du Pont and see his behavior. Makes me like Carrell's performance more.
05.01.16	Special Correspondents	Ricky Gervais	Didn't much care for this.
03.13.16	Bridge of Spies	Steven Spielberg	Not taking anything away from Spielberg's prowess in his craft, I think he's officially an old man making movies for other old men now. I mean, this was a huge snoozer. A few aspects like seeing cold war-era East Berlin and Tom Hanks' performance made it worth watching but for the most part this was pretty slow and forgettable. Night and day difference from the Spielberg of 30 years ago... but then again how does someone NOT change in 30 years? It's remarkable that he's still making movies that anyone cares about. I still haven't seen Linoln or War Horse (or Tintin).
03.12.16	Trainwreck	Judd Apatow	I liked this one alright. There were a few funny moments. I liked LeBron and John Cena, but mostly it felt like Amy Schumer's stand up set grafted onto a by-the-numbers romantic comedy. When I compare this to something like Forgetting Sarah Marshall it definitely feels flat. Which is a shame, I like pretty much everyone involved. And like I said, there was some funny stuff.
02.28.16	The Ladykillers	Joel Coen, Ethan Coen	It's been a while since I've seen this and, since I consider this to be the Coen's worst movie, I figured I'd revisit on the off chance that my opinion had changed. Certainly there's some good stuff in here. Tom Hanks' performance is great. Roger Deakins, the gospel music. But the story still bothers me, Maroln Wayans' performance takes me out of the movie, and J.K. Simmons' IBS is dumb. But all that said, the first half of the film isn't too bad. I guess now I'll have to see Intolerable Cruelty again to see how that holds up.
02.27.16	Get Hard	Etan Cohen	I laughed quite a bit in this. I liked the concept, still think Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart are funny, and there were a few bits which really struck me as funny. like Sad Dog and all the Boyz n the Hood stuff. It's not breaking any new ground or anything but whatever... does it have to? It made me laugh.
02.20.16	The Big Short	Adam McKay	Interesting movie about some dudes who saw the 2008 financial crisis coming. Good big cast, pretty good script making this pretty complicated subject matter understandable and not boring. Some of McKay's choices seemed a bit much to me like the freeze frames and weird little inserts to I guess give a context of the year 2007? Aside from a few foibles though like the use of music and whatnot I enjoyed it pretty good.
02.12.16	Dope	Rick Famuyiwa	Freaking loved this. So great. Great music, great script, great performances, great direction. There's a feeling of lightness and positivity throughout even when it's dealing with pretty serious subject matter, the film constantly defies expectations and perfectly mixes modern day atmosphere with really great 90s nostalgia and music. Man, what a soundtrack. This kind of reminded me of Scott Pilgrim in some indirect ways. And I have to say... a master class on 90s dance moves during the end credits. Amazing stuff. loved it loved it loved it.
01.23.16	Spy	Paul Fieg	Pretty funny. For me, the movie is made by Jude Law and Jason Statham even though they aren't particularly funny. Their personas lend a nice counterpoint to McCarthy though... which is nice. A couple funny moments.
01.22.16	What We Do in the Shadows	Jemaine Clement, Taika Waititi	Finally got this watched. I liked it a lot. I thought of it at a B-side to Jarmusch's vampire film... just as baroque in its design but a comedy rather than drama. It's really great. I loved seeing Rhys Darby.
01.18.16	Creed	Ryan Coogler	I liked this one pretty good. Maybe I should go back and watch the first five Rockys sometime to refresh my memory. I wonder how Sly felt having someone else write a Rocky movie. I'm glad he got behind it because this was a fitting epilogue for the character. Michael B Jordan was good. I wonder if I'll ever stop recognizing actors from The Wire as "ooh, a Wire alumn!" Like, will Wood Harris ever NOT be Avon Barksdale for me? Who knows... but WHERE'S WALLACE AT!?
01.17.16	Straight Outta Compton	F. Gary Gray	Great movie. This is one of those perfect storm movies where the real life subject matter is interesting, the producers have the creative and legal access to use all the assets that are needed to tell the story, the script is knowledgeable and informed by first parties, the director is very close to the subject matter and knows that world well, and the actors are capable (and in one case related) enough to portray their real-life counterparts well without ten pounds of make-up or coming off like a pale imitation. The result is really why I love movies. I love that the movie is long enough to really tell the whole story in regards to solo careers and different record labels. This movie was probably dangerously easy to just focus on the early years or take a snapshot in time or something like that, but to me the real interesting stuff happened after the group split. You'd miss all that stuff... The Chronic, America's Most Wanted, Snoop, Suge, Tupac, Bone Thugz, Warren G, Boyz n the Hood, Friday, the feuds, the reconciliation... I'm so glad they extended the timeline out enough to include all of that stuff. And I love the soundtrack. First you hear the sample sources, the inspirations, but then later on you hear the musical landscape change. Wu Tang's on at the club all of a sudden... And I really REALLY love how they show the real music video. Ice Cube's son is missing his father's hard edge but it's still uncanny to see his performance. Really everybody (except Snoop but then again where the hell are they gonna find another guy who looks like Snoop?). And everybody comes off looking intelligent. Ice Cube's interview was hilarious. I guess I'm gushing at this point. I loved it.
01.17.16	Black Mass	Scott Cooper	I liked this one ok. I'm thinking it's generally a bad idea to watch the documentary before the film version because this felt oddly fatigued to, probably because I already knew all the details from seeing that Whitey Bulger doc on netflix. I liked the cast and Depp did a fine job, but the plot felt meandering and sluggish and I never really got a sense of who Bulger was other than a criminal. Furthermore, I never got a sense of him changing or prospering after the Italian boss got locked up... All in all I felt like it was a pale imitation of Nicholson in The Departed (ironic). But you know, I liked Crazy Heart and Out of the Furnace and I wouldn't call this one bad... just a bit lethargic for a crime story.
01.12.16	The Revenant	Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu	Jesus. This movie is intense as all hell. I really loved this. Jesus... I mean... just fantastic filmmaking. Granted, it's right up my alley but... just amazing. Holy Shit.
01.10.16	Magic Mike XXL	Gregory Jacobs	I thought Soderbergh brought some interesting stuff to the first movie so I was curious to see where they would take it without him at the helm. I was pretty surprised to see Peter Andrews and Mary Ann Bernard's names in the credits... I guess Soderbergh didn't want to come out of "retirement" for this but still wanted to shoot and edit it? In either case, I think it's a nice move to let his producer/1st AD take the helm... hopefully it was a supportive collaboration and not like what I've been reading about Poltergeist. A little aside here: I'd always given Tobe Hooper the benefit of the doubt regarding Poltergeist but I read a bunch of stuff the other day by a bunch of strangers on the Internet that made a lot of sense and it really seems like a lot of that praise probably belongs to Spielberg. I'm sure Hooper has an influence as well but it really feels much more like a Spielberg film rather than a Tobe Hooper film. Man, Spielberg was on fire back then. Jaws was on the damn Syfy channel the other day and I wound up watching half of it. 40 years old and it's still a damn near perfect film. I haven't seen the last four Spielberg films... I'm interested in Bridge of Spies but Lincoln, Tintin, and damn Warhorse feel like chores to me. I should probably watch them though just in case. Oh right, Magic Mike. This was fun to sort of see the flip side of the coin, where the first film shows the dark side of male strippering, this is a pretty light-hearted road trip fun male stripper movie. Except Donald Glover shows up for some reason!? Anyway, I didn't find it as good as the first film, but this one is definitely not aimed at me since there was more stripping and random sexy dancing in places like garages and tiger marts.
01.08.16	The Man from U.N.C.L.E.	Guy Ritchie	This one was pretty odd. There was a lot of style to some of the sequences but also some really weird tonal choices that, to me, undercuts the film. Particularly the music... I like all the songs used but they were sometimes not appropriate I think. Like especially the beginning. The visuals flashing by quickly in a very kinetic manner but the music is completely muted and mellow. Made me feel weird. Especially after the inevitable comparison to Kingsman which is much more action than intrigue, this one feels like it's missing a critical spark to bring the thing to life. But I like that they did it period, it looked great and all that... just missing some ingredient to make the cake rise. I wonder what Guy Ritchie's life is like now that Matthew Vaughn is making better Guy Ritchie movies than he is. Maybe Madonna is a vampire? Damn Madonna stole his life essence!!!
12.31.15	Spotlight	Tom McCarthy	Tis the season for mirth and merriment, kith and kin, and ripped Academy screeners allowing me to see Oscar contenders easily online. I liked this one quite a bit, certainly a modern-day All The President's Men. Great cast, well-presented, clear and informative... I think it accomplished what it wanted to accomplish. That said, this is exactly the movie I expected. Granted, I expected a good watchable movie about interesting subject matter so how can that be a bad thing, but still there is a certain loose formula for "good movie" that this follows pretty closely. There's not much to say about it other than it's good and that you should watch it.
12.31.15	The Ridiculous 6	Frank Coraci	Morbid curiosity draws me to Adam Sandler movies more than anything else these days. Yet I have to say, the scene with John Turturro making up baseball was pretty funny to me. I guess it's left as an exercise for the reader to decide if one funny scene is worth two hours' time.
12.30.15	Furious 7	James Wan	This was... a little boring for being a crazy action movie. But I guess I'm invested at this point... Although I feel like 5 will stand up as the best of the series for me, but what the hell. hopefully Vin finishes this series with "one more trilogy" and they make it to an even 10. I'd love for there to be a supercut of all 10 films cut together chronologically some day
12.29.15	Kill List	Ben Wheatley	I got a little tired of having to qualify that I hadn't seen Kill List when discussing Wheatley's films this past fantastic fest so I thought I would fill in the hole. I didn't love it. In theory I guess it's a nice blend of a hitman movie and horror but I just didn't enjoy the style. I can definitely now see where A Field in England and High Rise come from, but I think Sightseers is going to be the movie I like most from this guy.
12.29.15	The Hateful Eight	Quentin Tarantino	In the theater again! This time going downtown to the Ritz to see this in the 70mm roadshow presentation. I have somewhat complicated thoughts that I'll get into below but the short version is that I liked the movie quite a bit. About the film, I really only have one complaint and that's the narrator. Why'd it have to be HIM? I mean, I know why, but still... Just imagine for a second that it's Jody's voice. How cool would that have been? Instead, a complete ego move that took me right out of the immersion. Otherwise, I thought it was great. It's fun to see everybody playing together. The script was great. The music was great (thanks to the Universal DVD of John Carpenter's The Thing, I immediately noticed when Morricone's unused score for that film came in). Fun fun movie. Now, about the technical specifications which seemed to have taken center spotlight for the film's marketing. First of all, why pick a movie that's like 75% shot in a one-room set to shoot in ultra panavision? Secondly, why not put that film in IMAX rather than force normal theaters to show it on screens too small to see any of the added benefit? And thirdly... was it really SO long ago that Avatar forced everyone to switch the DCP that everyone forgot how to run film through a projector? My screening didn't have any problems (a big reason why I went to the Alamo versus the Tinseltown), but I've read from numerous sources online that some screenings have had to default to digital by the end because of technical issues. Ouch. My personal theory is that Tarantino fell in love with the idea of making a movie in ultra panavision and showing it Ben Hur style with an overture and an intermission and program book and all that... but then just thrust it into his next project more out of opportunity than thematic fit. Django would have been an excellent film to shoot with those lenses. This one... is for the most part wasted. Now don't get me wrong, what little location photography present is absolutely beautiful and Bob Richardson shoots the hell out of that set and it's fun to be able to see the other actors on the edges of the frame, but it's still just mostly actors talking to each other. During one scene, Bruce Dern has a reaction to a character entering the scene. He's in a long shot and I think it was designed that we notice him because of the format, but the Ritz's screen is not big enough to suitably take advantage of the format so I could still barely see Dern's face. I couldn't help but wish that I was watching this at the Paramount where it really SHOULD have been shown. The program book is a nice touch however, and I'm still glad I got to see this format of the film. I definitely live in a fortunate city for film fans. I don't want to come off whiny or ungrateful... but I really don't think 90% of audiences will notice a difference between this and DCP. So, now I'm curious to pick up the blu and give it another viewing to see what 5 minutes was only in this cut. I'm guessing it's mostly scenery, which is a shame because the film needs as much of that as it can get.
12.28.15	Sicario	Denis Villeneuve	I really wanted to see this because I think the Mexican drug wars are really fertile ground. Everyone's good in it, the music is really haunting and good (more like a horror movie than an action movie), excellent photography... but I think I overhyped it for myself because I had a sense of "that's it?" when it was over. I'm not sure what I was expecting... but I had a bit of wanting left over afterward, which is weird because I think everything about it was good solid filmmaking.
12.28.15	Moonrise Kingdom	Wes Anderson	Got the Criterion of this for Christmas and my aunt hadn't seen it. I think I liked it more this time. I mean you can either love all the intricate details in the meticulously-constructed frames or you find it too precious and irksome. I love it. The photography is certainly stunning here though and the story is very innocent and charming. I'll probably end up owning all of Wes Anderson's stuff eventually just like the Coens.
12.21.15	Star Wars: The Force Awakens	J.J. Abrams	Saw the new Star Wars. It kind of sucks that I feel my old man crabbiness coming on, but the truth of the matter is that I had no interest in opening night crowds. Furthermore, I probably should have seen this at an Alamo but didn't want to camp on the refresh button trying to get decent seats before they sold out in three seconds. So I thought maybe a weekday matinee at the Bullock IMAX would be reasonably civil while still allowing me a good chance at a positive screening. I didn't really see that IMAX was showing in 3D which was not ideal but oh well. So, all that crap about how i hate leaving my house aside, I liked the movie a lot. I feel like every moviegoer shared a sigh of relief at it not sucking as we left the theater, although I did see two dudes high five each other which was pretty funny. I also sat next to a little boy which gave me a nice reminder of myself seeing Jedi. He was well behaved but started fidgeting when the old people on the screen talked for too long. And you know... I think that's the most mixed-emotion-y part for me as well. On the one hand, you kind of HAVE to have Han Solo and Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker back if you're doing another Star Wars sequel, but on the other hand... they are all old and probably don't really care about acting anymore. That might be too harsh, but the general vibe I get from Harrison Ford is that he wants his money and for everyone to leave him alone these days, and I think Carrie Fisher had much more fun on the press tour for the film than actually making the movie. So I thought everything with the new cast was great, but aside from a few nostalgia uppercuts when you first see familiar faces, the original characters offered the most strained dialogue and acting. I kind of want to watch the original trilogy again to remind myself why Harrison Ford was so amazing to begin with. Granted, I feel like he actually worked for this movie which is more than can be said for anything in the last 15 years, but it's just not the same. His stuff felt off to me. Like... really? Han still has to deal with these trader dudes or whatever? And when I think about it I guess he would be... the script makes logical sense, but it's just weird to see the characters alive again. That said, everything else felt excruciatingly designed to feel 100% Star Wars. It feels like JJ came in with a list of 80 things that he wanted to see in the movie and a list of 100 things that he wanted to NOT put in the movie and went from there. Also, the film feels like it's trying really really hard to fit into the mold, sometimes to the point of telegraphing plot. I don't really think this is a bad thing. I feel like the ancillary movies that are not "core" episodes will have license to play around with the formula a bit and present different viewpoints so there's nothing wrong with this being a most crystalline Star Wars structure, but still when a couple scenes started I immediately knew how they would end which was kind of a bummer because... they were bummer scenes and feel like they maybe didn't have to happen even though why am I even upset about it but still I am so whatever... Anyway, All of this deconstruction aside, I really enjoyed myself. A few times I got major dopamine rushes as I felt The Force of a good Star Wars movie just like when I was a kid. And although the 3D mostly just meant an uncomfortable set of glasses pressing against my brow, the hint of depth during the air battles gave an extra little bit of excitement (mostly I look forward to seeing the 2D Blu at home though). And did I mention that I really liked all the new characters? Pretty much everyone was great. wtf is up with Oscar Isaac killing everything out of nowhere? Jesus. So yeah. Major sigh of relief. It was really good. I really liked it. All is right with the world.
12.17.15	Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation	Christopher McQuarrie	The one where Tom Cruise hangs off a plane as it takes off. This was mostly ok. Really my only thought is how cool it must be to be Simon Pegg these days. To go from the dude from Spaced being a Star Wars and Star Trek geek to all of a sudden being IN Star Wars, Star Trek, and Mission: Impossible! Gotta be pretty sweet.
12.13.15	Southpaw	Antoine Fuqua	I still don't really care for Fuqua as a director but I like Gyllenhaal and Forest Whitaker. For me the movie kind of evened out. I thought Gyllenhaal's performance was really great but Kurt Sutter's script had me rolling my eyes a few times and Fuqua's ultra dramatic everyshot was a bit much. Luckily there was some humor in watching 50 Cent try to act.
12.10.15	Terminator Genisys	Alan Taylor	The Terminator is entering Die Hard territory where there are now more bad movies than good yet something about the world is still interesting enough for me to keep watching. I thought this one had some promise. Byung-hun Lee makes a great T-1000 and the young Arnold was kind of a cool idea... but the rest of the movie was pretty crap. Making John Connor the bad guy was a total mistake. Hopefully they don't make any more of these and let the first two (and I guess maybe the third) live on with dignity.
12.06.15	San Andreas	Brad Peyton	I'm playing lots of Fallout 4 these days so I'm in a disaster kind of mood. This was barely ok. To be honest, I found Alexandria Daddario's breasts to be distracting. I buy that she could come from Carla Gugino's DNA but damn... how is The Rock not struggling with awkward thoughts!? Anyway, like I said, barely ok. I get that they were showing the strongest earthquakes ever recorded but jesus you'd think that California builders didn't know earthquakes were a thing. The "newest, strongest" building ever somehow collapses after it's half-way submerged? Maybe there's some heady physics that I don't understand that explains this but for the most part it feels pretty false. Like how a helicopter has enough fuel to fly halfway up the third biggest state in the country. shrug. I mean I know i'm not supposed to be thinking during this CG fest but... you know... maybe a tiny bit of logistics wouldn't hurt?
11.23.15	Aloha	Cameron Crowe	well... so here's the thing. I still feel like Cameron Crowe has a great movie in him. Maybe it'll be Roadies... who knows... I don't really know anything about his personal life but I feel like, just from watching his movies, he's had a pretty rough couple of years. I hope he gets his mojo back, because i'm still a fan. but yeah, this was a mess.
11.20.15	Murder Rap: Inside the Biggie and Tupac Murders	Michael Dorsey	This caught my eye because it purported to have lots of police recordings of people involved and the reddit comments said the book that this is based on pretty much answered the question of who killed both these guys. I was never a huge Tupac or Biggie fan musically but I did enjoy Nick Broomfield's doc enough to be interested in finding out further developments. As a film this one is pretty rough. It's almost all audio recordings and talking heads along with a few CG and bad-acting re-enactments. The actualy information though is pretty interesting. I believe it. Suge Knight's interview in the Broomfield doc easily paints him as a gangster and I'd always heard some shady shit about Sean Combs so I don't really have much of a problem believing that they were both responsible. So... I dunno. interesting to watch once.
11.16.15	Chappie	Neill Blomkamp	Nobody does CG machinery better than Neal Blomkamp. Unfortunately I had some problems with the story and the movie mostly feels like a commercial for Die Antwoord for some reason. Like, how was it ok that Ninja wears a shirt with his face on it and his name and band name on the back and it gets a closeup? And why are there like a dozen Die Antwoord songs in the movie? It's a bit odd to hear Yo-landi speaking dialogue while her voice is rapping on the song that's playing under the dialogue. I'm all for using them in the film but this was a bit much. It kind of took away from the rest of the movie for me.
11.16.15	The Gambler	Rupert Wyatt	It's always interesting to see which movies Mark Wahlberg feels like showing up for and which he completely phones in. This would've been an odd choice to see "actor Mark" had he not produced it. Something must have clicked with this character for him. I'm not sure I get it, but whatever. It had a good cast (even if some were only on screen for like a minute, George Kennedy). Man it was nice to see George Kennedy again. Otherwise... I didn't think it was bad, but i did roll my eyes a few times at Wahlberg's ennui. I suppose that's the point of the film maybe? i don't know. whatever.
11.16.15	Kingsman: The Secret Service	Matthew Vaughn	good fun solid comic book action. It seems like Sam Jackson had fun. Certainly the church scene was crazy. Light popcorn stuff. I do like how they went all the way with the evil lair and henchmen and stuff, which seemed impossible after Austin Powers.
11.09.15	Pixels	Chris Columbus	not unspeakably terrible (at least compared to other Adam Sandler movies), but certainly a missed opportunity. Man that original short was cool, and the effects in this were too (although technically they were voxels not pixels, yuck yuck). But yeah... with Sandler's apathetic mits on it this was bound to be a snoozer. As always, I'm sure it was fun to shoot.
11.09.15	Entourage	Doug Ellin	Ahh the Entourage movie. Remember when people liked watching this show? bout rich people with ridiculously ridiculously miniscule problems? Well now they're back! What a shocker that I forgot this existed until I saw it available to watch. And you know... to give it some credit, it delivers just like the show did. When it's there in front of your face, it's a nice enough diversion. And then it's over and you forget about it and move on. I'm sure E will get over his mopeyness and get back with Sloan next time too. At least their portrayal of texas is as inaccurate as their portrayal of los angeles.
11.08.15	It Follows	David Robert Mitchell	Finally saw this! I really liked it! It had an original premise, subdued and effective execution, and great atmosphere. The main girl's performance bugged me a tiny bit but I suspect her vacancy is a tonal choice since everything about the movie was trying to be muted and creeping rather than quick and actiony. The abundance of circling pans showing the surroundings and making you think anyone walking in the background could be "it" following, the really great soundtrack with its pads and synths washing over you and building up deep bassy drones that release in uneasy silence, they both fit with the lead's vacant stares. I get that Cliff Martinez's synth stuff is kind of driving a trend right now and I was originally kind of put off by the soundtrack choice but as the film went on I really came to like it. I looked him up afterward and found out that he didn the soundtrack to a video game called Fez, which completely makes sense because both soundtracks are great in an elevated chiptune sort of way. And also shooting in Detroit. That's like free atmosphere these days. So yeah, this was really effective. I loved the actor choices for the actual followers. The tall guy was probably the creepiest? or maybe the peeing pross? Dunno. Good job though. Yay I wasn't disappointed! I'm so glad! So this is a great movie to end the fest on. Gotta say, for a year that kind of whipped together impromptu style I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. It's always fun to set aside the weekend like this and fall down the movie hole for a while. I wish it could keep going but alas tomorrow is Monday and it's almost time to make the donuts. So let's run down some stats for the year. 10 in the past week (1.43 daily average), 17 in the past month (0.57 daily average), 176 in the past year (0.48 daily average), and 2866 since this site started (0.71 daily average). It's best not to think about what those numbers were like 7, 8 years ago... but they are what they are.
11.08.15	Ex Machina	Alex Garland	A sexy robot tests a few nerds who drink beer and talk about AI. So when this came out I was a bit hesitant because of the whole "sexy robot" thing but I then heard from pretty much everyone how good it was and am finally seeing it now. Surprise! It's really fucking good! Even though the robot is sexy, they address it in the film and it's actually a plot point which is nice. The film looks spectacular. The sets and location photography are unbelievable. The fact that this is technically an indie movie... and it looks this good with that many effects shots in it... there are really no excuses you know? I mean I know Alex Garland is a high profile screenwriter so this isn't like completely out of the blue but come on... Stuff like this, Blue Ruin, hell... Monsters. Having no money is no longer an excuse for a movie not to look spectacular. And Geoff Barrow on the soundtrack! 2015 is turning out to be quite a lucky year for Portishead fans between this and High Rise. I mean I'm still waiting for a new album but I won't complain about getting an interesting and characteristic score out of the man any day. It reminded me a lot of when Underworld used to score films like Breaking and Entering and Sunshine. So yeah... loved this. Liked it way more than I thought I would. But yeah, that robot was sexy. I only had one little problem with the plot and that's at the very ending. I thought he changed the security protocols to open the doors when the power failed, so... shouldn't the doors be open at the end? whatever, still a good movie. Up next is the last film of DVRfest 2015. It is a movie that I wanted to watch for last year's fest because I missed it at Fantastic Fest but it wasn't available yet, so now I feel like i've missed it two or three times and everyone seems to gush about it so I hope I like it too and don't have to be that guy. I'll find out in a few hours!
11.08.15	Tomorrowland	Brad Bird	I've picked out three more movies that I feel fit the general DVRfest theme of movies that I've been wanting to see but haven't gotten around to yet, starting with this Brad Bird hopeful sci-fi love letter to the imagination and innovation of Walt Disney. I feel like, in terms of box office and this movie's public reception, the optimistic and inspirational nature wasn't very well received and the cynical toxicity of places like Twitter melted it down with acid, not helped at all by its defenders basically trying to guilt trip the world into having better taste in movies. It's true that this isn't a comic book movie, sequel, or remake and yes, in a perfect world, everybody would be open to something like this. But it's also a super hard sell of a movie that's half retro-futuristic nostalgia, half environmental proselytization, and half sci-fi thriller. This movie seems destined to become a cult favorite liked by people who already like Brad Bird in a not-as-good-as-iron-giant type way. I liked it more than Iron Giant (aren't I special!?). I love meta Disney stuff, love anything having to do with Disneyland, and love that some movies aren't afraid to have a message (even though they still do make me groan when i see all that on-the-nose nihilism). It's very easy to tear this movie down for daring to be about something, anything more than CGI, but I have to give it kudos for trying. Except I also see the marketing department drooling over collectible pins and pre-worn NASA hats and George Clooney toy jetpacks... but since the movie kind of bombed then we didn't get to see any of that stuff. YET. I thought it was good though. I thought the actors, including the children, did a great job for such an effects-heavy movie and the tomorrowland design was fantastic. I like that George Clooney can be in a movie and not have to be on every page of the script, I like that Brad Bird wasn't afraid to dive into live action and try something new. And, a few global warming commentaries aside, I didn't groan at any stupid turns or glaring holes which seems to be less and less common these days. Up next is another sci-fi, followed by the final film of the fest! I hope I can fit them both in and still make it to work in the morning.
11.08.15	The Decline of Western Civilization Part III	Penelope Spheeris	I saw the first Decline as a vhs rental in high school. The second Decline was a DVRfest movie from several years ago. I didn't know there even was a third Decline until this past Fantastic Fest when Daniel Kerr mentioned that Penelope Spheeris was just here for an AFS event (which I really should have known about and been there for, I bet seeing Suburbia on the big screen was a treat, not to mention all three of these docs). So shame on me for not knowing she was in town and shame on me for not knowing this existed. Time to fix that! So my memory of the first Decline movie was that it was interviews and footage of just the bands? Maybe there were some fans thrown in there too. Certainly for the second film she stretched out a bit and talked to some fans/groupies as well as local hair bands, but this one seems very focused on the gutterpunks: homeless punk rockers who hang out on Hollywood Boulevard and go to shows in between their drinking binges. The focus on these particular kids gives the music itself a secondary role, which I guess could also be said about the second one. I really loved this. It's a sad movie and pretty depressing but it's also authentic as hell and shows a new and unique part of life that most people don't get to see. I thought of Zack Carlson often while watching this. His Destroy All Movies book about punks on film talks a lot about how punks were portrayed - mostly inaccurately - in the media and how few movies carry the "real" punk spirit. I feel like Penelope Spheeris is the queen of that spirit. Certainly as far as the movies I've seen, I can only think of Alex Cox's Repo Man that even comes close to Suburbia and Dudes. In some ways I feel like this movie represents punk even more than the first (which is ridiculous but still). But who am i... I sat on my couch eating pizza rolls while watching this... So that was great, and also the only movie I had on the DVR this year. I'm kind of through my planned schedule of films so for the rest of the evening I think it's going to be random films off the internet! Yay for that!
11.08.15	Road Hard	Adam Carolla, Kevin Hench	So what happens with these kickstarter movies is that by the time I actually do get my DVD or Blu-ray or whatever then I've already moved on because everyone else has seen it and the disc just sits on the piles for months and months. That's what DVRfest is for though so that's why I'm watching these. For a time I listened to Adam Carolla's podcast pretty regularly. I didn't buy his books but I did back his film. Since then, I've stopped listening to his podcast because it's kind of the same thing over and over again, but I'm on record for liking his first film The Hammer and hoped this would be as good. It mostly is. Again, Carolla recognizes his limitations as an actor and writes a role that's 99% himself. The scenes where he has to emote things other than cynicism and depression feel a bit strained but they're minimal (just like The Hammer). This movie is well shot and there's a bunch of familiar faces in small roles that fill the film with smirk-worthy appearances and the script doesn't have any huge problems and it doesn't drag... so in that regard this is a pretty good movie. My issue is the familiarity. It's probably a bit unfair to expect something completely different from a guy who more or less says the same stuff every day on his podcast, but I was surprised by how much material was taken directly from the show. So when David Alan Grier does his phramaceutical bit or his Teddy Pendergrass bit, it feels like a not-as-funny version of the hilarious moments on the podcast. Similarly, the stand up bits and the rants and anecdotes that Carolla's character recounts to his friends in the movie are pretty much taken directly from stuff that felt organic and natural when I heard it the first time but now feel regurgitated and shaped to fit a different mold. Again, this is probably unfair to the film itself, and as time goes on if I'm in the mood to revisit Adam Carolla's comedy I might be more inclined to watch this film again rather than listen to his podcast, or if his podcast ever changes then this will be a more palatable historical record of the stuff he was doing at the time that I was a listener rather than reading his books. All that is to say that I liked the movie ok but didn't really hear any new jokes. However, there were a few meta things that I found amusing while watching. For one, they used Carolla's house as Larry "Babydoll" Miller's house in the film, so there's a huge thing where Carolla is complaining about how much money his agent has, using his own toys as examples... which is kind of odd and funny. But also, it let me see inside Carolla's house (which I've heard A LOT about on his podcast) so that was pretty sweet. Also, i'm guessing they used Nick Offerman's woodshop as Diane Farr's late husband's garage, and cameos from Carolla's dog and ex co-worker Alison Rosen and some of that stuff peppered throughout. But, on a positive note, the movie did have a bit of the same heart that The Hammer had and presents all the things that I like about Carolla: his everyone-is-crazy-but-me observations, his refusal to play the game, and his love-me-or-hate-me induvidualism. So for that I liked this movie. It was pretty good.
11.07.15	Friday the 13th Part 2	Steve Miner	So I remember thinking I had seen the first Friday the 13th but it felt like I was seeing it for the first time as I was watching. This one I was always on record as never having seen but there are a few scenes which felt oddly familiar. I wonder if a few teenage wires got crossed in my brain and I had it wrong all these years. Anyway, now I've definitely seen them both. Cross that shit off the list. So this one... the birth of baghead Jason. It was ok. More of a straight sequel than I would've thought although I remember part 5 doing a very similar thing of showing the ending to the previous film. I'd like for me to have a ton of thoughts and notes on this now that i've finally seen all the films in the series, but really both of these films are very formulaic. As they should be... after all they are almost templates of the genre. and thus ends day one of DVRfest. I'm going to sleep, then getting up and watching more movies!!!
11.07.15	Friday the 13th	Sean S. Cunningham	Being a child of the 80s I grew up with the ridiculous sequels of all the slasher films. I feel like my first Nightmare on Elm Street was part 2 or 3 and my first Friday the 13th was part 4. I've gone back on most long series like these and caught up but for whatever reason I never saw Friday the 13th part 2. Well I figure it's finally time to fill in that gap and I threw the first film on the queue because I can't actually remember watching it. Usually when people watch this one I think they go on and watch the next 10. In my case i'm just seeing the first two tonight. I found a few interesting things with this. One is how much it owes to Psycho. Not just the mom thing but also the score. In addition to the ki-ki-ki ha-ha-ha thing but there are stabby strings through most of the horror here. It's pretty crazy to think that this was just 20 years after Psycho! 20 years after this we had...what, The Ring? This one is also way more atmospheric than I remember. Lots of shots of the woods just hanging out being woods. It's actually surprisingly effective. I feel like the final shock scene and Kevin Bacon with the arrow through the throat is all that anyone ever sees or remembers from this movie these days but actually the first half is pretty quiet and understated. Otherwise, yeah this pretty closely matches Bava's Bay of Blood. It's just kids dying in the woods. Still, it was pretty good and, like all films with too many sequels, a far cry from where the franchise wound up.
11.07.15	That Guy Dick Miller	Elijah Drenner	I don't know if I went into this on my Wrecking Crew notes but this is another movie that I backed on Kickstarter and wound up being the last person on Earth to actually see. In the movie's defense, I think there was an Austin screening of this at South by Southwest but again but I was sitting at home waiting for my DVD or whatever. All of that aside, I really enjoyed this one. I feel like the film clips and interviews were exhaustively complete and the whole thing was put together proficiently. Plus Dick Miller's personality is as fun as you want it to be so it's a joy to step into his life a bit and see things from his perspective. And you know... this film also kind of doubles as an informal doc on Roger Corman and his New World generation. Joe Dante, Alan Arkush, John Davidson, Jonathan Kaplan, et al. I think that's some very fertile ground as well. It's fun to hear from all of those guys as well. I guess a snippet of Jack Nicholson would've been a really nice surprise but whatever... I didn't pledge at that level. So yay. This one flew by compared to The Connection. Next up is a bit of a throwback double feature to take me deep into the night.
11.07.15	The Connection	Cedric Jimenez	Always a sucker for a gangster movie, I was pretty excited to see this French movie that tells the story of The French Connection from the other side of the Atlantic. So 70s, true crime, gangsters, police procedural... these are all words that I look for in a movie. So why didn't I love this movie? I really expected to love this but I didn't. It's too long, mostly. And I hate that I'm saying this but I had a real problem telling the main good guy apart from the main bad guy. I guess all Frenchmen look the same to me. Anyway, I'm a bit surprised by this... time to watch something that will hold my interest a little better before delving into a horror double feature to end the night.
11.07.15	The Human Centipede 3 (Final Sequence)	Tom Six	It's noon on a Saturday and I just watched a movie. What's that mean? It's DVRfest, muthahumpers! This year I have a feeling the fest is going to be pretty minimal. I fell asleep last night trying to watch this first film, Molly's around the house doing stuff, and I'm working again so I only have the weekend. Plus I only have one movie on my actual DVR. Nevertheless, the spirit of DVRfest is alive and well as there are always movies that I need to catch up on and if I get through those I have the Internet at my disposal. So let's get started! With this... terrible terrible movie. What a crazy arc, this series has had for me. The first film, a surprise hit at Fantastic Fest, really caught on and got a huge release. The follow-up, I believe an Opening Night film at Fantastic Fest, pretty much sucked. This one, silently released onto Netflix with absolutely no fanfare, has the stars of the first two films play prison management who are affected by the first two films and decide to subject the entire prison population to the human centipede process. They even bring in director Tom Six to prove his claims that it's 100% medically accurate. So if Human Centipede 2 sucked, it was still kind of a real movie. This one doesn't even feel like that. I feels like they had a warden's office set for a week and decided to make a movie around it. The german guy, so awesome in the first film, is fully unleashed here in the worst possible way. He literally screams every line of dialogue and it's all but unintelligible. The super gross guy from the second film plays a mild-mannered account and not gross at all (not really anyway). There's also porn star Bree Olson and Eric Roberts for some reason. So this was really really bad. Tiny Lister plays an inmate of the prison. A serious step down from playing the inmate in The Dark Knight. Here all that happens is he gets his arm broken and he beats up Bree Olson. Gah. no fun. no fun at all. Next up... hmm... i'll have to make up a schedule real quick, so I have no clue what's up next! Either way, we'll both find out in a couple hours.
10.27.15	Back in Time	Jason Aron	A kickstarter doc about Back to the Future. At first I thought this would be just another retelling of how the film got made... and I was fine with that even though I think I got that story on the 25th anniversary DVD. But what I think sets this one apart is how roughly half the film is about various fans of the film and how they connect to it and were effected by it. That stuff was interesting and reflected a true cultural resonance that the film has. And man Leah Thompson still has it. Damn.
10.24.15	Avengers: Age of Ultron	Joss Whedon	Not much to say about this one other than it was a solid B/B+ spectacle movie. It had a bunch of cool stuff in it... didn't make me groan or anything... yet I'm still not fully engaged with any of these movies. Popcorn stuff for sure...
10.23.15	Prophet's Prey	Amy Berg	A doc about the Fundamentalist church of Latterday Saints AKA the crazy polygamist extreme Mormons as portrayed on the HBO show Big Love. I was surprised to see just how closely Big Love mirrored what was going on with this cult. Not the Bill Paxton character but Harry Dean Stanton and his whole family/compound. I knew they must be basing it on some fact but damn... So... I can't help but compare this to Going Clear, the scientology doc. In terms of pure filmmaking, Going Clear is much better. This move feels cobbled together from one or two key interviews and a bunch of footage taken out the passenger window of a moving car. Still, the story itself is pretty incredible and I never felt like I was getting a limited view of what they were talking about. Playing the tape where the prophet guy creepytalks to his teen bride while pushing into her was arresting. And again, I'm left with thoughts similar to my Going Clear experience. What's to stop these people from having a mass suicide or attack or something? Pretty chilling stuff.
10.17.15	Enemy	Denis Villeneuve	Well I finally got this watched. Kind of the only thing that got me through the first half hour was Denis Villeneuve's name. For the most part I found this pretty plodding and slow. It's kind of not until the last scene that I was really engaged. The whole thing begs for a second viewing to try and figure out what the end means, but I don't think I'm that invested. Whether it was literal or figurative, I don't really care. I can see how Villeneuve got from here to Prisoners, but I liked Prisoners much more.
10.17.15	Unknown	Jaume Collet-Serra	Anyone with a longtime netflix disc subscription will know that sometimes you wind up having a run of the mill Liam Neeson thriller sitting on your blu-ray player for 4 months. Such is the case with this. At first I thought this was like Frantic but then it became very apparent that this was a Bourne knock-off. I kind of like how Liam Neeson has somehow become an action movie star. Wasn't he in Schindler's List?? whatever...
10.13.15	Blank City	Celine Danhier	So... if I could travel through time... And I'm not saying I believe that one day I will be able to do this but I'm saying if I COULD... I'd take a tour of places in times that seem especially interesting. Right at the top of my list of these times/places is NYC in the late 70s/early 80s. I'd leave before AIDS comes in, but right up until then you have this incredible confluence of neglect and energy and creativity and freedom. I feel like a decent percentage of the docs on this site have been circling this era and this doc has managed to land right in the middle. Watching this felt like finding a piece of the jigsaw puzzle that's right in the middle but it hasn't been placed because it accidentally fell on the floor or it was stuck in the box or something. TV Party, Klaus Nomi, early Hip Hop and films like Wild Style, Jim Jarmusch, CBGBs and bands like The Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads and Richard Hell, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Times Square, The 77 Blackout, and the post-apocalyptic destruction of the Bronx and the lower east side. I feel like I've seen films focused on all of these topics yet this one film also touches on them all. Furthermore, it fills in a huge blank spot in my cinematic knowledge: NYC Underground films. I had a vague notion of this stuff... like I knew Andy Warhol was doing stuff with Paul Morrissey and making really obtuse art films and whatnot... and I'd also heard the names Richard Kern and Lydia Lunch in various industrial music circles like I think Marilyn Manson hired Kern to direct his first music video and Trent Reznor did something with Lunch back when I was into all that stuff... but I never really knew the story of who they were and what they did and I certainly didn't know (although I should have) that they tied into Jarmusch and John Lurie and Tom DiCillo and Steve Buscemi or anything like that. So this doc was like crack for me. I lapped up every frame. It was one of those things where I didn't even know that I was looking for this knowledge until I found it, but as soon as I learned of this movie's existence I watched it and loved the shit out of it. I mean I was staring at pics of a young Debbie Harry on /r/oldschoolcool TODAY and marvelling at how amazing she looked when she was young. So... I have to give props to MUBI. I totally signed up for that site just to watch Junun (i cancelled my subscription before I got the activation email), but they sent me an email about this and pretty much fulfilled their exact mission of presenting curated content that I didn't even know I wanted until they showed it to me. So good job, MUBI. Do this a few more times and I'll re-up my sub! Anyway... This has so much which is right up my alley by way of interviews, film clips, and source music... but what's interesting is that I didn't find myself really wanting to track down any of the films they discuss. And there were a ton of them. Really there's only one: Downtown 81, which I might try and see. The rest seem too rough for me to actually get much out of actually watching, which makes this movie even better because now I don't have to! This also makes me wonder even more about John Waters. I think I saw or read or... somehow ingested a chunk of his biographical data back when I watched a bunch of his movies (perhaps it was DVD commentaries), but it sort of astounds me that... ok so this film really details how there was a vibrant community of artists living in the lower east side and incubating this incredible surge of culture which included these personal amateur films that aimed to shock and provoke reaction. But then there's John Waters more or less doing the exact same thing, except he's all alone down in Baltimore. I don't think he had any sort of community to draw inspiration and competition and support from... he's just making these crazy movies all alone (with Divine). Maybe there was a similar yet much lesser known scene in DC and Baltimore at the time? Or maybe Waters visited NYC a lot? Who knows... His early work perfectly falls in with all the other films shown here though... they were certainly aiming for the same target. So anyway, now I feel like I know what Kern's and Lunch's "deal" is, and I got to see a super young Steve Buscemi acting with a super young Mark Boone Jr. (skinnier but still with the crazy hair and beard!) and roughly a half dozen jigsaw pieces clicked together thanks to this. I loved it.
10.10.15	Junun	Paul Thomas Anderson	PTA Followed Johnny Greenwood to India to make a record. This is very much a performance/fly on the wall doc and less any sort of narrative. The music is good - I recommend wearing headphones - but it's less than an hour long and really, aside from the performances, there's not much here. Not that there has to be, but I don't know... I feel like we could've used at least a few minutes between Greenwood and Shye Ben Tzur talking about their collaboration and how the project came about. The film doesn't really explain anything. But the performances are good and the music's good so I wasn't bored or anything. I found it to be worth watching.
10.04.15	Blue Ruin	Jeremy Saulnier	Man this is good. I watched this again to try and see if it turns out better than Green Room and all that happened is now I want to watch Green Room again. I went to kickstarter and watched the original pitch video for this. It's funny seeing the storyboards and test footage several years after the final product is complete. It only had something like 200 backers, 36 grand. I don't know how Saulnier achieved a movie that looks this good with that kind of money (in the pitch video he said he had 200 grand which is still unbelievably cheap), but this is a real gem of a movie. So well written, well performed, well shot and put together... Such constraint and intelligence behind the lens. I was afraid that my second viewing would be disappointing since the first was during Fantastic Fest but this really holds up incredibly well. Macon Blair is so good in this. You completely believe him as an everyman. Whenever anyone describes a movie as "he's just a regular guy, not a superman" I compare it to this. Gush gush gush, love love love. ahhh.
10.02.15	Rush	Ron Howard	I started this movie before Fantastic Fest. I'm not really sure why I watched it. It was exactly what I thought it would be. Long, reasonably well shot, kind of boring. Blah. Not my kind of movie I guess.
10.01.15	Bone Tomahawk	S. Craig Zahler	Which brings me to the closing night film which is a horror western starring Kurt Russell, Patrick Wilson, Richard Jenkins, and Matthew Fox as a posse looking for troglodytes that stole Wilson's wife. Unfortunately, Russell couldn't be here due to some injury (he's still cool in my book), but the other three were along with the director and some producers and whatnot. The movie was a lot better than I expected it to be (in that it was good and not crap). It looks and feels like a viable western except it has crazy cave-dwelling savages with self-mutilation make-up and lots and lots of practical gore and violence. One scene in particular (alluded to in the horror game Amnesia: The Dark Descent but seen in full here (wherein the person is held up by their feet and split down the middle)) is great fun. Also lots of lopped off bits and pieces. I don't know why, but I didn't expect the title to refer to an actual tomahawk made from bone. I thought it was some euphemism or metaphor or just two cool-sounding words put together, not a literal item featured in the film. Richard Jenkins is great. He's just as funny during the Q&A as he was in the film. And actually Patrick Wilson was also very personable. My one regret is that I saved a seat for Kier-la who never showed up so in the end some random dude ended up bugging me about the seat until we let him sit down. Oh well. Anyway, afterward, Daniel offered to drive Grant and I out to the closing night party which was held in Star Hill Ranch out off of 71. The ranch has a kind of western-themed street with maybe a dozen olden-looking buildings in a row. The Alamo, who did a screening of Serenity there the other night, set up camp, converting most of the buildings to a party atmosphere. The church played demonic DVDs on a projector, several larger buildings housed bars (along with the saloon of course), there was a mechanical bull and bb gun shooting range set up, along with a tattoo parlor for those that won the tattoo lottery and some brisket bbq in a long-ass line. The food went pretty quick. We hung around a bit. I don't think any of us are really much for parties. We did see Tim League get up and announce the audience awards while they passed around cascarones (confetti-filled eggs). He said that when he announced the winner everyone should slam the eggs on each other's heads. Since mine was already leaking flour all over my hand and shirt I elected to distance myself from the fray and discard my egg, but several poor dressed-to-party ladies wound up with flour-white hairdos thanks to Tim's prank. He said he thought it would be a good idea and make everyone look like the trogs from Bone Tomahawk. He got pelted. After that we drove back to the South Lamar garage where we split up and headed home. Thus endeth my Eleventh Fantastic Fest. Recapping a bit, I wound up hanging out almost exclusively with Daniel Kerr, Chris Popkoff, Grant Peterson, George Hickman, and Justin Lincoln which made it a lot of fun The facebook group chat that we were all in let us comment and share schedules which made getting decent seats at most screenings a breeze. Victor and Mark didn't make it, Jarrette was out of town, I saw Eric and Aaron briefly but never really hung out, and of course got my annual dose of Kayla. My top 5 (in no order because honestly they're all tied for first): -The Witch -Green Room -Man vs. Snake -Dangerous Men -Itchy-O (I know it's not a movie. shut up they were great) My bottom 5: 1. Darling (intolerable) 2. Ruined Heart (at least there was music) 3. Zoom (saved by its last five minutes) 4. Camino (meh) 5. River (he MURDERED a guy!)
10.01.15	Love & Peace	Sion Sono	Next up was the new Sono, which by now I expect to be weird and unique and charming. I got all those things. Perhaps this is unfair, but I was kind of hoping for a bit more. This sounds incredibly jaded and douchy, but a Sono film where a turtle gets flushed down the toilet and winds up in a puppeted world where an alcoholic homeless guy brews up speech and wish candy that lets discarded toys and stuffed animals talk and transforms the turtle into a giant turtle that gives hit songs to its former owner is not weird and unique enough for me! So... the sewer stuff with the old toys and the turtle didn't really do it for me. I think that's my problem with this movie. If I accepted that a bit more and had more fun with that then I think I would've liked this more. The other stuff, with the introvert guy who becomes a super huge star (based on 2 songs!?) and winds up in a shiny silver suit performing for millions was also a bit tame. However, the ending, where the beginning of the film comes back on a larger scale, was really great and connected beautifully. There is certainly a lot to love here.
10.01.15	Darling	Mickey Keating	This is a nice-looking black and white film where a female care-taker goes insane, kills someone, then jumps off the roof. It's very clear that the director was looking at Polanski movies like Repulsion and The Tenant for this. The problem is that both of those movies are much, much, much, much better than this. So... I got the feeling that the main actress couldn't really deliver dialogue or something because most of the movie is silent and when she does talk to people, the language is stilted and poorly delivered. Even Sean Young's cameo was pretty cringe-worthy. Mostly, this movie relies on inserted frames accompanied by really shrill and loud music cues. When the gore does start (which looks great in black and white), the music ruined it for me. And by that time I was completely disconnected, counting the speakers mounted to the auditorium walls and studying the film reels used in the lighting fixtures because that was more interesting to me than what was on screen. This was bad. I really didn't like it. It was a long goddamn 78 minutes.
10.01.15	Daniel's World	Veronika Liskova	Day 8 (final day) started with this documentary about a pedophile trying to deal with his sexual identity and find acceptance in the world. The doc is very sympathetic and tries pretty hard to portray him as a victim of his own brain... which is fine. Honestly, I'm pretty sympathetic toward pedos. If the internet has taught me anything, it's that there are people turned on by everything out there. We very often have little to no control over what turns us on, you just hope that whatever floats your boat is legal and consensual. For those that aren't that lucky, they are in for a pretty tough life. Now, that's separate from abusers and rapists. A line at the end of the doc proclaims that something like 80 or 90 percent of child abuse is perpetrated by people who do not fit the medical diagnosis of pedophile. This film's whole deal is that Daniel loves this boy so he'd never do anything to hurt him, including indulging in his own fantasies. That makes a certain level of sense, right? I mean when a guy hangs out with a woman he likes, she shouldn't be afraid that he's going to rape him at a moment's notice, right? Yet there's still that shock value when you see his wall of photos of little boys. And the pornography involved is a whole other can of worms that the film doesn't touch on at all. So I don't know.. the doc itself is just ok... nothing spectacular. But the subject matter is interesting along the same lines as Doglegs and Little Kingdom and other Fantastic Fest docs. Brian Kelley intro'd the screening and said we should talk about it afterward. I guess he meant that we should talk amongst ourselves afterward because the film ended and most of the theater just sat there waiting in the dark. I got up and left and heard more than one person ask "Aren't we going to talk about it!?" It's the last day, people. Talk in the lobby.
09.30.15	Green Room	Jeremy Saulnier	My day ended with an encore screening of Green Room, the festival's audience favorite film. This was getting dangerously close to overhype for me, enough so that I had started to actively avoid or dissuade talking about it until I could see it. I really liked Blue Ruin and pretty much knew I'd like this too, but I didn't want to go into it gauging it against unrealistic expectations. I think that worked for the most part. I couldn't help but immediately feel that I still like Blue Ruin more (I'll have to give that another viewing to see) because of a few very minor details at the very end of the film, but for the most part this is a tight, constrained film that does what it intends to very well and never drags for a moment. All the performances are great, the script assumes we aren't idiots, and the action/gore is superbly realized. This is my favorite gore of the festival. It's what I like to call "realistic gore," in that there's no rivers of blood or anything but when violence does occur it feels like we get every ounce of horror out of that violence. Nothing's dumbed down for the camera. When speaking with Grant I was trying to come up with another director who was really good at this but all I could think of was David Lynch. I think the Coens also do this very well. So yeah, this one is incredibly solid. Like I said, other than a few very minor details at the end (with Macon Blair's character), I liked everything about it.
09.30.15	Evilspeak	Eric Weston	Kier-la Janisse came back into town to promote her new Spectacular Optical book: Satanic Panic. For the screening, they did a half hour presentation explaining the time in the 80s and 90s where America bacame obsessed with devil worshipers. They even showed clips from 20/20 and the Geraldo Rivera special during the height of the panic. That part was really great. The movie they showed was this early 80s Carrie rip-off starring Clint Howard. Like a lot of exploitation films, it's more extreme than Carrie in almost every way. The world's hatred toward Coopersmith is more extreme, the religious furor is more extreme, and the climactic gore is also more extreme. In this movie, Howard sort of resurrects an ancient demonic priest with the help of his Apple IIe, then pledges allegiance to the devil in order to kill all the bullies who spent the last 70 minutes making fun of him. It's a really fun movie in that Terror Tuesday vein. It was pretty clear that the print was edited as most of the gore money shots were quickly snipped and replaced with reaction shots - that stole a lot of the thunder I think - but it was still fun to watch with a crowd.
09.30.15	Men & Chicken	Anders Thomas Jensen	I didn't see Adam's Apples, but thought I might still like this. If nothing else, it gave me a chance to catch up with Kayla a bit before the movie. It's about... a family of weirdos with harelips trying to sort themselves out. This is an exceedingly weird movie, perfectly at home in Fantastic Fest. I'm not sure if I liked it or not... I mean... ugh, I don't really know what to say about it. It's just really odd and vaguely funny. MGTB.
09.30.15	River	Jaime Dagg	A doctor without borders goes down a river in Laos and winds up wanted for murder and goes on the run. Ultimately, he crosses another river (can't tell which is the titular one) into Thailand. This movie had a pretty huge empathy problem for me. I feel like it was very much taking from Hitchcock in a "wrong man" situation but... accidental or not, the dude KILLS another dude. So am I supposed to be rooting for him to escape from authorities and get away with MURDER? Because I'm not. I'm kind of hoping he gets caught. So that kind of ruined the movie for me.
09.30.15	Liza the Fox-Fairy	Karoly Ujj Meszaros	Day 7 started with a swap. I had originally planned to see L'Affaire SK1 which was a procedural about a French serial killer, but was instead persuaded to see this Jeunet-esque Hungarian film about... trying to explain the plot kind of hurts my brain. There's a bunch of stuff in this movie but, at its heart, it's a romantic comedy. Not in the Hollywood sense of that term, but still. There's a ghost of a Japanese pop star who kills people in interesting ways, an odd duck police detective, plenty of colorful characters and a semi-surreal world in a faintly Amelie way. In some ways, it's like Amelie meets Delicatessen. Anyway, I liked this one. Of all the films I feel like the still for this in the program book was the most misleading. It's taken from a goddamn dream sequence in the film and doesn't look anything like the rest of the movie. I'm glad people said it's good but if I had seen a trailer or spent more time studying the films on the schedule I might have given this more interest from the beginning.
09.29.15	The Witch	Robert Eggers	Or should I call it "The VVitch" as it's written in the title card. This is like colony-era America where a family goes off to live on their own and gets tormented by a witch. So... Some movies in the fest I found that I liked less than most. High-Rise might be a good example where I recognize that it's unique and good but I didn't really enjoy myself in it. This movie is the opposite. From what I heard from my friends and those around me, most everyone thought it was good not great. Some of them were coming out of Green Room (the audience favorite of the fest) so that might be a factor. I really liked this. I mean I REALLY liked it. There's a limited cast of fantastic actors (including a few Game of Thrones vets), absolutely stellar production design and black and white photography, and a straight-forward story that was really effective in communicating the isolation and fear that came with living out in the wilderness back then. If I had one complaint it was that the music was mixed a bit loud but it was used well and thoughtfully and not too heavy-handed. I LOVE that there's actually a witch in this. It's not some bullshit twist or turn, not some fog-like abstract presence represented by stupid satanic whispering or jump cuts of women blinking. And those twins. Ugh. The whole film unfolds beautifully. I didn't find it slow or dragging at all (I don't know why, it is deliberately paced but for some reason I was into this unlike most of the other films at the fest). The main girl gives a great performance, and the end is FANTASTIC. Man, I really loved this. I also now get all the Black Phillip jokes made at the feud. Jump to the fence post Running in the stall Black Phillip, Black Phillip King of all. Toward the end of the fest, someone posted a poll: Black Pepper vs. Black Phillip. Hard choice! Today was probably the highlight of the fest since I really liked all four movies I saw. That's a great day.
09.29.15	The Martian	Ridley Scott	It was a hard choice to miss seeing something else in order to watch this 2 or 3 days before it's release, but I remember the Gravity screening from two years ago and how great it was and wanted to see this with the best possible audience. I kind of rushed to finish the book last week so I was really excited to watch this. So I do a lot of criticizing on here when it comes to Ridley Scott. It's true that I think he's overrated and has been for some time. I still think he's overrated but I will say that he's competant and, given good source material, a pretty safe bet. I think he did a good job with this. I couldn't help but think that the script was pretty dumbed down compared to the book but I asked Daniel, who hadn't read the book, and he said it still felt pretty science-y and intellectual. They changed the ending, but whatever. They also took out the storm, which I understand would've taken a lot of valuable screen time and heavy lifting to explain what the fuck is happening but still... Had this been an HBO mini-series it would've been cool to see. So I liked it. Hopefully it does well.
09.29.15	Dangerous Men	John S. Rad	So... both secret screenings kind of got out pretty early. Knowing that Crimson Peak was playing allowed some people to see other films since they didn't care to see Guillermo present it. On the other hand, when I caught wind that Drafthouse had finally gotten the rights and would be showing Dangerous Men as the second secret screening, it became my most anticipated time slot of the whole festival. I'll have to go back and read my earlier notes but I didn't think I'd ever get to see this again. This is one of those movies that you shouldn't even get to own. It belongs in the realm of boastful tales and treasured memories. However it's probably selfish to keep the rest of the world from knowing about this movie so I'm glad that Drafthouse Films will put it out there because it's really the perfect Alamo film. In preparation for the screening, I dug up the promotional rap that John Rad made ten years ago and sent the mp3 to my friends. We were quoting from it all week leading up to this. As we left the screening, they handed out cassette singles with the main theme on one side and the rap on the B side. Unbelievable. If I remember correctly, neither of the screenings I attended ten years ago were well attended. This screening filled the two biggest auditoriums at South Lamar. That's like 400 people seeing this movie at once. Probably 390 of them had never seen it. Anyway, the movie's still great. I really wish I was in the main theater and not the simulcast because I feel like we had a more muted reaction. It still got laughs and applause but not nearly as much as what I heard theater 5 got. I'd often catch myself laughing early because the beginning of a scene would trigger my memory of what was coming up. Black Pepper. What exactly did he do wrong? It was impressive how compassionate Zack's intro was to this movie. He has an incredible gift of describing what to most is an awful mess in terms that are loving and positive and technically not untrue. I kind of worry that that outlook (which is very much the Alamo way of looking at things), doesn't carry outside this town. Like, the Miami Connection screening here was a lot of loving fun, but in other cities do people gather just to make fun of it like The Room? I don't know. The Alamo's rejection of "so-bad-it's-good" works well here when Zack or Lars can explain it before the show, but I worry that Drafthouse Films ends up profiting in a somehow meta-exploitative way. I dunno, I guess the intent in which someone buys something is out of the distributor's hands, but still I wonder if other audiences are so kind-hearted as Austin's. Anyway, this was incredible. I loved getting the chance to see it in a theater again, and it will be an automatic buy when it hits blu.
09.29.15	Remix, Remake, Ripoff	Cem Kaya	Day 6 started with this doc; full title: Remake, Remix, Rip-off: About Copy Culture and Turkish Pop Cinema. If this year's fest had a theme it was Turkish Cinema. They had a bunch of Turkish movie posters on display in the hall, the artword for the official poster and branding was a pastiche of elements taken from those posters, and they threw a "grand bizarre" one night at the highball where Elijah Wood spun Turkish 45s. They also had a handful of Turkish films as repetory screenings that I didn't see, but after watching this doc I wish I had. Along the same lines as Not Quite Hollywood, this movie basically attempts to explain the history of Turkish cinema and what factors led to them churning out crazy knock-offs and IP-thefts throughout the 70s and 80s. I.e. a lot of those movies that are kind of branded as the Turkish Superman or the Turkish Rambo. I liked the doc. I'm always up for learning about a different culture's cinematic history. Toward the end, the film mentions a violent coup and some other historic events which effected Turkey on whole. I get that the film has to limit its scope somewhere but that and just the minor mention of when sex came into the movies and everyone started doing softcore or hardcore porn (it was hard to tell how explicity they were talking about) were areas I wished it went into a little more. But still, on whole it was entertaining and interesting.
09.28.15	The Wave	Roar Uthaug	This was a by-the-number disaster movie from Finland (or Denmark. I really am sorry that all three of the Scandanavian countries are more or less interchangeable for me). People at the fest gave it some shit, called it Dante's Peak, but you know... I think that other countries are entitled to make popcorn movies too. Although this did follow the Hollywood disaster formula pretty closely, it was interesting for me to see it in a Scandinavian setting. The mountains and Fjords and peaks are beautiful. And every disaster movie has that great scene where the shit hits the fan, so this film is no exception. Honestly, for day 5 this came as a welcome breath of mainstream accessibility. For the midnight slot I went to the Fantastic Feud and watched a bunch of movie nerds act tough on stage while simultaneously failing to name any fucking Christopher Lee movies at all. That aside, it was pretty fun. Tim League was relatively calm, really the whole show went pretty smoothly... I'm not sure if I liked that or not. I did like Scott Weinberg's open hostility toward Max and his sentence construction. The crowd seemed rowdier than the contestants though and, sorry ladies, but for most of the game every point on the women's team came from some dude in the audience. I guess I understand wanting to change up the teams, keep them current and somehow relevant to this year's fest (it was cool that Karyn Kusama was willing to get up there and test her knowledge), but honestly with folks like Matt Kiernan and Zack Carlson in the audience I found the knowledge base on both teams kind of lacking. I think only one or two questions were answered individually? I mean I didn't really know any of the answers either, but some years the feud was an impressive showcase of movie geekery. This year it seemed like an excuse for the audience to get drunk. At one point someone threw ice chips at James Shapiro and he started drunkenly winging them back. In the fray, some guy with an expensive camera got hit in the head and he got PISSED. He stared down the dudes in the back until they saw him then proceeded to agg out, saying unique stuff like "what!?" and "fuck off!" The drunk guy in the back was all like "everyone here is having fun but you." Sigh.
09.28.15	High-Rise	Ben Wheatley	The new Ben Wheatley, who's a total Alamo fav. This one is like a vaguely sci-fi lord of the rings where Tom Hiddleston moves into a new skyscraper and the power goes out and a class struggle between the top floor residents and those below ensue. It's pretty crazy. There's more than a little of Cronenberg's Shivers in there, without the weird under-the-skin monsters. Everyone kind of goes insane, but it's hard to tell if it's just a weird world or a normal world with weird people in it. There's a new Portishead song in this. They cover Abba's "SOS." I really appreciated how the film new how awesome and rare it was for a new Portishead song to exist so the movie basically stops and have a 5-minute montage to let the audience listen to the song. It was great. All in all, Wheatley definitely has a unique voice. I don't really know if I like it or not, but I respect that it's there.
09.28.15	Zoom	Pedro Morelli	This... is several stories intertwined in a feedback loop. There's a girl who wants bigger boobs that's writing a comic about a guy who's directing a movie about a writer who's writing a book about a girl who wants bigger boobs... or something like that. Anyway, in the last five minutes all the worlds become aware of one another and it's animated/live action/written in a way that I found interesting and satisfying. However, the movie leading up to that point had a lot of problems. This feels better suited as a short maybe, or perhaps if each thread had more going on... I don't know. Kid Koala did the soundtrack. I was expecting that to be a highlight but actually it was one of the things that bothered me most. There were a bunch of songs that were so completely goofy and on the nose that it completely took me out of the movie and made me groan. I think one song the lyrics were "b-o-o-b-s" and another one was like "got my mojo back," during a sex scene. Ugh.
09.28.15	Stand By for Tape Back-up	Ross Sutherland	Day 5 started with this... which is really more of a performance art/poem piece set to a spare visual than a documentary. The director examines the loss of his grandfather using scenes from a VHS tape with shared sentimental value, using the tape to form metaphors and milestones with his life and emotions and relationship to his granddad. For example, he plays the intro to Fresh Prince of Bel-Air like 4 or 5 times, rewinding after each time, and uses words that literally describe what's on screen but in sentences that talk about his grief and loss. Sometimes, you just stare at a paused frame of Bill Murray from Ghostbusters for five minutes. Other times you're watching a blue screen as the tape rewinds. So... I don't really know if I'd call this a film. I mean i guess "documentary" is certainly open enough to fit this in its criteria, but it's really, like I said, more of a recorded performance art piece or extended multimedia poem. As such, it's deep and effecting, but it didn't really connect with me that deeply. Sutherland performed live for the first screening of this, which I'm sure made it more commanding since he's there in person speaking.
09.27.15	Klovn Forever	Mikkel Norgaard	The last movie of the day was the new Klown. In the South Lamar lobby, they had a giant banner showing the two main actors in a 69 position on red satin sheets. Both of their balls were on full display. Before the movie, David Strong took a picture in front of the banner with his balls out. So that happened. The FF screening of the first Klovn movie now lives as a hallowed memory in my brain. I remember crying from laughing so much. It's hard to live up to that, so much so that I haven't gone back to watch the first movie again in fear that I will be disappointed. This one was good. I didn't laugh as much as I did in the first but that doesn't make this one bad. It's renewed my interest in watching the tv show. These guys are funny.
09.27.15	The Devil's Candy	Sean Byrne	So... I didn't see The Loved Ones, but in the Q&A the producer said that Sean Byrne's rewrite process is to swap out large themes or settings rather than just polish existing material. I think that process is what led to my problems with this movie because it feels like there are a lot of half- ideas here that never really resolve or connect. Mostly this was still MGTB, but it's pretty hard to genre-ize. It's kind of a haunted house, kind of a demon posession, kind of a serial killer, kind of whatever... but I'd have a hard time it's all the way any of those. As I write that, it sounds interesting but while watching it was kind of bothersome. The real star of this movie is Pruitt Taylor Vince, whose imposing physical presence and crazy eyes coupled with his vulnerable child-like performance create a truly dangerous character. Ethan Embry was ripped and tattooed and all but felt kind of silly next to Vince.
09.27.15	Schneider vs. Bax	Alex van Warmerdam	This was about a couple hitmen playing cat and mouse with each other. It was kind of billed as a quirky dark comedy but I thought it had several plot and tonal problems that kept me from really loving it. Still, it wasn't bad and there were a few moments of good stuff. There were a lot of movies that wound up being more good than bad but somewhere in that realm of mediocrity. I'll take that over painfully horrible movies any day, but they are kind of hard to talk about it. This is one of them. From now on I'll tag these movies as MGTB because I can't be bothered to actually type out "more good than bad" every time.
09.27.15	Man vs. Snake	Tim Kinzy, Andrew Seklir	Full title: Man vs. Snake: The Long and Twisted Tale of Nibbler. This is like a sister film or spiritual successor to King of Kong. It shares several interview subjects (most notably american tie-wearing Billy Mitchel and Twin Galaxies referee Walter Day), but is about the high score of another game. Nibbler is like a cross between Pac-Man and that game Snake where the more he eats the longer he gets and the more cumbersome he is to control without eating his own tail. This was great. Really great. Just as good as King of Kong in my opinion, but distinct enough to stand on its own. For one, i really love how there is no clear villain. Billy Mitchell comes off much more sympathetically here, as does Dwayne the crazy canadian competitor to our protagonist Tim McVey (not the terrorist). They also use some animation to really great effect. A highlight is during a telling of McVey setting the original high score where they use the talking head audio to drive the animation. It's just as well-produced and structured as King of Kong, just as impactful (it got a little dusty in the audience when a certain meal of mac & cheese was mentioned, I wish the Alamo would have brought some out just then for everyone), and just as invigorating. Great movie
09.27.15	Evolution	Lucile Hadzihalilovic	NOTE: I got too tired and stopped writing these notes day by day. The remainder is coming from the weekend after the fest ended. Day 4 started with this odd film directed by a collaborator of Gaspar Noe. It's very pretty with lots of underwater photography and gross-looking food and little boys who look alike and french women who look alike, but it's one of those movies with very little dialog so I kind of fought sleep a bit toward the end. This is a common theme for me this year. I had long blinks and head nods for practically every film. I credit this to me being a pussy when it comes to film festivals these days. I really have no excuse since I had off work and got a decent amount of sleep every night. However, I could easily tell when I really liked a movie because I would stay awake through the whole thing. Anyway, this was ok. It never really gets as intense that it maybe should, but whatever...
09.26.15	Follow	Owen Egerton	Local favorite Owen's movie about a crazy girl and her unfortunate boyfriend. For a movie of this type (which I feel like I've seen several although none are coming to mind), I thought this was really solid. Unfortunately, it's also not my favorite genre so it kind of evened out to being pretty good for me. I do think it was very well made and it certainly kept me engaged, but the whole hide-the-body thing is not my favorite. So, I had intended to see Baskin for the midnight, but they moved up the starting time and my brain was too busy being exploded by the band Itchy-O to care about seeing anything. For real. The Itchy-O marching band from hell/Denver... was amazing. I feel like there might have been just as many band members in the crowd as festival-goers, but having half the band walking among the crowd is a stroke of genius. It was creepy and bizarre and surprising and fun in oscillating intervals. The tiny women in black sheets writhing on the ground were the creepiest, although there were so many absurd moments in that 90 minutes of performance: -seeing Noah get locked in a head trance with one of the dudes, -when both the tiny women curled up against each of this one guy's legs and everyone was taking pics of him but he was just standing there scratching his chin -the random guy trying to follow behind the dude with the gigantic bullhorn speaker strapped to his back, flinching and leaning back every time the speaker shrieked out noise (which was often) -A similar dude standing right in front of Micah then blasting a sample of an elephant roar right in his face -the crazy ass chinese dragon getting so close that i could see the eyelashes on the blinking lids as it tried to munch on a girl's chest -watching this big guy jump back in terror as one of the tiny women in the black shrouds sprung forward at him and started coo-ing into his ear while rubbing on his belly -Randomly looking behind me and seeing both tiny women writhing on the floor together, one of them going into a headstand for like a minute and a half. -watching the crazy speaker dudes sneak up behind people and invade their personal space -Watching a space blanket get torn to shreds above the seething mass of bodies in front of the stage. -seeing one of the band members get propped up and crowd surf. This was in THE HIGHBALL! -The demonic procession of flags and eerie drones that starting the whole thing off -the Mad Max-esque dude on the giant tricycle riding through the crowd with speakers rigged up behind him. Seriously, it was insane. I've never been to a Skinny Puppy show but this is kind of how I picture one of those going back in their heyday. I was seriously impressed. Of course now I have to figure out how to go to sleep...
09.26.15	Too Late	Dennis Hauck	John Hawkes stars in this LA neo-noir constructed from five 20-minute takes. They're out of order kind of like Pulp Fiction so we have to figure out where we are and what happened between takes. So, I like film as much as the next movie geek, but this movie seemed to really go out of it's way to call attention to the fact that it was shot and presented in 35. That length of each take matches that of a full mag, each scene cuts to black as if to accentuate the cigarette burns, and there's a lot of technical wizardry going on with cranes and steadicams and long lenses. Furthermore, the guy who intro'd this said that the producers refused to make a digital screener of the film and insisted that buyers watch it on 35. And also that they've had offers but are holding back because they want a long theatrical release like Magnolia. It seems a bit extreme to me. So the first scene almost lost me. The dialogue was really stilted and the acting wasn't great and the camera moves were so deliberate that I felt like I was watching some student film trying to prove how savvy he is. Luckily, John Hawks plays a more prevalent role in the other scenes and I thought carried the dialogue much better. Plus there's a scene inspired by Julianne Moore in Short Cuts where a woman answers the door and spends 20 minutes with no pants or underwear on. That didn't win any points with the women in the audience (as I was walking out I heard someone talking with her friends saying, "I've never forgotten to wear pants when opening the door, have you?") but you know... pubes. All in all I thought this was pretty good. It had problems, but it also had a couple moments. I still have a problem with these long-take movies in that you limit yourself from perhaps the most fundamental tool of cinema which is editing. It often felt like I was watching a play, although this movie did not suffer from other problems shared by filmed plays like limited setting and lack of movement. So yeah, pretty good.
09.26.15	Camino	Josh C. Waller	Zoe Bell plays a photojournalist following Columbian missionaries led by Nacho Vigalondo until stuff happens and thrills ensue. I was pretty blah on this. It didn't help that the writer said he whipped up the script in two days. A lot of threads don't really connect with much cohesion, the photography is pretty flat, and the score, while I liked the intent, was pretty grating and mixed too high in the theater. I still like Zoe Bell but I thought she'd be in a better movie. Oh, and don't get me started with the ending. Laughable. She swears to never take another photo again, then gets in an El Camino and drives off into the sunset!? blarf
09.26.15	Doglegs	Heath Cozens	Day 3. This is a doc about a Japanese event where disabled people get to box or fight in a ring. Like most Fantastic Fest docs, this was really interesting and strives contextualize what could be seen at a glance as exploitation. It's a little reminiscent of last year's Little Kingdom but there's no hint of coercion or exploitation in what Doglegs seems to be about. While it looks shocking at first - an enabled person beating up on a disabled person - you quickly learn that the "bad" guys really care for the people that they're fighting and use the event as a way to empower the disabled guys and make them feel equal rather than coddled and pitied. The scariest guy I thought was the depressed guy. Everyone else that the film follows has some sort of physical condition but this one guy is pretty severely depressed and a hoarder. The film doesn't go too far with specific medical details but he seemed to have self-inflicted scars as well. I really felt for that guy. A pretty huge turn in the film for me was when I realized that the announcer, who's been responsible for some of the most un-PC humor in the film, is actually the main enabled guy's wife. So it was really his wife calling him the Hitler of the disabled who will take all disabled people to gas chambers. That's some unconventional love right there. This was really solid.
09.25.15	In Search of the Ultra-Sex	Nicolas Charlet, Bruno Lavaine	This was a French movie made up of old porn clips that were re-dubbed to make a silly story about how everyone on earth is taken by some sex craze that makes everybody fuck. In full candor, I was fighting sleep for the whole thing. So what I suspect was a pretty loose story to begin with loosened up even more with me dozing off a nodding out every few minutes. The stuff I liked about it was that they made some references which clearly make it a contemporary movie like Dancing with the Stars and Daft Punk, but you're still watching gross 70s and 80s porn actors with their hair and high-waisted underwear and natural bushes. (there were a lot of dongs but nothing erect which I guess makes this art instead of porn (or would this be considered X? (what constitutes XX anyway?))). The other thing that I liked about this was when the guy over-dubbing everything would comment or make fun of the actual clip and incorporate that into the story, saying stuff like "then the matrix numbers effect but not as good," or "invaders from planet Wig" when there were a bunch of dudes with poofy blonde wigs on. For the most part though, it was silly nonsense and it felt like it went on too much (which is rough since it was only an hour). There were two shorts that preceded it. One, Fuck Buddies, was ok but the girl in it was hot enough to make it like... halfway effective. The other one was directed by Bryan Poyser and it was pretty funny... about a teacher who mistakes his xanax bottle with viagara. Man, I'm beat. Bed now.
09.25.15	Crimson Peak	Guillermo del Toro	So Tim League said in his intro that we were allowed to talk about this movie in generalities but there was a review embargo until October 13th. So hopefully I remember to do that. Until then, it was good; I liked it. Fuck it. If anyone thinks this is a legit review, I'll point them to my traffic reports. The sets and costume design were really accomplished, as usual Del Toro's ghost design is great (if not a bit familiar compared to Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labrynth). The performances were great, but mostly what surprised me was that this is a full on grandiose "gothic romance" as Del Toro kept stating and I actually liked it. I definitely got notes of Rebecca here, but also stuff like Giant and Douglas Sirk. But there's also some trademark Del Toro moments that are really effective. It was another slow burn but I had no trouble staying awake for this one. I liked it much more than I thought I would. It was really good.
09.25.15	Tale of Tales	Matteo Garrone	This is more or less a collection of fairy tales intercut with one another. It had an interesting cast (For the second time, John C. Reilly makes an appearance in an interesting role that should've stuck around longer). The scenery and costumes were really nice and pretty, but once again it had a deliberate, almost plodding pace that made staying awake an activity for me rather than a passive state. I feel like it's ok to fall asleep in the midnight movie, but I shouldn't be doing it at six pm. I am out of movie-watching shape. Anyway, this one was ok.
09.25.15	Anomalisa	Duke Johnson, Charlie Kaufman	Don Hertzfeldt's new one played before this. I feel like there's quite a trend in science fiction these days for the future to be devoid of life and filled with clones or robuts. Anyway, I liked the short ok. It seemed to fit Hertzfeldt's blend of humor and oddity. The movie was that kickstarter animated thing with a script by Charlie Kaufman. I was a little surprised by how not-weird it was. The central theme of the story is well executed. I like it, but it was deliberately paced and further sapped my energy. I do get the feeling that if this were live action instead of animated then it would probably be a bit slow. Still, I liked it.
09.25.15	Ruined Heart	Khavn	Day 2 started with this Phillipino movie mostly set to music with very little dialog. This was everything I was afraid Coz ov Moni would be. There was no discernible story for the most part and on the rare occasion that something would happen, it was really confusing as to what was going on. The one thing that I liked about it was that the first scene of the movie was kind of a roll call where each character steps forward and looks into the camera and gets a title card explaining who they are (Criminal, friend, piano player, whore, etc.). However, they couldn't even do that right because a central character (Godfather) gets his introduction 5 minutes later. This one really killed my energy for the whole day. Didn't like it at all.
09.24.15	Coz ov moni 2: Fokn Revenge	Fokn Bois	My first midnight was this crazy musical from Ghana. The two main characters rap and sing through the whole thing in pidgeon dialect that's half english and half whatever. It looked like there was very little crew involved, real Ghana locations and people, and I didn't really understand... let's say half of it. But the music was pretty good, and I followed enough to understand the broad strokes of what was going on, and it's always interesting to get a glimpse at a completely foreign point of view. I liked this one the most of the whole night. I should look up these guys on bandcamp.
09.24.15	Lazer Team	Matt Hullum	The Rooster Teeth movie. I kind of new what to expect of this going in, but I wanted to give the local guys the benefit of the doubt. It kind of sucked. I mean, I guess it's admirable that they made a feature or whatever and there are plenty of visual effects for a relatively small budget, but you know... For as much pride that Austin has in its film culture, you'd think we could make better movies. We SHOULD be making better movies, so if anything, films like this should be scrutinized to a higher degree rather than being praised just for existing. Anyway...
09.24.15	The Lobster	Yorgos Lanthimos	Another year of Fantastic Fest kicked off with this new film from the Dogtooth guy. I haven't seen Dogtooth but I've heard enough about it to get the gist... enough that I knew what I was in for with this anyway. A surprisingly well-known cast fills out this weird world where people must be in couples and if you don't then you get sent to this hotel where you have so long to find a match before you're turned into an animal. A large part of this movie for me was about figuring out what the world's deal was. In that, I didn't really succeed. The tone of this movie is somewhere near a very dark comedy. I usually like dark humor, but some parts of this verged into territory that I don't think was supposed to be funny, so then it was just dark. In the end, I didn't mind this, but I don't think I'd see it again. Colin Farrell has a gut in it. I guess so his identifying feature couldn't be that he's really handsome. A note about the fest in general: Holy shit they have some TVs up in the lobby showing what's seating. I won't presume to take any credit for this (since I can't have been the only person to make this suggestion in the feedback survey... every year for the past 6 years), but dear lord and I happy it exists. Still not perfect, mind you, but a serious step in the right direction. And what's up with the construction not being done? It's been like 3 years!
09.21.15	The Wrecking Crew	Denny Tedesco	I've been on a bit of a movie hiatus in order to get a big personal project done, but now that it's complete and Fantastic Fest is right around the corner, I figured I'd better get into movie-watching shape again. This one... it played the first sxsw that I didn't go to way back in 2008, then showed up on Kickstarter a few years ago asking for money to clear rights for all the music they wanted to use. One thing that I've learned about backing films on kickstarter: it takes forever to see the movie. Yes my money helped (in very small part) to get this movie finished, but before they can fulfill my DVD reward they have to try and sell it to distributors. Then, if they DO get a distributor, they have to wait until whatever super limited release is done before they want to let anyone get a copy. Then, they have to wait for the distributor to get around to making the DVD. And after all is said and done, this movie popped up on Netflix instant like a month after my DVD finally got here. So I'm still happy to help the project and everything but... they could've thrown a digital link or something out there. I dunno. Anyway, this was a pretty good doc about a really interesting subject: the band of studio musicians that dominated the Los Angeles recording industry in the 60s. All those bands that look like they just stand there and sing? These were the guys making the music behind them. This was very much in the same vein as In the Shadows of Motown except with early rock n roll rather than rhythm and blues. The sheer amount of hit songs that these guys worked on is insane. And the movie's worth watching just for that. It's obvious that this took a hell of a long time to complete (some of the interview subjects are almost unrecognizable between the earlier footage shot on film and more recent stuff shot on video), and it's a shame that so many have passed away before this movie saw the light of day. There didn't seem to be any notable absences in the interviews though and it told a pretty complete story. So this was pretty good. Not life changing or anything but well worth a watch.
08.01.15	Wet Hot American Summer	David Wain	With the prequel series out I wanted to revisit this. My lasting memory from previous viewings is that it's a great idea and wonderful cast but the comedy is just a little TOO crazy to hit the sweet spot. I think the main danger of stereotype-based comedy is that you play up the trope too much and that's certainly the case with some of the jokes here, but other, more random or bizarre jokes are pretty funny and a few performances (Paul Rudd, Chris Meloni) are really great. And for the most part I find the movie funny... certainly I like everyone in the cast, but sometimes it's just too much. Not enough real emotion perhaps. And I think that's just David Wain's humor. The more mainstream stuff that he's done. Stuff like They Came Together and The Ten are also prone to going too bizarre, too surreal. Certainly Wainy Days and Children's Hospital lives in that space. But the more restrained stuff he's done like Role Models (and to a lesser extent Wanderlust) ends up resonating more with me just because of that basis in reality. I'm a fan of all of it though... ALL THE WAY BACK TO THE STATE BECAUSE I WAS A COOL TEENAGER WHO KNEW WHAT WAS GOOD.
07.11.15	Hector and the Search for Happiness	Peter Chelsom	Strong vibe of Ben Stiller's Secret Life of Walter Mitty here except it's Simon Pegg and it's China, Tibet, Africa, and Los Angeles instead of Iceland. And it's a bit more heavy I guess... and there's lots of philosophical thoughts on happiness... and writing on the screen like it's a notebook or something. OK so it's probably not that similar to Ben Stiller's movie at all other than that a mild-mannered guy goes on a journey and finds himself. I liked it well enough. I feel like if I were in a different mood, perhaps one or two shades more cynical, i wouldn't have bought in and i'd find the movie pretty smug, but whatever... I wasn't in that mood so I did buy in and enjoyed tagging along on the journey
07.11.15	Jurassic World	Colin Trevorrow	Well... What do I think about this one. I think this is the first JP movie not to lift anything from the first book. Parts of it I really like... basically seeing the fantasy of the original idea - a working tourist attraction with living dinosaurs - was a joy. The actual action of it... That was kind of meh. And... ok spoilers now. Spoilers! So... Indomitus Rex (or however you spell it), the trained raptors, the chaos and whatnot... It kind of makes you wonder why, after the events of the first three movies, they'd choose to make more carnivores. I guess people want to see the dangerous ones, but I got the sense that the raptors were only there for whatever weird intelligence study was going on. Mostly I really didn't like that they somehow turned the raptors and t-rex into "good guys" like they are heroes or something. Just like how I got the sense that the Spinosaurus from the third movie killing the T-Rex right off the bat was a message to the audience that this guy is even worse, now I get the sense that having the familiar species from the old movies turn on the new one is like oooh this new one is SO BAD that even the bad guys from previous films are good comparatively! Didn't sit right with me... felt hokey. But like I said... all the park stuff I liked. The spheres and water show and different enclosures that we get to see were all great design-wise. Man... wouldn't it be awesome once VR gets in consumer hands to be able to create a virtual theme park and be able to go walk around in it? I'd love to "go" to a completed Jurassic Park... although I guess I could just play that Carnivores game in VR and get a similar vibe. anyway...
07.11.15	Jurassic Park III	Joe Johnston	Maybe it's just because I think this one's better than the second one, but I have sort of a soft spot for this movie. I think it's lean, well-paced, and relatively devoid of stupid shit. It does feel like "just another movie" compared to the grandeur of the first and the sequel-ness of the second, but the kid isn't annoying, I like Sam Neill, and they finally get around to pterodactyls or pteranodons or whatever the hell they are. And I'm not sure who did the effects but the line between practical and digital is harder to see here than in the previous two.
07.10.15	The Lost World: Jurassic Park	Steven Spielberg	Continuing my Jurassic Park revisit... this one is still kind of weak. I think the effects are a little better but Malcom's daughter kills it for me along with a slew of other crap. It is fun to see a young Vince Vaughn, Julianne Moore, and Richard Shiff though. God that ending... Is this maybe Spielberg's weakest movie? It's gotta be on the list... feels kind of like a cash in by all involved.
07.10.15	They Came Together	David Wain	I really like that a lot of The State has stayed relevant for all these years. I also like most of David Wain's movies although some are a tad too absurd for me after a while (like The Ten and Wainy Days). This one... i really like that it exists but at the same time I was kind of over it by the end. There's only so many tropes you can throw at me in an ironic way about a genre before I get the joke and it gets kind of old. However, there is lots to like here and I liked it for the most part. Great cast too. It is kind of like The Baxter in that it sort of tries to have its cake and eat it too. It's kind of hard to make fun of romantic comedies when at the same time it IS a romantic comedy... but whatever. Funny people doing funny things.
07.04.15	Jurassic Park	Steven Spielberg	Molly and I are played LEGO Jurassic Park which is having its intended effect in that I feel like both revisiting the first three and seeing the new one. It's kind of funny to me how this movie is generally regarded these days as very good. My own initial impression was colored by how awesome the book was and how much awesome stuff from the book got left out of the movie (i think this is maybe the first time I had that reaction which is why it's so memorable), but on further viewings I've come to accept it for what it is. But I feel like maybe for people just a few years younger than me that were still "kids" when it came out this stands as a childhood classic. Which is funny because there's some really dumb shit in here. I'm thinking of Sam Jackson's arm and the unix system and the sudden cliff in the Tyrannosaur paddock and Laura Dern's running and the dinosaur snot and the electric fence climb and a handful of other things. On the other hand, what's done well is done really well so I can understand how the relatively minor offenses are dismissed. But still, every second of Jeff Goldblum's performance keeps it from being completely serious for me (Molly's words while watching him on screen: "It must be fun to be Jeff Goldblum"). But you know... landmark CGI, top notch practical effects, the park design is amazing, Sam Jackson and Wayne Knight are great, Sam Neill, John William's theme, and above all else the freakin dinosaurs really do make this movie stand out. I still don't understand why they'd even breed the velociraptors if they're just going to keep them in that crazy pen with all that vegetation but whatever.
06.28.15	A Nightmare on Elm Street	Samuel Bayer	For those looking for signs that movies today mostly suck, I offer this: The beginning credits sequence of this film is your typical montage of Elm Street signs and newspaper headlines and hazy obtuse imagery but it also has the credits written in chalk with a child's hand. Kind of cool, right? I mean considering that school children are Freddy's targets and the whole counting rhyme from the original series. Here's the problem. There's are neatly-typed overlays of the same credits printed over the shots of the chalk writing. Why have two copies of every credit? My mind immediately guessed that some exec, lawyer, or union deemed the chalk writing too hard to read or not on screen for long enough and, following the path of least resistance, the studio had them print "normal" credits over top. I may be wrong, but this small thing put me in a negative mood toward this film 90 seconds into it. Not a great place to start. Otherwise, maybe Friday the 13th was the same way and I didn't notice because the plot of the original was so spare but this remake is really a REMAKE. There are a few minor changes but I think they're mostly terrible. The ending of the original was always pretty weak so I didn't mind that this changed it to a post-pulp fiction ending but mostly... you know... just watch the goddamn original. Mostly this was a waste of time.
06.25.15	American Sniper	Clint Eastwood	I have to say I liked this more than I thought I would. I kind of thought that Clint Eastwood is too old these days to make a movie with any real excitement. I mean I love his earlier stuff and think he's a great movie star and all that, but I feel like he makes old person movies these days. While the subject matter and politics of this movie might still fit that bill, the filmmaking doesn't. This is a solid war movie and Bradley Cooper earns all the acclaim he got last awards season. It's a nice surprise to like a movie you assumed was boring oscar bait. yay for that.
06.20.15	Blackhat	Michael Mann	So it's been 6 years since a Michael Mann movie, more than 10 years since Collateral (the last movie he made that I can call good without any qualifiers), and we get this. It's been 20 years since Sandra Bullock ordered a pizza through the internet... you'd think people have realized that the art of hacking is not shootouts and car chases but dudes sitting alone in rooms for long periods of time not saying anything. So there's an automatic groan factor when you see Thor thunking on a keyboard... running around... shooting people... getting laid. But if I try to ignore all that stuff and treat this like an international thriller, there are aspects to this that I like. Mann's trademark composition skills, insane depth of field where you can tell he's like a foot away from the actor's face. The action is expertly presented for the most part. I love seeing Holt McCallany show up... it's just a shame that the script is so dumb. I still hold out hope that some day the stars will align and we'll get another Mann masterpiece. For the most part digital has caught up with him to where the photography didn't look like garbage (although there were a few scenes toward the end that got pretty rough), he's still interested in stuff enough to make another movie... I'm hoping he finds some property that really clicks some day... like Heat Part 2!!!
06.19.15	Friday the 13th	Marcus Nispel	Well that was terrible.
06.07.15	For No Good Reason	Charlie Paul	Documentary about artist Ralph Steadman, perhaps best known for his work with Hunter S. Thompson. I really like Steadman's work so this was great for no other reason than to see his stuff on the screen, some of it animated to nice effect, and to see him actually at work. The rest of the stuff - Johnny Depp hangs around the house and asks him some stuff, various forms of archival and interview footage with acquaintances like Thompson, Jann Wenner from Rolling Stone, Richard E. Grant (Withnail & I), etc - is also pretty good and I feel like I got a good sense of who Steadman is as a person and an artist (which I'm guessing is the film's goal), but really... I wish there was a 90 minute extra with a static shot of Steadman working. It's great to lift the veil a bit and see his technique but also realize that the "how" of his work is a very small part of what makes it great.
06.06.15	Million Dollar Arm	Craig Gillespie	I wasn't really interested in this until I realized that Tom McCarthy wrote the script and Bill Paxton had a role in it. I kind of get the sense that this was a paycheck script for McCarthy because it's so tonally different than his directed films, but it definitely fits the genre well and isn't terrible. Very much in the vein of every other sports movie but you know... there's room for these in the landscape along with all the other genres.
06.05.15	Square Grouper	Billy Corben	Another movie by the Cocaine Cowboys guy, this one concentrating on the marijuana smuggling going on in South Florida in the 70s and early 80s. It's split into three separate stories, each interesting in their own right, and not overlapping with Cocaine Cowboys at all in terms of interviews or news footage. It's a bit less of a sensational story (probably because there's no violence) but still really worth watching. Well put-together doc. I liked it. My favorite story is probably the last one, telling the story of Everyglade City and all the local redneck fishermen who became smugglers until 80% of the male population was busted one morning and spent 1 to 7 years in federal prison. Crazy crazy stuff.
06.03.15	Cocaine Cowboys: Reloaded	Billy Corben	So if the 70s belonged to the mob and started to implode in the early 80s, that made me want to revisit this great doc about Miami in the 80s. This was a "reloaded" edition of the film with more than a half hour more stuff, certainly flashier motion graphics and titles (almost too flashy. they use a technique of having pictures of people shift their eyes which is incredibly creepy), and I feel like more stuff from the law enforcement side? The issue is that, even at two hours, I thought the original film was a bit long. Not that it was stretching for time or anything but just the format of it made it feel more like it would work better as a miniseries like The Jinx rather than a single film. Here it's even moreso because when Rivi comes in you don't see Mickey Munday or Jon whatshisname for like more than an hour. It's still interesting to be sure, but it's also kind of exhausting. After a while I felt myself getting distracted. And then for some reason the ending seems very rushed. So... were I to watch this again, I might give the original another go to see how they compare. I'm not 100% convinced that this one's better. But whichever version it is, the story and interviews captured here are really great. And I love when a doc goes back to catch us up about the impact that the first release of itself had on the subjects which is usually reserved for special features on the DVD or whatever... Certainly some people's outcomes have changed in the last 8 years. good doc for sure though... i don't want to make it sound negative at all. They should show this in high school history classes.
06.03.15	Donnie Brasco	Mike Newell	Still a good movie. Pacino is so great as this mid-level mobster, which I guess also speaks to his performance in movies like The Godfather and Scarface where he's at the top. This and Carlito's Way (kind of) shows a surprising new angle to a familiar role for him. It's interesting to watch this after seeing the documentary that had Pistone recounting his actions and photos/news clips of the real guys. And this is a real Depp performance. Makes me even more excited for Black Mass. Now, what else can I inhale before I have to go back to working?
06.03.15	The Iceman	Ariel Vromen	This one's been on my instant queue for about 3 years. Finally saw it. Just as I had heard, they managed to take a sensational story about a chilling dude played by a great actor and make a boring movie out of it. The 90s HBO specials interviewing the real guy are soooo much better than this movie. And I really have to blame the director here. It's just not very engaging. I wanted to fill in another patch of my newfound nyc mafia fascination but I really should have re-watched Donnie Brasco instead. Hmm...
06.02.15	The Adjustment Bureau	George Nolfi	This has been on my netflix dvd queue for like 4 years. I guess it eventually made it to the top of the queue. It was ok... lots of opening doors. I like John Slattery though so it's always a nice surprise when I see him appear. Mostly this one is just pretty meh and unremarkable.
06.02.15	Conan O'Brien Can't Stop	Rodman Flender	Documania continues. Maybe it's an urge to have one more indulgent blow-out before I have to go back to work on monday... I watched a whole season of some show about the American mob that was pretty interesting... and now this doc about Conan's post-tonight show tour. It's decent, very similar to Harmontown and delivers the same glimpse of Conan's personality and process. I have to give him some credit for allowing some things to remain in the cut that I would think most doc subjects would want taken out, like how he's rail thin but refusing to eat a piece of fish because it has butter on it or how he's complaining about schmoozing with people who are probably capable of giving him money. I liked it ok.
06.01.15	Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy	Daniel Farrands, Andrew Kasch	A 4-hour retrospective on the entire Nightmare on Elm Street cycle. I feel like this might be a special feature on some DVD set or something because it feels like 7 behind the scenes featurettes put into one... but they are 7 GOOD behind the scenes featurettes so I liked it. Certainly you get some candid accounts of each film and what led to how they turned out. I think of the main 80s horror franchises I always liked Nightmare the most (my favorite Halloween is part 3 (sacrilege, I know), but I don't think I've seen all of them nor have I seen Friday the 13th part 2). I think maybe it's because you could legitimately claim that more than one of them were good. Plus the idea is so universal and classic. The super natural nature of Jason and Michael Myers always bugged me because they existed in the real world, but dreams are fair game. Anyway, I enjoyed watching pretty much everyone (except Johnny Depp and Frank Darabont and Ron Moore and Mike DeLuca) talk about their experiences. They really got a surprising amount of cast and crew as well as New Line execs to weigh in. I am sad to not see New Line pop up before movies anymore. They were really on fire in the late 90s and put out great DVDs when the medium was new. ...I should probably see the second Friday the 13th just so I can say that I've seen the whole series. I guess that means I should watch the remakes too. sigh...
05.31.15	Mad Max: Fury Road	George Miller	This is the first movie in a while where I felt the need to see it theatriclaly. I think ultimately I am happy to have seen this while it's still in the zetigeist, the actual theatergoing part of my experience was disappointing. I think I'm just of an older generation or something but having to select assigned seating at the box office, having a loud bro-ish waiter try and push overpriced hors d'voeuvres, and most importantly a dim sub-standard projector all got in my way. The picture quality felt flat and grayed out and, while for the majority of the movie the spectacle and story captivated me enough to forget about this stuff, I did find myself periodically lamenting that the image was so poor. I now look forward to when I have a blu of this and can watch it at home. My list of theaters that I am willing to go to is dwindling, sorry to say :( But anyway, about the movie itself: I thought it was great. I feel like action movies - or really any movie with a serious budget - have all slowly amalgamated into one glop of "pretty good." Not terrible... certainly adequate... but also not surprising. Not thrilling. Not exceptional. Chris Popkoff shared this theory with me the last time I saw him and I am finding that I agree more and more as time goes on. Every Marvel movie is pretty good. You can count on it not to be too boring or too ridiculous or too cheesy, but you can also count on it not to do anything you aren't fully expecting it to do. So when something like this shows up and reminds people what good action looks like and what's so great about the post-apocalyptic genre it really opens people's eyes. And this is the work of a 70-year old man. That's so fantastic. So often these directors seem to lose their vivre as they get older and gravitate toward quiet romantic comedies in Provence or heavy dramas that they can shoot within ten minutes of their home. This is a bright vibrant example of someone who still has a love and respect for imagination and thrill. The fact that every character name in the end credits could be the title of their own post-apocalyptic epic yet more than half of them are never mentioned in the movie shows how much thought and planning went into this. The collection of ideas... just marvelous. So yeah... great movie. Certainly better than Thunderdome and Mad Max... Ehhhh I think I still like Road Warrior more but this one's pretty close. Can't wait to own it.
05.29.15	Whitey: United States of America V. James J. Bulger	Joe Berlinger	Documentary fever continues with this look at Whitey Bulger's criminal career framed by his well-publicized and long-awaited trial. I watched this because Black Mass looks interesting and I wanted to know more about what actually happened. This is less a biography however and more of a court case where Bulger's agenda, the department of justice's agenda, and the FBI's agenda are all examined. I know they used Whitey as inspiration for the Jack Nicholson character when they adapted Infernal Affairs into The Departed and that's really apt since it seems most of Bulger's crew ended up flipping and informing before or after they were caught. The questions of widespread corruption within the justice department are also really interesting but, much like the West Memphis films, this movie is so close to the subject that we are left to draw our own conclusions based on information presented. The movie could've used an on-camera interview with Whitey but what are you gonna do... all in all a decent doc that was more interesting than I thought it would be.
05.28.15	The Seven Five	Tiller Russell	Rounding out a great double feature, this doc focuses on a group of cops from one precinct in Brooklyn during the worst part of the 80s. People saying there's a lot of Scorsese here but I kept thinking of The Shield as I watched this. It's like Shawn Ryan studied this story and used it as a blueprint for Chiklis and his actors. Almost everything they did on that show was recounted as reality here. It might be a familiar story these days to hear about corrupt cops taking bribes but for me to hear about it from the cops themselves is really interesting. And holy shit the interview these guys got with Dominican drug lord Adam Diaz... wow. Maybe it's because I just watched that other doc but I do feel like this doesn't do enough to contextualize the time and place that these cops were in. Just how bad conditions were. I also feel like the widespread nature of the corruption was skimmed over in favor of focusing on these core two to four guys. I'm pretty interested to learn about what the Captain of the 75 was up to along with everyone else. I guess the film can't be four hours long but still... As a whole I thought this was really good.
05.28.15	Streets of New York	Alan Bradley	This no-budget doc made by youtuber Al Profit is surprisingly good. It's pretty well documented on here that I have an obsession with NYC in the 70s and 80s and how low down it got. This presents a story as a rise and fall of crime itself, starting with the heroin trade of mid 20th century, the rise of gangs in the 70s, hip hop, how crack changed everything, the prison gangs, the street violence, the drug violence, school violence, how prevalent it was for so long, and follows through Guliani's clean-up and ensuing gentrification. It ties in the summer of sam, the subway vigilante, the bensonhurst murder, and a bunch of other stuff. I feel like when I was growing up I heard about kids getting shot over Air Jordans. I never really understood that but get a good insight from some of these interviews of people who were there. The movie constantly displays statistics and newspaper headlines while you're listening to interviews so it's pretty dense and created this rich chain reaction in my brain that explains so much of New York-set films of that era. Kind of like how Cocaine Cowboys contextualizes Miami Vice and Scarface, this doc contextualized a ton of NYC movies from the 70s and 80s for me. So yeah, I really liked this. And something about the amateur nature of it - I watched this on YouTube - also worked for me. It felt raw and truthful, stripped of pomp. Right up my alley.
05.27.15	The Cobbler	Thomas McCarthy	This is not exactly what I thought it would be and at first I thought it was worse than what I thought it would be but as the movie went on I came to like it more and more. I still think it's a little odd tonally speaking - not funny enough to be a comedy, too goofy to really work as a drama - but it's definitely interesting. And I think that could be said for all of Tom McCarthy's movies... some resonate more than others (i'd put this on the level of The Visitor, I liked Win Win and Station Agent more) but they are all interesting and go to places you don't really see in other movies which demands respect. This one really skirts some odd lines that, were it in the hands of other writers would have gone in dramatically different directions, the choices, some of which I didn't agree with (I didn't care for the dinner scene at all for example, found the whole thing cruel rather than sentimental which was probably what was intended), were nonetheless interesting. Have I said "interesting" enough?
05.26.15	The Private Eyes	Lang Elliott	I remember laughing my ass off when this came on cable as a kid. I have a memory of my mom telling me that this was what was known as "slapstick" and making a mental note that I love slapstick. Unsurprisingly, my tastes have changed a bit. I found most of this pretty tepid although I can clearly see that it's aimed at a younger audience and some of Tim Conway's and Don Knott's performances still worked for me. I hesitate to go back and watch Dorf on Golf. That's another one that I really loved.
05.26.15	Ray Harryhausen: Special Effects Titan	Gilles Penso	A By-the-numbers doc cataloging Ray Harryhausen's work and impact to cinema history. This grabs interviews from everyone who should be interviewed but something about the production quality of this makes me feel like it's a DVD special feature or something. It feels like some interviews are scrounged from different sources or something and the chronological nature where the movie moves from film to film gives the doc an unpolished note. On the other hand, you might watch this movie because you want to know more about his work and this is exactly what this gives you so my complaints are really minor nitpicks for a serviceable and decent doc.
05.21.15	The Art of the Steal	Don Argott	Thank netflix for recommending a movie with the same name. This is a documentary about the Barnes collection of art and how the city of Philadelphia tried for like 50 years to break the late Dr. Barnes' will and move the art from a tightly controlled educational environment into a big museum where it can make a lot of tourism money. This movie is... ok. It's maybe 20 minutes too long. But the interesting parts are interesting and I found it a nice subject to think about as I heard the story of what happened. On one hand, there are a whole cadre of people fighting for the collection to stay where it's always been and the movie spends a lot of time laying out an argument that certain wealthy businesspeople conspired for years and years to extract all that art (we're talking about billions of dollars worth) no matter what the guy's damn will says, but on the other hand... after the guy's been dead for half a century... I mean what's the statute of limitations on a dead man's wish? It's hard to really cheer these guys on when so much time has passed. I feel like the barnes foundation got a good 20 or 30 years or whatever of Dr. Barnes' upheld wishes... sooner or later someone's going to want to crack the vault right? But still... it's amazing how all the stuff outlined in the doc is legal. Not in like an "oh my god you have to see this movie" amazing... but more of a mildly infuriating level of distate for philadelphia politicians. I guess one could take this story on a thematic level of art versus commerce - and it certainly covers that ground - but it's pretty hard to keep you excited when you start showing tax forms and highlighted legal documents.
05.19.15	The Art of the Steal	Jonathan Sobol	Pretty much an Ocean's Eleven knock-off but that's alright. It still has Kurt Russell and Terence Stamp and Jay Baruchel and the plot is engaging and it easily held my interest. Pretty fun movie.
05.19.15	The Slammin' Salmon	Kevin Heffernan	I don't understand why Broken Lizard has a hard time making movies. True I think Super Troopers is their funniest movie, but the other one's aren't terrible and certainly deserve more love than most of the crap that gets studio backing. That said, I thought this was ok. I was kind of expecting it to be a little funnier considering the always-rich setting of a restaurant and the amount of small supporting roles. Still wasn't bad though. Hopefully Super Troopers 2 will be really great.
05.18.15	Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon	Mike Myers	Fun by-the-numbers doc about this successful manager of Alice Cooper and Emeril (among others of course). I watched it because Mike Myers directed it and it was short and it's fun to hear crazy stories about 70s rock and roll. It's basically a love letter so there's no drama or deep emotion or whatever, but you know... sometimes a pleasant doc about a rich guy with a lot of stories is just what you need.
05.16.15	St. Vincent	Theodore Melfi	I was prepared for this to be a pretty mediocre film treading familiar water. I feel like I've seen this premise done several times before. But the performances really carried some real emotion and subsequently I ended up enjoying this quite a bit.
05.13.15	The Drop	Michael R Roskam	Decent crime thriller starring Tom Hardy and James Gandolfini. It's very slow and "character"y but I appreciated that the Dennis Lehane script was not completely familiar. It's not terribly notable however... just a decent movie to watch when you're in the mood.
04.29.15	Dead Man	Jim Jarmusch	Still like this quite a bit. I think this was my entree into Jim Jarmusch and still probably one of my favorites of his. I love Robbie Muller's photography paired with Neil Young's spare score and just think the surreal dreamlike nature of the film is perfectly presented. I think there are more fades to black in this movie than any other movie. Each scene is like a vignette disassociated from time. And it's such an odd western. The band of Billy Bob Thornton, Jared Harris and Iggy Pop are so peculiar. And the bald lawmen. And Lance Henrikson stomping the head!? So bizarre and great and unique and interesting. I love the entire cast... really every scene has something to like about it. Johnny Depp's at his most Deppish... and the last twenty minutes or so just unravel in the most beautiful way. Man, so good.
04.28.15	Tales of the Grim Sleeper	Nick Broomfield	Nick Broomfield docs have always been a bit of a mixed bag for me. On one hand they always feel a bit sensational and skeezy like I'm watching the cinematic equivalent of an ambulance chaser, but on the other hand I admire his courage to go into situations that could be dangerous and the way he presents his films as his experiences rather than some message-y statement. Plus I think his interview style (I'm convinced he acts like a much slower, less intelligent version of himself to get people to open up to him) is really effective and I always find his movies very watchable. So with all that said, HBO aired this doc last night dealing with South LA's Grim Sleeper serial killer. I lived in the valley from 1978 to 1986, spending my early childhood there, and I have a lot of vague memories of serial killers being all over the news the whole time. I think maybe the late 70s and early 80s were the golden age of serial killers in the media. Even light comedies like Ruthless People had serial killers thrown in because they were so topical. The Night Stalker The Hillside Strangler(s) were the big ones locally but John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, Son of Sam and even Charlie Manson were all very much in the news. So I guess crack cocaine came in just as I moved out because I don't remember any news about any of this stuff in South LA while I was there, but I feel like it was definitely in the air back then for whatever reason. So watching an aging Nick Broomfield rolling around the hood talking to crackheads and neighborhood folk about this guy who was arrested (still no trial) for murdering 10 women is familiar to me in some very strange way. So... I really liked this. It gives you the chills and gut-churning feeling of exploring humanity's evil side and everything you'd expect from watching a true crime doc, but I also got - and please don't judge - a surprising amount of humor from a lot of the interviews. Broomfield talks to neighborhood friends of the murder suspect as well as ex-crackhead prostitutes that had close calls with the man before he was caught. That means we get to see a lot of really characteristic faces telling us things in interesting ways. An overshadowing theme of the film is that, due to societal and cultural divides, the LAPD never spoke with victims and witnesses that had crucial information and didn't do anything with the clues that they were given back in the 80s. One particularly infuriating moment comes from the one confirmed survivor (Broomfield speaks with several others who never came forward and spoke with the police) where she describes leading the police to a house two doors down from where the suspect would be arrested twenty years later. It took them TWENTY YEARS to check two houses down the street. But anyway, back to the humor. I couldn't help but laugh at these guys who first appear as adamant supporters of the suspect but soon start to share little tidbits like how the suspect showed them the gun he used to kill 10 women, or showed them polaroids and pictures of missing women, or paid dudes to clean blood out of cars or burn blood-soaked cars for insurance money. Or that it might make sense that he did it because they got his DNA from saliva left on the breasts of the dead girls and the suspect did in fact "like the titties." I mean, that's like Homer Simpson territory right? When he goes to work for Hank Scorpio and fails to realize that he's an evil genius? And one lady in particular was super fun to watch. An ex-prostitute now four years sober, she leads Broomfield around town looking for many of the women that appeared in pictures taken from the suspect's house. This involves a lot of them pulling the car to a stop so she can shout out at prostitutes on the corner. One young woman walks down the street with no pants on and this ghetto guide describes her as "asshole naked." Asshole naked is a phrase I dearly hope that I remember for life and if I forget everything else about this doc it will be worthwhile just because it taught me about being asshole naked. So... those are a few gems. HBO Has really been killing it with their docs this season. This was no exception. I'm not mentioning all the pathos and heart-wrenching sadness involved, or the implications of what impact must have been brought to bear on the suspect's son, or all the really heavy stuff that goes on here. Really good doc.
04.27.15	West of Memphis	Amy Berg	I many ways this was an encapsulation of Berlinger/Sinofsky's trio of docs but I was surprised to find a couple tidbits here and there that weren't presented in the other series like the extent of Peter Jackson's involvement and a few other entertainers like Henry Rollins and Johnny Depp. While I never got bored while watching this and feel like ultimately it's a worthwhile addition to the case as a whole, I did feel like this was an outside view of the whole thing. I don't know that I would recommend it over the other docs to newcomers of the case. Another perspective is always refreshing though and it's certainly more succinct at 150 minutes rather than the five to seven hours of the HBO docs (less Metallica music as well), but really this, because it was edited and released after the West Memphis Three were released, is ultimately a story told from some distance. It can't compete with the immersion and mix of emotion that the HBO trilogy brings. So... I dunno. I liked it ok as a summation of the other films, but definitely liked the other ones more. I was happy to get a little more follow-up with the kids once they are released though. I could use a fourth installment from Berlinger and Sinofsky once a real killer is caught. Not that anyone's looking.
04.27.15	The Imitation Game	Morten Tyldum	Very reminiscent of The King's Speech, this was a decent awards movie with some good performances. I liked it for the computer and crypto angles but the war stuff was also interesting. I'm also surprised to see that the Headhunters guy directed this. Good for him! I liked that movie a lot so it's good to see him do something of this caliber with that period budget and award buzz. The only thing that kind of bugged me was the occasional switch to stock war footage. I could've done with a simple on-screen title telling us the date. Super minor nitpitck though. I liked this.
04.25.15	A Most Violent Year	J.C. Chandor	I really liked JC Chandor's first two films and heard this was good. I think it's a weird and bold take to name the movie A Most Violent Year and make it about a business deal. Of course it's about more than that, but it did take me the whole movie to realize that this story was also a kind of treatise on violence itself. I respect that, but I also kind of think that NYC 1981 has tons of stories to offer and this is not the best from that particular well. But, judging the film for what it was instead of what it could have been, it's well-made and rich in character. I couldn't help but compare it to Killing Them Softly because I got the same feeling from it: An understated moment in an otherwise showy career. Certainly not bad, well executed, period in a nuanced way, but also not the showcase that All is Lost was.
04.24.15	Dumb and Dumber To	Bobby Farrelly, Peter Farrelly	So the short answer is I thought it would be better. I didn't think it would be as good as the first one, which I still think is funny today thanks to a mixture of nostalgia (it came out when I was in high school) and it actually being a good movie, but I did think it would still be funny. I laughed a couple times toward the end - I'm not sure if my resistance to the dumb jokes was tearing down to the point where it overwhelmed me and I started laughing or if the jokes got better - but for the most part it felt disjointed and awkward between them. Carrey and Daniels got on SO well in the first one but this one it seemed a little like... they were tolerating each other. It's a bit of a shame. 20 years is a long time and pretty much everybody involved are at very different points in their careers now and I was really hoping for the best. Who knows maybe this will grow on me... like I said a few parts toward the end did crack me up. Jeff Daniels' little finger move when he holds his beer up for the lady to smell really got me with its subtle brilliance and some of Jim Carrey's expressions were like classic Lloyd Christmas, but there was also a bunch of stuff that didn't work at all. And the good stuff was outweighed. I did like the Chinese Mexican place with the daughter dipping a chip in guac with chopsticks though. Oh well. It's probably still better than that prequel they made with the Dell dude. also, weird note: Early in the movie they visit a funeral home and Jim Carrey throws a banana peel on some dead guy's face. At first glance I totally thought it was a Bill Murray cameo but when I rewound it and freeze framed I decided it wasn't him. Now that I'm looking at imdb it seems that there WAS a Bill Murray cameo, just not the dead guy. So I missed the real one but thought I saw a fake one. odd. Maybe I just assume most comedies have a Bill Murray cameo these days!?
04.22.15	The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1	Francis Lawrence	So, to recap my feelings thus far with this franchise, I really liked the first two books - couldn't put them down - and mostly liked the third book, thought the first movie was too long and boring but found things to like in the second. Now this one, which I was in no hurry to see but wanted to watch it when it hit rental markets. I thought it was ok, a bit long and boring for most of it but it picked up a little toward the end. It's kind of weird... I feel like Jennifer Lawrence is a good actress and I've liked her in other stuff but she feels flat to me as a lead in this series. All she did this time around was walk around with her hair in her face looking sad. It doesn't help that they put her in these high-waisted bore-suits that soaked all interest from the screen. I mean I get that District 13 is supposed to be Spartan and dour but it was also only for like a hundred book pages. Since they are stretching out the last book we end up spending A LOT of time there and I can't quite care about any of it. I wound up checking my email and thinking about other things for parts of this. The sequels and series of the 80s were pretty box-office driven... There was Back to the Future where the two sequels were planned and shot at the same time but I'm thinking maybe Lord of the Rings was the first all0in commitment from a studio to make a planned trilogy. Of course Harry Potter is the big one, but if most people are like me they burned out on the series after the books ended (somewhere around film 5 or 6). Twilight, which I never saw any of. The Hobbit which was unfortunate all around. And of course Star Wars, which I don't know the details of but I suspect the first two sequels were rough-sketched out before Empire ended since they had those cliffhangers with Han and Luke. I'm just pondering the nature of this series and how it fits with the others... I feel like maybe these mega-franchises are not really a great idea. So much of this one felt like ramp-up to the next one and so much is presupposed from the last one that it doesn't really stand on its own at all. It's kind of like a really big budget episode of television. How's something like this going to live on in historical context? I'm a big fan of LotR but it's been years and years since I last saw them and I'm not likely to anytime soon because it's like a 12-hour commitment. If in 5 years I get an itch to experience Hunger Games again, am I going to sit down and watch all 4 of these movies? And further on down the line... it's not like these movies reflect much historical or social context because they were all planned out roughly at the same time. When I went back and went through the Texas Chainsaw Massacres I had a great time reading the different eras that each film represented. Or if I go back and watch some Police Academy movies, I'll be able to see the evolution pattern that that series took. And I think that comes from someone doing one movie then sitting down and asking "where can we take this? what next?" Certainly there are some positives to knowing how things will end before you start them, but I think that the form of the trilogy has cemented for a reason. Any more than 3 and you start to meander. I definitely felt that with this movie. wow long and rambling. I should've written this while watching!
04.21.15	Interstellar	Christopher Nolan	Since I'm in a downswing with seeing movies in theaters, I'm finding it really rewarding to sit down and experience these big hype movies after the world has moved on. I definitely remember the anticipation of this, the mixed reviews, and the blowback. I'd also heard that a few people still liked it. Mostly I'm astounded that I didn't get spoiled by pop culture in the time it took to hit the rental market. So... let me start off by saying that I liked this movie a lot. I think a lot of sci-fi these days is just set dressing thrown on action movies and the world needs more movies like this that really swing for the fences. I also loved how McConaughey and Hathaway were big enough names that the marketing people didn't have to dip any deeper to sell the film. Like I said, I'm astounded that I got to come to this movie in such a pure way after so long. I should go back and read negative reviews of this. I have to think that maybe the hype and perhaps expectation of a Gravity Part 2 biased a lot of peoples' experiences watching. I did have a few minor issues (Using the Dylan Thomas poem once would've been fine. 4 times got a little grating. Also the music was a bit too heavy-handed for me and the pacing with the "climactic" scene where Murph "rescues" her niece and nephew(?) felt very weak compared with what it was cross-cut with), but I thought the performances were great, the effects amazing, it looked gorgeous, and went somewhere admirable. I definitely felt shades of Clarke there at the end (Rendezvous with Rama, 3001). I also thought the world-building of the first act was really great and understated, the beat about the textbook being a great example. so... yeah. I liked this. Thought it was really well done.
04.11.15	The Wild Life	Art Linson	The fourth and last movie that I watched at George's house was The Wild Life, which I've been wanting to see for a real long time. I knew of it as Cameron Crowe's first produced script but had no idea who starred or what it was about. The gist I got from it was that it's a blueprint for Fast Times at Ridgemont High. It's a little looser in scope, the character threads don't quite connect like they do in Fast Times, but the slice of life format and the voice is very similar. It's kind of like if Fast Times was a single, this would be the B-side. I also got a strong Boogie Nights vibe from it just because of the time and place and Robert Ridgely in a small role. So the cast is chock full of young stars. Eric Stolz, Leah Thompson (oh man...) Chris Penn (not fat, bleach blonde hair), Rick Moranis, the other kid from Weird Science, the other cop from Jackie Brown, small appearances by Ben Stein, Lee Ving, Sherilyn Fenn, Randy Quaid, Dean Devlin, Ron Wood, and Nancy Wilson (Crowe also has a cameo but I didn't spot him). Score by Edward Van Halen. Again some serious firepower in this. It was pretty fun. I started to get tired about halfway through which is unfortunate. Like The Wanderers, the plot might have been too loose for anyone to pay serious attention to it but as a slice of life movie, hanging out with these wacky kids and listening to music, it was pretty good. I'm really glad I finally got a chance to see this and in a great venue to boot. After that I excused myself and came home to my bed. Those other dudes had seen 4 movies before I got there and had 4 more lined up when I left (I really wanted to see the next movie on the schedule - Yeti: The 20th Century Giant - but that would've put me home at 6am and I probably would've slept through most of it. Still, I had a great time for the third that I sat in for and appreciated everyone being so friendly. Good times.
04.11.15	War Party	Franc Roddam	I didn't think I knew anything about this movie until I saw the synopsis that said Kevin Dillon and a native American battle re-enactment gone wrong. That sparked a memory from 25 years ago when I watched this on my neighbor buddy's recommendation. In his description, the native americans get pissed and start scalping dudes FOR REAL. It doesn't really play out that way in the film but I still remember my neighbor Cameron describing it to me and seeing Kevin Dillon running on horseback up into some mountains. So this became more about revisitation for me as I watched it again. It's... not a very good movie at all, but there is a scalping scene and Kevin Dillon does run from the law on horseback up into some mountains. I wonder where Cameron is and if he remembers liking this movie.
04.11.15	Death Game	Sondra Locke	The next movie I watched at George's house was Death Game starring Sondra Locke, Colleen Camp, and Seymour Cassel. I didn't know anything about this one either but afterward people mentioned that it is now being remade by Eli Roth with Keanu Reeves in the Seymour Cassel role. Ugh. So... watching this made me realize that it's been a long time since I've been to a Weird Wednesday or Terror Thursday (I know that it's Terror Tuesday now, it's still Terror Thursday in my head). My exploitation endurance is out of practice. Long time-filling scenes where the actors don't really have any lines so they just repeat things over and over again and eat food for way too long and laugh for no reason don't bounce off my attention span like they did when I was an Alamo regular. So watching this was kind of a chore for me because this movie had A LOT of that. The plot of the movie is: these two young girls show up on a married man's doorstep. it's raining and they say they broke down or something and need to use his phone. His wife and kid are out of town so he says sure. They use the bathroom and wind up naked together in the tub, coaxing the guy in for a threeway. He says yes. Bad move. The girls go crazy, put him through psychological and mental torture, almost kill him, then leave. THE END. 90 minutes is a LONG TIME to tell that story. However, Sondra Locke and Colleen Camp are each beautiful in their own right and they spend much of the movie nearly naked so... you know... it's not all bad. Especially if you're name is George. They say "George" about once every five seconds through the whole picture. And you know... even though I got a bit bored by the moment to moment of the movie, I also recognized when certain things happen that give the movie value. At one point Sondra Lock paints up her face, adding these crazy question marks to her eyebrows making her look kind of demonic. It's a very impactful image and someone could make a hell of a poster out of that. And also... the ending. the last thirty seconds... is great. As happens so often with these exploitation movies you spend so long at such a slow tedious pace that when something finally happens it's really jarring and effective. So I really enjoyed having seen it. Watching it was just ok. I'm glad I saw it though and it's been growing on me.
04.11.15	The Wanderers	Philip Kaufman	So... my buddies George and Daniel and Chris have been doing their own 24-hour movie marathons for a long time now and I've never gone. Part of that is because of my experiences with Butt-numb-a-thon where, spectacle aside, it's really an endurance challenge to remain coherent through the whole night. While there is a certain pleasure that comes from falling asleep in a theater, drifting in and out of consciousness while a movie plays, I often wind up with little to no memory of the movies themselves and it wrecks my next day or two afterward. However, George and co. have always been friendly and inviting to their events so I've felt bad for not going and this time, since I have no job to keep me down, I decided to go and watch some movies then come home when I got tired. I got there just as Martin was ending. Just a quick note about how great George's setup is: A lot of people have home theater setups... George has like... a theater in his home. I mean he didn't have a projectionist with 35mm reel to reels back there or anything but he did have a nice projector, huge screen, 7.1 sound, a couple couches, chairs, and two rows of theater seats in a little stadium setup. Couple that with plex and you couldn't have a better setting for a marathon. There were maybe a dozen people there. The first movie I saw is Philip Kaufman's The Wanderers. I had no idea what this movie was. Really I had no idea that this movie existed. It's a snapshot of The Bronx in 1963 and the world of neighborhood street gangs populated by high school guys. This film has some amazing bona fides. Based on a book by Richard Price, written and directed by Philip Kaufman (falling in between Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Right Stuff), featuring a huge cast of young actors (including a pre-Raiders Karen Allen and a bunch of familiar faces like Omar from HBO's OZ and Angie Bonpensiero from The Sopranos), shot by Michael Chapman, casted by Scott Rudin, with an amazing soundtrack of like every early 60s rock hit ever. It feels kind of like a mix between The Warriors and The Outsiders but this was 79, same year as Warriors and 4 years before Outsiders. The tone and pacing are a little confused which I think is why this movie fell through the cracks but there's still just a ton of charm and emotion that makes it worth watching. I was really surprised and impressed with this. It also drew a startling thought. A 79 movie set in 63 would be like making a movie today and setting it in 2000. It might be because I'm getting older and more disconnected from pop culture but it seems like the difference between 15 years ago today and 15 years ago in 1979 is really huge. I'm not sure if I'd still think that if I had lived through it... but I certainly feel like the 80s and the 90s had style definitions of what was popular at the time that fit in tune with the 70s, 60s, 50s, 40s, and 30s. The 00s seem especially blah to me... but who knows... maybe 5 years from now it will seem different. That was a long and rambling paragraph just to say that it struck me how it must not have been such a huge deal to get the soundtrack for this movie back when they did. I feel like if you used all these songs in a movie today you couldn't afford to pay any of the actors. But making a movie set in 2000 doesn't seem like a big deal at all. Time is weird. anyway...
04.09.15	Before Midnight	Richard Linklater	This one was a bit closer to the first for me. As soon as I saw that they started the movie together I knew what the whole movie would be. I recognize that I'm judging the movie on its story when all three of these are really not about story at all but emotion and reality, but you know... if I'm going to be engaged for a hundred minutes I kind of need story AND emotion. So this didn't work as well for me... the whole movie kind of boils down to the last two minutes: whether there will be change or not. And... I mean like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf... is it a great play? are there great performances in the Nichols movie? All that stuff is Yes but at the same time I don't care to watch it again. Watching people argue gets pretty tedious for me. And while the notion of long-term relationship love might be worth exploring as part of this series, it doesn't hold a candle to the first two films in terms of vibrancy and romance. That might fit the characters' lives but it doesn't make the movie more entertaining.
04.08.15	Before Sunset	Richard Linklater	I liked this one a lot more than the first. The lean 76 minute running time might have something to do with it but also I found the story more intriguing since I didn't know how it would turn out. I mean, listening to two attractive people flirt with each other is fine but, like most of Linklater's "talky" films it kind of grows old on me. But it felt very authentic and conversational and I liked seeing Paris and hearing how each character has grown and reacted to the events of the first film and I certainly felt a palpable yearning for them to be together. I also like that it languishes in a similar yet distinctly different specific emotion as the first. To be more specific, I feel like the first film captures that electric catching instant connection with someone where time melts away and you are together with that person in a bubble floating through time and space and this one is one big awkward conversation where you each share feelings together but you both also know that logic and life are keeping you apart. I have no idea what the third film will explore.
04.08.15	Before Sunrise	Richard Linklater	I have all three "Before" movies sitting here waiting for me to watch them. I haven't seen any of these before, and really had very little interest when the first two came out. But now, in the wake of Boyhood and a third installation, I figured I best go back and see them. In many ways, I was least excited about watching the first one. To me, the aging and evolving relationships that are probably explored in the two sequels interests me more than listening to Ethan Hawke and Julie Deply talk for a hundred minutes. What's more is that I feel like I've seen the whole movie just from understanding the premise. It's very plot-light and really when they tell you that it's about two people who meet on a train and spend one night walking around Vienna falling in love, they're really describing the entire movie. Not much happens that you can't imagine as you listen to that sentence. So this was kind of a slog to get through for me. The Viennese scenery was the highlight. However, as a snapshot of a very specific moment in time and life - young combustible love - it is effective.
04.01.15	Ride Along	Tim Story	Man. This was like watching masters at work. I remember when Kevin Hart was like 14 on Undeclared and now he's the biggest thing ever. And at this point in his career it's amazing that Ice Cube still exudes danger and menace. So when you put them together under an auteur like Tim Story you get something truly wonderful. Now that it's past midnight, the curse is lifted and I can be serious. This was ok. I laughed a couple times. I'm not sick of Hart's shtick yet but I suspect that's because I haven't seen many of his movies. As always though the first half is better before the plot kicks in and drains most of the humor out. Other than that... I dunno... mostly mediocre but I laughed a couple times and that can't be discounted.
03.29.15	Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief	Alex Gibney	HBO has been killing it with the docs recently. Citizenfour, The Jinx (which was a miniseries so it didn't get a note on here but holy shit is it great), and now this. I don't think I've seen more hype and promotion surrounding a documentary on HBO before. Hopefully there won't be any disappointing backlash because of it because, while I did get a sense that this doc would blow the lid off of the whole thing and dish all the dirt and blow my mind, it is still just a movie. I think it presents the story and controversy around the cult in a really cohesive and comprehensive way but we don't get Travolta taking off his wig and sucking cock on camera. To me the most important aspect of this film is that it WAS hyped and promoted by HBO to such a huge degree. I get the sense that this film is a dare to David Miscavige and scientology as an organization. It seems to be saying "PLEASE fuck with us." On reddit a lot of hubbub was made about HBO hiring some huge number of lawyers to vette the film and everything presented here comes straight from first-hand accounts of ex-scientologists. The bizarre anti-propaganda campaign put on by scientology is pretty minor compared to some of the stuff that's talked about in the film but there have still been multiple news stories reporting their actions. Social context aside, the film is really good. Learning about L Ron Hubbard's life gave me a ton of context for Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master and makes me want to revisit it. Seeing interviews from the senior members that have left the church and now speak to raise awareness was really fascinating. Especially when it plugs into other news stories that I remember from a few years ago like that BBC special and Paul Haggis' letter and the Tom Cruise video leak that was parodied to death. The terms and lore of scientology are explained, some surprisingly draconian inner practices are brought to surface... The film doesn't deal as much with how badly some ex-members have been fucked or a few other facets (really Travolta and Cruise are the only celebrities mentioned in any detail) but for a 2-hour doc they still presented a ton of information. So... it would be so great if this movie was the tipping point and we see others come forward to bring the curtain down. Certainly Cruise and Travolta should hopefully catch some shit from us Suppressive People in their life. While watching I was thinking about what the allure of scientology is to me... like celebrity gossip is one thing but there's so much weirdness and oddity surrounding the subject that like... why do I even care? And I had a thought as I was mentally comparing how similar these interviews were to the interviews in that amazing Jonestown doc from several years ago. Scientology is the only cult I know about BEFORE all their members commit ritual suicide or kill a bunch of innocent people. Everything else always bubbles to the surface after the carnage... Jonestown, Waco, those comet dudes... I heard about those because everyone died. With Scientology, they're still walking around! This movie shows pretty clearly how crazy David Miscavige is. I feel like it's only a matter of time (granted it's probably later rather than sooner) before he turns into David Koresh or Charlie Manson.
03.21.15	Cure for Pain: The Mark Sandman Story	Rob Bralver, David Ferino	This is a doc about the 90s rock band Morphine and its lead singer/bass player Mark Sandman. I really fucking loved Morphine when I was in highschool and college and remember being pretty bummed out when I heard the news of Sandman's death. I think they put out 5 or 6 albums and although each album had some pretty far out free jazz sort of stuff that was a bit too much for me, each album also had several amazing tunes that really stuck with me till today. So it was good to learn the story of the band (I never knew it came out of another band, Treat Her Right) as well as hear recollections... I will say though that the movie kind of drags. It doesn't help that I watched it in 480p on youtube but... there's a lot of 16mm footage and stills that are just inserted out of nowhere. Unfortunately the story of the band probably makes a good 60 minutes so stretching it out even to 85 made it lag for me. It did put me in the mood to revisit all those albums though...
03.21.15	Our Vinyl Weighs A Ton	Jeff Broadway	This is a doc about Peanut Butter Wolf and his independent record label Stones Throw Records. It's a label in which I was a little familiar but didn't really know the story so this was right up my alley. Lots of good music here especially after talking up this kind of production-rich hip hop that really suits my taste. There's several albums I want to track down after watching this, which is really the best you can ask for. Very interesting, well produced, great music... Really liked it.
03.19.15	The Frozen Ground	Scott Walker	Sometimes when you see Nicholas Cage and John Cusack on a box cover you watch it even though it sounds lame and all the reviews say it's lame and it's actually lame. This isn't terrible enough to stand out but it's just like a super familiar retread of Insomnia and every other movie where a cop tries to catch a serial killer. Boring procedural stuff, "intense" shakycam interrogations... random strippers... pretty forgettable stuff. Which is terrible because it's based on a true story or whatever so I'm sure the families of the victims's feathers would ruffle at the statement that the story of their disappearance is forgettable... the "true" (or at least what I'm guess is true) parts of the movie were the most interesting. That and 50 Cent's wig.
03.18.15	Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory	Joe Berlinger, Bruce Sinofsky	This is an emotional and satisfying conclusion to the story of three innocent kids convicted of murder. This is also a frustrating look at the state of small-town justice and a woefully incomplete story of the deaths of three eight year old boys. I guess whoever actually killed them just gets away with it. Thanks, Obama. But really there's a lot to like. Berlinger and Sinofsky's style has really changed in the decade between this and the last one. I feel like the second one was half black and white recap from the first one where this integrates footage from 93, 99, and 2010 smoothly and succinctly. I also think we see a fair bit of 93 footage which wasn't used in the first movie. Some notable tonal shifts have happened. The Byers guy stands out the most. His bizarre behavior during the second film is entirely forgotten once he changes his mind and thinks that the kids are innocent. A new suspect emerges for a few minutes. Familiar faces come back older and balder, probably because 18 years gives a lot of distance that 7 years doesn't. This is also a time capsule film for everyone involved. It's interesting that Byers is the only person who really does re-evaluate his stance and change his mind. Everyone else, call it stubbornness or faith, holds on to what they thought in 93. So... I'm really glad I went back and gave this series another shot. I'm not quite sure what happened when I watched the first one for the first time. Part of me thinks that maybe the disc version has all of the explicit crime scene footage cut out of it because that stuff was new and shocking to me. You could also imagine how having that stuff omitted might effect the power of the movie, but who knows... for whatever reason I didn't like it the first time and I did the second, and now I'm a fan of all three of these. Really great documentary work.
03.18.15	Paradise Lost 2: Revelations	Joe Berlinger, Bruce Sinofsky	In some respects I wish every great doc had a sequel like this: Going back after a couple years to show not only any follow-up with the subject matter but also how the first film impacted the subjects' lives. However, other aspects of this movie suffer because of inevitable reactions from the first film. The biggest change is the loss of the absolutely insane access that the directors had in the original trial. Not only did they get to film the proceedings but it also seems like they got extended interviews with the whole damn town. We heard from the kids while they were in custody AFTER the verdict! This time around it seems like everyone has wised up and shut their traps which is probably smart for them but unfortunate for us viewers. So instead the focus shifts to equal weight between the appeal hearings and the one dad with the brain tumor. That's fine because he is an unbelievable character so now we spend the whole movie wondering if he did it. I can see it but only through movie-logic goggles where his tumor sends him into fugue states where his religious fury collides with an abusive upbringing that creates a Killer Bob-esque alter ego that murdered his son and drowned the other two just because they were there. This is a documentary however and not Twin Peaks so... that's a pretty thin scenario. I don't see how you can get engaged by the first movie and not watch this one though... even though it's not as good it certainly sheds more light on the case and people involved. On to part 3.
03.17.15	Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills	Joe Berlinger, Bruce Sinofsky	So... I remember watching half of this but to be completely honest I didn't think I had gotten through the whole thing before. In any case, HBOGO has all three of these docs so I figured I'd start with this before moving on to the others (which I know I haven't seen). The raw emotion of the bereaved people hit me much more this time. I feel like my initial opinion of this was that it was overrated and too long. I liked it much more this time. The Bojangles dude, the brain tumor, the flagrant holes in the prosecution's case... they all rang out this time. But you know, I also don't buy 100% that the kids are innocent. It's a great doc that gets this rich in humanity. On to the second one...
03.11.15	Citizenfour	Laura Poitras	A doc following Ed Snowden's whistle-blowing. I really liked this and have some thoughts about both the movie and the subject matter. I'm not sure I can put them all down coherently but whatever. The movie: The best thing about this movie is how in-the-moment it is. You really get a glimpse of what it's like to be living in Ed Snowden's world at the exact moment in which he becomes world news. Right when I started to ponder what it must be like to leave your house knowing that you would probably not ever coming back. Leaving a note for your girlfriend or wife knowing that there's a good chance you may not ever get to see her again. Giving up ties to your parents, your home, your friends... trading it all in for a hotel room in Hong Kong and one bag full of clothes. A huge part of me is so glad to have an "uninteresting" life so I don't need to worry about any of that, so much so that you feel the full gravity of what Snowden's convictions must be in order for him to go through with it. He's totally smart enough to understand what it means... he didn't just fall into this like it was some movie or something... Then all of a sudden his face is on every channel on the tv, random fire alarms start going off as soon as he unplugs the phone, and just like that he has to go in hiding, knowing better than the rest of us how easily he can be found and fucked. And the cameras were rolling. That's what's so great about this doc... you feel and see it. Subject-wise: I still don't understand why people aren't more upset. For the last 20 or 30 years or whatever there have been people in tinfoil hats being mocked for thinking big brother is watching us and now that it's come out: not a rumor or an allegation or some matter in dispute but hard cold undeniable FACT... all people want to do is say "duh! Of course I knew that, only an idiot wouldn't assume that. geez! Like me on facebook subscribe to my youtube channel #imsosmart" This is not a hopeful picture of my country and its people. Where are the marches? The protests? the boycotts? Where's the fucking impeachment hearings? Clinton gets roasted for lying about fucking an intern but the "democratic" governments around the world, in concert, systematically collecting any and all information about all of its people regardless of motive or cause for a dozen years and we all are just happy to shrug our shoulders and say "what are ya gonna do?" *he fervently types into his keyboard as he sits comfortably at home in his boxer shorts not doing shit either* So I'm mad at myself as well. What's left but to consider this reaction another sign of America's decline, right? Or maybe even humanity's decline? They need to start showing this doc in schools... The testimony from that lavabit guy as he tearfully recounts how the U.S. government went after him, forcing him to shut down rather than knowingly betray every one of his customers, is enough for a high school or college course alone. So much impotent rage right now! Goddamn it! Holy shit where's the Tylenol...
03.07.15	Harmontown	Neil Bekeley	I've been familiar with Dan Harmon's stuff since the channel 101 days and have been a fan of his work since then. I haven't heard his podcast though so I never really had a sense of his personality. I guess I should go start since it seems interesting and fun. The doc wound up being pretty entertaining for me... It's a good character portrait of a complicated dude. I'm pretty tired though so... that's my notes!
03.07.15	The Invention of Lying	Rickey Gervais, Matthew Robinson	Good cast but it wasn't funny. I never fully bought the core conceit of the film which was the whole world didn't know what lying is. It made for a few chuckly gags like Pepsi's slogan "For when they don't have Coke" but I don't think people would act that way even if they couldn't tell lies. This was more like unnecessarily-brutal-honesty world rather than no-lying world, so everyone's behavior kind of bugged me, then it was pretty one-note after that. There's also a bit of... so this is basically a superhero movie since he has a power that nobody else has, but just like that Adam Sandler movie Click I think I personally would use the power of lying WAY better than he did here, so for the whole movie I couldn't help but think about all the other cool stuff he could be doing with this power.
03.06.15	Admission	Paul Weitz	For some reason I thought this would be funny. It's mostly not, just a standard middle-of-the-road "dramedy." Not much to say about it.
03.04.15	Black Hawk Down	Ridley Scott	I'm on record as being a pretty ardent Ridley Scott critic. I think he's one of the more overrated directors working today and that basically he made two good movies 30 years ago and has been riding on that reputation since then. When I tell this to Ridley Scott fans one of the more recent movies that they bring up is Black Hawk Down. I mean it's more than a dozen years old at this point but still... it's more recent than Blade Runner. I'm about to write a big battle sequence and was in the mood for a war film so I thought now would be a good time to revisit this (I think I've only seen it once before in the theater back when it was released) and see if I'm wrong. Eh, I mean I'm not WRONG but I am a bit of an asshole about it. This is a fine movie. It's perfectly competent... It's not boring (although it is a bit exhausting since it feels like 110 of the 130 minutes is one big firefight), it's, you know, decent. Plus you get the added benefit of so many of the cast having gone on to bigger things. And so few of them are American. I never realized the dude who plays Jaime Lannister was in this! As like a sniper with a weird southern accent. There are actually a ton of weird southern accents in this. Eric Bana has the worst. And ok it's competent but this is a few years after Saving Private Ryan. I mean Band of Brothers also came out this year. How does this movie stand up to that miniseries in any way? And also the incident itself. I get a general heroism vibe from the movie but if you think about it... 19 Americans were killed, over 1,000 Somalis!? 50 to 1 sound like pretty decent k/d ratios to me. Maybe that just adds to the patriotic machismo of the movie? "Oh it was such an unfortunate incident... war truly is hell! Of course we still killed over a thousand of the fuckers in one day, but you know those poor families won't have empty caskets to bury!" Sorry if I'm being insensitive. So as you might tell I still didn't love it. I didn't hate it either though and you know it's strange but I still watch Ridley Scott's movies. I think I mostly hate-watch them these days (because they are terrible), but I must not hate them as much as other shit like Brett Ratner movies.
03.04.15	Foxcatcher	Bennet Miller	Huh. I really expected to like this, but it left me pretty flat. It was slow and seemed to meander a bit and I never felt like Carell played past his nose. Tatum and Ruffalo were good but again the story felt too loose and meandering to me. I also didn't full understand when the rift between Tatum and Carell formed. I guess that rift was supposed to motivate the end but it didn't for me so the end seemed exceedingly random and distanced. I never really felt like I understood any of the characters, although I applaud the wrestling training that both actors underwent and Carell's physical comedy made me chuckle (like when he jogs around the gym). Disappointment considering all the good stuff everybody had to say about it, but then again I had similar feelings about Capote (although I think I ended up liking that one more than this). And whatever that type of score is... the music in this seemed like every other Best Picture nominee ever. I feel like everything about this was trying pretty hard to win awards. It left me kind of bored.
03.03.15	The Daytrippers	Greg Mottola	I figured since I'm a fan of Mottola's recent work that I should go back and watch his first movie. Wow what a wave of 90s indie-ness. Parker Posey, grainy film stock, lots of hand-held. It feels like the birth of Miramax all over again. As for the movie: the cast is good, the story is alright... it's just SO indie. Low budget... some of the ADR doesn't match well at all, even the titles... everything screams new York film school student to me. I guess the raw feeling of the rough edges are an artifact of a time and place in the story of film: that 90s explosion of indie films after Sex, Lies & Videotape when being a hit at Sundance all of a sudden meant something.
03.02.15	The Lone Ranger	Gore Verbinski	This was about an hour too long. I think if it was 90 minutes a lot of the problems I had with it would feel minimized but since it's two and a half hours long and refuses to end then all the generic tired story and CG action sequences in the world can't make it any better. Yawn.
02.26.15	Begin Again	John Carney	I liked Once more than I thought I would when I finally watched it and I heard this was good. It has a bit more budget, a good cast and a similar musical vibe. I didn't like it as much as Once though. Kiera Knightley bugs me a tiny bit and although I usually really like Mark Ruffalo he's kind of all over the place in this. The music didn't engage me because I felt like the performances were clearly pre-taped and maybe not by Knightley. I mean it's not a bad movie but... oh I also wish Adam Levine wasn't in this. I really don't like that guy and his character's not very sympathetic which makes it even worse. Meh.
02.25.15	The Interview	Evan Goldberg, Seth Rogen	This was ok. I liked This is the End a lot more, probably due to the cast. Franco goes a bit full-retard, but Randall Park is really great here. Good music.
02.24.15	Whiplash	Damien Chazelle	A few qualifiers here: I've been a fan of J.K. Simmons since he burned a swastika into Beecher's ass on Oz, and the drums are my favorite instrument. I don't claim to know how to play them but I do love their sound and find that they are the most natural element to any song for me. With that in mind, I really liked this movie. Yes I don't really buy it as realistic and I can't tell if the jazz is legit or whatever... but J.K. Simmons playing a hard-ass prick and a movie filled with drum beats? Shit... The whole last 20 minutes of the film (end credits included) I was in heaven. Now that I'm thinking back on the plot... it seems pretty thin. But whatever, it doesn't matter. Simmons yelling "That's not my tempo!" is great in any reality.
02.19.15	Men, Women & Children	Jason Reitman	Ugh. This is a movie about how cellphones and the Internet are ruining the world and how parents just don't understand their children. I guess Jason Reitman is 75 all of a sudden? This movie seems so old and curmudgeonly to me... I feel like it's maybe trying to be this generation's Fast Times at Ridgemont High or something but Reitman's distaste for humor and joy taint the whole movie in lame melancholia. I don't need to see another movie about depressed people making poor choices even if there are a bunch of floating screens showing me how they write out texts and facebook posts. I feel like it checks more boxes on the indie trope list than the Skeleton Twins did. There was a moment when I was like "Well this must be almost over" and I checked the time and I had 45 minutes left. That's half the movie. And you know what makes things worse? I fundamentally agree with a lot of what this movie has to say and it's STILL unbearable.
02.17.15	Paul	Greg Mottola	I remember this movie getting pretty mediocre reviews and not making any money when it came out. Was that due to unrealistically high expectations or something? I found this to be a perfectly decent and pleasant experience. It's a great cast, it's pretty funny, there's a little bit of heart in there... what's not to like? The only thing that felt odd to me was that the movie was a bit too comedic to give real weight to the action beats. I completely buy Bill Hader and Joe Lo Truglio as inept government agents but I don't really buy them as killers. And if it wasn't Kristen Wiig I might have a problem with the new-to-cursing gag but since she's so dreamy I accepted it with open arms. Fun solid movie here!
02.14.15	Sin City: A Dame to Kill For	Robert Rodriguez, Frank Miller	So... I think the first Sin City movie is Robert Rodriguez's best work. I also really really love the Sin City books. So why is this movie so boring? Now I'm afraid to watch the first movie again because maybe it was just like this but it doesn't hold up? I don't know... it feels like the first movie presented this careful and faithful vision of an original take on noir tropes where this one feels like a tired lazy recitation of those same tropes but with no excitement or originality. And I don't really know what made one good and one bad, but I had a hard time getting through this one whereas I couldn't get enough of the first one. Maybe the source stories weren't as strong? There were certainly some books that were better than others I remember. Another thing I think is that for all his grandstanding about moving fast and getting his actors in and out quickly, Robert Rodriguez is not that great of a director so these performances all seem flat and disinterested. This stands in stark comparison with Chef. You know Robert Downey Jr. worked on that movie for a half of a day but he still manages to make a mark on the film with an eccentric character and a funny scene. So why are Chris Meloni and Jermey Piven even in this movie? They are so totally forgettable that they might as well not take up the time. And how can you have Rosario Dawson in bondage gear and not make her look hot? And Jessica Alba is all but fucking the stage but she's wearing more clothes than a lawyer, yet Eva Green is naked in every scene but using such a terrible accent that her boobs don't even matter. I also attribute this to Rodriguez. I think he's kind of incapable of filming a scene with any sort of sex appeal. So anyway, pretty disappointed with this one. This along with Machete Kills kind of seals Rodriguez's fate for me.
02.14.15	Chef	Jon Favreau	Showed this to Molly. She liked it, I liked it. This is definitely a feel good movie for me. Great food, great music, everyone looks like they're having fun. Favreau, Leguizamo and Cannavale seem like dudes that are fun to hang out with... Again the supporting cast is incredible. Really good time.
02.13.15	Birdman	Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu	I think this is a movie that I admire more than enjoy. So many things about it are undeniably great: the meta casting, the technical execution of these long carefully-choreographed scenes, the super meta story, Everyone's but most notably Michael Keaton's performance, the interesting jazz drum score, the ambiguous ending... I like it all, yet a lot of the actual watching of the movie kind of bugged me. Sure there were some moments like Ed Norton's look after giving a good line reading where I was into it, but mostly it was a lot of claustrophic camerawork and interior mopiness that I was kind of distanced from. But you know... the layers of meaning in the script and the performances and make-up and carefully-constructed final scene are really remarkable... again it just didn't hit me in a visceral way.
02.10.15	Boyhood	Richard Linklater	It took me a while to finally sit down and watch this. Along with the critical praise I'd heard stuff like how long it was, how slow it was, and how nothing really happens. Not exactly a lite affair. So I really liked this a lot. Yes it's quite long (somewhere around when the kid hit a growth spurt I thought the movie was almost over only to check the time and find another 90 minutes ahead of me) and at first the unique method in which the movie was made (basically they shot a week every year for twelve years) felt like a gimmick to me but soon it became clear that the movie was just as much about time as it is about this family. Most of the scenes in this movie would be cut out of "normal" movies for being too plain or ordinary but in this movie these plain ordinary moments are given greater significance by their placement in time. Patricia Arquette is good but it's really Ethan Hawke's performance that stands out to me. Granted, his part is a little more showy, getting to be the "cool" dad with his car and girlfriends but it's really his growth, both literal and figural, that's something unique and special. He also gets these really meaty "this is fatherhood" scenes with the kids whereas I think Arquette's role is more of a constant presence. You see her grow too but her story is kind of overshadowed by her surroundings. Which husband she's with, who her friends are, where she's living. I do think that if the same movie were done with make-up then it wouldn't really work. Seeing the kids grow and the returning cast age is critical to making these mundane things work but shit, man. they WORK. So who cares. Timely cues like music and fashion and world events also do a clear but subtle job of presenting the flow of time but it's on such a gradual scale that somehow makes it more interesting. We've seen movies flash ahead 20, 30 years to completely different eras but to slide into the next year then the next then the next and realize that there were still singular events that defined that year is really cool. And the plot succumbs to time as well. You'll see a scene like with the bullies in the bathroom or the high schoolers in the unfinished house... normally those scenes would have some expository or plot-related purpose and I did catch myself feeling like "oh this is where the disaster's gonna strike" but then they are gone just like childhood friends in a city you moved away from or a husband you want nothing more to do with. I DO wish they had somehow found their way back to the tunnel at the very beginning of the movie and showed the graffiti from the first scene at the end of the movie. That would've been cool. Maybe they'll do that the next time someone spends a dozen years making a movie. Anyway, I've gone on about this one enough. I was pretty surprised by how much I liked it. notes tomorrow same liquor store clerk as Dazed
02.09.15	The Visitor	Tom McCarthy	Another filling in the blanks movie. I really like Richard Jenkins and this is an interesting movie where he loosens up by listening to Fela Kuti and playing the drum. I would've loved this movie if the whole last half didn't get a little message-y with the American deportation policy... but I guess the movie can't be ALL good times. So it kind of lost me at the end but there were still some good parts. Worth Watching I'd say.
02.07.15	River's Edge	Tim HUnter	it's been a long time since I've last seen this and I think I added it to my queue when looking up Keanu's imdb and remembered that he was in this along with Crispin Glover and Daniel Roebuck. It's weird to see this after Bully. I think Bully was more closely adapted from real life events (wiki says this screenplayed was inspired by a real life crime where the killer bragged about it to his friends and showed a bunch of people but it still took the cops 2 days to find the body) but the movies are damn similar both in subject matter and in theme. I guess to a certain extent you could throw Alpha Dog in this same niche. I wonder if every generation will now get a movie like this. It is fun to see a bunch of young actors and be able to go back once their careers have all taken off and watch them like this. The movie still works for me. Especially any of the scenes with the body itself. Seeing her white and naked and super realistically dead for the whole movie then seeing her made up for the funeral is really creepy and effective for me. And Dennis Hopper... Blue Velvet is certainly the movie that comes to mind when I think about Dennis Hopper acting crazy but people might forget that he was also choosing roles like this one and Texas Chainsaw 2 to really cement that perception. Still creepy almost 30 years later. I'm old.
02.06.15	Oldboy	Spike Lee	Sometimes you just get sick of staring at your Netflix instant queue and pick something without subtitles. Eh... I wanted to see this out of morbid curiosity. It's not very good but I can't really tell why. For me it's so close to the Korean film (never read the manga so who knows how it was adapted) that any scenes worth a damn just reminded me of the original. Maybe for someone who's never seen the original this might not be as bad, but then again why watch this when the original's right there? There's really nothing here worth watching that wasn't in the original... except the subtitles I guess.
02.04.15	Green Lantern	Martin Campbell	Finally catching up on this one just because the latest Lego Batman game had a ton to do with the green lantern stuff and I know 0% of that lore. Yes there are some pretty huge logic holes and leaps but I have to say - maybe this is because my expectations were so low due to several years' worth of hate - this wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I wish they would've used a practical neckpiece for the suit but really... I don't think this was any worse than either of the Thor movies. I mean it's still not GOOD, but you know... not completely terrible either.
02.03.15	Batman: The Movie	Leslie H. Martinson	I bought the blu ray set of the series because I really loved the show as a kid. I remember one summer in the late 80s where it was in syndication and they showed two episodes twice a nice so I got fairly obsessed and watched every episode (save one, which I fell asleep through!). I even had a running list of "Holy"s that I added to every episode until my mom got me the official bat-book which had a printed list in the back. So it's been quite fun to go back and watch the series again now and I'm showing Molly since she's never seen them. Anyway we just finished the first season so we watched this before starting the second season to stay true to chronology. As such, this note will kind of be equal parts show and movie. I will say there are some notable differences with the movie. The intro for one with these super-saturated spotlights for each actor rather than the animated credits sequence of the show. They also never play the main riff from the show... My dvd is from Fox and my show blus are Warners so if those were the rights holders back then then that might explain it although they used the same sets and all the same cast and same producer so who knows. There's also less on-screen fight graphics (you know, the ZZZAM! and BIFF!) and when the movie does use them they don't take up the whole screen. My hunch is that they thought the movie would be on the big screen so viewers could read the words easier... although not having the words take up the whole screen kind of shows how sloppy the choreography is. But whatever, you certainly don't watch this movie for the amazing fight choreography. It's still a ton of fun. I think Adam West is my favorite Bruce Wayne. The scene where he's on a date sipping milk from a brandy snifter is hilarious to me. You'd never see George Clooney pulling that off. You'd think Cesar Romero would shave his mustache for the movie though. I mean I can see if you're working 3 or 4 days a month on the show and nobody's gonna notice anyhow who cares... but for the movie!? So this was great fun. I'm having a blast re-watching this stuff.
02.01.15	The Skeleton Twins	Craig Johnson	Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig are good in this... but the best parts are when they are hanging out and having fun together. I get that they wanted to do some "serious" acting and I guess now everybody knows they can (although Wiig's shown some depth before in stuff like Whip It) but... I still just want a movie where they hang out and have fun the whole time. This was a tad too indie for me, and by that I mean too much dreariness, acoustic guitar, and suicide talk. I think there's some checklist for Sundance screeners where they have to have at least two of like 20 indie tropes in order to be selected. This one has a good half dozen but I'm too tired to list them. It wasn't bad, just a total bummer.
01.28.15	A Most Wanted Man	Anton Corbijn	Another understated John Le Carre adaptation sort of along the lines of Tinker Tailor but without the period stuff and just an actual spy story rather than a mole hunt. This made me miss Philip Seymour Hoffman. He's excellent in this. Everyone else is ok but he's excellent. This also has an ending with a very specific tone that just a few other films have and it's really good. Anton Corbijn's narrative career is shaping up to be very surprising to me. Both this and The American are severely understated and I feel show a confidence with the script that many other directors (especially music video directors) don't have.
01.26.15	Only Lovers Left Alive	Jim Jarmusch	So a weird thing has happened. I was in no rush to see this and still haven't seen The Limits of Control. I think the reason why is twofold: 1) I like knowing there are Jim Jarmush movies out there that I haven't seen; and 2) I'm afraid they won't be good. Jarmusch is one of if not the only director who has never made a bad movie (in my opinion of course, as is every other word in this journal). Even movies like Ghost Dog and Broken Flowers that are not what I expected going in have sit with me and grown and yielded some fruit (like all that amazing Ethiopian music in Broken Flowers that I ended up listening to for a year after seeing it and Henry Silva and all those hilarious old mob guys in Ghost Dog). So I don't want to sit down and watch Eyes Wide Shut, you know? I don't want to watch Intolerable Cruelty or Ladykillers. I don't want to watch Punch Drunk Love. And who knows maybe Limits of Control is bad but not this. This movie takes a bunch of stuff I'm not into (dirge-y noise rock, lack of plot, vampires at this point, Tom Hiddleston) and gives me a movie that's great. I mean yes it still has all those things but served up in a way that I found interesting and engaging. And that last shot is so fantastic. To me the coolest thing about vampires is having time. Not having to worry about growing old means you can do whatever the fuck you want. This movie fully explores that(on a low budget of course, I'd like to see an HBO series where we follow the same guy through different eras and each episode is a different time and place like Vienna with Mozart, Paris with Lautrec, new York with the Ramones and Bambaataa), constantly fixating on the age of things, how quickly technology becomes outdated, and holding onto some sort of timeless style. And the notion of these vamps being artists, expressing through the ages under the guise of more historically renowned figures like Chopin or Shakespeare is wildly romantic. This is like THE goth movie of this generation right? This is the Hunger or Crow for whatever era this is. Hiddleston is basically straight out of Sandman comics (from what I've seen of covers, I never read that series). So yeah. I liked this one. Not sure I'll be watching it every week but I loved watching it once.
01.24.15	Win Win	Tom McCarthy	Filling in another one that slipped through the cracks. I still need to see The Visitor but I thought The Station Agent was quite charming and this was pretty solid too. Of course Tom McCarthy has to get over my hatred of the Scott Templeton character from The Wire so that's kind of like this movie is extra good for me to like it just a little bit. I'm mostly joking. Aside from the ending where all troubles seem solved just by taking a job I didn't know paid that well, I thought this was a really endearing drama with a super solid cast. I also think that McCarthy gets some of the best performances out of Bobby Cannavale who otherwise can fall kind of flat for me. It's kind of like Mark Wahlberg and David O. Russell in that regard. Good movie.
01.23.15	The Equalizer	Antoine Fuqua	This wasn't half bad. I'll be honest: I was surprised when I saw Fuqua's name on this. There's a lot to like about this. A couple stylistic choices irked me and a few song choices kind of bugged me but those are pretty minor nitpicks. Denzel's still badass when he wants to be, a home depot is the perfect setting for an action sequence, and poor Marton Csokas probably has an honorary degree from the Russian mafia for as much as he's played one. It's a little bit of a shame that this will be COMPLETELY overshadowed by John Wick for me. It's kind of cool to think that Equalizin' Denzel is out there trolling craigslist but that's nothing compared to knowing John muthafuckin' Wick is out and about hanging out at assassin bars and looking for pound puppies.
01.21.15	A Million Ways to Die in the West	Seth MacFarlane	Well... I think maybe that a Western is so fun to make... out there in Monument Valley riding horses and building a huge set to play around in... that it's not so bad that the movie doesn't turn out well? I mean I'm sure MacFarlane would've preferred another Ted-level hit but... it sure looks like everyone's having fun in those costumes on those sets. It's just a shame that it's not funny or thrilling or epic or any of the things that a Western comedy could or should be. I did chuckle a few times but mostly I just sat there acknowledging the flat jokes as they ambled past and waiting for the next one. Get along, little dogie.
01.20.15	Fallen	Gregory Hoblit	I always considered movies like Ricochet, Virtuosity, and this to be "early Denzel" but really Philadelphia (which I consider the dividing line between "early Denzel" and "prime Denzel") was 93 so really this is deep in the heart of "prime Denzel" territory (Training Day was only 3 years after this, bringing in "modern Denzel"). This astounds me. I could've sworn seeing this within a year or two of Ricochet (which was 91) but 98 means I was in college. 98 means right after (or before) shooting this John Goodman cut his hair for The Big Lebowski. That just doesn't computer for me... Anyhow, I remembered this being a solid thriller. For whatever reason this and The Hidden stuck in my mind as being good but really I think I just like the idea that a killer can move between host bodies. Hey what do you know, I also like The Thing! So even though there's Beck music on the soundtrack and it seems 6 years too late in my memory, I still enjoyed this rewatch. James Gandolfini (in a terrible mustache) and Aida Turturro have supporting roles (which I would say it was cool to see them before they became notable to me but holy shit The Sopranos starts the next year so whatever) and I didn't realize the killer at the beginning was Elias Koteas and there are plenty of really 90s things going on with the typography and wardrobe and whatnot.
01.19.15	The Hangover: Part III	Todd Phillips	Todd Phillips catch-up complete. This one was different I'll give it that although it was basically the Ken Jeong show much like how American Pie became the Seann William Scott show. It was also basically like an action movie or something? I don't know how much intentional humor was in there. I chuckled once and remember it ("I love cocaine!"). These really petered out huh... didn't hurt any careers none.
01.18.15	The Hangover: Part II	Todd Phillips	More Todd Phillips catchup. This, as expected, was pretty bland. The same jokes in a new setting pretty much. I think I chuckled once but can't remember when.
01.15.15	This Is Where I Leave You	Shawn Levy	The huge-ensemble-family-reunion genre is another one that for some reason I like even though I can't think of a single specific example of a good one. I wasn't a huge Big Chill fan, only liked half of that Jodie Foster one with Robert Downey Jr., The Family Stone sucked... I guess Royal Tenenbaums was a good one... so there you go I like a genre because of one movie. Anyway, the cast here is incredible and I really thought that even with Shawn Levy directing it would have something to like in it... and you know it does have occasional moments where you see the potential but mostly it's tired expected stuff. Boo hoo I guess I'll have to settle for Rose fucking Byrne. Boo Hoo Timothy fucking Olyphant's still in love with me. Boo Hoo Kathryn fucking Hahn wants to have sex with me. Life is so complicated!! Maybe with a better soundtrack or in the hands of a more emotional director this could've gone somewhere but it didn't. Oh well, maybe the next one will.
01.15.15	Inherent Vice	Paul Thomas Anderson	Huh. So this is definitely a movie where my thoughts and opinions need time to settle. There is SO much plot going on that I didn't completely follow it and will probably need to see it again at some point to pick up more nuance and detail. That said, one of the major reasons I had in starting this site was to record initial impressions and see if/how they change across multiple viewings, so here are my fragmented thoughts as of now: -LOTS of plot. Too much plot? Only time will tell I guess. I'm trying to think back to the first time I saw Big Lebowski and L.A. Confidential and wondering if I was as lost then as I am now. -Very Lebowski but without the Coen-esque humor. I can't help but compare Phoenix with Bridges which is unfair but still inevitable. -The humor is very subtle and buried pretty deep. Doc looking at baby Amethyst's picture was really the only indication to me that the movie was supposed to be funny at all instead of just a weird historical glimpse at a time/place of doping hippies and wolfman developers and bigfoot cops. I'm suspecting much of the humor is novelistic in that it's hard to come through on screen. The cast. -The cast is STACKED including some "glad they're in this" moments like Michael K. Williams and Benicio Del Toro. Really there are so many parts that I was seeing new familiar faces pop up throughout the whole movie. I did notice Belladonna in a small role where she shared the frame with Maya Rudolph and I wonder what she thinks of PTA hiring porn actresses... GOSSIP -Vitamin C by Can has been in my head since the title card. For no other reason I can thank this film for that. -Why is this two and a half hours? and where were they in the last scene. Driving somewhere? Am I supposed to know? What happened with the boat? How did DOJ get it? And what was up with the dentists, looney bin, and boat anyway? Were they all connected? Did drug cartels give all their businesses the same name back then or was it a coincidence or was it a joke? And... oh never mind.
01.14.15	Fury	David Ayer	I saw the poster for this at Jarrette's house and it made me want to see it. The poster might be the best part of the movie. I don't think this was bad... it just wasn't as good as it should've been. I like the idea of focusing on a tank crew and the tank-to-tank action was the stuff I liked best but all of the other stuff seemed much too familiar for me. I didn't feel a unique voice at work but rather it seemed like everyone had seen a bunch of war movies and acted like their supposed to act. A lot of the dialogue was pretty arch again seemed bordering on mimicry to me. The production and effects and everything were great - I don't think I'd call this a bad movie - but again I was hoping for more. Oh, and I'm pretty sick of Walking Dead and True Blood actors showing up in everything. They annoyed me on their shows and now they're annoying me in movies. Gah!
01.14.15	Wild	Jean-Marc Vallee	It was good to hang out with Jarrette again like it was 6 years ago. I also had mild interest in this movie... I don't really know why. For some reason I think I like movies where people go out into nature and be alone but I'm not sure I've ever liked any. The nearest I can get is All is Lost which I think was excellent. Anyway, this had too many flashbacks for my taste. I guess it might be what differentiates it from a movie like Into the Wild (which was more what I was expecting) and... I mean I can see academy members voting for all the dramatic shit that we see in glimpses and whatnot... and they used one of my favorite Portishead songs... but still I was left pretty disinterested by it all. Yes, even with the nudity.
01.12.15	Night Shift	Ron Howard	An early Ron Howard that's always slipped through the cracks for me. I guess this one stands out as Michael Keaton's break-out role as well as maybe Henry Winkler playing against type (he was still actively playing the Fonzie role in 82 right?) but for me it's mostly cool because of more location photography around Times Square in the heyday of its sleaze era. That and pre-Cheers Shelley Long as a prostitute. She doesn't do nudity or anything (ok she's in panties for one scene) but stands out to me as a real actress along with Winkler and Keaton. This is maybe one of those movies that was probably funny when it came out. It didn't hold much humor for me but I did enjoy the story, the scenery, and the performances. It kind of makes me want to work at the city morgue... except without all that pimping.
01.12.15	The Trip to Italy	Michael Winterbottom	So... I guess this is a show over in the UK? I don't really know anything about that... all I know is that this pseudo-real life thing between Steve Coogan, Rob Bryden, and Michael Winterbottom is fantastically entertaining for me. It was funny in Tristram Shandy, loose and conversational in the first Trip, and continues on here. I feel like I'm hanging out with movie nerds as they get on each other's nerves. It's insanely watchable. I could do with 6 more of these. Although I'm not sure tracking down the show would do much for me since I guess I've now seen all the episodes edited into a movie? That's a weird way to do things...
01.09.15	Due Date	Todd Phillips	playing catch up here with some Todd Phillips comedies. I'm not a huge fan but sometimes he does catch some lightning. This was not one of those times. I feel like since Steve Martin pulled off playing a mean guy in a few comedies that it's been a viable character archetype for some reason and I am not a fan. Unless they are expertly toned (like Martin in Planes, Trains, & Automobiles) or really over the top I don't think it works. This plays like a not-as-good version of PT&A and doesn't bring much to the table
01.09.15	Men in Black 3	Barry Sonnenfeld	So... I remember liking the first MIB quite a bit. I remember nothing about the second one except it was called MIIB and Biz Markie played an alien working for the post office. Obviously I was in no hurry to see the third one but now that I have I'm glad I did. It hit the spot for a fun popcorn movie that didn't insult me... and what's Barry Sonnenfeld been up to? his imdb lists a bunch of tv movies... did he piss someone off or something? Or was this a huge flop? I could do with more of his wide-angle symmetrical style in the cinematic landscape. Anyway, I enjoyed this well enough. Nothing bad to say about it... didn't love it but it was a quick 100 minutes that kept my attention and that can't be discounted. Good time.
01.06.15	The Wire	Various	HBO remastered The Wire into widescreen HD and put it up just after Christmas. David Simon wrote a solid blog article about the history and process of the remaster and ultimately gave the newly-framed version of the show his blessing. I don't know why they didn't just do an HD remaster of the original 4:3 framing but whatever... this gave me the perfect excuse to watch the show again. Of course, the extra stuff on the edges of the screen and the high definition quickly became forgotten as I got absorbed with the characters and story so it didn't really matter, but I will say that the shot compositions never looked clunky or messy and watching in 16:9 gave me the same experience as watching in 4:3 did a few years ago. I don't think there's a way I can match the length or detail of what I wrote the last time I watched this show, but I do want to say a couple things and reiterate how much I love this series and consider it my favorite TV show of all time. New things I hadn't noticed before: -Savino pops up in Season 5. I obviously saw that it was him when Omar pays him a visit but he's out and about with Marlo's crew in the episodes previous as well -While I still didn't see the reporter from season 3 (who Bunny talks out of writing a story about Hamsterdam), I did notice that one of the Baltimore Sun characters in season 5 had a tiny scene earlier in season 3 so there was a recurrence there which I find awesome. -I think they might have gotten some sponsorship money from Pepsi in later seasons. There's an inordinate amount of diet pepsi on screen for a while. It's a shame... that and the flashback in the pilot are the only things that break the illusion of reality for me. It's still way better than any other tv show out there and it's just my personal hunch but still... why so much pepsi!? -I know from the commentaries that they were originally going to make it more explicit that Randy was Cheese's son but this time through I caught Cheese's given name on the board once. It may be visible a few more times but it's cool that astute viewers could still pick up the connection from the last names. this time around my favorite theme song was season 1 and least favorite was season 4. I think season 3 is my favorite, with the penultimate episode there probably being my favorite single hour of the show. So many things culminate in that one hour that encapsulate the previous three seasons... Stringer and Avon's last scene together is amazing. Bub's last meeting in season 5 might be the best acting in the show. I felt sad as it was coming to an end but you know... it's still out there and looking better than ever... it's not going anywhere and I bet I watch it again in another few years.
01.03.15	22 Jump Street	Phil Lord, Christopher Miller	This was funny. It did indulge perhaps too much with the meta humor but that really paid off at the end I thought with a string of funny jokes. Channing Tatum is surprisingly likable in these movies and his scenes with Zook were pretty hilarious I thought. Also there was a classic joke in here involving Creed that really got me. Ice Cube also got to be funny... just an all-around solid comedy. Can't argue with that.
01.01.15	X-Men: Days of Future Past	Bryan Singer	Finally saw this too. I heard it was good but thought it had some problems... I think the casting was the best part. Days of Future Past was released in the time that I was reading comics so I remember reading them when they came out... so there's really no reason for me not to love this movie but I found some things really odd and clunky. All of the original cast were more or less cameos... the future sentinels were typical CG crap design. The prototype sentinels looked better but they still looked like futuristic 90s designs rather than 70s. Really all of the 70s stuff was kind of hackneyed fake movie-70s stuff... Maybe I'm being too harsh on the design because I'm not completely sure why this fell flat for me. Another problem I had was Bryan Singer's style. I really loved The Usual Suspects but I don't know that he can really direct action that well and his taste in casting is a little biased? And why the fuck has Colossus still not had one freakin line in an x-men movie? Anyway... the plot kind of got long in the tooth for me except for the one part that I wanted to go longer (the epilogue). What a wasted opportunity to not go into the alternate history that they just created a little more AND... spoiler alert... they changed Apocalypse into a wimpy looking girl/boy. That dude is HUGE in the comics! And why are there already 4 horsemen? How can they do Apocalypse and not do the awesome angel/death/archangel storyline! Bah! OK fanboyism over. I liked parts of this, like quicksilver's one goddamn scene, but really fox's x-men universe seems to be collapsing rather than expanding, and Hugh Jackman needs to lay off the gym a tiny bit. his topless shots were so veiny and bulgy he looked like a giant penis.
12.29.14	The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies	Peter Jackson	Well at least this is now done. I don't know... the whole trilogy has been missing the spark that the Lord of the Rings had for me. Again, this was lots of action between characters I don't really know that well and have a hard time telling apart. There were a few cool parts like getting to see characters who are supposed to be really powerful and badass actually be powerful and badass but it still felt really light on story. I guess I shouldn't say that the movie is light on story because things do happen, I maybe mean that the story is light. Mostly it's the titular battle which is fun enough to watch but pales in comparison to Helm's Deep or Pelenor Fields. And for a movie called The Hobbit I think Martin Freeman had like 20 minutes of screen time. But like I said, at least this is now done. It's not a bad movie I guess... and I'm sure someone will do a fan edit condensing all three movies down to one really badass 4-hour film.
12.28.14	Alan Partridge	Declan Lowney	AKA Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa. I haven't really seen much if any of Steve Coogan's Alan Partridge stuff but I'm aware that it's a long and career-making character that has been through a lot. I figured this might be a good taste without having to commit to a long british tv series and I wasn't disappointed. It has the production values of a movie, a tight script with tons of mostly funny jokes, Colm Meaney plays a great straight man and it was a compact 90 minute trip. I'm glad I finally got around to watching it.
12.27.14	Guardians of the Galaxy	James Gunn	Finally got to see this and really enjoyed it (like everyone else). The humor helped but also... Gunn really pulled off a vibe a smidge closer to Star Wars than Fifth Element. Lots of cool art and world design (I have no clue how much of that stuff came from the comics) and the script moves fast and is packed with detail. I liked the tone of this way more than the Thor movies and, as always, am anxious to find out how everything will eventually connect.
12.23.14	Drive Hard	Brian Trenchard-Smith	John Cusack and Thomas Jane in a Brian Trenchard-Smith movie... Weird roles for both but I bet they had fun. The movie has a real awkward tone (for me anyway) where it's kind of trying to be funny but also action-y although it's clear that the budget keeps all that stunt driving from being covered to the point of being exciting. I don't think I could call this a good movie but it wasn't a bad thing to watch in the middle of the night.
12.19.14	Hell Baby	Thomas Lennon, Robert Ben Garant	the Reno 911! guys (AKA A couple of dudes from The State) made this horror comedy. It's pretty funny. not great but not bad either. Rob Cordry is surprisingly good as the straight man and there's like the longest nude scene in non-porn history with Riki Lindhome which is pretty cool.
12.18.14	Escape Plan	Mikael Hafstrom	Who doesn't like a good prison movie? It might be a tiny stretch to call this "good" but it's probably better than Lock-Up which I think is Stallone's last prison movie. You know... I think I have a weird curiosity about Schwarzeneggar's post-gubernatorial career. I wouldn't call any of these movies good but he's working with interesting directors and they all attract pretty solid supporting casts and... I don't know... something about them I find comforting even if I don't like them. weird. anyway, After binging on Homeland I found the shadow complex design kind of laughable but whatever... I'm a sucker for a prison escape even if it is filled with guards in weird black masks and crazy designs that put Oz to shame.
12.17.14	Grudge Match	Peter Segal	This is the Raging Bull vs. Rocky movie. It's about a half hour too long and pretty tepid dramatically but whatever... I feel like DeNiro either put on or took off weight which must be really hard at his age. Um... not much else to say!
12.06.14	Tammy	Ben Falcone	I saw this right before getting hit with the flu so it's been more than a week. Not what I'd call good really... at all... way too much on the unlikeable side. I get that difficult people can be funny but it's unrelenting here and they never got the tone right. It's a nice story that McCarthy's husband wrote and directed this but it just doesn't work. No laughs were had. And then the ipad was my savior for flu week. I watched Bojack Horseman (kind of funny), three seasons of Scandal (I thought House of Cards was pessimistic!), and 4 seasons of Homeland (better call Saul!)
12.03.14	The Purge: Anarchy	James DeMonaco	Eh... I like how they obviously had more of a budget and went outside during the Purge but the story and most of the characters were much weaker than the first film and really... being outside makes it seem even less believable. who in their right mind would be out there just to kill someone at the risk of EASILY being killed yourself? whatever...
11.22.14	Sabotage	David Ayer	Ouch this was rough. What happened to Olivia Williams? Maybe it was just her accent and haircut but... whew. And there's a crazy cast of macho men but they're not cool-macho like Predator but more dumb macho. and I'm glad I never watched The Killing because I find that actress incredibly hard to look at and she's all over the place here. I don't know man... in many ways this felt like not a real movie to me... It's a good reminder of how easy it is for movies to completely fall apart.
11.16.14	Noah	Darren Aronofsky	Well that was a little different than I expected it to be. Especially the third act. And the first act. And part of the second act. Umm... let's see... what do I think of this... Since I'm pretty far from any sort of organized religion these days I spent most of the movie half-remembering learning the story of Noah in like 1st grade and trying to think if these names were important or something like that. Like is Na'El where we get nihilism from? And was that seed pod the same prop that they used at the end of The Fountain? These are probably not the questions Aronofsky wanted me to have but whatever... They could've been worse... like "what the fuck is a rock monster doing here?" I don't THINK I hated it... but I certainly won't be seeing this again or really thinking about it much after finishing these notes. It's interesting to watch careers develop over the years. Even movies I really respect and admire like Pi And Requiem for a Dream I don't want to watch over and over again. This is really... really really weird but I feel like The Fountain might be my fave Aronofsky movie. That surprises me... but if someone came in here and forced me to watch one of his movies RIGHT NOW it would be The Fountain. I know Requiem is better but it's such a hard movie to watch... Huh... I'm realizing right now that Aronofsky is not one of my favorite directors... I mean I like him and respect his work and all that and I certainly don't think he sucks but... I'm just in no hurry to see his movies anymore. How strange.
11.15.14	47 Ronin	Carl Rinsch	Keanu plays a half-breed in this mythical take of a real part of Japanese history. I liked the fantastical bits of it the best but also felt the movie was too lethargic for its own good. I felt like it was trying to be a samurai Pirates of the Caribbean movie but missed out on a few critical ingredients. Plus... SPOILERS... having the victorious climax of the movie immediately precede "honorable" ritual suicide kind of gives the brain mixed messages. Kind of a clunker.
11.14.14	Stretch	Joe Carnahan	This is a fun comedy/action-ish movie about a limo driver. It's very Carnahan-esque if you will... with an intricate plot, lots of speaking roles, and pretty smart plotting for the most part. I had a lot of fun with this and wonder why it wound up going straight to Netflix. It's a shame because this is a really good movie by all accounts.
11.10.14	A Serbian Film	Srdjan Spasojevic	Well that was fun... Uhh... well... I'm certainly glad I finally saw this. I had already heard about most of the shocking bits but it's still good to sit down and see the stuff in context. While there's some films I'll never do that with (The Brown Bunny, Nymphomaniac probably), this one I am. It reminds me a bit of a Breillat movie mixed with a Miike movie. The outrageousness is definitely there to draw a response but there's also a humor to it that I think, once I get over the shock, is very funny. I still don't understand exactly what the social commentary is, but I get that the producer guy is calling this art. But still... oh and also I know this is wrong but hot damn the wife was hot. I'm not saying the brother was justified or whatever but... I'd take a bathroom trip as well if you know what I mean. So there we have it. Somehow I managed to start the fest with Antichrist and end it with A Serbian Film. I feel like I should somehow thank Tim League for that. I didn't get to The Girl Next Door or whatever else ultra-disturbing movie I've managed not to see yet but oh well, there's always next year. So another year down. I think what I learned from this is that I'm too old for excess. I had a grand plan to just binge all weekend both literally and figuratively but the junk food made me sick and I had a few other things on my plate which kept me from rolling from movie to movie like I hoped. In the end I threw in an extra day but still didn't top DVRfest 2, and poor Kwaidan got sacrificed to the aspect ratio gods until some future date. Next year, no matter how much time I have, I think I'll cap it to 15 movies and enjoy myself rather than feel this pressure to outdo myself. I just wound up falling asleep. So here are the rough stats for this tenth year of my site. I've seen 18 movies in the past week, 33 in the past month, 221 in the past year, and 2701 total. That equals out to a weekly average of 2.57, a monthly average of 1.1, yearly avg of 0.61, and a total average of 0.74 movies a day. Remember when it was above 2? Those were the days. Let's see... some other notable stats: I've seen 15 Oliver Stone movies, 13 Werner Herzog films and 10 Coen brother movies (in 17 screenings). 643 Netflix movies, 337 at Alamo South Lamar, 262 from the DVR. 250 comedies, 246 dramas, and 229 docs. And thus ends another DVRfest. I'm getting pretty close to ol' Petey Bogdanovich... although I have yet to make a Last Picture Show.
11.10.14	Inside	Alexandre Bustillo, Julien Maury	So this French horror movie is about a pregnant lady being terrorized by this other lady who wants that baby. For most of this movie I was hoping against some psychological twist toward the end. With stuff like Martyrs and Haute Tension I guess I've come to think of French horror movies as having to have something weird about them. While the realism in this movie did break down in the end I was happy that she wasn't fighting herself or some bullshit like that. But still... the one cop with the nightstick really ruined it for me. Everything else I bought with movie-logic but that was too much. Aside from that though, I liked this one a lot. The make-up effects were great, the performances were nice, and they almost used enough blood. And... now for the final film of the fest. This next one played a South By I didn't attend but heard about the minute it was over and felt bad for missing the screening immediately. I heard enough about it to download as soon as it was available but it's been sitting on my hard drive unwatched for several years now. I can think of no better way to end the fest. So for my International Thriller night I started off in Australia then went to France and now I will end the evening in Serbia.
11.10.14	Razorback	Russell Mulcahy	And so we come to the last leg of the fest: International Thriller Night. A few years ago Fantastic Fest featured several Ozploitation movies in support of Mark Hartley's great doc Not Quite Hollywood. While I feel like I could do a whole weekend of Brian Trencard Smith movies that I haven't gotten around to seeing, I wanted to pick one from this country and I was shamed at this year's Fantastic Fest for having still not seen this. Thanks, Chris. Anyway, this movie is fantastic. Yes it's basically Jaws with a pig and yes the movie goes into full on slasher mode at the ending with the crazy pet food factory set lit entirely in blue but other than that this is a beautifully-shot tightly-paced horror movie with good make-up, wonderful scenery and decent performances. Really great work and it's no surprise that the director came out of music videos. It's not exactly realistic lighting but beautiful nonetheless and nobody gave Tony Scott shit for filtering the bejesus out of his movies so who cares. Really good. I'm shamed all over again that it's been on my shelf for so long without me seeing it. Next up we're going from Australia to France for another festival screening that I skipped because I'd just seen There Will Be Blood and didn't feel like fitting in one more movie.
11.10.14	Hardware	Richard Stanley	Yep, still love the fuck out of this movie. I don't think there was a movie that had more for the highschool version of me to like: post apocalypse, cybernetic hands, evil robuts, industrial music, blood and gore, hot redheads... Iggy Pop as the radio DJ... come on. Man... It still works I think although sometimes you can see the budget... but still. The depth of the world, the unique quality of the style and design... the creativity of the whole thing is really impressive both for it's time and for today. If you look at a movie like Riddick which I think is pretty comparative, you get the CG stuff but where are the extreme close-ups of hurped-up sweaty lips and robut-vision nudity? And wipperly wopperly songs? Man... the love affair continues. What a great movie. I can't wait to devour the special features on this as well. Richard Stanley's appearance at the fest proved to me that he is a fascinating storyteller and I'm sure there's a lot of stories on this disc. That will have to wait though... because tonight I'm going to try and end this fest with a bang.
11.10.14	Duck, You Sucker	Sergio Leone	Finally finally finally get to cross this off the list. Somehow I'd heard this was an overt comedy like almost slapstick. It really wasn't but it did kind of bridge the opera of Once Upon A Time in the West with the excess of Once Upon A Time in America for me. It's just a bit too long, too many explosions, too much face. Or maybe it's that faces like Eastwood and Van Cleef and Wallach and Fonda and Bronson are more interesting to look at than Rod Steiger's. In any case, this was good... probably really good compared with a lot of Italian westerns, but not as good as Leone's other stuff. Lots of explosions. lots and lots and lots of explosions. But also lots of revolution talk. For whatever reason... the sly trickery between Steiger and James Coburn didn't play for me like that between Eastwood and Wallach. I can't really say why... maybe if Good, Bad, Ugly didn't exist then I would find this great... ok... let me see if I can fit one more in before tonight's International Thrills triple feature to end the fest. I've seen this next movie before but got a Blu of it during Fantastic Fest and have been looking for an excuse to revisit it ever since.
11.10.14	Head	Bob Rafelson	There was no hope of making it through this last night. I was expecting something drugged-out and psychedelic but there is... NO plot. It's full on unadulterated from the first frame to the last hippie freakout shit. Not that that's a bad thing... just too much for 4AM. The Alamo used to show this every Christmas for their High for the Holidays series and I always wished I could go but was at home with my parents for the holiday. Furthermore I have this amazing criterion set about the BBS that I barely know anything about and have yet to crack the box on so it's fitting to include here. This is a total 60s trip of a movie that I won't even pretend to understand. What I will say is that the tone and apparent message are pretty are surprisingly complex. I think that was the point... to take something as light-hearted and manufactured for fun like The Monkees and deliver a surreal exploration of America and popular culture. It's at once playful and angry, nonsensical and message-y, a commentary on fame and a celebration of it. Of course, I also think this is the type of movie that's more fun to write and talk about than actually watch. I found it pretty hard to get through - mostly because of the whole "no plot" thing - but am really glad to have finally seen it. A great example of this is this note that you're reading right now. I'm writing it with 20 minutes left in the movie. Well Before Victor Mature comes to the party to explain everything about the black box and nothingness. Frodis? Well then. Next!
11.09.14	Let It Be	Michael Lindsay-Hogg	I'm being a bit dramatic in my lead in but seriously... I thought this was the doc where it basically showed The Beatles break up. Snippy arguments and passive aggression and outright blow-ups and all that. Maybe there's a different cut or something because what I saw was a bunch of rehearsal and studio time followed by a few semi-music videos and the famous rooftop concert. I guess the stories from that period are so famous that they've melded with the film itself? Or maybe the subtle looks and silences between cuts tell a different story and I didn't see it because I watched a bootleg copy that wasn't the best quality? Who knows. I was surprised. It's like 96% performance anyway... It was really good to finally watch this. I got into the Beatles very late and I think I've had this on my computer since the discs were re-released and the Rock Band game came out a few years ago. Even though this is the end of their professional relationship they can still play, man. The rooftop footage is just great. It's already 3:30 so there's no way I'm making it through the next one but I want to start it just to make the triple feature official. The Alamo used to play this every year around Christmas time and I've never seen it even though I loved their show as a kid. Time to hit the DVD shelf and pull down...
11.09.14	Once	John Carney	I think this played South By the first year I went and I missed it and heard it was great but the singer/songwriter-ness of it always kept it pretty low in the queue. Now that it's been made into a musical and a tv show I thought it would be a nice fit with a few other music movies I have on deck. It's pretty much what I expected although I have to say the music is really good. Considering it's really not my type of music I wasn't annoyed or bored by any of it and found a few songs genuinely enjoyable. So for someone who normally likes this type of music I can see them being blown away. I did quite like the ending. Not to spoil it or anything (although it is getting close to 10 years old) but it's not what I expected and that made the emotion that much more resonant and complex. It reminded me a bit of Lost in Translation's ending where you don't really know what you want from the two characters but you know you want SOMETHING and sometimes all life affords is one more whisper in the ear. This movie is really quite lovely... and I'm such a sucker for unlikely bands making a success. The Commitments is one of the best movies about that I think. A Fish Story. Hell, Eddie and the Cruisers a little bit... The whole sequence with the band in the studio in this movie is also quite great. sniffles... ok on to the next. With this movie I've just seen love blossom. Now I'm going to watch it die.
11.09.14	The Italian Connection	Fernando Di Leo	Ever since QT6 I've tracked down a decent number of Di Leo gangster movies and liked most of them. I have a couple box sets on my shelf even but since they are now readily available to me I haven't gotten around to seeing them. This is the last of the first box set that I haven't seen and it's been sitting on my shelf for years now. Time to fix that! So... I've come to expect certain things from a Di Leo movie and this does not disappoint. Beautiful women scantily clad? Check. Funky score? Check. J&B Scotch? Check. Sleazy low-level gangsters back stabbing each other? Double Check. I'd say what this one has that others don't is headbutts. Lots of headbutts. Actually I like whoever this main Italian actor is. He's a total gorilla guy (kind of reminds me a tiny bit of the Milano Calibro 9 guy) but really gives off sympathy as a low level pimp sacrificed to the gangster gods and running for his life. Henry Silva and Woody Strode play hitmen from America being escorted around by a smoking hot lady in a sheer shirt. In the end there's a chase/shootout that feels an hour and a half long and it doesn't really end well for anyone. It fits the oevre perfectly. I really don't think I can pick a favorite between the four movies in this box set. This, The Boss, Mr. Scarface, and Milano Calibro 9 are all amazing. Once again I have no good idea why I didn't watch this earlier... but that's what this fest is all about! I'll have to crack the other boxset soon. I'm sure those are good as well although they are lesser known to me. Anyway, looking at what I have left I think tonight will be a triple feature of music films from radically places, but first it's time to put some time in with the girlfriend and not act like I've been holing myself up all weekend watching movies and eating junk food.
11.09.14	A Town Called Panic	Stephane Aubier, Vincent Patar	I was sorry to miss this when it played Fantastic Fest a few years ago and seeing the Christmas special at this year's fest reminded me that I should track it down and give it a watch. I'm glad I did. This is a Belgian stop-motion movie about a cowboy, and Indian and a Horse and the various adventures that they get into. It's all very creative and surreal and cute and you can't help but love every second of it. There is so much to love in here... from the horse pianos to the fish-mom's obsession with waffles to the robut penguin scientists to the weird horse ballet interlude. So great. Next up is a little break followed by a night of extremes.
11.09.14	Night Nurse	William A. Wellman	Kwaidan! Well, two minutes into Kwaidan I discovered that TCM's broadcast of the movie was in both letterbox and pillarbox... and that it was almost three hours long. So I swapped it out for this which was another movie that AFS played that I felt bad for missing. It was half as long as Kwaidan and I still fell asleep. I'm old! Finishing it up this morning, I really liked this one. Some of the plot resolution is hurried and painfully convenient but it's also oddly brutal which I liked. This is a great example of a pre-Hayes code movie in that it contains some surprisingly risqu? moments like Stanwyck in her unmentionables and a pre-mustache Clark Gable beating up women. Plus casual mention of bootleggers and hospital practices date the film in a wonderfully nostalgic way. I guess back then bootleggers were a viable archetype because they were around and everybody saw them in their dapper suits! And there's this unabashed hatred of ethics that goes on... I don't know if maybe the medical industry was pretty unreliable before the A.M.A. was formed (whenever it was formed) or what but these goddamned ethics really get Barbara down! She's unbelievably beautiful and sexy in this by the way. Ouch. So this was great. I do with it were about fifteen minutes longer and had a real ending but whatever... not bad for an early talkie. Not bad at all! Next up... I'm on the fence about watching Kwaidan like that or renting the criterion disc and that's the last movie on the DVR so I think I'll change formats and watch a movie that should make for an absolutely perfect Sunday matinee.
11.08.14	The House That Dripped Blood	Peter Duffell	This anthology revolves around a single house that, according to the real estate agent who talks directly to the audience at the very end (spoiler alert), reflects those that live in it. Actually the only thing that all four stories have in common are that they take place in A house so it might as well be the same one right? Because then you get an awesome title like The House That Dripped Blood. I ended up liking this one the most out of all 4 british horror films this weekend. All four stories have something to like (Denholm Elliot, Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, and a great performance by Jon Pertwee who plays an old pro horror actor). Yes Christopher Lee's story got a little slow for me but it ended strong as did all the rest. So that ends the Amicus double feature although for the midnight movie (ok 2AM movie) I have one more anthology to watch. This one recently played at the Marchesa and it's been on my list for a while so I felt especially guilty for missing a 35mm screening of it. Let's hope I don't fall completely asleep for...
11.08.14	Torture Garden	Freddie Francis	I'm a tad more versed in Amicus than I am in Hammer but I'm still not exactly an expert. When I saw these coming on TCM before Halloween I thought they'd be a fun addition to this fest and I was right. This one is structured around a carnival attraction where Burgess Meredith plays a character named Dr. Diablo who, for five pounds, exposes patrons to a figure of Atropos and her shears of fate. As each person gazes at the shears they see some dark glimpse of what lay ahead. Some of these were more effective than others for me. Ok the only one I really liked was the last where Jack Palance plays a Poe fantatic visiting Peter Cushing's private collection of Poe memorabilia. The rest of them waver from familiar (a witch in the form of an evil cat forces a man to kill) to ridiculous (an evil piano gets jealous of some girl and ends up pushing her out a window). In the middle is a vaguely Ira Levin-esque tale of the secret behind Hollywood's biggest stars. The whole thing is written by Robert Bloch. This was fun but also serves as a good example of what I like and hate about anthologies. At least one is always a pain to get through but they're all short and keep it moving. Let's keep it going with one more shall we?
11.08.14	Send Me No Flowers	Norman Jewison	This is another one that's been on the DVR forever. It's a Rock Hudson/Doris Day comedy where Hudson plays a hypochondriac convinced he's dying so he tries to find a suitable replacement to take care of his wife. Tony Randall is the only part that I found still funny (he plays drunk for most of it and one bit where he repeats Hudson's speech about appreciating life to a bartender had me chuckling... "Have you ever felt a table? It's so smooth!"). Mostly I got a real wave of Idealized 60s life from this. The sets and locations they use for the house are pretty insanely Wealthy White America. I mean they have a phone in the backyard? And like 3 cars and the house has 4 stories and all they seem to do all day is hang out at the club and play white people sports. I know that was part of the effect of these movies... a little innuendo with a lot of wholesome innocence and happy faces. Have you ever looked at a tree? Anyway... this was supposed to be the matinee but I'm kind of running behind so I think a little juggling is in order and I'm going to dive back into the world of British horror with another double feature, this time with Hammer's anthology-friendly rival studio!
11.08.14	The Curse of Frankenstein	Terence Fisher	I completely fell asleep halfway through this last night so I picked it up today. I liked this one more than Dracula I think. That's probably because I've seen fewer Frankenstein adaptations. Cushing is great as the mad scientist. At one point he even uses teaching someone science as a threat. Be careful or I'll introduce Elizabeth to science!!! I still don't think I'm in any rush to watch the whole canon but at least now I can say I've seen a couple. Next up is... shit what's next. Something random!?
11.07.14	Horror of Dracula	Terence Fisher	So at this point I think I can comfortably say that I've seen a lot of horror movies. And in the past ten years I've really covered a lot of bases in terms of subgenres that I wasn't really familiar with before moving to town. One subgenre that I still haven't touched however is the Hammer horror films. That changes tonight with a double feature starting with this classic Christopher Lee Dracula movie! So... the thing I had always heard about the Hammer films was that they traded a lot of the literary source material for the blood and gore. That Christopher Lee's Dracula was brutal and animalistic and perhaps the scariest portrayal of the character. On the other hand, this movie came out in 1958 which is like a year after I Was A Teenage Werewolf and shit. So I tried to keep that in mind while watching and yeah, compared to stuff like the Vincent Price Poe movies and stuff like that this did show more blood... but I think for me personally I am so familiar with the core Dracula story that I was bored by it. I kind of put it on par with the Vincent Price stuff... but really just a few years later we get Psycho and Peeping Tom, Black Sunday and Village of the Damned. Next to those this seems psychologically tame regardless of how much Technicolor red blood you have dribbling down your chin.
11.07.14	The Mouse That Roared	Jack Arnold	According to my man Robert Osbourne The Mouse That Roared was Peter Sellers' breakout role in the states. He plays multiple roles representing a tiny European nation that declared war on the U.S. in order to surrender and get reparations... Jean Seberg is also in it just before she got really cool in Breathless. This was a frivolous goofy comedy from the late 50s for the most part... very light-hearted and fun if not so so funny these days. I did like how they had the Columbia woman get scared of a mouse at the beginning and run off her pedestal. It reminded me of how the MGM lion didn't feel like roaring at the front of Strange Brew. I love it when movies are allowed to manipulate the studio logo. Also... there's like a thematic cameo by a fox in this. He's looking and kind of laughing as Peter Sellars gets his foot caught in a trap. I thought that was a nice coincidence following the fox from the last film. Unfortunately, the end of the movie turns into a total disarmament message complete with a "we hope" after "THE END." I guess stuff like that firmly places it in context but I also couldn't help but groan a tiny bit. I think that makes me terrible. Anyway, this was definitely a fun change of pace and I'm ready for more! Next up is a double feature of horror movies!
11.07.14	Antichrist	Lars Von Trier	Hello, future me. Remember way back in 2004 when you started keeping notes on all the movies you saw? Well that was TEN FREAKING YEARS AGO!!!!! I can think of no better way to commemorate that then sitting down, cracking a coke zero, and watching as many movies as I possibly can over the next three or four days. Yes, my friend... you read that right. It's time to start DVR FEST X!!! WITH X MEANING 10!!!!!! Yes, ten short years ago I built this site because I was sick of forgetting whether I actually saw all of the Friday the 13ths or wondering how often I actually watched The Big Lebowski or watching a movie for the second time and hating it and thinking "what was I thinking liking this the first time i saw it!?" Now I still do all those things (see my notes for Fast & Furious 4) but I have a permanent record to display my shame. Nine and a half short years ago I moved to Austin and between September and October I went to QTfest 6, the first Fantastic Fest, and Austin Film Fest. I loved them all so much that, come early November, I was going through festival withdrawal. I noticed that I had a bunch of movies on my DVR that I'd been meaning to watch so I decided to recognize the anniversary of this site by clearing them all out. Thus DVRfest was born. Like every festival, it has since evolved to include a slightly wider criteria (namely netflix, my DVD rack, and movies off the internet) but I believe I am the only film festival to successfully keep the attendees list at one. Getting a badge is a real bitch. Since this is the tenth year and I happen to be laid off and have some time on my hands I decided to put some thought into the programming this year and truly make it an occasion (for myself). The whole spirit of this fest has been to catch up on things I've been meaning to see so this year I've selected a ton of films from the following bins: movies on my DVR that I haven't gotten around to seeing (classic DVRfest staying true to my roots), movies that I've missed at the various festivals across the years that I've always meant to go back and watch but never have, and some movies that have been sitting on my DVD shelf for years and years that I have never seen. Also, following custom I'll pick one movie that I've seen before and throw it into the mix. So... without further ado, I am kicking off the fest with one of my most egregious omissions. Can you imagine someone who has been to every Fantastic Fest never having seen ANTICHRIST!? It's time to let chaos reign up in this bitch!!! I'll be back in a few hours. Well that was fun. The one thing that surprised me about this film is how beautiful a lot of the photography was. When he wants to, Von Trier can certainly compose a shot. Mostly though it was what I thought it would be: 90% morose depression and 10% cringe-worthy violence. I have to say it's not my thing. I respect Lars Von Trier as a creative force and like the idea of his films but rarely actually enjoy watching them (hence why I don't do it often). I must say this was no different. Still, I saw it... check it off the list... moving on. Next up is decidedly lighter fare starring a youngish Peter Sellers
11.02.14	Knights of Badassdom	Joe Lynch	A surprisingly decent cast goes to a LARP and unwittingly unleashes a succubus. So... I enqueued this because of Joe Lynch's name on it... even though it looked pretty terrible. But when it started... it was good enough to where I really hoped this wouldn't be terrible. But by the last act there was no hope left for this terrible movie. The tone is all over the place from comedy to gore but it's very low budget gore and at one point a suit is used that's pretty embarrassing. So what happened? I did a quick google search and learned that Lynch has disowned this cut since apparently his distributor hacked it apart trying to make it lighter. I have no doubt that the director's cut is much better, but I still wonder if it's actually good. I hope so. The cast is great.
10.31.14	Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown	Alex Gibney	This is a really good doc. For a long time I've been waiting for a doc or biopic on James Brown since I really like his music but only knew the tiniest bit about his life. Thanks to the Alamo I'd seen the T.A.M.I. show and his live concert in Boston just after MLK's assassination but that was really about it (other than Weird Al's "Living with a Hernia"). This really got into the nitty gritty of his upbringing, personality, and outlook on life. As one can probably guess from the subtitle it skimmed over most of his last 40 years of life and concentrated really hard on the 60s and his connection to the civil rights movement. And it feels like they got interviews from pretty much everyone notable from his early career which is great. Also, so many great voices... I don't know for horn players if it's just a lifetime of using your lungs and throat professionally or what but there were a lot of awesome barely-understandable voices in this doc. It couldn't have been more up my alley so this is no surprise but I loved this. So great.
10.26.14	Transformers: Age of Extinction	Michael Bsy	Michael Bay has been making Transformers movies for about as long as he worked for Jerry Bruckheimer. WHAT HAPPENED? I guess my generation just has too much money and free time? Why did I even see this? I guess I'm to blame? Anyway... this was... alright, I couldn't tell what was going on in the first one, thought the second was terrible and the third was boring... this one was... just pretty bad. The dinobots at the end were worth seeing realized. I guess I'll have to see the next one to see the constructicons assemble? But really... what's up with this transformium where the robots can basically just break down to little cubes? That's not transforming that's morphing. I know this argument is like 8 years old now but why don't they show the robots transform? It wasn't too hard to manufacture metal toys that did it, they can't do it with CG models? I feel like I've gone on five paragraphs too long on this. Next.
10.26.14	Bad Words	Jason Bateman	Not a bad comedy. People being horrible to children is always funny, but it's not completely nonsensical and the little Indian kid is charming. Not bad.
10.25.14	Fright Night	Tom Holland	Continuing my recent sort-of trend of visiting old 80s horror movies I haven't seen since I was a kid, I wanted to revisit this to see if it was as cool as my memories believe it to be. It sort of was! Roddy McDowall, some awesome gross practical effects... Amanda Bearse... and Evil Ed the guy who was kind of annoying then did 976-EVIL then did a shitload of gay porn... Yes it was mostly crazy 80s bullshit... but it was fun bullshit! I know this is the worst but I feel sorry for today's youth with shit like Oculus and Annabelle... We had awesome stuff like Ghoulies and Child's Play. Anyway...
10.25.14	The Other Woman	Nick Cassavetes	Molly wanted to see this. I like Leslie Mann and Cameron Diaz but this wasn't that great. There were some pretty core plot holes (AKA "Silly man logic") like why the guy would give his mistress his home address or where the guy was for the whole weekend in the Hamptons while the three women became friends that really stuck in my craw and went beyond my willing suspension of disbelief. Just another bad comedy really... moving on.
10.24.14	Frances Ha	Noah Baumbach	Finally saw this. I can already tell that my feelings on this movie will probably evolve over the next few days so let me get my immediate reaction down here. I get the new wave homage thing, but I think Baumbach's work already verges on being too pretentious before the black and white photography and long shots of his girlfriend running through the streets so it's just too much. By the end though I had softened on this and was along for the ride. Gerwig's great at being simultaneously uncomfortable and adorable. Her performance really reminds me of this girl I used to know... the same exact vibe of being energetic and fully embracing her own awkwardness. It's really endearing. The parts of the film that I liked the most were the montage bits filled with random snippets of life. Liked those much more than the longer scenes. So I suspect that I'll wind up liking this movie, but I definitely want to get that initial sour taste on my record... The first twenty or so minutes of this had me cringing.
10.23.14	The Purge	James DeMonaco	I liked this more than I thought I would. The actual story was kind of expected (for the most part) but the news bits and world-building that went on at the beginning and end impressed me. I'm not sure what it's a statement on, but it's pretty fucked up.
10.21.14	Greenberg	Noah Baumbach	I am finally getting around to watching this mostly for the James Murphy score. I didn't really expect to like it (since I pretty much hated Margot at the Wedding)... and yeah I got pretty bored with it by the end but I guess the big thing here is that you can see Baumbach fall in love with Greta Gerwig which is always fun. Of course to have the movie produced by his then-wife (who also has a small role as an ex) is pretty awkward. It reminded me a lot of The Last Picture show in that regard (just the gossip not the filmmaking). anyways... now I can watch Frances Ha and hopefully enjoy it.
10.20.14	3 Days to Kill	McG	It's weird to see a kooky Luc Besson script not directed by Besson. I guess I kind of liked some of it?
10.18.14	The Amazing Spider-Man 2	Marc Webb	This sucked right? Too long, too boring, too much retread with the whole parents thing (although Campbell Scott should act more), too much Gwen Stacy... the whole movie is an exercise in "too much." The only thing that they didn't have enough of was the one thing I wanted: Rhino. A couple things here. When I was a kid going through my comic phase, Amazing Spider-Man was probably my favorite title to read. It was Todd McFarlane's height at Marvel (I think the first issue I bought was #301) and I remember it being that perfect "comic book" vibe of outstanding action, snarky humor, light vs. dark tone. For whatever reason this seems to be either impossible to adapt to film or as yet unachieved. Rhino makes much more sense to me as a muscle-bound dude in gray spandex. If Rhino's a Nolan-esque tank-on-feet then why is Spidey still in spandex? Why does Green Goblin look so gross? Also... There are so many colorful villains in Spidey's world, why do we have to see Oscorp in every damn movie? I am so over origin stories... I want Mysterio with the swirling fishbowl and the green cape goddamn it. And finally... I don't know if the Fox contract grabbed way more IP than the Sony one did or if it's just the setting but for whatever reason I don't mind the X-Men being an insular franchise but I really miss all the other NYC Marvel superheroes in this... or really I should say that I really miss Spidey in the Avengers and other Marvel Cinematic Universe movies. It's kind of off-putting to watch the stuff about how New Yorkers aren't used to a masked man swinging around New York when we all saw Loki destroy half the city a couple years ago. I know this is fanboy fantasy but I wish Disney and Sony could come to some deal to be a bit more inclusive rather than this feeling I have that Sony churns out these Spidey movies just to keep the rights.
10.17.14	Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit	Kenneth Branagh	I don't really get why the country is still not in deep shit but otherwise I liked this ok. Just another spy/action movie... but it wasn't terrible.
10.15.14	Dom Hemingway	Richard Shepard	It's always fun to see a movie that seems designed to let a great actor gnaw on any piece of scenery in sight. Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast, Tom Hardy in Bronson, Jack Nicholson in every movie since 1989... the parts that I liked the most about Shepard's The Matador were Pierce Brosnan's character so it's really fun to see a movie that's basically ALL that. It's almost like a play (was this a play?) where Jude Law goes off on occasional soliloquies... just gushing character. It must have been fun to write, fun to perform, and it was fun to watch. The problem with these types of movies though is that the plot has to be very light to leave enough room for this excessive character to live... so I had a few problems along the way but mostly this was a joy to watch. Richard E. Grant is also great in this... you'd never watch Withnail & I and imagine him being the straight man some day...
10.14.14	RoboCop	Jose Padilha	I wanted to see this mainly because of the cast. It's a lot better than it has any right to be. I guess they were paying well? This wasn't as bad as it could have been, but really it also didn't cover any new territory or say anything new over the original and I thought this version skipped over a lot of what made the first cool. I guess you could say there was a bit more comment about US foreign policy and media, maybe a bit more cynical in worldview... but the original had so much more to love. Meh.
10.13.14	Edge of Tomorrow	Doug Liman	Starship Troopers meets Groundhog Day. I liked this. the ending kind of bugged me and didn't make much sense, but other than that I thought it was smart and well presented and executed. Bill Paxton is also great as the Ned Ryserson. It's also pretty awesome how CG has changed the cinematic landscape so much that all the crazy exoskeleton stuff and aliens and future army dropship whatever is just a given in my mind. It's a far cry from the awe of the power loaders in Aliens.
10.11.14	Captain America: The Winter Soldier	Joe Russo, Anthony Russo	I thought this progressed the Marvel universe quite nicely. It still sort of becomes a video game cinematic by the end of it but I was entertained without much complaint. This definitely has the most business to take care of with regards to connecting the Avengers movie... which I guess I like because otherwise Captain can get to be a bit much for me (like Thor). It definitely got me excited to see the next Marvel movie...
10.11.14	RED 2	Dean Parisot	I remember liking the first RED as a bit of slick popcorn fun and this is by all means more of the same but for some reason I have no excitement or enthusiasm for this one. It's kind of weird. good cast, fun action, funny... Malkovich is kooky and funny... but overall it's kind of meh. Weird.
10.08.14	Godzilla	Gareth Edwards	This was great. Edwards took his realistic approach from Monsters and played on a grander scale. This is kind of what Monsters wanted to be I think... Great execution of ideas. Very happy with this one. Well done.
10.06.14	R.I.P.D.	Robert Schwentke	Eh... Jeff Bridges was fun in this. Other than that, it's kind of a low-rent knock-off of MiB. Pretty hollow.
10.06.14	Trailer Park Boys: Live in Fuckin' Dublin	Jeremy Chipper	Tidying up loose ends after watching season 8... still have one more movie to go (assuming it shows up on Netflix sometime) but we watched this kind of just to be complete. It's better than I thought it would be. There's an hour long concert film here but they shot a good half hour of context and wrap-around footage which was a nice surprise. Otherwise I assume Dublin got the same show that everybody else did on their tour. It was fun. I wish they hadn't cannibalized so much of it for an episode in season 8 but some jokes (like the piss jug) worked better on the show anyway. That reminded me a bit of the Marx brothers and how they used to tour their bits before putting them in movies. It's also pretty clear that Mike Smith is an entertainer whereas Robb and JP are more writer/actors. They just kind of stood around a lot of the time while Bubbles drove the whole show. Glad I saw it, probably won't see it again but glad I saw it.
10.06.14	The New Barbarians	Enzo G. Castellari	This is a low budget post-apocalyptic Italian picture heavily influenced by Mad Max. It's pretty typical euro fun... lots weird "driving machines" (as Fred Williamson says in his interview) modded out with weaponry and a nonsensical plot just there enough to make a convenient excuse to blow shit up. Still, there's some good stuff here (the cause of the apocalypse? books! who knew!?) like this weird blonde kid who's somehow a master mechanic and stunt driver and The Hammer blowing up like 50 people in a row with a bow and explosive arrows.
10.02.14	Gone Girl	David Fincher	I quite liked this. I was expecting something much more conventional and that was definitely reinforced by the first half of the movie but the second half really changed my opinion and I really loved a few sequences. I do wonder... since Fincher used Reznor and Ross again... if Fincher's style is getting more detached and ambient or if the score drives that. I'm fine with either way, but I wonder if Fincher has another film as kinetic and energetic as Fight Club or Zodiac in him. His films have really slowed down into different beasts. So yeah... liked this one a lot, which is a relief after Dragon Tattoo. Can't wait for the supplemental materials on the blu!!!
10.01.14	Life Itself	Steve James	The Roger Ebert doc. It was good... but for some reason I was thinking it would be FANTASTIC... and it's just good. It was at times frustrating because Ebert was so limited in direct communication during the time which he could have absolute candor about his life. I would've loved to hear his thoughts on Valley of the Dolls and Ultravixens in more detail, hear more about the breadth of his writing and activity and stuff like that. I guess this was kind of long as is and certainly the Siskel stuff needed to be there... but I don't know something about it seemed kind of by the numbers... maybe it's me.
09.30.14	Chef	Jon Favreau	I am going through a bit of Fantastic Fest withdrawal so I got an impulse to see this right away. I'll probably pick up the blu at some point because I liked it. I love that Favreau made this small movie again after his VFX-heavy recent history. It's a throwback of sorts to Swingers and Made but with a shitload of accrued favors at his disposal. Sure there's not exactly a ton of conflict but you know... sometimes you want a movie that will make you feel good and want to eat good food. This is kind of like Big Night without all that fuss about the critic never showing up and the restaurant closing. Stellar cast, wonderful location photography, everybody seems like they're having a good time... It will undoubtedly be dated in a few years after twitter and vine have gone away and the food truck craze dies down, but cie la vie (or however you spell it). This was lots of fun.
09.25.14	Nightcrawler	Dan Gilroy	Before this I watched a few episodes of an Australian comedy TV show called Danger 5 which was pretty damn funny in a gonzo over-the-top way. Then it was time for the closing night film: Nightcrawler. This was really good. I expected the story to go more in a desperate/creating-crime-scene direction but was happy with the angle that it took. Gyllenhaal's character is really great. The director also did a great Q&A which I've already forgot all the details of. The party was kind of lame though. They moved it from the Ghost Town at the last minute so it was in the courtyard outside, the lobby, the highball, and one of the theaters instead. I'd just spent all week feeling claustrophobic and pressed in like sardines in that damn space so the party felt like more of the same to me and I was over it immediately. Victor, Grant and I walked around back to look at the surviving You're Next mural then left pretty quickly. Plus I was getting a cold. A big lesson learned this year is that even when I CAN stay for the midnight, it's often better if I don't. The one slot I missed this year (Wednesday midnight) was for a movie I've heard was good (It Follows) and if I didn't have family coming in the very next day I probably would've pushed it and just been really sick through the weekend, but a lot of the midnights I did stay for weren't strong movies and getting more sleep would probably have done more good. Overall I thought the film programming was great this year, the organization took a few steps closer to great, and I loved seeing all the familiar faces again. However, I don't feel it was "special" in any way for the 10th anniversary, had some real nagging questions and problems with the theater renovation, and the Alamo menu is in real poor shape. I usually make it most of the way through the week before repeating favorite items but this year I was sick of the whole menu by day 3 and by the end it was just chicken strips (assuming they brought the sauce I had to ask for0 and pizzas. Everything else is way overpriced and just doesn't taste that good. It's a shame. So... my Top 5 this year: 1-Tokyo tribe 2-the astrologer 3-force majeur 4-john wick 5-nightcrawler My bottom five: 1-The stranger 2-Tusk 3-VHS Viral 4-Norway 5-Darkness by Day I'd say I liked 26 of the 34 things I saw though which is a pretty good ratio.
09.25.14	Let Us Prey	Brian O'Malley	Liam Cunningham plays some sort of weird demon fallen angel type thing who brings out everyone's past sins or something. I thought this was alright except for the absolute dumb parts (which were many).
09.25.14	Future Shock: The Story of 2000AD	Paul Goodwin	A well-produced doc on the 2000AD comic and it's relevance in comics history. I knew next to nothing about 2000AD other than Dredd so it was cool to learn a bunch of stuff including how it served as inspiration for movies like Hardware and Timecrimes. Good doc.
09.24.14	Norway	Yannis Veslemes	Very stylized, some interesting imagery, a funny Nazi joke toward the end, but that was about it for me. It's admirable that this guy wrote, directed, scored, and did the production design (and I bet I'm forgetting a few other roles) and there is definitely some interesting visuals in here... but the story is very minimal and I didn't quite follow what was going on most of the time. Perhaps it was lost in translation. Then I had to skip my first slot in the whole fest because my throat is sore and I don't want to be sick for a family visit this weekend. I'm really wishing they picked the weekend BEFORE the fest at this point but oh well...
09.24.14	Open Windows	Nacho Vigalondo	Technically audacious, this movie takes place entirely on a computer monitor. My expectations of this were drastically reduced based on feedback from SXSW so I ended up liking it more than I thought I would. It's true that the ending unravels but for the most part I was engaged by it completely. And it's cool to see Austin and the Alamo and even Fantastic Fest in the movie. There are plenty of familiar faces there in the crowd and Scott Weinberg even gets a line! Yeah, I liked this one... I think the problem is Timecrimes was really good and we all know that Nacho's grasp on the craft and technology of filmmaking is there so we want everything he does to be absolutely amazing... which is not realistic. I do wish he would make more movies though.
09.24.14	The Duke of Burgundy	Peter Strickland	Liked this one a lot. It's just as hypnotic and astral as Berberian Sound Studio but with a subject matter much more fitting in my opinion. Since I didn't expect much of a plot (and certainly nothing as complex or intricate as a Giallo) and perhaps because I was already familiar of Strickland's style I was happy to let the trippier parts of this movie wash over me. I love that they give a "Perfume by" credit along with a "Dresses and Lingerie" and all the insects and field recordings at the end. It's a truly peculiar movie but quite lovely and strikingly beautiful. And some damn fine lingerie as well.
09.24.14	Kung Fu Elliot	Matthew Bauckman, Jaret Belliveau	A really awkward and fascinating doc about this guy who believes that he's Canada's Jackie Chan. It's got some American Movie in there as well but it's also some self-delusion and craziness. Although the director insisted that it was real a part of me still thinks this is made up because the ending gets SO crazy.
09.23.14	Housebound	Gerard Johnstone	I really liked this one as well. They managed a great excuse to keep people in the haunted house (house arrest) and developed the scares with a healthy mix of hunmor that reminded me of The Frighteners a bit. This was really a lot of fun. I liked it quite a bit.
09.23.14	The Guest	Adam Wingard	I think this is the first Adam Wingard movie that I can unequivocally say that I liked. They really nailed the tone and brought out just the right amount of humor which helped it fantastically. Plus some great performances, good music, and fun set pieces. I really had a lot of fun with this. Simon Barrett was also really funny in the Q&A. I still wish they would go even further and commit to a straight-up dark comedy rather than stick to horror. I think they could really nail a comedy.
09.23.14	Goodnight Mommy	Severin Fiala, Veronika Franz	This was the secret screening, Tim said it was his fav at TIFF. I thought it was good for the most part but some aspects bothered me which kept me from liking it much more. It's definitely well-crafted... I suppose I'd have to see it again to see if my problems were real or not... but whatever. We all stood around discussing it afterward which is always great. But yeah... that krazy glue scene was very memorable. Good stuff.
09.23.14	Everly	Joe Lynch	This was pretty good. all around decent. Plus I love how Joe Lynch knows the fest so well and seems genuinely excited to be out there making movies. Another dog death, which I think makes 5 that I've seen this year? And goddamn Salma Hayek might be an alien or robot or something. How she can still look that good is beyond me. Good movie.
09.23.14	The Stranger	Guillermo Amoedo	this sucked.
09.22.14	Cub	Jonas Govaerts	Pack of cub scouts goes out camping and bad stuff happens. I mostly really liked this but the last act kind of unraveled everything for me to the point where I was pretty meh walking out of the theater. After discussing possible franchise opportunities with Micah however I began to see a bit more of the quality of this film. I still have some pretty big issues with it but I must admit that it looks great, has an interesting premise, and was mostly pretty good. I'd count it in the "liked" column.
09.22.14	Free Fall	Gyorgy Palfi	I really admired Hukkle and downright loved Taxidermia so I was really looking forward to this... and was pretty disappointed. Moments here and there were cool but for the most part it felt aimless and random. A real shame.
09.22.14	The Babadook	Jennifer Kent	Solid horror movie with an ending that I didn't like. Could've been a lot worse, but it also never really escalated so something I was completely absorbed by. Good performances though.
09.22.14	Force Majeure	Ruben Ostlund	This was really good. The dude who plays Tormund Giantsbane on game of thrones is great in a supporting role. It's a very awkward tension but it's really well done and the scenery is beautiful and interesting and the movie adeptly plays with this feeling of impending doom that I thought was really great.
09.21.14	Redeemer	Ernesto Diaz Espinoza	Way better than Mandrill but I think I still like Mirageman more just because of the context of that memory. If I watched it again I'm not sure... The serious parts of this one could get a little old on rewatching but the action is intense and brutal and real and Marko Zaror's talents get showcased in the best possible way. Plus there's a really good cover of "Run On" on the soundtrack. Good soundtracks this year... Liked it.
09.21.14	Tokyo Tribe	Sion Sono	Holy shit this was awesome. I want the soundtrack and I want to watch it again. Maybe my fav of the fest? It's just so goddamn good. The music is rockin, the design of the world and tribes is kickass and unique, there's enough panty shots and nudity to check that box for me... the fighting is good... it just has everything you could ask for out of this festival. At this point, looking back, I wish I wasn't so hesitant to enjoy Sono's films in previous years. I really liked the one from last year but didn't see Cold Fish for whatever reason and actively avoided the hair extensions one.
09.21.14	Horns	Alexandre Aja	This was also good. I kinda thought it would be good and it was good. Went to some interesting places... the end got to be a bit much but whatever. most of it was great. I just wish the mystery wasn't telegraphed so clearly by casting and the script. Mostly good though. I liked it.
09.21.14	Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau	David Gregory	Half Jodorowsky's Dune, half Lost in La Mancha, this doc follows the inception and eventual production of the 90s Dr. Moreau film with Brando and Kilmer. Also just like both those other docs, it's like crack to a film geek like me. Richard Stanley is a really interesting character and his stories of production are just insane... but then the stories of after Frankenheimer took over are even more insane... then the stories told during the Q&A were the most insane of all. The story of Stanley's witch buddy in London named Skip who suffered from radiation weakening his bones and necrotizing fasciitis then developed an addiction to pain medication but then got clean and became a drug counselor then started recruiting addicts that he counseled into his coven (skip was from Ft. Lauderdale originally)... insane. He also excellently fielded a question of whether he had ever met Jodorowsky or seen the doc ("A close examination of that film will reveal that I am in it")... AND I got a free blu of HARDWARE!!! This screening was the best. Loved this one.
09.21.14	The Soultangler	Pat Bishow	A VHS discovery from Zack that he's releasing in the US for the first time. It's a home-made horror movie kind of similar to Re-Animator. Although a lot of it is pretty rough, there's a definite charm in these homebrew one-offs that I absolutely love. All the non-actors and bad sound mixing and amateur craftsmanship is really endearing to me because it's most clear in these types of movies that the people who made them just LOVED movies and wanted to make their own. There's no studio politics or anything... and nearly every one of these that I've seen has an interesting release or business deal behind it. Parts of this reminded me of Black Devil Doll, others of Equinox... the gore at the end is surprisingly good.
09.20.14	The Editor	Adam Brooks, Matthew Kennedy	Not knowing much about the movie, it took me about 10 minutes to readjust my reaction once I learned it was supposed to be a comedy rather than just a really really bad horror movie. It reminded me in some ways of the old slasher spoofs like Saturday the 14th and Student Bodies in that it was spoofing a really specific kind of film. The big difference here though is that a lot of the humor comes from aspects of Giallo like bad dubbing and translated dialogue so the irony meter was off the charts and that kind of thing rarely works for me. There were still one or two funny moments for me but mostly I didn't go for the tone and felt that it was about a half hour too long.
09.20.14	Bros Before Hos	Steffen Haars, Flip Van der Kuil	from the makers of New Kids Turbo. This was a much more conventional story with a love triangle and typical romantic comedy structure but still with off-color humor and language to make it really damn funny. Spoiler alert but it's amazing that they accomplish what everyone wanted from Be Kind Rewind just during the end credits. Funny stuff. Loved it.
09.20.14	In Order of Disappearance	Hans Peter Moland	A Somewhat Gentle Man was a real surprise hit for me so I think that clouded my expectations of this a little bit. It's certainly a solid revenge picture with a great setting and beautiful photography and interesting characters, but I was somehow still expecting something more. I think that's my fault. It's a good solid film. I particularly loved the villain's taste in interior design. He had all these modeling hands on a wall showing sign language (with some in the corner made into middle fingers) and these awesome chairs where the backs were sculpted faces with holes for eyes so you could look through them. Amazing stuff. Good movie.
09.20.14	The Astrologer	Craig Denney	This was an AGFA screening presented by Tim League and Refn. Holy shit it's great. Craig Denney made a movie starring himself about how the world should be. It's filled with adventures and the highs and lows of success and fame. For real, the same movie has cobra and quicksand deaths, the US Navy paying an astrologer for advice, a meta-mind explosion of a movie called The Astrologer making 145 million dollars, and a Kenyan prison. I wish I could go on and on for two hours writing about this but I'm too tired and have already forgotten a bunch of quality details. You're not an astrologer, you're an asshole! Loved it. definitely in my top five.
09.20.14	My Life Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn	Liv Corfixen	A doc by Refn's life following the making of Only God Forgives, which I haven't seen. This is more of a personal intimate portrait of the man rather than a making-of thing. Some keen insights I guess but I think they are nothing not shared amongst most artists. insecurity, constant search for meaning, mixed feelings about the work, regret at not being able to change anything. It was decent.
09.19.14	V/H/S Viral	Various	didn't like this. Nacho's was interesting but once you get the joke there's really only a few sight gags going for it. The wrapper is not QUITE as annoying as the previous two but still sucks and makes no sense. The other two shorts were pretty lame. If it weren't for Nacho I don't think I would've seen this and I wasn't surprised at all with what I got. And the transitiony VHS-esque noise and jumble was loud as fuck. If I ever had a tape that played that poorly... I would return it and take my VCR in for repair. sucks.
09.19.14	John Wick	Chad Stahelski	Keanu Reeves, Willem Dafoe, and anyone who's ever appeard on an HBO show star in this fucking kickass action movie. They do a great job of setting up how badass Keanu is without having a guy in uniform list off his accomplishments. It does a lot of action-y stuff real well actually. Liked this a lot. Keanu's dreamy. Too bad even he isn't immune to the complete clusterfuck that is the south lamar lobby. So far this is my fav.
09.19.14	Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films	Mark Hartley	Great doc about Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus and all the shit they put out during the 80s. I love now that I'm an adult or whatever when these docs go into detail and behind the scenes on things that I remember experiencing in childhood. When I was a kid, all I knew was that all these ninja films started showing up on the rental shelves and all of a sudden me and my friends wanted throwing stars and nunchucks. It's really cool to see the business end of that equation recounted in typical energy and vivre that Harltey brings to his docs. He had a real gift as an editor. Every clip of the movies he shows is a perfect choice, distilling the absurdity and extremity of that movie in like 2 lines or 3 seconds. A lot of the time he splits the screen to show two things happening at once both illustrating whatever point the interviewee was making. The sheer amount of footage is amazing and the fact that it's organized and presented with such clarity is a real feat. Of course, anyone who saw his Ozploitation or Filipino actress docs knows what I'm talking about. Really great doc.
09.19.14	Dwarves Kingdom	Matthew Salton	A documentary about a theme part in China filled with little people. I saw this on An Idiot Abroad when they sent Karl Pilkington there so I knew a little about it but this goes more in depth and interviews several of the people who work/live there. It was a little boring, but presented interesting ideas about the gray space between genuine benevolence and exploitation. Not the most riveting doc in the world though.
09.18.14	Darkness by Day	Martin De Salvo	Way too slow for a midnight show. It's all atmosphere like something from Spain (this one is Argentinian) but it's too vague and not enough happens. I ended up thinking it wasn't terrible but I was bored through most of it.
09.18.14	ABCs of Death 2	Various	Way better than the first... but still mostly forgettable. It was really wise or lucky though to have the last short be by far the best. It was the first moment of the night where I felt that amazing fantastic fest feeling of seeing something new and extreme and being surrounded by people that were receptive to it. A really great final bit. A few of the other ones were good too, most of them were kind of random and forgettable.
09.18.14	Tusk	Kevin Smith	Fantastic Fest 2014. FFX. For the past 6 years I've had to juggle the fest with work, skipping the midnights in order to get some sleep before making it in to the office for the morning then skipping out at around noon to watch movies. Well enough of that shit! They laid me off two weeks ago so this year I am doing this fucker UP. Of course I haven't undergone some dramatic personality shift or anything so you won't see me drunk off my ass trying to sing karaoke or anything like that, but I do plan to see as much as I damn well please and enjoy myself this year. As such, I've included these notes in the deal. They will be really minimal this year. Like two or three words minimal. Basically I don't want to have to worry about anything other than finding a parking spot in the garage and hearing my boarding number in the lobby. I wish I had the energy or time to go into greater detail - and I might still for a few - but mostly I don't want the burden. So, future me, sorry these aren't as complete as the other years... but fuck it. It's the tenth one, let's have some fun. First thoughts on the new South Lamar: the garage wasn't as bad as I thought it would be but it's still too damn small. Really everything is too damn small. The highball, the karaoke rooms, the indoor lobby, the outdoor plaza... this will be the most cramped year of the fest I think, especially if it keeps raining and making everything humid as fuck. The original theaters/hallway feel really weird stuck inside the ultra-modern rebuild, but they are like greeting old friends. 13 dollar pizza. the intercom still fucking sucks. Unless you're in the lobby you can't hear shit. And still no goddamn TV showing what's boarding WHAT THE FUCK. EVERYTHING ELSE about the theater is great. I don't mean to come off too negative. I knew I would have certain gripes but really for an opening night it went very smoothly and I'm excited about something in every day of my schedule. Fantastic Arcade is stuck into the nooks and crannies as usual, but I got to meet Tim Schafer which was awesome even though I got super nervous and felt like a dork afterward. I recognized a few other Double Fine dudes... Super awesome that they're here. Tusk sucked. Didn't like it. Over the end credits they play the snippet of the podcast where they came up with this idea and that's about right. It feels like a movie a couple stoners dreamt up on a podcast. That said, I enjoyed Harley Morenstein's cameo (hope I'm spelling that somewhere near right) and Johnny Depp has an exceedingly weird part. I kind of respect how Kevin Smith made this movie to show other people that they can make movies... but still. it's crap. Just watch the first Human Centipede instead. This never finds a consistent tone and gets really uneven with super long scenes. Michael Parks is good, Justin Long is good, Depp is good... but most of the script is terrible. OK I laughed in one scene where Michael Parks tries to convince Justin Long that a spider bit him, but that's it. That and Harley.
09.18.14	House	Steve Miner	You know... I had very fond memories of this movie from my childhood but now that I've seen it again I think I my memories are more from the trailer in front of other VHS rentals than the movie itself. Maybe it's House 2 that I'm thinking about but I remember this being much crazier than it is... primeval jungles and whatnot... this is kind of a standard haunted house movie. Yeah, after watching the trailers for both House and House 2 my memories are definitely of the goofy comedic sequel. This one is kind of a real horror movie whereas the next one is just gonzo. Still, it's been fun to revisit these formative movies. I think I might look up Fright Night next, after Fantastic Fest that is...
09.16.14	The Believers	John Schlesinger	This is the movie I saw on cable that I misremembered as Serpent and the Rainbow. While that might end up being a more authentic view of religious magic than this one, I think this one is a better horror movie. The scene were spiders crawl out of the lady's face has been burned into my brain since age 11 or whenever it was that I first saw this. I'm kind of surprised to see that it's not a completely terrible movie! Martin Sheen yells a bunch.
09.15.14	Bones Brigade: An Autobiography	Stacy Peralta	Credit Netflix with this entry because I had no idea this movie existed until it popped up as a recommendation after Dogtown and Z-Boys. It's pretty cool to see Peralta return to familiar territory 11 years after his previous skating doc. Still just as personal and informative but set a decade after Dogtown, this catalogs the rise and evolution of skating in the 80s. The half-pipes, the skate videos, street skating... and how it's pretty much directly attributable to this team that Peralta put together. I liked this as much as the first one. For me it's almost a sequel because it covers another decade of the same history. I was never a skater but I was a kid during this time so I was aware of it in the periphery of my life and for whatever reason I loved surf and skate movies growing up like North Shore and Gleaming the Cube, so it's nice to see these connections get made here. I'm not sure why this wasn't talked about like Dogtown was... maybe it was but I just wasn't around to hear it?
09.15.14	Dogton and Z-Boys	Stacy Peralta	It's hard to believe that this came out in 2001. Whew. It still holds up. Really good doc.
09.12.14	The Unauthorized Saved by the Bell Story	Jason Lapeyre	I never watched Saved by the Bell. I don't know what happened but I don't remember even knowing it existed until Showgirls came out. I really can't explain it. I was all into 90210 and everyone my age knows all about it... but I somehow missed it. So I had a mild curiosity about this but I should've realized this was still a Lifetime movie. Pretty terrible in all respects.
09.10.14	Dead Snow	Tommy Wirkola	The sequel's playing Fantastic Fest and I didn't want to miss out by not seeing the original. As it turns out, I didn't like this very much so I'll probably skip part 2, but at least now I know. Zombies, Nazis... I'm just so burned out on all of this. The heavy snow and the climate could've made this one interesting but then the stupid fast Nazi zombies showed up. The overall tone is also kind of tongue-in-cheek and goofy... it's all a recipe for a dish that I don't care for.
09.10.14	Bloodsport	Newt Arnold	So a documentary on Cannon Films is playing at this year's Fantastic Fest and one of the questions on the Fantastic Feud survey is What's your Favorite Cannon film. I had to look up a list because I'm not as hardcore as I guess I should be and as soon as I realized/remembered that Bloodsport was a Cannon release I had my answer. I, as I would imagine 98$ of the other 10 year old boys in 1988, absolutely loved this movie. It's really shameful to say but THIS is my Enter the Dragon. When I finally saw Enter the Dragon I was kind of disappointed by it, yet THIS movie for whatever reason sits in the pantheon of my childhood loves. Well, I haven't seen it in perhaps two decades so I thought it was time to give it a revisit. Holy shit. It all makes so much sense now. I kind of had this thought that a lot of the schlocky exploitation stuff that I've enjoyed so much since moving here was because Austin itself celebrates it so fervently. Tastemakers like Lars and Zack and Tim league embrace and champion the obscure, goofy, and bizarre and freely take all willing viewers with them... I mean I know I haven't seen as many 70s movies as Lars or 80s movies as Zack so I stay open to new things and have enjoyed a lot of what they've shown me over the years... but when I watch this movie for the first time in so many years I realize it wasn't all them. it was ME too. Bloodsport has every ridiculous over the top 80s barf-fest of ninja sweat and flying jumpkicks as anything I've seen at the Alamo. It is such a prototypical exhibit of nonsensical martial arts... you couldn't make a funnier joke of the times if you tried. The fifteen minute flashback that's also a training montage that OPENS the film, the arbitrary romance between two people who can't even begin to act, the sweeping slow motion shots of punches and kicks that don't really connect, the pulsing synth-rock soundtrack... everything! The only thing is... when I was a kid... I didn't realize it was so ridiculous! It's not until now that I see... these sensibilities that make up my taste in film come not from Lars and Zack but from my own formative hours spent perusing the VHS racks of the mom-and-pop video store and repeat viewings of shit like this. Can you believe that JVCD made a career out of this movie? A whole career out of doing the splits. Yet... a not unsubstantial part of me still thinks this movie is really fucking cool. The whole concept of a secret underground fighting tournament... years before Mortal Kombat and UFC and everything else... Each competitor had his different style... the Muay Thai guy going up against the sumo dude against the monkey dude from Africa and the sheer brutality of Chong Li... Plus there's Ogre from Revenge of the Nerds! And Forest Whitaker..? holding an ancient stun gun??? Did I mention how terrible JCVD is in this? I mean he can he barely speak. Whatever. It worked then, it sort of works now in a different way. I'm really glad I gave this another watch. It makes me feel good about what kind of shit I loved as a kid.
08.30.14	Veronica Mars	Rob Thomas	The movie where all the kids from the show look weird and you can't remember who was in the show, who's a cameo from one of Rob Thomas' other shows, and who's new just for the movie. it was ok. I wasn't a huge fan of the show so I guess it follows suit that I wouldn't be a huge fan of this. Not terrible, not great. blah
08.23.14	Pet Sematary	Mary Lambert	I thought I hadn't seen this in a long long time but as I started watching it I realized that it hasn't been so long after all... so it was really kind of a waste because I really don't like this movie very much. I like Fred Gwynne though... it's time to track down Disorganized Crime again. I used to love that movie when it was first out on vhs. Anyway yeah... I hate the lead in this. he's a terrible actor. Really everyone but Fred Gwynne is terrible. But having an evil kid this young just didn't work. They have to cut the performance together and it comes off looking like an animal performance. ...Wish I would've checked this site before watching.
08.19.14	The Warriors	Walter Hill	This was available on HBOGO and I feel like it's been a long time since I last saw it. I was also in the mood to spend some time in late 70s NYC again. The tone of this movie really is something. I feel like I've read or heard in interviews how the theming of the gang outfits and make-up weren't intended to be humorous or exaggerated so maybe that's why, but something about the straight 100% seriousness of everybody coupled with a total fantasyland look... it's almost like this is a post-apocalypse movie without the apocalypse. All these nomadic tribes... everyone's performances are really stiff... I don't know it's just a really weird tone that I think totally works and makes the movie unique. And I can't watch the first scene without thinking about this old rave album I have by a band named Messiah. Pretty much every line out of Cyrus' mouth was sampled in that album. They even had a song called 20,000 Hardcore Members. CANNN YOUUU DIGGG ITTTT!!!!
08.16.14	2 Guns	Baltasar Kormakur	This feels like such a 90s movie to me. Everyone's got like 2 secret identities, everybody's like super powerful and whatever... it's all such a web of intrigue and backstabbing! It kept me away but... ugh. And how that actress keeps getting gigs... I mean I understand that she has breasts but... it takes quite a lot to be the worst actor in the room when you're working with Mark Wahlberg and James Marsden. And Denzel's in full on fun mode now right? He's gone Bobby DeNiro on us? ok sorry. I always like a Bill Paxton performance, Mark Wahlberg's been choosing roles that play to his strengths more lately, Denzel's never bad... like I said, I didn't fall asleep watching it.
08.16.14	Idiocracy	Mike Judge	Molly hadn't seen this and I think I haven't either since it came out. It's funny how much of the plot that I'd forgotten but how many of the little details that I remember. People are saying that more and more of this movie is true. I have to agree. About the little things, not the plot. The plot kind of makes this not a great movie but the details are so great. Poor us, right?
08.13.14	The Internet's Own Boy	Brian Knappenberger	Doc about reddit and internet evangelist Aaro Swartz who commited suicide amidst a lengthy legal battle... basically the internet and this doc makes it out that the government drove him to death. Lots of interesting things here assuming you care about the internet or copyright law. To me this fulfills one core reason for documentaries to exist and that is to raise awareness about something. if copyright laws change as a result of his suicide or this doc, then that's great. As a movie, it's ok. nothing spectacular. Worthwhile subject matter though.
08.09.14	Chasing Mavericks	Curtis Hanson, Michael Apted	I watched this to see what Curtis Hanson has been up to. He had a run of 3 or 4 really good movies there for a while... now it seems like he's fallen out of vogue for one reason or another. Anyway, this was a decent movie. So much of a surfing movie is up to the photography and Bill Pope shot the hell out of it.. The bits that are not surfing were... ok. I mean I bet if this came out instead of North Shore when I was younger, I'd've loved it just as much... but being older some of it is pretty cheeseball. Then because it's based on a true story they have to have this really weird tonally out of the blue ending that nobody ever would have written if it didn't actually happen. But whatev... surfing movie...
08.08.14	Lone Survivor	Peter Berg	Not too bad although I did have to vomit from all the macho testosterone slow-mo bullshit twice. But you know... other than that, not too bad.
08.03.14	V/H/S 2	Various	I guess I liked this one a little better. I liked how the stories ALMOST existed in the same universe... with a little more direction they could have and that would've been cool... but instead it's about the same I think. I liked that Eduardo Sanchez shot his in Frederick. Fredneck represent!!! It was also a novel take on the zombie genre... Gareth Evans' one felt too similar to every other cult movie to me (most recently The Sacrament or whatever that Ti West movie was called). I guess the overall quality of this one was higher than the first (I was thinking today of how I forgot to mention how godawful that killer in the woods piece was in the last one... jesus), but I still felt pretty meh on it. I feel like horror is fun to make so they pull the trigger on the thinnest premise then use the same old tricks to hope for scares. I think there's maybe a version of these anthologies that are really good... that the music doesn't change whenever it's time to get scared and the tracking doesn't slip (???) whenever the bad guys are on screen and these found footage movies are not deftly edited together from 48 sources by some unseen hand... but so many of these little details are off that it doesn't accomplish its main goal which I believe is to feel authentic. It's like Rodriguez using his grindhouse filters... anyway. these are finally off my instant queue, so that's good.
08.02.14	V/H/S	Various	Finally watching this, mostly so I can watch V/H/S 2, mostly to see Gareth Evans' bit. Anthologies are kind of hit or miss for me. They feel like watching shorts, in that whether I hate them or love them I still forget them pretty quickly. These were OK except for the fact that all these people live in a world where VHS tapes are in everyday use but everyone also uses the internet. I guess something like "MiniDV" isn't as catchy of a title. Anyway, my least favorite was Ti West's short (huge shocker), mostly because it was really boring then made no sense at the end. ha ha. I almost liked Joe Swanberg's until the end. I guess the one I liked most was the last one just for the slickness of effects, but to be honest I'll probably remember this one most for how lame the interstitial story was. Hopefully the next one is better (as I've heard).
08.02.14	The Raid 2	Gareth Evans	So... I remember the first Raid being good but pretty much all I remember now is that the first half was like Dredd with guns and the second half was a fatiguing series of fight scenes one right after the other since everybody's ammo ran out. At the beginning of this one, I thought the movie was in trouble. Now instead of a tight controlled setting we were getting into a broad deep-cover situation like White Heat or something... and all the generic gangster stereotypes start to show up... and I never really got bored or disliked it but at the same time I thought more than once how maybe an Asian crime movie has to involve gangsters machinating against one another and all cops must be undercover so maybe if the first one had more budget it would've included this stuff too or something... But the fight scenes are undeniably fantastic. I mean they are crazy. Every once in a while when a movie does a fight scene really well and you're involved enough you see a move and the film works so well that you physically feel it in your body. It's like a visceral reflex action that takes place. Like a guy gets hit in the nuts SO HARD and SO WELL that you feel it in YOUR nuts. Well, that happened for me pretty consistently at least once per fight here. I mean not always in the nuts, but you know... different places. And the CG is seamless enough to where the violence comes off as real. Well ok several of the weird blood inserts still seem overlaid and took me out of it a bit but for the most part... like if someone gets shot in the head they aren't afraid to show what a real headshot would be. There's a car crash in particular that has a body flying through the windshield and it happens so fast you think it has to be CG but it doesn't matter because that's actually what would happen. So... I feel like I'm rambling. The story was ok, not bad by any means. You can feel the budget and it's used wisely. But really it's the fight scenes. And I didn't feel fatigued like I did in the first. The enemies are a nice bit of Rogue's Gallery where people have special skills and have other fights to show off how badass they are before coming up against our hero. Man, these fight scenes. the prison scene, the car scene, and the end scene are all three classic unbelievable fights. This movie can stand on those alone (which combined is probably still like an hour running time). visceral body reaction
07.30.14	The Grand Budapest Hotel	Wes Anderson	So this may not be my favorite Wes Anderson movie, but I feel like it's the most perfect distilled essence of Wes Anderson to date. Pretty much every shot is fetishistic with its symmetry and attention to composition and detail and color and design. The story is adrift in generations of nostalgia for never-was perfection and he even goes so far as to use different aspect ratios to mark the time periods, the net effect of which for me is just enough widescreen to make the full frame seem jarring. I'm sure he loved every bit of it though. And this isn't to say that I didn't like it. I found it quite pleasant and enjoyable. It's just no longer reality. For me this is a fairy tale, whereas his first three films were still stylized reality. I'd definitely still buy the criterion release though...
07.27.14	The Internship	Shawn Levy	I couldn't get to sleep so I put this on thinking I'd fall asleep halfway through. I didn't but not because this was so great... I guess I just wanted to be awake at 4:30 on a Sunday night. Anyway, this is half an unfunny comedy and half google propaganda. Pretty crap.
07.26.14	Bully	Larry Clark	I finally saw Bully. It was better than I thought it would be. Great cast, lots of sweat. Kind of like a much better Alpha Dog. Ummm...
07.19.14	Zero Charisma	Kate Graham, Andrew Matthews	spoilers ahead. If you haven't seen it, stop now. The gist is I didn't like it. I feel like I'm supposed to like this by default because it's shot in Austin and they used Great Hall Games and I recognized Neil and David as extras and John Gholson has a part in it and it's co-produced by Zack Carlson... but I didn't. It looks like another shitty indie movie, the script is a mess, and I feel like it doesn't really develop or go anywhere. I wasn't rooting for anyone... which I guess is ok because nobody won or lost anything. I don't know... it's hard not to want to make this movie more formulaic, but there's a reason why so many characters hit bottom and learn humility and come out the other side as better people. There's a reason why despicable deadbeat moms get comeuppance in movies. There's a reason why we have protagonists and antagonists... I felt like this movie tread water in the middle of all of that but didn't want to be so unoriginal as to commit to any of it. I wish the main dude apologized to his friends at the end, I wish his friends saw how douchebag the hipster guy was, and I really wish they didn't all move to Flagstaff!? wtf. How about he gets his own damn place and hosts his game night more on a level playing field with John Gholson playing!? Maybe that would be too much... too wrapped-in-ribbon perfect, but was this movie trying to be at least partially a comedy? I couldn't tell. anyways... wish it was better. And oh.. note to self. if I ever take the leap and make a movie, either learn how to photograph and light or hire someone who does. Especially after watching Monsters, there is NO reason for this movie to look as crappy as it does. jesus.
07.19.14	Monsters	Gareth Edwards	I put off watching this for so long because I heard how low the budget was and thought it would look like crap. Actually, I think how good it looks is maybe the best thing about it. I really liked the world and premise of the movie, thought the romance was a bit strained and the lead actress was... meh. It's also hard to have a movie called Monsters and never really... deliver some monster scares. On one hand I like how passive and anthropological it was, but on the other... I could've used a little more action. I know... but still. still, not a bad movie at all.
07.19.14	Tim's Vermeer	Teller	Penn & Teller's friend invents/discovers a technique using lenses and mirrors to replicate Vermeer's photo-realistic painting style. In large part, the fun of this movie is seeing a very intelligent and rich guy follow his hobby. Wouldn't it be awesome to have the capability to follow this curiosity to the point of international travel, learning a new language, learning the technique to: fabricate custom furniture, grind optical lenses, make paint from pigment, and construct an entire replica room then spend 200 days making one painting just to satisfy that curiosity? But along the way we get an insight into Vermeer and a lot of those other Golden Age realistic painters' process might have been, and the dedication and attention that makes their art stand out, and question a greater concept of how technogoly compromises or enhances art. All this and it's not so long that it wears out its welcome. Good movie.
07.18.14	Fix	Doug Freel	A doc about Ministry's Al Jourgensen, mostly about Ministry's Al Jourgensen's drug addiction. I watched this in hopes of a nostalgia trip and perhaps learning more about early-to-mid-90s Ministry. What I got was a mess of a film about "the backstage experience" which is basically Al yelling and spouting babble a lot interjected with some interviews from people who don't really know him. No history, no timeline, no context, no performances, no story really... just random clips of Al walking around on stage taken from 3 or 4 shows and used over and over again. I didn't really get anything out of this... just a boring mess. Oh well.
07.18.14	Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2	David Yates	For whatever reason, I burned out on this film series and never saw the last one. I really loved the first handful and ate the books up... but I guess after reading the final book that was that. I feel like with this movie they just assumed that everyone had read the books because there was no exposition and a lot of things weren't really explained at all. Maybe the effects got away from Yates the director or maybe everyone involved was just kind of tired and wanted to see the series done... It definitely felt like the second half of a 4-hour movie to me, and since it's been a while since I watched the last one I couldn't really remember where things left off. I remember the book being a home run but this felt like it was missing some critical elements to me. Oh well at least now I've seen it.
07.13.14	Now You See Me	Louis Leterrier	A bunch of magicians rob a bank: great premise. The execution didn't really live up to it. at all. And then the end was terrible. It was flashy and slick and held my interest but I'm already forgetting it. So much needless CGI... meh.
07.12.14	Muscle Shoals	Greg Camalier	I didn't like this one as much as Sound City. The history is there but this is also mostly a profile of the one producer/engineer there that pioneered things and I didn't care for the way they shot and presented his story (let's put him in a field! let's oddly reenact things!). it was also like 25 minutes too long. I mean it wasn't terrible, but it didn't really grab me and I wouldn't watch it again. Here, I'll save everyone some time: the only thing I got out of this was that lots of the soul R&B music back in the day like Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin had white guys in the rhythm section. Saved you two hours.
07.11.14	Sound City	David Grohl	Dave Grohl's tribute to the historic recording studio in the San Fernando Valley. The first two acts follow that of a typical well-made biopic... humble beginnings, surprise success, cavalcade of stars, falling on hard times, resurgence, etc. Lots of famous people saying the same thing over and over (I guess it was dirty! and the drums sound great!). If the movie had ended at 80 minutes I would've thought this was a competent and loving tribute film with the star power that only a musician director can muster. But then a turn takes place and it becomes more of a behind the scenes music production doc and all the animated still photos and grainy vintage 16mm clips fall away and we see the people who've been just talking heads for an hour pick up their instruments and start playing and, for me anyway, the whole movie wakes up and energizes and ends on a really great celebratory past-into-future hopeful explosion that I really loved.
07.10.14	Free to Play	Valve	I listen to a gaming podcast called Idle Thumbs and one of those guys plays Dota 2 so he talks about it. often. Also, I'm continually interested in Valve and whatever the hell they do so I watched this movie a) to learn a tiny bit about what Dota is actually about because playing the tutorial did nothing for me, and b) see how Valve can make a movie. It's interesting that they never really claim any credit for any role (they list off all 300 or whatever employees in the credits) but for the most part it felt like a competent movie. There were a few tiny little things that rang sloppy (Most notably its 75-minute running time) to me but for the most part it's a pretty solid film. I liked how they interspersed Source Filmmaker animation to make the game action more immersive. Due to my specific wants mentioned above, I could have used like 3 more minutes explaining the game itself (like what the fuck is Mid and is it good or bad?) but whatever... I found this worth watching.
07.07.14	Gomorrah	Matteo Garrone	A modern depiction of Italian organized crime in Naples. This feels a thousand percent authentic which makes the dire brutality all the more chilling. I mean it feels like all Italian gangster movies involve nothing but back-stabbing and murder, enough to where I wonder how the mob has even survived since all they seem to do is kill each other, but this also shows the tendrils into other areas like waste disposal and clothing manufacture to hint at the diverse interests that keep these guys going and really controls everything from the drug traffic on the street to the haute coutre fashion on red carpets. Never mind the fact that everything along the way gets defiled and corrupted. This was really great. I loved the photography, always hand-held but never sloppy. Although there were five stories going on I never felt lost and although they all ended in varying degrees of tragedy I never got bored with where each one was going. This feels akin to Fernando Di Leo's stuff actually, how all the gangsters are complete immoral bastards and nothing is romanticised at all. City of God, Traffic, some of the recent Yakuza movies... This one sits on the same shelf. Loved it.
07.06.14	Nadine	Robert Benton	So Time Warner's fancy new cable modem is a total piece of shit and it's taking them 6 days to send someone out to service it so as a result my internet is spotty at best, non-existant at worst. Because of that, all my normal Internet-reliant forms of entertainment are unavailable (steam, netflix instant, etc.). What this means is that I've been staring at my dvd collection for about 45 minutes trying to pick a movie to watch. I settled on this because Molly's dad gave it to me years ago and it takes place in austin and stars Jeff Bridges. It's not a bad movie. I didn't realize it was written and directed by Robert Benton, who did one of my favorite low-key movies Nobody's Fool. Kim Basinger is really the star of this though which helps and hinders. Her Texas accent and screwball mannerisms kind of grate on me but it's counterbalanced by her mid-80s youthfull hotness. And Jeff Bridges is great as expected. I don't know why they don't make more action comedies... I guess we had Pineapple Express but compared to stuff like Romancing the Stone and Outrageous Fortune and 48 Hours it seems like a lost genre. Anyway... scratch this one off the list. Not a bad movie at all
07.05.14	1990: The Bonx Warriors	Enzo G. Castellari	Finally got around to seeing this. I remember having to miss it during the first Fantastic Fest due to scheduling or sleeping in or whatever. I always liked the fact that they shot in the Bronx in the early 80s and called it post-apocalypse... and didn't have to change anything. They thought audiences would just believe it because The Bronx was such a shithole back then. Now I've learned they shot maybe most of the interior stuff in the ruins and rubble of Rome, but still. Damn the Bronx was in rough shape back then. There's a quick shot where the actors are running through the streets in their futuristic wardrobe and in the background you can see a bunch of black kids playing basketball in some decrepit court. I wonder what they thought if they noticed the weird Italian white dudes running around with cameras, security provided by the Hell's Angels MC. There's another shot that Castellari kept in of an actor completely biffing on his bike. I mean he goes down HARD. The script never really addressed it, but that fall had to result in a few broken bones or something. But other than the retro shots of the Bronx, this movie isn't much. It's kind of like Escape from New York meets The Warriors, if Michael Beck was a gay Italian body builder who couldn't speak English. It's not QUITE as post-apocalyptic as I'd hoped - Manhattan still seems functional and no Road Warrior body armor - and everything about all the performances are pretty terrible, but this type of movie is also kind of hard not to have at least a little fun with. Certainly compared to Grown Ups 2, I had more fun with the camp and weird Italian style of this. The beginning credits are kind of cool, paying fetishistic close-ups to the futuristic brutality of the spiked elbow-guards and metal finger-claw weapons of the not-so-distant future (the title refers to like 8-9 years in the future, that's pretty dire but who knows if Guliani hadn't gotten into office). There's lots of weird unafraid-to-come-off-feminine gangs... like the ballet face-paint gang and the roller-skate street hockey gang and Fred Williamson is a really odd kingpin named "The Ogre" who benevolently doles out gasoline and electronics to his neighborhoods. Then Vic Morrow is named "Hammer" and wants to kill everyone for some reason... and at the end I can tell a bunch of the crew were burned by real flame throwers hitting panes of glass in front of the camera. So you know... worth watching.
07.04.14	Grown Ups 2	Dennis Dugan	Well... was that even a movie? Wow. Sandler's made like 20 of these movies now... I guess people just like him no matter what? this felt like... I can't even... ok, someone should do a marathon or series of movies where it's clear the actors are more interested in having a good time than making a movie. The Cannonball Runs, maybe throw Hatari in there, Monuments Men... and then 15 Adam Sandler movies... There would be a trio of awards given: Best Actual Movie, Most Fun on Screen, and Biggest Joke on Audience. I think this would be a strong contender for the third award. I feel like the reason why there were no jokes on the screen was because they were all being played on me during production. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I recalled a tweet by Jarrette which went something like this: "Worst movie I saw this week: Grown Ups. Best movie I saw this week: Grown Ups 2." Well kudos, man. You got me on this one. I spent a good 20 minutes waiting for it to get good before realizing what was going on. Afterward, Molly asked me "All those people are funny in real life right? They were all there anyway, why didn't they make some jokes?" Yep. I mean they didn't even give Nick Swardson's character a name? And where was Rob Schneider? Did he demand too much like a story arc or something? But you know... the handshake between the twilight kid and Milo Ventaglamigliano at least approached the theoretical concept of humor. I could at least tell that they were trying. And what the fuck was up with that deer? meh I give up.
07.02.14	Twenty Feet from Stardom	Morgan Neville	A doc about background singers, specifically a handful of influential ones from the 50 - 80s. Most of this was good... probably the highlight is hearing the emotional second take of Rolling Stones' Gimme Shelter, but then the movie gets into why they don't do their own records, why they never became stars, why they don't get any work anymore, etc. and the movie drags through its last act. It was still mostly good, but reminded me a lot of the Shadows of Motown doc about the session musicians... except that movie seemed to have a bit more dignity to it.
06.29.14	The Story of Film: An Odyssey	Mark Cousins	I'm not quite sure if this is a film of a TV series. As far as I can figure, it's a one-shot long-form film along the lines of a Ken Burns film, although I guess those are TV mini-series. In any case, I'm writing these notes not because I think this is a TV show that transcends the medium (like The Wire, which is the only TV show I've written notes about on this site), but because I've finally gotten to the end of this 15-hour saga and feel like I have some thoughts on it. At first I was real taken with the different perspective. I've seen several very long documentaries about the history of film and have generally liked them all. Film history is a subject I'm very taken with so I'm always up for learning more and with this film Mark Cousins presents a much more global take on the story of the medium. My American-centric tastes and upbringing made my exposure to Dreyer and Gance much later than Chaplin and Griffith, so it's refreshing to see a script that pays equal weight and importance to other countries simultaneously rather than an afterthought single chapter or a shortened summary in each era. So I thought "wow, this series is really casting a wide net!" Quite ambitious. Except for Cousin's Irish lilting narration. Never before has there been such an internal struggle of entertainment inside my brain. The first half of this series was spent weighing the interesting perspectives and insights of the films that are being discussed with the sheer annoyance of this guy's voice. I know it's shallow and petty and I should be above such things but really... damn... it's annoying. Or should I say "It's annoying?" because ever sentence uttered from his mouth ends on a questioning rise in pitch. I mean... there's a reason why most documentarians get an actor to narrate their movies. Michael Moore and Nick Broomfield don't because they tell such personal stories, but I feel like they aren't immune to criticism about this either. So an interesting thing started to happen while I made my way through this. Probably with the New Wave episode... where he spends maybe five minutes in France then goes to other countries and movies I've never heard of. I guess I don't really want to spend 15 hours watching something that only tells me what I already know, but on the other hand I feel like in the story of film, what was going on in post-war France is probably worth more than five minutes time. So from there, my interpretation of this epic doc shifted from an objective pedagogical presentation to a subjective personal perspective. Instead of a film like Visions of Light that illustrate the milestones and accomplishments of cinematography that cannot be argued, we get a doc more akin to Martin Scorsese's Personal Journey through American Movies where he recounts his formative years through the movies that influenced him. It's now clearer and clearer to me that this isn't THE STORY OF FILM as it's written in stone but really "The Movies Mark Cousins Loves" in 15 short hours. Now the narration makes sense, the vague anger at Hollywood, the predilection toward art and experimental film over mass entertainment all make much more sense. Viewed through this lens, the series works better for me, although every time Cousins proclaims something the best movie of the decade or this director's best work or this country's most important piece of art it makes me wince. I know it's one of the first rules in writing to take ownership and use a strong active voice... to know things instead of think them, assert them instead of believe them, but it's hard when some of Cousins' themes stretch thin or facts don't 100% fit his story. Mostly it makes me wonder what the better types of this kind of film would do if they had as much time as Cousins does. Scorsese has made two of these docs, one limited to his American autobiographical influences and one about his cinematic Italian biography. I wonder what he could do with 15 hours and TCM's catalog of clips. I don't know if there's one true authoritorial voice out there that could stand head and shoulders as the one true story of film, but I do bet other better produced voices are out there. Ones that wouldn't make watching such a series such a slog to get through. Overall, I found several areas very valuable to watch, but more often than not I saw the viewing of this mega-doc as a chore, which is unfortunate.
06.29.14	Man on Wire	James Marsh	Pretty much everyone says this movie is good but something about it made me avoid it until now. It was ok. I guess instead of it being the story of how this event happened I should look at it more as a profile of the guy who would think to do it... but for whatever reason I was never really engaged or interested 100$. Toward the end there are some good interview bits where his personality leads him to say some awesomely French things, and I guess there's some iconographic importance imbued with the World Trade Center towers that gives the whole movie another level of emotion or whatever... but mostly I was meh on the whole thing. At least now I've seen it and don't have to see it on my queue anymore.
06.27.14	Her	Spike Jonze	OK a few things... this first is that I'm starting to formulate a theory that directors who came up in music videos had to manufacture so much fun and exuberance for other bands that when it comes time for them to make movies of their own, all they have left to interest them is sadness and melancholy. Seriously, what the fuck. Mark Romanek, Michel Gondry, and Spike Jonze. You couldn't find music video directors with more innovation and experimentation and visual finesse in their work, yet all three of these motherfuckers can't make a movie with any kind of happiness to save their lives. What gives?? But aside from the inevitable bummer that this movie's story delivers, I really really liked all the other things about it. The worldbuilding of future LA is at the top of the list. Trains and skyscrapers everywhere, subtle touches in fashion and design and technology... all these things are so awesome and so well implemented. The fact that everyone has different kinds of phones and computers that represent different brands, the clothes are some new perspective of past trend, technology is a practical step ahead without going over the top... I just can't go on enough about how well this world is constructed. I also love how Jonze made this movie like a contemporary romantic comedy. He uses the same second unit shots that we usually see... helicopter skyline stuff, straight-down satellite type stuff... sunsets and vistas... the only difference is that they city these shots capture is fabricated. Yet there's no crazy muted color palette or sweeping impossible CG camera moves or anything like that to tell us to expect explosions or fly-bys from spaceships. So well done. And the story's not as bad as I thought it would be. The premise still kind of makes me gag but Phoenix's performance is so good (and like it's hard not to feel for Johansen's voice) that I didn't really mind it. It's still the weakest part of the movie for me, but that's ok because it wasn't terrible. So yeah, I liked this a loot more than I thought I would. It's a really really good movie.
06.25.14	The Debt	John Madden	Not sure why this was on the queue; probably added it years ago. It's an interesting premise: Israeli Moussad agents infiltrate easter berlin to hunt down the Nazi Surgeon of Birchenau and come back heroes for 30 years until he pops up again. I was with the movie until the end. I wanted Helen Mirren to be a bit more kickass. Unfortunately because the rest of the movie was pretty decent.
06.23.14	Side by Side	Christopher Kenneally	Keanu talks to a bunch of directors and cinematographers about digital vs. film. I'm always a sucker for watching movies about movies so I liked this and found it to include a nice explanation of the technologies in question as well as give me lots of examples of the evolving levels of digital photography. But it's also kind of a one-question film: is film dead? mostly. Done. This probably could've been a 15-minute thing... but whatever...
06.22.14	Milius	Joey Figueroa, Zak Knutson	I've always liked John Milius. This is a solid doc that tells his story well with a bunch of after-effects'd moving still photos and all the A-list interviews you'd expect from his buddies. I hadn't heard about his health issues and it's sad to see time catch up with him. It really makes me thankful for getting the opportunity to hear him speak and watch Big Wednesday with him at AFF that one time. I also didn't know he did so much uncredited rewrite work. I feel like there needs to be some resource to track when that kind of thing happens. Like William Goldman's career. He hasn't been credited on a screenplay for 13 years but I bet he's still working. Anyway... good doc on an interesting filmmaker.
06.21.14	Hunger	Steve McQueen	Pretty hard to watch but very beautiful and artistic and unique. I have to say, until the last half hour started I was kind of bored. Fassbinder's transformation though was crazy. I'll have to look up if that was CG or not. it looked unhealthy. This is definitely one of those movies that I liked having seen more than like seeing. Thinking back, the moments and details presented of the food and shit on the walls and the forced cleanings and the soul flying around the room all stick out as really great filmmaking, but I also can't lie and say I loved every minute of it. It's pretty clear that McQueen is a strong voice in cinema and makes great pieces, buuuuut not the funnest films ever made.
06.08.14	Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa	Jeff Tremaine	This one was weird. I like the Jackass stuff but it's all 100% predicated upon everything being real. When it mixes in narrative and actors the lines get real hazy... Borat and Bruno mostly worked and this does too but... the scripted connective tissue between bits is never as funny as the bits themselves so the more of that stuff they have the worse it drags. In this one though, it feels like they thought up Jackass bits and tried to connect them with a story afterward rather than the other way around. And then there's one real world bit where some poor actor has to act like an asshole in front of a bunch of bikers... I think they were going for drama rather than comedy... the whole thing felt weird to me. That said, the funny stuff was damn funny. The whole stripper scene was my fav... and when he's destroying the penguin... funny stuff. but every location looks faked because they have to set up fa?ade walls with two-way mirrors and shit... it just makes me question where the setup ends and the real people begin. I noticed they were careful to include pretty much everyone during the end credits reacting to finding out they were in a movie... I didn't hate it and enjoyed watching it... but I could also tell that this whole Jackass formula is about at an end.
06.07.14	The Monuments Men	George Clooney	George Clooney made a war movie with no violence. It was ok, but as you could probably imagine a little boring. I think this is one of those stories that you hear the premise and don't really need to see the movie: Dude: Hey did you know that there was a group of art historians that went around during WWII trying to save all the classic art? other dude: Huh that's cool. What happened? I mean I guess they saved it or most of it because it still exists... Dude: ...yeah... So there's not exactly much tension... the cast is great but it feels like they're hanging out more than working. Most of those guys, Bill Murray and John Goodman especially, kind of just have to smirk or blink and people find them funny so that's mostly what they do. I bet it was real fun to make... kind of boring to watch. Not bad, but maybe tied with leatherheads for Clooney's least interesting directorial effort.
05.31.14	The Friends of Eddie Coyle	Peter Yates	70s. Bleak. Naturalistic. Understated. Details. Loved everything about this.
05.30.14	Fair Game	Doug Liman	I didn't know anything about this movie other than Doug Liman directed it and I hadn't heard of it before. Turns out it's a based-on-a-true-story political thriller about a CIA operative who the W. administration outed because her husband was against the war. It was pretty good although shackled at the end by trying to stick to accuracy so instead of some satisfying act of payback or whatever, Naomi Watts testifies to some Congressional committee or something. That's something that's so cool about Inglorious Basterds... I mean why not, right? I would've loved an alternate ending to this movie where some car-bomb blows up Karl Rove or Cheney's chief of staff gets shanked in prison or something like that. Instead all we're left with is a clip from C-SPAN and impotent rage. But that aside, not a terrible movie.
05.26.14	The King's Speech	Tom Hooper	So here's the deal: my Netflix streaming queue is full of indies, documentaries, indie documentaries, and low budget horror movies. Although rewarding, those movies can also be a pain to watch. So when I want to sit back and put a movie on and eat some ice cream without having to worry about subtitles or focus issues my only options are these stupid action movies or whatever. This has led me to finally watch this movie... which I had little interest in other than knowing it wouldn't be terrible. Well, it wasn't terrible. That's about it really.
05.24.14	The Wolverine	James Mangold	Umm... kind of... well I wouldn't call it boring, but there was definitely something missing. I guess I liked it better than the last Wolverine movie... OK Here's the thing. Wolverine's an awesome character. He has one of the movie kickass mutant powers and his character and personality are surprisingly well thought out explorations of that power. So much so that he can carry more than most comic book heroes. Add to that the fact that I like Hugh Jackman (he's a good actor and he comes off as a really nice guy) and you get a certain level of... I hestitate to call it expectation because I didn't expect this movie to be great... let's call it potential. I get a certain level of potential with Wolverine that I don't get with any other comic character. Most Marvel characters come with differing levels of goofiness built into them, most DC characters are either too simple or too incomprehensible... so it's really just Batman and Wolverine with the potential to deliver a truly great film that transcends comic book action to deliver on all cylinders. Now... we have The Dark Knight. Where's Logan's Dark Knight? I think that's why people were so excited when Darren Aronofsky was attached to this. But this movie's problems can't be 100% attributed to James Mangold. The whole attitude of this movie felt kind of like they wanted feet in both Nolan and Bryan Singer worlds where the setting is unique and realistic but the action is exaggerated and comic. I think that without the Viper and Silver Samurai this movie would've been a ton better. So it's disappointing. Another lost opportunity, another failure to realize the potential of Wolverine. Incidentatlly I watched this on the weekend that Days of Future Past was released. Early reviews have been very positive.
05.24.14	Saving Mr. Banks	John Lee Hancock	As opposed to Jobs, this one has some top-tier talent delivering its decent script and you get some award nominations. I hated all the flashback stuff but that's really on me because that's what this movie is. I still liked it more than Finding Neverland, although I don't buy T.Hanks as Walt at all. I wouldn't call this the pinnacle of all cinema or anything but it's fine... polite... comfortable... I feel like that's John Lee Hancock's career right there. fine, polite, comfortable.
05.23.14	Jobs	Joshua Michael Stern	I really don't know why I watched this. I heard it was bad, I wasn't particularly interested, but still... I guess maybe because it was streaming and I was in the mood to watch something easy. The whole thing felt a lot like a TV movie to me or something akin to Bottle Shock or CBGB. The make-up and costumes are there, but it's mimicry rather than impression and the script is rushed and nothing really connects. Meh.
05.22.14	Shame	Steve McQueen	It's kind of coincidental that I watched this right after Don Jon. Maybe not I don't know. This was really heavy. I respect McQueen's skill at eliciting performances especially during these long takes, but it's hard not to slow the pacing of the movie down once you throw more than one or two of those in your movie. I can also respect how all the naked people are exceedingly good looking in this movie although I suspect it kind of works against the intent since maybe the whole first half of the film ends up being kind of titillating rather than concerning or dramatic. Plus there's still the large part of my brain that insists that sex addiction is just for women and good looking men and that this movie would've been really different had it starred Paul Giamatti rather than Michael Fassbender. But still, this was an obviously high quality movie that I'll be in no hurry to see again. At this point I feel like I have Hunger on my queue for homework... but even though I am not singing to the hills on this one, I definitely recognize the personality and depth of performance in both this and 12 Years a Slave. It's a really good movie. Just left me cold is all.
05.21.14	The Secret Life of Walter Mitty	Ben Stiller	So... Yes it's schmaltzy and the music hits you on the head with every emotion you're supposed to feel and the few moments of Stiller-esque humor (like the Benjamin Button scene which I thought was hilarious) don't fit the tone of the rest of the movie at all and the message is a bit mixed and muddled (he's rewarded for getting out there and doing things, but he's also rewarded for the years of drudging hard work he put in?)... but here's the thing: I've been having a tough year. I've had to face a few things that I wasn't ready to face and see a few more things coming that I'm also not ready for. I find myself really questioning major things about myself and how my life has been going up to now. The idea that I have traded financial and physical comfort over adventure and experience is very close to me, so this movie really resonated. I just loved all of it. This movie felt like a movie full of the running sequence in Forrest Gump except, for whatever reason, I'm not too cynical to receive this. Things that should've bugged me didn't and things that shouldn't have worked on me did. I didn't want it to end. I'd love to say that I had an acutely resonant moment with some well-regarded classic like Rules of the Game or Killer of Sheep or something... but I didn't. I had it with this, even with all its flaws that probably distracted most other people. For me it worked and I must not only respect that but celebrate it. I love movies.
05.19.14	Don Jon	Joseph Gordon-Levitt	This was ok. I was hoping it would be better, but i didn't think it's terrible. Julianne Moore and Tony Danza were my favorite parts. I mean I liked the premise and find some of the points (like how RomCom's are just as divorced from real life as porn is) but most of it was a bit too on the nose to seem authentic.
05.17.14	Fast Five	Justin Lin	Eh... I still wouldn't call this a "good" movie, but I liked the heist aspect of it so it's probably the one I like the most? maybe? Who knows... it just felt wrong to have not seen all of them once. Now I don't have to worry about remembering which ones I've seen and which ones I haven't. And why did The Rock spit at the camera while fighting Vin Diesel? And why was he so sweaty all the time? and who was that Vince guy? and all the skinny white girls are starting to blend together. Wasn't there a different skinny white girl in the fourth one who tried to give it up to Vin but he totally shut her down? And now he's with her doppelganger... probably because she's Brazilian... anyway...
05.12.14	Fast & Furious	Justin Lin	it's funny. While watching this I had momentary feelings of familiarity... but I wrote them off thinking they were flashbacks in Fast 6 or something... especially because I had no memory of most of the movie. Except I watched this 4 years ago. ha ha. I really don't remember watching this at all. So I guess Fast Five is the only one I haven't seen in this series... unless maybe I saw that too?
05.10.14	The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug	Peter Jackson	Well... I don't know. Something about these movies feels like if I tried to go back to college. They're trying really hard but it's just not the same. I actually don't mind all the new material with Gandalf and whatnot... and the story of The Hobbit is fun... so I don't really hate these movies, but they do feel long and stretched out to me. I was kind of debating whether or not to get the extended edition of the first Hobbit (because I prefer the extended editions of the LotR films) but... it kind of already feels extended. I'm not sure what else they could put in? Nowhere near as bad as the Star Wars prequels... but still just not quite the same. I wish it was. I feel bad that Jackon's returned to his legacy and it's not going as well as it did the first time round...
05.05.14	We're the Millers	Rawson Marshall Thurger	I heard this was decent. Jen Anniston in that first stripper getup was pretty hot but damn does she make a horrible stripper. A few of the jokes landed with me (mostly dealing with Kathryn Hahn and Nick Offerman) but for the most part it was really meh. Didn't like Sudeikis. And I know how perv this makes me sound but why have an R-rated comedy where one of the main characters is a stripper and not show some titty. It doesn't have to be Anniston titty. How about Boner Garage titty? I don't understand. That's all.
05.04.14	Me and Orson Welles	Richard Linklater	I think it's really great that Rick Linklater is doing that AFS series of 80s movies. I have a little guilt that I bought a season pass to them and have been too busy or tired or not in the mood to make it out to them. It also made me realize that I have some considerable holes in Linklater's filmography, mostly starring Ethan Hawke. I enqueued this in an effort to catch up. So what do you do when you like a movie's subject matter but don't care for its star? The guy who played Orson was great but Efron was distracting and the script wasn't perfect. I think my favorite part was Joe Cotton.
05.03.14	Thor: The Dark World	Alan Taylor	Meh. Thor was never my favorite because it wasn't grounded in reality enough. The same goes for the movies. Dark elves? Huh? Whatever... I guess I'll keep watching these Marvel movies but they are getting a little tedious for me.
04.28.14	Insidious: Chapter 2	James Wan	This one didn't work for me. There were a few moments that were effective but they were complete rehashes of the first Insidious and any tension or fear that those moments may have built were completely deflated when the script would trip my idiot breaker. "So that explains THAT!" barf... there are a handful of really groan-worthy lines not to mention the whole movie dealing with this "Further" nonsense that lost me in the first one. The one thing I did like is how they layered the first film back into this one. Not the first scene that was stupid but the later scene with them banging on the door. I imagine the loose ends from this film like how the forensics on whatshername's throat didn't match Patrick Wilson and where the hell the bride went when whatshername hit the mom in the back and everything else might get written into chapter 3. Didn't connect with this at all.
04.26.14	The Conjuring	James Wan	So James Wan is a competent filmmaker again. I don't think I ever saw Dead Silence but I have to say that I hated Death Sentence so much that I sort of condemned him. Although this could've been called Insidious 2 (until a real Insidious 2 came out), it's still a very effective and solid horror movie with thrills and chills, both cheap scares and rich. I must admit that watching it in the middle of the night with the house completely dark and headphones cranked with my back to an open doorway put me on edge to the point where did stuff like slide one ear off to be able to hear house sounds, periodically look behind me, and turn extra lights on when I went into the kitchen for a drink. As much as I want to be saying this in a note for some classic movie like The Haunting or Poltergeist, I must admit that James Wan got me there with The Conjuring. I daresay this scared me more than the original Exorcist (which I don't hold much stock in). The plot gets pretty extreme and kind of falls apart for me at the end (like most horror movies do) but not as much as Insidious did and it really could've been a lot worse. The quality of the cast certainly deserves a ton of credit, but again I must give Wan credit. The whole movie is so unabashedly horror. The score, the title roll, the setting and family and overall mood announces what kind of movie that it is and isn't afraid to admit its intentions. I'm so glad we've moved past the music video era of horror movies because now the lens filters are toned down, people care about performance again, and real stories backbone these movies. This scared me and you can't argue with that.
04.17.14	Sin Nombre	Cary Fukunaga	A long time ago I watched this show on IFC called "Film School" and it was about a group of NYU students making their senior films. It was a pretty great show and at times seemed staged or fake because the students fit certain archetypes so well. When it came time to start shooting, one guy got really upset because his whole first day of shooting was wasted by the DP trying to get one single perfect shot. I'd heard Sin Nombre was great but for whatever reason had never gotten around to watching it. OK I know the reason; it's the same reason why I haven't watched Gomorrah yet: It takes more effort to watch a critically-acclaimed subtitled film which may be hard to follow and pretty long than a stupid English-language comic book movie or whatever. But when I saw that the guy who directed season one of True Detective also made this movie: I re-added it to my queue. I could've sworn this was made by a native Mexican. It has the feel of a Cuaron or Innaritu or someone like that. Lots of hand-held, entirely Spanish-speaking, all on various beautiful locations that seem to span the countryside. Pretty ambitious stuff for a first feature from a dude born in Oakland who spent 8 hours trying to film a guy exiting a revolving door. He did it though. It's really good. I liked it quite a bit.
04.16.14	Inside Llewyn Davis	Joel Coen	Huh. You know while I was watching this I had two levels of thought going: one was that in the moment I was interested in seeing what happened next, but the other was that I sure hoped it went somewhere because I was unsure that I'd end up liking it as a hole. I rode most the movie that way, but the last few minutes really decided it for me. spoiler alert. So it's not immediately clear whether we've glimpsed some purgatorial revolution in an undending cycle or if most of the movie was discreetly a flashback that we've returned to (I suspect the latter), but either way I like it. The ending gives the movie a purpose. I was a bit conflicted though. I'm not a huge folk guy and not a huge Dylan fan although I have some intellectual idea of his impact on the genre. As such though, whenever Llewyn performs I'm not sure if I'm supposed to like it or not, perceive it as good or bad. I can't tell if I'm supposed to be sympathizing with a misunderstood talent or feeling sorry for the proficient yet uninspired performance. I feel like studios want to sell soundtracks right? so the music's probably supposed to be good? But then it's just a bigger bummer at the end when Dylan shows up to completely obliterate his rendition of Farewell. The one song that I know is supposed to be bad - Please, Mr. Kennedy - I actually liked the most. So who knows... I'm confused about the whole thing. Other than that... my first impressions are that I liked it but not loved it. I'd certainly rate this higher than The Ladykillers and Intolerable Cruelty and maybe also Burn After Reading, but it's also not in the pantheon of their top dozen films (each of which I would say I unabashedly love and could watch any time). We'll see if this opinion changes with time and thought.
04.15.14	The Last Stand	Kim Jee-woon	Wanted to watch an action movie and was curious because I like Good/Bad/Weird ok and really liked I Saw the Devil. I feel like this would've been ok if the script wasn't completely and utterly terrible. I mean the plot is ok and most of the action was ok, but every line out of every character's mouth grated on me. Oh and the whole corvette thing and fbi thing and Peter Stormare as a... I guess Texan? All that should go too. I guess maybe it's more like if this was the first draft of a script that was then handed off to someone who knew anything about the law who then handed it off to someone who knew how people talked... then it would work. You also have to wonder if there's director translation issues too, right? Or maybe it's me? Maybe the dialogue all the performances in I Saw the Devil were as hamfisted and terrible as they are here and I just wouldn't know because I'm too busy reading subtitles? Who knows. Either way. Not a good movie. I'm curious about Sabotage though. I'll watch that when it hits Netflix. Hopefully Arnie can use this as a lesson that his old career is dead and open up to more interesting - if less headlining - roles.
04.12.14	Nebraska	Alexander Payne	Another award movie down. It was ok. I didn't have a problem with the languid pace and meandering plot, but I do kind of feel like Alexander Payne makes the most un-funniest comedies out there. It's clear there's a vision here and I do feel like it captured a feeling of the Midwest really well, but... I don't know... there's not much else here. I did like when Will Forte asked Bob Odenkirk how long it took him to drive... but that's it. It will sit alongside "Dear Ndugu" and George Clooney running in flip flops on my shelf of single-things-I-remember-from-Alexander-Payne-movies. I guess he's still getting a pass from me because Election was so good.
04.12.14	Out of the Furnace	Scott Cooper	Yeah this is a great movie. It's weird that it came and went especially since Crazy Heart got so much attention. Christian Bale plays a Pennsylvania steel worker and stuff happens. Great cast, believable story, wonderfully evocative setting... The plot felt very Pelecosian to me in that it took its time and never got outlandish and a lot of it was about the journey rather than waiting for some twist or turn yet the climax still felt satisfactory to me. Just a wonderfully subdued tense movie. And between True Detective and this, Woody Harrelson is on fire. I feel like this is in the same vein as Place Beyond the Pines, but I liked this way better (and not just because of that douche teen). Great movie.
04.07.14	A Good Day to Die Hard	John Moore	tired and boring.
04.07.14	In the Loop	Armando Iannucci	It's kind of funny just how similar this is to Veep. I guess I should track down and watch In the Thick of It too... although I'm not sure if I'm ready for it. I liked this though... we can always do with more intelligent comedies that don't play stupid.
04.06.14	Man of Steel	Zack Snyder	I put this on to fall asleep to and finished it up today. I am not a Superman fan. I'm getting really tired of seeing the same origin stories told again and again. It's really boring and I was bored whenever it wasn't an action film. However, a solid cast pads everything out and I feel like the action was constructed better than average (i.e. I could tell what was going on... most of the time). it's weird, I doubt these big action scenes are even shot anymore. Maybe it's just weeks and weeks of close-ups of guys gritting and yelling but for the most part it's an animated film at that point. I will say poor Metropolis. It's pretty funny when some random humans, standing in the middle of an impact crater the size of half of Manhattan, looks at Supes and says "he saved us!" But on the other hand, it's cool to see shit explode so... better that than a bunch of space fighting or whatever. I still question this movie's existence though... but what's funny is I hope they make a sequel because we might actually get a new story out of it.
04.05.14	Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues	Adam McKay	Let's see. Funny. I definitely liked the first half more than the second. Felt a bit too long... got a bit out there. I liked the central idea though that Ron Burgundy is responsible for turning the news into a ratings circus. I wish they didn't repeat jokes from the first film although I guess they only did it twice that I'm thinking of (with the condoms and the end). Still, I was really laughing hard for that first half hour. All the stuff with getting the band back together really worked on me. Especially when Brick was reminiscing. that shit was funny. All in all I laughed and you can't argue with that, but it's not the wall-to-wall classic that I think the first one is.
04.05.14	12 Years a Slave	Steve McQueen	Pretty good. Probably won't be watching it again any time soon but good award movie. Let's see it feels like I should write more... I don't know... slavery's bad?
04.04.14	How to Be a Man	Chadd Harbold	I'm a relatively new fan of Gavin McInnes. I think I first saw him in what is still my favorite thing that he's done: a youtube video called How to Piss in Public. So... large parts of this movie feel very similar to that which I love. Just Gavin's outlook on life and his missives of confident advice are really charismatic and funny and true. The parts of the movie where it tries to be a movie... like with plot and drama and acting... those don't play quite as well. Whatever though, it's still a funny movie and the good parts are well worth watching. It's certainly funnier than Tadpole. Remember when everyone was raving about Tadpole? What the fuck was that about!?
04.04.14	The Wolf of Wall Street	Martin Scorsese	It seems to be a pretty common feeling to finally see these ultra-hyped awards movies and feel let down. In truth I'm not sure what to think of this. There's a lot there, but I've seen most of it before. Sometimes it feels like Scorsese doing Scorsese (which I hate typing because that means nothing but I can't figure out a better way to say it), sometimes it feels like nothing more than an exercise in excess. Just like with The Counselor I'd like to see the 6 hour cut or whatever to see a lot of those supporting characters probably have lines of dialogue. I don't know, man. I guess I'll leave it to time to see where this lands. Right now I'm guessing it won't stick, but who knows. And as someone born in 1978 at least now I know what the deal was with Quaaludes.
03.31.14	No Country for Old Men	Joel Coen	We went to Marfa, TX last weekend to get away for a few days. It's rugged desolate country out there but not without beauty. That and The Counselor put me in a mood to watch this again. What a great movie. Smart people clashing. And a really restrained hand by the Coens. The whole thing screams competence. Fantastic.
03.30.14	The Counselor	Ridley Scott	I will admit that my reasoning in seeing this was mostly spite. I think Ridley Scott hasn't made a movie worth talking about for 30 years and he's one of if not the absolute most overrated director working today. However, in this case I really think it's the script to blame. Even though Cameron Diaz' performance was terrible, I can't imagine that character and those lines ever being good. And it's not like anyone wants to see Meryl Streep fucking a car. I watched the extended cut... because... hmmm why did I do that. I guess I thought if I was going to watch this then I wanted to see the best effort and not something that could be claimed as compromised. And I feel like what happens in a lot of these movies where tone and detail kind of outweigh plot(I'm thinking stuff like Miami Vice and JFK) then I like the extended versions much better because they give room for the characters to breathe. This was still pretty terrible though. I liked everything that had to do with the transport of drugs. Everything else (i.e. all the stuff with the movie stars) sucked. It does have me in a mood to watch No Country again though... which I'll probably do soon.
03.29.14	The Road Warrior	George Miller	Molly had never seen this so I thought that should be fixed. Great movie, still love the shit out of it. So bizarre and so well edited. Lord Humongous... man. What a movie.
03.29.14	Texas Chainsaw 3D	John Luessenhop	Well I guess I wrote too soon. All I could think about while watching this is that I had JUST wrote that these are not typical slasher movies and they're all closer to remakes than sequels and here we go with a movie that starts AT the end of the original and follows the slasher template very closely (since the crazy family has become just Leatherface alone and killing teens for no reason). Well at least it's something different from the previous four films. The beginning scene went a long way with me. Because of it I found myself willing to forgive all the cheap looking digital gore and the shots where you can see the chain not moving on the saw while he weilds it and the inexplicable reason why the girl refuses to button her shirt up. In fact, I quite liked the twist on the story and making Leatherface more sympathetic. I kind of feel like if the girl was a different type and could pull it off, there's a great ending here where she not only accepts her heritage but also embraces it and starts a new family there. I guess that's sort of what happened with the scene after the credits but you never see her not skittish around her cousin and I just don't buy her doing much other than acting hot and showing off her skinny waist. Also... a lot of it is not great. Not terrible I guess? but not great. For as non-bloody the original was, this was awash in Karo. It did feel a lot like someone's take on putting Leatherface into a Friday the 13th or something. It's funny that didn't happen until now... So it's an interesting - if not entirely successful - ending to this marathon for me. I did like this one a whole lot more than the previous two, even though I kind of wish they hadn't flash forwarded and set the whole movie in 74 and dealt with the direct aftermath more. I was really taken with that intro. Anyway, I have one more epilogue to this celebration in store: an hour-long Blue Underground special feature checking in with everyone circa 2000 or so. Since I don't think I'm counting what's probably a DVD special feature as an entry here, I'm going to watch that (and perhaps listen to the commentary on the original disc) and update this note with some final... notes. ... The Blue Underground doc was interesting. A lot of the stories and even some quotes show up in Hansen's book, but it's always nice to see the faces as they speak. It also gave a glimpse of how compromised all the sequels were. It's worth watching. So... final thoughts. The original really does deserve all the credit it gets. The sequels are all kind of rough. But you know... compared to the Nightmare or Friday sequels I'm not sure they're THAT rough. And what I found to be interesting is that, for the most part, the sequels are far enough apart that each one reflects the changing landscape of horror, from indie 70s to excess 80s to tucked pant-legs early 90s to cyborg-fixated mid-90s to music video early 2000s all the way to a post-Avatar 3D. In the end after all is said and done, this is how I'd rank em: -Part 1 -Part 3 -Part 2 -Part 4 -3D -2003 Remake -The Beginning Wow they are almost in order! I wonder if that means anything... And now just for fun, let's throw some awards out: Best Leatherface: Gunnar Hansen. No contest. Everyone else seems to be either imitating Gunnar or acting like a professional wrestler trying to sprint. Best Gag: The working chainsaw through Leatherface's belly in Part 2. Sure it was kind of obvious that there were two saws, but both chains were moving and his prostetic belly was gross and huge. It was awesome. Best dig during the opening narration: Next Generation. "Regrettably not one of the family members was ever apprehended and for more than ten years nothing further was heard. Then, over the next several years at least two minor, yet apparently related incidents, were reported." Ouch! Sick burn... Gooiest bodies: Part 3. The adipoosal or whatever that word is... KNB did some awesome work in that intro with the level 5 biohazard suits pulling up fake heads out of snot and semen. Completely gross. Best throwback crew connection: It's a tie between Daniel Pearl shooting the 2003 remake and Wayne Bell doing the music for Next Generation. It's a shame that awesome beginning camera flash sound effect was never used as effectively as in the first film. The last four all brought it back in some fashion but they repeated the same sound over and over again like it was sampled from the original. What made the first one so cool was that the sound changed each time you heard it. Sometimes it crunched closed and sometimes it tapered off and the flashbulb glances at the gooey corpses were cut together to match those awesome eerie sounds. Biggest Dick: Barry from Next Generation. Thinking back I think he's my favorite part of the movie. Biggest Douche: Ryan from Part 3. Ugh just shut up and stop shining your glasses at me. Biggest Badass: Benny from Part 3. Not even Leatherface can take out Ken Foree. The only male to survive any of the films... thanks to his weekend warrior training and... all that practice killing zombies I guess. Biggest Trooper: Marilyn Burns from the original. All the other actresses had to get dirty and cry for a few hours. Marilyn was actually bludgeoned and cut and put through hours or physical and emotional torture, and she STILL came back for two cameos later in the series. Most of the other girls got bras too. Craziest family member: Tough one. I would say McConaughey but I think he just liked to throw around his girlfriend. Instead I think I'm going with Ed Neal for his hitchhiker in the original. His performance in the van set the bar for everyone else in the entire series. Sorry Viggo, painted fingernails ain't gonna cut it. Cyber-est Leg: McConaughey in Next Generation. Seriously what the fuck? This was really fun. If anyone read this, thanks for making it to the end!
03.29.14	The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning	Jonathan Liebesman	The less said about this one the better. It's like a remake of a remake following the formula of the first Platinum Dunes film with a few prequelly bits like "oh look that's where R. Lee Ermey lost his front teeth" and "oh look that's when that old slaughterhouse closed." Really the only differences (spoiler alert) are that the girl doesn't get away in the end and leatherface starts off with a face of real leather and we get a full monologue on how the family started eating people. It seems like the first movie happened a long time ago in a place far away. This was all handheld shakiness and weird artificial grain and close-ups and dried fake blood. It's a chore to get through. Hopefully the next one isn't as bad, although at this point I don't think I can imagine a new take on this movie. It's weird... I don't feel particularly like these fit the slasher genre perfectly. Even though teens get killed, I feel like most slasher films really flourish their kills where the first TCM threw them away very quickly. That was what was so great about them. They're kind of like the kills in the Godfather films where each one has an interesting detail and then they're gone. Even with these remakes the teens never die in progression and it's really quite a mess. So maybe because of this different formula, each movie feels more like a half-remake than a sequel to me. The second one is really the only film that feels like it progresses from the original. All the others are more variations on a theme, and watching them all together so close is kind of getting exhausting.
03.28.14	The Texas Chainsaw Massacre	Marcus Nispel	I must've seen this right before making this site because I'm surprised it's not in here already. So... Isn't it funny that I got more of a kick out of The Next Generation than I did this... It's just so... boring. I mean all of the Michael Baby/music video setups and filters and sprayed on sweat and where the fuck is all this dripping water coming from and who are they kidding like Jessica Biel has to kill the blonde dude just because he can't do a pull up? From a misogynist point of view, Kudos to Marilyn Burns for going braless in the original. Staring at Jessica Biel's navel is ok but they go out of their way to give her a soaking wet white tank several times and some mysterious maternity bra shows up. Ugh. Um... so things I liked. R. Lee Ermey of course... his sheriff is nicely nutso and is easily the best part of the family. Oh yeah, so Leatherface has no nose now? Huh? Sorry... things that I liked... hmmm. Well I'm pretty sure I'll still like this more than the next. To be honest I'm kind of looking forward to seeing the latest one, but the prequel I still kind of remember sitting through at a Fantastic Fest and thinking it was stupid and boring so... hopefully I'm wrong!
03.28.14	Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation	Kim Henkel	AKA The Return of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. You know, all through watching Dallas Buyers Club I suspected something was up but now after revisiting this I'm convinced that McConaughey's Oscar was payback for this performance going unnoticed. OR McConaughey won the Oscar when Dallas Buyers Club producers included this movie on the screener with an engraved note saying "Most Improved" in frilly fancy script. OR When William Friedkin met with mcConaughey to talk about his role in Killer Joe, Friedkin was worried that McConaughey didn't have the chops to carry such a heavy performance. "I can do it, Billy," he said. "I understand this character completely. Hell, I AM this character." Friedkin looked at McConaughey with concern in his eyes. "It's not that," Friedkin said, "I know you understand the character and his motivations. It's the fact that you don't have a remote-controlled cyber leg to hold you up in this one. The part's too HEAVY!" OR ALRIGHT ALRIGHT ALRIGHT Ok ok enough awesome McConaughey humor. Let's talk about this movie. So... ok the obvious point is that most of this movie is really really terrible. The characters are distilled to the point of satiric jokes (although the dick guy is hilarious and the bitch girl is almost as funny), the performances are terrible, the whole Illuminati angle is a complete mystery and I guess tries to answer a question that nobody ever asked, much of the action feels sloppy and low low budget (although thankfully this is pre-digital video so it still looks better than half the shit today), and Leatherface now just screams like every moment he's in a scene he's more Screamface than Leatherface. And of course... McConaughey has a fucking CYBER LEG that's receptive to any REMOTE CONTROL that... I don't know... gives him super stomping powers or something. So if you take all of that and disregard it, there's some pretty good stuff here. I like that it's shot in Austin (which I don't think the third one was even shot in Texas... I saw an awful lot of Joshua trees), I like how turn-it-to-11 insane McConaughey is right from the get go. I like a woman crazy thrown into the mix, although the first actual boob in the series gets inserted out of nowhere and - if I can type this without dying of irony - kind of cheapens the film. I like the throwback cast at the end and sometimes (SOMETIMES) the script feels sharp. And even though I hate the Illuminati thing, I like that they tried to take it somewhere instead of just telling the same exact story again. Now, whether I prefer an underground carnival or 20 year-old McConaughey working for Mr. suit-and-flesh-rings, I don't know. I'd probably put the third one above both other sequels. But it could have been worse. For a movie like this that maybe never would have been released were it not for Jerry Maguire and A Time to Kill, it SHOULD have been worse. So there you have it. the "original" series is done. It's a super fragmentary and relapsing series really. By this time Jason had "died" and Freddy fought dream warriors and... who knows what Michael Meyers did I don't really like most of the Halloween movies. But now I'll probably take a little break before dipping into the "reboot" series... It's funny what 10 years does... music videos and 9/11 changed a lot.
03.28.14	Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III	Jeff Burr	I remember liking this entry in the series quite a bit when it hit my local video shelves. I feel like maybe it was better than a lot of the other horror movies I was renting at the time. In fact I feel like maybe I saw this before the original, although I have some fragmented memories of the second, maybe seen on cable at some point when I was younger than I should have been. Watching it now, I do find it drags less than the second film. It's kind of a half reboot, half sequel that makes no canonical sense but whatever... at this point TCM means two and only two things: Leatherface, and crazy cannibal family. The trailer for this one had "Junior" having his chainsaw delivered unto him Lady-of-the-lake style. The chainsaw dominates the poster. The beginning titles involve an Elm Street-esque montage of Leatherface stitching together his mask. I also remember this being the time that they started offering "professional" Leatherface masks in the pages of Fangoria for some unbelievably rich (to a middle schooler) sum. At this point he's in the rogue's gallery right next to Michael Meyers and Jason Vorhees and Fred Krueger. I guess Pinhead too, right? Oh and don't forget whatshisname from Hatchet! LOL. Anyway, Viggo didn't eat the blood from the fender like I remembered. It's interesting that Savini did the second one and KNB did the third. Those guys have dominated the horror make-up for decades now. I'm all over the place with these notes. I guess I liked this ok. The family seems crazy for no reason and they seem more focused on hunting humans than anything else... actively predatory rather than tucked away on their own although I guess that's a natural progression from the last one. Bring on the fourth... which I think it going to be the hardest to get through although again I have fond memories of seeing it when it first came out, thinking it was better than it should've been. We'll see!
03.28.14	The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2	Tobe Hooper	This reminded me a bit of Rambo: First Blood Part 2 in that the first film felt definitively seventies and the sequel couldn't be more eighties. Where the original was an indie production of a dozen people out on their own in the Round Rock summer heat, this is a full on Cannon Golan/Globus buy-the-soundtrack popcorn fest. Half of it takes place in some underground carnival of dust and bad props, Leatherface is all of a sudden sexualized and the Cook monologues hard-core while the girl is strapped in to the dinner table. The daringly subtle comedy of the first is on full display here (one look at the classic poster tells you that). Basically everything that felt casual and implied in the first is now made completely explicit and exploited. That said, it's hard to blame an 80s horror movie for being an 80s horror movie. It's a product of it's time no less than the original so I don't see that as necessarily bad. And moments are still effective like the scene on the bridge where the UT fans get it (remembered) and the scene where hot-top intimidates the girl in the radio station (remembered) and the scene where Leatherface puts L.G.'s face on the girl (forgotten). I remember when I watched all the Nightmares on Elm Street that it was interesting to see how quickly the character of Freddy became caricature and the same thing happened here. Leatherface is referred to by name a bunch and does his signature saw raised/head shimmy in every scene that he's in. Again, maybe that's the time period... In the end, it's a pale disappointing shadow of the original, but really the original can't be sequelled. It's an artifact almost like it was found in some creepy attic half-melted from the heat. To spend any more time with that family is just a bad idea. However, creating a new family that acts just like them? With Viggo Mortensen eating blood off your bumper? Let's see about that...
03.27.14	The Texas Chainsaw Massacre	Tobe Hooper	I just finished reading Gunnar Hansen's Chain Saw Confidential about the making of this movie. It inspired me to revisit this one... and fuck it all of them. So, over the course of the next few days or whenever I can fit them in, I will re-watch all the Texas chainsaws... even though it's kind of a bum proposition because I'm starting with the best. I would say I would marathon it but... we're talking about 7 movies plus a DVD documentary that I snagged and it's already 3am... so this will be an exercise in moderation as well as nostalgia. This first film is magic. It still works. It's such a brutal experience. Watching it again after many years, the pacing had completely stretched in my mind. The chase through the woods was like 15 minutes in my memory as was the dinner scene and the van stuff. Really I thought the movie was those 3 scenes... They're really not that long... they had just stuck so firmly in my brain that they dominated over everything else. Reading Hansen's book, you kind of get the sense that this happened by accident. I'll have to re-listen to the commentary to hear Hooper talk directly about it, but mostly it feels like an accident too. It's a wonder that the movie came together at all, much less as effectively as it did. And Christ you feel the heat. So we're off to a good start. Somehow I think my memory has been pretty kind to the next three in the series, but we'll see. I'm looking forward to them. Side Note: I absolutely love and cherish my DVD copy of this movie. I think it's a Pioneer release of an Elite laserdisc because there's lots of mentions in the credits. It's a fantastic disc full of comprehensive extra footage with contextual introductions and trailers for the next three films and a great group commentary in addition to some fancy digital transfer and new stereo mix of the soundtrack (although the original mono is also available). It really reminds me of what was so great about DVDs (and by extension laserdiscs) back in the early days before the studios figured out how to ruin them. Love it.
03.27.14	Dallas Buyers Club	Jean-Marc Valee	In a huge shocker, movie everyone says is good is liked by one more person. McConaughey should get an award for losing all that weight. All jokes aside, I guess I liked it. It's one of those movies that you watch and like and then never feel a need to see again and then years from now you go "oh yeah, that movie exists.". I mean probably... who knows. we'll see. I don't have much to say about this.
03.27.14	The Ides of March	George Clooney	Just as Aaron Sorkin had The American President as a blueprint for The West Wing, Beau Willimon's play Farragut North turns into this film as a precursor to House of Cards. That was my primary reason for going back and watching this... well that and I kept hearing that it was good. I liked it. I think Clooney is a competent/talented director with enough clout to bring interesting projects to the screen. Some are better than others but none of them are terrible (even Leatherheads which has a few moments that make it worth watching I think). Of course I say that not having seen Monuments Men yet. hah. Anyway, this is another solid political drama. Great deep cast. Great script. And notably it doesn't feel like a filmed play to me. There are enough locations and scene changes where I didn't get too bogged down in monologues and soliloquies. It's kind of hard not to be infuriated that all politics in all movies equals unbridled cynicism though. Like shouldn't we be outraged that our appointed leaders and the whole process is so dirty and wrong and all we can do is revel in the decrepitude of it all? Like "haha the president is a murderer! I love it!" Is that a good thing? "of course! who wouldn't fuck Evan Rachel Wood! I mean even after Marilyn Manson, she's still hot!" I don't know... it all feels a bit negative. Sorkin gets a lot of flak for having some romantic notions and veering into sappiness but at least it's hopeful. This is really dark. Still liked it though. Also... the score for the end credits is great. All movie it's this brooding horns and bassline then when the cast list starts this funky guitar comes in with these drum rolls and all of a sudden the horns take on a funk flair and it's pretty awesome. I hope the last episode of House of Cards turns that famous bassline into a similar funky groove to let everyone breathe again.
03.21.14	American Hustle	David O. Russell	I was too wrapped up in plot to really know what I think about this the first time around. I liked Bale and Cooper's performances, thought Amy Adams and Jennifer Lawrence were a bit overrated. The narration and musical montages felt like low-rent Scorsese but I didn't feel it in most of the rest of the movie and I liked that stuff. I don't know... right now I'm pretty lukewarm on it. Perhaps on a second viewing i'll have stronger opinions.
03.21.14	Ruthless People	David Zucker	Microsoft wanted 20 bucks to let me stream Anchorman 2 so I looked through my library for a comedy that Molly hadn't seen and came up with this. For whatever reason, this movie was on HBO a bunch when I hit my formative sweet spot as a kid. Now I basically have the movie memorized and still enjoy it immensely. I consider this movie to contain classic roles from Judge Reinhold, Danny DeVito, and Bill Pullman. I even tolerate Bette Midler here. It's completely rooted in the 80s with spandex miniskirts and Beetle Juice-esque (except not ironic) interior design and serial killer fever (I remember for a time all of LA was pretty terrorized by Richard Ramirez and the hillside strangler and the freeway killer and everybody else. Of course today it's kind of like "...and why is there a serial killer in this movie all of a sudden?" Made perfect sense to me back then. Perfect fodder for comedy right?
03.15.14	The Hunger Games: Catching Fire	Francis Lawrence	I liked it better than the first which I found drab and boring. When I read the books, I liked the first the most and the third the least; it would be quite interesting if I wound up flipped on the films. I liked the attention paid to the new contestants this time around and thought the scenery of the other districts was nice and subtle. And this one didn't feel an hour too long.
03.15.14	The Great Gatsby	Baz Luhrman	Um... it was ok. The bizarre theatricality of it was kind of hard to grasp for me through the first act, but by the end I was with it. Still not sure I by Tobey Maguire as an adult... and it's pretty damn long, but as I think back on this I like it more and more. I'll probably never love it, but I certainly didn't hate it either.
03.10.14	The World's End	Edgar Wright	Truth be told I watched the first half of this during Christmas but never got around to finishing it until now. I like the people involved, like the idea for the most part, like the way it looks, all of that... but the pieces don't quite connect for me. It's kind of boring...? Maybe because the Invasion of the Body Snatchers genre isn't as ubiquitous as zombie horror or cop action? I don't know. It just doesn't go where I wish it would. I really hate to say this but I kind of wish it was just the same but with no robots... just old friends airing their grievances as they get proressively more and more drunk. I dunno... I don't know what would make me like this more.. However, I can say that I didn't see the ending coming. Bold move. Again I think it's something I like more as an idea than the execution here (why is he hanging out with THAT group of people? Why is he looking for a fight? I don't get it), but kudos for going there.
03.02.14	Wreck-It Ralph	Rich Moore	For a movie about classic video games, it could have used some more video games. Why get the liscence to use Street Fighter and Pac-Man and Sonic and not actually USE them? Lego Movie did kind of the same thing with Gandalf and Millhouse and the ninja turtle but at least Batman was a major player and at least the rest of the movie was interesting. This felt plodding and familiar and generic. Wasted opportunity.
02.28.14	Ender's Game	Gavin Hood	It's hard for me to separate my experience with this versus my memory of the book which I thought was great when I read it years and years ago. Maybe people who never read the book would like this. I didn't. The tone is bizarre, Ender's not enough of a kid, the whole family dynamic between Peter, Val, and Ender is rushed and feels off, I feel like the ending is so heavily telegraphed that it's no surprise at all because it's never quite clear that Mazer is supposed to be running the tests and the very very end gets so philosophical in like the last 90 seconds. I feel like it's a pretty big mess. Oh well.
02.22.14	Riddick	David Twohy	The further adventures of Riddick... I guess? I mean, not to sound harsh or anything but did anyone really WANT another Riddick movie? Is there some niched fanbase somewhere clamoring to find out what happened after the conclusion of the last one? 9 years ago? I like David Twohy's work and all but... a whole movie about Riddick trying to escape some random planet? It seems like a single issue of a comic book to me, not a movie. I feel like The Arrival and Pitch Black both stand up as solid sci-fi movies that don't need sequels or trilogies to follow up on. But you know... I didn't turn this off half way through... I don't think it's a terrible movie or anything and I shouldn't complain about a big budget sci fi movie that's not based on a comic or cartoon. It just feels very minor to me Is all.
02.21.14	Enough Said	Nicole Holofcener	Another solid engagingly authentic drama from the female perspective from Nicole Holofcener. I really love her work more and more as I get older because I can feel her getting older with me. The twenty-something confusion of Walking and Talking gave way to maturing insecurities in Lovely and Amazing to burgeoning marriages and peer jealousy in Friends with Money to dealing with a teenage daughter and guilt of success in Please Give and now to second marriages and empty nests in Enough Said. I think she's a few years ahead of me on the track of life, but it's comforting to see stories of this age and maturity level still resonate with some audiences. It seems like every movie these days is a reboot of some vapid thing with younger and younger stars. Why do we need to see a teen Fantastic Four movie? Fuck all that noise, this movie is about a divorcee dating an overweight guy and dealing with her daughter leaving for college. That it can be ten times more fulfilling and enjoyable than anything by Marvel Studios is a testament both to Holofcener's voice and the power of cinema. I feel like I'm being grandiose... it's a bit late. FUCK IT THOUGH IT'S HOW I FEEL!
02.19.14	White Dog	Samuel Fuller	Seeing Fuller's film in a theater with a receptive crowd and listening to Lars and Rick Linklater talk about it really elevated this movie for me from a late Fuller oddity to something I really enjoyed. In bullet format: -Still loved that dinner scene. "Sour cream, love it - fattening" is one of the oddest most bizarre pieces of dialogue ever and I cherish it. -The dog really acted well. I assume most of this was creative shooting and editing but the damn thing gets a death scene at the end where it gets its tongue all dirty and looks at the camera and gives a death sigh. What the fuck, dog!? That was better than every line reading out of Kristy McNichols' mouth! Well, except the part where she calls the old racist a "son of a bitch" eight times in a row. -Love all the extreme close-ups. Especially Paul Winfield's sweaty eyes. -Loved the Corman crew creeping in a bit. Paul Bartel complaining about flicker due to the rear projection playing in an incorrect framerate something like 60 seconds before Fully starts using slow motion and puts the flickering RP screen behind McNichols was a master touch. -Spotting Hitchcock/Truffaut and the Hitch poster and the Truffaut mention was cool. -The dog attacks still felt pretty movie-ish. I had no real clear indication of the severity of any of them. All in all I had a great time revisiting this film and this series is proving to be an essential part of my week. They just announced the next wave which includes some movies I'm really really excited to see theatrically so I guess this will be my Wednesday for the forseeable future. Can Not Wait For Star 80. Jesus.
02.17.14	All is Lost	J.C. Chandor	Impressively minimalist movie about an old man and the sea. Redford easily carries a role which requires unbelievable amounts of heavy lifting. I guess it was time he reminded everybody that he was a great actor before his directing career. There were a few times where I wondered how much time was left but that was mostly due to me having no clue where the movie was going rather than boredom. Really riveting movie. Liked it a lot.
02.15.14	The Lego Movie	Phil Lord, Christopher Miller	Really loved this. It's everything a Lego movie should be: imagination, elegant design, attention to detail, fun design, and appropriate for all ages. I really liked how the instructions played a part as well since I have a particular fondness for their manuals. The story sends a hell of a lot of mixed messages, but I thought it would be much worse so I didn't really mind. I do wish there was a tiny bit more cross-IP interaction but it's cool... Look forward to owning this.
02.12.14	Valley Girl	Martha Coolidge	The next in Rick Linklater's Jewels in the Waste series of his early-80s favs even though Rick wasn't here tonight because he's in Berline premiering Boyhood. Instead, Lars gave an extra long intro and afterward he chatted with Louis Black which I found to be just as interesting. This is a bit of a confession but I've never seen this before. It hit while I was still too young to see boobs and I never got around to it when I watching stuff like Last American Virgin and Joysticks. I should really also see Vampire's Kiss. Anyway, I was really taken with this. It didn't feel as scandalous as Fast Times and I loved how... ok I loved a lot of things. For one, I love how the Valley was where all the rich preppy people lived. Having spent 1978-86 being a small kid in the valley, I thought this was hilarious. I guess this is right before everyone figured out all the porn in the world was being produced next door and all the rich white people moved into the hills. I also loved how the movie embraced location and montaged the fuck out of early-80s Hollyweird and the Sunset Strip and some seminal punk and new wave bands in contrast with the color blocked collar-up "techno pop with no soul" that was playing all over the radio. It goes further than that though and, I feel, really sees Los Angeles - all of Los Angeles - with a loving eye. Even the "scariest" Hollywood Blvd. stuff isn't nearly as rough as Suburbia or Repo Man or even Thrashin' but instead a more innocent and romantic view of the seedy side much like the story as a whole. And of course Nic Cage is great. And you know... I'm not some huge fan of 80s music and certainly not the super poppy stuff like Modern English but, as Louis and Lars pointed out in their conversation, this movie uses the radio and music and that Modern English song I Melt with You so goddamn well that you totally feel it work. The music and scenery and fashion and everything comes together to make a pristine artifact of the American 80s. Well worth including in a series such as this
02.09.14	The Incredible Burt Wonderstone	Don Scardino	Definitely one of those movies where the pitch is better than the actual film. It's not very good.
02.09.14	Movie 43	Various	Shorts akin to Amazon Women on the Moon or Kentucky Fried Movie. In my opinion the movie is worth it for and never lives up to its first segment with Kate Winslet and Hugh Jackman. That shit was funny. Everything else? Not so much. Oh Well. It's still cool to see a movie like this exist with just a bunch of short-form sketches executed by movie talent. Haven't seen one of these in a long time... I guess since Comedy Central came on the air? It would be cool to triple feature Kentucky, Amazon, and Groove Tube.
02.07.14	In a World...	Lake Bell	Really good comedy set in the competitive world of voice over acters, particularly the fetching Lake Bell vs. the skeevy Ken Marino. A great example of a comedy with romance and heart and character that isn't completely idiotic or full of random stupid things to shock laughs out of you. Everyone's great in this. I really liked it.
02.07.14	Captain Phillips	Paul Greengrass	Solid telling of the whole Somali pirates story I remember from a few years ago. To me the most incredible part was always the sniper shots so I kind of spent the whole movie waiting for that one scene to see how in the hell they pulled that off, but along the way the movie grew on me. I didn't think Tom Hanks was stretching his muscles much - I mean he's always good but he spent most of this movie just sitting there - but now I think he deserves some recognition for just the final scene. His portrayal of shock is unbelievable. I've never been in shock but if I am I'm sure I'll spend the whole time comparing myself to Tom Hanks in this movie. Really amazing stellar scene to cap off an otherwise by the book procedural action thriller thingy... whatever you call a movie like this.
02.05.14	Veronika Voss	Rainer Werner Fassbinder	The second in AFS' "Jewels in the Wasteland" series of films from the early 80s picked by Rick Linklater. Not only had I not seen this before but I had no clue about anything about it and I haven't seen any Fassbinder movies before so I'm about as virginal as one can get for this screening. So... honest reactions are as follows: I can tell that it's not a bad movie, but it also lost me about half way through and I wound up waiting for it to end. Keeping up with the subtitles I think made me lose a few threads and relationships so I wound up not really enjoying it. However, I can appreciate how dense and multi-layered it was and I think if I was a bigger fan of melodrama in general I'd be up for revisiting this to catch more, however I doubt I will do that. Aside from the film itself though, I thought Linklater and Lars' conversation afterward was very interesting (they moved it out of the lobby into the theater and while it was not nearly as personal and intimate everybody could clearly hear everything and the people who felt like engaging didn't seem to have any problem doing so) and felt again like both an expert rumination on the film and a glimpse into Linklater's values as a filmmaker. Really at this point I've signed on for the whole series just for these conversations; the films are icing on the cake. As a post script, I watched Wings of Desire maybe 10 years ago now. I remember not really liking it much, thinking it was a bit too artsy and loose. However for some reason my brain regularly revisits the scene where Peter Falk tries on hats for his character in the movie that they're making for the movie in the movie. I still have only watched that scene once, but for whatever reason it's been burned into memory for me and keeps popping up. There's no way for me to know if this film will do the same, or if it does which scene it will be, but I guess I'm trying to say that time will tell how I treat this film. There may be another entry above this one in a few years time with drastically different thoughts.
02.04.14	Silver Linings Playbook	David O. Russell	For some reason this fell through my admittedly wide cracks after it hit DVD and Netflix. Remedied. I liked it a bunch. Thought everybody was great, including DeNiro who kind of proves he can still act when he feels like it. Russell's newfound inquisitive and wandering eye as a director is interesting to me for the most part although I feel like he gets a taaad too into it here. I also feel like... I mean yeah it's great and all that we're seeing a realistic and empathetic look at mental illness and all that other PC stuff... but is it really so believable that crazy meeting crazy fixes everything? Aren't they just a few more fights away from a Sid & Nancy situation? It's a bit Hollywood for such a "bold" look. But it was fun to see Chris Tucker again. It'd be great if he would show up in more movies. So yeah I wound up liking this a bunch. Especially the move where Jennifer Lawrence jumped and thrust her crotch into Bradley Cooper's face.
02.02.14	Hesher	Spencer Susser	Kind of a downer indie version of Mary Poppins... I wasn't in the mood for this movie and kind of forced myself to watch so I could send the disc back. I guess I'm just not in the mood for this type of movie but I was bored and turned off by it for most of the running time. Not a fan.
02.01.14	Pain & Gain	Michael Bay	Michael Bay attempting a Coen-esque tale of idiot kidnappers in over their heads. It was a little interesting to see what a Michael Bay movie was like without the CG or action sequences for him to hide behind. Not really successful. Lots of sweat going on. An absolute shit ton of needless narration. Needless slow-mo. And the overall tone is kind of confusing to me... I immediately looked up what was true and what was invented since the movie kept re-iterating that it was a true story blah blah blah. So people really died and were really dismembered and stuff. It seems like the families or whatever would be pretty peeved that their tragedy was turned into this weird macho jokey trying-to-be-quirk thing with the bloody Kiss the Cook apron and Marky Mark in his Calvin Kleins. I don't know... I mean I can see why some producer thought it was ripe territory... maybe Bay just didn't have the finesse to pull it off tactfully? Who knows. Didn't love it.
01.30.14	CBGB	Randall Miller	The story of the legendary NYC club and all the bands that came out of it. For whatever reason I get a sizable kick out of seeing actors play these bands in their infancy. I guess because 24 Hour Party People was so good? For whatever reason, I liked seeing The Ramones and Talking Heads and Dead Boys and Blondie (Malin Ackerman in Debbie Harry's wardrobe... just sayin)... that part was fun. But unfortunately the movie is also host to a ton of bad accents and had trouble staying compelling for me. Why is Alan Rickman acting in slow motion? Was that the way Hilly acted? I suspect he just can't speak quickly with his American accent. And where is Donal Logue supposed to be from? Just a bunch of weird stuff like that; it really brought the movie down for me. But you know... what IS the story really? I guess all I should ask for is seeing the bands and listening to the music (which was great)... And again this feeds into my late-70s NYC sleaze fetish a little bit. Must have been an exciting time, as long as you weren't stabbed to death.
01.29.14	The King of Comedy	Martin Scorsese	This starts Rock Linklater's series of favorite 80s movies for the AFS at the Marchesa. The Marchesa calendar lately has been extremely guilt-inducing as they are showing great stuff that i'd be attending multiple nights a week if i had the amount of free time I had in 2006 or 2007. As it is, I just remember what's playing and grimace that i'm not going for one reason or another. This series however was something I couldn't in any good conscience pass up... so I think my Wednesdays are planned for the next few months. This was the first time I'd seen the Marchesa sold out. I'm really glad for AFS and Lars that it sold this well... and it would be nice to see all of these sold out... but (close your eyes, anyone from AFS who's reading this) i have this secret wish that one of these weeks would be kind of empty and the conversation-in-the-round actually works where the 20 or 30 people left afterward talked and shared in Rick's love. But anyway... selling out the theater is great too :) I saw King of Comedy at some point in or just after college and I remember liking it but moving on. It was very refreshing to see it in a theater with a nice tactile 35mm print and interested crowd. Rick's inro was great, talking about his first experience with the film, some historical context for all involved, and some really specific oberservations on the performances that gave some insight on his director-ness... to me at least. I think a movie would be hard to not like in that atmosphere, but I think the movie's actually good on its own even if you watched it alone in your living room. Certainly DeNiro is in top form, just as intense as a Taxi Driver or whatever but in a completely different mode. And Jerry Lewis gives a wonderful peek behind the curtain as both his persona and celebrity in general. Sandra Bernhardt is hilarious... probably the only time I've thought that. It was great to see again. Afterward Rick and Lars tried a new thing where they invited everyone out to the lobby where they had a few chairs and mics set up and everyone gathered around to talk to them. I feel like I completely understood the intent which was to make it less a Q&A with Linklater or even an on-stage discussion between Rick and Lars and more of an inviting conversation with them and anyone from the audience that felt like participating. Certainly a circle discussion in the lobby after the film is commonplace after most screenings amongst friends so it's a pretty noble hope to involve Rick and Lars in something akin to that rather than anything that could be perceived as a lecture or dissertation. However I think a few things went wrong. 1) They started too early. People still had those personal conversations after the film, they just had to have it over the muffled speech of amplified voices from the other side of the lobby. Then for the people interested in listening or participating in that public discussion they had a hard time hearing because of everyone else in the lobby who were talking to each other. If they maybe gave people enough time to use the restroom and filter out into the parking lot before staying, people like me who chatted with friends and then listened in to Rick and Lars would've had more luck hearing clearly. 2) It seemed like there was still a mad dash to get front and center for the conversation, so people wound up pressed together or straining to see and hear just to be a part of it. The crowd made for a great photo, but if you look closely everyone is trying very hard to hear what's going on. 3) It was right next to the restrooms. People who had to pee had to press through people listening or talking who didn't necessarily want to give up their good spot. It certainly wasn't a huge clusterfuck or anything... and I really really applaud the idea of welcoming discussion after the film and think it's really cool of Rick to give his time talking to fellow film fans. I just had several occasions to think that if they just turned the house lights on in the theater then all of these problems would've been avoided. Of course then they couldn't clean the theater... so who knows. Plus this was the first attempt so there's bound to be some streamlining as people get used to the idea and AFS gets used to conducting things like this. I will say that the lobby of the marchesa has been transformed into a beautiful art-house space. I have no idea where that gigantic Kiss Me Deadly poster came from but it's amazing. As is Rick's collection of Polish posters. The Conformist and Naked in particular are striking and fit the space perfectly. And the wall of soundtracks is great. And the founder's wall is elegant and nice. It's just turned out to be a fantastic space. I love it there.
01.27.14	Oblivion	Joseph Kosinski	I liked this one. The plot is decent (even if I was ahead of it a bit) but really it's the music and the color palette I enjoyed the most. A lot of the world design is really striking and M83's score was reminiscent of 80s sci-fi without being too derivative. Very pretty movie both visually and aurally.
01.26.14	The Family	Luc Besson	I remember a time when a new Luc Besson film would be pretty highly anticipated. Not sure what happened. At least Michelle Pfeiffer got some work? The Goodfellas "cameo" was kind of the first (or last?) nail in DeNiro's acting coffin right? I mean he's basically a sitcom dad actor now right? Do you think he watches Wolf of Wall Street and gets pissed? Probably not because he definitely chose this path... Maybe on the Copland shoot he thought "I'm so tired of yelling. Maybe I'll start doing comedies" or something... now here we are. With this. It should've been a double feature with Goodfellas and La Femme Nikita to seal up both coffins. sigh...
01.20.14	The Jerk	Carl Reiner	I'd always thought I had seen this long long ago when I was a kid - and I may still have - but I added this to my Netflix queue because it's been forever and now that I watch it I think maybe I never actually saw this movie but instead saw so many clips from the movie that my brain filled in the rest. Certainly things like the scene where Emmett Walsh is shooting out the oil cans or the scene where Steve Martin doesn't need anything... except this ______, and the scene where he was born a poor black child without rhythm dancing on the porch... all of these things I've seen many many times. The stuff at the carnival (special purpose aside), the stuff once he's rich with the little umbrellas in his wine and Chateau Lafit in a water cooler and the lawsuit with "Carl Reiner, the Celebrity" seemed new to me however, so I'm going to chalk this up as a first viewing. Pretty late to the party on this one. I thought it was funny, but mostly in a very dated its-as-old-as-I-am kind of way. It's funny... looking through Steve Martin's imdb page... movies like this and The Man with Two Brains, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid... these are all lost in a hazy fog of my early childhood memory, but All of Me sits there in frustrating detail. I guess 1984 is the year that I became sentient or something because I remember that dumb movie like it was yesterday (heavy play on HBO probably helped) and certainly Three Amigos... I remember seeing that in the front row of the theater with friends and loving every second. Funny what a few years does for you. Anyway, liked this one ok. Glad I saw it anyway...
01.20.14	Please Give	Nicole Holofcener	3 for 3 in my opinion (I haven't seen Enough Said yet). I think the only bad thing about Nicole Holofcener movies are their titles. I can't really tell them apart. Not that I have any sort of deep knowledge on the female condition or what women think, but I do get an overwhelmingly warm and human and authentic vibe from every one of her movies. They are so good. I don't know very many other writers or directors working with everyday emotional stuff like this and just killing it. Loved this.
01.19.14	Prisoners	Denis Villeneuve	Some little girls are taken and families are upset while Jake Gyllenhaal tries to be a tough cop. I thought this was a very solid thriller and really loved how it took its time and reveled in the dreary east coast-ness of the weather and the palette. Roger Deakins hard at work. Paul Dano gets the shit kicked out of him which is nice because I find something about his face makes me want to do that. Satisfying conclusion... nothing to complain about here. Except... why does every DVD now have an ad for Blu-ray on it? They just show scenes from random movies and tell you how awesome Blu-ray is... but it's still 480p so it doesn't sell Blu at all. I don't get it and it seems like from now on any DVD produced will have this ad. DVD is my favorite medium and it's undergoing a slow and degrading death.
01.18.14	Margin Call	J.C. Chandor	Investment bankers have a really bad night when one of them figures out the entire economy is about to shit the bed. For a movie about a lot of rich dudes talking in rooms, this was really good. Great cast, dialogue that doesn't pander, and an interesting layering of character introductions and dynamics help a lot. Not exactly a feel-good movie, but still very good.
01.12.14	G.I. Joe: Retaliation	Jon Chu	Just like the first movie, my favorite part was seeing the vehicles and remembering how I used to have some of the toys. The rest of it is ridiculous and terrible for the most part. I think I liked the first one more? I can't really remember it. I just really really hate these doppelganger plot devices where someone has this absolute power just because they are masters of disguise. I feel like the whole X-Men movie franchise also relies too heavily upon Mystique. So the whole Zartan-as-president thing grated on me... AND the fact that they went out of their way to exclude Destro. Isn't that the whole thing!? The power struggle between Cobra Commander and Destro!? Whatever...
01.06.14	Fargo	Joel Coen	After seeing John Carroll Lynch in Zodiac - and seeing this was available on Netflix streaming without me having to get off the couch - I figured I'd watch this again. Still love it. Everybody's so great in this. Can you believe it's almost 20 years old!
01.05.14	Zodiac	David Fincher	I really love this movie. watched it on impulse. still love it. It may end up being my favorite Fincher movie, or at least the one I come back to the most regularly.
01.04.14	Deceptive Praces: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay	Molly Bernstein	Ricky Jay is a really interesting guy with a great act and to me feels like one of the best legit sleight of hand artists working today. Of course I say that as someone not at all in the magic world - I just like him in Mamet and PTA movies, but still. He strikes me as a guy very much into the history and code of magicians and I don't see him releasing street magic DVDs or viral youtube vids just to get hits. This doc details his upbringing and shows lots of early clips as well as talking about the momentous figures in the field that mentored him. Very interesting stuff. Part of me wanted to just watch Jay's act whenever they showed clips of him but this movie had a different scope which is fine. Interesting watch.
01.03.14	Cave of Forgotten Dreams	Werner Herzog	It was ok. Seemed a little bit like he got to go in the cave and needed a movie to justify it. Could've been worse but I find Herzog's docs really hit or miss. Kind of bored by this one.
01.03.14	Not Fade Away	David Chase	I'm choosing to see this as meticulously autobiographical or something because there's no other reason for this movie to exist. It's kind of a perfect example of a free pass movie, meaning someone has a huge success and Hollywood studios basically give that person one free movie that they can do whatever they want with. Usually they cost a lot of money and end up not being very good. The music alone in this movie must have cost a small fortune, and all the period stuff and movie and tv clips and everything like that just adds to it. But the story here - a kid starts a band that's not very successful - doesn't really deliver anything worth watching. Just a bunch of weird details from somebody's life... Odd movie.
01.03.14	Computer Chess	Andrew Bujalski	Nerds congregate for a tournament in the early days of computer chess programming. I liked this one a lot. Lots of authentic early 80s computer nerd stuff, good use of period video equipment (or stellar visual effects. it's too good not to be vintage though), juuust the right amount of weird to make it interesting. I don't really understand the ending but I also don't feel the need to. Plus it's cool to see Wiley on screen. Great role for him.
01.01.14	Goon	Michael Dowse	Laying on the couch all day I'm really combing my Netflix instant list. This has been on there for like 2 years... it wasn't bad... even though the climax of the movie is two guys standing still hitting each other in the face. Still... not a bad movie.
12.31.13	Side Effects	Steven Soderbergh	Another excellent genre movie to prove that Soderbergh went out on a high. In the last two years he's given us a virus movie, an action movie, a biopic, a stripper drama and now a medical thriller and none of them have been bad. Some better than others but all not bad. That's really incredible. I really hope his retirement is short-lived. I really admired the script for this movie; had some nice turns.
12.31.13	Parker	Taylor Hackford	This one wasn't too bad. Hackford is a competent director, Statham is comfortable in his persona, the script wasn't idiotic, and the outcome was satisfying. The only false note to me was Jennifer Lopez. She has too much baggage and not enough acting ability to play the role of some desperate realtor with questionable morals. Otherwise I liked it quite a lot although I do wish the whole movie was in that splinter universe where Parker agreed to the next job and it was a heist movie instead of revenge.
12.31.13	Olympus Has Fallen	Antoine Fuqua	Well I caught a cold so that sucks. Time to lay on the couch and watch a stupid action movie. This is Die Hard in the white house. It's formulaic in every way. I guess people need these movies for steady paychecks though so that's nice... I kept wondering if that was still the West Wing set that they were blowing up. I wonder if that set just exists somewhere now so whenever anyone needs to shoot the white house they just go over to Sorkin's garage or something. Seems a shame to have to keep building white houses every 2 or 3 years. anyway...
12.30.13	Bottle Shock	Randall Miller	The story of how... Napa valley became known for wine? Great cast led by Bill Pullman and Alan Rickman. Kind of a weird movie. Chris Pine and the love triangle with Freddie Rodriguez bothered me. I liked the wine bits though.
12.28.13	Velvet Goldmine	Todd Haynes	Back home. Watched this on instant because I'd never seen it before. It's really intense and if I'm completely honest with myself I didn't love it and probably won't see it again BUT it's a really great fantastic movie. I mean, to borrow from Citizen Kane in a movie about glam rock? And this constant shifting of time and place and realism and musical-style presentation all wound and woven together with great actors playing fictionalized versions of people while great music plays every second. It's quite a masterful feat.
12.26.13	The Outfit	John Flynn	It was pretty late but time for one more movie. I suggested The Outfit thinking it was tough guys and action sequences. I kind of forgot that there are no action sequences in the movie. Subsequently, my dad thought it was pretty boring (especially after the explosion-fest that is Fast & Furious 6). I still liked little touches but he was right... this was not the right movie for that moment. We should've watched Freebie & The Bean instead.
12.26.13	Fast & Furious 6	Justin Lin	This was my dad's pick. I got it for him for Christmas. I didn't say no even though I haven't seen a Fast & Furious movie since Tokyo Drift. Apparently a lot has happened since then: Brian's an international thief now instead of an undercover cop, Letty is dead or something, and everyone who was ever in one of these movies is now in the same gang like an Ocean's Eleven with cars. I actually think that's a pretty cool turn for this series to take. Oh yeah, I don't remember the Asian guy but I'm guessing he was in Tokyo Drift... but I thought I heard Tokyo Drift wasn't canon or something? It's all very confusing and makes me want to go back and watch parts 4 and 5 (whatever they're called). The movie itself is pretty ridiculous but I guess that's the charm. I forget the particulars but it was during some macho montage or action scene or something and it was like they all sat around thinking "ok how can I make this as extremely masculine testosterone sausage party as possible" and Vin Diesel was like "how about I spit?" Perfect. Anyway, dumb fun. Made no sense but whatever.
12.25.13	Elysium	Neill Blomkamp	Merry Christmas! I bought this for my dad with the secret ulterior motive to watch it myself. I liked District 9. I think Blomkamp really excels at making his worlds and effects look used and lived in. His design eye for firearms and machinery are great. The idea of an exoskeleton is awesome. The hell of automated bureaucracy is chilling. The concept of a space station for the rich is pretty cool. Unfortunately the story Is way too on the nose and there are several weird plot points including an end that in my opinion completely falls apart. I mean what the fuck... the idea that these rich people have machines that can cure any disease but they aren't shared with the rest of the earth is ridiculous in itself but to have fleets of medi-ships just hanging out in case someone one day decides to heal the world? And are kickass exoskeletons really so common in this dystopia that NO ONE gives a shit about Matt Damon having one? And there exists a weapon that shoots homing rockets out into space at a rate faster than transport ships but the richest guy in the world doesn't have any sort of automated defenses on his personal transport? Anyway, I can keep nitpicking because the plot doesn't hold true to the world that they created, but I'll stop there. I found plenty to like in this but also a lot to groan about.
12.25.13	Dredd 3D	Pete Travis	I got this for my dad and put it on because I thought I'd be in and out of the room and didn't want to miss anything of a movie I hadn't seen. Turns out I didn't have to step away so I watched all of this while everyone else slept. It's a little different seeing it in 2D. I guess I thought it was just a 3D artifact at the time but this weird blue/red effect most of the slow-motion footage has is kind of distracting to me. Also I feel like the beginning is pretty heavy with amazing slow-motion stuff then it just stops for the most part and that's a shame because those are the best parts of the movie. Still, I think it's a solid action movie and holds up without the 3D. Avon and Cersei are still pretty terrible in it though. oh well.
12.25.13	New in Town	Jonas Elmer	Merry Christmas! This was my mom's choice. She billed it as a Christmas comedy. It contains VERY little of either. We all sat through it to be nice, but ouch what a terrible boring movie. Sorry, mom!
12.24.13	The Place Beyond the Pines	Derek Cianfrance	I brought my Netflix along with me to my parents and watched this after they went to bed. Very long. I liked the structure, having not known much of anything about it beforehand. However I wished for a little stronger payoff and I absolutely hated Bradley Cooper's son. Gah. It's one of those things that's probably 100% intentional but still makes me like the movie less so who cares.
12.24.13	National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation	Jeremiah S. Chechik	Watched this surrounded by sleeping relatives for New Years Eve this year. Still a classic.
12.23.13	Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows	Guy Ritchie	Well I've waited too long to put these in so... the next 9 or so will be pretty brief. This was a random Netflix next-in-queue that I added forever ago. It was ok. For as much money and press that the first one made I remember this one just kind of fading away. Part of that must be the choice to go straight to Moriarty and the finality that led to. Still, I enjoyed it fair enough... I probably maybe even liked it more than the first? Who knows. I probably won't remember either one in a few years. Huzzah!
12.21.13	Double Dare	Amanda Micheli	I rented this again because I thought Molly would like stunt women and wasn't wrong. I'm glad it's short though because it's really not... I mean it's not like some grand portrait of the industry... it's more like we just follow along a bit and find out 22 year old Zoe Bell is a darling and watch her get a good role then it ends. Still, there's her in that rubber dress which is pretty sweet.
12.14.13	Jack Reacher	Christopher McQuarrie	This movie had a really weird tone. I feel like it was probably a decent book where details like being good in a fight and having a weird confidence that attracts women and being an expert sniper and having a keen eye for details all make sense because it's a genre novel and you know... Sherlock Holmes solves the mysteries not Dr. Watson. But in a movie - especially a movie starring Tom Cruise - all of these details weird strange and kind of false. I liked Way of the Gun and think Cruise is a good actor but this one felt a lot like Knight and Day for me where the weird tone just didn't work at all.
12.14.13	The Heat	Paul Feig	Pretty funny... Nothing classic I don't think but you know... pretty funny.
12.11.13	World War Z	Marc Forster	Not 100% terrible but I still have a problem with it being perceived as an adaptation of the book. The book is sprawling and global and evocative and imaginative and would've made a really amazing HBO miniseries but now we'll never get that because this movie exists. If it wasn't called World War Z I probably would've liked it ok. The CG zombies are still terrible and Brad Pitt has this strange power of immortality like if the movie went on another thirty minutes he could've somehow witnessed the epicenter of a nuclear bomb explosion as well as everything else he'd seen. Still, the global aspect of the film is somewhat interesting even if it does hinge on a knife's edge of typical Hollywood nonsense and manufactured tension. Also, I think I finally figured out my personal stance on zombie vs. virus. I choose to separate the beings themselves from what kind of movie that they're in. For the beings themselves I still feel like if they have a pulse then they're just infected with a virus. If they die and come back then they're zombies. How do I reconcile the pre-Romero voodoo movies and things like Serpent and the Rainbow? I don't. These days, It's Romero-style or nothing. Now, as far as the movies themselves are concerned, I feel like the core difference is this: If people are searching for a cure, it's a virus movie. If they're just trying to survive then it's a zombie movie. To my mind this adequately satisfies any gray areas. 28 Days Later is a zombie movie with virus infected people in it. World War Z is a virus movie with zombies in it. DONE.
12.08.13	Matewan	John Sayles	For this thing that I've been writing on and off a fictional John Sayles plays a part in it. The idea was spawned from a 20-second clip I saw on a cheap CD-ROM in the early 2000s purporting to contain film school on a disc. Amidst all the usual bland and expected advice from Hollywood screenwriters and film school professors, Sayles appeared outside somewhere telling me to quit school and go live for a few decades then come back to film with something to say. For whatever reason that clip stuck with me and, even though I can't really call myself an expert on Sayles (hell, I haven't even seen half his movies), I've sort of created a mental portrait of the man as a paragon of authenticity and personal and worthwhile storytelling. So when this screening popped up I felt like it was some cosmic message for me to keep writing and to get my ass out on a cold Sunday night to see a movie. I'm glad I did. The Marchesa really filled up and several AFS luminaries (like Lewis Black and Rick Linklater) showed up to see Sayles. He didn't disappoint... less than a minute after taking stage he mentioned how the story of Matewan came to him while he was hitch-hiking across West Virginia and Kentucky in the 70s. Of course. He also proved to be quite succinct and knowledgeable and open during the Q&A although the best answer of the evening came from his producing partner Maggie Renzi who said that too many filmmakers today are chickenshit and just make movies about themselves in their back yard. Pretty great. So is the movie. It's kind of an American classic from the late 80s. Packed to the gills with character actors and starring Chris Cooper in his first film role, the movie tells the story of coal miners in West Virginia struggling to start a union and whatnot. It's probably not a movie I would've searched out... like it doesn't sound super exciting, but It's really great the same way that Lone Star and Eight Men Out are really great. It just feels real.
12.07.13	Iron Man 3	Shane Black	I liked this more than the last one (which I can barely remember). These movies basically are comics now because I'd be kind of lost if I had skipped the Avengers movie and it feels like there a progression and kind of soapy quality to it, On one hand I think that's pretty cool since they are representative of their own comics and whatnot, but on the other hand each one of these things cost over a hundred million dollars and it's insane to think that much money is riding on characters with named like Pepper Potts and Rusty Rhodes. But whatever... Downey makes this franchise and he brings it again here so all is fine in the house of Stark. I'm not quite sure why he had to blow up all his suits at the end but whatever...
12.07.13	Skyfall	Sam Mendes	007... it's ok.
12.06.13	Flight	Robert Zemeckis	I'm happy that Robert Zemeckis is directing live action again because I think he's one of the best action directors out there... but most of this movie isn't really good. It's super heavy handed and familiar and, aside from the crash sequence, felt plodding and slow and hackneyed. I feel like there've been plenty of really authentic portrayals of alcoholism and AA and adiction and all that kind of thing that this movie doesn't really prove worthy against. Shame because I wanted to like it... but it just didn't happen for me. At least I finally got the see Nadine Velazquez from My Name is Earl naked. So that's nice.
12.02.13	The To Do List	Maggie Carey	A sex comedy from the woman's perspective... I don't think Aubrey Plaza can carry a movie by herself as she falls pretty flat for me, but the supporting cast is strong and the 110% 90s saturation made for a pretty nice nostalgia trip. These kids are class of '93 and I was '96 so... it's pretty much the same. I didn't have that Eddie Vedder poster or anything but Ten was the first CD I ever heard (the fidelity of that opening instrumental blew my mind) and my first concert was Lollapalooza 92 so... I'd seen that poster before. I'm also a fan of movies that shoot (or CG) their beginning titles on real world objects so that's a check in the "like" column. Overall a fine but probably forgettable film with a few funny moments.
11.23.13	The Way Way Back	Nat Faxon, Jim Rash	Sweet coming of age movie where a teenage boy finds solace against the wicked alcohol and weed fueled debauchery of a hamptons summer in the cool bikini-populated environs of a water park. Great performances throughout but a real spotlight role for Sam Rockwell as the carefree water park manager and moral center. I can't help but compare this movie to Adventureland which might be a bit unfair but since I really liked both films whatever... I feel like Adventureland is maybe a tad less dark with the parents stuff and more concentrating on coming of age but this isn't out of balance or anything like that. I just wish it were longer, more scenes at the water park. Great movie.
11.17.13	Pacific Rim	Guillermo del Toro	notes later
11.10.13	Dragnet	Tom Mankiewicz	So... Lars programmed a night of the original Dragnet television series. I think that's tonight actually and I doubt I'll make it out for that, but the old show was on my mind so when I saw this pop up on HBO I taped it. I feel like I watched most if not all the episodes when Nick at Night replayed them in my youth. This movie is pure 80s wackiness. Tom Hanks in full on funny sidekick mode, Dan Ackroyd trying his best Jack Webb, People Against Goodness And Normalcy, the absurdly strong henchman with bad teeth, high waisted bikinis, Dabney Coleman, explosions and machine gun fights, police commissioners, and the actors rapping over the end credits. I loved it at a kid, lapped it up. The City of Crime rap and the sample-heavy Art of Noise track were on heavy rotation in my Walkman at the time. Now it's more of an artifact. Cocaine is a hell of a drug. I fell asleep pretty hard during this last night so I finished it up Monday, which makes this the longest and fullest DVRfest since 2006. Pretty happy about that. I will have to put some time and planning toward next year since ten years is a pretty big deal. Even though a good half of those haven't been movie-heavy years, I'm still keeping up with this and logging every movie I see. I can honestly say that it's lasted longer than I ever thought it would and now I feel like I can do another 8 no problem to beat Bogdanovich's 17. Did he even say 17 years? I can't even remember anymore. All I know is that if I ever get famous, this is the shit that they will publish. Sorry I can't draw as well as Guillermo del Toro, futurefans! So a few stats to wind this fest up. in the past week I've seen 14 movies for a 2/day average, past month is 16 for a 0.53/day average, past year is 118 for a 0.32/day avg, and finally the site lifetime is at 2480 which works out to 0.75/day. Thanks for reading!
11.10.13	Primer	Shane Carruth	Yeah... I can finally cross this off my list. It's kind of pretty much exactly what I thought it would be based on hearing everything about it: lots of dialogue, hard to understand, interesting take on time travel. Check, check and check. I feel like the obtuse dialogue is a tad cryptic most of the time... like there's authentic shorthand and then there's alien language... but the jargon replaces the budget so I can't fault it for doing its thing. I think I understood 75% of it which isn't bad for the first time. I don't know if there will be a second, but I didn't hate it by any means. So. We come to the end. it's 12:30, time for the last film of DVRfest 2013. This has gone on a day longer than usual and I threw in a few last minute bonus films to make this the biggest fest since the second one which was epic. For the last film I may very well fall asleep so expect final notes tomorrow. All I'll say is that I've seen it before and really like its 80s wackiness and the Art of Noise song at the end was really formative to my love of samples in songs. I listened to the cassette of the soundtrack a ton when it came out. Let's do it one more time.
11.10.13	Synecdoche, New York	Charlie Kaufman	whew. This was an incredibly complex and intricate work, lofty and grandiose and also intimate and clumsy. I feel like Charlie Kaufman is some spiritual kin to Michel Gondry and this movie is the most unadulterated that he's ever been. And like Gondry movies I feel that the amount of imagination and creativity at play is amazing if not exhausting and, like Gondry, I feel Kaufman's melancholy saturate everything. This is terrible but I feel like I'd like this movie a lot more with a happier ending. I know I know. Something about this movie keeps me on the outside though. Perhaps it's just because this is a first viewing so I was working to keep up with the plot and my bearings throughout the film, but I can't say I love this. I admire and respect it, but not love. Whew again. Ok. I'm thinking... two more movies. I only have one left on the DVR but it's not midnight just yet and there's always Netflix streaming. This next one is a SERIOUS oversight on my part so this is a great example to finally get this movie watched. And it's short. And ordinarily I'd say I'm in for a mindfuck but after this it may seem like a walk in the park! We'll see. Luckily the last movie of the night (and fest) requires zero mental activity.
11.10.13	The Green Room	Francois Truffaut	AKA The Vanishing Fiancee. A while back I got pretty fixated on Truffaut. I read his biography, some of his reviews, had already read his interview book with Hitchcock, and tried to track down all of his films. I really liked most of them and managed to track down all but two. Years later, again thanks to TCM, I can cross one of those elusive films off the list. Truffaut stars as a World War I vet who's kind of obsessed with death and refuses to forget those in the past but instead lives with them always. He meets a younger woman similarly affected and... I don't know... talk about it for a while. Then he renovates a chapel and puts pictures of all his dead friends in it. At the end he dies. So... I guess this is what I could expect from a French film about death. It's really plodding and pretty heavy and there's no joy or fun at all. I'm sure these conversations on the nature of death and the human experience hold deep symbolism and if I remember correctly this was a deeply personal movie for Truffaut to make... but you know as a consumer experience there was not that much fun to be had. This is definitely a film I'm happier to have seen it than to see. I still love Truffaut though and seeing him on screen and reading his frequent collaborators' names in the credits makes me want to revisit the films of his I really love. Maybe someday. Next up is a movie with a confusing title.
11.10.13	Nora Prentiss	Vincent Sherman	A very minor noir that I'd never heard of from the Warner archives (thanks again, TCM!). A straight-laced doctor guy meets vivacious Ann Sheridan and throws his life away in a series of bad decisions. I liked this ok, would've liked it more if it were a half hour shorter. There's a very nice turn halfway through but you immediately see where it's going and it takes like 45 minutes to get there. I feel like plenty of other movies cover the same territory much better, but at this point I don't think there are top-shelf noirs that I haven't seen so this is where I'm at. The nuance and some of the James Wong Howe San Francisco photography along with that nice story turn make this worth watching. There's a great shot of the Cliff House that would've been really spectacular except it's at night so literally all you see is two headlight spots and a neon sign reading "Cliff House." You kind of have to put the structure and coastline in using your imagination. It really reminded me where the term "film noir" came from. So that's my Sunday matinee. Just a handful of films left in full potpourri fashion. I may take a few hours off to do real life stuff but will return when the sun goes down!
11.09.13	Spring Breakers	Harmony Korine	Spring Break... Spring Break Forever... I think part of the reason why I've been so hesitant to actually sit down and watch this is because it was so insanely overhyped. When it played South By people freaked out... when it hit theaters people freaked out... and even when it came out on DVD I read tweets about people watching it on repeat and stuff. I've seen enough of his movies to know I'm not a huge Harmony Korine fan so I was kind of afraid I wouldn't like it as much as all my friends do. So now I've seen it. I get that people like bikinis and guns and James Franco does give a crazy ass performance and the "look at my shit" scene is pretty hilarious... but it's still barely a movie right? Korine's indifference toward narrative is still pretty hard for me to take. The constant montage and repeating dialogue and languid pace really bugged me. I will say that anything involving the rival drug kingpin was hilarious. The scene where he's holding his baby and describing how it's starving because of the money being taken out of its mouth while sitting in a formal line-up of henchmen before a table literally heaping with marijuana was great, as was his commentary during intercourse. And you know... who doesn't like jiggling titties in slow motion set to dance music... the rest was a bit of an expected letdown. oh well. So that's day two of DVRfest 9. Tomorrow I'll probably do stuff during the day but return for three or four to finish the fest out. Now it's 3:15 and I'm hittin the sack. bitchez.
11.09.13	Mud	Jeff Nichols	Coming of age set in Alabama by the guy who made the excellent Take Shelter. Loved this. Everyone was great in it. Michael Shannon had a great small role. McConaughey was great. Great southern fried movie. Man, both kids were great. Also I should go back and check out Shotgun Stories since Jeff Nichols seems to love making really good dramas with Michael Shannon in them. I'm kind of out of words at this point - I guess it's been too long since I've had to write this many notes - and it's well 1am but I'm not falling asleep yet so I'm putting on a movie that screams midnight. A movie I've had on my desk for at least a month waiting for the perfect time to watch. That time seems to have come.
11.09.13	Urgh! A Music War	Derek Burbidge	Thanks to Warner Archive, I have a DVD of this 1981 concert film that's basically a two hour timewarp back to the wave of American punk and birth of new wave. I really love this film. Half the bands I haven't heard of, I don't understand a single lyric, but the music and crowds feel so completely authentic to me that every frame feels fascinating. Plus you have Klaus Nomi and The Cramps and that incredible performance by Gary Numan in his little future car looking like a petulant child right after a temper tantrum. It's sooo so great I can't even believe it. I've never really thought about a favorite concert film but I'm sure this is at least in my top five. Shout out to Kier-la Janisse for programming it for Music Monday oh so long ago or else I would never have even heard of this. Next up is.... I'm not sure! It's 11 o'clock now so I'm thinking one maaaaybe two more movies, but the stuff on my DVR seems destined for tomorrow's "Potpouri" day so...
11.09.13	Made in America	Ron Howard	Jay-Z put on a concert in Philly and Ron Howard made a film covering it. You know, as far as concert films go this one was pretty good. Howard really plumbed the whole "Made in America" theme of it to the point where it felt a bit more akin to something like Wattstax than Through the Never. It was interlaced and diverse enough to keep it interesting to me although I'm sure Jay-Z fans are upset that it's not his entire setlist. This was pretty good. After Sunset Strip though, I found myself coming back to memories of a certain film throughout my viewing of this... so much so that I think I'm making a last-minute change to the line-up and I'm throwing in a DVD to make this double feature a triple. I haven't seen this next movie in a long time and the only time I did I was in the original Alamo with some drunk teens standing up and dancing in the row ahead of me. I'm excited to watch it again.
11.09.13	Sunset Strip	Hans Fjellestad	...Sunset Strip! This is a great doc about the history of this... historic street and all the buildings and clubs and peoples and trends that inhabit it. It goes from the undeveloped land to modern day and covers pretty much everything I wanted it to. The Marmont, the nightclubs, the rock clubs, and the comedy clubs; the punk shows, the hair shows, the strip shows, the freak shows. Everybody that lives in LA is either on camera or listed as a producer, shit tons of period stills and location footage from films and concert footage and a stellar ending animation. Really exhaustive. It's great. I've seen 4 really good docs now pretty much in a row. One more to go then I think it's all fictional narrative from here on out. This next one... I really had no interest in until I learned Ron Howard directed it. What the hell is Ron Howard doing making this movie? I guess i'll see right now!
11.08.13	Spider Baby	Jack Hill	Well I fell asleep about half an hour into this so I finished it up as a matinee which is good because... well, it was pretty damn slow. This is one of those movies that's been in my blind spot, probably because it wasn't available on Netflix and I don't go to video stores anymore(feeling guilt from Rewind This). I know Jack Hill from the Pam Grier stuff from the seventies so when I kept hearing how great Spider Baby was I kind of assumed it was some weird seventies oddity with no narrative. Instead I sat down to a Bava-esque baroque horror film about a family who's... nuts or something. There was still enough cleavage to connect this to films to come so it made some sense, but it was a completely different movie than what I had invented in my mind. Pacing aside, I liked this. Lon Chaney Jr. was kind of terrible but everyone else was good. I especially liked the narrator for his happy go lucky attitude and goofy grin. And now onto day 2 of the fest. I've now realized that I have a ton of documentaries on the list. Today brings a double feature of music docs then some other stuff whatever I have time for. First up though I'm trading HBO for Showtime and a doc about a certain street in Los Angeles. Join me as we take a ride down the...
11.08.13	Rewind This!	Josh Johnson	A doc about VHS, VHS culture, VHS obsession, and VHS nostalgia. I have to claim bias on this one. Alamo regulars made it, Alamo regulars appear in it, Austin is all over this thing so I can't really be 100% objective. I can say that this movie really exemplifies what seems to be a prevalent thought here in town shared by most cineasts and filmgoers that is a holy appreciation for the diamonds in the rough. You see it in the Alamo programming, the mondo posters, the continued survival of I Luv and Vulcan videos, and in every film geek conversation circle that takes place before and after most screenings. People here love movies and have no class distinction between high and low and perhaps the bestest thing ever is to root through the oceans of pap to come up with that one special film to bring to the rest of the group and share. I don't know if that made any sense. It's getting late. And who knows if that's in any way unique to Austin. Maybe all film lovers feel the same. Anyway, I liked this movie a lot. I feel like anyone reading this (read: me) has their own fond and formative memories associated with VHS or video stores. I certainly do. In fact from time to time I still look up to see how Wonder Book & Video is doing in Frederick, MD because they were the most special store I had access to in middle and high schools. This movie is an avid celebration of all that stuff along with some history and pontification on the future of media consumption thrown in. I feel like they covered all the bases and presented an enjoyable and complete experience here. Definitely some good stuff. And now... I think I'm going to try and fit in a midnight movie even though it's after midnight and i'm pretty tired. We'll see!
11.08.13	Seduced and Abandoned	James Toback	Alec Baldwin and Tames Toback travel to Cannes in order to raise money for a film and in the process they make this... quasi-documentary non-fiction film for perhaps a fictional scenario that doesn't really matter because really it's about the state of the industry and the perils of money. It's messy and meandering and all over the place and the heavy heavy use of split screen made me feel like I was sometimes watching two or three movies at once (the beginning montage of Cannes footage was particularly effective for me because it showcased both the history and extreme range of films that get shown there. There's young Warren Beatty juxtaposed with Godard and Polanski juxtaposed with Sacha Baron Cohen's The Dictator). I like this in-between take on non fiction. It reminded me a tiny bit of F for Fake (god I love that movie), and especially compared to the very familiar talking head construction of Casting By I'd say I responded to this more. Up next I finish off my triple feature with a doc about a much different aspect of the industry although probably no less nostalgic for the good old days.
11.08.13	Casting By	Tom Donahue	A chill wind blows through Austin. Night falls earlier, owls hoot their foreboding warning to varmints and trespassers alike. Is it the beginning to a spooky movie? Nah it's just MOTHERFUCKING NINTH ANNUAL DVRFEST 2013!!!! Hopefully your mind added some explosions and fireworks to that, and since at this point my readership is now just me 8 years from now bored at work thinking back on good times I can bet that you did! But seriously, I've just gotten home from work. I stopped off and bought enough junk food to make me sick. Molly says she'll busy herself with her own stuff. That means I have a date with my empty couch, a Pringles can, and a DVR full up with movies. This year, I think I have lots of movies in the DVR, a backup of three Netflix discs and an Internet's worth of streaming possibilities if i'm still hungry for more. for those of you who are new to this private ritual of mine (me 30 years from now when i'm senile and don't even know what i'm reading), this weekend is a celebration of another year maintaining this site. It's also an opportunity to clear out all the movies I saved on my DVR thinking "Oh I want to see that" but then never sit down to watch. It's also lately been a singular event to force myself to stop doing anything else I usually do for fun on a weekend (I'm looking at you, GTA5) and binge on some movies like I used to do. Basically every weekend for my friend Jarrette. The unwritten rules of programming the fest state that I only get one slot for a movie I've seen before; everything else must be new to me. This means sometimes the movies suck, but I'm the only one in the audience so who cares. Pleasantries aside, let's dive in! For tonight I'm watching a triple feature of documentaries about the movie business. I've heard all three of these are good so I'm excited, although I still don't know which one I'm watching first... ...and it's Casting By! An HBO doc about the unsung art of casting directors and a more thorough examination of notable pioneer Marion Dougherty who basically found every good actor from 1954 to 1989. It's well constructed and has the suitably impressive amount of talent interviews needed to make the case for the profession, but also kind of feels like two shorts shoved together. The grudging stuff about how the position gets no respect in Hollywood's (or evil Taylor Hackford's) eyes is one thing, but the Dougherty biopic stuff is almost separately another. I mean I get that they are making an example of her career to prove their point, but considering she raised up a whole generation of talented casting directors who have spread Dougherty's method of casting across the industry, I could've used one or two stories about how they were awesome as well. If the cool casting anecdotes that drive this movie (seeing stars while they're super young or hearing about the other people who were up for now-famous roles or learning how particular roles were adapted through casting such as making Murtaugh in Lethal Weapon black are definitely the meat and potatoes of this movie) came from a multitude of casting directors rather than just one - like how Visions of Light showcased handfuls of great cinematographers - it might make the argumentative case stronger albeit at the loss of honoring Dougherty quite so much. In any case, I'm a sucker for movies about movies so this still worked for me. Nice opener! Coming up next: another HBO doc, this one much more recent!
10.25.13	Tales from the Quadead Zone	Chester N. Turner	After a pretty great Q&A (highlights: learning that during production of Devil Doll one location burned down and one actor was murdered; they made up names for most of the credits to make it seem like it wasn't all just Chester, his brother Keefe, and Shirly; Devil Doll was originally going to be one of the Tales from the Quadead zone but in his frenzied three-day writing binge he realized it would be too long, but they had already shot the 'Brothers' segment from Quadead before Devil Doll) everybody settled in to watch a midnight screening of this movie. Also pretty rough on second viewing. the white hillbillies "living high on the hog in the witness protection program" was still funny but both the Brothers segment and the last part dragged for me. I noticed people bailing though which gave me a weird nice feeling of some of the rougher Weird Wednesdays back in the day. I also made the mistake of not eating before the show so by the end I was preoccupied wondering if anywhere was still open for me to eat. Because of that I kind of hurried out which was surreal because I swear I saw Steve Little (improve comedian best known as Stevie in Eastbound and Down) outside as I left and if I was hanging out more I maybe could've told him I liked his performance in Wrong. Anyway, it was a fun night. The reality of the movies themselves hit me a little more than I thought they would, but I definitely enjoyed the experience.
10.25.13	Black Devil Doll from Hell	Chester N. Turner	Somehow Chester Turner figured out that people love the movies he made 30 years ago so now he's doing appearances promoting his new merch and an upcoming sequel. This means that every Weird Wednesday aficionado in town had to choose between AFF, Goblin playing live, or showing up at the Marchesa to see a double feature of Black Devil Doll from Hell and Tales from the Quadead Zone with live Q&A from Turner and star Shirley Jones! Lars, Bryan Connolly and everybody else was pretty excited for this. I guess the rumor was that Chester Turner was long dead so these weird VHS tapes floated in a perfect mythical oasis for tapeheads and obscure exploitation cineasts. I guess it might be like figuring out J.D. Salinger was your neighbor? In any case, it was real cool to see a lot of the old regulars from back when I was going to the Alamo a lot, and equally great to see these movies again in a pretty crowded theater. Turner had a copy of his master tape that didn't include Ichikawa's heavy metal intro and the sound mix was several generations above the first copy I saw which replaced what sounded like a crucial monologue with the casio soundtrack. The song was still here in this version but the dialogue was indeed understandable and I kind of feel like it changes the arc of the movie a hell of a lot! I think it was also a little bit longer cut because... ...goddamn did this feel long. 70 minutes my ass. it felt a full 90 to me. It kind of made me miss the kitchen schedule of the Alamo where when you saw the checks drop you knew you had 40ish minutes left. I mean I liked seeing it again, but it was also pretty rough. The great moment where the doll speaks for the first time is still pretty special and the bizarre climax is still just as rushed and random but there's a lot of treading water as well. No shit right? It's not like the first cut I saw was some master class in editing. I think just the novelty and surprise of first exposure helped out a lot whereas this time I was sort of awash in it wishing it could hurry on with things.
09.26.13	The Zero Theorem	Terry Gilliam	And here it is... the last movie of the fest. And I'm writing these notes ON THE DAY! I think this may be a first for me... I will wake up tomorrow with none of this hanging over me! Yay! So this takes place in a near future where ad saturation, consumerism, idiocratic dumbatization, and NSA surveillance have all run rampant. It's a very interesting world that yells GILLIAM in every corner of the frame. Christoph Waltz plays a weird bald guy who probably has Asberger's who works for some huge Big Brother type figure played by Matt Damon. The movie deals with all sorts of topical themes that... funny enough we had a video intro where Gilliam kind of rambled on funny tangents but as I watched the movie I suspected those tangents weren't so random after all. If that was intentional then... that's a pretty crazy intro! Also, Gilliam's taste in beautiful actresses is exquisite. Jesus Christ is Melanie Thierry hot in this just like Lily Cole was hot in Parnassus. Whew. Let's see what else. In thought it was OK. Certainly better than Parnassus and Tideland and probably Brothers Grimm. Still, it was missing a certain something for me to really connect with it. But you know... fuck me. I'm so glad we're in a world where Gilliam still gets to make movies that he wants to make, movies that are challenging and say something and ask questions. This week has really bolstered my faith in creative storytelling through cinema. Either I'm getting damn good at avoiding the bad movies or this year's programming was pretty damn good. After I got out I watched a guy get lit on fire then jump from the roof of the Alamo into a inflated cushion, then I saw the explosion of a car blowing up, a glimpse of a guy on fire, and a tiny bit of a car jumping off a ramp into the burning carcass of the previous car. Yeah stunts! I did my best at the party. I guess because of the stunt thing (or maybe other reasons) the party was held in the parking lot outside the theater. They had pork and potato salad as well as corn dogs and a bucking bulldog thing set up along with a big slide and a mini version of the death-defying leap where you fall into a bouncy castle type thing. They also had a dunking booth where I saw Tim League get dropped and - most curiously - an impromptu game of slapfighting or whatever it may be called. People just started gathering around in a circle Fight Club style and slapping each other silly. It was pretty odd. It was also muggy which made me sweaty and uncomfortable, but I did get to hang out with all my movie friends one more time which made me want to see them more often. Maybe this year I will!? Once again I need to remind myself that this week is tons of fun and not a burden and to look forward to it next year rather than stress over it like I seem to do every year. If I get a VIP that is. Dear lord please let me get a VIP. Anyway, recap time: I think I saw 30 movies, least favorites were: 1. Machete Kills 2. Goldberg & Eisenberg 3. The Green Inferno 4. Patrick 5. Mirage Men And those were really the only five I didn't like, which is great. Top five were: 1. Gravity 2. Grand Piano 3. Jodorowsky's Dune 4. Why Don't You Go Play in Hell 5. Maruyama The Middle Schooler And now I guess I return to real life! Bummer...
09.26.13	Goldberg & Eisenberg	Oren Carmi	This was a whole in my schedule where I'd seen everything else. In hindsight I should've watched Timecrimes again. Oh well. This one's about a guy who... doesn't say hello back to another guy or something so the other guy torments the shit out of him and things escalate. I guess it's notable for being Israeli. I didn't like this much. Sounds lame but I never felt the motivation for the crazy guy and the straight guy was too weird to be sympathetic. I also didn't like the weird steps in plot progression and... I don't know I just wasn't a fan.
09.26.13	Blue Ruin	Jeremy Saulnier	A hobo learns that the dude who killed his parents is getting out of jail and things go from there. I feel like most of the tone and pacing of this movie is due to the lead actor who gives a great performance as a shy hesitant man indelibly crippled by the loss of his parents. Of course the writer-director probably had something to do with it as well but this lead actor is not someone you'd immediately think perfect for a revenge movie and that's most of why I liked it. I also really liked the methodical approach the director takes in showing what's happening through silent details that create a larger picture. I got the sense that he doesn't take his audience for idiots which is always nice and sadly refreshing. A great little revenge thriller with a unique tone shot in Virginia. I liked this one a lot.
09.25.13	Metallica: Through the Never	Nimrod Antal	My last movie of the night was this concert film which most non-Metallica fans hoped had a lot of narrative in it. It didn't. it was basically a music video's worth of story in between performances. I mean it's a bit more than that... but mostly it's concert footage and what little narrative present is pretty hilarious. Let's see. Well I sat next to a big Metallica fan so that helped, and they had it loud as shit to where you could feel the bass rumble the floor so that helped. And the movie wasn't terrible. I got the sense that Metallica fans liked it. One dude started headbanging and freaking out when they played his favorite song. It was hilarious to see him sitting next to a completely still Nacho... I feel like I would've rather had another Metallica documentary but this wasn't terrible. I mean if it was a band I liked I would've loved it. The Q&A was great though. Kirk Hammett talked horror movies, Robert Trujilo made some jokes, and Tim was a great moderator. The last question of the night was classic: Q: What's Lars doing tonight? A (Kirk): Probably as much as he can, man.
09.25.13	A Field in England	Ben Wheatley	Ben Wheatley's latest about some british soldiers in like the 1400s or whatever. There's a bit of magic and hallucinations but mostly it's dirty guys walking around in a field. It was ok.
09.25.13	We Gotta Get Out of this Place	Simon Hawkins, Zeke Hawkins	This movie wins my award for shortest running time. I'm not sure what the actual running time was but it seemed the shortest to me. A handful of texas teens get in trouble with their crazy employer and stuff happens. It's a taut little noirish thing with good performances (especially from Mark Pellegrino (perhaps best known as Jackie Treehorn's thug in Big Lebowski who shoves The Dude's head in a toilet then looks at his bowling ball) and a few cameos from John Gries and William Devane) that does what it's here to do then gets the hell out. Not a lot of fat on this one, which I respect. Nice little film.
09.25.13	The Congress	Ari Folman	Pretty heady sci-fi starring Robin Wright as herself in a world where actors are signing their likeness away to a digital scan of themselves that studios can use to make whatever movie they want. THEN it gets weird. Like I said this was pretty heady. There's a hefty animated sequence in the middle that made me think this is what Roger Rabbit would've been directed by Tarkovsky rather than Bob Zemeckis. I liked it but probably wouldn't watch it again. There's some good ideas in here though about what the future may hold.
09.24.13	Gravity	Alfonso Cuaron	Goddamn amazing film. Here we are watching a week's worth of festival films then this behemoth comes and reminds me what an actual GREAT film is like. It absolutely floored me. It's playing in a different league. Jesus Christ. I don't even know what to write. Every frame is beautiful, it's a great inventive use of 3D (especially the POV shots), it's claustrophobic on a grand scale, the tension never lets up, I caught myself holding my breath and flinching at the screen, gush gush gush, holy shit, where's the tylenol? Favorite movie of the fest for me. I know it's not fair but whatever. The heart wants what it wants.
09.24.13	Cheap Thrills	E.L. Katz	A couple of old highschool friends are engaged by a rich couple in a series of escalating bets and dares that wind up suitably dark. Pat Healy, Ethan Embry (who's pretty scary now), and Dave Koechner carry the movie. Well them and a strong script. It's fun and funny and gruesome and makes you feel kind of dirty just like any dark comedy should. Really a lot of nasty fun and good bad times. I liked this one a lot.
09.24.13	Confession of Murder	Jeong Byeong-gil	Another Korean revenge movie that's good. It kind of sucks but the fact that there are so many Korean revenge movies in the last few years and that all of them have been pretty decent means that this having some good action scenes and a nice twisty turny plot and fine performances doesn't really set it apart. I don't know if this will stick in my mind over something like I Saw the Devil, but it's certainly good and worth watching.
09.23.13	Why Don't You Play in Hell?	Shion Sono	The only Sono movie I've seen is Love Exposure which Jarrette more or less dragged me to and I ended up begrudgingly liking it which has since softened into very fond memories. Now he presents a movie that's just as crazy to describe... totally different... but really amazing and crazy and hilarious. I really liked this movie a ton. It's about a group of kids who want to be filmmakers, and a Yakuza daughter... and some events that tie them all together to wind up with battling Yakuza agreeing to film their fight for a movie. It's the craziest bloodiest movie about making a movie that I've ever seen. And the ending is great. I took it to mean "Never mind about any rules or reality, just have fun and go with it!" FUCK BOMBERS!!! Really great great amazing movie. I guess I need to see more Sono movies.
09.23.13	Child of God	James Franco	The second secret screening is James Franco's new film. Tim league said not to tweet or social media about this movie until it screens at New York next Sunday but I figure at this point I don't have any readers left so this is safe. If anyone does read this and it's before 10/06/2013 at 11:30 EST, please do not spread this around. I'd hate to get the Alamo in trouble. Thanks. Also, I'll change the title at that time so it makes sense. or I'll forget and look at this years later and say "I don't remember watching This is the End at Fantastic Fest. Huh!" So... apparently people hated this at Toronto, but Tim said he loved it and thought it would do a lot better here. I agree that this is a Fantastic Fest type of movie. It's based on a Cormac McCarthy book and deals with a crazy guy in the woods of Tennessee in the 40s or 50s who lives off the land and talks to himself and wipes shit from his ass with sticks and eventually falls in love. Things progress from there. I don't want to spoil anything, but I'd be remiss not to note that for all of Eli's comments about how he wants to introduce the cannibal genre to mainstream American audiences, James Franco's got you beat, buddy! I don't think this will ever play in a Tinseltown but god help us if it ever does. And Franco doesn't list out movies like Nekromantik in the end credits either. I thought I'd hate this movie and I didn't. I liked it more than didn't like it. It's pretty damn slow, but the parts that are interesting are pretty damn interesting and that's enough for me. Definitely liked it more than Green Inferno, not to even mention Machete Kills.
09.23.13	The Unknown Known	Errol Morris	Errol Morris' new doc interviewing Donald Rumsfeld. I would say that Morris' recent predilection toward politics is maybe wearing thin but my experience with Tabloid (which could be seen as a return to form for him) felt kind of shallow compared to interviewing high-profile public officials like McNamara and Rumsfeld so... who knows. I think it is pretty clear that he didn't exactly crack Rumsfeld like he did McNamara in Fog of War so instead the movie had to become more about Rumsfeld's perception of himself (similar to Oliver Stone's interviews with Fidel Castro). I still found this to be an engaging and captivating film and some of Rumsfeld's answers, arranged to most clearly show his... shifting viewpoints really hit home. "We don't assassinate people" / "That wasn't an assassination attempt, it was an act of war." Mostly I just wonder what it's like to be Morris' subject. To sit there for hours, staring into his interrotron , looking into his slightly-crossed eyes, all those long silences between questions to let me keep talking if I feel like it. It's got to be a unique, and I'd guess unsettling, experience. Makes great movies though.
09.23.13	Tales of the Organ Trade	Ric Esther Bienstock	A HBO documentary about the organ transplant black market, most significantly dealing with kidneys. I'd never call this movie objective since it presents a clearly biased point of view in that poor people from third world countries are willing to sell their organs and rich people from first world countries don't have enough healthy kidneys to go around so what's the problem why are these doctors being prosecuted for saving lives... but the doc is still harrowing and eye-opening and presents its case well enough to be taken seriously. Plus I'm not really sure a doc HAS to be objective. Why go to the trouble to make a movie about something just to get criticized for not representing the side you don't agree with? It's not like non-fiction movies took some Journalistic oath or anything. Anyway, I'm sure there is exploitation and organized crime to some of this (that regulation would help (parable to the drug trade? blaaah too political)) that the movie doesn't get into, but it's intense enough as it is. My takeaway from watching this is DON'T GET KIDNEY FAILURE.
09.22.13	Maruyama the Middle Schooler	Kankuro Kudo	This is a movie about a 14 year old kid trying to suck is own dick. This, like Detective Downs, was on my schedule out of sheer curiosity that someone would make a movie about this. And, like Detective Downs, it wound up be wonderfully endearing and charming and enjoyable. Not only is Maruyama obsessed with licking his own dick, he's also got an overactive imagination that invents superhero personas for his parents and the people who live in his apartment complex. These fantasy sequences are sweet and funny and his burgeoning romance with a neighbor combined with the mystery of a serial killer make the whole movie just a lovely little package. This is what I imagine The Lady in the Water was trying to be. I am comparing it a bit to A Boy and his Samurai from several years ago at the festival. It's just a great fun movie that I liked very much.
09.22.13	The Green Inferno	Eli Roth	The first secret screening is Eli Roth's new movie about college students who get into trouble. This time, rather than the woods or eastern European torture houses, it's the jungle of Peru where Eli can make his own cannibal movie just like his friend Ruggero Deodato. So... i have mixed feelings on this. Some of the gore and stuff in the native camp was good I thought. However, a lot of it's kind of not good at all, like he script and performances and structure of the movie and ending and a handful of nonsensical scenes sprinkled throughout. And this is going to come off making me sound terrible but the film so clearly sets up this threat of female circumcision in like the first scene of the movie to where I was like "well at least I'll get to see some female genital mutilation." The threat of that very specific act carries through the entire movie but - SPOILER ALERT - it never happens. What kind of Eli Roth movie is it where the ticking timebomb doesn't go off? I don't get it, why he'd pull back on that and show us fake limbs getting hacked off instead. I feel like it's a dire mistake that kills the movie because everything else has been done better 35 years ago. he also does this thing where he lists the standout cannibal titles and their information in the end credits. Part of me likes that because it's probably useful to some people and his intention was to give those interested a way to explore the genre but another part of me hates it like how pretentious is he to be the savior of all cannibal movies and give the world a lecture of film history. So I dunno. Overall I didn't really like it but I also didn't fall asleep or walk out or anything so it wasn't like... completely terrible. I liked it more than Machete Kills.
09.22.13	Mood Indigo	Michel Gondry	Michel Gondry's latest and I'm very glad I got a chance to see this. I really love Gondry and think he's one of the most original and creative people working today. Unfortunately, none of his movies have really 100% connected with me the way I feel they should. I'm forever waiting for that one perfect movie from him that I'll probably never get. In the meantime, I get movies like this. The first half hour or so of this movie is pure cinematic bliss. It's filled with surrealistic whimsy and fantastic absurdity and everything I love about Gondry. Everything from the piancocktail to the Biglemoi dance is superb and lovely and makes me uncontrollably smile. Audrey Tatou is the perfect Gondry actress, The lead and Gad Emelah are perfect Gondry leading men, I love seeing Paris through Gondry's eyes. Everything's just perfect perfect perfect. Then things get sad. And I don't mean like someone stubs their toe. I mean like things get so sad that the movie winds up in black and white with the iris hiding the corners of the frame, like the film itself is so depressed it can barely capture light anymore. It is such a huge depressio bummer of a second half with no silver lining that it really hurts my enjoyment of the movie. Why is every Gondry movie so sad!? Anyway, that's Mood Indigo. Overall I liked it, but man...
09.22.13	Mirage Men	Roland Denning	This doc is about the disinformation campaign that the government instituted regarding UFO stuff going on in their air force bases. It's largely an examination of one guy named Richard Doty who worked in manipulating and disseminating a lot of the false information that UFO nuts have grabbed onto. Doty is an interesting interview, but most of this movie feels like something I'd see on the syfy network and the film doesn't even attempt to answer anything but rather convolute itself and give the impression that the truth is unobtainable. While the bare fact that various government agencies have active disinformation departments is interesting, by the end of the doc I was kind of questioning whether this whole movie is a waste of time or not. I guess that's how some people felt about Room 237 last year, but that had the film and Kubrick to anchor my interest whereas this is kind of just some kooky interviews in hotel rooms.
09.21.13	Moebius	Kim Ki-duk	A movie without any dialog. True story: For the first ten or so minutes the sound was out of synch but because it all sounded like post sound and there was no dialogue to ground it, the entire audience had no clue that anything was wrong. I know I just though "wow this movie is fucking experimental". After they got the sound issue sorted, the movie began again in earnest. I have to say... for a movie with no dialogue to play at midnight is pretty ballsy. I didn't doze off once though and I also didn't see anyone leave. It could be described as a castration comedy, but there's also some pretty heavy drama going on. Lots of castration though. My favorite part was anything involving this researched technique about how, in lieu of a penis to rub, you could get off by rubbin a rough stone against your skin until it's completely raw. Several characters try it and that orgasm-pleasure-followed-by-incapacitating-pain was always funny to me. Later in the film this idea progressed to getting stabbed and working the knife handle kind of like a cock. Great twisted Fantastic Fest moment... I liked it.
09.21.13	Jodorowsky's Dune	Frank Pavich	A doc about the movie that never was. I wasn't really familiar with all the details of this unmade film so it was a pretty fun ride for me to watch this. Unlike The Man from La Mancha where I got the feeling that if Gilliam had succeeded in finishing the movie it probably would've been terrible, I cannot imagine how amazing Jodorowsky's Dune would've been. Salvador Dali and Orson Welles in a movie together!? Pink Floyd soundtrack!? Dan O'Bannon and H.R. Giger doing a space movie before Star Wars!? It's really inconceivable to run the "what if..." permutations on this. The movie itself is great and really well done. They got fantastic interviews with Jodorowsky (who I will want to call Hodor from now on) and did a great job of visualizing everything. One of the my faves from the festival.
09.21.13	Man of Tai Chi	Keanu Reeves	Keanu Reeves' directorial effort is a solid liget Hong Kong action movie. Yuen Wo Ping did the fight scenes which are amazing and tell a story. I'm kind of blanking on what to say other than it was good, nothing was terrible, and it kicked some ass. I guess I should take this as a sign to take a break from note-writing. No! I must get through these! Forgetting what I thought about all these movies is the worst part of fantastic fest.
09.21.13	Nightbreed	Clive Barker	This was a real disappointment for me. I loved Nightbreed as a kid so watching an extra 45 minutes of it should've been something amazing. A few things held me back though. This new cut was basically constructed using two VHS work prints and the DVD of the theatrical cut and there's been no image resoration at all so it constantly flips between finished-quality DVD scenes and fuzzy duped VHS scenes of varying quality. It looks like one workprint had copyright text in the top corner that they blacked out while the other had gone through a few more generations and had lost most of its audio and visual information. Furthermore, the new editor used a lot of alternate takes of scenes that ended up in the movie so it was kind of like watching a shittier version of the same movie with only small nuances to set it apart. Thirdly, a lot of the new matieral is kind of lame and was cut for a reason. They'd be fine as deleted scenes on a special edition but don't make the movie any better for me. And lastly, this promised "completely different movie" is not actually that different. There are no gigantic plot differences or huge tonal shifts or even added plot lines. It's just a flabbier more muddled version of Nightbreed. So oh well.
09.21.13	Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons	Stephen Chow	God damn the notes keep coming. This is Stephen Chow's latest and the first of his that I've seen since Kung Fu Hustle (which at the time I thought "too much kung fu, not enough hustle" because I was an idiot who didn't know anything about movies). This one deals a bit more with fantasy or history (however China sees this stuff) by following a demon hunter trying to achieve enlightenment. It's mostly funny but there's fighting and the end goes to 10 when all the demon hunters have to take on the Monkey King and Space Buddha makes an appearance. Overall I liked the movie. I'd put it in the same drawer as that one that played a few years ago starring Chow Yun Fat in that it was light and fun and a spectacle but not something I will hold next to my heart forever.
09.20.13	Witching and Bitching	Alex de la Iglesia	My first Alex de la Iglesia movie. Batshit crazy. Starts off as a crime comedy then goes unapologetically supernatural with all sorts of witch shit. The title, although weak, is very apt. I think every scene is either people complaining or witches doing stuff (and sometimes both). I have to say though, I dozed through the end when things got even more wacky and CG but I don't know if it hurt my enjoyment any. Like I'm not sure knowing what was going on was any better than hazing in and out of the craziness that I saw. It does probably mean that this won't stick in my mind but oh well, I liked it at the time.
09.20.13	The Sacrement	Ti West	When Ti West came out and said "whatever perceptions you have in your head about what a Ti West movie is or what an Eli Roth movie is, put those on pause while you watch this" I had a hope that I might like this. AJ Bowen plays a VICE journalist who goes into a cult compound and they film what goes on there. Several years ago there was a stellar doc on Jonestown that played the video footage of the news crew get shot upon trying to leave in their helicoptor and the audio recording of the Kool-Aid being administered. Very chilling stuff. This movie is basically a re-enactment of that. It's a good re-enactment, and the performances (especially that of Gene Jones) are great and the tone hits and nobody cheapens the experience with jump scares or ironic music queues. It's pretty dark but so was the real thing. So... at this point I might have to rescind my Ti West ban and start seeing his movies again. I really like that he's growing as a filmmaker and hope he continues to do so. I liked this.
09.20.13	Grand Piano	Eugenio Mira	Elijah Wood plays a master pianist who gives a comeback performance and realized that there's a gun pointed at him demanding he not miss one note. It's a very Hitchcockian suspense story masterfully told. This might be my favorite of the fest this year. It's such a swiss clock of a movie made up of individually remarkable pieces that consolidate into a great viewing experience. Incidentally, I heard more people say it was DePalma-ian than Hitchcockian. Why? There's one split screen shot in the movie, is that it? Gah. My DePalma pecodillo aside, that one shot is obscenely great. It's a flashy technocrane deep focus shot that match cuts to matching static/zoom shots in split screen. Oh man... Gush gush gush. I'm shocked that was really Elijah playing and not some digital hand transplant. It's a great movie. loved it.
09.20.13	Detective Downs	Bard Breien	I signed up for this one out of morbid curiosity because ususally the fest has a handful of these that they pick specifically because they're better than you think they'd be. That holds true in this case as well. The story is a son of a police detective wants to be a private investigator but he has Down syndrome so nobody takes him seriously, until one day someone hires him for real. The movie manages to have its cake and eat it too in that it's funny and plays on the disability without coming off as exploitative or mean and it delivers a decent noir mystery and emotional character arcs to boot. Plus its shot well and all that technical whatnot. Really the only problem I had was their use of a Living La Vida Loca cover over the end credits. I hate having that song stuck in my head. Liked it a lot.
09.20.13	Escape from Tomorrow	Randy Moore	Holy shit I have a lot of notes to write. Let's get into it. Escape from Tomorrow is a sort-of thriller that got a lot of publicity at Sundance because it was largely shot at Disney World in Orlando. Because of that, the film makes use of a lot of the iconography and people at the park to make a statement about human nature (at least that's what I took from it although I may be wrong). The story follows a family through a day at the park and mostly focuses on the dad who ends up following around a couple of skinny french teenage girls and leching out. There's also strands of plot following the son's oedipal complex, this mysterious cat flu that's going around, and a bizarre third act that propels it into some sci-fi territory. This was really good. It's kind of amazing that the movie looks as good as it does considering it was all covert guerilla style, and the script and performances are good enough to make it a movie more than some anarchist experiment that I was afraid it might be. I still don't completely understand the ending (which I take as a good sign) so the overall theme is a bit muddled for me, but I got an overall impression that at least it was saying Something which is nice. Liked it a lot.
09.19.13	Patrick	Mark Hartley	Next up is this remake of an old Aussie thriller which I haven't seen. Charles Dance plays a creepy doctor (awesome) and Rachel Griffiths plays a creepy nurse (awesome) and Sharni whatshernamefromYou'reNext plays a nurse who's skinny and pretty hot but not as hot as her slutty co-worker. I liked the director's previous documentary efforts so I kind of want to pad my blows in case through some cruel twist of fate he actually reads this. I really applaud that he made a movie and tried for something a bit out of the ordinary (a throwback Gothic Thriller), but it didn't really work for me. I didn't hate this (liked it more than Machete Kills) but it wasn't great either. To me, if you're setting your movie in a creepy hospital place with gothic architecture and stuff, you have to wallow in atmosphere. That means more than color correction and high camera angles. I wish they would've watched Robert Wise' The Haunting a few more times to study the deliberate pace of that film and realize you have to let everything breathe. 2 or 3 jump scares can be fun, 48 is overkill and desensitized the audience. So I think it was a good choice to go for that tone, but I wish it was executed with a bit more wisdom. Sorry, Mark! Make another one!
09.19.13	Machete Kills	Robert Rodriguez	Another Fantastic Fest! I can't believe this is the 9th one... Seems not so long ago that I rolled up on South Lamar to watch Zathura and Hostel and Strings and the extended Sin City cut. I made several really good friends that year sitting in the non-existant lines and watching post-apocalyptic awesomeness like Miracle Mile and Last Wave. Cut forward to a brand new theater covered in promo materials, red carpets with press (some actual!) and the opening night film spilling into three theaters to fit everyone. Pretty crazy stuff. So this is my first visit to Lakeline. I feel like it's in no way an indicative experience but for the sake of record I'll summarize my feelings on it: tables are weird, not a lot of seats but decent auditorium size, smallish lobby, menu isn't as bad as I'd heard but they're definitely following trend now rather than sticking to their own stuff and everything's pretty crazy expensive, parking is confusing and somewhat nightmarish. Machete Kills: Didn't like it. They played a trailer for the third one as the beginning of the movie. Kind of like spoiling your own movie, not that there's anything anyone would care about spoilin. I envision the writer in a room divining his craft: writer: (writer writes a line) What do you think? writer's roomate: I don't feel like vomitting yet, better re-write. writer: (forms machete's line in third person) how about now? writer's roomate: (vomits) nailed it. Lots of fake heads and cheap visual effects and Rodriguez's pg-13 brand of sex appeal. I bet it was fun to make, which I guess is great for them. Rodriguez reminds me of a guy i knew in college. His enthusiasm far outreached his talent. On one hand I have to respect that he keeps making movies and involves local crew and all of that, but on the other hand I sure wish his movies were better.
09.06.13	Indie Game: The Movie	Lisanne Pajot, James Swirsky	Finally watched this too. I can't help but compare it to the Minecraft doc because of subject matter and timing. I feel like this might be more entertaining to non-gamers because it focuses more on interviews with the people but the Minecraft doc is a more effective movie. Here, you basically have three and a half people going through the same exact experience. I don't know if they just got really lucky with their subject selection or they chose all those guys knowing their games were pretty heavily anticipated... It would have been nice to throw in a guy that didn't become a millionaire... I guess Phil Fish was a still a question mark and it's a hard argument to say "make the movie more boring in the sake of realism" but I still got the sense that people might watch this and say "all I have to do is whine for a few years then I get a million dollars. Easy!"
09.06.13	Killing Them Softly	Andrew Dominik	I heard this was a bit disappointing. It's true, I was a bit disappointed. But that's just because... I don't really know why. The movie's really well made and the characters seem authentic and nuanced and I love all the actors and all of that... maybe it's the election coverage overkill or the anticlimax of the final scene or what but I just wanted this movie to be... MORE. Who knows.
08.31.13	Minecraft: The Story of Mojang	Paul Owens	I finally sat down and watched the Minecraft doc! It was great, but I'm probably biased because I'm a fan of the game, the company/guy who made it, and the people who made this movie. The stuff 2 Player Productions have gone on to do with Double Fine Productions is stellar in my view. They're really driving hard to capture the creativity and fun around video games while also portraying the long hours of hard work and constant compromise that goes along with it. Plus the films are photographed well, put together concisely and really look like more than 3-5 people are responsible for the whole thing. This movie was very much like that. Lots of good interviews intercut with follow-alongs for Mojang's coming out party and a year of their incredible growth and core interviews with the team that make up a portrait of the company and creator Notch. Really the only thing missing is an interview with C418 who did the music. I'm not sure if he wasn't included because he did the score for the doc as well as the game or what but I missed seeing him here since he's also very much an independent artist and fits the Mojang mold well. I liked that Junk Boy maintained his anonymity throughout even though he immediately drew my eye whenever he was in frame. I also like that so many people have screwed up teeth. I feel like these days at a glance you can immediately tell if a movie is a doc or fiction narrative just by the teeth. Perfect and whiter than the sun = Hollywood movie, fucked up = doc. So yeah... just a solid doc that really portrays the wonder and magic and incredible success of Minecraft really well.
08.30.13	Hardcore	Paul Schrader	George C. Scott's innocent daughter goes missing during a church trip to California and shows up in a stag film so he has to leave Grand Rapids and tour the sleaze of LA in search of her. Man oh man... so for whatever reason I find the sordid grime of 70s NYC and 42nd Street and all that very captivating. I doubt I'd actually like to be there but as seen through the lens of a camera I really love it. In that vein this movie really hit a home run for me which kind of made me feel dirty and question my tastes a little bit. Schrader has no problem at all with not only visiting but straight up wallowing in all of it. Seedy hotels, peep booths, adult book stores, massage joints, pimp bars, porno sets, etc. etc. It's a total descent into depravity for George C. Scott and I have to say he's a trooper. His wardrobe shifts throughout the film as he more or less goes undercover so we get to see him wearing these "swinger" clothes and for one scene he has a wig and fake mustache that makes him look too much like Tom Savini. The plot is pretty loose and the ending is kind of expected and anti-climactic but something about the tone and certainly the level of (I guess) authenticity with the locations was really great and has stuck with me. As I self-evaluate a bit, I hope the charm of this sleaze is not a buried perv streak in me like I was a peeper or prowler in a previous life but instead more of an anthropological artifact of pre-AIDS American subculture. I feel like there was a relatively short window where sex and sleaze really thrust forward before morality and risk of death whipped it back to what I grew up with. For me in high school and after, every town had a XXX bookstore and a strip club and every mom & pop store had a porno section which it probably thrived on but that was it. Everything was very repressed and to an underage kid access to any of those places was some sort of taboo xanadu. I feel like once everyone got Internet all that changed because it's hard to NOT find porn these days and pre-70s I feel like it was National Geogrpahics and Betty Page pinups and occasional 8mm reels and stuff like that. But from - I dunno - 75 to 85 it was open season. I remember as a small kid riding in the backseat of my parents car in the valley seeing the Pussycat theater and my eye being attracted to the glitz of neon and the caricature above the marquee. I don't think I could read any of the titles so I just thought it was another theater like Mann's Chinese or whatever. Similarly when I see movies like this or shots from Times Square at that time... all the little marquee bulbs and black lettering on yellow backdrops, peep booths, all nude revues and all that... it's right out there. Fascinating. I mean, they all probably had the same stigma as I felt with the discreetly-titled bookstores of my puberty but surely they had to be harder to ignore. In any case, I feel like that's pretty much gone today. Now it's Hooters for business lunches or The Yellow Rose for strip bars or the occasional bookstore if you're gay and horny enough to play STD roulette. A different time to be sure. But you know... all that's from my perspective. I'm sure I'm wrong about most of it. In any case though, I find it interesting to see George C. Scott flipping through an erotic novel at a book store filled with print material rather than video tapes, dvds, or blu-rays. Very seedy still, but in a fuzzy nostalgic way.
08.24.13	Trailer Park Boys: Countdown to Liquor Day	Mike Clattenburg	Finally catching up with this. It wasn't as funny as the rest of the series... maybe the novelty of who these characters are has worn off so when relying on plot for humor it falls short? Not sure but it seemed more sad than funny this time around. I did chuckle a few times though and loved Randy's "fat wound" and mostly I like all the characters and the world so more hanging out with them isn't bad... it just feels pretty familiar. Also it's an absolute marvel that the wardrobe and cars are still around. That black and white shark-tooth shirt of Ricky's must feel abhorrent to wear.
08.23.13	The Dictator	Larry Charles	Not 100% terrible because I laughed a few times. Not great but for a movie with the same joke over and over again I guess it could've been worse. I laughed a few times. My favorite was probably the birth scene. Kind of fell asleep at the end. oh well.
08.14.13	The Sapphires	Wayne Blair	Group of Aboriginal women become soul sisters and tour Viet Nam. It wasn't bad really but was pretty much exactly what I thought it would be. There wasn't really a conflict per se, but a nice pleasant story. meh.
08.13.13	Clear History	Greg Mottola	Larry David's HBO movie that's basically like a 100 minute season of Curb Your Enthusiasm. I don't mean that in a bad way. I thought this was pretty pretty funny and it's nice to see some bigger actors play around with Larry rather than the tried and true cast. Michael Keaton in particular was great. And I like how he wore a Larry Charles-esque hairstyle in the beginning. Pretty pretty good.
08.10.13	Midnight in Paris	Woody Allen	For anyone taken with romantic notions of nostalgia, a group in which I very much include myself, this movie finds that nerve and grabs it and indulges it with every pleasant sensation for 90 minutes. It's unbelievable how fantastic the scenes of fantasy fulfillment are, even if the message at the end is that such things are pointless. Still it's a pleasure I'm sure Woody Allen is guilty of wallowing in just as I am but he has the skill to present his Paris in the 20s stocked with artists and parties and boulevards in the most perfect way. This is a really great movie. I love pretty much everything about it. I love where attention is paid and where Allen averts his gaze and chooses not to spend any time dwelling on logic. Really the only thing that doesn't ring perfect for me is Rachel McAdams' character; she seems a bit one-note to me and I could've used just a moment of sympathy... but really this movie's not about their relationship it's about Paris so it's really fine I guess. And you know... generally... I love that Woody Allen is still working, still pushing out pictures. And every 5 or 10 years he makes one that really resonates and gets a lot of attention and then the next few will go unnoticed but it's really remarkable that he's had that much output in such a consistent manner. This was really great. I loved it. A special note about the Surrealist conversation. How perfect was that. Sometimes Adrian Brody grates against me but I loved him here.
08.10.13	That's My Boy	Sean Anders	Well shit. I laughed at this and when I say that I don't mean once or twice in some ironic way at a particularly horrendous scene or lazy acting but as in consistent and audible laughter. I know, right? I mean yes Sandler has this terrible Boston accent and an older plus-size black stripper drinks orange juice upside down while hanging on a pole and delivering exposition, but there's also that bizarre not-quite-real world from Sandler's first handful of movies and some funny ensemble work going on that worked on me. Not all of it but enough to admit that I liked this. Plus jesus it went to some weird places. Oh and it was a really nice touch to use Susan Sarandon's daughter as the hot teacher. I'm as surprised as anyone that I liked this but... the laughter doesn't lie.
08.06.13	Savages	Oliver Stone	Hate to say it but I feel like Oliver Stone is phasing himself out. Aside from a nice juicy role for Benicio del Toro and a decent performance from Salma Hayek this movie was very pedestrian. I know it's unfair to expect another JFK or NBK but... meh! I was still hoping for more than this. The narration alone is enough to kill this movie for me. Oh well, maybe his next one will work.
08.03.13	The Muppets	James Bobin	The new Muppets movie. I like how they treat the universe as if the Muppets Show really existed but also where the Muppets are real instead of puppets. I feel like that gave the movie a basis to get as goofy as it wants to be (which is pretty damn goofy) and still tap into some emotion when need be. For a Muppets movie I thought this was pretty great. I mean that like there's nothing here I wouldn't want in a Muppets movie and can't think of anything not here that I missed. The goofy humor worked on me. I liked it.
07.29.13	Hitchcock	Sacha Gervasi	The bigger budget Hitchcock movie this year. The Armageddon to The Girl's Deep Impact. The Volcano to The Girl's Dante's Peak. The Capote to The Girl's Infamous (both starring Toby Jones!). You get my point. I wound up liking this one a lot more. For one I much prefer Psycho to The Birds and the story of how it got made is much more interesting. For another I thought Anthony Hopkins' Hitch, while still occasionally dead-eyed and still doughy under all that make-up, was a more interesting and authentic portrayal of what I found the man to be via interviews and on-air footage. And thirdly, while this film still delves into Hitch's obsession with his leading ladies and paranoia surrounding his relationship with Alma, it ultimately resolves in a positive way. I feel like the story presented in The Girl is a little blip in Hitch's career and is less indicative of his whole life and career as the story told in this movie. Plus it has some great casting. Ralph Macchio as Joseph Stefano, Michael Wincott as Ed Gein, James D'Arcy fucking knocks it out of the park with his Anthony Perkins. Scarlett Johansson is a tiny bit too recognizable as Janet Leigh although her performance is still solid and I see Leigh's mannerisms come through. Helen Mirren probably dips too far opposite Imelda Staunton in that she's really hot and fiery and although from what I've read Alma had the fire, she looked more like Staunton. But the sad truth is I'd rather watch Helen Mirren in a swimsuit than Imelda Staunton so... she wins. Both good actors though... ahem. Anyway, I really loved seeing Psycho come together. I feel like these movies are only for movie lovers and pretty niche but I'm still glad they make them because stuff like this and that Citizen Kane movie with Live Schreiber and even that mediocre Nosferatu film with the great Willem Dafoe performance are all very watchable to me. My favorite scene was right at the end as Hitch stood in the lobby listening to the crowd react to his shower scene. I really wanted a POV shot of the usher standing behind him getting to see this Hollywood luminary's private moment as he conducts the screams. How great would it have been to be that kid!? Anyway, I'm not sure if it was that great to anyone who isn't a fan of Hitch (or doesn't even know who he is) but I really liked it.
07.24.13	J. Edgar	Clint Easwood	Another boring biopic about someone famous where the most interesting and sensational thing about that person is downplayed. Lots of make-up. I guess it's technically proficient but it's all just so damn distracting. blaaaaaah
07.21.13	The Big Year	David Frankel	Steve Martin, Jack Black and Owen Wilson all compete to... see... the most birds... in one year? Not what I would consider a funny movie but it wasn't terrible either. I guess pleasant is the right term. The supporting cast is really solid and mostly goes unused but it's still nice to see recognizable faces in all the nooks and crannies. It's just weird that this movie was obviously expensive with all its actors and locations... but not very man... you know.. jokes.
07.20.13	The Girl	Julian Jarrold	HBO Movie about the Making of Hitchcock's The Birds and the director's obsession with Tippi Hedron. I forgot to log this so the date viewed is a rough approximation from memory. I liked it ok. When I was going through my Hitch phase and reading a bunch and watching all his movies, everybody was pretty apologetic and sympathetic toward Hitch as if to say "well, he's been married like 40 years, who wouldn't get turned on by a hot young blonde starlet?" but this movie was much more on Hedron's side, showcasing the mental and physical anguish that Hitch put her through during production and the ensuing career crush he did all because she didn't reciprocate his advances. I don't know to what degree all of this happened but I feel like Toby Jones' performance is extra villainous. Part of it comes from his voice, which I guess he went gravelly because his normal speaking voice is much higher than Hitch's, but also it's just kind of a heavy take on the guy where every movie contains malice. Also, Imelda Staunton's portrayal of Alma maybe isn't quite as strong as she needs to be. Maybe a tiny bit too mousey. Sienna Miller's Tippi was good though. I liked all the production stuff, the scenes where they're actually making the movie, but overall I didn't love this because it's just too negative. Even if all this stuff is true, Hitch's persona and body of work also contained a lot of lightness and humor. I guess I'm an apologist as well!
07.20.13	This is 40	Judd Apatow	Judd Apatow's career arc continues toward the dramatic. Maybe his next movie will be about death and funerals and involve people in comas or staring at children with cancer. I guess that's a bit harsh for a movie I liked. Apatow's universe is still compelling to me even though it seems like Knocked Up will prove to be his sweet spot in the history books. I like these characters and how authentic they feel, love the kids and the smart writing of puberty, and really love how I get the feeling that source music was picked before they shoot the scenes. And all the people in this movie are funny... they just most aren't funny in this movie. Which is ok because I feel like this one doesn't even pretend to be a comedy like Funny People did. It's a straight up drama with bits of humor like any other good drama could (should?) have, and I'm cool with that.
07.19.13	Viva Maria!	Louis Malle	2 Consecutive nights out at the movies. No joke but outside of a festival I think this is the first time that's happened in 5 years. So this is the next in Lars' series of circus films that he programmed for AFS at the Marchesa. It stars Brigitte Bardot and Jeanne Moreau and Louis Malle directed it. It's funny because in his intro Lars mentioned how when he went through his French cinema phase (as I'm guessing we all did at some point) Truffaut and Godard really stood out for him but he didn't really "get" Malle. My own French period was pretty similar. I watched every Truffaut I could get my hands on and loved almost everything he did, watched a ton of Godard and never really got into him, but others like Chabrol and Malle I never really dived into as deeply, partly because of their availability to me at that point but also because I didn't really "get" them like I loved Truffaut and disagreed with Godard. Anyway, rambling aside... this movie! First of, I'll probably talk a lot about how amazing Bardot is in this but I don't want to undersell Moreau who is unbelievably beautiful and talented. I can't think of a better way of spending two hours than watching both of these ladies dance around in corsets. But Bardot... with this movie I finally understand her draw. I always sort of attributed her and movies like And God Created Woman as aging kind of badly that is to say having more impact in historical context than today. But in this movie, Bardot is playful and young and innocent and goddamn sexy and coy and blessed and beloved. Her performance and role really bring out everything I've ever heard about her and I'm happy to finally be able to appreciate her with zero qualification. Lars said afterward that this is a big hit and I'm so glad because as I watched I kept feeling pangs of sadness because the epic scale of this movie paired with the goofy tone of its humor made me think there's NO WAY anyone liked this when it was made. If ever there was an Ishtar or Waterworld or Heaven's Gate category then this movie MUST be included. The humor is so slapstick and stupid and gaggy that the tremendous budget with the laundry list of locations and armies of extras and beautiful photography and ornate costumes would surely consign this movie to failure BUT IT WORKS! I wonder if this was like the Titanic or Avatar of the day where people were just sure it would bomb but then everybody in the world loved it. The impressive scale of the movie almost demands some controversy... OR That's just my feelings based on the current state of the industry, knowing that they would never ever every make this today. I can't even imagine it really: a period epic about circus performers, slapstick comedy, and bloody revolution!? Like... imagine if Braveheart had Benny Hill comedy bits in it. No way critics would like that shit. Either way, I couldn't help but feel a little sadness for the inevitable fate of this movie and I was really pleasantly surprised to hear it was a hit afterward. Huzzah! So... I really enjoyed this. I think the prologue of Bardot's childhood really helped to set the tone so I was in the right groove for humour and like I said both leads were stunningly beautiful. Really great movie. I should track down more Malle stuff now it's all probably a search or two away.
07.18.13	The Sex Cycle	Joe Sarno	Huh! I spent the whole movie wondering if I'd seen this before and it turns out I had! Anyway, Lars programmed this as the second in his Auteur Obscure series for AFS. It's a mid-60s sex film but with an arty psychological bent involving empowering earrings and topless ladies in masks. It's pretty rough construction, loose editing, amateur performances, and a really strange habit of buttoning scenes with a drum hit, but it also had plenty of weird charm to offer. I thought most of the women were beautiful in a natural way. This movie seemed to land post-nose job, pre-boob job so all the skinny girls had suitable busts which is kind of refreshing considering what passes for nudie movies today. But really, I wish Sarno had a little more confidence in his writing so he didn't have to put so many drum hits in. That said, it's a vital lesson I will keep in my toolbox: if your people don't realize the scene is ending, throw a drum hit in there. The screening itself was cool because I got to catch up with Sonja a little bit who I haven't seen in a while and Lars was kind of nervous in his lecture and someone farted in the middle of the movie. I mean I was sitting pretty far off to one side and I think it came somewhere from the center so the whole theater probably heard it. I don't know if the guy was betting on the seat having more padding or maybe he got the angle wrong or something but it was loud during a quiet part of the movie and we all heard it, guy.
07.15.13	Searching for Sugar Man	Malik Bendjelloul	Good doc about this dude from Detroit whose music never took off in the states but was absolutely huge in South Africa without him ever knowing about it. Some South African dudes go on a search to track him down and eventually connect with him and he gets to learn how many people love his music. Couldn't ask for a better doc, right? I don't think there's many scenes as emotional as a poor old man standing in front of thousands of people who are cheering and screaming and yelling out appreciation for him after 30 years of working construction. I have to say it got a little dusty in the room for that scene. Sadness has never really gotten to me in movies but for some reason when people are tributing someone or showing appreciation or stuff like that it gets to me. I think It's A Wonderful Life is still really the only movie I've had to choke back tears from but it gets me every goddamn time. Anyway... digression. The music is kind of Dylan-esque with a touch of Donovan psych thrown in. I'm not much for "poet" songs where the lyrics are the main focal point but I liked this guy's music well enough and it kind of grew on me as the movie went on. I don't think I'll be tracking it down like I did the Kashmere band after seeing Thunder Soul but this is probably a better doc cinematically speaking.
07.13.13	The Five-Year Engagement	Nicholas Stoller	Not quite as charming as Forgetting Sarah Marshall but also not without its fair share of nice moments. Still, some inherent flaws here, like how the whole movie is people being unhappy. Oops. I still like all involved though, and the super quick shot of the fake deer sliding off the wet car roof made me really laugh for some reason. those floppy hoofs tangled up in the ropes really got to me. Also, I wouldn't be surprised if "It kind of feels like a bunny day" sticks into my personal lexicon of references-just-for-me that I sometimes say. Worth it.
07.13.13	Safe House	Daniel Espinoza	another mediocre action movie about corrupt and rogue CIA agents. Basically a Bourne knock-off except in this one Ryan Reynolds plays a junior agent who's in charge of keeping a safe house in Capetown and Denzel is a rogue agent who turns himself in because assassinos are after him. Not terrible. Not great. Just another movie.
07.12.13	Lola Montes	Max Ophuls	Lola Montes! Lola Montes! This is one of those titles that sounds good yelled over and over again. I picture Billy Wilder yelling Avanti! Avanti! Lola Montes! I don't really know why. Anyway, I watched this movie a long time ago when I read in an interview that Paul Thomas Anderson counted Ophuls amongst his most favorite directors. I like to think I don't remember much about that first viewing except some crazy camera moves and Peter Ustinov yelling her name. Lars and AFS gave me a convenient excuse to revisit this and soak in more of the story and structure now that I've (hopefully) matured a little bit as a filmgoer. As always, Lars provided solid context for the film which made me appreciate certain aspects such as who Martine Carol was and the heavy cloud of financial failure that the film carried upon release. Well Ustinov does not yell her name over and over again. Weird. Otherwise, there was a lot in this movie to like. The sets, particularly the circus stage and the Bavarian locations, are amazing. You can see money thrown at every nook and cranny of the screen. The lighting and camerawork in the interior soundstages, the circus set in particular, is nothing short of amazing. The costumes and set dressing and pretty much every aspect of physical production is lush and grande and opulent. Also the intricate flashback structure, moving from the garishly loud circus tale to much more intimate and quiet realities in flashback is pretty cool. Certainly for 1955 it's an achievement. It does feel pretty long however, and for the time it takes, it doesn't tell a huge amount of story. I was only carried along by the story a few short scenes at a time. The bright side is that I had plenty of time to notice all the technical stuff I listed above. I don't think it's ever going to be a favorite of mine, but I certainly enjoyed it and found it worth watching.
07.06.13	Student Bodies	Mickey Rose	Slasher movie spoof from the early 80s. This is a movie that I remember seeing on Cinemax late one night in like the summer of 92 and could never remember the title or anything, just that it involved a heavy breather in the girls locker room and that the movie interrupted with a guy saying that R rated movies made more money so he'd like to take this opportunity to say FUCK YOU. Well, Now I've seen it again and it's kind of surprisingly funny! I mean that in the stupidest possible way. Maybe it was just my mood but a lot of the clearly ADR dialog with these weird quick jokes really caught my fancy. Horse head bookends. So yeah I liked this one. Kind of like an Airplane for slasher movies. "I'd like to kill the kid with the GUM!"
07.05.13	Hit & Run	Dax Shepard, David Palmer	Fucking Dax Shepard. Sigh. Anyway. I liked this movie. I thought the car chases were competent, I liked that he was really driving with Kristen and even used his own cars, I thought the script had moments of humor and the supporting cast filled out the movie really well. In fact really the only bad thing I have to say about this is that I have to watch him make out with Kristen Bell the whole movie and know it's not acting. Dax Shepard is goddamn lucky and I want to hate him but I really just can't. You don't really see straight up car chase movies anymore (now that the Fast franchise is more about heists than cars) so this is a nice throwback.
07.05.13	Trailer Park Boys	Mike Clattenburg	I re-watched the show with Molly and now we are seeing this before Liquor Day. Not as funny as my initial sxsw exposure but that's to be expected since I've now seen the whole show twice over and that first midnight show was a complete virgin experience. Still though, I like hanging out with these guys so it was a pleasurable experience to be sure. Now all that's left is Liquor Day!!!
07.04.13	Cars 2	John Lassetter, Brad Lewis	I've been watching parts of this as I fall asleep on the couch late nights for a while now and just finished it last night. I really didn't like it at all. Easily my least favorite Pixar movie that I've seen (so that doesn't include Brave or Monsters University). It's all Mater acting dumb. The rivalry between McQueen and the F1 racer was like a bad callback to Talladega Nights. These spy cars do things that no car can possibly ever ever do making the whole premise pretty thin for me, then the script is complete 6 year old stuff with no layered humor or character complexity that usually makes Pixar movies enjoyable for people like me. I guess now that Lassetter's busy heading up Disney, Pixar has become less of a distinction. They had a great run, but now they're just typical animated movies in my mind. Shame.
07.04.13	Behind the Candelabra	Steven Soderbergh	Great performances, amazing make-up (really lots of that has to be digital at this point right?), suitably twisted story... Let's hope Soderbergh's "retirement" is either short-lived or doesn't include more tv shows or made-for-tv movies. Good stuff.
07.03.13	Zero Dark Thirty	Kathryn Bigelow	Liked this a lot. Felt a little long but mostly just authentic and gripping. I liked this way more than Hurt Locker. I didn't really follow the Oscars this year but I feel like this didn't get as much love as it should have, perhaps because the actors were not really in the forefront. Jessica Chastain was good and all but it was not the kind of role that wins awards. The supporting cast was just as good too. Really good movie.
07.03.13	The Amazing Spider-Man	Marc Webb	I didn't care for this very much. It's weird because when I went through my comic phase I was a huge fan of Spider-Man, but none of the movies are that great. I liked Spider-Man 2 when it was in theaters but don't think it's aged well at all and the other 4 have been not that good in my opinion. This one falls into the same trap as the first Raimi one in that it spends too long telling the ubiquitous origin story to where the film-specific plot is really minimal. Rhys Ifans in this movie has like the exact same part as Willen Dafoe in the first one or Alfred Molina in the second except they're different villains. I mean I get that it's a reboot but I don't understand why it has to be EXACTLY the same. Even the CG shots of Spidey zipping through Manhattan are exactly the same. The body posturing is a little more exaggerated and closer to the comic which was nice but still they're the same shots. I don't really get it. Like Molly said it's like seeing a new production of the same play or something. I was bored.
06.29.13	Forced to Fight	Yang Sun	And finally we reach the last movie of the weekend and the only midnight screening. This also happens to be the only movie Lars programmed. He gave it a buzzed intro saying that there's no way this weekend can be complete without representation of the many many shitty Kung Fu movies out there. Up until now they've shown some really spectacular stand-outs in the genre but he thought it would be fun to screen a completely lousy entry as well. He also mentioned having kids or something and even referred to a son named Nils. This caught me as particularly funny. Nils Nilsen is a great name. Maybe the best name. So the movie is Forced to Fight AKA Invincible Super-Chan. We saw a trailer for it last night (How will such a man react when his baby is iced?). Lars said it was 70 minutes long and the only other things I have written down are "The Playboy", "South Asia 8 Warriors", and "Much love for dummies." I got pretty delirious with this one. Really my only memory is that this dude who can jump incredibly high fought like a thousand guys right at the beginning of the movie and it went on for so long that I thought the movie would end when the fight finally ended but then it tried to start some kind of plot with characters and whatnot and my brain wasn't having any of it. Eventually it ended and Lars thanked everybody for coming as we ambled out. I had a thought that I should hang back and thanks Dan and his buddy from Chicago who I already forgot his name for coming, but I also had a thought that I was pretty out of it and should probably just head home so I did. So that's that. I can't really say that this experience has converted me into a Kung Fu superfan, but I can say that I've covered a few more bases and have a good idea of what these movies offer. More So than that I got to hang out at the Marchesa for a few nights, catch up with a few old friends, and enjoy some movies.
06.29.13	Invincible Armour	Ng See-Yuen	Next up was Invincible Armour and the first dubbed film of the weekend. Dan said the print came from a guy in the UK and that the soundtrack lifted some cues from various Italian westerns which gives it an unusual energy you don't often see in Kung Fu movies. I'm not sure if the trailer reel had a theme this time out (perhaps just dubbing), but they showed FISTS OF VENGEANCE and DRAGON DE FUEGO. So, at this point my notes kind of break down. Despite the dubbing I don't remember much about the plot of this one at all. I feel like there's some guy who never got laid so he has this armor Kung Fu that only has one weak pressure point and... it could be his balls. The beginning credits played like an educational video for learning the Eagle Claw, then there's a whole bunch of Eagle Claw fighting and this one guy is invincible and it turns out he spent ten years repositioning his one vulnerable pressure point and I don't remember where it ended up being but it could be his balls. Here's an itemized list of the notes I took: -spikeyballs on nuts -40 year old monkey holding a knife?? -broken eggs -bastard! -the hero has a most amazing way of exiting scenes (jumping through windows, backflip diving with double gainer and half twist) -"Well I suppose that I am" -Armour enhanced by celibacy -Iron Finger!!!
06.29.13	Eight Diagram Pole Fighter	Lau Kar-leung	Saturday night brought a slightly different crowd. I think for the most part everyone who came Friday also showed up tonight but there were also a few extra people it seems like. Lars and Dan started the night with Eight Diagram Pole Fighter, which they both cited as their personal favorite Kung Fu movie. I feel like that's saying quite a bit. They also talked a lot about director and choreographer Lau Kar-leung who just recently died. They said this first film was always at the center of their weekend programming but became even more prescient when they heard the news. Dan said that if you asked him a month ago who the greatest living director was he'd say Lau Kar-leung. Basically they hyped the shit out of this movie. They also told the story of how Fu Sheng was supposed to be the star of the movie but got killed in a car accident so Gordon Liu stepped in at the last minute to take over and how the movie's kind of seen as cursed (in the Rosemary's Baby/Poltergeist vein) because of it. Trailers beforehand were themed to Lau Kar-leung and included MAD MONKEY KUNG FU and another that I don't think ever presented its title. It starred Gordon Liu and Lau Kar-leung didn't direct the movie but he did do fight choreography on it. I'm guessing it was SHAOLIN AND WU TANG but that's just a guess. So this movie is very I guess you'd call it traditional in that almost all of it is shot on sets with kind of cheap historic costumes and high key lighting. At first glance I was kind of taken aback by it because it looked so cheap, but as the movie went on it took on more of a live theater stage play feel to me. Probably because the print was goddamn pristine. Seriously, it was like they were acting it out for me up on the screen it was so clear. I liked this one a lot. This sounds terrible but I think a major factor in my enjoyment was the fact that during the epic last fight things actually got gory. I hadn't realized it but until now the whole weekend has just been sweaty grimaces and some bruise make-up. This is the first film of the weekend to show dudes get all the way killed. In awesome ways to boot. The monks in this movie have a fetish for de-fanging these badass wooden wolf practice dolls so when they fight humans they end up taking lots and lots of teeth out with their poles. Seriously, teeth go flying everywhere. Teeth even get stuck in a guy's head at one point. So many teeth. There's a lot of pole action too. Really some great pole and spear fighting through the entire movie but the end fight is pretty amazing. I think I saw a pole go through some guys chest. The stick knows no friends. So yeah, this was my favorite of the weekend. Despite the cheap sets and costumes, the clarity of the print and the creativity and prowess of those fights really sets it apart. And just one more note on the print quality. I dug out my old notebooks that I used to take to film events when I first moved to town because I didn't trust my memory to recall enough details to write these notes well. I have “pristine print” written three times for this entry. It was really remarkable.
06.28.13	The Victim	Sammo Hung	The second half of Friday's double feature was revealed to be Sammo Hung's The Victim. Lars introduced this film as being a step up from the previous since Hung had a bit more aptitude and perhaps budget to shoot the fight scenes in a more dynamic way. He also mentioned being able to see technical shifts in the film in how it starts with a very old school execution but by the end you start to see a tiny bit of wire work and more new school of kung fu which we are saturated with now. Indeed the fight choreography here was really top notch, and I like how Sammo Hung was unabashedly fat. Not like today standards morbidly obese but for the 70s? that dude was fat. He could still move pretty damn fast though and brought a lot of silliness to his role as a guy desperately searching for a master to teach him better kung fu. He finds it in Leung Ka-Yan AKA “Beardy” as Lars called him. Lars actually went on quite a while about the quality of this guy's beard. I saw it. It was a good one. I guess by Chinese standards it could be described as amazing. Dan also told the story of the print for this movie which he warned was pretty crappy. He bought it from some guy in the UK who in turn had acquired it years ago from a guy in Taiwan then stored in his basement for years and years. Apparently when Dan got his hands on it the print was in small separate piles and he had to construct the film piece by piece. For this trailer reel, Dan picked a few showcasing targeted marketing toward urban markets. The first trailer was for a film called BRUCE LEE FIGHTS BACK FROM THE GRAVE and a hilarious trailer for a movie called FORCED TO FIGHT where the narrator asks “How will a man react when his baby is iced?” and the word “KUNG FU-R-R-ROCIOUS” is printed on the screen. Both trailers had the Aquarius Releasing logo on it. I feel like I've heard a tiny bit about Terry Levene and Aquarius but I'd really love a doc or book or something going into more depth. There's probably not actually much of a story there - just a businessman who owned a 42nd St. theater who played to his audience - but still. My experience of this movie was another reason why I wanted to attend. I guess I'm a lightweight these days when it comes to movie watching, or maybe it's the hypnotic effect of the fighting with it's rhythmic pauses between attacks and repeating sound effects for each blow but I found my eyelids getting heavy about half way through this. That meant that I really have no clear perception of how long the end fight lasted. I'd kind of drift off, then come back and the guys would be in a new place still fighting, then I'd drift off again and come back to the guys sweatier with more bruise make-up on but still fighting. Always fighting. That's a really cool experience I think. Falling asleep during a movie in the theater, coming in and out, having time and space kind of fold in on itself until it's just the images on the screen and sounds in the air all synched in time and rhythm. So I'm not really sure how the movie ended but I don't mind.
06.28.13	The Mystery of Chess Boxing	Joseph Kuo	Lars and AFS brought out Dan Halstead from Portland to show a selection of Kung Fu movies this weekend. I decided to go for a couple reasons. 1: Kung Fu is kind of a hole in my movie knowledge. I feel like I've seen a small handful thanks to QTFests and whatnot but I've never really had a good introduction or education in them. 2: I felt like going to a movie event. The few Kung Fu movies that I have seen were not instant favorites but what the hell, the feeling of spending a few nights fidgeting in a theater seat appealed to me, and I thought it would be a fun few evenings to hang out at the Marchesa. I think the fundraiser for the theater is wrapping up any day now and last time I checked they had reached 99% of their goal which is great, but I have to say I love how bare bones the theater is right now. The red velvet curtains along the walls are kind of grubby and I can see the dark shiny snakes of hot glue and repair amongst the folds. The lighting rig seems to be attached to a bright orange extension cord which hangs down from the ceiling in a knotted rope like gym class. The bare screen shows the edges of the frame in all their ragged fuzzy glory. Again I know it's not the popular opinion but all that stuff fits into my romantic notion of an arthouse theater perfectly. The crowd was comfortable but respectable at around a hundred people I think. A good turnout in my mind. Lars got up and introduced Dan and the general trend of the night was that they tag-teamed the intros although I think there was maybe a correlation between how many beers Lars had and how much he talked. At the beginning of each night Dan sort of took the lead but by the end of the night Lars was taking over with some rather choice humor sprinkled in with the intro. But anyway, Dan introduced himself and the context for the weekend with a slideshow that explained a bit about the history of Kung Fu cinema and how he came to acquire his notable print collection (If Lars is to be believed - and I think he is - Dan is the guy to talk to if you want a print of a Kung Fu movie. it doesn't matter if you're Tim League or Quentin Tarantino or RZA, you talk to Dan) which he owns but stores down here in the AGFA vault. This slideshow included shots of the derelict movie-house once owned by the Shaw brothers in Vancouver's chinatown district where he found a mother lode of 200 or so prints. At roughly 6 reels per film, that made for 8000 pounds of Kung Fu! The crowd started applauding at this snapshot of a low-ceilinged room full of dusty prints. I mean people clapped. At a picture of a bunch of film prints. I feel like if I ever get famous or whatever and Elvis Mitchell asks me what makes Austin so special to a film lover, this is the anecdote I will tell. I might also add in that we could all hear David Strong in the back following along the presentation as if Dan was talking directly to him. You'd hear his trademark David Strong voice saying “...yeah...” or “...uh huh...” every so often. So great. A personal aside: Dan's slideshow was short and really just showed a few pictures but I thought it was fantastic. I really wish this would become a trend. Like when Lars does his Auteur Obscure or even Chale with his Essential Cinema films might dig up some photos of the director or something and include a slideshow with their intros. I know... I'm weird and that's a lot of extra work, but I think it would be awesome. Make it a little mini-class even, what the hell. Anyway, the first film screened was Mystery of Chess Boxing, which Dan described as basically a remake of... goddamn it I forgot, 7 Grandmasters? Well he described it as more or less a remake of some previous hit but with a stronger villain, which should resonate with any hip hop fans because the villain's name is Ghost Face Killer. I found Mystery of Chess Boxing to be a strong archetype of what I think makes up a Kung Fu movie. There's a young kid who's eager to learn Kung Fu, there's either humorous dubbing or in this case poorly-translated subtitles leading to a nearly incomprehensible plot, there's a fetishistic bordering on educational preoccupation with different Kung Fu styles, there's clearly young guys in stark white wigs and fake beards, and there's many many very very long fights with monotonous foley work and hypnotically impressive choreography. This movie had all of that. Ghost Face laughs whenever he kills anyone. At one point the eager young guy serves bowls of rice better than Ralph Macchio painted Master Myagi's house. The end fight lasts the entire last reel (something shared with every movie screened this weekend I think) and features some rock/paper/scissors logic of shifting styles to defeat Ghost Face in the last 3 seconds of the movie. I like how these movies don't hang out any longer than they have to, although it's weird that they all still feel very long to me. When introducing the next movie Lars sort of faulted this for having a static camera for much of the fighting. I agree, but also thought that, considering the current state of fight choreography in Hollywood films, it was really refreshing to see a fight play out in medium and long shots so you can actually see what the hell is going on. While the other films this weekend may have had more advanced technique applied to the photography, I didn't dislike this film for its simplicity. I also want to make a note about the print quality. It was fantastic. I think Dan mentioned that this may be the only known print of this movie so it's even crazier that it should be so lush. With only one or two exceptions, all the prints shown this weekend were really remarkably clean. Oh, I almost forgot to mention the trailers. Lars and Dan showed a couple trailers before each film. Nothing crazy like some of the Alamo trailer reels, but still nice little duets of themed coming attractions. In front of this one was Five Element Ninjas and The Hammer of God.
06.27.13	Argo	Ben Affleck	Pretty good movie. Great beard. The hair wasn't as amazing as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy but still pretty good. Arkin didn't deserve any Oscar talk but I still love him. He's in that phase now where he just has to be in movies and he'll get awards. Like Oh he's working this year! Shit yeah! It's cool though. Pretty good movie.
06.25.13	End of Watch	David Ayer	Well... it was refreshing to watch an LA cop movie and not have it involve corruption or evil cops... I definitely spent the whole movie waiting for someone to take the money or the bureaucracy to come crushing down or something like that. Instead it was a straight good guys vs. bad guys type movie and that was ocol... ...except it was kind of threadbare as far as actual story goes and really obfuscated through this concept of found footage. I feel like I don't hate found footage films nearly as much as most people do and I'm not sick of them yet, but this really stretched the concept too far. Half the movie doesn't even come from "found footage." I feel like Ayer used the idea as an excuse to not hide the dashboard cameras and shoot the whole movie "in the style of" kind of like how Rodriguez exploits the idea of exploitation cinema in his Machete movies. I guess it's like maybe some sort of statement about how everyone has cameras these days maybe? but really no. The fact that the latino gangsters ALSO carry a camera around everywhere they go is ridiculous and the short cartel surveillance footage would've been cool if the rest of the movie paid as much attention (I feel like Chronicle did this well) but seems out of place here. I wish Ayer shot this like a Colors Part 2 or something instead. I could do without the first-person-shooter crap. So I feel like everything kind of evened out to a little more good than bad, but still pretty forgettable. It really sucks but does a cop movie NEED dirty cops to be good in this day and age? I hope not.
06.22.13	The Road	John Hillcoat	From my dusty pile of Netflix discs... I guess I realize now that the power of the book comes from the prose more than the story. Maybe it's because I had read the book and therefore knew where the road would take the boy and his dad, but I found this to be mostly boring as shit. I liked both The Proposition and Lawless so I was hoping to be taken by this as well but nah... One seen with Viggo and the crying boy kind of got to me but it was like the easiest scene to get to anyone ever. Other than that, a lot of gray, occasional less-than-a-minute glimpses of good actors, and a whole lotta nothing.
06.22.13	This Is the End	Evan Goldberg, Seth Rogen	Pretending it's hot outside when it's cold... sitting on a beach saying stuff like surf's up... As exemplified above, one could make the argument that being a popular actor is a pretty easy life. Extending that sentiment, it might be pretty easy to think Seth Rogen just got a bunch of his buddies together and had fun for a few months under the guise of making a movie. That could very well be true, but it doesn't mean the movie sucks! I really loved this. Thought it was hilarious, loved how everyone made fun of themselves a bit ("That's why you're number one!"), loved how there was still an actual plot that developed and conflict that resolved along with all the hanging out. It was all really great. Loved it.
06.15.13	Magic Mike	Steven Soderbergh	Abs and butts and butts and abs, I saw a movie with butts and abs. This was ok. Generally I'm in love with the genre-centric turn that Soderbergh has taken lately and I applaud him for being open to what is probably the closest to a modern-day song-and-dance as he feels comfortable getting, but the major lack of story really hurt this for me. Channing Tatum's physicality is impressive and I love how greasy McConaughy plays his part. I didn't 100% buy Tatum's non-dancing performance though, probably not helped at all by how flat the sister role was. The last scene was groan-worthy in how neatly is tried to tie things up even though I was still all WTF about The Kid's future as a doucher and what the hell Tatum would do that didn't involve fucking the floor and really nothing resolves at all. In story terms there's not much there, but it's shot well and I was never bored and I got to see Munn's boobs even though I really don't like like her much. To me the best performance was Joe Manganiello's face while pumping. It was only about 2 seconds long but it was fantastic.
06.15.13	Moonrise Kingdom	Wes Anderson	For whatever reason Wes Anderson seems played out in my mind these days, which is weird because the last two movies I saw of his... ok really everything of his but Darjeeling and half of Steve Zissou I like a great deal. I thought Fantastic Mr. Fox was great and I liked this a great deal as well. Perhaps on par with Steve Zissou in that I probably won't feel any great need to revisit with any regularity but still I have nothing majorly bad to say about it other than Movies like Rushmore and Tannenbaums capture Anderson's obsession with centering the frame and ornate living spaces better. This is like a love story for children or something. It almost should've been animated like Mr. Fox. This is all a jumble. I mean to say that I don't know why I'm not more excited for Wes Anderson movies because I like them, but they are more of the same if by "the same" I mean unique Wes Anderson vision.
05.25.13	The Comedians of Comedy	Michael Blieden	It's fun to revisit this now that Zack Galifinakis is a huge star, especially the scene where he's complaining about not being proud of any of the movies he's been in and that he's glad the show he's on was just cancelled. Basically everyone looks 10 years younger and skinnier in this. Still funny though. There really was a lot of anti-Bush humor going on in 2004 wasn't there!?
05.17.13	Star Trek Into Darkness	J.J. Abrams	I saw this because it was an opportunity to skip out of work early. I've always been a middle-of-the-road type guy with Star Trek. I saw the movies but never watched the shows. The last one I thought they did well with the casting but the story was kind of a generic sci-fi action movie and it had too many lens flares. With this one... I like the last one more because at least the plot was new. I guess you can just remake a movie now and not have to call it a remake? I mean, ok. it's not a complete remake, but it borrows so heavily from the original second movie that it feels like a dubstep remix or something. And then to add on top of it there's a whole mess of logic problems and plot holes that I wouldn't expect from a franchise that prides itself on its intelligence. I didn't really have any expectations and still wound up disappointed. oh well!
05.16.13	Rulers of the City	Fernando Di Leo	AKA Mister Scarface. Sooooo.... I don't know if you know this about me but i used to watch a lot of movies. No, wait. that's a terrible way to start this. Back when I was watching a lot of movies, I obtained a few via the internet. It was a major phase of discovery for me and, with the help of the Alamo and its staff, new friends like Jarrette and Micah, and a lot of free time, i tore through a lot of them. Some of my newfound favorite genres were blaxploitation and italian crime so I watched pretty much anything I could find of either of those. The thing with a lot of the IItalian crime movies of the 70s was that they were often pretty slow and tedious. I mean not just the Italian stuff but the American stuff as well. For instance, I remember watching Across 110th Street (which by all accounts should've been a grand slam since Bobby Womack did the score and Yaphet Koto's a badass as is Anthony Quinn so it's kind of a blaxploitation crime film) and thinking the song was waaaaay better than the movie. Anyway, this long rambling paragraph is supposed to say that I first watched this movie on my computer with not exactly stellar expectations and it really impressed me. Now, thanks to Lars and the AFS I get to see it again, this time in glorious 35mm and in a new space (to me) called the Marchesa. Since I'm inspired to write a decent amount about this, let me spend a minute with my first impressions of the theater. So, Apparently a long while back it used to be the Lincoln Village Cinema or something along those lines. I believe it was closed by the time I moved to town. Now it's back on its feet as a venue space (I guess for wedding ceremonies and stuff) and it has a 278-seat auditorium. It's in a strip mall butting up against an Italian restaurant that used to be a Carabba's so there's absolutely no pomp or circumstance. The marquee was stark and simple when I drove up: AFS. It almost seemed like a secret. It's also maybe 2 miles from my house. It took me about ten minutes to get there at 7:00 and five minutes to get home at 9:40. The lobby is large and open but also not fancy at all. Snacks and drinks are available but a step below the Paramount. I saw a few random closed doors that I didn't try peeking in, have no clue where the restrooms are, but the theater is big and outfitted with a simple stage. I really hope none of that comes off as negative because the space immediately clicked with me as something special. In Rochester they have the Little theater as their primary arthouse. It's small and barely finished and the Dobie reminded me a lot of it. For all my problems with the Dobie the thing I liked most about both of those theaters is their sense that the money went on the screen not the lobby. They, and really I mean the Marchesa here if you're not picking up on my inference, convey a sense that the people who run it really want to be there. It's a labor of love. There may not be a budget there but there's definitely love. The Marchesa is bare and sloppy and feels like everyone there belongs to a club that's just started. Not in an elitist way at all, but more like... passion. Muchlike how the scratches and splices in the reels contribute to a movie's charm, the theater made me feel like I was where I belonged. It gave me a few major vibes of my first visit to the Alamo on Colorado, which I very much appreciated. Tonight was sparsely attended with about 30 people there. This sounds terrible a lot of my favorite Alamo memories are not the nights when it was crazy sold out and exciting (although I hold a few of those in my deck) but the nights when it was pretty slow and I got the feeling that everyone else who didn't show up really missed something because I had just seen something special and the fact that I saw it with so few others bonded those of us who were there. Turkeython is an excellent example as is their Blaxploitation programming in February of... 2006? 2007?. Anyway, tonight felt like that. I caught up with a handful of familiar faces and there were a handful of unfamiliar as well, but we were all pretty cool for being there. Anyway... So I watched a movie there didn't I? well almost. Let me take ANOTHER minute talking about Lars and his goddamned intros. Going back to Rochester, the first time I went to the Little it was to see In the Company of Men with a girl and her film class. He was either the manager or the professor (I wasn't in the class) but either way someone got up beforehand to introduce the film and afterward a couple people got up in front and actually talked ABOUT what we had just seen. Again, I'm kind of sure it was just because a film class was in attendance but the students were not the only people to stay after and contribute to the conversation. That experience then became my gold standard for cinematic exhibition. Tonight Lars got up and introduced himself and the film society and referred to his mini dissertation as a lecture. In essence it was what I remember of his Weird Wednesday intros extended to fit more about di Leo, his work, and the cast. Lars is so knowledgeable and articulate that I feel like he could have gone on for another twenty minutes without complaint. I really hope his decision to present his thoughts a bit more formally continues. If he had the time or inclination I would welcome any kind of written notes he felt like putting down as well. I found it to be really great. Finally the movie! It was great! OK More than that. This movie fell a bit more on the comedy side than I remembered. The Napoli character really serves that purpose. I feel like I remember the surprisingly decent fight scenes and end shootout being longer and the peppy wry humor a little less. I also remember the score (excellent Brazilian-inspired rythm-heavy score provided by Luis Bacalov) being more present. I absolutely love the bassline in the beginning titles as Tony tools around in his dune buggy making collections and staring at women, and the clicking of whatever that latin instrument is came in a few times making me salivate for it to return, but it ended up coming in sparingly and never enough, leaving me wanting more forever. A few key scenes stuck out as much this time as in my memory. The scene where Beppy meets Luigi really turns the movie for me from some run-of-the-mill flick to something where gears are turning and the plot is actually well thought-out. The scene where Palance throws down a check, in essence daring his small-time adversary to cash it in, was a great gangster thing to do. Palance is actually a lot better than he has to be in this movie. I have to imagine that if you're an American actor over in Italy making these movies that you figure will never get seen by anyone you know, with some Italian dude yelling incomprehensible direction at you while they roll film and the whole schedule is only two weeks or whatever, it would be awfully easy to tune out and just go through the motions. Not Jack Palance though. There's one scene in particular where he's rolling into a slaughteryard where, on one level he could be surveying his surrounding for possible ambushes and tactical exits or something, but also remembering that he'd been there before a long time ago. There's a lingering shot watching his face as his eyes shift from building to building where he's really burning some calories there. No phoning it in for him. And I also want to completely steal the idea of someone storing their guns in a "first-aid cabinet" (I might call it a medicine chest). Having a cat be in there was funny too. That kind of sums this movie up. There's a laugh and an amazing tough-guy moment seconds apart. So... yeah I really loved it. I loved seeing it in 35 where the alternate title frames didn't quite match, I loved getting the subconciouss pacing with each reel change, and most of all I loved watching a movie again. It flooded back a bunch of fondness from my days before TG.
05.11.13	Gotcha!	Jeff Kanew	Somehow I never saw this as a kid. Jeff Kanew's follow-up to Revenge of the Nerds starring Anthony Edwards as a college kid looking for love in all the wrong places. I love how it was a valid conceit in the 80s for American kids to go to Europe for the sole purpose of getting laid. Was it the success of Porky's? Or maybe just plain human nature that led Hollywood to value horny boys as a viable commodity. In any case, Anthony Edwards and his swarthy friend find themselves in Paris hunting for snatch. The swarthy friend even pretends to be a terrorist(!) in order to trick women into coming back to his hostel room. Meanwhile Edwards deals with a snooty french waiter and catches the attention of Linda Fiorentino with a bad Russian accent that who lures him with sex to (gasp) East Berlin where he gets pulled into spy shit. After some cloak and dagger, he ends up back on home turf taking bad guys out with a tranq gun and saying "Gotcha!" after each shot. The charm of 80s movies shines through doesn't it? I completely loved the zeitgeist of this movie. It's so Rambo 2 where Edwards hides in trash bins and hangs upside down in order to get his "kills" and the rich parents thinking he's on drugs (I really wanted Alex Rocco to have a cordless phone in his pool lounger) and cutting to Interior - CIA Office - Day where a receptionist answers the phone "Hello, CIA." Ahhh movies.
05.10.13	The Cabin in the Woods	Drew Goddard	Somehow I managed to go this long without spoiling the movie. Really all I knew about it was that it somehow played on the slasher genre which the poster gives away anyway so I considered myself pure - nay, more than pure since by now all the fervor and reaction and blowback on this movie as settled down and people seem to have more or less forgotten about it. I liked it pretty well. It's definitely a high-concept movie that will probably live on more for its idea than execution. Kind of like how On The Beach is "That movie where people in Australia wait for the nuclear fallout to get them" rather than a stand-out Gregory peck performance or whatever. Not that being remember for a high-concept is a bad thing. It's a good one, didn't disappoint me. Well... I don't understand how the emergency release is so easy to get to or really why it needed to exist AT ALL considering the one thing you'd never want to do is release especially in an emergency but aside from that I found the idea good enough to support a film. I will now present my alternate ending which is obviously spoiler-laden so beware... oh wait I'm the last person on earth to see this movie so I don't have to warn anyone about spoilers. So. What if after the werewolf attacks the girl the stoner guy shoots her dead and yells "YOU'RE THE FOOL! I'M THE VIRGIN!!! WE'RE ALL SAVED!!!!!" and laughs, but then the ancients come up anyway because it was such a lame twist! Come on, genius!!!
05.07.13	Wanderlust	David Wain	This should've been funnier. Couldn't accept that everyone who saw it was right. They were.
05.03.13	Django Unchained	Quentin Tarantino	Tarantino's latest. I was actually pretty apprehensive to see this. I really wanted to like it a lot but felt like, since I didn't see it opening weekend or even in a theater, I kind of missed any kind of chance for happiness with this movie. I guess that means I was afraid it wouldn't be good. I liked it ok. I didn't find it hard to watch by any means, but I never felt immersed to the point where I forgot it was a Quentin Tarantino movie. I feel like literally every face on the screen belonged to some reference or friend of Quentin's. Even with the scene where he's playing an Australian miner (!?) i was less distracted by him than John Jarratt and Michael Parks. Once past the casting, the story felt like a standard Italian western with very little "Tarantino twist." I don't know. maybe It'll feel more organic on repeat views. I was more immediately taken with Basterds though.
04.27.13	Prometheus	Ridley Scott	So... I have a sour anecdote involving pressure to see this opening day that I won't recount but the reason I mention it at all is that I wasn't excited for this movie at all. I think Ridley Scott is overrated and too old to be surprising and really should retire. Sorry to be so harsh but it's how I feel. He made a couple good movies 30 years ago and has been riding that wave since and nowhere is it more apparent than his decision to return to the Alien universe to retcon some shitty new mythology into what should stand as a classic but flawed movie. You know what was the best part of the original Alien? Well, before the release of this movie I would've said the scene where they find the derelict spaceship and see the dead pilot and kind of have to gleam that they somehow were transporting or cotaining these alien eggs. It was subtle and weird and foreign and not all spelled out and triggered my imagination like a motherfucker. Well that's all ruined now isn't it. Now I know they're just Mr. Freezes in goddamn diapers who were out to kill their mutant offspring or something ridiculous like that? UGH. Why would they have ANYTHING to do with humans!? What the fuck. Oh, you know what I think is the best idea in any movie ever? Making every storm trooper be a clone of Boba Fett's dad! That's not an impossible coincidence based solely on a certain character's popularity with an audience at all! LET'S RUIN ANOTHER FRANCHISE WITH THAT SAME IDEA! Ohh! I can do one better! let's make it open for SEQUELS!!! GODDAMN IT! So... this movie somehow managed to bore me and enrage me at the same time. Noomi Rapace's mons was the only good thing about it. I could go on with a huge list of infuriating nitpicky things like the anachronistic technology levels and vapid characters/performances and terrible random action sequences and an outrageously ridiculous ending (really? You're telling me that a spaceship like a mile in circumference built to travel through the vacuum of space is going to roll LIKE A FUCKING QUARTER??? GAAAAAFUCK!), but I'm goin to save myself the anger and just say that I was right to not see this in the theater and I'm pretty sorry I saw it at all.
04.24.13	The Raid: Redemption	Gareth Evans	The action was good. Got a tiny bit slow toward the end but I'm guessing the fighting fatigue was intentional. Pretty damn fun movie. I've waited too long to write this note. At least I got it on the record though.
04.13.13	Scream 4	Wes Craven	This made me feel really old. It probably made Wes Craven feel older though. Between Last House on the Left, Nightmare on Elm Street, the first Scream, and this, he's tried to scare four generations of movie-goers. I don't think this one worked but the previous three did so respect to Craven in that regard. I don't think this is one of his worst movies but I don't think it's one of his best either. Mostly just tired. Not as absurdly out of place as the last American Pie movie, but still very much stretching. I also like that a movie with "4" at the end of it dared to make a comment about the amount of horror remakes lately.
04.08.13	Friends with Benefits	Jennifer Westfeldt	I was in the mood for a solid light funny movie with snappy dialogue and supporting characters that I want to hang out with. This ended up being a bit heavy for my current tastes but the first half kind of hit the spot a little bit. Just when is someone going to make a movie that's JUST the supporting characters? I think maybe I should've watched a Nicole Holofcener movie instead.
03.09.13	Bernie	Richard Linklater	This interesting little film is almost a documentary. It's structured kind of like one with real townspeople who knew the real Bernie giving interviews throughout the film. Jack Black plays Bernie in extended bits of reproduction. Really the only reason why I don't call it a doc is that there's way more reproduction footage than interview footage and several key players like the DA and Sheriff are played by actors. Although I think McConaughey's pretty great in this movie, his interview footage plays more humorous like a mockumentary. Still, the line's very gray here, especially considering the performances that Linklater gets out of a few of the locals. The guy explaining the five states of Texas was great as was the funeral director. One could question why include all the interview footage but it's pretty clear to me that you have to work really really hard to get that authentic east texas coloquialism that these real townsfolk exude. They're too good not to include, really. So although it makes the movie kind of weird and minor, it also gives it an real charm for me. I liked it a lot. Jack Black was also great by the way.
01.29.13	Young Adult	Jason Reitman	Jason Reitman's kind of steadily gone downhill for me. Loved Thank You for Smoking, liked Juno quite a bit the first time I saw it but it's gone under the unfortunate umbrella of being too popular for its time and now everybody seems to shit on it, thought Up in the Air was overrated, and now this which I only liked a few aspects of, which I will list out now: -I liked how we see Charlize when she's all made up and ready to kill and when she's in her comfy PJs and not worried about being "pretty." Of course it helps that you have someone like Charlize Theron (incredibly beautiful) to do this with. -I kind of liked how at the end just when she's ready to grow a little bit she gets what I perceived as bad advice rather than good advice. In movies, people always get good advice in critical moments so it was kind of a cool turn in that regard. -Overall I feel like Charlize was definitely a real character full of nuances and details that made up a rich portrayal. However, she's just a hot girl acting horribly which I have no patience for in real life and definitely don't want to watch a movie to see more of. Where's the fun of Aaron Eckhart owning up to sleeping with Katie Holmes? Where's Sam Elliot as The Marlboro Man!? I definitely feel like Reitman's taking himself too seriously these days, or maybe he's just trying to act like a grown up or "this is the type of movie that Oscar winners make" or something. I mean I doubt it's that conscious but for whatever reason I'm liking his movies less and less which is a shame because I do think he's talented.
01.27.13	The Wire	Various	Every once in a while people will talk to me about The Wire and I'll feel an urge to watch it again, yet somewhere around 61 hours is a bit too long to just go off and do one night. So I've turned 2 or 3 people onto the show and have ridden the waves of their experience and impressions for several years now. Finally, one random night, I put in Season 1 disc 1 and just started watching. Reiterating something from my previous note, this journal was always intended for movies and movies only. I've always had a healthy TV habit and it's gotten a bit larger these past 5 years as I've had less time to schedule theater trips or less mental energy to dive into the depths of my Netflix queue or even really keep up with Hollywood releases. Something about tv feels easier to watch for me than movies so often times, when presented with the choice, I opt for video games or tv over movies these days. I still contend that this is a phase and someday it will balance out and I'll start watching movies again but I'm getting off my topic which is I don't write about tv shows on here. But, as we all know, The Wire is not TV. It's been more than 10 years since The Wire started and I still haven't seen anything that's affected me the way this show has. Breaking Bad and Mad Men are both great shows and I do believe TV is going through a Platinum Age or whatever you call it with some of the current or recent cable and premium channels (along with a network show here or there), but it's all still TV. The Wire doesn't feel like that. You could cut the credits sequences out of every season and present it as one 12-hour piece and not know where one episode ends and the other begins. There's no callback or resets or flashbacks or inane exposition. There's just Baltimore and the people who live in it. Kintell Williamson and Detective Barlow are just as alive as Avon Barksdale and Jimmy McNulty in this world and we only see less of them because they are on the outskirts of this particular story rather than the center. So I watched the series again, as I will probably continue to do every handful of years, because it's the best thing I've seen on TV to date. Season One, in which we are introduced to this world and this show, meet the modern-day cops and modern-day robbers that they are chasing, and get a taste of novelistic story structure and the unforgiving bite of chain of command. In many ways, Season One is my favorite season. I feel like the heart of the show, and really the one thread that runs through every episode, is the cops vs. the drug dealers and Season One is the most undiluted in that respect. It's also the most procedurally detailed. Shit, it takes half the season just to get the detail put together with decent talent and get the case going. I've never seen that amount of attention paid to detail before. Furthermore, I've never seen characters like Polk and Mahon on a police show before. I feel like a lot of the drug organization is kind of familiar (although never more nuanced and filled with character) but the cop stuff really blew me away. That and the pace. A common perception of the show is that it's slow. Or at least everything leading up to the last two episodes of each season are slow. That's not it; it's really because viewers are not used to such longform pacing. Every scene in every episode presents crucial information that drives the entire season and in Season One's case the entire show. Episode One in fact is unbelievable in its foundation-laying. Not only every scene but really ever line of dialogue and every camera angle means something. Watching that first episode while knowing how the next 59 play out makes for a really great experience. And at the end, you get your first taste of bittersweet. They bring in a huge albeit compromised case, everyone gets patted on the back, then half the characters effectively lose. Stringer walks, McNulty rides the boat, Bubbles is back on dope, Daniels burns any hope of making Major. And people are still buying drugs on the corners. What a great mix of emotions to see it all play out. In many ways it's a perfect season and if they show stopped there I would've been satisfied. In many ways I couldn't see how the show could continue. I mean, the details breaks up, people go their separate ways. In a network show, all the stars need their screen time so how does that work? Little did I know... Season Two, in which we learn about Baltimore's colorful histories stevadores, the intracicies of shipping drugs chemicals and women, prison life for a kingpin, and the perils of Polack stained glass. Also a duck drinking whiskey. While the show was running, this season was my favorite. I was on my ass at the direction the show took and pictured The Wire as a completely different story and mostly-different cast each season (much like how American Horry Story is doing things I think). The dock workers, The Greek, White Mike, Frog, South Baltimore... couldn't be more different from the towers and pit of West Baltimore. As I watch it again I'm struck by how much connective tissue - following Avon and Stringer and D'Angelo, screen time given to McNulty and Freamon and Bunk, Daniels comes out of the basement relatively quickly - there is. It's much less a departure than Season Four, but still this is the first time the show establishes a different mini-protagonist for each season following that season's "message" or theme. In this case it's Frank Sabotka, Nicky and Ziggy: struggling dock workers who turn to the easy money of letting smuggled cargo slip through their port. It doesn't really end well for any of them. Whereas the first season could be described as a police procedural done very very well, this season really exposes the ambition and scale that Simon and Burns are targeting. It raises the show to be about more than McNulty vs. Stringer. We get our first real glimpses of the east side crew, Prop Joe's crew. Brother Muzone comes on the scene. We also get comfortable with the fact that Omar is a recurring character and our favorite dude in the show. Watching it again, I noticed that the actual case comes together much faster this season. Once it gets going, it seems like the actual timeline is just a few weeks. They're ready to hit the main stash relatively quickly. I also noticed that all the white guys on the show flip and give up information while all the black dudes stand tall. It could've been a hell of a case if all that dope wasn't washed down the drain the night before. Plus how great was the moment where they get Nicky in and ask him to identify the guy who Vondas met with and they found out that they inadvertently have a photo of The Greek without even knowing it!? I was so taken with this season that I remember being initially let down in that season three returned to Stringer and the west side. I wanted to see another facet of the city as different as the docks were to the pit. Season Three, in which we learn the dangers of attempting reform against big bad institutions manifested in a cop who legalizes drugs, a drug dealer who civilizes the game, and a tiny glimmer of hope in an ex-con who trades his whistle in for a lawn mower. Season three is my favorite season. When it aired I was a bit disappointed at coming back to Barksdale & Bell but in the context of the completed series it's the highlight for me. Mostly because of two of my favorite characters: Dennis "Cutty" Wise and my main man Bunny Colvin. It also has my favorite rendition of the theme song. A note about the opening titles. They are amazing. Little distilled visions of each season often told with iconic or representative images that only make sense on second viewing. The fact that the montage changes from season to season along with the song is innovative. Other shows like Weeds have since done the same thing with less effect (not to say the Weeds titles weren't interesting). I also like how there's some representative of a wire as the second shot each season. For the songs, all variants of Tom Waits' "Way Down in the Hole," give great tone to each season. We start with Simon's and exec producer Bob Colesberry's favorite version performed by Blind Boys of Alabama in the first season (which is also reprised in Season 5's end montage). Season 2 uses Waits' original recording. Season 3 was The Neville Brothers (who have since appeared in some fashion on Treme). Season 4 was by a group credited as DoMaJe who were all Baltimore teenagers, and the show finishes off with a version done by Steve Earle who plays Walon in The Wire and Harley in Treme. I get that Season 4's version being recorded by students resonates and it's not bad by any means but it's still my least favorite. To my personal taste, I'd rank them in this order: 1. The Neville Brothers (Season Three) 2. Tom Waits (Season Two) 3. Steve Earle (Season Five) 4. Blind Boys of Alabama (Season One) 5. DoMaJe (Season Four) Truthfully they're all great, and it's pretty close to a 3- or 4-way tie for first, but something about the layered rhythms and knee-shaking horn hits sticks in my head longer than the other versions and for that reason alone I have to give it the crown. Season Three probably has more going on than any other season. We see the return of Barksdale, the rise of Marlo, Cutty on the outside, Carcetti at the starting line, The Major Crimes unit at their most productive, Bubbles separating from Johnny, Clarence Royce being mayoral as a motherfucker, and the two big ones: Hamsterdam and Stringer's downfall. The end of the season felt like the end of the show to many. Still a major upset point I think although to me no less upsetting than D'Angelo's departure in Season 2. Plus we finally got to see Omar and Brother Muzone get on the same wavelength. For me this is the pinnacle. Let's spend a few minutes talking about how great Cutty Wise and Bunny Colvin are. Both of their arcs are tremendous. There's really no question that Bunny's Hamsterdam experiment would fail. That it raised interesting questions and was portrayed in a way that looked like, given another 12 months of resource allocation and development, it would be considered a real success all but demanded that the bosses kill it. And bunny knew it all right at the beginning, but still he tried it. Robert Wisdom's performance of these great scenes like the brown paper bag and telling Carver what real policework is and his interplay with Deacon or officer Mello is really something to see. When he sees "Bushy Top" McNulty at Major Crimes, his happiness mixed with a resigned knowledge that he's as big an asshole as his is good police is all conveyed with just a few lines but you get it. Really great stuff. It's really hard to pick a single favorite character in the show (and not have it be Omar), but Bunny's up there at the top. Dennis Cutty Wise isn't especially noble or good like Bunny, but he's honest about himself which is utterly charming. I feel like Cutty is the most clearly Pelecanos-ian influence on the show. To me he shares a marked resemblance to the main character in his book Drama City (which I liked quite a lot). His journey through the show, having no patience for the straight life, finding that the game's no longer in him, trying to do something productive, and ultimately maturing into a responsible positive influence on the community is one of the show's few unabashed successes. He stands with Bubbles and maybe Freamon as having a clear happy ending. All of these are valid reasons to love this guy, but it's Chad Coleman's portrayal that really gives him life. Unfortunately, Season Three also introduces one of the very few misfires in the show for me in the form of political campaign whatever Theresa D'Agostino. The part called for a hot girl who could also play smart. This is crass and I'm kind of ashamed to say it but she just wasn't hot enough for the role. She plays like she has McNulty eating out of her ass but really the waitress with the pierced lip and colored hair that offers him "whatever he wants" after he crashes his car twice was hotter than she was. Plus her character acts pretty ugly so she needs to be that much hotter to counter-balance that and she just wasn't. I feel like everyone else was cast 100% perfectly from the assistant principle to Horseface on the docks to Polk and Mahone to Old Face Andre. Really some of the best casting in any tv show or hell any movie ever. So that really makes D'Agostino stand out to me. I can't stand her. Mostly because her character's crap (which is cool because that's intended) but also because... well anyway. I mean Council President Nerese who butted heads with Carcetti because he jumped the Mayoral "line" pulled off the same dynamic flawlessly. Anyway, so much to love in the whole show but Season Three specifically. Season Four, in which McNulty cleans up his act and gets left off the call sheets, Prez starts a new career, Chris and Snoop take up home improvement, Carcetti brings in a new day, Marlo aims for the crown, and four little boys become very different men. This seems to be the season that most people point to as their favorite of the series. I've read that Pelecanos called it perfect television that he couldn't imagine how to make any better. If I thought Season Two was a departure, you'd think I would've been absolutely blown away by Season Four. All this stuff about the schools, McNulty's barely in the show now and Major Crimes in shambles thanks to one Lt. Marrimow; yet by this time I kind of expected as much from the show so to me it seems like business as usual. The targeting of education and the school systems, while unique and authentic and everything else, kind of hammers home the point of yet another institution is broken and trying to fix it will result in merciless defeat. However, the finale offers the brightest ray of hope and proves to be the closest to a "happy ending" that the show ever gets. I really like this season but it's the first that's not in contention for my favorite. The vacuum left by Bell and Barksdale can't really be ignored even though Marlo's group steps up to try and fill the space. I feel like Marlo's day really comes in Season Five so this is kind of a season in transition for me. The school stuff is great though, and seeing Bunny Colvin interact with the kids is amazing. They also did a remarkable job casting the young leads and coaching them into their performances. Too often, especially in TV, child actors come off as just that. These kids felt 100% real. I feel like maybe Randy's the weakest link but still he does fine work and in the final two episodes proves that he has real chops. I remember when this season aired it was almost like HBO was fed up with its viewers. The promos used Ball of Confusion by The Temptations with a kind of aggressive soul as if to say "Come on! Why are you fuckers not watching this show!!" I think they also played the first episode at the Alamo (it was either this season or three, I can't really remember which) when they were first trying out their "free admission but buy a $15 food voucher to secure your seat!" thing. I guess it worked out way better for shows like Lost because only about a dozen people showed up for this. All Henri could say in his intro was "I'm glad to see this in a theater so I can tell everybody around me to shut up" like this is usually some huge party show or something that people love to tell stories during. Anyway, I don't think that may people watched this season just like every other. It's really a shame. Not that I think the show had 14 more seasons in it but I feel like if it had just a bit more viewers to match the critical response, we would've gotten a full-length fifth season and who knows maybe one more. In any case, this is a great season. It's really largely buld-up for season five though. Certainly with Freamon taking all season just to find Marlo's bodies and McNulty deciding to come back off the beat and work a meaty case and Carcetti promising a brighter tomorrow. I don't think the full impact of the school's devastating amount of debt really sank in until Season Five aired. Season Five, in which McNulty is drinking again, serial killers are preying on the homeless, familiar faces are glimpsed and loose ends are tied, Bubs finally gets invited upstairs, and we find out that the newspapers are just as fucked as the police, docks, poltics, and schools. The last season is kind of everybody's least favorite season. Three main reasons make it so: One is that the show is ending so that sucks, Two is that it's only ten episodes long rather than twelve or thirteen like every other season, and Three is that McNulty's whole fake serial killer thing seems too radical or unbelievable. I am personally only bothered by one of those factors given that the show has to end sometime but the serial killer storyline most likely would've played more realistically if they had just a few more hours to play with pacing. Evaluating the idea on paper, it seems a perfect end to the series in that it's the ultimate stat juke; McNulty uses the various institutions like a computer hacker exploits security holes. It just seems to come about too suddenly. When the season aired, the first half or so leaked online and I couldn't resist watching the episodes that I could find (which happened to not be consecutive). That screwed up my initial impression a little bit, but I also had to spend some time going "WTF!? What happened to all the great stuff that was promised at the end of season four!" McNulty's drinking again, the police are more underfunded and devoid of morale than ever, there's this other institution of newspapers which by this point is preordained to be broken. Gus, by virtue of showing any integrity at all in the first episode is all but guaranteed an unhappy ending. Yet so many moments shine through. Omar on the balcony, "How my hair look, Mike?" and "My name IS MY NAME!" Goodnight popo, goodnight dope fiends; Dickensian, Bubbles opening up in group, and a bunch of others that I've forgotten because it's taken me too damn long to write this. It's really a surprising amount of great scenes given everybody's agreement on this season's shortcomings. And so ends the best show ever. A ~60-hour cinematic novel more than a tv show, The Wire will probably always be my favorite TV show of all time. I didn't read my first set of notes before writing this so hopefully it's not a complete replica and maybe I threw some extra stuff in this thirty five hundred words that I missed the last time but I bet it's pretty similar. I know I loved it as much this time as I ever have before. I do wish Simon and HBO would come to the agreement that you can be just as gritty In HD 4:3 as you can in SD 4:3 and release some damn blu-rays. Maybe that will make the perfect excuse to watch it next time, although I'm sure even on DVD I'll find some reason to revisit in a couple years. I always do.
01.06.13	The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey	Peter Jackson	Considering the mixed reaction I've been hearing from the movie and especially the high frame rate experiment I figured I should really see this theatrically because the next two may not have so many viewing options. Right off the bat I'll say I didn't mind the HFR thing at all. It was really only evident for me during the action scenes and I guess I've played enough video games (which generally run at a higher framerate because of my kickass gaming rig bro) that it didn't seem wrong or foreign to me at all. What did bother me was the 3D. It was too dim and the 3D didn't track to the periphery of the screen and the shifts in depth of field gave me occasional moments of vertigo. I'd very much like to see a 48fps 2D version of the next movie although then maybe the framerate would bother me more because I wouldn't have glitchy 3D to take my attention. Really though, this movie will live on in plain ol' blu-ray or DVD in normal framerate and two dimensions so who cares. If the higher frame rates were trending like 3D was when Avatar came out I might be a little more dubious but really I didn't notice it much... certainly wasn't bothered by it (I appreciated the added clarity) and thought it was fine. The movie also wasn't as bad as I'd heard. I mean it's definitely the extended edition and I don't remember a lot of the stuff from when I read the book (which was a long time ago, admittedly), but you know... it's the same Lord of the Rings world. Why not endulge and live and breathe in the spaces a bit. Although I don't remember Gandalf being in the book beyond his visit to Bag End at the very beginning, I really appreciated his scenes and getting a better sense of who Gandalf the Gray is as compared to Gandalf the White. I also liked the greenwood/murkwood thing and the hints at the Necromancer (which I'm not familiar with at all but I'm sure they got from some appendix or footnote somewhere). Broadly, it seems like they're grafting a Lord of the Rings Rise-of-Sauron prequel onto the plot of The Hobbit, but I have no problem with that. So It doesn't have the driving plot of the first trilogy, but still I think this is a pleasant warm blanket of a journey back to the world and we'll see what else they feel like including on their way to Lake Town and the showdown with Smaug. I liked it.
01.05.13	The Change-Up	David Dobkin	It's been a long time since I flipped around on cable, saw a movie starting and just watched it. Thanks to it being a weekend night and me being somewhat insomniac I got to do it tonight. I'm not sure I ever would've tracked this movie down specifically but it wasn't too bad for a late night on-the-couch flick. I would've appreciated the nudity had it not been completely fake. It didn't even look like a body double... it was like full on airbrush breasts on Leslie Mann. Plus the internet mentioned it too so I'm right. Now it's just creepy. Decent otherwise.
12.31.12	Pitch Perfect	Jason Moore	WAS NOT AS GOOD AS I WAS LED TO BELIEVE, but still pretty fun. I kind of equate it to the BRING IT ON of collegiate a capella. or just like DRUMLINE but better. I'll be honest though... it could've used some nudity.
12.29.12	The Avengers	Joss Whedon	So I finally saw this. It was ok. Hawkeye is ridiculous.
12.26.12	Raiders of the Lost Ark	Steven Spielberg	My dad got a new TV delivered and we spent most of the afternoon trying to mount it to his wall. It was pretty cool. Anyway, to christen the TV we watched this on Blu. Great picture. We also watched half of Last Crusade until everybody started falling asleep. This made me notice something kind of new and maybe a core difference between the two and maybe maybe a small insight into why the first one is a classic and the third is just very very good (in my opinion of course). In the first one, there's this question of Indy's methods and motives. Brady mentions buying his artifacts for the museum "no questions asked" and Belloc of course goes on that whole thing about how he's a shadowy version of Indy and Indy's just a stumble away from being him. Although Indy is clearly the good guy, The first film still posits that question. He can't blow up the ark even though he really should. I guess him being able to close his eyes when the ark is opened answers that question in that he's not completely consumed by his obsessions.By the third one, He's ultra-heroic and his motives are never questioned at all. He has the noble motivation of rescuing his dad even if it means killing nazis and defaming old church/libraries. At this point, we're along for the ride because, hey, he's INDIANA JONES. Even as a kid he knew things belonged in museums. Of course, he also stops his make-out session to say "ahh venice" for the third time and stuff like that too... because he's not even trying to be mysterious or dangerous anymore. That question has already been answered.
12.25.12	Lawless	John Hillcoat	Merry Christmas!
12.25.12	Ted	Seth Macfarlane	Merry Christmas!
12.25.12	Jaws	Steven Spielberg	Merry Christmas!
12.24.12	Attack the Block	Joe Cornish	Another Christmas tradition of mine is brinigng along my netflix discs and trying to watch them in my room before falling asleep. Some years are better than others. I made it through this in just two nights. Uhh... I feel like this movie was massively overhyped for me. Maybe if I saw it at south by the year it played or in the context of any festival i might love it, but since I'm watching it in my old bedroom at my parents house after they go to sleep I just liked it ok. Not bad at all, but also not really notable for me. Not sure what all the fuss was about. Decent alien design but I didn't like the sci-fi sound effects of their growling/roaring/whatever. Plus I feel like I've already seen my quota of trouble-in-ghetto-highrise movies this year. I get that it's budgettable to shoot in hallways and elevators. Not to trash on this movie or anything. I liked it ok.
12.24.12	National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation	Jeremiah S. Chechik	I suggested tracking down Psycho from Texas as a suitable follow-up to Killer Joe, but we opted for one of our traditional favorites instead. I really don't know what else I could say about this movie other than seeing the old school credit card carbon copiers and the un-ironic Guns n Roses poster on Audrey's wall was funny. Mostly it's weird how everybody's old and crazy now... Randy Quaid, Chevy Chase, Beverley D'Angelo's face... all were so young and normal back then. A Christmas classic in this household.
12.23.12	Killer Joe	William Friedkin	Well, it wouldn't be the Christmas season if I wasn't at home watching something completely inappropriate with my parents. I don't know... how we ended up watching this. One moment we were trying to agree on a Christmas movie and I guess all it took was my dad seeing it on the onDemand menu and me saying that I heard McConaughy had a good performance in it and we were off and running... staring at Gina Gershon's bush before my mom could even finish asking if she should bring down a plate of cookies to snack on. To call this experience awkward would be an understatement. My dad mostly slept, waking up during the most offensive parts to mumble "He sure picks weird roles" or "this movie is terrible." Afterward he called it the worst movie he'd ever seen and asked me if I liked it like it was a test to see if I was really his son or not. I liked it a lot, even with my mom sitting on the couch over my shoulder. I couldn't help but laugh at a few parts and had to just smile to myself at others. Mostly I was just amazed that we had chosen THIS to watch. My thoughts are probably severely skewed due to that. McConaughy certainly delivers one hell of a performance though, as does really everyone. The whole chicken leg scene was a real classic thanks to McConaughy. So terrible. And the ending was just the right level of batshit that it needed to be. I guess this is Friedkin's career now, right? This and Bug together are very similar. Uncomfortable disturbing plays shot relentlessly. So intense. Great movie. Uh... maybe don't watch it with your parents though.
12.17.12	80 Blocks from Tiffany's	Gary Weis	An hour-long doc about the gangs and neighborhoods of 1979 South Bronx. This continues my fascination with "dirty NYC" that I love for whatever reason. Watching this today seems like it's source material for The Warriors or something but I most enjoyed the minute details you see in the background and scenery. The brand names and little things like that. I also thought it was fascinating to see street gangs at this stage: carrying guns but not yet into drugs. There's one scene with a priest talking about he was in a gang in the 40s and 50s in Greenwich Village and how it was a relatively civilized thing and everybody still had families to go home to at night, but watching these kids I couldn't help but think how relatively civil they are compared to my white-guy sheltered exposure of modern gangs (Thanks again, THE WIRE). Drugs seemed to get rid of any sense of civility. But still, this has some great helicopter footage of Soth Bronx wastelands that made for such good film backdrops of the time. It's hard to think about Manhattan nightclubs and high fashion going on so close to this utter neglect and decrepitude (see the title). It's really another world. For whatever reason, this stuff really trips my nerve and I can't get enough of it. Time to revisit Style Wars I think, or maybe The Warriors... or finally watch those Bronx Warriors movies. or really just more movies in general. Sigh...
12.04.12	Haywire	Steven Soderbergh	Whatever's driving Soderberghs little dabbles in whatever remaining genres he hasn't tried yet is certainly paying off for me because now he has the cred to attract real top actors to very small roles in movies that, with a lesser caliber of credits, would seems like very minor efforts. This for example goes from a by-the-numbers revenge action thing to some grand experiment with Gina Carano and layered flashback and obtuse spy-world storytelling. I really enjoyed it. Something about Gina Carano just works for me. I know they altered her voice which is weird in theory but I can't say I noticed it while watching, and I know she's not an actress and in a couple places it shows but for the most part it really doesn't, but mostly her extraordinary physique and appearance. She's like a super woman who is completely believable as a badass. I can see how it doesn't work for some people but it did for me. I didn't have any problem staring at her for 90 minutes. With this and Contagion, I really wish Soderbergh wasn't retiring. Maybe Magic Mike will change my mind but probably not. Could you imagine like 14 more of these? Like a Soderbergh horror movie? or Soderbergh doing a western!? anyway... Soderbergh's whole thing with cutting out to just score while presenting exposition is getting a tad bit old but certainly not unenjoyable... just a little expected at this point. Plus what's up with David Holmes straight up ripping off RJD2 for the song during the end credits!? I've always been a fan of his stuff and especially his Soderbergh collaborations but this was just blatant. Real disappointed in that. Like they couldn't've just used RJ's song and had it fit perfectly with the score anyway? cheap. Thos little things aside, I really liked this.
11.29.12	Something from Nothing: The Art of Rap	Ice-T, Andy Baybutt	Ice-T interviews like 50 dudes about what it is to be a MC. And this isn't like, he got a handful of big names and padded it out with nobodies. It's like the 50 top dudes in the history of rap. Really impressive. I'm sure there are but I'm hard pressed to think of an important or significant group or MC in the history of rap that isn't in some way represented here. He starts in NYC and talks to all the luminaries and pretty much anyone you think he missed he catches up with when he gets to LA (after a pit stop in Detroit). He uses a really interesting technique of having most all of these guys either freestyle or recite their one of their favorite rhymes from any MC directly to the camera. It's very direct and really intimidating with some of these guys. You can definitely see where their power comes from. I dunno, man. This might qualify as one of the definitive hip hop documentaries, perhaps THE movie about rap, along with Style Wars or Scratch for DJing and maybe Infamy for graffitti writing. I mean it's not 17 hours long so it's not going to be 100% exhaustively complete, but it gets to some real meat behind some of the biggest MCs out there. You almost wish it were longer just because there's so many people represented here that each person really only gets one scene but they all come off really well. Great movie.
11.27.12	Get the Gringo	Adrien Grunberg	Mel Gibson gets thrown into a crazy tijuana jail called El Pueblito where, if you have the cash, you can bring your family in to live with you or get to go out and come back in and stuff. Cool setting, actually a pretty decent story. It's just a shame Mel has such a stigma now. I wouldn't be surprised if he actually directed this and gave his first AD credit just because of how crap his name is these days. It's a really solid genre movie well acted and everything else. Maybe in 20 years people will disassociate this with Gibson's current PR nightmare and appreciate it a bit.
11.20.12	Super 8	J.J. Abrams	Darker than I figured but still not really dark. I dunno. It was okay, had a few moments. The kids were kind of annoying though. This probably deserves longer notes but I'm not really in the mood. Meh.
11.11.12	Your Highness	David Gordon Green	I kept hearing how incredibly terrible this movie was so we put it off and put it off forever. I'm glad she was up for watching this though because that's exactly what DVRfest is all about so we finally sat down and gave it a try. To my slight surprise, it's not as bad as movies like Year One which I thought it would be. Instead of trying to be a comedy and failing, they aimed for that uneven mix of genres like how Pineapple Express was kind of a crime thriller but also a comedy. This is mostly a medieval adventure but also a comedy. It's not hilarious or really that funny at all but it still has stupid weed references and sex jokes and modern language mixed in with the period stuff. It's helped along by a good supporting cast (The baggage that Damien Lewis and Toby Jones and Charles Dance brings with them help a lot) and pretty early on I decided that this movie is the execution of a weekend D&D session from when Danny McBride and Ben Best were kids. Like this is the movie going on in their heads as David Gordon Green is DM-ing their session and leading them on this quest, and the characters say the RPG-ish things that Danny and Ben say, including the stupid high school stuff that they think is cool like having their D&D character smoke weed or whatever. Seen through that lens, this is a pretty sweet movie. I know when I was in high school going through my D&D phase, I badly wanted to see something fantasy-related on screen. I watched everything I could get my hands on, some good (Dragonslayer, Conan), most terrible (Beastmaster, Sword and Sorcerer, The Barbarians). There was even a D&D boardgame that came with a VHS tape that we watched that was really really crappy but at least it said "Beholder." In college when the D&D movie actually came out I saw it and was disappointed. Here finally is a decent D&D movie as long as you see it that way. I guess if you don't it's pretty terrible. It's surprisingly expensive. All these elaborate practical sets and tons of vfx shots. It feels like a mistake while I'm watching it like there's no way this movie will ever make money but I also kind of like that about the movie... someone got away with something. Hopefully those involved creatively with the movie feel like it was a gift rather than a letdown. I didn't hate this. It is a weird mix of genres that probably doesn't work for most, but oh well. I like movies that aren't for everyone. Certainly James Franco's zeal for the role is pretty cool. It only works if he gives it 100% and he really does. I was expecting worse. Well that wraps up DVRfest 2012! I'm just about at the halfway point to Peter Bogdanovich's record and have to say that I'm pretty impressed with myself for keeping this going as long as I have. *pats self on back for 15 minutes* Yeah, that feels good. Hopefully in the large-scale trend department I'll one day sway a little more back toward the volume that I used to watch and away from the last handful of lean years. I'll probably never see 700 movies a year again (unless I strike it rich with my awesome edible whisky stone invention) but maybe my gaming and reading and tv- and movie- watching habits will one day even out into more moderation for all. I've felt like the last couple years have definitely been gaming-centric (as evidenced by the constant battle this weekend), but who knows. I used to be really really into swing dancing and I never do that anymore. If I had the time and inclination to ever update the codebase of this site or even redesign it completely, I would make the genre and director fields multiple choice. I feel like Drama and Comedy are the buckets I put movies in when I can't decide on a subgenre when really all Dark Comedies should also be Comedies and things like that. Also, movies with multiple directors kind of get screwed here because it's just a single string search of two names with a comma so if they do movies separately, the one they do together doesn't get counted (hence why it's Joel Coen instead of both Joel and Ethan). There's just a few things that aren't perfect, and the codebase as a whole is pretty damn old these days. Oh well. Let's see where I stand a year from now. For now it's back to Dishonored and Treme. The ugly stats behind this year: 9 in the past week for a 1.29/day average (thanks, DVRfest), 11 in the past month for a 0.37/day average, 125 in the past year for a 0.34/day average, and a global total of 2363 at a 0.81/day average. Oliver Stone (14), Werner Herzog (12), and Joel Coen (10) top my directors list, Netflix (482), Alamo South Lamar (304), and DVD (240) top my venues list, Snakes on a Plane (11), Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (4), and Sin City (4) top my movies list. Comedy (218), Drama (196), and Documentary (193) top my genre list.
11.10.12	Repo Man	Alex Cox	If you're a close follower of this festival (read: if you're me), you may know that every year I try and include one movie that I've seen before. For the most part this is a festival of discovery (or in recent years catch-up) but I like to have a safe bet slipped away to pull out at a good time. This year it's Repo Man: a movie I saw once when I was a kid because my friend's mom recommended it. My sole memory is of Emilio Estevez with a flat-top putting a price sticker on some kid's glasses. I also remember that I thought it was really weird and not at all like the other Emilio Estevez movies that I was liking at the time like The Outsiders and Maximum Overdrive. Anyway, we rented it and I watched it with my mom and dad and I remember laying on the carpet feeling the intense burning dislike radiating from behind me. I was afraid to turn around and after it was over I felt like I had to say how weird it was just to agree with them. Truth be told I had no idea what to think about the movie... and I'm about to find out now! Pretty much loved it. Man parts of LA were a shithole back then and probably are even worse now. I feel like not many movies shot these parts of LA back then. It also features what feel like authentic punks. FEAR t-shirts and shared housing and all. But it's not quite reality. All the generic food and drink packaging and the lady with the bionic hand and other small touches makes it seem a little bizarre and out of place. So it's very timely and timeless. For some reason I get a big Western vibe from it too (probably the music but also the sunset/rise shots). The movie IS weird, but it's a really cool kind of weird. Loved the ending. Loved how Harry Dean Stanton would rather die on his feet than live on his knees. Loved how all of a sudden there was a SWAT guy in the hospital room. It's all really great and I'm glad I gave it another watch. Checking imdb, it looks like Alex Cox is still chugging away making movies. I wonder if any of them are any good. It's now Sunday morning and the harsh morning light has washed away my Lost Weekend of gaming and movie-watching. The DVR is almost empty and Molly is back. Things I've learned from spending a couple days in the house alone: I'm a slovenly bastard who leaves trash everywhere like a baby and I rely on societal pressures to brush my teeth. Fortunately, the lady is back and order has been restored. As a little bonus epilogue, Molly watched the last movie on the DVR with me. Something I've had on the DVR for about 10 months.
11.10.12	Little Fockers	Paul Weitz	Yep that was dumb. Total paycheck movie, right? At least everyone came back. What's Teri Polo been doing? Anyway... uhhh... not really too much to say about this one. Expected, mediocre, tired... things that were quirky little moments in the first (like Owen Wilson's character) are now blown out satires of themselves... Even the second was borderline too ridiculous but at least Streisand and Hoffman were worth watching. This felt a lot like American Reunion to me. Moving on. Aaand another battle lost to gaming. In my meager defense, I only have one more movie on my schedule and it's a midnight movie and it wasn't midnight yet. That's justifiable in some kind of way, right? It's midnight now though so let's all watch...
11.10.12	Our Idiot Brother	Jesse Paretz	Well that wasn't a dumb comedy at all! Maybe that's why this movie had such a negative reception? Aside from the whole brother-fixing-everything thing being a bit too on the nose, this felt much closer to a Nicole Holofcener movie than Judd Apatow. Maybe she comes to mind just because there's sisters and Emily Mortimer has body issues... I guess the separate sisters' issues are kind of shallow... so this is Holofcener-light, but still. The amazing cast along with it not being funny (until the end; I feel like Rudd's and TJ Miller's riffing on recycled candles was well-earned and hilarious) and having a legitimately heartfelt moment in Willy Nelson's emancipation really pleasantly surprised me. I liked it quite a bit. Well it's dark out but I'm still going strong so let's see how many more movies I can pack in tonight. There's no doubt in my mind that the next movie will be dumb comedy.
11.10.12	The Invisible Man	James Whale	Claude Rains gives an incredible performance with pretty much just his voice in this. I know I'm not saying anything new but It's quite remarkable to watch this after the previous two and realize just what a grasp that James Whale had on this kind of picture. The effects are great, the script is tight, Rains is legitimately nutso, and most of all it's funny. The beginning especially with all the villagers and the innkeeper couple. There's just a tiny piece of business when the innkeeper lady goes to prep the room for Rains where she raises like 4 hinged bar pieces in a row that I found particularly funny. So this was good fun. I'm glad I saved it for third. I liked it the most by far. So that finishes up my Universal Horror triple feature. The rest of the stuff on my DVR is dumb comedy so I may switch to Netflix as the night goes on... but what the hell, let's indulge once or twice.
11.10.12	The Wolf Man	George Waggner	Lon Chaney Jr. (with perfect hair) plays Larry Talbot... wolf man! It's funny these days to have everyone in the movie be so naïve. The same went for Karloff slouching around as a non-mummy in the last movie. The concept of a real werewolf is so far-fetched for everybody to actually believe that they continue to insist that there's a real killer wolf on the loose AND Larry's just going insane. But everybody knows the werewolf legend... kind of confusing. Anyway, dude turned into a wolf and killed a few people. I am glad to finally be watching these. Hopefully these notes don't sound too negative. I love all the little things that place these films in the 30s and early 40s like how all they need to set up the movie is a single screen of text followed by a process shot of two guys in the car saying "look, there's Castle Talbot!" or how the film literally dumps to the End screen. Some studio exec somewhere says "The wolf man's dad, what else is there to say!? Just end it" and so the editor does just that. And the plastic trees in the forest and all the dry ice fog and low key lighting and really everything about the movie except the plot, make-up, and Lon Chaney's acting I deeply love. It's great to see Claude Rains in a movie like this two years after Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and one year before Casablanca. Speaking of Rains...
11.10.12	The Mummy	Karl Freund	OK so gaming one a minor skirmish this morning. I'm not getting going until 11:30. Sigh. Also, I just want to say that it's like the biggest movie geek comfort blanket to see Robert Osbourne appear on the screen to talk about the movie I'm about to watch. I will be absolutely crushed the day he dies because he's been "that old guy on TCM" forever now and he's still chugging along with the nice little anecdotes and movie trivia in between features. I don't think I'm alone in saying, for anyone who's watched a significant number of movies off TCM, that he's just the best. I had no idea that The Mummy was directed by the guy who DP'd Metropolis and would later give up directing and go back to shooting movies like Key Largo! That's great! Thanks, Robert! Anyway, The Mummy. Karloff in fake wrinkles. Girl: How could you open that horrid tomb? Boy: Had to! Science, you know! Most of what I got from this is a sense of historic adventure that this movie was probably made as a reaction or play to the still-relatively-new events of King Tut's tomb discovery and the ensuing curse. I mean, this was made in the early thirties. During the prologue when it says it's 1927, that's just a few years ago. All the Egyptian artifacts and archaeology and everything else was new to most moviegoers and probably in vogue due to Tutankhamen. Isn't that crazy to think about!? It kind of put a preoccupying layer over the whole movie for me... ...which is good because I didn't get much more out of it. I mean, that's a bit harsh. Karloff is good (although I've never seen a more mummy-like dude than his "disguise" as modern-day Egyptian Ardath Bey) and I liked how they used a very subtle effect of filling the whites of his eyes with light to show hypnotism. But I feel like I've seen all these classic Universal horror movies before even if I haven't so for me this is just a bit of housekeeping. For that reason I'm going from most familiar to least in my triple feature in hopes that the last one will hold my interest in more ways than completionist checkboxing.
11.09.12	A Night at the Movies: The Horrors of Stephen King	Laurent Bouzereau	My plan for tomorrow's matinee/daytime triple feature is a trio of classic Universal horror movies that I, for whatever reason, never saw. I thought it would be a fitting introduction to watch this 75-minute TCM doc about Stephen King talking about movies he loved growing up as a primer. I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd seen this before though and maybe didn't log it because it's a TV production but whatever... I watched it again for the first time. Basically it's a single interview with Stephen King that they made into a feature by overalying stills and clips from the movies he talks about. I'm a pretty big fan of King's book Danse Macabre where he talks about some of these movies and generally think that his taste in horror movies is ok... certainly very informed although not perfect. Anyway, this doc kind of sticks to the mainstream expected classics and I didn't really get any new films out of it to add to the list (If I hear one more guy talk about the pool sequence in The Cat People!), but it was a nice little thing to watch as I drifted off to sleep and this morning I'm energized to power through these next three classics.
11.09.12	The Descendants	Alexander Payne	The story of DVRfest 2012, the eighth of its kind, consisting of 9 parts This year's DVRfest is different from the last few years. For one: I remembered it was happening. And because of that, Molly decided to leave town rather than spend all weekend watching movies. SO, I have all of Friday and Saturday to myself. Just me, a pile of junk food, and a DVR that's 82% full. The only catch is that there's this video game called Dishonored that's really good and gorgeous and with all this boy-alone time it's a pretty heavy battle between movies and video games being waged in my head. Even now as I sit at the computer to write this, the Steam icon is glimmering in my system tray, beckoning me to it. I have to admit that most of Friday night was conceded to gaming. I did finally tear myself away to watch a movie though, thus officially begins the fest! The Descendants is Alexander Payne doing a movie in Hawaii. I know Clooney's performance is good and it's a pretty dreary story but... a lot of the movie felt like a vacation for the filmmakers. Maybe that's my own baggage but whatever. I guess it was good. It kind of left me cold. Seems like a movie that's destined to be overrated. Let's see if I can fit one more in tonight before passing out, then tomorrow is movies from the moment I wake up.
10.20.12	Shut Up and Play the Hits	Will Lovelace, Dylan Southern	Mostly concert film some light documentary about LCD Soundsystem's final show and the morning afterward. I'm a pretty huge LCD fan so I soaked in every detail this film presented for me. It's hard to think of the film as a film even because I'm such a big fan it's just an automatic love. Like oh of course I love this movie. They'd have to monumentally fuck it up for me not to. I watched the whole 3.5 hour show on youtube the day after it happened. Of course I'm going to like it in HD with James Murphy talking about it. So the structure is made up of three parts: James the morning after the show going about casual day-after-last-show tasks, a lengthy interview James gave, often serving as narration, and the concert footage which looks like it was captured with 18 cameras. It's nothing less than stunning to see how well a concert can be captured these days. Even in low lighting everything's still crisp and visible but when the stage lights shine every face in the crowd is discernable. Especially this one poor guy who seems very emotional and upset about the whole thing. You see the bliss and excitement and power that the music brings to this crowd all in HD and well-lit. It's amazing. Watching it also made me sad. I got to see LCD three times. Once before their first album hit playing at South by, once on tour for their first record, and again on tour for their last. It's weird to have cogent memories of the beginning of this band and like less than ten years later be there for the end of it. The selfish part of me wishes they WOULD keep going on and on until they suck but I think in the long wrong they will be more memorable - and successfull - stopping when they did. Who knows, time will tell. Loved the movie though. It's a cherished possession. The collector part of my brain is happy to have a physical copy that no one can take away, even though considerable technical difficulties with trying to get my computer to play the disc kind of gave me an intermission in the middle of the movie that I didn't really ask for.
10.12.12	Seven Psychopaths	Martin McDonagh	Loved this. I feel like it's been a long time since Christopher Walken has had a real role in a movie. Not in a "hey, Christopher Walken is in this movie! There he goes!" way but in an actual playing-a-character type role where he can actually work. It was great to see him here, especially in the context of great actors like Sam Rockwell and Collin Farrell (great when working with Martin McDonagh, kind of like how Mark Walhberg has only shown up for PT Anderson and David O Russell) and Woody Harrelson. Actually there's a ton of good actors padding out small roles all over this film. It's a recurring feeling of pleasant surprise to see so many familiar faces constantly popping up. It's a little meta though, bordering on too much sometimes, but whatever. It didn't ruin the movie for me. It's also very much a dark comedy but I found all that twisted stuff pretty hilarious. Sharp filmmaking.
09.27.12	The Entity	Sidney J. Furie	My last movie of the festival was Kier-la's screening of this 80s classic which had slipped through the cracks for me. It's basically known as the ghost rape movie. Barbara Hershey plays the rapee and Ron Silver plays a shrink who thinks it's psychosomatic. I have to say, Hershey's performance in this movie is phenomenal. I mean I don't exactly get the connection with psychosis (I'll have to read the book!) since the movie makes it pretty clear that supernatural things are happening, but it must've been a pretty hard role to play and she was utterly believable. Ron Silver was also good in his weird way. There's also a weird "this is inspired by true events" message at the end of the movie that feels like a total 80s device that I somehow believe just because the ending was so weak. I liked it though. I forget how nice it is to watch older movies at the Alamo, particularly when it's not a packed house. I know this is antithetical to every business model but there's something about being in a theater with just one or two dozen other people... like we're the hardcore who show up for the unpopular ticket or we're all in some unspoken club for liking something that other people don't... or even just that we'd rather watch a movie than go to a party feels really good to me. The movie feels more personal somehow. Anyway, after the movie I didn't really feel like going to the party. I was tired, the theme seemed kind of tired, I didn't love the venue last year, and all things considered I felt like it was over. So it was a very unceremonious and abrupt end to my festival. I simply walked to my car and drove home. It's several weeks later now by the way. I know there are things I wanted to mention in these notes but now can't remember. Instead let me just put a general note here about how great it was to hang out with the old friends that I saw. It seems like fewer and fewer people are coming out to this thing. Tiffany, Victor, Ryan... all missing this year. The plus side of that is twofold: I got to spend more time with Micah and Jarrette and had some great times in between movies. And also I got to meet a bunch of new people. My pre-movie conversation with Marc English was illuminating. Antonio asked me to sign his book. More people than I thought remembered who I was which was flattering. I do wish I would've forced myself to write this earlier but fuck it.
09.27.12	Red Dawn	Dan Bradley	Remake. Wasn't unwatchably terrible but also wasn't really notable or good in any way. My memory of this has already faded. harsh!
09.27.12	Wrong	Quentin Dupieux	Mr. Oizo's Quentin Dupiex's follow-up to Rubber, about a guy who loses his dog. Surreal stuff can be hit or miss with me but the stuff I like I REALLY like. Rubber fell victim to festival fatigue for me I think so I almost didn't see this because it's so late in the fest but Micah really enjoyed it so I decided to take a chance. I'm glad I did because I liked it too. It took me a long time (mostly watching Bunuel movies on criterion dvd via netflix) to come to a personal approach to surreal in that it not making any sense IS the point. Certain messages on the surface are still there but there doesn't have to be any deeper meaning or symbolism or anything like that. Case in point: it's raining inside the office because it is. To me this is funny exactly when we go into the manager's office and she has a pile of towels to use and she doesn't like getting her chairs wet. I guess the deeper meaning is that it doesn't normally rain inside an office? Just like clocks usually don't display "7:60" instead of "8:00." I may be completely wrong with my interpretation of this material but, under my current understanding, I found this to be pretty entertaining. Mostly because it's funny. Bill Fichtner's great. Steve Little's great. The gardener's great. It looks great. And it's funny. So I liked this, and moreso I've been thinking back and liking it more and more since seeing it. It's kind of turned into a highlight for me in my brain. Also, I'm pretty sure Bill Fichtner's character lives in the Sowden house. I know it because Steve Hodel claims that's where his dad killed the Black Dahlia in his book and I found the crazy details of the house really interesting. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright's son, it's a crazy Mayan design with a center courtyard and weird hidden rooms and things like that. Super inside but I liked seeing it and making that connection.
09.27.12	Tower Block	James Nunn, Ronnie Thompson	A group of tenants at the top floor of a ghetto high-rise are terrorized by a sniper. Like a robot Marky Wahlberg-caliber sniper who shoots bullets so fast as to not account for wind speed and distance. Sorry, i didn't like this much. I guess it wasn't terrible but I don't remember much good about it. Oh, right. At one point they make it to the ground floor and to the back door that's not coered by the sniper, but they can't exit because the sniper has placed a garbage bin - like those massive ones behind restaurants - at the door. So they head back up and more people die and later on they use a sledgehammer to... do something else. It was one of those instances where I spent the whole time pissed at the movie because they could easily use the sledgehammer to break a hole in the wall NEXT to the back door. I mean even if it's straight cinder block or concrete or something.. wouldn't you whack at it with your sledgehammer for a few hours before gambling on your life by going out on the roof? gah. Anyway, this was one of the few that really didn't do much for me at all during the fest, sorry to say. I still love Severance.
09.26.12	Secret Ceremony	Joseph Losey	Elizabeth Tailor and Mia Farrow freak out together. This is the second in a three-movie series of rep screenings about Psychotic Women programmed in conjunction with Kier-la Janisse's new book. I had to miss the first one because it was up against a secret screening or something but I was happy to see that I could fit the other two in nicely. I'm a big fan of Kier-la and her writing and her unique taste in movies so it was incredibly nice to get a small taste of the old-school 409 Colorado programming back in the Alamo. So this movie... I couldn't really imagine a movie that fits "psychotic women" better. It's pretty much ALL crazy women for the whole movie. Too much so. Plus you have this magnificent baggage... like you can tell that Taylor is really freaked out about her double chin. And Mia's future controversy kind of defines her for me and she did this right after Rosemary's Baby. One is young and fresh, the other is confronting her age. To see they feed off each other is really intense. Plus it's directed very loosely. Lots of long takes just letting these women go. And when they find any semblance of calm we throw in a super smarmy Robert Mitchum or looney older Aunts to stir the pot. So there are things to like about this movie, but I personally found it too heavy for my tastes. It's just too much crazy for me. Maybe because I'm a dude.
09.26.12	Cloud Atlas	Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski, Tom Tykwer	So... I've actually put this off as the last note to write about Fantastic Fest. It's currently October 11th so... it's been several weeks since I've seen it so it's nowhere even close to a first impression, but I also wanted enough mental space to talk about this as long as I want to without the rest of the fest weighing down on me. Oh, and I haven't read the book, fyi. So... Cloud Atlas. Huge. Ambitious. Epic. Grand. Confident. Success. This is a movie, much like The Fountain or other movies that sort of connect stories through space and time by common themes and also those movies where actors play multiple parts, is a movie that strides to be truly universal and say something as big as humanity itself. It's a story of everything being connected, not such that it's people's ancestor or even common souls as such but more like how people pop up and life folds in on itself. It's not shy about aiming for the fences and is so audacious with its interwined story that I feel like a lot of its success comes from the mere fact that it doesn't fail at what it's trying to do. So... geez. How do I even talk about this movie? I guess I'll start with the bad. -Some of the make-up really threw me off. Particularly anything with the Asian girl. Her mexican lady was kind of a joke. -I didn't really love how all of Hugh Grant's and Hugo Weaving's parts were antagonists. I wish they would've mixed it up a bit more and had everybody play good and bad guys rather than keeping things so on the nose. -Uh... Overall it's a really remarkable film. My main memories are of how well every story thread is woven together and how everything makes multiple levels of sense and how great a lot of the make-up is. Jim Broadbent is fantastic, Ben Whishaw is fantastic, Tom Hanks is really great. The future stuff is still a little wonky with its future-speak but whatever. He actually pulls of the cockney tough guy which astounds me because I think he looks utterly ridiculous in the still photos I've seen of him in that character. The music's great, the editing is superb, the style is unique and as big as the subject matter... everything is just... really hard not to gush about. Loved it.
09.26.12	Room 237	Rodney Ascher	A documentary catalogging various insane theories by people who have seen the movie a shitload of times. This seemed to be pretty divisive at the fest. To those that thought it was just crazy people talking and got bored with it, I see you're point. It's my motherfucking kind of crazy though so I loved the shit out of this. The film is really well constructed, using footage from the film (and many many others, surprisingly deep cuts) to illustrate the interviewee's points very well. They never actually show the interview subjects on screen which I liked very much. It reminded me of the old Alamo features that Kier-La and Lars used to edit together from found and archival footage (this was helped by me sitting with Kier-La and her saying this was just like the old stuff she used to do). Furthermore every obtuse reference and minor detail is queued up and displayed for you so you can actually follow the crazy machinations as they unfold. There's one great scene though where someone notes that you can see Stanley Kubrick's face in the clouds of a certain external shot in the film and the doc lets you look for it on your own without the box highlights or arrows that help you out troughout the rest of the film. All of a sudden I found myself frantically searching for this image of Kubrick in these clouds and realized the entire theater was doing the same. It's a really nice subtle touch that I loved and had fun talking to people about afterward (I didn't see him. I thought I saw a huge pair of eyes but other people claimed to have found a full portrait of him) Also, kudos to the fest for screening The Shining backward and forward like they talk about in this doc. In kind of a dark side of the moon touch, if you watch them superimposed several cool overlays happen. Unfortunately, both screenings of this experiment were against can't-miss screenings so i didn't get to see all of it but the doc helpfully shows us the specific scenes that are mentioned so I don't feel like I completely missed out.
09.26.12	Wake in Fright	Ted Kotcheff	I guess this movie was almost were it not for the efforts of some awesome print archivists and now Drafthouse Films is re-releasing it. I really love stories like this... how the negatives were thought lost and then found in some unmarked box posted for destruction 48 hours after being discovered, then painstakingly renovated to be brought back to life. Or some random pristine print found in a closed hospital in Sweden or something because they used to screen it for child patients. These are stories that will soon be gone forever now that all films are digital, but something about the tactile vulnerability of the film itself really satisfies the film nerd neurons in my brain. Anyway, the film is kind of a typical existential 70s freak-out where a guy, kind of stuck in mundane life, gets roped into this absolutely hellish lost weekend adventure like he literally took a vacation in hell like the brimstone biblical hell with fires and devils and torture and shit... then at the end of the movie he for some reason loves it. I don't... well.. I guess maybe I sort of understand it but in the sissy white intellectual college student way like I appreciate the cinematography in SPike Lee films but I don't think I'll ever understand these types of movies in the grizzly 90-year old blues guitarist with a roadmap of cracks in his hands way like realy FEEEEEEL it man. I'll never be there, so parts of this movie left me cold. It's great though. Everything that movies have taught me about how dirty, fly-ridden, sweaty, orange, crazy, beer-soaked, rough and tumble, and batshit crazy rural Australia was and is and will always be. The amount of beer ingested in this movie, particularly in long chugging swallows, is really impressive. Donald Pleasance is also great. Boy that rape came out of nowhere, didn't it!?
09.25.12	Sightseers	Ben Wheatley	Pitch black comedy about a boyfriend and girlfriend that go on holiday (British) and kind of sort of become killing spree multiple murderers. This really surprised me. I liked it a great deal. I missed Kill List but only thought Down Terrace was OK. This was really good. Hilarious, captivating, surprising... everything you'd want in a movie like this. Really fun stuff. Oh, this was the first secret screening of the fest. They also showed it in two theaters so more people could see. I like both trends of having fewer secret screenings and making them more accessible. A lot of the logistics and mechanics of the fest (except for the usual bevy of small things and the goddamn PA seating announcement lobby lining up nonsense) were better this year. They're baby steps but I feel like each year gets a little better in terms of no headaches or major pains in the ass.
09.25.12	No Rest for the Wicked	Enrique Urbizu	A Spanish thriller about a dirty cop who kills some dudes in a drunken rage then spends the whole movie trying to track down a witness who happens to be tied into some crazy drug gang or something. It's kind of confusing since there's 2 completely separate groups searching for the same dudes from either end of the investigation, but maybe if it were in English and went by a bit faster I would've found it less so. So it's kind of a long wait but when the two investigations do converge and Stuff actually Happens, it's pretty decent. On a whole the movie's not bad at all and when I look back I like it, but I do remember it being a tad bit slow. Worth checking out though if you're into that kind of thing.
09.25.12	Bring Me the Head of Machine Gun Woman	Ernesto Diaz Espinoza	The director is back again and, like Mandrill a few years ago, gives off the distinct vibe that he's pretty much only making movies in order to come back to the festival. On one hand I don't blame him. On another, I understand it's very hard to get a movie made in Chile. But on a third hand, the movie's still not great. It's handicapped by its budget but it's also just such a minor story that it feels like nothing at all. Cheap cotton candy. They try to use a GTA-style theme with scores and missions and whatnot but... just like how it irks me when movie computers don't behave like they should, my gaming nerd brain was irked when the analogy wasn't used correctly. So i was probably more sensitive to that than others, but overall there just wasn't much to the movie at all. A hot girl in a kinda cool completely impractical outfit... eh.
09.25.12	Outrage Beyond	Takeshi Kitano	The sequel to last year's surprisingly non-weird Yakuza movie from Takeshi Kitano. I'm still not very versed in his earlier stuff so the relative straight-forwardness of it didn't bother me at all and I thought it was a solid gangster movie with a suitably convoluted plot. The sequel is on par with the first I think. I spent a little time wondering what the sequel could possibly be considering just about everyone died in the first movie but they get around that with a minimal amount of retconning and I was actually surprised at how quickly the story picked right up and started moving again. This one pays a bit more attention to the skeevy dirty cop and deals with the aftermath of the new boss's hostile takover. Like the last one, there's about a thousand characters and tons of plot going by pretty quickly but it's never boring, I never felt any strange leaps in logic, and really the only bad thing I can say about the movie is that the ending is pretty soft. It seems destined for a third film to make it a trilogy, which I have no problem with. Good solid movie.
09.24.12	Taped	Diederik Van Rooijen	Great Dutch thriller about a couple who go on vacation to Argentina then by happenstance capture a dirty cop killing some dude. Apparently this has already been picked up for an American remake which makes perfect sense although I doubt it'll be as good for a few reasons. 1. It's so refreshing to me to see a movie where tourists are out of their element and don't speak the language when their native tongue ISN'T ENGLISH. The fact that the two main actors are Dutch is a major factor for me. Once you make them American it seems a thousand percent more old and familiar. 2. The two leads here are so strong that the director can rest a huge portion of the movie's dramatic responsibility on them. I don't think there's a single frame of this film that doesn't have one or both of the leads in it. The director does an ongoing technique of switching off who to follow for that scene. And the camera stays close. It literally runs along side the actors. The camerawork here is superb in how it withholds just the right things to add tensions to scenes all while hand-held and immediate to the overall fear of the thing. If the actors aren't good enough to do these long uninterrupted physically- and emotionally-demanding scenes and so the camera has to pull back and cut a lot more, I don't think the terrifyingly plausible yet relatively simple story is strong enough to hold your interest. So I guess this note is a series of compliments framed as pre-emptive hate for the remake, but hopefully my very positive feelings on THIS movie shine through. I really liked it and thought it was a success.
09.24.12	Antiviral	Brandon Cronenberg	First film from David Cronenberg's son. It's suitably early-Cronenbergian. Filled with Body issues. The central conceit though I don't quite accept. In the future, people are so taken with celebrity that they're not only willing but it's considered a luxury to ingest diseases that celebrities have had. So a guy gets a Total Recall-esque sales pitch except for instead of a memory-implant of a vacation you get herpes!? Also, skin and muscle cells from celebrities are cultured and sold as steaks for people to eat. I suppose if you can accept that, you'd have a pretty solid little mystery type movie on your hands. There's some stuff involving blood and viruses and cool sci-fi tech to genetically modify stuff and they use a kind of cool idea where each bug has an identifiable "face" in the form of creepy blurry photographs of people's faces. You also get a movie where the main character is completely passive the entire time and a kind of weak ending that I didn't completely understand. It's certainly not without merits and the visual look of the film is impeccable, but I spent the entire thing thinking "wait, people WANT to be sick?" I get that it's social commentary but still... I found the premise too much of a stretch.
09.24.12	Holy Motors	Leos Carax	Lots of people raved about this in their pre-fest recommendations to me. I definitely heard "The movie of the festival" more than once. It follows a guy around as he makes several "appointments" throughout a day/night cycle, filling certain roles in life kind of like an actor in God's movie. They are incredibably disparate and kind of random so it becomes a game to count each appointment and guess what the next one will be. There's no doubt that the performance by Denis Levant is remarkable and amazing and should be applauded, but the movie itself didn't really connect with me. My favorite part was an entreacte musical number done with a cadre of accordians (found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qxG3LzYkfg ). I also liked when he dressed up as his character from the anthology Tokyo! and gave kind of a flipside-view of the events in that short. This reminded me a bit of Gaspar Noe in that it's definitely daring and new and for that I commend it even if it's not my favorite movie of all time. Walking out, I was a disappointed and felt like I didn't get what everybody else got but looking back I'm already grateful for seeing it. A little distance has sweetened it for me (although I doubt I'll see it again. I will listen to that song again though. right now).
09.24.12	The Final Member	Jonah Bekhor, Zach Math	This is an incredible doc (2 of 3 seen this year) about this guy from Iceland who, for some reason, has a Phallological museum of cock. It's basically dicks of all walks of life. Dick bones, dicks in jars, dicks in boxes, dried dicks mounted on the wall, dick wood carvings, dick cofee mugs, dick statues, etc. He has one of every kind of dick in the world on display, save one species: homo sapiens. The movie follows the strange and incredible journey as the museum curator tries to secure a specimen and complete his life's work before his health fails him and he dies. Although he's prepared to donate his own junk if he does kick the bucket, he has two other dudes on the hook: some famous Iceland adventurer guy who claims to have slept with thousands of women and a crazy American guy who has delusions of grandeur for his cock. Seriously, he wants it removed before he dies so he can sit back and watch as his rod gains world fame. He has ideas for a comic book. The race for who will fulfill the Final Specimen is incredible both in its oddity and entertainment value. The twists and turns that take place to get one final cock in the jar amazed me. Hilarious. Plus the documentarians got incredibly lucky in being able to capture a suitable ending to the movie that really makes it fulfilling. Great movie.
09.23.12	The American Scream	Michael Stephenson	A documentary (produced by Alamo Jack!) by the kid from Troll 2 about a handful of guys who put on amateur hanted houses in their back yards every year for Halloween. This is the first of three stand-out documentaries that I saw this year, each one really blew me away. The cool thing about this movie is that all three main subjects live within a mile of eachother in the same small COnnecticut town. That's insane. Talk about lucky kids. I'd never even heard of people doing amateur haunted houses. I know there's always someone in the neighborhood that go all out with the decorations (me during middle and high school) but I'd never dream to actually have an attraction and make people stand in line or hire actors. that's insane! And here's this one small town in New England where there's 3 6 blocks from one another! With every doc that follows this structure, it lives or dies by its subjects and the families profiles here are amazingly sympathetic and entertaining. One guy's fanatic striving toward perfection (born from a strict religious childhood), another's easy-going counterpoint, and a third eccentric father and son who are best friends although, truth be told, completely inept in their decorations. All three are bursting at the seems with heart and you want so desperately for them all to succeed.... and here's the thing: there's no real tension! Succeed against what? not completing their decorations? having no kids show up on Halloween? I have no clue! but I was still rooting for them way more than any character from any other movie I saw at the fest! I really want to compare this to American Movie but it's not really a good comparison because I was pretty sad for those characters and watching them try and fail (much like Anvil) felt a little exploitative to me because I felt like the movie was trying to get me to laugh at the characters. This movie never made me feel that, even when particular decorations fall apart or break or look terrible. The film is unstoppably optimistic and kind toward its subjects, and there was real heartfelt emotion for me at the end of the film seeing people enjoy their hard work. I feel like I wasn't alone in almost crying. A day or two later Tim League floated the idea on twitter of chartering a bus to drive from Austin to Connecticut to support the main subject's first foray into professional haunted house production. If I could get off work I'd totally do it because I want that guy to find stable financial success in doing something he truly loves. If not my favorite movie of the fest, it was certainly in the top five. After the movie, Zack said that someone barfed right outside the theater so we all had to use the emergency exit. It sounded suspiciously like we were being routed into a really quick haunt put up by one of the film's subjects. That brought back my most vivid memories of going to haunted house as a teen (waiting in very long slow-moving lines) and resulted in a nice enough little tour of Halloweenabilia to bring in the season. The most awkward part was when it dumped us out into a party at the end of the ride where people were just hanging out in this smoke-filled low light room. When I finally found the exit it led us to the alley behind the Alamo and we had to walk around the whole building to get back to the safety of the crowd. Fun.
09.23.12	Looper	Rian Johnson	Hey, what's a Bruce Willis movie doing here? Well Rian Johnson is good friends with Eric... Brothers Bloom played I believe as a secret screening... so it makes sense. In the future, time travel exists but is outlawed. The mob uses it because it's very hard to dispose of a body in the future so when they have someone they want to get rid of, they send them back in time to be taken care of. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a guy hired to kill these guys and dispose of their bodies for the mob. For that he is well-compensated but he knows that at some point, they will send the older version of himself back for him to kill. That way there's no loose ends or whatever. Or something. It's an interesting take on time travel. The details still don't really make perfect sense if you think about them too long (or try to write them out as a synopsis (see above)) but it works in the context of the movie. It's a bit more intellectual and slower paced than Minority Report but still with several decent action scenes and a lot of world-building that I love. Also, they prosthetic make-up to make Gordon-levitt look like a young Bruce Willis is amazing. I could've sworn it was digital but the director said it was all practical. This will maybe the the lasting achievement of the movie I think. The sci-fi movie where Joseph Gordon-Levitt does an amazing Bruce Willis impression. He even checks out his hairline in the beginning; I got a kick out of that. So I liked this movie a lot. It was a good mix for me between innovation and execution and I never felt bored or taken out of it. Willis was in it a bit less than I thought he would be - it's very much JoGo's movie - and the ending seemed a bit... inevitable, but whatever.
09.23.12	Errors of the Human Body	Eron Sheean	This medical thriller takes place at the Planck Institute for... advanced DNA shit. I really felt that the writer/director knew his shit in terms of context as all the talk of genetic disorders, scientific trials and research, and campus politics really felt authentic. This turned out to be one of the more solid films I saw at the fest although I'd still probably rate it a 7 or so. It's a bit slow at times but nothing compared to Vanishing Waves and has a pretty decent ending (after a pretty drawn-out pre-ending sequence that could've been shorter). I liked the ideas behind this and it kind of gave me a Chricton feel kind of in the same vein as Looker or Coma. I liked it.
09.23.12	Vanishing Waves	Kristina Buozyte	I had a real strong recommendation for this one. It's about a... Lithuanian? It's about a European brain science team that attempts some Source Code/Matrix/Assassin's Creed shit to investigate the brain of a comatose woman. The main dude, who... I guess shaving or trimming the crazy dark hairs of your gigantic neck mole is not a social necesity over there? Sorry, the main dude who does all the brain-diving starts getting it on with the mental woman and falls in love with her even though she's got some major issues. The movie is very deliberately paced and meditative. There's a bunch of "cyber" imagery involving neuron maps and vector art that you spend a long time looking at. In the end, it's a pretty good movie but I was probably over-hyped for it because I didn't really love it at all. I appreciated the nudity (except for the hairy moles on both lead actors) but the plot was a bit too slow for my festival-geared brain.
09.22.12	The ABCs of Death	Various	Sigh. So there was a little snafu and we ended up having to watch the 6 month-old work print version which I guess is significantly different (and worse) than the final cut. The premise is that Tim League and Ant Timpson gave 5 grand to 26 directors to make a short involving each letter of the alphabet in a horror-themed slant (e.g. A is for Apocalypse, B is for Bigfoot, etc.). The title cards come up at the end telling you what the word is and who directed it so the film's structure becomes a little like a game where you try and guess what's going on and what the word is. A few of them worked, some of them were bizarre in a typical Alamo/Fantastic Fest way, and some of them were in my opinion total misses. Furthermore, it seems like there wasn't enough producer oversight... like they just handed out the money and took what they got back and threw it in the template. There's a joke that works very well for "Q" by Adam Wingard but Jon Schnepp uses the same joke for "W" and it lessened the whole thing for me because there's only room for it once. I'm told there's a bunch of changes in the final print and a lot of pacing issues have been fixed. I could tell that Tim was pretty upset to have the first FantasticFest screening of his baby be compromised and I would be too, but I'm also a little peeved that he managed to bring everyone to Toronto for the premiere but there were some significant absenses for the Austin screening. Considering this is the most like Fantastic Fest distilled into one film (I think Tim said something like 23 of the 26 directors had previous films play the fest), there should have been a real blow-out event for this I think. If he's willing to put something from Wrong as the official FF shirt, he should've had everyone here for ABCs and had some special party and given out the alphabetical hats to the audience and done some other shit to really go all out. So I'm kind of bummed that I didn't see the final cut, especially since I didn't like this version enough to want to watch it again.
09.22.12	Plan C	Max Porcelijn	This was described in the program book as "Coen-esque." It's about a somewhat dirty cop who all of a sudden owes ten grand to his bookie and gets increasingly desperate as his absurdly complicated schemes to get the money unravel. It seemed very much like a Dutch version of Pusher to me in that this unsympathetic guy gets himself into trouble then asks us to root for him as things don't go as planned. Beyond that, it's just ten grand! Couldn't he just get a credit card? Is it really that hard to come up with ten grand for a cop who's willing to steal hash from crime scenes? Maybe the small scale was intentional but to me it just seemed pointless. Meh.
09.22.12	Berberian Sound Studio	Peter Strickland	I had really high hopes for this one. Toby Jones plays a british sound engineer called into an Italian post-production studio to work on a Giallo. I really loved the first half of this movie. It's filled with eccentric Italian film industry characters, dark humor involving foley recording and screaming ADR, and a metric ton of procedural goodies involved with working on a soundtrack for an Italian horror movie. They even do a thing where you never see the projectionist except for his black leather-clad gloved hands. So at first I thought they'd do that thing where the movie about a Giallo becomes a Giallo as the projectionist starts killing off the crew and eventually it'll be up to diminutive quiet Toby Jones to save the day. Well, the movie doesn't go in that direction at all. At first I was glad because it seemed so expected, but as the final act grinded on and on I found myself wishing for a convenient little narrative. Instead, it gave me an unravelling sequence where reality distorted and Toby Jones found himself in weirder and weirder situations culminating in the movie sort of starting over with Jones as a native Italian watching himself on-screen, except then it kept going and getting slower and more inpenetrably obtuse to the point where I have no idea what the fuck I was watching. I think this is my biggest disappointment of the fest because i was SO in love with the first half and they just ruined everything to the point where I walked out at the end thinking it really really sucked. It's a huge shame.
09.22.12	Cold Steel	David Wu	A perfectly competant action film by longtime John Woo-collaborator David Wu. It's WW2-era China and we follow a sharpshooter as he goes on missions and, because it's a movie, falls in love. I remember liking this while watching it but a week later I find that I'm already kind of forgetting about it. Not bad really but also not really stand-out great. Kind of like Let The Bullets Fly from last year for me.
09.21.12	New Kids Nitro	Steffen Haars, Flip Van der Kuil	One of my few allowed midnights: the sequel to last year's hilarious New Kids Turbo. I still recall the scene where one guy tries to pick up shard of broken glass by using his forearms to sweep them into a pile (eviscerating his flesh in the process) as one of the funniest most absurd random things I've seen in the past few years. Micah had a good point in that these guys were very similar to the Trailer Park Boys in that they're fun to just hang out with, even if the actual movie isn't as good as the previous one. So I enjoyed myself although I do have fonder memories of last year. The plot of this one involves zombies which I'm pretty sick of at the moment and a lot of the new and random (to me) humor didn't last during a second exposure.
09.21.12	Miami Connection	Woo-sang Park	Crazy 80s Floridian Kung-Fu fun as unearthed and celebrated by the Alamo. I think if Zack Carlson were able to take a Total Recall vacation in his brain this would be the world he'd want to visit. It's full of non-actor acting, strangely friendship-based rock songs, Floridian corrupt ninjas, and cocaine. They also had the whole crew here and they sang their two songs and they released a 7" of Dragon Sound's complete discography. It was a true Alamo gala event, caring SO much for something that pretty much everyone else wouldn't care anything at all about. The movie's real fun. It fits nicely into "Crazy 80s wackiness" territory. Lots of fun. The movie is made up of these really rough scenes where all these non-actors try to act natural and it comes off super weird and awkward. At least the dudes seemed to have a good sense of humor about the whole theater cracking up at their bad acting. I think it helps that the whole crowd had a sympathetic view toward these guys. It's hard to explain to people who haven't been to a Weird Wednesday before how the Alamo's appreciation for these kinds of films (read: bad movies) is not in a so-bad-it's-good way but more of a celebrating naivete kind of vibe. We got genuine amusement out of this terrible movie, but in a somehow more respectful way. At least that's how I think of it. I also think that a lot of this kind of reaction comes from the glut of mediocre crap that Hollywood makes. In some way, an outstanding bad movie is just as special as an outstanding good one in that it's pretty rare. There's also a difference between entertaining bad and dull bad. See? It's confusing! All I know is that I had a great time with this movie and will probably pick it up when Drafthouse Films releases it. I'm not sure how it'll play outside of Austin though.
09.21.12	The Conspiracy	Christopher MacBride	Aaaaand now it's a week later, the whole festival is over, and I'm back at work writing these notes during downtime. Hey, it happens sometimes. I had actual work during the fest so I didn't have any morning time to write these. Consequently I've probably forgotten 90% of the details I would've written here... ahhh well. Maybe I'll have more of a mature insight into my feelings on these films rather than... the initial thoughts... that this whole journal is supposed to capture. shit. Anyway, this is a mockumentary about a couple filmmakers who find a subject in this crazy conspiracy theory nutjob old man. In the course of interviewing him and fueled by his sudden disappearance (spoiler!), their curiosities are piqued to the point of picking up the fight and exploring the dark world of conspiracies themselves. Several things here. I really liked the obvious research that went into the actual conspiracies portrayed here. I find that stuff is always best when there's kernels of truth sprinkled in to make your brain say "it's crazy but what if!?" and the filmmakers (real not in the movie) do a great job of presenting what's so fascinating about a ton of different things. Also, having sat through Alex Jones' infiltration of Bohemian Grove, the whole last sequence was impressively accurate. I also really liked the ending and how it made use of the mockumentary format in a way I hadn't seen before. It makes you question the reliability of the narrator (although it also raises some questions about why certain footage would even be left in the movie if the agenda hinted at in the ending was really the case) which is a cool touch for a format that plenty of people hate these days. All in all, I thought it was decent and as the fest went on I liked it more and more in my memory.
09.21.12	Pusher	Luis Prieto	So I guess there was a ticketting snafu and I ended up in a press screening of this rather than an official thing. oh well! It worked out really well for me because it wasn't full after I busted ass from the Ritz to South Lamar and had to end up parking in the neighborhood streets because the parking lot was already full. The movie wasn't that great though. I didn't see the original but this one was overly stylized and I had some major problems with the plot, mostly that the guy we're supposed to be rooting for is a dick who got himself in the mess that he's desperately trying to get out of. Had a hard time caring for anyone, even though I guess it was technically competant. Pretty meh.
09.21.12	The Master	Paul Thomas Anderson	Noon screening at the Ritz in 70mm. If i'm completely hoenst with myself, I must admit that I've been kind of afraid to see this. I had an opportunity to buy tickets when PTA was here with the early screening and didn't go because I'd have to fight traffic to get downtown and it would be a nightmare to park and I wouldn't be able to stand in line long enough to get a decent seat. Those reasons, while valid in my opinion, were minor compared to the much larger one that I dared not even speak: I was afraid that it would be bad. I could not have been more excited to see Punch-Drunk Love. I was on a vacation up to philly to visit a trio of friends and all one guy wanted to do was see Punch-Drunk Love and play GTA: Vice City. It was a great trip except for the fact that we both kind of stumbled out of the theater and nodded to each other that it was good over and over without really talking about anything specific. Months passed and I felt like I needed to keep my cold reaction to the film a secret because everyone else loved.... I don't know I guess they loved the lens flares and occasional color swatches? It wasn't until years later hen I revisited the film in an honest effort to re-evaluate it and found that my opinion had not changed at all. I didn't like it and that's all there was. SO. I had this cloud looming. This fearful bias. Why? Well... I was lucky enough to see an early screening of There Will Be Blood at Fantastic Fest several years ago. It was deep and enigmatic and mature and all those things but i immediately felt strong feelings toward it, so much so that I opted to not see the final film of the fest because I wanted to revel in the afterglow of seeing a great movie. Word of mouth spread like wildfire on that one and nobody was afraid to praise it to the heavens. With The Master, I didn't hear shit. "Mesmerizing" was the most I got out of people who are normally practically drooling to be the first to tell everyone how awesome something is. I took this as a bad sign. Hence the cloud. But when there was no good noontime movie today and Jarrette mentioned seeing The Master at noon I thought it was a great idea. I'd force myself to see it and hopefully be pleasantly surprised. A few things. The Alamo made a big deal about installing 70mm projectors in the big Ritz house a few months ago. They've been showing a series of 70 prints like Ghostbusters and Raiders (which I'm pretty sure are blow-ups except maybe for the effects shots) leading up to The Master's release. It's the only place in town showing it in 70. Everybody who saw it early, perhaps as a replacement for talking about the content of the film, proclaimed that everybody HAD to see it this way and that it was spectacular. I really hate to say this but I didn't see anything. The Ritz screen isn't big enough to really capitalize on the larger resolution so to me it just looked like digital with a little flickering. I could kind of imagine, like I bet the stuff on the navy ship would look good on the IMAX or even Paramount screens, but at the Ritz looked almost exactly the same. Perhaps a smidge sharper than 35 but really... it was nothing like Dark Knight at Imax or Lawrence of Arabia at the Paramount. I guess I finally have to talk about the movie now. It's very much a sister film to Blood. Same treatment with the score and powerhouse performances and kind of obtuse scene cuts constructed to where you have to think out and piece together what you're seeing a little bit. It feels like it distances a bit too far for me. There's not enough continuity to make me comfortable enough with the plot to emotionalize the characters. They seemed like either monologue scenes destined for acting classes or short-film vignettes adfrift in time. Phoenix's character feels a little arbitrarily weird to me. I liked the cult stuff but felt we didn't follow it long enough to see any real outcome or development. I guess PTA used the Freddy Quell character as an entrance point into the culty religion as a way to say "who would be the person who actually believes this stuff?" but his focus gets a little loose and you end up spending either too much or too little time with Phoenix and Hoffman so niether one is really the star or support. It just a weird mix. It almost feels like a Terry Malick movie in that I can easily see a more typical narrative version of this film on the cutting room floor somewhere, cut into "poetry" for the sake of release. whew. so There we have it. I didn't hate it but didn't immediately love it either. I'm still in a bit of a toss up. It's definitely a well-made film, I'm just not sure if it's my cup of tea.
09.20.12	Dredd 3D	Pete Travis	My second movie was this. Karl Urban and Alex Garland and Olivia Thrilby were there. It was better than I thought it would be. They use slow-motion to really nice effect a few times, and it was cool to see actors from HBO shows I like (Cersei from Game of Thrones and muthafuckin Avon Barksdale from The Wire) but they both acted like... they were mutes or something. Odd choices, especially for Lena Heady who spends a lot of time just staring off in the distance and trying to look menacing. Wood Harris is better but was still a prop for like half the movie. The real stars are Urban and Thrilby. They kick some ass here and it's nice. I never really read the comic when I was a kid but I did have a poster on my wall of Dredd beating some punks up done by Simon Bosley that I liked very much. This movie captured the vibe of that poster very well. Brutal violence, no sentimentality, bad ass. I liked it more than I thought I would and more than Frankenweenie but still not a LOVE I don't think. It was good though no doubt.
09.20.12	Frankenweenie	Tim Burton	Behold! The 8th Annual Fantastic Fest! And thanks to Micah getting a pass for himself which made him able to offer the extra pass of one Mr. Brian Kelley (one of the many in the local Brian Brotherhood), I get to go! I really thought that last year was it when I didn't get a badge but it looks like I'm good to go for one more year. It even says I'm press! (hah!) Hilarious considering this is probably going out to 3 inactive bloglines accounts. So I'm working half days again this year. Skipping the midnights doesn't seem to bother me and I'm way less exhausted (and have also noticed higher immune system responses) when I come home and get to bed by midnight rather than 3 or 4 am. So aside from all the crazy late-night stuff I plan to see a pretty full slate of films this year. The level of detail in these notes is entirely dependant upon if I have any actual work to do in the mornings. Speaking of that, I need to get to bed so let's get to it. This is a feature-length re-telling of Burton's original short except this time it's stop-motion animated instead of live-action and it's padded out by more subplots and characters. It felt a lot like listening to a best-of album to me. Really EVERY familiar Tim Burton-ism is present so it's kind of ticking off the list as you watch. I think Winona Ryder's character looks and sounds and even shares lines with her Beatlejuice character. Burton throws as many homages to the classic Universal monsters in as he can. It works as a clever little movie but I feel like it lacks the soul of a really Classic Album. You can listen to the Best of Led Zeppelin and get all the hits but I like listening to the full albums more because you hear the hits in the context of the supporting songs and get a much stronger sense of personality and thrust to it. This one kinda felt like Tim Burton was just having fun and staying safe. I'm not a huge fan of his later work so it surprised me that I liked this at all, and I did like it. I don't want to sound too negative. I thought it was cute and effective and a nice little thing to watch. Just really expected and kind of empty.
09.13.12	Cowboys & Aliens	Jon Favreau	mediocre disappointment, I guess because there's absolutely no surprises. Oh, there's one sort-of surprise but it's really poor. Didn't like this one much, sorry to say. It couldn't have a better pedigree. Practically every name in the beginning titles had some award associated with it. By all accounts it should have been better. Oh well.
09.12.12	50/50	Jonathan Levine	I really liked this one. More than I thought I would. I didn't like The Wackness at all and thought Mandy Lane was overrated. This one though is a real movie dealing with some real emotion. The performances were all great, and with the exception of one scene (where I guess Seth Rogen spends some time drunk locked outside of his own car taking a long piss or something allowing Joseph Gorden-Levitt exactly enough time to make one awkward phone conversation before banging on the window to be let in) I wasn't really taken out of the movie at all. By the end I definitely had certain expectations of how the movie would end and it kind of surprised me which direction they chose to go. I mean, it's not some shock twist ending or anything but the whole film kind of leads towards answering one question and by the end I was completely prepared for either answer to that question, which means I was fully invested which is a good thing. Really good movie.
09.08.12	Contagion	Steven Soderbergh	Holy shit. Watching this movie made me feel like my throat was getting sore. I felt myself getting sick as the film went on. Nutso. I found this movie to be terrifying. There's a flash game called Pandemic where you craft a micro-organism and attempt to wipe out the world population. It's a morbid subject but kind of fun and known for how difficult it is to infect Madagascar. Playing that is fun enough but I'm not sure I'll be playing any more after watching this movie. When I was in high school I read The Hot Zone. It was a hot topic in the news because Ebola Zaire was found in monkeys in Reston, Va. which was about an hour from where I went to school and a lot of the military microbiology labs resided in the army fort in the town where I lived. That fort coincidentally was rumored (and I believe it's true although my details may be off a bit) to have a building that had an anthrax contamination so they just sealed the entire building in concrete for 50 years or something until the virus is definitely dead. The movie Outbreak came out which was generalized Hollywood bullshit but had a few good sequences (like where it followed a sicko's sneeze-spit into the air ducts of a movie theater) but ended in an absurd showdown or something and somehow Dustin Hoffman injecting a cure into Rene Russo who's on the brink of death but somehow gains a full recovery 28 seconds after being injected. That movie wasn't really as effective at conveying the silent inevitable death from a virus as the book did. We haven't heard much about viruses lately, flash games aside. I feel like this movie does an excellent job at conveying the shitstorm that some major bug would bring. I really was terrified and basically just waiting for everybody in the movie to die. Except Matt Damon. But once anyone caught the bug I was sure they would be the one who successfully fought it off and got better. until they died then I was sure everyone else was gonna get infected too. It made for a very tense 100 minutes. The music was great, the photography was great. Really smart concise direction. No-nonsense acting from a stellar cast. God. Really affecting. Loved it.
09.08.12	American Reunion	Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg	The gang's all back! including some minor characters I forgot existed! Who are for some reason treated like a cameo even though they have nothing going on! Except I guess Natasha Lyonne is now clean enough to hire again! Exlamation points aside, this movie was a really weird feeling. Thanks to the Alamo, I have an appreciation for a good sex comedy, and enjoyed the 90s raunchy spin that the first of this series offered enough to see all the (theatrical) sequels. It's been a while since the American Wedding though and watching everyone come back for this reunion plotline is doubly baggage-ridden because all these actors are basically doing the same thing. Some have careers, some had careers that are now in slumps, some had no real careers to speak of, and some are now best known for botched boob jobs. So there's constant judging going on, coupled with comparisons to see which actors, 13 years later and now no-excuse adults, can actually act and who are just horrible. There's a scene where Tara Reid is supposed to be asleep and it's the most hilariously awful thing I've seen in a Hollywood movie in a long time. Never mind that she's fully made up and not touching an inch of her face to the pillow, her eyes are barely closed. it looks like she's doing an ab crunch to keep her hair from getting messed up. It looks like she's a wax mannequin. Like in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Wow. So after all that, we have a sex comedy that really feels really really old. All these guys are old and weird now. I like whatshisname in How to Make It in America but he has a pretty poorly-written arc here so he has to spend all his scenes talking about vague international travel. Chris Klein looks like he can't even stand up straight because of his weird muscles (what did he interview for all coked up? Chicago or something? that was hilarious) They put a beard on that other guy probably to make him look older than 20. I feel a whole different level of embarassment for these guys amidst 18 year old hardbodies in bikinis, other than the intended embarassment for the kooky scenarios that Jim finds himself in. Man, I keep trying to give a solid mixed reflection but deterring into negativity. It was just such a weird experience to see this movie displaced from another time. It's kind of like when the Three Amigos misunderstand the situation and start singing My Little Buttercup in front of all the hardened Mexican drinkers. But i guess maybe that's how all school reunions go so maybe they hit the mark? Anyway, i chuckled once or twice at the absurdity of it but mostly felt old.
09.02.12	Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides	Rob Marshall	Another Pirates movie. I think the series lost me at the third one which is why I really only saw this out of checklist curiosity. It's ok but not surprising and like a blander, less energetic less focused version of the second one without the cliffhanger ending. Complete Meh.
08.31.12	Black Swan	Darren Aronofsky	Finally got around to seeing this. I was afraid I'd be underwhelmed just like The Wrestler due to all the rave reviews. I was kind of underwhelmed. I mean it's a good movie and all, but just not an EXPERIENCE like Pi and Requiem and to some extent The Fountain were. Instead it's just a movie. Just a thriller with a kind of predictable plot and a nice star performance that required lots of training. The visual effects were nicely subtle and I really can't complain about any moment in the film, but it didn't wow me, what can I say. Unfair I know but oh well.
08.28.12	Tucker and Dale vs Evil	Eli Craig	A nice mix of horror and farce (i know! right!?) where two rednecks are beset upon by a group of college kids convinced that they're slasher killers. I like Alan Tudyk and thought the other guy did a good job with his character. It's also nice to see the hot girl from 30 Rock have a few lines. The movie kind of rode the fence for me between legitimately funny and too self-aware but I think ended up on the good side more often than not. I think I'd like it a little better (although it would make much less sense) if we never saw the kids point of view and they just randomly intervened throughout without context. I'm probably the only person who thinks that though. I liked it. Good performances.
08.25.12	The Hunger Games	Gary Ross	Yes I read the books. Yes I've seen Battle Royale. I thought this was just ok. Something didn't translate well at all. I don't know if it was Gary Roos' predilction for random POV shots or focus issues or there's too many plaintive scenes where he feels he has to energize it somehow or what but there seemed to be like a third of the movie where it's a quiet scene with two people talking but the camera is going crazy all around them. I found it intrusive. Yet when there's clearly fx shots of the capital and stuff the camera's dead still. Also i found the title cards at the beginning to be ultra useless and weak and started the movie off on the wrong foot with me. Yet the games themselves seemed to be on fast forward to me and not in a page-turning way like the book but in a hurry-to-get-through-it kind of way like they can't afford even a second of scrounging for water or whatever. I dunno. it was just an oddly paced movie for me especially considering the running time. I get that it's a lot of story to get through but they also included some elements that could definitely have been in the second movie. Because of that the very ending feels like the ending to a sequel in a trilogy or something... where you have to sign on to watching the next one for it to mean anything. Anyway, there were some good parts too i guess. As a movie though it definitely doesn't hold up to Battle Royale. In the end it's just another adaptation that's not as good as the book. Harumph.
08.24.12	God Bless America	Bobcat Goldthwait	Bobcat GOldthwait's latest about a guy who's about to kill himself but he happens to turn on My Super Sweet 16 and decide's to kill that girl first. then her parents. Then some kids who talk during a movie. Then basically every idiotic asshole out there. Bobcat does a stellar job of making me hate the world and completely sympathizing with a murderer. What's funny is that he only had to amp up the annoyance factor by like 1% to portray a culture that's worthy of annihilation. It's the best kind of satire. Liked it very much. Way to go, Bobcat!
08.19.12	Cedar Rapids	Miguel Arteta	A fun small film about a small-town naive insurance agent who goes to a convention in hopes of bringing back a coveted award. At the hotel he's roomed with The Wire's Isiah "Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeit" Washington and John C. "For Your Health" Riley. It's funny in a kind of smirky way. Not side-splitting or anything but nice character work. It also has an optimistic viewpoint which i appreciate. Riley's character is rude and rambunctious but he likes Ed Helm's character and isn't a negative force at all. I like these types of characters, who are brash and have issues but also make good friends and help their buddies. This could have been a much different movie but I liked how it remained light and upbeat while the actors and characters keep it from being too fakey and romantic comedy-ish. Good movie. Way to go, Jarrette!
08.18.12	21 Jump Street	Phil Lord, Christopher Miller	Better than I thought it would be. A few gags legitimately had me laughing. Skinny Jonah Hill still looks weird to me. The third act still got a bit too actiony but the first half hour was really pretty funny. Also, really strange end credits.
08.11.12	Knight and Day	James Mangold	I rented this for a few reasons: Tom Cruise usually makes movies that are at least watchable, James Mangold usually makes movies that are at least watchable, and I'd heard it was so bad I thought maybe... again... everybody in the world was wrong and I would somehow be the only one to recognize the greatness. Well, it wasn't that good. However, I don't think it was really that horrible either. The problem is tone. This fits firmly in the Last Action Hero / Mr. and Mrs. Smith niche of goofy action films that try to be both comedy and action but usually fail by not really excelling at either. As that kind of movie it wasn't too bad. Cruise playing off his Mission: Impossible tropes is kind of cute. I guess it's confusing why this movie got made because these movies never ever work. Especially when you have a female lead written to do consistently idiotic things. Like annoyingly idiotic. Cameron Diaz completely does not work for me any more. So oh well. A semi-interesting failure.
08.10.12	The Bourne Legacy	Tony Gilroy	I skipped out work early to meet Jarrette for this since the Brewhouse is right down the street from my job and I haven't seen him in forever. The brewhouse is actually pretty nice. The menu seems like a complete Drafthouse knock-off but the wait staff didn't ruin my experience and the seats were comfortable. I like the Bourne trilogy. I like the first one the best, which I guess I'm in the minority on but whatever. I like to think of that trilogy as an example of a smarter, more savvy contemprary action film that doesn't really pander. I had really no idea what to expect from this except that it would probably not be that good. So... I ended up liking how they treated it as a straight sequel rather than a reboot or retelling or any other word that means start over from the beginning. I'm happy Total Recall is bombing. Movies continue to exist after they leave theaters. I remember The Bourne Identity and don't need to see it again like some play revival. I also like how they set this one during the events of the third movie, so not only is it a sequel but they also firmly root this in the context of the Matt Damon movies. Thirdly, I really like how Jeremy Renner doesn't play Jason Bourne. They even trotted out a lot of the previous actors for cameos or re-purposed footage to layer in all this context. All these things kind of got me excited and invested during the first act. However, the amount of heavy lifting that they go through to establish Renner as someone we care about following and explain how he ends up in the middle of things is pretty laborious and takes way too long. Because of that, it feels like the movie proper starts like an hour into the running time and should end about an hour after the movie's over. The end is only an ending in the technical sense that credits start rolling and everybody walked out of the theater, but nothing's really resolved or concluded or denoument'd. It feels like a typical middle-of-the-movie chase scene ends but instead of switching gears into the third act, Moby's too-old song kicks in and the lights came on. So there's some real structural and pacing issues there that made me feel weird. There's also some... quite honestly laughable plot turns that I found idiotic. This involves spoilers so stop reading if you care. The main driving force behind Renner's character is that he needs these meds (excuse me, "chems") because without them, he'll lose his super intelligence. Yes, he's afraid of becoming an idiot. His character, before being recruited, was dumb as a post and so he knows he won't survive if he goes back to that. What's crazy is that he plays a few beats like the stupidity is starting to kick in, but it's like in the middle of a chase. He starts to zone out (i guess like how idiots do) and has problems focusing. I found that whole idea hilarious. Ed Norton even says at one point "He's got 4 hours left until he loses his brain." Huh? I wish they would've gone further with it and have him start making poor decisions, like telling them to go through this door except instead of an exit it's a broom closet, or start calling Rachel Weisz by her wrong name or something. Start drinking Coors Light, getting caught up in televisions or something. Having trouble tying his shoes. That would have been great. At another point, one of the government techs asks Ed Norton (who fills the Chris Cooper/Joan Allen role of Guy-who-spends-entire-movie-in-a-room-telling-people-to-show-him-stuff) about the other top secret assassin program they have up and running called "Larx 13." Aside from the requisite shock from higher eschalon intelligence officers about the program's existence, the tech's computer monitor just has a giant "LARX 13" on his screen in like 140-point type. Like it flashed on his screen like that and he said "oh yeah!" or even worse, he thought "hey what about that other program... let me bring up my notes" and it was just this giant text screaming at him. I guess it's a tiny detail to nitpick but I found whatever scenario that would lead to this top-secret title being typed as large as possible on this guy's screen to be hilarious. So... I guess not a terrible movie but compromised for me by several fairly big problems and a handful of ridiculous moments. Eh.
08.08.12	Warrior	Gavin O'Connor	Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton kick the crap out of each other because Nick Nolte was a bad father in this exceptionally well-executed MMA fighting movie. I don't really have much to say. It's not like it played out any differently than I thought it would but the film is so well-acted and directed that it's good anyway. Not like showy Raging Bull direction or anything but you know, solid naturalistic realism. Solid movie.
08.06.12	Insidious	James Wan	James Wan and Leigh Whannel tell a non-saw story that doesn't completely suck. Sorry to start it off this way but I still remember how much I hated Death Sentence and how ridiculous Dead Silent or whatever that ventriloquist dummy movie looks so I had more or less completely written these guys off. Instead they deliver a very classical horror movie that I honestly like more the more I think about it. A family thinks their house is haunted when their kid falls into a coma and they start seeing ghosties. A lot of it veers pretty close to Poltergeist, which in my mind stands as one of the all-time scariest best horror movies ever, and sometimes falls short because of that similarity but for the most part manages to differentiate itself enough to stand alone. There are a few things like... you have to be ok with music stings and "cheap" scares to like this movie, but also some genuinely creepy imagery that has stayed with me until the next day. I feel like if I had written this note last night I would've said "pretty good with a really stupid ending" and called it good but since sleeping on it I have to give the film some more credit because it has stayed with me more than I thought it would. It's kind of a weird mix because I thought a lot of the stuff they did could've been done better but still works as is. Like the old lady in the photographs. It's SO on the nose that you could almost laugh at it... certainly nothing close to the Slender Man photos online with how it takes a second to see him and somehow that's even more creepy... but then they show the photo with her hand and I was like "ok, yeah. that works." The same goes for pretty much every gag. Why the lady has to wear the gas mask is beyond me, but it makes for a pretty creepy scene nonetheless. I also loved Whannel and the other dude's roles as the bumbly assistants. They perfectly fill the comic relief in the best way possible. Their constant bickering was pretty funny and really broke the constant tension and also called out some of the more ridiculous conventions being used... like the UV filter picture-viewer. Ridiculous "tool" but the execution of seeing the hallway in the different filters definitely worked for me. Perhaps the biggest stretch was the ending, where the husband basically goes into Craig T. Nelson's TV to find marryann. It's really weak and vague and looks like a TV-budget set with a lot of smoke going on. I almost wish we didn't see any of that. Actually... yeah. I officially wish we stayed in the room with the wife and didn't see anything in the spirit world or whatever. That would have been awesome. Anyway, I didn't think this was the best movie in years or anything like that so I should stop writing. i did like it though and thought it had some genuine scares. The music really brought a good tone to it I thought. The beginning scene and score basically said "hey! listen! this is a motherfucking horror movie. We're not disguising it! Let's go!" which i appreciate.
08.04.12	Paranormal Activity 2	Tod Williams	It's kind of crazy to me that this is now a 4-part franchise that seems to be stretching thinner and thinner with every release, but I can't deny that the formula works so why not. I do kind of wish I had seen this before watching the 3rd one. It would've made much more sense with the grandmother and whatnot. Anyway, this was kind of exactly what I expected with the addition of a few really kind of stereotypical terrible things thrown in to make it not as good as the first. For one, is there some secret test or union that you have to join when you decide you want to be a housekeeper or nanny or whatever that if english is not your first language you must possess expert knowledge in the occult and have any number of tricks up your sleeve in how to deal with pesky paranormal phenomena? If all my knowledge came from movies I'd swear it was true because this is like the 100th nanny that in tune with the spirit world that the stupid homeowners don't believe and fuck themselves because of it. Also, the husband's stubborn disbelief is really weak, especially considering that Meeeeekahh in the first film handled the ramp-up much more believably while still getting the same result (i.e. doing nothing). All this escalating weird shit happens in like 10 days and your entire family is telling you something's weird and you still don't believe it? Ugh. But except for that, I liked it. I am really taken with the jarring editting and scene structure of these movies. Every shot brings a little bit of rediscovery with it as you constantly have to re-check what time it is, which room you're looking at, and how much time has past since the last cut. Then you get these "Night #23" title cards that say "ok watch closely for the first where's waldo sign of the scary shit that's about to come on screen because you may very well be scared by a loud noise..... NOW! AH FUCK!!!! now it's daytime again relax." Just over and over this works for some reason. It's worked on me 3 times and I'll probably see the fourth one too (there goes the neighborhood!!!). oooOOooOOOOOOooooh
08.01.12	Killer Elite	Gary McKendry	I guess I saw the original Killer Elite because I have a note about it on this site. I really don't remember much about it though... I think I saw it along with a glut of Bronson action movies like The Mechanic that kind of all seemed the same to me. Anyway, I don't think this has anything to do with the old one other than the name. Uh... Jason Statham is like a mercenary guy and Clive Owen is part of some secret group of British dudes and... some stuff about Oman and it takes place in 1980. And Robert DeNiro is in it. It's kind of a mess. I liked the parts where they're plotting how to assassinate each dude but Munich did it better and it really didn't feel period at all. I mean it wasn't bad or anything but not really good either. blah.
07.31.12	Tabloid	Errol Morris	I'm glad that Errol Morris has returned to less famous subject matter like Fog of War and Standard Operating Procedure but to be completely honest I wasn't taken with this story that much. I know it's completely subjective but I found the subjects in Mr. Death and Fast, Cheap & Out of Control a lot more captivating. This felt more like an extended episode of First Person. I liked the last 15 minutes or so though. Booger was great.
07.30.12	The Nines	John August	Ryan Reynolds in an odd little sci fi m ovie that's also about how tv sucks. I had heard that this was a bit of an overlooked gem. I can kind of see it although it's also kind of minor note forgettable. Not bad by any means but, for whatever reason, just not really that special either. Or maybe it is but it just hasn't settled yet, who knows. I liked it more or less. definitely not bad. I guess that's it!
07.29.12	The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo	David Fincher	After reading the book and watching the Swedish film, this one was really more about seeing what Fincher did with it than anything else. I'm pretty much over the story, especially this first one. I guess America is too because I remember this not going over terribly well. It was ok. Everything looked like I thought it would. Kind of a by-the-numbers expected-levels-of-quality exercise that unfortunately was not fresh at all for me. It was good enough to watch through, seeing how they stayed closer to the book than the Swedish film in some ways and steered away from it in others, but there's probably not enough here to make me a fan of it. At this point I'm way more interested in diving into the special features since Fincher is like the last person in Hollywood to insist on anything more than 5-minute featurettes culled from EPK footage.
07.27.12	The Dark Knight Rises	Christopher Nolan	Skipped out of work early to see this at the IMAX. I feel like... I don't care about 3D at all, there's not really many movies I HAVE to see theatrically anymore, and I'll enjoy most things just as well on my couch or computer screen... but Nolan shooting 70mm will get me in an IMAX seat. I'm kind of surprised this isn't sold out straight for weeks. I remember having to plan a week or so out for Dark Knight but I guess this isn't catching on like wildfire like the last one. I don't think my screening was sold out. Anyway, so that's why it says IMAX rather than Netflix or DVR. How's the movie? Well I managed to remain opinion-free on the film, that is to say I didn't listen or read anyone's reaction other than they liked it or didn't like it. The plot is taken in part from pretty famous batman storylines so I wouldn't say I was completely in the dark about what to expect but still for a movie this anticipated I did pretty well in not spoiling myself. I wanted to go in with tempered expectations of a good movie. Not an outstanding movie but a good movie. I think that's what I got. So... there are massive spoilers from here on out. be warned. I love that Nolan's Batman franchise is not episodic in any way. I can't remember if Falconi and all the other crime bosses got killed at the end of the last one or not, but I feel like specific attention was paid to bring back previous characters to make the world more consistent. This one unifies with the first movie to make the second one the outlier, but I think there's no other way to tie an ongoing brand like Batman up with any sort of finality other than limiting the scope to what you've already introduced. Killing off the villians also helps. So with all that in mind, I thought it was a good end to the trilogy. It's not the phenomenon that The Dark Knight was, but I think it's still better than Batman Begins and it accomplishes something that I don't think I've ever seen in a comic book movie to date: a good ending. Oh and I absolutely loved that William Devane was the president. How awesome would that be in real life? OK probably terrible but just for a second it would be great. He makes a fantastic movie president. So yeah... Maybe I didn't spoil anything, who knows. Anyway, my initial reactions are that I enjoyed it quite a bit. I loved the image quality that 70mm brings. The cityscapes, beginning plane sequence, driving stuff, and whatever else the shot were all really good. It's a subtle effect the first time through when you're absorbed in the story to notice the grain switch back and forth but I feel like it's a great subtle effect that leaves people saying "why doesn't Movie X look as good as that Batman one?" Really phenomenal to see a technology used to its fullest. Oh right. I really really thought that Catwoman would ruin this. She didn't. There were a handful more complete boner comic book lines than in previous films though so I'm glad there won't be a fourth (please I hope there's no Robin movie) because it definitely was on a slope toward typical kids-movie stuff. The maturity and realism of this series is what will set it apart in the history books and I felt like they were playing pretty close to the line a few times here.
07.25.12	Real Steel	Shawn Levy	Hugh Jackman connects with his son through the futuresport of robot boxing. I think the movie works because of the successfull integration of a near-future setting with a complete by-the-numbers genre story. I very much liked how the future was not completely futuristic (except for Bing sponsoring an arena). With this subtle tweak the story managed to work on me. It's a weird feeling to watch a scene so completely ridiculous but still can't help but like it. That kind of sums up the whole movie. I think if I start to dissect it too much it'll fall apart so I'll just say that I enjoyed it and leave it at that.
07.22.12	Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy	Tomas Alfredson	Gary Oldman and a really solid supporting cast play 70s British intelligence officers, one of whom is a MOLE!!!!!!!!! Seriously though, this is a wonderful throwback to the hardcore spy movies of the 60s and 70s. And by that I mean the serious ones like The Spy Who Came In From The Cold or Three Days of the Condor... The Quiller Memorandum... and less the spoofs or goofs like the Flint and Matt Helm stuff. Completely straight, no action really, lots of talking that you really have to strain to follow, and still you kind of have to watch it a second time to really follow each beat. I really thought these movies died in the 80s and it's pretty awesome to see another one pop up. And talk about that cast. In the beginning of the movie, we see John Hurt, the head dude, step into a room of his senior staff. In one shot you're introduced to Ciaran Hinds, Colin Firth, Toby Jones, some other dude, and Gary Oldman. The guy I don't know does a great job too but still... all these actory type actors all around the same table. Fuck yeah. The cast is padded out by Guy Ritchie favs, Tom Hardy, and a few other random familiar faces. I love how since it's the 70s people totally embrace balding. I feel like it's been a long time since I've seen so many actors with non-shaved balding heads. it's great. One scene in particular one guy (who I remember seeing somewhere, had to look it up to realize he was one of the husbands in Friends with Money) is just out of a gym shower after raquetball and his hair is CRAZY all over the place. Awesome. So yeah, this movie took me a while to pull me in but by the end of the first hour I was firmly embraced. I just love how substantive it is. Gives me some faith that maybe more of these adult (in the most non-porn way imaginable) movies might get made. And of course, Oldman was fantastic and understated and quiet. A master at work, you know? ok, gushing over I guess.
07.22.12	Chronicle	Josh Trank	I think I've mentioned this before but I had an idea a long time ago for a really realistic take on people with super powers. It kind of spawned from me wishing I could TK idiots off the road and leave their cars in ditches while i drove in peace. Anyway, then Heroes came along and then i feel like several more came along, the latest being this. A trio of high school kids find a meteor in the woods and touch it and get awesome powers. The problem is one kid is from a problematic home so thanks to his mom's cancer and his dad's drunken abuse he kind of becomes a super villain. This is also a "found footage" movie along the lines of Blair Witch and Diary of the Dead. There was a lot to like about this movie but also a lot that I didn't like. First the good: -Glad to see Wallace! -The climactic fight scene was maybe the best use of found footage that i've seen. They switch between helicopter cameras, security cameras, news cameras, police car dsahboard cameras, private citizen phone cameras, and whatever else they could think of to capture the events. It's really impressive. -The ideas and basic plot of the film is pretty sweet Now the bad: -Everywhere but the climactic fight scene the camera thing is really forced and constantly explained so that we don't for one second think it's just a normal movie -The dialogue and most of the acting is atrocious. I mean really really bad. I think they yelled each others' names like 300 times. It was a pain to sit through consistently horrible lines delivered by kids more or less. -the kid's evil turn is kind of sudden. the apex predator monologue is facepalm-worthy. So... it was a good idea laced with crappy dialogue performed sub-par. I think there's probably more good than bad here though. I wonder if I should just write my damn idea down and trunk it for 10 years until the idea seems fresh again...
07.19.12	Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol	Brad Bird	Brad Bird can kind of direct actors! more notes later
07.18.12	Rampart	Oren Moverman	Woody Harrelson plays a dirty cop in 1999 Rampart division of the LAPD. There was a huge scandal of some sort there at that time that was part of the original inspiration for the tv show The Shield. Harrelson's character is a bit like Vic Mackey except for being in a drug unit he's just a patrol officer. I'm a pretty huge fan of James Ellroy. I don't know what percentage of the final script was his and what was the director's but I found several signature Ellroy elements here. I love how the movie isn't about the Rampart scandal but rather just set there in the background (much like how the riots figure in Dark Blue). I also love how the macguffin of the movie is whether orr not Harrelson's character is being framed. Several of the key incidents are expertly filmed to be completely from Harrelson's point of view so you really aren't sure if he's just being paranoid (which he definitely is) or if there's a plot afoot (which... who knows!?). I also love that Harrelson's character is a complete asshole. It's like a more believable Training Day. Harrelson delivers a great performance... maybe his best since Natural Born Killers and certainly in the same vein as Mickey Knox. The supporting cast is also stellar. Big faces pop up regularly throughout the whole movie, giving me a constant stream of little presents. The only false notes I felt were Robin Wright's character and his kids. They both seemed a little off and foreign, like it's definitely a dude who wrote this. Maybe I just haven't seen that before so it seems offputting to me but Wright's character is kind of a mess to me. Other than that though, great movie.
07.15.12	Larry Crowne	Tom Hanks	Tom Hanks loses his job at K-Mart because he doesn't have a college degree so he goes to school and has Julia Roberts for a teacher. You know, I really am a fan of Tom Hanks. He's one of those movie starts where you feel like aside from being a great diverse actor he's probably a super nice guy in real life and the whole world would love to hang out with him on the weekends. Personally, I feel like I appreciate him as a director more than most people. His Band of Brothers, From the Earth to the Moon, and Tales from the Crypt episodes were all great and I am an unabashed fan of That Thing You Do! I've often said that if I ever for some reason found myself at a press junket for some Tom Hanks movie I'd take my 15 minutes to talk to him about That Thing You Do! rather than whatever movie I'm supposed to be talking to him about. I think it's a fun well-made movie that will someday be considered an under-appreciated gem. So when I heard this sucked i REALLY didn't want to believe it. I could not have been rooting for this movie more. Unfortunately, it just wasn't there. As a comedy it wasn't very funny; as a drama it wasn't very dramatic; it wasn't weird enough to be quirky; not absurd enough to be surreal. It just kind of sat there in this middle zone where not enough happened to be anything other than mediocre. It's a real shame and I hope this doesn't turn Hanks off directing more. I think I remember him selling this movie upon release as some good-vibes type story that needs to be out in the world right now, but honestly aside from his character's random optimisim (I got no sense who he was or why he was so happy to be in a major crisis) I don't see the good vibes or the topicality. A real shame. Oh, and Bryan Cranston's porn addiction was like the fakest most PG-rated porn addiction ever.
07.14.12	Hated	Todd Phillips	Todd Phillips made this in college. It's a 16mm 50-minute feature about punk rocker G.G. Allin and his batshit crazy behavior in the name of rock and roll. So... where to start. OK. Todd Phillips. I remember a long time ago when I was doing Cheese and Whine with Jim he was kind of taken with this online short called something like Black People Hate Me and They Hate My Hat. I thought it was pretty good too. It was made by Andrew Gurland, who's only previous credit was a documentary called Frat House which apparently HBO bought but never aired. The rumor was that parts of the doc were faked and since the whole thing kind of hinged on how terrible frat hazing is... the credibility was paramount. So that doc was co-directed by Todd Phillips. Anyway, Jim ended up sending Gurland an email interview which was answered with short flippant replies but I think we "published" it anyway. I guess I mentioned all that because when you hear the name Todd Phillips today, people who know him probably know him for The Hangover, or maybe Old School, or maybe if you're a hipster Road Trip. The uber-hipsters (Anderson from The Film Vault included, which is why I bothered to go back and watch this) will say that THIS is his best movie. I officially agree. The movie is like a gritty documentary from like 1981 or something, like very similar to the first Decline of Western Civilisation (why is that movie hard to find? I remember it being great. Like when Penelope Spheeris subtitled the song's lyrics on the screen so you could tell the singer was getting maybe 3 syllables of every verse out) in that it's gritty and involves lots of really poor-quality footage and bad lighting and it's all forgivable because the subject is completely enthralling and temporary like you can tell this whole world is going away 6 months after the cameras stop rolling. EXCEPT it's like 1991. Terminator 2 and JFK are in theaters and kids are watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoons while this stuff is happening. This is not 1976 London. This is not CBGB's heyday. This is like... a month before Guliani cracked down on crime. It only looks that gritty and old because it's a student film shot on 16 with a student crew (Andrew Gurland operating the boom mic). Allin himself is the best documentary subject a film student could ask for. His band is full of misfit assholes, his fans are violent lunatics, and he's completely open and willing to be on camera for everyone to see. The film definitely has a film-school rebel attitude. The scene where GG appears on NYU campus and tries to get people to give him clothes to destroy before he chucks a few chairs and causes a bunch of students to flee like gazelles when the lions start charging felt more like a show of honor to me than anything pertinent to the story. I feel like you even see Phillips being led to the principal's office or whatever while his crew buddies try to keep filming the security guards. Then there's an insert of a memo from MYU saying GG Allin's leaving peacefully if he agrees to never come back. Total film school crap. But also because of this attitude, some of GG's most outrageous behavior is shown with absolutely no hesitance or remorse and that perfectly fits GG's persona. No studio could ever have made this movie as well as a film school student did because no studio in their right mind would think that seeing this stuff was not illegal or pornographic. So we have this perfect confluence of events where a punk student asshole finds a punk rocker asshole and films him like a punk rock documentary. Everything's rough and raw and full of piss, both the subject and the film. Of course it's also extremely voyeuristic. It's pretty clear that GG and several of his bandmates, fans, and family are mentally ill. For whatever reason (probably the fact that he's a singer in a band versus a hobo asking for change) his audience, the media, and ultimately the viewers of this doc find it acceptable to marvel at him like a freakshow, I guess with varying degrees of pity. I mean I kind of felt sad for him. The film talks to his high school buddies and mentioned a weekend where GG's brother slipped him some acid and you can totally infer that it flipped the crazy switch in his brain and from then on he was pretty messed up. The stuff with his dad sounds like he had some problems and has successfully passed them on to his son. It's kind of sad, especially at the end. I've written enough. It's a great documentary. Side Note: I see that Frat House is now on Youtube. I might have to give that a watch just to see what the big deal was. I wonder what happened to Andrew Gurland.
07.14.12	Transformers: Dark of the Moon	Michael Bay	I guess you could say it's better than the first two but still well below the level I'd call good. At least I could tell what's going on... this one is also clearly the most blatant kid's-movie type demographic too. You knw, from watching the original G.I. Joe movie recently... these Hasbro franchises are for kids. They make no sense to adults so maybe we shouldn't expect them to. Oh yeah except Michael Bay spends like 200 million dollars on it so the whole world has to like it. There's that. This was pretty crappy. I wonder where Bay's career will go. I remember the thrill of seeing people falling out of the exploding building in the trailer for Armageddon and that movie's script and story are ridiculous without the effects. Since these amazing visual effects are now more or less de rigeur and not really thrilling audiences on their own anymore, I wonder... The effects in this movie are really good but it doesn't really do much for me since everything else is so stupid. Bad Boys 2 will probably end up being his best movie, right?
07.13.12	Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator	Helen Stickler	Documentary about some famous skateboard guy Gator who ended up going to jail for murder. I can only guess that this movie exists because of Dogtown + Z-Boys or maybe it's a happy coincidence that it was so popular right before this or whatever. In any case, I'd never heard of it until it was mentioned on The Film Vault podcast and I guess I was interested enough to enqueue it. It's a pretty good doc. I feel like it's very similar to every other rise-and-fall story but the details of the crime are pretty chilling and the 80s atmosphere stuff in the background of all the impressive amount of footage put together is also interesting. I enjoyed the parts where it talked more about the skateboard industry as a whole as compared to this guy Gator so the middle was my favorite part. Not bad.
07.12.12	Lost in America	Albert Brooks	Albert Brooks decides to drop out of society (relying on his nest egg) and travel the country in his RV with his wife to find themselves. Their first stop is Vegas to renew their vows. Hilarity ensues. I've always considered this and Defending Your Life to be why people love Brooks and his movies. I've seen Defending Your Life way more than this so I thought it was time to revisit. I can't believe how great and realistic and funny the scene with his boss is. And how he keeps saying they want to touch indians. and the whole nest egg thing. There's several scenes in here that are absolutely classic. Really the whole movie is pretty great. And the manager at the end... ha ha. funny movie.
07.11.12	TRON: Legacy	Joseph Kosinski	TRON 2.0. I like that title much better. It's a disappointing movie because I think a) a TRON sequel these days everybody thought would be a no brainer but is in reality a really hard proposition, and b) several fatal flaws really kill their chosen direction. Young Flynn didn't work for me at all. it was weird and Uncanny Valley and somehow badly lip synched and didn't even look like Jeff Bridges half the time. He's only good from like one angle. And they used A TON of him. Such a pivotal character to be bugged by every time he's on screen. It's also like...exactly the same story as the first one. I thought we solved all this users vs. programs nonsense 20 years ago? So Flynn goes on this crazy adventure inside a mainframe then invents a virtual world with exactly the same problems? That leads me to... I have no idea what's going on through most of it. The first movie was awesome becuase it was a rough analogy to the Encom mainframe but this is... what, a game? Why would Flynn create a game world with the same exact gladiator games that he found to be inhumane in the first movie? I just don't get it. I guess I'm geeking out too deep here but shouldn't this be the one movie that can actually hold up to geeky introspection? And I guess he just lives in a garage? and grills every night? with a huge bay door open on the river but somehow he's not vandalized or robbed or succumbed to pneumonia for sleeping in open air next to a river every night? whatever. Meh. The visuals were nice though. That first shot of the space paranoid (or whatever the floating legged thing is called) is pretty awesome. And I loved the score but... Well I loved the score but thought it was wrong for the movie. For some of the scenes the elegiac sweeping synth Vangelis-like score makes sense, but I really thought the action sequences would get pumping Daft Punk tunes more akin to their albums than the same melancholic stuff. I was strongly reminded of Deus Ex: Human Revolution's music which was excellent and PERFECTLY suited to that game. That and stuff like Drive and everything Vangelis ever did. It's a great score. I just feel like it often undercut the thrill or tension or adrenaline of the scenes. So yeah... disappointing as I'd heard. I'm still glad I saw it but... give me the original any day (and let me listen to the soundtrack in my car or something).
07.10.12	Resurrect Dead	Jon Foy	Toynbee Idea In Kubrick's 2001 Resurrect Dead On Planet Jupiter This is a doc about these mysterious tiles that appear on various streets around Philly and really the whole east coast. I was not familiar about these until hearing about it on The Film Vault podcast. That made me curious enough to watch it. It's a detective story where a group of misfits obsessed with these tiles tries to track down who's behind them. The movie's ok. It's a little thin if you don't find the subject that interesting or have no direct experience with them and unfortunately neither the investigators or the investigatee are interesting enough to carry your interest like Winnebago Man. For me, the various clues and steps along the way were enough to hold me but the ending is a bit... well... I'm sure everybody involved hoped for a stronger ending. Eh... maybe because Dear Zachary's still on my brain but I didn't love this. I didn't dislike it either but I have a hard time saying much more than that.
07.10.12	Modern Romance	Albert Brooks	Albert Brooks plays a neurotic nincompoop habitually self-destructing his relationship. I appreciate how Brooks in this movie - and really his whole career - is unafraid to portray a character that is not exactly likable. It's a really weird flavor of romantic comedy where the guy in every scene consistently whines and does generally annoying things, but you end up liking the movie anyway. Well, mostly liking it. My favorite parts involved his newly-separated desperation to change up his life and how easily every salesman sees and exploits it. Brooks' brother as the sportingwear salesmane is great, upselling him on running shoots, sweatpants, wrist wallets, and everything else in the store. That whole sequence is pretty great. The constant suspicion and needling that he does towards his girlfriend about if she's seeing somebody else kind of grated on me after a while though. This movie was made in 1981 and for some reason seems way more dated than any other movie made at any time to me. It's constantly checking manual tape answering machines that he has to turn on or off, stopping at pay phones to call people, driving around LA in his little Porsche eating at restaurants with oversize laminated menus and referring to his relationship as "going together." Plus his job as an editor dealing with film on a flatbed rig and old analog mixing studios doing foley work and his excessive stomach, chest, shoulder and back hair all scream a different time to me. It's really strange that this should strike me as weirder than some 40s noir or 60s Sirk movie but for whatever reason it does. It feels more early 80s than my own personal memory of that time (granted I was a little kid but whatever. those memories are deeply embedded!) I also have Lost in America which I've seen before but not in a long time. It'll be interesting to see if I find that movie, which I believe takes place all over the country, as dated. So... an interesting movie with a handful of moments. James L. Brooks was also great as the director Brooks' character works for. I liked how they had him working in the AIP building even though his seeming success and Porsche and whatnot were a tad bit incongruous with working on cheapies. He also mentioned being at Peter Bogdanovich's Nickelodeon wrap party so maybe he was doing this movie as a favor or somehting like that. I'm definitely thinking too much about this. Oh, Super young Bruno Kirby as his assistant editor. That was cool. Anyway, decent movie. I doubt it'll stay with me like Defending Your Life and my distant memories of Lost in America ("Nest Egg!!!") but it wasn't bad.
07.09.12	The Amateurs	Michael Traeger	Jeff Bridges heads up a flat-out amazing ensemble cast, all playing idiots in a small town that get behind his decision to shoot a porno in the most innocent and heart-warming way possible. Aside from a weird meta ending that you kind of see coming, I really enjoyed this. It definitely has a minor vibe like it doesn't make many ripples in the pond and everybody's performances are pretty low key, but there's a certain joy in all these characters' idiotic naivete that I found charming. I drew a lot of comparisons to that Paul Newman movie Nobody's Fool. That one's probably better just because the characters are a little more believable, but the easy-going Sunday afternoon vibe of the movie matches this for me. Oh, Beautiful Girls. This movie shares some very strong similarities with Beautiful Girls (in that it has a strong ensemble cast and largely takes part in a bar where they all hang out). Sometimes it's fun to just hang back and enjoy these actors having fun with one another. I became aware of this movie through Jeff Bridges' website. Man, he has a great website. His photography collections on sets of movies are outstanding and I remember looking through his book for this movie and realizing the cast and seeing what fun he had on it, Seriously, practically every speaking role is by some recognizable actor bringing something to the table. Years later I finally sat down to watch it. I don't know if I'm in the minority or not but I like this. It made me feel good.
07.09.12	The Good, The Bad, The Weird	Jee-woon Kim	I avoided this at FantasticFest due to my aversion to "Japanese Weird" movies; a favorite of the festival and something i find to be cheaply-produced and arbitrarily insane. Of course, since then I've come to realize several things about this movie, such as it's Korean rather than Japanese, not really all that weird, and directed by the guy who followed this up with I Saw the Devil which I liked quite a lot. Shame on me I guess. Well, I finally saw it. I really don't want this to sound like I think all Korean people look alike, but I think at least one of the three main stars of this movie have been in every Koream movie that I've seen made in the last ten years (which is pretty much all of them... I haven't seen that many Korean movies). I guess they both like working with Chan-wook Park (or is it Park Chan-wook? I never know. I think Chan-wook Park rolls off my western round-eye tongue better so that's what I'm saying). Anyway... I very much liked the action sequences in this movie. The beginning, the various shoot-outs, and the massive desert chase toward the end are all excellent and very well shot. Where it fell flat to me - and one of the reasons why I didn't catch it at the fest - is when it steers too close to its source material. It's... just not Leone. The music isn't Morricone. And that one guy sure as shit isn't Clint Eastwood. I liked the other two and think they did a good job but as soon as Blondie catches Tuco and forms an uneasy partnership with him I felt like I'd just rather be watching The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. The showdown at the end is like an odd knock-off of the original where everybody just gets hit in their arms over and over. It just doesn't compare to the original in my opinion. I wish it was a looser re-telling or something like that. The scenes that weren't direct correlations were very nice. At least I've seen it now. I'm not too bummed about missing it theatrically.
07.06.12	It Might Get Loud	Davis Guggenheim	Jimmy Page, The Edge, and Jack White get together to chit chat, talk guitars, and jam. I've never been a huge guitar guy (my personal interests tend toward drums then bass then singing then like... theremin, musical saw, and mouth-harp... then guitar) but I must say that for as completely guitar-nerdy that it is, this doc is strong enough and to hold your interest if you're a fan of rock music at all. I can easily see the connection between Page and White's styles through the Blues but The Edge is a real interesting choice for the middle generation between the two. I'm not sure I can think of a better choice but The Edge certainly seemed like a surprise at first. His style is completely antithetical to the other two at first, but the doc does a good job of using him to explore the different boundaries and avenues guitarists can take their instrumet. Like I said, complete guitar-nerd stuff. I did find it interesting to hear The Edge talk about Punk music and rebelling against these indulgent 70s rock guys with their 15-minute solos and think that Page was more or less the Progenitor of that whole movement. Like The Song Remains The Same doesn't have a goddamn 30-minute version of Dazed and Confused. At another time in the movie, Page starts playing the Whole Lotta Love riff and you see both other guys can't help but become total fanboys. The Edge even gets up just to stand closer and watch. Jack Black has to cover his face because he can't help but smile. These guys, important in their own right, still bow down to Page. Moments like these really showcase the three generations on display here and make you geek out for them all. The last shot is also great. The camera pulls back as all three are in the midst of an acoustic jam to show the entire crew standing off to the side watching. The perk for this gig is getting to be there and watch these guys together. I get the sense that's why this movie exists... the filmmakers are huge fans and had some excuse to put them in a room together and I can't blame them. I got a bunch of enjoyment out of it.
07.04.12	Dear Zachary	Kurt Kuenne	Holy shit. You know what a definition of Good Movie is? When you hear how great a movie is over and over and when you finally see it you are still fucking blown away. What can I even say about this movie... without... i mean how can i talk about it like it's a thing to be critiqued. That's how personal and intimate this documentary is. It's overflowing with things to say. It feels kind of like you're watching it on fast forward because the director has so much to tell you in so little time. Immediately you're drawn in and leaning forward the whole time. And you... whew. this one really took me in. The best movie I've seen in a while. It's weird how a great documentary kind of sits in a different area separate from fictional narrative. Great movie-movies can definitely make you feel and heighten your experience in the world but the direct imperfect truth of a documentary can really sit with you for a long time. This kind of reminds me of this one doc I saw on HBO years ago about a friend who wanted to break into Hollywood and become a movie maker but killed himself instead. I wish I could remember the title or more information about that film because it's lived with me for a long time, particularly the climax of the film where the guy goes to vegas in a last-ditch effort to raise money to make his movie. That movie was made by a friend of the subject and the amateurish quality along with the deep involvement of the narrator is very similar to Dear Zachary. Great great movie. Now I have to go to sleep!? this sucks.
07.04.12	Take Me Home Tonight	Michael Dowse	Surprisingly decent all-night-party comedy set in 80s yuppie LA. You know, I'm almost on board with Dan Fogler. Every movie I see him in I hate him a tiny sliver less. I really wasn't a fan in Balls of Fury but since then he wasn't that bad in Fanboys, was the best part about that terrible Dane Cook comedy, and is enjoyable in parts here. There's still a few times where he just becomes super obnoxious over the top idiot but more realistic moments here like when he's trying to get it on with the older redhead and when he puts a pound and a half of mousse in his hair to get it to straighten is pretty good. The main girl reminds me of Kristen Stewart a little bit in the face but is probably more attractive? My main complaint about this movie and really all movies like this are that fuck that girl... why is she such hot shit anyway? Why does the guy have to fight, lie, do stupid shit, and beg to get a date with her anyway? Throughout the whole movie I wanted her to be cooler so she'd be worthy of Topher and not the other way around. But I guess that's because I'm a guy. So like I said: surprisingly decent. Not a bad movie at all.
07.04.12	The Expendables	Sylvester Stallone	Stallone rounded up all the action stars for one ultimate romp. I think this movie was destined to disappoint but for what it was (an 80s action movie) I think it was ok. Certainly there's a few "random dispatches" - where some of the dudes kill random people in exciting ways - that were creatively brutal and impressively done (like kicking that guy's head down and slicing that other guy's head off) which is really why the movie exists right? It's all just set-up for the random shots of violence going on. Seen in that light I don't think it's bad. Not a classic or anything but not terrible either. It does make you wish the movie was a hell of a lot better, but oh well. maybe the next one.
07.03.12	Hanna	Joe Wright	Little blonde girl kicks some ass thanks to being raised by Eric Bana and Cate Blanchett plays an antagonist. This was a pretty sweet movie. Great score by the Chemical Brothers and a nice supporting cast. I loved the pervo neo-nazi guy torturing people in tennis shorts. Huh, thought I would have more to say than that!
07.02.12	Exporting Raymond	Philip Rosenthal	The creator and EP of Everybody Loves Raymond travels to Russia to try and consult on a Russian version of the show. Cultural difference-oriented hijinks ensue. Aside from a general question of why he's even there and what stake does he have in it to even care how it comes out (I guess other than the money he'd get for selling scripts and maybe through a consulting contract for Sony Pictures or something. oh yeah and pride in his show), I liked this doc pretty well. The outrageous Russianisms are kind of to be expected, but Rosenthal's blatant awe unhiding expressive face make everything seem real and not shown to me for a joke. Particularly the scene where his driver takes him to the Russian Military museum and they talk about his history of service. That and the scene where he eats dinner at some family's house are really key scenes that elevate it from the expected "hey aren't Russians funny!?" to an actual travelogue for Rosenthal. Plus I'm super jealous because Adam Carolla always mentions how Rosenthal has an amazing house with a home theater and he has movie nights where he gets people to come talk about the films that they watch. How I wish i was somehow in that club... sigh...
07.01.12	Billy Wilder Speaks	Volker Schlondorff, Gisela Grischow	Caught this on TCM. I guess it's from German TV and IMDb says the footage is really from 1988. I can believe it since Wilder still seems pretty spry and active. Mostly this reminded me of Cameron Crowe's interview book and what a great career Wilder had making amazing classic movies. It also made me wish (yet again) for either a dream job or independant wealth that would allow me the time to take a few weeks and revisit Wilder's entire ouvre because really almost every movie he made was great. Even the ones I'm not a huge fan of (like One, Two, Three and Avanti and his last few) are at least interesting and give off the vibe of classic hollywood. Love Billy Wilder.
06.29.12	Battle Los Angeles	Jonathan Liebesman	Sometimes you're in the mood for a cliched war movie, and I know I've thought before that it would be cool to see a standard war movie except the enemy is aliens. Not like ID4 where you're in the white house and shit but just like a Viet Nam or WWII movie where you're on the front lines with the grunts... but with aliens. Well that is this movie. I really high hopes for this. I was holding out, thinking it might have been underrated upon release or something like that. I think it kind of is because a lot of it is pretty sweet. Unfortunately, it's kind of ruined by just how many cliche moments are in here. It's like there was some criteria where every line spoken by a human has to have appeared in at least 4 movies before. They had transcripts that they ran checks on for every page handed in. At first it was kind of comforting, like maybe they were doing it deliberately to root me in the genre as much as they could because the alien stuff is so far out. As the movie went on though and the boring dipshit machismo hoorah-iness of every action of every actor in every shot continued I got to wishing that it was a better war movie. Intolerable if it were human enemies, it ended up being at least watchable for me because of the way they treated the alien invasion. Half-Life 2 definitely came to mind. Gears of War came to mind. District 9 came to mind. I guess my hope would be that this would live up to those but instead it just had tiny glimmers here and there. Should've by all rights been better.
06.25.12	World's Greatest Dad	Bobcat Goldthwait	Robin Williams plays a dad and his son is a collosal prick. Things happen and it's funny in the darkest possible way. I can probably spoil because I guess everyone's already seen it... and indeed i'd had a certain major event spoiled long ago but whatever. If you haven't seen it and dig Bobcat's other movies or dark comedy in general then this fits in nicely. I love how movies like this are very much the protagonist vs. the world. Like the entire world. The protagonist is always more or less cool and very sympathetic and the world is just complete horseshit. What I liked about this movie is that Williams exploits that and reaps the benefits of it until, of course... because he's a good guy, everything rights itself in its shit-ness at the end. It's a very cynical movie but I think people probably agree with it more than they let on. I'm glad I finally got around to seeing it.
06.24.12	Shutter Island	Martin Scorsese	So I had this movie casually spoiled for me in the midst of an Inception discussion. It wasn't a full-fledged this-is-what-happens movie but sometimes just knowing there's something to spoil is enough to actually spoil it. So if you haven't seen this sorry for spoiling it by saying I was spoiled. SPOILERS! Isn't it weird that after typing spoiled like six times i now think that's the weirdest word in the language. spoilers. spoil. like foil? let's spoil thay. let's doyle that. tin spoil. oil of the S type. it's bad don't do it. no one wants to be oiled. eww that potato salad has really oiled. spoil spoil spoil. ugh. anyway, this was disappointingly mediocre. Kind of like Bringing Out The Dead in a why-did-Scorsese-make-THIS? way. I knew the story was going to be compromised for me but I was hoping for some cool style or something. It wasn't bad but just blaaah. And there's something about Leonardo DiCaprio... I don't really have a huge problem with him but something about looking at his face for too long kind of irks me. Stop squinting. So when you add that to this genre, where i find it pretty hard to watch people be insane because it all seems so fake to me. It made this movie drag for me. The scariest part was right at the beginning when that poor bald lady looked at the camera. shudder!
06.20.12	Moneyball	Bennett Miller	Brad Pitt leads a baseball team to some success with the help of Jonah Hill's nerdery. I heard this was good so i kind of expectedly liked this more than i would've thought i would have if i hadn't heard how good it was. does that make sense? much like The Social Network the fact that this movie is good really makes it good because it's not a subject I care or know about at all and yet I found much to like here. Good solid performances, a natural fit for Brad Pitt, perhaps Jonah Hill's last performance where he doesn't look like a big-eared deflated version of himself... all good things.
06.19.12	I'm Still Here	Casey Affleck	Joaquin Phoenix's weird experiment "captured" by Casey Affleck. Throughout most of the movie I thought that the only people who would think this was interesting was Joaquin and Casey. I mean I guess it's interesting as an idea... to create an actor's fallout just to get it on film (or tape), but the instant question of authenticity kind of tinged the whole thing. So once that cat is out of the bat, it's kind of like watching an un-funny version of Borat. Not that great. and probably 20 minutes too long. And the whole world sees Phoenix as even more of a weirdo now just for doing it. Maybe even moreso since it was fake. I kind of see it as a mistake on all fronts, but whatever. Let's hope he's good in The Master.
06.18.12	We Bought A Zoo	Cameron Crowe	Matt Damon buys a zoo after losing his wife to cancer. grief-tinged heartwarmth ensues. I still like Cameron Crowe and will see anything he does, but I feel kind of sad that I haven't really connected with a film of his since Almost Famous and I'm beginning to think he won't make a film better than that. The parts are here but, just like Elizabethtown, so much feel like they are trying too hard or too explicitly. It's not bad per se, but it just doesn't come together like I wish it would.
06.17.12	Crazy, Stupid, Love	Glenn Ficarra, John Requa	The bad thing about not seeing movies for a few years is that pretty much everyone has seen everything before you so there's no surprise discovery or early bragging rights. The silver lining of that situation however is having a general consensus of everything when you sit down to watch something. I probably would've seen Your Highness way before this if they were both new but as it stands, this impulse HBO recording left Natalie Portman's thong in DVR limbo because I heard this was good and that was bad. It also means I don't really have much to say here. It was pretty good. duh. I'm still not a Ryan Gosling fan but I like how Emma Stone called him photoshopped and I think Steve Carell did some good work here. The only time I felt like the movie was straining to hit the formula was when Carell was angry with Gosling. Otherwas, it was decent.
06.17.12	The Prowler	Joseph Zito	A long time ago when I was in the midst of reading James Ellroy's backlog I read some form of interview with him where he listed his 10 favorite film noirs. Two of the movies were unavailable to me: The Lineup and The Prowler. Both are now available I think but I still haven't gotten around to seeing them. Anyway, at the time when I searched around all I could find is this early 80s slasher film which i completely dismissed. I guess I added it to my netflix queue years later in a might-as-well fashion. It's a pretty run-of-the-mill slasher where a returning WWII soldier, jilted by a Dear John letter with great penmanship, puts on his gas mask and sticks a pitchfork through his beloved's (and her new lover's) chest. Fast forward 35 years when some horny teens put on the same graduation thing and blah blah blah helmet-wearing killer starts up again. It's really only notable for a few of the gags, done very well by Tom Savini. He uses white contact lenses a few times which is a nice touch and the general amount of blood used is notably realistic (I would guess). there's one gag in particular concerning a showering girl getting a pitchfork through her chest that's really well done. There's also an exploding head at the end which is more or less worth sitting through 90 minutes of idiots walking around in dark rooms if you're into the genre or just in the mood for a slasher.
06.16.12	Fanboys	Kyle Newman	Finally saw this. Really more out of curiosity than anything else. I knew it would be bad. it's pretty bad. that's about it. Lots of cameos that are mildly amusing but really not that much there. Now I've seen it.
06.14.12	Limitless	Neil Burger	Bradley Cooper takes a pill, gets a haircut, and becomes the smartest man in the world. I think this movie lived or died by its ending. The premise is pretty cool and things more or less go how you'd expect - like a Superman movie where the only real question is where the kryptonite is at any given scene - but the ending really has the power to either make this an awesome movie or just another forgettable flick. I love the ending of this movie. And nothing else really gets in its way. Cooper is good, the direction is good, script good, and I guess De Niro felt like acting a bit this time out because he's good as well. Really good movie.
06.14.12	NY 77: The Coolest Year in Hell	Henry Corra	This was originally a VH1 documentary and I watched it on youtube but I'm gonna write a note about it anyway because I liked it and it felt like a legit enough documentary to me even if it didn't get theatrical release. It's heavy on the various music scenes that exploded in '77 NYC but also included several contextual areas like Ed Koch's mayoral campaign race, the sleaziness of 42nd street and Plato's Retreat, the 25-hour city-wide black-out, and the Son of Sam murders. Even with all that, a bunch of time is spent on the origins of hip hop in South Bronx, disco mania wherever the paradise garage and studio 54 were, and punk underground in soho and the lower east side. Tons of interviews are included and what looks like a sizable animation and music budget make this quite a polished look at what has become a mild obsession for me. It seems like I've now attacked this period of NYC from every different media from the books like Sleazoid Express and Tales from 42nd Street and Last Night A DJ Saved My Live to movies like Summer of Sam and Times Square and Midnight Cowboy to the music of all the bands that were hitting back then, it seems like i have a near-complete picture of that place at that time in my head. Granted it's probably an extremely romanticised version of that place at that time but still. I'm fascinated by it. So discovering this was a bit like a junkie stumbling across a forgotten crack rock in the couch cushions. I ate it up. Several ideas came out of this. I wish there was more footage of Annie Sprinkle talking about back in the day and the sleaze aspect, which was definitely in the minority compared to everything else. I also wish someone would make a full-blown doc about the Disco Fever like the owner says in his interview. Great doc for a dirty-NYC junkie like me.
06.13.12	G.I. Joe: The Movie	Don Jurwich	Rented out of nostalgic curiosity (much like Transformers a few years back). I have vague childhood memories of Cobra lalalala and the big purple guy's toy version being incredibly disappointing so there were no real big surprises here. really the only thing i got from it is how many Joes make at least cameos. there's like over a hundred dudes here even though 93 of them are incapacitated for the entire film. It really is a toy commercial. The commentary was more interesting than the movie even though the commenter only had about a half hour of stuff to talk about. Still, it's cool to peel back the curtain on my childhood a bit and see how things ended up the way it did. like Sgt. Slaughter wtf? I had to send away for his toy. I probably played with my G.I. Joes to an unhealthy age. They each had such cool names no matter how ridiculous they were for actual military combat. Everything is pretty ridiculous really... hahahaha
06.12.12	Source Code	Duncan Jones	Huh. I'm a bit... mildly disappointed with this. I still liked it overall but based on the strength of Moon I was hoping for a bit more depth here. It kind of bugged me how quickly the guy was found once he actually cared and the whole end thing, while I guess somewhat twisty was still a bit... I dunno, shallow? It's the type of twist that I don't feel like pondering because the rest of the movie doesn't really demand it. Plus it succumbed to the whole i-have-ideas-about-what-i'd-do-that-the-movie-never-addresses thing that, while not exactly fair to the movie, also can't really help but irk me. Maybe that's the video gamer in me. I wish he would've spent a little less time worrying about what's going on with him and more time trying to solve the mission. Anyway, it's still good, I was just hoping for better.
06.10.12	South of the Border	Oliver Stone	Oliver Stone... This is a documentary about how South America's governments have been better off since they went against George W. Bush's agenda and slanted more toward socialism. I'm not very political so I won't pretend to know all the implications here but the gist seems to be Stone saying "hey, these guys are not dictators like our media says they are, they're doing good for their countries and what's bad about that?" For whatever reason, I really like Oliver Stone. I wish he made more movies and they were as good as they were in the late 80s/mid 90s. He's one of those directors that I still follow in hopes that he still has a masterpiece in him. His documentaries have been really interesting in a really critical anti-bush, maybe anti-american way. It's still interesting to see a new perspective on world events that you never ever see in mainstream media.
06.10.12	Pearl Jam Twenty	Cameron Crowe	Cameron Crowe's seemingly passion project about Pearl Jam's long and consistent career. It's exactly what you'd think it would be, but not a bad execution. It reminded me that I should see We Bought A Zoo. I kind of miss Crowe's presence in the film world.
06.08.12	Sharpe's Rifles	Tom Clegg	In the commentary track for Game of Thrones, the kid who plays Jon Snow said his two favorite TV shows were The Wire and Sharpe. I figured I would check it out. It seems more like Sharpe is a series of TV movies a la Horatio Hornblower. From the looks of it there's like 14 of them. I rented the first to see what it was all about. It's a period story taking place around 1800 when the British were fighting the French (huge surprise) and allied with the Spanish. My British history is not good enough to tell you what they were fighting about or what the war was called, but the beginning title card mentioned Napoleon being at his height or something like that. Anyway, a young Sean Bean plays Robert Sharpe: lowborn soldier made Leffftenant for saving some officer's life in the beginning because he's a b'dass shot. This one plays out as a bit of a (even more) historical Dirty Dozen where Sharpe gets handed a group of misfits and gets instructed to go on some secret suicide mission by intelligence office Brian Motherfucking Cox (complete with awesome facial hair). Honestly, the story was fun enough, the actors were good and on paper it seems like I should've liked it, but I just couldn't get past that British TV thing. I was kind of bored through most of it. Don't think I'll be watching the next 13, but I'm glad I saw a little bit at least and learned of its existence. Maybe someday when i'm bored I'll go back through these... or something.
06.07.12	How Do You Know	James Brooks	James L Brooks has managed to make a career of deeper-than-they-need-to-be humanistic romantic comedies that are way better than most other films in the genre. Spanglish suffered from Adam Sandler's performance I think but it kind of weirds me out how this wasn't better received. All the characters are so much more complex than the genre expects. I see the formular that they're following but every character manages to be human enough to soften the edges in the plot and really engage you in their relationships and emotions. Like, We know that Owen Wilson is the bad boy guy who's wrong for her and Paul Rudd is the hangdog nice guy who we all want to see get the girl, but Wilson's character isn't all bad. he's not even mostly bad. He just is. The same goes for Rudd And Witherspoon really. I mean, yeah it's still a romantic comedy, but it's a GOOD romantic comedy. It's just kind of a shame that it didn't come together or resonate like Broadcast News did or Terms of Endearment.
06.06.12	Moon	Duncan Jones	Hey has anyone heard of this movie Moon? It's pretty damn good! Sigh. Well, like everyone pretty much knows, this is really good. Great performances by Sam Rockwell and it's pretty refreshing that the computer is like an anti-HAL. Somehow I managed to stay completely in the dark about the plot of this movie so I was really afraid it would turn into Solaris Part 2 or something but it never really did. It managed to be thoughtful without being ponderous or languid. Very watchable; I feel foolish for not seeing it sooner.
06.02.12	Drive	Nicolas Winding Refn	Finally saw Drive. Liked it ok. Certain things, especially with the end, broke my suspension of disbelief just because they really did not make any sense at all. I get that the guy is aloof but come on. go to a hospital, dude. stabbing wounds to the abdomen are fixable. I think a lot of love for this movie comes from the music (the unapologetic synths are really strong and not just in a nostalgic 80s way) and the "cool" factor with the silver jacket and whatnot, but I think Gosling's character is too silent. his performance kind of bugged me actually. Anyway, still a good movie just for the direction really. there's a weird kind of pacing to scenes that doesn't really behave like it should and that worked for me. Not as extreme as Bronson but definitely still in that vein. I just wished Gosling's behavior made more sense. I feel like they have to have this song yelling "REAL HERO, REAL HUMAN" at my face to get any kind of compassion toward him at all, when if he made a few different choices it could've come naturally. Maybe I just don't buy him as a tough guy like Charlie Bronson or Steve McQueen and that's why his silence bothered me. I just don't feel that he was natural. I guess, from the way these notes are going, that was my one major complaint about the movie. Everything else is pretty good.
05.30.12	The Grey	Joe Carnahan	Liam Neeson and a group of dudes go down in a plane wreck somewhere in Alaska, where they proceed to be hunted by wolves while trying to get back to civilization. I'm a little torn on this. I liked it for the most part, but also had a few issues. I think the wolves looked kinda fake (they didn't actually look fake but the way that they were shot gave away that they were fake) and the flashbacks were eh (especially the one with the hair) and the ending... I felt a little robbed but I guess they had to end it somewhere. It also seemed, toward the end, that each scene was just listing off different ways to die in the wilderness. Perhaps if they had a few fewer survivors they wouldn't have had to stretch to get rid of them. I believed that the actors were cold, and liked Carnahan's restraint throughout most of the movie. It made the few times he embellished really stand out more (like Neeson during the plane crash and Dermot Mulroney's fall). I wish the wolf sound effects weren't so completely over the top though. Who knows, maybe that's what they're like. I don't think so, but who knows. Anyway, decent movie, glad I saw it, but I probably like The Edge and Shoot to Kill more.
04.28.12	Thunder Soul	Mark Landsman	A doc about a Houston highschool jazz band that, thanks to their awesome band leader, became a huge funk hit in the 70s. During the course of the doc, many of the original members of the band come back to the highschool to perform for the now-92 year-old leader. This played South By a few years ago and I remember people loving it and I've heard a lot of the Kashmere band on my pandora station and LOVE the music they made so I was pretty excited to watch this. Unfortunately the doc, as a movie in itself, is kind of mediocre. Maybe that's too harsh. It's probably a good movie but it didn't go anywhere I didn't think it would go. The outpouring of love and appreciation for the old band leader was super emotional like the end of It's A Wonderful Life but in real life and it really tugs at the heart-strings to see all these old guys come back to the old band room and get pick up their instruments again... Perhaps I was just hoping for too much. Thinking about it while I write this though, I'd definitely recommend it to people. Yeah, it's good. Just not the BEST DOCUMENTARY EVR! It's definitely good though. Those old dudes still got it. I wish somehow the movie ended with their full set or something. I think I just wanted more music.
04.27.12	Bronson	Nicolas Winding Refn	So I finially watched this, thanks in large part to Victor since this was basically assigned homework for a podcast we're starting (BREAKING NEWS! it's called Sports and Milk, look for it soon!). When it played FantasticFest I more or less dismissed it as a festival movie even after everyone who saw it told me it was good. Then when Tom Hardy kind of blew up in Inception and Warrior and the opcoming Dark Knight Rises I thought I should go back and see this... then didn't. until now! So I guess it's not exactly a secret that this movie is built on the powerhouse performance of Tom Hardy. Before watching I thought it would be very similar to Eric Bana's performance in Chopper, and while I still see major similarities between the two films, this performance and direction style are very much different. I mean, not so different that they aren't both films about interesting and brutal career prison inmates who excel at violence, but after watching I see Chopper as super-Australian and this as super-European. Refn seems like he's a Kubrick fan. Lots of solitary tableau shots, kind of like one of the cooler trends on the internet lately to make animated gifs of movie scenes that are barely animated. Lots of that in this movie when Hardy's not fighting naked. I'd say it's like 30% still shots of guards standing there or a packed theater watching the camera, 30% Tom Hardy fighting, and 40% Tom Hardy fighting naked. Good movie. It didn't pluck my own personal strings to elevate it to "love" i don't think, but I can definitely recognize the style and certainly the tour de force performance on display.
04.01.12	Grown Ups	Dennis Dugan	So... yeah I netflix'd this at some point! I also watched a movie! Anyway, this definitely falls in the Cannonball Run genre of filmmaking where it's blatantly clear that everyone involved was more interested in having fun shooting the film than making the finished product any good. I can't really fault them... Hey, let's give everybody hot wives and spend 90 minutes cutting on each other like old school buddies, then rake in millions based solely on the cast list! I just wish I was there for the filming rather than watching the movie.
03.09.12	Captain America: The First Avenger	Joe Johnston	Better than I thought it would be. Cap'n was always a problematic character for me when I went through my comic phase... the most enjoyment I ever got out of his series was when they made a new one with a new suit and he kind of self-destructed under the pressure. Anyway, this was handled pretty well with what I thought was a nice mix of action and story. The supporting cast are of a surprising caliber (Stanley Tucci, Tommy Lee Jones, Toby Jones) and all in all I felt it could have been a lot worse. Of course, all these movies kind of get a pass because they load up the hype toward the Avengers film. This one doesn't even have a cool little after-the-credits scene (although the last scene totally could've been after the credits) but a full-fledged trailer for The Avengers. I sure hope that's good because if it isn't, the entire Marvel house of cards kind of comes tumbling down.
03.03.12	Thor	Kenneth Branagh	Well I'll give it this. It's a super comic book-y comic book movie. The stuff in weird Asgard is way better than the Earth stuff. Can't believe Natalie Portman is in this. It's still pretty goofy but hey that's Marvel. Not bad at all really in the context of all these Marvel movies. I really do like how they're doing crossover with an over-arcing story via after-the-credits sequences and shared characters. The rest of my notes contain spoilers: Why does America think Stellan Skarsgaard is an asshole? I'm not sure I've seen him be NOT an evil douche in any english-language movie. In that FantasticFest film I saw though, he was a quiet unassuming guy and it was a great performance! Is it his accent that makes people think he's so un-trustworthy? or his haircut or something? I just wish someone in this country would use him as non-skeevy. It almost happened here. And it was cool to see Hawkeye. It came as a surprise to me so the beginning of that scene where you see a hand grab a bow rather than a sniper rifle was hilarious, but then you see whatshisname and it all clicks together.
02.11.12	X-Men: First Class	Matthew Vaughn	I'd heard this was good. I like Kevin Bacon. James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender are SO hot right now. Matthew Vaughn really should've directed X-Men 3. So why didn't this movie really work for me? Dunno. It just seemed like a re-run or something. Like the first child footage of Magneto was lifted directly from X-Men 1 right? And something about the Hellfire Club as the main villain seemed rather minor to me. I guess I kinda get how the origin stories are everybody's favorite but i dunno... at this point I would've much rather had a more blatantly episodic X-Men movie where they don't have to explain shit and just show us some awesome mutant superpower action. Like The Mutant Massacre or something where it's just balls-out shit going on or maybe talk about some Sentinel stuff. Instead, it felt like a re-tread of the first film to me except the mutants involved are even more obscure. Again, by the numbers I should've found this enjoyable but my takeaway is pretty bland.
01.05.12	Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1	David Yates	Ahh finally, Molly's Harry Potter movie catch-up has caught up and I get to see this for the first time. I really remember the last book the least for some reason so this was kind of like watching a movie version of some dream i had a year ago. I could never quite tell if things felt familiar because I remembered them from the book, because I kind of knew the abstract lego-version from the game, or if I was just tricking myself into believing that i was remember when I really wasn't. Even through that fog though, this was pretty good. I was surprised to see the pace slow considerably since they broke the book in half. There's no way he would've spent that much time in random wilderness locations if this was book 4 or 6. It was kind of nice although even with all the extra time, the whole incident with finding the sword in the froxen lake still made zero sense to me. Huh? I didn't get it at all. I'm looking forward to seeing the last movie though. I think the whole series has been great, even if Mad Eye gets a grand total of 9 minutes of screen time as himself. I feel like James and Lily get more time than he did. Oh well.
12.29.11	The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest	Daniel Alfredson	Last movie in the series and probably the most heavily edited or streamlined of the three. So much of the cat and mouse between The Section and Blomqvist is omitted here, it hardly seems like anything. Furthermore, the whole conflict with Erika backing down rather than taking a new job... probably better for screenplay purposes but it completely changes her character. It's also hard to live up to the complete dismantling of Teleborian in the book but the movie still does a good job of it. Without the human trafficking though the fight at the end seemed a bit arbitrary but whatever. I wonder if these movies are well regarded aside from Noomi Rapace's performance. They seem kind of mediocre to me. Definitely a case of the book clouding my judgement. I'm still glad to have seen them though.
12.27.11	Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince	David Yates	Back at home and trying my hardest to catch up on this series. This was only the second time I'd seen this one and I liked it more than I remembered. Maybe it's because I don't remember the last two books very well so I'm less mindful of all the details that they're skipping but... whatever. This was handled much better than the last one even if the whole thing is super dark (literally, as in hard to see) now and the side characters (including Ron) feel like they're hardly in it at all. Oh Well. It's a good movie nonetheless. Only two more to go!
12.26.11	Back to the Future Part II	Robert Zemeckis	Had to pack and go to bed before seeing the third one but that's alright. Still love these movies.
12.26.11	Back to the Future	Robert Zemeckis	Here's a shocker: Back to the Future looks great on Blu-ray. So did the Jurassic Park trilogy. Not much to say about this except for... home for the holidays watching movies with my parents.
12.25.11	The Girl Who Played with Fire	Daniel Alfredson	Merry Christmas!
12.25.11	Jurassic Park III	Joe Johnston	Merry Christmas!
12.25.11	The Lost World: Jurassic Park	Steven Spielberg	Merry Christmas!
12.25.11	Jurassic Park	Steven Spielberg	Merry Christmas!
12.20.11	The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo	Niels Arden Oplev	Oops. Forgot to write notes about this. Finally getting around to this series after reading the books but before seeing Fincher's take. This was a pretty weird book structure-wise and I think the movie struggles trying to make it work. The end in particular seems really hurried and forced. Do the people who didn't read the book understand why Lisbeth was a blonde at the end? probably not, but on the other hand maybe not knowing every excrutiating step to her financial heist isn't a bad thing. Also the weird complexity of Blomqvist running a magazine but publishing a book is completely side-stepped, probably for the better. All in all it's a pretty bland movie I thought. Sure, Noomi Rapace was great and the male lead as well, but it's just kind of all hurried and bland and not that interesting when i see it on the screen. Bleeding into the second movie a bit because I watched it on Christmas and kept my tradition of no notes on that day, the blonde giant and zalachenko REALLY fall flat on screen. In the book we're inside every character so we really feel them breathe and think but seeing them flash by on the screen is a bit disappointing. Also, without Lisbeth falling in love with Blomqvist, it really takes a whole arc out of the trilogy. Big news right? the books were better.
12.11.11	The Lincoln Lawyer	Brad Furman	I heard this was good. I read and liked the book. I really tried to like this but several things bothered me. -McConaughey. I think I'm over believing him as anything serious. I couldn't believe him in this role at all. -The plot. The book is somewhat complicated. I can't really see this from the eyes of someone not familiar with the story but does it really make sense to anyone? To me it comes off as an interesting twist that quickly gets wrapped up with a confusing deus ex machina. -the lincoln. I never pictured it being that old. Lincoln towncars are pretty comfortable in the back seat but this year's make seemed like a hollywood art director decision to me. fake. So the things I liked best about the book - the realism, the complexity, the process - were all skimmed over or falsified here and the things I kind of put up with the book - the sensational outcome, the shootout at the end - made for kind of a cheap climax to me. This feels like another transitory legal drama that everyone forgets everything about in 3 months. I was hoping it would be better.
12.11.11	Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix	David Yates	Re-watching this for the first time. Still not a huge fan. Umbridge is an unpleasant character. A lot of the movie seems rushed. Practically nothing happens since everyone in the end of this one is in the same exact place as the end of the last one (whoa, voldemort's actually back!), well... everyone except Sirius which didn't seem poignant or noteworthy at all really. I hate how all the story ties up with newspaper headlines and Harry never talks to Cho after learning she was dosed with veritaserum. Lots of loose ends which kind of stands out since the series is usually pretty good about that. Plus this one everyone seems to have grown up all of a sudden. Harry has too many muscles or something. and the teen angst in the book isn't really handled well. Eh. So all in all, still probably my least favorite and definitely the least fun.
12.10.11	Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire	Mike Newell	Playing the next Harry Potter game makes me want to finish catching up with the series. Especially considering I'm currently playing year 7 which I haven't even seen once. So Molly and I watched this. Everybody has long hair in this one. I also don't like how we like Mad Eye for the whole movie then learn it's not really him. Who knows how he really acts but we're supposed to like him for the rest of the series anyway. Still don't like how Sirius isn't really in this at all but whatever, it's still a good movie.
11.12.11	Horrible Bosses	Seth Gordon	Kind of high hopes for this. It had funny moments. It certainly seemed like everyone had fun making it. I'm also glad that little Sam Weir got a screenplay credit along with his cameo. A lot of the comedy seems to come from the R rating itself, like it's funny to put "TOTAL FUCKING ASSHOLE" in big type on the screen and to have Jennifer Anniston talk about breaking a nail from fingering so hard. I mean, kind of cheap laughs but I still laughed so I guess it worked. The ending kind of falls apart when people actually start to die (spoiler!) but other than that I got what I wanted out of it.
11.11.11	When You're Strange	Tom DiCillo	A Doors doc by Tom Dicillo sounded very interesting to me. It mostly was. It's weird how much time I spent while watching this thinking about how well Oliver Stone's movie portrayed everything. I feel like his dramatization gave me more info and insight than this doc did, but it was also interesting to actually see the real people hanging out and talking. Poor Robbie Krieger and his hair. Unfortunately, this came off more like a school assignment for DiCillo than anything definitive or iconic with regards to the band. I mostly wish DiCillo would make more movies like he did in the 90s rather than direct Law and Order episodes. sigh.
11.06.11	Crazy Heart	Scott Cooper	This year's DVRfest closer is on the schedule solely for Jeff Bridges. I'm really not a bit country music guy which led this to falling through my considerable cinematic cracks when it came out, but it was on at one random point and I thought it'd be worth seeing for Bridges' performance. I'm not wrong, of course, and the rest of the movie is tolerable too. I'm being a bit harsh. It's a good movie. I loved seeing solid names in the cast pop up pretty deep in the film. Although Maggie Gyllenhaal's charms have always worked at like half power for me, she did alright here. It's really Bridges' movie though. He's really just on fire these days, right? I loved how the film begins with him cursing a bowling alley. I'm actually kind of surprised by how much I liked this. Some of these "Oscar" movies get so bloated with praise that I'm almost guaranteed to dislike them, especially actor vehicles like this one. This was good though, which was good. Hmm... Not much else to say. It's late Sunday and to be honest I want to get a few HBO shows in before I hit the hey. I'm a little sad that this was yet another year of trying to fit the fest in among normal weekend activities. With any luck, I'll have a second DVR in my little man cave for next year and will give it a little more respect. I'd love to get back to the grandeur of the first three years. Wait, did I say all of this last year? I think I did. Shit... So stats: 7 movies in the past week, 9 in the past month, 87 (ouch!) in the past year, 2237 since the site started. An average of 1 movie per day, 0.3 per month, 0.24 per year, and 0.88 global. At least this year I didn't have a month with no movies like last year, although I only saw 1 in June so I don't know why I'm bragging. Huh. Thank goodness for FantasticFest; it's just about doubling my averages lately. Depressing stats aside, I still enjoy watching movies and I'm more grateful than ever for keeping notes on them. Here's to hoping I keep this going for another 7 years! Pervy old Bogdanovich would be proud.
11.06.11	The Innocents	Jack Clayton	God black and white scope is beautiful. The early 60s was really a great time for cinematography. Wonderfully baroque images of this huge English estate fill each frame as little creepy kids hop around and ghosts drive Deborah Kerr insane. This is one of those really well-regarded classics that I've never seen and have always felt a need to fill in. As such, it probably seems a bit overrated to me right now just because it doesn't pack quite the punch of The Haunting or Psycho for me, but I can definitely see how people love this movie. Kerr is great and the ghostly stuff is really handled with creepy subtlety. Particularly the hussy lady in the reeds on the far side of the lake. I don't know why long shots of people standing still are so creepy but they totally are. This reminds me of something. Why haven't any movies deliberately re-done the Three Men and a Baby cardboard cut-out trick? Remember that? Everybody got so freaked out that this kid was in the room for one of the scenes and a mythology quickly formed that he had jumped out the window (even though it was an interior set in some studio on the ground floor and I guess the kid was just a cardboard stand-in used for focus testing) and everybody watched it again and got super creeped out. And wasn't whats-his-name accidentally being in the shot the whole basis for the killer Bob character in Twin Peaks? It seems like this technique of leaving random creepy-looking people in the frame is un-mined territory. If i ever made a horror movie, any scene with extras I'd have one looking directly in camera and as much as i could i'd have random people standing still in the background. Free creepiness right there! Anyway, yeah part of this movie creeped me out a bit in an old early 60s way but by the end the histrionics were too much for me and I didn't quite understand the ending. Oh well. Horror movies are a bit like comedies in my mind in that regardless of plot or production quality or how well the film is actually constructed, they either work or they don't. 70% of Caddyshack is pretty boring, but the 30% that works is classic. The few scenes in this were memorable enough for me to call this a good movie even though it was probably a little long and there was a bit much running around at the end. The dude outside the window and the hussy at the end of the lake worked. Next up, later tonight, is the last movie of the fest: an exceedingly random end to a pretty random weekend of films. My DVR is down to 17% full though which is pretty awesome.
11.05.11	The Killer Inside Me	Micheal Winterbottom	Jarrette worked on this one! Casey Affleck plays a small town sheriff who's also a batshit crazy person. We follow him as he does some psycho things and plays it cool. This is one of those movies that has a great cast and is acted and directed very well but is ultimately not that much fun to watch just because the subject matter is disturbing. Usually I like this sort of thing, and the noirish elements are right up my alley, but something about the pace or setting or Affleck's narration seemed long for me. I was kind of hoping to like this more but instead wind up respecting it from a distance sort of. I acknowledge that it's a good movie but it kind of lost me toward the end or something. Oh well. I am amazed however that this was made by the same guy who did The Trip and everything else. Winterbottom is such a versatile director, it's really incredible. Well, that may be it for tonight. I might start the next movie but have no intention on staying awake through the whole thing tonight. I'll have to pick up the last two tomorrow!
11.05.11	Cinema Verite	Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini	This was an HBO movie about the 1973 TV show "An American Family" which I had no idea existed but I guess was the birth of "reality television" since it followed everyone in a family arouned EdTV-style until they got a divorce (spoiler!). Diane Lane plays the 70s liberated wife and Tim Robbins plays the slimy adultering husband. James Gandolfini plays the manipulative show producer. It's funny, I don't usually think of PBS producers as shady and manipulative even with their full 70s beards, and although he's not exactly an angel in the ethics department, the prevalence and escalation of this kind of "filmmaking" today sort of proves that his ideas had merit, that people wanted to see the dirt swept under the rugs. Having no prior knowledge of the show, I found this movie to be pretty interesting. Of course I have no idea, but it all felt pretty authentic and that the directors had no qualms of inserting original footage to set up chapters of the film gave its authenticity confidence. I'm a big fan of showing the original subject somewhere in these dramatization movies to see how close they made up the actors and how well the actors matched performances. I know it's bad to want them to mimic and actors bring their own ideas or whatever but whatever to that. This is one of the better HBO films that I've seen. It's weird how casual their films seem to me. I'll watch them and they'll play out and end and that's it. There's no prescene or impact with most of their stuff really but I felt this was pretty well done and definitely worth watching. Lane and Robbins are pretty good playing a 70s couple. Next up is a Michael Winterbottom movie. yay!
11.05.11	Sex and the City 2	Michael Patrick King	Sex and the City part 2... Why did I have this on my DVR? Well... watching the show was kind of a guilty pleasure for me although I only saw the last 3 seasons or so. I didn't rush out and see the first movie and drink cosmos or anything but I did watch it with Molly on HBO and thought it was terrible. I was mainly curious to see this one because it seems like everyone lurved the first movie but loathed the second. I couldn't imagine it being much worse than last time... Eh, I don't think it is. Yes it's not good, and all the middle east woman empowerment was groan-worthy and really the whole plot was plodding and meandering and ridiculous along with the dialog and costumes and everything else. I don't know, maybe because the show had less of a budget they had to keep things smaller and that kept them from being so bad? Or maybe the true strength is in the supporting cast which are always shoved to the side in these movies? I dunno. I don't remember the shows being so on the nose and clunky. I don't really feel like getting into details. It's way too long and not good but now I've seen it and it's deleted. Moving on...
11.05.11	Predators	Nimrod Antal	Boom it's DVRfest time. Once again, I'll devote (or try to devote as the case has already proven to be) the weekend to clearing my DVR of saved movies and also celebrating another anniversary of this movie journal. Can you believe this is the 7th one!? I totally can. So if you still follow this and care about me seeing random movies that you've already seen, why not follow along? Oh, that's right, because it usually starts Friday night and I usually would've seen 4 movies by now. That's why not. Well, As anyone bored enough to still read this journal knows, I've been in a non-movie-watching slump for like 3 years now. In fact, the past few DVRfests have reflected that slump getting so bad as me forgetting all about it last year until the very last minute. Well I have good news and bad news for this year. The good news is that, perhaps for the first time since the very first year, I actually have randomly-saved movies on my DVR dating back to February that needs to be cleared out. Nothing has been saved just for the sake of the fest and no netflix or computer movies will pad out the schedule. The bad news is that there's only 6 of them and I'm already behind. I tried my best to start the fest last night but fell asleep two separate times trying to watch this first movie which is, as the title states, Predators. So... I really love the Predator franchise. I think the first one is one of the top three action movies of the 80s (the others being Die Hard and... something else). I think the second one is a very worthy sequel that's mostly underrated (aside from the Gerardo music in the beginning) and I've always thought there was still new ground to uncover with the Predator species in new movies. The Alien vs. Predator films didn't please fans of either franchise and really only stand there to be made fun of and as examples of how to ruin a great concept twice. So when I heard there was a new Predator movie without the aliens back in the jungle with a decent cast, I got really excited. Of course, as everybody already knows, it's kind of a crap movie. On paper, they seemed to get a lot right. Band of badassess, not set on earth (spoiler!), a cadre of multiple Predators hunting them... Sounds right, right? So Why did it go so wrong and end up boring enough for me to fall asleep during it, wake up and rewind to where i was, fall asleep again, and have to try again the next day? It's really such a shame. It should've been such a solid action movie but it really wasn't in any way. I didn't buy Adrien Brody as being tougher than anyone else (except Topher Grace), I hated how we hardly ever saw anything from the Predator's POV, much less got to see them using awesome alien group techniques. All their cool new Predator gear was either kind of lame (oh great they have a boomerang with an IR camera on it and it fits on their shoulder like every other peice of gear they have) or not shown well at all. In fact I feel like I barely got enough sense of the variation between the predators to even know which was which. Then all the deaths are lame and the ending really falls apart with these blaring wholes that they never bother to explain like how the ship takes off or when Brody had time to watch the first movie and memorize Arnie's lines. I know I'm supposed to think that the modern-day yakuza guy who knows how to handle a samurai sword because they teach that in Japanese grade school squares off against the Predator in the field of tall grass, but to me it looked like a guy in a suit who can't see shit waving his arms around and then they both die without us seeing what exactly happened. At this point I was a little embarassed for the fictional race of Predators. Somehow there IS a difference between the group of them not killing Danny Glover because he bested the one hunter who was out on his training quest to become a man or whyever these dudes go out one by one and a hunter letting the japanese guy get back up when he falls down because he's somehow absorbed ancient samurai dueling etiquette and wants his hand-claw slice to count for the judges. Breathe, Brian. new paragraph. So, the reall bummer of this movie to me is that it sort of made me think that maybe there are no more good Predator movies to be made. I mean, the second movie managed to move the action to a city, introduce new Predator gear (like the awesome disc blade and expanding spear and personal napalm healing kit), expand the world by having Gary Busey aware of the alien and try to capture it for science, and expand the alien mythology by making them hunt other species and having their trophies on the ship. If that one movie that's considered crap by most do all of that, what's this one do? Oh great, there's a random jungle planet that they use for training, and there's a weird blood fued between Predators and slightly-larger Predators that makes no sense. Why is the smaller Predator even there if the whole planet is just for the bigger Predators to train? I mean, the hunting thing was already pounded to death with the AvP series anyway. So in essence, this movie is a near-complete retread in terms of franchise growth, but executed at a lower level than the first two. Great. That's worth watching. But what else is there to do? Go to the predator homeworld of course but I don't think that'd be very fun. It would be so cool to have an alien movie where the predator completely invades like half-way through. Pull a total Psycho and not mention the predator in any of the trailers or anything and actually have some form of alien movie that's interesting enough on its own, then BOOM a predator lands in the middle of it just to stir up shit. Like a weird Predator sub-plot in the second act. That'd be sweet. Anyway, Disappointment with this, as you all could have told me before I sat down last night. Maybe someday another Predator movie will come along that really lives up to the first two but my hope is dwindling. So... Next up is... probably a movie I shouldn't bother watching!
10.31.11	The Trip	Michael Winterbottom	I guess this they did a tv show of this? I had no clue when I watched it. Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon take a road trip through the northern England countryside to go to top-tier restaurants. The relationship established in Tristram Shandy seems to continue in this show, that being Brydon is jubilant and annoyingly happy and Coogan plays the lonely movie star who gets annoyed. There's a ton of impersonations in this one which are hilarious and, to me, provide a glimpse of authentic conversation between two actors. Or at least my perception of a conversation between actors. Constantly reciting poetry and soliloquies, repeating phrases to get impersonations right, riffing on ideas, etc. The same goes for the typical on-the-road conversations where it's mostly meandering but, thanks to the talent of Brydon, Coogan, and Winterbottom, completely perfect distillations of meandering on-the-road conversations that are actually funny rather than boring. The only heavy-handed bit to me was the sad piano music whenever Coogan talks to his on-a-break girlfriend in the states. I felt the sadness and lonliness enough with Coogan's performance without the music telling me to be sad. The rest of the movie is an effortless jaunt spending a few hours with these two guys. I really enjoyed it.
10.29.11	Dawn of the Dead	George Romero	So... Big thanks to Jarrette for inviting me along to this. I really had no interest in these Mondo Mystery Movies because the whole poster collector sell-out-in-60-seconds thing kind of rubs me the wrong way. People paying two hundred bucks and flying into town without knowing what the movie is or who the artist doing the poster is seems absurd and a tad insane to me. The amount that mondo posters go for on ebay also seems insane to me. I mean, I'm happy that Justin has managed to cultivate a following for Mondo and therefore the Alamo, but it's just not my crowd anymore I guess. Ultimately, I decided to go because Jarrette asked me and it's been forever since we've hung out and seen a movie. So... it was at a church. The blog said to get there no later than 8:30 and that the doors would close at 9:30 and you wouldn't be allowed in. Jarrette wanted to get there at 7. Again the insanity, but apparently he knows best because when we got there, there was already a line about 20 people deep and right after we took our place in line (right at the front thanks to Neil), a huge line of people walked up behind us. Apparently they had been waiting for a while at the door to the actual church rather than the little table that Mondo had set up. So at 7:15 there was like a hundred people there. Jarrette told me that for some of the Alamo events, people will be waiting for like 4 hours. There are so many movie fans in town now that even AFF Paramount screenings are kind of full. This really blows my mind; was I this crazy when I was in the thick of it? I guess I was... So this line at the church. At like 7:30 they start processing us, taking our ticket receipt and giving us a wristband and having us form a line right next to the first line. We're in the back of the parking lot nowhere near a church. The group behind us is dressed like Team Zissou and all have badges and lanyards. Neil finds out that they all hang out on some art forum and made the Mondo event an excuse to all fly out and hang out together. They're from like, San Diego and shit. A few people bring their own poster tubes. I feel bad joking about this when everyone around me is clearly much more excited to be there than I am, but come on... does the Mondo-provided cardboard tube not offer enough poster protection that you need to bring your own cardoard tube to ensure proper safety precautions? I wanted to see someone with a handcuff attached to their wrist and tube. At this point, I should say that Jarrette told me what the movie was on the ride over. I was really afraid that it would be The Exorcist since I'm not a huge fan of that movie. Jarrette told me that the Alamo was screening it in the theater this week and it would be a huge fuck-up were that the case. He knew what the original plan was but hadn't heard any updates so he wasn't completely positive, although he was pretty sure the church was just being used as parking. he was right. At about 8:30, a line of chartered busses pulls up and we get in. Jarrette and I get on the first bus, which proceeds to pull into the street and park for like an hour. I guess it's better than standing out in the (relative Texas) cold but... still kinda sucks. I guess they waited until 9:30 for everyone to get there and, get this, our police escort to arrive. A cadre of motorcycle cops along with some sleek black sedan pulls up ahead of us and we get to watch cops hang out for like a half hour before we're all finally ready to hit the road. So... it probably doesn't sound very cool on the page, but the feeling of being part of a 13-bus convoy surrounded by police protection, rolling through red lights, watching as the motorcycle cops bully cars to the shoulder to make way as we rolled down 360, over the bridge, and onto 183 was pretty damn cool. One car tried to merge with us and a cop pulled him over right there on the 183 on-ramp. Poor guy. I kept imagining the oncoming traffic seeing us, 13 busses on a mission, and wondering what the fuck was going on. Also, it was great to hear these out-of-towners get so excited without any context for the city. "Sweet, we're taking over 1325 highway!" Uh, no, dude... you just read the Burnet exit sign. Jarrette and I also had a secret joy because as soon as we got on 183 we both knew that we were headed toward the Highland Mall, an all-but-closed ghetto mall really only used for Bike Week race riots every year. All these out-of-towners are super excited, probably super impressed that Mondo rented out an entire mall where the locals really knew better. The Highland probably paid them! Plus the irony of driving all the way out of town just to have a bus take Jarrette and I both back to within 3 miles of our houses tickled us pink. When we turned on airport, the girl behind us realized where we was going and swore. What a huge anti-climax. Goddamn Highland Mall. But then we pull into the mall entrance and I look through the windshield and see a wave of zombies slowly meandering toward us. "That's a nice touch" I think, but then a huge glop of blood hits the windshield and the zombies start banging on the bus as we slowly pass by, smearing blood over the windows. Now everyone's looking out the windows down at the zombies surrounding us. We turn, do a little zigzag and park, the other busses filing in next to us. We can see just how much they've covered the sides of the busses with blood when we see bus #2 beside us. The Mondo coordinator lady's at the front trying to communicate with the other busses. Someone asks her where we're supposed to go and she says "when you exit, run toward the light." Everyone laughs because there's the Alamo Rolling Roadshow van with its foglights on right next to the mall entrance. Then all the busses must be parked because the doors open and the Mondo lady starts yelling at us to get off the bus. Jarrette and I are like the 8th and 9th off the bus. I step out to see a swaud of dudes dressed in para-military uniform all holding rifles and shotguns with flashlights mounted on the barrels, shooting the shit out of the zombies rambling toward us. They're yelling at us to run! run! go to the entrance! And all of a sudden everybody's cynical laugh at running toward the light fades away and we're all running for our lives, protected from the hungry zombies by the men with guns. We outpace them a bit and I see wave #2 heading straight toward us. Way more zombies than I thought at first. I see Lars in a bloody baseball uniform Staggering around. Jarrette and I are half-running half-watching the action go down as the military dudes pop off their blanks or whatever, shooting down zombies. Harry's the first ever zombie in a wheelchair just sitting there. More and more are coming. People are howling. It's mayhem outside the Highland Mall. I all but hear the click as a perfect mental image snaps in my mind. This perfect moment orchestrated for us. It was really really great. We run insde and see something like 400 folding chairs set up in the middle of the mall with a screen up front. Jarrette and I get decent seats (although the chairs themselves are terrible. I suffer through the whole movie) and everybody eventually files in. All the new Alamo people are dressed up. I have no clue how Jarrette didn't know this was happening. He knew the movie and he knew it'd be at a mall but he looked just as surprised as I did with the zombie horde and everything. They have the food court open for shitty pizza and fountain soda and it seems like it takes a long time for the movie to actually start. All the zombies are hanging out on the second floor looking down at us. It's pretty cool and creepy. Justin finally comes out as a burn-headed zombie and they bring out all this edible gross food like eyeballs and brains. They wing it all out in the crowd and I have to dodge a gelatin brain. Justin: "So probably everybody's guessed what the movie is. This isn't the Monroeville mall, you're in the Highland Mall in Austin, Texas and we're about to watch Dawn of the Dead." Then they bring out George Romero to talk for like 90 seconds. He does bring out a fake gun and kill a zombie though which is sweet. Then we watch the movie. I guess this is the first time I've watched this movie since starting this journal? crazy. It seems like I've seen this a bunch of times but I guess not recently. I think the film has an excellent beginning. Romero's editing is so kinetic and energetic. Especially with the way this film starts with all the chaos of a deteriorating tv studio... all the overlapping dialogue and yelling and everything going on is done so well. Then, during the middle and end I feel like sometimes the idea of the film is better than the actual scenes. The goofiness of some of the zombies and the weird randomness of the biker gang kind of get to me, but I love the idea how it all deteriorates and they are left just as they began. I also love the whole idea of trying to survive in a mall. What a fantasy, rght? to have access to anything you want in the whole empty mall? Still, some of the scenes and acting is kind of clunky and it feels maybe 10 minutes too long but whatever. I still love this movie and it's probably the definitive zombie movie for me. I can't think of a better one. After the movie, everyone became zombies as they shuffled toward the entrance to get their poster and get back on the bus. Unfortunately, the bus we got on had problems and we ended up sitting there for like 45 minutes until one of the other busses came and got us. it was like 2:30 by the time we got back to our car, which made for a bit of a silent and tired end to a great event. The poster's ok but I wish it were better. I decided to buy it from Jarrette so I could remember the event. This was like winning at slots you know? Who knows how many other events I'll go to wishing it could be as good as this one.
10.22.11	Bridesmaids	Paul Feig	Pretty funny although maybe a bit overhyped by this point. The scene after the brazillian meat restaurant was the funniest. The cop was weird. Kristen Wiig is pretty great. Really happy for Paul Feig as long as there's no Bridesmaids 2. I feel (even more than normal) like there's a bunch of movies I need to catch up on. This was one of them. Funny.
09.29.11	Comic-Con Episode Four: A Fan's Hope	Morgan Spurlock	Closing Night film! Spurlock wasn't here for it but Harry had the producer and several of the main subjects in attendance. There was a shitload of reserved seats... I guess when you're in full Mass Effect cosplay it's hard to stuff into just one seat. Anyway, the movie was ok. It's exactly what you think a comic-con doc would be. Eccentric people and costumes. People running for toys, lining up for Kevin Smith panels, and buying comics. Throw in celebrity interviews and you have a doc I guess. There were funny moments but nothing too memorable. Everybody's favorite line seemed to be from this old comic seller from Denver when he said "A woman telling you to grow up is God's sign to look for a new woman." They couldn't have seeded a better audience for this movie, except maybe in comic-con itself. It went over well here but I can totally see it showing on Starz or Encore or something. So that's that. final film! Afterward, a bunch of us went over to the carnival/closing night film which, while just being a few minutes away, was surprisingly large I thought. They had a stage setup with a DJ, several adult-size bouncy attractions (like a velcro wall and bouncy castles and shit), free Shiner and Tequila punch, and a buffet of fair-like cholesterol food including fried bacon, fried butter, and a queso fountain. Inside were several empty rooms and an upstairs devoted to Karaoke. I missed the remote location and room to move around from last year, but after a while got used to it and enjoyed a pretty decent DJ set. Some guy had taken up residence in a small inflatable pool and looked a fool dancing alone. They brought in performers dressed up in superhero costumes to juggle or dance with their weird light sticks or walk around talking to people in character and stuff. Actually, a surprising amount of people dressed up, including a guy with a taco costume. He walked in a room we were in at one point and yelled "hey! Taco cat is a palindrome! fuck off!" and left. that was randomly hilarious. It was good to let loose a little bit before having to say goodbye to everyone. The winnders of the new lottery system for next year's VIP badges were announced this morning so I was a bit bummed that neither me nor most of my friends got in. So this could very well be my last Fantastic Fest event, which is crap. So I acted stupid for a while and enjoyed the music and company before heading home absolutely exhausted out of my mind. Once again, Fantastic Fest proved to be a fun time despite the break from reality and mad dash of working mornings. I do hope I get a badge for next year but it seems like more than a few die-hard regulars might get shut out. I hope that isn't the case though... this has been a really fun week. so let's see... favorites? 1. Clown 2. El Infierno 3. A Boy and his Samurai 4. Take Shelter 5. New Kids Turbo
09.29.11	Help, We're in the Film Industry!	Nini Bull Robsahm, Patrik Syversen	This was in the program manual as "You Said What!" but I much prefer the direct translation of the title. I originally avoided this because the blurb said it was a remake of Miike's Audition. Everyone said it was funny though so I was happy to find time in the schedule for it. In fact it does involve Audition but not as a remake. Rather, the main characters a big film nerds and take a literal inspiraction from Audition to find a new girl for their buddy. The main guy actually meets someone he likes though and more or less commits to make a movie just so he can spend time with her. They actually get some financing but immediately blow it with a huge party. Alcoholocaust! Alcoholocaust! Alcoholocaust! Peter Stormare's also in it as himself and he's pretty hilarious. Stormare! Stormpower! It was pretty funny. It's a bit of a shame because it reminded me of Clown but Clown was funnier. This was still very good though. It's funny how most of my favorite films of the fest are in light-hearted non-horror films. Weird, huh?
09.29.11	Blind	Sant-hoon Ahn	Last day at Fantastic Fest, Thursday. The Loved Ones got picked up I guess because they pulled both shows and had to slightly re-arrange the prom. So I was stuck with a bit of a tough decision. I really only opted for this because it's Korean. A girl has an accident and goes blind, then becomes a witness to a crime and the criminal starts hunting her. On the surface, it's pretty much a Korean remake of Wait Until Dark, but it's competantly made and I was never really bored. They kill a dog though and that made everyone sad. They didn't actually kill the dog. It made me wonder why people can kill people left and right in movies and we never feel as sad as if someone kills a dog. Is it because we believe it more because dogs can't really act? Anyway, this one was decent, ended up being better than I thought it would, but still wasn't anything special.
09.28.11	Paranormal Activity 3	Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman	So.. after the last movie which was incredible (i'll just leave ***this*** here), I stayed for the midnight secret screening because a) I love torturing morning-at-work me, and b) How can I not go to a secret screening, even if it's a movie I don't care about at all? This may very well be my last secret screening if I don't get a VIP badge next year, so what the hell... it's worth being (extra) tired Thursday morning. It's kind of funny. I hadn't heard jack about the first screening being Almodovar but it seems like there was all but an official announcement that tonight would be Paranormal Activity 3. So... let's see. I didn't see the second one. I guess I'll have to now in order to bridge the gap, although I don't think I missed much since this was a prequel. Spoiler-free, I sort of object to any sequels to this movie because the format only really works once so watching it again just becomes more and more ridiculous. That said, there were a few good gags and the ending was satisfying. I ended up liking it ok. Spoiler time. So... the beginning is pretty awesomely arbitrary. They find these tapes out of nowhere and like somehow just decide to go through them or something. There's no explanation for why or how they're edited (they pull the fast-forward thing and they number the nights just like the first one), it just is. So that's one. Then, since this one takes place in 1988, it's all supposedly VHS footage, but the night scenes are super clear and illuminated. I don't know what kind of crazy full moon happened for that whole month or whatever but my personal experiences as a kid trying to tape anything at night ended up with grainy black and jack shit else. So that's two. Then there's the classic white person problem of, once the spirit makes unequivocal its-on-video proof of his existence, the family doesn't do crap about it. There's an argument where the mom like refuses to listen to her husband when he tries to tell her what's going on that seemed completely wrong to me. Just watch the video, lady! It's the Mist problem all over again. There's no need to argue, just shut up and see the physical evidence readily available! So that's three. Then there's the fact that the whole movie is basically the same exact formula of the first film. It felt like watching a bizarro-version of the first movie that made less sense. But you know... scares are still scares just like laughs are still laughs. It's hard to argue with the ladies at the end or the Bloody Mary and ghost sheet scenes. I do resent the amount of cheap loud noise stabs in the beginning but whatever. So there you have it. Only one more day left. Three more movies. Then a glorious day off. I can't wait.
09.28.11	Eastern Condors	Sammo Hung	A friend lent me his completely officially available region 3 dvd of this and I watched it at home. It's pretty interesting. I heard from somewhere that prints of this movie are shown very rarely because of rights issues and the last time it was shown, the Hong Kong government had to intervene somehow in order to get it on the screen. So chances are i won't get any chance to see this on the big screen with a great crowd and a font of information introducing it any time soon, so I watched it... on my own. I'd never really heard of this before my friend told me about it, but I'm very glad they did. Sammo Hung directs and stars a sort of Dirty Dozen knock-off where a band of Asian criminals are recruited to carry out a suicide mission of going back into Vietnam and destroying a missile dump left un-exploded by American troops when they pulled out. They quickly ally with a few Vietnamese rebels to do a solid 80 minutes of shooting, kicking, leaping, bleeding, and killing. Seriously, when people aren't getting riddled with bullets or flying through the air with grenade bursts, they're getting slow-motion kicked in the face with a boot. And you see that boot connect. There are some absolutely BRUTAL moves on display here, and the action is structured and shot so well... Very impressive. Just crazy stuff. Awesome. I loved it. I also heard that the guy who looks completely like Chow Yun Fat in fact was a last-minute replacement for Chow Yun Fat himself because he dropped out at the last minute after finding some success with A Better Tomorrow. And I heard how Sammo Hung went to the same Opera school in Hong Kong as Jackie Chan and a few other guys in this movie (the skinny evil dude and the main young badass dude) and that their childhoods were completely horrific and abusive and messed them up completely. Like how Sammo will order the entire menu at resaurants because of growing up so hungry, or how lots of these guys end up big gamblers and womanizers all because of their torturous upbringing. And when people ask why action has gone downhill it's because Hong Kong now has laws to curb the child abuse once so prevalent. Crazy huh?
09.28.11	Love	William Eubank	Can you tell I'm fuck-off tired? these notes will probably be very short today. Goddamn work. Anyway, this is the Angels and Airwaves movie. I didn't know anything about the band or the movie but Victor was pretty excited and the trailer looked just as pretty as Livid so I saw this. I expected it to be all the words that every band throws out when they make a movie: meditative, contemplative, cerebral, raw emotion, etc. and got pretty much exactly what I expected. I will say that I thought certain moments would break into flat-out music video segments which it did not; this is more film than music video and even has a loose story. I kind of had some long blinks toward the end and those moments of disconnect made the vague story even more confusing to me, but whatever... it's all about tone, right? I will say that the movie looked great. They said they made it for half a mil which is pretty nuts considering how good it looks. I also liked that Tim brought up Richard Garriot to conduct the Q&A afterward and his little anecdotes about actually being in the real International Space Station were like a thousand percent more interesting than Tom DeLonge talking about his band (to me at least, there was a whole front row full of kids who probably thought the exact opposite).
09.28.11	The Devil's Business	Sean Hogan	Day next-to-last at Fantastic Fest, Wednesday. I had to miss American Werewolf in order to make up work hours, then nothing in this slot really thrilled me so I went into this kind of expecting to be a little bored. This is the story of two hit men who try to kill a dude but the dude's messed up in devil magic and pulls some shit. It's clearly on a minimal budget and there's several very long dialogue scenes that are pulled off proficiently by the actors but still end up being too long so I stopped paying attention. At least it was a short movie. I think if I made this and I knew how little money I had or if it was my first feature, I'd be proud of getting it done, but it's still not like a "real" movie. I probably should've seen Rabies instead. Oh well.
09.27.11	The Eternal Evil of Asia	Man Kei Chin	Third Movies on Fire title, this one a sleazy horror movie involving weird voodoo enchantments. Grady's intros get more and more informative. Tonight he told us about the rpactice of midnight movies, where filmmakers would show their films on Thursday nights just before release, and drive an editor around from screening to screening to see what didn't work. It was too late to master another print but the editor would physically cut out scenes that were deemed too boring by the rowdy midnight crowds and that contributed to the Hong Kong craziness we see now. Grady called them the "crystal meth of movies" and "black holes of films" and I found both descriptions to be apt. So the movie... It's about a group of guys that visit Thailand and wind up accidentally killing a witch dude's horny sister. For revenge, he comes to Hong Kong and fucks with them with different curses and hexes until most are dead. I kind of forget the ending because I was zoning out and trying to stay awake. So... at one point the witch dude turns a guy into a literal dickhead (a phallic prosthetic put over the guys head, leaving only his face) and when he's scared he squirts piss out of the top of his head. Also, he fights a couple of witches (as in the evil witches are a couple) that spawn an evil placenta that encases him and tries to turn him into a baby and melt him into water and blood. Then they perform a flying spinning attack while in 69 position then start raining down explosions as fly around in doggy position. It's kind of a crazy battle. Despite my grogginess, I was firmly aware that this was still more cohesive than last night's film, and a truly bizarre oddity that I was very grateful to see. What a crazy crazy movie. Also, before the movie there were trailers, most without english subs. The one that got huge laughs however was a film titled "Raped by an Angel 3 Sexual Fantasy of the Chief Executive." Classic stuff. So... I'm officially tired. Two days left including a weekday midnight that I'm somehow going to do. I pity my co-workers Thursday morning, and frequently look to my "OOTO ALL DAY" appointment on my Outlook calendar for strength to get me through. Fantastic Fest, you are winning... but I will survive you!
09.27.11	Smuggler	Katsuhito Ishii	Sort of more restrained crime story from Funky Forest director. I'm not really a huge fan of Japanese Weird films, but thought this one might be constructed well enough to be enjoyable, which it was for the most part. These two assassins, named Vertebrae and Viscera, are sort of the main attractions even though the main characters are a kid and a hardened verteran/driver in charege of smuggling illicit cargo (like bodies). Vertebrae's pretty badass, using nunchucks to shatter people's heads in super slow motion. Viscera is also capable I guess but only really fights once and it doesn't effectively show his skill so who knows. I think this movie is a victim to festival fatigue. It's technically good and I enjoyed myself well enough, but wasn't blown away and found nothing exceptionally special about it so therefore I'm already forgetting everything about it. Sorry, Smuggler!
09.27.11	Boys on the Run	Daisuke Miura	A sex comedy about a poor schlubby guy who's too horny and screws up a relationship with his dream girl, then vies for some form of redemption and justice when she screws his friend and gets pregnant. This has been billed as a romantic comedy with all the parts that are usually cut out left in, or a "feel-bad" comedy. It's true that most of the movie is a relentless pity party for the main guy, who just can't get things to go his way. I liked this, although my Western conventional nature shined through at the end. I'll have to delve into spoilers to explain so stop reading if you care. The takeaway is that I liked it but it was one of those scenarios where i pictured a better ending in my head and was disappointed with what they gave me. So... when he decides to fight his friend who preggered up his dream girl then dumped her, he goes on this boxing training quest with an old alkie co-worker. He really finds some confidence, cuts his hair into a mohawk, and even knocks someone out on his way to the fight. But then during the fight he doesn't land a single blow and his only offense is peeing on the friend while he was pinned down. Then he cries. Then he sees his dream girl at the train station right before she leaves town and grovels for her to sleep with him. She agrees but it's a trap and that's not what she wants and, still crying, he pushes her onto the train and leaves. Someone comes up to him and asks if he's ok and he smiles and gives a thumb's up. OK, so it's a decent enough ending and technically on paper it seems he got some sort of redemption, but on screen it was nowhere near rewarding enough for me. I wanted him to finally yell at her and tell her she's stupid and a slut for sleeping with everyone BUT the guy who cares about her. I wanted him to stand tall in front of her rather than cry and grovel, even if it was a "trap" of sorts. But mostly, I wanted the old alkie mentor to get up after the main guy lost the fight, cooly decide that this guy was a good guy and deserved some satisfaction, and walk back up to the friend's office and kick the ever-loving shit out of that guy. He's such a slime-ball for the WHOLE movie and never gets any come-uppance. I know this movie is trying to put conventions on their ear and all that, and you're supposed to really be rooting for the main guy during the fight and be heart-broken when he loses... but COME ON! I just wanted it so much... and it could've easily happened. I guess the point is that the friend does get away clean, but still. I hated that. So anyway, I liked it even though it made me angry.
09.27.11	Carre Blanc	Jean-Baptiste Leonetti	Day Whatever of Fantastic Fest, Tuesday. I kind of thought today would be the day that everyone stays home for some reason. I guess maybe a few did but I was surprise by how many people, albeit tired and staggering, there are still going. A lot of people are looking and sounding hung over. Perfect time for a bleak French sci-fi! Todd Brown said this was in his top 3 of the year, and he sees "300-400" films a year. Since I don't really know Todd at all, that made me more curious of his taste in movies than the quality of this one. Especially now that I've seen it. The story is... I guess a kid grows up in a weird sci-fi society and his wife is unhappy so he quits his job in order to make her happy. Sort of. This would've made a great short I guess, but for the amount of story present, the film felt like mostly atmospheric filler to me. The appeal of the world was enough for a while, but so many faux-Malick shots or nothing in particular happening quickly tired me out. Jarrette and I passed a note back and forth throughout the first half of the movie that went like this: "I miss dialogue" "I miss dialogue that pertains to the plot" "I miss plot" That pretty much sums it up for me. I really hope that if the world becomes some dystopian sci-fi future, everything doesn't slow down and people don't stop talking and spend most of their time staring contemplatively. It seems like a boring world to live in.
09.26.11	A Day Without Policeman	Gwing-Kail Lee	The second Movies on Fire title was promised to be a sleazy grindhouse oddity. Grady Hendrix's presentation style is really strange. He yells out everything and wears pink suits like a kind of clown, but he also sounds like he really really knows what he's talking about and throws all these Hong Kong names out like they're Clark Gable and Tom Hanks but I've never heard of any of them. So I was pretty lost during the intro (not a bad thing! It was very informative but I was overloaded with information) then this movie came on and I was completely lost for the whole thing. It gave me my most vivid "grindhouse" experience to date. So, as far as I can tell, this movie is about a cop who is yielded impotent when he's involved in a shootout with chinese criminals with AK47s. The power of the automatic rifle really gets into his head and messes him up, so his girlfriend gets upset with him and may or may not have broken up with him. Then there's her sister who is either an undercover cop or a weird kid version of a mall punk. Then there's this chinese fisherman and his wife gets raped and killed by a gang of teenagers, and these chinese criminals... I guess because of national pride... help the fisherman get revenge by killing an entire village of.. Hong Kong-ers? And because he's now incapable of getting it up, the cop is a complete coward who does nothing for the entire movie, until the end when he finally shoots a gun and kills the chinese criminals, but then one of them comes back to life just long enough to hit him on the head with a rock and he dies. Makes perfect sense, right? So drench all of that in bad Lethal Weapon electric guitar riffs and the worst subtitles I've had the pleasure of reading and yous tart to get an idea of my experience. Seriously, the subtitles alone would present a logic puzzle to pause and figure out what people are saying. So.. I'm sitting there in the theater, taking in the images and random words as they flash in front of my face, thinking "what am I doing here? This movie makes no sense, is complete shit, They wouldn't even show this on cable in the middle of the night, I have no idea what's going on, I don't really care about anything, I can't believe someone made this, I can't believe someone released this, I can't believe this even exists, it's a complete disaster or miracle that this movie even got made, what am I doing here?" and then I thought "where else would I rather be?" and it hit me that this is grindhouse. There's no urine smell or nodding out junkies or prostitutes keeping warm or gang members waiting to mug me in the restroom, but this is the movie; this is it. This is 4am on a Tuesday when you have nothing to do and nowhere to go and you'd rather sit in a theater than stand on the street. This is having a 24/7 movie house and knowing that nobody cares about what's on screen but needing to show SOMETHING just to feed the projector. This is going to the drive-in on Saturday night and killing a sixer with your buds. This is watching Cinemax on Friday night not caring anything about the film other than seeing tits. This is everything distilled into one incomprehensible mess now flickering away in front of my eyes. I felt it.
09.26.11	Clown: The Movie	Mikkel Norgaard	Holy shit this movie is funny. As of now, it's my favorite of the festival. I don't even really know what to say. It's just hilarious and so competantly made. The characters are endearing, the situations feel natural and earned. Nothing's forced. The performances are stellar. The writing's smart and raunchy and in some ways represent reality but in others show this strange near-alternate universe much like Curb Your Enthusiasm where all the pieces fit together. gush gush gush gush gush. So funny. The ending had me light-headed with laughter. It's really amazing. I want to track down the tv show in which this is based now and see everything I can find. I am completely in love with this movie. The director and producer had some really inciteful comments during the Q&A for us ignorant Americans. One thing he said was that the guy who played Casper is really famous in Denmark. I found that interesting because he has a clear charisma on screen where even in the first scene where he's just part of a group and I had no idea he would be one of the stars of the film, I felt magentized toward him and wished he would show up more as the film went on. he looks like a Danish version of Kenneth Branagh in hipster costumes but has the type of vibe like Vince Vaughn in Swingers. Tour de Pussy, Frank! Tour de Pussy! Pussy beats fatherhood! Hilarious. Ahh... this was good.
09.26.11	Knuckle	Ian Palmer	Day... 4? Monday. Back to work. Nothing better after a full weekend of fantastic fest than sitting in an hour-long training about the merits of records management. I could not care less about the information security violations that my sticky notes present. Anyway, back at the theater, I saw this doc about a decades-long rivalry between Traveler clans in England and Ireland where disputes are settled in the form of fair fight bare-knuckle brawls. The doc itself is made up of ten years of footage. The first thing you probably think when I say that is "wow, ten years! there must be tons of great footage there!" and I did too but what I didn't think about was the video technology available ten years ago. A lot of this movie is pretty poor quality, recorded with VHS cameras and whatnot. Of course the quality gets better as the years pass, but it's still a little jarring compared to the beauty of a lot of the films here this week. That aside, the story is pretty interesting. It's a lot like a whole documentary dedicated to Brad Pitt's character from Snatch, right down to the whole family sitting on one couch for interviews and everybody stuffed into caravans and whatnot. It's pretty fascinating stuff to see these inflammatory youtube-esque videos get passed around between clans inciting fights and the age of one dude in particular as he has his first fight and ten years later when he challenges the same guy to regain his respect. That guy and the housing area where they live showed the most effects of time. I thought it was really cool to see this housing complex brand new when they move in and then see it ten years later when it's all sprayed with graffiti and one house has been abandoned to rot. I really don't know anything about this culture but I'm guessing they're kind of like gypsies... I kind of wish the doc explained the whole culture a bit more but the glimpse that we got was enough to make an entertaining film. It just could've been more I suppose.
09.25.11	Dreadnaught	Woo-ping Yuen	The first Hong Kong feature. I guess the reason why they don't announce the titles is because the American Genre Film Archive (or whatever Justin and Tim are calling their print library) just got a major load of Hong Kong films and may not... well, whatever. They're awesome surprises. The first one is Dreadnaught, an early Yuen Woo-ping kung-fu flick starring a very old.. I don't know his name. I've seen him a lot though and he's awesome. So... this is still a kung-fu film. Too long, too plodding, and eventually the fight scenes bore me as much as the lame story. That said, there are moments in this film that are downright awesome: -The dragon fight scene. There are two teams of dudes who have these Chinese dragons. they do super complicated dances with them, two guys controlling their dragon costume to mimic animal behavior while balancing precariously or showing incredible feats of strenght, then collide in a fight between the two dragons. As they try to nip and tear at eachothers' costumes, the dudes underneath are also fighting. It's this bizarre mix of fight choreography (which is really a sort of dancing in itself), actual dancing, and animal puppetry that is pretty mindblowing. -I like how a lot of the fight scenes, especially involving the old guy who I can't remember, revolve around non-fight subject matter. There's two scenes, one where he's trying to heal an angry fighter and another where a tailor is trying to assassinate him, that are expertly choreographed and performed but also clever and out of the ordinary. -the main bad guy pulls the head off a chicken for no reason. I'm not really a fan of animal cruelty but this was SO arbitrary that I had to laugh. Plus you don't actually see him pull the head off, it just cuts to him holding the head in one hand and the body in the other. So.. I guess the next two titles will be total sleaze grindhouse fare, then Wednesday's movie will be a big action movie that I may have heard of but guaranteed to never have seen in a theater. Although I got kind of drowsy during the slower bits of this, I'll be at the rest.
09.25.11	Take Shelter	Jeff Nichols	Michael Shannon plays an ohio husband and father to a deaf daughter who starts having nightmares of a coming apocalyptic storm. Heavy Last Wave influence here except it focuses more on whether or not he's going crazy than weird Gulpilil sightings. This is another slow burn movie which usually doesn't work for me in this context, however the power emanating from the performances, the vivid strength of the nightmare scenes (really reminded me of Jacob's Ladder in a way (more toned down that that) that they start subtly yet grow to frightening surreal images), and the slow blossom of the score all work seamlessly together to create this contemplative view of the end of the world. The "is he crazy" question is never 100% answered, but the last scene is haunting in its simplicity. It's also a wonderful turn that the climax that builds in a storm shelter gives you a resolution, but then the film keeps going. Man, Michael Shannon... Is there anyone better at quiet menace? He shows some gentleness with his daughter but so easily broadcasts the mounting anxiety of self-doubt coupled with forboding knowledge that his character bears. The Lyon's club dinner is a perfect explosion of performance for him. "YOU THINK I'M CRAZY!? THERE'S A STORM COMING!!!" so crazy in that moment... And I should say it's perfectly counterbalanced by Jessica Chastain. You read her love on her face as she's forced to deal with all this stuff. So great. So... yeah, this is really good.
09.25.11	The Skin I Live In	Pedro Almodovar	This year's first secret screening! Literally the only rumor I'd heard was that Scott Weinberg was introducing it so it was probably a horror movie, but then Michael Lehrman gets up and tells us it's Almodovar's new one which is a return to his genre roots. Kudos to the festival for keeping everyone in the dark! I was initially kind of disappointed with the announcement, since I haven't really been keeping up with his movies. I thought they were all about women talking to each other and probably crying. This one is about... not that. There will have to be spoilers in these notes so stop reading now if you don't want them. The takeaway is that it's well-made and either ridiculous or cool depending on if you go with it or not. So... It's a revenge movie because this kid sort of half-rapes Antonio Banderas' mental daughter, who later dies. So to get back, he kidnaps the kid and turns her into a woman that looks like his late wife. He then falls in love with the man/wife and tries to have sex in it's fake vagina. This movie was really confusing for me because the actress that plays the female version of the kid is SO GODDAMN HOT. and she's either naked or in a flesh-colored body stocking for like all of the movie. So she's super hot, but then I'm supposed to think of her as this kid who's been transformed, but she's SO HOT... ugh. It's hard to think about. As far as revenge plots go, it's a stretch. I really don't know why that would be the plan he ends up going with. I guess so he can do his weird skin experiments or something. But whatever, great twisted story that really fits the festival (a plus considering some secret screening are chosen more by what they can get their hands on than what thematically fits). I had a good time with it although I probably wouldn't have seen it on my own.
09.25.11	The Yellow Sea	Nong-jim Na	I can feel these notes getting shorter as I burn through them. Sorry. I'm trying to get caught up and not have a week's worth waiting for me at the end. OK, Sunday morning. Another two and a half hour movie, this time a Korean action movie about some weird border area between China and Korea. A guy in debt agrees to travel to Seoul to kill someone in order to erase his debts. Complications occur. So, after the first hour or so, the movie really picks up with pretty constant car chases and knife fights. If someone's not getting stabbed or chopped, they're running or driving after someone. It's all done very well, with an amazing amount of knife violence. I'm actually not sure I've seen more knife violence in a single movie. It gets overwhelming and exhausting by the end, which completely works because the protagonist is as well. The problem is, I was so wrung out that I'm not sure I understand the ending. Spoiler zone for my probably-wrong deductions: so... he was gonna kill the agent who hired the third band of assassins (the ones who crashed into him in the garage but then the one guy fell and died while swinging the shovel) when he saw his wife and figured out that his wife was the one who wanted him dead? no? I don't know... Anyway, a mostly-awesome action movie; another solid effort from Korea.
09.24.11	You're Next	Adam Wingard	The second screening of this was cancelled due to it getting picked up so this was kind of crazy to get into. They're really cracking down this year on taking boarding passes and checking them against badges and the online ticketting is better but still very arbitrary and kind of changing all the time. Anyway, this is a straight-up horror about a family reunion spoiled by paramilitary types wearing animal masks. There was some humor which I appreciated and a girl kicks ass, but largely it felt like a follow-the-formula flick to me. AJ Bowen pulled his role off though and his end monologue was great (he was also hilarious in the Q&A). Actually all the performances were strong. I liked how, for whatever reason, half the cast were also directors. Guess they're all friends. Anyway, there's some good death gags, snappy editing, blah blah blah. it's a good movie, just no... transcendance, if that makes any sense.
09.24.11	The Day	Douglas Aariniokoski	So... I realized I had a hole in my schedule and this was the only show that I hadn't seen already or wasn't planning to see later. Plus, I love post-apocalyptic so why not, right? It's the story of a group of people trying to survive in the wasteland. it follows them for 24 hours, during which time there's trouble. Umm... this was just ok. It was too long and slow for me, but the action was decent when they had it. Shannon Sossamon got naked and the other girl really kicked some ass. Lot's of talking though. And some arguments just seem to go nowhere and flame out, ultimately seeming like a waste of time. Eh, I dunno... Next!
09.24.11	Comin' at Ya!	Ferdinando Baldi	After the drama slog that was We Need to Talk About Kevin, Comin At Ya's goofy fun 3D hijinks was exactly what I needed. I'm not sure if I've seen any Tony Anthony movies other than Get Mean, but I remember that as not being great. That said, I was pretty excited to see this for the remastered 3D experience of the early 80s. My first Alamo experience was Friday the 13th 3 in 3D at the original 4th street location. I had a real blast that night and that movie's filled with cheap gags that I associated with 3D up to that point. I just wanted to feel that again, really. So... ok the movie's not great. BUT. The 3D is some of the best I've ever seen. Really. They had stuff coming out so far that I had to refocus my eyes between the foreground and the background. And a few times (like when they dropped coins or corn or rocks or whatever onto the camera) I had a bit of a visceral reaction. Actually, during the scene where the indian throws spears and shoot flaming arrows, I reflexively flinched several times. It was crazy. It felt like it was shooting straight into my face. I haven't felt that with Avatar or any of the digital 3D stuff. Forget about the actual movie, the 3D was tons of fun. The Q&A afterward was also pretty hilarious. The interplay between Tony Anthony (who came off speaking more as a producer or businessman than an actor) and 3d technician Tom Stern was great. Also, Anthony's jag on the secret of how TV works and how we can see a snowflake that falls in the east (answer: it's your brain. The Limbric system is like the Geiger County of your brain) was bizarre and made no sense. To add on top of it, Lars tried to ask a valid question of why this film had things coming out of the screen versus so many just increase the depth of field inside the screen and you could tell that they knew the answer but never ever explained it in an understandable way. It wasn't the most informative Q&A but really gave a window into their personality and was supremely entertaining.
09.24.11	We Need to Talk About Kevin	Lynne Ramsay	A movie about a woman who's dealing with the repercussions of her son's actions. This one will have to be very spoiler heavy because the story is so minimal that what it's about is kind of a spoiler in itself. So if you want to see it fresh, the takeway of this note is I thought it was "meh" ok. So... still here? cool. Tilda Swinton plays the mom and John C. Reilly plays the dad. Some kid plays the kids, and they did a great job of finding a kid and a teen that look similar enough to be the same character while also both being able to act. The kid winds up doing a school shooting thing and Tilda Swinton is left afterward to live with the guilt, shame, and animosity of the town afterward. So the movie's kind of framed with the story of her after the school shooting, having paint thrown at her house, getting punched in the face on the street, feeling mopey. Then there are constant flashbacks which tell the story of her entire relationship with Reilly and the raising of their child. I'm not really a fan of this type of structure since on the one hand it seems like enveilling that the kid does a school shooting is like the climax of the film, but it's the one thing I knew about the film going into it because it's the ONLY WAY TO SELL PEOPLE ON THE MOVIE. Dude A: "I saw this movie with Tilda Swinton and John C. Reilly the other day. It was kind of interesting" Dude B: "Oh yeah? What's it about?" ***SPOILED*** So are they asking me to be surprised by the school shooting or expecting me to know coming in or pick it up in the first five minutes (which isn't hard to do) and have to sit through the whole movie until we finally get around to it. Kind of confused by that. Either way it's not great. Also, these fleeting glimpses... I guess if you're Wong Kar Wai you can do it but I'm not a huge fan. To me, you have to repeat not because you're being poetic but because you don't have a story (or the story you do have is not that interesting). the thing I really thought was interesting (aside from the performances), was how the movie shifted from judging the mom for not raising her kid better to realizing that the kid is just an evil devil child that should be drowned in a lake and it's really not Swinton's fault. I thought that was an interesting turn and I started liking the movie much more at that point because the kid's SUCH a dick. Still, there's a lot to sit through to get to the gems like him intentionally shitting himself so she'd have to clean him, or him not stopping and just looking at her when she accidentally walks in on him masturbating. Evil children; fuck em.
09.24.11	El Infierno	Luis Estrada	Saturday morning! Time for a ten dollar Breakfast Club and a two and a half hour mexican drug epic! Actually, this was one of my most highly-anticipated screenings because I've been wanting a movie about the current Mexican drug war for a year or two now. Some of the shit that's happening on the border and in the cities down there is batshit insane and can be seen in headlines today, not buried in history. Hopefully we'll get some great docs or something once the war ends and the smoke clears (something akin to Cocaine Cowboys or Excellent Cadavers), but until then, this Goodfellas-mold of a brother returning to his hometown after 20 years of trying to get rich in America will definitely do. Although I believe this is a fictional story, the setting feels absolutely authentic. From the gaudy outfits to the solid gold pistols, this is what I'm seeing when they raid the cartel hide-outs and everything. It comes off as very funny on-screen but must be terrifying to actually live. The movie is actually really great at that: flip-flopping between humor and violence and the two never really get muddled.Just like Goodfellas, there's a fun energetic "good times" half and a pretty disastrous "bad times" downfall. The ending is also very good, delivering a message that feels 100% true without seeming forced or heavy-handed. It still comes from the story. The director said the movie sprang from the last shot of the film so it was never a question whether it would be in or out. A really great film. It might turn out to be one of my favorites of the festival, although everyone's been so quick to say that and, to be honest, I've really only seen a couple films so far that I haven't liked. Let's hope the rest of the fest goes this well.
09.23.11	New Kids Turbo	Steffan Haars, Flip Van der Kuil	Last Friday movie and my first midnight. The trailer for this didn't really sell me so iw as originally going to see the remastered Zombi print but decided to change up because it felt like a safe bet to see a movie I've seen multiple times when I could be chancing some midnight goofiness like when Trailer Park Boys came to South By. I'm really glad I switched. New Kids Turbo, much like Netherland's answer to Trailer Park Boys, is a movie based on a show about a bunch of supreme idiots getting into some shit. It's low class, crass, violent, stupid, immature, and really indefensible but also hilarious. It feels weird to type this but it's really like a dumbed-down version of Trailer Park Boys. Think about that for a second. So I don't know anything about Maaskantje (the neighborhood where these guys are supposed to be from), but apparently everyone there has a mullet, subsists on cheap fried food and Happy Hardcore, and says "cunt" and "homo" a lot. The stars are a group of dudes who all lose their jobs and, when they run out of government money, decide to rebel by not paying for anything anymore. I have no idea how it plays locally (although apparently they are making a sequel so it had to make some money) but in the Alamo theater on Friday night at midnight, it killed. Unfortunately, by the end fatigue had gripped me and my blinks started to elongate. I stopped laughing at the jokes due to my twilight state but still observed their humor in a weird detached interior voice, like my brain would say "you should laugh here, it's pretty funny" but it wouldn't quite make it to my mouth. it was weird. I wasn't even totally out of it, just feeling the tired creep in sapped my laugh reserves I guess. Micah brought up a scene the next day where the stupidest character tries to clean up broken glass by sweeping it together with his forearms and now that's the only gag I can remember, but it was damn funny.
09.23.11	Sleep Tight	Jaume Balaguero	Two Spanish films in a row. I guess Spain is just populated with tiny perky beautiful women, huh? This one's about a doorman in an apartment building who's stalking a tenant (the aforementioned hot young girl) in an exceedingly creepy way. The movie follows him and his exploits, and eventually you get a little confused about who you are supposed to be sympathizing with (depending on whether you are a sick bastard or not). The film is expertly shot and planned and I was impressed with the graps that the director has on film language. in the Q&A he said he was very keen to use those tools again after two REC movies which rely on "amature" found-footage shooting. You can really tell with how he uses his camera and lighting. The suspense works and I was along for the ride the whole time, but my lasting memory, again just because I'm in this festival, is that it was a bit long. I'm sure I wouldn't feel that way if I saw it stand-alone and even in the middle of a full day of movies I remember liking it. The lead actor is really great though. His sociopathic blank stare is chilling.
09.23.11	Extraterrestrial	Nacho Vigalondo	Nacho's new movie. Right before the film I had my expectations drastically redefined: There are no aliens. This is a dramedy set in one apartment. Don't expect Timecrimes. It's a romantic comedy. Don't expect much. It's funny to feel prematurely disappointed in a film a half hour before you see it, but also quite effective because I think I ended up liking it more than most. All the things said above are technically true; the alien ship is barely used for anything more than a device to keep the characters locked up together and could easily have been a virus or zombie plague or apocalypse or anything else. It's maybe a bad title considering it gives false expectations of aliens when they really are just the background setting. However, it's still a Nacho movie and even though it's really more about characters than plot, there are a ton of intricate little turns and clever predicaments that come from the characters' actions. It's also pretty funny and while I didn't come close to tearing up like in A Boy and his Samurai (fuckin kid actors losing their father figures), it's a bit touching at the end as well. Just a bit. Talking to Micah, I guess the short that this is based on is very similar. I can't really remember whether I'd seen it or not. In the Q&A, Nacho let slip a few tiny details about the film he's trying to do next. It's called Windows and he wants it to take place in real time, in one continuous shot, where all of the action - and there will be big action sequences - takes place on a laptop screen. Like via youtube, instant messenger, skype, etc. He immediately followed with "I'm tired of this film already, it's going to be so hard." It's certainly an interesting idea although these limited storytelling experiments rarely work out. Even a movie like Burial with Ryan Reynolds, I believe I respected the director for pulling the premise off more than actually enjoying the film. But anyway, we'll see. I'm sure in the hands of Nacho it'll be worth watching, as this film certainly was. Just don't expect aliens.
09.23.11	Headhunters	Morten Tyldum	So... the short before this movie was really good to the point where I thought it was the movie itself until it ended after the first scene. It's called The Candidate and must have some connection to John Gulager since his brother's the star (along with Robert Picardo) and he has a cameo. I didn't really catch any credits, but the short's very good and could easily be the first scene of a feature. Anyway, the real movie is sort of a Hitchcockian thing from Sweden or Norway about a high-end recruiter/art thief who has to steal to keep is ultra-beautiful blonde model-tall wife happy because he's short and hates his genes. The slimy Jaime Lannister dude from Game of Thrones enters the picture as some rich ex-CEO and awesome cat-and-mouse action ensues. I quite liked this film for the most part. There's a few twists and turns that are a bit predictable but nothing to major to get in the way of me going along with it. Eh, it may have been a smidge too long but I've seen a dozen movies since then and really only remember the good parts. The main dude's partner in crime is particularly funny as a balding inside-man who works at a home security company and turns the alarms off for the main guy to come in and steal art. Oh, there's also twin fat cops. What are the chances of that? And how do they pass the physical? Or do you think they used to be fit when they joined the force but then both overate? Did they become fat at the same time? So many questions... they are funny in the film though. I'm finding as a general rule, the films that engage me the most at this fest are ones that insert humor into the tension or horror. The films that grind you down with unease or atmosphere, while they still may good, are simply not fun enough to enjoy in the context of 30 other films. I really apreciate any attempt at levity considering almost every film involves at least a quart of fake blood.
09.23.11	A Boy and His Samurai	Yoshihiro Makamura	Wow it's been a long weekend. Hopefully I can remember something about these 14 films I've seen since last sitting down to write notes. What a fun weekend. It started with a two-hour workday (awesome) and this movie. Golden Slumber blew me away last year and I very much enjoyed Fish Story when I finally got around to watching Victor's lent DVD. Those two films made this one of my most hopeful of the fest. It's a completely different genre and not really like the previous two at all (Micah pointed out that both FS and GS were adapted from books by the same author; Samurai came from a different authro), being very family-friendly and heart-warming and romantically comedic and all. It's masterfully executed but, like most movies in this genre, tells a very familiar story. If you've seen Kate & Leopold, you've basically seen this movie. A single mom and young child come upon an Edo period samurai transplanted from his time into modern-day Tokyo. Hilarity ensues as his formalist samurai discipline and old-world values clash with the wacky world of female bread-winners and hustle-bustling streets. But, lest I'm sounding too negative, the movie is very well done and quite funny. The samurai takes up cooking and, through his work ethic and attention to detail, becomes an amazing pastry chef, so there's that too. It's really a great movie, just a shame the story has to be so familiar.
09.22.11	The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence)	Tom Six	Opening night film. I was in theater one so I didn't see the stars on stage but I guess they did the Yo Gabba Gabba dance party, poo sausage eating contest, and director q&a in both theaters. Yo Gabba Gabba dance party: Tim League gets on stage and shows a picture of his newborn twins to the audience, then says that since the birthing, his definition of "fantastic" has changed a bit to include fun for the whole family, so he pulls Elijah Wood on stage and they start playing his clip from Yo Gabba Gabba. They make the crowd get up and do his weird puppet dance then all of a sudden the whole Alamo/festival staff runs in with yellow shirts doing this weird dance. Henri is dressed up as one of the... Gabboids? (i have no idea) and we all dance for a while then they show a montage of exploding heads on the screen and the movie starts... ...but not before Nick Robinson's vasectomy bumper. Fantastic. So... the movie... ok, here's my lasting positive memory of the first film: Very well-made, crazy idea that's treated with remarkable restraint, and amazing charisma from the evil doctor that made it ok to laugh. The sequel is all in gritty hand-held black and white, mostly following this one guy Martin who's like almost a midget with bug eyes and balding pate and huge bulging belly. It's a silent role with no dialogue, but we spend the entire film with him and see that he's obsessed with the first film and decides to make his own human centipede. There's a shit-ton of gore, so much so that I'm convinced it wouldn't work in color because, especially by the end, the sheer amount of blood on screen would end your suspension of disbelief. Where in the first film Six showed just enough, in this one he shows everything. Surprise, it doesn't work as well! And since the lead doesn't really talk, there's no charisma. We revel in his disgusting physicality and the whole movie is gross but there's no laughs. True, there are some shock moments with twisted ideas I've never seen before, but they seem more in the vein of deliberately trying to one-up A Serbian Film than anything organic to this film. So, compared to the first one, it doesn't look as good, shows no restraint, and has no levity. Also, i swear I saw the color brown during one scene. It's a black and white movie but there's brown in there, right, Mr. Six!? Afterward, Six said that the third one (final sequence) would be the "coolest" of the saga, be shot in America, have a happy ending, and start with the end of the second film so all three could be strung together into one film. Clever. It's interesting because the director's demeanor seems very friendly and upbeat. Just like his first appearance, it's pretty funny that he seems like such a nice guy considering his work. I guess it always works out that way though right? except Abel Ferrara. So... while I didn't really hate this movie, I didn't really like it either. I'm not interesting in seeing it again, but you know, glad for the experience.
09.22.11	Haunters	Min-suk Kim	Haunters is about a ghost girl who lives in a toilet and freaks people out whenever they poop. Actually it's not. It's really about this dude who has eyes that let him control everybody he sees, except for this other dude who for some reason heals really quickly and can break free of dude A's mind control. They meet, they fight, they chase after each other for a while, then the movie ends. I actually really enjoyed like 70% of this movie. The good guy's buddys made great supportive comic relief and I'm always a sucker for realistic portrayals of super powers. The only real problems I had with it were that it went on too long and the two main dudes start talking like they are fatalistic enemies destined to always be at odds with each other. All this talk of dude B causing the death of all his friends and dude A has it so tough being different and blahbedy blah. I thought there could be more to explore with both of their relationship if the movie didn't have to force itself into some chase-y action flick. Still, not bad at all. Definitely some interesting situations. Oh, I also loved when dude B slams on his breaks after trying to hit dude A with his van. The van goes up like onto its grill with momentum. Funny visual gag in the middle of a tense scene.
09.22.11	Let the Bullets Fly	Wen Jiang	For the seventh time, I'm going to Fantastic Fest. So... fair warning. Once again I'm doing the festival while working the mornings, so I'm skipping most of the weekday midnights and will have to miss a few of the matinees due to trying to keep a 4-hour schedule at work. Not ideal, but it beats going broke. So therefore I'm writing these notes at work (shhh!). Therefore therefore, the length of these notes will be directly proportional to (a) the amount of work I have to do and (b) how many hours I have until having to leave for the theater again. Today, for instance, I'm in at 8:30 and out at 10:30 so these will probably be short. Or not; who knows! So... I think I've pretty much honed my scheduling strategy to pick movies I think I'll like. I don't care if they're readily available on netflix streaming, I'll still probably never see them outside of the fest so I may as well enjoy myself now instead of sitting through some obscure crap and having homework assignments. Case in point: this movie. I guess it's China's highest grossing film or whatever... All I knew is that it sounded more appealing than a comedy about a guy who keeps a kid locked in his basement (which I heard was good by the way; who knew!). It's a colorful mainstream action comedy slightly resembling Yojimbo (it's no Yojimbo) or Robin Hood (it's better than most versions of Robin Hood) where a good-natured bandit pretends to be a corrupt governor in order to oust a local mob boss in 1920s rural China. Chow Yun-fat plays the godfather character with equal parts humor and evil. This movie... doesn't suck. For what I thought it would be, it delivered sufficiently. It certainly could have been a LOT worse and I enjoyed myself for the most part, which was the whole goal. I don't think it'll be in my top 5 or whatever, but I could certainly deal with seeing solid 7s all festival rather than have to sit through some 3s and get one or two 9s. Or maybe I wouldn't... interesting. Hopefully I'll still get the 9s but instead of the 3s I'll see 7s. I guess that's what everyone's trying to do. Interesting. Or not, ok next movie.
09.12.11	Red Riding: 1974	Julian Jarrold	So... I heard this trilogy was good. So far I have to disagree. It seems like the whole movie was shot in extreme close-up focusing on weird things that I hardly recognize. It's like 45% random objects, 15% that one girl's weird mouth, and 40% Andrew Garfield's weird face. It's also like the whole movie is so slow and boring, they have to show you a glimpse of the last scene in an effort to hold your interest, but when you get to the end of the movie, you've already seen what happens. It's sort of like showing a spoiler-heavy trailer for the film RIGHT BEFORE the film. Granted, it was just like 2 shots, but there's enough there to tell what the whole movie is. The other two are in my queue so I'll watch them. Paddy Considine's in the next one so I'm hopeful.
09.05.11	Dinner for Schmucks	Jay Roach	I can't say I remember much more than the premise of the French film that this is based on, but it's safe to say that liberties were taken upon translation. It's weird because... I like Paul Rudd and Steve Carrell and jermaine Clements and Zack Galifinakis and Kristen Schaal and Ron Livingston and and Jay Roach, but this movie wasn't that great. I do think it's probably underrated at this point because everyone hated on it so much when it came out. True, it's not a good movie, but there are moments like Zack Galifinakis' laugh and Jermaine Clement's whole role (and sexy sex) that made me chuckle. I'll probably forget all about this in a week though.
09.05.11	The Informant!	Steven Soderbergh	Not really sure why this movie is populated with comedians. Maybe Soderbergh thought that just seeing their familiar faces on screen would make the movie funny? Or maybe he just wanted to ensure a fun time shooting? Who Knows. It doesn't really work here, but then again the whole movie never quite works. It's also a weird choice to do the super 70s-era font for the on-screen title cards when the movie takes place in the early 90s. And I don't know if it's the lighting or the lense choices or what but the movie "looks" older than early 90s too. All in all it's a really strange film that never feels comfortable with itself, which is a shame because I like everyone involved. Damon delivers a really good performance though, so there's that.
08.29.11	Fish Story	Yoshihiro Makamura	Hey, Victor! I watched your movie! Thanks for letting me borrow it (for a year)! This is a multi-decade story of how an obscure Japanese punk song saves the world. I think that Golden Slumber is a more polished film that comes together a bit more powerfully at the end, this movie is still fantastic in that exuberant feeling of all the pieces falling in place just when they should. I was a bit lost in some of the transitions and why exactly I'm following certain people - a few moments felt exceedingly random - but of course it all paid off when I stuck with the film and let it explain itself. It's a really fun human story that in a lot of ways feels like a bluepring for Golden Slumber to me. I wondeer if I'd feel the exact opposite if I'd seen this before the other film, who knows. I also wonder if Nakamura's other films are as good as the two that I've seen. Thanks, Victor!
08.24.11	Kick-Ass	Matthew Vaughn	I'm seeing this... a little bit late. Devoid of all hype, I found this to be fun but not much more than that. Hit Girl was certainly the high point of the movie. I'm just kind of over slick comic-book transitions at this point. Plus the bad guys had a weird mix of humor and danger that didn't quite work for me. I thought Ghost Dog pulled that off much better. It's also interesting to see that Nicholas Cage has completely left Earth behind. I loved his weird superhero cadence while in uniform. Completely weird. Anyway... i wish i had more to say about this but I really don't.
08.13.11	Too Big to Fail	Curtis Hanson	HBO movie on the financial freefall of late 2008. It's cool to finally watch one of these "true story" movies and to have been alive when it was taking place. It seems like it's always World War II or the 20s or 30s or whatever, Viet Nam... I definitely remember the same pundits and headlines that the movie involves. I think it does an admirable job of trying to communicate how and why things happened and there certainly isn't any shortage of acting talent at work here... but I think almost the opposite is true. There's just too many people talking too fast for me to fully comprehend everything that's going on. I guess that documentary that they made might do a better job of conveying information. I thought everybody, William Hurt especially, did a good job trying... there was just too much. I still hope Curtis Hanson gets to be let out of movie jail now though.
07.19.11	Edge of Darkness	Martin Campbell	It's refreshing to know absolutely nothing about a movie. After the first scene I had to hold back a serious urge to look this up because it played exactly like an outbreak movie. But then Danny Huston showed up and it turned into Constant Gardener Lite. Still, it was a little better than I'd heard, but still not very memorable. Meh.
07.19.11	Armored	Nimrod Antal	Group of ragtag armored car drivers decide to steal some cash, except they invite some nancy boy war vet with morals that ruins everything. It's kinda funny how quickly these guys go from best buds to accepting that they're murdering each other. In like an hour. Less than an hour. like 15 minutes. So... not a good movie, but I'm kind of a sucker for these modern-day genre pictures. Jean Reno, Laurence Fishburne, and Matt Dillon as a gang of armored car thieves? yeah I'll watch that. It almost doesn't matter that it sucks, except the part where i end up sitting through a crappy movie.
06.02.11	Young @ Heart	Stephen Walker, Sally George	Good doc although I felt like the director really got in the way. The movie could've been a lot better but luckily the strength of the subject matter shined through.
05.29.11	How to Train Your Dragon	Dean DeBlois, Chris Sanders	Pretty good. Should've wrtitten this sooner :(
05.28.11	Date Night	Shawn Levy	Had a few moments, mostly thanks to the personalities of Steve Carel and Tina Fey. It's crazy how much less critical I am now that I barely watch movies.
05.28.11	The Fighter	David O. Russell	My old college buddy Trapper once commented to me that there's innovation and there's execution and excelling in either is basis for respect. Since we were in college, I think the sentiment came out more as a ham-fisted defense of Bruce Willis in Armageddon but still, I get what he means. This movie is an excellent example of execution. It's a boxing movie based on a true story involving two brothers overcoming underdog odds, a junkie who struggles with kicking his habit. It involves a love story and a championship fight at the end that the good guy wins (spoilers!). On the page, it couldn't be more familiar, yet in the right hands with the right people and the right amount of verisimilitude and heart and nuance and character, you get something to be repsected. I thought this was really great. It seems pretty boring to say it like that but whatever. It's amazing how Mark Wahlberg can turn in such a great performance when he wants to or when someone knows how to get it out of him considering most of his other work. Here, he's quiet but not in the blank way that he usually is. I hesitate to put ALL the credit on him to anchor the piece because everybody else was firing on all cylinders as well, but I can see where he may be forgotten in the fray and he really put forward an understated - yet active - performance. It's also great to see David O Russell deliver. It's funny how all these directors making incest comedies and mathematical noirs in the late nineties are now dominating Oscar season. It'll be exciting to see where these guys - Russell, Aronofsky, Paul Thomas Anderson - go in the future. Great movie. Really well made.
04.09.11	Star Wars: The Phantom Menace	George Lucas	I'm playing through Lego Clone Wars right now and it's a really fun game. It's made me want to catch up on the TV show and movie that I never saw, so while those are enqueued, I realized that Molly had only vague memories of all the Star Wars movies so all the ships and characters are completely lost on her. So we had to start at the beginning. It's weird how the original trilogy seems like three distinct movies to me but the prequels seem like one big one. I guess knowing how the trilogy progresses forgives some of the initial disappointment of Phantom Menace, but watching it again now makes the multiple fatal flaws so evident. There's trying to make it a kid's movie but having a plot convoluted enough for some adults not to understand, there's introducing perhaps the most badass evil character in all of cinema since Darth Vader then killing him off in a really really lame fight sequence, and there's even showing the jedi in their heyday but excluding them from every major action piece in the movie (i'm not counting the duel with Darth Maul because it's just too painful to consider effective. Lots of awkward jumps and waiting with maybe 20 seconds of actual saber fighting, much of which is Maul doing sideways cartwheels and Liam Neeson trying his best), but really what it all comes down to is that George Lucas is not a good writer or director. It's funny to see that Molly liked Jake Lloyd, mostly because of his pie face when he doesn't have to talk. She also thought that Ewan MacGregor was a horrible actor. It sort of made me realize that everyone is terrible here. Natalie Portman, Liam neeson, everyone. Sam Jackson is the only one with any kind of comfort on screen but that's just because he's doing his own thing. So it's sort of like when the whole class fails a test: it says more about the teacher than the students. The dialogue is horrific. Luckily, the design is top notch and it was fun to see everything that we've been playing in Lego form on the screen. So yeah, still bad, but I was able to pick out elements and contexts that made it surprisingly bearable.
04.09.11	Pootie Tang	Louis C.K.	I wouldn't quite put this on my list of shame but it's true that I never saw it when it came out and Louis C.K. has become popular enough since then that I felt I should go back and watch. It feels like it should've been made in 1994 or 6 though rather than 2001. Still, it's fun to see comedians who have gone on to other things in this, and some of the gags were funny to me (Wanda Sykes spending the whole movie dancing like Rosie Perez in the beginning of Do The Right Thing is awesome). I also liked seeing Oz/The Wire vets Reg E. Cathey and J.D. Williams as Dirty Dee and Froggy, the weirdly Dick Tracy-esque villains. Oh and David Cross as the Pootie Tang imposter was great. So yeah, there are enough cameos and gags to make it worth watching but overall I got the sense that it should've been maybe a half hour short or something rather than feature length. It seemed pretty thin.
03.27.11	Good Hair	Jeff Stilson	Chris Rock explores the business and culture of Black women's hair. To a white guy such as myself, this was just as informative as it was entertaining. I'd heard these words thrown around like weaves and tracks and whatnot but I really had no idea what they meant. Furthermore, I remember that scene in the beginning of Malcom X where Denzel gets his hair straightened and it starts to burn then later he denounces straightened hair as white man's oppression, but again I had no real idea what that product was or why it burned or whatever, so this doc taught me as well as made me laugh. Rock/Stilson gets pretty great interviews, which I think is really what makes the movie good. It's true that documenting the super duper hair bonanza show or whatever it was made for a good skeleton of the movie and that stuff contained my single favorite scene (the one white kid in this group of super hair-dressers that are competing in this weird talent show/hair cutting contest that's getting put on goes to get some botox for the first time. He gets injected in his forehead and cheeks and there's footage of him looking SUPREMELY upset in a way that only a tiny blonde gay hairdresser can and he says "I don't feel as beautiful as I had anticipated. I feel like I got stung by a thousand killer bees" as he presses some weird cold compress on his face. It cracked me up. Anyway, it's really the interviews with everyone from Al Sharpton to Ice-T, Nia Long to Salt N Peppa that sold the movie for me. They are all great interviews. I love how Ice-T has more knowledge on the subject than anyone, obviously pulling from his pimpin days. Even Maya Angelou was hilarious. Hearing everybody open up completely is really great. Oh, my other favorite moment is when Chris Rock goes with this Indian supplier to sell hair to a black Beverly Hills hairdresser who's a total gossip. The hairdresser jokingly admits that he's re-sold hair that's been on celebrities, then continues to dish dirt saying that Vivica Fox prefers Malaysian hair. Then he has a wide-eyed moment where he just realizes that he's given away a hair secret for all the movie-goers. It's great. Funny doc, even for white people.
03.09.11	The Book of Eli	Hughes Brothers	I love Post Apocalyptic movies. I really wanted to love this, and ended up liking most of it. I had major problems with the end of course. I was with it even after we find out what the book is and all that. It's really just Alcatraz. What a horrible place to make shelter. There's no water there. Did they figure out how to desalinize or something? When I was on the Alcatraz tour like fifteen years ago they said that the reason for its closing was cost. The salt in the air erodes everything. There's no water, no food, and no way to get anything on there except by boat. It doesn't work as a shelter and certainly not as an archive. And Eli's condition was bullshit. I guess Denzel is as badass as Rutger Hauer but I immediately questioned half of his scenes, like when he just walks up and talks to a guy or when he crosses the room to open the door for Mila Kunis or even how he knows that Jennifer Beals is blind. I didn't buy it and it completely took me out of the movie (although to be fair I was already out of it thinking about how horrible Alcatraz is as a safehouse location). Aside from that, it was pretty good. Heavy Fallout vibe, complete with cannibalism sub-plot. Oldman was great, I love how Denzel will take a role like this, Ray Stenvenson seems to be pigeon-holed quite nicely as the menacing henchman. I liked how there was no narration in the beginning telling us that there was some nuclear superwar. The Hughes Brothers are still worth watching to me (going back to Dead Presidents even though there are a few flaws with that film as well). I was well-warned that this has crap elements so I don't feel too disappointed. It certainly had moments (although bad CG grenades suck ass).
03.07.11	Piranha	Alexandre Aja	Let's see. I kind of like seeing these 3D movies in 2D because they end up having weird framing and shots that mean nothing when they're not poking out at you. For instance, it's pretty awesome how the douche character throws a blue drink right at the awkward teen character in the beginning! Whoa comin at ya! The bad CG floating penis however, was not awesome. That's more or less my only problem with this movie: the bad CG. I just wish it were better. Right from the get-go with the whirlpool it's bad and never gets any better. Really strange because I remember the Hilla Have Eyes remake having really decent CG so I know Aja's capable. Anyway, I appreciated the amount of nudity. This movie really needs it and it's cool that they put it in. I enjoyed myself through most of this, although i guess I wish Dina Meyer had a bigger role and what happened to Paul Scheer? Jerry O'Connel pushes him out of the way and he's gone from the movie for some reason. Strange.
03.06.11	The American	Anton Corbijn	It's taken me so long to watch this. I must've fallen asleep to it a half dozen times. With such a stuttering method of watching this, I'm really not sure what to think of it. I rented it hoping for a smart action movie and got the quietest crime film I've maybe ever seen. I'm pretty sure I really like that, even though it put me to sleep so much. I've gotten in the habit of putting a movie on late at night to see how far I make it before falling asleep. Usually I'll finish a movie in two sittings that way but this... did not work in that fashion. But again, I kind of ended up liking that. Falling asleep to shots of Clooney walking down deserted streets at night is kinda fun.
02.15.11	Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps	Oliver Stone	Oh how I wanted to love this film. For some reason I still believe Oliver Stone has more great movies in him, and the 2008 financial crisis is a perfect excuse to revisit the character of Gordon Gecko in a new generation. The opening scene is fantastic (also used as the trailer), with Gecko getting out of prison with his 80s mobile phone, seeing a gangsta get picked up in a limo, and being confronted with how the world has changed all in one look on a now-ancient Michael Douglas. Potential is high, expectations are hopeful, come on! There are definitely moments. I pretty much loved everything involving actors who are over 40. Unfortunately, the crux of the movie - as was the first film - is the hunger of youth colliding with the wisdom of experience, both dancing with greed, soaked in money. Instead of models, coke, and fashion though we get motorcycles, prime real estate, and casual two hundred grand loans to your annoying mom. I was with the movie with Frank Langella vs. Josh Brolin. I was really with the movie when Gecko gives another speech (greed used to be good, now it's legal!), but little things, small but consistently strewn throughout the movie, kept reeling me back in. The tacky repitition of bubbles everywhere, the overuse of David Byrne's "Home," Susan Sarandon, the occasional line that's too on the nose or just not written well enough... These things really brought the whole movie down for me because I feel like Oliver Stone is either bowing to studio notes or he just doesn't care enough anymore to fight for it. And this whole fusion thing... like Austin Pendleton was going to perfect cold fusion at the end of the movie? I get that they used it to show that Shia, doing his best but still limited and - I'll just say it - wrong for the part, still has ideals and integrity and blah blah blah but it's too much. It's too cut and dry. I feel like the original film is much more confusing because the investment banking world IS confusing. The power plays and corporate moves going on ARE complicated. Here, the entirity of corporate maneuvering consists of spreading false rumors. Three times. By the way, I heard that Google puts kittens in microwaves for fun. I'm not saying that because I have Bing stock, I just heard it, ok!? Spread it through your viral network until random people badger the CEO on the nightly news! I don't know why I can heartily accept Eli Wallach doing his weird around-the-world sighing smile thing, which is obviously some random combination of muscle spasm and mild choking because he's so damn old, and have such a problem with Shia's accent or Carey Mulligan's haircut but I do. Perhaps the best example of the little problems overtaking the whole is Bud Fox's cameo. Initially I thought "awesome! It's cool they got him back!" but then he starts talking, giving a succinct one-line summary of his past 15 years and ultimo success. Like he had it prepared for some TV interview where they make you repeat the question so they don't have to show the interviewer. Like Gecko wouldn't have looked up what happened to him? Like he wouldn't have come out with an alcoholic dig rather than dumbly asking "so how ya been?" And most of all, like Bud himself couldn't have thought of something cooler to say to Gordon Gecko!? More than a wasted opportunity, that scene is actively weak in an area that should've been a home run. If they screw something as easy as a Bud Fox cameo up, how are they handling the hard stuff? Ultimately, the biggest problem I had with this movie is Gecko's sympathizing. Do we even remember the first movie!? Come on. I know it's harsh but I really wanted the movie to end 15 minutes before it did because THAT's Gordon Gecko. The lame reconciliation with Carey Mulligan's smallest headnod in the history of cinema followed by Shia's look down at her pregbelly made me groan. If they wanted us to ultimately sympathize with Gecko, how about having him screw over Josh Brolin in some badass way? Not decide that 1.1 billion dollars is enough to spare a hundred million to fix his minor family problem. It's so muddled and weak. Come on! This is the character whose speech the dudes in Boiler Room memorized and recited to each other for kicks! This is the guy who got out of prison broke and alone and turned himself into a successfull book author, exploiting the problems in the financial worth for legitimate gains as an author. Why is this guy kowtowed by Shia's lame rebuke "oooh you're such a sad man, Gordon. I sooo pity you!!! whaaaa! How's that compared to 8 years in prison!" God I hated the ending. I hated it so much that I saw it coming and actively rooted against it. It just could've been so great! Maybe Oliver Stone had some grand incite into his motives and learning a bit more context would shed some light. Which brings me to my final problem. Another sad suffering step in the corporate dessication of DVD. My netflix copy of this movie actively had the extras stripped out because it's a rental copy. Same annoying disclaimer at the beginning and end of the movie, an "Extras" link on the home menu, but nothing but random trailers for content. According to Amazon there's a director's commentary on the DVD. I guess because I paid $2 rather than $12 I can't listen to it. This recent trend (I've even had discs like Repo Men and Get Him to the Greek where the special features are actually listed but instead of content there's a 5-second clip telling me to buy the DVD in order to see them) is infuriating because it must take MORE work to strip this stuff out and ship different copies to netflix and redbox than it does to keep just one version. I understand saving on packaging, or printing plain DVD labels rather than expensive full-color passes on each disc, but who's gonna run out and buy the movie they just watched just to see the stupid 7-minute EPK "making of." Most extras suck nowadays anyway, it's just that Stone is one of a short list of director's who actually make their commentaries worth listening to (let's see, Fincher, Edgar Wright, David O. Russell, Soderbergh maybe, and one or two that I'm forgetting). To think that 10 years ago with the first wave of DVD releases, people were talking about seamless branching and mutliple angles and there were musical score audio tracks and actual booklets with the discs... The medium has really declined. There's a truly excellent three hours of solid content (not counting the two commentaries) on The Social Network disc, yet they can't include one extra audio track just because I rented this? Bullshit.
02.12.11	Easy A	Will Gluck	this was decent. Better than it had to be. I still didn't like the happy ending but what are you gonna do with this genre? have her end up a junkie or something? Light-hearted fun. I kind of wish the webcame narration structure didn't exist but I can live with it. Pretty funny.
02.06.11	Winnebago Man	Ben Steinbauer	So I really only did SXSW two years. I guess with AFF and FantasticFest it seems like I'm much more festival-savvy. Watching this movie was an interesting experience for me because it's totally a festival type movie that I would've undoubtedly seen at South By had I gone that year. Since I didn't see it in the context of 30 other films that week, I get to see it (and therefore judge it) as a real movie. It's pretty good. Lots of similarities to Best Worst Movie. You might think it's a bit of a stretch to make a full-length doc about the angry RV man from youtube but, much like George Hardy, half of the film is observing him as he realizes and deals with his newfound niche fame. It's a well-made movie, filled with interesting characters and entertaining throughout. What I imagine was the film's biggest laugh (at least for me it was) comes not from Rebney but a quick cut to his dog as he bids him a fond farewell for a day trip into San Francisco. I also like when docs like this have special features on the film's opening. Not only do you get a glimpse at a festival Q&A but since the structure of the film is so chronicling, it feels like an extra 15-minute coda to wrap the movie up. So even though I didn't see it as part of a festival, I still got my Q&A afterward. Uhhh... so good movie! Could've been a lot worse.
02.05.11	The Other Guys	Adam McKay	To be honest I'm a bit disappointed by this. It had some pretty consistent absurd humor through most of it but overall there was a real weird mix between straight cop action, typical Will Ferrell comedy, and weird bad satire like Hot Fuzz or something. And then during the end credits, there's a random infographic about the death of middle class. The infographic really killed it for me. What a perfect way to end a silly comedy... with cold sobering facts about the rich getting richer and the rest of the country going down the shitter. Was I thinking to myself half-way through "Gee, you know I'm enjoying this so far but it's missing a certain... Michael Moore quality that would really put it over the top." A lot of other stuff was pretty hilarious though. I thought Wahlberg did a decent job playing against type, and loved his constant radical assumptions (along with Ferrell's straight retorts like "where are you getting that!?") Also, the peacock thing was funny until they put a crappy CG bird in the last scene. And Ferrell's deconstruction of the lion attacking the tuna was great. Keaton's great in a jacked up sort of way. Really the first three quarters I liked a lot. Damn ending.
02.04.11	The Social network	David Fincher	Finchers Facebook flick. Expectantly good. A tad overhyped but evened out by the quality of special features on the DVD. Fincher's on a short list of directors who are always interesting in commentary tracks. Plus having a feature-length fully-produced doc on the supplements isn't bad at all. Benjamin Button and Panic Room both have better supplements than actual films in my opinion but whatever. This was good. A bit exhausting due to Sorkin's dialogue, but much more interesting than you'd think it should be. Of course, pretty much everyone in the movie can go suck it because they are all in this weird world where everyone either makes three hundred grand during the summer or goes to the olympics or becomes a billionaire just for having a nerd roomate. That's Harvard I guess. It's also interesting to see that thanks to the settlements of all the cases in question, nobody walked away with less than 65 million dollars. So maybe the movie's even better for making you empathize with any of these rich bastards because nobobdy REALLY loses. Bah. Sooo... yeah, pretty good.
01.31.11	Green Zone	Paul Greengrass	The politics in this lessened its impact in my opinion. I guess I was just expecting a random action movie along the lines of The International. Instead, I get Matt Damon single-handedly proving that America forced its way into war in a convenient two hours. There's a good guy CIA agent, a bad guy CIA agent, a passionate Afghan citizen, an evil general, a vapid reporter, and no-nonsense Matt Damon caught in the middle. The script is really pretty weak. I (of course) attribute this to Brian Helgeland. "Let's get the story right this time. xxoo" Oh well, guess I'll have to rent The American to hopefully get my decent Action fix
01.18.11	Best Worst Movie	Michael Stephenson	A documentary half about the movie Troll 2 and half about the star of said movie, George Hardy. The Troll2 half of the film could probably be replaced by any cult film but it's notable for me because the Alamo Drafthouse had a part in it and several dudes I know were on screen (go, Zack!). The real interesting stuff is with Hardy, who by all accounts is a super nice guy who happened to be in this ridiculous movie 20 years ago. Fame is a test. This movie is George Hardy taking that test. His "you don't piss on hospitality!" line recital makes a great through-line where at first a gigantic crowd has to egg him into it, then he kind of gets comfortable with it when playing around with the actors in the house, and finally ends up thrusting it on people who neither know or care. Seeing George at Horrorfest walking around in disgust really made me root for him. I ultimately feel like he passes the test, being at peace with his dental practice and not chasing the limelight any further, but the last line really tells us all that fame always wins. So that aspect of the film is really interesting. Seeing George react to a spark of adoration and rooting for the movie not to end up like Overnight or Waiting for Guffman. The other stuff is good as well.
01.17.11	True Grit	Joel Coen	Actually got out to see this which was great because I was feeling real bad not supporting Jarrette in some audience-like way. So this was really good. Great performances all around. Tight script. Wonderful photography. Really the only nitpick thing I have to say is that the music is a little expected. It's like a typical "western" score constantly reminding me that yes, this is a western. Usually I really go for the Coens' musical taste but this kind of felt a little shallow to me. Other than that though, superb in every way. Again though, not like... discovering a secret of the universe or learning that we went to the moon in '69 just to investigate a downed transformers spaceship or anything, but a good movie nonetheless. Very good movie. Good job, Jarrette!
01.17.11	The Song Remains the Same	Peter Clifton	I've been kind of going through a big Led Zeppelin kick over the past year or so. I picked up an awesome Japanese box set where they reproduced each album's original LP packaging for CD and presented the entire catalog in one place so I feel like I've finally filled in the blanks on a band that i've heard their greatest hits over and over again (much like The Beatles). So in that was the live album released in conjunction with this film so I added this to my netflix queue. Like a year later, here I am. This quickly went from me sitting down to watch it intently to me keeping this on in the background while i paid bills and straightened out my desk. The movie is 2 hours 15 minutes with an extended 12-minute intro where this guy who looks like Bud Spencer is dressed like a gangster and ambushes a poker game between a few goons, the wolfman, and a guy who bleeds in CMYK then calls each member of the band, some lounging in the countryside watching nude children play in a stream, others tilling earth on their farm, to Madison Square Garden to perform a gig. So the first reel is pretty damn confusting. Then the music starts and you kind of get that these little interludes are some sort of vision from each member of the band, none of which make any sense. So yeah, not a great film. But as a concert I found a few things interesting about it, all pertaining to the 70s. It's such a 70s gig in every way. Jimmy Page's weird wizard cosmis pantsuit, Robert Plant's little half-shirt with the tightest pants known to man, John Bonham's flaming gong - yes, a gong set on fire for the end of the set - and little bedazzled t-shirt. And then there's the completely indulgent solos as only the most popular rock band in the world can pull off. Jimmy Page whacking a bow on his guitar and pointing it up in the air, John Bonham playing with his hands in the midst of his Moby Dick sojourn. I particularly liked that one because it showed the rest of the band walk off stage to take a cigarette break while he went at it. The actual concert performance is somewhat worthwhile as a document of the time and place, but even on the live album I found the 30-minute version of Dazed and Confused just too much. I'm still glad I watched this though. It seems like the 70s is shaping up to be rock and roll's heyday and the Zep were the kings.
01.16.11	MacGruber	Jorma Taccone	People that saw this at SXSW loved it but it made no money. That's a shame because I thought this was very very funny. About a half dozen times throughout the movie I had tears in my eyes laughing and one scene in particular I couldn't even open my eyes I was laughing so hard. When MacGruber dressed Vicki St. Elmo up as him and issues ridiculously specific notes on how MacGruber orders coffee was just too much for me. Kristen Wiig's performance set it over the top. Her face saying "i'm not sorry... i'm sorry" and her look as she fishes through the tip jar were perfect, as was the kid they got to play the barista. Let's see. There's also the "Number one or number two? That means number two!!!" line was awesome, and the random subtitle for "that's loco, man!" was hilarious. The sex scenes were crazy and that they happened like 20 seconds apart was great. And I can't believe Ryan Phillipe agreed to place a celery stalk where he did. I wonder if he had a moment where he was like "I used to be married to Reese Witherspoon and now I'm sticking celery up my ass." Definitely a good sport though. I also don't know how he kept a straight face when MacGruber launched into his whole "I bet you wish your nose was a dick so you could stick it up guys' butts!" riff right into his face. And when he starts pleading to Val Kilmer that he's being framed and that he didn't write the manifesto. So funny... I guess I just go for this type of humor, you know... the funny kind. I thought this was great. I hope I can remember a few of these gags and use them from now on. Not the celery one.
01.15.11	The Town	Ben Affleck	Now that I don't really see movies in the theater anymore, I have to deal with hype quite a lot. What I'm seeing are a lot of good solid movies talked about like they're history-changing revelation bestowed upon its audience. I don't know if there are just so many bad movies that an honestly good one gets pounced on or maybe the state of film criticism is such that writers are so eager to get credit for discovering a good film that they go straight to 11 and broadcast to everyone the biggest word they can think of that means "good" or what, but either way it seems like I've rented a string of films that were vaulted to cinema history before they left theaters and when I watch them at home I just see good solid movies. Such is the case with The Town. It's a good movie. I'm not taking anything away from it. But really? I mean, robber wants out of the life, robber has to do one last job, last job goes wrong, robber either dies or gets away right? The story is not what you'd call revolutionary. Is it as good as even a movie like The Departed? Eh, probably not. Maybe because Ben Affleck was the guy in the director's chair, it's more of a surprise. But Gone Baby Gone was good too. Oh well, So it was overhyped. I still liked it. Jeremy Renner is pretty great. The Hurt Locker was similarly overhyped but I saw a scene on cable from the Jeffrey Dahmer movie that he did where he's arguing with his dad, played by Bruce Davison, where he doesn't want to open this old wooden box that was his dad's childhood treasure box and he explains that there's porno in there and goes through this whole thing where he doesn't want to open it in front of his grandmother just so he can get a few moments privacy to take the severed head out of it. His accent, mannerisms, body language... everything was different. Almost a completely different dude. So now that he's getting some serious acclaim for playing relatively subtle characters, some (like myself) may not exactly see it. But he's really great, and great here. Um, what else. Nothing I guess. Good movie. I liked it.
01.10.11	Exit Through the Gift Shop	Banksy	About as overhyped as it can get, I'd heard from pretty much everyone including people who don't even know I like movies about how genius this is... I was already sad before I even watched it because I already knew I was going to be disappointed. But I really wasn't. It's a great documentary with a great ending that kind of confirms what I always thought about "Art." The great thing about Thierry is that even before he discovered street art, he was ripping off rich people with cheap reject clothes (sorry, Beck!), so it's really no surprise that he should end up being not entirely sympathetic. I really love how everyone at the end was basically pretty angry about the whole thing. Also, I think banksy is secretly Mackenzie Crook from the british Office and the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Sounds just like him. It's great that Geoff Barrow and Roni Size did the music. And Ehys Ifans doing narration. This movie is basically very hip and i'm hip for realizing that. Right? Anyway, I quite liked this movie. The DVD extras were also pretty great. I love that the movie that people kind of expect this movie to be, being a film about Banksy, is actually an 8-minute special feature. He's right, Thierry's story is really much more interesting than his own. Also, the "Legal cut" of Thierry's film is hilarious. Good stuff.
01.09.11	Repo Men	Miguel Sapochnik	Ahh pretty good movie based on a "what if" scenario of a health care field gone completely awry. Basically, these dudes get to legally kill people if they are late on their prosthetic body part payments. Extreme but whatever. Unfortunately, the story itself is somewhat familiar although I will say it has a refreshingly bleak ending and the execution was pretty solid in a Blade Runner-esque way. For some reason I thought it was Larry Fishburne in this instead of Forest Whitaker so that was weird. But anyway, a decent movie.
01.02.11	Coraline	Henry Selick	I think this is a case of me seeing this movie too late. I get that it's a creative design but the story's pretty familiar and the pacing is kind of weird. I remember people really flipping for this, no? Oh well, I thought it was pretty ordinary. Again, fancy to look at but not much keeping me to the characters or plot.
01.01.11	Scott Pilgrim vs. The World	Edgar Wright	I loved pretty much everything about this. The incomplete/transitory scenes took a little getting used to and the ending was... a little odd but everything else felt pitch perfect to a comic i haven't even read. it's really crazy. when the first boss fight broke out it took a second to re-adjust my expectations of the movie (the first 15 minutes plays very much like a cool teen band film, which I wouldn't have minded seeing). The fights are pretty crazy and make the movie pretty crazy but hey, whatever. who says movies have to be sane. Incidentally, I watched the first 5 minutes at my parents' house showing off what a new film looks like in Blu-ray and did have a few moments (most notably the end credits trying to figure out who wrote all the songs) where I missed not watching it on Blu. Damn technology and its constant allure! Anyuway, yeah. loved it.
12.29.10	The Spirit	Frank Miller	Me watching this was a result of morbid curiosity and netflix queue laziness. Oh well, it's seen now, it's not secretly better than everyone says. It's a mess from start to finish. Shame. Mostly I wish Miller would get back to the Sin City comics. Those are still pretty awesome.
12.26.10	The A-Team	Joe Carnahan	For whatever reason, this was my choice. I never really watched the TV show but vaguely remember it being about 4 dudes in a van that drive around helping random people in LA. Like a lady loses her cat or something and they find it. Maybe I just saw the wrong episode or something, maybe it's all paramilitary explosions and location shooting and I just don't know about it. Given my understanding of the show, I was pretty surprised when my dad said he thought the TV version was better. I consider this movie a success. The script is snappy, I love three of the four leads (Rampage Jackson shouldn't be there. Get an actor). I even almost buy that Jessica Biel could be in the FBI. The CGI in the boat sinking sequence was terrible and made for a series of confined sets bordered by random freight iron that made me think that they ran out of money. Everything else though I thought was well done and reasonably intelligent. I'm sure all the stuff that happens in this movie is not realistic, but it has that tinge that someone at least thought about it even if they didn't hire the mythbusters to prove it out. It's plausible enough and presented in a way that kept me interesting. I'm surprised as anyone to say that I liked this. I feel like I like Narc and Smokin Aces less than most movie geeks. What can I say though, I had a good time with this. Maybe it's the Blu-ray. This christmas' experience with setting up my dad's player and seeing some movies on it, along with the fact that those movies were reasonably prices, has brought me a long way from my immediate dismissal of the medium. I'm at the point now where I have a few Blu/DVD combos because they were the same price as the DVD stand-alone and I'll probably wish I was watching the Blu when I pop the DVDs in. I wouldn't be surprised if I get a PS3 before too long.
12.26.10	Robin Hood	Ridley Scott	We got my dad a Blu-ray player for christmas. He watched The Unforgiven yesterday but i was in and out and only saw half of it. Today My mom got a choice and wanted to see this. She loves it. I heard it was horrible. Oh well. It wasn't actually as terrible as I thought it would be, although it did have the major problem I saw when it came out (and perhaps the reason why it tanked): I had absolutely zero interest in another telling of the Robin Hood story. The period London stuff was great I thought. I don't know why but early London really fascinates me. Probably a hold-over from Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. In any case, seeing 13th century Tower of London and Thames was pretty cool. I generally trusted the production design (as in all Ridley Scott movies). The action was eh, the acting was meh, the story was pretty bleh. We watched the director's cut and when I asked my mom what was extra she said she didn't remember so much action. I can't imagine this movie with 20 minutes of less action. Oh my god is it slow. It took like 80 minutes just to get the plot going. Who wrote this!? Oh, Brian Helgeland. That explains it. So... I stayed awake through it. You know, it was a professionally-made movie. I still have to ask who green-lit it though, since I don't think I'm alone in having no interest at all. It reminded me of how much Master & Commander has grown on me over the years. That's a pretty good movie! Oh one last thing. Semi-spoiler. At one point in the movie (it felt like about 4 hours in), we learn that Russell Crowe, who is playing someone who isn't Robin Locksley or whoever but is pretended to be for some banal reason learns that he, in fact, is fated to save the entire Kingdom of England. WHY!? Why do filmmakers place a need on the main character to be "important!" You know what makes chance encounters chance? THEY ARE NOT FATED! All I have to say is that it's a good think he got to that ambush site at just that moment. It would've sucked if he'd tripped on a stick and missed out on discovering his history and noble purpose in life. Likewise it's lucky that he went straight to one of two dudes on the entire planet who know who he is, and he bumps into the other on the way there! Jesus Christ. I hate this. I absolutely hate this. You know what ruined Star Wars for me? It wasn't Jar-Jar or all that trade federation crap or Jake Lloyd or Hayden Christensen (although those are all contributing factors). What made me officially turn on a once-beloved childhood franchise of mine is having EVERY GODDAMN STORM TROOPER BE BOBA FETT'S DAD! Come on!!! So thanks for using this crap-ass trope in this movie as well. I'm happy for Russell Crowe that he remembers that his dad gave speeches. Blaaaaah.
12.25.10	A Christmas Story	Bob Clark	Merry Christmas!
12.25.10	Toy Story 3	Lee Unkrich	Merry Christmas!
12.24.10	Anvil! The Story of Anvil	Sacha Gervasi	I guess i had the wrong expectations for this. I kinda thought it was a mockumentary a la Spinal Tap, and seemed to have my theory proved correct in the first five minutes when the drummers name was "Robb Reiner," but after watching the whole thing I guess I'm wrong and this is a real band? THaat said, I guess this was a good doc. These guys are kind of delusional and empathetic at the same time. Like most docs, this ended up being sad for me because these guys refused to let go of their wilted dream but they have a remarkably good attitude about it (damn Canadians) so i guess that's the feel-good part of it, right? I dunno. Anyway, decent doc I guess although I think I was summarily overhyped for it because I'd heard so much about how great it was it's really just another doc about weird people, except they're not dumb enough to laugh at (American Movie) and not talented enough to be impressed by (Genghis Blues). Anyways, it's christmas morning, it's snowing outside, and presents await.
12.24.10	National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation	Jeremiah S. Chechik	A holiday classic. I don't KNOW, margo!
12.05.10	Get Him to the Greek	Nicholas Stoller	I'd heard mediocre things about this and basically agree. Too loose, the scenes are disjointed. Brand's "acting" scenes really stand out. There are occasionally funny things, like Hill freaking out on adrenaline, but mostly it's kind of a meaningless film. Pretty much everything with Elisabeth moss is awkward. The weird party debauchery scenes feel forced to me although i do like the tongue-POV shots. Pretty meh. I also don't appreciate how they made it the same universe as Forgetting Sarah Marshall but Jonah Hill plays a new character. oh well.
11.20.10	The Ghost Writer	Roman Polanski	Ewan McGregor gets mixed up in all sorts of political intrigury when he opts to ghost write a former primer minister's autobiography. This was much lauded as Polanski's return to form. I agree that the paranoia and mystery that Polanski's thrillers are famous for are indeed here. There's actually a lot to like here: Great last shot. Almost iconic. Subtly sophisticated photography and staging, smartly realistic action, and an intelligent plot that rewards your investment. Great cast, quietly building suspense, and wonderfully vague tone all makes this movie a kind of sleeping beast. At first, with my expectations in the forefront, I was a bit disappointed as I watched just because the movie never goes as far as I thought it would (maybe it's too many Mamet films but I spent the entire time waiting for McGregor to be framed) but almost immediately after the movie ended (i even started these notes with the intention of giving a somewhat lukewarm response) things started clicking together for me and standing apart as smart solid filmmaking. Good movie.
11.14.10	Iron Man 2	Jon Favreau	Eh... So in hindsight, I realize that the reason why Iron Man 2 worked was that it was not silly like most other comic book movies. The characters were smart and the conflict was not so epic and the Jeff Bridges' antagonist was surprisingly cerebral. All of these things became painfully clear as I watched this sequel, which succumbs to most if not all tropes that make most comic book movies forgettable. Too many characters, too many robots, too many things going on, and way too silly. I also have no clue what the new mexico thing is and suspect i'll have to see Thor or The Avengers or any number of other Marvel movies to understand. This creates a weird mixture of emotions for me (see my RED notes for details). So... pretty forgettable.
11.06.10	Where the Wild Things Are	Spike Jonze	Huh. I'm not sure what I expected out of this and I'm not sure if I am impressed or disappointed or what. I kind of don't know what to think about this movie. I can definitely say that the creatures looked cool and were remarkably ambulatory. The design of their creations was cool as was the scenery. I think it's weird that Jonze - whose music video work can be so colorful and polished - tends more toward muted tones and hand-held in his feature work. Kind of a weird movie I must say. I liked the music. Thought the kid was good... I guess it's really the story that's not sitting right with me. I'm not like a super fan of the book and really don't remember it that well at all (although I certainly had a copy as a kid), but isn't the book more about having fun for a night than bumming everyone out? I don't know... it all seems like some special view of childhood that I don't really identify with. I guess this movie is hitting me like Adaptation did, which was I enjoyed the idea of the movie way more than actually watching it. So... kind of a bummer end to DVRfest this year. Lots of falling asleep and rewinding. It also feels a bit short, but nothing I can do about it now that it's over. Next year perhaps. So the stats. Oh the pitiful stats. This past year i saw 110 movies (0.3 a day), only 4 in the past week and month. My grand total is 2153 but with these slow years my average is down to 0.98 a day. Ouch. Netflix is now killing the venues at 395 with the number two slot being Alamo South lamar at 244. Do I usually talk more about this? I can't remember. So yeah... to bring it back, Peter Bogdanovich kept his review cards going for something like 17 years. I'm now a pretty decent chunk into that at 6. Another two years and I'll be over halfway there, which is both awesome and insane. This year I've learned of a new group of Alamo regulars all with their own "tallies" going, which makes me feel old and pretty cool. This time next year I should maybe have my rumpus room done to the point where i do this festival in here rather than the living room. I hope to have my life in order to the point where I can do 10 movies again, and who knows how many movies I'll see in the meantime. Hopefully more than 4.
11.06.10	Couples Retreat	Peter Billingsly	Really sad to see that everyone was right and this movie isn't that great. I was hoping for the best with Peter Billingsly and a script by Favreau and Vaughn but things really never came together here. It's a shame. You know it's bad when they steal jokes from Along Came Polly and don't pull it off as well as Hank Azaria did originally. I guess it's great that they got to hang out on the beach while making this but I wish they maybe would've worked a little harder or something. I don't know. It's funny how often these formula movies don't work. And it's also funny how everyone goes to see them anyway. Myself included. The line-up alone was enough to make me want to see it even though everyone hates it. It's weird how studio comedies are really just taking actors and putting them together. Sometimes you get Wedding Crashers, mostly you get You, Me and Dupree. Anyway, it seems an all too soon end for this year's DVRfest but it's already 1:15 so I'd better get the last movie started.
11.06.10	The Steel Helmet	Samuel Fuller	The Second night of DVRfest starts off with Sam Fuller's The Steel Helmet. It's really a powerhouse of a war film, following one bastard of a Sergeant through a few incidents in the Korean War. We start the movie with him tied up and a bullet hole in his helmet, the lone survivor of a squad due to freak luck (the bullet slid around the bowl of the helmet and grazed his forehead on its way out) as he meets a South Korean kid that he calls Short Round. Honestly it's pretty hard to really absorb the fact that this movie came out in 1952. Not only was the Korean war going on but it had been less than ten years since Fuller himself was at war. Comparing this to any other war movie of the 40s, 50s, and even 60s, this is by far the most realistic view that I've seen. This movie could be made today and it would fit right in with the tone and message of current war films. The only thing it's missing is blood and flying limbs. Everything else feels 100% authentic. That makes this film a real experience to behold and I can completely see how this basically made Fuller's career. Great movie. So... the next one I had planned I thought was feature length but it turns out to be only 40 minutes. I think I'll just update this entry after I watch it since that's a little rough to call a whole entry. Also, it starts with the words "Brett Ratner Presents" which... I'll be honest, if it was "Martin Scorsese Presents" it probably would've gotten its own entry. Oh well. I'll be back in 40 minutes. I Knew it was You: Rediscovering John Cazale It's interesting that this is only 40 minutes. It really should be longer, just like the man's life and his career, but I get the sense that there just isn't quite enough. The doc is well done even if the weird animated info-graphics set to catchy music is pretty out of place here (I wonder where that trend began. Was it Super Size Me? The Kid Stays in the Picture? Youtube?). They go over his short career and give glimpses of his stage work and get everyone you'd expect to talk about him. It makes me want to re-watch all five films that he was in. That's about it. For some reason, I have no problem watching Sam Rockwell, Steve Buscemi, and Philip Seymour Hoffman talk about John Cazale (I guess because they're good actors and so was he?) but seeing Brett Ratner put himself on screen is offensive to me. I guess because they got more than enough people who actually knew them (the Carol Kane and John Savage interviews are hilariously short) so did we really need a random director thrown in the mix? whatever. Anyway, that was surprisingly short. On to a romantic comedy that I've heard is bad but want to see anyway. And maybe some pizza.
11.06.10	13 Ghosts	William Castle	I didn't make it; fell asleep halfway through, so I watched the last half this morning. A poor family learns that a mysterious rich uncle has left them his house in his will, which is great except the dozen ghosts inhabiting it. With the ability of these special glasses you can see them, which is where William Castle inserted his gimmick of "illusion-O" where the ghosts appear in blue and the audience has a choice of looking through a red filter to see them or a blue filter to wash them out. This was pretty much exactly what I thought it would be: an innocent cheap fun movie that reminds me of the joy present in a lot of these old horror movies. Sure it's not at all scary or spooky and the floating candles and whatnot bring more smirks than shivers but... it's just fun to watch. It's comfortable like an old warm blanket. I think it's really great that TCM keeps up the tradition of horror movies on Halloween weekend; I really like that you can find movies like Night of the Living Dead and Creepshow on tv while carving pumpkins or decorating the house. Just as strong a connection as all the classic Christmas movies on in December if you ask me. Anyway, that was last night's ghostly double feature. I'm not sure what I'm watching next but tonight will bring 4 more movies! See you then!
11.05.10	The Lovely Bones	Peter Jackson	Behold DVRfest 2010! I'm getting back to my roots this year, meaning I have 6 random movies on my DVR, some of which have been there since June, and I'll be clearing them out over the next two nights. Traditionally this has been a time for me to reflect on all the movies I saw over the past year - the one-person festival serves as an anniversary of this website as well as an excuse to clear the DVR and to spend the weekend watching movies - but the past three years or so I really haven't seen that many so tonight's going to be more about seeing if I stay awake than any long pontifications on the nature of my movie-watching habits. Still, I'm glad to be celebrating my 6th year of cataloging every movie I see and have 6 pretty random films lined up for the occasion. First up is this Peter Jackson movie that I never got around to seeing upon release. I really don't even know much about it (picking the genre was hard!), just that it had pretty lukewarm reception and now he's kind of retreating back to Tolkein territory... usually not a great sign. I'm still hopefull though so let's get this show on the road! it's 10:45 and I've had a pretty long week at work. Here's to me not falling asleep and waking up on the couch at 5am with my contacts stuck to my eyelids! Back after the movie... Huh. Well... It looked pretty. Stanley Tucci was in it more than I thought he would be, which is half good and half bad. The good because I thought he was the only actor doing any work on screen but bad because he was such an... easy choice. I think maybe if I was bald or balding I'd be mad at this film because he's the only hair-challenged guy in this and he's 100% creepo child-killer. And you see like 18 shots of his thinning pate before you even see his face. But aside from him (and a cameo from some avid book-buyer in a trenchcoat in the very beginning) i kind of felt like everyone just had to stare off laconically for the whole movie while the girl whispered at the audience. This was one of those movies that seemed to play in slow motion, which really doesn't make sense considering Jackson's previous work (excusing King Kong perhaps, which also plodded along but at least had action sequences to spice things up). And there's plenty of his "trademark" extreme close-ups and wide angle lenses when it's creepy time but all the effect shots and really everything else after the girl dies (which happens quite soon) felt like a test to see when I'd start dozing. I think it may be one of those cases where the book should've remained a book. The story immediately felt disconnected for me and wasn't helped at all by Wahlberg who I guess hasn't been pushed as an actor before or since Boogie Nights with a side order of I Heart Huckabees (Maybe he'll be good in The Fighter, he's in that right?) who I never empathize with probably because the ghostly communion scenes are honestly a little confusing. I never really got how she got to see back into our world and only really saw the reflection thing at the end when there seemed to be a whole big scene building tension toward Tucci being stopped from pushing a certain piece of evidence into a safe hiding place but then Hitchcock's bomb on the bus actually blows up followed immediately by an incident so arbitrary that it gives no pay-off at all. Parts were pretty though. I guess there's that. It's just sad when I remind myself of Heavanly Creatures and The Frighteners and compare them to this. Don't really know what happened but it's a pretty big mis-step. Moving on, an old-school horror movie I taped off TCM during Halloween weekend. I've done this for the past several years in hopes of getting a movie just like this to fill out my DVRfest schedule and was kind of surprised to see this year that, aside from the Boris Karloff marathon where all those movies run together for me, this is really the only one that stood out as something I hadn't seen. I saw the re-make in the theater for some reason and left not happy. Let's hope the original is more fun and less Shannon Elizabeth trying to act.
09.30.10	Red Hill	Patrick Hughes	Australian cop-on-his-first-day-in-a-new-town thriller starring the brother from True Blood. I really wanted to like this because I typically like Australian movies especially their unique brand of modern western that they can kind of still get away with (No Country for Old Men had the same vibe here in America) but this turned out to be a little more typical than I would've hoped. Not bad by any means, but not surprising or great either. Some dude that the whole small town fucked over breaks out of prison and comes for revenge and Jason Stackhouse has to realize that his boss is the bad guy. It was ok. Kind of a mediocre movie to be the last of the fest... ...but luckily I saw one more thing! It's not a film per se so it doesn't get it's own entry but part of the reason why Stuart Gordon and Jeffrey Combs was in town was to do a weekend of performances of Nevermore: a one-man play starring Jeffrey Combs as Edgar Allen Poe. It was kind of a special thing. They had a curtain over the screen in one of the auditoriums, didn't allow food service during the show, and Gordon had a set of stage lights set up that he sat with a tech triggering cues on (i know this because I sat at the end near him and kept an eye on him because I wondered how one "directs" in theater). The lights went full dark and we hear Combs silently enter, take the stage, and start talking to us. He strikes a match and lights a candle as a spotlight takes its place and he sets the candle down on his desk and proceeds to give about a 80-minute monologue as Poe, reciting poems (heart-breaking Annabel Lee) and stories (amazing reading of The Tell-Tale Heart), getting drunk and lamenting about his new invisible bride's departure from the audience, and ending with a reading of The Raven. In short, I thought it was amazing. The direct energy of live performance coupled with my awareness that this was Jeffrey goddamn Combs and Stuart motherfuckin Gordon collided in a shock of sparks for me. They might as well have been acting out Re-Animator in my living room just for me, except I imagine several other people in the audience felt exactly the same way. It was a really special thing to get to see and I'm really glad I did. It made a perfect last screening of the fest for me, and will hopefully live on in my memory for quite some time. Great stuff. I almost went home after that but Victor persuaded me to check out the party (him offering to drive helped). So we went out to this ghost town and ate some of the whole cow that they roasted and watched Arc Attack perform with their tesla coils (a dude dons a chainmail outfit and stands between them letting the electricity touch his head or hands or whatever) and robo-powered drum kit. Later they put a metal cage in between the coils and saw Nacho Vigalondo all but Rape Elijah Wood in front of everyone. Mostly the party was a good time because I got to hang out with most of the old movie friends one more time without a movie to seat for interrupting us. It made me all sentimental for my old life a bit but also feeling good about where i'm at now. I made a vow to see everyone before next September. So... looking back, a few things seem interesting to me. This was the first year that I didn't get at least half-sick. That's awesome. I think I only saw one midnight movie and it wasn't that great. I actually went to the closing night party for the first time since, like, year 2. And I actually had fun! I saw way more good movies than bad, and met a bunch of people who I only vaguely knew by twitter. I got Zack's awesome book and got to say hello to Lars and Tim and managed to make it to work every morning (except the friday after closing night. I was mysteriously "sick" that day). My favorite movie by far was Golden Slumber, followed by The Sound of Noise then probably I saw the Devil. And I got a VIP badge for next year! sweet! And now, I'm even finished with these notes. So awesome. Time for lunch.
09.30.10	14 Blades	Daniel Lee	Typical kung fu film. I should've stayed at work I think. I was completely bored by this. I don't care about ancient Chinese settings, boring quests that make no sense, or flat characters that I don't understand. The kicking and punching is all polished to the point of familiar choreography to me now so it's not exciting at all. At least with Gallants it was old people to kind of mess with the formula a bit. This was completely by the numbers and I was bored as shit. I don't know if the movie was bad or good; all I can say is that I didn't like it.
09.29.10	The Troll Hunter	Andre Ovredal	The last secret screening: some unheard-of Norwegian mockumentary supposing trolls were real. I kind of had a groan when I learned that this was the secret film but you know... as I watched it it kind of grew on me to the point now, like a month later (jesus I'm late on these write-ups) I have pretty fond memories of this film. I thought it was cool if not expected how they gave realistic treatment to some of the fairy tales i was familiar with (I'm sure there are a ton of Norwegian ones that I'm not but I definitely recognized the billy goats gruff), and the whole Christian subplot was pretty fun and not at all American and... I dunno, it was just a well-executed take on the idea. Certainly could've been a lot worse. I liked it. It's been a pretty good festival for me. I feel like several previous years I had a feeling where I started off seeing a lot of crap, then later years I saw a lot of mediocrity, but this year I pretty much liked most of what i saw. Sure I liked some things more than others but I'd count them all as more than adequate. Did I already write this? damn.
09.29.10	Red	Robert Schwentke	Kind of surprised that this wasn't a secret screening. Either way, it was fun to get to see something early and tell people at work about. Luckily, I liked it and had a good time with it. Fun popcorn action movie. I only remember having one problem with it, which involves spoilers so beware. why was there nothing after the end credits!? The movie sets up perfectly that helen mirren deliberately shoots morgan freeman in a non-lethal place but they never bring it back at all. Either it's a huge missed opportunity in which case it sucks because it's lame to give Morgan Freeman such a messy and random death, or they're really confident that they get to make a RED 2: Even REDder which is pretty damn ballsy and maybe kind of cool. Maybe. Probably still crap though. I couldn't've cared less when Adam Green mentioned having Hatchet 2 all written out while shooting Hatchet 1 and that's why we see the chainsaw in the first movie or whatever (whether it's in the first movie or not, what's a fully-functional gas-powered belt sander doing in the middle of a swamp?) and if I liked Hatchet 1 enough to remember it I probably would've been irked at all the unresolved stuff they made me wait for. So bad move, RED. You should've had Freeman pop up after the credits. Other than that, I liked it. Good fun. Kind of a palate-cleanser from all the rape and subtitles and whatnot.
09.29.10	Bedevilled	Jang Cheol-so	Really good word of mouth on this. It's about an isolated island where the men kick the shit out of this woman until she snaps and kills them all. There's a hell of a lot of rape and violence toward women in the first hour. When she finally does snap and starts fighting back it's incredibly energizing to the audience but... seeing it this late in the fest where the theme for the year seems to be rape, i think a lot of people were over it. It's a very powerful film though and surprising from a first-time filmmaker. His broken-english Q&A was hilarious - he said all of us in the audience looked like movie villains and was afraid for his safety - until i heard he gave the exact same statements for the other screening. Then it's slightly less hilarious and somehow more prepared. The most interesting thing I got out of this actually came the next day when a couple sitting next to me got into a discussion with me about it. She was really really on the side of the main girl who visits the island rather than the one who gets abused (for me, the movie had a downer ending. for her it was a happy ending), like to the point where i think she was projecting or something. So adamant that the character's apathy was justified. I didn't see it that way at all and was actively rooting for her to die at the end. Different strokes! Anyway, probably one of the better films of the fest although it's hard to say because in hindsight really only a few of them remain clear in memory.
09.28.10	Hell Driver	Yoshihiro Nishimura	It's a real shame that this was a secret screening because i'm sure there were plenty of people who wanted to see this but they were not also the people who got into the theater. Typical Japanese weird fare: lots of fake blood and interesting monsters strung together with a terrible narrative and super-cheap production. As a movie it's pretty terrible but if you watch this kind of stuff for a specific purpose I can see how you'd find enjoyment in it. I did think that some of the "boss" monsters were interesting but the overall effect of the film was deadening so it came off as boring to me. The first 40 minutes or so is clunky exposition explaining some weird flammable zombie gland that sticks out of people's heads then the titles appear then it's like an hour-long action sequence with no break. This movie was pretty hard to get through... maybe the worst movie of the fest for me, definitely the most amount of walk-outs I saw. I don't necessarily blame the film so much as the presentation. if there was some way the fest could differentiate the early studio secret screenings from the obscure interesting screenings, perhaps more of the film's audience would get a chance to see the stuff. I would've much rather seen From Beyond than this but oh well. Such is the case with Fantastic Fest secret screenings.
09.28.10	Drones	Amber Benson, Adam Busch	a mundane office worker with snappy screwball dialog discovers that his co-workers are aliens and the fate of the world comes into question. Angela Bettis, Samm levine and Gruber Allen all play white collar aliens pretty well. Actually I quite liked this movie. The co-director said in the Q&A that the writers are from radio and that makes sense because the dialog is unrealistically smart. It's kind of a choice that you have to make a consciouss decision to go with but I did and enjoyed myself. It's also a bit of a Deus Ex at the end but whatever, for an interesting take on a comedy it's decent enough. I liked it.
09.28.10	Corridor	Johan Lundborg, Johan Storm	Swedish Hitchcock knock-off very much in the vein of Rear Window. I was with it for the most part although this did more to solidify my love for Golden Slumber than anything else because this movie was so heavy-handed in its "influence" whereas Gold Slumber adopted the familiar Hitchcock territory of an innocent man framed but absorbed that inspiration and digested it into its own completely unique tone. Corridor stuck pretty close to the formula that Hitchcock did better. Still, it's a decent movie and I was entertained. I remember sitting next to Karrie League and we got to the one point where the movie lost me - the protagonist is so freaked out with his paranoid fear that when he hears someone walking in the apartment that he's broken into, he blindly thrusts with his knife or screwdriver or whatever and runs and *shock* it turns out that he inadvertantly mortally wounded an innocent - we looked at each other and shook our heads. That was a nice little moment... not for the movie but for my festival experience.
09.27.10	Rubber	Quentin Dupieux	I had high hopes for this one. All i knew was that it was about a tire and it was by the Mr. Oizo dude. I like Mr. Oizo, and find tires fascinating so hey! The result is kind of a two-joke film. The tire itself is amusing for about 15 minutes but the real movie is a very meta excercise involving a group of spectators watching the tire from afar. Both threads feel overlong but the main cop actor gave a pretty good performance so overall I'll call it a decent film, but I was fully prepared for it to be in my top 5 and it just wasn't. It's also a shame that Olly Moss made two great posters for the fest (Rubber and Let Me In) but I didn't like either of the movies enough to pay 50 bucks for them or whatever.
09.27.10	Never Let Me Go	Mark Romanek	You know... I like Mark Romanek a lot. It's just a shame that I don't really care for his movies. Who knows, this could be good but it's so far outside my area of interest that I was pretty bored by it. For me, the emotions never resonated and I suspect Romanek is just too intellectual to pull it off. Who knows if he'll ever make a movie I really love but I am still primed for it. Since so much time has passed, I can't really think of anything else to say about this. It's already left my memory. I can share an anecdote though that happened at some point during the fest. It was an early show on an early day... and although there was no verbal confirmation I figured i'd be a good guy and save my buddy Ryan a seat. So people are filtering in and I have to deny several people waiting for Ryan and he never shows! I know he's seeing this movie so i look around and see him down in front way off to the side. I figure I should go over and tell him that I have a seat for him so i go to flip under the bar table and somehow dump a full large glass of ice water directly into my face. Shockingly cold, completely saturating my entire face, half my shirt, and one entire pant leg. A full house of festival-goers waiting for the show to start sees me, hears the cup empty itself into me and spray ice cubes all over the floor. I dash over to Ryan - at least I can tell him about his seat now - and he says he's ordered food and prefers to stay there. ugh. I go into the men's room and try to dry off while Harry Knowles cracks a joke at me while waiting for the handicapped stall. I figure I had a decision to make: cower home and dry up or return to the theater and eat the pride. fuck it. Miraculously, i didn't get the dude sitting next to me wet. deep puddles are still on the floor and the table just for my seat. it was almost like in the comics where a single rain cloud douses one guy in the middle of a crowd. I spent the next two movies drying off, telling the story to anyone who'd listen in an attempt to own the humiliation. Looking back I feel almost good about the whole ordeal, although you know... i wouldn't recommend it.
09.27.10	Re-Animator	Stuart Gordon	So, Re-Animator was a pretty seminal movie for me. My neighbor Cameron turned me on to it. I'd always been into horror movies (i remember trying to get my parents to take me to a drive-in double feature so I could see Friday the 13th part 7.. maybe playing with License to Drive? anyway) but Cameron was the guy who got me into the hardcore stuff like Faces of Death and Frankenhooker. We shared a love for fangoria gore, the movie Hardware, comics, and making crappy home-video renditions of our favorite movies. Re-Animator was one of our favs (hopefully the tape with us throwing glow-in-the-dark glop around in my basement is lost forever). I must've rented that movie a half-dozen times throughout middle and high school. Then watched it a few more times through college, then bought it on DVD and watched it a hand-full more times with the commentary and whatnot. So it has a personal spot in my film history. So when Fantastic Fest announced that it was bringing Jeffrey Combs and Stuart Gordon in and showing this theatrically, it was the first film added to my schedule (they also showed From Beyond which didn't have as much personal history with me but I still like a great deal, but it was programmed up against a secret screening so I didn't see it). I'm not sure there's much else to say. Great movie. I loved getting the chance to see it in a theater, much less to have the actor and director in house to talk about it. It was all just great and a real treasure of a memory for me.
09.27.10	The Man from Nowhere	Jeong-beom Lee	People said this was pretty close to Man on Fire which I'd agree with (I also got a bit of Leon but without the creepy love stuff) but whatever... it's a really solid Korean effort... I have to say though it's already kind of left my mind. Can't really think of many details other than the main antagonist brothers and how one has fancy hair and phone ornaments. It's weird to pull off dangerous while looking like such a dandy. What's that weird kung-fu movie with the super-skinny philipino dude where his boss grabbed his crotch and smelled it? oh well. Anyway, this was good, if not a bit forgettable. Still a good in my book though. Way to go, Fest!
09.26.10	Class of 1984	Mark Lester	So Alamo Zack finished his book of Punks on film and to commemorate the event he got to show Class of 1984. I figured I had to go for a few reasons: 1) I'm always up for supporting Zack and really wanted a copy of his book, and 2) I wasn't sure if I'd seen this or not. I pretty quickly realized that I had. Tim Van Patten, now acclaimed TV director, giving nerdy Michael J Fox a really hard time. I liked it ok. It really reminded me more of movies I saw around that time that I have weird disconnected memories of seeing on cable but it's a good movie I think and really showcased evil punks quite well. Poor nerdy kids, man... so bullied! Before the movie, Everything is Terrible made a montage of punk footage that was pretty epic and amazing. Mostly I'm happy for Zack and his book. I've spent a little time with it at this point and am really impressed not only with the thoroughness of the content but also the layout and design. It's a pretty slick book and I'm really glad I got a copy.
09.26.10	Hatchet II	Adam Green	Ok so I'll be honest. I feel like during FantasticFest 2 they deliberately played the first Hatchet in the smallest theater just to say they had a sold out screening that were standing in the aisles to get to see it and all that. I remember Harry's "review" that year and thinking it was utter bullshit and that the movie was ok but certainly nothing special. I felt that Severance was way better that year, but anyway. Then I didn't see any other Adam Green films but heard they were boring to bad. I did see a few shorts that I didn't like. Still though... Wrong Turn 2, man! I loved Wrong Turn 2 and sometimes quick sequels work way better than originals! So They added a second screen to this show due to demand but again, i was routed into the smallest theater in South Lamar, running the film to simultaneously project to the middle-sized theater next door. And Green comes in and tells us that people told him not to go back to horro because he was a real filmmaker now but he loves it so he did it but really he did it as a reward to his fans so this movie is really for us and by the way it's the kind of movie that is better if the audience gets into it so he'll be walking back and forth between theaters to see which one is louder. There were like 15 warning signs in his intro for me. So I took a deep breath and realized that I was now probably set up to not like this movie so I should just try to be open and take it in. It didn't really work. I remember being really impressed that the swamp in the first Hatchet was all filmed in a studio and thought that Joel guy did a good job of basically carrying the story between the kills (which were decent). In this one, somehow the swamp looks a lot worse and the story relies on... well ok the main girl is decent i guess but her uncle... I don't think he's an actor I think he's a friend who found himself in a movie or something. And Tony Todd's weird face and voice falls flat when he has to spend like a half hour covering all the exposition for both movies (because of an extended origin story and the set-up for the second movie). I Like AJ Bowen and thought he did a great job with The Signal and was really solid in a short I saw several years ago called Maidenhead and I'm glad that he's getting work but he has nothing to work with here and seems to make some weird choices. I don't know why but it looks like he's wearing a fake beard for some reason. He's not stand-out bad in this though because everyone else seems similarly lost. Anyway, so I know I'm not supposed to care about the writing or acting or any of that because the kills are great, right? Ugh. I get it, you mixed up a lot of fake blood. That doesn't explain why this supernatural dude who nobody's seen for decades has a gas-powered belt-sander. I just didn't go for any of it and some of the kills kind of insulted me. I guess I wasn't with it at all because some people in the audience hooted and hollered right on cue whenever a gallon of fake blood was tossed onto a wall; I looked around and feel like others were more like me but I can't be sure. Maybe I just didn't "get" this movie. 30 Days of Night 2 was pretty terrible and boring, but at least it was a real movie. It had a beginning, middle, and end. Here's how the plot of Hatchet 2 goes. girl: Quick! I need to go back to the swamp! Tony Todd: Ok, but we have to wait until 5. girl: ok! Tony Todd: talk talk talk talk talk talk talk girl: it's 5! We're now surrounded by fodder with weak side stories, can we go now!? Tony Todd: ok. -they go to the swamp- -people die- -they kill the bad guy- the end. The only thing to really think about during the whole movie is why they have to wait until 5 to leave. Aside from the obvious reason (running time), here's what i came up with while watching cheap make-up effects and tired death scenarios. -hatchet dude had to get more gas/oil mixture for his ancient power tools that he stores in the swamp -the one actor had to talk himself into believing that his twin brother was in fact alive despite everything in the entire world (except Tony Todd) telling him otherwise -Tony Todd had to take his elaborate morning "eye clown" make-up off. -Danielle Harris had to go baby Gap for replacement wardrobe -the uncle had to try and memorize his lines -the pompous self-important director had to find a way to put himself vomiting in the first scene of the movie. So for as much as I hated this movie, Green said something in the end Q&A about whether you like his work or not you have to respect that he, the son of a janitor or something like that, had the determination to get out there and make a movie. That's admirable I guess...
09.26.10	The Housemaid	Ki-young Kim	I picked this because it was old and I generally like older movies more than newer ones (especially in a festival setting), and because the write-up said that this was regarded as one of Korea's finest films. I've seen some pretty damn good films from Korea so I figured this was worth a watch. This was screening in a double feature with the remake which apparently switches the whole premise around and I wasn't interested in the remake at all so who knows if it's any good; I heard it wasn't. So the story is this guy has a happy family and he gets a housemaid to take care of... the house because he's busy and his wife is pregnant and whatnot. Stuff happens, they have an affair, then this malevolent dynamic sets in where he confesses to the wife but the housemaid's preggers and because of society they have to take care of her or something so she exerts her power and basically steals the husband against his will all in the same house with the couple's first two kids watching on. It's one of those slow build type of movies that never gets like... blood and gore horrific but just very very uncomfortable in the situation kind of like an anxiety dream. So you still have tension building and building and the housemaid goes nutsier and nutsier and it builds toward this end where she forces him to take cyanide with her or else she'll kill his wife and kids and he's crawling to his wife who he loves and with his dying breath apologizes for making such a mistake... SPOILERS AHEAD! ...and then it turns out this has all been a conversation that they couple has been having over dinner because they read about a similar situation in the paper. So there's that... but then! THEN! The father looks directly at the camera in full PSA-mode and tells up about how as men get older they think about young girls more and more and that we should be careful not to act upon them. Then he points to several people in the audience and laughs at them saying "I know you're thinking about it, and you too!" HE LAUGHS AT THE AUDIENCE. The end. What a crazy random amazing ending, especially considering the power and effectiveness of the entire film beforehand. It was truly bizarre and made the movie for me.
09.26.10	Outrage	Takeshi Kitano	I haven't really seen any Yakuza movies and I have to admit to not being familiar with Takeshi Kitano at all. That said, I liked this movie. I thought it was fun to watch and although it's ultimately just the same scene over and over again, it was fun to see how things turn out and how all the loose ends tie up. I was actually reminded a lot of the Italian mafia movies like the Di Leo stuff, how all the gangsters are dirty and vile with no morals whatsoever and everybody backstabs everybody, except with an added layer of etiquette and formality that comes with Japanese culture. Really well-made and well-executed. I feel like I'm typing this word a lot but it was solid. Actually this movie is indicative of most the movies I saw this year. I feel like in previous fests I saw a bunch of movies I was pretty lukewarm about or movies I barely liked but didn't blow me away. This year the vast majority of movies I actively liked. I don't know if I just got lucky or am better at guaging my tastes or the programming staff kicked ass or there was just better movies made this year but whatever combination of the above occured I'm happy about it because the end result was that I liked most everything I saw. It's a really great feeling when you see good movies all day. So yeah... maybe I'll check out more Yakuza movies at some point if they're like this. I liked this one a lot.
09.25.10	I Spit on Your Grave	Steven R. Monroe	Again with the Wrong Turn 2 ethos in mind, I approached this one with hope. The original - or rather the box art for the original - is pretty important in my cinematic history. I remember spending hours at the local video store when i was in middle/high school (B&B Video, later Hilltop video) looking at literaly every movie they owned. Some were just too overt to even trying to pass by my mom. Slumber Party Massacre was one. Stripped to Kill was another. But perhaps the one movie that I most wanted to see and that I most knew there was no way my mom would let me rent was I Spit on Your Grave. The title alone... but add to that the image of a woman walking through the woods in torn underwear, one ass cheek showing, holding a knife... no way. too much. And to my surprise, when I moved to Austin and kind of re-ignited my love for all the odd and mostly crappy horror movies I saw at that age and rented it through netflix, The original holds up quite well. It's brutal and intense and maybe the most distilled entry in the rape revenge genre that I can think of (I often compare it to Last House on the Left just because they share castration but Last House on the Left is so muddled in tone and weak in plot that this one really stands above). Anyway, so I like the original quite a bit. So the producer of this remake really impressed me. She said they wanted to go for it right from the beginning and never considered toning anything down which I admire. I also like how they're trying to release theatrically unrated and it completely sucks that it will probably not work. I will say that this movie is way better than Hatchet 2 which seems to be making a huge thing about doing the same thing. So I liked the movie. I thought it was true to the original and suffered from modern sensibilities more than any kind of neutering or studio interference. That said, I do think it's not as good as the original due to the current state of horror. While it's true that there's still basically a 20-minute rape scene in this movie, it's nowhere near as uncomfortable or intense as the original. Where the movie really pales is in the revenge killings though. I can see why they wanted to change up from the woman having sex with her rapists before dispatching them (it does seem like a pretty male outlook) but the elaborate nature and poetic irony of each revised revenge strikes me as movie-ish and fake and therefore more unbelievable than the direct nature of the original. The original could be real, this was a movie. She can't just kill the dudes, she has to make satisfying statements akin to the pain they put her through... so the guy who filmed the whole thing has to have some sort of camera-related death and stuff like that. it would be stronger if she just took them out but whatever... movies aren't like that anymore. so in the end i was happy with this although it's not a classic or anything. Still, solid and could've been a million times worse.
09.25.10	Red, White & Blue	Simon Rumley	I didn't really know anything about this movie or how Tim League hosted the filmmakers while they were here or how Alamo regulars helped out with it or anything like that. So when I learned all that right before the lights went down I thought i was in for a pretty bad movie that was overcompensated due to friendships. I'm happy to say that that wasn't the case. This would be a pretty good movie even if it weren't shot in austin. But since it is, I think it's pretty funny how... it's like the most Austin movie ever. They cover like 16 locations all around the city representing the hippest or coolest places in town. It's kind of like when LA filmmakers go to a location city like New Orleans and shoot scenes at every major landmark just to get their money's worth. So they have scenes at an Alamo Drafthouse, Toy Joy, Austin Diner, Broken Spoke, Beauty Bar, everywhere... it's pretty crazy and seems like overkill to me but that's just because I live here. I bet this is how all Los Angelenos feel about every movie. Anyway, Noah Taylor is great in this movie. The girl is just ok I think but the main guy plays a douche pretty well and Noah Taylor is great. Solid movie.
09.25.10	X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes	Roger Corman	They brought Roger Corman into town this year. I didn't see Sharktopus last night at the Paramount but really wanted to get a rare chance to see this movie in a theater. the Corman Q&A was icing on the cake. The print was gorgeous. The prismatic effects of early 60s special effects have a really unique feel to them and I think work quite well. Ray Milland is pretty great as well. I especially liked the party scene where the girl asks him to dance and he looks at her like she's a complete nutball for even thinking that he even entertains the thought of the possibility of him dancing ever in this world, much less with her. Then his subsequent dance is also pretty great. I've co-opted it into my repertoire and even used it at a wedding this past weekend. I think I didn't do it quite right because my friends said it looked kinda cool. Anyway, the ending kind of threw me for a loop. I first saw this movie a long time ago when I read Stephen King's book Danse Macarbe. So I remembered there being a final line after Milland plucks his eyeballs out of him yelling "I can still see!!!" but apparently I only remember that because King wrote about it in his book! I guess it's just such a cool idea and fit so perfectly that my brain made it truth. Weird! Really good movie though. One of the best saturday-matinee-sci-fi yarns I think.
09.25.10	Sound of Noise	Ola Simonsson, Johannes Stjarne Nilsson	Micah gave me this recommendation. I watched about half the short online then realized that it screened before the movie so saved the rest for the big screen. The short is really great. Basically, these 6 people break into an apartment and turn common household items into musical instruments. They have a song for each room and that's all the short is. It's awesome. So this movie is from the same dudes but this time instead of music for an apartment it's music for a city. And there's a story with a cop who hates music because his douche conductor brother gets all the acclaim within his family. The story of the movie is pretty good but it's really the music numbers that make this movie special. There are four main movements within the film and one introductory piece involving a van hitting the shoulders of the road at different speeds to make different tones while a guy with a full drum set in the back of the bus keeps the beat. It's so awesome I can't even say. Instead I'll post the youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qct3nBWlNTA So if this movie had two or three more music sequences it might be my fav of the fest, but as such I think it's firmly entrenched as my number two. A really great expression of how universal and primal music is to us as a species. I recommend it to anyone who likes music.
09.24.10	The Violent Kind	Butcher Brothers	Another movie where the filmmakers were there and psyched and they got internet porn girls to hand out free Pabst Blue Ribbon to everyone before the show (except the poor UT student sitting next to me. sorry, dude!) and they were really excited that people showed up and everything but I thought the movie was terrible. It was kind of like three movies one right after the other. At first it was a biker movie, which I was kind of alright with, then it turned into a weird Dark Hours abduction movie which kind of lost me but then it turned into an alien movie and I kind of dozed off. Didn't like it much at all. oh well. From what I understand, most of the midnight movies were pretty weak this year. I think this is the only one I saw.
09.24.10	30 Days of Night: Dark Days	Ben Ketai	So after my crappy seats and rough parking and lines and the general overall experience of the Paramount last night, I decided it was worth missing the philipino doc that the Not Quite Hollywood guy did just to avoid leaving south lamar. Unfortnately, the only show left with tickets was this. I tried to be open about it, remembering my experience with Wrong Turn 2 and how that has turned into a really solid movie in my mind. This wasn't. It sucked pretty bad. It's especially hard at FantasticFest when a movie sucks because the filmmakers are more often than not in the house and super psyched to be playing their movie at the fest and in the theater and thanks to how Tim et al treat the filmmakers with special trips involving automatic weapons or late-night karaoke or whatever i imagine it's a really fun fest to be a part of (several filmmakers have said that they have made or want to make another movie just to get to come back to the festival, which I think is cool), but when your movie sucks it sucks. Sorry. Setting a sequel to 30 Days of Night in Los Angeles... I really shouldn't have to say any more. I didn't love the first film but will say the thing that made it interesting was that it took place in Alaska. LA is pretty tired. Actually, the vampires in this movie are pretty tired. Screaming pointy-toothed goth dudes do not interest me at this point. Especially screaming pointy-toothed goth dudes in a random ship where the danger we're trying to stop is the ship leaving to go somewhere more interesting and do something you want to see more than what you're watching. Nothing new with this. Boring.
09.24.10	I Saw the Devil	Ji-woon Kim	First secret screening. Korean cat and mouse thriller where a serial killer makes the mistake of killing a supercop's wife. The cop goes vigilante and torments the killer by beating the crap out of him and making him swallow a GPS pill then letting him go, showing up whenever he's about to start trouble to kick his ass some more. The dude from Oldboy is the serial killer and is pretty great at being a hulking unstoppable monster. I was reminded a lot of Russell Crowe for some reason... he had his hair longer and is a bit stouter like Crowe in that newspaper movie... plus all the violence. Anyway, this is a pretty awesome movie. Great storytelling and the crowd really loved it, myself included. Can't say it's my favorite though because already a lot of details have left my mind, but I definitely enjoyed the hell out of it.
09.24.10	A Somewhat Gentle Man	Hans Petter Moland	This movie is built around Stellan Skarsgard, who plays a recently-released convict trying to re-enter society. His performance is great but doesn't completely make the movie because the script is pretty good and all the other actors do a good job as well. In particular I like the guy who played the older gangster who you get hints of maybe once having some power but any more these days all his crew are now old and he doesn't understand the new generation. He plays it with a cheap gold tooth that's great. There's also a mechanic who speaks in fantasically long sentences. I missed a lot of his performance because i had to read tons of subtitles whenever he talked but I was still aware that it was funny. good movie.
09.24.10	Gallants	Clement Sze-Kit Cheng, Chi-kin Kwok	Alright so I've made a pretty huge mistake. Since I actually had work to do during work hours this year, my time each moring to write these notes was not there and I ended up doing almost the entire fest without writing a single word. Furthermore, the next weekend I had a wedding to attend (yay, Ryan!) so as I sit down now to fill these in, it's been a good two weeks since I've seen some of these films. It kind of goes against my original intent with this site, since I've now had time to reflect and see which movies stay with me and which don't so my reactions may not be the original that I felt on the day, but oh well. this is better than nothing. So this movie... basically a town full of old action stars where some minimal plot forces them to fight one another. It's a movie where I liked the idea more than the execution. I like that these older guys got a juicy role again and it's fun to see old guys kick ass but... the movie is not very memorable to me. Just OK.
09.23.10	Buried	Rodrigo Cortes	Row Q seat 10. Awesome. Well, this whole movie is a guy in a box so I don't need to see the right side of the screen, right? Again I was reminded of Hitchcock, this time Lifeboat due to the set constraints. This one takes it a bit farther in that it's just one actor... sort of like Phone Booth but without the crappy direction, performances, or script. I have to say they pulled it off. A whole theater of people spent a few hours with Ryan Reynolds in a wooden coffin and I for one didn't really get all that bored. I also respect the ending. And I love how even in a voice-only performance, Steven Tobolowsky is still typecast as a nerdy slimeball. Ryan Reynolds in person... it's kind of a deal where he's really funny and charismatic and personable and that makes me hate him that much more. Like with his career and health and bone structure and everything else, couldn't he at least be an asshole? Nah, he seemed like a cool dude. Fucker. So even without staying for the midnight movie, I still didn't get home till 1. I'm sure this will make Friday morning's work that much more productive. Yay!
09.23.10	Let Me In	Matt Reeves	Off to the Paramount for a gala double feature of movies that are about to come out nation-wide. Huh, Parking's gotten worse in downtown, and standing in line to get a second ticket is no fun, especially when you end up being obstructed. I guess most people would prefer that to somewhere closer like... row A seat 7, but not me. Oh well, guess I'll just deal with the tight seats and the obstructed view for a few hours... great. Despite the physical discomfort, this remake was pretty good. I liked but did not love the original and feel about the same for this one. As always, Richard Jenkins and Elias Koetes were amazing. The boy looked like a perfect American equivalent to the original actor to me. The girl was a bit more American and less weird. So, my own trifling differences between versions. If you haven't seen either then this is worth watching and stop reading. -i liked Jenkins' car scene more in this one but - maybe this is the film and maybe this is just me knowing the story already - I actually felt more weirdness from the original dad; I feel like they drew out the mystery of what was going on there for longer. In this one, right after the first kill you hear the girl yelling at him saying "what, do I have to do it myself?" which I think leads people directly to here right off the bat. -I probably liked the hospital room fire scene more in this one although I remember it being great in the original as well. -I definitely liked the end pool scene more in the original. -I generally didn't like the CG movement they gave the girl. I guess it's an American thing (or a having-a-budget thing) but blah... didn't need it. I also didn't need the vampire eyes and weird teeth.
09.23.10	Golden Slumber	Yoshihiro Nakamura	I didn't see A Fish Story last year despite Victor and everyone else saying how great it was. I did watch the song performance at the end but without the film to put it in context I was a little lost. But still, based on the reputation of that film I thought I'd see this. I'm really happy that I did. I had no clue what it was gonna be but it ended up as a Hitchcockian innocent-man thriller filled with great acting and spectacular writing and solid direction. It made me almost choke up as well, which can be tough to do with subtitles and surrounded by tough film festival buddies. Maybe the thing I like the most about this movie is that Good wins. It's one of those It's A Wonderful Life films where... despite the odds, thanks to the main guy being a good guy and having good friends, things work out alright. A very human optimistic movie, which I found pretty refreshing. I mean, even the creepy serial killer turns out to be like Dexter on happy pills... way more moral than anyone who was ever in an Abel Ferrara movie ever. So I pretty much loved this. In contrast to Enter the Void, this 140 minutes flew by for me. Awesome.
09.23.10	Enter the Void	Gaspar Noe	Another fantastic fest! Yay for that, although I'll say up front that these notes probably won't be as thorough as they usually are. For the second year, I'm working mornings and attending films in the afternoon/evening so I'm writing these up at work and, unlike last year, I actually have tasks assigned so i'll have to do these on the sly. But anyway, it seems the festival is busier than ever. My sign-in synopsis: -online ticketing a great idea, horrible execution. Maybe one of these years B-side will cover ticketing and there will be a "reserve" tickets button for each day that automatically grabs selected films from the schedule. I guess this is an OK first start but honestly it needs more dev time. -poster's pretty awesome; shirt's pretty crap. -The Paramount seating is stll FUBAR. I'm changing my schedule to avoid it after tonight. -feels weird seeing so many people i either used to know or used to half-know. Has it really been a full year since I've even been to this theater? ouch. So this film fake sold out due to the ticketing. It was still pretty full though and I was lucky to get a decent seat. So... the beginning titles are online and I urge everyone to watch those. Seeing them in a theater is a real experience. It completely sets you up for anything... blanks the slate with an overwhelming attack of typography. Rad. And the film is superior on a technical level. The blend between photography and CGI is clever and his work with depth and focus is pretty amazing. However, like Irreversible, Noe sticks to his idea fervently, refusing to let it go kind of like how some movies (cough Machete cough) start off super grainy and after about 15 minutes revert to a normal movie. I admire his dedication, but feel the film also suffers for it. After a while, I'm just tired of looking at the back of this guy's head or looking down on people from above. Again, I admire his thought of giving the audience an immersive death-like experience but... with a little thing called editing this movie could be half as long and all the more effective. oh well. I liked parts, but by around the 2 hour mark I was waiting for it to end. notes later
09.11.10	Machete	Robert Rodriguez, Ethan Maniquis	Molly's parents were in town this weekend so I snuck out of a lunch to see this with my buddy Ross. To be perfectly honest, it was better than I thought it would be. The disdain I have for Planet Terror made me think this would bring up all those old feelings again, but it seems like Rodriguez learned a few lessons since then; either that or he mixed in enough of his El Mariachi sensibilities to make it work. The film grain and cut frames are still pretty gratuitous and noticeably absent after the first 15 minutes, almost like he started using it then got bored so decided to drop it. I appreciate the humor in the movie though and he wrote all the characters so they get to chew scenery pretty much through the entire film. Plus the plot is quick enough and complicated enough that following all the characters is enough to make up the movie and let Danny Trejo not say much. The porn music is funny the first time but gets a little tired when none of the sex scenes actually contain sex. At least they got Lindsay Lohan naked(ish) and showed a few breasts this time around... All in all I had fun with it and think it's a pretty good movie.
08.08.10	Fantastic Mr. Fox	Wes Anderson	I quite liked this movie. It was real fun to see Anderson's eye for design translated to a children's story with talking animals and whatnot. Actually, the more I think about it the more I liked it. A few times it bordered on pretense but for the most part i thought it was more human and much more emotional than his last couple movies. quite good.
08.02.10	Hot Tub Time Machine	Steve Pink	i kind of love this movie. mostly because it exists. it seems like they don't make movies just for fun anymore. Either it's some thin concoction of a performance based comedy, like putting Will Ferrell together with a single idea and letting him run with it, or it's a scientifically-engineered humor factory where every button is hit with the bored polish of a formula perfected 20 years ago... this movie feels like an 80s comedy in the best ways in that it's stupid, it doesn't take itself too seriously (yet without winking at the audience) and it's just about having fun. I mean, it's got a hot tub time machine for god sakes! The one weak link I thought was Chevy Chase. his scenes are all kind of weird and never quite connect. Don Knotts in Pleasantville will probably be the best all-time character of this type, and watching Chevy mumble through his exposition just made me think of how not as good he is compared to ol' Don. but other than that, i loved it. fun fun funny stuff.
07.24.10	Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban	Alfonso Cuaron	Still my favorite movie probably. We're playing LEGO Harry Potter Years 1-4 right now and it's pretty evident that they took most of Hogwarts' geography and design from this film, which is wise i think because this movie really made the grounds real and livable. It's also the last movie that didn't need to skip half the source material to make it down to 3 hours. good stuff that i've probably talked about many times now.
07.21.10	Inception	Christopher Nolan	Waited too long to write notes about this. My excitement and enthusiasm has kind of faded a bit... but whatever. i remember that I loved the shit out of it. I also saw it in the Galaxy's DBOX seats which were rad (kind of like a subtle version of Star Tours where the seats tilt and vibrate along with the movie)... it was a little distracting at first with the first gunfight where everything was just rumble times everywhere but after that it settled down a bit and became less frequent, so shock sounds doubled with shock thuds to your chest and actually made you jump or when there's slow-motion shots of falling vans you get the smallest tilt setting you off kilter. It was really well done I thought and had much higher value than Gold Class. So, I guess a major criticism of this movie is that you know you're not dreaming because you're not talking to a purple dinosaur. That the dreams were all so realistic was only half-explained by "they make sense to you at the time" but... to me, these are Christopher Nolan's dreams. logic puzzles, visual tricks, illusions, obscured facts... that's really what all of his movies have been about so it makes complete sense to me that that is what his dream world is about as well. I loved it all. loved how he shot it, loved the idea of it, loved the performances. I guess having not seen Shutter Island helped me in this case. The ending being open seemed like the correct way to end things to me more than stir any debate in my mind (the question of whether or not the top falls is a bit of a red herring, i took it as the fact that we don't know the answer was the whole point). I didn't mind the length, in fact I wanted more. The snow setting was great for it's James Bond-ness but I could've done with a few more visual flares or invasions like the train in the downtown street (which was awesome). Such a great movie.
07.06.10	Toy Story 3	Lee Unkrich	So I'm a homeowner now. In terms of this blog that means I pretty much don't watch movies anymore. At least not for the past few weeks, where it seems like there's always a wonderful(ly expensive) new facet of homeownership to discover in my time that's not work. So i have a new ceiling fan and sink faucet and lawn mown but not many movie entries to write notes on. I'm sure that'll balance out. at some point. I definitely wanted to see Toy Story though. I really enjoyed the first two and am happy that they revisited such iconic source material. I think it's great that they managed to address another major aspect to a toy's life that is somehow universally-known but also new to the screen with this one. Together with the collector aspect of the second film, these almost make the rivalry story of the first film seem insignificant. It's really great how they found a way to meaningfully continue to explore the world with these toys that we the audience have grown up with along with Andy. Of course, they know that and use it to make grown men cry. Bastards. So I loved it. Pretty much everything about it. Love that there is no full-on musical interlude yet still uses the Randy Newman music that is so closely associated with the series. Everything with the movie is great and just as it should be. um... i guess i could go on but i can't think of specifics at the moment. Also, This was my Gold Class experiment movie. I don't know about the normal 2D movies but right off the bat a $30 ticket fee is... pretty high. The food was cheaper than the website indicated but still pretty expensive (about on par with the Alamo). The chairs and the consequences of those chairs (more space between people, less people in the theater) are easily the best parts of the experience. The screen is average, the table is a little awkward if you have more than two drinks and one plate shared between the two chairs. The waitstaff try to be fancy but are less practiced than the Alamo staff. The front bar was glitzy and douchey and not my scene at all. All told it was a nice experience but I probably don't have the disposable income to make it a habit.
05.25.10	Only Angels Have Wings	Howard Hawks	This was also on while I packed. I haven't seen it in a while and really like the film, but since i was in and out of the room i only half watched it. I still love all the man-love going on... macho sentimentalism... they can't really make movies like this anymore. I guess The Hurt Locker comes close but nah...
05.25.10	Company Man	Peter Askin, Douglas McGrath	It was on while I'm packing. Very goofy in a sunday afternoon kind of way... Basically a nincompoop explains how he caused the bay of pigs. Kind of similar to The Man Who Knew Too Little but without Bill Murray. Basically the fun of the movie is seeing actors popping up as various historical figures or whatever. Anthony LaPaglia as Fidel Castro is pretty sweet. Anyway, it was ok.
05.17.10	Fortune Tellers Make Killing Nowadays	Agent Ogden	I've been a fan of Clutch for a long time. I strongly identify their early stuff with the highschool version of me and have found that, over the years, as my tastes have changed their sound has evolved as well. I feel like they're the musical equivalent of my friend Jim. I had a circle of friends in highschool just like I had a whole stage of musical involvement, but both the friends and the music have moved away as my tastes and interests have changed; all except Jim and Clutch. While I am not super all the time best friends with either, I still feel connected with them and think they have grown in a similar track as me. So a lot of this documentary was a lot of fans at a lot of shows saying basically the same thing. I find that pretty cool... that this band has cultivated perhaps a whole generation of fans who are able to enjoy a band for 15, 20 years. I feel like I've grown up with them and am really comforted that their new albums still rock and the same four dudes are still together making music. Plus they are so Maryland. Looking at the early footage included on this disc, they are totally dudes who could've roamed the halls of my high school. They're really just a few years ahead of me... I have vivid memories of being turned on to them by my neighbor and friend Cameron... going to this crappy amateur hardcore show with like 30 kids there just because he said they'd show up (they never did), getting a copy of their 7" on tape, listening to Juggernaut over and over again, their Passive Restraints single, their first album with that ridiculous Rats song, see them once then twice then who knows how many times... The old 9:30 club, the new 9:30 club, some random club with just me and TJ waiting outside for the doors to open and my dad freaking out because we were in such a crappy neighborhood, going with Bill Brown to see them at Hammerjacks where they played with Prong, but mostly I remember their second album coming out and really defining everything I like about Rock n Roll music. The first two songs went together and although Big News II was well hard, it wasn't your typical hardcore wall of distortion, and Neil had toned down his gravelly scream to actually sing, and there was this weird near-theme of space and aliens and conspiracies weaved through all the songs and the last third kind of dips into a slower spacier section that fades into an instrumental jam that you kind of feel you could put on while you sleep and unlock the 6 hour version with Tim Sult battling the greys all night long. So this DVD is half concert film, with Clutch performing that personally pivotal self-titled album in full at the 9:30 club, then a second disc with a full-length doco following them on the road and interviewing everyone involved. One thing that I really enjoy about this band is that they are clearly not geniuses. I mean, in interviews Neil has stated that they got together for the same reasons a lot of bands got together: they weren't particularly athletic and got mediocre grades. So for regular dudes from Silver Spring... they are now pretty well respected in the musical community for their craft... and it's really just because they never got super famous, they never broke up, and they never stopped playing music. JP Gaster has evolved from the weird-lookin dude without a shirt on in the band picture from their first album to... a weird-lookin dude who is maybe the most technically proficient and soulfull drummer in any contemporary rock band today. His solos are on par with the great jazz drummers who commanded their own bands. He's like the a#1 dream drum teacher of all time, talking here about the differences in tone between kits that he plays on the albums vs. taking on tour and sitting with his drum tech to practice on pads. Then you have Dan's solid basslines in perfect time with the beat. I love how this doc proves Dan to be "the quiet one" just like Almost Famous. And Tim's completely unique guitar sound that's equal parts blues and rock perfectly melded and Neil's penetrating eyes and deep voice and truly enviable beard... Perhaps it's a good thing they hardly ever come to Austin because i'd probably be the guy in this doc who poses with Neil for a picture and just before the flash goes off says quietly "you know i love you," completely freaking him out. So this disc is great. Plus!!!! They sent a huge-ass Clutch sticker signed by the whole band just as a sweet-ass surprise! Maybe everyone who pre-ordered got one I don't care... what an awesome touch! I'll probably never ever get to make a movie or anything like that, but I seriously have this fantasy... please don't laugh. I'm sitting in a studio in Santa Monica being interviewed by Elvis Mitchell for The Treatment and he's asking me how I came about deciding to entirely score my film with Clutch music. And I start by saying something about how Virgin Suicides kind of got criticized for AIR's music invading the film too much but in this case I wrote the movie from the start with this idea in mind... and how on one level I just wanted to have the excuse to sit in with them while they jam but also see how they'd do with longform composition. And I'd mention The Cinematic Orchestra doing an alternative score for Man with the Move Camera, and the Alamo's shows where they bring in bands to supply live scores to silent films and all that stuff then I'd mention how we ended up projecting the film at a club (probably somewhere in Austin although the 9:30 club could work as well) and having the band play live and just take the board recording for the score rather than have them record in a studio and the soundtrack will be a digital download because it's 100 minutes long but also there will be an audio-only track on the dvd and just revel in my cinematic success tied so closely to Clutch. Some would say pitiful, but fuck you it's my fantasy i can do what i want. The root of that is that I think they are capable of an amazing score. I even tinker with making a fake soundtrack for a fake film out of their existing stuff but the problem is there is so much i'd want to put on it that I can't come up with a track list. Anyway, i've been typing a long time. I liked this disc a lot.
05.16.10	Whip It	Drew Barrymore	So... I wonder what the rest of the country (or the world) thinks of austin at this point. I feel like I got here late and that was 5 years ago. Now, the city seems to be that much more exposed and bloated and notable and I wonder if all the other cities out there are just sick of hearing about us. Anyway, I thought this was pretty decent. I personally haven't been to a txrd match but I remember seeing them practicing one day when I found myself at an Austin Studios tour during the first sxsw that I was in town for and of course that raucous night at the Alamo when QT played Kansas City Bomber and Unholy Rollers when all the movie geeks in the room had to be upset at the talking very quietly lest we get our ass kicked by a girl, and Molly has a friend who played on the Hellcats so she has pretty vivid memories of the old good times and we both agreed that the portrayal of the sport in the old airport hanger with the douchey bands and guerrilla atmosphere was spot on. Also, I think the women in the film did a great job actually playing the game and all that. Directorially, it's pretty rough. Not bad per se, but a lot of scenes don't really flow and some cuts are pretty off. I bet they just didn't get enough coverage, considering Dylan Tichenor and Bob Yeoman were involved. Sometimes it worked (a few reaction shots like the kid in the shower or birdman) but other times it seemed a little messy. And story-wise... it is what it is. There are no surprises here so it's more about whether you enjoy the journey. I did like most if not all the performances. I think I just need to realize that I have a movie-crush on Kristen Wiig. I wish there was more to do for Zoe Bell and Eve but it was still nice to see them as part of the group. I also loved Andrew Wilson and Daniel Stern, but you know... not in the same way. so yeah, i liked it. It's kind of cool to see a story that i'm at least aware of... not some spy story in Iraq or NYC urban hipster drama or LA celebrity comedy. Although that kind of makes the little montage where we see every Austin "cool" location in a row seem cheap and easy like they just spent a weekend here then went off and shot in Michigan (why Michigan!?). I wonder if people who live in NYC or LA think the same thing... They're probably just way too cool and over it to even think about because their lives are so busy and interesting with real things, god!
05.15.10	A Perfect Getaway	David Twohy	I've always respected David Twohy as a filmmaker... I was pretty surprised to see that he had made what looked like a forgettable thriller so I thought it was worth a look. It must be pretty tempting to set anything you write in Hawaii. I'm sure it makes things more expensive or whatever but... you get to live in Hawaii for a few months. I've heard pretty weird things about living there full time but I don't think you can beat it for an extended vacation. Anyway, about the movie... I thought it was decent. It's hard when you have a whodunnit with only 3 people involved (in this case, three couples) because no matter how many red snappers and twists and turns you throw in there, it HAS to be one of those 3 people. So I can't say the movie completely blew me away with it's ending or anything like that but I still thought it was worth watching. The rest of my notes deal with spoilers. ye've been warned. So... Timothy Olyphant. I thought it was a good idea to play around with both his and Steve Zahn's "type" to layer expectations a bit more than average, but it created a kind of third layer of drama for me. Specifically Olyphant supposedly being the crazy killer. If this were 6 or 8 years ago, I'd say that was perfect, but now he's much less the drug dealer in Go or porn dude in Girl Next Door and much more the sheriff in Deadwood or Marshall in Justified. He's a good guy now... so while he can definitely still play menacing if he wants, I don't WANT him to. So the first part of this movie kind of held back because i didn't want him to be the killer (which he more or less had a 50/50 chance of being one). However, when the twist comes and you learn that he is, in fact, just a crazy dude who's hard to kill... that's an awesome moment. In fact, I wish there was more with the knife fight and chase at the end just to get more time finally being able to sympathize with him rather than Zahn. And the very ending is pretty weak. I wish there was a less rushed finality to it. But it was definitely awesome when Steve Zahn's hand comes up slit in half.
05.10.10	The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans	Werner herzog	Nic Cage. I think this movie is critical in understanding Nic Cage's career path as an actor. A lot of people like to say that he "used" to be good but now is crap because he used to appear in movies like Leaving Las Vegas and Raising Arizona but now he's in stuff like Ghost Rider and Next. i was definitely in the camp that thought he's just going crazy and the roles he's choosing were reflecting that, but after seeing this movie I get the feeling that it's all been a fairly conscious decision on his part to move away from acting in the conventional sense of the word and try expressing his characters more like a modern dancer or something... like how an alien who had no concept of humanity would approach things... a much more abstract take that hearkens back to a Wild at Heart style of raw nerve vitality unencumbered by civility or conformity. Don't get me wrong, the net effect is still the same: the dude comes off as batshit crazy and if you ask me each movie he does gets more and more entertaining because of it. But still, with this movie I see several deliberate choices ring out and have to wonder if this is just the first movie he's done in a while that stylistically matches his intentions, or involves a director smart enough to see what he's going for. In this film he's a literal monster. Hunch backed, gigantic gun poking out of his belt, Richard Nixon impressions wafting in and out of his voice... he's a monstrosity. The first Bad Lieutenant had a grimy feeling of dirtiness because Keitel took no pleasure in being bad. His face seemed to communicate that he was somehow compelled to depravity, whereas Nic Cage in this movie really seems to love being bad. Instead of making the movie uncomfortable, it makes it funny. Plus you add in Herzog's willingness to go for it and you end up with iguanas and break-dancing souls and old ladies with guns to their heads. So this movie is perfect for Austin and Alamo crowds, who seem to revel in the insanity that film can reveal. I can see how "normal" movie-goers might not get it or hate it or think it's crap. I got a pretty big kick out of it (although again, the overhype thing... but i'm tired of typing that).
05.08.10	(500) Days of Summer	Marc Webb	I'm glad I ended up watching this alone. While I have to admit to this being a good movie and that the story was told in an interesting way and all that, it's still a fundamentally bummer story. Kind of like The Puffy Chair. It can be a good movie all it wants but all told if i sit down to watch something like this again, i'll probably reach for Nick & Nora's Infinite Playlist instead just because it's about a relationship coming together rather than falling apart. Even a movie as good as Eternal Sunshine I have a hard time re-watching just because the whole thing is so sad. I remember in college I thought it'd be a great idea to basically start a movie where most romantic comedies end, but now that movies like The Break Up and this and Michel Gondry's work exist, i can see that ultimately it wouldn't be for me. I think it's valid for movies to explore this territory for sure... but I guess my personal taste is shining through... I'd rather leave the theater happy. That said, this was still a very interesting take, and it's good and all that...
05.08.10	Sherlock Holmes	Guy Ritchie	Something about historical London really does it for me. Maybe because of all those pages i read in Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, but for whatever reason... the cobblestone streets and gaslights and dirty smoke-filled skies over river Themes seems like a pretty sweet period to me. Not to actually live of course, but to visit in movies. So that certainly helped in my enjoyment of this movie, along with stellar performances by Downey and Law. Having never read any of the books, I'm not sure if Holmes' physicality was there to begin with or Guy Ritchie's insertion... I liked it the first time, showing how Holmes' mind worked out in advance what would happen, but the second time was a bit much. I guess it was adequately explained by the characters aimless eccentricities when not on a case but still, it seemed like a scene from another movie. So that stuff aside, i mostly liked this movie and will have no problem watching the next one. At times the CGI was a bit distracting but I liked the story and more than half of Ritchie's little tweaks (like tilting the frame as Downey tilts his hat to enter character). Altogether decent.
05.04.10	Law Abiding Citizen	F. Gary Gray	I really really liked this movie until the end because I chose to watch this as an origin film for a Batman villain. As an actual real-world film it's pretty ridiculous and absurd, but scene in a Dark Knight type of lens, it's perfect. Again, until the end... which is spoilers so stop reading. So the ending... I really had a problem that there was no post-credits bumper where he somehow survived the explosion. He could be burned up to a crisp or something or deformed and missing an arm or something like that so he's forced to wear a mask that represents John Q Public or something like that, but he has to live to cause chaos to Batman later in life. But instead, he dies not because he gets outsmarted - because really it's an arbitrary decision on the part of the writer to have him not see this coming instead of the rest of the film which - but because this is an American film and bad guys still have to die at the end. Bullshit! Anyway, so yeah... seen in that perspective, i loved it!
05.03.10	Up in the Air	Jason Reitman	So it's been a few days since I've seen this. I wanted to let it sit a bit before writing notes on it and here's why: At first, it was interesting to me how filmmakers... their path of maturation sometimes seems to correlate to a movement away from fun. This is a good movie and Clooney's good in it and blah blah blah it's good all around, but you know... so is Thank You for Smoking. Except Smoking was more upbeat than downbeat and Air is has more drama than comedy. Is the movie considered a "more mature" work because it's really honestly better filmmaking or is it perceived as stronger work just because it makes you cry. Wes Anderson also seems to be on this path where from Bottle Rocket to Rushmore to Royal Tennenbaums to Life Aquatic you have a generally-perceived maturation of the artist but you also have movies slowly getting less funny and more caught up in themselves. I think this is a dangerous confusion to make because i'll be honest when I say that I'd rather re-watch Bottle Rocket than Life Aquatic. So with this movie, I was initially wary of calling it better than Reitman's two previous films because a large part of me believes it's not. It's just sadder than his two previous films. If that's an indication that he has a better handle on his craft and that really if he could've made his other work sadder he would've then that's fine but I don't believe that. I think this story is just a little more melancholy. Couple that with George Clooney perfectly cast as someone who downplays his emotions and it comes out as better. With a few days to ponder on that, i've decided it doesn't matter. It's not like Juno didn't get any attention or anything. At this point i think it's safe to say that Jason Reitman is a real force and the movies he makes are good. Which one I personally prefer and which one is objectively his best are irrelevant to anyone that's not me. So with that, I liked how Reitman purposefully didn't end it with any specific message. I wouldn't've liked this movie nearly as much had Clooney somehow became a different person (or not) and I'm really glad all those deleted scenes on the DVD were not in the movie. I also loved the one quick shot of Anna Kendrick facing away from us on the airport people-mover toward the end of the film. It's one of my favorite little bits and - to me - a real sign of filmic maturity. My one complaint is that most of the actors mentioned in the beginning titles shouldn't have really been there. It should've just been Clooney, Farmiga, and Kendrick. OK Maybe Jason Bateman too. I felt a bit set up by seeing names like Zach Galifianakis, J.K. Simmons, Sam Elliot, Melanie Lynsky, and Danny Mcbride right up front only to have them in one scene in the entire film. It would've been a nice little surprise to see them peppered throughout the movie instead of expecting them to either return or waiting for them to show up. Wow talked a lot about this one. Glad I gave it some thought. A really good movie.
05.02.10	Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone	Chris Columbus	Molly read all the Harry Potter books so she wanted to start the movies over (aka watch the first two again). Understandable, but at this point I've seen this movie enough where twice in as many months is a bit too much. I fell asleep about halfway through.
04.30.10	The Hurt Locker	Kathryn Bigelow	Oooh it's so hot in here and i'm at war so it sucks. What a HURT LOCKER, eh? So I liked this movie. I guess it's just a thing that i'll have to get used to... having every good movie and even most of the mediocre ones hyped up for me for at least 6 months before I get around to watch them... it's hard to get excited about these movies that have already been talked to death. But i still liked it. I thought Jeremy Renner did a great job (although to be honest I would've loved to see more Guy Pearce). I'm impressed that there were so many set pieces though. Like, a normal movie might have one in the beginning, one at the end, and one or two in the middle. This felt like there were 14 (there were probably actually only 7 or so but still.. a ton) times where the whole movie seemed to focus down to one specific thing for a while. I really liked that. aside from giving us a sense of really living with these guys, it also kept the film moving because i was looking forward to whatever next fucked up situation these guys would find themselves. Also, i had a co-worker who was a big gun nut and always complained that sniping in video games and most movies were still only like a hundred yards and that these guns could shoot like a mile or two away. This movie had a sniper scene that - to me - felt extremely authentic. We see these guys with flies in their eyes and dust up their nose and get that conditions are hard, but what really impressed me was when they went to the scope POV to show what he's aiming at, it's all distorted from heat waves to the point where it's just kind of out-of-focus shapes. It's still probably more clear than the reality but just that it was harder to make out than every other movie with a scope shot impressed me. so yeah, good movie. duh!
04.28.10	Yes Man	Peyton Reed	Jim Carrey plays a pessimistic guy supposedly put under a trance to say yes to everything. Very much in the vein of Liar Liar, this movie is extremely mediocre, however ocymoronic that may be. Which is kind of a shame because most of the time I was actually liking it. Zooey Deschanel and Rhys Darby helped a lot but mostly this movie - ridiculous "covenant" aside - is kind of a good motivator. It's definitely always easier to not do something but in the long run you end up closing your life off. It's definitely something I struggle with since I feel naturally inclined to be alone and it was a consciouss decision I made when I moved to Austin. Subsequently, there's a very definite feeling of "living your life" that you don't get if you play it safe. This movie touches on all that, which connected with me. It's just a shame that it had to be framed in a stereotypical Jim Carrey "safe" comedy.
04.24.10	Zombieland	Ruben Fleischer	Finally saw Zombieland! it was ok. Probably a product of too many co-workers telling me how great it is and how much i'll love it just because it has zombies in it. It's a little tired. Plus I had this amazing cameo really built up for me then spoiled by Entertainment Weekly whereas if i saw this at FantasticFest I probably would've been pleasantly surprised by it. It mostly reminded me of how much I liked Adventureland. so... yeah. it was good. I mean, Woody Harrelson was good, the girls didn't do much for me. i liked the beginning titles with the cg typography that interacted with the world. Some of the rules are fun I guess... Ok here's a spoiler-ridden distillation of my problems with this movie: How can you have Bill Murray die in a movie called ZOMBIEland and not have him come back to life? That's just wrong. This sounds absurd but i feel like this whole fast-zombie/virus craze is exploiting zombies. This movie really should be called Sickoland, but nobody would have any idea what that means so it's Zombieland even though dead people don't come back to life!!!
04.15.10	Public Enemies	Michael Mann	Michael Mann. Aside from Oliver Stone I can't think of another director that makes me more excited for commentary tracks. Both directors are so articulate and exhaustive in their research and method that the joy I get from listening to them is always on par with the watching the movies they make. Sometimes even moreso. With this film I was listening to the commentary largely to answer one rather large question that I had with the film: what's up with the sound and picture. I found the acting to be stellar, the story to be familiar but authentic, the locations, costumes, props, and all of that completely immersive. It's just too bad it seemed like it was shot on a prosumer miniDV with the on-camera mic. I'm familiar enough with Mann's methods to know it wasn't accidental so I'll have to qualify this as me not willing to accept a period movie shot this way as the correct choice instead of the filmmakers messing up or anything like that. I was just surprised by the lack of polish here. I guess after Miami Vice I knew deep down that we'd never get a Michael Mann movie shot like Heat or The Insider again, but at least Collateral and Miami Vice had beauty in it. Here, everything's desaturated and the constant hand-held makes it seem like the cameraman is standing on an anthill or something or moving around just to move around and the thing that really gets me is the sound. How the ambient traffic noise pops up whenever Depp says anything while riding in the car, like Mann would rather have that sloppy levelling than go into the ADR booth. blech! So... it's another Michael Mann movie that I wish was better than it was. Perhaps there will be a director's cut some time that will give me occasion to revisit this. Billy Crudup was great.
04.10.10	Maestro	Josell Ramos	I'm reading a book called Last Night A DJ Saved My Life about the history of the disc jockey. Although I've always thought i've been pretty aware of dance music and history ever since college when I started exploring techno dub reggaue and what all and since then I've kept an open eye out for any movies like 24 Hour Party People that deal with musical movements, I guess I never really sat down and thought about all the connections. With all sorts of different named genres and movements and scenes, it's easy to see them as discreet isolated elements but what i'm finding so fascinating about the book is that they really all connect together. The categorizing and separation are just ways for us to talk about it. The problem with the book is that it has a whole bunch of interviews and names like three hundred seminal songs (it even has the top charts for each of the major clubs they talk about), but it has like 6 pictures and no thumb drive of reference music. So That's how I found this doc. The poster has three clubs listed on its poster (Paradise Garage, The Loft, The Gallery) but it's really more of a love letter to Larry Levan and the Garage than anything else. There are spatterings of the social impact, historical significance, and industry inspiration surrounding the time period and it's true that the movie talks a bit about The Loft (and the Gallery gets, like, maybe a mention) but it's really all about Larry It really doesn't concern itself with a timeline or organizational backdrop or any of that. Which is fine... I guess you need a focal point for a movie or else it's just a random collection of people talking... but considering there only seems to be like 5 photos of Larry in existance and maybe 2 minutes of grainy dark VHS footage, the movie ends up relying on slowed down playback, out-of-focus filler, and repeated imagery an awful lot. Also, the guy manning the camera for all the interviews seems to get bored a lot so you end up with people being way too close or half out of frame or shaking all over the place, i suspect just because the filmmakers thought it was cool. So as a stand-alone movie, it's not that great (I'm netflixing the second disc though because I saw online that it's like twice as long as the film so maybe the bonus materials will explore the other aspects 70s NYC dance clubs more), but as a companion to the book I'm reading it's perfect. It puts faces and voices to all the names I've been reading about for the past few weeks and constantly slips in music that's referenced in my chapters. Again, without reading the book I'm not sure I'd know or care who the majority of the people interviewed are, but since I am reading the book then it works very well. So I get to see how wreched Francis Grasso actually is (he's pretty wrecked) and hear all these foreign-sounding-named people with their NY accents and get a good moving vibe of what it was like in these clubs - all of which I was missing from my book. So I'd definitely recommend this to anyone in my exact position. So as such, I liked this movie. But I recognize that I was not the typical viewer. I actually wanted the references to go further. like to put the name of each song at the bottom of the screen as it played or something like that.
04.05.10	He's Just Not That Into You	Ken Kwapis	So... I have to admit to liking movies where lots of different people intersect in interesting ways, and I'm impressed by the cast for this movie... and I can't really complain for getting what was advertised... but this was not one of those movies that unexpectedly rise above their genre. I dunno... for a whole movie dedicated to having guys not into girls, the cacophony of happy endings was a little unsettling. And I expected all the guys to sort of be douches since this movie is so female-centric but gah! It's funny that this was set in Baltimore because once or twice I imagined these pretty people with petty relationship problems running into Bubbles or McNulty from The Wire. It was funnier than the movie I was watching. But again, I can't really complain about this movie being what it is... I guess it's my masochist streak coming out again.
04.02.10	The Cove	Louie Psihoyos	Y'all! there's this documentary that shows that Japanese people hate dolphins! Ok so I know I'm pretty late (not so bad with fiction films where the story is self-contained but it seems like I extra missed the boat on this one because it became so timely), but it was still a good movie. Although some (like Joe Rogan and South Park) seem to think there's more going on with these dolphins - something that only the Japanese people know - it sure comes off like these are just innocent animals being slaughtered for no reason. It's interesting how the end of the movie, when they show the footage they spent the whole film trying to get, it's kind of unsettlingly simple. There's no plot revelation around the bend and in the cove... we don't get any ultimate justifications or reasonings behind the Japanese fishermen, we only get blood red water. The question of "Why" still seems unanswered to me, and perhaps that was the filmmakers' point. In any case, I liked it. It's a movie people should see I guess although really this makes me depressed for human nature more than mad at Japan's dolphin-hate. Maybe it will actually take no more tuna on the shelves of grocery stores to wake people up, or maybe it will take tuna's continued proliferation to make us realize that we just hate our own race. Either way, no one seems to be willing to change unless concrete results stare us in the face. Oh yeah, the music wasn't that great in this. And I would've liked the "ocean's 11" bit where they plan the shoot a bit longer. Like, how did they get the footage? did they have to sneak back the next night and pick up the cameras? Eh... minor squabbles. Good movie.
03.14.10	Away We Go	Sam Mendes	Gah. I just wrote my notes then accidentally lost them. Here's the i-hate-writing-this-a-second-time version: I mostly liked it: -The actors were great -The script was refreshing. I like that the main couple's relationship is not in jeopardy like most movies of this type A few minor complaints: -The music was too intrusive to my ear -A few scenes toward the end come off more like acting class monologues than real life Kind of a weird take on the romantic comedy but I guess that's what you get when you have Sam Mendes telling it. I liked it much more than Revolutionary Road, but it still has that contemplative quiet that I associate with all of his work. Makes for an interesting, sweet movie.
03.13.10	Evolution	Ivan Reitman	This was on TV while i was doing some cleaning and present-wrapping. I don't remember particularly liking this the first time I saw it but... it's been about 9 years now (damn) so it seemed more interesting than all the other channels. Still not great. I like the idea of exploring an entire evolutionary scale in a movie, but I'm not sure pairing it with Seann William Scott fart jokes is the best way to present it. Maybe if someone re-cut this movie as a non-comedy with different music and no slapstick, it might be more interesting. Still not great but at least not so confused.
03.09.10	Fast & Furious	Justin Lin	Hmm... it's kind of funny how this movie completely acts like it's the return to form that made the first of this series the epic masterpiece that it stands today but in reality the first one was overrated and the next two flat out sucked. I hate to see Vin Diesel these days because he was actually great in Saving Private Ryan and Boiler Room but nowadays he can barely speak. His "badass" lines in this are laughably delivered. "I'm gonna enjoy what happens next." What? You're gonna survey the houston jets? "A real driver knows exactly what's in his car." Huh? A real diver goes zigzag in the dark? "Still a buster." Steal a toaster? Are you that bad off, Vin? Can't even toast your own bread? Man, that's rough. Anyway, this was... eh. I guess better than the third (what happend, Justin Lin!? Better Off Tomorrow was undeniably solid) but the effects have gone too far and I get no automotive thrill from any of the race scenes. It's weird... I am in no way into cars at all but I still find myself appreciating the fetishistic detail paid attention to in movies like (the original) Gone in 60 Seconds and Vanishing Point - and I even repected Tokyo Drift for the whole rice-burner drift thing - but in this the cars seemed generic and secondary. It's funny how at a certain point, amping something up more actually waters it down.
03.07.10	Four Christmases	Seth Gordon	Eh, sometimes you just want something light. I remember thinking that Favreau as a UFC fighter looked funny and hey, crazy parents, right? It was what I thought it would be... I laughed when Vince Vaughn saw the baby spit-up and said he had to get away or else he'd throw up too. Unfortunately, Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon have zero chemistry so I thought this movie was going to be The Break-Up Part 2 and when they got back together at the end (spoler!) I didn't buy it at all. Good to see Steve Weibe make a cameo though. Playing video games and experimenting with men nonetheless! Actually, all of the cast was pretty great... and most of the script probably read really funny. Just a shame that it didn't come off funnier
02.21.10	The Goods: Live Fast, Sell Hard	Neal Brennan	Funny. Great cast. Kinda forgettable though. Like it'll leave soon. Funny while it lasted nonetheless. This gets me to thinking: What makes a comedy timeless. There seems to be a ton of comedies - mostly starring one of "The Frat Pack" - that are undeniably solid and make me laugh but ultimately don't stand out enough to come to mind when someone asks for a funny movie recommendation. Yet other films like Blazing Saddles, Raising Arizona, and Anchorman have no trouble differentiating themselves for me. I think that although the specific taste might differ for everyone (I don't get the Tommy Boy love but plenty do), I think there's a common line in the sand for all of us. Weird phenomena ... So for whatever reason, although I liked this movie and laughed a lot, I can already feel it leaving my memory banks where inexplicably Carl Spackler remains forever
02.20.10	Avatar	James Cameron	So Avatar... Finally saw it! Couple things: -glad I saw it at the IMAX. The visual fidelity really is the star of this movie. Everything I saw on the screen looked real even though I'd probably guess 95% of it wasn't. That's really astounding. -Why do I think 3D televisions will fail? Because even in a friggin IMAX theater with amazing 3D technology unfolding before me (the best 3D I've seen to date... I'm still holding out for a chance to see Dial M for Murder theatrically though), I still FORGET that I'm watching it in 3D like 40 minutes in. By the end I was actually suspicious that the film had somehow become less 3D. I had to take my glasses off to make sure it was still blurry. Is it technically awesome? yes. Did I ultimately feel like it brought me into the movie more? Nope, at least not consciously. Maybe I'm wrong and if I watch it twice more one in 2D and them immediately again in 3D I'll realize that it is indeed a massive improvement, but how is Panasonic going to sell that to people? "Don't believe your brains, 3D really IS awesome!" -blue? really? I love the scale of the aliens but why did they have to be blue cat-people? And however Zoe Saldana looks in real life, as a Navi she looks an awful lot like Jessica Alba. And there's not a single creature with hair on this entire planet? I don't understand why people get depressed because Pandora isn't real when literally everything on the planet could kill us for sport. They couldn't have thrown a dog or mouse in there or something? And I get that the forest is phosphorescent but still... Blue? Blue people with cat faces? Do I really have to overcome this hurdle to enjoy the multitudes of other stuff that is awesome in this movie? -The antagonist was also a let-down for me. He seemed like if Billy Zane was a terminator. I really miss the relative complexity of Michael Biehn in The Abyss or Paul Reiser in Aliens. -I know it's sci-fi and everything, but the shallow masking of us raping native americans and killing our mother gaia is a little grating to me. I've already noted this (probably with WALL-E or the remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still), but somehow I have no problem swallowing allegories on nuclear war, racism, class systems, or religion; but the environment gets to me. Go preach to China and Africa and Russia about your goddamn carbon footprint and let me have my goddamn air conditioning on when it's hot outside. -Anyway, did I mention the visual fidelity? Awesome. And all of Cameron's technology was also great. He has a gift of thinking the futuristic stuff out enough to make the gadgets seem used-in-real-life practical rather than just futur-y. -Fuckin Celine Dion. All in all I liked it a lot. Thankfully this isn't Titanic Part 2 like I thought it might be. I'm really curious to see how it holds up in Home viewings... which is pretty cool. It seems like more and more these days movies are made more for TV than theaters; I think it's safe to say Cameron's trying to fight that trend. Most of all, I'm kind of relieved that I liked it. Not sure if I LOVED it or anything, but this saves me a lot of debates. i was really getting nervous there that this would be another Titanic and I'd be forced to argue against Cameron, who I usually love (unlike Micah, who seems to hate with a passion). So... oh right, the story. It was alright. Honestly, a ton has already been said about its genericism and similarity to District 9. I think that 12 years ago this story was much more "advanced" than it is today. I think maybe just the concept of the avatar and the process would tweak way more sci-fi geeks back then before the explosion of the internet and general disconnecting effect it's having on us. And the environment wasn't as big of a deal back then so maybe it would be seen as more forward-thinking and less on the green bandwagon (at least to me). Either way though, the story's pretty basic and nothing to really write more than a paragraph about. Wouldn't it be funny if Cameron was really good friends with Ed Begley Jr. and he let him read the script a decade ago and Begley came back and was like "Not yet, Jim. The world just isn't ready to listen." And Jim said "But I just made the biggest movie in history and I'm the goddamn king of the world! What excuse can I possibly give to make people believe I'm willingly holding off on my next film for 5, 10 years?" And Ed says "Blame technology." So Cameron says that and immediately half of Digital Domain and untold amounts of people are out of work just because Ed Begley Jr. wanted Jim Cameron's next movie to come out when we were already feeling guilty about turning on our lights at night. Maybe that isn't as funny as I thought it would be a hundred words ago. Maybe I'm just rambling at this point... rambling.
02.16.10	The Hangover	Todd Phillips	So... watching this one again, I did indeed like it more! Still feels pretty fresh though so I don't have much to say. Galifinakis is one funny dude.
02.02.10	Watchmen	Zack Snyder	One of those that I recorded mostly to watch in hd but also somewhat to see again. I'm not sure if i read the book before seeing this the first time (i want to say I didn't) so this time around I got to watch for details since I already knew the plot. Have to say I enjoyed it. Parts of me (specific parts) wish we got more slow-motion close-ups of Malin Akerman in her outfit (it's weird, she totally showed her boobs on Lisa Kudrow's HBO show The Comeback and I never really noticed but now that she's in skin-tight latex she's pretty damn interesting) and the Night Owl dude is not beer bellied like he is in the comic but other than that I thought it was ultra-specific in its adaptation. Pretty cool. I remember hearing that the Hughes brothers were doing From Hell and being unable to imagine how awesome it was gonna be then walking away with nothing to help me from being disappointed due to their adaptation (and stripping away of all societal context), i'm guessing for length. So with this it's pretty refreshing to have everything visualized well, even if it makes for a superhero movie with almost no action. I'm half-curious to rent the Black Freighter straight-to-dvd just to see how that goes and I imagine the next time I get around to this might be the director's cut to see everything that i'm not aware that I'm missing... but this theatrical cut stands pretty well I think. I definitely prefer it to 300.
01.30.10	Miami Vice	Michael Mann	Huh, I don't know if it was the "director's cut" material (I can't remember what's different about it other than the beginning but there seems to be more with Foxx) or if it's just my second viewing but the film seemed less frantic and a bit more sprawling and cohesive. I remember feeling a bit lost in the plot and torn between what was going on with it and what Gong Li was trying to enunciate the first time I saw this but it came together a lot more for me this time around. I still think that Crocket and Tubbs' dialogue is too much Jaime Foxx and Colin Farrell trying to out-cool one another but I guess that's what Miami Vice is supposed to be. Other than that, something made me like this more... I still miss some color-correction on the beautiful exterior day shots although the clouds and night photography are superb in a digital way (i guess the days of Thief/Heat/Insider visual polish are long gone. Perhaps Bad Boys 3 will give me my next fix). I mostly rented this for the commentary (which I still haven't listened to) but was happily surprised to be as into the film as I was. yay me.
01.28.10	Terminator Salvation	McG	The size and placement of McG's "Directed By" credit made me wonder if people who get to direct the third, fourth, fifth, etc. incarnations of a franchise series really think the people who see them will care who made it. People have to know, right? Say you get a gig making Silver Surfer 4. Is there any way that's gonna eclipse Silver Surfer 1? I guess maybe you have to or else why make the movie but... come on. Anyway, this was forgettably sufficient. Wasn't bad enough to make me angry (although I still like this one the least), wasn't good enough to give me anything in particular to talk about here. I guess the sound design of that one big machine who blows up all the cars was kind of cool... I guess it's also a problem when you're dealing with a movie that basically plugs in a hole from another movie. We know that Connor will rescue Kyle Reese, we also know that - blowing up that building/city or not - the war will continue long enough for Reese to go back in time (this is all thanks to the third film, which reaffirmed the series' fatalistic viewpoint), so really we're just watching pretty explosions here. So that's tough from a story standpoint. I almost would've rather had the film be vignettes from the Terminator universe. Like dispatches from the war. Even with the story they had, they should've spent more time with Sam Worthington and less with John Connor. Again, there's supposed to be this big surprise that he's a machine but we see in the first scene that he's been dead for like 25 years and wakes up covered in mud... How am I supposed to think anything else? But anyway, i chose to read into the machine's experiments a little and why he wasn't self-aware and hybrid rather than just tissue over machine and that part (in my head) was cool... Also, why can the T-600's walk up or down those corrugated metal stairs? Those things wobble when my hefty weight steps on them... is it supposed to be super light-weight aluminum titanium alloy? If so, how can they still deform solid-steel beams and shit when they fight each other? See? If this was a better movie I wouldn't be thinking about this shit...
01.24.10	Angels & Demons	Ron Howard	It's weird that Armin Mueller-Stahl's upper lip has a Seussian dip in the middle now. Um... this was ok. It's hard to compare to my memory of Da Vinci code because I think I still remember the book more than the movie. Even though i read this one a long time ago, i was surprised to remember several big scenes notably absent in the film. In the big push to fit all the plot in these two and a half hours, there's no time to think about what's going on and what the puzzles even are much less how Langdon solved them or what the solutions even mean. To me, it was very hurried and rushed, possibly in an effort to keep the audience from being bored (like they were in Da Vinci Code) but whatever... These are both pretty hard adaptations that I don't think were particularly successful. At least Tom Hanks didn't have his hair to supply easy fodder, probably the only reason why this wasn't lambasted as much as the first film. All in all, it was alright.
01.20.10	G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra	Stephen Sommers	A few years ago, we saw a short at one of Tim League's FantasticFest screener nights that wasn't particularly good except for the fact that it was live-action G.I. Joe guys running around. They played it completely straight even though it was pretty evident that it was just a bunch of friends out in Griffith Park for a weekend, and something about the ridiculousness of the toy line seen in flesh and blood irony-free really worked for me. And that's how I feel about this movie. Instead of no-budget and amateurish, it's way over-polished and CG-fake. If it were not a G.I. Joe movie, I'd probably completely dismiss it, but instead I buy it. OK, the spuer-soldier suits still didn't do anything for me, but that's just because I never had them in toy form. Everything else somehow seemed excusable because the toys were total 80s excess magic so why not the movie too? So I'm not sure why I'm choosing to disclose this publicly - it's pretty embarrassing - but why not, right? I played with G.I. Joes at an unacceptably old age. Like, 9th grade. I think they were the last "toys" that I played with, not counting video games. I clearly remember setting up elaborate tableaux of joes mid-combat on the basement carpet, on the basement stairs, on the workbench in the unfinished basement auxiliary room. Fake blood was employed. Leftover Mad Scientist glow-in-the-dark goop made to look like props from my imagination's unofficial G.I. Joe vs. Aliens movie. Screwdriver operations were performed to create a Joe strongly resembling Cable from The New Mutants comic book. And to make matters worse, after setting these epic scenes of carnage up, I would commit them to video, often with character voice-over as I zoomed and fumbled from scene to scene. This was perhaps my geekiest period of development. Now in my defense... I was also getting into horror movies at the time so the fake blood and glow-in-the-dark goop also made for fan-remakes of Re-Animator or Predator... and I also did most of this stuff with my neighbor buddy Cameron... Not that this makes it any less geeky, but whatever. Point is, G.I. Joe was my jam. Anyway, This movie isn't that great. My little basement scenes were better, but this had explosions enough and although I had to see Marlon Wayans play Riptide, I also got to see Ray Park play Snake Eyes. I do kind of wish they would've stuck to Zartan's original costume or involved the crimson twins somehow (they were a fav of mine due to their zipline accessory) but whatever... dumb stupid Yo Joe! fun.
01.18.10	Revolutionary Road	Sam Mendes	I figured "Hey, there's a few Sam Mendes movies that I haven't seen. I should check them out!" Once again, I should've listened to my growing gut and let this one pass me by. It was shot very well and I guess this is the sort of movie where I'm supposed to marvel at the acting or whatever but no. Sorry, but spending two hours with a fighting couple is not my idea of a good time, even if it's Liz Taylor and Richard Burton (and Winslet and DiCaprio are no Taylor/Burton). An actively depressing movie. I can't imagine anything that someone could say that could get another person to see this movie spoilers in the fake convo below): Person A: Hey man, have you seen Revolutionary Road? Person B: No, should I? A: Oh yeah, it's great! Leonardo DiCaprio plays an unhappy cheating husband to Kate Winslet and they fight a lot but then decide to move to paris and they don't fight as much for a little bit but then she catches pregnant and they decide not to go to Paris after all so they fight more then Winslet dies! B: sweet.
01.16.10	District 9	Neill Blomkamp	Pretty late on this one. i liked it. So much has been said about it and Avatar that I feel like I'd seen them both before I got this in the mail so I don't have much to add other than it was solid or decent or whatever word you want to use for sufficiently good. I wasn't blown away by it (again probably due to how late I am to the party) but there were really no weak parts, just a thoroughly solid sci-fi. I thought it was pretty interesting how they shed the documentary framing as the movie goes on and not only did it not bug me that they were "cheating" but I didn't even notice when it happened. Very well-constructed film for sure.
01.11.10	Bruno	Larry Charles	Like everyone said, the commentary made this movie better. Having the context for all the scenes explained (and I appreciated how they let Cohen and Charles pause the film when they needed to talk further, showing little picture-in-picture stills and clips to follow along with what they're discussing) make them more enjoyable... but you know... watching it that way just points out to me more the fact that this movie is a series of ideas they had (or sketches from the tv show) stitched together with clumsy exposition scenes or voice-over. As a narrative it's pretty weak. Mostly I think what the filmmakers said in the commentary is true: people like laughing at racist foreigners, but don't like laughing at gay foreigners. I do think there are some funny bits but overall the movie strains. It's also kind of weird how i've felt no urge to see Borat again. I wonder if I'd like it nearly as much a second time. Might have to rent it, if for nothing else than to see if there's a commentary track as insightful as this one.
01.10.10	Julie & Julia	Nora Ephron	Surprisingly solid effort from Nora Ephron! I think the thing I liked most about it was that the relationships here between the women and their men are actually positive. Maybe I've been seeing too many depressio movies lately where whenever there's a relationship it always has to be in some sort of jeopardy or peril. Here, seeing Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci is surprisingly great in that they never quarrel or snip or anything else... The Streep story helps the Amy Adams story tremendously, especially toward the end. There's a point in the film where Julia Child comments on the blog and I thought that was kind of weirdly addresses so I googled it and found out that - surprise - apparently the movie makes the Julie character (and her blog) much more pleasant. Oh well! In the movie, Adams has Mary Lyn Rajskub to tell her she's a bitch, thus making us like her more for realizing it, but still the actual story of Julie isn't that strong. At least not compared to that of Meryl Streep's Julia Child. However, I liked the pairing ok and think maybe just a Child biopic would be pretty dry so they work better together than they would separately. Overall I liked it. The food looked good too.
01.07.10	Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian	Shawn Levy	So... disconnecting completely with reality, this was pretty fun. I was along for the ride for the whole movie until the very end when the movie comes back to NYC. I'll talk about that in the next paragraph (spoilers there). Before that though, I had to continually tell myself not to worry about how everything gets put back in their boxes come morning. Once i gave up on that, I had a good time with it. Why not ya know? Why not have all those planes and jets and rocket engines have fuel in them or whatever... I guess it's a kid's movie and why bog it down by thinking too much about it. Instead, I had dumb fun (and although I dislike that term, at least this was fun rather than being dumb and still not fun) with this... until the end. I feel like it deserved a better resolution than what we got. All of the disbelief that my brain had been straining to willfully suspend for the whole movie came crashing down in the last scene. It was the straw that broke my dumb-filter's back. I mean, an anonymous donation insisting all the old exhibits back? So Ben Stiller has to be poor in order to be happy? He couldn't've used his money to somehow take Ricky Gervais' job or something? And people flooding into the museum (once again... the same positive outcome as the last film?) just because it's open at night now? The night hours are what bugged me the most. First off, how can Gervais really believe that motherfuckin' free-roaming animals are animatronic!? If holographic Teddy Roosevelt had such a glitchy time telling you what year he was born, Robin Williams and a real goddamn horse is gonna be fine with you? And there's no reason why his character couldn't have secretly known and been freaked out by it and that's why he wanted them out in the first place. And in the end instead of begrudgingly telling Stiller that he's the best night watchmen they've ever had (what does that even mean!?), he could say that when Stiller initially quit, he had to fill in for a few nights or something and since he knows how crazy the place gets, THAT'S why he's glad Stiller's back. Nah, instead he's just cranky but somehow loves that he's back for no reason. Probably because the lion walking around letting people pet it is just a robot and there are more than 15 people in the museum again. Plus, night watchmen don't come on duty just because it's night, right? The place has to actually close before the night watchman has anything to do... right? And what happens to all the poor saps who hear about all the cool moving exhibits the museum has now so they go sometime during the day? How does that work? Answer: it doesn't. Because it's stupid. It's a stupid end to the movie. And it sucks. Not to even mention the weird ancestral Amelia Earhart loitering around.... HUH!? So.... for a movie i heard was pretty terrible, I had a decently good time through almost all of it. Just wished whoever thought the last scene was a good idea spent a little more time thinking.
01.05.10	Max Payne	John moore	OK first thing first: the movie is bad. BUT, Better this be a bad movie nobody remembers than someone actually going out and making a big-budget film adaptation of a successfull game franchise like HALO or Half-Life or especially Grand Theft Auto and having it go down in the annals of fail. Why producers are looking to video games for stories is beyond me. I get why they're after the brand but why use the same stories? Story has always come last in the video game gangbang and for me personally they are always the thing you are stuck groaning through in between the reasons why I'm playing. So for this movie, I'll give it an A+ for trying to match the visual style of the game but... i mean listen. The game itself is a homage of film noir and crime stories. So this film is an adaptation of an homage to previous films!? It ends up like the clone-of-clone Michael Keaton in Multiplicity: something to be pitied then put to sleep. Why not put the writers to work and have Max go on a new adventure in the same vein as the game stories but not so mired in cliche? Perhaps because film production priorities are now starting to mirror video game priorities? WHO KNOWS. In the end, I'm left with a crappy movie based on a game that's more fondly remembered than actually played. We'll see how Max Payne 3 does.
01.03.10	Extract	Mike Judge	Mike Judge's latest, starring hapless Jason Bateman, haplessly evil Ben Affleck, and unsympathetically evil Mila Kunis. Maybe it was my mood but this movie has a pretty terrible mood to it. Clifton Collins Jr.'s character is really the only one that I liked... everyone else was pretty weak in one way or the other. Consequently, a lot of the humor kind of fell short for me. Again, probably my mood.
01.01.10	Funny People	Judd Apatow	Kind of a shame that this didn't come together a bit better. Really weird structure, much more dramatic than funny (enough to make the title ironic), lots of fun people and interesting scenes but the drama is remarkably un-funny. Just like Punch-Drunk Love and Reign Over Me, not sure the world likes Adam Sandler not being dumb and/or funny. But also like those films, I bet there's a small audience that adores this movie, which is pretty cool. Hell, I may be in that group at some point, I just need it to sit for a while and readjust my expectations. It's funny how you can hear over and over again about how a movie isn't what you'd expect it to be but still find yourself with expectations when you sit down with it. "Everyone else is just wrong!" you think to yourself, secretly hoping it's funnier or not as amazingly sad (damn you, UP!) as you keep hearing that it is, "I will be the one person who REALLY 'gets' this movie and therefore I will LOVE it and tell everybody else how WRONG they were." 2 hours later: not as funny as I thought it would be. huh.
12.29.09	Homicide	David Mamet	It's kind of weird how David Mamet is known as one of our best writers and so much is said about his language and his genius and everything like that, but every movie he makes is basically the same story. Different setting, same story. At least the films of his that I've seen. So it's kind of weird watching homicide detectives investigating murders and immediately suspecting some elaborate con which must just never happen at all. Maybe it happened once. So this is about jews I guess. It's kind of a weird movie. I like the job part of it, I didn't like the con part of it and how Mantegna gets sucked in. Eh. It'd be cool to see Mamet do a movie where the main character doesn't end up 100% fucked.
12.29.09	Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince	David Yates	I was more excited to see this than I thought! It's amazing that the cast has stuck around and grown for this long... These movies are downright dark now. And for some reason I don't remember the last three books very well so I'm really not sure what they cut out for the film. This seemed... a bit eh to be honest. I sure hope the last two deliver; I've yet to be sold on David Yates. Eh... I dunno, don't have many thoughts on this one. It wasn't bad but I still think the third film works best as a film.
12.28.09	Drag Me to Hell	Sam Raimi	This was fun. Borrowed a bit... ok A HELL OF A LOT from Jacques Tourneur's Night of the Demon - enough so that I'd even call it a remake - but oh well. Raimi inserts enough humor and actor-sadism to update the story and make it peppier than the original. Poor Alison Lohman! with the maggots and the slime and everything in her mouth. Ugh. But yeah, a small film, kinda like The Gift but more entertaining, but a fun ride of a horror film nonetheless.
12.28.09	Up	Pete Doctor, Bob Peterson	Now I'd heard this was sad in the beginning but god damn, man! It's not fair that this movie with such amazingly cute and uplifting characters like Russell and the bird and especially Dug the dog has to be in a movie completely veined with 100% sad juice. UGH! Anyway, aside from being sad right off the bat, I really love how unashamedly fantastic this movie is. Flying houses, impossible waterfalls, talking dogs, zeppelin combat... Maybe because Pixar films are always so technically proficient, there was always a moment of "wait, this isn't right" when the film would introduce another not-realistic-at-all element but then I'd quickly realize that not only is it right but it's a kind of "right" that can only be done with this medium. It's what I would value most in a film for children. If it only wasn't so damned sad! That's great, Pixar. Just great. You are now too good at storytelling. Stop making your films so potent!
12.27.09	Management	Stephen Belber	This was actually one of my mom's netflixes. We couldn't decide what to watch so this went on. Pretty long on the dull non-funny, just a few moments of comedy in between sadsap Steve Zahn getting shut down by Jennifer Aniston. Woody Harrellson was good but only in it for like 5 minutes. Mark Boone Jr was good but only in it for like 2 minutes. Overall pretty slow and not very rewarding. Good visit though. Now back to Austin.
12.27.09	The Dark Knight	Christopher Nolan	So... this was on while we were doing stuff and I eventually stopped paying half-attention and started paying full attention until the end. Still a very good movie. DirecTV HD is way better than Time Warner HD. That Joker sure is creepy.
12.27.09	Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown	Frank H. Woodward	For as long as I've been a Lovecraft fan (Read a bunch of his stuff in like 10th grade, been a slumbering fan ever since) and the amount of films that've (unsuccessfully) tried to adapt his stuff - films that i've felt compelled to sit through by the way - I'm amazed that it took this long to get a biographical documentary on the dude. So even though I put this movie on at the end of every night while at my parents and ended up watching in 10-20 minute snippets before falling asleep, I think this was a pretty decent doc. It explains the man, his basic life plot, and talks about certain specific stories. There's even a mention of the tabletop RPG that got me into the books in the first place. It's not a particularly memorable doc... there's no magic in the interviews or anything like that, but it's still pretty fun for existing fans. Makes me think I should revisit my long-dormant writing project. sigh...
12.26.09	The Hangover	Todd Phillips	This may be a little overhyped for me. Yes it was funny. The biggest joke was spoiled for me thanks to Adam Carolla's interview with Ken Jeong but I can see how it could be a great moment in the theater. I mean yeah... definitely funny. Maybe I was just too excited to see "the best comedy of the year" this time. Molly hasn't seen it so I'll probably be watching it again soon so I'll see what I think next time around. Liked it but couldn't help a little disappointment.
12.26.09	The Ref	Ted Demme	This one was pretty apt holiday-wise and another one I hadn't seen in years. This was actually better than I remember it. After watching Rescue Me it's pretty funny to see Denis Leary so young and still sticking to his old ranting thing from the very early MTV days. Good one. Funny.
12.25.09	All About Steve	Phil Traill
12.25.09	Inglourious Basterds	Quentin Tarantino	Merry Christmas!
12.24.09	Lethal Weapon 2	Richard Donner	We're back we're bad you're black i'm mad! Ahh Leo Getz... way to simultaneously save a movie and ruin a franchise. Oh and Patsy Kensit why did you have to get married and stop working... I really do think this is the best of the series though. The condom commercial, the smarmy South Africans, the toilet bomb, the subway drive-thru, it's all quite iconic. Not even remotely christmas-oriented like the first one, but oh well!
12.23.09	Lethal Weapon	Richard Donner	I actually watched movies this holiday! Starting with this one. It's pretty funny when I go and visit my parents for Christmas and we have to decide what to watch for the few nights before xmas that I'm there. We kind of throw movies back and forth trying to figure out what we haven't seen... meanwhile there are like a dozen DVDs wrapped up under the tree; the stuff we all REALLY want to see. So this year we ended up watching the first couple Lethal Weapons. It's been a long time since I've seen this. I remember it being the blueprint for the cop movie stereotype but i don't remember so much 80s saxophone. I remember it being more about Mel's suicidalism but I didn't remember the "do it! do it! use my gun and shoot your face off!" scene. And I'm still confused... was Gary Busey actually dating Murtaugh's daughter? Because how does that work? I don't think it does.
12.19.09	Star Trek	J.J. Abrams	I heard this one was pretty good (hah!). So... as a non-fan of Star Trek (all this awesome technology and alien races and shit! let's.... talk about it... around tables... forever... then when there's action we'll set our phasers to "pussy") and a hesitant audience to J.J. Abrams, This was downgraded to lukewarm curiosity. Grounds for pleasant surprises? Nah. I mean it's not a bad movie. Some of the banter was cool, but I feel like it's just another Star Trek story gussied up with lens flares and self-references. I'll give them this: the story explains a reboot of the series very well. However, do people really care how things like this happen? It's a movie, you can do anything you want. If it's a reboot just say it's a reboot in the ad campaign and that's good enough. It's all jibber jabber anyway, why do i care how somehow this James Kirk's dad dies when Shatner had a dad... Seems like there's more important stuff to cover, like why the Romulans needed a gigantic chain hanging down into the atmosphere just to shoot a laser. Couldn't they just shoot the laser from space? And if we're really talking about Star Trek nerdy realistic physics and whatnot, why build the Enterprise on Earth where it's constrained by gravity and will need to exit the atmosphere? Oops, because it looked cool I guess. Lens flare! So realistic! beh.. And I feel like the new Kirk got an even trade-off between his piercing blue eyes and his acne scars. I guess if people are hypnotized by your glare they won't notice your gnarly neck. So I guess this movie didn't convert me into a trekkie after all. It was better than most of the Star Trek movies though in that it had some action elements and at least moved at a decent clip rather than mire down in too many tribunals, hearings, conferences, and tet a tets.
12.13.09	Land of the Lost	Brad Silberling	Another comedy that got absolutely decimated... It must be a sign that i'm not watching many movies anymore or something because this got a couple laughs out of me. Again, it's mostly due to the cast. I think Will Ferrell is funny; I think Danny McBride is funny. When Ferrell is in full-on scientist mode or when they're high next to the motel pool, that cracked me up. Don't know what to say! So this wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Still not great... but I'd say better than Semi-Pro and Blades of Glory!
12.12.09	The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3	Tony Scott	I wonder how many people thought this movie was named after the Beastie Boys lyric? Hopefully more people than not realize that this is a remake of a pretty great 70s NYC gem, given the Tony Scott treatment of course. Instead of calm cool ultra-professional Robert Shaw we have loony bin grudge-crazy John Travolta with a fu-manchu stache and full-on neck tattoo to show he's tough. Jay-Z's 99 Problems playing during his introduction doesn't hurt either. And instead of everyday schlub Walter Matthau we have actually-head-of-the-department-but-embroiled-in-controversy Denzel Washington trying to act like he's an everyday schlub. BUT, it's not as bad as it could be. I personally don't think this particular story suits Scott's scattershot coverage approach at all but it's kind of like blaming Paula Dean for saying "Hey Y'all! Butter!" It is what it is and we should know what to expect by now and if I have a problem with it it's not Tony's fault. The supporting cast is pretty good here. John Turturro, Luis Guzman, James Gandolfini... they all make watching pretty interesting. Mostly though, I felt like all the soul-baring conversation that goes on is needless and leads to some incredibly vomit-worthy beats (which I obviously credit to Brian Helgeland - that hack!) and all that puke-worthy stuff just makes me want to watch the original again.
12.08.09	The Brothers Bloom	Rian Johnson	Con movies are pretty weird. I spent the entire film trying to guess twists or keep my mind open to what I was being told. In the end it was a somewhat hollow experience because with all the twists and turns that was going on I forgot to care about the characters. Turns out that's ok because the ending was a little messy and had I cared more I would've wanted more out of it. In the end it was pretty good; kept my interest and was not bad at all. I guess about on par with Brick in that I enjoyed watching them both but don't feel a need to own either one.
12.07.09	Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen	Michael Bay	It's pretty amazing how much I didn't like this movie. I figured there would at least be some decent action or something, but it really fell flat on all levels. After figuring the first film was made for TVs due to how close the camera was to everything, I was still surprised to not be able to tell what was going on some of the time. The truth for me is that these transformers designs are just too complicated. I can barely differentiate a face from a foot, an arm from a torso. It'd be great for a comic but when they're moving I just can't tell what's what. The old cartoons (and toys) were so much simpler... I couldn't even tell which one was megatron. So since I couldn't tell who was who, watching what was happening didn't mean much to me. Then all the humans. they suck. The story, whatever... all the elements I didn't expect to like did not surprise me. I'm just disappointed that the action didn't work either. Michael Bay's really in a slump I think... The Rock and Armageddon were total hamfests as well, but at least they got some adrenaline pumping. Maybe Bad Boys 3 will return him to the realm of relevance.
12.06.09	The Proposal	Anne Fletcher	So Sandra Bullock joins the long line of actresses who freak out about getting old and losing their natural beauty so they supplement it with crazy amounts of gym time and tons of "work." Kind of a shame really since I liked her face before and now it's a stretched bony thing that only slightly resembles the infectiously cute thing that it once was. Anyway, this was ok. Betty White was good, there's a scene where she's communing with the nature spirits and Sandra turns her primal chanting into booty dancing that was pretty amusing. The ending kind of made no sense but whatever...
11.23.09	Crank: HIgh Voltage	Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor	Crank was pretty crazy. I liked it. This one was pretty crazy too. I liked this one too. That's about it.
11.23.09	Death Race	Paul W. S. Anderson	morbid curiosity led me to this. I got a kick out of the original Death Race... figured I'd check out the castrated remake and see what the studios think modern audiences want. I feel like I've gone through the whole spectrum of remake discussion before. I'll just say that this was exactly what I thought it'd be.
11.21.09	State of Play	Kevin Macdonald	Russell Crowe and Rachel McAdams play latter day Woodward and Bernstein if Woodward's college roomie turned out to be Gordon Liddy. Kinda. Anyway, this was a proficient entry to the genre... not bad I didn't think but maybe ultimately forgettable. Still, I would rather have more movies of this level in quality than fewer better and many many more worse. I don't feel like my time has been wasted at all. Kudos!?
11.16.09	Adventureland	Greg Motttola	Thankfully I'd been warned by the wave of reviews that said this movie wasn't necessarily funny. I think it was definitely marketed as such and therefore fell flat on its face in theaters when everyone found a coming-of-age drama quirk-drama instead. Kind of a shame really because i thought there was plenty to like. A lot of the movie seems painfully nostalgic. they nail the setting and period and tone of the film perfectly... for instance placing most of the employees as college-age rather than high school so the dynamic with the parents is much different, or having the theme park be one of these small-time family-owned dinosaurs rather than a polished impersonal chain... the casual authenticity of 1986 and the overall feeling of wanting to be grown already but forced to wallow a little longer in childhood via your once-best friend, living at home, wanting growth but not yet self-sustainable... All of that is so specific and nailed head on. It really resonated with me. And I also really liked Ryan Reynolds' character. The exchange he shares with Eisenberg at the end (partially ruined by a deleted scene but whatever I take what I want from this movie) where there's kind of a silent notion that although reynolds is crap and has betrayed Eisenberg's trust, it was basically worth it due to what Eisenberg has gotten from Reynolds in turn. It says "yeah you're 85% ass but the other 15% gave me some valuable info so... we're even. Have fun with your life which is going nowhere while I hopefully go do something with mine." Also also, imdb says Kristen Stewart shot this after the first Twilight movie but I'm not 100% sure it was released beforehand. To me this is the last time Kristen Stewart is an unknown. Cinephiles liked her uncanny resemblance in Panic Room and I personally rediscovered her in Zathura where all of a sudden her face was striking and for a teeny little while she had a mini Natalie Portman career where she was loved by people who thought themselves "in the know" because they saw The Professional and Beautiful Girls until Episode One came out and then it's kind of downhill from there. In that same way I feel this was a goodbye movie from the secret-love version of Kristen Stewart and her tight frown and stroking eyes. No more bit part in Into the Wild or indie-work like The Cake-Eaters. From here on out it's tabloid covers, fashion statements, and love interests. Weird hairstyles and dealing with her own fame. So even though the boy and girl get together at the end of this movie, you know neither one of them have a plan. That first loves often don't work out, and that kristen Stewart will soon fall for a vampire and dump poor neurotic Jesse Eisenberg. Eisenberg's performance is one of the off-notes for me here, but as much as I feel he's almost channeling Woody Allen, I like the dynamic between him and Martin Starr: someone who should be in more of every movie that he's in. Even with his odd biceps and longish hair, he is still filling the same role as he did with Bill on Freaks and Geeks: the vulnerable geek trapped in the hand he was dealt; aware and mature about it yet allowing that wall to come down in tiny secret moments that this film catches beautifully. This film isn't perfect. A lot of it doesn't quite work or feels aa bit weird to me at first exposure. In fact I'm a bit surprised that I've gone on about this for as long as I have. But it does accomplish an aching recollection of the director's last moments of youth that affected me to be sure. It's just not very funny.
11.15.09	Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets	Chris Columbus	Revisiting the second film, which was and still is my least favorite. It's not that it's bad... it's just that it feels the most episodic and transitional (of the 5 i've seen anyway. The 6th is in definite danger of this). Plus Dobby really shows his digital age, the practical animatronics like the phoenix and the basilisk are also a bit dodgy and should be more believable, and there are a few ug moments particularly at the end when you wonder why Harry does certain things... like drop his wand right in front of Tom riddle. Still, knowing how good the third film is, this is a necessary step in the series. I can't remember this book well enough to know if the same story problems were there or not but like i said it's not all-together bad, it just doesn't hold as many strengths as the rest of the series.
11.08.09	White Dog	Samuel Fuller	Driving through the hollywood hills late one night, an actress accidentally hits a dog. She takes him to a vet who patches him up, puts posters up around the neighborhood, and falls in love with him when he protects her from a rapist. ("This is the same rapist I popped last year! Come on, buddy...") Since no one's claimed him, she takes him on as her own, not realizing that the calm protective animal hates black people. That's right. HATES BLACK PEOPLE. This is the story of White Dog, a very late entry in Sam Fuller's ouevre and probably his most controversial. It's a good thing that Criterion has such a hard on for the guy because this would probably be pretty hard to see were it not for their release. Actually, were it not for their release of The Naked Kiss, I probably never would've become such a fan (although I like Pickup on South Street and Underworld USA more, but whatever). His films were as direct as his personality. No frills, no tweaks or masturbation. Just straight-forward story. This one is a bit of a mix because his style and the story are so serious but that weird b-movie insanity creeps in along the edges whenever it can. Burl Ives is insane in this movie. Aside from his amazing opening speech (completely shut down by Kristy McNichol ("I really do need help")) and his general frantic energy through the whole movie, there's a dinner scene where Paul Winfield inexplicably has Romanian caviar where Ives is all like "sour cream! I love it..." followed by McNichols: "Fattening though" and they have this super quick conversation about how his diet allows it before a cop comes to the door and changes the mood of the evening. I've never seen anyone eat sour cream like cottage cheese. It's pretty weird. I'm kind of not opposed to it though. Dick Miller and Paul Bartel also both make appearances. So at certain times I think "so I'm watching a movie about a racist dog, this is so Corman, right?" but others, when the Ennio Morricone music kicks in and Bruce Surtees is filming this white german shephard running at the camera with its tongue hanging out its mouth, it's much more of a "real movie" vibe and the two competing sensibilities sometimes clash but often times work very well together. Paul Winfield baring his black chest to the dog as a final test is pretty hilarious, but the scene where the grandfather with his kids shows up to reclaim his dog ("Best of the lot!") is genuinely chilling. It makes for a pretty awesome effect. This is a much more fitting "Closing Night Film" i must say. The first movie of the weekend that I really liked a lot. So that wraps up another year. Stat dump! 9 in the past week, 13 in the past month, 126 in the past year (ouch), 1876 movies seen 2051 times total. With seeing the new Universal Soldier, I have now seen almost a hundred years of film (Safety Last in 1923 - 2010). It's actually kinda cool to think that this is the fifth one. How long did Bogdanovich do his? 17 years? I'm about a third of the way there! Here's hoping the next third is just as easy and rewarding as the first. Who knows, maybe one year I'll actually invite people over.
11.08.09	Milk	Gus Van Sant	A gay dude fights for his rights to party. Then dies. SPOILER!!! An ok biopic... certainly a good performance from Sean Penn (duh). I still don't exactly see the point of most of these kinds of movies though. My guess is for people who don't already know the story who want to learn more about it - sort of one long high-budget dramatization without the dry documentary voice-over - but in that case, why does nearly every one of them spoil the ending right up front? If someone knew then alright but for people who didn't know (like me), why ruin it? I spent the whole movie wondering how and when he'd get it rather than, you know, what was going on. Kind of a weird thing to do that I think happens quite frequently in this genre. So another biopic. Longtime readers are probably asking "why do you even watch these any more?" Good question. This can't be the end of the fest. Sure I've caught up on a lot of big movies that passed me by, but there needs to be something a bit more interesting than the usual oscar fodder. So let's end this weekend with something a bit more my style and a bit less... tolerant.
11.08.09	Gran Torino	Clint Eastwood	An old racist bastard befriends his vietnamese neighbors despite his constant listing of slurs and epithets. It's funny how Clint Eastwood can do it here and it's a social statement but when William Sanderson does it in Fight For Your Life it's offensive and demeaning. In any case, I found this alternatingly hilarious and decent. The whole teaching-someone-to-be-a-man thing is very macho and Pelecanos-esque and I liked that aspect, but Eastwood's gruff persona was very funny, probably unintentionally so. I also appreciate that he finally unlocked the secret language of the white man for everybody to know. Now when other ethnicities enter old-school barber shops, we won't be able to tell if they're one of the good ones or not. I also like how all of his sons and grandkids were unapologetic douches and how the movie pays no sympathy toward any of them even at the end. so... up next may be the last movie of the fest. I dunno. We'll see how I feel afterward. It's got gays!
11.07.09	Hotel for Dogs	Thor Freudenthal	Hot on the heels of Beverly Hills Chihuaha comes this comic tale of a hotel - get this - FOR DOGS! I actually enjoyed this more than BHC. It being a Nickelodeon film, it's a bit more honest in its demographic. Plus there's no completely fake Mexico to deal with, just a completely fake NYC. But still, my love for dogs and rube goldberg devices carried me through the typical children's movie plot and character. There sure does seem to be a lot of purebred strays in new york though... probably due to the fancy-pants community they have there, all making salsa and playing Monopoly whilst smoking pipes or cigarettes through plastic mouthpieces and commenting on modern art. Anyway, I wouldn't recommend anyone turned off by the title sseeing this movie. It kind of worked for me though as a last-movie-of-the-evening in that it's kind of fantasy and filled with cute doggies. So, last day of the fest. In fact only two movies to go (unless I dig something up for a "closing night film" which I currently don't have planned... look, I'm just like FantasticFest!). This next one involves racism!
11.07.09	Slumdog Millionaire	Danny Boyle	I guess this was a big deal last year, right? I'm not sure I see it. Yes, the framing device is pretty cool, and the colorful pallette looked great in HD... but overall it left me a bit bored. I liked how the title was on the kid's shirt, but all the childhood stuff made me glad I was white and comfortable to be honest. I didn't get the exuberant boisterous energy so much as the abhorrent squalor and devestating poverty. Passing it off as something I should be excited about seemed a bit exploitative to me, although I'm probably taking everything too seriously right now. Next year if I have more time to plan this out, I'll have to throw in some movies that might surprise me rather than the stuff I know is bad but want to see anyway and the stuff I heard was good but wasn't excited to see when it came out. In any case, I.... yeah, not sure why so many people went crazy for this one. I thought it was just ok. Oh yeah, and what was up with the bathtub full of money. Did he just want it to get bloody and be a pain in the ass for the dudes who have to clean it? Nice shades, bro. Up next... in what will be the last movie of the night... is something involving.... a hotel..... and dogs!
11.07.09	Valkyrie	Bryan Singer	Tom Cruise and several british actors play hitler-hating nazis that plot to end the war via assassination. They don't. SPOILERS! I remember how excited I was for Apt Pupil. After The Usual Suspects, Bryan Singer was close to the top of my list of favsy directors. Couple him with a Stephen King novella from the same collection as Stand By Me and The Shawshank Redemption? Can't go wrong! oops. It's kind of the same thing here except the part where I thought it would be good. This was just a weird choice all around. I'm not sure what anybody saw in this. I guess it's interesting to see just how close these guys came to changing history, but... in the end you know they fail, and they're trying less than a year before Hitler kills himself anyway. It's not like it's 1936 or anything... Sure they didn't know how the next year would shake out, but my highschool education leads me to believe that the tide had already turned by the time these events take place. Oh well. enough arguing with the movie. It was just shy of alright. I'm not sure why I needed to know this story though. Personally, I enjoyed an HBO movie that Branagh did much more called Conspiracy about the conference where the nazis decide to burninate the jews. It was just a small movie but presented a much more interesting take on the nazi mindset than this did... and with less epic music, Bleh. Bryan Singer, stay away from nazis. Speaking of that... this next one has Indian people in it!
11.07.09	Appaloosa	Ed Harris	Two dudes roll into a town and enforce the law a bit, then typical westerny stuff happens. It's kinda bad like everyone says. For me things were going swimmingly until Renee Zellwegger showed up with her face. I don't know what happened since Jerry Maguire but something about her nowadays... I really don't like. Maybe it's this assumption that she's hot even though her face is like a squished bloated prune sometimes. How can it be squished AND bloated you ask? Just look at her face and you'll find out. So I didn't really like her being in this movie, although her part is pretty interesting for the genre. I guess it's the most interesting part of the movie but that's a shame. It's a shame how every western story lately has to seem like it's lifted from a video game which was in turn lifted from an older, better movie. Are there really no more stories of The West to tell? In any case, the scenery was pretty. I enjoyed the HD aspects of watching it. I just wish it was better, you know? It seems like I'm screaming through these movies. Up next? midget nazis!!!
11.07.09	Frost/Nixon	Ron Howard	A british guy interviews Nixon and is triumphant when he gets him to admit that he sucks. Not to take anything away from Ron Howard who did a very good job with this (my fear was that it'd be two people in a room talking for two hours. It kinda way but not in the way that a lot of filmed plays really bore me. There was only one full-out speech and that took me out of it but oh well, could've been a lot worse), but I think this is a movie completely sitting on actors' shoulders. Were it not for Frank Langella (playing a bit more Anthony Hopkins' Nixon than real Nixon to me) and Sam Rockwell and Oliver Platt and Michael Sheen... it wouldn't have been much. I realize you can say that about every play ever made so to say it about a movie based on a play is pretty weak but... whatever. Let's put Pauly Shore in here and see what the critics say. Anyway, it was ok. Interesting enough story for someone who wasn't alive when it happened. I feel like Stone's Nixon gives a much better portrait, but watching this as a follow-up to that film would be pretty nice. Ok, what's next...
11.07.09	Aliens vs Predator - Requiem	Colin Strausse, Greg Strausse	This film exemplifies one of the main reasons why I think film criticism is dying if not dead: people will watch movies no matter how bad people say they are. In my defense, it's alien and predator... come on. I can't remember if it was a direct follow-up of the last AvP film, but this one starts with the chest of a predator giving way to an alien. The ship crash lands in rural Colorado, a distress beacon is received by another predator in their alien city, and a disappointing movie ensues. I think a lot of people take just how cool both the alien and predator mythos for granted these days. Maybe Alien: Resurrection is still too close to people's minds or the extreme let down of the first AvP film has sealed both creatures' fates as relics of the past but that's a shame. a real shame. Moments and glimpses in this film reminded me of just how cool both species can be. It's just a shame that fox seems to deliberately make the opposite of what fans of both franchises want. It's easy to say that humans shouldn't be in this movie. It's harder (and much more expensive) to say what a movie without humans would be like. Still, any chance would be better regarded than this, which is humans running around getting in the way of the real story: a predator hunting aliens. That said, there were severl elements here that I did like. I loved how the predator starts using the humans as bait at some point, even though I don't really understand why since this is a cleaning mission and not hunting for sport the predator couldn't have called up a buddy or two. Alien squad tactics are cool, Predator squad tactics would've been cooler. I also enjoy the amount of TV actors in this. I feel like this is a pretty grand tradition of the B-movie and am glad to see that it's still alive and well. What's more, I actually like most of the people working here. The dude from Rescue Me, the dude from The Job, the girl from 24, Sam from True Blood; it's like an on-hiatus pro-bowl. The acting isn't great but it's not too bad either and hey... it's Aliens vs Predator, not Hamlet vs Macbeth. The movie is too dark. I literally can't see much on the screen. I'd like a good look at the big baddie here but... I'm willing to live without it. Whenever aliens come out of the dark they look weird anyway. I really liked Predator's new toys, although I wish he got to use his whip for more than 4 seconds. Maybe he should put a wii wrist-band on it so he doesn't drop it with the slightest breeze. It looked pretty badass. All in all it's a predictably disappointing film. I still hold out the tiniest sliver of hope that someday someone crazy will green-light a radically different kind of film (more horror than action) and we can see these two species really grow and clash. Until then... I'll always have the five or so films that I already enjoy. From here, we go from one of worst reviewed films of recent years to one of the best.
11.06.09	Balls of Fury	Robert Ben Garant	Oops! Where did this come from!? DVRfest already? Damn. Well, to be perfectly honest I am not what you would call 100% prepared for my own festival this year. Lots of stuff is going on and this has kind of gotten lost in the shuffle. Oh well. Part of the fun of having it be a one-person film festival is that I DO WHAT I WANT! So, this year to celebrate another successfull year of recording every film I saw, I'm doing something similar to last year: not so much an exploration of films I haven't seen but a catching up of films that I missed. Also there's a few netflix movies strewn in this year so again it's not 100% "pure" DVR goodness. To make up for that however, this will be DVRfest's first year in HD! Huzzah! So anyway, "Opening Night Film" ended up being Balls of Fury because 1) it's the only comedy on my program this year, 2) it's the only one Molly was remotely interested in seeing, and 3) it's one of two that have been sitting on my DVR forever (which, constant reader will remember, was the original impetus for DVRfest 5 years ago (!!!)). I had heard it was bad, but the cast is pretty decent and I liked Night at the Museum so I thought maybe everyone was wrong and a true The State/Reno 911! afficionado like myself would appreciate the embedded humor. Eh, not so much. The story is a rip-off of Enter the Dragons, except instead of kung fu it's ping pong (except in two scenes, then it really is kung fu for some reason) and instead of being good it's the opposite of that. I think most of the problem... well ok there are a lot of problems. I don't understand who thought a lot of the jokes or gags in this movie were funny in any way at all. Then there's a decent amount of material that would probably be at least passable in the hands of a funnier leading man (it's pretty sad that I thought this guy was better in Good Luck Chuck... guess I'll have to see Fanboys now to tell for sure whether he sucks or not), then there were a few things that probably would've been funny with that actor if he was directed better (George Lopez, I'm looking at you). Finally finally finally, there were like 4 times in the movie that I laughed. I will now recount them for the official record: -after Randy gets stung by all the bees, there's like a 5-second scene of him crying in bed. -Not anything specifically but just in general I find the idea that Terry Crews actually being a credible comedic actor pretty funny. He and Tiny Lister should really play brothers some time. That would be great, since I think they're both genuinely funny. -The screaming courtesans of pleasure made me crack up even though I don't feel good about it. -...I'll have to get back to you. Anyway, a shame really. Maggie Q is hot and her pelvis dragon tattoo needs much closer inspection. Seeing her have to kiss Randy was pretty gross though, and I usually stick up for fat guys. On to the next, which was supposed to be a midnight movie but I fell asleep so will now be a noon matinee! Here's a hint: it involves humans again even though they are not in the title.
10.25.09	Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone	Chris Columbus	It's been a LONG time since I've gone back and watched the first couple Harry Potter films. Since I missed the sixth in theaters I'm a little disconnected and I figured this might be a good way to rediscover the franchise if you will. And Molly has never seen them. So... this one is really good. I know the series' stylistic turns on the world of magic make the first two films seem rather tame and kid-friendly, but there's two things I kept thinking about while watching this that brought me back to admiring this one: 1) the beginning is supposed to be kid friendly. These kids are still kids at this point. 11 years old. The first books were written for a younger audience so the first movies should be too. Knowing the full arc, one of the really cool things about the series (both book and film) is that it follows Harry's growth from a boy to a man. With that in mind, it's perfectly reasonable for this film to be bright and vibrant with Columbus' emotional eye. 2) This was the first movie. Columbus had SO much more to do than just think about where to put the camera. If you think about all the things he got right (casting, settings, art direction, costumes, did I mention casting!?), the rather simplistic or should I say straight-forward storytelling is not as strong as later films, but this is our first visual exposure to this world. I kind of appreciate that he doesn't hide anything behind lighting or quick camera moves because it gives us a critical first exposure to all of the elements that make up this world. After the tremendous amount of foundation laid for this film, all the other directors kind of had it easy. They had all this stuff at their disposal. So... I really enjoyed it. Makes me want to watch through the rest of them soonish.
10.21.09	The International	Tom Tykwer	On one hand, it's comforting to see another globe-spanning international action picture filled with interesting european buildings and dudes sticking his nose into things much bigger than him, but on the other this one in particular is just ok. There's a pretty sweet shoot-out in the Guggenheim but other than that... Naomi Watts is pretty miscast and doesn't know what to do most the time, the characters are all pretty familiar, Owen's obsessive personality is pretty tired, and the movie can't seem to end itself in any satisfactory way. Still though, it wasn't bad... and like I said, it's comforting somehow to see a decent intrigue movie.
10.11.09	Tenacious D in 'The Pick of Destiny'	Liam Lynch	In trying to psych myself up about Brutal Legend until parts of me explode in anticipation of Rocktober 13th, I decided to revisit this. I don't know, I think this movie is pretty under-appreciated. Again, it relies heavily on Jack Black's personality but hey, it's the Tenacious D movie! come on! The kids they got were perfect. The whole intro song was great. I think it's pretty much all great; very in tune with the shorts but expanding it out. I think maybe people had some pretty wild expectations for what this would be and that's what drew such a negative reaction when it came out or something... It seems pretty awesome to me. Now bring on Brutal Legend!!!
10.10.09	Year One	Harold Ramis	So... I can see why people didn't like this. bible humor is weird and the pacing's really odd and there's basically nothing here except comedians doing their schtick. If you aren't into Jack Black acting crazy or Michael Cera acting uncomfortable and speaking softly or David Cross being passive aggressive then there's really nothing to this movie. However, if you enjoy the previous sentence, you'll probably laugh a few times like I did. I don't care what my brain says; you can't argue with laughter.
10.05.09	The Day the Earth Stood Still	Scott Derrickson	I realize that the original was pretty explicit in its social message as well, but for some reason nuclear responsibility is just a lot cooler than environmentalism. I feel like if one more filmmaker tries to tell me to lower my carbon footprint, I will stamp their face with my supposedly huge contribution. Ugh. Anyway, this was ok. A lot of the charm of the original seems to be lost now that science fiction is very well established and all of these concepts are much more familiar. Keanu did ok. Gort's nanobot particle destruction cloud was kinda cool but also kind of sucked. I hate that they made Gort into G.O.R.T. Why keep Keanu Klaatu then? Whatever. All in all it's pretty mediocre. Not bad, not good. just images passing in front of my face, while i kill the earth with the power it takes my tv and dvd player to run. oops.
10.04.09	School of Rock	Richard Linklater	I'm sick. It sucks. With Brutal Legend just a few weeks away (Fuck you, Jack, for getting to play it early), I thought watching this would make me more excited to play the damn thing (as if that were possible). I still really love this movie. The kids are great, Black's probably at his best, Linklater's hand is light but confident, and the music's great. Step Off! Step Off! Step Off!
10.04.09	Observe and Report	Jody Hill	This was damn funny. I think Jarrette said the same thing, but it's like your standard Frat pack comedy for the first half, then becomes this amazingly subversive and original derailing of the romantic comedy genre... it's unbelievable to me that anyone with money backed this film at all. I wonder if there's some conventional second half of a script laying around somewhere with banal studio notes readily accepted by Jody Hill so he could go off and shoot the real version of his movie. It's at that point that I think I started liking this more than Molly did. So yeah, really great, funny, twisted, a little abused as a child probably comedy.
10.03.09	X-Men Origins: Wolverine	Gavin Hood	After playing the video game, I was actually very excited to see this movie. It turned out being better than I head it was but still not great. Interestingly enough, I think the video game had a better ending. Also, the best story bits in the game (the sentinel stuff) was not here at all, which I guess I'm not surprised by since that would've been amazingly expensive. But what is here is still pretty cool. I probably would've thought this was worse if I hadn't seen X-Men 2 so recently and realized how far we've come with comic book movies since then. Still could've used some blood though.
10.01.09	Daybreakers	Michael Spierig, Peter Spierig	Last movie of the festival. Can't say it came too soon. I am wiped out. On one hand, I'm feeling pretty hardcore for seeing 30 movies and working half-time through the whole fest, but on the other, I'm tired and feel this damn cold coming on at the last damn second. I was hoping to escape bug-free this year (mental note: 6 hours of sleep a night next year no matter what). Anyway, I didn't really know anything about this so was pretty happily surprised by what I saw. In a world 10 years after vampire plague, only 5% of the world's human population is left and the vampires are running out of blood. An interesting take on the genre. From there, Ethan Hawke plays a human-sympathiser and Willem Dafoe is in it and stuff happens. Good, gory awesome stuff. This was like 10 times better than Undead I thought. I guess they had 10 times the money which helped but mainly in story, this was a very solid flick. I particularly liked the explanation of blood deprivation and its effects. Pretty sweet and refreshing exploration of a very familiar genre! And that does it. Another Fantastic Fest down. Time for sleep. I'm hungry for blood but the human bank is closed sunshine sacrifice
10.01.09	Universal Soldier: A New Beginning	John Hyams	So... OK. Some random faceless person I don't even know told me at the beginning of the week that the last screening was the new Universal Soldier. I spent the entire week thinking it was an elaborate plant to explain away why they were getting Dolph as a guest. I was pretty damn sure they were playing The Expendables. I was wrong! They actually played this as the last secret screening of the festival. It was about as good as I thought it'd be. We're all back for more Where'd my ear necklace go? Answer my question
10.01.09	District 13: Ultimatum	Patrick Alessandrin	Ahh thank goodness. Back to movies where I know exactly what to expect. There's a little parkour, a little action, a lot of french talking, some cool tattoos, and a president I guess. It was ok. Punch! Kick! It's all in your mind! If you wanna test me, I'm sure you'll find!
10.01.09	Hausu	Nobuhiko Obayashi	Last day of the fest. Pretty tired after the missing sleep last night but hopefully I can power through one more day; maybe call in sick tomorrow to enjoy a long weekend. I initially wasn't interested in this one (looked like it definitely qualified as Japanese weird) but after hearing that Micah liked it (whose tastes for the genre pretty closely mirror mine), I figured I'd give it a chance. My hunch was confirmed when I noticed Lars, Zack, and Tim all sit down to watch. I think this is the first film of the fest that I've seen Tim take the time to watch anything. So going in, I was pretty psyched to see something, even if it didn't fit my taste very well. What an amazingly mind-melting movie. To say that I walked out of this completely and utterly confused is an understatement. This movie messed me up. Ryan can attest that I more or less just sat in the lobby for about a half hour trying to understand what I just saw. It kind of gave me a headache and was also the moment where my throat got scratchy and gave me the festival cold that is right now keeping me home from work (i know. irony that i would actually get sick when planning to take a sick day, shut it). It was like in the Lovecraft stories when people come into contact with something so alien that their mind can't even comprehend it so they go bonkers or immediately forget who they are. To explain this movie... is folly. I could say it's about a group of girls who go to stay at an aunt's house and find that she's a ghost. I could also say that it's a potent experimental mindtrip for children that pre-dates ritalin and crack cocaine yet manages the same effect. Those would both be technically true but nothing I merely type here would summon even a shred of the emotional sensory explosion that is this movie. My immediate reaction was a memory of the book Flicker by Theodore Roszak. The account that the narrator gives upon his first viewing of a Max Castle film. I feel like if there are any movies out there with hidden subversive techniques like those explored in that book, it'd be this film. It's not just that it's weird. It's super weird. Every scene is weird. Every shot is weird. Every frame is weird. I mean, why is the sky that way? There's no reason for that. It doesn't have anything to do with anything, yet it moves around on its own. It starts off kind of like a teletubbies episode. Everything is so very happy. For a little while. I feel very affected by this film. I really can't verbalize it in any way except to say that I've never seen anything like it. I mean sure if you break it down and take it scene by scene or shot by shot then yes, I'm familiar with some of the techniques they're using. But there are so many of them so fast and so overwhelming... it's crazy crazy crazy. I can't say I like this movie. Or dislike it. or hate it or love it or despise it or worship it. Right now it's kind of like a tumor in my head: when I try to think about it my head starts to hurt. I need more time. Why is she called Mac? Why am I even asking? auntie cat nightmare
09.30.09	The Human Centipede (First Sequence)	Tom Six	Every festival I usually end up seeing something that sticks out in my mind as being... something I could only see at Fantastic fest. Something that stretches the limits a little bit of what I expect from gore or horror or gross...ness or whatever. I guess it started with Gary's Touch, continued with Taxidermia then Martyrs and now this year... we have The Human Centipede. A couple dumb american girls get lost in the woods while trying to find a party and wind up at an isolated house's doorstep in need of help. Oops, instead of Mr. Rogers answering the door, it's a creepy-as-fuck German surgeon putting rohypnol in their water. A short time later, they're part of a human centipede! So... this movie is really great. I flat-out loved it. It's got twisted humor, fantastic performances, sick probably-illegal ideas and it's actually contained in a well-produced film! People have compared the surgen (Dieter Laser) to a mix between Christopher Walken and Udo Kier. That's pretty accurate. His performance is nothing short of amazing. His reading of "No, I don't like human beings" is classic. I loved every second he was on screen and was genuinely sad when... oops, spoilers! The centipede actors were also admirable. Having to spend half the movie on your hands and knees tied together must've been hell for them but they all did a pretty great job considering the circumstances. So I loved the film. It delivered for me exactly the way I wanted it to and made me supremely happy. What made me happier though was the Q&A afterward. Something about Dutch people... they always sound so happy when speaking English. This guy came out looking a little like Denholm Elliot from Last Crusade in an off-white suit and fedora and started talking about the most disturbing stuff with an innocent smile on his face and perk in his voice. I bet he's ecstatic that the film is so effective (both positive and negative) and quickly announced his plans for the sequel The Human Centipede: Full Sequence. He said he wanted it to be a double feature because the idea is so crazy that the first film was just to introduce the concept then the second will delve more into the different details. i think this maybe made some people really happy and others almost offended. One guy asked "just to hear this from your mouth, when you were talking about a sequel... that was a joke, right?" In Zack's words, it was one of the best Q&As ever. Each question was interesting and insightful and Tom Six the director had answers for every sordid detail (yes, he did consult a surgeon on the medical accuracy of the script; yes, you CAN do this at home and keep people alive for a very long time (years); no, you can't pull your face free due to the skin grafts on your cheeks... it would be like ripping your entire face off; etc.). The second-to-last question was "What's your ultimate celebrity centipede" and Six gave a deserving answer. I think a classic has been birthed. Afterward, knowing I was heading home to less than 4 hours sleep, I popped my head in the highball just long enough to see that there wasn't much more to the 3D dance party than a handful of TVs showing random stuff in 3D and a bunch of people I didn't know. Tom Cruise the front Nicole Kidman in middle J-Lo in the rear
09.30.09	Down Terrace	Ben Wheatley	I was told a dark version of The (british) Office. I don't really get The Office reference much unless they just mean British humor , but I definitely see the dark. A father and son are apparently in the midst of a court case against them. The dad seems to be the head of some sort of criminal organization in which the son is a part. He lives with his parents (the mom is more or less pure evil). Things get worse from there. I liked this film quite a bit. I couldn't get over how much the son looked like Bob Saget BUT ONLY FROM CERTAIN ANGLES. It was pretty weird, but undeniably true. I also loved the dad (and am aware that the father and son are really father and son, which is pretty cool) and really all the performances were very strong (which completely made the film). Not sure what else to say really. Very effective well-made film! Oi guvnor bloke mate! Why don't you learn some chords, son!? Ah, regal England
09.30.09	The Bare Breasted Countess	Jess Franco	OK, for anyone who read my Venus in Furs notes, know that 13 year old me would've KILLED to see this movie. The story is about... a girl descended from vampires who walks around naked and enjoys killing people at their height of pleasure ingesting their blood and their "hormones" together. The countess is played by Lina Romay, who's been accompanying Franco all three nights here at the theater. It's a little odd to interact with her during the Q&As then ogle her 20 year-old amazing body for 90 minutes then go back to Q&A. That's a little weird for me, but I guess it's no weirder than watching a movie that's basically 90 minutes of a naked writhing woman with a sold-out theater of dudes and a few chicks all around me. This movie was much closer to what I thought the first two would be. It's very atmospheric, very languid in pace and story, and very very erotic. Oh yeah, add hearing the guy behind me say that he could feel each of the victim's orgasms while watching the film to the pile of weird sensations for the night. It's pretty interesting to think that all three of these films really don't have any sort of conflict at all. None of them come close to conforming to traditional American narrative structure at all. It kind of opens you up to how versatile film can be; ;how many different things it can be used for and how many different ways it can communicate to its viewers. I really liked this. Put simply, it was hot. And I don't know why but, boots and belt is better than naked!? Gorgeous gorgeous women. I have no idea why I thought I might doze through this. More than the constant gazing at beautiful naked female flesh, the thing that made this movie hot for me was Franco's camerawork. He's unabashed in what he wants to see and the camera is quick to zoom in all the way in all the most interesting parts. There's a real energy behind the camera that reminds me of my most carnal thoughts... kind of exactly what I'd want out of an erotic film. In a sense, Franco's camera is another character in the film, constantly making love to Romay as she does whatever she's doing in the movie. The lust is palpable. All in all the Franco screenings were a huge success with me. Ideally, we would've had an indefinite time after each film to hear his stories late into the night but I guess a retrospective like this wouldn't have been possible without a festival to cover it so I'm just grateful for what we got. It's amazing to think how much that guy's done over the years (and continues to do - I heard he made three films this year!?) and judging from the three films of his that I saw during the fest, he's working on a plane very few others share. Huh? What did you say? Sorry, i was hypnotized by amazing bush
09.30.09	Yesterday	Rob Grant	Walking into this, not only did I know nothing about this movie, I had no recollection of why I even put it on my schedule. Jarrette was in the same boat and fully prepared to leave if it sucked. He left about five minutes in. Which is a real shame because if he would've stayed like 3 more minutes, he would've seen the first scene that tipped me to what this movie was REALLY about. The scene in question takes place in an office break room where three businessmen sit around a table and talk about how many people are out sick today. The only thing that sets it apart from any other poorly-acted and -scripted scene is that all three "businessmen" are like 17 years old (one also looks like a lovechild between Ben Stiller and an ape). These are clearly kids "playing older" because they ran out of adults to play adults! Wait a minute! This isn't some faceless terrible movie I'm watching, it's a bunch of friends getting together on weekends to make a zombie movie! From there, my enjoyment of the film increased dramatically. I started to create my own world behind the camera of this film (I have no idea if this is true or not... probably not) where the guy who played the shooting expert (awesome by the way) was also the director or writer and just wanted the world to finally understand why he likes to wear dusters everywhere (even though he lives in a basement apartment 3 miles off campus). These are mostly college students (with a few townies thrown in because they needed some older guys and that one dude has some gnarly chest hair) banding together with a handful of credit cards to make their version of the ultimate zombie apocalypse. Kinda like Pathogen but a little older. Could this all be in my head? sure. But there's a scene where one kid has to chuck a rock through a car window out of anger or fear and you can clearly see him smiling because... hey, he gets to break a window!!! He knows he's supposed to be acting or whatever but come on! How often do you just get to break a car window with no repercussions? It's fun!!! It's also pretty fun to pour a bucket of blood in your friend's face, get a semi-cute girl to lay down and put fake bloody intestines on her midriff, play like you're shooting people in the face because you're an expert sniper marksman, and go camping in the woods! This is the power of zombie cinema. So yeah, this was a terrible movie, but in a lot of ways one of the most enjoyable for me during the fest. In lieu of quality, I love that amateur sincerity that comes through with stuff like this and the Indiana Jones remake and things like that. Reminds me of the little skits and movies I used to make with my neighborhood buddies as a kid. As Chris said afterward, if it was me and a bunch of friends that made that movie, I'd think it was pretty awesome as well. Of course this could actually just be a crappy movie made by some crappy 28 year old, but the way I chose to see it was pretty damn fun. Let's meet after class and make an awesome movie I can pass for old
09.30.09	Sweet Karma	James Fler	I was actually looking forward to this one thanks to Kier-la's program notes and a general affinity for naked women and revenge. Plus any time any movie takes place in "the seedy side of..." any town, I find it pretty interesting because with most movies you get the tourist postcard, not the reality. This one's about a mute Russian girl who's sister goes to Canada to do housekeeping work but is really trapped into the sex trade. She dies, the mute sister gets a bag of her belongings, and then goes on a very calm murderous rampage through the offending organization's ranks. So I went in really hoping for the best with this movie, and enjoyed almost all of it. It's kind of weird that she doesn't talk (it seemed pretty obvious to me that it was to hide her inability to act... very much a model walking through this movie rather than an actress playing a part) and some of the action... well ok never mind I thought the action and violence sequences were competent. Nothing legendary but it wasn't laughable either. My beefs were two fold. One: there should've been more nudity. There's a TON of underwear in this movie. women are barely ever wearing more than underwear but also barely ever wearing less. It gave the movie a bit of tame-ness that I wouldn't expect... like it's trying to be at least a little trashy although the story and premise are complete trash. I could've used a bit more shocking nudity. Two: the ending. OK spoilers for this paragraph. So she kills her way up the ladder until finally she get's to the investor: the guy who put up the cash for the whole operation and gets half the profits living off the pain and suffering of innocent girls. She rushes in ready to kill him and a girl shouts "no!" and.... it's her sister. WHAT!? Never mind that after she supposedly got bought into freedom and now loves her once-captor, she apparently not only doesn't write to tell her sister that she's ok but she fakes her own death?? Huh??? It makes no sense to me why the sister would get all these personal items and clues to her whereabouts off of a dead body that's not her sister. It kinda... invalidated the whole movie for me. And of course then we get the scene where she can't bring herself to shoot the guy even though she was like a lady terminator throughout the whole movie shooting dudes without any emotion at all. Ugh. But despite those two things, i still thought it was pretty decent for the most part. Yes I wished it was better but oh well. Mute model kills scum Hot girls stuck in the sex trade More nudity please
09.29.09	A Serious Man	Joel Coen	So 15 minutes later I get out of the Franco Q&A and see that the Secret Screening is already seating all seats. Is it me or is the time between them calling seats 1-50 and all seats now less than two minutes. What good is pulling these tickets and waiting in line when everyone just rushes forward anyway? Luckily, Victor had saved me a pretty decent seat so I got in quickly and got ready to enjoy the movie... ...which is the new Coen Brothers film. I was particularly excited for this one since Jarrette worked the movie and it had a real chance of being good. It's about a cursed jewish family and their descent into hell set in 60s or 70s suburban Minnesota. If you're not a fan of seeing good guys with terrible terrible luck, don't see this movie. Over the course of the film, so much frustration builds toward the main character that you wish would just punch somebody - anybody - to regain some of his dignity, that by the end you either have to laugh or cry. My biggest surprise is how little the kids were in it. For some reason I thought this was going to be a little more autobiographical about the Coens' childhood. I don't really know why I thought that... nothing seems to support that claim other than them using their real hebrew school to shoot in, but nonetheless i thought it anyway. Instead it's about the dad and his... problems. It's a pretty enjoyable movie. i'm not sure how it will play to the masses but I found it to be intimate and extremely effective. The ending in particular was great and reminded me of why I love the Coens so much (hey, i already know what's going to happen... why do i need to see it?). Their unique point of view and seeming inability to cow to Hollywood standards of storytelling are so refreshing. I am so glad that they're out of their Intolerable Cruelty/Ladykillers slump! So that about does it for today. I'm starting to feel the burn for sure, although I plan to do a midnight movie tomorrow which might make me just a tad tired Thursday morning at work. We'll see. For now, I enjoyed heading home at 11pm to get a full night's rest. I now understand the pain and suffering that went into bagels
09.29.09	Succubus	Jess Franco	The second Franco feature, this one also a QTfest alumni. This one is about... well ok. To be completely honest, I had no friggin clue what this was about. At no time during the movie could you pause it and ask me what was going on and I'd have an answer for you. Right from the get-go I was pretty confused and after a while sort of gave up on even trying to connect things in any sort of logical way. If forced, I'd say there was this woman who liked to kill her lovers and at first her man liked it but then she started doing it to much (probably because of this other dude who psychoanalyzed her at some point) so he ultimately decided he had to kill her, except she came back as a ghost to kill him at the end. I'm sure people who actually know what the story's about are laughing right now but there you go: the honest record of what I got. So since the story wasn't doing anything for me, I decided to focus on the film in much more of an abstract way. I saw the audio and visual as two separate entities (it wasn't hard because the dialogue was so vague and enigmatic anyway and I was grooving to the constant jazz). At some points they seemed to separate quite a bit, then kind of came back together at the end. Somewhere deep down in my brain stem was surprised at the lack of constant nudity although pretty much all the women were truly beautiful European figures. I can't say that I liked this as much as Venus in Furs because this didn't engage the left side of my brain at all, but I still found it enjoyable in a deeply abstract way. Kind of like how in college I'd turn all the lights off and listen to albums with cthugha (a precursor to winamp and itunes) visualizations turned on. Afterward I thought i'd have to skip the Q&A to get into the secret screening, but when I walked out I saw the Ninja Assassin crowd pouring out of the theater. Thinking I had a good 20 minutes, I went back and was able to hear Franco talk a bit more about various things like how this was a rare movie of his that he still liked and other things that I already can't remember. The gist I got from hearing him speak was that there are a ton of things I didn't know about him (like how he worked with Orson Welles to complete Don Quixote or how Fritz Lang was a fan of his) and I wonder if there's a generally-agreed-upon definitive biography out there that I can check out. He seems like he's lived quite a life and I bet there are a lot of stories there. She's a perfect match Wicked soul and spiny back with silver panties
09.29.09	Rampage	Uwe Boll	A punk kid has enough so he buys a bunch of guns and a heavy armor suit and goes on a shooting spree, killing dozens of innocent people and blowing up the local police department. It's a Uwe Boll movie. Surprisingly (unless you've heard), it's good! There are a few things about it that kept me from loving it (mostly because I would've edited this movie a different way), but for the most part it's a very effective film. The lead is pretty strong (although I have to say that after seeing how tiny he is, the impact of the movie was lessened for me just a tiny bit. "Tiny," get it?) but it's ultimately the straight-forward attitude of the film that makes it enjoyable (for me anyway, I can definitely see a lot of people having a problem with this movie). Really only two things bothered me. One is the non-linear editing techniques used primarily in the beginning but peppered all throughout. I really would've loved to see the van explosion when it happened in the story and not as a flash just to hold my interest during these supposedly slow bits of buildup in the first act. I think it was a choice made out of insecurity (just my guess) and this film is all about balls. The second is that it's all jerky hand-held. This is the first movie that's given me any sort of motion sickness and I was surprised by it but nonetheless I found myself having to periodically close my eyes to settle my system a little bit. Which kind of took me out of it a little bit. But overall I liked it a lot. All the stuff with him in the suit is fantastic. I liked the ending a lot (although the very end title cards are a little weird and arbitrary). I liked the lead performance (although the other dude kind of grated on me a little bit, which is ok because that made the ending better), and the parents were pretty fun. I just wish it was shot like a much more hardcore (and less gay) version of Elephant than some verite mish-mash. I also found it a bit funny that this movie is basically the serious version of the Postal video game. I remember when Uwe was here with Postal (which was nothing like the video game (as I remember (i didn't play much of it)), maybe more like Postal 2 than 1), he mentioned writing another movie very quickly because he was in such a rotten mood then moving on to the lighter Postal material. I guess this is that movie, which ended up being a way better Postal adaptation than the official one. So yeah, Uwe continues his slow but steady rise in quality. Who knows, maybe some day mainstream critics will have to rescind some of their jokes. It wont happen with this movie though; way too brutal. I'd be surprised if it saw any sort of release. media breeds rage Tiny man with lots of guns I know, scary, right?
09.29.09	Kaifeck Murder	Esther Gronenborn	Fantastic Fest Day Tuesday. Everyone is pretty shocked at how quickly VIP badges are sold out. We now wonder when the price will hike up. It'll be at least a year I guess. I was mildly looking forward to this German supernatural murder mystery, but when Matt Kiernan used the words "stick with it" in his intro, my hopes started to dwindle. That's an unfortunate terms I've been hearing more and more this festival. I guess it's harder to make movies with interesting beginnings and middles but slow endings? Anyway, this ended up being a little different from what I thought. The murder mystery mentioned in the write-up took place like 80 years ago so it's less mystery and more watching a guy dream about old dead people. And the supernatural part is... watching him dream about old dead people. So there's a lot of dreams about old dead people in this movie. Then at the end a guy dressed up like the "monster" from The Village gets set on fire. Once again, I didn't dislike this movie but found it a tad slow and ultimately forgettable. These people are weird what is it with rural towns? Fuck you, Horned Barny!
09.28.09	Terribly Happy	Henrik Ruben Genz	My last movie of the night was a Danish movie about a big-city cop who comes to a small country town and tries to fit in with the locals. I liked the main actor but the movie was just as soggy and waterbogged as the landscape it portrayed and I felt like things didn't really get going until two thirds through the picture. Ultimately, I thought the movie was just OK. There were a few things to make it interesting and I actually kinda liked the flat Danish landscape, but the more Hitchcockian suspense elements... were not made by Hitchcock. Another early night in hopes of decent sleep. First they can't stand me then they cover up my kills this town sucks asshole
09.28.09	Venus in Furs	Jess Franco	Next up is my first Franco screening. I originally didn't intend to schedule all of these, but I'm a bit shamefully unexposed when it comes to his films so I figured this series would be a good place to start. Although in a way I started a long time ago. When I was in college, I somehow heard about a cd called Vampyros Lesbos: Sex-a-delic Dance Party. I bought it and loved it and listened to it a bunch. This led to a naive DVD search of the film Vampyros Lesbos, which seemed to be doomed in delayed release. When Synapse finally put it out, I bought it on a lark to see what kind of movie could be so crazy to fit the music on this disc. Well, turns out most of the songs I loved on the disc were from other movies, and I quickly lost interest due to too much vampyros and not enough lesbos. This was way before I moved to Austin and took any interest in these kinds of films at all. Instead, my knowledge of "these kinds of films" came from a different influential source of education and excitement: Cinemax Friday After Dark. You see, kids; growing up before the internet was pretty tough. For instance, if you were a horny young boy just starting to feel the urges, there was no youporn or GGG or sluts on ice a google search away. Instead, you had two options: Live the shame of going to an adult book store and paying 30 bucks for a VHS or scouring whatever's on your TV late into the night, deciphering random nipples in the twisted signal of blocked pay-per-view or hunting through whatever European art film Cinemax could pick up for any sign of flesh. This was before the shot-on-video influx of fake boobs and shiny lip gloss. Less Red Shoe diaries and More Emmanuelle. I can't even remember how many crappy dubbed german, scandinavian, and italian movies I sat through just to see some bush. Some were memorable (2069: A Sex Odyssey), others not so much. However, I think I credit my patience for sitting through sexploitation films today to me sitting down in the basement all those years ago, inadvertantly picking up an affection for the weird slow taste of 60s and 70s sleaze while waiting to see the bikini tops come off. So my first exposure to Franco was completely in this vein. Understandably, it didn't work. Today though, with several seasons of Alamo tutelage under my belt, I was prepared to take in Venus in Furs on the other level. The dream-like atmospheric muck level rather than the tits-and-pubes-level. I wanted the musical groove tone poem, not something that necessarily made sense. It was in this mode that i enjoyed the film. These women are unbelievably gorgeous. The music infectious and dynamic, driving the film to the point where the plot behaves like a song with verses and returning choruses and swirling elements that make it seem like the entire film takes place in just a few minutes like how they say your brain constructs dreams that seem to take fifteen minutes before incorporating the alarm that only started seconds ago. Istanbul, Rio, Klaus Kinski, a beautiful girl dead in the surf. What a fascinating experience. It's also interesting to be so aware of how me just a few years ago would hate this movie. I think back to debates I had in college or my supposedly sophisticated tastes in between the child innocence of the 80s and a few years ago when QT showed me Tony Arzenta and have to laugh. After the movie, Jess Franco held forth on a few topics, but that familiar festival itch started to take over when I heard people announcing other shows that were seating and I started thinking more about whether I would find a seat in the next movie or not than being fully absorbed in Franco's soft wandering voice. It's a real shame actually. Wanda on the beach Venus in Furs is smiling Blow that horn, baby
09.28.09	Love Exposure	Shion Sono	I was going to see Cropsy and Bronson until I stopped by The Highball and Jarrette put his entire reputation on the line to get me to see this instead. Having never seen Suicide Club or anything else this guy's done, I was dubious of Japanese Weird-ness. Luckily, I didn't consider it too wacky at all. I guess the story is mainly a love story between two teen kids: Yu, a poor kid with a terrible dad that forces him to become the prince of upskirt photography, and Yoko, a pretty girl who hates men due to a terrible dad that lusted after her when she was little. Throw in some catholic imagery, a bunch of hard-on jokes, and another girl (who's sociopathic due to a terrible dad who carried out his lustful impulses when she was little) who is hell-bent on ruining Yu's life (not quite sure why, something about original sin) and you get this four-hour epic opus that's distinctly Japanese. I enjoyed this one. I'm not sure it needed to be four hours long but there was definitely enough story to warrant 3 and I guess once you're over three hours, why not make it four? Because of the amount of time he had, Sono was able to take the movie in a lot of different directions. The first half is a bit more kinetic and comedic while the second strays into a lengthy subplot about a cult religion (which is what dragged for me). It's certainly epic and lots of things happen, but it did not change my life. Sorry, Jarrette. So many upskirts So little time to snap them I must sin! Thanks, Dad I hate men! Thanks, Dad Miss Scorpion you're so dreamy I love monologues! It's all been my plan Because I hate sex! Thanks, Dad Hello there, birdie
09.27.09	The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus	Terry Gilliam	Whew. VIP Badges selling out in 2-4 minutes is pretty scary, even if you got one. Anyway, the third secret screening was the movie everyone said would be the second secret screening. I have a feeling Harry didn't know what was showing so he passed it off as an insult to those that use twitter. I've never heard so many gasps at the words "London, England" before. Me? Even after Eric said he liked it a lot, I still wasn't exactly excited to see this. I kinda like Gilliam and he's made a few movies that I like a lot (12 Monkeys, Fear & Loathing as long as I watch less than an hour at a time) but mostly he's too much for me. Too much packed into his movies so i get overloaded. I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing, just my personal taste. But then on the other hand, I found Brothers Grimm to be not weird enough (like Sleepy Hollow... should've been better) so... this seemed like one or the other. It was ok. The girl was really hot. Like super hot in one of those japanese fantasy ways where the girl doesn't look exactly human but her feminine bits are accentuated to the point of faerie-like cartoonishness... with big boobs. Oh right, the movie. Yeah it was ok. What's odd is I don't really have much to say about it. I liked the little hairs that stuck out behind Tom Waits' ears as a nice weird little thing. The CG in the imaginarium was colorful and whatnot but something about it seemed like... well to be honest it reminded me of Richard Stanley's Dust Devil. It seems like it could've or maybe even should've been a really cool film but due to a number of factors wound up being a movie that barely comes together and kind of strains against the duct tape keeping everything together. I can't say the entire plot made entire sense to me... like how Plummer is immortal then mortal but then apparently immortal again or something? or why exactly Heath Ledger's character is shady in some way, or why the other dude turns into Harry Potter at the end. But damn that girl's legs (and boobs) were nice. Sorry, anyway...yeah another middle-of-the-road entry for me. I forgot to check out the highball tonight before heading home. It was probably too early to see anything memorable anyway. From here on out I'm skipping midnights (except maybe wednesday) so I can put in some work hours in the mornings. We'll see how that works out. Imagine a world filled with wild images that you imagine
09.27.09	Mandrill	Ernesto Diaz Espinoza	As stated in Tim's intro, Fantastic Fest 3 was memorable for having a couple stand-out movies attached to stand-out personalities that were there to party and also show their movies. One was Nacho, another was the Chilean action movie team behind Kiltro and Mirageman: Ernesto Diaz Espinoza and Marko Zaror. Well they're back with Mandrill: An In Like Flint / James Bond action movie where Marko Zaror grows up idolizing an In Like Flint / James Bond TV show and becomes an assassin to seek out revenge against the eye-patched gangster who killed his parents. Afterward the guys said they basically made this movie just to come back to Fantastic Fest, which is pretty damn awesome if you're Tim League. It's a testament to either how fun this festival is or how boring all the other ones are. It's also surprising because the movie didn't seem rushed or unpolished to me. I think a couple people maybe did but I didn't see it. Instead - and I think this was intentional - it seemed to me like an episode of this guy's own show that he runs in his mind. There are also flashbacks to show how awesome his uncle is. One of my favorite moments was the very beginning when he goes to an assortment of increasingly ridiculous locales in search of his target. It's pretty James Bond cool until you realize who he's looking for: "Donde estas Waldo?" I really like this movie: the style, the action, the fight scenes are impressive (they could afford a better camera this time so they slow a lot of Zaror's flashier moves down to see just how awesome his flying kicks are), the ladies quite lovely (and unbelievably tiny in real life, although I loved the leopard print dress), and the humor genuinely funny. I still place it a tiny bit under Mirageman, but enjoyed this much more than Kiltro. This was good times for sure. Marko is Mandrill He loves to love the ladies and kicking faces
09.27.09	Duress	Jordan Barker	In the words of Henri, "Day i'm-too-hung-over-to-remember-what-day-it-is" of fantastic fest was a day of transition for me. No midnight movie. Because of that, I only saw three films. The first film is Duress. Martin Donovan (whom I usually like) plays a dad with a daughter and his wife/her mom has just been killed in either some sort of accident or suicide or whatever. She zapped herself in the bathtub. So, because of his grief the whole movie has a dull blue color palette and everyone acts mopey. In the first ten minutes or so, he says he's "thinking clearer" then sees a Tyler Durden-esque character insert himself into his life and make him accomplice-ize with a murder. It's at this point that I start hoping this killer dude is not just a figment of his imagination. The spoiler-free version of the rest of these notes is that the first 98% of this film is intolerably dull. Like unbelievably boring. it's basically the scene I described above repeated 10 times or so. Donovan's there like "oh don't hurt my family just leave me alone" and the weird european-accent-for-no-reason killer is like "we're in this together, you're just like me, and by that I mean a killer not European" over and over and over again until you think the movie's some sort of meta joke to put the audience in titular duress because they're somehow not walking out. But then the ending is not only not what I expected but actually a pretty decent explanation of events (even if it does feel a bit close to Dexter). I don't know if I thought the ending was good because I was so relieved it wasn't another Fight Club rip-off or because it's actually of quality, but either way I walked out thinking it had a good ending but not good enough to make it worth sitting through. Duu uuu uuu uu uuuuu uuuu uuuu uu uuuuuuu uuuuu uuu uuuu uuu ull good ending
09.26.09	The Revenant	Kerry Prior	Back to South Lamar just in time to find that they in fact did not hold the midnight movies for the Paramount crowd, I managed to find an ok seat way in the back as Harry gave a too-long introduction to this film (which I'm grateful for; if he shut up earlier I might missed some of the film). This one's kind of a darkly comedic look on an army guy KIA who wakes up after a month of being dead. It's mostly about his relationship with his best friend (a loser played surprisingly unannoyingly by Chris Wylde) and the hijinks they get up to with his newfound abilities (and needs). OK this movie is good. Real good. It consistently goes places you don't expect it to go, don't think it will go, and don't believe that it just went there. Because of that, there are several tonal shifts from light hearted comedy to serious drama and back, which is incredibly tough to do and admirably pulled off by this film. Both lead actors are amazing, the film looks great, there's a surprising amount of effects work for a film without studio backing and it all looks incredible, everything looks completely professional and fantastic about this movie. It's just a tad too long. This should be a great movie with a breadth of quality deleted scenes on the DVD that you can watch after the film and enjoy on their own. Possibly due to the amount of turns that the story takes, it has a little bit of the Point Break effect where you think it's gonna end like 3 or 4 times before it actually does. I understand the filmmakers' pain because it's all good stuff... but Prior just made too much movie. Some of it should go. Which is a shame because there's a ton of great stuff in this movie. The funny bits are sharp and funny, the shocking bits suitably shocking. It's all believably realistic and did I mention the performances? Great performances. Great stuff. Liked this one a lot. I ended the night by dropping by The Highball and saw drunk Nick strangleholded by his drunken buddy while wearing 3D glasses, Nacho sing karaoke, and Anne hop on the pole, then went home to bed. My eyes freak you out bullets do not hurt me, holmes I'm awesome, let's drink!
09.26.09	Survival of the Dead	George Romero	After Cirque they made all of us go back outside just to come back in again. This created the longest and probably only line I'll stand in for this year's fest. Completely worthless. They're employing like 80 geriatric ushers all with wireless ticket scanners to stand in front of the doors and escort you to the seats, they can't have three of them do a pass of the theater real quick while others clean? Come on, now. Anyway, George Romero came out and did a pre-screening Q&A in which he received thunderous applause (two standing ovations) and warm reception to every word out of his mouth. I completely agree with Tim League when he said that if/when there's a Horror Hall of Fame, Romero should be the first inducted. However, I also kinda agree with Jarrette who said afterward that he should just retire and executive produce more if he needs money. While this movie didn't have the handful of fatal flaws that kept Diary of the Dead from being successfull in any way (except i guess in video rental markets), it did have a noticeably lack of any of the stuff that made his earlier stuff great: scares, threat, edge. The zombies were more or less the comic relief in this movie... I guess it's natural for any genre to move from innovation on a steady slope toward satire but you wouldn't expect it from the man credited for "inventing" the genre himself. Leave it to a Wayans brother. This really wasn't a zombie story at all. It's the story of a family feud between two Irish clans (except they live in delaware) who now disagree on whether to kill the dead or keep them around in hopes that they will regain some of their previous humanity. Romero answered a direct question earlier about how he's always been sympathetic and moving toward zombie humanity in all his films so I guess I can't complain about it, but it doesn't make me like it any more. I wish the ending of this movie was different. The tone to this was also much much more comical, with self-confessed "looney tunes moments" peppering the occasional gore and c-level acting. Again, not as bad as Diary (not as many monologues, no camera-facing soliloquies), but not great either. And finally, I know I shouldn't say this but after reading World War Z, I kinda feel like Romero had a few things wrong with this movie. In Max Brooks' thoughtfull novel, the beaches become the most dangerous places to be due to the unknown number of zombies lingering on the ocean floor. I don't think they'd just stand there as seen in this film. They'd walk to wherever you're going and walk up on the beach and be there. So an island is... not the best bet. Yet there only seems to be a handful of zombies on this island and tons of living people so... oh well. It's a shame but I think Brooks has advanced the logic of a zombie apocalypse a little further than Romero is willing to admit. But then again, Romero's zombie movies have never really been about zombies. It's just kinda hard for a zombie fan to realize that sometimes.
09.26.09	Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant	Paul Weitz	Quick jaunt over to the paramount to sit in another inexplicably bad seat for another movie supposedly intended for kids. i didn't really know anything about this going in. Had no clue it was based on yet another series of young adult vampire books or any of that. Pretty much all I knew was that John C. Reilly was gonna be there and that was good enough for me. So, I guess in an effort to pack the seats, they solicited high schoolers and junior high schoolers to come for free. That made for the whole front half of the orchestra seats populated with excited teens who think they're cooler than me. I even saw a kid with a mullet. I don't think he was old enough to be ironic but not young enough for his parents to be ironic so maybe mullets are coming back now? Crazy. Then the T-shirt guy came around and all the kids went CRAZY for youth XS-sized shirts. After the box was emptied and the suddenly-cool dude with the free t-shirts went back to being the gross old dude that all kids hate, impromptu marketplace shouting sprouted up here and there. I guess that's what we did before ebay and craigslist, huh? The movie. It was actually pretty good! I enjoyed myself about on par with Zathura (which I liked when it played the first Fantastic Fest but haven't felt a need to see it since then). John C. Reilly was great in it with a straight-forward sarcastic tone to his vampire that was pretty refreshing for me. The supporting freak show cast were also stocked with actors who are better than they need to be and the story itself was pretty smart and engaging. I really don't have anything bad to say about this. I was pleasantly surprised for sure. Hey smartybottom! sweet bloody wine, to your health! You're now one of us
09.26.09	Under the Mountain	Jonathan King	My third day at Fantastic Fest started with me checking out the "3D lounge" at the Highball with Ryan and Jarrette (TVs are too small to be immersive, not much more than slight novelty) which inadvertantly made me late for seating this movie because I was dillydallying in the lobby rather than realizing everybody was already in the theater. I know this is impractical but for future Fantastic Fests I could really Airport screening status screen on one of the indoor flatscreens that tells me if and what seats each screen is seating. Anyway, I found an ok seat in the second row and was therefore pretty close to Zack when he got up to announce the film as something he's incredibly excited about. The premise is that there are aliens living under the volcanoes around Auckland and these twin teenagers are the key to keeping them from waking up and destroying the planet. Samn Neil plays a good alien who's been keeping watch over the volcanoes but is now too old to be of any good. I never got around to seeing Black Sheep but I heard it was good and bad. This is neither good nor bad. It's really just bland. Everything happens how you think it'll happen and everything's pretty generic and familiar and although I like Sam Neil he doesn't have anything to do here except get mad at the brother for not believing in his sister (blech). Now I guess this is supposed to be for kids or young adults or whatever but still, pretty boring stuff. It had enough money to look and flow ok but I didn't really like it enough to think anything about it. As an aside because I just had some, I wish they sold the sour dust that you get at the bottom of Sour Patch kids in bottles in the cooke aisle. That way I could put it on everything. aliens are weird but ginger twins are also tentacle cliche
09.25.09	Smash Cut	Lee Demarbre	So, I guess when I added this to my calendar, My eyes saw David Hess, Herschel Gordon Lewis, and Sasha Grey but somehow missed Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter. Probably should have noticed that. Hess plays a director who makes crappy movies that decides to use a stripper he accidentally kills in a car accident as a prop in his new movie. Everyone says how good it looks so he keeps killing to finish his "masterpiece." Hmmm... OK I didn't like this. Not sure how much detail I need to go into to beat the horse though because this movie borders on a weird cult underground status that apparently people who liked Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter "get" and people like me don't get. Maybe it's supposed to be hokey and over-acted and cheap and hard to watch. Maybe that's what the kids like. The biggest problem for me was the music. It was wall-to-wall and loud and might sound ok as a house band for some bar but didn't make sense to the movie and was mixed way too loud and was also pretty repetitive. Maybe the music was an effort to hide other weakenesses of the film but it ended up causing a huge one. I feel like movies with music like that just aren't real. I mean, I did the same thing with my highschool psychology film that I made in 11th grade. You don't see me submitting that to festivals, do you? (say no). Turn the music off. Afterward there was a Q&A for the people who had stuck through the movie. My favorite part came when David Hess (who was sitting on the little stage literally right in front of a chair) mocked the director's laughter. They had a poster that they had forgotten to sign but said they would for anyone who could answer their trivia question. They asked what Ruggerio Deodato movie David Hess starred in and this was funny to me because a) I knew the answer (House on the Edge of the Park) but b) i didn't want the poster. Now, why didn't I want the poster? Well for starters, I didn't like the movie much so I didn't want to misrepresent by having some poster for some movie I didn't like just because it's signed by David Hess and the director of another movie I didn't like, Second, I didn't have a sharpee and could see a severely awkward moment of me standing in front of these two guys saying "I don't have a sharpee, do you?" back and forth forever, but lastly and most importantly, my memory of David Hess IN The House on the Edge of the Park is so evil and visceral that it's still ingrained into my brain and quite honestly I didn't want to get too close to the guy. I'm sure he's nice and all but... he was kind of creeping me out. So... great acting, Mr. Hess! After that I checked out the Highball party long enough to see the Robo-geisha girl hang from a stripper pole, meet a drunken member of the press, and hear some amazingly awful karaoke before getting in my car and heading home. Actors are cattle They do what you tell them and they bleed out real nice
09.25.09	The Men Who Stare at Goats	Grant Heslov	Back in the lobby (with the girls still in their Tengu bikinis posing for pics), everyone seemed to be talking about what the next secret screening would be. I guess it was kind of an open secret that Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassuss would play, helped a little bit by me overhearing Tim League tell someone "It's Imaginarium" right in front of my face. We sit down and Harry rolls up and starts talking about what a tight ship they run at the fest and how this movie was not the movie that he himself thought was going to play. Then he said the title and there were relieved sighs throughout the theater. Yay for us! And Kudos to TIm League. My guess is that it's something that exactly two people knew about and he had been disseminating false rumors as some psychological warfare technique. It makes me wonder about another rumor I heard about the last secret screening... A rumor that doesn't make any sense but would be a good cover for a guest who also happens to be in another movie coming out soon with direct ties to Aint it Cool. I'll have to get back to you on whether my hunch proves correct or we have to watch a crappy direct-to-video movie at the last night's secret screening. We'll see. Anyway, the movie was pretty good. It didn't "blow me away" but it wasn't bad either. People seemed to get a kick out of the repeated references to Ewan McGregor not knowing what a jedi is, which I'll admit does reek of a bit of irony. All the actors were good, it looked good and all that, it just didn't surprise me with anything. I think maybe the trailer gave too much away or something (the people who hadn't seen it laughed at all the trailer moments). I appreciated the ties to reality and it was enough to make me vaguely interested in doing a few google searches to see if this was a Fargo "based on a true story" or not. I probably won't do the searches though because that would make me a sap if it was all false. In the end, I liked it. Probably liked it more than Broncos. Less than Paranormal Activity. Cloony with high hair Use jedi accent, Ewan! The Dude has been found
09.25.09	Robo-geisha	Noboru Iguchi	My second day at the fest actually started with the Drawn and Quartered animated shorts program, which started very late and was the reason why I sat in the front row for Robo-geisha, but whatever. Sometimes the bar eats you. So the shorts were... ok I remember the latest Don Hertzfeldt which I didn't like much (too random at this point. I guess he's surreal now so that's ok but I don't get it, which is my problem... i guess), this quick one utilizing all these vintage ad materials that was pretty awesome, and an 8-bit short called Consoul that was pretty damn cool. Some others were tedious and boring and there was an anxiety among a bunch of people about making it to the Paramount in time for Zombieland which is another unfortunate byproduct to festivals but again oh well. So like I said above, I ended up in the front row for the first secret screening, which just about everyone knew or thought was Robo-geisha. Tim and Mark Walkow get up and start talking about Japanese things and then a whole slew of people involved with the film, including two tiny women with pointy boots, went up and were pretty funny. They promised a Q&A afterward and the movie started. So, I haven't seen Machine Girl or Tokyo Gore Police. If you're a fan of these, or Japanese... whatever you call those movies, then look no further. Wacky Japanese humor does nothing for me so honestly it's something I try to avoid during the fest. However, my distant memories of Big Man Japan (a previous secret screening/Tim pick) were more or less positive so I figured if there was something Tim was this excited about showing then hey, let's give it a chance. So it's about robot geishas. They eventually get weaponry installed in different places on their body. Most of the crowd seemed to laugh and cheer a decent amount. It was lost on me personally but I was expecting that so again... oh well. After the movie, all the male filmmakers (along with Tim and Mark) came out in a line all wearing sumo "wraps" (whatever you call the ceremonial undergarment used to cradle the junk and separate your buttcheeks), went down a row of seats rubbing their asses on "lucky" festivalgoers (bet you don't see Redford doing that at Sundance) then came up for a weird little ritual that eventually summoned forth the two Tengu girls in their bikini costumes who swung swords around then poked all the dudes in the ass with voodoo pins. Then they did a Q&A which was... I can't really remember any of the questions because front row made the costumes and bloody asses a bit too real for me. Sister, you are foe Know what's better than your sword? My hip katana!
09.24.09	Paranormal Activity	Oren Peli	The midnight shows were running late because they held the 10 o'clock shows for people returning from Broncos, so I had my first official way-over-capacity-lobby experience of the fest! But now instead of three lines filling up the space and making everyone awkwardly overhear each other's conversations, it's just a huge cluster of people wanting to be closer to the hallway entrance even though their ticket numbers are like 156 and the entire lobby will have to pass by them before they can move. But hey, I guess it's too much to hope that people think about where they stand when they start talking to their buddies so whatever, it happens. I'm sure this won't be the last. Once seated (with free popcorn and soda - a dubious sign), I started to wonder if I'd make it through without falling asleep. Macabre made me pretty tired and I started to think when the last time was that I was up this late on a school night. Luckily, the film kept me up (more on that in a few paragraphs). This movie is the story of a couple who buy a camera to document the titular paranormal activity going on in their home. Surprisingly (shockingly?) Harry Knowles actually had a pretty decent introduction likening it to the best episode of Ghost Hunters (with Rod and Douche) ever. It was a good intro because I think this movie needs a lot of help from the viewer. Like with any thriller that people call "scary," it needs some amount of cooperation on your part. I will say that if you buy into it, as I and most of the theater did, it works pretty well. After watching, I have several issues with the movie. So before I get into them, for the non-spoiler crowd let me say it was the movie I liked most tonight, it genuinely creeped me out, and kept me thinking about it right up to the point where I fell asleep in my unprotected bed in my unprotected apartment unfortunately alone. As Quint mentioned in his review, it's probably best to watch this movie at home alone but seeing it in a theater is pretty cool as well. Also as he mentioned, the film succeeds largely due to the acting of the leads; both (well, all three) were great. It also has a very interesting effect of completely announcing when the movie's about to get scary EVERY TIME then actually creeping me out almost every time. It conditions you to the point that when the movie cuts back to the bedroom with a "night #14" or whatever, you tense up. What's gonna happen now? The scares are even telegraphed with the sound design so there's no cheap "the cat jumped out of the closet!" gags at all (quite the opposite) yet the film still succeeds at freaking you out, which is quite an achievement. Ok, ramping up spoilers from here on out. The first few are minor, the fourth paragraph is pretty big. First, the girl wears nothing but tanktops. I didn't really mind while watching (boobs) but Victor mentioned it right off the bat and it was a total "oh yeah!" moment. Secondly, I know everyone has to sleep sometime but... don't you think you might want to change it up or something, sleep during the day so you can wake up at 3:08 when all this stuff seems to happen? I think I'd have a much harder time relaxing in that damn bed after night 6 or so. Thirdly, the last shot sucks. I guess it's a familiar problem with this kind of movie (Blair Witch suffered from it as well) in that the whole thing is so subtle and realistic that when the cards are shown and you have to have some cap to the whole movie, showing something subtle is not enough. If you ask me, even cutting the last 20 seconds would've helped it incredibly. it's such a downer to be "with" the movie the whole entire time just to go "eh" at the very last part of the very last shot. Fourthly, and most hugely, the dude in this movie is an idiot. Enough so that the whole movie now borders on reinforcement of Eddie Murphy's classic joke about the difference between white people and black people when confronted with ghosts. "Oh honey don't you love this house isn't it great? ~GET OUT~ too bad we can't stay, baby." I know the film goes out of its way to stress that it's the girl who's haunted and not the house, but the dude acts annoyingly white nonetheless. His fierce refusal to let anyone help and do everything wrong leads the latter parts of the movie down paths that I didn't find realistic at all. Like the "research" he does and the webpage he finds (complete with full-screen video even though the page itself looked from 1996) and the stuff with the potential names on the ouija board. It all seemed fake to me. I don't care about any of it and wish it wasn't in there. Why do demons all the time have to have backstory? Ugh. And seriously, how stupid do you have to be to burn a cross and think that's helping anything? I know his character is the way he is for the whole audience to have this reaction, but wouldn't it also be a cool audience reaction to have your main characters be pretty smart and do things that I would think to do and still have them pestered by demons? I know that's a harder job and all but... damn was this dude stupid. ugh! So that's that. It's 2:30, time for me to head home and to bed. In my dark bedroom. Where who knows what goes on while I lay there asleep. Hey ghost! I dare you to fart on my cheek at night Hah! Got it on tape
09.24.09	Macabre	Mo brothers	Back to South Lamar (parking is a real issue) and my next movie was already seating (damn, no time to check out the Stunt Rock shirt). I picked this one because the program write-up started with this: "God bless the creators of Macabre. Really. Because divine intervention is the only way this blood drenched slasher will ever clear Indonesian censors to be seen by audiences in their home country." I figured that was good enough for me. As it turns out... The extreme gore and voluminous amount of blood mentioned in the write-up were there, but so was a pedestrian story and by-the-numbers execution that the write-up didn't really say much about. I mean, I get that it's supposed to be about the gore, so the story isn't really "important" or whatever, and it's really weird to say that after a while, no amount of chainsaws and decapitations re-sensitize you to the blood enough to take interest in what's happening, but I left the theater really feeling empty like I had watched make-up tests for 95 minutes. Again, I can't really complain because nobody ever said it was going to be the Wuthering Heights of Indonesian slasher flicks, but whatever. I guess these kinds of films just hold less draw for me nowadays. Help me I am lost Take me to my creepy house Now eat this strange meat
09.24.09	Gentleman Broncos	Jared Hess	The Opening Night film is this: the new one from the Napoleon Dynamite guy. They got him, his wife, Sam Rockwell, Jermaine Clement (in full character reciting the winner of some sci-fi-ku competition (my favorite of which was "twinkle little star / if you do not grant my wish / I will destroy you)), and star Michael Angarano to appear with it, which would've been cool if my super VIP badge didn't yield me perhaps the worst seat in the venue. OK Maybe that's a bit facetious. I wasn't in the far right or left so the screen wasn't obscured by the box seats, but I was in pretty much the last row of the orchestra so the top of the screen was obscured by the balcony and all the ushers sat around me with their old person smell and disregard for the movie. So when the special guests came out, they strongly resembled animated action figures. In fact, since I didn't recognize Angarano by name, I had no clue he was the kid from Sky High (not to mention young William in Almost Famous where he would've stolen the entire movie if the rest wasn't so damn good) until I saw him on screen. So for everyone wanting celeb sighting dish, I can say that Rockwell had a buzz cut or something. So the movie: I liked it. But I also liled Nacho Libre. I didn't get a kids-movie vibe from this one, but I did get a valium depressant vibe, which is what I think threw a lot of people off. I think this might be a movie for kids on horse tranquilizers. Take that as a good thing or a bad thing. Actually that's how I view most of this movie. You can take the style and setting and characters as a good thing or a bad thing depending simply on whether you dig it or not. I think it's easy to see this movie as a deliberate step back into Napoleon Dynamite territory (the beginning titles are very similar, the first scene takes place on a school bus, there's a wacky female parent,...Utah) but if you don't see it that way and instead take it in as Jared Hess' personal worldview and accept that almost every movie he does is going to be this way, then it fits right in and works well. The undeniably great parts of this movie are Jermaine Clement and Sam Rockwell. Both play characters that are extreme but both ground it in a comfort with who they are that it works; they are a joy to watch. The problem is that neither one are in the movie as much as you want them too. It's definitely an odd movie from the guy who did Napoleon Dynamite. I think how you react to it depends on how open you are for it. To reiterate: I liked it. Again there was a Q&A (which i heard was good, even from people who did not like the movie), but again, we had to haul ass back to South Lamar to make our next movie... so we had to leave right after the final scene in the movie which appears after the credits. As a side note and potential advice to latecomers to the fest: apparently everyone thought that the line of white vans parked outside South Lamar was some sort of shuttle service taking geeks back and forth for the gala events. So also apparently, the "news" traveled everywhere (the variant I heard was that there were shuttles but the waits would be very long). Third apparently, there were large clumps of people standing on the sidewalk waiting for some phantom shuttle to take them 2 miles so they wouldn't have to park downtown, thus making some people late for the movie. HA HA. There is no shuttle. This tweet is copy righted in effort to a void plagiarism
09.24.09	Van Diemen's Land	Jonathan Auf Der Heide	Fantastic Fest!!!! Holy shit i'm at the Alamo South Lamar again! New menu items, new... hmm. Well ok it's largely the same, except the highball, which i'll probably talk more about later. Although I don't really go out to many movies anymore (at all), i'm still glad to be here at this fest and to have a badge that allows me relatively little stress in seeing what I think looks good. For the fest, I'm working half days and skipping all the weekday midnight movies (except tonight)... we'll see if I can keep up a regiment of four movies a day and manage to drag myself into work on time. Let me start off by saying thanks to whomever may still read this that is also going to the fest. I saw about a dozen friendly faces tonight and didn't get too much shit from any of them. The job/girlfriend combo seemed to answer everyone's questions pretty quickly, leaving time for pretty cool catch-up conversations with a lot of my old friends. It's kind of like the best possible school reunion ever, so thanks to everyone for remembering who I am. So ok, Let's see... where to start. I picked my badge up last night. Looks like 3D is a big push this year although I don't think I'm seeing any 3D films. Oh Well. I also hear rumor of a Stunt Rock shirt. Have to be on the lookout for that. Skipping ahead: Van Diemen's Land is - I think - a German movie about a group of British and Irish prisoner's in old-timey Australia who try to escape and quickly run out of food trekking through the harsh wilderness. The program guide mentioned Aguirre: The Wrath of God, which I thought might be because of some sort of genius subtle psychological portrait of the depths of isolation but ended up meaning it was in the jungle and really slow. Yes, the dude's start eating each other but you have to spend such a long time looking at them doing the same thing (walking through trees and stuff) over and over again, it literally becomes more interesting to look at the scenery (which is beautiful by the way and shot very well). The story itself follows a well-defined path (that of a way less exploity (and therefore less fun) Ravenous) and ends how you think it'll end. In fact, I found the most interesting part of the story to be the text on screen at the end of the movie, and wished very much that they condensed the 104 minutes I'd just watched into about 20 and showed me what happened next instead of offhandedly telling me right at the end. Let's just say I'm glad I saw this early in the festival while I still have a buffer for tedious pacing. There were a few actors who undoubtedly had interesting things to say, but since we had to hustle over to the Paramount next, Jarrette and I ducked out to find parking. Freedom is ahead Oops I'm hungry for human Time to stare slowly
09.20.09	Beverly Hills Chihuaha	Raja Gosnell	Um... well I can't say this isn't what I thought it would be. This is what I get for taking my mom's recommendation in movies. It's pretty bad, although I'm sure Mexican people everywhere kind of wish their country is as depicted in this movie. Maybe not though... even though there is no crime or corruption and the worst crime of all is dogfighting, it'd get pretty annoying living in this world.
09.19.09	Traitor	Jeffrey Nachmanoff	I don't know if it's just netflix's web player or what but the lack of english subtitles, while probably intended to convey confusion or isolation or remind me how much of the world doesn't speak my tyrannical pig language, but after a while it just disconnects me from the movie. They should spend less time with babelfish and more time thinking about things like how can fbi agents on a commercial flight get to Chicago like a half hour after getting a call that their suspect has been spotted. Anyway, it's nice to see Guy Pearce and Neal McDonough together again in a Ravenous reunion, just with way less cannibalism. Which is a shame. It would've been a nice turn in a movie otherwise about a muslam terrorist with a conscience. anyway x2, Jeff Daniels is in this. I know, right!? He shows up a half hour in like "oh yeah, there's also this guy at the table," except it's not just some dude it's Jeff Daniels. So that kind of tips a major turn in the film that... I could've done without really. Very similar to Eastern Promises, I kind of think I would've liked it more if there was no twist or whatever. But on the other hand, I wasn't what you would call riveted before the twist so whatever.
09.18.09	Taken	Pierre Morel	I heard this was good... had no clue it was co-written by Luc Besson. The story is pretty simple: stupid american teen girls get abducted into sex slavery but oops, one of the girls' daddy is a retired certified badass even though he has a giraffe neck and gigantic Irish nose. Yep, Liam Neeson is a bit of an odd choice for this movie but for me he makes the film unique. If this was Jason Statham or some other action guy, it'd be a pretty familiar bourne-ultimatum-meets-commando flick. Instead, it's kind of interesting to watch him kick ass via quick cuts and sound effects. In case I'm sounding like I didn't like it... i did. It wasn't the most memorable movie ever but it certainly gets in, does its job competently, then gets out. Can't ask much more than that.
09.12.09	Lakeview Terrace	Neil LaBute	YES THEY DESERVED TO DIE AND I HOPE THEY BURN IN HELL!
09.07.09	The Rocker	Peter Cattaneo	I kinda knew this would be mediocre going into it so I can't say i'm that disappointed. It was ok, sort of like School of Rock is the kids weren't real musicians and Jack Black was Rainn Wilson and the music wasn't good at all. Still, I laughed a couple times, like when Wilson made fun of the eagles and how Vesuvius took on british accents thanks to their popularity. Just ok. UPDATE: I completely missed this but apparently this is the 2000th movie I've seen since starting this site! Crazy. I think the big thing is how much longer the second thousand has taken than the first thousand. That's life though. Again, Bogdanovich kept his journal for 17 years and I hope to match him. There's bound to be some ups and downs in that span so it's all just part of life. Still, I'm incredibly grateful and proud to have so many entries on here... definitely the longest and most consistent "diary" type account that I've ever been able to keep. here's to another 2000!
09.06.09	Grindhouse	Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino	So... it's been a while since I've seen these movies. Inglourious Basterds is out. So is Shorts (although that doesn't look like something I want to see).. I figured it's time to revisit both of these movies and a) see if my opinion on them has changed at all, and b) see if the "director's cut"s make them any better. Planet Terror I still didn't like this at all. I absolutely hate how Rodriguez treats the film aging as an effect. I hate how the film "goes red" with lame CG tendrils just for one scene because there's a bad guy or how the frame burns up (complete with lame fireball sound effect) because Rose McGowan is soooo hot (but not hot enough to show nudity apparently). I can't stand any of it and it shows such a basic misunderstanding of what he's supposedly trying to homage that it comes off as an insult. I also hate how he uses the "missing reel" gimmick to get around minor things like making the plot make sense or telling the story. He also renders the technique impotent by having the first dialogue after the cut be a nearly complete explanation of everything that we've "missed." But... uh.... trying to think of things I liked... Good to see some of the actors again like Michael Beihn and Jeff Fahey (who aren't completely wasted like they were in the theatrical cut) and overall the director's cut made for a more complete movie... but mostly i see it as a failure. Death Proof This one improved a bit for me. I still think the structure is really strange and there's too much dialogue but... accepting all that, there's a lot to like here as well. The aging is done 1000% times better. The first half of this movie feels to me like an old print of a cheap movie (except the crash scene). The dirt and scratches are pretty spot on and the dirty splices and reel changes feel much more subtle and natural. It also seems like the Austin portion of the film is much softer like it's a dupe print or something. It's a great effect and gives the movie the exact right vibe. Inexplicably, that stops with an awkward scene in black and white (which I can't remember if it was in the theatrical cut or not) then pristine IB Tech for all the Tennesee stuff. It had to be intentional but since it's SO clean it makes the one weird splice stand out as awkward. It's not like Quentin hasn't shown prints that are half red and half perfect though... so maybe it still fits who knows. I enjoyed the stuff I recognized as extra (the lapdance ahem) but still found a lot of the dialogue to be stilted and fakey. Especially with the Austin girls. Luckily, Zoe Bell is so awesome that the Tennesee stuff seems much better. I also LOVED the scene with Michael Parks and his son where they're clearly just walking down the Planet Terror hallway set over and over again while talking. The sound and set in that scene really struck me as something ultra-cheap that I would see at a weird wednesday. I have a little more respect for the car chase at the end after seeing the special feature talking about who all the stunt drivers were, but i still could've used a bit more there. Kurt Russell is still the best part of the movie and seeing him whine and cry after getting shot is my favorite moment in the whole movie. And finally, it's still awesome to see people and places I know in a movie. Can't get over seeing David and Kaela in the background of The Omlettry or Kevin getting his neck ripped apart in the hospital hallway. Freakin cool... Conclusion I'm glad I watched these again separately. It cemented my dislike for Planet Terror and increased my enjoyment of Death Proof quite a bit. I might eventually have to pick up Death Proof just to keep my QT DVD collection complete.
09.03.09	Inglourious Basterds	Quentin Tarantino	I kinda figured I couldn't not see this in the theater. More than any other dude making movies today I think Quentin loves the cinema and to wait to see his movies at home on my TV just wouldn't be right. I'm glad I did. It was even worth the extreme sticker shock on the Lake Creek menu (7 bucks for chips and queso??? seriously!?). So let's see. I tried to anything anyone else said about this movie... reviews, blogs, whatever. I think it was a mistake for me to read the Death Proof script and be so aware of their shooting in town and every little detail because I didn't enjoy that movie much when i saw it so i didn't read this script, only watched the trailer like once, avoided everything. I'm glad I did. It's not exactly what I thought it would be, but that's not a bad thing at all. Instead of a men-on-a-mission type story, it's almost more of an episodic intertwining novel which, in hindsight, makes perfect sense considering this came from the guy who made Pulp Fiction. Although Brad Pitt is the marquee star, the movie's really made up of tiny star turns where characters get their very well-defined moment in the sun and then recede into the background for the next one to step into the spotlight. Again, this shouldn't be a surprise. I also very much appreciated how many unfamiliar faces I saw, helped of course that everyone gave really great performances. In fact, I liked the liked of Christoph Waltz and Michael Fassbinder and Til Schweiger so much that it became pretty odd to see Samm Levine and BJ Novak in there. For some reason, Brad Pitt never bothered me although I have to say that both Eli Roth and Mike Myers drew me out of the movie. Mike Myers was made up to the point that I felt he was playing Austin Powers doing a character than a real British general. I'm sure there's some reason why he was cast but I'm sure there's a real brit out there who could've done it better without the unintentional humor of just being Mike Myers looking ridiculous. And Roth... sigh... OK, He's great when he's saying "Antonio Marghereeeeeeeti" but his brooklyn accent is pretty terrible and again... like there isn't one good actor on earth who's actually from brooklyn? Come on, the brooklyn accent hasn't changed in like 500 years... it would've been cooler to have another fresh face there. Great use of music. Interesting structure. Great performances from interesting actors. I was kind of hesitant about this movie but ended up really enjoying it, which I'm really happy about.
09.02.09	RocknRolla	Guy Ritchie	Good music. I was real happy to hear some Sonics in there. Weak weak ending. It's funny how the fantasticfest secret screenings are like the hot ticket during the fest and everyone wants to get into them but they always end up being run of the mill movies that you just get to see a few weeks early. Renting this now, it was ok. Watching it with 200 people expecting Watchment, I'd probably be disappointed. Did I mention the weak ending though? Like we couldn't see what happened to the accountant or the russians? Eh, not that important... they're only, you know, the impetus of the whole movie and the main antagonist. No big whup. Everything else was entertaining enough though. Guy Ritchie has probably overstayed his welcome with the british thug romps but I still like them ok. Cool dudes talking cool getting into trouble and whatnot... pretty fun stuff with everyone being so damn tough or toff or whatever. Had fun enough watching it.
09.01.09	The Midnight Meat Train	Ryûhei Kitamura	This is not about those taco trailers all over town. Instead it's about one of NYC's subway trains and Vinnie Jones whacking people in the head with a gigantic fucking hammer and practicing his day trade (butcher in a meat packing plant) on some "long pork." Exactly what a movie called Midnight Meat Train should be. Midnight? check. Trains? check.... Yeah, surprisingly good. The CG is pretty cheap but it's also kind of gritty and lo-fi at the same time that most of it works (the camera going around the train during the fight scene... not so much, but hey I said "most"). Some good fun gore, Vinnie Jones is a badass as usual, and you know... just a solid horror movie. Nothing amazing, but nothing close to a disappointment either. tangentially, jesus! Clive Barker's polyp-ridden throat gives a really effin scary voice. OK. I have to add a note about something on the DVD. There's a special feature I guess all about Clive Barker's art. as in painting. Does anyone want to know why I don't consider myself an artist? Because I'd pay someone to slap me if I ever said any of the stuff Clive Barker says about his painting during these 15 minutes or so. Seriously... I guess all that pretentious rambling is supposed to make complete sense to an artist so... I'm a nerd because I don't consider my head a bucket and my body an impediment getting in the way of art escaping through my conduit. This little bit is so hilarious I'd almost recommend a rental just for it. At one point he has a little circular canvas in which he's drawn a black spiral and he talks for almost two minutes straight about the nature of the spiral and all that it represents to him... and I mean he more than talks, he pours forth. No contemplative elipses, no ums or ahs, no qualifications or conditionals. Just him staring at a spiral (and pointing to different parts of it) and holding forth on it's relevance to the universe. Jesus Christ. Another favorite moment was when he's in a little tent filled floor to ceiling with what he calls his "failures." Hundreds of canvases filled with paint. He quickly flips through them like a teenager looking at rock posters at Sam Goody, passing down sentences: "That's a loser gone lost lost what the hell? That I'll keep That I'll keep not a chance not a chance not a chance..." and they look like EVERY OTHER PAINTING HE'S BEEN SHOWING FOR TEN MINUTES! This proves to me that I am not an artist and have no eye for art. In the painting medium at least. Thanks, Clive. Hey, weren't you a writer at some point?
08.30.09	I Love You, Man	John Hamburg	Another solid comedy. The current state of comedy is pretty weird. It's kinda like the kids who grew up watching The Ben Stiller Show, The State, Uprioght Citizens Brigade, and Freaks and Geeks are now in control of Hollywood. Although I don't have any greenlight power, I also watched and loved all those shows so for me it's kind of weird because I like ALL these guys and think EVERYTHING is funny. How failed 90s tv shows became the seed of contemporary i'll never know, but I am thankful because this is right up my alley. Anyway, Everyone was pretty funny in this. I really liked that they picked Rush as the band they geek out over considering Jason Segel's Freaks and Geeks character. It's _almost_ like (in the same way that John Cusack in Grosse Point Blank _could_ be Lloyd Dobbler from Say Anything) Segel's character in this movie is just what happened to Nick Andopolis after Freaks and Geeks. He moved out to LA, got a Venice bungalow, met an older stoner mentor who snapped him out of the whole angst thing, fell into a few great investment opportunities, got laid A LOT, and here we are. I also like that Favreau took an acting gig. And that Thomas Lennon had a part. And Joe lo Truglio. And Lou Ferrigno. blah blah blah I liked it and laughed quite a few times.
08.26.09	See No Evil	Gregory Dark	This is the last of the WWE films that I hadn't seen and probably my least enjoyable. Modern day terrible action movies are at least unintentionally funny. Modern day terrible horror movies are just all quick cuts and bugs crawling across dishes. It's hard to believe two music videos have effected a whole genre for so long... anyway. This time the wrestler is not the hero - apparently Kane is a bad guy in the ring? I have no clue - instead he's a random murderer who plucks people's eyes out and keeps them in random dirty jars filled with viscous fluid borrowed from Marylin Manson. Not really sure why he's the master of this old burned out hotel that a couple random teens in trouble get assigned to clean for three days, but he's got like every room in the 9-story structure wired to a series of a dozen bells that ring and tell him where his next set of eyeballs are. oh i remember why he's there now. I sort of dozed off for the last ten minutes or so... but i remember now. yeah, there's a "reason" why he's there. Totally justified. Not random at all. So... random teens who I don't care about die and stuff. At the end a few of them leave. I guess a concerted effort to run down the stairs is beyond this group's capabilities (kids today, i tell ya) so most of them have to die at the hands of some huge wrestler dude who is somehow gigantic even though he doesn't eat anything and lived in a cage all through childhood. Fun! Hopefully the next WWE film will be an action movie that I can laugh at... more fun that sitting through this.
08.26.09	W.	Oliver Stone	hmmm on one hand I want to say that this is definitely at least ten years too early because we don't know what the historical significance of the Bush Jr. administration is but on the other hand, the film might could be proven to be historic ten years from now. This is interesting in the same way as it would be to go see Nixon like 2 years after his resignation. Everything's so close that it seems a little tired right now, but a few presidents down the road it _could_ be a thousand times more significant and powerful.... OR we could learn all sorts of crazy shit and this will be nothing more than a historical record of "what we thought at the time." So today, it's a bit tired. Great cast, good commentary on the DVD, but all said I'd rather be watching Pinkville.
08.15.09	Choke	Clark Gregg	Huh. I was definitely more a fan of the book than this film, but I'm pretty sure it was a pretty faithful adaptation. The problem is that the humor and tone of the book translate much sadder to me when I sit and watch it pass before my eyes. Vic Mancini is somehow much more pitiful to see than to read. The stone house scene is a great example of that... something that made so much sense on paper doesn't play AT ALL in the movie (and hence was cut but thankfully included in the deleted scenes since my first reaction after watching the movie was "where's the stoning scene!? That was like the climax of the movie!"). Oh well, still love the book. The movie doesn't quite come together.
08.09.09	The Curious Case of Benjamin Button	David Fincher	Another one I got for my birthday (david fincher + criterion = purchase). Jarrette had told me a loooong time ago that this was not that great and exactly what I expect it to be: Oscar baiting make-up and not much else. No surprise that he's right. The film (guess you can't call them that anymore) is very pretty and the music is suitably epic or whatever but it feels too much like a not-funny Forrest Gump (complete with war sequence, colorful sea captain, and significant historical events happing in the background) to be anything on its own. Plus the little old dude creeps me out. Digital or not, he's creepy. Fincher is clearly a talented director. I just don't like his scripts sometimes. Much like Panic Room, I suspect I'll enjoy the supplements on the second disc much more than the movie itself.
08.08.09	The Wrestler	Darren Aronofsky	I think this is the movie where I finally realized that I'm not much of a theatergoer anymore. Huge buzz, love the director's previous work, everyone's not only talking about it but asking me if I've seen it yet and... I haven't. Never made it out to catch this movie, no hurry at all. Instead, I got the DVD for my birthday and am watching it on a Saturday night with some home-made nachos. Nice. So... what I have to say about this movie is incredibly fresh and you probably haven't heard anything like it before. Mickey Rourke is good in it! Like, real good! I know!!! such a surprise and you never would've expected it, but I swear it's the truth! It's also pretty sad, very handheld and there's a lot of looking at the back of his head. Also, Marissa Tomei shows her boobs and ass. Why couldn't we have seen them back in Slums of Beverly Hills, Marissa!? The lame boob double is easily the weakest part of that movie for me! oh well.
08.08.09	Body of Lies	Ridley Scott	Molly's out of town for the weekend so I'm basically on a binge of video games, junk food, not showering, and movies. It's been a long time since I've just plopped down and watched a movie in the afternoon so... time to watch this netflix! Pretty mediocre. Sorry, Ridley but I liked Spy Game much more than this. I also remember the trailers where it made it seem like Russell Crowe somehow double crosses diCaprio and he comes back to the states to get even and there was none of that here. I don't appreciate the bait (if you call it that) and switch, but I guess marketting had to make SOMETHING up to get people in the seats. This movie really isn't about anything, unless you go for that whole current-state-of-warfare, we're-no-better-than-they-are, look-into-the-abyss-and-it-looks-into-you thing... which I didn't. Instead, I watched Leo walk around in cheap dirty tracksuits with his scraggly beard for two hours and then it ended. Great.
08.05.09	Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist	Peter Sollett	Decent romantic comedy that makes me feel very old. I actually didn't know if Where is Fluffy was a real band or fake. I figured it could've been like Groove where they talk about Digweed showing up all night and he finally does or... it could've been, you know, fake. Anyway, aside from making me feel 60 because these kids are so much cooler than me (and where were their parents? Is it a commonplace thing for every kid in NYC/NJ highschool to go out partying somewhere in Manhattan all night every weekend?), it was not a bad movie. Except I hate the girl who played Cera's ex. She was also the annoying skinny girl in Fool's Gold and she's on this season of Entourage as well so I feel comfortable in saying that I now hate her. I mean, I'm sure she's a nice person and all but I hate her face and can't stand to watch her in movies and tv. Oh Well! It's also funny how just being the daughter of a recording studio owner gets you into all the hot clubs without waiting in line. Does every bouncer in the city know who owns every recording studio and what all their kids look like? Oops, best not to keep thinking about this one. I liked it ok as it was passing in front of my face but maybe that enjoyment will go down if i ponder any deeper.
07.29.09	X-Men 2	Bryan Singer	I'm playing through X-Men Origins: Wolverine on the xbox 360 and having a lot of fun with it. Since I never saw the movie (and we're in the lull between the work print leak and the dvd rips) I decided to watch this again to sate my urge of seeing Jackman's wolverine in action. It's surprising - almost shocking - to me how much this movie has aged. I still probably think this is the best X-Men movie but... it's nowhere near as good as some newer comic book films to come out. There's absolutely zero character development, barely any lines even for half the cast, and half the actors look pretty ridiculous (especially James Marsden when he has to cry behind his "cool" cyclops visor). I remember thinking that Nightcrawler got a pretty decent treatment but now he seems relegated to reciting prayers in an oddly not-german accent. Brian Cox is basically the star of this movie and he's the only one who isn't a mutant. The over-reliance of Mystique bugged me then and bugs me now... makes you wonder how anything got done in Last Stand (which I'm afraid to revisit if I thought all this stuff about this one). I still more or less enjoyed myself... it's just that I was holding this movie as the gold standard of comic book films in my mind and movies like The Dark Knight and Iron Man is clearly better. Oh well. It's been a long 6 years.
07.28.09	Cocaine Cowboys 2: Hustlin' with the Godmother	Billy Corben	Primarily the story of Charles Cosby: Oakland cocaine dealer and west coast connection to Giselda Blanco. Not nearly as good as the first, this has to resort to bad animation to fill the time between familiar stories and outtakes from the previous effort. Moderately interesting but not nearly as shocking, gripping, or interesting as the original.
07.27.09	Punisher: War Zone	Lexi Alexander	I took off work for my actual birthday, and before diving into a new video game I watched a movie! I didn't care for The Thomas Jane Punisher (even though I like him as an actor) because it seemed more like a homo-erotic fantasy or some excuse for Jane to take his shirt off. Plus with Marvel's new ownership of their film properties, I thought there was an outside chance that this could be decent. And it more or less was. Sure it's not great. Not even really all that good. But i think it's pretty awesome how brutal and violent it is. Like, seriously. Shotgunning heads off and punching faces in type stuff. Pretty sweet. I also like Ray Stevenson from his work on Rome and Dominic West from The Wire (yay!) but everyone's "New York" accent were terrible. oh well, a fun enough diversion.
07.26.09	The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King	Peter Jackson	I always defended the fifteen-minute three endings of this movie with the thirty-minute 15 beginnings at the front of Fellowship. Well, after 14 hours, I really cared more about going to bed than seeing Frodo get on the boat. Sorry! Otherwise, great stuff. Great movies. Still amazed that they pulled it off. Also a good birthday Sunday.
07.26.09	The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers	Peter Jackson	The weird flashback/forward memories that Aragorn has of Arwen while walking from Edoras to helm's Deep are perhaps the slowest parts of the entire trilogy. It's crazy that the battle for Helm's Deep seems kinda minor compared to the battle of Minas Tirith in the third movie. it's also cool how I can no longer differentiate what was in the theatrical cut with the extra footage. It all seems like one very long good movie now.
07.26.09	The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring	Peter Jackson	After having a social rock band jam-out gathering on Saturday, I thought a good birthday gift to myself would be to spend a day watching movies like I used to. So I watched The Lord of the Rings.
07.22.09	Wonder Boys	Curtis Hanson	Watched this in HD. Still a great movie. Utterly watchable. It's about time Curtis Hanson gets out of movie jail for Lucky You.
07.13.09	Eagle Eye	DJ Caruso	I guess I should no longer be surprised that new movies are nothing but blatant "covers" of old movies. This is like a sequel to Enemy of the State with a little 2001 mixed in. Yeah, it plays about as well as it sounds. Crap.
07.11.09	Fool's Gold	Andy Tennant	Watching this movie: foolish. Seeing Matthew McConaughy's thinning hair ruining his perfect life: gold.
06.23.09	The Bucket List	Rob Reiner	Not sure why exactly I wanted to see this... it was ok. I was just talking to someone about Bill Murray and how it's a little hard to see his movies nowadays because he's an old man and you remember him in Stripes and the first Ghostbusters or Caddyshack and always picture him that way and not some old rich industrialist throwing golf balls into a pool. On the other hand, other people like Richard Dreyfuss have always been old even when they weren't. This movie was a great example of that because Morgan Freeman's looked the same for like 30 years now but damn is Jack Nicholson getting old. A far cry from Easy Rider I tell ya...
06.23.09	Get Smart	Peter Segal	Ahh sometimes it's just nice to lay on the couch and watch a movie. It feels like I haven't done it in forever. This was ok... a couple chuckles but nothing special or memorable. I'm at the point now with movies that there are so many i'd like to see that I have no clue of which one to watch when i get the time and I'm in the mood to actually see one. Hate to whine about something that's 100% my doing but... it still makes me sad that I don't see many movies anymore. Stupid... life... taking up my time. UGH!
06.04.09	The Hammer	Charles Herman-Wurmfeld	Although I never listened to his radio show, I've started listening to Adam Carolla's podcast at work. Aside from it being one of like five websites left not blocked by my work's firewall, i enjoy his unpretentious hollywood perspective and his rants/stories. Anyway, he mentions the movie he made a lot, and I saw that it was coming on HBO HD so.... watch'd! And it's good! Well, mostly. sometimes it's still a bit off, like it's amateur doing a good job of appearing professional but sometimes you still see little bits of amateur leaking through. The lead actress, the needlessly handheld shots... and that's really about it. Mostly, it's a solid movie that has something most movies, regardless of budget and talent, lack: charm. It's a damn charming movie, sort of like how Howard Stern's movie managed to not suck even for people who hate Howard Stern. Of course, this movie is a bit more fictitious even though my limited exposure to Adam Carolla has already revealed that he really was a carpenter and really did teach boxing classes at Bodies in Motion and really does like bands like The Mighty Bosstones. The whole olympic-nationals-at-40 thing though is a bit of a stretch. So again, surprisingly good charming movie. It helps a lot that Carolla basically plays himself so rather than coming off as bad or stilted, he's just naturalistic. I have no problem of this whatsoever by the way. Non-actors playing themselves sometimes end up being better than good actors playing whoever. It's definitely the type of movie you catch on HBO and end up watching it until the end.
05.29.09	Night at the Museum	Shawn Levy	with the sequel and all... Molly hadn't seen this. It was actually more entertaining than I remember, although I didn't remember that it was bad. Still not something i'd own per se, but you know... fun enough.
05.25.09	Fred Claus	David Dobkin	This came and went with no attention at all and I wanted to see this and understand why. I mean, good cast, funny enough premise, Wedding Crashers was pretty funny... why no love for this? I guess it's no surprise that the movie is not really good at all. it's a weird hodgepodge of pessimistic comedy and you-must-cry-now special moments, neither of which work particularly well. Two things really bugged me about the movie. 1. Most of the elves are midgets with tall actors' faces digitally grafted onto them. This is really really weird and bugged me out every scene. 2. There are zany sound effects for every crash and slap or whatever. And not just the north pole stuff but real life stuff as well. Sorry, but if I crash through a mall, there won't be clown honks and noises following me at every turn. oh well.
05.23.09	What Just Happened?	Barry Levinson	Way too inside for mainstream consumption but i'm a sucker for hollywood movies and obviously so are actors since a fairly decent amount of them are on display here. It is a bit sad... seems less funny when you see it playing on the screen versus reading about these anecdotes in Linson's book. Kinda makes you wonder why pretty much everyone wants to be in show business to begin with.
05.17.09	Australia	Baz Luhrman	So my mom really loved this movie, except the parts she didn't like. She watched it something like three and a half times coming back from her trip to Australia and wanted to watch it again when I got the dvd for her birthday. So I watched it. It plays out like a fairly straightforward romance movie for the first 90 minutes, but then goes on another hour for no reason. Was this supposed to be a two-parter or someting? Anyway, ugh. Not my kind of movie. Especially when all i get for sitting through the thing is a shot of 79-year old David Gulpilil's ass.
05.02.09	Quantum of Solace	Marc Forster	First off, 6 bucks for Time Warner's HD on demand is hardly worth it considering the compression artifacts present. Secondly, I don't know why I continue to hope/expect something different from Bond movies. I think there's some idealized version of what a Bond movie should be and a lot of people are perpetually disappointed with every Bond movie because they never live up to this expected version. But the truth is... there's never been the ideal Bond movie. Even the "classics" like Goldfinger are uneven and contain wacky over-the-top action. I now think that most Bond films are exactly what bond films are supposed to be, and it's my fault for wanting them to be something different. That said, when this was out in theaters I heard a lot about how different this was. It was apparently sleek and beautiful and isolating and, dare I say, cerebral. Well, it's not different. It's the same. Whatever. I'm over it. It's not like a bad movie or anything and I guess in therms of Bond movies it doesn't mess up terribly bad in that there are no chainsaw helicoptors or castles made of ice but... there is a building in the desert that randomly explodes like a hundred times and Bond is both an ace airplane pilot and boat captain as well as his usually top driving self. There's not as many cheeky in-jokes as Casino Royale but a whole lot of troublesome references to the last movie that people like me don't remember and don't care about. oh well. I guess I have come to terms with the fact that I am not a bond fan.
05.01.09	The Marine	John Bonito	Whoa. You know there are a lot of explosions in a movie when it's pretty much the only thing you know about a movie and you're still impressed. I didn't think there was that much explosive in South Carolina, maybe the whole southeast. It was indeed pretty crazy. I really don't like John Cena though. He sucks. Watching this movie made me feel sad that the dumb boys of this generation don't have Stallone and Schwarzaneggar like I did. I never thought this would be Commando good, but this isn't even Cobra good.
05.01.09	The Condemned	Scott Wiper	Micah challenged my theoretical knowledge on WWE Filmes after reading my 12 Rounds notes and that - along with having a cold and feeling like watching mindless explosions and machismo - led me to check this out (in HD!). I really didn't know anything about this one except Jarrette said he didn't think it was even a real movie. I don't know... As a fan of Running Man/Battle Royale/No Escape type movies, I have to admit that I liked this one more than I probably should have. Some greaseball producer creates a show where 10 death row maniacs drop onto a remote jungle island with bombs strapped to their ankles that are timed to go off in 30 hours less everyone fight to the death in a karate olympiad - i mean a winner-take-all man-fest. It's kill or be killed! That's all well and fine except for one thing: Stone Cold Steve Austin doesn't play games. Man that guy looks weird. His neck is thicker than his bald head and he's like 7'2 in some shots but 5'10 in others and sometimes he can sprint like nobody's business but other shots he lumbers along like sasquatch. It seems his major combative skill is just being able to take a punch then killing people with two of his own. This sounds... really crazy but I actually believe steven seagal could kick my ass more than this guy. Not to say he isn't a huge fucking wrestler that would have any problem dealing with me at all but I know Seagall would break some bones with a cue ball or something. This guy would just punch me, presumably until death. I don't know what that last paragraph means. This movie's pretty poor by, you know, most standards. But still, I guess i'm a sucker for badasses stuck on a remote island, especially if there are game shows and/or personal bomb harnesses involved.
04.30.09	End of the Century: The Story of The Ramones	Jim Fields, Michael Gramaglia	Blitzkreig Bop is pretty fun to play on Rock Band. That made me want to watch this. I have to thank Kier-La Janisse and Matt Dentler for my views on this one. At this point I've seen enough rock documentaries that they all start to interconnect. Rodney Bingenheimer is in this one a little bit which connects to his movie which connects to all the musicians he's friends with which leads to X which leads to Y which leads to that doc on CBGB's which leads back to this. It's starting to be a cohesive entity if you think about it that way. I think that's a good thing. Anyway, The story of The Ramones was not one in which I was familiar so this was interesting to me. Probably the bit that most engaged me was their starting days playing CBGBs. I always thought it was interesting that groups like The Ramones was playing with Talking Heads. I wouldn't really think that punk and new wave would go together in any way. This shed a little more light in that the state of NYC at the time was pretty bleak and the now-famous club drew a lot of kids simply because it was one of the few clubs open. The rest of the story is pretty predictable. Band makes music; band not appreciated; band plays long enough; band appreciated. Still, interesting enough.
04.28.09	Zodiac	David Fincher	Another one watched pretty much just because it was in HD. I really like this movie more and more every time I see it. Something about the revolving cast and the obsessional attention to detail about the nature of obsession not to mention the beautifully clean photography and - let's face it - fascinating subject matter all work wonders for me. I love that practically every speaking role in the film is filled by an actor who's been the lead in other films. I love the passage of time and the process of investigation. It's just a really pleasant movie for me to watch. Especially in HD! LOLZ
04.16.09	Good Luck Chuck	Mark Helfrich	So back when I used to watch movies, I had this extremely masochistic itch to watch bad movies. Usually there was some single iota that was enough for me to subject myself through the whole movie. I won't lie: with this it was seeing Jessica Alba's panties in HD. The big surprise here was that the fat sidekick (who looks extremely annoying in both Balls of Fury and Fanboys although I haven't actually seen either of those) was actually pretty pleasant. huh, right!? So... yeah pretty horrible. The whole penguins thing never really comes together. Dane Cook cannot hide his acne scars, and honestly sometimes Jessica Alba looks weird. Oh Well. What did I expect, right?
04.07.09	300	Zack Snyder	OK. So the only other time I "saw" this was as the last movie at a BNAT and I freely admit that I dozed through most of it. I don't remember loving it. In fact, I still have a boxed HD-DVD player with a copy of 300 sitting under my bed devaluing as I type. Throw a new TV in the mix however, and it suddenly becomes a good time to revisit this and give it a second chance. Very pretty. I saw every slow-motion jiggle in the oracle scene. I saw every digital spurt of blood. I saw every digital landscape. Eh. I don't get the mutated giant-creatures with the razor-blade arms and Xerxes' voice. Everything else I more or less enjoyed although I really don't see it as a movie. It's more like... I dunno, some extended sequence.
04.04.09	Role Models	David Wain	I thought this was funny enough to pick up on DVD. I like David Wain. I like Paul Rudd. I like funny. I laughed. Uh... that's about it!
04.04.09	Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills	Joe Berlinger, Bruce Sinofsky	This and its sequel are one of those movies that I definitely feel guilty for not having seen. It always comes up as a staple and I always have to quiet down and vaguely act like I know what people are talking about. This is eff'n long. Much more straightforward than my preconceptions... this was actually much simpler and polished than I thought it would be. Maybe because I'm coming at this much much later than everyone else, but I wasn't really in love with it. Maybe the sequel makes things more interesting. Does this make me a sociopath? that I didn't ball my eyes out while watching this? Hmm....
04.03.09	Almost Famous	Cameron Crowe	It was time to see this again. What a great movie. It's amazing how awesome the young version of the kid is and how great the first 5-10 minutes is... It feels like a whole movie in the first reel so when it zooms ahead to teenager years you're like "i dunno... that was good to the point where the rest of the movie might not live up to the prologue" but then? BAM! Phil Hoffman devil horns in the radio station. Good stuff. Even better on my new TV.
04.01.09	Ronin	John Frankenheimer	So... as I mentioned before, I got a new TV. Of course I'm too cheap/skeptical to buy a Blu-Ray player so I find myself scanning my premium HD channels and recording anything that might remotely look good in HD. Hence this. Now, I like this movie. I remember seeing it in the theater and buying the DVD so I could participate in the live event interview with Frankenheimer (that I couldn't connect to because the servers died)... so This was more like revisiting a pleasurable experience than taking any sort of chance. So the car chases, Jean Reno's French face, andSean Bean's sweaty coward look even better in HD (what doesn't). Awesome in fact. God, i love my TV. I ambushed you with fuckin coffee!
03.28.09	The Dark Knight	Christopher Nolan	So this is a split entry. I watched it again on my standard DVD on my brand new 52" LCD and it was still a pretty damn good movie. Then on Easter I got a chance to see the IMAX footage on the BLu-Ray on a 72" rear projection and that was even more awesome. Watching that in a home theater setup and thinking back to my hour-long wait at the IMAX and paying 15 bucks for a ticket and everyone coughing and smelling like BO in the theater, I actually had a moment where i took that "why do I even go to the theater" debate seriously. I know... FOR SHAME! Anyway, this movie is pretty long. And really not like the all-time most amazing movie ever... I think just the fact that it was solid and more happened in it versus Batman Begins really propelled its popularity (like X-Men 2). A good movie for sure... which is maybe surprising? Aside from it making a trillion dollars, it's still good.
03.27.09	12 Rounds	Renny Harlin	My first WWE movie... Jarrette and I had a good enough time with it considering we both went in actively hoping it would suck. The late-arriving gaggle of wrestling fans straight out of Idiocracy helped. Um... apparently there weren't as many explosions or rap songs as The Marine, making this slightly less memorable than other WWE fare. I don't know. In hindsight (since I guess I took a month-long vacation from this site), it seemed more like a run-of-the-mill bad action movie than anything so-bad-its-good. I laughed at it at the time though, that's for sure.
03.22.09	Forgetting Sarah Marshall	Nicholas Stoller	notes tomorrow
03.19.09	Watchmen	Zack Snyder	OMG I saw a movie. in a theater. sigh... Anyway, I picked up the graphic novel the other day and, after skimming the first few pages, decided that any hope of being impressed with the movie was by not reading it first. I'm glad I saw it in the theater although I definitely wanted more close-ups of Malin Ackerman in her uniform. Also because of the explosions and everything. So as a Watchmen newcomer, I thought the following: -lots of characters -very dark -lots of talking -Nixon looked terrible I liked how subversive it was and the whole real-life-of-superhero angle still fascinates me. It was good... but something about it rubbed me just a little bit wrong. Who knows why.
02.22.09	The Bourne Ultimatum	Paul Greengrass	At some point I realized that I had the first two Bourne movies but not the third, so I bought it. And watched it. This series pretty much holds up. I still much prefer the first film to Paul Greengrass's palsy camera work but whatever... the scripts are relatively intelligent and Damon fills the role nicely. Also, Fallout 3 was awesome and Bully was very fun. I watched that show Sons of Anarchy in preparation for GGTA4's The Lost and The Damned and found it to be a very entertaining show. Most of the talent (except Charlie Hunnam who I still think is a bit too pretty boy to be convinceingly rough n tumble) are actors who I would love to see in 70s biker flicks and aside from the whole Hamlet thing, the episodic plotlines and most of the characters ring true to my cinematic mind. Biker movie fans might want to check it out if they're jonesing.
02.15.09	Black Mama, White Mama	Eddie Romero	Well I guess that didn't work. On the other hand, I finished my 120-hour journey through Fallout 3, played through The Maw and Braid on my xbox, and finished re-watching Undeclared. Also, the yearbook edition of Freaks and Geeks is pretty awesome. Anyway, For some reason I think that I don't really like WIP movies because... well, I don't really know. This was pretty awesome. Pam Grier was great, the whole guerilla angle was cool, and Sid Haig - for the first time for me personally - was really amazing as this weird sort of cowboy bounty hunter drug dude somethingorother. I also loved the look on the cop's face right after the hooker told Sid who had the bigger pecker. This weird sort of smirk / smooch / grimace that I've never seen before. The best most memorably awesome scene in this movie though.... HAS TO BE, the nekkid girl licking Vic Diaz' belly. Straight up licking his bellyfat. It was a crystaline moment where I blinked and thought "you don't see THIS in a Will Smith movie." That's about as good a reason for watching this movie, and 100 movies just like it, as any.
02.04.09	The Black Six	Matt Cimber	A group of Viet Nam vets tool around the countryside on their bikes just having fun until one of them learns that his younger brother's been killed by a honky motorcycle club. Rumbling ensues. Here's how old I am. Lars is showing this TONIGHT but i'm too wussy so I chose to watch a crappy VHS transfer on my computer instead so I could get a full night's rest. Boo! Anyway, the titular 6 are all football players (it shows which teams they played for in the opening credits), but none of them can really act, not even on Jim Brown/Bernie Casey/Fred Williamson levels. Instead, they have a natural chemistry that comes off well in screen, especially in an early scene where they disrupt a racist road bar like they're Jonathan Winters in It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World. Later on, five of them kind of go off somewhere to have fun while the main dude (bubba) has to stay and do all the acting scenes, but then they get to come together again at the end in a super duper biker brawl that i'm kind of sorry was shot at night because some of that chain-swinging looked pretty intense and whenever there's a flare or a homicidal honky flying through the air in a blown-up chopper, everything else blacks out so you can't see... anything really. Still, it's a pretty fun end to a pretty fun movie, helped along by the lack of budget and stiltedness of the performances... unless of course you're not into that kind of thing, in which case you'd probably find it terrible. I'm sure I'll get tired of saying this but again, great music. Nice funk breaks all throughout. My favorite line is said by... I guess his name is Copperhead. He's a poolshark/pimp who Bubba strong-arms into giving him some information. To achieve said strong-arming, Bubba snatches Copperhead's pool cue and snaps it. No over-the-knee or nothing. Copperhead (who we're told was kept out of the army for an eardrum problem) looks at Bubba and says "You broke my stick, man, you crazy!? Damn... DAMN!" and stands there outraged. Like it was the actor's cue that he had to bring in from home and nothing was said about it being broken and fun is fun but damn, man, you broke my stick! Awesome. Second favorite goes to the character of Thor, who mentions something about smoking a pipe and getting high, getting fleecy white clouds high. Yeah....
02.03.09	The Black Godfather	John Evans	After learning from the experience of a numbers man, a thug-turned-organized crime leader plans to squeeze the white mafia's control and heroin out of their neighborhood. Even though the numbers dude warns "dont let your mouth overload your ass," he does it anyway. Gunfights, poorly-shot airplan explosions, and other Godfather-y things ensue. This was pretty middle of the road, in that it looked like crap, the actors were terrible, the plot derivitive, and the action mediocre. But, the music was cool, the non-actor-ish-ness of the actors lent for occasional glimpses of reality and/or humor, the evil honky white guys mobsters were clearly just the only white guys the production knew, and all that terrible-ness thrown together in this setting with a title like The Black Godfather... It ends up with some charm (even though the trailer is most certainly better than the film itself). My favorite part was the one dude amongst all the rifles and shotguns in tribal dress with beads in his hair carrying a spear. WHA? He actually uses it too, which is pretty awesome on at least two levels. I also like that the dude named Diablo was the constant source of ethical conscioussness toward the titular black godfather. Dude, your name is Diablo, you and your dudes sell drugs all over the neighborhood, yet you're calling JJ over there corrupt? huh? I guess that kind of talk has to come from someone in these films, so it might as well be from Diablo. Good fun. I'm super glad I finally watched it. Now I can honestly thank the guy who gave it to me instead of ducking the subject since I hadn't watched his gift a year after he gave it to me.
02.02.09	The Thing with Two Heads	Lee Frost	Ray Milland plays a transplant surgeon with severe arthritis and "terminal chest cancer" who perfects a procedure to transplant his head onto a healthy body; you know, to allow his genius to continue. The problem is that he's a racist and the only body they could find is that of a deathrow inmate who happens to be Rosey Grier. Of course he's wrongfully imprisoned so as soon as he wakes up with a honky head-mate, hijinks ensue. OK, there's a few points to make about this right up front: -Some of the movies I'm watching this month kind of border on different genres. This one for instance is really more sci-fi than anything else, but it's still "known" as blaxploitation thanks to Milland's racism, this black doctor's pride, and I guess playing "Happy Day" over the end credits. So as a standard for my criteria, I'm going off Josiah Howard's awesome reference book: Blaxploitation Cinema. He actually includes a few I wouldn't (Silver Streak, Terminal Island, etc.) but it includes everything I do. -Michael Viner was the music producer/consultant on this movie. The name is intimately familiar to me in a completely different context so I did a little googling and came up with a fact that severely biases my feelings toward this movie. The band Viner collected to score this film did so well that they released a couple albums afterward under the name Incredible Bongo Band. A lot of these songs were funky covers of rock standards, including a little track named Apache. The chorus of that recording, now known as the ultimate break in all of hip hop, is known to pretty much everyone thanks to the sugarhill gang ("Tonto! Kemosabe! Jump On It!"). So, in a certain sense, this movie created hip hop. -I really like Ray Milland. He's not what I would call a great actor - sort of a poor man's Cary Grant at his best - although his performance in Lost Weekend is great. The real reason why I like him is Panic in Year Zero. When actors accumulate enough favors to direct a movie, I think it says a lot about who they are. Some are good (Ordinary People), some kind of suck (Albino Alligator), most are interesting (Tree's Lounge) and some are fucking bizarre. Like you watch it and wonder "he finally had the power to make a movie and THIS is what he chose?" Such is the case with Panic in Year Zero. One of my favorite movies by the way. Also, around the time of this movie he was either not afraid or forced by addiction to do some equally crazy shit like X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes. So seeing him as a decrepit racist genius surgeon here is perfect. All that said, I was in love with this movie for the first half. It took its time with the setup and everything seemed perfectly fine to my willing suspension of disbelief and William Smith's cameo was a nice surprise and they did this operation and everybody's reactions were great (my favorite reaction comes later in the film though when Rosey's woman sees him with a white boy head on his neck. No surprise at all. "You always get into the craziest shit!" and "is there anywhere else there's two of you?" is all she has to say on the subject), it's all rolling smoothly. Then there's a car chase. Which turns into a foot race. Which turns into the take-a-nap mother of all dirtbike vs. cop car races ever set in Bakersfield, USA, or the Earth. I think it actually times in at just under 30 minutes. Think about that. That's a third of the movie. It doesn't transcend time or space like Psycho from Texas but it runs neck and neck (pardon the pun) for length. This is when I paid some bills and checked my email. Eventually, the narrative returns and the conclusion looms. The ending is a smidge of a letdown but still pretty satisfying. All in all, a very fun movie that really should've been 70 minutes. Feel like following along? Up tomorrow is a film I've had on VHS for at least a year and have never gotten around to seeing more than the trailer at the Alamo: The Black Godfather.
02.01.09	Coffy	Jack Hill	Coffy! This is one of the few movies I have lined up this month that I've seen before, but after revisiting Foxy Brown a while back I wanted to give this another spin and thought it would make a fitting beginning to my little celebration. I remember the first time I saw this I ended up liking Foxy Brown more. After another viewing, I think I'm changing my position. I loved how brutal this film was. There's really nothing held back. Yes, there's no real internal struggle with Coffy's willingness to kill like there is in Foxy Brown, but her frayed nerves afterward show enough to win me over that she's human and the sheer evil of everyone else makes it completely fulfilling when she dispatches justice. Speaking of evil, the dude who plays the congressman is... oh man! So great. I actually feel sorry for King George, both for his predicament and the prodigious amount of moose knuckle that his yellow pantsuit requires. Poor guy! Plus I loved the nudity. So yeah, great film. I loved it. Oh, I also loved the film-specific songs including the end which does a sort of recap of what I just watched in musical form. It's a shame that not many movies do that anymore... I feel like even instances where bands were hired to contribute a song to the film, it's some B-side they had lying around or some random thing not tied to the film in any way. I want more Dragnet rap!!! So what am I watching tomorrow? Good question.
01.31.09	Style Wars	Tony Silver	Hey! Remember me? I used to watch movies? Well, we're like 9 hours away from February and this is the year that I do something I toyed around with doing for the past three years! Let's see if I can watch 28 blaxploitation movies this month! Now, I'm not saying one a day because I know some days I'll be busy but hopefully other days I can make up for it by watching two or even three. The best part is that I already have most of the movies in my pocket, so if I don't see something, it's my fault. As a prelude to the upcoming foray into Afro-culture, I decided to watch this doc on mostly graffitti writing but also some breaking thrown in as well. This is another one like Krush Groove that I somehow never learned about until now. It's an amazing document of early-80s NYC subway trains. Absolutely amazing. Great interviews, perfect cinematography, and a real grit of authenticity for the time. The thing I loved most about this was how utterly New York everyone was. My favorite subject was Seen. I thought his art was the most striking but moreso the footage of him putting together the wall with his buddy was classic. 110% NYC. I don't really understand how pretty much everyone from those years were so explicitly representative of where they lived but I don't feel like anywhere is like that now... we all look the same. But yeah, excellent doc. I only wish it was longer.
01.24.09	Edtv	Ron Howard	I think i've noted before on how I like this movie way more than The Truman Show. Nothing's changed. I'm currently re-watching Undeclared (again) and the episode where Seth Rogan tells the british kid that his favorite movie is You've Got Mail evokes a very similar response for me with EdTV. I know it's not really a movie I'm supposed to like, and my descriptions of it are very similar to Rogen's ("it's light and enjoyable and he's on tv and people are watching him"), but damn if I don't like the movie every time i see it! Who knows why! This time around I really got into all the viewers. Howard handled the casting, shooting, and editing of all the different viewing parties perfectly. I laughed more times at the people watching TV than I did at Ed himself. All those viewers were great. In other news, I'm 80 hours into Fallout 3. Yay!?
01.12.09	Bottle Rocket	Wes Anderson	Man! I guess it's been a really long time since I first saw this! I guess I've been waiting for a criterion release for so long that I never rented the bare-bones disc just to watch the movie again. It's good stuff... perhaps the highest funny-to-sad ratio in Wes Anderson's ouevre. it's hard to believe that it's 2009, ya know?. OLD. From watching the making-of where Owen and Wes hint at how many jokes came from Jim Brooks, you have to wonder if it was his influence that made this as light-hearted as it is instead of mired down like Darjeeling. Probably not entirely (we have Rushmore as proof) but possibly. Some of the funniest lines ARE off-screen ADR. Anyway, great movie. It's fun to watch again and finally own.
01.07.09	Ruthless People	David Zucker	notes later
01.03.09	Burn After Reading	Joel Coen	Unfortunately, i didn't like this as much as I wanted to. It was in a weird place that was too serious to be comedy but too weird to be drama. Normally, the coens are masters at walking the positive side of that line but here it kind of fell flat for me. I think maybe my favorite scenes were with Sledgehammer and JK Simmons and there's only two of those. Otherwise, I wouldn't call it bad but... not great either. Oh well, maybe next time.
01.01.09	Three Amigos	John Landis	I guess it's been longer than I thought since I'd seen this. Classic comedy. Favorite bits have to include the canteen scene, the swinging from ropes scene, the plethora of pinatas, and "little neddy k-nickers." Newly added this time around were El Guapo's name explained to me (I want to go by El Guapo now!), the fact that he gets a sweater from his goons, the fact that he likes his sweater and wears it tied around his neck, and the plethora of genius Chevy Chase reaction shots. Man, how could that guy ooze such funny with seemingly no effort at all and end up so not funny? Anyway, Great movie.
12.31.08	Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang	Shane Black	Now that Robert Downey, Jr.'s a big star again, I thought it'd be interesting to revisit this movie where I think he really "came back" to acting. The chemistry between him and Val Kilmer's pretty great and it's a fairly constant battle between their performances and the showy writing for control of the movie. I still enjoy it as a fun jaunt through mystery stereotypes. i still don't get the beer commercial at the end but oh well - I barely cared about the plot in the first place.
12.26.08	Step Brothers	Adam McKay	Also still funny the second time around. For me at least. It's just a weird mix of childish behavior and adult humor. Adam Scott is great though.
12.26.08	Tropic Thunder	Ben Stiller	Man... Tom Cruise dancing is just so odd. I liked this one seeing it again. The adoption thing was a bit stronger the second time through. McConaughey lamenting about how Tuggernuts at least gets to choose his son was perhaps my biggest laugh. Good stuff.
12.22.08	Wanted	Timur Bekmambetov	I liked it as fluff entertainment. It sucks that nothing's original anymore but oh well. In complete honesty, I wanted to see this due to that picture of Angelina Jolie leaning out the car with the sawed-off shotgun, but I was surpised by how un-hot she was here. Too skinny. Good enough fantasy fulfillment though.
12.20.08	Hot Rod	Akiva Schaffer	Rico is funny. Cool beans.
12.14.08	Superbad	Greg Mottola	Huh, still funny! Go Figure! I know, right!? Anyway... uh, not much else to say other than I laughed and laughed and laughed.
12.13.08	Krush Groove	Michael Schultz	I remember Disorderlies, I remember Wild Style, I remember Beat Street, Breakin, Electric Boogaloo, and I even remember Tougher Than Leather (although I never saw it) but I don't remember this movie at all. So when I saw it mentioned in Planet B-Boy, I officially enqueued. It's pretty cool in a surprising/not surprising at all way that all these seminal hip hop acts are also very decent actors. Actually, Blair Underwood actually seems like the worst actor of the bunch, probably due to the fact that he's the only one playing someone else. Some aspects are kind of comfortingly hollywood fake-ass musical numbers with white boy extras pretending they have rhythm, but the pure performance footage as well as just seeing the real artists on the screen gives large portions of the movie a real authenticity. It goes back to my comments on Planet B-Boy... it's so interesting to have such a huge cultural movement happen in the media age where we can still see the very real roots of it all. It's pretty cool. The movie in itself is not a masterpiece. It was better than I thought it would be though.
12.08.08	The Foot Fist Way	Jody Hill	Finally saw this... Definitely a victim of overhype for me personally. Perhaps it's because we're now all pretty exposed to Danny McBride's comic stylings so it's not like... gloriously fresh. Not to say it wasn't funny... just in much more of a indie low budget way. like Swingers but not quite as much polish. I wanted more of a climax to be honest. Some of McBride's (and especially Jody Hill's small role) are damn hilarious though. I bet i'll catch myself quoting this one but for the time being I'm a bit sad that it wasn't the funniest thing in the history of time since man learned to laugh at the first tadpole getting punched in the groin.
12.06.08	Standard Operating Procedure	Errol Morris	Morris tackles Abu Ghraib. Beautiful as always. It really focuses mainly on the pictures themselves, which makes it interesting in certain respects but limiting in others. I think all these Iraq war movies are too early but... whatever. Errol Morris is still cool.
11.22.08	Planet B-Boy	Benson Lee	The competition genre like Spellbound or Air Guitar Nation translated to breakdancing. This follows a handful of international teams as they head toward Germany's Battle of the Year where they dance their pants off for the prestige of being the best crew in the world. It's pretty awesome. Crazy crazy moves. It's interesting to see it on such a truly world stage now, how moves have been broken down into categories for judging just like any other dance; a real illumination of the evolution of all dances since it's still so new. Someone somewhere decided one day to move a certain way to a certain kind of song and now we have the waltz or tango or whatever. Cameras just weren't around to capture it and the creators aren't around to comment. Anyway, good doc, fun to watch. You end up rooting for everyone. OK maybe not France.
11.22.08	The Happening	M. Night Shyamalan	Sick twisted curiosity drew me to this. I'm over paying for a Shyamalan movie ever again but... what can I say, it's a nice feeling to be right. Maybe now some people should go back and watch Unbreakable again and realize that it sucks too. I chuckled at one scene in this movie, where Mark Wahlberg talks to a plant and realizes that it's plastic and says "I'm talking to a plastic plant. I'm still doing it." And I thought that perfectly encapsulated my thoughts on this movie. I'm watching a crappy movie. I'm still doing it.
11.21.08	Hancock	Peter Berg	I find real-world explorations of superheroes or super powers incredibly interesting. It's sort of funny that I haven't read the most well known of this genre, but whatever. I wanted to like this but, it didn't go the way I wanted it to. I'm guessing the cut I saw was not the PG-13 theatrical cut which would've irked me more since the rough edges of his character were my favorite part. As soon as Charlize shows up my enjoyment ended.
11.16.08	The Abyss	James Cameron	Yep, still awesome.
11.08.08	The Strangers	Bryan Bertino	I'd heard this was generally creepy and the first half hour or so really built it up for me. The whole premise is creepy in itself since I never like people knocking on my door to begin with, so to imagine someone intentionally unscrewing the porch light so you can't see them would freak me out right at the beginning. Unfortunately, I would've said "fuck it" and left right then, so the rest of the movie kind of lost me from there. While that's not completely fair, I will say I liked the first wave of creepy background home invasion, but as the movie went on I started to wonder exactly what it was these masked "strangers" were after. Increasingly so until the end when I didn't much care. I think maybe they didn't write in enough neighbors or hitch-hikers to kill or something since right up till the end I was wondering if they were even after violence or just going for some scares since the youth of today is definitely capable of anything when they're bored. And I don't know if it was my heavy eyelids or the version i "borrowed from a friend" or what but it seemed like a few shot sequences repeated... like things happened twice in a row for me. It was weird; I'm not alltogether sure it happened, but I think it did. So anyway, a nice dark creepy movie to end the night on. I liked it, but it could've been better if further developed. So... that's it for this year's DVRfest. A short one I know; hastily planned and not as eclectic as previous years but oh well. We'll have to see what next year brings. As for the stats, i've seen 1774 movies in 1930 viewings since starting this site (221 in the past year, 10(!) in the past month, 6 in the past week) for a daily average of 1.32 total, 0.61 yearly, 0.33 monthly, 0.86 weekly. Top directors are Oliver Stone and Werner Herzog with 11 each followed by Blake Edwards (10), Hithcock (8) and Spielberg (7). 328 came from Netflix, 212 from the Alamo Downtown, 193 on DVD. 176 Comedies, 173 Dramas, 160 documentaries (159 horrors). It's hard for me to believe that I've been doing this 4 years now; I'm really thrilled by the notion. I've always been someone unable to keep a journal or diary for longer than a week so this has been really fun. Hopefully the next 4 will go just as fast. For now though, it's off to bed.
11.08.08	Run Fatboy Run	David Schwimmer	I'd heard this was pretty mediocre and for the most part agree although there were certainly a few points where I LOL'd and generally I liked the performances quite a bit. It's not like the plot deviates from your standard My Best Friend's Wedding formula but hey, it's the journey, right? I liked how believable Pegg was at being out of shape. As a card-carrying member of the unfit, I appreciated seeing him crumpled on the floor of the locker room after spin class like a pile of sweatsocks, playing his dialogue like normal because he couldn't move. Ya know, it was ok. So for the last film of the night, I'm veering toward a horror movie that I've heard is good. The rest of these... eh, well, I knew I was taking some chances. The capper should satisfy though. What is it? Well let's see!
11.08.08	Redline	Andy Cheng	100% of the credit behind why I saw this movie is owed to Jarrette, who urged me to check it out over and over again when I really wasn't interested. Well, I've finally seen it and hoo doggy am I thankful. So, a big part of the reason why I enjoy Weird Wednesdays is that it seemed that, in the 70s, you didn't always need millions and millions of dollars to make a movie. Therefore, every once in a while either a dedicated group of people or some eccentric rich dude or some actor with temporary clout got to make a film so unlike every other film that it came off as completely unique even if it was terrible. Well, those days are gone but what we do have, at least in the case of this movie and another must-see piece of trash called Dangerous Men, is the occasional uber-rich byproduct of the American Dream raised on Cinemax with the resources to go out and make his own version of every other movie. Sure the intentions are pretty much exact opposite from those 70s maverick indies but the result is sort of the same. Glimpses of personality can't help but bleed through. All that aside, this movie is terrible. TEAR IH BULL. Angus Macfayden... I really haven't seen enough of him to know whether he's pulling off the most phoning-it-in performance of all time (it's not even a phone... he's telegramming it in, complete with "STOP"s after every sentence) or if that's really him making "choices." Either way, it's pretty special to watch. The lead actress as well although I'm more certain with her that she was just a model that the producer liked and traded the lead for her panties. Eddie Griffin, Tim Matheson... I'd start to wonder why in hell they'd take this job but... I quickly come to the conclusion that they took it for the same reason that i'm watching it: yes it's crap but it's awesomely expensive exotic automobiles, oceans of scantily-clad supermodel flesh, and mountains of money. Fuck art, let's have a little fun. And that's the movie. Terrible, terrible fun. Even though it's trying to be Fast and Furious or whatever, it's stuck in its own little world of 25 million dollar bets and revenging kung-fu brothers and super-hot big-tittied race-car women and booming bass soundtracks. A world without pedestrians, stop lights, police helicopters, or insurance. A world, no matter how much the producer wants it to feel like every other car movie, is so the same that it's different. It's great. And talk about a punch in the arm after those last two. Whew! Next up is a pinch hitter. I think I'm replacing the last movie on the ticket because it doesn't exactly fit the theme of the festival, so instead I'm catching up on another movie I was mildly curious about when it hit South By this year but not enough to actually see it when it came out in theaters. See you soon!
11.08.08	The Fall	Tarsem Singh	Well... the swimming elephant was cool. Everything else in this mixture of Princess Bride and Wizard of Oz and whatever you want to call Tarsem's visual and costume design was kind of a mess. I mean, it was pretty to be sure. Locations and sets and costumes were all beautiful, but that was about it. This was my fear. I felt roughly the same way about The Cell except in that film the imagery at least matched the tone of the story. Here, it's supposed to be a child's imagination and... let's just say that she's one messed up little girl if this is the way she sees the world. Or maybe her parents were hippies; who knows. In any case, I couldn't get over the disconnect between the story-in-movie and the story of the movie and found it a good half hour too long. It's a shame too because I think Tarsem is capable of some very striking surreal images. I just hope one of these days he works with an actual story. So now for something completely different.
11.08.08	The Bridge	Eric Steel	The Golden Gate Bridge: World capital of suicide. This documentary... I'm really kind of curious about the method used for this movie. It seems a little morbid to film every pedestrian on the bridge for a year in hopes that they jump, but this guy got some very clear footage of what looks like very real people jumping to their very real deaths. Pretty powerful. But after that, the movie's basically depressing talking heads from people who knew people who "used" the bridge and how sad they were and how sad it makes them that they were so sad. Granted, suicide is a pretty sad affair, but I was really hoping for more from this doc. The most interesting part for me was the interview with the kid who jumped and survived, but that couldn't help but veer into the nature and pathos of mental illness just as much as anything to do with some bridge. Overall, I'd say it's a chilling fact to hear about the Golden Gate and some of the raw imagery is haunting and beautiful, but it's not much of a film. I remember some HBO hourlong America Undercover doc that handled suicide being much more involving. Oh well. Whew. Next up is hopefully something a bit more upbeat although truth be told I have no idea what it's actually about. All I know is that I'll see an elephant swim in slow motion. Check back!
11.08.08	Leatherheads	George Clooney	Constant readers (my mom doesn't even read this site. Seriously, who are you people!?) may recall that around this time every year I sequester myself to a weekend of personal movie festivalling in an attempt to a) celebrate the anniversary of this site and b) clear my DVR of recorded movies. I call it DVRfest. Constant readers may also know that my cinematic habit has severely lessened this year, well out of the area of fantacism and some say beyond even the most casual viewer's intake. Well, I sort of apologize. It's true that I'm seeing many less movies than previous years, but a substantial increase in Real Life tasks coupled with a natural upswing in my other leisuretime hobby (video games) has given way to less movies, less blog posts, and less postage paid by Netflix. However, one long-term goal of this site from the very beginning was to show trends and periods of my life via the movies I watch, so I never watch a movie just because my ratio's getting too low or see more of something just for the stat here. It's an honest reflection of my habit and, as such, it will have low points as well as high. So an interesting thing happened this year when I set aside some time for DVRfest: I didn't have any movies on my DVR! So instead, This year will the subtitle of DVRfest 2008 will be: The Ones That Got Away: Catching Up on Movies That Slipped Through The Cracks (Special Internet EP Edition!) I've loaded up 6 or 7 movies that've been sitting on my hard drive for an indeterminate amount of time in an effort to see all of them today (yep, chores and errands and everything else comes tomorrow; DVRfest is only one day this year). A lot of them are new, most of them you've probably seen already, but whatever... it's my festival and I do what I want. First up is this George Clooney movie that I heard was trying to be screwball. His previous attempt, with the help of the Coens, was... OK. Let's see how this one fares. Yeah... pretty much what I thought. It doesn't really come together for me in anything more than a nice homage to older, better movies. The beginnings of pro football elements were interesting and all but were all pretty cursory. In the end it was OK but pretty forgettable. I hope that isn't a running theme throughout the day/night. We'll see! Up next is a documentary that's supposed to be pretty intense. Well, up next directly is a trip to the grocery store to stock up on things that are bad for me, but after that it's the documentary.
11.06.08	Pride and Glory	Gavin O'Connor	Hey, I'm not dead! And my eyes haven't been bored out by lasers or cockroaches either! Just busy watching tv and playing video games. Anyway, as a reward for getting a high-profiles project done in time, my PM took us to Dave & Busters then to see a movie. Can't sneeze at that! This looked like a pretty solid effort so I was looking forward to it. It turned out to be pretty mediocre. There was one scene that was pretty brutal, but that was spoiled for me by a Christian co-worker reading one of those family-friendly reviews online where they count the number of times people say "fuck." So really, watching this movie was all about the performances and seeing acting talent together. A dinner scene in particular, where Jon Voight - playing drunk - boasts the merits of each of his children, and you see Voight there with Ed Norton, Colin Farrell, and Noah Emmerich (a character actor I've always liked since Beautiful Girls or so) and... it's about as solid as it should be. It's not "momentous" like The Score or anything like that, but these guys are all putting in the work in their own way. Unfortunately, there are also some scenes where I just wanted to groan loud enough to alter the space-time continuum to make the scene end faster. The whole cancer wife did nothing for me and any scene where people talk about what they should do bored me to a near coma (not helped at all by me getting popcorn with "butter" for the first time in ages. By the end of the movie I could actually feel the oil, having seeped through the bag, slick my shoe soles). Still, for the aforementioned brutal scene, my pansy co-workers were flinching and saying things like "damn" and it's always getting harder to shock an audience. I had a very Kiss of Death moment seeing Colin Farrell act nutso. And then the ending was lame as all get-out. Seriously. Half the police precinct like two blocks down and you don't radio for a car? Ugh. UGH. Oh and the shooting was terrible. Terrible. They were going for gritty and desaturated, they ended up with amateurish and shaky. Anyway, it was great to actually see a movie in a theater again (shock! Who am I and what have they done to Brian!?) and it had moments.
10.26.08	You Don't Mess with the Zohan	Dennis Dugan	Yeah this was pretty dumb. It's one of those movies that refuse to give up on jokes that are not good and don't really make sense to begin with, like 80s hair, disco dancing, fake kicks, and hummus. Almost to the point where they're just so bizarre that you kind of chuckle but not in any meaningful kind of way. This was that kind of movie.
10.25.08	The Incredible Hulk	Louis Letterier	Better than I thought it would be. It still added up to two CGI dudes fighting each other at the end. Good cast though and I like how Marvel can really get going with the tie-ins and cross promotion. If everything goes as planned I bet the Avengers movie is gonna be spectacular.
10.19.08	Deliverance	John Boorman	Gearing up for Halloween, I wanted to watch a scary movie that I hadn't seen for a while and remember actually affecting me. I remember Deliverance being one of the few movies that I approached after hearing all of the famous bits about it and still enjoying it as if seeing it cold. Plus I went on a road trip through the carolinas and Tennessee not too long after seeing this and that... had an effect on my mood. Kudzu can be pretty creepy, man. Anyway, This was still good although not as powerful as the first time. I love how random and casual the infamous encounter was; how the mountain men were not mutated gigantic Wrong Turn monsters but just poor rednecks in their environment. It's also helped out a lot by the quality of the four leads. You really believe these guys are out there. Cool times. I still think it's great. The cinematography is spectacular and it's exemplary of those early 70s slow build movies that seem to be polar opposite to today's seizure pacing.
10.17.08	Iron Man	Jon Favreau	AHHHHHHH DVD! so awesome! best movie evar! I did like it though. I liked how the end battle acknowledged the fact that these are two old guys in suits. Smart script. Good movie. News, right?
10.09.08	Anguish	Bigas Luna	The notes!!! I can't remember! Nah. Anguish was pretty awesome. It totally and completely "got" me when it zoomed out into the theater. I spent the first 20 minutes or whatever wondering when the weird-looking guy from the Alamo no-talk spot would show up and how he could possibly appear in the story and have it make any sort of sense, but then it did! I also loved the end credits. Whatshisname Barton Fink and Zelda were both pretty awesome and this is the kind of movie that could really only work in foreign markets (or super unknown actors) due to billing issues. Great movie and I'm really glad I held off seeing it until I had the opportunity to experience it theatrically. Zelda... ok it was obviously cool that Zelda came out and her brief time on the mic was enjoyable as she was spirited and funny and her little voice was cool to hear in person, but... it was brief. I guess the highlight of the night was when Zack Carlson said he gets to be "Big Z" and she gets to be "Little Z" and he says "I love you, Little Z" and you hear a teeny tiny voice from the crowd say "I love YOU, Big Z" awwwww. But you know, she's so tiny anyway, seeing her sit down there at the front of the theater was kind of like watching Opera from the cheap seats (not that I even know what I'm talking about). Not much happened. But it was cool. I hope I don't sound too whiny.
10.03.08	Sex and the City	Michael Patrick King	So... ok I watched like the last half of the show out of a mixture of curiosity and morbid fascination. The funniest laugh I got out of it was when Tina Fey was on the Dennis Miller show and said that she thought drag queens wrote the show because it's not a man's fantasy fulfillment or even a woman's fantasy fulfillment but some twisted mutation of what guys expect women to want. But anyway, I liked it well enough. Charlotte's cute. The movie's is pretty lame-ass though. Like kind of laughably bad. The plot is paper-thin and amazingly arbitrary and forced and way way waaay too long for what it is and - this is hard for me to write - I feel like some of their actions weren't true to their characters. Carrie would never ever want to get married in that dress. Whatshername... Miranda, she's like a shrew for 98% of the movie. Samantha is gaudy and passive and her boyfriend got really weird-ugly since the show ended. Charlotte's the only enjoyable character and, for a movie that's all about character, that's not such a great thing. So this pretty much stank. woo.
09.28.08	Anchorman: Wake-Up Ron Burgundy	Adam McKay	So we wanted to get the Sex and the City movie for tonight but it wasn't "available" and my "local" "outlet" so we decided on this instead. For an extended collection of outtakes and deleted scenes, it's still pretty funny. it makes me wonder if the whole bear thing was all new to replace the terrorist plot or what. Anchorman had a pretty great cast though so it's fun to see them all... having fun.
09.27.08	Baby Mama	Michael McCullers	I laughed more than I thought I would at this, mostly due to Amy Poehler. She's a funny lady. Still mostly mediocre but again, if you laugh you laugh, ya know?
09.25.08	Martyrs	Pascal Laugier	So last year I decided to see the Awards ceremony after There Will Be Blood rather than catch one last movie which was Inside. I've heard good things about that film and have since come close to regretting not finishing my festival with a straight-up horror film. So this year I did. Martyrs is about two french girls, one of whom was severely abused as a child and ever since is haunted by a creepy scarred naked woman who cuts the shit out of her any time she wants. The first half of the movie is basically this scene on repeat. It's pretty brutal and honestly gets pretty old because you know this naked scarred growling woman isn't real and you've already seen Flatliners so let's just get on with it. But then there's a turn and the whole second half is really good in a no-less-brutal way. Lots and lots of violence towards women, but I have to say I was pretty surprised by where it went. The last twenty minutes have an odd hopeless quality that really leaves you questioning... everything. Quite a film and a pitch perfect movie to end the festival on.
09.25.08	City of Ember	Gil Kenan	The Closing Night film this year was unanounced in the schedule and the program guide. This is pretty odd because the sponsors which adorm the little Fantastic Fest backdrops seen in every theater and every video released this year have the logos for Fox and the film itself among AMD and Fosters and Gamecock. And it's a full page ad on the back cover of the program guide. The only reasons I can think of for keeping this film a "secret" are derogatory so I'll just move on. At least they got Bill Murray! That came as an honest surprise to me. He came out and helped the director with an intro, did a Q&A afterward, and apparently hung out at the closing night party (which I didn't go to for various reasons, but pictured Darren Aronofsky pinned into a corner at Barton Creek Saloon between a wheelchair and an old man, unable to speak to anyone for any longer than a certain webmaster dictated. I'd like to think this wasn't true of Murray, I'll have to ask someone who went). Murray was about as cool as you'd expect him to be. The movie... had good sets and costumes.
09.24.08	Role Models	David Wain	For the midnight secret screening, all week we were pretty much sure this would be My Name is Bruce, but by the end cracks in our logic started showing through. Apparently, on Bruce Campbell's website he had listed him being in town on this date showing that movie. Similar to the "secret" of the closing night film, there's an ad for My Name is Bruce in the program book. Pretty straight forward. But then I saw the October Alamo ad reel and they're advertising his appearance there, plus if it's authorized to be on Cambell's website why wouldn't they want festivalgoers to know he'd be there... so there were doubts. Then it was this. This was pretty conventional. Some would say formulaic. Others would say it's paint by numbers comedy. I can't really dispute that. Exactly what you think happens in a story about a couple of immature douchebag guys forced to take care of socially-awkward-in-a-humorous-way kids happens. No surprises, no deviations, nothing off-center at all (which is surprising coming from Wain). Here's the thing though: I laughed. I laughed a lot. I thought the jokes were funny and Paul Rudd had good chemistry with Seann William Scott and I even got a kick out of Jane Lynch's one-joke character. I know it doesn't make sense, but I also can't deny that I enjoyed myself. the term "Whispering Eye" is hilarious, Rudd's analysis of Starbucks preached straight to my soul, and what can I say other than I liked it!
09.24.08	Alien Raiders	Ben Rock	A group takes a grocery store hostage and looks for an alien king being hosted in one of the human bodies. As the director said it was explained to him when he got the job, this movie is basically The Thing meets Dog Day Afternoon. It's very low budget, the biggest names they could get were Tony Almeda from 24 and the black boyfriend from Six Feet Under, and there's really nothing original about it. That said, for what it was it was pretty good. Judging from the picture in the program book, I figured it could've gone either way: fun direct-to-video romp or unwatchable piece of crap. It was pretty watchable. The lack of CG with the alien creatures was refreshing.
09.24.08	The Tingler	William Castle	After a few days off, I return to FantasticFest with a mild cold and extreme knewly-learned Java prowess under my belt. Work kept me from seeing the doc on Castle but I wanted to partake in this screening because I'd never seen it, it was going to be in "Percepto" (meaning some of the seats were wired to shock just like in the old days), and - truth be told - the newly-announced secret screening was sold out before noon when I got down there to pick up my tickets. Not to gripe, since I'll have the ability to see Appaloosa sometime soon, but I specifically asked the guy on Tuesday when they open so I could come down and get a good seat for tonight's midnight secret screening and he told me noon, yet I know someone who showed up at 11 and they were open and he got a decent ticket. Oh well. Anyway, this was a fun enough movie. I liked that Lars spent the pre-show looking at the backs of chairs and announcing which seats were "comfortable" for anyone who wanted to sit there. Ryan was psyched to get one of these "comfortable seats." They also handed out life insurance slips to anyone who dies "of fright" which made it fun. The movie is your basic low-budget 50s child-friendly horror movies. Vincent Price is pretty awesome of course but mostly it's the type of movie that you might catch on TCM on a Sunday afternoon or something and have a good time with (or typically something I'd put in my DVRfest: a nice old-school palate-cleanser). I like how they incorporate the theater with the real theater too. This was fun.
09.22.08	Road to Hell	Albert Pyun	This was... truly awful. Like, it's one of the worst things I've seen in a long time. A real long time. In fact, the only things I've seen that approach this quality are either on the Internet or as a satire. It basically took everything I thought a sequel to Streets of Fire might be and went the opposite direction. Fuckin... like, for real. I think the only reason I stayed for the whole thing is in case someone liked it and tries to use the "you didn't see all of it" excuse. If I let it, this would ruin my newfound liking for Streets of Fire. Luckily, I'm not letting it. Let's just leave it at that.
09.22.08	Streets of Fire	Walter Hill	Kier-La Returns! I think it's pretty cool that the Alamo basically threw this event just for her as a send-off or a tribute or whatever you want to call it. I also think it's cool that they got Michael Pare and Debra Van Valkenburgh to come out AND that they bought the print and gave it to her as a present. It must be pretty awesome to be Kier-La right now. So, the big thing I want to say about this show is that it had the glimmer of how I feel the Alamo used to be and the real reason why I love the theater so much. Streets of Fire is a movie I saw once under pretty uncomfortable circumstances and didn't like it much at all. We stopped the DVD several times, dogs kept trying to lick my face, we were under pressure to leave lest we miss another movie, etc. It all added up to me thinking it was kind of cool but too 80s for my taste. Seeing it tonight, however... I got it. It was loud, the crowd was enjoyably insane with love for both the host and the guests and the film, I bought into the premise, I followed along, I couldn't help but move my feet to the beat. Where before I thought it failed in being timeless due to the 80s bent on all the music, now I saw influences from other eras all mixed together. Sure, Diane Lane's songs were pretty 80s but the band playing at Torchy's was pure rockabilly that could've come straight from the 50s (OK so the fishnet-clad stripper dancing along was probably 80s, but who cares). The Sorels straight from the 60s, greaser biker gangs with crotch-rocket bikes, Lee Ving, Ry Cooder, Saxophone and synthesizers... it all melted together. It's not the most subtle of mixed cocktails, but it's certainly unique. The dialogue is tough if you want it to be, goofy if you don't, the costumes are iconic and bizarre, I still don't go for Amy Madigan's hair Shaggy Dog hair but I minded her pairing with Cody much less this time around. All said, the experience of seeing it at the Alamo made it possible to open up and enjoy the movie for all of its best features. So yeah, I am now a fan. Afterward, I was equal parts impressed and relieved that Michael Pare seemed like a fun guy. His answers and anecdotes were all funny and candid and authentic (at least they sounded authentic). I had a fear that he was now a crusty old drunk or something because he was big in a few movies 20 years ago because he had model good looks. Instead, it seems like he enjoys looking back on his work without any sort of chip on his shoulder. Of course I read into all of this; all he did was like smile and make a joke about how annoying Rick Moranis was. Still, it's a shame that he's now relegated to really crappy movies to get by... and maybe yeah that's because he's not a great actor or whatever, but still... he at least deserves more cameos like in Virgin Suicides. So the whole experience had me on a high. I was really pretty surprised that I enjoyed the movie as much as I did. Surprised enough to sit through Albert Pyun's "companion" "film", Road to Hell.
09.21.08	JCVD	Mabrouk El Mechri	JCVD is probably the biggest buzzed movie of the fest. Everyone walking out of the first screening raved about how good it is. "That monologue! like ZOMG!" yadda yadda yadda. I was curious about it, not excited. Yes it was good. Yes Jean Claude cries during an extended monologue and it's pretty impressive. Yes it's exactly the kind of movie that could reform someone like Jean Claude Van Damme out of a joke status and back into a star. It's a very smart move on his part. It's basically a redemptive cry of frustration falling on perhaps the best ears in the world to accept such a message: the Fantastic Fest audience. I'm not sure how well this will do anywhere else, but JCVD is now a hero in the Alamo halls.
09.21.08	Not Quite Hollywood	Mark Hartley	I find it kind of chuckle-worthy that the documentary programming has historically had my most highly-anticipated viewings in all the Fantastic Fests. This was no exception. It's everything that a dissertation on the boom of Australian exploitation cinema should've been. I can't imagine it being any better unless it was paired with a special feature about the completely odd Australian fad that the States had about the same time as these movies were being made. Croc Dundee, Young Einstein, boomerangs, Roos... The vintage Foster's spots that they've been playing in front of every show have seriously brought that wave of nostalgia back for me. What happened back then!? Anyway, this doc was great and - of course - put a few more films on my list. Things like Fair Game and Dead-End Drive-In and most of all Next of Kin. That film looked amazing. I'll have to check all of those out. Also, since I may not be up for Thursday's Turkey Shoot screening, it was great to see Brian Trenchard Smith and hear him talk a little bit. As expected, he's a pretty great speaker and all of his answers and anecdotes were pretty great.
09.21.08	Dark Age	Arch Nicholson	Day whatever starts with watching this again because I figured I should see at least one of the Ozsploitation retrospective movies of this fest. I still liked it about as much as Pirahna or something like that; a solid Jaws knock-off (although I learned today that apparently this was more a Razorback knock-off than anything else, huh!). Yes, the croc did look pretty crappy on the land, but I still think it's pretty effective the first few times you see it just due to its immense size. I also love how he eats a kid's head. It caught me by surprise yet again because the scene so totally reflects the one in Jaws where Brodie's son narrowly escapes death. Not this poor crying tike. HEAD CHOMP'D Anyway, good times. Next up were the animated shorts. My favorites were the one with the video game recreations, the film noir one, the one where it repeatedly zooms into the changing photograph, and the French one with the mail order body... oh and the bubble wrap one. that one was genius. I think my favorite though is the graffiti one. That was just amazing. I still can't believe they did that.
09.20.08	Acolytes	Jon Hewitt	This is about a triad of Australian youths who discover a killer burying a body in some woods and decide to use their leverage to get him to kill their bullyish enemy instead of turning him into cops. Things happen, events unfold, intrigue ensues. I more or less liked this movie with the exception of the two dozen cheap loud noise scares. Too many "Boo!"s or music swells leading to intense silences. In his Q&A the director mentioned that was a way to build suspense on a budget but whatever. Let the story stand for itself. It wasn't bad though, had its moments. Even if I have no clue where those two guys came from who beat up Parker before the Red 4x4 got to him, or why Parker was driving fast through the forest, or how 4x4 even found whatshername's body, but oh well.
09.20.08	Let the Right One In	Tomas Alfredson	Zack recommended I see this over whatever else was playing in its timeslot. I then heard from Eric that it's very good and Scott Weinberg said it was the best horror movie he'd seen in 5 (later 10-15) years. Huh. It's a Swedish film about a little boy and a little girl that he befriends who happens to be a vampire. It's kind of a lot like My Girl in some ways, but not really. Mostly I just want it to be so I could say that. Actually, it's kind of what you would expect. There's the sweet boy and girl romance, the relationship between the girl and her father, and the townsfolk who start disappearing as soon as they show up. I can't say it blew me into next week or whatever, but i did enjoy it and I must say the final scene is pretty great and well-earned. I think this is a vampire movie that women could enjoy. I thought it was good; not mind-blowing.
09.20.08	I Think We're Alone Now	Seasn Donnelly	I'd heard a lot of good things about thid doc but can't remember where. It's about two people obsessed with 80s pop singer Tiffany and it's pretty disturbing. Mostly it's sad because these people have some serious problems and it makes you realize how everybody's life is not alright in this world. But then you can't help but laugh because they're funny or the way they are causes them to be funny and that makes you feel worse for laughing. In his intro, Rodney said that we had a special guest in the audience and that he was in the movie, so I spent the entire time hoping whoever it was wasn't being too crushed by everyone's laughter. In the end it turned out to be the main stalker's friend, which was pretty great because he had a really great turn in the movie where you start off thinking he's kind of the base, the guy who has it together, and then he mentions Jeff's connections to secret society information and how his masters in History allows him to communicate with Jeff on these matters and you realize this guy is just a different kind of nut. (perhaps we all are huh? HUH!!?). Then there's also the layer of seeing Tiffany, once a huge superstar nowing playing free beach shows and gay clubs in Vegas. So many layers of sadness on display here, yet everyone in the film refuses to give up. They've led incredibly hard lives (one has Asperger's, the other is a hermaphrodite (and not one of the passable ones that can get by on kink porn)) but that just somehow fuels their will and motivation. It's scary, sad, funny, and fascinating. Really good doc. After that came the short films of Nacho Vigalondo. I think it's great that Tim League and Fantastic Fest work to cultivate friendships with talent and program extra events just for the talent, and it's great to see familiar faces like the brits from year two and Nacho - even if he really doesn't have anything new to show - but I have to wonder how much of the newly-increased ticket price goes to the alamo guys getting to hang out with friends for another week. Eww, enough pessimism, it's Nacho time! His shorts were good, clearly illustrating his sense of humor and innovative technique. I actually liked his first one the most, involving throwing a "batball" at a cow as a lesson in filmmaking, but they were all enjoyable as was his intros and Q&A. FantasticFest loves Nacho so it's great to see him again. Hopefully next year he's back with a new feature.
09.20.08	Estomago	Marcos Jorge	Day Three. The early start definitely helped my place in line for tomorrow's films. It dawned on me though that I'd have to come down here on my lunch hours Tuesday and Wednesday to make sure I get decent seats for Wednesday night's secret screening (which I seem to know what it is due to a publishing discrepency) and Thursday's closing night film (which I also seem to know due to another publishing discrepency. Huh, guess my friends' literacy is really coming in handy, as are the ads in this year's program book). This was... All I knew was that it was about food, which means it probably had some cannibalism. I remembered that Japanese film from two years ago that turned my stomach a little bit with the human fat frying and thought this would probably be worth watching. It was I guess, although I thought it was missing a climax or an ending or something bigger than I got considering the build-up. There are overtones of Perfume, Donnie Brasco, and that prison movie with the dude with breasts that played the first FF all rolled together with cooking tips and Brazilian hookers wearing sexy outfits. Again, I can't say it was bad, but it didn't blow me away. The VIP badges selling out in two hours did though. I thought the price increase was pretty steep for one year but, once again, bought one just because.... hey, it's the alamo. I was pretty shocked though to learn that they sold out in 2 friggin hours. I hope they held a few back to release or award throughout the year. I know several people who forgot and are not relegated to non-VIP status. Depending on how they do the ticketing next year, it may not matter anyway. I'd rather have them sell out in two hours than sell 800 and have the VIP mean nothing.
09.19.08	Feast 2: Sloppy Seconds	John Gulager	So... seeing the first Feast at the first Fantastic Fest was pretty fun. It was better than I thought it'd be, it was fun to see the people from Project Greenlight in person, and it made for a pretty enjoyable midnight romp at the Alamo. It seemed fitting then to see the second one at a Fantastic Fest as well, especially with Gulager patron Clu in tow. Return of the Living Dead! The Killers! Last Picture Show! Clu Gulager! Son in a certain sense, sitting through this movie was worth it just for the Q&A when he took the mic and said all sorts of nice fatherly things about his sons and the production. I also liked the Q&A because it turned out that the cute tattoo'd biker gang girls who got naked in the movie were sitting right behind me and admitted to all being on a porn site. Of course I didn't pay attention to which (godsgirls.com, there's a free tour). The movie... Well, I was pretty tired by the end of it. I was expecting it to just end because of how they shot part 2 with part 3 but the ending was pretty damn blunt. The movie also seemed like a lot of talking about doing things. Not much happened. It had the same fun tone jacked up with kitchen sink ideas that probably read better than actual execution allowed (like having a badass biker gang pair up with a used car salesman and midget luchadore brothers), but you know... the idea was fun enough. The problem is that nobody actually did anything. I probably enjoyed the director's brother's role the most. He definitely had the highlight of the film when he tries to save a baby and says "fuck it" halfway through. I also like how he wanted to autopsy the monster but that went on way too long. Everything went on way too long. Ugh. But the Q&A was fun, especially when someone (whose name rhymes with targill) asked if it was done or if they were still working on the effects. "Also, John, I'd like to ask if you're pregnant or just fat." OK he didn't say that, but I bet Gulager would've had a better time answering. Clu!
09.19.08	Your Name Here	Matthew Wilder	Part two of the Bill Pullman double feature is this (to quote him) "Fantasia of the last days of Phillip K. Dick." In short, it's pretty inaccessible. I was strongly reminded of Brreakfast of Champions or Southland Tales, except I don't think this film is as bad as those. I think for hardcore Phil Dick fans this is pretty enjoyable. For casual fans (like myself) or others, perhaps not. I will say that I very much enjoyed seeing Harold Perrineau playing Richard Roundtree and Charles Napier playing Charlton Heston. And Taryn Manning's breasts. And most of all Bill Pullman's performance. If it were a tour I'd say he qualifies for de-force status. I should also mention that Bill Pullman was here to intro and Q&A both movies! He seemed pretty great and had no trouble filling the gaps with interesting stories, kooky mannerisms and pretty poor jokes. I loved it. I saw Earl from Ruthless People, Lone Star from Spaceballs, whoever he played in Lost Highway and Zero Effect all wrapped into one. It's funny; Tim kind of asked if these weird movies were the "real" Bill Pullman or if this was just a phase and I immediately remember the Zero Effect commentary where Jake Kasdan mentioned all the oddball ideas floating around in Bill's head. It makes perfect sense to me. I mean let's not forget that he was in Serpent and the Rainbow, not to mention Brain Dead (with his oft-confused Bill brother Paxton)... Those are pretty weird movies, man. So I commend Bill Pullman for staying true to his sensibilities after all these years. I think he's definitely a talented working actor that refuses to get lazy.
09.19.08	Surveillance	Jennifer Lynch	Shame on me for still not having seen Boxing Helena I guess. People in creepy looking latex masks are brutally killing people across the midwest and Bill Pullman and Julia Ormond play FBI agents interviewing witnesses of one such incident in a local sheriff's office. Michael Ironside is also in it as the local Sheriff and French Stewart has some fun as a cop who dies. Oh, I should mention that I'm going to spoil the movie so don't read any further if you care. Not that the French Stewart thing is a spoiler because he starts off the movie dead and is only seen in flashback. Anyway, Pullman and Ormond are the killers. Ta Da!!! OK, so from the very beginning, Pullman plays his character pretty tightly-wound and they have a cryptic conversation in their car that is probably clever enough to mean something else the second time. So you immediately suspect that it's them and then you only meet like 4 other characters so by 10 minutes in I was thinking I'd be more surprised if they weren't the killers than if they were. So here's the thing. When Pullman unveils the surprise and is all like "I'm the killer, yay!" I was still into the movie. I wasn't groaning (because I'd already done that in the first scene) and I really didn't even see it as a mystery since it was so telescoped, but damn if Pullman's performance didn't keep me interesting. Ormond's too. They have a scene with them and Pell James that is pretty disturbing in no small part because it turned me on. I can picture Tim League sitting somewhere watching this for the first time and seeing that scene and thinking "book it." So Pullman's odd yet riveting performance, that one creepy hot scene, and Ormond being naughty all made it worthwhile for me. I hate to say this (especially if the writer reads this) but I think the script was the weakest part. I don't see a solution to his problem of making the question of who is the killer unguessable but... oh well. So as long as you don't depend on plot twists to enjoy yourself, this is pretty good.
09.19.08	Tokyo!	Michel Gondry, Jeos Carax, Joon-ho Bong	Day two starts mid-afternoon, which is good because I have to pack a weekend full of chores into one morning... ok so I only did one load of laundry but whatever. Getting my ticket numbers, I come to realize that the VIP advantage of picking your tickets up the day beforehand is pretty huge. Since it's already 3, i'm in the 50s for everything tomorrow. This ticketting system makes for more pandemonium in the lobby and pretty much eliminates any last-minute changes based on feedback (which makes any idle chit-chat with the festival-goers I see once a year pretty much a moot point since it's probably too late to re-arrange my schedule to fit anything else in) but knowing where you're at in the seat count is pretty nice. Anyway, I wanted to see this anthology about Tokyo pretty much just for Michel Gondry's segment. While I still like most of what Gondry's released theatrically, I still think he has yet to fully nail something with the same innovative perfection of his music videos. It'd help if he made something with a happy ending. Anyway, his name got me in the door so I can't say I regret watching this, but... All three stories felt too long to me and went in weird arbitrary directions that made no sense. The closest I came to actively liking it was the beginning of Leos Carax's story titled Merde, where - to the tune of Destroy All Monsters score - a weird guy with a crooked goatee and an ill-fitting green suit crawled out of the sewer and walked down the street with a random sense of mayhem. He steals flowers from girls and eats them, steals a guy's wallet and takes the money out and eats it, walks up to a teenage girl and licks her armpit; all in pretty much one continuous shot, all while doing an odd walk and making weird grunting sounds. Then he climbs back into the sewer. Cut to a news studio with two anchors looking serious. The headline: Tokyo is afraid. For those 4 minutes I thought it was great. Some sort of homage to the Honda monster movies and statement about the passivity of Tokyo's people, maybe even a comment on American imperialism to boot, why not. But no, then we have to follow the guy around in the sewers until he discovers old bunker grenades which he uses to kill and mutilate scores of innocent bystanders and a protracted courtroom scene follows with a weird French guy who shares his language, goatee, and unclipped fingernails. They talk in their little fake language for like 15 minutes. It's stupid. So anyway, didn't really enjoy it too much but I'm glad to have seen it. All three stories border on interesting but ultimately don't come together for me at all.
09.18.08	How to Get Rid of The Others	Anders Ronnow Klarlund	Another Fantastic Fest begins (for me). This year I am taking a decidedly casual tact with the festival. Since I couldn't get any time off work, I'm planning to see what looks good to me during the weekend and then trickle down to whatever's playing at night during the week. As such, I don't want to see any bad movies so my selection is less adventurous. I had to miss the opening night film and a im-sure-it-was-entertaining QA by Kevin Smith and when I got down to the theater to pick up my VIP badge Fanboys was already filled up, but eh... I'm finding that I don't really care about missing either of those, which is refreshing. So this movie - the only movie I saw on opening day - is a Danish film that presupposes that the government has discovered that a small percentage of its citizens consume a drastically inordinate percentage of the country's resources (welfare, grants, health costs, etc.) so they decide to eliminate them. The movie follows one group of people who are rounded up in a school-turned-concentration-camp and one by one interviewed to evaluate their societal worth. It's an interesting premise and played completely straight. In fact, I thought several times that maybe thinking this movie was a comedy (which it is) is a pretty bad thing. Maybe this should be straight-up horror. I guess that's the vibe that Fantastic Fest has always strived for in their programming though so I guess that's a good thing. The movie was good; funny. The end got a little eh but whatever. For the most part I liked it.
09.12.08	North by Northwest	Alfred Hitchcock	Wheeeeee!
09.06.08	Punch-Drunk Love	Paul Thomas Anderson	You know... I saw this in theaters and left pretty mixed on it; picked up the DVD when it came out and watched the half hour of colors and music once, and pretty much forgot about it. Since seeing There Will Be Blood though, I started re-thinking my initial impressions of this movie. I mean, I remembered the cool weird color things, the interesting music... right? Maybe I was wrong and this is actually very interesting and fits nicely with all the other PT Anderson movies that I love. Well, nah. I enjoy the colors a lot, both in the "scopitones" and the costumes and set design, but there's a problem when the most interesting parts of the movie are the end credits and all the random lens flares (probably) inserted anywhere they can be. Problems with the pacing, chemistry, both main characters, plot, and lack of any real climax all bothered me a lot. I just couldn't get into it at all. Oh well.
08.30.08	Payday	Daryl Duke	Rip Torn plays a bastard mid-range country western singer on tour in the form of a never-ending bender... well, a 106-minute bender I guess. This fits pretty well with a lot of other movies I've seen from 73 or 74... character-based story, sweaty and intimate and authentic, mostly quiet, severely unpolished, and a hell of a downer ending. Pretty good stuff. Mainly, I'll be happy to send this back to netflix and end my longest rental ever.
08.30.08	The Grand	Zak Penn	Incident at Loch Ness was pretty good; I particularly liked how Penn played with Herzog's image. This Christopher Guest-esque poker movie is also pretty good although it's one of those movies that's pretty evident that the people making the movie are having more fun that the people watching it. Not to say it isn't occasionally funny and worth watching if you've ever watched Celebrity Poker Showdown or one of the World Series' on late-nite ESPN38... I'm especially impressed with all the recognizable faces even in roles with like 20 seconds of screen time (like Mike Epps). Again, Werner Herzog as "The German" with Tiny Lister as a bodyguard is awesome even if we didn't know his little petrie dish he had at the table with him was full of ants so he could kill something whenever he needed a boost unless you get the DVD and listen to the commentary (Penn still tries too hard and isn't as funny as he thinks he is). Ray Romano is actually very funny here... and his post-game scene is refreshingly poignant and positive (in both the movie version and the alternate ending version). Phil whatshisname is also pretty good... probably I laughed hardest when Phil challenged his co-anchor to do simple math. It's still pretty inside - probably why it wasn't talked about more considering the talent involved - but I liked it ok. Definitely worth watching.
08.29.08	Hot Fuzz	Edgar Wright	...Watching this again on its own, divorced from the all-day cop marathon that preceded my first viewing, was pretty interesting. I found the beginning bits (especially Nick Frost's stuff) funnier than before, but found the ending shootout even more forced and absurd. I kind of have the same feelings with Shaun of the Dead where Wright tries to have his cake and eat it too. I like the movie-geek homage comedy a lot but then it turns and tries to be one of the movies it's heretofore been taking from. For some reason that turns me off, even though I liked that aspect of it in that Behind the Mask movie. I mean I still liked it, it just lessened things for me. I am still surprised though about the caliber of actors filling all the parts. I guess that speaks to either the support for Shaun of the Dead or the lack of work in England.
08.28.08	Roadgames	Richard Franklin	Stacy Keach plays a truck driver who may have witnessed a murder now playing a game of cat and mouse with a mysterios van as he delivers a load of pork from Melbourne to perth. Very Hitchcock-esque (Franklin freely admits that the premise is basically Rear Window on the road), very solid thriller. I really loved the moment after Keach looks through his binoculars and sees the van driver looking back at him while digging a hole, he looks to the side as if "oh nothing, just looking around. I didn't see you") then looks back and was like "oh shit he saw me." Hilarious little moment breaking the tension and suspense that Franklin methodically builds. I also loved when he tried to steal the dude's motorbike. Really solid, I liked it a lot.
08.24.08	Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid	Carl Reiner	Once upon a time I surbscribed to this great service that sent my movie rentals to me in the mail. Now, thanks to my work-informed movie-watching habits, Netflix is home to my most expensive movie rentals ever. It's to the point now where I don't even want to look to see how long I've had these movies sitting on my desk. I'd rather just pretend it never happened. What's worse is that they're probably all good movies. This one was fun. It quickly became more about seeing how well they intercut the various old movies than actually caring about the plot or Steve Martin's character, but it was fun to see all the old familiar noir faces in one story. I had a pretty similar idea years ago so it was fun to see it sort-of realized in this form. It was kind of a game to spot the movie they were taken from although a good third of them I hadn't seen. It looks like they took an awful lot from The Bribe. It was also cool to see Edit Head and Miklos Rozsa in the credits. Anyway, a fun exercize. I guess you can make a movie like this when you make a movie like The Jerk first.
08.22.08	Tropic Thunder	Ben Stiller	Pretty damn funny. I remember when I first saw Zoolander and it wasn't really connecting with a lot of people right away but now it's considered a classic in a lot of circles. I got a similar sense from this... some of the turns are so bizarrely odd and extreme that I think a lot of audiences instinctively reject it at first, but I bet Tom Cruise's little G5 dance will soon become something widely emulated at parties. Downey and Jack Black also have some amazing facial acting here. I can't believe the expressions they pull off. I would've liked to have seen more from just about everybody but I guess that's what the DVD is for. good stuff for sure. Man, this summer's turning out to be one of the best in recent memory.
08.22.08	Redbelt	David Mamet	It seemed like David Mamet asked himself "What if someone who knew how to handle himself physically stepped into the world of my movies?" That's the film basically. All of the familiar faces, familiar themes, familiarly disjointed dialogue, and familiar plot turns are there except the main guy can kick ass. I was never really bored but the turn halfway through was severely telescoped and the ending was pretty anticlimactic. Oh well.
08.20.08	Street Kings	David Ayer	Huh. This was pretty good. I liked this a lot. The very very end was a little eh but the very end was so awesome I didn't really care if there had to be a final moment that explained it all or whatever. Aside from that though it's pretty damn solid. Sort of like a companion to Dark Blue (duh). I sure wish James Ellroy would get over his writer's block and finish a novel. His jaded-as-fuck worldview is sorely missed in my imagination. I even got over Keanu's "acting" "choice" of sounding like a bad video game voice actor. And the main thrust of the story was evident just by seeing the cast list of characters, but there were some nice turns along the way in typical Ellroy fashion that I love. Good stuff.
08.17.08	Pineapple Express	David Gordon Green	Saw this again with Molly. Still funny and surprisingly violent! Can't say I picked up any new details or anything, but it's pretty fun to hang out with those guys while they get mixed up in a vaguely 80s adventure. I could also easily tell who all in the audience were smokers by the amount of laughs when we first see Seth Rogen showing off his techniques in the car. Solid movie, man. I liked it still, a lot. It needed that MIA song from the trailer in it though. I actively missed it. The guys who cut that trailer had the music dead on. All I wanna do is BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM! heh heh.
08.15.08	Doomsday	Neil Marshall	It's a real shame that the rebellious youth of today has to love movies like this instead of the movies that movies like this steal blatantly from. That said, this was fun enough. The ending was a bit too much for me but whatever... why not.
08.14.08	Laserblast	Michael Rae	This was one of those movies that for some reason 5 different people mentioned during my early days hanging out at the Alamo. I missed it during childhood so I made sure to make it downtown for my first terror thursday in like 6 months to see it. Luckily Daniel tipped me off that it was in the small theater so i got there super early. (tangent: maybe it's my working-man old-fogeyness but 6th street on a thursday night is very close to living hell. I couldn't believe the cacophany of distorted music, drunken yelling, and idiot shot-huckstering projected over the seedy grimy depravity of desperate people laid out as I turned the corner on 6th and San Jac. It honestly set me back a bit.) The movie... had it's moments. Although I appreciated the sheer amount of explosions, they somehow left me dry. When the kid plays like he's blowing shit up before he finds the necklace and actually starts blowing shit up was probably my favorite part. For some reason, I didn't enjoy Cheryl Smith in this at all, which is pretty odd. I also didn't enjoy how the one woman in the pool party who goes topless keeps her back to the camera. What kind of Band production is this!? So... if I had made this movie, I probably wouldn't have had the kid get possessed by an alien urge to destroy. I think they set him up pretty perfectly as a troubled kid ready to lash out like whatshisname in Christine. Having him somehow blameless kind of deflated any joy I was getting to the vague low-budget slaying of all his nemeses. The aliens were pretty random, but the final scene with the one on the rooftop is definitely the type of scene that some character is watching on tv in a movie to show how cool and obscure the director is (Thanks, Wachowskis. you're so cool for knowing Night of the Lupus). On a semi-related-but-not-really note, while listening to the latest episode of The Treatment, I was overjoyed to hear Elvis Mitchell bring up Nasty Habits to Ben Stiller. Elvis Mitchell loves Nasty Habits! Umm... so yeah, glad I saw it; not sure I'd see it again.
08.09.08	Robocop	Paul Verhoeven	For some reason it surprises me whenever anyone in the world hasn't seen Robocop. It doesn't surprise me to hear it mentioned during G4's E3 coverage like 8 times from geek fanboys who are now project leads of kickass games... so the confluence of both of these events led me to revisit this. Surprise! It was awesome! It's weird and F'd up but i somehow have memories of seeing this in the theater. I would've been what, 9? 8? That's pretty crazy. Maybe because it's been so long since I've sat down and watched it, it never really dawned on me how similar this was to Startship Troopers. The newscasters and television programming and consumer-dystopian future angles are all... not directly connected but definitely from the same brain. Ahh how I would cherish a Verhoeven retrospective at the alamo... but I guess they don't do retrospectives anymore (dig!). Anyway, this was awesome. I have most of the movie burned into my brain. Thank you for your cooperation, have a nice day.
08.08.08	Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay	Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg	I only saw the first one once; think it's kinda overrated. This was occasionally funny, much like the first. I did laugh in a few places though... so I'll call it ok!
08.02.08	Step Brothers	Adam McKay	This was actually very funny. It borders the rut that Walk Hard got stuck in (that it's basically one joke over and over again) but this manages to keep enough twists on the joke coming to never go completely over the line into tedium. I particularly liked how, although they act like they're 8, they have the habits and vocabulary of 40 year olds. I had strong Boogie Nights flashback vibes from Reilly here which is definitely a good thing. His loose improv style is pretty awesome. Ferrell is also very good in a familiar way, funnier than Semi-Pro and Blades of Glory by far. I dunno, I find myself quoting this all the time now. Fun time.
07.29.08	The Dark Knight	Christopher Nolan	Ahhh I've waited too long on this one. I really liked it. Seeing it in the IMAX was definitely worth it. The 70mm footage was almost overwhelming, which fits considering the story and pacing. It's so relentless; once the Joker gets unleashed it's a constant sense of danger. Ledger does actually even-if-he-were-still-alive stand out in his performance. Him just sitting there puts you on edge, always a split second away from something brutal. Everyone else was right; it's awesome. I hope to see this again in another month or so when it's not selling out every night just to get another taste of the IMAX presentation.
07.26.08	Batman: Gotham Knight	Various	An Animatrix-esque collection of animated shorts intended to bridge the gap between Batman Begins and Dark Knight. Basically, I thought the animation was poor but the story was interesting in a filling-in-backstory kind of way. It made me psyched to see Dark Knight but unfortunately all shows are sold out until tuesday. Ah well.
07.25.08	21	Robert Luketic	I was in the mood to watch a "new" movie and was mildly curious about this with a small hope that it'd be better than I expected. It wasn't. Pretty by the book formula. I thought it was funny how dumb the group of smart kids were though, and how they were like the thuggish gang of MIT. I know this was based on truth so I wonder how accurate it was, like if their little signals were actually as idiotic as the two hands behind your back thing.
07.23.08	Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out	Monte Hellman	Then I stayed for this Weird Wednesday, which apparently Hellman did as a favor to a dear friend. Afterward, longtime Alamo regular Joe came up and said "I think Two Lane Blacktop was better" and we all laughed. It's pretty weird to think of the same guy doing both movies. They do share similar pacing but that's about it. Not much happens in this movie unless you like Bill Moseley walking around with a brain dome. There are flashbacks to the first film though which reminded me of how cool that one is, and with both Richard Beymer and a super-permed Eric DaRe here I got a strange Twin Peaks vibe, especially with Laura Harring showing up about halfway through. Everybody says that Robert Culp's small role is the highlight of the film and I'd have to agree. I couldn't help but doze in and out of somewhere around half the movie but I seem to remember him talking about his cell phone plan and laughing at his own punchline to a deja vu joke. That, along with Moseley saying "And a happy new year!" at the end were bizarre highlights of a hazy memory. It was fun to stand around and talk about the movie a bit after it let out just like old times. A taste of them at least.
07.23.08	Two Lane Blacktop	Monte Hellman	I don't think I loved this as much as some people (especially the I Luv dude who introduced Monte), but I did like it more than The Shooting. I'm not really a car guy per se, but for some reason I like movies that revel in the engine sounds and minutia of automobiles. Maybe because it's totally not my world so it's all the more foreign or maybe more because I just like seeing specialized process and the functions of any subculture and the fact that it's cars doesn't really matter. In any case, this movie really loves cars so I dug that part of it. The awkward characters and plot... eh. Again, Hellman had a moderate Q&A where he talked about the stars and whatnot. Not many specifics are coming to mind. Glad I saw it to be sure. Very glad I saw it in a theater instead of renting the criterion disc although I may go back at some point just to go through the special features.
07.23.08	The Shooting	Monte Hellman	Monte Hellman came to the Alamo (apparently thanks to I Luv Video). I'd never actually seen any of his movies but had Two Lane Blacktop on my netflix queue so thought I'd take advantage and check out the whole triple feature, which started with this western starring Will Hutchins, Warren Oates, and Jack Nicholson. Basically, I'd heard Two Lane Blacktop shared an existential poeticism with Vanishing Point, so I kind of expected this to be equally meandering and borderline artsy. I was not surprised. I liked it but am really glad I saw it in a theater with no distractions to take me out of the deliberate pacing. I think if I rented this and watched it at home it'd take me forever to get through because i'd constantly be pausing to do other, more stimulating things. Hellman gave a shortish Q&A that i can't really remember. He had some pretty awesome hair though.
07.12.08	Batman Begins	Christopher Nolan	Seeing this again in antici..................pation of The Dark Knight (even though I didn't get into the Monday screening like all the cool kids in town and I probably wont end up seeing it for at least another week after it's out). I still like this one... good actors.
07.12.08	Hellboy II: The Golden Army	Guillermo del Toro	Hellboy 2. It was good. Good visuals, sometimes wasted or arbitrary as Jarrette mentioned but nonetheless fun to look at in a Nightbreed kind of way. For some reason Selma Blair kind of bugged me in this, not sure why. Maybe after seeing her in Storytelling I have a hard time believing her in... anything else. I also kind of spent the whole movie wondering why the sister didn't do what she did at the end right at the beginning... but other than those two things I liked it. Definitely entertaining, definitely visually striking, the comedic moments were pretty fun... the creatures made me want to play around more with my Spore Creature Creator... Ron Perlman is perfect in that role. I kind of don't even see the make-up on him.
07.06.08	The Ruins	Carter Smith	Man this was good! Solid no-twist-needed horror, sort of painting by number but executing very very well. I'm a fan of these types of movies (like Cabin Fever) where really everyone's screwed from like 5 minutes in and we get to watch as everything goes to shit. This had the added value of having the thing that we're supposed to be rooting for actually be not such a great idea. It makes you wonder what you'd do, which means the movie's working. I'd heard this was surprisingly good so I'm all the happier to see for myself. This could've easily been crappy, but it wasn't!
07.05.08	Hellboy	Guillermo del Toro	I've been meaning to pick this up on DVD for a while now and finally had an excuse: to get ready for possibly seeing the sequel this Tuesday and it coming out in a few weeks regardless. I only saw this once and remember liking it then kind of forgot about it for years. Time to revisit. Pretty good. It feels a bit like the actual story is shoved into the last half hour because it takes so long to get to know everyone so that has me really hopeful for the sequel since it doesn't have to worry about all that. The casting is great though, del Toro's direction is fun and exuberant and the effects are surprisingly solid. I'm glad I finally own this.
07.03.08	WALL-E	Andrew Stanton	With the exception of about 30 seconds toward the end when I felt a message being too on the nose, I absolutely loved this movie. Ben Burtt and Pixar are like peanut butter and chocolate. It does kinda make me want to see Short Circuit again but this is a lot better I think. I especially loved the end credits.
07.02.08	Emma Mae	Jamaa Fanaka	So when Fanaka was here last, I actually bought this along with his three other available DVDs. The cover and the title however (Black Sister's Revenge) kind of kept it on the shelf for me all this time. I think I was subconciously waiting for it to play Weird Wednesday again since I'd heard so many great things about it from when it played before. Lucky for me, it did! For starters, the movie is absolutely nothing like what I thought it would be. I havn't see Killer of Sheep or any of Charles Burnett's work but I picture it being like this but more depressing. Very casual, tonally perfect, intimate and personal; a minor-key masterpiece along the lines of Marty and Claudine. Very slice-of-lifey, very charactery, and more than anything authentic. This is the work of a humanistic artist such as Cassavetes or Sydney Pollock, certainly not from the guy who just brought us midget prison bulls and strangling-penis Soul Vengeance, right? The tone of this movie was a bigger shock to me than anything in Pen 3, that's for sure. I really loved this movie. It really has everything that a film like this needs and it's done with the perfect mix of competence and rough-edged inexperience. This is by far Fanaka's best film. It got a standing ovation.
07.02.08	Penitentiary III	Jamaa Fanaka	The return of Jamaa Fanaka! This time at the Alamo Ritz! I'm really glad to get a chance to see the elusive and infamous Penitentiary 3. I've heard stories about how crazy this one is and have wanted to see it ever since Fanaka came to town that first time for such a memorable experience. This time it's fully into the 80s turbo-charged excess zone where logic bends like light in a black hole. Questions such as why the prison hole has medeival candles instead of electricity, how The Midnight Thug gets his porn and crack, and why that white kid with the saxophone isn't someone's punk aren't work asking as you'll never ever get an answer. Instead, you're treated to a bizarro-world version of Pen 1 and 2, this time with oranges instead of Goodbar and fried chicken. It was certainly entertaining although I couldn't help but be a little disappointed from the overhype on how extremely bizarre it was. Take away the midget pervert thug and agoraphobic albino gangster(!!!) and you pretty much have the same story as before with a Michael Jackson haircut. But still, I'm really glad I got a chance to see it and Fanaka... He reminds me a lot of David Strong. I could've used a bit longer Q&A but we were running late and he had merch for sale so the lively story session from his previous visit never quite took off. I guess you have to take the master class to get that.
06.28.08	Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy	Adam McKay	Another revisit. Maybe Will Ferrell's best movie? I think maybe so. Plus the crew surrounding him are all in top form. It's funny to see Seth Rogen for maybe 30 seconds in this movie knowing he's now a full-fledged star. It's also funny remember how much extra footage is snipped into Wake up, Ron Burgundy that's missing here. Funny as crap though. I want some Sex Panther by Odeon.
06.27.08	Violent City	Sergio Sollima	This is maybe the most expensive netflix rental ever. I dont even want to admit how long this has been on my desk waiting for me to watch it. I am fully ashamed. It's also been fairly hyped up for me. I've seen the beginning chase/shootout on Alamo prerolls several times, heard about how badass Bronson and Savalas are, and have had it generally set up as an underrated Italian crime movie. Um, I liked it ok. I LOVED the elevator scene toward the end. That was awesome. Mostly though, I was pretty cold on it. Guess I just never got fully on board or it was missing something for me or soemthing because I could never really get into it. Several moments are pretty cool but way too much time passes between each one and - maybe it's a personal preference or whatever - although the girl was pretty hot I didn't read Bronson's self-destructive need to be with her. oh well.
06.25.08	Get Shorty	Barry Sonnenfeld	Been a while since I last saw this. I still enjoy it. I think maybe it'll stand as Barry Sonnenfield's best movie? I haven't seen The Addams Family in a while either though. Anyway, Travolta's actually really good in this but mostly I love DeVito's small role and Gene Hackman playing against type. Good soundtrack too. I've always loved that it used Morphine tracks and that kind of bedroom jazz stuff but I never realized that John Lurie did the music; that's cool. Fun movie.
06.22.08	Innerspace	Joe Dante	Fun times. Love this one.
06.21.08	Cloverfield	Matt Reeves	So... seeing this after all the hype and subsequent disappointment and eventual DVD release and pretty much after everyone's forgotten about it is kind of refreshing. I personally do not subscribe to JJ Abrams' cult of mystery. I'm not a fan of Lost - tried to watch it a few times in season one and couldn't get over how TV-y it was - and although I gave Alias four seasons' worth of a fair shake, I always thought that most of his work stemmed from one decent idea followed by a lot of scrambling. I like to trust that creators have more of a master plan than arbitrary cliffhangers and questions that never get answered. So when they couldn't even come up with a title for this movie, I was pretty non-interested. Seeing it now however shows off its strong points much better than opening weekend. It's unassuming at first, frustratingly strict with its point of view, and ultimately a 74-minute little romp that's pretty enjoyable. Yes, I could've used the monster looking a bit more... functional, but I thought it was used very well (except the end shot in the park which feels like it was inserted just to let us get a better look at it) and the people we're following around didn't annoy me nearly as much as everyone told me they would. So yeah, I liked it. I hope they don't turn it into a franchise or anything because that'll probably ruin what I like about this one, and I'm glad I watched it on my computer rather than in a theater (ugh, I can't believe I just wrote that) because even here the digital effects seem a bit cut-n-paste so I imagine they're more blatant blown up... that is if you can see them in between motion-sickness puke-heaves. I still couldn't really tell what was going on most of the time but at least here it was sort of intentional rather than Transformers or the last two Bourne movies or whatever. I don't know that I would call for a whole genre of these Diary of the Dead-type found-footage movies unless there was extreme care taken to keep them watchable (even here, some of the photography eeked beyond the herky jerky zooming and auto-focus that would really be going on to grant us at least a few moments of clarity, which I appreciated)... but still for just this once, I found it effective. Huh, i know! I was totally expecting to hate it.
06.21.08	This Filthy World	Jeff Garlin	John Waters on stage for 84 minutes going through his film history, sharing his life outlook, and snipping stand-up bits. It's pretty entertaining for fans; a lot of the material is already covered in his commentaries though. Still, I enjoyed it well enough.
06.20.08	Sky High	Mike Mitchell	Molly hadn't seen this and I thought it would be right up her alley. I was right!
06.19.08	Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy SHow	Ari Sandel	hmm... not as funny as I was hoping in the stand-up department but decent tour stuff. The Comedians of Comedy still seems to be the tops in this particualr groups-of-comics-on-a-tour genre for me. This was ok though, particuarly the one moment where Justin Long stacks boxes on a sleeping Peter Billingsly and tugs his pillow to wake him up and Ralphie freaks the eff out, apologizing later for acting like he was in Chino. Twas OK.
06.18.08	In Bruges	Martin McDonagh	Pretty decent.
06.18.08	Jumper	Doug Liman	So I totally didn't know that Doug Liman directed this. I probably would've given it a little more attention when it came out had I known actually... except it's VERY close to an idea I've had forever about a superhero who can teleport to wherever he can see (I guess mine was a bit more limited), so I kind of resented the movie for putting out in the world the idea that was mine even though all i ever did with it was start a novella and put it back in the drawer after about 10 pages or so... But I digress. This was surpringly good to me considering I hate Hayden Christensen but retroactively kind of disappointing now that I know it's Doug Liman. I mean the direction was good and the visual effects were functional and for the most part I could see the action which is an achievements considering the amount of effects at work and the fact that Sam Jackson is like 70 now even though he still looks 40, but some of the story points really made me groan. Like how there has to be this ancient rivalry between Palladins and jumpers, or how jumpers even have to be a group and not just some kid's quirk-of-nature power, or how the girl would see the childhood friend mysteriously back from the dead whom she just had sex with 10 hours ago then left her at an airport in Rome teleport across her living room and choose THEN to get all mad and all fussy. And I hate Hayden Christensen. And I didn't like Jamie Bell here either. And they stole my idea. So that kind of puts a hindrance on me actually actively liking this movie, but still. Surprisingly decent.
06.16.08	Hitman	Xavier Gens	hmmm... Maybe it's because I'm not watching many movies lately but I actually thought this was decent. I mean sure it's like a Bourne movie but not as shaky or good but still... it held my interest almost all the way through and judging from my experience playing the game (exactly once. I downloaded the demo to like Hitman 3 and thought it was too frustrating with all the garment changes without being able to save) Olyphant did a good job in acting out the character, goofy bald head and all. I guess it was kind of a thing for a big bald guy with a barcode tattooed to the back of his head to "blend in" just by putting on a waiter's uniform or carrying a bouquet of roses but it still strikes me as pretty dumb. Ahh movies based on video games...
06.13.08	Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade	Steven Spielberg	Seeing Crystal Skull and playing through LEGO Indiana Jones has put me in a mood to revisit this series, this one in particular (My memories of the last time I watched Temple were more of dawning disappointment in childhood nostalgia shown in harsh morning light). I liked it a lot. It's just so good.
06.13.08	Kung Fu Panda	Mark Osborne, John Stevenson	Yay for offsite training getting out for an early Friday! I don't know why this is the movie I wound up seeing with my extra time but who cares... I wanted to see it and heard it was good from co-workers (granted, they either have kids or have the movie-going mentality of a kid). I actually liked it quite a bit. I liked how the crane, tiger, mantis, viper, and monkey were actually in the movie rather than just a set-up joke used in the trailer but actually could've used a little more of them. The mantis gets a little shafted due to his size but for the rest of them it was pretty damn sweet to actually see anthropomorphic animals do their respective kung fu styles. Would've been cool to see them shown off a bit more but what are you gonna do... you can't exactly have bloody duels with deathblows in a children's animated romp. It was also funny but I say that as a fan of Jack Black. I'd imagine that people not into his shtick would hate him here because of said shtick. Anyways... fun times.
06.04.08	High Crime	Enzo G. Castellari	Weird Wednesday! I went to one! For real! It's been a while since I've seen an Italian crime movie (despite having one from netflix on my desk for the past two months) and this seemed to be super-talked-up by those in the know. I'm glad I saw it but think I may have gotten too tired to fully appreciate the ending. I'm not sure if I was expected to understand every little plot twist the first time through anyway, but heavy eyelids do not help. I liked what I was able to pay attention to though... especially Franco Nero's short ties. He was one stylish cop! Hot damn! Also, thanks to the dubbing, I thought he told a goon that he WOULD shit on his face instead of he HAS shit on his face, so for a few minutes I thought I had a new favorite line ever. Lars pointed out the quality and quantity of man-slaps here and he was right. By calling attention to them he actually created a palpable excitement whenever the whole theater saw one coming up. Even though it sucks that the small theater has like 15 seats, I like the closer energy of the crowd more than the main auditorium I think. Anyway, I'm paying for it now with a day of fatigue-driven torture but I have no regrets. Worth going out to.
06.03.08	Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull	Steven Spielberg	Ahh Indiana Jones 4. Spoilers. Like I'm not the last person on Earth to see this. OK, so while watching i remember thinking i was enjoying it more or less but when I try to look back on it the only things I can think of are things that I didn't like. So just assume that the little moments and smirks in between the big problems are what made me enjoy the movie and proclaim that I liked it more than didn't like it. I'm still not sure I like it more than temple of Doom but whatever. So.. yeah. Basically, I didn't like the plot. Thought it was dumb and the opposite of cool. And moreover I disliked how a lot of sequences in this one seemed wholly impossible. I get that there probably REALLY isn't a Holy Grail or stones that heat up or whatever but those at least remained plausible. Shia swinging from vines over random cliff-sides, gigantic tower-keys that don't seem to be able to reset themselves, the chances that of all the crates in that huge warehouse (which used to be a cool nameless warehouse somewhere and is now gay because it's area 51) the one with the ark gets broken and displayed in the foreground, the existence of ants the size of centipedes and KNOWLEDGE BEING THE FUCKING TREASURE all took me out of any kind of moment I may have been in. I wanted to like it. I was trying to like it. I succeeded sometimes but then it would stop abruptly. And above that, something about seeing 60-year old indy still trading foley punches... Not that I wanted Shia to have one second more of screen time, but I think they missed opportunities for Indy to not be able to rely on his physicality and have to use his wits more. I will say that Jim Broadbent is a worthy successor to Denholm Elliot and it was nice to see Karen Allen again and Ford actually acted in this even though he didn't sound like himself sometimes... but come on... aliens? motorcycle-riding literature advice? Largely I blame two people: George Lucas and David Koepp. I have no way of knowing who was responsible for what but the area 51 thing stinks of Mr. George lets-turn-boba-fett-into-every-fucking-storm-trouper Lucas and all those random interjections of clunky exposition pale in comparison to all three previous films. So again, all the bits I'm not mentioning I probably liked. I still kinda feel like it shouldn't have been made though.
06.01.08	Trailer Park Boys	Mike Clattenburg	Felt like watching this one again after seeing the series. Didn't laugh as much but still enjoyed it. Mostly it made me think of the highlights from the show though, like when they paved their driveway with hash or smuggled weed across the border with an electric train. Are they gonna make season 8 or what?
05.31.08	Wet Hot American Summer	David Wain	It was good to see this again after so long. I remember liking it the first time (being a huge fan of The State) but for whatever reason never revisited since it first came out. It's funny to see Elizabeth Banks and Paul Rudd here considering where they are now. Chris Meloni is also hilarious as the cook... I never really went to summer camp but so much of this movie not only matches the genre it's homagingating but my limited real life experiences as well (I went on several school camp trips for like 3-4 days at a time that approximated the summer camp experience) like the kid who wouldn't take a shower or the bug juice or whatever. And of course all the actors are really great at portraying early 80s youth. Rudd's im-so-put-out-i-can-barely-pick-up-the-tray-i-just-threw-on-the-ground routine is classic. Good times.
05.30.08	National Treasure: Book of Secrets	Jon Turtletaub	Maybe it's because I haven't been watching many movies lately but I was having fun with the first half of this movie! They threw all fact to the wind and just made up a ridiculous story... and I kind of love how Nic Cage kidnaps the president just because someone called his great-great-grandfather a bad person. Maybe National Treasure 3 will be about how he hears that some blog didn't like the second half of his last adventure so he has to unearth the secret basement of the alamo in order to find out who wrote it or something. But yeah, after a while the ridiculous nature of unearthed secrets was replaced by boring chases and huge underground CG cities and lots of water and whatnot. blah blah blah. the first half had me though, which is surprising!
05.29.08	Lions for Lambs	Robert Redford	eh, too preachy. Actually it's not that it's too preachy, it's that it's too sucky to hold that amount of preach. I dont want to spend an hour watching an old professor try to motivate a slacking student to do something with his life. When I was in school that was called detention and it was something you willfully avoided, not paid to see in a movie.
05.27.08	Recount	Jay Roach	they stole it! they stole it! sigh... I guess this was good since they got a whole bunch of liberal actors on the screen together. It was pretty HBO-movie-y though... kind of entertaining but I dont think I'd watch it again.
05.25.08	Bram Stoker's Dracula	Francis Ford Coppola	I remember being pretty disappointed with this when it first came out. Of course, I was pretty much a kid back then so I wanted more blood or whatever... I picked this up on impulse because it had a Coppola commentary and some documentaries that looked interesting (I have vague memories of seeing vidio footage of the cast sitting around a table reading from the EPK stuff when the movie first came out so I thought the behind-the-scenes stuff for this movie might prove interesting). I'm glad I revisited it because there's really a lot to like here. Yes, the lovey-dovey scenes get tired fast but luckily there are only a handful of them. There's also Keanu... but other than that, there are tons of in-camera visual effects that are pretty great and the overall design and photography of the film is wonderful. Had a good time watching this again and going through the DVD materials.
05.22.08	Juno	Jason Reitman	no notes. just saw it again.
05.14.08	Truck Turner	Jonathan Kaplan	Wow what a treat to get to see this on the big screen. Since seeing it for the first time about a year and a half ago, it's kind of grown in my mind to be the best of the "real" films of the blaxploitation genre. Movies like Human Tornado, Deliver Us from Evil and Super Soul Brother are loads of fun but I sort of count those separately because a big part of the fun comes from the loose slipshod nature in which they were made. Then there's movies like this and Superfly and The Spook Who Sat by the Door; tick...tick...tick or even Black Caesar that have the (relatively) comfortable budgets and end up comparable to mainstream films... AKA I can believe that they showed in theaters and that people paid to see them. So anyway, of THOSE films, Truck Turner stands out for me as being the most solid, enjoyable pick of the litter... Seeing it again solidified that for me. And I just love how Yaphet Kotto's character is used here. It's a bit of Welles in the Third Man where you hear him being talked about early in the picture, but when he finally shows up, every second counts. it also helps that he's acting like HE'S really the star of the movie and Isaac Hayes is the heavy getting impeding his progress. He's kind of the anti-hero of the pimp world, spitting on graves and slightly smarter than anyone else... the only one with a plan. Luckily, hayes' movie-star Black jesus persona is both figuratively and literally big enough to stand up to Kotto's intensity. The script, or, as Lars mentioned in his ramblingly loving intro (sign of a cool job #328: getting paid to correspond with people like Jonathan Kaplan about movies liek Truck Turner), the 80% of improvisation is natural, funny, and authentic. That, along with the fact that Kaplan actually knew how to direct, are probably the two biggest reasons why the movie works for me. It seems like there's just that extra bit of coverage or interesting angle or lens choice to make scenes memorable for me much like a George Romero movie where you can still tell it's the Corman school and all that but they managed to eek out every little bit to create something visually exciting to watch. Like the top-down shot when they're hanging the dude out the window or (of course) the wide angle close-ups that grace the Badass Cinema T-shirts... just a higher quality than a lot of the other movies displayed. And also the music. I think the first build in the truck turner main theme is maybe the best build in all of music. Especially when that counter-riff comes in: BAH-DUh-duh BAH-DUh-duh BAH-DUh-duh and those weird eeh-a-ooh-ooh-a-ooh-ooh-OOH sounds laid in just loud enough to grow out of that bass line... man! I wish I had it here at work to listen to right now. Whoever gets Micah's copy of the 8-track better have a player! Anyway, had a great time getting the chance to watch this at the Alamo. Love it!
05.11.08	Ghostbusters	Ivan Reitman	Back off, man. I'm a scientist.
05.10.08	The Great Train Robbery	Michael Crichton	Brian + no job = watches lots of movies. Brian + job = watches few movies. Brian + job + Grand Theft Auto 4 = watches no movies. Anyway, what a good movie. This is probably one of the movies that made me love the heist genre... it's pretty much the perfect mix of planning, colorful characters, things gone awry, and just plain fun. Plus it's period London which gives Donald Sutherland an excuse to sport his best facial hair in any picture ever. Good stuff.
05.04.08	Pineapple Express	David Gordon Green	And now the main event. Pineapple Express, 3 months early, with stars Seth Rogen, James Franco, Danny McBride, and director David Gordon Green in attendance. According to Harry, 7,000 people tried to get his tickets, only about 100 or so did. I don't know about that... all I know is that there was a line of maybe 120 people outside and after Harry's people and a few busloads of students from UT found seats, maybe 15 of the poor saps who'd been waiting since 6 (with flyers saying "admit two") got to sit in folding chairs alog the floor aisle. This screening was packed. Skipping ahead, after the movie Tim had set up five stations of desert-island tools and invited anyone smoke-canny up to see if they could be the fastest to turn a pineapple into a smoking device. The winner (who I believe cheated, smoking the pineapple instead of the tobacco supplied. The guy next to him had a much more elaborate setup and actually had smoke in his mouth when the "winner" exhaled his paltry puff) got a poster signed by all the talent there. Then there was a Q&A with typically insipid questions fielded with varying degrees of entertainment from the actors. It was kind of funny for David Gordon Green to get asked super-dramatic questions about his previous films (which I confess I haven't seen any... although he's surprisingly young and small to me as a person) and then Rogen getting asked if he really drew dicks as a kid ("Wow, wrong Q&A!"). Then there were the babbling fangirls asking Franco if comedy is harder than drama *swoon* Danny McBride modestly thanking Rogen for talking up Foot Fist Way. McBride was actually the quietest of the Q&Aers and also seemed the most modest, but what can 10 minutes in front of a spotlight tell you. All in all a good experience. Now the movie... OK so the movie.... well the poster, you know how everyone in the poster has guns, right? Well, the movie was surprisingly action-y for me. Lots of gunfire, the bad guys are funny as well as actually bad guys. Human life seems to be one of the topics under consideration for humor as well as weed and lack of intelligence here. It's kind of a weird mix where things are funny and everything but people are also, you know, dying. McBride is hilarious (much more so than in Drillbit Taylor) but then there's this hand-to-hand fight that's really pretty brutal. The crowd was pretty busy switching between laughter and that "Ohhh!" that people yell when someone on screen takes a hit that looks REALLY painful. The mix is somewhat disorienting but ultimately successfull I think. I'm not 100% sure it will be this year's Superbad in terms of popularity, but I enjoyed the hell out of it. It was kind of like if Beverly Hills Cop was actually funny or if Hot Fuzz wasn't satire. A unique experience.
05.03.08	Iron Man	Jon Favreau	I didn't go to the 2-day-ahead-of-release sneek peak to see the jet pack guy because I didn't feel like dressing up like Iron Man, but I was happy to see that they had a show letting out right when I needed to get there for tonight's Pineapple Express showing. Plus Aaron and Eric were going to see it again and I haven't seen those guys in forever so... why not make it a triple feature day just like the olden times? I never read Iron Man enough to even know who Mandarin is... but I sort of knew the bare-bones essentials just from being a comic book nerd in my youth. Plus the suit's cool. Although I should also say my main driving factor for wanting to see this is the talent involved, not the property. Favreau, Robert Downey Jr., Terrence Howard, Jeff Bridges with the awesome bald/shaggy beard approach... Seemed to be surprising choices for a mindless comic book action movie. So I guess you could say I walked in hoping for something a bit more "intelligent" than recent comic book movies, maybe a bit more interesting on the story level or something like that. I'll say right up fron that I liked it. Downey's charisma and quick-quipped writing kept it from getting slow, the effects and fight scenes were stimulating and refreshingly discernable, and Peter Billingsly cameos as a balding scientist. Check, Check, Check. It is kind of the "easy" story for Iron Man though. The origins for most comic book characters were usually most always interesting and for a first movie you pretty much have to explain how he comes to be. Still, in that regard, I wasn't flat-out bored by the lack of conflict or plot like I was in the first Spider-Man, largely due to Downey's performance, so that's good. I also for some reason accepted the pseudo-technology with no problems, probably because the characters all had alliterative names. In a Real World movie, I'd have a huge problem with a "TRANSLATE" button right next to the video screen on the computer but... whatever. Good movie.
05.03.08	The Travelling Executioner	Jack Smight	Ahh The Travelling Executioner. Me and Jarrette have had this move in-hand wanting to watch it for no kidding a year and a half. The history is intertwined with Butt Numbathon 7 and the trailers we saw there for movies like Pepe and The Legend of Hillbilly John which spawned a semi-weekly get-together at Tim League's house to watch these ebay-purchased films as a group. On the night of our first meeting, we all noticed Tim's incredible poster for this movie hanging on his wall, to which he said he'd never actually seen the movie. Well none of us had although we all loved Stacy Keach and had heard bizarre things about the movie. So Jarrette ponied up and bought a DVD-R and put it in his car for the next screening night and there it sat for eternity since Tim then conscripted the group into watching Fantastic Fest screeners instead of real movies until today: a random Saturday where Jarrette's in town for the weekend and we're killing time before Pineapple Express. So I've now finally seen The Travelling Executioner. It's pretty bizarre. I guess it takes place during the first world war or so; Stacy Keach plays the state executioner, travelling from city to city in his carnival-esque truck and performing each killing with pride and zeal. Right off the bat he calms a condemned man into submission with this long speach about the fields of Ambrosia and how great the afterlife is, then the plot proper sort of begins with this girl who's due to be zapped but offers up favors in exchange for pretending the chair's been stolen. Thus begins a movie that should be dark but has a constant bed of happy-go-lucky Jerry Goldsmith The Sting-esque score, often swivelling between light, dark, weird, random, and downright creepy. Keach is electric and awesome with his long hair and lack of mustache. Bud Cort's also in it. So most of the movie is very decent, if not exactly what I was expecting. Then the ending comes and holy shit... I better not say anything about that. I think maybe the most fascinating thing about this movie is that it was made by MGM. This was a "studio movie." That's incredibly hard to believe. So yay! Finally got to see this!
05.01.08	Forgetting Sarah Marshall	Nicholas Stoller	As expected, I liked this quite a bit. I loved how in addition to it adhering to the rules of this kind of genre (Swingers) and keeping it a romantic comedy, it also deviated enough to make it feel at least somewhat realistic instead of completely formulaic. I also love how the new boyfriend is more than he has to be and you actually end up liking him and laughing with him rather than at him. This seemed like a real fun movie to make (Hawaii!) so it's lucky that it's also good, probably due to Jason Segal and his script. The editing is also very well done... most of the inserts and flashbacks are just as long as they need to be and use the cut for emphasis nicely. I know therre's a ton of material missing that will probably end up on the DVD, but this theatrical experience was nice and tight. Yeah, I liked this a lot. Solid comedy.
04.27.08	Clue	Jonathan Lynn	flames... flames... on the sides of my face....
04.23.08	The Guy from Harlem	Rene Martinez Jr.	Man, that guy from Harlem, he's a bad dude. Watch out. I seriously didn't know that Harlem was this magical experience playground for anyone wishing to be a detective, but I do now because it seems like ANYONE from Harlem can be a superman if they move down to Florida. Ahh, there's the rub. So the main thing about this movie is that it's inept, meaning it's cheap and bad and all the actors in it are bad and everything about it is bad. Lars described it in his intro by mentioning that a friend of his was surprised there was even a print of it because he thought it "fell out of someone's ass." And yes, it is that bad. I think they had one studio to make the whole movie because every room has the same carpet and the same phone and the same bottle of J&B scotch and the same bad lighting and the script and acting were such that I more than once thought to myself that I was watching an old 70s porno without the sex... and that's fun! I had a blast with this movie... Yes it's inept but I also got a feeling that a bunch of guys were like "hey, this movie making thing is nothing! Let's make a movie!" Of course, sometimes that works (Mean Streets) and sometimes it doesn't. It really freaked me out that the titular guy from Harlem looked so much like Will Ferrell. Same eyes, same lips, same faux-intensity... Eerie. I did think that the best performance and perhaps best scenes in the film revolved around my main man Wildman Steve. It's interesting that he's credited as "Steve Gallon" here and therefore has two entries in IMDb. I did a few google searches and found out a lot about the comedian, including that he passed away in 2004. I am retroactively sad because talk about an extra special Alamo guest... whew! Even in this movie where he's supposed to be playing a worried drug dealer, he can't help but throw in that bravado and energy that I remember so well from Super Soul Brother. There were an awful lot of awesome line readings in this but up there amongst the top was his last line where he says "ahHA! I feel better." I also love his thug in the pink get-up and everything he did. The next time I see a girl wearing the same color as me I'll make sure to sit on her desk and ask her out. hmmm, what else to say about this... Is there anything TO say? It was a lot of fun and hah HAH! I feel better.
04.20.08	Kentucky Fried Movie	John Landis	again not really any notes. i watched it to watch something... funny but mostly i remember how much of a kick i got out of it when i first saw it in middle or highschool.
04.19.08	School of Rock	Richard Linklater	no notes really... watched it because I'm sick and I like it.
04.19.08	Heat	Michael Mann	I've been playing this game called Call of Duty 4 and basically it's a bunch of I'm-so-badass firefights that reminded me of the amazing shootout sequence in this film. Plus I was in the mood to see everything that's great about this movie... the procedure, Pacino's line reading of "GREAT ASS", the beautiful LA photography, the completeness of a cops & robbers story well told. I liked it.
04.14.08	I Heart Huckabees	David O. Russell	That's NIHILISM, Tommy!
04.13.08	Rudy Ray Moore: Live at Wetlands	Donald H. Randell	Going through the Dolemite box set... I guess I was picturing more of a stand-up routine or something... What I got was Rudy Ray Moore singing blues songs for 90 minutes. poorly. Getting old must be hell.
04.09.08	Skatetown, USA	William A. Levey	Skatetown, USA. Man oh man. What do I say about a movie like this. Zack frequently notes how movies of the 80s (especially early 80s) were an era of fun; A maximum injection of fun filling each frame with something radical or dudical or tubular or totally awesome. Sometimes I don't quite see his point but this was a prime example of what I believe he's talking about. The movie starts with a ghostly afro-disco albino taking an elevator up to a DJ booth where he greets hello to his location and "wakes up" different parts of the building with - no kidding - magic white thunderbolts from his fingers. Lights turn on, glitterballs start rotating, popcorn starts popping (waking up the cook who's - no kidding - asleep on the edge of the counter with a hot dog in his mouth. This alone would've set the film's tone as woefully and joyously 80s goof but then... THEN... the DJ points his magic fingers at the floor and POOF! A roller rink filled with avid skaters! At this point, I stamped my passport and took a trip to a magical little place called Skatetown. A personal note: When I was a kid my school used to take us every friday to different "fun" activities nearby. We're talking kindergarten here, maybe 1st or 2nd grade, something like that. So one week we'd walk over to a nearby park and play on the playground equipment and take a hike to the hidden bamboo field behind the gate, another week we'd go to the public pool and generally invade. Then some weeks we'd go to the roller rink and try to skate. I was never any good at it. My balance has never been great and I've always been tall and from way up here, the ground looks far away and hard. So I was always the kid going back and forth holding on to the rail while everyone else got to dance to "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go." Never had it in me. Flash forward what, twenty years? Very recently I was more or less forced to go skating as part of a surprise birthday party. We went to Playland during adult skate night and I put on shoes that put little red spots on my feet that are just now going away and I figured that maybe, with my increased wisdom, intelligence, etc. that I would somehow figure out how to skate better than I used to. Uh huh, sure. Someone led me around back and forth on the carpet trying to explain how to do it and I couldn't figure it out. There was some core disconnect between my feet and my brain that couldn't allow me to understand how to propel myself forward. It just didn't happen. So I mostly sat and watched the other people skate. So I have real life experience in the modern-day roller skate environment. I know what it's really like. This is why I treasured Skatetown as the Disneyland Xanadu disco fantasy that it was. In that DJ's mind, that's his world; that's where he lived. I want to live there too. So there's a pretty long list of names attached to this (mostly minor) but I don't have access to imdb at the moment so you'll have to look it up for yourself. I will say that the guy who played the doctor was live in person and gave some entertaining thoughts on the film beforehand (i could try to spell his name out but I'd just get it wrong. Look him up too). Also, Lars had an LP of the film's soundtrack (graciously donated by Micah even though I claimed credit for working on Reel Distraction) for which scored of audience members made drawings on order cards to vie for after the show (Lars said he'd post the best ones online. He probably has by now). These events, along with excellent trailers for Xanadu and Roller Boogie, got the crowd in the perfect mood for the transcendental disco-beat journey they were about to take. The stand-out performance by far was Patrick Swayze's incredible screen debut. He plays Ace, the tuff leader of the local roller skate gang The Westside Wheelers who inhabit Venice and the Santa Monica Pier and therefore Skatetown itself. I love that he hands out playing cards to introduce himself. I also love that he wears a belt just to take off during skating competitions to thrash about and show everyone how angry he is. I guess I love most though that there's a whole gang trying to be tough even though they're wearing purple and their ideas of sabotage are things like itching powder, mirror reflections, and pea shooters. It makes the scene where the one crazy guy's peeling an apple with his switchblade about as authentic as Flip Wilson's vagina when he appears as his own mother later in the movie. The ironic thing about the whole skate competition plot arc that really drives the whole film though is that Swayze actually was a MUCH better skater and definitely should've won fair or fixed. I'm neglecting about a million things here. Billy Barty skating: awesome. That old guy throwing out dead fish jokes to Dorothy Stratton in a bikini: a personal highlight for me. Sow as the good guy skating down the pier to "Born to be Alive." And the minor subplot about pills getting ground into the mozzarella cheese for pizzas (Skatetown ground their own mozzarella and made their own tomato sauce!?!?) so practically everyone in the movie had to act like the pizza was great when in reality it looked like maybe the worst pizza I've ever seen anyone eat in the history of the world. I also loved how, you know, it didn't really look THAT cheap. They obviously wanted to get the movement and excitement of... rolling around in circles with wheels strapped to your shoes so the photography is high-gloss and fluid and surprisingly well-shot. The soundtrack is also chock-full of hits; I don't know if they cleared everything but whatever it's there! I think there was even a crane shot or two... a rarity for Weird Wednesday fare! This was one of those bombarding shove-the-awesome-moments-down-your-throat types of movies where you physically can't stop yourself from succumbing to the 4/4 beat and having fun with it. I mean, I want to move to Skatetown and I can't even skate! What's that say!? Maybe that i didn't get enough sleep? Whatever. Speaking of that though... I really have to start making it back out every wednesday. I think the sad truth is that I'll no longer be able to do both wednesdays and thursdays, but I'm really missing my Weird Wednesdays... It was completely revitalizing to see this movie. Skatetown! round and round!
04.05.08	The Night James Brown Saved Boston	David Leaf	One of the handful of movies I was sad to miss when I didn't do South By Southwest this year was this doc about the night after MLK was assassinated when James Brown had a show in Boston. The Alamo plays that concert every year on MLK day (I've seen it once; keep meaning to watch it again because it's great but there've been obstacles both years (ice storms and sold out shows suck)) so I already knew the basic story, enough to get me interested enough to want to see it. Well, lucky for me, it's on VH1 less than a month later. I know I don't usually include TV on here, and this was just an hour long, BUT I feel like it was a movie since VH1 ran it as a "rock doc" instead of a normal show and I would've reviewed it had I seen it at sxsw so... that justifies me talking about how there needs to be a James Brown biopic again, right? OK so whatshisname was blind and Johnny Cash drank so what. JAMES BROWN. That's the movie I want to see. Maybe now that he's dead Hollywood will feel free enough to dig into all the boring personal problems that plague every successfull musician and make an overlong overrated biopic about him. BUT, that overlong overrated movie will have a handful of scenes that are AWESOME, no matter how much drama payroll screenwriters try to inject. I just hope they get a guy who remotely approached Brown's dancing ability. This doc touches just a bit on biographical elements of the man and it's tantalizing. you can see the movie done already in your head. Anyway, this doc was good but really seemed unfinished. I'm not sure there's another 20 minutes there to put in just about this one night and really this one stretch of the show that's maybe 5 minutes long where Brown keeps the cops from getting involved with fans jumping up on the stage and managed to cool the crowd out when they're all massing around him like Stephen Hawking and a group of zombies (get it, because he has big brains and can't get away? eh?), but it feels like it needs something. Maybe more concert footage or something. I dunno. Anyway, it was pretty cool to learn about MLK's connection to Boston and the motives behind why the mayor wanted to cancell the concert (done with CG maps that we all love). The stuff with the Mayor butting heads with Brown over choosing the televise the event thus enabling ticketholders to get refunds and see it for free was fun, the mayor seemed a good interview. The intellectuals and black leaders talking seemed a bit grandiose but whatever. I loved the "film journalist/concertgoer" and how he fills out his stereotype so well. The members of Brown's band were also good but I could've used more musicians in the film. Get Isaac Hayes up there talking about if he'd go on stage or not or at least someone talking about how influential James Brown's music was. I feel like ever since Eddie Murphy's hot tub sketch and Brown's frequent legal woes in later life, the man isn't quite taken seriously by the everyday guy. I hope I'm wrong about that though... I love how in James Brown's music, the rythm and his band are SO tight and he's SO loose. anyways...
04.05.08	Alligator	Lewis Teague	Another one of those movies often brought up that I haven't seen. This was pretty good. It reminded me a bit of Pirahna not only in the Jawspoiltation aspect but also in that it's better than it has to be and probably better than it should be. Robert Forster's great and so are the jokes about his thinning hair, the gator... eh, looks ok but it's handled pretty well, but most notably - as writer John Sayles mentioned in the little 15-minute doc on the disc - is the tone. Teague got that perfect mix of humor and horror, injecting light notes to mix it up but not so much that it loses its tension, that makes a movie utterly watchable. I liked the THEM throwbacks as well.
04.02.08	Escape from Alcatraz	Don Siegel	Ahh the feeling of an itch finally scratched. Great stuff. Something about the tight storytelling and location photography always grabs me whenever I see it. I guess this is the first time I've seen it since watching The Prisoner so that adds another layer of richness for me with Patrick McGoohan playing the warden. Definitely like this one a lot.
03.30.08	Foxy Brown	Jack Hill	Felt like watching this again too. Still pretty damn good although I guess this got wound up with Coffy in my mind a little bit. I remembered Grier doing a little more ass kicking and a little less being in trouble, but oh well. The ass she did kick here was pretty sweet and I still appreciate how human and motivated she is as a character. Not to mention her figure.
03.29.08	Dolemite	D'Urville Martin	Going way back, I think Shaft was - of course - the first Blaxploitation movie I saw, probably spurned on by exposure to Pulp Fiction or something. I'm pretty sure Dolemite was second though. I first saw this in high school and remember it fairly well all things considered. Still, since starting this site and getting into so many new genres, I sort of felt like watching this again not only to revisit the original but also so it could be included in the site total for the genre. I've seen over 50 Blax movies now and have really loved most of them, so it should go without saying that I really loved this as well. I am Joe Blow, the loverman. Shiiit, You should be paying me! Here's two dollars; go get yourself some douche powder so you're clean for me next time. Me and Micah have talked about this in the past and I probably wrote on it for Human Tornado but I love how Rudy Ray Moore is so... unattractive. I also love how his pants that go up to his solar plexus have this pregnant hump for his physique. It's one thing for those rail-thin guys to wear that stuff back then but it was another thing entirely for Mr. Moore to sport it. You gotta love how he embraces his cherubic figure and the women still seem to think he's the best ever. Even better than Joe Blow. I got your boy hangin, you no-business born insecure jock-jawed muthafuckas! I also Moore says "muthafucka" with 100% absolutely perfection. I can't picture anyone else saying that word any better. Maybe Antonio Fargas but that's in a completely different way. Maybe for a wheezy death bed scene, I'd call in Fargas; otherwise it's got to be R.R. Moore. I think the trick is that he takes his time with it. even before he starts saying it you see the gleam in his squinty eyes and you know he's drawing in breath TO say it. It's coming. And when it gets there, it's just a perfect realization of sentiment. Fantastic. Well if it isn't the hamburger pimp. Still, in the end I think I prefer The Human Tornado. The charm and humor that comes from how rough and cheap this movie is (like when the camera stays on Dolemite as he walks all the way back to his car, gets in, and keys the ignition before cutting) still keeps the laughs spaced out. I feel like The Human Tornado spends its entire running length in the red zone, and I love how Dolemite in Dolemite acts like a real person who dips into his jive for his act but Dolemite in Human Tornado seems to LIVE in his act. Pretty much every line of dialogue is rhymed and delivered as if to a drunken nightclub crowd, which makes the movie that much more surreal and hilarious. This is great too though.
03.29.08	Cornbread, Earl and Me	Joseph Manduke	Two in one day!? What am I, some kind of fanatic!? Anyay, I didn't really love this one. It was sort of everything I was afraid Claudine would be: preachy, heavy-handed, thinly veiled with the social protest, etc. I was pretty glad when the inciting event in this movie happened and I don't think I was supposed to be. I did enjoy Antonio Fargas as One-Eye though. I believe one of his eye-patched was plaid or something... so fly. It was also interesting (although not particularly surprising) to see that Laurence Fishburne was always a good actor even as a kid. Too bad he's caught up in his whole Morpheus menacing gravitas thing now... I bet he'd do well with comedy... back to his Pee-Wee's Playhouse days. So yeah... pretty blah. Oh well. At least Claudine was a Pleasant Surprise. James Earl Jones' performance in that is growing on me already.
03.29.08	Claudine	John Berry	hey look at that! I saw a movie! I've had this about a month - a holdover from Black history Month - and thought it would be another Education of Sonny Carson type of heavy socially consciouss film about the hardships of being a single mother. So I put it off for a long time and, as usual when that happens, after watching it I wish I would've seen it right away. I liked it pretty good. Aside from a few scenes dealing with the flaws of the welfare system it was relatively light on the social polemic. Instead it's kind of a Marty-esque story of a single mother's romance with James Earl Jones the garbage man. Great performances by the actors, awesome music (performed by Gladys Knight and the pips, written and produced by Curtis Mayfield), and most importantly an authentic script. Pretty decent.
03.21.08	The Bank Job	Roger Donaldson	After Drillbit it was a toss-up between this and Doomsday but the showtimes worked in this' favor. Guess I'll have to catch Doomsday on dvd (or at least dvd rip). I thought this was quite a solid film. I think the based-on-truue-story-ness of it helped it a lot, especially in the heist-aftermath section of the film where you suddenly realize how much of a pain in the ass taking the wrong thing can be. The tunneler and con man's end bits had that we-have-to-show-it-because-this-is-based-on-a-true-story vibe of bluntness and Statham played well to type in his role. I don't know about Saffron Burrows... I guess she was alright. The rest of the guys were great though... I liked the period, I liked the complexity of the circumstances and the simplicity of the heist itself. It's almost like an anti-heist heist film since so little is about the planning and so much is about the circumstances. Oh, I also thought that the main spook guy had a great spook look, like half Sean Connery Bond and half Daniel Craig bond. I liked this a lot, not in a surprising way but in a solidly fulfilling way. I don't really know why I like heist films but I sure do and this gave me everything I wanted from one... well... I could've maybe used a little more planning but what it lacked there it made up for in aftermath, which is cool.
03.21.08	Drillbit Taylor	Steven Brill	So I'm slowly starting to realize that despite its impediment on my naturally nocturnal sleep schedule and taste for midnight movies, this new job that I have is actually pretty good. For instance, I got a half day today... So I spent it at the movie theater. This movie... made me realize how much Greg Mottola is responsible for Superbad being as good as it is. Because really, Superbad shouldn't have been that good. It should've been a lot more like this. This is like if Superbad was made by typical Hollywood comedy directors, saturating every scene with popular music in 20-second bites and relying on a Star to provide much of the humor that wasn't fleshed out enough in the script. I felt like pretty much everyone (especially the homeless guys) were wasted here, plots were either familiar or undercooked, and the few moments here or there were either ruined by the trailer or too small to remember. Not to say it's bad - I didn't hate it - but it is fairly mediocre. I did enjoy seeing 3 of the 4 original UCB members in separate roles. It'd be awesome if some movie inadvertantly reunited them, like they're all at the same recovery group or something. Maybe they're just on my mind because a) I saw them the other week and b) they have bit parts in EVERY comedy now. Again, I don't want to paint it like this is a horrible movie, it's just pretty blah and pg-13'd. The fight at the end is unexpectedly harsh though... those bullies (including Josh button-your-lip Peck from The Wackness) are... pretty unbelievably bullyrific. I'm glad I didn't go to school with them. I did enjoy Ian Roberts though and his anecdote about highschool... he really plays into his jocky looks well I think. I was actually really surprised to see a big ol' guy on him when I saw him live because he's usually so pumped. Anyway... It had moments, but I wanted this to be better.
03.21.08	Blow	Ted Demme	This ever happen to you? I saw on the guide that Escape from Alcatraz was playing so I was like "Sweet! I am completely in a mood to watch Escape from Alcatraz!" but then I see that it's on Cinemax and I don't have Cinemax so... now what. So I ended up watching this (and enqueueing Alcatraz for another day) instead, which is a poor substitute for the Don Siegel classic. But still... I remember liking this enough when it came out to pick up the DVD. I still liked the beginning everything's-going-great stuff but as soon as Penelope Cruz shows her little rat face the movie loses me. I guess it's because she holds absolutely no draw over me but I don't get why Depp would go so crazy over her and put up with all her chihuaha yammering. The movie is very anti-women with his mom already but Cruz is a 100% complete bitch in this movie and I spend every second that she's on screen wanting to reject her entry into my hot nightclub just to put her in her stupid place. Take that! Hah! Anyway, It's no Goodfellas, it's no Boogie Nights, but the first half, the truthful elements, and all of the supporting players still make it interesting for me.
03.16.08	Margot at the Wedding	Noah Baumbach	Jesus, is therapy so expensive in NYC that it's easier to make films? What a surprise that Noah Baumbach made a pretentious bickering movie about rich people creating their own problems! The charm and humor that saved Squid and the Whale (for me at least) is completely gone here. This downright sucked. Not a good time at all. Ugh.
03.16.08	Semi-Pro	Kent Alterman	Jackie Moon is no Ron Burgundy I'm sorry to say... I wish i laughed more during this. it was ok and maybe smirk-worthy but, like Blades of Glory, shows more signs of saturation than innovation. I still like pretty much every face in this movie, but eh... wish it was funnier.
03.12.08	Dan in Real Life	Peter Hedges	so... I've never really tried acting but can't see myself being very good at it. Since I'm not really in that world though - seeing movies through the eyes of a strict viewer - movies like this make me wonder how hard it is to be a good actor. I mean, certainly there are good actors and bad or else all those direct-to-dvd and softcore cinemax movies would be watchable, but I watch something like this where Steve Carrell, undoubtedly a good comedic actor, pull off really understated dramatic work (although I guess he did similar stuff in Little Miss Sunshine) and wonder how his turn happened. Could he afford top-notch acting coaches to give him is newfound dramatic chops? was he always talented and just now got the chance to shine? or was it all the work of the director, who managed to put Dane Cook in a movie without me being sick of Dane Cook. I mean I really don't know. That's not true, I do know. I don't believe the Seann William Scotts and Justin Longs and Macaulay Culkins when they try to be serious, so I guess Carrell's just a good actor. Anyway, I liked this a lot. Great ensemble with solid actors filling even the smallest roles, very understated and naturalistic performances, and realistic humor with bittersweet tinges of pain. Despite Juliette Binoche having absolutely no hold over me, I still kinda bought why these guys fell for her. The very end with his daughters driving with him was a little barfy for me but up till that point I enjoyed it quite a bit. And, dramatic chops or no, Steve Carrell made me LOL. I still don't want to see Pieces of April though. Maybe someone can tell me there's a sliver of humor in that movie to make it worth watching??? Didn't think so.
03.10.08	Into The Wild	Sean Penn	Eh. Well it was pretty. I liked most of the people he met along the way but overall the movie's way too artsy and poem-filled for me.
03.09.08	I Am Legend	Francis Lawrence	Will "Welcome to Earf" Smith is the last man on earth, err, i mean the omega man, oops I mean an aarmy scientist survivng in a post-virus-ridden NYC. So... I read the novella a while back and liked it quite a bit. I would go into the nitpicking about what I didn't like about this movie but all that aside, it was barely ok. Both endings are pretty terrible, actually everything after his costar departs is pretty terrible. I found myself getting into the beginning stuff though, which came as a surprise considering I was expecting to absolutely loathe it. The virus thing is played out though and I don't know why everything that wasn't Will Smith or his dog had to be CG (didn't they spend like a bajillion dollars to shoot on location? It looked like it could've been shot against green screen with Peter Jackson's model of NYC degraded with a few weeds filling in the background. Pretty blah by the end though.
03.08.08	The Wackness	Jonathan Levine	Secret midnight show. Everybody seemed to know it was The Wackness. I'm sort of glad I got there early as many people did show up (more about that below). I knew next to nothing about this movie, except that Jarrette and Eric both really liked it at Sundance. I guess I'll split this up into good and bad. The Good -Ben Kingsley was great in this, obviously trying to make it a good time for people watching. -It had good music. -it looked ok. -the director made a kind of funny joke about daylight savings time (pretty hard to do). He said that the movie's only 95 minutes long but we'd be stuck there for two and a half hours. Of course this became even funnier when the movie started (again, more on this below). The Bad -I didn't like the main actor at all. I spent the whole movie wishing he'd stop breathing through his mouth. I guess maybe he was playing that up in order to be a drug dealer that's actually a dork and doesn't get any girls but whatever. It made it hard for me to look at the screen. -It feels pretty needlessly autobiographical. I got severe reminiscences of 5-25-77 from this, especially when I'm watching him getting it on for the first time and leaving voicemails afterward. It may be alright if I haven't already seen 16 movies about this exact same thing. -The same goes for Kingsley's character. He was good in it but it's a shame his character is so familiar. -It felt too long. That may have been my fatigue since I'm old now and staying up till 2 makes me tired. -I was pretty bored by the end. Why cant the whole movie be like the first five minutes when his voice-over was much more stream of conscioussness and it cut to his daydreams. By the end it was just another mopey drama with everybody sad but ok with it and blah blah blah. Where's the fun that a movie like Rushmore has? or even Charlie Bartlett... oh well. Lesson learned. I found this to be about as overhyped as the director's previous film Mandy Lane. The Ugly -I think it deserves a special note that this was easily one of, if not the most FUBAR'd crowd control experience I've had at an Alamo. I know it's south by but come on. I get there at 10:20 for the midnight show (early as noted above) and the ticket guy, only vaguely aware that this screening exists, tells me there's no line for it yet and just to hang out. I see a friend at the top of some other line (filled with badgeholders - not knowing the schedule this year I assume there's a midnight show here), I start talking to him; ask him what he's seeing. He says the scret screening. Gee, there's like 20 people in line already. So I get in line and nobody understands the two randomly placed line ropes so it snakes around the corner and clogs the door. An employee asks the people to slide forward, in essence making two lines and the first one would empty out then the second would go. I ask him why they don't snake it around as a single line and he says they need to keep the center hallway clear. So I readjust to a safer spot in line but nobody else moves. Some minutes later, the same guy asks the next people to snake around. They ask if they can just walk forward to form the head of a second line and the guy says no, they need to snake. But he doesn't close off the heads of the aisles so now there's three lines that are snaked by the honor system. More minutes pass. Now all three lines are moving forward into the theater at the same time. Instead of being at the 33% mark we are at whatever-we-can-push-forward-to%. The line is nil. Everybody crowds into a newly-arranged more-or-less single file line to get into the theater but, what's this? a house full of other people are trying to leave at the same time that we're trying to get in. The forward momentum stops and now I'm being physically pushed back by cattle cars of people shifting in the limited space. They emptied the line too early; we can't get into the theater yet. They ask everybody to return to the lobby. I am now at the head of the second line, presumably behind a host of people from the back of the original line now queued in the first line. More minutes pass. The first line empties again but now the second line snakes instead of waits for the first line to empty; we go anyway. We get in the theater and four full rows are reserved. Scrambling ensues. Everyone seats; its now past midnight. Slight introduction from filmmaker (see joke above), the lights go down the film starts playing. No sound. Lights go back up, more minutes pass. Eventually (at maybe 1am) the movie actually starts. So in essence, even though the movie was only 95 minutes long, we DID have to sit there for two and a half hours. It let out at about 3:30am. Now, I realize that this may sound petty when you read it. Yeah yeah what's the difference you still got in and saw the movie before it comes out in July. I'd probably say the same thing if I wasn't there. But the truth is, as humans conditioned to stand in many many lines in our lives, a certain sanctity develops. Some people cut in front of other people, most people hate that whn it happens to them but don't hate it so much when they are the ones cutting. There's a belief that waiting in line entitles you to your spot and shows everyone behind you that you are more committed to whatever it is that you're waiting for. IT's the supposed American ideal that if you work hard you succeed, if you put in the time and pay your dues, you reap the rewards. it's only fair. Translate this to a lobby full of film geeks high on a festival opening weekend and you get a bunch of rabid dogs snapping and snarling. To wait an hour longer than the guy who sneaks in front of you at the last moment stirs outrage. Having to wait an hour and a half to get into a 95-minute movie stirs outrage. Especially if the movie's not that good. So anyway, I'm just saying that, in the moment, it was notable. Especially since I've been in so many Alamo lines and they've been doing this long enough that it really shouldn't be an issue. They should know how to orchestrate a bunch of people in their lobby by now. Extra points go to the director who got everybody's beers for having to wait while the sound issues were figured out.
03.05.08	Kill and Kill Again	Ivan Hall	Yay for going back to the Alamo for like the first time in a month! Adapting to a morning schedule and a mild bout with the flu has kept me away. I've been looking forward to seeing this movie since that night at Jarrette's place when we put his 16mm print of Kill or Be Killed on and marvelled at pretty much everything in the first reel. Lars had said that the sequel was way better so how could I miss that. Well, I will say that the motley crue that Steve recruits is pretty awesome. I especially loved when Hot Dog saw the four kug fu guys standing at his door and after talking to them for like 3 minutes saying "hey! you're getting the group back together!" like they all randomly appear at his doorstep all the time just to borrow sugar or play his weird variant on Russian Roulette. This has maybe the best premise of any movie ever. That Dr. Horatio Cane (I guess the EPs on CSI: Miami are big fans of this movie), in his studies to extract fuel from potatoes (enough to drive all the cars of the world to the moon) discovers a side-effect mind control drug and fake-beard Marduk tries to put it in the water. I don't know why this is but apparently James Ryan underwent a throat-er-ectomy or something in between pictures because his voice is now like a bad Scwharzaneggar impression. 115 lbs. of trouble... heh heh. Good one, Lars. why is soft lady playing mush mush? why does The Fly have a guy behind the wall picking up the little platform that he's sitting on? I think maybe this one is more consistently bizarre and low-rent and South African-sweaty than the first, but I have to admit that I missed Chico and the Nazi a lot. Kill or Be Killed will always have a soft spot reserved for its first twenty minutes but it does get pretty tedious toward the end. This feels like more of a (cheaply and quickly) polished experience. Things like seeing those "elite soldiers" exercising in the background so late in the picture really helped me from dozing off despite my white-collar fatigue. If only there was a cameo of Chico and his travelling puppet show... oh well. I can definitely settle for this.
02.29.08	The Valachi Papers	Terence Young	Charles Bronson plays Joe Valachi, a mafia soldier pinned as a rat by his don (Lino Ventura) so he turns states and spills the beans on all the terminology, structure, pomp & circumstance of La Cosa Nostra. This was more of a "isn't that interesting" type of picture than anything else in that the names are real and it probably stuck sort of close to the truth (for a movie anyway). It also has a really cool title. It's also fun to see how this plugs into The French Connection which plugs into American Gangster. Now all we need is a Gotti biopic and maybe something to connect Donnie Brasco in the 80s and the history of organized crime in NYC would have a fairly complete cinematic record. Anyway, this wasn't bad but perhaps a bit too long and blah-y at times. Still, I found it interesting enough.
02.24.08	Be Kind Rewind	Michel Gondry	I had high hopes for this one. Great idea, great trailer playing to everybody's strengths, and Eric said the script was great as well. How could it go wrong? Even kinda wrong? Reality does, that's who. About a month ago I started hearing that the movie sucked, which made me sad. Gondry's movies have always kind of been right on the border of being GREAT but falling just a few small steps shy. I like Eternal Sunshine and Science of Sleep quite a bit (Human Nature was too all over the place for me) but with both movies there's a vague thing (which obviously eludes me) that's either missing or too much of that keeps it from that perfect balance that some films get where it's a completely satisfying utterly rewatchable experience. I think all his films promise that and certain facets deliver, but the big pictures don't quite achieve whatever it is that I'm talking about. With this movie, I think the promise is seeing Jack Black and Mos Def act out movies. The problem is that we see all of them in the trailer and in essence their whole "sweding" process is boiled down to one shot in a musical montage. This should be like half the movie and instead it's maybe a minute long and BAM, all of these movies are made and it's back to the problems or whatever. Now, the reason (or at least a major reason) for there not being more movies in the film has to be rights issues, which although I'd feel differently if I were the owner of any of those movies, speaking as a consumer I think completely sucks balls. It's bullshit that Black & Def can't show me their Pump Up The Volume remake or Lord of the Rings or whatever. They can't for the same reason why they can't rent the tapes in the movie. Sucks. Hurts the movie to not have more of that stuff in it. Now, hearing that it sucked from a few people and knowing Gondry's propensity for melancholia prepared me for this movie I think. I was ready for it to not be exactly what I wanted it to be and as such I walked out pretty much liking it. I wish I liked it a whole lot more, but I don't think it's a bad movie and bet on second viewing there will be more to appreciate. I do think the Jack Black power plant scene is really strange. Why he has to be... the place he is... is crazy and I would've liked the physics to have been a bit more realistic, but I guess we're working on some level of fantasy here anyway with so many people getting into this childish stuff... so oh well. Another problem I had was the ending or lack thereof. I guess maybe part of me was hoping for some last-minute reprieve and the evil city council dude to come to his senses - which speaks to how involved I was in the film that I cared that much - but to not get any sort of coda or epilogue was jarring. I kind of hate that I wanted one since they're in every movie and that just means i'm brainwashed by the Hollywood system but... I do. I want to see Be Kind Rewind prospering in the projects and strengthening its community. blah blah blah. Bottom line: I liked it but wished I liked it more. It's weird; I caught myself laughing at trailer moments that I've seen like a thousand times now. "What's happening to our hood!?" still gets me. Apparently it gets everybody else too. The crying baby and people talking next to me reminded me how long it's been since I've seen a movie in a theater (and going back even farther, a non-Alamo theater). I hate that I don't live in a theater anymore. Messages from movie friends asking if I'll ever come to Weird Wednesdays ever again make me real sad. I guess I might be significantly less sad when I get my first paycheck and pay off my credit card debt, but still. Sad.
02.24.08	The Brave One	Neil Jordan	I had originally planned to see this in a double feature with Death Sentence since they both came out at about the same time and both looked equally mediocre, but oh well. I think I maybe liked Death Sentence more than this just because that had some laughably bad elements like dirt-poor street thugs with 80k vintage muscle cars. All this one had was (probably) body double breasts and a few headshots. The ending didn't really work for me and Foster's NPR show was dumb and... whatever. mediocre.
02.24.08	The Education of Sonny Carson	Michael Campus	Whew. What a heavy movie. Accentuated by Campus' rough direct work as a director. Not polished at all; very raw and uncomplicated. I'm having a hard time figuring out what to say about this so I might just quit. I wouldn't say it's a bad film at all, but I didn't really enjoy watching it and can't see myself sitting down to look at it again any time soon. Just too serious and heavy and depressing.
02.23.08	No Reservations	Scott Hicks	I couldn't really tell you why, but I kind wanted to see this when it came out last summer. Maybe it's because I've been watching a lot of Food Network lately, maybe I just like Aaron Eckhart, maybe it's my latent masochism streak showing through... who knows. Well I finally saw it. It's ok.
02.23.08	Black Shampoo	Greydon Clark	SO I'm halfway through The Education of Sonny Carson (more on that when I get around to finishing it) and those that have seen it know how serious in tone and far away from exploitation it is... and it's just such a heavy movie so to take a break from that and watch this is like waking up from a dream where you're drowning. This movie is so much fun! It's hard to figure out where to start and I'm sure I won't cover everything that was great about it but I particularly loved John Daniels' lead performance. I haven't seen Getting Over or Candy Tangerine Man but the DVD has a phone interview where he says he mostly just played himself throughout his career so I can't imagine him getting much better as an actor. He's pretty terrible here, but in the best possible way. His laconic delivery and steadfast refusal to emote make the superman aspects of his character all the better. Like I have no idea how he's such a hotshot hairdresser to afford some remote cabin in the woods and keep a handyman on full retainer, but I accept it. I also accept his awesome staff in the form of two effeminite gays and a smokin hot receptionist who inadvertantly gets him mixed up in adventure. Most pointedly, I love how much said smokin hot receptionist is naked in this movie. Wowza. Sure it's funny too and turns into an action movie at the end but it's also funny which is important. The music's great but also riding that edge of borderline incompetant. The grooves are funky but the actual scoring and mixing are pretty rough and it, along with many many other touches, makes that classic "good kind of bad" atmosphere where inept things are somehow enjoyable because its evident how little time (Clark shot the movie in 2 weeks) and money (for 60 grand) the filmmakers had to work with. And then there's the ending sequence... which I don't mind saying that I kind of didn't see coming. So this shoots up there to one of my favs of the genre as well as now being my favorite Greydon Clark movie. Of course I haven't seen Lambada: The Forbidden Dance yet (and Terror Thursday regulars know that I'm not making a joke with that reference), but still.
02.20.08	Man and Boy	E. W. Swackhamer	Blax western starring Bill Cosby as a Union vet chasing down the people who stole his horse. Pretty good, actually. Nice to see Henry Silva pop up for a second. The kid did an awful lot of worrying and crying though but I guess that's how it was in the old west. Horrible title.
02.19.08	The Monkey Hu$tle	Arthur Marks	there's a lot to like in this movie, like: -a 15 year old girl wearing a "sweet potatoes" t-shirt -Rudy Ray Moore laughing with Yaphet Kotto over... who knows. -the line cook saying stuff like "chicken! Plucken!" -this cuba gooding jr looking dude with a mint leisure suit and no shirt -an awesome catfight And really, anything with Moore and/or Kotto is great. THere's a bunch of kid stuff though that's... not so much. Wish it was more of the adults to be sure, but there's still enough awesome moments to make this enjoyable for me.
02.18.08	We Own The Night	James Gray	Another solid crime movie from last year. I particularly liked the car chase/attack scene with the score mimicking the windsheild wipers. Still not a huge Joaquin fan but whatever... good, solid.
02.16.08	Gone Baby Gone	Ben Affleck	Ben Affleck directed, Casey Affleck starring, buzz surrounding Amy Ryan's performance (duh! She's on The Wire! Actually Michael K Williams also has a small role here and that Titus guy from Deadwood's also in it; I guess Affleck used HBO casting directors or something). I liked it but thought it was a tad long. Still, I enjoy the leap in time it took even though you totally know it's not over just because there's still an hour left in the movie, gives it a novelistic feel. Decent solid movie.
02.16.08	Detroit 9000	Arthur Marks	Cops and robbers movie with great Detroit location photography. The exposition is pretty blatant and some of the performances are way better than others, but I ended up liking this one well enough. It was more or less a solid cop movie than anything else. Alex Rocco's fun as the beat-upon good cop. Um... not much more to say about this. I liked it.
02.14.08	Cooley High	Michael Schultz	Netflix calls this the black American Graffiti on their little summary note. You can't really deny it, although it feels a tad more like Porky's to me but maybe porky's is the Flordia Cooley High since it came afterward? Anyway, pretty fun watching the main group of kids get into hijinx and whatnot with a good Motown song catalog backing them up. I didn't know that Boys 2 Men song that was really popular like 15 years ago was a cover of a song from this movie so that's certainly something learned. Turman was pretty good here but I think the crazy thing is that he did JD's Revenge the next year. Here... well ok he doesn't look 100% young (partially because they dress him in old man clothes) but he certainly plays the part of a high school student and just a year later he's a 35 year old pimp. Crazy. I liked this movie... not loved nor loathed.
02.13.08	J.D.'s Revenge	Arthur Marks	I knew Glynn Turman was a pretty great actor but I haven't seen him in any movies. I have seen the trailer for this several times as it seems to be an Alamo favorite and I always thought it kind of cheapened the film and Turman's acting ability at the end when it flashes the title followed immediately by Turman saying very casually "...I'm gonna HAVE my revenge." In actuality, this job does a pretty great job of making the possession subtle and organic and that line reading plays in completely different context while I was watching. Actually, every second Turman spends playing the 100% JD part is awesome. Lou Gossett's also pretty good here but this is really Turman's movie. I feel like he's great in a barely-good movie though. There's really no tension or suspense or anything like that since we all walk in knowing it's about JD's revenge. I guess you spend the movie building up to said revenge and there are a handful of laughs along the way (like the doctor perscribing a break from the studies and a few hits of weed to get rid of Turman's headaches or his best friend telling him that women like getting knocked around every once in a while, saying that guys need to do a little of "that nigger shit to set the lines straight") but there's also a lot of familiar scenes playing out too slowly. Were it not for Turman's great performance, I think this might get pretty sloggy by midpoint. Anyway, I think I'm too tired to make it out to Weird Wednesday tonight (since I need to be up early for work like all the other non-midnight-movie-seeing chumps out there) but I think since I'm staying in I have enough time to fit in one more netflix: another starring Glynn Turman! Oh, how did I know he was a good actor without seeing him in any movies you ask? Well, He plays Mayor Royce on The Wire! Talk about a politician I can get behind! sheeeeeeeeeeeit.
02.12.08	The Klansman	Terence Young	This is a movie that should be better than it is I guess. Lee Marvin and Richard Burton with a supporting cast from people like Cameron Mitchell, Lola Falana, and O.J. Simpson as a murderer on the run with a script co-written by Sam Fuller. About the Klan. You'd think you wouldn't even have to watch it; you just know it's good. Unfortunately, it's pretty watered down and preachy in a very studio way although Burton's clearly drunk through the whole thing and it's pretty funny to see Mitchell throw himself through walls when fighting the supposed army-trained martial arts expert that is Richard Burton, Marvin doesn't get to chew scenery nearly at all. OJ's one scene where he hijacks Burton for a minute is pretty awesome just because it's so serious and life-or-death revolutionary but for the most part... blah.
02.12.08	The Black Gestapo	Lee Frost	This was one of the many movies that stood out for me when I read the book Sleazoid Express, comparing it to other race hate movies like Fight for your Life and Poor Pretty Eddie but with more of an action movie slant. I kind of tempered that expectation with the fun that's generally associated with the Bishop/Frost movies when I sat down to watch this. There were a few chuckles here and there (like when it cut to Hitler footage for the opening titles or when the white mobster guy enters a barbershop and says "Hello, Black gentlemen") but for the most part it was pretty serious-minded sex and violence. Kinda not as good as I thought it'd be actually. While the story was generally better than it had to be, there were still some slow spots where it seemed like everyone's method to seem more important or authoritative was to just speak slowly. I liked parts of it very much. Others, not so much. On a more personal bloggy note, I finally broke down and got a full-time job that's not from home, so I think I'll take advantage of my last day of freedom by doubling up on the race hate movies! I'm thinking Lee Marvin and Richard Burton.
02.11.08	There Will Be Blood	Paul Thomas Anderson	Felt like I had to see this again in the theaters because festival screenings have been known to be... exagerrated for me. I picked up a lot more on second viewing. The shot where Daniel realizes that his brother is off is amazing. I also found that at a certain point I was waiting for the last scene. And I still don't think it's clear enough that they're twin brothers rather than one brother pretending to be both. But whatever. The direction is impeccable and it looks gorgeous and sounds fantastic. Great movie.
02.10.08	Car Wash	Michael Schultz	I kind of let the first half of this month slip by without going on a blaxploitation bender but watching Human Tornado the other night really put me in the mood to explore more of the genre. Unfortunately I don't have much of a backlog readily available but I do have a handful on the netflix queue coming my way so let's get funky! First up is this movie more famous for its theme song than anything else. OK some Joel Schumacher fans may know it because he wrote the script (!) and people like George Carlin and Richard Pryor have cameos in it but it's not really a classic of the genre ya know? It's a day-in-the-life structure with a bunch of cool people working at a car wash with amusing anecdotes, mini-adventures, and lots of minor plot arcs scattergunned across 100 minutes. I had a good time with this but did find the lack of central plot or conflict a bit distracting. Although I like all the characters and the soundtrack supplied by an everpresent radio bullhorn sho is funky, I didn't find the pacing and overall effect great enough to make it one of the classic just-hanging-out movies like Dazed and Confused and American Graffiti. Still, I loved The Fly and Ivan Dixon and Antonio Fargas as a transvestite and it was weird to see Bill Duke still young before his Schwarzeneggar action 80s days. Like most movies of the genre, this was a fun time, but still kind of shallow and empty and maybe forgettable. We'll see with time.
02.09.08	Charlie Bartlett	Jon Poll	The one where the kid becomes a school shrink and hands out perscription medication with Robert Downey Jr. playing the principle. Although it's basically Pump Up the Volume grafted onto Clint Howard's character from Rock n Roll High School, it's still not a bad movie and kids today probably dig it. I did find it interesting that Pump Up the Volume is terribly subversive and rebelious compared to this. The ending of the two films are pretty much polar opposites. Is that a statement on the highschoolers of today or the current state of the movie industry? Probably the latter. This movie had me for about the first half but kind of fell apart for me once everything started coming together to make one big happy bow on everyone at the end. Of course kids don't like him because he has drugs! They like him because he FEELS blah blah blah. It gets awfully grown-uppy in the end and that rings totally and completely false. so it ended up being just ok.
02.08.08	Christmas in July	Preston Sturges	Kayla just borrowed my Preston Sturges DVDs and looking them up to see what all I had led me to this one, which I guess TCM never showed when I was going through my heavy-duty Sturges phase. I'm a big enough Sturges fan that when the DVD box set came out I already had half the titles on DVD already and I'd seen the other half save this one. In a way he's an easy filmmaker to study because he only directed about a dozen movies, making him a prime example of that flame-that-burns-brighter saying. Even of his modest number of films the last handful are noticeably inferior to his earlier stuff so really his work boils down to a remarkable run of 8 movies in 5 years, starting with The Great McGinty and ending with The Great Moment. Well ok, maybe ending with Hail the Conquering Hero since The Great Moment is a straight period drama that's not as great as his comedies (his O Brother Where Art Thou I suppose). Anyway, Seeing his second movie so late after I've already come to love many of his other films is a real treat. Like The Geat McGinty, Sturges isn't quite firing on all cylinders yet but you see the beginnings and especially that subversive cynical wit at work. Christmas in July stars Dick Powell as a working man too poor to marry his lady who hopes big by participating in contests for cash prizes. His latest entry is a new slogan for a leading coffee company and it's a real dud. He read some article where a scientist claimed that coffee actually put you to sleep but everyone thinks it makes you stay up so it ends up doing that through psychological means, not biological. So his slogan is "If you can't sleep at night, it isn't the coffee - it's the bunk!" which is pretty funnily bad and, in typical Sturges fashion, gets its complete mileage through the smart quick dialogue. The problem is, several of his coworkers fashion a counterfeit telegram as a joke and, once Powell thinks he's won 25 grand, hijinx ensue. I wouldn't put this at the top of the Sturges heap but it's definitely charming and funny and carries along nicely for its scant 65 minute running time. It is a bit of a one-off and gets a bit uneven toward the end but you know, it's still a Preston Sturges movie and better than most anything today.
02.08.08	Rustler's Rhapsody	Hugh Wilson	Very self-aware genre movies can easily become too caught up in themselves to be generally entertaining to people who didn't write it. I think depending on your tolerance for such things this movie is borderline but for me personally it worked great. The idea is a mixture of what-if elements of old b-movie westerns treated realistically today and Tom Berenger as a meta self-aware caricature. It doesn't quite make 100% sense how they characters can know how the world works and still fall into the traps but whatever, it's fun. Pretty inspired casting of Andy Griffith as the evil rich guy who oppresses the poor sheep herders and I also liked Fernando Rey as the Spaghetti component, supplying men in dusters and thousand yard stares when Berenger shoots all the local heavies in their hands. Plenty of the jokes tickled me, like the whore with a heart of gold who doesn't actually sleep with anyone, just talks to them and how the one guy after explains how much money 600 dollars actually is in 1861 or whenever when steaks cost a dime and whatnot, and a few times I LOL'd like the size of the campfire explosion and some of G.W. Bailey's performance (I think the only thing I've ever seen him in is the Police Academy films (which makes sense since director Wilson made the first one of those), he's does a pretty respectable job here though as the local drunk slash sidekick). Oh I also loved Sela Ward's moment when she finds out that Blackie, the local big bully's been killed, exclaiming to her father Andy Griffith that they did EVERYTHING together and how he was different because he could FEEL, and TOUCH. Great moment there. Mostly it's very clever in how it plays against the Western genre staples and makes for smirkful viewing. This would be a good movie to catch on a Sunday afternoon or something. I liked it. It was silly fun.
02.07.08	Welcome to Arrow Beach	Laurence Harvey	AKA Tender Flesh. Speaking of tender, Zack told the touching story behind the making of this film (Laurence Harvey making it once he found out he was going to die and even editing it from his deathbed) in his intro which gave the movie an added layer of interest, which is good because I thought it was mostly pretty slow. I think the one thing I'll take away from this is the line (and I'm probably already not remembering this 100% correctly) "I think he's killing people, GIRL PEOPLE!" Other than that... eh, I think maybe this movie was harmed by knowing he kills and chops up and maybe eats hippies. If I had no clue then it would kind of be a really bizarre shock but as is it takes a hell of a long time to get to the reveal (the whole movie really) and there's not much else. True, some scenes are pretty uncomfortably weird and I was pretty tired, but for whatever reason I didn't really connect with this one.
02.06.08	The Human Tornado	Cliff Roquemore	To quote Micah, Man what a movie. The more blaxploitation movies I see, the more I'm convinced that it's one of the major pinnacles of film as entertainment. These movies all seem to play to their audience with expert precision and astounding power. No other genre puts me in the mood to have a good time faster or easier than the first funky riffs and candid urban hand-helds of a blaxploitation. Take this movie for example: Rudy Ray Moore standing in some random field wearing an assortment of outlandish outfits mugging up kung fu stances as colorfully painted title cards filled with awesome names like Lady Dee and Java pop up and an absolutely stinky funk track lays down. From the get go I'm nodding my head, wide-ass smile on my face. So I'm already signed up to the Blaxploi fan club and watching this movie has got me in a mood to renew my membership for life. The successfull dramas of the period like Cotton Comes to Harlem and Brotherhood of Death are absorbing and interesting, the not-so successfull dramas like Deliver Us from Evil and Brother on the Run are now funny thanks to low production value and dated social trends. Even when they're dead serious like Penitentiary, they still find moments of well-earned brevity aimed right at its audience. I love that you can see the filmmakers' specific goal of showing black folks some familiar terrain with familiar faces and familiar stories and everything clicks together very loudly. Perhaps too loudly for mainstream genre cinema but since they had the fortune of a specific audience and didn't try a goddamn if anyone else cared, the films sing their own tune. Loud. Of all the genres within blaxploitation, I may like the comedies the most. While watching this I was strongly reminded of Thousand Dollar Nigger and how riotous a movie-going experience that was back in the old Alamo. Both of these movies are downright hilarious in a perfect mix of low-down budget, amateur performances mixed in with pitch-perfect powerhouse presences like Rudy Ray or Wildman Steve, and enough just-plain weird elements thrown in to make everyone scratch their head. I think I've already filled my pompous high-brow quota but there's plenty of talk about the nature of movies and how these random surreal overtones approach a "pure" use of the medium to be had if I had an hour to kill babbling at my keyboard. Instead I'll just say that they made everyone bust a gut. So I'm kind of talking about everything but the movie because I know there's no way I can do justice to the film in a few paragraphs; no way i can make a bullet list of all the great moments and get any sleep at all tonight. Instead maybe I'll just leave it as a pristine experience in my memory and as another highlight of my Weird Wednesdays.
02.05.08	Revenge of the Nerds 2: Nerds in Paradise	Joe Roth	it was on.
02.03.08	Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery	Jay Roach	Not sure if I have anything to say on this one. I feel like I've seen it a thousand times and it's been a while since Austin Powers has been "cool" but it'd been a long while since I'd seen it and hey... So anyway, I still think it's a very funny movie.
02.01.08	That Thing You Do!	Tom Hanks	It's no secret that I like this film a lot, perhaps love it even. It's long been one of those movies that I never have trouble watching to the end if i ever come across it on TV or whatever and get in the mood to watch it about once a year. It's not like deep art or anything but for the majority of the movie it's fun kids having the time of their lives so it's fun to watch. I remember when it came out everyone said that the song gets so annoying by the end that they hated it and I always saw that as a very consciouss decision on the part of Tom Hanks. The song starts out fun and catchy and slowly slides into the realm of overplayed annoyance just like any "hit song." And aside from that, it's also a fairly pleasant period film dwelling on the high gloss of the mid-60s. I just like it a lot. So I got the DVD for christmas which really made me exciting. This is a full-on two-disc special edition with a new director's cut of the film! And this isn't like the Commando cut which adds maybe 3 minutes of an extended scene and extra frames of violence, this is like a half hour of added material making the film an epic two hour twenty running time! I'm glad it also has the theatrical cut because that version has an energy that makes watching it completely effortless like it takes 20 minutes to watch. That said, I really really enjoyed the new cut as well. Most of the new material fills in some of the blanks that you just assume in the theatrical cut. It's still interesting to see and acts to solidify each of the characters, give them more of an arc and backstory, and supply that much more of an impression of the era and the bright-eyed zeal that these kids see the world with. There are also a few revelations like hints of the private life of Hanks' Mr. White and an awesome cameo by Robert "Bunny Colvin of The Wire" Wisdom. I think most significantly however is Shades' conclusion. I always enjoyed the final moment where he's just playing around on his drums after his band evaporated and Del Paxton walks in and jams with him, like that's really the ultimate gift of this journey that he gets to jam with one of his music gods, but this cut takes it one step further with him recording an interview with Del and a bunch of guys with him sitting in and taking the tapes to his new job as radio DJ for a jazz station run by Clint Howard. His future goes from choosing to bum around LA looking for work as a session drummer to radio DJ with jazz expertise and I enjoyed that a lot. All in all the added footage gives the film more of an epic feel which I never ever expected would come of this underrated Sunday afternoon flick. I just wish Hanks had a commentary track to talk about his first experiences as a writer and director and supply a little backstory on what happened with the cuts (although I'd guess they were all due to time as 145 minutes is a bit long for light entertainment) and how he found the cast, most of whom have gone on to larger careers. Still, I'll take what I can get and am a very happy puppy to see so much new material for a film I've always liked a lot, perhaps loved.
01.31.08	Without Warning	Greydon Clark	A Predator precursor (seriously, an alien (played by the guy who played the Predator) comes to earth to hunt humans, only this time he's bald and has throwing disc leeches at his disposal. Aside from the obvious connections, there wasn't much to do with the Arnie action extravaganza here. This was much more on a horror vibe with woods and dark and creepy people like Jack Palance and Martin Landau creeping around. They were both great here by the way, especially Landau as the crazed army vet named Fred Dobbs(!). Cameron Mitchell, Larry Storch and Ralph Meeker all had very small roles just to populate the movie with, as zack said, a belly full of old coots. Oh and a teenaged David Caruso also makes an appearance. Considering how tough-guy he's tried to carry himself as an adult, the whole crowd got a kick at how gooberish he looked here. Shame he didn't get a death scene. I liked this... I thought it was funny how Palance had "the secret" way to survive the throwing leeches by cutting them so they'd die then peeling them off with a knife, but when he's hit in the back he just accepts his death rather than handing his knife to the girl standing right next to him who just watched him do his patented cut-and-peel method like two minutes ago. I guess he had the touch. Otherwise that was a pretty great scene though because Palance threw the dead leech back at the alien and it was awesomely pitiful. Actually, for the alien looking pretty hokey and familiar, I liked how the movie treated him. I don't think you ever see him walk, he's always either just a shadow or just standing there acting all alien and whatnot. Like I don't understand this weird thing you earthlings are doing that you call walking! It's like you're falling but you don't! Let me observe. Note to alien: walking is how you avoid getting blown up. Now that I'm thinking pretty deeply about it, certain questions do pop up (did he build that shack to store his bodies in? was there some random shack in the middle of the woods going unused? who's random house was that? was there a secret hiding place in the kitchen? probably considering it looked like a three-storey house and inside it was like my one-bedroom apartment) that tell me that maybe I should stop here. It was a good time though. On a more somber note, this month has my lowest movie count since I started this site. To my recently-bored loyal reader(s?) I apologize. I guess I've been watching too much TV!
01.30.08	Julie Darling	Paul Nicholas	I'm afraid my notes for this are less complete than last week. I liked this movie (a seething melodrama about a daughter's love for her dad) and it had some great moments, but this movie worked on a much more subtle level in that there weren't constant laugh-out-loud moments or bizarre little touches easily summarized in bullet points. Still, I'll try: -I loved the little kid Dennis and they way he said "hey." The first time we see him he's standing all goofy-grinned on the pier while his mom hugs some strange man and he says "hey" then later when he chooses to play hide and seek by crawling into a nearly-closed old refridgerator and the evil daughter pushes it shut all he says is "hey!" -I loved the shock of nudity. While it was funny to see Anthony Franciosa suckling on Sybil Danning's big ol' titties, it really pegged the wrong-o-meter when it flashed into the daughter's mind and we saw her, topless, writhing in passion with her dad. I guess the actress was playing younger (or they have some fucked up laws in Canada) and got a huge reaction from the crowd. -the ending, of course, is great. A kind of giallo, Tarantino escalation of violence... that's cool. And I also wanted to mention Fanciosa's performance. It's pretty bad but the way he speaks - and I don't know if that's his real speaking voice or if he's putting on an accent - is pretty awesome. Kinda like George Takei after a summer in London. Umm... I'm sure I'm missing some good moments; I liked the film a lot.
01.29.08	Predator 2	Stephen Hopkins	told you! I may be in a small group when I say I like this movie. Sure it got a few things wrong with LA circa 1997 (like the Gerardo music) but it's kind of refreshingly mild with the futurism and moreso than that... any funny ha ha's with the future setting or whatever, it's a goddamn Predator in a goddamn city! Granted it's not as eloquent as the first one and we get much less face time with Danny Glover's posse than Arnie's but it also does some great sequelly things like adding to the predator's toll repertoire and of course the reveal at the end of the ship and skull trophies and the expansion of the universe to include the Alien species (I was always curious what the other skulls went to) so in that respect I'd say it's a successfull sequel. I think maybe the weakest point is that the predator more or less inexplicably targets Danny Glover and his friends to hunt. Yes, he also kills Columbians and Jamaicans and whatnot but when he goes into the subway i have to think it's about getting to Bill Paxton in which case what makes Glover so special? Is it because he stole his kill in the first scene? Is it because he just sensed Glover's innate hunter nature? I dunno... it's a bit weak. Oh well though; just a minor part of the plot. And I can't write a note on this without mentioning Gary Busey. I don't get why his torso doesn't drop when he dies but aside from that, what a cool idea to try and capture the predator and I definitely buy Busey as the bastard crazy enough to try it. So it's a real shame that the Alien vs. Predator movies suck so much (apparently. I haven't seen the second one yet). They both have so much promise and the design and mythology of both creatures is so rich and interesting... kind of a wasted opportunity. I also kinda wish we could get a Predator 3 though. I don't know what it'd be about that wasn't touched on in the first 2 films but damn if they aren't fun for me so I will always want more.
01.28.08	Predator	John McTiernan	Since I just watched Commando and since a friend of mine is remaking Predator for a contest and since I wanted to make tonight a double feature night, I decided to watch another of my 80s action favorites again. I'm willing to admit that this is a better movie than Commando. I don 't think quite as many people die and there's no garden shed mayhem but everything else is pretty superior. I love how it starts off as a pretty standard action movie (done very well I might add) and then steadily devolves to the point where it's just Arnie vs. Predator with no dialogue or anything. The whole gang is awesome each in their own macho way. I love how Bill Duke gets off the chopper in the beginning wearing a suit. Like that's his thing, shaving and wearing a suit. It's also plainly clear that McTiernan is a more capable action director than Lester. The film looks spectacular and the action is tight and controlled and clearly intelligible. I do miss the days before shakycam MTV blip cuts. Damn Gladiator. Damn Ridley Scott. Anyway, Don't be surprised if you see Predator 2 pop up here in the next day or two. Watching this got me in a mood to see that in a big way.
01.28.08	Commando	Mark L. Lester	I got the "Director's Cut" of Commando for Christmas. I Don't really know how many times I saw this as a kid but it was A LOT. Probably more than I should have. So it was interesting to watch special features on the DVD like any other movie and see deleted scenes and whatnot for this thing which I basically have memorized. It's weird that the 3 deleted scenes were longer than the additional footage in the new cut (which basically has one extended scene with Arnie and the girl driving to the Sunspot motel to meet Cook where Arnie explains that he was off doing special ops instead of raising his daughter. it's about 90 seconds long and replaces the awesomeness of not mentioning the mother or the human aspects of having a daughter (other than as a motivating factor to kick some ass) with the awesomeness of yet another action movie cliche in a movie akready rife with them) but that's good because in my opinion the movie's damn near perfect as is. One issue I had is with writer Steven deSouza and director Mark Lester saying it was intentionally tongue-in-cheek and self aware. I have to disagree. They're trying to make themselves look smart here and they should just own up to making perhaps the best specimen of 80s indulgent excess action. Considering it was produced by Joel Silver and made in 1985... I mean sure the banter with the girl was obviously intentional humor, her commenting during the fight with Bill Duke and on all the car rides along the way and whatnot... but the action itself? Maybe it's because I first saw it as a innocent youth but I don't detect any sort of wink to the camera about the absurdity of the violence or any of it. I mean what's the more plausible scenario here. Joel Silver, Mark Lester, and Steve deSouza are all sitting around a table. what do you think they said: a) Hey it's 1985, the action genre is so played out. How about we make a movie that's like a joke on itself and the sophisticated public can get it and enjoy it as a statement on the current popular trend. b) Make the explosions bigger. pass the blow. I rest my case.
01.28.08	Animal Crackers	Victor Heerman	It's kind of a shame that I didn't have this journal going in highschool or college. It'd be cool to go back and read my first thoughts on the "classic" films and my going through the AFI Top 100 and the roots of my noir love and all that. If I had all of that previous info in here, this wouldn't have to be the first time I have to write that I don't like the Marx brothers. Whatever the reason... not a fan. I guess I must've enqueued this one because i hadn't seen it and it gets mentioned as a "classic" and all that. I dunno. I started watching not expecting much different (since all the Marx brothers movies I have seen all run together in my mind) and ended up mostly sitting through it and doing facebook movie quizzes. It's funny. When I was in college I had a roomate that used to buy and read all these classic books like Moby Dick and Siddhartha and I used to criticize him for reading books he didn't like just because he was supposed to like him. Well, this isn't the first time I've watched something just to have seen it so Mike, sorry for making fun of you behind your back for reading books you knew you weren't going to like. I now see why you did it. And I still don't like Brian De Palma.
01.24.08	Tales from the Quadead Zone	Chester N. Turner	It's great that Chester N. Turner made another movie after Black Devil Doll from Hell. I wonder if he had some sort of distributor in place or weird deal with some company or what because they look like the home movies I was making with my friends when I was like 12. It was a pretty big shock to be watching the opening titles for this movie and see a "casting by" credit. That means that there were strangers in this movie! See, here's how I choose to explain Turner's oeuvre: Shirley Jones is Turner's wife. They made Devil Doll as something fun to do on weekends that doubled as their "private tape" to put on at night as foreplay. Chester knew this guy, David Ichikawa, who said "hey, the video market's booming right now. If you have a movie I can probably sell it and you can make a few extra bucks." So Turner makes a copy of his tape and hands it to David who re-cuts it to add beginning and end credits and supplies his own awesomely kickass theme song just to make it presentable and before you know it, Turner sees his fun little perv-proj on the video shelves complete with cover art. Wow, that's great! He thinks. Imagine how successfull I'd be if I actually made a movie for real! Hence Tales from the Quadead Zone. Utilizing in-camera special effects, custom artwork, intricate plot framework, and more than one actor, this is a (kinda) real movie with (barely) more than three scenes. It's much more polished than Devil Doll and I think it may be a better in-the-moment viewing experience, meaning it's not quite as tough to sit through. It's still only like 62 minutes long but it attempts to be an anthology. Zack had warned us that there were only 3 actual tales from the Quadead Zone but I kind of thought he meant three stories in addition to the wraparound. Nope. And not only that, one of the stories is like five minutes long. It's a pretty amazing five minutes though, recounting the harrowing struggle of a large white family who are so poor as to not have enough food to go around. Why they can't cut the sandwhiches in half to accomodate all 8 of them I don't really know, but whatever. So Zack's blog about this pretty much covered the bases. I was too tired to write about it last night and now it feels like I'm cribbing from him but I will say it was pretty awesome. Probably not as "important" to the history of cinema as Devil Doll, but definitely more polished and like I said, easier to sit through as you watch it. I think the idea or memory of Devil Doll is greater though... And what was up with the basement graffito of "1 2 3 4 5" ??? That was awesome. Awesome enough to laugh about for 23 minutes. And living high on the hog in witness protection program? Or being sent to the state gas chair? Great. Also great is the white line on the left edge of the screen from where the camera captured the edge of the printed title card when they saved the image. And a lot was mentioned about the boobie mug. I remember seeing a whole line of those in my dad's Easy Rider magazine as a kid, detailing the fun happenings in Sturges, SD along with the softcore centerfolds of ladies on motorcycles. I really think I came close to making this movie in my early teens with the family VHS camera and my neighborhood buddies. The only difference is we never finished our stuff and could never find a girl willing to have a fan blow on her face as if a ghost son was talking to her. But I loved how the movie started on a close-up of a Madball. I had that particular Madball and was just in Toys R Us the other day to find out that they've brought them back for the next generation except now they have rubber interiors filled with blood and plastic guts for an extra gross-out factor. So this movie is ripe for a re-make! Lots of fun with this amazing experience. I love that the Alamo subjected like 160 people to this. What other theater in the history of the universe would ever even entertain the thought of showing this?
01.24.08	The Pink Garter Gang	Jimmy Murphy	Longtime readers may remember a Reel One screening a while back where a handfull of new aquisitions ran for 20 minutes for the Alamo guys to check out. It's nights like those that are some of my favorite Alamo experiences (unfortunately they're not always full films so I don't write about them here) and one of those first reels was this film! So I was pretty psyched to see this because I remember it being pretty good in its first 20 minutes. I was right about that. Splinter's gang is awesome. Rebel is great at being a slob, Bongos is great at being a dufus, but most of all Roach is great at being sort-of British and having several people comment on his funny talking. My favorite line from his mouth is his first, where he proclaims out of the blue that there's this new kind of weed that's a real trip. Great Stuff. Then this girl wearing a pink garter comes in and starts an upskirt-flashing catfight and even though she's not actually IN the pink garter gang, Mick Mehas somehow gets the band of elasticized silk and comes up with a crack idea of using tough chicks to pull off a series of robberies and heists totalling a million dollars. So most of the movie doesn't really have any bikes at all. This is maybe the least biker-ish biker movie I've ever seen. Luckily, Splinter's crew returns about two thirds of the way through to bring more of that fuck-all attitude that bikers love to give off like musk. What can I say... I really liked this one. Even though I got a little tired toward the end (which actually helped it a lot. there's a corvette vs. copcar chase that seemed to go on for 90 minutes thanks to my heavying eyelids. It was hilarious), I still loved it and the very very end was indeed classic. The thing with this movie, as discussed in the lobby afterward, was that there were like 8 different subplots going on that were never really explained at all. For this kind of movie - especially considering the level of production and acting going on - I was really surprised by the layering and subtlety of the plot. Now, I say subtlety but it's a weird kind of drive-in subtle that's totally in your face but fails so completely at conveying information that it ends up being real sly. I loved when Mehas pointed to what looked like a mugshot of some lady and said "what about that lady, won't she be mad?" like we're supposed to connect the dots to the two other times we've seen her in the entire movie. She doesn't have a speaking role, she doesn't even have a name, yet she ends up being crucial to understanding the end of the movie. Classic. And oh the acting. Pretty much everything about the last 3 minutes of this movie is so... I mean I really don't want to say "great" because it's not, but... great! And it actually surprised me with the credits coming up because they had set something up so completely then didn't pay it off, but then they did. and it was great. Other moments I loved: -Mehas getting into the big-haired blonde's car and her walking out the store, seeing him, throwing her hands in the air and saying "why not!!?!?" -The whole conversation between Mehas and his dad at the beginning. His dad was great! I wish I could remember every word out of his mouth. -Keith Carradine filling out a tiny role as a beach-bum Fresca freeloader. -Breakfast Club principal Paul Gleason as an inept cop with an awesome black partner who doesn't like paying for coffee or getting out of restaraunt booths in conventional ways. -The uncomfortable moment after the main tough chick tells Mehas that the guy deserved the rough treatment because he was a guy and continued to stare at him as he drove on in awkward maleness. -The fact that Mehas' grand scheme to get money for his girls' pregnancy is to join a biker gang. -The fact that he's a member of said gang for all of 45 seconds before he quits. -The fact that his girl never really looks pregnant over the months that his gang is pulling all these jobs. -I'm sure there are more but like I said, I got tired. Incidentally, this is my 100th Weird Wednesday! It's odd how it just so happens that I've seen 50 Terror Thursdays. Do I love Weird Wednesday twice as much? hmmm. Anyway, on this centennial engagement let me just say that this series has drastically changed how I watch and what I watch for in movies, generally for the better. It's been easily my favorite part of the week for a while now and... I guess I'll say more about it after my next hundred!
01.22.08	Rambo	Sylvester Stallone	Everybody thinks this movie will suck but they also thought the last Rocky would suck and I liked Rocky Balboa quite a bit. Well... OK so basically everyone in the theater sat watching the bad TV actors talk about peace or jesus or whatever patiently enough silently waiting for the violence to start. The early stuff goes on a bit long although the whole movie seemed to go rather quickly (maybe that's due to the very simple plot). Then the violence starts. the spectacular cacophony of violence. It's fast-shuttered and visceral and raw and worth watching even though all the blood is digital but who cares. People get blown up, huge holes appear in people chests, heads get lopped off, etc. Most of the shots were so quick that you barely have time to register how awesome the gore is so you don't notice the cheap CGI but the last guy rolls down a hill and it's very noticeable. Shame. And really if you think about it, the action climax is really kinda lite. I dunno, I enjoyed myself in the moment and there's definitely something to that but afterward I was hit with a feeling of "that's it?"
01.17.08	Troll	John Carl Buechler	Terror Thursday at South lamar. You know... I never thought I'd say this but after this summer's Weird Wednesday experiences there I really don't mind these midnight shows at South Lamar at all. In fact I kind of prefer them. I don't have to worry about parking, there's plenty of room for the line, and room to talk with your friends afterward. I guess I'm just getting old or whatever... going downtown is definitely less of a draw for me nowadays. Anyway, I guess I'd heard about the whole Harry Potter connection before but I'd completely forgotten about it along with anything else I may or may not have ever known about this movie. So it was fresh and surprisingly good! The make-up effects were really good and I loved how all the little creatures looked (especially the one that looked kinda like Rodney Dangerfield and the one that looked a lot like the Austin Chronicle's Lewis Black), Michael Moriarty was GREAT as the dad. I loved it when he jammed out in the living room. The little girl was also great (although the boy was really bad. REALLY) and the scene where the girl's running around on a sugar high and we meet all the tenants of the building is actually super well-constructed and played really well by everyone involved. Color me surprised. And then when I think it's getting kinda old, all the little creatures start singing! It's like Magnolia but makes more sense. I also loved June Lockhart's thing about what day they dropped the Hiroshima bomb and how that would be a good thing to look up. Oh, I also also thought it was cool to get her daughter to play the young version of herself, and how Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Brad Hall play a couple and ESPECIALLY Sonny Bono's unique brand of swingin bachelor. All the tenants are pretty great and the creatures were cool and funny and my lids only got heavy right at the end which, to be honest, I sort of thought would happen much sooner. Good, funny times. I'd always heard that Troll 2 had nothing to do with Troll 1. There are actually a couple similarities. The troll looks _kind of_ the same as the ones in Nilbog (but much better), he turns people into plants, there's a lot of the color green going on, and the dad's in both of them are awesome. Zack said it had more to do with the Troll 2 guys not getting permission from the Troll 1 guys before making it but... isn't that some sort of Italian filmmaking tradition anyway?. So yeah, had a good time with this one.
01.16.08	The Yin and Yang of Mr. Go	Burgess Meredith	proper notes tomorrow (assuming they dont fall out of my head as I sleep), but the short answer is I really liked it until I dozed off. This movie was lots of fun. Jeff Bridges was great as a James Joyce wannabe with loose morals and a deserter's desire to be free (He seemed to feel almost as strongly about it as whats her name in Group Marriage). Burgess Meredith was awesome as the acupuncture guy (not to mention directing this... thing called a movie), and James Mason is also terrific as the half-mexican / half-chinese gangster Mr. Go. The fact that the movie starts off with voice-over from Buddha says a lot about what kind of movie this is. Completely off the rails and a huge mess. A fun mess though. So I had a great time with it until my fatigue caught up with me and I started dozing off which didn't help the plot at all through the last 20 minutes or so. All I know is that at the end Jeff Bridges gives out a super secret laser rocket blueprint or something like he's throwing out T-shirts before an advance movie screening. my favorite sequence is probably when Bridges lures some guy into a homosexual tryst being filmed for blackmail purposes. The actual footage that we get glimpses of is hilarious. Kinda wish I could remember more of it. Daniel says it's available on Amazon for a penny. OH! The music! awesome awesome 60s pop fluff songs that are really amazing and don't fit the movie AT ALL. they are maybe the most out-of-place songs I've ever heard in a film. so yeah, good stuff.
01.13.08	Pecker	John Waters	For some reason I thought this was based on a true story, so it was weird when little Waters-ian touches would peek through like a lesbo bar named The Pelt Room and the boss at the gay bar named Mr. Nailbox. So... that was a fun little realization as I watched. I liked Waters' caustic wit much more when its tempered a bit with normal storytelling like it is here. Umm... yeah that's it. I'm tired.
01.13.08	99 Francs	Jan Kounen	Screener night at Tim's. I didn't go to the first few so I figured I should make an appearance lest I get deleted from the list. Turns out I was the only one there, which was a bit odd. At least I learned that Tim's just as in love with The Wire as I am. So this movie... French... about an ad designer undergoing a meltdown. Visually it's very pretty and clever and busy like watching 90 minutes of the visual effects shots from Fight Club and Stranger Than Fiction. The problem is that the story is drab and all over the place and too familiar to be anything more than mildly entertaining. I've seen excessive coke binge sequences before. There are some pretty slick visuals and a kinda funny albeit gimmicky switcharoo ending (claiming that you are a test audience and here's alternate ending #1) and the film ends with an ad for its own DVD, but it's just not enough to call all the way good. A couple moments but whatever.
01.11.08	Valley Girl	Martha Coolidge	Another one where it felt like it had slipped through the cracks for me or something. Like people are surprised I haven't seen this. For all those people, hello! I'm a guy! I'm not SUPPOSED to have seen this? I know this now. Probably not a bad movie. I can see why girls who grew up with it like it. It just has nothing for me though. At least Fast Times at Ridgemont High attempted to give multiple points of view. Here all the boys seem either thuggish or foppish and it's so totally and completely a girl movie that I don't think I'm supposed to like it for anything more than I do: Frederic Forrest as the dad, seeing Dottie from Pee-Wee's Big Adventure's boobs, and the 80s fashion/music.
01.10.08	Superbad	Greg Mottola	Still funny! imagine that.
01.10.08	Legend	Ridley Scott	So I saw this when I was a kid and only remember that I didn't like it much. Since then several Ridley Scott defenders have brought this up in the "your opinion means nothing until you've seen ____" vein so I figured I might as well revisit. Here are the nice things I have to say about it. Very pretty. The make-up is great, Tim Curry looks great. Everything else you can assume I didn't like.
01.10.08	Desperate Living	John Waters	To be honest I watched most of this movie with the commentary track. I got the basic gist of what was going on but didn't feel like sitting through the film for real before going back and listening to Waters' generally entertaining audio. This time Liz Renay was also interviewed so her interesting life perspective was also shared. I guess I've pretty much filled in the gaps with the early Waters stuff (not sure I'm willing to sit through his pre-Pink Flamingos stuff). Oh there's Pecker. Guess I should see that too sometime just to be completist (and i like his later work much more). good for me.
01.09.08	TerrorVision	Ted Nicolaou	Jon Gries was here again. The Napoleon Dynamite feast and Real Genius Quote-along were not quite my bag and charging 5 bucks for WW was also pretty crap so I wasn't gonna go but Jarrette pulled the whole leaving town thing and basically guilted me into it. Jon Gries was fun (again). The erotic art and the guy from Whole Shootin Match were my favorite parts of the movie (again). It was genuinely good to say hi to all the Alamoans whom I haven't seen for like a month. And I got to find out about a trailerthon that seems to have just popped up out of nowhere this weekend. So I guess it was worth going. ha ha. I bet that reads SO negative. It was a good time for real. I swear.
01.08.08	Boogie Nights	Paul Thomas Anderson	wow is this really the first movie I've seen this year? whew. I guess I've been watching too much TV. Did I mention that The Wire is good? So is this, but I feel like I've talked about this movie forever. I ended up watching this in two parts though (stopping after Amber Waves' documentary) and this is the first time I've watched the movie and kind of seen cracks in it. The second half without the stellar first half to carry it kind of splinters into pretty disparate scenes Dirk's whole drug problem is really sudden and a lot of ideas are thrown out fairly quickly when compared to how it began. I also really wish they had the scene at the end where Dirk revisits Cheryl in the deleted scenes. Afterward I watched the John Holmes doc on the second disc of Wonderland for comparison. They use a few clips from the Johnny Wadd movies and one scene where Holmes is standing next to his director that are near verbatim from the Boogie Nights homage. Pretty interesting. if, you know, you're into that kind of thing. So i really had no end-of-year reflection this year. I don't know if that's because I've been in a movie draught for the past month or what... I think this past year is more my usual average though. 2006 seems to be the pinnacle of movie-watching for me (I still can't believe I saw 70 movies that July). With Real Life things intruding into my free time I foresee no more all-night binges or 5-movie days in this coming year. Heck, I don't even have a South By badge. So we'll see what the future holds.
12.31.07	Walk Hard	Jake Kasdan	In certain respects this is just a one-joke film, but the joke is funny and ripe and well-executed throughout the entire film. I liked the everybody-having-a-good-time vibe from all the actors and thought the songs were smirky but some of the more random elements like how his first wife wants a candy house and his PCP Zeus-ian rampage were really hilarious. I laughed a lot but you know, I'm into these guys.
12.28.07	Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines	Jonathan Mostow	My dad thought this was stupid but I disagree. The crane chase is freakin intense and huge and worth watching the movie for alone. Plus you also have all that fate stuff that argues against the second film and the apocalyptic ending. Pretty cool stuff for a part 3 I think. It still probably could've been better with Cameron helming but whatever... I don't feel it's a complete failure or anything like that. Sure the "talk to the hand" stuff is a bit corny but oh well.
12.27.07	Les Enfants Terribles	Jean-Pierre Melville	So I think I should see this again someday when I'm not so preoccupied with reading the subtitles. I think all the talking distracted me from the acting and everything else that makes people love this movie. I thought it was ok and there were several little director-y touches that were great but... it took me a while to get through it. I was also waiting for the sister to get naked which... was probably unwise.
12.27.07	Apollo 13	Ron Howard	We went to the Air & Space Udvar-Hazy museum today and saw the Space Shuttle Enterprise and everything else in the space hangar which made us want to watch From the Earth to the Moon. Since we didn't have 12 hours on our hands we watched this instead. Probably the pinnacle of Ron Howard's dramatic work for me. I like some of his other movies but do think this is his best. It's funny... I remember when they were making this movie EW cracking wise saying they were making a movie so exciting that the NASA transcripts put people to sleep. Who's laughing now, Enetertainment Weekly? WHO'S LAUGHING NOW!?
12.26.07	Jaws	Steven Spielberg	...so we did.
12.26.07	Blue Water, White Death	Peter Gimbel, James Lipscomb	I got this on DVD for Christmas and my mom showed interest due to the sticker saying this was an inspiration for Jaws. On second viewing I'm even more struck by how entertaining the film is. Perhaps not by documentary standards but just as a film. I LOVE it when the still photographer chucks the air tank into the ocean with no line or anything. That poor guy's time in the shark cage is both hilarious and frightening at the same time. I was still fairly convinced that the whole thing was a construction. I mean what kind of grandiose early-70s idea is it to travel the world in search of the Great White shark? How can one trip yield so many seaworthy cliches? And what about those dialogue scenes? "Hey kiddo, don't you think we can get out of the cages?" and the final decision to go to "Dangerous Reef" in South Australia... I don't think so. On the DVD, there's a short special feature documenting some Beneath the Sea convention where many of the original crew popped back up. It's immedialtely hilarious to see Mr. "Those brutes just can't stand that sort of rough treatment" philosopher sporting an eyepatch and to see what years out in the sun have done to the Taylors, but then it gets into a bit of the making of the film. As it turns out, they say most of the film is complete verite except scenes where they had to film do-overs because they didn't capture the initial discussions. So since those scenes are so completely obvious, that makes me think that these guys aren't good enough actors to fake the stuff that isn't... which makes the film all the more amazing in my eyes. It put us all in a mood to watch Jaws...
12.26.07	Live Free or Die Hard	Len Wiseman	No more believable the second time around. In fact I'd say this fared pretty poorly on repeat viewing. Kind of a shame that the story has to be completely ridiculous. I wonder if there's anybody out there that really believes that government facilities look like how they do in the movies. Anyways...
12.25.07	Ocean's Thirteen	Steven Soderbergh	Merry Christmas!
12.25.07	Rocky Balboa	Sylvester Stallone	Merry Christmas!
12.25.07	The Bourne Ultimatum	Paul Greengrass	Merry Christmas!
12.24.07	A Christmas Story	Bob Clark	A Christmas staple since as far as I can remember. Probably since it came out. It still manages to make me laugh. This time around I got a particular kick out of how the dad says "well it's a blue ball!" as he's opening the incredibly heavy gift just dropped into his lap. Like he'd actually get a heavy blue ball like that's a real gift that he wanted. Anyways, Merry Christmas, everyone! Or happy alternative non-consumer-driven holiday!
12.23.07	Dark Passage	Delmer Daves	The third Bogey/Bacall movie, this one notable for having the first half hour or so told from Bogey's POV then the next half hour with him in face bandages from plastic surgery. I bet the studio bosses were thrilled at the prospect of not seeing their leading man's face for two thirds of the movie but hey, Bacall looked better anyway. It's also kind of notable because for the most part Bogart plays against type here. Usually he knows all the angles and stands as a pretty tough guy but here he's all the way into the vulnerable innocent man role trying to get by in a world that's out to dick him. And dick him it does. Maybe the best thing about this movie is the constant sense of threat out in the real world. Every random guy coming up to the camera and talking to prison-escapee Bogey seems like he's a mob knee-breaker taking five to get coffee. This guy gets NO breaks. Noir staple, sure... but that doesn't mean it's any less effective. Pretty much all the supporting players are really good, smart script, gorgeous photography boh with all the tricks in the first act to pull off the first-person POV before there were hand-held cameras and with all the location work in San Francisco, wonderful score by Franz Waxman. Even Basically a prime example of Golden Age studio filmmaking. Great movie
12.23.07	Die Hard	John McTiernan	Keeping with the Christmas mood... I guess it's really been a while since I've seen this last. Big surprise it's still good. I remember seeing this in the theater... I guess I was like 10. That's pretty cool. One of the best action movies of the 80s for sure although Reginald Veljohnson's "i shot a kid" scene seems to ferment. I love that the limo driver's name is Argyle and it seems like Bruce Willis goes out of his way to say it as much as he can.
12.22.07	National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation	Jeremiah S. Chechik	Not much to say about this one. This is more or less a tradition with my family; I wrapped presents for most of it.
12.21.07	Heartbreak Ridge	Clint Eastwood	Hmm. I guess this came out first but its similarity to Full Metal Jacket is enough to warrant comparison. It's mostly a movie about training marines via a roughneck gruff-ass old-timer that takes no shit and spouts colorfully lewd sayings followed by real combat that's not as good. Except as good as Eastwood is as an actor, he's no R. Lee Ermey and as OK as Eastwood is as a director, he's no Stanley Kubrick. As usual, the romantic interest in an Eastwood film is terrible, but I think the big things that spoiled this movie for me were Mario Van Peebles and his character and the rest of the troops. These guys make the dudes in Cadence look tough. Maybe someone thought it was a good idea to take a no-BS army dude and pair them with screwball comedy idiots but not me. Any cool points Eastwood earns with his badassosity are immediately mooted whenever Peebles appears with his unplugged electric guitar. Why doesn't he ever wear a shirt in this film? I guess it WAS the 80s.
12.19.07	Magic Christmas Tree	Richard C. Parish	Heading home for the holidays tomorrow but I had to come out for one last WW of the year to see this again. Again I felt very sorry for any kids forced to watch this while their parents went bowling or to martini lunches or whatever they did in the mid-60s. I think the movie has 7 scenes total and a good 3 of those are meaningless and tacked on. The highlight for me is probably still the dad starting the mower and mowing the lawn (have to mention the starting because I think it took him longer to do that than to actually cut the grass)/mom talking on the phone about casseroles and whatnot/turtle eating clovers scene. It's so tense! What's gonna happen next! I DON'T KNOW! It seemed longer this time. Like I remember the people chasing after their vehicles but I don't remember so much of it. But what's funny about that is that I also remembered the giant but thought there was much more of him! I guess your mind plays crazy tricks on you when you're exposed to something this great. So I loved it. It was a great final WW experience of the year for me. I really hope they play it every christmas.
12.19.07	The Wire	Various	The Wire. When I started this site I gave myself two rules: I wouldn't create an entry for a movie I didn't see all the way through (or at least sit through. Sleep and multi-tasking are allowed) and I wouldn't include any TV. So why am I putting The Wire on my site? Here are a few reasons (that people who already watch the show invariably know): -It's the best show on TV. Maybe ever. -Each episode (and certainly the show as a whole) is better than most movies -It's my journal so I do what I want. Plus I just re-watched seasons 1-4 in anticipation of January's premiere of season 5 so I'm in the mood to talk about it and it also explains why this site has been so inactive lately (hey, close to 50 hours in 9 days isn't too shabby). So if you've heard about the show and wonder what the deal is, or maybe you've seen an episode or two and wonder why people love it so much, keep reading. If you don't like the show get the hell out. It starts with a solid 12 hours of detail-oriented completely authentic police procedural. Kind of a modern-day take on cops n' robbers with a healthy dose of cynicism thrown in. The first season of The Wire is pretty straight forward. Sure it's harder to follow than the average network hourlong and the urban dialect is easy to lose amongst white suburbia but as you watch hour by hour, the verisimilitude seeps into your blood and you start to follow even if you don't necessarily understand every word. At its heart, it's one case. Good guys vs. Bad. But it's also about the institution. On both sides, people try to buck it and get unceremoniously crushed. I remember watching the first season as it aired and seeing the last episode and having no clue how there even COULD be a second season. I mean even if HBO was crazy enough to bring such a baroque tome of entertainment back to viewers more accustomed to the weekly whacks and psychoanalysis of The Sopranos. The Wire is probably the show most in need of patient and committed viewers. It's a show born for DVD consumption. Watching week-to-week is ultimately frustrating and wildly random. Why the fuck are we watching stevedores drinking in a bar? What's going on here? The Wire is a show my dad doesn't have time for. He thinks that nothing happens because he needs both the context and the attention to see that the little things that go on from scene to scene lead to huge ramifications down the road. So the first season sees a bunch of cops coming together to do REAL policework against an entrenched drug organization. Some of the cops are smart, others are dumb. Some of the drug people are likable, others are not. In the process we see glimpses of how Homicide works, how Narcotics works, how the Western district of cops in Baltimore handle it. Glimpses of a real world on the outskirts of the show's stated mission, glimpsed for us to ponder or discard depending on how interested we are. In the end, the case almost comes together but still ends up pretty good. Some bad guys go to jail, others don't. Some cops are rewarded, others are punished. The detail that the show was about however was disbanded. Every main character back to their own world. The last episode speaks finality. For those that have seen the show on DVD, imagine watching HBO and seeing the teaser for seaon two: A body floating in the river and the words "A New Story Begins" flashing on the screen. Imagine watching the first episode and the rest of the season not knowing there are 3 more seasons to come. The Wire's second season is a huge departure. It picks up a completely different set of characters, follows our old favorites like they were supporting players, and deals with a completely different area of Baltimore. Hell, even the theme song is different. And just like other detouring sequels (Super Mario Bros. 2, Castlevania 2, Zelda 2) this is perhaps my favorite season. Seen in the context of seasons 1-4 it seems pretty disconnected but the feeling of watching it on first-run and the ballsy freedom that the showrunners must've had stays with me. I love both the Sobotkas and the Greeks. Now that I've read George Pelecanos' books a lot of the greek stuff has indirect references to his work which is cool. The big theme of the season is the death of Work in America. Again, it's very cynical and dark, the outcome is not positive, but that's reality. Re-Elect Frank Sobotka. Season 3 is probably the best season of the show. It has my favorite theme song and Buny Colvin and the whole Hamsterdam thing is amazing. Meanwhile Bell's also trying to reform the drug trade and, once again, those who truly buck against the (oft-broken) system are crucified. Season three's also great because of Dennis "Cutty" Wise. He's a truly Pelecanosian figure and it's great to see him progress from newly-ex con to getting his life going. All of the actors are great but that guy in particular is really fun to watch. Same goes for Robert Wisdom (Colvin). The scene where he schools Carver on being a police is perhaps the highest peak in the Himalaya mountain range that is The Wire. Of course all the Oz alums are great too (Daniels, Carver, Bodie, Rawls, mayoral assistant cief of staff Norman Wilson, and Cheese were all Oswalt State inmates at one point) not to mention Omar and everyone else. Really, when it comes to craft and behind-the-camera accomplishments of the show, the gushing gets hard to control. Every aspect is designed and executed so well with such a consistent and elaborate sense of focus, continuity, and connectivity that astounds me. Really it's hard to come up with all the compliments to lay down the line; it'd get boring. Season 4 saw another departure when 4 kids were suddenly the stars of the show. Just like the dock workers in season 2, 4 was in a completely different world. What made it extra interesting was that the show flipped from inner city school children to mayoral candidates - from the absolute smallest aspect of Baltimore to the absolute largest - and the show connects them thematically. Again there's the punishing institution but in the second half of season 4 we finally get a ray of light. A new mayor brings the threat of a changing system. Will it hold? Seasons 1-3 point to "Not Likely" but until january the official answer is "ask again later." So let's see. After just shy of 50 episodes, what are some of my favorite things about The Wire? Sure I just said that every aspect of the show is superb but come on, there HAS to be highlights right? -Omar. For sure. Omar's one of the most entertaining and interesting characters of the last decade or so both in TV and film. He's the most explicit manifestation of the show's Western influence: a lone gunman bound only by his code. He IS Ethan Edwards or The Ringo Kid except, you know, gay and living in Baltimore and robbing drug dealers. Again, imagine watching the finale of Season 1 seeing Omar return from his jaunt to NY. For a character that could've only existed in season one to give the cops realistic leverage over the Barksdale people, I'm so glad he's a main character and we get to follow his future adventures throughout the show. -The Homicide detectives. And not just Bunk. Reading up on the show, one finds out that dearly departed detective Cole is none other than exec producer Robert F. Colesberry. Detective Norris is actually Ed Norris, onetime Police Commissioner of Baltimore and also an ex-convict. There are plenty of real-life connections (like how Lt. Mello is the real Jay Landsman or how the church deacon dude is actually reformed drug kingpin Melvin Little who was the basis for the Avon Barksdale character) but I have love for the fictitious homicide dicks as well. I love how Crutchfield is mentioned in like the first episode but you don't see him until either late season 3 or season 4. I love Vernon Holly's gentle face on such a big body. -I love seeing the detectives actually detect shit. Like the scene in season 1 where Bunk and McNulty work the scene of the woman shot through the window or the season later on where Freamon and Landsman following the shooters after Greggs' shooting or the scene in season 4 where Greggs closes her first homicide. Nearly all of it's nonverbal, just shot after shot and the logical inferences made in between: what Hitch and Arnheim call pure cinema. -Bubs is great. I liked The Corner but it was too oppressive for me to really love and watch it over and over again. To me, Bubs reprsents all of that show but in smaller bite-size morsels that I can appreciate without burning out on. I also love whenever he talks to Steve Earle. there are many more but I'm getting sick of typng. I'd better end this now, considering I could probably go on for hours. I just love the show so much; it's such a swiss clock of American drama. With four novels complete, I only hope that the fifth volume stays on par with the other. From what I've heard it involves a Sun reporter and deals with the media. I hope they bring back the reporter from Season 3 who first hears of Hamsterdam and also tie in more Norman Wilson who mentioned he used to work for the Sun. I also hear that Sergei's on the cast list which is very interesting. Damn Kevin for having the first 5 episodes already and not giving me a copy before I left for the parents for christmas. I could be seeing the first half of the last season of my favorite show right now! Oh well. Sometimes, waiting is better.
12.10.07	Hot Rod	Akiva Schaffer	still funny. I didn't laugh as much at the random stuff because I knew it was coming but I still appreciate that everyone in the crew are equally idiotic, and that's funny.
12.09.07	Trick 'r Treat	Michael Dougherty	fake title: Freeway trailers: -Halloween 3 -Nightmares -Trick or Treat Allllright. So the last movie and it's time for the costume contest. They also handed out bags of candy to everyone to fully get in "the mood." It's a whole Halloween thing because the last movie is Trick 'r Treat. huh. I guess it makes sense, seeing as it was supposed to play FantasticFest this year and all. But that's the last movie? Huh. Oh well. It's a halloween anthology. Dylan Baker and Brian Cox are in it. I liked how the little spooky kid that looked just like the spooky kid from The Orphanage was made up of pumpkin guts. Otherwise it was a fine movie along the lines of Creepshow or whatever. I didn't dislike it. After it was all over Harry announced the Monday screening to be Son of Rambow: a movie I liked a lot when I saw it at FantasticFest. Eric called out the drawings and we all took HD-DVD players off the back of a truck (I saw a few hobos hanging around. I wonder if they got a few as well). BNAT's over. All in all, pretty subdued year. If the talkbacks are right and Rambo and Cloverfield dropped out at the last minutes... eh, that makes sense I guess. I would've liked to see Rambo. I'm really surprise Cloverfield didn't play so maybe there was a shipping snafu (or maybe Paramount's finally learning what all the other studios already know)... either case a pretty subdued year. I could've used a lot more variation in pacing and genre. That said, it was nice to see some movies that I like at an Alamo and Lonely are the Brave was good. I want to think maybe the low key nature of this year will make getting in easier next year but I bet everyone will just expect BNAT 10 to be that much bigger. Who knows.
12.09.07	Farewell Uncle Tom	Gualtiero Jacopetti, Franco Prosperi	Fake title: Demon with a Glass Hand Harry pops up on-screen again and says that he's showing a HD version of the classic Star Trek episode: The City on the Edge of Forever. He gasps when he asks who hasn't seen this before and so many hands come up. Like it's that big a surprise that we're not ALL Star Trek nerds. Whatever. Anyway, I saw the beginning of this (Bones takes too much of that stuff, gets all loopy, hops through time, they have to follow him) but This was probably the thing I was most asleep for. I don't remember much at all of this except that there's new CG for the Enterprise and the planets and that it looks really weird and sticks out like a sore thumb. When it ended, I went down and got a sugarfree Redbull. When I came back, Dentler was interviewing Gary Huggins about his new short. Now, Gary's a good friend to the Alamo. I got to talk to him one time in one of those rambling cinematic excursions that film geeks communicate in. He has a trailer compilation that's really great. So I KNEW what he was gonna show would wake us all up in some way. He called it "Feels So Good." and considered it his cinematic birth. What follows... I'm not sure I should even commit to words. To those that saw Teenage Mother, you get an idea. Although picture the shock in that movie longer and more prolonged and set to upbeat quirky jazz funk. I will say this. The thing that grossed me out the most was not that he was getting a rubber tube pushed through his pee-hole out through a ripped-open hole in his perineum, but that he had OTHER completely separate issues going on with his asshole. Dude had PROBLEMS. and for all the work they were doing down there, it didn't look like they were fixing all of what needed fixing. Anyway, apparently the view from the balcony was that pretty much every guy was hiding their eyes and yelling out of empathetic agony. Thanks, Gary! Next, Tim came up and introduced Rodney! I've never seen Rodney intro a movie. He said it was rare that he got up there and those that knew him should take that as a warning. He was there to talk about the next movie: Farewell, Uncle Tom. fake title: Le Fin Absolue du Monde trailers: -Call me Bwana -JD's Revenge -Golden Needles -Black Samurai I'd read about this movie in Sleazoid Express where they basically call it the most racist film ever made. I know that means different things to different people. If you take someone who considers Birth of a Nation bad and show him Wonder Bar, or then show him Fight for your Life or Drum or Mandingo, you see different levels of ultimate. That said... I'm pretty sure the Sleazoid Express guys are right. This is one ultimate racist movie. And it's racist in that you have to believe they didn't intend to make it racist at first - like their original intent was to make a comment ON racism - but along the way they crossed their beams and ended up with something so completely bad that it's hard to watch. It's also hard to watch because it's a mondo movie and you have no clue how long it is or where it's going or when it'll end; just vignette after vignette of rotten racist shock. I think this is the film that the most people either slept through or went outside (or to the second theater, which I heard was quite populated with napping wimps). I dozed on and off for it, always coming back to something equally bad as before. Slave owners, breeders, pedophiles, naked black extras sweating in metal cages out in the sun. And there's no story per se, no characters. Just premise after premise of slavery. What was great about this was that Tim said they had a "condensed American print" of the film so they would switch over to video for the ending to give us the complete experience. So after what seemed like years of torture, we finally got the switch to video... just to have to endure like 20 more minutes! That's no ending, that's a whole last act! So it's shocking at first, then grating, then torturous, ultimately boring (which is probably even worse considering the subject matter). What a second-to-last film to throw at us! These people sure do want their HD-DVD players! Actually though, I've been curious to watch this for some time now. I was grateful for the chance to see it and see what the Sleazoid guys were talking about.
12.09.07	Teen Lust	James Hong	fake title: The Phantom Creeps So OK. Ernie Cline takes the stage. He explains that he WANTED this to be the year that he plays Fanboys but The Weinstein Company disagreed and besides, he's shooting re-shoots like this week (again). So instead, he has a scene from the re-shoots that wont make it into the film and will probably wind up as a DVD extra feature (assuming of course that the movie ever comes out and DVD is still the popular medium when it does). It's basically a scene where Danny McBride is a Lucas security guard and gives each of the 5 kids a test to see if their worthy. What starts out as Star Wars trivia quickly becomes him asking about obscure sexual practices with clever names. BUT, In his application, Harry said Cline's ideal BNAT double feature would be Fanboys then Episode 1. So We'd be watching Episode 1. hahaha, right? Yeah... Tim comes out and says he won't do that to us. Instead, he's been feeling bad that last year he promised Jeff Mahler that we'd watch Teen Wolf but he burned it and we saw another movie instead. So this year we'd actually watch Teen Wolf to make up for it. Teen Wolf starts up, plays for about a minute, then burns again. hahaha, right? Now they put on Teen Lust. I bet most people were wishing that this would be a big joke and burn and they'd show something else instead. That didn't happen. I kind of feel that Teen Lust was the most cheated due BNAT fatigue. It's just that it had its own weird world of logic and story and was probably pretty enjoyable... but at this point, I was in and out, the movie was in and out, everyone around me was in and out. It reached a point where I had no clue what was going on, who anyone in the movie was, or where it was going. It ended just as abruptly as it started for me. A nearly-random set of sounds and images. And it's a shame too. I bet if I see that as a Weird Wednesday, it's probably pretty good. Thomas and the Hobo with a Shotgun guys gave it a standing ovation. Kayla loved it. I'm pretty sure I missed its charm. I'll need to revisit it sometime without the weight of 7 slow movies and a musical on its back.
12.09.07	The Poughkeepsie Tapes	John Erick Dowdle	fake title: M trailers: -Man Beast -W -Three in the Cellar -The Evictors Drew got up and tried to sell this as a straight documentary. It works for like half a scene until you see how bad the actors are and how stilted and unrealistic the dialogue is. From then on, it's a conscious decision whether to take this as an incredibly unfunny comedic look at the wacky world of serial killers or a badly-made Blair Withch-esque thriller using the documentary form to tell another familiar serial killer story. Except once or twice, I didn't really get any vibe that this was "supposed" to be funny at all. The guys next to me were damning it for making fun of such horrible subject matter but there's way too much straight brutality footage and interview stuff to think that the occasional absurd comment is funny. I hate to say this but it was really terrible. Unwatchably bad. It just didn't work. If it was trying to be serious, everything lacked the authenticity needed to sell it. And should it really be a question of whether or not it's supposed to be funny? Shouldn't we just KNOW if it's supposed to be funny? If it was supposed to be funny, these guys need to watch more Howie Mandel or something. So... afterward Tim said the filmmakers were supposed to be here but got caught up in travel. I heard though... that they were here and chickened out on their Q&A. Probably wise for them although I would've been curious to hear them defend their film. As for the audience, this was the first in an increasingly brutal run of films that I believe left no one unaffected.
12.09.07	Lonely are the Brave	David Miller	fake title: Rambo Trailers: -Blind Fury -Rambo 3 -Stop or My Mom Will Shoot The movie: Harry said that this is the movie Sly cribbed from when he made the original Rambo. I can kind of see that. Kirk Douglas plays a cowboy who gets himself put in jail to help bust his friend out who then becomes the subject of a manhunt by sheriff Walter Matthau (who's quirk is to chew gum just like Charley Varrick), crazy prison guard George Kennedy and truck driver Carroll O'Connor. Again, it's deliberately paced and rather sedate but I liked it a lot. Probably my favorite full movie of the fest this year. Everybody's good in it and I liked following Douglas on his escape route, especially since he's having trouble with his horse. There's a few tense scenes having to do with the horse making it up rough terrain that are pretty intense. And having the ending telescoped so early on gave the whole thing a fatalistic noir undertone. Good stuff to be sure.
12.08.07	Sweeney Todd	Tim Burton	fake title: Dr. Phibes Rises Again trailers: -Big Trouble in Little China clip with Kurt Russell swapped out with a bad CG rendition of Harry. mildly chuckle-worthy. -Voyage of the Rock Aliens (we miss you, Kier-La) -Get Crazy -Freckles (how did he lose his hand!?) The movie: Exactly how I thought it would be. Burtony goth, musical numbers, Bonham Carter in a corset. The throat-cutting is fun at first, old by the end. I enjoyed Baron Cohen's small role. The songs seemed redundant (maybe they were just reprises) and the movie seemed too long but overall you shouldn't believe me because this isn't my kind of movie and I didn't really expect to like it and I didn't. I didn't really like Chicago either, so go ahead and dismiss me. At least Burton wasn't there for the crickets Q&A like last year with Dream Girls.
12.08.07	The Abominable Dr. Phibes	Robert Fuest	fake title: The Story of Dr. Wassell 2 Pixar producers got up, explained that director Andrew Stanton was supposed to be here but got sick, and intro'd a handful of scenes from WALL-E. These were great and probably the best things I saw at this year's fest but it irked me that they didn't show the whole movie since I KNOW they tested it in Portland a few weeks back. Guess they don't want the public writing about it before it's done but whatever. I wanted more! The producers took 2 questions afterward (thanks Satterwait, I don't care about the friggin score) then trailers: -The Exterminator (trailer played two nights ago, the film's playing Terror Thursday in a week or two) -some weird pizza ad -Sorceress the movie: I kinda like this movie. I guess I should be glad to get to see it in a theater. The print was good. Vincent Price talking through his neck is good. This is the fifth slow movie in a row though. Give me something with source music and MTV editing to wake me up, please! The mod-y psychedelic effects worked on me (in that I was put in a trance) but... this feels like a set-up for Sweeney Todd much like last year's idea-better-than-execution animated porn/inherit the wind double feature. There's probably people here who haven't seen this so... good for them. What's next.
12.08.07	Mongol	Sergei Bodrov	fake title: War and Peace Next up, a Russian-made biopic on the early days of Genghis Khan. But first: I forget when exactly it happened, but at the front Harry told everyone that we'd be getting Toshiba HD-DVD players at the end. Crazy. Some dude was on hand to give like a 15-minute presentation of how cool HD-DVD was by using some of the special features on the 300 disc and showing us how good the new German Terminator 2 disc looked. Pretty huge promo giveaway! i bet a lot of fanboys are taking back everything they said about Harry's HD-centric dvd picks column. hah! So Drew got up on stage and they showed the new trailer for Narnia 2. Havin't not seen Narnia 1 I didn't care at all. It looked OK. The producer got up and introduced another 5-minute segment showing some new stuff. He also stressed that the new movie was darker and had more practical effects, basically apologized for the first one blah blah blah. So more Narnia 2 footage, then they showed a clip from Rambo with a text message from sly beforehand. The footage was basically two scenes: one where he's steering a boat and tells the girl from Dexter that he respects her, then another where they encounter pirates who want to rape the girl so he kills like 49 of them in 2 seconds. I really hope this is as good as the last Rocky was. Wish we saw the whole thing today. sigh. Trailers: -Secret of Magic Island (yay! evil space-age monkey!) -Big Trouble in Little China -Thunder Cops The movie: OK. Long. The battle scenes had blood which was nice, but otherwise kinda slow for me. I'm mildly curious about Ghenghis Khan but probably would've been more fulfilled reading a wiki entry. Too long and drawn out for my tastes. Liked the blood, the rest was pretty ugh. Someone near me said afterward: "If there's one movie that's gonna break big this year, THIS IS IT!" Whatever. Harry said afterward that this is the first in a trilogy. Can't wait. That was a joke. I CAN wait. Maybe I'm being too harsh on this. I was awake for most of it. The slow parts were kind of interesting. Just not great. Like Aplocalypto-esque in a way. Plus its a biopic so that's more points against it for me. So many scenes of people saying to kid version of Genghis Khan: "I will kill you!" but then they either let him go or he escapes. I feel learned on the guy's early life now but not really entertained. next.
12.08.07	Pickup on South Street	Sam Fuller	fake title: Kiss Me Deadly Harry continues with his political theming. OK by me because it means I get to see this in a theater. YAY! People around me didn't like it but screw them. this shit is good. They still winced during the fight scenes, which I think are really great and, one beat where Widmark waits to get punched aside, a nice example of how to stage fighting realistically and effectively. trailers: -A Bomb for a Dictator -some weird Will Rogers Institute Child Immunization thing -Mr. No Legs The movie: Probably one of my favorite noirs. I love Widmark in this and Jean Peters is tre sexy in a trashy way. Of course it's known for Thelma Ritter's performance which is also great. I basically love how lean it is and tough. Widmark's seductive way of playing Peters is great and everybody's specific criminal code is awesome. Great to see it in a theater, just wish some of these great old movies were new to me. (i know, whaa whaa not obscure enough for ya)
12.08.07	Charlie Wilson's War	Mike Nichols	Fake title: Dune Harry said the connection was helping people in the desert. At this point I stopped even thinking about what the fake titles mean. trailers: -The Burbs (looks good, doesn't it, Lars?) -Bachelor Party -Amin: The Rise and Fall (hah hah hah hah) The movie: I liked it! I'm not traditionally a huge Mike Nichols fan so no one was more surprised than me. OK I liked Angels in America too but whatever. Hanks was good, Roberts was OK, Hoffman steals the movie. Every scene, especially the first. It's very Sorkin-esque with the fast quips and repartae and whatnot but whatever. It keeps this movie which should be boring as sin moving. I don't know how long it is but it felt short. That may have to do with the ending (read: it's abrupt). It's good though, solid. Not the best movie of the year but good. Didn't sleep at all in this one.
12.08.07	The Great McGinty	Preston Sturges	oooooooooook BNAT9 notes. Let's see if I can get through this without dying. My buddy Jim left 10 minutes before I Carpooled with Tiffany. VERY tired from a week-long visit. Got good parking. There early. Hot in the theater. Tons of DVDs in the swagbags. I got a good seat sitting next to Jack and Bernie, Tiffany's up in the balcony (turns out, that's the semi-equivalent of the side chairs. A row of standard chairs with a row of barstools behind) with Jette. Harry intro'd from the back of the theater via video feed. Seeing his face big on screen is... unsettling. He said something about the writers stike and how the writer of this movie only got paid ten bucks for the scipt. BUT he also made a deal to direct the picture and... it's Preston Sturges. This isn't Harry's favorite Sturges movie but it's the first one. Personally, I think the difference between the best PS comedy of the early 40s and the worst PS comedy of the early 40s is nil. They're all great and this is no exception. I'm happy for everyone getting to see it for the first time and happy that I get to see it theatrically. some trailers: -Hobo with a Shotgun (the guys are in attendance but dont get up or anything) -some weird Pinnochio kids movie -Happy Birthday to Me -Stunt Rock As Stunt Rock ends, a wizard with gray beard and staff gets up on stage and whacks his staff down. A harsh pink light erupts and confetti shoots from stage right (Henri) and above (guessing Justin?). The wizard takes his beard/hat off and it's Tim! He apologizes to the costume shop for breaking the staff and gives a short BNAT welcome. Then the movie: fake title: All the President's Men I dozed a bit during some of this. Truth be told I dozed a bit during every movie but one, so from now on when I don't mention whether or not I slept at all, assume I did. It wasn't always that I didn't like the movies, it's just the sheer mathematics of it. tired person + slow/quiet movie + hot theater = sleep. Nothing I can do about it. Today really stress-tested the new theater's features. At first it was apparently freezing in the first 4 or 5 rows, alternating between comfortable and sticky hot in the back where I was, and even noreso up on the balcony where they're right under the vents. For a while it felt like they were turning off the AC while the movies played because everyone would cool down in between movies but get hot again once they started. This was one factor that made for a pretty brutal second half but more on that later. I love the movie. Love Brian Donlevy and he's usually more of a support player for Sturges. Love all the other Sturges players making appearances and think the plot is surprisingly subversive for 1940. Great movie.
12.06.07	The Visitor	Michael J. Paradise	Glad they showed this again because I wanted to see it 2 years ago but an ice storm kept me away. This movie was strange. I have a hard time even thinking about it. Spectacular cast... I did NOT expect to see Glenn Ford pop up (then pop out) and wonder why Peckinpah had to be dubbed so badly (probably due to slurring). Just crazy ass shit with an awesome soundtrack and John Huston and maybe-god. This movie is defying my note-taking powers. I best leave it alone.
12.05.07	Switchblade Sisters	Jack Hill	Full disclosure: I hadn't seen this movie before tonight. I know... whatever. I'm glad I didn't watch it alone on DVD because seeing it with a crowd was really great. I think I waited too long to write this note so I'll forgo any attempt at elegance and just list the things I remember loving: -I think the biggest thing was that I loved that these kids were in high school. At one point Crabs says something like "I have to meet with the mayor tomorrow!" and he's running community outreach programs and feeding the homeless and he's a huge drug lord and gang leader... where does he find the time to study!? He's also like 36 and flaunting his chest hair. Whatever kind of highschool that was, it would've been great if that's where Max Fischer ended up after getting kicked out of Rushmore. -At the roller rink, maybe I just didn't get who all was part of Crab's poly-wearing crew but I could've sworn I saw two random dudes in matching baby blue tops pull out guns and join in the shoot out. Like awww shit, EVERY time I want to go skating... glad I came prepared! -The whole black power movement thing (foreshadowed ominously by that awesomely gutted hobo following the girls down the street) came out of nowhere and I loved the two main girls. The Pam Grier-wannabe one smiled even when she shouldn't and the other one was militant about things she didn't need to be. They were an awesome team and had an awesome armored car. -The guy who played Dom. I can't really tell if he was a really horrible actor or if he was actually pretty good and just playing the role. Either way, he was awesome. "besides, you asked for it." -I want to thank the film in general for giving me the term "chicken ass." -The three main girls were all phenomenal. Hands off the fruit, faggot! Where have I seen Monica Gayle before? Maggie's eyes were crazy beautiful and Lace's sneer made the whole movie. I'm sure there's more but I can't think of them.
11.30.07	Elf	Jon Favreau	Gettin towards christmas time... I'm forcing myself to get into the spirit extra early this year... listening to the songs, baking the cookies, and watching the movies. I really cracked up on Faizon Love's scenes this time around. um.... I forgot what else to say
11.29.07	Galaxy Quest	Dean Parisot	Caught this on TV. I still think it's funnier and better than it has to be. Love Sam Rockwell as Guy and an ultra-small role by Rainn Wilson. I dunno, even though I never watched Star Trek I like this movie.
11.28.07	Office Girls	Ernst Hofbauer	wow the IMDb cover art for this is... explicit. whew. Anyway, this was a pretty funny and light (and probably ultimately forgettable) German "report" movie where guys with awesome facial hair and bad teeth ask women about sex in the office; entertaining vignettes ensue. Probably the highlight was what Lars pointed out in the two old janitor ladies with the foul mouths and gutter minds. Um... yeah, it was a fun time. I wasn't bored.
11.28.07	Black Devil Doll from Hell	Chester N. Turner	I wonder what my most heartfelt desire is. I think it's BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP yeah that's it for sure. I considered it a special treat to get to see this movie again. The experience wasn't quite as magical as the first time but it was still unbelievable (I actually covered my eyes at one point. It was just too much to take with the "music" so loud and the doll love and everything. Most of this movie is kind of a sick challenge to watch) and I never plan to see it alone or anything like that (although I would like to rip that awesome David Itchikawa song) so... getting to see it again theatrically was definitely a good thing.
11.28.07	Beowulf	Robert Zemeckis	Remember when Zemeckis made real movies? Anyway, I figured if I was gonna see this at all it should be in the theater with the 3D and stuff. I dozed in a few of the slow places in between action scenes. This is not a new criticism but it felt like watching a video game cut scene that never lets you play. Sometimes it would look real nice but then a female character would appear looking like something modelled on a 386 like it was for a Sega Saturn game or something. Plus with them trying to make the characters look reminiscent of the actors... I don't get why they didn't shoot live action. More expensive I guess. Shame. So I'm not sure how much I slept through but it seemed awfully long. The 3D did help but even that got old with all the oh watch out there's a spear comin atcha! stuff. Glad I saw it in the theater. I can't imagine me liking it the tiny bit I did at home in 2D.
11.27.07	No Country for Old Men	Joel Coen	Seeing it again was great. I think the big reason why I like the movie is you see a lot of guys thinking and figuring stuff out. We follow along but we're not spoon fed it or nobody walks up and says "oh, you're examining the room layout to know where the mexicans might be hiding, aren't you?" so you feel like you kinda work it out with them. There's a scene in the first season of The Wire where two detectives analyze a crime scene only communicating with the work "fuck" and it's pretty much the same thing. I really love watching people figure stuff out and figuring it out with them. So big surprise that I still like it. Wel also got to see the PTA-cut There Will Be Blood trailer which is similar to the others but more intense and creepy and they ran the teaser for The Big Lebowski which made me wonder if the Alamo folks read my note about the opening night. Whyever they did it I'm glad because the teaser's pretty cool.
11.27.07	The Departed	Martin Scorsese	This has been on HBO a lot recently... got me in a mood to watch it again. same thoughts as previous times, really like it for the most part.
11.24.07	Death Hunt	Peter Hunt	When I was growing up, one movie that stuck with me was Shoot to Kill with Sidney Poitier and Tom Berenger chasing a bad guy through remote wilderness. So imagine my happiness when I came across this movie: 1931 Yukon Territory and trapper Charles Bronson gets chased through the wilderness by mounties Lee Marvin and Carl Weathers. It's like Shoot to Kill meets Jeremiah Johnson! I liked this a lot. No reason in particular I guess other than the stated cast and premise. Just a solid movie. Lee Marvin has these awesome snow-blinders that make him look sort of like a GI Joe figure and at one point Bronson kills like 438 assholes while bunkered in his cabin. Kind of the one weak note (but also an awesome note depending on how you look at it) is Maury Chaykin. What's a NY Jew doing in 1931 Yukon territory? They at least try to explain Carl Weathers by saying he was born in Louisiana but Chaykin sticks out like the pink part of an excited dog. He also threatens a man with what may be the smallest knife I've ever seen. They said it was based on a true story but 1981 was not exactly the pinnacle of Hollywood verisimilitude (but then again, are they now?) so I have no doubts there were a few liberties taken. Who cares. I can look up the facts on google after I write this. The movie was fun and good and that's it.
11.24.07	Executive Suite	Robert Wise	Robert Wise directs, Ernest Lehman script, William Holden and a cadre of memorable 40s/50s faces fill a board of executive VPs toiling for the top spot after the head of a big company croaks. I liked this mostly because of the great script and acting but also in that it's so firmly rooted in its time. Holden makes a huge speech at the end about how companies shouldn't be run by accountants and dividends should not be the bottom line. As I was watching I was thinking about how easy it'd be for Holden to get another job but his loyalty to his company keeps him there. Pretty good. it has a tiny bit of 12 Angry Men vibe but with business.
11.24.07	I'm Not There	Todd Haynes	Biopic using 6 different actors (including a black kid and Cate Blanchett) to portray Bob Dylan. Not knowing much of anything about the man or his music, I was definitely lost for most of this. It was kind of interesting to see people like Christian Bale and Heath Ledger give different takes or portray different aspects of his personality, but I spent most of my time trying to figure out what was going on and whether or not it had anything to do with something that actually happened. Like the whole Richard Gere segment... huh? My favorite parts were the one short scene with The Beatles and seeing David Cross as Allen Ginsberg. I can definitely see why Dylan OK'd this movie. I didn't see it but I'm strongly reminded of Masked and Anonymous: another movie with a ton of good people that I heard doesn't come together. Maybe if I had already read the biography and was intimately familiar with everything going on I would enjoy this much more or maybe if I give up on thinking it's a biopic it would work better but... for a biopic it's interesting, for a real movie it's kind of a mess. It doesn't help that I'm not a huge Dylan fan. I usually pay much more attention to the music than the lyrics so I'm in another boat altogether.
11.23.07	Before the Devil Knows You're Dead	Sidney Lumet	Two brothers plan a robbery because they need cash and shit goes wrong. I really liked this movie a lot. Not exactly the feel-good film of the year (in retrospect I'm kind of gladd the AFF schedule didn't permit me to see this right before Grace is Gone. I might've ran my car into oncoming traffic on the way home or something), but really really great. There is one thing that bugged me. The film has a really fractured timeline so it's constantly flashing back to follow different characters through the same timeline. That doesn't bother me at all (I liked it actually) but every time they flash back there's a breaking glass sound effect and flashing frames between the scenes. It strikes me as a very old-school way to be nifty (like the end of Fail-Safe) but it happens too often and it's too rough not to be annoying. I think maybe if Lumet were younger he'd finesse that a lot but I get the feeling he sat with his editor saying "eh good enough. I'm 90, I don't have time to be worrying about this." The rest of the film's great though. Really strong work from all the actors (Phil Hoffman's fantastic, Albert Finney's great, I even like Ethan Hawke because he plays a fuckup, you get lots and lots of Marisa Tomei's boobs and even get a little nipple-outline on Amy Ryan!). Also, Micah will love it when a certain someone appears mid-way and hits his supporting role out of the park. Can't say too much more without giving it away. I'm just glad it was good and Lumet's still around.
11.23.07	Lars and the Real Girl	Craig Gillespie	severe introvert buys a Real Doll and treats her like she's alive; town plays along. The premise could really go in any direction but Ryan Gosling gets all actor-y and cries a lot so it's a pretty sad portrait of someone struggling with heavy issues. There's a bit of humor thrown in due to the premise itself but in the end it's kinda heartwarming and string-pulling and stuff. I thought it would've been awesome if he got really mad at the doll and killed it by chopping her up and then there'd be a whole murder investigation Twin Peaks style but... he didn't do that.
11.23.07	D-War: Dragon Wars	Hyung-rae Shim	here's a hint: the "D" stands for Dragon. whew. Not gonna bother even trying to explain this one. I saw it at the dollar theater because friends were going and the title was D-War: Dragon Wars. I didn't expect anything and had a pretty great time. I also found the CG way better than it needed to be and although large parts of the movie make absolutely no sense whatsoever it was still easier to watch than Transformers. My favorite parts were the bum yelling at the ambulance and the old lady trying to walk through the fence. I also loved how they trusted in any stranger that came along and helped them whether they morphed into Robert Forster afterward or not. Although the best line is probably the little kid asking "what are you talking about" when Forster's getting into the way-too-long flashback-within-a-flashback to explain the whole Korean legend or whatever. I as an audience member empathized completely. Afterward, me and Jarrette were talking about how great it would be if there was a Weird Wednesday all night marathon that they didn't announce the titles to but got a group of hardcore weird movie geeks in a theater all night and then all they showed was newer films that fit the bizarre badly-made mold. Stuff like this, Redline, Omega Code 2, Next, etc. Some films don't need to wait 30 years to become absurdly enjoyable.
11.22.07	Blood Freak	Steve Hawkes, Brad F. Frinter	gobble gobble gobble.... gobble gobble gobble AHHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! ... AHHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! ... AHHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! ... AHHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! Don't do drugs, kids. So I had a pretty good time with this movie tonight. Lots of laughs at how bad the movie is. The scientists are both great but I think I like the non-bearded one more. It makes complete sense now why I had no clue what Micah was talking about when he mentioned the guy telling not to do drugs then coughing really bad (it's not in this print) and god DAMN does that mask not look anything like a turkey. fun times.
11.22.07	Blade Runner	Ridley Scott	Happy Thanksgiving, everybody. I saw two movies today. soooo... ok let me just get this out in the open. I like Blade Runner and see how others could love it but do not love it myself and feel Ridley Scott has traded too much on this and Alien over the years to become a really overrated director, which takes the film down a few notches in my mind. That said, it's been a while since I've seen it (I believe I've only seen the theatrical cut once and the director's cut once and that's it) so I figured I owe it another viewing and a chance to see it theatrically shouldn't be passed up. My feelings on the movie are largely unchanged. I mean yes the visual design is striking, the ideas are interesting, Rutger Hauer is badass (except for when he howls) and the music's great. I just don't feel the actual story. Looking at the scenery is fine but there's something about the pacing and the actual plot that rubs me the wrong way. Plus, why are there 6 rotating spotlights right outside of every window on the Bradbury building? is that some future-thing we can all look forward to? But anyway... I want to really like Deckard but he doesn't really do much. Other than killing Joanna Cassidy, he's awfully reactive. The same could be said for The Dude and lots of other noir leading men so I shouldn't complain but... he's kind of a wuss. Plus I really don't like how Scott went on record with Deckard being a replicant. If he is a replicant... why is he a replicant? Was all the "i walked in here quit, I'm walking out twice as quit" just implanted memories and the cops were going along with the little charade because this replicant can hunt other replicants better than any human? Do they program replicants to be alcoholic? If he's designed to hunt other replicants, shouldn't he be a bit stronger and less wussy? It seems like that would be a more usefull skill when hunting replicants that believing you're human. What, do they have to make him believe he's a human to avoid hurting his feelings? he's a robot! You can tell him what to think! I don't get it (because it doesn't make sense). The same thing with the spotlights through the windows... just doesn't make sense to me. I like my science fiction to make sense. Still, the movie looks beautiful and a few shots (like the last handheld shot with the door closing and Deckard going with Sean Young) are really iconic and classic and such. I dislike the term "neo-noir" but do appreciate how they use the archetypes like the private detective and Sean Young's look (which is also why I liked the narration). Overall, I still like it but not love it, and that's probably the way it'll stay.
11.21.07	Things to Come	Derek Todd	This was supposed to be War of the Robots but the Ritz has no 16mm (yet) so instead it was supposed to be The Jupiter Menace with George Kennedy walking around talking about the end of the world but after the first reel we all found ourselves watching this movie instead: A science fiction sexploitation romp that's like a mix between Westworld, The Stepford Wives, 1984, and Sadomania. Whew. Highlights include a cowboy autofellating his sundae massage, the most unattractive greaser drive-in dude snapping before saying "get some action" and begrudgingly going to the concession stand to get some corn where there's a completely unexplained fight going on in the background, and the titles of all the television programming that we're gonna get in the future: stuff like Kiss My Whip and The Forcible Intruder. That said, I sort of missed good ol' George Kennedy. The Jupiter Menace looked like it had some charm to it... I mean a movie can't be ALL bad if someone gets his heart ripped out in the first five minutes. And that bible expert who's also a computer programming was awesome. Plus I was ready for a christian fake-documentary and therefore unprepared for the lengthy softcore scenes featuring cute naked girls parading around on screen. Oh well, still pretty fun.
11.21.07	Pu-239	Scott Z. Burns	Dude gets exposed to radiation then steals some plutonium to sell so his family can survive after he kicks. Paddy Considine is good as the dude and I liked the movie for the most part even though the tone was all over the place from heavy and sad to really absurd comedy with occasional voice-overs that don't match either. It's weird how they managed to take a dog getting hit by a car (which I was initially upset with) into something funny. I guess the moral of the story is don't eff with radioactivity.
11.20.07	Enchanted	Kevin Lima	Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww... Got to see this for free. Pretty sure I wouldn't see it otherwise and certainly not in theaters. I must confess to liking a few moments and the overall idea (that Disney cartoon characters come to the real world) is good but... I wanted it to be slightly less sincere and more ironic and also dwell less on the Elf-esque naivete like the princess talking to a castle billboard and more on the differences between fairy tale cartoons and real world like the chipmunk not being able to talk and the princess dress not fitting through the door. I would've loved to see Susan Sarandon have a hard time walking on her heels (even though she has green magic lightning bolts) and her dragon form trying to fly but having wings too small to work or something (instead of her not even trying to fly. Who ever heard of a dragon that couldn't fly!?). I also wanted a Ghostbusters shot at the end of people at street level covered in the glittery aftermath of vanquished evil. I also could've used Dempsey being more freaked out when he finds himself in the middle of a song and dance number... like "how did I get on this boat?" or "how can those old guys dance like that?" and stuff like that. So it's safe to say my hopes were pulling the movie away from what it was... unfair perhaps, but whatever... that's why it's my opinion.
11.19.07	Silip	Elwood Perez	With the holidays coming up, it may be the perfect opportunity to look at your loved one and share your tender feelings toward him or her with the gift of raw and untamed Asian Erotica. Lucky for you, the fine folks at Mondo Macabro have heard the call and brought Silip: Daughters of Eve to region one Filipino softcore fans worldwide! Tonya is a coming-of-age girl in a remote village caught between her religious body-guilt and delirious lust for the local buffalo-killer. We know he's a buffalo-killer because we see him do it in the first two minutes of the film. The first scene of this movie is basically a dare to stay in the theater. Little kids are crying, begging this dude to leave the poor desert cow alone as he thwacks the beast repeatedly in the head with the blunt end of his axe. Hollow thuds pound in between the cries and wails of children for a few minutes as the water buffalo falls and twitches and grunts its last breath of hot sandy air. It's enough to make Cannibal Holocaust fans question humanity. From there it's basically a soft-core skin flick that slowly but surely sinks into deranged extremes of depravity and craziness involving Tonya's Americanized slut sister, rape, accidental murder, killer-kid group decapitation, more rape, and a pinch of burning. To be completely honest, most of this movie was too screechy dramatic for me. So much of the movie is women yelling at women, women yelling at men, and women yelling at kids. All three subjects get the same argument: Men are the devil, don't have sex. After a while you'd think they'd get it but since two naked ladies are on the cover, we know they never will. Instead, Tonya fights her urges by rubbing salt into her stuff and hot sand into a kid's stuff. The buffalo killer screws whoever's around, and the kids... well, the kids kill a guy and cut off his head. I'd say all that yelling didn't quite sink in. I liked the more bizarre elements and the women are beautiful and often naked; I just wish I didn't have to sit through 125 minutes of melodrama to see them. If you are in the mood however, there's plenty to like and I do feel the film grows stronger as it plays out. The climax (heh heh) of the picture is absolutely nuts and the sex seems to get dirtier as it goes on which keeps a bare level of interest in the body-rubbing monotony. I suppose there's a certain intensity and "boldness" to the film but it didn't suit my tastes in pacing or plot enough for me to wholeheartedly enjoy it. Incidentally, the new Mondo Macabro DVD release of the film has a second disc containing 10-30 minute interviews with the director, star and art director (maybe recorded in a shopping mall, I'm not sure) as well as an essay on sexy time Filipino Bold Cinema that gives some semblance of cultural context and significance to the film. This helps a bit but mostly it made me curious about the state that Filipino cinema had to be in order to embrace something as extreme as this. It's probably on some other Mondo Macabro disc already but I bet there's a pretty decent doc in the Filipino cinema explosion of the 70s and 80s and Imelda Marcos' rabid film fanaticism and the Manila Film Center to be made. Get on it, someone! So if you're in the mood for some sex and violence this Turkey Day and like brown skin and exotic desert locales, give this one a shot. Just have a sudoku or online bill paying to do during the scenes in between sordid sex and shocking violence.
11.17.07	Flight of the Intruder	John Milius	bomber pilots during Viet Nam go on a mission to be macho. I liked this one ok too (until the end) but think I am maxed out on the Milius testosterone cinema. Some great war photography though.
11.17.07	Farewell to the King	John Milius	Nick Nolte deserts WW2 and becomes the king of a Borneo tribe caught in the final days of pacific theater battle. Tell you what, I liked this much more than The Wind and the Lion but it was still iffy in parts. Everyone in this movie talks like they're reading a story to children. Pretty good though.
11.15.07	Nightmare	Romano Scavolini	AKA Nightmare in a Damaged Brain. The second "real" Terror Thursday at the Ritz and the first one bumped to the small house. Hmmmm. Peoples' fears of a New World Alamo take one step closer to Alex Jones-paranoia. So the dual sold-out lines streaming from the Ritz doors made for rough going for all the people who tried to get through the sidewalk, apparently not realizing that the entire street was blocked off and ready for their drunken stumbling. At least there was a guy shooting watermelons in the face with an air gun. Once the lucky first 90 of us got inside and scrambled to seats not in the front row, the troubles didn't wash away. Sound issues made for a rather lengthy break in the film with the first 30% of the film harassed by an insistent buzz and the latter 70% played at extreme low volume, not helped by the 3 or 4 jerkasses having their own conversations and yelling at the screen. And when the film finally started to unspool again, it was out of order. I can't really say I caught this while I was viewing it since the film is structured with very explicit title cards and was mostly in a disjointed abstract (read: not quite coming together) style i figured the flashback from night 5 to night 3 was deliberate. I guess it wasn't. So it's fair to say that my viewing experience was compromised. An off night, bound to happen. I liked the movie ok. I liked the gore at the end with the axe in the dude's face and the blood gushing out.
11.14.07	Rulers of the City	Fernando Di Leo	There were three of you. Now there's none. That guy's so tough just looking at him makes my asshole twitch Fuck them all and fuck you too There sure are some great lines in this movie (AKA Mister Scarface). Also some great turns. I still love Palance's method of standing up for his people and the reveal of Beppe's sedition. The movie isn't so much a Weird Wednesday ha-ha bizarrity but a real solid crime film. I also loved how the guys had porno up on their walls just like Silva in Wipeout. That Di Leo... hah hah hah. I wish I could track down a copy of The Italian Connection. Want to see that.
11.14.07	Los Angeles Plays Itself	Thom Anderson	I think I waited too long to write this up. Uh... ok, this is a doc about LA's history on film. That's a fairly big lake to draw from considering it's the most photographed city in cinema. I went in basically hoping to see tons and tons of clips pointing out similar buildings and areas of the city and some geographical linkage between films (if i was super rich i'd love to go on road trips hitting as many filming locations as i possibly could). I got that so I can't say I'm disappointed, but there are a few things about the movie I wish I had known going in. Like how it's almost 3 hours long. And how it's not so much a film as an essay set to moving images. The director reads his script with all the excitement and emotion of a grad student defending his dissertation (for three hours) and after a while it just gets boring. Yes he does talk about the Bradbury building and shows clips from lots of the movies that have shot there and I admired how his samples ran the gamut from silents (needed more of these though) to high art to drive-in trash to modern day. Probably the most interesting bit for me was Bunker Hill and Angel's Flight, seeing the neighborhood in the old noirs and as it was decaying and its newborn-ness in Night of the Comet. But (and I suppose this is the easiest argument to make about a subject so big), I also feel like a lot was left out. There's a tiny little bit of black cinema at the very end but he never mentions any of the blaxploitation films of the 70s showing off watts and compton and whatnot. Boyz in da Hood is barely touched upon as an example of movies stereotyping the city into ghettos and pleasure zones. That's probably the biggest problem I had with the movie: I didn't really agree with most of what he was saying. All this crap about how movies have done LA wrong and even the acronym LA is a slight against the city and it's the only city that people abbreviate (cough DC cough KC cough NoLa cough dozens others) and blah blah blah. I suppose if you're gonna make a movie like this you HAVE to "say" something rather than just putting all the clips on screen and saying "that was shot there!" over and over again, but all this anthropomorphized city defending holds no water with me. Lake Arrowhead doubles as Switzerland because it's cheaper than going there, not because LA has no identity. The downtown skyline is almost as identifiable as DC or Paris at this point (and definitely on par with Chicago or Dallas) so don't give me any of this guff about the city being a ghost. Chase scenes are geographically incorrect because they're MOVIES adhering to schedules where locations need permits, not because the director doesn't know that the building in Century City doesn't lead directly to the docks. I guess if your point's just a shy cover to get away with saying "they shot that there!" without actually saying it, that's fine. Just don't be so snooty with it. Anyway... long and boring but I got to see lots of clips of LA locations which is what I wanted so... whatever.
11.12.07	Ratatouille	Brad Bird	No commentary on the DVD? for shame!!! still good.
11.10.07	Revenge of the Zombies	Steve Sekely	So what's a better way to end this fest than with a movie about nazi zombies? TWO MOVIES ABOUT NAZI ZOMBIES! And this one starring John Carradine! Who was in Stagecoach! Which was the first film of the fest! FULL CIRCLE, PEOPLE. You won't get this at BNAT. Anyway... I tried really really hard to stay awake for this and even rewound the ending a couple times because as far as I can tell this is the same movie as KotZ except with John Carradine instead of the Bela Lugosi-looking mad doctor in the first one and less of the black driver dude (although he was still in it). No plane crash this time but otherwise it's damn similar. I did catch the speech about the power of an undead army but again no explicit Hitler name-dropping and.... and the end is pretty foggy. Actually in the harsh light of noontime (as I write this) I can't really remember much of the movie... I suppose that's for the best though because it was a Monogram picture and only 60-something minutes long and was about zombies for Hitler without even saying Hitler! So that's that! DVRfest 3 is over. What did I learn this year? Well, first off I learned my programming skills are awesome. Actually that's not true. I already knew that so it's not something new. I learned that when I get up relatively early and do things during the day, I have a problem laying on my couch and watching 5 movies in a row without me falling asleep. Next year's DVRfest might very well be 4-movie nights instead of 5. Whatever, it was fun falling asleep to weird movies. so... 548 movies in the past year, 1606 films seen 1714 times in the last 3 years, 50 in the past month and 17 this week. Top directors are Oliver Stone with 11, Werner Herzog with 11, and Blake Edwards with 10. Top genres are drama with 157, Comedy with 155, and documentary with 155 (followed by horror with 149 but that's unfair since so many horror subgenres split this number up. the genre system on this site is the next thing i'd re-work if i go under the hood again, it's a mess). Snakes on a Plane is still the top movie with 11 views, Sin City and Napoleon Dynamite have 4, and Knocked Up, Danger: Diabolik, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, The 40 year-Old Virgin and The Big Lebowski are all at 3. Netflix is the top venue with 296 followed by 212 at the Alamo Downtown, 167 at Alamo South Lamar, 160 on DVR and 156 on DVD (I'm also up to 92 Weird Wednesdays! I wonder what will be my 100th?). I really hope I keep this up. The format seems to suit me and I love browsing through my stats and getting awesome comments from people who worked on forgotten movies and reading my old posts and seeing how many typos and bad grammar there are. It's almost like I write for AICN huh (oooooh burn!) Will I make it another 11 years like Peter Bogdanovich? Will I see nearly as many movies once I get a full-time job? Will I ever finish that short with Jarrette? I am trying not to say no to any of those questions. I guess I can check back on this a year from now and see!
11.10.07	King of the Zombies	Joean Yarbrough	This is what TCM's website had to say about this movie: "A mad scientist raises the dead to fight for Hitler in World War II." Now how can you pass that up!? Well... I sort of did. I think I was actually out for about 15 minutes of this and hazing in and out for about 20 more. Not good considering the movie's only 67 minutes long. I didn't quite get an explicit mention of Hitler either. At the very end someone explained that the mad doctor had half the island under hypnosis but... never actually heard the plan about how zombies were actually useful to the Third Reich. Oh well. What I did hear was some awesome 40s lingo (mostly from the black guy who plays the two white guys' servant but actually has like the biggest part in the movie). Stuff like "marble orchard" for graveyard, "fugitives from the undertaker" for zombies, and the phrase "my feet took up root" for I'm scared and can't move. I want to talk like that although if I did it'd probably be annoying in most everyday circumstances. So... yeah, there was a mad doctor on a remote island and these guys crash land their plane but then the black guy follows the creepy butler down to the kitchen and all the help is like "yeah theys zombies everywhere, just clap and you'll see em." Awfully casual I must say. Then toward the end I swear I saw all these zombies hopping up and down and singing along to the tribal drums. Bizarre.
11.10.07	His Kind of Woman	John Farrow	Robert Mitchum agrees to go down to Baja and get paid for doing nothing until he finds out it's all a plot for a deported mob boss to steal his identity and get back into the states, stranding Mitchum on a permanent Vacation. Jane Russell's the girl, Raymond Burr's the mob boss, Charles McGraw's the thug, and my favorite part of the movie: Vincent Price is an Errol Flynn-esque actor/cad on vacation. I wish there was more narration. There was only like three and a half lines but McGraw delivers them perfectly, like a narrator who really can't be bothered to tell the story he's telling. I also wish there was more newscaster voice-over. In the very beginning you hear a tidbit that I quite like, something about a senator claiming to be quote "misquoted" unquote. heh heh heh. So... yeah, toward the end Vincent Price goes nuts and starts killing people. The movie's probably not like how it sounds when I type that... he goes nuts in a comedic way spouting actor-y Shakespeare lines while discovering vitality in being a man, but I chose to see it as somewhat more sinister. He just cracks and finds out that he enjoys killing. It's awesome. He also says stuff like "this is man's work, women are for weeping!" Unfortunately, the movie's not nearly perfect. Mitchum is ineffectual as ever and I spent more time wondering how Russell got into her dresses than paying attention to whatever she was saying... something about being a millionaire but not really. The movie's also about 40 minutes too long and killed my energy. By the end I was dozing a bit and kind of glad because it seemed like the fight on the boat went on forever alternating between genuine shoot-out scenes and light comedy like Price's rowboat sinking with him standing at the helm like George Washington crossing the Potomac. I'm 90% sure I wouldn't be into that mixture of tones if this was the only movie I was seeing tonight but... whatever. I just rested my eyes for a few minutes and let it pass. And now I finish this year's DVRfest with a double feature from Monogram pictures. Both are pretty short and both sound completely bizarre and un-missable. Check back later to see what they are.
11.10.07	The Day of the Jackal	Fred Zinnemann	OK so it's not the same Jackal but still! close enough! I stayed away from this movie for the longest time because I was so bored by the 90s remake with Bruce Willis and Richard Gere but it turns out I should've seen it much sooner. Despite its length, I thought this was pretty damn good. I loved how huge it was and how Zinneman wasn't afraid to bring in new characters just for one scene or to go wherever he needed to go in order to tell the story. Plus I love the main investigator guy although I only remember him from Munich. I actually thought a lot about The Boston Strangler while watching due to the way that every lead is systematically followed step-by-step and how much grunt work was involved in the days before computers and databases. I really liked the documentary aspect of the film and how it casually switches from talky procedural scenes to silent Hitchcockian tense stuff. Liked it a lot. Even if all the Frenchman did have English accents. We're well over the hump now. It's time to settle into a nice dark noir before our final double feature of the fest. This next one is, again, something I haven't seen before but something that looks pretty great.
11.10.07	Gotcha!	Jeff Kanew	Back for more!? Good! Today we're starting off with Gotcha! I never saw this but loved the whole laser Tag/Gotcha/Photon fad what with the Brian Bosworth commercials and whatnot and always wondered what Jeff Kanew did right after his monster Revenge of the Nerds success. Be back in a few hours! Huh. I guess I didn't think the whole movie would be Anthony Edwards running around his college campus playing paintball with people but I didn't really expect him running aroudn East Berlin with Linda Fiorentino either. I'm not surprised though... this falls perfectly in the Cloak & Dagger Little Nikita kids espionage fad of the 80s. Plus it makes sense that after doing a movie about nerds, going off to europe sounds like a nice change of pace. I loved Alex Rocco as the dad more concerned about his Nikon than his son. Alex Rocco's just great, isn't he? So are Linda Fiorentino's breasts. You don't see those as much as you used to. Anyway, this was a fun little intro to the night. I can't help but think how impossible any sort of Gotcha-esque game is today... yeah, guns on campuses. sounds like a laugh riot!. The Alamo showed this and tried their own Gotcha game a while back but I live too far north to qualify. I never really heard how well or poorly it did but there hasn't been another one so I could take a guess. It's nice to imagine yourself with some next-level agenda whenever you're doing something mundane like grocery shopping or going to class though. Oh, excuse me one second. I have to pull out this gun and shoot that guy who's getting a coke over there. I'll be right back. Not for real though, of course. So one last thing I thought was interesting about this movie. When they're in Paris looking for women, Edwards' latino friend masquerades as an Algerian terrorist named Carlos to pick up chicks. I totally had no clue that was in there but guess which movie I'm watching next!!!
11.09.07	Forbidden Zone	Richard Elfman	whewy. I am so tired. The last half of this movie I can't really tell what I saw and what I dreamed. Were there talking chickens in this? Were those two guys also in UHF? What an onslaught of grandiose weirdness! Somehow I think I saw this in the perfect way. And now I have to sleep. To those who stayed up till 4:45 with me, you sleep too. See you tomorrow.
11.09.07	The Wild Angels	Roger Corman	So yeah, I've never seen this. The Alamo played it one or two years ago and I never got around to getting out for it so it's been a pretty big hole in my biker movie exposure. My current understanding is that this is the movie that kicked off the whole biker movies craze of the 60s and 70s and I can definitely see that. It's interesting how instead of the usual 45 minute interlude of partying, raping, and fighting... this kind of split it up into several smaller sequences culminating in the batshit crazy funeral party. I really liked Corman's cutting and his handheld here... It's so raw and kinetic and everyone is clearly trying to play cooler than everyone else. Plus there's the names... Blues, The Loser, Frankenstein, Pygmy... cool biker names. I have to admit though. I'm tired. I kinda hazed in and out for a few parts of this and think it enhanced my overall experience. It's already pretty late though so I won't go on. Instead I have one more movie to see and from what I know about it, it'll make the perfect exhausto-capper for my first night. what is it? stay up late and see.
11.09.07	Dreamscape	Joseph Ruben	Dennis Quaid plays a psychic using his powers to make money at the track. Max von Sydow plays a scientist who's managed to project psychics into the dreams of others and is doing research to help people with chronic nightmares. Christopher Plummer is the shady government intelligence agent who's funding the project with the secret agenda to assassinate the president through his dreams and David Patrick "warrrriors come out and play" Kelly plays the rogue psychic psychopath. The movie is Dreamscape, a 1984 alternate of Nightmare on Elm Street (according to imdb this made it to theaters 3 months before Craven's film) with some Matrix and some Coma and Dennis Quaid's abs thrown in. Joseph Ruben (The Stepfather) directs with some wonderfully pre-digital effects work and there's even George Wendt playing a Stephen King-esque horror writer (named Charlie Prince) who somehow knows about the secret experiments thanks to research for an upcoming book. Oh and you get a quick shot of Kate Capshaw's boob and that's 1984 Capshaw so... nothing to shake a stick at. (looking at imdb comments, it looks like the Image R1 DVD of this is cut and does not include either the Capshaw side boob or an earlier cheating wife boob shot. suck!) Considering I knew nothing about this movie going in, I was pretty blown away by what I saw. I can't believe I haven't known about this since I was a kid. Due to the dream aspect of it, it can be funny sometimes then sexy then scary (with an awesome Snakeman that looks just like a He-Man toy I used to have). All those actors, such an interesting and out-there premise, so many ideas going on... I just can't believe I haven't heard of this. I think maybe Elm Street overshadowed this or something like how Sixth Sense ruins Stir of Echoes but that's a shame. This movie is pretty damn good! I mean, it's still a 1984 movie. The music's horrible, all the green screen is terrible and Quaid's pretty boy bit doesn't really fit, but I love that he uses his power to pick up chicks! Love it! If it wasn't Hollywood, they should've gotten a pretty ugly dude for the part since Quaid probably had no problem getting chicks psychic or no (especially if he has an excuse to take his shirt off or smile or do both) but whatever... that's movies. Scientist women probably don't look like Kate Capshaw either but you don't see me complaining about that. So yeah, awesome times watching this movie. I feel like the fest is really kicking in. What's up next? Well, even though it's already 1:15, it's time for a midnight movie. What did I pick???
11.09.07	She Wore A Yellow Ribbon	John Ford	When I hear the list of "great" John Ford movies, I've seen a lot but still have plenty to explore. This seems to be one of the titles thrown in many peoples' hats so I figured it was about time I saw it. John Wayne plays older and it suits him very well. Again I'm aware of how much has been said about that guy but the scene toward the end when he's been called back to his post and a whole room full of people are there to applaud him, he vaults his eyebrows into super puppy dog mode and is at once sad and lonesome and vulnerable but at the same time still macho and masculine. I think that's what made him such a hit with pretty much everyone. So... I liked this one although I totally thought it was going to end a half hour before it did. That's ok though because the last half hour had some of the best stuff in it. In particular I liked seeing Ben Johnson in his prime (that guy could ride), Wayne's comic chemistry with Victor McLaglen (the barroom brawl/toast with him was pretty great), and the beautiful photography. There's a scene with a lightning storm rolling in that at first I thought had to be an optical or something. I still think the lightning bolts are because they are too big and too perfect but just the clouds and lighting in that scene are amazing. It actually reminded me of a shot in No Country for Old Men... I bet if you're on set on days like that you just have to thank whoever's responsible out there and not dwell on it too much. Special moments. And although the movie's not similar in any sort of stylistic way, just the fact that Wayne called his troops dogfaces reminded me a lot of Sam Fuller. I really need to see Steel Helmet and Fixed Bayonets. Oh, I also loved when Wayne has his little powwow with the old Indian guy and the Indian's saying that they're too old for war and should go hunt buffalo and smoke a lot... the way he says "We get drunk all the time!" was great. So... this next movie is truly a mystery. A while back, my Time Warner DVR was wigging out and lost all the guide information so there was no data available for any show on any channel. So I was flipping around and caught the beginning of some movie that must have piqued my interest. I remember seeing the director credit and the star and looking it up on imdb and thinking I wanted to see it so I recorded for two hours and it's been listed as "instant recording" ever since. Of course I've forgotten what the movie was and anything about it and the recording starts after the beginning titles so... all I know after queueing it up is that Dennis Quaid's in it. Intrigued? me too!
11.09.07	Stagecoach	John Ford	Well lookie what time it is! Another year of fanatical film "journal"ing (it's not a blog!) down, another self-indulgent junk food-fueled weekend of personal film festival is upon us! Well, upon me. And I'm already running late. If this was AFF I'd be pissed. So last year DVRfest kind of exploded into a four-day bonanza of lonly excess but this year I'm scaling back to basics. 10 movies, 2 nights, I've only seen one of them before, wish me luck. I wont give much of the schedule away (I don't even know what one of the movies is) but I will say it's starting with John Ford and ending with Zombies fighting Hitler. I can't imagine that reading along is fun for anyone but apparently a few people do it anyway so feel free to check back here every two hours or so for ongoing coverage of the fest. I saw Stagecoach in a film course years ago and I've been curious to revisit it again and see if my curiouisly mixed response to Ford's films have changed any, So I figure this is a good place to start. Be back in a few hours! Well it's still quite like I remember. I hadn't realized that John Carradine was in it though (in a relatively early role for him... only 60 previous credits!). I remember my film prof telling us how many ways Ford tells us that the brothers John Wayne's up against are gonna lose before they actually start the fight and it's still funny to see. It's actually so blatant and Wayne is now such an Icon that it's completely unbelievable that he has any chance of losing at all, but still... it's a great shot when he drops to the ground shooting and it's a great introductory shot as well. I'm painfully aware of how far away I am from the first person to be saying this stuff... Everybody knows it's a classic film and all that. I like it to be sure. I'm not sure I love it on a visceral emotional watch-every-week level but I definitely see why it's talked about. Since I'm running late I wont go on about it. Next up is another Ford picture... which one is it? Find out in a few hours!
11.08.07	Superstition	James W. Roberson	First (real) Terror Thursday at The Ritz! Also the first time it's late due to overlong sing-alongs! Back to normal! except with a warmer and more awkward lobby experience! Anyway, Zack gave a nice little intro... Sorry but my note-writing reserves are all dried up from The Mist. I thought this was OK. I liked how it was such a downer and pretty much everyone involved died and there was no hope for anyone. I loved the line "You've damned us all, church man." and "shut your bitchy mouth" and the buzzsaw death was awesome (freaky buzzsaw breaks looks and gores into a dude who sits down while he dies and the saw keeps churning through him and the chair he sits in. awesome) and as Zack mentioned afterward it's pretty much clockwork that every 8 minutes there's a death because the writer knew he couldn't keep the story together any other way. The investigator was also awesome in how much free time he had and how he was always grouchy.
11.08.07	The Mist	Frank Darabont	I will try to stay spoiler-free for half of this note. I'll tell you when to stop reading. In the interest of being fully honest, I had heard that this sucked. Which is a shame. I read the story a long time ago and really loved it and still remember parts of it (like the ending) very well. Plus the fact that the venue was changed (apparently because the Ritz elevator is having troubles) and Darabont didn't want any food during the movie even though we had already paid for a 3-course meal... It had me very much in a mood to want to like it but be disappointed. So Much to my surprise, I liked the majority of the movie! I think most of it works really well and there are a few ballsy moves there and the whole thing has a quality of coverage and cutting that you don't normally see in horror movies nowadays (i.e. epileptics can actually watch the movie if they want to). So even though I'm gonna list specific problems I had with it further down, I want everyone to consider this a positive review. I think the creature design was for the most part fantastic (and really the only parts I didn't like about it were dictated by the story itself) and one moment near the end created what is for me my first truly satisfying Lovecraftian moment on film. I also enjoyed Thomas Jane for the most part. Actually all the actors did a great job. Blah blah blah. It was all well-done on a craft level. I liked the semi-documentary low-budget approach too (although I think that was more to do with behind the scenes and shooting method than actual visual style. The only difference that comes across as you watch it is there's more zooming than usual). In the end I'd say I liked about 75% of the movie a whole lot. Spoilers start now because I can't gripe about it without mentioning certain specifics. If you don't want the ending spoiled don't read the rest of this! -I think it's a story suited to a pretty low budget (pretty much one location, the mist hides a lot, etc.) and I'm glad Darabont could focus so much on his cast and everything but... I still feel he needed more money for the CGI. Like I mentioned before, I didn't have a problem with the designs so much; the CG just looked extra shiny to me. Especially shooting handheld and stuff, I could've used the CG being 100% photorealistic and as believable as possible (for, you know, being unimaginable monsters). It bothered me throughout, especially because there was all of 1 practical creature effect and it worked just fine. Now, the ending makes this less of an issue for me but more on that later. -So the first real tense scene involves tentacles. Afterward, the guys that were in the loading dock and saw the things have this HUGE long scene where they try to convince everyone else that they're telling the truth. I sort of get why that scene needs to take place (since so much of the movie is about how human nature and how we deal with intense fear and panic and denial is certainly one of those ways but... there's a piece of tentacle right back there in the loading dock! The entire argument is a waste of time and I guarantee every person in that audience wanted to scream out JUST SHOW IT TO THEM! and be done with this stupid scene. Also, in the story I remember the main dude sleeping with the school teacher while everyone else sleeps. It continues with the exploration of how everyone deals with such an intense situation but i don't really miss it in the movie. -It's one thing for me to read crazy religious babble and sermonizing and it's another thing to actually sit through it on-screen. I don't mind reading it, watching it is tedious for me. I knew this coming in since it's most definitely in the story and Marcia Gay Harden did a good job with it but... it's still hard to sit through. I suppose it's a success because it makes those few moments where she's actually shut up all the more sweeter, but ugh. -I can't remember if this was in the story or not but there's a scene in the movie where one of the army guys explains a little about what Project Arrowhead actually is. Doors to different dimensions, windows to other worlds, blah blah blah. I don't know why there's always a need to explain where something comes from or why it's happening. A bit part of the draw for the story for me (and again, if I'm just not remembering this than it's my bad) was that it just happened. Sure you could guess that it had something to do with Arrowhead but we don't need anything more than that. There are monsters in the mist; that's it. -The creature design is great but... all these alien beings from another dimension and what do we see? bugs and spiders? really? Granted you dont see many spiders with evil looking skull faces or whatever but... bugs and spiders? So, this is from the story so this gripe is really not the movie's fault but still. -The movie has almost no music and most of the cues are just kind of generic pulsing action-backdrop stuff to keep you pumped up. That's fine. But at the end when they finally get to the car and this Dead Can Dance music starts playing over all these long slow-motion shots of a car driving in the mist. UGH. -The ending. OK. So the story ends (as far as I remember) they get in the car, drive off, they try the radio, they hear two words: "Hartford" and "Hope." It's kind of a non-ending to be sure but it ends the way it starts and it stuck with me because it was what it was. There are monsters in The Mist. That's it. In the movie, first they go check on the wife, then they drive (to more Dead Can Dance) and drive until they run out of gas. -- First, I have to mention this. The final monster they see (the huge one that shakes the car with every footstep) is the closest and most successfully cinematic realisation of a Lovecraftian monster that I've ever seen. You can't really see much in the mist but it's absolutely huge and weird and tentacled and everything it needs to be. Fantastic job on that. -- So anyway, they run out of gas, only 4 bullets for 5 people so Tom Jane shoots everyone (including his kid) then gets out and waits to be killed but... the mist clears and there are military guys with flamethrowers burning the monsters and people are getting to safety (including the woman from the beginning who's the first to walk out in it). Aside from the windows not shattering from the gunshots in the car and his ears not bleeding from the immense sound bothering me on a mundane level, I was struck by this ending not because I didn't like it but because it changed the whole movie for me. Let me try to explain. It's a twist. But not a twist like a twist ending like aHA! the father did it! type twist ending but more a twist of the knife. The way I see it, both the story and the majority of this movie is like someone repeatedly stabbing you. It's a simple horror story that's effective and it just is what it is. Stab Stab Stab, straight forward, relentless, horrific. The ending makes it more like an EC comics story or a Tales from the Crypt episode. It's stab stab twist the blade in your guts. Did they REALLY have to just wait two more minutes and they all would've been saved? REALLY? Well in this cruel world, yes. and the girl from the beginning that by all means should have died survived and probably everyone they left at the market survived too because the world is out to get you and you're screwed. That makes it more comic booky to me (which forgives the cartoony CG). Again, not a bad ending by any means, it just changes things for me. I like stab stab stab movies. I like monsters in the mist. I like them driving into grey and credits coming up. I guess that's just me. I like him killing his kid for nothing too, but in a much different way, a way I didn't really see with this story.
11.08.07	Bee Movie	Steve Hickner, Simon J. Smith	I like Seinfeld. I like his show, I like his comic sensibility, and I liked his documentary. So I thought this might be worth watching even though it's very obviously meant for small small children. Ultimately, I found it entertaining. I think I laughed more than the kids did, always at small things clearly meant for adults. It's not Pixar-quality but I liked it more than the Shreks. I liked how the conceit for talking bees was that all animals actually can talk in real life, they just have a rule not to talk around humans. Like that Far Side cartoon with the cows all standing around talking in a field until the lookout yells "car!" and they all get down on all fours and chew grass while the car passes then they get up and continue civilized conversation. I liked the storyline where bees are pissed at humans stealing all their honey. I guess the only things I didn't like about it were very general and non-specific. I guess it was just a bit too kiddy for me.
11.07.07	Carnival Magic	Al Adamson	First Weird Wednesday at the Ritz! Lars had a great intro for the film explaining the bizarre circumstances surrounding the film and how the print came to be shown. Apparently this is in all likliehood the only print of this film in existence since Adamson self-distributed and it was only released unto the realm of private collectors due to the director's unfortunate death by murder and entombment in his house. Strange! Not nearly as strange as the movie though. Talking monkeys, psychic magicians with chest hair, drunk lion tamers with even more chest hair, teenage girls becoming young women, and an awesomely trashy nurse all speckle the Carny sets and infest our minds with calliope-driven insanity. There's also a guy with a radio and a guy who can only bend steel when he's Gus (thanks, Lars). I also particularly loved the cop on the radio because of the way he said "ten fo'" and the other cop for sitting on his car even as it was towed away. And all hail the triumphant return of Wednesday Night Special!!!! Man that thing is beat up. It was fantastic to see it play again in the new space. I never really realized how much I missed it at South lamar until I saw it again tonight. yay! Deleriously weird movie. Really glad I saw it.
11.07.07	Deadly Daphne's Revenge	Richard Gardner	Another borrowed from Micah a looong time ago. AKA The Hunting Season (a much more apt title if you ask me since Daphne's in like 5 minutes of the movie). A group of guys pick up a girl hitch-hiker and rape her then the whole movie's about how she goes to the police and the guys feel persecuted for being called a rapist. So stuff happens and the girl falls for one of the guys but then Daphne shows up at the end, a crazy woman escaped from Camarillo and the root for the main guy's hatred toward women and black people, and gets deadly revenge. So it's kind of a rape revenge story in that it has rape and revenge, it's just that the revenge doesn't come from the rapee. For her it's kind of a love story. Although the above paragraph sounds pretty interesting (and there's a Mexican named Bobo. he's great), this movie was just too slow for me to stay with. Maybe I picked a distracted time to watch it but sitting through it didn't do much for me. Thinking about it afterward is actually much more entertaining. The movie plays completely serious and straight with all these rapists complaining about how their careers are in jeopardy thanks to this woman coming forward. Damn it! Now I can't be governor! One little rape and all this hubbub! jeez! Or the other guy ("If you want to keep selling me insurance you better go upstairs!") who just went to sleep losing his wife because the whole town's now heard how they all raped a girl. But then the weird thing is she drops the charges and is sorry for saying anything. It's actually pretty twisted and weird in retrospect. Too bad it couldn't be a tad more enjoyable on the actual watching. Maybe if I saw it under better circumstances I'd like it more. hate women and black people bobo the mexican
11.05.07	The Big Lebowski	Joel Coen	I just read this book I'm A Lebowski You're A Lebowski which, while it wasn't nearly as interesting and comprehensive as the other book published on the film, was a fun read containing interviews from character inspirations and most of the actors including the Ralph's check-out girl and Little Larry Sellars. Reading it put me in a mood to watch it again. What a great movie. Just perfect.
11.05.07	Special Delivery	Paul Wendkos	Micah lent this one to me long long ago, so long ago in fact that I forgot why he lent it to me or what it was about. The cover art made it look like a tender 70s romance between Bo Svenson and Cybil Shepherd. Lucky for me, it wasn't (at least not exactly). Bo pulls off a bank heist but he's the only one on his team of vet war buddies who makes it out. While being chased by cops, he stuffs his bag (holding a half million bucks) into a street corner mailbox and gets away. He comes back later with the task of getting his bag from the box before the late pick-up. What elevates this movie for me are the various supporting characters inhabiting this one particular block (of what looks like seedy 70s Hollywood). Several layers of interest and tension layer on as more people become involved like the sleazy dealer bartender who sees Svenson stuff the bag in the box and hears about the robbery and tries to steal the money for himself or the local gangster Mr. Chu with his deleriously over the top dialogue who trails the bartender to see what he's up to or Cybil Shepherd as a crazy woman who sees the whole thing from the window and falls for Bo the bank robber or the biker gang (complete with a young Jeff Goldblum playing Snake) who ask for trouble when they mess with Svenson. In the end, most or all of these characters intertwine in some way. it's pretty satisfying. So yay. A pleasant surprise here.
11.03.07	Seizure	Oliver Stone	Probably the end of my Oliver Stone kick (since I've seen everything else of his except for his TV work which I'm not paying for Australian DVDs or learning Spanish to see) and sadly no commentary track on this one. It's a shame too because I'd love to hear what he has to say about it. I mean I would REALLY like to hear that because this movie made absolutely no sense to me. Granted I wasn't trying to hard and it never really lessened my enjoyment of the movie, but the whole thing is just so... strange. It kind of cops out at the end but then again sort of makes the most sense of that cop-out of any movie I've seen that uses that excuse. I know that's confusing but I don't want to give it away. I never thought I'd hear the line "I'll give you anything you want, just break that midget's leg!" in an Oliver Stone film. So... yeah, I'm serious about not knowing what the hell was going on for the whole movie. Even in the beginning when it's sort of supposed to make sense, I was never quite sure who knew each other and how. Then Herve Villechaize shows up and there are feats of strength and he claims to grow in people's bellies and know everything and... huh? Even the scene where irrascible Uncle Charlie tries to buy gas with a credit card is filled with mystery. What was he saying about his name on some sign? I have no clue. So... considering his somewhat mixed comments on Roger Corman and Sam Arkoff when he was here talking, I'd be very interested in hearing his take on this movie. It's funny though. You can really tell that even when he's clearly out to make a genre picture, he has a problem sticking to convention. If only Alexander and World Trade Center shared in the daring and energy present throughout his career. Whew. this was a mind bender. Time to watch a sitcom or something.
11.03.07	24 Hour Party People	Michael Winterbottom	Seeing Control put me in a mood to watch this again. Plus now I like to think I know a lot more about that whole era than when I first saw this years ago. Plus there's the story that the guy who plays Ian Curtis in Control also played Mark E. Smith of The Fall in this (I didn't see him. I saw the real Mark E. Smith but no Sam Riley. A google search confirms in an interview with Riley that he had one line and it was cut from the film) so... all these things point to me renting this. It's still good. I still quite like the way Winterbottom plays with Tony Wilson's commentary and free DV shooting. While I'm sure it's not nearly all 100% accurate (Tony Wilson's commentary goes a long way in separating what did and didn't actually happen), it's admirable that they told so much story in one film. And actually pulled it off. You don't have to look any further than a Southland Tales or a Good Shepherd to see how hard something like that is to do. It also makes me wonder if that infamous Manchester Sex Pistols gig was featured in Sid & Nancy. It's been such a long time since I've seen that movie I don't remember. I seem to think that there's only like two performance scenes in that film though so probably not.
11.02.07	Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer	Tim Story	Ugh.
11.02.07	Brute Force	Jules Dassin	Prison noir starring Burt Lancaster in his second movie directed by Jules Dassin with a script by Richard Brooks (thanks to producer Mark Hellinger). I particularly enjoyed how the heavy is little ol' Hume Cronyn. I suppose it's a testament to his acting ability that I can believe he intimidates anyone at all, much less big ol' Burt. There were several aspects of the film that i didn't dig at all: the singing dude, the various flashbacks, and the doctor's long-winded social message speeches. Aside from those though, I liked the rest. I particularly liked how brutal the violence was (for its time) with the killing of the snitch sequence and the climactic break-out attempt. When Burt learns which of his crew was an informer, I thought "wouldn't it be cool if they strung him to the front of that cart and used him as a human sheild?" then just as quickly "nah, it's the 40s. That's like a Mad Max type of thing to do, not Hayes Code 40s" but sure enough they did it and it was awesome!
11.01.07	The War of the Gargantuas	Ishiro Honda	After No Country ended, we decided to try our luck finding seats down in the theater proper for the midnight movie. I must confess to peeking at the poster early to pass the movie on to Micah so he could decide whether or not to make the drive down from Dallas. I wish I had more time to talk about the film with people afterward (I noticed Lars sitting in the back watching it for a second time; ANnie said Javier gave her nightmares) but the size of the midnight standby line motivated me to look for seats ASAP. I found a few other friends and sold the guys sitting next to them to swap their seats for VIP spots and voila: prime seats for the midnight feature. This was my first time actually walking down into the big house. I'm not sure what the view is like from the first row because the screen looks A LOT taller from down here than it does from the back or the VIP boxes. It's really nice though and seems more personal than the SOuth Lamar houses for some reason (be it the size of the room or the number of rows or slight differentiation in row height, i dunno why it just does). Styrofoam skyscrapers and city scenes started dotting the stage, coupling with the Japanese Monster pre-show to give people a pretty good idea of what the next movie was. I saw the buildings and someone asked "Who's gonna get up there and smash them?" and I flashed back to Zack's theater tour with Owen and him showing off a hot pink monkey suit and I knew. Sure enough, once Tim got up there and started talking, he introduced a few special guests with their own theme music. Horns of impending doom sounded and a black gorilla man walked out with his arms up in a rage, followed by a hot pink Dr. Seuss version of a gorilla. The dark brown one picked a model plane up and threw it at the pink beast. Pinky leapt through three buildings into the larger darker ape and they wrestled to the ground. Buildings were kicked into the faces of front row patrons, the pink guy almost lost his mask at one point (revealing his converse all stars underneath the pink fur), general havoc ensued. Once the buildings were decimated, The pink guy took off his mask to reveal... ZACK! The Triumphant return of Terror Thursday! Last scene wrestling Owen in a kiddy pool of blood, a pink gorilla suit is the perfect way to welcome back the weekly wacky midnight horror series devoted to blood and fun. Zack proceeded to give some short words, yelling into a microphone that was turned off and out of breath but still heard by all. Then the monkeys got down and Tim welcomed Quentin Tarantino to introduce the film after noting that Lars and Zack both got man-happy when they heard the title of what we're about to see. Tarantino gets up and reveals that we're about to watch The War of the Gargantua which is actually a direct sequel to another favorite of his (and QTfest alum) Frankenstein Conquers the World. Apparently, in Japan the two monsters who battle it out with Tokyo at their playground were not "gargantua" but Frankensteins and they had names (Sanda and Gaira) but US distributors excised as much as they could of that stuff and invented this Gargantua thing instead. He also mentioned that Nick Adams (male lead of the first film) fell so madly in love with Kumi Mizuno that the Japanese people were embarassed by how much shame he was bringing to his wife and that's probably the reason why Russ Tamblyn steps into the role for this film; Adams' wife wouldn't let him spend any more time with Mizuno! He probably said a few more things but I can't remember. The movie started after a few choice Monster trailers and... ...I'm not experienced enough to really be a connoisseur of this genre, but it seems to me that most of the movie is waiting for the monster (or monsters) to either fight or destroy Tokyo or do both (preferrably at the same time) but you have to wait for the whole movie to see it happen so it's like an hour of waiting then maybe 10 or 15 minutes of fun then that's it. There's always some unsuccessfull military action that scientists try to stop... and in the end they sort of think they killed the monster (until the next time it shows up in another movie). Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I don't know what to be looking for with these movies, but they end up feeling rather slow and familiar to me. So while I won't say I disliked the movie, I will say that after No Country it was kind of a sit-through-it deal and I can't help but wish it was Anguish because I'm dying to see that movie and have been told repeatedly not to watch it on my computer but to wait to see it in a theater. Oh well. So afterward there was much lobby chitchat. It was fun and Thomas was there getting everything on video and before I knew it the first night at the Alamo was over! Here's hoping for many more years of fun there. It will never be the original downtown, but hopefully it can be something just as good in its own way.
11.01.07	No Country for Old Men	Joel Coen	First Night at the new Alamo!!! Since I don't like mushrooms I skipped out on the Matango feast, instead getting downtown at around 8 and aquainting myself with east-of-congress parkiing (not fun). I wanted to get there early enough for there not to be a line though so I could hang out a bit with whoever was there and maybe sneak a peek around. As it turns out, after talking with Tim Doyle a bit and checking out the new Mondo Tees store (along with new T-SHirt designs. I need me a Weird Wednesday and Terror Thursday shirt) and looking for some of the 30 differences between the original "Remember the Alamo" poster and the reprint, i glommed onto Zack and Owen as they were about to have a look around. The lobby is a lobby I guess. I still don't associate it as much with the old downtown lobby. I don't know the square footage but it seeems smaller. That may be due to the layout. The bar is really nice and Mondo Tees is really nice. I love the exterior with the lights on the ceiling and there's a great ZAAT poster that, as Zack pointed out, looks like it's a fake movie poster in the background of some cheap horror movie set in a theater. The color scheme is lots of browns and golds and oranges - very 70s. I actually got the tiniest bit of Kubrickian Shining-ness. Not in any sort of direct way but just the feeling of the lobby and the stairways to the houses. I dunno. I hate to say this but it feels like an amazingly comfy old-timey lobby if you're seeing an unpopular show. I'm not sure how comfy it'll be with one or both houses sold out. The lobby was pretty warm tonight with so many people in it and the line situation on the stairs still doesn't seem 100% ideal, but I can imagine if there were only say 50 people it'd be a really great space to hang out in for a while then walk up the stairs to take your seat. The smaller house is bigger than I thought it would be but still quite intimate. It looks like the first row is gonna be ROUGH as it looks approximately 18 inches from the screen, and behind the last row seems to be a thoroughfare for the waiters and runners to bypass the projection booth. The rows have an old-downtown version of stadium seating; looks to seat about 90. The big house is really great. There's sort of a Paramounty feel as you go through the door to the mezzanine level because the VIP boxes above create a lower ceiling over the back few rows before opening up into a cavernous space ramping down to the screen (which is HUGE by the way). The stage is also very nice, big, and high enough so everyone can see what's going on up there. The view from the VIP boxes is actually quite good as well. It's kind of a weird feeling at first to be looking slightly down at the screen instead of craning your neck up, but I quickly got used to it and it's really fun to be up in the box above (and therefore better than) everyone else. It is a bit of an ordeal to get up to them though. I'm not sure if they'll be in everyday use just because they're so close to the projection booth and you have to traverse the labrynthine waitstaff stairways to get up there (i bet every waiter and runner loses like 15 pounds from all the stairs. crazy!), but it's a nice view and once they get the big loungy comfortchairs up there it'll be a great spot (for tonight they just had padded folding chairs and the old barstools (that I hate) set up with impromptu tables). There were still lots of little touches of unfinishness here and there. Judging from the blog updates the past few days, I'd say it's amazing how much work got done this last week to make it ready to be open, but I bet it will REALLY be finished in a month or two. So that's the theater. Overall I was pretty impressed. Someone also mentioned that a second changeover projector was definitely going in soon, hence ending all worry that the big house wouldn't be able to accomodate BNAT or anything else (from what I understand we have Mike to thank for that so... thanks, Mike!). I'd say job well done to everyone that worked on it. So... ok, after waiting in line for a long time, Karen offered us the option to sit up in the VIP section for the show. I couldn't really say no so I felt like I got some special treatment for a while. Did I mention how great it was to see all the original downtown cats back together again? Sure I'd seen most of them at South Lamar or Village over the summer but... yay for them getting their home back! In my opinion, that crew represents the best service team of the three theaters (not to say the other guys are bad, but a lot of the guys in other locations talk way too loud and never remember that yes, I've been here before). So A huge perk of the VIP seating is our own devoted waitperson: Annie! Yay! Couldn't ask for better! So us VIPS also got some smoked Ostrich thingy which was cool and made me feel very important. Also in the box was the architect and a few other random people. I could hear David Strong in the other box. Before the show, pretty much everyone saw Tarantino walking around to and from the restroom and it was yet another occasion where it seems like all my movie friends are together in one spot so I was on overload with saying hi and catching up with out of towners and feeling good about life. I LOVE that there's a community surrounding the Alamo and the films they show and that it's been so open as to include me in the past couple years. So OK! The lights finally dim and lights illuminate the stage. Tim hops up (they didn't put in stairs to the stage yet so they had a couple milk crates zip-tied together making it kind of an adventure to get up there, especially with close to 200 people watching you (and judging)) and starts talking. Happy to be here, blah blah blah, history of the theater, blah blah blah, let's watch a montage. Henri had whipped up two little sequences, one a photo-montage of really early Ritz photos following the theater up through the years set to dewey photo-montage sap music until it ends with a video clip of The Dead Kennedys playing (Word is that The Ritz was the premiere Austin venue for punk music in the seminal 81-83 years). Then Tim br4ought up.... Argh I can't recall his name. Anyway, he used to run the space in the 70s or something and did a lot of interesting things with it (similar to the Alamo) but was ahead of his time I guess. He was cool and funny then they showed another montage of the construction they did to convert a tired pool hall to a brand new theater, culminating in a clip from Fantastic Fest where Tim tries to hereby declare the theater awesome with a champagne bottle that refuese to break (He actually puts a whole in the brick before finally shattering the bottle and sending lethal shards of glass all sorts of ways). Then Henri comes up and pre-emptively apologizes to the wait staff for all the messes he's gonna make in the theater before Tim gets us all to yell out that we declare the theater awesome and Henri blasts the theater with one of those confetti guns. I imagine that it was pretty cool to be down in the falling confetti (especially if you'd just gotten a pizza or something for it to fall in) but I must say it was equally cool to see the ribbions shoot out over half the rows and see everything fall down from my high-above VIP vantage point. So let's see, what next. I guess that's it unless I'm forgetting something. Tim says that this movie is the best one ever and the lights go down! Finally! the movie! Well, not yet. First comes a series of Coen trailers culminating with the trailer (not the teaser. unfortunately) for The Big Lebowski. This got lots of cheers. It's weird because... well I'm in the mood to watch the movie again after reading this new fan book about it called I'm A Lebowski, You're A Lebowski, but every time I've seen that movie it still feels like an outcast cult movie to me. It still feels like a movie that parents don't get, yet the entire theater was clearly in the fan club. Maybe that's just the Alamo audience but I dunno. At this point there's two books written about it, festivals centered on it, saturated into pop culture, and the source of countless Halloween costumes. It might be time to accept the fact that it's pretty mainstream. So, after The Big Lebowski trailer, they had a little bit from Odeon theaters with Barton Fink saying that so many words had been written, so many reams of paper had been used, so many hours of work... the least we can do is not talk. I've never seen this before. It's awesome. They should play it more often. The Movie. Near perfect in my eyes. At this point I can't see the one problem I had with it as criticism but just a difference of opinion because I literally have one issue with the movie and the rest is perfect. Not to dwell on the negative but just to get it out of the way (and this is a spoiler so skip the rest of this paragraph if you haven't seen the movie or read the book!!!!!), I felt there was one scene missing. When Llewellyn gets to the El Paso hotel, I remember much more in the book with him and the girl seen brieflin in the film talking to him from the pool. The one thing the movie didn't have that I wanted was the scene between them where they're sitting there drinking beer at night or whatever and Moss has this speech or conversation with the girl where he basically expresses that he's accepted his role as a badass and likes it. Up till the phone call between him and Chigurgh, he's more or less just been surviving, but at the end of that call he's now actively chosen to continue the game between them two and he expresses his outlook really well to that girl by the pool and it's about as obtuse as the rest of the dialogue in the film but really communicates that his past life is over and he's now comfortable with being an outlaw and gets a bit of confidence and he's not really aware of just how over his head he is anymore and at that moment, you know he's gone. It's like a great farewell speech in the form of him liking what he's doing. Now, I can understand why it's not there (there are like 3 other big speeches right around that time and it might've taken some tweaking to make it work with that pool girl character since all the other stuff with her from the book isn't there and it might even been a tad too conventional to give him a big dramatic speech right before he dies, lessening the shock of the following scene) but I missed it nonetheless. Anyway, other than that one little thing, I think this movie's perfect. The movie can't be done any better than this. A home run. Amazing. Everything I was hoping it would be. Really fantastic.
11.01.07	The Hand	Oliver Stone	I started off really liking this - Michael Caine draws a Conan-esque comic until a car accident separates him from and the severed limb seems to have a life of its own - but by the end my enthusiasm was completely sapped. It's pretty tired by today's standards and there's really only one scene (the car accident) that I think still holds up. It's a pretty great scene though with some good gag shots and even before the actual hand coming off it's cool to hear Michael Caine yelling "get back, you cow!" to another driver. Unfortunately, then it becomes all psychological and ineffective. I would've much preferred if the story went along the lines of what he thinks is phantom limb pain is actually him feeling the bugs eat on his hand so he has to find it in the field and take care of it but then he goes crazy and uses it to strangle people while he has an alibi. that would make a pretty cool movie if you ask me. The commentary's funny though. Stone actually says "holy cow" at one point.
10.31.07	Kung Fu Halloween	Hau Cheng	A movie called Kung Fu Halloween with no Halloween in it. In any case, maybe it's something about the kung fu genre or the fact that this print was pretty dinged up and warped or the fact that it's Halloween but sitting in the theater tonight was one of the most "grindhouse-y" sensations I've had at a Weird Wednesday. Here it is, Halloween. Pretty much EVERYBODY is either trick-or-treating or partying on 6th or driving their kids around to trick-or-treat and what am I doing? Watching a horrible kung fu movie with a hundred and some other anti-social freaks. Sure the theater doesn't smell like urine and I didn't see anyone fornicating or injecting drugs but... It's halloween! Surely there's something better that pretty much everyone can be doing instead of listening to horrible HORRIBLE dubbing and scene inserts from other movies. Right? So even though parts of the movie bored me (it is a kung fu movie after all), there were a few entertaining moments and the part where it switched movies was pretty classic. just snakes in a massage parlor all of a sudden! yay! then back to the action. I also liked the end where they thought that putting a padded bra on a stuntman and dressing him in a tight bodysuit would accentuate the breasts and sell that they're women but I guess they forgot to tuck or something because... they weren't women. On a side note, this is the last WW at South Lamar. At first I didn't think the series would work at all over there but not only has the attendance been respectable (regularly filling up the 100-seat theaters) but the programming has also been excellent. There were some real nice surprises these past few months (Hooch, Mitchell, Return of Bruce, The Girl Who Knew Too Much, and who can forget Black Devil Doll from Hell) so... great! Here's hoping Weird Wednesdays at the Ritz continue the trend. It's definitely the highlight of my movie-watching week nowadays.
10.30.07	Heaven & Earth	Oliver Stone	This is like the Oliver Stone movie I least want to see, but since I've been going through his films and commentaries lately (and having no luck finding copies of his two TV docs (damn spanish DVDs with their lack of english subs)) and this was the only one in the box set I hadn't seen... figured I'd take the plunge. It's a lot like Tess of the D'Urbervilles except in Viet Nam. The voice-over is so flowery and feminine that you almost forget it's Stone behind the camera until the VC takes her away and tortures her in various brutal ways. I do think it's a fitting end to his evolving Viet Nam "trilogy" (Platoon, Born on the Fourth, this) in that you see his shifting perspective much like John Ford vs. The Indians. Tommy lee Jones is good but doesn't show up until halfway through. Something about him... I have no problem believing he's crazy and capable of harming others. So anyway... the main girl was good too I guess. It's just that the story was exactly like I thought it'd be and nothing really surprised me and it's not my kind of story to begin with so... whatever. However, I think this has Stone's best commentary. I think it's because he's really really high, but that's just a hunch. For whatever reason, he really lets his guard down and gets passionate about what he's talking about. I always find his commentary tracks to be very interesting (I even sat through the alternate Nixon track which only had him talking maybe for an hour throughout the 3.5 hour film) but in this one he even recites a big speech in the film as the actor says it on the screen, then at the end he talks about what a crock of shit 20 million dollar paydays for actors are and how they never get blamed if a movie bombs and the director is probably the lowest paid person on a movie if you put it in dollars per hour terms, He's always quick to point out things the critics dislike about his work (and usually has a decent answer) but here he really vents a little bit at the end and it's great. "TWENTY MILLION DOLLARS! Think of all the things you could do with twenty millions dollars. You could stage balls at Verseilles, you could make Bravehearts, but you have to pay 20 million for a mug."
10.28.07	Talk to Me	Kasi Lemmons	Don Cheadle plays 60s DC DJ Petey Greene and his producer/buddy Chiwetel Ejiofor. Pretty good as far as biopics go (since I wasn't bored to tears by it). There was a bit of the expected dramatization with the down slump part of the story but for the most part it's kept interesting by the acting and music and the fact that Greene never really wanted all the fame he got. Good stuff.
10.28.07	The Wind and the Lion	John Milius	I have to admit my attention drifted a lot during this movie. I'm not sure I can adequately pass judgement on it except to say that it didn't hold my attention and my distractions were more interesting. I liked the Teddy Roosevelt scenes but all the Morocco stuff didn't interest me at all.
10.28.07	A Letter from Death Row	Marvin Baker, Bret Michaels	So... Something you may not know about me is that I watched Rock of Love this summer and loved every second of it (until the reunion show). But, like everyone that watched the show, ever week drew a growing frustration with Michaels' hair. Always with that damn bandana and every week with different feathery doll-hair ribbons hanging down on his neck like drapes. It certainly looked fake and moreso, if he isn't bald why not go without the bandana? like at least once? So a buddy of mine told me a few stories on working with Michaels for a music video and how he is indeed balding and apparently you can tell in one of the crappy movies he was in. Hence me renting this. Another friend of mine swears that VH1 did an Internet sweep to clear away any and all images of Bret that might make him look bald once his show became a hit. Apparently there are a few google images that are no longer there and a few references that have mysteriously been deleted. This wasn't helped by the fact that my first copy of this movie arrived in the mail cracked in half: the conspiracy continued. Well I've finally seen it now. It's a horrible horrible movie and I don't recommend to anyone that they watch it, not even just sitting through it while you play solitaire like I did. Michaels always appears with a bandana in this too except for one scene where he's completely shaven bald and there's really only one shot where you see the top of his head and thanks to the shot-on-video quality you can never quite tell where the shiny no-hair-there-anymore areas stop and the stubbly just-shaved-this parts begin. If I had to guess it looks like he has deep pockets of receding hair (a la Woody Harrelson) but there's one shot where his hair's wet and he's being prison raped in the form of the warden cutting off his hair in the shower where you definitely see what looks like hairs on the base of the back of his head. Of course the real hair is lost in a confusing mash of bandana and hands and sissors but we now definitely know that he's no alopecia bald. he has something. Through the rest fo the movie he sports varying lengths of brown hair to show him growing the shaved hair back so all of that's obviously a wig so the hair he does have must be pretty short. But what exactly does he have? Who Knows. There's one other shot of interest in this otherwise waste of a film. In it Michaels jumps from a second story window into a swimming pool in an effort to evade the cops after being framed for murder. He's wearing a face mask that's been pulled up to cover his head and when he jumps, what does he do? He holds onto the face mask with both hands. Now if that isn't a wig-wearer's instinct I don't know what is. You've just jumped off a second story heading for a swimming pool, flying through the air immortalized forever on film (well, video). Do you wave your arms wildly like a man on the run (acting!) or go to cover your face if you're a scaredy-cat or spread them wide to maximize your surface area to make sure you don't sink too low? No, you make sure your hair doesn't come off in the wind. Because you wear a wig. Because you're bald. Case closed.
10.27.07	License to Wed	Ken Kwapis	BARF!
10.27.07	Hukkle	Gyorgy Palfi	While this was good, I prefer Taxidermia because it had more story. There is a story here, but it's like a puzzle you have to figure out or a present you have to unwrap. Either way, there's work involved to make the movie more than a bunch of random nature photography and local faces. Thank goodness there's something because even at 75 minutes the movie drags. Yes it's very pretty and more or less interesting but with no dialogue or structure or anything, it feels like drifting. I'm really glad I saw it but I can't see myself watching it again (unlike Taxidermia).
10.27.07	Pink Flamingos	John Waters	OK, I'll give it to him on this one. This movie lives up to the hype surrounding it. It goes a few places you don't normally see especially nowadays. And as always Waters' commentary is candid and entertaining. I think my favorite part of the whole movie might be Waters' voice-over. It's so mean so Bawlmer... great stuff.
10.26.07	American Gangster	Ridley Scott	Watching this after filtering through so many Oliver Stone movies is not a good idea. I would've loved to see Stone do this movie because I think he would've pulled it off. As it is now, keeping my bias against Ridley Scott in mind, it's just ok. It never quite came together 100% for me and I thought a lot of it wasn't quite explained as well as it should've been and for seeing so many HBO faces I would've liked a little more Wire-esque procedure but oh well. It's a big story and lots of familiar faces are in it and he spent a lot on 70s music. The very end should've been a much better button because 1991's NYC was no better off in terms of drug abuse but for completely different reasons. I think that's what they were going for with the Public Enemy song but... it didn't hit hard enough. Anyway, I don't really have much to say about this. As a crime movie it's pretty familiar but also nice to see new york in the 70s again, even if it means bad wigs and a pat soundtrack.
10.25.07	The Thing	John Carpenter	Another Halloween revisit. Surprise! It's still great!
10.24.07	The Roomates	Arthur Marks	Fun little movie about a group of hot girls who are friends that each get up to their own little plot arcs during one crazy summer that suddenly turns into a slasher film in between the teasing sexy scenes and the women's lib discussions. It was pretty fun. I liked the biker guy whose idea of harrassment is yelling "Come on! Don't be a creep! Daddy wants to look at you!" and when the blonde he's been chasing finally gets refuge in the house, she declines the offer to call the police, saying he's probably gone now and she doesn't live too far away. I love how the two girls just wave goodbye to her as she goes off down the same trail she was just chased up like five minutes before. There's also some awesomely off acting to pretty great lines like the kid talking about how many women he's been with or how the other guy is just a little "boy virgin." However I also found there to be a shocking lack of nudity. I actually can't remember seeing anything more than bumps under sexy teasing midriff tops, bikinis, and tight dresses. I want my money back! a fun time as always.
10.23.07	Poltergeist	Tobe Hooper	I usually get pretty nervous showing movies I really love to friends who haven't seen them. Especially on the level of Poltergeist. I can understand how some people might not get into more culty or inaccessible films but... how can anyone not like Poltergeist!? OK it's possible to not like Poltergeist, but is it possible to keep being friends with me afterward? Well luckily everything went fine. I was still worried though. Does the gnarly old tree freak 30 year-olds out the same way it freaked me out whenever I first saw it? the skeletons in the swimming pool? the creepy clown sitting in the chair? I think the guy peeling his face off freaks everybody out no matter how old you are but other scenes in the film... I dunno. They still work on me. On a certain level at least. It does kinda suck being such a movie fan and having seen so much that it's so hard for me to get scared in movies anymore. I guess I never really got scared by movies even when I was a kid except for a handful of them, but now it's even fewer and farther between (the only ones I can think of recently are the pre-monster bits of The Descent and Session 9). I do cherish it when it happens though. Since Halloween is coming up, here are a few top-of-my-head scares from my childhood moviewatching: NOTE: I don't mean in a BOO! knee-jerk reflex jump way but in a seriously creeped out thinking about it afterward way. -Poltergeist: mentioned above -Poltergeist 2: the preacher -Flowers in the Attic: the end and how messed up it is. -Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom: according to my mom the heart scene freaked me out. I don't remember though. -Prince of Darkness: At the end when the hand comes through the mirror, and the general slow burn of the whole movie (nowadays it's almost funny, oh well) -Something Wicked This Way Comes: Like the whole movie -Friday the 13th part 5: I know. I think I did it more to myself than the movie did but afterward I kept imagining someone outside my window watching me. -The Haunting: All those sounds when they're in the one room with the rubber door -Jacob's Ladder: The obvious hospital scene but also the little glimpses like the bag-over-their-heads guys on the subway train and the spike coming out of whatshername's mouth. creepy! -The Shining: The whole vibe but most of all the creepy twins and the naked girl.
10.23.07	Nixon	Oliver Stone	I'm trying to remember where I heard Stone mention his planned trilogy of presidential pictures (I bet it was the JFK commentary) and who his last subject was to be, but whoever it was it sounded very interesting and I'm sad he never got a chance to make it. Nixon... I don't like Nixon as much as JFK. Maybe it's just a tougher story to tell or maybe it relies too much on Anthony Hopkins (who I never completely buy into although I do think he does a good job here), or maybe because Stone goes a little too far with the birdshot approach to editing (superimposing the Chinese and Russian words on the screen while Nixon talks with Mao and Brezhnev are a bit much if you ask me) or maybe it's just because JFK is a better movie. For whatever reason, it falls a little short in my eyes. That said, I still like it and continue to like it MUCH more than I thought I would (it actually took me a long time to see because I was so uninterested when it came out and a 3 hour movie about him was not my idea of a good time). Again, the technical craftmanship of the picture is top-notch. The size and caliber of actors he got to fill the many many roles is great (I think maybe between this and JFK every recognizable face in early/mid-90s character acting is covered (in particular Sam Waterston playing the CIA director (and evil incarnate) is fantastic, not something I'd say about his work on Law & Order)), and I admire the novelistic fluidity of time (bouncing back and forth through Nixon's life to draw more dramatic connections). I also like how archive footage of Castro and Cuba in general is so tightly wound into both these films. It's pretty fitting that he'd finally get to talk to Castro years later and fill in the other side of the story. And one other thing. I noticed Sam Waterston's credited on IMDb as having his scenes deleted. I'm a really big fan of Oliver Stone's director's cuts (pre-Alexander, I can't vouch for those). First off, the scenes he restores are actually worth watching, and secondly they're usually like 20-30 minutes longer and not just tacked on to the end but new material interspersed throughout the entire film. I'm actually really surprised that Waterston's stuff was cut for the theatrical run because his one or two scenes are so strong and give strong insight into the predicament Nixon found himself. So if you already like a movie like JFK, the difference between 3 hours and 3 and a half hours isn't much and you get a whole lot more. And with a movie like Natural Born Killers, I feel the director's cut makes the film MUCH better. I've always been a fan of the film but the last time I saw it I mistakenly watched the theatrical cut and found it strangely messy and unimpactful. all the little bits and pieces put back in for the director's cut actually makes that movie feel tighter to me so... there you go. Check out Oliver Stone director's cuts. Nixon was good too by the way, but I can see how he didn't have the numbers to make a third installment. The end of this film really peters out and leaves you exhausted. It does _kind of_ feel like a second-in-a-trilogy film (ok i'm probably projecting most of that) and it would've been nice to see some more of this kind of exploration behind the doors during a real dark spot in American government but... oh well. I can live with what we've got.
10.23.07	JFK	Oliver Stone	With Oliver Stone on my mind lately (filmwise at least (perv!)), I decided to take another look at what I think is his best movie. To this day I'm astounded by the amount of information conveyed, the amount of characters involved, and the amount of style exhibited in this movie. It's really a marvel in itself that the movie comes together at all. Before all the controversy and politics and history, the underlying technical craftmanship of this film is really spectacular. I can't even imagine cutting this thing on a linear system. Unbelievable to me. I also think Stone and Bob Richardson's explosion of changing film stocks and speeds and styles set a trend that's still in use today. You see it in Tony Scott's work, you see it in Michael Bay's stuff, and especially in horror movies for some reason. Of course most of them still don't look as good (and don't have that bright white light shining down on people burning out the tops of their heads). Kevin Costner... eh. to be honest I tend to forget he's in here. I suppose that's a good thing. I remember him getting flack for his accent when it first came out (I also remember every other aspect of the movie coming under fire before people had even seen it). The accent is what it is... I easily overlook it. I can't overlook the memory of how controversial this movie was for saying that the government had a hand in JFK's death and how utterly and completely I believe it today. I guess if I was a REAL critic, this is where I'd bring up W Bush and Iraq, huh. So anyway, masterful storytelling. It's a real accomplishment to take on a subject as convoluted and gigantic as this and not only communicate the facts of the story but also make it a damn entertaining movie (even at 3 and a half hours!). I enjoyed it so much I felt like Watching Nixon again.
10.22.07	Comandante	Oliver Stone	Stone's doc on his first meeting with Castro. It's very interesting to see Stone's style translated to documentary. I REALLY hope Pinkville is closer stylistically to Any Given Sunday or JFK than Alexander and World Trade Center. Honestly, I miss the bravery and individual authorship I usually associate with Stone's work that I feel is missing in his two latest features. Seeing this documentary reminded me of how strong that voice is. The politics of it... eh... They are honestly not that important to me. What I liked much more was just seeing the man talk, demystifying the vague blanket of "Devil" that Castro seems to wear in this country (since before I was born). It was interesting to me to see that he has an office and eats lunch and all the other normal things every other person on earth does. Of course it's constructed in such a way (with much file footage and second-camera inserts of the man's hands and mannerisms) to make it entertaining and Stone including himself in the conversation rather than some unseen voice conducting talking-head interviews both lends a looser feel to the movie and informs us of his role in the conversation. I think since this is his first doc and he didn't go in with any preconcieved agenda or goal to steer towards, Stone's enemies have an easy time saying that he was flattered and hoodwinked into liking the man, which may or may not be true. Stone also takes the somewhat weakened stance of saying this is just an account of our meeting rather than positing some active purpose of the film, but within his self-confessed parameters I feel the film really succeeds. It gives a glimpse of the man "behind the beard" so to say and really nothing more. Since that was all I was looking for, it worked out well for me. I'm now very interested in seeing his two other documentary efforts (Looking for Fidel, where he returns much more in the tough-questions grilling mode apparently, and Persona Non Grata which has something to do with Israel and Palestine) as I found this pretty interesting work. Hearing him speak the other week, Stone repeatedly painted himself as a dramatist rather than a journalist (often as a response to questions about movies being made today about the Iraq war. It's his opinion that you need time to sort everything out before you can come to any sort of greater truth about the event so the films being made today are really more documentary than anything else) so I wonder how successfull he feels his non-fiction work is (he also mentioned not thinking much of his horror efforts due to his unease with the genre) and if he'd be interested in making any more of them. I would think, with his cinematic history of research-heavy projects and explicit political beliefs that he'd do well.
10.20.07	The Darjeeling Limited	Wes Anderson	Got to see this with Jason Schwartzman in attendance. He was funny in the Q&A. So... let me preface this by saying I wanted to like Life Aquatic much more than I did when I first saw it (I barely like it now... it's kind of a movie where I enjoy scenes while I'm watching and walk away not liking the movie as a whole) and I'm of the mindset that Anderson's forgotten he's from Texas and thinks he's a New Yorker who summers in Paris or something, so there's a lot of pretension that leaked into Aquatic and it was kind of an ill omen because even from the beginning his shot composition and editing and music selection are very particular and precious but the characters and story always had enough heart to keep the movies honest. I'm now starting to think that most of that character and heart came from Owen Wilson because Anderson's first two movies compared with his latest two (I think Tenenbaums was the turning point although I still love that movie) LOOK very similar but that's about it. It's probably at least part the John Woo doves implosion thing where Wes Anderson movies have to be Wes Andersony now but... I watched 10 minutes of Rushmore before going to Darjeeling and think there's a much larger difference there than familiarity. I feel his earlier films had an exuberance and excitement that's now settled into malaise. Which sort of speaks to how I felt about Darjeeling. One last pre-note: The short, Hotel Chevaliar, is like my worst fears of Anderson realized. 12 minutes of dollies, steadicams, overcranking, whip pans, and interesting little knicknacks surrounding Jason Schwartzman trying to act like Belmondo talking to Natalie Portman trying to act (and look) like Jean Seberg. Nothing happens. Every line of dialogue is stilted and artsy, and even seeing Portman's butt is kind of too late. Sure it's a nice butt but whatever... That's how bad the short is! It made me not care about seeing Natalie Portman's ass! So... with that fresh in my mind going into the theater, I was actually pleasantly surprised that this movie was watchable and looked and sounded like a real movie. It's kind of a shame that my expectations have to be on the floor in order for me to enjoy it but... here we are. There are a few moments I think I'll like once it's out on DVD. Certainly the beginning with Bill Murray as Karl Malden in the old American Express commercials. The final little character wrap-up including the tiger, everyone downing the different muscle relaxers (someone out in the lobby told me that alcohol was illegal in India and that's why they were guzzling), the other two calling Adrien Brody "rubby", etc. It kind of bugs me when the same source music is used more than once in a movie though. And I don't mean like in a you hear the beginning then it stops for a few seconds then it comes back as the scene continues way or even a calling-back-to-earlier-events type way like Hurdy Gurdy Man in Zodiac but in a clearly-using-this-instead-of-a-written-score-cue way and using the same part of the same music more than once. That kind of bugs me. So it bugged me when Anderson used the same Satyajit Ray filmscores more than once. I kind of liked how we're given no context at all to any of these characters and you more or less discover who they are while they're on the train, but the flashback scene seemed like too much to me, way too explicit for something that, until now had been really implicit. But oh well. I think the net result is I liked it but not a lot. I might give it a second viewing (who am I kidding, I'll probably buy it if Criterion puts it out) just to see how it grows on me, but I am pretty disappointed that Anderson's trend toward pretention continues.
10.20.07	30 Days of Night	David Slade	Jarrette was in town for a day so we caught up on a few movies. I had... maybe not HIGH per se, but I had expectations nonetheless for this. I'd heard the graphic novel was good and early word was good. So I really didn't expect such a piece of shit. First of all there's the cast, which I don't like but that's not their fault. So I was hoping to say "I don't like the cast but the rest was awesome" but no... they went out of their way to ruin my plans and make me say something different. Because the rest wasn't awesome unless by "awesome" you mean shitty. The whole thing didn't make any sense. Even things that could easily make sense didn't because of how it was handled (like why the airport closes for a month just because it's dark out). Why do the vampires talk in their own vampire language? And if they do talk that way, you'd think their language would evolve a little bit to suit their pointy fake teeth a little better. Or I guess the high-pitched scream covers most of the basic communication needed and they only dip into vampirese when they need to say something really expository or poetic. Wouldn't it have been cool for them to speak Russian? they're just a bunch of Russian vampires who made their way over to this Alaskan town? I guess that makes too much sense, cut it out! So it becomes laughably ridiculous at the end and that also brings my favorite line: That's someone else's blood! ugh. horrible movie.
10.18.07	Grace is Gone	James C. Strouse	Last AFF film of the year for me. I wanted to catch the new Lumet film as well but.. scheduling. OK enough complaining. This movie's really good and REALLY sad. John Cusack plays a father of two daughters who hears that his wife's died in Iraq and has to figure a way to tell his daughters. The film works primarily because of the absolutely stellar acting from Cusack as well as the two kids. And Clint Eastwood wrote the score. So... yeah this is weepy as hell but really good. Cusack really showing his acting chops.
10.17.07	The Savages	Tamara Jenkins	This... was a bad time for me to see this movie. A drama with comedic moments about the mortality of one's parents was pretty much the last kind of movie I wanted to see tonight. So I found it pretty fucking depressing. Good turns by Laura Linney and Phil Hoffman and it was... not fun but familiar to visit dreary-ass upstate NY again so I think it was a good movie... quite a downer for me though. Afterward I tried to see Darjeeling Express before Weird Wednesday and the line was so long I gave up and went home instead. Video games and South Park never let me down. So tomorrow is the last night. Looking at my schedule, I won't be able to see both films due to scheduling. You'd think with only two slots a night they'd put a little more thought in the schedule to let film fans see more of the films that they want to see. It's funny how there's almost no problem seeing 5 or 6 movies a day during SXSW but one can't see 2 movies a night at AFF. It's just another sign (along with poor projection, lacking venues, and frequent lateness) saying that the movies are secondary to the conference in this festival, which I believe keeps its reputation as the "lesser" festival in town intact.
10.16.07	Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project	John landis	As a friend said before the movie started, It's about Don Rickles; Uwe Boll could direct it and it'd still be hilarious. While I guess that technically is true, I think Landis still did an admirable job in gaining the access and permission required of Rickles to be able to make the movie. From what the producer said during the Q&A afterward, pretty much everyone was interested in appearing in the movie and they even had to cut out a bunch of people (going on the DVD extra features) so the caliber and amount of big names interviewed here... well, hard to get or not it's still fun to see so many people affected by Rickles. I was often reminded of the great doc Kier-La played as a Music Monday about the Vegas lounge acts while I watched this. Rickles' show seems just like that. he sings, he makes people laugh, he's fast and loose and works every night. While I'm sure the energy of seeing him live doesn't fully translate to the screen, it's still damn funny to watch. Damn funny movie.
10.16.07	Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade	Lincoln Ruchti	Watching this on an old prijector using half an Alamo Lake Creek screen. yay, AFF. Anyway, this is about all the old video game record-holders from the early 80s and where they are now along with Twin Galaxies guy Walter Day. For those that have seen The King of Kong, this film fits nicely as a companion, filling out a bit more on the other people in that Life Magazine photo and offering a slightly different perspective on people like Billy Mitchell and Steve Sanders. Donkey Kong is no more centered on than any of the other classic games and Steve Weibe isn't here at all, but you do get to find out fun facts like Twin Galaxies referee Robert Mruczek pinup art collection and how one of the guys ends up as a sleazy pimp. While this was a funny doc just like King of Kong, I felt the humor in this one was much more malevolent toward its subjects. True, it IS pretty easy to laugh at these guys (who were geeks then and - Surprise! - are mostly still geeks today) but where KoK managed to find heart and an identifiable basic human goal underneath the retro geekiness, this film seems content with just showcasing how funny/pitiful these characters are. Still well worth watching for anyone ever into video games or movies like Joysticks, but I dunno... King of Kong wins.
10.14.07	Juno	Jason Reitman	So first of all... before I talk about the movie at all, there's really no excuse for this screening starting 45 minutes late. It's the first film in the theater, the special guests were there on time, and security guys were outside like an hour ahead of time telling everyone to take their cameras back to their car. Why they wait till quarter till to even start seating, I have no clue. So thanks to this I missed the next film of the night, so thanks. Anyway, whining aside, this was really funny. It does kind of fit into the Knocked Up/Superbad grouping but has a much more feminine perspective and point of view. Writer Diablo Cody (afterward in the Q&A she told her story of basically being a blogger in Minnesota and having a LA guy call her up and saying she should write screenplays so she wrote one in two months and sold it pretty quickly. Every wannabe writer in the room (and there were a lot of them) probably cursed her out and fell in love with her simultaneously) wrote a pretty great script (if you buy 16 year old girls being that clever) in a pretty interesting voice. A very-much blogger voice actually. But thankfully the adult characters talk like adults. J.K. Simmons as the dad is great. I also like Allison Janney's stepmother character in that she's actually very nice but Ellen Page rebels against her anyway just because she's 16. Everyone's great in it. I did find one interesting thing during the Q&A. Apparently everyone hates Jason Bateman's character but I totally didn't. If anything I found Jennifer Garner's character to be less sympathetic but I guess that's because I'm a man and EVIL. Oh, and Jason Reitman cast Cut Chemist as a chemistry teacher. that alone makes the movie cool to me. So... I have to go but this is a pretty great movie. I think Reitman's showcasing his intelligent sense of humor just as well as Thank You for Smoking and he's quickly making a name for himself other than being the son of Ivan Reitman. Everyone will see this soon and agree.
10.13.07	Control	Anton Corbijn	This was like the number one movie I wanted to see at this fest. Although I'm just a casual fan of Joy Division so I can't speak to how accurate it was or how close the actors look/behave like their characters but I can say that everything seemed 100% dead on. It's not a short movie (I think what I saw ended up at around 130 minutes) but very good. The live shows were all really well done (A producer was in attednance and said that all the actors had to learn their instruments (Sam Riley knew how to sang but had to smoke a bunch of cigarettes to lower his voice) and by the time they shot the gig scenes they actually performed the songs then acted to their own playback... which is great considering how it sounds. Yes it is a tad different but it also has all the messiness of a live performance so... I was impressed. Everyone already knows how pretty it is, but it's really shot as if from moving black and white photos. I'm not sure the camera ever moved (it probably did, I wasn't keeping a tally or anything, but after watching the previous film (which felt like 90% handheld and steadicam work) this felt extremely static and composed. I think this makes a great companion to 24 Hour Party People in that it both clears up that film's treatment of Curtis (When I saw that movie I thought it seemed more like he committed suicide out of boredom than anything else) and it gives greater context to the atmosphere and music of the time. I loved all the gig posters in the background and little touches in set decoration and costuming that made this feel all the more authentic. I guess I don't really KNOW if it's actually authentic or not (being too lazy to read the books), but it certainly feels that way. Great movie.
10.13.07	Born on the Fourth of July	Oliver Stone	Busy day at AFF but only two movies. It started out with a morning "conversation" (read: extended Q&A) with Oliver Stone that was packed and for the most part interesting and awesome, followed by an afternoon "conversation" with John Milius (equally interesting and awesome but less people) followed by the mega "Writing the War Film" panel with Oliver Stone AND John Milius (even more people, even more interesting and awesome even though I've now heard a couple of Stone and Milius' answers to more common questions three times). Finally, Stone stuck around to screen Born on the Fourth of July and do one more Q&A. whew! So, I remember watching this movie when it first came out on video and my parents rented it. I remember thinking it was like three hours long and mostly about Tom Cruise whining about being in a wheelchair and yelling the word Penis at his mom. It's funny how my memory has distorted over the years with some things but remains the same with others. Willem Dafoe slurping up the tequila worm? exactly the same. All the stuff with Cruise as a kid doing push-ups rather than kissing the girl and the 4th of July parades and him growing up that I thought took up like 25 minutes? All wrapped up in the beginning titles. ...And there's still a heck of a lot of Tom Cruise whining about being in a wheelchair and yelling Penis. But I noticed other stuff this time around too. Like I don't know if this was just when steadicams became available or what but it felt like 95% of this movie was either shot handheld or steadi. It's increadibly mobile. It must've settled down for the more dramatic parts (There was also a lot of use of close up) but it mostly felt on the move. I think it's great how clear Bob Richardson's evolution as a DP is through Stone's films. Here it feels right on the cusp. They're clearly trying some radical things with color and movement and a little with lighting (you see the burned out surfaces a little but he hasn't moved on to the JFK/NBK extreme yet) but there's still plenty of standard set-ups. I really wonder when his hair turned gray and if working for Oliver Stone had anything to do with it. From his films and reading that Killer Instinct book, I really expected Stone to be an aloof, philosophical, poker-faced guy in person but in hearing him speak today I found him to be much the opposite. He's warm, polite, concise and expressive. He definitely has his opinions but he communicates them very well and - this it the part that really impressed me - it sounds like he still loves movies. He still watches movies and his trivia brain seemed a pretty deep well. When he and Milius spoke about favorite war films both were quick to mention a handful I'd never heard of before and Stone was right there with actors, plot synopses, and in some cases exact running times (I'm too lazy to check if Lawrence of Arabia is actually 3 hours 48 minutes but he seemed pretty sure). It always bothers me when directors act like they're too good to like movies anymore or they never liked them to begin with. I always kind of suspected that was the case with Stone because he seemed to fall into filmmaking after returning from the war just because it was there and most of his movies carry a very blatant agenda and never really settle for just being an entertaining movie. I don't think that's the case anymore though. When someone asked them how they feel about Sam Fuller, Milius immediately responded with "Oh I LOVE Fuller. Love him!" and Stone looks at the stage and says "He's loved by critics and that's good" then after much prodding admits that "he's a pulp director that always seemed of the Roger Corman/Sam Arkoff variety to me, but The Steel Helmet is one of my favorites." After hearing that, I can buy how his outlook on cinema is for more than pure entertainment which probably points to a deeper love of the medium than those who indulge in simple genre execution. So... I should also mention that Milius was not without his fair share of opinions. After explaining how he's been blacklisted by the liberal majority of Hollywood after making Red Dawn, he also casually mentioned how the Mexicans are slowly invading our country, using the old German WWII plan of coming up through our midwest and dividing the country in half. "They're doing it now and they don't even need a war. And they're gonna win by the way... but that's ok. Change is good." Sounds like it's time to get the Wolverines back together! He also mentioned how he liked the draft and think it should be re-instituted but that's a whole other discussion. So they were both great to hear speak. They also both seem like perfect guys to sit down with for a few hours and just talk over cigars or something. Several times during the various panels I had urges to ask small follow-up questions to keep them talking because I could tell there's a lot more there, but had to remind myself that this was a Q&A and not him hanging out at my house. That's a shame though. More bigshot directors should hang out at my house, and they should do it more often. Anyway, Good times with hearing what these two have to say, and I'm glad I saw this movie again. I still can't say it's my favorite of Stone's but I'm glad I've refreshed it in my mind.
10.12.07	Michael Clayton	Tony Gilroy	Clooney plays a fixer for a law firm and gets mixed up in a big case when Tom Wilkinson goes crazy. It was good in an adult have-to-pay-attention way. The couples on either side of me were both thoroughly confused but came out at the end saying they liked it. It tinges of Oscarbaiting but whatever... still good.
10.12.07	Big Wednesday	John Milius	I'd never seen this before so it was cool to not only see it theatrically but on an IMAX screen (they didn't use the full screen but they did use the full width so the display was quite large). I liked it a lot. I am usually a bit wary on movies that span large amounts of time and have actors age but I think this pulled it off nicely and the music lent it an aire of epic-ness that elevated the whole thing. The surfing footage was also quite good. Gary Busey was awesome in this. I don't know why I didn't know he was in this but I'm glad I do now. I really want him to have one surfing scene in Point Break now so I can pretend that after Big Wednesday the same character settled down and became a FBI agent (like how I pretend John Cusack's character in Grosse Point Blank is really a grown-up Lloyd Dobler from Say Anything). Busey's crazy in this movie and I like it. The scene where they try and dodge the draft his great and perhaps my favorite. I even like Jan Michael Vincent here. And Milius talked a bit afterward, which was great. This will really motivate me to get up tomorrow morning and make it down to the panels. He's a concise and entertaining speaker and I can't wait to hear more of his stories.
10.11.07	The Walker	Paul Schrader	Another year of Austin Film Festival. To be honest, I'm not really in the mood for another festival right now. Real life is trying to intrude. But I paid for my badge this year so there's no obligation to cover anything so my notes will probably be pretty lax and my schedule is not what I'd call strenuous. Plus the programming this year looks... eh. Nevertheless, I have around 10 movies picked out that I want to see and there's a few first-runs that are also on my list so... should be a decent week. Didn't start off too well though. This movie stars Woody Harrelson as a deep-south gay dude who hangs out with important peoples' wives in Washington DC. A murder happens, some sort of thing that could be mistaken for tension ensues. Maybe it's just my unexplainable dislike for Kristin Scott Thomas but I found this movie to be pretty boring most of the time. There are some good actors here (Ned Beatty, Lauren Bacall, Lily Tomlin, and Willem Dafoe in a small part) but like every scene is people talking about something someone else. Maybe they talk about more things... I dont care. I didn't care who killed the guy or why or who would get blamed. But I thought it was funny at the end when Harrelson busts into Beatty's office and it's like... he reached the end of the board game. Oh! You made it to my office, i'll stop doing all the bad stuff to you now! Good job on making it... to my office. You still have no proof and I could keep sending thugs to kill you or whatever but since, you know, you're talking to me face to face I guess I'll let everything drop. good job on getting past my wife so you could get into my office! I guess it's not a BAD movie per se, just not something I'd ever be interested in seeing again. Next.
10.11.07	Eastern Promises	David Cronenberg	Viggo was good and I'd been told to expect something kind of slow and loose which came in handy because this also feels kind of undercooked to me. This has to have spoilers so read no further if you want to stay clean. I was really digging the kind of casual entree into this world of the Russian Mob and liked Armin Mueller-Stahl a lot with how he treats Naomi Watts and whatnot... But I was pretty let down when the whole undercover cop thing happened. I'd MUCH rather Viggo just be a tough guy playing the angles to take over. He could've still not killed the uncle and everything else he did that was nice but been a real hood instead of some russian cop. blah. So familiar in a movie that kind of banks on being a glimpse of something different. And the ending... yeah, it kind of just ends. I think that stems from there not being a very strong plot to begin with. It makes the whole movie feel a little undercooked. I liked it for the most part... but didn't love it.
10.10.07	The Baron	Phillip Fenty	Watch out! Here comes... The Baron.... I am a fan of Calvin Lockhart so it was cool to see him as a hustler/almost-filmmaker (a tiny bit like a Black Hollywood Man), even though he's in trouble for borrowing money from the mob in order to make his movie It kind of broke down toward the end though (did he go to the Bahamas for that street carnival-like scene?) but there were still plenty of things to like about this movie. Like his rich friend who he hits up for cash and Richard "burnface" Lynch as a sleazy crazy mob guy. I definitely wanted to see more of his movie though... that looked awesome. Ugh. I've forgotten everything already.
10.09.07	Conan the Barbarian	John Milius	I figured since John Milius and Oliver Stone are gonna be in town this weekend I should brush up on the movie where they worked together. You know, when I put the disc in I was pretty sure I had seen this at least once as a kid but as I watshced I realized all this stuff was completely new (I guess my memories are of Conan the Destroyer or Red Sonja). It's... not that good. I'm surprised by how basic it is. The pacing's all over the place and it's mostly slow and never really exciting. I did enjoy the sword chops with the awesome blood a lot and the music was so big and loud that it sort of became enjoyable because it was so huge. I dunno, I guess I was expecting a little more considering what a huge hit I seem to remember it being.
10.07.07	The Heartbreak Kid	Farrelly Brothers	Ultimately forgettable but not without several laughs for me. Sure there's a lot that doesn't work (like Mencia) but I really enjoyed the whole crossing the border sequence and Rob Corddry's part and some of his wife's lines.
10.06.07	Disturbia	DJ Caruso	If this was like two years ago I'd be going into a diatribe about how movies like this are ruining cinema but... I guess i've settled into silent resignation... Just watch Rear Window instead. it's better.
10.05.07	Zodiac	David Fincher	I refuse to buy the barebones disc of this when I know Fincher will probably do up a spec ed along the lines of his other films once he finished Benjamin Button. I still really love this film. It's long and sprawling and pretty much everything I didn't like about Wyatt Earp but... in a good way. I love the film shows a handful of murders take on mythic status and the search for facts in the messy labrynthine world of reality clash to create something easily obssession-worthy. Very similar to Jack the Ripper or any other high-profile unsolved murder I guess, it's kinda like a fractal in that the closer you search the more you find until you literally have rooms full of information draining your life away. This was what I loved about Ellroy's Black Dahlia book because several cops in that story become this level of obssessed. Of course none of that stuff was in the movie because De Palma had to make it sucky, but whatever. I really hope we get a 3-disc set comparable to the Panic Room DVD. I'd love that level of thoroughness with a movie I actually like.
10.05.07	Romper Stomper	Geoffrey Wright	I always get this confused with Chopper so I thought I should actually see it in order to get to the bottom of this whole Russell Crowe thing. He's good in this for sure, but it's funny to think of him back in these days before superstardom. I can definitely see why Curtis Hanson cast him in LA Confidential based on this... The movie was ok.
10.05.07	Raw Deal	John Irvin	Imagine my surprise when someone told me Arnold Schwarzeneggar made a movie in between Commando and Predator that I haven't seen! I vividly remember the video box art to this but for whatever reason never saw the movie (or if I did I completely don't remember it now... kind of like Cobra). Maybe I had this confused with Next of Kin (same director. huh.) or something... whatever the reason, it's a treat for me now! Well, sort of. It's kind of forgotten for a reason. It's completely mediocre with by-the-number plotlines and characters, sub-par action, and way too much acting on Arnie's part. This just makes Commando and Predator look better though.
10.04.07	Wyatt Earp	Lawrence Kasdan	I'm really glad I didn't see this when it came out because I know I would've hated it. I barely like it now. While there is a certain kind of fulfillment of getting all of the backstory and context behind the big events in the Wyatt Earp story, for the most part this feels more like a filmed book than a movie. It's way too long, awkwardly paced, and you have to wait an awfully long time before you get to any of the good stuff. At this point, I kind of don't mind that. If you know you're watching a 3-hour movie and it's one of those things where you're supposed to soak up the atmosphere and kind of live the life for a short time, I can go with that a little bit. In 1994, definitely not. But still, ugh. Give me Tombstone any day of the week, even with its hokey movie-isms and bad montages. If I wanted all the details I'd read a book. oh and the music was horrible.
10.03.07	How Come Nobody's On Our Side?	Richard Michaels	so this movie is about Larry Bishop and Adam Roarke playing actors in biker movies that take a ride and end up stranded somewhere along the coast of Southern California (if I lived there longer I'd totally know). It starts off pretty cool in a biker angst sort of way but as the movie progresses it gets goofier and goofier until they're coercing a midget hot air balloon to pilot them away from chasing cops. it gets pretty goofy. The plot didn't make a lot of sense to me... there's a whole astrology angle that supposedly answers why they need to shave their beards to be able to talk to border patrol in order to cross the border to buy weed from Penny Marshall and Rob Reiner but... I didn't really get it. I did love how much Adam Roarke valued his fucking freedom though. My favorite scene is easily the one where they have to borrow his sister's VW bug and he refuses to get in because as soon as he does he starts paying dues... and Larry Bishop tries to persuade him by saying that the dues were very minor and major dues were like shaving his beard for the man (yet to come, they both look really REALLY sad when they shave) and that riding in a VW almost isn't dues at all, just ego. You can't fool Adam Roarke though... he knew that riding in that VW would result in hijinx. I also liked that Bob Tessier made the beginning titles even though he's literally in one scene (the first) and has no dialogue. Yay Bob Tessier! And this movie is blessed by some awesome songs that I wish I knew all the words too. I love how the cops see a tank rolling down a city street and their only problem is that it's going too fast. I love that Adam and Larry hotwire a fucking tank! So yeah, fun moments... not a great film but it sure goes to some bizarre places.
10.02.07	I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry	Dennis Dugan	wow that was... not funny! I should make a new genre for anti-comedy.
10.02.07	1408	Mikael Hafstrom	John Cusack goes in a haunted hotel room and shit happens. I respect how much of the movie is just Cusack in the room but to me it felt too long and stretched out to make a movie. The short story was good and had a neat history but was also pretty short so I thought that really showed. I liked the beginning stuff but the whole flashback/writing a whole book sequence got tired for me real quick. I was also waiting for my favorite "gag" in the story but, they changed the ending to be lame which is a shame (spoler parenthesis! my memory of the story was that he sets himself on fire and makes it out of the room and it turns out that he'd only been in the room like 6 minutes when it seemed like whole days). Compared to that, the ending they went with seemed familiar and blah to me. oh well, i guess i am just a jaded guy who cant get scared in movies anymore.
10.02.07	Evan Almighty	Tom Shadyac	eh... ummm.... ugh.
09.29.07	Knocked Up	Judd Apatow	still hilarious!
09.29.07	The Black Hole	Gary Nelson	So... I remember loving this as a child but I haven't seen it in so long that literally the only memory left is two robots fighting and a windy garden. Thanks to the Alamo's Saturday Morning Kid's Club free screening, I saw it again for the first time in like 20 years. It's... really out there. It kinda explains a lot because I remember a small handful of "children's" films back then that were really twisted and strange and out there. I mean the ending where they go down into hell and it's all fire and brimstone and stuff then it's a mirrored hallway with an angel-esque girl flying around... did they die? did they take a road trip to hell and heaven? Either way, what a downer!!! The awesome Slim Pickens robot (made in Houston!) dies and Maximilian Schell becomes one with his robot (named Maximilian) and just all sorts of craziness going on I couldn't believe it. What's this movie's deal? So yeah... pretty big surprise to see how crazy this movie gets. I kinda remembered parts all throughout but I must've repressed or closed my eyes or something for the ending. No clue. Side Note, after the movie and the latest meeting of Gastronauts, Fango writer Matt Kiernan asked us to help him out with Halloween (the movie) trivia questions for the AMC website. Now, I didn't admit this or anything but I'm not a huge fan of the original Halloween, much less the 7 sequels and remake. I do remember the third one being good but having nothing to do with Michael Myers and... that's about it. I'm not even sure I saw 4, 5, and/or 6. So let me tell you... talk about humbling experiences. Try being in on a conversation between Matt Kiernan, Scott Weinberg and Zack Carlson talking Halloween trivia. Sweet beautiful baby jesus.
09.27.07	There Will Be Blood	Paul Thomas Anderson	There Will Be Blood. Closing Night film for Fantastic Fest 2007. At first it seems like this is a pretty bad programming choice for a genre festival (not that I can blame them. How do you say no to the first public screening of a PTA film!?) but after watching the movie I'm convinced it fit in perfectly. Perhaps it's even better seen in these circumstances because it takes a while to creep up on you and you start noticing similar elements and themes and before you know it you're watching a horror film with Daniel Day Lewis playing a monster. I'm going to stay spoiler free here... I really don't want to ruin anything since the marketting for the film has been so great without giving much away. So the long and short of it is I loved it. I loved the beginning - the ambitious tour de force beginning that further establishes PTA's maturity as a filmaker - the middle - the subtle and playful middle shocks and consumes you - and the ending - the Citizen Kane horrific ending. It doesn't feel like a PTA film yet it does. The music is utterly amazing and not only fits the film but also informs it. I love the lush strings and occasional relentless percussion that fit the scenes so perfectly that although it may initially seem like an odd choice, after the scene's over you can't imagine it with any other piece of music. The photography was amazing, production design unbelievable, all the way down the line top notch quality. And then there's Daniel Day Lewis. Watching this is like seeing a whole movie's worth of the best couple scenes in Gangs of New York. I think he's in pretty much every shot and for good reason. I mean yeah, Paul Dano does some strong work and there's a few other familiar faces (no PTA Alums though, or at least I didn't catch any) but by and large this is DDL's movie and he makes the most of it. I honestly have no clue how long this movie is. I was completely transported. I think PTA mentioned it was two and a half hours but it could've just as easily have been 90 minutes for all I knew. Such an enthralling experience. So OK, I lied. I have to talk about specifics. Just for this next paragraph. Skip down unless you've seen the film. How batshit crazy is that ending??? Holy shit! At first I was like "ahhh that's awesome he's rubbing it in!" and then I was like "hah! he got his ass!" but then I was like "man that's so great! I SUCK YOUR MILKSHAKE!!!" but THEN I was like "ohhhhhhh my god" but T H E N I was like "spooge" because the ending is so incredibly awesome that I can't even believe it. And the beginning! He sets up this characters entire history with zero talking. You see where he came from, what's formed him, that itchy connection to the land that drives him and keeps him from any sort of human relationship. When he finally does speak he's already conning. He's lying from the first moment we hear his voice. So really, all of his character "development" happens in that first 15 or 20 minutes before he says a single word, because lord knows he doesn't change once he starts. It's just incredible filmmaking I can't believe it. And how about that driving percussion when the derrick burns holy fucking shit! Leave it to PTA to have the oil burn at magic hour and cover the flame against darkness and the actors in near sillhouette with the faded sky behind them and huge billious clouds of black rolling over their heads. So beautiful yet also completely serving the story. man oh man oh man! So yeah, this really really blew me away. I'll be honest, I didn't love Punch Drunk Love and I've still only seen it once (it probably deserves another viewing now to see what's what) but this... this is really a masterpiece. Film as art. All cylinders firing. I can't wait to see it again. This film so affected me that I decided not to see one more film (which I'd heard was good and had previously been looking forward to) because I wanted this to be my last film of the fest. It's still washing over me several hours later as I type this (at 4am), so even though everyone I talked to said the movie I was going to see was great (Inside), I don't regret it. So instead of the movie I stayed for the awards ceremony. It started off with a quick video of the various events that happened during the week: George Romero talking about how awesome Austin was, Marko Zaror kicking over Henri's head, Zack getting a groin full of guts shot out of a cannon, filmmakers shooting shotguns, Tim christening The Ritz as awesome, Zack Ward telling us to suck his cock, Kareoke madness, Tim slipping off a podium, and other scenes I forget. It was a fun video and although it was more than a little bit "look at how awesome we are" I still wanted it to go on for like 14 more minutes. Then They announced the winner of the Reel Heroes contest where the kids made little festival bumpers (Red Cape won which is good although I also really liked Shark Vadar... both of them are better seen than described; I'm sure they're on youtube) then since the Red Cape kids were in Minnesota they taped an acceptance speech (also on youtube) that was hilarious. Then they announced the Bloodshots winners and Comedia a Go Go's "LARP" won which is awesome and they showed that again and people laughed then they got down to the festival awards. Basically the big winners of the fest were Timecrimes and Mirageman. After that we all went over to the afterparty where I suppose fun was had although PTA seemed to be roped in by Harry the entire time. Oh well. I learned that he went for BBQ with the super special VIPs earlier that day and got up to some awesome firework-related hijinx the night before that made me jealous of everyone that was there. I either need to figure a way into that secret club or move away and make a film that gets into the fest so i can come back and have Tim put me up in his attic so I can be in on all this awesomeness going on. I can't complain too much because I was seeing movies during this time, but still. From what I understand PTA loves Small Soldiers and Pan's Labrynth. Go figure. And now it's all over and done with for another year (this is the recap section of this write-up). Remembering how opposite of excited I was for this a week ago, I must admit I had a much much much better time than I expected. I really liked the slight expansion of genre this year. I thought the action and crime and comedies included for those wishing for a break between horror films helped a lot with sensory overload and festival fatigue. They've also come that much closer to streamlining the queueing process and presenting their fest in fun and different ways. I still miss the casual air of the first year when no one was there so there wasn't a mad rush to seats for every show, but lost conversations in lines were gained sitting in theaters so that more or less evens out. And The programming in general just seemed a lot better this year. Although I didn't like any of the AICN Secret screenings, all was forgiven with the Closing Night Film and I think expectations will be more tempered next year if they differentiate between the big AICN worth-waiting-4-hours films and the more typical Fantastic Fest screening where you should expect something new and interesting but not necessarily the big Oscar movie 4 months early. Also, I think a highlight for everyone was Monday's Fantastic Fued/Kareoke party. I know SXSW has like 4 parties every night for various films but I don't think any of them are actually in the theater. Having everyone cut loose in the middle of the festival both made for some excellent stories and made the Alamo and the festival seem that much cooler to just about everyone. There's always going to be some films that aren't as good as others, but I really only saw one movie where I was sitting there waiting for it to end and only a few more that I thought were merely mediocre. That's actually very good as my memories of last year's fest was that most of it was paralyzingly mediocre with a few good films at the end. I know a lot of work and money went into the films this year and I think it paid off. The Nikkatsu series was a highlight for everyone in the surprisingly well-attended screenings I'd bet and the Honk Kong action movies went over real well too. I don't know, I'm impressed. I didn't have any "bad days" at all. I am broke and sick of the Alamo menu but... hey i got to eat more than popcorn or candy at all these movies! how can i complain about getting tired of the pizza. So let's see. How about some lists. Favorite Films 1. There Will Be Blood 2. A Colt is My Passport 3. Taxidermia 4. Timecrimes 5. Velvet Hustler (Special mentions to Raymond and The Tale of How, two amazing animated shorts) Favorite Non-film moments -Seeing Nacho sing Tainted Love with Austin -Seeing Tim secretly high-five Henri during the Postal Q&A -seeing Paul fucking Thomas goddamn Anderson in an Alamo. -Both Timecrimes Q&As. We sure do love Nacho Vigalondo here -Gary's Touch. Even though it was technically a short film, watching it felt like a non-film experience. Biggest running themes in this year's movies -Vomit -Masturbation -People getting run over So that's that. Fantastic Fest 2007 is over and done with. I guess I can go to bed now. I'm finished.
09.27.07	Kiltro	Ernesto Díaz Espinoza	The first movie from the Mirageman guys. This one's very different in tone and much more of a conventional martial arts picture where the dude seeks revenge so he sojourns and goes through training to meet his opponent at the end. There was still some humor thrown in and I loved the heavily Italian Western-influenced score but I also didn't like how long it took to get to any action. And the CG blood, intentionally or not, makes the movie very comic booky. And Marko Zaror shows his butt off. It was good though. I liked Mirageman more but whatever. I'm glad I saw this instead of standing in line for the closing night film. Thanks to Tiffany and Patrick and Ryan and Victor for saving me a seat so I could see this!
09.27.07	Finishing the Game	Justin Lin	Last day! I started off with this movie about casting Bruce Lee's replacement for The Game of Death. Honestly, I'd heard it was either mediocre or barely good and I got what I expected. I think it's an interesting idea but the movie isn't as inspired or developed as it needs to be. Instead, it's mildly funny jokes that make you mildly laugh sometimes and overall pretty forgettable. Not bad, not good. blah!
09.26.07	Taxidermia	Gyorgy Palfi	And for midnight: Taxidermia. Taxidermia... How can I even try to explain it. Well, Amon Tobin did the music. That's a start. For the record, I love Amon Tobin and his music fits the film perfectly. This might be my favorite new movie of the festival. That probably puts me on some FBI list or something, but I can't think of another movie (aside from the Nikkatsu films) that I've walked out of so excited and fulfilled. Yeah. I'm not even going to try to explain it. It's just so great... I won't ruin it with words.
09.26.07	Velvet Hustler	Toshio Masuda	Rounding out the Nikkatsu Action retrospective, Velvet Hustler is about Goro, a hitman hanging out in Kobe because he's wanted in Tokyo and disenfranchised with everything. As Lars said, this movie is pretty much a perfect synthesis of both shown previously, encapsulating the crime elements of A Colt is My Passport (there's even similar plot twists) with the New Wave influence of The Warped Ones. The result is a more experimental meandering film that drifts in and out of noir elements in a haze of long takes, anguished conversations, and lots and lots of cigarettes. I've been thinking about what my favorite thing about Goro is - he's pretty much the coolest guy ever so there's a lot to choose from - and I think I've settled on how he dances. His white suit and the hole in his hat and the way he guzzles liquor while making out are good, but I think his dance skills beat them out. There's a scene where he starts dancing in the club he owns and lines of people form up behind him and follow along. I was instantly reminded of Band of Outsiders when the three main parts dance in that cafe (I think it might've been the Madison?) and also the beginning credits of Kung Fu Hustle where all the gangsters dance (my favorite part of that movie by the way), but Goro takes the stoneface air of apathy on display in both of those movies to an extreme, literally stumbling forward and back with his eyes closed, expending as little energy as possible. At first I just thought it was a weird little transcendent moment in the film like when a girl starts singing a pop song for no reason but there's a later scene where Goro dances with a girl and he does the same thing! It's so cool I can't even believe it. If i ever get to make a movie, i MUST remember to have either my heavy or my hero smoke his cigarette with his teeth rather than his lips. I don't know if I've ever seen this before these films (and, not being a smoker, I'm not privy to the secret world of smoking technique) but damn if it isn't an awesome small touch. So, due to my personal bias toward noir and differences in tone and pacing between the films, I think Colt eeks this out as being my favorite of the three but this is right up there. Jo Shishido's character in this one is really great (I love the scene where the girl catches him surveilling or camping or whatever he's doing and the scene where he's targetting them on a carnival ride) and all the performances are wonderful, but the New Wave touches slow the movie down a bit and the ending is tragic rather than triumphant so I think, as a viewing experience, Colt packs more of a punch for me. I'll tell you what though. I'd love to have all three on DVD to watch whenever I want because I suspect that Velvet Hustler will grow in my mind the more I think about it. One of the things I've learned from the gathering of really smart and experienced people in town for the fest is how much of a tyrant Criterion is with its unreleased titles. Apparently they own the rights to all these films but have no plans to release them and are unwilling to sell to anyone else who would put them out. I just hope an Explise box set makes it out sometime or something. It's a real shame to know that these films could be readily available in the states but aren't. All in all, it was an amazing series of films and I'm super glad I saw all of them.
09.26.07	The Orphanage	Juan Antonio Bayona	So the third secret screening is Guillermo del Toro-presented The Orphanage. SURPRISE! Actually I didn't know for 100% sure until they announced it but... come on. The director and writer were there and Guillermo had a quick video intro to boot. Um... so it's about a woman who moves back into the orphanage of her past to renovate and re-open it but her adopted son (with invisible friends) disappears and she's led through a ghost story in her search to find him. Everyone... well, most people around me seemed to really like it. So I'm in the minority here. But I couldn't get into it at all. It looks pretty, it's well-made and all, but I had problems (both big and small) that kept me from ever really enjoying it. The one that came immediately to mind, while not being the biggest, is that she has these huge iron poles in her closet. I GUESS they are leftovers from unseen scaffolding that went along to the faint offscreen audio of people working early in the film but for the most part they are just heavy iron poles clunking around in the closet and I have no idea why they're there. They kind of figure prominently in the story though - like they come into play two or three times - so every time they show up I thought "why are those even there?" On a broader level, the movie seemed awfully familiar to me. I respect that a lot of the talent behind the film are first-timers and think it's not a bad movie in any conventional sense of the word, but the thing I look for from young filmmakers is not to see established stories executed very well. I leave that for the Woody Allens (Match Point) and David Cronenbergs (History of Violence). From young filmmakers I want something new, and nothing in this movie was new. I saw them getting together and saying "hey! Let's see if we can make a movie just like everyone else's!" and in that they were successfull. The car kill, the paranormal research, the creepy ghost children, the haunted house... they've all been done better in other films and without anything original to hang onto it all feels like reproductions to me. And the music was awful. Talk about manipulating emotions. I think the Patch Adams score was less blatant. There were a couple of jump scares where I knew something was coming but still jumped because of pure reflex. It's like the music included gunshots right next to your ear to ensure you will react. Not cool. I feel bad being a negative nelly about this. I truly honestly wanted to like it but... I mean really, what doctor would even attempt CPR or mouth-to-mouth on someone looking like that?
09.26.07	Sex and Death 101	Daniel Waters	So the movie I was planning to see next was going to run right up against the secret screening (which I had heard was a big movie and good and aparently word spread to everyone so it was a pretty "open" secret but oh well) and, truth be told, it looked pretty crappy so I opted to see Sex and Death 101 again since it was in the Same theater and would allow me to get awesome seats. Uh, the movie was still funny but with more casual crowd there weren't nearly as many laughs. I don't really have that much more to say about it so instead I'll use this space to include a few comments I got today while out watching movies. Kimberly Gibson says: I love Simon Baker. I would pay to go and watch him reading the phone book, but this movie sounds like alot more fun. I think that he is enormously talented and quite under-rated. He has the ability to do both dramatic roles as well as comedy. Oh, and did I mention that he is sexy as hell and absolutely gorgeous!! She then felt a need to send a second comment stating: Just a few more words about Simon Baker. He's dreamy, charming, athletic and quite honestly, simply adorable. He is so watchable. Why don't more people know about Simon Baker? This guy is the real thing -- spread the word! Kim, I don't know why more people don't know about Simon Baker! but We're sure doing our part now, aren't we!
09.26.07	The Devil's Chair	Adam Mason	A Jason Statham wannabe and a girl enter an abandoned looney bin or someplace where they find an electric chair thingamabob rigged withbones and shit. The girl sits in it and dies then the guy gets put in an un-abandoned looney bin until some old dude lets him out in order to fulfill some demonic blood prophecy. OR DOES HE!??!??!?!? This movie was thoroughly mediocre. I really didn't like the Statham-esque main guy's constant commentary to the audience as it pulled me out of the movie every time it happened and made the BIG HUGE UNEXPECTED TWIST small and minute and completely expected. Yes there was lots of fake blood and an Alien-meets-hourse-skull demon but no real good gore aside from one sequence where you see wires snake under someone's skin in their arms. After that, it's just OK. Not sure I should've sacrificed the extra sleep for this but oh well. It just makes me that much more hardcore I guess. However, the short that played before it - an animated film named Raymond - was awesome. I hope it's on youtube or something. you should totally do a search for it. it's only 5 minutes but it's cool and hilarious and awesome. Maybe my favorite short of the fest.
09.25.07	The Backwoods	Koldo Serra	For Midnight I opted to see this Spanish movie starring Gary Oldman and Paddy Considine (as well as a REALLY hot girl and a still-hot-but-nowhere-near-as-much-as-the-other-one girl who both get briefly full-frontal. Pretty much everyone who saw it the first night said it was good so I was prepared to like it. Eh, this is another case where everyone around me liked it more than I did. OK get this, Oldman and Considine are walking around in the woods going back to their isolated house after a day of hunting when they come upon another house. Oldman immediately says it looks abandoned and I guess it is run down and there's no car in the garage but his house looks run down too so... ok whatever. Then he sees that the front door is locked and chained and proceeds to KICK IT IN. Huh? Hey, abandoned house. TIME TO LOOT. So after he looks around inside the house with his gun drawn like he's a complete house burglar, he notices that there's another locked door and he can hear movement behind it. So he breaks into that one too and finds a girl with webbed feet who's dirty and looks like she's fed from a dog bowl. So they take her home with them and clean her up. Assuming Oldman's character's a dick who likes home invasions, I guess I can buy that he's doing the right thing in rescuing this girl from neglect or whatever (even though she would totally be dead if someone wasn't keeping tabs on her). So the next morning, a bunch of rough dudes from the nearby village knock on the door asking if he's seen a little girl and he says no. At this point it's kidnapping right? I dunno. I found the movie to be well-made technically speaking and although it was slow I had no problem staying awake and watching it, but I had a few problems with it, mainly that I didn't like any of the main characters from the get-go and spent the entire movie waiting for them all to die (and not all of them did, not even close). Oldman's a looting asshole who kidnapps and lies to his neighbors, Considine's a passive wimp who never becomes a man even when he starts killing people, the one girl whines the entire time and almost cancels out being so hot (almost), the other girl does absolutely nothing, yet the whole movie follows these people just so there can be a "twist" at the end where you're supposed to feel for the girl's dad (which I did anyway because I guess I value respect for other peoples' property over child abuse... I guess that's my problem). This also suffers from the guys doing things I would never do in that situation. If I'm walking along in the woods in a Country I'm not too familiar with on new land that I've just bought and haven't spent much time on and I see a house off in the distance, I might go up and knock, I might get a little closer to see if anyone's home, I'd probably turn around and keep walking. If I did go kick the door down, find the girl, and feel a need to get to the police, I'd drive at a reasonable speed and keep my eye on the road no matter how much the people in the car with me bicker amongst themselves. After all, there may be a felled tree in the middle of the road so I may have to stop suddenly. Because way out in the wilderness like this, if my car breaks down I'm pretty much screwed, right? So I'd think about that before I barrelled down the road at night not looking where I was going. Right? I guess that's just me. Maybe these problems are too small to be deemed worthy and I'm wrong for not loving this. I still think it was OK, just nothing special.
09.25.07	The Warped Ones	Koreyoshi Kurahara	After the Moebius doc I kinda sorta gave Retribution a chance but the Japanese horror movie seemed very by-the-numbers. Granted I'm not a fan of the genre (it felt tired to me after the second one I saw) but this one seemed in a coma. I guess if I was really into them this could've been like Wrong Turn 2 - completely delivering on the execution even if there isn't much innocation - but... whatever. So I hopped into the end of Timecrimes' second screening to see Nacho's Q&A (which was hilarious. In describing why Hector 2's bandages were pink, he said it was a mix of the red blood and white bukkake. He said it so casually and quick that Tim had to back him up, triggering Nacho's little song about how the world is united under one word. Oh man, what a character. The Warped Ones is the second in the Nikkatsu retrospective, this one representing a MUCH different vibe than last night's stellar A Colt is My Passport. Instead of hard boiled crime, this is a juvenile delinquent story obssessed with jazz, the New Wave (Breathless in particular) and rebelling against Morality. Once again, it felt to me like the Japanese take on Rebel Without A Cause was so potent that it wound up being more human than human. Very extreme not to mention great. While the genre kept me from liking it as much as last night's film (I'm a sucker for crime movies), there was still plenty of awesomality to go around. The main kid's tendency to grip his cigarette with his teeth while he flared his lips out was great, not to mention how he walked around like a beat icon stuck in a world of pretension, literally just standing there looking up at the ceiling while the bougeouis commented on his angst. Then he rapes a girl and there's a whole story about her ruined virtue and eventual pregnancy and all that stuff. I think my favorite character was not this punk or his friend that hooks up with a gang but the friend's prostitute girlfriend. She reminded me a lot of Ann Savage in Detour in that her laugh is a cackle capable of cooling the warmest of hearts and she's so aggressive in her a-morality. Right before the rape scene, when the three of them have the girl unconsciouss in a sand dune, she says "I wish i were a man" and stomps off. Who wouldn't love a woman like that? There were actually several great lines. "Only people who don't listen to jazz get into fights", "Are you having an abortion too?", and the immortal "I ate a chiken, I'm horny." Commit them to memory, people. Start using them today! So I felt pretty special to get to see this movie (again with the makeshift screen for the manual subtitles) and to have author Mark Schilling here to explain its historical context and place in Nikkatsu history. For a series I initially wasn't too hot on I sure am winding up loving it a lot. I can't wait for tomorrow's Velvet Hustler: a film which Lars says is a perfect synthesis of the hard-boiled crime of A Colt is My passport and the New Wave freedom of The Warped Ones. MAN!
09.25.07	Moebius Redux: A Life in Pictures	Hasko Baumann	So... I remember the day Kier-La said she finally saw a Fantastic Fest screener that she liked and described how great this doc was. And now, since she's up in the Great White North instead of down here taking credit for all her hard work, I made seeing this my own personal tribute to her tastes. I think Matt Kiernan dedicating his awesome winning performance in Fantastic Fued to her and singing Ballroom Blitz in her honor is probably a better tribute but whatever. Speaking of last night, I'm not sure how seriously I can take this movie after seeing its director Hasko Baumann karaoke the Love Boat theme. Very Well. Apparently he did a rendition of Werewolves of London later on in the evening that blew everyone away. One guy in the audience said he sang like Leonard Cohen which is awesome. Luckily the movie's great and I didn't think about The Love Boat once while watching it. He got a lot of great interviews (most notably Philippe Druillet and Alejandro Jodorowsky (which he said took a year and a half to get)) that painted a very good picture of Moebius the artist. He only touched on his personal life a tiny bit (when it influenced his work) and came off feeling much more like a celebration of the art than the person. That's not a bad thing in my book though, since I was fairly unfamiliar with the art and found it to be very interesting. Good doc. I liked it a lot. During the Q&A, someone asked Hasko what he wanted to work on next and he answered a doc about the Italian crime films of the 70s. People started cheering. Then he said hopefully that could get him back here and people cheered more. I am lining up to see that movie right now.
09.25.07	Hell's Fever	Alessandro Perrella	So I'd heard very... interesting things about this movie. Trusted Alamo sources really enjoyed it so I thought I'd make it a full day and catch it. Side note: The alamo's breakfast menu... it's neat that it exists and all but one of my favorite items isn't on there and totally should be: you can get a bagel with cream cheese... and you can get a fried egg on your BLT... so why is there no bacon, egg & cheese bagel! Well, this particular day, I asked one of the fine waiters what was up with that and he completely hooked me up, ringing it up as a BLT but subbing the bread for a bagel and replacing the L and T with Egg and Cheese. It came out perfect and hit the spot better than anything ever hit a spot before. I don't know if my awesome waiter guy wasn't supposed to do that or what but if this sounds good to you, try asking for it and who knows, maybe it will get on the menu (as it should be!). Anyway, the movie. A group of people apparently rob a bank and go up to the snowy mountains to hide out while some dude changes their car somehow (the only thing i picked up was "he's even changing the tires!"). So instead of staying at this mountain mechanic's little house, they trek to some cave where there's a one-person elevator leading down to a "safe room in the old mine" where they can sleep and eat canned food. Only, the first guy goes down and only his hand comes back up. OK... There's this movie called Mom and Dad Save the World and one of the running jokes is that everyone on the alien planet is incredibly dumb so simple Earthlings (in the form of Teri Garr and Jeffrey Jones) are the smartest people on the planet. One of the best manifestations of this joke is a grenade that they use. The guy says it's incredibly dangerous and should be handled with upmost care. Anyone that picks it up gets completely obliterated. Jones asks why anyone in their right mind would pick this thing up? and you see the grenade and "Pick Me Up"s written on it. So of course, when the bad guys get there they carefully approach the grenade then the first guy picks it up and blammo! he disintegrates. The second guy slowly approaches, looks at the first guy's smoking pile of clothes, sees the grenade, reads it, and picks it up. The third guy sees the second guy disintegrate and calls for backup before slowly proceeding on. I've probably explained all of the funny out of that joke but whatever. The main plot os this movie IS that gag. One by one people go down in the one-person elevator and one by one they die. It's awesome. Aside from the fact that they're all bad Italian actors with either amazingly-bad dubbing or thick thick accents, their characters are incredibly stupid. It's really great. Really. Then there's the cops who are looking for a rabid dog!???!? Completely unrelated for like 98% of the movie, this squad of cops led by this girl who is at the top of her game "scan the zone in quadrants" looking for the rabid beast who has rabies. In what is probably the funniest scene in the movie (for me anyway), she comes across several pools of blood in the white snow and as she's walking through it she finds a crossbow. She picks it up, says "Someone dropped an expensive weapons," hands it to a deputy and tells him to "take this back to the office lost and found box." Now THAT's policework. Incredible! It actually took me a few seconds to realize how amazing that was and I laughed for... a long time afterward. It's one of those ideas so absurd that it hits you in waves. Even after the movie was over I still reeled from it, thinking about her finding bullet casings next to a dead body riddled with holes and telling someone to clean up that mess lest someone trip. So I really had a great time watching this movie. Plus I got a copy of Lady Terminator thanks to Mondo Macabro which fits perfectly with this vibe. Great stuff. hilarious. And one final site-related note. It occurred to me a couple days ago that I haven't gotten any comments recently so I checked the form and found that something had broken. It's fixed now but on the offchance that there are readers who sent me an awesome comment in the past few weeks (before yesterday), I didn't get it. Sorry. Resend or hate me forever; the choice is yours!
09.24.07	A Colt is My Passport	Takashi Nomura	The first in a three-film retrospective of Nikkatsu Action films of the 60s. This may frustrate some of you and bore others because apparently these films are very hard to find in the US (for instance, as far as everyone in the room knew, tonight was the first time this film had every screened in this country) so... when I talk about how awesome it is you wont be able to easily track it down or catch it when it hits theaters in a few months. Too bad! A hitman (chipmunk-cheeked Branded to Kill star Jo Shishido) takes out a rival organization's leader but his boss makes peace with the rival's new leader while he hides out in a fishing town. Soon, as terms of the peace agreement, his own men must take Shishido out unless he can find a way out of the country. As a sign of how rare this print is, the english subtitles had to be typed out and manually advanced using a separate projector hooked up to a laptop. The Alamo fashioned a smaller subtitle screen under their main screen so we could read and not have the subs over the picture. It was an awesome little setup (I wish every subbed film was presented this way but, As Lars noted when David made that exact comment, sometimes we can't choose. heh heh) and I was sort of constantly aware of how small a chance of me ever seeing this movie again was. You know how I wrote about Crazy Thunder Road last night and how it was like the Japanese translation of "the biker film"? Well this is very similar but it's the Japanese translation of "the hard-boiled crime film." AND "the Italian western film." It's a VERY interesting mix of styles and comes out so potent as to possibly be more hard-boiled that the stuff it takes from. Kind of like using the essential oils of something instead of the actual ingredient. It's great though. Absolutely great and I loved it. In the intro, author Mark Schilling noted that the film kind of goes off its rails for the last twenty minutes or so and gets super crazy. Well, I'm not sure what he meant by "off the rails" but if he was going for "becomes the best thing ever" then he was pretty dead on. Once Shishido trades his safe escape for his friend's, he tries to figure a strategy for the duel to come. Using intelligence and surveilance, he painstakings make a bomb and devises a plan on how to take out the group of shooters that will come after him. It's pretty much dialogue-free and so filled with awesomeness much like a Melville procedure, Hitchcock suspense or Dassin heist. It's like the film starts off in a wide shot (in a story sense) and through the movie narrows and narrows until its fetishistically close to Shishido, watching his every move. The Spaghetti Western influences come in through the music certainly but also the direction and staging and shot composition. Lots of tight close-ups, eyes, formal posturing, iconic shots and looks, etc. During the end duel, we see Shishido standing on the horizon and the camera pulls back but instead of being in between a gunman's legs we're in between a BMW's wheels: it's a high-noon face off but it's man vs. car. It's still a great great shoot-out though. So this is part of an 8-film series playing NYC in a week or two. The only guy I know that lives there is probably too busy/uninterested to make time to see it but if any of you stranger google people reading this live there and this sounds at all decent to you, look it up and see it for yourself. It's really a great film. So... the midnight spot was clear save "Fantastic Fued with Scott Weinberg." It's a horror trivia game with Scott as the host and Devin as co-host/scorekeeper and teams of 8 battling it out against one another. There was a decent turn-out and, although I'm still not really sure of the rules of this game, it was hilarious seing everyone play it. I believe Lars got genuinely pissed at the looseness of the game and at least two answers were challenged (that's what happens when you play horror trivia with guys like Lars and Zack). I think out of all the questions they asked (and there were a lot) I knew a half dozen and would've gotten one more with 5 minutes to think about it. The teams were sort of neck and neck until the final round when Fango-writer Matt Kiernan got up against John Carpenter (no, not THAT John Carpenter) and had to trade off directors of the Halloween, Friday the 13th, and Nightmare on Elm St. movies. Matt was like a machine with those!!!! I was amazed. Everybody was amazed. It was amaZING. I have no idea how he knows all that crap but... good for him! Directly after that, people started singing karaoke and drinking free beer. It was fun for a bit (Zack's rendition of Rebel Yell was spot-on and hilarious) but after three horrible songs I saw that it wasn't ending anytime soon and wouldn't help me in my fight against oncoming germs any if I stayed and shouted conversation and drank enough beers to sing so I bailed. And then I wrote. And now I sleep.
09.24.07	End of the line	Maurice Devereaux	People on a subway car are caught off guard when a Christian religious group get are paged with a message letting them know the apocalypse has started and it's time to start "saving" (read: stabbing to death with crucifix daggers) everyone in sight. Right off the bat, I have to mention that in the Q&A afterward, someone asked if you could buy those crucifix daggers anywhere. is it scary or funny? you tell me because I'm Not Sure. So I think maybe this and Timecrimes are getting the biggest positive word-of-mouth of this festival. It's interesting because I think neither of these have distribution because they're such a tough sell. Hopefully enough people will write and/or talk about both these films so they get picked up by someone and can be seen by more people. There are spoilers below so if you don't think you'll ever see this then read on. I think what a lot of people are responding to are... well, two things. The first is that the ending takes you to a place where there's a distinct possibility that these crazy christians that have spent the whole movie being antagonists were actually right and were saving people from the hellish torment of the demons that were on their way up to Earth. It's a pretty awesome twist on the movie without it being a twist like "ta DA!!!" like Shyamalan twists. But there's also a little subplot dealing with muffins so the ending is deliberately ambiguous as to whether the demons are real or hallucinations. When asked during the Q&A the director answered by saying the clues were there and his goal was to get people talking about it afterward. The second reason why people like it (i think) is that there's a gag with a pregnant girl where she gets stabbed and the baby comes out and high-fives the mother as they both die. It's awesome but apparently offensive to some people (pussies!) So... I myself liked the film. I don't think it's the best thing ever but it's done very well and pretty effective and man does it take BALLS to make christians the homicidal maniacs in your horror movie. You have to respect that (That's probably all you'll be able to do since I can't see any distributor putting this movie in theaters). It also got major extra points when I learned that the writer/director also completely financed the film. I have no clue what the budget was but it looked good. Like a real movie. Like a Hollywood movie. And the effects were good and not cheap at all. I'm absolutely sure it looked at least twice as expensive as it really was. Definitely good and I hope it gets seen by others.
09.24.07	Aachi and Sspiak	Jo Beom-jin	Alright. Let me try to explain this movie. It's Korean animated... set in the future or whatever where the only source of energy is human pooh so the government outfits everyone with an anal ring that registers when you crap and they reward you with a super-addictive juicybar. So the Juicybars are so addictive that a whole group called the Diaper Gang forms and... that's the backstory. The actual plot of the movie would probably (and I'm not joking) take me all night to write. To me, this movie suffered similar to The District from last year. Visually, it's stunning. But it's so fast and busy and it never slows down that you get overstimulated. I dozed off for a bit of this toward the end but let me tell you, my little dream fragments as I hazed in and out were AWESOME. I feel kind of bad though because I could tell this wouldn't be something I'd love from the trailers and really only saw it because there was nothing else in the time slot that interested me. I think most of the people that watched it really liked it and, after seeing Dai Nipponjin last night, I completely understand why Tim's so crazy for this. Just too crazy for me (i'm a fogey!)
09.24.07	Blood, Boobs & Beast	John Paul Kinhart	Over the hump and I wokle up with a slightly scratchy throat. Shit. Time to start overloading on vitamin C. Why does my immune system break down after four days of festival? Anyway, I really wanted to see this doc because I knew Zack really loved it and I liked Alien Factor and always find it interesting to see and hear how completely independant guys did their thing. I didn't know Dohler had passed away last December though. That really sucks. That made the ending really sad. Actually, not just that he died but also that he had more or less moved on from filmmaking, finding no joy in it anymore. I haven't seen his later films but judging from the movie they were pretty drastically different from his 80s stuff though so maybe the times are so different now that it was bound to happen, health problems or no. Skipping back to the beginning, Don Dohler was a guy who made low-budget horror movies in the 80s kinda sorta known for being "bad" although plenty of people (like Zack) have genuine love for them. He's a cult figure and since he lives and works in Baltimore, he's kind of like the horror equivalent to John Waters. Longterm readers (man you must have boring jobs or something) may remember me seeing Alien Factor and being impressed by the special effects. One of the things I learned in this doc was that Dohler also published Cinemagic, a magazine devoted to how the special effects work (like CineFX today), as well as working with several big names in the underground comics scene. Dohler's history is interesting but it's intercut with fly on the wall footage of him making his latest film. That's really sad too, sort of like the toward-the-end montage of Boogie Nights when Jack's walking through the video warehouse and Ricky Jay's shooting the lesbians saying "just keep going, it's videotape" like this is the sad state of the industry today look at what it's become. For some reason, seeing Troma films shot that way are ok but seeing Dohler, with Alien Factor so innocent and packed with child-friendly imagination, now making casting decisions based on who will do nudity... Yeah, this movie is sad before Dohler gets sick. It's really good though. I really liked it. UPDATE! I totally forgot to touch on one subject that I really loved about Don and that's his Baltimority! I went to highschool in Frederick, MD (my parents still live roughly five minutes from Burkittsville which is (sigh) where they set the Blair Witch Project) so for shows one either went into big bad DC to the worst neighborhoods where all the cool clubs were invariably located, or every once in a while you went over to Baltimore and Hammerjacks (I'm sure there are more clubs but Frederick highschoolers didn't know about them in my day). So although I've never lived in Baltimore per se, I did live near there; close enough to get some everyday exposure of what I now realize are unique Baltimorean traits. The first is (obviously) the accent. The part in this doc where the friends bust on the "Come Oo-on!" line, asking if people really talked that way. The answer is yes, they do. Dohler's accent isn't nearly as pronounced but he has something I almost like better: It's that deadpan pessimist minor tone to everything he says. Like you hear him talk and you can perfectly imagine a line like this coming out of his mouth: "well it probably won't matter because the world will end in three weeks anyway, just my luck." Like living in Baltimore is so tough that everyone just starts to sound like that. "Had to take the bus cause my car broke down, wasn't but ten degrees out of course." I don't know if this is making any sense on the page, but I loved it. I think his accent went a long way in painting him as the tragic tired figure in the doc.
09.23.07	Big Man Japan	Hitoshi Matsumoto	The late-addition screening that Tim had this to say about it: The holy grail of film bookings. if you miss this, you miss the festival. Dai-Nipponjin. It's about a guy whose job it is to get blown up to super size in order to fight the various giant monsters that occasionally plague the area. It's in mockumentary style following him around during his everyday life in between working. The mockumentary part is very dry because he's a really quiet guy but when he gets big, the surprisingly-decent-yet-still-not-seamless CGI battles between him and the various "baddies" are awesome. I'm gonna go ahead and spoil the ending because I doubt this movie will ever be available in the US in any sort of official capacity and the ending is the most bizarre part that I ended up liking the most so I have to mention it. After a whole movie of this really realistic CG, the movie switched to live action guys wearing plastic suits on miniature sets wrestling the bad guy around and beating him in his oversized foam-rubber head with rolled up newspapers and punches and kicks. It's so bizarre I really didn't know what to think. And then the movie ends and there's a scene over the credits where they talk about everything they did wrong during the fight. I'm too tired to explain it entirely but... huh? So strange. I'm actually still not sure if I liked it or didn't. I'm going to sleep on it and see if anything becomes clearer.
09.23.07	Crazy Thunder Road	Sogo Ishii	An ultra-rare screening (Apparently it's played in LA once and that's it for the country ever) of this Japanese punk biker movie, the student film from Sogo Ishii. I think it might have something to do with one gang fighting with another, but there's a facist para-military gay guy that keeps popping up and about halfway through the picture the plot all but disappears until all of a sudden one of the guys has sharpened hooks for a hand and wants to kill everybody in his town with the help of an arms dealer and a pre-pubescent drug pusher. So I never really knew quite what was going on, but I didn't let that stop me from enjoying the movie. There's a real energy to the camerawork that makes perfect sense as a student film. Ishii's trying all kinds of stuff and really playing around and the movie has an energy that reminded me a bit of the French New Wave films, Shoot the Piano Player in particular due to its added similarlity of taking a distinctly American genre and churning it through the inevitable translation to another. I felt like the notion of making a "biker" film filtered down to each individual shot. There were so many that just showed a large group of guys hanging out and being bikerly, even some insert shots of guys just sitting there looking tough or like they don't care. Then the costumes and hair and all the usual stuff on top of course and the requisite "zone out" segment of the film where logic and plot take a coffee break and the actors are left to play around. And then at the end, it's like I'm watching Mad Max meets The Exterminator as the dude guns down everybody on screen wearing his cool black outfit with the shoulder pads and opaque black goggles and helmet. excitemet! The music was also great. Punky bikery songs that I've never heard of because they're Japanese but no less rowdy and bassliney. Really good stuff. Glad I got to see this one.
09.23.07	Son of Rambow	Garth Jennings	Next up was the other movie I was looking forward to seeing since Jarrette and Eric both loved it at Sundance. It's about a couple of British kids who become friends while making their own sequel to First Blood. It's funny and filled with interesting kids... there's a French foreign exchange student milked for a lot of laughs, and ends up with a finale so heart-warming mine needed to turn on a fan. I really liked it. The two main kids were amazing and I was stunned to hear that they found them both in the school system and neither were "actors" before this. There was also good music throughout (although, as a couple people discussed afterward, not altogether correct to period). I feel like I should have more to say but I'm tired and a lot of the details have left me. I really liked it though. Oh, I don't know if this is worth mentioning or not since I can't remember how he credited himself on Hitchhiker's but here he went back to his Hammer and Tongs moniker. Is that going back to his roots or something? Who knows.
09.23.07	Persepolis	Vincent Paronnaud, Marjane Satrapi	I opted out of Death Note in order to get a decent spot in the line for today's secret screening. If I was programming this festival, I'd put the biggest pride movie I could into this slot because it's still the weekend so everybody's still here and strong word of mouth today would drive the whole week... So I'm afraid I let my imagination run wild a bit and sat down hoping for a movie that I'd been looking forward to. Then Dentler got up and introduced this. Persepolis is the animated tale of a woman growing up in 80s Iran with the revolution and whatnot, kind of an autobiography of her trials, tribulations, and travels. I guess it was based on a graphic novel (and co-directed by the main character). The animation was mostly in black and white and had a unique style probably taken from the book. I can't really say it's a bad movie. I can say that it's not my kind of movie and if I had known about it ahead of time I would've seen something else. I think a couple people (non-VIP badgeholders waiting in line for 3 hours expecting a Mel Gibson-level special event) were a little miffed. Plus the fact that Dentler mentioned it only being a secret screening here because they wanted the official US push to begin in a few weeks with NYFF made it seem all the less special. I'm not sure if I'm glad I even saw it. It really did nothing for me at all. Again, I can't say it's bad - It didn't look or sound bad - but it was so outside the realm of my interest that nothing really mattered. Oh well, next.
09.22.07	Postal	Uwe Boll	man! for a genre film festival I sure have seen a lot of comedies today. It's ok though, the humor is always a welcome addition to the blood and guts. They're so close in so many ways anyway that I'm glad this year has these lighter moments. My memories of last year were pretty relentless. Or maybe I'm just picking the pansy movies this year, who knows. Anyway, for midnight they showed Postal with Uwe Boll and star Zack Ward in attendance. Yes, he's the guy who was Scut Farkus in A Christmas Story. As for the actual movie, eh. It got some laughs from the audience but never more than a smirk or occasional chuckle from me. It wasn't bad in the way I thought it'd be bad (Uwe being so self-aware now that it comes off sad), but it wasn't.... well, good. It seemed like a checklist of things generally considered in bad taste nowadays. I felt sorry for Michael Pare when he popped up here, and also sad when I saw Dave Foley's penis. That's about all I have to say about the movie. The Q&A was great though. I never in a million years would've thought that Uwe Boll would be the straight man, but he totally was compared to Zack Ward. That dude... well, I'm sure the video will be on the Internet very soon (if not already). But seriously, he had some... conviction. And beers. Lots of beers. I think he called us all queefs, challenged us all to fight in the lobby, suck his cock, and fuck off. Multiple times. I actually think I'm too tired to adequately explain this Q&A. Words fail me. I still can't believe Uwe came off as the sane one. OK, it was like this. It was like being at a bar at 1:45AM and somehow being cornered by the guy who's been drinking since noon except instead of talking about conspiracies or his cheating wife or whatever, he talks about political satire movies and Uwe Boll's balls. It starts off funny but then goes on and on to the point where you're looking around for a way to escape. Still though, memorable to say the least.
09.22.07	Sex and Death 101	Daniel Waters	Daniel Waters (Heathers) writes and directs this movie about a guy (Simon Baker) who gets an email one day that lists every person he's ever had sex with and will have sex with in his entire life. It turns out to be a glitch from some ubercomputer that Patton Oswalt and the guy who plays Bunny in The Wire work on, so Baker starts using the list to his advantage. Meanwhile, Winona Ryder keeps putting guys in comas after seducing them, starting a whole feminist movement in the process. Surprise Surprise, Baker finds out that Ryder is the last name on his list so he starts fearing for his life and tries to stop having sex. I thought this was very funny in varying tones from light-hearted romantic comedy to paint-it-black dark comedy to twisted to borderline illegal humor and back to heart-warming stuff. It makes for a very hard-to-market film I'm sure but it also feels similar to Heathers in that way. I laughed a lot and was thoroughly entertained. It also felt like a real movie and not just something that'd work in a festival atmosphere. I hate to spoil any of the specific jokes but one HAS to be noted for posterity (and my memory). There's a montage where Baker has sex with a lot of women and Waters conveys that by subtitled translations of different japanese character tattoos on lower backs. It's an immediate classic joke. Waters, Simon Baker, Patton Oswalt, and one of the (many) hot women from the film were in attendance and got up afterward. Patton was hilarious as always (i bet people would even pay to hear him talk WITHOUT watching a movie beforehand!) but surprise surprise, one of the biggest laughs came from Henri when he empathized with Simon Baker about how hard it had to be for him to act like a woman's not sexually attracted to him. Baker had a real good sense of humor though and stuck with it, actually impressing me quite a bit with his wit. All around it was a pretty great Q&A, alternatively hilarious and interesting.
09.22.07	Southland Tales	Richard Kelly	I started today off by sleeping in. I think my Asian wackiness quota filled up yesterday with just two movies so I wasn't in the mood for the Japanese wacky comedy I had scheduled for the first show (turns out I should've seen The Cold Hour I guess, but oh well). So my first screening was actually a collection of shorts made by this dude named Phil Chambliss. He's been making his own movies completely independantly down in Southern Arkansas for decades now and the festival programmers decided to make a program of them and show four that give a good example of the range and variety of films this guy makes. They're... pretty rough but contain a raw authenticity that city folks making fun of country folks can't duplicate. The films themselves are really trippy and existential. I'm not really sure if he designed them that way or they just came out that way due to rudimentary production and post tools (he literally edits with the camera, clicking pause and record while cueing with a VCR to create the final cut). Technically speaking, they're very amateurish and all the people in them aren't really professional actors, but all of these factors come together to create something I got a kick out of (oddly enough). Definitely not for everyone though. A few people found that out real quick and scuttled away a few minutes into the first film (a Bergmanesque conversation between two ex-con would-be hunters and a devil's helper offering them hunting permits for twenty years of servitude). Described as folk-art filmmaking, it was very odd and interesting. Next up was the first super duper secret we're-not-telling-you-what-it-is screening of the fest. I heard people started lining up four and a half hours early for it. I'm glad they decided to show Southland Tales today because it's really the only film I was sure they'd screen and now the rest of them will just be rumor and hearsay for me. Apparently we are the first audience to see the "completed" cut of the film. Richard Kelly was there to introduce it and Q&A afterward. It's like two and a half hours long. How was it you ask? Well... I thought it was a mess. There were a few moments of clarity where I kind of enjoyed myself but for the most part it was a real big mess. An incoherent, disconnected, needlessly obtuse yet mind-blaringly on the nose (at the same time!), indulgent mess. I hate to say that because Richard Kelly seems like a nice guy and I (like everyone else) really liked Donnie Darko (well, the theatrical cut at least) but the reason why Donnie Darko was good was because it actually worked. It was like a souffle that rose while Southland Tales is the failed lump of eggs and flour that didn't come together. There are a few guidelines that came from this experience that might help me in the future though: -if you need a series of graphic novels to explain your movie, you might be in trouble. -if your big important mantra line for the whole movie involves a character calling himself a pimp, you might be in trouble. -if you have Justin Timberlake walking around an arcade lip syncing to a Killer song, you might be in trouble. Here are the good things I have to say about it: It certainly is an ambitious movie, and it has a lot of faces in the cast that I like. Amy Poehler, Wood Harris, John Larroquette, Wallace Shawn, Curtis Armstrong, Jon Lovitz... I love that they're all in a movie together. I don't quite get how casting all of them makes your movie an Andy Warhol pop art masterpiece, but whatever. And I totally don't get how Kevin Smith can think a movie like Magnolia is criminally indulgent then BE IN this movie. Don't get that one at all. So whatever. Hopefully it'll come out, flop, hit DVD, get the Donnie Darko uberfan cult support and Kelly will be able to move on and make another (smaller) film that might be really good. I sure hope so. And that's about as much thought as I'm giving Southland Tales. Next.
09.21.07	Wrong Turn 2	Joe Lynch	The direct-to-dvd sequel to the blockbuster hit that no one saw but a lot of people bought the DVD. I wasn't a huge fan of the original so literally the only reason why I was in the theater was the one shot they'd been showing during trailers for the festival: a guy brings down an axe and the camera's positioned on the ground in between a woman's legs and you see a bucket full of intestines fall and her legs pivot and fall apart rather than together. It's a really great gag so I figured even if the rest of the movie sucked ass, I owed it to that gag to check this out. And again, maybe I have the festival goggles on that makes anything decent seem good and anything mediocre seem decent but... I liked this movie! I mean, it was what it was but for what it was it sure was! I'd even say I liked it more than the first, which I only remember as being too slow and not enough deaths. The premise is that a group of people are filming a survivor-type reality show pilot out in the woods but they happened to take the proverbial wrong turn and wind up redneck inbred mountain man-bait. The kicker (and a large reason why I liked the movie) is that the host is none other than Henry Rollins playing an ex-military survivalist dude. This is basically what my brain has been waiting for since high school but I'd never thought to ask. Henry Rollins going all Commando on me and taking people out explosive-arrow Rambo style. Add that to intentially unrated gore, a handful of creative gags and lots and lots of blood and you get a movie I enjoy. I dont really care so much about the Wrong Turn mythology or the inbred character names or whatever because but this movie really delivered on some quality splatter. I was pleasantly surprised. So let's hope tomorrow keeps up the pleasant surprise-ratio.
09.21.07	Weirdsville	Allan Moyle	Being a big Pump Up the Volume fan, I knew I wanted to see this so I didn't read too much about it. It ended up being kind of like a... hmm. I definite know there are movies very similar to this but none of them are coming to mind. You know... movies where a couple of deadbeats are driving around town trying to do something and several groups of interesting and/or funny people interfere along with several coincidences that make the whole thing wrap into itself? It's one of those movies. It's funny, kind of odd, pretty original. I liked it a lot. Also of note was the short that played before it: The Ecstasy Note. I've written about it before but was glad to hear it get some response and didn't mind sitting through it a second time, waiting for the big comic beats. I just wish it was ten minutes shorter and that much tighter, but I still like how big the idea goes (this was the one about a guy who sticks a fork in his hand and bangs it with a knife to make all those who can hear it writhe in undescribable pleasure). I love it when the doctor looks at the x-ray and says "well, looks like you've got a fork in your hand." gee, thanks.
09.21.07	Mirageman	Ernesto Díaz Espinoza	I had originally planned to see the Mobius doc next but... I was really more in the mood for something with action that would keep me awake so I switched at the last minute and found a seat for this instead. So... this dude Marko Zaror is a martial arts guy and made a movie in Chile called Kiltro (showing later in the fest). According to the Twitch guy who introduced the film, that was South America's first martial arts movie. The same team behind that movie made another movie and this is it. Basically, it's the story of what if Marko wanted to become a vigilante superhero. He doesn't have any superpowers but he can beat the everloving shit out of you if he wants to and, you know, that's been known to deter some crime from time to time. So the movie's shot very verite style, very fast and loose, with marko running around the streets in his little home-made costume fighting crime. There's lots of humor as he tries things like changing into his costume when he sees wrong being done or public backlash because he looks lame and people take him for a crazy person or a joke, but the music in the movie give his serious motives an action movie mentality that resulted in the crowd cheering A LOT whenever Marko did an awesome kick or won a fight or whatever. And this is the Bruce lee kind of fighting where there's no wires or digital effects, just people getting punched and kicked and thrown around. I liked the movie and laughed and felt entertained throughout, but also felt a sense that everyone around me was liking it a bit more than I was. It's weird... I liked it for sure but it felt like it was missing an ingredient to make it a real movie. I'm not sure that makes sense to anyone (I'd think festival regulars might get me before casual viewers do), but it's like it needed salt or something. I actually think this is common in festivals and one of the major reasons why movies like Hatchet and Behind the Mask lose their luster when seen as a "normal" movie. In the context of all these micro-budget submissions and imported indies, festival-goers glom on to any and every enjoyable moment in each film, deeming it good or even MUST-SEE if there are enough of them, yet a lot of these movies are incredibly mediocre stacked against a good studio movie. It's worth it because every once in a while you find real gold that's way better than any studio movie could be, but along the way there's a good deal of pyrite as well. Not to say this movie is pyrite. Marko, please don't kick me in the face.
09.21.07	Never Belongs to Me	Gee-woong Nam	Next up was perhaps the most questionable slot in the festival. I'd heard so much about the short preceding this film that I couldn't not see it. I mean serious stuff like Karrie League not being able to finish watching it and Rodney proclaiming it the grossest thing he's seen in years and Lars calling it "pretty rough." Never mind that the movie following it is about a guy with a penis gun and starts off with a dog and a lion mating with a human woman. Gary's Touch. It's gross but not unbearably so. Maybe that means I'm a sicko or just jaded to infinity. It's not violent or animal-cruel or eating-puke type gross, more like sexual, bodily-fluid gross. And it's really only one scene and it's also pretty damn funny so... I was a bit let down although I can see where the hubbubb comes from. To me it was worth watching. Never Belongs To Me however, quickly became an exercise in trying to fall asleep while weird loud Japanese things happen in front of me. There were about 7 minutes of enjoyment (when the guy finally gets his penis gun and goes through training then gets revenge on the bad guys) but... instead of ending when it was supposed to, it went on. For another 45 minutes. I was kind of following it up to that point but from then on nothing made sense to me and I was basically waiting for it to end. Admittedly, I am not a super huge fan of Japanese horror or Japanese wackiness. I think both are really arbitrary and random and work fine as an Alamo pre-show but aren't necessarily something I'd pay to see. So there's my bias right there, but still. ugh.
09.21.07	The Rug Cop	Minoru Kawasaki	Day Two. Word from last night's midnight screenings is that this movie End of the Line is worth watching so I'm switching my schedule up to make room. That means I watch this now. This is a comedy about a cop who uses his toupee to solve crimes. Mostly he throws it at people and it knocks them over or whatever then flies back on his head. He's surrounded by other kooky cops with silly tricks like a fat guy who can sweat all over people or a short guy who can run fast because there's less wind resistance. The only other cop with useful powers however is "Big Willie" who pops up with a light saber-like rod whenever he's turned on. It's a really childish comedy filled with similar jokes following a simple plot. Plus it gave off a real sitcom vibe to me... like I was watching a bizarro world episode of Three's Company or something. Everyone else seemed to like it more than I did. Oh well.
09.20.07	The Ferryman	Chris Graham	A group of couples head off on a fishing trip onboard a yacht from New Zealand to Fiji. All's good until they catch a shark and find a human hand in its belly. Along the lines of The Hidden, Fallen, and Carpenter's The Thing, this movie is about a malevolent spirit that can switch bodies with the use of a special dagger. The twist is that the spirit is running from Death (or the ferryman, mythologically speaking). John Rhys Davies plays the initial host that a group of yachters pick up. This movie was much better than I thought it would be. Every aspect was just better. The depth of character, the abundance of twisted humor throughout, and the places they went that I didn't really expect them to go all brought this movie up in my eyes. I wouldn't say it's a FUN movie, but I definitely had fun watching it (if that makes sense). For instance, at one point, the spirit has just switched into the body of a beautiful yet shallow and bitchy girl, leaving her spirit in the bruised bloodied and gutshot body of the guy before. She then proceeds to masturbate in front of "herself" while the guy whines in disgust and yells "you can't make me cry!" over and over again. I really didn't expect to see that when I sat down an hour ago! The big difference may be that I like all the characters. They're fun before they're possessed then most of them get to be even more fun when they get possessed. This movie wouldn't be nearly as good if the evil spirit wasn't such a bastard. Thankfully for the audience, he is. Not so much for the poor dog who undergoes some (hopefully) fake movie-violence. And never mind that shark.
09.20.07	Timecrimes	Nacho Vigalondo	One day while a guy sits in his backyard looking into the woods with his binoculars, he sees an unbelievably gorgeous woman taking off her shirt. Little does he realize that this will set off a chain of events leading to him travelling back in time three times. It's a smart, tight, entertaining puzzlework of the time travel concept that explores both the inevitability of time and how fragile it is. I really liked this film a lot. During the Q&A, someone asked the director (very funny but apparently he has that unbelievably hot topless girl as a girlfriend so I hate him) whether the film was about this guy being unable to change events in time or trying hard to keep the house of cards from falling. The director answered that the guy is unable to change anything even though he tries... which is interesting because I thought the movie was about the exact opposite. Because through the course of the movie, this guy gets the crap beaten out of him trying to make everything work out alright and ultimately has to do a pretty bad thing (hence the title) but I thought it was because he wanted to keep existing and not blow up time, not that it was because he was forced by the unseen hand of fate. Either way, (and I'm sure the director's wrong and I'm right by the way), it's a very well-executed idea that I can easily see becoming a cult favorite due to the new dimensions that repeat viewings would bring to it. Like I said, I really liked it a lot.
09.20.07	Diary of the Dead	George A. Romero	Fantastic Fest 2007. There are a few immediate differences this year with the opening night that I liked. Firstly, the opening night film was in the 7 spot rather than the 9, so there's no extraneous first film to see before the "big" event. Secondly, the opening party was held in the parking lot behind the theater before the first movie, so you come early to pick up your badge and crap then it gives you an opportunity to hang out for a bit and meet up with old friends and not have to miss a movie to do so. Plus in typical Alamo fashion, there were morbid attractions like a challenge of eating chips sprayed with pure capsaicin extract or watching Zack take a cannon filled with blood and guts directly to the groin or seeing Tim League beat the everloving shit out of a pinata stuffed with raw meat and guts. Yet while all this went on, waiters carried around trays of fancy schmancy hors d'oeuvres. Every year I come to this thing I feel more entrenched as a local filmgoer. It's strange and uncommon for me to be amongst a large group of people and know more than three of them. Movie geeks unite! Anyway, George Romero officially gets extra points because when I showed up more than two hours before his film was scheduled to start, he was already out in the crowd hanging out and talking to his fans. Plus he said "fuck" during the Q&A but more on that later. Actually let's talk about it now. After the movie, he gave a really great Q&A that included his definitive... definition of the rules dealing with zombies. Paraphrasing, he said "It has nothing to do with infections or viruses or anything like that, if you get bit that just speeds along the process of dying and anyone who dies comes back because God or whoever the fuck's up there won't let them stay dead!" He was loose and open and gracious and very appreciative of the enormous amounts of fanboy love vibes being sent his way and it was awesome. So when the lights went down, this year's Fantastic Fest impressed me once again. Thanks to the young filmmakers challenge, they actually had real FF bumpers this year instead of stealing from the various shorts, and more than that, they're good! and funny! Then they showed trailers for upcoming festival films (thus sealing Flight of the Living Dead's absence on my schedule for good) (and I saw different trailers with each film of the night), a new bit where veteran waiter Devin explains to the new folks how ordering food works, a new menu cover with breakfast specials, red bull, and illustrated guide to ordering (i guess someone tried walking into the kitchen the other day because he didn't know how it works), and George Romero's no-talk spot from when he was here last (playing to many many cheers). Then the movie started. So... I don't want to be a negative nelly, but I'd heard beforehand from multiple people that Diary of the Dead was supposed to suck, then I heard from multiple other people who'd seen it that it did suck, so my expectations were on the floor. With that in mind, I walked out of the theater thinking it wasn't as bad as everyone said. Diary of the Dead is sort of a "reboot" (ugh, if i was less tired I wouldn't use that term I swear) for Romero, taking the timeline back to the day the dead stopped dying. It's told as if we're watching a film student's documentary edited together by his girlfriend. Basically it's a group of friends who start off filming a movie when the news reports start coming in and try to make it to the girlfriend's parents house then to other forms of safety while all hell breaks loose. Now, when I say it wasn't as bad as everyone said, that doesn't mean there aren't a lot of things I had a problem with. Like main characters and the structure of the whole film - kind of major problems to have with a movie - but when I wasn't cringing (the canadian girl from "San Antone... that's in Texas!" and the british drunk professor who is inexplicably... inexplicable are the two main perps), there was some stuff to like. Most of the actual zombie stuff was good, some of the gags were great (although it sucks that so many effects are digital nowadays), and although I thought the message was a bit on the nose, I respect that the message was there. I also can't decide if I liked the whole beginning conversation where Romero uses his film school characters to air his grievances over the genre he defined ("They can't run, they're dead! If they ran they're ankles would snap!") or if I found the self-awareness too much to bear. I think the strongest aspect of the film (and Romero has always been really really great with this) was the sound montage of background news reports, radio broadcasts, and whatnot. I remember the ending of Martin how he zoomed out with the radio chatter clouding in and how effective that was... and in this film it establishes a lot of your basic zombies-are-here awesomeness that I can never get enough of. You know, news guys looking at the camera saying the dead are walking, scientists warning that you have to shoot them in the head, pundits arguing about the apocalypse... I don't know why but that stuff NEVER gets old for me. And this time around (as uncovered during the Q&A) Romero got a bunch of his "old buddies" to come in and supply voice work for that stuff. Buddies like Guillermo Del Toro, Simon Pegg, Stephen King, Wes Craven, Quentin Tarantino, and more. They're all mixed so well you may not recognize all of them, but it's cool when you do. So... yeah, not as bad as everyone says. Give it a chance!
09.19.07	The Girl Who Knew Too Much	Francis Lyon	There is a category of movie star so touch and macho that people watch them on screen and want to fashion their lives like them. I'm talking about names like William Shatner. Chuck Norris. Bruce Lee. William Smith. When walking down the street and you see a scumbag steal an old lady's purse, ask yourself: "what would ______ do?" Different names fill that blank depending on your religion. Tonight, the Weird Wednesday theater transformed into a Church of Adam West. Right off of his Batman gig, West starred in this movie with all the trimmings that make man-pulp so chewy: he lives on a boat, he kicks ass, he kills people, he owns a restaurant, the restaurant has a funny lounge singer with awesome songs, hot asian chicks in danger fall in love with him, he drives a little sports car that spins out during car chases, and he gets mixed up in crazy situations involving a) the syndicate, b) the police, c) the cia, or d) dirty red communists (the answer of course is E) all of the above), and he comes out alright. THAT's living life the Adam West way!!! So the plot's so convoluted that it's a bad idea to even try following along. Instead, you should just look at Adam West's neck. He really has an oddly thick neck for his small head and wide frame. It's great to see his sloping brow un-hidden by any sort of cowl. especially in one shot after his stunt double's just been beaten up (roughly too I might add, they really slammed that guy into that wall!) and West's sweaty mug falls right into a close-up. That seemed to be the general camera technique in this movie though. I guess they didn't have the budget for a focus puller so the actors had to pick up the slack with their marks. Rodney noted after the movie that half of it was out of focus. Try sitting in the front row, buddy! Wests's got some great lines though, and some great readings. Hearing him answer "no" twice was a highlight for me, as was his answer when asked what his vice was: "I kill people." Man what an awesome vice to have. Mine's Doritos. that's not nearly as cool. Buddy Greco's also great as Lucky Jones, West's piano playin sorta-sidekick. Two times the movie stops so Greco can sing full songs looking directly into camera while singing and fitting in a little schtick ("you look great!" "here come da judge!"), songs with lyrics too great to remember. Something about guilt in the deep recesses of his soul and those freaky little things and some sort spot on his brain or something. It pains me that I have already forgotten this. Not a perfect movie by any means though. It felt 20 minutes longer than it actually was and the beginning was like a parade of guys in suits talking about crap I care nothing about. It all fits the mold though... I guess some people like it and others don't. I can't get enough. it's so cheap and tawdry and macho and sweaty... I want to live on a boat! OH! I can't go to sleep without remembering the one scene with the airport dude who takes West aside and lays this whole anecdote on him about pretending he's an Oil man and going all out and winding up at 4:30 AM with a half a bottle of champagne and a 300 dollar check, and how he doesn't have the money yet but he'll get it. I guess guys who own swanky Asian-trendy restaurant/lounges get that spiel all the time. West certainly played it like he did. He was very understanding too. Such an odd scene to put in a movie though. yet it kind of makes sense in this one. man, good times at the Alamo Drafthouse. So... Fantastic Fest starts in like 12 hours. I remember my notes on the first year being very in-depth, the second year being much less so. I'm really not sure how much energy and excitement I'm going to have this year, so in the coming days I might start using some sort of format to cut down on time (and probably readability). I wish I could sit here and type an hour of babble for each one but the truth is I don't feel like carrying around my notebook this year and without it I forget details and by the time I'm back home I just want to go to bed anyway... so we'll see what I end up with. I have 36 movies on my plate (and one compilation of short films and one live trivia show) so feel free to read along and see how many I end up skipping out on. Standing in line talking to people will be fun though regardless.
09.19.07	The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford	Andrew Dominik	I wonder if these "free but you can pay ten bucks to reserve a seat" screenings would actually sell out that quick if it wasn't noted that "this show is expected to sell out quickly" on the website. It's a pretty genius ploy for the theater. Lars should start saying "be sure to get there early because it's expected to fill up" every week instead of the weeks where he actually means it to see if any more people come (not that there are empty seats now). Whatever. I digress. This more-or-less advance screening had Casey Affleck and director Andrew Dominik in attendance as well as a few producers (but they didn't get up and talk so it's like they don't exist). They introduced the movie then everyone ordered ten bucks worth of food and I think some people were in for a big surprise. I'm sure there were a few American Outlaws fans out there who started checking their watch at the 100-minute mark; Brad Pitt fans feeling the sting of watching Meet Joe Black without checking the running time first. This movie is long but very good. It's also slow and dramatic with relatively little action and Nick Cave string score instead of Jon Bon Jovi tracks (Shot dowwwwwwn in the blaze of glory!). I thought it got just a tad actor-y and award-y at times but for the most part it's just a good movie. It must have been a great script or everyone must really love Chopper because Dominik packed A-list talent in every nook and cranny of this film. I would listen them all out but that would take too long. It's Casey Affleck's movie though and he does really good (as does everyone else (even Brad Pitt)). The one thing I was a bit miffled at is how third-billed Sam Shepard is only in the movie for likie 7 minutes. He's great when he's there though. Everyone's great though and again, to list them all would take too long. Plus it's beautiful. The picture coupled with the cold narration and wintery score gave me a HEAVY Wisconsin Death Trip vibe. I almost asked Dominik if he was influenced at all by the film but figured that question would be out of line with everybody else asking things like "who were your real life idols growing up" and "where did you shoot" (while ALBERTA, CANADA was gigantic on the screen during the end credits). Intentional or not, it's there. Which is great. I'd keep going but I want to save some energy for the next film
09.19.07	Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome	George Miller, George Ogilvie	Figured I'd revisit this just to make the trilogy complete. The was a staple on HBO when I was a kid so I saw it a lot and remember it being not nearly as good as Road Warrior. Now that I'm older and have seen a couple thousand more movies, what do I think? Not as good as Road Warrior. I think parts are still iconically awesome (like the announcer dude's "It's dyin time" introduction to thunderdome and Master Blaster and even the dude with the kabuki mask on a tentpole) and I think I would full-on love the whole Bartertown sequence were it not for Tina Turner. Then the whole desert plane survivor kids thing bores the crap out of me and the ending, while the vehicles are maybe the most badass of all three movies, feels like a revisit to the climax of Road Warrior. It's still way better than the crappy get-us-out-of-the-desert bits before though. I also notice the sax-heavy score a lot, which seems more 80s than post-apocalyptic. And why did Max trade in his dog for a monkey? ugh. oh well, the awesome parts are still awesome. and there are some great quotes that will eventually end up in mixtapes.
09.18.07	Company	Ram Gopal Varma	So last year's Fantastic Fest had a Ram Gopal Varma series of three or four of his films but I was too busy seeing the mediocre new movies to care. Since this year I'm placing a lot of stock in the Nikkatsu series, I figured I'd finally get around to watching this and see if I missed anything. It's pretty good. Reminded me of City of God a lot, although I liked that much more (helped by CoG's lack of Bollywood music video interludes). But still, this was a good epic crime film where two best buddies end up hating each other for a while due to misunderstandings and, you know, the business. Except this was fictional and City of God was based on a true story. But whatever. this was good too. just not as good.
09.15.07	Chalk	Mike Akel	Low budget indie about teachers and how tough teaching is. This had a limited run here (maybe thanks to it being shot here) and it looked interesting enough to see but I didn't get around to it in time. It's good. In a festival atmosphere I'd say it's really good. Some aspects of the film don't really pan out and I would've liked a bit more humor but I think the picture plays largely because the main actors are good. Right off the bat you want these teachers to survive and thrive even if they're stuck in hokey storylines. There could've been more here and I'm reminded of how great The latest season of The Wire showed the learning curve of becoming a good teacher but still, this movie has some merit. Not bad.
09.14.07	Son of the Pink Panther	Blake Edwards	well that's over. At least this one has Benigni doing his schtick. It's still not funny but at least there's schtick. And now I've seen all of them. kind of an empty vistory, actually. I guess I could go after all the cartoons or the unofficial entry Inspector Clousseau but... I'd rather not.
09.13.07	Curse of the Pink Panther	Blake Edwards	So I guess a long time ago when I watched the other Pink Panther movies I thought I should go ahead and rent the last two just to complete the set, even though the last few I'd watched were horrible. Thanks to netflix queue neglect, I guess that time has come. This one follows around an American detective in search of Closeau's disappearance. The catch is - get this - he's just as bumbling as Closeau was! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA genius! At least this time they didn't try to say Sellers had anything to do with it by using outtakes and deleted scenes from previous films, but they still try to revisit all the old supporting characters and villains in an effort to justify this one's existence. It's really long and so complex that I never really had any idea of what was going on (not that I was paying too close attention after a half hour or so, i just kind of gave up thinking about it and just watched the pictures on the screen) but I think at the end what happened is Closeau turned bad and stole the pink panther for himself then had plastic surgery to make himself look like Roger Moore but then The Phantom (an ancient David Niven) stole it from him. I kind of thought the one thing Closeau had going for him was that he was the good guy so this didn't sit right with me at all. Everything else about the movie is boring and unnoteworthy. Blake Edwards, man. How can the same guy make a movie like Breakfast at Tiffany's and this?
09.13.07	UHF	Jay Levey	I was a huge Weird Al fan for probably too long. I still like him and all but starting when I was... let's say 8, up until... well, up until some completely socially-acceptable age (ahem), i was a fanatic. I remember he took over MTV one weekend and I taped 6 hour chunks because every so often he'd mess with videos or show established videos with his song dubbed over (like Taco Grande over the Rico Suave video). He also had this VHS where he went to Japan and it started off like Jimi Hendrix except he lit his accordian on fire. So I very clearly remember seeing this opening day in theaters and clapping when his credit came up. I loved it then and love it now, although I'm sure childhood nostalgia has a lot to do with it. But whatever! Weird Al! DON'T YOU KNOW THE DEWEY DECIMAL SYSTEM!!!?
09.12.07	Guru, The Mad Monk	Andy Milligan	My second Andy Milligan movie. I liked it more than The Body Beneath. Definiely a movie you have to know what to watch for though. Although I liked Carl's horrible job of acting heterosexual and Guru's crazy eyes whenever he says anything and occasional traffic noise mixed into seagulls and foghorns during exterior shots, I also wonder if these movies could've been successfull in any other place at any other time than times square in the early 70s. From reading Sleazoid Express I gather Milligan had his own little loyal following and that his movies played a lot in various theaters always doing relatively well. That astonishes me. I have to admire the guy's balls though. If I had no money but wanted to make a movie, I think I'd at least set it in contemporary NYC rather than period Mortovania or wherever the church was supposed to be. He sort of pulls it off too. Sure a lot of sets are whatever wall they're shooting against and he keeps everything close enough not to need any peripheral decoration but hey, he made t. he got it done. It's kind of like watching a stage play that you get to walk up on stage and stare at the actors while they perform. Hopefully I can catch Bloodthirsty Butchers at some point. Maybe the Alamo will play it when Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd comes out. (ahem)
09.12.07	Death Sentence	James Wan	It's movies like this that make me like Death Wish more and more. I really wanted to like this. I like Kevin Bacon a lot and would love to see him really be a badass. I still think he's capable of it although here he's much more convincing as the scared dad than the revenge machine of the last act. It's just a shame this movie is so... not good. Occasional action scenes are effective (like the home invasion when Bacon runs from the sawed off shotgun and the parking garage chase that shows how exhausting all that running is) but so much of the world is so fake that I don't buy it and even Bacon's actions... OK so you kill the kid who killed your kid. I can buy that. Then the gang shoots at you in the middle of the street and you end up destroying a car and killing another gang member. You don't run away! You call the cops and act as if someone else killed the kid and they just think it's you. That would totally work and that way the annoying ass cop character has one fewer "you're in trouble, buddy" monologue. She's easily my least favorite part of the movie. First of all, Aisha Tyler as a hardened detective is maybe the worst casting choice I've seen in a decade. We're talking Horst Bucholz in Magnificent Seven levels of bad (I bet this would be talked about way more if this movie was any good at all but her ruining an already-shitty film is pretty unnoteworthy). Then making her talk like a know-it-all while being aggressively ineffectual is like salt in the wound. I hate every second she has on screen and ever syllable spewing from her pie hole. John Goodman is also a horrible horrible casting decision. And then there's the gang. Never mind that the town itself is like a normal city with a horror movie nightmare on elmstreet ghetto, but this gang is like.... OK, I imagine gangs like this hanging out in Disneyland. Like this is the theme park equivalent of street toughs. Ornate face tattoos, custom paint jobs on classic muscle cars, leather dusters and fetish boots. If they can afford all that crap why don't they move out of the ghetto? So, with both the good and bad guys annoying me, this movie didn't have much going for it. Too bad, really.
09.09.07	3:10 to Yuma	James Mangold	I liked pretty much everything about this movie but Ben Younger. I just hate that guy. I didn't mind him when he was the probably-gay kid in Six Feet Under but now that he's all grown up and trying to play tough guys I don't buy it at all and I want him off the screen. He's got no business here. Anyway, I liked everyone else and while I don't really remember the original film TOO much, I felt this did a good job in re-telling it with more scenery and realism now expected of a Western. There's also more violence. I don't know if I 100% agree with how the film ends, but I also like that, even if it's a little hokey, it's still a definite choice. Oh, I also saw in the end credits that there are listings for assistant to Ben Wade, Dialogue Coach to Ben Wade, and make-up artist to Ben Wade. It got me thinking of all the fun eccentric things I could do if I was super rich and nobody dared quash my ego. There really should've been different people credited to Russell Crowe too just to make "the illusion" complete. Funniest credits I've seen since the last Naked Gun movie.
09.07.07	Army of Shadows	Jean-Pierre Melville	Last ticket in my Paramount book this year... I've actually had the DVD of this since my birthday in July but haven't watched it because I knew I'd be able to see it theatrically. I always felt pretty jipped that Austin didn't get a run of this last year when the print was going around and everyone was talking about how good it is - it's one of the few film-related things that Dallas got but Austin didn't - so I was about as psyched as a man can be to see this. Plus, I sort of knew what I was getting into. I know Melville's slow-burn technique and was ready to be patient with it. And like every other Melville film I've seen, at the end I loved the net effect of the film. While I was watching it, yes I was aware of its very deliberate pacing and an attention to detail so fine that it bordered on tedious, but when I sat back and read the end credits, I was blown away.
09.05.07	Pirahna	Bill Gibson	Good to have Weird Wednesday to come home to... but this one. whew. Parts of it got pretty tough. William Smith is great and the director's choice to keep showing him looking right into camera is pretty creepy. The incessant shots of random animals and jungle scenery? not so much. I think it's because I was pretty beat to begin with but I disconnected from the movie about 3/4 of the way through and sat out the rest. There were a couple laughs thrown in though, mostly awkward reaction shots or weird non-sequiter lines (do you know the funky chicken?) but it's definitely a movie you have to wade through and pick the moments out.
09.04.07	Tombstone	George P. Cosmatos	It's fun watching this movie with my parents. My mom points out all the historical inaccuracies and my dad asks who all the actresses are then goes "hmmmm." I like this movie though. There are tons of actors in small roles who are recognizable... like, TONS. So that's always fun and hey... Val Kilmer's Doc Holiday! I do think I'm finally ready to settle into a serious viewing of Kasdan's Wyatt Earp though. Now that I'm a bit older, I think I can put up with an 8 hour movie so I'll give that a chance... I bet I still favor this Hollywoodized version though. Michael Beihn as Johnny Ringo... Why doesn't Michael Beihn work more? I bet he's either a douche or an alkie or a bad actor that needs James Cameron to make him good. Either way it's a shame... I miss him in movies. Not so much with Dana Delaney. Hot yes, wonderful actress? eh... anyways...
09.03.07	The Road Warrior	George Miller	Now this is more like it! I don't think I'd ever seen the prologue to this before (where it shows footage from the first film in a pretty vague recap of history leading up to the movie) otherwise I wouldn't have been quite so confused about the state of the trilogy as a kid... but I'd definitely seen most of the movie many times before... and all the images and characters came flooding back to me. The little whirlybird doohicky with the skinny pilot, the feral kid with the razor sharp boomerang, the mullet dude, the mohawk football pad dude, the hockey mask Lord Humungus dude... why are all the bad guys so S&M'd up in this movie? Who cares, it's awesome! Watching them back to back also confirmed a long-standing hunch of mine - that Wez the mohawked football pads badguy in this movie is also Bennet the chainmail vest-wearing big bad guy in Commando. I figure that's why he was cast... because otherwise I don't believe he's a physical match to Arnie at all. He needs to added baggage of being the head-butting Road Warrior psychopath to fill out his skinny arms and flabby midsection in Commando... I really can't say enough good things about this movie. I bet it's the first post-apocalyptic movie I ever saw and I loved it so much that it spread out to the whole genre and I still feel it today. Other movies I really love like Blood of Heroes or Hardware I never would have watched if I didn't already love The Road Warrior. Great movie.
09.03.07	Commando	Mark L. Lester	One of my favorite action movies growing up. I meant to just watch 20 minutes or so while we ate then get back to setting up computers but I ended up watching the whole thing. I love it so much. John Matrix and Bob Lee Swagger were separated at birth! Someone has to do a Commando/Shooter double feature soon.
09.02.07	Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World	Peter Weir	I guess seeing a boat movie and a Peter Weird movie morphed into wanting to see this movie again. Although i didn't really like it the first time I saw it, I've come to respect this movie mostly for its air of authenticity. the art direction and production design and costuming and everything else is perfect. And the CGI is seamless with the models and however else they shot the boats and ocean scenes. As you watch you forget that it's a special effects bonanza going on and you're just back in 1800 watching two ships battle it out. However, I also still think it's a pretty damn long two hours... the whole galapagos thing... and the whole cursed dude and them waiting for wind... and the whole thing where they're in cold and snow all of a sudden waiting for something to happen or something... the movie feels as long as the title, like it's really two movies somehow spliced together. I guess that's just epic I'm feeling? I dunno.
09.01.07	The Truman Show	Peter Weir	A while ago my offhanded remark that I preferred EdTV over Truman Show made a friend very upset, so out of fairness to him I thought I'd give this another shot. It's not that I thought they were directly comparable films, but I did think that, given the similarities in theme and subject matter, EdTV handled it a little better since I found McConaughey's performance to be endearing (which is crazy. I hated him up till then (except Dazed of course) and the comedy elements lightened it up. I just thought that it worked better as a comedy with dramatic elements rather than a drama with comedic elements which is what Truman Show is. Well, after seeing it again, I'm willing to give up a few grudges. One of my main problems with buying into the conceit when the film came out is that this perfectly created world worked with 0 problems for 3 years then in a week everything goes to shit. Is the bank right next to where he works really still a false front after 30 years? Would the actress playing his wife since college really break character under just a little pressure? I didn't buy it. Watching again... I can see how time may be elapsed a little bit more and I just didn't catch it 9 years ago. And although I still don't buy that the wife is such a bad actress, I like how they have to explain Truman's world when an actor quits the show or whatever. Actually that's the part of the movie that I like the most; the travel agent still having her make-up kleenex on and his best friend going out of town for the summer and things like that. Plus the whole style of covering the movie like they're in-show camera angles... makes the first half of the movie pretty enjoyable for me. But I still don't like the second half that much, mainly because I feel it's a wasted opportunity. The shot where his sailboat breaks through the wall aside, I hate the whole end sequence where they throw a storm at him then Ed Harris talks to him like god and blah blah blah plus the ending's really really weak. I want to see him experiencing the real world and getting harangued by his legion of fans and learning about the real world. Maybe then, once he's seen the difference, Ed Harris' plea to stay in his world where he's safe has more resonance. who knows. In general though, as soon as the movie pulls out of the tv show and starts in on the show workers and all that, it loses momentum. I still don't hate it... I don't think it's a "bad movie" but I also still prefer EdTV. Perhaps to aimed for higher and failed is more noble than to accomplish a lower feat but... the Ron Howard comedy done well comes off as a better movie to me than the thematically-charged moral question and somehow allegory that is this movie.
09.01.07	The Guardian	Andrew Davis	Kevin Costner's a rescue diver. he dies at the end. there, i spoiled it. you never have to see it now. you can thank me next time you see me.
08.31.07	Hairspray	John Waters	Wow. I'm really really surprised at how much I liked this. Like, I really REALLY liked this movie. Does that make me a poseur because I didn't really like Polyester or Female Trouble? Probably... but I don't care. Probably my favorite dance was seeing The Madison. It makes me wonder if the people in Band of Outsiders was doing The Madison or some other dance. I loved all the dances though. It's great that Waters focuses on them with almost a fetishistic attention to detail and simple yet complete coverage (yeah! a long shot! you can see whole bodies! It's a shame Paul Greengrass and Michael Bay don't read my blog). I also love how the mean girl comes up with these pretty random condemnations to defame Ricki Lake. Roaches in hair? what?? And then there's all the integration stuff which somehow works because of the lightness of the dancing and that trademark Waters humor... but it's also, you know, about something. another thing to mention to Michael Bay if I ever catch him in an elevator. So yeah... against pretty much all expectations, I really liked this movie lots and lots. The commentary is also great with Waters detailing all the true-life bizarre habits of early 60s Baltimore.
08.31.07	Blood Work	Clint Eastwood	Wanted to see this again because I just read the book and luckily my parents collect mediocre movies so they had it in their library. It's a pretty bad movie. I remember seeing it when it came out and not liking it, thinking Eastwood looked 85 years old in both this and True Crime. In this he's even more fragile though because he's supposed to have just had a heart transplant. On my first viewing, I blamed everything on screenwriter Brian Helgeland, who aside from Highway to Hell I am really not a fan of. I remember the acute sensation of seeing LA Confidential again for the first time after reading the book and being so mad... so so mad... that it took years for me to overcome it. Luckily, that movie had enough elements other than the plot to make it a good movie and now I can see it again and not get too pissed. Well, with this Helgeland does it again, taking an interesting albeit complex plot and Frankensteining it up to the point where it feels deliberately antagonistic to those that read the source material. Only this time, Curtis Hanson and Jerry Goldsmith's score and the wonderful art direction and top-notch ensemble acting weren't here to back him up. Instead, there Clint being clint in front of the camera and really hamming it up behind (there's a scene where he's supposed to remember something he saw earlier and it's like soap opera levels of ham and cheese). Even with the twisted distorted script though, I don't point the big blame at Helgeland for this one. Instead, that honor goes to the woman who plays the main love interest. Oh man. Every second on screen... it's so painfully evident how bad of an actress she is. And then when the story calls for her and Eastwood to go all lovey and make tender love in the moonlight... it's enough to bring up bile. She's horrible. Shouldn't be in this movie. Speaking of that... I remember going to see the Bruce Willis suspense movie Striking Distance with my mom and after it was over with the climactic reveal of who the bad guy is, My mom said she knew it was going to be him because there's no way such a big name actor (Robert Pastorelli, famous at the time for playing a painter on Murphy Brown. hah!) would take a role where he dies in the first 15 minutes. I call this star-spoilage. You either see the name in the beginning titles or recognize the face early on and simply know their role isn't simply the maid or innocent witness or alibi guy #2. And so it is here with Jeff Daniels playing Clint's neighbor. And here's the messed up thing (spoilers in this paragraph. Nobody should care though; the movie's old and crappy to boot). In the book, Jeff Daniels' character is NOT the killer! So people that read the book in which the neighbor character is a nosy but likeable and ultimately good guy all rejoice because jeff Daniels is a great choice for the role! AS A GOOD GUY. In fact, they don't even let on that you changed his last name from the book until late in the movie, like it's all a suckerpunch for the small percentage of the hopefully millions of people that watch this movie... Then when they give the innocent bystander Buddy's last name and Buddy the killer's last name and start setting up some lame device where Clint only pays with checks, anyone that read the book groans. It would have been SUCH a better movie if the innocent bystander (a good actor by the way, he'd go on to play the guy in Hostel in the dressing room wondering how to handle his prey) is actually the killer (as he is in the book) and leave Jeff Daniels as the nosy neighbor! Because Jeff Daniels doesn't take roles where he's JUST the neighbor... does he? So anyway, this movie is bad on multiple levels. I'm glad I didn't love the book as much as I loved LA Confidential or my Helgeland hate would grow. As it is, it's just staying the same.
08.30.07	Lawrence of Arabia	David Lean	The quintessential Epic film. I saw it a long time ago on DVD or maybe even VHS and found it loooooong and probably overrated. Since then, I've had numerous people defend the film by saying it's a completely different experience seeing it in a theater, particularly in 70mm. Well now I've seen it in 70, and what do i think? OK, I'm not giving full credit to the print, but I liked it. I think a lot of why my mind has changed has come with maturity and more exposure to different kinds of films. Particularly Peter O'Toole's acting. But I will say that the added detail and grandeur of seeing those loooong shots on a big screen really does add a dimension to the feel of the movie. I'm surprised to be honest, but it really does. Stephanie sat behind me and pointed out O'Toole's sissy run late in the film. It was so unexpectedly fairy that i burst out laughing with a mouthfull and sent myself to coughing. funny funny stuff. Actually there's tons and tons of undertones going on. I bet you could write a paper about how Lawrence in Arabia is like his trip over to the gay side and his return to Cairo is him fighting with his feelings and acting straight. anyway, I'm visiting the parents/doing some tech support for the next few days so let's see how many movies I get to. Definitely been a weird summer.
08.29.07	Black Devil Doll from Hell	Chester N. Turner	Black Devil Doll from Hell. How do I even try to explain it... Do I have the right words? Do right words even exist? Are words even enough? Lars set this movie up perfectly. I think by the time the lights went down and the hiss of VHS noise came up the entire theater of 200 or so people were ready willing and able to love this movie. And this is a hard movie to love. If I had rented this and taken it home to watch alone, I'm not sure I could've gotten through it and I'm damn sure I wouldn't have gotten anything out of it except maybe some morbid fascination or secret ammo for those "i've seen weirder movies than you" debates. Instead, thanks to the unique cult of Weird Wednesday and Lars' intro, I was treated to 70 of the most insane minutes I think I've ever spent in a theater. Yeah, it's 70 minutes long, but as Lars says, it feels like 8 years of George Bush. Shot on VHS, edited on VHS, re-edited probably still on VHS, projected on VHS (there are no prints of this movie), this movie does not subscribe to that tired old Hollywood belief that movies need pacing or whatever. Parts of this movie are painful to sit through... at least they would be if you didn't have a couple hundred other people laughing as hard as you are. So Lars mentioned the length, he mentioned the VHS thing, he mentioned how great the opening song and titles are followed by how cheap the Casio preset beats were throughout the film. Then he gave a final warning to people not up for the potential offensiveness of the film, giving us all that tinge of wondeer and a challenge of whether or not we can take it. He also mentioned that this director only made one other movie and that they would show it as Terror Thursday so every one of us (exept the girl who walked out) left HAVING to see "Tales from the Quadead Zone." And everything he said was dead on. The beginning titles? stretching to like 7 minutes in length of just black and 30-second-long title cards all fueled by this awesome guitar-riffing song with awesome pitch-shifted lyrics and a heavy bassline. The "Re-edited by" credit that appears both at the front and the back of the film, making us all wonder what this movie was like before David Ichikawa got his hands on it (he's also repsonsible for this wicked tune), the saturation of Chester Turner's name all throughout them... These credits are awesome. And then the movie starts. I would say it's very similar to the movies I made when I was 13 with my neighbor friends but we didn't have any nudity. I almost don't want to describe any of the actual movie because it's just too much. I will recount one of my favorite lines ever though. "I've been with men; several to be exact." So if you try to watch this at home, good luck. To my comrades who were there last night, I think it's safe to say we have another classic theatrical experience to cherish for some time to come. Not only can't I believe that movie made it to video store shelves, I can't believe I saw it in a theater. a packed full theater! Unbelievable.
08.29.07	Shoot Em Up	Michael Davis	Perhaps this is a sign. I completely forgot that I saw this movie after undergoing the phenomenon of Black Devil Doll from Hell. I did see it though. Walking in, I thought it would be the type of movie where Clive Owen delivering a baby during a shoot-out is the most ridiculous thing to happen in an otherwise realistic action film. What I saw was a movie where Clive Owen delivering a baby during a shoot-out is the most realistic thing to happen in a completely ridiculous film. There's a serious cartoon vibe that I started off liking but quickly found, like everything else in the movie, way way too obvious. I guess that's just me bgeing weird because I can't think of many subtle cartoons... but whatever. The film is so over the top and dumb and big that there's really not much to say about it. Highschool kids everywhere will love it. While I can't really say anything bad about this movie because the movie is so self-aware that it yields any arguments moot, I have a hard time getting behind movies like this because it's another step away from intelligent film-as-art storytelling toward mindless entertainment good for nothing more than hypnotizing the kids instead of hiring a babysitter. I have to admit though, it was better than I thought it would be and I had a good enough time while watching it (in that unique simultaneous groan/laugh way where I can't really tell if I'm laughing with the movie or at the movie or if the movie wants me to laugh at it. Who knows.
08.27.07	Mad Max	George Miller	Since I just finished a post-apocalyptic road trip mixtape, I figured I'd check this out. Back when I was in middle school (AKA before IMDB or at least before I had access to IMDb) my friends and I were in constant confusion with Mad Max. We'd all seen Road Warrior and loved it and we'd seen Beyond Thunderdome on HBO or whatever and... well that was what that was. But these rumours of Road Warrior not being the first Mad Max movie - that there was another movie simply called "Mad Max" troubled us... because half the kids we talked to referred to Road Warrior as Mad Max so maybe somebody was confused? misinformed? whatever. It's funny how easy something like that is to clear up nowadays but back then there was no easy answer (the video stores all carried Road Warrior (all labelled "The Road Warrior") and Thunderdome, none of them carried Mad Max) and the confusion lived on for years. So it's not surprising that there was a Mad Max before Road Warrior. What IS surprising to me is how different it is. I don't know if the dude on the special features' comment about mad Max being the first post-apocalyptic movie is true or not, but when looking at the film it does make sense. Mainly because the apocalyptic touches are so (relatively) light. There are still things in this world (like road signs and towns and government suits and laws) that I'm not used to seeing in these kinds of films, especially not a Mad Max film. On the grand timeline of how far each film takes place before or after said apocalypse, I'd put this at like 5 months after... a pretty short amount of time for not actually including the apocalypse itself. Of course it must've been budgetary contraints keeping them so (again relatively) close to civilisation, but the story too is surpsisingly civil. Mad Max is a cop(!) and a biker gang comes after him. And although the biker gang is definitely tweaked out, it shares remarkable similarities with all the earlier biker movies. There's the crazy leader, the possibly-gay right-hand man, the crazy guy who can't stop raping... I think maybe this movie's closer to The Born Losers than anyone realizes. So in many respects, watching this movie felt to me like watching a prequel for The Road Warrior that just happened to be made first. While it's interesting to see where Mad Max comes from and why he becomes the road warrior in the first place, ultimately it's information I don't care about and would actually rather not know. I have to remind myself when people bring up the whole what-sequels-are-better-than-the-first-one thing to chime in with this. Great. now I want to see Road Warrior again.
08.25.07	TRON	Steven Lisberger	I don't remember the first time I saw Tron. According to IMDb, if my mom took me to see it when it first came out in 1982, I would have been just turning 4. Since her memory serves that Empire Strikes Back (80) was the first movie she took me so, this would definitely be possible... but since the first memory I have of being in a theater is Temple of Doom (84), I can't really be sure. I am sure that I had some of the awesome TRON toys that were out at the time (the figures were clear with red/blue coloring and each had a little disc that stuck onto their backs until the first time you take them off and they get lost forever, and the light cycles looked exactly like in the movie and moved via plastic ripcord) and when I was playing with them I already knew how awesome the light cycle sequence was in the movie because I was disappointed the toys didn't make the solid barriers trailing behind them. Who knows. What I do know is that I loved it back then, still like it a lot, and am a bit embarassed for it when I see it with an audience and hear people laugh at its timliness. Sure it hasn't aged as well as... well I would say any other movie ever made but let's be honest, what 80s movie has? But hey! Jeff Bridge's little sneaky walk... actually all the live-action stuff is pretty great. I love the coltish kid at the arcade who points out where to find Flynn; a total dead ringer for the kid who played young Richie Tenenbaum. I loved that Flynn gets super sweaty playing the video game. Even though the game... OK it makes no sense. He rounds a corner, fires like 3 times at the Recogniser, blows it up, and gets the high score and people cheer? So ok that part doesn't really make sense but I love that it made him all sweaty! And I love that the thought of programming 5 successfull video games turns you into a senior VP in charge of defense contracts and stuff... getting to fly around in a neon helicopter. I guess I'm listing off a bunch of reasons to laugh at this movie but I am completely not. OK maybe kind-hearted chuckle, but not HA HA YOU'RE DUMB guffaws. Whatever. Anyway. I love it. I love the shifted point of view to see things from a program's level. It makes me drift off into geeky daydreams about apps on my modern-day machine act when they all go to the commissary for lunch. I bet it's just like my highschool. Each table belonged to a clique, so you'd have all my Adobe programs hanging out like art geeks, all hip and trendy like they sort of want to be iTunes but they can't hide the fact that they're myopic with bad skin so they end up with faux-hawks and expensive sneakers and pre-worn jeans and $90 t-shirts. Then there's the Microsoft Office table full of full-on nerds but they all know the lunch staff so well that they eat steaks while others get meatloaf. You can hear all my mp3s eating lunch down the hall in the band room so they can jam out, and my games... they all eat in the special exclusive "Senior cafeteria" where even still there's some strata. Freecell and Spider Solitaire have bag lunches while Far Cry and Bioshock laugh loudly like cool kids. Then there's GTA San Andreas making out in the corner and somehow not caring that people can plainly see he's made it to third base. All is well until Yahoo Messenger walks around to every table with flyers or the class prankster slash principal's son Internet Explorer invites some hobos in for ice cream sandwhiches and the hall monitor Kaspersky Anti-Virus has to boot them out. Yep. I bet the innards of my computer are a lot like that. But seriously. I do love the whole religious aspect of TRON, where the users are totally faith-based. The analogy kiiiiind of wears thin if you think about it too closely (it might hold up for some maintenance program or resident filter type thing but most programs need user input don't they? so wouldn't they have pretty hands-on interaction like TRON does when he gets instructions to take down the MCP all the time? Anyway, I like the thought of it. I will say that the movie seems very long to me. I like it. Don't get me wrong. But every time I watch it I swear it's like 140 minutes instead of 96 or however long it actually is. The whole sequences where they're on their way to the IO tower and they're on that cool sailship-looking thing with hyperdrive to get away from the star destroyer and all that... it's soooo long. I like it. but long. So seeing this on 70mm... I have to say it wasn't a religious experience BUT it was very very nice. You could see a TON of detail and all the little bleeps and bloops sounded great and... you could really tell when the camera wasn't 100% in focus. But I have to say... the transfer on the DVD is so great... I'm kind of used to this movie looking really pretty. I mean, it can't be that hard a task since most of the graphics are little more than wireframe. But I did appreciate the chance to see it in its intended format. It was a very good time.
08.25.07	Honor Among Thieves	Jean Herman	Charles Bronson and Alain Delon play guys getting out of the military looking for action. They kind of target the same safe to crack and a game of cat and mouse... or cat and cat... or mouse and mouse... ensues. I didn't really feel this one. I was distracted for most of it and the pacing and structure were really bizarre. I guess the idea behind it is sort of cool but whatever... didn't interest me as much as a movie with these two guys should.
08.24.07	Hooper	Hal Needham	OK, the fact that Burt Reynolds plays a stuntman doubling for ADAM WEST alone - No further info needed - makes this movie awesome. Even with Airwolf skulking around... I don't care. Burt doubling Adam is just about the greatest thing ever. And Adam really rubs it in. In practically every shot he has a woman under each arm like his mustache is fooling anybody. The only thing that would've made it better is if instead them making a bond rip-off if it was the old Batman TV show. But whatever, even so... talking about tickling my fancy. After that, eh... it was alright. It seems pretty stuntsploitationy to me but what it loses in inaccuracy it gains in Burt-style good times. It's kind of hard for me to imagine top-of-the-line biggest-star-in-the-world Burt because basically for my whole life his career's been going downhill, but watching this movie made me think about how huge he must have been circa 78 when i was getting birthed. I'm pretty surprised there aren't more guys my age named Burt. Was it like too much pressure sort of like naming your kid Elvis? or was Burt the sort of star you didn't mind thinking about at night but wouldn't want to have to put a walking reminder of those thoughts through school and take care of him for 18 years? Who knows... there should be more Burts though. I don't think I know a single Burt. So this movie was fun enough to watch but nothing mind-blowing.
08.21.07	Return of Bruce	Joseph Velasco	Brucesploitation flick starring Bruce Le. This was about a thousand times better than I thought it would be, not because the fighting was anything special but because it was made in the Phillipines and therefore had nothing to do with reality. Easily the strongest part of the movie was this unbelievably skinny emaciated-looking gay guy who was sort of like the lead henchman and right-hand man to the big boss man. He always had both rear pockets stuffed with random crap to make it look like he had an ass and pranced around like a disco-loving deer or something the whole time. Just looking at him made you laugh and he's in the movie a lot so that was great. Although at one point the big boss man punches him in the crotch, then smells his finger and says he doesn't smell good. What? There were plenty of other great moments too. The two guys randomly fighting until one guy finally admits he's a cop (by pulling his badge out of a chest pocket in one of roughly 50 awesome shirts shown off in this film (my favorite? a tie between the Cancer crab men's t and the Peacock women's t) and the other guy says he's sorry. There's actually a whole cop plotline that just disappears. a lot of things disappear. and there's a kid named piggy that's hilarious. and the ending of the movie... just oh man. By far the weakest parts of the movie were the actual fight scenes. Bruce Le goes through like 16 end boss fights in a row and the last 14 are so tedious and slow that they grind the movie (and my conscioussness) to a halt. Other than that though, this was a real fun time.
08.21.07	Wild Hogs	Walt Becker	As much as I hate to admit this, I laughed during this movie. More than once. Sure it's stupid but any movie with Stephen Tobolowsky playing a sheriff... well it can't be all bad. It can easily be mostly bad (which it is... very much so) but hey, humor is a strange bedfellow.
08.20.07	The Third Man	Carol Reed	So this movie... for whatever reason... causes me dismay. Over repeated viewings I've grown to really admire it (although the first time I saw it I wasn't too into it. I wanted it to be more Hitchcockian than it is), but part of me still refuses to dive into the "i LOVE IT!" pool. I'm not sure I know exactly why that is but I have a few guesses. Anyway, the net effect is that tonight I liked Fallen Idol more, but it was good to see this on the big screen anyway. I think the main reason why I can't get 100% into this movie is also the reason why so many people do, namely the anti-protagonist nature of Holly Martins. He spends the entire movie one step behind, one clue short, and one motivation shy of taking any active part in the story at all. I watch it and still kind of wonder why he's even there, why he stays at all when all of this stuff clearly has nothing to do with him. I suppose it's a noir equivalent of the family staying in the haunted house after the walls bleed or a demon voice tells them to GET OUT. And you know, as I type it out, it sounds like a cool angle! Because you get to follow along and see just the edges of this unfolding story that's clearly between someone else... That's really how I experience most of the drama in my life... I'm almost never directly involved but I'll hear about a fight or some tension or whatever between two other people from all of their friends talking to me or you get different nuggets from different people across time and even though it has nothing to do with me, it's still interesting. Kind of like gossip but with murder. Sounds pretty cool, so why doesn't it work for me? Perhaps another reason is the sheer density of the plot. To me, there are a lot of characters that pop in and out throughout the film and everybody talks about everybody else so it's a lot of names to keep track of faces and then there's the whole penicillin thing and Harry Lime's reputation and this semi-mystery of how he died which ultimately proves meaningless. It's really a relief for me when Orson Welles appears on the screen because it means we'll FINALLY get some progression to the story. I do really like Welles' performance here. He always appears like a superhero or something, confident look on his face coming out of nowhere, in complete control of his surroundings. And yet he plays so you can see his mind working. In the ferris wheel scene and later when he meets with Holly and the girl tells him there are cops everywhere, he flashes on murdering his childhood friend in a sociopathic instant until circumstances make that unwise and he pops back to friendly "old man" chums. It's really only those few moments where you really buy him as the bad guy in the movie, and they're really all in Welles' performance. So I don't know. This is a clear case of the movie being undeniably great and me just not loving it as much as I feel I should. I certainly don't dislike it (hey, I own the DVD)... who knows.
08.20.07	The Fallen Idol	Carol Reed	I'd never seen this before. It's really great. Reed's sense of tension coupled with his rigid British sensibility maes for what I found to be an extraordinary picture. The story takes place in the French Embassy in London. The Ambassador's gone to pick up his long-absent wife and left his young son to the house's support staff while he's gone. The kid likes Mr. Baines (probably the butler) but hates Mrs. Baines (like the head maid). Stuff happens and things develop and shit gets real. At first, the obvious great thing about this movie is that kid. He does such a wonderful job acting like a real kid... curious, undaunted, innocently obnoxious. It doesn't hurt that he also looks precious and Reed gets these wonderful kid-esque looks from him (especially when he's come back from his "sleepwalk" and is covering his mouth with the blanket, basically speaking with his eyes). Reed's also very careful to throw in plenty of levity early on in the picture to allow the kid to really grow on you (The trip to the zoo in particular), which is key because you need to be completely on this kid's side when the dramatic event happens and you start scooting closer to the edge of your seat. And of course Baines is great as well, but so is Mrs. Baines. She's SO evil it's great. Really a venom-dripping Nurse Ratchett performance from her. But all this is kinda alright. I mean, I was liking the movie but not really loving it. And then something happens - the big event - and I really got into it. First, that it happens so late in the movie is both ballsy and admirable. It made me look back at the hour or so that I'd been watching and realizing the heaviness of the lifting going on during all of those seemingly light and frivolous scenes to set up things just so we the audience know exactly what we need in order to find all of the different levels of tension that fire off when this catalyst ignites. This is the biggest thing that I loved about the movie. The tension in the last act of the movie is like a writhing snake: It's constantly shifting and changing and popping up in places that you don't normally expect to find tension. On one level, yeah, there's the big question of whether or not the character you like will come out ok... yeah, expected that. But at one point you're holding your breath not because the police are missing key evidence (although the movie hits that note as well... and quite wonderfully I might add. Reed manages to put the piece of evidence (a window) in nearly every shot of the entire sequence. It's enough to make you want to scream at the screen) but that the child will tell the truth! It's an ingenious turn to take the two characters you're "with" and have one misunderstand something critical. The dynamic that forms really surprised me with how many opportunities for nail-biting it creates. So the last act of the movie really drew me in and made me love this movie. And probably made me love the first two acts all the more. This is really superior filmmaking at work here; it's a joy to see.
08.19.07	The King of Kong	Seth Gordon	King of Kong with Donkey Kong expert Steve Weibe and Twin Galaxies founder Walter Day in attendance! It's so great that Picturehouse bought this movie and are releasing it in theaters. It's really one of the best docs I've seen in a long time so it's great to see sold-out line-out-the-door audiences waiting to see it. Such a great doc. Kayla's Donkey Kong cabinet cookie sculpture was awesome too.
08.17.07	The 400 Blows	Francois Truffaut	Truffaut's first full-length. At one point I thought the absolute sign of Hollywood apocalypse is if I ever hear that a remake of this movie is in development. If I ever write anything in the movie-about-movies mold, a 400 Blows remake will be my condemnation of Hollywood moviemaking. Worse than Good Will Hunting 2: Hunting Season, Worse than Son or Daughter of Glen or Glenda, I can see some smartguy suit in an office putting Haley Joel in it and giving it a green light. ugh. But anyway, I love this movie too. Again, it's heavy. it makes me sad. The only comfort I get out of this movie is knowing that I get to see Antoine Doinel in 4 other movies grow up and get into trouble with exceedingly hot women and generally make it through life alright. Just watching this movie, you're not quite sure. But again, the movie feels so complex in its nuance to me that it's hard to settle on one feeling for any length of time. Even with the parents, I keep flip-flopping between condemning them as bad parents and letting them off the hook. Why? because they're human. They're not Cruella DeVille or Mary Poppins but somewhere in between, depending on which day you see them. OK yes, the mom is pretty undeniable, but the Dad really gets me. He seems like a nice guy most of the time, but Leaud plays against him like he's expecting a slap at any moment and, to be honest, I totally remembered him hitting the kid when he sets the fire, so I guess that says more about my judgement of the character. And then you have the friend kid's parents, who are equally dysfunctional but funny since we don't have to live with them too long and they have lots of cats. If anything, they're problems are even worse than the Doinels' but we never see them that way. I think in Small Change Truffaut states his message too on the nose with the latchkey kid character with the rotten parents. Here, it's explored perfectly through an eye that reeks of authenticity. Even without reading the biography to know that Truffaut's childhood was unhappy or that Antoine Doinel is basically Truffaut's stand-in or the father-son relationship he formed with Jean-Pierre Leaud, you know it's real. you know because you see it on the screen. It oozes out of all the details peeking out around the loose plot. There's one shot in the film where Leaud is lying on a bed (I've forgotten if it was the scene where he pretends to be asleep when his mom comes home or if it's when he's in the jail cell) and he's lying there awake and it fades to black but Truffaut keeps the gleam in his eyes for just a split second longer, stranded in the black. I remember catching that and wondering if anyone else did because it was such a quick small thing. Then it made me wonder what exactly people notice that gives this film that undeniable feeling of realism, or if people even know (I certainly don't). People feel it though, it sinks in somehow. Again, nothing new here... no critical breakthroughs to win any Cahiers du Cinema award or anything... but whatever. It's great to see this on the big screen.
08.17.07	Jules and Jim	Francois Truffaut	Finally made it back downtown (first time since the Alamo closed. I still didn't go down Colorado though) for a double feature of Truffaut movies. They played Fahrenheit 451 earlier but... I'm not a huge fan to be honest. That is an exception though because I am largely a Truffaut lover. There's still a couple of his I haven't seen (The Green Room, Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me) but I went through a huge phase a couple years ago and there's a large handful of his films I find utterly delightful. He mellowed out in a big way later on in his career so I think a lot of people dismiss him after a while - especially his last few which are light comedies compared to his early work - but while I do love the innocence of Small Change and the theatricality of The Last Metro and many others, I still concede that his early work is best, most probably because of the palpable energy and zest that's bursting from every set-up, even when the story's dark or melancholy. Side Note: I think Shoot the Piano Player gets lost between 400 Blows and Jules and Jim but it shouldn't be. It's one of my favorites. Anyway, so Truffaut finally got me back downtown for movies. Luckily there wasn't too big a crowd (I guess most people came yesterday) so there weren't that many old people talking like they're in their living room, and I could fully enjoy both these movies thrown up on the big screen. I'm not gonna try and talk about Jules and Jim like I know anything. I will say that Glen Kenney's commentary on the Fox Lorber DVD release of the film is great and goes a long way in explaining cultural significanses and references and in-jokes that Americans 45 years later would never get. Personally, I still don't understand everything when I watch it - things like the final line of narration saying he would've scattered the ashes but it was against regulation - but i'm all the more drawn in for it. To me the movie's like a very complex wine to be soaked in and contemplated with ever-changing feelings as you get more and more out of it. It's touching and funny but also sad and scary (for men at least, especially those who have succumbed to the powers of a woman before (i.e. been in love)), the pace is very languid and seemingly episodic but it's very intimate and flies by. A big thing I noticed in this viewing is how much of the movie he gives to narration. In later films (I'm thinking Two English Girls) he takes this to excess and pretty much defines what I think of when I hear the word "novelistic" and it's on full display (more evenly tempered) here as well. Some of the best jokes and most important information goes to the narrator, with the pictures flowing bye in a very different style. I almost see it as a movie and a radio show playing simultaneously. The effect, for me at least, is very storyteller... although it's not Truffaut's voice (as in Two English Girls), it's very much as if he's telling you this story and you're closing your eyes and what you're imagining is showing up on the screen. I'd usually say that kind of thing never works and is uncinematic but... here we are. So I loved it. It's a damn heavy film and considered by myself and a guy friend I saw afterward to be scarier than some of the best horror films and it deals with pretty uncomfortable aspects of love, but it's masterfully done and a true classic. And Oskar Werner's acting man... not even so much in his line delivery (what can I tell of that anyway since it's all French or German) but his body language and how Truffaut places him throughout the film. I immediately feel sorry for him and it never lets up. Even when he's happy his eyes are sad and when he walks away at the end... even with the sort of up-beat relief of a piece of music, every step plays the whole movie over again. And while I was never completely bewitched by Jeanne Moreau (I always preferred Catherine Deneuve), I admit that she's great here. ok enough of this. I still have to talk about 400 Blows!
08.15.07	The Girls from Thunder Strip	David Hewitt	yeeeehaw! More banjo music. I don't actually particularly like banjo as an instrument or banjo music but something happens when it enters my ears that just makes my legs go tapping and my fingers go air-picking. Who knows why but I apologize to those sitting next to me tonight or a few weeks ago for Hooch. I can't help it. So, Jack Starrett and Casey Kasem are definitely the best parts of this movie. Lars went out and bought a handful of Juicy Fruit packs for us to chew during one scene in particular where Starrett's Texas Twang makes chewing it sound unquestionably like the right thing to do (much like Mr. Goodbar with Penitentiary, potato salad with Penitentiary 2, and milk with Night Warning). But every one of their (few) scenes together, they share real chemistry and were hilarious. Stuntman Gary Kent was also good in this, focusing his steely blue eyes into a hell of a bastard rapist, part of a trio biker gang ("Hells Chosen Few" a leftover from Hewitt's previous film... I guess they're a very chosen few; three) that harass a redneck ("What's that smell?"), get thrown in jail, get busted out, kill cops, and die. The other part of the movie has to do with three sisters running a moonshine still... or something. Truth be told, the movie's not very good. at all. There's no sense of cohesion or connective tissue, no through lines, no set ups, nothing like that. But damn if it wasn't fun to watch with a full crowd, especially since the bunny rabbit rapist himself Gary Kent was in the audience! Before the show, he regaled us with anecdotes about Hewitt's complete lack of knowledge when it came to making movies ("He was a nice guy but pretty clueless, so he just tried to copy Al (Adamson)), and a few stories about this film's shooting location: Spahn Ranch. In the 9-day shoot, they filmed most of this stuff up there with all the creepy crawlies begging lunch off them every day. In fact, Kent and production manager Bud Cardos hired Charlie Manson to fix their dune buggy at one point (I guess for a different film since I didn't see any dune buggies here. Maybe he was talking about Mitchell (heh)) and had to threaten him to fulfill his end of the bargin (something about Bud ripping him a new asshole). Apparently he cowed pretty easily; Kent said he couldn't imagine anyone following him anywhere. But he told another story where the crew broke for lunch one day out near a well, unbeknownst to all of them that the rotting decaying corpse of a stuntman they had killed was laying down in the well! Apparently they were up there after the killings but before Manson was caught... pretty damn creepy! Lars mentioned Jody McCrea's "wooden" performance in the intro. Oh man was he right. Toward the end the film actually becomes suspensefull, not because the lengthy chase sequences are done well or anything but because McCrea keeps stopping to deliver run-and-gun dialogue in hour-long meditations. It makes you wonder if he's just giving up the chase or what, then he'll casually mention having to get that guy or that he's on the hunt and he'll start running again. This ultimately pays off (after way too long, nearing Psycho from Texas length here for the final chase) when the biker "gang" leader takes refuge in a dark cave: a decidedly unwise decision (REEEOOWWWR!). Back to Starrett though. I completely buy that he could intimidate those three bikers to the point where they'd voluntarily get in the back seat of his car. Although the "crazy one"'s hippie song against police brutality was nice, it was even nicer when he got knocked out by flailing shards of acoustic guitar. "I hurt mah finger..." Again, not a good movie, but fun. I'd agree with what (Lars said) Frank Henenlotter said about the film: "Like Hee Haw but with death." do you have a stick of juicy fruit?
08.15.07	Inside Man	Spike Lee	It was on. I still like it. extra points for having two Wire Alums! I could talk more but I'd probably be repeating my previous note (about likine Spike Lee best when he deals with mainstream genre stuff and how the story's clever and all that) so... i wont.
08.14.07	The Incredibles	Brad Bird	There was a new Team Fortress 2 technical video released on the Internet today and the game looks really fun with an awesome early 20th century art deco design somewhat reminiscent of The Incredibles so... it made me want to watch it again. such a great movie all around.
08.12.07	7 Faces of Dr. Lao	George Pal	Tony Randall plays all 7 faces thanks to Oscar-winning make-up by William Tuttle. This is a fun little movie for kids. For kids. It reminded me a lot of the 60s Disney films like Swiss Family Robinson and Babes in Toyland (except I didn't grow up on this one) in that, even though... i dunno, _fairly_ serious stuff is going on, it's all treated so lightly that it's more about the giggles of bad jokes and broad acting than anything else, which makes it perfect for kids. Plus it's kind of like an anti-Something Wicked This Way Comes, which is good because a movie like that needs something in the world to balance it out. Especially for kids. If I ever have kids and they see that movie, I'll be sure to show them this movie afterward so as not to ruin them on circuses for life. Plus, the scene where Pan dances around and plays flute is awesome.
08.11.07	The Hill	Sydney Lumet	Sean Connery goes to WWI-era British military prison in the middle of a desert where punishment is doled out as trips up and down this man-made hill of sand. Of course, by the end it's Connery screaming that the rule book doesn't make sense... blah blah blah... war is evil... this guard is evil... black people are evil. OK so Connery doesn't say that bit, which is good because Ossie Davis is also in prison and freaks out when the main guard dude says that. It's a pretty heavy movie, and not really one I'm in a hurry again (not because it's bad just because it's two hours of people being broken down), but Lumet shoots in high-contrast black and white and since there's so much light in the desert, he gets some phenomenal depth of field so his compositions are really great. The way he shoots the hill itself is great. And we're always really close on sweaty yelling faces; it's great. I also thought it was interesting that they shot outside of Almeria Spain in 1965. They must've been sharing base camp with about a hundred Italian western crews... I wonder if there are any stories there.
08.11.07	And the Band Played On	Rpger Spottiswoode	HBO docudrama on the emergence of, scientific research on, and political in-fighting about AIDS. Apparently the book's better but the movie's good enough to get the gist of things. Scary stuff. It's weird to think what I was doing in the early 80s while all of this was going on (playing with Star Wars toys mostly). I suppose it's just as weird for people older than me to think about growing up with sex being a life-threatening risk as it is for me to picture a world before AIDS: those lucky 60s/70s bastards who got to pop some penicillin and rock all night. Sigh... but then again, they didn't have anything as cool as Star Wars toys to play with either, so I guess it's a trade-off.
08.11.07	The Dark Wind	Errol Morris	This one was pure curiosity on my part. Nobody said it was particularly good, but I wanted to see what a fiction Errol Morris movie looked like. The answer: like every other fiction movie. Lou Diamond Phillips plays a native american cop on Indian land following a mystery based on a Tony Hillerman book. ALthough Phillips' channeling of a navajo basically means he talks softly, he's surrounded by other people I enjoy like Fred Ward and Gary Farmer (the Indian from Dead Man). The story is what it is... it's a pretty slow but alright movie to watch on the couch late at night when you don't feel like doing anything else (i.e. it didn't have commercial breaks). IMDb says Morris didn't finish the film due to disputes with EP Robert Redford. That may explain the music and the voice over and a bit of the pacing, but it's still a pretty pedestrian movie. curiosity sated.
08.09.07	Sunshine	Danny Boyle	The Sun's dying so a bunch of people have to take a gigantic bomb out to it to re-ignite it or something. Kinda like The Core but not as lame. I'd say most of this movie is very good but the weakensses lay in the script and that's never a good thing. I really liked all of the effects - it's a beautiful film - and Danny Boyle's shot composition is great. discovering the design of the ship and the cool little futuro-knick-knacks of the world the characters live in is fun and the stuff with them dealing with the shield malfunction and exploring the second ship is pretty tense. BUT, it seems like a lot of these ideas are really familiar. Have there really been so many peril-in-outer-space movies as to use up ALL the ideas? This story is pretty completely divided between Armageddon, 2001, Alien, and Event Horizon. I think the only new stuff was the oxygen farm and... hmmmmm. BUT (again), for the most part, the prettiness and slickness and good music by Underworld help gloss over the familiarity for most of the movie until it becomes unbearable in the last act. I like the idea of having the antagonist blur the camera (I guess because he's so intense or something) but in execution it just made things confusing. I also got a bit bored by the sequence in which people are picked off in expected ways. Still, I liked it more than I didn't like it, and found it to be really beautiful. I liked the tone and people who were in it; I just wish the story had more to it. I don't really like it when a whole movie can be boiled down to three words (stay on mission).
08.08.07	The Libertine	Pasquale Festa Campanile	Not the Johnny Depp Libertine, this one's about a widow learning to explore her sexuality in an effort to pin down what turns her on (lots of reading seems to help). Since so much of this movie has to do with fantasy and so-called perversion, I was heavily reminded of The Frightened Woman in parts. The dead husband's swank fuckpad for one, the bizarre daydreams of various kinks for another, and the same actor in a small role singing "I'm the strongest man in the world! I'm the strongest man in the whole universe!" in the shower. And, like The Frightened Woman, it was pretty damn good and had awesome french happy music all throughout. Although there wasn't that much in the way of nudity, there was plenty of playful semi-, almost-, and barely-nude stuff and most of the women were really cute... I dunno, this movie wasn't really good in a bad way, it was just good. I totally want a big set of scales to act as two chairs now.
08.08.07	The Nomi Song	Andrew Horn	starting with footage from It Came from Outer Space, this is the story of Klaus Nomi, new age pop/classical singer/alien. I rented this primarily to understand what his deal was. While I can't say that I completely "get it" now, I did learn a lot about him and his whole thing so... mission accomplished. A few moments during the movie, I felt UBER hipster for recognizing clips from Urgh A Music War and TV Party (thanks Kier-La!) so that made me feel good. I think the most gripping part of the film dealt with Nomi's death from AIDS. He was such an early victim that he was dying just as the news of the syndrome was hitting the media, so it was really heart-wrenching to see all of his close friends afraid to be near him at the end because no one knew what the hell it was. Makes me want to watch And the Band Played On again.
08.06.07	Elizabethtown	Cameron Crowe	I thought I'd give this another chance now that it's been a few years. I'm generally a Cameron Crowe fan although his last couple have not done what most of his earlier films have for me. Elizabethtown... I don't know that it feels like he's deliberately retreating to safe ground after Vanilla Sky (although Kirsten Dunst's little snapshot mimicry definitely hints at that), but mostly I feel like this is a soup where the ingredients, although fine by themselves, do not quite come together. The atmosphere of rural Kentucky with everyone pointing the way as he enters the town to all the locals with their Southern charm and the whole big family thing works really well I think, but the whole romance bit seems really grafted on and I won't even mention how out of place the whole shoe failure thing is. Mostly I kind of wish that the stewardess never comes back into the story after his flight... I think a big part of this is Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst. I... eh... for whatever reason I just think they're both wrong for this movie. I don't like Bloom or Dunst here, I think they're easily the fakest parts of the movie... I mean I get why Crowe included all of these elements and why he cast those people... I just think his target of a movie is at the margins of my target. I still think the whole road trip map is really cool and I wish someone would make one for me but again, it feels like a cupcake thrown into the soup. I like cupcakes and I like soup but... not together. Enough food analogies (I'm watching too much Good Eats). I ended up perhaps liking this a bit more than on the first viewing (which was shaded by disappointment), but it's still not my favorite. I'd actually put it on par with Singles.
08.06.07	The Bourne Ultimatum	Paul Greengrass	The third Bourne movie, again directed by Greengrass. While I like the idea of his documentary approach to shooting action, I also like (as I've gone on and on about many times before) being able to tell what the hell is going on. So I really liked the parts of this movie that I could follow, but still remember fondly the first film's attention to actually showing you all the fancy moves Bourne's doing. The first one he fought a dude with a pen, the second one it was a rolled up magazine. This one's a hardback book. I think. The sound effects made it sound kinda like he was fighting with a hardback book at one point and I think I saw a few frames of one here or there but I guess I'll have to watch it on my computer monitor when the DVD comes out to make sure. I think some pretty spectacular stunts were in this movie though. I caught glimpses of some awesome dirtbike stuff and the car chase at the end (even though I had less of a clue than the tunnel stunt in the last movie) seemed to end like it was pretty huge... sigh... All the other stuff I really liked though. I thought it was on par with the other two in terms of being smart and at least trying for realism and replacing the government threats of Brian Cox and Joan Allen with Albert Finney and David Strathairn are pretty sweet. Allen and Stiles are still good in their roles and Bourne is badass as always. I wish I knew my way around the rooftops of Tangiers... It was also good to see Scott Glenn again even though he's really old now. He has more wrinkles than he knows what to do with. So Ultimately I liked it. I liked the callbacks to the first film and the resolutions at the end and think it's a really solid action trilogy. Nitpicking, I would've cut the very last shot and stayed with the music and Stiles' smile but then again I also would've used a tripod every once in a while so that's just me. Good movie though.
08.03.07	Little Miss Sunshine	Jonathan Dayton,. Valerie Faris	it was on and (gasp!) I felt like watching a movie. Charming little movie...
08.01.07	Mitchell	Andrew McLaglen	MITCHELL!!!!! That's a great name for a police captain to scream at the top of his lungs. Like Brannigan or McBain. That didn't really happen here though. Sure the captain's pissed at Mitchell's unorthodox methodology and unwillingness to follow orders, but there was no Last Action Hero window-shattering going on... oh well. Instead, there was a whole lot of Joe Don Baker acting like a kid on impersonate-your-parent's-profession day. As I watched I couldn't help but notice that Mitchell doesn't actually do much police-work, and what little he does do is, well, wrong. In fact, I'd venture to say that Mitchell is a pretty horrible cop and worthy of some good ol' fashioned Captain-yelling... for instance: When Mitchell wakes up in the back of a police car at the scene of a crime and the uniform officer asks him if he wants to come in, he considers it like he's checking to see if he needs to pee then agrees. Then he finds fault with John Saxon killing a burglar because he planted a gun near the body to make himself seem less... evil (I guess his party guests didn't mind since he did the cold-blooded shooting in front of them). Maybe it's because Saxon refers to the robber as a "wetback" that ignites some moral outrage in Mitchell? Nah... later on when he's being tough, Mitchell declares "I'm gonna bust you for the murder of that Mexican." Still no name... I'm not sure either of them even looked at the body because the dude was pretty clearly black. When Mitchell witnesses a harsh attempt at a hit and run, he tracks down the felon in his scraped-up car, beats the crap out of him, and slams his hand in the car door. Did he arrest him? Cuff him? call in back up? Nah... just getting even I guess. That's what you get when you mess with Mitchell! Next. Mitchell's idea of tailing suspect Martin Balsam seems to be showing up every morning, honking until Balsam comes out, and giving him a big thumb's up. I guess I'm not a cop so it's just every other cop movie I've ever seen that leads me to believe that tails or stake-outs are generally considered discreet affairs, but discreet is not in Mitchell's vocabulary. As for dealing with bona fide criminals, Mitchell never arrests anyone. He just shoots them. Preferrably in the face. He shoots EVERYONE in this movie and the people who don't get a bullet get blown up instead. So unorthodox! I guess the only time he acts like a police at all is when he arrests his whore girlfriend for having weedm but you can tell he's doing it more to piss her off and just because he can than any reason of moral or lawful fortitude. Maybe it's because I've been reading an extremely thorough non-fiction portrait of the homicide detective, but I found every negligible and anti-cop maneuver Mitchell does utterly hilarious. It's just so far removed from any semblance of reality... that's damn entertaining. Like trying to kill someone with a dune buggy. What? How do you even do that? Slopping around in riverbanks with loose mud and dirt in this little buggy that, while it does go fast, can't weigh more than 300 pounds... going out to crack a guy's rib or run over his foot I can see but murder? Especially if you're John Saxon and you've just shot a (mistakenly) Mexican burglar in your home with one of 58 guns laying around... how does the decision to go after "freak dune buggy accident" cross your mind? I guess if you're in Mitchell's world nothing really has to cross your mind; you just do it and don't bother to look back. "Hey, did you really lay that?" Yep. UPDATE: I completely forgot to mention the other pretty major thing that I love about this movie and that's how it seems to focus on Mitchell's depression and misery whenever possible. This hangdog harmonica music slides in whenever Mitchell doesn't get his way and even when he's happy there's a Leon Redbone type of song singing about him with a decidedly sad tone. There's even a scene where Mitchell's laying there on the bed all grumpy like, swilling warm Schlitz before he drags himself up out of his stupor to take a shower. There's no dramatic thrust to that scene; no reason for it to be there at all. But it's there and I love it.
08.01.07	The Simpsons Movie	David Silverman	So many people are going to the movies this summer. I guess it's great for the good films like Knocked Up and Ratatouille but it frustrates me that so many people are loving crap like Pirates 3 and Transformers. Subsequently, seeing this movie at an Alamo was impossible opening weekend. Even on a wednesday night the show sold out... lots of Simpsons fans out there I guess (who'da thought!?). Anyway, I liked this movie. For some reason or another I can't bring myself to sing its praises to the heavens - maybe it's because it was more a relief that it's good than a surprise - but it could've been much much worse and for the most part it feels like a natural movie extension of The Simpsons. I think Spider-Pig will become the next in that long line of Simpsons jokes that seep into the public conscioussness, although I think the gag that got the biggest laugh out of me was seeing the elephant kick an animal out of frustration. I was also waiting for Bono to make an appearance. so... yeah. a success. For whatever reason I can't add any exclamation points although maybe in a year or two after it's out on DVD and it's just another addition to the stockpile, I'll watch it again and laugh and think back to the time when I first saw it and immediately loved it. ahhh, good times.
07.28.07	Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That!	Nathaniel Hornblower	I missed maybe the first five minutes of this when I flipped onto it and wound up watching the whole thing Even though it was at home and not at the Paramount with the beasties in attendance, it was still damn fun to rock out and watch along. For any beastie fan at all this movie's really awesome. I should pick this up on DVD...
07.27.07	Spaceballs	Mel Brooks	For my birthday I wanted to revisit an old favorite that would make me laugh. After narrowing it down to 8, I decided on this mostly because it's been a long time since I've watched it and after catching half of Planes, Trains and Automobiles on TV the other day I was in the mood for a John Candy movie. I feel kind of stupid listing off the great things about this movie... kind of like trying to tell someone about Raiders of the Lost Ark or Star Wars. I'd start then stop and think "do i REALLY need to be doing this?" Instead, I'll mention what I think is the funniest scene in the movie. It made me crack up tonight while watching it and also think about it several times across the night into the next morning. It's not Rick Moranis after they've emergency stopped out of Ludicrous speed (although that's damn funny) or the way he says "fooooled yooooou" (even though I still say that all the time) or any of the other classic classic scenes like jamming the radar or beaming the president up or his luggage combination or the line "what's the matter, Colonel Sanders... CHICKEN!?!??" Nope. My favorite scene comes after they find out where the princess is by playing Spaceballs The VHS and fast forwarding past now (which just happened then) to see them in the desert and the president hears about it and says "comb the desert!" Cut to pairs of spaceballs running gigantic combs through the sand, Sanders asking Dark Helmet (wearing his desert hat outfitted with eye-holes) "are we being too literal?" followed by them asking if each group of comb-holders has found anything. The first two guys say "no, sir!" the second pair holding another comb says "ho, sir!" The camera pans over revealing two black guys holding a giant afro pick; they answer "Man, we haven't found shit!" End of scene.
07.26.07	Jerry and Tom	Saul Rubinek	I caught part of this on cable late one night and it didn't come on again so I netflixed it to see the whole thing. It feels like a late-night cable movie in that you can see why it doesn't quite work to become an all-the-way success but there's still interesting stuff going on and good actors... it's kind of engineered specifically for you to catch on tv and end up watching the whole thing. Joe Mantegna plays a teacher to Sam Rockwell who wants to become a hitman, working out of a used car dealership owned by Maury Chaykin and Charles Durning. The movie unfolds through a series of anecdotes showing Rockwell's progress from kid working the phones first getting exposed to hitman-ing to newbie in training to seasoned pro (which again hurts the film's overall punch but makes for good watching), the two guys talking while waiting for various marks (filled out by people like Ted Danson, Bill Macy and Peter Riegert). Furthermore, the director does a lot of transitions in-camera with clever uses of sets; things like going from summer to winter by craning up over a fence to reveal snow on the street beyond or entering a 1st-person flashback by panning to the right and tilting the camera. The abundance of these little tricks covers up the sheer talkiness of the movie (based on a play). Overall it's pretty surprising that the movie is not only competant but interesting and showing up at 2am on cable. It was then no surprise whatsoever to me when the movie ended and I found out it was directed by Saul Rubinek. I don't know what it is about actor-directed movies (Saul's maybe most known (to me anyway) for his role as the film producer in True Romance) but a lot of them share similarities. They all fill out minor roles with recognizable faces, many never quite come together as a whole, and almost all of them share a dramatic stressing of how directory they can be. I'm strongly reminded of Adam Goldberg's movie I Love Your Work. So it's interesting that this fits so well into that mold. Not a bad movie at all by the way. I liked it.
07.25.07	Sophomore Swingers	Unknown	I like going into completely unknown movies because it puts us all on a level playing field. No one's recomending it to me (creating a subtle pressure to like it) or warning me against it or creating any sort of expectation at all. All you get is a title and maybe the poster art and that's it. And with a title like this, it really doesn't mean anything (proven by the roughly inserted "SOPHOMORE SWINGERS" re-issue splice at the beginning of the film)... this movie could be anything at all really, as long as there are some boobies once in a while. It turned out to be an Italian sex comedy in the Sergio Martino vein pairing hot young women who sometimes get naked with generally funny guys doing their Italian schtick. I love these guys because they're all so expressive with their body movements, the creative english dubbing of these guys almost always ends up being one of my favorite parts of movies like this. I guess it's hard to come up with a way to have these guys talking in any sort of normal manner when they're flailing all over the screen in weird rhythms and sudden outbursts. I'm afraid I waited too long to write this and have forgotten most of the moments I liked in this. I remember it being generally better than I thought it would be and a success as a WW screening (Lars mentioned that if this would good (having two unknown movies in a row be uncovered gems (along with the undeniably great Hooch)), we may get super powers like being able to shoot lasers from our fingers, so a few people may be sewing superhero gloves while I type this... but it wasn't like the best thing ever. There were moments however... The one that stands out in my mind is the teacher's out-of-nowhere fight against a gang of biker thugs. Screeching these high-pitched wails looking like a bird dropping an egg, he kicks all of their asses even though they're all wearing helmets and he's punching them with his bare hands. And on a side note of a more mature nature... I really like something that this movie had tons of: upskirt shots. I think these are pretty undervalued in films... you see lots and lots of cleavage and topless action but I think a simple upskirt or pantyflash is incredibly sexy and can't really be called too revealing (although it is! making is sexy). The panty shots in this movie were plentiful and fetishistic in lingering screen time, plus they're all low-cut butt-crack euro-70s bikini cuts which doesn't hurt at all although they do look funny from behind.
07.23.07	Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix	David Yates	Well... what can I say. New computer that can play games + new Harry Potter Book + new addiction to Good Eats TV show = no movie watching. Maybe things will return to normal in a day or two. In the meantime, I figured no one would go to an 8pm Monday screening of the new HP at the IMAX since a week had past. Wrong. It sold out... and I don't know why all non-Alamo Austin theaters suck so much but they really do. You'd think a town somewhat known for its film seen would have better theaters... the film started 45 minutes late (due to technical difficulties... not sure what was going on since they had two shows earlier today) and there were about a dozen huge black spots on the screen. I think they might've been bugs (Austin seems to be getting bombarded by crickets lately. no clue why) but whatever the reason, for a $12 IMAX ticket, the presentation should never be that shoddy. Of course no one was around when the movie got out except an elderly security guard so there was no one to complain to but whatever... I guess that's why I have this. So all that aside, there's the movie. It's weird that it's the shortest of these movies to date considering it's the longest book. Where Goblet of Fire felt like they tried to cram everything in so the movie came off hurried to me, this one seemed to excise tons and tons of stuff leaving us with a nicely paced if not ultra-simplified version of the story. Aside from the length, in my mind this film also have a tough road because it's my least favorite book. Especially now that I'm reading book 7, it seems like book 4 really was a pivotal turning point because the three books since then have all been much darker, much more trying, and much less... well, fun. So this was the book that basically said the shit just got real, which is unfortunate because I think lots and lots of kids fell in love with the series because of how fun it was. And also, the series seems to mature with Harry, so where once things like Chocolate Frogs and Every-flavor beans get plenty of screen time, now it's all about much bigger things and the very top of the magician society figure prominently. So, since the story gets more mature, so comes the criticism. I think might be the first movie to leave those that don't read behind. Now this is just a hunch since I read the books and can never know what the other side sees, but it seemed to me while watching this that the movie presupposed that you knew what A LOT of stuff was or why it was important. Maybe that's just because it's paid MUCH more attention in the book, but the whole climactic scene of the movie felt like it had no context at all to me. It was more of a thing like "oh, this is where we have to go... so we went there" without any of the rather grand meaning behind what they were going after and what were all around them. Harry's relationship with Cho, the significance of Kreacher, and Trelawny's prophecy were all particularly snipped this go-around... so knowing or caring why Dumbledore keeps her around felt kind of moot to the film. Maybe I'm wrong and it played fine to people who have only seen the movies... or maybe I'm wrong in that all the films relied heavily on already loving the material, or maybe I'm wrong in that no one's going to be interested in the fifth Harry Potter movie without being fan enough to go back and read the books... but then again maybe I'm right... in which case this will be their least favorite movie the same way that it was my least favorite book so... everything will work out anyway. never mind. However, there were a few elements in the book that I did like and they were all presented here. I really like how at this point the Order is an excuse to see all of our favorite grown-ups acting together. The scenes where they debate and talk over dinner are great just because we get to see everyone we've met through the years now together, banding together. Likewise, I like all the Dumbledore's Army stuff and how the students begin to apply what they've been learning. It's still great that so many of the actors are returning to their roles with each film, especially the growing children. The production and costume design are always pitch perfect and pretty much exactly what I imagine on the page splashed up on the screen. I think all in all I liked it more than disliked it. I knew I wasn't going to love it going in and didn't walk out disappointed. I just hope they get the next two right because both are almost as long as this and have tons and tons of stuff to work with. now back to reading!
07.18.07	The Sword and the Sorcerer	Albert Pyun	ahhh my first note on my new computer. I have to say... this admin form looks better on my new monitor. I'm sure you'd all agree if you were here or something. I'm also typing this note while devoting most of my CPU cycles to solving world hunger and I'm getting no lag at all! Anyway, I thought this was kind of a peculiar choice for WW... 80s, fantasy, Conan rip... Usually not things that jump to mind when thinking about wednesday nights... but in that context it was actually pretty fun. By far my favorite characters were Rodrigo and Captain Morgen. I loved all of Rodrigo's closeted regret and random reaction shots and every frame exposed to the light bouncing off Captain Morgan is special. I don't really get the swiss army sword going on but it was funny... once you forget about the plot and stop caring about all the crap everyone's saying in every scene, it's a pretty fun little movie.
07.16.07	Tremors	Ron Underwood	Comfort food. Why is this movie so fun?
07.15.07	The Devil Wears Prada	David Frankel	Sometimes it's easier to watch what's on rather than reach for the remote. It's times like this that I sort of wish i didn't have to enter EVERY movie I see in here, but then again I was too bored to turn it off before it ended so I guess it's my own fault. uhhh, Stanley Tucci's good.
07.15.07	Crimson Tide	Tony Scott	YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!!!
07.14.07	The Comedians of Comedy	Michael Blieden	it was on... funny stuff.
07.14.07	Almost Famous	Cameron Crowe	felt like time to watch this again. good movie.
07.12.07	Blow Out	Brian De Palma	So I wonder what movie De Palma defenders will insist that I must see before passing judgement next. Body Double? Home Movies? Whatever. eh, I liked the idea of the downer ending (although Travolta's covering his ears thing ruined it) and that's about it. Oh, I also liked the beginning accident scene a little bit. freakin de palma.
07.11.07	Hooch	Edward Mann	hooo boy. Hooch! Hooch Hooch Hooch. Tears of Joy, Tears of Joy. To be honest I don't think any note of mine can do this movie justice. I need to track down a copy and write while I see it again to make sure i don't forget the thousand little bits of awesome that are in this movie. I'm on overload. I will say that this was pretty unexpected and great and I never thought I would've loved to see Danny Aiello in jean cut-offs so much. It's good in a pretty terrible way but damn if pretty much every scene didn't have something worth remembering in it. Really, I should type more but I don't have it in me tonight. Maybe tomorrow.
07.11.07	Fort Apache, The Bronx	Daniel Petrie	Paul Newman's a SOuth Bronx cop dealing with crap. This might be the lowest NYC has ever looked on film. The wasteland of eearly 80s south bronx rubble litter practically every shot of this movie.It's pretty incomprehensible to think how much dereliction anddecay going on back then when you see it today but damn if it's not all over this movie as an anthropological record. In fact, the scenery is almost more interesting than the movie itself... but not quite. Pam Grier's pretty great inher small role in this, her snake dance especially. I liked it, really solid.
07.10.07	Hot Rod	Akiva Schaffer	Ahhh... this is turning out to be a pretty great summer for comedy. Well, I'm not counting License to Wed or anything but Knocked Up and Superbad and now this all made me laugh really damn hard. The thing with this is seemingly random humor kind of on a Napoleon Dynamite vibe (but trading nerdy for... dorky?) but it's also a pretty major throwback to 80s comedy kind of twisted and distorted to fit today's audiences. Still, there's some pretty awesome homage here like a punch dance in the woods and an MC Hammer 2 Legit reference and a crowd-singing-in-the-streets moment that's pretty sweet but it also has no problems with going the extra mile with violence and stunts gone horribly horribly wrong that the youtube crowd now expects. There were tons of funny moments that we were all immediately quoting back as we walked out of the theater (probably the biggest is "wow that's... really racist, but correct") and there are enough to fuel repeat viewings so I really hope this does well. It's not the smartest form of humor and for the first fifteen minutes or so I was smirking while everyone else was laughing but when I gave in to it, I laughed more and more and by the end I had a constant grin going on. The crowd laughed a lot... stepping on some lines because there seems to be absurd little jokes in every shot of the film. I loved Bill Hader's shorts... actually I loved all the costuming here but one of his shirts in particular of a deer seemingly ripping out of his torso really made me crack up (there's also a shot where we see him air-drumming for like 3 seconds that really tickled my funny bone (if you know what I mean)). I'm trying not to list out every bit I can think of that made me laugh but it's hard. Rico handling the RV owner, Will Arnet's euphamism for prophylactics, Ian McShane's rhodesian fighting implement, Chris Parnell's tattoo, and Rod's whole relationship with his step-brother and little pre-fight pep talk... it all just hits on such a ridiculously enjoyable note. Maybe it's too strange for some, too random for others, and too low-brow for college types, but it really made me laugh so whatever. spirit of eagle!
07.10.07	Meatballs	Ivan Reitman	It was on TV and I hadn't seen it in a really really long time. I remember there being more nudity but I'm probably confusing it with all the other summer camp teen sex comedies. but even without nudity, bill murray still makes it funny in his own scene-stealing way. fun to see again.
07.08.07	The Eiger Sanction	Clint Eastwood	Clint Eastwood plays a retired hitman turned art professor(!) named Dr. Hemlock(!!)forced back into working for an ex-nazi albino spy mastermind allergic to light and cold named Mr. Dragon(!!!) to avenge his friend's death by climbing a mountain (!!!!) after being seduced by a stewardess named Jemima Brown (!!!!!). And then there's George MFin Kennedy as Eastwood's Monument Valley-living beer-swilling redneck climbing buddy (!x1000), although now he's become an "impressario, at least that's what they call me. That ain't dirty, is it?" Sound like fun yet? add in some lines like "Here's to the selfish killer and the patriotic whore" and "I knew there'd be death," a constant stream of redskin racial slurs during the training sequences, throw in a pinch of leg-humping by a dog named Faggot, and you've got yourself a stew going on. Alas, the whole movie is not as crazy as it sounds. It is pretty cool though. It's like 45 minutes of spy movie, 45 minutes of training montage then 45 of mountain cllimbing movie. Eastwood's pretty badass in all three but, once again, I found myself enjoying Kennedy most. He was just on fire in the 70s!
07.07.07	They All Laughed	Peter Bogdanovich	I dont really know why I never tracked this one down before now. I'm a pretty big fan of Bogdanovich's early films... actually I like most of his stuff that I've seen. Anyway, I can add this to the list now... i liked it quite a lot. Ben Gazzara and John Ritter are private detectives following around Audrey Hepburn and Dorothy Stratten respectively, basically having fun in manhattan and happening to make a movie in the process. This shares a lot with Saint Jack in that the location shooting seems authentic and loose, the story is fairly languid in structure and pacing, and it's really more about spending time with characters that you really like than worrying about any sort of conflict. Plus Gazzara plays a ladies man which is awesome and John Ritter plays a goofier younger version of Bogdanovich which is... actually that part's pretty weird since he's following Stratten around. Stratton is undeniably beautiful but damn is she can act her way across a street. I think she's handled well in this film, largely a long-range target of affection never really fleshed out as a character per se, but whenever she talks I kind of wish she wouldn't. Hepburn on the other hand works just as well as a completely different kind of distanced woman. When we finally get a bit closer to her it's not so much following the hot girl down highschool hallways as getting to talk to the really charismatic girl you've seen talk to much hotter guys than you. I don't know if that makes sense... both actresses fit their roles well but for completely different reasons. I must say though... the highligh performance of the film for me (ok, aside from Gazzara, he's awesome) is Blaine Novak as the roller skating longhair working with Ritter and Benny. That dude is great; I loved every second he's on screen. They're all pretty great though, coming up with an endless supply of little pieces of business. Actually the whole movie seems fairly obsessed with non-verbal communication. There are tons of hand signals, quick looks, and minute gestures throughout, all giving off a vibe of realism and that the main guys have been working with each other for a while. Then there's the women. Equally great, all hot. Yeah. This one was quite a surprise for me. It's pretty great.
07.06.07	Penitentiary II	Jamaa Fanaka	So... I'd heard that the Penitentiar series gets progressively more bizarre and makes less and less sense which is something I suspect I'll appreciate more after seeing the third film. Right now, I'm still prety jarred by this. For starters, this wasn't a prison movie. I kind of thought, what with the name and all, that Too Sweet would get in more trouble and be sent back to another tough situation and much more moral outrage and expressions of masculinity. Instead, he's out for the whole picture except when he boxes the prison champ. Yeah, he goes bacck to the Pen for a boxing match. That's something I can't quite get my left brain around... Meanwhile, Half Deaad has escaped (probably by getting plastic surgery to look like a young Ernie Hudson) and is out for vengeful blood. Armed with a pair od idiot sidekicks with awesome names ('simp' and 'do dirty'), he manages to rape Too Sweet's girl to death in the bathroom before launching into another sweaty-naked-black-man fight reminiscent of their first meeting back in pneitentiary 1. I can't exactly say hat Hudson makes a more memorable Half Dead than the dude who played him the first time, but he does bring his own unique brand of pyshcosis to the role, augmented very well with wide-angle close-ups and ugly pink lighting. Seldom Seen also appears to be a different person. I can't really figure out how he'd be stucck in the Pen for life in the first film then just show up out of the blue in this one, but whatever. The guy who plays him doesn't come close to the powerhouse performance of the original, but he sounds kind of like him and, with his beard and fro and sweating all the time, is pretty fun to look at. I can't really get a grip on what this movie's about. The plot makes little sense (my girl's dead so i'm gonna box and be the world champ and show young people... something. what?) and things happen that are very peculiar. A Star Wars scroll appears in the beginning going to very long lengths to set up the character but all that heavy lifting gets done in the first scene anyway. Fanaka seems to be so aware of the sequel mold that he cares little about connecting the dots. This movie really throws me off guard. It's so different from its predecessor one a very fundamental level but one or two layers up it tries to a fault to bring back favorite characters or situations. What Mr. Goodbar was the the first Penitentiary, potato salad is to this. Why is Mr. T there and why is he dressed up like a genie? Why is Half Dead's disguise to help him blend in a multi-colored clown wig? I don't have answers to these questions. All I can say is I want to get Mondo Tees to makes me a yellow t-shirt with black lettering saying "too TOO SWEET." A really surprising and confusing and bizarre viewing. Makes me really curious to see if this was the mutant (like Temple of Doom) or a sign of what to expect with the third one.
07.06.07	Double Dare	Amanda Micheli	Doc about stuntwomen Zoe Bell and Jeannie Epper, kind of a youth and experience deal with a whole grrrl power bent... The whole movie's pretty interesting but I think the real standout is Bell. Hot damn. Is it possible to watch this movie and not fall in love with her? at least a little bit? answer: no.
07.04.07	Kill Castro	Chuck Workan	First Weird Wednesday at South Lamar. For some reason Terror Thursday shows here didn't seem quite as weird as this did. Plus they didn't show the "Wednesday Night Special" reel (was last week's split the last straw or are they saving it for WW's triumphant return to the Ritz?? who knows. I probably think too much about this stuff), just trailers for Killer Elite and Filler Force and boom we're in. I can see how some felt this movie was a bit long and slow in parts and I think Lars gave the movie a pretty soft sell (but still mentioning the best parts like Robert Vaughn's seeming indifference to being in the movie and every frame Michael Gazzo's in and the kinda cool early 80s electronic Tangerine Dream-esque score (aside from the horrendous calypso steel drum theme song)) and while it was pretty short on action, damn if it wasn't jam-packed with man-pulp. I eat that shit up so I really liked this movie. I love how the main guy (described by Lars as Gregory Peck meets a pile of dirty laundry) has a blatant disregard for those he supposedly cares about. He didn't know that his woman was Cuban and not Spanish (nor did he care), he seemed intent on rubbing his sidekick's stereotype of having 7 kids in a 3-room shack in his face, and I'm not even sure he knew the name of the kid he was trying to save. I guess he can be that way if all it takes to bed a lady is a 5-second montage of him dancing with them. I guess that's not even a montage, it's just two dissolves. I mean when you own a dingy transvestite-infested ("now that right there is what I call a real slut") bar down in Key West, I guess you can be like that... and that is how part of me really really wants to be. Of course until you get involved with mob dude Gazzo and his CIA cohort Vaughn. He should be glad he wasn't there for the awesome "I'll teach you all about coconuts" scene where a couple snipers shoot... a coconut. It starts off pretty cool but eventually becomes awesome when, like an hour later, we cut back twice to see the snipers shoot two more coconuts. I guess on their budget that was the punch-it-up action scenes. Part of me thinks Vaughn spent the entire movie thinking about what he'd do in Key West after they finished shooting that night but another part of me thinks he was just so into this grizzled seen-it-all operative that it was all work behind those awesome sunglasses. I guess whichever way it actually happened the outcome looked the same. Where every other character in this movie chose to be "tough" by acting macho, Vaughn's toughness came from not even caring. He's like 'yeah say whatever you want i don't care because i'm such a salty bastard.' It's pretty awesome to see his "choice" coe up against the haggard machismo of main guy Stuart Whitman and especially when he plays against the greaseball manic energy of Gazzo. I know there wasn't a lot of explosions or car chases but just seeing these guys try to chew on each other was more than enough for me to dig every little bit. And I really love how the movie's called Kill Castro but most of the movie has nothing to do with that and after someone explicitly says so and another character's like "hey, you named the goddamn movie Kill Castro so I want to kill Castro!" he dies and the movie ends. Clever use of stock footage of Castro seals the deal and they even use a quick clip of Carter reminding you that it's 1980 and Cuba and Castro and Bay of Pigs has absolutely nothing to do with anything anymore. And even if it did and the movie was actually about it, it still makes no sense! Throw in some cockfighting, near-nude oiled black men wrestling to the death, sharks and snapping turtles and you've got yourself a pulp sandwhich, mister. Love it!
07.03.07	Live Free or Die Hard	Len Wiseman	ok... listen up, Hollywood writers. I'm giving out a free little workshop here for one paragraph only. No seminar fees or gold badges to buy to get in on it, no hotel lobbies to have to wait in before the panel starts. Just listen up. If you have a character afflicting a coputer virus on a system, it's ok to have him tell his henchman "upload the virus" and flash to a growing (non-labelled) bar on a monitor. The audience WILL get that the little bar means he's doing what your evil character just told him to do. You DO NOT need the computer monitor to say "Uploading virus." In fact, if at all possible you should AVOID having super-smart computer hacker characters typing random keys that make said "Uploading Virus" window pop up. Why? good question, I'm glad you asked. Because it's fucking stupid and makes you and your characters and your movie fucking stupid. Don't Do It. sigh... This movie is 10 years too late. I thought we were finally rid of this cyber-terrorism crap with The Net and Enemy of the State and what whole wave of mediocrity. Why are they trying to bring it back now? Why is Kevin Smith a digital jedi? Why is Justin Long in a Die Hard film? If they called this 16 Blocks Part 2: 18 Blocks I would've been... well, not happy, but surprised a little. If this was The Last Boyscout 2: Even Laster I could've swallowed itm but a Die Hard film? Come on... Not that I'm glorifying the past at all. I actually think, in terms of overall quality, that this fit in well with Die Hards 2 and 3. It just feels so alien with all this hi-tech crap. how about good ol' bad guys with no god-like powers cat & mouse-ing McClane? Does the bad guy really need complete control over the entire country in order to give this guy a bad day? It's just not Die Hardy enough. The action is really big. I could tell what was going on (read: I liked it more than Transformers) and it was visually fascinating but... SO BIG! Eh, whatever. I can't hold that against actions films... the bigger the better I guess. At least they didn't have evil robots talking in their native tongue and subtitled in their native tongue which then translates into English until the final battle when they talk to each other in English. At least this didn't have that. Here there was just a little French from the Distrct B13 guy... Not quite Schiessen das Fenster material but at least it didn't offend me. By the end the action does seem completely unbelievable but oh well... pick your battles. Eh... I just hated the story. I don't think an R rating would've helped. Hearing "jerkass" and having "yippee kiyay" cut off was pretty blatant but I guess that's the price we now pay during the summer. At least he still shoots the bad guys instead of disarming them and putting them on trial. ok. I'm over this one too.
07.02.07	Transformers	Michael Bay	Ahhh, Transformers. What am I gonna do with you... I didn't really have any expectations except from what I'd heard about how bad an early draft was and a faith that Bay could deliver awesome robot on robot violence. My whole Transformers nostalgia bubble popped last year when I watched the first movie again... I guess I went into this more out of curiosity than anything. My hope was that it alternated between awesome action scenes and so-bad-its-good connective tissue. Not exactly first-in-line excitement. This would have been a really good movie if I was retarded. I HATE feeling insulted and hate even more the argument of summer movies supposed to not make sense and hate way even more that the crowd around me liked it. I try not to feel superior to the people around me but god damn that theater was filled with imbeciles. "He's a truck!" "That's Megatron!" "he's a jet!" I guess everyone took some time off their doctorate studies to take this one in. This movie was made for 6-month olds who are captivated by flashing colors and loud noises and nothing else is needed. It's like the writers (assuming what I saw was actually their idea) held in their minds the target, the best possible thing this movie could be, was a carbon copy of ID4. I just don't get it. They're not even ripping off good movies anymore. Who thinks the "uploading virus" scene in ID4 is good enough to recreate? I think they might have been intentionally going for a so-bad-its-good movie (which is ridiculous) but failed. It's a retarded mess. And the action scenes? the saving grace of giant robots beating the crap out of each other and destroying cities? They might be cool if you could tell what the hell's going on. It's a real shame that a movie this huge has to be made for TV. Of course I mean the rating as well but mostly I mean the way it's shot. I miss long shots and masters... I really do. Maybe I'll be able to tell what's going on when I illegally download the DVDrip and watch parts of it on my computer monitor when it's just a rectangle on the screen, but this movie should've been a theatrical experience and I felt like seeing it on a big screen was a disadvantage. So many cool visuals were wasted by "intense" camera placement that the action wound up boring me. I got tired of seeing nondescript gray parts shifting and and blurring in extreme close-up. You know what'd be nice? It'd be nice to see a car transform into a robot without the camera going through its armpit or under its legs. You've got this cool-ass robot on the screen that we've paid to see, just let us see it! fuck! whatever. i'm over it.
07.02.07	The Last Detail	Hal Ashby	So since I was already watching one Asbhy film I figured I might as well jump right into another. Nicholson was awesome in this and I liked watching it a lot but - and maybe because this was much less a "serious" film than Coming Home - it felt much more temporary for me. Again, I'm probably wrong and in a year or two I'll read this again and laugh at how little this affected me but whatever. there you go.
07.02.07	Coming Home	Hal Ashby	When I have a movie that's regarded as a classic that I haven't seen, especially something like this where I know the movie's not really about initial reaction so much as how it sits with you and grows on you, I get sort of... not quite intimidated but definitely aware of the chances that I won't immediately like it as much as I'm supposed to... and perhaps I never will. Consequently, this sat on my desk for like a month before I forced myself to watch it (along with another Ashby movie right after it). I mean, I've liked every other Ashby movie I've seen (not that I've seen all of them). It's very much a product of its time and, taken on a certain level, the whole movie really boils down to "war is bad" over and over again, but it's done very well with good acting and an absolutely amazing soundtrack. Seriously, that's probably like a $10 million soundtrack for a film today if not more. I did really like how much of each song Ashby used though, often really low in the mix but managing to hit several beats throughout the song as the scenes play over it. So... yeah I liked it. I have to say I already liked it a little more while listening to the commentary than on my first viewing (as a product of MY times, I can't see Robert Carradine as anything but Louis Skolnick and have never been the hugest Jane Fonda fan but damn if Voight and Dern weren't amazing)... i' sure it'll grow on me but this first watching felt a lot like planting a seed and hoping for the best.
06.30.07	Edtv	Ron Howard	I was talking about (read: defending) this movie the other day and it put me in a mood to watch it. due to somewhat close releases and similar premises, this movie always gets compared to Truman Show and I like it more. WHile they're really different movies (Truman Show is a drama with comedy in it, Edtv is a comedy with drama in it), I find Edtv to be much more relatable and realistic and less preachy and heavy-handed with its (same) critique on television. However, since I was disappointed with Truman the first time I saw it and liked this one, I've only seen Truman Show maybe twice while I've seen this a good half dozen times easy... so it may be time to revisit Jim Carrey's wacky world that he buys completely for 30 years then stops believing completely because the whole world crumbles around him in one day again. But for now, I continue to have a good time with this movie. It still made me laugh a few times and in addition to really (begrudgingly) buying McConaughey's charisma here, I get a kick out of most the supporting cast: Ada Goldberg as the best friend, Martin Landau as the stepfather, Dennis Hopper as the biological father, Sally Kirkland as the slutty mom, Elizabeth Hurley as the hot girl, and especially Woody Harrelson as the brother. Jenna Elfman... eh, should have been Rene Zellweger and the Rob Reiner evil TV exec thing gets old but thankfully it's only old for about 10 minutes before resolving. I love all the audience members they go back to, the ongoing comentary, and how the show gets better sponsors as it starts making money. I think it's a funny and deceptively simple handling of a topic that's only become more accurate since the rise of Fox's reality show slate and it's entertaining to boot. Still a fan, deal with it.
06.30.07	Ice Age: The Meltdown	Carlos Saldanha	so... I guess I watched this just because it was on and I didn't have to think too much while watching it. I do think the little cartoons with the scrat or whatever it's called are great and a real throwback to the classic WB cartoons so I guess this movie's better than the first one because there seems to be more of him in this, but still... I guess you have to be a kid to go really gaga for it... or at least i do.
06.30.07	The Wheeler Dealers	Arthur Hiller	This was at the top of the list of movies mentioned in Jow Bob Briggs' Texas history talk that I wanted to see. Arthur Hiller (The In-Laws, Outrageous Fortune) directs James Garner as a Texas oil man who heads to NYC to wheel and deal some money to make up for his run of bad luck on the oil fields. He ends up owning a fancy restaraunt, getting into modern art, and striking oil in Massacheusetts and along the way he falls for feminist wall street analyst Lee Remick. VERY light comedy but fun in a Saturday afternoon kind of way.
06.29.07	Squirm	Jeff Lieberman	Live power lines on the muddy ground turn worms crazy; horror ensues. Eh... I don't really have any notes for this. it wasn't too bad to watch but didn't really surprise me either.
06.29.07	Daltry Calhoun	Katrina Holden	I really only rented this because I was curious about Quentin Tarantino on the comentary trak (he's an exec. producer). The movie is... I think it's a situation where it's either really charming or really lame depending on how much you're into it. I was about half and half. The main kid is great though.
06.27.07	Night Warning	William Asher	So how do I even describe the last show at the Alamo? My fondness of this movie has only grown since seeing it before. i was really psyched to see it again and couldn't be happier that they got Susan Tyrrell to appear with it. I'd heard some pretty crazy stuff about her so it seemed like an easy slam dunk of a farewell. For those that haven't seen the film, it's really a tour de force performance from Tyrrell that drives the thing and makes it work. Bo Svenson is great as the psychotic racist bigot cop but it's really Tyrell's portrait of a deteriorating mother figure that makes the movie memorable. So it couldn't be more perfect when she was introduced and came up in her wheelchair pushed by David Strong. But before that, Tim waxed sadness a little bit about the last time he'd be taking the stage before handing it off to Lars to introduce the film. Lars went into how he first et Tim (sort of trying to steal some of his books he thought he'd left at the Kinko's where Lars was working), and about how he was a regular here from the very beginning before he got into programming Weird Wednesdays and eventually coming on full time (Tim commended him by saying he couldn't imagine an Alamo drafthouse now without Lars) and generally gave his send off to 5th and colorado with class. Then Susan Tyrrell came up and stuck a rose into her cleavage and waved for David, who had taken a post off in the corner of the stage away from the spotlight, to come and stand behind her before trying her best to shrug off any semblance of compliment or question Lars could throw at her. Finally, after a few minutes of explaining how her performance cae out of mornings spent in the attic with the make-up girls smoking something relaxing and coming up with ideas that she thought were funny but the director thought were serious, she rejected any more attention, threw the mic to someone in the front row, turned her wheelchair toward the ramp, and said "Mr. Strong, Do Your STUFF!" while rolling down out of the spotlight and that was the intro. The lights went down (for the last time. you can really append this phrase to every sentence in this paragraph I bet) and Tyrrell's musical number from The Forbidden Zone played before another blast from the past adreel played featuring soe past special guests to the theater. Stuff like Phantas-mania and Bruce Campbell and a splatterbowl between Lucio Fulci films and H.G. Lewis films. It also included ads that played for the early days of rolling roadshow (time-lapse footage of the crew assembling their pre-inflatable screen. I can definitely see why they moved away from that), the opening of Alamo Village, the opening of Alamo South Lamar, and a nice little teaser intercutting Fred Astaire singing Puttin' on the Ritz with Young Frankenstein. Then another video popped up with Edgar Wright introducing himself as Peter Jackson, then panning to his buddy Peter Jackson introducing himself as Edgar Wright. The two guys kind of poked fun at eachother then mentioned their Alamo appearances with some funny anecdotes and ended with a nice joke about making out with either Harry or Quint (it's hard to tell in the dark). It was funny and pretty sweet and awesome. Then trailers, this time for Weird Wednesday classics like Devil Times Five, The Candy Snatchers, Force Four, and Wonder Women. Then the movie. Toward the climax of the picture, Alamo wait staff handed out little cartons of milk to everyone and Lars led us all in a toast to "Susan Tyrrell and fucked up movies" during the scene where she licks milk off of Jimmy McNichol's face. I think she was back in the theater by that time (Wiley had to run after her when she fled earlier and apparently somehow talked her into returning for a short Q&A. Thanks, Wiley!) because I heard someone that sounded like her cackle with delight. The Q&A was hilarious. I think she might've answered some questions. Jasmine's kid Liam asked her "was it was fun to be killy or something." Someone asked about her relationship with Bo Svenson which got her off on a tirade. She also talked about her (much more amorous) relationship with Herve Villechaize. Let's see, she also talked about this show she wrote all the music and perfored in but the producer absconded with all the materials... and how Verhoeven's American movies suck, and how John Waters is obsessed with murderers. You may get an idea of the tone the Q&A had... pretty chaotic. She's a real character for sure, and kept nuzzling her head back against David's midsection, which was hilarious. I can't think of a better person to be up there behind Susan Tyrrell's chair than David Strong. After she ended the Q&A by once again forcing David to take her away, Tim said one last farewell to the place while a round of Dewars shots passed around the theater. With arms raised, Tim thanked us and invited us back to The Ritz this fall and that was that. Pretty much immediately, people started working on taking their chairs apart. I really saw no use for one or place to keep one so I opted out of that whole struggle, donating my chair to either Kevin's home theater or Jack's home arcade setup (I did grab a menu though as well as a poster). When I left the house I felt a few seconds of guilt for not bringing a still camera or my video camera or anything like that but it was quickly washed away when I got there to see Thomas shooting away and the alamo camera out and Michael shooting and Anne shooting as well as approximately 130 people with cmaeras flashing away and taking shaky video of select events. Actually, right after Night Warning ended Shaun the projectionist manually closed the curtains on the screen (for the last time) and there were a few second of complete darkness lit only by the camera flashes from throughout the theater. It was a pretty great moment. But anyway, I'm sure there's roughly a terabyte of image data making its way onto hard drives and internets as I type so I don' feel like I missed out on anything. Instead I got to experience the last night as viscerally as I could through direct contact. With these notes to remind me, I'm hoping I can keep those memories alive for quite some time. Nobody left too quickly though. They started doing informal interviews on the stage with anyone who had alamo memories. I took the opportunity to watch as the chairs were disassembled, talk in the lobby, explore the back stairwell and green room and step on stage once to see the perspective. I also got back up into the booth and looked out through the projector window. It's weird how the theater looks so small from up there yet so big from down on the stage. Everybody kept hanging around though, eventually falling off slowly as people finally got their chairs up and started loading their cars. An hour or so passed (making it very late considering the movie didn't end until 4AM) and Thomas said they were taking the neon sign down outside. So after that the group slowly shifted to half indoors half out on Colorado as we watched the guys (slowly) go about taking the sign down. That took about another hour where I think the finality of it really set in for me. The moment they cut the power to the hanging Alamo sign and lowered it onto the truck... that was it. people were talking about breakfast somewhere but it was taking forever and I was ready to go... Finally, around 7AM, I got in my car and headed home. Now, I have a feeling of "now what?" This past month has sort of been on overdrive, spending as much time at the theater as I could. I remember this feeling after the end of QT6 but with even greater potency. I've spent about two years going to this place 2-5 times a week, soaking up movies and experiences and making friends and slowly but surely establishing myself within the community there. I don't doubt that the new theater will be cool, but I do have a few small fears that it will be closer to South Lamar's multiplex shine and less the unfinished concrete and brick atmosphere of 409 Colorado. No matter how good it is there, it wont be the same (although I was very glad to hear that they're saving the screen and curtains for use in the smaller theater at the Ritz. I know that's not their first screen by far and it may not even be the original curtains, but still... something about bringing a few things over like the screen and sign makes me happy). I think certain things (like Weird Wednesday and Terror Thursday) will stay in my schedule for as long as I can keep them there, but I can also see myself cutting back a bit with the new theater. I feel like with this closing it's also a great milestone for me personally as well. I've now done my homework. It's time for me to take what I've learned and try to apply it to my own work. We'll see! But for now, 409 Colorado is no more. Here it was. That was it.
06.27.07	Earthquake	Mark Robson	Here it is. This is it. There've been a lot of clever little phrases popping up like "Remember the Alamo" and "The Alamo is dead, long live the Alamo," and I'm tempted to start quoting The Doors myself, but all the silly writing aside... here it is; this is it. The Last Night at the Alamo. I wanted to get there at around 8:30, ended up walking in at 9 thanks to parking woes. It's weird to think that the slotted spots on 4th between Congress and Colorado won't be the holy grail anymore. I guess in the grand scheme of things, where I park is about the least weird thing to think about but there it is. After being treated to one last line on the stairs in stifling heat, they let us into the lobby and there was a nice table spread with flowers and candles showing off the feast they had just served. I've been pretty comfortable with missing Big Night (the first film of the evening) since they announced ticket prices, but I must say that seeing the food made a small part of me (well, not so small according to my belt) regret not splurging. Especially when they let us in the theater and all the feasters had the choice seats (I fared pretty well though, ending up 2nd row center which is actually almost ideal for me) and sneaking a peak at the full menu. Reading that thing made me really sad to miss it, but the other parts of me that pays rent didn't mind. Just for the sake of it, here's the Big Night feast that I missed: Chicken Consume paired with Feudi de San Gregorio, Fiano di Avellino, Italy 2004 Il Risotto: A trio of seafood, truffle, and spinach risottos paired with Bottega Vinaia, Pinot Grigio, Trentino, Italy 2005 Il Timpano: A heavenly drum of pasta filled with penne, egg, sausages, salami, parmesan, mozzarella, and fontina baked to golden perfection paired with Casa Dreolino, Chianti, Rufina, Itally 2004 Salmon with meyer lemon, roast tomatoes with basil, and artichokes with radicchio paired with Poderi Colla, Dolcetto D'Alba, Italy 2005 Roast suckling pig with cherries and blood orange, poussin with grape sauce, beets with sage, roast garlic with rosemary, sweet and new potatoes paired with Sette Ponti, Crognolo, Tuscany, Italy 2004 Merinque cookie with mascarpone, fresh fruit and nuts paired with Casalnova, Prosecco, Veneto, Italy NV yeah... I bet that was good. Feasters also got treated to a half hour introduction by Tim, making us double feature ticketholders wait all the longer while they dined in extravagance. whatever. So when Tim got up to introduce Earthquake, the house was packed. Alamo staff started handing out hardhats as Tim explained that the one time they brought this much bass to show Earthquake was down in San Marcos at the fault line where they had noise complaints in a three mile radius and it took them 40 minutes to locate where they were. But, they weren't inside then... so this was basically new ground and Tim had realised a few days before that he was the one that installed the drop ceiling above our heads and didn't have the upmost confidence in his handiwork. So we all got official Alamo last night hardhats to wear during the movie just in case a heavy ceiling tile fell on us (we had to sign a liability waiver in line). TIm also mentioned that while he loved all of us, he hated Hated HATED Cuba Libre: the club downstairs from us that moved in on the pretense of being a low-key club and dodging the city's sound shielding specs and then becoming a trendy hair gel monster farting out a constant bassline thud every weekend night, ruining untold quiet moments in the theater with their obnoxious music. So this was for them! Unfortunately, even with the bass so loud as to vibrate bottles off tables and break a light fixture, Cuba Libre only heard distant thunder. Lars did his part however by punching and kicking on the wall. Oh well, at least we got some chest-vibrating gut-wrenching crotch-fertilizing bass out of the deal. I'd never seen Earthquake before. It was pretty great. The print was showing its age (one reel was a little warped creating focus issues) but I loved Chuck Heston as the lead and Richard Roundtree as a motorcycle daredevil and especially George Kennedy as the pissed off cop and Marjoe Gortner as the crazy grocery store clerk slash volunteer national guard. I guess I need to see Starcrash now. Oh yeah, having Walter Matthau pop up was also a surprise (even credited as Walter Matuschanskayasky). Mostly though, I got the kind of vibe like this was a slightly more gonzo version of the 70s disaster flick. I don't know why, but it seemed to give much less time to the dramatic death scenes of each star and deadly serious tone in place of seemingly random but ultimately much more entertaining moments like when Roundtree goes on his test run and biffs the loop de loop or when Gotner gets harassed by a trio of reprobates loafing on his stoop, not to mention when Gotner goes batshit crazy and guns them down in cold blood (spoiler!). I think Towering Inferno and Poseidon Adventure could've used more scenes like that. Beforehand, they played an assortment of classic Alamo ads for events of a bygone past. Soe I remembered (Tim Doyle's knee-popping Napoleon Dynamite Mondo Tees spot), some I'd seen but had forgotten (The human frogger for atari 2600 gaes at the theater), and some were before my time but really great (Lars and Henri's porn compilation shot at Vulcan). It was a nice little trip down the memory lane involving sitting through the adreel 3 times a week and having them burned into your brain. Then came a video by Don Coscarelli basically wishing well to the Alamo before one of those fancy little balls flies in and explodes his head. Then a series of vintage trailers, ostly of disaster flicks. Let's see, there was Tentacles, The Towering Inferno... dan, can't reember the others. They were good though, trust me. After the show, the sadness I felt when I first got into the lobby and saw the funereal table spread quickly washed over with the happiness that watching a movie with basically everyone I've ever met in town and feeling the incredible bass (with little sounds thrown in the stereo mix making it sound like girders were bending and glasses were breaking behind us) wash over us all. Seriously, looking around at the crowd, i felt like the new kid on the block all over again. Everyone there had been an alamo fan for much longer than I have... I don't know that I've seen as many familiar faces in one place ever. Truly, pretty much everyone showed up. It was great.
06.26.07	Brewster McCloud	Robert Altman	Over to the Paramount to catch the last half of the Altman double feature. I'd never seen this before. It's pretty crazy. Bud Cort lives in the Houston Astrodome where he's working on artificial wings to fly like a bird. Helping him on his quest is guardian angel Sally Kellerman, who I guess kills people that get in Cort's way but it's always preceeded by bird crap for some reason. Maybe the raven is the actual killer, I don't know. Anyway, through in Shelley Duvall as a tour guide and Michael Murphy as a Bullitt knock-off and you've got yourself an Altman movie. This movie... I dunno. It was wacky and goofy and I laughed in a couple of places (Stacy Keach's role for instance, or how Detective Shaft, after crashing his car in a pond, decides to end things on his own terms), but mostly it was too much for me. Too crazy. I did like how Altman handled the end credits though. I seem to remember him doing something similar with MASH too where he lists all the actors off over the radio. Here he had a big circus and had the title of the movie up on the scoreboard and brought all the actors back made up as circus folk for their credits. that's cool.
06.26.07	The Day the Earth Caught Fire	Val Guest	I wasn't really planning to see this but the thought of going downtown to see a movie NOT at the alamo on the night before it's closing just made no sense, especially when it would be a movie I've already seen (although I do like McCabe & Mrs. Miller) and the free AFS screening is a cool-lloking British sci-fi flick starring Leo McKern. So one more chance to see everyone taking pictures and soaking up the atmosphere it was. I realized I'd never been down the back stairs and took a trip to marvel at the incredible alamo graffiti covering the walls there. anyway, I figured since this visit was largely a nostalgia trip that I'd sit roughly where I sat the first time I was there and order what I first ordered. This time they gave me a fork to eat the cheese fries with. That helped a lot. The movie was pretty good. Nuclear testing sets the world off its axis (changing the equator) and orbit (hurtling us toward the sun and certain char-broiled death). So the movie's basically like an early 60s British version of The Day After Tomorrow without the evil wolves or friendly Mexicans to come to the rescue. It was much better than The Day After Tomorrow. But very British. Even in the worst of times, those guys had a witty comment to make. Fun Pre-apocalyptic movie.
06.25.07	Nashville Girl	Gus Trikonis	Well after last night it really really seems like the end. Two days left and I won't be there tomorrow. This was the last Music Monday Kier-La's programming... It's just so... final. Before the movie, this really great band called Canned Hamm played a short set. I was really blown away. Two guys with a sequencer hooked up to the PA, they rocked the crowd with half jokey vegas lounge act and half funny yet also catchy songs. They actually reminded me a lot of a Canadian (and less overtly sexual) version of Junior Senior. Some of my favorite songs they performed were "Erotic Thriller" and "In Praise of Older Women" but their last song was really incredible, petering out with each member going through the crowd getting everybody to sing "And I want your body against mine without complications." Goofy yes, but the beats were pretty dope and the tunes were surprisingly good. Awesome band! I also really liked the movie. It's an exploitation of Coal Miner's Daughter with (I'm guessing) lots more rape and music producers sleeping with 16 year old girls. I really liked how, as we follow the main girl (Monica Gayle) through the twisted road to country music stardom, we get treated to a running parade of memorable small roles that appear, hang around for a bit, then leave the picture. The Brooklynite YWCA shower bimbo who turns into her best friend for like 7 minutes, the street smart sister she meets in work farm who helps her out for like 8, and even Beauty, the first music manager's secretary. And then there are all the men who promise her fame just to sleep with her. My favorite of these is the one with the awesome rainbow-crotch'd pants and shirtless jean jacket. There aren't really a whole lot of positive male influences in this film but I guess that's what makes Gayle's final line ("you can take your contract and shove it!") all the more cheer-worthy. Although Thomas cracked me up by clapping after a rape scene or something just as bad. And it was nice to see Tim & Karrie and Lars & Anne and Zack and all the other regulars come out for Music Monday. Made the last one pretty cool.
06.25.07	Seven Blows of the Dragon	Chang Cheh	The fifth film that Harry really wanted to play was his 16mm print of 7 Blows of the Dragon that QT gave him some time after he played it at QT 1 (as the latter part of a double feature with Duel of the Iron Fist). It's notable for the "chk-chk-chaw" sound effect used throughout the film that seemed to catch on with QT intros and whatnot. By this time it was about 3:30am and those that stayed had minute-by-minute increasing fatigue reminding them that they had to work in... 4 hours. Personally, I didn't get much out of this. I never really knew what was going on or who was allied with whom or why someone was being rescued or why some people were mad at others. It's was pretty much a jumble of people running and talking and fighting on the screen for an hour and a half. On one level, it's kind of a fun state of mind to be in, sitting slumped in your chair glassy-eyed watching images flash in front of your face, but on the other it's always better when you can... you know, have an idea of what the movie's about. Eventually it ended and so did the night. We left at around 5AM. I wonder how late people will stay on Wednesday. It's really getting down to the end. Wah.
06.25.07	Impulse	William Grefe	For the fourth (and originally last) movie of the night, Harry relinquished control to the Alamo who used the spot to justify paying the rental fee to show this film again. Personally, I would've paid $25 to see this film alone so it single-handedly made the night a success for me. Lars got up on stage and started talking about "our greatest living actor today": William Shatner. He described this film as incredibly erotic if you're into Shatner. Originally titled "Want a Ride, Little Girl?" the film we're all about to watch is none other than IMPULSE. Although I can't say I've seen all of Shatner's ouvre, I can say that what exploitation stuff I've seen him do is amazing. Kingdom of the Spiders, Big Bad Mama, and his tour de force phenomena in this movie are all great. Besides that, they showed a trailer for White Commanche which looked incredible and Sleazoid Express had nothing but good things to say about him in Roger Corman's The Intruder (AKA I Hate Your Guts) (a film I'm dying to see) so... Shatner's Shatner for a reason. I think my first note when I watched this a while ago gushed enough about this movie. It was an absolute joy to see at the Alamo... It got the best crowd reactions by far and the scene where he runs into the lady with the balloons is just so crazy... love it! although this time the scene that really stood out for me was when he was in his car trying to convince the little girl who'd just seen him kill a man (named Karate Pete) by hanging him and treating him like a punching bag then chasing him through a car wash and running him over two or three times that he deserved to die because he could break her little neck like that if he wanted so she should get in the car because he's really a nice guy. After she says no (can't imagine why!) and tells him that she's not afraid of him anymore, SHanter unleashed a three-act play in like 30 seconds. First it's a fist out the window with anger, then it's a pointed finger in the air with menace, and finally it's a glimpse of frightened little boy as he puts his car in gear and drives off. After that scene I looked over at Micah who was already saying "man, he's SO good."
06.24.07	Topkapi	Jules Dassin	Next Harry introduced this movie and the only reason he gave for programming it was liking fat actors. Personally, a little more set-up could've helped me tremendously with this film. Had I known upfront that it was a Jules Dassin movie for instance, I would've found the interplay between the traditional caper genre with gaudy Italian broad comedy more interesting instead of thinking it was just a weird Greek or Italian knock-off of Rififi. Maybe it's my problem for not knowing Dassin directed? Since the only person to clap when Harry asked who'd seen it was one dude who yelled "Zero Mostel rules!" I kinda think I wasn't alone in needing some more information. (FYI, clapping guy, Zero Mostel is not in this movie. The two fat guys Harry vaguely mentioned as "doing their best work" are Peter Ustinov and Akim Tamiroff). So the crowd was kind of sluggish for this one. The long silent sequences where they pull off the heist made the thumping music from next door all the more evident (I could even hear the lyrics to Magic Carpet Ride). Between the music and the lack of crowd response and Harry's squeeky wheels taking him out of the theater for half hours at a time, the film was pretty tough to stay engaged with. Ultimately I think I liked it though. The main Italian (or whatever nationality) woman was pretty rough and the thought of her being a nymphomaniac was more disturbing than erotic, and I never really got into Tamiroff's schtick, but I loved Ustinov's performance and am a sucker for heist flicks anyway. Again I have to thank Harry for showing this because I'd never track it down on my own but I appreciate having seen it.
06.24.07	Stardust	Matthew Vaughn	Next up was the one new film playing. Matt Vaughn appeared in a video intro with a Transformers poster behind him and no one clapped or did anything until he pointed at it and said "unfortunately, you won't be seeing this movie. You'll be watching Stardust instead" and one dude gasped so loud it was like my favorite memory of the entire night. It was like he just found out it was Christmas Eve and he got to ride along with Santa and keep all the other kids' toys he liked. Meanwhile, I was pretty eh. The trailer did nothing for me and for whatever reason Iwasn't interested. So Again, I have to thank Harry because I wouldn't have been in any hurry to see this movie but it surprised me with some dark humor and wry observations that ended up making me like it (for what it was). I do think it was missing a scene where they go to the boudoir and you see the starlight pulsing with increasing intensity until it peaks and slowly fades, but I guess the MPAA would have a problem with that. Tim also made a hilarious little half-ass mistake by playing the wrong film's trailers in front of it so right before the film started we got to see an 80s Clint Eastwood talking about crack cocaine and how it's not worth the thrill of even trying it. "So take this as a frentid reminder... don't even try it. the thrill can kill." So part of me thought Stardust might be a drug in the movie that makes you feel special... but it's not.
06.24.07	Wonder Bar	Lloyd Bacon	Harry Knowles' last-minute goodbye to the original Alamo in the form of a semi-BNAT. The evening started with Tim saying there would be either four or five films depending on how many people stayed. I'm not gonna talk about Harry's intros, I don't remember all the trailers, the movies proved an interesting mix, but the main joy of the night for me came from hanging out at the theater for one last almost-all-nighter with almost all of the friends I've made by going there. The Alamo poster was gone, the neon signage gone, Mondo Tees gone, dishes were stacked up in the corner; the Alamo was slowly disappearing. Tonight was one last shot to see the place at 4AM and walk out into a completely empty downtown Austin. It's a unique feeling, sitting through more than three movies in a row, and not something I greatly enjoy. The first movie was Wonder Bar, a run-of-the-mill 30s musical starring Jolson as a nightclub owner/performer. There's the usual gang of light comic relief as you sit there and wait for the Busby Berkeley music numbers to start. The first is in the BB DVD pack but strangely enough the second isn't. Although this wasn't a bad movie (I probably would've been a lot more into it had it played earlier in the day like noon or even 4pm rather than 7), the highlight is clearly the last musical number which depicts a kind of "black heaven" with Jolson in black-face meeting St. Peter at the pearly gates and singing songs about how pork chops grow on trees and Uncle Tom's a hero and stuff. It's really amazing in its racism and not in a designed-to-shock way like the 70s race riot films felt but in a 30s-form-of-entertainment way that makes it seem even worse. Funny, I don't know why that wasn't included on the DVD. There's even dancing watermelon slices at one point. So I have to thank Harry for showing this because I know I'm probably never getting a chance to see it in a theater ever again. Unfortunately, his squeeky wheelchair wheels betrayed him whenever he left the theater so I was constantly aware of when he slipped out to the lobby to skip all the slow parts that we were all trudging through.
06.22.07	Black Force	Michael Fink	Clearly an excuse for a bunch of karate guys to beat each other up on film, this movie (if you can call it that) is about a group of badasses that people hire to TCB. And TCB they do by goin' out on the street and asking around, fighting random groups of people on said street, then showing up at the masterind's house to take the loot. Probably the most enjoyable thing about actually watching this movie was the end credits where it points out that like 87% of the people involved with the making of this movie were varying degrees of black belts. Seriously, I think there were 6 people with no belt information attributed to them. The only guy who has lines was probably the guy who put up the money and insisted on getting to play the big bad boss man. It was the greatest finding out that the husky dude who played like a sort of main henchman for a little while had an 8th degree black belt. I didn't know they even went up that high. Mostly it was 5th or 2nd degrees, such as "professor" Malachi Lee and "Obosan" Owen Wat-Son and Warhawk Tanzania. Hilarious. The movie's really bad though. It didn't have any sync-sound so it's all badly-mixed barrages of random lines of dialogue from random people, groovy music, and chop socky sound effects of breaking shins and snapping gi's. And to prove that it's all just an excuse to have fun, the last 4 or 5 minutes of the film is just a recap of all the fight scenes in the previous 70 minutes. Silly, but undeniably fun.
06.22.07	Clockwise	Christopher Morahan	John Cleese is a time-obsessed headmaster late for something when everything goes wrong because he's also kind of an ass. I guess that's the American way of synopsising this. If I was British it would take 95 minutes and be much more clever. Not that I didn't like it though. I really enjoyed how uch miscommunication they could squeeze out of every line. It's great when you have three characters in a scene each talking about something completely different and yet still talking to each other such that it makes different sense to each one. I particularly liked the teacher caught smoking at the beginning. I don't think he says one complete sentence the entire movie. Really great writing. Lastly, my damn Jamaa Fanaka Goodbar is still on my desk and it's a constant temptation to eat even though it's now a priceless autographed memento. I should really hide it in a drawer or something somewhere out of sight. Damn my sweet tooth!
06.20.07	Snakes	Arthur A. Names	Holy Wednesday! Well you know what? I know it's not Tuesday... and I know it ain't thursday... if Snakey Bender's in town that means it must be Wednesday! And if you know what's good for ya, you best not mess with Snakey's Wednesdays. The Alamo could close tomorrow morning and I'd feel complete. I'm all for seeing Night Warning again and having Susan Tyrrell be wholly inappropriate next week but to my mind the original alamo experience ended tonight. Watching Snakes with a jam-packed house (who knows how many they had to turn away but at one point Karen had to insist than anyone without a chair could not be accomodated and made them leave), surrounded by friends all having a blast... sitting and watching as a 20-piece brass ensemble got out of their seats and got set-up to start in with the series of John Philip Sousa march cues each time Snakey takes a trip to that cliff... well it just doesn't get any better than that. David yelling out he brought his trouser snake with him and marching up and down the aisle as the band played a prelude to the film, seeing trailers for Slither, Poor Pretty Eddie, and Q: Winged Serpent (this might be the first time I've seen all the movies they play trailers before a Weird Wednesday)... everything about the whole night seemed exceedingly perfect. Afterward everyone applauded Lars to high heaven and just before he was forced to say something sappy, the band started up with some more marches and the night ended with some rousing live music as the crowd filtered out of the theater. Standing around talking with everyone late into the night... it's these memories that will live longest in my mind. This is really why I moved here and couldn't ask for more right now. I remember reading about the awesome events going on 10 years ago and thinking how far away I was from anything like that and now I'm here in the Alamo's warm embrace, feeling like it's where I belong. I know the Ritz will be nice and fun and all, but it will never be the same. In a way it's good that this place is going away though... it makes for a very clear moment in time. Pretty soon the first ten years will be over and it'll be the brand new Alamo and I'll be one of those guys talking about the good ol' days back in the original location, growing each dusty brick and lopsided seat into legend. I still feel like I've missed a lot but I don't think I got here too late. I've had more than my fair share of mind-bending taste-altering events here and feel like I left tonight with one more. I'm convinced that the next three or four times I make it down there will be like the last week of school. I'm excited to see the films of course but it'll be a different vibe. Tonight was it.
06.20.07	While the City Sleeps	Fritz Lang	I started this last night but couldn't stay awake to finish it properly. It was a noir that had stuck with me from the time when I first jumped in the genre several years ago. I remember it being a cool angle, to focus on the men and women working the news trade rather than the cops or criminals, and remembered that Dana Andrews was pretty good in it. What I didn't remember was that Vincent Price plays the son of a newly-dead media magnate and George Sanders plays the guy in charge of the wire service who's up against Thomas Mitchell (the editor of the paper) for a big promotion. I remembered the murder angle and how Andrews uses his woman as bait but had completely forgotten the whole side of the picture about in-fighting and how Vincent Price's character was being cuckolded by his young wife and Ida Lupino's power-player columnist. It's a pretty great noir filled with good actors and well-written characters. Good stuff.
06.19.07	Planet of the Vampires	Mario Bava	Bava's sci-fi about a planet filled with souls looking for bodies to survive. I rented this when it came out on DVD (because I'd heard QT played it at one of his festivals) and thought it had some really great sci-fi technobabble and costumes and the lighting and set design (which I'd read were very limited and all basically the sae 4 or 5 structures re-arranged and re-lit to look different) but got pretty slow through most of it and wasn't the legendary film AICN had made it out to be. Well, seeing it with a crowd helps a lot. My personal favorite memory of this experience however doesn't belong to the film at all. It was standing in the lobby before-hand and seeing Kier-La come out dressed as one of the astronauts which, if you've seen the film, should immediately bring a smile to your face. Man! how awesome is it that she has a Planet of the Vampires uniform, anyway!? I was rendered speachless and had to scurry into the theater so I didn't look like I was staring too hard and my jaw wasn't too slack. Good movie as well. fun.
06.18.07	It's All Gone Pete Tong	Michael Dowse	Story of a big time club DJ who goes deaf but doesn't let that stop him from rocking a party. It includes documentary-esque interviews interspersed throughout the film and claims to be based on a true story at the beginning but... well whatever. I guess whether or not it is actually true affects peoples' feelings about the movie... I wonder if people like Fargo less when they find out that's completely made up. Not that this is a Fargo-quality movie, but I didn't think it was too bad either. A little padded out in the downward spiral portion of the movie but I liked how it resolved, it's shot very beautifully and they actually went over to Ibiza which is nice, and the deaf girl who teaches him how to read lips is pretty hot. Actually all the women in here are hot, and they're also on topless beaches... yet another great reason to shoot in Ibiza. Kind of like Eddie and the Cruisers except with a techno DJ.
06.18.07	Here We Come	nico raschick	A fun doc about b-boys behind the iron curtain, this follows up on a bunch of guys who saw Beat Street in the early 80s and were completely taken with breakdancing. The story unfolds into this huge cultural phenomenon throughout the 80s in East Germany that actually went on longer than everywhere else. It's funny (seeing white boy German kids trying to emulate NYC street culture... badly) and interesting (how the government reacted to this trend). In many ways these kids were crazier because they couldn't go out and buy Kangol and Puma gear so they had to make their own(!), trying very very hard to identify with this style they were so smitten with. The doc mixes various forms of vintage footage with now-they're-older modern day interview footage and it's all put together with this East German oldschool hip hop that they also had to invent in order to dance to. You get some guys with awesome names like Beatschmidt naming crews like The Stretch Breakers not knowing what it means (they meant scratch but didn't know how to spell it, not that that makes any more sense). It's all this very bizarre alternative world to 80s oldschool hip hop strained through limited resources and cultural differences on display. I actually enjoyed the stuff were they talk about making the music as much as all the dancing parts. Although a lot of it was clearly taken from American songs, they still had these heavy German chords weighing them down with that oppressive German vibe. really interesting stuff. And they also talked about the wall coming down and how that basically ended the whole scene because everyone wanted to get a job so they could buy a car and stuff like that. Good doc. Those crazy germans!
06.17.07	Moog	Hans Fjellestad	doc on synthesizer inventor and pioneer Bob Moog. Not especially great but certainly not bad either, especially if you're into that sort of thing.
06.16.07	Star 80	Bob Fosse	Thanks to Jarrette for letting me know this movie existed. It's Bob Fosse's last movie and it's about Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratten's life and death. Eric Roberts stars and actually acts and pulls it off pretty well (granted he's playing a psychotic pimp). Cliff Robertson is also good as Hugh Hefner. I liked this more than the average biopic, probably because Fosse's so loose with his timeline, constantly cutting back and forth between the main story, interviews after Stratten's death, and the crazed-out moments in the apartment as its happening. Seen this way, even though I know where it's heading, I'm never quite sure what I'll see next. I also like it just because the story's so tragic and borders Hollywood.
06.16.07	Mom and Dad	William Beaudine	Man so much is going on this month it's crazy. i really feel like, as a movie watcher, i'm on overdrive in a sprint to the end of the month. Eventually I'll have to return to the real world but i'm trying my best to stay in the reel one for another 10 days or so. Anyway, tonight the Alamo played host to Joe Bob Briggs. I must confess to not being too familiar with him but I know he's a big spokesperson for B- and drive-in movies and a lot of texans really love him so I figured if there was any time to become more familiar with what he's all about, it'd be tonight. Before Mom and Dad (the main reason I went), he and Texas historian (and apparently highly entertaining UT professor) Don Graham gave a presentation on the history of Texas movies from the earliest days when San Antonio was a film center before everyone moved on to Hollywood all the way up to Bottle Rocket, a film made by texans starring texans taking place in texas but really not being firmly identifiable as such at all. The presentation consisted of a bunch of slides which Graham spoke about and Briggs chimed in once in a while, followed by a series of memorable clips (ending with Pee Wee's Big Adventure) and a few Q&As. It was very different than whatever I expected but largely entertaining and pretty interesting as well. Again a completely different crowd here - mostly old people drinking wine - which made me feel like i'd snuck into a jazz lecture or something. Really cool different vibe from what I'm used to at the Alamo. I'm really glad they do things like this and kinda wish they would do more of them (assuming they're just as good as this was). And then most of the old people left and an intimate group of us sat down to watch Mom and Dad. Mom and Dad was like the king of sex hygeine movies made infamous by an aggresive old-school roadshow marketting campaign and presentation platform. It was really part circus, part, freak show, part sex show, and part morality play all mixed together with vaudeville and burlesque stylings and packaged under educational pretext. Apparently it made upwards of a hundred million dollars from the 40s when it was made right up to the late 70s. The book I'm reading right now (Sleazoid Express) mentions this movie practically every other page and opportunities to see it are far and few between nowadays, so a big thanks to Joe Bob Briggs for bringing it down to show (even though it looked like a DVD of a VHS of an old 16mm print with a little sprocket damage here and there). Briggs spent some time describing the circumstance and context in which the film used to be shown, talking about Kroger Babb's meticulous plans to create as much furor as possible in each town and milk as much money as possible from each viewer before moving on to the next small town. He'd even stop the show after about an hour and introduce Dr. Elliot Forbes (leading sex hygeine expert) who would talk for like twenty minutes about the dangers of unwanted pregnancy and social disease then sell pamphlets for a buck a piece before starting the film up again so the audience could see "the good stuff" in the form of educational films-within-the-film with names like "Facts of life" (with the live birth footage, "Modern American Surgery" (with detailed caesarian footage that still grossed my whole row out), and "Seeing is Believing" (with lots of photos displaying the ravaging effects of syphilis and ghonnorhea). Up until this point, the film plays very similar to (I'm guessing) every other sex ed film ever made. I know I was heavily reminded of Reefer Madness in the way that the film sets up an ultra-idealistic utopia world squeeky cleaner than the most tame Ozzy & Harriet or Donna Reed show then portrays the negative effects of teen lust and giving in to temptation as literally the end of the world. Briggs talked some about the different similarities this genre shared - how all bad things happen at the road house or supper club and how most carriers of VD were lower class and often minority - and that Mom and Dad certainly wasn't the first sex ed film and probably wasn't even the best one (not sure how different the best one would be), but that Babb was pretty genius in giving it such an innocent name, playing each city either into or away from the controversy that might erupt around it, and carrying on with such clever tricks to make each city a moneymaker for him. As a film it's nothing too legendary or special, but the story of the film is exceptionally interesting to me. Aside from being a forefather of exploitation cinema, it's also an interesting picture of how novel films were back then before our moving-image-saturated world of today. Very interesting night!
06.15.07	My Voyage to Italy	Martin Scorsese	Kind of an Italian corrolary to his earlier Personal Journy through American Cinema doc, this 4-hour movie explores Scorsese's favorites of Italian cinema. A sliver of my brain hoped this would somehow include a little bit of 70s stuff like I'm watching nowadays but that's pretty unrealistic. He does mention Mario Bava once, saying he went on to become a very good horror director, but that's about as close to that stuff as he got. Instead, he focuses heavily on the neorealists and ends in the id-60s. Not that I have anything against those guys... I guess my spur-of-the-moment reaction to hearing that this doc existed sparked a glimmer of what it would be like to hear Scorsese talk about people like Fulci and Deodato and Lenzi... I bet he'd still be interesting and find value in their work. well... some of their work. But instead it's all about Rossellini, De Sica, Visconti, Fellini, and Antonioni. Because he has less ground to cover than his American foray, Scorsese spends a lot more time with individual films here. like A LOT more time, often showing extended scenes and spending 10-15 minutes on each film. For the movies that I like or am interested in this is great. For the ones that don't hold me at all this is bad. The Visconti section for instance... torture. I mean, it's interesting to hear him discuss and show what he finds so interesting in his work and I'm glad I have an exterior understanding of his importance now but nothing I saw gripped me at all. Ugh. I will say I have a renewed interest in seeing L'Eclisse though. After L'Avventura I pretty much forgot about any other Antonioni but seeing the striking images of the final few minutes of Eclipse has really piqued my interest in that film. Same goes for Fellini's I, Vitelloni which I haven't seen but it looks like I would like it. One of my favorite Fellini films that I have seen is Amarcord and that's largely because it seems so authentic in its anecdotes of childhood. I bet Vitelloni is very similar but for a somewhat different age. And I would say I want to see Umberto D now but the scenes he showed in this doc almost made me cry to I bet seeing the whole movie would be way too depressing. An interesting doc. Nowhere near as rewatchable for me, but a great discourse on these handful of Italian directors for anyone interested in their work.
06.15.07	Murder by Death	Robert Moore	Now this one I liked quite a bit. Truman Capote gathers the world's leading criminologists to challenge them to see who's the cleverest of them all in a dinner party murder mystery. The guests include Peter Sellers playing Charlie Chan (he's actually named Wang but we all know), David Niven and Maggie Smith as the Thin Man couple, James Coco as Hercule Poirot, Elsa Lanchester as Agatha Christie's non-Poirot heroine whom I don't know her name, and Peter Falk as Sam Spade. Not only that but there are also very notable performances by Alec Guiness as the blind butler, Eileen Brennan as Falk's smitten secretary/mistress, and James Cromwell as Coco's chauffer (with a hilarious French accent). With so many great actors together all playing strong personalities, it's easy to imagine this film being a good time. I liked a lot of this movie. It reminded me of another favorite very similar to this: Clue. I still prefer Clue because I grew up with it but if I was older and the tables were turned I could see myself favoring this one. Falk is great with his un-PC habits and Maggie Smith is really hot in that British way. Like I said, Cromwell is surprisingly funny here... although I guess that's not too surprising. It's all just very fun to watch. Lastly, it's cool that the drawing of the main characters featured in the beginning and end credits was done by Charles Addams. Checking the wiki page, I just learned that there was a deleted scene involving Sherlock Holmes and Watson. Bet that was funny.
06.15.07	The Cheap Detective	Robert Moore	I don't really like how the Paramount insists on changing the play order for double features on the second night even when they're clear sequels. Who wants to watch After the Thin Man right before The Thin Man? But in this case, I actually didn't mind because this movie was clearly not as good as Murder by Death so it was nice to watch this knowing I was saving the best for last. It's a comedy with Peter Falk playing the Sam Spade/Philip Marlowe archetype and schticking through send-ups of Casablanca, Big Sleep, Maltese Falcon, and all those other Bogart and private eye noirs. While it was funny seeing Dom DeLuise play Peter Lorre and John Houseman play Sydney Greenstreet and James Coco play Claude Rains, the premise isn't quite enough to stay interesting the whole way through for me, and much of the humor comes from gaggy one-liners and just-plain-dumb Airplane-esque puns. Probably my favorite part was seeing Madeline Khan trying to pretend like she doesn't know Falk's character every time she sees him. I didn't really go for her changing name gag but her looks as she's trying to feign not knowing him made me chuckle.
06.14.07	The Stepfather	Joseph Ruben	Terry O'Quinn's a psychotic dude who kills his family then moves on to the next. Lots of people here for this one, probably because it's a recognizable title even for kids born in the 80s. Loud crowd too but oh well. Let's see. I really liked the vengeful brother-in-law. He seemed in a hurry to get pretty much everywhere, culminating in his frenzied entrance to the local library to look for a specific travel magazine. I love how he alost knocks over the Science Fiction rack in his quest to get to periodicals. And it's almost like a Stephen King novel in that as soon as he gets to where he's going and in a position to possibly become a useful part of the story, he's killed. I also like how the psycho stepfather is actually psycho. He's not completely normal for his whole life until the last act when the twist is that it's him. Sure it's not a mystery story or anything like that, but I still appreciate when a movie takes the time to show that even though he's pretty decent at hiding his psychosis, it still seeps out every once in a while. And lastly, it's cool that Donald E. Westlake wrote it.
06.14.07	Uncle's Paradise	Shinji Imaoka	Another night of Fantastic Fest screeners at Tim's house. While I enjoy the rare occasion to meet with friends outside of the Alamo (even if it is to watch movies in Tim's attic instead), the charm of watching these screeners is quickly wearing thin for me. I suppose it's good because I'll have already seen the movies that we watch that eventually make it to the festival, but it means having to sit through a lot of the rejects as well. Uncle's Paradise is a Japanese pink film where this dude gets hard-ons and constantly falls asleep so he has problems with masturbation and has to seduce lots of women to keep from... I don't know. It seemed to me like 60% of this movie was sex scenes involving one actress and three maybe four different guys. One sex scene would end and another would start. Then there were pockets of crazy story that I guess made the movie memorable enough to program. There's one funny scene where a guy dies from a huge spider on his back, and another where (spoiler!) the uncle dies after shooting his load on a snake and having it bite him (i guess the snake isn't a fan of bukkake). Then the nephew or whatever goes to hell to rescue him but gets caught in an eternal blowjob by bloody bitches in heat and the slut girl who's fucking everyone has to win at rock paper sissors to get them back. Somehow giant squid is randomly involved and after they rescue him Uncle writes "thanks for getting me out of hell" on a random bottle that makes for a pretty funny lost-in-subtitles joke. Let's see, Uncle also had this awesome habit of writing his name on the women he screwed, which made their boyfriends or fathers mad when they saw it. But like I said, I think there's maybe 45 minutes of softcore sex scenes here in this 65 minute film. Yet it was the best movie we (tried to) watch. We gave the following about a half hour each: -Death Note, about a guy who has a book (conveniently titled "Death Note" on the cover) where all he has to do is write your name down and you die. So he watches the news and "hacks into secret police files" to see who's escaped justice and writes their names down... This was the funniest movie of the night but since we were laughing at pretty much everything about it, we turned it off. -Small Town Folk: Um... I think maybe people are lost and ask directions and Warick Davis gets on somebody's back and tells them to keep going down the road. To be honest I've succeeded in erasing most of this from my mind already and had a hard time even remembering that we saw part of this so I'm not sure we ever got to a point where we knew what was going on with the movie because every frame was so achingly bad. -Babysitter Wanted? Something about a babysitter. At first it seemed very Christian-funded since it was about a Catholic going off to college and her roomate is a pot-smoking pierced and tattoo'd slut type with a Deathcab for Cutie poster on her wall. But then she takes a job babysitting and she's maybe being stalked. That's pretty much all that happened in the first half hour or so. we were very bored. we skipped ahead to find out the (gasp!) twist then turned it off. -The Last Gateway: This dude has a gateway to hell in his belly. Notable for being an English-language film made by Argentinians. Some humorously bad dubbing for the actors with too strong accents but the story was all over the place with flashbacks and I never really cared enough about anything to wonder why some people wanted gateway-belly and what the person who was helping him wanted to do with his belly. they might've kept watching but it was time to leave for Terror Thursday so we bailed out.
06.13.07	The Frightened Woman	Piero Schivazappa	OK, let me tell you how much I liked this movie. I got home at like 3:30 dead tired from a long day doing physically exerting things, toot tired to even write these notes, but before collapsing into bed I had to look to see if a copy of this was available because I couldn't imagine never being able to see this movie again. (side note: not only did I find a very decent widescreen copy of the movie but I also found the excellent soundtrack which I'm listening to now! yay for me) So... where do I start. This is the kind of movie that overloads you with amazingly bizarre moments to the point where a guy can walk into a warehouse with a gigantic sculpture of the bottom half of a woman laying on her back with legs spread, walk into its vulvic doorway, have that doorway close with teeth-like sliding doors, and come out a skeleton and YOU DON'T THINK THAT'S ODD. The feverishly fantasy-minded sets and tone of the movie builds with such consistent intensity that you are overcome, overtaken, and overloaded with imagery. A man lectures his secretary on the dangers of sterilisation, saying "it is essential that the fertility of the man should reain absolutely intact." This man has a series of paintings of blown up slides of "various types of bacteria and protazoa" hanging as art in his euro-cool living room. "Bubolic plage, leprosy, typhus, cholera, carbuncles, tetanus, diptheria, rabies." He drugs his secretary's J&B and installs her into his S&M playground and subjects her to a good 45 minutes of B&D fantasy fulfillment complete with outfits, harnesses, weird-ass rubber doll versions of himself, and empty pools for him to hose her off in only broken by one hypnotically tantalising scene of her dancing to the awesome euro-pop soundtrack while wearing an outfit made of gauze. When she attempts suicide by pills, the tables turn and he confesses his non-murderous nature. The last half hour or so is spent watching him run around with her like a puppy dog until she makes him confront his vaguely-motivated hatred of women (something about seeing scorpions get it on. after the female scorpion devoured her mate, he picked up a rock and "pounded that treacherous female to a pulp," convinced that was how all women made love) by offering herself to him in a (filled up) pool, where he faces off with her in grand Speghetti Western fashion and has a heart attack or something and dies, thus becoming the latest in her faux-suicidal rampage to strike back at misogynists everywhere. It all doesn't make a whole lot of sense, especially when you actually try to think about it, but my is it a bizarre cinematic journey to watch. This guy has soooo many things that I want. The block of stone with attached headcuff, the boatcar that takes him to the ancient dwarf-infested castle slash cafe restaraunt with suit-of-armor doormen, the ridiculously large piece of bread slathered with butter and marmalade, the twin showers and stand-up air-dryers in his bathroom... hell, his whole house. I just want it. I want it ore than the balloon room from Girl From Starship Venus. I want it more than the hidden torture chamber from Marta. I daresay I even want it more than the rotating corkscrew bed with entertainment center tower in the middle from Diabolik. Well, ok, I think I still want that bed more (especially if Eva's in it), but it's definitely close. The fetishistic lengths that the various sexual domination scenes play would probably be borderline tedious were it not for the creativity of each scenario and the ludricrous babble that the man sputters while exploring his kink. I LOVED his speech about sperm collecting and how rabbits have already learned to reproduce without males and how pretty soon women will be able to pick their sperm out, have it cultivated in some exterior machine, and pick it up when it's ripe. I really wanted to hear more of the Sexual Aberrations and the Stars tape that he leaves playing and see what it has to say about Leos. His scientific description of the physiological effects of fear really creeps me out. This movie is just unbelievable. Crazy, kinky, strange and erotic. A Weird Wednesday highlight that leaves me saying to myself "I must have faith in my virility."
06.13.07	Sicko	Michael Moore	Michael Moore... I have somewhat complicated feelings toward his movies. I think they're very well done and express his conviction well and he shouldn't be faulted for making movies about his opinion, but I do think the tendancy of the audience toward believing his movies to be fair and balanced truth is disconcerting and as a documentarian he fills a lot of the spotlight (no pun intended) leaving a group of equally talented filmmakers whose work is just as evocative and also closer to "pure" documentary but suffers from being less controversial. I think a lot of people equate documentaries with Michael Moore films when in a lot of senses of the word they're really not. They are however pretty popular and his films do stir conversation (although I'm not sure how much the gun laws have changed in this country since Bowling for Columbine and I bet kerry wishes Fahrenheit 9/11 did a little more with the people of America) and if you happen to agree with what he's saying then it feels exciting for someone to put up with the death threats and hate mail to stand up and say these things. So for the record I enjoyed Bowling for Columbine s a movie, can't remember if I've seen any of his stuff prior to that, and Fahrenheitt 9/11 was, although I agreed with most of what he was saying, a rushed and hurried film that showed its agenda on its sleeve and wasn't above taking cheap shots which made it easier for its detractors to dismiss it. I didn't think it was that good a movie. So now he's taking on the health industry, which is maybe an even easier get than guns. Gee, I hate paying for insurance that will try to get out of taking care of me too! This guy is on to something! Somehow I don't think I'll see too many "average citizens" protesting this film. I have no problem believing a gaggle of politicians (especially those specifically pointed out as taking money to go ahead with bills that somehow help the insurance and pharmaceutical industries) getting outraged over it, and really have no problem seeing that either. Stupid politicians. As Usual, Moore's great at manipulating very strong reactions from people. All the stuff with the random people with health problems is heart-breaking then he intercuts that with his wacky adventures abroad discovering free health care pretty much everywhere else on earth. you know he knows the answers to the questions he's asking but it's no less amusing to see his gob all flabbergasted when people keep telling him it's free. But after the specific cases, he gets several people trying to explain why socialized health care works and it comes off as it works in other countries because their people care about each other so therefore it wouldn't work in America because we are all selfish prick bastards. Pretty much the whole movie is designed to make you hate America. But like I said, that's Moores point and he conveys it very very well. The group I watched it with all wanted to marry Canadians after it was over, yet strangely none of us thought this movie would bring about any change (myself included). It's weird how you can agree so much that something is so wrong yet readily accept that there's no way to change it. I think we're living in a very pessimistic time when it comes to government. I see a very very thin similarity to the current state of movies. Now that everyone knows that movies (and politicans) are test-marketted and written by committee with explicit capital-raising motivation and less care about actually doing a good job, a lot of apathy and despair comes from that. I think everybody fantasizes about how great it would be if a real true-blue leader (or studio head) came around like Teddy Roosevelt or Darryl Zanuck and exacted some real change but at the same time we know those guys'd never make it to the top for whatever reason. It's frustrating, especially when you see hippie college chicks crying for impeachment on a street corner and can't help but dismiss them as naive children. Is it the media's fault? The politicians? the process itself or its flagrant corruption? Those are probably all factors but - just like why they keep making terrible sequels and remakes - ultimately the people are responsible. If everyone refuses to see Fantastic Four 2, they won't make a Fantastic Four 3.
06.11.07	Ratatouille	Brad Bird	Sneak with Patton Oswalt and Janeane Garofalo (skinnier, tinier, tattoo'dier, and hotter than I thought she'd be) there to do a Q&A afterward. I'll say right now that I didn't follow Patton to South Lamar where he screened The Foot Fist Way. Not because I didn't want to see it but because I wanted to see Kier-La's compilation of Harry Nilsson stuff more. But anyway, Patton and Janeane were very funny in the Q&A and told stories about how cool the Pixar compound is, Brian Dennehy, the Sopranos finale, and whatever the kids in the front row were talking about. It was good times. So with all that extra stuff out of the way, let's talk about the movie. When I saw that first teaser way back when I was severely unimpressed. I really liked The Incredibles because it finally grew beyond talking animals in funny miniaturized versions of human cities. While it was certainly still "cartoony," it was also about people and not squirrels. So when I saw the talking rats I was pretty harumphed. Plus Cars didn't quite wow me like I wanted it to. All that said, this movie is great. Pixar magic in top form. Great great great. Wonderfully entertaining. blah blah blah positivity. A big thing that I loved about it was how visual a lot of the movie was. At one point I found myself thinking that for having the lead role Patton sure didn't talk much, huge lengthy sequeneces played out where his character's only form of comunication was with his body. But it wasn't just because the rat couldn't talk to the humans. Plenty of scenes played completely silent between human characters as well. It really reminded me of the best parts of the classic cartoons I saw as a kid where the music and the animation told the whole story. A huge kudos to the animators on this project but also the story people for refining the beats down to quick looks and funny movements rather than clutter it with needless dialogue. Not that the voices sucked or anything. Everyone did a good job as usual. There was also no singing which was awesome. I dunno. I feel like I shouldn't go on because I don't want to spoil anything and going on with the praises seems boring. I really liked it though. Loved all the characters and the story and the ending and everything. It's up there with the best Pixar's done and that's saying a lot.
06.11.07	Lord Love A Duck	George Axelrod	I'm afraid this one suffered from viewing interruptions. I saw the first half over at Jarrette's house but then the power went out and I didn't end up seeing the second half until a week later and even then the phone kept ringing while I was trying to watch so... I was pretty distracted which is a shame because the whole reason why I brought it over to Jarrette's house to begin with is I could tell this movie needed my undivided attention. Oh well. I liked parts of it but other parts were pretty slow and other parts were too 60s-ish "offensive." I wonder how many kids back then loved this movie just because their parents hated it. It has a semi Terry Southern feel but it's nowhere near as crazy, just kind of crazy with dollops of beach movie, draa, and romantic comedy strewn about. Tuesday Weld sure is hot though.
06.10.07	Election	Alexander Payne	It was on and it's been a while since I've seen it. Good movie. great use of voice-over.
06.10.07	A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American ovies	Martin Scorsese, Michael Henry Wilson	A nearly 4 hour doc where Scorsese talks about the history of American cinema through his eyes. I watched this back when the AFI first started its Top 100 series and a glut of movie docs appeared to commemorate the centennial of the medium. This is one of them have stuck with me over the years (along with Visions of Light (an amazing doc about cinematography)) so it was interesting to re-watch with 10 or so years of serious movie-watching under my belt. I like this one particularly because he focuses on some films that the typical docs ignore, particularly the noir stuff where he points out several of my faves of the genre like Pickup on South Street and Crime Wave. I remember seeing The Bad and the Beautiful based on this doc which led me to Val Lewton's pictures and Jacques Tourneur's stuff and Robert Wise's stuff (both of which also led back to noir favorites Out of the Past and Odds Against Tomorrow), so I guess I have a lot to thank this doc for in terms of my movie-watching habits in college which have become a foundation for the stuff I'm exploring now. Beside all that, it's a good doc that doesn't feel anywhere near its running time. Kinda like crack for movie geeks.
06.08.07	Ocean's Thirteen	Steven Soderbergh	So... I may be in the minority on several levels here, but I like Soderbergh's mainstream movies much more than his artsy indie stuff and I really like this series (yes, even the second one). Still, I think they work better in vegas over Europe and they're really guy movies so the women in them often feel like they drag down the movies. So in this installment they're back in Vegas and both Zeta-Jones and Roberts are absent! I really liked this one. it's fun and moves fast and the plot rides that line where you have to keep up with it but you can still follow it on the first watch but I'm sure there are plenty of small hints and touches layered throughout that will make repeat viewings a little richer each time through. And you have all the guys back and doing their thing and it's just a good time. The movie also has a real old-school vibe. It feels like a rat pack movie right down to establishing shots of airports purposely made to look like stock and technical inaccuracies so blatant that they must've been done on purpse and even the end credit fonts... it all speaks to those kinds of films that were made strictly just to have fun with. For such a huge cast everyone gets their moments and Pacino and Ellen Barkin are both great and i dunno... it just works. And unlike normal trilogies or part threes, there's no sense of epic-ness or having to outdo or even call back to the previous films. No huge CGI monsters or end-of-world scenarios or whatever... I can see this series going on for a while without the weight of its predecessors. Which is good because I hated all of that crap in Spider-Man and Pirates parts 3. Really fun movie, I'd say just shy of the first one in terms of fun. We'll see how the replayability comes in but I'd say it's a definite step up from the second one (which I still like by the way) and pretty damn close to the first. The only thing the third has against it is we don't get all the fun stuff of getting the band back together and rounding everyone up.. and there's a pretty heavy couple of scenes loaded with exposition to get us up to speed. That's to be expected but the job in this one is so complex that it needs to cover like twice what the first one did. Not a huge problem though... as soon as everything's set up it jumps directly into the fun stuff. Yep, I really liked it.
06.07.07	The Hidden	Jack Sholder	The Hidden! I remember seeing this on cable as a kid and thinking it was great, then thinking that Denzel Wasthington movie Fallen was basically a Hidden rip-off, then kind of forgetting about it. Until now! To be honest, it got a little slow in parts that I didn't remember, but there's still enough awesoe stuff going on that I liked it a lot. One of the big things I liked about it was all the 80s character actor types that were in it. You had a pre-fat Ed O'Ross (watch the first season of Six Feet Under where he plays the russian flower guy and it's just crazy!), you had the cop guy who looked a little like a meld between Chris Sarandon and Steven Bauer and you had the police lieutenat that was also the white cop in Ruthless People that has that really weird line reading of "identify the body." Even that first guy was Hank Jennings on Twin Peaks. I guess they're all still working on TV or whatever but to me each one of those guys were really quintessential late 80s/early 90s cop types. So it's all the cooler to see them up against some monster alien type who cares about as much for human life as Commando-era Schwarzaneggar. Except for the slow parts, it's a pretty steady stream of car chases, explosions, and random acts of violence against innocent bystanders. Good times.
06.06.07	Penitentiary	Jamaa Fanaka	Since we were still running so late, the Q&A was held back until after the second show and everyone shuffled in pretty quickly to get the movie started. Fanaka introduced Penitentiary as being his third film that he made at UCLA that got picked up for distribution (at the time he was the only one to have that happen, maybe he still is). He said Ellie May was his thesis film but after they they wanted him to graduate! He knew he wouldn't get anywhere in the traditional Hollywood structure so he insisted on staying and using their resources, along with a series of educational grants, to make this film. He also said that by the end of shooting he had absolutely no money but all of the cast and crew were so invested with finishing the film that they passed a hat around and actually finished the film on food stamps, that people had given up their subsistence to help him finish the movie. Penitentiary went on to be the most successfull independent film of 1980 and since he raised the money himself he owned the negative so he ended up seeing a great deal of money from it. He said aside from Penitentiary 3, his family owns the negative to all the films (which is great and really rare). More than once he mentioned that Pielberg doesn't own E.T. but he owns his movie, obviously a point of pride for him (as it should be). He also shared an anecdote about shooting and how they didn't have money for trailers or anything so they put up sheets in some of the prison cells to act like dressing rooms and "the smell of sweet pussy was in the air like ambrosia." As it turns out, this was just a taste of what was to come later on during the Q&A, but for now the lights went down and we watched the movie. I remember seeing this last February as part of the Alamo's black history month programming (along with Richard Pryor: Live in Concert, Tick...Tick...Tick, The Spook Who Sat by the Door, Abby, and Dr. Black and Mr. Hyde) and remember thinking it was a pretty solid prison movie with some memorable fights. Watching it again, I liked it a lot more. Afterwards I went out and put down another 20 bucks for Penitentiary 1 and 2 DVDs (and he was kind enough to sign my Mr. Goodbar). Penitentiary is about Too Sweet, a drifter caught in the wrong place at the wrong time and sent to federal pound-you-in-the-ass prison. Once inside, his roomate, a crazy man missing teeth by the name of Half Dead, tries to bust him out (and by that I don't mean escape). A sweaty oily face-mashing endurance-fest of a fight scene ensues. Having successfully defended his cherry for one night, he doesn't make any new friends when he tells a punk to stand up for himself; that he can make a fist too. The warden, a business-minded fellow with a brother-in-law in the boxing game, all but forced Sweet to participate in the prison tournament and rooms him with elder boxing trainer Seldom Seen. Seldom's an institutionalized old fart filled with useful life lessons and dramatic monologues. After some training, the fighting starts and tensions between Sweet and his enemies grow until the ex-punk with his pees-standing-up newfound manhood steps up and blocks a shiv meant for Sweet. In righteous rage, Sweet beats the holy hell out of his adversary and earns early parole in order to box on the circuit. The movie ends with him drifting off down the road. Yeah there's colorful characters and great dialogue on display, but what I think I neglected to notice last time around was the abundance of heart and reluctance to drop into any sort of stereotypicality. Sure it's a prison movie and there are guys you root for and guys you root against, but they're all also people. And it's funny. and it's genuinely sad at the end. and although the rapists in the beginning of the film were white devils, the honkey warden who could've easily been a malevolent force in the movie was actually a pretty nice guy. It's not really the people that beat these guys down but the system itself. That this movie has any statement at all is a refreshing surprise, but that it managed to communicate that in the midst of an entertaining story is even better. (although I bet if Too Sweet had Brother Charles for a lawyer, none of this would've happened). Both of these movies are really excellent and the work of not some hack out to feed his habit or use the casting couch but of a real artist doing what's important to him regardless of money. It's a shame that his work doesn't have the polish to become more of a mainstream subject because I think the quality's there. I'm really excited to watch the two DVDs I haven't seen and track down his two other films I don't own. I'm also incredibly happy and grateful that the Alamo could put something like this together and expose me to this guy's work. I'm not sure how many other theaters would take a chance like this. I'm just glad they do and I'm here to see it. So the Q&A! It was hilarous. Three people in a row asked questions about the prosthetic dong from Brother Charles, which got Fanaka on a big tangent about the origins of the whole penis size stereotype and the reasonings behind it and the eventual effect and ultimate unimportance of it all. My personal favorite moments were when he mentioned being at a party where two lesbians retired to the bedroom and he heard the sweetest most beautiful sounds in his life and he knew there wasn't one dick in that room so what's the big deal. "Besides," he said, "sometimes you can do a lot more with your tongue than your dick anyway." Here here! This cracked the crowd up. Not that he only talked about sex though. He talked a lot about the school he's trying to start where he lives, giving kids an alternative to gang life by working on movies and making videos like he did. He also talked more about his history and that he's writing Penitentiary 4 right now and thinks that Tarantino, a fan of his, would be great to direct it (if not himself). I think he talked about other stuff too but it was really late by the time it all let out so I'm sure I'm forgetting plenty. All in all it was a great double feature. Shame about the first movie of the night but oh well. This was an event which clearly did not appeal to everyone (although Weird Wednesday filled up) but I think for those that were there it was pretty special and that's what it's all about. It's like Eddie Muller earlier in the week. For me and a handful of others it made our month. I realize that doesn't make the theater rich, but I also hope they realize how taking a chance sometimes pays off in ways not immediately evident. Great times!
06.06.07	Welcome Home, Brother Charles	Jamaa Fanaka	Alright. Now this is something worth talking about. Tonight the Alamo played host to writer/director/producer/sometime editor/composer Jamaa Fanaka. Truth be told the only film of his I'd seen before was Penitentiary but I'd heard many many good and crazy things about this film (AKA Soul Vengeance). In fact, I found a copy of it online but have held off on watching it just so I can have my first viewing experience be here at the Alamo, who've played their trailer of it to much laughter and cheering. The trailer has this great narration of the title over and over. It's got a really odd tone but it's clearly angry and "social" and doesn't really look like anything too sensational or shocking until someone like Wiley tells you about how that one guy actually gets choked. So the first show ran way late, but right at the end the director mentioned how Fanaka had given him his first working job on a movie (electric on Penitentiary 2) and said he was a really nice guy with great stories. I got my first glimpse of him, looking way less militant than I (for whatever reason) expected. He was out in the lobby selling DVDs of most of his films. I picked up Soul Vengeance and Black Sister's Revenge (AKA Emma Mae, another film I've heard a lot about) and while he was signing them Lars gave me a Mr. Goodbar (to come in handy later). Mr. Fanaka had a real easy speaking rythm that was kind of hard to hear in the cacophony of the lobby but midway through signing my second disc he started saying something to me and I leaned in to make out what he was telling me: "I almost made a mistake. I was about to write 'peace, love, and good pussy' I better put 'soul' instead." I wanted to tell him that they were synonymous in my mind but was overcome with fanboy glee for some reason. Not a lot of people paid for Brother Charles. It reminded me a lot of Richard Rush. The people that were there were fans though. When Lars introduced him (maybe the most excited I've seen him since Rush was here, if not ever) he got a strong enough welcome and told us about how he made this film. To hear him say it, he's a poster boy for affirmative action because he was actually physically on his way to do an armed robbery that may very well have changed his life forever when he saw a sign saying "UCLA: You are welcome" so instead he looked into that and somehow got accepted into the film school there. He talked a bit about how all students have to make a "project one" which is basically a minute-long thing with no synch sound or anything, just film. Then for a "project two" students typically deliver a 2-3 minute short with sound and everything. Well, this movie was his project two. He said his professors laughed at his ambitious craziness to deliver a 100-minute feature-length film while all of his peers worked on something fifty times as short. So having this fact in the back of my mind amazed me that the movie comes together at all. I mean, I've taken a few film classes. I know what kind of stuff gets made. And it's not like this was his thesis film. This was like, just an assignment. So that really impressed me. The aggressiveness of his outlook in saying 'hey, if i have the resources here, why waste time on some little thing when I could make something real.' I HAVE to imagine it was a good day when Crown International called him to say they were distributing hisWelcome Home, Brother Charles. And I'm glad they did because, even without the ultra-low expectations of having it be a student film, this movie is worth watching (worth owning in my opinion). And it's not just because there's a scene where the main guy strangles a dude with his 9-foot long anaconda-like cock. I mean sure that is A reason, but not THE reason. Brother charles is some sort of drug dealer who meets this other guy in a trashy hotel room for a drug deal. They get wise to the police van following them and try to walk away but Charles isn't quite as good at intimidating white people as his buddy so he gets nabbed in front of a group of prostitutes crying his freedom. En route to booking, one of the cops, having a particularly bad day sicne he found out Charles' buddy has been giving his wife more than he can, takes out his aggressions in the form of a backseat beating and attempted castration. This leads to a one-sided courtroom scene and a montage fueled by black and white stills of Charles serving out his sentence. Once out he's determined to go straight, meets up with that hooker who kinda liked him before, and starts into a romantic drama movie with him looking for work and whatnot. And then he sees the bad cop on TV one night and goes crazy with revenge. From there, he starts a series of home invasions where he shows the wives of his targets his junk which simultaneously seduces and hypnotizes them into letting him in later at night so he can strangle his oppressors with his manhood. Eventually the cops catch on and corner him on a rooftop where he threatens to jump. Brought in to talk sense to him, his girlfriend takes one look at the situation and yells "JUMP!" Credits roll. I can see how some might be disappointed if they were expecting a movie filled with penis-strangling craziness. This is not that kind of movie. Instead, it's a much more challenging and meaningful statement from Fanaka's point of view, and he uses the big shock in a way to really say something more than "buy a ticket." I don't actually get a very big exploitation vibe from either of his movies that I've seen. Brother Charles, a revenge tale you'd think would be filled with honkeys gettin what's comin to them, stays surprisingly reserved until the last few minutes when it really slaps you in the face with what you're seeing. I love how he used something as potently symbolic to prove his point in a really overt Fuller-esque way but also be funny about it. Being serious and discontent and opinionated yet also entertaining and (deliberately) hilarious is a pretty funny mix to pull off. You don't see it too often. Luckily, all the freebie Weird Wednesday people were forced to hear all about this movie and probably left thinking they had missed something unbelievable. Serves them right.
06.06.07	5-25-77	Patrick Read Johnson	So AICN threw this free screening. The little that I knew about it was that it had something to do with Star Wars opening and a guy really excited about it or something like that. I think it's a little unfair to pass judgement on what I saw because it was so rough. The director said he played it directly from his Final Cut timeline so... it was pretty clear thatit wasn't complete. So what we saw had temp music, a temp audio mix, un-finished effects shots, and displayed on a smaller pixelly frame. So really I guess it's conceivable that he could fix any problems I might have with it so anyone reading this don't take it as an official review or anything. But I didn't like it. It was two and a half hour long, didn't have any clear sense of direction or story and a really shoddy and weak delivery. I like John Daly (the main kid from Freaks and Geeks) and certain spots, like when he goes to Hollywood and Austin Pendleton (who's good in this) takes him around and he meets Spielberg working on effects shots for Close Encounters and John Dykstra walking him through the model shop and showing him a really early cut of Star Wars... all of that stuff is really great. It's just everything else that isn't. And it's so long and keeps refusing to end. It ends up playing much more like a biopic, but directed by the star. I think this is why they don't let you grade your own tests in highschool. I also don't really get why there's 700 effects shots in this movie. Weird little things like replacing one night sky for another or putting someone looking through a doorway that easily could've actually been there looking through that doorway but for whatever reason wasn't. I get that the director is an effects guy and maybe he just wants it to look perfect but... I don't know, seemed pretty superfluous at times to me. It's also much much less about Star Wars than I thought it'd be. It's actually a lot more about 2001 than any other movie. I want to say I liked the movie-geek overtones and inspiration behind the whole thing but it just didn't work for me. It seemed weird and sad and fake and not funny enough. I get that it wasn't really going for broad comedy but... eh, whatever.
06.05.07	Comedian	Christian Charles	Doc on Jerry Seinfeld's post-show new act. I guess it's also a little bit about up and comer Orney Adams but the movie actually feels like it uses him a bit unfairly. I guess that's the only bad thing I can say about this... I liked it the first time I saw it, I like it now. Season 8 of Seinfeld's show just came out and it got me in a mood to watch this again because I keep reembering like a half dozen great little scenes or lines from here like the story he tells Orny about the musicians out in the cold looking in at the happy family or Jerry's work ethic revelation involving construction workers or the deleted scene about how some bits just come into this world funny and refuse to die while other ideas you coddle and carefully mold together and no matter how much care and attention you put into it the thing still dies. I think this movie's a great glimpse into the night-to-night working stand up's life but the stuff Jerry talks about can be extrapolated to any artistic medium. Really good film (and the trailer's hilarious).
06.04.07	La Brune et Moi	Philippe Puicouyoul	Tracing paper thin story giving excuse to show performances from a bevy of Parisian punk bands. It was really short but I liked it. There was only one song I didn't really like and the rest of the music was really good I thought, and there was a little nudity and a French guy talking in uber-french. Part of me wishes i could go up to random girls and say how they entrance me and picturing them naked gives me a burning fever, but I'd probably just get slapped. The night was made a HUGE bummer though when I learned that Kier-La's soon to be leaving. Like for good. This is incredibly sad news for both fans of her in general and fans of her unique programing sensibility at the Alamo. My hope for the new location was that the second screen would allow for more of the things she typically fought for but now that she's leaving, I'm crossing my fingers that it doesn't become the sing-along and master pancake theater that also shows weird wednesday once a week. I know she's been responsible for a lot of the events that are most memorable to me since I've been here and I'm already missing her influence on my cinematic diet. This news has made the closing of the theater even more momentous.
06.04.07	The Window	Ted Tetzlaff	Noir night at the Alamo with czar of noir Eddie Muller there to introduce the movie and talk about his whole preservation thing that he's doing and be generally interesting. I am super psyched to hear that he's found elements for Joe Losey's The Prowler and that a new print will be struck this year... been looking to see that movie for like ten years. But tonight he was here with this movie which I'd never heard of (although apparently AFS played it a long time ago, along with all the other interesting movies I wanted to see that they never show anymore) but still, it's relatively unheard of and in a new print that looked gorgeous. The story is a version of Aesop's boy who cried wolf with a kid in NYC who sees a murder from a fire escape one night. This movie has some awesome little-kid-in-peril stuff going on and the parents come off as awesomely neglectful nowadays. I just loved them... at one point the dad gets fed up with the kid's tall tales and says to him "you don't want to ake me ashamed of you do you? well pretty soon, you'll be known as a liar and people will see me on the street and say 'there's the father of that liar'" (paraphrased). so cruel! Not to mention the villains of the movie who, once they find out he was witness to their unexplained murder (maybe killing someone in your own home is a bad idea?), try to shut him up. The movie climaxes in an old condemned tenemet building with some really great suspense. Actually the whole movie is expert with its tension and how this poor kid is not only not taken seriously but actively pushed toward exposing himself to the killers. And there's a scene where the boy's trying to push a key out of a lock and the killer's on the other side of the door helping him to get the key. Sound familiar? For like a year now I've been defending that movie Torso because of one amazing scene and here I see it, done like 25 years before, almost exactly the same. Screw you, Torso! After the movie, I got Muller to autograph my copy of Dark City and ended up talking with him for a good five or ten minutes. It was awesome. I don't know about everyone else but this was something I was really looking forward to and completely delivered on my expectations. I thought the movie was fantastic, Muller was a great guest and a really nice guy, and although it wasn't packed I wasn't alone either. I really wish they'd get him back to do a whole series of obscure noirs... co-sponsor with AFS and call it like Lost Noir Weekend or something and get Muller and James Ellroy down to host. Looking at Muller's San Francisco fest looks amazing... too bad I can't afford to visit San Francisco for 10 days so he has to do it here instead.
06.03.07	Hostel: Part II	Eli Roth	Midnight Sunday sneek of Hostel 2 with Eli Roth there at the drafthouse... saying goodbye I suppose. Beforehand they had a short "demonstration" from some tattoo'd goth chicks from Sinsations. Watching burlesque and this ore S&M-ish stuff live never really does it for me but I really like their outfits and one of the three girls was really hot so I didn't exactly not like it either. Plus they did the whole little routine to Ministry's Stigmata so it was an opportunity to hear that song pumped loud into the drafthouse. I'm a little surprised I still have all the lyrics memorized and know the song really well even though it's probably been ten years since I've heard it but hey... I still like it. So... As this site can attest, I saw an early version of the first Hostel and really liked it, then never saw it again for some reason. I appreciated how the torture stuff unfolded and like the revenge-y ending but I guess it didn't have that thing which makes me want to watch it again. So from the get-go I was a little puzzled that the movie warranted a sequel. I liked it as a movie but a franchise? With those feelings in mind, here's what I thought (spoilers but they're probably nothing you can't guess): It's very close to the same movie but with a group of women instead of men and not as much sex in the beginning. Actually there's very little female nudity and the one girl I really wanted to see naked I totally didn't get to see naked. It really confused me though because the movie plays sort of like the premise is still a surprise except it's totally not, so sometimes it jumps around assuming you know what's already going on but other times it stays really slow and seemingly innocent like we don't know what's happening. I guess it's that way because it's a sequel... they throw a few things in there connecting it to the first movie like the same clerk and gang of kids and stuff so maybe the long sequence of how the group of girls gets to the hostel is just to fit it in with the first one but... we already know where they're going so... why am I watching it? By far the most interesting parts of the movie are those dealing with the clients. Probably the best scene in the whole movie is an auction montage where you get glimpses of random ultra-rich people bidding on new meat. Although I wasn't completely into all of their scenes, the main two client guys were at least not 100% guaranteed to go exactly where I thought they would (even though they did anyway) and the stuff with the tattoo and the tools and wardrobe was also very cool. I didn't like any of the girls. Especially the main one. I was rooting for her to die even though she's the main girl so I knew she probably wouldn't. The movie, and the rabid audience I saw it with, felt like it was all about the death gags, which is weird since more than one takes place off-screen. I did enjoy one but it seemed a bit shy of really going for it (Eli mentioned afterward that that scene was trimmed for MPAA where a girl couldn't be touching her nipples because it was too sexual) but others were kinda eh. There's a big shocker at the end I guess but honestly I sat there and watched it and felt bored by it all. I don't know if that means I'm a horrible jaded person with a cold dark hole where a heart should be or if i'm turning into one of those Bob McKee assholes who keep yelling "story!" over and over or what but... this movie was boring. There, I said it. Boring. I was bored.
06.03.07	Hell Up in Harlem	Larry Cohen	AKA Black Caesar's Sweet Revenge. In this one, instead of dying at the end, Fred WIlliamson lives and gets better so he can take revenge on the people who double crossed him last time. sort of. A lot of it also deals with Julius Harris playing his dad, who he brings into the mob life. And then it kind of goes all over the place. This movie was kind of fun, but to be honest I was much more entertained by Cohen's commentary track where he talks about issues in making the movie like how both he and Williamson were working on separate movies during the week and found ways to make this on the weekends and how Fred's actually doubled in most of the NYC scenes and the usual wild west kind of antics with stealing shots and getting lucky with the location photography. It's also refreshing though to hear someone adit to shortcomings in the film and pass on nuggests of wisdom that he learned (like don't put your friends in your movie because then you'll feel bad about cutting them). So for me the commentary made the movie more interesting than it was.
06.01.07	First Blood	Ted Kotcheff	Geez it's been a long time since I've seen this. I vaguely remember watching it on network TV as a kid and thinking not much happened then he blew up a car at the end. Now that i, you know, know what's going on during all the "slow" parts, I like it a lot more. It's still funny how a movie like this can spawn such an 80s explosionfest like part 2 (which I LOVED as a kid, had the toys and everything), but I do think it's much more effective to see him doing his geurilla thing in the jungle than in the pacific northwest woods. This movie needed a sasquatch. good though, i liked it.
06.01.07	Vacancy	Nimrod Antal	A bickering couple checks into the wrong motel where Frank Whaley and his buddies make snuff films of them killing patrons. Surprisingly good (and short) horror movie I thought. Gets in, does its job, and ends. pretty intense.
06.01.07	Fast Food Nation	Richard Linklater	Not exactly the feel good movie of the year, but worth watching I thought. There's a parade of recognizable actors that keep drifting in for one or two scenes - I guess to show that they're against fast food - which both makes it cool because he got a lot of good actors and not so cool because none of them are in it very long so the movie feels kind of aimless because of it. Not as aimless as I'd heard though... I liked this one probably more than others. I am also half jazzed / half miffed that Linklater used Friends of Dean Martinez for his music. Jazzed because I think they're great and suited very well to film scores but miffed that I wanted to be the one to do it. They supplied music for a small doc about the Salton Sea and I saw them play live in front of that and was really impressed with their vibe so they made it to my fantasy list of people I'd use if I ever got a shot at making a movie. Now they'll want to get paid or something since they've already been in a "real" movie. Plus... I dunno, the use of their stuff here gave the movie too much of a Traffic knock-off vibe for me... I think their music's great but not the best choice for this movie.
06.01.07	Mr. Brooks	Bruce A. Evans	Jarrette convinced me to see this. It's long and really mediocre. It also felt like it was adapted from a book but I didn't see any source credited which confuses me because there's like 2 or 3 extremely random subplots going on that felt like stuff that works great in a book but should be trimmed for a movie and I kept explaining their existence on some source material that the writers wanted to stay true to. So that's weird. But it wasn't full-on bad... I enjoyed WIlliam Hurt's character (despite myself... but if I had a murderous multiple personality guy talking to me in my head, it'd be pretty cool if it was William Hurt) and Dane Cook's maybe funnier trying to do drama than his stand-up routine. And then at one point Hurt looks at Cook and says to Costner: "Even if he was nicer and funnier, I still wouldn't like him." I'd love to believe that was an ad lib due to on-set tensions or something... And then at the end it almost gets cool but then they do a cliche thing to taint it but then they do another thing that's infinitely more cliche and horrible and it ruins any hopes of having a cool ending. I don't know why stuff like that still exists in movies. Like, why does she have to put his glasses on at the end? Why do the glasses have to be a big honking symbol of his murderousness or whatever? Why did Adam Goldberg have to die on the same Hitler Youth knife he scored in the beginning of Saving Private Ryan? Or why does it have to be the prisoner they let go that kills Tom Hanks? Do some people really go for that? If you do, send me a comment so I can yell at you.
05.31.07	Blood Bath	Joel M. Reed	Terror Thursday this week is this anthology made by the Bloodsucking Freaks guy (a movie I've owned forever and have still not seen). Everybody seemed to really like it... to be honest I was severely bored with the first 45 minutes or so... like looking-at-the-ceiling bored. It's really cheap and really slow and there's no sex and no violence and you know where each of the first two stories are going about 15 minutes before they get there and I was having no fun at all. But then this black ghost popped into this guy's vault and started saying "boooooo" and it really picked up. Because the guy in the vault takes the fact that he's a ghost haunting him as a good thing and starts talking to him because he's so lonely. In perhaps the best line I've heard all month, the ghost admits to his miseray, saying "honkey devil knew this would happen." I also love that, according to him, the devil is a white woman. great stuff. So after that bit, the movie picked up and ended pretty strong. I suspect a lot of people got up and immediately started praising it due to this strong ending still fresh in their minds. That's a good thing though... I'm happy that everyone had a good time, even if I didn't forget how horrible the first half was for me.
05.31.07	Spellbound	Alfred Hitchcock	I also like this one, although I'll freely admit that it's very dated. All the psychoanalysis stuff was (I guess) so new back then and so familiar today that it comes off as humor, which is ok I guess. The movie has other problems as well, and also has that feeling for me of being a puzzle film that's specifically designed to see two times and never again: once to be surprised at the end then again to pick up on all the clues you missed the first time. Lots of cague shots of seemingly innocuous things that you watch and trust that the movie will explain to you later. For whatever reason, these types of movies seem a little cheap to me after repeated viewings. But still, there are plenty of things here that I like, enough for me to hold true to my "liked it" status. And whether they want to admit it or not, the audience couldn't help but gasp in both these movies tonight, which is always fun.
05.31.07	Notorious	Alfred Hitchcock	Another Hitch double feature at the Paramount. I really really like this movie. i'd say it's in my top 5 - nay, top 3 Hitchcock movies... Love pretty much everything about it. So I'm glad I got to see it on the big screen. Although it's funny I have a much easier time talking about things I don't like than things I do... I should probably look into that. Later.
05.30.07	Chesty Anderson, USN	Ed Forsyth	For some reason I was pretty disconnected from this movie right from the start. I don't know if it was the 16 print or the way all these girls never quite get any background or individual characteristics or if it was just me and my mood, but whatever it was, i wasn't into it. However, I did marvel at Timothy Carey's performance. It really seemed like he bullied his way onto the movie and the director was afraid to talk to him at all so he just let him do whatever he wanted. It's amazing to watch and made no sense. At one point I thought maybe he died or something because he wasn't around anymore but then he showed up again and went back to whatever he was doing. I don't even think "chewing the scenery" fits here because it's so much more than that. He completely hijacks the movie... he chews the scenery, the people around him, the weather, and the film in the camera. really great and made the movie worth watching for me.
05.29.07	The Wrong Man	Alfred Hitchcock	And the next movie he did was this. A coplete change of pace and a major step away from his run of technicolor suspense thrillers. This is like Hitchcock's go at the docunoir style (and only like 10 years late) except instead of following the cops or the criminal it follows a wrongly-accused innocent through the elaborate procedure of mid-50s crime fighting. I think this movie suffers from maybe the worst dating ever. It's pretty hard to give up the thought that this guy in the exact same situation today would walk out of the police station in like an hour. He wouldn't even go downtown, much less get put through what he does here. And the methods used by the cops to prove his guilt are copletely ridiculous. It doesn't play well today at all. Actually, I'm not 100% sure it would've played even back then. This is like 5 years after the start of Dragnet and numerous other police procedural movies... It has the whole "this is a true story" to hang on and make you marvel at how bad the system is, but still. It's a perfect excuse for Hitch to show us how creeped out he was by cops and jails and the whole thing, and I think that's by far the strongest part of the movie. I wouldn't be sad if the film ended after the scene where Fonda gets out on bail. After that, it turns into the movie that refuses to end. My least favorite part of this movie is Vera Miles and her character. ugh. So it's not my favorite, but I don't really dislike it either thanks to the really effective POV shots and maddening first 45 minute or so. It's an interesting choice of movies for the Paramount to program. I have to commend them for not making the super obvious choices (and I'll be comending them even more next week when I see Notorious and Spellbound there) but I'd really really really like to see Dial M for Murder in 3-D so... Paramount guys, if you're listening... ahem!
05.29.07	The Man Who Knew Too Much	Alfred Hitchcock	Watching Hitchcock movies at the paramount tonight... great escapism. If there was only a late-night restaraunt open near there, but anyways... I hadn't seen this in a while... I think I still haven't gotten around to watching the original but I've seen this a few times so it was really more about seeing it on the big screen and getting out of my apartment than anything else. I like it but it's not one of my favorites of Hitchcock's... I feel like the Albert Hall sequence is great and everything before then is build-up to it and everything afterward is just waiting for it to end, although it has a pretty damn good ending. Other than that, there's more stuff to like but it is pretty long and fairly slow. All that stuff is there for a reason but that doesn't make it any shorter.
05.29.07	Preacherman	Albert T. Viola	A southern preacherman goes around lulling people into giving him money and sleeping with all the hot young girls. I think this is hicksploitation at its best... so my enjoyment of it directly correlates to my enjoyment of the genre. Which is... like. I guess I spent a few too many years living in the sticks with real rednecks to really cherish these movies or hold them as weirdly anthropological windows like I do blax films... but I do enjoy how these guys' problems are always just about getting laid and getting drunk. I really liked Viola's portrayal of the preacherman though. and he's got a great name. Amos Huxley.
05.28.07	White Lightning	Joseph Sargent	Quintessential Burt Reynolds is a dude who makes a deal with the feds to get out of jail to exact revenge on a dirty sheriff for killing his hippie brother. I liked a couple things in particular about this good ol' boy movie: the sweat and the hippie-hate. Some wonderful dialogue on dirty hippies smokin pot and growin their hair long... and everyone's soaking through their shirts with sweat for the whole movie. no one sweats in movies anymore... it makes me feel bad when I sweat and I sweat a lot so that sucks. I also liked Bo Hopkins and Ned Beatty in their roles. pretty good movie.
05.28.07	He Walked by Night	Alfred Werker	A Los Angeles counterpart to The Naked City and basically the pilot episode of Dragnet, this movie dispenses with the minimal character stuff that City had and delivers a straight police procedural. Not nearly as much location shooting here (but still some) and lots and lots of detailed followings of late 40s policework (such as creating a sketch of the suspect and rounding up the usual suspects)... no score makes it seem longer than it is... amazing photography though. worth watching for that alone.
05.28.07	Less Than Zero	Marek Kanievska	rich 80s kids do too much drugs and get into trouble. awwwwww, poor rich kids and their distant parents. That's what they get for hanging out with James Spader.
05.27.07	Breach	Billy Ray	A newbie FBi dude has to uncover old pro Robert Hanssen as a spy. ahhh, government office work. I can vouch for them getting the low-level everyday working environment right, but it's funny to hear my dad talk about these movies and list the various inaccuracies... kinda like how I cringe whenever some computer guru starts up with his technical mumbo jumbo. I'm happy to state that the computer work in this movie is pretty real though... about time. I guess everyone in the world has to be familiar with something before Hollywood finally concedes and stops making it up off the top of their head. Maybe one day we'll all be meteorologists and they'll have to stop putting the thunder sound effects immediately as the lightning flashes in every storm in every movie ever made. someday. anyway, i can't imagine this movie being interesting to anyone not explicitly interested in Robert Hanssen. It's remarkably monochromatic and visually uninteresting - basically all you have to look at is Chris Cooper's creepy hawk eyes - and slow as all hell. still, I kinda liked it. I don't know how close to the truth they were but if I choose to believe they paid meticulous attention to every detail (and why shouldn't I believe, they got the computers right) then it's also educational.
05.27.07	Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home	Leonard Nimoy	This one I remember a little more because it's my mom's favorite in the series so it was on a lot more while I was groing up. I think I like it the most too just because it has a little humor in it. I didn't laugh or anything but at least it's not constantly life-or-death high drama... although I could do with watching all the future stuff in this movie on fast forward. There are so many langurous shots of the black cylinder with a hanging nut floating there making whale sounds that I really have more than enough time to wonder about who was responsible for that horrible design. I mean, a black cylinder? with a dangling ball? I bet it was that way just because the CG wireframe image that the monitor displays couldn't handle more than simple shapes like a cylinder and a sphere. Yeah, that's probably it. And I don't have to note about the whole save the whales thing do i? So... I dunno. I'm glad I saw both of these again for one reason or another, and it did get me out of the house. And I got decent parking so that's good too.
05.27.07	Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan	Nicholas Meyer	The summer classics series has started at the Paramount again. After getting up super early to wait in line for tickets to the last night at the Alamo then pigging out at the first meeting of the Austin Gastronauts, I didn't really want to sit at home fending off sleep until a decent hour or waiting for the phone to ring so even though I've never been a huge fan of Star Trek I opted for this double feature of what I seem to remember being the two best of the movies. Pretty much the only thing I remembered about this one was the earwig... which was still awesome. That and a few choice Shatner moments were pretty much it though. I thought it was super long and needlessly heavy and I guess even though the original TV show was way before it I still felt a pretty explicit Star Wars knock-off quality to it. But, like I said up there I've never been into Star Trek. I don't think Spock's little "illogical" mannerisms are amusing at all and I've never understood how the only problem that the Enterprise seems to ever have is a lack of enough power and don't really care if Kirk's feeling old or young. Just not that into it.
05.26.07	Blood Feast	Herschell Gordon Lewis	I guess I originally rented this before I started this site which is strange but whatever. So even though the crowd for the first movie would qualify as full, the die-hards that stayed for Blood Feast were considerably less... thinning out the seats like Nic Cage's hairline. It's kind of a shame but also understandable... but ALSO kind of the reason why I wanted to go. Probably my favorite atmospheric sense memory of this original location downtown alamo is real late at night watching a movie with a sparse crowd of die-hards. Be it the end of the QT all-nighters or the ill-fated Turkeython or the random Weird Wednesdays that for whatever reason don't draw the normal crowd or whatever... Night of the Creeps was like that, Joysticks, a lot of Music Mondays... That's perhaps not the best list for Alamo profitability but i get a very different experience from the place when it's mostly empty versus when it's packed and I really like it. So before the movie even started, it was worth it for me to get down there. So Blood Feast... I guess it has been a super long time since I've seen it because I totally didn't realize that the two leads were also in Two Thousand Maniacs. It's... well I guess it's no secret that the movie's really cheap and pretty inept and rough... but you know, it's still better than a lot of festival movies I've seen at SXSW... at least there's a story that kind of makes sense (even though they recite every detail of it at the end... loved that). And although the acting's bad, it's still that magically more-fun 70s bad acting... makes no sense I know but it's the truth. So I don't know. I still can't call myself a rabid fan but I didn't have a problem watching it again (the theater and crowd, blah blah blah, etc. etc.). It did freak me out to see so many people still downtown at 3:30am. Don't the bars close at 2?
05.26.07	Two Thousand Maniacs	Herschell Gordon Lewis	Herschell Gordon Lewis at the Alamo was not a slam dunk decision for me by any means, but by the end of the night I was pretty happy that I decided to go down and catch it (despite having to park at the capital and navigate the drunk people still out at 3:45a afterward). On Stage he appeared very vital for however old he is (90? 110?) and I heard that he absolutely tore into the BBQ he ate earlier that night. Since the road to the ghost town where they were going to show the even got washed out in recent flash floods, they started the show at midnight so HGL took the stage at the beginning, did his thing, then left fairly quickly, leaving us to watch deep into the night. The 30-40 minutes of HGL at the beginning made the night for me. He started off with telling a few stories (very well, you can really see how he could be a good businessman and marketting guru), then stood up and sang the whole 2000 Maniacs song (like all 5 versus it was crazy), getting the crowd to help with the YEEEEEEEHAW!s each chorus, then took questions that, no matter how stale or brief they might've been, he answered with lengthy interesting/entertaining anecdotes. I've never really felt like clapping after each answer before but did here. And after that, the movies. Even though I've seen this before, watching it at the Alamo just makes it better. The movies are kinda slow so I know when I rented the DVDs I ended up half-watching by the end but in the theater you're forced to pay attention and end up picking a lot more out of the details and nuances. Plus you have the crowd laughing to keep up the vibe. I think maybe a lot of people who hadn't seen this before came in only knowing its reputation for gore and therefore walked away with a sense of "is that it?" but for me this movie is more unsettling because the whole town's crazy... even the little cat-hanging kids and old grannie ladies looking on and nodding yes. And what gore that does appear is pretty realistic (especially for its time). I think the gore in Blood Feast is much more tableau, shock-of-seeing-it oriented like "look at all the blood on that girl! let's slowly pan" or "look at the guts on the table! let's slowly zoom" whereas the gore here is more in service to the ideas (which are what really get you anyway). No one really cringed after the guy gets to the bottom of the hill in the barrell, but when the first nail gets hammered into that barrell, I heard a few people gasp and groan (which is cool). And I also like how the deaths are kind of similar to carnival rides that everyone's excited about. it's like they were all like "yay! now it's time for the log flume! (cheers)" but instead of a fun amusement it's horrible dismemberment... perhaps the biggest (of many) problem that 2001 Maniacs had... that's a prime opportunity to think of messed up ways to kill people... it's kind of a shame that there were only 4 or 5 mentioned in this movie. so yeah, fun time.
05.25.07	Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End	Gore Verbinski	the next in the summer's huge blockbuster mega-budget action movies. spoilers below but short synopsis: eh. too excessive and big and long and indulgent. It reminded me a lot of the third Matrix movie. There's scenes that are two long of the hero stuck in his own mental-ish prison, ultra-huge final battles that someone has to convince the others needs to take place in order for them to save their existence, and multiple copies of a main character running around talking to one another. There's also chunks of really clunky scenes filled with heavy lifting to get the audience to where they need to be to understand what's going on but I don't think that's exclusive to The Matrix franchise (unfortunately). Kind of typical sequelitis, getting crushed under the weight of characters and plotlines and a need to resolve everything in some gigantic epic way. Plus it's also bound by all the little things that have to appear since it's part 3 of a trilogy - lines, characters, the dog with the key in his mouth, etc. - so you have to go through a lot of layers of the onion before you get to anything that smells fresh. Maybe not a bad thing... I can't really say I hated this movie or even disliked it... but I'm not a huge fan either. It's just very expected. It's weird to be looking at some huge CG spectacle and thinking "yeah yeah... big surprise." oh well.
05.24.07	Night of the Comet	Thom Eberhardt	The passing of a comet turns everyone not protected by steel into dust and those only partially exposed into evil sort-of zombies. Kinda like the first half of 28 Days Later if it took place in 80s LA and starred a couple teenage girls. I have my college buddy Trapper to thank for seeing this for the first time. I remember he rented a double feature of Larry Cohen's The Stuff and Night of the Comet and I didn't particularly like either one (although I later suggested The Stuff as a cheese-a-thon entry tro smashing success (which is where I saw Troll 2 for the first time (it's all connected!))) but since then I'd say it's safe to say that both my viewing tastes and how I appreciate movies in general has changed a tremendous amount (i.e. I moved out of my fakey film school snobbery), so I was excited to see this again. So excited in fact that I made up lyrics to a Night of the Comet punk song. Since a few of the people I shared them with goaded me into singing the song but I couldn't remember my own lyrics (yeah, I'll never be a singer in a band ever), I'm pasting them at the end of this note for posterity's sake. Be warned though, the lyrics are © me, bitches... so no stealing. Before that though... I wanted to say that it was better than I remember it being! It still gets bogged down a bit in the underground base third act and I wish there was more exploration of the newly-empty world... but it was much less slower than I remember (some of that might've been helped by seeing it in a theater with a pretty full house) and there were definitely some funny moments. I can't believe how 80s this movie is. I remember the red filters and really angular fashion but I forgot all about how the radio station is basically a tribute to all things neon. There is so much neon in this movie, it's crazy. And since a lot of the movie takes place in an automated radio station, there's bland 80s pop rock filling the background ad nauseum. It certainly was a time... I also want to note that Suburbia's Jack Diddly himself Chris Pedersen has a small small role in this. I thought it was him at first but then he said his one line and it sounded just like him so ah HAH! trainspot'd! Night of the Comet (to be yelled loud) NIGHT OF THE COMET! NIGHT OF THE COMET! NIGHT OF THE COMET! NIGHT OF THE COMET! I WAKE UP AND EVERYONE'S DUST! PRETTY POISON TURNED TO RUST! THE SKY'S RED AND THUNDER STRUCK! MY FAMILY'S DEAD AND I DON'T GIVE A FUCK! NIGHT OF THE COMET! NIGHT OF THE COMET! NIGHT OF THE COMET! NIGHT OF THE COMET! DIRTY ZOMBIES IN THE STREETS! FASHION SENSE JUST CAN'T BE BEAT! SHOULD WE DO SOME HEAD CHOPPING!? I SAY FUCK 'EM, LET'S GO SHOPPING! NIGHT OF THE COMET! NIGHT OF THE COMET! NIGHT OF THE COMET! NIGHT OF THE COMET! THE VALLEY'S TOAST, THE FUTURE'S FUCKED! BUT I DON'T CARE CUZ MY JEANS ARE TUCKED! I JUST WANT SOME PIECE OF MIND! CANNIBALISTIC DAILY GRIND! NIGHT OF THE COMET! NIGHT OF THE COMET! NIGHT OF THE COMET! NIGHT OF THE COMET! NO LAW! NO LAW!! NO LAW!!! NO LAW!!!! CHEERS!
05.23.07	Next	Lee Tamahori	We ended the triple feature with the Nic Cage gem Next. This one's about a guy who can tell 2 minutes into his own future so the government wants him to help them figure out where a nuclear bomb is planted. OK, this movie is awesome. 30 years from now, it'll be a classic Weird Wednesday movie beloved by small but loyal audiences. I actually think Nic Cage is turning into the William Shatner of today. he's always so over the top with these weird ideas. Like I have no clue why he's a magician in this movie. The tricks he does aren't even really dependant on his super power... but I think he (as a person, when he's not working) just really likes magic so when he signed on he was like "you know, I think I should be a magician in this movie" and that was that. And along with a few things that are like "yeah, cool, you could do that if you knew what was gonna happen!" he gets into these scenarios that are completely absurd and stretching the limits of his supposed power. It's all very lovely... and amazing. I laughed through like the entire thing then talked about it and laughed even more on the way home (and I wasn't even alone talking to myself!). It's a new classic to be sure... this along with Shooter is really restoring some hope for modern hollywood movies. freakin Nic Cage, man... highlarious.
05.23.07	The Invisible	David Goyer	A kid finds that he's a sorta-ghost when he becomes sorta-dead and walks around talking to people who can't hear him. That's a good thing though because the things he says are so ridiculously bad that they'd probably crack up laughing. I was thinking that Marcia Gay Harden's performance here was particularly abhorrent but now that I think about it, I think she deserves some recognition for not breaking up when she's supposed to just sit there as if the whiney kid in front of her isn't trying to throw a tantrum and look cool at the same time. The rules of what he can and can't do as a sorta-ghost are never really defined and change from time to time so it feels like... well, it feels like whatever a truly awful movie feels like. Occasional moments are kinda funny, like when he raises his arms to the heavens and screams, but mostly it's just bad. really bad.
05.23.07	Meet the Robinsons	Stephen J. Anderson	Had a movie day catching up on movies I barely wanted to see... starting with this one which was actually pretty good! Sure it's more or less Jimmy Neutron meets Back to the Future, but the animation was good, the 3D was great, and the script was smart and funny enough not to put me to sleep like Shrek 3 did. Kind of a shame that nobody saw this... it had the same kind of charm that I found in The Incredibles and Sky High (not as much heart as The Incredibles though and no Kurt Russell like Sky High... although Tom Selleck is still pretty good). Judging from my expectations, I'm surprised to say that I liked this one. Solid funny animated movie.
05.22.07	Mission: Impossible III	J.J. Abrams	it was on and I felt like maybe watching it again to see how it holds up. Still probably my favorite of the Mission: Impossible series and that still probably doesn't mean much... but there are some sequences here that are just so crazy that they are still exciting to me. Glimpses remind me of the goold old days of Jim Cameron action movies but there also has to be all this romantic crap that takes you out of it. oh well. it's weird that i think a tom cruise blockbuster sequel got a bad rap but i guess that's the case. i think this one's pretty good.
05.21.07	Shrek the Third	Chris Miller	blah blah blah I'm Shrek and ogres are supposed to be mean. Hey I'm Donkey and I'm nice. Hello, I'm Puss n Boots and I'm a cat... in boots. Together we are crack cocaine for children! Marketing, merchandising, and franchising have made us more important in your child's life than you parents! In the next movie, we will tell all the children in the world to poison your coffee and sojourn to Disneyland to start their own society. whew, not sure where that came from. Perhaps it was the boredom of watching this movie. We get it, Ye Olde Foot Locker is like a medieval version of today's foot locker. I seem to remember the second one having a lot of little background jokes for the adults in the audience (but I still only saw it once) but this one was pretty blah both in the back and the front. Except any time the queen said anything I said "Julie Andrews!!!!" in my head like Peter Cook in Bedazzled and laughed, so maybe on the outside it appeared like I was enjoying the movie but really I was just making myself laugh. which is kind of sad. Hey, I'm an only child. I'm used to it.
05.20.07	Fuzz	Richard Colla	So right off the bat I have to say this. The Alamo has the trailer for this movie and it has some really really great voice-over that I really really want to grab, so I was equally excited to get rent this for the trailer as I was for the movie itself... but the trailer they have on the DVD has no voice-over! It's the same exact cut, and even mixes the dialogue down for where the voiceover should be but... no VO! sucks so much. Anyway, This was a pretty fun if not completely solidified cop movie starring Burt Reynolds, Tom Skerritt, Raquel Welch, and Yul Brynner as The Deaf Man ("who's definitely NOT fuzz!"). The movie reminded me a lot of the Denis Leary show The Job where different cops have different cases that they're working but they help each other out, get into wacky adventures, and do plenty of general banter in the station in between chase scenes. This isn't quite as overt a comedy as that show was, but it's kind of a similar vibe... except it's also a movie instead of an ongoing show so they have to wrap everything up in the end. So even though it comes together in a very coincidental way, I still really liked watching this just because it's a whole group of cool 70s cops having fun and working crimes. Plus there's this one old guy who has a scene were he goes on about someone dumping garbage in his car that's hilarious. great little monologue.
05.20.07	St. Ives	J. Lee Thompson	To pay the bills, reporter-turned-novelist Ray St. Ives becomes a bagman for John Houseman and Jacqueline Bisset, falling into adventure in typical noirish fashion. Not extraordinarily bad but not extraordinarily good either. Another solid 70s crime mystery...
05.19.07	Genghis Blues	Roko Belic	A blind blues singer learns how to Tuvan throatsing (man that sounds dirty) and travels to Tuva to compete in their throatsinging symposium. It's interesting what 8 years of emerging digital video technology can do... vhs is so 20th century. pretty good but it also peters out toward the end.
05.19.07	Marnie	Alfred Hitchcock	I've had this forever and have always put off watching it because it just didn't look good to me. I am a huge fan of Hitch's earlier stuff and even some of his later stuff but something about this movie just seemed overwhelmingly boring to me. I guess it's good that I finally bit the bullet and watched it but... I wasn't pleasantly surprised or anything. Marnie is a woman who steals money because she's all messed up and a bitch. Sean Connery falls in love with her for no reason and puts up with her for the whole movie then in the end there's a flashback to her childhood and we find out why she's such a bitch all the time. boo hoo. So every scene was either watching Tippi Hedren be a bitch or wonder why Sean Connery's still hanging around her. There are some typically Hitchcockian silent "tense" scenes but they never really come together like his more classic stuff... and there's even one line where someone says "I always thought a girl's best friend is her mother" which I smirked at then quickly gagged on. The only highlight for me was getting to stare at Diane Baker when she was in her 20s and unbelievably gorgeous.
05.18.07	The Aurora Encounter	Jim McCullough, Sr.	A kiddie movie about a little alien visint an old west town in texas. Supposedly it's based on a true story, but the movie's pretty drabby and laggy and really only worth watching for two things: Jack Elam plays checkers with himself in one scene and talks to himself and even pulls a knife on himself. That's pretty great. The other reason is that the alien is played by a kid with progeria That's the one where you age really fast. According to IMDb, the kid got cast because of the make a wish foundation and his one wish was to star in a real hollywood movie. If that's the case, I'm glad everything worked out for the little guy. If that's a lie, then man is that messed up. Oh, and some of Elam's lines are sampled in a DJ Shadow song... so that might also count as a reason to watch if you're a huge Shadow fan or something. ack mentioned this movie in his intro last night so thanks to him. It was worth it to see that little old kid walking around in the old west.
05.17.07	Creature from Black Lake	Joy Houck	Two University of Chicago dudes go down to the bayou to find prove the sasquatch's existence after reading a story about a local trapper losing his buddy to the long-haired creature. The word "creature" is said more times in this movie than I've heard it all my life up till now. That, along with the name, kept making me think it would be a black lagoon rip-off (even though I already knew it was bigfoot)... now that I think back to it... bigfoot in the swamps really doesn't make any sense, but whatever. I liked this movie a lot. I really enjoyed watching both of the main kids (especially Pahoo) and both Dub Taylor and Jack Elam are great in their small roles. Some of the creature footage, if seen in the right mood, can also be genuinely creepy. Mostly not, but for a second or two maybe. It's hilarious though, when he throws the dogs around or stands in the foreground giving us a good angle on the stringy wet hair drooping between his legs. And when Rives asks Pahoo about his thing with burgers... definitely some funny moments. It wasn't THAT funny though. It's pretty weird how wide the gap is between wednesday crowds and thursday crowds. You'd think they'd be pretty similar but that one day makes a hell of a difference. Oh well, it's still much much better than it used to be before Jack got here to keep the talkers silent. Still lots of malicious superior laughing going on though, and yeah i do feel like the grinch when i complain about people laughing too much but whatever, it's obnoxious when people laugh just to show how cool they are. anyway, I really enjoyed this. I kind of equate it with Grizzly where everything about it is just a little bit better than I expected it to be. It makes for a pretty solid thursday night movie.
05.17.07	Ellie	Peter Wittman	Shelley Winters kills her husband for his farm and hot daughter Ellie gets revenge on her boys. That's about it. My favorite part was the funeral preacher whose eulogies get increasingly casual and bored. lots of hillbilly atosphere going on... wasn't bad. I more or less liked it.
05.16.07	Daydream	Tetsuji Takechi	That's maybe the weirdest movie I've ever seen. ok, ok. maybe I need to add a little bit more. I'm sure when I look back at this years from now I'll appreciate a little more information than it was weird. Plus I don't want to alienate the only two readers I have :) So anyway, this is a Japanese pink film about a man and woman sharing a trip to the dentist. However it may have originally been like, the version I saw had the woman getting all turned on by the dentist working in her mouth and the film constantly cuts to naked American porn actors wearing masks vaguely re-enacting each scene in a somewhat more explicit manner. It started off hilarious but grew stale pretty quickly. And then it got even less funny because the Japanese man goes into his own Japanese daydream (that's still cut with inserts of the American nakedness daydream) where he has to watch the woman get dominated by the dentist... and that's most of the movie. Then at the end we jump back to reveal that they're still in the dentist office but maybe not!? Massacre of pleasure had a plot that quickly dissolved, but you could still tell they at least started with a semblance of storytelling. Here, it's all very abstract right from the get-go. The soundtrack especially, filled with harsh electronic bleeps and bloops punctuated with drill sounds and very very sparse dialogue (subtitled). It was... well, it was weird. But that's a good thing. The series isn't called Camp Wednesdays or Retro Wednesdays... it's good for there to be a real head-scratcher thrown in once in a while to keep it a challenge. And I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised that only a handful of people left early. I can't imagine as many people showing up anywhere else.
05.16.07	Something Wicked This Way Coes	Jack Clayton	Haven't seen this since I was a kid. I remember not liking it because it made me uncomfortable... all the stuff with dads being weak and ties between friends under strain and everyone succumbing to evil and something that's supposed to be fun like a carnival really being not fun. Plus something about the scarab lightning rod... I dunno. I still think it's the scariest movie Disney ever made, although I haven't seen Watcher in the Woods in a while. still not a favorite, not because it's a bad movie but because it unsettles me.
05.16.07	Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter	Lee Demarbre	It's Jesus Christ versus the Leesbian Vampires in this Canadian indie shot on 16 and acted out by a bunch of goth girls and hair-dyed freaks. None of it's synch sound so it comes off much more like a summer movie that a bunch of unemployed 20somethings did than a real movie, but for that kind of movie it's really ambitious. It's got musical numbers, kung-fu battles, lots of actors, and a bevy of Three Stooges sound effects to match the ridiculous nature of the plot. It's kinda fun but also way too long (at 80 minutes). It would've made a good short. I did like the fight between JC and the atheists though. The main girl pulls up and says "hello, Jesus. You don't know us because we've never talked to you before." After kicking their ass, he responds with "real enough for you?"
05.16.07	Physical Evidence	Michael Crichton	Burt Reynolds is a cop framed for a murder and lawyer Theresa Russell has to prove his innocence. It's movies like this that explain why John Grisham was such a huge hit. I don't know how good the Grisham movies were but they're a lot better than this. I saw this just because it was the last Crichton movie I haven't seen... and now I have. Really boring and bad. not worth talking about at all.
05.13.07	The Swinging Cheerleaders	Jack Hill	so the night, the mini-fest, and Quentin's programming at the original downtown Alamo ends with Jack Hill's Swinging Cheerleaders. I'd never seen this before, and am actually pretty lacking in my Jack Hill quota, but of course I'd heard it was good so I was confident that I'd overcome the fatigue that the last movie unleashed and end the weekend on a good note. QT gets up and talks about how great Jack Hill's dialogue is and that he sometimes builds the rythms up then says the exact wrong thing, like he's on the beat then off the beat then back on again. Having only seen a couple Hill films, I had no idea what he was talking about and didn't notice anything of the sort while watching this. But oh well. QT ended his intro by saying he'd be back at the Ritz at some point then great trailers played (again, no notes... so just trust me or maybe I can get them from Lars) and the movie started. It's good. Not as funny as I expected... more like a straight drama. Like a prime example of an exploitation movie that's actually a good movie and not just a joke. I do have to say that I wasn't watching it loving every second, but the overriding word in my head is "good." It's just good. Nothing to complain about... not dissapointing at all, but not something I feel a need to yell to the heavens about or talk to friends trading quotes with either. I guess that means I'm not sure what I have to say about it other than I thought it was good. seriously inferior notes this weekend. It deserved more time and attention to detail but unfortunately I was doing other things during that time so it came out this way. Trust me when I say it was a fun weekend though, filled somewhat with the flavor of a QTfest but also kinda casual and not a big deal. I think a lot of that was timing, a lot was how quickly it popped up on the radar, and other factors as well. Standing in the lobby afterward I was actually pretty bummed out. the "Last..." procession has now started. It's actually happening. This place will soon be gone forever. Sigh. trailers played beforehand (thanks to Lars). QT-owned are noted: BEFORE SWINGING CHEERLEADERS Pom Pom Girls The Teacher (QT) Pretty Maids All In A Row (QT) Cheerleader Beach Party (QT)
05.13.07	The Swinging Pussycats	Alexis Neve	So I took my parents to Chuy's and fed them till they passed out and managed to make it back downtown in time to catch the last half hour or so of tonight's first movie in the Swinging triple feature: The Swinging Barmaids. This played before in the midst of an all-night exploitation marathon during QT2 under the alternate title Eager Beavers (Bucktown, Gates of Hell, Swinging Barmaids, Police Women, Wonder Women, Ghetto Freaks, and Girl on a Chain Gang). I guess in his intro QT mentioned that the killer in this was only in a few movies but I wasn't there so I don't know if he remembered playing Bucktown (where he plays a bagman) that same night or not. Anyway, from what I saw it really wasn't a sexploity movie at all but more of a serial killer picture that just happens to have some women working at a bar. When I came in there was a pretty groovy fight scene going on in a pool and it was pretty good from then on but afterward a few people told me I saw all the best parts. By far, the biggest line of the night and probably the whole festival happens in this movie where a group of them are talking about the killer and the killer is in the group because of course he's one of the circly of friends and one of the girls says the killer must have a "crazy calculating faggot mind," then it cuts to him looking upset and later he makes sure to say "faggot" a couple more times like it just burns him so much... like "then we'll catch the faggot." He also makes several asides like "well whoever the killer is, he sure is smart." and "if I were the killer, I'd be running for the boondocks right now," and seems to take personal offence at anyone who has anything bad to say about this guy who's killing off his friends. I love the idea of a serial killer only killing people who don't think he's cool. so like if someone said "man that killer's so groovy" they'd get crossed off the to-kill list. So overall I'm sad that I had to miss the intro and first batch of trailers but happy that I saw what I saw and that what I saw was good. So next up is Swinging Pussycats, which Tim got up to say he was hesitant about since it was German and he's not the hugest fan of lederhosen films. QT loves it though and says the beginning is great but he loves the whole thing and the main girl is quite cute. Well, the beginning was pretty cool. It starts with the main girl in white lace undies talking to the camera in a weirdly-translated monologue about what to expect with the movie and then she says are you ready or something like that and the screen goes black and she counts down for the movie to start. Except she starts from 20 so it goes on for a while. And there was a scratch that seemed to move back and forth about every second or so to almost correspond with the numbers she's counting down. She is quite cute. Other than that, the movie was pretty rough. Lots of talking about meaningless stuff... some butler who's old... almost no nudity or sex on screen at all... did I mention the talking? and that's about all that happens until it ends, which took a while. I can't really remember any specific parts because it was all the same... women talking about how they like sex or something and something to do with the water... then there's a little plot about some Italian guy trying to get money out of marrying someone or something? I really can't remember. Funny how I have no problem recalling the feeling of extreme boredom though... oh well. trailers played beforehand (thanks to Lars). QT-owned are noted: BEFORE SWINGING BARMAIDS Ginger(QT) Police Women (QT) Night Call Nurses (QT) Private Duty Nurses (QT) BEFORE SWINGING PUSSYCATS Dagmars Hot Pants (QT) Helga Candy (QT) Teenage Tramp (QT)
05.13.07	Blades of Glory	Josh Gordon	Took my parents to see this. I thought it was really funny, but it was clear to me that my mom, who's much more familiar with the world of competitive figure skating, thought it was much much funnier. It is kind of a rehash of previous Will Ferrell efforts - there seems to be a genre building of childish sport comedies (Talladega Nights, Dodgeball, Blades of Glory, Balls of Fury) - that all employ the same kind of humor, characters, and plots... but whatever. I thought this was funny.
05.12.07	28 Weeks Later	Juan Carlos Fresnadillo	This was probably a bad idea but I wanted to see this and Jarrette was going to a midnight show so I sacrificed a few hours sleep to see it before I hear from everyone how good/bad it is. The spoiler-free answer: This movie kind of felt like a viral epidemic to me. At first I was loving it, then one thing happens and I'm like "eh, well I don't get that but it's still a good movie, I can forgive that." Then a few more things happen and I'm like "well.. ok so I have a handful of problems with it... but the rest is really good so it's still mostly good for sure" and by the end I think i'm 50/50 on the liking it/not liking it meter. Like Jarrette said, it was one rewrite away from being a really good movie, even though I think he had different problems with it than I did, well.. some of them. I'm sure we overlapped as well. Spoilers from here on out! I really liked how they pulled a Psycho and had Carlyle get infected. I thought it was handled really well too with the sad music playing over the violence and blood. It was also excitedly unexpected how the main medic girl gets it. But... there's something about the Psycho move that... to me, if you're going to develop a character like he's your main protagonist then you're gonna very suddenly shift the narrative away from him, he can't linger. I hated how they kept him as kind of the everpresent pursuing uber-zombie. He should've died way sooner in some cool but random way. and i know this has been going on long enough to where I'm supposed to be ok with it, but I'd really like there to be a movie made again someday where I can tell what the fuck is going on in the action scenes. I think I first complained about this in Gladiator so that's what, 7 years now of hating modern-day action sequences? gah. It's like every time this movie is supposed to get "crazy" all it means is they start jiggling the camera more and cutting more often. like dudes with bloody eyes biting people and ripping into arteries and shit is too boring to just shoot... you've got to make your audience's subconscious work overtime at piecing the strobe cuts together and thinking about what we might have just seen. It's really frustrating and I hate it and I wish it would stop. But unlike Jarrette, I like the typhoid mary aspect to virus movies. I thought it was kind of writerly with the different eye colors but whatever... I was digging on the whole medical thing and whatnot but then it became a cure thing and that i wasn't so into. the whole save-the-kid thing seems really familiar when they're on the verge of a carrier spreading infection thing. But I guess with that they're limited by the instant craziness of the virus... but whatever. And mental note, when there's a deadly outbreak that you're trying desperately to contain, it might be a good idea to leave the lights on. Sure it makes for a scarier and strobier little scene but come on... in what military rulebook does that little gem reside? Oh shit, some of these people are infected with a virus that has visible symptoms! Quick, huddle them all together and make it totally dark! It's for their safety! The movie has a handful more of those kinds of things that just don't make sense - and really I think a large part of these movies is thinking about the "what if..." aspects of the situation and reacting to realistic ways of dealing with it - but I already feel like I'm picking on it. All the calm parts I really liked. Most of the beginning stuff (i thought the prologue was ok (would've been great if i could see it) but i'm talking more about the establishing stuff with London and Isle of Dogs and bringing in people), I loved Robert Carlyle until he became Michael Myers, and I like Idris Elba and Harold Perrineau but they were both underused. I wish it was better.
05.11.07	In Hot Pursuit	Jim West	The last movie of the night (which started at like 1:30a) has always been referred to me as Polk County Pot Plane. It's kind of an adventure story starring these two dudes named Oosh and Doosh. As QT describes them, they're kinda like 70s versions of the Barbarian brothers but not as smart. Another regional film reeking of Georgia about these two guys helping to smuggle pot... somewhere. It's not really an adventure movie but the plot structure is kinda odd in that you just follow these guys for no reason... so they do a job and they kinda get away with it but then another job comes up and that one doesn't go so well but then stuff happens and another job comes up and so forth, so the last half hour has almost nothing to do with the first half hour and as you watch you get two feelings: 1. I have no idea where this is going. 2. I have no idea when this is ending. And yet some things are telescoped to an extreme. There's a stunt involving a house that's set up for like a half-hour. Like suuuuuper long and it's so obvious that you know immediately, but it kind of goes around the bend (like the chase in Psycho from Texas) from funny to tedious and back to funny. So for some things you know exactly where it's going but in terms of big picture grand scheme type stuff, you're just along for the ride. So I think maybe the thing about this movie that impressed me the most are the stunts. QT talked about this in his intro as well, saying there sure as hell weren't any stunt coordinators or anything like that so that they did these stunts at all is just huge. And that kind of psychotic lack of fear or planning or common sense shows in most of the stunts. Like, it's incredibly clear that the scene with the guys hanging from the helicopter was just those guys hanging onto the helicopter. One guy's like yeah! and gives a thumbs up while he's hanging like 70 feet above the city. All the car stuff was great because it's also pretty clear that they didn't have any back up vehicles... so the continuity's great because all that stuff was just went-out-and-done... I think the biggest "whoa" moment was when this prop plane (like the biggest plane ever for smuggling weed btw) has to land in this cut-out runway and shears the tops of the trees off. that's crazy! those guys were crazy! That's damned entertaining! So... you know, this one had a few slow spots. I won't say i liked it as much as Redneck Miller, but I did enjoy myself quite a bit. I thought it was good and the highs definitely outweighed the lows. I'm sure there are tons of things I'm forgetting to mention but hopefully I'll see it again someday and get another chance to go on about it. trailers played beforehand (thanks to Lars). QT-owned are noted: Before IN HOT PURSUIT McCullochs (QT) Outlaw Blues (QT) Moving Violations (QT) Black Oak Conspiracy (QT) Convoy (QT) High Ballin' (QT) Breaker Breaker (QT) Road Games (QT) 09/24/07 UPDATE!!!: The best unforseen byproduct of starting this site is occasionally having the right person type in the right google search terms and find their way here. After posting this I got a few short comments from folks somehow related to this film and that was a real thrill but when I got home tonight (this is during Fantastic Fest 2007), I had this waiting for me in my inbox: You have no idea how much fun it was making that movie. There are many things you got wrong in the review. First, I was a State Rep. for 72 District of Clayton County Georgia, not Polk County. I was Flying Governor Busby over that mt. in my Helicopter where the plane was sitting. That was the first time I saw that plane. It was surrounded by ATF and FBI etc... We landed and were met at gunpoint until they all knew who we were. I told the Governor I was going to buy that plane. I bought the mountain, the plane, and the rights to the story that was told to me by one of the felons and the pilot. No one else had any money invested except me. No one in the house but myself and on my own time had anything to do with the movie. The actors are friends and family and people who wanted to be a part of the movie. The only part of the movie that was filmed in Polk County was around the plane and when it flew off the Mt... The rest of the movie was filmed in Jonesboro Georgia, and in my house and back yard. I guess what I am trying to say is the best part of the movie was the making of the movie. The movie did appear on the big Screen many times. I am not sure how the movie made it to your screen, but I am honored, no matter what you may think of it. I wrote it all the way down to the last line, I furnished the cars, Helicopter, plane, the Truck that Plowed thru the House, I furnished the house as well. I found the actors (as they may be) the jail scene was really in the Jonesboro Ga. jail, the jail men were real. All of the movie equipment was purchased, I still have it as a matter of fact. I directed it, and even was in the movie. Every penny came from my pocket. As I have always told people that thought it a bad movie, "You make one by yourself, and let's see how it turns out"! This is one you need to know the behind the scenes story that really would make you laugh. Respectfully Yours, Jim West PS The plane was real, the idea was based on a true story, yes, that plane really did fly in pot, but in real life, it did not get away. I flew it to Fla after that scean and sold it. I wish I had kept it. Crazy!! With many of these old movies that the Alamo shows during Weird Wednesday or part of QTfest, I wonder what the story and circumstances were back then to create such an... interesting film. Well in this case, now I know! So, my apologies to Mr. West for the inaccuracies in my first review and a big big thanks to him for writing to talk about making it! It sure sounds like a hell of a good time and I really think that carried over to the film because as I think back to seeing this months and months ago, I remember really liking its homegrown humor (even if it is unintentional every once in a while) and crazy-ass stunts. Aint it cool? Oops, I guess I can't say that. Hmm.... Isn't that awesome!?
05.11.07	Redneck Miller	John Clayton	Tonight's triple feature was regional hillbillies. I guess the night started really really late which worked out for me because I got there around 9:45 and the first film hadn't ended yet. That movie, Hot Summer in Barefoot County, I didn't really care for at all but bet I would've had a better time seeing it with the crowd. It's just really slow and not funny or absurd enough to carry me. So, this paragraph has to be about how nice Karen the manager is. She not only didn't give my seat away by selling a stand-by ticket but she also had an idea where an empty seat was when I got there, double-checked with me after the first movie ended to make sure i got a seat, and did some totally gross dirty work that no one should ever have to do. She's always on her game and persists in being the glue that holds the theater workings together and makes being an Alamo regular such an enjoyable experience. So... that said, I saw Micah on one of the side seats and thought it'd be ok to sit there for the night. The old wooden seats were hard but I found them tolerable. I've never spent a whole movie on the newer side seats, which for those that aren't familiar with them are higher more like barstools with a small layer of vinyl padding on the seat. Well, for whatever reason, I had a total reaction to it that made my ass sweat. It was not cool. Luckily some more seats opened up for the last film so I value this experience as knowledge gained and lesson learned. get there early! But that really should be "the way" though. I'm so glad they whole reserved/assigned seat thing is out. Getting there early and waiting in line is part of the moviegoing experience that never really bugs me. If you're late for the movie, a bad seat is just what you get. it's been that way since the beginning and shouldn't stop now. This isn't opera. wow how bloggy! ok! So Redneck Miller was one of QT's first prints and he saw it 10 years ago and kinda remembers liking it. I think it's because of this that he totally undersold the movie. This is really great, and it's not just because the main dude is pretty badass and is named Miller. He's a DJ so people call him that, or maybe his name is DJ too and it's just a coincidence? whatever. The movie's really really solid. It's pretty funny, it's really really cheap, it's earnest and bursting with authentic regional heart, and it never really drags like a lot of movies with severe limitations end up doing. This dude steals Miller's uniquely painted bike and rips off a drug drop so the dudes who were supposed to get the drugs target Miller instead. The turn comes about after they kind of accost him and force him to meet with the big boss man when Miller tolerates their jive for like 30 seconds then says "to hell with this" and takes their gun and kicks their ass and leaves. The this trio of black drug dealers becoes... comic relief sounds shallow but they are constantly funny. But they still bring a black favor to the movie that I really appreciate. But there's also the music which is great both when its supposed to be (like chase sequences or whatever) and in random cornball cues like whenever Miller signs off or a little slide whistle whenever appropriate. It's so goofy but it worked on me full throttle. I loved every note played. And oh man, Miller's on-air rap is so great. Something about soggy sandwiches and another day of paying your dues... just great stuff. So I wouldn't really call this movie a comedy even though it's funny nor would I say it's a serious drama because there's that tinge of non-professional actorness whenever things get heavy... but it's just a hell of a good time and its own brand of movie that just is what it is. Really great. And for anyone that knows me, it's ok to call me redneck or DJ or just yell MILLER! whenever you see me. I'll respond. Again though, no notebook means no notes means no trailer listing. They were great as usual though so maybe I'm hoping I can coerce Lars into sending me a listing again just to keep things complete, even though these notes are by no means complete on these movies. I already feel like I've forgotten about a hundred great little details... but oh well. moving on. trailers played beforehand (thanks to Lars). QT-owned are noted: Before HOT SUMMER IN BAREFOOT COUNTY Small Town In Texas (QT) Texas Detour (QT) Gator (QT) Truck Stop Women (QT) Ride In A Pink Car (QT) Moonrunners (QT) Before REDNECK MILLER Hillbilly Jamboree (QT) God's Little Acre (QT) Road To Nashville (QT) I Walk The Line (QT) Thunder In Carolina (QT) Fireball 500 (QT) Fast Company (QT)
05.10.07	The Oldest Profession	Various	One last sex comedy to fill out the bill. This one is an omnibus where different directors handle the history of prostitution, starring with prehistoric times and going up through the ages. Franco Indovina directs the prehistoric one where a woman discovers make-up and gets a guy to give her all his jewelry to sleep with her, Mauro Belognini directs the roman times where Caesar goes to a brothel and finds his wife working there, Philippe de Broca directs the French Revolution one where Jeanne Moreau plays a prostitute duped by a john pretending that the guy who's just been executed outside her window is his aristocratic uncle and he's just come into an inheritance, Michael Pfleghar directs one called The Gay Nineties where Raquel Welch discovers that a john is a Hanover (as in Bank of Hanover) and plays her way into marrying him, Claude Autant-Lara directs the modern-day one where a girl uses an ambulance as her bedroom, and the distinguished director Jean-Luc Godard directs the final sketch called Anticipation, a futuristic sci-fi piece where a guy from another galaxy orders a prostitute and teaches her to kiss. All of them were amusing. I think I liked Godard's the most though just because it was so strange. Maybe Raquel Welch's one was more enjoyable but Godard's was just so... Godardian. But it was short so it worked for me. There's a bit where they feed each other this water from a spray can and each one laps it up as it's being atomized onto their mouth and chin. plus he also shifts color overlays... it's so pretentious it's hilarious in a movie about prostitution. I dunno... just so strange. Really fun and funny movie though. tommorrow night is Redneck Night and I'll probably be missing the first movie but Micah lent e a copy of it so I watched it today! But just for the record, the first movie tomorrow night is Hot Summer in Barefoot County, followed by two other movies that I really want to see. Hopefully, I'll get to! trailers played beforehand (thanks to Lars). QT-owned are noted: BEFORE OLDEST PROFESSION Madam Kitty (QT) Camille 2000 Two Faces Of Love
05.10.07	Sex with a Smile	Sergio Martino	Next up is an omnibus sex comedy directed by Sergio "Torso" Martino, starring like a dozen more hot euro babes. Actually this one and the next one were vignette-structered movies so by the end of the night it felt like I'd just seen 12 movies. They also kind of meld together. Let's see if I can remember these... I think my favorite was the story with Barbara Bouchet where this guy pays her 20 million lire to have sex with him and she protests for a while then gives in... then he comes back with another 20 million, then he eets her at the airport with another 20 million and ends up getting to bone hot Barbara three times... but then her husband arrives on a flight and it's revealed that the horny guy was hired by the hubby to deliver 60 million lire to him so ha ha, joke's on you, hot girl! It was funny though. Actually all the stories were funny. Each one was kind of a duet with a hot chick and an Italian comic. Another highlight was The Bodyguard where Marty Feldman (known mostly to me as Igor in Young Frankenstein (the guy with the lazy bugeyes)) is sworn to protect some mob doll. The segment is a tour de force in his massive physical comedy skills. At one point he's coated in concrete and trying to crack his body parts out so he can move, and he goes through this whole routine with carefully molding his fingers into a closed position like he's about to judo chop something, but then he does this minute move and it suddenly becomes him trying to listen by cupping his ear. hilarious. He acheives really super broad comedy with really subtle stuff... quite remarkable (and now that I think of it, Mr. Bean-esque). Really funny but populated wiht ultra-hot women. I love the hot euro women because they actually get naked in their movies. You're sitting there watching and marvelling at how beautiful Barbara Bouchet is and then a few scenes later you get to see her breasts. Awesome stuff. trailers played beforehand (thanks to Lars). QT-owned are noted: BEFORE SEX WITH A SMILE Birds Do It, Bees Do It Chatter-Box Boob Tube Beach Girls (QT)
05.10.07	Sex on the Run	Franz Antel	Here we go for another QT mini-fest, this one held in honor of the original downtown location closing in a month. It's a sad time but also a happy time... QT screenings are great because a lot of friends show up and it's fun to talk in the lobby in between shows. Unfortunately it's also Mother's Day weekend and my parents will be in town this weekend so I'll have to miss some movies tomorrow night and sunday night... hopefully not too many though. But since I'm gonna be up half the night then have to adhere to my parents' "normal" sleep schedule, these notes are gonna suffer. Sorry, I need sleep. Anyway, this first one previously showed during QT4 as part of a Sex Night double feature with Jess Franco's Sucubus. It's a sex comedy starring Tony Curtis as both Casanova and a random guy who looks just like Casanova. It's period so there are tons of corsets and bustiers and stockings all over the place... which is good. Unfortunately, the movie felt really long to me like a sluggish rhino that's just woken up from a nap and trying to trot down to the trough to get his dinner but he's not really hungry... he's really still half-asleep and it's hot out and he doesn't want to run so he takes his time lumbering to where you know he's going. Lots of hot women here. LOTS. In his intro, QT targetted on how many hot euro babes were on display tonight and he's right. it's a Rosalba Neri shy of being all of my faves. He also mentioned that Harry noted this was a low point in Tony Curtis' career and that we should be so lucky to have a low point like that: namely jetting off to Venice to ham it up with a cadre of hot young naked flesh... yeah, that's tough. As usual, a series of trailers play before each feature. No notebook this time around so those are lost too. Sorry, jealous reader. my attention to detail is slipping! I do know that at one point they played a trailer for How to Seduce a Woman and in my head I thanked Micah because it was like the only movie I'd seen before. UPDATE: Big thanks to Lars who sent me a complete list of trailers for this fest. I know this will come even more in handy a few years from now when I think back to the event and re-read this stuff. QT-owned trailers are noted: BEFORE SEX ON THE RUN Bawdy Adventures of Tom Jones 9 Lives Of Fritz The Cat (QT) How To Seduce A Woman War Goddess
05.10.07	Hot Summer in Barefoot County	Will Zens	Quentin Tarantino's coming back to town to show one more weekend's worth of forgotten exploitation movies before the original downtown Alamo location closes for good. Of course he picks Mother's Day weekend to do it so my parents are visiting this weekend, making it regretfully impossible for me to make a couple of the shows (hopefully I'll be able to put them to bed before 10 so I can make the second and third features). This movie is one that both Micah and Lars told me sucks - and I wasn't planning on watching it - but since I'm now going to have to miss QT's screening of it I figured I'd sit through it just to fit in with the cool kids. Yeah, it sucks.
05.09.07	Cop Killers	Walter Cichy	Ultra cheap movie made to fund Flesh Gordon. Most everything Lars said in his intro I agree with: the ice cream man is classic, every line of dialogue sounds like two kids trying to be tough, the movie loses its steam toward the end (in perhaps one of the least exciting car chases of all time), and Bill Osco really really cannot act. I'm pretty tired so I wont go on but... let's just say it looked like they had a lot more fun making the movie than I did watching it. Not to say I hated it or anything, but it won't go down as a personal favorite either.
05.09.07	The Born Losers	Tom Laughlin	Dramatic first appearance of Billy Jack! whatever. I don't get why everyone always calls him an Indian. I guess if he came up to you and said "yeah, i'm native american" you'd then have license to slander but... dude looks nothing like an Indian! It's always bothered me and probably always will. I think I'll go up tonight and call random white people Indian and maybe I'll get lucky and one of them will actually be one and kick my ass with his green beret skills. Jack Starrett wins the award for being the biggest badass that isn't Billy Jack in any Billy Jack movie. It seems like he was hobbled a bit in editing or something because all of his lines are super badass and he plays it accordingly but his character ends up still falling for every little trick the bikers play on him and ends up being rather ineffectual... which are definitely not badass traits. Although I labeled this a biker movie, I don't think it actually is one. Although they have the cool names and act like the bikers in every other movie, they are portrayed as ultimate evil in this movie and are there basically just to test Billy Jack and taunt him into kicking their ass. It's like a weird blend of biker movie with hippie morals. Still, there's a great moment where one of the girls involved in a rape case tells her mother that she liked it and she keeps sneaking back to get more because she hates her mom so much. Ahhh teenage rebellion, the biker's friend. The whole time I was watching this I kept thinking about that series of ads where Laughlin went crazy... maybe sometime I'll direct myself in a series of movies designed specifically to make me look like a badass. i bet that's fun.
05.09.07	The Amorous Adventures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza	Raphael Nussbaum	AKA Superknight, this period sexploitation musical ended up reinforcing how much I liked Cinderella ore than drawing any sort of entertainment on its own. I can't help but compare them and, of the two, Cinderella has better songs, hotter women, and funnier jokes. Sorry, Don. Not a very good movie.
05.08.07	The Manitou	William Girdler	William Girlder's last film. Starring TOny Curtis. About some native american medicine man trying to rebirth himself by growing a fetus on Susan Strassberg's shoulder. It starts off really well with moments of genuine creepiness but by the end it's so over-the-top out-of-control huge that I sort of lost interest. A lot of that might have to do with how dated the effects are but mostly I think it's that I dont like it when things get too huge. Same with Ghostbusters and Spiderman 3 and anything else. For me the perfect balance of dreading something huge happening/fighting to stop it and how it actually resolves is Carpenter's Prince of Darkness. That one arm is enough... because something so huge or evil or powerful or whatever is bound to dissapoint when you actually see it. anyway... i really liked the first half of this movie.
05.07.07	We Were Never Here	Antonia Ganz	A doc about German rock band Mutter, perhaps most famous for its various affiliations with Jorg Buttgereit. This is either a case of the subject matter not warranting a feature-length film or the film itself falling short of telling the best possible story (probably a healthy mix between the two). As it was, it's a pretty long 97 minutes that just ends. I liked some of the music but some I didn't. I liked some of the guys but never really saw them open up too much like the really great music docs... I dunno, I don't really have too much to say about this one. I liked the band that played before it though (Diagonals).
05.06.07	Breaking and Entering	Anthony Minghella	It's weird to watch a good movie after sitting through a night full of crap. It's also weird to watch an Anthony Minghella movie and like it. I was really thrown after liking Cold Mountain and now this, which I thought was pretty good as well. Crazy. He needs to make another movie that everyone but me likes so I feel back to normal. I do love how, since he's all serious and major and stuff, hot actresses like Vera Farmiga and Juliette Binoche get naked in his movies though. good heavy little movie.
05.06.07	Because I Said So	Michael Lehmann	Double barf. well THAT was a bad idea...
05.06.07	Music and Lyrics	Marc Lawrence	barf.
05.06.07	Flushed Away	David Bowers, Sam Fell	It's interesting to see the Aardman design style translated to CG. I think they actually modelled the animation to look stop-esque as well... I don't know if they were trying to fool anyone or just evoke the style but whatever... I think it worked. Pretty funny... not much else to say. tonight I am feeling extra masochistic so I'm doing a doulbe feature of romantic comedies. wish me luck.
05.05.07	Joysticks	Greydon Clark	While there were more people than I expected, it's still a shame that Napoleon Dynamite could sell out and Joysticks could draw maybe 60 people. oh well. Before the show, they had Satan's Hollow going and Jack got the high score. Way to go, Jack! Nerd! anyway, it was good of John Gries to stay and hang out for this and it was even better that his girlfriend made him stay and watch the movie because she hadn't seen it before. It had to be weird for him to sit there while a small group of us really geeked out on such a horrible (in the best way) 80s gem. But it's cool that he stuck it out even though he said he honestly wanted to kill himself after he made the movie and thought that his career was over. But he also said this had the worst music in movie history which... I disagree with. the music in this movie is GREAT. I really need to track down a soundtrack or get a good copy of the movie to rip audio or something because the songs in this film kick ass. There's the theme song sure with the "totally awesome video games!" but also.. the Knack-esque King Vidiot cue and the "shake it around" love theme... all these background songs that the lyrics are way too loud in so you can hear them even though there's dialogue and whatnot going on. great stuff. Gries also mentioned that he couldn't tell whether Joe Don Baker was drinking or just happy all the time, but whichever it was he had a good time working with him. So... this would make great double features either with Pinball Summer as an early 80s youth culture exploitation fest or with The Wizard as a video gamesploitation night. Such specific niches, such totally awesome movies. This was tons of fun. I really liked the movie and saw it's great to see some friends again and generally wallow in our weird tastes and afterward Gries was super nice and kept introducing himself like "hi, I'm John." and stayed well past all the fans had left and it was a few minutes of quiet laid-back conversation in the lobby of the drafthouse - moments that i'll perhaps miss the most after the move (depending on how the new lobby is or if there even is one) - talking about random things, hearing awesome little anecdotes from Gries' long and varied career, and just having a good time. Incidentally, they played a trailer for a movie that Gries made an early appearance in called Swap Meet, which looked like a swapsloitation film all about the weirdos who hang out at flea markets and the hijinx that goes on. Tim mentioned that he MAY have a print of it and might have to show it if he does and Gries said that Joysticks was like Gone with the Wind compared to Swap Meet. I'll be there! And then I walked outside and remembered the date. It's funny, Cinco de Mayo up in Rochester, NY is just May 5th. It comes after May 4th and right before May 6th. So i continue to completely disregard the date as anything special, and am therefore surprised when I walk out of the little movie geek cocoon of the Alamo into a sea of party-dressed drunk people, cabs, pedi-cabs (grrrr), cops, cops on horses (grrrrrr), road blocks, bad live music, and more people who cross the road when the light is green. Unlike Halloween when there are tons of people downtown but they're all dressed cool or slutty or St. Patrick's day when there are tons of people downtown but they're all dressed in green or slutty, this was just like any other Saturday night but more. tons more people clogging the streets. I fled. I also thought about if it was that bad in the warehouse district, what's it gonna be like after the Alamo moves to 6th street. I glanced down that way on my walk to my car and could only see a throng of movement with two cop cars slowly being enveloped. After shuddering, it made me value these last few months all the more.
05.05.07	Napoleon Dynamite	Jared Hess	I saw this again because it was at the Alamo and I don't think I ever got to see it in a theater and John "Uncle Rico" was there in attendance. I don't really know where the backlash came from this movie. Like, by the time I saw it it had already gone from really cool to too mainstream for the cool kids to oversaturated. I still think it's funny in its own way. I like that it's its own hermetic world out of time nestled up there in Idaho and it's not self-aware or satirical of anything... it's just odd and funny. THe same goes for the plot. it's really rambling and slice-of-life-y but it's a slice of a life that's really strange. I dunno, I still really like this movie. Gries was awesome. He was funny and easygoing and wore a Chuy's hat and said he ate at Salt Lick yesterday and liked it (debunking all those nasty vegetarian rumors). Someone asked him about it and he was like "did you see that steak? I would've rather eaten Tina's ham!" so there you go, all you people who got here by googling "john gries vegetarian." He had several amusing little anecdotes about the production including a screening in Prescott or whatever town they filmed it at where nobody laughed but everyone liked it, thinking it was how life was. He also said Jared Hess' description of Uncle Rico was like meets David Hasslehoff meets Burt Reynolds meets Elvis. Out in the lobby beforehand, Karrie was taking glamour shots of people with a football and Zack had a plate of steaks for people to throw meat at a big poster of a target with Napoleon's head in the center. They also had "Vote for Pedro" T-shirts for sale. They also had tater tots on the menu. General fun times that the Alamo provides.
05.05.07	Thrashin'	David Winters	So when I watched Suburbia again, I was confused because I could've sworn there was a scene where the kids go to a club and see Freaky Stylee-era Red Hot Chili Peppers play Blackeyed Blonde. But it wasn't there, so I did some IMDb digging and found out that my memory of that was actually from this film. Sure enough, that scene is exactly as I remember it. The rest of the movie isn't though. It's not punk at all... it's drenched in 80s Hollywood depictions of youth culture though. So many poseurs, especially held up to Suburbia. I'd love to see some weird alternate reality film where the Suburbia kids somehow show up in venice and kick the everloving crap out of the Thrashin' kids with their pansy black leather jackets and skate-or-die graffitti. Seriously, as a movie this is even inferior to the roller blading knock-off movie Airborne. I guess it gets points for being first though... Um... so it's Romeo and Juliet grafted onto the 80s LA skate scene where a good-guy group of valley guys go against the punky ruffians of Venice. Except the ruffians say lines like "well that look happens to be stylin' so you don't know what you're talking about." I mean, maybe the disenfranchised youth of 86 really talked like that but... no. I shouldn't really fault this movie for not being authentic though. It's so potently 80s that nothing else really matters. I mean how can you hate a movie with dialogue like this? -What do you thrash? -What have you got?
05.04.07	Invincible	Ericson Core	this time around it's The Eagles who are losers and recruit an old bartender who makes the cut and doesn't totally suck. Maybe next year Disney will make the story of an old gas station attendant who became a pro hockey player and they can call it The Invincible Rookie? Anyway. I liked this one more than the last, largely because I like the gang of character actors that play his South Philly buddies and I also like looking at Elizabeth Banks. Not a surprise that both movies have the same exact "they're better than you but you have heart so you can win" speech... along with other little things like structure, theme, music, and aesthetic. ahhh, Hollywood's churning them out, aren't they? Well I now feel so uplifted that I need to watch something incredibly depressing to even myself out. Something from the 70s where someone almost wins but then they lose. and get hurt. and their mom dies. and their dog does too. and then they die. slowly. But i'll probably go to sleep instead.
05.04.07	We Are Marshall	McG	Tonight is a self-flagellating 2006 set-in-the-70s inspired-by-true-events uplifting pretty-boy-starring football movie double feature! I think that may be one of the most specific themes I've had yet. I think these movies are about as close as they can get to being the same movie without being remakes or sequels to one another. It's bound to be awesome in a way that will likely make me want to vomit. First up is this one with McConaughey about a bunch of football players who die and the uplifting and unskilled freshman team who replace them. I guess the movie presents this story in a somewhat different tone but whatever. I thought it was awesome that they had the big moment be the second game of the season (which they won at the last second!) and then the voice-over at the end mentions that they lost every other game and kept losing for like 20 years. I love it when Hollywood somehow thinks they have to adhere to the truth and it completely goes against the whole movie that they make. Since I don't watch Lost, Matthew Fox's charm is completely lost on me. so... I really don't know why I'm doing this, but i'm doing it! Let's finish this sucker off
05.04.07	Lucky You	Curtis Hanson	I'd like to say that the studio just didn't get it or couldn't figure out how to market this movie and that's why they held off on releasing it for like 4 years then dumped it out against the biggest movie of the summer... but that's not the case. Like pretty much every movie that gets delayed and delayed and delayed until you've all but forgotten about it then quietly sneaked into release and on to oblivion, it has some pretty major problems. For me, the biggest of those problems is Drew Barrymore's character. I don't even really think it's her fault, but every line she speaks reeks of lame device-y omniscient wisdom and it sounds terrible how she's always using poker terms in real life. But it's not just her. everything about the movie just doesn't come together. I wanted it to. I was really rooting for it. Moments are OK. But ultimately it doesn't work. Call it a misfire or bad luck or whatever... it's just not that good. But for as not good as it is, it also feels 4 years too late. There's all this stuff about how poker is changing and these new things happening like hole cameras on players' cards and online players winning tournaments that, maybe 4 years ago was still new and interesting, are now commonly accepted as part of the current trend and popularity. I really don't understand the studio move of holding a movie back for years and years. It's no better now than it was way back then. If anything it's worse. oh well.
05.03.07	Invasion of the Bee Girls	Denis Sanders	Really fun and entertaining movie. I'm glad it lived up to its expectations for me. William Smith plays a relatively (for him) mild-mannered federal guy sent to investigate deaths at some government research place. All these guys are dropping dead from sexual delight. It is, of course, the product of gene research gone wrong to create a bee-girl who does it like a queen but is sterile from radiation so her urge to copulate never sates. Hot naked women with black eyes, some occasional gore, and William Smith, man. that is a recipe for delight.
05.02.07	Black Cobra	Joe D'Amato	Rail thin Laura Gemser gets naked a lot then exacts reptilian revenge on her real life husband! Or I don't know if they were married at the time... Lars just told me that after it ended. Anyway, a huge death storm scared away all but the intrepid few tonight which is a big shame because for some weird reason I'm much more comfortable staring at hot naked women with perfect breasts and bushy 70s pleasure coves in a full theater. Having the audience be sparse makes it somehow more seedy and depraved. Especially with it raining out and some people wearing overcoats. So even though I'm not a huge fan of these kinds of films (they remind me too much of the cinemax stuff I used to watch as an early teen), a couple things in this movie got me through: The music. This haunting melodic score with a breathy female vocal and an uber-swank keyboard and rythm Jack Palance. He's really odd in this. I thought he was almost playing against type because he was this calm quiet guy who never goes crazy or kills someone or bites anyone's ear off. not even once. I guess he's supposed to be acting reptilian to match his snake-loving character, but aside from being very weird I thought he came off remarkably likable. For Jack Palance. The revenge. I'd say this is a great example of why I watch these types of movies. This movie... is pretty slow. And since it's a drama, there's not really any humor or anything too bizarre happening to make it a real novelty experience, so you're sitting there watching it, perfectly OK with it being a sexy drama with lesbian scenes and a paper-thin plot about how she doesn't like to be owned by anyone and some sort of sibling rivalry (I blame the parents. Who names their kid Judas anyway?) but then this scene comes along that's so outrageously awesome that, to me, it not only makes the movie worth watching but it makes the movie good. She has the guy who killed her female lover held down on the ground, then a guy brings up this cobra and she says something along the lines of "relax, his venom glands have been removed. But the funny thing is, this snake has been trained to eat its way out of anything because it has to be free. So I'm gonna put the devil inside you to let it eat out your demons, and this snake is the devil." And they take down his pants and I guess shove the snake up his ass and it eats its way through him and kills him. They don't show anything but the idea is enough. That's an idea worth stealing. If I was quentin tarantino, I'd put that in my next movie. So after that, it's all gravy.
05.02.07	Mad Monster Party	Jules Bass	I have the Alamo pre-show to thank for turning me onto this. A late 60s Rankin-Bass feature-length stop-animated movie starring Boris Karloff, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Wolfman, Dr. Jeckyll, Mr. Hyde, The Invisible Man, The Creature from the black lagoon, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, King Kong, a zombie that looks and sounds like Peter Lorre, and Phyllis Diller as a hag. Yeah. I really wish I grew up watching this every year because it's pretty cornball for me now but I can imagine totally loving it if i saw it at age 6. I really loved just looking at all the famous Halloween monsters when I was a kid and here they are all together moving around and dancing to skeletal Beatles playing awesome 60s pop Monster Mash-esque tunes. There's really only a few things holding the movie back from being absolutely perfect kiddie inspiration. 1. a lot of time is spent with some normal human guy who's boring. 2. there's weird musical segments where people sing about being in love or whatever and that's boring. 3. they all die at the end! what kind of party is that!? That's bullshit! There is a hot redhead who falls in love when the boring human slaps her though, so that's cool (although maybe a mixed message to kids). But it's all so ghoulish and morbid and fun and great. I really would've gone nuts over this 20 years ago. I'm still really amazed to find out that it exists (and that I've never even heard about it before)... if it was just a bit less corny and maybe 15 minutes shorter I'd go nuts for it now, but it's pretty clearly a children's movie. If and when I have kids though, this will be mandatory viewing. As a personal aside, since I didn't know about this when I was a kid, I fell in love with the Night on Bare Mountain segment of Fantasia. Disney would air this Halloween special every year that was a collection of spooky cartoons and it'd always end with this segment which I thought was maybe the best thing ever. I liked the singing skeletons and the Goofy meets the ghosts stuff too but nothing beat those rising spirits and awesome-looking devil guy. Man, I love halloween.
05.01.07	Superbad	Greg Mottola	The next comedy from the Apatow school that's currently ripping shit up. This one's kind of about Seth Rogen's highschool experience starring Jonah Hill and Michael Cera. I guess Sony was doing an advance screening for UT students and gave 20 seats to the Alamo for fantastic fest badge holders so I got a chance to see it early (way early. the movie comes out in august). It's funny. It's really funny. This and Knocked Up are going to make Seth Rogen a huge star this summer. spoilers follow. I really like that there's a really big 70s feel to the movie even though it's a contemporary setting. More than just the funny Foxy Brown titles sequence and absolutely fantastic funk score, the whole movie feels like a sibling to Dazed and COnfuzed and The Stoned Age and yet filled with cell phones and modern references. It was also great to see Joe Lo Truglio pop up in a small part. I guess Paul Rudd broke the seal for the mixing between Wet Hot American Summer alumns and Apatow acolytes. It's great that these two groups are now starting to intermingle even more. It's great that we are now at a spot with this specific kind of humor where there are too many good people to fit into any one movie It's also great that these guys, in addition to seeding familiar faces like Kevin Corrigan and David Krumholtz into the movie, also initiate great new faces. SNL guy Bill Hader and Chris Mintz-Plasse are both great here and 17-year-old especially Mintz-Plasse (AKA McLovin) is bound for glory. I also appreciated how the "hot girls" that the guys go after are hot in a realistically high school way. they're still not exactly perfect 10s (no offense) but still definitely out of these guys' leagues (yes, incredibly large contingent of horny college bitches in the audience, Michael Cera is still kind of a geek. you can shut up now.) And although getting the girls is part of the story, I liked how the movie stayed dedicated to the primary focus of the friends' separation. So even at the end when they both end up going off with their girls who both want them, it still plays like a tragedy and it's kinda sad. Overall, really hilarious and a worthy update to the highschool genre.
04.29.07	The Man with One Red Shoe	Stan Dragoti	Felt like watching something stupid. Why doesn't Dabney Coleman do more movies?
04.28.07	Dust Devil	Richard Stanley	This has been in my queue for a long time. I remember seeing commercials for Hardware but it never came out in a theater where I lived (probably due to the whole ratings thing) so it was like the number one most anticipated video release of the year for me, and I loved the shit out of that movie. It was post-apocalyptic and stylized and perverse and artsy and there was Ministry music and Iggy Pop played a radio DJ and there was a killer robot and a guy got cut in half. I still know Dylan McDermott not as the guy from The Practice or Clint Eastwood's partner in In the Line of Fire but as the metal-handed guy from Hardware. But other than that, I'd heard the director was fired from the Dr. Moreau remake and not much else. Enter this serial killer movie set in Namibia. It's really weird and arty and red and desert-y but also slow and meandering and aimless and kind of a mess. I like all the elements but get a feeling like they don't quite come together. I can definitely see Harvey Weinstein seeing the first cut of this movie and breaking into a cold sweat. There are some interesting things here, soe interesting visuals (and I like the lead actor, Robert Burke (he's on Rescue Me and was on Oz but was also in Good Night and Good Luck. He usually plays a take-no-shit tough guy). In the commentary, Stanley also pointed out that the big guy playing the police captain is the same guy who played the peeping tom neighbor in Hardware and Red Six in Star Wars. I so couldn't believe it that I looked him up and found that he was also Major Eaton in Raiders of the Lost Ark and Eckhart in Burton's Batman movie! That's crazy! William Hootkins. anyway, glad I finally saw this, but think Richard Stanley may end up being a case where I only like one of his movies. he seems like a really intense and weird guy. I checked out his Sea of Perdition short online and it was really... enigmatic. Not sure I go so much for such things. I've been meaning to revisit Hardware though (got it all lined up as a double feature with Death machine (which also has William Hootkins in it!)) so maybe it's just a case of nostalgia driving my love in the first place. who knows...
04.28.07	Lady in White	Frank LaLoggia	children's horror movie that feels a lot like Lemora and Something Wicked This Way Comes to me. The small amount of location footage was nice to see the upstate NY bleakness that I remember. Alex Rocco's real good in it. I should've seen this much younger though. I think I would've really gone for it as a kid. decent.
04.27.07	Diggers	Katherine Dieckmann	Drama from State-alum Ken Marino. I really wanted to see this during SXSW (especially since Marino was in town along with a few other Staties) but scheduling proved impossible. Word was it's pretty mediocre. I dunno. I liked it. It's a small movie, but not without character and charm. I really like all the cast (Josh Hamilton needs to be in more movies that I see, it's nice to see Lauren Ambrose doing this after Six Feet Under rather than Psycho Beach Party 2, and I keep forgetting that Maura Tierney can act (she's so clearly on repeat in ER). While I don't quite fall in love with the group as much as I did in Beautiful Girls, I did appreciate the slice of life and understated performances. For the kind of movie that it is, I liked it. Liked it better than The Groomsman for instance.
04.26.07	TerrorVision	Ted Nicolaou	Zack was really excited for this one. I guess it's a movie that if you see at the right age will stick with you forever. I missed the boat on it though so this was my first time. It's really cheap, starring familiar 80s faces and made by Charles Band's crew. Mary Woronov and Gerrit Graham play the mom and dad who are into swinging though, which may be the most sexuality ever portrayed in a Band production. All of the art in the house was awesome... pop=type paintings of naked women in various fetish lingerie, mostly kneeling or on all fours. Great stuff. The monster is funny looking. I don't know why I thought this (maybe the trailer?) but I thought this movie would be much more like a Harry & the Hendersons type vibe where the family's trying to learn to live with the monster like he's Alf, but instead there's a lot more people-eating than I expected, so I guess I'd call it a horror and not a comedy but it's pretty much right on that line. Eh, I dunno. I found it fun but nothing too special. I guess I'm too old.
04.26.07	Auf Bosem Bodem	Peter Koller	Another night at Tim's house watching Fantastic Fest submissions. This time he's got a new 17-foot inflatable screen so he turned the night into a friendly get-together and invited a bunch of people to watch the movie out on his lawn. I got there a little late so a movie had already started. I don't know the name but it was Korean or something and epic and fantasy and whatnot like a House of FLying Daggers rip-off. It looked pretty but made absolutely no sense and I was quickly bored to tears. After sitting through that for like an hour, Tim finally mercifully turned it off and put on this short called Battle for the Serpent Stone. We all quickly realized that this was, in fact, a live-action G.I. Joe short film. It was awesome. I mean, it was a horrible film, but it was awesome.Duke, lady Jaye, and Snake Eyes are pitted against The Baroness and some cobra troops to find some stone. It's all pretty poorly made but the costumes are decent and it's just so awesome to see real live G.I. Joe characters! Can you imagine a full-length R-rated film??? With the dreadnaughts and the evil twins and cobra commander and destro and all those really specialized different kinds of vipers and whatnot?? oh man that would be so great. So they we watched this Austrian masochist movie. It's about a couple (Romeo + Juliet) who buy this piece of crap studio. Romeo is real tuff, punching people, doing his kinky girlfriend in parking garages and whatnot, and eventually murdering the sleazy real estate agent. So when he goes to bury the body, some madman knocks him out and buries him up to his neck in the dirt. What follows is about 70 minutes of screaming and spitting and fighting andyelling and whatnot. It's kind of funny and also uncomfortable and... ok I guess. I wasn't a huge fan but i had no problem watching it over, say, staring up at the moon or looking at my hands in the dark like I was doing with the previous movie. It's kind of right up Fantastic Fest's alley though so I won't be surprised to see this title on the schedule come September.
04.26.07	Spider-Man 3	Sam Raimi	massive spoilers probably. the short answer is that I thought it had problems. Not as good as 2, arguably on par with 1. I didn't really like it. so stop reading now if you don't want to be ruined. Well, nobody ever accused Sam Raimi of being too subtle. To set this up, I thought the first spider-man movie was severely overrated. I thought it was ok, but also too long and pretty slow and cheesy and just so-so. The second movie impressed me because I was expecting a typical sequel and even though it's long and there's a lot going on, for some reason that movie came together and worked better than I thought it would. Well, this one was pretty close to what I was expecting the last one to be. It's really long, it felt long. Too much stuff happens so not enough attention is devoted to any of them (except Parker himself I guess) and it really comes apart at the seams in the last act. I guess I wasn't as dissapointed as a few other people who are much more into the comic (or at least remember it better than I do even though I was definitely a Spiderman comic fan at one point), but I generally agreed with all their grievances. My favorite story arc that I remember reading was the whole black suit phase. I thought it was awesome that the suit was an alien symbiote and for a while it was a pretty transparent excuse to introduce a design change and make Spidey look cool again... so it was like a whole phase where that was his suit. So for a while he was like super-spidey cuz the suit was working with him and he was still kicking ass and it was just like cool. But then it eventually starts to turn dark, where the suit's doing stuff while he sleeps and he notices his aggression getting out of hand and all that. So it was like a whole thing... not so immediate... and it ended up being a message not to mess with stuff that you don't understand, and that while short-term gains may be cool, you have to be mindful of long-term effects. I realize that they couldn't really do that for a movie (although it certainly was long enough), but when the whole arc's compacted so much it sort of stops making sense. It's seen as a villain and the scene where he's like "wow this is great!" he's doing the exact same stuff he always does. it's like "wow! i can stick to walls and shoot webbing and do flips! this is great!" and then it immediately turns him into an a-hole (my favorite part of the movie by the way) and then he's like "it's gotta go" then Eddie Brock gets it immediately and he's immediately a huge villain then he dies. With Sandman, I liked how they started him. thought that CG sequence of him forming was great. Then he's in one pretty decent scene which turns into this weird thing where I guess NYC has an ancient catacomb Temple of Doom spot in its subway architecture and then you don't see Sandman for like an hour. Then he reappears as this absolutely humongous CG thing that I guess still gets hurt by bombs and stuff even though he's all sand because at a certain point he just falls apart because... I guess he's out of hit points or something. But he revives again long enough to tell Spidey that it was all just an accident before turning into a sandcloud and floating away. what? That's nothing compared to Green Goblin though, who loses one fight then has memory loss (for real) until it comes back and spider-man kicks his ass again. Then he turns into a friend and dies. There must be some setting on those green goblin grenade things because one can go off right in your face and all it does is cause some minor scarring but throw it onto gigantor-sandman's head and it decimates like a city block's worth of animated sand. and throw it at an alien symbiot and it completely incinerates the alien and anyone jumping into it until there's not even ash left. just smoke. I think the biggest F U to the fans is Gwen Stacey though. She really has no reason to be in this movie It could be any girl, really. Incidentally though, I think Bryce Dallas Howard is 50x hotter as a blonde. She doesn't even look like her here... she should keep it and date me. So let's see... there are several things like that that bug and bother me. But hmmm.. bright side... what did i like... well, Bruce Campbell had an entertaining cameo. I didn't think it fit the movie at all but I loved all the stuff that Tobey Maguire does when he's supposed to be acting like a badass. J.K. Simmons is still good as J. Jonah Jameson. Sam Raimi's still giving his brother acting parts (and I guess his other brother co-writing credit now). Thomas Haden Church looks great as Sandman. Topher Grace shows us how great he could've been as Spider-Man. hmmm.... Well i'm sure there are other small moments that I liked too. Just a shame that the gigantic CG action stuff overshadows my memory with blah. Side note: they accidentally strung the reels up in the wrong order so about 3 reels in 20 minutes went missing and all of a sudden James Franco had his memory back, Spidey had his black suit, Peter Parker had a new haircut, MJ was breaking up with him. It was just like QT said where it introduced all these questions in your head like what did you miss but at the same time it was awesome to just skip ahead to all this stuff happening. More Grindhouse than Grindhouse. I'm not sure all the press in the room appreciated it though so they stopped the movie and let us enjoy more free concessions (which everybody had been fully utilizing from the get-go. take that, sony!) while they re-spooled it to show us the missing reel in the right order. That was fun.
04.25.07	Deliver Us from Evil	Horace Jackson	So it's no secret that I love blaxploitation movies, especially the ones that are so cheap that things like story and acting disintegrate into whatever the director's friends could do. Even when they're filled with outrage against oppression and work to stand as deadly serious messages, they still end up coming off as fun. I don't know why... maybe it's the good music or the much more exagerrated style of the 70s, but even a movie like this which couldn't get any more serious and preachy if it went door to door and passed out pamphlets is really really insane hilarity. I've been wanting to see this since the Alamo played the trailer, which features two kids fighting ("I go first cuz I got the bat!" "I go first cuz I got the ball!") to a bunch of kids messing with a kid in a wheelchair to... i dunno, a really heavy-handed title. What I got was a movie made in some weird state where they don't allow you to speak at normal volume. You have to yell everything in extree drama. Then a curtain has to close on you and people start cheering. I really don't know how to explain the vibe of it all. It's like I kinda want to say if BET had an ESPN2-equivalent channel where it was just like BET but injected with more BET to make it like hi-grade BET octane then they made their version of a Stanley Kramer movie, it'd be a watered-down version of this. This movie feels like some weird flipside to the Six THousand Dollar Nigger coin to me. It's got a little bit of the same vibe with the really loose plot and obvious nature of each scene existing just to set up a gag or message, but whereas Super Soul Brother was an intentional comedy, this is as outrageously anti-comedic as it gets. Which makes me feel a little bad because the crowd ate this up, laughed a lot all throughout. I bet if Horace Jackson was here to see a theater full of white people laughing their ass off at his polemic against black-on-black crime... well, I think he might start screaming "boy!" over and over again and taking out elaborate glass shelving with a broom. But we can't help it. This movie is so insane, nothing connects completely, it's so bizarre that it plays as really genius comedy. Right off the bat when the dude's sweeping some generic mad scientist set decoration then he's in a straight-jacket in some weird blank room with multi-colored lighting and he's telling a doctor that he knows why he's there, he's CRAZY (followed by maniacal laughter, followed by the doctor's laughter)... I mean... how can you not laugh at that? So in that mode, this movie is wonderful. Already, the moments are flooding in, making me want to write about it for an hour. There's the scene where the guy picks up the girl ("I like speed. What do you like?") to how every time we see little Joe (a kid in a wheelchair who tries to memorize the lord's prayer), someone's gotta be locking or unlocking the brakes on his chair, to the boss guy telling him to shovel dirt and then being honored to know the man to the absolutely classic drug dealers!!! Man, that first scene where the main guy's trying to outline his plan to sell to all the elementary, junior high, senior high, and junior college kids but he stops every time the other guy snorts a toot and they cut to that guy just wrinkling his nose and staring ahead. Those guys should've been in much more of the movie, but the precious few scenes that they are in are gold ("The kids are ready to fly and I'll give em the wings!"). But then there's the whole romance angle and how the main dude (who clearly IS crazy. who knows how he got out) completely lies to this woman and stalks her then she laughs about it and holds his hands after he does an amazing display of swinging a bat around on the playground, or how the main girl keeps getting more and more injured until the climactic scene where they freeze frame her face contorted mid-slaps over and over again to the two guys selling the campus newspaper for two dollars. what the fuck do those two guys selling the campus newspaper for two dollars have to do with anything??? I don't know and I don't care. Then there's how the main guy (i never really learned any of the characters' names. oh well) starts talking to the camera in the last scene in this awesomely non-sensical socio-political diatribe but still refers to the reverend like he's still talking to him. then the text "WHEN WILL IT END?" flashes up.... and then the movie ends! It ends now, that's when! Oh man... Now... That's not to mean that watching the movie was a non-stop thrill ride. One choice in particular - to cue the same song every time there's black-on-black crime ("look what you're doin to me! Know that you're doin to yourself!") - gets real old real quick. The tune's catchy the first time. The 38th reprise is not so welcome. Also, pretty much any time the cripple kid's on screen or the main girl, it's really slow and you think you might want to shoot yourself. But then the AWESOME cop/probation officer visits the main guy's pink apartment, walks around calmly for a good 45 seconds, checking out the bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, then gets into an extreme pointing match by yelling "you're in trouble, mister!" snd it's the best thing ever. "Don't you know 75% of us are still part of the man's menagerie!?" I guess the probation dude understands what that means (because of his earlier tirade about a time coming and how he can feel it) but he doesn't get how he got the word "menagerie". Probably from the looney bin. I can definitely see this film growing in my brain like mold. With my memory fresh, I remember the moments of boredom as well as the sheer.... whatever! of the movie, but I think as time goes on, the fondness will bloom until I'll think back and not even remember the soggy piece of bread that it used to be... just the fuzzy green carpet of awesomeness that it's turned into.
04.24.07	Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back	Irvin Kershner	so... an undisclosed place awards their employee of the month with a screening of their choice and he picked this movie which an undisclosed person happened to have an old pre-special edition print of. So don't tell George Lucas but this undisclosed venue had a private screening for employees and friends of the print's owner so I got to see the original Empire Strikes Back on the big screen! And what's more, the same undisclosed person has a collection of vintage Star Wars trailers in 35 so we got to see like 7 (plus a Howard the Duck teaser) in a row before the movie! It's amazing how the original trilogy still has a hold on people of my generation. Something about that "Long time ago in a galaxy far far away/STAR WARS" opening that makes you clap. it's just so ingrained... everybody there (and there were a lot of people. pretty much a full house) clapped and cheered, then yelled "ewww" when Leia kisses Luke. I really hate that this version is all but extinct. Yeah matte lines are more pronounced and some of the compositing makes for semi-transparent overlays and you can see flashes of black boxes from the different plates and the full-body taun taun is clearly stop-motion, but those aren't necessarily bad things. It's a product of the hard work that all those people put into the movie back then and it's what millions of people saw and fell in love with. No special effects movie looks perfect forever. I think the differences between Episode 1, 2, and 3 Yodas and R2s are even more distracting than any of the original trilogy stuff. I guess I haven't been saying anything new here... but getting a (rare) chance to see the original work just brings all this stuff up for me... and since this is my site and i can write what i want, tough. take that, lucas!
04.23.07	The Magic Christian	Joseph McGrath	Hippie movie starring Peter Sellars and Ringo Starr and a cavalcade of cameos with a script from Terry Southern based on his book. I think I was a little more shocked with Candy at the mere existence of something that delusional so now that I've had a little more exposure to the British wit style of surrealism, I'm a little better equiped to handle it. This is really episodic and bizarre and absurd and pretty funny. Sellars plays a rich guy who adopts Ringo, a homeless dude, as his son. Then they basically fuck with people, offering lots and lots of money to get them to sell out and go against their code, like making a cop eat a parking ticket or a Sotheby's guy watch as a painting is destroyed or the Oxford crew team to ram the Cambridge team during the race. But then toward the end they go on this boat called the Magic Christian and it loses all sense of place and time and becomes scene after scene of sheer craziness. then it comes back to (relative) normal where Sellars and Ringo throw a bunch of money into a vat of piss and shit and blood and guys go in after it. The end. My favorite bits: on the train when they keep switching out one asian man for another to prove that the guy sitting in the next seat couldn't tell them apart, but then he gets swooped into a secret party room in the train where it's all strobe lights and nakedness. Just before that, Sellars is in a board meeting where he proposes this gigantic car in a crudely animated piece with 30 starlets in the back seat and roman columns for a grill. Then the meeting ends and he passes out envelopes to each member of the board saying they're fired and a clue as to where they are (it's revealed that they've been riding in a train the whole time) and a letter of recomendation for their next employer. There's also a news item about this black power guy getting into Crufts dog show with a very odd breed of dog. It's actually a panther with a black poodle's fur draped over it (including a little tail poof followed by the rest of the panther's long tail). the panther gets in there and eats a bunch of dogs and it's really funny. And the Magic Christian stuff. Yul Brenner in full drag singing to Roman Polanski, CHristopher Lee as dracula roaming the halls, a black and white gay bodybuilding duo dancing the tango in micro-bikinis, Raquel Welch in full roman dominatrix gard whipping a hull full of topless women into rowing Ben-Hur style... about as phantasmagoric as they come. so yeah, pretty crazy.
04.23.07	Walking Tall	Phil Karlson	Yet another one that I wish I could say I saw a long time ago. This was awesome.
04.22.07	Convoy	Sam Peckinpah	I was all set to watch this movie, but then the titles ended and it switched to fullscreen pan&scan. for a 1.85 movie I can kinda let it go but I feel like I'm missing half the movie when it's shot in 2.35. literally. However, when I got on the netflix site, I learned that the DVD of this is somehow converted to 1.85 so it looks all distorted through the whole movie. So i thought I'd rather miss half than have it be skinny and crappy the whole time, but right off the bat it has me wishing I could see it in its correct aspect ratio at some point. I should've gotten this from TCM rather than Showtime. damn it. so.. the beginning and end credits looked really great. anyway. I really like the fact that this is based on a song. People talk about how movies based on video games are so shallow and how can there possibly be good enough story or characters if they come from a game. Well how about a song? Granted it's a pretty narrative song, but still, that's awesome. That's like making a movie starring the Bud, Weis, Err frogs ten years ago or like... Outkast making a Hey Ya movie (oh wait...). So anyway, I really commend that undertaking. Can't get much more commercial than that. This doesn't seem like prime Peckpinpah material, although it's interesting to see his touch on something like this. good times.
04.22.07	Roadside Prophets	Abbe Wool	Since I'm revisiting movies I saw when I was in highschool... this was on cable the other day so I decided to re-watch it. John Doe plays a biker guy who befriends another biker guy one day after work and goes to the bar they used in Fight Club to have a beer with him. On the way, the new friend tells him all about this great place in Nevada with a casino where you're always lucky. Then he dies. So John Doe puts his ashes in a gas tank and takes off for Nevada in search of this fabled place called El Dorado. Along the way, he befriends Beastie BOy Adam Horovitz and they meet up with a series of colorful characters... it's your basic early 90s "quirky" indie with a steady stream of cameos like John Cusack, David Carradine, and Timothy Leary (I guess you can't call it a cameo if you play a waiter and never get a close-up like Don Cheadle). It's kind of got this existential bent to it, like a Vanishing Point Easy Rider vibe, but it's all 90s instead. Not a bad little movie but not one for the vault either, it was fun watching this again but I don't know that I would've tracked it down had it not been on right in front of me. It makes me want to watch that movie Dudes again though. Interesting note about the writer/director: how do you go from writing Sid & Nancy to being an electrician and set lighting technician? weird.
04.22.07	Suburbia	Penelope Spheeris	I remember renting this a few times and really liking it when I was in highschool, largely because Flea has a part in it. Haven't seen it in a long time since then though, and have ended up confusing memories of it with the skate-or-die movie Thrashin' (which I think i want to see again now), but a lot of what I remember liking about it was still here. I love that nobody's really a very good actor at all but you can tell they're just so angsty and punk rock that they don't even care. it's almost like anti-acting. Especially the main guy. He's almost good because you can tell he says every line with the maximum amount of spite. In that way, all of the kids are pretty good and really create a group that you root for against the strip-joint-patron suburban husband scum. I'd really LOVE to see a special edition of this with all the gang re-united for interviews and a commentary. I wonder what happened to all those kids.
04.22.07	Deep Red	Dario Argento	Holy crap a giallo I actually like. And not in like a one-sene type way but most of the movie was enjoyable to me. Very well done. But then again I'm pretty much the last one on the block to finally see this so... duh. I like how the camera is very much a physical presence though... like when the curtains pull back to allow the camera in or you see the camera breaking through some barrier to look at what's going on. and not just in the black glove POV scenes either. I also LOVE the music in this. I think it's maybe my favorite Goblin score to date. The killing theme and the main theme and the music that plays when David Hemmings explores the house are all fantastic.
04.21.07	The Blood of Heroes	David Peoples	With all the older movies I've been watching since moving to town, I have a constant sense of "catching up" where pretty much everything I see has been heavily recommended by lots of people. So if I like the movie, it's kind of like a "well of course" thing and if I don't then it's a "huh, that's strange." So it's really really nice to revisit a movie that I firmly remember seeing on the video shelf all on my own, loving the crap out of it even though none of my friends did, and watching it over and over because I loved it so much, completely independent from any outside knowledge of its general consensus of cool. Freakin Blood of Heroes. A Post-Apocalyptic sports movie, Blood of Heroes is about a band of "juggers" who go from dogtown to dogtown playing this awesomely violent game kind of like a mix between and football and hockey and rugby. Each person has a role on the team, like one guy has a netted barbed chain to swing around in defense of the "quick" whose job it is to handle a dog skull and place it on the opposing team's spike. There's also slashes which use a half-jousty thing/half irom hook and a couple other players with pugil sticks or whatever they are. They play for money (pieces of metal) and to collect winning dog skulls to eventually take to one of the nine existing cities and challenge the professional league. It's all in hopes of going pro and turning into a gladiator superstar. So after the games in these little dogtowns, there's a big party where everyone gets along, gets drunk and gets fucked before moving on the next morning. Leading this band of badasses is Rutger Hauer, with Delroy Lindo, Vincent D'Onofrio, and Joan Chen in lieu. It's pretty much the awesomest movie ever made. It's so great, man. It's all Australian outback-y and desolate and there are flies on everyone's face and the whole world is just dripping with tough guy macho brutality. It's not a movie unless you see Twin Peaks-era Joan Chen biting an ear off a guy, I tell ya. It's the past, it's the future, it's all over the place. I love post-apocalypse movies, i think, largely because of this one. It was truly a forming experience for me and I'm really happy that watching it again tonight made me just as happy as it did the first time. Until I checked IMDb and found out that there's always been 10 minutes cut from the American release. All this time, I've been missing 10 minutes! Although since this cut's ingrained in my memory I bet seeing the long cut will just mess with me, like seeing Leon after already falling for The Professional. Some guy in the message board listed out the missing scenes. Some of them seem cool but others sound like they might ruin the subtle inferences that exist in this cut. A lot of the human stuff is never actually addressed with dialogue (because in this world, if you talk about your feelings then they will crush your skull) but still communicated through looks and small moments. I think that's a big part of why I love the movie so much... how it manages to convey so much information about the world and the characters with so little exposition. Well... either that or the insane amounts of violence. AWESOME!
04.21.07	Alpha Dog	Nick Cassavetes	This reminded me a lot of Havoc in that it's filled with rich white boy actors with fake tattoos trying to act tough. And while that may be "the point" of both movies, it doesn't make sitting through their honkey ghettoisms any more enjoyable. This is particularly bad... I'm sorry, I just can't buy any of these kids as tuff. I know they're all angsty and trying to re-establish their images as non-kids but ugh. Ben Foster's gotta be the worst with his big head that he shaves to show off. Seriously, he's the perfect guy to play brainiac. But they're all sissies no matter how many fight scenes they insist on doing or how intense they get. whatever. The parents were better (nice to see Alan Thicke for a second). Well, all the parents except for Sharon Stone. I hate when actresses get in the fat suit to make them look all ugly but when they're crying or whatever you end up staring at their perfect bleached teeth for five minutes. it finally got interesting about ten minutes from the end when I realized the attention to witnesses and whatnot was because it was "inspired" by true events rather than some screenwriting gimmick (as a gimmick it's not bad. it creates a sense of foreboding). But, since stuff happens, it changed my mind and I figured they must've had to adhere to some sort of fact. So the wrap-up was interesting for me but it's a lot to sit through just to see how everyone ends up. hilarious background lines
04.21.07	The Ex	Jesse Peretz	quirky-esque anxiety comedy starring Zach Braff in the Ben Stiller role and Jason Bateman in the Owen Wilson spot. Bateman plays a guy in a wheelchair so everyone assumes he's a nice guy BUT HE'S NOT. While I think this would've been a good movie 10 years ago, today it's just a mish-mash of things we've seen before, sugar-coated with familiar faces and mild smirks. It was nice to see Charles Grodin working again, Amys Adams and Poehler were good but wasted and Donal Logue was a one-joke character that I wanted more from (because I know he can make pretty much anything good). Mostly, I don't know if this is intentional or not, I spent the movie not so much laughing but cringing at how much it would suck to be Zach Braff's character. But then he never really gets his direct payback so it felt like a fuse burning for 78 minutes just to snuff out at the very end. It was easy enough to watch though... I'm sure there's a hollywood-comedy-as-pacifying-medication-to-keep-us-hypnotized metaphor around there somewhere.
04.20.07	The Driller Killer	Abel Ferrara	huh.
04.20.07	Letters from Iwo Jima	Clint Eastwood	slightly better than the last one, but that's probably mainly due to the interesting idea of shooting them both at the same time. I wish they interlocked a bit more than a handful of the same CGI shots. It would've been cool to have the leads in the other movie cameo in this but... I guess the timelines are completely different and it'd be tough or whatever. I did like how Clint stuck to his POV in both movies and how the Japanese in Flags were shot very similar to the Americans in Letters. Also, did I mention that I hate Paul Haggis? Well, probably not as a person. I don't know him or anything but I hate his work.
04.20.07	Flags of Our Fathers	Clint Eastwood	still very much in the shadow of Saving private Ryan / Band of Brothers, but I guess maybe in some type of universe this makes an ok pacific corrollary (weren't they making another HBO mini-series about the pacific front though? maybe that will be to this as BoB was to SPR (let's hope)). Eh, watching this has left me bland and unthinking of any sort of notes. maybe a fan cut without all the flashbacks would be better. maybe.
04.19.07	The Hoax	Lasse Hallstrom	the story of Clifford Irving, the guy who wrote a book on a famous art faker then faked a Howard Hughes biography himself. I generally hate Richard Gere so this movie kinda works in that while he's lying and smirking his way to fame and fortune, I know he'll be found out in the end and everyone will hate him as much as I do. Even with Alfred Molina though, I still prefer Orsen Welles' F for Fake (which deals with the artist and contains interview footage with Irving) and the accompanying doc on Irving that Criterion put on their DVD. oh well.
04.18.07	Cruisin High	John Bushelman	The dangerous world of juvenile delinquency exposed! I could never quite figure out what time period this was supposed to take place in. The black pimp guy was obviously straight outta 76 ("man this guy is dangerous!") but some of the Silks looked really 50s-ish (especially Marble with his greaser haircut, black leather jacket, and mickey mouse t-shirt), but the car they drive is pure 60s. Anyway, I think a large factor in this movie is how awful the lead guy is. They really couldn't have picked a worse actor. I guess they went for him because they needed him to pull off whiney and cowardly as well as mean but... it just doesn't work. Watching him intimidate his gang into submission was like... well, it was like something bad. that made it fun though. It was also fun to hear the kids curse like sailors because they're all delinquenty... and also a few really choice lines like "Don't say anything! Just die... just die silently!." I also loved how the lead guy's always talking about "good times" with his brother, and when he's told that he shouldn't speak ill of the dead, he retorts with "why not? dead people are deaf." great stuff. Really fun movie.
04.15.07	Vice Squad	Gary Sherman	It's funny how 80s Last Aerican Virgin feels when this feels so 70s to me. This movie is great. Wings Hauser is amazing, the song he sings is amazing (neon slime!), and whatever... great movie. Really solid story, really tight pacing, but also pretty believable. Hauser is scary. Good stuff. really good stuff.
04.15.07	The Last American Virgin	Boaz Davidson	"The Last American Virgin: See it, or be it!" I missed the boat on these really early 80s sex comedies (since I was like 4 when this came out)... I have vague memories of Private Resort and Hardbodies playing on HBO and whatnot but they were even before the cinemax late at night listening for parents waking up days, they were more like seeing glimpses as my dad flipped channels days... Even Porky's I didn't end up seeing till a year ago or so... so I'm no expert. This movie was brought up by a couple different people at a couple different times lately so it seemed like the world was trying to tell me to see it. It's really harsh! And also pretty gay. The scene where they measure everyone's boners was.... pretty uncomfortable. so... yeah. that Better Off Dead girl is evil. and the main kid plays the geeky loser real well. Actually all the kids do a great job in filling their stereotype. harsh movie, man.
04.14.07	The Killer Eilite	Sam Peckinpah	James Caan and Robert Duvall are partners in a private firm that contracts to the CIA to keep people alive and whatnot until Duvall sells out and puts bullets into Caan's elbow and knee, effectively retiring him. Except Caan is a badass and trains himself in martial arts to use his robot-like arm and leg braces along with his cane to take muthas out and then he comes back for him in macho revenge style. This doesn't really play out in macho reveng emode though. Actually most of this movie is about Caan's recovery and the politics involved in this world, not so much machine guns and explosion actiony stuff. There's still some awesome Peckinpah slow-mo though and the world is still populated with gruff professional male types so it feels suitably hard-edged... and the trailer has some awesome voice-over. pretty good.
04.14.07	Looker	Michael Crichton	I'm a fan of Crichton's work both in books and movies and this is one of his few directing efforts I haven't seen. It's funny because it's all about engineering advertisements to best manipulate their audience... so the big "idea" of this movie is happening right now. Of course there's also some techno-thriller jibber jabber like weird light guns that hypnotize you and stuff like that, and it's all populated with 80s-hot supermodel types with a grating electronic score and cornball theme song, but at least it's about something. hmm.. it looks like he's only made one other movie that I haven't seen. I guess I should enqueue that.
04.13.07	Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters	Matt Maiellaro, Davie Willis	The ATHF movie, with the Alamo serving a meatwad (in the shape of an igloo), A box of Fries and a Key Lime Shake. The fires and shake had stickers on them to make them look exactly the the characters, right down to the pink bendy straw. it was awesome. the movie was more funny than not, but as expected I think it collapses a bit under its length. In search for a story big enough to take up 90 minutes, they turn to the origin which I was never that interested in anyway. And they use the robot duck guy a lot, which sucks because I can never understand that dude and he talks A LOT. There were some funny parts though... I have to say that my personal favorite part was right at the very beginning when the "let's all go to the lobby" guys come out singing their little song and they see some other concessional treats standing in te background looking pissed off. then they start up in a hardcore version of the movie rules... which was just great. I can't wait for this to come out on DVD so I can see it again and again as an Alamo no-talk spot because it's perfect. but yeah, it ended up being funny but nothing special.
04.12.07	What Waits Below	Don Sharp	Kind of like a pre-cursor to The Descent except instead of a group of girls it's a group of scientists and army dudes and instead of evolved cave monsters its a race of Lemurians (i guess a contemporary to Atlanteans). Timothy Bottoms plays the Army major who's the first to freak out and the girl from Prince of Darkness is also in it. While I liked it, I think it will ulltimately be pretty forgettable. But for a thursday night horror midnight movie, it did its job.
04.12.07	Night at the Museum	Shawn Levy	pleasantly surprising non-sucking movie. Still not like the best movie ever or one for the ages, but it could've been a lot worse. If I was a kid I bet I'd like this movie and if I was a parent this would be one I wouldn't mind sitting through over and over.
04.11.07	Marta	Jose Antonio Nieves Conde	Haven't heard of Jose Antonio Nieves Conde? Well he directed 26 films in his 30-year career! shame on you!!! yeah, I've never heard of him either. But thanks to Lars and a good first reel I know about him now! Marta is an atmospheric little thriller that takes Psycho and Vertigo and a couple Poe stories and mashes them all together. Marisa Mell (Eva from Danger: Diabolik) looks hot as ever and takes her top off like 34 times. no kidding, she does it in just about every other scene. At one point she's even like "it's hot in here" and takes her shirt off but the next shot is her stoking a fire. It makes no sense but don't think for a second that I'm complaining. She's so hot in such a peculiar European way that I had absolutely no problem watching her in her underwear or topless or wearing sheer nightgowns or whatever. If they possibly could've fit in more I would say they should've... but it looks like someone already passed that particular note along because she takes her shirt off A LOT and I like it. The rest of the movie... hmm. Well, based on my previous viewing of its first reel, I had all sorts of ideas about what kind of movie it could be and they were all pretty much wrong. It was good though, and by the end I was conscioussly trying to figure out how it would end. Plus it has a few great lines (mostly revolving around the main guy's mother or his mental state ("I'm normal!!!")("I can remember my father's screams, day and night") ("I want you. I don't care who you are or what you're doing")). I think this would be a movie where, if I knew what it was about going into it, I might not have been that excited about it, but since I was there and watched it, I ended up liking it more than I thought I would. does that make sense? well it does to me.
04.11.07	The Laughing Policeman	Stuart Rosenberg	Another solid cop crime drama, this one starring Walter Matthau in San Francisco where he's investigating a busload of people mowed down with a machine gun. Literally, a guy gets on a bus one night, sits in the back, and takes everyone out. One of the victims is Matthau's partner so he, along with his new partner Bruce Dern, has to figure out what the hell happened and who the hell did it. I'm on the verge of not buying Matthau as a cop here but since he's clearly of the "i'm gettin too old for this shit" variety where he doesn't have to actually physically exert himself too much, I buy him as being cynical and demon-driven. The movie has some anti-hippie overtones which is always good for cop movies. It seems like a statement against the term "pig" that I guess was new back then, and all the Miranda crap that kept cops from doing their job (i.e. beating the living hell out of punks and deadbeats until they tracked down the bad guys), and Bruce Dern is great with all the un-PC statements (not to mention his mustache). I liked this a lot more than Rosenberg's The Drowning Pool but suspect that's just because I was more into the gritty SF cop procedure than I was with Newman's mystery. Still maybe not the best cop movie I've ever seen, and maybe it feels a bit overt in the Bullitt-isms, but it still held solid enjoyment for me.
04.09.07	The Last Mogul	Barry Avrich	A pretty interesting doc on Lew Wasserman, who was basically the most powerful man in Hollywood for like 40 years. But then again, I really like movies about hollywood. I guess it's cool to say you don't, like a movie about making movies is too inside or specialized to count but whatever. I like Living in Oblivion, Day for Night, The Stunt Man, etc. and I like learning about Hollywood and movie history. deal. So this was pretty interesting, especially his overt Jack Valenti and Ronald Reagan ties. That he was on top wasn't really surprising, but that he was on top for so long definitely was. Nowadays, I'm used to hearing about studio heads getting fired about every year... since they now all answer to multi-national corporations, I don't think they have very much actual power at all, but back in the day the famous heads like Mayer and Zanuck and Cohn were all-powerful. It's interesting to hear Wasserman's story which began in the good old days and managed to survive through the 70s. Man that guy must have had some stories... this movie did a pretty good job of laying out his life and the major events in it, but it lacks the stories that I'm sure occured. I wouldn't call it an amazing doc but it wasn't bad either, and it suited its purpose nicely, to say i learned a bit about the man.
04.09.07	Times Square	Allan Moyle	So... this is about the daughter of soe publiv figure being really frustrated so he puts her in a looney bin to see if she's crazy. There, she eets another girl who's really aggressive and non-conformist and they escape and live in squalor and hang out in Times Square and the adjoining 42nd Street and become counter-culture heros by staying runaways and dropping televisions off buildings. I was pleasantly surprised to see that this was directed by Allan Moyle, who made one of my favorite childhood nostalgia-trips Pump Up the Volume (it was actually his next movie after this, just 10 years later (i bet there's a story there)). This actually shares a lot of common themes with PUtV, but as Zack mentioned it's also very very similar to V for Vendetta. Honestly, although I liked the movie my favorite parts were the glimpses of circa-79/80 42nd street. I spotted movies like The Dark and The Chinese Mack (playing with The Chinese Godfather) on marquees in the background of shots all throughout the movie. It looked really grody and sleazy but also really awesome. I often wonder where all the weirdo people that you see standing on the street down there went when all those places closed. Are they on some other seedy street still sitting or standing there? Did they go to the library? did they get jobs? who knows. They're probably still there and I'm just sheltered and romanticising the whole thing. Good music in this, Tim Curry's pretty funny as a late-night radio personality counterpart to Cleavon Little in Vanishing Point. The movie was very punk rock in attitude... pretty cool, glad I made it out tonight
04.08.07	Ghost Rider	Mark Steven Johnson	so.. I didn't want to go to sleep at noon and completely mess up my sleep schedule so I hung out with Jarrette and bit and on impulse we decided to see Ghost Rider at the dollar theater. It was kind of a bad move because the movie was so horrible that I started dozing about 2 minutes into it. I really think I slept through 75% of the movie but whenever I snapped to or woke up it was so unbelievably bad I wanted to go back to sleep. At one point I woke up and he was fighting Wes Bentley and he was all like "your move doesn't work on me because i have no soul muhahaha!" and I thought "great! I've slept right up until the end!" it didn't end though. so I dozed some more. Like, I don't think I could have told you that Donal Logue was in this movie, but I seem to remember him killing each one of the main bad guys so... did I really miss that much? I was awake for the absolutely terrible ending with Sam Elliot's character being all like "I can only transform one more time, but let's go for a ride, together!" and at one point Nicolas Cage was yelling a lot and I thought of that Wicker Man deleted scene that the Alamo played for their worst Oscar performances spot where he's like "not the bees! not the bees! oh no the bees! the bees! the bees!" because it was like the most terrible version of horrible even imaginable. SUCK'D and I inherently distrust anyone who said this was watchable. I'm glad I slept through most of it and I don't care to ever see any of it ever again. so there.
04.08.07	Grindhouse	Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino	After the film we broke for breakfast in the lightening gray of overcast dawn. A little kid approached Lars and said "so it's between that and Toys are Not for Children." After a few shocked seconds, he asked "where did you see Toys are Not for Children!?" That kid's either gonna end up a really cool guy or locked away for a long long time. Bellies full, a still-packed house sat down to see Grindhouse. Perhaps it's unfair to spend the night watching great movies authentic to the era and follow it up with a modern-day emulator, especially when that emulator starts off with a Robert Rodriquez film. Planet Terror feels like and exploitation of exploitation. Robert takes the most superficial aspects of the genre and roughly jams them together in an effort to create a pastiche of potent images and moments that will hopefully overwhelm certain parts of your brain into overlooking the absence of anything real. The usage of these techniques however, showcases Robert's fundamental misunderstanding of the genre. Planet Terror is not a grindhouse film at all, but a Robert Rodriguez film wearing a store-bought Grindhouse Halloween costume. For better or worse, Robert's trademark style drives every aspect of the film. Environmental hazards such as missing reels and print damage are utilized as dramatic tools, making absolutely no sense in realistic terms. Scratch lines don't change from shot to shot and color fade does not introduce in CG tendrils and fade back to pristine 30 seconds later. To an eye used to seeing the effects of time and many many projections on aged prints, the blatant manipulation of these effects were a constant distraction. Aside from the occasional spare piano melody meant to evoke John Carpenter andthe broad-stroke idea of a zombie movie (except they're not zombies), the films bears stronger resemblance to Desperado than anything else. Perhaps a strong argument toward the auteur theory, but thoroughly out of place from the vintage-esque trailers and drive-in concession ads that the film strives to present. These, by the way, are excellent. Rodriguez's Machete trailer performs much better than Planet Terror, Rob Zombie's Werewolf Women of the S.S., on-screen credits aside, fits well into the mix, and Eli Roth's Thanksgiving ties with Edgar Wright's Don't as my favorite moments in the film. The Acuna Bros. concessions and various vintage ratings and "coming soon" animations all work very well to establish mood and give the films a more presentational "main event" introduction. It's a shame that people missed all of this with trips to the restroom after Planet Terror ends, hurrying back to their seats in time for Death Proof to begin. Death Proof, while not without its problems, fits much better into the experience that Grindhouse presents to its audience. Quentin's occasionally Slasher-influenced tale of groups of women attracting the attention of a crazed stuntman and his Death-Proof car fits the mold of a film inspired by the title and poster and shot on a shoestring budget to accomodate that. Lots of slow dialogue fill the time between "money shot" scenes of automotive madness and mayhem. Until he gets flashy with an ambitious 8-minute steadicam shot, Tarantino's direction even mimics that of the time with simple set-ups and a general feel of cheapness and compromise with a limiting schedule. Of course, we know all of this is deliberately designed since he actually had plenty of time to shoot and plenty of money to spend. Nevertheless, Death Proof plays like a modern-day exploitation classic. Quentin also uses spare aging effects to dirty the heads and tails of his reels and introduce a splice here and there. His missing reel, as unfortunate as it seems to be, plays more like an actual missing reel than a story crutch. And then there's Kurt Russell. With precious few moments, Russell delivers Stuntman Mike into his canon right along with Snake Plissken, Jack Burton, and R.J. MacReady. My biggest frustration with this film, followed in a close second by the overwhelming amount of meandering Quentin-aware dialogue, is the lack of Kurt Russell. Although he's very effective as the constant observer seen in the background and used more as a force rather than a character, every second Stuntman Mike's on screen is great and there should be more. Perhaps a sequel's in order, playing like Psycho II, where we follow along in the further adventures of Stuntman Mike as he targets other women to have fun with. I do have problems with the film, but they're minor compared to Planet Terror. Choosing to see Death Proof as any other drive-in feature, I'd say it's very successfull. Sergio Martino's Torso gets much respect and that's pretty much just for one scene so I can forgive Tarantino his indulgences with dialogue and thinking he knows how to talk like a woman. I also really liked Quentin's song choice and seeing the Alamo in the establishing shot of Austin. And that's it. Grindhouse is over. It's almost noon, time for either lunch or sleep whichever urge takes hold first. All in all a very enjoyable night spent amongst friends in a great place. There's nothing quite like walking out of the Alamo to a dead silent wasteland of downtown Austin Sunday morning, eyes squinting from the light and completely disoriented trying to remember where you parked. I really cherish these times and hope everyone that was there had as good a time as I did. To those that weren't there, I hope you had a good time following along on here. Until the next one, cheers.
04.08.07	Poor Pretty Eddie	Chris Robinson	AKA Black Vengeance AKA Heartbreak Motel AKA Redneck County, Poor Pretty Eddie is much more than your standard hicksploitation fare. On the surface, it's about an uppity African American singer whose car breaks down in a most decidedly backwoods redneck town, falling into the insane fancy of a bartender/motel manager named Eddie and the Lyme diseased attention of the townsfolk. Shelley WInters, in an incredibly brave performance (she seemed to revel in these parts around this time though, appearing in the lowest budget fare alongside with higher-profile gigs like The Poseidon Adventure, often going out of her way to deprecate herself with comments about her increasing weight, fading beauty, and reembered youth), plays Bertha, Eddie's sugar mama. Dub Taylor and Slim Pickens also give really great performances as well, padding out this town as the ultimate in down south slimy smiley good ol' boys. Plus they have some amazingly coloquial dialogue. Really great characteristic stuff. What really sets this film apart however is the editing. Lars mentioned it in his intro, and another fan of the film also brought it up as a huge determining factor in its greatness. Frank Mazzola, fresh off editing Don Cammell and Nic Roeg's Performance, infused this film with a high-brown artsy tone that completely transforms the subject matter and performances. There's something so unsettling about having this gritty messy story presented on such an arthouse level. All these slow fades and obtuse angles of scenery and intricate matting and beat-by-beat construction using different speeds and takes... it's really not what you'd expect with a redneck rape movie. As the film progresses and everybody escalates into frenzy, the film keeps a constant state of heaviness reminiscent of a more energetic ANtonioni or a less morose Bergman; this unconsciouss feeling that what you're watching is "important." Yet it's a slow-motion shot of a retard shooting his sling shot and yelling NOOOOOOOOOOOO! I can't even imagine seeing this in some random drive-in on a date some Saturday night. Talk about subverting expectations. So maybe it was a happy accident or a devious plot or a misunderstood vision or an unheralded masterpiece. As it stands today, it's a perfect example of the fruit that exploring exploitation cinema bears. Still remaining remarkably unique after several decades of Hollywood catchup, I still can't imagine a movie like this getting made today. Great film.
04.07.07	The Losers	Jack Starrett	The Losers (AKA Nam's Angels) is a biker film fused with a Viet Name war film. The whisper-thin conceit of the film is that the army cannot officially cross the boarder to retrieve an imprisoned CIA operative so they hire a bunch of scooter trash to carry out the mission. Led by Link (William Smith as muscle-bound and seething as ever), the motorcycle club that calls themselved The Devil's Advocates (best biker gang name ever, by the way) also includes the biker-ubiquitous Adam Roarke as Duke, Paul Koslo (Whitey from Freebie and the Bean) as Limpy (because he has a limp), and other gang members named Speed and Dirty Denny. It's pretty much the ultimate badass biker gang, very similar to Arnie's crew in Predator except with less ammunition and more anti-authoritarian angst. Jack Starrett directs the film, which should ring a bell to any fans of Race with the Devil, Cleopatra Jones, Slaughter, or QTfest favorites Hollywood Man and the amazing Dion Brothers (AKA Gravy Train). According to Lars' intro, Starrett was like a king director in the exploitation world yet completely unheard of in mainstream cinema. His impeccable technique and unique style, while somewhat obscured by shoestring budgets and limiting schedule restrictions, nevertheless begins to shine through as you visit more of his films and compare them to others in the same genre. He was also a pretty decent actor, often appearing in his own films as well as others such as Richard Rush's seminal biker flick Hells Angels on Wheels and Tom Laughlin's Born Losers (the dramatic first screen appearance of Billy Jack!). Basically, these guys are there to kick ass, so they do it. But first they need to soup up their bikes with aror and guns and grenades in the saddlebags and a rocket launchere here or there. And along the way, why not enjoy some of the local entertainment. And get into bar brawls and backyard wrestling matches using uprooted trees as weapons. Like all good biker movies, The Losers gets the distinct feeling about a half hour in that it's completely off the rails. At one point, Link has to get physical on Dirty Denny in order to get him back on track. If you watch that scene and replace "fix up the bikes" with "get back to the script" and "go to Mama San's and get laid" with "fuck you," you get a real sense of chaos and freeform structure that all biker flicks seem to value. The tonal transition from the anarchic Revenge of the Cheerleaders to the casualif not meandering vibe of The Losers took some time. Coupled with the time slowly drifting from late at night to early in the morning, the lengthy drinking and womanizing sequences officially required of any biker flick eased a lot of the crowd into the semi-hypnotic state of exhaustion spiked with caffeine jitters that makes up a large part of the all-nighter experience. It's not a real marathon if the last two films make complete sense, or you don't turn over to see the guy sitting next to you trying desperately to keep from nodding off. At 4AM, it doesn't take much to set this off. While The Losers is a good film, and really picks up in its third act with its unique fusion of men on a mission war movie with biker fetishism and ethic, the langurous pace as they put off their planning to get drunk and laid had a nice effect. It put us all in a somewhat dazed state ready to receive the next film, which Lars warned will not fuck around.
04.07.07	Revenge of the Cheerleaders	Richard Lerner	We all watch movies, some more than others, and as we see more and more we come to know certain similarities that films share; signifiers exist to clue us in on what kind of movie this is, what to expect from this movie, etc. And then every so often (and this happens very rarely), you watch a movie that you flat out can not believe exists. You soak it up through your eyeballs and take it in as best you can but when you start to think about what circumstances had to exist and what kind of people must've come together in some sort of cosmic alignment in order for something this crazy to actually manifest into the material world, your brain quickly starts to complain. Darktown Strutters was one such film for me, Fight for your Life and Drum are others. Revenge of the Cheerleaders is most definitely one of these films. It's the story of an unruly gang of aggressively nubile cheerleaders who rule their laid back school with tinges of Troma rancor mixed with highschool satire, teen sex romp, and way too much weed. Weird things happen in this film, things that don't make any sort of sense at all. The principle cooks a full turkey in his office, reprobates from the opposing vocational school can shatter soda glasses with their bare hands, fire extinguishers demand as much obedience as a handgun, and not only does the cheerleading directly affect the outcome of a basketball game but the final score of said game determines whether one school merges with another. Everyone's naked all the time and when they're not they're pissed off about it. David Hasslehoff plays a character named Boner and gets full frontal. At several points, someone puts on a random funky tune and everyone in the entire movie starts dancing in some loosely choreographed routine. School board members have secret underground lairs accessible via golf course sandtraps. This is not the world that I live in. Watching Revenge of the Cheerleaders is a real experience. It's something I suspect doesn't translate too well to home video, without the crowd of people surrounding you, reacting to the multitude of crazy-ass spectacles flashing on the screen, and succumbing to a group-think orgy of the ludicrous and absurd. I first saw this film by sneaking into a QT cast screening when Grindhouse first started shooting. He held double features every Tuesday night starting at midnight for a few weeks to let the cast and crew get a taste of what he and Rodriguez were going for. Watching it with an intimate collection of famous people, obnoxious people, friendly people and Nicky Katt (who I put in a separate category alltogether) was a great and surreal experience. I had a hard time believing what I saw that night and I honestly still do. Revenge of the Cheerleaders is the kind of movie where you get the feeling that if you were to try and critique it in any way, the film itself would reach out and slap you across the face. I still don't understand how it can defy convention yet fit perfectly into its very specific genre but it does. Best seen at 2AM with 200 of your closest friends.
04.07.07	Wipeout	Fernando Di Leo	Welcome to the Grindhouse all night marathon extravaganza: four badass grindhouse classics preceeding a showing of Rodriguez/Tarantino's own Grindhouse feature, held at the historic Alamo Drafthouse in downtown Austin, TX. Some would say there's no better place to show this movie than right here and they'd be right. How right are they? The establishing shot of the city in Death Proof is a shot of this fucking theater. Home to five Tarantino film festivals, over five years of continued grindhouse screenings (every Wednesday at midnight), and ten years of overall excellence in obssessive film geekery, this is the midwest mecca of cinema. And what's better is that unlike NYC's 42nd street it's still around and unlike LA's most historic and prestigious movie houses it's not filled with assholes. So yeah, when I had the choice of paying 30 bucks to attend the star-studded Grindhouse Austin premiere at the historic Paraount, I opted to wait a week and a half and pay 18 bucks for a Saturday night filled with vintage classics, amazing trailers, and 200 like-minded people who want to stay up all night watching weird-ass movies. It can't really get much better. Well, actually it could for me personally... having seen 3 of the 4 non-RR/QT films tonight's largely about thee experience and the crowd and revisiting favorites than surprises or newfound gems. That's ok though. As it turns out I got my fair shair of surprises after all. It's damn cold and wet and raining like crap on my drive down. I get downtown, get relatively lucky with parking, and three blocks of walking in the rain later I start to hear the rumors of snow farther north and global warming and whatever. There are relatively few familiar faces here tonight, I guess the people that show up every Wednesday have already seen these films or can't afford the 18 bucks or have appointments at the methadone clinic in the morning. The house is all but filled to capacity though with a new batch of people, some of which are clearly here just for the last movie (which doesn't make any sense because it opened yesterday), some have already seen it and want to see it again, and some, like me, are here for the whole thing of it all. See, the original Alamo location is closing in a few short months, moving a few blocks away to inhabit the Ritz theater on 6th. For those that have been coming here for ten years it's the end of an era, for those like me it's one of a dwindling number of chances to soak in as much as we can before it's gone (or changed) forever. Lars, programmer for the Alamo and curator of the ongoing Weird Wednesday series, is here to host the evening, introducing the first film called The Boss AKA Wipeout! Directed by Italian maestro Fernando di Leo, this film was all but extinct before Quentin brought it much love and attention in one of his festivals (QT4, 70s Italian Crime night with a double feature of Shoot First Die Later and Wipeout (both directed by Di Leo) followed by a midnight showing of Hickey & Boggs). In fact, I think Di Leo's entire current interest is do to QT's repeated screenings of a series of his movies here in town, so it's only fitting that it kick off the marathon. For the uninitiated, Italian Crime movies are, understandably, analogous to Spaghetti Westerns: compared to the American films that they're trying to capitalize on and emulate, they're much more brazen, more rough hewn, more overt. They're faster, cheaper, more brutal and ruthless and serpentine and stylized and that comes through on the story level, the design and direction level, and the acting level. I guess Antonioni and Fellini used up all the subtle in Italy because by the time the 60s were over they didn't have any left. So with that in mind, The Boss is the story of a hitman (played with supreme stone-faced death-visaged glory by Henry Silva) caught up in a vendetta between Richard Conte and the guy who raised him like a father. Along the way, someone's daughter gets kidnapped and the mob guys double cross on double cross on double cross after double cross. A lot of the talking scenes spew forth so much exposition that's so intricate and convoluted that it's easy to get lost and not know who the hell's who and what's going on. But the thing that makes these movies great is that you don't really care. The tough guys have never acted tougher, the action is intense, the music amazing, and just moment after moment is filled with something worthy of appreciation. I first saw this movie at the Best of QT Fest that Quentin held a year ago (playing in a double feature with Brotherhood of Death, followed by the Weird Wednesday presentation of Joy House). I asked Lars if this was QT's print they were showing tonight and he answered that he didn't know of anyone else who had a print. It's generally regarded as one of Di Leo's (many) best though and it's a treat to see again. This speaks to one aspect of these films: their unavailability. Perhaps movies like The Boss or The Dion Brothers wouldn't be quite as amazing as they are if they were readily available on DVD. The fact that you can't see them without a pretty hefty search or a really great theater nearby makes watching them more of an event. So yay for me to get to see it again and Yay for Austin for having it screened 3 times in the last 10 years and yay for the Alamo for making certain clips (recorded off a poor-quality VHS bootleg) no-talking spots to forever ingrain the film into the brains of all who see it. Henry Silva's really great in this, as is the dude who plays the hand-gesturing cop. I really think it's a testament to whoever did the English translation that he could fit something close to sensible communication in the midst of all that hand motion, quick talking and odd cadence of speech. The net effect is a really bizarre vocal performance matching the mannerisms and gestures of what's on screen perfectly, but often sounding odd, not to mention hilarious. I think the big surprise of the film however, and this was spoiled when Quentin introduced it because he couldn't help but comment on it, is the part of the daughter. When the daughter gets kidnapped (in a great scene driven by fantastic music, the score of this film is absolutely top-notch), the offending brutes threaten her with the expected male maneuvers. At first the actress plays really shy and humiliated, and then she has this great turn which becomes a really funny returning gag through the rest of the film. It's completely unexpected from an American viewpoint and serves as a great example of differences between American and Italian crime. Preceeded perfectly with select vintage trailers, The Boss went over great and its somewhat deliberate pacing interspersed with really energizing action sequences tempered the audience for the night, but did nothing to prepare them for the craziness that is Revenge of the Cheerleaders.
04.05.07	Hell Night	Tom DeSimone	Revisiting this slasher flick because I never quite trust my judgement when I see anything in the midst of an all-night marathon. The highs seem higher and the lows seem lower after 6 or 8 hours in a theater. However, I still think this is a solid middle of the road slasher. I certainly don't think it's bad, but it gets pretty laggy and doesn't really stand out for me at all. I think Vincent Van Patten is the best part of the movie. He's funny in pretty much every scene, and reminds me of that other actor who was in North Shore and White Water Summer. And the movie slows down right when he leaves. Coincidence? Also, there were some BOO! type scares that caught many in the audience and that always has to be respected, and I think the ending is pretty solid which always helps. That's really it though... the rest of it is pretty mediocre. Oh, I also thought there should've been some nudity, but since there wasn't I liked the PG sex scene... it's like what an 8 year old thinks sex is... he kisses her on the belly and they roll around for a few seconds and it's over. Score one for the good guys.
04.04.07	Kill or Be Killed	Ivan Hall	A bit thanks to Lars for playing this again as a Weird Wednesday. I think the ultra-casual circumstances to which I came to this film helped a lot in me loving it, and the second half does really drag down, but damn if the first half hour or so doesn't contain enough amazingly bizarre moments to fill the good-movie quota! It was a delight to get to watch it with a crowd and hear everyone crack up at the little whistling noises Steve makes, the flashligh wild dog eyes out in the desert night, Von Rudolf's still-photograph nazi flashbacks, Steve's girlfriend's random maniacal laughter, the random car destruction, and of course Chico (and Chicolette, which I think the audience was too shocked at all the little person mistreatment to find as funny as I did). Man, that is one ugly dwarf. I noticed he had a huge scar on his cheek too... I wonder if he was like a criminal or just abused all of his life for being small. Either way, I'm glad he got to lend his severe acting talents to this movie and live on forever. Lars really talked up the sequel. Hopefully all the pussies who walked out before it was over don't convince him to not play it. I really want to see it now.
04.02.07	Natural Born Killers	Oliver Stone	I just finished reading a book on the making of this movie so I wanted to see it again. I think the last couple times I watched this was the director's cut, as it was surprising to see the Theatrical cut again and all the teeny tiny impactful moments that are gone. I can't say I have the director's cut 100% in my memory right now but I seem to remember it much better with all the little minute things put back in. Right now it seems like a pretty radical treatise that's so messy that it just barely connects the dots but I remember the last time I saw this thinking it was really really good. I'd like to see the Director's cut again now to see what's what. still, a crazy movie and really good. Seeing it after the book gives a new perspective on things but it's still a movie and it's still good. Batshit crazy but good.
04.01.07	Bad Boys II	Michael Bay	Since so much of Hot Fuzz directly references a handfull of action cop films (this and Point Break especially), watching yesterday's fuzztival put me, along with everyone else I talked to last night, in a real mood to see Bad Boys II again. It's only like 4 years old now but it already seems like some fever dream that a movie that gonzo exessive could be made. I'm surprised to find I don't have a previous note about it on here because I'm certain I've already written about my theory that this movie is about as close to a Grand Theft Auto adaptation and you can get. It kind of seems like reality at first but the longer you watch it the clearer it is that it's not; it's a facade of reality specifically engineered to create awesome moments and things like physics or laws or time itself are made flexible by the higher priority of visual astonishment and a general potpouri of elements that make you involuntarily say "cool." And really GTA is the same way. Plus you got Haitians, you got Cubans, you got the Haitians fighting the Cubans, you got missions involving following people, killing people, chasing after people in really expensive cars that you hijack on a whim, you got crazy-ass shit like dead bodies falling out the back of vans, you got insane bad guys that you get to kill at the end, and last but not least you got explosions. Now tell me that's not GTA: Vice City. I think also that, as time moves forward and this movie becomes more detached from its release context, more people are going to see just how crazy this movie is. I remember it getting absolutely thrashed by the critics and pretty much everyone I knew who saw it (save my one college buddy who always loved Michael Bay), but yesterday pretty much everyone was going off on how great it was. I really think it's been Michael Bay's best work to date. I like this so much more than Bad Boys I. A group of friends were talking about it the other night and someone said that was limited by its budget, which made us all laugh because it's ridiculous and true. Bad Boys I is like Michael Bay's Clerks... this is him at his full potential. Criterion should forget about Armageddon and The Rock and buy the rights to this. Seriously. And I really love how the last half hour is basically its own separate movie. Like, the last half hour is more or less Bad Boys III. They really shot two movies worth of stuff for Bad Boys II but just condensed it all down into one fuck-off movie instead of drawing it out like The Matrix. It's wanton displays of violence, willfull destruction of property, and wonderful celebration of testosterone.
03.31.07	Hot Fuzz	Edgar Wright	And lo it was time to see Hot Fuzz. There were clearly some people in the audience that had sat through the four previous movies just to make it to this point. When the boys walked out in their Texas cowboy shirts the crowd went apeshit crazy. Austin is definitely a fan to these guys. They were funny and British and nice and excited as well which was cool. Crazy trailers this time, ending with the unbelievable Thunder Cops trailer. Although that movie's been tainted for me now that I've seen it, I can't deny that it's still one of the best trailers I've ever seen. So... Hot Fuzz... It was good. I liked it. Almost everyone seemed to like it. At first I was a little jarred by the style of the film (very abrasive and cutty). It's understandable since they're going for a very cop-movie, Tony Scott/Guy Ritchie style but when the subject matter's about very mundane things it took me a while to adjust. Of course, when the things that were happening started getting bigger, the style made complete sense and they sort of fit into each other like a glove, but it's a pretty weird transition to go from having the style be a comment on movies they're kind of sending up to having the style be genuinely what they're aiming for. Overall, I think I liked it on par with Shaun of the Dead. Parts of it really made me laugh and I can't say I didn't have a good time watching it, but there similar aspects of both movies that cause problems for me. I don't completely get and follow how the movie can be really self-aware and sort of be about packing references and commenting on a genre and then falling into the same traps that it kind of makes fun of earlier on. Kind of like how in this year's Oscar broadcast they had a joke where Al Gore was about to announce his running for President but the orchestra cuts him off... but then later on in the same show the orchestra cuts off numerous people trying to say something in their moment of glory. It's kind of a "well if you know about it, why do you keep doing it!?" thing for me... I hesitate to say either of Wright's movie make fun of the genre they're in though. I get a sense from both that he loves them and these are really more homage pieces than any sort of satire, but he does pack in the references which ends up splitting my enjoyment a little. It's hard for me to appreciate it as a straight story knowing there's all these winks and nods in there but it also ends up hard for me to not groan when the story takes over and introduces familiar cliches. This movie seemed much more on the level of tongue-in-cheek fun though. I think there's more lines and gags and overt references and call-backs in this than Shaun, and I don't really mind cop-movie cliches like buildings blowing up and bullet proof vests and whatnot as much as I hate the "i can't shoot that zombie, she's my mum!" stuff. However, this movie also takes a few turns I didn't expect. It picks up a really heavy Ira Levin vibe (I'm purposely leaving that a little vague. don't look him up if you don't want potential plot spoilers) at one point and becomes... not very cop-ish at all, but ultimately returns to form for a hilariously great climax. I really don't want to give off any indication that I didn't like the movie. But, as someone who didn't love Shaun of the Dead as much as others, I suspect I'll fall in the same camp with this one. Liked it, not loved it. So that's the fuzztival! Afterward, the boys were kind enough to hang out and sign crap for everyone that wanted it while large circles of friends gathered around in the lobby talking about the day. The general consensus around my circle seemed to point to Freebie as the highlight of the day, but it was fun all around (unless you count the slow parts of Police Story). Slowly but surely, we all started heading out to clash with the harsh reality of downtown Austin at 2am on a Saturday night. After 13 hours in the Drafthouse, walking out to the drunken cacophony of 4th street was pretty sucky. And it's just gonna be worse once they move to 6th. sigh. But never fear! Next weekend there's the Grindhouse all-nighter!!!
03.31.07	Freebie and the Bean	Richard Rush	A couple friends asked me earlier in the day what I'd seen and what I was most looking forward to. Well, no offense to the Hot Fuzz guys but, Freebie, the only movie of the day that i'd seen before, was by far the movie I was most looking forward to seeing. When I saw it for the first time, it was on an old pan&scan VHS copy and, although I liked the movie, I could tell how cropped the full-frame version was. Now I get a chance to watch the film in widescreen at my favorite theater with a packed house full of cop movie lovers??? Well shit. So it was with great excitement that I sat down for the fourth feature of the day and Edgar introduced (his intros were actually really great. Through his references and his movies, you can tell he's a real movie geek (much like Tarantino without the stand-up comic mannerisms), but he's also got that damn British accent and wit which makes everything sound smart and funny and smartly funny. Not nearly as digressive as QT's, Edgar's intros were mostly short and to the point but also informative and energizing. Especially in the case of Freebie, I got a real sense of how psyched he was to see this with us, which is really great. I think the whole theater picked up on it because this movie got one hell of a reception. The trailers this time around focused on the buddy and group cop movies. Really Great stuff. Really tied the room together. So... I don't know if I mentioned this in my previous note but in the commentary track on the In-Laws DVD, Arkin mentioned that that movie came about because the studio wanted to make a sequel to Freebie and the Bean, and since he didn't particularly even want to do the first Freebie, he maneuvered things around so he could eventually make In-Laws instead of another one. Well, regardless of why he didn't want to do it, I really wish and hope he somehow hears of how great a movie it is and how well it holds up today. That movie really plays, and on the big screen it screams. Although i could see the stunt guys a little better on the big screen, it didn't even matter because they stunts they were doing were so amazing. And it seemed like every shot included some pedestrian coming an inch away from getting run over or churned up in motorcycle axle. And when the screen's not filled with "fuck-off car chase scenes" (as Edgar put it), it's undeniably hilarious. The chemistry between Alan Arkin and Jimmy Caan is fluid and comfortable and a little bit destructive. You completely buy that these guys have been working together for a long time, not to mention seeing glimpses of my other favorite partner/ensemble dynamics in their performance (like The Dude/Walter/Donny in The Big Lebowski). I guess I am rambling now. It's just a pinnacle buddy cop movie. Can't do much better. Side Note: Someone should REALLY make a movie with three main roles where they constantly talk and bicker and have fun and cast Jimmy Caan, Alan Arkin, and Peter Faulk. Kinda like a Grumpy Old Men thing but make it R-Rated and not so goofball and basically get all of them in a room together and let them go. It'd be so amazing to see those guys re-unite now that they're all old.
03.31.07	Sudden Impact	Clint Eastwood	Next up was this, the fourth Dirty Harry Movie. I'd never seen this or The Enforcer. Edgar said that it was his second favorite Dirty Harry movie after the first ("that's the best one but this is the party favorite"). That made me wonder if he had movie parties or if whatever kinds of parties that he throws ends up with someone saying "let's put on a movie!" and the party somehow still rocking ahead two hours later. In my experience, putting on a movie either puts people into couch-stupors or drives people out of the movie-room to drink elsewhere. Anyway, I sort of see what he means. Edgar also mentioned that Albert Popwell appeared in all three previous Dirty Harry movies as different black stereotypes and appears again in this movie as Harry's partner. but Harry's other partner, a British Bulldog named Meathead, was the real star of the movie. But first, a third round of excellent cop trailers, this time of the vigilante justice category (yes, Cobra made an appearance). Great stuff. I think it's the trailers that are really gluing this day together. It's so fun to cheer for childhood favorites and hear everyone else laugh with you, sometimes also hearing people who'd never heard of something (like me and Micah with Partners, what an amazing-looking movie!) saying stuff like "what the fuck!?" or "i HAVE to see that!" The movie. It's funny how blatant the progression of a franchise is with this movie. I don't even remember if Harry said "make my day" in the original film (i know he said "do you feel lucky, punk" and he probably did say it) but by this time it's a total catch phrase and you can see Clint's disinterest on his face whenever he has to say it. Watching it with a crowd also makes this apparent. People cheer whenever the fabled .44 Magnum makes an appearance, they cheer for the "make my day" line, they cheer whenever Harry Calahan shoots down thugs with merciless pitiless cold-hearted calm. What's more, because it's the fourth one it's really not even about Harry anymore. Instead, it's basically a rape revenge movie starring Sondra Locke that Dirty Harry just happens to be in. So... I have to confess... while I DID enjoy this movie as a very steroid-driven-twisted-monstrosity-of-something-that-was-once-subtle-and-good kind of way, it did feel long for me and my lids heavy'd a little bit. Maybe it was the early-evening nap calling or sitting in a dark room all day or the lack of sleep from the night before or whatever... but at a couple points during this movie my eyes were blinking independantly and making agreements with my brain like "just let the left one close for like a minute, then it'll take over and the right will get some time off." Luckily, it picked up after a while and I got my second wind right when it ended because up next was Freedibe and The Bean!!!
03.31.07	Police Story 2	Jackie Chan	In between screenings, Tim announced that, in order to empathise with the cops as much as possible, they were handing out free donuts to everyone. yay! Next up was this Jackie Chan movie. Edgar appeared again to give his personal take on Jackie Chan movies ("they're a lot like porn: once you know where the good parts are, you never have to watch them all the way through again"), but he said this particular title played like a money shot compilation. He listed off all the scenes like "fight scene in a playground where they fight around the monkeybars: check. Fight in a firecracker factory where they throw little bombs at one another: check," etc. He actually made the movie sound pretty good. Too bad it's not. Anyway, before that they played trailers for the more zany aspects of the cop movie genre. Honestly there were so many it became more of a sensory experience than remembering them individually. So... the movie had subtitles and, in a bit of karmic retribution perhaps, a guy just as tall as me with longer hair than me was sitting right in front of me so the middle of each sentence was hidden unless I went from side to side or stretched up to see over his dome (thus killing poor Marcus who had to sit behind me), so plot comprehension was frustrating from the get-go. Luckily, the action scenes don't really employ much talking so when the movie was good I didn't feel I was missing anything. It's just all the boring-ass crap in between the action scenes that I had trouble following. I did like how the movie started with a re-cap of all the aazing stunts done in the first Police Story. I kind of wish that's all this movie was... like fifteen minutes of excised fight scenes played back to back. I certainly would've had more fun. Not being the biggest kung-fu fan, Jackie Chan fan, or guessing-the-missing-word-in-each-sentence-that-makes-it-make-sense fan, the cards were kinda stacked against me on this one, but I can't pretend it was any sort of pleasant surprise for me. I liked the stuff I knew I would like, and I sat through the rest waiting for it to end. By about the 60% mark I just gave up on trying to read the titles and quickly decided that the acting and direction weren't enough to convey whatever was going on. So that made it even more boring for me. oh well.
03.31.07	Electra Glide in Blue	James William Guercio	Starting at noon today the Alamo threw a cop movie marathon ending in a sneak peak at Hot Fuzz with director Edgar Wright and stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost in attendance. Amazing event, tons of fun, both because of the good movies (mostly) and everyone that showed up. It's really great to walk in and see like a dozen friends, some of which have come in from out of town that you haven't seen in a while, scattered throughout the theater. Add to that the now palpable vibe of appreciation and impending sadness at the closing of this venue and you have a whole day of aazing experience. As such, the Alamo staff decided to go balls out with the trailers today. I think Tim said they'd have 6 or 7 trailers before each one of the movies. This may sound like a lot at first but, thanks to Zack who hand-picked and ordered them, they were like a little themed mini-trailerthon to get us amped up for each movie. I mean, let's face it. A lot of cop movies (especially from the 80s)... we may like talking about them and remembering them but we don't REALLY need to watch them all the way through again. Steele Justice, Stone Cold, Tango & Cash... they make great trailers but... let's just leave it at that. So getting to watch little bits of all these were great. Before this one they showed a series of 70s-typical cop films (alas i didn't feel like studiously noting each one so now I really don't remember any of them). It started with this movie, which is about a really short Robert Blake motorcycle cop patrolling Monument Valley and trying to become a homocide dick. It's all VERY 70s with beautiful Conrad Hall photography, a loose sense of narrative that meanders to and from the plot, and an ending that fits the moment perfectly... and it's also sort of the antithesis of Easy Rider. The trailer for this kind of makes it look like it's a comedy about Blake being really small and trying to do a big man's job so there was an initial re-adjustment that I had to take when the movie started and it became obvious that this was more of adeliberately-paced meditation on ambition and surroundings. but as it went on I got to like it more and more even though it made for a very contemplative start to a festival that I seemed to think would be pretty high-energy. It was really good though. I'm really glad it played first; I think it made a great opening film. Edgar was there to introduce the film for us, saying he'd be popping in and out throughout the day because they had to do press as well but they re-arranged the schedule because he really wanted to see Sudden Impact and Freebie and the Bean with an audience, so after getting this one going (and telling us all to sit through the end credits because the last shot was so incredible), he whisked away on his British wit and charm, returning at the end to talk to fans and Harry.
03.29.07	Amin: The Rise and Fall	Sharad Patel	This movie is like the exploitation version of Last King of Scotland (not that I've seen Last King of Scotland) made 25 years earlier. The guy who played Amin was... well I won't say he's Forest Whitaker levels of good actor but he seemed to personify the dictator rather well and his laugh is just classic. hah hah hah hah hah this is what happens to bad mommies! Knowing that everyone shown on-screen really happened makes it a pretty damn creepy and brutal movie to watch... It's basically one innocent guy getting mis-treated and killed after another. It's got a great poster though and the movie's pretty good even though it's unrelenting and feels longer than it is (not because of any pacing issues, but that there's never any real release or humor or anything (other than his laugh hah hah hah hah hah you're so pure you will be my fifth wife). Sucked to be Ugandan in the 70s I guess. oh yeah, I went to the Weird Al sing-along before this and it was great fun.
03.28.07	Willie Dynamite	Gilbert Moses	So the print of Erotic Adventures of Superknight was incomplete, forcing Lars to switch in a last-minute replacement. I seemed to be in the minority by being sad about that but whatever... the film he replaced it with was this ge of blaxploitation pimp cinema. I knew this was on the blaxploitation.com crew's top 30 movies so I was excited to see it, even though it's no sexploitation musical based on Don Quixote... So... things that are great about this movie: the theme song, the score, Milky Way, the truck driver, the outfits, the lamb, the bitches, Bell's hand movements, Willie's crotch holster, and more. I also thought it was a real interesting turn how, after the big climactic police chase and shoot-out, instead of ending, the movie continues on for a few scenes to get really dramatic and performance-y and (i think) elevate the movie from simple fun to a more complex level of pimp and ho life. Unexpected and certainly slower than the jackals in the back row who laughed at a woman getting her throat slit would've liked, but important to have in there I think. So yeah, this was a great movie. I liked it a lot. On a side note... those of you who know me or have been reading this for a while might recollect that I used to play a lot of video games. Nowadays I see too many movies to get wrapped up in console gaming but two titles still appeal to me like crack rock (GTA and Elder Scrolls). Well, an expansion pack to Oblivion just came out so... this journal might be slowing down for the next few days. Fair warning.
03.27.07	The Drowning Pool	Stuart Rosenberg	Paul Newman reprises Ross MacDonald's Harper character in this solid if not a bit predictable private eye story set in bayourific Louisiana. I thought the best part of the movie was Linda Haynes. She seemed to have a real wounded world-weariness... she plays an awesome prostitute or tramp or otherwise trashy woman. um... oh yeah, Melanie Griffith plays the same exact character as she did in Night Moves... 1975 must have been a really popular (and slutty) year for her. not much else to say about this one...
03.25.07	The Burbs	Joe Dante	For the Dante event the Alamo played trailers for just about every one of his movies, including The Burbs. Seeing the trailer made me want to watch it again, especially after someone asked about it and Dante gave a little insight in the multiple endings and general cult fandom that's sprung up for it. I know it's always been my default Dante fave because I love the idea and so much of the movie is firmly implanted into my memory ever since I saw it for the first time as a kid, but Innerspace holds up so well (I think) and Gremlins (and Gremlines 2) is so great and just looking over his whole filmography made me wonder if this was REALLY still my favorite of his. Well, there are definitely a few moments that make me wince. Most involve Corey Feldman. The "pizza dude" references and his final line are really pretty rough... and the whole ending actually feels a tad weak. I can never remember exactly how it ends and for a movie I pretty much have memorized that's kind of a giveaway. BUT, there are still so many moments that I absolutely love... pretty much every second Bruce Dern is on-screen he's hilarious, especially when he's in the background. And Hanks has some of his early comedic looks as well, like the sardine scene still makes me crack up and he's not really doing anything. And his weird sneeze, like his Money Pit laugh, remind me of how he became a star in the first place. Plus the idea's just so great. Dante has some real fun with the score, playing up Spaghetti western moments and traditional horror moments and military moments all in the music. Yeah, I still really like this movie a lot. Now that I know I'm not the only one who likes it, I'm tempted to change my fave to Innerspace but... I think I still like this just a tad more even with the handful of missteps and 80s shrapnel thrown in.
03.24.07	Piranha	Joe Dante	After Innerspace we trekked out to San Marcos and Aquarena Springs where they shot the Dick Miller resort scenes for Piranha! We got there just in time for me to share a glass-bottom boat tour around the springs with Joe Dante (and about 20 other people but they don't matter), and gaze down at the fish and turtles and bubbling low-pressure springs and strong-ass high pressure springs where Johnny Weissmuller once dove and Steve McQueen hung out while shooting The Getaway and seducing Ali MacGraw. Unsurprisingly, I liked this movie more in this setting. And Dante explained that the completely random little stop-animated monster guy appears in one scene (along with the Jaws video game, it was to tell the audience that the filmmakers knew it was a knock-off so expect to have fun with it instead of take it completely seriously) so my one question about the movie was answered without me even having to ask it. I think it holds up as a really solid exploitation romp. And it was cool to watch it right where they shot it and have Dante talk on the boat tour about how little its changed. So... That was Joe Dante day. Two great movies at two great locations. I'm really glad they could get him to come down (oh yeah, they also played his "Homecoming" Masters of Horror episode). Of course, a weeklong retrospective with a Gremlins double feature, Amazon Women on the Moon/Twilight Zone Movie double feature, Explorers/Looney Tunes: Back in Action kiddie night with a Howling midnight screening, a Matinee matinee with buzzing seats and Zack dressed up like the Mant running through the crowd and, of course, doubling Innerspace with a screening of The Burbs all leading up to the Piranha roadshow event would've been amazingly perfect, but oh well... I'll take what I can get.
03.24.07	Innerspace	Joe Dante	Joe Dante live in person!!! Showing Innerspace!!!!! Seriously, how can this not sell out!? I'm mad at how few people showed up for this. Come on, Austin! South by's been over for a week, stop spending time in the park and see freiggin JOE DANTE! Anyway, I absolutely LOVED getting another chance to see this in a theater. I have vague recollections of seeing it when it came out, followed by numerous rentals and HBO screenings, followed by proud DVD ownership, but it's been 20 years since I've gotten to see it splashed up on a screen so thank you, Alamo for making that happen. Dante was great. He gave a lot of the credit away to his collaborators and explained that this started out as his "mainstream" movie to make up for the critical and financial bomb that was Explorers, and that the original story idea started off being a completely serious spy movie. From what I understand, he had his choice of films to watch in this slot and picked this because he hadn't seen it in a while. Lucky for me!
03.23.07	Shooter	Antoine Fuqua	Man... this movie is so great. And by that I mean it's absolutely 100% terrible. But it's somehow a good kind of bad, which is rare for contemporary bad movies. It's like a Weird Wednesday grape just waiting for 30 years of cinema to ferment it into sweet sweet wine. It's like a third-generation dub of Commando, Sniper, and The Fugitive all wrapped up together in a mind-numbing series of cliches, tired plot twists, and explosions. Walking out, Jarrette said it was like a WWE film without the wrestler star. I mean, this movie is SO bad... if you went in looking for quality filmmaking you might be very upset. BUT, if you don't mind laughing AT a movie once in a while, and you have a soft spot in your heart for the 80s action-fests, you can have a great time with it. like I did. So great. And it completely lives up to it too... it never dissapoints you by getting decent for a scene or two. Nope, it's thoroughly bad from start to end... If this was made by David Wain or the South Park guys, I'd say it was genius, but then again they might wink to the audience a bit much and ruin the tone essential to this movie being so funny. Really. It's hilarious.
03.22.07	The Alien Factor	Don Dohler	No-Budget Bawlmer production about a group of aliens that come down and start wreaking havoc until a rogue adventurer figures out how to kill them. On the surface, this movie is pretty rough. It's clear they were working with no money, local actors (the sheriff especially), no resources, and no help from anyone. It actually reminded me a lot of the little crappy half-movies me and my friends made in middle and high school (probably helped a lot by the fact that it was the same exact terrain, maybe 75 miles away from where they shot this), except we were lazy and kids and never finished anything and this guy managed to have full-body costumes and double exposures and monster animation and we just had a Freddy mask filled with a red towel and a vial of Re-Animator-esque glowing liquid. So taken in that context I have a lot of respect for this movie... and although a lot of the readings were klunky (and thanks for laughing at every line, small group of jerkasses in the theater ruining it for everyone else), I thought the story was surprisingly well thought out. It's basically a precursor to Critters, but I loved how the different alien beasts were different species with different methods of killing and weaknesses to death. And that perspective shot of the alien ship was pretty sweet. I dunno, I think this movie might get labelled as crap by most but I found a lot of heart in it.
03.22.07	The Holy Mountain	Alejandro Jodorowsky	So I liked this a lot more than El Topo. On one level, there was just lots more going on, on another there was a lot more architecture and scenery to marvel at, and on yet another there was lots more female nudity to stare at when all else failed. yay for nudity. still can't say i love it, really. it got pretty long and I could never read it well enough to figure out if it was right about to end or go on for another hour... but I'm glad I saw both of these and actually enjoyed this one to the point where I wouldn't feel like I'm lying to meyself if I said I liked it.
03.21.07	Scream... and Die!	Jose Ramon Larraz	I'm surprised this was written by Derek Ford (Girl from Starship Venus) because... that was funny and actually moved along and this... didn't. At a certain point, i think you have to evaluate the definition of suspense. There's suspense and there's a woman walking through empty rooms for a half hour. There's a monkey in one scene and a sex scene which is amazing (and by "amazing" I mean incredibly disturbing and probably illegal), but otherwise... I was pretty out of it.
03.21.07	El Topo	Alejandro Jodorowsky	I have to admit that I saw this more out of a weird sense of duty, like i SHOULD see this rather than I want to see this. It's about what I expected... I think at some point I have to admit to myself that I'm just not that into surrealism. I need some semblance of a story and without it, the minutes get longer and longer. I didn't hate this or anything like that, but I can't honestly say I loved it either, or I'd break down doors to get a copy. Plus this guy sat next to me when I went to the David Lynch interview thing who said that Jodorowsky was the only other "hermetic director" (besides Lynch) who was worthy of attention, then he mentioned Kenneth Anger and started looking like he was high on coke. So I have that connection going on in my head, which isn't cool.
03.19.07	8-Bit	Marcin Ramocki, Justin Strawhand	A doc about the music and art movement involving retro video game systems. The subject matter is extremely fascinating to me, which is good because the doc has some pretty severe pacing issues. Whatever, it's still fun to see and hear how the old visuals and sounds from my childhood are now being played around with to create something new. They even mentioned demos in the little history section that starts off the film. I remember in college there being a demo night where a bunch of stoners and nerds sat in this black-lit meeting room watching the guy's computer have to reboot after every demo. Good times.
03.17.07	I'm A Cyborg but That's OK	Chan-wook Park	The closing night film was Chan-wook Park's latest. It's about a girl who thinks she's a cyborg so they put her in a loony bin where she wont eat food. I gotta say... this did nothing for me. I thought it was very pretty, had a cool opening credits sequence, and some funny little things going on in the background during some of it but for the most part it never really came together for me. It didn't seem like it was anything. There was no story. Watching this made me realize how good The Science of Sleep is because this is what that could've been. A very pretty mess. so that's it! it's over! whew. I have to say, with previous festivals there's always been a note of sadness at the end, but not this time. I'm ready for everyone to leave town and for things to go back to normal.
03.17.07	Monterey Pop	D. A. Pennebaker	Last night I had this flash of motivation and planned out a full 6 movies to see today. That didn't happen. Instead, I braved the horrendous parking to come downtown for two movies and then it's quits. First was this classic seminal rock doc about what's maybe the first music festival and certainly the first music festival doc. I'd never seen it all the way through before so I figured if I'm ever going to see it I should see it here at the Paramount sitting down front, especially since I'd heard it was a new print. I'm really glad I did. By this point i'm pretty much exhausted and burned out on watching movies all day, so the music in this film tapped directly into my subconcious. It was really great. Especially Joplin's performance here. unbelievable. I'm really happy I saw this.
03.16.07	The Devil Dared Me To	Chris Stapp	So this was exec. produced by Anthony Timpson who's a great friend to the Alamo. I've met him once and he's a really nice guy. The movie's about a rivalry between stuntmen in New Zealand. It's filled with outrageous stunts and gore and it's generally the type of movie you're supposed to get pretty drunk before watching. In his intro, Tim League hopped on stage and led the theater in shotgunning a free round of Lone Stars passed out in the audience. It was a pretty full house and seemed populated with the ideal crowd. Everyone had a lot of fun with it. Personally... well, I laughed a few times. I liked how much fun everyone seemed to be having. I certainly didn't hate it or anything like that... but it did get pretty goofy in parts. The Q&A was funny though, with the two main guys pointing to the questions hurriedly saying "come on, assholes. next question! you! the guy just sitting there!" So it was a fun end to the night.
03.16.07	Audience of One	Mike Jacobs	This was flat-out amazing. I was amazed. I'm still amazed! It's about this pastor who claims to have received a message from God that he must make a Biblical sci-fi epic movie and this documents that process. There's a mockumentary made several years ago called ...And God Spoke where a team of filmmakers try to make a movie out of The Bible to horrendous result that I've always had a soft spot for, but this is like that but funnier and also real which makes it sad and a little scary all at the same time. I feel like there's too much great stuff to mention here, but I will say that the ending blew me away. Just when you think maybe he comes to his senses a bit... nope. He pulls it out. I couldn't stop laughing as he unveiled his 8 arrows, each more fantastic than the last. Unbelievable. I'd heard that the director and the pastor were here for earlier screenings. I'm sorry to say I didn't get to see him and hear him field some questions, but the silver lining is that the editor was still there and, without either of those guys to monopolize the answers and perhaps spin them toward a polite or vague answer, this dude spilled the dirt. "I'm the editor so I get to say what I thought," he told us as he began to let us know just how real this guy is, how infamous his group is in San Francisco, how much time the director had to spend embedded in the church to get the access he got, and how crazy and scary the whole group is, especially as an example of faith-based reasoning. He said he told the director at one point "I don't know if you realize this, but you're making an Iraq war film," showing that these guys jumped into stuff they no nothing about with no regard for fact or history but firm in the belief that God's behind them. So the Q&A was enlightening and entertaining, putting a great cap on an amazing film. When we got to the drafthouse afterward both me and Jarrette couldn't stop telling people how great this was.
03.16.07	The Unforeseen	Laura Dunn	This is a doc about Austin's Barton Springs and its history with battle between land developers townsfolk that don't necessarily want economic growth if it comes at great cost to the environment. Terence Malick and Robert Redford exec. produce and Redford appears in an interview saying he learned to swim in the springs. This is a very good doc. Not because it's about Austin but because it generalizes to the point where Austin's used more as an example of similar things happening everywhere. Inside this example though, there's some great interviews on both sides of the fence (including some irony-drenched footage of one guy talking while working on a model jet fighter, painting bombs and whatnot), plenty of slick motion graphics and animation to explain the history and the points, and some sad music that threatened to put me to sleep even though I was really enjoying the movie. as an aside, I noticed Kyle Cooper's name credited to the beginning and ending animations. The Alamo's bringing him to town and I'm now very excited to go and hopefully hear him talk about his work (he did the beginning titles for films like Seven and Dawn of the Dead (remake)). Anyway, yeah this is a good movie. Of course, with a packed Austin crowd, the feedback was vocal and plentiful. Lots of boos and hisses whenever the land developers or Dubya appeared, lots of cheers for Ann Richards. A lot of the people who worked on the movie were there so it felt like a home screening. Good experience.
03.16.07	Itty Bitty Titty Committee	Jamie Babbit	This however was like watching a better version of Monkey Warfare. I like how this movie is a lesbian story populated with lesbians but it's not about lesbianism. I guess most gay cinema is at that level now and I just don't know because I'm stuck in my hetero world but whatever... the blonde girl in this is really hot, lesbian or no. Makes me want to drink Diet Coke. anyway, a nice lesbian gets seduced into the world of feminist radicalism and a group that calls themselves Clits in Action with an awesome logo: C(|)A. It (gasp!) actually has a decent script and even with the transgendered in the cast there's no blatantly horrid acting. I had fun with it... good movie.
03.16.07	Quiet City	Aaron Katz	About halfway through this movie I thought to myself "man, this is like a slightly less-crappy version of Dance Party USA." Well, now that i'm home and can check imdb, I can see why. I was gonna say this movie was just barely mediocre but, knowing it's from the guy who did Dance Party (the worst movie I saw at last year's fest), I'd say it's a really remarkable improvement. it still feels like you're watching actors doing really bad improv and trying to pass it off as naturalism, but this time around at least there's no crappy monologues and at least a hint of a story. But not really. It's more like low-rent Linklater meets a Lost in Translation fan. The lead actress was there and she's cute so it wasn't all bad though.
03.16.07	Fish Kill Flea	Brian Cassidy	Glorious SXSW day next-to-last (AKA 8). Since it looks like I'm only seeing two movies tomorrow, I thought I'd suck it up and wake up early for one last full day of movies. First up was this 47-minute doc on a flea market in Fishkill, NY. You might think it's a great idea and an opportunity to profile the quirky people that work and frequent flea markets - i do - but this doc never gets too deep. It's actually more like if you just took a single trip to one. You meet these people for a little bit then move on, flirt with buying some worthless piece of crap, then leave when it starts to look too depressing. There's a sort-of arc about the market closing and them moving somewhere else or not but it's all very distant and meandering. The movie ends and that's about it. As a student project it's ok. A real movie it's not.
03.15.07	Fido	Andrew Currie	This was a very funny movie that plays with the zombie convention by putting them in a Pleasantville-type Lassie-era Douglas Sirk melodrama setting. Zombies are controlled by a leash around their neck which stops their urge to eat human flesh and are used for slave-like labor. The main family gets one and the kid befriends him as a pet. BIlly Connolly, Dylan Baker, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Tim Blake Nelson all do great jobs. I need to get to bed but this one was lots of fun.
03.15.07	TMNT	Kevin Munroe	animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turles movie as an AICN event with all-you-can-eat pizza. I basically went because I heard the SXSW movies playing that slot were all crap. It's very much a children's movie. Characters pretty much say exactly what's on their minds at all times and the message is extremely clear. A few things bug me even in children's movie logic. Part of the story involves 13 monsters set free a long time ago that these huge stone dudes are trying to wrangle up to break some curse or something. So, if you're not going to really deal with any of these monsters very much and not even show some of them, why have so many? Also, it seems they all hang out in NYC, apparently unnoticed all these years. Neil sitting next to me had a great idea how they could've been all the mythical creatures like Nessie and the Abominable Snowman and stuff but nope, they're all just generic-looking monsters that are easily found. My other point is... ok, my favorite turtle has always been Donatello. He was smart, he made awesome gadgets, and he still kicked ass with the Bo staff, which gave him the longest reach in the video games. My second favorite was Leonardo but it always bugged me how he had two swords and did the same amount of damage as everyone else. Come on, man! you have swords! swords are sharp! Swords cut things! A Sword beats pretty much everything but a sai. Which leads me to my least favorite turtle Raphael. Sure he's gotta be different with a non o-ending name and all but... sais? they're defensive weapons! They're barelly offensive at all... even if you use them to pierce, those flared handles only make the center spike an inch or two long. SO unless you're fighting a guy with a sword, they just look cool on your belt. SO! this movie has to make Raphael the star. He's really the only one who gets any character development at all, the only one who shows a little bit of balls, the only one in the foreground more than 5 times, and they even made him like three times as muscular! What is THAT shit about??? otherwise... it looked pretty. it should've been in 3D. The action was pretty cool but it's so dumb... definitely a kid's movie that I can't see working on any kind of emotional level for anyone older than 8.
03.15.07	Monkey Warfare	Reginald Harkema	Horrible and meaningless movie about some people who scavenge junk and talk about how much the world sucks. There's a whole activist/terrorist angle that I don't feel like getting into. the funniest part of the movie is at the very end when some guy explains how to make a molotov cocktail but then throws it and the bottle doesn't break. This movie lost me when it started putting text on the screen following along with songs that were playing. And it has a really abrupt meaningless ending. Didn't like this one at all.
03.15.07	Great World of Sound	Craig Zobel	This was produced by the Homestar Runner guys (Matt Chapman also has a small role) and directed by their childhood friend. It's about the world of "song sharking" which is basically getting fame-hungry musicians to pay you to sign them to a label then running off with their money. It's a lot like Boiler Room or The Prime Gig but with music instead. So since the story was so familiar, the only things that kept the movie interesting for me were the music and the actors playing the main roles. The director said they set up motel room facades with a two-way mirror and shot some of the audition scenes semi-candid camera style. So most of the musicians playing music were actual musicians and therefore there's a lot of interesting music there. Also, the audition scenes never really dipped into the joke of crazy people thinking they're good... it was more about the developing salesman skills of the two leads, who did a pretty good job. Overall I'd say I liked it OK. I didn't really love it but you could do a lot worse with a very low budget indie movie.
03.15.07	638 Ways to Kill Castro	Dollan Cannell	SXSW Day 7 started with some sleeping in. Screw the Kurt Cobain doc. It also started with a rather annoying reminder that I need to go to the eye doctor. I put in new contact lenses to find that my right eye was out of focus. Not as much as if I didn't put it in, but enough to notice. It seemed to get better in darkened theaters once my pupils dilated but driving and walking around got old pretty quick. oh well. This British TV doc is about the many zany ways the kooky CIA tried to kill The Beard. It's about as good as you'd expect from a British TV doc with an interesting subject. Not high art but not really boring either.
03.14.07	Reign Over Me	Mike Binder	A dentist sees his old college roomate on the streets of NYC and gradually re-befriends him again to find out that he's been shattered by grief after his wife and kids (and dog) were killed on 9/11. Don Cheadle plays the dentist and Adam Sandler plays the crazy person. The performances are good. I feel like the movie's on the verge of being good but it never quite gets there all the way. I actually think I'd like it more if it wasn't attached to 9/11. I guess the point is that it takes people a long time to get over their grief and the news cycle of today is much shorter than that, but wouldn't that point be made even more effectively if they just died and it wasn't part of some huge national tragedy? I dunno... whatever. Ultimately, I liked all the lighter friendly scenes between the two guys but the emotional stuff stretched my enjoyment factor. Maybe I'm just a cold-hearted son of a bitch, who knows. So, Binder, Cheadle, and Sandler were here for a Q&A. I think the most enjoyable aspect of the screening was this woman sitting a few rows up from me. She was waaaaay into it, laughing too hard for too long at too little, emoting in little sounds like "woooo!" or "eeeee" and kinda almost talking to the screen several times during the movie. When the lights went up she raced to the front row and had her hand up immediately, butDentler kept looking further back in the theater for questions until Cheadle actually said to her "you're next" and Binder flagged Dentler's attention to point her out. Finally, she started talking and gushing all over Sandler which he gave small polite replies to until someone behind me finally yelled out "Don, you're good too" and the whole theater clapped. Then she continued with a question that "that guy," asking Cheadle if he weas on Saturday Night Live. He answered "no, that was Tim Meadows" and the entire theater laughed. Crazy. Unfortunately, it started late and went long so we didn't get out until after midnight which means I won't get to see Black Sheep. Oh well.
03.14.07	The Lather Effect	Sarah Kelly	At first I thought this might end up being charming. A group of friends have just thrown an 80s-style party and wake up the next day nostalgic for their high school past. Ione Skye and Eric Stolz is in it and the first time you see Peter Facinelli he's dressed in a pink shirt and sunglasses like Tom Cruise in Risky Business. But then they start talking. it's horrible. And there's this one actress that's incredibly hot and I love that her character is a nympho because I get to think about her naked but every time she "acts" it hurt my brain. Sorry. I wanted to like it, I really did. But the writing is just too bad and therefore the performances were pretty weak as well.
03.14.07	Truth in Terms of Beauty	Vince DiPersio	A Doc about photographer Herman Leonard, who took some great pictures of Jazz people and plenty of shots of really hot mostly naked women. it was good but I have nothing to say about it.
03.14.07	Big Rig	Doug Pray	Doug Pray's trucker doc. I'm a pretty big fan of Pray's work, so perhaps I am biased, but I liked this one quite a bit. It's got some great hybrid redneck/hip hop trucker songs and it's edited and photographed really well. This movie is kind of like if you went out to a truck stop and hitched a ride across the country. You meet these drivers, hear what's on their mind, see the scenery, then leave them and meet someone new. It's actually maybe surprisingly not funny. There's no highway hijinx or crazy drivers doing meth off the dashboard or anything... instead you get glimpses into real peoples' lives. Done quite well.
03.14.07	The Chances of the World Changing	Eric Daniel Metzgar	Day six. I saw this because it's about a guy who started collecting turtles in a conservation effort and wound up with something crazy like 12,000 turtles in his Manhattan loft. I kind of approached it in a new-yorkers-are-crazy type of way but the movie's really more about this turtle conservation cause that's shared by others as well. Actually most of the movie takes place in New Jersey. so... it was ok. After all these movies... I really can't remember anything. I had a hard time even remembering what I saw first this morning, then even more trouble thinking of the title instead of "that turtle movie." Anyway, yeah... I gues sit was interesting. Yeah, it was. I'd call it good I think. No reason to call it bad. That I can remember.
03.13.07	The Whole Shootin' Match	Eagle Pennell	This is what's considered the first in the current wave of independant movies. Apparently it's the movie that inspired Redford to do Sundance and blah blah blah. It was all but lost until Mark Rance and Louis Black started looking for a decent print and eventually completely restored it for a DVD release... so people will be able to see it again. It's about two slacker-types who do stuff. So it started really late because Louis Black had to introduce it, then they played Pennell's short A Hell of a Tune before it which was like 40 minutes long so the movie got out super late, making me miss my next movie. Since it was pouring down rain and I was looking at 2 hours of waiting in line out in it to see the only other movie I wanted to see tonight, I went home super early. Anyway, maybe it's the festival fatigue talking but I found the movie to be pretty slow and boring. At one point, the boring-ness had sort of rounded the bend and I found myself interested for some reason... then I got bored again. Like, for a time my boredom had lapped itself and was having a little fun staring at each other until it broke away leaving itself in the dust. I think seeing it again in fresh circumstances, and also going in expecting the tone and pacing, would yeild much better results. Today though, I wasn't into it.
03.13.07	Helvetica	Gary Hustwit	So... probably my biggest surprise of the entire festival was the line for this movie. I really really really didn't think anyone would be interested in a feature-length documentary about a font. Boy was I wrong though... the line stretched the entire length of the convention center and the 400-seat auditorium filled up (what it was is that the movie was a combined event with the Interactive conference so all those designer and blogger nerds got to go to this as well). The movie, in addition to telling the history of the font, is also kind of a travelogue through modernist and post-modernist design. They go plenty of places and interview respective top designers, telling a bit of their biography as well as their thoughts on Helvetica. The movie's also sprinkled with maybe hundreds of shots of Helvetica used around the world, showing up pretty much everywhere. This made for what will probably be a long-running funny joke for just myself (since I don't think anyone else I know will see this), of pointing out any text in public and saying "helvetica" (even if it's not actually correct). I even found myself doing it in the next movie whenever any sort of text was photographed. So in that respect, this movie will live on a long while for me. Um... It's good! It's not as good as I hoped it would be (I figured if someone had the balls to make a whole movie on a font, it would have to be absolutely genius), but it overshot my realistic expectations by a long shot. They didn't dwell on the one thing I knew about Helvetica though, which is the angst designers feel against Arial for being a cheap knock-off that Microsoft used so they didn't have to pay for the real thing. It's interesting though that the designers interviewed for this film had a wide range of feelings about the font. Some loved it, some hated it, some respected it but found it too boring, some blamed it for the Iraq war, some were obssessed with it for a while but have now moved on. One guy even described what it must have been like in the 60s for all these companies to drop their antiquated ad aestethetic (filled with comic fonts and tacky clip ark) for the ultra-clean modern look of Helvetica. The guy went on a whole rant about it filled with colorful descriptions and riled himself all up by the end of it. It's always cool and funny to see someone get so passionate about something that a lot of people... actually most people... care absolutely nothing about. And the poster's clever to. It says "meet the cast:" then lists the alphabet in Helvetica. I joked in line about seeing the D at the convention center handing out flyers earlier in the day, and how they had tried to get the whole cast but X was being a prima donna and P had gotten totally wasted at the OK Go show last night... but in the movie they played a clip from Sesame Street where the letter D was puppet-ized and I thought that was funny. I WISH I saw a D walking around outside the theater. There's a total lack of costumed button-hander-outers this year. No Skip from Darkon, No Leslie Vernon handing out sticky hearts, no hot roller derby girls badgering you into taking a postcard. It's a shame.
03.13.07	Doubletime	Stephanie Johnes	Day Five had the best intentions but ended up being a half day. First up was this doc about competitive jump roping... and double dutching. It follows around two teams (one more affluent and white team from Chapel Hill and one more financially challeneged black team from Columbia, SC) as they both prepare for their first performance at the legendary Apollo theater. The rich white kids kick ass in jump rope competitions (single rope) but can't dance and don't really know much about double dutch (two ropes, more of a team effort). The black kids are great at double dutch but.... well, yeah they start off good. So the doc follows as both of them prepare and eventually compete in this Apollo show. It's very much in the vein of Spellbound and the crowssword doc and that kind of thing... but it's also really really good. Micah made the point afterward that this is one of the few movies he's seen at the fest that he can picture playing in a "real" theater with a wide release. I concur. It's shot very well (lots of use of the fast shutter speed to accentuate the quick movement and flying ropes), amazing editing (that didn't sink in until I thought about the movie afterward, realizing how much information has to get conveyed and how many characters have to be represented in this really large and somewhat complicated story, yet the movie never seems to drag in exposition or get lost in its own explanation. Plus each character gets his or her own little moment in the film, which is a feat considering there's like 8 of them), great story, and the skill and athleticism on display is really amazing. The greatest moment for me was after both of the advanced teas performed when the judge said "wait a minute, we're not done..." and these crazy Japanese teams came out and destroyed. Since none of them won I have to assume that the winning team was even more bedazzling and it just wasn't shown, but in watching the doc the Japanese felt like what it must have been like to be at the Savoy ballroom on the night that Frankie Manning came in and did the first aerial move in a house packed full of Lindy Hoppers. These kids were CRAZY. Infusing martial arts moves into their jumping and fetishistic obssession with weirdly-translated Western hip-hop culture, these guys were clearly on another level. Asian Fury on display. There were some great reaction shots of our kids staring slack-jawed... So... I loved this one. it's really great.
03.12.07	Flakes	Michael Lehmann	From the director of Heathers and the writer of Over The Hedge, this is about a guy who works in a cereal bar (he has all these brands of cereal (both current and vintage) on the wall and people come in and order like ice cream, where they mix and match recipes to create interesting flavors of cereal). Aaron Standord and Zooey Deschanel star. Unfortunately, the plot is directly lifted from the War of the Roses mold, just transposed to the world of cereal restaraunts instead. Lots of pre-Katrina French Quarter atmosphere but i never like these movies where a couple spends the whole time fighting. And this may just be my male perspective at work here, but Dechanel's character seemed like a total bitch to me. For no reason, she pushes her boyfriend to hire her at the cereal shop (which never works anyway), then when he definitively says no she gets mad and takes a job at a rival store across the street and proceeds to make it cool enough to take all the business away. So she basically closes down this awesome cereal shop just for not getting her way. Then she dumps him for not expressing his art through music, but when he spends his nest egg to buy her a present she takes him back. gee, thanks, bitch. so - sigh - once again, this movie had moments but was otherwise mediocre. I'm skipping out on the midnight slot tonight because nothing that I want to see works out, so that means an extra couple hours sleep hooray!
03.12.07	Knocked Up	Judd Apatow	There was nothing really up against this and I was curious to see what they cut to get down to 126 minutes and I also just wanted to see it again. It was just as funny. They changed a few things but I don't remember anything big missing... I guess either the BNAT cut wasn't as long as it seemed or they tightened the whole thing rather than dumping something. I can't remember. funny funny movie. Yes, it's like a boy's Nine Months but whatever. Freakin funny.
03.12.07	Cat Dancers	Harris Fishman	A doc about this guy... ok, he was a ballet dancer then he and his woman started working with big cats as like a Sigfried and Roy of everywhere other than Vegas. Then they took on this other guy and both the second guy and the woman were killed by one of their tigers. So the still-alive guy - who's quite a character in his own right - recounts his life story set to fuzzy out-of-focus 16 and video footage. I must say I liked it a lot more than I thought I would. Even though the guy wore these really... awful wigs the whole time and they never addressed it, his story was pretty enthralling. It was pretty slow though and a lot of the questions afterward were things that the movie kinda should've answered for us, but oh well. it wasn't bad.
03.12.07	Skills Like This	Monty Miranda	The poster and trailer put this on my schedule. Basically, a guy that's a really bad writer finally finds an area that he has natural talent in: stealing. It's shot incredibly well. Really looks great. I think most of the supporting actors did a good job. I really like the idea, I laughed at a lot of the places where I was supposed to laugh, but found problems with some of the tonal shifts and plot development. At first the theft is treated with humorous lightness and casual...ness. But really quickly it gets super serious about it, like he's now a kleptomania... and it really isn't helped by the main guy's performance. I guess since he wrote it he's kind of built into the project but... sorry to say I think the movie would've worked more with a better lead actor. So I liked it in the beginning, but by the end had dragged down to just OK status for me. Like pretty much every mediocre movie I've seen in the last couple days, there are definitely moments in here that are great... it just doesn't hold together for the entire movie.
03.12.07	Running with Arnold	Dan Cox	Day Three? no, four... whatever. Started off with this doc about Arnold and how evil he is. It was ok. yeah, barely ok. The thing that surprised me most about it was the Q&A afterward where pretty much everyone criticized the director and producer in attendance for not making a balanced film. I even heard people behind me talking about Michael Moore's work and how great it is but they still found a major fault in this movie being one-sided. I don't get that at all. But what made it worse was that the filmmakers said they thought it was pretty fair. I don't believe they should be ashamed for making a one-sided doc but... come on... don't call it balanced when you're showing tabloid-worthy unflattering photographs and using audio from The Terminator where Beihn describes a world run by a machine set to images of Arnold shaking hands and smiling behind podiums.
03.11.07	The Signal	David Bruckner, Dan Bush, Jacob Gentry	The midnight show was the hotly anticipated The Signal. Everyone who saw it at Sundance raved. For good reason too. This movie is great. Basically, the televisions, phones, and radios all stop working, broadcasting this jumbled noise that if you watch or listen to it makes you go crazy and kill people. Sounds a lot like Stephen King's Cell, huh. The movie's split into three sections (each given different directing credit) which sort of represent different stories but really they all interlap so it's more like different chapters told from different characters' POV. So it's really unfortunate that Cell's gonna be a movie because I bet history regards this film as the Cell knock-off (even though they had finished shooting before the book came out), especially sad since I feel this movie develops better than Cell does. This is the first movie in a very long time belonging to a very short list where I felt the whole going-insane thing was really effective. I think it's one of the hardest things to convey in film and really only a handfull of films do it really well and this is one of them. That's major in my book. So... the only very minor problems I have with this movie are in the third story. The second story is a lot more dark comedy, which I think would work perfectly if the third story was as different to the previous as the second had been to the first, but instead the third story returns to the tone of the first which makes the second stand out all the more. I think it would've been a GREAT move to make the third segment really disjointed and abstract, closer to an art film than a zombie or horror. THat way, the progression of style throughout the movie would symbolize or mirror how you might react to the end of the world: first terror, then an ironic sense of humor, then finally insanity. I think in some subtle ways that can be read into it now but they had a chance to make it more overt. That's it though. I really liked this movie. A lot more should be written about it... but my bed calls me with sweet soothing sighs.
03.11.07	1 More Hit	Shauna Garr	A doc about J-Swift from the hiphop group Pharcyde and his struggle to make a comeback with his music and kick his crack habit. I'm a little conflicted because I think a lot of the power of the film comes from the director being personal friends with John, but on the other hand I felt there was too much of her in this. Especially the beginning when she's like "let me tell you a bit about me" before talking at all about Swift. That could be a relatively easy fix - just putting that little section a bit further into the movie - but what do I know... I'm not even spellchecking this. After seeing the incredible TV Junkie last year, this seemed to fill the same spot with somewhat less effect. It's a shame I'm so jaded or whatever because some people in the audience were really impacted by this and loved it. I thought it was a solid OK. I'll give it this, though. I never once got heavy eyelids. Incidentally the director is ridiculosly hot. Kind of a Pam Grier thing going... wowza.
03.11.07	Eagle vs Shark	Taika Cohen	SXSW Day Three. Daylight Savings suck. I only saw three movies today because I attended three panels in the morning. In brief: Grindhouse 101, starring Robert Rodriquez who got there late and immediately confessed that he didn't know anything about grindhouse movies ("that's Quentin's thing") before introducing Harry Knowles ("This guy found a movie seat he liked so much he put some wheels on it and takes it everywhere") to co-moderate and talk about the subject (AKA random childhood anecdotes about his parents letting him watched messed up movies). At one point it sounded like RR was about to bring Tim League up (which could make sense because he actually knows quite about about grindhouse cinema) but Harry interjected with more random anecdotes. For the record, the movie where the guy drops a ball bearing on his shoe then kicked it to kill people by hitting them in the forehead is Adios Sabata, the movie where the scientists explains the difference between black sperm and white sperm is Girl on a Chain Gang, and the classic grindhouse double feature trailer where the guy coming out of the theater says "e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e" is BLood Spattered Bride and I Dismember Mama, not Night of the Bloody Apes. Eventually, they showed a 2-minute clip from Planet Terror (which admittedly looked really fun), a couple of classic exploitation trailers (Green Slime, Boss Nigger, They Call Her One-Eye, The Crippled Master), then the top three fake grindhouse trailers submitted for the contest (Hobo with a Shotgun, Maiden of Death,... one other one), and Eli Roth's fake grindhouse trailer (Thanksgiving) that was pretty great. That was about it. Next was a case study for The Ten and Diggers, with David Wain, Paul Rudd, Ken Marino, and various producer and directors. Not a lot of people there considering how packed screenings of both movies were but they were really funny. One guy asked if they wrote their scripts with contingencies for natural disasters in mind. There was lots of Friends joking before Rudd noted that Wet Hot American SUmmer is what got him Anchorman so has really defined his current funny-man statues. I had an urge to raise my hand and tell them that Chris Meloni was hilarious in that movie but then it occured to me that that wasn't a question and it always sounds idiotic when you chime in with some lame praise so I didn't do that. You hear that fellow festival-goers? I didn't do it! Think twice before doing it yourselves. Please. Finally there was a panel on the current state of horror films and their possible future. Critic and nice guy Scott Weinberg, Behind the Mask director Scott Glosserman, a couple people from Borderland, Rider Strong, Zack Carlson (of the Alamo) and moderator Harry Knowles were all up there. I'm not saying anything bad about Harry's moderator skills because I want to get into next year's BNAT but... I really didn't think the moderator's job was to answer every question and cut off the panelists. Huh. But when he wasn't expounding or sayign Curse of the Demon was his favorite horror film, he did a good job of steering the conversation and getting everyone to talk. The things said though were pretty much what every horror fan already knows so... Eagle vs Shark has incessantly been described as a New Zealand version of Napoleon Dynamite, so much so that I was anxious to see this movie just to say that it was more than that. It wasn't. The first part of the movie is really enjoyable though, meeting the characters and getting introduced to the quirky world and whatnot, but the second half seemd to drag for me. That festival exhaustion kicked in... it's really a better feedback than any test audience or scholarly criticism or whatever. I am now at the point where I've seen enough movies that my primal base brain will switch off if it's not good enough to keep me enthralled. So yeah, I didn't not like it but it pretty much IS just a kiwi version of ND
03.10.07	Kenny	Clayton Jacobson	An Australian mockumentary about a guy who works on port-a-johns for a living. So the main point of interest (and also the main problem) with this movie is that it sticks to the rules of documentary very closely, yet it doesn't play as outrageous like... every other mockumentary ever. In the Q&A, the director said that's the only genre where the performers wink to the camera and you don't see that in straight dramas, then Micah said "i guess that's where the "mock" comes from." However, it seemed like a lot of people in the theater weren't aware of its fictional nature and cheered along with Kenny as if he were real. Good for them but I bet they felt cheated when it was over. Not that I didn't like the movie... I thought it was a pretty poignant and funny little drama... it just should've been shot like a normal drama I think. The use of the mockumentary form is kinda interesting but I think it hurts the film overall because the audince is very much used to Christopher Guest-style stuff. This would've worked just as well with a little more money to hide the radio mics and some silent character in the passenger seat to listen to Kenny's monologues. Totally not a midnight movie by the way.
03.10.07	Everything's Gone Green	Paul Fox	The kid from Joey and Road Trip stars in this angsty/quirky story of a guy who realizes everyone around him is running a scam and decides to do it but a hot girl calls him corrupted so he stops. Of course it's filled with much more angst and quirk thanks to the script by Douglas Coupland. This was yet another movie that I was REALLY ready to like and came away with a distinctly mediocre feeling. I feel like I should make a macro for "there were moments I liked but..." because I'm saying it so much. It's true here too though. Director, Star, and writer were here for a Q&A, highlighted by someone asking about Road Trip 2 rumors followed by Coupland asking what Road Trip 1 was... like 4 times until Paulo Costanzo finally said stuff like "It's not 'Road Trip 1,' it's just Road Trip!" and "OK, imagine there was a movie called Road Trip. What do you think that movie's about?" Coupland came off as suitably quirky and removed from reality (although Kier-La might be happy to hear that he described the Alamo as a Partridge Family theater (maybe due to the tables in each row?)). They were all very Canadian, which fits since the movie's set in Vancouver. Yeah, they said the crew loved every day of work because it was actually supposed to be Vancouver. So... eh. I liked it more than not liked it, but I wish it could've been like 15% better to jump it into the realm of I Heart Huckabees or the other what-am-i-doing-with-my-life dramas that border on the whimsy.
03.10.07	All the Boys Love Mandy Lane	Jonathan Levine	Somehow this movie went from 0 to 118 on the hype-o-meter in like 2 days. That hurt it because, while it was kinda decent I guess as a slasher flick, I wasn't really feelin it. I didn't buy the premise or the execution or the ending. Really, the first scene was the best for me and I walked out thinking it was barely OK. Definitely going for that "scary texas" vibe with the gold filters and heat waves and rusty windmill crap. One of the kids spoke exactly like McConaughy... I was glad when he died in a sounds-better-on-paper way. Filled with eh.
03.10.07	The Ten	David Wain	A comedy made up of ten shorts, one for each commandment. It's hilarious. not half-and-half funny and mediocre but hilarious. I loved it. There are like 50 funny people in it and they all have at least one moment to shine. Great stuff for any fan of The State or Stella or whatever. Wain was there with Ken Marino and Paul Rudd and Jonah Hill also watched the movie for some reason... He wasn't here but Liev Schreiber was pretty great in this. Again, I could go on a lot more but I won't. I just really liked this a lot. thought it was really funny.
03.10.07	When a Man Falls in the Forest	Ryan Eslinger	Dylan Baker, Timothy Hutton, Sharon Stone, Pruit Taylor Vince. Shame this movie was so slow and meandering and weak. Is it me or does Stone only pick extremely unsympathetic roles lately? It's like the only job she can get is the bitter used up angry old hag. ugh. I thought this could be good, and there are maybe 2 or 3 moments, but for the most part I was pretty bored. Major problems with the story I think... but I'll waste valuable minutes of sleep getting into it so whatever.
03.10.07	The King of Kong	Seth Gordon	SXSW Day Two. This is a really well-made and enjoyable doc about two guys: the dude who set the Donkey Kong high score in 1982 and the challenger trying to beat him. These guys are such great characters and represent such archetypal roles that the story plays out in like a video game nerd (nerd, not geek. these guys are losers for the most part) myhtological epic. OK maybe not THAT grandiose, but it's a really engaging story and you really get behind the main character. It's filled with great moments, great characters, and great drama. Really loved this one.
03.09.07	Trailer Park Boys	Mike Clattenburg	I knew nothing about the Trailer Park Boys show or whatever before this. I walked in and it seemed like everyone in the theater was already a huge fan. The three main guys were there in character and were funny. The movie is hilarious! It really makes me want to track down the show and catch up on it. It's kind of a loose-format mockumentary about this group of guys in a Canadian trailer park that constantly get drunk, smoke dope, and pull off petty theft, often winding themselves up in prison. It sounds kinda eh but seriously, it was hilarious. I was really pleasantly surprised and had a great time with this movie. It kinda feels like I'm really late to the party but at least I'm here now. If only every midnight show is this good for the entire fest... I'll be very very happy. half-day today. I'm aiming for six films tomorrow. here's hoping I make it to all of them and I remember what they were by the time i get back home to write them up.
03.09.07	The Lookout	Scott Frank	I forgot to mention before that I saw Shia LeBouf as I was walking to get my badge. He asked us where he could buy a cigarette and we pointed down the block. That's my celebrity story for the fest. Next up is Scott Frank's story of a kid who gets a head injury in a car accident and now has to write things down to remember them. It sounds a little like Memento but it's not really. Jeff Daniels plays a blind guy who lives with him to help him do the mental equivalent of physical therapy to try and put his life together. He's really the best part of the movie. Unfortunately, there's this astmatic villain that befriends the main kid in order to get him to help rob a bank where he works as a night cleaner. Isla Fisher's also in it as a girl the main kid gets to sleep with. A bunch of people were here with it (including Fisher) but they didn't do a Q&A afterward so I didn't get to unabashedly stare at how hot she is. The movie... I really wanted to like it. And like I said, whenever Jeff Daniels is on screen I did. But the script is so dan writerly... it's completely caught up in its own irony and meaning. I guess it's what a lot of hollywood execs and script doctors consider a perfect story but it's just so damn by the numbers. You know stuff comes back, things you learn in the first act pay off in the third, blah blah blah. It quickly becomes about following the mold, creating a few really bizarre moments that I giggled at. Plus I felt like the whole theater was taking crazy pills because everyone loved it and clapped for everything (seriously, the Spyglass entertainment logo got applause). Again, I'd strain to call it OK. It's probably better than I give it credit for, but I was really hoping for the best and didn't really get it.
03.09.07	Suffering Man's Charity	Alan Cumming	South by starts! I am losing my everpresent notebook this year in exchange for an extra free hand and less to carry around, so my notes are all mental. That means these entries will probably be drastically shorter, which is good too because I'm trying to fit as many movies in as possible so the less time I spend typing at 2:30 in the morning, the more time I spend sleeping. The fest started with this dark comedy by Alan Cumming, who was here as well as a few of the actors including Karen Black. Afterward for the Q&A Black hopped up on stage (kinda literally) and proceeded to entertain me more than she has in every movie I've ever seen her in (except the Zuni War Doll segment of Trilogy of Terror). When she noticed that her director chair didn't have that little bar of wood to perch your feet on, she tried to look comfortable with one heel stuck between the chair legs and the other draped over the arm, then she remarked how beautiful the theater was and said "painting!" whil pointing up at the ceiling. Hilarious. Unfortunately, the movie suffers from weird pacing and lots of crying speeches from Cumming who plays a crazy person and some kinda stock indie techniques of weird video effects and "experimental" editing that I just didn't go for. There were moments of pretty nice dark comedy here but overall I'd strain to call it OK.
03.08.07	The Beast Must Die	Paul Annett	Calvin Lockhart and Peter Cushing star in this Amicus horror movie that's really more like a mystery story except the murderer's a werewolf. They even begin the movie telling you this, then mentioning that at one point there will be a "werewolf break" where you can stop and think about who's the werewolf. Said break is great, with a 30-second timer and a voice-over suggesting each character (with a random shot of each person to match). Lockhart doesn't seem to fit here. I really like him in the other stuff I've seen him in (mostly blaxploitation stuff, ok all blaxploitation stuff) but here he comes off as severely overacting. but then again, he's given such British lines to say. "I'm no VOYEUR!" just doesn't sound right coming out of his mouth. oh well. Have to admit, this one was SLOW. I can't say I was ever bored like in Wolfhound, but the whole movie was tediously British. A few moments here and there but... overall I'm glad I saw it but wouldn't rush to see it again.
03.08.07	Wolfhound	Nikolai Lebedev	Well alright. A screening for The Travelling Executioner kind of turned into watching screeners for FantasticFest at Tim's house. It made for an interesting evening. First up was a movie called Stag Knight, about a castle where some knight died 100 years ago and it's now rented out to a group of dudes having a stag party. We start watching the DVD and the pacing is incredible, like so fast that we each start to suspect we're missing stuff because nothing makes sense. I mean nothing. People start dying like two minutes in, it's like they're going through the entire expected plot in 10 minutes. man, this movie is crazy! how are they gonna keep this up for an hour and a half!? Oh, it's just like a ten minute long trailer/promo reel showing all the money shots... Well that's bizarre. Thankfully, it was successfull in anti-selling us on the movie so when the real thing started after we'd seen all the cliche'd lines, sub-par gore, and crappy story, we wisely turned it off. So next in the machine is Wolfhound, a Russian fantasy movie with extravagant production value. This huge semi-transparent X blocks out the middle of the screen for the entire movie. So that was distracting. and in night scenes it was very distracting, and in night action scenes it was impeding. I couldn't tell what the hell was going on because the cuts were too fast and all I was seeing was this X. Otherwise, it's the story of this kid who somehow survives when his entire clan is slaughtered by a dude with a wolf tattoo on his hand, so he grows up a slave and becomes the master badass warrior and goes for revenge. He gets mixed up with some princess along the way and things end up on a pretty epic scale. There's about a half-hour of really impressive fantasy in this movie. I really dug on some of the stuff a lot. Unfortunately, there's like this 45-minute montage of the group leaving a village that soaks up any patience you might have... then some of the stuff gets a little... goofy. OK really goofy. OK absurdly goofy. I wouldn't be surprised if I saw this on the schedule for this year's FantasticFest, so that makes me feel all ahead of the curve and elitist which is awesome, but the movie is about 40 minutes too long for me. I was bored in parts.
03.08.07	The Mechanic	Michael Winner	Bronson plays a hitman who teaches Jan-Michael Vincent the tools of the trade, so it's a bit like The Professional (without the pedophile angel) for the first half, then things get tricky with double crosses and whatnot. Very decent solid Brosnan flick. It also has an exploding motorcycle gag that I'm not sure how they did... you see the guy moving as he falls off this huge cliff then it explodes immediately upon impact (no cut). The guy must be a dummy moving in the wind or something but damn if it doesn't look real. crazy.
03.07.07	The Six Thousand Dollar Nigger	Rene Martinez Jr.	Packed crowd. Wild energy. Laughter stepped on about half the movie's dialogue. I am officially overloaded. There's too much great stuff to list. It's just so great. For one, it seems like Wildman Steve (all caps, great) never once looked at the script. I can see him come in and just say "now listen, the people ain't payin to see no actor, they payin to see Wildman STEVE, hear? So you just go on and do what you gonna do and let me do MY thing." He's so loose in this but constantly hilarious. And there's some of the weirdest coverage I've ever seen here. They cut to the most random messed up close-ups to hide mistakes in the master... the effect is hilarious though. Pretty much everything about this movie is hilarious... the stuff that's supposed to be funny is and the stuff that isn't is so bad that it is. It's just great. I can't go on.
03.06.07	Gridiron Gang	Phil Joanou	The Rock teaches kids to forget about their gangs and focus on what's really important: football. It's exactly the kind of movie that you'd expect when you hear that. Except for the couple times where I barfed from too much schmaltz and bad writing or acting or whatever, it wasn't too bad. There was one HILARIOUS line where Rock and Xibit are looking at a fun-loving little kid and Rock says something like "I wonder if he was smiling when he stabbed that old lady for her purse." What a great unintentionally hilarious moment.
03.05.07	The Legendary Joe Meek	Alan Lewens	A british TV documentary about record producer Joe Meek who did some groundbreaking stuff then killed himself, preceeded by a promotional clip of a much better Meek doc still in progress. It was kind of a big cockblock to show the ten minutes of this good entertaining well put-together doc then switch to a 60-minute program on fuzzy video with muddy audio. it was ok.
03.04.07	A Face in the Crowd	Elia Kazan	another dirty pick. To be honest I was not that hot to see this. I'm not what you'd call a huge Kazan fan... his movies, or at least the ones he seems most famous for, are just so ultra DRAMAtic. Even the ones that don't take from plays where people talk actingly to one another for two hours, everything is still so heavy and social. Mostly I consider his strengths in working with actors, which is not my favorite aspect of the movies so... I've kind of attributed it to personal taste and moved on. But for this I purposely tried to keep an open mind because a couple people really like it and consider it one of Kazan's best. So... yeah I guess I liked it. It's one of those situations where I am constantly aware of how "good movie" this is, but it still just borders my visceral entertainment zone. The acting is (expectedly) superb, the message strong and prophetic, shot well, told well, cut well, all that stuff. But the whole movie I was just waiting for the huge long monologues to start coming in. Those virtuoso passages just waiting for acting class exercises about one's inability to love or frustration at being human... and at the very very end I sort of got a few, but for the most part I was pleasantly surprised. It helps to have Matthau deliver those by the way. For whatever reason, his brooding quiet tone agrees with me much more than a southern-accented belle or whatever. The few times he gets more than one line at a time to say he reminds me a lot of his jaded scientist in Fail Safe. Clearly intelligent with an edge like he's aware of how above everyone he is but also with some pity because he knows he puts himself there. At the very end when someone finally gets to tell Rhodes off, I suppose what he says is sufficient but I wanted him to just sock it to him... like the verbal equivalent of a mack truck hitting a kitten. I guess it was a lot closer to that back in 1957. So... I think the biggest surprise in the movie for me was the Vitajex success montage. I honestly didn't think Kazan could get that excessive with his imagery. It's like for a moment there he turned into Eisenstein or Godard with his cutting. It's really a pretty scary minute or so... very mocking and cynical. Actually the whole movie was very dark... surprisingly dark for me. I liked that about it, although the nihilist in me wanted Patricia Neal to go back up to him at the very end, leaving Matthau alone and the two leads stuck in a continuing downward spiral. I suppose her walking away is one glint of light for the audience to hold onto... I like to think it was studio-mandated. The reason why I liked this movie more than I thought I would is that I expected a story that boiled down to two words: power corrupts. What I got however, was much richer. And that's because Rhodes starts out as an asshole. If he was a nice simple country guy that gets whisked (or even worse, groomed) into sudden stardom and becomes a bastard, it'd get old. But instead, the first thing we learn about him is that "he's a mean one" and instead of being a comment on power, it's a comment on, via television, human nature's willingness or even eagerness to follow. In that respect, I think this makes a great double feature with Sweet Smell of Success. Plus Winchell appears in this film which is fun. Speaking of... I didn't recognize him until I saw on IMDb but that's Rip Torn as Barry Mills! Crazy! And also, I absolutely love the term "gentleman loafer" which Rhodes says very early in this movie. That's an amazing title and if I ever get business cards printed that will be my title. So, summing up. I must admit I liked this more than I thought I would. Clearly a good movie. I still won't be running out to buy the DVD...
03.02.07	A Piece of the Action	Sidney Poitier	sigh. Well I guess three was too much to ask. It's like they got together and said "hey, you know how we've made these two movies that people like? well let's get together again and do the exact opposite." A Pice of the Action... more like A Piece of Crap. This movie is so heavy-handed and socially-consciouss and un-funny and long... I can't believe it. First off, Cosby and Poitier start the movie not knowing each other but each being a successful high-level thief. Then, when a newly-retired cop (played by skinny-ish James Earl Jones) sends them notes forcing them to volunteer at a community center or face jail time for their crimes (which I guess Jones figured out when he was on the beat but just let slide because he was too busy doing nothing), they have to work together to - you guessed it - teach disenfranchised youth the value of getting a job. Minimal scenes with Cosby and Poitier together, painfully long sections where it's just Poitier re-enacting Blackboard Jungle with him as the teacher which actually has nothing to do with the plot because before too long one of the marks from his con finds him and steals his woman so he can't be bothered to teach the class (that he had to give money to for them to pay attention in the first place) until at the very end when they give him some sort of teacher award and he decides to give up his life of incredibly well-paying crime to better the community instead. ugh. I mean, what is this? I feel like I've been baited and switched... like these three movies make one big M. Night Shyamalan movie... I'm here for an alien invasion thriller, buddy, not some treatise on faith and religion. So.. I was actually too tired to write this out last night and now that I've slept, I can't remember any of the few things I thought were ok with this movie. I don't mean to sound like I hated it with fury - it was more like severe dissapointment - but... I can't remember the good things I was going to say (there weren't many). Oh yeah... Cosby's disco moves were ridiculous. there.
03.02.07	Let's Do It Again	Sidney Poitier	This time around, Poitier seems to have the power to hypnotize people... which comes in handy when their not-quite-culty fraternal order needs money for a new building. So they head down to New Orleans (or, over i guess, since they're in Atlanta) and hypnotically amp up boxing challenger Jimmie Walker to unleash his inner tiger and win the title fight. And that's like the first half of the movie. This was really like watching Ocean's Eleven and Ocean's Twelve together because the whole second half is aftermath from the first half (hope that doesn't give too much away). Not only is Cosby and Poitier great (Poitier playing the straight man to Cosby's bigger performance (and wardrobe)) but Calvin Lockhart and John Amos were also great as competing bookies. I liked this one for pretty much the same reasons as Uptown Saturday Night. While this one had a bit more The Sting influence, it's still just as fun with a really great Curtis Mayfield score. it's already late though and I want to fit the last one in before I pass out so...
03.02.07	Uptown Saturday Night	Sidney Poitier	I'm ending my sort-of series of blaxploitation movies tonight with a triple feature of Sidney Poitier/Bill Cosby movies: Uptown Saturday Night, Let's Do It Again, and A Piece of the Action. I've heard all three of these are good if not great and I'm excited to see them all for the first time. I guess Bill Cosby's more or less a joke nowadays but back in the 70s he was still cool for sure. Here, he's sporting a beard just as bushy as his afro playing a cab driver and friend to Sidney Poitier's working-class dude. To celebrate Poitier's vacation, Cosby persuades his buddy to go uptown to Zenobia's, a hot after-hours club that they can't really afford but what the hell. They get there, start having a good time, start winning some money at the craps table, then the place is held up. Cut to the next day when Poitier, glancing at the paper after dozing through the church sermon, finds out that he's won 50 grand in the lottery. Just one problem: his ticket's in his wallet which was stolen last night. And off they go. I really liked this movie because it was a comedy. They deal with local gangsters and there are still gunfights and elements of danger and violence, but it's all pretty light. Harry Belafonte does his best Brando Godfather impression as the Mr. Big-type and mostly it's just two guys trying to get a wallet back, getting caught up in hijinx and whatnot along the way. Poitier and Cosby have obvious chemistry together on-screen and really carry a lot of the physical humor in their mannerisms and behavoir. Especially the scene where Cosby roughs up the guy at the bar and a little later when they're being dragged outside to be killed. Sounds weird to say it but funny stuff. I liked this one on the same type of level as Cotton Comes to Harlem. It's a really solid good movie that's also made for black people. It doesn't feel exploitive at all... just funny.
03.02.07	The Departed	Martin Scorsese	With all the Oscars and whatnot, I felt like watching this again. It's really solid I think. I still love Alec Baldwin and Mark Wahlberg's performance a lot... actually I like everyone's performance a lot... actually actually I like pretty much everything about this movie. The only two things that kind of caught me were the rat in the last shot - don't know if the movie needed to be quite that obvious - and the weird limbo warehouse space that Nicholson and Damon find themselves in after the police raid on the drug bust... like they turn some corner and the dozens of cops are nowhere to be found and don't come running when they hear 6 gunshots. That still irks me but... that's it! Other than that, perfect.
03.01.07	The Wraith	Mike Marvin	Charlie Sheen... for a guy who gets top billing you can only see his face in maybe 15 minutes of this movie. I guess they mean his character is top billing even if you spend most of the time only seeing a slick 80s future-car or a guy in a dark helmet.. It's sort of like an 80s take on High Plains Drifter. A leader of a small-town car racing gang is crazy in love with this girl (an 80s-gleam'd Sherilyn Fenn) so when he catches her getting it on with her boyfriend they kill him. So now the movie's about his spirit (which comes back in the form of Charlie Sheen) to exact revenge by out-racing each one of the hooligans responsible. I guess I sort of gave away the whole movie... but that's ok because the only charm this movie has is with its eerie vibe of reality disconnect. This is another one of those movies where everything in it doesn't seem quite real, not for any intentional reasons but just because everything's so bad. That makes it fun though... you've got some awesome lines in here like "whoever he was, he was weird and pissed off" or "it's an evil spirit and it ain't cool!" plus terms and phrases I just don't hear used enough like "kidney buster." Plus it's a chance to see Clint Howard's Eraserhead audition transplanted into a mechanic part. A fun thursday night.
03.01.07	I'm Gonna Git You Sucka	Keenan Ivory Wayans	So February is over. I obviously started this whole run of blaxploitation movies too late. Oh well. Next year. To wind things down (festivities officially end tomorrow night with a triple feature I've lined up), I decided to watch this spoof that I loved as a kid and haven't seen since learning about the previous career of everyone in this. Bernie Casey, Isaac Hayes, Jim Brown, and Antonio Vargas all come together to have fun and sort of pay homage to the whole genre. They also got a guy to fill the Jim Kelly role. So... maybe it's because I saw this so much as a kid but things that I remember being hilariously funny are now mildly chuckle-worthy. It is cool to see all these guys on-screen together... makes me wanna see Three The Hard Way... I think it's funny though that Brown did Crack House the year after this.
02.28.07	Massacre of Pleasure	Jean-Pierre Bastid	Tonight's weird wednesday was exceptionally weird. I'm reading this book called Flicker that mentions the underground film scene in the mid to late 60s. In the book the author uses a fictional title named Venetian Magenta to kind of summarize the movement, but this movie reminds me a lot of what he was talking about. I guess the big thing is that it made no sense. And it's not like an abstract poetry film where you can tell it's trying to not make sense. Each scene plays like it's part of a puzzle but the movie is like trying to put together an old jigsaw at some day care place where ten years' worth of lost and found pieces have all been thrown into one box. If this was one of those found footage pieces I'd say the guy got admirably close to logic, but things never quite connect. There's a vague idea that perhaps in some form at one time things did connect, but by the time the light hit the screen tonight all of that was lost in a little more than translation. There's a lot of narration in this movie that gives me the idea that the french version is probably a lot different. like, completely different story, completely re-arranged scenes different. The little dialogue that we hear is fairly trivial, leaving all of the "plot" heavy lifting to the narrator, sometimes introducing a silent scene like "and then we talked it out" and you see (but not hear) two people talking for a while. Even the French version is pretty obtuse though I bet. A lot of it seems so prototypical Frenchie art film of the times... rebelling against or trying to grow beyond the new wave and forcing audiences to accept new values of film just because they are in vogue. Lots of zooms, shots of people looking off-camera, random shots of random things, more zooming. It's all drenched in pretension. The director credits himself as "Jean-Loup Grosdard" and what I sort of understood to be the base theme of the movie had something to do with crime, sort of like this was maybe the director's take on Breathless: an underground french take on an experimental french take on american crime movies. So i bet even in its most pristine original auteur-esque form it still shows the distorted qualities of being a third-generation interpretation. That can be kind of liberating though for the audience. When not obligated with the task of following any sort of plot line, I found pleasure in more specific cases as I watched. There were plenty of really great visual moments... fairly random but no less enjoyable, and the randomly-placed lesbian scenes were nice, and some of the writing in the dialogue was also great ("ancient art of keeping a man happy","finding out was delicious"). There did seem to be a strong theme of violence toward women though... don't know what that's about. The flipside of these shallow pleasures is that the 80 or 90 minutes that it takes to watch the movie gets pretty exhausting when you don't have any deeper intrigue or curiosity to fall back on. So... definitely an interesting week.
02.28.07	Trouble Man	Ivan Dixon	Another pretty great one, although this does kind of sag for a while, maybe an extra ten minutes spread around the second and third acts but whatever... this movie gets severe levels of extra points because of the soundtrack. Specifically the track T Plays it Cool. This has been a favorite song of mine for many years now but I never tracked down the album that it's on (I first heard it in connection with hiphop DJs like Shadow and Cut Chemist who include it in their mixes as fundamental grooves (along with Marlena Shaw's California Soul, Billy Garner's I Got Some, and Michael Viner's Incredible Bongo Band's cover of Apache). So When Mr. T starts shooting pool with this guy and I catch the beat to T Plays it Cool, all the pieces fall into place and I realize this soundtrack is now my favorite Marvin Gaye album. So after that, it's pretty much all icing. But T is one baaaad dude. I love all the beginning stuff where we learn why he gets his name and how he handles his business. He's easily a soul version of Dashiell Hammett and the movie plays as such. He's just a cool guy to follow around for a movie, if a little macho fantasy is your deal. I liked this one a lot but do have to admit to it dragging in parts. It's interesting though... looks like this director only did two movies in an otherwise TV career: this and The Spook Who Sat By The Door, two really solid blaxploitation movies.
02.27.07	Cleopatra Jones	Jack Starrett	Yeah I really liked this one too. Surprisingly enough (for me anyway), I wasn't that into Tamara Dobson but EVERYONE else in the movie is unbelievably great. Especially the little tiny roles like the kid that watches her car or the two guys that talk about her after she leaves her place or even the off-screen fight going on in the apartment building before she runs into Snake (also amazing). And Shelly Winters as Mommy... whew. great stuff.
02.27.07	Black Belt Jones	Robert Clouse	Tonight is Jones Family double feature. First up is Black Belt. Damn. I'm once again overwhelmed by awesomeness. Pinky, man... every damn word out of Pinky's mouth is just unbelievable. I love how he calls his enemies communist, i love how he credits his gall to being from New Orleans, and I love how even when he's just stating the obvious he somehow puts an edge on it that makes it hilarious. He ranks up there with my favorite blaxploitation villains of all time. anyway, I also loved seeing Scatman Crothers act like he's a karate sensei, and his death is amazing. Really the whole movie... it looks a lot cheaper and exploitation-y than some of the other movies I've seen the past few weeks and a lot of its charms come from that. I didn't really appreciate this in the same way as Truck Turner but I think I enjoyed it just as much. Just tons and tons of fun. Seeing it makes me wish I was in town when the Alamo had Jim Kelly here. My copy of the film was full-frame with stutters and sound issues so it'd be great to see theatrically. hopefully at some point, but at least now I've seen it and can count myself as a fan.
02.26.07	Napoleon Dynamite	Jared Hess	A couple factors led me to want to see this again. It's a movie I completely understand why some people don't like it but for whatever reason I love it. Even though I think they're supposed to be in highschool, this feels like such a middle school movie to me. like it was made by middle schoolers as well as being about middle school. Just so fun.
02.26.07	Friday Foster	Arthur Marks	Way less sleazy than the previous two Grier movies I watched last week, this one is based on a comic strip. I don't think I ever read it but it's somehow familiar to me... i think it was one of those serials that since they weren't one joke strips they contained like a half-second's worth of action and since I never read the paper (even the comics) every day they never made sense to me because they're completely out of context and don't really go anywhere or mean anything unless you've read the previous 30 strips. So it'll be like "oh no, the film's lost!" then a guy will say "we'll get it back, in my car!" and that's it. Why are those even printed? At least family circus occasionally had those cartoons where the baby left a dashed line to follow all the random places in the house he went. I mean that's at least... like there's a purpose to that. it may not be funny, but at least there's something to do. sigh. anyway. a serious lack of nudity here, but not completely absent thanks to a shower scene toward the beginning and a hot tub scene toward the ending. And even though Grier's made up to look much more like the spunky newspaper photographer that gets entangled in perilous political plots instead of a prostitute (or a vigilante nurse pretending to be a prostitute), the movie succeeds on its own out-of-the-gutter way... mostly with its cast. Not to say Grier doesn't sleep with pretty much every viable male, it's just done a bit more tastefully. I also love Grier's kid brother who hustles the pimp who always comes by in hopes of turning Grier out. That kid is awesome and I'm glad he doesn't get kidnapped at the end. I also thought it was interesting that every single person, no matter if he was a private investigator or a senator or a black billionare or a photagrapher, was really proficient in handling guns and killing people. The end sequence just goes nuts. I don't know why a priest would have a cache of shotguns in his meditative retreat but damn it, he does and even the fatcats on capital hill not only know how to gun random attackers down, but also seem to have absolutely no problem doing it. repeatedly. so this was fun. I still think Foxy Brown takes the cake for me and Pam Grier, but hey the more the merrier.
02.26.07	Reno 911!: Miami	Ben Garant	Reno 911! goes to Miami just like in Police Academy... 6? no, 5. i think it's 5... maybe 6. Anyway, it's good to see them swear a little, get a little more explicit, not that they're that clean on comedy central... it just seems fitting that these guys would swear. kinda like when you see the Ren & Stimpy Spike TV episodes that are extra raunchy, you realize that all the stuff you've seen before is like a watered-down version of what it should've been all along. That said, I probably enjoyed this about as much as the show. Meaning i laughed a lot, really liked it, but probably wouldn't own it on DVD. It's really funny though... and I loved all the State guys playing tattoo rats. It was great to see them all together (sort of) again. now THAT's a show I'd own on DVD.
02.22.07	Humanoids from the Deep	Barbara Peters	Yeah... I'm still not in love with this movie but it's not totally without merit and the crowd helped it along quite a bit i think. It does have a few things going for it... it's short, it's got a strong ending, and there's plenty of footage of the actual humanoids so no one can ever accuse it over not delivering on its promise. I also appreciated how much exploding went on... like, I'm not sure the filmmakers are aware of how gasoline actually works but damn if there wasn't some good explosions... I've never seen anything explode like that from a molotov cocktail before...
02.21.07	Bad Ronald	Buzz Kulik	This nerd sort of kills a girl and his weirdo mom makes him hide in a secret room of the house to evade the fuzz. Then she dies and he stays in there even after a new family moves in. OK.. that's a pretty creepy idea, but for a made-for-TV-movie that is unbelievable. I love that this was shown on TV where kids of any age could watch it. It's such a messed up twisted idea, and what's more, in true 70s fashion the whole movie is from the perspective of the kid! So that's even more messed up! As if they're saying "don't feel bad for this kid... even though he's killed someone, circumstances pretty much make it all make sense. it could even happen to you! pity bad ronald! So, as anyone would do when they're cooped up in a confined space for long periods of time, Ronald spends his time painting. The funny thing is, he didn't go stir crazy or anything... his bizarre fantasy world of Atranta (presumably an asian's version of Atlanta) already existed in his messed up mind... before any of this happened. So in his room he's just bringing his fantasy world to life through paint... and once the family moves in, he drills holes in the walls to be able to peep at the three attractive daughters to Dabney Coleman's disinterested father. And he pilfers food and falls in love with one of the girls and it's about as great as TV back then could get. I can completely believe that if I saw this as a kid, I'd walk around for weeks wondering if there's some dirty insane kid waiting to rip through the wall at any moment. Jesus, that's scary. Aside from all that though, the movie got some pretty big laughs. The nosy neighbor peering into the kitchen, the popular kid offhandedly mentioning that Ronald killed his sister, a few choice lines in the script... the crowd definitely had a good time with it (which helps a lot). It's almost enough to make up for the lack of sex and violence... but I guess with TV movies what are ya gonna do.
02.21.07	Joe Versus the Volcano	John Patrick Shanley	So a web forum that I frequent has started up a movie club where a rotating member picks a film that we all watch and talk about and this was the first pick. I'm pretty happy because I don't have to spend the first round saying the movie sucks and i've been wanting to see this again anyway after Eric showed his 16mm trailer of it. I really like this movie. I remember when it came out it completely bombed... actually it was the last bomb before Tom Hanks' run of like 15 mega-hits and i read this interview with him once where someone remarked on that and he said "yeah but why didn't they come to Joe Versus the Volcano?" So in fantasy scenarios where I find myself with 15 minutes of face time with Tom Hanks, The two movies I'd want to talk to him about are That Thing You Do and this. The first half hour of this movie stands as timeless classic in my opinion. All the stuff with the office job, especially Dan Hedaya. In fact there's a few lines from this movie that've successfully managed to wiggle their way into my toolbox of everyday phrasings: "I'm not arguing that with you" and "I have no response to that." But all the stuff and especially Hanks' quitting speech is awesome. I really dig on the expressionistic aspects; the clearly fairy tale aspects. I like that it's not reality... and I suppose that forgives the happily ever after ending but I suspect, with a few tonal changes and a more realistic ending, that there's a great tragedy tale here (...or you can just watch Ikiru). BUT, part of the reason why I like it is because it's light and funny with just hints of darkness rather than the other way around so... it is what it is. I'm also surprised to see recognisable faces in really small parts... Not only Ossie Davis as the (perfectly portrayed) chauffer but also Nathan Lane as a tribal dude, Amanda Plummer as a sailor, and Carol Kane as the hairstylist. They, like the small thematic or stylistic touches that sparkle throughout the film give it a real sense of design for me. This is really a well put-toether piece of filmmaking. i still feel it's unjustly dismissed. But... yeah the ending kind of strains me. I really love all the lost at sea part... the weird typhoon with the green lighting, all that stuff reminds me of a less crack-adled Cabin Boy... but once they get to the island it wears pretty thin. Especially when they're up on the volcano and Meg Ryan insists on jumping with him. I just don't buy any of that. To me, he should've jumped and died and become legend to the (non orange soda-loving) tribe... but again, it is what it is. Glad to see this again though... Love this movie.
02.21.07	Across 110th Street	Barry Shear	This one kind of straddles the line between blaxploitation and straight-up gritty 70s crime. Awesome. That's like going to order a prostitute and finding one that also cooks you dinner. My love for grungy location photography is fully stroked here, showcasing what has to be some of the lowest points in NYC neglect. Maye Wild Style shows it off a bit more but... still. And I loved Antonio Fargas in this, throwing caustin to the wind and entertaining a squad of whores with such lines as "money money money!" claiming he got it by winning a beauty contest. Unfortunately... well.. I mean i really wanted to like Anthony Quinn in this, but his accent seems to change countries with every scene and he doesn't do much with his cliche'd writing. I did like how he ends up but pretty much the whole way through I thought he was a weak point in an otherwise solid movie. True, it trades the blaxploitation funk for the crazy mobsters and police machismo but like i said... to me that's like ordering a chocolate sandwhich and getting peanut butter for free. A big although though... although i love the theme as i know it, i was very surprised to not hear it appear in the film. Under the beginning titles, it's much faster with near-completely different instrumentation. The ongoing score was still good and all... I guess all these years i've been loving the soundtrack version of the song or the single version or whatever else version gets more strings and slowed down a bit. i dunno and I'm too lazy to look it up. Good movie though, if you ask me, although as a blaxploitation or a crime I'd say it was just run of the mill. And true this is not even close to the only black crime movie in the genre, but this one just seemed much more farther away from "pure" soul to me for some reason. I'm probably wrong but oh well.
02.20.07	Coffy	Jack Hill	I liked this one too, although I think not quite as much as Foxy Brown. There Grier seemed a bit more human and you can feel how she gets to the kickass brutality she ends up doing. Here's she's more of a force, like a Western hero. And that's cool too... the badass stuff she does here is even basasser than FB... I just didn't feel it quite as much. but you know... the movie should be considered a classic just for the scene where King George gets out of his car in that yellow bodysuit showing off each ball induvidually... his little theme song there is amazing (and also ripped off by Beck I believe). I was also pleasantly surprised to find that the girl who gets her hands cut by Coffy's hair razors was none other than Linda Haynes (of Rolling Thunder and Human Experiments). Mostly though this movie, again, was about how much ass Grier can kick... which i have no problem with whatsoever. I should also note than when I mentioned how these are a tad sleazy... I really don't mind that either. Although I think Grier's bust is showed off a bit more in FB, there's still plenty here to like. Good double feature...
02.20.07	Foxy Brown	Jack Hill	Tonight I'm doing a Pam Grier double feature of Foxy Brown and Coffy. Yes, I guess I should be watching them the other way around but whatever... My hunch is Coffy's better so I'm saving that for last. Besides, if watching Coffy first makes this one seem worse, then screw that because this was awesome. catching up on another classic, pretty much everything about this movie is great. And sexy as hell too... oh man pam had some big ol' boobies. I felt 13 all over again, unable to look away. I mean... really. So much to love about this movie... it's just a tad sleazier than Truck Turner and not quite as tight in the pacing but it's all about Grier and how badass she is. which is great. Had a really good time with this one.
02.20.07	Sleuth	Joseph L. Mankiewicz	Usually I find filmed plays really boring. And... this is no exception. I found this movie really really long and really boring. Why do people in plays have to talk so much? Layrence Olivier plays a mystery author who invited Michael Caine to his house to talk about how Caine's sleeping with his wife. From there, it's like a verbal cat and mouse game except instead of the cat eventually eating the mouse he just talks it to death. so long and so much talking. oh my god. I guess I'm supposed to marvel at the acting but whatever...
02.20.07	Logan's Run	Michael Anderson	so... my main computer is offline at the moment which means I basically have nothing to do but read or watch movies. I'm deciding to watch movies. This one is catch-up for me... I've never seen it. I thought it was pretty good, but so much has either been used in other movies or talked about in relation to this one that I never really felt like I was seeing somethin new. I guess that's my fault for not being alive in 1976 to go see it, huh. umm... yeah that's it i guess. I've now seen Logan's Run.
02.19.07	Liquid Vinyl	Taylor Neary	A doc on the history of the house DJ, past present and future. boom hsst boom hsst boom hsst boom hsst. They got a lot of faces here, maybe most notably Carl Cox and David Morales but the most interesting part for me was hearing the history and the hot clubs where it started (helped by interesting interviews with a lot of those original guys). Although the doc makes a very clear choice to focus on the House JDs rather than the house producers, you still get a pretty clear picture of the scene (not that I am some huge house music afficionado or anything). It was pretty good. My favorite line: "I like my shit funky"
02.18.07	Cotton Comes to Harlem	Ossie Davis	So, I don't want it to be an official thing or whatever because I may get busy or something and won't be able to keep to it, but I'm in the mood to celebrate Black History/Heritage month this week with a full load of blaxploitation movies, aiming for one or two a night for a week. Although I was too tired to give it a proper note, Truck Turner kicked my ass last night and I have a nice selection queued up for the near future (and if netflix cooperates, maybe even a choice triple feature to end the festivities with). So we'll see! but in the meantime there's Cotton Comes to Harlem. Directed by Ossie Davis and pre-dating... a lot of the genre, this movie is about a pair of cops (named Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones) who work Harlem and have their eye on a swindling reverend taking money from black folk. At a rally, the reverend is fired upon and a chase ensues. As it turns out, the rev's stolen money is stashed away in this bale of cotton that fell out of the shooters' truck so the movie's about everyone trying to track it down and figure out who all's trying to kill who. Redd Foxx has a small role and I also noticed Cleavon Little deep in the credits but didn't spot him in the film. Seeing his name did make me think "this radio station is named Kowalski" though. I'm generally a pretty big fan of this genre. I find even the slow ones easier to sit through than your average biker or kung-fu movie and think the good ones are downright awesome. Plus I respect the identity of them, love the locations and flavor of the times that always manages to get captured along with the social messages and evil honky cops and whatnot, and also like that they're mostly cop or crime stories (which I gravitate towards anyway). So it all adds up to me liking this stuff... except maybe when it's Space is the Place and nothing makes any kind of sense whatsoever... but anyway. So this movie is kind of surprisingly devoid of over-the-top white devils. Sure there's a few racial slurs here and there and one white cop gets played a fool over and over again, but mostly it's about the black community and how when a black steals from blacks it's even worse than when whites steal (because we've been doing it so long, it's expected). It's about two good cops who don't take any shit but have a deep connection to their community and have its best interest at heart. I found that pretty cool... I was laughing less at the blatant button-pushing that I see in a lot of these movies ("oh man, that guy just said "black bitch" he's gonna get his ass kicked") and more just enjoying the plot and character. I'm sure there's some messagey-type stuff in here... I mean, a bale of cotton floating around Harlem can't just be a coincidence, but I was pleasantly surprised by the subtle hand that lays these things out. Good movie.
02.17.07	Truck Turner	Jonathan Kaplan	This movie kicks so much ass.
02.17.07	Cutter's Way	Ivan Passer	John Heard and Jeff Bridges play buddies who get margingally mixed up in a murder investigation... but mostly it's about how Jeff Bridge's is a non-committing slut and Heard is crazy and crippled. This movie... I dunno, I guess it was ok. Way too much drab stuff about whatever instead of actual crime things or thriller things or... any sort of other interesting things. Still, I wouldn't call it bad... just another movie floating in the sea.
02.17.07	Employee of the Month	Greg Coolidge	Vapid Dane Cook comedy. It's that masochistic streak coming out again I guess. Not that this is the only problem I have with the movie or anything but... slackers I know tend not to have $100 haircuts. I have to admit i chuckled a few times, mostly gut-reaction things to Pedro getting hit in the head. Man, i can't believe I laugh at that stuff... it must be hard-coded or something... but a nice piece of physical injury sneaks past my brain and goes directly to my funnybone. I sort of wish it didn't but... it does.
02.16.07	Brain Damage	Frank Henenlotter	huh. This guy also did Frankenhooker. That's cool. Man, this one really fell through the cracks. In highschool I was nuts for movies like Basket Case and Frankenhooker. Anyway, even coming to it at such a late date, I got quite a kick out of this little movie that's CLEARLY about puberty. Usually i never notice crap like that - certainly never in the first viewing - but this one's really pretty hard to miss. I don't need a DVD commentary to tell me that. And there's a nice cameo from the Basket Case twins... which I thought was cool.
02.16.07	10 Items or Less	Brad Silberling	so... full disclosure, i completely thought this was that vapid-looking Dane Cook comedy with whatshername so when I started watching and the ThinkFilm logo popped up I was pretty confused. Turns out this is the Morgan Freeman/Paz Vega movie instead, so I went ahead and watched it. Vega continues to remind me of a hotter version of Penelope Cruz. same smokin body and hot cute accent but with less of a rat face. anyway, much to my surprise i liked this movie. I think it's the first Brad Silberling movie I can say that about. I like it mainly because it's very loose and very fun. I can almost picture Morgan Freeman doing it just to have fun. There's no real danger, no real drama or anything heavy like that... it's just about appreciating the small things in life and taking a positive outlook... and having fun. While these types of movies tend not to get taken seriously or win any awards, they are often the movies I enjoy most in repeat viewings.
02.14.07	Love Me Deadly	Jacques LaCerte	Always trust in Weird Wednesday to bring you a Valentine's screening of something necrophiliac. At first you think it's doubles with incest though thanks to the copious flashbacks to when the main woman was a girl with her dad, playing on swingsets, serving him food, and all the other censorship board replacements for actual sex. The jokes on us though, as we learn at the end. Still, incest or not, thanks to her childhood this bitch is crazy. Unable to be turned on by anything living, she must crash funerals and wait for everyone to leave so she can make out with the corpse to get her rocks off. Eventually, she meets this guy who murders prostitutes by embalming them in order to have subjects for his necro sex cult that he hosts, but she gets married so that kind of puts a cramp on her style. You know, I'm not saying I'm into this kind of thing but... if I was a necrophiliac and hooked up with this orgy crowd that met at a funeral home, I'd kind of want to lock the door so strangers off the street couldn't just walk in on me naked and making out with a corpse. I guess that's just me though because these guys don't seem to mind. And it happens. Repeatedly. Although the whole movie's about this girl and her lust for the deceased, there's not actually that much ewwww-worthy corpse-molestation going on here. Still, there's plenty to love about this girl who loves too much. For starters there's the theme song. For real. It's like some lost James Bond theme song that they changed the title of the movie so they decided to come up with another story where "love me deadly" would be apt enough for a title. It's an awesome song... Love me Evil... Kiss me Evil.... oh man i love it. Also, there's the husband. Some of his lines... i love how he seems to be this romantic poet at heart, occasionally reflecting on the world and his place in it with lines like "we're children, playing a game." That may just be bad writing though. When the first male prostitute realizes that he's about to be killed on an embalming table he yells out "You're not kidding! He's not kidding!" I guess he's talking to God at that point. Also, the husband's reading of the word "Gotcha!" is... well, would it be wrong of me to say it's the best thing in the movie? At one point the woman dresses up like a little girl and goes to the cemetary and prances around on her father's grave, talking to him and dropping long-stem roses all over the place. When the hubby confronts her she yells "No! This is not your place!" We've all been there, haven't we? So... most of the acting in this movie is pretty bad and you can tell in a couple scenes where everyone involved agreed that the dialogue was not even worth saying (so they set it to music instead), but the movie is surprisingly serious and irony-free. And really, that's the only way a necro-love movie can work, isn't it? So watching this was great fun, especially amidst the twisted Austin lovers who thought this was a perfect Valentine's Date.
02.14.07	Smokin' Aces	Joe Carnahan	I decided to watch this again because I don't quite trust my BNAT memory with the last two films. Surprisingly enough however, I didn't see anything that I don't remember so although I was heavy-lidded through about half of it last December, I guess it all soaked in. Therefore, I feel largely the same about it. I like all the characters but it's like an hour long set-up for 5 minutes of spectacular violence then a reeeeeally long coda where you learn a bunch of useless information that you don't care about. And since I had a clock nearby this time, I could double check to make sure. The introductory speach that sets up the framework of the movie and introduces all the characters is 20 minutes long. Seriously. Then there's an hour of further set-up. An hour. then it's really good then the last 15 minutes are slow and pretty much meaningless. But whatever. I like set-up... I like all the characters. The only thing is I feel like since there's so many cool hitman characters, I never spend any time with any of them. they're all barely in the movie. This is a movie where a comic book prequel series or line of action figures would actually really help (like Star Wars). I feel like the real story has all happened before the movie starts and we just see the end of everything. That's ok, I guess... Still a fun movie for the most part, although it feels a bit meth-induced.
02.13.07	Man of the Year	Barry Levinson	so... this is a trainwreck of a movie. I'm not sure if it's an unfunny comedy or an untense thriller or an undramatic drama but whatever it is, it doesn't work. I mean, Jeff Goldblum orders a thug to inject Laura Linney with a drug that makes her crazy. Is this reality? Probably not worth that much thought. definitely not worth two hours of your life.
02.13.07	Get Carter	Mike Hodges	I put seeing this one off for a long time because I didn't like the remake. Not like that should've swayed my viewing habits or anything but for whatever reason it did. I finally got fed up of seeing it included in lists of the best crime films ever so... here we are. yeah, it's pretty awesome. I especially enjoyed when Caine calls Britt Ecklund for phone sex. THAT was a pleasant surprise. so... yeah. i don't really feel like going on about it but it's great (like everyone else already knows).
02.12.07	Hickey & Boggs	Robert Culp	Crime story starring Bill Cosby and Robert Culp as private eyes. I first learned about this movie when QT mentioned how it's like the flipside of the I Spy coin, where it's all very realistic and they're disheveled and cursing and whatnot. And he's right, it foes feel a lot like a private-eye version of The Venetian Affair (a similar flip-side movie except with Man From U.N.C.L.E.'s Robert Vaghn as a secret agent). The mystery is complex and told pretty subtle-like... The whole movie's just really solid. Really good. Plus young versions of michael moriarty and jimmy woods pop up.
02.10.07	Coogan's Bluff	Don Siegel	Clint Eastwood plays Coogan, an Arizona deputy sheriff sent to NYC to retrieve a prisoner. Problems arise when he finds out said prisoner's locked up in Bellvue coming off a LSD trip. Coogan bluffs his way into the hospital to get him out but gets jumped at the airport and has to track the acidhead down again, through the 1968 hippie psychadelia culture. There's even a scene where he walks through a club with a cowboy hat on while the band plays "pidgeon-toed Orange Peel." Damn dirty hippies. For some reason, the title always made me think this was more like Donavan's Reef than Dirty Harry. I should've known though... with Don Siegel at the helm. I particularly liked how womanizing Eastwood is. I guess I'm used to seeing him full-on stoic and non-sexual at all but there's a hilarious bit in the beginning where he's in a bath and squirts the bar of soap up towards a woman's gigantic cleavage then makes a joke about how it's the biggest target in this county. Overall though, I didn't feel like I was watching a classic. There are a couple of moments and it's always cool to see Eastwood as a tough guy... it's a solid movie but nothing to write more than three paragraphs about.
02.09.07	Zodiac	David Fincher	David Fincher finally makes another movie and thankfully, mercifully, it's really really good. I hate when I'm going on and on about Fincher and people say "didn't he direct Panic Room?" or they bring up Alien 3 and I have to qualify the shit out of every statement I've just said, blaming the script or the studio or whatever. Finally I can be like "you know, the guy who did Zodiac" and not have to say any more. Even Fight Club... I have a problem with the last act (that's also the last act in the book) but I can honestly say I had no problems with this movie. Even the length (two hours forty minutes) seemed to fly by for me. It's also a rare case where the length of the movie acts towards the message and theme of the film. Watching it does exhaust you to some degree, but you get the sense that you're supposed to be exhausted because the main characters are also exhausted. So in fact, the long running time actually helps you to identify more with the characters as the film becomes less about the actual crimes than the general human nature of obssession and fascination with the missing puzzle pieces of life. It's definitely not the first film to deal with this stuff, but the second half of this film was also really interesting to me because I know for the longest time Fincher was working on developing Ellroy's The Black Dahlia as a movie... I'm a huge fan of both the author and the book but I don't think those are the only reasons why I hated the movie. The movie was just a horrible translation. They kept in all the goofy plot stuff that relies on Ellroy's execution and threw out all of the overlaying themes and colors. Well... as the book The Black Dahlia moves on, the main characters become obssessed with the case EXACTLY like what I just saw in Zodiac. Yes, EXACTLY in all-caps. I can almost see Fincher thinking it out, ultimately dropping Dahlia due to too many problematical elements and finding himself attracted to this project in part because it touches on such similar facets. "well, I can't convey the exact tone I want to with that project but I bet I can with this." I'm telling you... right down to the tableaus with the invading paperwork; boxes and boxes of case files spread out and looked through and taking over these peoples' lives. Watching this movie was like seeing my Ideal Black Dahlia movie without all the Elizabeth Short stuff. Instead it's true. And it feels it. I got a kick out of reading in the end credits how they had technical advisors, researchers, and private investigators working on this movie. As I watched I felt completely comfortable in believing every detail on screen, right down to the pocket protector that Anthony Edwards wears (also a great homage to Revenge of the Nerds, whether it was intentional or not). The actual Zodiac killing sequences felt realistically creepy, maybe borrowing from the way Spike Lee shot the Son of Sam killings in his movie a little bit (without the stylized color palette, still no red in Fincher-land). That he uses several different actors to protray the killer is a master stroke. They all fit the type but are all subtley different... so when the police interview different suspects you really don't know who's "supposed" to be the killer. Or do you. One interview scene in this movie is just unbelievable. And it's the kind of scene that has to be true. If it was fiction... well, then it would be a David Koepp script. And the actor playing the interviewee (I know him mainly as Marge's husband in Fargo but I know he also did some TV work as well as plenty of other character roles) is beat-for-beat perfect. That's another thing actually... every little walk-on, single-day, glorified extra role in this movie goes to incredibly talented and well-respected actors. One thing I like to do with any movie is read the beginning titles and see how deep in the cast I get before I stop recognizing names. If i can get all the way to the casting agent then I feel like I'm in for a pretty good movie. Well, with this movie... every new name was an extremely pleasant surprise. It's almost worth not looking this up on IMDb (I've already spoiled Anthony Edwards, sorry). So you have an excellent cast at work on an incredibly detailed script oozing verisimilitude. Then there's Fincher's direction. Anyone who got the Panic Room DVD probably expects this but I think his movies contain some of the best use of CG elements period. You watch this movie and... while there are a few shots that are a little visually virtuoso, for the most part it just looks like a period 70s movie. I'm just guessing but I bet there's a good 2-300 visual effects shots in this movie. The thing is you just don't notice them. Fincher uses CG so effectively though, to bring his intentions to screen with 100% clarity. On the one hand this doesn't allow for very many "happy accidents," but on the other you never see anything where it shouldn't be. Nothing's slightly out of place, nothing doesn't land two inches to the left or right of where it needs to, nothing. And yet it looks like it's shot like any other film. Now, I bet studios don't quite see the point of spending all this money to make sure a gun slides to the exact right spot on the floor or a building has the exact right second floor as it used to in 1969, but I bet it does have an affect on the audience. That affect might be subconsciouss, but I bet it's there. Fincher's using new tools to tell his story more effectively, which is money better spent than any number of robot explosions or flying superheroes. So yeah, I guess I liked this movie a lot. I think it represents about the best both true crime movies and serial killer movies can get, up there with In Cold Blood, The Boston Strangler, Silence of the Lambs, and Bonnie And Clyde. Thanks to Lars and Kier-La for something.
02.08.07	Grizzly	William Girdler	Grrrrrrrizzly! Live bear in the audience tonight! Yes, sir, LIVE BEAR! Fortunately for all of us, he wasn't hungry and felt more like getting on the mic to give away Vulcan Video gift certificates and field questions about his work in the film (questions such as "do you shit in the woods?"). Although he was looking significantly less than his movie magic'd 18 feet 3 thousand pounds, he was still pretty grrrrrrrizzly! They showed a trailer for Country Bear Jamboree that was classic. The movie's also pretty great. It's got some great mauling going on. little kids lose their legs, women lose their arms, and a poor horse loses its head. That's the best part for me because they have a quick shot of the horse's legs then a shot of the rider trying to balance on the newly-headless steed. Great mental image that conjures, whew. all three of the main guys (aka forest-Brody, forest-Quint, and forest-Hooper) were great as well. All in all this movie is better than it has a right to be... For a Jaws-in-the-mountains knock-off, it's pretty damn fun. Especially the end. with the RPG.
02.07.07	Loaded Guns	Fernando Di Leo	Weird Wednesday tonight is a Fernando Di Leo movie that I haven't seen. Beyond that, it's a QTfest movie so that's two reasons to see it. Lars, who had expressed some anxiety about the crowd's reaction tonight, took great pains introduce the movie as sort of a train wreck that flops from random acts of female brutality to zany broad comedy. He likened it to John Huston's Beat The Devil, a movie where the story derails but the movie carries on due to the vitality and energy of the characters. I think this did a great job of preparing the audience for what kind of movie to enjoy. Instead of being confused and lost, they were immediately looking for the humor and lack of cohesion in every scene. The movie went over really well. Personally, here's what I think happened (based on my one viewing). Di Leo wanted to make a sexy gangster story with Ursula Andress and came up with his usual extremely convoluted tale of double crosses and tension but then as filming went on realized that the puzzle just wasn't coming together, so he said "Fuck it, let's have some fun" and shot a fight scene and a chase scene that are both really goofball, had Bacalov write the corniest most broadly-comedic score he could come up with, and tried to pass it off as comedy. With a different score, the first 80% of this movie could be just as serious and brutal his other crime films, but the music does so much to change the connotations that woody strode's gang beating up Andress out of the blue comes off as pretty damn funny. I was pretty surprised not to find any real comedy (aside from the cabbie) until the fight scene starts. I think the QTfest audience had massively different expectations or something. I really don't see why everyone thought it was so horrible. I mean, it's definitely not Wipeout or Mister Scarface, but hey. Anyways, here's where I should talk about how gorgeous Ursula Andress is. But you know... what am I going to say? I'm just happy that a woman that beautiful was ok with showing so much. I really think all women that hot should get naked on film... I mean, that way they'll be able to look back at it when they're 80 or whatever and remind themselves of how unimaginably hot they were. Rita Hayworth totally should've gotten naked in Gilda. Maybe that's what heaven is: getting to watch your favorite movies but with added scenes where the really hot women get naked. So Micah is right. It is good to finally know where that Woody Strode carnival fight comes from, and it's also nice to find out that the little guy who keeps jump-kicking the dude in the water that Strode plays with like a little kid doesn't have ANY context in the movie whatsoever. All in all I liked the movie. I think even when it doesn't work, Di Leo's style and fashion sense make it worth watching. I think I finally kind of understand what was happening with the plot now that I've had some time to think and sleep on it, but in the end I guess knowing what's going on doesn't really matter. also, as a ploy to not have to take them to the dump, Lars offered the first 35 or so people a free vintage film canister, which he drove the truck around after the movie and handed out. While I bet 95% of them end up in various dumpsters around the city as soon as everyone gets home and realizes there's nothing they can do with them, these things went like hotcakes. The one I got is a heavy-ass rusted corroded eroded dented banged-up piece of trash originally manufactured by Warner Brothers and most recently used to hold the first two reels of World Sex Report. I can't imagine putting anything of any sort of value into this thing - in fact I'm afraid to even open it - but damn if it isn't one cool souvenir of an era in film exhibition that I was never a part of. I'm sure I'll keep it around somewhere, maybe take a picture of the rust and degradation for a textured background or something, who knows.
02.07.07	Polyester	John Waters	Thanks to IFC and creative programming, the Alamo's playing this movie with new Odorama cards (that look nearly identical from the originals... with a little cable tv branding added) to scratch n sniff n follow along to. This is just another example of why the Alamo kicks ass, you know? So I've never seen this movie. Actually, I haven't seen a lot of Waters' early stuff. In fact, I've only seen Female Trouble, which I had mixed feelings about. Well it wasn't exactly a packed house this time but the people that were there were obviously superfans of both the director and the movie. I felt like I kept getting a different, several-levels-less-funny version of each joke when everyone in the theater erupted in uproarious laughter behind me and I just kind of smirked. I think maybe for them it was also a chance to act out, like they were transported back to when the movie first came out to packed houses and got to squeal and yell with everyone else. Yet when what I thought was the funniest line came out ("Let me kiss your DTs away") I was the only one laughing. Go figure. Maybe I was the only alcoholic in the house hardcore enough to know what the DTs are. Anyway, This movie was kind of weird for me because it's populated with the kind of people and acted in the style of Female Trouble (pretty cheap midnight movie fare, lots of locals with awesome looks and accents but absolutely no acting ability) but it was shot and lit like it's one of Waters' later films. I guess that's explained by where it falls in his filmography but it still made for a pretty weird juxtaposition for me. But truthfully, I don't really know why I didn't like this movie more than I did. Maybe I just missed the boat, maybe it was my alienation from the crowd who clearly loved it, maybe it was the constant sense memory of this old He-Man toy I used to have called Stinkor (he had a skunk-man head and was dipped in smelly stuff that stunk up my whole room with stink-chemical) due to the odorama card. Ultimately, I felt the same about this one as I did about Female Trouble. I'm sure I'll remember back to certain scenes, lines, or small characters (like the father in Female Trouble who leaves town to go to Detroit to "find work in the auto inDUSTry"), but overall I wasn't too taken with it. Go figure.
02.05.07	Air Guitar Nation	Alexandra Lipsitz	Shame on every one of you. This screening should've been sold out and instead there were like 20 people there. Well, it's alls y'all's loss because this is a great movie and people who don't see it are losers.
02.04.07	The Hitcher	Robert Harmon	Been meaning to see this one for a while (although, strangely enough, absolutely 0 interest in the remake). Rutger Hauer is the man. This movie had a really strange structure though. On the good side, I could never really tell where it was going or when it would end, but on the bad side I could never tell if it was going anywhere and it seemed to take forever to end. Mostly, I spent the movie hoping that Rutger Hauer wasn't actually C. Thomas Howell's psychological other half or whatever. Very glad to know he's a real flesh and blood nameless perfect killing machine capable of shooting helicoptor rotor motors out while off-roading in a truck rather than some wussy not-really-there physicalization of Howell's loonybird brain. See, kids... back in the 80s our horror movie villains were TOUGH! they needed killing, not therapy! so aside from not really knowing what the point of it all is.... on second thought I guess the point is simple enough (don't pick up hitchhikers) and I just spent the whole time with Black Christmas complaining about all the needless backstory so I don't really wanna know anything about the Hitcher and how he can appear anywhere at any time... so no asides, I liked this movie.
02.04.07	Nighthawks	Bruce Malmuth	Thanks to an uncharactersitcially helpful IMDb comment on Night Moves, my Netflix queue is now top-heavy with 70s crime movies. I couldn't be happier because I love pretty much everything about 70s crime movies. Except this was made in 1981. Yeah, well. Those movies haven't come in yet. What I have right now is a Rutger Hauer double feature of this and The Hitcher, but this movie reminded me of all the cool 70s crime movies I have coming so I thought I'd share. And really, 81 is more or less still the 70s. This movie has all the NYC grit, macho tough-cop bravado, timely disco club location photography, and psycho punk bad guy that all but define the genre. Plus you got Stallone with a beard playing a guy named Deke partnered up with Billy Dee Williams... come on now. This was pretty good. Maybe surprisingly good for a Stallone movie. Joe Spinell (of Maniac "fame") played the police lieutenant and got to yell at the stars like they were about-to-be-knifed hookers for a scene or two. Plus it's Hauer's American film debut so I'd say it's worth watching for several reasons. Overall though... it's a solid crime movie and I just can't get enough of them right now so i'm still hungry for more. On a side note, We finally put up Reel Distraction today, so I guess this journal will get a little more exposure through there. Well, I'm still not doing spellcheck, grammarchekc, good taste check, or any other kind of check on this... so this site won't change at all, but periodical stuff from me will also appear there in polished English-correct form. Yay for having a formal home and an answer to give to people who ask "who do you write for?"
02.03.07	Infamous	Douglas McGrath	...so... There's the book In Cold Blood which I'm told is great. Then there's the movie In Cold Blood which I know is great. Then there's Capote which... I guess was good but not great. And there's this which is like the Capote remix. Or maybe Capote is the white-label Infamous remix that leaked out before the album hit shelves. Either way, it's the same story, so they end up defining themselves by their differences (and how neither one lives up to In Cold Blood). It's just tweaking the nobs on the same scenes... This one injects faux-interviews with Truman's friends talking about him after he died or something... and touches a (very small) bit more on his New York social circle but for the most part... yeah... it was like I was watching Capote again but I was drunk the first time so I don't remember it right. I really don't know which one I like more or less...they are both good and not bad but also not great. I mean... do you pick Daniel Craig or Clifton Collins, Jr.? Catherine Keener or Sandra Bullock? Chris Cooper or Jeff Daniels? Ooh, someone should cut them together so you get Toby Jones' Capote talking to Catherine Keener and Phil Hoffman's Capote talking to Bullock. That'd be rad but I'm nowhere near interested enough to actually do it.
02.03.07	Black Christmas	Glen Morgan	I think everyone had such low expectations for this remake that it got a lot of credit when it didn't completely suck. And it's true that it doesn't totally let you down like most remakes or offend you like The Fog, but I dunno... I still didn't think it was incredible. I appreciated that it was a bunch of hot women running around but they were pretty interchangeable to me and I never quite knew what was the deal with any of them. On the one hand that's bad because I wasn't "with" any of them, but on the other hand, I could never tell who was supposed to be the hero survivor girl and who was fodder so that's refreshing. There were also a couple (and I mean couple as in two) moments of cool horror-type stuff... the first time you see the running gag is pretty sweet (the 6th time somewhat less) and the tried-and-true eyeball-looking-through-peephole never fails (again, the first time. the 6th time not so much). But... it's plagued with backstory to fill time to stretch it all the way out to 75 minutes... and at this point I couldn't care less about what kind of twisted prequel stuff happened to make the crazy person crazy. Actually that's not true. I'm always up for hearing the story of some creatively messed up childhood trauma, but to flashback repeatedly... for a 2006 movie... it's just been done so better so much before. I really don't need to see it again. But oh well. For the most part, I didn't not like it. Definitely a decent date/popcorn movie and I kind of liked the xmas lights green/red lighting through the entire movie... but you know... the original. I saw the original not too long ago and the phone calls scared me for real. To me, this one is still a pale imitation, but it didn't COMPLETELY suck so it could've been worse.
02.03.07	Death Wish	Michael Winner	god damn Freebirds is good. anyway, I've never seen this... It slipped through the cracks or something... I don't know how because as a kid I loved reading The Punisher comics which is basically the same thing as this, except he wears a skull on his chest instead of a flat mustaches. Um... So I remember reading in some article... this guy stated that Death Wish represented the moral corruption of society and was a low point in cinema history. I guess he said that because of the ending... but whatever. However, the movie does kind of boil down to one point and once its made there's not many places it can go. I did love to see Bronson trying to act like a normal person in the beginning of this though... yeah, I can totally see him drawing up housing blueprints and doing site surveys. Plus there's a scene (I guess where Bronson gets his inspiration to start killing people) shot in Old Tuscon... and that's a pre-fire Old Tuscon, which is... probably only interesting to me. It was also cool to see a young Jeff Goldblum playing Freak #1. For some reason, I never fully connected with this movie. I don't think it's bad, but I kinda saw the entire movie in the first scene (and, you know, years and years of having it in the ether) so I guess watching it was kind of like buying the Cars DVD just because you have all the other Pixar discs...
02.01.07	Troll 2	Claudio Fragasso	The first time I saw Troll 2 was in college, maybe 1998 or 9. I had a group of friends that worshipped this movie and threw an annual cheese-a-thon where they rented a bunch of "bad" movies and stayed up all night watching them while eating tons and tons of cheese and drinking Tang. I guess it's a college thing. Anyway, That night, I brought The Stuff, someone brought an Ed Wood movie, someone mistakenly picked Transylvania 6-5000 as a bad movie, and I dunno a couple others... Hell Comes to Frogtown I think. Anyway, The first time I saw the crazy-eyes non-troll I was hooked. So it gives me great great joy to say that tonight's terror thursday screening of Troll 2 was not only sold out, it was the hot ticket in town, easily the best turnout for any Terror Thursday to date, and rivalling some of themost packed nights of Weird Wednesday. I got there 45 minutes early and the line was already out the door and halfway down the block. I spotted Zack and learned that I was on the list! I tell ya, as much as I loathe the people that show up late and get to skip the line because they know someone, I sure love being that guy. Reportedly the line ended up well around the corner, and easily 200 people were turned away. That's just crazy talk... four to five hundred people wanting to see Troll 2. It might have something to do with the fact that 4 cast members were here in attendance! The kid, the angry dad, the playboy boyfriend, AND the kid that turns into a tree all made it down! And not only that, they paid their own way! AND it was the tree-guy's birthday! How's THAT sound, old college buddies? HAH! It's kind of understandable though. Austin has such an exuberant audience for these kind of movies that - honestly - if I was one of these guys who churned out exploitation movies in the 70s or made Troll 2, I'd love to appear at the Alamo. I'm not sure how much love their given in other places, but here they are definitely VIPs. Apparently Troll 2 has quite a strong following everywhere though. Guys were here doing a full-on documentary on the whole phenomenon. Some people were lined up since 9pm (that's for a midnight show) and wearing home-made Nilbog t-shirts. Afterward, people were more than happy to be interviewed, meditating on how great a movie this actually is. Well, ok. "Great" probably isn't the right word. It's definitely unique though. It's almost exhausting actually, because every line of every scene spoken by every character every minute of this movie is somehow wrong. It's like it's not even made by humans, but pod-people trying to act like humans and not quite getting it right. It's amazing that it's so consistently off. Really the only other movie that comes to mind as being anywhere close in feeling is Dangerous Men. I'd dare to say that Troll 2 is PERRRR-fec! So the theater's packed. Every seat, barstool, and wooden lobby chair is taken. Not only that, there are people standing in the back and to the side. For the whole movie. People laughing and cheering, applauding (in a good way) after particularly hilarious moments... really with the movie. It's another moment at the Alamo (along with QTfests, BNATs, and a couple other events) that I'm feeling like I'm here in a moment in history. 220 rabid Troll 2 fans lucky enough to get in (remember another 200 were turned away), watching this movie at the Alamo. It's the kind of thing I used to read about on aint it cool and wonder why I hadn't moved here yet. It's truly why I'm here.
02.01.07	The Wedding Date	Clare Kilner	...I really don't know why I watched this. I guess I let my guard down and my masochistic streak poked out. But there was one line delivery and one cut that made me laugh despite myself so... I still don't know why I watched this.
01.31.07	The Night They Robbed Big Bertha's	Peter Kares	Hicksploitation sex comedy with no sex. I really thought more of the movie would be about after the ragtag group of random hillbillies robbed the money bags from the local cathouse and went on the run after the whole town rose up against them because they all patronized the place, but instead it was lots and lots of set-up to the heist. Normally, I like that. I'm a sucker for blueprints and diagrams and little miniature dioramas with toy soldiers representing where the different people have to go and what they have to do, but there wasn't that much of that kinda thing here. Instead, they spent a lot of time with the overly complicated pre-heist chores, each of which either didn't make enough sense or made way too much sense. However, there were three things here that I got a kick out of: 1. Toward the end of the movie, a little girl gets on the radio and says she's an orphan and hopes the people who robbed Bertha's money burn in hell. Innocent little girls cursing others is always worth a laugh. 2. One of the girls that works for Bertha never talks, except she does when she's with the Preacherman except has a really deep man-voice. You can never go wrong with that gag either. 3. Toward the beginning, a radio guy interviews an indian who has a hit country western record and asks him to sing a bit. He does, standing up and starting in with the standard indian chants but after a bit he stops looking off into nowhere and starts looking right at the interviewer with a completely dead face. I don't know why I found this so funny but I did. The Indian looking at the guy like that while he made these grunts and moans with such an emotionless face... going on a bit too long... maybe daring him to interrupt... I dunno. Right after that, they put on the Indian's hit record and you can hear it in the background while they talk and it's my favorite part of the entire movie. I really with the song played again later on over a montage or something so I could hear it more clearly (and track this down and rip the audio so I can listen to it whenever I want)... just this crazy wailing and moaning over a simple beat. It's hilarious.
01.30.07	Snakes	Arthur A. Names	My Snakesploitation Triple Feature ends tonight with the mind-blowing Snakes AKA Fangs AKA Holy Wednesday AKA Holy Shit this is a great movie AKA The Best Weird Wednesday Movie Ever. Like, I almost don't even want to talk about because it's so good. I feel like just saying some of the things that go on here might ruin it for anybody out there who hasn't seen it. I mean... it's just that at a certain point in the movie, about a half hour in, you think to yourself and you just know. You just know, man! And from then on out... it's like... well I imagine it must be what David Lynch means when he talks about diving within: magnificent waves of pure bliss (and you don't need to pay $2500 to get it!). Snakes is the story of Snakey Bender, a simple guy who has a very bad day. When all you have is your Wednesdays and all of a sudden you find yourself without that... well, what would you do? You'd get bloody snake-themed revenge! That's what you'd do! I really^9 hope the Alamo gets their print back and shows this again at WW. I think everyone in the theater would be like "right on!" whenever Snakey warns someone not to mess with his Wednesdays. I feel like ripping all those lines and making a Weird Wednesday mixtape full of awesome music heard in Weird Wednesday movies and handing them out gratis when this movie plays. It's getting late so I don't feel nearly as witty as earlier, plus I spent the majority of this movie with my jaw slack. I think I really need some time to digest this... to comprehend the subtle flavors in the aftertaste... to play some John Philip Sousa marches and drive some cars off cliffs. Mostly though, I think I want to meet a woman like this school teacher and ask her about her childhood. And I'm fairly sure there's a strong religious subtext to this movie. That one of Snakey's snakes is named Lucifer is a big hint of course, and the preacher saying that snakes are the devil is another... but mostly I think it's about how both God and the devil should NOT fuck with Wednesdays! And now let's see if I can get in my bed without clearing the sheets to check for snakes. This has certainly been a most fun evening (spent alone. hmmmm....) of snakes fun. I'm kinda glad I held off on watching these until the time was right. I think seeing all three together mounted up to an angry nest of enjoyment that wouldn't've been quite as lethal had I seen each one alone. Yay for themed movie nights and Yay for Snakes!
01.30.07	Sssssss	Bernard L. Kowalski	It's Sssssss! The ssssss-iest of snake titles around! A name so cool you don't even say it, you hiss it! Sssssss! First off, not letting the Comic Sans font fool me, the Universal logo and Zanuck/Brown's names on this meant it would be just a touch more expensive than Rattlers. I don't know how they convinced Strother Martin to do this movie though because he has to handle more snakes than... well, more than one. Even with clever cutting and the occasional dummy, there are still shots of him right down in it with these scaly little guys. That would bug me I think. Yep. If I was an actor I don't think I could do a movie like this or Kingdom of the Spiders. Just too creepy crawly for me. The snakes would smell my fear with their pits and strike out for sure. A few similarities do exist though. I mean, more than the snakes... For one, there's an equally out of place conversation near the beginning of this one when the girl gets introduced (replacing Women's Lib for environmentalism) and... well... actually that's it. The two movies are pretty different. Rattlers was on a "this could happen if we let the military-industrial complex continue with its new world order!" vibe and this one is more in the Saturday matinee kid's movie mad scientist vein... which is cool by the way. Martin plays a herpetologist (that doesn't mean what I thought it did) who gets a new student assistant and begins to "innoculate" him with cobra venom so he's safe on the job. Uh huh. Along the way, we find out he's crazy because he talks to a python and reads Whitman quotes about how animals are cooler than humans and when the school jock asswipe kills his pet snake (and calls them all "snake freaks"), he scoops his Black Mamba into a bag and follows him home. After getting it on with a horny co-ed, the jock takes a shower (explaining that "twice a night's all the coach allows me" when the girlfriend wants more lovin'). In the shower, Strother unleashes his venomous pet and we see it bite a dude's foot in slow motion. Ouch! I mean, you can see that his other foot was gonna step on it so it really had no choice, but still! When the foot raises the snake follows and you know it's because he has his fangs stuck in the soft flesh... I hate things that hang by fangs. ugh. creep me out, man. Even if it had its poison glands removed or whatever, that's still a snake on your foot with its teeth inside you. I have to stop typing about it even, it's bugging me even now. Meanwhile, the assistant (who keeps noticing weird things like the top layer of his skin peeling off and changes to the bone structure of his face) woos the doc's nerd-cute daughter by taking her to a carnival (where an actress appears that will be credited in the end crawl as "kootch dancer"). It's here that the assistant goes into the freak show tent and sees the amazing snake-man, a dude with no arms and no legs that looks kinda like a lizard and whimpers a lot. Eventually, the assistant's metamorphosis advances. At one point he looks at himself in the mirror and goes into a rage. The girl yells through the door "how do you feel?" and he answers "ugly!" Ahh, male vanity. As you can probably guess, the doctor's serum is in fact turning the kid into a new race of king cobra with human intelligence! Unfortunately, the mad doctor also keeps a squealing mongoose in his lab at all times, so there's a pretty gnarly showdown between supra-intelligent snake vs. wiley mongooes at the end. Aside from the insistent addition of weird-ass snake-breathing sound effects any time there's a snake on-screen, this movie's about as fun as it sounds. The pace slows a little in the middle after we've known what's going on for maybe 40 minutes but the movie wants to wait 20 more until it lets us in on the big twist, but hey... 1973 audiences were stupider, right? I mean, I saw Fantastic Planet. What's THAT shit about? Anyway, great fun. It's got me psyched up to the point where I finally feel ready to see this next movie. Here I go.
01.30.07	Rattlers	John McCauley	.....sssssssss....ssssssssss.... what's that? It's a Tuesday-night Snakesploitation Triple Feature, that's what!!! I have three of these slithering sneaky suckers lined up and damn if I'm not gonna be hissing and spitting by the end of the night. The festivities start with Rattlers. I'll be back after the movie with notes! My night starts off with two boys climbing a desert hill to see a "real live skeleton" when they fall into a rattlesnake den and die die die! This is great because I hate kids. I'm in a special kind of mood tonight and this first scene makes me think I'm on a personal journey. This guy in a tie looks like his face is more on the left side of his head than his right. Maybe it's just the angle. He's tapping on the glass of a snake tank though so he's going to die at some point in this movie. That's good too because he's one of these guys who keeps way too much crap in his breast pocket. Now here's something problematic. The janitor, in a wild spasm of sweeping, has knocked a king cobra's cage door ajar. oops. Mr. pocket clip is handling stressed out "pleasantly plump" birds. Oh he's gonna get it. Damn this turtleneck'd snake scientist! He's here to save the day with his complicated snake charming technique (no doubt learned in India). It's a good thing it's not a spitting cobra he's charming. Otherwise his eyes would be melted by now. This is serious. This snake guy has handled hundreds of snake-bite cases but NOTHING like those kids. whew. In the interest of good taste, I watched the rest of the movie without the running notes. I kinda wish I had though. This is not what I would call a self-sufficient movie. If I didn't have the notepad nearby and, I admit, a game or two of solitaire to get me through, this would've turned into a pretty boring venture. However, that's not to say there wasn't stuff to like in it. It's just that the movie was too slow to carry itself. Here's the good stuff though: -i love the Rattler-esque wind chime instrumentation in the score. It kind of kills any kind of suspense because the people ALWAYS get bit so as soon as you hear the wind chimes kick in, it means whoever's on screen is about to die. On the flip side, it also meant you were about to see more snakes, which is always fun. -either this movie gets extra points or points taken off for using a real dead dog and turkey in one scene, but definitely extra points are earned for having the guy take so long to realize that they're dead. He waves the cloud of flies away a few times, picks up then drops a clearly-inanimate paw, and kicks the turkey in the head. -Out of nowhere, there's this huge debate about Women's Lib. I don't know why it's there (other than it was made in the 70s and it fills some time) but it sure as hell is. You don't hear the term "sitting on your liberated ass" nearly enough nowadays though... maybe I should bring that back. -There are a few monumentally bad monologues in this movie. It's like something actors would work on before going to their Days of Our Lives acting school. Wonderfully terrible readings of these inane exposition-heavy soliloqies about every last detail in the story of how the pilot got bit by the snake or why the girl hates men. Great stuff. -The army health dude uses an eye dropper to make his martini. Not quite as advanced as today's use of the vermouth atomizer, but still pretty sweet. I think he takes his supplies out of an autoclave as well, so it's clean AND dry. -Right after the big climactic confrontation between the snake scientist and the snakes, they cut to a wild weekend of Vegas romance. For real. The Women's Lib girl totally falls for the snake scientist in two lines' worth of dialogue and they go on this lost weekend of debauchery and soft-lit ballroom dancing. Now THAT's a way to get back at those snakes! -Later on, they're smooching it up in a tent when they get bombarded by a snake attack. A random army guy comes to the rescue and unloads a full clip of machine gun ammo INSIDE the tent. It's almost too good to be true and honestly makes the movie worth watching for me. -And at the very ending, when the reason for the legion of aggro Rattlers comes out, we get an Army general going completely nutball, which is always fun. So all in all, this was better than I thought it would be (having been warned that it's not very good... which is true) but I'm fully hoping that this is just the cocktail to get me ready for the double feature of snake movies I've been holding off on seeing until the exact right time because I've heard so much about them and how great they are. So what's up next? Well I'll give you a hint. It starts and ends with an "S" :)
01.29.07	Melody	Waris Hussein	It was nice to see this projected in a real theater and hooray for Kier-La being so hot and buttered by Jack Wild to want to play this. I think it's a very sweet and charming movie that moves more like a book than a film. It's filled with bunches of things specific to being a kid, and even more specific to being a kid wherever and whenever this was. I could tell it was a bit too sweet and too slow for some, and the audience turnout was... questionable. but what the hell, I liked seeing it again. Probably not a movie I'd get in the habit of seeing every 6 months, but once more didn't kill me.
01.29.07	An Inconvenient Truth	Davis Guggenheim	I figured I should see this... for whatever reason. As a lecture it's very effective. As a movie it's pretty horrible. I don't know where these acoustic-guitar-y biographical segments of Al Gore walking on his salt-of-the-earth farmland or talking about peaceful summertime rivers came from, but all that stuff made me want to eat something so I could throw it up. And they just come out of nowhere... It's like... you know what it's like? It's like you're watching a guy give a powerpoint presentation on C-SPAN that has commercials for Al Gore's biography. Glabl warming this, global warming that, my mom died of cancer. The ice is melting, the oceans are getting warmer, I loved working on the farm. Drive a hybrid car, use those expensive lightbulbs, and I didn't win the presidential race. Gah. it bugged me to the point where I didn't even care about what he was talking about. I just wanted the soft music and random shots of Gore working on his laptop to end.
01.29.07	How To Seduce A Woman	Charles Martin	As plenty of people have said before, watching a bad drama can still be fun because it's unintentionally funny, but watching a bad comedy is just torturous because you can't even laugh at it. Such is the case with this movie. It's anecdotes about a guy trying to sleep with women using a team of friends to create elaborate lies and cons to get them into bed. Then at the end of each segment, the guy mugs to the camera. I think the reason why Micah lent me this is because the main guy is the same dude from Sweet Sugar... and he was AMAZING in that movie. Here though, he's always playing rich and debonaire and happy... nowhere near as fun as the twisted sociopathic doctor in Sweet Sugar. Plus this movie is like 110 minutes long... What's up with that? So, in essence it's like watching the same scene 5 times in a row. The only real moments that came of it were random moments when Hitler appeared as a hotel doorman and when Toulouse Lautrec popped up as somebody's son. what? anyways...
01.28.07	Showgirls	Paul Verhoeven	I don't spend much time in Vegas, but I think this is maybe a perfect encapsulation of what vegas is: trashy, cheap, glamorous, fake, lewd, greedy, and amoral. In other words, this movie is great fun. But I guess everybody on Earth already knew that... Well at least now I'm in the officially loop.
01.28.07	Impulse	William Grefe	Holy Shit. William Shatner. Man... That poor unfortunate woman with the baloons. Nobody deserves to be ground up into dog food. To say such a thing is just... just... classic. I loved every frame of Shatner in this movie. Since I never watched Star Trek, I was slow to come around to the church of Shatner... I thought he was great in Kingdom of the Spiders and Big Bad Mama and generally like his goofiness now but after this, color me converted. Man oh man oh man oh manoman.... Shatner takes every conceivable second to be a bastard in this movie. I loved LOVED when he hustles his woman out of her shop so she can get him her money then a guy walks in and immediately he's "we're closed" and not even looking at the guy! Normally I complain in mystery books/movies/tv shows whenever they have this big reveal that someone on the good guy side is actually a psychopath. Like, the cop's boss turns out to be the homicidal maniac serial killer or the president turned out to be behind the terrorist activity that morning... because how are they gonna spend so much time acting completely normal and passing the tests and putting in the years of paying your dues and having a wife and kids and all that, then as soon as its revealed that they're secretly the bad guy they let loose this crazy-man laugh and their eyes go all shifty. No amount of TV criminal psychologists telling me "they could appear completely normal in everyday life, just like your boss or the president" makes me believe that if you hung out with him long enough, you'd see something. Well, all that said, I COMPLETELY believe that William Shatner's character in this movie is a complete nutjob. Looney bin material right from the start. Sure he acts normal and has a good front but you see it... it's so great. Oh man, after he hits the dog and justifies it by saying "they're real good at licking their wounds. He'll clean himself up and be alright" HAH! I really hope Lars decides to run this again as a Weird Wednesday sometime because, as much fun as I had with it tonight alone, I bet it KILLS with a theater full of Shatner-ites. Until then, time to make a copy before I return this to Micah.
01.27.07	Black Sunday	John Frankenheimer	Black September tries to blow up the Goodyear blimp during Superbowl. Does it explode, firing thousands of bullets in all directions killing thousands upon thousands of football fans in a heap of burning wreckage? Since the image of the blimp looming over the stadium is the cover of the book and the poster for the movie and the main DVD menu, that's the only real question involved... and you have to wait 140 minutes to find out... but really, you already know the answer, so I guess the journey is supposed to be the fun part. Robert Shaw has an... unfortunate Israeli accent in this... and it feels like they had to write a scene for Bruce Dern to break down and cry and be dramatic in order to get him to play the role... Other than that, it's well-done but no real shocks or surprises. I'd always avoided both reading the book and watching the movie because I could so easily tell how the whole thing went just from the premise... Well now I've seen it and... yep, I was pretty much right.
01.26.07	Night Moves	Arthur Penn	Gene Hackman plays private investigator Harry Moseby, which is a great private investigator movie. This movie is pretty cool because it manages to be both referential of the genre and also work as its own movie in an irony-free way. It's kinda similar to The Long Goodbye in that homage/subvert way, except this one doesn't go so far with the subversion. Instead, it's just a really solid noir-esque 70s crime movie. Hackman's great in it as well... Good movie all around.
01.26.07	Color of Night	Richard Rush	When this came out I remember there was a big thing about seeing Bruce Willis' dork in the pool scene... so I kind of made seeing this a low priority until I was turned on to previous Richard Rush films. Now, going back, I can see the director's touches on this but at the same time... I dunno. it's a misfire. There are a couple cool elements like not being able to see red on Casey in one scene, but it seems so adrift in early 90s machismo... like that Tom Berenger movie Shattered and That Uma Thurman movie Jennifer Eight and the Stallone movie The Specialist and that Linda Fiorentino movie Jade and all those other kind of gimmicky mystery thrillers that all seem to have the exact same tone. Plus you have Willis ab-ing it up and all the "steamy" sex and whatnot... I dunno. I guess they're all Basic Instinct knock-offs anyway, but still.
01.24.07	Get Mean	Fernando Baldi	After talking with friends outside the Paramount (I love doing that. it makes me feel so communitive to have people bump my shoulder and say hi), I headed down to WW, anxious since I missed last week's The Abductors. I think I've now seen over a year's worth of these things (this'll be 57), and I can't imagine not going as often as possible. Anyway, this movie was like a sad twisted incest-malformed remnant of a once-strong lineage called Spaghetti Western. After every variation is explored, every other genre stitched in, every facet imagined... you end up with this: Tony Anthony's "Stranger" escorts the Princess of Spain to her home where barbarians have taken over her ancient castle (rumored to hold the treasure of Rodrigo) and are currently in the midst of battling the Moors. Huh? Right... So to restore the princess to power and take out the barbarians (who look a lot like vikings, except the Shakespeare-obsessed hunchback advisor and the Victorian homosexual council), Anthony has to pass the trials of death to get the treasure, meaning he has to go through a cave, become a black man ("I'm black and I'm dyin!"), run from a bull, and punch out a random barbarian hiding in aforementioned cave. From there it gets tough so he has to GET MEAN with a four-barrel sawed-off revolver shotgun and 48 stickes of Tain't No Thang and a bow with explosive arrows and a six-shooter and a squinty eye. He doesn't care about the princess. He doesn't care about the treasure, he doesn't care about anything ("yup!") except the money he's owed... which has previously been explained is coming out of the treasure so... he kinda does care about the treasure if he stops to think about it (which he never does). I didn't really care for the first two installments of this Stranger series. They were boring and stale. This one at least has vikings in castles and randomly-placed crystal balls (that are really mirror balls but the lawn art kind not the disco kind). Plus he does deliver one all-time classic line, after he kills the big bad guy, saying that people who string other people up and roast them like pigs (which this guy did) are trash. "But you're worst than trash," he says, "you're garbage. Garbage, fella..." garbage, fella.
01.24.07	Inland Empire	David Lynch	AFS presents Inland Empire at the Paramount theater with special guest David Lynch. Lynch came out to thunderous applause and introduced a short vocal improvisation by local singer Christa Bell, who was very beautiful and wore an elegant gown and made reverberating tones for about a minute. And then David Lynch says "and now... Inland Empire." Skipping forward, the ending Q&A was great. I love the way Lynch speaks and it was a pleasure to see him do it in front of me. I love how he uses this hand gesture of wiggling fingers to symbolize pretty much everything he talks about. Whether that means everything in life can be symbolized by waving fingers on a hand or that he only talks about things that make sense that way is a mystery. Still, I loved it. It was great. He talked about catching big ideas and loving them and opening up your concioussness to the vast ocean that engulfs you in blinding waves of bliss. And he said the Lost Highway DVD is color-corrected and timed and ready to go but Universal is sitting on it because they don't think it'll sell. Some people gushed on and on when they had a chance to ask the man a question... Lynch was very polite and nice and had a tear in the right elbow of his suit. Still, in a black suit and black skinny tie, he looked very classy. And then there's the movie. The beginning title is stunning. The movie is three hours long, and the closest I could make out to a plot was also my interpretation of Mulholland Drive. I'm sure there's a great Laura Dern performance here... but it's all over the place that I had no clue what to guage it on. Unfortunately. I'm finding that my tastes don't align very well with experimental film. When there's elements of the abstract and surreal inserted into a standard narrative structure, I go apeshit. I think that's why I'm so in love with Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet... it's the standard mystery story with these perverse surreal weird-ass underbelly elements around the edges, creeping in at night when there's not enough light to keep it away. The whole ride that Kyle Machlaclan takes with Frank is some of the best stuff cinema has to offer I think, but i feel that way because it's surrounded by normalcy. It's Kyle falling into the hidden world, almost another dimension that co-exists in secrecy with all the 9-5-ers and stay at home moms. But a whole movie of that shit? That affects me very differently. Here, it's three hours of organic journey through rough emotion and circumstance. Things happen, or don't. It kind of fits together but not really. What's more, I don't think it's even a puzzle to figure out (an aspect I didn't really like with Mulholland Drive. I hated that the DVD had "hints" on how to figure it out). It's a work I can respect and admire but not really enjoy. I think it's really really great that Lynch made this movie - he seems very happy like a painter with a direct connection between the canvas and his subconciouss - and I have no doubt that it's cinema as art, but it's just too much for me. I really loved certain segments and visuals and aspects and moments, but for me they don't come together at all. Actually, now that I think about it, I'm having a very similar reaction as when I saw Un Chien Andalou. Except that was like a third the running time as this. It's definitely an experience though, certainly unlike any other new movie I saw this year, and I can't honestly say I hated it or anything like that. It's just too much for me.
01.23.07	Young Mr. Lincoln	John Ford	Man 1939 was a hell of a great year for movies. I remember the first film class I ever took (and only one I ever liked), the week the professor went over John Ford... I think he screened Stagecoach but he showed clips from The Searchers and matched it to Star Wars, then he played two clips from My Darling Clementine: the scene where Fonda's stretching out with his feet up on the veranda post and the scene where he dances. The teacher's note on both of these scenes was how great Ford utilized Fonda's physical stature, really playing up the too-tall lankiness of him by accentuating his legs or making everyone around him smaller. Well, this whole movie is like that. I lost count of the shots where Fonda's legs are up in the foreground, his feet are jutting out toward camera, his pants are barely getting down to his long boots, or his oafish walk with his tophat made him look about 3 feet taller than everyone else in the movie. With the make-up on, it's REALLY strange to hear Henry Fonda's voice coming out of Abe Lincoln. really really strange... On the second disc, there's a GREAT bit of audio recording of him talking to John Ford's grandson (for a book he was working on) where he talks about going into the screening room to see the test he shot as Lincoln and saying "Jesus Christ, this big tall sonofabitch is lincoln! And then he started to talk and my voice came out and I shat!" Actually, even though I haven't watched the two 45-minute BBC tv shows on the second disc, I think this 5-minute audio interview is my favorite bit of the week. As Fonda's about to go into an impersonation of Ford, he falters a bit then adds "and this is just for you and me" before launching into a couple four letter words that I don't believe I've ever heard in Henry Fonda's (or Abe Lincoln's) voice. Then right at the end he discounts Ford's famous story (also here in a 7-minute audio interview with him) about how when he first met Fonda without the Lincoln nose and make-up on he didn't recognize him. Great stuff. Anyway, the movie.... I mean, I really really liked all the visual things about it, all the acting and shot construction and pacing and flow and all that stuff... but I have to admit that the sapfest Alfred Newman score was like pouring syrup into my sinuses for 100 minutes straight. I'm trying to figure out why I don't go berserk over these Ford movies when, after I break them down into specific elements, I like almost everything about them. I think here it's the music and also, perhaps this is true with a lot of his others as well, when he dips into the ritual and shows the dances and singing and whatnot... that stuff goes on a bit too long for me. I really like that he includes that across all his movies... i love that on a conceptual level... but I'm thinking maybe that's when it loses me a little bit on the visceral level as I'm watching. I don't know... maybe it's something to grown into... maybe it's an acquired taste... right now it's kind of confusing to me though. Like I see iconic images from The Searchers like the beginning and ending shots or hear absolutely classic lines like John Wayne saying "I can whup you to a frazzle" and think that's absolutely perfect... yet my memory of actually watching The Searchers is that it felt a bit too long and pretty slow. who knows... maybe in a year or two I can look back and read this and laugh because future-me is such a gigantic fan and right now i'm just being naive and immature? we'll see i guess. But if you're reading this, screw you, future-me! heh heh heh.
01.23.07	Directed by John Ford	Peter Bogdanovich	I want to take this opportunity to thank the Internet, more specifically the bit torrent technology, more specifically karagarga, more specifically the 6 guys seeding this movie. Without you, I'd be cursing TCM's lack of repeat showings and filing this one away, yet again, in the dusty text file of movies I've long wanted to see. But thanks to those mentioned above, I have now seen this Peter Bogdanovich-made doc on John Ford, notable for it's early 70s thriving interview footage with Duke Wayne, Hank Fonda, Jimmy Stewart, and John Ford himself (shot in Monument Valley no less) and narrated by Orson Welles. I think I first learned of this film while reading Bogdanovich's Who The Devil Made It where he may have off-handedly remarked that he made a documentary film about the guy for AFI (just as he habitually makes off-hand remarks about writing books about all his famous friends like Ford, Welles, Fritz Lang, etc.), then tracked down some random interview transcript on the Internet where Bogdanovich said that AFI never cleared the rights to all the film clips and music so it was stuck in their vault and couldn't be shown. So I guess thanks to TCM, they ponied up and brought Bogdanovish in to update it, adding 10 minutes of interview footage with Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood, Walter Hill, and Harry Carey Jr. So After all this work, TCM plays it twice last November. Gee, thanks. Anyway, all history aside, I wasn't dissapointed with the caliber of interviews presented here. Especially John Wayne and Henry Fonda. I've never really seen too much interview footage with those guys, especially not when they were still young and healthy enough to resemble their on-screen likenesses. ALl of Duke's stories were classics and hearing about how Ford directed Fonda into the little thing he does in My Darling Clementine with his feet up on the veranda post was great. Similarly, Jimmy Stewart's recounting of the river scene in Two Rode Together intercut with Scorsese talking about it in full-on "these are my inspirations" mode and the scene itself is a big reminder of just how geeky I am about this stuff. I'm just eating it up... Meanwhile the state of the union address is going on that I couldn't give two craps about... nah, I'm enthralled by the story of how one shot in a movie I haven't even seen came about. Yeah, I haven't actually seen that many John Ford movies. My mom was a huge fan of both Ford and John Wayne so I grew up thinking they were pretty sappy... I'm still not 100% sure I honestly enjoy a lot of what's considered all-time classic, but I like to think that I'm slowly coming around. I'm definitely in the mood to watch one now. As a movie, I'm not sure how great this would be to someone as a John Ford primer. It kind of skips all over the place movie-wise and doesn't cover his whole filmography or anything like that. But if you're already a fan or at least familiar with his movies, this works great like a movie-geek discussion, where it starts with one person on one thing and then someone else says "yeah, like in this other movie when that happens" and it goes from there. For me it was great and I'm very happy to finally see it. It's nice to check this one off the list for sure.
01.22.07	Saint Jack	Peter Bogdanovich	Thanks to Micah for lending me his DVD of this. I'd never seen it before but it was on my list for several reasons. Some great location photography of Singapore here, as well as really great work from Ben Gazzara and Denholm Elliot. I especially loved Gazzara's easy dialogue, always being friendly with everyone but with an edge of fast-talking confidence. I guess everyone's favorite line is when he tells the group of thugs to get on with it before he drop-kicks a midget down the hill, but all throughout the movie he speaks with a casual yet perfect manner. It's kind of interesting. due to the exotic locales and large number of non-pro actors, this feels dangerously close to something I'd see at Weird Wednesday... and yet it's a Bogdanovich picture. Before I saw Targets a few months back, I wouldn't have thought any of his movies dipped that far below the line of serious oscar-worthy hollywood-style pretension, but both of those bore the strong mark of Roger Corman if you ask me. It makes me like Bogdanovich all the more to learn that he did these kinds of pictures as well as homage-fests like What's Up, Doc? and uber-award-type movies like The Last Picture Show. now I REALLY want to see his John Ford doc. I heard it's floating around now because someone finally paid for the film clip rights... I really hope I can track it down at some point. Been wanting to see that for years and years.
01.21.07	I Don't Know Jack	Chris Leavens	A doc about frequent David Lynch actor Jack Nance and how he was eccentric and alcoholic and now dead. I don't mean to sound crass or anything but this was pretty boring. Sorry, Jack. I liked you as an actor and you will live forever as Eraserhead but tales of you getting drunk and acting crazy are awfully familiar. I'm sure the people who knew him like that this movie exists but for the rest of us... well maybe that's a bit too harsh. As a movie about this guy's life it was the story of his life... It's just not a movie that gives you more than you expect going into it. A special feature on the disc is a 20 minute segment about how Jack's death might've been murder, all based on Twin Peaks actress Kimmy Johnson (the sheriff's receptionist) having a dream where Jack told her he was killed by someone. In there, they interview the homicide detective who worked his case and he was great. He has this eye patch and is wearing this big hat and talks about how all the people I've just spent 90 minutes listening to are weirdos and he didn't like them. Then it has footage of Kimmy going to a psychic and the psychic channeling Jack Nance and him saying he's touched that they care about him but he wasn't murdered. That 20 minute bit was way better than the film itself.
01.21.07	Billy Wilder Speaks	Volker Schlondorff	videotaped interviews with Billy Wilder. It's only 70 minutes long and I guess originally aired on TV somewhere but with another 60 minutes of additional scenes on the disc, I am counting it as a feature. This disc is worth a rental just for the last deleted scene... at a tribute for recently-deceased I.A.L. Diamond, Wilder directs a scene taken from an Early Diamond student script using Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon. They play writers trying to come up with the perfect adverb and it's great. A new glimpse into their chemistry together as well as a glimpse of seeing Wilder at work. It's a really great three or four minutes. The rest of the disc is all interviews that slide back and forth between English and German. He gives a little more candor since he insisted the interviews wouldn't be publicly released until after his death, but for the most part it's like an abridged version of Cameron Crowe's interview book Conversations with Wilder. There's lots of interesting bits as well as the fun in hearing his voice as he speaks, but since I read the book there wasn't much new stuff here. Still, as a big fan of Wilder, I enjoyed hearing him talk, especially when he's asked if he'd direct films even if they didn't pay him.
01.20.07	Dog Soldiers	Neil Marshall	For some reason, I never saw this when it came out and I'm tired of having to silently nod my head in vague agreement whenever anyone else talks about it so, here I am. I think the last time I had to pretend to have seen it was during a discussion of the best werewolf movies of all time. After a little thought, there's really not that many. It seems to me that there's an all-time great werewolf movie waiting to be made, but maybe not. Maybe the mythology itself is flawed or something... all the werewolf movies I could think of were at best good, never great. The Howling, The original Wolf Man (and it's been so long since I've seen that I shouldn't even say I have), and of course American Werewolf in London. Plus I might throw in Wolfen even though it's not technically a werewolf movie per se.... but you know... is American Werewolf really the story gets? I like the idea behind Mike Nichols' Wolf but don't really enjoy the movie all that much, and the Ginger Snaps movies were varying degrees of enjoyable but none of them classics. Teen Wolf... of course. My personal favorite werewolf movie might just be Silver Bullet. anyways, this is kind of an eventual but well done take on the genre, pitting werewolves against soldiers in rural Scottish highlands. I liked seeing the main dude from Rome in here among the absolutely identical looking soldier leads. I'm pretty sure I also know the captian from something else but the rest of them could be storm troopers for all I know... I liked this movie. It's maybe a bit basic but the same could be said for The Descent and I liked that too. I do have a couple minor greviances (like the girl character and I really could've done without the Matrix reference), but for the most part I had a good time with it. Good Saturday Night type horror movie.
01.19.07	Alfie	Charles Shyer	I'll be honest. I watched this movie because I was flipping channels and saw Marisa Tomei wearing low-cut pants with her little thong straps coming up out of them. Yeah, what can I say. Sometimes that's all it takes. It's a shame too because this whole movie is about something I hate: beautiful people. I try to be positive... I don't like being a hateful person... but I really can't stand pretty boys and supermodels who get everything for free and have really retched problems like sleeping with too many hot chicks or not having a pair of shoes that match some party dress. I spent this whole movie wanting to punch Jude Law in the face. Yeah, try to find a date with a broken nose, jerkass!
01.19.07	In Her Shoes	Curtis Hanson	you know, as time went on after I saw this movie, I'd think back to the story and what it's about and maybe try to explain it to people and it always comes out as the most cliched saccharine sweet formulaic laughable chick flick of all time. I mean... Cameron Diaz dyslexic, learning to read from an old blind guy... Toni Collette giving up her lawyer job to walk dogs... it ends with a wedding... blah blah blah, right? yeah... I don't know. It's really good. It's really really good. I think it must be the acting or something...
01.18.07	Tombs of the Blind Dead	Amando de Ossorio	So I've now seen Revenge From Planet Ape... I was fully prepared to call it its own movie and make a separate entry here but... it's really not. After the (admittedly hilarious) tacked-on intro with the narration over stills of the ruins from the movie talking about how long ago we fought with a race of alien super-apes and defeated them and seared out their eyes with red-hot pokers before they voweds to return for revenge, the only difference between this and Tombs is a few scene excisions: all the raunchy make-out near-sex-talk and the shot of the first girl switching shirts, the beginning flashback of the knights swording the girl in some sort of Templar ritual, and the minute-long scene where they learn about the templars from that book with the illustration. So... a new 30 seconds and about 2 minutes gone and there you go. Still, I'm really glad I saw this cut. It makes a great example of how distributors and exhibitors of the classic drive-in era were... kind of like a semi-modern-day example of the how they used to recut the silent pictures from unsuccessfull tragedy to successful comedy without telling any of the people who shot the film to begin with. Even the cut sexy-talk scenes I can't be sure was a blanket thing with all Planet Ape prints... it might've just been the guy at the drive-in taking sissors to it in order to let kids in without angry parents. It's a mystery... but one I find pretty fascinating. Anyway, the crowd had a good enough time with this I think. It definitely helped me enjoy it... especially the weirdo morgue attendant. I still don't know why the train goes so unbelievably slow but I guess I should just write it off as European.
01.17.07	Only Angels Have Wings	Howard Hawks	I'd seen this movie a long time ago and a couple of signs pointed me toward revisisting it. It's just as good as I remember it being, filled with a bunch of bravado and tough guy behavior that Hawks seems to revel in. A group of airmail pilots in the Andes have to fly through treacherous conditions for a living and Jean Arthur stumbles into their world. Rita Hayworth is also in it in her breakout role and this amazing character actor who was in every great movie released in 1939 (and I believe there were a lot of them that year). I love how that guy is stocky but not really fat except for a weird camel hump underneath his belt. You just don't see that nowadays, probably because people don't wear their pants so high. Anyway, I think the charm of the movie, aside from the characters, is in its rythm and pacing. It's a two hour movie that feels like 80 minutes and you don't realize how caught up you are until you feel it nearing the end and realize that two hours of your life has gone by. It never feels hurried or frenzied but it's always moving forward. Most of Hawks' movies are like this... Impeccable structure and pacing. I might end up netflixing this just to grab the peanut song they play toward the beginning. Cary Grant screaming PEANUUUUUTS! is hilarious. And oh, I think it's been maybe ten years since I first saw Rita Hayworth and I still can't believe how hot she was. My poor little brain just can't comprehend it.
01.17.07	Tombs of the Blind Dead	Amando de Ossorio	A girl gets in a fight with her boyfriend and hops off an incredibly slow-moving train into the wrong neck of the woods, ending up in a burial ground for Knights Templar. I guess she gets bored or tired or something because she makes a fire and lays down to listen to some jazz, smoke a cigarette, and read a book. Meanwhile, the ghosts of the templar come out riding ghost horses and clop around outside. Maybe Europeans are just like that but... ok one: i wouldn't jump off a train at some random spot in the middle of nowhere, two: i wouldn't stop and get undressed and sleep just because it gets dark outside, and three: i sure as hell wouldn't pick a creepy old ruin of a castle or keep or village or whatever it is to do it in. That's the best aspect of this movie though. It works best when its all atmosphere and singular images or ideas rather than any sort of cohesive plot or story... like a nightmare with bad acting. Like a frog hopping through a puddle of blood or a burning mannequin's head melting. spectral beings wearing rotted armor riding toward you on horseback in slow motion, your silence betrayed by the beating of your heart. The idea of it works on you more than actually seeing the dudes and the mediocre make-up, never mind sitting through the slow bits that spackle these scenes together. So this movie makes a better memory than experience for me. I'm glad I saw it though, because tomorrow for Terror Thursday they're playing a version of this recut to exploit the Planet of the Apes craze... which has to be pretty interesting. I didn't want my first exposure to this movie to be that though... Although the DVD has the intro to the recut version on it with the really quickly put-together titles and beginning narration, and it says "thanks to Harry Guerro" so I wonder if I'll be seeing the same print that Blue Underground transferred for the DVD. A minor thrill but still.
01.16.07	Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest	Gore Verbinski	I still think lots of people like this series lots more than I do, however I think both of these have grown on me with second viewings... I'm not exactly sure why, maybe just the whole adventure feel of them. I'm looking forward to the next one.
01.15.07	The Sinister Saga of Making 'The Stunt Man'	Richard Rush	Rush's full-length making-of doc... it's made kinda like the movie with constantly shifting angles and focuses with kind of a fluid movement that uses plenty of video magic to make everything cut together. Pretty unusual for a doc, it's clear that Rush really gave this some time. Practically every shot makes me think two things: 1) he had a blast putting this together, 2) he's not working. One makes me happy, the other makes me sad. The information is interesting but probably too long unless you're already either a huge Stunt Man or Richard Rush fan, but he goes through every detail from inception to awards here... and if you're going to make a documentary on the making of a movie that's really what you have to do. It's not like there's gonna be a dozen of these all on the same film, I think it's always better to put too much in rather than too little. However, what I thought most interesting and impressive is that Rush invented the rack focus. So the rack focus is only 30 years old? huh... I'm still not quite sure about that, but Rush takes full credit and i'm sure some DP somewhere would protest if it weren't true... anyway I found this very cool... and really its own movie rather than just a DVD supplement. It's just so surprising how he can make a movie like this and then... Color of Night 14 years later... and that's it. Unrelatedly, I've been getting comment spam from this site off the little form below. Since I can't exactly email those guys back saying the comments don't appear on the site, I'm trying out a little makeshift security instead. If you want to quickly send me a comment, you now have to answer a simple trivia question. If you don't know the answer, it's jaws. I'm hoping this stops the robots but is slightly less annoying than putting in random distorted characters which i hate.
01.15.07	Crank	Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor	A very loose remake of DOA all meth'd up to appeal to today's MTV audiences starring Jason Statham (I guess Transporter is when he all of a sudden became an action star?) and you get to see Amy Smart in her underwear (which is nice) really quick, like everything in this movie; like a video game it's so quick (complete with VG title and post-credits ending), there's no time for pesky things like character or plot because if this movie gets boring then the main character dies so that can't happen so instead it's a cinematic daydream filled with outrageous violence and funny little things like having the guy be able to read the subtitles or subtitling without translating or putting dirty words on his forehead when he asks someone if it's written there (kind of like an update on Natural Born Killers without all the Oliver Stone message-y nonsense or Tommy Lee Jones) so if you're not being dazzled by the stunts then you're laughing at the little touches that are all designed to make you forget that the movie that you're watching really isn't about anything at all but who cares because it's a fun ride and everybody likes fun rides, right? right.
01.13.07	The Good German	Steven Soderbergh	another movie where I completely understand how people can not get into at all if they don't both know and like the kind of old hollywood vibe that Soderbergh's going for. Especially with the first few scenes so clearly shot using process and stock footage, it's definitely jarring to see the 1940s aesthetic. And then you have Toby Maguire trying hard not to be Spider-Man. But, I think the movie gets a lot better about a half hour in when all that stuff kind of falls away, leaving a pretty interesting post-WWII mystery drama to unfold in gorgeous photography. It really fits the mold of a Michael Curtiz or Carol Reed film, with Cate Blanchett clearly playing Marlene Dietrich and George Clooney playing... well, he always plays George Clooney, but that's what makes him a star. I do think it's funny that this movie seems to be getting flak for its homages when I remember Far From Heaven getting the exact opposite for mimicking Douglas Sirk. I think this movie is good but not great, and probably appeals to me mostly by reminding me of other better movies, but oh well... it's still nice to see something different nowadays, even if it is a throwback.
01.13.07	The Good Shepherd	Robert De Niro	A sprawling flabby take on the early years of CIA that has about an hour's worth of fictional biopic that keeps this movie from being great. I can definitely see how people who are not already very interested in the history of espionage find this movie way too long and way too boring. For me, I thought all the spy stuff was really great but found myself working to like bits amidst all this family stuff going on in the middle of everything. It's hard enough to follow since it's all told in flashbacks and flashbacks within flashbacks and all the cloak and dagger stuff takes some thought to figure out what's going on anyway, I don't need a boring neglected family B story to cloud things up even further, especially since Matt Damon's character is more of a composite or heavily modeled after someone rather than a real person. Still, good performances for the most part, and the stuff I did like I really liked... I just with it was 40 minutes shorter. oh, and the guy who plays Damon's kid has a mouth like a rainbow trout. seriously.
01.13.07	Munich	Steven SPielberg	Munich is a movie that I remember thinking was good in the theaters about a year ago but have never felt any urge to own or see again. In fact, I'd kind of forgotten it was even made until I saw it listed somewhere a few days ago. Since I now think of all Steven Spileberg movies as being really good in parts but ruined by incredibly out of place sentimentalism or softie endings, I figured I'd watch this again and see if I'm wrong or what. So what's up with intercutting the killing of the Munich hostages with Eric Bana having sex? What's that supposed to mean? Is he a necro now? Or maybe that thought popped in right at the end and that's why he's so freaked out... like he accidentally thought of his mom or something. I dunno... Aside from that I'd say there's a few scenes that are suspiciously absent... like Bana falling to his knees and begging Geoffery Rush to forgive him, or holding up his ring and saying he could've bought two more locations of people to kill, or going to Boston at the end and having his whole family there waiting for him to live happily ever after. Oh wait, that happened in Brooklyn this time instead. Still, the actual assassinationy parts were good and this makes me want to finally watch the original Day of the Jackal. I think I'll settle for The Good Shepherd instead.
01.12.07	Saw III	Barren Lynn Bousman	After the second one I thought this was a series that should've been left as a singlet, but this one manages to tie everything together as well as fix a few loopholes from the first film and make the second one... well, a tiny bit less of a waste of time. I guess that makes me impressed and pleasantly surprised with this... but it sometimes still felt a little too... i dunno... fakey. And it's very dark, as in i had to jack my brightness up to see what the hell was going on. Still though, it made a good end to the trilogy. Except they're making a fourth one.
01.11.07	Human Experiments	Gregory Goodell	An unbelievably thin Linda Haynes falls into a bad situation and ends up in a prison where they perform radical psychological experiments. I remember being really impressed with Linda Haynes in Rolling Thunder so it was awesome to see her naked here. It was also cool to see an aging Aldo Ray in a small part toward the beginning, and that guy I see in tons of stuff (imdb says his name is Geoffrey Lewis) as the mad doctor. This movie was pretty decent. It's not so crazy as Sweet Sugar and the other WIP flicks that I end up liking most, but it's not filled with speeches about freedom either, and towards the end it gets pretty interesting. I was reminded of a couple movies but to name them would give it away so... guess I'll keep them in my head. But there was one scene involving a bunch of bugs. I guess it's a hard-coded response where you either get creeped out by that or not, but I'm surprised more people didn't use this idea more. Put a tarantula or scorpion on someone's thigh or rain down hundreds of cockroaches and crickets and cut to a shot of a centipede crawling over something and it automatically creeps out like 60% of your audience. In this scene Linda Haynes has to crawl through an air duct while covered in bugs... yeah that's oogy. UPDATE: I can't believe I forgot to mention the absolute best scene in this movie. I'll never forgive myself if i don't include a mention of Linda Haynes masturbating with her own tears... god i love that.
01.11.07	The Legend of Hillbilly John	John Newland	Another absolutely great trailer shown at BNAT, this is kind of a hicky mythological tale of Hillbilly John, who spends his time making up songs and walking around with his trusted dog named Honor Hound.. His grandpappy decrees that he's gonna "defy" one night but the devil kills him because his strings weren't made from true silver. The evil government stopped using true silver for its dollars long ago but nobody told ol' pappy, so John goes on a quest to find some true silver to make guitar strings out of so he can beat the devil, but along the way he meets witches, slavemasters, and has a run-in with the dreaded uglybird. Yeah, this movie sounds like the best thing ever, right? Well, the trailer sure is. Watching the movie however, the harsh reality of having all these things go on with no explanation or logic or reasoning kind of wears you down. It's a pretty long 89 minutes to be sure, but afterward I found myself thinking back to like a dozen great moments that didn't seem great at the time but now certainly are. And the ending... well, I didn't see the ending coming, that's for sure. But with a movie like this I guess that's to be expected. I spend like twenty minutes thinking every scene would be a good one to end with and then when it comes for real it's so abrupt and sudden that I can't believe it. Truly an odd movie. I'm so glad I saw it, even if I wasn't really glad at the time.
01.10.07	The Body Beneath	Andy Milligan	My first Andy Milligan movie... I wouldn't say I took an immediate loving to it, but I did find some very interesting things going on. To me this movie seemed like an excellent example of how if you're determined and crazy enough, you can will a movie into existence. I can totally picture this guy completely caught up in his own world, constantly badgering everyone he knows to help him out with this or that as he follows this unscratchable itch to make movies. Lots of this movie shows a limited or cut off view of really great technique. Like he goes for these really Wellesian deep focus shots with tons of actors filling the frame in interesting ways but it doesn't _quite_ work so you end up with some odd framing cutting off faces at the nose or above the neck. There's also this party scene which I thought was really cool at the beginning when I thought it would all be played in these vaseline-smeared glimpses over dreading music, but the scene turns into these big speeches and the vaseline stays on the lens too long. It's also very talky BUT the talk is smart and sharp. Of course this would be better if i could remember any of the smart sharp lines, but oh well, it's late. Overall, I'm not sure I'm in any hurry to see it again, but I liked the feeling of freedom and independance coming off this movie, as well as the hunchback named Spool. What a great name.
01.08.07	Lost Vegas: The Lounge Era	Tim Onosko	A pretty fun doc about the lost days of Vegas lounges and the hard-working multi-talent acts that made them thrive. ALthough there's a notorious lack of footage of these guys in their heyday, the director tracks down a lot of them and shows enough modern-day performance stuff to give a glimpse of what it must've been like. All these guys are great, man... they're like the coolest version of your funny/annoying borderline alcoholic uncle imaginable. Especially this one dude Babe Pier. He does these impressions where he gets the voice pretty good but also does impressive physical imitation as well to give a really funny overall picture, even if his impressions consist of saying who he is, saying one line, then introducing the next impression. Plus he's got this hair... oh man... it's like... I don't even know what it's like, but it's funny. Him doing Tony Bennett singing Take Me Out to the Ball Game is hilarious. The other guys too, they're all knuckleheads who used to work all night every day to make those old days of Vegas the romantic vision of a memory it is to most of us today. Good doc!
01.07.07	Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me	David Lynch	This site would be a lot more active lately if it also included TV I was watching. On the first of the month I started going through Twin Peaks, from my Internet-downloaded pilot to my Season One DVDs to my VHS-ripped Season Two DVDs culminating in this netflix rental of the movie. Although I'd seen Season One before, rented the European tacked-on-ending version of the pilot, and watched this several times before, I'd never seen Season Two so I never liked the movie much. Now, going through them all again in order, I have to say it all makes its own kind of cohesive sense. There's even one line in the movie (spoken by Heather Graham) that refers to the state of things after the show ends. So in this week, while watching these I've also been reading up on tons of Twin Peaksian trivia. Like how there was gonna be a big romance arc between Cooper and Audrey but Maclachlan (who was dating Lara Flynn Boyle at the time) said his character would be too moralistic to enter into a relationship with a highschool girl. And also how the reveal of Laura Palmer's killer was never really intended by Lynch but more or less forced on him by the network and co-creator Mark Frost, whom I believe is under-credited in the grand scheme of Twin Peaks and responsible for a large part of the more TV soap opera-esque vibe of the show. I think it's a clear sign that while the show was mixed with humor and pretty much coined the word "quirky," the movie (presumably more Lynch and less a collaboration with Frost) is much more oppressive and obtuse. I think it's the mix of the two sensibilities that created the best parts of the show, so I can definitely see why lots of people don't like the movie. Anyway, because of the Audrey arc getting cut and the forced hand of Laura's killer, the second half of the second season ended up with a lot of storylines that were supposed to be small sideline bits having to bear the weight of the show. And it's really like night and day to watch before the killer's revealed and after. The show becomes very aimless and loose and trivial story points start taking longer and longer to work out. Up until then though... I'd say the first 18 episodes or so... you can't make better TV than that. It's wonderful and surreal and funny and scary and utterly addicting. And the music, since Badalamenti never scored for specific episodes but rather recorded a library of cues that the episode directors had to pick and manipulate to fit, ends up being VERY thematic and memorable. so anyway, even though the end became a bit of an endurance mission, there's enough in this show to make it really really great. I can only imagine watching it fresh as it came on (and ya know, it seems like it was on A LOT longer ago than 1990), not knowing the answer to any of these mysteries ahead of time. I forget when exactly I first heard the big secret of Laura Palmer's killer but I know it was pretty much the first thing I learned about it. But even with the big shock of the experience ruined for me, I still had a great time seeing the second season for the first time. Although, I'm pretty happy it ended when it did. Although the last episode is very good, I didn't particularly like how it ended and I'm glad it didn't go on so I don't have to see where that leads. I'd much rather have Agent Cooper end up retiring from the agency and buying a cabin in the woods and filling out his days as a Twin Peaks deputy, hanging out with all the good people of the town and finding odd mysteries in ordinary things ad inifinitum. So now that that's over, I've enqueued David Lynch's short films and Dumbland in preparation for getting to see him in person with Inland Empire at the end of the month. Although I kind of miss not having Twin Peaks to watch now, I know that hopefully this spring season two will finally be released on DVD so I can revisit it with hopefully some commentaries and interviews, then with lots of luck, good number from that will finally tip over the guys who own the rights to the Fire Walk With Me deleted scenes and the movie will be re-released as a 2-disc special edition with that hour of new footage and I'll be able to see that. I have little hope for the pilot getting an American DVD release though, although it's a shame because they could put both versions on it and maybe finally get Lynch to do a commentary. OK now i'm just dreaming.
01.06.07	Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby	Adam McKay	man, the tiny baby jesus prayer still makes me laugh till my lungs are empty. Overall though, I'm still thinking I like Anchorman more. I think this time I really appreciated John C. Reilly's stuff a lot more... everyone's accent is spot-on, but it's still just too close to a subject that I can't stand. Just having to watch the few establishing racing shots turns me off. And I still think Baron Cohen should be funnier... but oh well, the DVD has some really funny line-o-rama/alternate takes/deleted scenes but the commentary was painful to sit through. Not because of the UCB Ian dude but director Adam McKay's improv grated on me. There's a Ricky Bobby commercial on here though that also made me really crack up... for (i'm forgetting the actual name) Dr. Nelson's diet Pork Rinds where he's like "mmmmmmmmmmmmm that's a good pork rind" and "is that Dr. Nelsons!?" heh heh heh.
01.05.07	Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural	Richard Blackburn	Kinda weird to see Cheryl Smith so young... this movie has a pretty unique visual style which I liked. The DVD transfer is really pristine... perhaps even too good. Without a few scratches and with such vivid colors, the movie has a kind of timeless feel, really doesn't look like it's from 1973. Um... I feel like I should have lots more to say about this but I don't. I liked it ok but it's not a favorite. Cheryl Smith is good in it but I'm glad I didn't get any of the "weirdly erotic" tone mentioned on the netflix sleeve because she really looks young here.
01.04.07	Asylum	Roy Ward Baker	I rented this movie a while back and really liked it. The box cover I rented was titled "Asylum: House of Crazies" and I loved that too. House of Crazies... what a great title. So I really only remembered two things about this movie: that it was good and that the first story had a bit that made me really laugh. This guy chops up his wife and wraps the parts in paper (even separating the thumb from the fingers for some reason) and thanks to some voodoo bracelet the body parts come back to life. He first sees this when the wrapped-up head climbs the stairs from the basement and rolls out on the kitchen floor. What's the typical British response to an unspeakable horror like this? An arched brow. That's it. One tiny little arched brow. Man, so great. But of course the REAL crowd favorite of this movie is the very end when its revealed that Herbert Lom has been working on tiny robot versions of the people he knows. Yeah yeah, he's crazy... but then there's this scene where it keeps cutting to him concentrating REAL hard on the little robot of himself... and voila, he's transferred his soul into the robot and the robot slowly... very slowly... walks down the hall, gets in the dumbwaiter, walks across a desk, and kills the director of the titular asylum with a scalpel into the back of his neck. The exact circumstances of this.... like if you sat down and thought about all of the things that would have to happen in order for this plan to work... I mean this robot moves SLOW. It's just hilarious. And then, when the visiting doctor realizes what's happened and stomps on the robot, guts squish out! ewwww! heh heh heh. Fun movie, still just a wee tad slow in parts, but mostly it's just some good British horror fun with a house full of crazies... not like a friday night horror movie but more like a sunday afternoon horror movie... good times.
01.04.07	Rock The Bells	Denis Hennelly, Casey Suchan	So, the title refers to the name of the concert that's being documented. I guess people in LA know what it is but for everyone else, it's a horrible title. Why is it a horrible title? because the whole story is about the concert promoter struggling to re-unite the entire Wu-Tang Clan for a show... so maybe throwing "wu-tang clan" in the title somewhere might help the millions of wu-tang fans out there to know that they want to see this movie. Because it's worth seeing. Damn worth it. So it's kind of like a Gimme Shelter setup with a promoter working his ass off to get this all-day festival going. His original goal was to get a few Wu-Tang members but after a while it looked like getting them all might be doable so he approached RZA and the movie's big question is will they all get there. Along the way, it's a near-Shakespearean tale filled with all kinds of characters including the promoter's mom, the wigging out production coordinator, colorful Wu-Tang management personnel, Redman, and a dynamic duo that makes up ODB's XXL Brooklyn support system. It's funny and amusing and impressive and really really scary. The amount of people that show up to this thing... and seeing how the show-runners react is pretty high drama. Sure, nobody gets stabbed but hey... maybe that's a good thing. However, after all the praise I can pile on (and there is plenty to pile... this movie is great), I have to say there's a big lost opportunity right at the end of the film, which kind of made the movie implode a bit for me when the credits came up. The movie follows the whole day really well, choosing to include several performance scenes of opening acts doing their thing. These are all really great and feel natural in the pace of the film and all that but they set up the one mega final celebratory Wu-Tang performance at the end. There is no mega final celebratory Wu-Tang performance at the end of this movie. After following so much and feeling the weight of stress on all of these guys through the whole movie, a mega final celebratory Wu-Tang performance song would really really pay off well. I understand that this is not like an official Wu-Tang movie and that even just the publishing rights to one of their songs has to be so far out of the filmmakers' budget that it's not even an option, but the movie needs it. It really does. You can't have the whole movie be about these guys coming together and not SHOW THEM TOGETHER! If I were these guys, I'd put together the best footage for one of their songs, insert the closing text summaries and ODB RIP stuff as it plays, and roll the dice with distributors. so yeah... great movie.
01.04.07	Memories of Murder	Joon-ho Bong	From the guy who did The Host, this is the story of the police investigation following Korea's first serial murderer. The ending of this movie really affected how i feel about it and it's an ending that I'd read before seeing and really didn't want to know so... in the interest of safety to both of you out there who read this... if you haven't seen this movie then know that it's good and I liked it. From here on out, it's spoiler madness. So... the movie's pretty long, and at the 2 hour mark you really start to wonder how this thing is gonna end. The movie's as much about the state of Korea and the way it works than it is about the murders... So the movie ends and the murderer is not caught. All of their suspects are cleared and they're left with no leads... then it fast forwards to current day where the main cop is now working a different job and he revisits the first crime scene and talks to a girl who just inadvertantly saw the killer. point being, he's still out there. I guess all unsolved crime stories have to end on this kind of anticlcimactic note - and this movie makes me really anxious to see Zodiac and how they choose to end that one - but I think this movie handles the inevitable conclusion pretty well by making it pretty disconnected from the get go. We never really get much in the way of character background or motivation... it's more like we work for the paper and we're assigned to follow the case so we follow it and at the end we get re-assigned and that's it. I get how this might put some people off, not having a clear protagonist to empathize with or a clear antagonist to focus your aggression on but hey... I bet that's how it really is more often than not, so in that regard I really liked how the movie owns that instead of tries to find hollywood-esqe loopholes around it. It looks gorgeous and flows well, but it is over two hours. I liked it, though. I liked it a lot.
12.30.06	Coach Carter	Thomas Carter	Standard sports-is-the-answer movie with Sam Jackson as the coach. Aside from the few moments where I almost vomited it wasn't too bad.
12.28.06	Pepe	George Sidney	so maybe the best trailer played at BNAT this year was for this movie Pepe where Mexican movie sensation Cantinflas says "Pepe... That's Me!" over and over again. Then it cuts to all these chairs with names of dozens of celebrities that apparently appear in this movie. But they all have little accessories next to their chairs... like Zsa Zsa Gabor's name ("ZSA ZSA") is sparkly, there's a martini on Dean martin's chair, and Edgar G. Robisnon has a painting next to it. So, surprisingly enough, all those people do appear in this movie. Furthermore, it's a 3 hour MGM kitchen-sink Oscar vehicle for Cantinflas! The downside of that is that Pepe is a 3 hour MGM kitchen-sink Oscarbait comedy that isn't funny. Actually watching this was pretty tough, but at least I got to go over to Tim's and see his awesome attic screening room and suffer through it with others. There were a few moments (Bing Crosby's cameo, when the horse swims in the pool, the nightclub interpretive dance knife fight) were cool but the movie was about 90 minutes too long and a rough 90 minutes it was. The Maurice Chevalier numbers in particular were pretty harsh, but oh well... I've now seen pepe. Pepe? THAT'S ME!!
12.27.06	Confessions of an Opium Eater	Albert Zugsmith	so... I was in Tuscon for christmas visiting with family that seemed to pass out at the strike of 8:30... so I didn't get any full movies watched all week, until I returned to Austin on Wednesday and made it to this Weird Wednesday oddity. After an unrelated intro that felt like it belonged in some saturday serial, Vincent Price stars as a roughneck sailor type (yeah, weird right?) who stumbles into... some sort of plot or adventure or mystery or something. This movie is... well, it's like... hmmm. OK, either a lot of these old b-movies were this... comfortable with its lack of cohesion and logic and they were just all lost to time and this is the first one I've come across or there is no other movie like this ever made. Absolutely nothing about this makes sense in any kind of real world fashion, but you watch it long enough and it starts to make its own kind of sense. Every word out of Vincent Price's mouth is some obtuse quote or reference to eastern philosophy... he always seems to find these secret passages out of nowhere that he has no problem with using that leads him to weird cheap-set locales and midget captives. When he takes the titular opium (smoked, not eaten by the way), he just kind of does it because he's there - not really for any plot or character reasoning - but it does lead to the best part of the film: a nighmarish trip sequence followed by a silent slow-motion chase sequence. At least it starts off as a chase sequence but quickly becomes a series of rooms that Price casually enters, looks around, then leaves. Then there's a pig butcher and a talking bird gets shot and Price wakes up... was it a dream or reality!??!? This movie is so bizarre. It helps me that a few characters are from my reality and seem just as weirded out at being trapped in this world than I would be. The girl will say something like "help. get me out of here" but of course Price would answer with something like "as many stars as in the gutter after it rains." This movie needs to sink in some more. Usually that's a good thing.
12.21.06	Blood Beach	Jeffrey Bloom	Just when it's safe to get back in the water... you can't get to it! This is a Jaws rip where there's a monster in the sand that sucks victims down. While I guess it's better than it should be, it's still pretty long with cool things only sporadically peppered in. Like how one of the supporting guys is named Hoagy. Burt Young and John Saxon are the best parts of this movie but they're in relatively little of it. Every scene Burt Young has is basically this: "LA sucks I want to blow it up. It's better in Chicago" and at the end he blows shit up and finally gets to smirk. Saxon plays the police chief and has three mini-monologues that are good, but like I said most of the movie is about some random dude I don't care about, and the girl he used to date (who I also don't care about), and a roster of random victims who i both don't know and don't care about... which makes the movie kinda slow. Outside afterward, Zack and Scott Weinberg got into a frenzy of movie referencing that made me feel like I don't know who John Wayne is. It's times like this that i want to get a Vulcan membership, fall off the face of the earth for a month, and watch 8 movies a day. I know I shouldn't look at it that way, and there will always be movies I've never heard of, but sometimes it's overwhelming to be the small fish in the pond. It's a good kind of overwhelming though... it's like Scott was saying when he was talking to other Philly critics about why he wanted to move to Austin. He answered "I'm tired of being the guy in town who knows the most about movies. here i'm like number 12." Very true, and I had the same exact reasoning when I moved here, except I think I'd put myself more at around 50. 51 whenever QT's in town.
12.21.06	The Meltdown Memoirs	Roy Frumkes	A 2-hour doc about the making of Street Trash. OK, first off... I'm not sure a 2 hour movie needs an intermission. Or let's put it this way... if you feel your 2 hour movie needs an intermission, it may have some pacing troubles. It's all good though... you're pretty much only gonna watch this movie if you want to know more about Street Trash (it's the second disc of the special edition) and if that's the case, a long-winded extra-thorough doc on the subject is not a problem. Except Frumkes manages to interview everybody even remotely involved in the movie except the director. I guess he's too busy steadicam operating or too rich to care about his first movie or something, but considering they got Bryan Singer to sit down and talk, Muro's absence is pretty weird. And in 2 hours, it's never mentioned that this was based on a Kurosawa movie. That officially makes Kier-La's horror trivia game too hard. So since I had to miss this at Fantastic Fest this year, I'm glad to be able to rent it and see all the goofy fun that went into this goofy fun movie.
12.20.06	Magic Christmas Tree	Richard C. Parish	whew. Magic Christmas Tree. I imagine that a whole generation of psychoanalysts have this movie and this movie alone to thank for their continued livelihood. That this is a kids movie and parents probablyforced their kids to see it while they went off shopping or adulterating, leaving scores of impressionable sponge-like minds to absorb what goes on in this film... well I guess they don't have war crime equivalents for parenthood but those that've seen this movie would agree that maybe they should. After 20 seconds of color credits the movie switches to black and white. Normally you'd just accept that as something intentional but this film is so shoddily cobbled together I really thought maybe the movie would randomly switch back and forth based on what film stock they could afford that day. A group of kids are talking about what they're going to do for Halloween and one of them decides to be brave and sneak up to the local witch's house. As it happens, the old hag is trying to get her cat (named Lucifer) down from a tree so she grabs ahold of the boy and forces him to climb. He falls and hits his head and from there the movie takes off. I don't really want to give everything away... but just picking my favorite parts are tough because pretty much every scene has something great about it. For instance, there's this ridiculously long montage that intercuts the kid's mom talking on the phone with the kid's dad trying to mow the lawn with the kid's pet turtle (named Ichabod (that he keeps in a drawer)) eating grass. Seriously. for a movie that's only anh hour long there are some amazingly long sequences here. And it's just so messed up. The giant... Santa... the pie-faced fireman... the husky kid... it's just SO MESSED UP. I can't even go on. This is perhaps the most poorly put-together film I've ever seen. It rivals the crap I did with my friends when I was in middle school with my dad's video camera. It's a mess of unsynched ADR, mis-framed angles, split continuity, and bad editing. If this was one of my childhood favorites I think I might have to commit myself. Oh, I don't know where they found the guy who played the kid's dad but he's a gem.
12.19.06	Grand Theft Parsons	David Caffrey	no notes really. i liked it.
12.18.06	Summer of Sam	Spike Lee	I felt like watching a movie I know I like... until Inside Man and his Katrina doc this was the only Spike Lee joint I liked, mostly because it felt completely against type. I really liked how it was more about the community than the case, and Leguizamo's character is pretty well-defined. Of course his new interview stuff feels completely out of place but oh well, it's funny in its own little way. and i'm tired so that's it.
12.17.06	Slither	Howard Zieff	Jimmy Caan plays a con who gets out of jail and meets up with a series of random crazy people, eventually falling into a quest for a stash of embezzled money with mustachio'd Peter Boyle. This movie kinda fits in the same universe as Gravy Train... It's kind of serious in some places but mostly it's funny in an odd underspoken sort of way. There's also this really awesome big black van that follows Caan from through the whole movie with its own theme of a funky drum break. It was pretty good, actually funny. I'm happy that I finally got to see this.
12.17.06	Saving Grace	Nigel Cole	this is the one where the british widow sells weed to make ends meet. The movie's casually funny enough to make me not regret watching it, but it's more of a chick flick i think... or a movie that old ladies can watch and feel risque. Brenda Blethyn was good though at selling her housewife-ish-ness.
12.17.06	Lessons in Darkness	Werner Herzog	a semi-documentary of the Kuwaiti oil fields burning after the first Gulf War. I see a definite connection between this and Wild Blue Yonder... and reading an imdb comment that Herzog considers this more of a science fiction film than a documentary film makes a lot of sense. Unfortunately, this didn't translate well at all to me on my tv. Maybe if i saw it in a theater or IMAX screen i'd be more taken with the tragic beauty of all of these helicoptor shots, but as it is I was pretty bored.
12.16.06	The Bourne Supremacy	Paul Greengrass	Not as good as Identity but still not bad. The performances are all good but I can't stand Greengrass' constant use of shaky close-up hand-held... it's one thing to be visceral and kinetic but come on, dude... at least show us what's going on. I hope the third also uses the Moby track at the end with the same credits design... give the trilogy a nice cohesion. I also hope I'll be able to see what's going on. Seriously, even on my fairly small tv, some of these "action" sequences seem more like random abstract images flickering in front of my eyes... like i'm not even supposed to tell what it is because it's going straight to my subconsciouss mind. In order to remind myself how a good fight scene looks, I popped in Sam Fuller's Pickup on South Street and watched the subway brawl toward the end. It's a quick little scene but I really love how efficient and brutal it is... Dragging the guy down the stairs and having his head bob up and down, pushing him over the turnstyles, throwing him onto the tracks, and Fuller uses these really high-angle shots to show you exactly where everybody is and what's going on. not an epileptic insert to be found. Sure it's filled with 50s foley punches and Widmark practically reads a book waiting for the guy to punch him at one point, but everything else about the scene is pretty flawless I think. I just wish more directors today were better with action scenes. I think many of them hide their lack of understanding under mounds and mounds of cuts and blurry shakes.
12.16.06	The Bourne Identity	Doug Liman	Premiere ran a picture of Damon in Bourne Ultimatum which tripped a switch in my head that made me want to watch these again... so instead of working on stuff I should be working on, I'm doing a Bourne double feature. I've also been reading Sylvester Stallone's Q&As on aint it cool for the past few weeks and at one point he mentioned these movies as being good examples of successful smart action movies of recent years. I have to agree. I never really feel like this movie condescends to me or simplifies things for the sake of understanding. In fact, I love how streamlined it is, like when he finds shotgun shells in a drawer, looks at the childrens toys on the floor and figures that the gun must be somewhere high out of reach, then feels around atop the armoir and finds it. It's just a few cuts and it happens while they talk but you can follow the logic pretty continuously. There is the weird stairway fall at the end which borders on cheese but for the most part this movie is remarkably un-dairy.
12.15.06	Over the Hedge	Tim Johnson, Karey Kirkpatrick	pretty mediocre.
12.14.06	Rituals	Peter Carter	A bunch of doctors go on a fishing trip and get harassed and eventually killed by a mysterious WWII vet mountain man and his blind brother. Of course you don't find out who they are till the last five minutes so I ruined it for you. It's ok though because this movie absolutely stops about halfway through. The first half is your standard survival horror fare with the cityfolk complaining about woodsy things then freaking out when the mountain man starts messing with them... but then the last 45 minutes turn into this really slow endurance-fest that's basically Hal Holbrook and the movie's producer bickering at each other. I think most of the theater fell asleep for the second half of this movie, which is kind of a shame because the very very end has a fairly harsh live-burning which is worth watching to hear the stuff the producer yells before he gets it. I remember seeing this movie a long time ago and as far as I know my feelings on the movie remain the same: it's not bad but gets pretty slow and really really dark. The whole end sequence takes place in a dark cabin and you can barely see what's going on. get a lantern up in there!
12.13.06	Bummer	William Allen Castleman	I don't really know what genre to put this in... you don't see many movies where the whole story is a band maybe has to go on the road, a band's gonna go on the road, a band does one gig in bakersfield, the bassist kills a girl, the end. Seriously, they dropped checks with 45 minutes to go and nothing had happened. So I guess you have to just enjoy hanging out with rock types and groupies and just go with the flow for this one... which would be fine if the group was interesting or something, but it's three interchangeable guys and one awesome fat bastard psycho bass player. Easily the best part of this movie is the bass player. I loved every word coming out of his mouth... i wish there was more. but as it is, I kinda sat through the movie waiting for him to say the next thing. There's some really absurdly great things going on with his complex character. The only thing any of the other characters ever have to contribute for the whole movie is one of the guys says he'll get his lesbian manager's (thanks Lars) "fat butch ass." I'm not sure how many opportunities I'll have to reference someone's ass as fat butch but I'm gonna try my hardest to do so... So the best part of the movie is the very end. The bass player's just semi-raped then killed one of the groupies and run around the woods like a monster then shot his bandmate in the face with a shotgun. The other groupie grabs a gun and shoots him in the gut. The bass player looks at her and says "...why!!?" That's just great. The groupie actually answers him though, saying "because we're losers" which is funny because it's nowhere near the answer I had in mind... but I guess both answers fit. Overall I'm glad I saw a movie called Bummer, and I'm really happy that I have that last scene in my memory now... but through the majority of the movie I was kinda wondering why this movie was made.
12.13.06	Harsh Times	David Ayer	Here's a movie where what tiny little bit I'd heard about went a long way in skewing my expectations of a movie. I saw Christian Bale's haircut and him holding a gun on people who had their hands up and thought he was a cop. Subsequently I spent the entire movie waiting for him to become a cop so the movie could start. Well, those that've seen the movie may get a chuckle out of that. Um... so this movie... I dunno I guess it was ok just to hear Bale trying to either do a latino accent or what... I do find it interesting how he can be such a chameleon and still keep that little wart on the bridge of his nose. But most of this is like the boring bits of Training Day, which I didn't like anyway. Let's put it this way... I felt no remorse for pausing this half-way through to rush out and watch The Holiday. I wouldn't say I hated this movie. I was just uninterested.
12.13.06	The Holiday	Nancy Meyers	I don't know who Nancy Meyers thinks she is but someone should tell her that romantic comedies longer than Ghandi just aren't cool. OK maybe that's a bit facetious since Ghandi was 6 hours long, but still. 140 minutes is just ridiculous for a movie like this. I guess if i was romantic comedy uberfan #1 I'd love the value I get but instead I felt like I sat through two crappy chick flicks instead of one. Like I got a bonus whole other second movie filled with equally false and inane situations gratis. I didn't want that movie. I would've exchanged that second movie for socks or something. Please don't push your crappy bonus movie into my eyes! So really the two things that got me into the theater were hearing that Eli Wallach had a part and hearing that there are plenty of movie-related things in the periphery (thanks, Micah). About 30 minutes in, Eli Wallach walker-d his way across the background and I was pretty sure that was gonna be the last time I saw him in this movie. While that would've sucked, it DID make me laugh which made me feel like I was fitting in with all the middle-aged women behind me. And while it is true that Jack Black plays a composer and Cameron Diaz cuts movie trailers and Wallach is an old legendary screenwriter, I really don't think any of those jobs are done the way they're shown in here. Like I'm pretty sure the owners of these trailer houses have some crappy west hollywood apartment somewhere, deciding if this week's money goes to groceries or gym membership. I'm pretty damn sure they don't have some huge Hollywood hills palace with batcave-levels of tricked out home furnishings. And I'm also pretty sure that a WGA event announced three days beforehand would not bring a sold out audience to see some old writer get on stage. Maybe if it was some other town but not LA. But I suppose I really don't deserve to complain about this movie. I knew exactly what it was from the trailer and even more exactly from the first three minutes... I could've just left if I was so disgusted. I think if I ever afford therapy, one of the things I'd want to get to the bottom of is why I habitually watch movies like this that I know will be bad.
12.11.06	Danielson: A Family Movie	J.L. Aronson	This doc is about Daniel Smith and his different bands, which also peripherally includes Sufjan Stevens so this happened to capture him RIGHT at the point where he broke it big. There's a big crisis 75% through the movie where I could kinda tell the filmmakers were having trouble deciding whether to make a Sufjan Stevens movie instead of a Danielson Famile movie because that was clearly the more commercial choice. I'm kinda glad they stuck with this one though because he's crazier and therefore more entertaining. And some of the music I actually liked... Basically, it's a christian family/band and the main dude says he writes more like channelling God's message than him making up the lyrics... and he's also an artist because he makes weird sculptures and whatnot... it's all borderline creepy or sad depending on his mood, but hey whatever floats his boat. So it's a pretty good doc.
12.11.06	Children of Men	Alfonso Cuaron	OK this is a great movie. Trailer, be damned, this is a great movie. Good story, great acting, impeccable direction, and wonderful aesthetic. I really can't say enough good about it so this note will probably be pretty short because praise gets pretty boring pretty quick. It's just way better than I thought it would be and really really well done. There are a couple scenes that all play in one take (or you know, separate shots digitally stitched together to seem like one take) that do a great job in really engaging you with the action. Really like surprising breathtaking edge of your seat type stuff. This may sound odd at first but I was really reminded of the video game Half-Life 2. The big thing with the Half-Life games is that they never take away your control as a player to look around. So where most games would have a controlled cutscene where important information is fed to you, Half-Life never stops time like that. The effect is that some things happen out of the corner or your eye or get obscured by other things going on. So the way Cuaron structures a few sequences in this movie (mostly action scenes), it feels very much like the camera is playing the movie like a video game, following Owen around in a consistent virtual world and catching whatever various events it happens to catch (and it also helps that certain sequences in Half-Life 2 mirror certain sequences in this movie very closely (rebels conducting urban warfare in battle-damaged buildings)). Of course we know it's all planned to show us exactly what the director wants to show us, but it really doesn't seem that way. The only other film that comes to mind is the D-Day sequence in Saving private Ryan, where you constantly have stunts and effects going on in the periphery. Oh, you know... Battle of Algiers as well. The warfare stuff in that. Actually, you know, I'd say it's not too far off to call this movie a sci-fi version of Algiers. But the movie's not just these amazing action scenes. There's a real story and real social commentary going on here as well as funny characters and more standard future-y products and technology and whatnot. Again, really great movie. Don't believe the trailer.
12.10.06	300	Zack Snyder	The Carnahan intro came while the movie played so they played it after. It was pretty funny, basically him singing happy birthday then shooting a PA who interrupts him. ha. then Zack SNyder was there to intro 300 in person ("I heard it makes a good morning movie") and did a Q&A afterward. 300 resembles my memory of the comic very closely, although in quickly flipping through it again I see a fair amount of differences along with one very visual thing that i didn't see in the movie (maybe i was blinking during that scene though). But basically my memory of the movie is that there's a great slow-fast-slow battle scene followed by time-filling background stuff then more battle then more flashback back and forth for the whole movie. My other major memory is that everyone had 2 or 4 too many abs. I really think a lot of the abs in this movie are CGI. I can buy the pecs but not the abs. These spartans have 12-packs, which just isn't right. So I kind of forced myself to stay lucid for the scenes I knew would kick ass, but the rest kind of degraded as my blinks started getting longer and longer. I will say that I think I was more with it for both Smokin Aces and 300 this year than I was for V for Vendetta last year, but it still sucks when you're not 100% awake to be able to relax and enjoy the movie. I remember liking 300 though. Snyder's comment that it's more of a Spartan fever dream than any sort of realistic historical drama is very apt. So that was my BNAT. Except for Dreamgirls I liked every new movie and either didn't watch or didn't care for any of the vintage movies. If it were up to me, I would've showed The Informer first, dreamgirls in the middle of the night to wake the fans up (and let me sleep), and perhaps swap out some of the vintages... if you're gonna play Chirpy you really don't need Once Upon a Girl... but oh well. That's why it's Harry's birthday and not mine. That's what DVRfest is for I guess. BNAT round up! Fake Titles: -Shock Corridor -Show Boat -A Man Called Flintstone -Witness for the Prosecution -The Set-Up -Teenage Mother -I Was A Teenage Werewolf -The Conformist -The Quiet Man -Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires -California Split -Spider-man 3 Real Titles: -Black Snake Moan -Dreamgirls -Once Upon A Girl... -Inherit the Wind -Rocky Balboa -Knocked Up -Teen Wolf -Black Book -The Informer -Raw Force -Smokin' Aces -300 Food & Drink -Mozzarella Sticks -Chicken Caesar Salad -Sugar-free Redbull -1 caffeine pill which didn't work. -2 tylenol
12.10.06	Smokin' Aces	Joe Carnahan	There was supposed to be a Joe Carnahan video intro but it wasn't here yet so they just played the movie: another very pleasant surprise because I knew it was gonna be really energetic and keep me up. um.. well here's how the movie's structured. there's like a half hour of really intricate exposition followed by a half hour of really awesome violence followed by a half hour of really needless explanation. I tried my best in the first part, woke right up for the second part, and slowly faded for the third part. The violence is pretty damn cool... Tarantino/Guy Ritchie type stuff... but the ending got really unecessary and the beginning... I'll probably like the beginning more when I'm fully awake for it. Jason Bateman is great in the two scenes he's in though. Not a bad movie, pretty fun. I remember liking it ok, excusing a few little details.
12.10.06	Raw Force	Edward D. Murphy	So Tim FINALLY heads back down to the front of the theater, signalling the end of the movie for real this time, and The Informer mercifully ends. Great... the deep middle of the night, Time for Tim's fucked up exploitation movie! Zack comes out and introduces Raw Force. Trailers: Challenge of the Lady Ninja, The Legend of Hillbilly John (look out for the Uglybird!), It Came Without Warning, Cannibal Girls, Curse (new favorite trailer). Maybe if I hadn't seen it before, much less just two months ago so everything is fresh in my mind, I'd be excited. But as it is, I watched up until the party scenes then went out to the lobby and talked. Funnily enough though, moving around outside made me tired, which sucked because I spent the next two movies intermittently fighting my heavy eyelids. So my memory of both the next films are not 100% complete.
12.10.06	The Informer	John Ford	So after Black Book they passed out this energy drink called Cocaine. It was kind of a thing beforehand where they had this guy drive a cache of it down from Dallas or wherever so we could all have some... I checked out the website and it had a hilarious bit from The Daily Show making fun of the drink and the guy. When they passed it out, everybody I asked told me how horrible it tasted in a different way. I looked at it and it was warm and had lots of sugar so I opted for an ice-cold sugar-free red bull instead. Since I don't drink coffee or drink that much caffeinated soda much anymore, I felt it jolt through my bloodstream. I was wired. so the next movie harry plays is an early 30s John Ford drama called The Informer. Trailer: In the Nick of Time Now, I've never seen this movie, but even the best John Ford movies seem a bit deliberate and lengthy to me. Not that I don't like my John Ford, but they are not what I would call energetic movies. So I really think it's a cruel joke that Harry showed this now (the middle of the night). This movie is SO slow... and filled with nondescript foggy sets and people talking slowly and walking slowly and not saying much because they're drunk... it just has to be his idea of funny. At one point Tim walked down to the front of the theater which made me smile because it meant the movie's almost over so he's about to get on the mic again... but he walks back after a few seconds and mentions to someone (I just wanted to see how many people are asleep). Seriously, 75% of the audience slept through this movie. I still contend that the only people who stayed awake (myself included) did so due to caffeine rush instead of any interest in the movie. I've heard that it's a great classic of a film and it very well might be, but I spent the entire time wishing for sleep. Harry spent 90% of the movie out in the lobby which also pisses me off, but since I hadn't seen it before and clearly wasn't falling asleep I didn't want to walk out on a movie I'd never seen. sigh.
12.10.06	Black Book	Paul Verhoeven	The next movie was introduced as Teen Wolf. This little short guy Jeff Mahler had been asking Harry to play Teen Wolf every year so he finally broke down, saying that since Michael J. Fox was such a huge stem cell guy, that following a pregnancy movie would somehow make enough sense to program it. The light go down, Teen Wolf starts up, a few minutes play and the motor cuts out again, burning the Teen Wolf print! Tim's voice: Looks like that shit-o-meter just went off again, let's watch the new Paul Verhoeven movie Black Book instead." So... I was kind of bummed out. It's been a long time since I've seen Teen Wolf and was kind of looking forward to watching it. So it took me a few minutes to fully switch over to the somber WWII undercover resistance fighter movie that is Black Book. Black Book is a great movie. I think it's a huge leap forward for Verhoeven, but I'm glad to see he didn't lose any of the blunt explicit...ness? explicity? awesomality of his earlier stuff (meaning American stuff. I haven't seen his early early stuff although I'm told it's good. If only the Alamo would do a retrospective...). The violence in here is sudden and brutal, just like dumping a vat of toxic waste on a guy then liquifying him with a truck. There's also some great nudity and the leading lady is wordlessly beautiful. I love how in Europe really hot leading ladies that are great actresses can get naked and not expect an Oscar for being so brave (fuckin' Mosnters Ball). So I feel that this movie is pretty undeniably great. We were making fun of Tony for taking a while to warm up to thinking it's ok... I'd really like to see this again some time on its own though because for as good as it is, it's a very heavy movie and a pretty long movie. While I was fully engrossed the whole time and really impressed with how good it was, it did take up my excess levels of energy... a large part of that was probably ducking and weaving to read the subtitles around the guy in front of me's huge head. So it was just all kinds of good, but left me pretty used up.
12.09.06	Knocked Up	Judd Apatow	Rocky made everybody happy. It's time for a comedy. Harry said that Fanboys dropped out due to reshoots but the guys were still there. Writer Ernie Cline (AIRWOLF!!!), director and producer all talked about the movie's inception and all that crap then showed a 7-10 minute clip show that was pretty funny in a very very geeky way. It went over huge for BNAT but... who knows what that means. We aren't normal. Trailers: The Mafu Cage, The Buttercup Chain, Pepe (That's me! starring an assload of celebrity chairs), Matango. So the replacement film... Jarrette walks up to me and says he just saw Seth Rogen in the lobby so it's Knocked Up. This was my biggest and most pleasant surprise of the entire event. Not in a loving-a-movie-i-thought-i'd-hate way but like a general life type of surprise. Knocked Up had never once been mentioned by anyone as possibly playing here, it's not coming out till June, and I saw it. I didn't believe it. i had to go out to the lobby and see Seth Rogen with my own eyes, then i went back and sat down and did a little happy dance in my seat. I am a huge fan not only of 40 Year-Old Virgin but Freaks and Geeks, Undeclared, the Ben Stiller Show, Anchorman, Talledega Nights... pretty much everything Judd Apatow's been a part of. When he was in town last year for Austin Film Festival and did a little presentation, i sat front row - probably a little too close for his comfort - and got to see his nose hairs while he talked about Virgin deleted scenes and showed a failed pilot of his called North Hollywood (which I thought was very funny). so... I'm about as big a fan as i can be without stalking or forgetting the last time i went up to someone i really liked and respected and made a complete fanboy fool out of myself and following him around like a puppy. anyway. I guess you can sum that last paragraph up in one word: bias. I loved Knocked Up. I didn't care that it was two and a half hours. I didn't care that it was basically Nine Months but funny. I laughed at every joke. Completely in love with this movie. Hopefully, after they trim it down for theatrical release, they'll bring it back to this cut for the unrated DVD (like 40 year-old virgin) because I have a feeling that the stuff that'll get snipped is stuff with the posse of stoner friends made up of Jason Segal, Jonah Hill, Martin Starr, and Jay Baruchel. That's a shame because I really loved every second of that stuff. In fact, I hope they someday get to make a movie together where they are exactly like they are here except the movie's about them instead of pregnancy. But a couple of other people in small roles that are exceptionally hilarious are Alan Tudyk and kristen Wiig who play E! executives. Wiig especially... every one of her lines and her delivery are amazing. Loved this movie. Wanted to have unprotected sex with it to ensure another Judd Apatow movie 9 months from now.
12.09.06	Rocky Balboa	Sylvester Stallone	Finally, a movie I was interested in. With The Set-Up as the false title everybody pretty much knew this would be Rocky. My interested for this movie started at no-interest and raised to morbid-suriosity because of the trailer. Trailers: Rocky (re-issue), Rocky 2, Rocky 3, Rocky 4, Rocky 5. A little bit into the Rocky 5 trailer, the motor stopped on the projector and a frame burned out. Tim League got on the mic saying they had installed a Dolby Shit-sensor for the occasion and apparently Rocky 5 was rejected, so let's watch this Sylvester Stallone video intro instead. I forget what he said but it's basically "yo, butt-numbers. enjoy my movie. happy birthday, Harry." You know, I really liked this movie. I love it when actors are in roles that also mirror themselves in emotional or thematic ways. Like casting Shirley Maclaine as the used-to-be-wild grandmother in In Her Shoes or the scene in Road to Perdition where Paul Newman mourns the death of his son. In here, Stallone's Rocky is kind of used up in life, forgotten and out of the spotlight... but he feels an urge to prove that he's still there, still a point to existing. Of course Rocky isn't nearly that articulate to actually voice and of this... it all comes out in likes like "i think i could do something" or "ey." So you apply the Rocky movie formula to this new portrait of him and it really comes off I think. Aside from the incredibly remarkable crowd experience (for this one i went along with the clap-happy crowd who all stomped their feet and sang along to the theme song during the training montage and cheered rocky along during tthe end fight scene like it was happening live), I really feel the maturity in Rocky and the movie. I've read on AICN that Stallone's ideal Rocky experience would be to play Rocky 1 then at the end fade to black for a few moments then come back up with the beginning of this one. Just a massive jump cut past all the glory and whatever the sequels were right from the beginning to the end. My overriding memory of the last time I watched the first Rocky (a looong time ago) was that it's really a story about a loser. He meets a homely girl and finds a very small piece of happiness... kind of like a boxing version of Marty. And this one feels very similar to that. Most of it's pretty bittersweet and melancholy that acts in great contrast to the few moments of triumph and joy. It really worked I thought. Got a huge kick out of this movie.
12.09.06	Inherit the Wind	Stanley Kramer	So two bad movies in a row for me. Hopefully the next one will get me back up. what is it? Inherit the Wind. Great. Am I back in 9th grade biology? I won't really say this is a bad movie - I remember liking it ok when I was in school - but it's the exact opposite movie I needed right then. Sure the idea of an animated porn/evolution courtroom drama double feature is HIGH-larious, but actually sitting through it is a different story. So about 15, 20 minutes in I realized that BNAT is not a magical journey that transcends time and space... it's 11 movies in a row. So after the third reprise of "gimme that old-time religion" and the first time Gene Kelly makes a long-winded speech about freedom (to thunderous applause), i ent out to the lobby, walked around a bit outside, followed Jarrette to his car to look at how much cooler his gift bag was than mine (while he made a comment to the AICN talkback on his phone that would later create controversy) and chatted with the people who also decided to sit this one out. I think this is the first entry to this journal for a movie that I didn't watch all the way through. Usually if i catch a half hour's worth on cable or something i don't count it... but since it's BNAT (and I actually did this twice), I'm including it for completeness' sake.
12.09.06	Once Upon A Girl...	Don Jurwich	So I didn't like Dreamgirls. That's ok, I'm not into musicals. It seemed like a good enough movie if you're into it... ok. So this next movie was just bad. Harry explained that it got him horny and no one had ever heard of this movie and there's only one print in the world and he got it and it's an animated porn made by the Hanna-Barbera guys in their off-time with mainstay cartoon voice actors playing the roles of naughty fairy tales. Trailers: Panorama Blue, Female Animal, Baby Love (going for the whole pedo crowd), Girls Are For Loving (a Ginger movie), and Underage (REALLY going for the pedo crowd). Once Upon A Girl: There's a short live-action wrapper where Mother Goose (in drag) goes on trial for some reason and has to tell these stories which make the judge and jury hot (both literally and figuratively, everyone was covered in sweat). So there's three naughty fairy tales, each went on too long. My favorite quote was from Neil afterward when he said "I'm watching these scenes and each scene is going on a bit too long then it dawned on me: wait a minute! I'm supposed to be masturbating!" Ugh. It makes me wonder which parts got Harry Hot. It's just bad. poor animation, lots of looping, little creativity. All the expected jokes repeated ad nauseum. It was maybe the longest 77 minutes ever.
12.09.06	Dreamgirls	Bill Condon	So I don't really like musicals. I like some. I'm a huge fan of pretty much every Busby Berkely number, and like their container movies ok as well. What I hate and have never been able to buy into are the musicals where the songs pop up in the middle of scenes like opera... where characters are talking then all of a sudden they're singing. I hate that shit. Well this movie does both. It's chock full of motown-esque (but not as good) songs then it also has the "I'm so angry" songs as well... It's really long and predictable and constantly makes you want to hear the real, much better, songs that they're trying to resemble. I really only found two aspects of this movie interesting: 1)Eddie Murphy was good in it. maybe not as good as everyone's slobbering about, but good. I really think he should do a few more movies that are ensembles or in supporting roles instead of "eddie murphy movies." That kind of thing goes a long way in rejuvinating your career... it's also advice I'd give Arnold Schwarzeneggar if he ever acts again. 2) I thought it was interesting how they mention several times in the movie that Beyonce can't sing while the American Idol drop-out is like the best singer ever. Beyonce's management must find that thrilling. So BIll Condon was there for a Q&A afterward. Very short and awkward. Only two questions, which is weird because the audience clapped after every song. And there are A LOT of songs in this movie. so that's a lot of clapping for a movie that no one's interested in afterward. But that's BNAT I guess. I know this sounds really whiney and wrong to complain about an audience that's TOO enthusiastic and respectful of movies, but it got to be a bit much. Every movie, people are clapping for no reason. I'm all for clapping at the end if you like it or for special guests being here or for people you love in the beginning credits, but after every scene? With a normal audience that would be something pretty special, but here people were throwing applause out like an old lady playing quarter slots in Vegas. All day. ALl night. it got old.
12.09.06	Black Snake Moan	Craig Brewer	OK... last year my BNAT write-up was absurdly long. Like every review that comes into AICN combined. This year I've been putting it off for almost a week because there's lots of movies and I feel compelled to talk about each one. So this may end up being really short because now I just want to get it over with and back to normal. Plus round 2 of air guitar is next tuesday and I have to save my note-taking energy for that. so here we go. Happy to be in the line that's sure to get in. Poor Micah. I got cheated on my gift bag (no transformer!) oh well. Good seat except for that guy's hat right in front of me. starts with: Chirpy. animated short about a little bird who eats mushrooms and has sex with a horse until he finishes and drowns her. Trailers: Stunt Rock, Raw Force, Teenage Trampe, The Telephone Book (The World's greatest obscene phone caller ("I can seduce the president")). Normally the first movie of the day would be vintage but this year Harry's mixing it up. In hindsight, I think this was a pretty big mistake. For me at least. It ended up hurting my enjoyment of all the vintage films. more on that later though, for now I was excited to see Black Snake Moan as soon as possible. I think both of Craig Brewer's movies hinge on your ability to buy the main actor performing music. If you don't feel Terence Howard rapping or Sam Jackson playing blues, I bet the movie falls apart for you. Since I'm not particularly knowledgeable in the blues and am a pretty big Sam Jackson fan, i had no trouble buying it or the kinda loony premise or how it kind of baits and switches you (much like Hustle & Flow). Thinking on it now, I think Brewer is like an anti-M. Night Shyamalan. Instead of setting up normal genre movies like alien invasion or ghosts to lure people into the theater then subjecting them to egomaniacal treatises on faith or storytelling or whatever, Brewer kind of dares people to see movies that sound really offbeat or cliche then rewards those who show up with an actual drama. I guess depending on how you feel about his movies he can be closer or further apart to Shyamalan but I think there's an element of surprise or bait and switch to both their work. So I really liked this movie. I've never found Christina Ricci sexy but this is as close as I've gotten to being turned on by her, and I love Sam Jackson's hair and completely buy it when he plays the blues. I'm not sure I'd go on and on about how great an actor Justin TImberlake is, but whatever. Craig Brewer was there for a Q&A and said he'd be styaing till 6am. that's cool.
12.08.06	Killer Bait	Byron Haskin	AKA Too Late for Tears, this is a really fun noir with Lisabeth Scott playing the quintessential femme fatale. When she and Arthur Kennedy accidentally gets their hands on a bag full of money, her greedu psychotic nature makes her do things normal ladies just don't do. At one point, Dan Duryea (in another seething dame-slapping performance) says to her "I don't think I'd like you with a heart." There were a couple twists that I didn't see coming that really kept my interest up... Liked this one a lot.
12.08.06	Westworld	Michael Crichton	Following up from seeing Bang Bang Kid... I still really like the idea of this movie... actually I'm a pretty big fan of all of Crichton's directorial efforts (that I've seen) as well as his books... but anyway. Yul's awesome as the robot gunfighter gone amuck. The idea actually works for the budget of the movie too... I don't know how much this cost to make but it looks pretty low budget (Romanworld is pretty much that one exterior pool setting and Medievalworld is a dining room and bedroom pretty much), but it's kind of ok because it's supposed to all be facade. Kind of a cool way to explain away your movie's shortcomings. still fun. i still like it.
12.07.06	Devil Fetus	Hung Chuen Lau	I wanted to see this movie again to see how it would play when it's not the last movie in an all-night marathon. My hazy recollection of my first seeing it makrs it as perhaps the weirdest movie I've ever seen, so I was wondering if it made any more sense when seen with fully consciouss eyes. Well, it didn't. It really didn't. This movie... somewhere around 75% of it is really slow and pretty boring, but the little bits and pieces that I like I REALLY like. The husband's pustule maggot face, the splitting-in-half-for-no-reason car, the wormy cake regurgitation, and especially especially the battle between the spirit and the monk... I think they are all things everyone should be forced to see at least once in life. A lot of the other stuff though, not so much. This also has some really great subtitling. My two phrases were "let's happy for a while" and "your second daughter-in-law was beaitched by a ghost." It's just one wrong letter but oh what a great new word it makes. Zack had a shirt with that saying on tonight to commemorate his seventh viewing of the film... that explains a lot. So, Zack also mentioned animal cruelty in his write-up. I didn't remember any at all so I was on close lookout for what was obviously fake and what coulda been real. Basically there's a dog and an eagle, with the dog playing the much more major role. Eventually this spirit possesses the dog and the main dude has to samurai sword him to death, ending with an extremely satisfying burst of blood shot into a woman's horrified face. All the dogfight stuff seemed to be cut specifically so they didn't have to hurt the animal, but then I don't think they had a budget for a fake dead dog as realistic as what they use later in the movie when its hanging or rolling over or a close up of the eye with a fake laser bean coming out of it into the brother's head (transferring the spirit) so I'm pretty sure they used a dog carcass for all that stuff. The eagly on the other hand, is really only in one scene where a Monk needs its blood then it jump cuts from the Monk putting a knife up to its throat to off-screen blood squirting into a cup. In talking after the movie, I started to wonder if it was the movie that made those conspicuous cuts or maybe just this particular print. I dug out the copy I have on my computer today and double checked. The dogfight scene is the same but there was indeed a shot of the eagle getting its throat cut! Poor eagle! At least it wasn't ripped in half and freeze-framed for end titles.
12.07.06	Ali G Indahouse	Mark Mylod	I bet Sacha Baron Cohen is scratching his head right now. After the Ali G movie made absolutely no waves in the states, Borat makes 100 million. Go figure. I bet a bit reason is that this movie's a narrative (take note, Christopher Guest!) and involves some cookie cutter plot about him in parliament. Aside from that though, I thought there was a lot to like here (if you like Ali G). I loved Martin Freeman as one of his posse (although the commentary track with him and Ali didn't do much for me), and the beginning with all the suburban chase and shielded police bird and east side/west side stand-off was great. I dunno, formulaic to be sure and a much more juvenile and kiddie brand of humor than the tv show but i still had fun watching it. So now I wonder how the Bruno movie will be.
12.06.06	The Losers	Jack Starrett	AKA Nam's Angels, this biker movie was pretty unique to me because it's also a Viet Nam men on a mission war movie. For whatever reason, they bring this Biker gang into the jungle to helm a mission to infiltrate this camp and rescue some POW. The problem comes when the army dudes uncover the bikes and they're girly Yamahas instead of Harleys. Afterward in the lobby, we all talked a bit about why they weren't hogs because of budget or availability in the Philiphines or whatever... but whatever the reason I thought they handled the Yamahas in the movie pretty well. After all the bikers make fun of their pansy ways and someone mentions that street bikes probably don't do too well in the jungle, the spend a large portion of the movie either working on the bikes to make them more badass or waiting for parts to work on them and make them more badass. I guess it's a prerequisite that these bikes be suitably badass before the gang can mount a speed-is-the-essence rescue mission. This is where the staple biker movie drink/whore/fight sequences come in. I don't really know the whole deal of this job or anything but it felt like the most laid back urgent mission ever. That's alright though because it brings up the interesting aspect of this movie to me. As a genre study, it's a pretty faithful blend of both the men on a mission war movie and a biker film. The biker gang's made up of characters with interesting names like Limpy and Dirty Dan, one of which is just a bastard that the others hang out with for no reason. They hang around a lot, get drunk a lot, fight a lot of random people, and get some love on with their old ladies whenever they can (plus the obvious fetishism with the bikes themselves), but while they're doing all that there's the steady undercurrent of souping up the bikes for the mission, planning out strategy (including an incredibly detailed scale model of the camp), making connections with interesting side characters who give them supplies, and ultimately you root for them during the grand action scenes and wait to see who lives and who dies. For a biker movie there's a surprising amount of jungle, guns, shooting, explosions, and plot but for a war movie there's a surprising amount of laziness, tangents, bar brawls, weed, greasy long hair, and anti-authoritarian guff. The movie sticks to this very precise line throughout, even going so far as to make the bikes themselves the weapons that the bikers use to attack. Why have them charge in while holding a gun when they can mount the gun onto the front of the bike itself? Even when this creates certain logistical problems like, say, shooting someone not directly in front of you, the film would rather create interesting uses of the bikes than taking the easy way out and having someone just hold a gun. There a guy up in a tower giving you crap? Just pop a wheelie at the correct angle and shoot away! I think this is an important point which may suggest that there's more of a plan to this movie than what some may thing. For Starrett to make a Viet Nam biker movie in 1970 is just badass. Never mind making the leader of the gang William Smith. Actually, I think the leader may really be William Smith's engorged triceps, but Smith speaks for them so he's like a leader by proxy. Throw in Adam Rourke and name them The Devil's Advocates and you've got a pretty amazing biker gang. I wish they made a prequel to this movie to show what kind of mischief the gang got up to in the States with their personalized hogs before shipping back out to the jungle. I think it could've been almost as interesting to have the movie be about a gang full of vets rebelling against society because of how they were received in homecoming... but hey, that's a different movie and this one kicked enough ass. So... Vic Diaz. I don't really know that much about this guy... I've really only seen him in three movies I think. I already love seeing him on the screen and hearing him talk but I have to wonder... because every role I've seen him in it's like a Philipino Where's Waldo... He's not really a major presence and never really does much but he's so clearly having a good time... smiling and whatnot, that I want to know more about him, whether he's a Vietnamese grease monkey or an alien cultist or a vampire pimp's flatulent ghoul. I don't really know where he came from or if he could even speak english or what, but I'm also not sure I want to know. so there are some pretty great moments in this one, like the black seargent reconnecting with his ended whore affair and seeing his baby or Vic Diaz's very good Albanian friend or most of Limpy's lines or the incredible falls that everyone takes when they try to negotiate a barbed wire fence during the attack or Dirty Dan's 8-man ass-kicking extravaganza and the black army dude's use of a palm tree to help him out or Jack Starrett's role as the POW CIA agent presumably gone in undercover to try and divert Red China's involvement in the war or something and how he seems to have all kinds of information regarding William Smith's character that comes out really late in the movie in this bizarrely emotional scene (stuff like "and what about those young girls you raped?" huh!??) or the final end montage of poignant moments from the past 90 minutes, but I also really enjoyed (on a completely separate level) the idea of the film itself and the unique blend of genre. It was a tad slow but there was more than enough there to keep me interested.
12.05.06	Nine Queens	Fabian Bielinsky	the original that spawned the remake Criminal. I think this is actually a much better movie (helped in large part by the fact that the main guy here is pretty slimy and not inherently likable (for me at least) like John C. Reilly)), but this is one of those movies that's all about the first viewing, and every twist and turn is still too fresh in my mind for any of it to work again. still though, it was interesting to watch and it made me wish I had seen it before Criminal.
12.03.06	Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire	Mike Newell	another impulse watch. it still feels like it plays on fast forward in a few spots (especially the first act stuff... the quidditch world cup and the dragons most noticeably) and I still don't see why people would sit for a two hour thirty minute Harry Potter part 4 but not a three hour Harry Potter part 4 but oh well... I guess I should get used to it as there's just as many pages in all the books from here on out and people can only hold their pee in for so long. at this point i just hope that they can keep it all together for the last three films. It'd be a real achievement to have the same cast (well, except Richard Harris but you can't really blame him for dying) through a 7-film series... just keeping my fingers crossed that none of the kids pick up a coke habit or hire a demanding agent or something... that'd suck.
12.03.06	Brannigan	Douglas Hickox	BRANNIGAN! Is it The Simpsons that made a police chief yelling that name so familiar in my mind? I dunno... anyway, glad to finally check this one off the list. John Wayne plays a cop who goes over to London to extradite John Vernon except Vernon gets kidnapped. I like how lots of people call Branningan a lousy mic or a big Irish bastard all the time... but on the whole I found it kind of forgettable... not bad, just not great either.
12.02.06	The Don is Dead	Richard Fleischer	So I finally got around to going through my notebooks and listing out all the movies I had written down in little "check this out" circles in the margins of my QTfest notes. Basically, they are movies QT mentioned in intros, movies with cool trailers, or movies I otherwise heard about during the two fests I've been to of his. The list came out to 30 movies. This is one of them. It has a really good trailer, told with mostly stills from the film either panned or zoomed or zoom-panned with dialogue and sound effects overtop. The title appears written in blood on a wall over a dead man. It's a crime story starring Anthony Quinn, Frederic Forrest, Robert Forster, Al Lettieri (he played Sollozzo in The Godfather) and a host of other familiar Italian-American faces of the period. The reigning don dies, making room for one guy to hatch a subtle plan to start a war that would eliminate his colleagues and allow him to assume power over the entire city instead of just the half he has now. So basically it starts very small and escalates (kind of sort of similar to City of God) to the point where everyone's going gun crazy. The Godfather overtones are pretty blatant here: the guy who wants out but gets pulled back in, the sick father figure, the montage of cool mob killings, Abe Vigoda... but you know, I'll take all the quality Godfather clones I can get. While I wouldn't say it's anywhere as good as The Godfather, the story is compelling and the acting is good and Richard Fleischer's direction is competant and you know... it exists. I hate it when I really love one movie and there's absolutely no other movies out there anything like it. Same with music by the way... so yeah, I enjoyed watching this one a lot, but then again 702 crime movies are like crack to me right now.
12.02.06	The Groomsman	Edward Burns	another Ed Burns indie drama about dudes going through issues and stuff. Very strong cast that finally doesn't include an obvious weak link (I seem to remember there always being at least one person in his casts that's not nearly as good an actor as everyone else). Um... yeah it was ok.
12.02.06	Sixpack Annie	John C. Broderick	um... well this is about a girl who needs to find a sugar daddy before the bank takes her aunt's diner. or something. Tron makes an appearance, otherwise let me just list out what I liked about it rather than pass judgement on the film as a whole: -My favorite bit in the movie were these really badly ADR'd grunts and sneers from the French fetish guy... when I was in highschool I had a joke where I'd say the only French i could speak were "hunhHUH!" and "stupeed ameericaan!" and the noises in here were exactly like the noises I used to make. That made me laugh. -My favorite character in the movie was Carmello the bartender. Not because he's a Cuban radical or anything like that but because the actor's name is Pedro Gonzalez-Gonzalez. -This makes me wonder if the song "My Red Hot Nuts" was just used in this movie or written for this movie. It'd be cool if this was the origin. -there's a midget at the end. he comes out of nowhere... just this midget all dressed up for some formal ball or something. no reason. completely out of the blue. -There are approximately 38 really really bad jokes told in this movie. In fact, a couple characters exist only to tell bad jokes, but pretty much every character has at least one. I really don't know what it means but the longer I think about it the more I'm convinced that it does mean something.
12.01.06	Pee Wee's Big Adventure	Tim Burton	it's funny how the smallest thing can create a fanatic urge that drives you nuts until you satisfy it... like getting a song stuck in your head or in the case of tonight, having a random "remember the alamo" thing turn into me needing to watch this movie right away. I haven't seen it in a while so i didn't mind... I still really really like this movie. It was a childhood favorite; I think it's withstood the test of time (you really can't tell that it was made in the heart of the 80s), and the childlike humor is pretty strong i think. love it...
12.01.06	The Bang Bang Kid	Giorgio Gentili, Luciano Lelli	Spaghetti Western comedy about a robot gunfighter. That something like this exists is pretty cool just by itself... that it's also a genuine spaghetti western (instead of just using a few long lenses and morricone music cues) is awesomer... but still this was just a bit too goofy and mis-paced to catch me in the bullseye. I was through with all the stuff with the robot not working right after the first gag and the rather long shootout in the middle of the movie had me checking my email, but whenever the narrator voiced in some gags I thought they were funny and the main girl was still nice to look at so I can't complain. Since robot's creator is like an inventor, this actually had a tinge of a Back to the Future Part 3 vibe for me along with the Westworld and other western flavors... although watching this (and recently marvelling at the Polish poster in this sci-fi poster book i have) really has me in a mood to watch Westworld again.
12.01.06	The Bastard	Duccio Tessari	Micah lent me what looks like a dvd bootleg of a vhs copy taken from Japanese TV (a few frames of Taco Bell commercial pop in every once in a while) of this Duccio Tessari Italian crime movie starring Guliano Gemma and Klaus Kinksi (in awesome euro-trash sunglasses no less) as rivalling gangster brothers of Rita Hayworth's alcoholic mother character. Basically this movie is a contest to see which brother can be more cold-hearted and ruithless than the other. Seriously... they do some cold shit. And it's not like Steven Seagal or Jean Claude Van Damme coldness either... it's like greek mythology levels of familial harshness. And then there's an earthquake at the end. I guess that's a spoiler because it creates a great WTF moment when you're watching, but I can't write my thoughts on this movie without mentioning that. It's SO out of nowhere that I had to watch it twice and make sure I saw it right. And for as deus ex machina-y as it seems, it just proves to lay foundation for the harshest coldest shit in the entire movie. Great ending. I think this movie would've dragged if it was any longer than the 70 or so minutes that it is... but luckily it's so short it's just like a shot. I liked this movie... I think I still liked No Way Out more but... this one is pretty good as well. On a site maintenance note, those reading this from the movie details page probably notice a new little form underneath here. Basically, I've finally had to come to terms with the fact that people other than myself occasionally read this site and decided that, while I still have no intention on proofreading or spellchicking anything I write here, I can at least make it easy for you to send me any comments you may have. They won't be public comments though so don't try to show off just to look cool for the other 3 people that come here, and if I ever start getting weird crazy spam I'll have to rethink the implementation, but for now you can put your name and email address if you want (although the comment itself is all you need), then it'll shoot whatever you have to say to me. easy.
11.30.06	Cinderella	Michael Pataki	wow. I think this movie just blew my mind. Not only is this a sexploitation version of the story but it's also a musical. Like a good half dozen songs. Now, you may read that and think "heh." That's what I did when Micah told me about this... but it's one thing to hear about it and it's another to actually sit down and experience it. Cinderella. Sexploitation. Musical. you almost have to let the words sink in before any sort of full realization happens. And then they start singing... the prince has erectile dysfunction, the wicked stepsisters are horny bitches, the fairy godmother is actually a soul brother burglar... and there's so many hot 70s titties jiggling out of fairy tale costumes... I can't believe it. And what's more is... a few of the songs.. I actually really dug! That doesn't happen to me with normal musicals. ever. But the funky song where the fairy godmother sings about stealing zebras from libras is downright catchy! There's this dream sequence involving corn on the cob and popcorn that's hilarious, and then there's this whole King's court ballroom dance that all of a sudden switches to a rockin disco beat... and although a glass slipper still comes into play, there's also a snapper involved which is hilarious and awesome. I can't believe this movie exists but since it obviously does (because I just watched it), I want more. Someone should throw a sexploitation musical marathon of every (if there are any others) one of these made. oh and one more thing. I totally didn't even realize that it was Rainbeaux Smith playing Cinderella because I actually found her really attractive... I usually don't quite see the attraction but color me converted. wowza.
11.29.06	Sixteen Candles	John Hughes	This was another movie that I avoided due to my childhood aversion to Molly Ringwald. Thank goodness HBO Family is there to let me catch up with all of these movies that people tell me I should've grown up with. Surprisingly enough, I liked this one. It's more of a realistic (if you don't count the goofy sound effects) R-rated take on the genre, which I really enjoyed. Boobs, swearing... they are my thing. I also enjoyed seeing a young John (and Joan) Cusack... Still not much of a Molly Ringwald fan but at least she said "fuck" in this.
11.29.06	The Sex Thief	Martin Campbell	Who knew that the director of Casino Royale and GoldenEye got his start in sexploitation? Well, Lars did for one. And me too, I found out a few weeks ago while waiting for Casino Royale to start. It was the impetus of probably the single best distillation of Harry's personality that I know of. Classic moment. Anyway, thanks to Weird Wednesday I actually get to see this movie, which is about a thief who has sex. See, he burgles these women, then instead of getting mad, he's so hot and great at lovemaking that they have sex with him then report a completely different description to the police so they can't catch him. That guy should hold classes. Anyway, this is a mostly enjoyable British sex movie... lots of 70s bush and titties... the ending kind of confused me though. I don't know if they were leaving it open for a sequel or what but... the message of the movie ended up being if you're man-hot it's ok to steal. Kinda odd. I loved the beginning credits though with the nude body parts and whatnot... and I liked the cutting between the sex thief's seven rapes in a row with these two comic relief cop/reporter guys getting drunk. They actually have a pretty enjoyable subplot of being complete pervs addicted to porn. At one point they meet for lunch and one guy's all like "oh by the way, I brought this" and pulls up an enormous suitcase filled with stag films... then there's this sound effect of a car accident and all the film is strewn all about this car, so they have to try and gather it all up before some random pedestrians pick any up and look at it. Finally they give up and run away as some random dude exclaims "gor blimey! There's a prick!" So even though I had to hydroplane the whole way home in a mega texas storm, I thought it was worth it to see this. I don't know if i can honestly say Campbell did a better job with this over Casino Royale, but I can for damn sure say this is better than Vertical Limit. I still think Cast A Deadly Spell is his best work though.
11.28.06	Deja Vu	Tony Scott	I'm glad to see that Tony Scott has moved out of his Oliver Stone cutting phase of Domino and Man On Fire and back to just the mega-coverage style of his Spy Game and Enemy of the State days... I think it's a necessity for this movie though since the story goes pretty far out there with a few ideas. Um... what to say on this one. I don't think it's bad. I liked the supporting cast. Yeah, I liked the movie. I guess I'll leave it at that.
11.28.06	Stranger Than Fiction	Marc Forster	I think the trailer for this movie really hurts it. It's not really a laugh-out-loud comedy. WIll Ferrell plays it totally straight. The ending is sad. There are some funny moments but I think it's being sold as the wrong kind of movie. In fact, I liked this more than both Monsters Ball and Finding Neverland... it's a shame this movie's not being hyped up like those were. Dustin Hoffman's great in this. So's Ferrell and this is the first time I've really found Maggie Gyllenhaal sexy (and yes that's including Secretary). And that Wreckless Eric song is like the critical moment in the entire movie. It makes Eric's story of going to the premiere and getting to see his name scroll across Emma Thompson's tits a lot more meaning for me. And also, for anyone thinking the visual effects were a lot like that one scene in Fight Club, thank Kevin Tod Haug.
11.27.06	Bronco Bullfrog	Barney Platts-Mile	Another late 60s british film about how being young in England sucks. For the first 8/10s of this I was heavily reminded of the boredom that came with Radio On, but luckily this movie picked up toward the end. with some funny little scenes and the realisation that this movie was about to end without a single person smiling even once. Looking back, I kind of liked how nobody ever really did anything... this kid's dating this girl but really all they'd do is go places and not do anything. Even when they're making out it's really forced and quick and then they're leaving. but at the end, the titular character lets them sleep at his house and when they go to sleep it's kind of funny. Then at the very end, they run down to the docks and Bronco's like "I gotta go" and keeps running and that's the end. whew. heady.
11.27.06	For Your Consideration	Christopher Guest	ummmmm yeah not that funny. I have to agree with what pretty much everyone else is saying... Fred Willard and Jane Lynch as the entertainment news show hosts were the funniest part. Everything else was kind of... well it wasn't like... bad. just not really that... substantially funny. Since it's not a mockumentary style, there's not really too many scenes that allow these characters to just go off... some of them looked funny, sounded funny. Oh that's not true... even though he's barely in it and doesn't really do much, Larry Miller is hilarious in this. But it's also the subject... you'd kind of think hey, Chris Guest taking on Hollywood... it's gonna be a real treasure trove and it's really not. it's all pretty expected. the movies in the film, the role stereotypes, all of it... I mean it's kinda funny... just not as funny as it should be.
11.25.06	The Quiller Memorandum	Michael Anderson	George Segal plays an American agent working in West Berlin to track some neo-nazis including Max von Sydow who plays a character named Oktober. Also starring Alec Guinness, Senta Berger (who was also in The Spy With My Face) and George Sanders with a score by John Barry and not a single gadget, this is a heavy-loaded straight up 60s spy film that I would've never heard of wer eit not for QTfest (where it played in a double feature with Sol Madrid during QT3). I'm a pretty huge fan of these 60s straight spy films, but I have a pretty hard time finding them. There seems to be more spy spoofs than straight ones, which is a shame because as fun as those are, these are way more awesome and satisfy me on a much deeper level. But you know... it's still a spy movie. At one point von Sydow asks a freshly captured Segal "what's it like to be so sexually attractive?" Segal just smirks his answer. Mostly though, it's Segal walking around West Berlin getting into trouble. He's a little bit of a pretty boy but there's one scene where he tough-arms a dude in glasses where i completely bought into him. The covers a lot of the standard spy bases (he gets drugged and resists interrogation) but since it's played so straight, it easily held my attention. There's no actual memorandum though. I guess I spoiled it. Maybe the book that it was based on is the memo... who knows. This actually reminded me a lot of another QTfest movie: The Venetian Affair.
11.23.06	Let's Go to Prison	Bob Odenkirk	I can really see why not a lot of people would like this movie. it's so.. I don't know if the word is dark or ironic or dry or what but... it's a comedy about prison and all the rape and violence and everything else prison has to offer. i laughed a lot though... not in like a timeless classic cant-wait-to-see-this-again way but in a way that made up for Bobby. I liked Michael Shannon as the aryan leader.
11.23.06	Bobby	Emilio Estevez	Happy Thanksgiving. I'm not a big fan of the traditional 1pm turkey/stuffing/cranberry sauce ritual... so I decided to hit up a few of the no-kidding ton of first-run movies I want to see. This... well it's about Bobby Kennedy I guess even though he's not really in it till the end. I guess they couldn't call the movie "the bunch of meaningless people who also got hurt when Bobby was killed" though... but that's basically what it was. it went all over the Ambassador hotel and followed like 30 people around for 5 minutes at a time then ended. there are a crapload of recognizable stars but it's just... well... it's just not a very good movie. it's boring, all of the little stories and scenes are bad, it really didn't go anywhere, wasn't about anything, and didn't really serve any purpose... yeah, kind of a waste.
11.22.06	Naked Rider	William Diehl Jr.	whew... so after that, the next movie better be really fun. Unfortunately, I think the powerful effect of the Jonestown doc overshadowed any subtle charm this movie could have for me. Um.. so this is a movie about... well there's a big rich guy in town (called Big Jim... not Jim, Big Jim) who like horses but sleeps with every woman but his wife. so a stablehand gets with his wife, they fight then race horses. the end. And 90% of the action described here happens in the last 20 minutes so for the first 80 or so, i guess you'd have to call it atmosphere. But i liked these: -a guy uses the saying "He's gonna come down on you like an angry possom on your back" -Big Jim's wife asks the stablehand "You don't treat women like Wedding Cake, do you?" (something about icing) -At one point they go out for a hot night in Atlanta... I guess back then all Atlanta had to offer is penny arcades and knick-knack stores. they finally end up at a disco but the camera walks past the funky 70s dancing to find these guys sitting in the back having dinner or something. man party animals! -during one sex scene, there's some pretty good funk music going on. So... there's really only a couple sex scenes... remarkably little nudity for a sexploitation movie... actually everything that happens in this movie is pretty remarkably weak. the horse race, the fight, the drama, everything... it all seems to happen with some profound lack of enthusiasm which, on a different night, I might've gotten a real kick out of. Tonight though, it wasn't nearly enough.
11.22.06	Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple	Stanley Nelson	A new doc about Jim Jones and the whole kool-aid mass suicide thing. I was barely alive when this happened so I didn't really get to experience it on a consciouss level, only learning about it later when an adult made a kool-aid joke that befuddled me. Lucky for me this gave the complete picture of what happened... and does it quite well. Told through interviews with surviving Peoples Temple members and a surprising amount of both audio and video footage (really... shockingly surprising), this really paints the picture of what all happened there... I had no real grasp on the sheer number of people that died (909) and that Jonestown was in Guyana... It's a really interesting and tragic story that... well the doc plays Jones off as starting off an odd kid then sliding into full-on crazy as he went, but that so many people followed him, gave up their life savings to him, brought their entire family to him... it's a really chilling picture of that certain part of human nature and the right sequence of events that lead to a nazi germany or a mob lynching or whatever... It's also interesting to see how few of these guys snapped out of it when the killing started... and there's this amazing amazing audio of Jones talking while it's going on... and they're giving the children the punch first... and he's telling them to drink it quickly but he's not really tricking them either. He's telling them that it's better to die and to go ahead and drink and they are. they did. 909 of them. there's also all these film clips and video and stills of Jones, Jonestown, and his congregation. I really want to know why nobody ever talked about his dark glasses though. To me it's such an iconic representation of Jones... it makes me ask myself if it was in his plans all along or if it just seemed like a good idea at the time... and if he had a problem letting people see his eyes because he's maybe afraid they'll see through him. who knows... aside from that though, this movie did a remarkable job of allowing you to picture just how it happened and understand how such a seemingly incomprehensible tragedy can take place. it's also interesting though... afterward Anne mentioned that another bad thing about this is that it kind of ruined the idea of a commune or co-op situation and radical hippie outlook of trying to change the world... which I guess is true. An ominous event pretty directly leading into the conservatism of the 80s. so... from an imdb comment there's a youtube link of Jones' audio "deathtape". it's so crazy... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_0ZhrZhDr0&NR
11.19.06	The Seven-Ups	Philip D'Antoni	AHh I finally see this movie. Directed by the producer of French Connection and Bullit with a story by Sonny Grosso, this movie has a hell of a pedigree making it sort of the unofficial other sequel to French Connection. I like to believe that it's really what Scheider was doing while Popeye went to Europe to track down Fernando Rey. Now he's the leader of a strike team very similar to The Shield, making big cases with unorthodox methods. They're called the Seven-Ups because that's what their targets get in prison: seven years and up. Except when we drop in on them they get mixed up with a series of mob kidnappings that Scheider's snitch hasn't told him about. It's a really solid movie, just a tad slow for your standard cop fare and with a somewhat different take on the score (instead of funky drum beats and syncopated brass it's all strings and undertones), but the quality of the story and acting keep you interested. Lots of unique messed-up NYC faces here, like the guy who played Maniac and the guy with the charred scar-tissue face who i've seen pop up in all kinds of movies. Plus another sweet car chase through grimy 70s NYC... can't beat that with a nightstick.
11.19.06	McQ	John Sturges	It's cool to see John Wayne as a gritty 70s cop, but this most of all has the feel of dinosaurs at work here. People at the end of their careers trying to stay current. Still cool though and definitely not bad. Thank goodness for The Godfather, The French Connection, and Dirty Harry for spawning a whole decade's worth of gritty cop crime movies filled with mobsters, car chases, and vigilante cops.
11.19.06	Revenge of the Nerds	Jeff Kanew	REVENGE OF THE NERDS! AT THE ALAMO! WITH BOOGER LIVE IN PERSON!!!!! Oh man what a treat. I love this movie, everybody had so much fun. I felt really proud of the audience being so excited and always cheering for Booger and clapping along with the little michael jackson rap at the end and everything. Plus Armstrong had some pretty sweet anecdotes (his belch was actually audio of a camel mating. He wrote a whole biography for booger's backstory and still has it. Upon reading it recently, he realised it was his life. In the gym, Booger's reading Lady Chatterly's Lover)... it took me like a good half hour until i finally connected the dots and noticed that Poindexter is now the guy from West Wing and Studio 60... Plus they played trailers for Risky Business, One Crazy Summer, and Better Off Dead. and they made up mondo tees to match booger's that said "gimme' head till i'm dead" hahaha. So yeah, this was great. Armstrong was really nice and funny and cool and the movie was great and it was a really really fun time to see it with a packed crowd of people who all love it. They recorded a commentary for a DVD that's still not out! Hopefully soon...
11.19.06	The Point	Fred Wolf	Alright! Tonight at the Alamo they got none other than Booger himself: Curtis Armstrong! And funnily enough, he's also one of the world's foremost Harry Nilsson experts! So, in a total Kier-La move, they played this animated TV special that Nilsson wrote before Revenge of the Nerds and made the double feature ticket really cheap! ok, enough exclamation points... I'd seen this once before, based on a recomendation from a hippie friend of mine. While I thought it was clever enough with the whole point thing and bevy of double meanings going on and it was cool to see where that song Me and My Arrow came from, I wasn't in a huge hurry to see it again. The DVD was narrated by Ringo Starr though, and this print supposedly had the original narration by Dustin Hoffman, plus hey... Curtis Armstrong in person! So I guess this has a whole series of different narrators depending on when you caught it on TV. Even though Hoffman was credited in the print and ABC insisted that it was him and Booger said it was him, it didn't really sound much like Dustin Hoffman. It was like Hoffman doing a really good straight non-nasal accent. Maybe it was the mic or something... there were only a few places where I could kinda sorta tell it was him. The whole thing though, I think I liked more with his voice over Ringo's though... Starr's accent always takes me out of things. Plus I really kinda remember the DVD having a slightly different ending, with a little bit more inference that the Point story was real and the kid knew it and the dad didn't get it... but maybe that's just me being crazy. so... I saw it again. Not in a hurry to see it any more but it was cool to see in a theater and with booger!
11.18.06	Pretty in Pink	Howard Deutch	I never saw this as a kid. Not to say I wasn't a fan of Jon Cryer (Hiding Out) or Andrew McCarthy (Weekend at Bernie's)... I guess the title turned me off. or Molly Ringwald. anyway, since I never saw this as a kid, i have no nostalgia now... I never saw Sixteen Candles either and only caught Breakfast Club for the first time a few years ago. Anyway, I wasn't too taken with this, but it was kind of interesting as an artifact of the 80s. 80s music, fashion, hair... everything. Now I can say I've seen it like everyone else.
11.17.06	Accepted	Steve Pink	yeah, this stupid teen/college comedy genre is a guilty pleasure of mine. Especially this kind of movie where it's really basic wish fulfillment. Like who wouldn't want to go to a college where Lewis Black is a professor and you can take a course in hitting on strippers? Sign me up! Plus you've got a few young up-and-coming comedians here (i guess the most notable is Jonah Hill, who previously killed as the kid in The 40 year-old Virgin who wanted to buy the boots from Catherine Keener's ebay store) and it's got a fun vibe and all that.. but seriously... some borderline 80s-levels of wish fulfillment... which is a good time every once in a while. Tangentially, the special features have my first glimpse of what Tom Shadyac actually looks like. I don't know if he was in wardrobe or what but the man looks like a hobo. seriously.
11.16.06	Casino Royale	Martin Campbell	Well, I guess I have to preface any comment I make about this movie by saying I'm not the A#1 James Bond fan. I haven't seen all of them... actually I don't think I've seen even half of them, and I really didn't like any of the recent ones. I did think Pierce Brosnan was really great casting for the character but he was stuck in outlandishly boring action movies for his whole contract. So I had no faith at all in this one, even though I'd heard it was a reboot and I seemed to be in the minority in thinking that Daniel Craig was an interesting choice. Starting fresh... the climax is a card game, not an explosion, etc. etc. spoilers from here on out. Well, ok. It starts out with a chase sequence that, while it's pretty typical action, it's typical action done very very well. Hey, nothing wrong with that. I'm being dazzled here! lots of running and jumping but, like i said, it's really well-done running and jumping. And from there the movie does a lot of what I wanted it to do. Aside from one or two small scenes that felt needlessly emotional (that, in hindsight, were clearly foundation work for later on in the picture), i had zero problems with this movie. I really liked this movie. Sure, they couldn't have the villain just weep blood without explaining it and having people talk about it (like a huge scar over the eye and having the cornea be all milky and whatnot wasn't explanation enough of something messed up with his eye), but hey... it's still a cool villain who sometimes cries blood. and the women are gorgeous (although PG-13 sucks. show some breasts!) and it's cool to see the Bond conventions played with and subverted (like the bond girl names and the car chases and whatnot). and i'm even ok with the running commentator explaining how exactly to play poker and what each move makes during the climactic card scene at the titular Casino Royale... I was having fun... I really liked this movie! And then they put an extra half hour on it that should just not be there. They should just delete it! loose the reels... or warn people that now is when you should walk out. the last half hour kills this movie for me. oh, great... a boring action sequence in an old building. Haven't seen that before. great. when's this over again? It's almost like they couldn't help themselves... they had a good movie that was somewhat different and they just couldn't leave well enough alone and decided to fall back on all the crap that made me yawn at like the last 6 or 8 007 movies. sigh... I'm starting to think though, that my perception and ideal of what a great James Bond movie should be is in reality not a James Bond movie at all. I've never read the books or cared too much but maybe james bond isn't as elegant as i want him to be... maybe he does like driving tanks and construction vehicles around and making big things blow up. i dunno...
11.15.06	The Glory Stompers	Anthony M. Lanza	back in town just in time for Weird Wednesday! I wouldn't miss this one, since it played on the very first night of the very first QTfest as a midnight movie after The Savage Seven and Hollywood Man... I think it would've made a better night to save Hollywood Man for the midnight though... this one pairs with Savage Seven much more. It's more of the typical biker formula: stuff happens in the first and last 10 minutes, separated by a good hour of the biker gang at a wild party and/or riding into the country. Gotta be free I guess. Still, this one stands out because Dennis Hopper's the main bad biker dude and he is high. very high. in every scene. in every shot. That's alright though... he's got some great dialogue. And also Casey Kasem has a thick beard and mouths "I love you" to a pansy-assed good biker in the beginning of the movie. Yeah, The Glory Stompers are the kind of bike club that wears little native american spirit pouches on their chests rather than iron crosses and swastikas. They have the same name as the movie though so they have to win in the end, even though it's not even really like they won but more like the bad gang (called Black Souls) kind of collapse from within due to that everpresent rape temptation. It's great though... they kidnap this girl and tell her they can either kill her or take her down to mexico and sell her to some "high-class Mexicans." If you ask me, the biggest fault in this movie is that we never see these high-class Mexicans... That would've been so great. Overall, there were some good times, some slow times... it was an ok movie. It certainly filled its genre expectations... no catchy original song though. It needed that too. High-class Mexicans and a groovy original theme song.
11.14.06	The Great Race	Blake Edwards	Another really long movie, also set in 1910 or 1908 or whatever, but this time it's a Blake Edwards comedy starring Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, Peter Falk, and a particularly sexily-dressed Natalie Wood. It's very much got an old vaudevillian tone with Jack Lemmon as a mustache-twisting villian to Curtis' dressed-in-white daredevil hero. The whole first half hour is just stunt after stunt with Curtis coming out on top and Lemmon having various schemes to sabotage Curtis and all of them blowing up in his face. Peter Falk is Lemmon's sidekick... they are the funniest part of this movie. There is a long-distance race though, from New York to Paris (no, not Paris, TX) where hijinks happen. I dunno, the movie's ok... it's just so zany and over the top that you really have to buy into it to get any enjoyment out of it whatsoever. I remember trying to watch this about a year ago and falling asleep. so that was my trip to visit the folks!
11.13.06	The Sand Pebbles	Robert Wise	I didn't really know this was three hours long until I started watching it. I've sort of been catching up on Steve McQueen lately though and hey - Robert Wise - so why not watch this... it's a navy story circa 1920 or 1910 or something set in china. It's very long and very slow and there's little to no action for the entire movie. instead, it's about McQueen's individualism and how that doesn't jibe with either Richard Crenna's skippering technique or the way navy-ing works over there in china or whatever. character arcs and subplots abound... it spans all four seasons... did I mention it was long? yeah, not too taken with this one, but at least now i've seen it.
11.12.06	Play Time	Jacques Tati	Netflix... I'd heard many good things about this movie, and had even planned to see it in 70mm at the Paramount this summer but ended up missing it. I'm not too versed in Tati's work and, from the introduction on the disc, maybe I should've seen a few others of his before this. I guess this is like the last one he did with the Hulot character and the expense and failure of the film bankrupted him or something. Anyway, it's all about how modern technology sucks and it's made up of 3 or 4 extremely long set pieces filled with near-silent gags. On the one hand that was nice because the frame's so full of detail that it was nice not to have to read too many subtitles, but on the other hand... I don't know, I just didn't get it. I mean, I understood what was going on and everything, but for whatever reason it didn't tickle my funnybone. oh well.
11.12.06	Run Silent Run Deep	Robert Wise	So my parents' dvd collection goes like this: romantic comedies and christmas movies for my mom, every QQII and vietnam movie ever made for my dad (and Easy Rider). So I ended up seeing a lot of war movies. I wanted to see this because it was directed by Robert Wise. Aside from some really blatant miniature work (i think you can even see the lines on the bottom of the swimming pool in a few of the torpedo shots), this is a really solid wll put together submarine movie with Burt Lancaster and Clark Gable. In true classic Hollywood thriller tradition, the last five minutes are the most tense and it leaves you pretty excited. good stuff.
11.11.06	The Big Red One	Samuel Fuller	I wanted to see the reconstruction. Maybe I was blacking out but it seemed to me that several bits and pieces were actually cut from the theatrical cut, like in the beginning where they establish that Zab's a writer and Griff's a cartoonist and all that, or the very very beginning where they explain how the big red one came to be... but there's a lot added too including some really Fuller-esque little anecdotes that are fun. Fuller's even in one scene as a photographer, which is cool to see. The disc also has two pretty in-depth docs, one on the movie and reconstruction and one on Fuller, both of which I liked. I still think the movie shows its budget at times and suffers because of it, but if I saw that in 1980 I would've been blown away. Of course now that Saving Private Ryan and even moreso Band of Brothers exists, this isn't quite as impactful, but oh well. Lee Marvin's still awesome.
11.10.06	Redneck	Silvio Narizzano	I brought along a small pile of movies that Micah lent me in the case that my parents went to sleep at 8:30 and I had nothing to do nights... As it turns out, this is the only one I got around to watching... the rest were plucked from my parents' collection. In this, Telly Savales... I don't know that I'd call him a redneck but I guess his accent is sort of from the south... anyway, he and Franco Nero bungle a diamond heist and inadvertantly kidnap some important guy's son (Mark Lester). But Telly's basically crazy so they're running from the cops and at some point start running from Telly. Nero gets naked snf hsd s long scene were Lester stares at his ass, then Telly rips his ass open and slowly dies. This movie sounds cool and starts off really cool... and ends pretty cool too but there are long sequences in the middle of them driving or running or sitting in the dark where not much happens visually and it kind of slows down. pretty strange movie.
11.10.06	The Philadelphia Experiment	Stewart Raffill	so i went home for a week to visit my parents, eat free food, and clear out all of my old childhood toys from their basement into a storage shed. I was on one of their laptops the whole time so I didn't feel like writing up notes and now it seems like a big task to jot down all the things I thought about a week's worth of movies so I'm afraid these get jipped a bit. quickly though: Somehow this movie got twisted in my memory with another movie where some sort of time machine brings elements of the past into the present.. like they end up in a primordial swamp trying to get across town or something. I remembered that Michael Pare was in this and it was the navy and they were zapped into the future and this weird storm was following them and Pare's buddy had a black hand that made him disappear or something but... there was none of that other stuff going on here at all. Huh. I wonder what other movie that was. This one? yeah Pare really wasn't the best actor. Dated effects. fun movie though.
11.08.06	Young Nurses	Clint Kimbrough	It made me sad to miss The Glove last week so I made a specific point to make it out tonight before a week of northern virginia basement-cleaning and free food. This is... well... This has some truly phenomenally bad acting in it. Like, it's marvelous how bad a few of these actors are. One scene in particular, right at the end... here's the exchange: -Do you still need housecalls? I may need a doctor tonight. -That's one call I'll make for free. Now, Imagine the lines are written in Araimic and the actors read them as they translated each word in their head into English. I'd say that's a good estimation of how bad the readings were. So great. That nurse in particular... oh man. She was so painfully pleasant to watch struggle through each word. It doesn't hurt that she's in a movie where, when extremely distraught, she runs into the ocean while stripping off her uniform. huh? It's best not to question things like this... just go with it. All of the nurses were pretty bad, and most of them had incredibly idiotic little arcs or subplots leading them toward the end of the movie. They were great though... like this one guy hurt his shoulder so the nurse thinks it's dangerous for him to enter the sailing regada with his shoulder blade, but the guy's dad insists and tries to rape her or something. Now, I don't know anything about sailing really, but it seems like most of it's just sitting there while the wind does the work. Sure, every once in a while you have to pull some ropes and duck while the thingy goes to the other side. But if John Candy can do it, how physically strenuous can it be? So his dad guilts him into leaving the hospital even with a cut on his shoulder but the nurse gets on his boat and cons him into racing with her instead of his dad. When his dad, who's been flirting with some random girl on the dock, sees his son casting off without him, he yells "YOU'RE GOING TO LOSE!!!" over and over again... so awesome. My favorite line comes out of this nurse's mouth (poorly), after the hurt-shoulder hunk accuses her of stepping out with his dad she tells him "I wouldn't see your dad if... he was my own dad." Huh? Does that mean what I think it... aww never mind. Better leave that one alone. Although she doesn't say my favorite line, the best nurse has to be the black one. Somehow, in the midst of all this sex and hurt shoulders and whatnot, she gets wrapped up in this experimental drug overdose murder case. I'll go ahead and spoil it for everyone by saying the bad guy was none other than Sam Fuller, who I guess plays an old doctor slash elderly... helper... who has a whole medicare scam going on with the old people he's helping while also... maybe... selling this experimental dangerous drug (did i mention it causes aphrodesia followed by hallucinations followed by coma followed by death? well it does) at marked-up prices to the old people... All I really know is he had a suitcase with money in it and some black guy who was either helping him or trying to kill him found out he's been hiding it on some random piece of Baja land. on a boat. Anyway... this black nurse spends most of her screen time tooling around on her motorcycle. it's great. A deaf guy writes that she's one heck of a good looking girl. awwwwww. There's also a random mini-story about a candy striper having sex with a patient. and maybe another plot going on that I've already forgotten. So many scenes in this movie make absolutely no sense... but they're fun unlike Radio On... and, maybe it's just because I like 70s funk soundtracks, it seems like every piece of crap movie made back in those days had an awesomely groovy soundtrack. So while all this stuff is happening there's wild sax or flute solos or kickin drum rhythms driving everything and making it an enjoyable experience to watch, even if the script is horrible and the acting is worse and everything about it pretty much sucks. It sucks in a good way.
11.08.06	Cocaine Cowboys	Billy Corben	Anyone even remotely interested in the cocaine explosion of the late 70s and early 80s needs to see this doc. It's better than Blow, Scarface, Miami Vice... all of that crap. Much like how the recent Excellent Cadavers showed the stranger-than-fiction events of the Sicilian mafia wars, this movie's doc status allows the story to show how truly excessive Miami in the late 70s/early 80s was. It's not Al Pacino walking out and killing one person in the street in broad daylight. It's doing that with machine guns every day for like 3 years. That's something that, if it weren't true, it would be unbelievable. This doc does a phenomenal job telling the story of just what happened to Miami, the transformation from a sleepy place where the elderly went to die into the modern neon-blitzed trendy-ass place it is today. It's told with really really great interviews with most of the prime cast of people that were responsible for the whole thing. I mean... that scene in Blow where Johnny Depp's walking around his house and there's so much money that he says "we're gonna need a bigger boat"? That's nothing. Some of the photos they pull and some of the stories these guys tell... man oh man. They also detail exactly how they'd transport the coke, how everything worked and who called the shots, and gave a general picture of how huge of an impact cocaine had on the town. And then the violence started. About 60% of the movie deals with the ultra-violence that followed such decadent growth. A really alarming pictures of the abundance of violence that happened down there in the early 80s. Like Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is an understatement. Through this whole section, a major interview is the guy who was one of the top assassins through the whole thing. And this isn't like that crappy Iceman HBO doc where they have an old guy talking about deaths just to get on TV. This guy's not so much talking about the murders (although he does do plenty of that) but more about what was happening within the cartel at the time that resulted in the violence. Plenty of gristly photos and it's all bedded by a Jan Hammer score. So the main thrust of this movie seems to say "this is the REAL Miami Vice" and that's very true. But I found connections to all the 80s drug stories that have been seen on movies as well. Even a show like The Wire came to mind when they cry out for Baltimore's help with an annual murder rate of 400. One year in Miami there were over 600 murders. That's close to two a day, which is just crazy. It also asks some interesting questions about what happened to all this money. This is a really great movie. If you are reading this and you are someone I talk to on a regular basis, be prepared to have me tell you how much you need to see this. It's really unbelievable.
11.06.06	Radio On	Christopher Petit	Well, Wreckless Eric was there to talk a bit about his involvement with the film (and how he found a VHS copy of this apparently taped off of German TV) and read a few (hilarious) excerpts from his book. That was the highlight. The beginning credits made a specific point of listing out every song used in the film, then the title itself was photographed on a scrolling marquee. That was cool. After that it was really slow and really quiet and meandering and had no real point and lasted forever. The plot is a guy gets some kraftwerk tapes from his brother who I guess died so he drives to Bristol. That's it. The movie was filled with scenes where it'd play and afterward I'd think "that was great. I'm so glad they put that scene in here and made me sit through it. That scene had so many reasons for existing. Sure, I can't think of any right now but I'm sure they're out there." Yes, I thought that whole paragraph of stuff after a lot of scenes... because I had plenty of time to have paragraph-long thoughts cross my mind. a lot. So... yeah, wasn't too taken with this one.
11.06.06	Richard Pryor...Here and Now	Richard Pryor	funny.
11.05.06	Vampyr	Carl Theodor Dreyer	My plan was to put this at the very very end. Hopefully I'd be so blitzed on movie-watching and it'd be so late that I would enter this film in a near-hypnotic state. I read about this being genuinely scary and from what I remember of Dreyer's Passion of Joan of Arc with all the crazy close-ups and whatnot I have high hopes. The combination of the movie's deliberate pacing, near-complete lack of dialogue, haunting strings, and my heavy eyelids had a nice effect, eliciting a near dreamstate experience of this film. I think the story's about a guy who goes... to a place and finds that there's a vampyr there. At one point he takes a little double-exposed dream journey and maybe helps someone kill the vampyr and a spirit chases a doctor who may have helped the vampyr until he ends up buried alive in a grain silo... or something. Yeah, I know. but I don't really care too much about what happens in this movie. The mood and atmosphere are so strong and the primitive sound mix so impressionistic that it all seems like a dream anyway. Plus Dreyer plays around a lot with shadows... lots of neat little tricks and treats. Even though the closest we come to any sort of conventional vampire mythology is a skull with elongated canines and a shot of the vampyr sucking blood, it's all very fitting. Kind of like the B-side to Nosferatu. The print was in pretty tough shape though, and whoever put the english subtitles on REALLY liked this one particular gothic font. The print was so big that two lines covered half the screen. Luckily, there's really not that much dialogue at all.. it's mostly a silent movie with a soundtrack. It made a very fitting end to my weekend. Now it's all over: my DVR's wiped clean, my eyes are shot, and my bed is calling. DVRfest is officially over. Until next year, that is! Who knows, maybe someone else will sit in for a few movies next year. Here's to another year of keeping my journal even when I don't feel like writing any inane notes. Two years down, 15 to go! I'm gunning for you, Bogdanovich! You're in my sights!
11.05.06	Chopping Mall	Jim Wynorski	So I knew nothing about this movie. From the title and the release year I figured it was a typical slasher movie set in a mall. As those that do know about it or have seen it can attest, it's a little bit more than that. And by a little bit more I mean... it's a freakin killer robot movie! So much so that the credits call them "killbots"! They are like a cross between Johnny 5 and ED-209... stalking this mall at night and killing any sex-crazed teen in their path. Awesome. After that though... it IS sort of a typical slasher movie set in a mall (is that the same mall as Fast Times at Ridgemont High??), only difference being it's the killer robots doing the slashing with their lasers and sleep darts and mechanoid crushing claws and taser cannons. They are bullet proof and they are tank-tread'd and they are pissed! Except after they kill someone they say "thank you. Have a nice day." hahahahaha. I guess I now know what cyberdyne does before moving on to global defense systems... So that was a fun time. Gotta love killer robots. It's not 4:15am. I'm tired. I should be going to sleep. Not Yet. One More. One More movie to end this weekend of one-man film festival celebration and journal-entering. I wonder what I saved for last...
11.05.06	Scarecrows	William Wesley	A group of paramilitary army base robbers (yeah, it's the 80s) parachute into a random field when one of them backstabs the others and jumps out of their hijacked plane with the money. Little do they know that they've jumped right into a field populated with creepy scarecrows, some of which are magically alive and don't like trespassers. There are maybe four scarecrows that stay put on their crosses. Any time the movie needs to transition between scenes or cover a flubbed line or fill time or anything like that it just cuts to one of these scarecrows. I think it's even the same shot. I know for a fact that they use this one shot of a harmonica like four times... But the thing of it is that these close-ups on the creepy non-moving scarecrows are actually pretty creepy. One in particular has this wrinkle-grin that really freaks me out. Why, then, do they make the animated murderous scarecrow faces not nearly as creepy? they are like bad Skeletor molds in old papier-mache. I don't get it. Probably a solid 10 minutes (scattered throughout the movie) of looking at these stationary burlap sack masks that are awesome then the ones that actually move and pitchfork and whatnot are lame!? gah. Whatever. This movie actually uses a pretty good workaround for it's scene after scene of people walking through light forest at night. Since they're paramilitary types, they all have little radio headsets so pretty much all of the pertinent information is conveyed through that. You might think it's corny until the scene where one guy acts like he's going insane and then you wish he was doing it via walkie talkie instead of having to watch him "act." I saw this such a long time ago. I rented it because it was at Blockbuster and it had an "unrated" sticker on it. This is the R-rated cut though (Showtime pansies) so I'm not sure how much gore was cut out for this version. There's really not much here though to be honest... although the idea of killer scarecrows stuffing dead people with straw and money, then seeing the paramilitary army base robbers pulling out handfulls of bloody cash is pretty amusing. This isn't what I'd call a good movie, but as a nice dark flick with killer scarecrows at 2am as the 17th movie in 60 hours, it does alright.
11.05.06	French Connection II	John Frankenheimer	Following with another Frankenheimer. My big regret this weekend is that The Seven-Ups hasn't been on TV lately. I really wanted a French Connection pseudo-sequels double feature, but oh well. This time, Popeye Doyle travels to Marseilles to track down Fernando Rey and take his ass down. What's funny is that I don't get that Hackman has any sort of plan. He gets no help from the French Police so he just walks around the city, calling all the cops assholes and saying "I came here to get that frog son of a bitch and I'm gonna get him!" over and over again. Eventually we learn the real reason why he's in town. Unfortunately, instead of an exciting chase sequence, there's a good half hour of Hackman being addicted to heroin against his will then writhing around and crying while the French cops force him to go cold turkey. It's like Trainspotting without the dead baby. Kind of really slowed the movie down for me. But after that, the action picks up in typical gritty 70s cop movie fashion, so that was highly satisfying. Overall, it's not a bad movie at all. I can see why it's not really talked about like The Seven Ups though, even though that's not an official sequel. It's got a great ending though. oh man. So now that it's like 1:30am, it's time to start the midnight programming! I've decided to end the fest/weekend with a heady triple feature of horror movies! I'll be up till dawn, baby... let's do this!
11.05.06	Grand Prix	John Frankenheimer	Whew. Long movie. This follows a season of Grand Prix formula one racing with an international cast of people like James Garner, Eva Marie Saint, Yves Montand, Toshiro Mifune, and Antonio Sabata (Sr.). I first learned about this movie when Ronin came out and Frankenheimer said he learned all the chase photography stuff on Grand Prix. And he had to deal with a freakin super panavision cinerama camera too! So, as expected, there's some really great race photography here. I'm not sure how they get a few of these shots... must be some sort of gyroscope rig or something. Or some remote motor control or something because some shots pan from the oncoming road to the driver. Really cool stuff. There's also lots of use of split screen (credited to Saul Bass), sometimes seeming excessive but others proving pretty effecting (such as showing flashbacks on half the screen while the race is on the other). So, technically... this movie is great. The story's pretty boring though. One guy gets hurt, blah blah blah, the guy that used to win is now losing, the guy that used to lose is now winning, blah blah blah... with a predictable ending and because this is a three hour movie rather than a two hour movie, there is twice the forced romance with the racers and various women. I kind of liked how there was no clear star here and three or four of the main racers each had their own stories going, but it felt like I'd seen it all before. The biggest surprise I got out of this movie was seeing that the mother from Arrested Development used to be pretty damn hot. I'm glad I saw this though, because it's hopefully set up the next movie perfectly!
11.05.06	Force of Evil	Abraham Polonsky	Force of Evil originally came to my attention in Martin Scorsese's big "My Journey through American Film" doc, where he said he identified with it because it wasn't about hitmen or the top bosses or any of that but the street guy running a numbers racket out of an apartment on the third floor of some building. John Garfield plays a mob lawyer with a numbers bank older brother. He's on the eve of fixing the day's lucky number so all the local numbers banks go bust paying everyone out in order for a bigger gangster figure to come in with a combine corporation. Marie Windsor plays the gangster's moll wife. This is the kind of movie made specifically for stand-out performances. Both Garfield and the guy playing his brother have several scenes where they give it all they got. It's great though... the movie walks the line between noir style and realism. Plenty of location stuff but also tons of really elegant low-key lighting and camera setups. It's surprising that this was a first-time directing effort by soon-to-be-blacklisted Abraham Polonsky. So my memory of this movie has not been tinted in rose at all. It's still really good. I'm a fan of noir in general but this is really one of the movies that stand out for me. Particularly because it's not super well-known like Maltese Falcon or Double Indemnity. It's really great. Got me all pumped up for a three hour racing epic! yes!
11.05.06	Something to Scream About	Jason Paul Collum	Ahh, glorious day three of DVRfest 2006. Tonight's lineup is one more cinematic orgy of fun to hold me over until the next DVRfest. I've got all kinds of stuff on deck, all culminating in a midnight horror triple feature to keep me going all night! Will I make it? Shit yeah! Let's get going! Continuing from last night's Russ Meyer bill, I thought it would be good to start today off with a doc about the old b-movie scream queens. Well that's not really right. Most of the women interviewed in this TV doc are not old; most are still working in crappy new b-movies instead of the cult-favorited old b-movies. A few of the icons show up (the girl from Night of the living Dead, a few girls from Slumber Party Massacre, the girl from Sleepaway Camp), but earned their pedigrees from Troma or Full Moon movies... And then there's Julie Strain, who gives the best interview but is also probably the least qualified to be there. I would've thought this documentary would have at least one clip of one person screaming but I guess not. Still, it goes into the different issues of being a hot actress working in low-budget horror movies... nudity, money, conventions, stalkers, etc. Some are pretty cynical, some are still enthusiastic. All of them swear they do it for the art. All of them are still attractive in some way or another. I think it's such a huge difference between low budget horror nowadays (digital video, bad lighting in some guy's crappy hollywood apartment) and low-budget horror 10, 20, or 30 years ago. Anyway, moving on... time for a noir.
11.04.06	Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!	Russ Meyer	Violence!!! Cleavage!!! I guess this really isn't so much a sexploitation movie as a cleavesploitation movie. No nudity is the low point for me here, but that's alright. I knew this girl in college. She was one of these types who played women's rugby and would always have her refillable water bottle stocked with wine or vodka because she was so hardcore. She was big but not fat or ugly or anything... Anyway, I have no problems believing she is now spending her time killing random people out in the desert somewhere. College aquaintances aside, this movie was pretty fun. I really loved the music and the quick cutting, never mind the bizarrely aggro nihilist attitude of these go go dancers. Goes without saying that their figures are out of this world, but their looks are also very unique... I guess my honky comes out when I say that Boom Boom Billie was my fav... Rosie was too exotic and Varla was too psychopathic for my tastes. Give me a nice drunk sexpot any day! I do think it's unfair that TCm had little interview bits with modern-day Tura Satana to completely ruin whatever I thought of her massive notable breasts back then. Luckily, Lori WIlliams looks to have held up quite nicely. allllright. So this was a good time. I should do Russ Meyer double features more often! And now it's time to sleep and hopefully dream of wonderful pussycats kicking my ass. Tune in tomorrow for a jam-packed last day! Another show was just added to the schedule tonight! It's DVR mayhem over here!
11.04.06	Mudhoney	Russ Meyer	MUDHONEY ...leaves a taste of evil! Confession time. Aside from Beyond the Valley of the Dolls I haven't seen any Russ Meyer movies. And even that one I saw before I knew who Meyer was. Oh, wait. I saw Fanny Hill too but it was on Cinemax Friday After Dark when I was like 12. So I don't really count either of those. Point being: I really don't know what a Russ Meyer movie is except women with big boobs. Well tonight that all changes. I guess. Mudhoney is a depression-era tale about a stranger who walks into a small dustbowl town looking for work and finds it on a farm populated with a nice old man, his lovely niece and her drunk bastard of a husband. The hubby spends all day guzzling home brew corn whiskey and rabble-rousing at the town cathouse run by a toothless woman (played by Princess Livingston) and her two blonde incredibly well-built daughters. It's pretty clear that meyer values a woman's aesthetic more than her acting ability - I guess i'm not saying anything particularly surprising there - but I got a big kick out of how one of these prostie daughters was a deaf mute. The actress was clearly the hottest woman in the entire movie (for me at least, none of them were really ugly... except for Princess) but man she must've really sucked as an actress for her character to be a deaf mute. Gee whiz she's hot though and luckily we get to see every hot woman's boobs at least once. Thanks, Russ! What's more surprising to me here though is that the movie's a workable drama. In fact, if the boobs weren't so big you might mistake the first 75 minutes of this movie as some Warner Brothers socially-conscious movie written by John Steinbeck or Tennessee Williams or someone. Well, maybe. The last 15 minutes though turn real dark, managing to make me feel pretty dirty and happy at the same time, which is a weird sensation that brings back memories of how Tarantino defined exploitation cinema one night before showing The House on the Edge of the Park. It's very anti-religion, darker side of human nature type mob justice human ugliness type stuff but at the same time the angry townsfolk are finally getting around to taking care of the guy who's been an incredible asshole for the whole movie. So part of me is on the side of the lawful protagonists but the other part of me wants the crazy preacher to hang the son of a bitch. It's very conflicting and the movie gets really crazy and chaotic. Awesome. So it wasn't all boobs and fun. Pretty good black and white photography, lots of cackling hick-looking people (especially one kid with a lazy eye. those are always fun), and really not that much nudity at all (but thankfully there is some, answering a little question I've had about TCM for a while now)... good movie! So to finish off the night and my little Russ Meyer Midnight double feature is the title he's perhaps best known for. A movie that I've had to kind of shamefully play along whenever it came up in conversation... not wanting to admit to people that I'd never seen it before. Well, in 95 minutes I will have no more shame! It's time for Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
11.04.06	Grave of the Vampire	John Hayes	AKA Seed of Terror, this movie is about a half-breed vampire who's on a quest to kill his pappy. No, it's not a Blade prequel, it's a Weird Wednesday-worthy drive-in movie from the heart of the 70s starring WIlliam Smith as the seed. Actually, As a Weird Wednesday I think it'd be pretty slow. I don't know of too many 90-minute movies with a 30-minute prologue... but there are maybe 3 or 4 moments here (including the end when it flashes "FIN" up on the screen along with a phrase in french (i chose to believe it translated to "...or is it???") that made watching it worthwhile. This is actually a pretty quiet performance by Smith... for the most part at least. At the climax when the father vampire (who's now a college professor) asks who he is, Smith screams "I'm your son! Conceived in a grave! And Now I'm here to vanquish you!" about as over the top as you're thinking now. It's great. Mostly though, this movie is pretty tame. You'd think if they were gonna spend a half hour on the setup to the story, the least they could do is show a baby sucking on a bloody boob, right? Wrong. We get a decidedly PG-rated version of it here. Just a shot of fake blood like on the center of her chest then a close-up of blood dripping on lips that I'd give 50/50 odds of actually belonging to a baby. I think I saw some stubble in there. Still, it makes you think about how cool the Blade series would've been with William Smith instead of Wesley Snipes. I know, right!? That got me in the right mood though because up next is a Russ Meyer double feature!
11.04.06	Gilda	Charles Vidor	Man oh man... Rita Hayworth in this movie... makes me fall in love with all women and all of cinema. Love it. She's so messed up, but so perfect too. Glenn Ford is also great in this but he's a dude and not nearly as hot. This is one of those movies where I don't think I can say anything new about it. I love it. Tons of other people love it. They are right to love it. that's about it. man oh man. I could go on for a few more paragraphs but what the hell... let's keep going. Up next is a nice change of pace. It's deep into saturday night now... time for a horror movie!
11.04.06	The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years	Penelope Spheeris	I guess the message of this movie is it's ok to laugh at hair metal. I openly admit I was into both Guns n' Roses and Poison when I was a kid... but the biggest thing I wonder while watching this movie is... what about the guys old enough to know better? What about all these groupies? Are they all soccer moms now like Goldie Hawn and Susan Sarandon? What about all these failed musicians? I'm thinking this is partly a document of its time but also that of LA. Weirdos, man... weirdos. Anyway, this was funny. I'm not quite sure it was as definitive a portrait as the first one was but whatever... I don't really NEED a definitive portrait of 80s rock... although preceeding this with Heavy Metal Parking Lot would've been perfect... (15 minutes later) Thanks, Google! ahh... well, brief foray into 80s metal over, time for more Glenn Ford!
11.04.06	The Desperadoes	Charles Vidor	Welcome back! Day Two of DVRfest 2006 starts with a Randolph Scott western that's really more of a Glenn Ford western. Scott still got top billing but it's pretty clear that Ford is the rising star here and he's pretty good as a good-hearted bad man who comes into town for a bank robbery that went ahead without him. Scott plays the town sheriff. I thought it'd be a good idea to start the night with one of these old-hollywood technicolor westerns. I didn't particularly love this movie but didn't really hate it either. Most of all I just got the sense of watching a saturday afternoon matinee with stampedes and gunfights and sappy romance and saloon brawls and whatnot. Plus I'll see Ford in a movie I remember liking a lot a bit later on tonight. For now though, this is a good hors d'oeuvre. There was a pretty cool shot of a herd of horse all reacting to an explosion at the same time and starting a stampede. Never see that nowadays.
11.03.06	The Quatermass Xperiment	Val Guest	Wow. I'm surprised at how similar this is to The Thing. Actually, this is pretty much The Thing from Another World meets The Astronaut's Wife with a smidge of The Blob thrown in for good measure, set in London rather than the north pole. Brian Donlevy plays a rocket scientist who's just sent a mission into unknown reaches of outer space. The rocket ship crash lands in a field and only one man is left alive... but he's weird. It becomes sort of obvious that he's been alien'd as he starts to suck blood out of people to thrive. Eventually, he becomes more of a blob-like creature, leaving giant snail trails all over London. In the end, just as they did last movie, we prove that electricity is badass but this time Science prevails as we see Donlevy walk away from the newly-slane beast to announce that he's trying again. "The End" splashes against a shot of another rocket ship taking off. Donlevy actually gives the Thing scientist a run for his money on the crazed Science stuff. At one point he says "There's no room for personal feelings in Science!" which made me chuckle. I always think of Mr. Wizard or Bill Nye the science guy whenever I hear a line like that. I want to bring up my fist with my index finger pointed toward the sky any time someone talks about advances, uses, merits, or importance of Science. That's a big part of what makes these movies enjoyable for me. So... movie-wise, this is not as good as The Thing. It's got a perhaps-typical british thing about it where it's a tad slower pace, the talking seems much more radio-play-y with people just standing there delivering their lines, and the gore or shocks or whatever should be in there to really deliver to the crowds are never quite as effective as they should be. Eh, whatever. It made a pretty cool double feature with The Thing and filled my first night out nicely. So one night of movies down, two to go! Tomorrow brings another wide array of movies to my eyes, all just 13 hours away. I can't wait!
11.03.06	The Thing from Another World	Christian Nyby	Watch the skies! Keep watching the skies! My favorite thing about this movie, aside from the monster being a big vegetable, is the main scientist dude. I haven't seen a more aggressive characterization of the public take on atomic-age science in any sci-fi of the 50s. This guy is SO pro-science it's just funny. Actually, a great sequel would've been that his little farm of thing-pods hooked up to the blood plasma somehow survives and a whole army of "thing"s rampage. But anyway, it's a really really great moment right at the end when they're about to zap the monster and the lights go out. Thanks, Mr. scientist. Asshole. That scene, like every other in this movie, plays on fast forward. I think a major reason why this movie still works today is how quick it is. If you think about it while you're watching, nearly every scene has at least four people, all taking part in conversation. The result is barely any time spent without dialogue or action. It speeds right along from beginning to end, a real ride of a film that's still fun today. So that makes three movies in a row that I've seen before. Time for a change. I know absolutely nothing about this next movie other than that the spelling of the title makes it sound like a sci-fi movie: The Quartermass Xperiment!
11.03.06	Brain Dead	Adam Simon	I keep confusing my incredibly hazy memory of this movie with another movie which I haven't seen called Brain Damage. Since this, the director did a fun Corman movie called Carnosaur and a couple really interesting docs (one on Sam Fuller, another on 70s horror movies). This is one of those movies where you're never quite sure if what you're watching is a dream or reality. Usually these movies end up boring me because at some point I stop caring. With this one though, since it flip flops so early on and there are so many flip flops, it's kind of like I never care so that frees me to enjoy it as more of a meditation on reality itself and not so much what's going on with these characters. In addition to Pullman and Paxton, there's a really great performance in here by Bud Cort as a crazy mathematician. With his big round head, seeing his exposed brain with his head in one of those big vices is pretty sweet. Also, George Kennedy shows up wearing thick 80s glasses. odd. I think I still like this. It's pretty short, which is nice for a movie like this. But also just because of a few images which have proven to stick with me since whenever I saw this before, had to be like 14 or 15 years ago now. It's this constant sight of brains... brains in jars, plastic brains on desks, diagrams of brains, exposed brains in heads, brains brain brains! And the "climax" of the movie, which is a visual that's stuck with me vividly, is still pretty damn cool. (SPOILER: Bill Pullman pulls open his brain surgery stitches and there's butterflies inside his head). whew. trippy. Now I'm perfectly primed for tonights midnight sci-fi double feature!
11.03.06	The Naked City	Jules Dassin	Since I knew that Sunrise dealt, at least in some way, with "the city" I figured this would make a great refresher to rejuvinate my spirit. This is the movie that spawned the TV show and also stodd as one of the first "docu-noirs" that shades noirish crime tales with authoritarian near-documentary tone and process. TONS of NYC location shooting, all authentic look and feel, and a good ol' fashioned crime mystery. There are 8 million stories in the Naked City. This is one of them. I'd actually seen this a long time ago. Since then though, I've been turned on to Dassin's other works (Rififi, Night and the City), and I have to say his eye for location, wherever he is, is pretty sweet. This one has tons of late 40s New York scenery... I'd really love if someone did a shot for shot remake of this today just to see how much the city's changed and how much it's stayed the same. Of course, seen with today's eyes this is your basic episode of CSI:NY... but you have to respect the change of pace for back in its day. The film's narrated by the producer, who introduces the movies and the stars at the beginning and throws in running commentary as the movie progresses. There's great use of a truly omniscient point of view here, occasionally even dipping into random people's heads to hear a line or two of their thoughts as voice-over. The camera goes all over the city, picking up our cops and shady characters and whatnot as they become worth watching, filling in backstory whenever we need it, and showing the passage of time and the story's context in the lives of everyone else. For a prototype of today's police procedurals, you can't really do much better. I really like this movie. I've never seen any of the TV show though... I wonder if they're anywhere near as good. So now that the sun's down it's time to move on to a movie I've found myself wanting to see over the past several months. It was on randomly last night and therefore became a late addition to the schedule... a movie starring Bill Pullman and Pill Paxton, having plenty to do with brains... meandering coiveover people... random thoughts
11.03.06	Sunrise	F. W. Murnau	This is the one film on the schedule that I'm not really looking forward to. In some respects, this whole weekend is an excuse to force myself to sit down and watch this movie. It's one of those basic "classics" that I feel I should watch at least once to say that I've seen it, blah blah blah... but I'm really not that interested in it. So now that my gullet is wet down with Code 46, time to swallow the pill. Gotta do it or I'll never get to the next course, which is a real treat! Here I go... whew. well at least that's over. Some of the visual stuff going on, particularly in the beginning, is interesting when you think about what all it took to do that in the camera back in those days but mostly... it was sloooow. I must admit to entertaining myself by adding my own dialogue to what was on screen but even with that, by the end I was just saying "the end" over and over for like the last fifteen minutes. Great, though. Now I've seen this and know what it is and never have to watch it again. Moving on.
11.03.06	Code 46	Michael Winterbottom	Since I'll be visiting the folks next weekend, the official celebration of two years of near-daily journal updates starts right now! DVRfest 2006! I've got a full selection lined up and printed out right here next to me and I am excited! I've got nearly twice the number of films as I had last year, plus with the extra foresight I think I've planned some pretty interesting double features and overall themes throughout the weekend. While I'd only seen 2 of the 10 movies I watched last year, this year I've seen 5... but it's been a long time since I've seen any of them and I believe I've only seen each one once before so it's still a whole weekend of mostly-new movies for me. I have to say... this is about as close as I want to come to actually programming festivals, not having to put up with dealing with distributors, trying to get special guests, ticket sales, or any of that crap. I am still getting a rush though of picking out all these movies as they come on and thinking "this would be great for DVRfest." If you're bored or interested, feel free to follow along all weekend (updates should start around 6pm CST each night) as I make journal entries after each film! Here we go! The opening film of the fest is Code 46. It's a movie I put off seeing because the trailers seemed to give the entire story away and I didn't need to see Samantha Morton playing a mildly less-annoying version of her Minority Report character. Since then though, I've kind of become converted to the church of Winterbottom so... call me curious. SHAVED! This movie is gorgeous. They managed to create a futuristic city that's realistic and subtle but also believably advanced. I have a few irks with a lot of science fiction and this is what they are: I hate when the world they're presenting is more interesting than the story they're telling. I also hate when they spend all this time to set up a system of the way things work in the future just to break or change that system by the end. Both of these pitfalls are pretty common in what I see... I think this movie avoids both of them. Although, it's pretty clear to me that I'd like this movie much more if I liked Samantha Morton. Just, for whatever reason... I don't like her. She looks like a teenage boy with boobs... something's just off there that tickles me the wrong way so, acting talent aside, I don't like looking at her (especially with her short short hair in this movie). Especially since everything else in this movie is so beautiful (ok, maybe not everything... but the architecture and lighting and location and scenery sure are), I feel like this movie REALLY wants me to think Morton's hot to buy the whole story and I just don't. The weakest link here is buying that Tim Robbins would fall so head over heels for her. The way the story develops however, proved different enough that I wasn't bored actively distracted by all the cool little this-is-the-future touches (like Minority Report). Most importantly though... the ending. It's a total 1984 ending and I love it. It makes it an everyday story that just happens to be set in the future instead of some forced epic shoving some message down my throat. Really happily surprised by the ending. The music's great too. So... great! Off to a good start. Next!
11.02.06	Never So Few	John Sturges	Filling out a Steve McQueen box set... it's kinda funny why this is included. I guess it's an early role for him but he's kinda barely in it. Mostly, It's Frank Sinatra acting tough while on various forms of leave from a ragtag small-numbers unit fighting japs in the early years of WWII. Along with Sinatra and McQueen is Peter Lawford, who I really only know as "the other guy" in the rat pack, and Charlie Bronson as a tough-guy Navajo. heh. Oh, and since it's a Sinatra movie, he has to fall in love and make out with a hot lady, in this case Gina Lollobrigida. But you know, last name aside I really don't get why she's such a vixen. Accent? Cleavage? probably the cleavage. Maybe it's because I'm used to today where sex saturates everything but all these exotic foreign women of this time: Lollobrigida, Sophia Loren, Leslie Caron, Brigitte Bardot... I just don't get why any of them are hot. Well ok... I totally get why Brigitte Bardot is hot, but the rest of them... whatever. anyway, this was ok. kinda long, sort of episodic, very Sturges-ian(??) with the nice location photography and everything but all the big dialogue-y scenes invariably take place on some stage somewhere where everyone's very comfortable and just made up to look grungy. I guess that's how all war movies were back then though. anyway, constant readers may have noticed that my notes have been fairly brief since AFF ended. Part of that was note-writing burnout, part of it was the movies themselves, and a third was that I was saving up for this weekend. Longtime readers/friends may remember that last year, to commemorate the anniversary of starting this site, I threw myself an impromptu film festival to clear out the movies I had on my cable digital video recorder, calling it DVRfest. Well, I've decided to continue the tradition with the second annual DVRfest this weekend! The attendance was about to double this year but, with my lingering cold making my apartment a den of contagion, it looks like the fest will once again be a one-man affair. Nevertheless, with the added foresight I've managed to put together a 3-day extravaganza of movies, most of which I've never seen. So I invite those interested in reading about my little adventure to follow along all weekend!
11.01.06	Talk Radio	Oliver Stone	Filling in the blanks on Oliver Stone's oevre... I think what I remember most about this movie is some sort of parody... maybe The Ben Still Show, maybe SNL. Not sure... anyway, aside from John C. McGinley and Bob Richardson this movie was pretty much exactly what I thought it would be: a monologue-fueled social statement on Howard Stern and... crazy people or something. I guess if you are a big Eric Bogosian fan then this is right up your alley but... it was a bit much for me.
11.01.06	Mighty Joe Young	Ernest B. Shoedsack	rounding out the King Kong boxset sitting on my to-watch shelf for months and months... no notes on this other than to say I'm about done with giant gorillas for a time.
10.31.06	Bedlam	Mark Robson	one more... another Karloff treat. This time he plays the warden of an Eighteenth-century London looney bin, and not some socially-consciouss Girl, Interrupted looney bin either... a hardcore truth-doesn't-matter 40s version of olden-times London shithouse rat boobie hatch complete with cages, whips & chains, and google-eyed crazies. Animals, without souls... treated for amusement by others. Harsh. Halloween-awesome though. Karloff plays nice to the aristocrats but takes out every cruel whim on his locked-up lunatics. After Cat People, I Walked With A Zombie, and The Body Snatcher, I think this is my favorite movie of this box set, which is cool because I saved it for last. Not a particularly rambunctious Halloween this year but I think I watched some suitable movies given my mood and energy levels... only 365 days till next Halloween!
10.31.06	Isle of the Dead	Mark Robson	Karloff!!! The Plague!!!! Premature Burial!!!!! KARLOFF!!!!! At least there's an isle in this, and some dead. yay for non-misleading titles. Some people get stuck in a place when plague breaks out and they do a self-quarantine and sit around talking about faith and whatnot while they drop like flies. Karloff plays a tough-man army general nicknamed The Watchdog because he obeys the laws so carefully that he's not averse to kill his own countrymen for breaking it. Plus there's some greek mythology thrown in for good measure and talk of old races and ancient blood. gothic. dark. halloweeny. lots of shots of Karloff's crazy eyes... ooooOOooooh
10.31.06	The Ghost Ship	Mark Robson	Again, this isn't so much about a haunted Ghost Ship as a tense thriller about perfectly un-super-natural people. A new 3rd officer thinks his captain's a homicidal maniac so the crew turns on him. I thought the Ghost Ship that came out a few years ago was at least a loose remake of this but it's totally not. There's no mass decapitation intro or anything. There is a creepy mute guy with random interior monologues though. This has a few things going for it, including an early but no less surly appearance by Lawrence Tierney, but I am more of a fan of horror movies that are actually horror movies and not military thrillers with "ghost" in the title.
10.31.06	The Leopard Man	Jacques Tourneur	castanets go clickety clack. This one is not so much really about a Leopard Man per se... A real leopard (that looks like a panther but what do I know) gets out and kills someone then a whole rash of leopard-like killings take place. Is it really the leopard turned cold-blooded manhunter or is it some crazy dude acting as a copy cat???? The thing I like about this movie is how much gypsy voodoo type stuff is here. Tourneur seems pre-occupied with this a bit... but still the brand of scarier-when-you-don't-see-it horror is pretty effective here.
10.31.06	The Curse of the Cat People	Gunther von Fritsch, Robert Wise	this one's more of a ghost story than a... Cat Person... story. Kind of like minutes 15-45 of The Exorcist stretched into a whole movie, or a much better version of Hide and Seek. Pesky cat people... cursing and whatnot. ahhhh.
10.31.06	The Seventh Victim	Mark Robson	So it's Halloween... and I'm sick. I have a ticket for Night of the Living Dead tonight with live creepy music by an all-zombie string quartet, but I'm not sure I'm so hot on going out tonight, especially if it means contaminating a whole theater full of people... so I may just stay in and watch Val Lewton movies instead. This one is kind of half-mystery almost, except it deals with 40s-era satan worshippers. They are really quite polite and well-spoken. they even have a pesky non-violence pact that seems to get in the way of their other law to kill whoever breaks a third rule of secrecy. Lots of rules to be a satan worshipper back then I guess. But I guess their very white collar-ness is what makes it creepy... they could be any one of us!?!? But the whole movie is kind of oppresively obssessed with death, which makes it all the more atmospheric and moody. Plus it's got a shower scene that pre-dates Psycho by like 20 years! crazy.
10.30.06	I Love Your Work	Adam Goldberg	this is a weird movie.
10.30.06	Hillbillys in a Haunted House	Jean Yarbrough	you know... I think every movie should end with a 15-minutecountry and western concert program. Exactly what I need after the story ends... 6 random country songs. So this gets a thumb's up from me because of two things: 1) the gorilla. 2) Jeepers... who's just weird and sings a song at the end in a way that's hilarious. Other than that, this is the type of movie that other movies reference when they talk about how bad some movies are. Total b-picture no-budget second-bill runner-up type stuff. It's kind of fun though, like when the main guy has to play his guitar to prove that he's an entertainer and not a spy... pretty horrible stuff but fun in its own laughing-AT-it way.
10.29.06	Society	Brian Yuzna	Wow. I guess the rich ARE different.
10.29.06	The Notorious Bettie Page	Mary Harron	Gretchen Mol is hot. Really really hot.
10.28.06	Kill Baby, Kill!	Mario Bava	Gothic Italian horror from the maestro himself... This is one of those films just screaming to be played late-nite saturday on a cable horror show... if they still had late-night saturday horror shows. Anyway, it's in these ruins, people in villager clothes, lots of cobwebs... The ending had a few pretty cool trippy moments but it's a tad slow up till then. It's ok though... the atmosphere is fun in that 60s technicolor horror way.
10.28.06	The Nightmare Before Christmas	Henry Selick	Seeing this in the new Disney 3D (which is great). they played an early Pixar short (the one with the snowman trying to get out of his snowglobe) in newly-rendered 3D as well. The short had great 3D, the film was much more subtle. I actually had to take the glasses off at first to make sure I was seeing 3D at all. I don't know if that's just how the process works or if it's the controlled color pallette of this particular film or what, but the 3d was definitely pretty subtle. It still looked good though and since I haven't seen this movie since its original theatrical run, I figured it was time to see it again. I remember now why I wasn't so hot on this the first time around. I'll probably have that damn "this is Halloween" song in my head for a month. argh. Actually... I still think there's too much singing in it, for me at least. the design is good though and the animation, story, all that stuff. There's really no reason why I shouldn't like this movie more than I do... something about it keeps me just shy of really loving it though. who knows what.
10.28.06	Little Dieter Needs to Fly	Werner Herzog	The doco side to Herzog's tale of Viet Nam pilot Dieter Dengler. This makes a great afterward to Rescue Dawn. I got to see what the real Dieter looked like, hear him recount all the stuff I just saw Christian Bale go through, and get my fix of Herzog voiceover. Good movie.
10.27.06	Point Break	Kathryn Bigelow	I wanted to watch a movie I didn't have to think about or make any notes on. This did nicely.
10.26.06	Satan's Cheerleaders	Greydon Clark	Despite an ominous amount of red lights, I made it down to South Lamar just in time to catch this, hopefully flushing out a festival's worth of films in one late-70s funfest. Well, kind of. In his extended intro, Zack let us all know that some previous owner of this print saw fit to snip one frame out whenever the various cheerleaders showed their undies. Man, what a pervy projectionist! You know those were getting spliced into Disney films a la Fight Club... or maybe he just had a scrapbook of girls' asses... who knows. Anyway, for the first 20 minutes of this movie, there's no satan. It's all cheerleaders and no satan... but then the satan part gets going in the form of a school custodian peeping tom with a sequined work shirt. I seriously love that guy's shirt. So by the end it's actually all satan and no cheerleader... but it's still fun. Well, it's all fun except for the 18-minute sequence soundtracked by this repetitive satanic chant... man talk about a pace-killer. But other than that it's fun. The sheriff/high priest is named B.L. Bubb and he's pretty funny because he hates his wife. He's always like "damn it, woman! don't sic our pet hounds of hell (named Diablo and Lucifer) on them! we need them alive!" and at one point actually says "women. you marry them, make them your high priestess, and get nothing but trouble." All of this under a bed of pretty awesome disco music. Not satanic cheerleader disco music or anything themed to the movie at all but just honest-to-goodness hip-hustling disco music. My favorite song was "who you gonna love tonight"... very catchy (who you gonna love!? who you gonna love toniiiiight). And so there's cheerleaders and satanists and they do some stuff and at the end it all becomes clear why this is all happening: satan loves football. Can't ask for a much better thursday night... hail satan!
10.26.06	Nightmare Detective	Shinya Tsukamoto	For the last film of the fest, I decided to fit this recently-announced film in before Terror Thursday. I think this screening was hurt by the venue. IMAX is great for IMAX films, but for blow-ups of Japanese Horror movies, especially those of Shinya Tsukamoto, it's dangerous. In this case, there was so much goddamned shaking and handheld photography that I was noxious by the end, having to close my eyes every minute or so to keep my head on straight. It doesn't help that the whole movie depends on that shakycam barely-see-whatever's-there "technique" to bring any sort of horror... something I hate even on my crappy small TV at home. The story is about... I guess some guy is getting into other people's dreams and killing them, making it look like suicide. So this psychic is brought in to help. Except the psychic's not in most of the movie. They bring him in at the very end. Before that it's just cops looking at crime scenes and the same thing happening three or four times in a row. It's a shame too. If they'd only seen other movies Shinya Tsukamoto's been in they could've just looked for him and assumed he's the weirdo killer. I'm not a real specialist when it comes to Japanese horror, but I know I have seen like 5 movies with him either acting or acting and directing and in every one he plays the villain. I'd think by now he'd be on the quick-dial for cops. "ooh someone died in a weirdo freaky potentially-supernatural way, it's time to call Tsukamoto." I guess since this is his movie he gets to pretend like everyone doesn't already know it's him and has to, you know, find out at the end in some vague explanation that makes no sense. Great. So lots of people walked out of this one. I'm not sure if it was due to boredom or nausea though. It also had 15 endings... but I think that's because time was running out to get to Terror Thursday so I just wanted it to end. So that's the festival. Biggest highlight was probably Rescue Dawn and Tenacious D. Biggest grumble was the ongoing and consistent projection issues with nearly every film I saw. But oh well.
10.26.06	Tenacious D in 'The Pick of Destiny'	Liam Lynch	Closing night at AFF: Tenacious D. Unfortunately we got no JB in person but there was a pretty decent crowd, all of us anxious to see this film. The lights go down and animated caricatures of Jack Black and Kyle Gass walk on screen. Gass burns a fatty, swallows a bean & cheese burrito, and proceeds to fart around the theater in surroundsound. a large metallic THC springs up with the tagline: "The audience is baking." From there, we launch into an amazing musical introduction where several stars of the universe align to let you know that this movie is tons of fun. The kid they got to play young JB is, well could be illegitimately his. JB's dad, the posters on his wall, who he prays to, everything. This introduction truly rocks your socks off. And the best thing about the introduction is that it isn't the best thing in the movie. The film stays at this level of intense rock-tacular hilarity until an equally-rock-tastic musical finale that blows your socks off again! Really. Supranatural levels of fun. The trailers on this one are extremely deceiving. Apparently the marketing people want you to think that this is watered-down D, a D incapable of rising above nutcracker and powerslide jokes. Those marketing people are wrong. This movie is 110% D. It's literally impossible to make this movie any more Tenacious D. It kind of borrows from the old HBO shorts, some of their best songs, and fills in a whole bunch of blanks in perfect ways. As just a casual fan of their music, I believe this is the best they've ever been. Watching them is more fun than listening to them for me but when you can do both... shit. Also, be sure to stay for the credits. It's not a X3 level of revelation/plot cancellation but there is a funny gag worth staying for.
10.26.06	Cloak & Dagger	Richard Franklin	Surprisingly Hitchcockian! I haven't seen this in a long time but used to love it when I was a kid... I guess what boy didn't, right? Well it's still 80s goofy and it's still kind of creepy if you think about it - these guys running around trying to kill a kid - and the message of all old people being evil is a bit... weird, but hey all in good fun I guess. I think my big surprise here was seeing WIlliam Forsythe playing an uber-computer nerd who has coke-bottle glasses and writes video games. Considering how tough-guy he is nowadays, it's funny to think of him back then... actually, it's not too long after this that he did Raising Arizona, huh! I think the cosmos is telling me to see that movie again.
10.25.06	Vampire Hookers	Cirio H. Santiago	Whew... time for a breath of fresh air. First time all week (probably thanks to the rain) that I had no traffic and an easy time finding parking... it's funny how something like that can wear you down when you do it every day. I found myself cursing all manner of special activities going on downtown this week just because it meant I had to drive around forever looking for a damn parking space. Anyway... Vampire Hookers! John Carradine's gnarled knuckly hands! Great theme song! 20 minute sex montage! The guy that played Nathan Arizona as a sailor whose afraid of graveyards! Easily my favorite part of this movie is Vic Diaz who plays a ghoul names Pavo. He wants to be a vampire but doesn't like the bloody marys, preferring to smell his own farts instead. ahh classic. good stuff.
10.25.06	American Stag	Benjamin Meade	This documentary about stag films got off to a somewhat controversial note when filmmaker Ben Meade told his story of submitting to South by Southwest and getting rejected. They cited his film as pornography, which made him wonder if they'd even bothered to watch it. After sxsw offered to take another look at the film, Meade decided to go to the press instead, insisting that the festival did not watch the films that filmmakers paid money to submit. So this didn't play at south by. Instead, AFF asked to play it so he flew out here on his own dime to support the festival. And while I wouldn't call the film itself pornography, it's definitely ABOUT porn and offers plenty of chances to see some vintage full-frontal female bodies. He seems to draw the line at the male member, always cutting right before her hand takes it out of his pants or it enters the frame or whatever, but large portions of the film are these clips from stag films... so I'm not so sure the whole sxsw thing had a clear right and wrong to it, but hey... if they can play a doc on the word "fuck" then they can play a doc on stag films, right? The fact that Fuck was better than this might also have something to do with it. Anyway, in addition to the numerous clips (obtained over a year thanks to ebay and craigslist according to the director and his wife), Meade also interviews several experts in the field (including Film Threat's Chris Gore) and a few professional personalities like Adam Corolla, Tommy Chong, and Melvin Van Peebles. They cover the baseline facts of the genre (1700 of them made, died when porn theaters and video started) and talk about several celebs who supposedly appear (Babra Streisand, Marylin Monroe, Jayne Masnfield, Joan Crawfod) and Meade does an admirable job in showing the film in question, making a little game out of it whether you think that's actually her or not. Overall, the movie is marginally interesting if you're a pervert like me. Apparently this was just picked up by Bravo, and that fits. This would make a decent diversion on TV some night for sure. The director though... something was odd about him. He came out and started giving us lessons on how to make independant film or something... telling us to pick subjects that would be interesting to other people like getting screwed out of car insurance money, and to always support film festivals because lots of times those are the only places to see these movies in a theater. Where all that stuff came from I'm not sure. I think he maybe thought he was somewhere else... like his panel got cancelled or something. It was a little odd to me. Oh well.
10.25.06	Special	Hal Haberman, Jeremy Passmore	Special is a little story about a meter maid (Michael Rappaport) who enrolls in an experimental drug program that supposedly boosts your self-confidence. At first this sounds awfully familiar to School for Scoundrels, but pretty quickly becomes much more like Unbreakable or Mystery Men when we see that he slowly develops super powers. Well, sort of. Actually he's having a psychotic reaction to the medication. While my initial impression was that the movie would have been much more entertaining if he actually did have the power to float 6 inches off the ground, the tone of the film eventually won me over. Although there is some humor early on (such as when he believes he can run through walls but actually just smacks into them), the film takes a dramatic turn and ends up pretty heavy. Rappaport does an excellent job of making us feel for his mixed-up character; he makes us wish he really had powers as much as he does. It ends a little sad, a little harsh, but also a little uplifting. While Special wasn't anything like the movie I thought it would be, it still proved to be just as charming and effective a film as I had hoped. It's kind of a small film - in a minor key let's say - but good nonetheless.
10.25.06	Wisconsin Death Trip	James Marsh	I was under the impression that this one small town in rural Wisconsin had some sort of freak rash of deaths and killings and whatnot, like it's a special occurance and that's why there was the book and movie... and maybe it is but from what I get out of the movie it's more like just a random town picked to showcase the way it was back in 1890. I mean, there are murders and suicides and insanity now, what's to mean it was any different back then? I don't know... maybe I'm missing it and the true story is the whole town died out or something but it seemed to me it's just a collection of news stories about people dying. oh well.
10.24.06	Marie Antoinette	Sofia Coppola	Watching this movie felt like a trip to the museum. I looked at pretty pictures on a wall of scenes from some sort of historical place and time but ultimately walked away not really engaged or interested or whatever... just pretty pictures on a wall. The acting wasn't bad, everything was very pretty, but that's it. We got to see Dunst's nipples through a thin veil of nightgown so that's cool, and Jason Schwartzman was funny. that's about it.
10.24.06	Comeback Season	Bruce McCulloch	I guess Bruce McCulloch got tired of being funny and decided to write and direct a romantic comedy about a guy who loses the girl and tries to get her back. I don't know where he came up with that idea but it's a good one! in fact, they should make about 300 movies just like this one! oh wait, they already have. Ray Liotta plays a businessman who sleeps with his assistant. In the midst of an anniversary dinner (just after his daughter accepts her boyfriend's marriage proposal), Liotta's conscience gets the best of him and he confesses. He gets thrown out, has a series of unfortunate events, and winds up in jail. Meanwhile, this high school football player gets injured, and also winds up in jail. So through some plot contrivances too shameful to get into, Liotta and this football guy ends up living together. Liotta tries to get his family back, but his wife and daughters both hate him, take away all his money, give all his furniture and clothes away, and refuse to talk to him. HIlarious, right? Actually, this movie must be made for 13 year old girls because, from my perspective, all these women are bitches. Hateful spiteful bitches. Especially the daughters, man. Not only do they drain all of Liotta's accounts but they also ask him to dip into his retirement fun to pay for the wedding that he's not allowed to go to. I guess all of this harshness would be justified (you know, because he slept with another woman) but at the end both daughters turn on their mother, saying it was just as much her fault as his. huh? There's also a b-story with the younger daughter and the football guy that I don't even want to get into. Actually, I've spent enough time talking about this movie as it is. It's like a TV version of a poorly-done knock-off of a mediocre romantic comedy. sigh...
10.23.06	Sleeping Dogs Lie	Bobcat Goldthwait	Well the weekend's over, the LA people are gone... now it's just us festival-goers getting to see Bobcat Goldthwait's new film. It's a dark comedy about a girl and her family and her relationships and whatnot, dealing with the subject of honesty and how even though everyone says it's great to be brutally honest with one another, some things are better left unspoken. What would the best way be to examine this idea? Why, bestiality of course! In college, this girl blows her dog. It happens right at the beginning of the movie and is just there in your mind forever. They don't show it or anything - it's not like the actress actually does any blowing - but it's definitely part of the story and serves pretty well as a secret so dark and disgusting that she doesn't want to tell even the closest people in her life about it. From there, the movie is a bit like Meet the Parents but with way bigger balls. Instead of having a pot-smoking hip-hop-listening brother, this girl has a meth-smoking paint-huffing brother. The fiance is there to ask the girl's dad's blessing to marry, he's straight-laced and thinks she's perfect... they unsuccessfully try to have sex in her parents' house, etc. Except in the beginning of the movie... SHE BLOWS A DOG. so that makes everything funny. Eventually, we learn some disgusting truths about other family members... Roy Orbison gets mentioned, the phrase "shoot the cookie" gets said, Elvis may be involved in some way... generally, the first half of the film is very funny. Then the cat (or in this case the dog) gets let out of the bag and the movie has a real serious turn (I was reminded of Jodie Foster's Home for the Holidays in that way) and there is some genuinely emotional relationship-y stuff that goes on... a death in the family even so it gets downright sad in parts. And then funny again at the end. Bobcat was there to intro and Q&A the film which was great. He told a little story about seeing this with an audience and seeing this woman who was getting up to leave at the beginning and her friend talked her into staying... then later on in the film Bobcat's daughter leans over and whispers for him to look at the woman, who is now crying. "yeah, you cry, bitch" she says. I don't know Bobcat Goldthwait's daughter's name or anything about her, but that story alone puts her in my cool book. He also said that the film cost 40 grand, was written in 3 days, shot in 16 (mostly with crew found on craigslist made up of underage students), completely without permits (in fact, he broke into some random person's garage to shoot one scene, telling the crew to be quiet tonight because "it's a heavy scene for the actors"). When asked for his inspiration, he said "my dog is really hot." ALso funny, he said he auditioned actors for the meth-smoking brother and, oddly enough, most of the actors would turn into werewolves after taking a hit... like that's how they thought meth addicts acted or something. funny. So yeah, this was good. It was funny then sad. Pretty good for a dog blowjob movie.
10.22.06	The Prestige	Christopher Nolan	After Rescue Dawn, we couldn't help ourselves but to make it into a Christian Bale double feature by seeing this. Um, I guess there'll be spoilers below... so if you are reading and you aren't me and you haven't seen it and don't want it spoiled, just know that I liked it. ok... so yeah, it's about obsession mainly... but here's what I liked about it. -I liked that both of the main characters are not particularly likable. As their contest of one-upsmanship escalates, I found myself constantly guaging which was the more antagonistic. What's funny is that, by the end, I had pretty much decided that Hugh Jackman's character was closest to "the bad guy" just to have one of my friends say that he thought Christian Bale was the bad guy. And yet, for a movie about two unlikable people, it's still very watchable. Sure a lot of that is to do with figuring out what's going on, and we watch because we're waiting for the next reveal, but still. Both men are very good actors and much of this movie deals in character so I found it cool that it wasn't clear at all which one we should be rooting for. -I like that Scarlett Johansson played a magician's assistant because that meant that she'd be wearing cleavage-enhancing corsets and short skirts and trampy stockings in every scene... which is nice. -I LOVE that the movie isn't afraid to leave the realm of authenticity and veer just a bit into science fiction. It's also what I liked most in a trilogy of historical novels written by once-sci-fi-king Neal Stephenson... just a touch of the unreal or fantastic goes a long way in changing the overall tone and possibilities of a movie. To that end, David Bowie and Andy Serkis also give good performances. However, a movie like this is engineered to be a magic trick in itself... so when they more or less give away both of the big twists before the ending, I was left wondering if I had missed anything with the movie's last shot. It's like saying "Ta-Da!" 15 minutes after the trick when you've already explained it and your audience already gets it. Maybe not though... I heard some people around me whisper "holy shit!" on that moment... and I hate it when people say they figured it out right from the beginning so I'll stop talking about the ending. Overall, I liked this movie, probably as much as Rescue Dawn but for completely different reasons. It's definitely quality, and I'll have to wait for the repeat viewings to see what stays with me. This, together with The Fountain, didn't seem to mind leaving a few things open for discussion though, which I really appreciate. It's so refreshing to not have a movie treat me like I'm 6.
10.22.06	Rescue Dawn	Werner Herzog	The last day of the screenwriter's conference here at AFF also brings the "centerpiece" film of the festival: Werner Herzog's dramatization of his earlier doc Little Dieter Needs to Fly. Not only is it new narrative Herzog, but it's Herzog back in the jungle. Next to that, I don't care about any controversial Death of a President movie, even if it is screening at the Texas State History Museum. Christian Bale plays Dieter, a pilot who gets shot down on a secret bombing mission over Laos and has to survive. It's really Bale's movie but the supporting cast is filled out with Steve Zahn, Jeremy Davies, and a handful of familiar faces (including the guy who played Andy the small pox'd preacher in Deadwood and the guy who played Stumpy in Carnivale). Davies' anorexic physique is showed off and Zahn wins the beard contest for sure though, leaving Bale's transforming weight much less of a showcase than in The Machinist. They are all definitely troopers though... dunking their heads in dirty jungle rivers, getting down in the muck, and even letting real leeches suck on them in one scene. It all looks very real and very jungly and somewhere where I really wouldn't want to be, whether it's for real or just to make a movie. Surprisng to me though, this is Herzog's most commercial movie to date. With the leverage that Grizzly Man gave him, this is a great movie to vault him into mainstream American households... which would be funny since he's like 60 and has already made 50 movies. But even though it's commercial that doesn't mean it's bad. Once again Herzog portrays the jungle itself as a character, showing its voracious and relentless growth, covering and strangling anything in its path. In a few scenes Bale and Zahn machete their way through the bush. Herzog shows this process and its difficulty with real authenticity to potent effect... it's literally like the plants are alive and trying to hold you back. With the constant reminder that Herzog's already done the documentary form of this story - that everything we're seeing actually happened to the real Dieter Dengler - man that guy went through some shit to stay alive. The music is also very effective, perhaps the most "herzog-ian" aspect of the film, with a subtle undercurrent of trembling strings accenting the sounds of the jungle, blooming into fully dramatic score in key moments. Really the only thing this movie is missing is some sort of voice-over from Herzog himself... but I say that about pretty much every movie, whether Herzog's attached to it or not. My favorite scene was probably the one with Zahn and the farmers. It's so crazy and sudden and even though it's not dreamlike at all you still have to ask yourself if that really happened. I guess this movie will get lots of comparisons to The Deer Hunter because of the whole concentration camp angle... and that's valid. But Herzog's take on this somewhat familiar genre stands alone and is pretty great.
10.22.06	Goin to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film	Adam Rockoff	as the name suggests, this is interviews and film clips from the slasher genre. It's a good movie but to be honest I feel like I've written way too many notes lately so I'll leave it at that.
10.21.06	The Return of the Living Dead	Dan O Bannon	It's party time! This was a great event with five(5!!!) members of the cast live in person! Jewel Shepard (Casey), John Philbin (Chuck), Beverly Randolph (Tina), Don Calfa (Ernie), and Ms. must-be-nude-clause-in-her-contract herself, Linnea Quigley! (Trash) were ALL HERE! Freakin amazing! Too bad I'm poor and couldn't afford to pay for anyone's autograph, but just seeing them, hearing them, and creepily sitting behind them to see what they did while watching the movie was enough! My big curiosity was Linnea Quigley... I guess I'm so used to seeing the hardbody 80s version of her constantly-nude body that I was afraid what she'd look like today (very similar to the reason why I'm not seeing the Stones tomorrow night). I needn't have worried though, Linnea looks absolutely fantastic for her age and is still like a size 2. I desperately wanted to ask her about Psycho from Texas but... I thought that'd be too creepy. I mean, I also wanted to ask her to get naked, you know, for old times' sake... but I think that would've led to trouble. So instead I just stood off to the side and geeked out with several other people. ahh, good times. The movie... seeing it again kind of cemented the fact that it's a really solid comedy and an all-around fun time for me. I now have zero shame in saying that I love it, and not in an ironic oh-its-so-80s way either. Afterward in the Q&A, everybody took their turn talking about how much of a bastard Dan O'Bannon was... it was creepy and hilarious at the same time. Then Don enlightened us on how his character was actually taken from a real-life nazi with the same name... and all of the little weird creepy Dan O'Bannonisms that are in the movie and creepy things he did in real life. Everyone was cool and in good spirits and one of them got into this 3-minute laughing fit during the movie that was really funny. Oh and Greg Nicotero sat behind me. I was in a cool celeb sandwhich between him and the cast members, it was great. Really fun time.
10.20.06	Perfume: A Story of a Murderer	Tom Tykwer	So the persons who told me that this movie was good neglected to mention that it was two hours forty minutes long. Whatever. Tom Tykwer's succeeds in making a magical epic creepy fairy tale drama that does everything film can do and a bit more. Maybe it's just the perfume angle but I couldn't help but be reminded (for the second time recently) of the Tom Robbins book Jitterbug Perfume, where the realm of smell is treated with such gravity and power capable enough to control the world. More than that though, the movie's frosted with fantastical elements that give it a whimsy and sense of controlled reality; the difference being this world is pretty dark. Lots of death going on and it's treated very seriously. Luckily enough though, it's usually accompanied by incredibly gorgeous women being nude... so it constantly puts your emotion (well, my emotion at least) in that gray zone between horror and eroticism, without ever really being a horror movie. A big yay for hot naked chicks, even if they are dead. Seriously, the two redheads in this film are beautiful in a way that's incategorible. Both women are the kind of beauty that a part of every man would like to kill just to be able to smell them all over. You may not admit it, but I know you do. but it's also about perfume, which I find kind of a slyly mysterious subject anyway. Like you might not think a movie about perfume would be interesting at all, but think about it for a bit. How did it start? how did they make it? All that old-timey crap... I dunno, I find it interesting. Distilling base oils and whatnot, so it had that going for it as well. But mostly I loved that the movie is really dark even though it sort of shouldn't be. Like, you'd think it's just some chick flick and not a story about a pervert murderer with a really good nose, you know? So I was really taken with this one. Loved it. The next day: All about panels today. I'm seeing Return of the Living Dead tonight and there's no good 7pm slot so I'm only seeing panels today AFF-wise. Since panels aren't movies, let's share some notes in this entry for the entire Saturday of the fest. First up was David Milch's panel which was called showcase or up close and personal or something else that means the same thing: excuse to hear him talk. Milch has probably the most interesting and exterior process of writing that I've heard of, and his personality (a mix between lit teacher and street brawler) makes any sort of anecdote or point that escapes from his lips a treat. A self-admitted sociopath, Milch sat down to talk about his career (or whatever) this morning to an excited crowd. Right when it got going, Ian McShane walked in and sat in the front row. Someone somewhere whispered loudly "it's AL!" To skip forward a bit, McShane was looking for Milch after the third panel of the day and I had a little interchange with him: Mr. McShane (heretofore known as Ian since I'm such huge pals with him now): (to an elderly paramount usher) ...I don't see him, I guess he's not down there. Me (yeah you know it): Are you looking for Mr. Milch? Ian (looking fiercely right at me): Yeah Me (pointing with confidence): He's right down there in front on the side. Ian (having attained peace by knowing me): thanks. To second-degree this tangent, just now as I sat down in the Driskill lobby to write these notes down, Milch and McShane walked by talking about something. Milch suddenly turns around and introduces himself to this guy on a wheelchair (coincidentally the same guy in the wheelchair who got wheeled out of the way at the Pan's Labrynth screening), saying that he saw him at an earlier panel and wanted to say hi. They talk for a bit and Milch says he'd definitely do an interview with him and starts to sit down. Apparently (as I found out three minutes later), he had an interview with Danny Trejo lined up so he couldn't just then, so Milch says he has to catch a plane in an hour so he gives him his phone number and says to call for that interview. So this proves that a) Milch is kind to the handicapped and b) maybe karma isn't just a name of a bar here in town). Anyway, the hour spent listening to Milch was great. He talked about NYPD Blue (and hating David Caruso), his writing method, deadwood, airline urination, his new show John From Cincinnati (the star of which was in attendance, along with Susannah Grant and a someone that looked just like Sheryl Lee... and maybe other celebs too who knows), the Hayes code and how it influenced classic Hollywood westerns, teaching, Saint Paul and his pitch for an HBO Rome show, deadwood's future, how words are electricity, and a pretty sweet acid story involving shooting a shotgun at a cop car. He's not a fast talker but he uses plenty of big words like "exigeses" and "penumbra" and is seemingly full of these obscure quotes that are both short and profound ("facts become articles of commerce") and like a paragraph long. I listen to this guy talk and have no problem believing that he writes every word of every episode of Deadwood. Yet he's funny and self-deprecating as well. Plus he's full of these little sayings that I now want to start using in everyday life, like "that's why they make chocolate and vanilla" instead of the decidedly low-brow, borderline porn saying of "different strokes for different folks." Ice cream comparisons are much cooler. So some little nuggests of info, listed willy nilly: -He describes the thematic question of NYPD Blue as "the illusion of law versus the reality of order." -The two 2-hour tele-movies that will end Deadwood is "the fiction that we're embracing today." He wanted to continue the show much longer, but didn't want to get into the specifics of why that's not happening. -His new show, which is supposed to be like a surfer noir, is also about quantum mechanics. He brought up this idea with islands; about how you think islands are separate but it's really only the water that makes you think that. They are connected with the same earth; the water just gives an illusion of separateness (he somehow related this to all of mankind, something about watching a boxing match and the sound a crowd makes on the first site of blood) -He was various forms of alcoholic, heroin addict, and freon nut for 20 years, only being 8 years sober right now. That puts him loaded up his entire teaching career and much of NYPD, which I find interesting. -His house has a drawer with like 30 broken phones because if his wife isn't home to answer the phone, he'd rather smash it than answer it. Actually that's why he writes the way he does; he can't stand to put his hands on anything like a keyboard or anything because the second he comes into contact with any sort of order, he freaks out. He said that he once spent a year writing the same 12 pages word-for-word every morning. Crazy. So yeah, interesting guy. He spoke more during the third panel of the day but more on that later. The second panel I attended today was with Michael Showalter, Michael Ian Black, and David Wain AKA Stella slash 3 parts of the 11-member group The State, creatively responsible for Wet Hot American Summer, The Baxter, and the upcoming film The Ten. These guys are funny, but you knew that. Since they showed a bunch of Stella shorts last night, MIB came out sporting an Alamo t-shirt (Huzzah). The other two wore significantly less cool shirts of different kind. They played a 15-minute clip reel quickly chronicling their history with clips of theier beginnings in the New Group at NYU, The State on MTV's show You Wrote It, You Watch It (or whatever it's called), The State's own show, The CBS State special, Stella stand-up in NYC, Stella Shorts, Wet Hot American Summer, The Baxter, and Stella on Comedy Central. Yeah... the Stella short they showed most of is a short called Dickfish which is... pretty funny but still fitting with the usual amount of dildo-humor that seems to go on with most Stella stuff. From there, the moderator asked the typical history questions, they went through a detailed account of how they came together and blah blah blah. Lots of interesting stuff, lots of funny stuff. Lots and lots of questions from the audience (like 50 minutes' worth... by the end it was people scrambling to ask anything... they got the dreaded "what do you order at starbucks?"), lots of funny stuff in the interplay between the three guys. Let's see, some of the more interesting bits that I thought to note: -They related a hilariously horrible story about being in a meeting with an incredibly racist CBS executive (named John Pike) who referred to all black people as being from Cracktown and watching late-night comedy because they didn't have to be up in the morning and all this horrible stuff and them mentioning it to this reporter who was doing a big piece on them at the time (apparently that piece is up at the-state.com), hence their short stay at CBS. -Someone asked if they liked working for VH1 on those "I love the __s" shows and Showalter said he really sucked at them because he'd feel like a fraud, like he doesn't miss the slinky at all. He doesn't care about the slinky, it's stupid. He then explained how that show works and gave an example of how he sucks at it and how Ian Black's great at it. He said he was looking at this list of topics he had to talk about and spent a half hour trying to come up with a joke about how he thinks Nick Nolte's mugshot looks, and he's coming up with really wacky bad stuff like a mix between james brown and a vacuum cleaner (I don't actually remember his joke, that was mine) and he's talking to MIB on the phone and he just asks, for the hell of it, what he'd say and Michael Ian Black says "...bad. It looked really really bad." and there you go. -Someone asked for their comedic inspirations and David Wain answered by saying Tati. But he said it in a snobbish French way and it was pretty clear that this AFF audience here on a freakin screenwriting conference about MOVIES didn't know who the hell he was talking about (sigh). So Showalter says "have you seen Mon Oncle?" also pronounced very french (mon onk) and he gets laughs, so he says "Or Le Weekend?" to more laughs. Then he's like "i'm serious, go to the video store and ask if they have Tati's Mon Oncle" to even more laughs. I guess he was saying it "funny" but... it also made me sad. -They also gave us an update on their projects. Wain's movie The Ten looks really funny and Micahel Ian Black has also written and directed a movie, the title of which is certain to change to some undetermined new better thing so he couldn't tell us. He did tell us the political reasons why neither Showalter or Wain would be in it though, which were candidly interesting (he set up with a company that blamed Wain for his earlier movie not getting into Sundance because Wet Hot American Summer did), which was funny because I ran into this guy Fernando who works at the Alamo - hilarious guy - and he told me that he ran into David Wain at a party last night at Ruth's Chris steakhouse. At first he said Wain was a dick and I asked really? and he said "well, I was pretty drunk. I don't remember what I said to him, but he made fun of me." hilarious. All in all, I wish Perfume wasn't playing last night so I could've gone over to the Alamo and saw them talk more with their Stella shorts, I wish Return of the Living Dead wasn't playing tonight so I could've gone over to Emo's and saw the two Michaels' stand-up, but oh well... Since I still don't have the power to control time I'll have to do with seeing these funny funny man-people here on this panel and hearing all sorts of interesting talk about The State and Stella and all that. Oh, on that clip reel it was great to hear the State intro song again... man i used to love that song every week. OK, so the last panel of the day (and the glorious end to this note) was called "Creating Classic Characters" with a panel made up of David Milch, Shane Black, Sydney Pollack, and some moderator guy. They moved this to the paramount because it's such a superstar panel that pretty much everyone with a badge showed up. I guess the topic of these kinds of panels is really just an excuse to get the celebs talking to each other but come on... creating classic characters? oh well... so right off the bat the moderator asks how Milch came up with Sipowicz (his dad), how Shane Black came up with Riggs and Murtaugh (western heros), and how Pollack... well.. something about Out of Africa. Sydney was quick to say that, as a director who's never sat down at a blank page and created any sort of character at all, he didn't really belong here. Buut then he talked anyway (thankfully) and then Milch rang in saying that Pollack saying that was just his particular lie that he tells himself to allow his particular style to happen and they were off and running. It was actually a really great mix of personalities. Most of the time, Black peered out at the audience with a grimace on his face like a hung over demon looking for prey. Milch did a lot of talking that sounded like a lit professor, Black would always be sharp and quick and funny, and although Pollack was silent much of the time, he did speak up occasionally, always with something worth hearing. Talking about Tootsie, Pollack said he turned it down the first few times because he thought it was a one-joke movie... so the way it eventually worked out is that he, Dustin Hoffman, and the writer all sat in a room for a week to really work it all out, and Pollack, not being comfortable hanging a whole movie on just character, needed some sort of spine, so he saw that as his job in that situation... to find the spine. To that Shane adds "yeah, but for you aspiring screenwriters out there, this is Sydney Pollack we're talking about. Normally, you have to find the spine before you give it to him. It sort of is your job!" That's actually how the whole thing went. Pollack would say something inciteful on the director's end, Black would communicate solid notes and lessons directly to the screenwriters out there, and Milch would come in with much more complicated reference-filled notes that end up being really profound... if you can follow them. But then he'd interject a story like how he hated Caruso so much on NYPD that one time he was yelling at him and he had a heart attack, but he hated the guy so much that he didn't want to give him the satisfaction so he pretended like he was fine until the argument ended, then went over to a friend and calmly said "ok, now I need to go to the hospital." A fairly major point that everyone talked about was the use of dialogue and what makes dialogue great. THey kind of each sited a single line that holds tremendous dramatic power that really defines the entire movie for you... talking about what's great is not the line itself but the character and his vocabulary and the situation and how appropriate everything is to the world that's protrayed on screen. So Whether it's some eloquent Shakespearean verbage in the midst of King Lear, or Marlon Brando's blunted frustration in On The Waterfront, they're both great because they fit. Later on, to answer a question about how he wrote the female character in Long Kiss Goodnight, Shane Black told a story about how when he was young his mom had some troubles, borderline suicidal type stuff... so growing up, they always had to be on eggshells because they knew that if they upset her, she might hurt herself. So, on this subconsciouss level, in the movie when someone finally yells at this girl and tells her to calm down (or whatever), what happens directly after that is a guy with a shotgun comes through the door and all hell breaks loose. So, he said "sometimes you don't realize it while you're writing, but all that stuff still comes through. Anyway, there you go." And David Milch launches into this dissertation on how, really, all great dialogue and everything we speak in normal life is the culmination of our entire past projected onto the present. And that works both for in movies and right now... and he proceeds to dissect Shane's story while he listens on and ends up with a really complicated but completely correct deconstruction of his story and how it all added up to the words "anyway, there you go." Milch: "and THAT's dialogue." After a second, everyone started to clap. Including Black and Pollack. So that was interesting. I mean, it was also really funny... it wasn't all that kind of heady stuff... it was actually a really great panel. whew. done.
10.20.06	Catch and Release	Susannah Grant	Susannah Grant's new movie (which she directs as well as writes) stars Jennifer Garner as a newlywed-cum-widow who deals with her fiance's death along with all of her/his friends and whatnot. A thousand nipples and explosions could not make this a male-friendly movie, but you know... I sort of have a soft spot for these sapfests when they're done right and Grant's contribution to In Her Shoes granted me some interest in this. Unfortunately, I think a lot of people were disappointed to learn that Kevin Smith, who acts in the movie (he's the fat non-sexual friend) cancelled his appearance and guearanteed-to-be-entertaining Q&A. We did get an ego boost from Grant though, who said she just finished the movie on Tuesday and that we are the first audience to see this movie, so yay for that. OK, here are the things that made it stand out from every other romantic comedy for me: -It's set in Boulder, Colorado. I'm a general fan of movies that are set in specific locations that are not LA or NYC. It means they actually went somewhere and paid attention to the locations, which mean the movies have a bit more aesthetic identity (like Tao of Steve being in New Mexico or Wonder Boys being in Pittsburgh). Plus I lived in Boulder for a few years when I was a kid so the flatirons in the background were cool to see in a movie. -Timothy Olyphant, presumably because of Deadwood, is now a romantic leading man! He still has to have some of that dangerous 5-day-stubble sexual predator look to him but it's cool that studios think he can carry films now, because he's a good actor. -um... -... So OK it's not a radically out-of-the-box approach to the genre, but hey... how many romantic comedies are? The important point (for you chicks out there) is that it will make you cry because you're sad and then cry again because you're happy. neat. Unfortunately, Austin and/or AFF festivalgoers did not prove themselves incredibly competant during the Q&A afterwards. I've come to expect one or two idiotic questions but come on people... One person asked why one character, in the midst of a little mini-struggle kissed another character instead of headbuttng him. Huh? Maybe they thought they were at the Shane Black screening instead of Susannah Grant. Another person asked what her inspiration was. Someone said the music was good, and the rest were about Kevin Smith. sigh. Surprisingly, I actually did get some info from Grant's answers. Apparently the rough cut of this movie ran three hours long, so lots and lots of material got cut, much of it including back story on Olyphant's character. If you're googling this from the future because you want to know what that lost backstory was, here you go: He starts the movie working for some trashy horror flick (uh huh, because romantic comedies are SO much more honorable) and he gets the news that his friend in Colorado just died so he walks off the set and takes a big powder for the entire movie. So there's lots of stuff with his phone ringing, people trying to figure out where he is and what's happening, lawyers contacting him because it's a big production that he's putting in jeopardy, etc. And the original ending had tons and tons of callbacks to all this stuff (which, after cutting it all out, made no sense) so they actually reshot the ending in a much simpler way that you can probably guess (it involves a beach and the line "what took you so long"). Also, apparently she never writes characters with specific actors in mind. huh. So... more people were here for this than TV Set (cough kevin smith cough), and I guess it wasn't a bad movie but it didn't really give me heat flashes either.
10.20.06	Walking to Werner	Linas Phillips	I started day two of AFF at the Stephen F. Austin Intercontinental hotel (SFA to the pros), where they set up a small screen and put out ballroom chairs, turn the lights off, and call it a theater. I'm too afraid to see movies at The Hideout so I can't know for sure but this sucks for watching movies. Worse than the Convention Center with the plastic fold-up stadium seating. Oh well, I'm trying not to let it get to me. I'm here to see this movie about... well... OK so at some point, German film director/crazy man Werner Herzog decided that instead of flying from (I'm guessing) Berlin to Paris to see his dying friend, he would walk there on foot. And his walking would keep her alive. The cool thing about the story is that Herzog is so crazy that his friend actually lived for the month or whatever that it took him to cross the lush rolling hills of Europe. So this guy Linas Phillips, who is probably just as crazy as Herzog but in a very different way, takes this as... perhaps it's inspiration maybe it's just boredom, and decides to walk from his home in Seattle down to LA (well, Santa Monica, "the same thing" as he says late in the film) to Herzog's home and make a doc of it and call it a spirit quest or... something. Linas starts by contacting a friend of Werner's to get in contact with the man himself. He doesn't hear back immediately however so he decides to start his walk anyway. OK. I'm trying to figure out the best way to present this movie. It's a real success if you count unintentional humor as an asset. I'm so glad the director/subject wasn't in the audience though, because then I would've felt guilty for having such a good time at this movie's expense. So I guess the best way to describe it is just to start. This guy Linas... he's a very prototypical long-haired hippie type. He walks around town holding up a camera shooting himself and gets frustrated by attempting to talk about what he's planning on doing and why. "Argh! I don't want to talk about it!" he screams to himself as he turns in circles on a random street corner, followed momentarily by "this camera is heavy!" He starts his quest with a support staff of a producer who I guess is supposed to line up his hotel reservations and a buddy who drives along for a leg of the journey to shoot him at scenic locations. Mostly though it's just linas walking along highways with a camera in his hand, talking to himself and either going insane or slowly laying out his existing insanity on tape. Pretty quickly he gets a voicemail from Werner saying he just got back in town and he's on his way out to Thailand to shoot a movie (which I'll see Sunday) so good luck on the walk but he won't be home when he gets there. HA! He can't turn around now though, he's already walked like 300 miles or something. So he talks to himself about that, tries to angle flying to Thailand for an interview to end the film with and Herzog says no. This is an awesome movies that I'm so glad I'm watching. Now, as all this is happening it's shot after shot of random roadkill, rainy landscapes, shaky shots of cars driving by him on the road, and his face in a bevy of expressions ranging from pained to frustrated to concerned. They glean excerpts from various DVD commentaries that Herzog's done to try and relate some sort of meaning or profundity to what we're seeing but really it's just a guy walking down a road and not really knowing why he's doing it. Eventually, he runs into the invariably more interesting roadside prophets that probably all deserve docs more than the director and things get interesting in an Americana, crazy-rural-type way... The director is repeatedly mistaken as a woman due to his long blonde hair and soft voice. He goes even more crazy. In one scene he comes upon a heard of cows that approach. He gets all confused because they were so friendly by coming up to him at first but now "it's like I'm a stranger" when they lose interest in him. He just can't figure it out! It vexes him. He's thoroughly vexed. From there it gets even more self-important and bizarre. He interviews a man who admits that he's thoroughly blitzed... the man steals his pen and paper and Linas yells after him "hey, man! That's not cool! I think you're a cool person but that's not cool!" He absolutely goes apeshit when his buddy drives him a few miles down the road because he couldn't find a place to stop. As he's walking back north to make sure his journey is 100% pure, he spews all sorts of nonsensical hate, including the incredibly amazing observation that "you cannot push yourself into the future with your feet!" But you know... isn't that what we all do all the time? think about it... yeah. I think my favorite quote of his in the movie is this though: "You can't vacuum the dirt off your soul." Deep. You know what though? For as idiotic and pointless as this movie is, and for as hard as it tries not to be idiotic and pointless, by the end when Linas finally reaches LA (well, Santa Monica) and walks up to Werner's door, I actually wished that Herzog would be there... home from Thailand for some random weekend to pay taxes or rescue someone in a car wreck or something so he can be there when Linas finally walks up and rings the bell. So on a certain level I have to say that this movie got to me... by the end I was genuinely hoping that his long walk would yield some reward, even though the fact that it didn't probably means more. Ironically, the most honest and rewarding moment comes right afterward when Linas takes a seat on Werner's front stoop and says "it feels good to sit." Indeed it does, Linas. Indeed it does. So, aside from the fact that they projected it in the wrong aspect ratio in a conference room, I had fun with this movie and am very glad that I saw it.
10.19.06	Dr. Black and Mr. Hyde	William Crain	yay for Driskill lobby wi-fi. Actually, I take that back. No yay for that. I'm sitting in the midst of gaggles of pitch-frenzied flop-sweaty screenwriters from LA all believing the secret to success is one business card away. Anyway, luckily for me we have the Alamo just down the street for a healthy does of trashy blaxploitation cinema 100% guearanteed to repel all of these... people. Anyway, this is a movie that they actually played back in February as part of their black history month programming, but I had to miss it then so I'm happy to be able to catch up now! It's the story of Jeckyll and Hyde except with Bernie Casey, early early Stan Winston make-up, and an awesome finale at the Watts Towers. I don't really know why I'm fixated on the towers. My best bet would be that it's because they were in GTA: San Andreas. For whatever reason though, I always enjoy seeing them in these films... it's like the blaxploitation verion of the washington monument or something... makes for good endings (just ask Abar). Um... but this movie is actually pretty damn slow. Those juicy bits when Casey becomes a honky behemoth come few and far between... but they are to be relished. Since his mom was a maid in a bordello and none of the prostitutes helped her when she was dying, he has an underlying hate of all whores that he starts taking out when his dastardly scientific liver-helping syrum takes ahold of him. He also seems to be inpenetrable to knives and bullets and even though he just has some frosting in his afro and looks more ashy than white, people seem to think he's caucasian. Maybe that's why he's so mad... who knows. Anyway, I liked this one even though it slowed down at times. I'm becoming a bigger fan of this genre with each movie I see. If I could only get a copy of Welcome Home, Brother Charles...
10.19.06	The TV Set	Jake Kasdan	AFF 2006. 8 days of... pretty casual festival movie-watching. Thanks to their venues and scheduling, it's really pretty tough to watch more than 2 movies a night all week, but since I've somehow ended up with a weekend badge to get into all the screenwritery day panels, this first weekend will actually be pretty full, which is nice. So if you are a freak for festival coverage and don't want my condensed articles appearing on dumbdistraction.com, you can always follow my adventures detail by detail here. I guess I just set myself up for a hell of a lot of writing huh. The festival officially started for me with my buddy Jarratte buying a badge so he wont have to stand in the film pass line alone. It doesn't hurt that the badge is under a hundred bucks and gets him into Saturday's panels... but it did mean he had to wait there in the registration office for over an hour while they didn't print his badge out. He finally had to talk his way into the first film with his receipt and a smile. It's alright though... although the orchestra seating was fairly full for this opening night film, the very fine eldery of the Paramount roped off the balcony so I guess seating isn't so much an issue this year. Which is weird because This is a conference for screenwriters and The TV Set is a movie about screenwriting, filled with war stories involving familiarly frustrating studio execs, spineless managers, and a constant barrage of compromise in the face of one man's original vision. While it does ring of truth, this is not exactly a love letter to the network TV industry. Strong performances from David Duchovny, Sigourney Weaver, and other less famous people... smart writing that seems to come from both experience and a sharp sense of satire, and good music all make this movie pretty funny, especially if you're a writer. One scene takes place in a network meeting room with a big board of their line-up in the background. I got a particular kick out of the fake show names interspersed with real titles. So much so that I wrote them down. Check them out: Slut Wars, Out of my Way, Stat, Go to Your Room, World's Grossest meals, Malibu D.A., and Bart's Your Uncle. Sigourney Weavers character, a concotion of the worst stereotypes of every tv exec, also has some particularly choice lines, such as citing some unnamed study that proves "suicide is depressing to like 82% of everyone." When Slut Wars gets particularly good ratings, she pops the champagne and yells in triumph "19 Share, Motherfucker!" Jake Kasdan was there to introduce the film and answer questions afterward. One particular insight was that Weaver's character was original cast with Ben Stiller. That gives Weaver's foul-mouthed character a lot of context, but I think she's the better choice. Kasdan also brought up an interesting point that in TV, getting 8 million viewers means the show is in trouble. So if every person in LA watches your show but nowhere else in the entire country, you're gonna get cancelled. So, because of that, every show (dependant on ratings for their advertising dollars) needs to reach as wide an audience as possible. Therefore most people in the tv industry are not so much worried about making good entertainment but running the numbers in order to keep their jobs and support their families. That sounds pretty depressing... but this movie is funny. In a perfect world, this would have been the first half of an opening night double feature with For your Consideration, but this'll do. Instead of heading to the IMAX to see The Queen, we decided on eating then hitting up Terror Thursday instead.
10.18.06	Sexus	Jose Benazeraf	This movie is kind of an excuse for nudity under the guise of art film. I saw this direct-to-cable movie a while ago where the narrator said something about "those French movies where nothing happens" and it cuts to a black and white shot of a guy taking a draw from a cigarette then exhaling then standing there for like 15 seconds. This movie reminded me a lot like that in that it's clearly trying to be an art film instead of being something that just is an art film. It's very French and the pacing is very slow and everyone moves very slowly and tries to emote as little as possible; then you've got repeating shots of a clock ticking or people walking all the way out of frame before it cuts. Throw in some random nudity and an excuse of a plot and you've got this movie. SO it's clear that it's not the plot or character development or acting that sells you on this movie. I think there is plenty to like here though. I personally got a huge kick out of the male lead... a (caucasian) character named Blackie... who's thousand yard stare rivalled any method actor any day. He really does as little as possible, speaking each line of dialogue like it's a post-ironic verse from some beat poem that he's so over already. It takes this guy five minutes to blink, for real. Then the main kidnapped girl is also great, escaping for a while to frolic nude next to a lake then returning to fall casually-madly in love with Blackie just in time to return to her rich father. Really, on a certain level, everyone in this is pretty great. It's like everyone involved with this film managed be making fun of the genre and being a part of it at the same time. I don't get a sense of detached comment really but I do get a very deliberate execution vibe... It's really weird and slow but I liked it. Or at least, I like it now that it's over. I'm not sure how much I was liking it while it was going on. Seriously, if you're shooting a car driving away, you don't have to wait for that car to reach the vanishing point before cutting away. We get what's happening. Oh! Chet Baker did the score too, which there wasn't enough of. It's all Brazilian rythm stuff for the most part but that's cool and the couple moments that call for some soft horns are really great. So's the nudity.
10.18.06	Thunder Cops	Jeffrey Lau	Ok so Tim league has a trailer for this movie called Thunder Cops that could very well be the best trailer ever. I know youtube links don't last forever but for the sake of record, here's where you can see this trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YovlJkATVAY So I've seen this trailer probably around 10 times now and love it. It's just so all over the place, like what sort of movie could possibly exist that has chicks firing guns, human shields, weird monk kung-fu, and a chase scene between a decapitated head and a fleet of remote control helicoptors? And how could that movie make any kind of sense!? So when Thomas got a copy on DVD and set up a screening at some random soundstage in town, A dedicated group of us braved the tornado warnings and crazy ass storm to show up and satisfy our curiosity. So if you like the trailer and want to keep that wondrous curiosity alive until you too will one day get a chance to see the whole movie, don't read any further. I guess the big thing is that this is really a comedy. And not in any sort of unintentional way either... It's like a slapsticky borderline-farce type of comedy. It just happens to have ghosts in it. The second big revelation is that all those scenes in the trailer with the kung-fu and the chicks with guns and the human shield and all that? yeah, none of that's in the movie at all. Maybe there's some director's cut out there somewhere or maybe they took those scenes from some other movie but either way, they're nowhere to be found in the film I just saw. So after you accept that, this is actually a pretty fun crazy movie. The english subs on the disc were horrible though so that made some stuff funny that probably shouldn't have been, but yeah... It actually started out really funny for me but the pacing and the stupid humor are so relentless that by the end it was kind of tiring. but hey, i've now seen Thunder Cops!!!
10.18.06	Celluloid Horror	Ashley Fester	This is a documentary on Kier-La and her Cinemuerte film festival. When I first looked into getting a copy of this, i had really just met Kier-La and was just as interested in her as her festival. But it's taken so long to finally get this that, now that I know Kier-La at least a little bit better, the more personal stuff of her shown here made me feel a little stalkery... which is bad. However, I enjoyed all the festival stuff that much more, and that's not to say Kier-La's interviews in here are bad or anything... it's just weird to see someone you know be the subject of a full-length doc and get that intimate treatment like talking about her childhood or following the course of her marriage. It's a good movie, uses tons of clips that must've been hell to track down clearances for, and does a really good job of showcasing the fairly specific side of horror that Cinemuerte was all about. At least that I think it was all about. I also wanted to see this as an example of what an Alamo doc might be like. Still pretty tough. While I enjoyed this a lot, I am a self-admitted film geek. Not sure about any sort of crossover potential here or with the Alamo, no matter how much I want there to be. So this proved interesting in many ways for me. I'm really glad I finally got a chance to see it...
10.17.06	Survive Style 5+	Gen Sekiguchi	Jarrette all but forced me to sit down and watch this with him. He likes this movie so much that he bought a copy, lent it to a bunch of people until someone never returned it, then bought another copy. So you know how there's a certain cutty style to the films that music video and commercial directors have? the whole style over substance thing... fast cuts, very pretty but no story going on? Well this is the first movie from a Japanese music video/commercial director. Those familiar with Japanese commercials, music videos, and entertainment in general can probably imagine how crazy this is. However, there is actually a narrative here and it does come to some form of conclusion amidst the craziness. I liked this a lot. It's very funny, has an amazingly loud color pallette and one of the characters lives in an absolutely amazing house. Plus Vinnie Jones is in it... and Sonny Chiba (although he's credited as Shinichi Chiba)... and the rest of the cast is really good too. The first 20 minutes or so seem pretty random but it's one of those movies where eventually all of the characters intertwine somehow. But it works so it's good. Incidently, I guess this is one of the movies Jarrette suggested for the first FantasticFest. I personally think that if they played this then, or even at this year's fest, it would be a real highlight. I guess music clearance issues are keeping it from really hitting stateside so fests and bootlegs are kinda the only ways to see this right now, but yeah definitely... if this played fantastic fest it would go over quite well. ahh, maybe next year.
10.17.06	A Nightmare on Elm Street	Wes Craven	I'd never seen this theatrically... so I did. I feel like I've already put down all the notes I need to about this movie... it seemed pretty familiar this time... but I guess I'm still glad I saw it on the big screen. Pretty new print... and by that i mean the new print was pretty, not just pretty new.
10.17.06	Terrorstorm: A History of Government-Sponsored Terrorism	Alex Jones	heh heh heh.... Alex Jones.
10.16.06	You're Gonna Miss Me	Keven McAlester	Doc about Roky Erickson: genius musician who's crazy. I can't helpt but compare it to The Devil and Daniel Johnston, both being "genius" and both being crazy and also both living in Austin for a time. I'd say that Roky's current state is a little more hopeful than Daniel's, but both doc still end up being pretty sad as they explore these guys' lives. In the case of Erickson, I think it's safe to say that his parents, which are both featured in the film, deal heavily with his mental state. It's kind of funny though, the film portrays Roky as not going insane until after he was locked up in the looney bin for some BS marijuana conviction... it's only after he got out that he started getting paranoid and loopy. Who knows... what I do know is that I want to check out some of his music now... what played in the film was all really good.
10.16.06	Ronin Gai	Kazuo Kuroki	This is another one of those movies that I added to my netflix queue so long ago that I don't really remember why I wanted to see it. It must've been a bad recomendation or something... I found this to be very slow and tough to sit through. You'd think a samurai movie about a gang of ninjas that kill prostitutes and an unruly band of ronin that sober up enough to kick some ass would be more exciting. Go figure.
10.16.06	Tess	Roman Polanski	So I rented this on a blind recomendation, get it in the mail to find out that not only is it based on a Thomas Hardy book but it's also three hours long. Ugh. I had to read The Mayor of Csterbridge in highschool and hated every page of it. Actually I hated all those romantics... but anyway. So yeah, this is pretty much 100% not my type of movie. Pretty much all I can say about it is that it's beautiful and young Natassja Kinski is beautiful. Otherwise, it just seems like a story about a woman's with eternal bad luck surrounded by asshole men who treat her badly. Doesn't really sound so romantic to me, but I'm a guy so I guess I just don't get it.
10.14.06	Kill Bill Vol. 1	Quentin Tarantino	Even though I'm filing this under volume one, What they actually showed was the Cannes fully uncut whole-bloody-affair version of the film that's 4 hours 15 minutes longand only differentiates the two volumes with an intermission rather than have them be two separate films. I'm not making this two entries because I think even as Vol. 1 and 2 they are just halves of one movie. I don't think Vol. 1 stands too well on its own and without it vol. 2 is pretty slow for the most part. The last time I watched these (just before I started this site) I watched both of them back to back and felt that I liked them much better together than when I saw them theatrically. So, when QT's there to introduce this new cut that played at Canne with everything shoved together, I'm there. First off, Kurt Russell was there. He strolled in at one point, asked a guy if anyone was sitting there, and sat down in front of Harry, just sitting there like a normal person who has to get a normal seat in the theater because he's a little late. Crazy. Karen the manager went up to him and told him there was a whole reserved section where QT, Rodriguez, Linklater, et al were sitting so he moved up there... but he could've and I believe would've watched the entire 4 hour movie sitting next to strangers, which is awesome in my book. I've never seen Eric and Aaron so geeked out... they were like prairie dogs trying to pop their heads up high enough to see him sitting at the other end of their row. After all, it's Kurt Russell. I was pretty geeked out too. I told Micah, who was down for the event, that I'm actually related to Kurt through my deceased step-grandfather's son's wife. He said I should go up and tell him that... my creepy-meter went off so I thought better of it, but now i'm thinking I'll get mondo tees to make me a t-shirt that says "I'm Kurt Russell's sister's ex-husband's step-second cousin." I think I deserve it. The movie itself is made from the Japanese print of the film, which played in Tokyo Hong Kong I think QT said... he listed off all the places it was too violent for. The big difference is the House of Blue Leaves fight scene doesn't pop into black and white. It actually makes a difference... all that red is cool. I think there's also a few more gags in that fight scene (i don't remember the shot where she cut's the guys hands off but I may be mistaken) and there's also one last shot of her dealing with Sofie Fatale's other arm. The other big difference I noticed is that he changed the ending of Volume 1, cutting out that last bit with Bill and Sofie where he says "does she know her daughter lives?" Instead, it flashes onto an intermission then starts Vol. 2 like normal. Actually I don't think there's anything different with Vol. 2 at all except I think more credits at the end. The music goes to some RZA loop for like 4 minutes as the credits keep rolling. Still, it's cool to see them together, it's cool to see them at the Alamo, and it's cool to see them with QT (who still laughed pretty hard and pretty long at his own stuff, which I think is funny). Out in the lobby afterward, some people were shooting testimonial footage for upcoming tv spots for when they give this cut a revival-house re-release. Not too interested in being the goofball who gushes about the film on tv, but if I could remember anything anyone said in that amazing I Dismember Mama/Blood Spattered Bride exploitation trailer, I think I would've gone up there to quote it. Instead, Micah, Jarrette and I drove down south a bit looking for the Jungle Julia and Red Apple billboards that were up a few months ago. Unfortunately they've been taken down so we drove up north to Burnet where they were shooting more recently and did find the Jungle Julia in the Game of Death/Kill Bill yellow/black unitard outfit, so that was a little fulfilling. Fun night out all things considered, even though it took me forever to find parking and the incessant bass throb leaked in from next door's rooftop club. Saturday night in Austin...
10.13.06	The King	James Marsh	A nice, if not dark little drama starring Gael Bernal Garcia as a dude who gets out of the Navy and tracks down his illegitimate father (played by William Hurt) who, after impregnating Garcia's prostitute mother, has found God and is now a pastor with a fundy family. It's kind of a typically heavy indie drama in that it deals with some taboos and follows characters who are not your typical protagonist... but you know, it's a good typically heavy indie drama. It's well-shot, well-acted, and has a great intimate score. so yeah, really dark but pretty good.
10.13.06	Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man	Lian Lunson	Tribute concert film with little doco bits thrown in interstitially, this is basically a big beautifully-shot lovefest to the very-much-songwriter Leonard Cohen. It's weird though... All these people covering his songs... they just don't work for me unless he's singing them. Maybe it's because I'm not so much a lyrics person so I not paying enough attention to what's being said to enjoy his songs coming from anyone's mouth, but to me what makes Leonard Cohen songs great is his voice and his rhythms. Rufus Wainwright covered my favorite song of his in here with this weird salsa beat and almost a Copa Cabana vibe in the vocals... the novelty wore off pretty soon. It reminded me of the moment when I realized that music in movies and what appears on the soundtrack usually don't match 100%. Even before I had to go looking for that cool guitar riffy song in Pulp Fiction where Uma walks to the bathroom of Jack Rabbit Slims (Rumble by Link Wray), I bought the soundtrack to a movie called Pump Up The Volume just for this one song that was featured... Christian Slater used it as his opening theme when he got on the radio... So I buy the soundtrack just to find that Concrete Blonde had a crappy cover version of it on there... they didn't pay for the rights to use the Leonard Cohen recording of Everybody Knows on the soundtrack, just the song. suck. Anyway, this movie is also pretty expert, perhaps too expert to the casual Cohen fan (like myself)... I guess most of the songs are mentioned via interview before they start but you don't get any on-screen text or anything like that to help you out. I don't really mind that though... you can always wait for the end credits but whatever. Just trying to think of something to say about a concert film. The interview bits were good.
10.13.06	Infamy	Doug Pray	Doug Pray continues to make hip, interesting, well-constructed films that don't get any sort of distribution or media attention at all. What's up with that? Infamy explores the world of graffiti writing, interviewing a handful of (assumedly) well-known artists and talking about both the practice and lifestyle of the craft. You get a glimpse of different styles across cities like NYC, Philly, San Francisco, and LA, different writers' personalities, and common threads that connect the "element" together. What's great is that Pray manages to both show the beauty and meaning behind the artwork and also the sense of danger that goes with writing and vague moral/legal mindsets that all these guys live in. It's all really well told and Z-Trip helps out with some music. Top notch doc.
10.12.06	Hellraiser	Clive Barker	You know, this had way more beginning than I remember it. Actually it sort of feels like the whole movie is a beginning... but I think my far-off memories are intermingling the first movie with the second, which I only remember liking much more than this. Still though, there are a few things in here that are pretty creepy... it's just that it's a fairly slow movie and, in following the general trend of horror franchises, they barely show the monsters at all in the first one. Those cenobites do look cool though... and that box is one of the best movie props of all time. Ultimately, I'm glad I got to see this theatrically... it'd been a super long time since seeing it the last time, but the biggest thing it did to me was make me want to see Hellbound to check if my childhood memories mirror that of Beverly Hills Cop or if the second Hellraiser actually was better. jesus wept.
10.11.06	Boss Nigger	Jack Arnold	Oh he's so bad... They call him Boss... They call him Boss... Boss Nigger! This blaxploitation western stars Fred The Hammer Williamson as Boss, a bounty hunter who comes into town with his sidekick Amos and makes himself Sheriff then proceeds to abuse his power by throwing honkies in jail, blatantly stealing from honkies, and causing a general uproar. Meanwhile, an outlaw (played by William Smith) and his band of... outsiders... get made because they can't oppress the town any more due to the uppity black devil so drama ensues. I found this to be a quite enjoyable flick. First of all there's that song. There's really only about a half verse worth of lyrics before it just starts repeating the same line over and over again, but goddamn if it isn't a hell of a catchy tune. Actually all of the music is typically funky and soulful and quality even though it's a western. Unfortunately though, this was written by Williamson so most of the dialogue is pretty hokey. The names of the mexican characters cracked me up though(poncho, margarita). highlights for me were the helpful but absent blacksmith, Amos trying to knock the guy out with his gun butt through a window, the near-vaudevillian exchange with Boss and Amos and a few honkies in a jail cell paying fines in exchange for freedom, the actress who clearly traded all of her acting skill for good looks saying "bring him in... put him on my bed" and "looks like I'll be doing the resting since she's doing the caring" (and consequently getting the curtain slammed shut in her face), and William Smith shoving a wad full of bills down the front of his pants. I laughed a lot with this movie and had a generally great time. I'm finding out that I have a real affinity for blaxploitation movies on the whole. The Alamo had a few politically incorrect posters up for tonight's title and apparently they have a print of a movie called The Six Million Dollar Nigger... which now I am aching to see. The poster has a small illustration where he's undoing his robe and a woman on a bed is swooning... that's just awesome. Another thing I like about these genres classified by time as well as subject matter (like Spaghetti Westerns or biker movies or film noir as well) is that, while there are a lot of them, there's actually not THAT many. Sure they're not something you can completely watch over a weekend but I bet by the time I'm 40 or whatever... it's kind of possible down the road to actually see all of them. Right now all I want to see is Welcome Home, Brother Charles though.
10.10.06	Beverly Hills Cop II	Tony Scott	yeah pretty much. It's that much goofier, more stylized, hammed up, and 80s-decadent. It's funny because I remember when I was a kid i liked this second one way more than the first one. I really think 80s cinema was just one long delirious fever dream...
10.10.06	Beverly Hills Cop	Martin Brest	Beverly Hills Cop night tonight... except the third one which I didn't bother to record. I haven't seen this first one in a long time... I remember it being not nearly as flashy as the second. It really is. I guess this is right at the beginning of the Simpson/Bruckheimer filter-rama mega success of the late 80s/early 90s so their very identifiable style wasn't as clear an imprint on Brest's direction as it became with the rest of em. Aside from the synthesized score (I still remember how awesome I thought the main theme was when I was a kid) there's really no 80s cheese here at all. I do have vague memories though of how explosive a hit this was, and Eddie Murphy doing all his little schticks to get around proper police procedure. They still end up killing like a dozen guys though... it's definitely the same decade that brought us Commando... So now let's see if my memory of the second one is any better than the first.
10.08.06	Eyewitness	John Hough	AKA Sudden Terror, even though there's not a lot of terror and it's not very sudden. This stars Susan George and the kid from Oliver and Melody as a brother and sister who get mixed up into witnessing some sort of political assasination. It's directed by John Hough (who I didn't place last night but IMDb graciously reminds me that he did Dirty Mary Crazy Larry and The Legend of Hell House as well as The Watcher in the Woods and other things) and it's early 70s so it's got a real british thriller vibe (even though it was shot in Malta (sans falcons)). Lots of wide-angle close-ups, deep depth of field, and interesting foreground/background compositions give it the aire of a real movie, especially after sitting through a TV movie about the elderly. The size of the Melody kid's head still bugs me (not helped at all by his huge mop of hair in this) but this was back when Susan George's teeth were still relatively alright (and her body's always been alright)... plus there's this assassin guy who looks like if a young Steven Spielberg moved to swingin 60s London. He's not in the movie long but he definitely looks awesome whenever he appears. Also, another assassin looks a lot like Dave Coulier, which makes it awesomer. This movie is pretty good, helped a lot by one scene where the bad guys do something I didn't expect them to do. I wouldn't say it's a very memorable film but it didn't suck at all.
10.08.06	Better Late Than Never	Richard Crenna	So, checking my phone after getting out of the movie, I found out that Eric's running some 16mm tonight. OK, had nothing planned otherwise. why not? First up was this TV movie written by John Carpenter and directed by Rambo's Boss himself, Richard Crenna. Even though I more closely associate him with the antagonist from John Candy's Summer Rental, "Rambo's Boss" sounds better. This movie... well first off, from the credits it looked like Carpenter was just hired to do a draft or something. The story credit goes to other people and he's co-credited with the script. So it's not your average John Carpenter fare... Actually, it's about as opposite as you can get from that. It's about an old guy who's house gets torn down to make room for a highway and gets booked into an old-folks home where a snooty employee gives his defiantly independant spirit some oppression. It's really like a TV-tame version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest with old people instead of crazy people. It's actually very easy to see the story the other way around, about a nice enough retirement home worker who's put through hell by some old fart hellbent on giving everyone heart attacks and broken hips. She really doesn't do anything that oppressive or demeaning... but maybe I'm just saying that because I'm not stuck in an old folks home. Ask me again in 40 years and maybe I'll see things differently... in between my bowls of tapioca pudding and episodes of Jeopardy. So this old guys gets the other old people to rile up, ends up getting drunk and shooting guns with one crazy old man, hijacks a bus, and also coordinates a mass escape to steal a train and start a new civilization in an old ghost town. Oh that cooky ol' codger... if only he had some wood to whittle on instead, none of this would have happened. All that said, Donald Pleasance plays one of the old guys... actually all of the old guys are funny and they have some funny little lines and whatnot. It's just a shame that the story is made for the lobotomized. I get that the elderly are people too (unless they're in a wheelchair; then they're just punchlines because they sleep all the time then die), but isn't there some story - any story - better than them arguing over assigned seats? Maybe the first draft included monsters and necrophilia but they had to tone it down for TV. who knows.
10.08.06	Kiss My Snake	Tom Tavee	This is a doc about a small village in Thailand known for king cobra boxing, where these guys get up on stage and taunt venomous snakes so they can dodge their strikes. they also put the snakes' heads in their mouths, put their hands right under the snakes' chins or on their heads, and little kids dance around with pythons stuffed down their pants. Basically, it's a story of a crazy place where crazy people do crazy things with dangerous animals... I guess for fun. This is an instance where no matter how good or bad the actual movie is, the subject and snake boxing footage alone is worth watching. Did I mention that these people are crazy? these king cobras are BIG and mean and loud and these people put on these shows basically for free every day of the year. So watching that stuff takes care of itself... it's crazy. it freaked me out. The director and composer were there to give a little Q&A afterward and several subjects were brought up that really should've been in the film. As it is, the movie's kind of like a snapshot of the village and three or four people are profiled. There's a lot going on with the "sport" itself though that's grown out of this little village. For one, there is now snake boxing in several locations and a lot of these local village guys travel around to various events. For another though, there's a group of kids that seem to be working their way up with rat snakes and pythons before boxing poisonous snakes... and one of the main things presented by the village's mayor (and son to the founder of snake boxing) is his hope that the sport continues, but what the director said during the Q&A was that he doesn't see it continuing on very long because none of the kids are interested. In the film he interviews one kid who seems hesitantly positive of the sport (sitting right next to his somewhat crazy father) but the director said he had a whole line of kids interviewed all saying that they don't like it at all, but couldn't use it because their parents weren't there to sign releases. So... I don't want to come off as a robber baron or exploiter of child labor or whatever, but are these kids and parents really gonna see this no-budget DV doc and think to sue? I think it would've represented a major point in the film that's just not there otherwise. Also, according to the composer, all these snake boxers who go on about how much they love their cobras also said that they HATE working in the rice paddies all day and, given a choice between the two, would rather tempt fate on a daily basis than stand out there in the hot sun. I dunno, I just felt like I didn't get a very complete picture with the film itself, and thought that all of this stuff coming up in the Q&A should've been in the film to begin with. BUT, that doesn't mean the movie sucked. Like I said, the boxing (they don't actually punch back and forth, a little head-slapping and venom injection is as close as it gets) footage itself is incredible, the music's actually really good, and the characters featured in the film are all pretty interesting. plus i got in free because of the snakes on a day thing, which is sweet.
10.08.06	Son of Kong	Ernest B. Shoedsack	lazy sunday afternoon, decided to watch the docs on the King Kong DVD and saw that Son of Kon was only 70 minutes... I've never been a huge Kong fan... I think I've gone over that in both my notes for the original and the remake... so Son of Kong and Mighty Joe Young are both movies I'm not really super pumped to see... My lack of enthusiasm toward seeing them carry about equal weight as my guilt for owning DVDs of movies that I've never seen... I really think I might set a deadline to catch up with everything before the new year... watch one a night or something. Anyway... This was what everybody says about it: rushed but ok. it's a realistic premise (Denham is getting sued by half of new york so escapes with the old captain and eventually they run into some excuse to go back to the island) so that doesn't feel too forced, but once they're back on the island it totally does, even to the point where Denham is actually telling son of kong how sorry he is for taking his dad away from here while he bandages little Kong's finger. ugh. Kong's Son also has a habit of mugging to the camera and plays a few gags which take away all the seriousness and realism of the first one. at least now i've seen it.
10.06.06	The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift	Justin Lin	...so much drifting. I think it's interesting how this whole series has not been about showing the coolest cars going fast but actually a search for the most annoying male lead ever. Vin Diesel? eh, he's not too annoying... good thing we're making Paul Walker the star! Yeah, Walker's pretty annoying, but I bet he'd be more annoying paired up with Tyrese! Yes! So how are we gonna top Walker and Tyrese!?!? How about we get some random hick kid from Friday Night Lights!!! and un-little Bow Wow! Perfect. That will make just about everyone spend the entire movie wishing they could punch these guys in the face instead of, oh I don't know, enjoying the film. I don't know why I watched this. I don't know why I watched the second one. I don't know why the first one was a success. At least it feels dead now.
10.06.06	The Departed	Martin Scorsese	So... it's still Infernal Affairs, but Scorsese along with an INCREDIBLE cast make it better than Infernal Affairs, for me at least. How so? Well... they develop rats and deception more as a theme here, saturate the entire film more with it... but mostly it's the performances. Nicholson is treated so strongly in this movie that from the very beginning you feel his presence, his touch on everything. I loved the whole prologue with him in darkness, laying out the film and the world; his film, his world. It's not just Nicholson though; everybody does an excellent job, and each part is written very smart. Alec Baldwin delivers what I consider a Glengarry Glenn Ross level of performance, Mark Wahlberg, Matt Damon, Leo Di Caprio, Vera Farmiga, Martin Sheen, Ray Winstone... every one of them are flawless in this movie. Even the grating southie boston accents on everybody didn't irritate me. The material is also handled incredibly well... blah blah blah all that great stuff. It's a really good movie.
10.05.06	Raw Force	Edward D. Murphy	This movie really makes me wish I had coded this site to allow multiple genres for each film. This really has it all... machine guns and explosion action, kung fu, cannibals, zombies, pirates, yacht parties... it tries to cover all the bases in hopes that you don't realize how crappy it is.I mean crappy in a fun way, but still... The story is about... well it doesn't really matter. people on a boat go to this island where these monks eat the flesh of women to raise the dead kung fu masters buried there. There's some stuff involving jade and all these tourists seem to be karate black belts or members of the LAPD SWAT team or just there to party in topless boobfest fashion. my favorite part was this yacht party that goes on in the middle of the movie. One guy breaks a huge block of ice with his head to make drinks and another guy blames the devil for making this girl be in a centerfold. Then everyone tries to score like it's a sex comedy all of a sudden and people have randomly hilarious day jobs like a 3rd grade teacher or they're on the lam running from a murder beef. So they all have some fun for a while then a gang of bad guys climbs aboard and it's back to the bad fighting and breaking candyglass bottles. So Raw Force didn't quite change my world forever, but it was a pretty fun time and an absolutely packed house. Seriously long line... The Alamo staff made up RAW FORCE tshirts beforehand and they all came up front for the intro which everyone yelled RAW FORCE like 4 times. The movie ended with a "To Be Continued..." referring to Power Force, which I guess is not as good and even harder to find. I feel like I should keep going with every little detail... but I don't feel like it.
10.04.06	Shark!	Samuel Fuller	you have to say the title with gusto... SHARK! What's funny is that this isn't really that tense or exciting a movie... certainly not worthy of the exclamation mark in my eyes... but it still had a few notable moments which made watching it worthwhile for me, the largest being that it's a Sam Fuller movie I haven't seen. Less than ten years after he did one of my favorites (Underworld, USA), he's doing this kind of thing... I haven't seen most of his later stuff (except The Big Red One) so it's weird for me to see some Fuller touches transposed to the 70s... it's still fuller, but it's kinda not. anyway, Burt Reynolds is in this... and it's about sunken treasure and there are sharks in the water. That's basically it, but there's also this Sudanese kid called runt and Arthur Kennedy plays an alcoholic doctor. And a stunt man got eaten on film and they left it in. actually they show it twice. and they based their ad campaign off it. which is pretty sleazy... Burt's got a few Fuller one-liners (something about being born by a winch?) and there are some occasional little bits and odd close-ups that make this funny. most of the theater clapped at one point when Burt randomly throws this chicken across the room... like with way more hate than is called for. Personally, my favorite part was when Burt needed a doctor and someone explained "oh, he's upstairs with his weekly DTs" and we hear a scream and cut to Arthur Kennedy wigging out all over the room. Sure it's not exactly The Lost Weekend, but you kind of get the feeling that Kennedy is using some heavy duty sense memory for that scene. Just the idea that he gets them every week, like it's scheduled or something, made me laugh. so it's a pretty typical pulpy adventure/rogue story where everyone's sweating all the time but it's not sweat it's machismo that they're oozing. Even the girl is hardcore and macho... the actual shark "tense" scenes are pretty laughable though by today's standards, and the breezy cool jazz score didn't really help to create any sort of suspense at all. The story goes that the producers took this away from Fuller and butchered the edit to the point where Fuller wanted his name taken off it... so that's the excuse. I found it interesting to watch once and intermittently entertaining, but probably not something I could sit through once a week. OK it's not as bad as the DTs, but still...
10.04.06	Big Time	Chris Blum	Tom Waits concert film. The film itself is a lot like Waits' music, which makes it very interesting and really stand out as far as concert films go. I liked it easily as much as The Last Waltz and Stop Making Sense. What I found most interesting is how Waits sings his different voices... he actually sings in different ways, like singing out of the side of his mouth or whatever. together with his body movement it really illustrates how so many of his songs are actually just acting. He takes on different characters for different songs and the lyrics are about character exploration... now, sometimes i find that tedious (although he can do a pretty spot-on Louis Armstrong voice, when he sings like that it bugs me), but for the most part I really dig it. Especially his band and the bizarre bluesy/gypsy vibe they have going on. I should probably go back and listen to his albums more closely at some point... I am sort of on the record as liking him but not very well versed in a lot of his actual stuff. but anyway, as far as concert films go this one is really great.
10.04.06	Science of Sleep	Michel Gondry	To me, this is the best that movies can be. I just deleted two really pretentious follow-up sentences so I think i'll leave that nice and vague. This is a very unreal story about real life... and how it sucks. It's great that Gondry draws very authentic emotion and drama from the most whimsical source... and he does it in a way that's uniquely his, completely distinguished from everybody else in the game today. Its imaginitive surrealism is woven perfectly into the fabric of Gael Bernal's (and by extension Gondry's as well) reality creating a whole movie full of those little moments spent in the infinite limbo between awake and asleep. Through that, it tells a timelessly poignant story of unrequited, or rather ill-fated love with charm, innocence and grace. It's really quite special. I can understand people who are not fans of Gondry's work - hey it's not for everyone nor should it be - but i can't understand people who like his stuff but say this isn't as good as the rest. I think this is his first film that's successfully 100%. Of course I don't know the man personally or anything, but I do feel his Director's Label disc content has a lot of his personality imprinted on it, and this film feels much more like a natural progression from that than Eternal Sunshine does. I still really like Eternal Sunshine by the way, I just feel that that's like 75% him and this is 100%. So yeah, I'm quite taken with this. I had a great time in the theater being sad... i'm thinking it may be a bit too much to call myself a hopeless romantic creative-type like Bernal is in the film, but I think most if not all of us have aspects of ourselves that we like to think of as that. The Shakespearian romantic who goes crazy with love and does stupid things, the inner child who creates his own world when he's stuck in a shitty real one, the stalwart guy stuck gazing at a woman he wants but cannot have. I'm sure it's not just me, so I won't claim credit for all of us... but Gondry captures and communicates all of those emotions perfectly. It's also a shame that Bernal's character is sort of crazy... so you feel for the poor girl caught up in it all too. I also love that Gondry makes a film not for Hollywood but for himself. The movie's maybe 50%, 60% subtitled, tossing in some profanity and a glimpse of casual nudity when the story needs it even though it relegates him to an R-rating. This movie being R is bullshit... it's nothing if not made for teenagers struggling through that messy first big love. In my theater they were showing This Film is not Yet Rated right next door. People need to see that movie so we can either change the way movies are rated or the outlook that mass audiences have toward them. Whether the average teenage American will go see this film or not, they shouldn't have to sneak in. anyway, tangent... I can't wait for Gondry's next one; to see what he does with Jack Black and Mos Def.
10.03.06	Jet Li's Fearless	Ronny Yu	Jet Li's final movie! until he does another one then this will be known as Jet Li's final martial arts movie! until he does another one and then this will be known as Jet Li's final martial arts epic! until he does another one... Whether he actually retires or not... this is pretty good but completely mismarketed in the states. I guess I should've learned my lesson after the House of Flying Dagger ad campaign, but damn it i wanted more fighting in this! I was sold on a jet-li-remakes-bloodsport vibe and that's the vibe i wanted! Oh well... after really slowing down and resetting my tempo, I liked this one well enough. I mean there's still plenty of fighting... just a lot of really slow planting crops and lesson learning crap too. I am still just a casual fan of this genre, especially these mega epic movies that've seemed to pop up on American screens since Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon... but as those go this one was pretty good.
10.03.06	School for Scoundrels	Todd Phillips	Todd Phillips continues his career of making comedies that I like but seemingly not quite as much as i should. I mean, John Heder, Todd Louiso, Horatio Sanz, Matt Walsh, and that airport employee from Fight Club (a dildo, never your dildo) all in a class where Billy Bob Thornton teaches them to be assholes and successfull? Doesn't that write itself? I guess it does... wait... So this is another one where I feel bad because I enjoyed myself well enough (although I did laugh more at Jackass) but can't help but be let down simply because it didn't blow away my mediocre expectations. maybe if will ferrell was in it... that was a joke.
10.03.06	Jackass Number Two	Jeff Tremaine	Finally saw this after spending all of Fantastic Fest being the guy in the group who has to cover his ears... maybe it was seeing it in a theater only holding 5 other people, or maybe it was the picture going out a half hour in and having to wait 30 minutes for the theater to fix it (after showing a few minutes of the film with sound only), or maybe it was the overhype... but I dunno. I thought this one was just barely better than the first (which I laughed at several times when I saw it in the theater and haven't had any urge to see since). A few gags were creative, and I couldn't help but laugh at a few places when nuts were punched or kicked... but it ultimately left me with a hollow feeling I get a lot with TV shows turned movies: is this it? I laughed a lot harder at Borat's funniest moments. I'd hate to be accused of hating comedy though. I want to stress that I enjoyed myself... it was just that I had higher hopes. And I never get how they just throw away celebrity bits... I think I saw Mike Judge for like 48 frames, Luke Wilson popped up for 2 seconds during the end credits... maybe it's a skateboarder thing where getting c- or b-level celebrities to be in a scene of your video isn't too big a deal... and if their bits aren't that funny then I guess it's good their relegated to outtake-level presences... but both with this one and the first I got a sense that there was like a 2-hour movie here culled down to 90 minutes for pacing. If the DVDs have all the excised bits then I am whining for nothing... so favorite gags... The taxi ride was pretty cool just for how many layers it had... I'm always a fan of the old people stuff, both in the last one but even moreso in this one. Great use of that Peaches song over the old balls gag. I was seriously cringing with the steve-o human bait and the anaconda ball room stuff... As usual it's got near-porn amounts of male nakedness... i guess the naked-is-funnier rule still works... but it seemed like they liked it a bit too much. I still worry for Bam Margera's mental state and think he should be medicated... It's kind of a guilty laughing though... like I am now one step closer to Idiocracy... which has already become quoatable around town (hey, i like money too! we should hang out sometime)... i am literally laughing at a man just because he's just vomited or fallen. oh well.
10.02.06	The Return of the Pink Panther	Blake Edwards	FIlling in the gap from the MGM set that I have, this is the third in the series and the first of the older, crappier run generally accepted as being made just for the paycheck. I'm sure some people, maybe those who saw this as a child, like this movie and think it's funny but for the most part I think all of these later ones meld together. it's the same gags over and over, same plots, same locations, same people... pretty un-notable. I guess this is known as the one with Christopher Plummer replacing David Niven... woopty. Still, after a week full of horror movies and a few days off, something this light and mindless eased me back into watching movies. Tomorrow I catch up on the first-run stuff I've been missing.
09.30.06	Eddie and the Cruisers	Martin Davidson	Special midnight screening for Kier-La's birthday! This means I actually got to see Eddie and the Cruisers in a theater! Only at the Alamo nowadays... Ever since coming to terms with my true feelings about this film - giving up on not liking it just because it's one of my mom's favorite movies - I am fully out of the closet as an Eddie fan and was like a little schoolgirl full of glee that I got to see this... yay! um.. so some people laughed at some stuff... I guess I can't blame them - I laughed a few times too - but it did make me feel a little sad... but whatever. It was great to hear the music in a theater and see the picture up on the screen... I mean cool that it's Kier-La's birthday party too and all but... Eddie! It really makes me wonder what happened to Michael Pare... this, Streets of Fire, Philadelphia Experiment... then poof... imdb says he's been working steadily in crappy direct-to-video stuff... i guess he's either a pretty bad actor or he has a horrible agent. He was great in 83-84 though... so yay... eddie in a theater! can't be beat.
09.28.06	Isolation	Billy O'Brien	So after that... well there was one more movie slot for the festival and then it was either gonna be staying for Terror Thursday or going to the festival afterparty. First though, I ducked into Isolation because I'd heard the short was good and the movie was good and I'll be able to see Edmund tomorrow. Isolation is a movie about killer mutant cows. Yeah, you read that right. Due to genetic meddling, these little exoskeletal fetal cows start chewing through the herd and any people who happen to get in the way. Call it The Thing on a farm, Alien for cows, or whatever... It sounds ridiculous but it was actually a pretty good movie. This was actually the movie which made me squirm in my seat the most. Mostly because I don't like farms and how filthy they are... the beginning scene has a vet shoving her arm up a cow to check on the fetus and something in there bites it. Later on a guy comes as close to literally being up shit creek without a paddle as you can come, and has to wade through neck-high slurry inhabited with unseen mutant cow fuckers... gah. Plus there's lots of steam coming off things like guts and blood that make the whole setting seem all the more authentic and grimy. It does get a bit unclear toward the end but for the most part the story flows nicely and the movie looks pretty slick (meaning competant, not glossy). Plus there's a scene with one of those slaughterhouse hydraulic spike guns where they try to put down the evil misshapen calf that they've just had to hand-winch out of the mother... man squirmy... I think another good aspect of the film is that it has a very limited cast... so you can't really stack up the body count too fast because there aren't that many codies to count... so you end up having to spend time with these people and, thanks to the writing and acting, you actually get to like them. Plus, for some unheard-of Irish movie, it looks like a real movie and has someone I recognize (the guy who played Ian Curtis in 24 Hour Party People). so yeah, it was a good time. I liked it for sure. so Terror Thursday had a last-minute schedule change (Vampire's Kiss instead of Last Rites) so I decided to hit up the party and hear who won the awards. It was held down the street at this "saloon" that was converted from a gas station... kind of odd. I usually don't go for these festival parties because I always end up talking to people I talk to all the time... but whatever. It was pretty much the same with this one... I sat around talking with friends until they announced the winners (they had like 38 awards that don't mean anything. Why does a second-year film festival need an award for best supporting female performance in a horror film?)... the winners were pretty much all political... whatever. So right after that we all kind of took a powder from the party and ate at IHOP, returning just in time for the bar to close and a pretty sloshy Tim League to yell out "afterparty at my house!" A few minutes later, I was getting a glimpse inside Tim's abode. It's pretty awesome, fitting his personality to a T. He had a black velvet painting of Farah Fawcett, a card catalog in his upstairs hallway, and a gigantic photograph of meat (taken from a grocery store) above his fireplace. There on the table was Kier-La's horror trivia game!!! I geeked out a bit. So we all sat down to play... The crowd broke into teams made up of the visiting filmmakers, austin regulars, and various festivalgoers. The Frostbite producer was on one team, the Severance screenwriter on another... my team was Jarrette, Jeff, Cargill, Tim Leage and myself. We got thrashed. It was pitiful. I will probably blame it on bad luck (i don't think we got one easy question the whole time, and even drew what Kier-La called the "hardest question in the entire game") but for the sake of full disclosure, we also sucked. We had a Street Trash question... we've all seen Street Trash and Tim had even been at the festival screening where this tidbit had apparently come up, but none of us knew the answer. So we lost pretty hardcore... it was humbling because a couple of guys around the table were actually pretty good at it (sure it helps if you write a book on Italian horror movies)... and we had a good time trading brit vs. american insults back and forth (particularly harsh on the Severance guy, forever tormented for getting a Shaun of the Dead question wrong in an earlier game). Tim threatned to ban us forever if we didn't roll good numbers, we all looked at each other with blank stares every time a question came up... it was fun. I actually did know maybe 4 or 5 (easy) questions that other teams got... but for the most part I felt like a 6 year old let in to play no limit texas hold-em. Basically I spent a lot of time looking around with glossy unfocused eyes. So THIS felt like the festival closing night party to me... really fun time. And now it's over. So... I guess maybe a little recap is in order. My own meaningless awards. # of things seen: 29 # of things actively liked: 18 # of things I wanted to see but had to miss due to scheduling: 13 Biggest surprise (positive): The Host Biggest surprise (negative): Renaissance Biggest surprise (mediocre): The Woods Common themes: Bear traps, important trees, mayans Biggest Regret: Missing Funky Forest for Shock Waves Biggest semi-regret: missing Simon Says for a VJ competition Biggest non-regret: missing A Quiet Love for the acquisitions panel best day of films: Monday Worst day of films: Friday Top 5 favorites: 1/2. The Host / The Fountain (tie) 3/4. Severance / Hatchet (tie) 5. Beach Party and the threshold of hell
09.28.06	The Fountain	Darren Aronofsky	Second viewing, this time with a packed house. I liked it just as much, if not more this time around. The second viewing exposes just how intentional and designed every aspect of the film is. The constant use of gold throughout the lighting and costume and theme even, the parallels between time periods, motifs and all that filmy crap... it's all planned out to say something. It's not exactly clear what that something is... I mean sure something's have specific intentions but big questions of the film largely remain interpretive. There are several different ways you can think about this movie and I think all of them are possible. I'm actually reminded of the book Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins a lot with this... somewhat less insane but there's still a similar quality that I think they share. And Rachel Weisz's character's name is Izzi Creo. I'm sure that means something. It's cool though. Nobody clapped through half of the end credits... all of us just sitting there watching an abstract effect on the screen. I think it's a really powerful film. Aronofsky answered about a half hour's worth of questions, ranging from pretty dumb to pretty good. Composer Clint Mansell was also in attendance and got a few opportunities to talk about his working relationship with Aronofsky, working with Khronos and Mogwai, and working in general. They let loose that a lot of the third act's score to Requiem for a Dream is actually made up of Mozart chord samples all chopped together. Aronofsky also made a cool point by saying he approached Hugh's character as a progression from darkness to light, almost like a vampire. There's one shot in particular toward the beginning of the movie where this is really apparent. (incidentally, that shot is like a reverse image of my dream journal... Aronofsky that hack... stealing my design!). he also called the movie a few things which I liked. Metaphysical chick flick, Spychadelic fairy tale, and a love poem to death. pretty good. He also elaborated a bit on what the movie was back when Brad Pitt was attached. Apparently they had constructed this huge Mayan pyramid and had 150 Mayan extras hired and had poured 18 million into the movie before the plug got pulled and the project died. So I have to believe that both the Mayan and the future stuff would've been much expanded in that version, but you know what... It still works at a 30 million dollar movie quite well. I forget who he credited, but he said one of his colleagues said he turned the movie into a poem when he read the updated script. That makes sense to me, the finished film is quite poetic. And then someone asked if he was aware that he had a few scenes which repeated in his film. Right, those just slipped in there. Afterward, a few people separately told me that while they were watching it they were really blown away but afterward they couldn't really tell me what they liked about it. That's actually kind of understandable. I think especially the last ten minutes of the film are incredibly gripping and also pretty abstract... The picture coupled with the music create something vivid and powerful to the extent that I really haven't seen in a film in a long time... it's something you hate blinking because you have to miss a few frames... you just can't take your eyes off of it. but after it's over you're also not quite sure what the hell just happened or what it all means. Perhaps a little 2001-esque after all. So yeah, I still really liked it. Everything about it is great and Aronofsky has now moved beyond the visual tricks and gimmicks that established him into a realm of mature filmmaking. I just hope it doesn't take him 6 years to do the next one.
09.28.06	The Fantastic Planet	Rene Laloux	Ahh last day... actually a pretty laid back day due to fatigue and a lack of midnight movie... my day started out quiet enough with a screening of Fantastic Planet introduced by Darren Aronofsky. Harry took the opportunity to call Kier-La a "programming elf" which is wrong on so many levels... but otherwise it was interesting to hear Aronofsky talk about why he liked this movie (it's trippy and has a homegrown feel to it). He also said that one of the projects he's working on now might end up animated in a very very similar fashion, and he's never seen it projected so this will be a treat. Myself, I was interested in hearing the original score which Wiley says is pretty great. As a surprise to pretty much everybody (since it wasn't in the book or mentioned by Harry at all), one of Rene Laloux's shorts preceded the film... which was actually pretty sweet. It was also animated, and stold the story of a farmer who uses his tears to make his crops grow big (by devising several methods including holding onions up to his eyes or wearing a backpack which regularly hit him on the head and kicked him in the ass). Trouble comes when snails eat his crops and grow into huge town-destructing gigantor monster snails that create some general rampage-esque chaos before forming together to die in weird formations. Amidst the devastation, the farmer decides to grow carrots, again watering them with his tears. The short ends with several huge rabbits looming over the horizon. Pretty cool short. Seeing the movie again... this was the first time fatigue reared its head for me. A couple times previously I had trying to will myself to fall asleep but this is the first time in the fest that it crept in against my wishes. So I kind of rested my eyes for a few seconds here and there, which I didn't mind too much because the film is really far out and dreamy anyway... I will say that the score is awesome and much cooler than the Chicago tunes I heard last time, but I must say I got tired with all the dialogue. I don't remember it at all but I guess last time I just read the subtitles while the band played... I wish the original score went from begin to finish and there was no dialogue... hearing french people talk made the movie seem that much more like just a normal movie... the imagery is so great and the story is so simple (well, sort of) that I think it's cooler to treat it like a psychadelic fairy tale and not bother to make it accessible at all. Anyway, I had a good time with it, even in my dreamy haze. And although Aronofsky's first pick for a movie to show was Aguirre The Wrath of God (which Harry said they couldn't get a print in good enough condition to play (which is bullshit because the Alamo showed it in like January)), this still made a pretty good introduction to The Fountain.
09.27.06	The Swinging Co-eds	Walter Boos	Yay for 70s German sexploitation comedies where really hot women are constantly bushy nude for very ugly men. I'll never forget watching 2069 A Sex Odyssey on cinemax Friday after dark and loving it... thus cementing my fondness for lederhosen, oktoberfest, fauleins and madchens, and those cool tops that the German 70s women wore that pushed out and accentuated the boobies. This one is one of those omnibus case study type movies where you basically get a girl, see her get into crazy kooky sexual situations, have sex, and that's the end of her story. Repeat. I remember seeing another cinemax movie like this except the connective tissue was a pack of cigarettes... and this pack of cigarettes went around the world over the course of the movie and ended up with the original owner at the end. What's funny is I bet that's not just the plotline of one movie but the basis for a whole subgenre or European softcore films in the 70s into early 80s. Gotta love em. Back when the women were actually very beautiful and their bodies were naturally perfect instead of chiseled or enhanced or airbrushed or tanning bed'd or everything else the spice channel girls do nowadays. For some reason, ogling the breasts on the women in a movie like this seems healthier and cleaner than staring at those of today... like breathing clean mountain air instead of smoggy soup. Yeah I know that's weird, it makes sense to me though. This movie was a good time. The women were hot, the guys were funny, the enjoyment cheap and taudry, and there was a lederhosen guy toward the end which was awesome. Oh, Christina Lindberg was also one of the case studies in this... jesus her body is pretty much perfect. If only she didn't have a baloon-sized Swedish head... everything else is just... wow. Yeah the funniest part of this movie for me was the dubbing in a vain attempt to make it sound ultra-American... setting some of the stories in places like Miami or Boston even though you can see a street sign that says "siegfriedstr." and giving the women absolutely horrible southern accents. It's also funny because they chose to supply voice-over narration over some scenes, presumably because it was easier than trying to make up some scene in english which fit with the has-to-be-completely-different English storyline instead of whatever the movie was about in original German. It's actually pretty blatant how much the storylines of the movie are changed for American release just with the dubbed audio... pretty funny actually. I also found it funny that I was relieved and comforted by the pretty bad shape of the print. Maybe it's a rejection of all the DV-shot DVD-projected indie films or the pristine new festival film prints I've been seeing lately but it was really good to see some faded color and tons of scratches over luscious natural 70s beauties tonight. good times.
09.27.06	Pan's Labyrinth	Guillermo del Toro	This was the second AICN Special Screening listed in the schedule. It was pretty much the worst-kept secret of the fest... everyone seemed to know the first day that it would be this movie, but that doesn't mean any less of us wanted to see it. So there's a whole story about why it had to be unlisted and why Guillermo, traditionally a big fan of Austin and big friend to Harry, couldn't be there in person (long story short: he's commited to premiere at the new york film festival closing night), but Harry did have a typed-out speech of Guillermo's that... for whatever reason... harry decided to read aloud in his Mexican Guillermo accent. Now... I'm not talking bad about Harry because he's the reason I got to see both this and Apocalypto and several other good films here at the fest... but I would think that if you were planning on reading someone else's writen speech out loud to 200 people, you might want to glance over it once or twice before picking up the mic. About half-way through this little paragraph, Harry stops and says "this is a tough word... I don't know this word..." then a few seconds later continues on with "para-diggum" and it's suddenly like Ted Danson just walked onstage in Blackface or Dan Quayle had written "potatoe" on a chalkboard. Everyone looks at each other with wide eyes then maybe half the theater yells out "para-DIME!" and Harry tries to cover it with a lame joke about him being mexican and that's why he mispronounced it. So paradiggum is now my new favorite word. It's replaced Crispin Glover saying "I am not a retard" in his hilariously bad southern accent as my new favorite thing to say in awkward silences. Can't believe it. paradiggum. anyway, the movie. Again, this one was much more realistic that I thought it would be. There are certainly fantasy elements present but it's like 80/20 between real drama with the spanishoccupation and rebels fighting it out and a kind of fantastical series of challenges for the main girl to go on. My immediate reaction was that it was VERY similar to The Devil's Backbone, if you replaced the ghost kid with a walking goat dude. There is some pretty cool violence, mostly in small touches that make it much more effective, and the reality of the film stands strongly on its own... it just took me a bit off guard with not being more surreal or fantasiac. Unlike The Fountain, I think my expectations made me just a tad disappointed with this, although I still liked it. So only one more day! Only three more FantasticFest films! Only one more that I haven't seen! it's all happening! First though, I went downtown for a nice little Weird Wednesday diversion.
09.27.06	Roman	Angela Bettis	Sitting through Firefly really hurt me for Roman I think. This was also shot on digital and had pretty deliberate pacing and characters that don't immediately scream out for empathy... so I really think my quota for that type of stuff was full for the day after Firefly, leaving me in no mood for this. Still, I felt I had to see it though... Lucky was nice enough to talk to me back at South By when I still had a documentary idea going and I am still a pretty big fan of both May and Angela Bettis' tiny, tiny cute little self so I was definitely curious about this and hoping for the best. The idea was that this would be a companion piece to May... not like a sequel or anything like that but more like a cousin, this time with Lucky playing the lead and Angela directing. So while the idea is cool it also sets itself up I think because even though they both did decent jobs, comparing the films is a bit unfair. It's clear that Lucky's a better director than actor and vicey versey with Angela... and that's not just because both May and The Woods looks gorgeous on lush film and this one is all on an XL-1 with available light. Again though, I think that's unfair because May and Roman are, in some respects, completely different kinds of movies. Still, I have to say I didn't really like this. Really the only kick I got out of it was seeing Kristen Bell play not one but two quirky hot chicks attracted to introverts... that does my heart some good. I may very well have to rent Veronica Mars now, although I have a feeling she's much more sexually assertive in this. Oh, also... Crab Man from My Name is Earl shows up briefly as a police detective. He looks about as far from a real police detective as I can think of... so that was funny. I sort of got the general feel that this was a movie all these guys would work on while they were otherwise unemployed... so if they didn't have anything going on for any given weekend, they'd shoot some stuff for Roman and eventually it got done... That's not necessarily a bad thing... it really comes through that it's a group of friends working on this project and I think it's cool how they all stick together and help each other out with their different projects and stuff... but it does have some home movie feel as well. Oh well, Maybe it was just me, and I hate to say this because I like Lucky and Angela is cute and can fit in my pocket, but this one didn't do much for me.
09.27.06	Firefly	Pete Marcy	After some extremely unfulfilling chinese buffet (never again), I decided to check this movie out instead of hang out in the lobby and talk to people. I've had a new episode of The Wire on demand since monday but haven't had a free hour to watch it, so my guage for whether a movie is good or bad has now become whether or not i think about how I could be watching that episode of the Wire right now... if I spend my time wishing I was at home instead of the theater, your movie has problems. This movie has problems. It's kind of a Donnie Darko rip-off in that some stuff happens then over a perioud of time weird things happen to some people that lead them to eventually all connect at the very end in an explanation of what happened right at the beginning. The problem is that all of the characters aren't defined or developed or fleshed out at all, so you end up watching these people that you don't care about do things that you don't care about to come to a conclusion that you don't care about. Couple that with crappy looking DV photography (which, sorry, I personally don't like. I find that a movie has to work twice as hard to win me over if it's gonna look that way) and a 25-minute short and you get two hours that could've been spent watching that episode of The Wire twice instead. sigh...
09.27.06	The Fountain	Darren Aronofsky	so hey... yes we're all lucky to get to see this tomorrow with Aronofsky and his hot wife present... but when presented with an opportunity to see it at an Alamo a day early in a press screening, I am incredibly there. In fact, I am there early to hear about how they screened Pan's Labyrinth last night while I was watching Wilderness, and how Tim's planning on showing a print of something at 2am tonight downtown... I guess hanging out in the lobby early gets you tons of dirt... privy to certain information like how they've set up a Texas Chainsaw tour for the filmmakers in town, driving them out to the house and around the area and whatnot. It's ok... all of those guys go ahead and have a good time driving around in a bus... I'll be in the theater watching The Fountain with like 15 other people. I really liked this movie although it did not meet my vague expecations... The future fantasy stuff is kind of surprisingly sparse, most of the movie taking place in modern day... and it's also less a story of a guy who either reincarnates through the ages or lives forever but some kind of obtusely hinted at cinematic devices at work. If that sounds too vague, I'll just say that there's a book in the movie called The Fountain. How's that for obtuse? But you know, whatever I was thinking it was going to be... this was a really good movie. It's a quiet movie, a deliberately-paced movie... a real change in approach from Pi and Requiem... yet it still has the Aronofsky crew team behind it and he managed to recruit mogwai to help with the music along with Clint Mansell and the Khronos Quartet. I'm really interested to see this with a crowd, and even more interested to hear what they have to say tomorrow when they present it and answer questions. This is one of those movies where it ends and the end credits roll and the only music is a melancholy piano piece and we all just sat there in silence until the film unspooled and the lights came up. Really powerful film... I just hope any sort of sci-fi or fantasy expectation doesn't hurt it with crowds... if anything it's more of a romance movie than anything else... about love and death and life and living and dying... I hope no one boos because that means they have cold dark hearts. so more on this one tomorrow when I see it again. This time around though, I really loved it.
09.26.06	Wilderness	Michael J. Bassett	So this year at FantasticFest they have a whole color-coded category for survival horror in the program book. 6 movies all dealing with woodsy gore and redneck hunter maniacs... I ended up seeing half of them and all 3 were good. This one is about a group of troubled youths including a couple bullies who drew a soft kid to suicide going out to a remote island for supposed team-building exercised led by one counselor guy. Yeah, it didn't make a whole lot of sense to me either... but that's ok because it only takes like 15 minutes to get all of that out of the way and start in with the creative woodsy deaths. The most interesting part of this movie for me was a shift that happened toward the end of the film. It's not so much a twist or anything like that, but just a cool character thing that changes the goal of the film... Unfortunately, I think the very end kind of goes all over the place, killing people off left and right where the first 75% of the picture really revelled in tense moments in between kills. Still, I liked it. Yet another beartrap gag. Harry pointed out opening night that beartraps would be a recurring theme and indeed they are. But I guess that's also a standard of the survivalist horror genre... It's not like we're seeing beartraps in urban dramas or anything.
09.26.06	The Woods	Lucky McKee	Next up was a real curiosity. I'd heard The Woods sucked but then was good again but was going to be on a shelf forever but then was going to be released but then not... Regardless of the quality though, Bruce Campbell and Patricia Clarkson in a Lucky McKee movie? hells yeah! Also, this gets extra points for making Shyamalan change the title of the movie he was shooting at the time to The Village (yep, this was shot that long ago). So now that we've finally gotten to see the movie? Well it certainly doesn't suck. I liked it well enough. I think I was expecting it to swing pretty far one way or the other though so for it to just be a decent creepy movie kind of threw me for a loop. It's about a girl who gets sent to this boarding school where the teachers are odd, and it's surrounded by spooky woods. In the Q&A afterward two people asked about an Argento influence... so I guess anyone that's seen Suspiria is prone to think that. And it IS reminiscent of Suspiria for sure. I thought it of as Suspiria meets The Guardian with a teaspoon of Carrie thrown in the mix. At one point though... Bruce Campbell picks up an axe. The house liked that a lot. Especially because his role in this is pretty toned down for the most part, playing a repressed mid-60s dad. So yeah... it was decent. Certainly not bad. I think I like May more, but there's really no reason why this shouldn't be on screens... Trees get away with too much shit nowadays... all the hippies hugging them and whatnot, people need to get re-afraid of trees... it's been a while since Evil Dead.
09.26.06	The Beach Party at the Threshold of Hell	Jonny Gillette, Kevin Wheatley	Today's Fantafest started with this post-apocalyptic movie that I'd pretty much heard nothing about. Hey, post-apocalypse? I'm there... even though people in the theater were guessing at a strong Six String Samurai vibe... which, since I saw it alone on my tv instead of some "perfect" sxsw audience, was not good news. It is kinda like Six String Samurai in that it's post-apocalyptic and a comedy and really really cheap, but that's about where it ends. For one, I actually enjoyed this movie... and for another it didn't give me a headache so... bonus. I thought of this as a bad movie that I enjoyed though... the beginning is chock full of weird exposition since the movie is sort of structured like a TV documentary... well, sort of. It's like a crappy DV indie movie with an intruding TV doco busting in whenever it wants to. There's animation, there's historical footage, cheap CG graphics, and talking head interviews all kind of slopped together in a noisy soup of set up and character background. If you aren't immediately tickled by it all, it gets pretty grating. My friend wrote a note saying "I hate this movie" and passed it on. But then it grows on you... by getting better. The exposition fades away as stuff starts to happen and the DV indie sort of takes over, pushing the TV doc out of the spotlight and the movie finds its rythm. My friend took his note off the table at a certain point and ended up liking it by the end. For me, that's largely due to the lead actor... and I guess writer and co-director. Dude's like a cross between George Clooney and Vincent D'Onofrio with some Jack Burton sprinkled on top. His character... you know, I don't feel like getting into any of the story stuff... it's just too crazy. I mean, if the movie needs a half hour to set it all up, how am I gonna do it here in one paragraph? he just has the tailored "cool" role and plays it nicely. So yeah... this was goofy and funny and kinda crappy but not so much to let it get you down. It was a fun time. It also had a pretty decent short before it. Since the time has kind of crunched between my sleep and making it to the theater, I've stopped mentioning the shorts but they're still there, in front of most screenings to soak up time. There's been maybe two i didn't hate and this is one of them. It's a quick little scene between an old guy (the man who smokes in x-files) and a salesman and we find out as they talk that the guy's trying to buy a replacement body... but he doesn't have enough money. So the company that makes the artifical bodies has this employment plan to work off the bill but it basically turns you into a slave for 100 years... but the old guy has cancer so it's a basic choice between death and enslavement for 100 years. It manages to speak about some human truth while being interesting and entertaining and, most important for a short, short. So I was happy with that one... they should all be so good. Afterward, I went to Greg Nicotero's panel. This was kind of a shame because I'd heard the ComicCon Grindhouse trailer was going to play... which was gonna be awesome. Unfortunately, we got the word one degree away from nicotero himself that it wasn't going to play. Why? Well apparently Robert Rodriguez was gonna come by and moderate the panel and present the footage to us but he's in LA. I can't speak to how or why he didn't make it but... that sucks. And it sucks worse for those of us who knew what we were missing. Nevertheless, Greg played some clips from previous work and talked over them and paused them to tell us stories about the jobs and directors. The big surprise for me ended up being finding out that they had done the make-up effects on UHF, Weird Al's movie... I love that movie and knowing that makes me love it just a little more. So it was still a fun time, still well worth going to. Something like this always makes for a good excuse to put someone in a position to hear all the typical things you really want to ask but don't when you actually talk to him in fear of coming off as too fanboyish. Kinda like when your parents visit town so you can go do all the corny touristy stuff that locals snicker at. Not that I talk to Greg Nicotero at all... but if i did, I'd have all these bases covered.
09.25.06	Northville Cemetery Massacre	William Dear, Thomas L. Dyke	Unfortunately, after three pleasant surprises that made the entire day fly by, a vintage biker film from the 70s... well I was looking forward to it and I liked it, but after the three previous it seemed a little long. Under previous titles Freedom, R.I.P. and Wheels of Death, Northville Cemetery Massacre is about a detroit motorcycle club that gets framed for raping and beating this girl so a psycho cop (who actually did the raping and beating) enlists an outraged father and a maniacal hunter to kill them all. Aside from a woman saying a great line (when asked if she wanted some pot, "no thanks, I heard it makes you wanna rape and kill"), my favorite scene was when the hunter explained his reasoning for being ok with killing bikers, explaining that like any good hunter, he's also an ecologist... and he sees this as protecting the herd, since bikers are born scum anyway. He delivers it straight and it's hilarious... but bad news for the bikers who proceed to explode in firecracker-triggered squibs of real blood from slaughterhouses and leftover hamburger. Half the fun of this movie was hearing the director talk about it before and after it played. He was filled to the brim with stories... I think he was just so excited that anyone would want to show this movie (and all 26 of us that showed up instead of seeing Severance) that he wanted to get every single story out of his head. Some were entertaining, like how the actor in the lead part had to be dubbed so he managed to hire a really young Nick Nolte to dub the whole part for $150 (if you can call like 3 scenes with dialogue the lead part), or how he got ex-Monkee Michael Nesmith to add a funky/good ol' boy score or how he managed to get the biker club to be in it and further troubles that came when the movie didn't make any money. I particularly liked the end... the bikers, well.. i'll just say it's not a shamshing success for the bikers... and since it isn't it kind of takes on this completely different message about America and freedom and where we're going... Sure the very very end is pretty obtuse and confusing, but just before that during the titular massacre it's just different from a lot of other biker movies to seem to want to say something. but still, right after the host? come on... it was good and I'm happy I saw it but it couldn't compare to the rest of the day's films.
09.25.06	The Host	Joon-ho Bong	Speaking of really good movies, this was awesome. It's a Korean monster movie BUT... hold up a second, curtail your expectations based on that phrase. It's like a very serious modern-day Korean monster movie. The creature is all CG instead of man-in-suit and it's shot beautifully and the story is really that of a family trying to rescue a young daughter than any sort of global town-wrecking rampage. The mosnter itself is a mutated fish-thing that lives in this river in Seoul and one day crawls up on the banks to start eating people. From there it actually becomes more about the government's response to the attack and what happens afterward. While funny, the movie is actually very sad. It's a strange line that it walks but it does it very well, alternating between the two emotions pretty rapidly... and then occasionally becoming Jaws levels of suspenseful fun whenever the monster attacks. Actually what surprised me most is how much the movie tilts anti-bureacracy and government. The Korean govt. officials are portrayed with Kafka-esque levels of red-taped ignorance, and the American army and government are seen as downright nasty, using the event as an opportunity instead of taking care of the problem (gee, wonder where they get that). A lot of the suspense actually comes from these innocent family members as they struggle against the paralyzing web of government institution... which I didn't immediately suspect when I heard it was a Korean monster movie, ya know? So this movie is I think the first film which I'd peg as Fantastic during this festival. I really liked Severance, thought Hatchet was really good, liked Unrest, Frostbite, and Apocalypto; Bug was great but this movie is fantastic.
09.25.06	Bug	William Friedkin	So Bug was packed in the 200 seat theater... I don't think people had to sit on the floor but there were some folding chairs going on. I'm pretty surprised at the crowds this year... much larger than last year for pretty much everything. That's a good thing i suppose, but I don't particularly like it when I can't get a seat because the movie before it let out late. Luckily I had a saved seat but anyway... This one is about Ashley Judd and the creepy marine guy from World Trade Center hiding out in a crappy hotel room absessing about invisible bugs eating them alive. It's a claustophobic white trash story that borders on the line between really creepy and rounding the bend into dark comedy. Harry COnick, Jr. is also in a supporting role as a slimy ex-con... which he pulls off surprisingly well for me. Mostly its just these two though, going crazier and crazier throughout the movie. It's a really good movie... even though I was kind of let down that I didn't get to see Billy Friedkin do an honest-to-goodness monster bug movie, this is a pretty suitable substitute... There are still some moments when blood and gore creep in that are pretty great and caused some gasps in the audience, but mostly it's just watching these poor crazy people destruct themselves. It's based on a play but it's really one of the few stories that felt like it could be a claustrophobic movie instead of a play in the first place... Yes there are some long scenes and it pretty much only takes place in one location but whether it's Friedkin or the writer or whoever, it didn't feel like I was watching a filmed play. Maybe it's because I don't see many horror or thriller plays... Ashley Judd wasn't going on long monologues about surviving incest or being unhappy or whatever typical broadway thing I'm used to seeing people "act" about... but yeah, for whatever reason the whole play aspect never bothered me, and it usually does. Judd... I don't really like her much and she confuses me by being able to look so hot and so white trash pretty much interchangeably (in this one it's definitely more white trash) and I don't think she's that great an actress... in this she definititely does my favorite bit of physical acting of hers (and it plays in the background too), and while the role does stretch her limits some I mostly didn't feel like she was out of her depth, which I guess makes this a good performance for her. The dude was note-perfect though and really really creepy and funny at the same time. Awesome performance by Michael Shannon... he really makes the movie. And, cool enough, Michael Shannon was in attendance to talk afterward. Tim was pretty funny by saying "i'm gonna give you th emic then step away because I don't want to be within 15 feet of you" to pretty big laughs. FUnny enough though, he said that in most of the productions of the play, the theaters they played in were very small, some seating only 50 people all of whom were a mere 15 feet away from the actors. So that actually gave a much heavier tone to the play because the audience is so close to it that at the end they are just really creeped out and have to leave right away... it's only in the film that you get some distance and can see how some of the stuff that goes on is actually pretty funny (as sick as that may sound). He was pretty candid in his Q&A, seemed like a very nice guy and was happy to see so many people loving his movie. I think up till now he's been "that creepy guy in lots of movies" and, while he still may not be Michael Shannon, he'll now be "that really creepy guy from Bug" to those that see this. It's really a stand-out performance. And a really good movie. on the stage it wasn't funny.
09.25.06	Hatchet	Adam Green	OK So when i got wrangled into a way-too-long discussion after the movies last night, I inadvertantly stayed way past the letting out of Hatchet's first screening. So I got to see how excited people were after seeing it... The leatherface guy came up to us and gave us all high fives for no reason and the director did indeed stay out there talking to people until 4:30am. The next day I heard that a whole group of people from last night were here today to see it again. So this movie had some buzz. Apparently it sold out five nights at Tribeca... and did some equally buzzworthy things at other fests. So Fantastic Fest screened it in the smallest theater. people had to sit on the floor... To say that when the house seats 200 is one thing, to say it when the house sits 83 is another. Oh well, I guess the film has just a tiny bit more buzz now that it's played here and people had to sit on the floor to see it. All of that monkey business aside, it was a pretty fun movie. It looked pretty decent for its budget, had some cameos by Robert Englund and the guy who played Candyman, and the monster was played by Kane Hodder... So in its own completely separate way, this was similar to Behind the Mask in that respect... kind of a throwback to 80s slasher flicks: Monster, gore, and tits. This has some fun with all of those though, setting it during mardi gras to get the boobies, coming up with another monster mythology along the lines of Jason and Freddy, and executing some pretty cool gore gags that - GASP! - are shot so we can actually see what's going on! Unfortunately, it sounds like the MPAA has a problem with some of the best gags on display here... which I think could really hurt the movie since that's one of the best things about it. The movie is not all quick cuts and gore-by-insinuation (probably because he didn't have the time or money to do the necessary coverage) so it's not like they can just make it slightly more cutty to save themselves... but however it ends up theatrically, the director said it was in the contract for Anchor Bay to release the director's cut on initial release though so it'll be seeable at some point. so the movie's fun. It's got humor, familiar faces in the supporting cast (like the jump to conclusions dude from Office Space and one of Bill Murray's many many brothers). One thing of particular note is that all the vomiting that goes on in this film is actually real. which is awesome and gross at the same time. Like even the mouth-to-mouth puke is real. Something to keep in mind while you watch... um... yeah so that's it. I liked this one... I think I still like Severance more, but this falls second as far as the fun horror movies go... it's good though, for sure.
09.24.06	Frostbite	Anders Banke	Frostbite is a Swedish vampire movie that takes place during a month-long stretch of darkness in a small snowy town. It looks really good for its budget, has a pretty funny script, and is executed pretty well. I think if it was in English it would actually make money here in the states. It has a bit of a Buffy vibe going on with highschool students vamping out and stuff... my favorite scene involves a guy who's slowly taking on the symptoms going over to his girlfriend's parent's house for dinner... to find that her dad's a priest... and they're having garlic-braised chicken for dinner... he ends up taking more interest in the younger sister's pet rabbit instead. There are some problems though. The editing is a bit rough, overly relying on awkward wipes and fades to black too much, which makes the ending come out of nowhere. And one of the lead actresses kind of came off as bad to me, and some of the stuff gets pretty formulaic for a movie which seems all too aware of how much it's playing with the genre. Still though, good is great at this festival right now... I got some enjoyment out of the movie and i walked away liking it.
09.24.06	A/K/A Tommy Chong	Josh Gilbert	I missed this at SXSW so it worked out pretty great that they were showing this when I got downtown. Poor Tommy Chong. I guess you could call this a liberal doc... but I'm not sure how liberal you have to be to see the absurdity in sending Chong to jail. So this doc does a good job of underlining the obvious beat to this story, and also following him around right before and after his jail term. While I liked the doc, I think the biggest thing that I learned was that Chong has a hot wife. After that I stayed downtown for this VJ competition thing that was going on. Basically, for the recent series of free concerts that the Alamo's given in conjunction with a few other places (and AT&T), they've had live video mixing to match the DJ playing music. So this was a competition between local VJs... basically they hooked their setup into the Alamo's projector and mixed video images to music that the DJ played... although I think in most cases the VJs brought in specific music but the DJ also did a bit of mixing on his own so I generally didn't know whether the VJ was doing a prepared set or improv'ing. um... yeah I'm not sure about it. I'm going back for the next one to see Tim compete, but I think watching this has dashed any thoughts I had about competing. The majority of these guys had serious setups... like two matching laptops with a piece of mixer hardware and a little monitor... and they still weren't that impressive. It's funny how they were all kind of similar as well though. I think a lot of these guys work primarily with raves or house systems where the visuals are clearly secondary to the music... like the little whatevers playing on the monitors just to have something to look at if the band/dj is boring (and let's face it, most DJs are pretty damn boring to watch, unless you're a DJ yourself)... so there was a lot of belly dancing and fire-eating girls overlayed onto psychadelic color sweeps or mandala patterns... which I found pretty boring. I think, ideally, the music would be a basic beat but the video clips would also have audio to treat as samples... so the video actually becomes the focus of the whole experience... I don't know if the various pieces of software out there support that or not though... but it seems like you just pick your little motion loop, pick which filter you want to fiddle, and call it good. I'm curious with Tim though because he should have a pretty large catalog of video from films... not just a dancing skeleton loop or a travelling-through-tunnel shot. I mean... manipulating a clip of James Brown dancing over a solo sounds cool to me, watching it switch back and forth between 2 still photographs does not. So yeah... mixed results with that. I did have to duck out early though, missing the last two competitors, to get to the midnight movie in time. I'm glad I did though because I really could've used a good movie to end my night with (oh yeah, My throat got sore at some point today, which put me in an angry mood because i hate getting sick). I'm glad I did though...
09.24.06	The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes	Quay Brothers	A long time ago, one of my first netflix rentals actually, I checked out a disc of Quay Brothers shorts.... I'd heard they were very similar to the old Tool music videos that I really liked... twisted animation, baroque gothic-y type stuff... that sort of thing. The shorts were interesting but really varied in terms of my enjoyment... So, I walked into this movie pretty much expecting to be a little bored and maybe not get into it but curious enough to not want to pass up the chance to see it and hoping for the best as always. sucked. A super long and slow short preceded it which didn't help matters... and then this started unrolling and it was pretty much staring forward waiting for it to end. Thomas made the comment that it was like a home movie of David Lynch's garage sale... I think that's being kind. I'd say it was like that at its best parts... usually though it was a couple people either sitting or standing and talking to eachother about things that make no sense, intercut with weird little 2-second glimpses of animation that makes no sense. I guess it had a very deliberate visual design and style... so for those people who like Joel Schumacher movies for the costumes you might get a kick out of looking at this, but I am officially tired of very pretty movies with very weak stories. I was so done with this movie that I had to take a break from the fest after it was over. I just couldn't take either one of the movies playing next, both sounding like a weird and confusing psychological thing involving madness or whatever, and opted to go downtown instead. Back into the lovely arms of Carrie and Cathy and Fernando and Joe and Karen and the lovely downtown atmosphere... It almost didn't matter what the show was.
09.24.06	Unrest	Jason Todd Ipson	ok catching up... This movie had a solid recomendation and sort of hung on the hook that the director was a surgeon so they filmed in a real morgue and some of the cadavers were real. Of course none of the bodies that the actors tough or anything, but the background bodies were... so the actors probably ended up smelling at the end of the day just like real med students... The movie is indeed pretty decent. It's more or less you standard possession med student dead body talking to me type story... but there's some creepy medical type stuff going on and the supporting cast is actually very good. Unfortunately, the main girl is not... oh well. so... yeah. kinda creepy... had its moments... a few problems, like the last 8 minutes and the main girl's acting and some of the lines they have her say (no joke, at one point she says "rest in peace, bitch!") but overall i'd count it as a good movie and I walked out un-disappointed.
09.23.06	The District!	Aron Gauder	so yay for Apocalypto... for the midnight movie I was sold on the trailer for this Hungarian animated feature (Hunganime?)... It looked crazy and funny and the animation style was pretty far out. That's all more or less true... It starts off really crazy and I sort of stopped caring so much about the subtitles after 10 minutes because everyone was talking so fast and the dialogue was overlapping and I hated having to keep look down to read what was going on instead of looking at the cool animation... so in that respect it was a bit too much and, like Tim, I wish I understood Hungarian so I could absorb it all easier... but I still got a kick out of the premise. This kid's grandfather tells him that the road to life is money, money, pussy... so he figures out a way to get money in going back in time, killing a bunch of mammoths at the spot where he lives, then coming back after their bodies have turned into oil and striking it rich. From there though, the newfound oil creates global consequences... George W. Bush has a small role... Tony Blair appears wearing a Darth Vadar mask at one point... and in general things get a little crazier. Oh, and it's constantly punctuated with Hungarian rap songs... like there's so much of it that it could be considered a musical. Except it's hookers talking about tricks and stuff like that... but the basic skeletal story is ripped off from Romeo and Juliet. Again, I seemed to be in the minority, but I kinda dug this. Yes it was crazy and blaring and kind of obnoxious... like watching random cable channels late at night... but it was so colorful and original that I got a kick out of it. Now, it wasn't my favorite thing ever or anything like that... and I thought it ran out of steam, maybe should've ended 10 or 15 minutes earlier than it did... but still, I'm glad I saw it. And now I'm going to bed because it's late and it's another full day tomorrow.
09.23.06	Apocalypto	Mel Gibson	So the big super secret film is a pretty early version of Mel's Mayan adventure movie. To be honest, this was not very high on my list of movies to look forward to. i was really impressed with the trailer last December, but... I hated The Passion and again I'd heard this wouldn't even have subtitles and stuff like that. so my expectations were pretty low. Well, it had subtitles. The story is basically of a jungle tribe that gets attacked by a more civilized group of Mayans who capture the men and women of this more primitive tribe, walk them into their city, sell the women off as slaves, and use the men as human sacrifices. One man manages to escape and the whole last act of the movie is a big chase sequence with him running from a band of Mayan hunters. Along the way, you get glimpses of signs of the mayan culture on the brink of extinction... disease, famine, pollution, corruption... so it's really a message of a simpler, more primitive tribe trying to escape the oppression of a bigger dirtier new civilisation. But that's really just on the sidelines... mainly it's a big chase sequence. um... So I have to say I enjoyed this movie. I think I am in the minority though... the majority of people sitting around me anyway all hated it. The person sitting next to me leaned over when the movie ended and whispered "Apoca-CRAP-o!" and some people said they spent the entire time making fun of it... One guy felt it was expoitive and just plain wrong... I dunno, I liked it. It tries to be authentic and atmospheric and yeah it has a few things to say which are obvious corrolaries to current events but you kind of have to look for them or put the pieces together yourself. Granted, there are a couple moments which... eh... and one scene in particular toward the end which made me laugh, and not in a good way... but hey, for a movie with a cast made up entirely of first-time indigenous people actors and all spoken in the Mayan language, I never found myself bored or tired. I don't know what to say... I enjoyed it. It kinda did make me wonder though, because the trailer looked great and definitely like it was shot on film, yet what we saw here looked like cheap consumer-grade DV. I'm thinking that's because it's straight from the Avid and it hasn't been color timed at all yet and most of the effects aren't done and it was low resolution and blah blah blah... but I don't know. That's a hell of a difference if the film was indeed shot on film because lots of shots, especially in the jungle, look VERY DV. I'll be curious to see how the finished film looks in theaters, because I definitely expected the movie to look much much better than it did tonight. It's forgiven though because it's very much a work in progress. Actually all that stuff... music, sound effects, sound mix, visual effects, picture quality... it was all very temp or unfinished. A few times they had to put print on screen to explain a shot that didn't exist yet... but you know, that also kind of added to the fun of getting to see this movie so early... assuming it all looks and sounds much better in December. So what's funny is... apparently they screened it for Harry today at 1 because they were paranoid and if he didn't like the film they wouldn't play it tonight. I think that's hilarious. So when you read Harry's gushing review of it, keep in mind that if he didn't love it, his already-announced super secret special screening would have to be cancelled.
09.23.06	Severance	Christopher Smith	So after Tideland we got some food then sat in on an Aquisitions panel between SXSW Matt Dentler, John Pierson, and film buyers for Roadside Attractions and First Look Films. I basically wanted to see this to a) see what a Fantastic Fest panel would look like, b) silently make fun of everyone asking questions, and c) see how many times Pierson mentioned Roger & Me (only once, although Dentler brought it up a second time). Truthfully, it was a much better discussion than I thought it would be. That's largely due to the candor between the film buyers. Apparently, they decided that this was a minor enough event to be able to speak freely and dish some dirty about specific films that I'm used to only hearing about in vague ballpark figures. So that made it interesting for me, especially since I just finished reading Pierson's book (referred to as a bible multiple times) so this was like a 10-years-later epilogue saying how it all works now. So after that people were already lining up for the super secret special screening at 9... All day we'd been thinking about it and had it narrowed down to either 300 or Apocalypto. During the panel Jarrette found out that it was definitely Apocalypto. wee. So thanks to the way they worked it with the lines, they let us watch Severance and not lose our places for the 9 show, which was nice because Severance really kicked ass. It's like a Cabin Fever mixture of horror and comedy... mostly scary but constantly punctuated with some funny to keep it more of a fun type of horror than oppressive or Japanese. I hesitate to say anything specific because I think it's actually gonna come out here in some theaters, but the writer was in attendance and gave a quick Q&A where he said they're kicking around a sequel idea which revolves around a fantastic scene in the film... it actually sounds like a good sequel idea. But the gist of this movie is a bunch of yuppie defence contractors go up for a team-building weekend at some rustic lodge and run into some psycho paramilitary types who kill them. Yeah, the idea sounds pretty familiar... but the movie comes up with really funny little touches to set it apart from the rest in the survival horror genre, and really plays well to audiences. It's the first non-doc of the fest that I've really actively enjoyed. Definitely one to keep on the radar.
09.23.06	Tideland	Terry Gilliam	day... 3? yes, day 3. Started today out with an afternoon showing of Tideland. This screened the night before to lots of talk afterward... I'd heard it sucks from way back, plus the fact that it played Toronto 05 and is still playing festivals... Other than that though, All I knew about it was that it stars some kid and Sarah Polley traded emails with Gilliam about her. So... my friend Aaron had the perfect synopsis for this movie... and if it wasn't a joke, it'd be pretty true. If this was called Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, I'd love it. The whole movie is populated with junkies, retards, and psychopaths... it deals heavily with taxidermy'd corpses... it plays like some freak dream... and I'd pity any normal person who accidentally drove down this road and found themselves in this world. I guess it's a hard job for the kid to pull off since it IS mostly her throughout the movie and she has to do different accents for the little doll-head imaginary friends she has... but like a lot of Gilliam's stuff this movie is just too crazy for my tastes. I was happy to see Jeff Bridges in a small role... and there's a couple scenes that trip out of Gilliam's fantasy mind which are pretty cool visually speaking (one under water and another down a rabbit hole), but for the most part I found it pretty tedious. Again, if one of these characters ended up as leatherface in the last scene, I would've thought that it's awesome for them to take such an odd turn with the prequel... and these people ARE TCM-levels of messed up... there's plenty of morbid shit going on here, spiced with a few pedophilic overtones to make you feel good (unless you're a distributor)... so it really would fit nicely... too bad it's a Terry Gilliam movie instead. Like Jarrette said afterward, it did seem more like a Gilliam movie than Brothers Grimm, it's just a shame that the story sucked.
09.23.06	Midnight Movies: From the Margin to the Mainstream	Stuart Samuels	So this entry was kind of tainted because it's been showing on Starz and Encore for like a year... who cares though, I don't get Starz and I really wanted to see this. As a pleasant surprise, they actually had a 35mm print of it! And what's more, the print actually looked a bit dingy like it's been run a few times... all adding to the subject matter and the atmosphere of the piece. Basically, this doc talks about the handful of movies that drove the "midnight movie" phenomenon throughout the 70s and changed the way movies are today. El Topo, Night of the Living Dead, Pink Flamingos, The Harder They Come, Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Eraserhead. Film clips, talking head insterviews, some vintage interviews, news footage, news print review blow-ups, and other various supporting visuals make up the doc in surprising quality. It does have a small TV doc vibe but mostly it's just interesting, informative, and entertaining... which I think is all you can ask for in a doc. I love how specific theaters had importance back then... I suppose they still do today, with the Alamo being a prime example, but it really makes me wonder if it'll be mentioned in docs 20 years down the road like The Elgin is here... if they'll have an aging Tim league in a loud t-shirt talking about when a bonkers-crazy Russ Meyer showed up to talk about his films or when Eli Roth got the kids to show their Raiders of the lost Ark adaptation for the first time... we'll see I guess. Anyway, I had a lot of fun with this movie... probably the most fun of the 7 I've seen so far. It totally makes me want to read the Midnight Movies book... and I'm sad I missed Lars' intro because I'm curious if he mentioned any sort of split between exploitation movies, which had been going strong in drive-ins and grind houses before this whole "midnight movie" thing started with El Topo... and I guess they both died out at around the same time: video tape. I think it was John Waters though who said that exploitation was gone and sexploitation was gone... I'm not sure what time period he's referring to though because thanks to Lars I have seen PLENTY of both those kinds of movies seemingly centered around 74 which is two years after Pink Flamingos was made... just a little offshoot that interested me, especially because they didn't go after a Roger Corman interview for this and treated that whole world as separate, even though several of the seminal 6 movies started out with standard exploitation releases. I'm hoping the book gets more into that... anyway, a good end to the night for me... watching a doc on midnight movies at midnight. Tomorrow holds at least one super secret special screening so i'm going to sleep tomorrow to make sure I'm not drowsy for it.
09.23.06	Gamerz	Robbie Fraser	Next up was this Scottish comedy about a bunch of nerds who play D&D-esque role playing games. It's actually pretty good... It made me chuckle occasionally... There's a hot goth girl in it... and it actually seems like they got the gaming part... well, close to right. I guess every nerd had his (or in two cases her) own experience with how you sat in the basement playing these games on weekends - I myself never wore a cloak - but I think a lot of this movies charm relies on the nerdy audience's memories not totally disagreeing with how the character on screen play. I myself still hold up a short bit of machinema as being the perfect dramatization of gaming... but hey, this one comes close. There is a bit of a dramatic turn in it though... and some stuff weighs it down so I can't really call it uproariously hilarious or anything like that, but it does have its charm and I think it succeeds as a film. I was pleasantly surprised, mostly due to the "Z" at the end of the title. With a title like GamerZ, my expectations are pretty damn low. So while I liked this, I've still yet to see a break-out loving-it movie... Last year I guess I was lucky because it was right off the bat with Strings... This year though... well maybe it's coming up.
09.23.06	Renaissance	Christian Volckman	So next up was a completely different kind of animation and much higher expectations. For those that know my interests with design and the stuff I do for my mixtapes and medialife website, this movie's visual aesthetic is 100% right up my alley. All stark black/white stuff with occasional dips into the monochromatic spectrum but for the most part it's either black or white and yes the whole movie is that way. So visually, I thought it was quite stunning. Pretty much every shot if not every frame could be paused and shown as a poster or a page in a design book I thought... seeing it moving varies between really impressive and detail overload since your brain is doing so much work to interpret the shapes... Unfortunately, at least for me, the story was fairly weak. For one it was too complicated... and maybe the story itself is actually not that complex at all, but for me... after deciphering the image and figuring out which character was which (they tried their best to distinguish between people, either with haircuts or wardrobe or body shape or whatever, but it's still tough to tell them apart when you see so little of them), following the actual scene always left me a little behind and a little disconnected. It's weird but for such a visually compelling movie I found myself bored in a few places. I just couldn't follow the story and when I could, i wasn't that interested. It's a pretty typical sci-fi cop mystery sort of story... like Minority Report or Blade Runner, set somewhere around circa-2053 Paris. Again, I hate to call this movie bad because i was so turned on by what I was seeing. Still though, I left the theater pretty unfulfilled due mainly to the story. I remember when the first Sin City footage was released on the internet and some people complained, saying the movie should be the artwork through and through... I think this is a good reinforcement to the direction Rodriquez took with it... While it is pretty, it gets in the way after a while.
09.22.06	Blood Tea and Red String	Christiane Cegavske	Day 2. The next two nights' notes will be the most pressed for time since the weekend schedules start at 1 instead of 3. Pretty respectable crowds for everything today... I'm waiting to see what Monday's like. While I'm glad to see the festival doing well, waiting for an hour in line to see a movie i'm barely curious about kinda wore me down. Today's films were a steady ramping up of enjoyment for today, starting with this odd little stop-motion animated fantasy film. Sorry, Kier-La but I just couldn't get into this movie at all. I guess it took the director 13 years to make it so maybe it's tough to face cutting scenes that took you months to animate just for the sake of pacing... but man did it need it. There are a few scenes in here which just go on way too long... and it isn't helped by the fact that all of the movie's communication is via little animal chirps and grunts... no dialogue... so what little story happening is all very vague and weird and obtuse. So... I guess I can explain it as being about a group of albino mice-men who are maybe enemies with another group of brown rat-men with bird beaks... or maybe they just amicably co-exist in the segregated groups I don't know. Anyway, there's some business with this little doll of a woman and they sew an egg into her belly and it births as a woman-bird that gets caught in an old-maid spider's web. Along the way, the albino mice-men play poker with blank cards, drink red tea, and get in a fight when one of them cheats. I think. That was actually my favorite scene if you took away the five minutes of a half dozen clocks ticking that made up the soundtrack. There's also a stagecoach pulled by a turtle... and the rat- and mice-men all wear fanciful royalty clothes... and apparently it all takes place in a teapot. Whatever. If this was like an 8 minute short it'd be tolerable as something to sit through before going on to the main feature (much like the forgettable short before this was), but at 70 minutes... that's a long time to not have any clue what the hell is going on. At least for me it is. So I can see the work that went into this... she gets an A for effort... and it certainly was different. I was actually reminded just a smidge of Henry Darger's work in that it presented some weirdo original fantasy world... but it wasn't for me.
09.21.06	Shock Waves	Ken Wiederhorn	Instead of staying for a midnight feature, I felt loyalist toward the downtown theater so I went over to see this movie, which has the distinction of being the first official Weird Wednesday selection. It's about underwater albino nazi zombies... I'm not sure you can pack more intrigue and excitement into four words... After Zack's hilarious intro and a Weekend at Bernie's tarailer though, we all got to find out the ugly truth about this movie. This is a long 90 minutes. It's like the director saw Carnival of Souls, loved that one shot of all the ghosts coming out of the great salt lake to do the waltz of the dead, and decided to make an entire movie out of that one shot. These albino nazi zombies... it's really all they do is rise up from water and sink back down into water. When it's time for someone to die, a UANZ will rise up, grab them, then sink back down. Their one weakness seems to be taking off their goggles... maybe they all wear contacts so without goggles they can't open their eyes underwater... or maybe it's the harsh UV rays of the sunlight... either way, taking off their goggles makes them stumble around and sometimes die. Unless you do that though, it's a whole lot of rising up out of water and sinking back down into it. and that's the best part of the movie. The rest, with small roles by John Carridine and Peter Cushing, is basically watching people walk around. One guy is kinda funny because he has these bags he's pre-occupied with but mostly all of the victims meld together, except for the girl which IMDb tells me I recognize from the 78 Body Snatchers remake. ahh, that's right. So now I can say I've seen this... although most of the fun from the screening is talking afterward with David's kooky anecdotes and Sonja's redhead horror-loving. Ok it's bed time... day two awaits!
09.21.06	The Last Supper	Osamu Fukutani	So after Chainsaw I was in a cannibal mood and decided to double up on my Asian horror tonight (I am actually not an uber Asian horror fan... throughout the rest of the fest I think I am keeping it to a limit of one per day) and see this movie about a plastic surgeon who likes to eat human flesh. This is like the flipside of the Chainsaw cannibalism. It's all high brown and white collar, it's presented like haute cuisine like this guy could have Hannibal Lector over for a dinner party and talk about the palate or whatever... and it's also all about the cannibalism rather than being a gorefest with the whole eating people thing just another detail to creep you out. Here, it's front and center. And what I thought was funny... and I guess it's actually common to the entire genre so I always think it's funny, is that human flesh apparently tastes really really great. Like this guy is kind of a nerd... he starts eating humans and BAM! he becomes this ultra-sexy, ultra-successfull guy that people call God. Unsuspecting ingestors are wow'd by the taste... it's the best meat they've ever had! Yet they aren't creeped out when he says it's "secret meat that only he has." How many times does the average person hear that? If i was in a diner and had a good sausage and asked what it was... if I didn't hear like, Jimmy Dean, or Garlic-stuffed Pork or something... I'd be pretty suspicious. Especially if it was just some filet... there are only so many kinds of meat... that list is pretty short. Beef? no. Pork? no. ... Venison? no. ok now I'm worried. Maybe it's like a movie-universe thing where people in pre-postmodern movies aren't aware that movies exist... so like people in cannibal movies don't really have cannibalism on their mind. Or maybe I'm just a weirdo who is quick to suspect cannibalism wherever I can... All I know is if something told me it was "secret meat" I'd be suspecting the worst. Anyway, this had a funny Scottish short, also cannibalism-themed, before it that was a pretty good lead-in. The first half hour or so of this movie is pretty great. There's a scene where he takes liposuction fat and cooks it up and eats it that totally turned my stomach... him saying how it was treated with saline and anesthetic so it tasted all salty and medicinal but he ate it anyway... and there's this whole sexual side to it where he had to stop eating beef and pork because he didn't like the thought of fucking a cow or pig. The actual body part-type gore gore was pretty sub-par though... especially after the KNB-level stuff going on in Chainsaw... The biggest plague of this movie though wasn't the fakey body parts. It was the music. The score for this movie is absolutely horrible, and it's laid over the entire movie. It really makes the movie feel twice as long... it actively hurts it. The movie's last hour gets a little sluggish as it is, so with the really bad music it becomes pretty unentertaining, which is a shame because I really liked the first half hour. Some stuff toward the end was good too (he actually uses a decapitated head as a weapon, beating someone's brains in with a woman's head), but it gets uneven and a little contrite. Still though, I probably enjoyed this movie most of the night... It made me hungry for human flesh so I could steal their sense memories and become sexier.
09.21.06	The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning	Jonathan Liebesman	So I literally left Haze, crossed the hall, and entered Chainsaw. This is the big opening night film with the director, two producers, Jordana Brewster, R. Lee Ermy, and the dude who plays Leatherface all in the house. Greg Nicotero was also there but didn't get up and answer questions about the gore... So the house was pretty packed... not quite Borat packed but pretty damn packed. They had to bring out the folding chairs again so it was about as full as that theater can get. People excited to see the new Chainsaw... I almost felt like a traitor or something because I was only mildly interested. While I thought the remake was better than I expected it to be, I still wouldn't classify it as good... so a prequel to the remake just seemed... I dunno... I guess numbers don't matter any more anyway but still... I was hesitant. So a couple things about the movie. R. Lee's in it a lot. Like he's the main non-victim speaking role... and they really made him the tentpole of the whole messed up family... maybe that's a bit like making Boba Fett the blueprint for every storm trooper in all the Star Wars films? maybe not... who knows. I like R. Lee though so I was happy he got a nice juicy role to play into. The movie for me is a polaroid representation of contemporary American horror film... it's really slick, uses tons of filters and inserts on ugly things and tries very hard to recreate a gritty grimy 70s feel that just came naturally back then, it's got a constant bed of ambience music specifically designed to put you on edge or unsettle you in some way, the gore is always shot quick, cut quick, and as close as they can make it to really not have to show anything, the sound effects are really what makes the gore in this movie. For the most intense scenes, I'd say there's really only about 8 frames of truly offending footage... it's just put together in such a honed manner to sell you on the thought of it. It's really the school of Psycho mastered. You don't get any ghosts or creepy kids or creepy kid ghosts or super long takes of people looking at something though which seems to be what Japanese horror is all about these days so... I'm not sure which one I'd rather have. There are some pretty brutal scenes in here though... again, mostly sound effects, but still. Probably my favorite gag is when one victim gets in a car and starts driving off, Leatherface puts a meat hook into her and pulls her right the hell out of the car. You don't actually see anything, but the shot they do have is cool enough to sell the idea and again, I guess that's what counts. There is a lot of gore in the movie though... lots of blood and body parts laying around and things of that nature... for today's standards it is a pretty hard R, which the director said they really had to push and fight for in order to get Chainsaw back to the top in terms of gore. Maybe 75% of the way through the movie, the Alamo waitstaff brings out little bowls of... it was either chili or meat stew... and passes them out to everyone. I ate mine because I know once I get down the road, no matter how full or not in a mood to eat I was, it'd sound like a pussy move to NOT eat the free mystery meat chili while watching a Texas Chainsaw Massacre... so I ate it all up although pretty much everyone around me chose not to. I can understand that... the smell of the meat permeated the entire theater and coupled with what was going on up on the screen... plus not knowing exactly what it was in that little bowl... well it was definitely a leap of faith. That i took. It tasted good. mmmm! The ending of the movie is also pretty cool Spoilers for this paragraph!!! so.... they kill Jordana Brewster... so the survivor girl doesn't get away. and not only that, they also kill two random people as they kill Brewster so it's a nice little scene. And right after they they got John Laroquette to reprise his narration... sort of ending the movie with the beginning and whatnot. A nice touch I thought. My take on the movie was... I liked it more than the 03 remake... but still am pretty mediocre on it. It's basically the same exact movie as the remake... overall I thought it was just OK.
09.21.06	Haze	Shinya Tsukamoto	So here we go! Fantastic Fest 2006! Twice as long as last year, twice as many movies, twice as many things that I'll have to miss due to constrictive scheduling... Oh well! I'll cry about it later, right now I'm too busy enjoying a genre film festival held entirely at the Alamo! We'll see how long these notes end up being. With 8 full days of this, they might get pretty brief depending on how much sleep I'm getting. This wont be coverage for any site though so at least the pressure to form complete sentences and spell check is off... which is nice. So my first movie of the fest, after getting my badge (which is a bottle opener shaped sort of like a hatchet), poster, tshirt, little chainsaw keyring, and envelope with various little bits of goodness (alas no spare SXSW bag this year though), was a movie called Haze. It was made by the dude behind Tetsuo: The Iron Man, which sort of stands in infamy for me. When Netflix first started up, a friend of mine joined just to rent that movie. I was a little traumatized by it. Since then I think I've only seen one or two more of his (A Snake of June being one of them), but recognize that he's pretty influential in both Japanese and western cinema for breaking some ground. A film of his played here last year (Marebito) that I was strongly warned against seeing so I didn't. This year though, I decided to throw caution to the wind and check him out. The thing is, and I don't know if this is just this one and Marebito or an ongoing trend in his work, Tsukamoto has shifted into these really miniscule budget small DV films with him doing pretty much everything but holding the camera (he can't because he's the star... pretty much the only actor). So working in that world kind of limits some options and creates a specific kind of film that either works or doesn't work depending on the viewer. This is my rationalization for why some people hated Marebito bad enough to tell me not to see it even if i was paid, and others thought it was pretty good. Haze is... well I take it to be a nightmare film. It probably has some deeper, much more significant meaning to it but... for me it's just a nightmare. The film starts off with no exposition, no character background, no establishing shots, no nothing... it's just him in this tight space getting injured. It actually reminds me of that movie Cube in a way because it doesn't bother with any sort of set-up, it just starts. But, unlike Cube, Haze is only 50 minutes long so it never bothers to stop and inject any sort of lame reasoning or outcome to it... it's just scene after scene of Tsukamoto in these maliciously designed spaced being physically tortured for no reason. One scene in particular has him stuffed into this corrider so tight that his mouth is forced open against a metal pipe, buth barbed wire under his heels so he has to stand on his tippy toes and slide down this corridor, scraping his teeth on the metal, to get out. The sound effects are particularly effective. However, there's some weird little dialogue toward the end then it gets even weirder right at the end and it kind of left me like... well on one hand I had to admire it because it didn't bother with any of the traditional horror movie filler... it just got straight to the point and did its thing. But on the other hand, it felt kind of like an empty gesture. With nothing to latch onto emotionally or with any sort of commitment to his character, it kind of came off as an unsettling video art installation piece. Without any real narrative, it's basically just sitting through watching torture, which is pretty torturous in itself. So I ended up thinking it was OK... nothing to call to the heavens but... I dunno... I'm don't feel completely cheated of my time. What's interesting to note is that since this film is only 50 minutes long, they paired it with a 30-minute short beforehand called Oculus. Oculus is actually a pretty cool idea... this guy locks himself in a room and videorecords himself in an effort to prove that a particular mirror is haunted/evil. While he sits there he tells us all about the mirror's history and it killed his parents blah blah blah and he slowly goes insane. Now... this would actually make a pretty cool short story I think... On the page, all of that interesting exposition while he sits in a white room with videocameras running would come off pretty well... I actually got sort of a Richard Matheson meets Stephen King's Room 1408 meets Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves vibe from the idea and execution... it's just a shame that it's a short film instead... Not only is it up to this one actor to pull the entire short off, it's kind of forced into having to be too long in an effort to sell that he's slowly going insane... It's something that works in your head as an idea but the end product gets old.
09.20.06	Ginger	Don Schain	so... this movie is pretty horrible. But it's a classic example of being bad in pretty much every way but ending up a really great time just because it's so laughable. EVERYTHING about this movie is funny. It probably won't sound funny here, but trust me it was pretty hilarious tonight at the theater. For starters, there are some awesome credits in the beginning. The car dealership where they got the cars is credited, the super special optical effects are credited, and there's even a guy credited as "trouble shooter." Can't beat that with a stick. The movie... I guess it's like a female undercover cop/spy movie but really it's more similar to Coffy except with a white girl. She has to infiltrate a band of Brighton Beach rich kids who are up to no good... it's great though because every actor is terrible... the private dick guy has an amazing long island accent and spinal curvature... every "hot" girl has like a facial scar or something... the main bad guy is hilarious and a near exact replica of the one Alamo waiter at South Lamar that I hate. That dude talks more than my parents did when I got a D in social studies in 9th grade. just drop my check and move on dude! You need to learn the Suni hand signal or something... anyways... there's this black guy in the movie that's obsessed with white ass. And it's great because pretty much every other shot through the entire film is a really jarring and uncomfortably long POV shot with these people acting badly right into your face. Some of their eyebrows alone deserve awards of some kind. And the waiter-guy's leather choker... And then there's the nudity. I think this is the first movie I've seen where the main girl strips down to nakedness as a form of punishment. It was really funny to see her pull down her panties to some you-would-think nice full-frontal action and have the entire audience sigh in a soft gurgle of disgust. The main girl was blond and very skinny but that's about it... when she takes off those midriff shirts and tight pants... well, let's just say the mystery was better. But she strips like 4 times in a row at the end of the movie... oh that's another thing. Every shot in this movie goes on roughly three minutes too long. Seriously. Ask anyone else who saw it and they'll agree. So you add all of that, plus tons of other stuff that I'm forgetting, together and get this movie... Ginger... capable of planning intricate plans for two whole days and plagued with random flashbacks to guys we have no clue about... I think my favorite device of the film utilized some of the aforementioned credited special optical effects. At one point, the waiter/bad guy yells into camera "There's a lot going on tonight and I want it ALL to happen!" Then we see a shot of the city at night... and these four white dots appear as if to make a picture of the big dipper or something. But then one of the dots blows up to full-frame and we see some scene going on... it goes on too long and then unexpectedly shrinks back down to one of the dots overlayed in the city. I tell ya, by that fourth dot it was pretty hilarious. I started wanting the whole movie to be seen through that framework... like have 18 dots pop up at the beginning of the movie and keep coming back to it... like that movie The Falling Man! So a fun time. I'm pretty sure I'd never make it through on my own... but with a little help from 200 other people it became a really great time. So tomorrow FantasticFest starts... crazy. I've made up a pretty full schedule so we'll see how I do.
09.20.06	Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan	Larry Charles	whew... so... this kind of felt like a roller coaster ride, but not because there were thrills or chills or any of that... it felt that way because we waited for about 3 hours to watch an 80 minute movie. At least I didn't show up at 1:30 like the people at the front of the line. Dorks. So Anyway, this was about the expected level of funny... I still laugh at the trailer (NYOT BLACK!) so those same jokes still played for me in the movie... I actually loved the NYC stuff a lot... because new yorkers are so awesomely rude. What was most surprising for me was that the stuff between Borat and his producer (played by an actor) was also funny... I figured the real hilarity would all be in dealing with the innocent bystanders but man... probably the most outrageous and side-splitting scene was mostly in a hotel room with just those two... other scenes as well, kind of inserted to keep some semblance of plot going, were also funny though... Just an all-around funny movie... I laughed a lot, especially at the jew jokes...
09.20.06	The Black Dahlia	Brian De Palma	So... I have maybe 8 or 9 big problems with this movie... enough to keep me from liking it and I didn't see a lot of stuff that may eventually bring me around like the acting and atmosphere in LA Confidential. But first, let me say that I am NOT a huge De Palma fan... and AM a huge Ellroy fan. I've read this book twice and really get a kick out of it even though there are a few elements that make adaptation tough. My "big 8" are not in the it-should've-been-so-easy category... this is a convoluted and very dark story and I think would be tough for anyone to adapt both faithfully and successfully... but hey, LA Confidential was a good movie (despite raping the book of its ending and pretty much discounting the entire message of the story)... so it must be possible, even if they do have to make Bucky end up all happily ever after with Kay... No, instead most of my complaints come from the casting and acting and direction. It's understandable that they had to make some revisions to the book's story to fit it on the screen (although that 3 hour David Fincher epic is sounding very good right about now)... but from what I've read certain cuts were made for budgetary reasons rather than story... For a hollywood movie, that sucks. OK, i'll let it spill. There is one defining moment in the book that put me over the edge from just liking it to really loving it. It's kind of a spoiler so... just skip this really next paragraph if you don't want to hear it (and the corresponding way in which they screwed LA Confidential up for me for like 5 years). In the book, Lee Blanchard goes down to Mexico at some point... and his character is kind of on edge by this point anyway, popping bennies and doing the mulholland drive run on his bike at 100+ mph speeds... so when he kinda disappears at first it's not a huge thing... but then he stays disappeared. So Bucky then looks into where he went, finds out that he followed some lead down to Mexico, goes down there looking for him, and finds him DEAD AND BURIED IN A SHALLOW GRAVE OUT ON THE BEACH. In the book, this comes like a punch to the face. Not only does one of the main characters kick it, he dies off-screen! and his partner finds him like that... There's like 20 pages where I refused to believe it. It's too sudden, too shocking. Surely Ellroy wouldn't do that to us!? so from then on out it was no holds barred... who knows what can happen. Similarly in LA Confidential (which was written after this), Dudley Smith shoots Spacey's character (my memory of that book is much more hazy so i could be wrong) but the overriding point of that book is that SMITH GETS AWAY! He doesn't get shot at the end, he doesn't even get hurt at the end. he walks away scott clean! There is no Rolo Tomasi bullshit or anything like that... it's just the way it is... So there's that... I might write more about this tonight but right now i have to go stand in line for Borat. OK BACK. So Where was I? Oh yeah, reasons why I don't like this movie. The thing of it is that I didn't 100% completely hate all of it. A lot of stuff in the first hour or so I actually liked. Surprisingly enough, I didn't mind Hartnett as Bucky... I always thought Aaron Eckhart would make the perfect Lee Blanchard and he didn't dissapoint... and Mia Kirshner, while too hot to be Betty Short, is always nice to see on screen. I have some major problems though with Scarlett Johansson (too young) and Hilary Swank. Swank tries her best to play all the femme fatales of great noirs but... sorry... she's just not sexy. The best accent in the world can't hide those teeth. She's all dressed up but just doesn't sell it to me. She has to be the flipside of kay to understand the primal obsession angle and why Bucky keeps going back to her. They really should've switched roles, giving Kirshner the Maddie Linscott role and letting Swank do a glorified cameo as the Dahlia herself. Of course that doesn't make good business sense but oh well... I also think Kim Basinger would've made a great Kay, but that would make LA Confidential weird. So... I missed a lot of the nuance with the character and some stuff with side characters like how the police detective that Bucky shows Blanchard's room too gets his own room and puts all the case info back up on the wall... like the Short case becomes like an obsession passed on from cop to cop. There's also TONS of stuff with two other cops, Bill Koenig and his partner, that plays a major part in the book, now replaced by some convenient leaps of logic in putting the puzzle pieces together. That stuff's kind of expected though (unless it was a 3 hour Fincher epic... sigh), but what you DON'T need is the fucking repeated voiceover that all but blankets the last half hour of the film. I swear, at one point something is repeated the VERY next scene. VERY NEXT SCENE. Come on... that's like Lifetime MoW type stuff... I mean I know the story is complicated but jesus.. It's also as if De Palma actually followed the material for once during the first hour then woke up one morning in Bulgaria and thought "wait a minute! this is a brian de palma picture!" and from that point on it's needless and offsetting POV shots, liberal use of split diopters and slow zooms, and extreme close-ups. Since the rest of the movie's style is fairly classical and restrained, every little De Palma-ism stands out like a sore thumb. In that respect, my fears came true... De Palma ruined it. and yeah, what the hell is Rose McGowan doing in this movie???? and don't even get me started on k.d. lang. It's like for one scene in this movie it's a deleted scene from De-Lovely... then it's back to neo-noir. But you know what?? It's shot by Vilmos Zsigmond, production design by Dante Ferretti, music by Mark Isham (ripping off Goldsmith's LA Confidential score)... it's got really solid crew behind it... why does it still look and feel wrong? I can't be sure... it's just surprising. ok one more thing. Swanks mom? played wrong the whole way through. The ending is supposed to be this really bizarre turn and it's supposed to kind of assault you with four or five things at once, but the movie waters down some things, plays others so broadly that it draws laughs, and generally leaves you not really caring. Again, this is not the easiest thing to adapt but... come on. I feel like i'm just airing all of my laundry now. It's pretty clear that I'm biased toward the book and against De Palma from the get-go... I just wish for once that a movie that I'm REALLY looking forward too meets my expectations. it doesn't have to be every time... just once in a while. I'm just glad Jarrette told me about the Mexico stuff not being in there... because the way they handle it instead is WEAK. I would've been fuming... ok, i'm done.
09.17.06	Unholy Rollers	Vernon Zimmerman	Now this is more like it! THIS is what I wanted from a roller derby movie! Here we go! For starters, after Kansas City Bomber (which didn't even take place in KC) ended, I spotted a glimpse of a most heated debate between Lars and Kier-La... It was a little bit of the parents fighting thing, I certainly didn't want to budge in so I deliberately paid unattention, but my guess it was about whether or not to throw out the rollergirls. It's a tough question to ask because on the one hand, this whole thing is with the roller derby league here in town, and the proceeds benefit a rollerderby-picked charity (some main rollergirl got up on stage and told us, then said "yay, battered women!" in her very un-womanly voice to match her very womanly figure) and so it was like a real TXRD "thing," but on the other hand we're at the Alamo and like the number one rule at the Alamo is no talking... So this was one night where I didn't envy their predicament. So Lars got up again for his intro and, in the nicest way possible, told people to shut up. Then QT got up and reiterated to not talk... And here's the thing I'm taking a complete guess at with Quention... usually, at least for the two festivals I've been to of his, he'll lay the "don't talk at the movie, it's ok to send energy toward it but don't take from it" spiel like once a night, maybe once every other day and people get it. I've never seen him have to give it twice in a night... but I also think that he went to a lot of grindhouse theaters growing up where talking is a constant... and when I got into his crew screenings there was lots of talking going on there too (although that was a private screening so all rules are off then)... so I bet he's actually pretty neutral on the subject of movie talking. I mean, I'm sure he appreciates it that the Alamo enforces the rule, but it wouldn't be the first time he's watched movies like this with crowds like that. Well, whatever. I like it when I can hear the movie. So as both Lars and QT were telling us to shut up, people were still talking. Then all these hot Claudia Jennings trailers played (oh yeah, there were like 12 Raquel Welch trailers.. no kidding it was like a half hour of trailers before the first movie... only 3 or 4 before this one), people were still talking... so after the trailers Tim hopped up on stage and, as I've seen him do many times before, managed a pitch-perfect announcement and third-times-the-charm reiteration to shut the fuck up. He was funny, he threatened violence, he compared movie talkers rapists... all with a beer in his hand and an unassuming demeanor that managed to say "look, I like you guys, I recognize that you like to get rowdy, but tonight we're not in the rink we're in a theater so give the movie, the people, and the theater a little respect." Not a peep through the whole movie. Well, maybe it was Tim's intro and maybe it was the fact that the movie kicked about 20x more ass than the first one. First off, as Lars said afterward, I think a lot of people became Claudia Jennings fans tonight. She was good to look at and filled her role nicely in Group Marriage a few weeks ago, but I think this is the first time I've seen her take on a lead role in a film and play the feisty spitfire redhead that apparently she's known for. There are MANY things I love about this... first off I love hot women who don't mind getting naked. Secondly, I love that this particular hot girl didn't take any shit. She didn't have any sort of uptightness or reserve that some hot chicks get just because they're used to getting things easily due to their hotness. These are women I always just assume are crap in bed because they've never had to work for anyone's affection... but not this girl. I bet this is one of those lets-do-it-in-public-because-im-so-horny women, and that's pretty cool. Thirdly, unlike Raquel's meaningless ennui, this girl is flat-out crazy. She's being spirited... she just wants to kick some ass. The plot sort of follows the standard rise-and-fall storyline, but it's like she was in her crazy downward spiral of decadence and hysteria right from the beginning, she just wasn't rich enough to have anything to lose yet. So yeah, it's safe to say I was taken with Claudia Jennings in this movie. I really want to see Gator Bait now; a movie I missed when it played Weird Wednesday last year before QT6 and that I've read is inspiration for Craig Brewer's upcoming Black Snake Moan. Lars says it's out on VHS and rentable. The other people in this movie are good as well though. The people Jennings sort of lives with in the beginning of the movie, a stripper and auto thiever couple, are both hilarious. Especially the boyfriend who's about as happy-go-lucky as Henry Silva in Chained Heat... he like his job, likes his woman, and that's that. The roller derby athletes, managers, and patrons are all less serious than the previous movie's as well. Whereas the inbred-looking Kansas City crowd was just scary, this inbred-looking crowd was mostly funny. Through the innuendo spread across both films, I'm guessing that roller derby was like a precursor to WWF wrestling... sort of a sport entertainment program where certain elements are false and planned, leaving just enough realism to sell the yokels on it. It's also interesting to watch NASCAR and note how similar their presentation is to modern-day WWE... both enterprises make huge money... big sigh for the state of humanity... Idiocracy here we come. So yeah, just about every aspect of this movie was better than the last. From the supporting characters like the mumbling old guy in charge of putting on the star spangled banner to the adulturous mexican guncrazy love interest to the roller derby footage itself, this film is built far more successfully in the exploitation vein. It may not be high art but damn if it isn't entertaining. You can also see glimpses of Martin Scorsese's hand in some of the sport sequence cutting... I think they actually dressed the cameraman up in the team's costume at one point because there's a POV shot of skating and the dude falls down and you see legs and arms flopping around. Kind of surprisingly visceral and stimulating to the eye in ways that Raquel's chest just can't do, especially trapped underneath huge 1s for like 80% of the movie. In the end, Jennings just goes completely shithouse and starts rollerderbying in the streets, cruising for a random death scene to end the picture with. Indeed she does get hit by a car, but she's too tough to die. Instead she gets up and flashes her fore-arm tattoo (weirdest tattoo placement ever) at random onlookers and we freeze and iris in. Classic.
09.17.06	Kansas City Bomber	Jerrold Freedman	QT Roller Derby night... I've done the unforgivable and waited too long to make this note. All the details are gone... but anyway, I was sad to hear that QT's wrapped his film and showed Jackass 2 as probably the last austin crew screening... so no more secret fun for me. Tonight though, he's here with a shitload of rollergirls (and their crazy-ass fans) to show a double feature of roller derby movies as an excuse to meet the hot ones. When he hopped up on stage he yelled out a roll call of all the local league's teams, thus establishing that he's down. Whenever I looked back though at the ultra-rowdy boot-stomping crowd, it always seemed like it was random tattooed guys who were screaming their heads off. I'm sure the actual gals were getting into it too... i just couldn't see them through the assult of drunken dudes. So... this movie has Raquel Welch in it... and she's really hot. I'm tempted to just end this note here and now with that... because in essence that's why I watched the movie, just about all I cared about during the movie, and pretty much all i thought about in every scene of the movie. Sure it has people in it and stuff happens but... Raquel Welch is hot. As Lars said afterward though, the movie kind of does have her thumb print all over it... like the other woman who's supposed to be just as hot that Welch is supposed to clash with during the movie is... not hot. What's funny is she probably is pretty attractive, but in a completely different way than Raquel, and her character had to be drunk and not wearing any make-up in every scene just to accentuate how hot Raquel is. What's also funny is that QT mentioned how Kevin McCarthy was Monty Clift's one true love... now, whoever knows Kevin McCarthy... maybe from Inner Space or the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers, can quickly call up his image and say "really?" I guess so... different strokes for different folks, as QT said. I bring this up and call it funny though because there's a scene in the movie where Raquel's character inexplicably enters into a torrid affair with McCarthy's seedy roller derby manager character, and QT said it's ok to heckle this scene because it was just so wrong. Heckling aside (which I'll get into in a sec), the scene is hilarious because, looking closely, Raquel is like 100% open mouth tongue-wagging shudders-of-passion into it and McCarthy is like a cold fish. I mean, i literally think Raquels lips surrounded all of McCarthy's lower face, and he's just pursing his lips like he's kissing his grandmother. It made me laugh. unfortunately, everyone else took that scene as a queue to start dinner conversation, improv comedy, and loudest whistling contests. It got pretty out of hand, which is a shame because they were stepping on some pretty classic lines (i remember one being something like, Raquel asks McCarthy if he loves her and McCarthy tells her "as much as someone like me can, sure." So, for a movie that as it was only really had me due to Raquel's hotness, the rabbling and rousing didn't help. Still, there were a FEW things I did like about this movie... One scene takes place while the tour bus is broken down... but it's broken down on train tracks. Maybe if they didn't drive on train tracks they wouldn't break down. Anyway, in that scene, Raquel beats the motherlovin crap out of the other "hot" girl... but that's really the only time in the entire movie that Raquel's supposedly-top skater character succeeds in any way. Every time we see her, she's either getting beaten in the ring, beaten out of the ring, or beaten by life in general (like having her son refuse to talk to her and run away from her when she tries to touch him). For being the league's top skater she sure does suck. I guess all the scenes where she kicks ass happen off-screen and we're just supposed to accept that she's a good roller derby-er but we sure as hell never see it. Between her and her incredibly mannish wig-wearing stunt double, she takes punishment pretty much all throughout the movie. She also doesn't seem to particularly want to be there. Even though she abandons her kids and rejects the offer for a dependable job and gentleman suitor waiting for her on the homefront, she doesn't appear to have any real roller derby ambitions of any kind, and the end of the film is actually about her NOT taking a promotion. If she wasn't so damned hot all of that would probabably have an effect.
09.16.06	The Ground Truth	Patricia Foulkrod	While visit a friend in NYC, I ended up seeing this at a Landmark theater in the Lower East Side. I'd heard that non-Dobie Landmark theaters were actually pretty cool... and they are for the most part right. It's built into an older building so you can still see the wooden support beams in the ceiling and old steel/brick construction around the windows... the seats were close together and the AC was barely working though. oh well. the movie... it's a doc about how the war sucks. Mainly it's about the wave of post traumatic stress disorder happening among returning troops and the government's general neglect of them. There are some good interviews with injured soldiers returned home disfigured but alive due to medical advances... and the problems they have with the whole situation, but on the whole I felt it was pretty much driving home things that I already know. I suppose it's good that movies like these are being made, but it also seems like there's 32 of them out right now... and all of them don't have the actual emotional impact of a film like The Best Years of Our Lives or The Deer Hunter... or I assume Coming Home although I haven't seen it so i could be completely wrong about that. Oh well... still fun to see a movie in NYC.
09.14.06	The Thirsty Dead	Trey Becker	welp... i guess the only notable thing going for this movie is how well it adheres to the stereotypes of really bad movies. Everything about it was... pretty horrible. Yeah, in a so-bad-its-good type way sure... but still. I actually don't think I need to explain anything about it... you already know... it's just bad. But for the sake of my memory in a week or two (because I know this one will leave my memory banks in a hurry): Um.. these girls are kidnapped by these dudes... it takes place in Manilla but then not really. So they take the girls to this mountain with a huge papier-mache cave system (with doors) in it where this group of... either vampires or aliens, mixes the blood of young-ish girls with some secret herbs and spices and drinks it to live forever (hence the title... sort of). They all wear pastel-colored robes and tunics... looking like a 50s sci-fi cast stuck in a 70s horror movie... and there must've been some bet going for who can give the worst performance because they were sure trying hard. So these people have this head in a red ice cube... that tells them things sometimes... and the girls escape and one of the guys helps them but leaves the circle of age and gets really old in 6 dissolves. A snake appears wrapped around one of the girls' ankles in one scene... that was probably my favorite moment because the actress was all like "help! help!" and then she stopped pushing air and just kept mouthing the word over and over again while the rest of them stood around and the leader girl told her to stay still. That's pretty much it.
09.10.06	The Morning After	Sidney Lumet	so... I guess this got added to my queue because it had Jeff Bridges and was directed by Lumet. Jane Fonda's also in it as an alcoholic who yells and cries a lot. It was ok... pretty mediocre to be honest. oh well. So a quick note to explain my absence: LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy. Also, I'm out of town this weekend so pretty much the whole week is a bust for movies. Never fear, I'm sure Fantastic Fest will rejuvinate me plenty.
09.10.06	The Lost Boys	Joel Schumacher	We couldn't figure out what to do Sunday night after dinner so they picked one of my DVDs and we watched this... heh heh heh. No matter what the sinus boys have to say, I still like this movie. The Jason Patric/Jim Morrison thing is pretty damn overt though... how could I have gone all through my impressionable teen years without picking up on that?
09.10.06	Superman Returns	Bryan Singer	My parents and I played the tourist Sunday... we were at the museum anyway and decided to watch this in IMAX with a few 3d Scenes because they hadn't seen it. Truth be told I wasn't that excited and kind of dozed a little bit (damn old people and their morning schedules)... it kind of re-affirmed what I had grown to think of the film since initial viewing. Kevin Spacey and Parker Posey were good... the beginning titles sequence was awesome (and should've been in 3D... unlike other much less obvious scenes that they chose)... but the movie is kind of overlong, especially after the climax... and it also has a bunch of stuff that feels like it's only there because Bryan Singer wanted to do that scene (I'm thinking about the semi-origin flashback). and the whole devious plot is kinda uninteresting for me, although the CG was good. So... it's still Superman... nancy boy do-gooder type... But I saw it big with a few minutes in good 3D so that's cool.
09.09.06	Raiders of the Lost Ark	Steven Spielberg	so I took my parents to the Paramount to let them sit in the balcony, ooh and ahh over the grand decoration and old-timey feel, and get their butts sore from the sub-par seats. Not much to say about the actual movie this time except that I feel like I've seen it too much recently... it's all too familiar. although, i never noticed how much detail you can discern when Karen Allen steps out on the submarine deck wearing only that silk nightgown. but anyway... good movie. I wish I could've stayed for Temple and Crusade but we were off to the Salt Lick to gorge on meat.
09.08.06	Sketches of Frank Gehry	Sydney Pollack	Knowing pretty much nothing about architecture (I took one architectural drawing class and pretty much only passed by fixing all of the autocad computers), I really only know Frank Gehry's work from a "oh that stands out" viewpoint. Most of the time it's cool... but i'm also reminded of this certain run back when i read comics of this huge space ship that was basically a big domino twice the height of the world trade center towers and how it just sort of parked in midtown manhattan and everybody hated it because it blocked out the sun for like half the city half the day. So I can't really imagine living next to a Gehry house, but it'd be pretty damn cool to be the one living in one. The doc is pretty interesting... if not really all that informative. Still, it gives a personality snapshot of the man, some of his history and inspiration, and the whole thing is loosely assembled in that Sydney Pollack way. I was entertained.
09.08.06	Hollywoodland	Allen Coulter	...So I forgot that my parents go to sleep at like 10... their time. Before they zonked out though I took them to Alamo South to see a new release. They got some flavor of typical Alamo audiences, waitstaff, and adreel. When the vintage trailer started with a shot of a german shepherd jumping through brick walls, my mom had a moment where she thought she actually knew what it was and said "rin tin tin!" and then the title flashes up: Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood. heh heh heh. Anyway, just to fill in a whole to my blog entry from last night, my parents got in late but they rented a car and were too tired to do anything so I was off the hook by about 10:30 in the midst of that Chronicle Brouhaha... today though they called me alltogether way too early. I probably should be sleeping now but it's a few minutes before midnight and that's just against my nature. So this movie... I dunno, I was a little tired so I think that stretched the pacing a little bit but for the most part I liked it; thought it was pretty good. Maybe I'm just insane but I think this is the first "actory" type roll for Affleck that I didn't feel was over his head. Of course he gets the best part... like gee, making out with a horny Diane Lane is such a task... I really don't know how he did it... although I think Diane Lane looks her most Joan Allen-esque in this movie... the two kind of confuse me enough as it is already... but anyway... yeah i thought it was pretty good. Very reminiscent of The Black Dahlia though in more ways than one... man I really hope that movie is good.
09.07.06	Critters	Stephen Herek	It's late, my late nite disc is playing... this is gonna be a pretty bloggy post. If you want to skip all the stupid this-was-my-day crap and get to the movie, I predict it will start two paragraphs from the end. scroll on down. So this was a pretty interesting night for me. It started off kind of good because the difference in traffic on mopac between 6:00 and 6:30 is like night and day... unfortunately, I guess all the people on the road at 6:00 got off downtown because I couldn't find any parking and due to time constraints had to break down and pay at a garage. Now, when I first moved here I paid for parking a lot. I kind of saw it as a measure of how long I've been here... how long in between having to pay for parking. So I think the last time I had to pay before this, not counting a few random quarters here and there, was SXSW. So that's pretty good, even though it cost me 6 bucks tonight and I now have to reset that clock. oh well. So I was downtown to see the first episode of the fourth season of The Wire at the Alamo. It's a sneak peek because it doesn't exactly premiere until Sunday... even though it's on HBO On Demand already but whatever... hey, a chance to hear the end credits bass in a theater? shit... So The Wire is my favorite show on television I think. After revisiting Season Three a few weeks ago, I was firmly entrenched. Together with George Pelecanos books, I think it's the top shelf of current crime story... and thanks to HBO, every episode doesn't need to resolve something, they don't need to play to lowest common denominators, and there's the requisite time needed to explore every step of the way toward the headlines we might hear on the news about major drug busts or whatever. I'm not surprised that it comes off as too slow for some... and the turnout tonight kind of reinforced the fact that this will never be a really populist show... but for those other Wire fans that are out there... man are we blessed. This episode, much like the first episodes of every season, manages to set the entire season in motion with events that don't really seem too important now. Creator/writer David Simon always brings up the Moby Dick comparison, saying that in the first chapter of that book... you don't meet Ahab, you don't see the whale, you don't even get on the boat. However, that doesn't mean that nothing happens. The Wire is basically a modern-day cops n' robbers tale. It's like Heat expanded into 12- or 13-hour visual novels... with drug dealers instead of professional thieves. The characters are so authentic and well-rounded though that you end up sympathizing for characters on both sides of the fence, as well as not liking people from both camps. Then throw into the mix a guy who specializes in robbing the dealers and you have a hell of a wildcard up your sleeve. So in this episode, the three-season arc that ended last season has given way to a new king of the corners... but the cops ask themselves how he can control so much terrotiry without dropping any bodies. Of course, some stuff goes down to get the cops on the case, but we also find out exactly why they've been quiet. They kill whoever needs killing in an abandoned boarded up row house, sprinkle lime on the body, and nail up the doorway. Just another hollowed-out shell of a dying Baltimore. It's both a genius routine for the dealers to avoid heat as well as a potent commentary on the city's neglect. Really great stuff. I can't wait for the next 12 episodes and I really really hope HBO greenlights a season 5 so they can finish the series as planned. So anyway, I got to see an episode of The Wire at the Alamo! Yay for that! Unfortunately, a Boy Band Sing-along was in between that and the midnight movie... My parents were flying in and supposed to get into town around 8:30... Their flight was delayed though so I found myself with nothing to do for a few hours, waiting for a call to see if they were hungry when they did get in or just felt like going to their hotel. So... I started walking up toward the Paramount thinking I could maybe catch whatever they're showing there. And then I run into an aquaintance of mine... completely random, out of the blue. We catch up a bit, it turns out she was midway between the Chronicle's 25th anniversary museum exhibit and the party down a few blocks at Copa. So we talk and walk back down thataway and I end up at this Chronicle party where A few of her aquaintences sit down and I'm suddenly surrounded by slightly-tipsy middle-aged women gossiping and talking about which high school is the best. Chronicle luminaries dot the landscape, I think I maybe saw Donal Logue for a second... I'm meeting the chronicle's publisher and thanking him for the Shot in the Dark page. I love reading the Shots in the Dark because they're so... passionate. Some of them come off as sappy and some as sad, but for the most part I think it's a cool kind of person to think enough about that random person to put it out in public. Whether or not anything ever happens, you at least did something... you got it out there, professed your love/interest/curiosity to anyone that would listen... and you never know. It actually somewhat connects to a story tidbit I've had for a while about a guy who leaves notes in his books and sells them used... collecting other books he finds with other people's notes, trying to connect in that way. Here's a random shot in the dark in this week's issue: Pettite brown haired mustard stealer, I saw you repeatedly stick a mustard bottle in your purse. Mustard is the most sensual of the condiments. Can I ketchup with you? Isn't that just great? And some of them are so wonderfully vague... I'm making this one up but it could happen: Guy in red shirt, you were in front of me in line. I was too shy to say hi. Let me correct my mistake! ...I'm in lines all the time! That could totally be me. Some woman out there somewhere totally wants me for my personality. That's awesome! So after hanging out with the heart of Austin's culture (in a way), we were off to a secret bar she knows that's up a few blocks. We park and we're walking to it, passing all these trailers. I see names like "pam" and "jungle julia" taped to the doors and figure it must be for Quentin's movie. Then I connect the links and see that we're maybe a block away from Texas Chili Parlor. That was actually my backup plan for if my parents were hungry. Good news that they weren't because we probably couldn't've gotten in. I thought they were wrapped at that location but whatever. So we walked through the trailers and down the steps into this bar. My first thought was that scene in Jackie Brown (it may have been a deleted scene... I can't remember) where Sam Jackson takes Bob DeNiro to his favorite bar and they talk about a bar's atmosphere and personality. Of course it didn't hurt that we just walked past Quentin's trailers and the song playing on the jukebox was Al Green's Let's Stay Together. It's this tiny place though, moderately busy in a very chilled out way. Perfect place to take my beer-loving friends if they ever freakin come and visit me jesus christ. anyway, so we end up talking about erotic scenes in movies for an hour and I am proud to lay a little movie called Pretty Maids All in a Row on her brain. She flips from the description of it... and I didn't even mention Telly Savales! So this weird little excursion makes me feel like it's 2am... I look at my phone and see it's 11:45! She takes me back down to 4th, drops me off, and i get in line for Terror Thursday... it's out the door. The boy Band Sing-along went along and along. They let us in and it fills up fast. There are some serious Critters fans in this town. Great! One guy even brought a huge Critter puppet that may or may not have been an original prop.. I'm not sure... he'd put sunglasses on it though, pretty sure those didn't come with it. So people are excited to see Critters, man. Some regulars are there, Aaron, Kaela and Eric are there along with Tim and Kier-La... good times, man. The movie: It's CRITTERS! I saw this a bunch as a kid and... not once since then. Actually, a lot of the memories I had for it actually came from Critters 2... like the stuff with the easter egg hunt with the critter eggs, and the critter running under the bed at the kid's arms and stuff... but I also thought it wasn't until 2 or 3 that a big critter appears. I still think it's different... like in critters 2 they all huddle together to form a Voltron-esque big Critter instead of just a randomly big one like in the first movie, but who knows. I liked watching this a lot though... except one thing at the end bugged me. When the critters take off in their ship, they just want to be mean so they press a button and blow up the family's house. That's awesome, right? Well.. the bounty hunters give the kid (who later appeared in Band of Brothers and ER... another unexplained familiarity crossed off my list) some sort of interplanetary phone and says "call me" and they take off too.. OK, so I guess one of the hunters morphing into the playboy model is in the second one... but wait a minute, the phone thingy starts beeping and he hits a button and the house reforms. Splintered wood binds back together, shattered glass reforms, blasted burned embers come back to their previous state, paint and all... and it's a happy ending. That's bullshit, man! I have no problem buying everything that happens in the movie up till that point, but recreating their house is just a BS 80s copout move... like it'd be sad if they lost their house awwww. Never mind that pretty much every member of the family got a critter nettle to the neck at some point and probably still have critter toxin surging through their veins... their poor house was blown up (which was awesome) so somehow it has to be made right. Blah. I love that they have a subtitled language though... and that they have wicked senses of malicious humor. That makes it like a meld between gremlins and the raccoons from The Great Outdoors. I also loved the bowling shirt... sort of a mint green with pink highlights and a Ghostbusters logo on the back except instead of a ghost it's a pin. Cool logo. I want one in slightly less gay colors. So that was my thursday night. Writing it out like this, it doesn't seem like that much happened. I just reveled in the random flow of it... taking me places just because I was open to going... I'm sure that wouldn't happen every time I randomly walk up toward the Paramount, but it'd be cool if it did. It's wonderful how this is still a small town in many ways... especially among a few circles. Just a cool feeling...
09.06.06	Chained Heat	Paul Nicholas	CHAINED HEAT!!! Lars said this is his favorite American WIP movie because it's just so evil. The double feature of Richard Rush before this put all of us in a good mood (even though all the freeloaders in the lobby should've been there 5 hours earlier) so we were all pretty ready for some nasty prison fun. In that regard, Chained Heat delivered in spades. This kinda sucks because time constraints are rushing me so I can't just sit here for an hour thinking of all the great bits and pieces of this movie... It was another one of those nights where a circle of us all stood around regurgitating favorite lines and laughing about it (another reason why I love the Alamo and the people who frequent it)... there was plenty to go around. I think the big tone-defining piece of information about this movie is that John Vernon plays the warden with a hot tub in his office and several security cameras set up so he can film himself getting it on with hot naked inmates. Later in the film, he exclaims "I have a whole ROOM full of porno! And they're all of me!" A weird part of me wants to add "porno room" to my dream house on my things-to-do-once-i'm-rich list... or at least a porno nook... just some lurid wallpaper, a stripper pole or pair of handcuffs or something... even if I never actually use said room/nook, I think it would be a nice addition to the home. Sipping coffee in the porno nook every morning or something like that. So most of the girls are 80s-hot. Linda Blair is in this and shows her chesties. Every character seems to be in a contest for a most-vile-prisoner award... but the guards win hands down. This redhead with the uncanny ability to match blood DNA on nightsticks just by looking at it... I think she may be the worst. Not only does she take pleasure in watching a male guard (one of like 3 men in the entire movie) rape an inmate, she also has no problem with drowning, beating, kicking, choking, and bludgenoning anyone who needs it. The other highlight for me is Henry Silva, who plays... I'm not exactly sure. I think he's either a doctor or the assistant to the doctor or something... anyway, he's a drug dealer and pimp and man, talk about happy-go-lucky. Nothing seems to phase him. It's like he maybe thought this was an early 80s WIP teen comedy instead of the dark trenchcoat fantasy that it is... he's full of witty little comebacks and sayings, always has this weird Silva-esque grin on his face, and supplies most of the comic relief to the picture. Even when he's just answerng simple questions he... it's almost like he deliberately hams it up ("llllllllove it!!!")... my favorite line of his is when he wants to flee from murder charges, saying "you know what the Chinese say... Chow!" He goes to drive off until a random cop points her gun at his face through the driver's side window. Silva actually rolls down the window before looking at her... ahh man, that's a MAN right there. So this was plenty of fun, even though it's still hard for me to believe that this genre exists... it's such a perverse dark fantasy of an idea... that it thrived makes me feel dirty for humanity. And now I have to clean my apartment because my parents are in town this weekend. So if you notice that I am not watching movies, it's probably because I am feeding them good Austin food instead.
09.06.06	Psych-Out	Richard Rush	Unfortunately for Psych-Out, it played after The Stunt Man. It's really not fair because it's a completely different animal and somewhat understated (for a hippie movie) and simple compared to the previous film. And I am not the biggest hippie movie fan. I wasn't even born until about a decade after the whole freak-out ended and have never quite understood the psychadelic fantasty that the youth of the country became during that time. On the surface it just seems crazy to me. Still... Jack Nicholson, Adam Roarke, and Max Julien (GOLDIE!!!! GOLDIE!!!!! GOLDIE!!!!) in an acid rock band together? That's gotta be worth seeing, right? Yeah, it's worth seeing. Mainly to see how restrained and designed it is compared to other films in the genre... you get the feeling that the movie is trying to say something, to present some form of idea to you as you watch it... which, as we all saw in the midnight show, is not always the case in the exploitation world. Still though, for me it can't help but come off as somewhat meandering, filled with vague debates about selfish games vs. living free and injected with a random gang of greasers to harsh on the film's mellow. What's funny though is the gang of letterman-jacketed squares are pretty much all future-directors. Henry Jaglom, John Bud Cardos, Gary Marshall (ok he's a cop not a greaser, but still.. all short-hairs look alike to me, man) all heckle and jeer with Gary Kent playing the lead thug. Kent was in the house to talk afterward (as was stuntman Chuck Bail for the previous film) and he also did all the pyrotechnics at the end of the film. So I must confess that I liked this movie more than I thought I would - it was kind of a worry going in - but still, it's not quite my bag, baby.
09.06.06	The Stunt Man	Richard Rush	So... for like my old college buddies that still for whatever reason read this site... over the past year you probably haven't been recognizing 75% of the titles that I've been seeing. That touches on a point I've made before in these notes... that one of the best things the Alamo has turned me on to is this "other" world of movies that, for one reason or another, just aren't talked about anymore by mainstream voices. Nonetheless, these movies do exist and they were made by people many of whom are still alive and within this realm there are auteurs and hacks just like in the Hollywood that gets special-edition DVD releases. What's great about the Alamo is that they treaure these guys just as much as the other big guys... so when someone like John Saxon or Jim Kelly comes to town they are just as excited as Peter Bogdanovich or Quentin Tarantino. Actually I think that non-partisan exuberance can sometimes limit the scope of who they ask to come down. I think a lot of people would be willing to make a trip down here that the Alamo team would just assume never in a million years. But luckily for all of us there last night, one person said yes. Tonight is Richard Rush night at the Alamo, AKA Lars in Heaven. That must be one of the best perks of the job... getting to talk with the special guests, especially the ones you admire, and have an excuse to basically ask all of the movie geek questions you've always wanted to ask him. When I walked in I saw Rush, Chuck Bail, and Gary Kent all sitting together with Rush in the corner wearing sunglasses that make him look like one of those old Italian guys that hung out in Ibiza during the 60s, sipping coffee and absorbing lazy afternoon rays all day. Lars was bent over, as if taking communion, straining to hear the pope's dying words, or some equally religious metaphor. I decided not to waste valuable seconds by saying hi and went inside. The crowd was kind of disappointing to be honest. While I normally never complain about getting to stretch out but come on, people! I'm especially looking at you, Weird Wednesday regulars... oh well. All the COOL people were there and that's what's important. So after a glowing introduction by Lars, Rush came up and briefly described The Stunt Man... saying he hardly ever gets a chance to tell an audience what it's "really" about. Usually at around this point I try to zone out because, while a few hints or a small list of things to watch out for are cool, I sort of want to find out exactly what it's really about on my own. Fortunately, Rush stayed suitably vague, saying hilarious things like "not paranoid in the padded room sense but paranoid like... your assistant and your boss had lunch together and didn't tell you about it." Well that managed to make perfect sense and also not ruin the film! so that's good. Like this film could be ruined. I guess i've been seeing a lot of good movies lately, but there's still a feeling I get when I finish watching a movie and absolutely know that it's a five-star film. This film is precisely all over the place... to the point that it makes you question if you should be laughing or taking it seriously, because both emotions simultaneously work. When Railsback finally lets us in on why he's on the run from the police, his story is so absurd but delivered so dramatically that I was honestly confused. Some poeple in the audience laughed, others did not... until Barbara Hershey started laughing and gave us all permission... yet there's still an element of danger. Although I think Railsback's performance is the weakest note in the movie, he portrays a taught wildcard of a character very well. As Peter O'Toole describes him at one point, he is the normal guy who is a timebomb; someone who can snap at any moment and start shooting people from a clock tower. The depth of character presented in this movie presumably filled with stunts rivals that of Truffaut's Day For Night and Winterbottom's Tristram Shandy... yet we also get amazing stunts and beautiful photography. This film really has its cake and eats it too... a pretty amazing accomplishment. It gets to be the action movie as advertised, as well as acharacter piece examining the nature of reality and illusion, as well as a paranoid mystery of intentions. And it has great music too. So I really loved this film. It blew me away. It's time to add the DVD to my shopping cart and start looking for the poster.
09.06.06	When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts	Spike Lee	It seems a bit too painfully ironic to summarize a massive 4-hour documentary from Spike Lee in one word: depressing. I'll throw frustrating, angering, and disheartening in there too but then it's only one word per hour. I suppose I should say a little more. This tells the story from just before hurrican Katrina hit New Orleans to about 9 months afterward. The first hour was pretty much just about the storm itself, then the next three hours slowly slide into anti-fema and anti-bush propaganda. Good for it too... because one thing Spike does well is bring his message across in a vividly emotional way... and there are some pretty great interviews in here with colorful characters that wear their hearts on their shirtsleeves (or whatever the saying is). These people are still mad and for pretty good reason too. I don't really follow the news that closely at all, so I really don't remember exactly when the media deemed katrina bad ratings, but somewhere along the way i think the whole city just got swept under the rug and Spike wanted to bring it back. I think the only thing more ridiculous than not being able to carry liquids on a plane is knowing that six or eight months from now everything will be back to normal. We're almost like a whole country filled with people suffering short term memory loss... and wether it's the dog or the tail, i think the media is a huge contributor to that. So I'm glad this is coming out now and its so overt in its criticism... If you believe what the people in the movie are saying, there's a big job in New Orleans that still isn't done... and it's Bush's fault. whatever. As a movie it's pretty gripping and those four words I mentioned above. I especially liked the Wire actor saying there's a special circle in hell for Insurance companies.
09.05.06	Quai Des Orfevres	Henri-Georges Clouzot	Same goes for this one pretty much. It seemed really talky to me... lots of reading. I skipped a scene here and there trying to figure out if I've seen enough french movies to understand what they're saying with my eyes closed. I couldn't. Again, it didn't seem bad and there were several pretty great moments, but my whole mindset was just in and out and I drifted away from full attention several times. It needs a more faithful viewing before a final opinion but right now it was just ok.
09.05.06	Elevator to the Gallows	Louis Malle	So this guy came around really early in the morning (for me) to fix my terlet... so consequently I think I didn't give either of these french crime films that the Paramount played tonight a fair chance due to fatigue. I couldn't help but rest my eyes for a few seconds at a time off and on through about a third of both of these films and, when they're subtitled, that sorta means trouble. I also blame Miles Davis' score for this one. It's so sleepy... Anyway, the parts that I was lucid and attentive for were pretty good. I really liked how it ended... there were a few really great moments here, but all night I was sort of remembering the last night of french crime that they played and how much I liked those more... Maybe someday I'll see this again with tons of energy and really give it a proper viewing, but right now it was just pretty good.
09.05.06	Beerfest	Jay Chandrasekhar	I feel like I'm seeing this one pretty late... oh well. I thought it was pretty funny... you can always count on Broken Lizard for some awesome gratuitous nudity... and just from Super Troopers I like all those guys so as long as they all don't either annoy or bore the crap out of me (ahem, Club Dread... I'm looking at you), I'm a pretty easy sell. While I am not the biggest beer drinker, I did visit Munich once. I laughed more than a couple times... the whole thing with landfill's replacement got me not on a gut level but more of a cerebral one... Really awesome that they went there even if I didn't guffaw. I still like Strange Brew more as far as the beer comedies go but I think they could've done a lot worse than this.
09.05.06	Clash By Night	Fritz Lang	So... pretty much every noir fan has his or her own definition of the term. Some think it's a genre, others just a set of expressionistic lighting and camera angles... I myself tend to think of it as a period in time, or cycle... from the mid 40s to the late 50s. And the big reasons why I define "film noir" that way are movies like this. While most of the classic noirs are crime stories, there are some, such as this one, that are pretty far away from the private detectives, hoods, and gangsters. Even though this is really a relationship melodrama, it's colored all over with noirish tone and attitude that makes it fit just as well as the Double Indemnities and Maltese Falcons. The movie Lang did before this, Rancho Notorious, does the same for the western genres... so even though they are in completely separate genres, they're both still noir (never mind that I tag it as a genre for this site). But... whether it's noir or not, I still prefer crime stories to relationship melodramas. This one was a bit slow for me, even though it's pretty clear that Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Ryan, and Paul Douglas all give great performances. The characters I liked the most though were Marilyn Monroe and her beau... even though they are supporting characters, they are the moral center of the piece which makes Stanwyck's and Ryan's twisted hearts all the darker. But what can they do? Just like in Born To Kill, they are a match made in hell... Poor Paul Douglas is just the nice guy and therefore in the noir world he suffers.
09.04.06	The Narrow Margin	Richard Fleischer	Another tight short noir (71 minutes) that takes wonderful advantage of its limited budget. Bulldogish Charles McGraw plays a cop assigned to escort a gangster's moll from Chicago to LA in order to testify. Pretty much the whole thing takes place on the train between cities, with Marie Windsor (who looks like that woman on The West Wing but 20 times hotter) hidden away in McGraw's side room, and several goons looking around the train for her, aware that McGraw's a cop but they don't know what Windsor looks like. Unfortunately, This other girl starts innocently talking to McGraw and the hitmen mistake her for the target. Tension ensues. It's pretty effective use of keeping all the players confined to limited space and forcing them to appear civil even though McGraw knows who the hitmen are and the hitmen know who McGraw is. There's a pretty cool fight scene at one point played near silently since a gunshot would disrupt the passengers and send the whole train into freak outs. Meanwhile, little plays involving telegrams and a mysterious car that keeps up with the train along a side road are also used to good effect. And then there's this little turn toward the end which works rather well. Solid noir. Good times. I actually probably could've used another 5 or 10 minutes at the end but whatever...
09.03.06	Freebie and the Bean	Richard Rush	so Richard Rush will be in town this wednesday to talk to QT's cast about how to act cool in a 70s stunt-heavy way... and since he's here they're showing two of his biggest movies at the Alamo. I'm feeling woefully unprepared, having only seen two of his movies before (both biker flicks). This one has been pretty highly praised in the annals of both The Alamo, QTfest, and with Alan Arkin fans... so it was finally time for me to borrow Eric's VHS copy (thanks anyway, Micah) and watch it. What I knew going in: It's sort of like a precursor to Lethal Weapon... actiony cop stuff but they bicker at eachother and it's also funny. While that does basically encapsulate the movie, it doesn't really convey the level of quality it has with each genre. There are some pretty respectable car chases and stunts going on here, a few moments of genuinely touching cop-type stuff, and the humor is very funny. Alan Arkin and Jimmy Caan have some good chemisty I think... which is funny because Alan Arkin seems to have good chemistry with whoever he works with. Maybe it's not really chemistry and just that Arkin is awesome... but Caan does pretty good here too... I really like him when he plays comedy. I'm sure this will sound like the worst idea ever once I type it out, but he should do a dad/son comedy movie with Scott, who has a pretty decent funnybone of his own. Both of them seem made to play tough guys but i dunno, they make me laugh when they act goofy. This makes me really want to see Slither. but you know what? this is embarassing. It wasn't until like 75% through the movie that I realized that Arkin is supposed to be mexican in this and that's why he's the bean. I guess maybe that's still not true... maybe that's actually his last name so he gets called mexican because of that... I'm really not sure. He has a hot latina woman though... so who knows. either way it's funny but the whole bean thing totally didn't click. I was thinking everything else, like he's small... or he's filled with protein or something. I get that Freebie's Freebie because he insists on a few gratis cop amenities, but putting a racial slur into the title of a movie is awesome. So... in the commentary track for The In-Laws, they start by saying the studio wanted Arkin to do a sequel to Freebie and the Bean... and Arkin said something snide like he didn't even want to do the first one much less make a second... but as it turns out it made lots of money so they wanted a sequel and that's the seed of what eventually became The In-Laws. So this movie was popular, it had good people behind and in front of the camera (shot by Laslo Kovacs), and holds up over time. So why the hell is this movie a "forgotten gem" and not more well-known? I don't get it. I'm sure a lot of it has to do with DVD unavailability... but still, it seems like it should be mentioned more than it is. Especially since, as far as buddy cop movies go, it's right up there with the best of em. I'd really love to see this in a theater someday... the VHS was pan&scanned so there ended up being a lot of shots of the empty space between Caan and Arkin as they sit in a car, or halves of both of them talking. sigh. so anyways, yeah i had a lot of fun with this one. Good stuff.
09.02.06	The Town That Dreaded Sundown	Charles B. Pierce	so at midnight I heard that we're watching 16mm stuff at Eric's. OK, I didn't really plan to be up all night tonight but I guess it's worth it. Why not, right? So he's got a pretty good reel of trailers going including a few that I'm really not sure why they are on 16mm at all (like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind and The Two Towers (in scope even!))... and then we watched this really great vintage making-of for Raiders of the Lost Ark hosted by Harrison Ford (with some amazingly stoned-out narration) all about the stunt guys that worked on the film. It would make a near-perfect pre-show for Richard Rush this week... it even uses a few seconds of footage from The Stunt Man in the doc. That's probably the coolest thing about this doc... is uses footage from so many movies there's no way anyone would justify clearing the rights for that many obscure little movies on today's DVD supplements. But it's really great and really effective, because they'll be talking about the inspirations for Indiana Jones in the old saturday serials... and they would actually show several of them, how they'd construct the cliffhangers and damsels in distress and compare them to what's in Raiders... And since the whole thing's about the stunt guys, they also had some history of the profession in there, showing clips from Stagecoach and a few westerns of that time that had this one guy, an old rodeo guy or something, do these really early stunts like fall between a wagon train of 6 horses (similar to when Indy gets thrown over the hood of the mercedes truck and has to slide underneath it and get dragged along behind)... and Harrison's at some ranch hanging out with some stunt guys and they're talking about different gags and working with horses and all these clips of really amazing horse stunts (i have no clue what it's from but there's a movie out there somewhere where both the horse and rider slide right off this huge cliff and fall into the ocean) and crafting new technigues (which they show examples of) and stuff like that... but then as it turns out, both stunt guys are afraid of snakes and Harrison isn't bothered by em at all. heh heh heh. So that making-of tv show was really great... After that we put up the screen sideways to see how his scope lens fit... it pretty much did so we watched his short reel of just a few epic trailers in scope and it looked so cool that we decided to watch a scope feature. Hence this movie. This is a supposedly true account (changing the names of course) about a series of murders that terrorixed Texarkana in the mid-40s. There's a guy with a bag over his head killing young people when they park in secluded areas to make out... so Ben Johnson's brought in as the most awesomest texas ranger ever (aside from Walker) to catch this guy that is getting the whole town afraid to walk around at night. Well, the good things first... when it's not a direct pre-cursor to Friday the 13th with the masked guy in the woods chasing after teens and killing them in interesting ways (I guess he bit his victims), this movie has the tone of a slapstick comedy. It's a very odd mixture... either there's screaming women on screen or bumbling cops crashing into ponds. ALl this with the authoritatice narrator reporting to us like we're watching Dragnet. Probably the most fantastic death involves a knife taped to the end of a trombone... I really find it hard to believe that they found that at a crime scene... i mean, that's just stupid. Made for a funny scene though. Mostly though, this movie just kind of crawls along... then at the end the killer gets away and is never heard from again... until he shows up in line for this movie, and could be sitting right next to YOU! AN ok saturday night movie... I may have enjoyed it more if I wasn't so tired and the sun wasn't coming up... oh well.
09.02.06	We're No Angels	Michael Curtiz	I actually like the late 80s We're No Angels with DeNiro and Sean Penn (and John C. Reilly) a lot... but I never knew it was a remake so when I found out I added the original to my netflix queue. Like 8 months later, here it is. Instead of DeNiro and Penn we get Bogart, Aldo Ray, and Peter Ustinov playing the escaped convicts trying to get across the border to freedom, except it's Devil's Island instead of whatever northern border town it was in the 80s... and it's getting on a boat to paris instead of crossing the bridge into Canada... and they con their way into fixing a roof instead of being priests... so it's really a pretty loose remake, which is good. This plays VERY much like a mid-50s technicolor comedy. Even though they are supposed to be crook,s murderers, and rapists, the three guys kind of yuk along, all good chaps, really. Ustinov's accent helps a lot. And even though Aldo Ray keeps carrying around this pet viper that they unleashed to kill a guard and exact their escape, it's treated like a puppy dog... a killer puppy dog. So they fix this store's roof thining they will later steal the store blind... but the store owner and his family are nice so they help them out instead. And then at the end they decide to go back to prison. And as they walk away halos appear over their heads. Even one for the snake. This isn't a very good movie. I can't help but think most of these jokey lines about them killing people and forging wills and laughing when one pompous jerk gets bitten was a bit much for 50s audiences... Plus the sets and staging and everything... I dunno, I pretty much just sat through it. Remake's better!
09.01.06	Safe Men	John Hamburg	So after that I was still pretty pumped (not to mention hungry) so I had a midnight movie in the form of this netflix which I'd never seen but heard good things about. It has some really early screen appearances by guys who would later go on to much bigger stardom like Paul Giamottie, Sam Rockwell, Steve Zahn, Thomas Hayden Church, and Mark Ruffalo. It's about a couple deadbeat musicians who are mistaken for expert safe crackers... and wackiness ensues. Most of the comedy comes from the chemistry between Rockwell and Zahn. It's pretty fun... sort of a minor key type movie that provides solid entertainment but isn't showy or flashy enough to make that many waves... pretty off-beat and quirky... i was reminded of Welcome to Collinwood (and not just because of Sam Rockwell) quite a bit... with some The State/Stella-style humor mixed in... Michael Showalter has a small role in this by the way. I think it was actually funnier and better than Along Came Polly (the director's other work)... a nice little light comedy to end the night with... good day.
09.01.06	Code of Silence	Andrew Davis	So a small group of us had tickets for both shows. We got to stay in the lobby and seat before they let the line of sold-out crowd in for the second show. Hey, it's chuck norris on a friday night. Both shows sold out pretty easily. After talking with Ant some more in the lobby (no surprise he knew about Jeff Speakman in The Perfect Weapon and Kill or Be Killed), the crowd filed in. Pierson, who recognized me from our little talk a month or so ago, asked me how it was going and we talked for a very short time. Once everyone was in the the alamo adreel ran, a spotlight came on and this time Pierson got time for his introduction. He spoke mainly of his experience running a theater in Fiji and how everybody on that island loved Chuck Norris... for his 80s action movies but even moreso for Walker Texas Ranger. The new crowd, much more like a typical Alamo crowd (the first show had tons of kids and old people in it), listened well enough but burst into cheer when Chuck finally walked in and got under the spotlight. They took more questions this time around... no story about how he got into the business or anything like that although he did start off with his whole kickstart/WCL thing... It's really funny because he has these figures... 38,000 kids graduated from kickstart, 5,000 currently enrolled (but he wants it to be 500,000)... and whenever Walker came up he'd be quick to spit out 8 and a half years, 203 episodes... hearing it pounded into my brain was very salesmanlike... but hey, he's chuck norris. He has a very specific image to project... And his wife has that horse tightly reined, man... She was a total nascar wife: blonde, hot, surgically enhanced, skinny, peppy, and very opinionated. I would totally not be surprised if she's his business manager as well as wife. So this time around, I sort of kept noticing that he's looking at me. At first I think this must be just one of those things. Me with my green shirt is one of the spots in the audience that he's picked in the rotation as he tells these stories... you know the whole public speaking thing about shifting eye contact around the room and whatnot... but he seems to keep coming back to me. I'm sort of getting a little creeped out by it, and make a conscious decision to nod just a tad more and smile just a tad larger when i'm supposed to... and then midway through his bruce lee story (synopsis: they meet, they work out together, bruce invites him to be in his movie so he can kick his ass), he looks at me and says "some of you who were here for the first show have heard this already, you'll have to bear with me" and makes this little motion thing toward me! Like i'm now the representative for all 30 of us who've stayed... even though the two people sitting next to me were also there for the first show... so I yell back "it's worth it!" and he says "ok good" and keeps going... so fast forward to after the movie when the lights go up. The friends that I was sitting with look over at me and say "he kept looking at you!" like.. kind of a bit jealous even... "he SPOKE to you! he waved at you!!! Chuck Norris talked to you!" so we joked that I should wear the same shirt and show up at his WCL thing... i was kind of creeped out and intimidated to be sharing some Chuck Norris eye contact though. he's old but... who am I kidding... I was sure to enjoy his anecdotes just as much the second time. So the guy in the front of the line for this second Q&A was Lars. He gets the mic and says "Hello, Mr. Norris. I'm Lars and I work for the Alamo Drafthouse and I just wanted to know, if someone was talking on their cellphone during the movie would you punch them or kick them?" and the crowd started laughing. We died down and Norris answered with some very Christian drivel about avoiding a lawsuit and how most times when he gets angry he pictures further down the road and the eventual outcome that would happen and that always calms him down quick, so he'd probably just let the guy talk on the phone. Lars: "What if you HAD to choose." more laughter. Chuck thinks about it a second, then says "well, in the theater I'd probably use my hands. I'd probably choke him unconsciouss." Thunderous applause. The whole theater goes nuts. Expect that to be an Alamo no-talk spot like tomorrow. Other questions were pretty similar.. more Walker Texas Ranger stuff... What's your favorite Chuck Norris fact, who was your toughest adversary ("Guys from Texas were tougher")... that kind of thing. It went on for a decent time... didn't feel rushed but ended when it should've... and once again the bodyguards rushed him out the back door like a rockstar. Chuck had left the building. So then we had to watch this crappy movie. It actually wasn't 100% completely crappy. It was directed by Andrew Davis who'd later go on to direct The Fugitive with Harrison Ford, and since it was set in Chicago had a few familiar faces (including Dennis Farina) peppering the supporting cop cast as well as giving a little bit of a glimpse at the roots of what would eventually be done better in The Fugitive. Really the only other thing that makes this notable from any other 80s cop action movie is that Henry Silva plays the gang kingpin... even though I think he's supposed to be puerto rican or columbian or something which is pretty funny. He's just Henry Silva though... no accents or make-up or anything like that. It's also really evident to see the whole Steve McQueen influence on Norris' performance. he doesn't say a lot unless it's important... but still gets a few good lines like "if i want your opinion I'll beat it out of ya." Most of the movie however is pretty paint by numbers stuff. At the end he kills a lot of people. So that was Chuck Norris at the Alamo! awesome, right?
09.01.06	Sidekicks	Aaron Norris	So After Idiocracy, I walked right into a chat between Lars, Eric, Jarrette, and Anthony, the guy from New Zealand who runs the.... icantrememberthename Film Fest down there and has lots of cool prints and a good relationship with the Alamo. He went on the roadshow tour (bastard) which just ended so I got to meet him and talk movies a little, which is always fun. From there I made my way downtown for tonight's double feature and special guest appearance by the man, the myth, the legend: Chuck Norris. For any Chuck Norris fans out there, I'll say it now. Yes. I saw him. We shared eye contact. He made a vague hand gesture toward me. I said something to him and he sort of acknowledged me. So back to my story... This was kind of a last-minute thing that the Alamo got together, bringing the Norris in to not so much show these movies but to promote his upcoming WCL event next month here in town. He was kinda into it though... when we got into the theater there was almost a whole row reserved for make-a-wish kids as well as several seats marked off with signs saying "Seat reserved for Mr. Chuck Norris." I sat in the row ahead of the cancer kids - third row back - to get a good view of Chuck's Q&A. I am not a huge Chuckles fan... I saw a few of his movies on cable as I grew up... I was aware of Walker Texas Ranger's popularity (both in Texas and around the world), but to be perfectly honest I was here more for the Q&A with crazy Norris fans and to hear Norris stories thanidolize him or become his penpal or get his autograph or whatever. I haven't even checked out all the chuck Norris facts even though the ones I have heard are pretty hilarious. So Norris is late to the showing. Lars is there with his camera, having confided earlier that his mission today was to get Norris to do a no-talking spot for the Alamo in their green room so he can green-screen different visuals behind him as he spoke, Tim was hovering about... Ant was here, John Pierson was walking around the stage with a page of notes, presumable he'd be hosting and conducting the Q&A... several of Mr. Norris' people were there checking out the door to the alleyway and making sure the mics were in their correct positions... but Chuck was late. Finally Karen comes up and tells us all that he's late because he's at some sick kid's house hanging out for a good cause... so we couldn't really be mad that he wasn't here to introduce the first movie but there'd be a Q&A afterward. So with that the lights went down and we had to watch Sidekicks. So... Sidekicks is a pretty funny movie. It's a family movie... and kind of wears that on its arm, but it also has Chuck Norris playing himself... so even though it's really a child empowerment story with Jonathan Brandis (who I'll always like just because he played Bill in the TV movie version of Stephen King's It) as an asthmatic nerdy kid who daydreams all the time, it's really a whole movie about how awesome Chuck Norris is and how every kid should idolize him because he's so awesome... whether he's roundhouse kicking or shooting an M-60... it doesn't even matter. Chuck Norris is THE MAN. So all the fantasies that the kid has where he's The Norris' sidekick are pretty funny... also because they incorporate people from his waking life like his teacher or the bully into different roles in the fantasies. So in that regard, it's actually not too bad a movie to watch. Plus there's also the guy who played Bull in Night Court as the awesome gym teacher, the girl from Wonder Years as the object d'desire, Kato as the guy who actually teaches the kid martial arts, and an extremely over the top Joe Piscopo as the prickish rival karate teacher filling out the cast... oh and Beau Bridges as the computer programmer dad. Still, the audience got antsy whenever the movie went too long without Chuck Norris. About 20 minutes in I heard some people sitting down and turned to see Norris sitting down a few seats to the side one row behind me... some small sick kid to his right and a hot Chuck Norris-worthy wife to his left. So I know he watched most the movie with us... which was good because the whole audience went into applause at pretty much every Norris appearance on-screen and the ending when he completely dominates Piscopo was nonstop adoration. Had to make him feel good. I don't think he stayed for the next movie though. So after Sidekicks ends (spoiler: the kid beats his asthma and wins the tournament yay), Chuck finally came up and stoop in front of the stage. camera flashes went off, people held up their phones and those little "chksssh" sounds went off, and he got on the mic. They set up another mic that people could line up behind to ask questions, but first Pierson mentioned Good Guys Wear Black and Chuck went off on maybe a 15-minute story about the beginnings of his film career and how he got into it after being the karate world champion and whatever... and it was pretty interesting. He told a Steve McQueen story... some stuff about him going from town to town with a handful of prints for his first movie (not counting all the stuff he did before that), how he got into the profession, how he cultivated his persona and overcame his shyness in doing interview after interview trying to get people to come out and see him... basically his whole history. Then he sequed into a pretty rehearsed spiel about his kickstart program for inner city youths and how he's started this new fighting league to fund kickstart's expansion and what the WCL was all about and how awesome it was and that we should all come out and see it next month, just three weeks from today. So then someone got to ask a question. Even though the Q&A was pretty much everything that I was hoping for, it was pretty amusing to hear Norris go off on these stories that he's obviously told hundreds of times before. Sometimes they didn't even really match the question... like someone in the second show asked about working with McQueen, Lee Marvin, and Bruce Lee and Norris went into his Bruce Lee story (which he also told for the first show) and that was that... no Lee Marvin story for us... although he probably had one, it's was just a one story-per question ratio that he was keeping for time's sake. So it was all there. The insane old lady who sat front row center and kept throwing her hand up with a big thumbs-up all during the movie yelled out how she was his biggest fan and wanted a hug and a kiss and then needed help standing so Norris could half-hug her and pretend not to be creeped out, the woman with her down syndrome kid saying what an inspiration he was and could her son get an autograph and Chuckles inviting him down to where he was so he could give him a WCL card that's been pre-autographed and shake his hand then say "i need a hug, buddy" and hug the down syndrome kid, and the college stoner guy saying "um.. Mr. Norris, I just wanted to say that you're awesome" and a question about Bruce Lee and a question about the chuck norris facts (which led to a two-pronged story... first his favorite fact ("They wanted to add Chuck Norris to Mt. Rushmore but couldn't find granite tough enough for his beard") then a little mini-history of the facts then an anecdote about a little cartoon that's being produced for wireless phones involving him vs. einstein to count to infinite twice then ultimately saying that he was flattered and wasn't upset at all by them and he sees it as a good thing since it's getting a whole new generation of young people interested in him), and a few episode-specific questions about Walker Texas Ranger... It was great. So his answers were pretty well rehearsed... but he seemed like a nice enough guy. Toward the end he made sure to say how it was god's plan to create this new fighting league to fund his inner city youth martial arts program... and he also let slip that he's 66 years old which shocked everyone. The Norris doesn't age!!! and he thanked us then his bodyguards rushed him out through the back door and we all had to go out to the lobby.
09.01.06	Idiocracy	Mike Judge	So, in order to beat the traffic, I went down and watched this early to put me downtown for the later double feature. I really wanted to see this though... couldn't believe how Fox treated it but was nonetheless to finally be able to sit down and watch it... I was pretty worried though. I'd heard that Fox took the movie away from Judge and recut it and that Judge hated it now and things like that... and with it residing in shelf limbo for so long there... there just had to be some reason. I still don't know what that reason is... but oh well. The movie... well... I liked it. I LOVE the idea... i generally hate stupid people so I was primed to laugh at them... I really like finally seeing movies shot in Austin that I recognize places in the movie from the locations rather than recognize places from seeing them in movies... and even saw a guy I know (San Antonio Kevin) as a featured extra role. (apprently Jarrette and Eric are also extras but I didn't see them). Generally the humor is funny and I laughed a few times... but to be completely hoenst I was hoping for a bit more. I wanted there to be more and perhaps a bit sharper. They kinda went the broad route for most of the gags... which is ok and I think the movie still works that way... I just found myself more amused by little touches like advertisements and background things more than the jokey joke-type jokes. It was also like the only thing that made this movie rated R was 3 extra "fucks." I want to say again that I liked it though... I think maybe on repeat viewings now that I know what I'm watching, I might find more to laugh at... there is plenty to like though. I liked seeing Michael Bolton on screen again (even if his voice constantly reminded me of Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force), I liked that Maya Rudolph is always in short skirts and tight tops, I really loved all of the product devolved stuff... especially with the advertising. It was pretty reminiscent of Mom and Dad Save the Universe... except with that movie they had a pretty easy out and I think one of the things Idiocracy suffers from is a forced climax and ending. With Mom and Dad, they get back to the Earth and everything's fine. With this one, the answer's not so easy so we wind up in a scene that really felt forced to me... some studio need to put the main characters in jeopardy just so they can save themselve and be ok in the end... in whatever capacity. Of course, I thought (and still kinda do) the third act in Office Space is by far the weakest... so maybe I just don't like Judge's endings, who knows. Someone at Fox probably knows... but i don't think he'd tell me. So overall I give it an OK. I laughed a couple of times, found most of it pleasant enough, will watch it again to see how it grows, but upon initial viewing couldn't helpt but be a bit dissapointed.
08.31.06	Night Warning	William Asher	Alright... I'm finally getting some time to give this movie some attention. Of course now I've probably forgotten a lot of the great little touches but... oh well. The jist of it is that it's awesome. The story is that Susan Tyrrell plays this 17 year old kid's aunt, but in the beginning scene we see how his parents were killed in a fairly awesome car accident involving... i'm not sure if it was a log or a pole or what... anyway it crashes through the windshield and takes the dad's head off, then the mom steers it off a cliff where it crashes.... ....... ........ and blows up. So the kid was raised by this aunt and we catch up on the story as the kid is 17 and a basketball star with a girlfriend and whatnot. The problem is that the aunt is completely nuts. What I really like about this movie, as it applies to my note on Bunny Lake is Missing and several other movies involving crazy people, is that Susan Tyrrell starts off... you can see how she functions in society but you can also see how she's sort of crazy. Then as the movie goes on and she gets crazier and crazier, it's believable. it's not some discrete on/off switch that she flips when it's convenient for plot purposes. And Tyrrell herself does a really really fantastic performance with this transformation. I was particularly struck by her physical prowess... everyone talked about how great Kevin Spacey was in American Beauty for appearing so pudgy and building muscle and losing weight as the movie went on... but that's nothing compared to Tyrrell's performance... and with her all she gets is a haircut. Her face and the way she holds herself and moves completely changes as the movie goes on. She ends up looking like a completely different person and I mean that literaly. Completely different. She goes from MILF to the grinch who killed her nephew in 90 minutes. She is genuinely scary by the end, with the crowd gasping and jumping back on a few shots that reveal her looming behind whoever's in the foreground. The other highlight in this movie is... you know him, you love him... Bo Svenson as the dick homophobic detective. So homophobic. In his intro, Zack laid perhaps the funniest joke of the week on us by saying that we'll all hear the word "faggot" more tonight than we did through our entire junior high. The other bit notable story is that when the Alamo had him here to intro the film for a Butt-Numb-A-Thon, he remembered absolutely nothing about it at all. Like he didn't even remember that it happened. His performance is great though... so condescending and reneck bullying to everyone... even other cops. Plus his office had a set of longhorns and two bullwhips up on the wall as decoration. That struck me as incredibly funny. Actually though, the whole film shows remarkable attention to detail for being what it is. In an early scene, basketball teammate Bill Paxton (who looks like he's 15 years old here) yells "foul!" on the main kid and grabs his wrist. Later on, the team has a game and you can see that he's bandaged it up. With the director's technique as well though, he throws a few Jules and Jim-esque stop frames in the beginning to show off the main kid's sweaty nubile physique. it's funny and creepy at the time, but he'll later throw some stop frames into straight-up horror scenes to great effect. In fact, nearly everything that seemed weird or funny the first time came back toward the end of the film in some way to connect it. I'd give you more specifics but... I forgot. So Svenson's really great at being despicable. In fact, he even refuses to see what's actually going on just because he want's to believe that the main kid is gay so much... and the ending becomes really extreme with him... unbelievable. The movie seems to walk this line where it can be funny and enjoyable in a "bad movie" kind of way but also be genuinely effective and work on its own terms. For me, they are usually one or the other. The more I think about it the more I liked it... it's really kinda cool. Oh, and there's some incest too. It's a great beat... Tyrrell's last moment... like she's got time to do one last thing before she dies and the thing she decides to do is just awesome. Talk about crowd reaction. Again, the whole family things are hinted at from the beginning but really escalate toward the end in a pretty chilling way. Finding out how much of a nutcase Tyrrell actually is is the movie's main thrust and it does it very well. Great time! In fact, after walking out of the theater I was almost angry that I hadn't known about this movie years ago. Like, why wasn't this on the horror shelf of the little video store i went to in middle/high school so i could've seen it (because I saw damn near everything they did have) and love it... or why didn't i track this down just trying to fill the spots in Bill Paxton's filmography and stumble upon it with completely no context whatsoever... All these years I could've been loving this movie and I'm just starting now! So that's the kind of movie this is. A really really great time. I loved it. Although... It really looks more like.. 78, 79, 80 instead of 83. Paxton looks SO young... like a good ten years younger than he looks in Weird Science... I think maybe they shot this and shelved it or something like that because it doesn't have an 80s look to it at all... very late 70s to me. anyway, awesome.
08.30.06	Group Marriage	Stephanie Rothman	The Alamo has had the poster for this up in their lobby for like ever... I'm glad they finally played it so I could see it so now I can point at the poster and say "yeah, that's good." The funny thing about this movie was that it actually WAS good. The script was surprisingly tight and funny (well, the first half... the meandering music montages kinda became more of a presence as the movie went on) and it had a story and the character were decent as well and it was actually funny! and not in a takes-thirty-years-to-appreciate way either. So aside from the unexpected level of quality, there were also some beautiful beautiful ladies... I guess it does help ease the problems of a 6-person marriage when all the chicks are really foxy... and they were all naked at least once. Even though this movie really isn't that sexploitative, it's nice to have that near-guarantee that we'll at least get to see something. My only regret is that we don't see more of the Black chick working at the car rental place with the computer to keep track of her dates. They should've made a sequel! I'm hard pressed to pick a fave... I don't want to play favorites... My favorite line came fromictoria Vetri (lars described her as tits-on-a-stick thin which is right but in a good way) when the group confronts her about getting it on with complete strangers. One guy says "a marriage is still a marriage, even this." and she kind of shrugs her shoulders and says "I gotta be free" and walks away. YES! So this was fun... and I contend a good movie even though we talked a bit out in the lobby about how great the weird wendesday crowd usually is... at least for movie-going. They are probably hell on the alamo staff... but for enjoying these movies it's a real treat. For a movie like Pinball Summer to be a good time... that really says something. I can't wait till I get to see Kill or Be Killed with them (ahem!)
08.30.06	Born to Kill	Robert Wise	I read about these guys like Richard Widmark and Dan Duryea being really nice guys in real life... helping animals, enjoying sunsets, that sort of thing. Well from what I've read and heard over the years I have no problem believing or even suspecting that Lawrence Tierney has probably stabbed at least one man, woman or child to death... and probably for something small like spilling water on his shoe or looking at him wrong on the subway. Here he plays a thug names Sam Wilde who kills pretty much indiscriminately... whether it's a guy who happens to date a girl he wants, or the girl he wants if she sees the guy he's just killed... or his lifelong pal if he walks into a girl's room. It's all willy nilly to him, except he knows enough to blow town after this first double murder (interestingly enough, the girl's name is Laurie Palmer), so he goes to San Francisco where coincidentally he runs into Claire Trevor. Trevor plays a black widow with ice in most of her veins who walked in on the two bodies but didn't call the cops. She represents what all of us smart sensitive nice-guy types hate: the smoking hot woman turned on by bad boy thugs... taken to the extreme. She's all set up to marry this complete rich guy gentleman but gets all wibbily wobbily in the knees whenever Tierney walks in the room. When Tierney figures out that Trevor only wanted him for slummy afternoon rendezvous on the side, he goes after Trevor's step-sister, a freakin gorgeous rich girl played by Audrey Long. And hence the stage is set for these bad people married to good spouses but really hot for eachother. Tierney's motive for marrying the rich girl isn't so much the money but rather thesocial class that it gives him, telling sidekick pal Elisha Cook, Jr. that he'll be able to "spit in anyone's eye" and get away with it. Cook is great as the guy who realizes what kind of trouble Tierney can get into but constantly has to agree and stroke Tierney's ego to stay alive himself. I can't help but watch his performance and imagine that's how the more timid directors of the era handled Tierney as well. I guess unless you've got an eyepatch or shoot off a gun instead of yelling "action" the fear of getting shivved for suggesting more emotion from the man might keep you rather agreeable. I hope that's not the case with Robert Wise though... but it must be easier when Tierney's playing this kind of role. Claire Trevor seems like she does a fine job of acting this heartless moral-free femme fatale but seems the type to love puppy dogs and ice cream in real life. Tierney's just showing up and acting normal. His idea of sweet talk is a mix between badgering and insulting. Every woman in this picture swoons over him though... even though his only two emotions are 1) uninterested thug, and 2)i think i may have to kill you while you sleep. It makes the love scenes pretty interesting though, dealing with either of those two looks. It's also great when Tierney and Trevor come together and heat themselves up by calling each other hayes-code equivalents of bastards and bitches... but in one particularly steamy interlude while they whisper sweet nothings about the grotesque state of those two bodies, Tierney shows his hand by getting a bit too detailed. For a while Trevor is more in love than ever now that she knows he's a full-on murderer, but then things get complicated. This movie isn't very flashy and I haven't seen it on many top 10 lists for noirs, but it really covers all the bases incredibly well. The few nice, morally-upright people end up dead, terrorized, or driven to tears and all the bad people kind of self-destruct. One interesting touch is the role of the private detective, who at first seems to be just as slimy as everyone else but then takes this really odd biblical narrator tone toward the end. I'd really be unnerved if someone told my story using an overweight ethically-questional private dick as the mouthpiece to the audience... but the more I think about it... it could be kinda cool. Hooray for noir!
08.29.06	Blazing Magnum	Alberto de Martino	heartily recomended, this co-production between Canada and Italy proves to be more than just a Dirty Harry knock-off. For one, I get a sense that this cop is way more batshit crazy than partner-toxic Harry Callahan... For one I don't think Dirty Harry would shoot a helicoptor down IN THE MIDDLE OF A GODDAMN METROPOLITAN CITY... maybe Callahan saw the infamous Twilight Zone movie clip on the internet but I'm pretty damn sure that Captain Saitta didn't. I mean that is hard boiled right there... Good think Saitta didn't have a sequel in the 80s... he would've rocket launcher'd whole city blocks to death... as long as there's some jewel fence suspect hiding out somewhere in the blast radius. I guess that guy is SERIOUS. But after all, the dude did pull a knife on a baby. You don't do that and get away; not even in a helicoptor. This movie has me getting ahead of myself. So Martin Landau plays a suspect doctor, Gayle Hunnicutt plays a suspect slutty friend type, Mia Farrow's sister plays a blind girl, John Saxon plays a non-suspect cop, and the entire rest of the cast is subject to Stuart Whitman's no-nonsense harassment in this semi-mystery story about a cop investigating his sister's death by poisoning.The Canadian element is in here (it looks cold) and so is the Italian (it's gonzo and sleazy)... Whitman barrels around willy nilly, shooting robbery suspects in the chest and pushing transvestites around until he gets to the bottom of things... which is where I sort of lost the thread of the movie because I was so caught up in how much of a man he was. Actually there's a very decent mystery going on here with an ending that does a few things most giallos that I've seen dont: a) it makes sense, and b) it's actually rewarding. Even before the whole shoot-down-the-helicoptor-in-the-middle-of-a-city thing. So what kind of man is Captain Saitta? He's the type of man to say "respecable." He also strikes me as the first character on screen that actually seems capable of hot curling someone to death. This movie has these occasional scenes that are just... they are just crazy. Like what are these scenes doing in this movie? Dirty Harry didn't have these scenes... What is going on!? At one point, after shaking down a porn shop clerk for locations of transvestites, he walks into this weird-ass... I guess it's some sort of penthouse. It's either a penthouse or a gym... because it's on the top floor of this building and you actually have to walk by a pool, go outside onto a balcony, then back in through a sliding glass window to get to any sort of living area... even though that's just a couple of chairs and a makeshift desk. So there's these crossdressers there... getting made up as celebrities... and Saitta walks in and the first thing he does his grab one of them and push him around saying he needs information. So one of them gets cross and throws a bottle at him, which you just don't do to Captain Saitta. Don't these trannies know how's a little tense!? I guess that's later on in the movie when he goes to check out a locker at a bus station and someone taps him on the shoulder. Anyway, these transvestites go at him with karate, straight razors, and building ledges... but eventually wear out under the constant pheromonal thrush of Saitta's testosterone, which is when he proceeds to kick one in the balls, throw one into a wall (like for real, you see him hit his head hard. it looks painful and concussing) and outfit one with a hot curler suppository. That's the Tony Saitta way. I think Dirty Harry would've just shot them. Pansy. Later on in the film, Saitta hides in a dark corner of a hospital room waiting for the killer to reveal him- or her-self. What does he do when the murder appears? Does he yell "stop! Police!" or leap into a tackle or step from behind a curtain and brain them with a lamp? No, he THROWS A FREAKIN TABLE ACROSS THE ROOM. I don't think those other options even enter his mind to tell you the truth. He sees the table, he sees how far away it is from the sick woman in the bed and how he'd have to throw it OVER her in order to hit the perp... and that just makes perfect sense. Perfect plan. It's good because it's simple. ...and there's also one scene with a midget named Dutch. So... with all this going on, I still kinda remember it being a bit slow in parts. I think a big reason why this movie comes off so positively is its ending. Not only is there that whole helicoptor thing to end with, but before that... the resolution to the giallo aspects of the film are pretty cool since there's actually two or three characters who are believable as the killer, and then you have this little chase sequence with the knife and the baby and whatnot... but also you have the final puzzle piece to the mystery of what all was going on with Saitta's sister fall into place in the form of slow-motion breast-jangling. I don't know about you but if I was gonna put something at the end of a film to reward the audience for sticking around... that'd be pretty high on my list. Of course it's also a cool resolution on the story level... but they made they did go with slow-motion nudity and i won't complain about that. Another thing I really liked about this is the score. Mostly it's a brassy downtempo jazz type of thing but they also use this keyboard synthesizer... I don't know if it's a mellotron or what... and it is kind of borderline annoying about half the times they use it, but the other half is really great. It's reminiscent of the band AIR's instrumental stuff... although they are clearly reminiscent of stuff exactly like this. and I end with the car chase. I THINK this is the car chase on one of the Alamo pre-show discs... I know there's one on there that's long and amazing and pretty much every time i've seen it play it gets random applause from people after it ends... which I don't think ever happens with pre-show stuff. Laughter sure, but not really applause so much. Anyway, I think it's one and the same because they're both awesome. It's in a city, down city streets with people around, cars going absolutely nuts... tires squealing everywhere... hills and dead ends and turns and evasive maneuvers... but then it seems like the car chase itself takes a freebase hit of crack or something because all of a sudden the cars are going down like 40 degree grade hills into gravel pits and they're running sidecar motorcyclists into random piles of stacked boxes and they're offroadin and they're both jumping over a train in the same shot and both cars are beat to shit and finally they both flip over and both of them get out and have a routine interrogation scene. Very much like in that Mamet movie State and Main where Alec Baldwin has a car accident, hops out and says "wow, that happened." and goes on with his day. They play the interrogation scene like he's just pulled him over at a stoplight or something. crazy. Sure it doesn't have one car flipping over onto another car and that other car still driving around until it makes a sharp turn and flips the upside down car back over and onto the road but... it definitely has its moments. So yeah... ended the night with a good one. Cool movie.
08.29.06	The Stranger Returns	Luigi Vanzi	Tony Anthony returns as the Stranger, this time appearing out of the desert with a frilly pink parasol and riding a rabbit-hunting horse named Pussy. Unfortunately, that's where the goofy fun stops. Pretty quickly we get back into the straight-up knock off and although it's not bad, it's not really great either. It's just too close to the actual man with no name... except not really. like you can tell they didn't want to give him a poncho so they gave him a blanket... and he couldn't wear that type of hat so they gave him a slightly different hat... but he's still blonde, he still has no name... ahh well. In this one, the stranger masquerades as a postal official after he finds a dead one on the road. There's some sort of plot involving a whole stage made of gold, with shoddy wooden plates covering it up... and a band of heavies after the gold and the stranger playing both sides yadda yadda yadda. run of the mill stuff. While I'd say the overall pacing and flow of the movie is better than the first - there's a cooky preacher type that helps him out - there's more particular stuff to like in the first. Here, the only thing that really caught my eye is this badass 4-barrel shotgun that he uses to kill a dozen guys with... so good. Cross those off my list. If i ever come across the last in this series I might give it a go, but i won't be actively searching for it. So now let's end the night with hopefully something awesome.
08.29.06	A Stranger in Town	Luigi Vanzi	It's been a while since I've done one of these theme nights and I'm in a mood to stay in and watch movies tonight so it's gonna be Spaghetti Western night followed by an Italian crime midnight feature that's heartily recommended by not one but two trusted sources! First up though, is this movie with an imdb comment saying "Even spaghetti westerns fans will be bored." Ouch. Does it live up to that dubious honor? Well let's see. well, a little bit, yeah. That kind of comes from the story though. Since it's a Fistfull of Dollars knock, the titular stranger doesn't say much... and since no one seems to inhabit this town that the stranger is in, we get an awful lot of foley'd footsteps as he slowly walks around... and then in true man-with-no-name fashion he has to get the everloving shit kicked out of him, which takes a while... but then isntead of cutting to condensed-time sequences of him getting better, this stranger takes it upon himself to clear out all the outlaws while still bleeding internally and all that... so pretty much everything he does after that, be it climbing stairs or walking around or whatever, also takes super long. Combine all this with the traditional on-repeat Spaghetti Western theme and I can see how it's pretty slow to some (myself included). However, there are a few things to like here. I for one loved how adept the stranger was at killing people in ways that we are used to seeing other movie characters take without notice. Like the bad bartender guy in the beginning... oh you're holding a knife up to me huh? ok i'm going i'm going let me just turn around slowly and..... HIT YOU IN THE HEAD WITH THIS BOTTLE! hah! Now, for anyone else, the bartender would be knocked out right? Not the stranger. That dude is dead. Later on, he kills someone by slamming their head into the floor once. I swear the same exact thing happened to him like 8 times when he was getting his beating... I guess he just knows the secret pressure point or shakra or something. There's also a gunfight sequence played in the dark with all the lighting coming from gunblasts. It's an idea that's so simple it's probably been done thousands of times but for whatever reason I liked it here... although there's also a scene where the stranger thinks he's sneaking around in the dark but then the main heavy lights a match to reveal that he's right next to him. And then the main heavy's right hand man lights a match... and like 15 other people light matches all in a row. hilarious. And then toward the end the stranger goes into this whole Rambo sequence of taking goons out. Again, this is a standard scene but I thought it was done pretty well... maybe it's just because it was action after about an hour of him walking around, getting beaten, and then walking around some more but this time slower. So I guess this is a trilogy but I only have this one and the sequel so I hope it's good enough to enjoy but not so good that I'll want to track down the last one. we'll see!
08.28.06	Dead Waters	Mariano Baino	I wasn't feeling this one too much... all mysterious convent on a remote island where everyone's old and blind... saw the end coming at the very beginning... pretty bad sound mix throughout... I couldn't really tell what was going on 80% of the time... and basically just sat through it wishing I had gotten up earlier today so I'd be tired enough to doze through this. there was a decent shot of gore with a woman pulling (hard) someone's guts out but... not really worth watching the whole thing for.
08.28.06	Bunny Lake is Missing	Otto Preminger	The Zombies appear on TV in the background for one scene in this movie so Kier-La played it Music Monday. I am really glad! Personally, although I find the documentaries interesting, I most enjoy when she programs a fiction film that just happens to involve music (like Candy). It doesn't so much matter how much music's in it because I trust her programming. I know it already sort of exists with Weird Wednesday and I'm definitely sure it wouldn't sell very well but in a perfect world I'd love it if the alamo picked a time slot every week and rotated between the programmers for like potpouri... so you know the first tuesday night of every month is Tim's pick... any genre, any time, any movie... but he gets to pick it and they play it and if it sucks we get to yell at him but if it's awesome then alright. Second tueday Lars, Third Kier-La, Fourth Henri... I guess exactly like the staff picks at a video store... and also exactly like what all of them do on a grand scale with the alamo programming in whole... ok never mind that is a horrible idea. I just wished they played more reperatory screenings I guess. Anyway, this movie. It's good! It's funny because I'm sure in it's day it hadn't much been seen before and maybe was even considered a Psycho knock-off a little bit but nowadays the premise is so cliche that in the beginning I was really hoping it would prove to be different in some way. A woman reports that her four year old daughter is missing, yet she cannot prove her child's existence because someone has also stolen all of young Bunny Lake's things and police dude Laurence Olivier has to find out if the little girl exists or if this woman is just bonkers. What's interesting about this movie for me is that it starts off so familiar, then gets really kind of perverse and dark and awesome... but then ends up quite familiar again. So I'll need to spoil how the movie ends from here on out... if you don't feel like reading, my final word is that I liked it quite a bit, it got a theater full of people to gasp out loud at one particular point, and it's shot in black and white scope which is awesome... I love black and white scope... hard to make a movie look better than in black and white scope. So... there's a red herring in the form of Noel Coward who plays this landlord with a melodious voice... he is so awesome because he's a total perv... has the Marquis de Sade's skull and whip in his place and asks an investigating cop to swat him with it. Plus he makes advances on the very hot leading is-she-crazy lady in such an old-man arrogant way that is just hilarious. I almost wished it was he who took the kid just to see more of him acting really really creepy. It's also great because in his first scene he's kind of kooky but ultimately innocent, then when he next appears he's very dark and genuinely creepy, but then when we see him again after it's fairly obvious that he didn't snatch the brat, he become really absurd and funny again. It's a pretty subtle treatment of character there in the middle and I think Coward does a great job acting it and Preminger a great job capturing it. I should also say that Olivier does a good job playing the thankless role of the guy the audience follows... but he always plays it smart and with charm and yadda yadda yadda come on it's friggin Olivier... like he's gonna suck? Next up is the really creepy turn of Kier Dullea (who plays the woman's brother) turning psycho when she finally finds actual proof of her daughter's existence. It's in the form of a doll which she retrieves from a repair shop. He becomes nuts on a dime and torches the doll to a sad burnt plastic husk. The thing is though, there's a great shot where he sets the doll aflame and we zoom in close on his face with the fire lighting him and his pupils are completely dialated. REALLY creepy in a subtle way. Plus Dullea and the main actress (guess I have to finally look up her name... Carol Lynley) actually look alike... but they play certain scenes like there was a total incest thing going on when they were kids... and maybe even after they grew up. Unfortunately, something happens with crazy Dullea that I hate and always confuses me. Are all crazy people completely sane until the twist and then completely nuts? If she can bait him just by calling him stevie and playing children's games at the end, how in the hell can this guy be holding down a successfully job, and carrying out this complicated acting job of being concerned and playing the cops while he keeps the kid in his trunk. That makes no sense to me. Crazy people are crazy... they don't act normally... that's WHY they're crazy. This seems to happen a lot in movies... and it's quickly rising to the top ranks of my movie pet peeves, along with "computer experts" hitting the "enhance" key to make a pixellated zoomed-in picture magically res-up and be readable and always hearing the thunder exactly when the lightning flashes. Man do those things bug me... So... by the end of this movie, she's baiting Dullea away from killing her daughter by playing children's games with him... right because he's so crazy that he forgets all about the girl as long as he's playing blind man's bluff... and she keeps him occupied until the cops show up. But you know... I think she is pretty nuts too though, because she knew about him and still decided to be around him... and also probably got it on with him... so maybe that gives the ending a little darker edge to it, but still... I'm sure in 1965 it was like a water cooler topic oooh that guy's psycho! he's gotta twisted nerve but today it's pretty yawn-worthy. HOWEVER, I really liked this movie. Preminger was in top form if you ask me... wonderful photography, great use of handheld and it really showed off London (and the woman who plays the school principal or whatever was also in Peeping Tom and Frenzy) and the acting was great (even if the story called for 110% crazy from Dullea, everything up to that point from him was great), music... Saul Bass credits sequence... and like I said, the whole theater did that jump/gasp thing at one point in the film. That's a pretty clear indication that it had everyone engaged... Well worth watching, even with the familiar premise.
08.28.06	Garlic is As Good As Ten Mothers	Les Blank	The Alamo went crazy again and showed this great documentary (about garlic) with an all out garlic feast... garlic in the appetizer, saled, entre, and desert. Not only that, but they had a chef in the theater sauteeing garlic as we watched... wafting the smell into the theater, fibers of our clothes, and fabric of the seats for probably a week. It was great. They also showed a short that Blank did right before this (he did Burden of Dreams right after this) called Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe... which was included on the criterion BoD DVD but is still great and also involves garlic! So what we ate wasn't shoe leather... but it still fit pretty nicely. The movie... for a doc all about garlic it is surprisingly good... mostly (as usual) because the subjects are interesting and funny and it's all cut together very well. And they cook so much food with so much garlic in it that even while eating the lemon sorbet dessert I still wanted more garlic... So do people not like the smell of garlic? They call it the stinking rose but I don't really think it stinks... It definitely smells... a strong aroma to be sure... but I don't dislike it. Maybe that's because of the years and years of associating it with food that will taste good and give me the ability to melt steel with my breath... i guess if those things are wrong then I don't wanna be right.
08.27.06	The Man Who Never Was	Ronald Neame	Truth be told, I added this to my netflix queue so long ago that I don't remember how I even heard about it, and had no clue what it was about or who was in it or what when it came in the mail... sometimes that's cool though... I must've had some curiosity toward it or I wouldn't've added it in the first place, right? As it turns out, it was a pretty cool movie... albeit with one major flaw. It's based on a true story of how the British tried to fool Nazi Germany into reallocating some of their defenses away from Sicily before the big invasion... a mission which they accomplish by planting false documents on a dead body and dumping in the ocean to be found in Spain. The trouble comes during the last 45 minutes or so of the movie when Germany sends a spy back to London to check the authenticity of this dead body based on the personal articles and trinkets found on his person. It would almost be tense if they didn't say at the beginning of the movie that this was, except for a few changed names, absolutely true... and we all know they don't make movies about failed attempts very often. Still, it's cool to see the attention to detail that Clifton Webb and his little team of intelligence schemers stick to in creating this fictional Major and getting him ready to be accidentally found, even if you already know they get away with it. Maybe it's just from seeing it on my relatively small screen, but it looks like this was shot with an early scope lens because there's pretty noticeable distortion going on around the edges of the frame and the director chose to use lots of pans, zooms, and otherwise dynamic shots which kind of played with my perception a bit. That coupled with the sheer amount of dissolves sent out to a cheap lab that didn't match the color made it kind of distracting to me at times... but oh well, at least I could always tell what was going on unlike fight scenes today. All in all I was pretty pleasantly surprised with this... It went a lot quicker than I thought it would and delivered a pretty solid little story exploring a tiny detail in the huge machine of WWII.
08.26.06	Crossfire	Edward Dmytryk	This noir is kind of made important by its social message about anti-semitism... so in that respect it gets a little message-y in parts but Robert Ryan is great and especially both Glora Grahame as Ginny the ginmill tramp and her separated husband (credited as "The Man"). Not a huge fan of Robert Young though... seems like he's made out of wood.
08.25.06	The Big Lebowski	Joel Coen	So I've seen a thousand movies since starting this site... I figured for the occasion I'd throw caution to the wind and watch one of my all-time favorite movies. I remember seeing this in the theater when it first came out - it only played one place which was way outside Rochester, a group of 4 or 5 of us drove out there to catch it - but I'm not exactly sure when I really started to love it. Somewhere down the line I did though because I think I can watch this movie pretty much whenever. This is now one of my litmus test movies to make sure I'm hanging out with the right people. I made my parents watch this. It's really a modern classic that exists in a perfect universe. Every facet of this movie is right... The dream sequences are perhaps the best dream sequences put to film since Spellbound... it's fun to find every aspect of that second dream in earlier parts of the film, like the giant painting of sissors in Maude's flat to the checkered tile floor of The Big Lebowski's mansion and whatnot... and in the first one you can actually see The Dude's reflection in the bowling ball right before he gets stuck in the finger hole. I could really go on forever about this movie. There's a great book that talks about every aspect of it, complete with interviews from everyone (including Mary Zophres the costume designer and Rick Heinrichs the production designer) to shot-by-shot explanations of the dream sequence to ideas, inspirations, and practical obstacles during photography... I wish there was a book like that for every Coens movie... but of them all I have to say that this one is my favorite. I never really find myself fashioning my life like H.I. from Raising Arizona or Marge from Fargo... I do try to live my life like The Dude though... every day. So since I'm breaking quad digits here, I'll indulge a bit and talk about the site itself. I still kind of insist that it's not a blog, even though I guess it is... I just hate that word, and to me the word "log" means a list of files included in a zipfile or a record of financial transactions... the "Captain's log" is really the only thing I can think of that comes close to what blogs have turned into... I still much prefer Journal or even Diary though because that's what they are... people talking about their own lives. I'll say though that this is the longest I've gone with any sort of journal, diary, or log or any web project at all for that matter... In that regard I'd consider this a success... I think years and years from now when I look back and see when, where, and what I thought about a movie the first or second time I saw it i'll be glad. I'm not sure if i'll make it 17 years like Peter Bogdanovich did, but I guarantee this is way less cumbersome than a closet full of notecards. This site has also grown a lot more featured than I thought it would. When i first wrote it, I pretty much made a copy of the code and made that a journal for every book I read (http://mybook.medialife.org). It takes me much much longer to read a book than to watch a movie so I don't spend nearly as much time on there as I do here... so because of that I never touched the code to that site since starting it... never even fixed that bug with displaying by most recent date... but at this point it makes a good comparison to see how this has grown... maybe not so much on the public side but definitely the admin stuff... and I just thought of another thing to add when I get around to it (along with fixing that pesky event date bug). ANYWAY, point is this had grown over the past 1000 movies and I spend way too much time looking at it. I have no hopes that it'll someday become heavily traffic'd and popular or anything like that... but I have to say I really get a kick out of it... Lastly, I really thought my viewing habits would be different. When I first started this, I thought by the time I did a full year I'd be seeing movies 3, 4 times no problem. As of now there are only 4 that i've seen more than twice... That's really surprising to me. But I think that's because ever since last September (QT6 to be exact), I've been getting into a much different area of film that's completely new to me. I think it's pretty cool that I have a complete record of that, and a complete record since I've moved to Austin as well, not to mention a complete record of every movie downloaded from the internet. This time, much like when I first got into film noir or when I first got into Hitchcock, represents lots and lots of new movies for me... so I guess that accounts for a lack of repeat viewings. So now it's back to seeing whatever. Maybe for my three thousandth I'll pick another special movie... or as Micah suggested for my thousandth new movie (still at 947 unique titles)... but until then it's more movies! 1000 movies watched in 655 days, averaging 1.53/day. As many movies seen made in 2005 as in all of the 70s (172), 433 in the 2000s, 79 in the 90s, 127 in the 80s, 73, 29, 22, 6, and 6 rounding out the decades. Snakes on a Plane seen 11 times, Sin City 4, Danger Diabolik 3, 40 Year-Old Virgin 3. 8 Werner Herzog movies seen 8 times, 6 Coen brothers seen 8 times, 6 Spielbergs 7 times, 6 Blake edwards 6 times, and 5 Linklater films seen 7 times. 95 horror movies, 92 documentaries, 88 dramas, 79 comedies, 46 crime movies. 192 seen through netflix, 139 at Alamo downtown, 103 on DVD, 91 on DVR, and 73 at Alamo South lamar. 10 events on the books, the biggest being SXSW 2005 with 34 movies, followed by QT6 with 29 and Best of QT Fest with 20. Aren't stats fun?
08.24.06	When the Screaming Stops	Amando do Ossorio	Terror Thursday tonight at South Lamar to switch it up... I haven't seen the Blind Dead movies that this director is mostly known for but I have seen Demon Witch Child so i did have some sort of... not so much a warning, more like an expectation... in what i was walking into. The movie's another telling of the lorelei story from The Nibelungen, except with boarding school chicks and a mega stud hunter guy that likes tight pants. The first half is pretty damn funny what with the horrible dubbing and bikini-clad women and whatnot... but the second half drags a bit as we realize that we're not going to get as much gore or nudity as we really want. Yes I say we. I'm fairly confident that I can speak for the crowd here... The main girl though... man is she hot. Well actually none of the women in this are bad looking... and they are all in that natural 70s way where they aren't emaciated and bony... and that isn't code for fat either... just like, real. some of their breasts aren't as big as seems necessary now, some have pretty wide hips, etc. But they are all pretty... the main woman though... wowza. she's got one of those perfect faces that you just can't stop looking at... but have to force yourself eventually because her body looks good too. These big almond brown eyes... really striking. I guess the woman that plays Lorelei is supposed to be the big star and the hottest... and she is hot as well, but not like the professor woman... oh man. Spain makes em right. There's a few absurd things going on in this movie... but it's mostly the general feel of it that made me chuckle... I was ready for it to end at the 80 minute mark though. All in all it had its moments and with a woman that beautiful up on the screen i really can't complain.
08.23.06	Pinball Summer	George Mihalka	So it's late... I've got my late nite disc spinning... time for some naive ramblings. To get it out of the way, this movie was a pretty stale teen comedy only made interesting by the fact that it kind of revolves around pinball. My buddy Steve loves pinball and I think he would really love to live in this universe forever. It's clear that 1980 was like the last huge wave of pinball... 1980 Also seems to be the pinnacle of women wearing no-bra tanktops and tight hot pants... i am NOT complaining... it was actually the most enjoyable aspect of the movie for me. I guess that's being harsh. The crowd had a good time with this, lots of laughter, and there were some things... like the totally completely gay overtones with the main guys and the fact that the bad greaser biker guy was named Bert with an "e." To me, Bert is soo much cooler and funnier than burt. A while ago i wrote a short script starring a robot bartender and I came up with a reasonable acronym in order to name him B.E.R.T. (Brilliantly Efficient Robot Tender (hey, i didn't say "genius acronym," i said "reasonable)). Plus Lars had a pretty great intro where he said this movie might be completely horrible or it might be genius. He's not sure. It's pretty horrible until you start to realize that pinball extends to this bizarre existential metaphor... and then you see how the whole movie is just these kids letting inertia point them in a direction that they go until they hit something or bounce off someone and carom off in some other direction. It's true none of the people really DO anything in this movie... so when they finally get around to this pinball tournament near the end of the movie, and we see that the pinball game is called "Pinball Summer" with drawings of the movie's characters and vehicles on it... it all starts to make some sort of sense... or not. So... I dunno, I'd say this is a pretty mediocre movie only made fun by the audience. Which really tripped me off into a thought tangent. I remember a college buddy of mine named Trapper... when we had various websites where we reviewed movies and DVDs and trailers, he'd always be the guy who liked something the rest of us hated. His standpoint would be like "well I'm sure someone likes this" and forgive an awful lot about a movie because someone worked hard to make it. I disagreed with him then, mostly to defend my scathing condemnation of some piece of crap, but as I sat in the theater tonight I realized that 2 or 3 years ago, I would totally completely hate this movie forever. And Trapper would probably say "well it was fun because we saw it with a good crowd that brought out the humor" and I'd probably disagree... and you know, I still can't let go of that difference between the quality of the movie and my enjoyment of it. I still think that there's some ultimate objectional quotient of quality that a movie ends up with... that's indisputable no matter what anyone says. Like a movie like Casablanca or Rushmore is just good. It's just plain good and if you don't like it, it's your fault. Aliens, if they came down and needed to use cinema to fuel their space ships, would pay more for Casablanca than Snake Eyes. But is that really true? One thing this past year of going to the Alamo pretty regularly and also in keeping this journal has shown me pretty clearly that it's hard to separate your experience from the movie. I still do it... like I'll call a movie shitty but say I like it, but most of the time I'll like something in spite of a bad audience or because of a good one... does that make the movie I liked in the room full of assholes better than the one I liked in the warm responsive one? Maybe, Maybe not... ok yes. yes it does... but the experience does factor. I would not have liked Pinball Summer at all if I watched it alone in my apartment. No Chance. But you know... this makes me think of something else. If the big reason why I enjoyed watching this movie tonight is to see the 1980 pinball and hotpants, does that mean in 20 years people will like movies like Armageddon and Enemy of the State because they'll get to see early CGI or "bad" performances circa the late 90s? I can't imagine Pinball Summer had many fans when it came out... I think 1980 people just thought it was a cheap sucky teen comedy. Of course so much has changed with cinema itself to make movies of that era stand out in their own unique way... and I think a love of that era itself generates a lot of love nowadays... so maybe in a few decades, the movies coming out now will take on a collective identity that people go for then... so in essence the movies that I hated and argued with Trapper about will become the movie that I watch with a good crowd at a Weird Wednesday equivalent and have a good time with. We're all just pinballs, man... bouncing off bumpers and cradling flippers until fate tilts the table.
08.22.06	Strange Brew	Rick Moranis, Dave Thomas	I love this movie and I'm so glad I got to see it in a theater... the way the beginning MGM logo gag was supposed to be seen! And also, the whole widescreen joke in the beginning is totally lost on pan&scan audiences... so it's a real treat... I am honorary Canadian I think for liking this movie as much as I do. Especially the movie they make in the beginning... it's so great... "there wasn't much to do... all the bowling alleys had been closed so i spent most of my time looking for beer." I really wish that movie went on for at least 5 more minutes. They served a canadian beer flight with this and gave away a bottle of Elsinore beer... that was pretty cool but really come on... the theater should've sold out just because it's STRANGE BREW!!! Oh no! she's stuck in the electrified gates! Only one thing to do... "RAM HER FROM BEHIND!" ahh... genius. cooooo-Loo-coo-coo coo-loo-COO-COO!!!
08.22.06	The Beales of Grey Gardens	Albert Maysles, David Maysles	This is a lot like one of those posthumously released albums of b-sides and demos that famous bands release to make a little more money even though they're dead... except in this case it's worth it because the characters of little and big Edie Beale are so interesting. It does feel like the b-side to Grey Gardens but that's ok... fans of that movie shouldn't like this movie any less... These scenes deal a lot more with the other characters surrounding them (namely Jerry and Louis), as well as more singing, arguing, swimming, and prancing. There's even a montage of all of Edie's fashionable outfits thrown together at the end, presumably for the sea of fashion designers who love this movie... It doesn't quite have the dramatic thrust that Grey Gardens has... more just an extended collection of deleted scenes, but it's still nice to go back and visit them once again...
08.21.06	Joe Kidd	John Sturges	Clint Eastwood is Joe Kidd and Joe Kidd is trouble. Actually Joe Kidd is just a dude, maybe a little bit of a troublemaker, that gets caught up between Luis Chama the pissed off mexican and Frank Harlin the rich land owner. Probably the most notable thing about this movie is that Luis Chama is played by John Saxon. Yeah... John Saxon as a Mexican. He's only in a few scenes but... well, it's right up there with Jack Palance in The Professionals and (I hear) Burt Reynolds in Navajo Joe. Actually, with a bit of forsight that would've made a good double feature... Oh well, I'll have to catch Navajo Joe later. Lalo Schiffrin score, Elmore Leonard script, and John Sturgest directing pretty much ensures that it's a decent movie... and it is. but i didn't think it was as good as some of Eastwood's other American westerns... still good though to be sure. For the longest time I was anti-western because my parents liked them... and I'm still not the biggest John Wayne fan just because my mom's a John Wayne fiend... but these 70s westerns are really great. Clint Eastwood stuff... where it's a little more gritty, informed by the Italian stuff, and gets into the minutiae and more interesting facets of life and crime back then than that romanticised 50s melodrama stuff.
08.21.06	Grey Gardens	Albert Maysles, David Maysles	man those women are crazy.
08.20.06	Cast a Deadly Spell	Martin Campbell	So... back to Lovecraft. The 9:45 show (which also had a line out the door and into the parking lot) was a collection of shorts shown at the Portland HPLfest in various years. One of the included pieces, another adaptation of Pickman's Model, was actually a Master's thesis film from a UT student who was in attendance. It was made in 1981 on 16mm so there were some glimpses of the Austin of that time. Honestly, I didn't go for these shorts. Some were better than others, but... ugh. So many were that same black and white DV look... with amateur voiceover or film school sound scares and things of this nature... either that or it's bad CG with bad sound mixes and big-breasted trees dancing... Granted, there's a whole section of Lovecraft's work, the dream stuff, that I never really went for. So I think a few of these shorts (the one I probably liked the best was called The Canal) fit that vibe pretty well I thought... but there weren't any in the bunch that I really flipped for. So the midnight movie was Cast a Deadly Spell, which is awesome. It was an HBO movie made in 1991 and produced by Gale Ann Hurd. I vividly remember this coming on and them marketting it with "From the creators of Terminator 2..." and watching it and... it's kind of a hard sell. The tone of this movie makes it pretty hard to market... but I think on its own terms it's very fun. I really liked it when I first saw it... saw the sequel with Dennis Hopper and eric Bogosian (which wasn't as good and not nearly as Lovecraftian) and was really pumped to see it again, especially in a theater! Basically, Fred Ward plays a private detective named Phil Lovecraft. The basic premise is a throwback to noir except what if magic was real. So you have cops lighting their cigarettes with flame from their palms, Police detectives interrogating werewolves, actual little puppet gremlins wreaking havoc on car engines, blood rain, unicorns, hexes, vexes, and minor demons all incorporated into the tough talking hat brimmed world of 40s noir. Understandably, it's not a tone that everyone will go for. But for those that like these two genres (noir and lovecraftian horror), i think it's a real blast. One of the best ideas is using zombies as slave labor and bodyguard muscle. There's a great scene where it shows a crew of zombies building a house... it just makes perfect sense in this particular world. Another part of why this movie is cool is, in addition to Fred Ward, the main heavy is played by Clancy Brown and the femme fatale is played by Julianne Moore. Awesome, right? Another little detail that surprised me when I saw this again was that Lee Tergesen, known to everyone whose seen an episode of Oz as Tobias Beecher, had a small role that's very ironic when you think about stuff that happens to him in Oz. One thing though... I could've SWORN that there was a scene where a ghostly incarnation of Nina Simone sings in some room... I guess I'm thinking of the sequel though... I can't imagine HBO cutting that scene out for any reason. So that ended the night. Really fun day at the movies... Ia Ia Cthulhu ftagn!
08.20.06	Trainspotting	Danny Boyle	So... because of scheduling restrictions, Irvine Welsh popped in for a book signing and a screening of Trainspotting right in the middle of our Lovecraft Sunday. It was cool though... Andy the Lovecraft guy (who just sold me an audiobook CD recording he did of Jeffery Combs reading Herbert West: Re-Animator and a book he wrote cataloguing all the Lovecraft movies up to this year ("Brian, Thank you for supporting the festival. Any friend of Lovecraft's is a friend of mine! Cheers, Andrew")) cleared his stuff off the table so BookPeople could set up Irvine Welsh stuff, hand out his new book which lots of us bought included in our ticket price, and make room for Welsh himself to sign ("To Brian," that's about all I can make out). After that he got up and rather than talk about the book he read a passage from late in the book where a guy whose put a hex on another guy to take all his hangovers visits a white witch to try and take it off. The scene, a grotesque display of language describing his payment to the elderly morbidly obese witch in the form of sexual gratification, rang out in his lilting Scottish accent as waiters ran the rows delivering hot nachos and steaming pizza to people who may or may not still be hungry by that time. It was pretty awesome and actually reminded me a lot of Chuck Palahniuk reading Guts to people. The Alamo or BookPeople or whoever's in charge of getting these authors in town should really go after Chucky P for his next book and show Fight Club. It'd be awesome to get him down here. The movie, of course, is really superb. It's one of those perfectly-crafted movies which end up defining a period in my life not because I was a junkie or anything but just because I remember when it came out how everyone had to see it and it was an eye-opener for me in several ways. Much like Clerks.. how everyone in school was like "you gotta rent this movie, Clerks..." and singing the Berserker song all the time and stuff... I remember people had to go down into DC to see Trainspotting, and most of us didn't see it till video... and there was talk of subtitling the whole movie so us Americans could understand it... and it was like a year after Pulp Fiction... just a really exciting time for movies... and I'm sure these films got a whole generation of people into film school. But aside from all that, it's a great movie.
08.20.06	Call of Cthulhu	Andrew Leman	It was H.P. Lovecraft film festival day at the Alamo downtown. Kier-La got the guys that run the Portland fest to come down and show some stuff for us Austinites... While I was hoping that the shows wouldn't be too empty, I really didn't expect much turnout. Luckily though, Austin proves to be cool once again by selling out the first show, nearly filling the second, and leaving a healthy turn-out for a midnight show on a sunday night. In addition, we all bought tons of stuff from the merch table so I think we impressed the Portland guys enough to come back next year. Let's hope! It was also cool to see so much Cthulhu t-shirts on the crowd... this town is pretty damn cool. So for the first show, they played an old episode of Night Gallery adapted from the short story Pickman's Model on 16mm. It was very cool and probably one of the highlights of the day for me... I love that story (and even chose it as the basis for my near-fan-fiction series of stories that i'm working on) so it was cool to see it filmed. After that they showed the silent film Call of Cthulhu. I actually own this on DVD but it's on my haven't-seen shelf so I purposely held off to see it fresh on the big screen. For starters, I am not a big fan of the actual Call of Cthulhu short story... Furthermore, although I like the idea of having it be a silent movie, seeing new digital video gone through the typical scratchy filters always kind of bugs me. Now if they actually got the old cameras... or even used cheap bolexes or something with black and white stock, that would work wonderfully... but of course these guys don't have the money for that so I have to consciously lower my guard and try to forgive that stuff and concentrate on the story... So, as such this wasn't bad. It was certainly better than Monarch of the Moon... and seemed to follow the story (or my memory of the story at least) fairly closely. It helps that it was only 47 minutes long... but it could've been worse I suppose. Ultimately I still feel that the aspects of Lovecraft's work that I respond most to have never been put 100% effectively into a movie. Maybe it's impossible - certainly plenty have tried - or maybe the things about Lovecraft that I love are more from other sensibilities than I realize... but whatever. This was still just mediocre. I think though, that if you're gonna do this whole old-style DV look... you should also do like a 5-10% blur on everything. Things look just way too sharp... even converted to black and white with artificial scratches and luminosity flickering going on. You need to darken the corners of the frame more than the center, and get rid of all those precise edges... grain wasn't fine enough to show that back then.
08.18.06	Snakes on a Plane	David R. Ellis	i turned it up to 11. it's midnight. i'm listening to this annoying ass song once more then going home. more later. So I am home. It's 2 AM and I'm still wide awake. Maybe Snakes on a Plane broke me. Maybe I missed my sleep window so now I have to stay up until the next one floats around. This does not bode well for my Lovecraft Sunday. More on that... Sunday I guess. So when I got home I added the original intro that I wrote out before heading to the theater last night... and I also want to include some closing thoughts because there've been some things that popped into my head EVERY time I watched the movie but that damn music video popped them back out when I was trying to do the in-theater live updates with all the witty repartee and comments on how awesome we all were buzzing around my ears. Tomorrow I will clean all of this up (relatively speaking... I sure did say goddamn a lot today, huh) for the sake of history... but I wanted to make sure I got everything down before I actually honest to god slept. [[i don't know if i cleaned anything up, but that part about how i will go back tomorrow and look this over... well, i did.]] First off, for the tenth show (and really this was the last official Snakes on a Day screening... this last one was like the bonus round) I ordered Snake on a Plate and it was good. Although I did not get to see the snake wrangling live, I feel I had about as complete a Snakes on a Plane premiere event as I could ask for... without actually having a snake and/or a plane. I'm pretty sure I will look back on this experiment with fondness that I did it and it made me go to some places I don't usually go and that's cool. I certainly have no regrets about doing it... although I must admit the sword is a bit double-edged. I am feeling pride and shame simultaneously right now. Pride that I endured the entire event and am even more hardcore than the other guys, and shame that I just spent 26 hours in a theater watching the same movie over and over again. This will likely be a subject I don't volunteer in conversation but when asked about it will openly reveal all. Or maybe I'll feel different about it in the morning. [[Nope]] So... Snakes on a Plane. What is it about? If you ask Shannon he will tell you masturbation. He's got some pretty good arguments for that too... especially the one line that David Koechner says about what all a man can do with one hand. I have thought in each viewing about what the hell this could mean... It really makes no sense to me... I think it's a great line when he says it... but really, why is it in this movie? Aside from that though, I personally think it's just about some snakes on an airplane. To me, this movie is very similar to the cheap B-picture Drive-in type stuff of the 70s. Granted, Lars is right in saying it also has a very writing-by-committee feel which is sort of the exact opposite of that old 70s stuff, but this movie is also very blatant with its intentions and audience. It sets out to give you exactly what you want and in the process doesn't REALLY care if it ends up making sense. I get a real sense when watching it of exactly what was re-shot for the R-rating, what's old from the PG-13 cut... the gore stuff and snake death scenes can almost be hot-swapped in any order... and even though almost every line sounds like it came from an introductory text on dramatic storytelling, these small little things fall through the cracks... like Jackson saying he's from Tennessee so he doesn't notice the heat, or Sean saying "gotta breathe" at the end like he has to remind himself of basic bodily functions and Mr. Mullet falling as he runs from the helicoptor. And is it just me or are there like 58 shots of helicoptors taking off, landing, and flying across the landscape!? For a movie about snakes on a PLANE there sure are a lot of choppers. But anyway, Even though parts of it are like cookie-cutter MTV-sized mass-dispensed entertainment nuggets, the duct tape holding it all together throws a really classic exploitation vibe my way. but like in a modern-day way. And it's called SNAKES ON A PLANE! I love that this movie now exists. I really thought I had this movie down... but you know what? It took me until the tenth viewing to realize why it looks like major badass Eddie Kim is badly blue-screened in his fight sequence (it's like 2 shots, maybe 12 frames of film total, where they fight directly in front of the window... blue outlines both people (I guess because the skyline is like Hollywood or something... I thought I saw the Hollywood sign in there)) and until the 11th viewing to realize that the entire conversation between Bobby Cannivale's FBI agent and Todd Louiso's "hardcore" snake expert where they talk about getting anti-venom from zoos and wind up figuring out who sold Kim the snakes was completely constructed in the editing room. If you look and listen closely, what they actually say to each other makes no sense. It's like pieces of some completely different Louiso monologue was cut to fit Cannivale's re-shoot... but the effect is that Louiso comes off all the quirkier and more hardcore. I love that sudden exhausted head-back sigh that he takes at one point... like oh man I've just had to answer four questions LET ME REST. So I guess you do pick up something new every time. But some things were there right from the beginning. Like how the Sean character belongs in some MTV movie about north shore high school surfers instead of a snakes on a plane movie... or how Eddie Kim's tireless insistence to exhaust every other option before settling on the snakes on a plane plan must've been harder than getting the bloodstains out of his white suit. Mostly though, it's the innate feeling that although this movie really kinda sucks... it's a hell of a lot of fun. And it actually delivers pretty much exactly what fans wanted from it. Of course, you watch it 11 times and nothing makes sense. Practically every scene in the movie has at least one hole. Whole subplots, like the search for the correct anti-venom and complete list of snakes when there are only like 2 snakebite victims still alive is fruit-and point-less, or how once Mr. Mullet confesses to Kim's involvement in conspiracy to murder a plane-load of people, Sean's eyewitness to one little prosecutor (unless his last name actually was "Prosecutor") becomes kind of moot. Or the timing in which they must've gotten the snakes onto the plane in the first place... with the mysteriously fast cell call with the flight info (i guess it was quickdial) to the dousing of pheremone to the sniffing of dogs that went on the plane before they knew to put snakes there... and why the cockpit door was so easy to open before the third act when a pilot was still alive... but ANYWAY, my original intent with this paragraph was to say that all of these holes don't really matter. It doesn't have to make sense or connect all the dots or even come to any sort of conclusion... why? Because it ends with Sam Jackson surfing, that's why. Any movie that somehow involves Sam Jackson surfing... gets a free pass in my book. Although it does make you wonder how Sean could've drawn that incredibly descriptive colored drawing of the devil on a surfboard (it looks exactly like Bali to me!) with a #2 pencil... and seriously, how much Red Bull does that guy drink? I will freely admit though, that after Jackson my favorite part in this movie was Kenan Thompson's Troy. I love how the entire last ten minutes becomes the Troy show and Jackson is relegated to amazing reaction shots and yelling truly classic lines like "TURN THIS BIG MUTHAFUCKA LEFT, TROY!" I seem to remember yelling that to a documentary camera at some point during this affair... perhaps not wise. It's no fair that they interview you after 14 hours of repeated movie watching. The joke that made me laugh every one of the 11 times that I saw this: "my ass... my ass, man..." that just cracked me up. every time. Every time it happened, the moment when Jackson shoots out the windows and the whole pressure drop sequence starts, I was really impressed with the sound mix. It was almost as if they'd deliberately slowly weened the mix down to just a simple score and Jackson's dialogue all in the fronts then hit you with this barrage of sensurround whirling goodness that sounds so deep and full that it really enveloped me, no matter where in the theater I sat. My favorite death is probably the men's bathroom one... just because from the very beginning of the scene when the guy gets up, flashes his forearm tat, and tells a random woman that he'd be right back in a way that must've taken 8 weeks of sleaze lessons to perfect... from that very beginning moment I am chuckling... because his vanity is directly responsible for his death! If he'd been looking at where he was aiming "big boy" instead of checking out his eyebrows, he would've seen what was coming for him. Plus, he gets an amazing line (that I sorta fudged in my previous post because it was SO self-explanatory... but that's why i love it. there's no way to misunderstand "snake, get off my dick!" it's about as pure a line as the title of the film itself) and also one of the quickest deaths considering where he got bit. It's like, for this particular guy, the jugular is #1 and his cockvein is #2, then it's all the rest of the veins in his body. I believe he's dead before he even sits down... amidst the drowning grind of one last profanity at his rotten luck... ALL DUE TO HIM LOOKING AT HIS EYEBROWS! I love it. My favorite snake kill has to be the HIYYAAA! judo chop from the homophobic piggyback kickboxer. that he actually says HIYYAAA!... has to go in some book somewhere. As far as the audiences went... I'd put the premiere crowd at the top, followed by the last crowd, then the noon crowd with the awesome group that dressed up, then all the others meld together. Seating-wise, I've cemented my dislike for the very front row, become somewhat more comfortable with the farther back rows (especially at South Lamar) but still prefer the row I've always preferred. Interesting, I know. This is why I hate blogs. Who is interested in my favorite row at the Alamo? Only two possible people: 1. an enemy doing research so he can start getting to the theater before me just to take my favorite seat, or 2. a stalker. And I mean the bad kind, not the good kind. anyway... This movie was much better than I expected. And what's more, it's a really good choice to watch 11 times. When I first walked into this little experiment, I thought that it could be any movie. Now, I don't think that's true. Maybe it is, who knows... but this one had enough minute bits of odd and obscure dialogue to trip my tickle-meter no matter how many times I watch it. Like in Caddyshack... I don't care how many times I have to sit through the rest of it, whenever Bill Murray's on screen I laugh. I can watch that movie 11 times in a row... probably. I don't think watching... say... The English Patient 11 times would be quite as sustaining. So it's really good that the Alamo and Shannon chose to do this little endurance challenge with this particular movie. It's still a very weird feeling though... like the last three shows were no problem at all. no problem. at all. I feel like I could've gone 6 more... it just didn't phase me one bit. You know what it was like? It was like listening to an album over and over again... and the album is pretty good but you have 3 or 4 clear favorite songs so you listen to the whole album but all the time while you are listening to each track you have a constant meter of how far away you are from the next song you REALLY love... so before you know it your 3 or 4 songs have played and you listen to the album again and it's the same thing. You enjoy it as it passes over you, you revel in your favorite tracks, and have no real problem putting it on repeat. it's like a combination of that, and watching... you know how sometimes on DVDs they will put TV spots on there and it's one track but it's like 8 or 10 spots and they might start at 30 seconds and by the time they end they are like 5 seconds but they each give you the same general information. Well imagine that but instead of 5-30 seconds it's 2 hours. So it's somewhere in between those two feelings. I would be willing to bet that once I go to sleep and wake up... hopefully tomorrow... I will not share this feeling at all. In fact, I won't be surprised if I never want to see Snakes on a Plane again. HOWEVER, the other hand is telling me that now that I have such an intimate relationship with this one movie... I will want to come back to it just to remmeber the event, which may very well be true. [[well... I am not anti... although I don't think I will see it any more in the theater. I probably will pick up the DVD though.]] I don't know about watching it 11 times in a row again. Again, this is something that would be absolutely impossible for me to do on my own. At home I have so many distractions on hand and feel like I have so much that I should be doing that I would just never be able to commit myself to it. In a theater though... especially the Alamo... i saw it really as an opportunity to experience this feeling that's still keeping me awake now. That and I am totally in with all of the Alamo waiters and managers now. One guy actually thanked me when I was on my way out... and the cute really short waitress said see you soon. Sure in a place that you're not enamored with that might come off as creepy... but I have no problems with everyone there knowing my face. I kind of wish the late-night manager at the Wendy's across the street from me would forget who I am and stop giving me 10% discounts and free small frosties like I am a drug addict being kept on the hook... but Alamo people are alright. To the 12 other people who were crazy, stupid, and/or bored enough to show up... it was good times. Not sure I am up for an encore next weekend... but give it... 10 years and we'll see. And with that... I think an hour is all I'll dedicate to this long-winded wrapping-up of a long-winded marathon of repetitive viewing. I really don't know why I'm not collapsed on my keyboard inputing three thousand "h"s with my forehead until the text buffer runs out right now... it's actually kind of worrying me. God I can't wait to read this tomorrow. [[it was fun.]] I guess I could go on typing forever... but you know what? ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! I'VE HAD IT WITH THESE MUTHAFUCKIN SNAKES ON THIS MUTHAFUCKIN DAY!
08.18.06	Snakes on a Plane	David R. Ellis	It's dark out again I think. People love this movie. even though the whole premise becomes meaningless at the end once they take a helicopter trip out to the desert. And that makes ten. Everyone else is all feeling good like they accomplished something. Wusses, all of em. I am like Spinal Tap, turning it up to 11 where everyone else only has 10. Bonus round coming up next! I am JAZZED!!!! ok not 100% jazzed. I am feeling the burn. It's weird though... after maybe show... five, i got a serious vibe that I could maybe watch this movie forever. I am not bored when I watch it for some reason... even though by this time i can count the number of scenes between now and my next favorite part. Not tired at all... not thinking about sleep or my apartment or any of the... pretty much infinite things i could be doing right now instead of sitting in the back of the theater watching the 10:15 crowd filter in. this is gonna be great though. I will be able to see a packed house react to all the jumps... and then it will be over. I actually loath the trailers much more than the actual movie. The thought of watching the Texas Chainsaw Massacre prequel trailer one more time makes me shed a single tear... so i guess I am a single tear away from victory. Victory from... [[God i came to hate those trailers... Even Borat, which is hard to hate. Thankfully, Ginger the projectionist removed the trailers from the reel for our late-night private screenings so I only had to sit through them 6 times instead 11. Seriously, the vintage Airport 1975 trailer was great the first time but after a while it seems to go on for like an hour. The other trailers were, for the sake of record, Jet Li's Fearless, Borat, Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, and Jackass 2.]]
08.18.06	Snakes on a Plane	David R. Ellis	9 down! Amazing! I am completely awake and feel like shushing the guy next to me so i can watch in peace. Who could've forseen this. I think the addition of new blood helps a lot... I always have the next big scare to look forward to seeing reactions on not to mention the 5 or 6 little group comments from us dirty dozen. No one else is staying for the 11th show though... pansies. So the next show is sold out. We will get a shout out apparently... gonna be our grande hurrah... as far as sitting in a darkened theater goes. i'm sure there's more i could talk about with the actual movie... like how this song will probably be stuck in my goddamn head forever... but i have to pee. like bad. [[I really did... but I had this thing that, while I missed most of the trailers once, I never actually walked out of the theater during the movie.]]
08.18.06	Snakes on a Plane	David R. Ellis	you know... sometimes i don't believe that the day has finally come and Snakes on a Plane is actually a physical movie playing in theaters... but then I watch it 8 times in a row and you better goddamn believe i know it's real. Lars pointed out a great tidbit which is actually insight into the entire film. It's saturated in post-ironic irony... It's like not only do the filmmakers know that we take their irony as irony but they are aware that we know that their irony is ironic and want us to know that they know. From the beginning song throughout the entire movie... it's all like so ironic it's not even ironic anymore... it just is. If i was writing a master's thesis, that would be a whole chapter. Another chapter would be on how awesomely Sam jackson says the word "motherfucker." oh, and that girl still does the stewardess instructions in the aisle... presumably for the single ticketholder's joy... There's talk of joining in one solid row for the last show... a shining horizontal line of smelly sleep-deprived unity to go out with a bang... so I think the next show I'll rock the last row again... although funnily enough I had 0 fatigue this time around. Maybe i've crossed the hump and the next time it'll be even funnier. we'll see. [[while we never did get to an official position on the one-row thing until before the last show for a Last Supper-esque tableau while Shannon delivered his final thoughts to the doc crew, we all ended up hanging out in more or less the same row for maybe three shows. The waiters finally got mad enough at us for taking a whole row and not ordering any food that they broke us up for the last show... seeded us in with hungry patrons so every waiter got paid.]]
08.18.06	Snakes on a Plane	David R. Ellis	Crashed abd burned on this one. Which showing was this anyway? 6? 7? They are completely blurring together now. Anyway, I dozed in and out for somewhere between 10 and 40 minutes... not really sure. The end always seems to pep me up though and hearing fresh laughter is... refreshing. We still did our little shout outs but I think people appreciated them... nothing annoying or anything that runs over good lines or anything like that. oh man am i fried. Why the hell did i buy that extra ticket? Sitting through three more of these goddamn things is gonna be R-O-U-G-H. That 11th show will be a real test. a test of manhood. or hardcoreness... of snake-i-tude. i need to walk around or something... get seen in all these local news interviews going on. We yelled Sam Jackson's signature line into a cellphone for G4... I'm sure that made riveting television. ok bladder, i hear ya. [[a group of people showed up in costume for this show. That was really great... it was three guys as pilots and two hot women as stewardesses... the steward outfits must've been halloween costumes because they were really revealing and slutty... not that I'm complaining.]]
08.18.06	Snakes on a Plane	David R. Ellis	ok this one got a bit rough. I was a bit drowsy there for a bit... but luckily a few choice lines and music swells brought me back to attention. It's pretty surprising how this movie gets along and goes along once it gets getting and goes going. It's also weird how even though I pretty much have this movie memorized, I'm not really liking it any less. Sure I only laugh at one place now... but I'm like the jaded comic who always says "that's funny" instead... I feel like a SoaP pro. Like... if I ever watch this movie with anyone ever again I will be a bonus to the viewing experience. I have so much to share... probably too much. The breakfast tacos were like... heaven tacos. it's 11:30, you don't get more wit than that. Unless it involves snakes on a plane. or a few random DV shots that stand out like a sore thumb. Good goddamn do i hate this song, this music video, and everything associated with these three minutes right here. OK time to prep myself for those early bird noontime viewers. We'll try to quiet down for them and not ruin their virgin experiencces... although if its only like 2 people they will probably be pretty freaked out to watch it with us. At this point, I see myself making it all the way, I see myself maybe falling asleep maybe not, but I don't see how I'll feel after sitting through this movie 4 or 5 more times. speaking of that... fuck it. i am buying that 10:15 ticket.
08.18.06	Snakes on a Plane	David R. Ellis	you know what sucks about snakes being on a plane? You can't shoot them. They're on a plane... so you can't shoot. you can't shoot snakes when they're on a plane. You can't shoot snakes on a plane!!! man, that sucks. Anyway, it's like 9:15... I think one more show until the public gets to interact with our dazed and line-yelling asses. Several clear favorites have surfaced that everyone seems to like... except this goddamn music video oh my god I am only half way through this bitch and this was supposed to be the easy half! This girl has also gotten up and done the whole flight attendant rap like 3 times now... it's kind of creepy but i hope she keeps doing it. oh man... [[she did indeed keep doing it. I'm not sure how many people watched her... because the scene in the movie is pretty funny... but she seemed to enjoy doing it every time and stuck with it even when she had to dodge waiters in sold-out houses. kudos!]]
08.18.06	Snakes on a Plane	David R. Ellis	it's like 7 AM... I'm sure it's light outside... it's time for an ode to Julianna Marguiles... Dear Julianna, I liked you on ER. You were a nurse. You were hot on The Sopranos. You are all woman. Now you are fending off snakes at 35,000 feet. And you totally grope that girl's boob at the end. Love, -brian. So let's see... either the popcorn or sitting in the front row was a mistake. Kind of noxious for like an hour... oh well. Breakfast tacos after the next show! Also time to note that I like how they show the eyes hemorrage at one point. Two Michael Mann movies mention that but he never showed it.. black ball hemorrages. so it's cool to see. There are some very charactery characters here... the ringleader guy Shannon made a very astute obseervation about the film's anti-sex tilt. Past the usual horror movie stuff and into symbolic territory when they use a life raft to seal off the spermy like snakes... at least i think that makes sense. ok next show! [[as you probably imagine, the type of person who would do this sort of this is pretty odd. Everybody was very nice of course, and I'm proud to say we all made it through the ten shows... and about half of us were blogging in some way (either by laptop, borrowed laptop, or old fashioned pen & paper notebook). One woman actually owned a venoumous snake store and had just that day put a snake on a plane before coming to the screening. I'm sure she feels exactly how i feel when i see a movie about computers where they do stuff like hit the "enhance" button to make a zoomed-in pixelated image become clear... seems like in every area Hollywood almost never gets the details truly authentic. Another pair of guys made it through the night with a little help of Cap'n... Shannon the ringleader exuded a kind of manic energy, determined to stay awake for the whole thing. Of course he had to deal with interviews and whatnot between shows so he couldn't afford to be tired. I guess it was also his birthday or near so because some of his friends came out on the last show with a cake and a present (a snake and a plane). There were a few expert bloggers sitting near the power outlets tapping and clicking away, and a few other random groups, all drawn here by the sheer insanity of the idea.]]
08.18.06	Snakes on a Plane	David R. Ellis	so... three down... who knows how many to go. It's 5 AM... I've officially got a favorite line but first I have to share that the main guy in this movie is one horrible ass actor. however, Sam Jackson is absolutely awesome in this. Some of his line readings and looks are so classic... just great stuff. I also want to throw a shoutout to the ultra-green snake-o-vision used liberally throughout... it's so snakey. [[actually, it really sucked and was horrible.]] goddamn this music video. God, damn it to hell. so here are some awesome lines from this movie. Caution, spoilers: "Are you playin that video game or is that video game playin you!?" "Bitch, get off my dick!" "Sir, I assure you there's no strange smell." "Outta tha way, gram-ma!" "Get this fuckin snake off my ass!" "my ass.... my ass, man..." "It's got both." "Oh baby, you'd be amazed what a man can do with one hand." "But no, this broad needed one more tour of duty." "Turn this big muthafucka left, Troy!" and my ultimate favorite... at one point in the movie, the cabin lights go off... and somewhere deep in the mix some far-offscreen character yells "SNAKES!!!" SNAKES!!! [[like that's the reason why the lights went off. Like at that point the poor guy is so used to snakes ruining his lovely day (as promised by the beginning song) that snakes are the reason for every bad thing that happens ever. Lights go out? Snakes! Weak economy? Snakes!! global warming? SNAKES!!!]] So since we are lagging in time they are on ultra-repeat mode... like a a 2-minute lull between screenings... this time I was in the back row... next time it'll be front. It's pretty damn cool watching movies with like 13 other people in the theater. it's totally ours. [[my thoughts on the whole seating thing. For the first show i was in the late-comers line so they let us into an already-full theater and i got like second row off to the right. I didn't feel too bad though because I knew i'd have ample opportunity to see it from my favorite seat all night. So the second viewing was from third row center... at which point I decided to maybe use this opportunity to experiment with where i sat and perhaps try a different seat every time. So the next show was the last row, then the first row... but the first row sucked so my little plan deteriorated into sitting wherever.]] I'm not feeling any fatigue at all... but the thought of watching it again... well it's best not to think about it. See you in two hours.
08.18.06	Snakes on a Plane	David R. Ellis	Two down. It felt normal to me. I think this is the threshold of oblivion though. The place is pretty empty... it's 3AM... the documentary guys are asleep. already. this music video sucks. I have to say though that the movie was still enjoyable. It's so cobbled together. It's like a bucket full o' cliches mixed in with a few R-rated gore shots (which are pretty good by the way), some awesomely gratuitous boob shots, and some really really bad CG snakes. There are even like... hero shots of a few of the key snakes. Like they pretty much wink at the camera as they slither by. An early highlight for me is Todd Luiso's portrayal of the "hardcore snake specialist" that has all the great expository dialogue about anti-venom and whatnot. oh man... caught up in band-of-brotherhood-building banter... more later.
08.17.06	Snakes on a Plane	David R. Ellis	Snakes on a Day: Trapped in a theater for 24 hours watching Snakes on a Plane over and over again until either venom, fatigue, insanity, or the clock grants me exit. There will be 10 showings in this 24 hour period, and I will be allowed to leave the auditorium for bathroom and smoke breaks (if I smoked) but not much else. If i break down and leave early, I will somehow be forced to donate money to some snake charity. That is not an option. Additionally, there is one more show Friday night after the 24 hours are officially up. If someone... myself let's say... chose to be even more hardcore than the rest of these fools I'm doing this with... he could buy a second ticket for that 10:15 show and sit through 11 screenings in a row. I'm going to make that determination somewhere around noon tomorrow. So here are my self-imposed rules. I'll only fire up the laptop to make journal entries after every show... unless my battery dies or explodes on me (it is a Dell). No cellphone contact, no IM contact, no web contact (other than my own site), and no email. This will be as pure of a documentation of my deteriorating mindset as I can possibly make it... tune in roughly every two hours if you want to follow along. Why do this? Well... why not? Truthfully, the movie itself isn't the draw. I think it's gonna suck. It's listed as 111 minutes long... which is a long ass time for a movie called Snakes on a Plane to go on. But it could really be any movie. Some of my all-time favorite movies I haven't seen 11 times, much less in a row. So this opportunity, to sit through the same movie that many times in a theater where distractions are not allowed is pretty unique. I'm thinking of this as a personal experiment. I know what kind of feeling comes after an all-night marathon, and even after a 24 hour marathon like BNAT, but this is different. After the first showing, it'll be a movie i've seen before over and over with no end in sight. The only change will be rotating single-ticket viewers who get to watch it for the first time while I'm already in hell. What will it do to me? will it be torture? will i fall asleep for like 8 hours and wake up every 20 minutes to nightmares about snakes in a theater? I honestly have no clue. let's find out! [[It's now aturday evening. I managed to sleep for 12 hours and am now going back through this to fix the typos due to unfamiliar laptop keyboard in the dark rather than fatigue (i think I have a clue how to differentiate the two)... but I'm sure as I go along the way I'll remember more to add so any paragraphs bracketed like this one represent morning insight and are not realtime]] First viewing... getting set up and whatnot... more later! the movie's better than I thought it'd be though... sweet... free chips and popcorn and soda all night. man those snakes... they are so wiley... ok more in a bit as us hardcore all nighters settle in... OK a bit more... it's a lot better than i thought it'd be! there's maybe 12 or 13 people here for the whole thing. I just signed the release... that makes it official. I am officially here forever. QT and the whole Death Proof crew was here for the show... made everyone all ooohy and ahhy. The crowd was fantastic... two sold out audiences having fun. I was definitely waiting for that line... that lovely muthafuckin line. but in the back of my head I knew all the people sitting around me were way less hardcore than i am. Although... there is a music video over the end credits... I know; i just KNOW that i will hate every frame and note of that goddamn video by the end. but until then, hey let's enjoy the ride. [[Because we had valuable few minutes of silence between shows in which to actually talk to one another, walk around, generally exist... I ended up making pretty much every one of these entries while the end credits played. This means that while I wrote every one of these, this music video that plays with the end credits was going on. That accounts for the number of times that I mention this song/video... and probably is also responsible for the amount of profanity going on]] so now we are in a smaller theater... last call for the kitchen for the night... there will be like 2 alamo people here all night so we get free reign over the kitchen. I expect to talk more about the film as the night goes on... for now let's just record the fact that the first screening was a blast and i had tons of fun and the crowd was great and the muthafuckin snakes were on the muthafuckin plane.
08.16.06	Fer-de-Lance	Russ Mayberry	Since Snakes on a Plane comes out tomorrow, Weird Wednesday cooked up a companion in the form of this movie... which should've been called Snakes on a Submarine. It's actually a TV movie... which explains a lot when you actually watch it. It's a 70s TV movie though... and as we should all know by now, when it came to filmed entertainment, whether in a theater, drive-in or TV set, the 70s were just better. Lars listed off like 5 TV movies which apparently all kick ass. I wrote down the title of one, Bad Ronald, which I'm sure I'll have lots of fun trying to track down. Anyway, beforehand Micah has warned me that this might bore a lot of people in the theater. At a certain point it really stops being a snake movie alltogether and focuses on typical disaster action... there's a very lengthy underwater diving sequence that is pretty laggy and lots of the action is played on cheap sets and whatnot. Surprisingly though, the film played very well to a full house and had people clapping and cheering even in places where it wasn't mandatory. like huh, ok i guess people want to clap here... cool. A very kind reception for the film all the way through. My personal hunch on the success of tonight's screening is Quentin Tarantino. He was in the house tonight along with Nicotero, Rosario Dawson, Zoe Bell, and a whole cadre of hot Death Proof women to watch the show. It's actually his print that they played tonight so Lars introduced him for a little impromptu QT intro to the film. He set us up pretty well, reiterating some of the stuff Lars brought up (like how badass macho David Janssen is in this) and also adding his own personal memories of seeing it on TV and somehow remembering that Leonard Nimoy was in it and one of the things he likes about collecting 16mm is that he can find all of these crazy made-for-TV 70s movies and watch them again. So after that, I think the whole audience was really primed to love this movie. And with QT a few rows behind you, are you really gonna walk out on his print? Have that walk of shame right by him and forever mark yourself as a tool to Quentin Tarantino himself? Yeah, I wouldn't either. Whatever though, I'm glad he was there. The crowd really helped this movie along and made it a fun experience. It's a good case for the power of a full movie theater... This is probably pretty unwatchable alone... There's really no snake gore... not much snake tension unless you get really freaked out by shots of lethargic snaked hanging out on pipes and whatnot, and again... most of the movie is a standard submarine disaster flick with altogether way too much time spent on random technicalities about saving the ship. Yay for Weird Wednesday and Yay for finally living in Austin so I can say "yeah, Tarantino dropped in again tonight to watch the movie" even though I'd never say that because I'm not a name dropper. ok that's a lie I will tell everyone I know how they missed it.
08.16.06	My Summer Story	Bob Clark	So... A Christmas Story is pretty much a seasonal classic in my family, as with many others I'm sure... Around mid 90s I heard there was another movie made from the same author except this time it was summer... and Ralphie was grown up a bit and it dealt with a family vacation. It was like a TV movie on the Disney channel called Ollie Hopnoodle's Haven of Bliss and Jerry O'Connell played Ralph. Jean Shepherd still did the narration and everything... it was just different. So I don't know how I knew about that mediocre TV movie sequel and not this official Bob Clark-directed feature mediocre sequel... but for whatever reason I'd never heard of this until Clark mentioned it in his Christmas Story commentary. I'd compare this to Ollie Hopnoodle's more because it lacks that certain whatever it is that makes A Christmas Story a classic... but it is odd to see this movie with the same music and house and town and characters the same age with different actors. It feels much weirder than the TV movie... Things just aren't right! Charles Grodin isn't the dad, Darren McGavin's the dad! This isn't right! Who are those people!? That is not their beautiful house! Mary Steenburgen is not your beautiful wife! Melinda Dillon is! After about half the movie though, I kinda let it go and tried to enjoy it as its own thing. The only replacement that I really couldn't get over, aside from Kieran Culkin obviously trying to play Peter Billingly instead of Ralph Parker, was Grodin. I just didn't like his take on the dad... His grumbling wasn't funny, i just couldn't hear what he was saying. I didn't get the cold grudging respect vibe at all from him... he just sounded like he was doing a walter matthau impression with marbles in his mouth or something. It also looks like it was shot in LA. The light and like... the stuff with the cars and the fair they go to looks totally backstage to me... like they could only afford a weekend's worth of exterior shots at the original locations... ANYWAY, a few of the stories in here are pretty good. I liked the top stuff... others kind of fell short though and without a central theme of Christmas to hold it all together it seemed kind of aimless... but I have to say I'm glad I saw this though... it's kind of a glimpse through a bizarro-world window into some alternate universe that's just enjoyable instead of timeless.
08.15.06	Small Soldiers	Joe Dante	so... I didn't want to go to sleep too early because of this thing I'm thinking about doing on Friday so I decided to watch a random movie on TV and this was on. My one memory of when I saw this in theaters was that it surprised me with how crazy it got. I didn't expect the kid to get corn on the cob handles shot into his leg or the dag to get nailgun'd at all. Of course, connecting the Joe Dante dots a bit more now, it's completely reasonable to expect such craziness. I bet they had a field day figuring out how all the little constructed vehicles and weapons would work... and getting some Dirty Dozen actors to voice the commandos is cool too... fun movie in a way but not classic.
08.15.06	Touchez Pas Au Grisbi	Jacques Becker	I wish I would've seen these yesterday when the order was switched. This one was much more well-known to me... it's on criterion DVD, i've heard it talked about and things like that, but while I enjoyed this I think I liked Classe Tous Risques more. Jean Gabin plays Max, a career criminal highly respected both for his talent and his loyalty to friends. This time Lino Ventura plays a dope dealer who finds out that Gabin's behind a recent airport robbery netting 50 million in gold bars thanks to Gabin's friend's floozy dame (played by a young Jeanne Moreau). So they kidnap his friend and Gabin has to deal to get him back... some stuff happens and the movie ends. This is more the type of crime movie I've come to expect. Max has all the answers, the whole underworld is on full display, and the luck of fate plays its hand as bad men do bad things to eachother. Good movie to be sure... I'll probably pick it up on DVD at some point... but with the high hopes and after the complete surprise of Classe Tous Risques... it was a bit of a letdown since it didn't completely blow me away. It's also either weird coincidence or clever programming on the Paramount's part but a lot of characters share their names between the movies. That, along with Lino being in both and even a few lines in common (a woman asks a man if he loves her in both movies, both to satisfying answers) gave the feeling that these films were cousins somehow. Good double feature, just watch Grisbi first.
08.15.06	Classe Tous Risques	Claude Sautet	French crime night at the Paramount... They call it noir and I guess it is but I choose to define that term more specifically as american films so all the foreign counterparts are just crime movies to me. As crime movies go, though... this one is pretty good. I was particularly impressed with this very French sort of spiritual bent that the film takes on toward the end. The very end probably cuts off too abruptly for some but I saw it as a sign of what was really important with the conclusion to Lino Ventura's character. Pretty cool I thought. anyway, Ventura and this other dude make a daring daylight robbery and, in their getaway from Milan to Minsk... err... Milan to Nice, both his partner and his wife get gunned down by police. That leaves him to take care of his two young sons and find some sort of sanctuary in France although he's a severely wanted and hunted man. He contacts a group of his friends in Paris, each of whom owe him a great debt, but they're either on parole or have grown too fat and respectable to risk their necks out for their long-forgotten old buddy who's now lamming it and driving the cops crazy, so they hire a stranger (Jean-Paul Belmondo) to drive down and pick him up in disguise as an ambulance transporting a head injury. Ventura plays this character really well. When he gets back to Paris and talks to his "friends" you really get the full implication that this guy would've gone anywhere for his friends, and is equal parts sad and angry that his buddies didn't do likewise. It's only Belmondo, a friend of Ventura's recently-clipped partner, that treats him with the proper respect. It's kind of an unconventional storyline for a crime movie - an older guy trying to secure somewhere safe for his kids to grow up - but it's pretty cool in that it examines not the flashy robberies and heists but what happens to men that make that their living. Pretty cool stuff.
08.14.06	Little Miss Sunshine	Jonathan Dayton,. Valerie Faris	so... I heard this was bad but then I heard this was good so I saw it and it's good. Maybe it's just Alan Arkin but this reminded me a lot of Slums of Beverly Hills... comedy with heart about a dysfunctional family. Has funny moments, sad moments, heartwarming moments....good characters well acted... and surprisingly little flash from directors who up till now have mostly music video and commercial work. Fun movie.
08.14.06	Excellent Cadavers	Marco Turco	Excellent doc about the somewhat recent history of the Sicilian mafia. I guess there's a book that's already been turned into a fictional movie but after seeing the crime scene photos and interviews with the real people involved I'm not sure how actors can bring the same emotion to this story. Plus it's complicated. The main gist of it is there were two guys who tried to do some good and pretty much sacrificed their day to day lives in an effort to bring these mafia guys to justice. At one point they even had to live in a remote prison while preparing the case in order to ensure their safety. So years and years of this huge trial take place and finally the sentences get brought down and a ton of these guys gets jailed... only for the next politician in line to reverse all these decisions, let these guys out of jail, and undo all the work the prosecutors did. Then the prosecutors die... people are outraged but the government itself is unwilling to do anything about it. It's a pretty chilling story of a place where this cancer is so ingrained in the country that it's almost impossible to do anything about it. 80% of businesses kick up for protection... 80%! and these mafia guys aren't like... all sly and shadowy. they are blatant, out in the open, and cocksure. Can't get to a guy who needs getting got? Well we know he will have to drive at some point, let's blow up the road he's driving on. Seriously, this huge crater from a massive explosion on a highway just to kill one man and send a message. It's pretty crazy stuff... and all real. To me, this really informs all of the 70s Italian Crime movies that I've been watching. In those movies, mobsters are portrayed as the lowest scum of the earth, willing to backstab or sell out anyone to make a buck or stay alive. The movies almost have an active hatred for them... and they usually almost all end up dead. Especially a movie like I Kiss The Hand, which is about one don coming in and disrupting the status quo with aggression. He's constantly underestimated so therefore he constantly surprises the big bosses until one day he's the big boss himself. When I first saw this I thought to myself that it was a good yarn; an entertaining story about mafia politics and not much more. Now I see the direct connections between that movie and real life events. That wasn't just some quickie mafia exploitation movie... that was some ripped-from-the-headlines stuff going on... John Saxon was the Corleonesi and Don ANgelino's crew were the Palermo Mob... after a few name changes of course. So it's really interesting to see the stuff that really went on... it gives complete contex to both the plot and attitude of most of the films made in that period.
08.13.06	Mr. and Mrs. Smith	Doug Liman	it was on... Jolie's hot... I still think it's a decent movie except that last scene where they shoot while all tangled together to kill everyone in the entire world and it makes no sense because it's just a strike team and not the bosses themselves but oh well...
08.12.06	The Falling Man	Emilio Miraglia	TJ's Bon Voyage. After scarfing down some Frosty Paws and watching Eric's spliced-together reels of TV spots and trailers, we watched this Italian crime flick starring Henry Silva. After some random shots of cars driving in San Francisco, Silva walks up to a door and gets shot. As he falls the frames slow down and we jump into random flashbacks of his son getting killed and whatnot. We follow the story of what led him up to this one particular doorway that he's falling through... single or double frames of this shot of him falling are interspersed throughout the film. Seriously, it happens like 30 times. Randomly placed... in the middle of scenes or whatever it just flashes on him mid-fall. It'd make a pretty good drinking game if any of us watching actually drank. It's not just the falling man frames though... some scenes are cut so badly that I feel like there were minutes missing. Others, like single frame inserts of his son's face, come at wildly random times. There's leader inserted presumably for commercials so maybe the film was just butchered for the TV print (even though there's a scene in a strip club with a secon'd worth of nipple) or maybe some film student got his hands on this at some point and decided to have some fun... or maybe the director's just schizo. The score was also interesting. It's early electronic so it was basically either long-sustaining high-pitched tones or random bleeps and bloops... mix that with psychadelic Haigh Ashbury rock and late 60s pop... all over the place. The most notable part of this movie for me was how big Luciano Rossi's part was. He still got manhandled and abused then killed but... he had lines and more than one scene and lots of screen time... will have to ask Kier-La about it! so... I guess I'm glad that I can say I've seen this or whatever, but I didn't really have a good time with it at all... a fish in the sea of crappy low-budget flicks that make the good ones really stand apart.
08.11.06	Big Bad Mama	Steve Carver	Man... Candy from The Candy Snatchers as Angie Dickinson's randy daughter named Billy Jean! Angie full-on no-body-double naked! Tom Skerrit sleeps with the whole family! This movie is so awesome. And to think that Angie was like 40 back then... that's just crazy. Plus there's Shatner and Dick Miller... man what fun.
08.11.06	The Driver	Walter Hill	Another early Walter Hill, this time with Ryan O'Neal as a decidedly Jeff Costello-esque getaway driver and Bruce Dern as the crazy cop who's out to get him. Instead of Melville's poetic symmetry and attention to procedure however, Hill throws in like 5 pretty sweet car chases. It also has Adele H hereself Isabelle Adjani playing... a hot girl. Again, nothing to write a thesis about but a solid good movie.
08.10.06	Evils of the Night	Mardi Rustam	so... this movie is really horrible. If it was more softcore and german it'd be 2069, but instead it's John Carradine, Ginger from Gilligan's Island, and Julie Newmar playing aliens collecting platelets for the continuation of their species. I think. The real horror comes from Aldo Ray and Neville Brand, who play mechanics hired to thug around and bring young college co-eds to the aliens... everybody that isn't like a porn star is like 80 in this... so it's either hot body and bad acting or super old and saggy palsied. SUCKS. The crowd had a good time with it though because it was so goddamn bad. I have to say though... there's a character in here named Brian. and right from the getgo Brian gets crapped on. Before he even has a chance to show us that he's the annoying prick guy, everybody makes fun of him and berates him for no reason. They all laugh at him and say very mean things and I don't think that's right! He's the only one with the gall to talk back to the twisted pervert oldman mechanic even when he's tied up with a knife to his throat! Even though he didn't get any action from any of the pretty girls, he's still courageously angry all the time, even though he doesn't actually do much. So I felt that Brian got a bum rap for this whole movie... and to whoever it was in the theater that yelled "Yeah, Brian!" when he finally got untied and came to the rescue: i love you. It was a female voice that said that by the way...
08.09.06	World Trade Center	Oliver Stone	weepy.
08.08.06	Urgh! A Music War	Derek Burbidge	A pretty impressive list of early-80s new wave and punk bands showcased in this concert film. Although I guess there's about a half hour cut from the print they showed, a 35mm print at all still existing is pretty remarkable. From what the IMDb commentors say, the film is forever wrangled in legal rights issues so it'll never see DVD and severely cut versions only play sporadically on TV. So let's hear it for the Alamo one more time! The film itself... well it's a concert film shot in 1980. Historical significance, memorable performances (especially Gary Numan zooming around in his futuro-little rascal and The Cramps doing... what The Cramps do (I'd hate to be the guy who has to use the mic afterward)), and a general snapshot of the musical movements that were going on is about all a concert film can hope for and this succeeds. It's still just band after band playing songs though. One thing I never got was how the new wave and punk meshed so easily. I hear stories about Talking Heads playing CBGBs and stuff and it always confuses me. This connects the dots a little bit - like, i can kind of see some similarities now - but still, just the instrumentation is so radically different, it's pretty surprising for me to think how open audiences must've been back then when they show up to the club and like it whether it's grinding sloppy punk or electronic coldness new wave... I guess they did though.
08.06.06	The Poseidon Adventure	Ronald Neame	It's been a long long time since I saw this... I was really a kid and I think it was on TV... like TV with commercials TV. So... yeah I don't know how these disaster movies got to be in vogue for that short time... they're really pretty ridiculous. It's great that so many stars get on screen together but, at least here, you can tell each one including a prerequisite number of "drama" scenes in their contract. The deaths get pretty operatic by the end... talking to god and whatnot... so completely over the top but I guess when you're stuck in an upside-down boat that's sinking or you're on some massive soundstage with water tanks and propane fires and you're tired and wet and greasy there's no such thing as overdoing it. At least Billy Zane wasn't in it.
08.04.06	Antone's: Home of the Blues	Dan Karlok	Doc about the club and the guy that runs it that has become a landmark blues spot in Austin and around the world. Particularly now because Clifford Antone's gone, but this was shot a few years before that. I'm not a huge blues guy, not because I don't like the music but more because I've never really been schooled on the subject. It's a genre much like Jazz for me that's so deep and rich and struck in history that it's a pretty heavy pool to take a cannonball into. A lot of the names sound familiar but I don't connect any of them with sounds or songs... so in that regard this was pretty cool for me because they dug up video of each one of these guys playing... so not only did I get up on what all Antone did but I also got a pretty good idea of what alot of these guys did that makes them so cool. It's sort of familiar to the Z-Chennel doc for me... Antone along with the Z-Channel guy strikes me as a dude who's passionate about something that he always thought was cool but popular mainstream audiences for whatever reason wasn't. And of course time catches up with them and the few fans that they had from the beginning have gone on to great things. The only difference is it's blues instead of director's cuts of films and forgotten gems of cinema. Anyway, this is a pretty good doc...sort of like a primer for the Austin blues scene.
08.04.06	Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby	Adam McKay	So... perhaps the funniest thing about this movie is that NASCAR fans will probably like it. Oh that Will Ferrell's an idiot... not like the real drivers. and fans. that like watching cars take lots of left turns. Anyway, I thought it was funny... I think I like Anchorman more but that's because you don't see rabid news anchor fans drinking lite beer on lawn chairs every weekend. So the nascar stuff in here, even though they were making fun ot it, kind of grated on me. The characters were also on that line some of the time where they're too stupid to be continuously funny but not downright retarded like Steve Carell's Anchroman part to go round the bend into funny again. I love lamp. Still, I laughed. I liked it. I think this particular branch of the "frat pack" crew (namely Adam McKay and Judd Apatow and their respective regulars) are really hilarious... I was kind of expecting more out of Sacha Baron Cohen though. oh well.
08.03.06	Trail of the Pink Panther	Blake Edwards	This finishes out the Pink Panther box set that MGM put out... so that's it! except for the third in the series which MGM didn't have the rights to. And the two more Panther films which don't star Sellers. And the Steve Martin Remake. And all the other Pink Panther cartoons that DePatie-Freleng made for UA that didn't get included on the bonus disc. Yep... this is about as incomplete a complete set can get. Still though, this movie very much feels the last in the series anyway. It's got a let-get-the-band-back-together structure where a TV reporter goes around interviewing all the players from previous films about Clouseau and cueing clip-show "hilarious" moments from earlier in the series when it was still funny. I'm guess that Sellers died in the midst of filming this... The beginning credits (not even De Patie-Freleng anymore) dedicate the film to Peter, saying he's the one and only Closeau (until the next movie of course, which is even announced in the end credits of this one). There's about a half hour's worth of new material with him (albeit he's still repeating some gags), and then his plane goes missing and the rest of the movie is this TV special-like approach. Very similar actually to Truffaut's Love on the Run, except that film felt like the clips were always part of the plan rather than scrambling trying to finish an incomplete film. And the whole Antoine Doinel series is better than the Pink Panther series, but whatever. So let me check imdb... Wow. he died before shooting even began. I guess that first half hour was deleted scenes from previous movies. Crazy. Well, I don't know whether or not to track the other three down. I can't say I enjoyed anything beyond the first two films in this series that much... but now that I've seen 6 of the 9, part of me thinks "why not." I'll add them to my netflix queue and will get around to them eventually.
08.02.06	T.N.T. Jackson	Cirio H. Santiago	Like the trailer says: "TNT Jackson: She'll put you in traction! Coming to this theater as the next attraction!" This movie was a huge blast. The kung fu is so wonderfully horribly bad that every move of every fight (and there are lots of em) made me smile. And then there's Jeannie Bell... oh man is she hot. Cute in a really kind of casual almost rural way... but with a perfect 10 body (that she, thank the lord, shows off in this movie... even going so far as to do a whole fight scene wearing only panties. The entire male population of the theater thought "right on" at the exact same moment), and such a wonderful style to her acting... I guess some would say that by "style" i mean "bad" but... i dunno... it has a certain charm for me. It does feel like she's just saying lines, but it also feels like she's either pissed off about saying them or something... there's just a tinge of something behind it. My favorite line in this movie was when she addresses this woman by saying "look lady, or whoever you are..." awesome. There's also a couple moments in the fights that are completely out of nowhere... like it's bad judo chops and front kicks for a few minutes then out of the blue she breaks someone's arm in half. or punch a dude through the chest... or someone falls through a window and plummets down like 4 stories out of nowhere. so yeah, like 74 minutes of hot-ass Jeannie Bell kicking bad kung-fu ass in the phillippines... can't beat that!
08.02.06	Favela Rising	Jeff Zimbalist, Matt Mochary	An interesting doc on the favelas (ghettos) of Rio De Janeiro, and how a group of musicians have started an effort to attract kids away from the drug armies and into more constructive groups... it ends up focusing on the main dude that started it (called Afro-reggae). It's pretty good... but just because the story is so interesting. The photography is.. ok. the editing a bit rough, the story construction average... basically only noteworthy because of the absolute horror going on in the slums of Rio. In that it makes a good companion to both City of God (superior in pretty much every way to this) and the doc that accompanies on that DVD. Makes me glad I don't live there. Afterward I stayed for the next show which was a compilation of "forbidden animation" AKA politically incorrect stuff that you don't see much anymore (lots of racial stereotypes, mostly black with some wartime Japanese thrown in; an early Bettie Boop where she sings about how good she is at humping, and a full-on animated porn made in the twenties that was easily the funniest thing of the show).
08.01.06	The Master Touch	Michele Lupo	Italian crime starring Kirk Douglas as a safecracker just out of prison in Hamburg. Notable for its surprisingly decent plot turns and a balls-out no-kidding amazing car chase. This played with Gambit and The Muthers on Heist Thriller night of QT Quattro... I must say I liked this one a lot. The ending's great, it's not really slow like some Italian crime can be, and hey, it's a heist movie. I love heist movies even when they suck, so it's a bonus that this one didn't.
07.31.06	Freedomland	Joe Roth	ugh. I don't want to even talk about it. This movie sucked; that's all.
07.31.06	The Fall	Peter Whitehead	Supposedly Whitehead's masterpiece... Supposed to be a document of late 60s America along the same lines as he portrays Swinging 60s London in the other movie of his I saw. It's hard for me to believe that the 60s actually happened. Parts of it are really great, parts are really out there, and parts are pretty unwatchable. I thought it was over and then it went on for like another half hour. It also has some really amazingly pretentious title cards... and there's more of Whitehead in an editing room or making love to a hot model type than anything else... It's really almost impressive. One thing though. The whole movie is about all the problems America had during the 60s, and how those who stood up and voiced their opinions were repeatedly shut down, enforced, assassinated... It's not called "The Fall" for nothing... so in the midst of all this really 60s hippie struggle stuff with viet nam and race riots and RFk and whatnot, there's a scene where some pothead performance art type kills a chicken by thrashing it against piano wires. Granted, it's a pretty bad way for the chicken to go and any animal cruelty in film makes most of us squirm in a viscerally uncomfortable way... but it's a chicken. How many die every day for our nuggest and spicy chicken sandwiches? This is not the most tortured chicken in all of history. This one crazy woman one row behind me decides to shriek NOOOOOOOOOOOOO! when this stupid chicken dies. Like a pained can't-keep-it-in-anymore sorrowfull wail that was louder than the psychadelic rock soundtrack (and, sitting on row 3, that says something) that lingers for like 4 seconds before she shuts up again for the rest of the movie. This kind of makes me want to punch her in the face. Like, nah... I won't scare the shit out of everyone sitting near me for the killings of MLK or RFK... but goddamn if a chicken will gives its life without my valkyrie roar. Crazy.
07.31.06	911 in Plane Site	William Lewis	I was sort of bored enough to watch this exploration of the various ways how 9/11 was all a sham not only covered up but planned by our government to keep us afraid enough to ok several wars for no good reason. I'm not usually too vocal about my politics... but I am jaded enough to believe this is JFK all over again... however these kinds of crackpot expose "films" do nothing for me. It's very much like that UFO doc that I watched with Dan Ackroyd talking alien smack while the director pans and zooms on the same 3 photographs over and over again. No matter how close to or far away from the truth they may be, the used car salesman tactics used in these movies makes it all too easy for "the man" to discredit the ideas. My personal opinion is that it's gonna take 30 or 40 years of history and theories bandied about between eccentric insomniac types in coffee houses and all-nite diners before anything credible surfaces. I guess it's important to keep this fringe stuff going on in the meantime... but they always seem to go a few too many feet across the line for me to accept.
07.30.06	Private Parts	Paul Bartel	Paul Bartel's take on Psycho I guess. It's about a young (hot) girl who stays with her aunt in a hotel populated with various odd and creepy people. It's really not that funny (except for two cops who show up at the end for a few minutes) and only has one moment of gore (pretty early), relatively little nudity (but thankfully some), and pretty deliberate pacing... but it's pretty good! Who knows how or why... I just went along with it. Actually, there's some really great scenes that shows off why Paul Bartel probably should've been arrested just for how dirty his mind is... I am not surprised to see this was rated X in the UK... but like most exploitation trailers it gives away the whole movie and shows snippets of the best parts... so if you rent this don't watch the trailer first. Looking at IMDb, it appears that this is the first and last movie that the main girl was in... most all TV stuff... shame, I was hoping she appeared in at least one more sleazy 70s movie so I could ogle her some more. Oh well.
07.30.06	Hannah and her Sisters	Woody Allen	I remember when this came out and not being interested in it at all. I'm glad I didn't see it when I was a kid... it would've seemed like the most boring movie ever. Seeing it now for the first time, I found it pretty good but, like most of Allen's stuff for me, nothing to love forever and ever and dream about and put in my special secret diary that I keep under my pillow. It also seems like Allen's character is in a completely different movie for 90% of the time... Both movies are so distinctly New York though... I guess all of Allen's are, or most of em anyway... I don't think any other city gets so much love from movies. There certainly aren't many movies filled with people going on and on about how much they love LA. Anyway, all these people have lives so far away from mine, I kind of enjoy the movie in a certain way but it never hits me really deep. Still enjoyable though.
07.30.06	Annie Hall	Woody Allen	Woody Allen day at the paramount. I've only seen this once before and it was in a film class so they had to have subtitles going for the hearing impaired. So it kind of killed the subtitle joke... But of course I think the Paramount projectionist just had a stroke or something because not only was this film too low so the subtitles all projected against the black underneath the story but in the next film they projected a whole reel in the wrong aspect ratio, switched out the lens and the matte while the second reel played, and left it out of focus until 3 of us showed up in the lobby to let them know. Aside from that, although I like this movie I think there are plenty more people that are much bigger fans. My favorite parts are two very small roles: Christopher Walken's scene and Jeff Goldblum on the phone in LA saying "I forgot my mantra."
07.29.06	Red Dawn	John Milius	I had this friend in college... He was from a small town about an hour outside of Rochester... The men in his family hunted every year and they lived way out in the woods and he had more than one piece of camoflaged clothing and although he was a nice guy and I was friends with him, it didn't take too large a stretch in the imagination to picture him snapping some day and taking a gun to work. Anyway, his two favorite movies were Slaughterhouse Five and Red Dawn. We watched this once in my dorm room and I got the distinct impression that some part of him was just waiting for this movie to happen. This wasn't like a cautionary war movie or a nightmarish vision of what could happen but more like a fantasy... Like oh man if only someone invaded so i could hang out in the woods all the time and shoot them. So I'm hesitant to like this movie too much. It is good though... just as long as it's in a Patrick Swayze's character sort of way instead of a C. Thomas Howell's character way.
07.29.06	Unfaithfully Yours	Preston Sturges	Filling in the gaps of Sturges movies that I haven't seen, this one appears to be quintessential Sturges gold on the surface. It's a romantic comedy about something you'd think would be the complete opposite of romance or comedy: a jealous husband concocts elaborate plans to murder his wife while he conducts a classical concert, then goes home and tries them to problematic results. A few things keep me from really loving this though. First, I've never been a big fan of Rex Harrison... and since I don't like him I never sympathize with him in this movie. Second, it seems to play out in slow motion as far as Sturges goes. I really don't know what happened to him when the war ended, but the quantity and quality of Sturges' work divebombed... Kind of mysterious and sad... So this was ok... not one of his best but I kind of admire it just for the premise
07.29.06	Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation	Eric Zala	A bunch of kids got together and remade Raiders pretty much shot-for-shot over a period of seven summers. It's kind of an interesting history of how this film, err.. video, came into the public eye (the gist is that Eli Roth brought it to a BNAT and played some of it, which motivated the Alamo to get the kids out to show the film here which in turn led the kids to show it around different places... all the proceeds going to charities or whatnot so they don't get sued by Spielberg and Paramount). It pretty much is exactly what it sounds like: a shot-on-video version of Raiders with kids in all the roles and coastal Mississippi settings. It's kind of cool to see - the crowd was pretty warm toward it - but now that I've seen it I can kind of seal this experience off. It reminded me a bit too much of the horrible stuff I did when I was a kid with the VHS camcorder and my buddies (thankfully all of that stuff is lost to the ages)... and it ends up just making me want to see the real version. Still though, I think it's pretty cool that the kids actually spent all that time and finished it... talk about determination. Also, there was some awesomely dumb-idea bits in the movie like fires breaking out in a basement, setting kids on fire, and a hilarious anecdote related during the Q&A where they tried to make a plaster mold of one of the kids' face to pretty horrendous results. I had a pretty good time, really glad I saw it... but you know, I'm not craving to get my own copy or anything like that. My favorite parts of the movie were anything dealing with the monkey in the original film. Of course these kids in Mississippi didn't have any monkies at their disposal so they used this little sleepy puppy instead. It'd be fine except they still put this puppy wherever the monkey was originally... so you end up with the 16 year-old Indy walking around with a puppy on his shoulder, manhandling and carrying it like it was still a monkey. That, and the puppy's eyepatched assassin owner tooling around in a HUFFY bike, tickled my fancy the most.
07.28.06	Miami Vice	Michael Mann	Hmm... well ok. I like it. There's a lot more to like than there is to dislike. I really love all the night photography... I think Mann is one of the few who can really make DV look good on its own terms, but I have to say that I really missed the vivid lushness of film during the day stuff. I almost hate to say this, but Michael Bay's Bad Boys photography made Miami look better than it does here... during the day. I could've really used some slick bright glassy ocean speedboat shots to mirror the grainy neon nighttime but... oh well. Also, a few story things... they are kind of irksome but really just minor nitpicks. As I think back to a lot of Mann's films I really only find a couple without too many flaws, and I definitely liked this more than Ali or Mohicans... so I shouldn't make like I'm complaining too much. it was good... maybe I was just expecting a bit too much. Mann's love scenes are so weird...
07.26.06	Rumble Fish	Francis Ford Coppola	huh. I'd never seen this before and wasn't forced to read the book so... interesting. It's sort of like a bizarro-world version of The Outsiders... some of the same Cast, same crew... Tom Waits plays a bartender type in both... but there's more R-rated language in here and it's shot in striking black and white with all these art film angles and depth of field. It's kind of like if The Outsiders is for high school then this is for college. Oh, and Diane Lane is even uberer young and hot in this. whoa. So I liked this one... probably more than Outsiders...
07.26.06	The Outsiders	Francis Ford Coppola	the "complete novel" edition... although it's been so long since I've seen this... and I think I was reading the book at the same time for school so the memories intertwine and blend together... so I have pretty much no clue which 20 minutes were added in. I guess that can be a testament to Coppola's cut since nothing (aside from one shot at the very beginning which looked like it was taken from a work print) sticks out like a sore thumb as being inserted. The movie... well it's one thing to see all the actors together when they were young. You see Tom Cruise spaz out in pre-rumble adrenaline much like he spazzed out in the media last summer. Swayze when he was still Swayze and not a joke for some VH1 I Love the 80s pundit. Pre-sex scandal Rob Lowe, mid-career Emilio Estevez... uberyoung/hot Diane Lane, and even Lief Garret. Anyway, the rythms and pacing of the movie are very book-like. I guess that's the point... Actually the whole thing has the same kind of taught-in-highschool dialogue and characters that I remember from all those books they made me read... but I guess that's also sort of the point. Overall I'm glad I rented this and I'll listen to the commentaries before I return it but... not essential for me to own. Sorry, Ponyboy.
07.26.06	Revenge of the Pink Panther	Blake Edwards	Another one down. This has the bit where Sellers dresses as a salty sailor with fake peg leg and an inflatable parrot that he keeps having to blow up with his armpit. I guess I've seen this before because I remember laughing at that (and that alone) when I watched one of these movies as a kid. It's not that funny now. The whole movie isn't that funny... Dyan Cannon doesn't help.
07.23.06	A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum	Richard Lester	So I think after two Blake Edwards laugh-fests, trying for a third was fighting burnout. Nonetheless, I'd never seen this before so I decided to stay and check out Richard Lester's work. It was... a bit too farcical for me after laughing so much at Sellers' subtle performances... Zero Mostel is like the absolute opposite after that... but i still laughed a few times. the "was 1 a good year?" wine joke got me... for the most part though I was a little tired and distracted. Perhaps if I saw this first... oh well. not bad; I doubt much of anything can follow The Party for me.
07.23.06	The Party	Blake Edwards	This movie however, I've loved since the first time I saw it. I still remember rolling on the floor (rolling!) the first time I saw the scene where Sellers experiments with the oscilliscope not knowing it's a PA system. Yes, I was actually ROFLMAOing... hard to believe, yet true. So I've never seen this in a theater and was very much looking forward to it. I guess it might not be so PC-cool to like this movie nowadays since Sellers plays an Indian (dot not feather) and so I guess you are sort of laughing at someone who is playing an Indian for the whole movie... but fuck it. This movie is funny as hell and I don't care. And after being pleasantly surprised with watching The Pink Panther again I was really ready to have a good time with this and I did. Many many laughs... I really love this movie. It's probably both my favorite Edwards and my favorite Sellers... I've seen it maybe a half-dozen times now and I still crack up every time certain scenes play (the gunga din hornblower, birdie num num, the aforementioned oscilliscope, hand crushed by Wyoming Bill Kelso, the upstairs bathroom, "poo", it goes on and on). Plus you've got the absolutely beautiful Claudine Longet who sings that absolutely beautiful "Nothing to Lose" song... and this crazy hippy ending which escalates to ridiculous proportions. Plus it seems to epitomize Mancini's style to me... like you're at some swank party with a fantastic combo supplying idyllic hipster swinging music... and also Edwards' style with the long proscenium sequences where gags go on and on and build until even the release makes you laugh... it's all kind of in archetypal form here for me... ok I guess I've gone on long enough about it...
07.23.06	The Pink Panther	Blake Edwards	You know... after sitting through Lady in the Water's desperate pleas for the audience to become children again in order to be entertained, it's cool to see a movie that actually brings the child out of you all on its own... Sellers' humor in this movie is about as far from sophistication as you can get... yet his charm and superb delivery makes you laugh. At the paramount today, people of all ages were giggling like school children at some of the broadest goofiest humor I've ever laughed at. I'm not really a Pink Panther fan... in fact I was half expecting to be a little bored sitting through this in waiting for the next picture, but I tell you seeing it with a crowd absolutely transforms it. I mean how old is the mirror gag when the two people in gorilla costumes look at each other like they're looking in a mirror? yet it cracked the whole theater right the hell up! Take that, M. Night! So yeah, I laughed way more than I thought I would (certainly more than the last time I saw this... on DVD) and really enjoyed myself. Of course it helps that the Paramount plays old Warner Brother cartoons before the features... really puts you in the perfect place for a Blake Edwards comedy.
07.22.06	Brick	Rian Johnson	A highschool take on film noir... I'd heard a lot about how good this was... yeah, it's pretty good I guess. i think maybe I'm a little overhyped... Mostly this movie makes me wonder what highschool is actually like these days... it's hard to imagine but ten years ago every person in the country didn't have a cell phone. And in middle school before we were old enough to start with the underage drinking, sex, and drug use, the big black market school thing was bubble gum. How ridiculous does that sound... kids that were destined to become weed dealers started out by peddling watermelon bubble yum out of their lockers. Sure a few years later it was pot and all the normal teenage stuff, but from what I hear that that crap that the 15 year olds did when I was 15 is now being done by 12 and 13 year olds... so I wonder if 15 year olds nowadays really talk like this. Probably not... unless they are living in some bizarro-world version of the 40s, but still... I bet it's just as alien to me today as the language in this movie is.
07.22.06	The Descent	Neil Marshall	Thanks to the Alamo I got to watch this in a cave. Even though they changed the ending (the filmmakers, not the Alamo) and the sound was pretty echo-y, it was still pretty cool... to see it in a cave.
07.21.06	The Desperate Hours	William Wyler	The movie that spawned a whole subgenre of suspense thrillers... I typically find these movies pretty uncomfortable to watch... the whole thing is about bullies coming into people's home and waving a gun around, verbally and physically abusing innocent people and turning them into savages... Wyler is a bit too classy to include the extended rape sequences or impressive torrents of racial epithets that make other films of this genre notable, but a grizzly Bogart does enough with his spittle voice and sunken eyes. Not a bad movie...
07.21.06	The In-Laws	Arthur Hiller	This is my first time seeing this... I really get the feeling that, under the right circumstances, this could rank up there as a comedy classic. The chemistry between Peter Falk and Alan Arkin is really great, and the movie's filled with gags that are already growing on me. The big thing though is that the performances are subtle enough to pick up more and more and also project more and more the more you see it. This is something that I actually mostly smirked at while watching it but found myself laughing more than once while i re-watched it with the commentary track. I actually find it similar to Caddyshack. Aside from Bill Murray, I don't think that movie is hilarious on its own. Thanks to a group of friends that obsessed over it for a month or two however, it now cracks me up every few minutes. Of course that's only a guess since I've really only seen this once, but I get that vibe from it. And undeniably, Falk and Arkin are great. SERPENTINE! SERPENTINE!
07.21.06	My Super Ex-Girlfriend	Ivan Reitman	This is one of those premises that people hear and immediately think of as funny. It's a really good basis for a movie, but also ends up being pretty big shoes to fill because the concept is specific enough to immediately picture but the whole superhero thing is vague enough to let your imagination fill in your own perfect little details... and there's no way one movie can fill everyone's imaginitive dating-a-superhero ideas. I think this movie didn't totally drop the ball though... some moments (like the bed moving) actually worked a lot better than I thought it would judging from the trailer... other moments (like the CG shark) were... eh... but that reminds me. So many people laugh at the jokes that are in the trailers. What kind of phenomenon is that? Am I alone in not laughing at the joke I saw before? And these aren't like intesively context-sensitive character jokes.. these are like one-liners... huge laughs. people are dumb. anyway... I'm not sure how I feel about Uma's character... Again this is a mismatch in my imagination's scenarios and what Reitman actually shot but it's a bit like that movie Film Geek. When I think of a comedy about film geeks, I'm expecting him to be socially inadept because he's a film geek, not because he's an asshole. So when he is an asshole, I spend the entire time thinking "you don't have to be a film geek to do that... you just have to be an asshole" so making Uma's character kinda flaky gives an excuse a little bit I think. And she's not flaky just because she has superpowers, she's flaky because she's flaky. You don't have to have super powers to act the way she acts in the film, you just have to be flaky. And you know what? super powers or no, I'm with Luke Wilson... I wouldn't want to date a flaky person. Now... flakiness due to job stress or because the super powers or things like that... that's funny. I'm not sure I could date a superhero even if she was perfectly sane... there are enough issues there to explore without giving that easy out... BUT, like I said above, I don't think they completely dropped the ball. There's enough good stuff in here (helped largely by the supporting cast, as always) to keep the movie going and the conclusion is pretty satisfying and I chuckled a few times. I suppose it also helps that both Uma and Anna Faris look really really hot here. It's nice to see Faris playing not only a woman that isn't a completely obnoxious ditz, but a woman with an actual personality and some genuine charm... that isn't evil. So, while it wasn't the dating-a-superhero movie of my dreams, at least it didn't totally disappoint... which is nice.
07.21.06	Clerks II	Kevin Smith	I had errands and stuff to do today but... whatever. time to see some movies. So... anyone that's heard me go off before knows my complicated relationship with Kevin Smith and his movies and his fans... I do give him some begrudging respect for some things but... not the biggest fan of his movies. Pre-Chasing Amy however, I was kind of the opposite. Clerks came out when I was in highschool so it was like, the cool thing to like... and I did like it. I rented it multiple times and laughed at the Berserker song and a friend of mine would only do the Randall dance at prom. That was 10 years ago. Nowadays, I still watch his movies... I admit to when I like them, don't hate the guy as a person, find his Q&As refreshingly honest and funny, think his movies are... alright (Jersey Girl was better than everybody said it was, Chasing Amy and Dogma not so much), but his fans are horrible creatures fueled by the slightest personal interaction via view askew forum into rabid conscienceless fiends... like if i had the super power to control all ants in the world, so when someone made me mad i could wave my hand and a huge group of ants would swarm out of nearby patches of nature and form a solid brown/black blob to envelope the object of my wrath (or, you know, criminals or whatever), that is how I see Kevin Smith's fans... And yes I happened to be in the Magnolia camp when that particular furor erupted. ANYWAY, I think this movie is more bad than good... maybe the best he's made in a while... I have some issues with it but I have to say that one scene in particular had me crying with laughter. That alone makes this movie ok in my book... it made me laugh. really hard. once. Without spoiling anything, it was the Pillow Pants scene... oh man, Randall in that scene is absolute comedic genius... the other guy too, sort of a PB&J situation there, but Randall really really got me... So with that I forgive the entire "story" portion of the movie being compacted into 2 scenes, the thought that a girl like Rosario Dawson would find Dante attractive (hey that's not such a bad thought though... if it's gonna be a geek fantasy we might as well go all out), the limits of the actors' emotional acting prowess, and Smith casting his own wife as "the hot dream girl." All that's off the books just because of the pillow pants scene... I also really don't understand how the first 40 minutes of this movie can be so offensive to a film critic... but I guess that's another story.
07.20.06	Lady in the Water	M. Night Shyamalan	sigh... I want to stress that I didn't pay for this. I was planning on illegally downloading it, and maybe even seeding a few CAM copies just to support the theft of monies from M. Night Shyamalan... but a friend conned me into seeing this and offered to buy my ticket if i paid the same amount for his popcorn. Yes there is a difference in that. I gave Devil Wears Prada money but I'll be damned if I give Lady in the Water a red cent. Anyway, how's the movie? Frustrating. Frustrating because there were a hell of a lot of people there for a thursday midnight screening... Frustrating because they laughed when they were supposed to (in the beginning anyway, they started to turn by the time the film ended). Frustrating because, yet again, there are glimmers (much less this time around) of good ideas, good performances, good work on this movie that are utterly shat upon by Shyamalan's insistence on being a pretty boy rock star Hitchcock reincarnation. I have to go now... i have some peer to peer sharing to do.
07.20.06	Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room	Alex Gibney	For some reason I'm always disinterested in the latest hot doc that everybody's talking about, but when I finally get around to seeing it I usually feel like a doof for missing out for so long (except for March of the Penguins... SUCK). This is really good... constructing a pretty complicated story very clearly and effectively... it also relies a lot on pop music to sell the talking heads and news clips to keep me interested... lots of music. It's good though... very interesting and pretty scary... especially at the end when it reminds all of us that Enron is not the only case of this, just the most exaggerated (so far).
07.19.06	Revenge is My Destiny	Joseph Adler	After that it was over to the Alamo to stand in line for Weird Wednesday. Ludicrously long line... the lobby all over the place with their expanding bar... another pretty-much sold-out week. This is from the guy who directed Convention Girls (A movie I've really grown to have fond memories of. I know my initial notes here are kind of harsh but I've come to look back on it pretty fondly). It actually makes sense... if Convention Girls was an oddball Florida version of a Robert Altman movie, Revenge is My Destiny is an oddball Florida version of a pulp mystery movie. The archetypes are here, the attitude and convoluted plot twists... but it's all put through the sweaty absurdist filter of early 70s Florida. The main guy is just a bit too hardboiled, the sleazy comic/bar owner a bit too sleazy, Mr. Tony the gay wig shop owner a bit too knowledgeable of woman problems. The net effect is subtley surprising. It's almost as if Florida was an alen planet and this is the alien race mimicking something they receieved via space broadcast or something. For me personally, it kind of means I get to have my cake and eat it too. On one level, it's filled with hilarious little Floridian touches that crack the audience up... but on the other, it's actually not that bad of a story, not that badly made, not that badly acted. I liked this a lot. It really has me wanting to see this guy's other movies actually. Lars described a bit of the premise to Scream, Baby, Scream which actually sounds not too far from one of my favorite H.P. Lovecraft stories... have to track that down. Oh by the way... this is maybe one of the best titles I've ever heard, but it has absolutely nothing to do with this movie.
07.19.06	Hail the Conquering Hero	Preston Sturges	this second picture is a bit heavier with the wartime patriotism, a bit more Capra-esque with the small-town good-heartedness of the townsfolk, and also perhaps not as scathing controversy-wise... but it's still pretty damn funny. Demarest especially... there's a scene where Bracken keeps trying to look him in the eye and Demarest keeps avoiding the looks... but it's played as two people of about 30 in the frame so you really have to look for it to catch it. His whole performance in this movie is like that... sly winks, background gestures, stern-jawed type stuff... really hilarious though. I do find the female lead in this slightly more wooden than whatshername in Morgan's Creek... she's beautiful though, dressed immaculately by Edith Head, and fills the role alright. Mostly it's the writing itself that's the star though... sure all the actors do a great job delivering the lines (and i bet it was hard work. In both these movies there are some pretty extraordinarily long takes of paragraphs upon paragraphs of dialogue) but it's the words themselves that make people involuntarily giggle. So smart and crisp... you watch a Sturges movie and get a perfect picture of the guy: round glasses, three-piece suit, sitting in a booth of some high-class bar in NYC sipping martinis while he writes. Another great movie... thanks, Paramount!
07.19.06	The Miracle of Morgan's Creek	Preston Sturges	Tonight is Preston Sturges night at the Paramount! First up is the classic Miracle of Morgan's Creek... I think pretty much every Preston Sturges movie is great... the ones I've seen anyway (and he didn't make that many). He made 8 movies between 1940 and 1944 and the 7 that I've seen are all good. He also used the same actors a lot, establishing a troupe or regulars that, since they were made so quickly, sort of exist in a really precise point in time forever. I can't see Brian Donlevy in a movie (like Kiss of Death) and NOT think of him in Preston Sturges movies. The same goes for William Demarest and Jimmy Conlin. I also associate Eddie Bracken and Joel McCrea with him just because the work they did together was so good. anyway, it was a joy to see this at the Paramount and have a crowd laugh with it all this time later. Sturges' humor is so quick and smart... for them to be so wildly popular in their time gives me a picture of a most idyllic audience... that could laugh at the smartest dilletante social satire and broad slapstick pratfalls simultaneously... And the pacing! these movies must've played like they were on fast forward back then... I think that's a major reason why they still work today... mostly though this is a case of creative freedom burning like magnesium before winking out a few years later. THE SPOTS!!!
07.18.06	The Beyond	Lucio Fulci	What would Fulci do without a zoom lens? Seriously though, this is a movie that I've been feeling actively guilty for not having seen... I call myself a horror fan but I haven't even seen this? So now I've seen it... it's seen, check it off my list... what did i think? Well, as far as Fulci goes, I can see how it's regarded as his best. It makes absolutely no sense, I had no idea what was going on, the ending was so confusing that I was beyond confusion into a realm that could be mistaken as apathy but is really more like blown fuses... I felt the same way after Open Your Eyes/Vanilla Sky... I have a limit to the amount of plot twists or, in this case, nonsensical storylines and obtuse theories of narrative and after I cross that limit the systems shut down. So I can't tell you what this is about, can't tell you about any of the characters (there's a woman... and a man... and a little girl, sometimes) but the gore was pretty sweet and the whole movie delivers what I've found so far to be absolute distilled essence of Italian horror. I don't think Fulci care if his movie makes sense.. I think he cares that we see that goddamn eyeball pop out of that dude's head... and the tarantulas bite into the dude's tongue and rip his nostril off... and the 50 gallon beaker of acid pour all over that woman's face so the strawberries 'n' cream froth that oozes out for the little girl's shoes churns our stomach a bit. And in that regard, I think the movie really works. Ultimately, I think I still prefer Zombie... just because that one scene of the zombies coming out of the ground set to that music makes an absolutely classic image for me that will probably always define the word "zombie" for me... but otherwise this is pretty fun. I'd like to see it with a real gore-hungry crowd to hear the cheers when each of the particularly nasty ends happen.
07.18.06	Tom Horn	William Wiard	This time around, instead of a rodeo dude McQueen is an aging badass hunter, tracker, interpreter, and killer. Not knowing anything about the real Tom Horn, I was kind of surprised at this movie's structure, particularly the ending. Kind of a weird film to make actually... but now that I think of it, both of these films tonight are stories that I wouldn't automatically assume would make good movies... I guess it's McQueen that makes them good... This one wasn't bad but also not really a classic or anything like that... minor notes in his work: still good but not really the type of stuff to call attention to itself. As a double feature I think they work pretty well together. now that it's midnight, I wonder what I'll watch next.
07.18.06	Junior Bonner	Sam Peckinpah	Tonight is Steve McQueen Good Ol' Boy night... starting with this QTfest film about a rodeo man visiting his hometown... He visits then rodeos and that's pretty much the entire movie, but even though it's slow it's not really boring. At least I didn't think it was boring... more like one of those atmosphere pieces where you just hang out with the guys and soak it in... even though I have no interest in rodeos or any of the people that go to them, this is a pretty enjoyable 100 minutes. I really liked the dog.
07.18.06	Ace in the Hole	Billy Wilder	So I finally watched this... it's good but I think if it was widely available it would be just another movie in the body of Wilder's work. Instead, since it's pretty hard to come by (especially if you don't like supporting bootleggers), it's seen as this scathing, still-true-today expose on journalism that MUST be seen by everyone who thinks they're cool (at least that's what I thought it was before I saw it). Douglas is good, the wife is awesome... it is pretty damn cynical but no moreso than Double Indemnity or Sunset Blvd.... but you know, it's not made of gold. Still, it IS a shame that you can't go pick this up... it's pretty good and worth seeing...
07.17.06	The Crazies	George A. Romero	A bug gets loose that makes people crazy and... they go crazy. and the government tries to control it but... they still go crazy. yay for crazy i guess...
07.17.06	The Towering Inferno	John Guillermin	epic! fire! stars! seventies!
07.17.06	You, Me and Dupree	Anthony Russo, Joe Russo	Not the funniest movie in the world, but it has a few moments. I like that Seth Rogen is getting work in movies not connected with Judd Apatow... he makes a good supporting role here... I dunno.. nothing special, laughed once or twice.
07.16.06	Un Flic	Jean-Pierre Melville	Melville's last film... I'd say it's good except for a terribly unconvincing miniature train and helicoptor scene that he unfortunately cuts back to A LOT. If he got a real helicoptor and a real train it would be great, especially considering it's the basis for one of his ultra-complete crime scenes where we see every little detail in what happens. I never thought I'd be interested enough to watch a guy comb his hair twice in a row but I was. And yet for as deliberate as that whole sequence was paced, toward the end there's some much faster cutting that feels really frantic and energized... oh and you know what? Catherine Deneuve was freakin HOT. I never quite saw what others saw in Jeanne Moreau but hot damn! Catherine Deneuve! She's like the best parts of Grace Kelly mixed with the best parts of Gwyneth Paltrow... and French. Has to be one of the most stunningly beautiful women ever put on film... has to be. So, I should probably talk more about this movie but... I'm tired.
07.16.06	Grand Theft Auto	Ron Howard	pretty fun... car chases are fun.
07.14.06	A Scanner Darkly	Richard Linklater	Seeing it again... this time with composer Graham Reynolds doing a little mini-concert beforehand, playing about a half hour's worth of music from the film with his little set-up down in front of the stage. It was pretty cool actually... especiallly his introductions, trying to give context to the music without giving anything away from the film itself. They ended up being "so... at one point Kanoonu's walking down a hallway... there's a lot of him walking down hallways in this movie... and this is what you hear" My second take on the movie... well, My initial SXSW thoughts were that I liked it... but as the months went by my memories of the film kind of wilted to the point where I thought it was kind of a disappointment. Well... As far as I remember, the only thing that changed between the South By print and what I saw tonight were the end credits... maybe a bit of music tweaking... but that's about it. And I liked it! I still think Keanu's character isn't set up well enough, and there's a scene almost at the very end that kind of still rings cop-out explanation... but aside from that I really enjoyed myself... Happily surprised that the movie's as good as my initial thought instead of after I had all that time to question my mid-festival judgement.
07.14.06	Hooligans	Lexi Alexander	This is one of the big sxsw2k5 movies that I missed by not going... finally catching it. The whole middle section seems like a slightly less homo-erotic Fight Club to me... but other than that it was good on its own I guess. Plus hooligans is just a fun word. Hooliganism... heh heh
07.13.06	Burial Ground	Andrea Bianchi	So I'd heard this was great. They should have some special hand gesture or asterix to put next to the word "great" when people actually mean really really really bad. It's a completely different kind of enjoyment (at least for me) and I find that I can't really shift gears between the two that quickly. IMDb says this movie is 85 minutes long. they are LYING. This movie is approximately 157 minutes of watching guys stand there while zombies in bad make-up with maggots and/or earthworms on their face slowly walk toward them. That's it. Nobody has the money or know-how to pull off a gag like a pitchfork stabbing so the slowly-walking zombie just takes it away from the just-standing-there guy and keeps slowly walking. So excrutiating... Really the only thing that makes it worth sitting through is this kid... IMDb tells me that he was only in 4 movies (and uncredited in 3 of them) and doesn't list a date of birth so I can't know for sure but he looked 35 in this movie. He looks so old that I have a hard time believing he's actually some woman's son in the Italian soundtrack. I really think whoever did the English dub couldn't figure out what this diminutive little man was doing in the movie so they made him this woman's son just as a sick joke to the audience. A sick joke indeed, after a scene where the son feels up his mom... and even sicker after the "kid" dies, becomes a zombie, and bites his mom's nipple off. The dude is so OLD though... he's got like a few gray hairs, crow's feet around the eyes... but every word he says in the whole movie is "mama." Other than that... it's horrible. OK there's one scene where a guy's trying to take a bear trap off this woman but keeps letting go so it chomps down on her leg again and again... that's pretty funny, but otherwise oh my god... it's so much of a Zombie rip-off that the movie is only watchable if you've seen Zombie. Not that it makes any sense either way, but it's such a rip-off that if you've seen Zombie you can at least remember the scenes and gags that Burial Ground is trying to rip-off. ugh.
07.12.06	Kingdom of the Spiders	Bud Cardos	William Shatner vs. tons and tons of tarantulas... The last 20 or so minutes of this movie were pretty great... and like great in a genuinely effective way... but the movie spends a long time revving its engines before actually burning rubber. However, a few scenes still stand out: After his cow and dog have both died, Woody Strode listens to the scientist girl tell him that it's not plague or bacteria that killed them but rather spider venom. "oh," he says, "maybe that spider hill has something to do with it." Lo and behold, this huge mound of dirt with hundreds and hundreds of tarantulas has popped up in his back yard... yet the amount of screen time spent lamenting the possible quarantine of his crop makes this small tiny little detail sort of not something you'd think to overlook. Later in the picture, they try to kill the spiders with really strong poison via crop duster. The pilot takes flight and gets to spreading the poison around before finding hundreds and hundreds of spiders in the cockpit with him. He proceeds to screem like a little nancy girl while doing tricks and loopty loops in the air, seeding the whole town with poison, before crashing directly into a garage where Shatner's standing. It's actually a pretty cool shot where the plane crashes and we see the flaming carnage unfold as the camera dollies out, but mostly it's the pilot's girly screams that made me laugh. Finally, after breaking down into fitful sobs at assumed news of quarantining the cattle, Woody Strode's wife finds herself trapped in her house with hundreds and hundreds of spiders. She tries fending them off with a pistol, shooting randomly at the floor as she backs up. Yikes! A big ol spider has landed on her hand! I guess shaking it off is too much trouble for her though because she just raises her arm out and shoots it... or the spider on it... either way: pretty hilarious. Shatner also gives us a few choice moments, most of them when he puts on his Mr. Romance hat but also a terribly gripping scene where hundreds and hundreds of spiders crash through a window and land all over him and bite him a few times. That's sort of taken for granted thouugh... You really only have to know that Shatner is in the movie to know there will be awesomely over-acted bits from him whenever the director isn't looking. It was a fun movie... but a bit slow for the first hour or so. Maybe that was because it was a little warm in the theater though... that never helps the pacing. UPDATE: oh my god I forgot to mention two of my biggest laughs in the entire movie!!! both are really quick bits and both involve Shatner... and both are awesome. The first is.... I don't even feel like putting this in context... there's just a bunch of spiders (hundreds and hundreds) on the ground and, for whatever reason, Shatner has to run across the way to get... somewhere. It's like the owners of every single tarantula were on set right off-camera watching to make sure their babies weren't hurt or something because Shatner does the goofiest hopscotch over every one... it's just so funny to watch. Actually his treatment of all the spiders is funny to watch... every time one pops up on his hand and he does that little "aaahiiieee!" and shakes it off, he's the best actor in the world. Here though, he's just trying not to step on any spiders. side note: I guess all those loving tarantula-owners weren't around for the later scenes in which spider after spider is seen getting squished, stomped, crushed, stampeded, and set on fire. Definitely no ASPCA going on here... The second awesome Shatner moment is when he goes to grab his niece off of a bed crawling with hundreds of spiders, then... I guess more focused on clearing the bedspread of spiders than actually saving the little girl, he actively THROWS HER DOWN... onto a pile of hundreds AND HUNDREDS of spiders... just so he can shake the ones on the bed off... In the next cut, he treats her like a football, whipping her around in his arms like he's ready to throw her... the kid pretty much leaves the movie after that. ahh good times. UPDATE AGAIN: So... last night I had a dream that hundreds and hundreds of big huge furry tarantulas were in my apartment. I didn't wake up screaming or anything but I can't say it was a nice dream... so thanks Shatner, for making me feel like a kid again.
07.12.06	Straight Time	Ulu Grosbard	An Eddie Binker story about a con who gets out, flirts with going straight, then starts hamburgling again... Awesome Dustin Hoffman performance, strong support from a bunch of cool people, and all with that nice and gritty long-lensed 70s feel. It's cool to look back and see Hoffman's really great performances... especially when I think my first memory of him is as Tootsie... ahh the eighties... This is the skinniest I've seen Kathy Bates, the sanest I've seen Gary Busey, and the youngest I've ever seen Theresa Russell. WHOA. some serious heat there... good movie. solid.
07.12.06	Dillinger	John Milius	John Milius' take on Dillinger... it's pretty much awesome from every angle. Not much more needs to be said I guess...
07.11.06	The Benchwarmers	Dennis Dugan	so it's 78 minutes of absolute nonsense and it is now 3:30AM but you know what? this movie really really made me laugh. I love that they gave all the nerds really super terribly unbearably hot girls that like them, i love that Jon Lovitz owns KIT and the batmobile, but I think my favorite part of the movie is Nick Swardson. He's the guy that plays Terry on Reno 911... In here he plays Howie, David Spade's agorophobic brother. Every joke he has in this movie made me laugh out loud. His flavor of uncomfortably casual effeminite weirdness really cracks me up... especially in this movie. When he runs full tilt waving a plastic sword at a couple girl scouts I almost peed a little. No clue... I can't explain it, but you know what? I'm not ashamed either. Both this and Grandma's Boy are so so SO much better than Click... I can't believe it.
07.11.06	Death of a Scoundrel	Charles Martin	I guess this is a pretty forgotten movie and that's a real shame. George Sanders is in it and it's shot by James Wong Howe with a Max Steiner score and released through RKO so it's like a real movie... I'd put it in the same bin as The Bad and the Beautiful, Sunset Blvd., and Sweet Smell of Success. Basically, George Sanders, playing the titular scoundrel, is the biggest most corrupting negative force of an asshole bastard ever put on screen... until he repents at the end to meet censor board standards. Anyone that comes into contact with him ends up with his life absolutely ruined and it's awesome. As the movie starts, Sanders plays this Chezch dude just returning from a Nazi prison camp to find that his brother, thinking him dead, spent all his money and married his wife/widow/whatever. Then, in a moment of weakness, Sanders informs on his brother's ill-gotten wealth in order to secure papers to America. He's kind of emotionally stricken and pretty heavy handed and I'm thinking Sanders is really miscast in this role. But then he gets to NYC, engages in witty double-entendre'd banter with a girl who he's seen steal this guy's wallet... they go up to her room, he puts on the moves, she goes to change clothes and get this. Sanders steals the guy's wallet back and runs out of the apartment. Some guy chases after him, shoots him in the back, they fight, the guy gets run over by a truck and dies. While he's getting stitched up he hears about this miracle drug called penicillin, stakes a stolen bad check to buy shares, and strikes it rich the next day. For the next hour and a half or so, the movie moves at that kind of pace, taking us along for the ride as Sanders cons, manipulates, cheats, and steals his way to a massive fortune... Sanders is cast pitch-perfect in this role... it's really the personification of every arrogant British vibe he throws out as an actor... and he is so evil! He pimps women out, frauds millions of people, and at one point gets furiously angry when his intended con, inflating a bad oil well's stock by leaking rumors that it had struck oil, proves to be true... Damn, I can't cheat people out of money today and ruin lives! shit! This really is a very enjoyable movie... practically every line from Sanders' mouth is hilariously evil... a decent supporting cast, well-shot, a huge booming score... I liked it a lot.
07.10.06	The Last Man on Earth	Sidney Salkow	Since they changed the name so much, I thought this would be a pretty far departure from the source novel I Am Legend. Surprisingly enough though, it follows my memory of the book very closely... until the end. This is a pretty good movie... Vincent Price plays the last man on Earth... because the rest have become vampires. Actually, although they are technically vampires, they act more like zombies and it's spread by a virus... so it's dangerously close to being a zombie movie or an outbreak movie or even a post-apocalyptic movie... Those are all good genres to be in though if you ask me so you'll get no complaints here. Good midnight fare.
07.10.06	Monster House	Gil Kenan	Next up was Harry's AICN 10th Anniversary screening of Monster House in full-on awesomely digitally-projected 3D. I got to sit in the reserved section... I think it's the first time that's happened. I felt pretty cool about it, except for an equally special person was sitting right next to me getting hammered off her skull. She found every leaf with more than two dimensions absolutely hilarious. I can't fault her I guess... she was trying to be as quiet as she could... but you know, still distracting. That aside, the movie was actually a lot of fun. I don't know if it's ok for small children scary-wise, but for new adults wanting to be children again it works fine. It doesn't come right out and say it but the movie has a strong vibe that it's set in the 80s. ALl of the halloween decorations and video games and technology feels like it's coming out of the animators' (who are all probably around my age) nostalgia zone... so it all happens to be in my nostalgia-zone too... which is nice. It was funny, but also young adult-levels of scary (like maybe 8 and over, except Giovanni (the kid who stole Harry's thunder in his intro) who I'd say is ready to see Texas Chainsaw Massacre at age 6)... the motion capture is also pretty evident here. The actual character design is more stylized so everyone doesn't look like creepy dead versions of Tom Hanks, but the characters have a lot of physical mannerisms and motion that I bet would be pretty tough to do with just keyframe animation (especially the Chowder character. He has some basketball stuff that's pretty intricate as well as lots of arm and hand movement that feels actor-y, not animation-y to me). The 3D is pretty amazing... but that has just as much to do with the attention was paid to the shot composition as it does with the technology itself... In almost every shot there's always things happening in multiple levels of depth to keep your focus going back and forth. I was reminded a lot of the Dial M for Murder special features that I just watched where it shows how Hitch did the same thing... it's not blatant poke-you-in-the-eye stuff but when seen in 3 dimensions it really really works. Although I'd imagine this movie is pretty fun even in 2D. It's just better in 3. So that was a good time...
07.10.06	Tonite Let's All Make Love in London	Peter Whitehead	The Alamo's doing a Peter Whitehead retrospective... I guess the Maysles are responsible for bringing his films to the states for a little tour or something so... I went to see this out of sheer curiosity. Beforehand they showed one of Whitehead's shorts (which was actually 45 minutes long) about a bunch of beat poets convening at Albert Hall to read and act hep. Whitehead is kind of scene as the guy who made the very first music videos so you see that sort of influence here... lots of handheld, zooming, cutting, pausing, a little messing with exposure... that sort of thing. The movie calls itself a Pop Concerto for Film instead of a documentary and I'm inclined to agree. It doesn't really have any sort of narrative or point other than to paint the times that it was made: the Swinging 60s of London. The film's broken down into different parts... the girls, the music, the art, the movie stars, that kind of thing, and includes really random interview snippets with people like Julie Christie, Lee Marvin, Michael Caine, and Mick Jagger. It also has music by the pink Floyd and a youngly hot Vanessa Redgrave singing Guantanamero. The movie is interesting. I think that's about all that can be said about it... I can't know for sure but it feels like he depicts the era rather well... but you know, nothing to see over and over again every day.
07.08.06	It! The Terror from Beyond Space	Edward L. Cahn	A manned mission to mars in 1973 discovers a huge monster that they stows away on board and starts wreaking havoc during the return flight... 20 years before Ridley Scott's version. Those 20 years were important though because this movie sucks. It's a really really long 69 minutes, awash in bad acting, bad sets, and bad science. I think even in 1958, booby trapping a vent grate on your rocket ship with 8 hand grenades is a bad idea. Maybe that's supposed to be the charm of it... but for this type of thing there's more interesting pictures. I blame Stephen King. In the back of his nonfiction book Danse Macabre, he has a list of 100 movies that are really scary. Being the list-fanatic that I am, I went through it and wrote down all of the ones I hadn't seen. This is one of them. As I go through the list it becomes increasingly apparent that, for as good a popular horror writer he is, his taste in movies is godawful. He's got good movies on the list too though, and i'm down to 20 left to be seen!
07.08.06	The Pink Panther Strikes Again	Blake Edwards	So I got this Pink Panther box set for a birthday or christmas at some point... I've never been a huge fan of the series but I do remember going through and watching the first 3 of the series when I was younger and liking them ok. Now that it's on my pile of unseen discs... I figure I should start knocking them off. Little did I know for the entire time since getting this box set that it's not complete. I'm kind of ok with it not having that newer one with Roberto Benigni but it's missing the third in the series as well! So I inadvertantly saw the fourth in the series thinking it was the third... that weirded me out. So now the question is will I find the pressure of revisiting the five in this set to rent the two not included? probably... oh well. So this one... it's pretty much what I remember about the entire series: kinda mediocre movie with occasional funny bits from Sellars. This isn't the one I remember being not good at all except for the one scene where Sellars with the blow-up parrot though... instead this is the one with him as a hunchback and him as a Einstein-esque dentist. um... that's it i guess.
07.08.06	Wattstax	Mel Stuart	Doc of a concert film held at the LA Coliseum celebrating the watts riots with awesome soul music. Plus I've never seen a helicoptor shot of the Watts towers... never knew how small it was... just like a tiny sliver next to railroad tracks... weird.
07.07.06	Cannonball!	Paul Bartel	yay for Paul Bartel. I'm not really sure why I didn't know this movie existed until about a month ago... I wish there was someone I could blame for never volunteering this information or leading me to click the exact right combination of imdb links to lead me to its page but I guess the only person who I can possibly blame for that is god... so screw you, god. All my life I thought freakin Burt Reynolds and Dom Deluise were behind the whole cross-country race thing. It makes so much more sense knowing that it was really Bartel and Don Simpson. Anyways, fun fun movie, even though apparently 98% of the country looks like california. And it also has a cameo from pretty much everyone in the Corman stable... I'm sitting here thinking "Is that Marty Scorsese? Is that Sylvester Stallone?" yes. yes it is. On the crew side as well... Tak Fujimoto shooting, Chuck Russell PA-ing, Run Run Shaw exec producing, Michael Levesque art directing... names all over the place! I guess that was just Corman in the 70s...
07.07.06	Reel Paradise	Steve James	the doc about John Pierson's family. I guess the first thing that comes to mind is how invasive a documentary crew can be. This movie is just the last month of his year there but jesus, it seems like the camera's there in all the places that you really don't want to be. Kudos for the whole Pierson family for being ok with that... I got a real kick from his son actually... Smart kid. After that though, it's an interesting adventure that ends up being more about an american family than the place they're at. Glad I saw it... it was very watchable... but it also gives me pause with the project i've been working on. Have to think that through I guess.
07.07.06	Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest	Gore Verbinski	so... the middle Pirates movie... I think I liked it about the same as the first, meaning I'm sure there will people that love it much more than I do but I think it's good fun. Good use of the extensive visual effects, cool Bahamic locations, Depp is funny... It does have the ending of a middle movie though... I dunno, it's a good summer action adventure movie... nothing much more than that.
07.06.06	Parents	Bob Balaban	Whoever called this a dark comedy is out of their mind. Sure there are some parts that are intentionally humorous but come on... this is one creeped out movie. I remember renting this when it first came out. Other than that, the only thing still in my head was that it was way more serious than I thought it'd be... and that they ate people. I am happy to say that not only does the movie hold up, I think it's actually really good. it's surprisingly well done, with Balaban pulling out a lot of tricks to emphasize the creepiness of your family and that you can never escape (I'm also thinking of the shot where the school headshrinker screams and the camera pulls back through the door then into the air ducts and out the roof where the arriving Randy Quaid can hear). Randy Quaid is really really creepy, the kid does a great job at acting creeped out, the mom is great, everyone's great... but mostly it's just this heavy vibe that coats the whole movie. There's a really dischordant score bed that kind of creeps and sogs away during a lot of the tense scenes that really gets to you... and the line between funny and creepy feels completely deliberate in its use. Interestingly enough, I was deeply impressed at how quiet this normally rowdy thursday midnight crowd got... It clearly had everyone in the theater going... there was complete silence when there was supposed to be. So yay! I couldn't remember barely anything about this movie so it's good to find out how quality it is. Afterward Wiley laid out his whole theory that what's so bleak about the film isn't the whole cannibalism thing but more that life just sucks... it's all about screwing and eating and conforming and everybody's insane and you can never get away from it. Interesting... but i think it was a little about cannibalism too. Sure made me hungry.
07.06.06	T-Men	Anthony Mann	So a lot of times when people first think about film noir, they think the stark black and white photography. lots of shadows, lots ofdepth of field, interesting camera angles, wet city streets. There were a handful of guys that shot like that very well but I think the most exagerrated and stylish of all was John Alton. He even wrote a book on cinematography called Painting with Light and that's really what he does. Every set-up shows just what needs to be seen and nothing more... you get the idea while watching movies he worked on that every stroke of white against the black is there on purpose. The result is very striking and really defines the genre for a lot of people. This movie, I think, defines a lot of that style. The story is about a couple of treasury agents going undercover to weed out a major counterfeit ring. Typical undercover-cop things ensue and there's some good suspense built up before the movie ends. It's really notable more for the photography though. Even within the realm of low-key lighting, comparing to all the other great photographers of the day, Alton's work really stands apart. I only wish this was a better transfer... I know AFS showed a print of this like 10 years ago... I really wish they'd do it again. I'd kill to see this or The Big Combo on the big screen. But at least I've finally seen it. Looking on amazon, I guess it got re-released on DVD (it was in a double pack with Raw Deal (another Anthony Mann noir I've really wanted to see for a long time) but that's long out of print) as part of a set but the word is the transfers are horrible and not worth owning. Maybe someday someone will clean it up and give it a decent release. until then, though... at least I have a copy.
07.06.06	Two O'Clock Courage	Anthony Mann	Tonight is Anthony Mann Noir Night! Two crackin movies that as far as I know are unavailable on DVD... procured thanks to the generosity of TCM and the ingenuity of l33t internet hax0rs. First up is this movie, whose title seems to be some sort of circa-1945 saying that I have no clue what it means... 5 "oClock shadow is still around I guess, but what the hell happens at 2 O'Clock? 2 AM or PM? For some reason (probably the completely separate term "liquid courage") I think it has something to do with being drunk... In actuality, it's the name of a stageplay that's involved with the Amnesia Mystery plotline of the picture. What's immediately surprising is just moments after a pitch dark ultra-noir opening where a man wakes up on a street corner bleeding from the head with no clue of who he is and what he's doing there the movie cranks into fast forward screwball comedy pacing and rapid-fire wise-acre dialogue like this was some light Cary Grant comedy. Stylistically it's not very noirish at all... but it still has a few themes and hints that make me categorize it as such. I actually got a kick out of the main twist that explains the movie... pretty fun... and at a whopping 66-minute running time it really flies by. This is really just an intro though, because the movie that I really want to see is coming up next.
07.05.06	Toys Are Not for Children	Stanley H. Brassloff	ahhhh.... so... I've finally seen it. I sat through all of it with my eyes open to let the images pass directly into my brain... and now I have to write about it!? ... ... Well... I think it wasn't quite as effective for me since I'd heard about it and heard about it and it'd been talked up and up and up and especially the end I was so ready for the end that, since it's not so much a surprise or shock as an unfortunate outcome that you know will happen from the first scene in the movie... and you've had to endure a whole movie's worth of waiting for it, hoping it won't happen, for some reason it doesn't happen... because it doesn't have to happen if just a few things would go right but... alas... it's fate. it happens. So if this was at the end of a butt-numb-a-thon when I'm in that headspace after seeing 10 movies in a row and this little unassuming movie called Toys are Not for Children comes on... I think it would've have seriously affected my mind. Or if i just showed up on a Wednesday night having heard nothing about this at all... that would be a different story. But in a way i'm kind of glad I had heard about it... that I was prepared just that little bit so my mind had its defenses up... manning the walls as it were... to let me survive. and keep watching. Talking to someone after who closed his eyes at some points, he said it was actually worse because he could still hear. He tried his best but he still got it... and it was even worse without looking. So I don't really want to talk about the movie... notate specific scenes or lines that made me laugh, put down memories of the little tidbits to file away and maybe someday incorporate into my own work. Nah, none of that. For those reading that have seen it, you don't need me to remind you of what goes on here... and for those that haven't seen it... you don't want to know. trust me. heh heh... actually... it had probably some of the most effective use of flashback I've seen in film... it had nearly no nudity... not very much swearing, no violence really whatsoever. Yet I'd give this an X rating in a heartbeat. This movie, along with toys, are definitely not for children.
07.05.06	Amazing Grace: Jeff Buckley	Nyla Bialek Adams, Laurie Trombley	continuing with the sort-of music double feature is this doc on Jeff Buckley: pretty boy singer/songwriter that died. It seems like they got random people to talk about him... like what is Sebastian Bach doing in here? Other than that, I guess it was ok for fans of Buckley... I was interested in it because I never got into his stuff and certain people try to tell me how good he is so at least now I know a little more about him... even if I still don't really like his music.
07.05.06	Space is the Place	John Coney	I guess... well... I guess this movie is about Sun Ra playing a game of cards with the devil. This is definitely the strangest and most far-out blaxploitation movie I've ever seen... I get the feeling that this is a very faithful cinematic representation of Sun Ra's attitude toward time and space though, so fans of him probably understand this very well and easily and better than I do. Especially the last 20 minutes or so. I'm sure that makes perfect sense to Sun Ra fans. My favorite gag was when the Overseer would get two hot chicks to strip for his henchman then order him to wait outside. heh heh... poor henchman.
07.04.06	The Toy Box	Ron Garcia	I didn't think I'd ever say this... and I really don't think I'm this type of person in general... but this movie had so much sex in it that I wish I saw it in a theater with a crowd. It's not that it was like, so hot I couldn't stand it or anything like that... rather the opposite; it felt like i should be 13 watching it on Cinemax at midnight gasping at every frame of bush. Except if Cinemax ever played this movie it would've been the best Friday After Dark EVER. That's where the crowd comes in... there's enough absolutely fantastic voice-over, completely random and pervy scenarios, and just-plain-messed-up sleaze going on here that a half-drunk crowd would really eat it up and make it a hilarious viewing experience. Watching it at home alone though... it just seemed like naked 70s women writhing around in orgies for 90 minutes... I felt too weird actually being turned on so it ended up pretty boring. I was acknowledging stuff was bizarre and funny, but it wasn't hitting me on a level visceral enough to actually laugh. That said, I'm glad I own this because a lot of that voiceover will definitely make it into a future mix. no doubt. it's awesome. So future note I guess: Movies that look like great Weird Wednesday experiences should wait to be seen at an actual Weird Wednesday. Ultimately I'm glad I watched this instead of the other feature on the disc (and the reason for me buying it), Toys are Not for Children, which I'll finally get to see tomorrow night. At a Weird Wednesday!
07.04.06	The Thin Blue Line	Errol Morris	I'm a really big fan of Errol Morris and this is one of his last movies I've yet to watch... plus with the fourth and all I figure a movie that actually did change the real world might be something cool to watch. The movie presents such a clear picture of the murder of this police officer in Dallas and the wrongful conviction of the guy they arrested for it that he was actually released from his life sentence after it came out. It's not often that a piece of entertainment so definitively takes an effect on those that see it... it's pretty cool when it happens though, even if it doesn't involve the law (like undershirt sales dropping after Clark Gable in It Happened One Night or even "The Rachel" haircut thanks to Anniston in Friends). This movie, like every other Morris doc I've seen, is very interesting and filled with moments of humor, heart, and emotion. It all seems very very true as well... yet his style and structure are very different from most of the docs out there today. I think Vernon, Florida is still my favorite of his but this one didn't disappoint.
07.04.06	Find Me Guilty	Sidney Lumet	So it's the fourth of July. I didn't really have a themed plan but after going through the special featured on the All the Presiden't Men I watched the hour-long Sidney Lumet interview on the Network disc which in turn made me want to check out his latest even though I'd heard it was pretty mediocre. Well, it was a bit of a pleasant surprise for me... True it's not changing the world or anything like that but it's well-made, pretty well-acted, and interesting enough to warrant sitting down and watching it. It's the trial of all those Lucchese crime family guys, in particular one guy who represents himself in all of his entertaining Italian color. Despite his wig, Vin acts pretty well here... reminding me that he was in that short where he cries and stuff before he was ever XXX or Riddick or whatever Action star... I guess it's largely his performance that makes the movie interesting though so if you don't buy it, you don't like the film. I enjoyed it though... kept me actively interested, and gave me a really interesting jolt at the end. Spoilers from here on out. They're found not guilty. Throughout the whole movie you're sort of rooting for Vin. Even though you know all these guys are gangsters, you're still rooting for them. But then at the end when they all get off, you're supposed to feel triumphant but... it means all those gangsters got off after all that money was spent to convict them in the longest case ever blah blah blah... they are back to the rackets and drugs and whores and whatever else they're into... except fot the guy who you're supposed to like the most who is already in jail and doesn't get released... So it's a very emotionally conflicting ending... really makes you wonder if the movie should've been made in that way, portraying the prosecutor so antagonistically and the mob lawyers in such a kind light. oh well. next!
07.03.06	Castle Freak	Stuart Gordon	For my midnight movie tonight I pulled one off the shelf that I for whatever reason didn't see. I think it came out too late... I was already past my Full Moon Entertainment phase and watching all the movies that AFI and Roger Ebert says I have to love... Whatever though, I'm seeing it now! And actually that's not true. IMDb tells me that Lurking Fear came out in 1994 and I definitely rented that when it came out... same with Necronomicon so... I really have no clue why I didn't see this. Not important I guess... First reaction? Wow Barbara Crampton got old! Second reaction: This is nothing like Lovecraft. Mostly.... eh. I think Jeffrey Combs is good in this... that's about it. That damn cheap Full Moon-y score does a lot to ruin a lot of the vibe for me... Oh but I liked the hooker-eating scene... that was cool. Definitely no From Beyond or Re-Animator though.
07.03.06	Sol Madrid	Brian G. Hutton	The second in the 16mm double feature was Sol Madrid. This was a QTfest film so I really wanted to see it. It stars David McCallum (AKA Illya Kuryakin) as an undercover cop who goes down to Acapulco to look for some henchman of a big mobster guy (Rip Torn) who's mixed up with a local opium farmer (Telly fuckin' Savalas). Ricardo Montalban's also in it as a local undercover agent who helps out McCallum. This movie is pretty freakin awesome. Savalas oozes cool, McCallum is surprisingly good, and the plot moves fairly quickly, leading us on a twisted path as McCallum befriends Savalas posing as a bigtime heroin dealer. The long and short of it is that it's a good movie well worth watching, even though it seems to be completely unavailable except TCM plays it sometimes with 4 minutes cut out. Hopefully someday it'll get a release so more than Tarantino's friends and obscure 16mm collectors can see it. Spoilers in the next paragraph. My favorite aspect of this movie is that McCallum is like the worst most dirtiest cop ever. So how would this look to your commanding officer? Well, on Tuesday I sold smuggles 28 kilos of heroin across the border in an unnecessarily complex scheme then sold them for three million dollars. Wednesday the man I was supposed to arrest appeared to commit suicide but was really killed by someone so... I tried to arrest another man but he pulled a gun on me so I shot him dead. Then I shot another man in cold blood with no evidence of his guilt whatsoever. On Thursday, another man shot at me so I drowned him in a shallow pool of muddy water. And loved it. Then I gave a fugitive junkie prostitute a bunch of money and a fake passport to get into my country. No need to thank me, boss... I'm just doing my job. So after that, we spent a long time rewinding another movie then didn't feel like watching it so we threw on the first reel of Kill or Be Killed and watched that again. I tell ya... the first reel of that movie kicks so much ass. I must not forget to ask Lars if they have a print of it. I'd kill to see that movie on 35 with a crowd. I'd even stage a karate olympiad with two teams of the world's best karate fighters pit against one another in fights to the final conclusion staking my rank and my honor on the line in order to see that movie in a theater... and I don't even have a gay South African kung-fu nazi midget sidekick named Chico!
07.03.06	The Eternal Sea	John H. Auer	I guess tonight is 16mm night. This was an obscure print that Jarrette got in a pack of four, all we really knew about this movie was that Sterling Hayden was in it and Elmer Bernstein did the music. It turned out to be a biopic about Admiral John Hoskins... a guy who all he wants in life is to command a ship and life seems to keep him from that in the form of many different obstacles, chief among them being an explosion that leads to the loss of his leg. He is so gung-ho patriotic however that he learns to walk with a peg leg, refuses to retire, and ends up not only commanding a ship but introducing jet plane take-offs and landings from aircraft carriers, thus preparing our country's beloved navy for the Korean war. For a run-of-the-mill Republic war picture, I was most surprised with the expert use of stokc photography. There's some naval battle footage in here that's really really awesome... planes exploding, corkscrewing into the ocean, getting ripped apart by gunfire, typhoon waves, and even an aircraft carrier sinking that all fit almost seamlessly into this ultra-cheapy movie. Note that I say almost... there's still those shots of a guy on a set looking through the binoculars, insert stock shot, then him turning 30 degrees and looking again, insert another shot... but the footage was so damn impressive and they matched the sets relatively well to make it genuinely effective in my mind. It got me wondering why movies don't seriously use stock footage anymore... it seems to be completely replaced by CG. Another kick I got out of this movie was the unabashed patriotism of it... There's a character in here named Zuggy that was supposed to grab Hayden's gear when the explosion on the carrier crushed his leg. Zuggy was badly burned in the ensuing fire but managed to grab Hayden's remaining gear (that hadn't blown up) and give it to him as he lay there with a gangrenous leg. Later on in the picture, after Hayden learns to walk on his fake leg (he actually snaps it in one scene... a nice wooden foot laying next to Hayden's crumpled body) and finally assumes command of his ship we see Zuggy again. As it turns out, his injuries caused him to retire but when he heard that Hayden got a ship he RE-ENLISTED just to carry his gear on board. Now if that isn't loving America I don't know what is. Every line of the movie is equally filled to the brim with feverish nationalism. As Hayden's Admiral Hoskins keeps getting more and more assignments due to his success and innovative thinking (they mention that Walt Disney even came up with an insignia for him... it looked like mickey mouse on steroids wearing a sailor's hat and a machine gun barrel spitting bullets for a leg. I'm not kidding), his long-suffering wife and completely absent children accept each delay in ever seeing him again with a smile and firm knowledge that the country is better for it... They end the movie with Hayden visiting an airlift plane where some angry soldier gives his optimistic pep talk some guff. "Easy for you to say," he says, "but look at this!" pulling his blanket back to reveal he's lost a leg. Hayden walks up to him, reveals his wooden appendage, and puts the boy in his place. From there he decides to forgo several top assignments and a long-overdue retirement to spend time with his wife and family in order to work with cripples. awwwwww. So, basically... this movie is Men of Honor but better.
07.02.06	What Have You Done to Solange?	Massimo Dallamano	uh oh! someone's killing off co-eds by ramming a knife in their... well... anyway... there was lots of nudity so that was good.... other than that though.... I don't know... Guess I am just not a very big fan of the genre.
07.02.06	Thriller: They Call Her One Eye	Bo Arne Vibenius	I guess the lesson here is if you ever plan to go into business by wooing women back to your place, knocking them out, getting them hooked on heroin, then forcing them into prostitution to get their next fix and cut out their eye if they talk back, you better not pick a woman who was raped as a child because if you do... just bad news, man. bad news. I guess I should be outraged that netflix sent me the cut version of this movie without the hardcore scenes and the eye-cutting shot (this copy cut a frame before the blade pierces the eye)... even though this is still not rated... but to tell you the truth I'm not sure seeing some genitalia and a gushing eyeball would change the movie completely for me. Maybe it would... who knows. Anyway, I still enjoyed it a moderate amount... I liked the extended "training" montage the most where it's literally shot after shot of sex then violence then sex then violence... pretty awesome since she never says anything. I also think the whole setup's pretty rude and it got me thinking about good painful ways to kill people... like for movies of course... and that kind of scares me that i'd find myself thinking about that. But she shoots the guy like three times in the leg. that shit would HURT. So I think you you tie someone down then shoot him three times in the leg then tourniquet to keep him from bleeding to death but then like... pour some maggots over the open wound and leave him there with an IV of nutrients for like a month... he would slowly starve to death while his leg wound would probably get infected and it'd be a race between the infection and the starvation to finish him off... I think that would be a pretty bad way to go... see what I mean? scary! I shouldn't be thinking about that crap... Evil movie! Evil!
07.01.06	Cannibal Apocalypse	Antonio Margheriti	Even though it's a cannibal movie starring John Saxon, I didn't really connect with this... Maybe it's because it took an hour to get to any sort of cannibalism at all or maybe it's because the whole thing's pretty slow and it's really more a virus movie except instead of getting sick or turning into a zombie you start eating humans instead... but mostly I blame the score. This movie has maybe the worst score ever. Whenever any sort of action or gore breaks out, this ultra-upbeat disco beat kicks in high gear... It's really really strange watching a vietnam firefight and listening to this disco hustle bullshit. Takes me right out of the mood every time. So tonight's Noir Night was a bit of a misfire... par-for-the-course noirs and a cannibal apocalypse movie that didn't deliver on the cannibals or the apocalypse. Oh well. If i can sit myself down and make myself watch a giallo (it's a qtfest film though and I've heard some good things about it), tomorrow will be Netflix Night... I sat down and made a count today of all the movies i have in my possession that I haven't seen and it came out somewhere close to 70... which is just crazy. So I may make these themed nights fairly commonplace as a method to get through a lot of this stuff that I haven't seen... pretty embarassing to have someone point out a dvd in my collection and I haven't seen it.
07.01.06	Whirlpool	Otto Preminger	Poor Gene Tierney... Knowing how her life ended up when going into this movie gives the whole thing a rather morbid undertone since she spends a good deal of time in here thinking she's crazy... but really it's just nasty old Jose Ferrar messing with her subconsciouss in a big message to audiences: don't let anyone hypnotize you. Watching this movie, the big feeling I got is that I haven't seen enough Preminger to really get his style... I've seen a good 4 or 5 of his movies now but still can't put my finger on what makes his movies his... aside from a consistency of quality. Even so, I'd say this one was kind of a minor effort in his ouvre... a decent story, actors I like, but it's one I'll probably remember very little of a few months from now. Unless I'm hypnotised and ordered to love it.
07.01.06	Dillinger	Max Nosseck	Noir Night begins with Lawrence Tierney's first appearance on the screen as John Dillinger. It's an interesting movie, propelled largely by Tierney'sroughneck demeanor... I'm not sure how historically correct it is or whatever - it seems a little more on the exploitation side than that - but there are some "shocking" scenes of violence (off-screen of course, but even if you don't show it the idea of killing someone by punching him in the face with a broken beer mug seems pretty brutal) thrown here and there and it's not without it's very low budget Monogram noirish charm. Of course I can't help but watch and think about all of the later Tierney stories that would come, like him on Reservoir Dogs, him on The Simpsons, and him on Seinfeld. All of that helps this movie out for me.
06.30.06	Le Samourai	Jean-Pierre Melville	Next up is this movie where Alain Delon plays a hitman who is really really badass. Again, Melville's pacing is really deliberate, covering practically every detail that goes on, spending like an hour with one interrogation. It's not a bad kind of slow though... and Delon's silent intensity kept me interested. I think there's a lot more going on here in terms of why both of these movies, although they seem slow at the time, really grip the hell out of me. A lot of Melville's staging and composition are amazingly efficient... awesome movies. For sheer Delon hitman badass-ness though I think Tony Arzenta still wins out, but the two together make a really interesting pair. Well I had a midnight movie all picked out but I don't think it counts if I start it at 3:30am. Guess it'll have to carry over to tomorrow's festivities: noir night.
06.30.06	Le Cercle Rouge	Jean-Pierre Melville	Tonight is Melville night. First up is this crime "epic" following Alain Delon and... someone else as criminals met upon by fate who pull off a major jewel heist in Rififi fashion and then try to fence it. For two hours twenty minutes, Melville certainly takes his time and while watching I thought there were some stretches there that were pretty damn slow, but the funny thing is now, like a minute after it's ended, I have a feeling of really living with those guys and following along with their plans. It's kind of a cool feeling, and it's leaving me really liking the movie I just saw.
06.30.06	The Devil Wears Prada	David Frankel	Yeah I saw it, so what? Actually... both the first assistant and Stanley Tucci and Streep were pretty good in this... I still don't know why I am not a big Hathaway fan but whatever, she wore progressively skimpy clothes which is cool... but mainly the supporting cast made me chuckle a few times. Still tons of cliche stuff in here but oh well. Now I have to go watch Missing in Action or something to feel more manly.
06.29.06	From Beyond	Stuart Gordon	This is a rip of the director's cut that just played on Monsters HD. For as loved and revered as Re-Animator is (and hey, I loves me my Re-Animator), I would've thought this would at least be on bare-bones DVD or something like that... but I guess not. When I was a kid, I remember seeing this one show late at night that was like a sort-of Siskel & Ebert except it was all horror movies... and I think it only came on once (or I only saw it once) and in 30 minutes they gave a tribute to Denholm Elliot, sung the praises of Street Trash (and showed the keep-away sequence with the guy's dork that stuck in my head for like 15 years), and reviewed the hell out of this movie by concentrating on the fetishistic obsession with Pineal glands. A few years later I'd do a report on sleep for my psychology class in highschool and read about the mysteries of this gland and how scientists still didn't exactly know what it did except to say it had something to do with sleep maybe. I spent a long time trying to figure out a way to show From Beyond in my psych class but ultimately only got away with Hitchcock's Spellbound. Anyway... This movie... I dunno, man. It's pretty freakin awesome. I think it's the most faithful movie to the spirit of Lovecraft's stuff to date (although I still haven't seen that silent Call of Cthulhu). it's got the other-dimensionality, the insanity, the overreach of technology, and the seedy underbelly of the human psyche... with Jeffrey Combs in top form, Barbara Crampton just as hot as she was in Re-Animator (plus wearing bondage gear), and Ken Foree kicking ass. Of course I think I'll always like Re-Animator more but the two together really stand as Gordon's strongest work for me. Loved it. Had some incredible and imaginitive gore. I don't believe the director's cut is that much longer than the original but it's been so long since I've seen this that I couldn't tell what was added. All I know is this movie kicks ass and when it comes out on DVD I will buy it. So there.
06.29.06	Superfly	Gordon Parks Jr.	finishing my double feature is Superfly with the awesome Curtis Mayfield soundtrack and lion-maned Ron O'Neal trying to get out the game despite the Man's best efforts. I don't know if it's because of the soundtrack, but this movie always seemed to me to be in the higher strata of blaxploitation cinema. Stuff like Shaft, Coffy, and The Mack were definitely the first titles I heard about even though for whatever reason I never got around to seeing this until now. It's actually a pretty good movie though... not unintentionally funny or ridiculous or any of that stuff... No eyebrowless supermen or evil Colonel Sanders here, just an urban story of a coke dealer trying to get by. Good stuff. Next up in the midnight slot (even though it's 2am) is From Beyond... a movie I haven't seen in forever but have pretty fond memories of.
06.29.06	Black Caesar	Larry Cohen	Rather than go out for Terror Thursday (I can rent House on Sorority Row later. It's a QTfest film so I want to see it but.. not in the mood tonight), I have a pretty kickass triple feature lined up... starting with two blaxploitation films that I only know from their amazing soundtracks and a midnight movie that, if memory serves, is also pretty amazing. Black Caesar, basically Little Caesar remade with a little Scarface thrown in for good measure, is good mostly because of Fred Williamson... and James Brown. I don't think it's Larry Cohen's best movie (ahem, The Stuff) but for what it is with what he had you could certainly do a lot worse. Definitely enough blood for the massacre scenes and the real NYC locations are awesome. I recently played this video game that has an exact map of Manhattan (well, the streets and major landmarks anyway) and I was more interested in finally connecting all the dots from all the NY movies together... Since I've only been there a few times and never very long each visit, I've never really gotten a grasp on the geography of the place, like TriBeCa vs. Harlem vs. Lower East Side vs. the Village. So I'm playing this video game and thinking "so this is where Serpico was" and "ahh, 110th Street!" rather than paying attention to whatever lame plotline the video game had going. So many movies have been made there that I'm familiar with a lot of places without ever being there. I'm sure I had a point at the beginning of this paragraph but... oh well. Black Caesar was good.
06.29.06	Rock 'n' Roll High School	Allan Arkush	Another one of those movies that I sort of remembered seeing but never enough to actually say I saw it... As it turns out I don't think I ever did... I think I know this better as Detroit Rock City... so therefore I think I missed the boat on absolutely loving it but it wasn't bad at all... Still pretty fun even when seen roughly 15 years too late. Interesting casting Clint Howard as the guy with all the connections... I kind of like him in that role though... really makes you wonder why he's so cool... gabba gabba hey!
06.28.06	Abar	Frank Packard	Finishing the night is Abar, The First Black Superman at Weird Wednesday. I thought it fitting to start my day and end it with Superman. Which did I like better? Put your money on Abar. This is one of the most blatantly ridiculous blaxploitation movies I've seen to date. Hilarious. Uproarious. Just Plain Wrong. Classic. So let's see... for starters, Abar has no eyebrows. Yeah, I don't know what that means... whether the actor underwent chemo just before filming or if he has the same disorder that Ed Begley had in Arrested Development or what... but for whatever reason, he is bald, black, beautiful, and sans eyebrows. Next up, he really only spends maybe 20 minutes of the movie as superman. He's not born into it but transformed thanks to a serum created by Dr. Kinkade. All that plot stuff is secondary though to the casually blatant racism of all the caucasoid cast. The sold-out theater laughed like hyenas and I honestly had a moment looking around and wondering if this was actually such a good thing, for a theater full of white people to be laughing this hard at a white person on screen being so utterly... wrong. I guess that's the exploitation seeping in though, huh. Seriously... especially toward the kids, the neighbor ladies are hilarious. The kids too though... they are such bad actors that lines like "I hate them for killing my cat" or "you're nothing but a watusi wobbler" are made funny by the worst delivery on the face of the planet. Nobody's winning any awards here though... Dr. Kinkade is just as bad and Abar, even though he's by far the best actor in the movie, can't help but draw laughs whenever he mentions the black ghetto and their struggle (and he mentions it a lot). The acting is bad, the fighting is bad, the bigoted terrorizing sucks, and the lab set is horrendous, but the house that the Kinkades move into is actually pretty sweet. I'd live in that house. Maybe change the desert motif in the front lawn but hey... it's even got a pool. With a diving board. Gosh, what else. This is one of those movies where there's so many great lines (and so-so lines with great deliveries) that it overflows my brain and leaks out by the time I get back here to write it down. Abar's psychic powers of messing with white folks at the end is so serene... and the moment where he's shot and sees god (in the form of a painting of jesus obscured by a cheap fog machine) is transcendent... causing him to sit in the Watts Towers - as if on a throne - and beckon bigoted cops to shoot at him so he can make them fight each other. Meanies in the neighborhood? watch out or Abar will turn a wind machine on your ass and shrink you down in a box on-screen... then make you think you've been black all your life and just passing as white. All of this stuff is actually in the movie. So... yeah, a home run week for Weird Wednesday. I can't believe that movie exists, but I am so glad I got to see it.
06.28.06	Quality of Life	Benjamin Morgan	I'll also admit that I only saw this because I didn't feel like going home just to come back for Weird Wednesday... so I really didn't even care what it was. I would've watched anything. As it turns out, it was a movie about graffiti writers in the Bay area. All things considered, I could've lazed into watching something much worse. That's not to say it was good. It felt very much like a festival movie. I kind of felt bad for paying for it... like if it was one of 30 that I saw at South By or something like that, I'd say it was pretty good... but paying full price for it seemed jippy. It's your basic story of two friends, one wants to get a job and the other slides deeper into trouble. Blah... although the second-hottest girl from Groove was in it so it made me think of that movie a lot, except with graffiti instead of a rave. Very indie, very video-y... but better than some of the movies I saw at South By this year. There was a party scene though where there was a DJ and on the soundtrack he was scratching but then it'd show him queueing a record and it didn't make any sense and I was sad. But then it showed him scratching and I could see it was Super Duck Breaks on his table which makes sense and I was happy. And then - and this even gets a close-up - there's a shot of him putting on another record and it's Lyrics Born - Callin' Out and I was super happy because I love that song and want it to appear in more than a Diet Coke ad. But then the song NEVER CAME ON. the same old generic party song kept playing for the rest of the scene. What kind of bullshit is that!? Go to the trouble of showing a close-up of the LB record going on but then don't play it? Not cool, man. Seriously not cool. And don't blame it on the rights because the DJ was wearing a Quannum shirt (LB's label), they use a Maroons song earlier in the movie (the cool Quannum group, not that gay pop stuff Maroon5 or whatever), and they have DJ Shadow on the special thanks at the end... and even if they couldn't use the song, oh I don't know... maybe take out the 1-second insert of the record going on the table? Like that would ruin the movie... one more second of badly-lit hipster party mingling.. oooh i'm so sure. Afterword: the Alamo men's room got tagged all to hell after this show. That sucks for Karen and the Alamo folk but... I thought it was kind of funny too.
06.28.06	Week End	Jean-Luc Godard	From comic books to pretentious-as-all-get-out Maoist Godard polemic... now that's a change of pace. I saw this movie more out of curiosity than actual want. It was an occasion where AFS was playing something I'd even think about seeing and with my recent defense of Brian De Palma hate I figured I've seen way less Godard than De Palma, so my ammo against conformity to any eager Godardians could use some... heaping. What I found funny was afterward when everyone answered if they liked it or not with a preface that they either loved Godard (if they liked it) or hated Godard (if they didn't). Like this film is not a deciding factor at all, just a reinforcement of prior belief. I guess that's the way it is though with Godard... you either love him or you don't. I don't know though... Breathless and Band of Outsiders felt like actual movies for me... Contempt falls closer to Week End but it's clear that Week End is a deliberate stick of dynamite to any sort of bougeouis method of thinking about cinema... Actually I took it more like a dare or a flipped bird to those even trying to understand it... sort of like the past 4 seasons of The Sopranos. It's pretty clear that Godard is angry with this film... I just don't quite get what he's mad at... Or maybe I just gave up and watched the traffic. In any case, it didn't win me over to the Godard camp... Although I have to say there were some things I liked about it. Toward the end there's a dude with a drum set out in the forest that supplies a backing beat to the cannibalism and whatnot that's going on. I think more movies should have drummers in the background to supply beats over. Maybe not have the 10-minute philo-political rant laid on top but still... great idea. I also, like a typical peabrain, got a kick out of the huge traffic sequence (except I thought it was more Fellini than French. oh well), and the use of music during the beginning monologue where the female lead recounts a memory/nightmare sexual encounter I found interesting because although I got to read the subtitles it seemed deliberately levelled to obscure some of the things she was saying. Plus she was in her underwear.
06.28.06	Superman Returns	Bryan Singer	Ok... So I really wasn't looking forward to this too much. I never really liked the first series of films and never read the comic and found Superman to be kind of a dork anyway because he was all-powerful so basically his problems were all either nancy-boy like pride and resenting the fact that we always cause huge global disasters or they were something dealing with some color of kryptonite which turned him into even more of a nancy-boy because they he got hurt too. That said, when the beginning credits started in this movie, I completely geeked out. I think it's pretty good. Certainly exceeded my expectations (I thought it would be somewhere on par with the first X-Men movie, which I liked ok but had several pretty huge problems with it)... yeah I still have a few minor gripes but for a Superman movie I think you could certainly do a lot worse. So... it's too long. And I still think the leads are too young and the superman boyshorts are... well... gay. And still, since it's Superman the threat has to be global huge and become completely unbelievable and leave me awash in small questions like what happened to the other crystals or why would what he did almost kill him when he could've just dug a little deeper and gotten some un-krypto'd rock to stick his face in. But whatever... Admittedly, those are pretty small gripes for a movie this big (and long), and I have to say that Kevin Spacey knocked it out of the park. His "BILLIONS!" line in the trailer didn't impress me but I love him in this movie... I completely buy that he's kind of evil but also practical and sensible, like when he backs away from the model train set and is the first to realize that staying on his boat is a mistake. Parker Posey... well... hams it up a little bit, but that's ok because it just makes Spacey's deadpan all the better. Plus there's nothing like a cannibal joke in a PG-13 movie. So... yeah. It's a comic book movie... and it's an uber melodramatic two-and-a-half-hour comic book movie, but it's done well, looks spectacular, and doesn't grate my nerves with lines like "you know what happens when a toad is struck by lightning? the same thing that happens to everyone else." ugh.
06.27.06	Return of the Living Dead III	Brian Yuzna	I guess I never saw this... I know I saw part 2 a looooong time ago and got to revisit the first one a few weeks a go thanks to the Alamo, but both Aaron and Quentin Tarantino both sing the praises of this one so I couldn't pass it up. First off is it's not funny. I can't remember how ha-ha the second one is but the first is kind of known for being deliberate comedy as well as gory, and since the humor is what turned QT off the series, I can see how he has no problem with this one. It takes the military trioxin story of the series and treats it sans quincy punks or sight gags. no "send more cops" here... it's all about the brain-eating. It also looks like complete straight-to-video crap. The lighting is horrible, all the sets look like they took five minutes to put together, and most of the acting belongs on TNT. It's also primarily a love story so you have that element ladled on heavy... all together it took me a long time to really get into it because I couldn't help but be distracted by this stuff. But then the main girl freaks out in an orgy of self-mutilation and this movie becomes really awesome. The gore is pretty good right from the get-go, but seriously... this girl (who I guess is now on The OC) gets all pierced up to the point where all the subjects in that Modify doc I saw a few days ago would be jealous as hell. She turns complete fetishistic badass in one kickass montage filled with close-ups of skin getting pierced, cut, popped, and pulled. When she walks out ready to kick the latino street gang's ass, I found myself oddly turned on for some reason. From there the gore gets even better. There is an absolutely fantastic shot of a guy getting his lip/chin skin pulled off by her pierced mouth that's just great, plenty of brain-eating, eyeball-gouging, spine-yanking, and steam-burning in a really crazy climactic sequence... but then there's one more scene after that which kicks equal amounts of ass. According to imdb, a lot of the great gore in the movie was cut out to make a R-rated cut for video release (and it's that censored cut that's now on region 1 DVD) so although I saw the unrated version, it was a 4:3 VHS rip that, while decent, deserves to be better. So it had a slow first hour or so... but I'm telling ya, once she starts jabbing herself all Tetsuo: The Iron Man -style, this movie becomes gold.
06.27.06	Freddy vs. Jason	Ronny Yu	Even though it's not in the box set Micah insisted that this still counts so I was basically guilted into watching this again. I'm sort of glad I did though because I don't hate it nearly as much in the context of the rest of the Nightmare sequels. I still think it's a bit of a missed opportunity with the Freddy in Jason's dreams stuff but... oh well. There are a few good gags here and it doesn't totally shit the goose like parts 5 and 6... It does feel more like Jason's in a Nightmare movie than Freddy in a Friday movie though... maybe that's because Nightmare always had more story than Friday or maybe just because Freddy can talk and Jason can't but for whatever reason... I guess this does count. I hate how dumbed down this movie is though. Like three different people say exactly what's going on even after we get a lame Freddy monologue at the very beginning... I guess i also have a complaint similar with Aliens vs. Predator: too many humans. I'd love to see a really stark take of this movie where the humans are completely context-less... like they truly are just fodder and we never get to know any of them except in how it affects Freddy and/or Jason... anyways, i didn't dislike this as much the second time around as I did when I first saw it... had a few fun moments, guess i shouldn't ask for more than that with a movie like this...
06.26.06	Dog Day Afternoon	Sidney Lumet	So I heard Find Me Guilty was pretty mediocre... and Lumet hasn't made an undeniably good movie in 14 years... but you know... 12 Angry Men. Network. Serpico. Dog Day Afternoon. If someone made just one of those they would go down in film history books. All four means you can make mediocre movies for the rest of your life if you give us something like The Verdict once every decade or so. Not much I can say about this movie that hasn't already been said... it was great to see on a big screen. That shot at the beginning with the trash truck on the sidewalk makes NYC look so goddamn dirty... more trash in the gutters than in the cans. Unbelievable... NYC in the 70s is like a different world...
06.26.06	Serpico	Sidney Lumet	Pacino night at the Paramount. I think Dog Day Afternoon steals a lot of thunder from Serpico... people sometimes forget how absolutely kickass this movie is. It's really like the blueprint for most if not all of the great gritty 70s police crime pictures. It's all here: bad cops, street crime, dirty-ass NYC, and a badass ladies-man protagonist. Plus he's always working undercover so he's always dressed as a butcher or soda jerk or hasidic rabbi or whatever. Pacino's performance is the best... he's got more hair to hide behind than Dog Day but it's just as good, man... Plus the movie actually moves... one of the quickest ways to spend 130 minutes that I know of... and it's populated with a bevy of archetypal 70s NY character actor faces... Love this movie.
06.25.06	New Nightmare	Wes Craven	hmm... well, this was interesting. I like dcertain elements of it but it maybe goes on like 15 minutes too long and I hate it when kids are spooky/possessed/psychic. it's a lot to put on a little kid and you end up having to look at them an awful lot. Aside from that though... I like the reinvention of Freddy, all of the meta hollywood stuff, Bob Shaye and Wes Craven acting, seeing John Saxon appear as himself, etc. It's just weird because it's also a horror movie... it is kind of creepy in a few spots I have to admit, but kind of falls short for what it was trying to do. So there we go. Seven movies in two day. Let's see... Favorite: part 1 Favorite Sequel: part 3 Worst: part 5 Funniest: part 4 Gayest: part 2 Best Nightmare: the alley/cut in bed from part 1 Goofiest Nightmare: either the roach motel from part 4 or the motorcycle from part 5... or the pizza from part 4.
06.25.06	Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare	Rachel Talalay	At this point, Freddy's a malevolent Bugs Bunny hopping around in nightmares in make-up that looks like play-doh. The story reason of his death is no better or more final than any of the previous... but the sheer satire of the movie pretty much sealed the coffin I think (probably the box office as well). At least he didn't take Manhattan. Still though... i found it more watchable than the dream child. Except the red/blue 3D. That made my head hurt so I turned it off. Oh, and what a wasted opportunity to not use the Curtis Mayfield song from Superfly. It could've easily replaced Iron Butterfly in Breckin Meyers' psychadelic trip-out scene or the end credits (or both)... I mean if you're gonna name the movie Freddy's Dead... and there's a great song with the same name... isn't that a no-brainer? I guess not though because there seems to be a lot of movies that do that. So one more to go... this one's actually been giving me hope through the last... three or so of these. I only saw it once and that was still when I was relatively young and the trailer for it is pretty interesting. Let's hope there are no dream children.
06.25.06	Double Trouble	John Paragon	Next up was this movie where one brother played an angst-ridden cop who likes wearing a Raiders sweatshirt and the other brother plays a wiseacre jewel thief. Circumstance forces them to become partners even though the cop brother is initially mad at the thief brother... crazy early-90s b-plots and bad acting ensues. It's funny though because James Doohan plays the captain and has a line "Sorry about my voice, I've been yelling at assholes all morning" that struck me as genuinely funny. What's that doing in here!? Anyway, this was a lot of fun... I won't call it good, but it was a lot of fun and the people in the theater were obviously fans. Afterward, the second Q&A was awesome. I really didn't wake up this morning expecting to see one of the Barbarian brothers bust into an elongated a capella rap about the virtues of hemp tonight, but sure enough that's what happened. They also threw out random stories of one of their childhood friends' dads and how mean he was... and some stories about Gary Busey and Mr. T from DC Cab and lots of other casually hilarious stuff while we sat there in the audience and tried to think up questions so they didn't have to go. Once they stopped talking about the movies they seemed to finally open up and have a good time... it made for a really great Q&A. So a nice reprieve from Elm street for a bit... watching some nostalgic 80s fun and seeing what those body building twin guys look like now (less bulky but still fit, wearing berets and other LA hippy garb, acting basically just like they do in The Barbarians)... Back to the dreams!
06.25.06	The Barbarians	Ruggero Deodato	had to break up the freddython to make this double feature with the Barbarian Twins live in person. Yes, those bodybuilding identical twins that were in a handful of goofball comedies in the 80s were in town and at the Alamo for two movies' worth of fun. They are not huge anymore though, and say that the bodybuilding and the steroids were a big mistake... they are like, vegetarians now... and all spiritual and stuff. More on that in a bit. I vaguely remembered this movie from childhood. Pretty much all I remember was that there was a harem scene where all the women wanted them. Personally, my favorite movie these guys did is the one where they were big rig truckers (imdb tells me it's called Think Big) but this one was fun too. Watching it again I guess my biggest surprise is that it's directed by Ruggero Deodato... the man who did Cannibal Holocaust and The House on the Edge of the Park. I guess this is just a Conan rip-off instead of a horror movie rip-off but still... Kier-la said afterward that she saw it just because of the director and was surprised to say the least. This movie is about as goofy as it gets, with the brothers hamming it up in practically every scene. In the Q&A they said they hated the script so pretty much every line they say in the movie is ad-libbed. It kind of shows but on the other hand that's the funniest stuff and, like they say, at least it's bad and funny instead of bad and boring. the Q&A was pretty interesting... they were kind of silent and rambling but one of them mentioned that he's working on a short film and the crowd wanted to see it. So after they went out to the lobby to take pictures and sign autographs they played it before the second feature. It's made up entirely of still photographs set to world music... that's about all I have to say for it because they seemed like nice guys and he mentioned that it's not done.
06.25.06	A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child	Stephen Hopkins	this one made absolutely no sense. Something about bringing back his mom to give birth to him again or something... i have no clue. It's also the one I remembered the least about... but I'm pretty sure I saw it because I remember the motorcycle "death." Ugh.
06.25.06	A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master	Renny Harlin	full-on goofball now. wetness factor is at 0, the deaths are all pretty ridiculous, and they kept the Patricia Arquette character without Patricia Arquette. oh well, I'm still fairly sure this one is better than the next one... we'll see!
06.24.06	A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors	Chuck Russell	so I fell asleep halfway through this and had to pick it up today. No Krueger-infested dreams though so that particular experiment is a no go. This one is probably the pinnacle of what the series became... I think up till now though each one is different in its own right, but now if I remember correctly each movie is basically a copy of this one with all the creative freddy-as-tv, freddy-as-roach-motel, freddy-as-pizza deaths instead of him just being a bad guy that cuts you in your dreams. The wetness factor in this one is at like 5%... barely a gleam, although to be fair you don't really see straight Freddy that much in this one, he's usually in a different form. I actually remember renting this when it first came out... which makes me like 9 or 10 when I saw it... and for whatever reason I always thought I'd seen the first two even sooner so who knows what my parents were letting me watch. I remember a friend of mine, having already seen it, say that "Freddy gets fresh!" referring to the scene where the nurse takes her uniform off for the kid before turning into Freddy with the tongue-tying and all... but mostly I remember that this was the best sequel and it probably still is. Let's see and find out!
06.24.06	A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge	Jack Sholder	yeah... this one is pretty gay. Not meaning bad or anything but there are some serious homoerotic undertones going on through this whole movie and I'm not sure the writer and/or director couldn't know it when they were making it despite what the special features say. The special features also sort of dismiss this one as a mistake in the series and spend a bit of time basically apologizing for it and trying to qualify what brought it about. I dunno... it gets pretty wonky at the end but for the most part I like this movie. I don't think it's any more different from the first one than the third one is, and if they didn't lock the style of the series down after the third one I don't think this one would seem out of place at all, but even so I still think it's neat how there's an anomoly in the series... sort of like how the 7th level of hell is supposed to be all icy and cold... a nice change of pace. Krueger himself is still wet and scary here... except when he's at the pool party. I'm not sure starting a 7-movie marathon at 10:30pm on a day where I had to get up early was such a great idea. I think I am gonna try and stay awake for one more... I guess I am turning this impromptu marathon into a 2- or 3-night festival instead...
06.24.06	A Nightmare on Elm Street	Wes Craven	Can I make it through all 7 Nightmares on Elm Street? We'll see. This one is actually good and Freddy is genuinely scary. I think a lot of what makes him scary in this one is that his skin is wet and glisteny... like it's still newly burnt and all shiny and leaking plasma and pus and whatnot... in later movies he looks made out of plastic. it's also interesting to see the ending where Freddy's destroyed in a much more high-level way... yet the movie ends in a dream. well, the credits are over. time for Freddy's Revenge!
06.23.06	The Shape of Things	Neil LaBute	This slipping through the cracks when it came out and I always like to keep up with LaBute's movies because they're so damn razor-sharp. I'm especially interested to see what he does with Wicker Man but... this one. LaBute movies always make me afraid of relationships and this one is like Eckhardt's character from In the Company of Men turned female and hot-but-not-as-hot-as-she-should-be-in-this-for-some-reason Rachel Weisz... The whole movie I knew it had to end horribly but when it did I was still bummed out by it. I am glad real life is not like this (all the time).
06.23.06	Charles Mingus: Triumph of the Underdog	Don McGlynn	I guess there's a jazz festival going on this weekend and Mingus is the subject. Because of that, there was a showing of this doc at the Alamo with Mingus' wife Sue in attendance to intro it and answer questions afterward. Who knew that she's a huge shoplifter of bootleg Mingus music! anyway, the doc's really good... covers Mingus' work and the sort-of reunion that happened when they filmed the doc of a group of musicians getting back together to perform some "lost" piece of his for the first time. I've always liked Mingus' bass and the way his tunes seem to explode in all kinds of emotion from sadness to anger to sweetness but I didn't know he actually composed more classical-type stuff as well. Interesting doc for sure... plus I love seeing that kind of crowd at an Alamo.. all old jazz hipsters and parents out on the town for a friday night... it makes me feel all cultural and stuff.
06.23.06	Click	Frank Coraci	So what I thought would be a Bruce Almighty-esque comedy about a remote control thatcan TiVo reality turns out to be a Christmas Carol remake with sprinkles of Bicentennial Man. It's not funny, just sad... I didn't get it at all... it's sold completely wrong but... I just don't get it. And it irks me that all he does is fast forward. if I had that remote I would do everything but fast forward. I had the same problem with Bruce Almighty... I would totally act differently with those powers... why do the guys in the movies who get them always have to act lame?
06.22.06	Mommie Dearest	Frank Perry	I can totally see why drag queens love this movie. Fay Dunaway's performance is so... wow. Otherwise though, nothing special.
06.22.06	Phantom of the Paradise	Brian De Palma	So... apparently my dislike for Brian De Palma isn't credited by some friends of mine unless i've seen absolutely every picture he's ever done. Liking maybe 2 of the 12 I have seen doesn't seem to count if I haven't seen this one or two that are absolutely his best blah blah blah. Anyway, that's how I was conned into seeing this movie. Not being a fan of De Palma or the Phantom of the Opera story, I had extremely low expectations. Well, I liked most of the music, I liked how crazy it got at the end, like the last 3 minutes, and I liked the girl's impromptu disco hustling during her audition but mostly it was split-screen shots ripping off Touch of Evil or wide-angle shots ripping off Kubrick or whatever other "influences" De Palma decided to "explore" while Paul Williams did his thing. However, since this is really more of a Phantom/Faust meld I enjoyed it more than I thought i would... so there's that. Didn't love it though. oh well.
06.21.06	The Bullet Machine	Lindsay Shonteff	the print of this movie had the title Harry and the Hookers and it's in imdb as both that and Clegg so... anyway, it's a brit private detective picture where the main dude loves the ladies and the action. this... was a really fun movie and had plenty of moments I really enjoyed (like how one of the first things you see is him like swallowing this chick's face in a huge long extra-lippy kiss) even though I never really followed the plot all that well. I actually can't remember what the hell it was all about now or how it resolved but I also don't really care. It was a fun time and a movie I'd probably never ever see were it not for Weird Wednesday so for that I'm grateful. Good movie.
06.20.06	The Loved One	Tony Richardson	Described to me as kinda like Dr. Strangelove but with funerals instead of nuclear war, this movie proves itself really hard to explain to other people. It kind of changes its identity three or four times as it goes along and picks up an oddly hippie type of sensibility. I... liked it. it was just really odd and different. I think it's the kind of movie I need to let sit for a while and maybe watch again knowing what to expect before I pass final judgement on.
06.20.06	Invisible Child	Joan Micklin Silver	So... I sort of took a vacation for this site for the past week or so... Logigng in and filling out this form multiple times every day can get a bit monotonous so I decided on a little break. Therefore, the next 9 or so will probably be shorter notes than the movies deserve. sorry, movies. This is a Lifetime movie about a mom who is crazy and thinks she has a child that no one else can see. Two things make it interesting: the first is teh cast. Rita Wilson (Tom Hanks' wife), Victor Garber (the dad on Alias), Tushka Bergen (the girl from Swing Kids), Mae Whitman (George Michael's girfriend from Arrested Development), and David Dorfman (the creepy kid from The Ring) fill out the main cast. The second is that tonight was trying out a new idea at the Alamo called Heckler's Paradise where the movie is so unbelievably bad that they let people yell at the screen. I think it's a good idea... this particular night though was exhausting. It was like everyone who's ever been told to shut up at the Alamo before came back for their revenge and there was like 8 years of pent-up heckling that just got released in a 90-minute cacophony of unintelligble yells and lame one-liners. I think the majority came from maybe 4 people who took it upon themselves to keep up a brisk regiment of 2 heckles every minute, whether they made sense or not, and the rest of us were drowned out in the constant white noise of everybody trying to say things at once. It was... very tiring. I really only heard 3 or 4 actually funny heckles (more than one coming from the same guy), and spent the majority of this bad movie thinking about how this format could work. A few ideas. 1) it has to become a regular thing. I think this was extra obnoxious because it was the first one and everyone was trying to show off... if it was a monthly thing or maybe even weekly i think the excitement would settle down a bit to a more enjoyable level. 2) Henri shouldn't have a mic. While what he was saying was funnier than what most everyone else was saying, it does sort of take the power out of the audience and put it in his hands since he's amplified. 3) People hadn't seen this movie before so they were flinging anything that came to mind. I really think that if you let "professionals" handle movies like this and give Invisible Child and Prayer of the Rollerboys to the Sinus guys, it'd be a funnier show. 4) the flip-side of that, I think if people got to heckle movies they know (like Top Gun, Footloose, typical Sinus movies), there'd be some more wit on display and it wouldn't be quite as exhausting to try and get the storyline of the movie for the first time as well as listen to the heckles. 5) it should be at midnight. So, my personal hunch is that if you put this on like, friday nights at midnight... showing any kind of movie, it would catch on as a fun drunken party way to have fun... like maybe even fold it into Sinus where you have Sinus shows then heckler's paradise midnight shows after of the same movie they're doing... i dunno... i think that would work out.
06.19.06	A Shot in the Dark	Blake Edwards	had a sort of Lost Weekend, except with video games instead of crack or heroin. This month's issue of Premiere has a list of "the greatest comedies" along with some interviews with people about the notable ones... kind of put this in my mind... It's funny how Sellars' accent kind of comes and goes in this one... not sure if it's as Edwards posits in the magazine about how it wasn't supposed to be Clouseau until about halfway through filming or... the inconsistent accent is just funnier. Either way, Sellars sure is funny in this.
06.16.06	Maximum Overdrive	Stephen King	I finally broke down and bought this... I remember it being a favorite of mine when I was a kid... the Green Goblin truck, Emilio Estevez being a badass, coke machines killing teams of little league players... what's not to like, right? He also got AC/DC to do the music, which I think it awesome. the movie's still lots of fun for me. My memory seems to have made each scene longer and more important than it really is... like I thought the sequence where the bible salesman cries and moans in the gutter lasted for like 10 minutes (which it does not) but hey... I guess that's what happens when kids see this stuff before they're supposed to :)
06.16.06	Targets	Peter Bogdanovich	I'd never seen this Bogdanovich movie... it's pretty good! No surprise though to hear him say his two least favorite genres are horror and sci-fi and this is the only thing even close to horror that he made. For such a big fan of Hitchcock it's a shame he's not into thrillers because I'd love to see more movies on this caliber. The sets show the Corman budget, but it's an inventive way to use footage from another film (is that... hey that's jack nicholson!) and it becomes even more inventive when you hear him explain the scenario which brought the film about. This would make such a perfect drive-in movie... oh man. So even though he doesn't seem to do much more than introduce his famous friends' DVD and write about how cool it was to know famous people nowadays, I have to remember that he made some awesome movies. I also got particular enjoyment from hearing how much Sam Fuller influenced this film and thought it cool that Bogdanovich gives the credit where credit is due.
06.16.06	Rumor Has It	Rob Reiner	um... well you get to see the side of jennifer aniston's boob, so there's that. which is nice.
06.15.06	The 40 Year-Old Virgin	Judd Apatow	Watched this on impulse. It's quickly becoming one of those movies I could watch any time... not because it's gut-busting hilarious but I find myself really liking all of the characters and it leaves me feeling good. I also think the ending is better and better every time I see this... especially this time after seeing Candy. I just love how we get to see every actor again all gathered together and celebrating like yay it's the end of the movie let's have a good time! and it's outside and sunny and there are brightly colored flags everywhere and it's hippyish andmusical and flamboyant like daytime fireworks... definitely as good a way to end a picture as any.
06.15.06	Gone in 60 Seconds	Dominic Sena	more money, more stars, more explosions. more coverage less cohesion, more story less character, more glitz less balls. All flash no fury, all style no substance, all muscle no heart. the original movie was what it was... sure there were numerous scenes where all the dialogue was ADR'd to keep the barest level of logic going and there were more non-actors in it than actors but it knew what it was and didn't try to be anything different: an excuse to have fun with cars. Yeah the story of having to steal all these cars in such and such time and they all get women's names and the family business struggle and whatnot were worth watching but come on... it's all just preamble to the 40-minute chase sequence. That's half the movie right there... 40 minutes! Ultimately the movie achieves what it sets out to do with all the passion and authenticity inherent in the project and I walk away extremely satisfied. The remake, with it's latched-on story of some evil Brit that's gonna kill Nic Cage's brother and rekindling the romance with his old flame and lots of witty banter between the older and younger members of the crew, feels compelled to tell the exact story that you expect to see in any action movie. That it also has a car chase or two is secondary. Bruckheimer also has his filtered MTV-edited style at play throwing up the montage so fast that I barely have time to figure out what's going on, never mind if it looked impressive or not. Plus since it was made in 2000 right when all the electronica music was popular, the soundtrack is rife with hot acts, music changing approximately every 20 seconds to fit all of it in. And maybe what's worst is that I don't think the remake is that bad. it just is what it is... a product of its time. It is kind of interesting though to watch these back to back... proof that they don't make em like they used to.
06.15.06	Gone in 60 Seconds	H. B. Halicki	I think the differences between this original and the Nic Cage remake are about as indicative as you can get when comparing 70s filmmaking vs. 2000s filmmaking. more on this in a bit.
06.14.06	Bigfoot	Robert F. Slatzer	Lars couldn't have introduced this movie better... saying it was truly one of those so-bad-its-good flicks that are fun to laugh. And I guess it's true that there are some pretty awful moments in here which make you laugh, like how pitiful the biker "gang" is or how the bigfoots seem to just be wearing furry sweaters and pants or Joi Lansing's parachuting out of her airplane to land in Bigfoot Country and whatnot... but you know, just because a 7-minute psychadelic dance party sequence goes on long enough to make you laugh, you still have to sit through it. In this regard I have to thank Lars for playing it because there is absolutely no way that I could sit through this on my own without fast-forwarding like half of it and therefore losing interest in the other half. I guess the highlight for me was the bigfoot vs. bear fight toward the end... I immediately compared it to zombie vs. shark from Zombie... I think Fulci wins out but still... it's not every day you see a Bigfoot battle a bear in Kongspoitation tis-beauty-killed-the-beast fashion.
06.13.06	Kill or Be Killed	Ivan Hall	To finish the night we decided to thread up the first reel of a completely random 16mm movie that he recently purchased in a pack of 4. All he knew about it was that it was an 80s kung-fu movie. Now, to those who have seen Kill or Be Killed, you're surely aware of the shock and awe that took us when we watched the first reel. For everyone else though, let me try to explain just a little bit about why this movie... is amazing. So first of all, even though it was released in 1980 it was actually made in 1977 so it's technically a 70s movie, not an 80s movie. The music montages are bedded by funky music, not synth-pop crap, and the karate here is hardcore Bruce Lee kicks, not Cynthia Rothrock ninja shit. The beginning titles are actually projected on dudes doing their moves. So the director's name gets slightly stretched and deformed by the sculpture of some guy's sweaty flexing bicep after he performs a sweep or whatever. The entire sequence is better than any Bond movie ever... I couldn't believe it. This also seems to be a regional film made in South Africa. Heavy South African accents saturate the movie and whenever they need to appear to be somewhere else they just flash pictures of New York or Tokyo taken from some magazine on the screen and a big title stating the name of the city followed by a cheap South African set populated with natives. I really don't see South African movies every day so this twist was pretty cool. Now the heavy duty stuff. Get ready. Your mind is about to be obliterated just trying to think about how cool this movie must be. The film's about a nazi general in exile... or something... who has this castle (CASTLE!) in the middle of the desert, where he keeps a karate team in prime fighting condition. Along with his delusions of still serving the Reich, he has a South African gay nazi kung-fu midget named Chico as his sidekick. let me just repeat that. A South African gay nazi kung-fu midget named Chico. At a certain point in this movie, just when you think that it can't possibly get any better than it already is, Chico pulls out a hand-puppet and starts talking to it like it's his only friend. When it's snatched away by one of the brutes on the Karate team and he's asked why he plays with dolls, Chico answers "it is not a doll" and then starts chasing them around to get it back. Chico's involved in more than one fight scene and seems to really get shoved to the ground and thrown around for real. I almost feel for him... but then again I guess he chose his path in life, to be a sidekick to a delusional nazi general holed away in a remote desert castle training a karate team for... no real apparent reason. It gets better though. There's a japanese guy named Miyagi who buys diamonds from the nazi general... and the general erects an arena to challenge Miyagi in a karate olympiad to restore his fallen nazi rank and honor. Miyagi agrees to assemble his own team of the best fighters in the world in order to get a buy-one-get-one-free discount on his diamonds and the nazi general sends Chico around the world to recruit his own team. I guess the team he already has is crap or something... I didn't really follow that. All I know is the one guy in the nazi's existing team with 0% body fat escapes from the desert castle with his woman and Chico is secretly happy to see him go. When their car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, this muscly uberfighter tears the car to pieces with his kung-fu and fashions a windsail. Chico finds the debris of engine and car remnants and gives the approving thumbs up to the vast desert emptiness. So that's the first reel. From there, the movie actually slows down a bit as extended recruitment scenes turn into even more extended olympiad scenes... Still though, Chico and the rest of the jaw-droppingly amazing things that inexplicably happen in the first 45 minutes are strong enough to carry you through the rest of the movie to see how it ends. I have to find out if the Alamo's ever played this. I can only try to imagine what a Weird Wednesday crowd would do if they saw this. Apparently there's a print floating around under this name but it's actually the sequel Kill and Kill Again that doesn't include Chico so maybe there's a chance that my buddy has fallen into a golden 16mm gem of the same caliber as all those SOuth African diamonds horded by the crazy nazi and his karate team out in the desert... I must ask around. But for a completely random movie that we knew nothing about, it was an unbelievable experience. We were even only going to watch the first reel but it kicked so much ass that we had to keep going. Oh, right. Not only was the print cheap and included in a package deal, it was also in mint condition. Perfect color, no scratches, nothing. Amazing... and pretty much exactly what 16 collecting is all about I think. Maybe if i'm ever in a position with extra cash to blow on a hobby I'll get into it, but for now I'm just glad I have friends who already are.
06.13.06	Pretty Poison	Noel Black	So after Film Geek and an unsuccessful attempt at getting my friend's older DVD player to play a bootleg of The Dirk Diggler Story and the original Bottle Rocket short, we switched over to 16 and watched this Anthony Perkins/Tuesday Weld story about an arsonist perv who falls for a 17 year old sociopath. It seems to be a theme where Perkins plays people who are crazy but you empathize with him anyway. QT's intro for Psycho 2 came to mind throughout this screening... I felt bad for him but at the same time... he WAS trying to sabotage the chemical plant and he WAS sleeping with the jailbait. I don't really blame him though... girls like Weld seem to bring that out in people. anyway, good performance by Perkins, Weld is ultra-hot, it's quirky and funny and an all-around good movie... too bad every memory i had of watching this movie was obliterated by the next thing we saw.
06.13.06	Film Geek	James Westby	I paid to see this at an Alamo about a month ago but due to a power outage only ended up seeing about 25 minutes' worth. So, because he's cool, Lars lent me the DVD screener to finally find out whether or not the film geek ends up with the hot girl reading the Cronenberg book on the bus. The movie's shot in Portland which is cool... it looks like a pretty fun town and it strikes me as remarkably un-hot which, as the temp here tops 100 already... in june... looks particularly appealing to me. I'd like to visit one day and see how the day-to-day is there. About the movie... since I'm more or less a film geek as well I spent the whole movie trying to like the main dude. He didn't make it easy though because he was obnoxious and full-on anti-social in ways that me and my equally-film-geeky friends are not. So it was a constant struggle to get behind him... but still I was along for the ride until the last ten minutes or so when it turns into a masturbatory film geek's secret-revenge-on-the-world fantasy in the form of a mockumentary about his website's success. Then it completely lost me. I think my friends and I could do a much better take on this story... to the point where it might actually be something fun to do, just to prove us better than this movie.
06.12.06	Lolita	Stanley Kubrick	This movie slipped through the cracks when I was seeing all the Kubrick movies for the first time... something about hearing that it sucked/was misunderstood/censored (depending on who I heard it from) and not wanting to sit through another Barry Lyndon. I should've seen it sooner though because it's pretty good, especially the first hour or so. After Shelley Winters leaves the movie it goes downhill somewhat for me but in the scenes she plays with James Mason they are both freakin hilarious. Of course Sellers is funny every second he's on screen but the real surprise for me was Mason of whom I'm a borderline fan. He did a really good job here... impressed me. Otherwise, I think people tend to get caught up in the controversy and Sue Lyon's age and overlook the fact that this movie is actually funny. And not like how Baby Doll is supposed to be a comedy maybe like On The Waterfront or A Streetcar Named Desire is funny but a comedy as in it makes you laugh. Still though, it feels like a real movie made by a human being... perhaps the last movie Kubrick made before he was alien probed into the genius culture-expanding introvert that created his next half dozen pictures. oh, as I was driving home I passed a Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey train, complete with stock cars for the animals. It was awesome.
06.12.06	Modify	Jason Gary, Greg Jacobson	a doc about body modification, filled with gross-out footage of people expressing their freedom. freaks.
06.11.06	Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith	George Lucas	eh.. I hadn't seen this since it came out in theaters.. it was on TV so that triggered an urge to watch it again and see what I thought. I think I still like it the most of the prequels... but it also still feels incomplete, like i'd have to watch both seasons of Clone Wars andplay the associated video games to get the full story. Otherwise... I'm thinking the dialogue is so bad that maybe it's trying to be... like those old serials where everyone said exactly what was on their minds all the time then it would wipe dissolve to random action. Oh well... I guess it is what it is and I just have to accept that. or I could be like Darth Vadar and scream NOOOOOOOOOOO!
06.11.06	Baby Doll	Elia Kazan	It was supposed to be a double feature of horny old men and young girls but they didn't get all of the Lolita in time so hopefully I'll be able to see that tomorrow. Instead, all I saw on this lazy sunday afternoon was Elia Kazan's movie of Tennessee Wiliams' screenplay about the New South. It's basically Karl Malden vs. Elia Kazan for the young and saucy Carroll Baker... AKA The Battle of the Noses. I think Malden's still wins out but even when he was young and virile Wallach had a hell of a schnaz. Like most of these beloved Kazan/Wiliams pictures, I am not enough of a fan to sing their praises. They still seem like plays caught on film to me... yeah yeah good acting and all that but the scenes are so long and there's so much emotion flying all over the place that I'm left pretty exhausted by the end. I guess I can only take so many 15 minute scenes before I start to zone out from lack of explosions... i guess i have to say it's a good movie (really great characters, great acting, blah blah blah) but these types of movies are just not my cup of tea, even if it's about perverts.
06.10.06	Static	Mark Romanek	Too bad Kieth Gordon doesn't act anymore. For whatever reason, He stands out for me in whatever he's been in that I've seen. Oh well. So this is Mark Romanek's first movie, pre- all the music videos even. It's about a guy who invents something... huge, and his various friends. In a lot of ways it reminds me of Neal Stephenson's book The Big U, being that it's kind of a disowned first try of a work that has way more charm than the author gives it credit for. Yeah, it's not a perfect film, but I think it succeeds in its own way and has good turns by both Gordon and Bob Gunton as a veteran doomsday guy with a vietnamese wife and two sons named North and South. Amanda Plummer's also in it but I almost never like her so I'm trying not to hold her against the movie. I know Jim Jarmusch would be angry if i use the word "quirky" but it does seem to fit when it comes to this movie. good, small movie... I think I like it more than One Hour Photo.
06.10.06	Failure to Launch	Tom Dey	um... worse than usual.
06.09.06	The Hills Have Eyes	Alexandre Aja	Aaron Stanford's sure come a long way from pining for Sigourney Weaver in Tadpole. It's cool though. I liked him in that and I like him in this. This is actually a really decent remake... some pretty good desert-is-so-creepy visuals and really driving home the nuclear testing after-effects idea that i don't even remember in the original. Maybe that was the backstory in the original but from what i remember they were just randomly terrorized by freaks and then fought back. I don't know if I buy that there's still all the 50s mannequins on the swings waiting to get blown up but... hey, it's a movie. I particularly liked the dog in this. It's kind of like the end of Red Badge of Courage or whatever book they made me read about the two dogs and once one of them dies the other loses its will to live, except in this movie the other dog turns into a revenge machine and kills the Rubber Johnny knock-off. No diss to the effects though... KNB rocked the crap out of this movie... some first-rate effects going on here... it's also shot very well with great music and blah blah blah, it's good. i liked it.
06.09.06	Nacho Libre	Jared Hess	Thanks to the Alamo and AICN I got to see Nacho Libre tonight out at this place where they also had a ring set up and 6 real luchadores that were flown in from Mexico City get it on... oh, and one was a midget. I got the feeling that us american audience sitting on a grassy knoll sweating and waiting for the sun to go down so we could watch the Jack Black movie were not the ideal audience for real authentic lucha libre, but I think we got into it by the end and the luchadores did there best to rouse us up, going into the crowd several times, taking the fight out of the rink and onto the dirt and rock, and the midget even slapped another wrestler with some random flip-flop (returned to its owner after the madness ended). Not to be outdone, Big League Chew himself hopped in the ring just long enough to get smacked around with a plank of wood before being spanked to unconscioussness by the band of evil wrestlers... sad to say that the midget who looked like Sgt. Kabukiman and the other two good guys were busy with their own fights and didn't come to the aid of Mr. Alamo... oh well, it was all in good fun and even though Jack Black wasn't there and Jared Hess dropped out the crowd still had a good time with the mexican food and lucha libre before the sun went down. There was a good 60 people there wearing wrestling masks (and I only spotted one strong bad! go figure) and they all got up near the stage for a group photo after the event. Then the sun went down and the movie started. I think the reason why this movie is getting mixed reviews is both because it can't live up to the quirky originality of Napoleon Dynamite and because it's just not much of a comedy. Not to say it's a bad movie... it's just more of a children's movie than anything else. It's funny in parts but the humor is so broad and caricature that it seems more like a Warner Brothers cartoon. Jack Black's accent and facial gestures, his sidekick's smile, the luchadore opponents; they are all very very goofball. I'm talking fart sound effects whenever Nacho leaps. Again, this is not a bad thing. I really had fun with the movie and felt good at the end and did laugh out loud a couple times, it's just that mostly i was just smirking and the goofiness.
06.09.06	Prime Cut	Michael Ritchie	Chicago professional Lee Marvin takes a ride out to rural KC to make cow rancher/crime boss Gene Hackman pay his dues after Hackman grinds a man up into hot dogs. Sissy Spaceck is also naked and young and hot in her particular way. This is a really solid 70s crime pictures with a battle of the badasses as there's almost no gunplay for most of the movie... just Marvin looking hard at Hackman and Hackman looking hard back. good stuff.
06.09.06	James Ellroy Presents Bazaar Bizarre	Benjamin Meade	A local-made doc about Kansas City serial murderer Bob Berdella... who apparently captured and tortured six men before killing them, cutting them up, and maybe just maybe cooking them in food that he served to others. the documentary portion of this movie is pretty decent, the recreations footage is kind of hokey, and the random music videos of some people trying to act like a band and play along to the pre-recorded songs is absolutely horrendous... filled with standard in-camera video effects and shot bad enough to match the lyrics of each song... and then there's one interview with James Ellroy where he talks about serial killers and what an asshat Bob Berdella was... I stayed interested just because of the whole morbid fascination thing but really... this should've been 20 minutes shorter and just a straight doc without any of that wonky crap added in.
06.08.06	The Gate	Tibor Takacs	I remember liking this a long long time ago when I saw it as a kid... geodes, little monsters, heavy metal music... what was not to like? So for this packed terror thursday I was looking forward to seeing it again and seeing how it stands up. It's not a bad movie at all! Still has some moments that are pretty creepy... some cool late 80s effects... pretty good! ok now sleep.
06.08.06	Creature from the Black Lagoon	Jack Arnold	following up It Came from Outer Space is this classic, starring the same dude and directed by the same dude. For whatever reason, the 3D on this film felt 20 times better to me... maybe it was the print or maybe it was this higher production value with the cameras... who knows. All I know is I wasn't distracted like I was with the first movie and a lot of the underwater photography was really entertaining to see with depth... not to mention the creature and all those spear-guns. yeah, good time.
06.08.06	It Came from Outer Space	Jack Arnold	Double feature of 3D films tonight at the Paramount, starting off with this sci-fi classic. Apparently red/blue 3d glasses turn adults into 6-year-olds, oohing and ahhing every time any sort of depth is seen on-screen. Also, this movie has seemingly become a comedy in the 50 or so years since it was made. Anyway, aside from all that it was cool to see this movie at the paramount, even though the 3d was pretty mediocre with ghosting and the usual stuff that happens with red/blue... It did look better since it was in black and white, but still... I wish it was polarized. This movie has some great the-desert-is-so-creepy dialogue in it though... and uses joshua trees to good effect.
06.07.06	Sweet Sugar	Michel Levesque	this movie was so great... it's completely changed my mind on Women in Prison films... I didn't think I was too big a fan before but now I can see that I was wrong. this movie was so confoundedly fantastic... I wish I could remember all the great stuff in it but the truth is it was so packed that I only remember the last great thing, which is the evil Dr. John going completely nuts and yelling "DR. JOHN IS INDESTRUCTABLE! YOU'RE GOING TO DIE! BUT NOT ME! DR. JOHN WILL NEVER DIE!" and then the wounded soul sister who he's talking to actually takes her gun off of Dr. John to shoot a gas can in the jeep and blow them both up... I guess just because she's finally had enough of Dr. John's shit. Truly every second that Dr. John is on-screen... something special happens. Whether it's his "experiments" with ethnopharmacology (including an orgasm-inducing serum and some sort of primal instinct vaccine that reduces housecats to feral scratching machines... a particularly harsh form of punishment for women inmates I guess) or his lust for virgins or his seething pleasure in random acts of violence. When a guard is caught humping a prisoner in his bed, he orders that guard to whip the girl as punishment. Instead, the guard lashes another guard once, perhaps twice before the other guard pulls his gun and shoots him like 16 times. Levesque takes particular care to show that Dr. John is around the corner loving the guard-on-guard hate. And then there's Mojo, the black prisoner who's also sort of a voodoo priest... and the two guards caught up in a subplot about getting the younger brother laid, the weekly bonfire jamboree where the band is so committed that not even a catfight messed up their rythm... oh yeah, and a lesbian waterfall scene too. The soundtrack is great, the dialogue absurd, the acting.... actually I don't know how the acting was because I spent the whole movie looking at skimpy tops and short shorts... it's probably pretty bad though... this movie really had everything i could ask for in a Women in Prison film. I could probably go on much longer... but the magic of the movie should really stay in the frame. Great time...
06.06.06	Last Man Standing	Walter Hill	Walter Hill's gritty desert take on Yojimbo/Fistfull of Dollars/whatever it was originally called. Pretty good... it felt like a precursor to Sin City actually, although the comics were probably written before this... or maybe not, I don't know. It had a bunch of tough guy supporters that I've liked in other movies (the big dude who was the gym teacher in Class of 1999, the "warriors, come out and play" guy who was also in Commando) as well as Christopher Walken and William Sanderson... It still feels like a pretty casual film to me... I don't want to say forgettable... forgettable in a good way... kind of like a lot of Hill's stuff to me... good stuff but nothing legendary. nothing wrong with that though... have to respect a solid yarn.
06.06.06	Danger: Diabolik	Mario Bava	oooh it's 6.06.2006.... if i was in highschool i would be excited. instead, I watched Danger: Diabolik. I love showing this movie to people. it really should be shown in highschools... I can't imagine any type of person who isn't crazy that doesn't like this movie. it's so great. i love it so.
06.05.06	Melody	Waris Hussein	Watching Jarrette's 16mm print at his place... this movie is notable for having original score by the Bee Gees, being Alan Parker's first script, and not being available on video or DVD. At first I was really surprised to hear that a Bee Gees movie isn't available but then I watched the movie and wasn't so surprised anymore. Not to mean it's bad, I actually enjoyed it in a casual way, but it's a story about a 10 year old boy who falls in love with a 10 year old girl and they want to get married so the whole class of children skip class to perform a wedding ceremony and all the teachers in the school chase after them... then there's a complete breakdown and the kids assault all the teachers and blow up their car and chase them off while the two kids hop on a railroad trolley and pump themselves off into the sunset. The movie's actually pretty slow and pointless until the last half hour or so, with the last 10 minutes getting outright flabergasting. I can honestly say I did not see that coming.
06.05.06	The Fall: The Wonderful Frightening World of Mark E. Smith	Dionne Newton	a BBC doc on rock band The Fall and main dude Mark E. Smith, who looks a lot like DJ Qualls 20 years older. The Fall is a band that all of my more music-savvy friends have loved forever and I know absolutely nothing about so it was good to finally get a little education on them. John Peel's favorite band apparently... this actually has interviews with Peel mere months before his death so that was cool to see him and watch him do his show... and Smith's interviews are hilarious as well. I'm pretty sure a good half the theater couldn't penetrate his accent but what he was saying was pretty damn funny. Good doc.
06.03.06	Alone in the Dark	Jack Sholder	A bunch of crazy people escape from an asylum and terrorize a headshrinker and his family. Yeah it sounds pretty dull until I mention that two of the crazies are played by Martin Landau and Jack Palance and Donald Pleasance plays a hippy hospital administrator. Even so, this movie is still pretty slow at times, only peppering in good moments and scenes throughout... but hey, Jack Palance is such a great crazy person... that makes it a classic right there.
06.03.06	Humanoids from the Deep	Barbara Peters	A small fishing town is terrorized by fish-men monsters that want to kill the men and rape the women. It's fun... sort of, and manages to rip off about a dozen different, much better, horror movies throughout its 80 minutes. But hey, with a title like that you pretty much know what you're getting.
06.03.06	Cars	John Lasseter	Not being a car person, a NASCAR person, or a Larry the Cable Guy person, I'm pretty sure this wasn't the movie for me. I think it's Pixar's longest movie to date and I'd put it on par with A Bug's Life as far as my enjoyment goes: certainly not bad, but I wasn't blown away either. It is visually stunning though, which shouldn't get taken for granted just because its Pixar... another great step forward as far as animation and rendering technology is concerned... The story just wasn't up to Pixar's par. Plus we're back to a Randy Newman song in the middle of the movie (although he didn't sing it this time)... which I was pretty happy to se leave in their last few movies. It's sort of wrong when you find yourself laughing the hardest at the stuff that plays during the end credits, ya know? Still though... not bad. I'd say it's barely good. and the short that plays in front of it is pretty sweet.
06.02.06	The Break-Up	Peyton Reed	I can totally see why most people wont like this... It's sold as a romantic comedy but it doesn't have a happy ending. Actually, I think the epilogue scene was put on in an effort to placate the masses a bit... and it just doesn't work. Everything up to that last scene though... is pretty good. It's just a this-is-how-life-is movie instead of a how-life-should-be romantic comedy. With most romantic comedies, I look forward to the supporting cast more than the leads. Usually they're the main sources of humor in otherwise sap-fest boring movies with exactly the same story. This movie has an awesome supporting cast. Joey Lauren Adams, Close Hauser, Jon Favreau, Jason Bateman, Judy Davis, Justin Long, and Vincent D'Onofrio all do a hell of a lot with what they're given... so... yeah. I liked it, even though it's like an anti-romantic comedy so all of the housewives will hate it.
06.01.06	Blood Tide	Richard Jefferies	I was told that this was a good one. It had a lot to like: A surprisingly svelte James Earl Jones in a diving suit, the evil Cobra Kai sensei from Karate Kid, some underwater greek-lovecraftian demon that demands sacrifices... but unfortunately the print was in terrible condition. I don't know what happened to it between the time they last played it and now, but tonight it was pretty distracting. The film was so warped that not only were portions of the frame constantly out of focus but at one point the soundtrack started edging into frame. Completely washed out and beet red with annoying buzzes throughout... it was easily the worst print I've seen at the Alamo. There were still a few moments to grab onto in the film though. After James Earl Jones' woman places a melon on his crotch, she offers a knife which he balks at. "You don't open watermelon with a knife!" he says as he punches it two or three times until it shatters apart in his hands. Later, he plays drunk in a scene and answers every one of Cobra Kai's questions with a pretty hilariously delivered "...WHAT!?" There's also a completely random incestuous bro-sis kiss at the end... wicked. So I'm glad I got to see this but that print should really be put out to pasture. I could smell the vinegar in the lobby on my way out.
06.01.06	Everything is Illuminated	Liev Schreiber	hmm... good. lots of russian music. sad in parts. the dog was fun. mind's drawing a blank. it was pretty good... that's about it.
05.29.06	The Return of the Living Dead	Dan O Bannon	It'd been so long since I last saw this that I pretty much only remember the girl getting naked in the cemetary. It was pretty good, pretty funny... and I got a kick out of seeing the black guy from joey playing a comic relief Quincy punk. Actually all of the punks are pretty hilarious... the dude with the chain from his lip to his ear was hilarious. the local punk band however... not so hot.
05.29.06	A Professional Gun	Sergio Corbucci	spaghetti feast at the alamo... Franco Nero plays a pollack who helps out a mexican revolution for the right price and Jack Palance plays a heavy named Curly who I guess is gay because he plays pretty particular and when his henchman's shot down he cries out "SEBASTIAN!" although Nero is so close to his mexican counterpart that it's really a tough contest to tell where the homosexual undertones point... pretty good movie though... good spaghetti too.
05.29.06	Dan Ackroyd Unplugged on UFOs	David Sereda	poor poor dan ackroyd... this is a documentary where he basically sits and talks about UFOs... and they flash the same 5 pictures and blown-up video footage about 30 times each. i wonder if the sequel will be about sasquatch. i guess that's an easy joke to make... Ackroyd really believes this stuff and has also had experiences on his own... but still... unplugged? huh?
05.28.06	Desperation	Mick Garris	Someone needs to stop Mick Garris. He's not getting any better and he's had some pretty damn good source material to work with. Ron Perlman is perfect for the part of the crazy cop but... nothing about this movie works. Can't say I'm disappointed because I expected as much from Garris but still, it makes me sad. Although... this King book had a very precise tone... pulling off this kind of vampire movie takes a very steady hand... I'm not sure who could've done it well (especially on TV) but... Garris sure didn't.
05.28.06	The Maltese Falcon	John Huston	Made a pretty cool double feature with Casablanca, considering it was made around the same time with not only the same male lead but also two of the same supporting cast (Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet). Bogart's much more wiley in this one though... the smile on his face after he takes Lorre's gun away from him for the first time, as he's walking him back getting ready to hit him, is pretty evil. Great movie, I'm really glad I got to see it at a place like the Paramount.
05.28.06	Casablanca	Michael Curtiz	I guess the Paramount's been showing this movie for over 60 years now... I'm glad they showed it one more time so I can get a chance to see it. Not much to say about the movie other than it's one of the best ever made. duh.
05.27.06	Straw Dogs	Sam Peckinpah	awesome movie. I love how geeky Hoffman plays it until the last scene... he goes bonkers absolutely pitch-perfect. Susan George also has horrible teeth but nice everything else.
05.27.06	Diary of a Chambermaid	Luis Bunuel	another BUnuel... this time Jeanne Moreau gets to show off her stocking'd legs. I really don't have any notes on this... it was ok. I don't think i got all of the political whatnot since I have no French context...
05.26.06	Panic in Year Zero!	Ray Milland	Some movies really creep up on me. I saw this on a whim a few years back and didn't think much of it... just another cheapie nuclear scare picture good for a laugh and not much else. But as time wore on, I found myself thinking back to this with fonder and fonder memories until suddenly I was bringing it up to people and calling it awesome. For whatever reason, this movie stuck with me and has really grown into a favorite of mine. I like apocalypse movies. Post-Apocalypse, Pre-Apocalypse, Dawn-of-Apocalypse, you name it. If the movie takes place in any sort of relational timeframe to the Apocalypse... I'm down. Imagine you wake up early one morning to take the family on a camping and fishing trip up in the mountains. A few hours of driving later, you notice a flash of lightning in the morning sky. Wait a minute, there are no thunderclouds... another flash hits. You pull over to check the windows of your trailer and see mushroom clouds blooming all over Los Angeles. So what do you do? In Ray Milland's eyes the answer is simple: you protect your family. Not only do I love all of the details of a normal world losing its civilization inch by inch, but this movie also stands out because Milland instantly becomes a badass capable of murder and enlists his son (played by Frankie Avalon) as his sidekick/soldier. When he's not ordering him around to gather wood, tie rope to bridges and drive the family station wagon, he's got him covering the old man's back with a rifle, even yelling at him that he almost missed one roadside reprobate who threatened them with a gun. When Milland learns that the reason why he almost missed (it's not because his son has a problem with killing a peer, in fact he kind of likes it) is that the mom pulled at his gun, he goes off on her too. The movie is really about holding onto civilization, both as a society and individually... Milland goes to these militaristic lengths to protect his family fully aware of what he dangerously close to losing. It's a really cool struggle that reminds me more than a little bit of revenge films... It does have a little bit of a problem ending, but if you think about it in a certain way then it fits... It actually works for me more than any kind of deus ex machina or fabricated climx could... apocalypse movies (and zombie movies funnily enough... strange how interchangeable nuclear holocaust and a wave of zombies are) usually end with the first frame of film, the whole movie is ABOUT ending... ending of everything and our pitiful grasp at straws to hold on just a few days longer... but this one is about beginning. How do you end a movie that's about beginning? kinda tough... This ending reminds me of the ending to Stephen King's novella The Mist. So yeah, I really love this movie. It's got an awesome jazzy score by Les Baxter, Milland plays a crazy man, Avalon plays a kill-happy teenager... what's there not to like?
05.26.06	Trinity and Beyond	Peter Kuran	The doc on the atomic bomb, constructed of all that declassified footage. This feels like the DVD that the Hollywood's Top Secret Film Studio doc is a special feature of... but you know, while this actually tells the story of the bomb and nuclear testing, I ultimately found both the footage and the interviews in HTPFS more interesting. Maybe if I see this in 3D on an IMAX screen I'll tell a different tale, but the footage in the other doc of the same explosions was just better. Still though, this is nothing to sneeze at... really arresting footage of the explosions, shockwaves, effects on structures and the atmosphere, etc. all put in a geopolitical context... crazy stuff, man...
05.26.06	X-Men: The Last Stand	Brett Ratner	You can always count on Ratner to bring in a studio-safe disappointing film... and this is no different. In a perfect vacuum I think this movie is a C+, but given the context of the X-men and it being the 3rd in a series and where the characters were in previous films and how they exist in their comic book form, I think this movie really really sucks. Everybody gets like 3 minutes of screen time in order to fit all 50 people in... this supposed war starts and ends in like two days, nothing feels connected or realistic at all, and the few opporunities for effective fight scenes or character scenes are all wasted by poor direction. I thought the first X-Men was OK but had a few really terrible lines of dialogue; the second movie was really good and felt exactly like a comic (tight, complex, lots of character, lots of action, and it makes you want to read the next issue) so it's even more of a shame that this movie brings down all that Singer and company worked for two movies to set up. Before watching this, I could definitely see the X-Men franchise going on and on... and judging by the crowd of random friday-afternoon matinee-ers I could've bet another one will be greenlit by Tuesday but this movie destroys all of that. What's worse is that it tries to have its cake and eat it too. It ends the storyline that the trilogy seems to be all about, kills off lots of main characters, and yet dangles a few cheap possibilities just in case Fox execs change their minds. The storylines that it decides to dabble in are all mistreated and rushed, and what I'm left with is a cheap rip-off of X-Men 2 but with the same actors. It felt weird and while minute-to-minute I was thinking that it's not THAT bad (just not good either) by the time I walked back out to my car I was thinking it sucked. For such a promising series to end with this is a real shame... At least Vinnie Jones' sideshow excuse for Juggernaut said "Don't you know who I am? I'm the Juggernaught, Bitch!" so I will always get a chuckle out of that...
05.25.06	The Children	Max Kalmanowicz	I guess if I really want to get technical about it this is a zombie film but... since there are fewer evil children films and they really don't look or act like zombies at all, I'm going with this genre. I guess they are turned evil by a cloud caused by nuclear waste... so they have black fingernails and anyone they hug either gets burned or melted to death... their hair and clothes aren't effected though so... I'm not really sure what their evil power is... All I know is that when they hug you, you die and look gross. They are sort of like zombies though because if you shoot them they get back up. Instead of their heads though, you have to cut off their hands with their evil black goth fingernails in order to stop them. Not just one hand; both hands. This is a severely crappy movie with acting so bad I can't really blame anyone for laughing at the screen. Like so many of these movies though, the end is pretty freakin rewarding, enough so to make me forgive the rest of the movie and walk away happy. This main guy... I never caught his name... treats his cigarette-smoking uber-pregnant wife so badly... screaming at her to make the damn coffee or get the ice water for his burned/melted hand faster, faster! Coupled with a clueless sheriff, they square off to see how much overacting each can do... By the time one of them dies, the other celebrates his victory by rubbing the dead man's chest with his burned melted head resting in his lap. I guess it was dawn when they shot it because they had to dissolve to the next take where the guy stops rubbing and gets up to check after his wife... the effect suggests that he spent 6 hours grieving for his sheriff friend and admiring the softness of his uniform. Yeah, this movie is pretty bad... especially when they play the Devil Times Five trailer right before it... it really can't stand up to the awesomality of Devil Time Five... but then again, what can?
05.25.06	Pillow Talk	Michael Gordon	hmm... ok I have to admit, a few funny moments. It's actually much more overtly sexual than I thought it'd be... and I think from now on whenever I see Rock Hudson I'll immediately think of him in Pretty Maids All in a Row... Yay for Thelma Ritter though... awesome.
05.25.06	16 Blocks	Richard Donner	Dick Donner seems about as tired as the character Bruce Willis plays... just played out and going through the motions... and Mos Def's voice is annoying in this... don't know why that decision was made... oh well.
05.25.06	Firestarter	Mark L. Lester	Tihs is one of the last King adaptations I haven't seen (maybe the last... not sure). I didn't really like the book much... so I guess it's no surprise that the movie kind of sucked for me too. Really slow, Drew Barrymore's "acting", random pyrotechnics. Needless to say, I liked Commando much more.
05.24.06	Darker Than Amber	Robert Clouse	Her eyes were darker than amber... I never read any of these books but feel like if i either read much faster than I do of find myself needing like 20 books to go through I would definitely check them out. Like Lars mentioned in his intro, what guy wouldn't want to bum around on a boat all day, falling into crazy adventures and sleeping with random hot women... Yeah, all you need in life is a boat, scotch whiskey and lovely ladies... So this movie is pretty decent. Like Lars also mentioned, the second act trips up a bit and gets pretty slow, but it's redeemed by the ending... actually it's redeemed completely by William Smith's psychopathic heavy... Nothing better than a bleached-blonde musclebound freak with bright red blood covering his face running around a dock and knocking random people over. Truly the sort of thing you just don't see every day. There's also a few random great lines ("I get moody when I lose things", "yes, I am a lovely lady") but mostly this is just a pulpy Florida tough guy movie... good stuff.
05.24.06	Transformers: The Movie	Nelson Shin	I seriously remember almost nothing about the story behind the transformers... autobots vs. decepticons. after that, all I remember is which toys I had... so When given the chance to see the movie projected at an Alamo and knowing that Michael Bay's shooting the film right now, I couldn't pass it up. So... this film is pretty crappy. I remember it being good... compared to the G.I. Joe movie and the He-Man live action miscarriage of a movie, I remember this one being really good. Granted Orson Welles as the voice of Unicron the planet-eating mech is awesome... but the weird al yankovic song not so much. It's actually the constant bed of background 80s rock that bugs me most about the movie... the story's actually pretty decent and it gets double extra points for killing characters off. No parachutes floating from every blown up G.I. Joe jet here, man... robots DIE. Sure it feels more like a gimmick to introduce celebrity voices than anything else but still... Optimus Prime and Megatron throw down... and thanks to boogie nights i have the song they throw down to memorized ("you got the touch!"). Actually you know it wasn't that bad... I was definitely ready for it to be over when it ended though... that non-stop barrage of robot fighting and heavy metal is better suited to kids I guess.
05.24.06	Hollywood's Top Secret Film Studio	Peter Kuran	A documentary on Lookout Mountain in Hollywood: the air force film studio that photographed all of the nuclear bomb testing as well as making educational and science films... It's only an hour long but I feel needs an entry because the footage is so awesome. I really want to see that Trinity movie now... but hearing these old guys talking about how far away they were from the explosions, how they photographed them, new techniques and technology innovated to capture and study the bombs, and their most exciting or wary moments in the field is truly captivating.
05.23.06	Open Your Eyes	Alejandro Amenabar	Kind of surprised how closely Crowe stuck to this for his Vanilla Sky; Add a few record albums and Truffaut references and they're virtually identical. So it's fitting that I feel about the same toward this as I did toward that: by the end I am pretty desensitized and don't really care anymore what is real and what's not. I'm fine in believing none of it's real or most of it or some of it... doesn't really matter in the end. Penelope Cruz seems hotter in this though, perhaps because she goes topless a few times... and instead of Underworld in the club scene they had Massive Attack which I thought was cool... both directors have taste in music. Still though, I guess the moral in this is either that women are crazy and shouldn't be trusted... or don't have casual sex.
05.23.06	The Deep	Peter Yates	This was remade as Into the Blue. This isn't the best movie in the world but it's like 30 times better than Into the Blue. OK so there's no Jessica Alba but instead you get young Jacqueline Bisset wearing a white t-shirt as she dives. And instead of Paul Walker you have a young Nick Nolte, Robert Shaw, and Louis Gosset Jr. plays the heavy. Oh yeah, Eli Wallach's also in it. Plus you have some really honest-to-goodness tense-ass underwater peril scenes, man... I actually caught myself holding my breath a few times and some of the footage they get down there is... well it really impressed me for a little movie that I had no expectations toward. It's a cool idea, a real adventure search-for-treasure story, told with cool characters played by cool actors. It's got the big guy from Hard Times that reminds me of Mike Mazurki too... there's a scene where he fight's Gosset's big muscly guy... it's sort of like a big muscly guy stand-off... and they pull an outboard motor into the fight. there are shots of this guy grabbing onto the thing with the rotor spinning. That's just crazy... There are extended underwater sequences where the audio is literally just the sound of bubbles and creaking iron. These scenes are very effective though... like I said, I was genuinely taken with the tension in this movie... I can't believe how crappy they made it with Into the Blue. Based on a Peter Benchley book with score by John Barry, this movie really surprised me. So I was looking at the imdb entry for this and it says that the tv version is like 53 minutes longer than the original theatrical cut. That can't be true - who knows with the imdb, I'm pretty sure anyone can say anything they want about a movie and 4-6 weeks later it shows up and becomes undisputed truth - but other comments do mention scenes in the tv version that don't appear on what i watched. The film as I saw it was a really really quick 125 minutes... very tight and lean. But one commenter said they added an hour and showed it on two nights which makes complete TV sense so A good hour of footage must be out there somewhere. IMDb also mentioned that it was released in Germany as a 35-minute selected scene edition. It's just another reminder how films can split into such radically different lives as it goes on through history... even if two people sit right next to each other and watch the exact same cut at the exact same time they take away different perceptions... imagine the difference between a 35-minute cut and a 180-minute cut! That really really geeks me out... like I bet there's some 16mm TV print of this floating around and I could get my friends to buy it and watch it with act break leader and the extra hour... and it's a completely different film than what's on DVD. But what's on DVD is really good too!
05.23.06	Hoop Dreams	Steve James	I guess I'm really behind the curve on this one... everybody already knows it's great... the thing that gets me is that it turns into a will-they-succeed story to a will-he-survive story and keeps a real tense balancing act between extreme success and heartbreaking tragedy. Way better than Crash, Roger.
05.22.06	High and Dry	Michael Toubassi	A doc on the Tuscon, AZ music scene. It goes back to 78 and basically covers my whole life's worth of music in that town.It's very comprehensive but subsequently also perhaps 15-20 minutes too long. Even though they are the only band I'd really heard before, the whole Machines of Loving Grace sequence would probably be better suited as a DVD extra. Length issues aside, it fulfilled the primary reason why I go to Music Mondays: to learn something new. Still, I can't help but make the connection between things people in this movie were saying about Tuscon and things I'm seeing here in Austin. Made it pretty interesting for me...
05.22.06	The Da Vinci Code	Ron Howard	hmmm... well OK. First of all, I think it's funny that when National Treasure came out everyone said it was a Da Vinci Code ripoff but now that this movie is finally out it's a National Treasure rip-off. Secondly, I think I want to state that I liked the book more for how fast of a read it was and all of the little Paris and Painting-y descriptions in the book than anything regarding the actual plot. So for me, watching this movie... it's like when I read it it went too fast for me to worry about it all making perfect sense but when I see it up on the screen all laid out for me It all seems... really ridiculous. So this guy is shot in the gut... better hurry and scrawl all of these encoded messages all over the place - anagrams that would take me like an hour to work out - and arranges himself to die just so all spread eagled and whatnot. Sure the movie explains it away but it's answered with an equivalent of the force in Star Wars... sure he was a genius at all that because that was like, his specialty. And she's good at it too because she was brought up that way... It just leaves the realm of reality for me very early on. So from there it's just an adventure story. it's no longer The Da Vinci code: bestseller with all-star cast and the safest bet to make money in town... So I can sort of see where the National Treasure thing comes back in. There's nothing in here so great or amazing to set it above National Treasure at all... at least not for me. So I always hated the albino in the book. I have no clue why he's an albino (aside from paying off the ghost/angel comparisons) and didn't like any of the self-flagellation stuff from the get-go so it's no surprise I found it boring in the movie... but I am a little surprised that I didn't like Hanks as Robert Langdon as much as I thought I would. I'm a bit fan of intellectual protagonists... people that can think out solutions rather than punch their way to victory... and I suppose I'm a fan of them because they are much harder to right and perform... but here was a case (in the book at least) where both are done pretty well. In the movie though... I don't know, he seems flat. And the dialogue they give him doesn't help any... with all of these visual effects and clever techniques to show him working out anagrams or visualizing statues, you'd think you wouldn't need him to speak random thoughts all the time... recapping what the dozing audience might've missed, restating what he's doing all the time. It was to the point where, again, it felt unrealistic to me. So, like everyone else, I was kind of underwhelmed by the movie and thought Ian McKellan was the best part. I didn't hate the movie, didn't dislike the movie... i was never really super bored while watching it, but it didn't set my heart on fire either. Won't pick it up on DVD. In many ways I think it's a lot like the book though. It's cerebral without ever being challenging, interesting without ever being educational (yes everybody, this is fiction); the only difference is the movie lacks that page-turning excitement that made the book such a fun read. Sure, that means, for people like me, the one good thing about it was taken away... but still. It does make me sad though how despite nearly every review being at least lukewarm it still made so much money. It says to me that film criticism really is dead... it's just people going through the motions to see movies for free now as far as I'm concerned. Maybe it's because the movie deals with Christianity so everybody discredits all the reviews for being intentionally inflammatory (definitely a possibility. i know i did) or maybe you just can't stop everyone that read the book from seeing the movie but still.. at what point do you take the critics' word for it? So oh well. It's out, I've seen it, moving on.
05.21.06	Girl Shy	Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor	An alamo event with live score supplied by local band Django's Mustache... It was a much better fit than Fantastic Planet set to random Chicago tunes but it still felt like the band just played their songs to the movie, pairing sad songs with sad scenes and happy songs with happy scenes. Since it was a trio with jazz guitar, rhythm guitar, and tuba the sound "fit" well enough with the movie but it still didn't compare to White Ghost Shivers' score to Sherlock, Jr. and Cops. Plus it helps that I am a much bigger Keaton fan than Lloyd but oh well, tonight was still fun and pretty unique. The movie has its moments. The end chase scene is really well done and there are several cool gags going on... actually the movie's pretty good, i should give it more credit. It certainly held my attention for 80 minutes and got a few laughs out of me. What I thought most funny though was that there were a few White Ghost Shivers that sat next to me for the movie. I was pretty close to the front of the theater so I didn't want to put down the band and have them overhear me but I really wanted to lean over and tell them that they did a much better job.
05.20.06	Poseidon	Wolfgang Petersen	more mediocre action from Wolfgang Petersen... oooh, watch TV actors drown! At least they kept the dead bodies floating around throughout the movie... like they all weren't flushed into the ocean right away... but for a disaster movie it's pretty drab and boring, severely uninvolving... I guess you just can't rely on star power like back in the 70s with the original where you didn't want Ernest Borgnine to die just because he's freakin Ernest Borgnine. Josh Lucas I can give or take.
05.19.06	2001 Maniacs	Tim Sullivan	it seems very much like a crappy modern-day remake of a classic cheapo old horror movie. it's got hot chicks that go topless, lots of high-key lighting and fake heads, and people trying to act like hicks rather than actually being hicks. Robert Englund is cool and all in a certain kind of way but here it just seems like... i don't know, like Freddy Krueger Presents: 2001 Maniacs. Still a few moments of fun gore... they certainly got their money's worth out of the fake heads... but you know... it's all the heavy metal remake of the original song and cheesy dialogue and whatnot... bah.
05.19.06	Date Movie	Aaron Seltzer	this makes Scary Movie 4 look like The Godfather... i blame all the heavy tv finales for putting me in a mood for a light comedy and having to sit through this because i hate "walking out" of movies...
05.18.06	The Super Cops	Gordon Parks	Super Cops! This supposedly ultra-rare movie is like a mix between Serpico, The French Connection, and Gravy Train. It's about these two real life cops who worked so hard to clean up both the Bed Stuy streets and the NYPD corruption that they became known as Batman and Robin. They are played as sort of bumbling buddy-buddy cops though which gives the movie a quirky bent to it (not to mention the enormous amount of homosexual undertone... there's so much it's really a gay movie with cop undertones) that makes it pretty damn funny as well as a decent 70s cop movie. In fact, there's even an action scene where they're running through a condemned building and a wrecking ball starts destroying it. If only there was a random old black dude keeping chickens in a room on the top floor it would truly be a long-lost twin of Gravy Train... as it is though, it's just a first cousin. It was a really fun movie to watch with friends... It's a shame it's not more readily available.
05.17.06	Hells Angels on Wheels	Richard Rush	Fast and loose. I think that's how I'd put biker films now... not so much that the stuntpeople always take over but the whole vibe of a good biker film is just fast and loose. Of course I haven't seen all of the good biker films out there yet so I'm sure my personal definition will keep changing but it seems like most of them aren't particularly worried about following a specific story or plot. A sequence that could (and sometimes should) only take a few minutes in any other kind of movie has no problem stretching out and taking its time for 10 or 15 minutes in a biker film. It almost seems like the gang just rides around, sees something mildly interesting, and decides to shoot it and incorporate it into the film on a whim. It's not a bad thing though... along with the colorful supporting gang characters and free-wheeling rebellious worldview these random sequences are part of the charm of these movies, for me anyway. I still don't get the nazi thing, which exposes me as a severe non-biker, but oh well. As far as biker movies go this was pretty damn good. The team-up of Adam Roarke and Jack Nicholson really drives the movie for me... both of them are so good in this that seeing them face off on each other is really electric. Lots of good photography in here too by Laszlo Kovacs and a really great, albeit completely rushed ending. Really quick, the love triangle is between Roarke and Nicholson with a girl that's very free-loving and slightly nihilist. Roarke gives her to nicholson who starts loving her even though she's glad to lick Roarke's boots if he so wills it, but Roarke treats her like a moped. In the final scene, Nicholson proclaims that he'd marry her even with someone else's bun in her oven but when he starts a fight with Roarke over her honor, the girl throws Roarke a pipe! There's a great beat where Nicholson, who's arguably been winning the fight up to this point, looks at her, then Roarke, then the piece of wood he's holding, then her again, then Roarke again, then the wood again, then her again... then drops the wood and walks away. Nicholson really plays the hell out of that beat and makes it a highlight of the movie (character-wise at least, I'd say a few random bike stunts and fights are the actual highlights of the film). So stunt guy Gary Kent was in the house for the show and Lars brought him down and interviewed him a bit for us before the movie started. It was really interesting to hear what he had to say but also equally interesting to hear Lars' questions. It was exactly like Inside the Actor's Studio except instead of asking Julia Roberts about her work on Pretty Woman or whatever mainstream Hollywood version of movies that show covers, it was this completely different world of film populated with biker movies, obscure buddie comedies, and exploitation B-pictures. Just as much adoration going on, just as interesting stories, just as much connective tissue to other films that I now have to check out... except here we're talking about something that Actor's Studio fans have no clue about. I think so far the one big thing that the Alamo has done for me is open my eyes to this other world of film that exists on completely separate planes from the film school/TCM/AFI hierarchy of classics. I must say it's very exciting... I feel like I did the first time I saw movies like Sunset Boulevard or The Third Man all over again except this time I have a little context and maturity to put these experiences on.
05.17.06	Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire	Mike Newell	I still think it's about a half hour too short but in checking the deleted scenes I see there's only a couple minutes worth that wasn't included so... oh well. still good... but I think I'm gonna end up liking the third movie the most out of all 7.
05.16.06	A Clockwork Orange	Stanley Kubrick	The Alamo showed a British print of this with the waiters sressed up as Alex and his droogs. I guess I've forgotten how long it's been since I've seen this movie... it's one of those movies that you automatically buy on DVD but then just never watch, but I wasn't going to miss an opportunity to see it theatrically, that's for sure. I'm still mad I missed 2001 but I'm sure that'll come around again. Not much to say that hasn't already been said ten times over by other people... I'll just note that I liked it and wonder who did the erotic artwork that's on a lot of the walls in the first part of the movie. It's always stuck with me as one of the big things I remember about the whole film...
05.16.06	The Boys from Brazil	Franklin J. Schaffner	I was outside my highschool biology class one day working on a poster or something when I heard the audio from a video we were watching. It started off innocently enough, giving profiles of several healthy young boys across the world. "what do they all have in common?" the voice-over asked. "ADOLF HITLER!!!!" man I laughed for minutes. So I finally caught this movie on cable and am glad I saw it. Aside from the premise, there is nothing quite like seeing Greg Peck play Dr. Mengele. Everyone in this movie though... from Peck to Lawrence Olivier playing a nazi hunter to James Mason to Steve Guttenberg... they all seem to really be hamming it up. It gives the movie this really insane vibe... like it might all be some fever dream; like you have a hard time believing this movie was actually made. And I guess Olivier got an Oscar nom for this which is pretty incredible. I mean sure his accent's great but... really? It seems like his whole performance is a joke, like "if you want to see a REAL nazi then watch Marathon Man." I mean, I don't think this would be out of place at a Weird Wednesday even... except the fact that it was a major studio release and got several nominations and whatnot... Mengele's little Brazilian retreat filled with Moreau-ian freaks and random servants, the ugliness of this one nazi dude's wife, and the kid that plays the Hitler-clones... oh man, that kid. That kid is so great... He's not on-screen much and I guess this is like the only movie he ever did but that kid was great. Imagine a 9-year old Hitler saying things like "holy shit" and "heavy duty". He's clearly the highlight of this movie... especially the last scene he's in... I definitely wish the kid was in more of this... although the movie's worth watching for Peck alone as well. Strange movie.
05.15.06	Radio Revolution: The Rise and Fall of the Big 8	Michael McNamara	A doc about this AM radio station in Windsor, ON that played R&B and changed the way radio was presented... then died due to Canadian content restrictions that made them play crappy Canadian bands instead of rockin Detroit stuff. It's very much a TV doc but the subject matter is interesting and the interviews are enjoyable... good music monday that unfortunately almost no one came out to... makes me feel bad for kier-la... but this doc called her lucky because she lived in Windsor so... maybe it evens things out.
05.14.06	Monster-in-Law	Robert Luketic	man Jane Fonda is old.
05.13.06	Black Christmas	Bob Clark	so where to start with this...Negatives... the trailer is spoilerific... and i guess the moral of this story is remember you have an attic. OK now that that's out of the way, this movie is really great... probably the best Slasher film I've seen to date.I say it's the best because it's the first one to really draw me in and get me going. I usually judge these on the quality and originality of the inevitable one-by-one killings but this one, man... it's genuinely creepy! In fact, I think the death scenes are the weakest part of this movie, the strongest by far being the eerie-ass obscene phone calls and the chase scene that happens near the end. man that is intense (and completely spoiled by the trailer)... Bob Clark is a scary dude, man... IMDb tells me he plays the psycho dude and if that's true I've gotta hand it to him. He's got some real problems. Those phone calls creep me out. The rest of the movie is good too though... I did find myself saying "open the pod bay doors, HAL" whenever Keir Dullea was on-screen and the ultra-canadian hockey-playing fur pelt-wearing boyfriend that the Strange Brew girl has is pretty funny too... the house mother is great, John Saxon is great, Margot Kidder... who I usually can give or take, is actually pretty effective here as a cynical drunk, and they found the most awesome dude to play Strange Brew girl's dad... his head... is awesome. Plus it's just a really creepy thought to picture someone hanging out in your attic for days, watching you while you sleep, living like ten feet away from you and you not knowing it. still, you'd think the bodies would start to smell after a while, but maybe the canadian winter cold preserves them who knows... All I know is this was pretty awesome and I got a huge kick out of it. And I always thought When A Stranger Calls was the movie that made the whole "he's calling from inside the house!" shock famous... and I guess it may be but this movie kicks its ass and it was made like 5 years earlier. I guess it's the THX cue that really sells Stranger...
05.13.06	Must Love Dogs	Gary David Goldberg	...so I think the whole reason why Diane Lane suddenly realizes that John Cusack is the man for her was cut in some deleted scene somewhere... it makes no sense. Also, I completely don't buy that Diane Lane has a problem finding dates, but since I pretty much only watched the movie for Diane Lane I guess I brought that particular story inaccuracy on myself... oh well.
05.13.06	Vampires	John Carpenter	Wanted to watch this again because it's set in the desert... well, sort of set in the desert. When I first saw this, I was somewhat dispapointed. Looking back, I think that disappointment came from the fact that the entire slayer team is effortlessly cut to shreds 10 minutes into the movie. I really don't like that... the first Mission: Impossible did that too... Those supporting characters are like horror movie gold.. people like them then get sad when they die... like in The Thing. Seeing this again though and knowing that all those guys aren't long for this world... I liked it a bit better. It's like a precursor to Blade but their bullets don't have UV or silver or whatever in them so they just waste bullets until they stake them or drag them into sunlight. Aside from that though, I like this... I like how it's basically a western badass vs. vampires... Daniel Baldwin... Cheryl Lee even though she's pretty... yeah I still don't think it's Carpenter's best but it's ok...
05.12.06	Art School Confidential	Terry Zwigoff	So if you're not a fan of Terry Zwigoff or Daniel Clowes you can pretty much summarize this movie as those few scenes in Ghost World where she has to take the summer art class and everybody seems to like the crappiest stuff stretched out into an entire film. For me though, since I liked those scenes in Ghost World, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Still, the degree of jaded scathing cynicism going on here is borderline scary... like one less joke and it would be really too much (like Rules of Attraction), but luckily it never gets too heavy and there's always a funny person that I liked in other movies on-screen doing something I like. Pretty good! A good time! Terry Zwigoff is like 4 for 4 for me personally... ooh imdb tells me he did another doc before Crumb... must track that one down.
05.12.06	Mission: Impossible III	J.J. Abrams	So... yeah this is the best Mission: Impossible movie to date. In my eyes that's not saying much, but still... it does count for something. The action sequences are pretty well done and aside from a few cheeseball romantic dialogues about trust and whatnot, it's a pretty easy two hours to sit through. Hoffman plays a cool take on a bad guy and it was nice to see Cruise actually use his support team (and have them not all die five minutes into the movie... poor emilio estevez)... although with all the locations in the world you'd think they could use one not already the setting of a major badass action sequence in True Lies AND Bad Boys 2... in any case, I still don't understand why Cruise was thrown to the side when something blew up behind him, but I guess it doesn't matter... the tension was up and I was feeling the scene. I liked it.
05.12.06	The Devil and Daniel Johnston	Jeff Feuerzeig	Yay for Alamo triple feature fridays!!! Today I'm playing catch-up with first runs... starting off with this doc about sometimes Austinite musician Daniel Johnston. He's a good musician but... you know... crazy. Still though, he has an interesting story so it's a decent doc... even if I don't get his music that much. Sad story... I'm glad I'm not crazy.
05.11.06	Motel Hell	Kevin Connor	I now live in a world where Brian has seen Motel Hell. When I was at QT6, this is the one trailer that they showed that most made me want to go out right away and see the movie. I tried to netflix it and the DVD became unavailable so I finally got to see it tonight thanks to Terror Thursday. I guess the big thing about this is that it's the movie where the old couple bury people up to their necks in a secret garden and keep canvas sacks over their heads except when it's time to feed them with a snorkel hooked up to a funnel or hypnotise them into submission before using the tractor to break their necks. This is ALSO the movie where a guy puts on a pig mask and runs around with a chainsaw... it's actually kind of strange; most of the movie is pretty hilarious (and I get an intentional vibe from the humor, there's a great running joke about learning the secrets of smoking meat that killed) but then there's this one scene where the guy comes out in a pig mask and he cackles away while they have a chainsaw fight that's actually genuinely pretty creepy for me... and then it goes back to being funny. For those few minutes though it flipped over to the dark side and delivered some pretty sweet creepy images... So this breaks the streak of seeing bad movies. Yay for it being a really fun time at Terror Thursday! Side note: it was pretty packed tonight and the crowd was great... a complete 180 from last week... yay for that.
05.11.06	The Sentinel	Clark Johnson	This was mediocre for the most part... Just another in that steady stream of diversions... like the Alex Cross movies that Morgan Freeman did or whatever... It didn't bore me but I'll probably never see it again... or if I do it'll have to be at least three years later when I forget all the details. Actually, the only really notable thing about this movie is its use of completely context-free quick montages of various generic threats and islamic jihads that seem to serve as segues between scenes. The whole movie had a real Enemy of the State style where it keeps cutting to some faceless big brother taking telephoto lensed pictures of everybody and thigns like that, but these bursts of random words overlayed on shots of DC are really laughably out of place and never serve any meaning to the movie. I really don't know what was going on with them because Clark Johnson's work on The Shield has been really great and aside from the third act completely falling apart I enjoyed S.W.A.T. Maybe he's saying that the world is full of threats so when he shows the city he wants to show all of the aggression out there that the secret service need to protect the president from... either that or they needed to fill time. blaaaaaaah
05.10.06	The Toolbox Murders	Dennis Donnelly	RV ruined this too... this isn't a good enough movie to undo the damage that RV did so it had little chance right from the get go. A few scenes are kind of creepy just for the sheer psycho-factor but for the most part it was a bit too slow and too long for me this particular night. I'm curious to see the remake though
05.10.06	R.V.	Barry Sonnenfeld	horrible. Note to self: If I'm ever directing a movie and the funniest joke in the entire thing is a huge picture of myself plastered up onto the side of a RV so I have to go back to it over and over again, it's time to call up Alan Smithee.
05.10.06	Thief	Michael Mann	tryiing to catch up on my early Mann before Miami Vice comes out... This is a movie that's always slipped through the cracks for one reason or another with me... It's pretty good though... certainly no Heat but then again, what is? As usual, the procedural details of robbing seem completely authentic here... Michael Mann definitely knows how to lay that stuff out... he also has to have a completely out of the blue relationship for no reason other to show how cold James Caan's character can be... much like DeNiro in Heat. Still a good movie though... man am I looking forward to Miami Vice.
05.09.06	One Last Thing...	Alex Steyermark	so... the first hour was tolerable and then it descended into laughable... a Bad movie. On the other hand, I really like that Johnny Messner dude... not in a gay way or anything like that, but I think he does more than what he's given. he reminds me of big Pete Bondurant from Ellroy's American Underworld trilogy... like a really big muscly dude who's very aware of his capabilities but also sort of has more than that going on in his head... Other than that though... this is like Win a Date with Tad Hamilton meets The Girl Next Door... but not as good.
05.09.06	Boogie Nights	Paul Thomas Anderson	It's hard to believe that DVD is 9 years old. I believe it was the summer of 97 that I first saw the test market releases of The Wild Bunch, Goodfellas, Bonnie & Clyde, and Cool Hand Luke in Warner Brothers snapper cases on the shelves of Suncoast in the mall. With a little help from porn, DVD had taken off by the winter and all the major studios had committed to DVD releases by the next spring. I bring all of this up because Boogie Nights was the first movie for me where DVD elevated my enjoyment of the movie from Like to Love. When I first saw it in the theater, I was surprised by its quality but still felt it was just a porno version of Goodfellas. When the DVD came out though, oh man. Not only did it have a nifty mini-collage of stills on the paper fold-out, but it also had a music video directed by PTA, a commentary track, and 9 deleted scenes. Back then, that was a lot. Also back then, the 9 deleted scenes were actually deleted scenes... meaning scenes that were well worth watching if you were a fan of the movie, not just alternate takes or 15 seconds of snipped footage at the tail of a scene. One of these scenes was actually a full mag's worth of film; like 10 minutes of in-character improv of everyone trying to act in a porn movie and forgetting lines. I think this is the exact moment that I became a luis Guzman fan for life. Also, the commentary track still stands as one of the most interesting and easy to listen to tracks I've heard... I REALLY wish PTA would start recording them again... the tracks he laid down for his first two movies are amazing. So, as a byproduct of getting the nifty DVD, I watched this movie an awful lot. Every time I'd see it I'd notice something new; some minute detail going on in the background with a supporting character that adds to the immersiveness and authenticity of this world that PTA recreated. The first half of this movie is pretty hard to beat for me... it evokes my absolute best memories as a child in the Valley on hot summer days... My parents weren't pornographers or anything but just the palm trees and tiki torches and hanging out by the pool in the perfect weather and everything like that... it really gets it perfectly in my eye. I do have early memories of coming home from school and passing the Pussycat theater though... and all of the cars and fashions and houses in this movie seem absolutely right to me... And now that I think of it, I think this may be the movie that I've seen the most times without ever seeing it in pan&scan... Actually no, I think it's a close tie between this, The Big Lebowski, and Fight Club... but still... this was an early one that I've only seen in widescreen, which I only notice on a consciouss level because there's so much going on in the framing of this movie. With everything going on in the background, you can't afford to not see the whole screen. So anyway... this feels long and rambling. I still love this movie... it IS a tad long, and the title cards are apt because the last half hour is a long way down, but it's a good long and I don't mind...
05.08.06	Milano Calibro 9	Fernando Di Leo	Another Di Leo... I liked this one as well but probably not as much as Il Boss or Mister Scarface... not because it's bad but just because it doesn't quite as many OMFG moments. There's still some great stuff in here though and the storyline is again a very interesting take on a fairly overdone storyline. The last scene in particular is amazing... and how the Rocco character transforms throughout the film... Plus this is officially the movie that made my jaw drop for Barbara Bouchet... wowza... i HAVE to see Amuck now at some point just to see her rock it out with Rosalba Neri... HAVE TO. The main dude in this is also really good... he's a potato-head gorilla-looking dude that reminds me of a Ray Winstone/Ron Perlman lovechild... he's got a really intense stare and doesn't say much for like the first 45 minutes of the movie until Bouchet pops up on screen... It's cool how Di Leo managed to use such difference presences in his leading badasses as this guy, Henry Silva, and the dude from Rulers of the City to equally cool effect. He plays all of their strengths really well... they come off great on-screen. There's also a line that pops up late in the movie... Rocco calls what the main character Ugo did during the movie "The Big Screw." is that a name for a movie or is that a name for a movie? Porn Noir comes to mind. And one more thing... there's a really great scene around halfway through where an old blind ex-boss, Ugo, and Ugo's friend Kino (a badass in his own right, but more of an independant worker than a family-man) walk and talk about the current state of the mafia and how it doesn't exist anymore. All of this mafia stuff in actual Italian films seems 200% more authentic and informed than any of the American stuff I think... I guess that makes sense that it should be that way but still... it's interesting in the little ways that that verisimilitude oozes out.
05.08.06	The Phantom of Liberty	Luis Bunuel	whether it's supposed to mean anything or not, I still don't 100% get why it's not supposed to mean anything... but still i like Bunuel because he's a perv. This one plays out like Slacker, replacing philosophy with surrealism and austin with hot women in stockings. I don't exactly feel like I wasted my time watching this, but I can't figure out why. Weird movie, man... Bunuel was working on another plane altogether...
05.07.06	Dellamorte, Dellamore	Michele Soavi	AKA Cemetery Man... hmm... I guess I just never connected with this movie's vibe. I guess other people really like this... who am I to say they're wrong. I didn't get it though... too wonky for me.
05.07.06	Rabbit-Proof Fence	Phillip Noyce	So I don't know if 2002 was just a good year for Noyce or if he's been biten by a radioactive dust mote or something because both this and Quiet American are like 10 times better than I could've expected from him. Maybe he was just stuck in the wrong niche with all that Tom Clancy Bone Collector stuff... this is really great.
05.06.06	Jaws	Steven Spielberg	this is the kind of movie where if you see five minutes of it somewhere it makes you want to sit down and watch the whole thing. well, I saw five minutes of it at Eric's the other night so...
05.06.06	Eddie and the Cruisers	Martin Davidson	Eddie! Eddie! Eddie!
05.06.06	The Satan Bug	John Sturges	Sometimes it's cool to sit down and watch a movie knowing absolutely nothing about it other than the title and director. This one's a precursor to The Andromeda Strain... basically someone steals some super-potent chemical weapon and it's up to the main dude to track it down and get it back before it's released and kills the world. I think the best way to describe this would be mediocre... it wasn't bad but not really anything worth remembering forever either... This has to be an early movie for Ed Asner but aside from that it's just a convoluted near-disaster pic. It's set in a top-secret base somewhere in the Southern California desert though which coincidentally jibes with an idea I've been kicking around for a story/script... I think the best way to pull off creepy during the day is to set it in the desert... As a kid I was really freaked out that we were gonna drive through Death Valley in one of the family road trips... like the place is so bad they didn't bother even trying to make it sound ok. Plus you get a whole bunch of things like mirages and oases and roadkill and rattlers and whatnot... I remember seeing one of those snakes horror movies where they're driving through the desert and there are like 100 snakes baking on the road and they drive over them and the car gets all bloody. later, an irradiated snake bites a dude and he turns into a snake and his woman gets terrorized. I seem to remember it being like the third part in a franchise... no clue what the name of it was. ANYWAY, this was set in the desert...
05.06.06	12 Angry Men	Sidney Lumet	You can't get much better than this movie for character acting and direction. The first time I sat down to watch this movie I really thought it was gonna suck. Since I'm not a fan of play adaptations and this movie was described to me as a dozen guys sitting in one room talking for an hour and a half... well let's just say I wasn't excited. I was wrong though and still with every viewing continue to be surprised by how tight and even this movie is... In his book Lumet wrote that he saved money by shooting every shot set against a certain wall in the entire film before moving the camera and having to re-light... the amount of cutting he does around the room as the movie progresses really makes me wonder how they hell he could pre-plan it out to that extent. It's completely seemless, from the level of emotion in each actor to the amount of sweat soaking through their shirt. I marvel at how he shot the movie this way... I'm not sure it could be done by anyone that wasn't working at the top of his game in hour-long live TV every week. just incredible... and I don't know if it's just me but Fonda's close-ups throughout the movie give it this whole other layer... like he starts off being the innocent idealistic Fonda type and by the end he's sort of succumbed to human nature a bit... he's happy that he's won everyone over and it's down to Lee J. Cobb alone... It's so subtle that it may very well just be me, but I always think to myself if Fonda's character had some sort of ulterior motive going into that room or if he was just the inhumanly reasonable guy he portrayed himself to be... Stuff like bringing in that second knife showed he had serious doubts while the trial was going on, yet he certainly played the room in the beginning, giving off the vibe that he more or less voted not guilty just so they could talk about it for a while and not condemn the kid to death right off the bat. I don't know... what I do know is that this is a fantastic movie and should be dissected in film schools everywhere. How Lumet manages to make the same room seem like different sets throughout the movie is just incredible... Like certain shots you think start off as panning shots until one of the jurors looks into camera and you realize that it's Fonda's POV instead... and that final top-down shot at the very end is amazing... showing us that after all it's just a table in a room. This is also like a how-to guide to be an amazing character actor. I just can't go on about this movie enough. I really need to stop catching it randomly on TV and pick up the DVD. Side Note: We've had hellish storms with hail and tornado watches and whatnot the past two nights in a row and it looks like a third is on its way in right now... my little Desktop Weather Channel program says there's a flood warning and offers advice: "When water covers the road... turn around. Don't drown." Man, what would I do without the Weather Channel to keep me safe.
05.04.06	Zombie	Lucio Fulci	So when I first saw this movie I thought it was pretty slow with a few great gore scenes. I felt like I didn't like it as much as I should have. Ooh, an opportunity for a paragraph of mini-blog! There was a local video store right on my way home from middle school and high school. My parents lived way the hell out of town so there was really nothing much out there except trees, cows, and antique shops. So pretty much every day I would stop at this video store and rent one or two movies to watch that night after getting my homework done or whatever... SOmetimes I would spend like an hour in this tiny little shop trying to decide what I wanted to see that night. For the most part my parents were cool with what I was renting... occasionally there would be some discussion, like if I wanted to rent Evil Dead 2 or Faces of Death I'd get a raised eyebrow or two... but mostly they'd cave in and let me watch what I wanted to watch. So I pretty much scoured every wall in that tiny little video store (except the porno corner) through my formative years... and I think I still have a lot of video covers burned in my brain from spending so much time in there looking around. But the two movies I never had the gall to even try and rent because I didn't want to have the conversation that they would cause with my parents were Zombie and I Spit on your Grave. The latter because of the title (and the picture of the bloody nearly-naked woman holding a knife on the cover) and the former because of the zombie's too-real looking face on the cover. I would look at that and think "man, no way... that's too gross to even look at for them. I better not even try." So, later on when I actually saw both of them, I liked I Spit on your Grave a lot more than Zombie and thought that there was something wrong with that. So - man this entry is bloggish, sorry - tonight I went to see this Film Geek movie at South Lamar but a huge freakin storm knocked out the power and made us all afraid for baseball-sized hail for a few minutes until the Alamo employees let us go outside and we saw that it was just raining. Funny enough, everything south of the river was dark but as soon as I crossed the bridge it was fine; Downtown was cool as always. So I went ahead and caught this at midnight, figuring I could re-evaluate my opinion of it now that I've seen several other Fulci movies and have a more acquired sense of his vibe. Plus I'd never seen it theatrically and how are you gonna pass up an opportunity to see zombie vs. shark on the big screen (although that's not my favorite scene). Unfortunately, it seemed that the thunderstorm kept all of the courteous people at home and only the rude and/or drunk made it out to the show. It was like the whole audience was watchingTommy Boy or something and I was stuck in some alternative universe with a movie that is actually not that funny. I don't understand it, man... this is the first time I've really understood how QT says "don't laugh AT the movie, laugh with it. you are not cooler than this movie" because usually when there's a bad seed in the Alamo he's just talking... but tonight I actually felt bad for the movie, like it was the kid in school with the hand-me-down clothes that other kids laugh at even though it's not his fault. Like every line had someone cackling to make himself look cool, at least I'm guessing that's why they were laughing. Maybe there was a nitrous oxide leak in the back of the theater or something, I can't be sure, but it got really annoying. I feel bad complaining about laughter because i feel like a nazi wishing people would stop having fun but geez... Oh man the voice that i'm hearing doesn't exactly match the mouth on the screen HILARIOUS! And it's like Marcus said when he learned Lars had his hands full at South Lamar: "The talkers will take over now, especially with this movie." He was right, too... How do you even complain when the majority of the theater is joining along... they managed to even find something funny with my favorite scene in the movie (where they decide to rest in a conquistadore cemetary and the all the zombies come up out of the ground set to that laconic main theme). There is nothing funny about that scene, why are you laughing!? Oh well, it happens sometimes. This isn't meant as a formal complaint to the Alamo or anything... so many people were doing it that I didn't see how it could be fixed, even with lars there. Just a bad crowd, it happens... It's a shame though because I really dug the movie more this time around and would've actually gotten into it were it not for the insistent laughter. Clapping and cheering after a good gore scene is great, but laughing for no reason or just because a gag doesn't look 100% real bugs me. It's weird that it's taken me so long to experience that I guess... oh well. Next week is Motel Hell and I'm really looking forward to that... let's hope the wheather's better so there'll be more people shhh-ing than heckling.
05.03.06	Hollywood Babylon	Van Gulder	After the movie ended, Lars turned to me and said "52 movies a year; it's not easy." Such is his apology for tonight's Weird Wednesday film. The funny thing is I got a kick out of it. The movie is adapted from Kenneth Anger's book which apparently details all of Old Hollywood's scandals and dirty little secrets in explicit detail (i have to read this book now). Apparently, Anger sued after this movie was made and tried to get all the prints burned. Thankfully, one print spent 30 years in this place and that and finally ended up in the projector spooling out for tonight's modest crowd to see. So... a lot of people walked out of this one. I think a lot of that had to do with Lars' underselling the movie in his intro... But granted, the movie is made up entirely of grainy archival footage from silent films or badly shot orgy scenes with early-70s softcore actors. Neither looks particularly good and the sex is not very hot at all. What saves this film is the voice over narration. I really hope he's reading passages directly out of the book because there is some great imagery there... phrases like "sloshing bucket of sin", "of equine dimensions" and "smelled of human urine and donkey dung" fill this movie's soundtrack. The whole entire text reads like a salacious supermarket tabloid backdated to the 1920s. In fact, sometimes whatever the narrator's talking about would drift away from the meaningless sex on the screen... he'd be talking about the moral decline of society or going on with a whole treatise on film history and meanwhile you're staring at one girl sucking on another girl's nipple. And then there are the newsreel footage going on and on in between scandalous vignettes, giving us the context of world wars, LA history and the comedic superstars of the day. Maybe it's just that I'm a film history nut, but I really got a kick out of this stuff. You get to see a Fatty Arbuckle "type" naked and hear everyone groan, then see him use a bottle on a nympho and kill her (no blood). You get to see a Charlie Chaplin "type" fall in love with a little girl and knock her up, then insist on never doing it "the old-fashioned way" again. Then he tries to teach her some oral techniques and she refuses to learn so we get the treat of seeing extended shots of an actor that in no way looks like Charlie Chaplin moaning and groaning and eventually finishing his business with another girl while the first one watches and learns. "Learning is the most important part." Marion Davies, Marlene Dietrich and Josef von Sternberg, Rudolph Valentino, Erich von Stroheim, Clara Bow, and several other stars of the silver screen all get exceptionally sordid recreations of their darkest desires... It's all so seedy and grimy... I don't know what to say other than I got a kick out of it. Afterward, we all watched in a group as they brought out all of Quentin's prints to be delivered back to their home. There ended up being like 37 containers (we didn't see Dion Brothers though... he must've kept that one in his hands at all times) laying out all in a row in the lobby. I got a pic with my phone but it sucks... so that sucks. It was cool to see them all though... memories of a week-long fest sitting there all together. whew.
05.02.06	Grandma's Boy	Nicholas Gloossen	Pretty stupid as expected. You know though... it's actually surprisingly entertaining for me... but maybe not if you don't like video games or Nick Swardson. Although if you are a Linda Cardellini fan (ahem, Ryan) you should definitely see this for the scene where she drunkenly karaoke's Salt N Peppa's Push It... and I have no clue how they got Kool Keith to write a song for this movie but that's some pretty serious indie hip hop cred right there... it surprised me, considering this movie was supposed to be unforgiveably bad. I like all of Adam Sandler's the supporting crew though so... I guess that adequately explains why I liked it. I am guilt-free in my liking it now...
05.01.06	The Taking of Pelham One Two Three	Joseph Sargent	Went over to Eric's house and watched his 16mm print of this movie along with a reel of trailers, an educational documentary on sharks (manhunter or myth, directed by Jorn something), and five minutes of his Jaws TV print that had several subtle differences that really threw me for a loop. It was pretty awesome to sit around watching film projected on a screen like that... like hints of the new wave crew hanging out or something like that. I know nothing about film collecting but dealing with the actual film like that is pretty cool. Eric's print of Pelham was moderately red and a TV print so there were random bits of blank leader in there marking commercial breaks as well as a few omissions of swear words but for the most part it was the same and I doubt i'll se eit projected on film in a theater anytime soon so it was pretty freakin cool to watch it like this. and now it is time for sleep.
04.30.06	The Girl from Starship Venus	Derek Ford	Quentin on stage: "It's really hard for a film to follow Pretty Maids all in a Row... near impossible. I have one though." He proceeds to go into another fantastic intro about The Girl from Starship Venus, sort of half what he said when it played a month ago and half more in-depth explanation on where he saw it it's unavailability and the way exploitation film exhibition worked back then and what it's like to sit through so many bad movies and finally see a good one, but having to keep that happy memory to yourself for 13 years because absolutely nobody else has seen it and it's pointless to bring it up because all that'll happen is they'll want to see it and not be able to. He talked again about holding onto memories in leiu of DVD or video... and also said that he's got some pretty brag-worthy prints in his collection but this print of Starship Venus is up there as far as he's concerned. It's nearly impossible to find and he's happy to share it with us again, the first time in 9 years since QT1. Then he told us that, in this festival of so much great movie music and catchy theme songs, all of them (Hollywood Man included) PALE in comparison to the these song to this movie. He fully expected each and every one of us to be singing along by the end and even went so far as to tell us the lyrics to the chorus ahead of time so we wouldn't mess them up. Then the lights went down and for the last time we saw a Best of QT fest movie. Just to add to my notes from the first time I saw this, I just love the lines "I'm in need of refueling" and "pleasure is my intent... presently." The supporting male cast is great in this... the theater lech and the wedding lech are fantastic... unbelievably so. The actual star? well who knows.. she doesn't actually do that much acting. They managed to structure the film in such a way that she never really needs to emote or even say lines. It's a really great trick actually, because with so much voice over telling the story they can get away with long drawn out sex scenes over and over again. Like the last 15 minutes of the movie is one superlong softcore sex scene with pages and pages of voice over laid on top of it. It's like a Reservoir Dogs level of what kind of movie is feasible on a tiny budget, except sex instead of crime. I also have to give it up again for the bushy stripper. her scene goes on forever too but the faces she gives as she vibrated her ass or contorts her body is classic. also, the baloon scene went over well and I still contend it's the best scene in the movie, but I also got a real kick out of some of the porno titles that cover all the windows and walls in poster form all around Soho. I have no clue if these are real movies or not but with names like Let's Get Laid, Sex of their Bodies, Love-Hungry Girls, and (my favorite) Sore Throat... they are hilarious, intentional or no. So the crowd ate it up and when the music started coming in at the end of the movie people started clapping along with it. The chorus kicked in and I could hear people singing around us "Cuz she's the... Girl from starship Venus and she came from outer space! And she came down to our planet to observe the human race! She's got turned on to permissiveness now she keeps up with the pace! She's the interstellar traveller of love!" The movie ended. The lights came up. The crowd didn't stop clapping. Instead, people hopped up out of their chairs and turned to face Quentin, not cheering the movie anymore but the man who's nice enough to keep bringing them back here and showing them to us. For a while he sat there sort of letting it happen, probably thinking of something to say... then he stands up and yells "see you at QT7!!!" After some chatting in the lobby and on the street, we all felt the buzz still buzzing even though it was 12:30 already. So we went to Eric's house to watch some random 16mm stuff and I got to ogle all of his amazing film geek artifacts and memorabilia. He had this truly bizarre educational film about handicapped people in the workplace starring a young Michael Keaton with a huge list of cameos and some truly un-PC things going on like a Busby Berkely musical number with people in wheelchairs... Some Clash of the Titans TV Spots... some cool trailers and little snippets of film, hanging out until late night then doing early breakfast at Jim's until 5:30... I ended up having another all-nighter just to come down off the high QTfest put me on. It seemed a lot shorter this time around and even though it's only 7 days instead of 9, there were only 20 films shown this time versus 30 so it's definitely got me looking forward to QT7 already.
04.30.06	Pretty Maids All in a Row	Roger Vadim	No pre-fest dinner tonight. The habit formed over the week came to an abrupt end when people realized the movies started at 7 tonight instead of 8. Apparently we were not the only ones taken aback by this... Quentin totally thought it started at 8 as well and went out for a burger until someone got in touch with him and got him back here. In the meantime, Rebecca Campbell from AFS asked for a show of hands who made it to every screening in the fest. There was about 30 of us that cheered in hardcore pride... Then she said that Quentin and Unruly Julie had graciously bought everyone with real dedication a free t-shirt and drink. Since I had already bought a t-shirt and wasn't planning to drink tonight, I opted out of standing in line. Instead I revelled in secret glory of seeing every instant of two QTfests... not even leaving for bathroom breaks during the films. Am I the most hardcore in the land? well I'm too modest to answer... but yes. Stalling for time, Tim started up the first reel of Psycho From Texas... As soon as he mentioned the title, all the weird wednesday regulars burst into loud raucas appreciation. If you're a fan of exploitation cinema and haven't seen this movie then you really need to, man. no excuses. It gave me another chance to see the ridiculously children-in-peril flashback sequences and hear the amazing "yesterday... was a long time ago" song about how Wheeler learned to rape and murder and mess his mind up with sweet wine. Almost unfortunately, Quention showed up about 8 minutes in and they stopped the movie (to numerous Boos). Tim smiled and said "I just realized that that's probably the most evil thing I could do to you all." and gave us some info about how apparently when this movie first came out it was only 64 minutes long and rated PG. So, in an effort to boost ticket sales, they went back and shot some sex and violence in the form of the numerous flashback sequences that pepper the entire film. I think in a perfect world, Quentin would've come in, seen that Psycho from Texas was playing, and decided to make the night a triple feature and just let it play. Oh well. Also, during the beginning titles I heard this little clicking sound that repeated nearby. I looked around a bit and saw that Lars was snapping his fingers along to the music. Not looking for attention or anything like that, just enjoying the hell out of the movie and music. When the "yesterday" song started in a looked over and saw him mouthing the words to it, not just the chorus either... verses too. What can I say, it is a great song. So instead of watching all of Psycho from Texas, Quentin came up and apologized for being late ("Not being a rock star or anything, I just thought it started at eight") and introduced Pretty Maids All in a Row. OK, so... if you don't know anything about this film, try to imagine this. Roger Vadim, the dirty Frenchman who married and slept with Brigitte Bardot (he directed ...And God Created Woman), married and slept with Jane Fonda (he direct Barbarella), and slept with (don't think she married her) Catherine Deneuve, came to America and made this movie about highschool cheerleaders. In Quentin's words, "if I'm gonna watch a movie about highschool cheerleaders, I don't want some sensitive decent man making it, I want an old French lech making it!" (as he makes a hand gesture suggesting an upskirt shot)... He is very true. He then went on to list the cavalcade of 70s sexploitation starlets that appear as the pretty maids in this film (including one named Joy Bang, how apt), and then goes into an extended dissertation on why everybody in this movie is amazing. He says he actually likes the young virgin guy in this (he usually doesn't, thinks they're always wimps), that he "has a hard part and he pulls it off" (snickers build to outright laughter as Quentin waits and waits and it never quiets down so finally he cracks up and sayd "he had a difficult role, and he succeeded"), Angie Dickinson in the sexiest role she's ever done - a truly pre-MILF-terminology MILF (although she's not a mom ("There are other sex scenes that ring my bell and boil my oil but there are no other seduction scenes that ring my bell and boil my oil like Angie's in this")) - Telly Savales honing his awesomality in preparation for Kojak and most notably Rock Hudson as Tiger, the gym coach/guidance counselor who's sleeping with all the cheerleaders. He says he anticipates... maybe seven and a half minutes of snickering before we forget that while he's kissing the girls he's actually thinking about the football players and just believe that he is this womanizing dude. Oh, and it's also a murder mystery! Gene Roddenberry of Star Trek fame wrote and produced this (Quentin said it's the only post-Star Trek thing he put out) and they even have Scotty himself James Doohan in a small role as a cop in this! So it's really basically the best movie ever made and we're all in for such a treat. He's pretty much right. The movie's really well-made but also just dirty and lecherous... like any time he could Vadim put in shots of really hot young women doing handstands or wearing miniskirts and shot from low angles or whatever. Everything Quentin said was true.. the young virgin guy kid did a great job... even with Angie Dickinson's breast in his eye socket, Rock Hudson is sporting a mustache and some hippy garb during the scenes with him at home and comes off completely as the type who likes to sleep with underage girls, Angie Dickinson... well... let's just leave that unsaid. Telly Savalas rocks his sunglasses perched on top of his bald head for the whole movie and other actors like Roddy McDowel, Keenan Wynn, and James Doohan all fill their supporting roles really well. The murder mystery's not really so much a mystery, but it's enough of a story to keep the movie moving and make all of us feel like dirty old men for seeing so much panty-clad ass that it almost gets old (almost)... There's also some really great lines like Rock Husdson asking a cheerleader (as he's undressing her in his car) "Did you ever want to say to the world, 'I Defy You'?" The young virgin guy gets so mixed up when he's trying to talk to Angie Dickinson that he says his dad's rich, then corrects himself "oh wait, my mom's rich, my dad's dead." At one point so many bodies are showing up that he says (can't remember exactly) "we never have gym on days where people are murdered." It's just a really fun really great really sexy (in a lecherous way) movie... Afterward Quentin mentioned that at several points he stopped and thunk to himself "is this the best movie ever made!?" and thought that for all those stuck up intelligencia film snob types, making a movie that makes you wonder if it's the best movie ever made is pretty good in his book. He also mentioned before the movie that the women who he sees this movie with usually get catty while talking about Angie Dickinson. They're all like "yeah, but she's old... not looking so great... blah blah blah" and Quentin's like NO! So afterward he said a lot of women came up to him and said "I don't know what kind of bitches you're watching this film with, Angie Dickinson was HOT!" True feeling or just an excuse to talk to Quentin? Either way, they are absolutely right.
04.29.06	The Legend of the Wolf Woman	Rino Di Silvestro	To end the night (it's like 8AM, is it still last night?), Quentin played the infamous Legend of Wolf Woman. He explained how way back in QT1 they had a few spots on the last night for encore presentations of the most popular movies and this was one of the encores simply because people wanted to make sure they actually saw what they think they saw. Since this played last at the first QTfest marathon, people could not be 100% sure if it was demensia or bad dreams or what so they had to watch it again. Also, Quentin said one of the good things about this movie is instead of having to wait like an hour for the good stuff to start happening like in those old 50s sci-fi movies, we get the woman-to-wolf transformation during the beginning titles. No messing around here, we get right into it... Naked girl writhing on the ground and sporting furry tittles not even five minutes into the movie! He then thanked everyone for staying and with that the movie started. Now, for anybody who's been through an all-night marathon type situation.. you know that unique headspace that you can pretty much only get into by seeing more than 5 movies in a row. Double features.. yeah they are fun.. triple features are a full night of movie-watching... but once you get past five in a row, it's like a trip to the desert while on opiates or a weekend spent in a sweat lodge type situation. One of my highlights for QT6 was seeing R. Kelly's Urban Opera before the last movie at that marathon... and seeing what I think I saw last July when Devil Fetus flashed in front of my dazed and confused eyes. So the slot of the last movie in a marathon like this is very specific and very important. If it's a movie like Blood Spattered Bride, it won't work. People will fall asleep. If it's a movie like Twisted Nerve where you have to think more than just a tiny little bit, it won't work. People are too tired to sleep. In my limited experience, I hold Devil Fetus as standard. Nothing takes advantage of that uniquely cinematic altered state like a flat-out crazy-ass movie that you have a hard time believing it even exists. People ask you about it after you've slept and you almost don't want to describe it because you know they won't get it. You can't tell them to track it down and watch it on their own either because there's no way it could be the same. It has to be a brotherhood allegiance type deal where if you were there all you have to do is say the title and nod and if you weren't there then tough luck. Legend of Wolf Woman is one of these movies. Although I don't think it's as good as Devil Fetus (and I'm using the word "good" in its loosest possible meaning), it was that kind of movie and I don't think I would've liked it in any other situation. The whole movie made no sense. I don't know if it was me (I wasn't tired due to the caffeine but i felt myself staring at the screen and having no idea what I was looking at several times) or the film itself, but I got next to no actual point or sense to the movie. Thinking back, all I can make out is that this girl thinks she's a werewolf but really she's just crazy. I think. Thank goodness I made some illegible notes in my notebook, writing in darkness. About halfway through the movie, the girl meets a stuntman and falls in love. I think there was a whole montage sequence where he'd perform a stunt (which I guess would make her really hot), she'd run up and start making out with him, they'd have sex, then run on the beach. Over and over like three times this happened: stunt/sex/beach, stunt/sex/beach, stunt/sex/beach. But then a group of rapists bust in (saying things like "I heard you're a great LAY!" and "Now I'm gonna lay ya!" and the stuntman gets killed in the most casual stabbing every. I mean... the rapist isn't even looking at him.. he's just standing there with one hand on his hip and the other holding his knife out and the stuntman is stuck onto it... like either it happened by accident or this racist is SUCH a good knifer that he can't be bothered to even look to see where he stabbed him. This may have never happened though... it could all be in my mind. I also seem to remember there being some of the worst small talk ever in a couple scenes, and use of really queer phrases like "that's somewhat fascinating." How can something be somewhat fascinating? Isn't that like saying it's somewhat very interesting? I don't get it. I do know I saw hairy titties though... that was funny. the make-up in the wolf woman scenes (which I guess are either flashbacks or fantasies or... something, because she's not actually a wolf woman but just crazy) is basically little patches of fur glued onto her skin with green make-up everywhere else. I think there's also a scene where she wakes up and a huge lizard is laying on her... i think... and I've also written down a memory that someone gets his head smashed into a steering wheel and inadvertantly honks the horn every time... and it happens over and over again so it's funny. I don't remember that at all but if I wrote it down it must've happened... right? So all in all I think that's exactly what my memory of the last movie of a marathon should be. I think others were more lucid (Micah said it was his favorite movie of the night... I think mine is Policewomen (if you don't count Silent Night, Deadly Night)), but this isn't their movie journal it's mine and mine is better than yours. So I think we got out of there at 9:30... Drove Jarrette home then went back to my place and Micah crashed on my couch and we set the alarm for 4:30pm and slept pretty much until then.
04.29.06	Hell Night	Tom DeSimone	So Apparently director Tom DeSimone directed some gay porn. Quentin told us the whole story... it wasn't just a just-breaking-in, stepping-stone type of deal... it was like 10 years, 25 movies, Tom DeSimone: Gay Porn Director. I guess he did them well enough though that somehow he got a chance to make a slasher movie and this is what came about. To tell you the truth, QT's intros are all melding together for me now. As the night went on, I stayed awake less and less out of actual interest in the films and more and more out of sheer caffeination. In fact, I didn't even write the title of this movie down in my notebook... all that's there are two small notes, one of which is "AKA The Movie That Wouldn't Die." First though... Quentin announced that they'd show the first reel of Silent Night, Deadly Night! "If Vanishing Point has one of the best last reels of any movie, Silent Night, Deadly Night has one of the best first reels... and we're showing it to you tonight!" Now, in my humble opinion, I think they should've made Sunday night a triple feature and shown Policewomen to open that night so they could play all of Silent Night, Deadly Night tonight. It would've fit perfectly and for as good as the first reel is, the rest of the movie's pretty damn good as well. Plus it would've represented QT6 which didn't have any other films playing this best-of festival. I'm mostly ok with that because it meant that I got to see more movies I've never seen before, but still.. Silent Night, Deadly Night, Tarzoon, and No Way Out were clear audience faves (although we did get a Tarzoon trailer that drew mega-applause). But oh well, I can live with just the first reel, which ended in a pretty great cut between a nun's concerned face and college girls in beer-drenched t-shirts. Something about that time of night and the rush of redbull going through my system created perfect conditions for the famed Grandpa speech in that first reel though. As soon as grandpa started moving his eyes to look at poor young Billy, I completely cracked up. I tried to keep my laughter silent but i was shaking... SHAKING with laughter through the entire speech. Every little movement and nuance that the grandpa made, the inflection on every word coming out of his mouth, was like the funniest thing in the world to me. It's such a perfect monologue... perfectly written, perfectly executed... at the very end I finally gave in and threw my head back and laughed like a madman so I could release all that energy and get to the job of wiping my eyes dry and catching my breath... but that first reel of Silent Night, Deadly Night would prove to be my favorite movie of the whole marathon. He really should have played the whole thing. Hell Night is about a fraternity initiation ritual where rushes have to spend a night in a supposedly haunted mansion. I guess this film is notable for having Linda Blair in it... I dunno, it seemed like a pretty run-of-the-mill slasher movie to me. I don't understand how they could use this haunted mansion as a house so much that they've rigged it with speakers for playing random screams and rope ladders to the roof so they can rig fake bodies hanging outside the windows and they know all about all the secret passages and NOT seeing the evil deformed mongoloid children of the house's haunted history before this particular night. Were they on vacation or something? Is that why they're killing all the co-eds? "We get back from Boca to find you punk kids squatting in our house, you're gonna pay, mongoloid style!" The majority of the movie is shots of kids walking down hallways or passageways, then finding dead bodies. I mean I guess that could be said about all slasher movies... maybe it was the time of day (or, in this case, morning... already) or whatever but I didn't really get into this movie at all. I think Quentin talked about some guy having a long monologue to do and pulling it off or whatever and nah... don't care. Actually there's only one character in this movie that I did care about, and that's Vincent Van Patten's part. Apparently, when it was first showed at QT3, he was voted by Rick Linklater (who showed up earlier, stopping by on his way to Cannes) as the festival's biggest Weenie. I can believe that... he's a pretty massive weenie in this... but hey, he can't help it. He's young, he's in college, and he's out to get his love on. After he finally nails the clearly-a-slut girl he's been chasing since the beginning of the movie, he says to himself "Score another one for the good guys." So him, along with a halfway decent end to the mongoloid killer (spoiler: he hotcurls her to death... actually i'm kidding. he's actually impaled on a knocked-over gate), are really the only things I got out of this movie. Mostly, it was people slowly walking down hallways and passageways and running into dead bodies.
04.29.06	Policewomen	Lee Frost	Next up was a little change of pace. When I saw this on the schedule I was all but sure it would be a secret movie and rather than wanting to advertise that it was a secret movie (that would only fuel people to try and find out to ruin the surprise) he put in a title for a film that he had no intentions of playing. Well, I was wrong. On all accounts actually (I thought the same thing about Billy Jack). He actually showed Policewomen. It made more sense when he introduced it though. I guess since QT2 had two marathons one was an all sleazy exploitation marathon and not horror, so it was still a fave from a past marathon and he really loved it so it's here, smack dab in the middle of all these horror movies. QT started by saying how big of a fan QTfest was of Wes Bishop and Lee Frost movies. Yet another pair of names I've never heard of before. That's good though... more things to look up later. My list of films offhandedly-mentioned by Quentin that I felt I needed to see is much smaller this time around than last. In the past 6 months or so, I've really dived into this whole area of film and feel like, although I'm still very much the rookie, I at least know what game I'm a rookie in. So Policewomen (note the plural) has some hot girls in it. Some cool female kung-fu stuff and a scene with William Smith as a karate instructor or something... He's pretty funny in the one scene... mostly the movie's just about hot girls acting bad though. The policewoman goes ondercover... actually the title is a bit of a spoiler because for 75% of the movie there's only one policewoman so you have to wonder about the title until another one shows up and then it's ok. This movie does a great job of picking the right angles to photograph the hot women in tight clothing. Actually between this and The Muthers and... pretty much every movie shown this week I have to say I appreciate the whole no-bra thing that was going on in the 70s. I'm sure it made for some sore backs but oh freakin well. The real stars of this movie though are the bad guys. This gang of female robbers is headed up by this old lady in her 70s named Maude (heh) and her 30 year old bodybuilder beau named Doc. Beau plays his character like John Wayne with brain damage and scenes between the two of them are fantastic. One shot in particular when they're flying in a plane and Maude it looking at Doc with love in her eyes is pretty classic. She's this short little wrinkled old woman with bad teeth giving out expert mastermind heist instructions... I have no clue how they found that actress or who had guts enough to ask her to be in this movie but whoever they are deserves some props. It's like asking your grandmother to talk about sex in front of you... it couldn't have been pleasant. This movie... like the main policewoman's love interest slash co-worker tells her, "your style takes a lot of getting used to." Especially the beginning of this film... it's very low-budget exploitation type stuff. Pretty slow. The closest I got to sleep the whole night was the first half of this movie. I never dozed (did much better than BNAT and QT6's marathon actually) but i got pretty uninterested and contemplating trying to sleep for a little while until I sat up and looked around and saw Micah awake on my right, Eric and Jarrette awake on my left, and way the hell down at the end of the row Harry awake. Everyone else in the entire row was passed out. Blake? dead to the world. Jay? head back, jerking himself awake with his snores, Roland and Martha? collapsed all over one another in complete unconscioussness. Further down the line I could sort of see other people sleeping but... just seeing that like 70% of this supposedly most-hardcore-of-all row was out like a light actually energized me. I was fine after that until the last movie. There's one scene toward the end where the policewoman has activated a super secret spy lighter that's actually a homing beacon. Unfortunately the signal shows up on the walkie talkies that Maude and Doc are using. There's a great shot of like... arm-cam Doc's POV as he holds out his walkie talkie like a metal detector and walks around as the signal gets stronger and stronger, finally ending up right at the policewoman's crotch (ok, front pocket). Just seeing that arm sticking straight out holding the walkie talkie and the camera locked onto it as it moves around is... well it's pretty awesome. Unfortunately, when they showed the trailer for this the night before ("TOMORROW!" became a common expletive that QT would throw out every night as trailers for the scheduled films would play), there was a pretty good line about the cop dude saying he wanted to make love to the policewoman but was afraid of getting hurt (something like that), and the policewoman saying "I'll make you a deal. I'll make love to you, and I'll be gentle" followed by some footage of a love scene. Said love scene was nowhere to be found in the actual movie! What kind of exploitation movie actually takes OUT the love scene??? Quentin needs a new print of this movie now.
04.29.06	Don't Go in the House	Joseph Ellison	Next up was a movie that I'd rented when it got a DVD release. It'd been extremely built up by Harry Knowles, him claiming that this is the one movie that broke him and sent him running to cower naked in the corner and cry. When I saw it alone in my apartment, I thought there was one great scene, a good idea behind it, but otherwise it was pretty slow. So I was extremely curious to see this play with a QTfest crowd and see if I was wrong or what. First though, Quentin introduced the only new thing to ever play at QTfest. It's a short directed and starring Rie Rasmussen (in attendance, sitting with Quentin and Eli Roth). Um... I think others liked it more than I did. Basically, this woman comes home and there's someone there who ties her up and he's like a serial killer that's killing innocent people in the name of satan... like a blind kid, a deaf girl, really no-harm innocents like that. so he strips naked and is about to get to the torture and killing when the girl basically says she's satan and her quest to poison the bloodline of humans is through diseases and afflictions such as blindness and deafness so in effect he was killing off the wrong people... or something. then she kills him the end. Now, I did like how the girl's blond hair, when it gets mussed up, strongly resembles devil horns and like... those chinese devil spirit flames that come off their faces... and I have to respect a woman who will put an upskirt panty shot of herself in her own movie so that's cool too... but I dunno... I guess I have a problem when things get 100% representational or clever... something in my mind chews away saying "what are the odds that this guy picks satan..." A couple friends of mine made a short where a vampire hunter gets hooked up with a vampire on a blind date, but I actually didn't get that feeling there because there's enough hinting and suggestions that the hunter knows all along... but this short didn't give anything like that out... just a satanic cult murderer guy picking a random innocent girl that turns out to be the devil herself. Well shot, superhot lady, but it didn't do anything for me. So Don't Go in the House. You've been warned. The movie played pretty well with the crowd. I know I enjoyed it more that way... but still it's one great scene, a good idea, and a mostly slow movie. I think a lot of the problem comes with the great scene coming about 15 minutes into the movie. Everything after that feels like the director had no idea what to do after that scene so he just threw random things that don't really go anywhere in for the rest of the movie. Still though, that one great scene is enough to call this film a good freakin time. Actually, shortly after said scene transpires, there's like a follow-up scene that had Quentin yelling out in the theater "Best cut in cinema history!" to a rowsing round of laughs and applause. The other redeeming factor in the majority of this film is the supporting cast. The main guy is... not great. But there's a friend part that's great and a priest who must've went to some special school to get his eyebrows to move like that and a archetypal guido Jersy disco dancer toward the end that beats the main guy up.. they don't hold up to this one scene but, you know, if you're watching the rest of the movie anyway then these are guys to look out for. I made a reference to this while we were eating fantastic bbq at The Salt Lick (nothing like filling your gut with meat immediately before a 13-hour marathon) to Micah, saying "Once you put a steel room in your house, there's no going back." Apparently he thought i was quoting a line from the movie because it's so badass. Nope, it's all me. Expect it in one of my scripts or movies... if i ever do anything with my life, that is. So I was warned and not only did I go in the house but i went BACK in the house and had a mostly good time watching it again because i was at freakin QTfest with a still-sold-out audience. Some people were still waiting in the stand-by line at 3am, man... that's hardcore. Even at the very end the theater was still more than half-full... I was really surprised. After the movie, I headed out to the lobby to relieve myself and passed Dennis Quaid on the side of the theater. I walked past him then had to do a quick double take like "is that Dennis Quaid? Did he just watch DON'T GO IN THE HOUSE!?" I don't think he did though... I think he just popped in to meet Quentin, take a piss, then head back out into the Austin nightlife. Still though, random dennis quaid spotting, I'm sure my mom will be excited.
04.29.06	Twisted Nerve	Roy Boulting	So after Bride ended and we all stretched our legs a bit (pacing is important), Quentin got back up on stage to introduce the next movie: Twisted Nerve. Pretty much the whole audience was familiar with the whistled theme to this movie since QT used it to great effect in Kill Bill. He even asked for all of us to give him a recital and for a few moments the theater was filled with whistling fools. Quentin ate it up. In fact he said that not only was it OK to whistle along with the movie, it was encouraged. Twisted Nerve is sort of half a Psycho knock-off and half a Peeping Tom knock-off, fitting in nicely with a whole wave of British psychological thrillers that came out in the 60s. The basic plot is that this young guy pretends to be a simpleton to get into Haley Mills' pants. Oh, he also kills his dad. The title comes from a quote from... someone... and the explanation behind the main dude's actions get into DNA and mongrelism, so there's a semi-scientific approach there with is kind of creepy and funny at the same time. Having the crazy guy whistle the theme while he stalks women is an awesome bit (perhaps taken from Lang's M?) that, along with Bernard Herrman's constant variations on that theme all throughout the movie's score, ensure that it's the single most catching melody of all time. Quentin said that in lots of places but especially eastern Europe that melody is really popular as a cell phone ringtone. It's really the characters that make this movie good though. Hayley Mills' character stays in a boarding house with a couple great supporting roles. The guy who played the killer in Frenzy is getting it on with the house matron but when she takes pity on faux-simpleton Georgie and lets him sleep in her bed and wont answer when Frenzy guy comes a calling, he gets miffed. Another tenant is an Indian (dot not feather) medical student... When Frenzy guy accuses him of seducing his sugar momma, he replies "We Hindus are forbidden to eat cow." Scorching line. 1968! Other noted notables is a scene where a doctor's doing rounds with his student and they talk to an elderly lady sitting in her bed with a really strange relaxed look on her face. They start interviewing her until they find out that she's currently on a bedpan. They all leave pretty quickly. And toward the end when Georgie's been exposed as sociopath father-killer Martin, one guard tells another to "watch yourself, this one's a nutter." The dry delivery with the heavy accent really made me crack up. Overall, even though I enjoyed Twisted Nerve, it didn't blow me away. Quentin went on at some length in one of these introductions about the general unavailability of a lot of these films. Stuff like Dion Brothers and The Outfit is nowhere to be found on DVD and VHS shelves... and he kind of thinks that's OK. Sometimes, it's good to remind yourself of the way things used to be before video or cable TV so when they left theaters you could not see them anymore. You had to remember them. You held onto memories of the films you loved and that made it all the better when a revival run came into town or something like that because couldn't see it any time you want so it made you excited about it. That said, After Twisted Nerve finished I thought about how tough it'd be to not be able to see this movie for years to come... and I wasn't that broken up about it. Dion Brothers I'm broken up about, Rolling Thunder not being on DVD i'm downright pissed off about, but not seeing Twisted Nerve again? eh... I'll live.
04.29.06	The Blood Spattered Bride	Vicente Aranda	Saturday night during a QTfest means an all night marathon! Actually (as Quentin related to us something Linklater said: "yeah I remember when these things started we'd get out at five, six AM. Now they're not so much all nighters as all nighters and half of next day-ers... Like we get out and go grab some lunch."), in doing the math with the running times and the average breaks in between movies it was already pretty apparent that we wouldn't be getting out of the Drafthouse until well into Sunday morning. Fine by us! The night started with an assistant to the city mayor presenting Quentin with an official proclamation that today, April 29, 2006, was Quentin Tarantino Festival Day. The verbage written on the official parchment was pretty funny, with such terms as "lederhosen films" and "kung-fu epics" appearing under official City of Austin letterhead. QT took stage and informed us that it was also Uma Thurman's birthday today! Yay for Uma and Yay for Quentin and Yay for us because we now get to see six movies in a row! Quentin first started out by asking us who would be here at the end of this thing. I remember for QT6 a much larger response (and, ironically enough, a much smaller audience at the end of the night than what we had tonight). Quentin then laid out the rules for marathon viewing. He said that as the night goes on and you get a little looser, a little more delirious, you may find yourself becoming a bit more vocal. And that's ok, he said, as long as it's in the right direction. With that, he turned around and motioned that it was ok to be talking TOWARD the film, then turned around again and motioned the other way, saying it wasn't ok to go in this direction. This is the movie's job, let it go this way and you go that way. Then he ended the bit by slapping his ass and it was funny. Also, he said, if you're hear to see one or two movies then go home that's fine... no harm in that you won't be ridiculed or anything like that... you just can't say you went to the marathon. You went out tonight and saw a few movies, you didn't go to the marathon. And some people are big nazis about sleeping in these things... Quentin is not. He thinks sleeping is perfectly OK because you know if you fall asleep during one of these, you will wake up at some point with some completely context-free gross obscenity going on and in that moment between sleep and conscioussness when you're not even sure of where you are, the movie will create a memory that will live with you forever. Quentin introduced Blood Spattered Bride as a stick of dynamite tied to your crotch with a fuse so long that you forget it's burning. "You stop hearing the fizzle, you get comfortable, then BAM! your balls are blown off!" He likes this movie so much that he named a chapter of Kill Bill after it. He said it's his favorite lesbian vampire movie and when the chuckles started he had to educate: "No, this isn't one of these QTfest-only subgenres, it's an actual taught-in-schools established subgenre (lars nods in silent approval). Jean Rollin had a whole career with these movies, although this isn't directed by him but still." He then talked about when it played in QT2 and how he really made a mistake with it by making it the last film of the second marathon of the fest... people just weren't up for it, so this time around he's pulling it back in to give it the proper screening... right at the beginning of the night to set the pace. He also dedicated the screening to Unruly Julie (Quentin's longtime assistant and basically the person responsible for putting this whole thing on) and Rie Rasmussen (a very tall, very skinny hot model type that's also a director and is starring in Luc Besson's next movie... she's been in the audience for the past few nights). And with that, the movie started. So, I guess the story is this young girl is married to this dude and she finds out that his sexual appetites really border on rape. She goes along for a bit but at the same time there's some sort of thing about either a family ancestor or a haunted painting or maybe both. For whatever reason, this lesbian vampire makes night visits to the wife urging her to kill her husband and les out with her for eternity. She has her repeat mantras like "He pissed on my flesh to humiliate me, he spat inside my body to enslave me." and gives her a suitably wicked blade that leads to a sequence where she stabs her hubby to death and detaches his manhood. Of course this has to be a fantasy because it's against the rules to have a scene that awesome so early in a movie like this... so you have to wait another hour to see the same scene happen again. Although I can't say I didn't like the lesbian vampire stuff, I have to admit that the husband was my favorite character in the movie. He's such a pervert... so fixated with breasts and sex that it's really funny. He find a hand sticking out of the sand on a beach and a small tube nearby. He digs a bit to uncover a girl's face wearing a diving mask and snorkel. So i guess just to make sure, he digs a little more and perfectly exposes her breats but nothing else. very close to the oddly specific fantasies i had when i was like 13. At the end of the film, after he finally accepts that his wife's been turned into both a lesbian and a vampire, he cuts directly into a breast. Sure the papers say "heart cut out of two women" but they have to say that, don't they? They can't say "breasts cut off, heart also maybe removed." There's also a scene where the vampire is silently seducing the wife and the hubby has the most brilliantly inane babble going on in the background, talking to himself about how he has no vocation and he's quite happy. His time is perfectly occupied. he goes on like that for about three minutes until the scene ends. There are plenty of moments in Blood Spattered Bride to like, like the doctor character spying on some lesbo vampire getting-it-on and the smash cut to him asking the hubby "how well do you know your wife?" These moments are spread out through a pretty long and slow movie though... You really need to have patience with it or spend some time concocting your own lesbian vampire stories in your head in between the good parts on screen. I wouldn't say it's the perfect movie to lead off a marathon with but I will say I'm damn glad it didn't play last.
04.28.06	Rolling Thunder	John Flynn	The night ended with Rolling Thunder. Let me just get it out of the way and say that while I loved all three films played Wednesday, I think this is the best night of programming so far. All three of these movies fit together in such an interesting way that I really think they built on each other to make my enjoyment of the movies greater than the sum of its parts. ALl three were pretty serious in tone and much more deliberate in pace and each was also much different than what's played the fest so far. I really have to marvel at how they work together... I have no clue how to guage or think about something like that so you go, QT! OK... so anyone that reads this that isn't actually at the fest (AKA Grant), I think it's pretty clear that a lot of these movies that play are good on completely different levels than others. Some are really cheap exploitation flicks that I basically like for small little gems hidden somewhere in the movie or because certain characters or actors are unintentionally funny or just bizarre... but every once in a while (and I really only include The Dion Brothers in this list... so far), QT plays a movie that is great no matter how you look at it. It's good in a way that you just can't deny. You can't pass it off as cheaply made or full of cheesy dialogue or a genre favorite or whatever... it's just GOOD. it's as good as any movie out in first-run theaters today, and it's as good as many award-winning movies that get written about all the time. In fact, it's so good that the overriding thought that you have after the movie's over is "why isn't this movie known!?" like in a pissed off way, like it makes you mad that this movie is not thrust on film students along with Kurosawa and Hitchcock or whatever. And I can take guesses at the reasons why they're not better known but I'll probably never know the answers. All I really know is that this movie is fucking amazing on any scale and it's a goddamn shame that all film lovers everywhere hasn't seen it. That is the case with Rolling Thunder. William Devane, man... OK, so it's a Paul Schrader story about a Vietnam vet who's just returned after seven years in a POW camp. He comes home to a parade and fanfare... Yay! he's home! But then he goes home. His son doesn't remember him. His wife's getting married to some other dude. The world's moved on and he can't even sleep at night because there's no one there to administer a daily beating... a daily beating that he's gotten for SEVEN YEARS and grown to sort of love in a messed up coping-mechanism way... The movie is a fantastic post-war character study that easily rivals The Deer Hunter. Devane's performance is ice cold but every so often you get a peek behind his pilot's glasses at just how messed up and tormented he is inside. It's really nuanced and great. ...And then he has his home invaded by a crew of robbers out for some War Hero loot. They think they can make him give up the location of his money stash (laughs from the audience). They grind his hand off in the garbage disposal. They kill his son and soon-to-be-ex-wife. From this point forward, the movie becomes a hardcore revenge tale that... delivers. Devane gets a prostetic hook. There's a great sequence where it shows him practicing putting cigarettes in their pack. "Oh," you think, "he's learning to use his hook. that's cool." Then, two scenes later, you see him perfectly pick up bullets and load them into a gun with his hook. Then, as he's SHARPENING his hook on a spinning whetstone or whatever you call it, you make the bullets/cigarettes connection and realize that he is now a revenge machine. this turned into a revenge movie the second those guys came into his house and there is no going back. Tommy Lee Jones has a supporting role in this and with the maybe 10 minutes of screentime he has you can tell he's going to become a huge star even though his neck is thicker than his head. He's trapped in a suburban hell and shows it in one quick shot of a static look. A slow death in his eyes. When Devane comes for his help in killing the poeple who killed his family, Jones doesn't even think. "I'll just get my gear... Let's clean em up." Jones, Devane, and actress Linda Haynes all absolutely kick ass in this film. Quentin actually spent the majority of his intro talking about Linda Haynes. Aside from dedicating the screening to her, he also said that the only thing that's held him back from remaking this movie is that he could never find someone to compare to Linda Haynes. "Everyone would just be a SAG actress. Nobody could inhabit that character like Linda Haynes did." I guess he's right... I think he's a much better acting observer than I am... I mean she was good but I didn't flip out any more over her performance than Jones' or Devane's... Then again I think Tarantino has seen this movie a few more times than I have. But anyway, he really flips for her in this movie (he also mentioned that after being in this and a few other roles she quit the business. He's tried to get her for stuff several times and always gets a message saying that she's flattered that he likes her work and even remembers that she had a career but she doesn't act anymore)... and to tell you the truth I don't remember what else he said. So even though i didn't LOVE Billy Jack, I didn't dislike it and all three movies worked so well together, plus the fact that Rolling Thunder will probably be my favorite film of a festival filled with favorites, made this night really extraordinary. Plus, after Rolling Thunder ended, the passing storm overhead let loose some rolling thunder of its own, which was pretty sweet.
04.28.06	Vanishing Point	Richard C. Sarafian	In the break I got Aaron to introduce me to Eli Roth. Aaron intro'd me very well and Eli immediately got what was up. I got about five words out of my mouth before he said "yeah sure just get in contact with me" and started talking to Harry. I stood there for a second thinking "hmm... should i wait and try to chat more?" before realizing "shit, he said yes. I guess that's all I need." and walking away to track down Tim. Tim did me a huge favor and talked to Julie, the woman who manages to keep Quentin's schedule, and tell her about my doc project. The only problem is he asked for an interview with him this week, which I was both not expecting and not ready for... So at the end of the night I straightened that out with him as well and he said he'd get me in communication with her so that's cool too. Progress! A lot of people who saw Vanishing Point a few weeks ago with me decided to ditch this screening and play pool instead. Eric stayed but I'm not sure if it was because he liked the movie or because he didn't want to miss another screening that Harry can hold over him forever. Either way, he earns extra cool points with me because I seem to be the only guy I know who likes this movie. Actually, I liked this more the second time around. Maybe it was knowing how it ended or having Billy Jack to really prime my hippy vibe, but for whatever reason this movie really clicked with me this time around. I still think Cleavon Little's radio DJ gets a bit too much toward the end (there's a scene where he and Kowalski sort of talk to each other through the radio... and at the end there are a couple needless cuts to Super Soul sitting in his booth fearing for Kowalski... eh), but for the most part I really dig this movie. The first half is just a balls-out chase movie with shot after shot of the Dodge Charger going fast. Matt actually pointed out that a beginning sequence where Kowalski's driving on a road that follows a rushing stream was actually shot on the highway between Boulder, CO and Estes Park. Estes Park is home to The Stanley Hotel, where Stephen King got the inspiration for The Shining (and later shot the TV movie version there)... so if a miracle happens and I'm able to follow the Rolling Roadshow Tour this August, chances are we will tool down the same road that Kowalski did! Awesome! The second half of this movie becomes severe existential hippy soul journey through the desert, complete with meeting random characters, losing track of time and space, and some sort of vague spiritual awakening. I don't know what to say except I dug it... Part of me wishes the whole movie was like the first half with Kowalski literally saying less than 5 lines of dialogue in an hour and hijacking that car to Cuba but I can't fault the movie for going where it went. In his intro, QT said that the deeper you dig into the stories behind Vanishing Point, the more stuff you'll dig up. Instead, he opted to let the film speak for itself. Aside from reading a bit about it on IMDb, I know close to nothing about this movie so that comment really piqued my curiosity. I hear there's a director commentary on the DVD; definitely have to check that out now. Quentin also mentioned the soundtrack (which is indeed awesome), and how it was one of the first movies to use songs instead of score - something he's tried to do with all of his films (pretty successfully too I might add). A QT intro that definitely left me wanting, but a movie that really grew on me the second time. awesome!
04.28.06	Billy Jack	Tom Laughlin	So it's already 4:30am and I'll probably have to be up at around noon so I have no time to mess around. I'll just get down to it. To start tonight off, Louis Black took stage and said that tonight was the best triple feature of all time. You could maybe program a triple feature as good as this, but never better. This was surprising. All freakin week, whenever Billy Jack came up people groaned. This was easily the least anticipated film of the entire fest, so much so that I was completely primed to hate it even though I've never seen it. For real, people were talking about deliberately missing it or going in just to hear QT's intro then take a nap for two hours, completely dismissing the movie as long and boring and stupid and a waste of time and anyone who likes it is a loser, quentin included if quentin's not just pretending to like it in order to look cool. So for Black to say that this is one of his favorite movies and he's seen it over and over again... well that makes him a loser, right? I don't think I'll answer that... instead I'll just flip forward really quick and say that for people alive and old enough to know what was going on in 1971, I can totally see how they love this movie. It's got all of the freedom of expression and human rights and all that other dainty idealistic hippy crap that never actually took over the nation even though a lot of people really wanted it to. I think this is what informs all of the scenes that Micah can't stomach... it's a lot like Cartman who has absolutely zero time for dirty hippy propaganda. All those scenes of Laughlin's woman talking about pacifism and whatnot... right up a whole generation of young people's alley. It's no surprise it was so popular and it's no surprise that all of the then-young,now-old people have a soft spot in their dirty hippy hearts for it. Or maybe I just think that because I wasn't born until 1978 and all I got was Michael Jackson and Transformers. Anyway, Billy Jack actually wasn't that bad. Of course it wasn't as good as Quentin said it would be either, but oh well. He talked a lot about Indian religious explanations, Laughlin's love for his woman, Pauline Kael calling it the best post-rape scene ever put on film, and regaled us with... talking about his recitation of the best scene when it played at QT5. Yeah, like I need another reason to hate that I wasn't at QT5. There are a few good scenes though... Actually, for whatever reason, there's a few improv comedy scenes that really work well. They feature a pre WKRP Howard Hessman and are pretty entertaining. There's a too-long scene where kids try to stop some sort of town mandate to close a school or something plot-ish like that and one of the guys who speaks is named O.K. Corrales. When the old dude insists that he give his real name, O.K. responds "My real name is O.K. Corrales. Do you have something against mexicans!?" Also, whenever Billy Jack has to kick some ass, it's extremely enjoyable. Of course, in between you have lots of hippy politics... That I also enjoyed on a much different level. I loved how everyone treated pacifism as a very specific thing... like it was almost a style of kung-fu. lines like "Not a bad idea for a pacifist" and "Damn your pacifism!" made me chuckle. QT also mentioned that he mentioned in his first intro that it was sort of funny that all of these pacifist message movies seemed to solve all their problems with violence. I guess that was the struggle of Billy Jack's character... but it also says something when the violent ass-kicking scenes are the funnest in the movie. I doubt many people watch this movie JUST for the teenager singing folk songs or to study the rite of snake brotherhood or whatever it was called when Billy Jack let a snake bite him then passed out for a while. I'm put my money on them seeing it for the ice cream shop scene where Billy Jack monologues the living shit out of the town rich guy's spoiled rotten son, or the scene directly following when he takes off his boots ("watch out for his feet, his feet'll kill ya") and puts the beatdown on a half dozen redneck goons. I do have to say one more thing about this, specifically in comparison to Billy Jack knock-off Johnny Firecloud which played at QT6. At least Johnny Firecloud was MUTHAFUCKIN NATIVE AMERICAN! Where's Tom Laughlin get off judging "the white man" with his quiet calm indian-esque voice when he's got Irish freckles all over him. Sure, he probably claims some fraction of native american blood but does that come across on-screen? I guess maybe he's supposed to be a honky in reform or something... but come on. I'd hate to be a Native American back then and have my only role models be a white guy who kicks ass and an old dude who cries when people litter. I guess it's better than nowadays though... Oh, and Louis Black had one other line that he threw out in his intro that really struck home to me, since I'd at least seen Vanishing Point before. he said that all three of these films have politics that they shove right in your face, but they're like Sam Fuller politics where you know you're seeing it but you're not quite sure what it means. The entire triple feature would prove that statement true for me... and I think that's what made this triple feature work so well together.
04.27.06	The Muthers	Cirio H. Santiago	I forgot. Quentin mentioned one other thing before Dion Brothers. Somehow or another he got on the topic of Race with the Devil (I think he was talking about director Jack Starrett's other films) and said that he can never talk about that movie without reciting its tagline which he thinks is the best tagline to a movie ever and I have to agree. "When you race with the devil, you'd better be faster than hell." He then said that he's been trying to work that into dialogue for every one of his movies but it's never worked... someday though, we will hear a QT character utter that phrase. You heard it here (and AICN (and Dumb Distraction (and Cinema Strikes Back (and probably a few other sites I don't know about)))) first! So for the midnight movie tonight... The Muthers... A blaxploitation/Women in Prison/Fillipino Action movie starring four foxy soul sisters who all shoot guns without bras on. i only have one note in my notebook about this movie: yay for pirates. See, the day job of these ebony vixens is being pirates... They loot from rich yachts and have little feuds with rival pirates... but they there's something about looking for a missing sister (as in relative, but probably also in the soul way too) and they volunteer to go to this work farm/prison place then they have to escape but that's hard. Quentin said that he's played this print so much that he thinks it might actually be one of his favorite films now. I can sort of believe that but also can't considering the two films that played before this. Granted they are completely different and this movie is really a pure grade-Z exploitation flick whereas the first two of the night were studio pictures with actual budgets. But still... I think this felt more like a Weird Wednesday movie than Joy House did. It's kind of slow, pretty cheap... but there are occasional small gems to be found and a few scenes that are genuinely rewarding. After the first two though... it just couldn't compare for me. Sorry women in prison... better luck next time. And so ends day.... what, 4? something like that. All three intros tonight were great... Quentin really in top form. It also seems like the celebrity spotting is not as high-profile as QT6, but RZA's seemed to be here every night and Eli Roth popped up tonight; word has it he's here for the rest of the festival which is sweet because I want to meet him and ask him to be in my doc. Tomorrow night looks like a mixed bag but they showed a trailer for Rolling Thunder tonight that has me eagerly salivating to see it tomorrow... so until then...
04.27.06	The Gravy Train	Jack Starrett	I didn't write any notable lines down for this next film however. If i did I'd have spent the entire movie looking down at my notebook. Actually that's not true, I did write down one line: "I want my pants I gotta go see my mom!" Oops, I wrote down one more: "Can you warble?" Basically, The Gravy Train (AKA The Dion Brothers) is the best movie ever made. Need a little more detail? OK. Stacy Keach and Frederic Forrest play brothers from West Virginia who quit their jobs (Keach quits shovelling dog food in an agitated fury, calling it busy work that don't mean nothing and that he could be Kirk Douglas. Flexing his biceps he yells "KIRK FUCKIN' DOUGLAS!" Forrest... well, he throws his miner's helmet through the foreman's window) and move to DC with dreams of opening up a seafood joint called The Blue Grotto. Such items to be featured on the menu are octopus on ice, oysters casino, and eel. Unfortunately, they need to pull an armored car job to raise the capital for the place so they put on their best criminal face and successfully steal some loot with an Italian named Tony, a Puerto Rican named Carlo, and a body builder family man named Rex. Tony and Carlo pull a double cross and the Dion boys find themselves in some hot water. No kidding, every single line of dialogue in this movie is funny. It's backwood West Virginia hick humor done perfectly. The dynamic between Keach and Forrest is completely natural and kinetic... scene after scene they 100% live up on that screen and they are hilarious together. Scene after scene, gag after gag, laugh after laugh, it's all good. At this point I'm not even sure if I should go on... I can already tell I'm not doing the film justice and too lazy to even try. Toward the end though, there's a chicken dude that just sort of pops up, absolutely kills in the dozen or so lines that he has, then disappears. Afterward, Eric said that the sequel that he's got in his mind has Keach and the chicken dude partnering for a chicken and seafood restaraunt. I would pay to see that movie. Also, the film ends with an action sequence that takes place in a building being torn down with a wrecking ball. Seriously, there are some shots showing a wrecking ball knocking walls, supports, bricks, and mortar apart, crushing them to dust and debris, while actors or stuntment or gullible fools who'll do anything for ten bucks pretend to fight each other. I'm watching this scene and can't help but be blown away by this. I mean, they are TEARING THIS BUILDING DOWN. TO THE GROUND. and they are shooting in it. Now I know a lot of the inserts must be rigged with fake debris or even a light-weight stunt wrecking ball but still, there are some shots in this sequence that show people feet away from the wrecking ball doing its job. that's just... that's just crazy. So yeah... oh, Quentin told us that Terrence Malick wrote the script... he took his name off of it but who knows why. It's hands down the best mix of comedy and action I've ever seen.
04.27.06	The Outfit	John Flynn	Hump day for the best of QT fest! This week has gone by so insanely fast... It already makes me sad that I only have three days left although each day holds at least one movie that i'm dying to see. I'm quickly realizing that this "best of" concept works really really well for me since I've never seen the majority of these. Last night yeilded three absolutely fantastic films and tonight... well, two out of three ain't bad. But first, Tim gets up and publicly apologizes for calling Brotherhood of Death a piece of shit. Everyone cheers, QT's satisfied. The we start with The Outfit, a tough-as-nails crime film starring Robert Duvall, Joe Don Baker, and Karen Black (and Robert Ryan). As explained by QT in his great intro, this movie is adapted from a Donal Westlake-cum-Richard Stark Parker book, and that Westlake has no problems optioning the rights to this incredibly popular series of books, but has a protective clause in the contract prohibiting moviemakers from calling the character Parker. That way, if the movie sucks, it doesn't taint the book. According to Quentin, Point Blank (and therefore Payback), Slayground, The Split, and even Godard's Made in USA are all adapted from these books, with a wide array of badasses filling the role of Parker (under different names). He also goes on to insist that unofficially but still just as much, the role of Mr. White in Reservoir Dogs is Parker and DeNiro's character in Heat is also Parker. Furthermore, the events that take place in The Outfit directly follow events that take place in Point Blank, so you can even see connections where Lee Marvin becomes Robert Duvall and Angie Dickinson becomes Karen Black. It made for a really interesting context in which to put the film... So what's it about? Well, Duvall gets out of prison and finds himself a wanted man. Apparently the titular outfit wants some payback for either a bank job where he accidentally stole the wrong money (if you believe The Outfit) or for raising bloody hell in a cooly-executed revenge spree (if you saw Point Blank). It's funny actually, Micah noted that the background given in this movie is actually very similar to a Don Siegel movie called Charlie Varrick starring Walter Matthau and Joe Don Baker. Quentin himself had mentioned Varrick in his intro as Baker's other best performance along with his turn as Duvall's buddy in this. Connections like this is what being a film geek is all about. So Duvall confronts the outfit (headed by an aging but still steel-trap Robert Ryan) and picks an arbitrary amount that he figures he's owed: 250 grand. Until they pay up, he tells them, he'll be robbing them blind. All that stuff he considers "extra." He then proceeds to figuritively spit in the Outfit's face over and over again until finally he has to kill Ryan in his home. Duvall's performance is incredibly awesome, tipping the badass scale until it breaks. I'd say he's truly a worthy successor over Marvin, which says a hell of a lot. Joe Don Baker's also great in this though.. a very understated performance considering what he's known for, but rock solid nonetheless. He has a great scene where a couple goons come into his Diner and try to intimidate him. man... i don't even want to explain it because i know it wont sound as cool if i type it out. just trust me when I tell you that it's a great scene and well worth watching. Actually pretty much every scene is jaw-droppingly great. At the tail end of his intro, QT spoke to himself "hmmm what else is there to say about this movie, uuuhhhHHhhhHHHhhHHH" he went on as he fanned the mic in front of his mouth for a second, then exploded with "OH FUCKING DIALOGUE!" He's right. Each word is either a straight razor or a sledge hammer.. each line cuts or bruises. As far as badasses in films go, this one's up there. Even Karen Black, who I usually don't really like (I'm surprised I'm so not alone on this) is pretty minimal in this and really only has one scene where she says more than one or two lines at a time. I squinted my eyes and imagined Angie Dickinson anyway. So yeah, man. This was truly out of the blue for me and it kicked my ass with its awesomality. Great great flick. A random note or two: at one point Baker knocks a goon down the stairs and actually shoots him as he's falling/rolling. Such a great bit! I mean, what better time to shoot him is there? Duvall also has a line I thought to write down... he's asking a bartender to get his boss and the bartender says "anything you gotta say to him you say to me" and Duvall sits down and says "I don't talk to a guy wearing an apron, get your boss."
04.26.06	Joy House	Rene Clement	A surprising amount of people left before Weird Wednesday (including Tarantino). I really think there should be some sort of exam or essay contest to determine who gets the QT badges... It seems like so many of them go to people who wuss out after the first movie. Their loss I guess, because Joy House was fantastic. Even though I really liked both QT movies, I think Joy House was my favorite of the night. It couldn't have been more up my alley. Joy House is like a prototypical film noir washed with New Wave style and sprinkled with just a hint of post-modernism. I kept thinking The Postman Always Rings Twice meets Diabolique meets Contempt... meets Ginger Snaps 2. Seriously though, for the most part it feels like an Orphan film noir that was separated from his blood parents for 15 years and suddenly surfaces in France in 1964. It's got everything that makes noir great, but the camera is livlier and looser and the scenery much nicer. And by that I mean both the French Chateau and the femme stars. Lola Albright, as Lars put it, plays the queen of the bitches... and she's so successfully manipulative that you can see her turn that bitchiness on and off behind her eyes like others might flip a light switch. Jane Fonda, a super-young Jane Fonda, plays Lola's neice or cousin or something... also sort of a maid and fatale-in-training. Alain Delon, in his prime, gets caught between them as a don Juan who's forced into hiding when an American husband tryies to track him down and repay him for sleeping with his wife (played by the guy who later shows up in all the Police Academy films. talk about a surprise to see him as a hard boiled killer instead of a bumbling goldfish-loving commendant or whatever he plays in those movies). So he takes a job as chauffer to rich widow Lola and has to fend off sexpot advances by almost-too-young-but-who-are-we-kidding Jane Fonda. I cannot believe Fonda's beauty here. I mean... just... never mind. But Lola (i love the name Lola so I'm taking every advantage of using it here) is super hot in her own right... slightly older, more experienced... you know what i mean... I really feel for Delon here having to make out with both of them. I guess that's just another one of the peks for being like Tom Cruise but bigger. Freakin pretty boy Delon. So the dialogue is razor sharp, the photography stuffing, the plot twisted and sordid, and the character amoral and deceitful. Sounding good yet? Lalo Schiffrin does the score and it is amazing. It's burned itself into my brain forever (never mind that I can't remember the Brotherhood of Death music anymore). It's jazzy but also sort of thriller-ish-y and some notes of tension thrown in with the breezy vibe. I have to track down this score. The ending is note-perfect. there's no better way that this movie could end. The beginning is amazing... Delon does a few stunts that today would, and probably should go to stuntpeople (that's back when we had more than actors, we had STARS), and all of the performances are sizzling.... Again it's like finding a long lost film noir and feeling that tingle that I got when I saw my first one all over again. Love love loved this film. amazing. thanks Lars! So a triple feature of great movies... no weak point here. Oh there was one weak point... All during Wipeout there was some girl talking and trying way too hard to laugh at every single thing that could possibly be perceived as funny. I was sitting down toward the front so have no clue who it was but whoever you are, know that Ann Richards or George Romero or Henry Silva will find you one day... and when they do they will take your ass out. Other than that though, great night!
04.26.06	Brotherhood of Death	Bill Berry	In Quentin's decidedly less-energetic intro to the second film of the night (I think something happens to him during the first film... this is the third night where the first intro has been incredible and the second has been drained and short), he describes this film as a regional blaxploitation classic, his favorite even. It's also, surprisingly enough, the only film to directly involve the KKK in a serious manner. You'd think black power movie after black power movie would involve KKK redneck beatdowns but I guess not... maybe it's because all the funding was up north or something... who knows. This movie really take it on though. Quentin's also pretty sure it had to be shot on the DL, saying "You thought Hollywood Man had problems getting his movie made, these guys'd have burning crosses on the set!" A few times in the film the camera lingers at a billboard saying "Support your local Clan" that looks too authentic to be art department. The redneck "actors" are all surprisingly method as well... one klan rally scene in particular cuts to each redneck and his own distinctive feature (lazy eye, missing teeth, overbite, etc.). Then there's a trio of ex-NFL players doing a pretty decent job of playing buddies. They go to 'Nam and learn special tactics that they then use on the whiteys at the end. I don't know where they found those rubber masks that they put on a few whiteman captives but man oh man they'd be Sharpton-bait today. The movie is good to the point where I didn't bother to write down specific notes. It's got funny moments sure, but I was too engrossed to worry about jotting them down for later. Of course that makes this write-up pretty sucky but oh well. I think other people have recounted most of them... i'll just check their stuff to remember specifics. The main thing is that it's got some extremely justified violence in the end that had everyone cheering. That and there's this song called High Horse that's extremely catchy and now burned into my brain forever. The Wipeout music? nah, can't remember it anymore... my head's filled with this High Horse tune.
04.26.06	Wipeout	Fernando Di Leo	Day three of the fest started off with dinner at Spaghetti Warehouse... Poor saps who didn't get badges... we got to eat, drink, and be merry like 200 feet away while they hung out on the stairs for hours. I was seriously stressing that we would miss out on seats because we didn't get out of there till 6:30 but our row seems to be reserved for us now... and it doesn't look like there are enough badgeholders here to want these seats anyway. What's going on here? Did AFS only sell like 60 badges? I'd really like to get a complete total just to kinow. I seem to remember the frenzy to get a good seat for QT6 being much higher. It filled up by the time things go underway of course, but still... I mean we're talking about Wipeout here! Ever since seeing Rulers of the City (AKA Mister Scarface), this movie has jumped to the top of the list of films I'm most excited to see this week. Tim gets up and tells us that Quentin's not here so he's gonna read a complicated paragraph about the fest's sponsor: Ustudio. True enough, the paragraph has phrases in it like "global revolution" and "highly distributed talent" and even manages to use "aggregates" as a verb. I picture 75% of the QTfest audience's eyes glaze over (the remaining 25% of course belonging to ustudio employees feeling good about themselves in their reserved seats and weirdo people like me and Roland who sort of have to know this language even though some of us (like me, for example) don't really want to). Luckily, mercifully, Quentin shows up and introduces the night in what I think may be the most energetic, excited, and informative intro to date (at least for QT6 and this one). He's explaining the roots of Italian gangster movies, the differences between romanticised American films and films that come from a place where everyday people actually have to deal with the mob in some way every day, and that Hong Kong's violece ain't got nothing on Italy. WHile what he's saying makes sense, I think it's also Italy's collective taste in film that makes things so brutal and raw. You see the same exact difference between American and Italian westerns and you know... there's no Tombstone or Boot Hill outside of Naples. Still though, for whatever reason, Italian films know how to kick some ass. Wipeout is no exception. AKA The Boss ("Wipeout is like the best title ever but The Boss... Henry Silva and Richard Conte in The Boss... The Boss might be a better title"), this movie is about a hitman and a Don battling an evil Colabrian trying to bully his way into the family. Sounds familiar to I Kiss the Hand right? Well it sort of is, except where I Kiss the Hand is a pretty deliberate dramatic movie with splashes of action and violence, Wipeout is a mouth agape actiony violent-as-fuck movie with splashes of drama. You don't see Henry Silva crash into a car and break it clean in half as it falls off a bridge and blows up in I Kiss the Hand. You don't see Henry Silva launch three or four grenades into a movie theater just to make sure the bodies are charred beyond recognition there.... nope for that you have to see Wipeout. Wipeout ALSO plays similar to No Way Out (AKA Tony Arzenta, not the Kevin Costner flick) in that Richard Conte plays the Don but the star of the movie is a hitman ("In America you can never have the hitman be the start of the movie. You might get a movie where Henry Silva plays a hitman out to get the main star but you have to go to Italy to get movies where the hitman IS the star") who gets double crossed... but this is a Fernando Di Leo movie not a Duccio Tessari movie so there are all sorts of twists on genre convention and high-octane tough-guy dialogue thrown in too. Oh what's this? a scene where it looks like someone's gonna play a bit of soccer to establish their sypmathetic character's affinity for an annoying innocent child character? Nope, kick to the nuts. Scene over. Oh great, now they've kidnapped the Don's daughter (kidnapped by student radicals no less) and plan to gang rape her while she cries and gets all hurt and blah blah blah. nope, she loves it. she's too much for them. she wears them out. She's got a specialty that's freaky. She's hungry for more. Wipeout, like Mister Scarface, is actually pretty slow in a few places. I don't want to make it seem like this movie is absolutely perfect and if only more people could see it then it would replace Citizen Kane on all those lists... but the thing with both movies is that there are so many cool moments padding the slow scenes that the occasional threat of boredom completely leaves your mind afterward. All that remains is the tons of cool shit that you just saw, not the scene where the already-established-as-angry Calabrian acts angry. But you know, enough of that. let's get back to the cool stuff. Silva's relationship with the aforementioned nympho daughter is flat-out awesome. He takes apathy to an entirely new level. When asked if he'd bump her off once he gets tired of her, he simply states "honey, I'm tired of you NOW!" She talking to much? "Just screw, baby; don't think." At one point Silva realizes that he's "spent a week between her legs while all hell breaks loose" and slaps her around a bit. she seems to like it. I think, because this girl's such a nympho, this may be the only QTfest films that I see with no rape scene. I told you it was different. Gianni Garko's also in this and I have to confess my ignorance here. Harry says he plays the Police inspector who talks more with his hands than his mouth, but I thought he played the police inspector on the Don's payroll. I remember him as being young in Five for Hell but he's got a mustache in this so I can't be sure. In either case, the dubbing on the guy who talks with his hands is truly excellent. You can tell that he's talking so fast and with so many body gestures that it must have been a real task to fit english dialogue in there. Who knows if what we heard was anywhere near what he said, but what we heard was pretty great. He manages to be the jaded experienced cop, the comic relief wise-cracker, and the jittery overstressed caffeine junkie all in one character. And then we get to the music. Absolutely fantastic score by Bacalov. There's a riff with a sliding bass and distorted guitar that fit so well into the muddy sound mix that at some points I wasn't sure if something was exploding or it was just the music coming in. There were three or four recurring "themes" (if you can call a rising and falling 4/4 drum beat a theme) that builds the movie up and pays it off repeatedly. It's a pretty fine line with these films that use the music over and over... in the case of Who Saw Her Die I loved the music at the beginning and was really tired of it by the end but with this one it just works. Instead of getting tired of it I think it's burned into my brain forever. Awesome music... wonder if there's a score out there somewhere. Also, Quentin played trailers for The Nickel Ride and The Don is Dead beforehand. Both of these trailers are absolutely phenomenal... who knows how good the movies actually are. Why they don't cut trailers like this nowadays is beyond me and a real shame. I guarantee that if a trailer came around that exhibited this level of creativity and design that it would sell tickets. And I guess a few intro tidbits even though they're covered on AICN/Cinemastrikesback/dumbdistraction... Quentin has a new Texas drink that he calls Period on the Beach: Big Red and Malibu Rum ("for when you want to get that 14 year old girl drunk so you can..."). He also paid extreme compliment to Austin by saying that this is the epicenter. The Earthquake of film knowledge and appreciation starts here and ripples out to everywhere else (I imagine Harry Knowles has a lot to do with that but honestly feel the scene is getting more and more potent... we're about at critical mass here, do not be surprised if another big boom of Austin talent pops up soon), and of all the filmmaker's Quentin's introduced to us here for the first time, Italian crime Maestro Fernando Di Leo is the biggest success. He's right though... when I look back at the titles of previous QTfests, I see a lot of movies that are fairly commonplace now but were absolutely forgotten 5 or 6 years ago. All I can say is that if I ever move out of this city, it'll be to wherever Quentin opens his movie theater when he retires (Tim: "It's a moral imperitave that you watch exploitation cinema").
04.25.06	Hollywood Man	Jack Starrett	Hollywood Man was described by Quentin as being a Biker movie meets 8 1/2. It's about a movie stuntman trying to make a movie about a biker who becomes the object of harassment by a real biker gang. He's got his own problems with having to deal with shady Florida-scale mobsters to get financing, so when these bikers show up he kicks their ass and throws them off the set. Little does he realize that the leader of this biker gang is a full-on rapist psycho killer... even with a combover this guy is crazy. So the movie plays half straight and half as a movie about movies (complete with the self-aware scene where William Smith, the main dude, talks to a rural honky cop about how their conversation is like a scene right out of some cheap exploitation movie where the main dude talks to some honky cop). It's pretty interesting... I think I was more engaged by this than the first movie of the night... People were dropping like flies around us but Thomas in the back would clap at these random moments that he felt needed it, which made me laugh. The big thing about this screening was that this huge lightning storm flared up in the sky behind the screen pretty much right after the movie started. By the midpoint the entire sky was flashing bright with strobes and flashes of lightning. At first I was sure that it would start raining any second and ruin the second movie, but pretty soon it became apparent that no thunder was accompanying the lightning so we just got an awesome silent fireworks show as a backdrop to the movie. There were even several scenes in the movie where lightning was supposed to be flashing (of course when you're on a budget a single white frame with a thunder sound effect after it is all you need), so a few moments mirrored very nicely between what was on screen and what was all around is. It kind of made the whole driving way out of town and freezing on a rock for three hours worth it for me... that's one thing you don't get in a theater. I really only had a few notes about this movie though. One was that William Smith's biker character in the movie within the movie wore a fake mustache that made him look just enough like Jack Palance to be cool, and also there is this really horrible theme song that plays 3 or 4 times throughout the movie, complete with a few verses of lyrics. Quentin actually sang a bit of it last night then had to stop himself until he could unleash it tonight, and unleash it he did. I think he knew most of the words and belted them out for us all to hear tonight... It's the kind of song that really sticks in your head... like 4 notes over and over again. According to quentin, when we're 80 and have alzheimer's and can't remember our mother's name, we'll still be able to sing this song. Hearing it in my head right now, I fear he's right. An interesting side note: talking to Lars after the movie ended, he said that the movie itself was rumored to have some sort of mob involvement with the financing, making the line between reality, movie, and movie-within-a-movie blur even further. I guess I should mention that the movie has a surprise ending regarding these shady florida mob investors... it was a good ending. So that was it for tonight... day 2... a double feature outside under the stars (hidden by clouds the entire time... except for one random light in the sky that popped up for a while and didn't move, then disappeared again. ufo! ufo!)... tomorrow night is back home at the alamo, and kicks off with a movie i've been dying to see ever since i saw Rulers of the City a few nights ago. Can't wait!!!
04.25.06	The Savage Seven	Richard Rush	So the whole thing with today is that the air guitar stuff was going on at the downtown alamo tonight so QT fest had to be moved somewhere else. Yes, Tarantino was redirected because of air guitar. You might think that's ridiculous but once you go to one you will completely see the logic there. So instead of calling it off, they decided to make it an outdoor event. This way, they didn't have to worry about selling the venue out so anyone that wanted to come and experience the QTfest vibe could. The only problem is that a huge thunderstorm was due and the whole day was overcast and threatening rain. At 3:45, they took weather.com's 60% chance of rain to mean that we're dodging the storm and the show was on way the hell out in this place called The Glenn. The rain contingency was to play the movies at South Lamar, which would've been weird because they would have had to set up two theaters, but to be honest that didn't sound like such a bad idea... at least it would be in a theater... so anyway, since it's so far out of town lots of people who flew into town needed rides. I left my place at 6 and the sky to the north was black. Things did not look too good. I brought an umbrella along with my lawn chair. So I picked up this guy Matt and we went out there and they wouldn't allow chairs in the place and I didn't bring a blanket or anything so I was pretty much screwed. The venue's actually pretty weird. It's similar to the Stubb's outdoor area except it's a sort-of grassy lawn instead of all dirt... and there are booths for drinks and stuff but it's in the middle of this shopping center, like we parked in the Best Buy lot which was right across the street... but inside the gate it's a lawn sloping down to a stage and for tonight the Alamo's rolling roadshow inflatable movie screen. Pretty much as soon as we got there it began to sprinkle a bit and the wind picked up and they had to take down the screen. I was sure they were gonna cancel it right then and there but there was no official announcement or anything and more and more people started showing up. We staked out a series of rocks to sit on at the back of the field... this really wasn't ideal because the rocks were uncomfortable and we couldn't help but hear everyone walking and talking behind us... It also got downright chilly and me in my shorts was pretty much as unprepared as I could be. No blanket, no pants, no socks... it kinda sucked. it still wasn't raining though so Louis Black got up and talked for a bit about how great we all are then introduced Quentin and he gave a rousing introduction to the first movie. Tonight's double feature is a recreation of the very first night of QT1... without the midnight feature. So it's like two thirds of the first ever night of QTfest... but also outside almost as if we were in a drive-in... and he showed this film on 16mm way back then and now has a pretty good 35mm print of it, so we've upgraded in that sense too. And to also sort of top it off, the stunt coordinator for this movie was in attendance. He didn't get up or anything but I saw him come in. This is a pretty cool thing because in this movie, much like a lot (if not most or all) biker movies, at some point it becomes very clear that the stuntment take complete control of the movie. I don't think I've seen a biker movie with a massive end brawl that hasn't degenerated into one stunt after another, making almost no sense in relation to the movie but complete sense when you picture these guys trying to prove who's the craziest guy out there over and over. Guys jumping off buildings, falling off bikes, setting on fire... everything in the stuntman's handbook invariably gets thrown into every good biker movie. If it doesn't, then it's not a good biker movie. So The Savage Seven is no exception to this rule. By the end it's total chaos... which I can dig. What's also cool about this movie is that Max Julien plays an Indian. During his intro, QT had a funny bit where he offhandedly remarked that every black man tries to say he's part Cherokee anyway... then he starts talking to someone in the audience (I have to believe it's Elvis Mitchell), saying "...yeah they do... and if they don't they're not cool." He also explained that even though there are some cool people in this film (Larry Bishop, Max Julien, Penny Marshall for like a second, Bud Cardos, Chuck Bail, and Duane Eddy!?), by far the best thing about it is Adam Roarke. According to QT, if William Smith is the king of biker movies, Adam Roarke is the crown prince. What's great about him in this movie is that he never quite lets you forget that he's not a good guy. Just when you're getting just enough empathy toward him he does some horrible thing that reminds you that these bikers are bums... not nice people. Quentin also mentioned that this is sort of almost close to a retooling of The Magnificent Seven as a biker movie, but I spent the most part of the movie trying to figure out where that connection was and could never really find it. The plot seemed to be a biker gang rolls in on or close to an Indian reservation and... sort of hates them but then befriends them but then hates them again but for the wrong reason. There's also a huge dude who is sort of the real bad guy, but most of it is bikers vs. faux-indians. All the biker-movie staples are present (weed, rowdy carousing, rape, the psychopath biker who goes too far, etc.). One dude gorws his own herb in a little box he keeps on his bike. When asked about it, he answers "if people potted plants, then it'd be ok if i planted pot. I'm a horticulturist." Earlier, in the midst of a boozed-up party scene, one dude pukes on another dude's woman. "Hey!," he says, "You just barfed on my broad!" The first guy says sorry and the second responds "it's ok, you're my brother. If you want to barf on my broad then go right ahead." This kind of gentle - feminine almost - male bonding seems to happen a lot in biker movies... I'm sure there's an essay on homosexual undertones in the genre floating around somewhere, and if there's not I'm sure there soon will be. Let's see, what else... the main bad guy's henchman yells out "care-atay!" as he starts using his psuedo judo on the bikers in one scene. After Snake in Monkey's Shadow last night, this scene is pretty laughable. In another scene, the horticulturist biker tries to woo a girl by grabbing her by the arm and saying "let's go in the back room and make love." When she rejects him he says "what's the matter, I said I liked your oatmeal." These are the moments that make the movie memorable for me, although I have to say that the increasing briskness in the wind and everything else made it tough for me to really get into the movie. It seemed like an awfully long 94 minutes and by the end my ass was hurting from sitting on a rock the whole time. I ate a $3 taco in hopes that just the process of digestion would generate a little body heat and I hopped around for the short break in between movies while more than half the crowd left... I guess not a lot of people were interested in staying for the next movie which was...
04.24.06	Snake in the Monkey's Shadow	Sum CHeung	Snake in Monkey's Shadow AKA Snake Fist vs. The Dragon. If you know Blake and talk to him at all or read Cinema Strikes Back, you'll know how crazy he is for this movie. For me personally, he's talked it up to the point where I was actually looking forward to it. I guess another geek confession is needed here. I was just never a big Kung-Fu guy. Maybe I just rented the stupid horror and action movies instead of the stupid kung-fu flicks or maybe I was busy watching cinemax late at night instead of wherever they played the kung-fu but really the most into martial arts that I ever got was during that whole American Ninja phase, and to tell you the truth most of that was just about the cool outfit and the throwing stars. So when I watch a kung-fu movie now... I'm dazzled by the fight choreography and the photography (if they're good), but am usually never really invested in any of the characters or plot or anything and usually get pretty bored with them in the non-fight scenes. I guess there are always exceptions and when a movie is great it's great no matter what the genre is, but it's just not my favorite. I haven't seen enough of them to know the stars or the different styles or any of that, and since knowing Blake it sounds like the best ones are only out on region 2 DVD so it'd be hard for me to play catch-up... but there you go, I am not a big fan of Kung-Fu movies. That said, there are certain aspects that I think I love more since I'm kind of an outsider to the genre. For instance, I LOVE the formality and seeming clarity in the difference of styles. Like Tiger Claw is Tiger Claw and Snake Fist is Snake Fist and if you're gonna mix the two together, you will flat-out confuse your opponents. And not only that, but you'll feel compelled to stop the fight and tell them the name of your new style so they can tell you back whether it's very good or if it sucks. You'd think a clear winner or loser would say this on its own but apparently not. If you've just gotten your Mantis Claw ass handed to you by the drunken style, you are pretty much forced to spit some blood and dirt out of your mouth and say "his drunken style beat my mantis claw." It's almost like a more-complex version of rock-paper-sissors. -Ahh, I see your monkey style beats my snake fist, but two snake fists is no match for you. -shit, you're right. I also get a kick out of watching the styles themselves, and I suppose that must be the main draw for most of the kung-fu fans out there, but mostly I like the rules of it. So obviously the best part of this movie is the footage with a real cobra going up against a real (chained up) monkey. Yes there's fight scenes with guys who use either Snake Fist or Monkey (as well as most of the movie being about Drunken style), but the real action, the real "no animals were NOT harmed in the making of this movie" moment is watching the monkey fight the snake. There's some great slow-motion (and even freeze-frame) shots of this battle... ending with the monkey full-on getting the snake's head between his fanged teeth (i call the monkey a he because of his pretty big monkey balls). it's a pretty crazy battle that had way more tension for me than any of the choreographed actor stuff... although it also acted as cool inspiration for the main dude to learn the monkey technique while watching the fight and meld it with his drunken style to create... the hook style? I was hoping for a somewhat cooler name... maybe along the lines of Orangatang style or drunken baboon style but... oh well. Apparently it works even if it has a weak name like Hook style. This leads me to the other thing I really love about kung-fu movies. Most of them that I've seen have a ridiculously long fight scene to end the movie but when that death blow comes, the movie is OVER. No coda, no denoument, no shrink spouting psycho-babble to a room full of cops... no nothing. There's the deathblow and that's it. FIN - END - get the hell out of the theater. After such a long build-up, it's a really celebratory moment of ecstasy... and it always ends like... too early... but not really because if it went on even one frame longer then it wouldn't be as cool. So that's it for this movie. It's relatively simple. Even QT's intro was pretty short... he was like "I don't think there's anything else you need to know about it." Sort of like Snakes on a Plane in that respect. The movie's called Snake in Monkey's Shadow, there you go. This was definitely not a bad kung-fu movie... I just couldn't help myself to not be as into it as Blake. That's taste for ya... So several lobby conversations later I'm home writing this up. Blake told me that not only did QT leave early but he was also spotted flat-out head-back mouth-open asleep during the movie. Hey, the guy's in full pre-production... I'm not suprised. Still though, I walked out to the lobby thinking if i refused to leave they might relent and play a random midnight movie... it felt like a Tarzoon-equivalent would've capped the night perfectly, but oh well. It's still freakin almost 4am right now so I guess it's late enough... plus there's tomorrow... and the next day... and on and on till Sunday. I freakin love QT fest, man... How am I gonna sleep now?
04.24.06	Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die	Henry Levin	So my notes on Best of QT Fest begin. Let me preface this whole thing by saying that both Blake at cinemastrikesback.com and Micah at dumbdistraction.com are doing much more complete reports than I am... in fact I am sort of relying on them to record all the trailers, plots, tarantino intros, etc. that I can go back and read later... In here I am just going to put what I thought was worth noting. So I got downtown right at 5pm and found a class parking spot about as close to the Alamo as you can get without it being valet or a pay lot. I was psyched because I could make several trips to drop off t-shirts (yay for AFS making the shirts in XXL this year), posters (hell freakin yeah the Friday the 13th design is awesome. Actually, the bloody face design is such a huge poster that it really looks damn good as well and the Vanishing Point design, seeing it with the colors so vivid and loud, looked great as well. All three of them look a lot better in person than they did online. AFS also had their "official" best of QT fest logo on posters as well, but since I got it in t-shirt form (glow-in-the-dark t-shirt form no less), I still felt very comfortable in getting the Friday the 13th one), and sunglasses. Plus is gave me an opportunity to go outside even though I'm not cool enough to have to smoke with the RZA or whatever. Trips to the car are cool enough for me. Oh, I also got a free QTquattro shirt with my BoQTF shirt, and for as cool as the Friday the 13th design is, I still wish they'd somehow get that guy a book of stills from the movies that will be shown at the fest so all of the cool characters and drawings in the poster can also act as reminders for all the films that show... but oh well. maybe if I ever get QT-level famous and put on a festival and posters are made for it I can do that. Until then, I will be happy with this poster. So when I walked into the theater, the big thing was that about half the seats had reserved signs on them. Easily the largest reserved section I've ever seen at an Alamo. It wasn't all Quentin though... Like two rows for Ustudio (the Tipping Point of this year... let's hope they don't show up just long enough to applaud themselves like they did all through the last fest), a row for AFS board members, then several rows for who knows... it was reserved-crazy. No problems though... I was there, I had a badge, I was fine. Blake had a whole table set up with stills and the posters on the walls were straight-up awesome; movies we'd be seeing tonight or later on in the week. Left and right I'm bumping into people I met at QT6, people I've befriended since QT6, and a few people I know who didn't go to QT6. I hope this week changes their lives like QT6 changed mine... "life" meaning at least as far as movies go (which, for those that know me, is pretty much all of it). I was just feeling giddy in my seat, man. good friends in a great place getting ready to see great movies. It was a real all-is-right-with-the-world moment. There were so many reserved seats though that I didn't even bother to keep looking back at the theater looking for celebrities. Apparently Rodriguez was there (not with Rose McGowan) and RZA was there (I'd guess more for the second show than the first), but I wasn't nearly as curious as I was last September. I did hear Tarantino's laugh though and knew that he was in the house. Then Rebecca Campbell takes the stage and introduces Quentin. QT... looking just as... well I don't want to say Haggard or Tired because as soon as he starts talking you see he's got plenty of energy. It's clear though that he's working on a movie. I'll put it that way. This is clearly not the only thing going on for him this week... and the first words out of his mouth are an affirmation that this is most definitely NOT QT7. QT7 will be new films, well not "new" films but films that haven't played here before. This is a Best-of festival, which he's been wanting to do for a while now but always felt like he'd be wasting his visit if he did that... so it made good sense since he's in town shooting this movie anyway to do this now. So immediately in my head I'm thinking "so when is QT7 and how can I make sure I get a badge?" This first intro feels almost long but not in a bad way at all. Most of his intros toward the end of QT6 felt kind of short, like he felt we didn't want to hear him talk so he should just shut up and play the movie already... but I think it's really quite the opposite. That dude can school me for like 45 minutes before a movie if he wants to as far as I'm concerned. He can bring Elvis Mitchell up on stage and have some Inside the Actor's Studio thing for an hour and I'd be fine with it... as long as we did get to eventually watch the movie as well. So this first intro felt right on... He went off on tangents, threw in tidbits about Vidal Sassoon's kids, and even said that he really only knows Terry Thomas not so much from the Ealing comedies but from It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and... that's it. Immediately I said to Micah: Diabolik! and Lars right afterword yelled out "Danger: Diabolik" and Tarantino looked at Lars and said "YES!" and Micah elbowed me with a "awww yeah" look and like I said before, all was right with the world. The Diabolik trailer actually played before the movie. Don't believe me? Just ask Eva... So Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die... an amazing title even with that Ashley Judd John Patterson mediocrity out in the world... an amazing title for any kind of movie other than a spy movie. As I watched this I kept stretching my mind to try and think of ways that this great title could connect to this movie at all. It just makes no sense, which actually, in its own way, makes perfect sense because the whole movie makes no sense at all so why should the title be the only thing making sense? that just wouldn't make sense. And before I go any farther in making it seem like I didn't like this movie, I should elaborate on my tastes when it comes to spy movies. For whatever reason, I find that I really only truly like spy movies when they are both serious and non-actiony. I sort of get a kick out of the Flynt movies and Austin Powers is funny and all, but I wouldn't say I actually LIKE like those movies. 3 Days of the Condor I truly like. Spy Game, actually, for whatever reason, I like. Harry Palmer movies I like, James Bond movies (or at least recent Bond movies) I don't like. So this movie, while it was filled with some funny gags and had a few moments, for the most part is just outside of my particular tastes when it comes to spy movies. It's just one of those un-geeky things about me I guess much like QT not liking The Goonies or whatever. The funny thing is I actually like spy movies more than Kung-fu movies but more on that in a bit. So this movie is very 60s-funny. The plot is nonsensical and the heavy's dastardly plan is flat-out ludicrous, even after QT mentioning that an actual rocket scientist (Andy AKA Copernicus) says it's feasible. I just don't by it. If you've got a secret evil army developing shady technology and vying for world domination, why does it have to be through a means as absurd as a satellite that shoots down radiation that makes all men impotent. I mean, WHAT? They actually referred to it at one point as the "sterility apparatus." Come on, that's just dumb. The whole movie's dumb... and yeah yeah that's the charm of it, that wasn't missed by my eyes I did have a good time with it and I laughed at the funny parts like everyone else... but come on, a sterility apparatus? So... now that I've explained why I didn't like it, how could I still have a good time with it? Well, Terry Thomas and the more flagrant Bond rips mostly. Thomas plays a chauffer/ass-kicker that helms a Bond-on-LSD tricked-out Rolls Royce. This car has a bullet-proof partition between the passenger- and drivers-side back seats (presumably for the fighting brother and sister during those long road trips... oh and in case someone feels like car-jacking you by climbing in the wrong side), a pyschadelic homing device, your standard turbocharged engine and things like that, automated tea service and wet bar, extending portable wardrobe, and an uncanny ability to transform itself into a billboard. Thomas plays the master of this automobilic awesomefest who can also beat entire gangs of hoods up, spray machine gun fire at evil armies, and he also sports a hat filled with deadly... shaving cream? He also has these pills that, when dropped into the radiator of a car, will actually make the car come apart. As in disassembled. as in disintegrated... not just like smoke coming from under the hood but a complete and total breakdown of the structure of an automobile. I guess the morale of this movie is Don't mess with Terry Thomas. The spy gags in this movie are so funny... a lipstick cannister that blows poison bubbles, shoots that shoot tiny darts, a ring with hot poison needle action... it was a little child empowerment and a few hundred digital shots shy of being a Spy Kids movie. I guess you need all those gadgets when the main bad guy threatens you with death via piranha. Oh, the one really cool thing about this movie - as in authentically cool and not in any sort of camp or comedic way - is that it's set in Rio and early on in the movie there's an action scene that takes place on the statue of Christ. Much like North By Northwest or Saboteur, except without all the process shots, there's some harrowing footage of these actors on the very top of this thing, shooting at each other and getting rescued by helicoptors. The scenery is pretty great. And by Scenery I also mean the line-up of scantily-clad Italian beauties that parade across the screen in the first few reels. So many bikinis to ogle, so little time. Unfortunately, after the beach scenes are over the main actress always has on some ludicrously outlandish 60s "style" dress. One such creation had her looking like a cross between a joke cigar that's just been blown up, one of those collars they put on dogs to keep them from chewing out stitches or licking their balls, and one of those wire brushes that jazz drummers use when they want to slow things down a bit. I mean really, should those kind of comparisons really be used with a piece of clothing? Diabolik's fashion was out there but also awesome. In this it's just inane. So let's see. There are two more things worth mentioning here for me, both of which I got a real kick out of. The first is that the main spy guy has a real obsession with bananas. He has to take one and eat it every time he sees one (and that's like... 6 or 8 times throughout the movie) and I have to believe that particular personality quirk is only in there to lead up to an honest-to-goodness, i-shit-you-not banana peel gag toward the end of the movie where the main henchman's chasing the girl and slips on the banana peel into some random electronics and fries to death. You know the only other movie I've ever seen a banana peel gag in is Sherlock Jr. and that was made like 50 years before this one. just sayin... The other classic moment that I really want to remember for years to come about this movie is that the final countdown to the rocket lift-off is actually manually counted down by the main bad guy. Over the loudspeaker you hear "final countdown. Rocket will lift of in 60 seconds starting... NOW!" then it's his voicing counting down from 60 as fast as he can. We cut to the evil console and see him sitting there talking into the mic with his finger on the button. I.... I mean..... well.... I guess I shouldn't even try to understand that, it's just so classic as it is now. to understand it would probably ruin it. So that was the first movie of Best of QT Fest. Personally, I'm sort of glad tonight's movies are what they are because that means we get the Spy and Kung-fu genres out of the way quickly. I honestly think I'll have a much better time with biker, crime, comedy, gangster, gearhead, revenge, horror, and sexploitation movies than these two. Moving on... next up was:
04.22.06	Rulers of the City	Fernando Di Leo	This film took a few turns in its first half that really really impressed me. Even though this certainly isn't the first or last rise-to-power crime story, the way it's done here is pretty freakin cool. So cool in fact that I think I'll do a plot synopsis (which I usually hate doing). Skip the next... 3 paragraphs if you don't want any spoilers. Jack Palance plays the big Don in town. He strolls into a smaller Don's gambling joint and covers a losing bet with a check that he knows no one will dare to cash. Tony, a small-time loan collector, takes it upon himself to get the money to prove that he's worth a promotion. In order to do so, he allies with a newly-outcast enforcer from Palance's mob and they hire an actor to impersonate a government official. Palance's right hand tries to bribe said official, Tony takes the money and leaves the check in its place. Two little hitches: Palance's bribe was 10 million Lire and the check was only for 3, and Tony's Don freaks out when he actually gets the money because this means Palance will come after him. What a cool way for a big Don to throw around his power... imagine if Palance did that intentionally in a bid to rub out his competition. It's basically him spitting on the little guy's shoes or sleeping with his woman and daring him to do something about it. So the little Don blows town, his right hand gives up Tony then, in his own bid for power, knocks the little Don out and makes a deal with Palance! Of course, Tony and the ex-enforcer have their own plan going and proceed to outsmart them all to become Rulers of the City... or something. So yeah, even though I was watching this alone on my computer, I felt no need to check my email or anything like that and when one particular twist twisted I whooped it up a bit... then felt dumb for getting vocal about a movie that I was watching alone. The music's also pretty great but mostly I was impressed with the story, man. What a kickass crime tale. There were a few things though... like an awful lot ofkarate kicks early on in the movie... and the comic relief guy gets a bit much toward the end when all I want the movie to do is overwhelm me with its badassocity, but for the most part I really got a kick out of this... now I'm REALLY looking forward to Wipeout! at QTfest.
04.21.06	Hard Times	Walter Hill	A mid-70s story about street fighter Charles Bronson and his wiley manager James Coburn. It felt like a brother of movies like The Cincinnati Kid and The Color of Money to me... except this one interested me by having Bronson take the "title" pretty easily without the usual drama and tension. The real turn comes after he's won, which is something you don't see too often. Bronson's his usual squinty stoic self, and Coburn plays fast-talker pretty well with his super-long arms. It's a pretty solid movie... and it has some sweet mid-70s New Orleans scenery too.
04.20.06	Silent Hill	Christophe Gans	So after that we headed over to the Metro and walked right in to a sneak preview of Silent Hill, complete with obnoxious free-movie crowds that turn from semi-civilized (just shy of being able to shut up during the movie) human beings to mindless zombies hungering for free t-shirts rather than brains. Perhaps I don't like seeing us as a species devolve so much so quickly like that, or maybe i'm just a misanthrope... either way though, I hate these early screenings. Still though, I didn't think I'd have time to see this with QTfest starting up so there you go. I've never played any of the games so I was a complete virgin going into this. I have to say I really liked it. It felt like I was watching someone play the video game in the exact right way, catching all of the cinematics in just the right spot and surviving the combat with just the right amount of health and ammo left over. Maybe that doesn't work for some people, but I like to think that I used to be a pretty hardcore gamer so I was fine with it. All of the creature design really rocked my socks. I guess they're all straight from the game so kudos to the game but kudos to Avary and Gans for not feeling compelled to change them. By far my favorite dude was Pyramid Head. hearing him drag that anime-size blade around was probably the creepiest part of the movie for me. Usually when I see CG bugs I am immediately taken out of it and somewhat annoyed. While everyone in the theater squirmed around in King Kong during those bug scenes I was absolutely fine... But having a dude with a pyramid head dragging a huge blade around made me disregard the bugs completely, which was good. There's also a gag where he rips all of the flesh off of this girl and flings her hide at Rahda Mitchell that floored me. Awesome! Also, toward the end one character gets charbroiled over a bonfire and you see the flesh on her face boil and crisp. Never seen that in a film before, I was pretty impressed. Toward the end, there's some stuff done with barbed wire which tripped my suspension of disbelief breaker... but for the most part I was really engaged with it... really enjoyed it a lot. It's still weird when we gt like a solid 5 minutes of exposition right at the climax of the movie... so much like a video game... but you know, it flowed. I just thought about how this print, which had that one sequence artificially aged to look like the film was all dirty and scratched, will look in 20 years when it's supposed to dissolve to a clean white screen but doesn't. I have to believe that someone somewhere will still be projecting film prints far into the future, so movies like this and Seven and Fight Club with their dirty-film "looks" will grow into accuracy. So after that I actually made it downtown and even parked and was completely set to see Warhol's Dracula at midnight when I gouged my big toe on some random piece of metal sticking out of the sidewalk. I walked a few blocks down to a mini-mart while I bled out onto my sandal and tried to clean it up right there on a street bench, pouring foaming hydrogen peroxide onto the sidewalk and trying to get a band-aid on it... but by then it was past midnight and my sandal was all bloody and sticky and I stank of peroxide so I limped back up to my car and drove home. Maybe it's a sign saying 3 movies is my limit today, maybe I should just look where I'm going. Either way I hope I don't get lockjaw. That would suck.
04.20.06	Streets of Fire	Walter Hill	The plan was to see The New One-Armed Swordsman at the Alamo, bum around for a few hours while the Madonna sing-a-long went on, then catch the Terror Thursday showing of Warhol's Dracula. Instead, Aaron and Jarrette told me there was a Silent Hill screening at 9 so I ditched the Shaw brothers and watched Streets of Fire over at Aaron's house instead before we headed over to Silent Hill. I guess this is Kier-La's favorite movie and Jarrette really talked it up too... It calls itself a rock n' roll fable set in another time at another place, and stars Michael Pare, Willen Dafoe, and a supremely young and foxy Diane Lane. Never tell my mother this but I am a huge Michael Pare fan and Eddie and the Cruisers is one of my fondest childhood movies, so this film had really just slipped through the cracks for me; I'd never seen it before. Lee Ving, the girl who played Dottie in pee-Wee's Big Adventure, Rick Moranis, Bill Paxton... this movie has a really awesome cast, a great premise, and pretty badass dialogue. I think the only reason why I don't absolutely love it is that I feel the 80s infecting it all over. Thanks to childhood nostalgia, I am not completely anti-80s. It bothers me here though because I feel them trying to be timeless but they end up being timeless in a completely 80s way. It's about rock n roll and there's a clearly Motown-influenced group in the movie but all the drums are treated and synths are everywhere not to mention the random neon squiggles and music notes and costumes. All the music's buffed till it's shiny and rouged till it's Flashdance, man. They even manage to fagify Link Wray's Rumble... that's just wrong. I don't really have a problem with Ry Cooder, who did the music. I think it's just an unfortunate product of the times... Every decade seems to date itself in some way so I guess I'm just more annoyed by 80s artifacts than 70s, 60s, or any other decade. Still though, I think if the alternate rock n roll universe was just a little more steeped in 50s rawness it would have been a perfect match with me. You know, like Eddie and the Cruisers.
04.20.06	Monarch of the Moon	Richard Lowry	AICN put on a free screening of this that didn't sell out. I guess that should have told me something. My friends walking out around 20 minutes into it should have told me more. I stayed though... a glutton for punishment perhaps? Lazy? Indecisive? Probably all of the above. The movie is like the old cliffhanger serials used to be, very much in the vein of Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, and Sky Captain. I bring up Sky Captain because it's basically an exact copy of this movie except for much better, and I'm even one of the few that liked Sky Captain. Monarch of the Moon has six episodes and lasted for almost two hours. It was shot on an earlier version of the camera I just bought. Note to self: talk to whoever I can about using a HD camera for my movie. I shouldn't crap on this too much though, they only had something like 80 grand to make it with... but still. Let's just say I won't be seeing it again.
04.19.06	Psycho from Texas	Jack Collins, Jim Feazell	Ending the night with Weird Wednesday, this is the first real replay in the WW series. It's a movie about... a psycho from Maine. Maine? Yeah, the MAIN part of Texas. This is such a great great movie with so many great great moments... but the problem is right now two overriding scenes are bullying out the rest of those great moments from coming to mind. The first is a chase scene that lasts, not kidding you here, a half an hour. Like three days pass and they still cut back to this one guy chasing another guy through the woods and swamp. At one point, the chasee gives up and lays on the ground catching his breath. The chaser collapses and sort of takes a nap on the chasee's boots... until the chasee resumes the action by crawling away. The Chaser crawls after him. In every shot of this chase, they guys are like five feet apart... like he's just BARELY out of reach to the chaser... for a half an hour. I'd say it's the centerpiece of the film but it's totally not. There are easily five or six things just as absurd, but the other big one that's burned into my mind forever is toward the end when the titular psycho from texas goes into a bar to eat his KFC. One thing leads to another and he's got the bartender (played by Linnea Quigley) full-frontally nude yelling "DANCE! DANCE! FASTER! DANCE! LIVLIER! FASTER! DANCE!" for like five minutes. He pours a pitcher of beer over her and slaps her ass while continuing to order her to dance. She's basically jogging in place and that seems to count. The scene is so uncomfortable and grating and repetitious and horrible that I don't think I'll ever be able to forget it. So those two scenes are like attention-craving alpha puppies in my head right now, pushing out all of the other reasons why this movie is so fun. In a thematic connection to the movie I saw before this, there are also several flashbacks to a kid getting kicked and slapped by his sexually active mother. Captivating pathos! There's also the hysterical maid named Bertha, the black kid who treats a pair of glasses like radioactive poison, the diabolical fiancee-cum-kidnapping mastermind, and let's not forget Slick, the psycho's matchstick-chewing accomplice. I don't think I'm even scratching the surface at any sort of comprehensible description of what this movie is. Maybe it can't be done, maybe it shouldn't be done. Let's just leave it at that. Oh... According to IMDb, an alternate title to this movie is "Evil + Hate = Killer" That's a great title. Someone should make a new horror movie and call it that.
04.19.06	The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things	Asia Argento	So I pretty much admit that watching any movie with Asia Argento in it is pretty much just to ogle her crotch tattoo. I can't really come up with any other reason why I saw Scarlet Diva and I can't give you a better one for this... but it's weird... She always seems to be most naked when she's also most messed up so it's never quite as sexy as I think it should be. It's all dirty and drug-crazed. like the amount of clothes is directly proportional to her mental state. I take what I can get though, and in this case it meant watching a kid get messed up for life in a serious way. This movie is pretty freakin rough. A continuous stream of absolutely evil things happen to this kid, so much so that they had to use three actors to play the kid. I guess it was too much punishment and shame for just one young boy to handle. This kid just doesn't get a break, man. Whether it's a freako mom or her jilted lover's pedophilic revenge or her uber-religious parents sermonizing or her brother scrubbing him down in scalding hot water or her revolving door of boyfriends' exposure to life as a truck stop hooker or the inner workings of a meth lab... I have a pretty hard time hating Barny. I mean, sure he's annoying and purple, but he's not pimping mothers out or making boys dress up as girls and seduce Marylin Manson. Oh yeah, all of the supporting roles in this movie were played by people that are way too good to be in this kind of movie. Marylin Manson I can understand because he's a musician not to mention a pretty bad actor, but what the hell is Winona Ryder doing in this movie? Peter Fonda? Jeremy Sisto? Michael Pitt? These people have acted well in good projects. Ben Foster? He's a freakin X-man for christ sakes... what's he doing forcing the blonde kid from Elephant and Lords of Dogtown to bathe in scalding hot water? And why is his character named "Fleshy Boy"? So... there's about five minutes in this movie when Argento's character abandons the kid and he ends up with his religious grandparents and he gets to know one of his uncles played by the blonde kid from Elephant and Lords of Dogtown. For five minutes there, this movie is really good. The kid mistakes the word "psalm" for "song" and starts singing Anarchy in the UK, even spitting at the end, and it's pretty great. Then they peel potatos and kinda sorta become friends and the movie is really quality and I'm liking the characters and I'm thinking it was just a 20-minute introduction to show how crappy this kid had it before winding up here... but then Argento re-appears and the kid's life becomes hell again for the rest of the movie. Afterward, someone in the back laughed. I think someone told a joke or something... all i know is that laugh felt so wrong. I didn't even want to hear it... everybody else just kind of silently milled out. Harsh harsh movie, man...
04.19.06	The Proposition	John Hillcoat	Next up was a special free AICN sold-out screening of this Aussie Western that hasn't really played here in the states yet. It's really freakin badass and brutal. Both Ray Winstone and Guy Pearce are awesome in this and the story is great. The usage of vintage photographs reminds me of how pissed I was by the end of The Village when all those old photos showed with the end credits but the movie was absolutely nothing like them. Well, this movie is pretty much exactly like the old photos you see with the beginning titles: gritty, dirty and wrong. I think the best thing about this movie is how your sympathies are stretched and manipulated. In the beginning we learn that a family gang has raped and murdered a fine upstanding family, yet through the course of the film we come to get behind several of these family members> Nothing new, I know... but what really got me is that the film reminds you exactly of why you're not supposed to like these guys at the end, so there's a really uncomfortably sympathy there that I really enjoyed. Great script by Nick Cave and what must have been a solid hour of new music that really put a contemplative and sometimes jarring vibe on the scene. I thought Deadwood a few times but this is never as soap opera-y... Maybe the realism of Deadwood combined with the badassosity of The Wild Bunch or The Professionals. It's just really great and I was super impressed.
04.19.06	Thank You for Smoking	Jason Reitman	I wanted to see this again both because I liked it the first time and it would let me drive downtown in 4:00 traffic rather than 5:30 traffic. I'm glad i did... I dunno, it's a pretty solid comedy. I like everyone in it, love how the characters don't compromise themselves and how the movie doesn't compromise itself, and it goes down smooth. Plus this time around I got to notice the Alpaca brand cigarettes and all the Sam Elliot advertising going on in the background. Great casting too. Aside from Eckhardt playing to type, I also completely believe Bill Macy as a Vermontian, Maria Bello as a hard drinker, and Katie Holmes as a slut. Hah!
04.18.06	White Heat	Raoul Walsh	TCM ran this awesome awesome movie that I don't have on DVD yet so I decided to record it and watch it months and months later. It really is a great movie with perhaps my favorite Cagney performance, an awesomely understated performance by Edmond O'Brien (see him a year later in D.O.A. to see why I call it understated) and the uberhot Virginia Mayo fatale-ing it up. I also love the attention to detail with the police tracking tactics of the time. I guess a lot of 40s noirs paid attention to this (the polygraph test in Call Northside 777 comes to mind) and although I guess I should be bored by it I'm always fascinated. You can really see the roots of Dragnet's popularity here and I suppose what is now Law & Order and CSI and all those procedural shows on TV. But it's definitely Cagney and also Raoul Walsh that make this movie a classic badass noir... it's long but never seems slow, it's complicated but never complex, and there are absolutely no frills. great movie.
04.17.06	Who Saw Her Die	Aldo Lado	Giallo starring George Lazenby that i wanted to see solely based on the trailer. The Alamo plays it every once in a while and the whole thing is set to this amazing music that's like looped choir boys singing with an electric bassline and drum track underneath. It gives the trailer a really epic feel and it regularly draws applause when it plays in front of other movies. So I guess it's no surprise that the actual movie is pretty slow and mediocre. That music, credited to Ennio Morricone, is like the Killer's theme so any time we see his/her hand or POV or a knife or pretty much any threat of danger at all the music ramps up abruptly until the danger passes and then fades down abruptly. By the end of the movie I was actually pretty tired of it. Is that irony? Also, watching it on my computer was a bad decision. I ended up being pretty distracted through most of it. oh well though, at least i got that loop recorded to wave in case i ever want to listen to it again.
04.17.06	Scary Movie 4	David Zucker	Had a few laughs but ultimately forgettable. My favorite gag was Craig Bierko as Tom Cruise splitting duraflame logs. that cracked me up. So did the dialogue in Japanese and the Oprah stuff at the end (the reason why i wanted to see it. I can't help but laugh at that), but the duraflame bit had me rolling.
04.16.06	Monster Squad	Fred Dekker	So the last time I saw this movie was... when it came out on video. I was sick at home one day and my mom brought this home for me to watch and I was incredibly psyched because hey... kids fighting monsters, man! So thanks to Eric, not only was Dekker here but Andre Gower (Sean, the leader), Ashley Bank (Phoebe the little sister), and Ryan Lambert (Rudy, the greaser cool kid) also showed up for a full-on reunion of 80s fun. This event sold out two shows on Easter Sunday. That's saying something, man... not only did it sell out twice but it also looked like they sold 98% of the available merchandise afterward. Why is this movie not out on DVD? Makes you wonder. So easily the best thing about this movie for me is the Creature make-up. It's the best Creature from the Black Lagoon that I've seen. Tom Noonan's Frankenstein is also pretty good but that Creature man... whoa. Not to mean the rest of the movie is bad. It's pretty good... lots of good lines and the crowd was really responsive and made it a great time for all of us... I know I had a good time. The Q&A was the highlight for me though. All of the "kids" there were really funny and loose and Dekker was pretty unflinching with his honesty ("I wrote it and I have no clue why the mummy was in the boy's closet. Because it's funny")... and the questions were pretty good too (someone asked if they felt bad about killing off the only black character in the film. Another person asked if there were armadillos in Transylvania), so it was a great time to be sure. There's definitely worse ways to spend an Easter. oh, almost forgot. Dekker gave Eric the dragon crystal amulet thingy! the actual prop! it's really awesome... i bet he was trying his best not to truly geek out about it until he got home and safely alone. i know i would be FREAKING OUT if i got a vital prop from one of my favorite movies.
04.16.06	Underworld Evolution	Len Wiseman	I feel bad complaining about a movie where Kate Beckinsale wears skin-tight rubber, so I'll just leave it at that.
04.15.06	Night of the Creeps	Fred Dekker	Another kickass Alamo event... tonight at midnight they showed Night of the Creeps with writer/director Fred Dekker in attendance. I'd never seen this movie before but had heard lots of good things about it. Well... good in an 80s horror/comedy sense of the word. This was actually a last-minute thing. Tomorrow there's a Monster's Squad reunion screening with Dekker and a couple of the actors, but since Eric (who put a lot of this together) also loves this movie and he was going to be in town anyway, Kier-La got a print there you go. Dekker gave a cool intro and good Q&A afterward. There was a pretty decent crowd for it (I suspect more tomorrow), and aside from the print jumping the sprockets right at the beginning, the screening went well. It surprised me exactly how similar this is to Slither, both in subject matter and tone. When Tim asked Dekker what he thought about it, Dekker was very polite, saying his movie wasn't all that original either and since James Gunn says that he hasn't seen it he thinks they just stole from the same places. That said, he had 20 years to see his movie and he didn't so fuck him. heh heh heh. Later on though, talking in the Lobby, Dekker brought up a Monster Squad TV show from the 70s and how he'd never even heard of it when his film came out so he can sort of identify with that feeling. He also urged all Night of the Creeps fans to actually physically write a letter on paper and put a stamp on it and send it to Sony Home Entertainment so it's there in front of their face and they can't just blanket delete the e-mail and it's not just a list of random names that don't mean anything and they might think there's money to be made and decide to release it on DVD. Dekker spoke of his original ending which is pretty different from what we saw so it sure would be interesting to see that footage restored. So my thoughts on the actual movie? I liked it. It does walk that line like Joe Dante's work where it's sort of goofy and funny but then you'll find moments of genuine creepy horror stuff mixed in. There's a detective character that's stuck in the 50s that's the best thing about the movie but the main kid is also really good. I think he's the kid that played Rusty in European Vacation... he's got a couple straight-man reaction shots in this that are really well done. surprisingly well-acted. There's a line where the hot sorority girl tells him that her newly-ex boyfriend is an asshole and he says "I know he's an asshole" in a pretty great reading. I dunno, some surprisingly good acting out of him. The biggest things for me tonight, hands down the things I will remember about tonight for years and years to come, are the trailers that Tim played before the show. He played trailers for The Stuff and Night of the Comet. If you are Steve or Trapper you will know that we watched those very same movies in a double feature up in Rochester one night, and in that order as well! When the trailer for The Stuff started I was like "nice! I didn't know Tim had this..." and leaned over and said I loved this movie to Jarrette, who looked like he hadn't seen it. But then when Night of the Comet came on Jarrette was like "I love this movie" and I was completely taken aback. I mean what are the odds? Two of Trapper's favorite movies from the 80s, that he rented and made us watch as a double feature, projected in trailer form at the Alamo years later. There's something cosmic about that... or not. I remember not liking Night of the Comet at all though... I'll have to see that again. The Stuff though... I actually suggested that to my other friends in Rochester as part of their Cheese-a-thon (where we watch bad movies and eat cheese and drink tang all night. it was college) so I got to see that twice in the same year... the trailer reminded me of how bizarre and crazy it is. Now i want to see them both again.... i might have to recreate that double feature sometime and coerce a few people to sit through them like Trapper coerced me. so a good night all around. The two actors from Monster Squad were also there tonight and they all hung out and talked in the lobby after the movie... more on them tomorrow though.
04.14.06	I Kiss the Hand	Vittorio Schiraldi	So this movie went from a so-so trailer to the best movie in the world over the span of two days. QT singing its praises to Tim followed quickly by Blake telling me how amazing it is and how vindicated he feels in hearing that QT's also a fan because he wasn't sure if it was just him or not shot my expectations of this movie from 0 to about 8 or 9. Now that I've sat myself down and watched Blake's copy (looks like a 2nd-generation VHS transfer with japanese subtitles), I'd say it's actually more like a 7. It starts off as an Italian Godfather rip-off, complete with a big family wedding scene that's actually pretty well done. From there it follows the downfall of the Ferrante family as rebel upstart Gaspare Ardizzone rises in power via blood. Ardizzone is played by John Saxon who, aside from a particularly blowhard Italian accent, gives his career performance. Granted I probably haven't seen half of his work but it's by far his strongest work that I have seen. He's got two scenes in particular, one an angsty monologue about his lack of respect delivered to his wife (that ends with her asking what he wants from him and him answering "I want you to take your clothes off" then shoving her head into his crotch while he triumphantly looks to the heavens) and another a speech given to all of the Dons gathered there to discuss whether Ardizzone should be made a Capo or not. They are both easily on the level of DeNiro or Pacino if you ask me... The second speech especially... it's really really great. But since it's Italian, there's a lot of shooting, dying, and convolution. I think the real power of this film is that it's an honest-to-goodness quality film made from standard exploitation story. I guess that doesn't make a lot of sense cinsidering the director adapted his own book into the screenplay, but it's how i saw it. Even though every character always referred to everybody by their full names, I still had a hard time following exactly what was going on and the ending, although it hit me with a certain emotional impact, made absolutely no logical sense to me. But still, the characters have real emotions, the acting is pretty great, and there are a handfull of scenes here that i was surprised to find in an Italian gangster movie. Surprising humanity in an ocean of random shootings and executions. So... yeah. It's funny I was a bit disappointed with it's lack of best-movie-ever-ness but I'd very much like to see this movie again, particularly either in a theater or with a decent digital transfer. Like Blake mentions in his mini-review, it feels like i've seen the movie but haven't experienced it. And perhaps a second viewing to help me understand who everybody is and what's happening in every scene will clarify a lot of what i didn't quite get the first time. Still though, for a virtually unheard-of movie, it's really great. It'd make a perfect QTfest movie for sure, and I have no problems believing he's such a fan. A great example of a lost gem. Side Note: I finished the main storyline of Oblivion today. Yeah, it's the reason why this journal has been so sparse for the past few weeks. Roughly 175 hours of my time has been spent playing a video game instead of watching movies, paying bills, snd other general social interaction. There's always a few more side things to finish up with that game so I won't pretend that my play time will end, but now that the main dramatic thrust has been resolved, hopefully i won't be a crack fiend for it anymore and will be able to return to my main habit: movies.
04.13.06	Demons 2	Lamberto Bava	Kicking off the second calendar of Terror Thursdays is the sequel to the movie that kicked off the first calendar. It's cool how fast this series has taken a loyal following... the line was out the door! Sure it's mainly because the Madonna sing-a-long ran late so they weren't letting anyone in the lobby but still, out the door! What's also cool is that it seems like mostly a different audience than Weird Wednesday... if you ask me thursdays are a bit rowdier and a bit drunker. Plus I think Lars has built a reputation of silencing those that speak up on Wednesdays that has yet to set in tonight, plus the fact that Thursday nights are basically equatable to friday nights for most college students. Actually, funnily enough, some dude got all up in Tim's face after the movie tonight complaining that Tim told him to shut the hell up. Everyone in the theater could hear this dude talking but his defense was that everybody had seen it a million times and we were all here to drink beer and have a good time (to which David said "well, I've only seen it 900,000 times"). The guy was pretty adamnant in his position but Tim totally held his ground until the guy agreed to just let it go and leave. Meanwhile, all of us regulars kind of circled around in the walkway, making our presence known and getting Tim's back. Afterward Aaron said he was just waiting for the guy to take a swing so he could see 30 Alamo fans all jump on him in a righteous battle royale of unleashed anger collected over years of having to sit through movies while jerkasses won't be quiet. The guy just left though. Another pretty cool thing about tonight is that Tarantino showed up. He came in right at midnight so I bet he was surprised to see the theater running late and have to walk up the stairs through a packed line of people wigging out as soon as they recognized him. One girl screamed to her friend "YOU SHOULD'VE GOTTEN A PICTURE!" as he, as casually as possible, hustled ass up the stairs, stood at the bar long enough to get a beer, then disappeared into the theater. By and large though, the crowd was pretty cool and non-invasive. I'm actually surprised more people didn't stay after the movie to ask for autographs or whatever... by the time the movie talker left, it was basically us regulars hanging out in the lobby talking movies. Well, us regulars and Tarantino. Oh, right... the movie. I thought I saw this a long time ago but Eric set me straight... I had seen Night of the Demons, not this. So Although I haven't actually seen Demons 3-8 or whatever, I am kind of thinking it would be cool if they started off each TT calendar with a Demons movie. I mean, who doesn't want to see a demons movie about once every two months, right? So... good things about this movie. They brought Bobby Rhodes back (the pimp in the first one) as a sweaty gym instructor... they had a demon dog transformation that was awesome, and managed to have a car full of punks driving around for no reason just like in the first one. They also had a demon kid which is awesome, and had the demon kid chest-burst into some weird demonic half-Gremlin/half-Zuni doll from Trilogy of Terror. It screamed just like little Asia Argento, but it was pretty cool with it's gnarled teeth and tiny wings and muppet mouth. I don't want to make it sound like I didn't have a good time with this movie because I'm about to start talking about how it's not as good as the first... I smiled through most of it and had several great laugh/exclamation moments... but I sort of think the whole movie is a missed opportunity. Demons 2 is basically just like Demons 1 except in an apartment building rather than a movie theater... except with a worse ending. The greatest moment in the first movie, for me anyway, was when they're finally about to escape from the building and a freakin helicoptor falls through the roof. WTF? See, the demons are not just contained in the theater... they're everywhere! So even these lucky few that get out of the theater alive are still on the run because basically the whole world is being overtaken. So wouldn't the logical assumption for Demons 2 be something taking place in a world with demons everywhere? Something akin to Dawn of the Dead or Aliens. I guess that would've cost too much money, and made too much sense for those wacky Italians. But, considering how I wished the movie was completely different, I still got a real good time out of it. Don't think I'll rush out tomorrow morning to buy the DVD or anything but as a Terror Thursday experience it was pretty right on.
04.12.06	Black Heat	Al Adamson	Thank goodness for Lars' introductions. If i sat down and watched this movie cold I'd have absolutely no idea what was going on. Since Lars laid a little bit of the circumstance behind this movie's existence out though, it made for a much less confusing, albeit no more entertaining, time. Reading up a bit on Vanishing Point after seeing it last night, the film came about as an excuse to market the new Dodge Challenger (at least according to IMDb trivia, but who knows how legit that stuff is)... so in essence it was like the great-grandfather of those BMW short films that came out on the Internet a few years ago. Similarly, knowing that this film had three completely different titles (Black Heat, Girl's Hotel, The Murder Gang) aimed at three completely different demographics (blaxploitation, sexploitation, Euro-action...ploitation), it becomes clear why there's a a group of constantly near-nude women all hanging out at one particular hotel that's a front for... some nefarious plot (I never quite understood quite how they all fit together, but to be honest I wasn't trying too hard), as well as a couple car chases thrown in for good measure and lots and lots of gunshots. So it's really only one third blaxploitation (filling out nicely with an Independent Black Woman reporter lugging around a news camera on her shoulder complete with a sternum-support rod and a honky assistant sound man, A salt & pepper cop duo and an elongated love scene with extended close-ups of Timothy Brown's nylon-undie'd ass), one third sexploitation (featuring a gambling-addicted girl putting herself in the pot during a poker game to be beat by 4 sevens, followed immediately by the same girl getting raped again, this time by the evil headmistress of the hotel who's bought up all her debt in order to... well, for some reason or other. it's like 5 minutes of severe female-in-trouble action stuck in the middle of this movie), and one third action (I don't feel like filling out another elongated parentheses... this sentence has gone on long enough). So, fitting of that idea, the movie also ends three times... the first time was the best. Even the most random Weird Wednesday experience usually has at least one little tidbit that I can walk away with and note on here for possible future use. I'd say this movie has two: a really great funky score and Russ Tamblyn. Tamblyn plays Ziggy... I guess he works at either a club or the Girl's Hotel... or somewhere else. ANyway, he harasses random women, kills for pleasure and takes particular pleasure in intimidating the afore-mentioned gambling addict/gang rape-ee by utterly destroying some poor schmuck's car. Then socking him in the balls with a metal hammer. Then running over his legs. Twice. When Tamblyn finally dies via impalement on some random spike, he manages to flip the bird to the cop with his last bit of life force. Sweaty and mustachiod right to the end. It was really awesome to watch this movie and think of The Haunting and West Side Story and Twin Peaks... ahh how the 70s had open arms for oceans of washed-up actors. so you know... even though they can't all be gold, WW never feels like time misspent. P.S. I forgot to mention one other thing about this movie. There's so much footage of people shooting at each other on rooftops in here... it's exactly like the stuff in Boogie Nights with and Brock Landers and Chest Rockwell in Angels Live in My Town. Like, EXACTLY.
04.11.06	Vanishing Point	Richard C. Sarafian	QT introduced this second half of tonight's double feature as "not the shitty Viggo Mortensen TV movie Vanishing Point but the real Barry Newman Kowalski Vanishing Point" and also mentioned that for anyone that's read his Grind House script, there is a definite plot point lifted from this movie. This is a really cool movie about this guy who wants to drive this supercharged Dodge from Denver to San Francisco, evading the cops and becoming a folk hippy hero along the way thanks to blind radio DJ Super Soul (played by Cleavon Little). There are pretty long stretches of time with no dialogue at all, just shot after shot of this Dodge Challenger burning ass across desert highways. As I was watching I realized that I had seen the TV movie remake of this, and that it did indeed suck. This movie though, is its own sort of cool. Barry Newman has maybe 15 lines of dialogue in the whole thing but has the type of role where cult hero status is pretty much guaranteed. It's kind of like an action chase movie with a hippy sensitivity. Really a cool film and I am excited to see it again when it plays Best of QT in a few weeks. So that's it for tonight. Not a lot of celebrity-spotting... didn't meet any famous people or anything, but had a great time hanging out with my friends and watching cool movies with a loud raucaus crowd. Oh yeah, a certain person with certain infamy was here tonight, working certain wiles to live up to certain reputations. I've never actually seen starF-ing in action until tonight, but it's pretty blatant and unsightly. I'd like to say that if i ever got famous on a QT level that I'd be above all of that... and while I think that I would be in that one particular case, I have no doubts about being a complete slut when the women are actually hot.
04.11.06	From Dusk Till Dawn	Robert Rodriguez	Tonight's Grind House crew screening started with this movie which Tarantino says he hasn't seen in a theater for a long long time. Rodriguez wasn't there - actually, these "crew" screenings seem to have become half and half between actual crew and AFS/alamo folks who just want to see the movies in a cool atmosphere - but QT mentioned how he thought this was his best acting and that their best collaboration to date ("We'll see about Grind House").The intros seem to be getting less performancy as these go on... The best part about watching this movie again in the theater... well there's actually two best things about it. The first is hearing how much Quentin laughs at his own stuff. You'd think he might want to be modest about it or something like that but he was laughing harder and longer than anyone else in the movie. It got to be where I stopped thinking it was funny and started thinking "well of course, why make a movie you don't like" so... good for him... I guess. The other thing is that now I get to see the movie with a bit more wisdom and experience concerning the types of movies that QT likes and draws from. With Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, I always thought of his cinematic inspirations/sources as being fairly close to those of Paul Thomas Anderson (American Classics mixed with some New Wave and maybe a little Kurosawa), but starting with this movie and pretty much everything he's done since, QT has been much more exploitation-bound. I didn't see it back in 96 when this came out but I do now. I noticed John Saxon in there, and realized who Fred Williamson is (and spotted Greg Nicotero as the guy who Sex Machine intimidates with his crotch gun (which must hurt like hell when he fires it, right!?!?) and Michael Parks as the sherrif in the beginning sequence (later to reprise the role in a flashback sequence in Kill Bill) and having Harvey Keitel's Chinese son played by Ernest Liu (have to believe there's some relation there to Gordon)... it all just makes much more sense to me now. Now, the Salma Hayek dance and whiskey serving... I always thought was one of the hottest moments in contemporary cinema, bar-freakin-none. But also, over the years since seeing it (and being disapointed in it) for the first time, I've also come to really like how the movie completely switches genres on a dime. I still think the first half when it's a Desperate Hours movie is pretty slow, but can think of few other movies that manage to completely bait and switch on you like that. Now if only the film wasn't marketed at a vampire picture, this movie really would've blown some minds. Dealing with the first half though... I think they might've made a mistake by casting Keitel and Juliette Lewis. I can see why they did it because in the second half of the movie they turn into complete badasses and it suits their image just fine (especially at the time coming off Rservoir Dogs/Pulp Fiction and Natural Born Killers), but I have a harder time believing them as non--badasses during the first half than if they would've cast actors known for their sensitive sides and turned them into badasses during the second half. Still though, the pacing of the first half makes the second seem to go by in about a minute, and now that I've actually seen a few other Desperate Hours movies and know the conventions, I find myself enjoying this film a lot more. Plus they had the volume pumped. it was rockin.
04.11.06	Bridge on the River Kwai	David Lean	Rounding out my triple feature before tonight's midnight double feature is an archival screening of David Lean's cinemascope masterpiece... on 35mm. One of my friends is crabby because there's a great screen but it's not a 70mm print. I'm personally just happy to see a few of these theatrically... maybe the next time they show them I will complain about the print too but for now I'm happy enough just to get to watch them projected. That said, this is a pretty freakin long movie. They're also playing Doctor Zhivago and I don't think you'll catch me dead in there... I think this is the one Lean Epic that I can take just as a movie. Although that same friend of mine tells me that seeing Lawrence of Arabia projected on 70mm at the cineramadome in LA is a religious experience, watching it on DVD is most certainly not, for me anyway. This one though at least has William Holden and explosives. It's also really a downer if you think about it... At the end when they play this rousing marching band tune overtop the newly-blow'd-up bridge, it's really either wrong or meant to evoke irony because the tone at that moment is so depressing. Everybody's dead, Guiness' last moment of thought is that he'd just spent 12 weeks doing something horribly horribly wrong, and the random medic guy screams "madness" over and over again. yeah that's a high note to go out on if I ever saw one. It's a really great movie though... but it's still three hours long. I had to break down and endulge in some Alamo food to get through it.
04.11.06	Dave Chapelle's Block Party	Michel Gondry	next up was this one, which I've been wanting to see forever but have been too wrapped up in Oblivion to get out for. I'm a Dave Chappelle fan, a Michel Gondry fan, and a fan of most of the music acts appearing here so I figured it was a surefire hit. It was. It's actually 50/50 split between concert performance and documentary leading up to the event; both halves succeed in their goal. The music is good and the talking bits are interesting and entertaining. Some of my favorite parts are actually when Gondry compares footage from the concert with footage shot at rehearsal the day before, showing how certain gags and sequences come about. You get the vibe that everyone's good friends there and they're all there just to have a good time so it's a real happy movie. Very relaxing.
04.11.06	Lucky Number Slevin	Paul McGuigan	Tuesdays are fast becoming my favorite day of the week. After the first week I don't think it's so much the hanging out with celebrities thrill anymore but I'd be lying if I said I was above all of the elitist better-than-the-rest feelings that come along with seeing something early and being in the loop rather than just another guy waiting in line. The tarantino screenings are like QTfest mixed with crack for me. I'm more than willing to mess up my sleep schedule every week in order to see a midnight double feature. no question. So since I had that on deck for tonight, I planned the whole day as a movie binge, starting with something new that I wanted to see. This movie... well let's see. I liked it. I LOVED seeing Morgan Freeman as a crime boss. Everyone in it's pretty good and it's done well. That said, it ties up very cleanly and leaves me feeling like it was a fun movie but a small movie. It will be a movie that's brought up 10 years from now and the reaction will be "huh? oh right, that movie... yeah, that was fun." Not a bad time at all though.
04.10.06	The Long Good Friday	John Mackenzie	It's weird when your first exposure to someone is in a movie like, say, Who Framed Roger Rabbit so you have to find out he's a British tough guy later on. This movie's pretty good except for the music which reminds me of Scarface but not as good. I guess the music's OK but it just doesn't fit the movie at all for me. Hoskins is great, Eddie Constantine is cool, seeing a super young Pierce Brosnan is cool... it's a pretty cool movie all around. I don't know, it's late. I liked it.
04.08.06	Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo	Sam Firstenberg	For the second show (with a much rowdier crowd), Alamo Tim got up to introduce and gave a rowsing speech about what impact these films have had on his life. I think I was born just a bit too late to have any sort of permanent damage from 80s movies (aside from a little demented childhood nostalgia) but definitely remember these movies coming out and jamming out to them and thinking they were so cool and dancing with my neighbor friend who lived down the street and acting all bad-ass because we wore dogchains for a week. So then there was another dance competition (won by a woman who did a pretty wicked heartbeat move) that AMODA William coerced Tim into participating in. Tim got out of his chair, took a huge swig of beer, and said OK. All I can say about Tim's popping and locking skills is that... he looks like an absolute psychopath while he gets his groove on. Just in his face, it looks like he's trying to kill children while ha moves and contorted. I immediately damned myself for not having my camera right there in close-up because it would've made bar-none the best DVD extra of all time. So... curse me, and curse Oblivion. Anyway, for whatever reason I thought the second Breakin' was the better of the two. Yeah, I was about as wrong as I could be. It's like when Dave Chappelle talks about going out of town for a summer and returning to DC after crack cocaine had hit the streets. It's the same town I guess, but it's like a flipside bizarro-world nightmarish version of the same town. Electric Boogaloo is like the cracked-out el negativo version of the first movie. It's all pastel colors and huge sweeping music numbers where everyone on Earth knows how to breakdance (including the mailman and telephone maintenance guy). not to mention the gang fights in the form of dancing. In the first one it made sense because the better dancer won the club cred and showed up the other dancers (see You Got Served) but alone under some highway one gang breakdancing against another? There also seemed to be a huge influx of bondage gear between early 1984 and late 1984. Gone are the jazz dance buttcrack tights and spandex leotards, but now everyone seems to be sporting something spiked, studded, or handcuffed. Everything is supposed to be so much happier and shinier in this one but all the costumes and emotions and characters have a much darker edge to them, much more aggressive. It's a really weird mixture of tones that didn't sit well with me at all. Luckily though, the healing power of dance won everyone over and it ended happily. There was another short Q&A afterward where Boogaloo stressted that the healing power of dance is what brought blacks and latinos together in the movie so maybe it could work in LA right now. who knows... all I know is that the 80s were a strange time and these two films stand as constant reminders of just how strange it was. Lest we ever forget...
04.08.06	Breakin'	Joel Silberg	Tonight was an awesome double feature here at the Drafthouse... Breakin' and Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo with creator/producer David Zito and dancer/star Michael "Boogaloo Shrimp" Chambers in attendance. It was complete with local dance contests before each show and Q&As after. Kier-La had mentioned earlier this week that the show had only garnered 4 online ticket sales... well it turns out she wasn't checking the double feature purchases. Both shows were sold out with apprecieative crowds and even though Boogaloo was charging for autographs and pictures with him and a broom, the people at AMODA together with the Drafthouse people managed to put together another top choice of what to do on a Saturday evening. The dancers before the first show were a little peeked, although there was this one kid that said he taught himself that got up there in his vest jacket and rocked some serious popping and locking. He came in second though... some random guy in a longhorns shirt was the clear winner. After the show though, one young girl in the audience asked Boogaloo to show off some of his moves so he gave us a little something that was pretty impressive (although the whole night was much more oriented toward pop & lock rather than breakdancing... they had a few DJs from Backspin Records mixing some primo electro live before each show and the Alamo stage isn't really condusive to any serious floor work). A fun time was had by all though. For whatever reason, it seems like they always play Breakin' 2 on TV and never the first, so it's been a LONG time since I've last seen this movie (and likewise for Beat Street, which is so long ago I hardly even remember)... What I found watching it again was that the movie has a certain sincerity to it much like Wild Style. It's a feeling that this is actually more a jazz dance movie with this new street dancing stuff showcased in it than what would later become the breakdance movie. It's clear that they had a classically trained dancer and then just found these Shabba-Doo and Boogaloo Shrimp kids and the movie then became a bit of a document of the times and emerging trends (kind of like krunking I guess)... The movie's pretty straight forward and devoid of most cheese (until of course the end scene when the healing power of dance overtakes the snooty Brit audition judge). It's not a bad movie at all, and Chambers' scene with the broom set to Kraftwek's Tour de France is pretty classic. Also, Ice-T's there but I think he's credited as like a hip hop speaker or something like that. Jean-Claude Van Damme can also be spotted as an extra in Venice, grooving out in the crowd. In the Q&A afterward, producer David Zito told us about the relative success of the film (made for 1.9 mil, ended up grossing around 28 mil, with ancillary deals and whatnot extending to about 50 mil, but more importantly allowing producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus to raise upwards of 200 mil on Wall street. Zito credits Breakin's success to Golan and Globus buying MGM. Interesting. P.S. I'm not sure if I mentioned it above but I wanted to make sure to note that Boogaloo Shrimp said he got a lot of dancing inspiration from Ray Harryhausen and mentioned Clash of the Titans multiple times during the Q&A. I thought that was interesting and awesome.
04.06.06	Boarding House	John Wintergate	so what is there to say about Boarding House? Well... you know how I keep saying that I have no idea how a lot of those crazy movies made in the 70s ever got made? I have no problem seeing how this movie got made. What amazes me is that this movie, shot on video, got transferred to film which means it somehow played in theaters. Does that mean that this is technically the forefather of the digital video revolution, 20 years before digital video even existed? Watching the movie was also strange because everything's all fuzzy and saturated like you'd expect from 1982 video technology, but it's also got nicks and scratches on the film itself. It's a pretty confusing vibe. So... the very beginning of the movie... there's like six minutes of scrolling teletype. That's when I laughed hardest. After that, there was funny stuff but not six minutes of scrolling teletype funny. The main guy was really creepy looking and he had a rat tail which i thought was hilarious. It was like the perfect mending of 70s hair with 80s hair... the big blow-dryed white fro with the little rat tail hanging down. It also feels like his intention for making the movie was exactly like his character's intention for having the boarding house: I'm gonna get like ten hot girls to hang out with me and then i'll get to see them naked. This movie reminded me a lot of the home movie stuff i did with my neighbor when i was like 14... except we had way less nudity. It's clear that the director loved the "fade to black" button on his camera and used it often, most times fading out of a scene like 30 seconds too soon. I think I've talked about this enough. This is truly one of those movies that I can't say I liked at all (While I think this was a worse movie than Dangerous Men, DM was a lot more enjoyable), but am glad I've seen it. once. once is enough. OK maybe in ten years when I have friends who haven't seen it... maybe once more then.
04.05.06	The Candy Snatchers	Guerdon Trueblood	In the hour or so since I saw the final shot in this movie, I've been trying to think of what to say about it. It'spretty clearly great, but it's like it's hit me in the chest or something because I can't even come up with a genre for it. I loved the guy laughing about a kid not talking, the telephone dude's "uniform" of a shirt that says "Coors Breakfast of Champions," the one guy yelling out his death count as he unsuccessfully tries to raise it and especially that last shot... what is a last shot like that doing in a movie like this? The bit character that sells the kidnappers an ear has no business being that charismatic and effective in his role. I think this is one that will grow on me like Convention Girls did... Ask me in a month and I will laugh as uproariously as the boss did when he learned the kid couldn't talk.
04.04.06	Revenge of the Cheerleaders	Richard Lerner	I used the restroom in between shows and when I walked back into the theater, I saw QT look at me for a second. Then he nodded and I nodded back. I got the strong feeling that he thought maybe I was some random crew person who he maybe met once but has since totally forgotten about but wants to make me think he still remembers me. Hey, I'll take a nod from QT any way I can get it. Unfortunately, for whatever reason Sean the projectionist just started playing trailers at some point so QT didn't get to intro the next movie at all. Maybe it's because the already-tiny crowd of 20 had cut in half by that point... who knows. It's kind of a shame too because after seeing it I really wanted to know his thoughts on it. When the movie was over I saw that QT had even bailed before the end, leaving only Rodriguez, his probably-wife, and a few other random people in the theater aside from the group of us. It's a shame too because this movie is hilarious and awesome and I'd love to see it with a packed crowd. Kier-La said that the Alamo is playing it in a few weeks so I'll get a chance to do that hopefully. Revenge of the Cheerleaders... well... OK. In the first scene, this incredibly hot-bod'd blonde cheerleader has sex in a bathroom stall and who walks out but a young david hasselhoff playing a character named Boner. That's a pretty good indication of the theme and style of this movie... it's really hilarious and very very cheap. Sometimes the movie drops to a 16mm blow-up for random insert shots... like the director desperately needed about 3 minutes of connective tissue footage to make the movie follow the slightest bit of logic, but nearly every line is some sort of really bad joke or insult like a couple low-brow reprobates from rival school Lincoln Vocational telling off a cheerleader with "up your middle class ass." The few scenes set in Lincoln high are awesome, with constant wood shop sounds going on in the background and a whole class of greasers not listening to an extremely apathetic teacher explaining how stenographic shorthand could mean the difference between a low-paying job and a middle-paying one. Later, Rainbeaux Smith and a fellow cheerleader from Aloha High will hold the classroom up with a fire extinguisher, collecting everybody's drugs (including the teacher's, stashed away in her stocking) and dumping them in the school cafeteria's spaghetti sauce in the makings of what felt like a 20-minute long food fight sequence that ranges from amusing to funny to downright disgusting. The cheerleader squad is made up of hot stereotypes and they all get naked... well, everyone except for the fake-pregnant one. It's just a great great movie that's funny and quick until the last 20 minutes, where they have a qhole basketball game where the home team is losing until the cheerleaders step in and cheer their way to victory in an effort to sort of have to make the movie have a point... then there's this huge long chase sequence that ends up in a land developer's evil underground lair. Yeah... it's that kind of movie. I'm sure there are about a thousand reasons why movies like this don't get made anymore... but you know it's still a shame. So another awesome geek-out night of crew screenings. Maybe next week Tim will be there so I can get him to introduce me to QT and ask for an interview for the doc. here's hoping!
04.04.06	Carrie	Brian De Palma	Another Tuesday night. Again I just happened to be around the drafthouse at midnight and surprise! QT's doing another crew screening! Much less people here than last week... I'd say maybe 20 people at the beginning of the night, down to 5 by the time it ended. My friends and I totally stuck out like a sore thumb but nobody approached us and told us to get out or anything. I think my friends being friends with Greg Nicotero helps... I officially met him tonight by the way. awesome. In any case, it was a very intimate and casual atmosphere, even moreso than last week, and when he got up on stage to intro the first movie QT very much seemed like this was a weekly thing. awesome again. Tonight's double feature was Carrie and Revenge of the Cheerleaders, which QT said he actually saw as a double feature in 1976 at the Old Time Music Hall in Torrance, CA. He also mentioned that for everybody with those lists of Best Films of the 70s - and he mentioned the types of people who would say Jaws or Nashville - anyone that doesn't include Carrie in their top five... their lists are full of crap. He thinks Carrie is one of the best things Hollywood has ever given the world... and then we watched it. I saw Carrie a while ago and still remember it for the most part (mostly I remember differences between the movie and the book) but I think my lack of love for most other De Palma movies has marred my stance on Carrie a bit. Watching it again, it's a really good movie. Trying to picture not knowing how it ends (thanks to the video cover and everything else), this movie is a complete gut punch if you think about it. For the most part it's just a teen high school drama. I mean sure there's Piper Laurie's insane religious babble but whatever... and then that scene hits and the screen splits and all of a sudden we're all watching a freaking horror movie. So... yeah I liked this movie a lot when I was watching it but I already feel myself not wanting to type "a lot" for whatever reason. I'm remembering the usage of the Psycho shower scene music.. but there's also Travolta's fantastic performance... Although i remember in the book that character was more of a mean dumb-ass than a happy dumb-ass, but some of Travolta's deliveries are classic... like when he calls Nancy Allen a Fuck or when he says "That's it. I'm convinced" of her idiocy. And some of piper Laurie's lines are also classic, particularly the scene where she sees Carrie's "dirty pillows" in her prom dress and offers to "burn it together and pray for forgiveness." Good stuff. Plus how can you complain about a movie with a slow-motion panning shot of naked highschool girls in a lockerroom as a beginning-titles sequence. You just can't. Plus, to make the grindhouse experience complete, someone totally lit up in the theater... the place stank of sweetness for like 10 minutes. You just don't get that at normal Alamo screenings, for better or worse.
04.01.06	Ed Wood	Tim Burton	So I successfully managed absolutely 0 outside contactfor April Fool's Day. That means I didn't get duped but it also means I might be a vampire or ghoul or something. I'd like to say I watched this movie because of that but in truth it was on a few days ago and I wanted to revisit it so I recorded it and watched it randomly late last night. I think this was the first Tim Burton movie that I didn't really like when I saw it for the first time. Sure there was the second Batman but with Michelle Pfeiffer in that catsuit, I figured it must be my fault, not the movie's, for not really loving it. With Ed Wood though I just didn't get it at the time... and the same with Mars Attacks... and then Sleepy Hollow hit and I haven't really liked anything of Burton's since then. I've gone back and tried to Like Mars Attacks a few times though so I figured, with my new diet of exploitation movies, that Ed Wood might fare better on me now that I had a little more of a window into what goes into conventionally-thought "bad" movies. The result? yeah, I liked it a lot. For starters there's the photography... absolutely gorgeous. Everything looks just as it should in the best black and white possible... then there's Martin Landau's transforming performance... I always knew this was good but I don't think I ever really saw it until last night. Then there's the script which somehow manages not to feel like a biopic even though it is... and a lot of Burton's direction in this really makes me ask my self what the hell happened? To compare a movie like this with a movie like Planet of the Apes... I mean what?? So yeah, big surprise, big likey. You also get a pretty realistic (I assume) glimpse of how it is in independent movie fundraising and the compromises almost everyone has to make when working at that level... and watching Lisa Marie as Vampira, it makes sense how Burton could fall for her... until of course he traded up for a much better actor. Still though, she's got a real starlet physique. hah!
03.30.06	Torso	Sergio Martino	rounding out the first calendar of Terror Thursdays... the crowd has pretty consistently grown over the past two months... tonight didn't sell out like Erotic Adventures of Pinocchio but it was about as healthy as the usual Weird Wednesday crowd. It's pretty cool to see the series lift off like that... and it's also an opportunity for me to catch up with all these missed horror movie gems (and I thought I was a fan before I moved here!). But... like 90% of this movie was pretty boring for me. I guess I'm not a big fan of giallos (gialli?)... they never make any sense to me but the whole concept and structure kind of hinges on having some sort of logic i would think... why have all of those long expository dialogue scenes when they don't make any sense and don't matter in the end anyway? I do like the death scenes though so I sit through them for rare glimpses of awesomality that I can go home with and Torso had one such scene. The main girl is locked inside this room and the killer's left the house. She slides some newspaper under the door and pushes a pin into the keyhole to push out the key. We see the key jiggle in the door... jiggle, then fall, to land just off the newspaper. The girl slowly starts pulling the paper back, not knowing where the key landed... then we see the killer's gloved hand appear next to the door. he bends down, picks up the key, and puts it on the newspaper. It's maybe 30 seconds long and made the whole movie for me. Such an awesome tension flip flop and so economical. If someone told me that Martino made this entire movie just for that scene, I would believe him. I mean wow. Otherwise, nothing too special.
03.29.06	The Erotic Adventures of Pinocchio	Corey Allen	So let's see, what's there to say about this that the title doesn't. Lars said afterward that it's a little better-made than it should be... I still really liked this (seeing it for the first time, I'm not sure repeat viewing would hold my interest as much... I think it was more of an experience and a checklist item like "well, i've seen that... life is one step closer to being complete" type deal than a really great movie), and I can see that. It's not quite as dirty as I thought it would be, although still.. those 70s natural beauties... man those girls are hot. Even the random prostitutes have a certain era'd charm that really makes them attractive... it actually felt to me like this was part of some series... like soft-core versions of all the Disney movies... it was all very colorful and set up like a fairy tale... with weird stages and a guy who looked... well i guess he DOES look a lot like Super Mario, but I think he was supposed to be a doorman/brothel co-owner and that explains his white gloves. The beginning was certainly great, where Gepetta tries to make love to her woodne-sculpted Pinocchio and there's even one of those great who-bothered-to-write-and-perform-this custom songs laid on top of it... and the fairy godmother is hot too... and when his stuff gets super long it's funny but not really shown enough to be classically funny. I don't know, I can think of several things that made me laugh... I'd say it was good, but it's one of those movies that you watch and like but then afterward think of several ways that it could have been better.
03.29.06	TV Party	Danny Vinik	I missed this on Music Monday so I had to catch its replay right before Weird Wednesday. It's a good doc on Glenn O'Brien's TV Party, a NYC cable public access show that ran from like 78 to 82 and had a bevy of underground emerging NYC artists and musicians on the show. Modelled after Hugh Hefner's Playboy After Dark show, where it's basically like you're getting to look in on a cocktail party that's going on between friends, this really rough show stands as a great window into that early-80s NYC explosion of art mixed with early hip hop culture al;l set in NYC at it's most rank and vile. I think this is one of those great eras... like Paris in the late 60s or LA in the late 30s/40s. You had so much going on in such a small area that the people and events took on a much bigger meaning once that time had passed. All through this movie I was thinking about Austin and how most Austinites believe that their era had already passed since the city's all grown up and sold out now... but I don't know. Maybe it's because I refure to think that I missed it, but I can definitely see a next wave coming out of this town if a few more key elements fall into place. I can see the people like Linklater and Rodriguez being analogous to Andre Bazin and Max Ophuls to Truffaut and the New Wave bunch or Coppola to Lucas and Speilberg... sort of the godfathers of the movement. I know there are tons and tons of film things going on around town and everyone's trying to make it and all that, but i still think something missing. I don't know what, but I feel like there is. Maybe this is also coming off the high from last night's QT screening too... but certain things that the Alamo does (Weird Wednesday in particular) feels SO MUCH like a seed of inspiration or the fertile ground for something to reall grow from... I think one inciting event or catalyst might really launch something big here.... or, you know, not. So anyway, this doc had interesting interviews, really chaotic and intriguing video clips, and things of that nature. It was good.
03.28.06	The House on the Edge of the Park	Ruggero Deodato	So after that first movie, there was a break where it seemed extra cool for a few reasons. One was that it wasn't busy at all, very casual and also very late (like 2:30am at that point), and the other was that Tim was letting people smoke out in the lobby. Apparently this is the way it used to be but it's been completely non-smoking since the time I got here so it seemed really odd and out-of-place. Eventually though, QT got back up on stage to intro the next movie of the night: The House on the Edge of the Park. He started by asking who all had seen Wes Craven's Last House on the Left. A lot of us clapped or rose our hands so he said "Well, this is the Italian rip-off of that movie." And we all got very excited. Then he told us that David Hess himself was the star of the movie, and that it was directed by the guy who did Cannibal Holocaust. So now we were frothing at the mouth. Then he told us how the movie keeps getting worse and worse - "worse" not meaning bad but uncomfortable - and worse and worse until at one point you will ask yourself "why am I watching this?" and THAT is what exploitation cinema is all about. There should be at least one moment in every exploitation movie where you ask yourself that, not believing that something like this could ever be put on film or that you could ever want to see it. He also mentioned how this movie, although it has sex in it, is not a sexploitation film. Instead it's a hard HARD terror film. Oops I forgot to mention something about the previous film. In his intros, QT seemed to take on half a teacher vibe to the crew, laying out ground rules on what exploitation movies are, what grindhouse movies are, difference between genres and all that. At the beginning of the night he mentioned that nearly all sexploitation movies are comedies.. some are dramas, horror, etc. but for the most part they try to be funny. When he was 14-16, he depserately wanted to see pornos but these movies were the only ones he could successfully sneak into, so he wound up seeing all of them. And with other genres, when they're bad you can laugh at the inadvertant humor of them... but with a really bad comedy what do you do? You can't laugh... it you could then the comedy would be a success. So some of his most excrutiating experiences are sitting through bad sexploitation comedies... and he sat through a lot of them. So if we know about grindhouse through his QTfests, that's ok but what we have to realize is that he's already sifted through all the crap and is presenting those pre-found gems for us. A movie that just seems ok to us would seem like the best movie in the world if we were there every night watching all the crap that came before and after it. So continuing in that teacher vein, QT laid out the difference between a Horror film and a Terror film, using Grindhouse as an example. He called Robert Rodriguez's film a Horror film because the stuff that goes on in it, with the zombies and aliens or whatever, could never happen in real life. His movie though, about a guy rampaging in a car (or something), is a Terror movie because it COULD happen in real life. So The House on the Edge of the Park is a Terror film because it could really happen (note: I'm calling it a Desperate Hours film but I guess if I built in support for multiple genres I could call it both). So we got some education too. It was also cool to hear him tell the crew not to talk during the movie, don't talk at the screen or to your buddies or anything like that. Later on in this movie, some woman started talking a little bit and we were all joking afterward if there would be a memo on the call sheet the next day reaming her out for ruining QT's moviegoing experience. It's the feasability that things like that could actually happen that makes QT such a pinnacle in the eyes of movie geeks I think. He really respects the movies and enforces it... It's also what I love so much about the Alamo. So this movie... it starts out with David Hess driving, then forcing a girl to pull over, then raping her in her car. It's about a guy who's maybe a mechanic or something and has a semi-dopey friend... who are just about to go out on the town to boogie when a car pulls up with some rich people in it and want them to fix their car... so they end up going to a private party with the rich people filled with people who are weird... sort of in a eurotrash way but kind of also not... i'd say like 70% eurotrash, 30% faux-new york high society. Then they dance around and play some cards and one girl teases David Hess but leaves him blue'd and then Hess pulls out a straight-razor and starts tormenting everyone. He rapes a girl, has his friend try to rape another one (he can't but they later fall in love for real and do it outside), forces one girl to kiss another, beats the crap out of a few guys, and generally puts them through hell for like an hour... until this virgin shows up and he starts cutting her. It's true that the movie gets really really uncomfortable, not helped at all by the fact that there's almost no music after the beginning titles. we're all just stuck there in the theater watching this go on. But then the ending ramps up in a truly ridiculous twist and there's an absolutely great slow-est-motion-ever shot of Hess getting his retribution even though, like the movie itself, he seems to refuse to die just out of sheer will for a while until finally he goes limp and the movie ends and the lights go up and I feel like I need to go to church. As I was walking up out of the theater, the guy in front of me caught QT's attention and he said "Jeff! you made it through the whole thing!" I looked at the guy and didn't recognize him so I wrote him off as a random crew person. Later I would find out that it was Mr. Lawnmower man, Body Parts himself, Jeff Fahey. He looked so different that I couldn't believe it and even now have no memry of what he looked like after the movie because i so didn't recognize him. So people talked in the lobby for a while... Nicky Katt came up to Tim and I saw that he ow has a tattoo on his neck (sure it could be for a movie but somehow i doubt it. I think he's actually turning into his Dazed and Confused character for real), and at one point Tarantino did one of those talking-to-a-group things about why the last movie kicked ass and managed to spread the eye contact to our whole group, which was awesome. Then we left and went to Katz's for late-night dinner and I got home at 6am and passed out. What an unexpectedly awesome night, man...
03.28.06	The Girl from Starship Venus	Derek Ford	So I was on my way home... literally I had my car door opened and was putting my book and DVD on the passenger seat when I htought I better empty my bladder before the drive. So on the way back to the theater, I ran into a guy I've talked to a few times before. He immediately starts telling me cool stories about being an Extra on Grindhouse... and the awesome death scene that Greg Nicotero gave him the previous night. Then a bit out of the blue, he asked me if i knew about tonight at midnight. So... I'm hesitant to give full details herel. But I think of this site as my personal journal and have never really done any promotion of it of any kind and as far as I know, three people other than myself read it. So if by any chance there are more of you out there, I have to ask that if you're local to Austin that you not spread this around or if you're press or keep a blog or whatever not to pick up on it and announce it to everyone or anything like that. It's not top secret or anything but if everyone knows about it then it will ruin my chances of getting in again :) So anyway, as it turns out, just like with Kill Bill, Tarantino was screening movies for the crew of Grindhouse on their off nights, which is Tuesday and Wednesday. So this guy told me they were showing movies tonight and that I should show up. So I asked my friends, who usually know everything before I do, if they had heard anything about it, and they ask Jay Knowles and nobody's heard anything (I guess we should've asked Harry because I guess he knew about it but wasn't interested) so everyone went home but I figured since it was already like 11 I might as well stop by and see if there was a chance I could get in. So I saw that same guy outside Alamo downtown so we talked some more, this time him giving me dirt on who's a dick and who's a nice guy as well as how generally demeaning it is to be an extra on a film and get paid 75 bucks for 13 hours work and be treated like you're not even human. Then I see Lars and he tells me there's a good chance I can get in so I go upstairs to chat with some people who were just getting out of the Air Guitar championships that I had to miss to see Harryhausen... and I saw a few other regulars hanging around in a nonchalant way so I figured I was pretty safe. Plus it wasn't that busy and it looked like there were plenty of open seats so I called my friends and we all ended up being able to see Tarantino's keep-the-crew-awake Tuesday midnight double feature screening! The first movie was The Girl from Starship Venus. QT went into an intro exactly as if we were at a QTfest (except it wasn't sold out and there were no AFS people or stargazing people not there for the movie or anything like that... plus there people like Michael Biehn, Greg Nicotero, Tom Savini, Robert Rodriguez, Nicky Katt, and Josh Brolin there too, completely casual) where he's animated and lets his inner stand-up comic out and drops the mic from a high height as he walks off. At this point i was pretty much in geek heaven... I felt like the screening was just for us even though it was actually just for the crew. I noticed Tim and Kier-La also stayed along with a few Air Guitar friends but all told the theater was still less than half full. QT's intro called this the funniest sexploitation movie he ever saw because it was genuinely funny. not in a laugh-at way but in a genuine comedy way. It's british and ultra-obscure and he has no idea how he found a print but he did so he's showing it to us. He also mentioned that the theme song that plays in this movie will get stuck in our heads forever. He wasn't lying either man... it's damn catchy and plays a few times during the movie to really cement it in our brains much like that Desperadooooo song from The Dirty Outlaws. After the movie QT actually recited the whole chorus for his friends to applause afterward. His booming voice was heard throughout the theater singing this silly song about an interstellar traveller of love. the movie was pretty great. Even my one friend who doesn't like sexploitation said it was great. It's british so it has all of that seedy London circa 1975 going on... where movies like Chinatown and That's Entertainment are playing side-by-side with movies like "Sore Throat." The story's about a space ship that comes down from Venus to study this human race that they call Dongs. Their spaceship is the size of a ball bearing, but they send out a researcher who blows up to the form of a hot human female. Most of her acting takes the form of her vapidly staring into space while interior dialogue between her and the space ship is voiced over, but the effect gives the audience a great esxcuse to stare at wonderful natural 70s beautiful naked breasts while having a laugh at the fnny dialogue without any sort of bad acting getting in the way. Of course she starts off naked, and the comedy ensues as she walks around completely oblivious to our culture and makes wrong assumptions about our behavior and that sort of thing. It IS actually genuinely funny in addition to there being a hot girl on screen through most of it, and the British-ness of it lends itself to some great lines like "let's knock off for a touch of the naughties." There's a great scene where this guy loves balloons to the point where he's filled his entire bedroom floor to ceiling with them... so he's trying to find the girl in this sea of balloons and he finally gets to where he wants to be but the Venusians have put up a defensive barrier to protect the girl so his junk gets shocked when he tries to "know" her (in the bibilical sense of the word) and he gets shocked up into the air. It's a funny scene in a funny movie with a damn catchy song. I'm always amazed when these really cheap movies have a full-on song complete with verses and lyrics and everything written for them. This movie also finally answered the question of what stripper were like before the age of brazilian waxing, since I wasn't frequenting strip clubs back then, I never knew if strippers always accomodated their mini g-strings or if, like everybody else back then, they let it all grow out. The answer of course is the latter. There's a great scene in here where the camera seems fixated on a stripper's groind while she gives a performance, showing this little tiny thing only covering half of her bush. Actually, I've probably seen more bush in this movie and the next than I have everywhere else combined for a long while... well ok Revenge of the Nerds too (hairpie!!!). ahem. I guess this has been confirmed as one of the new movies QT will be showing for his upcoming Best of QT fest... and I am already looking forward to seeing it again, assuming I get a badge of course.
03.28.06	King Kong	Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Shoedsackc	So that let out just in time to get a decent spot in the line for Harryhausen and King Kong. Fortunately some friends showed up when a separate line to buy books started up so i could save my spot while getting the overpriced coffee table book to get him to sign. Luckily he's signing afterwards because the line's really long. King Kong... I'm still not in love with it. Maybe it's because I never saw it when I was a kid, but it doesn't have a hold over me like a lot of others. I think it's pretty slow and has a weird structure and doesn't really make that much sense... there are some good things about it too of course... i like how the movie draws sympathy for the monster and the long silent sequence with Driscoll on Skull Island is really cool... but I dunno, I just don't love it. But afterward, it was cool to hear Harryhausen talk for a bit, then the dude who was at BNAT to show us a 2 minute trailer of this Edgar Allen Poe stop-animated short was there to show us the 6 minute full version... that was basically the same. Then they showed 2 minutes of a movie that looked really funny but I have no idea what it is or if I'll ever see it again. afterward I managed to get my book and my Clash of the Titans DVD signed, which was awesome.
03.28.06	Inside Man	Spike Lee	so I finally forced myself to not even start Oblivion up today because I wanted to see King Kong and there's like 6 movies out in theaters that I want to see and it's just sick that I spent literally all weekend and half of this week playing a stupid video game. So i went down to the drafthouse early to catch Spike Lee's new one before Harryhausen got there. It's pretty good! Probably the Spike Lee movie I've liked the most since Summer of Sam, and that's the only other Spike Lee movie I can full-on say that I like. For whatever my tastes are, I think I feel about the same way with Spike Lee as I do with Steven Soderbergh: I like his stuff best when he's dealing with either a straight genre or "selling out" to mainstream Hollywood. That makes me sound like a low-brow consumer but oh well. This oen has a solid cast and a pretty smart script and it's done pretty well. There are a few little director-y touches thrown in to remind us it's Spike Lee back there rather than Uwe Boll or Paul W. S. Anderson, but for the most part it's just a bank robbery story told well. can't really ask for more than that.
03.23.06	Street Trash	James Muro	It's now officially a major pain to stop playing Oblivion long enough to see a movie. Serious clash of the geek-outs happening in my apartment... the video game nerd in me keeps saying to forget about the outside world and just play a few more minutes while the movie geek in me urges with the incessant thought: "but it's STREET TRASH!" so the movie geek won... tonight. I liked it. I loved the use of shocking blue and orange mixed with the blood and gunk whenever a guy melts or blows up or bleeds out of her nipples or anything like that. Nice unnatural splashes of color thrown in there... this movie has some great gore for sure... I think if the 80s horror is known for anything it's some over the top awesome gore. I also liked the 'nam crazy dude seeing a plane in the sky and yelling "air support!!!" to no one in particular. good movie. Tim's intro mentioned that the director is now a very successful steadicam operator even though he only directed this one gem of cinema. Knowing that going in, it's painfully apparent that even with the freedom to do whatever he wants, he really really loves his steadicam. I think there were maybe a half dozen shots in this film that weren't steadicam. still though, the video game nerd in me kept gnawing at the back of my brain. having to look for parking, the 9:45 Open Screen night going long, people around me talking during the previews... i could've been home alone sitting in the dark playing Oblivion. It actually put me in kind of a bad mood to have to go out. Signs like this usually means that i have a problem, as in I'm addicted. Well I totally am. I'm thinking I might give in to a week-long bender and hope that I don't OD. So don't expect too many updates this week... ok back to the game.
03.22.06	Autopsy	Armando Crispino	This Weird Wednesday movie really lived up to its name. I guess it's about a killer who makes his victims look like they committed suicide... but the plot is so loose and barely there that I could never really tell. All I know is the girl takes her top off an awful lot for an ice queen. This movie might have disturbed some of the audience with all the autopsy photographs that are randomly strewn on beds, projected onto walls, and blown up to poster size for inclusion in a "criminal museum" filled with Mannequins demonstrating different ways to off yourself. The movie is suitably funny and strange for the most part, but after we learn who the killer is there's about ten minutes of slow torture as the movie refuses to die. It left me forgetting the good stuff I'd seen earlier and just happy for it to be over. However, my favorite quote from this is definitely "Thanks for your cooperation, I'm going back to race car driving and photography now"
03.22.06	Revenge of the Nerds	Jeff Kanew	the best comedy of the 80s? who knows... it's gotta be up there though.
03.21.06	Derailed	Mikael Hafstrom	I knew very little about this movie going in. I actually thought it would be an Unfaithful type of deal... so for a while I was intrigued. But then about 40 minutes in, i got this sneaking suspicion that there would be some twist and spent the next half hour hoping that I was wrong. Sigh. This would've been a pretty decent Life Goes to Hell where Clive Owen just can't catch a break but... well you know... I guess that's not good enough for a movie anymore. Still, this wasn't bad... I just hate these movies where you're supposed to be behind the filmmakers but it's so easy to be ahead of them. Why wasn't Owen the new Bond?
03.18.06	Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon	Scott Glosserman	American Dreamz started so late that it was already 9:45 by the time We got back t omy car and I gave everyone's phones back. So since I missed the next movie (sorry, LOL), I went to Spaghetti Factory with everyone and hung out till the midnight movie. Behind the mask would make the perfect end to the fest for me. It was a movie that I really enjoyed the first time I saw it so I could sort of rely on it to be a positive experience, ensuring I don't go home with a bad taste in my mouth. Well the second time through, with the exhaustion of a few more festival days on my back, did have an effect... but for the most part I still really liked it. The director was really thankful and happy for all the good word his movie's gotten this week (he hugged Quint, I saw it), and a few people that worked on the movie were still in town for one last Q&A which was nice. I noticed a few more things in the movie but also saw a few loose ends that were never addressed (i;m thinking deleted scenes... hopefully there will be a DVD at some point). It was good though, a fitting end. So that's it. My first SXSW. A few stats (including the 1 shorts program I saw as a movie): number of films seen: 35 favorite movie: This Film is Not Yet Rated least favorite movie: Dance Party USA movie that made me laugh the hardest: Danny Roane movie that made me cringe the hardest: Hard Candy movie with the longest line: A Scanner Darkly movie with the shortest line: The Passing Show movies seen at: Alamo Downtown: 9 Alamo South lamar: 8 Paramount: 7 Arbor: 4 Convention Center: 7 Dobie: 0
03.18.06	American Dreamz	Paul Weitz	Long trudge back to the car to drop off the big bag along with everyone's cell phones since they weren't letting them in for the next movie since it was a sneak peak or whatever and all those crappy cameraphone pictures are ruining the industry. Eventually though, we got into the Paramount and I could let my dogs rest a while. This was the closing night film and Dennis Quaid was in the house along with the director. Weitz did a little stand-up routine in the beginning and he along with Quaid and another actor in the movie did maybe 5 minutes of Q&A afterward. The movie? um... it was ok. It went a few places that I didn't think it would go which is always nice for a Hollywood picture, but for the most part it was pretty expected humor. maybe it's because I'm not a huge American Idol fan... or maybe it's because I don't like Mandy Moore... The funniest part was Willem Dafoe playing essentially Cheney and Quaid doing his dubya. Even that though... I wonder if it will still be funny 20 years from now (I guess that's up to Bush). So it wasn't bad... I laughed a few times... but I don't think i'd pick it up on DVD or anything.
03.18.06	loudQUIETloud: A Film About Pixies	Steven Cantor, Matthew Galkin	So after that, I practially skipped my way to the Convention Center to see the Pixies doc, which I'd heard was very good. I wasn't dissapointed. The movie follows the band around on their reunion tour... we get to see Black Francis without his shirt on, how much Kim and Kelly Deal still look alike, Joey Santiago scoring a movie in his hotel room, and the musician-cum-magician drummer freak out when his dad dies and start popping pills on the road. It's not really too heavy on the whole history of the band or things like that... more a verite look at just this particular moment in time, but it was very well-done and really entertaining. also, they were handing out the big music bags for free since it was the last day. Awesome, more free crap.
03.18.06	Dance Party USA	Aaron katz	whoever recomended this to me owes me an apology. a big one too. Granted, None of the movies in this slot really appealed to me and along with a recomendation the other reasons why I picked this were that it was at the Alamo and it was only 66 minutes long but... damn it. This movie is about teens who have sex or something. It's a lot like Kids except for Chloe Sevigny's not in it and it sucks ass. I think the biggest reason for why it sucks is lack of script. It's very obvious that most of the dialogue was "improvised" (either that or having every actor wait for like 5 seconds before every line just to "act" as if he's desperately thinking of what to say next was just a piece of genius direction) and goes absolutely nowhere; painful to sit through in every scene. The WGA should send this movie to every producer in Hollywood with a note saying "without us, this is what you get." It's not shot well, it's not cut well, lord knows it's not acted well, and as far as I know it's not written at all so... it was pretty painful for me to sit through. What made it worse was like 2 guys in the back of the theater who laughed way too long and hard about everything. I think it was the actors back there, marvelling at the genius of lines like "hey, I'm drunk," and "You know what I hate? the clit." I'm not sure if this was the wost movie of the fest for me... I'd say so but it was only half as long as The Lost...
03.18.06	Al Franken: God Spoke	Nick Doob, Chris Hegedus	With the past few "event" write-ups that I've done, the last day is always the hardest to record. It's the first night where I figure I can sleep first then write later so I end up putting it off for a few days and then all of a sudden it's this huge bear to get done. So I'm forcing myself to write these right now, after waking up on Sunday. If they're short or vague or whatever, oh well. So today I was aiming for a full-on 6-movie day to end the fest... go out with a huge bang. The first movie, which I wanted to see not so much for the subject matter as the talent behind it, was this one. It was raining and random streets were closed off so traffic was terrible but I managed to get in just before the lights went down and the unbelievably crappy SXSW intro film played. This doc follows around Al Franken for a while. That's it, basically. Earlier in the week when she spoke at a panel I was at, Chris Hegedus mentioned that they had originally started with the intention to follow the lawsuit between Franken and O'Reilly... but when it was pretty much laughed out of court and dropped in five minutes, they had to just keep shooting and hope a movie surfaced. So that's basically waht this is... it touches on the lawsuit, it touches on the Air America radio station (that's the full-on subject of another really good doc Left of the Dial), book tours, school visits, national convention coverages, etc. It basically just follows Franken around. So I think that it was a good movie makes it more the achievement of the filmmakers than anything else. It's constructed very very well. I don't know how they did it but I'm in their fan club now (well... Hegedus was always there)
03.17.06	Slither	James Gunn	Thank goodness for my friends in line. By the time Ohio let out and I walked the 5 blocks to the Alamo, the line was pretty freakin huge. Of course it was augmented by scores of drunken fools wearing green... This might be the busiest and most clogged that I've seen the city to date. I think the night of the Rose Bowl still wins for happiest and rowdiest but for sheer jam-packed busiest I think it was tonight. Anyway, because of my friends in line I got in and got a good seat for this. The director and actor Michael Rooker were also in the house, which was awesome. Rooker came up wearing a Mexican wrestling mask and appeared to be very drunk although Gunn assured us that he wasn't. Funnily enough though, after the movie ended people just sat there for a few minutes expecting a Q&A that didn't happen. At first I thought they must've bailed on the screening to get their drink on but nope... they were hanging out in the back talking to anyone that would come up. Strange. If I had a number one complaint about the film festival this year I'd say it was how the Q&As were handled. Anyway, the movie was tons of fun. The crowd was into it, I was feeling it, the gore was good the laughs were good the hot girls were hot... really nothing to complain about accepting that the movie is what it is. You have aliens in a meteor taking over Michael Rooker and stuff, you have little sluggy things trying to get down people's throats... that's a blueprint for a good time. I got to shake Rooker's and Gunn's hand afterward and tell them great job... it was cool. So this week I've seen both Henry the serial killer and Dick Hickock of In Cold Blood in person at the Alamo and I'm still alive. Life is good. Also, in one particular moment, Carrie the waitress transcended her previously-established level of cuteness to become the hottest woman I have ever seen... there for a few seconds at least. I mean oh freakin' my. I really wish I could pass as lesbian (pack a box lunch as it's said in the film).
03.17.06	The Oh in Ohio	Billy Kent	this movie was about a sexually dysfunctional woman and her husband. Parker Posey and Paul Rudd fill the parts. They break up, start sleeping with other people, and become happier. I liked this movie for several reasons: 1. it's pretty naughty. lots of sex and female orgasm talk, a vibrator plays a big part as does a beeper, and Heather Graham has a small part as a lesbian willing to help Posey out. 2. Danny DeVito gets Parker Posey. I think that's a pretty huge victory for us non-models everywhere. 3. Did I mention Heather Graham plays a lesbian? All the acting's also great (and Keith David has an awesome small role), and perhaps the best use of Bob Marley's "Jammin'" ever in a movie. I dunno, it may be just cuz I'm a perv for Parker Posey but I really enjoyed this movie. it felt like it flew by in five minutes. That said, the ending felt really abrupt. There could've easily been 10-15 more minutes there, and I think it needs it. The film did really well with me up till then though... I think this might be a good girlfriend litmus test to show to women and see how uptight they are. That is, if I were the type of people to test out potential girlfriends in such a shallow way like that... but The Big Lebowski and Re-Animator work as well.
03.17.06	Live Free or Die	Gregg Kavet, Andy Robin	Micah had strongly recommended this one to me to the point where I would've felt guilty if I didn't see it. Therefore, I'm happy to say that I liked it and so there won't have to be any debate about it. The movie's about... well I guess he's a loser... Aaron Standord and his old mentally-slow highschool buddy or something like that getting up to a little bit of trouble... or something. Actually, now that i'm thinking about it, it's an incredibly hard film to summarize. The writer/directors worked on Seinfeld for a bit so there's some of that all-the-threads-come-together-at-the-end thing going on... but there's other stuff going on too. yeah, I am completely clueless about how to describe this, except to say that it was good and pretty funny. it also had a Black Keys song in the beginning so it was in my cool book right from the beginning.
03.17.06	Tales of the Rat Fink	Ron Mann	After that I went downtown and found parking on 9th and Colorado; not bad considering it's the height of SXSW music and the film's still going on and it's St. Patrick's Day so like a few hundred people have already been drinking since noon. This movie is a doc about Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, kar kustomizer, model maker, and car-toonist. Even though this must be like the 85th doc I've seen at south by, this one was refreshingly different in its approach. First off there was lots of good animation, using the Rat Fink character to introduce each chapter. Secondly, the story is narrated by John Goodman as Roth himself, as if he's watching the movie and looking back on his life from up on his cloud in heaven. Third, the movie introduces a series of notable custom cars as if they were interview subjects, using celebrity Roth-loving voices to speak the cars' thoughts. The only ones I recognized as I was watching were Jay Leno and Matt Groening but in the end credits i saw the Smothers brothers, Brian Wilson, Paul Le Mat, Ann-Margret, and others listed as well. So those three things together make for a much different approach. Since it was also very short, the movie comes across as fresh and interesting and entertaining like a quick little joyride or some other equally-strained car metaphor. This is actually something I think my dad may get a kick out of... he's always calling out the year and manufacturer of any old cars that he sees in movies and this one actually gives them screen credits so I thought this is his kind of doc... except he doesn't watch any docs that aren't on the history channel. I liked it though.
03.17.06	Before the Music Dies	Andrew Shapter	Day end minus one of SXSW... I slept in till 11:30 this morning and it was NICE. Screw the documentary on credit card debt... don't buy stuff you can't afford, end of movie. Instead, I started my day with a doc about how messed up the record industry is. What made it good was that it showed a few groups I'd never heard of before playing awesome music as an example of how a lot of the best music nowadays is really hard to find... so I got a few names on a list of people to check out later and that's cool. The doc had some interesting interviews with Erykah Badu and Branford Marsalis among others, got some nice shots in at Clear Channel, and was clearly made by local guys because there's tons of shots in Antone's and ACL fest and stuff like that. So that's cool too. To be honest this movie wasn't on my original list of the "must see"s but as a movie semi-chosen by random to fill an empty spot, I think I could've done a lot worse. It's great when you walk into a movie completely cold knowing nothing about it at all and having it be good and having a good time with it. well worth watching.
03.16.06	Fuck	Steve Anderson	The midnight show tonight was a documentary about the word "fuck." It's pretty well-done with animation by Bill Plympton and 30-some interviews with random people like Bill Maher and Sam Donaldson and Ice-T and Ron Jeremy. While it was good and I enjoyed myself, jarrette had a good observation that there needed to be either way more than 30 interviews or more of a concerted thematic or subjective reasoning behind their appearance in the movie. A minor note though... for the most part it was a good time. I'm glad too because at some point this week I was in line next to one of the guys who made this and I told him I'd be seeing it and was looking forward to it. Now I don't have any guilt for not liking the guy's movie. A few beats sort of skirt the same issues as This Film is Not Yet Rated... and I really think some of the people who worked on this are big Howard Stern fans because not only did Stern's stuff with the FCC come up but they also played a few sound clips that Stern's repeating a lot since moving over to satellite (namely the Pat O'Brien voicemail tapes and that one recording of some baseball manager talking about how much he hates the fans)... So I actually saw 5 movies today. If i had gotten up and went out to see Summercamp it would've been six but oh freakin well... I'm pretty exhausted just from the five and I still have two more days to get through. The end is in sight though... weirdo music people are now clogging the streets. Next week will seem so weird.
03.16.06	Brothers of the Head	Keith Fulton, Louis Pepe	OK, the mockumentary form is officially old. I don't know if this is traditionally a SXSW trait or if it's just this year but it seems like 90% of the movies that I've seen this week have either been in documentary format, whether fiction or non-fiction. Is it a budget thing? it's easier to put some fake experts in a room rather than worry about actual scenes with character and continuity of emotion and all that crap? Well for whatever reason, I am just about doc'd out for a while. This movie... just didn't work for me. It's about a pair of conjoined twins (connected at the chest) who become a successfull punk band in mid-70s England. It sounds interesting and it had pretty interesting people behind it but it was slow and tedious and not as cool as it should've been. I wish it was better and/or I enjoyed it more but oh well. A downer. It really made me tired. The only thing that really got me through it was that almost everyone had told me the next movie was good.
03.16.06	High Score	Jeremy Mack	after that I saw High Score. it's a documentary on some dude in Portland who's trying to break the world record high score for Missile Command (it's like 80 million points). Before this though, there was a short doc about some video game that reflects current events. oooh, special. Anyway, this was a good doc... it was short and to the point. You'd think there wouldn't be much of a story there but there totally was. See, the problem with him beating the high score wasn't that he couldn't get that far or anything like that... it's that the 20 year-old circuitry and programming of the game makes it randomly reset itself after a period of intense play. So he's try for it, get like 18 hours in with a score of 30 million points, then it'd crash and reset to 0. Riveting on film, man... I think we've all had our computer lock up and erase something important that you haven't saved to disk so you can imagine playing a game for almost a day then having everything erase in the blink of an eye. The real gem of this movie though... the thing that absolutely made it for me... was at the end after the guy's dealt with such a stunning blow and resolved to try again next year. He's sitting there talking to the camera and he says "Missile Command, I'm alright at. Asteroids, I'm alright at that... but my real passion is... rollerskating" and it cuts to a shot of him at a roller rink positively GETTING DOWN while wearing skates. What a hilariously non sequiter ending... it really made my day. He was there for a Q&A and vowed to focus his marathon highscore attentions on Galaga and Q-bert after besting Missile Command and Asteroids. Good luck, dude!
03.16.06	Danny Roane: First Time Director	Andy Dick	Next up was Andy Dick's movie... about a goofy actor with substance abuse problems who tries to make his first movie and does a hilariously bad job of it. People that saw this when it first played said that a very drunk Andy Dick did one of the greatest Q&As of all time, dry-humping random people at one point... and the feeling was that the movie didn't end. Alas, no Andy today but I still got to see the movie. There were 2 or 3 times that I was laughing so hard I couldn't breathe and tears were squirting from my eyes. No matter how stupid or goofy or trite or whatever a movie may be, if it does that to me I love it. I don't care. This gets a thumbs-up from me for sure. Some hilarious cameos, especially Ben Stiller. I guess, if we believe this movie, that awesome oil painting of him taking the bull by the horns from Dodgeball is hanging in his production office. That made me laugh. The funny ineptitude of this also reminded me of ...And God Spoke
03.16.06	The Passing Show	Rupert Williams, James Nackie	day eternity plus one of SXSW 2006. My day was spent largely at the convention center... a triple feature there followed by a double feature at Alamo South Lamar made a full house of movies. This first one, a doc about Ronnie Lane, the dude in The Small Faces and The Faces, is exactly the sort of thing that plays Music Mondays. Actually, Kier-La showed an extended trailer to this before the festival started and the Alamo is running it after the fest ends with Ian McLagan in attendance. Truth be told I forgot the name of the movie so I had no clue this was that when I walked in. Since I am very unfamiliar with Lane's body of work, I found the doc pretty slow. I kind of dozed a bit and spent some time seeing what i would write in my notebook if i closed my eyes and just wrote. At least now I won't have to see this as Music Monday... I can skip one for once.
03.15.06	Wah-Wah	Richard E. Grant	So after getting all riled up over the Beasties, I ended my night by driving up to the Arbor for this. Directed by Richard E. Grant (he was Withnail), it's what seemed to me an extremely autobiographical movie about a kid growing up in Swaziland, South Africa. It's kind of your typical kid's perspective "i hate that my parents are divorced" type movie and it's not really flashy or special in any one clear way, but I have to say it was a quality film and I liked it. How do I know it's quality even though there's nothing I can really point to in particular (aside from the acting... Gabriel Byrne, Emily Watson, Miranda Richardson, and the main kid all give really great performances)? It made me tear up at the end... and it made me tear up even though despite knowing full well that if i heard a description of the ending of the film I would think it's completely cliched cheese. So there you go... it's just a solid movie done well. It's a little weird not going to a midnight movie tonight. Last night I thought there needed to be more midnight movies playing but after thinking about it for a while, I realized that there were 8 different things to see on the 9 nights of the fest... that's not bad. Still though, I got home tonight at like 11:30. That's just weird.
03.15.06	Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That!	Nathaniel Hornblower	Immediately after Scanner let out I got in line for the beastie boys' doc. The line was already around the first corner, but without a 500-large VIP list I was pretty confident that I could get in. In fact, I got the exact same seat: Awesome. Basically the idea behind this movie is that the Beasties handed out 61 cameras to different people in the crowd to record their experience of a sold-out show in Madison Square Garden, then Yauch picked and chose the best bits and cut them all together to make this movie. So it's a concert film but 98% of it is shot by the fans themselves (the title comes from a line spoken by the guy laying out the only rule for the guys with the cameras (don't stop recording), saying "so fifty years from now, you will look back at this and say 'Awesome; I fuckin' shot that!.'" The movie really works. At first, since I was pretty close and it was on such a large screen (projected on HDcam, but shot on much lower-resolution cameras), the resolution issues made for pretty pixellated viewing. After the show got going though, the Paramount's phenomenal sound system made the experience great even if there were no visuals. People's heads were nodding all around me and the whole theater cheered and clapped after each song. Visually though, there was lots going on. Little funny jokes were thrown in, quick shots of random things like a cameraperson turning the lens on herself as she sang along for a bit, or zooming in on Ben Stiller as he knew all the words to Shake Your Rump to even rotoscoping one girl shaking her thang and making her dance with one of the boys by looping over and things like that. At one point, one of the cameramen takes a trip to the john and films his stream of urine followed by his foot flushing the toilet. So it wasn't all just streat shots of the stage... they did lots of little visual things to keep it interesting on top of the fact that it was intercutting so much footage. At certain times it would zoom out to show all footage on one screen, then zooming in on another angle. Also at one point, he was cutting literally every frame... at first the rapidity of cuts is a bit jarring but, just like mtv, you get used to it after about 15 minutes. So there's all that stuff, but the show itself was amazing and I think that's the big part of why the movie's so awesome. The songs, the performances, the set changes... the show itself was pretty phenomenal. Plus you had Mix Master Mike on the tables so you get the full live treatment of their songs where's dropping new beats for every verse and doing solos and stuff like that... I really believe that if we were standing in a club watching this instead of sitting in a theater, we'd all be dancing and waving our hands in the air. So yeah, to any Beasties fan, no matter how casual or hardcore, this is well worth seeing. Afterward, the three guys ambled on stage and sat down, making an Actor's Studio joke. For whatever reason, there was no moderator or anything so there was a few moments of confusion until everyone caught on that they should start asking questions. The guys were funny with their answers... but it helped a lot that the questions were so bizarre. This was definitely more the music crowd than the film crowd filling the seats. lots of "questions" that were basically "you guys are so awesome" over and over... although Jeffrey Ross was in the audience and asked Yauch when his next movie's comin out and he answered "hey, I know you! Why don't you come up and do some stand up?" to which Ross fired a scathing joke at one of the more shameless "question" guys. Someone asked them to do a song of theirs right there on the stage. They didn't. Apparently they're playing a secret show tomorrow night though... which I won't be at. I thought it was cool that they showed up for the screening though. I hope they were there to see some of our reactions though because the crowd was really getting into it. When they'd start playing some of their more famous songs more than a few women would scream. They also got a standing ovation (the second one I've seen this year)... pretty much proving that the movie had earned it's title: awesome.
03.15.06	A Scanner Darkly	Richard Linklater	A little more rested, I parked in a garage I hate and got in line for some music documentary. Calling Jarrette to ask what time he'd be showing up to get in line for the secret "TBA" screening of Scanner Darkly (that pretty much everyone in the world knew about by that time), he officially advised me to skip the movie and just stay in line. It's a good thing too because I was FIRST and that line went around the block and all the way back to Brazos just about... and that's just badge holders. God know how many film pass people tried to get in and there were even a few single ticket buyers who were obviously either insane or bored enough to stay in line when virtually every film badge and many curious gold/platinum badges were in line next to them. What's more is that this was a crew screening as well so there were about 500 VIPs who had special tickets and got to go in before the badgeholders. so did I mention that I was first in the badgeholder line? That's important when I mention that Aaron and Kaela and Jarrette and a bunch of other people got in on Harry's special reserved list and got to go in before even the crew VIPs... because by the time us first 50 badgeholders got through the doors the theater was already well on it's way to being full. Luckily, Aaron and Kaela saved Blake and I seats right in our favorite row so I got like the perfect seat for the screening. Unbelievable. Before that though, most of the press were the second, third, etc. to show up so I got to meet the GreenCine dude and talk to the rotten tomatoes dude again and for a while it was just a little film press camp-out happening in the badgeholder's line before the whole town showed up. That was cool... plus Jarrette and Aaron and Kaela showed up so it was a fun line-up if you ask me. Also for a long-storied reason, Aaron was hanging out with Patton Oswalt (Comedians of Comedy)... so when he came to get his wife and said "I'm taking the beautiful ladies inside but we'll try to save seats for you guys" Patton grabbed my arm and said "I meant him" as if to pull me instead of Kaela. Sure it doesn't sound funny all typed out like this, but hey... Patton Oswalt involved me in an impromptu joke so screw all y'all. Aaron spotted Lucky mcKee (director of May and the Masters of Horror episode Sick Girl) in the line and went down to talk to him. He was nice enough to introduce me as well so I got to meet Lucky freakin' McKee... then after we were back up at the head of the line (because I was first), he mentioned that I should ask him to be in my doc. Duh! So i go back and say I'm doing a doc on the Alamo drafthouse and immediately his eyes light up, so I ask if i can interview him and he immediately says sure, he'd be happy to. Is it always this easy? So we talk a little bit more, he gives me his info (see, always carrying around this notebook does come in handy sometimes), then I asked him about the possibility of seeing The Woods any time soon and we talked about that for a bit. Man, nice dude! So not only did I meet him but I also now have the means to talk to him again and a reason to do so. Lucky freakin' McKee! So. Now that I've covered everything that happened while I was in line... I have to mention that I did see the movie as well. Dentler came out and said it was the first showing to a mass audience ever so we're all very lucky to see it and very lucky to even get in the damn place. But then he said unfortunately Rick couldn't be there so there wouldn't be a Q&A afterward or anything like that. At this point Jarrette looks behind us and turns back with a smile on his face. Since he worked on the movie I figure he knows something so I look back too and Rick Linklater's sitting about four roows back from us right on the aisle. I guess since this is an unfinished print and it's more a crew screening than any sort of sneak preview or premiere he doesn't want to treat it like it's done by doing a Q&A... or maybe he just doesn't feel like it or something... or maybe he had to leave in 5 minutes or something... but any way you put it Matt Dentler is a liar (if, on some miracle, you ever read this while simultaneously knowing who I am, i meant that in the best possible way, Matt). The movie... well the animation is gorgeous. Every frame of the scramble suits are unbelievable and I couldn't take my eyes off them. Constant fascination for the whole movie. It's a much more consistent style than Waking Life, and also much more detailed. Basically most of the movie looks just as good as the stills they've released online. Having not read the script or the original story, I for whatever reason expected the movie to get to more of a No Way Out tension-y sort of place by the end, which it totally didn't. Instead, it's really a Linklater movie, just told in the near-future and animated. It's pretty slow-paced, definitely not actiony or adrenaline-fueled... but still very engaging and interesting. Thinking back, I'm actually thinking of Drugstore Cowboy more than anything. Great performances though, especially by Downey, Jr. Keanu's pretty passive through the whole thing but Rory Cochran's great, Woody Harrelson's great, and... well Winona's not in it that much but she's not bad either. fills the role nicely. It's really cool though, for this science fiction movie to really be a little drug movie literally in disguise. So my initial reaction is that I liked it quite a bit. I think a second viewing, having the benefit of knowing where the story goes and how it ends, will be very interesting.
03.15.06	The Last Western	Chris Deaux	Day 419 of SXSW... Blake crashed on my couch last night and had an interview downtown with the Hard Candy people at 10:30... So I was down there in time to see an 11am movie and I picked this: a doc about Pioneertown, CA, an old west city set that was built for use with B-westerns and the Gene Aurty show in the 40s and early 50s until it was deserted around 1955 and left for dead only to eventually have all sorts of weirdos inhabit it. I guess the hell's angels used it for a while, then it was big for dope dealers and whatnot and nowadays it's mostly home for alcoholics and old people. I was reminded a lot of the Salton Sea doc that screened at the Alamo a few months ago... except that was a better movie. I have to confess though... I guess I can do one night with less than four hours sleep but after two nights my ability to watch mediocre movies falls drastically. Not only did I doze during this movie, I actively tried to sleep through the last half of it so I would be more awake for the good films coming up later tonight. The problem was that after explaining the history of the town itself, it started telling the stories of the people that live there. I don't care about those people, so that = nap time. Luckily the director wasn't there or anything so I didn't inadvertantly insult anyone by closing my eyes.
03.14.06	S&Man	JT Petty	Another one without an IMDb entry. This midnight movie is sort of a half-truth, half-fiction doc/mockumentary about underground horror and snuff films. The title (pronounced "sandman") refers to a fictional series of DVDs where this creepy7 overweight guy that lives in his mom's basement stalks women then kills them. The director sets the movie up as a documentary about these kinds of films where the sandman dude is just one subject but the movie slowly gets more involved to the point where he becomes a part of the story. I thought this movie was OK. I maybe would've liked it more if the director wasn't so pompous during the Q&A. The ending is kind of vague and sudden, but the first thing he said when he got on the mic was that he would answer questions but wouldn't explain anything. So a few confused questions and really really vague answers later, he told us that he would give us "just a bit" of explanation and went into this whole bit about how he hates documentaries because they're just as false as fiction films so this movie was his exploration of that, and manipulating the audience... it took all five questions for him to finally admit that there was some fiction in the movie and of course by that time we were being rushed out of the theater by sxsw people. For me though, my only real interest was finding out which subjects were real and which were fake, so the Q&A was a complete waste of time for me. The movie reminded me of 8MM a lot (not a good thing, by the way)... I'm still not sure if there's an interesting movie anywhere in the world of snuff film or whatever... this didn't convince me that there is. So this wasn't a complete letdown like Population 436, but it didn't really satisfy me either.
03.14.06	Hard Candy	David Slade	After that it was a quick jaunt over to South Lamar to get in the already-long line for Hard Candy. The last horror movie that I was here to see and this interested in was The Lost (I blame the alternate poster... and Misty Mundae)... so this time around I was a little more apprehensive. both Jarrette and Eric said it was good, but Jarrette didn't want to see it again... so who knows, right? Well... the movie pretty much kicked my ass. I think the trailer spoils almost the entire movie, so that really sucks... but Micah stopped watching it like 30 seconds in so the big twist/idea of the movie was new to him. After that happens though, the movie didn't go where I thought it would... it pretty much barraged me with intensity and tension until the last frame and left me absolutely exhausted. It's almost as if it were some really dramatic stageplay or something where you feel competely worn out at the end because of how many emotions are thrown around... except it's a teenaged girl and a tied up thirtysomething guy. One sequence in particular had every guy in the room squirming like hell... I think the filmmakers can take some pride in making all of us in the theater their bitch. The director and writers and producers were there afterward but for some reason the SXSW guys always limit the Q&As to like 5 questions. I hate that... they're always jumping in telling them "One more" even if, like this case, there's no more movies playing in that theater for the entire night. Why have the people there if you don't let them talk? bah.
03.14.06	Patriot Act: A Jeffrey Ross Home Movie	Jeffrey Ross	After air guitar, I got in line for Jeff Ross' documentary. It's footage of his first USO tour in Iraq that he did with Drew Carey and others. I personally find Ross' comedy really hilarious in alternatingly clever and vicious ways... and he was there to introduce it and warm us up with a little audience humor. He's funny in real life but he gave forth the tone that this movie was pretty serious as well and I'm glad he did because while it was about comedians, it was really more affective as a glimpse into what the troops' lives are like over there circa about a year ago. You get glimpses of everybody's act but in their downtime it's less Comedians of Comedy and more Good Morning, Viet Nam. The movie was interesting but also a bit of a downer after the Air Guitar madness, especially with Matt Dentler's introducing it primarily as a comedy. Afterward, Ross answered plenty of questions in a polite and honest tone, giving me the impression that he's a pretty nice guy that was genuinely surprised that his movie had a pretty much sold-out crowd. I wouldn't count the movie as one of my favorites, but it certainly wasn't bad and it was cool to see Jeff Ross in person. I was in the front row too so I'm doubly glad he didn't make fun of me. whew.
03.14.06	Air Guitar Nation	Alexandra Lipsitz	Day whatever at SXSW 2006. Today started with the 10 years of Aint it Cool News panel. That was exactly what I thought it would be: interesting rambling stories of the site's creation and history told mostly by Harry with a few minutes from Drew and Eric as well. It was a good time though. Afterward I had originally planned to go to a Digital to Film panel but I decided to skip that and see Air Guitar Nation instead based on Micah's recommendation. I'm glad I did. I can't really find an IMDb entry for this so you're just going to have to take my word on its existence. It's a doc that basically follows the first year of the U.S. Air Guitar championships and America's representative in the World Championship held in Finland (where they take their metal seriously). Yeah, sounds really really stupid, right? Well it is, but it's also lots and lots of fun! These dudes jam out... and they have awesome stage names like Bjorn Turoque and there's a whole remote island training camp that you can sojourn to if you wanted... By the end of the movie I was completely converted and rooting for my favorite dude and the whole place was rooting with me. I don't know how but the filmmakers actually made air guitaring look impressive... that's a pretty big feat. Afterward lots of the subjects of the film were in attendence and so we got to see them in real life which is always cool. Alas no in-theater imaginary axe-grinding, but I did get a C-Diddy pick, and a complimentary air guitar was placed underneath each seat in the theater so that rocks as well. This was a very fun time... I'd always dismissed the regional finals that are held at the Alamo but I think the next time they come around I will go out and see them... I have to believe this is even more fun live.
03.13.06	Population 436	Michelle Maxwell MacLaren	I ended the night by driving back downtown and finding surprisingly decent parking for the Alamo downtown. Nobody knew anything about this movie except that Jeremy Sisto was in it. I saw that as a good thing. Micah noted that since a short's playing before it, one of the two had to be great and the other had to suck. Well, the short was great. A scary little film about a children's doll that becomes a really creepy monster that his mother somehow controls and keeps in the closet. Very effective short. The movie... well, I'd say if it was trimmed down to an hour it would make a par-for-the-course episode of Masters of Horror. True Jeremy Sisto was in it but so was Fred Durst. Yeah, that Fred Durst. Rather than getting into the ugly specifics of why I didn't like it, I'll just say that I'm glad this didn't play last night right after The Lost. during the Q&A afterward, the director said that the movie was really more of a psychological movie than a horror movie so it was OK that it was all shot during the day. I wonder if that means it was some sort of endurance test that everyone in the theater was an unknowing participant in... My favorite part of the movie was when Micah leaned over and said "the sign [with the population number] never changes!" man... that made me laugh for a long time... and then had an aftershock whenever they showed the town sign again. Maybe for people who've never seen or read any Trapped in Crazytown stories the glaring "twist" would come as a surprise but... come on... there's a scene where Sisto (who plays a Census Bureau worker) has a list of years and every census year shows the population being 436... of course 4+3+6=13 and 1+3=4... not that that really means anything. There were about a half dozen of those types of thing in the movie... like how everyone stopped their clocks at 4:36 and some random 50s-era family was living in a cell in the basement and arcane books with pictures of burninating villagers in it... oops I've gone into ugly specifics.
03.13.06	The Life and Hard Times of Guy Terrifico	Michael Mabbott	Lucky for me I stuck around for the next movie at the Arbor based on a recommendation from Micah. This movie was great... it's a mockumentary about a progressive country singer/songwriter who was killed in the early 70s named Guy Terrifico. They got a bunch of country singers to give interviews about this fictional guy and set up a whole life story that was pretty hilarious. They did a great job of capturing the early 70s film stock and harsh lighting and things of that nature, making the archival footage pretty impressively period. Then there's some pretty classic lines and situations, including Guy getting kicked in the brain by a horse at one of his infamously wild parties, his catching trend of humping the bass drum at every live show, and the homosexual midget buddy that documents everything from a low angle with his grainy 16mm camera. Then at the end it manages to turn dead serious with an honestly really good performance and a gag that made the whole theater jump. Although they're mildly jokey, all of the original tunes are actually pretty good (in that early 70s progressive country way), so the whole movie really impressed me as being quality and a good time. Micah said it played here at last year's SXSW so I have no clue whether it'll be viewable anywhere else ever but I hope so.
03.13.06	American Gun	Aric Avelino	drove back up to the Arbor in rush hour traffic to see this movie with a small crowd. I guess I'm not the only one who sees the long trip to the arbor as a pain.... but for whatever reason I wanted to see this... I guess because it has Forest Whitaker in it and he's kicking major ass on The Shield this season... the movie is a downer and it never really goes anywhere. It's set up in multiple locations with multiple characters like a Traffic or Crash but it just never goes anywhere. The different threads don't really connect in any way and after a while the movie just ends. To be honest it felt like a waste of time afterward... although there was some OK acting from good actors... I got nothing from it.
03.13.06	95 Miles to Go	Tony Caltabiano	SXSW Day 4 (Monday). Half road movie and half comedy concert, this movie follows Ray Romano around as he goes on a short driving tour to do some stand-up. it shows off his neuroses and odd habits like how he sets "mind bets" with himself then finds loopholes in the self-imposed punishments if he loses... things like that. It's a pretty decent doc especially if you are a Romano fan (although he does curse and he tells an oral sex joke that probably wouldn't appear on his sitcom)... but for me the best part of this screening was when the director/buddy/co-star of Romanos came up on stage with Ray and they did some Q&A and then Brad Garrett asked a question from the back and eventually got on stage and started making fun of Romano and the SXSW guy trying to tell them to wrap it up and the huge burly photographer crouching in the front row. so it was a fun time.
03.12.06	Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon	Scott Glosserman	So I went downtown, actually found some parking, and made it to the Alamo in time to get a good seat. The director got up before the movie and started thanking his parents like he'd just won an Oscar. This was the first time that he'd publicly shown any of his work ever so it was a huge deal for him and he had lots of the cast and crew and friends in the house with him. Lucky for both him and me, the film was absolutely great. The first two thirds is a mockumentary with a small crew following around this guy who is planning on becoming the next Freddy Krueger or Jason Vorhees. It's a pretty hilariously meticulous deconstruction of the genre sort of similar to Man Bites Dog where the guy is talking about killing like it's a craft. He even has a mentor in the form of Mr. In Cold Blood himself: Scott Wilson (who was in the audience. I was a little starstruck and frantically thought of something to say to him but couldn't so i just gawked). Kane Hodder has a cameo as a resident of Elm Street. tons and tons of little in-jokes and referene pepper the film... apparently I missed most of them and would have loved to hear the director name them off but the shrill SXSW lady was rushing us out of the theater even though it was the last show of the night and still before 2 even... man i hate that. but anyway, every once in a while, as Leslie Vernon would outline his plan to torment his targeted "survivor girl" with cliched scenarios, the film itself would flip into a much more cinematic aesthetic. There's a great small role for Poltergeist's Zelda Rubinstein as well as Robert Englund himself. So the movie follows as a mockumentary until in the third act it becomes a self-aware horror movie in itself... there's a moment of unease there for me where I was like "uh.... is this gonna get dumb now?" but luckily it's done well enough that some actual tension starts creeping in with all the "wait, she's a slut not a virgin" jokes and "I think this is a bad idea, and I hate that I'm the one saying this in this particular context" jokes... so in the end the movie ends up having its cake and eating it too. Of course, in that sort of situation i always have little nitpicks when the characters don't do exactly what I would do (i.e. making 100% sure the dude is dead) but you know... it's sort of an Adaptation and Not Another Teen Comedy type deal... it may be self-aware but it's still in that genre. so this was a huge surprise for me... the filmmakers got a standing ovation, the entire sold-out audience went nuts for it... i think everybody loved it... I certainly did, and it completely made up for The Lost... good freakin' times.
03.12.06	The Lost	Chris Sivertson	This movie had everything going for it. After dropping the Rotten Tomatoes guy off I made my way down to South Lamar and ended up waiting in line for like two hours. I almost went into the Air Guitar movie on a whim but it had sold out so I just sat and waited. One of the sxsw manager dudes said that the producers of this movie were going to treat the entire theater to buckets of beer and chicken strips. So we had free food coming, the movie's based on a book by Jack Ketchum, who I've read his first book and absolutely loved, and apparently the director is friends with Lucky McKee (like everything I've seen from him) and Eric met him and thought he was incredibly nice and cool... plus one of the posters for this movie had a corpse-looking Misty Mundae topless. How can you beat that? Well... I'm not sure whether to get into the gory details or to just say I was dissapointed and leave it at that. the first two minutes were great... really awesome beginning scene to a movie for sure... but as soon as it said "four years later" it started pushing me further and further away from caring about anything that by the time the ending rolled around it was too late. Ketchum was in the audience and Micah had my copy of Off Season but I didn't even feel like waiting for the Q&A or anything like that. I also spilled most of a full cauldron of free salsa all over myself during the movie so my foot was all sticky and spicy. I was ready to just go home but Micah persuaded me to give the midnight movie a shot to cleanse my palate.
03.12.06	Friends with Money	Nicole Holofcener	My third day at SXSW. I skipped the "state of american docs" panel (suspected answer: they're popular) so I wouldn't have to drive downtown and park for an hour just to drive back up here; did laundry instead. Then i skipped down to the Arbor for this movie and got there incredibly early. There was still one guy in line ahead of me though, who happened to work for Rotten Tomatoes. So we talked the wait away, he ended up interviewing me as i gave him a ride back downtown to his hotel afterward. but before that we saw the new Nicole Holofcener movie. It's about on par with her previous two, which for me means it was great. Very feminine but in the best possible way. naturalistic, emotional, catty, casual, and very character-driven. If anything I think I liked it more than Lovely and Amazing but it's been too long since I've last seen Walking and Talking to compare. Anniston plays a stoner woman with a bunch of friends who all have money... so it's a bit like Parenthood or Your Friends and Neighbors in that each couple has their own thing going on but they also have similarities and that kind of thing... but it's well-written, well-acted, and well-executed. A good solid movie that fits in perfectly with her previous two. Now if only she'd make more than one movie every five years.
03.11.06	TV Junkie	Michael Cain, Matt Radecki	Next I headed over to South Lamar to catch TV junkie: a doc compiled from roughly 3,000 hours of footage. This dude has a lifelong habit of constantly videotaping himself and his life. Apparently he fills the tapes with footage and never watches them... so then filmmakers came along and went through it and constructed the story of his life told through footage that he shot. The dude's not dead, but his life does follow that familiar movie arc of having success, losing it all because of drug addiction, hitting bottom, and getting back on his feet with some sort of resolution. The difference with TV Junkie, and the reason why this film is absolutely riveting and unbelievably great, is that the footage itself tells the story with a level of honesty and emotion that I've never really seen before. I mean sure... I had a few memories of Grizzly Man go through my head, along with this documentary I saw on HBO where a struggling filmmaker ultimately kills himself and videotapes himself doing it (not shown in the doc of course), but for the most part I'm just sitting back watching this story that every biopic tries to tell done better than any biopic can ever achieve. Unfortunately, I was in such a haste to make it next door to catch the midnight shorts program that I missed out on the Q&A, where apparently the subject of the film had watched it with us along with his wife. I guess it was her first time seeing the film with an audience so it was a pretty unique and essential Q&A that I'm already sad I missed... but oh well, at least I got to see the movie. Speaking of the shorts, they were OK. The best one was directed by Bob Odenkirk and was the best one due in large part to Zack Galifinakis. There were lots of the directors there... and almost no questions for them.
03.11.06	Darkon	Luke Meyer, Andrew Neel	My second day of SXSW started with me turning off my alarm and sleeping through the first panel on finding funding. It looked good on paper but the 8:30am/3-hours-of-sleep version of my brain came up with some pretty persuasive arguments. Instead I woke up at 10:30 and made it down for the next panel: DVD vs. theater. I felt that Alamo Tim was pretty alone up there on the panel... He was the only exhibitor up there not distributing DVDs or vertically integrated with a company pushing day & date multi-platform releases. Instead of what I thought the whole conversation was going to be about, everybody but Tim just took the downfall of good movie theater experiences as a given. Of course, all the Alamo fans in the room (and believe me we were there, Tim elicited applause several times in the hour, the only panelist to do so) took some umbrage with that and the simplified stance that movie theaters can't be any better than they are now that almost everyone up there seemed to share. That said, I finally got to hear John Sloss talk... I'd always heard about what a good guy he is and how his involvement with IFC and a few people really makes him awesome. He seemed very competant and very lawyerly... The whole panel was a bit subdued though... the moderator was pretty much silent and everyone didn't really want to step on anyone's toes... Except Tim who took the opportunity to give the Landmark dude a few licks and bring up the anit-trust suit of 1949 (heh heh heh, and he hadn't even seen This Film Is Not Yet Rated... yet) so... eh. But lucky for me Aaron had been through the Finding Funding panel and filled me in on what I missed as well as giving me tons of great info for how to get work on my doc started in an official capacity. Thanks Aaron! Next up I went over to the "Shooting Docs" panel where a group of interesting documentarians (including Kirby Dick and Chris Hegedus) talked about a wide range of documentary filmmaking in general. I was eating it up, until the moderator (also a producer) had to leave and it turned into a q&a free-for-all with person after person asking about fair use and securing clearances over and over again. Finally one of the guys said there was a whole panel devoted to it later in the conference and they handed out post cards for it. Still though, I got tons of good info and advice from it, including Kirby Dick saying that if I have an idea and the means, just start shooting now. Start shooting and editing and even if what I shoot now never comes close to making it in the final film, I'll bet started and i'll also have something tangible to show people who can give me funding. Good advice and a nice kick in the pants for me, I'd say. I better get on it! Plus I heard that Hegedus shoots all alone now... sound and picture, so it gives me a little more confidence in not needing a skilled crew right away. But this is a movie journal right? not a "how was my day" journal. Darkon is a doc about a group of people in Baltimore that go out every other weekend and pretend they're in medeival times. They make the costumes, take on what they believe might be the way they could've spoken maybe, and carry on the role playing in live action form, complete with beating the crap out of each other with padded weapons. Now, I freely admit to having a sordid past spotted with a fairly lengthy Dungeons & Dragons phase... but I'll tell you what I never went live action. I think there's some instinct in every human that draws a line telling you what's just plain too geeky. I had no problem hanging out in a basement every weekend rolling dice and mentally picturing a half-elvish version of myself robbing from the fighter's guild and killing orcs in some forest, but for me personally the rennaisance faire was the line. I don't dig on axe-throwing contests or bands with mandolins and lutes no matter how many girls i knew from school were there dressed as wenches. So when some of my goth friends started playing Vampire live-action, I had absolutely nothing to do with it. I mean sure, it's cool that they... "express their interests" so freely but it just didn't do it for me. So this movie captures the feeling that I had when I saw my friends walking around town wearing mirror sunglasses at night and resorting to paper/rock/sissors after one guy engaged another. It's fun to laugh at them for a bit, but then it becomes interesting... and then all of a sudden it's sad. The movie does it's best to explain the draw of living the fantasy life a few days at a time but constantly reminds us that the huge castle that one army is sieging is actually just some plywood planks nailed together and painted white. It's real to them because all they need are the symbols to ignite their imagination, but the audience sees what's really there. So it's pretty easy to laugh at these guys... constantly. Whenever someone does anything anachronistic while wearing his period costume got laughs, people laughed whenever someone'd wear their sunglasses along with their dark elf make-up, and the degree to which these guys take that stuff seriously is pretty humorous... I think the movie is good though because it never feels like a Daily Show segment. The directors like their subjects and laugh with them not at them. I just hope most audiences see the difference. "stick jockey"
03.10.06	This Film Is Not Yet Rated	Kirby Dick	a great doc about the MPAA and their shady practices. I mean really great. It really exposes the agency's hipocrisy and hidden agenda. There's an absolutely great turn towards the end of the film that had me rolling. It also did a great job of intercutting between two mini-movies: a talking-head history of censorship in movies and case studies of the MPAA's biased ratings, and a direct cinema piece as hired private investigators track down just who exactly the people that rate these movies are. Perhaps most revelatory, the film also uncovers the people who judge each film's appeal... Very surprising... I remember my first real film history course and the professor talking about the old days of the studio system and their vertical monopoly, controlling the product, distribution, and exhibition of film... and of course how it famously got split up... and how false that fact now rings after seeing this doc. I really hope this movie somehow ignites change in the rating process; it does a really fantastic job of showing why it needs it.
03.10.06	Thank You for Smoking	Jason Reitman	SXSW 2006 starts. I think, looking at the 9-day schedule stretching out before me, that my SXSW write-up will be nowhere near as in-depth as BNAT or AFF or FantasticFest... in fact it probably won't even be as in-depth as my noraml stuff... Deal. This was really good. smart and funny. I loved how Aaron Eckhart doesn't change though... if Nic Cage played that part he would've grown a heart when he spent time with his kid and changed careers at the end because he was a better person or whatever. Instead, we get an actually good movie.
03.09.06	Gates of Hell	Lucio Fulci	So yeah I missed the Taxi Driver screening tonight in order to get some stuff done before SXSW but I made sure to get downtown on a busy thursday night to see the next Terror Thursday. Tonight was much more packed than the previous three weeks (I credited to early south-by-ers), filled with people wondering aloud if the alamo really served beer or what. This, coupled with Kier-La's introducing me to her friend last night as "Brian, a regular here" plants me pretty firmly as an established Alamo junkie. I think I am also becoming more Austinian because whereas last year I was all excited by SXSW and didn't mind waiting like 8 hours in a goth club just to see the one band I came for, now I am just hassled by all of the out-of-towners and can't wait for them to leave even though most of them aren't even here yet. I guess I have more than a bit of my mom's anti-social behavior in me after all. So this movie left me pretty cold. There were a few gore scenes which delivered (mostly because it's gross to have intestines in your mouth, whether they're yours or someone else's), but for the most part just a lot of zooms in and out on people's faces. I'm ok with the story not making much sense but I still resent how placing a movie in Dunwich constitutes a "Lovecraftian" label. I think the thing I want most in life is to make an honest-to-goodness good Lovecraft movie. Something that would make all of my old goth-elitist highschool friends happy. Not a Stuart Gordon version of Lovecraft nor John Carpenter or Stephen King versions but an actual authentic Lovecraft version of Lovecraft. It would be slow and the main characters would be old and people would go insane and at the end you'd just see like one tentacle of one of the elder gods and it would be jazz all over your mind. Until then, I guess all you have to do is call the town Dunwich. There were a few gags I liked in here though. The crying blood was awesome, the wall bleeding after it's hit with all the glass shards was awesome, the drill through the head was awesome, and the hole through the priest's guts at the end was pretty good too. I didn't get all of the squeezing-the-back-of-the-head-till-brains-ooze-out thing though... It'd seem like there's easier ways to do that. The next Terror Thursday though, after all this SXSW nonsense, is Street Trash... so I'm definitely set for that.
03.08.06	Angels from Hell	Bruce Kessler	so... ok this wore just a tad thin through the third quarter but a few things kept me interested and a few more things deeply impressed me; -so it's the '68 version of l33tspeak, when bikers used terms like "can you dig it" and "are you getting what I'm laying down" with 0 irony. My favorite line in this whole movie appeared pretty early... I don't think i have it 100% right but it's something along the lines of "I'm gonna lay some jazz on your brains" as the main biker dude outlines his sunny plans for his biker club's future. I have to start saying that or put it in a story or movie or something. lay some jazz on your brain.... oh man. -The end. The gang's leader has become really crazy for some reason all of a sudden and plays a whole scene's worth of dialogue staring camera right with a goofy grin on his face. Then the fuzz is outside and makes them all take off their "colors" (in this case their light blue denim vests, mostly overtop light blue denim shirts but oh well) and the gang leader goes even crazier, grabbing the head cop's gun and saying something unimportant. The cop plays it cool, suggesting that he button up his shirt before leaving... so the gang leader does it. He stuffs the gun into his armpit so the butt is practically slapping the cop in the face and goes about buttoning up his shirt... but the cop doesn't go for it. I guess he just couldn't stand the sight of his bare chest or something. So after his shirt's nicely buttoned he offloads the gun, hops on his chopper, and goes to leave...until some random cop shotguns him in the chest. Like 0.2 seconds later a bible quote flashes on the screen and the movie's over. So what they do for the picture credits they give all the leads is put their name under shots of them reacting to the shooting/in shock/just standing there (however into the movie you are)... I think that's a great little thing, man... what a great ending/segue into the credits... I wish it would've cut to the main characters who were killed earlier in the story like laying on some autopsy table or a freshly filled-in grave or something. just like a quick summary of where each character ended up at that moment... but what we get here is still pretty cool and completely made the movie for me.
03.06.06	House Party	Reginald Hudlin	so after Soul Cinema and Music Monday, the Alamo had a free midnight screening of Kid n' Play's House Party. What made it cool was that, for various scheduling serendipities, Kevin Smith showed up to intro and watch it with us. Now, I am not a huge fan of most of Smith's movies, I tend not to like Smith's fans at all, but always begrudgingly enjoy Smith himself just because he's so self-deprecating and candid. he did a surprisingly length 45 minutes of Q&A on all sorts of subjects (, upcoming projects, TV appearances, current status of all of his projects, his thoughts on My Name is Earl, etc.), some even including House Party. Then he sat down and we watched the movie. What to say about this early 90s hip hop high school comedy? Well it's rated R which is awesome... Robin Harris and John Witherspoon, Martin Lawrence back before he had his TV show, good stuff. the new jack swing, high-top fades and sculpted hairdos, and coordinated dance movies? not so hot. It was still funny though... in a very peculiar way. good times all around.
03.06.06	Let's Rock Again	Dick Rude	following around ex-Clash frontman Joe Strummer during a 2002 tour with his latest band The Mescaleros... well, latest band before he died that is. These types of stories always make me sad. friggin Joe Strummer walking around some Jersey radio station trying to get inside and begging some random DJ to play his song... handing out hand-written flyers for his show in Atlantic City. There should really be some eternal respect clause in all high-profile music contracts. It happens so much though... you hear about old jazz guys playing hotel bars or whatever, guys like Strummer all over the place who are still fundamentally musicians - it's not like they've changed - passed over by changing tastes in the public and spending their twilight years just barely gettin by. sigh. Also, he isn't credited on imdb as anything but i swear Grosse Point Blank credited him with a "music by" beginning title... tons of movies have used Clash songs but I thought he was doing a few scores or music supervison on a couple movies lately... I didn't know he was friggin playing Atlantic City... sigh. So a few of the songs they played in this doc were really dubbed out and awesome. It was a good doc for what it was... but it started pretty abruptly and ended pretty abruptly... for following his tour though it was great, and made me feel sad because his music's still good and his personality's still interesting... well, was still interesting before he died. too young.
03.06.06	Abby	William Girdler	AKA The Black Exorcist. You know, with the new "genre" field on this site, I wanted to use the more empowered "soul cinema" label for these types of movies but this one really belongs more in Blaxploitation... you can't get much more exploitative than this... it's basically the Exorcist, even to the point of having a demon unleashed in some exotic locale before joining our main characters in their suburban home, but with black folks. That's not to mean it wasn't enjoyable with the possessed Abby becoming a superslut size queen and effortlessly throwing hospital staff to and fro but for the most part it's just The Exorcist on a lower budget with people saying "right on" instead of "ok."
03.05.06	Safety Last	Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor	I finally get to see this. It's been on my list of movies to watch since... well, whenever AFI put out their top 100 thrillers (it joined The Freshman which had been on there since the top 100 comedies). Maybe I'm coming to Lloyd too late but I personally don't see it. Not as graceful as Chaplin, not as thrilling as Keaton... I guess the battle for the Silent-era greats never has Lloyd coming in ahead of those two but I dunno.. it seems like Safety Last is definitely a case of the last scene making the movie, I was just a bit let down in that it was the only scene that really had me engaged. An average Chaplin or Keaton movie would have like 3 or 4 scenes at that level. but in any case, I'm glad I finally saw this and can cross it off my list. yay for that.
03.05.06	The White Diamond	Werner Herzog	a wonderfully dreamlike and meditative documentary, no surprise from Herzog. Something about him and the jungle, man... he always takes the most fascinating look at it. This is kind of a missing link film for me because when I saw Grizzly Man after The Wild Blue Yonder I really couldn't see how the same guy made both films. In this one you start to hear some of that Sardinian music creep in but at the same time the interview subject is fascinating and slightly goof. Not to say that I boil down Grizzly Man to a slightly goofy interview subject, this was connective tissue in more than those terms, but still... After watching this I think the main reason why Wild Blue Yonder didn't gel with me was because of Herzog's use of file footage. I found that the music didn't bother me here because the photography was so beautiful and captivating and hypnotic in all the ways that grainy messy NASA and dive footage is not. Really good movie.
03.05.06	Jim Brown All American	Spike Lee	After seeing Tick...TIck...Tick I wanted to check out Jim Brown's story. He seems like another guy along with James Brown that really should've had a biopic made about him but A) they can't find anyone who can even play at being that good, and B) his personal life has shades of violence rather than drugs and we all know that a successfull biopic needs drug addiction and happy endings. Interesting doc... pretty long but I guess Spike really had 2 or 3 stories to tell here instead of just 1.
03.04.06	The Chumscrubber	Arie Posin	You know, when they came out and I could not separate Chumscrubber from Thumbsucker, I thought it was just the name. Now that I've seen both I know it's because they are the same exact movie. The same kid's even in both, and this isn't like Timm Sharp playing a darker version of his Underclared character on Six Feet Under, this is like the same kid in pretty much the same part in two exact same movies. That said, I think I like this one better. This one has a little more surreal overtone to it that made me think it was more Mike Mills than Thumbsucker. It's a shame Thumbsucker didn't hit on a lot of what I like about Mills' work. Looking back, I feel about the same with it as i do Romanek's One Hour Photo, the only difference being there's not another movie called Photo-Mart that's just like One Hour Photo but slightly better. OK so they're the same. Not 100% but pretty damn close. The adults are a little more wacky andcaricatured in this one, a little less interesting on a character level and more thematically designed to drill home that kids today have problems and need attention rather than drugs. yeah, yeah... I thought it was kind of interesting how this movie has perhaps the loosest most nonsensical macguffin ever. At first it's funny but then it just made me wonder why anything is going on... so I don't know. I wouldn't say I loved either one of these youth-angst-in-suburban-hell movies, but neither one was too bad either. Good cast from the adults for sure.
03.02.06	Pieces	J. Piquer Simon	the poster says "Pieces: it's exactly what you think it is." That, coupled with Lars' observation that the movie is a massive collection of little touches of memorably bad moments, pretty much sums up my thoughts on this phenominally bad movie. One of the major sources of laughter comes from the ADR, with tons of little non sequiters and dialogue quirks clearly put in just to fit the acting or to keep some semblance of plot wheezing and chugging along. It's also very quick with lots of people talking over one another... it makes you realize how amazing the english dubs on Leone's movies are. All of the characters seem like archetypes cut out by idiots. Lynda Day George seems to straddle two, playing the tennis pro love interest and a cop to boot. We also have the dean of the college, the burly creepy-looking red herring greensman or whatever he is, the getting-too-old-for-this cop, and the slick trenchcoat-wearing detective. They're all just sort of hanging out on this college campus while someone hacks pretty girls to pieces with a chainsaw. get it? Pieces. In the beginning of the film, we see a kid get slapped by his mother for putting together a nudie jigsaw puzzle. The kid gets an axe and chops her up. into pieces. just like the puzzle. PIECES. It's actually quite funny though, the movie keeps going back to the nudie puzzle as the killer puts more and more pieces in as he kills more and more victims. See, he's taking pieces from each victim... almost as if they are pieces of some human puzzle. The problem is, in order to remain anonymous and gender-nonspecific for the camera, the killer has to wear heavy rubber gloves while he puts this puzzle together. I don't know the last time you tried to put a jigsaw puzzle together wearing heavy rubber gloves, but this movie is proof that it's not easy. The camera lingers for what seemed like 45 minutes at one point while the gloved killer's hand tries to pound the nudie girl's elbow-piece in place. Compared to that, lopping off limbs with the saw is a piece of cake! the movie's filled with so many of these humorous little oddities that I can't seem to remember any of them right now. The only thing that's coming to mind is the ending. See, at the end, this college student/casanova type/wannabe cop (i guess) finally fends off the killer until the slick detective rushes in and shoots him in the head, whew. With the danger over, the detective leans against a nearby bookshelf, triggering a secret swinging door which launches the bride of frankenstein human puzzle-woman onto the casanova! The kid falls down with the rotted sewn-up woman on top of him. a choked cry fills the theater. the kid tries to squirm out from under her dead and pieced-together weight. you can see the assembled corpse trying her best to hide a smile. Just a perfect opportunity for a freeze-frame ending... can't ask for a better one... but they don't end it there. Nope, they cut back outside to show an ambulance arriving then they have another little scene where the casanova says something about his heart finally starting to beat again. Damn, a totally lame ending; missed opportunity. They should've frozen it on the woman on top of him! But wait... under the blanket, the frankenstein girl-corpse RAISES HER HAND, GRABS CASANOVA'S CROTCH, AND SQUEEZES TILL MASSIVELY PLUMP BLOOD BALOONS POP ALL OVER HIS CRUSHED AND PULVERIZED JUNK! Casanova screams, and the frame freezes for the end. I didn't think they could possibly top the first ending but... they did. Oh man they did. That has to be one of my favorite endings... just throwing the whole concept of re-animation or zombies in the last 5 seconds just to get a gore-pleasant junk-crunch close-up. Totally unexpected, yet still exactly what I thought it would be.
03.01.06	The Sex Cycle	Joe Sarno	My first exposure to Joe Sarno. According to Lars he's on the level of Jess Franco: a real director of integrity working in a medium that allows him to make lots of movies albeit succumbing to certain commercial restrictions (i.e. lots of boobies). Judging from this movie I just about buy that. The major vibe I got from this is that everything was deliberate except for the acting. As if Sarno said to himself "well, I can only get these non-actors to fill the roles because they are the only people willing to take their clothes off... and they HAVE to take their clothes off so... oh well." The photography was pretty good (in a minimal almost noir fashion, totally driven by budget rather than any stylistic choice I bet, but still... it's good), the plot is pretty wacked out and crazy, and there were a few setups and transitions, small tricks with the lighting and things of that nature, that struck me as way above expectations for a movie like this. of course, it's all balanced out by Lars' professed love of this movie and great intro... but in the end I found myself quite enjoy'd. I think two factors helped out with that a lot: 1) it was short. Like 70 minutes short. I think it was a short movie to begin with and the second reel had a lot of splices (unless all those jump cuts were intentional) so it was even shorter. This kept the eerie stilted tone manageable. I'm not sure if i would like the unexpurgated 135-minute extended edition quite so much. 2) I saw it at the Alamo. Of course the Alamo is the best but I think any theater really would be of help. I'm not sure that I would've given this movie 100% attention had I rented it and watched it at home. There seems to be so many more distractions here when a movie isn't 100% engrossing 100% of the time. I find myself wandering, checking email, etc., when I watch movies here... even for movies that i really love. The theater is nice and insulating, keeping my focus... focused for the entire movie. I think if i was paying half attention to this I would've missed a lot of the nuance and charm of this movie. It's making me wonder if my dvd of Vampyros Lesbos might be worth another viewing where I tie myself down and force myself not to pause it or answer the phone once while watching. so, a few things that really made this movie interesting: Many of the female characters never looked directly at anyone that they're talking to. At first I just thought the girl was reading her lines off-camera but she kept doing it and others did it to so I have to think it's intentional. Lars says it's to signify the alienation of the characters. OK. It's also just weird. The other thing was the great 60s soundtrack. These little drum roll hits to end scenes cracked everybody up, but I generally liked the drum solo score interspersed with the vaguely surfer-rock make-out tunes. It made me think of Wes Anderson's tendency to pair a particularly frenetic moment with a rousing drum solo, but this movie used it for all occasions, even just to end a random dialogue scene, which was fun.
03.01.06	Brewster's Millions	Walter Hill	pretty good although I kept thinking "well why didn't he just by 25 stamps" and things like that. I guess it wouldn't make much of a movie if he spent all the money in a day though... oh well.
03.01.06	Fun with Dick and Jane	Dean Parisot	My TiVo-like device actually filled up last night. I feel like I am so behind on like a thousand things that aside from midnights tonight and tomorrow I am officially falling off the face of the Earth until at least Monday. This movie... I was interested to see it because of Apatow's involvement with the script... eh... pretty lackluster on all accounts I have to say... instantly forgettable.
02.28.06	In Cold Blood	Richard Brooks	Alamo played this as a double feature with Capote. I didn't stay for Capote though... just wanted to see this on the big screen. It's such a gorgeous movie... stunning black and white photography by Conrad Hall and host to the famous "the light is crying for him" scene mentioned on the Visions of Light documentary. I think I've pretty much tracked down every movie mentioned in that doc... it's so great. but anyway, this movie... wow. I remember being really impressed with it when I saw it the first time. Quincy Jones' music, Robert Blake and Scott Wilson's performances, it all comes together with this intriguing Kansas murder story. Really good and unbelievably pretty in a theater. It also has one of the better chilling endings ever. Looking up Brooks on IMDb it's no surprise that he also wrote/directed Looking for Mr. Goodbad, another film with a wonderfully shocking and chilling ending that just leaves you waiting, wishing, hoping for soothing safe end credits and soft music. I can't remember if they show up in Goodbar but for In Cold Blood, the lights just went up and when people started talking they whispered because it was so quiet and heavy in there. Then I saw Alex Jones in the hallway and life went back to normal.
02.27.06	Candy	Christian Marquand	I really can't believe this movie exists. Written by Buck Henry based on a book co-written by Terry Southern, starring the cluelessly innocent and lovely Ewa Aulin as a sort of pure light force that's really really hot. She stumbles from situation to situation, meeting all these people who want to bone her. What makes it interesting is that the guys whom she meets - these guys that all want to bone her - are the likes of Walter Matthau, Ringo Starr, John Astin, Sugar Ray Robinson, Richard Burton, John Huston, James Coburn, Charles Aznavour, and marlon freakin brando. The movie is so completely absurd... and somewhat lewd but also really episodic and just plain-ass strange. it felt like The Muppet Movie mixed with Tarzoon and just a touch of Barbarella. I was sitting there watching it and just not believing that this actually existed. Oh, The Byrds did the soundtrack I think... and Dean "Godfather" Tavoularis designed the production, and Douglas Trumbull did some effects for it. I mean, why haven't I ever heard of this before? Probably because it's absolutely crazy like some weird almost-sexploitation picture with an archetypal late-60s end sequence which I've never seen anything like it except the ending of The 40-Year Old Virgin. But man, this movie was so funny... it did get a bit long and strange at the end but especially in the beginning it was hilarious. I think I need to get this on DVD if it's available.. just to have.
02.27.06	The Spook Who Sat by the Door	Ivan Dixon	Alamo's Soul Cinema program continues with this story about how some Senator's poll results forces him to call racism on the CIA which in turn forces them to institute some sort of affirmative action program for agents. Only one brother makes it through the rigorous training program just to be put in charge of running the copy machine. So out of the blue, he quits, moves back to Chicago, and starts training street gangs to become a guerilla army and overthrow the country to show Whitey that they mean business. Most of the best parts are in that first half hour that takes place in the CIA. After that it gets pretty long but still has a few notable notes that made it enjoyable... especially for a buck.
02.26.06	The Cave	Bruce Hunt	as I predicted when I saw The Descent at BNAT, this is just like that except for bigger budget, faker sets, bad CG monsters, and macho dudes instead of hot chicks. One of the two chicks in here, Piper Perabo, proves why she isn't a bigger star yet and everybody else just seems to go through the motions. Uh oh, we're dying off one by one. blah blah blah. I think the mediocrity of this movie makes The Descent even better because that's a movie that SHOULD be just like this but actually proves to be pretty damn creepy. so yay for The Descent and I'm sure I'll have forgotten all about this by... tomorrow.
02.26.06	The Muppet Movie	James Frawley	It's truly a narrative of heavy-duty proportions. They showed this as part of the Texas Puppetry Theater Film Festival 2006... AKA this movie and about another two hours of various puppetry shorts, Jim Henson rarities, and a reel put together honoring the late Jerry Juhl (who co-wrote this movie). It made for a pretty fun Sunday night... this sold out easily but the 9:30 show of shorts, etc. was also pretty full. Jim Henson's daughter Heather was there to talk a little bit and hang out and they had a live marionette dude named Mr. Puppet in between shows regaling us with bad jokes and little wooden people doing lip-sync. Actually though, several of the shorts were really really cool and funny. I think my favorite was one called Herd, which started out with all these cows getting beamed up to alien ships then a guy who works as a cook for a burger joint finds an alien in his house and makes friends with him by taking him to the beach and stuff. The alien puppet's eyes are so mischevious and unruly, and the whole thing was clearly written and directed with competence. That one along with Sammy & Sofa were probably my favorite but they were all pretty cool and interesting... just another one of those random special things i get to see at the Alamo that's probably really hard to see anywhere else. yay for me.
02.25.06	Dangerous Men	John S. Rad	Tim & Lars held this over for one more weekend and Micah came down from Dallas to see it so it was a good excuse to see it again. Although there were only 8 people in the theater, a good time was still had by all. A few choice moments which I think are my favorite: -The sequence where the girl is sitting on the beach looking at a seashell and the words to the song that's playing are written in cursive on the beach... until a wave comes in and washes half of them away, blurring out to a flashback where the girl is giving her now-dead fiance this weird-ass thing that may be a combination centerpiece/ashtray made out of shells and googily eyes and the guy says "...it's beautiful" and we come back to the beach to see her throw the shell down and arbitrarily run away down the beach. -the sequence where the dead guy's cop brother talks to the bartender at the most civilised biker bar in the world, paying 200 bucks for 2 beers and asking the bartender how often the bikers come in. After a moment of thoughtful contemplation, the bartender answers "oh... about every day." As the cop walks out, the bartender asks his name. "Clem (I forget his last name)," he says, to which the bartender answers "I'll just call you Clem Cuckoo." Meanwhile, the girl who has been suggestively throwing darts (poorly) walks outside after rejecting a large bald biker with temporary tattoos on his arms and head ("she's hot, i'm gonna bang that") to immediately strip down to a skimpy bikini and run and frolick in the surf. She's acting happy, she's acting fun, then she totally falls on her ass and gets totalled by an incoming wave. Now she's up and running for her life back to the beach before the next wave gets her... clearly no acting there. There's so much that's great about this, from the weird connections that start poppin gup, like how an inordinate amount of lovemaking attention is paid to the knees and bellybutton in more than one scene, or how one of the worst line readings actually happens twice by different actresses ("are you sure? (pause) you want to do this?"), to the sheer audacity of Black Pepper's stringy ultra-blonde hair, We joked around afterward that you could probably get a Master's Thesis out of it, maybe even a full course. David, who was seeing it for the third time tonight, gave an introduction in leiu of Tim or Lars. In it, he noted that if we wrote any reviews for this to be kind because we really don't want to spoil John S. Rad's sense of accomplishment. I wonder what the S stands for... Super? In any case, this is a perfect movie to see at the Alamo. afterward a small group of us stood around for a time reegaling each other with our favorite moment. After a second viewing, I'd say Dangerous Men the movie is more than fine, it's PURRR-FECT!
02.25.06	Running Scared	Wayne Kramer	A Paul Walker movie, but a surprisingly decent one. Probably the most explicit going-down scene in a mainstream non-porn to date... unless you sort-of cournt The Dreamers... but after that it turns into a very fast-paced ride that gets increasingly complex and convoluted to the point where they are just piling twist after twist on you every other second. My personal hunch on the frantic pacing is to keep you from actually thinking about the plot while you are watching. You're so caught up in trying to follow what's going on that you don't really notice anything else. I think that's why I didn't have a problem with Walker's accent or the wife's acting (after her first scene) or how the ending really makes absolutely no sense... I was having too much fun just holding on and feeling the moment. The movie's a lot better than I initially thought it would be and had a little guts that I hope more Hollywood movies get back to, so for that I must say i'm glad. Now, though, after some time to think and reflect, the story really falls apart with hole. Oh well, though, it's still a fun time. The completely separate tangent of the couple who finds the kid in the van is super cool and creepy at the same time... a great little divergence from the main thrust of the picture that I would've thought would be the first thing to go with most movies so double kudos to Kramer for keeping it in, whatever his reasons may be. A not-so-kudos to the entire crowd in the theater that I saw this in. It wasn't even like it was just one party talking all the way through it... EVERYONE talked. whenever there was a quiet moment like 8 people started talking to whoever they were with and the entire theater was loud with it. Couple tat with the particular people sitting directly behind me, who looked like they were in college but spoke like they were 6, yet to grow into that buffer zone between thoughts that pop into your head and what actually makes it out of your mouth: "why'd they shoot THAT guy!?, who's that guy!? oh that's so messed up! he's talking about HIMSELF!!" man... but old people, middle-aged people, everyone talked. is the whole world taking crazy pills? GOSH!
02.24.06	Just Friends	Roger Kumble	I think the problem with this movie is that Ryan Reynolds is too much of a jerk. Granted, that seems to be the type of character where he really shines but for this formula you really need to be behind him in order to care or laugh when things don't work out how he wants. I mean, I certainly identified with being stuck in the friend zone in highschool but for this whole movie i was thinking "i wouldn't do that." The vindication is supposed to be that now that she's more mature she recognizes that you were right for her the whole time, not that you can now act just as assholic as the jocks did back then. I think The Baxter handled a similar theme much better. I wanted to like this movie but i think it's tonally offset about 15% and that kept me from really going with it.
02.24.06	976-EVIL	Robert Englund	Terror Thursday... I'm really surprised that I never saw this. I clearly knew about it, it came out right when I was getting hard and heavy into the local rental place's horror section and it was directed by frigging Freddy Kreuger himself. For whatever reason though, this one slipped through the cracks and, just as with Demons last week, I'm almost glad it did because I got to have my first viewing of it at the Alamo. i didn't really fall completely in love with it until near the very end though when the kid-turned-demon kills the pet parrot and yells "that's what the plastic's for, asshole!" to no one in particular... just years and years of pent-up rage at his momma (and I guess the parrot too) for telling him not to eat on the couch. Man, that cracked me up... to the point that when it's revealed that the momma's dead and her pet cats are eating her guts out, I felt like I didn't get why everyone was screaming and laughing and clapping at that but not the plastic on the couch line. There's more than one great moment in this though... a very good time all around. Oh, one more thing. I don't know where that city's supposed to be but i was about high school age in 1989 and i NEVER played strip poker with a bunch of guy friends. ever.
02.23.06	Charley Varrick	Don Siegel	Don Siegel directed it, he's my MAN (so quick, he made lots of fans)... a pretty badass 70s crime film starring Walter Matthau as a good-guy bank robber and Joe Don Baker as a mafia heavy sent to track him down and recover a bounty of mobbed up money. I loved the ending to this... it just seemed right, even to the point where I swore i saw Matthau's crop duster move somewhere earlier on in the film... maybe on the side of his van or something. In any case, I really liked this... good tough-guy Don Siegel fare... the Alamo should totally do a Don Siegel retrospective man... that would kick some major ass
02.22.06	The Dark	Bud Cardos	After the AFS screening I tried to watch this Gatchaman anime with some of the english voice actors in attendance but I just couldn't. Instead I hung out in the lobby and read a bit and got to hear Kier-La recite a hilariously raunchy Mad Lib (apparently her first ever) and talk about her Barbie board game. Tonight is Weird Wednesday's Fifth Anniversary. Tim got up and spoke a bit then Lars got up and in addition to introducing the movie also talked about the Alamo Downtown's current plight with the upcoming lease rate increase. It really made me curse myself because they were both great little speaches and I really wish I had gotten them on tape. I need to get in gear with my camera and start bringing it to the theater to capture stuff like that. Since I'm thinking the question of whether the Downtown theater will be closing next may would make a good central story to hang the history and anecdotes and philosophy of the theater on, i really missed out by not being prepared for tonight. Have to get on that!!! Anyway, The Dark is about as old as I am, and it stars a bunch of TV people. The story's about a huge monster that should probably be a Frankenstein-esque zombie but for some reason was made into an Alien. The beginning crawl is so hilariously slipshod, filled with cuts and stutters, the crawl speed varying and some text repeating, that it's enough to drive your interest through the sluggish middle right into a pretty crazy fantastic ending. It was produced by Dick Clark, has Casey Kasem playing a police pathologist, Philip Michael Thomas in one scene playing a dude named "corn rows", and William Devane's hair wearing William Devane around from scene to scene. Seriously, behind his driving glasses and under that late-70s Stephen King hairdo, Devane is maybe trying on his best Bruce Dern but probably more thinking about what he's gonna have for lunch. Either way, it's a pretty vapid performance. At the end though, when the zombie/alien starts setting guys on fire with his laser eyes, all is forgiven as one dude, for no particular reason, gets like a triple shot of stink-eye and flies into the air on a wire until he completely combusts leaving absolutely no trace of human remains whatsoever. Everyone else just seems to get the stared-upon area set on fire. I don't know what that poor guy did to him but for whatever reason the zombie/alien dude had, he got no mercy... like the other cops who just got hit with a piece of wood. so I think it's a fitting anniversary movie... let's hope for at least another 5 years so i can actually be in on the conversations afterward about how great Snakes and The Great Smokey Roadhouse were.
02.22.06	In a Lonely Place	Nicholas Ray	AFS screening of this Bogart noir... a lot like the Hitchcock movie Suspicion except Bogey plays is-he-a-crazy-killer-or-not about 10 times better than Cary Grant ever could. One shot in particular, where Bogart's screenwriter character pontificates on exactly how the killer could have done his gruesome business uses this line of key light across his eyes that, together with a rare showcasing of his buck teeth, paint Bogey as completely looney bin. moreso than Sierra Madre, moreso than African Queen... just completely nutso. Of course Gloria Grahame is good too but the movie's really a showcase for Bogey (no surprise since it was made through his Santana production company) and he really makes the picture as good as it is. Right up to the last minute I totally thought that one way or the other Grahame was gonna get it. I'm still not completely sold on Godard's quote about Ray being "cinema" but I do like his style in this... lots of deceptively complicated shots and interesting compositions. It's just a good movie all around.
02.21.06	Class of 1984	Mark Lester	I'd never seen this before. It seems like I've seen most other high school movies (especially the "dark future" running into post-apocalyptic ones) but for some reason never this one. I've seen the sort-of sequel, Class of 1999, tons of times though, and always loved the evil robots in it (especially Patrick Kilpatrick). I guess it's sort of like never seeing Rock 'n Roll High School but seeing the Corey Feldman sequel tons of times...need to get my priorities straight I guess... but you can't blame me for being born 5-7 years too late. I don't really know why but I love high school movies. This one's no exception. At first I thought it was just another update of Blackboard Jungle but then one of the kids got his arm cut off with a tablesaw and I officially started loving this movie. Hence the era of The Substitute and 187 is born. Man, doing a quick inventory in my mind... there were just tons and tons of high school movies in the 80s and early 90s weren't there. I blame the coreys. Early Michael J. Fox appearance aside, it was interesting for me to see Tim Van Patten as the main heavy and think of him directing all those HBO original shows now like Sopranos and Deadwood. Damn if he doesn't look a hell of a lot like Chris Meloni.
02.21.06	For A Few Dollars More	Sergio Leone	Alamo event with all-you-can-eat Spaghetti and salad and then some tiramisu to make you explode. I don't really like tiramisu because I don't drink coffee but The Alamo South Lamar has some really really good freakin tiramisu. Um... so anyway, this movie is really great. I love how everyone always tries to double cross everyone. There's no honor anywhere except when Eastwood and Van Cleef recognize each other's ruthlessness. and I love how important the music is with Leone's work with Morricone... just great stuff man, but I don't have to tell anyone that. I'm still on the look-out for a full-size version of the awesome awesome Eastwood Few Dollars More Italian poster. my mini-poster just isn't big enough. i need it like 96x78 or something... as huge as can possibly be.
02.20.06	930 F Street	Tarik Dahir, Jeff Gaul	Music Monday this week is a documentary about the famous nighclub 9:30 that was originally located at 930 F Street in DC. Lots of interviews with a notable lack of performance here, considering that it's about a nightclub. since I've been to both the old and new 9:30 club more than once, it was cool to see pics and some video of both venues and reminisce about the times that I was there, but I am a bit conflicted with my thoughts on the actual documentary. There's some good stuff about the history and flavor of the club itself but the story here is really about the straight-edge movement, Dischord records, and the whole general trend of hardcore music that started out and burgeoned at the club. Most of the musicians interviewed and virtually all of the music performance clips fit that story well, but then you have groups like R.E.M. and Clutch who were clearly from a completely different place being interviewed as well. Both R.E.M. and Clutch are completely justified in being in a 9:30 club doc (R.E.M. played there like 18 times and Clutch, who are from Silver Spring, practically live there) but because of this movie's structure and focus they seem wildly out of place. So to me it felt like the movie wasn't quite sure of what it was about. I get the feeling that the directors started off just wanting to do a straight history but then stumbled upon this great stuff with Ian Mackaye and that whole "scene" with the all-ages shows and matinee shows and dischord bands and stuff like that, and that's cool but I think they should've cut some of the stuff that didn't have anything to do with that OR toned that down and went for more of a general picture by including several other offshoots that the club was there for. Why there's a whole sequence on moshing/slamdancing in the pit I have no clue... I suspect it's just because they had the footage. Speaking of footage, one unique aspect about the original 9:30 is that there was a crow's nest up in the corner where a dude would always be filming the band so it could broadcast on all the closed-circuit TVs set up around the club, so you know there has to be tons and tons of amazing performances somewhere just screaming to be gone through and presented in a movie exactly like this. So all the stuff about the club itself I loved, the stuff about the audience, the bands, the promoters and owners, all that stuff was great. BUT, and maybe this is just because it doesn't fit my personal memory of the club, having most of the musician interviews be attached to that one specific genre of music kind of bugged me. They use several calendar playbills as chapter heading devices so you can get quick little glimpses of the wide range and variety of bands that played there... not every night was Minor Threat hardcore night... and not every Minor Threat show was at the 9:30 club.
02.20.06	Penitentiary	Jamaa Fanaka	Black prison movie that turns into a black prison boxing movie. This has some sweaty muscular guys fighting over who's topping who then a subplot where a sissy regains his pride then dies. All in all, it's everything a prison movie should be and, while I wouldn't stack it up with my favorites of the genre, I thought it was worth watching. Also, Alamo Downtown has a new menu. no more schlitz! different kind of chocolate cake! new quesadillas and pizzas! oh my...
02.20.06	Jackson County Jail	Michael Miller	I guess the moral of this story is to always always always fly instead of drive. It's good. I wish I could've seen it in a theater because here at home when something isn't absolutely riveting I am much easier distracted. Still though, I think this was good in a 70s Corman sort of way... A few things I especially liked about it: the cops firing into a parade full of highschool marching band jut to hit an unarmed Tommy Lee Jones. what!? the fight scene where the random dude grabs a scythe and starts swinging away at Tommy lee Jones. What!!? the cop smelling the hot dog. what!!!? also, the film begins with someone spooling film into a projector. Of course we learn that it's an ad for sanitary napkins and the movie goes on from there, but it strikes me that it would be a really great way to cover opening credits for some other movie... a movie where it being a movie is inherent... to have some unseen person spool the film into the projector as the titles appear then maybe at the very end of the end credits you hear that sound of the film reel finishing and fwapping against itself as it spins around or something like that. could be cool.
02.19.06	Over the Edge	Jonathan Kaplan	Ever since I noticed the ad for Vulcan Video on the back of the Alamo guide being the poster for Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry, I've sort of made it a practice to watch whatever movie they use for each issue. This is one of those movies that I started watching and immediately remember catching it some late night on Cinemax or something. The hangar rec center, the circular highschool, the crazy riot at the end... but when i caught it a long time ago I didn't even know what it was called. It reminded me of another movie called Suburbia (the Penelope Spheeris movie, not the Linklater one) and several other movies that my onetime neighbor Cameron insisted was really good until I watched it. Not to say I didn't like this... I think it's great in that late 70s "youth problem" vein (I remember another late-night cinemax movie where a kid was supposed to show up for a birthday party or something but he stole a car and was in jail so he couldn't make it)... but Cameron sure had weird taste. When I was in highschool, some kid set a fire in his room at some problematic-kid-jail/school and escaped as was on the run for like a week. Cameron talked to him on the phone once but didn't have anything to say to him. I remember everyone in school was all up in arms and somehow the paper blamed Natural Born Killers for all of this kid's problems. At least we didn't chain all the adults into a cafetorium and shoot their cars in the trunk thereby blowing them to hell in a huge all-engulfing fireball. oh one other thing. The ad on the back of the cab is for Elitch Gardens. I've totally been there. they have a log flume there with a tree close to the queue with so much gum on it that you can't even see the bark anymore. gross and cool at the same time.
02.17.06	Dangerous Men	John S. Rad	Dangerous Men came out of the blue, very much different, it's so true. Turned out to be the talk of the town, whoever saw it told another one. They passed the word everywhere, Everyone wants to see it here and there. That's why it turned the talk of the town! Yeah! Dangerous Men the movie's FINE! John S. Rad directed it... he's my Man! So quick, he made lots of fans! His name all over with respect! Whoever saw the film said it's PURFECT! Don't lose the fun time, go and see it! It's unforgettable! Do not miss it! With movies like Casablanca and The Big Lebowski out there I can't in good conscious say that this is the best movie I've ever seen... BUT i have no goddamn problem telling everyone I know that this is hands down the absolute best cinemax/showtime movie that's ever been made or ever will be made ever until the end of time or film, whichever comes first. So many great things about this movie... I can't even remember them all. It's just like... imagine every little thing that you've ever seen in movies that take you out of the story. Every bad line reading, every visible wire holding up the flying monster, every line of dialogue that's slightly out of sync with the lip movements, every gun that doesn't fire correctly, just everything like that. Ok, now take all of the things that are along those lines but so over the top ridiculous that you've never actually seen them in a movie except for maybe parody movies that are deliberate in their usage. Now take all of those things and throw them in a box and throw that box off a cliff. The bloody garbled mess that splashes out when that box collides against the craggy rocks at the bottom of the cliff? that horrible mess IS Dangerous Men. and what makes it work instead of being boring and painful is my firm believe that John S. Rad is not in on the joke at all. It's like the R. Kelly factor as Kier-La says... the Trapped in the Closet series would not be nearly as funny as it is if R. Kelly was in on the joke, but he's not. He's taking it completely seriously and believes that it's serious work. he must be friends with John S. Rad, man... because this movie is such a mess but it never ever winks at you once. This is the real deal, and it is unbelievably great. So the story is John S. Rad was an architect in Iran until the Shahs took over or whatever so he came here in 78 a millionaire and decided to make a movie. It then takes him about a decade to shoot this thing... then another decade to release it. Every single element of this movie can be made fun of. Not one single thing is ok or bad in a boring way... it's really an amazing achievement. I'm really thinking I'm going to go see it tomorrow night as well. That's how much fun I had with this movie. I can't believe that I'm lucky enough to be around when something like this pops up. I really think it's going to be one of those movies that bonds people... like I will be able to make a joke about it to Lars a year from now and those of us who were there tonight and tomorrow night will laugh. Dangerous Men the movie is indeed FINE!
02.16.06	Demons	Lamberto Bava	kicking off Terror Thursdays at the Alamo... nothing better than seeing a free movie about people who go in to see a free movie and end up getting mutilated and transformed into glowy-eyed, green-drooling demons. I can not believe I've never seen this before. I loved absolutely every second of this movie. I felt like I was 13 again, home after a week of school with several movies picked from the Horror shelf at the local rental place digging into a sugar-fueled hardcore horror all-nighter with my neighbor buddy. Somehow this fell through the cracks for me and while part of me wishes I had seen it back then so I could've been dropping it as my geek-taste currency all these years, another part of me is glad that I didn't see it until tonight... sitting with guys who are just as film-crazed as me, guys willing to try and find parking at 11pm on a thursday night (I broke down and paid) to come see this goofball gorefest of a horror movie. Part of why I think the AICN guys are now copping attitude is because they are not down there for this stuff... i mean, how can you pass this up? I would probably live at the Alamo if they let me. I bet rent would be a bitch though. anyway, yeah i absolutely loved it. my face is sore from all the smiling. I love how it turned all post-apocalyptic at the end... maybe I'm just in a good mood or something because i really, really got a kick out of this. whew...
02.16.06	Richard Pryor Live on the Sunset Strip	Joe Layton	catching up a bit with the Pryor stand-up since seeing Live in Concert at the Alamo last week. I guess I don't need to note that it was balls funny... but what else is there to say really... oh, Haskell Wexler shot this! and i got a big kick out of the African guy's odor being so bad it was "oh dear" heh heh heh
02.15.06	Neither the Sea Nor the Sand	Fred Burnley	Maybe I was too tired for it or I'm not indoctrinated into the British exploitation scene enough or had biased expectations going in or whatever... but this movie didn't quite click with me. For a story about a woman who keeps loving her man even after he dies, comes back to life and starts decomposing, the alive-on-dead lovins were criminally sparse. I had something more akin to the guy in Deathdream's rate of decomp more in mind but this guy just stopped talking, got a little paler, then put in contact lenses for one scene. From the first scene on I wasn't expecting a level of gore/shock like the last few scenes in Lamberto Bava's Macabre, but still... I found myself wanting more than I got. The creep-o-meter was set at like 6 and I wanted 8. That said, all the main actors gave good performances and some of the writing (especially in the beginning, before the main dude dies and stops talking) is pretty classic in its sheer oddity (it's not an affair...it's a love affair). I'll call it a near-miss.
02.14.06	Keep the River on Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale	David Shapiro, Laurie Shapiro	I feel like this is a little bit of a bait & switch here because although this old dude did eat a bit of human flesh once, the movie talks about it for maybe 3 minutes (at the very beginning and very end) and the rest is your standard anthropologist, old-guy-returns-to-jungle doc. It's a lot like Tigrero except instead of salty old Sam Fuller and Jim Jarmusch going around, it's a gay dude with a bad hip. Still interesting of course, but not enough cannibalism. Everyone from the New Guinean and Peruvian tribes interviewed want to forget their violent man-eating past so... it kind of takes the wind out of that awesome title.
02.13.06	Two Thousand Maniacs	Herschell Gordon Lewis	more sweaty Florida goodness, this is an amusing movie with a pretty cool idea but done with the midnight movie methods that made HGL the godfather of gore. For the most part, this is very much a Weird Wednesday type movie, but the idea behind it is pretty cool, like something out of Nightmares & Dreamscapes-era Stephen King. There's also a scene with quicksand... I remember the time in my childhood when I first heard about quicksand and became completely obsessed with it... like how could you drown in sand... it's earth... so like you're drowning in dirt. wild. I think it was used in a few Spy vs. Spy strips too which probably fueled my interest... it seems like for a while there it was a staple in all the horror or adventure movies... there had to somehow be quicksand which people had to save people from with a big branch or something. I've still never actually encountered quicksand in real life though... Oh, good music too.
02.13.06	Tick...Tick...Tick	Ralph Nelson	part of the Alamo's Soul Cinema series, this movie was much better than I thought it'd be, largely due to George Kennedy and a very old Frederic March being in it. It's very sweaty and I don't understand why what seems to be the main Klan dude being the first to turn and support Jim Brown as the newly appointed sheriff. Other than that though, the movie is actually pretty quality, dealing with both Brown's typical racist threat as well as Kennedy's dealing with losing the election to Brown and finding himself not a sheriff anymore. Everyone's sweating all the time which is great. I don't think enough people sweat in movies...
02.11.06	Cannibal Holocaust	Ruggero Deodato	I've finally seen it. I sort of think that animal cruelty is an easy out... like playing the race card or whatever, but my short answer to Cannibal Holocaust is this: I am never EVER going in the jungle. ever.
02.11.06	Scratch: All The Way Live	Doug Pray	A well-done concert film covering the live tour they put together after the release of Pray's Scratch documentary. The tour had The Original Jazzy Jay, DJ Z-Trip, the X-ecutioners, and Mixmaster Mike along with live art by Mr. Obey himself, Shepard Fairey. Pray's next doc (about graffiti) is playing this year at SXSW and I am psyched to see it. I think he's one of the freshest names in the documentary field today.
02.11.06	Wedding Crashers	David Dobkin	I still laughed, but I think this more represents the current status quo of "top hollywood comedy" than anything classic or timeless. I like these guys, like the R-rated-ness of it, really don't dislike anything about it and like I said I still laughed, but it does have a bit of paint-by-numbers, churning the movie mill feel to it.
02.10.06	Coachella	Drew Thomas	A documentary/concert film about the 2-day music festival held once a year out in Indio, CA. It's pretty decent if you like the bands presented, but when Morrissey popped up I hated every second. Still, you get the Flaming Lips giant spaceball, you get The Pixies and The Stooges, you get the slightest bit of techno and hip-hop mixed in with lots of rock, but you only get one song each, and most of the times it's not the whole song. So it's sort of like a sampler with some short interview clips thrown in. Still, it's not bad and it shows some of the cool things set up there and gives you a bit of a feeling of being there (like when the cameraman walks into the rave tent when Roni Size is playing then walks back out). I guess my main complaint is that the non-rock acts feel unbalanced... although seeing Kool Keith in his Black Elvis wig was pretty cool and hearing Chemical Brothers mix together Come With Us and Music: Response was nice... but it felt like they spent 6 minutes with some groups and only 3 with others... granted watching DJs push buttons on stage isn't exactly cinematic (Squarepusher's small segment made me laugh, but maybe that was at all the kids trying to dance to his stuff), but still... I kinda wanted to see Mos Def perform as well as joke around about The White Stripes not being there. Oh well, i'm nitpicking. This doc could've been lots worse.
02.10.06	Firewall	Richard Loncraine	aside from the trailer ruining all the twists and the beginning using Massive Attack's Angel for like the fifty-thousandth time in a movie or commercial and a few cheesey parts at the end, this movie is actually not that bad. It doesn't surpass any expectations but it's not a letdown either.
02.10.06	The Pink Panther	Shawn Levy	I reviewed the trailer for this more than a year ago. That is a long-ass time ago. I laughed once in this movie and didn't pay to get in so I guess I have to say it was worth it but somehow I think I still got cheated. hamburger.
02.10.06	Final Destination 3	James Wong	I liked the first two but this one was just too much. In the beginning it was entertaining even though I was laughing when everyone else was cringing but by the end the intricately detailed deaths were neither intricate or detailed. Plus Ali Larter wasn't in it so it has to suck. At least there was nudity.
02.09.06	The Weather Man	Gore Verbinski	Back in the filmtease days, the one piece of insider-y stuff we got is a daily from this movie. it's where Cage is punching at air in the parking lot... it made absolutely no sense. Based on that, and the fact that both Verbinski and Cage are somewhat unreliable in my eyes, I didn't bother seeing this movie in the theaters even though I heard it was good. Well, it is good, but I'm still kinda glad I didn't catch it when it first came out. Sometimes I just look forward to renting new releases that have a chance of being good. so much of the new stuff that i rent or pay-per-view sucks so much that i kind of like seeding the deck a little bit and this movie made a good time of it. Cage is good in this, and the script is great. It's definitely a hard sell: a story about a weather man who's having trouble with his family. Some good use of voice over, and nice direction make it pretty entertaining though. definitely not bad.
02.09.06	Eddie Murphy Delirious	Bruce Gower	Compared to Richard Pryor, it ain't much of a comparison at all. Still though, he had one classic bit here (black people not staying in a haunted house) but i'm surprised how dated it is. On another note however, Murphy seems to have solved the sweaty comic problem by wearing all leather. I remember seeing this years and years ago and laughing and laughing... it only got a few chuckles out of me now... oh well.
02.08.06	The Summertime Killer	Antonio Isasi	Yay for weird wednesday. I think Micah's suggestions have finally broken through into my brain. Expect new fields with each entry soon (genre and venue). I mention it here because I think I now feel compelled every week to say somewhere in my notes that it was weird wednesday... So with a genre field I can just mark it as such and then I'll also be able to get a count of how many I've seen and put up one page which lists them all out. that = awesome to me. This movie... I guess the titular summertime killer is Chris Mitchum, Bob Mitchum's kid. He seems to have inherited all of the dopey look of naivete and gullibility that his dad had without any of the rugged danger or world-weariness. In this movie at least, he looks like a rich guy's kid that's completely spoiled and considers riding motorcycles to be a profession. I buy all of the wooing pretty girls stuff from him and none of the professional killer. That's fish four days old, I wont buy it. (I love Sweet Smell of Success). So I guess this movie is initially about a kid getting revenge for the death of his father, but about halfway through it becomes an alternate take of Swept Away except they don't yell at each other as much and the girl is ultra-hot Olivia Hussey. From there, Karl Malden, who's in my book the best part of this movie, lets him go at the end and dies because of it. Aside from one awkward lovemaking scene between a hotpants'd Mitchum and underwear'd Hussey (hubba hubba), there's not much of note in this movie that was better than I expected and therefore kind of worse. The music's great but scarcely used, it's pretty much a full two hours long, and either paced deliberately or Mitchum couldn't remember half of his dialogue. Either way, I really felt the length in between enjoyable bits... but still, it's great that I got a chance to see this movie because I probably never will again.
02.08.06	Fail-Safe	Sidney Lumet	Proof that Volcano and Dante's Peak were far from the first pair of similarly-themed projects, a friend's recommendation described this movie as Dr. Strangelove but serious. I guess ultimately Strangelove took on more cultural resonance as those born and growing up after the height of Communist paranoia coupled with the fast influx of the Computer Age died down and appeared ridiculous in hindsight, but Lumet lays this movie down in a way that completely grips you even if in the back of your mind you can't help but think of Strangelove's comedy. I have a couple notes about this. When I first heard that Harrison Ford would be playing the president in Air Force One, I was like "right on" because at the time (this was before he slipped into the coma he's been in for like the last 10 years), there was no better actor I could imagine being the president. Not only that, I kinda didn't mind the idea of ol' Indy being the Commander in Chief in real life... as long as reality worked like the movies did. So I bet it was the exact same sentiment for audiences in the 60s to see Henry Fonda playing the big guy. Right On! I've been thinking about what overall tone or theme I like most in Lumet's work and I guess it's his directness... a get-to-it, no-BS attitude in filmmaking that perhaps came from his TV roots or whatever... but just like, no slow motion, no useless musical montages, none of that crap. It's all "Here are the players, here is the story, let's go," and this movie certainly fits into that mold. The beginning dream sequence is maybe one of the weirdest and best dream sequences (in a way) that i've ever seen. from there, we just sit back and watch stuff happen. yet without any sort of heavy-handedness (in the direction, the script has plenty of 60s-era message-y explicity) you still become taken in and gripped by the film. When you hear the high-pitched shriek on the phone line, it's brutal... and you look at that scene and realize that it's just two actors in a non-descript room! yet it's riveting! even now! pretty exhausting though... but in a good way. Now if only Volcano and Dante's Peak were as good as this and Strangelove...
02.07.06	The Family Stone	Thomas Bezucha	So after the depressio craziness of One Day in September, I figured I'd watch a surefire feel-gooder... pretty people, christmas, romantic comedy... well, as it turns out this movie is more akin to the second half of Jodie Foster's Home for the Holidays than the first, all sadness and heartstring tugging and whatnot... so I guess it's just written somewhere that I go to sleep tonight feeling down. Decent movie though... Diane Keaton and Craig T. Nelson play awesome parents.
02.07.06	One Day in September	Kevin Macdonald	pretty heavy stuff. Sad time, so much going wrong. In addition to the point of German disorganization which is pointed out pretty explicitly, I'm surprised that more attention wasn't paid to the fact that the uber-invasive media which had every second of that day broadcast from every angle hindered any rescue or deployment possibilities they might have tried. I guess doing something as simple as cutting the power to the terrorist-controlled building was too much to ask back then... but I guess it was a different time and really one of the first seeds of terrorism's current incarnation to hit the world populace. I wonder though if those Palestinians specifically picked their unique headgear because they knew it would become so creepy and strange. I mean, a white pith helmet? Huh? In any case, this doc was pretty good, certainly delivered on the depressing sadness of the whole affair. I was not surprised at all to find out that this director also made a very decent doc on fellow documentarian Errol Morris. Morris' influence can be spotted in a few places here, even going so far as to use some Philip Glass music in a few spots... however the inclusion of rock songs and several montages give the film much less of a meditative vibe than Morris' usual work.
02.06.06	Rubber Johnny	Chris Cunningham	This is only 6 minutes long but I have to make an entry anyway because in the bits that aren't just an Aphex Twin music video this is some of the creepiest stuff I've seen in a while. It's between this and The Descent now for creepiest nightsthot imagery. I really really wish Cunningham yielded more output though. His music video work, especially with Richard James, is so unbelievably horrific that I couldn't even imagine a whole movie of it. And this, with just like a minute's worth of footage that's not blippy and cutty set to Aphex's music is so unsettling and unique, I don't want to say I want him to work more because I don't know how much work goes into these little videos and shorts but I am so anxious to see him tackle some form of narrative. I know he had an installation piece somewhere of floating naked people hurting each other which was excerpted on his Director's Label DVD... and I guess that's like 10 or 20 minutes or something but... come on... It almost feels like this short takes the easy way out by reverting to Aphex Twin music video quick cuts.. the first two minutes set up something so eerie it's just incredible. Nightmarish stuff which I'm seeing nowhere else these days. I want more!
02.06.06	Private Parts	Betty Thomas	Since Stern started on Sirius satellite I've been checking out his show again. I used to listen to him back when I had a morning commute and watched his E! show on and off for years and years... even vaguely remember his Channel 9 show way back in the day (but seem to remember the guy who ran the local comic book shop saying how it was better than SNL more) so anyway... thought I'd revisit this since it's like 9 years old now. I remember when this came out the prevailing thought was that it wasn't as bad as you'd think. Even my mom liked it (I think my dad did too although he could never admit it since he's an Imus fan) which i took as a sign of the movie's success. Actually, I remember when we first moved to Maryland after my dad had been living in Rockville for a few months until my school year ended in Boulder and him talking about how funny the Greaseman was on the radio. This was before his racial slander got him kicked off the radio forever of course... but I think Stern was still in Washington at that time and my dad talked a little about him too... before he got old and therefore had to start listening to Imus... The movie is still pretty good i think. The whole point is to intriduce some humanity and empathy to Stern who's widely thought of as a sleavoid pig to those that don't listen to him. I think he is a genuinely nice guy though which is why he has so many fans and why those fans are so intensly loyal. Anyway, it was a fun trip back to when he was married and carrying on with that Fartman schtick... although I doubt he makes another movie because I think even he was surprised at how decent it turned out.
02.06.06	New York Doll	Greg Whiteley	A pretty well made documentary following New York Doll bassist Arthur "Killer" Kane 30 years after the band broke up. Since then, he'd found god and become a mormon and spent some time working in a library and has a quiet bus-commute life until Morrisey shows up with a reunion offer complete with Buster Poindexter. Lots of people were laughing but I found the whole movie pretty sad in a humbling way. Here's a guy who knew incredible heights then crashed down to absolute bottom. Every shot of his face shows each one of those years and during the reunion footage he showed such a mixture of nostalgia for an old life that will never happen again... so when the ending of the film revealed that he died very quickly after his last show, it's a real punch in the gut... I was actually reminded a lot of Harvey Pekar... just a low dude... very calm but very sad. Good movie though, for sure. Also, there was a group of hardcore dudes sitting the next row up and whenever Morrisey was on screen one guy raised his hand and shot him the bird. It made me chuckle and reminded me of when I was back in highschool and thought things like that were cool.
02.06.06	Richard Pryor: Live in Concert	Jeff Margolis	Kicking off Soul Cinema mondays at the Alamo, this show totally sold out. It didn't pre-sell out, but it totally sold out all the same. Considering this is just about as old as I am, this really really stands up. I full-on belly laughed... and what gets me is aside from all the black/white comparisons he also has a whole bit on his dogs and his horse and stuff... who does that? Doing material on his heart attack and stuff, it really sets Pryor apart as someone who can make pretty much anything funny. really classic stuff. Now I'm gonna watch an Eddie Murphy concert film and see what's what. As a general rule though, I bet you can always walk in or turn the channel and tell exactly where you are in a comedy concert film by seeing how sweaty the comic is. Fresh shirt? you haven't missed much... is he drenched? then it's about over.
02.05.06	Chungking Express	Wong Kar Wai	so I guess it should really be Kar Wai Wong if it's also Chan-wook Park... but oh well. WKW has a better ring to it... i am too tired to comment on this movie though... maybe next time
02.05.06	Bubble	Steven Soderbergh	man... real life sure is depressing on the big screen. Kudos to Soderbergh for making a movie that feels just about 100% naturalistic and realistic... but the whole reason why i watch movies is to escape from reality. oops.
02.05.06	Blood Simple	Joel Coen	dince seeing the other Coens on the big screen I'm deciding to eventually revisit the others I haven't seen in a while. I was actually lucky enough to see this director's cut of Blood Simple on the big screen when it first came out in 2000. The commentary on the DVD is pretty hilarious at first but gets old by the end... still a great movie, so suspenseful... so much vomit.
02.04.06	Clue	Jonathan Lynn	Love this movie... I laugh every time I see it, there's so many reactions and looks that everybody gives each other... still though I think my favorite line is right at the end when Madeline Kahn finally confesses in such a way that all she can get out is "i hated her... SO... much... flames... flames on the sides of my face... heaving... heaving breaths..." man, her delivery of that gets me every time. I love pretty much everybody in this movie though... so many great touches... they really deliver on this sharp witty script that's funny but also works as a real Classical Whodunnit and all three endings feel natural and believable. I really think this is an underrated classic
02.04.06	Ocean's Twelve	Steven Soderbergh	I think a lot of the backlash that this film received when it hit theaters was undeserved. it doesn't look like all those actors are having any less of a great time during this than they did during the first one but for some reason that's a bad thing now. I still prefer the first one but I think that's because that whole movie is about how great they are and this whole movie is about how they mess up. It feels like a letdown to see them get bailed out at the end only to find out that they won a long time ago... it's just not as dramatic. It's also that much more complex and makes you wonder why they go through the whole charade in the first place... and the other problem I have is with the night fox character... like he gets through all those lasers just because he knows capoiera... like the guys who installed the security system are like "nobody can get through this unless you know the brazilian art of dance fighting." And after he goes through all those contortions to get down the hallway to steal the egg, how does he get back? I think there was really only 1 hole in the first film and it was pretty minor (how do they get the porn fliers down into the vault) but this one's got a few more for sure... I still have a good time with this one though, and have to say that I'm looking forward to the next one. I just hope they spend more time on them being successfull this time. Oh, all the supporting cast was also much more supporting this time around... Barely any time with a few characters... I hope the next one's more evened out as well.
02.03.06	Cry_Wolf	Jeff Wadlow	beware spoilers. The Usual Suspects meets April Fool's Day. Except all the characters and dialog are so stilted and forced that you can see everything a good 20 minutes to an hour ahead of time. Like a lot of these horror movies though, it's a good idea that's just not supported by any kind of execution. At about the hour mark I evaluated every main suspect and had a sad realization that it could be any of them, not because of any sort of reasonable explanation but because other movies have had much longer stretches of logic and reality. In the end, does it really matter who the killer is if the explanation is going to be so outlandish that you won't believe it anyway? I guess I am judging too harshly for a slasher movie but there was no goddamn slashing so I'm a bit pissed. Not only does it take like 70 minutes for there to be any killing but every death scene was shown right in the beginning as the kids made up the story. And how are you gonna think someone's dead just because they're laying there for like 20 seconds. The movie logic in this really really bugs me. Is it that hard to have sexy prep school students kill each other? I hate to say this but I think I liked both Urban Legends' more than this (although Rebecca Gayheart representing any sort of physical threat at all is laughable)... and I say that because I spent this whole movie thinking about how good it could have been. At least with urban Legends I felt they were trying their best with a ludicrous premise... oh well.
02.03.06	Crimes and Misdemeanors	Woody Allen	This was recomended to me as a companion to Match Point. I guess I should state that I find Allen's movies watchable but am not a huge fan, and I also find myself unable to divorce his work from the stuff I've heard about his personal life, no matter how hard I try. Other than that, I think it's interesting that people are calling Match Point his best movie since this one... I am surprised at how amazingly similar the dramatic half of this movie is to Match Point. All through this I thought about other directors who make so many movies that they seemingly run out of stories, or like Stephen King's second haunted-car book and his admission of its similarity to Christine. I guess some people like Hitchcock managed to make whole careers out of telling the same basic story over and over again, but I'm now thinking even more that Match Point is so lauded more because it's not crappy than because it's actually good. That's just me though... I am not a Woody Allen expert.
02.03.06	Rollerball	Norman Jewison	Talking a bit with Wiley before weird wednesday this week, he mentioned that the Charlie Kaufman script for A Scanner Darkly placed the film in the future according to a 70s movie. Although Linklater dropped that idea for his film, I can't help but think what a great idea that is for some other movie. Rollerball is a great example of what Kaufman means by 70s-era future. I still can't helpt but think this would be a better movie if it wasn't made by Jewison. I mean the movie's still pretty good, but imagine if Robert Aldrich had gotten his paws on it? forget about it. Still, the actual rollerball scenes, especially the Tokyo game, still hold up as pretty brutal. It's just surprising how quiet Caan plays it and how slow the rest of the movie is... but that's what makes it 70s sci-fi instead of explodefests like 80s sci-fi or CG-replaces-thinking pap of 90s sci-fi.
02.01.06	Girl on a Chain Gang	Jerry Gross	weird wednesday! I have heard so much about Teenage Mother and have had so many people ask me if i've seen it that I think this notes should really be about it instead of Girl on a Chain Gang. I will see Teenage Mother soon though so i guess it can wait. This movie is a nightmare of deep-south institutional corruption and racism shown in stark black and white. Actually I'm not sure why these hick cops terrorize these three random people in town to help people vote. Only one of them's black and he seems to get off the easiest. The other guy gets bitten to death by snakes and the girl is raped and molested for a night before becoming the titular girl on a chain gang for about five minutes before escaping and falling into the safe hands of a random state trooper who knows all about how naughty the townies are. The main sheriff guy, as Lars described, is like all the bad parts of Steve McQueen and a few other actors combined. He's really creepy in this because he's constantly chewing a huge cigar and he has a padlock hooked on an ammo loop on his gunbelt. I have no clue why he has a padlock hanging there but once I happened to notice it during a scene I could not stop thinking about why it was there whenever the dude was in a long or medium shot. There's also an assistant deputy or whatever that looks like a cross between Rory Cochran and Leonardo DiCaprio in What's Eating Gilbert Grape. Hearing all of them try to deliver lines is pretty funny... especially the black guy doing his best Sydney Potier impression, but they are all beat by the old codger who plays the judge. See, for like the first hour and fifteen minutes the movie is pretty slow and talky. Then they have a courtroom scene that is classic... every frame of it. The sweaty drunk witness, the wiley lawyer, the doddering doctor, and this hee-haw judge with what may be the worst character "choice" ever recorded on film. The scene includes the doctor going into a lecture on sperm and putting up slides showing white stains that he says are from white guys and these black magic marker squiggles which he says came from the black guy. All said and done, the girl is not actually on a chain gang until about the very end. That's pretty disappointing. If the movie started at this courtroom scene and spent all of it's time post-sentencing on said chain gang, I have a feeling that it would be pretty cool. As it is though, it's really only saved by it's last 20 minutes. The first 70 or so are pretty low-key with only occasional bursts of particularly bad acting or poor dialogue. Oh, one last thing. The shot composition was also always off. Lots of shots where chins are cut off or we're just a bit too close or too wide. I think it had a subconsciouss effect on the audience...
01.30.06	The Matador	Richard Shepard	The Alamo is playing this so I saw it again. Still good, still funny. I wish Kinnear would get more sympathetic roles like this. I guess he makes a good dick but I don't like him... it's like it's too easy for him or something. Wouldn't it be cool if they did a Talk Soup movie and put Kinnear up against John Henson? OK maybe not. Afterward I made it over to downtown to see 60s promotional videos for a few hours. good stuff. another awesome triple feature!!!
01.30.06	Match Point	Woody Allen	After an awesome glimpse at the second floor of the Alamo South Lamar, I finally got to sit down and watch this new Woody Allen movie that everybody is saying is so good. Um..... yeah it's good. I think part of it is that it's good because it's not bad though. After the last 4 Allen movies or whatever, anything that doesn't suck is like gold. It IS good though... just a solid well-executed simple story. Well-acted, Well-directed, well-everything. Still though, I don't think I will tell it to the mountain or whatever that saying is.
01.29.06	Fight Club	David Fincher	Now, I remember seeing this like 3 times theatrically when it came out, but I thought it'd be worth seeing on the big screen again and I was right. It's just different to see something up there after having it on DVD and spending time with it and seeing it many many times. You notice pretty much everything. I still think it's a really great movie. And I still think it's just a tad too long toward the end but mainly that's due to the strength of everything leading up to it. I also still wish they changed the film-jumping-the-sprockets effect to VHS tracking problems and DVD skipping issues for home release though... Same thing for Stir of Echoes with the whole hypnosis-in-a-movie-theater thing... if i ever make a movie and have something like that in there I am gonna make sure to put aside enough money to do different effects for each medium. Anyways, yeah this movie is super duper gay... but that doesn't mean it's bad. It just makes it funny to hear when the frat boy jock types go on about how they love it. It is pretty subversive though... I don't think there's been another movie (except Passion of the Christ I guess) like it until V for Vendetta hits this year... but this is way better than that.
01.29.06	Miller's Crossing	Joel Coen	Again at the Paramount, a second double feature with Miller's Crossing and Fight Club. Absolutely fantastic to see this on a big screen. It's really a perfect film... I can't think of a single way to make it better.
01.28.06	Opera	Dario Argento	so... when this movie started it looked gorgeous and it was really good and I thought that I was finally seeing an Argento movie that had some nice production design. the photography of the opera house and those wonderful wide lens setups looked great and the first death with the knife through the bottom jaw so you can see it in his mouth was AWESOME. OK so the pins on the eyes just barely passes my disbelief-suspenders but still, I was ok with it. By the end not only did i not know what the hell was going on but I totally didn't care. After all that hard rock music to accompany every kill and the grand raven-cam shot, it didn't really matter to me how they got up in some swiss villa, or how the killer managed to show up there as well, or how the mob of people hunting them showed up, or what the final shots of the main girl meant... i was just blah'd out by then. The first 10-20 minutes though are really great! If only the rest of the movie held up.
01.27.06	Live Freaky Die Freaky	John Roecker	I'm always equal parts excited and wary to see movies that are supposedly super offensive or controversial. It's a very easy idea to launch into your imagination and, at least for me, it never ever lives up to its hype. I'm sure when I finally see Salo I will sit there afterward and my first reaction will be "eh." That's pretty much how this one went. It's sort of the Charlie Manson story told with claymation with alt-rock/neo-punksters voicing most of the cast. The dude from Rancid is in it, the dude from Green day, the dude from Blink 182, and i'm sure plenty of other people in bands I'm not cool enough to know are all also in it as well. Honestly, the first musical number is pretty good... and really whenever there's hardcore claymation porn on screen it can never be all bad... but after that it gets pretty tedious. I was strongly reminded of that other Manson Family movie that I watched last year where the feeling is: I should be liking this a lot more than i am. I still laughed at a few places (best laugh: "Sharon Hate" is driving along with her gay friend talking about how they love to kill mother nature and cut down rainforests and all this stuff then the gay guy says something like "shut up or i'll kill you and cut out your baby and fuck it" and she stops the car and just looks at him in complete silence for about 5 seconds) so I guess i'm glad I saw it... but I wouldn't recommend it.
01.26.06	Death Race 2000	Paul Bartel	"I've got two words for you: Bull Shit." "some people might think you're cute, but me, I think you're one very large baked potato." (in response to "all's fair in love and war") "I'm glad you said that, because what we got going here ain't exactly love." Three great lines muttered by Sylvester Stallone in this movie. Now I'm mad that I had to grow up with The Running Man instead of this. awesome movie. right up my alley. it's criminal that i haven't seen this until now. It totally makes me want to go back and play some Carmageddon again. I'll also have to check up because if i remember correctly they were calling Carmageddon 3 "The Death Race" and may have even been licensing the cars and idea and stuff but I never saw the completed game come out, which was a shame because both Carmageddon's were on the verge of being really fun. The totally need to make Frankenstein's car an unlockable in the next GTA, man... complete with teeth. Also, Paul Bartel! big balls on him. big strange balls.
01.26.06	Some Like It Hot	Billy Wilder	an Alamo event up at Village with a spicy feast. To tell the truth, I signed up before the menu was announced just because I wanted to see the movie in a theater. I love how I'm getting such an opportunity to see these movies that I love on a big screen. They had a 35mm print of it that was pretty damn decent, way better than the Coens films yesterday. What was also great was that the three waiters that worked the screening all went drag for the occasion! While I don't get out to Village enough to know any of them like i do downtown, you have to respect that and all the ridicule they were subjected to out in the lobby by all the other employees who didn't have to don dresses. Of course... still... one dude got in a miniskirt and showed off his hips in a way that was borderline not funny anymore... luckily he didn't cover my row. Tim got up beforehand and said that this was chef James Holmes' swansong event and that he was going on to open up his own restaraunt in a few months down on South Lamar. So the menu was half good and half not my style, but the film was really great to see again. another awesome event!
01.25.06	The Seniors	Rodney Amateau	So after the Paramount double feature, I walk down a few blocks to the Alamo. On Saturday when I was waiting outside to get in to the Red Light Burlesque, I was thinking that because of the damn Cuba Libre awning and sign, the Alamo sign was like invisible from that angle. I remember when I first flew into town and came down to see Friday the 13th 3-D I walked right by it because I didn't see the sign, and that early pictures of the building before Cuba Libre moved in it was like the only sign on the building and really stood out and now it's just kinda stuck in between a huge awning and a huge sparkling star. However, when i turned onto Colorado at 7th street and looked down the road i was happy to see the Alamo neon glowing bright as could be. Cool to see that it's still severely visible from most angles. Still, it does kind of have the feeling of being the last white house in a neighborhood that's gone all latino (racism aside) meaning it has a very casual unfurnished feeling in a whole section of downtown that is now up to the gills in tight shirts and hair gel. screw all them though, the alamo can kick their ass. you don't see lines around the block for Cuba Libre now do ya. Anyway, The Weird Wednesday movie tonight was The Seniors, which I'll get into in the next paragraph. I ended up sitting up with the Alamo folk tonight because I was sort of chatting with kier-la beforehand out in the lobby and thought it cooler to continue the chat rather than go down front to enjoy this classic gem of a movie. As it turns out, I sort of got a vibe that kier-la actively dislikes me... it may be just a paranoid hunch but... it may not. who knows. Anyway, i still had a good time up there talking with people I'm getting to know better and better. I think for the next QT and other movies i really want to experience though I will still be down in good ol' seat 1011. It is cool to have to move over a seat because Tim needs somewhere to sit though... So the movie sounded pretty horrible. I didn't know a few things about it though that luckily completely saved it and turned it into an honest-to-goodness good time for me. 1) Dennis Quaid is in this movie. I don't know if it's his first movie or not (actually imdb tells me it's not) but it's sure as hell before The Right Stuff. 2) this movie is actually about a bunch of guys starting a huge prostitution ring and making millions of millions of dollars. 3) It's got that late 70s charm of being somehow innocent of how absurd everything is. It's like it was back in some magical time when sex couldn't kill you and it was ok to make fun of the establishmentand everybody was basically just having fun. Oh wait, it was. What a great year to be born in: all downhill from there. 4) at the end the movie stops and becomes a really altruistic anti-materialist hippie-fest for about two minutes before remembering "oh yeah, this is all about pussy" and going back to 70s teen sex comedy romp. That's so awesome. So the thing that I think I liked most about this movie is all of the adult roles. Yes the main characters are all typical sex-crazed college dudes but every adult they come into contact is like some fantastic 18-year-old's version of what an adult is. You have the older women who are all insatiable nymphos, you have the cops who take bribes and re-assure them with "if anything goes wrong we know how to make it look like a drug overdose", you have the police commissioner who offhandedly confesses to lynching someone, you have the bishop who is like 20x more corrupt than anyone else, and you have businessmen willing to kill rather than lose a buck, but in a funny way. What awesome adults... maybe they are just awesome because they aren't lying to try and cover their personalities. oooh deep for a weird wednesday entry! Anyway, I got a kick out of this. It wasn't a classic like Black Angels or deceptively quality like Convention Girls (a movie I've really come to have fond memories of... maybe they're wrong but who knows), but a good time on a wednesday night. I laughed really hard once and out loud several other times. Sure it didn't get my gut busting as much as when Glenn says "Mind you don't cut yourself, Mordecai" then throws mints at his own child in Raising Arizona, but then again... what does?
01.25.06	Barton Fink	Joel Coen	Again at the Paramount as a double feature with Raising Arizona. This print was old and scratchy too. Did I care? well yeah, a little bit. I would've loved to have seen absolutely pristine prints of these movies... they are not like Weird Wednesday where part of the vibe of the movie is the personality of the actual film. I am still glad to see it theatrically though... am glad that I get the chance now since I never had it when it was first released. I still think they should've played Miller's Crossing with this as a double feature but oh well, I won't complain. This movie is so great... I love the attention paid to the patterns of the wallpaper and carpet throughout the movie... really great stuff. yay!
01.25.06	Raising Arizona	Joel Coen	Starting off an excellent triple feature tonight, I had one of those weird-ass days where you get on the highway at like 5:30 and there is inexplicably no traffic anywhere. Is today some holiday I don't know about? So I end up getting to the Paramount, even with parking in my usual "i give up and need the exercise anyway" spot and walking, with like a good hour wait. I don't mind, there are massive flocks of birds that attack the "theater block" every night at sunset and watching them reminded me of the one class I took where we had to program flock behavior. Even though the print was really old and scratchy, seeing this movie on a big screen was such a treat. let me say that again: SUCH a treat. For me personally, the early coens movies (everything, excusing Hudsucker Proxy) from Blood Simple to Big Lebowski are absolute pinnacles of cinematic joy for me. Blood Simple... that their director's cut was actually five minutes shorter and it still seems like a three hour movie because every second is so damned suspenseful. Raising Arizona... with perhaps the best stretch of expositional introduction ever put on film... the first ten minutes of the movie should be in a museum. i mean the whole film should be in a museum but the first ten minutes should have duplicates just for emergencies. Miller's Crossing... a movie so perfect in its genre that it makes the originals in the 40s seem like they're missing something. Barton Fink... such a strange and beautiful film that makes a perfect flipside to the Miller's Crossing coin. It's no mistake that one was written while the Coens were having problems with the other's script. Fargo... A sublimely human tale filled with characters that somehow seem real in the Coens' world which always skirts fantasy. And of course The Big Lebowski... which I like so much I can't even talk about. So yeah, to see Raising Arizona at the Paramount? forget about it... No problem waiting an hour for that.
01.24.06	Aguirre: The Wrath of God	Werner Herzog	Talking to Wiley after the show about how I first didn't like this until it grew in my mind into something else he agreed and said people usually have to change gears when they watch Herzog movies. I think that's definitely right. His movies are not fast and filled with action and explosions. You have to kind of slide into them like you slide into sleep, and only then are they effective. This one though, I found pretty creepy. I loved seeing it on the big screen and couldn't help but remember some memorable pronunciations from Herzog's commentary for the DVD of this movie (especially at the end when he talks about all the monkies and says "monkies" like 30 times) but this time I wholeheartedly no-doubt-about-it liked it unlike the first time I saw it. The print was kinda rough though... but oh well, at least I got a chance to see it Theatrically. The first scene with all the people coming down the mountain still thrills me. Herzog is so crazy to let all those people actually do that.
01.23.06	Put the Needle on the Record	Jason Rem	Man stupid DJ culture. I think the main difference between techno DJs and hip-hop DJs is exactly the difference between this and Scratch. This one is just like "how awesome are we?" mixed with Girls Gone Wild. Nonstop music overpowering all of the interviews, every freakin subject trying to act cooler than the previous one, and whenever the filmmaker's felt they needed some pep they just threw in shots of bared breasts or asses in tight clothing. So because the movie sounded just like a club everyone in the theater started yelling at each other like they were in a club. There was like one moment of silence in the entire movie and when the beat dropped out the noise from people talking was just as loud. Seriously disappointed in this... it could've been cool but instead I felt like I had stayed up too late and was watching some DJ info-mercial or E! special on Ibiza.
01.22.06	Return of Sabata	Gianfranco Parolini	ahh the four-barrel Derringer is back! along with Lee Van Cleef! It's almost like Adios, Sabata never happened... which is weird, but anyway. Right from the beginning this one is like... well ok in the same way that Leone's Eastwood trio got more and more baroque and operatic, this series seems to get more and more comedic and goofball. in this one we got a guy who'd rather chomp down on a rubber thong and lay down spread-eagle stretching out the rubber with his legs like a human slingshot to kill people with than shoot a gun. The Parolini requisite acrobat is in full effect, and an awesome brass knuckles/switchblade/i think also a gun maybe is the weapon of choice for the dirty priest who Sabata has to take gold away from. It's pretty damn clear that Clef is either drunk or having a great time through this entire movie... he's got those eyes shifting and pulling off impossible hipshots and trapping bad guys in a whole bevy of situational boobytraps like spraying guys with water or shooting a guy with a rifle strapped under a table to even going so far as to hide a blowdart in his cigar (what???). Yeah, it's pretty safe to say that by this time Sabata and his whole universe is pretty far off the deep end... but that doesn't mean it's bad! The movie is a great time... really fun. I think it'll take a little time to decide which is my favorite though.
01.20.06	Cinderella Man	Ron Howard	You know, I don't believe I can think of any other movie where the marketing campaign was based completely on guilt. After this movie didn't make any money in its first few weeks I remember everyone, critics included, getting all mad at the moviegoing public. "Why aren't you seeing this good movie! You owe it to yourself and Ron Howard to see this movie! Get out and see this movie!" and it still tanked. Wanna know why? Because not only did the trailer give everything away, but the stuff it showed was BORING. This movie is exactly what you think it is... sure it's good technically-speaking... everyone remembers their lines and for the most part the film's in focus, but it's a story that's just been done to death. This might as well be a remake to a movie everyone's seen or part 5 in a franchise that everyone's grown tired of. He wins in the end. There. I ruined it for everyone. Oh, and the depression was tough. end of movie.
01.19.06	Adios, Sabata	Gianfranco Parolini	Sabata's back and this time he's Yul Brenner! I don't know if it's just my mood or what but while I think this is just as goofy as the first one, I enjoyed this movie like 3x as much. For some reason, the quirky stuff in this movie made more sense to me than the quirky stuff in the other. You have another acrobat who does a flamenco of death, a silent guy who cradles iron balls on his feet and roundhouse kicks them into his enemies' heads (who's also transfixed by a musical timepiece), and Sabata himself dressed in black tassles handling a rifle that looks like it couldn't hit the ocean if fired from a lifeboat. Yet Yul seems to bring off hipshot after hipshot with his nifty multi-round cartridge that he's badass enough to keep a smoke in the last chamber I've actually been wanting to see this movie since QT6 when Kier-la got up to introduce Five For Hell and mentioned that her favorite actor Luciano Rossi was in this and Quentin thought for a second and said "wasn't he also in Adios, Sabata as the guy who kills people by kicking iron balls off his feet?" and I thought "wow... i have to see someone kick an iron ball off his foot to kill someone." So the thing is, that guy is NOT Luciano Rossi! Was Quentin perhaps wrong about something? Well.. here's another thing about this: IMDb credited Rossi to the wrong character in Five For Hell and Kier-la hadn't seen it before so she just mentioned the character IMDb had listed. The dude that did play this feet-of-fury guy was in fact also in Five For Hell, but I can't remember which character he played. Did QT mistakenly think of the wrong Lucian Rossi or did he make the connection with this guy instead and was actually right!? I guess only Quentin knows... my favorite moments are the spectacular bridge explosion at the end (you can really tell when something's actually honest-to-goodness full-scale blown to shit and when something's a miniature. The way the dirt and rocks reacts to the force of all that explosive is really impressive) and when the big guy finally finds the gold and licks it to make sure it's real. Yeah... he licks the gold from his hand then says "gold!" QT was wrong about Luciano Rossi but the guy he was thinking of was in 5 for hell
01.18.06	Pigs	Marc Lawrence	Hooray for Weird Wednesday! This week was Pigs AKA Daddy's Deadly Darling. There's a really great song with a whole nursery rhyme vibe that's just awesome... I might have to rent this and rip that to my computer so I have it forever. Other than the song, the movie's about an old guy with prodigious amounts of ear-hair that owns a small diner that looks just like a house and keeps a bunch of pigs out back who hunger for human flesh and blood and bone. Two old ladies live nearby in fear of the highly-mixed pig noises that constantly bother them at night, and all the bodies gone missing from the graveyard and mysterious strangers who disappear only seem to make the pigs fatter. So in drifts this lady who acts crazy until we find out that she really is crazy so then she acts SUPER crazy and starts killing people. Of course the old guy helps get rid of her victims because they have this weird enabling father/daughter vibe catching. Now, what makes this movie REALLY creepy is that the actress who plays the girl is really the daughter of the guy who plays the diner/pig owner. There's all sorts of daddy stuff going on in this movie and at one point the girl dances to the jukebox and the camera gets right up into her cleave and butt. That's just creepy, man. Other than that, all the actors seem like they either forgot their lines or made them up right on the spot. either way you get a lot of awkward pauses and a few scenes that just go on way too long because the director had to shoot them in one shot. There is one hilarious scene though where the girl, who's just murdered some jerkass roughneck, is walking down some remote dirt road and gets haunted by terrifying squeals of pigs. Now, the pig sounds saturate the soundtrack and are so loud that they are more annoying than scary, but her reaction along with several quick zooms in on random trees and shrubbery, make the scene good. And then the 70s-chase music funk starts in and the scene is great. and then she just starts running full out and doesn't stop till she's back at the diner. Yeah... she's haunted by phantom pig sounds so she runs BACK to where all the real pigs are. That makes the scene a classic. Also, there is a possession scene at the head of this movie that's never referenced again. It's so awesome... the devil, in the form of a swine, has possessed this girl wearing lingerie so of course she's put hoof prints all over the walls and is rooting her face around in slop on the floor. It feels about as arbitrary as the ending of this movie where they manage to set something up then pay it off literally less than a minute apart. to end this up, here is the genius dialogue: -all the pigs in the truck? -yep, all 12 of them -you better count and make sure -2,4,8,10,12... huh that's funny -what? -there's 13 of em now SHOCK! HORROR! IT'S ALL TRUE!!!!
01.18.06	Wheel of Time	Werner Herzog	The Alamo's Herzog retrospective continues with this doc about a mass gathering Buddhist ritual in both someplace in India and someplace in Austria. At least I think it was India. I wasn't really trying to understand it in any logical way because I knew it's be hopeless considering both the subject matter and the director. Instead, I went in expecting something meditative in tone and hopefully interesting as well. I think because I prepared myself that way, I was pretty fulfilled with my experience. If i went in hoping for another Grizzly Man, I'd have been put to sleep. I don't know if this is anything new or not but I got a great linkage between how the Buddhists pray and how they cook. Everything is very very intense and detail-oriented and they are relentless in practice. All the people pulling pieces of dough apart to throw into the huge pot seemed exactly like them prostrating or tapping out a ludicrously complex mandala out of colored sand. That was easily the most fascinating footage of the doc for me, watching these guys construct this mathematically symmetrical and surgically precise image one grain of sand at a time... and then to have the dalai lama smear it up and have all the colors melt into one another at the end was awesome. Other than that, it was slow and meditative and gave you plenty of time to think while you watch kids look at the camera or people walking at incredibly slow rates. Thankfully, Herzog narrates the film though. Again, I love to hear that guy talk.
01.15.06	Sabata	Gianfranco Parolini	continuing my education in Italian westerns... it's kind of great because I get to see all of these movies for the first time. QT's comments about the only other Parolini movie that I've seen (Five for Hell) are right on though... for whatever reason there is tons of acrobatics in this... completely strange. and also a very Robert Rodriguez idea of hiding a rifle inside a banjo. It's cool to watch a movie and make the connection based on Quentin's notes. The movie is borderline too goofy for me I think. I like Lee Van Cleef and all but at a certain point i yearn for just a little bit of realism and logic. I can buy these guys all being uncanny perfect shots and stuff, but when there's a dude hopping all over the place and bounding up into the air to get the drop on someone, I have to think about why they don't just shoot each other and get it over with. I did really like Sabata's pistol though... it looked like it had four barrels and another two hidden in the handle so he could be all sneaky and stuff. awesome.
01.14.06	Dead Man	Jim Jarmusch	I think this is the first Jim Jarmusch movie I ever saw. i remember renting it when it came out on video and being in exactly the right mood to watch it. I watched it with headphones on and was blown away at how the movie can be so meditative and deliberate with its pacing but still hold my interest as closely as it did. Since then I've really only spoken to one person about this movie and he absolutely hated it... so now that i've seen thousands and thousands more movies I figured it was time to watch this again and see how it stands. I still really like it. Neil Young's score and the frequent fades to black definitely make this a movie that I can understand people being bored by... but i dunno man, it just puts me in this great semi-conscious place but there's still enough humor and narrative to keep me going along so even watching this completely straight and sober makes me feel altered. I feel like this is my perfect version of a Terrence Malick movie. And now I completely get why the Indian is named Nobody.
01.13.06	Thumbsucker	Mike Mills	When it came out I always got this confused with Chumbscrubber so I missed both of them in the theater. Of course as soon as this left theaters Elvis Mitchell talked to Mike Mills on The Treatment and I got really interested to see it (same happened with Chumscrubber). I'm a fan of Mills' documentary on the french band AIR as well as some (but not all) of his video work and some (but not all) of his design work as well (for the record this is not the guitarist for REM). He actually did a short film that's like a more surreal egg or seed of this movie involving a kid that enters this cookie cutter mold of suburbia and walks into random houses to observe weird stuff going on. With this one though, there's more of a narrative and a lot of the hyper- or surreal imagery is toned down to more believable levels. It was good but I had a problem in that the main kid bugged me. All the kids bugged me in fact, and I found myself much more interested in every adult character rather than the main kids. So like the whole movie I was looking at the other half of each scene and constantly wanting to go the other way... but oh well. Like I said, I don't think it was bad... slightly elevated from reality with dialogue (especially from the father) that I found unaturalistic to be sure but interesting because of it. I think I'm actually feeling about the same level with this as One Hour Photo... I still like the director but am hoping his next project will connect with me more.
01.11.06	Thrill of the Vampires	Jean Rollin	So here's what I knew about Jean Rollin tonight: This girl I knew for a short time didn't like his stuff because it always seemed to boil down to lesbian vampires having sex. So based on that I made damn sure to get there early tonight for Weird Wednesday. I guess maybe if you want to make these kinds of movies you can hang any genre on it but there seems to be a tendendcy for horror and sexploitation to meld beautifully. As if when you're making a horror movie you're already working so much with fetish and subjective taste that it's not too hard to go from showing dreams that are nightmares and dreams that are... much more pleasant. For whatever reason though... vampires are just better when they are chicks that like chicks. Torture and madness carry that extra edge when you know it's sexually deviant torture and madness driven by lust. I dunno, makes perfect sense to me. So this movie is pretty all over the place, great in lots of different ways. In places it's absolutely absurd, really experimental in a nouvelle vague way, and authentically creepy. There's a shot early on in the film, this long shot of a castle and after a few seconds an enormous amount of blood floods from one window. That's a great shot, man... and really belongs in a movie as scary as The Shining. But this other shot in the movie, where these two guys vie for camera space as they talk and end up smashing their faces together to both fit in frame that totally belongs in... I don't even know what it belongs in. A few other shots insist on panning around and around forever in these huge long takes that must have been way too hard to simply be the easiest way to shoot the scene. I found myself watching this movie that, on the surface, was really messy and all over the place. Of course the audience laughed at every jump cut or off line reading, and yeah the plot made almost no sense and the effects were messy and you could see the blood baggy taped to the slave girl's arm, but underneath that I felt a sense that there were actual intentions going on in there, that Rollin wasn't just getting his kicks but maybe trying, in his own perverse way, to say something. Who knows what, but something. I really get a kick out of how sincere this movie is with its basic plot though. I guess vampire movies have to either exist in some world where nobody knows anything about them "oh! so they drink blood! I get it now!" or a Kevin Williamson post-modern too-cool-for-school-fest. Maybe that's why I still have a soft spot for The Lost Boys... the Coreys at least know a vampire when they see one, albeit I guess they learn through comic books. Anyway... this movie spends a lot of time explaining the same thing that early Jim Carry movie Once Bitten does, except with lesbians. Which makes it better. Oh yeah, really great costumes in here as well... I love that in this vampire-less world, nobody also seems to know about underwear. fine by me. Interesting note: I typed 'twice bitten' into imdb and this movie called Vampire Hookers came up. I wonder if Lars has seen that (brian@medialife.org if you have!) So anyway again, I really got a kick out of this movie. I swear a few things in there should be stolen for "real" movies because they are great... but lots of stuff in here wouldn't really work anywhere else (although the graveyard sets reminded me a lot of Black Sunday... which got me thinking about Barbara Steele. lots of tangents tonight. Afterward I asked Lars for other Rollin recomendations now that my appetite was sufficiently whet. He listed off a bunch of names which I'll have to check imdb to remember but also mentioned that at a certain point he took on a pseudonym to do strictly sexploitation movies. Pseudonyms pretty much rock if you ask me. I wish more mainstream directors would take on pseudonyms. I think that would actually help a lot of people. I'd love to see someone like Spielberg or Oliver Stone or even Tarantino do a nothing-budget totally risky movie under another name. I think stuff learned there would help them out with their bigger pictures (and in the case of Tarantino, just get the guy working more). I mean I wonder if Peter Jackson's agents and publicists would even let him do a Meet the Feebles or Braindead these days... The topic of Jess Franco also came up. Lars loves him. I dunno, The few I've seen from him were just way too slow for me... and I sometimes thought I was watching Cinemax. But who knows... maybe it's about time to revisit Vampyros Lesbos. The soundtrack is still great.
01.11.06	Nosferatu	Werner Herzog	Continuing the Herzog retrospective this month at the Alamo, a brand new 35mm print of the English version of Nosferatu, where Klaus Kinski finally sheds all his human make-up and lets us see what he really looks like. Is it wrong that i buy him as a weird vampyre monster a lot easier than a regular joe? This got me thinking about what type of guy Max Schreck was in real life... if he was like the turn-of-the-century equivalent of Kinski and when Murnau's Nosferatu came out everyone was like "ahh, of course... yeah that fits." Herzog's version has several variations that I quite enjoyed. I really like how he played in the plague and had the whole town getting sick with all the rats from the ship. I am not really one of those people who are incredibly bugged out by rats except one little thing about them does bother me a great deal: their extended bloated ass-thing that drags the ground underneath the base of their tail. What is that anyway? it's like each rat is carrying a half-roll of quarters that he's just about to pass. GROSS. Other than that though, they don't oog me out on general principle, but I was pretty impressed at the sheer number that Herzog managed to wrangle up for some of his shots (especially the last supper with the plague-ridden family eating outside). Having the plague associated with Dracula was a pretty nice touch I thought... of course I never read the original material so I have no clue how close/far any of the filmic translations have been. I also enjoyed Isabelle Adjani's perfectly oval face and how her Lucy was much more assertive than in other movies. Of course, I had to spend all of her screentime wracking my brain for the name of the movie that she did with Truffaut where he completely fell in love with her and shot like a hundred million close-ups of her so the entire movie is like one big close-up of that beautiful porcelain oval face (The History of Adele H, thanks imdb). Interesting, that movie was shot in both English and non-english simultaneously. That really confuses me because it's like two totally different movies. I always wonder which one is better but don't really want to sit through both back-to-back to figure out. So I enjoyed this film. The Stoker Dracula story is one I'm almost burned out on, never being one of those people who can like all 15 different versions of A Christmas Carol or something like that, but the music, Kinski, and a few shots which are authentically creepy kept me fully engaged. Now I'm very curious to see Wheel of Time, as I've now seen a few Herzog docs that I really like and one sort-of doc which I didn't enjoy much at all. So after this, I watched Super Mecha Kucha Happy Fun Monkeybash and pretty much melted my brain.
01.10.06	The Quiet American	Phillip Noyce	geez, when did Phillip Noyce become more than a by-the-numbers action director? I mean Dead Calm sure... but since then. Damn, now I guess I have to see Rabbit-Proof Fence. So I love that this is an actual spy movie. I hate that most people today equate that with the Pierce Brosnan James Bond movies. Although I guess spy movies of today are more like Syriana... and this is more of a throwback to when spies were still cool... but hey, that doesn't make this movie any less cool. I was reminded of Ellroy's latest book a lot with all that stuff about the first inklings of American involvement in vietnam... a very interesting time if you ask me because it's not all war glory and defeat but real turmoil and behind-the-scenes good stuff that significantly less people know about than Platoon or Hamburger Hill. so yeah, color me impressed, Mr. Noyce.
01.10.06	Waiting...	Rob McKittrick	um... in highschool I knew a guy that worked at Pargos and I never ever wanted to eat there because I knew what his personal hygeine was like. Yeah this is a comedy but come on... it's so easy for those guys to molest your food... you know it's true. Other than that, I don't really have much to say on this. It was OK, not offensively bad, not gut-busting funny either... had a few laughs and I like the cast but felt maybe it should have been a better movie than it is. It is funny that the new guy is called Mitch though. What was the name of the new guy in PCU? I hope it was Mitch to match Real Genius and Dazed and Confused... that'd be awesome.
01.09.06	Fantastic Four	Tim Story	I think even for a comic book movie there is a certain point where even trying to be remotely realistic is just a bad idea. Like a guy with a last name like Von Doom wouldn't be targeted by the FBI at age 6... Of course I always thought the fantastic four comic was lame and unbelievable. There was just one bit in a spider-man comic when he first got his symbiotic suit and Ben Grimm was doing tests on it that I thought they were OK and that's just because they were smarty scientists. I never got Dr. Doom at all, man... and I can't remember any other FF villains... just way too absurd even for wacky Stan Lee. So I guess in that respect the movie is true to form... really goofy and unbelievable. It was weird to see the dude from Groove in another movie though... the girl has been on The Sopranos and a few other things but this is the first time I've spotted this dude.
01.09.06	The Shield Around the K	Heather Rose Dominic	A doc about K Records, home to Beat Happening and several other punk/pop-ish bands based out of Olympia, Wash. I mainly know of them because my favorite Beck album wasmade up there and released through them. The co-founder dude has a very identifiable voice so it was a surprise to hear it singing something other than the few Beck songs that I know it from. Most of the music played though was like a perfect mix between Velvet Underground and the voodoo rhythm label... so I was again impressed by Kier-la's impeccable programming skills. the doc itself though... eh... well maybe they were going for a similarly lo-fi approach just like K Records is known for, but at a certain point I become distracted because I have no clue who the person talking on-screen is or what song that band is playing or even who that band is. Definitely lacking in a few bits for me... but that just makes a good reminder of what to look out for and avoid with my doc so... it's all good.
01.08.06	There's Something About Mary	Bobby Farrelly, Peter Farrelly	yeah I stayed up. A few things here: I still think the first 20 minutes of this are classic and I laugh every time. Keith David (or is it David Keith? Whichever one is the cool black actor and not the white guy who was in Major League 2 and U-571) is hilarious, Markie Post spraying bactine onto Ben Stiller's crotch cracks me up, and I love how Cameron Diaz is holding the ice pack as Stiller's wheeled out to the ambulance. However, the last time I watched this, I remember thinking that the rest of the movie had really aged poorly and was clearly too long. I think that may have been the extended cut though because I didn't think that this time. The movie's still pretty long but I think it carries OK and is still probably maybe my favorite Farrelly brothers movie (tied with Dum & Dumber. if Kingpin was all Bill Murray that would be my fave but it's not so it's not). Also, I never realized that Diaz's brother in the film, Warren, is W. Earl Brown. Big difference between him there and in Deadwood, that's for damn sure. and maybe i'm in the minority but i like the whole Cat Ballou musician guides through this movie. People that don't understand it are just thinking too hard. So that's good... a movie I didn't enjoy that much last time I still got a kick out of this time. now it's time for bed oh one last thing. Mary Zophres did the costume design for this movie. She's like the only costume designer name i recognize because she worked on The Big Lebowski and contributed to the making-of book. So whenever she designs costumes for a movie or whenever i see rick heinrichs listed as production designer and of course roger deakins as DP I always think back to that awesome making-of Big Lebowski book. What a great book, for real.
01.08.06	The Ringer	Barry W. Blaustein	eh... at least it was shot here. that's cool. actually this isn't offensively bad... i have to admit I laughed a few times. I like jed Rees though as well as the kid who did all the impersonations on Undeclared, so it was cool to see them get work. I didn't know it while I watched but I was not at all surprised to see that the Farrelly brothers produced it. I sort of want to see There's Something About Mary again... either that or go to sleep. Guess we'll see what happens!
01.08.06	Fitzcarraldo	Werner Herzog	Ahhh Werner. the only thing that could have made this movie is if he somehow narrated it in English. I love the way he talks, man. LOVE IT. I also love how there's only like one miniature shot in this entire movie. The same with Aguirre, there's a tangible feel that the look of authenticity has that cannot be faked. Herzog is crazy... but I love it. I love how he sets out to make a movie about a guy who wants to drag a huge steamship over a mountain, and all the foolishness of that but his sheer will pulls him through... and then in order to make that movie he himself has to do the exact same thing. Circumstances of production aside though, I liked this movie a lot more than I thought I would. When I first saw Aguirre I didn't like it at all but after listening to the commentary track just in that amazing beginning shot of all the guys coming down the mountain, I couldn't turn it off and watched it straight through with the commentary back to back. Since then, the movie's grown on me to the point where I think I'll like it when I see it again. I was expecting the same thing with Fitzcarraldo, but instead I found it to be impressive, touching, funny, and charming. Kinski, although he can never look completely sane, can have a strange innocent vulnerability in his eyes sometimes... and I think Herzog really knew how to use him to his fullest. Having said that, I have to think I got more out of this movie having seen the excellent documentary Burden of Dreams beforehand. When the indians paint their faces black and the crew of the ship spends a night worrying about death, I figured that this was Herzog's integrating an incident that he witnessed while shooting where a rival tribe either injured or killed a boy or something so the whole tribe went off to war and there wasn't anything Herzog could do to stop it. Either way though, I am so glad I got to see this on the big screen. And with a brand new 35mm print to boot! I really think this is a movie that could not be made today... just impossible. And that's one of the greatest things about movies... they show us how crazy we used to be.
01.07.06	After Hours	Martin Scorsese	filling in the blanks here... not too many more times i get to watch a scorsese movie for the first time... to me, this movie is another testament to how crazy NYC was in the 80s. like SoHo is a graffiti'd wasteland populated by punks and bohemian artist types and if you go down there you may die or end up trapped in a plaster of paris sculpture all night. this movie feels a little bit like Jarmusch on coke... NYC in the 80s though... between coked up weirdness like this, hip hop starting in the uber-ghettos like Wild Style, and the weird art scene going on like those Julian Schnabel movies... it really seemed like a crazy scene. Will Patton was great too. also, for anyone that reads this site by actually visiting instead of via RSS, i added a few tidbits here and there: the details page has an imdb link and also has the release date... that way, after I get through going back and updating all my old entries, I'll be able to quickly see how many movies from the 70s, 80s, etc. I've seen. I also added event flags so if you want to read my entire BNAT or fantasticfest write-up, it displays all the movies I saw during that event in the right order so you don't have to search around for the right date then read them backward. Yes, i geek out of maintaining this site too much, but oh well. deal.
01.07.06	Two for the Money	D.J. Caruso	um... eh..... hmmmm..... well... erm..... whatever.
01.05.06	Hungry Wives	George A. Romero	AKA Season of the Witch. it's like an early 70s banal suburban take on witchcraft. It reminded me of that first scene in Last House on the Left when the braless daughters are talking about social issues for no apparent reason, except these are mostly older housewives getting drunk and dabbling in satanism. Can't say I loved it, but i do like the Donovan song quite a bit.
01.05.06	Flightplan	Robert Schwentke	What I found interesting was that the ultra-spoilerific stuff with her finding her daughter's breath-fog-on-the-window-heart and knowing for certain that she was not crazy because the heart was drawn with smaller fingers was NOT in the movie. Instead, it's made to be much more vague as to whether she's crazy or not.. but of course the trailer still ruined it so all that stuff got pretty boring since you already know she's not crazy. I guess I shouldn't place 100% of the blame on the trailer... a buddy of mine (correctly) noted that it's all a blatant rip-off of Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes anyway and I'd add a few pinches of panic room there toward the end so... it's not exactly a masterpiece to begin with. still though, trailers are so awful with spoilers nowadays... if this was marketed as a straight hijack picture with shots of shady looking arabs or something, it would have been kind of a nice surprise. oh well.
01.04.06	Caged Women	Bruno Mattei	AKA Chicks in Chains AKA Emanuelle Reports from a Women's Prison AKA Violence in a Women's Prison, this week's weird wednesday was kind of a mixed bag. On one hand, Laura Gemser was like barely in it and barely did anything besides stare off into space when she was on-screen (The operatic Emanuelle in America trailer that they showed beforehand proves much better justification for the Gemser fan club) but that doesn't mean there aren't some good moments with other characters in the film. Stereotypical mexican landscaper Miguel is awesome in the three scenes he's in, and the name of the sissyboy in the men's prison (yeah i know, what is a men's prison even doing in this movie?) is classic: Leander. Overall though, I find that the promise of a women in prison flick is always better than the actual movie. You'd think it would be pretty hard to mess up but i dunno.. maybe when it comes to women in prison i just have more precise fetishistic pleasures or something... they are never as good as i want them to be though. This one's no different, but one of the reels was really messed up with what at first looked like a monster hair that quickly spawned into this really abstract shuttering line dance across the screen. After trying his best a few times, the projectionist just ran what he could with the odd obstructions flying around the gate until the reel finally blew up and he switched to the next one. This whole segment completely revitalized my interest in the film. The hairs/decomposing film stuff looked like an early Underworld video superimposed on the picture, and with just a little stretch they actually enhanced the picture (at one point, a lecherous dude sits down on the bed and feels up Gemser in typical pre-rape glee... a little end of whatever was flipping around up there in the projector stuck out of the dude's groin and started vibrating at the end)... and then with the nice cut in time, there was a little leap there to wonder what all happened during... so all in all i'd say the presentation difficulties added to my enjoyment. plus i got to use my alamo gift card. best gift ever.
01.04.06	Expedition: Bismarck	James Cameron, Gary Johnstone	I guess this is a precursor to the Titanic and deep sea IMAX docs (this one aired on the Discovery channel I think), James Cameron takes the MIRs down and lets the ROVs loose on the sunken german boihemoth of a battleship. Very fascinating in exactly the same way as Ghosts of the Abyss and Aliens of the Deep.
01.04.06	Munich	Steven SPielberg	good... but it still got all wonky and old-spielbergian a little bit at the end where somehow he thinks the "climax" of the Munich incident and another sort of climax would go well together... No matter if the French call it the little death or not, it still didn't work for me. the rest of the movie though, was good. all the actors did a good job and there is some really intricate work with interweaving old news footage and new filmed elements in the beginning. I don't think anyone can say Spielberg's grasp on the craft of moviemaking is anything less than stellar these days... it's more his happy ending soft nerves that worry me now good to be back in town though, although going to see this at a Tinseltown matinee was maybe a bad choice. this ancient couple sat just within earshot of me and cawed at each other during the whole thing. their cell phone also rang. twice. What's worse though was that there was a couple of women sitting directly in front of them that did everything but punch them in their hips to get them to stop talking and neither the old crone nor the ancient mariner so much as registered their existence. Ultimately, the two women moved to a different seat and the thought of yelling at old people kind of kept me silent but man oh man would i have loved to see them get booted... I wonder if Lars will kick a little old lady out if she's talking... i hope so. just because she's little and old it doesn't mean the theater is her living room all of a sudden. she can't just talk out to Alex Trebek and have those of us around her not hear. bah. anyway, good movie. i was not let down by the ending as much as i thought i would be, weirdo paranoid eric bana sex scene aside.
01.02.06	It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World	Stanley Kramer	another one of these great big movies with tons and tons of stars. they really need to do an update of this kind of picture with all the frat pack guys together... it'd be so great... but probably still not as good as this. fun fun fun fun movie
01.02.06	The Dirty Dozen	Robert Aldritch	sweet...
01.02.06	The Magnificent Seven	John Sturges	I wanted to see this again after reading Eli's book... even though you can barely see his gold tooth. Kind of slow but you know... classic. man James coburn is lanky though... and with all the accents in the place that's like the most international band of texas gunfighters ever.
01.02.06	Danger: Diabolik	Mario Bava	I actually got my parents to watch this at midnight after the ball dropped. They both kind of dozed by the end but that they stuck around till the end was enough for me. My mom mentioned how bad the Valmont character treated women and I thought about No Way Out with that line where the guy likes the gutter because that's where he found his girl came to mind... after that dude, Valmont is like Gandhi. Great movie though. I can't wait to check out the John Phillip Law commentary... there are some DVDs which just feel right to add to the collection.
01.01.06	Back to the Future Part III	Robert Zemeckis	A full-on good series. consistent, running themes, feels complete, good length and pacing throughout. i'm not sure you could ask for a better-executed trilogy. These really hold up for me... like em a lot.
01.01.06	Back to the Future Part II	Robert Zemeckis	I used to say this was my favorite one because it went into the future. Now i'm not so sure because it does suffer from some middle-itis a bit with a lot of heavy lifting introducing the third one. you can definitely tell that they planned out both parts 2 and 3 together (although it doesn't immediately show that they shot them together as well) but still, i love how they intertwine the events of part one back into this though... these movies really work like a swiss clock or whatever. very funny too.
01.01.06	Back to the Future	Robert Zemeckis	i've seen this movie so much over the years but this time we still managed to pick out a new detail (the twin pines mall which was build on old man peabody's farm (the same actor who played the comatose grandfather in Silent Night, Deadly Night) becomes the Lone Pine mall after Marty runs over one of them with the delorean)... that's the mark of a cool movie
12.31.05	Kiss of Death	Henry Hathaway	Haven't seen this for a long time but in the meantime I've seen tons of other movies and have come to love both Brian Donlevy and Richard Widmark. Widmark is riveting in this... it's impossible to look away when he's on screen... unfortunately Victor Mature is pretty easy to look away from... it's not as fast-paced or dark as i seem to remember, but still a top-notch noir that i'm really glad is finally out on DVD. Now they just need Force of Evil and a decent transfer of Kansas City Confidential. incidentally, happy new year!
12.31.05	The Great Escape	John Sturges	ahh to be home with the parents. I thought that after my dad got a widescreen TV i'd hear the end of complaining about letterbox... i guess that was a fragile dream easily shattered. maybe someday they will make cinemascope 2.35:1 TVs and my dad will finally be at peace but until that day comes... oh yeah, good movie.
12.30.05	The 40 Year-Old Virgin	Judd Apatow	seeing this again brought back memories of AFF and hearing Apatow talk and show off most of these DVD supplements. I'm so glad I got a chance to see one of his failed tv pilots. this movie is still pretty funny in a surprisingly heartfelt way, although watching it with my dad was... well it could have been worse, i guess i could have seen it with my mom... or grandmother... Romany Malco still makes me crack up the most in it though... him and that older pakistani dude.
12.30.05	Batman Begins	Christopher Nolan	I still think this is my favorite after Burton's first one and really only like that one more because of Nicholson (who outshines to the point of hurting the movie but oh well...)... i still like the whole nightmare imagery design but after seeing what McKean did with Mirrormask... this could have been so much darker and closer to the Arkham Asylum graphic novel. Still though, for a comic book movie it's pretty decently intelligent and the tumbler continues to kick ass. those action sequences though... jesus christ how about a lens wider than 250mm, buddy? oh and a light here or there would be nice considering we're watching a guy wearing a matte black bodysuit supposedly kick peoples asses at night... I'm lucky to make out an elbow here or there
12.28.05	King Kong	Peter Jackson	Took my parents to see this so they could at least watch it on a big screen. second time felt longer for sure... but the CG fest of T-Rex vs. Kong is pretty damn hard to beat.
12.27.05	Kiss the Girls	Gary Fleder	haven't seen this in a while... still get cheesed out whenever Ashley Judd's on screen... but more morgan freeman playing detective is cool... it'd be funny if the dvd was split into like 120 chapters like james patterson's books are... It takes his characters like 3 chapters just to go to the bathroom...
12.26.05	The Great Raid	John Dahl	hmm... long. slow. i'd say for war fans only... even my dad was a bit bored... he kept saying how much better We Were Soldiers is.
12.25.05	Eight Men Out	John Sayles	Merry Christmas!
12.25.05	Sin City	Robert Rodriguez	Merry Christmas! some quotes from my dad: "THIS is the kind of movie you want to make!?" "weird movie, son" "it's snowing and they're in a convertible"
12.25.05	The Great Outdoors	Howard Deutsch	Merry Christmas!
12.24.05	A Christmas Story	Bob Clark	Another xmas standard here.... still funny after all these times. a classic.
12.23.05	National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation	Jeremiah S. Chechik	This along with A Christmas Story is a family tradition at my house... I don't really understand people who haven't sen it or don't like it just because I personally watch it every freakin year. It's still funny to me though. I love it.
12.22.05	Secondhand Lions	Tim McCanlies	awwwwww.... I think the biggest memory i'll ever have with this film was the filmtease review I did where we all thought it was called Secondhand Loins... still, even though I was severely uninterested in this when it came out, moving to Austin and seeing Tim around here and there made me feel guilty for not even watching it... Not bad, not bad... For whatever reason I don't like Haley Joel right now though... i think it's because he's now officially into the manboy years where he's not quite one but not yet the other either. I just hope he doesn't play a junkie in some indie movie to prove his cred. good family film... for family
12.22.05	Summer Rental	Carl Reiner	So I'm home. Typing on a laptop with a non-ergo keyboard... guess i'll have to deal for a few weeks. My parents had Summer Rental on DVD and I hadn't seen it in a long time. John Candy... sunburn.. winning the rigatta by sailing with his pants. It made me laugh a few times, most notably with the dog, but i for whatever reason remember it being funnier oh well.
12.21.05	Convention Girls	Joseph Adler	One last weird wednesday before i head off to cold northern virginia to spend xmas with the parents and have to live with mall cineplexes for a couple weeks. I'm really glad I went too. Not only did i get some time to chat with Wiley and hang out a bit afterward and talk about the movie, but it was a really surprisingly quality movie! With a name like Convention Girls (great poster art too), i completely did not expect to see what I saw. Everyone afterward called it Robert Altman's best movie. Yeah... I mean i get that since it doesn't really have a main protagonist and the scenes are all short and kind of loosely stitched together in a Short Cuts/Nashville/about half of Altman's filmography kind of way... but still. First off, it's about a doll-maker's convention. Like, a weekend in a hotel with all these people who buy, sell, and make dolls. With that kind of gripping subject matter you HAVE to think that the convention is just your typical excuse to string together a bunch of softcore sex scenes. It's not though. The movie is ACTUALLY about the doll convention. In fact, there is almost no exploitation of the titular girls at all. Don't let that fool you though, it's still not Altman. This movie made absolutely no sense to me. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed it. It just didn't make any sense. Like... not just in a big picture way but each individual scene made no sense to me. The things these people say are so random and stilted that it's either pure crap or real genius (either way it's great). I'm really overwhelmed though... so many things going on in that movie and none of them really sound or feel natural. The last scene sums it up best when the uncompromising Hungarian doll-maker turns down an offer to sell out and make enough money to keep making dolls and his schoolgirl wife, who was sitting there the entire time, asks him what happened. He says nothing, something good and something bad, nothing. And she asks what happened and he says he didn't do something and she asks him if she should be happy or sad and he says happy and she says she's glad. Yeah... So anyway... that was a real unique experience... a really weird movie that is so normal and restrained that it should be called something much less suggestive. Once again though, it's great that I got a chance to see this. A complete pleasant surprise... that made absolutely no sense. Also, in his intro Lars mentioned that another film of Adler's, Scream, Baby, Scream, is a great one of those weird-artist-who-paints-horrifying-yet-genius-portraits-of-freaks-and-weirdos-who-turns-out-to-have-real-freaks-and-weirdos-chained-up-in-his-basement-so-he-can-paint-them type movies... and it's funny because it is so true. there is like a whole subgenre (presumably all spawning from either The Picture of Dorian Gray and/or Lovecraft's short story Pickman's Model) where some artist finds great success with his morbid art and turns out to really be messed up instead of how Stephen King swears he is normal in real life. I'll have to see Scream, Baby, Scream now because I loved Bucket of Blood (even though I guess that's technically sculpture instead of painting... but whatever). It also fits nicely in with that next short story that was supposed to be ready for Halloween but kind of got put on the back burner for the time being (where I take Pickman from Pickman's model and put him on his own Lovecraftian adventure). Hopefully I will finish that soon. As a side note, Lars approached me after the movie and told me he reads this site. That is pretty cool to me so hey Lars, how's it goin? my email address is brian@medialife.org if you ever need to drop me a line. He also mentioned liking to talk about the movie after he watches it which i completely agree with. I'm still a bit new in town to have a posse so I sometimes feel goonish and creepy just standing there alone listening to everyone else talk and throwing in a line here and there after the movie but, and this is especially true with stuff like Weird Wednesdays, it's so much better to share your experiences afterward... I always feel like an overinflated baloon or something whenever i see a really good (or bad) movie and just leave... i need to let it out somehow (hence this site) and it's always cool to hear what other people think about it. I think that's one of the many cool things about going to the movies... you all sit in the same theater together but have completely different experiences. It's kind of social but at the same time incredibly personal... to the point where you are pleased if you laugh and someone else laughs or if you jump and hear someone else scream. It reminds me of the few times i went with a film school girl to see movies at the independant theater up in Rochester where they would hang out in the theater after the show and the professor would moderate a discussion about the movie. I always thought that would make such a kickass weekly thing to get into... I guess what normal people do is get something to eat or coffee or a beer or whatever and talk there and it's understandable that the theater would want to either get the next show started or close up shop for the night but still... I guess the old romantic thoughts of Truffaut and those guys in their cinema clubs screening movies then talking about them all night creeps in too, but it'd be cool if there was a quiet place near the alamo where groups could go to talk about what they just saw... and there would be regulars and people would drop by and join in the discussion or whatever. ok now i'm mixing in romantic thoughts of the algonquin roundtable. This has been extra long because I doubt the next two weeks will bear much fruit. I also wanted to try and get across how i can like a movie that's still technically not good (sorry Trapper. maybe someday I can make you understand) but oh well. Man, lars will read this. that is so freakin cool.
12.21.05	Fearless Freaks	Bradley Beesley	the Flaming Lips doc. What's sometimes cool about a good documentary is that it takes the director like 10 years to do. You get interviews from the guy before he was on heroin then while he was on heroin and all skinny then after he kicked and gained weight.. you get to see the guy's hair get long then red then short then gray... anyway, this was good. i remember when it was playing at the alamo here i didn't go see it because i thought i wasn't enough of a Lips fan but that's BS... i should've seen this in the theater and i am really kicking myself for not seeing Zaireeka in the park... but oh well! maybe they'll do it again
12.20.05	House of Wax	Jaume Collet-Serra	Eh. Not that a real house made entirely of wax could ever probably exist, but if it did and a huge fire broke out in the basement and everything melted like that, it would be AWESOME. Also in the end credits, Paris Hilton's name appeared first as "PR HO" then the rest of the letters faded in. That's not very cool... i mean yeah it's a joke but if she's in your movie aren't you supposed to have her back? the movie itself of course is not that good... but you know... whatever. you dont watch it for it to be good.
12.20.05	The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada	Tommy Lee Jones	Here's a good example of a good movie that I actually like. Makes a great double feature with Brokeback Mountain as long as this one is played last. It's a really good western, Tommy Lee does a good job as does Barry Pepper and it's got a really cool title. Can't ask for much more
12.19.05	Brokeback Mountain	Ang Lee	I figured I should see this since it'll probably be out of theaters by the time I get back and there's no way my parents will want to see it while I'm at home. It's about as "good" as everyone's saying but something about these really heavy dramas just don't engage me at all. It's like their designed specifically to get awards or something, which is why Cold Mountain surprised me so much that I actually liked that. This one though... yeah there's no real surprise. good acting, pretty scenery, dudes kiss for a few scenes, and it's all heavy and dreary and stuff. Better than Hulk though.
12.18.05	The Baxter	Michael Showalter	It's funny how liking a show like ten years ago leads to watching a movie just because a guy from The State did it. That said, this is a really charming little movie about a Baxter: the "nice guy" who always gets left at the altar at the end of the romantic comedies when the couple that was meant to be together finally gets together right at the end. It's charming because it manages to be that same exact thing while also being about it not being that. It's also cast very well with Showalter being the lovable dupe, the leading men roles filled out well with the likes of Justin Theroux and Paul Rudd, and most of The State members making various appearances. I don't really like their Stella show but this was a nice surprise.
12.18.05	Screamers	Christian Duguay	Yay for Peter Weller and Dan O'Bannon! Solid 90s sci-fi thriller complete with dated visual effects... mark another one in the Fangoria book off the list
12.17.05	The Transporter 2	Louis Leterrier	Sometimes I worry about Luc Besson's fleet of production-assistant-cum-movie directors churning out B- product until the end of time. It sucks because when Besson directs he seems to hold himself to solid A-/A standards but when he's just writing or producing he seems to think that one action sequence is good enough to carry a whole film with an absolutely ridiculous plot. Some random IMDb person wrote that he's like the French Jerry Bruckheimer now and I agree wholeheartedly. Mindless popcorn movie fun. This is no different. Like the BMW film series with martial arts. That said, I think I like this one more than the first (even though it really made no sense and didn't break 80 minutes in length), I've liked Keith David since Men at Work, and there are some pretty car chases in this so I guess I shouldn't expect any more. It also uses the song that was in the Sin City trailer but not in the movie (the only problem I have with that movie, really). It's also funny... watching Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and seeing how Jason Statham turned into some sort of muscle-bound James Bond type and Jason Flemyng seems stuck in the land of grody henchman and lazy-eyed servants. What happened to Matthew Modine though? The last movie he actually starred in was what... Full Metal Jacket? Don't get it...
12.17.05	Red Eye	Wes Craven	Who are they trying to kid by stretching out the end credits to 10 freakin minutes long. the movie is still 76 minutes long no matter how you pad it. Other than that, I didn't think this was as bad as everyone else said it was. It was by the numbers and formulaic and no surprises or anything like that, but it wasn't actively bad. Of course both this and flightplan made the mistake of coming out now because all will be overshadowed when SNAKES ON A PLANE comes out next year. That movie will own. One more thing. Colby got a part! Finally, coming in second on Survivor is paying off... good job, Colbster!
12.16.05	Prime	Ben Younger	Surpasses expectations. Proves that Ben Younger isn't just a one-trick pony. I think I still like Boiler Room more than this but it's cool he did such a different movie for his sophomore effort. Good use of a RJD2 song in the beginning too. It treats the whole thing where the audience doesn't know that meryl streep is the younger guy's mom like an actual reveal though. In 10 years or so this will probably work again but for now the trailer has killed like the first 15 minutes of the movie. Man trailers suck nowadays. Other than that though... Uma is so friggin hot. I would so marry her and give her babies. Ethan Hawke is a fool.
12.16.05	Havoc	Barbara Kopple	Anne "I'm not a princess anymore" Hathaway acts like a wigger who goes into east LA and flirts with latino gang members. Stephen Gaghan thinks he's David Ayer all of a sudden. I can definitely understand why this went straight to video. My most pervading thought was how similar all the locations and characters were to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. They really got it right with that game... this movie however seems very very fake.
12.16.05	Into the Blue	John Stockwell	hey... Jessica Alba in skimpy bathing suits... I wasn't gonna pay for it but you know I was gonna see it.
12.15.05	Syriana	Stephen Gaghan	Hey this was based on a book that I've had on my bookshelf for a few years and never got around to reading! And to think, I could have been all prepared and ready to judge the movie against the book but oh well... This was like the unofficial sequel to Traffic: harder to follow, more controversial, and ultimately not as good. Doesn't mean it's bad per se, just not as good as Traffic. I think Traffic worked because in addition to feeling the broad spectrum of an issue, you also became personally invested in the characters. Here, you get such small glimpses and are so consumed in trying to follow the plot (at least on first viewing) that you never really get to feel like you know these guys and therefore you don't really care about them. Not to say they're unlikable or anything like that, I just didn't get to see enough of them. Oh well, it's like a cake that doesn't quite rise. Still cake, but there is better cake out there.
12.14.05	The Black Angels	Lawrence Merrick	I had to miss Weird Wednesday last week due to an ice storm. I felt bad and took shit from Micah because I had gone on and on about Lars' uncut print of The Visitor. Oh well. I'm here this week with no clue about the movie but I'm here anyway and I'm ready. Man is this movie great. I mean... holy shit is this movie great. It's a biker movie pretty much... but the gangs are so homoerotic it's not even funny. Actually, it's very funny. After one guy is late getting back with some beer, he gets slapped and says "wow that smarts!" The best part is this little montage when one of the bikers strays from the gang and goes on this downtown night ride. They got this song, this really folky type song about eating cigarettes and getting HIIIIIIIIIIIIIGH that is so classic... I just have to track it down somehow. The song actually got applause from the audience because it was so great. The movie is filled with great moments though... I already can't remember them all. It's just a hilarious hilarious exploitation movie... really really great.
12.14.05	Bluebeard	Edgar G. Ulmer	Today must be the day that I officially became an Alamo regular. Since I went to all three shows tonight and it was a pretty slow night, I got chances to talk with both Karen (the manager girl who recently had a baby) and Carrie (the absolute hottiest hottie waitress there... who is rumored to be lez), the dude that cards people knew I was over 21, and on my way out from the last show the guy with the bleached hair said "hey man" instead of "would you like a calendar?" I talked most with Carrie... ah, so dreamy. The great thing about her is that she does a crouch/bend over thing when she runs the aisles so there's no way she can tell that you stare at her ass every time she goes by because it's really hard for her to look back. Her face is way better than her ass though... she's 24 and getting a masters in media studies... SO HOT. Of course my heart belongs to Kier-la but there's nothing wrong with Carrie, man. It almost makes it easier if she was gay because then I could just admire with no pressure or guilt of not doing anything about it. She was pretty interesting to talk with though... nope, no problems there. Anyway... um... oh yeah, the movie. They were supposed to play a movie called Ruthless but the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences has what's probably the only print left in existence and I guess they didn't feel like sending it out so good ol' Chale from AFS played Bluebeard instead. Bluebeard is scheduled for next tuesday in a double feature with a movie I'm not really interested in seeing so although I wanted to see Ruthless more, I wasn't too upset that I could get to see Bluebeard instead. No, it's not a pirate movie. Instead, it's a period noir about a painter/puppeteer (John Carradine... creepy) who kills each girl that he paints. He tries to swear off painting and persue his puppet career, putting on marionette shows of Faust in the park for little kids, but there's a killer on the loose and someone eventually recognizes one of the dead girls from a painting. From there, it becomes cat and mouse as the police figure out who the painter is and there's a pretty cool device with a cravat that gets ripped and sewn. All in all it's a decent little film. For the dirt floor budget it had, Ulmer managed to make a pretty entertaining flick.
12.14.05	Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea	Chris Metzler, Jeff Springer	A documentary about California's Salton Sea: a large saltwater lake just south of Palm Springs that was created from an engineering mishap and became a vacation hotspot for a few years until a few minor ecological disasters rendered the area smelly and full of dead fish and birds. Now it's home to weirdos, eccentrics, poor folk and old people. The doc kind of covers all of the little communities around the sea and gives a nice history to the spot and educates toward how it's drying up and without some major financial help the sea will eventually evaporate and ruin Palm Springs with huge dust storms which suck. It also lets us meet lots of people from the area and shows us how weird, eccentric, poor and old they are. One of the directors was in the house and gave a pretty complete Q&A afterward. Then the band which supplied most of the music for the movie did a 20-minute set with some footage sort of synching on screen. The movie was interesting and made me think about how weird the whole situation is down there. It's this sea that was basically a mistake to start with but had maybe 10 or 20 years of prosperity before nature kind of reminded everyone why it wasn't there in the first place and now it's dying one long slow 30-year death with these people trying to hold onto it for some reason or another. There's really no easy answer to the question of how to deal with the sea, just that it's there out in the desert and may one day be gone. The band is called Friends of Dean Martinex and they're local. It's two guys, a keyboardist and a drummer, and they played with a laptop so about half the song would be loops and samples then they'd play on top of them. The songs were really nice. Sort of like AIR's instrumental stuff... the only problem I felt while listening to them was that their songs sounded like the build-ups to crazy grooves that never really break out. They'd all make great intros or first tracks of albums but if they really opened them up and laid down a solid drum track they could become right up my alley. I still really enjoyed them though so I might try to track down some of their stuff. I think they have a few albums out or something.
12.13.05	Sick: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist	Kirby Dick	I heard of this guy when he was in the controversial Nine Inch Nails video "Happiness in Slavery" where he's locked up on some sort of robot chair and has his genitalia stretched and fed into an organ grinder. There was a book too and then he died and then this documentary came out and it was always something I would think I wouldn't mind seeing then forget about for like years at a time. So thanks to netflix I finally sat down and watched this. It's about what I expected... Several scenes are things I don't think I'll ever unsee... painful things.
12.13.05	The Strange Woman	Edgar G. Ulmer	A Period noir? This movie takes place in 19th century Bangor, Maine where it's basically a lawless logging town mostly inhabited by ruffian lumberjacks and the few aristocrats who own the mills and the land. Hedy lamarr plays an archetypal femme fatale that enjoys seducing men away from happiness. At one point she even manages to get one guy to kill his own father, then shuns him for it. The movie's worth watching for Lamarr's performance and also in how they deal with such frank sexual subject matter in the mid-forties. Lots of reaction shots and arched eyebrows. AFS must be going crazy or something... two decent programs in a row! (first the Korean series where they showed a few Chan-wook Park films and now this Ulmer series). Of course, actually screening Detour for the Ulmer series would be too much to ask, because no one would show up to see that at the Alamo. Oh hell no. But anyway, This was worth watching and well worth admission (free). After that, Kier-la showed her compiled doc of The Velvet Underground. I won't count it as her own movie because I didn't count Lars' Cash In Advance either. Plus Kier-la borrowed pretty heavily from a few other documentaries for this so... well whatever. It was really good though and presented an interesting overview of a band I know next to nothing about. Afterward she was bombarded by friends of hers... I see I have lots of work to do if i want to woo her... We talked for a while before the show though and she gave me some solid eye contact while talking to like the dozen of her friends that huddled her afterward so I feel I'm making headway in setting up my foundation. Now what I have to do is impress her in some way... OK this is officially not about the movie anymore, I'm stopping.
12.13.05	Aliens of the Deep	James Cameron, Steven Quale	the extended version on the DVD that's 100 minutes long instead of 50. Another good doc along the lines of that Titanic one that Cameron did a few years ago. The most fascinating part for me was all the life in deep ocean... so cool. The correlation between our deep seas and space is interesting as well but I couldn't help but get a little cheesed out at the very end with the CG aliens... especially after seeing so many cool and unique (presumably) real creatures first. Really wild stuff. Too bad the IMAX theater in town sucks and never programs good films.
12.11.05	V for Vendetta	James McTeigue	V for Vendetta Fake: Sword of Gideon I've never read the comic. Basically all I know about this is Natalie Portman shaved her head for it and the Wachowski brothers wrote and produced it. I guess it's supposed to be pro-terrorism too or something like that. The lights went down for the last time of the event and Donald Duck in Der Fuehrer's Face flickered on the screen. It was great. There's a song that follows through most of the cartoon and the entire audience honked along with their duck bills. Afterward Harry got back on the mic and said "and now is the time to put the duck bills AWAY" to laughter from the audience. A vintage '80s commercial for the Atari game Starmaster played next, followed lastly by Eric's print of the hilarious Return of Captain Invincible trailer. Next up came the new X-Men 3 and brand spankin new Mission: Impossible 3 trailers which made a good ending to the night's trailer festivities. The guy next to me leaned over and warned me that he would probably be crying through the entire thing because this was his favorite story and he was looking forward to this movie more than anything else. He said there would just be streams of tears running down his face by the time it was over. I said I wouldn't judge him and it would be ok. Then the movie started with something about remembering the 5th of November. Now, here's what I remember thinking: The whole movie is set up in the first five minutes and the main guy wears a mask the whole time so all his dialogue is just staring at a mask. I remember thinking that I pretty much got everything I needed to then I started dozing. it really sucked because I know how much of a treat it was to see this so early I really thought Natalie Portman's English accent was hot and I wanted to be awake to fully appreciate what I was getting to see, but you know how that nodding head, heavy eyelid thing goes... I got up and downed a redbull which didn't really help. I chewed the rest of my gum which didn't really help. I threw off my jacket-cum-seat cushion and nothing seemed to help. It was a constant battle to stay awake for the entire thing so subsequently I never payed all that much attention to the actual movie. I was never surprised or anything like that, the whole thing had a certain sense of predestination like, whether real or imagined, I had a picture of the whole film laid out in the first five minutes. Everyone around me seemed to really enjoy it and I may well revise my stance on this considerably when I get to see it again but right then at that moment it didn't do anything for me and my hazy conscioussness. Afterward I asked the guy next to me what he thought and he said he loved it. I apologized if I distracted him at all for all my nodding head and jerking awake action but he said his eyes were glued on the screen and he didn't notice at all, which made me feel a little better. People started to get up to leave but Harry said there was some stuff to give away and that Drew and Eric were in charge of it. They decided to just call out seat numbers and Harry said one through twelve" and I had to remind them that us standby people on the sides sat in impromptu rows 13 and 14 as well. Drew called out several random seat numbers before finally asking how many people spent the entire time in a folding chair. We all raised our hands and he said everyone who did deserved something and everyone clapped for us which was nice. I had a choice between a Buffy toy and something else I was equally disinterested in or a Death, Jr. thing so I opted for the Death, Jr. I have no clue what Death, Jr. is but at least it has something to do with Death so that's fine with me. Downstairs, boxes had been placed with bundles of rolled posters for people to grab on the way out. The Rolling Roadshow van had also backed up to the front door and Alamo staff handed out Atari Flashbacks to everyone. The word is that they're releasing a BNAT version of Pitfall where Pitfall Harry is replaced by a pixelly Harry Knowles but I haven't checked it out yet. They also had Hostel mini-DVDs in the lobby to grab as well. While everyone swarmed out, I went down and dropped all my crap in my car. On the way down I spotted Blake and Micah putting their crap in Blake's trunk so I figured I had enough time to get to my car and back before they took off. Alas I didn't and they were gone by the time I returned. Oh well, I'm sure they had a good time and I'm glad they got in. Back at the Alamo, the crowd was thinning considerably. I caught up with a few friends and an offer for IHOP came out which I accepted. It gave me another really cool little Eli Roth moment where he was signing posters for fans and talking to people I knew. He was really funny much like his small part in Cabin Fever, and took it well when Aaron's wife said her school class was looking forward to Hostel and really loved Cabin Fever. "Oh yeah, they are perfect kids movies... kids love torture." I thought it was really cool for Eli to stick it out for the whole thing. Apparently this is his fourth one, which pretty much puts him in my cool book for good. At the IHOP we talked over what films we liked, when we fell asleep, and your basic geek-out movie chat. Someone brought up that Richard Pryor had died and Drew told a pretty hilarious story about a time he recently went to see him do comedy in a club. The fatigue started to set in and not even a bacon and jalepeno omlet could hold it back. Soon everyone parted ways and thus ended my first Butt-Numb-A-Thon experience. TOTALS ====== LINEUP The Most Dangerous Game King Kong Footlight Parade Masters of Horror: Sick Girl Sympathy for Lady Vengeance The Professionals District 13 Masters of Horror: Cigarette Burns The Descent Stunt Rock Drum V For Vendetta TRAILERS Apacalypto Argoman: The Fantastic Superman The Legend of Dinosaurs and Monster Birds Stunt Rock The Pit and the Pendulum (stop-motion short film) War Eagles Betty Boop in Parade of the Wooden Soldiers (short) Lucky Seven The Soul of Bruce Lee El Desperado Once Upon A Time in the West There Was A Man Called Invincible Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest Scorpions and Miniskirts Danger Girls Seven Golden Women Against Two 07 (Treasure Hunt) 2gether 4ever Hostel (Eyegasm clip) Eunuch of the Western palace Thunder Cops Donald Duck in Der Fuerher's Face (short) Starmaster (Atari COmmercial) The Return of Captain Invincible X-Men 3 Mission: Impossible 3 FOOD 1 grilled chicken club w/ fries 1 chips & queso 1 Raging Bull pizza .5 pack of gum DRINK 2 sugarfree redbull 6 ice water SCHWAG BNAT7 Yearbook BNAT7 Poster (awesome) Atari Flashback2 Matrix: Path of Neo PlayStation2 game Death Jr. Action Figure deck of Italian exploitation movie poster playing cards from NoShame Films King Kong t-shirt (XL) The Producers t-shirt (XL) BNAT7 t-shirt (L) Aeon FLux t-shirt (M) Shark Tale Rain Parka M:I III hat Aeon Flux hat Hostel nail clippers Hostel mini-DVD Hostel temporary tattoo Domino temporary tattoo Domino shotglass (chipped) Monsters HD microwave popcorn (2 bags) Transformers Comic Book (Issue #0) Wedding Crashers Do Not Disturb Door sign Madagascar postcards (set of 5) The Pit and the Pendulum stop-motion short film Postcard Wallace & Gromit pencil Starbucks Doubleshot Espresso & Cream (1 can) Hostel 8x10 Poster Monsters HD 8x10 Poster Domino Mini-Poster Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence Mini-Poster Nightwatch Mini-Poster King Kong Mini-Poster Walk The Line Mini-Poster Munich Mini-Poster The Producers Mini-Poster The Matador Mini-Poster The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe Poster War of the Worlds Poster Aeon Flux Poster The New World Poster Hostel Poster (German) Superman Returns Poster V For Vendetta Poster (ripped)
12.11.05	Drum	Steve Carver	Drum Fake: Tin Drum Drum is a slave-ploitation movie about... well... OK Warren Oates plays a slave owner who doesn't have cotton fields or anything but rather breeds slaves for profit. Pam Grier plays his bedroom wench love slave. Rainbeaux Smith plays a sophisticated lady hired to take after Oates' young daughter who gets it on with all her daddy's studs. Ken Norton and Yaphet Kotto fill out the cast as a slave named Drum and his buddy. As a midnight movie, this would be classic. If I was fresh for this and this wasn't film #11 of 12 in a 24-hour marathon, I would be singing its praises for like an hour. It's just so wrong and has such great lines that it ends up being a movie you can't really believe ever got made. However, showing when it did, especially right after Stunt Rock, absolutely killed me. I really wish I would have gone to sleep for this instead of watch everyone else sleep. The pacing of the film dragged so much that it was really the first time I got tired the whole night. It's a shame really, because there were some pretty classic lines like Warren Oates saying "Woman! Don't go meddlin' around with my poontang!" and "What we been makin' AIN'T love!" Still though, it pretty much ruined me for the last film. After Drum finally ended, they cleared everyone out into the Sunday morning sunlight in an effort to wake us all up and to make us go through security once more before screening the final film: the big mystery movie flown in from Australia with only one print in existence. Everybody knew it was Superman. They also served a breakfast buffet with eggs and potatos and fruit and stuff to make up yummy breakfast tacos and stuff like that. Everybody but me, fresh off of naps during Stunt Rock and Drum, all seemed to be awake and alert. I, on the other hand, felt myself fading. I wasn't all that excited to see Superman anyway to tell you the truth. I don't watch The OC or any shows on the WB so I felt I am too young to appreciate what Bryan Singer seems to be doing with the superhero anyway, not to mention my lack of obsessive love for the Christopher Reeve franchise or comic series either. My personal favorite Superman was his appearance in Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns, which is nothing at all like what most fans love him for. So we all went back into the theater and found duck-bill noisemakers on our chairs. We sat down and munched on breakfast while Harry honked his duck bill and told us that Nicky Katt was kind enough to lend us a print of an award-winning Donald Duck short that will play before the next movie. He led us on and on talking about the movie without telling us what it was. Apparently, this wasn't going to play at all. He actually got the "sorry, not gonna happen" letter from Warner Brothers but apparently they reconsidered. Then, because it was somehow contractually obligated to have its official premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival, they had to Call those guys and ask if it's ok if it plays at Butt-Numb-A-Thon. Harry said that was a real moment when Drew told him "do you realize what you just said? You had to call the Berlin International Film Festival and ask if it was ok to play at butt-numb-a-thon." So this film is a real catch for BNAT and a super early sneak. The film in question is V for Vendetta.
12.11.05	Stunt Rock	Brian Trenchard-Smith	Stunt Rock Fake: Hooper If we'd looked up Hooper on IMDb and saw that it was a Burt Reynolds movie that was full of stunts, there's no way we could've not figured this out. The Stunt Rock trailer has played at every BNAT as far as I've heard but this was the first time the entire movie was being shown. Needless to say, the crowd was ready for it. Too bad it was really really horrible. Horrible in a great way of course, but still horrible. The movie is pretty self-explanatory. It's either a stunt, rock, or rock with stunts. It's either near-documentary footage of this stuntman doing lame stunts like scaling down a building or getting lit on fire or concert footage of this really lame hair metal band called Sorcery doing songs and including a guy dressed up as Merlin "battling" a arena rock version of the devil. They hypnotise each other and saw each other in half and stuff like that while the band jams for like 10 minutes at a time... just incredibly long sequences... then wrap it up when the devil has been vanquished. The loosest plotline in a movie ever ties the band and the stuntman together. For the stunt sequences, director Brian Trenchard-Smith makes liberal use of split- and tri-screen even when he doesn't have enough footage to fill each frame (he mirrored some shots, took blown-up still frames, and duplicated footage)... it's just really really horrible. The stunts and bad acting are still more interesting than the rock band stuff though, which is torturous. So many people fell asleep during this movie. I don't know why I didn't. So we've all finally seen Stunt Rock. According the the guys at the end of the movie, that was 1978 Australia's vision of the future of music: magic and stunts mixed with rock n roll. Makes you think Justin and Britney aren't the end of the world after all. Lars got up to introduce the next film which is the one from the Alamo Vaults. I'd heard great things about the films that Tim has picked in previous years for this slot. Toys are Not for Children is still pretty high on my list of movies to see. This year, Lars said they're playing a movie that Tim was too sick to make it down to the theater for. A movie that's perhaps the most offensive movie ever made. The unofficial sequel to Mandingo: Drum. Before that though, they showed trailers for Eunuch of the Western Palace (got all the men in the audience screaming) and Thunder Cops (which I am proud to say I howled and clapped during its beginning credits. That's right. this trailer has beginning credits). Thunder Cops got some pretty big apllause afterward but not big enough in my opinion. After the whole thing ended though, someone mentioned to me that someone in New Zealand had a print of the entire movie, so an Alamo screening can't be too far away.
12.11.05	The Descent	Neil Marshall	The Descent Fake: Deliverance I haven't seen that movie The Cave with Cole Hauser that came out earlier in the year but I imagine that it's a lot like this movie except for instead of Hauser and some roughneck macho types, this has six hot British chicks going down in the cave. The film played on DVD and Harry said he tried to get it on film but something went wrong along the way or something like that. In any case, this was the last movie to come together for him this year so we get stuck with watching it on DVD. It was shot on DV anyway so it doesn't really matter. I really didn't expect this movie to be good at all. I was strongly reminded of Harry's all-night horrorthon that they did this past july and how bad the requisite indy horror movie they played then was. Plus this was a cave movie where they find a monster... blah... pretty typical stuff. But then they had some shots where the hot girls had to scuttle along like worms to get through these tiny crevices in the rock and it's completely obvious that it's just them and a dv camera down there in a real cave, not some set with polystyrene rocks. At this point it started working on me like Open Water did. A lot of people were flat-out bored by Open Water; my personal hunch on that is that it relies on your fear of the ocean. If i was a diver or surfer or something and had no problem with swimming in water that went for miles and miles under me and could be filled with who knows what and I'm just bobbing on the surface like fish food before some goldfish swims up to suck it in, then I probably would've been bored by Open Water too. With this though, the thought of voluntarily going down and walking through what's basically an accident in the earth in a place where there's absolutely no light or easy way out and any number of unkown factors anywhere in the Earth could trigger the tiny space you are momentarily inhabiting to cave in and erase you forever is not my idea of a good time. So there's a moment in the film where we find out that they are in an uncharted cave instead of some safe tourist trap and I completely bought in. I was invested. After that, I was surprised again to see the dealing with the monsters, at least at first, to be genuinely scary. The first reveal really threw me and I jumped. I jumped several times and didn't feel dirty or manipulated afterward. It did get a bit excessive toward the end but I guess I am stuck with that. You can't have a movie that's all beginnings... it needs to go somewhere or you end up unfulfilled. It stayed surprisingly creepy though. A big surprise for me. Another thing I noticed while watching this was how absorbed Harry was. I'm sure Harry got tons of shit for crying during Armageddon and I've always thought he likes way too many movies but in getting a chance to watch some movies pretty much right next to him I really got to see how he throws himself into every film. He was jerking and gasping all throughout this film, even yelling out "oh shit!" once. It's the same feeling as when I saw a buddy's girlfriend all curled up against his arm and hiding her eyes while watching Hollow Man. Hollow Man! Something about that childlike innocence and vulnerability toward a movie that drives a lot of what I think is really magic about the medium. A large part of me wishes I could become 6 again like that every time the lights go down and really be affected by almost every movie I watch instead of just every once in a while when something really special comes along. It surely would've made sitting through Hollow Man more enjoyable. One last note about Harry. He left for like 10 minutes during pretty much every movie. I think it was to use the restroom in privacy and it took him a while with his wheelchair, but still. I wonder how he feels about missing so much of the movies... maybe that's why he watches them like 15 times each. I absolutely hated it every time I dozed during the last movie or every time I had to use the restroom or walk out to the lobby to give my ass-bruise a break, and with all of that I think I still only missed about 5 minutes of movie-time total. After The Descent we had another break. I finally got to ask Tim if we could expect to see the Thunder Cops trailer since he'd been showing the highlights of last week's trailerthon all night. "I'd say chances are good. In about 2 hours." Sweet! After seeing it twice, the Thunder Cops trailer has pretty much become my favorite trailer of the year. It's got everything: kung-fu, chicks shooting guns at each other, zombies, mystical eastern magics, a chase sequence between a decapitated head and a fleet of remote-controlled helicopters... what more can you ask for!? Each break really energized me. I think it made the night go faster and stay on schedule to not have a break after every movie but it really cut down on walking around and socializing with people. This was one of the few times a year where nearly a whole theater will know each other and it's cool to stand out in the lobby between films and talk them over. Oh well. Into the breach once more as night became day and we entered the final stretch of films, harry introduced the next film as a bizarre movie from the fifties that he's not sure if the crowd will like or not. The lights go down and a production company logo comes up (VCI or something like that). Some people started out "uh oh!" then we see a cliff with a man standing right on the edge and enormous cheers break out in the theater. Here it was at last: Stunt Rock.
12.11.05	District 13	Pierre Morel	Banlieue 13 (District B13) Fake: Escape from New York I guess Luc Besson is never going to direct anything again ever. I get the feeling that now he wakes up some days with a half-remembered idea he had in some dream and hires people to make movies out of them. Hey! what if Jet Li was a dog? Hey! What if a taxi had super powers? Hey! what about a movie about a guy who drives a car? He sure does attach his name to a lot of successful stuff though. OK, I remember there was a Levi's commercial a while back with a group of guys who didn't believe in the concept of stairs or elevators so they would scale down buildings and jump from rooftop to rooftop. There was also like, a french 60 minutes-esque segment that found its way onto the Internet with this same group of guys that could fall incredible distances and roll out of them without being hurt. I think that one of those guys is the star of this movie because the chase segment in the first 15 minutes of District 13 is exactly like that Levi's commercial. This dude's jumping through windows, scaling down balconies, falling like 20 feet at a time, doing all this crazy stuff, except since it's a movie there's guys trying to chase him and falling and breaking bones and stuff. It's incredibly awesome to watch and the audience immediately started in with the Oooh!s and Ow!s. The whole first bit is amazingly cool. This spider-man dude kicks all sorts of ass. Even when he's in a jail cell he still kicks ass. Then it cuts to this other dude who is a cop but can also fight and the movie slows down as it goes on. I think that's inevitable for any movie with that strong of an opening. It does get a bit absurd though, with this strung out girl apparently kicking her heroin habit in 20 minutes and some The Rock-esque suspense to get to some rocket/bomb before it takes off or whatever. The plot is pretty inane, almost to the point where watching the movie without reading the subtitles would be better, but man those first fifteen minutes. You just can't mess with those first fifiteen minutes. We had another break after that where I got to hear about kier-la's Luciano Rossi (the guy she got up and gushed about before Five For Hell on QT6's Itallian WWII Epic Night) Tiger Beat-esque fanzine, where she basically talks about how cute he is and in which movies he has the best haircut and costume and stuff like that. I personally thought it was awesome to A) hear that she was attracted to men, B) note a lack of ring on her left forefinger, and C) that she thought that I sent her a photo of him even though it was Blake that actually did it. So it was a good conversation all in all, even though it ran past the end of the break a bit. That's OK though, I will always miss a Harry introduction for a bit more time with the lovely Kier-la. When I got back inside, Drew AKA Moriarty and his writing partner Scott Swan AKA Obiswan were standing next to the big guy talking about their Masters of Horror Episode. I just heard the end but they basically said that they've gotten to see it a few times now and wanted to watch it with us so they hope we like it. The audience was not stingy with cheers and applause all throughout BNAT. It ws very clear that everyone was there to have a good time and really celebrate film and/or Harry's birthday in a good way. The lights went down once again and light danced on the screen. A wonderful little teaser for an AICN-produced movie called 2gether 4ever where a highschool girl wearing a too-short skirt draws a heart on somebody's locker in blood. And then, Cigarette Burns Masters of Horror: Cigarette Burns Fake: Revenge of the Colossal Beasts Cigarette Burns was like The Ninth Gate but better. While I am just as turned on by a search for a notoriously eveil film as I am by a search for a notoriously evil book, Cigarette Burns does not have things like guardian angels and climactic satanic rituals and Udo Kier makes a much better rich eccentric than Frank Langella. I'd count this as another good episode of the series (that makes three, with Sick Girl and Deer Woman) and I really only have one gripe about it. The notoriously evil film in question is titled Le Fin Absolute du Monde. They must say that damn title 50 times in 50 minutes. I asked Drew about this later and he said they got screwed by legal. It was originally Le Fin du Monde which rolls off the tongue much faster and smoother but the legal department made them change it. On one hand I kind of understand but on the other... like a pronoun here or there is too hard to throw in? That aside though, this had two or three really great gore moments which made up for hearing Norman Reedus say the name of the movie over and freakin over. Right after Cigarette Burns ended, Harry called for Eli Roth to come on down. Unfortunately, Barbara long-european-last-name didn't come down with him so I didn't get any more free ass-gazing in while Eli talked a bit. Earlier in the night, he had come down to say hello to Harry, snuck his hand down the neck of his shirt, and left some Eli Roth chest hair on his table. Even more earlier, we in the standby line marvelled at the constant stream of absolutely gorgeous women seen at Eli's side. This dude is obviously taking full advantage of being a movie director, massive amounts of body hair or no. It took a bit of stammering before he and Harry gave us what the next movie would be: not Hostel but a british spelunking thriller called The Descent. Eli then introduced a clip from Hostel that he calls the "eyegasm" scene to sate those of us who didn't make it out to Fantastic Fest a few months ago to see an early cut of the entire movie. The scene is a complete tease, cutting out just before the gasm moment that makes it all worth it. Afterward Eli yelled out "If I had seen that before we showed it, I would've brought something better. Sorry!" but I don't think the crowd minded.
12.10.05	The Professionals	Richard Brooks	The Professionals Fake: Guns of Navarone Harry neglected to mention that LEE fuckin MARVIN is the star of this movie, where he plays his requisite badass with morals that heads up the all-star group of equal badasses on a mission that demands maximum badassosity. Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan and Woody Strode fill out the team as the explosives expert, the horse whisperer, and the tracker. Ralph Bellamy hires them to "rescue" Claudia Cardinale from Mexican bandito Jack Palance's dirty mits. Apparently Palance has kidnapped her and since Marvin and Lancaster used to work with him, they would know best how to infiltrate his dirty Mexican camp. Richard Brooks shows some awesomely sweaty desert. There's some great men on a mission encounters here like when they deal with random banditos on the path and how they get into Palance's camp but most of the great stuff comes from the characters. Lancaster wants to screw every woman in sight, Marvin is too cool to even look at anyone, and Palance, of course, is a Mexican. This is really a treat because it's up there with the classic westerns but it's pretty much unheard of. i personally love finding a movie like this because, with the more movies I see, I kind of miss seeing the really great ones. Like, I've already seen The Wild Bunch lots of times, you know? Wouldn't it be great to see a movie just as good but for the first time!? I remember a long time ago trying to find a D&D movie that was as good as Dragonslayer. I just couldn't do it. All I had was Dragonslayer and even that wasn't 100% fulfilling. I guess I'd have to wait like 10 years until Lord of the Rings came out for satisfaction. After The Professionals ended, Harry brought up Matt Dentler: Mr. SXSW. Matt: "The only reason why I'm introducing this movie is because I've seen it, and really the only reason why I've seen it is because it'll be playing south by southwest next year. Who was here at last year's Butt-Numb-A-Thon (cheers) OK so you guys probably remember a little movie that played called Ong Bak? (massive cheers) Well, this is not Ong Bak 2. It's not the same universe, it's a French crime film, but I think you'll see that the action and fighting in this movie is in the same vein as Ong Bak. This movie is called District 13 and right now nobody knows about it but I think it'll be a cult classic pretty soon. it was written and produced by Luc Besson. If you do not absolutely love the first 15 minutes of this movie, then you are not a true film aficianado or fan or whatever. That's all I have to say." With that the lights go down and ttrailers start to play: Scorpions and Miniskirts, Danger Girls, and Seven Golden Women Against Two 07 (treasure Hunt).
12.10.05	Sympathy for Lady Vengeance	Chan-wook Park	Sympathy for Lady Vengeance Fake: Shurayukihime (Lady Snowblood) Very operatic, very deliberate, Sympathy for Lady Vengeance completes the loose trilogy of movies that each pretty much floor me. I think, at least on first viewing, Oldboy still tops the list for me but this movie was pretty damn cool as well. It kind of tricked me on my expectations though by starting out very disjointed and complex, filled with flashbacks on multiple characters and really taking a lot to keep tabs on all of these people that we're just meeting for the first time, but becoming simpler and simpler as it goes on. I heard from Blake that they're toying with a cut of the film where the color starts to desaturate at the midpoint of the film until it's complete black and white at the end. This makes complete sense and would be interesting to watch, but may also be a bit too on the nose. As it is though, the movie is pretty enchanting in the way that Chan-Wook Park's previous two were and a worthy addition to the set. That reminds me. I think I'll just be forever unclear about wether it's Chan-Wook Park or Park Chan-Wook. I've heard people say it both ways and his films credit both ways. My personal hunch is that in Korea they credit family name first then first name so I would be Miller Brian over there, but that's just a guess and I really don't know and even if that were true, would it be better to say it how they say it or say it how Americans say it? All I know is that he makes good movies. At the end I still felt a bit confused about the beginning and thought I needed to see it again, which is usually not a bad thing. There's an Alamo event just waiting to happen there though... all three revenge films one after the other would make a whole theater spooge I think. Another break, used mainly to absorb what we just saw. Blake was just a little underwhelmed but I think he'd been looking forward to seeing it for a long time. It suddenly dawned on me that this thing was one movie shy of being halfway over. Was it really 10 PM already? The battery in my watch died a few days ago so without my cell phone and in the confines of a darkened theater, I had absolutely no conception of time whatsoever. It felt like it was just getting going though. The first 10 hours had passed very quickly. Back inside, Harry introduced the next film as one that he's been bugging Tim League to get a print of for years. Luck worked out this year and one became available. He then asked the audience if anyone's ever seen a movie called The Professionals. Hmm... sounds familiar but all that comes to mind is the Luc Besson film The Professional. A few people mightily roared though, and even more people cheered when Harry asked who's seen The Wild BUnch. Well of course everyone here's seen The Wild Bunch, he's just dropping a more familiar name because not enough people have seen The Professionals. So then Harry starts up his intro in typical Harry fashion by saying he will introduce this movie in a very wrong way. Then he said he almost thinks that This movie is better than Wild Bunch because it has a fantastic cast but Wild Bunch has a fantastic cast too so the main reason why this may be different is that Jack Palance plays a mexican. "Wait a minute," I thought, "I've seen Jack Palance play a Mexican." Harry goes on to say how cool Burt Lancaster is in this film and I thought "wait a minute, I've seen a movie where Burt Lancaster is cool and Jack Palance plays a Mexican... What's the name of this movie?" Harry then says that Gina Lolobrigida... excuse me Claudia Cardinale has the second best sweaty titties ever in this film (the first pair going to Caroline Munro in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad), and that this is a great Men on a Mission flick. At this point I am like "hold on! I have seen this movie, what's it called!" at which point it clicks and I get that he's talking about The Professionals and he didn't just bring it up to compare it to the next movie. Ahh I can get mixed up sometimes. So now I'm thinking how and where I saw this movie... how I can possibly have seen a BNAT movie before BNAT! Maybe I'm really more versed in film than I give myself credit!? Oh wait... Harry listed The Professionals as one of his DVD picks. So even though I've already seen this, it was because of Harry that I have. Well, I remember liking the movie, and watching it on a big screen will be sweet, so bring it on! The trailers start. I hear a familiar tune. It's El Desperado AKA The Dirty Outlaws that screened at QT6. I start to sing along because it's such a great song. The movie was a bit slow and off, but damn if that song doesn't get lodged in my head for weekes every time I hear it. Tim's recent aquisition of the trailer does not bode well for my sanity. Next came Once Upon A Time in the West There Was A Man Called Invincible: a trailer that I like because it's funny but hate because the title is so damn long. And then, in perhaps the most random moment of the event, the teaser for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men's Chest played.
12.10.05	Footlight Parade	Lloyd Bacon	Footlight Parade Fake: Top Hat Back in the theater, Harry introduced the next film as 1933s Footlight Parade, which is his favorite musical (I think he said that) and a nice way to stay in '30s-era New York (rebuilt after Kong's escapades of course). He mentioned how James Cagney is best known for his gangster roles (probably because he was so freakin good in them) but he was also quite a hoofer. His background is in vaudeville but he wouldn't really get any notice for dancing in movies until Yankee Doodle Dandy like a decade after this. He really doesn't dance much in this but when he does it's pretty good and not nearly as stiff-legged as Dandy. There's also a scene where Cagney eats breakfast and there's a great big grapefruit there on the table which I can't help but think of as some set dresser's ode to The Public Enemy which came out a few years before this. The best parts of Footlight Parade should be attributed to Busby Berkeley, who created the music numbers for the movie including the tour de force triple threat of a finale that piles one outstanding number on another on another. I was very excited to see this movie because it's the one film I never quite tracked down when I went through my own private Berkeley mania a few years ago. He did this in a really hot year for him; the same year as 42nd Street, Gold Diggers of 1933, Roman Scandals, and also Dames according to Harry (although IMDb has it listed as a 1934 release). I think I still like Gold Diggers of 1933 more than this but that's simply because I saw it first. The last three numbers: Honeymoon Hotel, The Waterfall, and Shanghai Lil all belong in a museum and I believe I've seen either clips or the numbers in their entirity elsewhere. The film also has Dick Powell before he stopped shaving and became Philip Marlowe, Ruby Keeler who tries to look ugly by wearing hot eyeglasses, and Joan Blondell playing lovestruck with wild abandon. I also really love how this is clearly pre-code in that the dancers are always barely wearing anything and the humor is dirty and wise-cracking and adult. There's definitely something great about a whole music number built around a hotel where newlyweds come to screw. I think the main reason why Busby's stuff is so great though is that it captures the essence of the musical perfectly. I actually much prefer these musicals of the 30s and early 40s that all have some arbitrary plotline set in a theater of some sort because it reinforces the reality that the actual music number shatters. Once you get people singing whenever they want to, for some reason directors must think "well, we can buy them singing for no reason, but to have a lamp that wouldn't be there normally is too much. nobody will believe that." That's total BS. Footlight Parade, Dames, the Gold Diggers movies (although '35 takes place in a hotel, they still put on shows in a small stage on the grounds), 42nd Street... they all take place in a theater to give it some excuse for why people start singing. When they do though, the magic of film takes over. It becomes something completely emotional and surreal and reality distorts and melts as is needed. There's something really great about trying to imagine a Busby Berkeley number actually take place on a stage and I think that's part of the fun too. So yeah, I'm really happy Harry showed that instead of The Producers, which would probably get it all wrong wrong wrong for me. Oh, I forgot. Before Footlight Parade, they showed a Betty Boop short called Parade of the Wooden Soldiers which acted as a pretty nice transition from Kong to a musical. The cartoon had a stuffed ape come to life and wreck stuff. After footlight parade, Harry asked if Angela and Lucky were in the house. Up stepped supertiny hottie actress Angela Bettis and young horror director Lucky McKee. I immediately got super excited. I'd spooted an older guy in the ticket line with a great shirt that had a red axe on the back. Later on, inside the theater, I'd glimpsed that the front of his shirt said "The Woods," which is the movie that Lucky made starring Angela and Bruce Campbell after he finished a great little updated lesbian romantic comedy version of Frankenstein called May. So now that I saw that the older guy was actually Lucky's Dad, I completely thought that we'd get to see The Woods. They stood up and came down and stood next to Harry (cue ass-staring) and introduced... Lucky's episode of Masters of Horror. It's called Sick Girl Sick Girl Fake: I Married A Monster From Outer Space Sick Girl is about a weird bug scientist (yeah yeah they're all weird i get it) that keeps tons of pet bugs and talks weird played by Angela who meets a really cute long-haired girl played by softcore "actress" Misty Mundae and falls in love with her. I've never seen any of her work but here it's really fun. Look her up on IMDb and you'll see stuff like Bikini Girls on Dinosaur Planet, Lust for Dracula, Spiderbabe, Vampire Vixens, The Lord of the G-Strings, Play-Mate of the Apes, Naked Cooking, and Erotic Survivor, where she plays Misty, member of the Puu-Nani tribe. The list of great titles goes on and on. She actually did a really great job in this. I missed the beginning credits because I was peeing without having to wait in line so I missed her name and totally didn't know she was that type of "performer." I did really like it when her character said she wasn't shy and took her top off, but after she gets a bug's seed planted in her ear and starts mutating into a girlbug, there's some actual acting that needs to go on and she pulled it off really well. I will say this about Sick Girl. Having not seen John Landis' Deer Girl that aired the night before BNAT, Sick Girl was the best episode of the series that I'd seen to date. It's a fun little thing that unfortunately still has a rushed look to it but makes up for it with Angela Bettis' performance and some cool suspense dealing with a pillow that the superbug nests in. It made a really fun prelude to The Woods for sure. Meaning after they got back up and did their Q&A, They'd be showing The Woods... right? Well, they did get back up and they did take some Q&A. I did get to look at some more booty as Eric asked about working with Misty (Lucky knew her beforehand and wanted to work with her), where the story came from (it was a script before he was hired and the main part was written for a man but she wanted to have Angela as the lead so changed it to lesbo), shooting time (10 days, pretty fun and smooth shoot), and where Angela got her character choices (playing with the bugs was fun. this one little green leafy guy was like the best actor she's worked with. Off-mic Lucky said "didn't you base your character on an ex-boyfriend?" and she said "shh! it was an ex-boyfriend from Austin!") and what the progress is with The Woods (Lucky: "Well, it's done. It's sitting somewhere"). Argh! Wrong Answer! You were supposed to say "Funny you mention that... We have it right here! Enjoy The Woods, BNATTERS! LET'S SHOW IT NOW!!!1" but instead you just sat down. Harsh! No Fair! Oh well. At least the Masters of Horror series was redeemed now that I've actually seen a good one. Harry said there was one more movie to see before the next break and it was Sympathy for Lady Vengeance! (Harry: "I am DYING to see this") The lights dimmed and they ran trailers for Lucky Seven and The Soul of Bruce Lee (this didn't play at trailerthon, Lucky Seven did). Then the screen went white and the movie started.
12.10.05	King Kong	Peter Jackson	King Kong Fake: Gorgo So my whole thing with King Kong is that I wasn't looking forward to it at all. I am not a huge superfan of the original, never saw the '70s remake, and thought that a 130 day shoot and over 200 million dollars for a remake was just insane. Some of my friends here had small parts in the movie though and most everybody around here thought it was going to be amazing. So I kept my mouth shut and just doubted silently. Then I saw the trailers, tv spots, and that 4 minutes that appeared online where the effects don't look up to snuff, the movie doesn't look that exciting, and it's freakin three hours long. I really enjoyed watching the production diaries online but felt they would ultimately be more interesting than the film they were making. All that said, I think Peter Jackson made a movie as good as King Kong can possibly be. I mean, yeah the first hour is long... but come on. It's a three hour movie. The whole point of a three hour movie is so you don't have to rush through it. People wouldn't complain about the pacing of the first hour if they didn't already know about what happens during the second and third. It's sort of a trick movie in that it sets itself up as one kind of movie then changes completely once Kong comes on the screen. I can only imagine what it would be like to watch this movie cold as a kid or something, not knowing the story or anything. By the time I saw the original, I knew pretty much everything about it. So watching this movie for the first time is probably a pretty wild ride. These guys go on this ship off into the wilds in search of some uncharted island... and when they get there, the movie takes a complete left turn. All of a sudden they're all attacked and this girl is taken and tied up and offered up like a snack to some unseen beast in the forest; something so gnarly and huge that the villagers build up a huge craggy wall to defend themselves and give up offerings in order to keep it happy. And then this huge ferocious ape comes out and the movie suddenly becomes a tragedy where you eventually empathize with the ape and find yourself sad when he dies. In that respect, the first hour of the movie needs to be that long in order to set up the movie that Kong is supposed to be before it gets hijacked by the giant ape. I don't think I could have seen this movie in a better environment than at BNAT. the audience cheered after scenes they liked... not just the beginning titles and end credits but after SCENES!!! The sound was top notch (so loud I think they either blew the center speaker or overloaded it. Tim was spotted about halfway through the movie replacing a wire or something because Kong's growls were rumbling), the print was brand new and crystal clear, and the whole place was filled with people there to see Kong. In fact, a lot of people left right after Kong... Of course none of the people sitting next to those that left let me know and I ended up spending the whole time in my wooden chair, but oh well. Like I said, I really didn't mind it. So the movie that I was really worried about not liking ended up entertaining me completely. The distinct thought that I remember having over and over toward the end is that if this were any better, it wouldn't be Kong anymore. Jack Black HAS to say "It was Beauty killed the beast," Kong has to fall off the Empire State Building; this stuff just has to happen for it to still be King Kong. I do think there's still work to be done whenever one digital character rides on top of another digital character (although Anne getting flipped up onto Kong's shoulder is way better than Legolas on the Cave Troll) and some of the effects shots are a little wonky but hey, we're talking about maybe a dozen shots out of however many hundred or thousand there were and I'm sure they'll be cleaned up for the DVD anyway. You would never think that NYC is completely fake, or that mostly every shot had some compositing in it. Even Kong is really great for the most part. He easily outshines Golem. So on the whole I was pretty impressed. Now I just hope it makes back its absolutely gargantuan budget. After the movie there was our first break which I used to snag by schwag bag and drop it off in my car. Afterward I caught up with the guy I went to highschool with, and ended up saying how in love with the Alamo I was as we walked up the stairs. Karen, the woman who just had her baby, heard me say it and said thanks. Awesome. In the lobby I ran into some AICN folks who went to the NY premiere. One of them said "fuck the premiere" and the general consensus is that this was a much better screening and they liked the movie even more here than they did there. This was also when I caught up with Micah and Blake, who explained that after the initial 11 got in, most of the crowd left and a small group stuck around just for kicks. SOmeone came back out a few minutes later saying there's three more seats available. Now in a group of only 9, Micah's ticket was drawn first and Blake's drawn last! Amazing odds that all three of us got in, but it made me feel good that we could all experience it and they wouldn't have to rely on this.
12.10.05	The Most Dangerous Game	Irving Pichel, Ernest B. Schoedsack	My personal experience of the 7th Voyage of Butt-Numb-A-Thon... and my first! RRR! RRR! RRR! RRR! Somewhere along the line, the people that make alarm clocks must have done a study to discern that the most annoying sound in the world was not a ring or a beep but rather a sideways electronic grunt. Especially when it starts crying at 8 AM. Is this the day that I get into Butt-Numb-A-Thon? I shower and get downtown by about 9:10, passing by the Alamo on my way to a somewhat close parking space. Parking before noon on a saturday pretty much rocks. If i had a wristwatch that enabled me to control time, I'm pretty sure the #1 abuse would be rewinding to 9 AM to park then fast forwarding back to whenever I need it to be. Blake and Micah are already there but I only need to casually skip in front of one person to meet them. It doesn't matter anyway since the standby line is going by raffle this year. In fact, I think maybe those people that got there at 5:30 AM did so just to make all of us feel bad if they didn't get in. I got there at a good time though. Harry's webpage said to show up at 10 and they handed the raffle tickets out at about 10:05 and cut everybody that got there after that off. I thought that was pretty harsh for about 20 seconds until I realized that it meant better odds for me. And so we waited. Luckily, the guy I skipped in front of had brought his laptop. I missing Harry's posting of the fake line-up for today: a list of movies that would play in bizarro-world BNAT. The list: Rollerball Gorgo Top Hat I Married A Monster From Outer Space Shurayukihime Guns of Navarone Escape from NY Revenge of the Colossal Beasts Deliverance Hooper Tin Drum Sword of Gideon We all new it would be 7 new ones and 5 old ones. Assuming each was new, let's see. No clue what Rollerball could be. Gorgo must be Kong. It's a Given. Top Hat... Most Everybody was thinking The Producers but my secret hope was that my memory didn't betray me and I actually did see Liam Lynch's name on that initial BNAT Attendees list and that he would show up with Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny. Wishful thinking... Top Hat seems much more correlative to The Producers (and one of Harry's friends told us as much). No clue on Monster from Outer Space. IMDb told us that Shurayukihime was Lady Snowblood which meant Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. Had to. No clue on Guns of Navarone. People had mixed thoughts on Escape from NY but again, my secret hope kicked in. The John Carpenter on the attendees list probably wasn't _The_ John Carpenter because Eli Roth wasn't listed and we knew he was showing up. Still though, just the thought, coupled with Drew and Scott being in town... I bet they are gonna show their Masters of Horror episode Cigarette Burns. Revenge of the COllossal Beasts? No clue. Deliverance must be Hostel. MUST BE! With Eli here and the film screening in town Monday. MUST BE. No clue on Hooper. For whatever reason the guy in line kept putting his laptop away after browsing one web page and getting him to bring it out again and again seemed rude. So, trying to think of what movie Hooper is, the only thing that popped into my head is that early Paul Newman mystery movie where the title is one word that's his name. It was William Goldman's first script. Nobody knew what the hell I was talking about. One guy tried to convince me that I was thinking of The Verdict for a while... Now, Hindsight Alert, if we HAD looked up Hooper on IMDb, we all would have guessed it instantly. Tin Drum? no clue. Sword of Gideon? IMDb said it was set in Munich. Duh!!! With that, we started to brace ourselves for having to watch a Spielberg movie as the last movie. By now, ticket holders had started to line up around the building and the standby line stretched down to the pizza cart. Post-baby Karen came out and gave out raffle tickets. She asked how I was. Sweet! Recognition kicks so much ass. I think it's because I asked how her baby was doing one time when I bought a ticket next to an Alamo regular so now she registers me as "been here before" which really makes up for one of the wait staff asking me if it was my first time there a few weeks ago. Karen's recognition, followed by Tim League recognizing me and shaking my hand on the stairs, were highlights of the night as far as Alamo belonginess was concerned. A theater filled with Harry's closest friends and family, and I get recognized a few times. Felt good. I also recognized someone I didn't think I would. In the initial list of attendees, a Jedidiah Scher was listed. There was even a talkback about what kind of name that was and how crazy ha ha. Hey! I sort of almost knew a Jedidiah Scher back in high school. in Maryland. Only back then he went by "Jedd" and spent all his time playing bass and somehow being popular while still liking comic books and band. Well, sure enough... I see his face in the throng of people getting their assigned seats and goody bags. He passed me and I got to be that guy who says "hey! are you (insert name here)? I went to high school with you!" Turns out, he lives in LA and came out because his application got in. it's his first time at the theater. He said he would always read about these crazy events going on in Austin from Harry's webpage and just decided to try and go one year. Luck (and his name, no doubt) got him in. He works for G4 now. You know, he may have a cool business card now but you know what? He read about how cool Austin was and decided to come down for a weekend. I read about it and decided to QUIT MY HIGH-PAYING JOB AND MOVE HERE. So who's working for G4 and who's living the dream, I ask. Yeah, that's right. So more and more attendees flooded into the theater. Depression fell over the fifty or so of us in the standby line. I started mentally picturing the lobby to figure out how many wooden seats they have. I could only remember eight. 8 / 50 * raffle = I'm going home. A few aintitcool aquantances of mine came over to chat, each sorry/surprised that all three of us hadn't gotten tickets. They were obviously excited because they all said "see you inside" with the same level of meaning and care that I sometimes say "you too" when an usher at a movie theater says "enjoy the show." However, each of those guys expressed genuine handshakes when they saw me later on with a bright pink band around my wrist so I forgive them all. You know, sitting in the standby line really sucks. You know you have no chance of getting in and it's a horrible feeling where you're friendly with everyone else but secretly wish they'd just leave and give me their tickets and know that sooner or later, a lucky few of us would get in and the rest would have nothing better to do than think bad thoughts about us all weekend. Personally, I was completely convinced that I wasn't getting in. I was there basically to hang out with Blake and Micah for a bit and felt even worse for them because they came down from Dallas for this. I don't think I've ever won anything in a raffle ever Unless it's a situation where everyone wins and even then I get like the $10 gift certificate for Nails by Denise or something. But for as crappy as the standby line is, I did get one highlight out of it. I got to see Eli Roth and his hot Eurobabe Hostel co-star walk up in their comfy clothes holding their ass-pillows and register to get in. I like Cabin Fever more every time I watch it and thought Hostel was really really great. Whether I got in or not today I planned to find out where the hell his screening was Monday and go for that as well, so seeing him walk up and go in was pretty cool. Of course, seeing him hanging out with people I knew and both of them sticking it out till the end was even cooler, but still. One thing I missed about QT6 was getting a seat so early that I missed seeing QT actually arrive. There's something cool about that. Then these four guys showed up super late and they had tickets. Those fuckers. The least you could do is get there on time, huh??? So Karen came out and said they had 12 empty seats. That number was immediately corrected to 11. Jay Knowles, Harry's father (who was genuisely rendered as a horned cyclops in the BNAT7 artwork) picked tickets out of a bowl and read them off. Two people down the line got in together and gave a high-five out in the street. He called off a number right next to Blake, Micha, and I. We all cringed. 11 out of 50 meant that only 1 of the three of us, if any, would get in. Then they called out my number. Sweet! There were only 4 people left after my number was called but they stopped the drawing for a bit to take care of the batch of 5 of us standing out in the street. Karen started handling us like dazed cattle, taking us toward the door and handing out t-shirt and gift bag tickets along with our wristbands and telling us to go up the stairs to pay. As we left I heard Jay say "Don't raffles SUCK!" and I felt really bad that Blake and Micah only had a 1 in 40 chance with only 4 tickets left to draw. On the other hand, I had just gotten into BNAT7!!! On the stairs, I could hear Tim League on the mic, bringing absolutely massive cheers from the audience. I was really like a dazed cow standing there, ready to hand out my 60 bucks to whoever would take it just so I could get in the theater and not miss any more. I also felt a sense of duty to document the fuck out of this whole event so Blake and Micah could each re-live it through my lovely descriptive prose. They only had size Large left of the t-shirts, meaning my decidedly XL frame would never be able to sport the great BNAT7 shirt? Oh well, just let me in. I had to go back downstairs to get my wristband? oh well just let me in. Wait, I already had my wristband? don't go back downstairs then. JUST LET ME IN. You don't understand. Tim's introductions are classic. Hilarious, smooth, timed perfectly for audience reaction, I've never sat through a bad Tim league intro, even for films that he's never seen before. I managed to get into the theater and find a pretty choice seat (as far as wooden and fold-out chairs on the sides of the theater are concerned) just as TIm handed the mic over to Harry. I actually sat right next to Harry and the microphone mixer. I also had a table to put my jacket and food on and could lean the chair back just a tiny amount but enough to lean my head against the wall. I also prefer to sit near the front so that didn't bother me. The screen was pretty distorted from being on the far side wall but it also meant no heads taking up the frame and after the lights go down you don't notice the dimensions of the frame anymore. It also allowed me to easily scope the crowd just by turning my head, so I got to see how many people were sleeping and also got to see the projectionist switch projectors at the end of the reels: something I never actually watched before. Yeah the seat was wood and the bruise on my ass from slipping on the ice earlier in the week didn't like that much but I wasn't scrunched to either side so i got to stretch out a bit and my jacket doubled as pretty decent ass cushion. All in all I can't really complain about the seat at all, and think I might have actually preferred it to a seat farther back in the theater where I'd have to work to see between heads and keep my arms folded over my belly between the armrests. Plus I got to sit right next to Harry so anyone that came up to talk to him I got to overhear and when he wheeled himself out of the theater and dragged his mic along I was there to scoop it up and keep anyone from tripping over stepping on the mic. Also, when he'd wheel around to face the audience in between pictures, I was right behind him so I kind of got an effect of having an entire theater look at me without having to actually say anything. And to top it all off, when super-tiny hotty actress Angela Bettis got up with director Lucky McKee, I got absolute free reign to stare directly at her ass the whole time, since she was standing next to Harry (and really was barely taller than sitting Harry... so tiny! I felt like I could pick her up in my hand like Kong). Add all of that to the automatic sympathy and hardcore points all of us standby people earned at the end of it for sticking it out on the wooden seats and I have to say that it was like the best place I could have possibly sat. Plus I got to see this one girl who sat directly in front of Harry. I guess she's active in talkback or chat or something. She was this blonde girl; that type that's like a 7 and acts like she's a 9... you know, still fairly attractive but uses it way too much. She came with a guy who sat in a fold-up chair at the end of the row and would constantly get up and walk out to the lobby. She also made a habit of checking her cellphone about once a minute, giving me that awesome blue light in the corner of my eye. After the second movie, she came back saying "pajamas!" and wearing these silk bottoms that barely covered her ass, showing off these black lacy get-ups oh-so-intentionally. She wasn't as bad as the two girls who hung around in trashy lingerie for the whole thing, but still. She'd also kiss Harry like every time she passed by. I don't know if Harry's girlfriend sitting right next to him saw or minded or what but Harry wasn't very responsive, even after kiss on cheek #8. At some point, her dude left for like 6-8 hours and she somehow got Matt Dentler to sit with her for like an hour or so. She also left for a stretch, coming back with a huge pizza box that she ate one piece of then had a server take it away. She ordered 3 buckets of beer and 2 pitchers and drank like two bottles. She handed Harry a bottle in the middle of a movie and asked if I wanted one but I said no. I think she left and came back the most times through the whole affair. Certain people (like the "classy guy in the 'FUCK' t-shirt") got up at least once for pretty much every movie (I know because I was sitting on the side so I saw everyone that came my way to get out) but this girl took the cake. Somewhere along the way, She told me that I'd been sitting there for a long time. I said "so have you" and she struck a pose. Weird girl, man. Like really. I kind of get that not everyone that comes to this thing is there for the movies, but I would hope that everyone is respectful to those that are. There were intermittent half hour breaks for everyone to go out and smoke, use the restroom, socialize with friends, etc. so it's not like watching every movie was torture. It's pretty clear though that a lot of people were there just for Kong. I'm getting ahead of myself. As I took my seat and tried to get comfortable, Harry was telling the audience that many of us probably had guesses based on the list of fake titles he published this morning. He then said that we're not as smart as we think we are and he's smarter than he thinks he is, which doesn't make 100% sense but people cheered anyway. He also mentioned that the last film of the night is taking about 25 hours to get here. It left yesterday, should be in customs right now, and should hopefully get here before tomorrow morning. According to Harry, it's the only print of the film in existence right now. Harry then asked the crowd for any guesses on this first movie and all sorts of titles rang out. He then asked how many first-timers were here then said "all of you people yelling out new movies have been to this before and you KNOW the first movie is always old!" Then he gave it up that it's The Most Dangerous Game (which drew applause). This is a movie that I've never seen but always wanted to. I remember reading the story in 7th grade English class and there was a few stills from the movie to make it easier on us middle schoolers that have to (gasp) read! Harry said that there's really only on movie that's not a surprise "and y'all know what that is" (to more cheers) and in that movie, the movie that Ms. Wray is tied up doing with producer Merian C. Cooper is this one. Pretty confusing. I didn't really get what he said until later on in the night when all became clear. Anyway, this movie is like an alternate to King Kong that Cooper produced the year before the 1933 original. Harry then mentioned that they'd play a few pre-BNAT trailers and would anyone like to guess which. A Raucous entire audience yelled out "STUNT ROCK!" With that, the lights went down and the BNAT7 experience officially started with: Mel Gibson sitting down staring at the screen. "Hi all you butt-numb-a-thon-ers!" He gave a little talk about how he's down in Mexico (-Mel to offscreen: "Say Something in Spanish" -offscreen: "(something in Spanish)" -Mel: "See?") and said he wanted to show us the first glimpse ever of the teaser for his new movie Apocalypto. The teaser won't show up online for 3 weeks so it was a true BNAT exclusive. "Be Brutal," he said, "or cheer. It's all the same really." The teaser played, looking very interesting in the same way that The Passion teaser looked very interesting... you know, before it was revealed that it was basically a Christan snuff film. No dialgoue but shots of some pyramids and some screen text about how empires end or something. To tell you the truth I can't really remember specifics. I just remember the last shot being pretty impressive, starting with the sun and panning down to see some chief's painted arm and down further to see that he's standing before tons and tons of digital people. It could definitely be cool, but like someone told me later, you can never tell if it will be Cool Mel making a movie or Crazy Mel... Apparently when he was here to introduce The Passion at BNAT5, he was just as funny and self-deprecating as he was in the video'd intro tonight, so you can really never tell. After that, Tim played trailers for Argoman: The Fantastic Superman (now that Munich was definitely not the last movie being played (way more than one print in existence of that), Superman became the next favorite guess for everyone. This trailer helped), The Legend of Dinosaurs and Monster Birds, and Stunt Rock. Of course. The Most Dangerous Game Fake: Rollerball The Most Dangerous Game has the slow pacing and traditional set scenes of a typical 1932 movie but the horrific "twist" and subversive undercurrent that's still somewhat fresh today. It made a great first movie because, after all is said and done, it was still noon on a saturday and this is a great saturday noontime movie. It's a good settling-in movie. It kind of has the feel of I Walked with a Zombie or a better version of White Zombie or any of those foundations of early horror where it was really more about the idea than the special effects or gore. While I am all for those things, I think "the idea" remains the true source of horror in movies today. I guess there's a reason why it's in the Criterion Collection, huh. After the film, Harry introduced a few guys who talked for a while about a project they're working on with Ray Harryhausen to make Edgar Allen Poe stories as stop-motion animated shorts fopr Bravo! Canada. They showed a one-minute teaser for the six-minute short and then talked about another project they're doing with Harry from an old unfinished idea by Merian C. Cooper called War Eagles. Apparently his tagline was "bigger and better than King Kong." They showed a little "sizzler" spot for this which basically explains the idea's origin. At about this time, I look over at the other standby folk sitting against the opposite wall and see Micah! He waves and I wave back then he points down next to him. I lean over and there's Blake! I have no clue how they got in, but unfortunately couldn't go over right then and ask them because Harry decided to only do a break after every two or three movies instead of every one. This made it tough on the chronic pee-ers but also ensured that the show kept rolling. Harry told us that many thought the next film would be King Kong, and while It's true that he's showing a Peter Jackson film next, we all might be surprised. "See," said Harry, "Peter's been working on a film in secret for a while now, which Peter just does because he's wiley. It's very topical though and we present it here for the first time ever!" On the screen, some guy appears in a room talking to the camera. He's trying to introduce this documentary that he's been working on about Avian flu and that although it's very low budget, he did go to China to shoot. Then Jackson walks into frame behind him and interrupts the guy, saying that he was sorry but this was his BNAT slot and he's been working on a movie that he thinks people might want to see. "I'm all for low budget films, don't get me wrong," he told the guy on the screen, " but I've got a big budget picture that, when i was there two years ago I promised I'd come back to show. Actually I tripped right there (pointing to the bottom-left of the screen) and it was quite embarassing." This got laughs from the audience. Jackson then said he was sorry he couldn't be here in person but was stuck in the press machine at the moment wrapped up with the premiere and he hoped we would all enjoy King Kong (asking if Harry still has his gas bomb (which he did (I saw it (it was right in front of Harry the whole time)))). Then they played King Kong.
12.09.05	Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic	Liam Lynch	Aclaimed to the point of overhype, this is funny but not hilarious. The interweaving with the stand-up and music videos worked more than didn't work I think... it just didn't make me tear up laughing. I did laugh a few times but I was kind of looking for something that would really floor me and make my face hurt afterward and instead I got a pretty consistent smirk. One thing I never realized until just looking it up is that Sarah's sister Laura did the voice of the receptionist in Dr. Katz. Now THERE is a show I'd love to have on DVD.
12.08.05	Melinda and Melinda	Woody Allen	I'd heard this was terrible. Will Ferrell certainly playes Woody Allen, which doesn't really work... and there is definitely something off with the acting and the dialogue, but it's kind of a cool meditation on how very minimal changes can change a tragic story comic or vicey versy. Reminded me somewhat of Sliding Doors... and of course Rashomon which everyone everywhere has to bring up whenever anything's told or shown more than once in a movie. Still something just off about this though... like I don't know if the stories within the story were supposed to be acted... unwell, or what... but some scenes are just horribly "theatrical" and stilted. Maybe new yorkers talk like that... I dunno. I still think that Woody Allen is just getting too old... made too many movies... lost his spunk. There's always his next one though.
12.07.05	Sorcerer	William Friedkin	Just a few random notes. Decent remake. I like how they gave more backstory to the driver characters and the bridge scene is a great update to the turnaround scene... I miss the oil pool and the drivers seem more distant in this one, but I like the setting and how they cover the bases of more modern technology. I don't know which version is closer to the book, whether Wages of Fear was "punched up" to add character drama or what, but they are both good. I do think that Tangerine Dream's score to this hurts it though... this is not a synthesizer movie.
12.07.05	Murderball	Henry Alex Rubin, Dana Adam Shapiro	it's no real surprised that not all quadriplegics spend their lives in special beds ordered QVC and snapping at live-in nurses... some of them like to kick ass in full-on burly testosterfest. Good doc... it's cool that they all have really hot girlfriends. Austin hotty!!! Also, the player commentary is pretty funny, with all the teammates making fun of the other guy and talking about said Austin hotty.
12.06.05	Jackie Brown	Quentin Tarantino	Been a while since I've seen this and I thought that maybe now, since I've been introduced more to the kind of movies that QT himself favors, this would resonate more with me. No surprise that it does. very much so even. It's kind of like it makes so much more sense now after seeing a few real blaxploitation movies. I think with this and Kill Bill QT has made genre movies for genres that don't really exist anymore. They are A-list pictures in some wonky timewarp that belong to the cinema of 30 years ago... so the more you are familiar and like those genres, the more you appreciate these movies. The problem is that not a lot of people have seen them anymore... their loss though. I really really like this movie a whole lot better now than the last time I saw it
12.06.05	Cinemania	Angela Christlieb, Stephen Kijak	Consider me humbled. To think of how I thought of myself in terms of movie knowledge before I moved here to Austin. Since then, I've been saying this is the best town for movies in the Country. I now have to revise that to the best movie town in the country for me. This film shows how NYC, of course, kicks Austin's butt as far as showing art films are concerned. This film also shows that certain film buffs are in a whole other universe than me. The subjects in this doc take things to a whole new level. I think the only person in this town that's like that is maybe Harry Knowles... although I've still heard/read him talk about a movie or two that he hasn't seen (yet)... i don't think even Tim league or Quint or Lars can stand up to these guys in this doc. It's like too much though... they openly give in and let it control their lives. It's still kinda scary though how much I identify with a lot of the things they say. There's a deleted scene on the DVD where each film geek gives their personal ethos as far as where to sit in the theater and I have had that exact same conversation before in just as much detail (i.e. way too much)... but these guys still put me to shame. BUT, I still think I like it here more than I would in NYC... and they don't have the Alamo there so really in the end they are big limited-to-popcorn-and-candy losers.
12.06.05	The Ice Harvest	Harold Ramis	I don't know if Harold Ramis' comedies just keep getting less and less funny or if this was supposed to be a serious movie from the start. I guess since it's all dreary and has lots of stippers and the F word pops up before the beginning titles, it's the latter rather than the former. Taken as such, it's a pretty decent movie... nothing offensively bad (unless you count seeing all the twists and turns before the movie even starts), nothing outrageously great (Oliver Platt probably does the best job, but even then he is just playing drunk for the entire movie)... nothing special, but still entertaining.
12.05.05	Sound Unbound: Developments in Late 20th Century Jazz Volume One	Anne Heller	Loosely tracing the metamorphosis of be-bop into free Jazz, this doc (directed by Alamo-involved Anne Heller) strings together clips of Thelonius Monk, Coltrane, Mingus, and about a half-dozen others for some performances and interviews about the period that jazz loses me. I just need those rhythms I guess. It was an interesting doc though.
12.04.05	Undead	Michael Spierig, Peter Spierig	huh, well isn't this a fun little movie. It's actually more sci-fi than the name lets on. Sure it's a zombie movie on its surface but that's really only part of it. The whole movie has a very camp 50s sci-fi feel to it, especially the music. There's some really decent gore here as well... plus a great great great mechanism to get the hot girl down to just her undies. Sort of like Dead Alive meets Close Encounters.
12.04.05	Kingdom of Heaven	Ridley Scott	More Ridley Scott mediocrity. I think this movie has two core problems. One is that Liam Neeson and his character are the best part of the movie so you want the whole movie to be about him rather than Orlando Bloom, and Two is that it's too complex for a rousing historical action epic. Gladiator was pretty simple... this one is filled with all sorts of confusing turns and the ending really feels like they tried to have their cake (being historically accurate (just my guess, i know absolutely nothing about this stuff)) and eat it too (fit the mold of a LCD blockbuster action movie a la Gladiator). The outcome is pretty weak. But oh well. It was about what I expected it to be, and had some actors that I like in it.
12.03.05	Stephen King's It	Tommy Lee Wallace	I don't usually put TV stuff on here and since this is technically a miniseries and not a movie I guess I shouldn't but oh well it's my journal and I get to break my own rules whenever I want to. Plus it's It, which i had some sort of obsession with as a kid. After re-reading the book I decided to watch this again because I remember watching it before, during, and after reading the book for the first time. Even from the beginning I realized that it really sucked but still... something about the story and characters drew me to it. So now this is like the definitive way that I see John Ritter, Seth Green, Harry Anderson (even moreso than Night Court) and Tim Curry (sorry Rocky Horror fans)... again, even though this movie/miniseries/whatever really really is not good at all. Actually that's not true. I associate Tim Curry most with Clue. It was still interesting to run down all the differences between page and screen now that I'm a bit more familiar with common motivation for said changes... it kinda puts it in a different perspective. I am still pretty surprised at how much of a classic villain i held Henry Bowers to be when he's really pretty minimal in both the movie and the book. Weird again... how my biggest memories from it when I was a kid now prove to be small little things.
12.03.05	Revolver	Guy RItchie	Um... i feel like I'm back in 96 or whenever The Usual Suspects came out. blahhhhhh. what happened to Guy Ritchie man?
12.02.05	Wages of Fear	Henri-Georges Clouzot	So I guess Clouzot had a real streek there with Wages of Fear then Diabolique... I feel about the same for both films... they are overlong and the setups take way too long but once it gets going there are some great moments of suspense. In this case it was also cool to see people wade around in a pool of oil. it's like water but thicker and blacker!
12.01.05	Don't Go in the House	Joseph Ellison	purportedly the nastiest most offensive movie ever shown at a QT fest. Eh... I think this is a good case of maybe I would have liked it a lot more in a theater with a QT intro rather than watching it alone in my apartment. Maybe I saw a cut version or something... Especially after watching Maniac not too long ago, this seemed kind of the same except with burning. However, there was one scene where a fully frontal nude girl gets set on fire with a flamethrower that's pretty intense...
12.01.05	The Fantastic Planet	Rene Laloux	Yay for the 500th film in this journal! It's this really odd surreal fantasy animated picture that the Alamo Drafthouse showed with live score from Neil Hagerty (guitarist from Pussy Galore and Royal Trux) and his band the Howling Hex. This also means that I've spent every night this week at the Alamo Downtown. Aside from QT6 I think that it a consecutive record. Luckily, I'm busy doing something else tomorrow night so there will be a break before I'm back again for Saturday night's Trailerthon (which looks to be tons of fun for a trailer geek like me). The Fantastic Planet is a really strange movie. I'm not sure what the original soundtrack is like, but it feels like I should be high and listening to prog rock while I watch it. Luckily, Howling Hex supplied a constant stream of random improv morphing into a few actual songs before dissolving back into random strummings and noises. I am not really a fan of this type of music... but it was kind of made worse by the flagrant disregard for the film. This was nowhere near a score to the movie. In fact, word has it that in the show previous to the one I saw they just played extended versions of Chicago songs. A paying gig is a paying gig i guess but the other live score showings I've been to all blew this one away. Oh well. Luckily, I wanted to see the movie enough that the music didn't really bother me. I was so weirded out from the visuals already that I really didn't mind... I did like it whenever Neil picked up his bass guitar though because that meant there was gonna be some sort of rhythm coming and that's always cool. As a funny side note, after the show I was standing talking to/overhearing some Alamo regulars and this guy came up to Lars and went on and on about how this was real shit and it was real 2005 and there's not much 2005 left so that makes it even cooler, and how he can understand that shit, like it speaks to him. Lots of stuff he can't understand but this he could. Of course Lars listened with a straight face but i was looking pretty hard to see just a crack of a smile underneath his facial hair. Who knows, but this was right after he got finished telling us how crappy the first show was. Then Kier-la came over and heard about the Chicago thing but when one of the band came by she was all like "that was great, I liked the Chicago songs!" heh heh... such are the pitfalls of running the event i guess.
12.01.05	Doom	Andrzej Bartkowiak	First movie that i pirated. If the MPAA is reading blame id because they owe me for buying Doom 3. all those people who said the movie actually wasn't that bad are lying.
11.30.05	Brother on the Run	Herbert L. Strock	yay for weird wednesdays! I should also note that on Monday there was an awesome Music Monday night with a double feature of short documentaries: One about the famous Record Row of Chicago: a localized street in town that played home to a phenomenal series of small black record labels in the 50s before Motown came in. They also played an awesome doc on Jamaica's sound system movement and how it relates to modern DJ culture. Both were too short to get their own entries (I don't really see them as "movies" per se) but they were awesome. Also, before this movie they had the "reels of steel: Texas Showdown." It's kind of like DJ battles but instead of trading back and forth, the Alamo invited the film archivists who are in town for this huge film archivist convention to bring their best stuff and show it against everyone else's best stuff. The result was 9 short bits of film that are really nothing like you'd ever see anywhere else. We had experimental montage animation, two and a half minutes of time lapse photography of a bank in Chicago, a reel of sleazy NY porn, a XXX-rated porn animated with clay-enhanced dolls, 33 yo-yo tricks done by this 70s superstud in aviator sunglasses, a Moonwalker-esque film made to open Styx concerts, an incredibly strange air-force-produced called "Aaark: Something about Communication," some re-edited footage of Ronald Reagan praising crack cocaine and urging all Americans to take up a drug habit, and a so-innocent-it's-dirty bit about a little kid working in a firehouse. All in all it was pretty damn cool. All the archivists in the house were all loud and rowdy like this was clearly the coolest thing they'd be doing while in town, and Tim gave the winner a nice piece of bling: a necklace with a little 35mm film canister that actually spins! The audience decided on the winner (it was basically a tie between the yo-yo film and the air force communication oddity but Tim sided with the Yo-Yo and although i was cheering for Aaark, I was not unhappy with the yo-yo. That dude was cool, man). Awesomeness. So then I stayed in the packed lobby for Brother on the Run. This is basically a really cheapo blaxploitation movie starring some dude doing his best Sidney Poitier impersonation. Some great funk soundtrack, some hilarious lines, some good luvins... it was a good time. As a teaser for the trailerthon that they're showing this Saturday night, they showed two new trailers from their "A-stock" which I have to say blew me away. The Thunder Cops trailer was like a whole movie. it had complete fight scenes, all sorts of chinese myusticism, a few zombies getting mown down, and chicks shooting at eachother. Superargo and the Faceless Giants was also fun in a completely different way.
11.29.05	The Good Thief	Neil Jordan	Jordan's update/remake of Bob le flambeur starring Nick Nolte and a few other people that I recognized but don't know their names. The core differences are that it's got a happy ending and the heist is much more complex. Jordan also does this thing where he throws like 2 or 3 extra frames at the end of a lot of the scenes. It's very subtle but something you start noticing right away. It's kind of like the stopping effect used in Out of Sight but not as long and much more frequent. A pretty decent update and a pretty good movie.
11.29.05	The Man from Planet X	Edgar G. Ulmer	For the second show, they screened this 1951 science fiction film of Ulmer's. It pre-dated The Thing From Another World, making it one of the very very first sci-fi movies ever. It was made for what looks like 5 bucks, shot in 6 days on the sets of Ingrid Bergman's Joan of Arc using enough fog machine smoke to choke a horse. The titular man wears a laughably fake "alien" head/space mask contraption and communicates through simple musical tones... and math. For all of its limitations though, this is a pretty fun little '50s sci-fi romp. Not great or anything, but a fun watch to be sure.
11.29.05	Edgar G. Ulmaer - The Man Off-Screen	Michael Palm	AFS started up their Edgar G. Ulmer series tonight with a double feature. The first show was a documentary on the guy produced by his Daughter who was in attendance. She wore really strange '50s-style glasses and spoke like someone's grandmother. The documentary was decent, originally made for German TV. They got the original interview tape between Ulmer and Bogdanovich which eventually became Ulmer's chapter in Bogdanovich's massive interview book Who The Devil Made It, along with new interviews with Boggles, Joe Dante and John Landis, Wim Wenders, Roger Corman, and a host of actors who appeared in his various movies (including a surprisingly negative John Saxon). Afterward, Edgar's daughter said that Saxon didn't know his lines when he showed up on set so Ulmer never got along with him and that's why he was so negative in the doc. For people who have no clue who Edgar G. Ulmer is (AKA most people), he's the guy who made Detour: one of the classic film noirs and probably also one of the cheapest) and The Black Cat, which was the movie starring both Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. Of course he also made a ton of other movies but is still pretty unknown. I guess her daughter has spent like 15 years trying to save his films from extinction. So yeah... the doecumentary was interesting.
11.28.05	Kicking & Screaming	Jesse Dylan	the Time/Warner pay per view crapped out and I never quite got to see like the last ten minutes of this but I feel like I don't really need to see it to find out how it ended. People said this was horrible... I dunno, i guess it's not good. There's too much son-not-getting-along-with-unsympathetic-dad stuff for a comedy... but a few random moments made me laugh and I was surprised at how much stuff Ditka did in the movie. It's like a real part! Sure he's playing himself, but still... I thought he did a good job. Also, Martin Starr's very small part yielded the best (and his only) line in the movie. Undeclared vet Timm Sharp also had a line and one of the kids' soccer jersey said Apatow. I guess he's got some form of Producer credit but i never saw the credits so who knows.
11.26.05	Inframan	Shan Hua	Trailers: -The Bodyguard (VIVA! CHIBA!!) -Robotrix (Sympathy for Lady Robocop?) -Sting of the Dragon Masters (with hilarious use of Bernard Herrmann's North by Northwest score) For the final movie of the night, Tim introduced Inframan: A Shaw Brothers cash-in on the Ultraman series complete with the best villain of all time (Princess Dragon Mom) and a lackadaisical motorcycle chase which did indeed prove to be quite leisurely and well-described. With that, Tim thanked us all for coming out and hurried up to the projection room to start the reels. The other contributors to this site whup my butt with their Shaw Brothers knowledge. Therefore, what I offer up a novice's perspective. This site is also no stranger to this movie (evidence here) but one thing happened during this specific screening that made it extra special and cool. Just as Princess Dragon Mom came on and went into her whole world domination monologue, a technical issue tripped out the projector and the film slowly sped down to a stop. Hearing her plans for complete control of the planet distend and deform into low guttural whispers that left us all deeply impressed. The guy next to me said that should've been in the movie right there for real. I agreed. Of course, two guys sitting in the back filled us in on what she actually said, presumably because they had the movie memorized. They then went on to debate the other merits of the movie until the difficulty was fixed and Princess Dragon Mom popped on the screen with her awesome snake head/whip hand once more. I personally found the movie pretty exhausting. So much fighting. So many explosions. It's the kind of movie that starts off at 103 mph and never dips under 70. It was great and hilarious and absurd and strange but also pretty tiring. I did notice one moment though, where a man in suit must have been stuck on set too long because he was totally doing the pee-pee dance off in the background. I'm also trying to figure out which was my favorite kung-fu monster. I think it has to be drill-man because his drill was so curved and non-functional and he really makes no sense. He's like a clump of dirt with a drill for one hand and an inanimate metal claw/vice for the other. That knows kung-fu. Awesome. Things learned from Inframan -Scientists are cooler with Austin Powers wigs. -Just because you're an elemental demon spirit or whatever doesn't mean you don't have to go to the bathroom every once in a while. -Having eyeballs on your hands must be kinda cool... like... when you're alone... and curious. With that the night ended. A tad premature in my opinion. It's not a full-on all-nighter unless you walk out to bright shiny morning sunlight if you ask me. Still, dumping about a dozen of us out into the deserted 4:30 AM Austin streets felt suitably alien, like we had been on some long journey and had finally found that loose brick in the tunnel which let us escape back into civilization. According to Tim, they're planning another horrorthon for the future so if this sounded like fun and you're in the area be sure to make it out. These are truly special events that deserve recognition and applause.
11.26.05	Silent Night, Deadly Night	Charles E. Sellier, Jr.	Trailers: -A Christmas Story -Demonoid ("This is a warning for those who believe, eternal damnation for those who do not") -Motel Hell (complete with a messenger of death, a piggy with a chainsaw, and a "secret garden" of people buried up to their necks in dirt with their heads covered by burlap sacks) With the wait staff fleeing and Tim taking up the Projectionist's reins, the shamefully few of us who showed up for this event moved into the third film of the night. Silent Night, Deadly Night was shown pretty recently as part of QT6's '80s Horror Movie Night and I think both Blake and Charlie reviewed the film better than I can (coverage here and here), so instead of going on and on, I'll just mention that the mustachiod cop who shoots the wrong Santa has the reddest eyes ever. Get some Visine, man... you look so high! After the movie, Tim played the Alamo's full recording of Quentin Tarantino, together with Robert Rodriguez, re-enacting the film's great beginning scene (glimpsed here) on stage for all those lucky enough to stick it out for the last night of QT6. Just a little Thanksgiving treat doubling as a reminder of why the Alamo Drafthouse is the best theater in the world. You don't see Tarantino acting out scenes at the Arclight do you? Hell No! Things Learned from Silent Night, Deadly Night -Every nice boy and girl wants a bloody box cutter for Christmas. Trust me. -Shoot your movie in a toy store so 15 years from now even if the movie sucks 20-somethings can watch and see in the background all the toys they had when they were kids. -If all your kid can say is "naughty" and "punish," get him some help. No matter how muscular his body or cherubic his face is, get him some help.
11.26.05	Darktown Strutters	William Witney	Trailers: -Greased Lightning -Scream, Blacula, Scream -Foxy Brown I missed Tim's introduction to the next film of the night because I was out in the lobby talking to Kier-la (heh heh). Apparently he had warned the crowd that this movie would be too much to handle at 4 AM; it was that strange. After a cadre of blaxploitation trailers, a title card appeared stating "If this film bares any resemblance to Cinderella... it's bull$h!t!" From there we have a gang of vividly dressed female three-wheel chopper vixens rolling into a beachfront snack stand and getting in a Keystone Kops undercranked chase sequence ending with white guys thrown into a public toilet. From there, it gets a bit crazy. I've been trying to think of some way to sum up or explain this movie for any who haven't seen it. Here's my best try: Imagine the kind of humor in I'm Gonna Git You, Sucka! but not as subtle melded with the social sensibility and roughness of Sweet Sweetback's Badaaassss Song, now replace "The Man" with Colonel Sanders: owner of a "Sky Pig" fast food rib joint who has cotton bushes planted in his front lawn. OK, now throw in some ludicrously inept/racist cops, a KKK biker gang that wears their robes and hoods as they ride, a few musical numbers, the requisite amount of stereotypical black '70s caricatures in vividly gaudy costumes, and stir fervently to a funky bassline. Oh, I forgot to mention the cloning machine with an "abort" button in the form of a breast. Now stretch that gonzo concoction like taffy until it's about 20 minutes too long and you have Darktown Strutters. There were technical difficulties about an hour into the screening and while we sat in darkness the guy next to me leaned over and said "I thought this was a trailer for like ten minutes." I laughed then he asked me what this movie was about and I didn't really have an answer for him. The film started back up and never really ventured into the realm of logic or comprehension So it's probably true that this movie would've killed me had I seen it at 4 AM. Things Learned from Darktown Strutters -Both veteran TV western director William Witney and Grosse Point Blank director George Armitage must have some chemical excuse for not remembering 1975. -If you ever accidentally touch a guy named VD, ask him to make you clean and he will squirt you with his oversized hypodermic needle. -I still have no clue what the hell anything had to do with Cinderella.
11.26.05	Blood Freak	Steve Hawkes, Brad F. Frinter	Anyone that's been to an all-night movie marathon will surely agree that it's a very unique experience. Throughout the night, several things happen. The sheltering womb-like atmosphere of the darkened theater takes on greater significance, stretching the midnight hours into a timeless span where the outside world ceases to exist. The movies themselves compress and expand like living breathing things controlled by their quality and pacing. A really great film flies by in seemingly less than 40 minutes but a terrible film will blunder and wheeze for hours upon hours, letting your mind wander to thoughts of your comfortable bed at home, that glorious feeling of closing your eyes and falling into deep sleep, and all of those people in their own beds right now that were sane enough to stay away from this torturous experience. You might think that watching six films back to back would really test your endurance, but think back to this in the midst of that fourth film and it's really not. When it's programmed right, the films fall like dominos and you step out into the fresh silent air of a new morning on a bit of a high, ready for some breakfast and then some sleep. There's also a sense of camaraderie between those most hardcore of audience members who stick it out in the cold dark hours while those around us stop nodding off long enough to leave in a state of delirium. I may not know your name, dude two rows behind me with the shirt that says "mono," but we are still brothers. Anyone that's been to an all-night movie marathon knows about that which I write. It's a real experience that helps some movies and hurts others. A good example would be the infamous screening of R. Kelly's Trapped in the Closet parts 1-4 as a precursor to the final film in Quentin Tarantino's all-night '80s horror movie marathon as part of QT6 (full coverage here). It must sound like such a non-event to those that weren't there but for those that were... we know, man. We know. And so this particular addiction to which I was first exposed back in July and got hooked on at QT6 now drew me to Tim League's latest answer to the Alamo Drafthouse's Thanksgiving Weekend blues: The first annual Turkeython. Turkeython '05 consisted of four gems of cinema plucked for their unfortunate "turkey" status. While it may have been billed as bad movies all night, Alamo regulars know better than to think that these films were actually looked down upon. Sure enough, one of the first things that Tim mentioned in his introduction was that, although these movies aren't winning awards or anything, they are certainly beloved here at the Drafthouse and he would defend the honor of any one of these so, for the sake of all that is holy, don't talk at the screen! They then proceeded to show their latest "don't talk or we'll take your a$$ out" spot, this time taken from Gremlins where a bunch of loud annoying little green late-night snackers get blown up en masse. Point taken. Trailers: -Theater of Blood ("They died spectacularly...grotesquely...horribly") -The Town That Dreaded Sundown (Ben Johnson vs. the Phantom Killer) -Carnival of Blood ("Begins where Hitchcock stopped!") -Curse of the Headless Horseman ("Rated PG" narrated over a shot of a decapitated head) The first film of the night might also be the most fitting. It seems to take the whole turkey thing to extremes. It's a story about a muscle-bound do-gooder who gets hooked on the pot and then, after eating scientifically-tampered turkey, wakes up with the head of a giant bird, proceeding to go completely homicidally insane... but not before having his way with several women turkey-style. The movie, of course is Blood Freak Aside from being a morality tale about the dangers of drug abuse and scientific turkey tampering, Blood Freak is also a study in how all actors are not created equal. They sure do make em special down there in rural Florida, as Errol Morris' Vernon, Florida attests, and Blood Freak proves a solid example of how Georgia and Tennessee don't hold a candle to the massive backwoods lawn art trailer trash that Florida spawns in its sticky humid swamps and lowlands. This is a phenomenally sweaty movie, filled with hot girls who can't act, old codger farmers who can't act, and good ol' boy hippies who... can't really act. My overriding thought as I watched star/producer/co-writer/director Steve Hawkes stumble around blindly in his giant turkey-head appliance was that it must be sweltering in there. The guy deserves some sort of credit just for baking his brains in a giant artificial turkey, even if his muscle-bound arm is weird and scabby. At least I think it was a turkey. It really didn't look like one, but three distinct gobble sounds repeated on the sound track over and over whenever he was on screen so I assume it was. The esteemed filmmakers also only had one or two different screams recorded, repeating each at least eight times one after the other whenever someone was supposed to die by turkey-headed mayhem. Frenzied laughter caught hold in the theater when this economic "technique" became painfully evident. I think it peaked around x5 or x6 but by x9 it was pretty over. Since this was a holiday event, there should really be some learning involved. Things I learned from Blood Freak -even low-budget exploitation films from the '70s have lame "it was all a dream" resolutions. -If a scientist pays you to eat something, don't do it. -if you wake up on a table saw with your leg being cut off, try to scream the exact same way each time. It's better that way.
11.25.05	CQ	Roman Coppola	This is a movie about other movies. There's liberal influence from Danger: Diabolik here (John Phillip Law is even in it) along with tons and tons of other movies... it's a fun little piece that's pretty short but a good time with cool actors and great production design and photography.. cool little movie indeed
11.25.05	Saw II	Barren Lynn Bousman	They owed me after the 50 Cent movie so I snuck into this. This is actually the first ever movie that I've snuck into I think... I usually don't mind paying for movies... you know, support the industry and all that... but I knew this was gonna be bad and had someone else there also willing to sneak in so I knew at least I wouldn't get caught alone. What was actually funny was that this other person brought out his laptop to show me some on-set pics while we waited for the movie to start and a manager came up and told him they weren't allowed in the theater and we were all holding up the start of the movie while he shut his computer off and stowed it comfortably under his seat. We were cool as ice though... and no check for ticket stubs ensued. whew! The movie's pretty bad... not as bad as Get Rich or Die Tryin but still pretty bad. The poster is cooler than the movie. I kind of figured out the "twist" though because it gets more and more obvious as the movie goes on... Donnie Wahlberg does an un-good job in this... now I think I need to watch Band of Brothers again to put him back in my good book.
11.25.05	Get Rich or Die Tryin	Jim Sheridan	this movie is as bad as everyone says it is. This is what happens when you really want to spend the day lazing around a movie theater but have already seen everything good out.
11.24.05	The Ipcress File	Sidney J. Furie	great. now i have to see all the Harry Palmer movies. Very cool British spy movie.
11.23.05	L.A. Confidential	Curtis Hanson	So instead of waiting in the uber-long line for weird wednesday, I went home and set out to sit down with some soda and doritos and watch South Park. Oops, no South Park on the DVR. So since I was all ready with nothing to watch, I pulled this off my shelf and popped it in. I think I have finally forgiven Brian Helgeland for his work on this movie. Yeah it all ties up really tidy and yeah Bud White lives after being shot like 6 times in the chest and once in the face and yeah Rolo Tomasi is a complete Hollywood load of crap and yeah they took the sympathetically tragic character of Buzz Meeks and turned him into a chauffer/rotting corpse BUT, the real marvel of this movie is that the plot makes sense and there are no holes. Nobody has divine epiphanies of information, nobody blows up the droid control ship by accident or travels back in time to save a loved one or anything like that. We get to see each character learn every little thing and also, especially with repeat viewings, watch the bad guys working hard to stay unseen. It's really like a swiss clock or whatever... something very intricate that's fun to look at all the tiny little gears and mechanisms doing their thing. Plus you get cool 50s LA stuff and a nice breezy Jerry Goldsmith score. So yeah... maybe I need to re-read Ellroy's LA Quartet and get mad at this movie all over again but for right now, it's a pretty great movie in my mind.
11.23.05	Voodoo Rhythm: The Gospel of Primitive Rock n Roll	Marc A. Littler	A documentary about Hamburg-based small primitive music label Voodoo Rhythm and the eclectic line-up of musicians they have signed. This show also had Voodoo Rhythm act John Schooley in the house to give a 20-minute performance of his one-man band rock n roll. The music was decent for a one man band, sort of working within those limitations and managing to excel just because of the raw emotion behind it... which turned out to be the point of the whole documentary and every band on the label. There are some funny interviews and some really interesting music but the documentary itself is not very good. It's about 40 minutes too long and paced very poorly. By the last few bands I was actively hoping for it to end, then afterward I was so exhausted/emptied of patience that I didn't feel like putting up with the huge crowd for weird wendesday and left. However, I really think it would be cool to have Voodoo Rhythm bands do a soundtrack for some small indie movie or something. The different bands are so diverse but also share certain indefinable similarities that I bet it would really make a mark as film music, sort of like The Doors with Apocalypse Now or Neil Young with Dead Man. Very interesting though... I think Music Mondays are quickly eclipsing Weird Wednesdays as far as my excitement level is concerned and, looking at the new program calendar, there are some really great shows coming up that I can't wait to see. Go Music Mondays!
11.23.05	Bob le flambeur	Jean-Pierre Melville	I've had this from Netflix for a criminally long time. Like, I feel BAD at how long I've had this and haven't watched it. ESPECIALLY, after finally sitting down and watching it, it's a really really cool movie. It's a heist flick set in 50's Montmarte where a gambler tries to take down Deauville Casino. Of course dames ruin it all, but the ride is still very fun. Melville also had a personal thumb's up from QT when he was in town putting down French Policiers for not being as cool as Italian Crime film. Definitely need to check more from him out... and now I finally get to send this back. Good movie.
11.22.05	Meet The Fockers	Jay Roach	I've got two reportedly great movies sitting here on my netflix pile and yet I watched this. why? comfort food I guess.
11.22.05	Danger: Diabolik	Mario Bava	AKA Danger: Diabolik! AKA the movie that the Beastie Boys used for their Body Movin video AKA the coolest film ever made by a really cool director known for horror. Maybe it was the gorgeous new print, but for some reason instead of laughing at the uber-dated special effects and the general cheese factor of it all, I just sat there thinking this was an amazing movie. I SO want to live Diabolik's life now... I SO want his secret cavern lair, his underwater jetcraft, his circular bed that rotates around his entertainment center. I want John Phillip Law's cheek bones and I most definitely want his hot euro-babe and her entire wardrobe. This is like Barbarella meets the 60s Batman meets Italian style and fashion. IMDb says it was based on a comic strip. I totally buy that. I will also totally by the DVD.
11.21.05	Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire	Mike Newell	At Alamo South with a Hogwarts Feast. I was really curious about this one because it's the first adaptation of the longer books in the series. I mean it had to happen but my thoughts are pretty predictable. I think the movie was good but it felt a bit cursory and rushed (story-wise, not production). Characters like Snape and Sirius are hardly in this movie at all which is a shame because they both largely depend on this entry and the next for us as an audience to really be there for what happens. The movie also skips over scenes I kinda wanted to see. There surely must have been more elegant ways to segue through the dragon fights or the Quidditch World Cup. I hate hearing lines of dialogue explaining what happened that we didn't get to see I really think that anyone who watches this fourth Harry Potter movie would be OK with a 3.5 or even 4 hour movie... it's not like any of us are on the fence about it... like gee, i loved the first three but... John Williams isn't doing the music for this one so I am not seeing it unless it's only 2 hours 45 minutes instead of 3. But anyway, I think it still works as a film... but I also think that from here on out the books become more and more set-up for the last one so the movies will have to work a bit harder to stand on their own, especially with twice as much source material to cut out than the previous three. I think the first two movies translated the vibe of Harry Potter books perfectly, the third one went above and beyond, and this one falls just a bit short. The effects may be better and their hair may be a bit longer but it feels scissored a bit... like they let the vibe slip through their fingers while trying to hold onto the plot. Still good though, don't get me wrong. I am just starting to think that Azkaban is pretty hard to beat.
11.21.05	The Dentist	Brian Yuzna	Trashy, but who's not afraid of their dentist? Like you walk in one day and he's secretly got loony and gonna strap you down and drill all your teeth to dust... so in that regard this movie works.
11.19.05	Poltergeist	Tobe Hooper	This was third. LOVE IT!
11.19.05	Re-Animator	Stuart Gordon	this was second. Love It!
11.19.05	Cabin Fever	Eli Roth	had a triple feature of horror. this was first. love it!
11.18.05	Sideways	Alexander Payne	watched this one... again... or at least most of it.
11.18.05	Walk the Line	James Mangold	It's got a cool poster - the art one with the guitar on Cash's back - but you know... biopics and me don't really get along. The songs are good and it's cool to see/hear the actors perform them in a weird way (although they're not as good as the real thing of course) but if you take away the singing and fame you are left with another story about a drug addict. So really the only enjoyment I get is driven from biographical curiosity... but you're never quite sure what's real and what's tampered with to suit cinematic purposes. This will probably get a lot of acclaim and maybe some nominations but it's very similar to Ray... like the same exact movie made for Cash fans... Where is my James Brown movie!!?
11.17.05	The Notebook	Nick Cassavetes	I don't want to talk about it...
11.16.05	The Single Girls	Ferd Sebastian, Beverly Sebastian	Back again for another Weird Wednesday. This week it's Ferd and Bev Sebastian's Single Girls: a slasher movie about a weekend free lifestyle retreat filled with plenty of hot ladies in hot outfits and bad 70s d-list leading men. Unfortunately, the print was pretty mangled with tons of little cuts. In fact the actual climax of the movie was cut. At least I think it was cut. The movie could just be that crappy but I don't think so... So aside from that, it was OK. The main girl, Claudia Jennings is very hot, which is cool. I really like Ferd's name though. Maybe it's short for Ferdinand or maybe his parents were illiterate and mispelled Fred. who knows!
11.16.05	The Conformist	Bernardo Bertolucci	FINALLY got to see this. This was on my movies-to-see list when i very very first made it up years and years ago... nd I couldn't find it on VHS and it wasn't out on DVD and eventually I kind of forgot about it until a local arthouse theater started showing it so not only do I finally get to cross it off my list but I got to see it in a theater! That's cool because, after it was on my list, they used clips of it for this documentary on cinematography called Visions of Light. Vittorio Storaro's photography is indeed very striking and wonderful to see projected on film. The story is... I am still a bit confused but whatever, at least I got to see it. oh, there are two devestatingly gorgeous women in this... scorching.
11.15.05	I Walk the Line	John Frankenheimer	Not the new Johnny Cash biopic but the 1970 Gregory Peck movie where the titular song originated. Actually I'm not sure if the song was on some album beforehand or not but Johnny Cash did the music for this and that song seems to speak to the film pretty closely so... yeah. It's still pretty clear that the song is more famous than the movie, which is a story about a hick town sheriff falling for hot jail bait and looking the other way as her family cooks up moonshine. Tuesday Weld, hot off of Pretty Poison fills the role of underage sexpot quite well, luring icon of decency Greg Peck into a lurid affair, ultimately driving him crazy with lust. The movie... is not that great but there are some really gorgeous Frankenheimer compositions in here and I think this is the trashiest drive-in-iest movie ever to use split diopters and deep focus. I really don't know if it was supposed to be a throw-away drive-in movie or not with talent like Frankenheimer, Peck, and writer Alvin Sargent involved, but that's really how it ended up. The movie gets kinda crazy at the end and a baling hook comes out of nowhere to inflict some damage. Pretty interesting experience to say the least. It's also funny to note that the theater was almost empty after being nearly full for Oldboy and pre-sold out the previous night for a collection of Johnny Cash TV appearances and music performances.
11.15.05	Oldboy	Chan-wook Park	I think Oldboy is just going to be a movie that i will always see if it's playing somewhere. Seeing it again, I liked it even more (although a sudden case of GID made me miss the dental torture and most of the hallway fight scene which is a shame (mental note: although the downtown Alamo may be the coolest theater in the world, the bathroom is most definitely not)). I am now seriously considering getting a region-free player so i can order the super mega phatty 3-disc edition of this movie out on Asian DVD. if anyone reads this ever and you haven't seen this movie, rent it today. It's also out on region one dvd so there is zero excuse.
11.12.05	The Comedians of Comedy	Michael Blieden	Caught this as a midnight show at the Alamo Village (had the first bad food tonight... soggy fries and a burnt chicken club. strange). It's a documentary following Patton Oswalt and his equally funny friends through a 6-day west coast tour playing comedy in rock clubs. It's very funny... I'd say funnier than The Aristocrats... and as a bonus Comedy Central is now doing a show following their 12-day East Coast tour which, although bleeped and with commercials, is also very funny. netflix actually produced the documentary so you should rent it and watch it to laugh a lot. Very funny stuff.
11.10.05	Piranha	Joe Dante	PIRANHA!!! What guy didn't have some morbid fascination with these little critters as a boy? I mean, they're fish that eat and kill and a school of them can turn a cow into a skeleton in 8 seconds or whatever! Plus it's early Joe Dante, has a script from John Sayles, and features a few real heavyweights in bit roles: Kevin McCarthy (Invasion of the Body Snatchers) and Keenan Wynn (tons of stuff, including the voice of the Sergeant in that sex ed cartoon Disney made where syphilis and gonorrhea were army troops undergoing a briefing... anyone that's seen it knows what I mean)... unfortunately, a lot of scenes are straight Jaws knock-offs and the piranha deaths are always quick-cut snippets of fish shaking around next to skin and blood... I guess there's not really any better way to do it, especially on a budget, but there's one head-on shot of a piranha opening up for dinner that's cool... and come on, it's PIRANHA! The woman who plays the maid in Will and Grace got it via piranhas in a bathtub in this other awesome movie called Devil Times Five. Well worth checking out. So there you have it! Two nights of five movies each, 8 of which I'd never seen before. Looking back, all of them were good! OK maybe not all of them were good (Maniac, I'm looking at you), but I liked all of them, which is really cool! Overall this experience has been very fun... something I may well make a habit out of... but right now it's time for sleep.
11.10.05	On The Beach	Stanley Kramer	On The Beach is a story of a submarine captain and several others living in Melbourne, Australia waiting for the radioactive fallout from WWIII to reach them. I don't know if it's the first post-apocalyptic movie ever made but it's definitely the earliest that I've seen and also the best cast. Gregory Peck, Antohny Perkins, Fred Astaire (not dancing), and Ava Gardner are all in this, as is the stunningly beautiful Donna Anderson (who aside from this and Inherit the Wind never really did much acting of note)... all playing up this really A-list picture that just happens to be about the death of the human race. It's understandable, 1959 being the heart of nuclear fear, that the film is populated with preachy little monologues about humanity pushing the button and how we're all stupid to create such weapons we must never use... but just think about the idea of it... sitting down there in Australia, the last ones left, just waiting for the cloud. A glimmer of hope appears - maybe the rainfall and weather of nuclear winter has slowed or even stopped the drift of radioactive death. Let's send a submarine on a mission to test the waters and see how it looks. There's also a great mystery in this movie in the form of random morse code blips coming from San Diego. It's unintelligible but how does San Diego have power? Who's making these random blips? Will humanity carry on and survive or is all lost? It's a very gripping movie with wonderful performances and gorgeous black and white photography. Aside from some non-existent regional accents from the Hollywood stars, it's actually quite realistic in tone. I hadn't seen this in a long time and was glad to find that it's still as great as I remember. Now it's late and I should probably go to bed. There's only one movie left though! And I know it's just not going to be the same if i go to bed and watch it tomorrow during the day.
11.10.05	Hedwig and the Angry Inch	John Cameron Mitchell	What do you follow up Hitchcock and camp sci-fi with? Transgender Rock Opera of course! I guess that's really a genre with only two entries but still... why do the good ones have to be transgender? I always have to check my masculinity at the door, especially with Hedwig because, in the right outfit, John Cameron Mitchell looks too much like a girl. I don't like it. at least he didn't shave his pits. Speaking of... Michael Pitt really creeps me out. Everybody seems to like him but i totally don't. Ugh. This is also the second movie in my little marathon that the band Girls Against Boys has been a part of. Awesome! I have emerging patterns just like QT6 and FantasticFest! Maybe next year I should invite some friends over for the occasion of this site's anniversary and let other people in on the goodness that's going on right here right now. Of course then I'd have to put on more than my boxers to watch the movies... and worry about Pringles crumbs falling all over myself instead of being the kind of total slob that living alone lets you be. Nah, screw that. Anyway, I had a really good time with this movie, tranny guilt aside. The music was really good and it was actually constructed and directed very well. In particular i loved the shot of young Hedwig jumpin gon his bed and rocking out to music on American radio. That kid is awesome! Also, John Cameron Mitchell has a great "what the hell is going on here" look... I'd like to see him (not dressed in drag) playing a straight man (no pun intended... unless you laughed) to some goofball like Ferrell or someone like that so we can see him give disapproving looks all the time. He did a little spot for IFC where he's at a stop light and some crazy living-in-a-movie woman drives up next to him and he acts creeped out by her living-in-a-movie-ness... He was really good in that. So I'm winding down now... a quick trip for some late-night Wendy's and the penultimate film of the Blog/DVR fest is...
11.10.05	The Green Slime	Kinji Fukasaku	Next up is this Japanese sci-fi horror movie from the late 60s. I think this makes a good example of John Landis' reasoning for why movies suck nowadays. According to him, the big thing that happened in the late 70s was that a select group of directors somehow started making B-level movies with A-level budgets. The result is really a movie that you're not supposed to care much about but are sold the opposite because it cost so much to make. The premise of The Green Slime is that a meteor is heading toward Earth so a group of people have to go up there, land on the meteor, drill and place nuclear bombs on several locations, then blow it up before it can collide with Earth. Sound familiar? The difference is that this movie, with its low budget miniatures and crappy sets and B-grade actors, is good campy fun while Armageddon stretches out and becomes both bombastic action and sappy melodrama, spending the whole time going "look at how expensive this movie is... take us seriously!" The other core difference of course is that this movie covers that whole subject in about a half hour, then becomes the Japan-made man-in-suit sci-fi fun that you'd expect from the title. It's interesting to note that this was put out in the same year as 2001... it for some reason reminds me of a double feature VHS tape I once rented with Night of the Living Dead and Reefer Madness. The two movies can really not be much different but somehow they are lumped together, either because of genre or because of some CHS distributor high on wacky tobacky. So The Green Slime ended up being really a lot of fun. I saw some Alien in there, some Thing in there, some Blob of course (especially the awesome rock n roll theme song which plays at the beginning and end)... all mixed together with plenty of quasi-futuristic clothing and some yucky green goo which grows into one-eyed tentacled electro-shock monsters. Sweet! Next up is something completely different.
11.10.05	Family Plot	Alfred Hitchcock	To start off the second night in my All-DVR-Movies-Must-Go!!! Marathon, I chose Hitch's last movie, which I have never seen before. No one actually dies in this movie, which might be a Hitchcock first. Again, it's weird to see actors in a hitchcock movie that are still working today like William Devane and Ed Lauter. This movie is generally considered to be pretty weak in Hitch's ouvre... and yeah I mean compared to some of his others this is a pretty minor note in the symphony, but it still plays and still has a few fun moments so I don't think I could call it bad at all. Like Topaz, I think his post-Psycho work (with the exceptions of The Birds and Frenzy) are talked down because they start to pretty radically change up the formula that's worked for him for the past 20 years. I do think it's kinda true that he was like the last dinosaur toward the end and really lived a bit too long and the world had moved on without him... but you know... they're all still worth watching.
11.09.05	Madman	Joe Giannone	For the last movie of the night, what better choice could I make than Madman Marz, a movie I last saw at the end of Quentin's 80s horror all-nighter during his festival. Sure I'm nowhere near as delirious or altered now as I was then and I don't have the benefit of watching R. Kelly's Urban Opera beforehand but... hopefully after blazing through 4 movies tonight it will still be a fun capper. At the end of QT6, Alamo Drafthouse owner Tim League told all of us that liked this movie to see it again because we'll find that it actually really sucks. Was he right? Um... for the most part yeah. It does have its moments though. The whole first reel or so I think is actually pretty good. The movie starts with T.P. singing an ominous song around the campfire and it flashes on each of the characters, showing them later in the film when they're being terrorized by Marz for just a few frames. I think this is a cool way to set everything up and let the audience know what we're in for: a solid by-the-numbers slasher flick. There's also some incredibly cornball dialogue in addition to the T.P. belt buckle, the hot tub twirling waltz, and the philosophical rumination of the potential for evil in mankind that I may or may not have mentioned last time. Before Marz shows up and starts killing people, the movie is actually very entertaining for me. I have to say though, this movie has what has to be the fastest introduction-to-death of a character ever. Poor Dippy. He's seen coming out of a door with a bottle in his hand, then it cuts to him asleep in a chair and one of the girls waking him up to tell him the bottle's empty, then it cuts to him walking into a building, presumably to get another bottle, and opening a door to have Marz gash out his throat with his burly feral woodsman Madman claws. Dippy is in the movie then out of the movie in less than two minutes. What's funny is that Dippy has the most acting experience of anyone in this film! Actually it's a bit eerie... the main girl was in Dawn of the Dead before this then Creepshow right after this but those are the only movies she's acted in, the guy who plays T.P. was never in anything else, and it's largely the same for the rest of the cast. I wonder if there's some sort of Madman Marz curse that kept anybody that was in it from working ever again. Look it up on IMDb and you will be surprised at how little everyone involved has done. Even the director. This was the only movie he ever wrote or directed. Spooky. So it's late and half of the movies on my DVR are now officially watched. Be sure to check in tomorrow as I conclude this Two-Night event and watch five more movies of equal randomness!
11.09.05	Topaz	Alfred Hitchcock	One of Hitch's movies that I haven't seen yet, Topaz impressed me as being kind of a departure. It's a straight-up spy movie! Not only that, but it's a historical fiction spy movie! telling a story behind the scenes of the cuban missile crisis. It's also really long for a Hitchcock film, something like two hours fifteen minutes and imdb says that even that was cut down and there's more footage on the DVD. It's also nearing the end of Hitch's life/career so it's feeling less and less like the classic Hitch movie from the 40s and 50s that I tend to associate with him. So I guess there are lots of things that kind of stand out with this film... Frederick Stafford's French accent comes and goes throughout the course of the film, and it's really odd to see John Vernon play Cuban in a Hitchcock film... I mean, he was in I'm Gonna Get You Sucka... and worked with Hitchcock. How is that possible? Anyway, maybe it's just because it was the last real spy film that I've seen but i was reminded of The Venetian Affair more than once while watching this. I guess, now that I think about it, spy stuff has always been close to Hitch's forte but it's usually just a wrapper for sequences that build suspense. Hitchcock films usually work like timepieces, filled with intricate gears and mechanisms all working together to create tension, but this movie is more like a Clancy novel without all the military detail or maybe even a Bond movie without the arrogance or novelty. It's more about political intrigue and plot than finding yourself holding your breath. That doesn't make it bad of course... I personally think those scenes kind of fractured Torn Curtain, which became less about a complete movie and more about the one death scene in particular. So cool, an interesting espionage flick to take me into the middle of the night.
11.09.05	Maniac	William Lustig	A seminal slasher movie from 1980, Maniac goes inside the mind of a madman, letting us watch as he kills attractive women, scalps them, and nails their hair to mannequins for company. Star/writer Joe Spinell is very creepy in a NYC greaseball kind of way... like if Dennis Franz was a bit taller and liked to kill... This movie really has everything you can hope for in a 80s horror movie: Tom Savini effects, hot skinny girls in tight bad fashions, and lots of mindless killing. Unfortunately you also have to put up with near-constant "inner monologue" from the maniac, which is basically just whimpering and groaning. There are a few good gags here though, especially the end and Tom Savini's small part as Disco Boy getting his head blown up via shotgun blast through the windshield of his car. William Lustig, who would go on to do the Maniac Cop series (i guess he likes that name) has since started up Blue Underground... supplying freaks and mentally unbalanced with the movies we love on DVD since 2002. right on! My self-imposed marathon continues after a short break to watch South Park.
11.09.05	The Bellboy	Jerry Lewis	Next up is the celebrated Jerry Lewis movie The Bellboy. Although I haven't seen a lot of his work, I never really liked him enough to look into him more. I will say that my respect for him and his body of work grew like 5 or 10 times after reading the extended interview with him in Bogdanovich's book Who The Hell's In It. Take this movie for instance, which I only really watched because Tarantino mentioned it in Four Rooms. He wrote it, produced it, directed it, and starred in it (both as himself and as Stanley the titular bellboy) all while also doing his nightly act at the hotel where this movie takes place. Not only that, but he did the entire thing in just a few months because he felt the movie he'd just finished with Frank Tashlin should come out in the winter instead of the summer and Paramount needed a Jerry Lewis movie to fill the slot. Pretty crazy but I guess Classics sometimes come from those kinds of circumstances. Lewis invented video assist too so... a certain amount of respect has to be given just for that. The movie really has no story or plotline of any kind. It's very close to sketch comedy almost, with just one gag after another and no real continuity between them. Some of them are funnier than others and yes I did chuckle at a few (most notable the bit he does with the ringing bank of phones). I still am not A-#1 Jerry Lewis Superfan but I can see why fans really love this movie.
11.09.05	Series 7	Daniel Minahan	Today is the 1-year anniversary of starting this site. I've seen 462 movies in the past year... a little over 1.25 movies a day! That's a little scary but also pretty awesome. I guess full-on scary would be a sustained 2 movie a day habit, or even a 3 movie a day habit. If you ever see a yearly total of over 1000 on here, send me an email and tell me to go outside. So I want to sort of commemorate the occasion of actually sticking with something that I do almost every day for a year and I also have 10 movies on my DVR that need watching... my aim is to tackle a good 4-5 of them tonight. I am giving up Weird Wednesdays this week to have my own little mini-marathon of completely random movies that have been collecting digital dust on the hard drive. First up was an hour-long bit TCM ran on Alfred Hitchcock, intercutting scenes from his most famous movies with interview footage where he tells of his methods of making good suspense. There wasn't much new here that I hadn't already seen in other similar programs but hearing Hitch talk is always entertaining and seeing the selected clips makes me want to revisit some of his movies (or catch up on the few that I haven't yet seen (hint hint)). Next was Series 7 (AKA The Contenders), a movie that fell through the cracks for me because I always got the title mixed up with Session 9: a surprisingly creepy no-budget indie movie. This one is a satire of reality television that sort of blends Survivor and The Real World with The Running Man and Battle Royale. Five people are drawn by lottery and given guns then forced to hunt each other down until only one remains, who then gets to move on to the next season. The movie's constructed like a marathon of television episodes, much like The Real World does, unwillingly sapping you in for an entire Saturday. So there's lots of nice touches that remind us of the TV nature of it all. It's a fun little movie... the shame is that it reminds me of better movies (OK, this is maybe better than the movie version of The Running Man, but the book kicks its ass)... Arrested Development's Will Arnett has a small part though, so rock on.
11.08.05	Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance	Chan-wook Park	AFS screened this so I got to see it at the Alamo for free(!). I guess this is out on DVD now but it must've just come out because when I added JSA to my queue it wasn't available. Anyway, this is the first part of Park's Vengeance trilogy (continuing with Oldboy and ending with his new Sympathy for Lady Vengeance) that's not really a directly-connected trilogy by anything more than thematic similarity. No same characters or anything like that. This movie is a pretty evident bridge between JSA and Oldboy. It's brutal and un-forgiving like Oldboy is but it feels constrained and a bit too long like JSA. It's still really good though.... REALLY good, and manages to mess with your allegiances as far as which characters you are sympathetic towards and which you aren't (just like both). The main character is also a deaf mute, which makes things interesting. The story is a little like that fable/Tales from the Crypt episode where a guy is forced to kill someone and take his money to afford an operation for his sick sister/mother/whatever just to find out that the only doctor skilled enough to perform the operation was the guy he just killed... but this is actually a bit more twisted than that and also telescopes outward to what would happen to the guy after he has to watch his mother die... and what would happen to the doctor's wife after he's been murdered. OK I am stretching the analogy a little bit thin and also mixing between what actually happens in the movie and what kinda sorta happens. I'm just very impressed is all... So I'm looking forward to seeing Oldboy again next week... This was really really good.
11.08.05	Zombie Death House	John Saxon	John Saxon directed this. It really doesn't live up to it's name. Some dude gets sent to prison where a CIA dude tests out new drugs that turn people into zombies. It's really pretty slow and uninteresting. I could say that the budget (or lack thereof) is at fault but it doesn't make the movie any better. There's a Dead Kennedys song at the end credits though... so that's cool
11.07.05	The T.A.M.I. Show	Steve Binder	An ultra-rare 16mm print shown for a buck at the Alamo's Music Mondays, The Teenage Awards Music International show is a mother of a 1965 pop music concert film. It's like a whole show of those old Ed Sullivan musical performances strung together with hosts Jan and Dean. The print was awash in the high pitch white noise of screaming teenaged girls but with a line-up of Chuck Berry, Gerry and the Pacemakers, The Dakotas, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson and The Miracles, The Supremes, The Beach Boys, The Barbarians, Lesley Gore, James Brown, and the Rolling Stones coming at you with absolutely no breaks, I can kind of see how kids went nutso back then and just screaming for two straight hours. Aside from the image and sound quality issues, the film is a really great document of rock n roll and pop music in the mid-sixties. It's funny though, everybody is still feeling very glossy and radio-friendly, even the Stones playing it pretty straight, looking more like something out of the 50s instead of just a few years away from Woodstock and Altamont, but the second James Brown takes the stage we're in another freakin world. He is so in his own league in this movie, doing it all. He's down on his knees a good half dozen times, he's got his backup singers throwing the robe over his shoulders, he's screaming his heart out a good 2 feet from the mic and it's still picking it up, then they launch into night train and it's like the whole stage explodes. I'm watching and thinking "Screw Ray Charles, man... somebody needs to make the James Brown movie." Not only does he steal the entire show but he was also the only performer to get the Alamo audience to clap. After every song. After him, The Stones just can't compare. Crazy. So yeah, I consider it a treat to get to see this movie... it actually reminded me a lot of That Thing You Do! with how those kinds of shows were put on back then and also how a lot of the bands actually performed. Gerry from The Pacemakers had his guitar strapped way high up on his chest and played it like a shotgun and The Miracles backing up Smokey Robinson had all sorts of choreographed stage show stuff going on in addition to singing... I mean not everything's changed nowadays depending on who you see and where, but it was cool to see it back then when a lot was different. There's a shot at the end of Chuck Berry clearly staring into the cleavage of a well-endowed dancer that's been gyrating and vibrating all during the show. I love that dance... that weird surfer/rock n roll dance from the early-60s that looks like you're having an epilleptic fit set to the beat of the music or something. I don't know how some of those girls kept up that pace for the whole show... there definitely needs to be more go-go girls at shows today. definitely.
11.07.05	Joint Security Area	Chan-wook Park	rented this in anticipation of AFS screening Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance tomorrow and Oldboy next week. This was very different from what I expected but still pretty good. I think I'd probably get a lot more out of it on a second viewing but not because there's a twist or anything like that. It actually reminded me a lot of the Travolta movie Basic that came out a few years ago. I've always been a little curious in just how the North/South Korean DMZ works so seeing the location was interesting for me, and I also think it's cool because they don't have the benefit of history to rely on. The people who made this have no clue what North Korean soldiers are like or any of that... it'd be like telling the story of Berlin when the wall was still up, so I think it gets extra points for that... pretty cool movie.
11.03.05	Capote	Bennett Miller	It's good. No big surprise or anything... Hoffman's great, everyone's really good. it's well done and gripping and moving blah blah blah. I really liked it, no problems with it right now.
11.03.05	Slaughter Hotel	Fernando Di Leo	Woo another weird Wednesday, this time from QTfest favorite Fernando Di Leo. This movie is pure unadulterated eurotrash... hot women, lusty sex scenes, and bloody violence that makes absolutely no sense. Aside from the ungodly-hot Rosalba Neri as the nymphomaniac whose lust for her brother causes her to want to make it with all men (she wears an amazing outfit too... so hot... unbelievably hot), Klaus Kinski is what makes this movie. Beforehand Lars said that in reading Kinski's autobiography, he learned that the dude would take pretty much any job if it meant he could lay a hot chick. With that in mind, every second Kinski is on screen he's seen leering at some actress or completely uninterested in whatever part he's playing in whichever movie he's in. His long blonde hair which looks like a bad wig but I guess is real is definitely more important to him than any sort of acting task as he constantly brushes a lock or two off his bulbous forehead or straightens it out while playing scenes. The movie makes so little sense that any sort of plot summary just wouldn't work. I'd rather just remember this for the ultra-hot euro-babe Rosalbe Neri and another classic Kinski performance. Oh yeah, I'd heard from a friend beforehand that this movie has some extreme stretch marks in it and indeed it does, embedded deep in the movie during like a 20 minute lesbian nurse sequence which includes bathing, African tribal dance, making out, and a crowwbow bolt through the neck. awesome.
11.02.05	Evenhand	Joseph Pierson	I rented this because Mike DOughty did some songs on it. So, since I knew absolutely nothing about the movie, it was kind of a pleasant surprise to actually have it be decent. It's about a couple cops in a small Texas town. Yeah it's sort of got the Training Day vibe a little but there's more heart here... it's not something super special, but it's a nice little indie movie (with good music)
11.02.05	Dallas 362	Scott Caan	Scott Caan's little indie movie about a pair of loser friends growing apart. A lot of their scenes together make them seem very... gay. It was a decent movie though...wasn't horrible or anything and it could've been a lot worse for sure... Jeff Goldblum's performance was pretty awesome, and seeing Kelly Lynch's nipple again is always nice. Some of it is a bit hokey though, but i shouldn't talk because you don't see me writing/directing/producing/starring in a movie.
11.01.05	Jarhead	Sam Mendes	Mendes does the Gulf War. Based on a non-fiction book... it's pretty tough. I guess I'll just split it up into what I liked and what I didnt. Liked: the movie is very aware of other war movies... even showing a scene from Apocalypse Now inside the film... so certain scenes that pretty much recreate Full Metal Jacket are intended I guess. I got a good sense that this was a movie made on top of all previous movies though... the whole thing plays on those expectations. In one scene a gung-ho soldier breaks formation to go hop, skip, and jumping out into a desert field. I am just waiting for him to get blown up by a mine and the film does everything it can to make me think that too... but then he doesn't. Didn't Like: The problem is that nothing happens. The whole movie plays on war movie conventions and expectations then turns all of them on their head. I think that's a really deliberate move that Mendes makes (because he makes it a lot), so I guess the film succeeds in that regard but what I'm left with is a movie where nothing dramatic really happens. It's all just a huge anti-climax. Again, I don't think this is the film's fault per se, I think this is the very message of the film , but it doesn't make me like it any more. Liked: The few new things brought to the genre were pretty good. The sense of waiting, the paranoia surrounding your loved ones at home and the procedural stuff like hydrating and readiness exercises were interesting to me and all shown very well. Didn't Like: Some of Thomas Newman's score felt really out of place to me here. With the period source music and deeper subliminal "tense" music going on in most of the film, whenever Newman's trademark plucked strings and light airy Six Feet Under/American Beauty stuff comes in it sounds completely out of place to me. I think Mendes should try out some new talent. I thought Roger Deakins' photography was good but that was clearly a choice made out of neccessity. So in the end I'd say that it's a good movie that I just didn't care much for. I wasn't really engaged or emotionally involved with anyone, I was constantly deflated of any interest or tension thanks to one anti-climax after the other, and ultimately feel cheated out of a war movie (which I'm convinced were all goals set by Mendes, well maybe not the lack of emotional investment in the characters, but the other two for sure) I'm not sure what a repeat viewing of this will bring. I can definitely see it going either way. I could, knowing how everything turns out, relax into it and enjoy the minutiae and details of the movie and enjoy it a great bit. I could also just sit through it being bored because all of the tension created by setting up conventional war-movie situations is gone. I guess I will have to wait and see, then write about it here. p.s. even though I got to see this early and for free, it almost wasn't worth it. It was a packed theater that I had to drive like an hour to get to and the whole crowd was really obnoxious. Little tiny kids were let in to this R-rated war movie, everyone around me talked at different points, never long enough for me to have a solid excuse to shhh them, for a cumulative 40% of the movie, and all the radio station employees threw out t-shirts like foul balls at a baseball game. I guess I should never be surprised at how quickly we as a species degenerate into animals with the scent of free crap in the air, but it was pretty pitiful to see all these people knocking each other over in the aisles to get a free Jarhead t-shirt. One shirt, which was tied into a knot, somehow rocketted past the guy sitting down in front of me and bashed into the back of his seat... It ricocheted like 3 seats over and the guy had a look on his face like 'whoa. that would've hurt. a lot.' So all of that plus a dude a few rows up who said "i want my poster" like 18 times made for a theater experience that, frankly, I'm too snobbish to enjoy anymore. Give me Alamo or give me empty weekday matinee at Tinesltown I guee...
10.29.05	Cabin Boy	Adam Resnick	For the other "after hours" Texas Book Festival event, they brought Chris Elliot and Alan Zweibel out for a signing, Q&A, and screening of Cabin Boy. The guy who ran the Q&A, Lowell Bartholomee, seemed to take a page from last night's Q&A and got his introductory stuff out of the way as soon as possible, letting the guests speak as long as they wanted to and fielding plenty of questions from the audience. Chris talked at length about his days at SNL, Get A Life, Cabin Boy, skits he did at Late Night, writing his book, and even signed this girl's monkey. Alan Zweibel had tons of stories about writing in the early days of SNL (many of them also appear in that History of SNL book), creating It's The Garry Shandling Show with Shandling, working with Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm, and writing as well. After listing off Zweibel's accomplishments, the guy sitting next to me said "wow, I should've bought his book too!" There were many laughs for the Q&A and they both seemed very funny andquick on their feet. Neither of them stayed for the show but really, who could blame them. Elliot told the history of the film right before it started, basically saying Tim Burton was going to direct it at first (which is where all the mythical creatures and surrealism came in) but then decided to just produced it which brought the budget down from 40 million to like 7 million. The problem though was that they never changed the script to reflect the budget change, which is why we are left with the movie as it is. I haven't seen this movie in a long time. i rented it when it came out and remember thinking that Andy Richter had the funniest part when he showed how a harem girl dances. Watching it again though, not only am I surprised by some of the actors in here (Russ Tamblyn as a half man/half shark, Melora Walters in a red swimsuit looking hot as well as a bit part by none other than Alfred Molina), but I was also surprised at hownot a complete mess it is. Sure, it's all in a water tank and the miniature shots are so obvious that having the giant play around with them like G.I. Joes somehow comes as no surprise, but Elliot's foppish Fancy Lad is pretty hilarious and the salty sailors are like a rogue's gallery of cool character actors from the 90s. I mean I'm not totally in love with this movie or anything, but I had a good time in the theater and didn't check my watch once. So rack up another awesome Alamo event. Jealous??
10.28.05	Panic Room	David Fincher	I wanted to check this out again after watching the exhaustive special features on the 3-disc set. I still have some pretty major problems with the script but it's really fascinating to watch the special features break down shots that don't even look like effects shots. Together with Alien 3, Fincher's bad movies still somehow remain interesting.
10.28.05	The Good, The Bad and The Ugly	Sergio Leone	Finally back at the Alamo... as part of the Texas Book Festival going on this weekend, they managed to get Eli Wallach to the theter to sign some stuff then do a Q&A before watching The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. How cool is that!? Harry mentioned that this may be the coolest special guest that the Alamo has had to date... they've had some cool ones but never with the history and mainstream legendary status as Eli... pretty much the only thing that could top it was getting ol' Clint himself down here... or maybe a reunion with Clint, Eli, and the dug-up corpse of Lee Van Cleef. As it was, there was only Eli tonight and tons of people stood in line to get stuff signed by him before the movie. Some asshat UT film professor condusted a short Q&A before the movie. He spent all this time talking about crap that ultimately didn't matter. When Wallach got a chance to talk, it was really great. He had funny stories and vivid memories and recounted some of his experiences with this film and one or two about the Magnificent Seven as well. Unfortunately, he was cut off several times by the conductor and even had a moment of 'shouldn't we take questions from the audience?' before being shuffled off to start the movie. Personally, this made me mad. If he wants to keep talking, let him keep talking! A lot of people in the audience left after the meal anyway because they were too pansy to stay for all three hours and they weren't using the theater for anything after it that night either so who cares if the movie starts late. We're there to see Eli... half of us have this print on DVD already and brought it in to get it signed! Oh well... At least we got to hear a little bit, and for those first 30 or 40 of us who were lucky enough to buy a book before they ran out (gee, a book signing connected with the Texas Book Festival... you'd think maybe bringing more than 40 books to a sold-out event would be wise?) have a lot of his anecdotes down on paper to read at our leisure. The movie was awesome to see on the big screen. We also got a spaghetti meal that was good until Quint spilled red wine all over me. Then it was sticky and smelly and stainy but still kinda good. Best Tiramisou I've ever had... even though I'm not really a fan of Tiramisou. Afterward a group of us hung out in the lobby and talked about the event. 4 lucky people snagged the "WANTED: ELI WALLACH" posters that they had up... bastards. Wine aside, it was a really fun night, another great Alamo event.
10.27.05	The Squid and the Whale	Noah Baumbach	Closing night: Sad at not seeing any more movies, happy to get bad to real life and better theaters. Tonight they scheduled the movie I was looking most forward to such that it would run over all the second shows. It's for the best, I suppose. I'd hate to go from a movie I liked as much as The Squid and the Whale to some flick that sucks and have that be my final AFF experience. Best to just leave it with this: The Squid and the Whale is about a family undergoing divorce in mid-80s NYC. The focus of the story is Walter (played by Jesse Eisenberg who a lot of you might recognize from Cursed but was also in The Village and Roger Dodger), the teenaged son of the family, as he deals with adjusting to this new situation. Whereas Walter sides with his Father (Jeff Daniels in a really great role), younger brother Frank (played by Owen Kline, son of actors Phoebe Cates and Kevin Kline) sides more with their mother (another consistently good Laura Linney performance) although both children exhibit lashing-out behavior that we get to see in all its awkward uncomfortable glory. Filling out the cast is Anna Paquin as one of Daniels' grad students and perhaps a career-reviving performance by William Baldwin as a burnt-out tennis pro who calls everyone "Brother." Although the subject matter is painful and depressing, the movie has charm enough and finds humor in the minutiae to elevate it above something like Winter Passing into a realm closer to Royal Tenenbaums or Rushmore, perhaps no accident due to Baumbach's current proximity to Wes Anderson. I was personally a bit worried that this film would follow the highbrow intellectual ennui of Baumbach's previous films but maybe spending some time with Anderson and his surreal familial drama has helped him to move on, ultimately yeilding a much more mature film than both Mr. Jealousy or Kicking and Screaming (I haven't seen Highball). It's still populated in a world where the most biting insult is calling someone a "philistine" but the film never gets caught up in its wit or mistakes its importance as anything more than personification of these particular characters. There are great moments here of growing up, seeing your parents as humans with flaws, understanding mistakes as you make them, and several other staple coming-of-age ideas that sound overdone and boring but really aren't in this movie. I mean where else are you going to see semen smeared on school library books? Don't answer that. So yeah, this is a film worth seeing for sure. Afterward, actor Jeff Daniels came out for a very candid and rewarding Q&A: -First off, the actor seemed very comfortable up on stage and welcomed all questions openly and honestly. Hearing him talk about acting and his job gave me a feeling of maybe what it would be like to be there for an Inside the Actor's Studio session or something before Lipton became a self-parody and called people like Rob Schneider brilliant. It was pretty cool. -In the film, Daniels' character (Bernard) is very unsympathetic. He doesn't apologize for his actions and what's more he never changes. He is who he is right from the start and never strays as the film unfolds. When asked how he got to that place, Daniels explained that the main concept behind Bernard is that he doesn't know his life is unraveling. He sees himself completely as the victim and that he's already done everything he possibly can, and a general feeling of under-appreciation amped up to the Nth degree fuels his every action. Daniels explained that he lives in Michigan and has written around 10 plays for his theater company there so he had an inkling of what Bernard must feel, which is a severe lack of attention that he feels he deserves. So, Daniels said, he just doused that with gasoline and lit the match and he was there. -He said the part was very complex, difficult and challenging; very unsympathetic, painful and tragic yet also very funny. He met with writer/director Noah Baumbach after reading the script and Noah mentioned that he was the first person to see the humor there. Apparently, the part had gone out to a few different people who had turned it down because it's too unsympathetic, and was out to one actor who was taking his sweet time getting back with an answer when Daniels read the script. In essence, he "stole" the part by getting a lunch with Noah and really impressing upon him his willingness to do it. He mentioned that there was a small period of sizing up where he could feel Baumbach looking at him and thinking "can this Dumb and Dumber guy really pull this off?" but ultimately he won him over and got the part. -Daniels' main thought about Bernard is that he never gets a pet-the-dog scene. In most films, usually toward the end, you see the unsympathetic character sort of break down and acknowledge that he's a bastard and pet the dog, thereby gaining sympathy with the audience. Daniels mentioned that that's why several actors passed on the part and also why he was so interested in it (Daniels: "Cruise has that scene in every goddamn movie he does! He Does!!"), so for him it was really refreshing to play a guy who just is who he is. The conflict in the story is with Walter, not Bernard, so Bernard can just be Bernard and it's up to Walter to deal with that. -At that first lunch meeting, Baumbach told Daniels that the script was very autobiographical and that the part of Bernard is based on his father, famous critic Jonathan Baumbach, who is alive and well. Through the course of preparation, Daniels met Jonathan and could directly see where some of the "writerly" phrases like "an elegant block" and "the filet of the neighborhood" came from. He said that Jonathan would throw out a word here or there that was very unusual and get a little glint in his eye, sort of testing to see if Daniels would catch it or not: all mental fodder for character filed into Daniels' brain. Daniels also mentioned that Jonathan Baumbach's writing is indeed very dense. -The problem came afterward during rehearsal when he felt he was stuck in imitation/mimic mode with Noah's dad. He had to really talk it out with Noah and personalize it to get beyond the mimicry into the real spirit and soul of the character, which was the big challenge for him. That's where the whole underappreciation thing came in and he was off and running. Daniels said that this was the main difference between independant film and studio projects. Here it was just he and Noah sitting in a room hammering it out. There weren't 20 producers on cell phones all saying "it isn't working, it isn't working!" to one another in increasingly frantic tones. -They had two weeks of unpaid rehearsal before shooting, which Daniels was very grateful for. "You can make a lot of mistakes and not have to pay for them," he said with regards to the relatively cheap expense of rehearsal time versus the every-second-counts crunch of being on set with equipment rented and crew standing around. The movie was shot in 23 days (July/August 2004) in Brooklyn for 1.5 million dollars (Daniels: "Basically a buck and a half") which i personally find really amazing. -"I'm the guy they call when they have to deal with kids AND animals." Daniels describes working with children and young actors as a constant battle. The most important thing to do with them is to establish trust and get them comfortable enough to shed all the nervous energy of a child actor and arrive in a place where it's NAR: No Acting Required. Really the only way to do that is to spend enough time with them so they know that in the midst of all the craziness going on, they can look to you as a source of trust and safety. You do that, Daniels says, by just spending tons of time with them, talking about things they're interested in, and making that transition so smooth that by the time you get around to the script, they're treating it just like any other subject. He mentioned that Laura Linney did the same kind of thing with both Owen Kline and Jesse Eisenberg, which is how the four of them got close enough to act like a real family in two weeks. Because of this rehearsal time, they hit the ground running because all of the problems normally had during the first week of shooting had already come up and been dealt with. He advises any independant filmmaker out there to stress the importance of rehearsal. Treat it like the theater, which uses it religiously. -Someone asked about what kind of preparation 12 year-old Owen Kline went through to do all the uncomfortable and embarrassing stuff that he had to do in the film and Daniels answered pretty candidly by saying that he didn't really care. Acting is big time and if Owen couldn't do it they would get someone who could. He then said that both Phoebe and Kevin talked a lot with him in preparation and the big trick in acting at any age was to not judge the character. You may do things as that character that you wouldn't or couldn't ever do as a person but that's the character on the page and it's your job to bring him to life. He also said that it was important to supply them with positive-yet-vague reinforcement after the scene, like saying "hey I heard your scenes went well yesterday, good job! Want some ice cream?" Not speaking about it in specifics to bring up anything potentially embarrassing but letting him know that he was doing a good job. That said, when asked if it was weird that he had to kiss and feel up Anna Paquin, Daniels answered "yeah, that was weird. We never really talked about it." Daniels played Paquin's father in Fly Away Home so it probably was pretty... uncomfortable, but he told a great story about how when they were setting up for their first kiss, he looked out the window and asked Paquin if she saw any geese. She said no and he yelled "Rolling!" -Someone also asked about the circa-2004 cars on the streets in supposedly 1986 period. To that, Daniels said that they could only afford five period cars (one of which belonged to the 1st AD) so they tried to use them as much as they could but they just didn't have the money to keep those pesky SUVs out. -Another person asked if they shot the movie in sequence, to which Daniels explained the whole process of how, in most cases with films, they shoot by location since that's usually the most limiting aspect of scheduling a film production. Therefore, you shoot completely out of sequence just because you have to get everything at location A shot while you can then you move on and get everything at location B and so forth. He said that's where working in the theater really helps actors because you need to have a firm grasp of where your character is emotionally at every step of the picture so you can dial it up or down and have it come off as consistent in the finished piece. With plays, everything's sequential so it's easier to feel that scale incrementally. -For the record, Jeff Daniels does not play tennis, but considers himself an excellent high school athlete. Besides, he mentioned, Bernard wasn't supposed to be too good anyway so he thought he fit the role pretty well. it was Billy Baldwin that had to act like he knew what he was doing. -To end the night, someone asked Daniels if he's heard Noah's father's reaction to the film, since Noah mentioned that he never showed him the script. According to Daniels, Noah's dad Jonathan came up to his son after he first saw it and said "I'm very unsympathetic." Noah tried to comfort him a bit, saying stuff like "no... I don't think so. Some people even like you!" and Jonathan answered "No, I'm very unsympathetic. But I'm also very proud of you." With that, a huge "awwww" swept the crowd and they wrapped up our time with Jeff Daniels, The Squid and the Whale, and the 2005 Austin Film Festival, leading us out of the Paramount theater into the October night. Luckily for me, There's a pair of Alamo events scheduled for the weekend to keep the energy rolling. Back to the Alamo, back to my netflix, back to dreaming of Kier-la.
10.25.05	Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story	Michael Winterbottom	Down to the Paramount again to catch Michael Winterbottom's latest, I sat watching people come in at the last second (there's a regular crew of them that are prone to this; I'm recognizing faces at this point) and realized that I wasn't sure what this movie was about or if it'll be any good at all. Each summary I had read of this sounded like descriptions of completely different movies; the only hope I held onto was that Winterbottom, who's consistently impressed me in the past, would take me somewhere I'd like to go. Tristram Shandy is a movie based on the classic book The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne. The Quixotian deluge of tangents, digressions, and absurdist comedy is said to be unfilmable (as the film addresses). There are so many stories in its 720 pages that one could make virtually any genre of film from it, simultaneously remaining true and hacking to pieces the original material. So how does Winterbottom handle it? He takes a wonderfully meta approach, stepping in and out of the story at whim and letting the cast play versions of themselves as well as period characters, somehow managing to keep the whole thing from deliriously falling apart. This film feels like what Soderbergh's Full Frontal attempted to be. The films strength comes not only from the insanity and comedy of seeing behind the scenes of a film production but also in thematic ties between Steve Coogan as Shandy and Steve Coogan as himself. Each description I've read of this film is true and also completely different from every other. The film succeeds in bringing the novel's sense of pattern through the chaos translated to that of the film adaptation process itself (presumably. Not like I've read it or anything). As we watch this glorious mess splay out in every which way as the narrative literally stops and falls into the bottomless pit of documentary, observing the production undergo budgetary troubles, rewrites, media attention, etc., we begin to see similarities between the story they're trying to tell and the story we are being shown. Coogan argues that if only Walter Shandy could be seen holding his baby, all of his unsympathetic traits would be forgiven by the audience. Meanwhile, playing a caricaturized insecure actor protrayal of himself, Coogan constantly undermines his co-workers, flirts outside of his relationship with Kelly MacDonald, and drinks like a fish. yet, when we see him change his baby's diaper in a moment of quiet solitude, all is forgiven. The film remains coherent through all of this and ultimately returns to Shandy's world for a very fitting ending. Describing itself as a story about a cock and a bull, Tristram Shandy is really a masterfully told story and well worth seeing for any that have the opportunity.
10.25.05	Winter Passing	Adam Rapp	Ahh day six: that point where the novelty and excitement of attending a film festival gives way to marathon endurance and a growing realization that it will all soon be over. Tonight I started with Winter Passing starring Zooey Deschanel, Ed Harris, and Will Ferrell and playing at the IMAX theater here in Austin. Several rumors had spread concerning films shown in this theater for the festival. Word had it that they showed one movie here on DVD last night. I'm sure if theaters were alive this one would be crying alone in a corner somewhere. It hardly gets to show anything besides Texas history documentaries and Stomp! films as it is, so to finally have a chance to see something worthwhile here and have it be a DVD projected into the middle of the gigantic screen is a real shame. The troubles don't end there however. Winter Passing, either from a bad print, mis-configured settings, or inept projectionists, spent half its time sputtering out droning helicopter machine-gun jackhammer noise pollution at us in the audience, sometimes cutting out to mono or dropping to a whisper. It'd be one thing if this was a fantastic movie that excelled even with the crappy sound, but to be honest this movie needed all the help it could get and truly suffered because of the sub-par presentation. Winter Passing tells the story of Reese Holden (Zooey Deschanel), daughter to extremely successful and "important" writer parents, whose mom has just died. She's currently disconnected from her family, living in NYC acting in off-Broadway theater, doing coke with grungy guys in dingy bar bathrooms, indiscriminately sleeping with men, and slamming her hand in dresser drawers (presumably just to feel something because her life is so full of woe). A book agent approaches her with a generous offer for a series of love letters written between her parents long ago. Tempted by the money, she agrees to go back to her childhood home in Michigan and retrieve the letters for publication. Upon arrival, she finds her father Don (Ed Harris wearing a great hermit wig) living full-time in the garage, drinking himself into insanity and death. In the house, Will Ferrell and Amelia Warner play characters who nurse/aid Don with stuff like walking and eating. Will Ferrell plays Corbit, a guy who's a bit slow, either for medical reasons or just because it's funny, and Amelia Warner plays Shelly, a 23-year old hottie basically just like Katie Holmes' character in Wonder Boys except with medical problems. The movie has your typical acoustic-folk hand-held de-saturated soggy autumnal Michigan depressio indie feel, complete with bad haircuts, overcast skylines, and dreary mornings. Winter passing is a not-nearly-as-good Wonder Boys mixed with a Bizarro-world Elf; A Jesus' Son without the charm. Granted the film does have a few moments (most coming from Ferrell's innate comedic timing), it's not completely horrible, but I found it to dip into morose melancholia a bit too much. At least it didn't feel like a play.
10.24.05	Special Thanks to Roy London	Christopher Monger	The second show at the Arbor tonight was a documentary titled Special Thanks to Roy London: an acting coach who proved life-changing importance to the likes of Sharon Stone, Brad Pitt, Garry Shandling, Sherilyn Fenn, Jeff Goldblum, and many many others. There are only a few pictures of the man and just two interviews where he talks about acting, so the vast majority of this doc intercuts that footage with a host of actor interviews of those that worked with him, outlining his personal history, a little bit of his teachings, and ultimately his death at age 50. Just as I am not a fan of plays turned into movies, I am a sucker for movie-related documentaries. I just eat them up. The complete movie fanboy in me breaks through whenever I see celebrities talking about other celebrities. Who's friends with who, how such and such came about, what's responsible for what... it all fascinates me to no end. So it's no big surprise that I found this documentary very interesting. The movie starts with everyone trying to describe London's physical characteristics, sometimes agreeing but mostly directly contradicting one another. It seems no one saw Roy London quite the same way. We then see a picture of him, dispelling the myth that the film just built up, and we go on from there in typical documentary fashion. We start at the beginning of his career as a stage actor and sometime writer, then move on to him coming out to LA and starting teaching, then discussing what his lessons were and how he helped a whole wave of actresses break through in the early 90s, and ultimately end with his death. It's the type of movie that you will either be interested in or bored with right from the beginning, and your feelings probably won't change midway through. There are some faults with the construction of the film though. A full third of the movie concentrated on London's death from AIDS, orchestrating this huge tear-fest specifically designed to make you cry. Personally, I'm more interested in the man's life than his death and felt this segment went on way too long. There are a few gems though, such as Sharon Stone describing a scene where she was holding London in his arms and he seemingly died, causing great joy in Stone because she had been the one he dies with, only to feel mixed frustration and joy when he wakes up with a huge gasp and one last epiphany on the craft: "It's all about love." London condensed all scenes in every film down to being about love, power, death, or money... gradually dropping money then death as he went through life and finally power as he neared his own end. A lot of this stuff is very actor-y which I found fascinating because the actor's job is so odd. I can understand however that, put in the context of a greater worldview, such trivial things as an actor's motivation could be seen as minor and unimportant. The film makes no apologies for treating acting as one of the great arts though, so you either accept it and enjoy or deny it and leave. All in all, it's a decent movie uncovering another layer in the gigantic onion that is the movie business. I also think this is the first film I’ve seen at AFF this year with no Q&A afterward. It felt really weird to not have a page of notes for this movie.
10.24.05	The Sisters	Arthur Allan Seidelman	The Regal Arbor hosted me for a double feature on this chilly day five of the Austin Film Festival. Not having to scrounge for parking was nice but I have to tell you that sitting in comfortable seats was even nicer. Now if only I could chow down on more than popcorn and soda... Oh Alamo Drafthouse, how I am missing you. The first film I saw tonight was The Sisters, adapted from Richard Alferi's play which in turn was "suggested by" Chekov's Three Sisters: a classic of the theater produced innumerable times. To me, most movies based on plays are completely different animals than your average original screenplay or book adaptation. I feel drawn to mention, for the sake of anyone reading this, that my personal tastes shy away from most play-turned-films. I tend to find them tiresome with all that concentrated time spent in one place with characters talking to each other in ways that I never hear on the street. Granted, there are always exceptions to the rule, but if you've seen a few of these types of movies, I bet you know what I mean. The Sisters fits very much into that mold. Yes it has a solid cast and yes the performances are powerful but I found myself borderline detached throughout the movie. Many people in the audience really loved the formality of the dialogue but I found it to be stilted and unrealistic. Again, I believe this to be an issue of taste so please bear that in mind. At its core, The Sisters is about one family of siblings dealing with their paternal relationship each in a different way. Although it was originally entitled Three Sisters, there's also a brother as well as several significant others and co-workers rounding out the cast, each given their moment to shine with a meaty monologue in what seems like a sea of constant bickering and argument. Some time passes and the sisters sort of deal a tiny bit with their issues, most of the characters have their little arc, then the movie's over. It's a movie about confrontation, defense mechanisms, and verbal abuse. Maria Bello indulges in the latter with the most zeal, looking as hot as always while lashing out to anyone that will listen. Mary Stuart Masterson, Erika Christenson, Chris O'Donnell, Eric McCormack, Tony Goldwyn, Steven Culp, Alessandro Nivola, and Elizabeth Banks fill the other roles nicely, each with tons of dialogue filled with big words that I’m sure was a pain to memorize. Oh yeah, Rip Torn also has a part, although his accent is so vague I have no idea where he's supposed to be from. I have it down to either the south or Russia. I can't call the movie bad. It kept me at least interested, I didn't walk out and I fully recognize that everyone around me enjoyed it a lot more than I did, but you know... Sweet Smell of Success had just as formal dialogue in just as much abundance but it still managed to feel like a film. There's a term used a lot with play-turned-movies: "Open it up." In the theater, the more economical you can write in terms of setting and number of characters, the less hassle it is to actually produce the thing. I've seen very few films (Twelve Angry Men comes to mind) that manage to spend over an hour in one room and keep it interesting. Due to thematic and story limitations in this particular case, almost every conversation is forced to happen either in a faculty lounge or a hospital waiting room. I yearn to be free. Open it up. Anyway, enough of my griping about the film which I'm sure most people will praise. On to the Q&A! The director Arthur Allen Seidelman and actress Mary Stuart Masterson were both there to talk about the film and they mentioned lots of interested things: -One of the big changes that Richard Alferi made to Chekov's play was to change the settings from the characters being in a small town in the Russian landscape yearning to return to Moscow to the characters being in New York City yearning to return to humble Charleston. He felt that the change made the play more contemporary since most of us tend to move toward big cities when we grow into adulthood rather than away from them. Seidelman directed the play at the Pasadena Playhouse when it was first written. -The film was shot entirely in Eugene, Oregon in April and May of 2004 with a budget under 5 million. The cast had a week of rehearsal time which Masterson feels was very important in creating relationships with the other actors. -Masterson noted that in a play there's always an ensemble camaraderie with the other actors but not so for some films. In this case however, everyone got along great and there were no egos or anything of that nature. Everyone got paid the same (Seidelman: "Very little"). -When asked what techniques he used to translate the play into a film, Seidelman mentioned using the camera to communicate certain emotions visually while other characters were talking. He said that the camera always serves the actors, never the other way around. -Seidelman was asked how he prepared for the job and if he ever had to rein the actors in to which he responded "the reins should never fall from the director's hands." The job of each person working on a movie is to provide a piece of the puzzle and a director's job is to keep track of all those pieces and make sure he has a completed picture at the end, so it's essentially his job to "direct" the actors toward a desired shape and size that will fit with the rest of the puzzle. As for preparation goes, he said he went in every day with a plan but was free enough to change it. -Someone asked Masterson about her tendency to play strong female characters and where that came from. Masterson related a bit of information about her parents (both accomplished actors) and that her mother was a real activist for a while. Apparently they both did a Geritol commercial to pay a few bills and Masterson’s mom had to live with her dad saying "My wife, I think I'll keep her" at the end of it. Mostly however, Masterson believes that strength of character mostly comes from the writing and that she's just happened to be chosen for these strong characters. She added that she's played a few weaker characters as well. -Masterson also noted that a while back she did a stage production of Three Sisters playing the role of Irene (played by Erika Christensen in this film), and her overriding thought was that the play felt like each character was in her own world. This film, to her, felt like they were all in the same universe. -Talking about the language in the film, Seidelman said there were very few changes made to the script during production. He personally thinks that our cinema has become language-poor, and although the formality of the language may be unfamiliar, he loves it and thought it important to keep. Also, he noted, the sisters use language as weapons and shields; it's the words that they hide behind while cocooned in the womb-like comfort of the faculty lounge, so the language was important in that regard as well. With that, they had to clear the theater for the next show, which was already 20 minutes late.
10.23.05	Bloodrayne	Uwe Boll	There were plenty of seats at the Paramount to hold everyone that was looking forward to, mildly interested in, or morbidly curious about Uwe Boll's latest video-game movie Bloodrayne. Dr. Boll (PhD in literature, achieved while he was making unseccessful films in Germany) is infamous for his previous video game efforts Alone in the Dark and House of the Dead. I must confess to not seeing either of these, but when I was a part of a website that reviewed film trailers House of the Dead was unanimously voted Worst Trailer of the Year. From what I've heard from those who sat through the whole film, I consider myself lucky to only have watched 90 seconds worth. The film is about a half-vampire/half-human named Rayne who wants to kill vampires. There's also a group called the Brimstone society which likes to kill vampires, but they're being killed off by this big powerful vampire that also happened to rape and kill Rayne's mother. Ben Kingsley plays this big baddie but basically all he does for the whole movie is sit in a throne and look bored. Will Sanderson plays a human who works for Ben Kingsley and apparently does all the work. I'm really not sure what makes Ben Kingsley so powerful because he really doesn't do much at all. Every line reading speaks more of "please let this week be over so I can go home and get paid" to me than "I am a super vampire that is really powerful." In fact, the vast majority of acting that goes on in this movie is pathetic, so much so that I almost don't want to mention it. Like, when you come across a three-legged dog, it'd be wrong to trip it, right? Michael Madsen, Michelle Rodriguez, Kristanna Loken, Geraldine Chaplin, Udo Kier, Michael Pare, and Meat Loaf were all somehow in this, so it was interesting to see each of their differing methods of phoning in a performance. It really says something when Billy Zane gives the best performance in a movie. What's there to say about Bloodrayne? It's a disappointment, not in the ways that you think an Uwe Boll film would be (like cutting to video game footage for every death or having random wire-frame guns spinning around in the background), but disappointing because it's not so bad that it's worth talking about. It's just a horrible boring movie. I guess it's supposed to be better than his previous two and Boll talked a lot about how bad the conditions were shooting in Romania but that doesn't make the film any better. The movie is really not worth talking about. Don't see it, it's bad, that's it. It reminded me a lot of the D&D movie a few years back. However, Boll's stage presence and honesty in answering questions afterward made him come off as a very personable and fun guy. I still can't quite figure out if he thinks his movies are actually good or not, but he certainly doesn't shy away from saying that not everything he's worked on comes out perfect. Together with actor Will Sanderson, they took some Q&A after the screening: -They shot entirely in Romania, which was tough because it's largely a mafia-run area right now so if you don't use one of the two production companies set up there, they shoot you. They also ended up using mafia-controlled prostitutes to populate Meat Loaf's harem of nymphs. -Boll likes to cast at the very end of pre-production. He gave some reason like if you ask them right at the last second, they are more apt to say yes if they have a hole in their schedule. He also stated that he's pretty open with who gets cast, telling the agents "this is the part, if you've got John Malkovich that'd be nice but we'll see other people too." In Dr. Boll's opinion, who you've got playing the part isn't really important anyway when you have a genre picture as long as it's a recognizable name. In this case, he hired all of his actors two weeks before shooting started. -Will Sanderson was very funny and uninhibited. When asked what his shooting experience was like, he started with "I was happy to go home." He also talked about how, with only two weeks of fight and horse training conducted by a Romanian crew who didn't really speak any English, all of the fight scenes were a real mess. Boll added that some of the stuntmen that showed up didn't match the stuntmen that they were told they'd be getting, and a lot of them weren't very good at all. -Boll also mentioned that Madsen was constantly drunk and never in any real condition to get on a horse or fight with a sword. -When asked about the writer, Guinevere Turner, Boll said that several writers came in and pitched for Bloodrayne but he liked hers the best. He thinks her script is great and that it's fast, really keeping the story moving which is important with this kind of picture. -On the subject of video game films, Boll stated that he's made other kinds of films in the past and originally did not want to do House of the Dead because the script was terrible. He said that he still didn't like the script even after accepting so a lot of the dialogue in that movie got cut. Unfortunately (both for him and for us), although the movies don't necessarily do well in theaters, they happen to make a lot in DVD sales. Since he has private investors who expect returns, he's kind of stuck doing video game movies right now because they keep making money. -When he options the rights to a particular franchise, the game company usually sends over all the background information as well as character bibles and things of that nature. He does play the games but most of the time the stories are only equivalent to one act. They set up characters but a game usually doesn't have enough substance to carry a complete arc so he has to expand. It's a constant battle between fans of the video game and people who don't know anything about it, so he says he tries his best to stay right in the middle because leaning too far to one side would alienate the other. -When asked about why Boll seems to be bearing the brunt of Internet hatred, Boll answered with "yes, stop. Please, stop." He then went into a thing about how video game and horror film fans are also the people most active on the Internet and the most vocal, about how it may be a vocal minority type thing, then Will Sanderson threw in "Yeah, but he's also fun to hate." They then mentioned the secret stash of Nazi gold that Boll uses to make his films, which got pretty big laughs from the audience. So there you have it. I know he's supposed to be crazy and mean but he seemed pretty nice and easy tonight. That doesn't mean you should go see his movie though, don't even rent it.
10.23.05	Severance	Troy Miller	Day Four of AFF. Sunday. I officially hate the pre-film short and cell phone message now, not even mentioning the way-too-long sponsors film. I guess I predicted I could last until tomorrow. Oh well. The first show I saw today was Severance, a local-made film about following your dreams, living out your fantasies, and buying a white tux. More specifically, it's about Steve Saddleman, an aspiring writer who has a job in hi-tech but feels like he's wasting his life. He finds out that the girl he likes at work is seeing his prick of a program manager and freaks out in a client meeting. The company's instituting lay-offs anyway so they give him a chance to resign, offering a decent chunk as severance. Steve immediately accepts. From there, he follows his love of film noir heroes like Humphrey Bogart and starts being a private investigator. He buys a white tux and wears it everywhere, eventually getting in good with the girl from work (who's been laid off) and even getting a client. Of course, the whole thing descends into a noir mystery story with him getting double-crossed and robbed blind. His old company also goes bankrupt, killing half of his severance pay but in the end he manages to write his book and get a menial, albeit more pleasurable, job to pay the bills. The first half of the film feels very much like a corporate IT version of Swingers. There's Steve hanging out with friends who try to get him to be more engaging and assertive, There's Steve's ladies-man friend trying to help him with women, and there they ending up in humorous situations because of it. Take all of that and throw in some white collar absurdity and you have what makes up the first half of this film. I must say that they did a great job in keeping the IT-speak authentic unlike TV shows like 24 where it seems the writers have never used a computer in their life. I've been in meetings very similar to the that shown in this film and part of me would love to go off the deep end like Steve; oh how sweet it would be. The second half of the film becomes much more escapist fantasy. Steve hires a secretary straight out of the 40s, wears his white tux everywhere he goes, and does the whole inept private detective thing pretty well. You can feel the tone of the movie shift dramatically as Steve starts mimicking Bogart's machine-gun speaking rhythms and patois. The plot becomes more twisted and convoluted as we follow Steve on his case and try to figure out what's up. In perhaps the funniest scene of the film, Steve can't figure out how to work his camera to take pictures of an incriminating infidelity, so he whips out his sketchbook and later presents his client with crude (anatomically correct) stick-figure drawings of what he witnessed, playing the sketches off as firm evidence of a job well done. The movie was shot on Ilford super16 black & white stock, creating a breezy fine-grain aesthetic that was unfortunately compromised by the digital projection in the theater. The effect they were going for is evident, but doesn't always come off perfectly. I hesitate to call this a bad film in any way, but if I'm to judge this on the same level as any other film, I would say it's a bit amateur. A lot of the actors could be a lot better and the story could be a tad more original, less reminiscent of other films. Other aspects of the film however are very impressive. The score, written, arranged, and conducted by local jazz musician Pat Murray, fills the movie with air and goes a long way in connecting the corporate-gripe first half with the noir-fantasy second. Lead actor/writer/director/producer Troy Miller does a good job for the most part as does his main buddy. Viewed in the context of local-made film, I'd say this was excellent. A precise budget wasn't given but I have to imagine that they did a tremendous amount with what they had, especially considering they shot on film rather than digital. I think there's real talent in here somewhere, so hopefully this will get noticed and give those involved an opportunity to make something with more money and better resources. Afterward, a few of the producers and Troy Miller (wearing his white tux) came up for some Q&A. Troy fielded almost all of the questions: -Everyone told them they were crazy to shoot on film, but they wanted to go for that noir look and found that Ilford, a British film maker, made a stock that gave a very unique brightness with fine grain that they liked. However, there are only one or two companies in the U.S. that carry Ilford stock so they had to really work to get all they needed. At one point, Troy said, all of the Ilford film in America was in town exposing on his movie. -As far as influence and inspiration goes, most of the tech stuff came from real life (Troy had a hi-tech job before this. He now has a day job as a waiter at the Driskill Bar & Grill), but he's also loved Humphrey Bogart and film noir for a long time. He did go through a crash-course in Bogart films before shooting to get his performance down, but he's always been a fan of those movies. -This is Miller’s first feature and it took three and a half years to make, from writing to final cut. -A lot of the cast came from a local improvisation comedy group called The Heroes of Comedy. -Miller's now working on two projects: one is a straight-up comedy and the other is a horror film. -When asked what their biggest lesson learned while shooting this was, we got the following answers: 1. Get everything on paper. 2. Make sure you have enough money to finish shooting before you start. 3. Don't forget about post-production. 4. Don't shoot in August, it's really hot. With that, the Q&A ended and I had to rush downtown to make what is for some the most heavily-anticipated screening of the festival.
10.22.05	The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai	Mitsuru Meike	AFF's only midnight showing is a Japanese film about a prostitute who's shot in the head and becomes supra-intelligent and somewhat psychic. A clone of George W. Bush's finger is also involved. This is what's called a Pink Film in Japan. It's basically softcore porn that's shown in special theaters, usually only an hour long and shown in sets of three. This movie is also sort of a regular film though, with a plot (kind of), a social message, and some truly bizarre images. The mixture of the two creates a pretty interesting effect that, depending on your comfort level with sex, is either really fun or really offensive. The majority of the Q&A with director Mitsuru Meike (more on this later) revolved around what exactly a Pink Film is. My personal take on it is something very similar to the sexploitation drive-in movies of the 70s. The sex is simulated (at least I think it is), and there's enough character and story to elevate it from hardcore porn but the effect is about the same... to have a good time with it and look at pretty girls. This particular movie is just crazy. It's the only film I've seen at AFF so far that could maybe fit in at QT or FantasticFest. I mean, read the plot synopsis again. This girl gets SHOT IN THE HEAD. She spends the entire movie walking around with an open bullet wound in the middle of her forehead. She sticks stuff into the hole to get psychic feelings about them, and even ends up having sex with the guy that shot her. The bullet in her brain does wreak some havoc however. Aside from making her incredibly intelligent and able to absorb information and ideas at an astounding rate (a la Phenomenon), she has increasingly delayed sensations. She'll drink coffee that's sickeningly sweet and not taste it for a half hour, or have sex with someone and not get aroused until an onslaught of pleasure hits her at some inopportune time. Just imagine watching a movie like this. The net effect is still watching a hot girl constantly writhing with pleasure, tearing the clothes off her body and having sex with every male member of the cast, but the idea behind it is great. She even has sex with a Ph.D. while spouting off about Noam Chomsky and Sandra Sonntag. The professor is so turned on that "Noam CHomsky" takes a pavlovian effect on him whenever he hears the name. Of course this is Japanese sexploitation though so certain staples of their culture still prevail (e.g. rape and excessive use of "money" in tactfully-composed money-shots). So where does George W. Bush's finger come in? Well, it's stolen because it can arm the "Deus Ex Machina," a briefcase of random buttons and gears that's supposed to be a remote trigger for America's nuclear arsenal. The finger moves and talks however, floating or flopping along once outside of it's makeshift lipstick case and even managing to tunnel into Sachiko on a rooftop while a television set shows a guy with a cardboard George W. head affecting lude gestures with his hands. I guess you could call it a rape scene, but it's certainly the most creative rape on film that I've ever seen. The finger gives her knowledge of the nuclear trigger and lets her know where to go. The movie ends with a spectacular conclusion that I really hate to give away. I will just say to be sure to stay for the end credits because the movie manages to take from 2001 in some sort of bizarre epilogue that is too weird to be anything but cool. The Q&A afterward was severely uncomfortable. The director had a few translators up there carrying on five-minute conversations before we would get an answer like "he was just saying that Pink Film used to have rape scenes all the time but not so much anymore, and that he doesn't think this rape scene fits in the movie but it's in there." Add to that a general dominance of people asking about Pink Film in general (what it is, what it's like, how culturally accepted it is), a misguided question about Takashi Miike coming from a guy clearly not seeing the movie he thought he was seeing, and a few general comments like "I think your message was hindered by the sex," and we were really only left with a few actual questions of the director. -This was made around the time that the U.S. went to war with Iraq and, although a lot of people in Japan opposed the war, the Japanese government sided with Bush and went to war anyway, so there was a lot of resentment from some of the people. This is his 8th film and although this is sort of a mixture between Pink film and regular film, he's only done Pink films in the past. He hopes to segue into regular film though, and it's a pretty established path to go from working for a production company to directing pink films to directing regular films. He's using it as a stepping stone (to this, some guy mentioned that Eli Roth had to lower himself and do horror films in order to get an opportunity to do real films, like it's low or immoral to actually like doing horror. Jerkass). The information in the above paragraph took about a half hour to get. It was still a fascinatingly odd film and I'm very glad I saw it, even if i had to ping-pong my head back and forth to read the subtitles between two heads in front of me. Damn Dobie. BONUS PARAGRAPH JUST FOR MY JOURNAL: Since I'm pretty sure I'll never be able to see this movie again, I just want to make sure that I remember that she uses Bush's finger to trigger a nuclear war at the end, then the bullet falls out of her forehead as she's walking along the beach with missiles coming down in the background. Then there's a shot of action figures in front of a backdrop moving around in complete Troma style, voices saying "help! no! we're all doomed!" dubbed in. It has to be one of the best scenes in the movie, totally friggin hilarious.
10.22.05	The Matador	Richard Shepard	The Matador is the story of a hitman (Pierce Brosnan in an absolutely electric performance) who's a little burned out and befriends a businessman (Greg Kinnear) in Mexico City and realizes that he's his only friend. The idea is somewhat done but this movie proves to be humorous, surprising, energetic, and intelligent enough to elevate a familiar premise to something extremely enjoyable. The writing is sharp and witty, filled with hilarious moments of surprise, discomfort, and depression. Perhaps the landmark iconic scene in the film, where Pierce Brosnan walks through a hotel lobby in his underwear and boots into a swimming pool, comes together with a near-perfect combination of music, direction, and Brosnan's performance. This is a real showcase role for Brosnan and he fills it tremendously well, making me think about what each one of his Bond movies could have been. The reset of the cast fills the movie out nicely, Kinnear in good-acting mode rather than annoying-prick mode that he sometimes slips into with his typical characters, and Hope Davis bringing a lot to her role as the wife. After Kinnear and Brosnan meet for this intense few days down in Mexio City, the movie cuts to six months later where Kinnear has grown a brosnan-esque mustache and we see the effect of Brosnan's character on this one. It's a really cool line that threads through the second half of the film, that energy that somehow transfers when you meet someone exactly opposite of you. There's also a lot of tension in the film even though Shepard refuses to show us the traditionally tense moments in a hitman film. We already know all that stuff, we've seen important men taken out by sniper fire hundreds of times. Instead, he works on that audience knowledge to create tension on the possibility of those traditional moments rearing their ugly heads. Uh oh, two characters are talking in front of an open window, will a bullet come through there right before they divulge important information? The movie plays masterfully well with those ideas and keeps you engaged until the credits roll. So in summation, I liked this movie a lot. It was great fun and I really hope it does well so the Broccoli family will see what they have wasted with what could have been the best Bond since Connery. Ahem. Anyway, writer/director Richard Shepard was in attendance and supplied some As to Qs after the show: -Shepard originally wrote the script after a project that he was working on fell through. It fell through so horrendously that his agent actually fired him. Out of frustration and angst, he wrote The Matador never really imagining that it would get sold. He had a main character that no actor in his right mind would want to play, a hitman movie with no hitman moments, and it was all about two grown men becoming friends. He was intending to shoot on digital for 20 grand. Pierce Brosnan's production company had an open call out for a writer on Thomas Crown Affair 2 so Shepard's new agent sent them this script as a writing sample but a few weeks later Shepard got a call from Pierce saying he'd like to star and produce this movie. From there, once Brosnan was attached, more actors started flocking and they actually had a budget so digital became 35mm and this little "screw you, Hollywood" project became an actual movie. -When it became evident that they could get big actors to fill the other rolls, Shepard wrote Greg Kinnear and Hope Davis down as first choices. -All the settings in the movie (Mexico City, Denver, Tuscon, Budapest, Manilla, among others) were shot in Mexico City. Casting and set dressing became a serious issue, as where are you going to find a brothel full of Thai hookers or snow to make Moscow and Denver seem cold in Mexico City? A lot of the dirty mangy extras were actually embassy staff. -The costume designer, who'd previously worked on Kill Bill, came in with the idea of dressing Brosnan in clothes a half-size too small. This fit perfectly with Shepard's idea that Brosnan should be scruffy in this movie, with clothes that aren't perfectly tailored, some salt mixing with the pepper in his hair, a big mustache, and maybe even a bit of pot belly. -Shepard was incredibly lucky to get sound editor Richard Hymns, who's worked on films such as Saving Private Ryan and Fight Club. Apparently, Richard read the script and called Shepard up, saying he'd just come off Catwoman which was such a piece of sh** that he'd like to work on something he actually liked. Hymns got paid scale to do this film. -The cast stayed in the hotel where they shot. The hotel actually made a deal that they could screen their dailies there every night with an open bar. 20 movie guys coming in after a long day's work in the Mexico sun meant bad news for the bartender, so Shepard's pretty sure the hotel lost money on that but they were very nice and accommodating. For the scene where Brosnan walks through the lobby of the hotel, it wasn't planned but Shepard thought the lobby looked so great that they should use it somehow so he asked brosnan "How do you feel about walking through here in your underwear" and Brosnan asked back "can I wear my boots?" -The shot that comes at the end of that scene, which got huge laughs from the audience, wasn't originally planned. That, along with several other things, was actually created in editing after casual small test screenings. The net effect of these changes was mostly to make it more humorous. -In the beginning of the film, a Porsche blows up. To get the Porsche, Shepard said they had to drive one down from Texas, because Porsches in Mexico City just don't exist (they'd be carjacked in like 20 seconds). They could still barely afford to rent one for one day so it's just a shell that's actually blown up, although even then he only had one take for the explosion and it was on the first day of shooting AND it was with a Mexican stunt crew, none of whom spoke any English at all. Needless to say, Shepard was a bit nervous on his first day. -When asked about Brosnan's character's sexuality, Shepard quoted Bowie, saying that he was "try-sexual. He'd try anything." -This was the first script that Shepard wrote without an outline, not knowing how the story would end. At one point he had such bad writer's block that he put the script away and didn't pick it up for six months. When he did, he wrote "six months later" and went from there, which remains in the finished film. On writing in general however, he stated that he writes so that he can direct. He loves the entire process of movie-making and wants to be involved as much as he can. Special thanks go out to the guy whose "question was really a 15-minute gush about how much he liked the movie and all the incredible insight he had into exactly why the movie was so good. We all respect your anonymous talent that much more and really only stuck around to hear you talk, not the writer/director. The Q&A went a bit long so I really had to hurry to make the midnight movie, a film whose blurb was so bizarre that I could not miss it for the world.
10.22.05	Ghostbusters	Ivan Reitman	Day Three of AFF: I forgot it's Saturday and arrived downtown ludicrously early for the screening of Ghostbusters with Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson in attendance. Showing at the Paramount, the insane lines around the block I experienced for Shopgirl a few nights ago were now a half dozen guys sitting on the sidewalk working on laptops. The theater filled up a bit though, with people filtering in even after it started. There was a similar occurrence yesterday for The Ape and a friend of mine mentioned the same thing for a movie he had seen. At this point, another few people come in five minutes late and sit right in front of us. By now, everybody knows this film. You certainly don't need me to comment on it. I'll just say that it was great to see it up on the big screen again, and I noticed a moment for the first time (after they accidentally trash the maid's cart in the hotel, you can see her in the background trying to put a small fire out by spraying Windex at it). Comedy classic? Who knows, but people sure love it. During the end credits, a few people were even singing along, yelling out "Ghostbusters!" for all of us to enjoy. Afterward, there was some Ghostbuster Q&A: -Dan Aykroyd moment: When he made Blues Brothers he declined the merchandising stuff because he didn't want his face on every lunchbox in America. When he did Ghostbusters, he told Ramis, he did. -Writerly "Message" of the film (according to Harold Ramis): We create our own monsters and nothing is more scary than our imagination but, with ingenuity, courage, committment, and a little help from your friends, there's nothing you can imagine that you can't confront and conquer. -Ernie Hudson talked a bit about his experience on the film. He was very courteous and tactful, saying that the original script that he read was and is still fantastic, but there were some frustrations when the script changed. Ramis then gave us the dirt that Winston's part was originally much more of a presence with lots of great scenes, but as will happen on a movie, the larger, well-paid stars of the film start looking at the script and thinking "why don't I get these great scenes?" So a lot of Winston's stuff was lost to Bill & Danny's characters, leaving Hudson to come in on page 68 instead of 8. This was also the movie where Ernie Hudson realized that instead of being rich & famous, you could be poor & popular. -Slimer was based on the spirit of John Belushi: a slob that's funny but also a little scary at the same time. -The original script and a lot of core ideas came from Dan Aykroyd, who's really into the ghost stuff in real life. In fact, he even used to have a Canadian TV show called Psi-Factor where he talked about and went in search of paranormal activity. Ramis also mentioned that Danny would go around talking about a lot of the little references his character made in real life, mentioning to friends "did you know that a patch of Russian wilderness was completely cleared in 1909 and nobody can explain it?" and things along that line. -When asked about ad libbing on the set, Ramis said that what sounds spontaneous is probably written and what sounds written is probably improv'd. He then went into a distinction between ad libbing and improvisation, which is what most of those guys were trained in. "There's consultation, we talk it out before we shoot so it's not just a spur of the moment thing," but he also mentioned that with so many writers and directors in the cast, it was always pretty quick with changes and tweaks. -Ramis is still friendly with Aykroyd but doesn't have very much interaction with Murray, who is apparently becoming more and more of a recluse. He's fired his agent, his lawyer, and now has an 800 number to call if you want to get in contact with him. -As a last question, someone asked Ernie if there are any lines that he gets in public a lot that he's tired of and Hudson answered by saying he just did a play where the whole cast had at least 20 years experience in acting but none of them had done any film or TV work. He's been in the business for 40 years and some of his close actor friends have never been seen in anything, so to have the opportunity to be in a movie, especially one as culturally present as Ghostbusters, is really a treat he treasures every day. So when people come up to him and say "That's a big Twinkie" or "I've seen sh** that will turn you WHITE" he doesn't really mind at all. As a final comment, Ramis threw in a conversation he had with William Atherton, who played the EPA scumbag in the film. He had lunch with Atherton not long after Ghostbusters was a hit and said "so isn't it great that it's becoming so popular?" Atherton replied "there was a whole bus of teenagers the other day and I heard one kid say 'Hey, Peck!' so I turned around and the entire bus yelled 'DICKLESS!'" They also threw a Ghostbusters party complete with Egon drink, but I was much more interested in seeing the next film: The Matador.
10.21.05	The Ape	James Franco	I spent my second day of the 2005 Austin Film Festival in the ballroom-turned-theater at the InterContinental Stephen F. Austin hotel. A screen was set up with digital projection and dining table chairs were arranged to make rows, giving anyone who's ever attended a 300-slide presentation about the current state of their company instant chills. The only thing better than watching a movie on a really small low screen is watching a movie on a really small low screen with rows and rows of people in front of you. I really thought the days of scooting from side to side attempting to peek at a movie screen in between silhouetted bowling pin heads were over, but apparently no one told AFF that. Like they couldn't get another actual theater to screen these in? If I had paid for a badge or something, I'd be pissed. Anyway, The Ape is a movie written and directed by Freaks and Geeks/Spider-Man/James Dean star James Franco. He wrote it together with Merriwether Williams (who is also writes on Spongebob Squarepants) originally as a play that they performed at Playhouse West in LA. It's a story about Harry Walker, who decides to move out on his wife and child in order to find the peace and seclusion needed to concentrate on becoming a writer and an artiste. The only problem is that there's a giant gorilla living in the ratty NYC studio apartment that he rents. He finds out after moving in and, thanks to an "UPKEEP OF APE" clause in the fine print of his lease, has to put up with the gorilla who's really just a man in suit. Not even a man in suit, more like man in gloves and mask. The mask is treated with no illusion of reality at all, even shooting angles where light comes through both eye-holes and the barely-moving mouthpiece flaps up and down randomly. Instead, The Ape talks to Harry, tries to become buddies with Harry, and even picks the lice out of Harry's hair after infesting him. You might think this sounds like some sort of existential meditation along the lines of Beckett or Daniel Quinn, but it's really not. Instead, Franco plays Harry with such random levels of apathy, passion, and insanity that you're left with a fun but ultimately pretty simple movie. No deep thoughts here; instead there's a lot of "it's funny because he's an ape" jokes like seeing Franco splattered with thrown feces, hearing an ape swear like a sailor, and taking insult about his weight ("I'm svelte for my species!"). For some reason, Franco also dons a monkey-fur helmet for the last sequence of his film, truly descending into the madness that we all saw from the second scene. This doesn't mean it's a bad movie or anything, it's just very odd and I don't get a feeling that it knows exactly what it wants to be. There are a few really funny ideas in the film, including a dating website called "Rendez-Jew," that make the film enjoyable, but there are a few other scenes which bear the unmistakable mark of a play shot on film. If you are a fan of Franco or absurd humor with darker edges then you should check this film out. After the film, James Franco (dressed up in a full suit and tie), Brian Lally (who played the titular Ape), and producer/actor Vince Jolivette came to the front of the room for a very brief Q&A. -All three guys were part of the same Playhouse West theater company so the project came from there. According to Franco, he and Merriwether Williams had written about seven plays for the theater and this one, with its limited number of settings and characters, seemed to make the most sense to shoot first. -The gorilla mask came from a previous play and Franco thought it was different from most ape masks in that it had a moving mouth and it sort of looked scary and funny at the same time. Edward Albee's Seascape was a definite influence on this project as far as its tone was concerned, since it deals with serious family issues yet has two characters dressed as sea monsters on the stage at the same time. Richard Yates' book Revolutionary Road was also an influence. -Franco's inclination and interest in doing more than acting started on Freaks and Geeks, where he would follow a lot of the directors around and observe their work as well as constantly trying (and ultimately succeeding) to gain entry to Judd Apatow and Paul Fieg's writers' room. He's very happy with his acting career but said that sometimes he likes to be more involved after principle photography wraps, which leads him toward a more writer/director path. And that was it, the audience was shuffled out to the second floor lobby where lines for Judd Apatow's presentation that was scheduled next. For those wondering about James Franco's demeanor, I'd say watch his Freaks and Geeks character but dress him in his Spider-Man character's wardrobe. He's soft-spoken and a bit hesitant to answer, but also quick to flash that weird semi-scary grin of his for way too long. Ultimately he came off as very polite but also aloof. It's cool he showed up. The lines for Judd Apatow's presentation were much longer than for The Ape but I still managed to get in without an uber-expensive conference badge. For some reason, nobody sat in the first row so even though a good number of badge holders had already filled up a lot of the banquet chairs, I got what I thought was the best seat in the house. Not only was I close enough to the screen and had no one sitting in front of me, but Judd Apatow literally stood right in front of me when talking in between segments. Eye contact with him when he's less than a foot away is definitely different than eye contact from row 12. On the menu tonight was some stuff taken from the upcoming DVD release of The 40 Year-Old Virgin and an unaired pilot that Judd did in 2000 just before Undeclared was broadcast. Judd mentioned that he was really just in town to interview Harold Ramis but they asked if he could show something as well so he thought he'd continue his current trend of getting people to come out to see his failures ("It's always good for about 100 people or so"). He introduced each bit and talked about them then took questions throughout the presentation, ending up at about 100 minutes of Apatow goodness. Here's the blow by blow. First up, Judd warned us that he'd be showing stuff cut from 40 Year Old Virgin because it was too dirty. "There will be full frontal nudity," he told us. "I'm not kidding." He then talked about how make-over montages always suck so he didn't want to do that with Virgin but thought that showing a waxing scene would be funny. Foolishly, Steve Carell volunteered that he should just get waxed for real and they could film it. When they suggested that he trim up his hair since having it short makes it somewhat less painful, Carell stated that he wanted it to hurt as much as possible. He also mentioned that they shot a PA getting his nipple-hair waxed first to see how it would play on camera and could not stop laughing at dailies. With that, he presented "How we waxed Steve." Expect all of this Virgin stuff to be on the DVD. "How we waxed Steve" is a short assembly of behind-the-scenes footage, multi-angle split-screens, and finished film footage edited together to give a sense of how the waxing session actually went down. It starts with Carell talking to the camera telling us all "how much can it really hurt?" followed by rip after velcro rip of body hair removal that had the audience howling with laughter. There's lots of good stuff in here, including some incredibly sadistic shots of Apatow laughing at Carell's pain, Seth Rogen's list of clean/dirty shouted expletives for Carell to yell, and some glimpses into Apatow's improvisational directing style. It ends with Carell, soothing aloe-soaked bandages covering his chest, saying "that hurt more than I thought it would. That was a mistake." Next up was "line-o-rama" which showcased Apatow's tendency to just throw dozens of jokes in a scene and pick the best one later. This sequence was made up of 5-8 alternate takes for each given sequence, hitting us with quick bit after bit for a few minutes. There's some really hilarious stuff in here, and afterward Apatow mentioned that it sucks for him to watch this with us because he hears big laughs that might have been better than what made the final cut. My personal favorite was when Paul Rudd, basically saying he doesn't like Matt Damon but think he's good in The Bourne Identity, referred to Damon as "Project Faglight." After this segment, Judd was asked if he always shoots with multiple cameras. Judd said he does like to do that whenever possible, especially in conversation scenes. He'll insist on shooting both sides of a dialogue with two cameras even though his DP sort of hates him for this because it makes the shots... not as pretty as they could be. Apatow admitted to be too lazy to worry about continuity and would rather capture one take that works. Hopefully, he said, you get a feeling of how people really talk that makes up for the ugly composition. Next up was the pilot episode of "North Hollywood," a show he made because he couldn't cast Jason Segal as the lead in Undeclared. He explained that for a time in the year 2000, ABC wanted to reinvent themselves as the new Fox and was looking for edgier shows to renew their ratings. Then, somewhere along the way, some really soft show (Perhaps According to Jim or 8 Simple Rules...) did really well and ABC decided to base their whole network on equally soft shows, so when Apatow delivered this they were severely uninterested. The show stars Jason Segal as a struggling actor living in a house shared with Kevin Hart (he was in Soul Plane and played the customer in 40 Year Old Virgin, he's the guy that sounds like a more understandable Chris Tucker(that's taken from a joke in this pilot by the way)) who's a struggling actor as well but also a stand-up comedian, and Amy Poehler who plays a personal assistant to Judge Reinhold as well as being, you guessed it, a struggling actor. They all share a house in North Hollywood, hence the title. Since this isn't likely to see the light of day anytime soon, what follows covers the plot of the show in fair detail. If you're not interested, skip down three paragraphs. Right off the bat we get to see Segal in Frankenstein's Monster make-up terrorizing young children at Universal Studios. He quotes passages from Mary Shelly's book and gets reprimanded by his boss, played by Anchorman director and SNL writing alum Adam McKay. "You are basically a mannequin that moves. No emotion, no speaking, just stick out your hands and groan." Segal yearns to break free. Meanwhile, Amy Poehler resolves to quit being Judge Reinhold's assistant and focus on her acting career. However, when she shows up at his house, we find Reinhold still in his pajamas laying face down on his couch watching Judge Wopner's Animal Court. A poster of Vice Versa adorns his wall. He's down and out because he just went to an audition where they were looking for a young Judge Reinhold and he didn't get it. He laments that he was the second choice for Splash but he lost out to Tom Hanks (Reinhold: "He's got willpower. He's quick. He's like a shark of niceness"). He's so pathetic that Poehler has to cheer him up and can't bring herself to quit. This later changes when Reinhold bugs her about getting his ringtone changed to the Beverly Hills Cop theme ("If Jamie Lee Curtis has Halloween, there has to be a way to make mine play Beverly Hills Cop! That song even sounds like it was written on a cell phone!"). She quits in frustration, leading Reinhold to show up at the house where Kevin Hart sells him on the idea of writing Beverly Hills Cop 4, starring Hart as Eddie Murphy's cousin Teddy. Segal, as depressed as Reinhold was earlier, is convinced by Poehler to audition for this young Judge Reinhold part (he really DOES look like a young Judge Reinhold). To his surprise, he gets a callback. The next morning, Segal's splayed out on the bathroom floor with his head in the toilet. Both Poehler and Hart console him to get their own bathroom time and Segal plays the scene exceptionally well with a real bloody nose (Apatow: "We figured that using real blood worked for us so why not have Steve really get waxed?"). They finally get his hopes up only for him to show up to the callback reading against Colin Hanks. Hanks goes in to read for the part and returns with hugs and lots of laughter (Segal frantically flipping through the script pages: "I thought this was a drama, where is the joke?"). Segal goes in the room and we see that Jake Kasdan's playing the director. Segal makes a joke about Tom Hanks having sex with himself to make Colin which doesn't really go over well, but he ultimately gets a one-line job as a college student sitting on the steps of a dorm in Orange County. Throw in another subplot with a love interest for Segal, Amy Poehler tongue-kissing a really large dog who later humps Segal's leg while he tries to talk on the phone (makes you wonder about Poehler's true relationship with that dog), and you've pretty much have North Hollywood. Apatow came up and said he doesn't know if it could be a series but it wasn't too excruciating for him to watch so that was good. He also said that apparently Jason Segal does get nervous nosebleeds because the copious amount of blood in that scene was all real. Another thing he mentioned was that Steve Gutenberg was his first choice to play the down-and-out actor role that Judge Reinhold filled out nicely. It was a pretty funny pilot and yet another crime against Apatow's deserved success. Judd continued with another few segments cut from 40 Year Old Virgin, where Steve Carell's character tries to fantasize and masturbate but finds it hard (no pun intended) due to being so inexperienced. There's two takes of this sequence (both hilarious), one where adult actress Stormy Daniels is very explicit about her anatomy ("This is my left breast, this is my right breast. This is my vagina. It's just another body part, like my elbow. (Pointing)Elbow... vagina... elbow... vagina") which ultimately ends badly, then another sequence where Carell pauses his TiVo on an attractive newscaster and fantasizes about her undressing for him then really enjoying sex with him until the end where she says "Great, now I'm pregnant." Both got big laughs from the audiences. For the last bit of footage of the night, Apatow played the uncut improvisation that Seth Rogan and Paul Rudd trade back and forth while they play video games that ultimately ends with the "know how I know you're gay?" sequence that appears in the final film. Afterward, Apatow mentioned that this basically tells him he doesn't have to write a script to make a movie (joking! Settle down, writers). Apatow then took a few more questions: -Seth Rogen, Sean Lambert and Brent White all (who both edited on Freaks and Geeks) all help Apatow decide which "best joke of the bunch" makes it into the final film, along with lots of test screenings. -When asked about Film Schools, Apatow related his USC experience (dropping out after about a year), and said that although he tries not to give advice that will alter lives, his own experience mostly just hurt his confidence because it was basically a room full of people putting him down. He said that most of what he actually learned can be found on DVD commentary tracks, but maybe schools that have equipment to let students make films would be valuable. He also said that there were a lot of talented people in his class so that made it hard to compete with, like Matt Reeves, who would later create that show Felicity, going through Steven Spielberg's home movie footage to edit together movies for him at the time he was taking the class and Macy Gray, who, according to Apatow, did not do her homework very often. -Apatow stated that the concept for The 40 Year Old Virgin came from Steve Carell and the project came together very quickly. -When The Cable Guy was brought up, Judd said that he and Ben Stiller actually got together some time back and recorded a commentary track for it but the whole thing ended up being Stiller sounding sad and Apatow saying "I still think it's funny," so they decided not to release it. He also mentioned gathering extra scenes and stuff so the question of a Cable Guy Special Edition remains unanswered. Apatow's personal thoughts on the movie are that Carry perhaps plays too authentically dangerous and that it takes the viewer a good 3 or 4 viewings before figuring out that it's supposed to be funny, which perhaps isn't the best thing someone can say for a movie. It seems to him however that just as many people love the movie than hate it so that's cool with him. -Asked about any possible ideas for season 2 of Freaks and Geeks, Judd said that they knew they were going to be cancelled very early on and actually shot the final episode toward the beginning so they could have a decent end to the series whenever NBC finally pulled the plug, but there were a few ideas floating around like Lindsay having a serious drug habit and taking a lot of LSD after touring with the Dead all summer, Samm Levine's parents going through a divorce, and the gym teacher marrying Bill's mom. -Someone also asked about why the Undeclared episodes on the DVD seem to be out of order. Apatow answered that since Fox saw fit to almost immediately start airing episodes out of order for some completely illogical "research-driven" reason, he eventually got mixed up himself so what just seems out of order actually makes no sense. -When asked if he would like to do another TV show, Judd said that TV is hard and they're mean to you. He then went into a bit about how, when Undeclared was cancelled by the same guy who cancelled The Ben Stiller Show, he went crazy enough to send a very explicit note of frustration which is generally not something you do with studio heads. -The last question of the evening came from Harold Ramis, who sat in (along with James Franco) for the presentation. His question: "I noticed you had a dog humping in your pilot and also dogs humping in Virgin. Is that a theme?" Apatow's answer was that it's his idea of a mainstream joke, sort of like selling out. He knows that popular movies have dog-sex in them and it's sort of like fart jokes, how we should quit being snobs about it and just recognize that it's funny. He did mention that there are guys whose job it is to facilitate the dog humping, and he's got a huge table with different breeds diagrammed out and he presents the director with all the options of who will mount who but who won't touch each other; just another glimpse into the surreal life in the movie business. With that, the night ended. Parasitic clouds of people swarmed around Franco, Apatow and Ramis out in the lobby. Poor guys, they practically have to bring out their mace just to get to the restroom. Stay tuned as tomorrow brings Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson together for a screening of Ghostbusters followed by The Matador with writer/director Richard Shepard in attendance.
10.21.05	Good Night, and Good Luck	George Clooney	Really good. Solid performances from a huge list of awesome character actors (including Ray Wise! yay!), an interesting and pertinent story, and shot very well with great music. Nothing bad to say about it.... which is odd i know.
10.20.05	Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang	Shane Black	After Shopgirl, we all had to head back outside where lines had already formed for the next showing at the Paramount: Shane Black's Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. Black, who has apparently been to AFF several times in the past (during the Q&A after the show he mentioned that he's finally good for more than drinks at the Driskill), was here tonight not just for panels and roundtables but also to show his new film which he wrote and directed. Before the show, they played a nice little AFF intro where an announcer tries to pass off LA as Austin, calling the LA River the mighty Rio Grande and the Chinese Theater the Paramount. It drew chuckles the first time but I predict I will officially hate it by Monday. The movie itself is really great. It's a "tough guy" movie that manages to be post-modern and self-referential but also true to the genre at the same time. Robert Downey Jr., who plays a New York petty thief wrangled into LA rising stardom, supplies some really great narration, speaking to those of us in the audience who have seen three hundred movies similar to this before. It's smart and quick and sharp, throwing out references, mea culpas, and non sequiturs left and right. My only complaint is that it goes away for about an hour. Yep, I found myself missing voice-over. Crazy, I know. Val Kilmer also gives a great performance as Gay Perry, a private detective hired to coach Downey Jr. for a part. Michelle Monaghan fills out the leading cast, acting well and looking unbelievably hot in every shot. Black doesn't shy away from the casual nudity and hot chicks that make movies like these so enjoyable. This is very much an LA movie. It's set during the Holidays so you get that unique LA Christmas atmosphere of garish color, oddball excess and industry-fueled celebritydom. In the movie, it's like a big deal that Monaghan has done a commercial, and it actually IS a big deal because the commercial becomes very important in the last scene. What's great about this movie is that, while simultaneously making fun of the late-80s/90s action stuff that made Black famous but also including authentic action sequences done very well, it’s really about this complex mystery tale very much in the vein of the classic noir pulp fiction of Chandler and Cain. A fictional series of dime store novels fuels the central plot and the film is even divided into chapters, each with a title taken from Chandler's work. The supporting characters all have classic crime story names like Harlan Dexter, Dabney Shaw, and Harmony Faith Lane. The plot is so complex and moves so quickly that I'm actually a bit unsure about a few of the twists and turns that it takes. It's a movie that definitely warrants repeat viewings to understand all of its layers (much like The Big Lebowski (no, I’m not joking)). I'm convinced that there's a rather huge revelation in the last shot of the film, but I don't know what it means yet so I won't say anything. Overall, I had a blast with this movie. It was really refreshing, consistently surprising, and thoroughly enjoyable. Even the beginning titles were in a grungy animated style, somewhat reminiscent of Catch Me If You Can's titles, that work with John Ottman's score to establish a neo-retro post-modern classicist tone that this movie somehow thrives in. A real treat. Afterward, Shane Black came out for questions: -The story originally started as a very dark romantic comedy. Black showed it to James L. Brooks at one point to get feedback and Brooks said it was trying awfully hard to NOT be an action movie; it was feeling more like Black was trying to be him. He then brought up a few movies like Chinatown which, while still a genre picture, was not really an action movie. At this, Black said that made complete sense and the invisible planes stuck in a holding pattern around his head now had the OK to land and the script went from there. -It took him 21 months to write the script and then no one picked it up or had any interest at all. Some returned it with bizarre notes like "we're not looking for a period picture," clearly not even reading it. Then, luckily, Joel Silver read it, liked it, and really got behind it. Warner Brothers gave him 15 million and basically said "get back to us with the finished film" so there was no studio influence at all with this movie. Black stated that he really only had one man to please, and if both he and Silver liked something then it's in the movie. Black mentioned that having Joel Silver's ear was like a huge invisible club following him around, making sure things got done the way he wanted them to. He also stated that shooting digitally was never a question because Joel Silver does not shoot digital. He loves film and Black loves film and that was that. -One of his main conscious goals with this movie was not to cater to the audience, but to make them have to stay alert and keep up. Also, while he references a lot of genre conventions and pokes a little fun at a few of them, he feels the movie, at its core, has a good heart so he didn't want to make the violence that graphic or let the tone get too serious. At one point he mentioned that action movies are all about ejaculation anyway, with all the machine guns spitting out fire and bullets and things exploding, so he said "Screw it. Why not make it literal? Have someone actually shoot with his dick." That drew more than a few laughs. -On working with both Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer, he said despite the ongoing rumors about their difficulty to work with, both actors were "angels." Both very professional, very courteous and ultimately gave really great performances. Black mentioned that there was real chemistry between the two and that they remain good friends after filming. He also said that Mel Gibson called up Joel Silver and personally vouched for Robert Downey Jr. to land him the gig. Shane Black originally kept seeing Downey around the office because he was dating one of Joel Silver's producers, but after Gibson's call he just sat him down and had him read a few lines and it was like hearing the perfect translation of his script coming out of Doney's mouth. I have to say that's true, Downey's dialogue, both in the film and the narration, is supremely natural and hilarious. -When asked if Black was influenced at all from either the Coen Brothers or Charlie Kaufman for this movie, he responded that, to him, the Coens make movies about other movies and that they're very heady and intellectual. For him, he always takes from real life and real experiences and emotions and never from other films. As for Kaufman, he said that he's never seen a Kaufman film. That's not for any reason in particular, he hears great things about them, but he just hasn't caught any of his work yet. -According to Black, doing the whole Robert Altman overlapping dialogue thing is easier than you'd think. It does create more work for the editor but it's not impossible and coverage wasn't a problem considering the naturalism and humor that you get from it. -One person asked him "What were you like as a child?" the question was ultimately more enjoyable than the answer. -Another person, clearly an aspiring writer, asked him how much of the script is on the screen since he directed this as well. Black answered by saying that this is the first time what he wrote is what we saw. In another question about whether he learned anything as a writer by directing the film, Black stated that he sort of didn't want to learn anything; he hoped he could still write without any of the logistical issues or limitations in mind when he sat down to write because that would edit his ideas and creativity. So there you have it, a great movie followed by a pretty good Q&A. Thus ends night one of the Austin Film Festival. My ass is already sore from a double feature at the Paramount, with only seven more nights to go!
10.20.05	Shopgirl	Anand Tucker	Something's in the air. Is it the smell of desperation? The sweet stink of screenplays passed from hand to hand? The invading aroma of out-of-towners on sojourn to their big break into the movie business? Maybe it's just the horse-drawn carriage that standing next to me. In any case, the 12th Annual Austin Film Festival is officially underway. Since I'm a movie junkie and not a roundtable/panel fiend, the Heart of Texas Screenwriter's Conference doesn't really appeal to me. Instead, I'm standing in front of the lovely Paramount Theater in downtown Austin, TX with my ID out ready to get in to see Shopgirl. Starring and written by Steve Martin (based off his novella), Shopgirl is a story about a lonely girl (Claire Danes) going through different relationships, one with a clueless slacker type (Jason Schwartzman) and the other with a wealthy but non-committal rich old dude (Martin). This isn't really a plot-driven movie but more of an emotional exploration as we watch these three characters go about their lives. Wow, I managed to make this movie sound really boring. Without the spoilers, I'll just say that it was decent, had some definite moments, and was worth watching. Given the subject matter, the film could have been a lot worse but good acting, competent direction, and a really heavy score and aesthetic gives you the feeling that the movie is more than it really is. Jason Schwartzman is incredible in this. Yes, every scene that he's in feels like a completely different and much funnier movie, but he's really great and plays the character very well. Danes delivers as well but her relationship with Steve Martin seems a bit creepy to me. I couldn't get through this movie without entertaining the thought that Martin wrote the story, adapted it for the screen, produced it and starred in it just so he could get to make out with Claire Danes. Just like believing that the actors get line readings through the phone whenever they're talking on-screen, I have to believe that such a clearly obvious opportunity wasn't taken advantage of. Hey, I'd like to make out with Claire Danes... I'll write a story about how I'm rich and suave and get to dress her up then do dirty things to her. Awesome! I'm sure Steve Martin is a really nice guy and a complete gentleman, even if he does write in a hand-going-up-dress scene for himself now and then, but it was a problem for me to avoid thinking about his motives while watching. Also, the scenes between him and Danes are so much more dramatic than anything involving Schwartzman that I feel it strayed a bit too far and cut the film in half for me. I still liked it though. Pretty Good. Afterward, director Anand Tucker, Claire Danes and Jason Schwartzman came out for a Q&A. It's at this point that you're reading the page thinking "Where are the great pictures of the beautiful Claire Danes, the funny and hairy Jason Schwartzman and the... directory Anand Tucker?" Well, wanting to do the right thing, I asked the proper AFF people about bringing a camera in or even running out after the movie's over to pick it up just for the Q&A, and I got a resounding negative. Of course, there were a good half dozen flashes going off so I'm spiteful enough to wish everyone that snuck a camera in and took awesome pics and got away with it a bad night's sleep and some non-lethal-yet-annoying malady in the near future. Some interesting notes from the Q&A: -Tucker tried to base the tone of the film on old Powell & Pressburger and Douglas Sirk movies. He cited A Matter of Life and Death as one of his favorites and loved how the main characters fall in love in the first five minutes of that film. -When talking about his character, Jason Schwartzman stated that it "was like invisible ink inside him and Claire was like the lemon juice." Danes blushed a bit at this, looking extremely glamorous and gorgeous in a slinky black backless gown, coat and heels. I tell you, folks. I was third row center, the pictures would have been magnificent. -When asked about the hardest scene to shoot, both Schwartzman and Danes talked about their final kiss. They are actually close in real life and have been friends for some years. Danes mentioned that they'd had sleep-overs before, quickly following with "not that kind of sleep-over" to which Schwartzman shrugged his shoulders then blew a kiss up to the balcony, drawing massive amounts of laughter. -As a last note, when you watch the film there's a scene set in a Best Buy where a few characters shop for books on tape. Watch out for copies of My So-Called Life down in the corner, apparently the dastardly doing of "that wiley art department."
10.19.05	Demon Witch Child	Amando do Ossorio	An Exorcist knock-off that's so cheaply made they had to repeat the first scene twice to fit all the beginning credits in. There are some GREAT moments in here, but unfortunately I'm too much in a rush to go into them. Mental Note: check to see if this is on DVD so i can rip the choral song and some of the dialogue.
10.19.05	Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things	Bob Clark	bizarre. The title and the trailer are definitely the best things about this movie. It's about a theater director and an acting troupe, i think, who sail out to a burial island for... some reason... then the director scares the actors by having other actors get made up and play dead.... but then he takes a real dead body and tries to re-animate it unsuccessfully...then he wants to marry it or something... but then the dead do start coming back to life and the movie just goes all over the place from there. I'm glad I've seen this now... continuing my education in exploitation film, but it's not one to write home about.
10.17.05	Rock & Roll Invaders: The AM Radio DJs	Unknown	The first movie I've seen since starting this site that I can't find a director credit for. This was made for Canadian TV but it's a full 96 minutes and very interesting, not to mention my first Music Monday so I'm putting it in here. The movie's about the rise of the radio DJ after TV came on the scene. It's got a stellar soundtrack - no way they got the rights to all those songs - and explains a lot about how radio really was a frontier there for a while. It was everything that you think radio should be... cool people playing music they thought was good and turning on entire generations to a little something called rock and roll. the early DJs, the first black DJs, the white DJs who played black music, right up through Allan Moondog Freed to Wolfman Jack Aoooooooo. very interesting documentary and it captured that whole essence of how great it is to champion something, to bring something amazing to other people. That's really what the Alamo is doing today, now that radio dj has pretty much zombified. All this for a buck. I'm pretty sold on music mondays...
10.17.05	Guinea Pig: The Android of Notre Dame	Kazuhito Kuramoto	the second in the Guinea Pig series. I almost feel bad splitting them into two entries because each is less than an hour long. I watch tons of hour-long documentaries on TV and don't put them in here but oh well. This one's a bit more of a narrative movie. It's basically Frankenstein except with a Japanese midget and 1980s computer technology. The gore is pretty boring. There is some awesome misspelled english words on computer screens though, like "switzaland bank" and "brain sensaling system."
10.17.05	Guinea Pig: Devil's Experiment	Satoru Ogura	this series has been described as the goriest movies ever. This one, which I think is the first, was made in 1985 and is pretty much uncredited. It's about a group of guys torturing a woman. That's it. Maybe the series gets more brutal as it goes on because this one, aside from being tedious, was borderline absurd. Some of the tortures, like tying the woman to a chair and spinning her around until she pukes, tons of kids pay for whenever they hit up Six Flags. How Charlie Sheen could believe this is an authentic snuff film.... well, he IS Charlie Sheen.
10.16.05	Fever Pitch	Bobby Farrelly, Peter Farrelly	I don't like movies with excessive title cards. That said, this was OK.
10.16.05	Pet Sematary	Mary Lambert	I saw this a long time ago when it came out and remember thinking it wasn't too good, but since then I've read the book and also heard a few people talk about it like it's a gem of late-80s horror. Figured it's worth another watch because the book was fantastic, really one of King's best. I think the main issue is that it's a B-movie based on an A-book. King, who's never really shared my tastes when it came to horror movies, wrote a screenplay that strips away all the nuance and motivation in the book (yes, the book has nuance and motivation. It's really great) and leaves the bare-bones plotline which, because we're not treated to any of said nuance or motivation, doesn't make any sense. Add incredibly award-worthy bad performances everyone but the kid and Fred Gwynne(especially from Denise Crosby) and you basically end up with a movie that needs a few beers and a midnight screening to be very enjoyable. For instance. his cat dies, he buries it in the indian burial ground and it comes back with an ill temper and spooky eyes. Now everyone hates the cat because it's evil. Here's a great idea, bury my dead kid there too! A large portion of the book deals with the oppressive haze of mourning and turmoil that surrounds death and gives the main dude enough meat on his character to explain this choice, but it's just funny in the movie. I know the whole book-is-better-than-the-movie thing is quite old, but this is really a shining example, along with several of Mick Garris' treatments of King's work, of how a literal translation from book to film more often than not does not work. This movie just doesn't make much sense. The book was so much about death and secrets... how men keep secrets from women and how death obliterates them all. In the book, Gage comes back with knowledge of secrets that Death lets him in on. It's tons creepier to know that whatever your kid is now, he knows WAY more than you. The movie never gets close to anything psychological like that... just an idiotic father making crazy decisions. However, there are a few pretty nice gored scenes... especially the last one involving blood and puss and an eye socket, they kept the book's ending which is awesome, and The Ramones did the song. So that's maybe a grand total of 5-7 minutes of decent horror. That's more than I can say for the remake of The Fog.
10.15.05	The Lost Boys	Joel Schumacher	My first Sinus Show. Mr. Sinus (say it fast) is Austin's answer to MST3K done live by three goofballs who sit in the front row of the Alamo with microphones and watch the movie with you. The shows routinely sell out and they cover a different movie every month. It's sort of taking the mash-up of restaurant and theater that the Alamo already is and mashing it up further with a comedy club. It's funny because completely different audiences show up for the different events that the Alamo holds. Weird wednesdays, music mondays, alex jones documentaries, buffy sing-a-longs, and sinus all seem to have mutually exclusive audiences for the most part. No wonder none of the wait staff remembers my name. YET. Anyway, these three guys (one a subby standing in for the third who just had a baby) are pretty funny and lay on their jokes filled with local references, profanity, and brand names: all stuff you never saw on MST3K. Their jokes are hit and miss... it was a good time though. At one point they stopped the movie and started re-enacting the bathtub scene... it ends up with one of the dudes getting out of the tub with a garlic-adorned jockstrap to face another guy sort of dressed up to look like Keifer Sutherland. Unfortunately, Corey Haim's nut is totally hanging out of the jock and the garlic ain't doing too good of a job of covering it up. A brazilian joke is thrown out and the third guy hops up as the greasy saxophone rock star from the beginning of the movie to save the day with his aggro sax rock. then the movie started up again. All in all it was a pretty fun crazy time. They also had a drinking game going that would get you pretty buzzed by the end. It strikes me as having the same effect as MST3K: some people just go crazy for it and show up religiously while others (like me) are more apt to be casual fans. It's a good time.
10.14.05	Elizabethtown	Cameron Crowe	I had it all planned out. Since I didn't like the remake of The Fog enough to even comment on what I didn't like since there was so much of it, I was gonna flat-out love this movie and make a nice neat pair of reviews: sucks, awesome. Unfortunately, while I generally enjoyed myself in this movie, it was not as great as I was hoping it would be. It's probably, after Vanilla Sky, my least enthusiastic reaction to a Cameron Crowe movie to date. Not only did it feel like a retreat to safe ground, it also felt like the first hour and a half of the movie is something quickly whipped up to set up a big road trip sequence at the end. Granted, it's like the ultimate road trip idea that I think everyone who watches this movie wishes would happen to them, but it still feels like the armored car robbery sequence in Dead Presidents to me. The rest of the movie feels a bit undercooked. A lot of the supporting characters don't have the love that Crowe's previous mini-parts had (like Todd Louiso's jazz-loving babysitter or Mark Pellington's door security guard)... Jessica Biel, Judy Greer, Loudon Wainwright, and virtually all of the Elizabethtown locals (save Bloom's cousin) are pretty much wasted empty parts... 80% of Kirsten Dunst's quirky charm feels artificial and forced... Bloom as well, especially in his voiceover, seems a bit hurried and rough-sketch in execution. There are moments here and there that are pleasant, and none of the movie is outright bad, but held against Crowe's previous works it falls short. Sure Alec Baldwin gives another Glengarry Glenn Ross-caliber cameo performance in the beginning but you know what, that's like five minutes. Even the music felt really overhanded. I really really REALLY did not think I was tired of the "Cameron Crowe formula" but this feels more like a knock-off than the original. I also think that Crowe is a much better People filmmaker than Place filmmaker. Aside from knowing that the roads are confusing and the people are friendly, I never really got a sense of Elizabethtown itself. One comment is made about the oppressive heat but I never see anyone sweating or glossy ever. I hear the bugs once but after that, nothing. It made me think back to how well Savannah is handled in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, or pretty much any Coen brothers movie... this seems like it should be more about the place but it can't get away from the people. It is a pretty sweet idea for a road trip though. I liked it ok, but it wasn't awesome, which is sad because look at all this typing I had to do.
10.14.05	The Fog	Rupert Wainwright	sucks
10.12.05	Werewolves on Wheels	Michel Levesque	When i came out of the theater after Grizzly Man, the lobby was jam packed with people waiting to see the Something Weird Wednesday midnight feature. I quickly just planted myself right at the head of the line and started talking to a guy I'd met the previous weekend. Granted I've only been or tried to go to a few weird wednesdays so far but this was just insande. not only did the theater fill every seat (including the fold-out chairs they break out and place to the sides of the theater when it sells out) but there was also a line out the door of people who got there too late. I mean the title is cool but is it that cool? the only other reason that came to mind is that it's Lars' birthday. He gets up and says the only drugs he does is a little bit of pot and if you given pot, make sure it's good pot. Then he intros the movie. (paraphrasing) "You probably read about this and thought 'this is gonna be some shitty movie that won't even live up to the title' but you are wrong, this movie kicks so much ass. When I first took over doing this series this was one of the movies that i just HAD to show. We never could find a 35mm print so this is 16 but out projector's really good so you might not even notice the difference. The director of this movie, Michel Levesque, who knows if it's inexperience with dealing with real bikers or stunt men or what but they totally take over this movie. It's so clear that there are stunts just thrown in because the stunt guys wanted to do them and they're clearly all improvising dialogue and the plot just leaves the movie at one point until they're all out in the desert just yelling "Movie! Movie!!!" into the sky, then the plot picks back up." It's really all true. Everything Lars said. In addition to that, there's some satan worshippers, some awesome dialogue that I've already forgotten, and an actual werewolf motorcycle race that got a ton of cheers. It's one of those special midnight showings that would suck if you saw it at home alone.
10.12.05	Grizzly Man	Werner Herzog	A documentary about Timothy Treadwell, who spent 13 summers in Alaska living among Grizzly bears then... got eaten by one. This is really a top-notch documentary that Herzog creates from 100 hours of treadwell's footage. Most of the time, Treadwell was all alone, shooting himself and creating a sort of naturalist superhero persona for himself when in reality he was camping on a national park where these bears were really in no danger whatsoever. The man was pretty clearly unstable and needed to be on the medication that he stopped taking, but Herzog manages to create a real portrait of innocent (misguided) passion that gives this guy a mission in life. Instead of jesus, Tim found bears. The film is alternately funny, beautiful, sad, and meditative (but never as indulgent as Wild Blue Yonder). You want to laugh at this guy as well as feel sorry for him, and find yourself with really mixed emotions regarding his death. One of the things I really liked about this documentary is that a lot of the personal interviews that Herzog conducts with Treadwell's friends and family feel VERY stagey and rehearsed, like each subject wanted to come off as interesting and cinematic as possible, but after Werner's questions end, there's a specific moment where each person lets down their guard, as if thinking "and cut" in their head and just standing there naked until the film finally cuts. It makes for a really interesting viewing experience to get these glimpses of realness coupled with Herzog's poetic abstract ramblings coming through in his unique voice. This is a really great movie.
10.12.05	Inside Deep Throat	Fenton Bailey, Randy Barbato	A documentary about the phenomenon surrounding Deep Throat. It was pretty good, and actually showed what all these talking heads were gabbing on about, hence the NC-17 rating. In the end though, it all boils down to aggrivation about this country's weird-ass stigma around sex. Seems like we're always trying to blame and shut other things down that are almost never the actual problem. grrr. well put-together film though.
10.12.05	Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit	Steve Box, Nick Park	It's been so long since I've seen any Wallace & Gromit shorts that I've kind of forgotten about them. This was good though, shame about their warehouse fire.
10.11.05	In Her Shoes	Curtis Hanson	Either it was James Ellroy or the devil himself but something happened to Curtis Hanson while making L.A. Confidential and all of a sudden he started making really great movies that I never think I will like beforehand. This is no different. This has everything going against it as far as my interest is concerned. It's about sisters and old people... Not only am I a dude but I'm also an only child so I didn't think I would connect with this AT ALL but saw it anyone on pure Hanson-faith. I'm really glad I went. This movie made me cry. I freely admit it. This movie also has hands down Cameron Diaz's best performance to date. It's funny that she finally gives it in a role that, at least in the beginning, centers exclusively around her beauty. I'm not sure she's looked better in a movie than this either, except maybe The Mask and select scenes in Charlie's Angels when she's wet. Hanson constantly has her walking around in her panties, wearing low cut jeans and skimpy tops, looking absolutely gorgeous and sexy with cleave everywhere (i know! Diaz has cleavage in this movie! Hanson should win an award just for that), and really playing/utilizing her looks to the nth degree. Meanwhile, Toni Collette, who can look either hot or ugly because she's such a good actress, plays her frumpy lawyer sister. Throw in Shirley MacLaine playing a wise grandmother and you've got what could be a real chick flick but totally isn't. I mean, I'm sure women love this movie too, probably more than men will... but I don't think it's joys are exclusive to women like say... Practical Magic. The scenes with Diaz and MacLaine impressed me the most because every time I saw Shirley size Diaz up with one smart look, I saw her in Some Came Running, in Irma La Douce, in The Apartment. She WAS Cameron Diaz's character, both on screen and in real life. She's lived it, and brings every speck of wisdom learned through the years to her part. I'm slobbering all over this movie I know but it was just such a pleasant surprise. It made me cry!
10.10.05	Dark Secrets: Inside the Bohemian Grove	Alex Jones	I went to see this because I'm pretty curious about the Bohemian Grove thing and Alex Jones was the first guy to sneak in there and get video evidence. Said video, shot with a hidden camera made up to look like a pager, showed some of the occult signage and symbology that's supposed to saturate the place along with the Cremation of Care ritual that goes on every year when the World's richest and most powerful men go there to drink and be merry. Although there's a message warding against talking shop while you're there "Weaving spiders come not here," it's Jones' contention that tons of policy and major geopolitical decisions do hatch there amid the Northern California Redwoods. Word has it that the Manhattan Project was dreamt up there, along with (depending on how much you believe) tons and tons of appointments, nominations, etc. etc., whathaveyou, and more. Every republican president of the last century has been members, and both Bushes go to this retreat every year and allegedly participate in paganistic luciferian rituals. The Cremation of Care ritual, which as far as I can figure is about the pagan owl god Moloch destroying the Cares of the world for a short time to enable everyone there to let loose and have a good time (sort of a haughty religious version of the Fraggle Rock theme), involves a ritual sacrifice of a fake dude. Secret societies, especially pagan ones, are always interesting to me... plus i had one of those coincidences where you go for 27 years not hearing about something then read about it twice in one week... so I got my ticket and headed down to the Alamo South Lamar to see Jones' documentary and hear him talk about it. The film, as a film, really sucks. It starts off decent enough with Alex working with a British film crew to plan the infiltration of the grove and talking about what they hope to see there, followed by interviews with locals that live around the area and some historical context of the Grove along with several of the spotlight rumors surrounding the place (a particularly juicy one involves a gay porn star who was in How The West was Hung being flown in to service all the rich fatcats for two weeks), but then the film dumps the captured footage of the Cremation of Care ceremony on you for like a half an hour. And this is crappy digital-zoomed video footage taken from a hidden camera the size of a pager circa 2000. Everything's on a 45 degree tilt, it's constantly moving back and forth whenever the guy walks, it's hard to make out anything, and goes on forever. People left and right of me were leaving due to motion sickness. The theater started off packed and by the time the film ended whole rows were emptied out. What's worse though is after he lets the ceremony play out in shaky-tilt cam, he plays it AGAIN in enhanced mode, where software's straightened out and tried its best to steady the subject of the shots. There's a cool effect here when the software has to zoom or pan to keep the subject centered and these black fields from where the edges of the captured video are shifts and moves to keep everything steady. Of course the video is still blown up to the point of complete blurriness and there's really only about a minute of clear video spread out across the 20 minutes. Showing the whole encounter, which really isn't that interesting to begin with - it's just a bunch of people in robes standing on a stage while a bad theatrical play is carried out over a loudspeaker, ending with some fireworks and a burning spot where I guess the effigy was - really takes some documentarian balls I guess. It's like when they mess up and play the same commercial twice in a row, except imagine the commercial being 20 minutes long. The film ends with Jones back in Austin, driving to the Governor's mansion saying "I'm going to see Bush. I got the proof and he's gonna answer!" He then stands on the sidewalk with a megaphone ranting across the street to the two cops on duty at the Governor's mansion while a guy walks around in a witch's robe and George W. mask. It's at this point that you realize that, no matter how true Jones might be and no matter how absurd and strange the footage he got inside the grove might be, Jones is still a soapbox loony bin case. Afterward, he applauded us for staying through it all. He called us veterans and explained how he made the film literally in 2 weeks while still doing his daily radio show. He also mentioned that he's going to cut it down even more. The good part of the evening actually came before the movie, when he played an early cut of a new documentary that he's making called The Order of Death or something like that. It's very much a sequel to Dark Secrets, covering the wake of his footage and the growing media attention that the Grove's received in the past five years. He also includes much better footage that a Grove employee shot and sent him, showing much more of the grounds, shrines, and general occult oddities present there. He even mentions Harry Shearer's mock-job movie The Teddy Bear's Picnic, which I thought Jones would have enjoyed but was surprised to hear him attach Shearer, calling him an apologist and his movie a triviality. I guess he's upset because the thrust of his worry behind the grove isn't that all these rich and powerful men are getting together to get drunk and pee on redwoods but to worship un-Christian gods and decide the world's fate, which admittedly Shearer's film does not touch at all. The doc was only 40 minutes long and Jones said he's going to expand it with more history on human sacrifice and how almost every major culture has history in it. Personally, I was interested in the information he presented but find Jones' message (he runs www.infowars.com) to be a bit too paranoid. Maybe I'm just one of the sheep but he seems really really upset that rich people would act this weird. I'm pretty sure I would act that weird if i had a billion dollars... I just can't afford to right now.
10.09.05	The Last Wave	Peter Weir	My last movie of the festival was showing at Alamo Downtown, not South Lamar. Malefique ended around 11:45. Sure it was Sunday at midnight, but dealing with downtown parking is always an unknown factor when you don't feel like paying. Lucky for the dozen or so of us that made it to the end of the fest alive and still wanted to see The Last Wave instead of Creep or The Birthday, The Alamo Downtown was running late. Yeah, big surprise. I was treated to a rare few moments of being Mr. Popular, recognizing several people coming out of the Nightmare Before Christmas sing-a-long (with pumpkin carving, bobbing for apples, and (presumably) singing). That always makes me feel good... gets me awake and psyched to see more apocalyptic action. Kier-la introduced this one as well, asking how many of us had seen it before (only one raised his hand). Well, she said, we were in for a treat. It's a beautiful trippy movie and they were stoked to get a print of it for this fest since it's not really played around much anymore. With that, we settled into the film. It was a perfect cap to the weekend for me. It played slow and hypnotic and almost hallucinatory, fitting exactly how I was feeling after so much time in darkened theaters mixed with so little sleep. When the radio starts flooding, it makes perfect sense. When the black rain casually starts dripping down on his windshield, it's like the way all of Cast A Deadly Spell SHOULD have been. David Gulpilil gives a solidly enigmatic performance; the scene where he brings Charlie to dinner at Richard Chamberlain's house is so deliberate and quiet... perfectly creepy. Then the movie makes this grand ramp up to what should be an anticlimax (just a few grainy wide-angle shots of a wave crashing) but feels sweeping and final. I was really captivated by it. We walked downstairs, out into the world with FantasticFest officially over, and it was raining like a sonofabitch. Then we walked out in it and it stopped. So that's it. 4 days, 16 films, 10 shorts, 2 panels, and some episodes of anime that I walked out on. Here's a short list of the five films that schedule limitations denied me from seeing: The Birthday: Barton Fink, Blue Velvet, and Lovecraft were all thrown around in the various reviews and opinions of this film. The thing that kept me away was Corey Feldman doing his Jerry Lewis impersonation through the whole thing. It could've been good though, who knows. The director was around and apparently maybe gave some Q&A after the screenings. Before it, they were showing a short called Oh Mikey, apparently a spoof of '50s sitcoms. G.O.R.A. which I caught the last half hour of. Most expensive film in Turkish history, epic sci-fi comedy with a character named Bob Marley Farouk. Heard mostly great things about this and enjoyed what I saw. Marebito: another movie claiming Lovecraftian influence. I was going to see this over P but was persuaded against it. I dunno, the write-ups made it sound good, but having a non-budget and shooting it in 10 days probably tells you something. Oh Mikey showed before this one as well. 1990: Bronx Warriors: I missed the first half of this and am looking forward to filling that in via netflix DVD rental. Good early 80s Italian Post-apocalypse fun (set in the crumbling fallout of NYC). No Blade of Grass: This is the movie I most regret not seeing. It's not out on DVD or VHS domestically as far as I know, and I love the whole Panic in Year Zero type of film. I really wish I could've seen it. And finally, why the hell not, here's my Top 5 Favorite Films Seen at FantasticFest 2005! 1. Strings Epic on a story level and a craftsman level, this film treats marionettes with the most creativity and ingenuity that I've seen in film ever. You really forget they're puppets but KNOW they're puppets at the same time. It's integral yet disregarded; a really fascinating and beautiful movie. 2. Hostel I guess you could describe Hostel as fascinating and beautiful as well, but for completely different reasons. It's stark raving fun with no reservations or qualms about being what it is: a down and dirty grimy tale of the horrors waiting out there for dumb tourists. Of course, my horse! 3. Zathura Transcending the family to be a great film for people of any age, Zathura is a really fun ride with a smart script, excellent kid actors, and some real laughs and thrills. A fascinating story with a beautiful blend of effects work, it's as solid as solid can be. In the words of Jon Favreau: "It's something that parents won't hate when they have to watch it 50 times with their kids." 4. Wolf Creek A deceptively deliberate and simple horror movie, again, about what can happen to dumb tourists for pretty much no reason. Ok nothing is really fascinating here but the Australian scenery is beautiful. John Jarratt's laugh will probably haunt my dreams for months to come. 5. Miracle Mile What do you you're given the deadline for the end of the world? You watch this movie! It's all the fun that the Apocalypse should be. Fascinating and beautiful. Ok I'm done.
10.09.05	Malefique	Eric Valette	After an unsuccessful go at trying to get all the responsible parties behind the fest together for a group photo (sorry), I took my seat for Malefique, a movie Kier-la describes as Lovecraft meets Papillon. A group of inmates locked in the same room of a French prison discover a book of magic hidden away behind a loose brick. They start reading the book in hopes of finding a spell that would enable their escape. I talked to a guy who saw this in a previous screening and he mentioned two things about which I now feel i should state right up front: 1. one of the main characters is a pre-op transsexual and, like Bob in Fight Club, has big bitch tits. 2. In one scene, there's a talking/winking vagina. How can it talk AND wink you ask? The only answer I can give is Movie Magic. It's quite a sight however, hopefully it won't show up in any nightmares. So I am a huge Lovecraft fan, and enjoy some of the movies out there made from his work. SOME. Most of them however, even the ones I like, I don't think resemble his work that much. They usually take a few names or symbols and paste them onto whatever completely different horror movie they're trying to make. This one comes pretty close though. It's claustrophobic, moves from banal to fantastique, and ends... unwell. Some Elder Gods are thrown out in incantations and whatnot for good measure, and I finally get to hear how words like "ftagn" are pronounced. One notable scene involves a spell to move through stone but the book warns that the effects are fleeting. What happens next is very rewarding to a twisted gore hound like me. It was also very hazy and deliberate with its pacing... watching it on the last day created an interesting effect where time seemed to expand and contract throughout. I was so caught up in it that I didn't realize how late it was running until the last scene, where I proceeded to snap out of it and freak out a bit. I blame the short that preceded this. It was like 20 minutes long and the story was so simple that choosing to take that much time to tell it was really pretty offensive. If there were morals and ethics laws dealing with short films, I would give the director of Domoi: The Voyage Home a ticket. It should know better. Malefique was good though, and as usual I found Kier-la's summation to be correct (yes, I'm kissing ass. Sue me)
10.09.05	Hostel	Eli Roth	After Bronx Warriors let out, I was faced with a difficult decision. The next shows were Bloodshots: winners from a 48-hour short film production contest held recently, and the first four episodes of an anime called Hagukei which was apparently a sci-fi translation of Moby Dick. I really didn't want to sit through bloodshots and had unfortunately already stuffed myself during Sin City so there was nothing to do but see Hagukei. The short that played before it, Herman the legal Labrador, was amusing. It is how it sounds: a dog lawyer puts on pants and goes to court. It's all animated of course, and has occasional chuckles with evil pizza men or something. I guess it's an Australian TV pilot episode... Then Hagukei started. I'd heard from one other person who'd seen it instead of Miracle Mile on Friday say it started out slow but by the time it finished you wanted to see the rest of the series. Personally, by the time the second episode ended, the already-thin crowd of maybe a dozen had dwindled to 6. I sort of realized that I would have a better time standing outside watching a parking lot on a Sunday afternoon than sitting through the next two episodes of this and left. Maybe die-hard anime fans or die-hard Moby Dick fans or the exclusive club of die-hard Moby Dick anime fans would love this, but since I'm not a huge anime fan even when it's good, this was completely lost on me. I don't want to spend too much time tearing it apart so I'll just leave it at this: In the first episode credits, they listed a voice actor for Moby Dick and I had no clue if he was in the episode or not. About 90 minutes of parking lot-observation later, a line started forming for the biggest "closing" film of the fest: Hostel. Tim came out to introduce the film to a packed house. He explained how Eli Roth was a "friend" of the Alamo Drafthouse, and proceeded to list off all the stuff Eli had participated in (Premiering Cabin Fever here in an all-night horror movie marathon held in an abandoned Loony Bin, manning a lemonade counter as well, bringing the teenager remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark to the drafthouse, and hosting the "Olsen Twins 18th Birthday Party Bash" where he got up with his loose-fitting shorts on and announced that he'd masturbated in the back of the theater to a house filled with 14-year old girls), and said that we could all blame some of the twisted horrific stuff that goes on in this movie to Harry Knowles, who apparently passed on a few ideas to Mr. Roth via late-night phone chats. I guess there's a tiny bit of hype surrounding this movie on the Internet right now. I personally haven't read all of the reports that say it's the goriest movie ever or that it takes horror to a completely new level or that it's the most "important" horror film of the century... but I did really like Cabin Fever and had heard the basic outline of Hostel which made me really interested to see it. I'm trying to not mention any spoilers, but if you want to stop reading now I will just tell you this: Roth gives us what we want. Sex & violence is on the menu and that is what we get, in that order even. Each is done pretty damn well and, as long as you get that "important" crap out of your head, you are almost guaranteed to enjoy yourself. That said, there's no way the MPAA will release the cut they showed us. Sorry, guys... but it will be a long wait for that DVD to come out and finally see the version that's creating all this hype. What's funny is that they'll probably only have to shorten a few of the gristliest scenes of gore and violence, but all the shots of beautiful full-frontal naked women will have to go. Damn us Americans. For anyone that's ever done the backpack-trip-through-Europe or visited Europe on a field trip or anything like that when you were in your late teens, you probably have a subtle awareness of how vulnerable you are when you're over there. Sure everyone's nice and stuff but they're almost too nice, and when you venture out to more local-friendly places you get glimpses of surprising levels of animosity. Of course, most of the time it's because you're in a whole group of drunk horny teens running wild in another country. So the premise of Hostel seems eerily possible to me. You read about the sex-industry stuff that goes on in some countries and can't really deny a violence-correlative existing somewhere. Throw in how the American sex industry seems to be invading eastern-European countries right now and you've got a project worthy of Eli Roth's attention. Anyway, I'm a bit hesitant to get into any of the details... some of them are really great and although the "big reveal" is neither that big or revealing, it's unfolded in a really nice way so I don't want to just say it. I will say to keep on the lookout for a Takashi Miike cameo, as Harry Knowles has mentioned a few times in his reportage that Hostel is basically Eli's reaction to seeing Miike's work. There is one specific thing that I have to bring up though, because it's the biggest event to emerge in the whole Fest. QT6 had animated penises and retard handymen, FantasticFest has an emerging pattern as well. In the last four days, I have seen so many fingers get cut off it's not even funny. Hostel, Dark Hours, Wolf Creek, and malefique (Strings too if you count the whole hand) ALL have finger-lopping scenes. It must be finger-harvesting season or something... crazy. Anyway, Hostel's a really fun movie that made us all cheer and yell out and got me reveling in a few moments that were just so joyously wrong that I couldn't contain myself. A few times, I'd see where Roth was going with a scene and immediately ball my hands into fists and just wait for it to pay off, because it's pretty damn sweet when it does. If/When you can, definitely see this movie. Oh, before that they played Restaurant Dogs, Eli's student film that won him a student academy award. It starts off as a fantasy take-off on Reservoir dogs where Ronald McDonald and his crew have stolen the Burger King's Dairy Queen and this guy who just wanted a milkshake goes on a mission to save her. Then it starts to get weird, cutting back and forth from live-action fast-food violence to incredibly bizarre collage animation. It sort of hops, skips and jumps between homages to lots of different films, even lifting Army of Darkness' ending... sort of. Incredibly strange and definitely showing Eli's roots.
10.09.05	Sin City	Robert Rodriguez	In an effort to replicate the hazy sense of zombification that seeing 20 movies in 4 days on scant few hours of sleep a night brings, my write-up for the last day of Fantastic Fest 2005 will be vague and blurry. Actually, I hope it won't be, but if it is you know why. The Recut and Extended edition of Sin City started today at noon. It was scheduled at three hours, ten minutes. It was also playing on DLP that Rodriguez had supposedly come in and personally tweaked to ensure the best possible showing for us. Of course, rumors spread faster than QT6 ticket sales at film festivals, and word had it that Rodriguez was either gonna show up for Saturday's screening or Sunday's. He didn't show up Saturday. So I had several things to look forward to this morning. Unfortunately, none of them really panned out and I ended up food the whole time just to stay awake. Rodriguez didn't show up. Instead Harry introduced the film, calling us all gluttons for not seeing the separate volumes separately. Now be prepared to be overloaded with Sin City goodness as all three separated and elongated stories were shown sequentially rather than the sort-of inter-woven theatrical cut. Well, there's maybe 4 minutes of new footage, made of maybe 3 new scenes, 17 new shots, and of course 3 new title cards. I think the end credits music was new as well. That's about it. However, I will say I still appreciate the experience for getting to see this on the big screen one more time, especially in the gloriously sharp and rich contrast of DLP. The movie just ended an hour too soon is all. I can't wait for the DVD with the Austin Paramount premiere audience alternate audio track on it. Listen for me, I'm the guy in the front row who clapped when everyone else did. Since Sin City got out so early, I walked in and caught the last half of 1990: Bronx Warriors. As I mentioned previously, I love the apocalypse genre but haven't seen any of the four films they programmed for this fest. Bronx Warriors was originally one that I wouldn't be able to see due to scheduling constraints, but I had made myself feel better by adding it to my netflix queue. Seeing the last half of it sort of makes me really want to see the first half but also sort of not. Don't get me wrong, I had a great time with what I saw, but walking into the movie missing the entire set-up and every character's introduction brought a whole sense of mystery to what I saw. Who is The Ogre? What kind of name is Trash? Why is this guy wearing a nazi uniform? Zombies? And what is with this flat-chested dominatrix girl with the whip and spiky metal finger things? Maybe all of these questions are explained in the first half, maybe not. The trouble is, if they are, I'm not sure I want to know. What I do know is that this dude Trash, who I guess has some girl somewhere hidden away kidnapped/in love with him, is crying an awful lot for this dying guy. That embrace is awfully tender, at least up to the point where he breaks his neck, presumably to end his pain. In fact, I think he cries more for this guy than for the girl when she gets it. Maybe it was his brother or something... maybe. It's cool though because you watch a movie like Wild Style, made the same year, and see how demolished and abandoned parts of NYC were back then. I have no problem believing this low-budget movie didn't spend much time in making these locations seem any more post-apocalyptic than they already were. Just add a few motorcycles with skulls on them, an elbow pad with a spike on it, a few pointy sticks to spear and impale people with, and Hammer: The Exterminator (and nihilist extraordinaire) and you have a movie! Good time... totally woke me up.
10.08.05	P	Paul Spurrier	Why they named it P instead of Ghost I don't know. Although... I guess the choice between a constant urine comparison and a Demi Moore reference is a tough one to make. It was up in the air for me tonight as far as the midnight show went. Originally I had planned to see Shinya Tsukamoto's Marebito, but after hearing aggressively bad things about it coupled with the knowledge that it was shot in 10 days and not really feeling like sitting through another slow Japanese horror story, I went for P, a Thai film about a black magic-using teenage prostitute. There is a ten-minute stretch of this movie that is just awesome. It's after all the girl's childhood stuff where she's called a witch and a freak, after the stuff about how she's pretty much tricked into moving to Bangkok to become a stripper/whore to make enough money for her sick mom to eat rice, and past the stuff where she uses white magic to make her appear more attractive and become the star of the club in which she works. Of course, if you're thinking of visiting Bangkok's gentlemen's establishments and looking for extended "research" footage, then this movie may be for you. The dancing sequences in this movie, like pretty much everything else, go on forever. Anyway, the awesome segment of the movie that I'm talking about is after she starts using black magic to get back at the bitch in the club and this other guy who "initiated" her into the world of prostitution then moved on, when she breaks the Gremlins-esque rules of what never to do in fear of having your black magic reversed onto you. She rolls under a clothesline, she accepts payment for teaching someone magic, and worst of all she eats raw meat... after midnight. Very quickly, the main girl transforms into a full on vampire evil spirit, complete with the teeth and the extreme hunger for blood. She goes on nightly rampages for a while and the movie is really great. for about ten minutes. After that, it turns into a possession film with all the tedious accoutrements typical to the genre. There's the priest/medicine doctor or whatever who will try to purge the demon from the girl, the caring best friend who tries to defend herself against the evil spirit's guiles but proves no match for the old "I'm all better now, thanks... now let me out!" line, and the ultimate sacrifice to rid the world of the abomination. All during this, you are silently praying for the movie to end. It just doesn't though. Like the evil spirit, this film refuses to die. You know everything that's gonna happen, the best scenes (snake vs. pissing cock (snake wins), machete-wielding dude about to slip on an ice cube vs. pretty stripper's face with mouth full of cucumber (he misses the cucumber), extremely out of place CSI shot of internal organs... erupting or something) and all that's left is the cinematic equivalent of filling out paperwork. Yet still it goes on... and on and on. When it finally does end, it has to come back with the longest end title sequence ever. The funny part is it's all overlapping more slow-motion shots of the main girl stripping/dancing in a g-string all sprinkled with glitter. All of us were out of our seats on the way to the door yet planted in place, unable to pass this footage up. Meanwhile, like two credits would show up every 30 seconds or so... By the end I was trying to remember the good times... that 10 minutes oh so long ago when the movie was good and I was having fun and not sitting there being bored. Ahh vampire scenes, how I missed thee. Good times... Random Notes: -"I killed him before he paid me" -The girl has a pair of pants which say "pretty" right next to the crotch. -One of the stripper character's names is "New." I found that... incredibly funny. -"The power's back on. Now I can watch the sexy TV Karaoke ladies"
10.08.05	Pulse	Kiyoshi Kurosawa	Now, this one is not very new. It's actually pretty old, pre-dating all of the staples of the current Japanese horror remakes here in the States that have now become cliche and tired. I'll begin by saying I was probably too tired to see this movie. The fourth film of the day on the third of a four-day festival... What I didn't need was this deliberate pacing. I've seen the creepy boy peeking around the corner, I've seen the girl with hair in her face, I've seen the ghosts disappear and reappear. I've clearly seen this movie too late. I did however enjoy all of the ideas the film dealt with. I really liked the genre shift toward the end (a pattern that emerged in both this, P, and Dark Hours today), and also enjoyed the whole aftermath like it was almost a war but not really. Oh, I'm getting ahead of myself for anyone that hasn't seen it. Pulse is about this website that shows a webcam of ghosts. When you see a ghost's face, you are irreversibly shocked to the point of not really being about to do much of anything for a few days and then you're compelled to commit suicide. There's also a ritual of taping up a room with red tape and after a while a ghost will appear there... and for some reason at this particular time there are now enough ghosts to appear whenever they want... or something. Like I said, I was pretty tired for it. I did enjoy one early scene where a teenager installs ISP software, going through the ridiculous install process and accepting the terms of agreement. However, it's immediately followed by a scene in a computer lab with some of the worse faux techno-babble ever. Maybe it's just because I know that particular area (I bet doctors cringe whenever they watch ER), but I have two pet peeves in movies and faux computer babble is one of them. "Enlarge the batch file." what? Why do you want to enlarge it and what good will that do? "Use conventional memory." Just stop it. I think I need to see this again to give it fair judgment. Sure it felt like I just watched a marathon through binoculars for two hours, but that maybe have been just me. Me and the baker's dozen of virtually identical Japanese horror films to come out since Pulse's release. They played trailers for Electric Dreams and Tron beforehand though. I love the Tron narration: "Tron, where love and escape don't compute." Classic. I keep forgetting the shorts. They were not very good today. The one that played before this, Popee the Performer: Great Magic, was a cheap little CG thing about magicians sawing each other in half trying to kill one another. The animation was... well let's just say I spent 10 weeks in a single class and churned out better stuff than this. the summary in my notebook: SUB-PAR. Random Notes: -the main kid wears a Gilley's shirt in this movie. That got a bit of a crowd response.
10.08.05	The Dark Hours	Paul Fox	After The Big White, I hit up the A Scanner Darkly panel next. Sorry Narnia fans but I am about ten times more looking forward to this than that. I am a big fan of Bob Sabiston's software and the unique animation style that it produces, and thought Waking Life, while meandering at times, was really beautiful. Today, producer Tommy Pallotta and (I think) animator Lance Meyers (hope I heard/remembered that correctly) were there to show a few bits of stuff, answer questions, and give us a live demonstration of how the rotoscoping software works. Unfortunately, there were ongoing technical difficulties with the DVD player so the panel ended a bit short, but we managed to see everything they had to show once. Here's a rundown of what we saw followed by random answers to questions asked: -An early version of the new trailer. It's a minute long and, while it doesn't show much of the drug stuff, it does contain a wink of the scramble suit. The other stuff you will all get to see when the trailer hits, so I'll spare all the details. -They also showed two completed scenes, one short one with Keanu and Winona and another enjoyable scene with Keanu, Woody Harrelson, Robert Downey, Jr., and Rory Cochrane. The difference in animating styles between this and Waking Life is pretty huge. Where Waking Life was basically a moving painting, shifting from style to style with each encounter, A Scanner Darkly looks much more consistent and realistic. Instead of random abstraction, the animation looks to adhere to the filmed details pretty closely, but still allow for the quirks and benefits of their particular interpolated rotoscoping technology. The most striking difference in animations styles to me however was in the use of colors and lighting. A Scanner Darkly looks very much close to seeing a posterized image move. It's a tight color palette making up each shot, but they mentioned that there's a good 20-50 different color shapes constantly shifting and moving in each face. The effect is pretty sweet. Lance then proceeded to open up a scene of the film (it's always so shocking to see the DV footage raw underneath) and work on a simple example while Tommy took questions. The arduous attention to detail and sheer consumption of time that this technique eats up became evident as the panel continued and we could check Lance's progress while listening to Tommy. Basically, the whole process breaks down to individual lines and shapes of color. Each one has to have key frames set and manipulated, so if you pause a frame of the trailer and try to count how many different lines and shapes you see, then imagine having to move each one manually to every key frame in the shot, you begin to understand why animators are usually aliens and sustain themselves on gallons of Diet Coke laced with methamphetamine. -The project sort of started with Pallotta looking to get the rights for Dick's book Ubik. Apparently several people own share the rights to that and each wants complete control over anything done with it so, according to Pallotta, the chances of seeing Ubik in movie form any time soon are very slim. Scanner Darkly came up shortly after that though and Linklater got Keanu to sign on very early and, since they were going to have to animate the scramble suit stuff and the copious amounts of hallucinations anyway, they decided to go 100%. -There is about 18 months of work put into the project to date, but although they're not scheduled to open until March 2006, Pallotta estimates that the movie will be done before the end of the year. -The budget was 8.5 million, with all the actors getting paid scale. At its high point, 75 animators were working on the project. -It took Linklater 5 weeks to shoot the video footage for the film, but as he did with Waking Life, he wasn't too careful about catching lighting equipment and whatnot in the shots. -This is a tougher animation gig than Waking Life, not because it has any more action scenes or anything (although one car chase sequence was mentioned and there was a 360 spinning shot in one of the scenes they showed which looked amazing), but because they were tied much more closely to keeping the stars recognizable and consistent and also translating their performances correctly. -Of the characters, Winona was the hardest to animate because, with guys, you can get away with a certain amount of distortion because it still somehow looks masculine. With the ladies however, it's a fine line between them being beautiful and them looking ugly and horse-faced. So Winona was a challenge to keep pretty. -the way they actually tackle animating the movie is that the animators are divided into teams of 10, each with a lead, and are assigned scenes to work on. Within that scene, the work is usually broken by character, the lead assigning each individual animator to a person or aspect of the scene that suits their strengths. -All work is done on Macs, with a single network server connecting them. No render farms or basements filled with nitrogen-cooled hardware. The program is straight 2D and, if thought about it in a very specific way, is basically a beefed up version of Flash. -Charlie Kaufman's script wasn't really utilized or referenced in any way because Linklater had a personal vision for the project and the way they got the rights to make the film (the Dick estate actually gave them a deal, charging less than usual) was by basing the whole project on a very close literal translation from the book. -The DV footage was all cut together and locked before animation started. It's coming in at about 100 minute long. After all that, Pallotta mentioned that he wanted to see the trailer again. Unfortunately, it sort of broke midway through and that spelled the end of the panel. Still, it was pretty interesting stuff, and fun to see Matt Dentler running back and forth all over the theater with a wireless mic Phil Donahue style... After that came Dark Hours. Kier-la got up to introduce the film by stating that she is Canadian (Labatt Ice!!!) and she thinks most Canadian film, with the exception of Cronenberg's stuff, is crap. She hates Atom Egoyan. Canada also has a content quota for all of their film festivals, so when she was doing Cinemuerte, she'd always have to wade through frozen lakes of crappy Canadian film trying to find a few to fill that quota and get the funding. So, when she heard that Dark Hours was actually good, she was hesitant. Yeah, maybe it's good... for a Canadian film. But, to her surprise, she found the movie to be just plain good regardless of citizenship. Now, this sort of contradicts one of Tarantino's big speeches during his last festival introducing a movie called Funeral Home during the all-night 80s horror movie marathon. According to QT, if you go down the list of great 80s horror movies, you'll find a surprising amount of them to be Canadian. Who knows, I'll let Quentin and Kier-la fight it out in a cage match some other time, right now I'm just interested in watching a horror flick. Sweet! a Devil Times Five trailer! Dark Hours starts out in a typical Desperate Hours vein. It starts out innocently enough with a woman psychologist discovering that the brain tumor that's been benign for two years has started growing and is inoperable. She has maybe a year to live. She tries to break it to her hubby but he doesn't have time. Apparently, if his editor doesn't get his finished book by Monday, he'll ask for the advance back. Yep, there's no time to talk, hon... I've got to bust ass up to our cabin to finish this book! of course I'll be bringing your younger sister along because she's my research assistant. You don't just sit on news like that though, do you... so she drives up to meet him at the cabin, where she finally tells them and they start crying or something. Enter the seemingly innocent kid looking to use the phone followed shortly thereafter by his older gay lover who also happens to be an ex-patient of little Ms. brain tumor. Cue the sadistic hostage games. In an effort not to spoil anything, I'll just say that it's a decent to good horror movie, depending upon your feelings about twist endings, with several moments of top-notch violence and gore. I personally thought it was more good than bad but had several problems toward the end. If you want a little more detail, Things were going well then I hit a BIG disappointment but then it actually managed to redeem itself just a bit before dropping another HUGE disappointment. I hate when that happens. Oh, the short beforehand. Srendi Vashtar. 12 minutes of waiting for it to end. This is what happens when you want to make a movie but have no friends to help you. Why he decided to supply the voices for every character, I don't know. Whoever does know can probably explain the ferret with godlike powers and the importance of eating toast as well. I certainly can't. Random Notes: -"pain doesn't lie" -"best veal I've ever tasted. I don't know how they do it, but they breed em with no heads! Seen it myself."
10.08.05	The Big White	Mark Mylod	Another sunny day with temperatures in the 70s. Sounds like a perfect day to spend inside watching movie after movie with a bunch of other pale long-haired delinquents and reprobates! Maybe it's because I got there after today's screening of Sin City: Recut & Extended already started, but the theater was absolutely dead when I got there. Wimps! The midnight shows tonight were also feeble... and I thought this was a movie town! My day started with a black comedy called The Big White, starring Robin Williams in a quiet desperation role similar to William H. Macy in Fargo (that and the snow are about where the Fargo similarities end. Oh there's hitmen too, I guess that counts), Holly Hunter as his crazy but funny wife, Giovanni Ribisi as an insurance claims investigator who hates Alaska, Alison Lohman as his girlfriend, a phone psychic who is pretty ok with Alaska (her scenes play like a PG version of Jennifer Jason Leigh's character in Short Cuts). Tim Blake Nelson and W. Earl Brown (who absolutely kicks ass in Deadwood) are also in it as the aforementioned hitmen, along with Woody Harrelson, who's thrown into the mix to add that pinch of spice. This is easily the most mainstream-Hollywood film screened to date. I can easily see this popping up on pay-per-view and Blockbuster shelves everywhere. It's the kind of movie that you expect to be quirky but it's really not. It's got decent production value, big name stars, and all the requisite character arcs and little plot twists that make a mainstream movie what it is. Now, that doesn't mean this is bad. I quite liked it, in a very comfortable sort of way. Even though there is a dead body or two and a little gristle and blood here and there, the movie doesn't send off a dangerous vibe at all. Nelson and Brown's kidnappers never quite make it past "bumbling" to authentically threatening, steadily debasing to the point where Nelson's sensitive about his cooking and they run around snapping each other with wet towels after a shower. This is what Makes Harrelson's performance as, not surprisingly, the crazy missing brother to Robins Williams a centerpiece in the film. Although there's really not much of a character there, Harrelson manages to inject real trouble into the movie, literally invading and hijacking it halfway through and driving it toward its climax. I don't think I'm alone in having no problem believing that Woody Harrelson is crazy, so he really plays it up. It's a pretty decent flick that doesn't really disappoint but also doesn't really challenge or stick to your ribs much. Nevertheless, it's worth watching. The short that played before it however, was not. Rex Steele: Nazi Smasher was a cartoon (yes, cartoon. not animated short, cartoon) about a 50s-esque hero type guy who fights nazis including the staple impossibly-endowed nazi dominatrix. I'll give you a hint on how it ends: he saves the day. Random Notes: -they played a video by Motorhead before the show. You have to respect a song titled "Killed by Death"... you just can't argue with it... are you gonna argue with Lemmy? I didn't think so. -"Why are the flowers talking?" -"Tastes like a rectal Polyp" -"How would she know?"
10.07.05	Creep	Christopher Smith	Kier-la came out again to intro this midnight movie about a girl with a way-too-yellow dress running through London's sewers and subway tunnels (tube tunnels? tube tubes? who knows). She basically said that this was very similar to a British movie made in the early 70s called Death Line (AKA Raw Meat), but a lot of people thought Death Line suffered a bit from deliberate, British pacing and so Creep is basically what those people wished Death Line was. Before the movie, they played a short called Mindtrix which was basically a Geto Boys music video using Star Wars figures in stop-animation. It's about as funny as you'd expect. Creep sets itself up like a typical monster movie, where we have Franke Potente establishing her character as someone interested in doing a line of coke, tracking down George Clooney, and fucking him. Of course she happens to fall asleep while waiting for the train and wakes up after the station's locked up for the night. Cue the trying to get out, the stalking monster, and the lots of blood and screaming. A large part of this movie and my thoughts on it revolves around what I think is a fairly significant spoiler, so if you don't want anything ruined for your first viewing of Creep, my one-line synopsis is that, despite having a few issues with it, it's a very decent horror movie with a sufficient amount of blood and gore and hey, who doesn't like seeing Franke Potente running. So OK, the first few encounters with this beast are of the grab-you-in-darkness variety. We see a girl and a guy get pulled quickly into the darkness, as if from some huge lumbering beast. We also see a guy get picked up by his head and killed. We also hear high-pitched scraping yells and there seems to be some correlation between the beast and gathering rats. So... when we finally see this antagonistic force and we learn that it's not any sort of monster at all but a man-Gollum of a dude that's just lived in these tunnels his whole life, I start re-examining his super-strength and seeming control over rats. Also, the film makes a point earlier of not having any curious cases of missing people or anything like that, yet on this particular night, this freakshow guy's killing train conductors left and right; he's pretty much killing everyone but Franke Potente. So I have to wonder, if he's been living down here for years and years and years, why start with the indiscriminate killing on this particular night? He seems to have a whole system of caging and torturing victims, but we never really see any carnage from people who weren't still breathing at the beginning of the movie. I know I shouldn't be thinking at a time like this, but still... this dude has problems dragging a dead body out of a pool of water, how's he picking a guy up by his head? Other than that though, and Potente's frequent running (it must be in her contract or something, at least her hair wasn't red), there are some really nice gore scenes in this movie. One scene in particular, you see nice full gouts of blood shoot out straight at the camera. Another scene involves a gynecological examination table and a long curved rusty blade. There's also the gratuitous explanation scene with lots of distorted fetuses pickled in jars. Be on the lookout for one that looks EXACTLY like Yoda. I swear. The last shot is also pretty interesting. Franke manages to insert a little questionable doubt there in the last few frames which really makes me wonder why I think she's so hot. I mean, she doesn't have the best body, and her face isn't like super conventionally beautiful, but she is just SO hot! who knows, it's a mystery... maybe it's all the running. Random Notes: -They showed trailers for Creepshow and Night of the Creeps in front of this. I've been horrible with remembering the pre-show trailers so just assume that they are all kick-ass. Because they were. -I guess in London the sewer water is kept at a nice 80 degrees or so, at least when lead actors are swimming around there. Steam coming off the water didn't exactly sell me on the cold dankness of it. But then again, maybe the steam just meant it was "fresh" which makes it all the more urinary and disgusting.
10.07.05	Night of the Living Dorks	Matthias Dinter	So After Wild Blue Yonder, I had a real need for something I could laugh at and easily understand without worrying about my intelligence or anything like that. Night of the Living Dorks sounded like the perfect answer. Beforehand, Tim League got up and explained how he assigned which films each person should intro for the fest, and how he really had no idea why he penciled his name in for this movie because he knows absolutely nothing about it, other than it won the Audience award as this year's Fantasia Festival. He also mentioned that this movie really scares him because the title is so horrible but he remembers last year being afraid of another movie with a horrible title like Shaun of the Dead, which he turned out to really like so he offered no guarantees but hoped for the best. Lucky for us all though, we are getting to see Forklift Driver Klaus first. For anyone that hasn't seen Forklift Driver Klaus (oder Stapelfahrer Klaus in Deutch) I strongly recommend hitting up google. It's available somewhere online and, even if you can't find a version with English subtitles watch it anyway. I first saw it without subtitles and I almost think it plays better that way. It's set up as an industrial safety film about Klaus' first day as a forklift operator. Needless to say, Klaus has a very bad day. Curiously however, it seemed that Tim's print with English subtitles was also in black and white. The German version I found on the Internet was in color. Either way, it's a really good time and well worth the 9 minutes it takes to watch it. Then came Night of the Living Dorks, which is a really horrible title. It should be noted that it's "Losers" in the German title instead of "Dorks," which at least cuts out the possibility of a penis reference. A lot of people afterward compared this movie to Idle Hands (but better) and Shaun of the Dead (but worse). Honestly, aside from it treating the zombie genre as a source of comedy, I don't see a lot of similarities. Idle Hands was all frantic pantomime mixed with postmodern sidekicks and Shaun of the Dead, no matter how much fun it had with the genre, still ended up a bit serious at the end of the day. This movie is more like a straight-up teen comedy where the stars just happen to be undead. There's the hot neighbor who's not really supposed to be hot because she's goth who burns a torch for the oblivious main character who wants the popular girl instead of the she's-actually-hotter-than-the-popular-girl neighbor who's throwing herself at his feet, there's the cool-guy-but-still-nerdy-just-not-as-nerdy-as-the-main-guy friend who's main job is to smoke, drink, and chase after hot teachers, there's the popular rich kid antagonist, and the nerdiest-of-the-bunch-brainiac-friend to round it all off. All the staples are there, it's just injected with really funny zombie humor. Think Teen Wolf with rotting flesh and detaching genitalia. The gags are quite funny. I got a sense that a lot of them were jokes that perhaps their upper brow tried to keep out of the movie but they were just too good to give up. There's a Thriller reference in there which kills, lots of "Oops, I ate the gym teacher" type of stuff, and a great hot tub joke which would definitely be a perk of not having to breathe. Perhaps ultimately it does fall between Idle Hands and Shaun of the Dead quality-wise, but I still think the movie has more in common with She's All That or 10 Things I Hate About You than anything Romero-influenced. Random Notes: -losing your penis = funny, showing you staple said lost penis back on = funnier -apparently being a zombie also puts you in with the ladies
10.07.05	The Wild Blue Yonder	Werner Herzog	After Miracle Mile, there was a bit of time spent getting into completely random discussion/debates with a few people about movies like G.I. Jane, The Doom Generation, Renny Harlin, and Joel Schumacher. I think for a casual film fan to hear these types of conversations which switch topics like once a minute but follow some minute tenuous thread of continuity that only a fanatic can recognize and follow must be really tough. I also think that, to the film geek, conversations like these are the equivalent of dogs sniffing each other's hindparts. You have a conversation like that with someone and you get an idea of their personal film ethos... you have an idea of their stance. FantasticFest seems to be a healthy breeding ground for conversations like these. Next up was a panel on the effects used in the upcoming Chronicles of Narnia movie: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. They had a whole mini-exhibit of stuff set up in the lobby that everyone took in for a while since the panel didn't start until an hour after the second round of films started. When we seated, they also had articulated masks for the minotaur and one of the ogres. At this point I should say that I am completely outside the circle of Narnia fans. I never read the books, never got that interested in the story and therefore never paid too much attention to what's going on with the upcoming film. Basically, I only really saw the panel because of scheduling the alternative films at later times and because it would be yet another exclusive thing I could tell my friends about and make them jealous. The panel was led by the B in KNB effects: Howard Berger. Right from the start, I got a sense that Berger had a real personal attachment to this movie and all the work he's done on it. Now, I'm not really "in the loop" and I've never had hour-long phone chats with cool directors or have any cool stories about film people telling me juicy gossip or anything so I don't really know if Berger is like this on every gig they get or if this is something special, but he did seem to exude a particular excitement and reverence when talking about the characters and how he handled them and things of that nature. The thing started with Berger running through a slideshow of production photos taken in New Zealand on set for the 7 months that they shot. He then explained a lot of how and where the different effects crews took over and how they worked together. WETA did all the initial designs but the Kong started up and Richard Taylor decided to pull back and just handle all the weaponry and armor stuff and hand the creature effects over to Berger. From there it went between Berger's team and Rhythm & Hues for the practical/digital split, all working from the base of beginning WETA stuff. He then started up another slideshow and basically broke down how each of the main characters/races were handled. He went into some depth here and I thought many times that if I was a big Narnia fan then I would really really be loving this. As it was, I was very interested in hearing how it was all done, the attention to detail the team took with the creatures and handling the actors, and in particular with the emergent behavior on set. It seemed that after a while, the cyclops would not eat lunch with the ogres, and the ogres wouldn't eat lunch with the goblins... that the cliques started to segregate much like the different apes did on the original Planet of the Apes shoot. It makes a certain amount of sense if you think about it a little bit, but it stops making sense if you think about it too long so be careful. After that there was a Q&A session where questions were asked about what was a set versus what was location (I guess they couldn't get a stage tall enough for the initial Narnia set piece where the kids step out of the wardrobe so they had to dig down and build the set into the ground to accommodate the low ceilings), how the creature effects worked with the child actors (Berger told an interesting bit about how, for the first time the kids meet Aslan, the giant Lion who I guess is a king or something, he had his team keep the lion moving as they set up to take to continue the illusion that he was not just a hunk of fur and wires for the kids.), casting choices (Apparently, when director Andrew Adamson finally found his perfect choice to play Mr. Tumnus, the actor James McAvoy was unavailable for any sort of prep. I guess McAvoy was on a TV show or something and had full work weeks. So, because he was so gung ho to get this role, one Friday directly after he wrapped for the day, he got on a jet and spent 36 hours to fly out to LA and get into KNB's studio, got the whole body-mold/cyber-scan treatment in 6 hours, then spent the rest of the weekend flying back to England to get back just in time Monday morning to walk into work saying he had a pretty relaxing weekend), and other assorted things that I can't remember. He did say that, unlike most other gigs, in this case there was absolutely no contention between the practical guys and the digital guys. They picked up each other's slack seamlessly and smoothly, him doing stuff the digital people couldn't do and them doing stuff he couldn't do. He also mentioned that in the Minotaur head, he built in articulation of the lips and stuff even though it wasn't scripted for them to have any lines. But of course when they got on set, the director came up with an idea to have him say something or other so Berger just went over to his puppeteers and said "make him say that" and they did and the VFX crews all got real happy, saying "dude, you just saved us $150,000." I guess that was what they call a good day. To end the presentation, they played some footage specially cut together for FantasticFest, different from the stuff shown at Comic Con. It had some temp music and some temp effects but I guess it was so new that Berger hadn't even seen it. Afterward he got up, clearly impressed, and said "that was awesome!" Because I couldn't hope to mention all the stuff they showed (if only i could've had my cell phone to take pictures with. so much would be visible in those 640x480 grainy dark shots! oh well), I'll leave the contents of the stuff that was shown as an exclusive treat for those of us who were there. Next up came a hard choice. It was between a Turkish sci-fi comedy called GORA and the new Werner Herzog film The Wild Blue Yonder. I opted for the Herzog. The Wild Blue Yonder is a movie that I'm convinced I'm not smart enough to understand. I've seen a few things like this, mostly shorts made up entirely of "found" footage, where I sti through it and seem to understand what I think they're doing, but also have this itch in the back of my mind that there's probably more to it and I'm probably just shallow or something. This is how i feel about Terrence Malick's work. of course, Tim League mentioned that this is the first time that Herzog's new film has been screening on this continent, so when I tell my friends about it I will have understood everything perfectly and absolutely loved it. In truth however, it had a very hypnotic effect on me and made my eyelids heavy more than once. The movie itself is a few minutes of Brad Dourif talking into the camera about how he's an alien from another world called the Wild Blue Yonder where the sky was iced over and everything was beautiful, and he came to Earth because his planet was dying out but when he got here he sort of discovered that he's not very smart. In fact, the aliens just suck. Maybe generations upon generations ago they were incredibly intelligent and important people, but nowadays they can't even succeed in building a shopping mall. The thrust of the movie however is a really loose narrative made up of various sources of documentary footage. Using a pastiche of NASA film, early flight footage, odd warehouse stuff, and lots and lots and lots of underwater photography of divers under a shelf of ice, Herzog uses Dourif's narration to tell us a story about how humans discover wormholes and take an expedition to this alien homeworld as a possible colonization spot. Nearly the entire film is blanketed by cello solos, Sardinian song, and various other "world music" types of sounds. Some of these languorous meditations go on for 5, 10 minutes before cutting to chapter breaks explaining what's happening. Personally, the most exciting parts of the film were interviews with Ph.Ds. That should tell you something. Just because it's not exciting doesn't mean it's not interesting though... and I'm still pretty convinced that I missed something about it. There's some sort of inside information that I'm missing that will elevate this experience beyond stupification. It took me a whole other movie just to be able to form some kind of opinion on it tonight... It's really truly strange and beautiful. Perhaps Herzog himself should've played the alien. As much as I love Brad Dourif, hearing Herzog speak always fascinates me. My favorite random quote of the moment is him saying "I don't hate the jungle. I love it" so maybe hearing his voice throughout would've kept me more engaged. Who knows... Afterward I snuck into the last half hour of GORA. It looked entertaining but was full of Matrix gags and stuff like that. Herzog's films have a history of me not liking them at all at first but then they stick with me and haunt me until one day I wake up really liking them. I got the vibe from GORA that I would be hungry again an hour after consumption. Notes from the journal: -The dude towed a boat over a mountain, can't he shoot his own footage?
10.07.05	Miracle Mile	Steve De Jarnatt	Day Two. It's overcast and "cold" (that means mid-50s to Texans. Since I still have less than a year spent here, my blood is thick enough to laugh at everyone going around in jackets... of course that's a small victory after spending the summer melting, but I'll take it). It seems the vigor and anticipation that brought the people out early yesterday has either slept in or stopped for coffee. I'm way early it could be because the first screenings are a choice between episodes from an anime based on Moby Dick or a post-apocalyptic movie starring Gilbert from Revenge of the Nerds. Either way, half of me thinks more people should be here but the other half is glad I can stretch out for this first show and not have to watch my elbows. Kier-la gets up to intro Miracle Mile. She tells us all that in addition to the cool premieres and sneak previews of new movies, one of the great things about going to film festivals is that you can see cooler older films that you might not have had a chance/inclination to see otherwise. She also mentioned that when they decided to put together a series of post-apocalyptic films, Miracle Mile was the first movie to pop up for her. I guess this movie plays really well and often on TV, so it's been sort of a constant loser at the game of musical chairs that is programming for festivals, because she really loves the movie but it always gets cut because she thinks a lot of people have already seen it or can easily rent it. Nevertheless, she says she loves the film and is glad that people are showing up to watch it. At this point, I confess my growing crush to the dude next to me and he completely empathizes. "It's not at an unhealthy level though, at least not yet," I tell him. "Give it a year," he answers back and the lights go down. Now, I am admittedly a pretty big fan of not only post-apocalyptic cinema but also countdown-till-, as-it-happens-, and even doesn't-really-happens-but-it=could-and-that's-the-message-damn-it-apocalyptic cinema. One of my favorite movies that I watched over and over again in High school was Rutger Hauer's Blood of Heroes, which seemed to combine post-apocalypse with the sports movie. I hated baseball but If i could've played the mount-the-dog-skull-on-the-spike game and be either the dude with the bolo chain or the dude with the huge jousting stick, I would've excelled I think. My problem is that, for as much as I love the genre, I am criminally negligent with a lot of the great movies. I just haven't seen them, for some reason or another, which sucks but it's also kinda cool because it means i still get to see tons of movies for the first time. Anyway, for those that haven't seen the film (like me), Miracle Mile stars ER's Anthony Edwards as a... I guess he's a jazz trombone players, all I know is he wears a really loud blue suit and a tie that's maybe suitably skinny for 1986 but probably too skinny for 1988. He meets this girl of his dreams at the La Brea tar pits museum, showing off all those qualities that got him cast in Revenge of the Nerds, and he and this dream girl with a hedgehog haircut get all close and romantic until the scene where they keep referring to street vendor hot dogs as "tubesteaks." The girl has to work at some diner (home to the Fat Boy Burger) but they make a date for midnight, which of course he misses because a bird picks up his tossed cigarette and sets its nest on fire which happens to be precariously suspended on the hotel's power lines. This has to happen to smokers like three times a week. The surgeon general should really alter that warning to include this hazard because people really need to know the risks. So when Edwards, we'll call him Harry, wakes up, he rushes down to the greasy spoon with a bunch of flowers and completely booty calls the dream girl (heretofore known as Julie), saying it's 4a.m. and they should, like, hang out. He then gets a random call to the phone booth from some guy who mentions something about only having an hour to live before nuclear war breaks out and things presumably decline from there. So the movie is the frantic scramble for Harry to find Julie and get them both to safety before complete and utter destruction and, before that, LA traffic jams... which might be just as bad. The whole movie is like the above paragraph. If you read that and think "sounds like a good flick, a semi-cheese movie to have a fun time with" then you will get a real kick out of it like I did. Tangerine Dreams supplies a very lush but cold soundtrack and the tone and pacing of the movie steadily gear up as the panic starts to spread, ending in scenes of utter chaos. It's these last moments that really showcase the mixture of authentic panic and surreal absurdism that gives this movie its charm. At one point, Harry is walking on top of cars to get across a street chocked with gridlock. He jumps off a truck to another car and the roof dents in. The guy in the car proceeds to go absolutely loon, shooting a pistol up through the roof that he's so pissed just got dented, then actually leaves his car to chase Harry under other cars and into a sewer, firing off rounds the whole time. In some quick shots of people running like spooked sheep, keep an eye peeled to see a dude in a complete silver tin foil suit; I guess he was prepared for this from day one. Also watch out for small appearances by Eddie Bunker as a gas station attendant with an illegal firearm, Kurt Fuller as some dude that does a ton of drugs and goes completely crazy for no real reason at all, and strongman Brian Thompson as a gay bodybuilder helicopter pilot. i remember Thompson as being like the B-grade Schwarzenegger of the mid-eighties. He certainly has an interesting face. All in all, I had a great time with this movie. Part of me really wishes I could make it to all four post-apocalyptic films screening at the fest but as it is I'm glad I got a chance to see this. Random Notes -"It's time for the insects now" -"I fried my brain over a rumor!?" -"Hey! I'm the guy that picked up the phone!"
10.06.05	Feast	John Gulager	For a midnight show, they had Feast, the third Project Greenlight movie. As soon as I came out of the theater from Wolf Creek, I saw producer/Project Greenlight star Chris Moore standing next to a big Feast poster. I went up to him and brought up the remake of Race with the Devil, which he's directing and AICN writer "Moriarty" is writing. Moore is just as personable, sharp, and witty talking to lowly fans like me than he is in the show. I actually really hope his movie flies and does well. The original is really fun and, while I'm generally against remakes, since i got to talk to Chris Moore about it in person and he was nice to me and thanked me for wanting to see Feast I now want it to do well. Actually pretty much all of the Project Greenlight guys were there: Gulager, the two writers, the editor, the non-tall producer guy... the tall producer wasn't there I don't think, and the casting director of course... It was weird to see them all just standing there and not intercut with them talking into a camera doing an interview. Again, Harry intro'd the movie, recommending that we all order a bucket of beer because the whole movie takes place in a bar and if we don't order now we will certainly want some later. He also said that this cut would be VERY early and no way is this movie coming out this year. Again, it's funny because the movie seemed pretty damn done to me. Maybe there's a few minor pacing tweaks to make and stuff like that, but the movie played with all the effects and music and everything. The movie is what it is. Some of the AICN guys didn't like it at all, but I personally got a kick out of it. Granted I have seen three good movies in a row today and was in a place so open and ready to like a rowdy gorefest midnight movie that I probably could've been happy with Madman Marz again, but you know... not every movie has to be the best movie ever made. Some movies are OK just being stupid fun movies. The film did get a lot of audience response though, I think everyone involved with it was happy that we seemed to like it that much. The clips shown on Greenlight illustrate what kind of movie it is pretty well. It's quick, it's sloppy, it's filled with quick shots and fast jerky movement to hide the fact that it's really just one set and a guy in a suit grabbing at the actors and drenching them in blood, but I think it accomplishes what it sets out to do: it entertained me for an hour and a half, had some good gore, some hot chicks, and some smart-ass lines. I think maybe my favorite moment comes when one of the hot girls (i guess there are three but I don't think Krista Allen or Navi Rawat can act their way out of paper bags) is trying to clean up the absolute you-can't-do-that-on-television full-body coating of blood... so she's in her aquamarine bra rubbing down her red-stained cleavage and it cuts to Balthazar Getty and his movie-brother just staring at her. It's a nice little beat that draws out on her cleaning herself up long enough to satisfy all those urges. What's funny is she catches them looking, makes some comment, then goes behind clear-plastic flappers and gets down to her panties as well. Anyway, where was I... Yeah, the show was completely right. Navi Rawat fell completely flat with her part... that casting director was a bitch. Afterward with the Q&A, Gulager... who was just as candid and open as he was on the show. Perhaps the funniest thing he said was when someone said that it was nice to see Krista Allen in a starring role even though she's still playing a slut. Gulager said something like how a lot of actors play roles well because that's how they are in real life. Everyone starts laughing, Chris Moore covers his face with his hand, the non-tall producer turns away to hide his laugh, the non-skinny writer just laughs out loud. Gulager tries to qualify, saying how some of the classic actors really just play themselves over and over again (definitely a valid point), but then he brings it back by saying "so Krista's probably a slut, I don't know." To call your star a slut twice in one answer... that's pretty much awesome in my book. Randomosities from my notebook: -The movie is one of those movies where the first 5 minutes are like a machine gun with action and exposition and music and characters and then it slows down for the next hour and a half or so. -probably the best gore scene involved a monster getting his cock caught in a door. They then chop it off and it flops around under the handicapped kid's wheelchair until someone steps on it and it explodes with cottage cheese white stuff and blood.
10.06.05	Wolf Creek	Greg McLean	I've been wanting to see this movie since Australian night at QT6, when Quentin told the story of his favorite Aussie actor John Jarratt. Jaratt was the star of the giant Croc movie he showed that night called Dark Age, and the story, in a nutshell went like this: He's his fave actor so when Aussie press asked him who his fave actor was he named John Jaratt. They were all surprised because, unbeknownst to QT, Jaratt had become sort of a TV handiman with a show where he basically guided you through building shelves or fixing your sink, that type of stuff. Well, QT persisted and the next day all of the Aussie press had headlines: HANDIMAN JARATT HAS HANDI-FAN TARANTINO. Cut To: Greg McLean trying to get this horror movie called Wolf Creek togather, about a group of kids who get abducted by some random dude out in the middle of nowhere. McLean was trying to convice the studio to hire none other than John Jaratt for the random killer role but they were laughing him off, saying he's just a has-been with a handiman show on TV. The QT headline hits and what do you know, Jaratt gets the gig. Jaratt's so good in the role that his career is now going through a resurgence! (as an epilogue to this particular tale of coincidence... after I watched Jaratt in Dark Age that night at QT6, I went home and checked the news and wouldn't you know it there's an announcement that Greg McLean, producer/writer/director of hit horror film Wolf Creek, has announced that his next film will be a Giant Croc movie!) Exhale. So ok, i am hardcore, I am die-hard. I didn't go to the party because I wanted to see this movie so bad. Kier-la intro'd this one, saying that she tried really hard to get it because the Weinstein company bought it without even showing it and have been very secretive about it since then, generally giving the impression that it's really good and they know it. She also mentioned that the gore is supposed to be pretty grisly, citing Irreversible and Funny Games as movies it's been compared to. Ahh Kier-la, my crush grows. The guy next to me said that she was invited in to one of his film classes to talk about the birth of exploitation film. I SO want a film-scholar girlfriend right now. ANYWAY, the show started with an Australian animated short called Ward 13, which is a big escape sequence where this guy with a bandaged up head runs and fights with deranged doctors that are turning their patients into monsters. It's really bizarre but very fast-paced and actually had a few funny gags thrown in there. Highly surreal.. like Mr. Bob meets Jacob's Ladder. Then Wolf Creek started. The film takes a very 70s approach: lots of long lenses, lots of sunset lighting, a cutting rythm that doesn't really explain what's going on but more like gives glimpses of scenes that aren't really important enough to know all the details anyway. Then they break down in the middle of nowhere and a guy comes along and offers to town them back to his place and fix their car. Now, at this point, about 50 horror movie cliches and pitfall cookie-cutter situations are probably flashing through your mind. You can probably guess how the rest of this movie goes. In some ways you would be sort of right but for the most part you are dead wrong, dude. First off, the movie doesn't devolve into typical third-act Hollywood horror filmmaking of today. There's no lightning storms or big twists that a good guy is really a bad guy or anything like that. OK there are a lot of "this key won't start this car!" going on but it's shot in a really great gritty naturalistic way. It's really more akin to films like Texas Chainsaw Massacre or The Hills Have Eyes where you just watch as events unfold. It never quite becomes apparent that these are just characters in the movie you're watching, which is quite an achievement for a horror film! Also, some of these cliches do get flipped. Maybe it's because it's Australian instead of Hollywood-churned-out, but the sequence and way that events unfold didn't feel comfortable to me, it didn't feel expected. For example, the kids are made up of two women and one dude... and there's like a good half hour where we don't see the dude AT ALL. We don't know if he's dead, alive, escaped, whatever... he's just not dealt with for a solid half-hour. There's also a great interchange between the women, where one seems to take the familiar "strong girl heroine" role but then gets completely stripped of any power, both figuritively and literally. We don't even see her die... that's how unimportant she becomes and the film treats her likewise. Maybe I'm reading into it a bit much but I just really had a great time with this movie. It's really what I love about horror films. The gore/violence was not as traumatic as Irreversible (haven't seen Funny Games yet but i've read about it and it's on my list), but John Jaratt does make one hell of a bad dude. There's a GREAT scene involving him and a high-powered rifle. There's two great scenes involving him and a high-powered rifle actually, but one in particular... I can't really think of a better way to execute that scene. exhale. Randomosities from my notebook: -"head on a stick" -the dude has an awful lot of drool -weird eclipse shots thrown in for no reason. -they just end it!
10.06.05	Zathura	Jon Favreau	After that, I took my same seat for the Zathura premiere. They had original planned to show the movie on two screens to accomodate everyone but it looked like just the one screen was just shy of being full. This may not bode well for FantasticFest, but the crowd gave a really good reaction so I think the filmmakers present felt sufficiently loved. Plus it's a thursday... I'm curious to see if the fest gets busier during the weekend. This was like the big premiere of the event. They brought out this huge FantasticFest banner and Harry gave an intro and explained how tough it is to program event-heavy films early because they're usually just not done until a few weeks prior to release. Luckily though, Favreau used a lot of practical effects on this one and aside from a few effects not being done (they all looked done to me though) and a few pacing tweeks, the movie was pretty much complete. In attendance was Favrea, producer/Ralphie Peter Billingsly, the editor (sorry buddy, forgot your name), and actor/Punk'd-or Dax Shepard. I'll get to the Q&A after the movie though. My first and still probably my biggest surprise with this movie is how good the script is. I am not a big David Koepp fan at all... and fully expected this to be klunky with the characters like Panic Room but to my pleasant surprise it wasn't at all. The first ten minutes have some really top-notch character establishment stuff that all seems natural and real while at the same time economical and efficient. Tim Robbins' small role still has a little meat to it and his interaction with the kids was great. There are a few lines right off the bat (like the teenaged daughter, whom Robbins has just woken up, saying she's hooking up with her boyfriend later. Robbins: I don't like you saying that. Daughter: It's just an expression, it doesn't mean anything. Robbins: I hope it doesn't. Daughter: it doesn't. Robbins: I hope it doesn't. Daughter: It doesn't! We should've never watched Thirteen...). So now i thought back to how Jumanji started... with these weird period kids burying this box in a spooky graveyard or something and a statue of Colonel Sanders lit by lightning strikes. This movie is clearly another beast entirely from Jumanji. They still both have magical boardgames and like, really scary dangerous situations for kids to be in (I think Chris Van Allsburg has cornered the market on that. His children must be MESSED UP), but after that this movie leaves Jumanji in its dust. When the game stuff starts, it's done like any well-crafted action movie. Really the only thing classifying this as a "family film" is a few lines toward the end regarding brothers being there to help eachother and that's what brothers are for. If you cut out three minutes of this film, you have a very entertaining sci-fi action movie. Granted it's still kinda light-hearted, but who cares... the Post Apocalyptic movies are coming later. The Q&A was fun... Favreau was pretty open with his answers, Dax was funny, and the editor pleaded with us not to suggest any changes; he wants to go home. The effects were really a tight interweaving between practical and CG, sometimes even putting a guy in the robot suit but CGing his arms in and his legs out, still keeping the weight of the torso's movement though. I can't tell you how cool it was to see giant lizard guys actually there being photographed by a camera rather than moving all smooth and silky CG-style. Plus having the robot and the space ship out in the lobby helped as well. After the questions stopped coming, I went out to my car to get a camera to snap some pics of the props. I saw all the celebs getting into their Navigators to head to the afterparty. Here's where the decision came in: go to the Elks lodge and play vintage boardgames and try to get 20 seconds of face-time with Favreau and maybe having to settle for Dax, or stay and watch Wolf Creek? Randomosities from my notebook: -Dax told a story about being in a theater watching a movie and having this little girl stand up in the middle of it and say "I love this movie SO much!" like she couldn't handle keeping that emotion bottled up anymore... and that's everything good about movies right there -Dax also did a full-on impression of Mike Judge and his favorite direction to give to Dax during the shoot of his new movie Idiocracy: "Dax, in the next take, could you be a little less gay?" it was funny.
10.06.05	Strings	Anders Ronnow Klarlund	And so begins the first annual FantasticFest here in Austin, held at the best theater in town (Alamo South Lamar) spanning four days of horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and post-apocalyptic film. Actually, they programmed too many films. There's 24 films being shown and only enough time to catch 19. Still though, it's a real treat and I have a feeling based on today's attendance that it being the first year gives those of us lucky enough to be around all the more glory. Sort of like being at QT1 or something. Anyway, it was the first full-on perfect autumn day outside today. Never got out of the 70s, a brisk breeze constantly blowing through, not a cloud in the sky. I got to the theater about an hour early and got a choice parking spot right in front. They had several doors to the lobby open creating a crossbreeze. Some of the AICN folks were already there, a few guys I sat next to all through QT6 and have seen at film events since then, and the Feast/Project Greenlight people were there to pick up their badges. Stan Winston had brought a model for the giant robot and Zorgon ship used in Zathura, which were on display in the lobby. Since this is the first year, I could actually buy my way into the cool-people circle and get a VIP badge which lets me sit down first, get into the party after the Zathura premiere tonight, and a free poster/t-shirt (in a SXSW bag with Exploding Dog artwork on it!!!). Of course, they have a special VIP poster that's different from the badass black poster i spotted last night but completely forgot to gank one on my way out, so I had to fork up ten more bucks to get the most badass poster. They also have a clearly-more badass golf-style shirt that i want as well... After hanging out in the lobby and chatting with a few people, they casually let us know that people with cool badges could sit down. It seemed like everyone was in a rush to see this movie with Robin Williams instead of Strings... they are crazy. Strings was up there on my list of films to see when I sat down with the schedule and planned out what I'd watch when. I'd heard stark raving good things about this film and also that a 35mm print of it in the US is pretty much a miracle. According to Harry Knowles, the film's only been screening on film one other time in America... So when the lights dim, Tim League, Alamo Owner and all-around cool dude, gets up and says that we are the most discriminating audience because this is the film he would be seeing right now and he's gonna try to sit with us and watch it if he doesn't get pulled away. of course he got pulled away. It made me wonder for all the cool stuff he puts together and hosts and documents and stuff like that, his life must be so hectic that he probably doesn't get a chance to just sit and watch movies much anymore. I'll come back to this at the end of this entry. Before the film started, they showed a short called Moongirl directed by Henry Selick, who directed Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach, and the animation stuff in Life Aquatic. Well, apparently he's converted to CGI for this short, a 9 minute story about a boy who's fishing by moonlight with his pet squirrel and manages to hook this massive catfish constellation of stars. The celestial fish drags him up out of Earth and flings him at the moon, crashing through the canvas exterior into the hollowed out core where this huge merry-go-round lays dormant. Immediately, jagged monsters made of shadow try to get in but a girl and her pet (giant) cat keep them at bay while they repair the hole. There's a bit of talking and some stuff with lightning bugs and a pretty cool little action scene where the shadow-monsters try to steal the lightning bugs but they get them back and eventually use them to fuel the merry-go-round. It's revealed that the boy is now Moonboy and must stay there until the next kid comes flying up with fresh lightning bugs, that fresh lightning bugs is, in fact, what makes the moon light up. I enjoyed this short more than I thought I would. I really liked the childish simplicity of logic here mixed with ideas that would be really really tough to pull off with any medium but CGI. They Might Be Giants supplied the score and the character design reminded me a lot of Psychonauts, where the kids have huge eyes and wide heads but are very personable and quirky. Then Strings started. Put simply, this is a marionette epic. What elevates it to a really great movie is that the marionettes are aware of their strings, and in fact have a whole mythology set up around them, tying their mortality directly to them. At once they acknowledge that they are dependant upon these spiritual/physical links to the heavens up above but also act with complete free will like any live-action character in any other story. There's a whole system set up around the strings that constantly creates striking visuals or cool ideas... you see how marionettes are born, how they get hurt, heal, grow old, and die. There's a military general character who is very tough and therefore has much thicker strings than other people. A newborn baby's strings are whisper-thin. It's a really great use of the medium. On the other hand though, there's a really epic story going on with these characters, involving a war between factions, political intrigue, backstabbing, love, etc. etc. This could be Dune but with puppets, Hamlet but with puppets, or Braveheart... but with puppets. This mixture makes everything very strange and beautiful. The director keeps coming back to these landscape shots of beautiful scenery obscured by thousands and thousands of strings, each leading down to control some marionette. it's really striking to see. I was really impressed with it. Afterward Harry wheeled around and geeked out on it a bit with me. We both loved how the city gates and prisons are nothing more than bars that raise, since characters can't pass under them, and how the ability to jump really high is like a super power. Very cool concepts based on what life would be like if you had strings going from you straight up to heaven. None of the buildings have rooves or anything, and in the final climactic battle when they set a forest on fire, just pushing people against them is lethal because the flames catch their strings on fire. There's an absolutely beautiful shot of the army getting mowed down seen only by strings burning and breaking and falling. Here's another cool thing. Tim mentioned that VIP people didn't have to leave the theater before the next show, which was the Zathura premiere. Sweet! I have the best seat in the house! Except, since there was security there to check for cameras or recording devices, they made us leave but we got directly in front of the line and got to go right back in. I feel so special. When i was out in the hall, Kier-la approached me and asked me how the movie ended. She said she was watching up above (presumably in the projection room) but got called away during the end. Again, I wondered how often these really cool, super-film literate people get time to just sit and enjoy a film. To be perfectly honest, when I first saw Kier-la i didn't think she was attractive at all. I don't mean this in a bad way but she seemed to me to give off a very lesbian feel. However, when I approached her to ask about her horror trivia game, I was struck by how cute she is. Her face is absolutely adorable. and now I'm finding that the more I talk to her, the hotter she gets. For real. It's not like... a "thing" or anything, I won't be stalking her or anything like that... yet. It also kind of helps that she could kick my ass in any sort of movie trivia/conversation/debate/whatever. Explaining how the movie ended to her I actually got a bit nervous because I wanted to do it really well and be all interesting and emotive. Best to just stop typing at this point I think... Randomosities from my notebook: -Now that I know that Sunny from Alamo downtown has a kid and a guy, my favorite waitress there is blonde Carrie. I also have a favorite waitress at South Lamar... she's been my favorite since like the second time i went there for the Godfather feast but I never knew her name till tonight. what is it? Carrie!!! OMG star-alignment coincidence-or-is-it!
10.05.05	Luther the Geek	Carlton J. Albright	Ok, this is a movie about biting the heads off chickens... but what I don't get is that Luther also talks like a chicken and acts like a chicken, peeking his head and buck-buck-bucking through the whole movie. He chews the necks out of more humans than he bites the heads off chickens so is he a really a geek? I don't know. and by the way, this is REALLY what the movie's about. I'm not making it up or anything. The dude really bucks like a chicken through the whole thing, and even gives a rooster call whenever he kills someone. What I want to know more about are the idiots who let this guy out of the loony bin. The dude can't even talk, he eats raw eggs and tries to kill everyone he sees... i don't see how parole is an option. I guess the only thing i learned from this movie is this: if someone offers you an egg, you better take it. P.S. not really attached to this movie but this happened tonight and is movie-related although it wasn't a full-length screening so i can't give it an entry here. However, since this is my movie journal, I'm gonna talk about the Full Moon event I went to tonight. Charles Band is the president of Full Moon Entertainment, and anyone who is familiar with that name knows what I'm talking about. Puppet Master, Trancers, Dollman, Subspecies... Band, along with Roger Corman and Loyd Kaufman, is really keeping the exploitation horror alive in this day and age. He's made like over 200 movies or something, it's just crazy. I bet almost half of the movies in the Horror section of my local video shop from middle/highschool were Full Moon titles... most of them are really horrible of course but they're also fun. Band's particular fixation with evil/demonic dolls and toys and little people is a mixed breed of creepy and really cool. I totally wanted to be the Puppet Master for like 3 years and have those little dudes that could drill into people's heads or slash their Achilles heel and whatnot. Anyway, Band is hitting the road in a grassroots effort to raise awareness since even the most minor print or TV advertising is now financially impossible for him. The show is a lot like hanging out at Band's house while he shows you random cool things. He had a reel of not-yet-huge movie stars getting their start in his movies, behind the scenes effects work, trailers, tv bits, etc. etc. interspersed with anecdotes from him, stories, mini-rants, all kinds of stuff. He even brought his i-guess famous rock star son out to sing like three songs (Alex Band, who was in The Calling... who knows). He also showed a trailer for an upcoming release that just HAS to be a modern classic. It's called Gingerdead Man and it's about a killer (Gary Busey) who gets killed, cremated, and accidentally baked into a gingerbread cookie. He then comes to life and starts killing people, saying lines like "Eat me you punk bitch!" It was awesome. He also talked about being approached to make Halloween whatnots and inventing a line of halloween bras, which two HOT girls modelled for us. One had bloodshot eyeballs, one had Rocky Horror-esque lips, one had vampire skulls, and one had larger breasts attached over the actual bra. In the beginning, Band explained that the show would basically include the three main pillars that interest him: blood and gore, weird dolls and puppets, and hot chicks. He didn't really disappoint on any of them. Later in the show, he brought up a few members of the audience and directed a short scene where a monster rips a hot girl's top off. I mean nothing was shown, but it was equally cool and funny to see him conduct non-actors quickly to accomplish the scene on stage. There was also a drawing where you threw your business card into this coffin and he randomly picked a winner to appear and get killed in a new Full Moon movie. I didn't win. Toward the end he auctioned off 4 original puppets from various movies (one dating all the way back to Stuart Gordon's Dolls went to this super hot blonde chick with dreadlocks for 60 bucks!)... I think Harry got one of them... oh and the winner of the get-killed-in-a-movie contest got another one... Perhaps what got me most excited however, was that Band announced a special scam/gimmick/opportunity that he's doing with his next movie: Petrified. Basically, he explained, you look at a lot of these Hollywood directors and producers (Scorses: dwarf. weird looking dwarf. Coppola: mellowed now but when he was younger, total terrorist. Tarantino: straight out of bizarro world) and said how if Tarantino came up to a girl and was just a 7-11 employee she would tell him to fuck off, but since he's a powerful guy in hollywood now, he always has a hot chick on his arm (it's true.. the girl he brought to QT6 was like, taller than him and model-hot)... so everybody in LA tries to play off that they're producers so they can get tail... but most of them are faking so when the girls search their name on imdb, they see through the lie. WELL, The ever-innovative Charles Band announced that for everyone that spent a hundred bucks on the Full Moon merchandise (they had tons of it, DVDs, t-shirts, statuettes, toys, you name it), they would get attached to Petrified as an executive producer... which means they'd get their name in imdb.com and also, the movie would be in the Guinness book of world records for having the most executive producers ever. nice!!! 6 DVDs and a bronzed statuette of Blade commemorating the Roadshow later, I am a producer. Now all I need is a casting couch. So it was a pretty fun event, I'm very glad I went. It made a GREAT precursor to FantasticFest... but now I have to hit the hey and sleep in till 12 or 1 tomorrow in preparation. 4 days, 19 films... get ready.
10.05.05	Incident at Loch Ness	Zak Penn	This is a really well-done supposed documentary where Werner Herzog goes out in search of Loch Ness. It's not just a mockumentary though, it's actually pretty complicated and self-aware as it shifts tones to moments of pretty authentic horror. That and I love to hear Werner Herzog talk. Really liked this movie and am totally set for Wild Blue Yonder friday.
10.04.05	Mirrormask	Dave McKean	Wow. what a visual treat. Every frame could be a piece of art in itself. This is a really wild great movie. It fits perfectly with Alice in Wonderland, The Neverending Story, and Stephen King's The Talisman. McKean's design is so COOL... but Neil Gaiman's script takes it beyond just a visual presentation. There's actually a decent story here. It's whimsical, magical, ethereal and surreal. I really can't even describe how lush and intricate every shot is... it's a real achievement... and I can NOT wait to get it on DVD. Again, Wow.
10.04.05	Porky's	Bob Clark	Somewhere along the way, Porky's became synonymous with lude trash just one step away from porn. It's really not. It's actually a pretty good fun movie. Sure it doesn't shy away from exactly how horny every high school guy is, but it's just as much about the era, friendships, and gettin back at The Man. Sure there's the famous shower room scene and yes the whole movie centers around poor pee-wee trying to get laid, but isn't that what American Graffitti is also about? Dazed and Confused? Fast Times at Ridgemont High? After watching this again the movie feels much more like a low budget drive-in second cousin to those films. The fact that Bob Clark made A Christmas Story right after this begins to make more sense. How he can go from this to Baby Geniuses, or from Black Christmas and Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things to this is still pretty inconcievable.
10.03.05	The Addiction	Abel Ferrara	Leave it to Abel Ferrara to try and mix deep philosophy with trashy exploitation. The vampire genre is used as a drug metaphor (hence the name) with rape/imposition of will overtones and plenty of philosophical aetheria thrown into the mix. The movie was pretty tedious for me, and by the end i was wishing i could watch it on fast forward and still get the sound. Lots of Ferrara regulars in it... and lots of blood which is always good, but also a lot of Lili Taylor voiceover about control, addiction, submission, nothingness, and whatever else just went in one ear and out the other.
10.03.05	Max	Menno Meyjes	I heard about this movie when it was getting made but then nothing when it was released. Usually, that's a bad sign. But it has John Cusack and Noah Taylor in it so I watched it out of curiosity. Basically it's about young Adolf Hitler when he was just getting started and being a starving artist. I guess the sequel to this movie could be about Charlie Manson and David Koresh's music careers. The movie's not exactly bad, but there's nothing very memorable about it either.
10.03.05	A History of Violence	David Cronenberg	Cronenberg's new one... I think the power of this one comes most from the acting. Mortensen really sells it. I love Cronenberg's violence though... he does it so right on. If i ever make a movie, I'd want to do Cronenberg violence... it's sparse but when it's there it's there and it's real. Really affecting. I liked it a lot but a recent case of overhype left me a bit jetlagged. Think I'll need to see it again on DVD.
10.02.05	Domino	Tony Scott	Another Alamo/AICN sneak with writer/Donnie Darko master Richard Kelly in attendance. Tony Scott was supposed to be there too but he had to be location scouting for his new movie. Apparently it was to be set in New Orleans but now the studio wants to film in Miami and he's down in Nola now seeing if his locations are not, you know, destroyed. Anyway, this was at South Lamar and i got there super early because I was just sitting around here. Being first in line, I read through the new Alamo schedule. Sweet! A thanksgivving all-night horror marathon with all holiday-themed movies! I get to see Silent Night, Deadly Night again! Anyway, The movie is about a pretty rich girl model-cum-bounty huntress with a cool name played by Keira Knightley. She dresses in some hot clothes in this. She also shoots guns and uses some nunchakus. The movie follows Tony Scott's newfound love of shotgun-spray coverage. This guy's going crazy like Oliver Stone went crazy 15 years ago. Where some directors become mellower and more efficient with their camerawork as they age, Scott seems to be doing the exact opposite. It's physically exhausting watching his movies now... even Spy Game, which half the movie was basically Redford sitting in a room talking to people, overloads the senses with barrages of angles, speed, music, and film stock. This movie fits that mold pretty well. Where Man on Fire surprised me by being 10% better than I thought it would be, Domino is 10% worse. Maybe it's the added pressure of being a Richard Kelly script, maybe it's because the bar's still 10% higher after MoF, who knows. The end result is still a movie that's good, I just couldn't help but find a few problems with it. The main problem is that it lies to the audience. Subjective POV aside, it shows people die and later it says that they actually didn't die. I can see where they'd feel justified in doing that, but I think it wouldn't have been any worse if they hadn't... or maybe it would have.. maybe we are so expectant today of twists and surprises that we have to be lied to by the movie in order to ensure that no lame-ass says "i saw it coming" afterward in the lobby. I guess if i was making this movie, my hatred for that dude would convince me to put the scene in so.. I guess i don't have a problem with it anymore. My only other little tiff is that, in the Q&A with Richard Kelly afterward, he mentioned several times that it takes multiple viewings to figure out the puzzle of the movie and what's really going on. Not only am I fine with just one viewing in thinking that I have a pretty decent grasp of the movie, I also don't think there's really any puzzle to figure out and I don't think that Tony Scott made a "puzzle" movie. Certainly not like Donnie Darko. I guess that's not the movie's fault either though. So why didn't i just LOVE this movie? the setting was right, couldn't have been in a cooler environment to see it, I like all the actors involved... i just wasn't thrilled though. Something in the back of my mind kept pulling me back and viewing this from the outside. it could be the numerous stylistic and story "homages" Scott uses of his previous work or the occasional comment directed specifically at the audience, but those have been used in other movies that I Love... so who knows. I liked it, but wasn't blown away. There was an afterparty held at a shooting range where you could shoot clay pigeons with shotguns then drink beer. I didn't go though... I'm still pretty undecided, even after making the decision, but oh well
10.02.05	Spider	David Cronenberg	Since I'm planning on seeing A History of Violence tomorrow, I wanted to catch Spider because I'd missed it when it came out. For some reason this movie did not interest me at all. AN hour and a half of watching Ralph Feinnes walk around slowly and mumbling to himself and being crazy at the end? surprise! he's still crazy!
10.01.05	My Bloody Valentine	George Mihalka	I guess this is supposed to be a real classic in the 80s slasher film canon... I think that the slasher film is pretty tight with its distinctions which both works for and against it. On one hand, you won't see too much straying from the central line of a killer murdering people over and over again, but on the other hand the attention becomes focused tightly on the nuance and style with which each movie is made. So when a movie gets cut by the studio and all the gore is taken out, it hurts all the more when the gore is supposed to be the central focus of the picture. It also reminds me of how fragile film can be... When we have 14 different DVDs of Evil Dead 2 and Night of the Living Dead available, I don't immediately think of the thousands of films that have been lost forever or are on the very brink of extinction. Lots of these films just get mangled and abused for their whole lives if they are not lucky enough to be a classic or make a lot of money. It's a real shame because there's charm with a lot of these, and I'm just finding out how big an audience there still is for genre/exploitation film. Anyway, this movie's about this guy who was buried when the mine that a bunch of kids were having a Valentine's Day party in caved in and he had to eat his buddies to stay alive for a week or however long it took to dig him out. Then, the next year, he breaks out of the loony bin and kills a bunch of people on Valentine's Day and the town, aptly named Valentine Bluffs, never celebrates the holiday again until this particular year. So it's a bunch of mining-related deaths and the young kids are miners and most of the killing takes place in a mine. Good fun but I really missed the gore shots. You can totally tell. they set up the shot like every other slasher film but then you just never get that payoff this-is-when-you-scream shot... very frustrating. A thread in the imdb comments about this movie led me to read up a bit on the status of the 8-9 minutes of cut footage that Paramount chopped to make an R (by today's standards, i'd say it'd still be R unless Spielberg was directing, in which case it'd definitely be PG-13)... and how torturous it is for the fans of this film to know that the negative still exists but Paramount are too pussy to ever release unrated movies on DVD and they still own the rights so it's pretty much dead forever. It really sucks that these kinds of reasons are usually what's behind your random favorite movie not being out on DVD or not getting the Criterion treatment... anyway, lack of gore aside, this movie was still fun and I can see why it has a fanbase. Not a favorite or anything but I'm glad I saw it.
10.01.05	My Name is Nobody	Tonino Valerii	My first Terence Hill movie. I can see why he's such a cult fave... he sweats charisma. In this one though he really plays sort of a dick. He's a fast draw who idolizes Henry Fonda's character and spends the movie orchestrating events to put Fonda into a mythic situation: he going against 150 men on horse (aka the "wild bunch"). This movie is really light and Hill spends more time playing with the bad guys than shooting him. Ennio Morricone's score is grand but also cornball and the way Valerii handles the wild bunch scene is really odd. It's a fun movie though... I just prefer my westerns a bit darker. Oh, i have NO idea what the last shot is about... all i can say is poor barber!
09.30.05	Rock School	Don Argott	Like the real life School of Rock, Paul Green started a class for kids age 9-17 for rock music and now made them learn Zappa. The doc was very entertaining, especially the kid who's so painfully self-aware of his problems that you're always flip-flopping between laughing and feeling sad... for the most part though, it's like School of Rock but for real and with more swearing. Some of the kids are bad, some are good. This played at the Alamo South lamar and the teacher was there for a Q&A afterward (Paul Green: How many people here would want to sue Viacom? That's some scary shit right there) and a group of his students also played a small set beforehand... they were decent but the sound wasn't great. Overall it was a fun movie and a fun experience.
09.30.05	The Great Silence	Sergio Corbucci	a Corbucci classic with Klaus Kinski playing a crazy bounty killer named Loco up against Jean-Louis Trintignant as the must Silence in a tale of revenge, murder for money, and shot off thumbs. It's notable because it all takes place in the snowy winter and man does it look cold. The ending is also... really something. This made me yearn for that morrowind-esque Western video game that will never get made.
09.29.05	The Big Gundown	Sergio Sollima	How can you mess with Lee Van Cleef? You just can't. He always looked like a hawk to me with his sharp eyes and sharp nose and sharp jaw and sharply hollowed cheeks. You don't mess with hawks because they can pick up and fly away with babies. In this movie, Van Cleef is a manhunter set on the trail of a wiley mexican named Cuchillo. There's also a great German baron sharpshooter that wears a monacle and plays the piano. In a great showdown, "Fur Elise" is mashed up into the typical spaghetti western score to make a pretty unique sound as he and Van Cleef square off (one guess as to who wins, although i would've put money on him shooting the baron through the monacle... i would've lost though). It's a fun movie, good times... I find myself getting into these more and more lately.
09.28.05	Serenity	Joss Whedon	OK, this was kind of a special event. Apparently this sold out faster than any Alamo event ever (although i bet QT6 badges went quicker). What it was: an advance (a few days still counts as advance, right?) screening of Serenity held in an Old West Town outside of town with cast members Summer Glau and Jewel Staite (hot! even in person!) in attendance. Oh, and I totally got in for free. Well, not exactly for free, but after buying my Fantastic Fest badge they announced that badgeholders could attend so it's pretty much for free... just like the Domino premiere on Sunday (tune in for that one!). So this Old West Town was actually Reimers' Ranch. Ok, what's Reimers' Ranch? Well, it's where the built the set for the recent remake of The Alamo, and according to Hollywood, it's the largest free-standing set ever built in North America. A lot of qualifiers, I know, but still! So it wasn't shown in just some old town with a longhorn skull duct-taped to a general store, it was shown IN THE ALAMO!!! The huge inflated screen was set up to one side of the courtyard and everyone set their chairs and blankets facing it, walking through the front gates to get in and surrounded by small buildings and crumpled walls of goodness. The ranch itself is about a half hour outside of town (south/southwest. for a northerner like me who had to wade through rush hour mopac traffic just to get down to the part where it then takes a half hour, I ended up spending a good 90 minutes to get there), and it's a very similar experience to making the first trip out to The Salt Lick. At first you're in the city, then it thins a little, then you're in outlying towns and before you know it, you're on a stretch of windy road weaving into hill country with nothing but trees and land all around you. There was a line of cars slowly turning into the ranch on a road that went straight into the country. At a certain point, Tim & Co. checked for receipts and made sure everyone was on the list before handing out wristbands and we turn off the paved road onto this even windier and hillier dirty road. You pass what looks like a rusted out general store circa 1906, you pass a few oil tanks you pass an offshoot that looks like it leads to the actual house where the Reimers' live, then you crest this hill and look straight down into THE ALAMO. off to the side is another little street that I just got a glimpse of because i was in the midst of a huge line of cars, then we park and walk under that entranceway through the gates to a little slice of film geek heaven, cowpatties and all. Oh yeah, this is all happening right at dusk with an amazing sunset going bright red and sending shadows off clouds in the sky. I've never seen that before... actual dark lines of shadow in the sky. Since I got there later than I had planned, I staked my claim at a decent spot and just camped there. There was a ginormous line for food and restroom so I decided not to initiate that cycle of digestion. I guess I had a box of chinese snacks coming my way for having a fantasticfest badge, but there was some snafu with not giving everyone (including me) the right ticket vouchers and I didn't really want it anyway so I just sat and looked around at the scenery, feeling the breeze (thank god. it was 103 today, but by the time the sun went down and with that breeze it was warm and cooled down to pleasant when the sun sank and the stars came out), and thought about the odds of this happening anywhere else. I guess I'll have to watch the movie now to see where I sat. So finally it's dark out and everyone's here and Tim comes out to thank Harry/AICN and Joss Whedon and Universal and to tell everyone not to take pictures or video of the movie and leak it online. Then he gets into the poetry. See, if you don't have a fantasticfest badge, one of the ways you could've gotten a ticket is by writing a love poem to one of the characters in the show. 100 people were given tickets based on the quality of their work (Tim: anyone who mentioned anyones loins, inner thighs, or buttocks were thrown away. We're a family establishment here at the Alamo Drafthouse, and there will be no loin-talk tonight). He was gonna read some out but then this dude with a sleeveless t-shirt and a fedora hat got up and grabbed the mic. He got us all clapping and launched into this song he wrote about Jayne's name being gay and him kicking puppies in the balls. We're talking like, 4 verses, choruses, and even a clapless solo ending. It's now clear to me that i am far from the number one superfan in this particular crowd. Tim brings out Jewel and Summer and everyone stands and I think all the guys fall into instant love. But then they show this little bit of Tim's wife's uncle giving a lesson in how to swear in Chinese. This was really funny and he was absolutely hilarious... I'm surprised at how well he delivered the different phrases and his facial expressions as he said it, looking to people off-camera here and there, having a blast. It was a perfect primer for the movie. The movie? It was actually.... really good! I was like... a casual fan of the show. I downloaded all the episodes and watched them one weekend. I really like the Old West aspects of the universe and for the most part the stories and characters are good but I tend to have a problem with Whedon going to the witty dialogue a bit too much. Some of the episodes were too funny for me... and also borderline too cheesy. I'm happy to say that the movie blends and mixes tones perfectly to my taste. One scene in particular goes from laugh to cry in like, 2 frames. Enough is told in the movie to give some closure to the show but it's also left open for more if the film does particularly well (Tim and the actors urged us to all see it 9 more times). There's still some wit to the dialogue and of course it's the future so they have to talk differently anyway but I never felt it becoming obtrusive to the emotions going on at all. It is true however that everything looks like 10 times better and Wash's piloting skills are significantly higher than they were during the show, but i'm choosing to think of it more as seeing the universe the way Joss envisioned it and it being hindered by a tv show budget rather than them making everything prettier just because it's a movie and that's how things are supposed to be. so yeah, I liked the movie as much as I liked the best parts of the show, if not more... but I think it definitely helps to have seen the show. Although they retell a thing or two to make it understandable for people who didn't watch, you get way more investment with the characters when you've already spent 17 hours with them. So after the movie, Henri came out and told us all to look up at the sky, and the spattering of stars that we don't get to see in town, and to look where we are and how perfect this is. Then he went into a bit about how people came up to him to talk to him and he was crying and he was trying to hide it so people wouldn't come up to him in the grocery store and say "dude, i saw you cry at that movie outside" but then he noticed how people who didn't see him can now come up too because he just told everyone. Anyway, he's a huge Whedon fan so he did a lot of the Q&A coordination while Tim hopped around with his camera playing photographer. One dude offers to pay ten bucks to shake Jewel's hand. She agrees and he starts running up front, to be stopped at the last second by Tim "Ten bucks, buddy!" he's just kidding though. the guy shakes her hand then turns it into a shake/hug and guilts Summer into giving him one too. Another guy said his friends brought him out for his birthday tonight and could he get a picture with them to top it all off. We all clap when he does. A third guy yells "Can I have a hug!?" and we all yell "NO!!!" Lots of Q&A. like a good 40 minutes worth... and they finally had to leave. And we all cleaned up and packed up and left as well, a huge line of cars coming back from the middle of nowhere to Austin. A guy passed up going the other way, I bet he had a good time watching us all. I hope he counted. I drove home on the now-empty MoPac, watching as lightning flashed to the north... our cloudless night of stars will probably be overcast and some much-needed rain tomorrow. So this was a pretty special experience... I'd probably feel bad at whatever normal movie i go to next but... the next two movies I have planned are both also special! so yay! I think I'll finish this night off with a sandwich and a spaghetti western. oh, one last thing. One of the cool things that The Alamo Drafthouse does is make up their own little "don't talk during the movie" spots to explain that if someone is talking you can write it down and Lars will take their ass out. Anyway, they have a Firefly spot where it's the scene where Book explains to Mal that if he touches this underage girl, he'll be sent to a "special hell" reserved for child molestors and people who talk during the movie. Anyway, the girl sitting next to me had made up her own little "Special Hell" sign and flashed it when the spot ran. people cheered. cool.
09.27.05	Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior	Prachya Pinkaew	So I've never been like a super-obsessive with Kung Fu movies... I'm not against them or anything but I've only seen a few and there are tons of people out there who have seen many, many more than me... so I didn't catch this in the theater and am now just getting around to renting it on DVD. The stuff i've heard about it is all true: Tony Jaa is one major badass. He's so unbelievably badass that they have to show his moves like three times in a row just so you can fully comprehend how badass it is... and the thing is, you WANT to see it three times in a row because he IS that badass. No wires, No CG, just Tony Jaa kicking ass, taking names, then kicking the names' asses over and over and over. This guy is so badass that, at the beginning of the film when they clearly don't want to show all the fancy moves too soon, he just pushes people over. and they fall. just shoves em right the hell over. so awesome. the actual movie though... well it's ok, but the music is terribly generic and fits the scene maybe once or twice but is otherwise really boring or inappropriate. and the subtitling on the DVD is full-on close-captioning... since I'm not deaf i find it distracting to read [laughing] or [hip hop music] over and over again... and it seems to me that [speaking Thai] and [unintelligible] are just not an option when it's english subtitling to a Thai movie... i sort of know they're speaking thai, I don't need to read it over and over. what i want to know is what they're saying. i don't have the subtitles on just because they're fun. if you've ever liked martial arts movies, you are hereby bound to see this if you haven't already. It's all about elbows and knees and jumping over cars.
09.27.05	Race with the Devil	Jack Starrett	When you race with the devil, you'd better be faster than hell! Great tagline, perhaps one of the best ever. Peter Fonda and Warren Oates take their wives on vacation in an RV and stumble across a satanic ritual sacrifice then spend the rest of the movie trying to get away. I guess the message of this movie is that everyone that lives in texas worships satan. great movie. they've showed the trailer several times at the Alamo and it's been on my list for a while. I'm glad that it's still a good time alone on my computer compared to a theater full of film fans. would make an excellent double feature with Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry.
09.26.05	The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing	Wendy Apple	I have no clue why this is included on the Bullitt, there's about 15 seconds of Bullitt footage in it, but whatever... This is to editing like Visions of Light is to cinematography. Of course, since editing is nowhere near as showy and much more abstract than photography, the doc has to do a bit more heavy lifting to show off what it's talking about, and some of the editors interviewed (by the way, they got a TON of interviews... really comprehensive) bear their invisible status with a bit of frustration, but for the most part it does a great job of explaining the process, discussing the history and innovations, and also giving flavor on a few specific films that we've all deemed "important." It's available as its own DVD as well and certainly worth checking out for anyone interesting in editing or hearing cool movie people talking about films you love.
09.24.05	Last Action hero	John McTiernan	I still think this movie got a bum rap when it came out. Schwarzenegger, perhaps at the height of his popularity, was cool enough to make fun of his image a little bit and everybody pegged this movie as a failure before it even came out. Now that it's a dozen years old and Schwarzenegger's career has deflated - well.. acting career at least - this movie stands up as a decent comedy with tons of cameos that define that era... I mean MC Hammer had a cameo that wasn't supposed to be ironic... Of course I like these movie reality/real reality movies and wish i lived inside a movie most days so this is right up my alley... but yeah this isn't nearly as bad as people say it is.
09.22.05	Corpse Bride	Tim Burton, Mike Johnson	A special AICN free screening with austinite director Mike Johnson in the house. They also gave us all a mini-poster, a keychain, a pen, and a coaster. Three people also won signed Todd McFarlane toys... needless to say I was so happy with all this other useless crap that i will keep around for like a month before feeling ok enough to throw it out that I didn't give it my all to get a toy i couldn't open as well. So... I only saw Nightmare Before Christmas once... I remember it being not as cool as I wanted it to be but that's about it. This one still has that Burton design and all the Burton staple actors but only four songs this time (including one I actually liked) and is much more of a straight story. It's also super short. I didn't time it to the exact minute or anything because they played a few classic Burton trailers before-hand and all that stuff but I wouldn't be surprised if the running time (minus end credits) was under 80 minutes. Um... otherwise, it looked cool and the Q&A with Mike Johnson afterward was sort of interesting (the last question he got was someone that was at his bah mitzvah saying that everyone from the neighborhood was so proud of him. awwww) but the three primest rows in the theater were all reserved for Harry and his goons and like, everyone else in the world but me... so I ended up having to sit way back. It wasn't too bad but three whole rows reserved is just crazy. so yeah... i mean it was ok i guess. nothing really wrong with it. Just no surprises either.
09.21.05	The Bees	Alfredo Zacarias	My inaugural Weird Wednesday: a free midnight exploitation movie shown every wednesday by Lars, although I spotted a few other Alamo luminaries there as well as a surprisingly large turn out of freaks, losers, degenerates, and perverts. This is clearly a strong following. While waiting in line, one guy brought up Johnny Firecloud, citing the now-infamous "tangle assholes" line, and I swear he was not at QT6 Encore Night... he was just talking about it from the last time they showed it for Weird Wednesday. Hardcore. Anyway, John Saxon is the star of this movie about killer bees who, by the end, evolve and become intelligent and communicate a warning to mankind that they will either co-exist as equals from now on or they will sting our asses to extinction. Yeah, pretty wild. This has to be the bottom of the particular Killer Bee movie barrel. I really thought that I saw this when i was a kid but it didn't have the one scene i remember so i must've seen another from that killer bee movie craze that went on in the late 70s. it's funny though because, like both Lars and QT said, John Saxon is great no matter how crappy the movie he's in is. When he starts talking to the bees and telling them that they will continue trying to decipher their buzzing, you almost believe it. almost, but even almost is pretty damn good. There were a few other choice lines here and there, along with an ancient John Carradine complete with swollen, twisted arthritic hands, but this is definitely a movie i'm pretty sure i wouldn't enjoy if i saw alone. Still though, showing up at the Alamo downtown after three nights away was eerily close to a feeling of coming home... I think I'm making this a weekly habit for as long as it's possible. If i learned one thing at QT6, it's that I am a complete novice in the world of exploitation film and something needs to be done about that.
09.21.05	The Upside of Anger	Mike Binder	I kind of sort of liked Mike Binder's HBO show and all the women in this movie are hot so... i watched it. Not bad. Costner seems most comfortable and at his best when he's playing has-beens and losers lately. I'll think on that one for a bit.
09.20.05	Alexander	Oliver Stone	Whew. This movie is heavy. Like every line spoken by anyone is weighed to the ground with gravitas and historical importance. Maybe it will be seen differently 10 years from now like most of Stone's films, but right now this seems all over the place, boring, and way WAY too long.
09.20.05	The Big Easy	Jim McBride	The Alamo Village played this with some "classic New Orleans cuisine," proceeds to go toward Hurricane Katrina Relief. I've only ever been to the Alamo Village once before to see Raiders of the Lost Ark. The vibe i get from being there and also seeing the special events they do there is that it's like the second string Alamo. If Downtown is the original and South Lamar is the flagship, Village is like the little brother. It still does special events unlike the other franchised Drafthouses but it's minor stuff. So... this was about like that. The meal wasn't bad but i wanted the gumbo to be spicier and especially the cayenne-cheese grits with cajun shrimp. Also, they couldn't get a film print of the movie so they had to play it on DVD on a somewhat older digital projects so it was pixellated a bit. That aside, i didn't have a bad time, and the movie was kind of fun in a very certain way. Good supporting cast, I never quite buy Dennis Quaid as cajun but this was when he was such a pretty boy i guess nobody cared how he talked. Ellen Barkin is hot as always, and aside from constantly referring to the city as "The Big Easy," the locations and whatnot were cool. I think whatever my next "thing" was after QT6 was gonna disappoint me so it's good i got that out of the way with this... so i can start to gear up for Fantastic Fest.
09.20.05	Teddy Bears' Picnic	Harry Shearer	A satirical look at the infamous Bohemian Grove... despite the absolutely top notch cast of comic talent here, I still find the actual subject matter that the film makes fun of more interesting than the movie itself. I'm very much looking forward to seeing Alex Jones' "Dark Secrets" documentary when he screens it at the Alamo next month.
09.20.05	The Exorcism of Emily Rose	Scott Derrickson	An interesting angle on the possession film: putting it in the form of a courtroom drama. Good acting for the most part and a few creepy moments but always accompanied by typical stab cues of score. Not bad but it probably won't become a favorite or anything.
09.19.05	They Came Back	Robin Campillo	I much prefer the French title "Les Revenants." This movie takes a pretty unique point of view on the whole zombie genre. Here, all these dead people just come back to life. no gore, no hunger for brains or anything like that; they're just back. So the movie deals with how we'd handle such a huge influx of people whom we've written off as dead. The zombies are still portrayed as mostly-silent and pretty slow, but they talk and do their old jobs and one woman even has luvins with her dead man. The movie's tone and pacing is very quiet and slow, laconic even... The dead people seem to have some sort of unspoken agenda so the movie strings us along making us wonder what it is. The effect is pretty interesting though, because I ended up watching the whole movie just waiting for them all to stop beingconcussed and start eating flesh. My only beef is with the ending, where I think they cheaped out a bit and also left things too vague. However, there's some great use of thermal film and the whole film achieves this eerie creepiness to it with all these old people just standing around or walking slowly. There's also a few scenes of scientific research into the returned dead which i liked a lot. overall a very interesting, if unexpected, film.
09.19.05	Layer Cake	Matthew Vaughn	A very solid British crime film that's not as flashy or gonzo as Guy Ritchie's films but still pretty convoluted and filled with interesting characters with funny names. The ending is totally ripped off from No Way Out though... except more arbitrary but oh well. still good.
09.19.05	Lord of War	Andrew Niccol	Due to QT6, I missed a couple first-run opening weekends so I am now playing catch-up. I'd heard that this movie was good and while I no longer really trust Nicolas Cage to deliver anything, I still had a glimmer of hope based on Niccol's Gattaca (perhaps this is because I never got around to seeing S1m0ne)... The movie is about a big-time gun runner, using him as an antihero and making the conventionally "good" guys (interpol, ATF) into antagonists that get their come-uppance at the end. I can see why some don't care for a story like this since it asks us to sympathize with this guy who sells guns to terrorists, but the movie actually makes several really pat moral statements about how crappy his life actually is and how he's really just an animal driven by greed and pride. I'm honstly not really sure if i see the point and execution of this movie as good or bad. The big picture aside, there are a few little filmic trickshots that are pretty entertaining, and regardless of what the story actually is, it's told pretty well. Nicolas Cage does better in here than expected... Not bad for a Hollywood movie, I guess. At least it says something, even if that something's really muddled and alternately subversive and conservative.
09.17.05	Johnny Firecloud	William A. Castleman	So here's the funny thing about this screening, the last screening of the entire fest. Tarantino was gone. Nobody seemed to really know where he was off to, no one really knew if or when he was coming back, he just sort of disappeared at some point. and was never really heard from again. So i guess I've now seen a movie that Tarantino hasn't... that officially makes me eligible for a hardcore filmgeek badge and secret decoder ring, right? Anyway, Tim got up and intro'd the film instead and did a great job of it. he also called for a show of who had made it to every show of the fest. I proudly started clapping and although I was surrounded by AICN people so it made it seem like there were a lot of us, Micah's (he was sitting a few rows back)dumbdistraction.com write-up mentioned that there was really only about a dozen of us. Not even Tim made it to all of them, citing BMX Bandits as his downfall. He then called for a show of the all-but-one club and got some more applause (many yelling "Madman Marz" excuses... weaklings.) Tim: ah yeah, Madman fuckin Marz... did anyone actually like that movie? (I actually did) You guys are high or stupid or something. I've got news for you... you watch it again and you'll find out that movie sucks! I call that just a little bit of jealousy for not making it to all the showings, but Tim's a cool guy so I'll let that go. So Tim continued with his intro, calling Johnny Firecloud a rip-off of Billy Jack made by the great David F. Friedman, basically making a bloodier, dirtier, nastier versions of movies that make a lot of money. The movie was pretty much that. There was a great scalping scene along with a few other cool death idead (a bag full of rattlers!) but before it could get to that we had to sit through a lot of rednecks making fun of indians and indians arguing about whether or not their culture sucks. The main guy, Johnny Firecloud, was pretty built but insisted on wearing these really tight pants with this totally cinched up belt which made him look flabby. He's constantly angry at everyone even though big-breasted women want him, including an absolutely beautiful Native American girl who actually gets raped TO DEATH. I'm not sure exactly how much rape it would take to cause death, but it must be a lot, and she must have gotten it. Easily the most interesting character of the movie is not Johnny Firecloud or the big rich redneck who own's the town but the police dude with the dirty secret that keeps him on the rich guy's leash. There's a scene in here where he sits at his desk and has a sort-of quit breakdown/tears-of-rage sort of thing that... I have to say, was a real moment. It felt like it deserved to be in a better movie, or maybe it was still pretty bad but just better than everything else, at 3:30am who can tell. Anyway, he's gay, or maybe not, but in any case he got discharged from the military for being gay. This calls us back to an earlier line where one of the rednecks confronts him in a bar and says "One of these days you and me are gonna tangle assholes!" Drew (AKA Moriarty) after the movie: I don't think that means what you think it means, man. You should maybe rethink that before you go around saying it again. In another emerging pattern though, there's a scene with some of the best camel-toe I've seen in recent history. It mirrors Funeral Home's nicely. I think the only other good moment of the film comes when Johnny Firecloud's getting back at the big rich redneck. Instead of killing him, he ties him up and whips the shit out of him (because of course he was whipped earlier, blah blah blah) and has him strung up to hang with his feet barely standing on the ground and connects with a solid punch right to the balls. The rich redneck guy then proceeds to try and scrunch up his legs in pain but then starts hanging and has to bring his legs down to the ground but hurts so much he can't so he's thrashing around trying not to choke as he deals with his nutpain. Pretty cool. Other than that, the movie doesn't end with a death or even a showdown but a wussy psychotherapy session between Johnny Firecloud and the gay cop on that pile of rocks that they use for every movie (a joke was made of it in Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey when they're watching a Star Trek episode and the evil B&T robots then tae the real B&T to the same formation to throw them off and kill them). All of this talk of feelings and knowing who you are and where you're going pretty much killed any sort of excitement or energy I had for this film. At that point it was just 4 in the morning and Quentin had already left. Through the whole night I was feeling pretty sad since this was the end. Sure spending every night at the Alamo was sort of getting to me (there was a bug that was going around that I was just waiting to catch, my ass was sore, and I had a paranoid fear that all of the assorted BOs were attaching themselves to my clothes and stuff), but after this final film there was a pretty positive feeling of making through to the end. 27 films, 1 TV show, and 2 encores in 9 nights = pretty epic. I'll have Weird Wednesday's to revisit some of this kind of feeling though, and upcoming festivals to hopefully see everybody again. I do have a fear that I won't get a badge to the next QT fest - selling out in half an hour is really hardcore - but hopefully something will work out. Hopefully there will be another one, and in less than four years too. After saying goodbye to everyone and sauntering out into the completely deserted streets of 4:30am Austin, i got in my car and headed home to bills and garbage and an empty refridgerator and all the other pains in the ass that real life creates. I didn't get a ticket for the Firefly marathon going on today at the Alamo so i'll actually have to stay home tonight. i wonder what that will feel like.
09.17.05	Fight for Your Life	Robert A. Endelson	Encore Night continued with a new film which Quentin described as one of his favorite exploitaiton movies ever. He was looking through Tim's list of prints last night and freaked out when he saw the title and when he called Tim up this afternoon and said he wanted to show it, Tim just started laughing. Qhen QT mentioned that it would make a great double feature with Hot Summer in the City, Tim got serious and said you couldn't do it. It would just be too wrong. Either the screen would ignite into flames or God would just have enough with us and push the "Smite" button on his keyboard. QT then goes into an impersonation of a foul-mouthed ghetto-slang God stomping his foot down on poor little Alamo Drafthouse Downtown... at the time i thought "God wouldn't really be that bad" but after seeing this movie and imagining seeing it together with Hot Summer in the City, I have changed my mind. I DO think God would get that upset and start swearing and mashing us down into hell with his white sneaker. What's funny about the movie is it stars William Sanderson, who has been in tons of stuff, usually as a dimwit thanks to his unique voice. He was in Blade Runner as the toymaker and the Bob Newhart show as Larry (with the brother Darryl and the other brother Darryl) and is now on Deadwood now as E.B. Farnham, the hotel owner. According to QT, anyone who knows this guy will forever now know him only as Jessie Lee Kane from this movie. His performance as a cracker southern hillbilly psycho nutcase will burn into your brain and make you forever associate him with this role. "You can make a movie as incendiary as Fight for Your Life," Quentin tells us all, "but you can never make a movie MORE incendiary than Fight For Your Life." Quentin also mentioned that this movie first had the title "The Fighting Family," but then it was "Fight for Your Life," but when he finally got to see it in NY it was "Staying Alive." Incidentally, IMDb has seven titles associated with this movie, including "I Hate Your Guts", "Getting Even", and "Blood Bath at 1313 Fury Road." The Isely Brothers-esque theme song that plays in the beginning and end of the flick has the words "fight for your life" in it though so... you know. The actual movie is about a black family (the patriarch being a deacon at his church, very soft-spoken and decent) being terrorized by a group of escaped convicts. Sanderson is the leader of said escaped group, taking great pains to include EVERY reacial slur in the KKK lexicon of "words that make black people angry." He doesn't limit himself to the family that he's terrifying though. See, he has a gun and his buddies only have knives so he gets to call his latino buddy a spic and his "oriental" buddy a chink an awful lot too. Both the spic and the chink are pretty funny though. one's like obsessed with his poor upbringing and the other is a total perv who they have to hide the family dog from for some reason. It's really Sanderson though who takes the cake. He points a gun at the back of a baby's head after killing its papa, beats the deacon out of conscioussness with his bible, yelling "turn the other cheek!" and he rapes the virgin daughter then lets the other two have goes while the dad's still knocked out. The pervy oriental also beats this little kid to death with a rock. It's really pretty brutal and totally uncalled for. I really think the FBI needs to investigate anyone who owns a copy of this movie. It's ultimately rewarding though when the family finally turns the tables on Sanderson and his crazy-ass buddies. The once peacable happy family becomes completely vicious and vindictive, shooting one guy in the crotch and really exacting some revenge on the other two. I think it might be wrong for me as a person to say i really liked this movie, but I have to say it's the kind of movie that you don't tend to forget. Surprisingly (to me at least) there were lots of people there who'd seen it before, many times before actually. It's just a reminder for me that i am a real lightweight when it comes to exploitation film. Oh, also. Quentin said that the last movie of the night would be Johnny Firecloud, which he hasn't seen so that would get to be his little festival, watching a movie he hasn't seen with us.
09.17.05	Tarzoon, The King of the Jungle	Picha, Boris Szulzinger	For the second film of the Night, Robert Rodriguez came up to thank the sponsors and intro QT. Man, this guy has been working out. Anyway, after bringing him up on stage, QT turned and motioned for Rodriguez to stay... At this point, everyone who'd been at the 80s horror-thon started working themselves up. Quentin mentioned that they played a movie called Silent Night, Deadly Night, all of us vets started cheering. Tarantino then said that they were going to re-enact the first scene from that movie, with Rodriguez as the grandfather and Quentin as young Billy. They both got on their knees, RR started playing comatose, and what followed is probably the highlight of the entire festival for me. Rodriguez gave it up as well as I remember seeing a week ago, only forgetting to throw in a "BOYYYY" but other than that pitch-perfect. It was really something special to see. Afterward, Rodriguez explained that it was probably his favorite monologue in all of cinema and he hadn't seen it in a long time but the last time he did it was to scare the shit out of the Spy Kids kids when one of them mentioned looking forward to Christmas. He also mentioned that he's been hanging out at Quentin's house working on Grindhouse (tangential note: RR said that QT actually got a line idea for their trailer from one of the trailers played here during the fest... so when the Grindhouse trailer hits expect it to say "Rodriguez and Tarantino are back! but this time, they're Back TO Back!") and when he mentioned that he was gonna play SN,DN for us, he went right into it and Quentin was really surprised and impressed that he knew it so well. Surprised and impressed indeed. So after that, Quentin said that there was really nothing that could be said to prepare anyone for Tarzoon for those that haven't seen it. I'd agree, it really is better to just let it wash over you and appreciate the perverse surreality of it all. I was a little anxious about seeing it at 10:30 rather than midnight, but to my surprise the film was still really funny on that bizarre level. I think I appreciated Belushi's Perfect Master character even more. "Come on, douchebag, what's your name?" and the two-headed dude arguing to himself about whether certs was candy or not. Eric (AKA Quint) said he got a set of French Lobby cards off eBay but they haven't arrived yet. I really hope there's one of the phallus army generation conveyor belt... that'd be really special.
09.17.05	No Way Out	Duccio Tessari	Encore Night at QT6. Thanks to AFS accidentally printing the line-up of the 80s horror marathon and the mystery midnight movie for Sexploitation Night, tonight is really the biggest unknown in the whole festival. People have been rumouring and pondering for most of the week how exactly tonight would work. Would there be polls? an applause-o-meter to decide which films get played? would it be an all-nighter? how much it would suck if it WASN'T an all-nighter, would there be new films? Would we get to see Confessions of a Young American Housewife just because Quentin hadn't? Would Nicky Katt finally wear a new t-shirt? Encore night was like The Weather for everyone waiting in line: a perfect filler for any lulls in conversation. Speaking of waiting in line, I got there early enough to see the AICN folks walk in and straight into the theater. Thanks to Emily Hagen (a 12 year old girl who'd just gotten a state grant to make a zombie film) and her mother being in line behind me, i got an impromptu invite to check whatever it is that we watched out. Pretty sweet not having to wait in line for an hour. So tonight was sort of off from the very beginning. The current rumor was two old films and two new, which made sense since we'd all calculated QT's timetable to make it to the Emmys the next day. Still, it would put us out of the theater at like 4:30... a horrible time as it's not early enough for breakfast but too late for a normal night's sleep (thankfully the McDonald's near my apartment has all-night drive-thru. mmm bacon, Egg & Cheese biscuit). Not only that, but Quentin wasn't there to intro the first film. Instead, Lars got up and talked about No Way Out's excellent score, awesome set design, and beautiful female lead that has like 3 scenes in the entire movie. According to Lars, Quentin was off doing volunteer work for hurricane Katrina. Lars, man.. you never know... I really thought it was a joke but then everyone started clapping. Lars then said "if you have a problem with that then you are a cold-blooded motherfucker." Later on, I talked to someone who asked if he was kidding and he wouldn't say a word. In any case, No Way Out didn't get as rambunctious a response this time, but for me personally, even though i wasn't as vocal about it, I still liked it just as much. In addition to all the stuff i went on about last time, I can't believe I forgot to mention the total superman lunging knifing that Delon does at one point when he runs out of bullets. It's just this grand sweeping leap up this flight of stairs to land with a knife right into this guy's back. So badass. I also forgot to mention another death where the bullet goes through the guy to break the fishtank behind him, leaving all these goldfish wiggling around on the table... as well as another death where he shoots a guy right between the eyes and his sunglasses break apart. Man, those deaths were sweet... it was a perfect mix of hitman cool and giallo style. There were also several little bits and pieces of foreshadowing leading up to the final shot this time around... just little things that make the facial expressions in the last scene all the more resonant and important. Later, Eric (AKA Quint) said there was a No Way Out one-sheet on eBay but someone else was bidding on it. He said he might have to get dirty and do some last-minute sniping to get it. I would love a No Way Out poster but have no doubt that his eBay powers are greater than mine.
09.16.05	Fistfull of Talons	Chung Sun	The night ended with a good-ol kung-fu flick, directed by (QT: he's like the Kubrick of the Shaw brothers stable) Chung Sun and starring Billy Chong. Before the movie started, Quentin mentioned (along with like 15 other things that I'm not mentioning (the same goes for every film I'm writing up here)) that the last shot, not the last scene but the last shot, might give Tobe Hooper's last shot in Texas Chainsaw Massacre a run for its money as the Best Last Shot of a Movie Ever. "It wouldn't win, but it would give it a run." I have to say he's right. As far as the plot's concerned... some angry manchurians want to overthrow the republicans (HUGE cheer from the crowd), but there's this one soldier dude or something that stole the emporer's seal.. and he's hiding out next to where Billy Chong washes his horse. Fighting, training sequence, weird kinda-romance with chinese Cher-lookalike, and epic final battle set on a huge statue of a loungin Buddha ensues. Some of the shot compositions during the fight scenes are really impressive, and the movie adheres to a strict ruleset of like... guys fight until they spit blood. Once they spit blood, they are out of it. The wire-enhanced mega kick- and punch-recoils were spare enough to make them look really cool and not get old, especially coupled with the spitting of blood previously mentioned. There were definitely some pretty effective sequences here... and then the last scene. After a huge long final battle, the Cher-lookalike calls upon her mystical control over eagles and a few of them fly into the bad guy's face and start pecking/scratching away. Of course they use a real eagle for the shots of the dude tussling and rolling around, gripping this eagle so it won't fly away... but then this last shot: The bad guy stands up and, gripping an eagle-leg in each arm, rips the bird apart at the seam... splitting it right the fuck in half. As this happens (in slow-mo), Billy Chong is flying through the air set to connect in the biggest jumpkick-to-back-of-head ever... then the film literally stops, becoming a still, and the credits role. End of fight right there, I guess... but then again after you split an eagle in half what more can you really do? So there I have it. If tomorrow night's Encore Night is in fact made up of encore presentations, this concludes the new QT films of the fest. The week has absolutely flown by. Part of me really wishes this could go on forever, despite it being hot in the theater tonight and my ass just about being out of cushion, it's really really great to live the lifestyle of waking up, eating, going to the theater, coming home and writing it up, sleeping, and repeating. Of course i have all sorts of real-life stuff backed up for a week, but it has been so worth it. I learend tonight that 9-day badges sold out roughly at 8:30 am... i got mine at 8:20. I feel so lucky... and am already dreading the mad rush to get one next time... otherwise I will be waiting in standby with everyone else :(
09.16.05	The Dirty Outlaws	Franco Rossetti	Next on the list was a spaghetti western named The Dirty Outlaws although QT thought the original title must be Desperado due to the really kickass theme son (which he then began to sing the chorus very loudly and just a second or two too long. the guy has real comedy chops, I'm telling you). Louis Black from the Austin Chronicle also gave him a poster of this film, which QT said he didn't have, and mentioned that Black himself got the poster from Jay Knowles (Harry's dad) a long time ago, getting it in trade for some comic books. Heh. QT also mentioned that this movie had his maybe favorite actress of all time in it: the girl who does the voice dubs of one of the female characters. He said that she's basically been in every movie you've ever seen, and she's so great but he doesn't know her name. I thought this was a really interesting facet to Tarantino's tastes... that his favorite actress is really just a voice... very cool. The movie was OK. Some of the brawl photography was really great but a few sequences went on pretty long, and the main character, who basically starts off the movie as a horse thief and stumbles into this plan to steal a stash of gold from a blind dude, all of a sudden has a severe curse of the Morals when he takes down the people that beat him up and killed the blind dude that he was conning anyway. This makes the takedown scenes even longer as he continually has to give bad guys weapons, make sure they know who's killing them, let them run a bit before mowing them down, etc. After the badassosity of Yul Brenner and Alain Delon, this guy was borderline pansy by comparison. They left you for dead in a huge mudpatch! the least you can do is gut-shoot them then dig your muddy heal in the wound while they squirm there... Why play games? The theme song is excellent though, really catchy and it's still in my head. DESPERADOOOOOO!
09.16.05	Crack House	Michael Fischa	Tonight's Grindhouse Triple Feature marked the end of new programming for QT6, unless any of the rumors/wishes about there being more than previously played films in the Encore night come true. That said, tonight sort of represented those forgotten genres that drew the short straws this year and didn't get a whole night of their own. First up is a semi-blaxploitation flick called Crack House. Before that though, the pre-show had this trailer with the line "He used a camera like most men use a woman." What does that even mean??? I don't know, but it's really cool. Crack House: Even though this movie was released in 89, anyone that played GTA: San Andreas has basically seen this movie. There's stereotypically funny chicano gangs, OGs for life, sleazy characters, and a crack den that eventually gets busted up. What's interesting about this movie is that it actually has sex slaves in it. I'm sure this isn't the first movie to have em, i mean the midnight feature last night was all about one, but I found it pretty entertaining to see the rather quick transformation from prosperous student to rockhead sex slave up close and personally. The actress actually pulls of the whole shakes & shivers act pretty well... but by the end of the movie she's only dressed in lingerie and cannot leave the house. awesome. Other than that, Jim Brown plays a really... really sleazy guy in this with class act lines like "get this bitch a speedball" and "is this your bitch? Used to be." If this isn't somewhere on his reel, he needs to check himself for real. Continuing in the tradition of TP in Madman, another pattern (along with retard handimen and animated penises) emerges with one of the slimeball characters here being named BT (stands for Big Time, by the way... because he's so... big time?). I think the funniest character in the film has to be the highschool principle though, who ends up being one cold-hearted ruthless killer/drug supplier/pedophile... Richard Roundtree, who plays a cop, has a great line after he shoots the primciple down at the end of the film: "We need to start paying these teachers more money." There you go folks, a moral message. Now would somebody please get this bitch a speedball? Oh yeah, one of the black gang members (the one who keps saying crazy awesome stuff like "OG for life!" and "OGs don't die, they multiply" had this awesome 80s shirt on that said "OG Jammer" and after the movie Tim made up a replica of the shirt... so cool. Not cool enough to buy one of course, but still...
09.15.05	Hot Sumemr in the City	The Hare	For the midnight movie to end Sexploitation Night, QT picked something very special. Beforehand, Tim league finally took stage for an intro, and did a remarkably well-spoken explanation of how, since the AFS was putting on this event instead of the Alamo Drafthouse, the thin line between filth and art was teetering into the "art" category tonight. By use of a hand gesture demarcating the level of "art" that we've been at tonight so far (mostly boobies, a bit of fur), he raised his hand much higher and talked about the trailers we were about to see corresponding with the film we were about to see. Then he made all of us who might be bloggers or internet journalists (Tim: this means you redhead boy (everyone laughs at harry knowles)) to promise not to say the Alamo showed filth. I remember from a few other trips to see somewhat risque features that some law or regulation forbids the Alamo from showing hardcore porn, so that, along with common decency, dictates that I not explain too much about this movie that i just saw. I mean, not that anyone reads this... but if there was a mistake someday and someone actually did, i definitely don't want to get Tim and the Alamo in trouble... and they wouldn't... because they didn't do anything wrong... or show any filth... no filth at all. I will say that I am probably a changed man because of it. I will also say that the trailers were very graphic in their non-filthiness and made us all do that laugh/groan/clap thing more than once. There was lots of slow-motion non-filth, some really vivid underwater non-filth, and I particularly got a kick out of the trailer for Behind the Green Door drawing a reference/comparison to Visconti's The Damned. I guess blue cinema really was more highbrow back then. In his intro, QT talked about how he really didn't like porn at all. He got a job at the Pussycat theater when he was 16 and was an usher there for some time not to mention his years at a video store putting him in constant contact with the stuff, but before Teenage Hitchhikers, when he was explaining what the difference between porn and sexploutation was for him (the girls have charm, not track marks and bullet holes), called porn anti-film. He said he was such a non-fan that he couldn't even remember the few he ever saw which he didn't think were bad, which is really saying something because over the course of the week we've heard him remember the name of pretty much every movie that's ever existed and become obscure. BUT, he says, the box art of Hot Summer in the City finally won him over one night and the movie quickly became his by-far favorite porn (not filth!!! it had a story, thus proved social import). Again, what was shown tonight was art, not filth, so I'm not gonne even describe the box art or the movie in any way except to say that the plot involved a gang of black dudes two days before a huge racial riot is started by "The Man" (whom we actually see) and an unfortunate teenaged white woman. Anyway, one thing QT mentioned is that one of the guys has sort of a large head and droopy eyelids... and as the movie plays you start to think to yourself "is this guy retarded?" I mean his character is definitely retarded. They call him slow and do mean things to him and he ends up having to take care of himself in the corner and all, but what you start wondering about is the actor himself... because he plays retarded REALLY damn well... much better than all these other dudes play their characters... and the retard character's name is also the actor's first name... so it really becomes apparent as you watch that what's onscreen is really pretty wrong in ways that even the most DPDA/bukkake/donkey show stuff of today doesn't even do. so yeah, it was a special moment between all of us in the theater. I'm sure we'll all remember it for some time.
09.15.05	Teenage Hitchhikers	Gerri Sedley	QT: This movie actually has teenage hitchhikers in it. That's rare, don't get used to that shit. Quentin talked about this American flick being a good example of the kind of stuff they'd make for drive-ins in the early 70s, most usually as part of a triple feature with something like: Teenage Delinquents, Teenage Hitchhikers, and Teenage Prostitutes or whatever. Most of the time, the movies would actually have nothing to do with the title, they're just fit to the mold in order to get randy couples in the gates. QT mentioned being a kid and driving past the drive-ins and getting just the slightest glimpse of one of the scenes on the screen and being like, jazzed about it. It's a memory that's clearly fond and I have similar ones except mine all revolve around being able to climb into the back seat and see the other, better, movie playing while i waited for the second movie of the double feature (They'd always play some really super crappy movie first that I'd have to wait through just to get to the good stuff like Friday the 13th part 7 or whatever. Of course then my parents would fall asleep or maybe start staring at the other screen while i dug on the tinny screaming coming in through the audiobox. anyway...). So this movie, being American, has way more violence in it than the other one. THe girls are also not nearly as cute, but at least they are hitchhikers. For some reason, the supporting cast of this movie is incredibly bizarre. There's a lingerie salesman who starts a scene incredibly hetero and ends it in complete drag coming on to a cop, there's the cop with the effeminite southern drawl is sort of threatening but not really, then in the best role and really the only reason that made this movie worth watching, this rapist who becomes incredibly hurt by one of the hitchhiker's accusations of small genitalia and poor sexual prowess. This movie is one of those that you see the running time is 74 minutes and know that even so, it's gonna seem like three hours. There were a few good lines though (mostly toward the beginning) including "hey! we laid our music on you, that's worth something!", "if you want bread, go fuck a baker", and "I was afraid I'd catch something." There's also a scene in here where they just talk. it begins with no sex and it ends with no sex. what the hell is a scene like that doing in a movie like this!? There must've been lost footage or something. All that dialogue in a row couldn't have been intentional. So where Hay Country Swingers was at least enjoyable and completely saved by the last five minutes, Teenage Hitchhikers is slow enough to veer into "painful" territory. I was pretty glad when it ended.
09.15.05	Hay Country Swingers	Alois Brummer	Sexploitation Night at the QT fest! There's only one more night of new films after this, so so sad! But in other news I've finally been getting off my ass and talking with people in between the films. Aside from the whole AICN crew, I asked John Pierson what it took him to appear on The Real World and he completely agreed with me that that one dude needed to get punched. He also called the blonde slut hot, and said that Dave Grohl, whom he saw the other night, dedicated a whole song to her ("that blonde slut"). He also said he just did his time and got away from those idiots... great answer. I also asked him about "Direction Man," which sometimes plays at the Alamo in the pre-show... to describe it would sort of ruin it so i won't, but Pierson sort of introduces it with Kevin Smith on the Clerks set. He talked about how the clip actually has a real twist and gets much less benign. Great. now i have to find a copy. I also said hey to the guy who runs cinemastrikesback.com, which is running excellent blow-by-blow write-ups of the entire fest... so if you want to get a complete picture of this week instead of just my thoughts and perspective, head on over there (same goes for dumbdistraction.com and of course AICN) and a few others, generally sharing in our movie geekery where i am continually exposed to tons of stuff i never knew even existed. man i am such a small fish in this pond. anyway, the first movie of the night, Hay Country Swingers, is a german flick about.... you know i really don't know what it was about. This girl ends up at a farmhouse... i guess you could call that a plot. anyway, before QT came up, Lars (yeah, Lars!) told us all about how he loves sexploitation films and has seen a bunch of em and in his opinion the countries that they are made have a correlation between the quality of their sexploitation films and the quality of their food. He cited France and Italy as having wonderfully hot and great flicks, then said German stuff was just beer & bratwurst, greasy shit. And then he said even within german sexploitation there are levels of quality and Quentin had decided to show a lederhosen film tonight, truly the lowest of the low. Lars then said to QT: you must have balls the size of volkswagons to show this, and I applaud you for it. To which QT gets up and intros the film. It was very funny and i think all of the details have oozed out of my ear because I can't remember anything he said. Anyway, the movie makes absolutely no sense. every guy is horny and tries to get with any living being in the scene, I don't think there's one scene in the entire film that doesn't end with softcore sex. I also don't think there's one scene where some rendition of Beethoven's Ode to Joy is played. The girls are all either cute or 70s-esque though and the whole movie is really quite funny. I was strongly reminded of all those trashy dubbed films they used to play on Cinemax Friday After Dark during my burgeoning youth. 2069 A Sex Odyssey, that one Emanuelle that was Japanese, maybe even a Jess Franco movie or two if i'm not mistaken. One thing to mention about this film is one character, I really never knew which one... whether she was the wife of the owner or one of the lesbo farmhands or any of the seemingly random people that would just pop up to either have sex or try to have sex, introduced the main girl to a vibrator. Main girl: i've heard about these and always wanted to use one. it looks so complicated. random woman: it's easy, just use it like this. Then she procedes to titillate her titties, working it all over her upper torse and even down the side of her leg once or twice. I really hope no burgeoning youth women saw this and took it as educational... There was also the dopey handimen who is sexually taunted by all the babes in heat. We last saw him in Funeral Home, where prodigious amounts of ear-hair kept him from getting any play from the tragically un-hot "hot girl." This time around, he gets to poke and prod and slobber all he wants until all the women harshly end things and he's left to his own devices. Poor dopey handiman. One last thing. Right at the end of the movie, the main girl finally uses her vibrator and finally figures out another place to put it besides on her breasts, abdomen, legs, neck, and arms. The movie then cuts to this animated cuckoo clock where the arms of the clock are little phalluses and the ticker is a huge swinging pair of balls. The hour strikes and an animated cock jumps out and goes on this little adventure where first it roams free but then it runs from this really ugly woman with hard nipples. It pulls up it's foreskin to hide, it disguises itself as a cannon, it deflates until someone tickles it hard again, all kinds of crazy stuff just out of the blue. Cut back to the main girl finished with the vibe. I guess it was supposed to symbol some sort of internal masturbatory fantasy but... if so that is one CRAZY freak of a woman... hilarious? yes, erotic? nope. Anyway, it was a fun romp absolutely fitting the title of tonight's theme, probably made better because it was so German and definitely saved by the bizarre animation at the end. Quentin mentioned that dopey handimen have become an emerging pattern this year but I'd contend that animated penises have also reared their ugly heads, so to speak.
09.14.05	The Sell-Out	Peter Collinson	For the midnight movie, QT played a non-Italian sort-of crime, mostly-spy movie starring Oliver Reed and an old Richard Widmark. This movie was directed by the guy who did the original Italian Job as well as tons of others I haven't seen (yet). One of the special things about this screening is that QT is missing a reel of it. So like, 10 minutes are just not there. What's funny is that QT said he'd seen it so much like this that he not only doesn't miss it but also never really wants to see that missing reel even if he had the option because one of the great mysteries of the movies for him would be answered with that reel. Basically, Widmark is "retired" CIA and lives in Isreal with a hot wife. Oliver Reed, a former student of Widmark's has defected to Moscow but now, caught in the middle of some high-end tomfoolery on both sides, has basically the entire world wanting to kill him. So he shows up and Widmark has to take him in and figure it all out. The thing is, it's pretty blatant that Reed and the hot wife had been together before she was with Widmark and the movie starts, but what QT always wonders is that if Reed hooks back up with her in that missing reel. There's one scene in particular which would have two completely different tones and meanings depending on that fact... so he threw that out as something to think about while we watched. Personally, I didn't even realize a reel was missing. I guess it was reel 2 so it was pretty close to the beginning but there were certainly no HUGE logic or plot jumps so I really didn't think anything of it, but it is interesting that it gives us license to wonder back and forth. Beforehand, QT said that to show a film that's missing a reel and still charge for it must be taken as a sign that he still likes it the way it is, which i would agree with. Personally, i like to think that they did get together... the hot wife part is such a femme fatale role that having her cheat on her man is just one more twist of that screw. Maybe she actually didn't but she definitely at least thought about it. Again, there is awesome music going on, as there was in both Death Rage and No Way Out. Whenever that bass drum/hi-hat gets rolling, you know it's on. There's also one stand-out sequence where they end up driving through a minefield. Some great shots of them almost blowing themselves up. Widmark, although old and ironically looking much more like a nice guy than he ever did when he was young, has a scene here and there where he shows that he can still slap around women or push grandmothers down stairs if need be, and Oliver Reed's performance is just... well, bizarre. His readings are soo strange, man. It makes it interesting but also pretty absurd. I bet he was on drugs. In the end, it was a fun little movie but it couldn't hope to top my experience with No Way Out.
09.14.05	No Way Out	Duccio Tessari	OK, how fuckin cool is this movie? This movie is SO fucking cool... that i was COMPLETELY gut-punched by the last shot. Looking back, it's something that i should've seen coming from like, the first frame... but instead i was SO engrossed and SO with this story and its characters that the end actively made me mad. I couldn't help it, the entire audience groaned so I know they were with me too. Elaborating without giving much away (not sure this is available anywhere anyway), Alain Delon plays my exact idea of the archetypal badass hitman. He's not all flashy bald and robotic like Yul Brenner, he's a nondescript guy with a strong jaw that's very very good at his job. In the opening scene, he performs a hit and this other guy just happens to be in the room. There's the quickest look of sympathy on Delon's face ("sorry. wrong place, wrong time, buddy") and he shoots him dead and leaves. This movie is like what if there was no Natalie Portman character in The Professional and it was all just wicked hit after wicked hit for the whole movie. It's so great. QT mentioned that aside from being a crime film and drawing influence from other areas of Italian cinema at the time, there's also a touch of giallo in here because the action pieces are set up and revolve around the death scenes and that the deaths are performed with the coreography and outright virtuosity of a giallo, which i found not only to be absolutely true but also completely awesome. It's like how Coppola says somewhere in the Godfather commentaries that he tried to give each death a unique note, like being shot through the glasses or the rag silencing the gun catching on fire, etc. the deaths in this movie are completely badass and all of them memorable. In one scene, Delon busts in on one dude in a train car and shoots him then shoots him again and we see blood splatter up across the window as the body falls back, cracking and breaking it out. Then the top half of this dude flops out and hangs outside the train as it goes through a tunnel, slapping into marker after marker and finally crashing through some wooden supports before Tessari finally cuts away and lets the poor man die. Watching it was sort of like seeing The Matrix for the first time... there are things done here that you've sort of subliminally always wanted to see done in a movie because they just feel the most effective and unique but for some reason no one ever does them (like when Agent Smith misses Neo with a punch and punches through a concrete column instead and plaster goes flying into the camera). As another example, there's a car chase in this movie that's so utterly badass and completely unique that I am surprised it's not more famous. I don't know what kind of car it was that Delon was driving but we'll call it a beamer and he's chasing these gunmen in a Peugot... and this other car pulls out in front of the beamer and Delon's laying on his horn as the slow car takes FOREVER to pass this truck and it cuts into the slow car with this woman saying something like "geez, stop honking," completely oblivious to the fact that she's taking forever. at another point Delon skirts across a separated highway to pass another traffic hold up and smashes nearly head-on into this VW bug. the bug is TOTALLED. Normally, this would be where the chase sequence ends right? drat! they got away! Not here. In a cacophony of squeeling tires and screeching rubber, the beamer backs up and swerves around the crumpled mass of metal that used to be a VW bug and continues on. Then there's actually insert shots of the motor and gears as he shifts up and gives chase... these shots are so incredibly cool to finally see in there... and then the beamer makes a move to cut off the peugot by going off-road, so there are these shots of the beamer BLASTING through these woods, driving on a bed of leaves mind you, skating back and forth to avoid hitting trees at like 60 mph... and finally, the car chase doesn't end with a big crash or an explosion or anything like that... the gunmen just stop their car and run into a building and the beamer pulls up and stops and Delon and his buddy get out and also walk into the building. It's such a realistic way to end a car chase that is just never done. And of course, we don't even see the actual murders because we know it'll happen. Killing them is not a challenge... the challenge was getting there. Alain Delon is pitch perfect in this movie. He's quiet, stoic, moral, pissed the hell off about his wife and kid being blown up, but also not an animal. He's got one of the best lines in the film, after someone's just come up to him with this grand scheme of helping him out or some such thing, Delon just looks at him and says "Fuck Off." Now, in print that doesn't sound too impressive, but this is the first naughty word spoken in the film and we're maybe 20 or 30 minutes into it... and it's only said a few more times through the entire movie. So the tight control of it makes it more satisfying. I guess that could be said about the entire movie. It's very tightly controlled and perfectly orchestrated. Like I said, i was completely "got" by that last shot... and there aren't even any end credits or anything. it's like the film just punches you right in the gut then stops. whew...
09.14.05	Death Rage	Antonio Margheriti	A night of Italian crime films of the 70s just HAS to be QT6. I'm keeping tabs on three sites running write-ups of this event and i swear all three of them have commented on how evil and forboding Nicky Katt is. He just sits there glaring at people. I bet under his breath he's saying "i've gotta knife... i'll cut you" over and over again. Actually he's probably a very nice dude who just doesn't want to be hassled. I bet if someone said they were a fan he'd say back "thank" and then "I've got a knife, I'll cut you." anyway, the first movie of the night was Death Rage, apparently a reference to this really odd visual "problem" that Yul Brenner has in the film, where he keeps seeing his brother get shot or something. That's basically the long and short of the entire movie. His name is Inigo Montoya, they killed his brother, now prepare to die. Highlights definitely include the score. There was really awesome 70s funk scores to all three movies tonight and man is that stuff good. it all reminded me of how great the score in Hustle and Flow is, and how movie scores are rarely that quality anymore. After this festival, i think my idea of what kind of film i'd make if i was given that dream shot has drastically changed... it would now definitely have a fun score. Another highlight was FINALLY getting to see what all the fuss was about regarding Barbara Bouchet. Like I've been telling everyone lately, i thought i had seen a lot of movies until i got to this town. Now I know that I haven't seen anything, man. There are entire worlds that I haven't even broken the surface of, and the wonderous sensuality of Barbara Bouchet is one of them. Indeed she is unratably gorgeous and was not afraid to bare it all so that makes her cool in my book. Plus acting like Yul Brenner is a human and not the robot cowboy from Westworld must have been tough, so double kudos to her. Speaking of Yul, it's true he is a badass hitman in this movie... but for this being a hitman revenge movie, there are surprisingly few hits or revenges going on. As always, Yul strikes me as much too stiff and cold. I mean he's still badass in this movie, but a stiff cold kind of badass that somehow has to fall in love. In this angle, Yul kind of loses me. Other than that, there's a young pipsqueek of a sidekick that wants to constantly help out by shooting horses with a BB gun or something. He looked a lot like an Italian version of Michael J. Fox, and the movie ends on a pretty solid note with him being "hired." ALl in all, this was a fun film but not nearly my favorite of the night.
09.14.05	Crash	Paul Haggis	Even though i'm still in the thick of QT6, these netflix movies just sitting here is driving me crazy. they need to be watched and returned so i can get more. It's actually kind of coincidental because this is another character tapestry movie silimar to From Hell To Victory (minus WWII of course). the interesting thing about this movie is that really none of the characters are very likable. I suppose that's the point of the film, that we're all flawed no matter how much we think we may not be, but from a nuts & bolts standpoint, not having any clearly sympathetic characters is a pretty big risk that I have to respect, even moreso since the movie is still just as interesting and engaging. it may still be a bit overrated but nonetheless it's a solid movie and it doesn't really get bogged down and preachy with the race stuff like i thought it would even though that is what the movie is entirely about.
09.13.05	From Hell To Victory	Umberto Lenzi	The second half of this double feature was a bit more on the epic side of the scale. Where Five for Hell was a small story of guys on a mission, From Hell To Victory is a large character tapestry that weaves them into WWII over a span of 5 years or so. We see 6 or maybe 7 characters from different countries (including one German) who are friends in the beginning of the film and follow each of them as they work their way through individual paths during the war. In this way, I was reminded of Starship Troopers and how we see the career growth of each of the characters in that movie, except of course this wasn't directed by a crazy Dutch dude and had no co-ed shower scenes. QT said that if this movie was made in 64 instead of79, it would have fit perfectly into that whole genre movement that was at its height back then and even would have had the same cast. I can say that George Hamilton makes an awesome Frenchman though, no matter what year it's made. The plot was so intricate in this movie though, and there were so many characters, that i found myself a little overwhelmed in a few places. I feel like I'd understand it a lot better the second time around when I'm already familiar with all the characters. It's certainly not a bad movie though, and kept my attention easily.
09.13.05	Five for Hell	Gianfranco Parolini	Day Five: Italian World War II Epic Night. The fury of the line seems to be mellowing down a bit with most people only showing up a few minutes before the theater opens. I suspect that starting tomorrow the line insanity will start gearing up again as subjects like Italian Crime, Sexploitation, and Grindhouse seem to be the subjects everyone's most looking forward to. Today though, i was second in the badge line and there was only 4 or 5 people on standby when i showed up. This one girl had a "I heart Adam Durtiz" shirt on though and said she'd been waiting since like 3. I sort of would have liked to see what happened when she actually saw Duritz walk in but...felt like sitting down in the theater instead. I finally caught sight of RZA tonight... he looks kind of... REALLY out of place here. It's cool, though. I've also been keeping tabs on the three websites keeping day-by-day accounts of the fest and a clear trend seems to be emerging: Nicky Katt is one scary dude. Everybody's afraid to talk to him because we all feel like Adam Goldberg in Dazed and Confused. I saw him outside smoking when i left tonight and had an instant of being _the_ guy to break his death stare and shake his hand anyway but... he was talking to some woman and i had already started walking the wrong way before realizing that my car was the other so i felt foolish enough already. Perhaps tomorrow. The first movie, Five for Hell, was pretty fun in a real absurd way. There's this pre-occupation with acrobatics that runs through the whole picture, even going so far as to include a small trampoline in the gear that this band of soldiers takes with them on their mission. Like, each guy sort of has his specialty: one's a safe-cracker, one's an explosives expert, one's really good at throwing a weighted baseball, etc. and then there's one that's just an acrobat. And they take pains to set up these situations where an acrobat soldier is needed... like there's two soldiers in a foxhole so clearly the best plan of action is for this guy to set up the trampoline, jump up to a tree, then jump and flip down into the hole. There's also the obligatory 20-foot-high electrified fence that they didn't anticipate. Hey! good thing we have an acrobat here! he'll jump right over that fence! Another reason why this film is so fun is Klaus Kinski who plays the most arrogant romantic cruel nazi ever. You don't have to see the Werner Herzog film "My Best Fiend" to know that Kinski was born to play this role. His game is truly unique... i would have to be five times the man to even try his methods of seduction... Unfortunately for the double agent however, he's just as quick to order a firing squad. the movie is very rambunctious though - rousing even, and generally a good time is had by all. In the end we all cheered for the good guys that made it and wept an imaginary tear for those who fell. Also, Lars told another few people to shut the hell up. It was so sweet.
09.12.05	Blue Water, White Death	Peter Gimbel, James Lipscomb	In between the films, I spied Robert Rodriguez hanging out, talking to Harry. He is so buff now... It's starting to gel a little bit. Familiar faces seen on line and at previous nights... sort of unspoken familiarity... there are lots of head nods between people who still haven't spoken... and of course all of the people who are already friends. The AICN crew behind me was talking about some girl that one of them thought was hot... it involved an order sheet asking to bring strawberry shortcake instead of chocolate cake... i thought for a moment it might have been about one of the two or three Alamo girls who were already mine (in my head) so i, perhaps mistakenly, turned around and asked who they were talking about but alas... such things are not really subjects for total strangers i guess... i shouldn't let my (imaginary) jealousy get the better of me. (the note was never sent). So the next movie, Blue Water, White Death, is really really really great. To complement the previous film, this one is about mindless killers that are scary and ancient and completely without hesitation or sympathy: the great white shark. This was the movie that Spielberg saw when he was getting going with Jaws and it heavily influenced the stuff with the shark tank and in fact they even hired some of these guys to shoot second unit stuff before principle photography even started (the stuff with the shark attacking "Dreyfuss" in the cage). This movie.... i have real doubts about its authenticity. It's like completely opposite from Cry of the Wild where meticulous attention is paid to how things were done. In this movie, they go all over the place, from South Africa to the Mozambique islands to "Dangerous Cove, South Australia" in search of the elusive Great White. the people on board set themselves us as complete buffoons so when they're put in danger you actually sort of laugh because they so deserve it. While in a cage surrounded by white tips and great blues, one of them punches a passing shark, remarking "they hate that sort of rough business." When on the Mozambique islands, one of them gets right up to a sleeping little baby seal and shocks it awake. The poor seal nearly embolizes as it hops to and fro trying to get away from the evil humans. Three of them have an absurd conversation about leaving the cages to swim with the sharks where any sort of doubt seems to wash away within seconds just by one of the guys saying "i've been watching them and know their pattern." Meanwhile, their whole idea is to follow whaling ships to dive after they've killed Sperm whales that attract sharks to feast on the floating carcass. Of course, inserting a quick shot of one of the guys saying "they're so intelligent and interesting. at this rate they'll all be extinct before we can really discover them." makes the copious amounts of floating dead sperm whale ok somehow... There's also a folk singer on board, apparently only there to supply the crew with some tunes while he gets his hair cut. So they do leave the cages and there is some AMAZING photography here, including this great 360, maybe even 720 (hard to tell when they're underwater) degree panning shot of the ocean teaming with sharks both off in the distance and right up against the camera. At one point a shark tries to eat this girl's hair, mistaking it for floating meat. At others, sharks ease their mouths right up to these guys' heads before they can push them back. And yet when the girl attacks one with the boomstick, it's sort of sad but also funny because the shark starts quickly swimming in circles just like that old joke about the guy who's hit in the head so he tries to get away but he just walks around and around instead. In another sequence, one dude gets the bends. When they finally do find some great whites (off "Dangerous Coast" no less), the bastards immediately start chomping on the cages. Again, absolutely stunning photography of these huge babies knocking into them, trying to bite, attacking tethered pieces of meat. At one point a shark gets entangled on one of the lines connecting a cage to the ship and utterly knocks the crap out of this thing with a guy inside. It's really fantastic footage coupled with snide remarks after they surface and little jokes cracking left to right. It really doesn't seem real to me, but that doesn't keep it from being 100% awesome. oh, on a final note, I got to see Lars ask these two women to please not talk during the movie. It was so awesome... they shut right up. For a skinny little dude, Lars can be pretty intimidating. I think it's all the hair.
09.12.05	Cry of the Wild	Bill Mason	Documentary Night. This and tomorrow night are the only nights with less than three movies playing so it felt super brief and a complete waste of my awesome parking luck. It's ok though because both documentaries shown tonight were really great in different ways. The first is this, about wolves in Canada. It was made by this dude Bill Mason, who is one of these guys in the early 70s who seemed to have a physical love affair with freedom. Like he had a board of wood with a hole in it and "freedom" written at smooch level that he took to bed every saturday or something. This whole movie has a supremely explicit freedom bent to it... This guy gets dropped off in the middle of nowhere for months at a time with just himself and 80 pounds of survival and camera equipment and he walks around camping out next to dead caribou in hopes of capturing some wolf behavior. Now, I hope it doesn't sound like this is a bad thing. This dude is awesome. He sets up his second camera with a remote trigger to film himself filming the wolves, and there are occasional interjections where he explains exactly how he's shooting and where to let us all know that when we see a panning shot of him, it's actually during that fourth winter when he took a buddy along to get pick-up shots, not that the whole thing is fake. What's funny is that he doesn't actually have a lot of luck out there. Lots of aerial shots of wolves running but that's about it. He does build this igloo though, that was so badass to see it made me want to live in one, like a summer home or something. At one point he hears wolves outside but doesn't want to chance scaring them off by going outside to shoot so he just takes his little saw and cuts himself a window to point his camera out of. It was so friggin cool... i so want an igloo. The film sort of shifts at one point to a pack that's being held in captivity, including two that are tame and as lovable as dogs. Here there's a segment about the reproductive cycle with the requisite sort-of-gross/sort-of-cute shots of the newborn cubs and seeing them grow up and play and whatnot. And then, presumably because his mistriss wills it, he gets sad that these wolves have never lived in freedom, so he shoots them with tranq darts and hauls them 3000 miles to the frozen tundra and lets them loose and stops feeding them. So these poor wolves just hang out and starve, basically... probably complaining (if this was a cartoon) about what happened to the TV dinners. There's a great shot where Mason sets up that the Caribou have finally returned to this area and there's a whole group of them running away and we pan over to... the wolves just sitting there. Like actually working for their food is just not gonna happen. Then we see a shot of a few caribou looking into camera, no doubt thinking "what the hell is wrong with those wolves? this must be a trick or something." So they take the wolves back to captivity, proving the point that not only are wild wolves terrified of humans, but they also need to be taught to hunt prey. and freedom is great.
09.11.05	Dark Age	Arch Nicholson	Technically, QT showed an episode of an old Australian TV show called Riptide in between Four Desperate Men and Dark Age, but since it was only an hour and a TV show, it doesn't get its own entry. It was cool though, and had a car chase, as does every Australian movie according to QT. He did a great near-stand-up bit about Australian filmmakers confused by a script that didn't include a car chase. It was really funny. What was interesting about the show though was that the lead is an American... so I guess the show was all about how badass this one American is in Australia. Kind of odd and somewhat correlitive with an aspect of Dark Age which... ...RULED. First off, it's a giant Croc movie. Secondly, it's shot by Andrew Lesnie of Lord of the Rings fame. QT's print of this movie was pristine. I swear i would believe this movie came out this year if only the fake croc was CG. Instead, it was made in 1987 which makes it really... sweet. OK, the movie does parallel Jaws rather a lot, at least in the first half or so. Replace the shark with a croc and the stories become pretty similar. BUT, there's just a quality going on here that seeps out of the frame and into your head. It's the kind of subtle-but-consistent quality that's almost subliminal... you just at some point realize that this is a really good fun movie. there's one scene though, where the antagonistic boss character tells the Steve Erwin character that all these croc-related deaths are making the Japanese businessmen nervous and there's a danger that they wont come down and build high-rises. Coupled with the American protagonist in Riptide, I wondered if there's a little brother type of need for outsiders to come in and be the hero rather than homegrown Australian pride... probably not but then again they ARE all criminals. Now, the fake Croc, which is really huge... like 25 feet long... looks pretty good as long as it's in the water. There are some shots where it surfaces that are designed really well to emphasize the massive size of it relative to humans... how a human could basically park a chaise-lounge and sip a daquiri comfortably inside its belly, except for all that nasty digestion of course. However, once it gets on land, particularly in the end, it doesn't move enough and sort of breaks down into a big lump of plastic on screen. Most of the time though, I was really impressed with how they used it. One thing which must be noted is a scene in which a kid gets eaten. There is a shot where you see the kids head inside the croc's mouth chomping away. It's so totally and utterly badass, no one in the theater could believe it. It's a real quick shot, but it's in there, man... and it's unspeakably cool. So two really sweet movies to wrap up Australian night. So i guess RZA was at the horror-thon but I didn't see him. Since I sit so far up front and the VIP section is toward the back i miss most of the celebrity... on the first night i sort of made a decision to be here for the movies instead of the audience and sat where i wanted to sit rather than close to Quentin. In the same vein, I'm writing just my thoughts and reflections down here. A couple other sites are doing the more conventional reportage on the event but hooey to them. this is my journal and I'm writing what i want to.
09.11.05	Four Desperate Men	Harry Watt	So after BMX Bandits ended, we finally got to watch a "real" movie. Real, meaning awesome. It's a 1959 movie set in Australia (duh) starring Aldo Ray as a guy that springs out of jail to clear his name, as strange as that sounds. Aldo Ray, who QT went on quite a bit about, is awesome in this movie. QT mentioned he sees a lot of him in Bruce Willis, and went so far as to show Willis a few Ray films in preparing for Pulp Fiction, but I personally see Ray more as equal parts Bruce Willis and Michael Chiklis with just a dash of Harvey Keitel. That is some masculine fuckin witches brue though, man. It's great, when the movie starts off Aldo is in this cool form-fitting heavy shirt, but as the movie progresses he skimps down to a wife-beater and finally totally bare-chested showing off his near-wife-beater pattern of body hair and solid The Thing-like physique. Oh yeah, the story. So after getting his brother to help him and these two other guys break out of prison so Aldo Ray can win over the public that he's innocent and get a retrial, their boat breaks or something and they have to dock on this little fort in the middle of Sydney Bay called Pinchgut. It's like a little fortress with old-style cannons there and also this really big gun. Anyway, things get mucked up and it becomes like a stand-off where snipers try to tag them from bridges and stuff but Ray holds the town hostage with this huge gun because there's a ship filled with explosives in the bay. In one of several scenes which clearly define this movie as great, several military men talk about the situation and what would happen if the ship exploded. Now, they're talking around this table where there's not just a map or a rudimentary mock-up of the city with staplers and erasers but a fully-realized scale diorama of the city and the bay down to the smallest detail. Even the ocean is painted with different hues to show waves and swells. Overhearing QT talking to Harry Knowles after the movie, this model is like straight out of Godzilla. So the one police guy asks the other one what it would mean if the ship exploded and this other guy just takes his hand and in a grand arc, swipes the town apart into a eave of destruction. It's something I've always wanted to do in every museum I've ever been to that has those cool diorama set ups filled with detail. Just take your paw mit of a hand and destroy, destroy, destroy! oh man was that a great moment.
09.11.05	BMX Bandits	Brian Trenchard-Smith	...I'm waiting in line to see Sunday's programming: Australian Night. I know pretty much nothing about the films being shown tonight so I have a pretty blank slate as far as expectations are concerned. I DO notice a haggard quality to those of us who like to get there early and wait in line though... clearly the marathon has taken its toll. Still though, getting there super early gives you a spot on the stairs where you can sit instead of stand and also lets you feel the AC instead of the wet humidity of the day outside. I also like watching the Alamo staff wander in one-by-one in their street clothes. This place is so cool. The first film of the day, which QT explains would've been the kiddy-feature if he'd pre-planned enough to give AFS enough time to advertise, is BMX Bandits, which he describes as a Goonies-equivalent for those that grew up in Sydney (he doesn't like Goonies either... Quentin, we hardly knew ye). It stars a super young Nicole Kidman (QT: after The Others this is actually my favorite performance of hers. she's quite charming) along with other Aussies who deliver the ironic and quick-witted dialogue with those cool accents. They are all BMX-ers who sort of steal a bunch of super-walkie-talkies that can magically listen in on the police band and a couple bumbling bank robbers chase after them for about an hour too long. I will say this though... the movie had strong resemblances for me to Gleaming the Cube (not so much Rad since I only saw that once and spent the entire movie disappointed that Peter Billingsly wasn't in it because i was in the video store and i saw him riding a motorcycle or something and asked the guy what movie that was playing and he said Rad so I rented it and it turned out that the tape had a trailer for The Dirt Bike Kid before it and that's what I saw in the store)... replacing cheesy late-80s skateboard stuff with early-80s BMX stuff. So i really can't rip on this too much because I liked Gleaming the Cube a lot when i was younger and watched it like 5 times. The few things on note on this movie: There's an actor in here named Angelo D'Angleo. That's so cool. Also, Nicole Kidman's BMX double was a clearly-masculine dude with like... facial hair. It was about as obvious as Banderas' double in Mark of Zorro.
09.10.05	Madman	Joe Giannone	As i was gulping the redbull down and walking back into the theater, some music was coming through the heavy door. Opening it, I walked into blasting R.Kelly music. I mean BLASTING!! feel-the-bass-on-the-floor-and-in-your-chest-blasting. I sat down and saw to my far right that Tim League, Lars, and a few other Alamo high-ups had shit-eating grins on their faces, their eyes shining with what was on the screen. They were running R.Kelly's five-part song/narrative video and let me tell you something. it was HILARIOUS. It completely woke me up and energized the inrush of caffeine to my system. That thing would not end, it just kept getting better and better. I couldn't believe it. it was like a 100% pickmeup at like 7:30 in the morning. After that ended, QT hopped up and gave us the dirt on Madman (AKA Madman Marz), about how it was basically born too late and therefore missed the slasher craze and fell into obscurity, about how it was a really solid, fun flick involving many of the classical elements of the genre (There's a group of camp counselers, there's a campfire story, there's a creepy old house, etc.), about how the guy with the cool initials-only name wasn't something traditional like TJ or PJ or AJ or JJ but rather it was TP, about how not only was this douchebag of a character (QT: he's actually an asswipe, so it's perfect!) named TP, but he also had a HUGE belt-buckle that said "TP" on it. Man, after the redbull and the R.Kelly and this talk-up, i was SO ready to see Madman. I have to say, this movie delivered. It was a great classical telling of the woods slasher story, had cool deaths, wonderfully idiotic characters, some decent screaming-and-running shots, the whole package. It was a really really great way to end the night. I am SO glad I stayed and didn't wuss out after the one-two punch of Beyond Evil and Mausoleum. The last two hours of this marathon were total delerious bliss. Roughly 6 hours later...
09.10.05	Mausoleum	Michael Dugan	So after Beyond Evil pretty much sapped me of all my energy and logic, i was looking to Mausoleum to re-energize me. QT got up on stage and basically said that Mausoleum was the exact same as Beyond Evil but without the good acting. uh oh. Now, back in July when Lars and Harry put on an all-nighter horror-thon, the tantalizing unknown of which film they were going to show next kept me going, especially since Harry mentioned that the title of the last film was so amazingly perfect that it had to be great (the title was "Devil Fetus" and indeed, in a certain sense of the word, it was great). Tonight though... knowing i was going to have to be back here at 5pm to start Australian Night, and confronted with basically watching a worse version of the slow-moving movie i'd just sat through... well, I'd be lying if i said my fortitude wasn't tested. I started thinking about my bed with its memory foam, started thinking about that feeling i still get when i wake up to my alarm just to turn it off and go back to sleep. All this stuff started bubbling up as Mausoleum, which had even less of a plot than Beyond Evil, started playing. Luckily, there was nudity. Not only is there nudity but there were monstrous snapping breasts that ate a guy's pecs. When QT, a guy who seems to love something about even the worst movies, says that he didn't give a shit what happened until the last 15 minutes of this movie... well, thoughts of McDonald's breakfast and being able to stretch my ass muscles out and get out of the damn seat started pulling my eyelids down. There was one great scene in this movie though. There's a black housemaid that has to go up into the haunted-esque room and her lines are so awesome. something akin to "I ain't been this nervous since I been black", "There's some strange shit going on in this house","No more grievin, I'm leavin", and "I got religion." Now... I did not fall asleep. I didn't. Not once. During the last fifteen minutes though, I was nodding and dazing pretty hardcore. These were the dark times of the night... the times when i thought my hardcoredness would fail me and i betray my love and fall asleep during a movie. Luckily, the movie ended and they were selling Redbull. Looking back, there seems to be some pretty great elements to this movie... maybe if it was shown instead of Beyond Evil I would've responded more to it, but as it was i was a bit too tired to enjoy it.
09.10.05	Beyond Evil	Herb Freed	This sounds pretty horrible but... i could really go for an ass massage right about now. Since I only had time to sleep for 4 hours between the marathon and Day 3, I've spent so much time sitting in that damn theater seat this weekend to give me a real ache. anyway, the next movie (QT: "This is about the time where people can start moving seats" the crowd had thinned somewhat) was not a slasher but rather a possession flick starring John Saxon of... John Saxon fame. I always thought that dude was a bit too buff for his head. It doesn't help that every dude in this picture is wearing vein-defining tight pants and nipple-enhanced tight shirts... but anyway, some ghost witch possesses Saxon's wife (Lynda Day George) and weird stuff happens until the end when they fix her or whatever. The only part I really remember in this is a sequence where the wife's ring finger swells up to awesome proportions because of something to do with the wedding ring and love and blah blah blah. Oh yeah, QT also said that the role of the husband in movies like this is typically a "soft cock role." I like that phrase. By the end, i was feelin it. It was now almost 5 am. My notes include the phrase "hope the next two are peppy." I think this is about the time i thought i had come up with an awesome and amazing idea for a horror movie. I quickly spilled out a whole page of notes on it and, thinking back after only four hours of sleep, i now realize that there isn't actually an idea in this page of notes at all.
09.10.05	Silent Night, Deadly Night	Charles E. Sellier, Jr.	Many cool things about this one. First: it's awesome. Second: QT told us about how, after he'd finally discovered this movie and talked to Robert Rodriguez about how cool it is, Rodriguez came back with a fully-memorized in-character rendition of the beginning monologue. Understandably so because this beginning scene is so awesome... i mean it's SO awesome that i shouldn't even really write about it. The whole movie is great actually but it all starts with this one scene that i really wish Rodriguez was there so he could do it for us after the show. Maybe he'll put it on a DVD sometime or something. Another really cool thing about this movie is at one point the main character, who's been horribly scarred against Santa Claus since the aforementioned first scene, gets a job in a toy store. This movie was like 1984 so there's the Jabba the Hut toy there, there's Castle Greyskull in the background, there's Mouse Trap, there's a Krull boardgame, there's the 80s "Monster Make-Up Kit" there in the background, all these great toys that i remember drooling over in Toys R Us when i was little. It was really cool to see those again for sure. and then he starts killing people. There are a few puns here and there but mostly this kid just says "NAUGHTY" and "PUNISH" over and over again and really, that's all he needs to say. The sick and twisted nature of this whole movie says it all for him. A real classic.
09.10.05	Funeral Home	Willian Fruet	Continuing the 80s horror movie marathon (it's gonna end with "Madman" so just assume everything between there and here is this same delerious night), QT brings out this Canadian flick about... a Funeral Home director who killed her husband and pretends he's still alive and also sort of a killer. What's funny is that QT announces this striking resemblance before frame 1 flickers... and he also says that once you realize that it's a Psycho knock, you can never really un-realize it... which is very true.Even the kitchen and the house is remarkably similar. Of course there's a "trainable" in this one though, complete with copious amounts of ear-hair and the stereotypical dullard Lenny voice. There's also an incredibly scary cat in this that is just the right amount of filthy and mangy. It freaked the hell out of QT and it freaked the hell out of all of us. As the end credits rolled, the cat's name (not "cat" as the ear-hairy retarded dude calls it) is actually "Mitten." Oh, there's also a really scary sequence where one of these old leathery women that are clearly not hot enough to fill the "hot girl" role but was as hot as the budget allowed displayed some camel toe which HAD to be painful. No way it was coincidental... even if she was parapilegic she would feel that itching at her neck, man. It also went like, too low... know what i mean? like the toe should not have been that long. Frightening. Anyway, I guess Mike Judge was in the house the previous night along with all the other celebs, but i missed him. I did catch Greg Nicotero talking to the AICN crew behind me tonight though. They were talking about a gag used in Eli Roth's upcoming Hostel (QT had a Cabin Fever shirt on, it was awesome) involving a whole arm filled with blood actually pouring out after it's chopped off. One of the great things about sitting close to Harry and the other AICN guys is that when QT or other special guests make their way down to talk to them, i get to overhear their conversations without being that shameless nerd geekboy that walks up to the crowd of people he doesn't know and just stands there smiling. This way i get to stare and smile but I get to do it from the comfort of my own seat, which is nice.
09.10.05	Psycho II	Richard Franklin	QT 6 day 2, er... night 2: the 80s horror movie all-night marathon. Six movies that almost broke me in my hardcoredness. Let's just say thank god for R. Kelly, but more on that later. The evening started with Psycho 2, which I'd conscioussly avoided (along with Psycho 3 and Psycho 4) because I love the first one so much i don't want to see that universe sullied. So i had a wee bit of trepidation going into this, compounded when Tarantino spouted off on his non-love for Hitch and preference of any and all hitch-rips (except Truffaut (another gasp!) over the fat man himself. After hearing that, I truthfully had no clue how good or bad this night would go. Luckily, Psycho 2 is a really good film and I think it surprised everyone in the theater who hadn't seen it. The dude sitting next to me said he was just staying for the first movie and based on his surprised enjoyment ended up staying for 5 out of the 6 (although I'd say the last 2 don't count because he was PASSED all the way OUT). The story is set 20 years after the first movie, with Norman Bates being released from the loonyin and Vera Miles makes him go crazy again. It's told really well though and Anthony Perkins does indeed deliver a really nuanced performance. Watching this made me think that even though I haven't seen everything he's been in, no matter how many movies he did he was still underutilized as an actor, especially after Psycho. He should have been a much bigger star i think. QT pointed out perhaps his favorite line reading ever. Tony perkins gives it when he has to say "cutlery." Poor Norman, if only Vera Miles hadn't messed you back up. Dennis Franz was also quite good in this as a super sleezoid who gets drunk and dies. awesome.
09.10.05	The Italian Job	Peter Collinson	The original. Not part of QT6 but a netlix that I wanted to see this because i thought i didn't hate the remake enough as i should. Surprisingly, while this version is fun with all the late-60s stuff you get in British movies and Michael Caine being Michael Caine, the remake is different enough and the supporting cast (minus Theron of course) are strong enough to make both of them enjoyable. I like that this version ends with a literal cliffhanger though... very funny.
09.09.05	Tarzoon, The King of the Jungle	Picha, Boris Szulzinger	OK this one is just bizarre. Shown as a midnight gonzo movie after the Robert Vaughn secret agent double feature, QT gave a rundown of this movie: It's a french animated picture called Tarzoon that's basically a send-up of Tarzan. For the American version, National Lampoon and early SNL kingpin Michael O'Donoghue and Anne Beatts wrote the dialogue and got a bevvy of great comedians to supply voices, such as Bill Murray, Christopher Guest, and John Belushi as a beer-swilling kid who's enslaved a flock of seagulls to power his magic carpet, not to mention Johnny Weismuller Jr. to supply the broken english made famous by his father. So after it was all re-done and pretty much ready to release, the estate that controls the Tarzan property sued them so they had to rename the movie Shame of the Jungle. Rather than do any work however, they just blacked out any on-screen mention of "Tarzoon" in squiggling blobs of censorship and took any audio of the name being spoken and reversed it. So in the movie you get a lot of characters talking about "noozraT"... which made me chuckle every time. Why did they sue? Well it could be that this movie is really really lewd and bizarre. Tarzoon's johnson hangs out for practically the entire movie. A monkey even hangs on it at one point. An evil bald Queen with 14 breasts sends a legion of cockmonsters out to kidnap Tarzoon's love June for her hair. Yes, i said cockmonster. Late in the film, there's a sequence where it shows how they come about. Little babies fall into jars on a conveyor belt where they are repeatedly smushed down. With each smushing, their bodies get smaller and their dorks get bigger until finally an axe swoops down and separates the deflated baby from its militaristically animated block and tackle. Somehow, the cockmonsters also have assholes though. Anyway, they walk and run around on their balls and shrink down inside to hide and jump into condoms when alarms are raised and shoot acidic... well... you get the idea. The whole movie is foul like this, with really racist depictions of black dudes getting eated by crocodiles, an elephant getting his ass drilled out, a monkey fiddling with Junes nipples, and tons of other stuff that i've already pushed out of my mind. Just plain crazy. Along with QT, writer/directors Richard Linklater and Tim McCanlies were in the house tonight, as was actors Nicky Katt and Wiley Wiggins, Austin mainstay Louis Black, the entire AICN and AFS cadres, and the singer dude from Counting Crows, unless there's another guy with that haircut and that skin tone walking around town... which i guess there could be. I didn't want to go up and ask him if he was the Counting Crows dude just to say "cool" and walk away if i was right.
09.09.05	The Venetian Affair	Jerry Thorpe	This movie is the flip-side of the man from U.N.C.L.E. It's still a spy movie but instead of slick, dapper, and dashing, Vaughn plays borderline alcoholic, unkempt, and more than a dash inept. What's funny is that the movie was shot in Venice and looked so much more like a "real" movie than The Spy with My Face that it was out of the funny territory and into "decent." Boris Karloff has a small role, Ed Asner's thick neck makes numerous appearances, and damn if Robert Vaughn still doesn't have awesome game. All he has to do is ask a woman "are you sure you want to be alone tonight?" and he gets action. Also, they played a trailer for Putney Swope which has to be.... easily... one of the top five best trailers i have ever seen. easily. words can't even describe it... except to say that it's even MORE awesome if you've seen the actual movie.
09.09.05	The Spy with My Face	John Newland	And so begins QT6: Quentin Tarantino's intimate gathering of hardcore film geeks to watch obscure, interesting, and/or badass movies. Tonight was Secret Agent night, showing two Robert Vaughn spy pictures. This was, according to Quentin, a 2-hour episode of the show The Man from U.N.C.L.E. beefed up with 10 more minutes and released as a film. Since it's TV, and 60s TV at that, the budget was miniscule enough to make this hilariously bad. Shots of Griffith observatory and Mulholland drive doubling for the swiss alps, awkward editing, and a cave matte painting so bad it looks like it belongs in a cartoon are stand-out memories. There's also the peculiar but awesome habit Robert Vaughn has of falling into a woman's bosom every time he's knocked out or faints. All very funny moments, supplemented by superb trailers courtesy of the Alamo beforehand and QT's masterful introduction.
09.08.05	Papillon	Franklin J. Schaffner	french words are fun to yell. PAPILLON! PAPILLON!!!! anyways, i can scratch French Guyana off the list of choice places to go to prison. Turkey's out too.
09.07.05	Nightmare Alley	Edmund Goulding	A noir set in a carnival where Tyrone Power ends up biting the heads off live chickens. Not one of my favs but still pretty solid, if a bit slow. Makes me want to watch another movie on my list called Luther the Geek.
09.06.05	Panic in the Streets	Elia Kazan	despite there not being any actual panic in said streets, this is a pretty decent noir starring Richard Widmark as some doctor who finds a dead guy with the plague. Hilarity er- Panic ensues. It also has an angularly peculiar "Walter Jack Palance" as the main heavy... man is he weird-looking.
09.05.05	The Street with No Name	William Keighley	I guess this is the root of the tree that's branched into House of Bamboo, Point Break, and The Fast and the Furious, interchanging a seedy gang of thieves with Tokyo, surfing, and street racing. Unless of course this is a remake as well... perhaps the guys on the commentary will tell me if it is or not. The movie itself is pretty decent... it's got an early Richard Widmark performance that's not nearly as seething and putrid as he is in Kiss of Death, but he's still pretty convincing when he beats up his old lady. Gotta love Widmark.
09.03.05	Battle Royale	Kinji Fukasaku	So i finally got around to seeing this and it did not disappoint. Basically, a classfull of 7th graders are dumped on an island and given 3 days to kill eachother off until there's just one survivor. Of course just from the one-line synposis you can tell this movie is way too badass to be American. Nope, the sicko Japanese have to make it, and make it they did. This movie is awesome. It reminds me of the best of 80s American survival action but way more gorier and with kids instead of Rambo or Schwarzeneggar or Rutger Hauer. There's like 30 kids along with two older kids who are complete badasses as well, all thrown into the mix in this jungle island with deserted old buildings and a crazy school teacher listing off the dead every six hours... so messed up. Really great movie.
09.02.05	Cabin Fever	Eli Roth	When i first saw this i thought it was pretty derivitive but still a good time. Now, I'm realising that although it takes a lot from horror movies of the 70s, this is still one of the best horror movies of recent years. It still has some really cringe moments as well as the absurdly horrific funny moments and creepy woods atmosphere.... i'm liking this movie more and more each time i see it.
09.01.05	Two Mules for Sister Sara	Don Siegel	A decent western I guess, but pretty low on my Clint Eastwood favorites list... probably due in no small part to Shirley MacLaine who I just don't like. Great music by Ennio Morricone though
08.31.05	Audition	Takashi Miike	...you can really sleep through the first hour and a half of this movie... but good lord should you wake up for the last half hour. It's like a completely different movie and very brutal and hallucinatory and creepy... but sitting through the movie up to this point is pretty slow.
08.31.05	The Constant Gardener	Fernando Meirelles	Well, it's no City of God, but it'll do. Definitely not bad but ultimately sort of predictable with its evil corporation plot that always makes me wonder if i should feel bad about being so cynical and jaded about these kinds of movies and not cry for the plight of Africa or something like that. I guess I am just a bad person.
08.29.05	The Vanishing	George Sluizer	The original version, not the remake in which i believe he gets out at the end and somehow there's a happy ending... so just for that alone this version is way better. It still doesn't make a whole lot of sense... and repeat viewing slashes any sort of creepiness or surprise with the story although i must say if i watched this version first and the trailers didn't spoil it for me, the last five minutes would've kicked some major ass.
08.29.05	The Brothers Grimm	Terry Gilliam	Some bad CG, a happy ending... it felt like it should be weirder to me... like it was watered down, but the idea is great i think... and i liked the performances and all that. It felt a bit like Sleepy Hollow though, where this conventional storyline feels very injected and arbitrary.
08.26.05	The Aristocrats	Paul Provenza	really hilarious, but it's also a documentary. It's not just telling after telling after telling of the same joke; there's some commentary and discussion thrown into the mix as well as a few variations, different jokes, and even a bullpen session in The Onion's writing room. But there is also telling after telling of the same joke, all of which hilarious. really good movie. on a side note, the Alamo offered up a free season pass to the best teller of the joke afterward. I've been debating back and forth on wether to get up and offer something but a few days ago I decided categorically not to: i'm not a comedian. The way they worked it is they only let 5 people do it, all of which volunteered before the movie, and gave each guy (no woman would go for it) 3 minutes. I think i could've beat three of the guys but the guy that won and the guy that should've won but went over his time limit both had genuinely funny tellings... so there you go.
08.26.05	The Perfect Score	Brian Robbins	I think this is the first movie which i am ashamed to have to put on this site. I really don't know why I watched it. really.
08.25.05	Ichi the Killer	Takashi Miike	Wow this is a crazy movie. You know those moments in some movies where it's so over the top and graphic that you just have to yell with a smile on your face and you're somehow grossed out, really excited, and laughing at the same time? Like in Sin City when Bruce Willis pulls the yellow bastard's crotch off... well this movie has like a half dozen of those moments. I'm really impressed.
08.25.05	The Bad News Bears	Michael Ritchie	the original, which they stuck surprisingly close to for the remake. I dunno, i wouldn't call either one a classic, really. It feels like it should be better than it is.
08.24.05	A Very Long Engagement	Jean-Pierre Jeunet	not as good as Amelie. It's too long, but very very pretty for sure. It's also filled with cool French-looking faces like all other Jeunet films... just a bit too slow and laconic for my tastes.
08.22.05	Steamboy	Katsuhiro Otomo	it looked pretty but to be honest this sort of put me to sleep.
08.21.05	Constantine	Francis Lawrence	It wasn't as bad as everybody said it was... but you know, it wasn't that great either. Should have been more Rachel Weisz bra-shots in my opinion.
08.19.05	Broken Flowers	Jim Jarmusch	expert filmmaking. loved it. Jarmusch is getting better and better and thankfully he's getting really good actors now too, not that Lurie or Waits are bad actors... but stock like Jeffery Wright and Murray are used to their fullest and it really makes for an entrancing movie. Great music too. great all around.
08.19.05	The 40 Year-Old Virgin	Judd Apatow	A pretty funny movie for a bad day. I just sucked up all 18 episodes of Undeclared like a spong yesterday so it was good to see a few show alumns in the cast. The funniest character though went to Romany Malco. It's also interesting because I've now seen Catherine Keener go from "Hot Woman" to "Hot Older Woman" so there's that. the actual movie had more story than i thought it would after Anchorman... I think Carell wanted to come off as an actor as well as a comic here and he did so I think. a pretty good movie... at least it was rated R... friggin kids.
08.17.05	The Onion Field	Harold Becker	This is one of those movies everybody assumes that i've already seen so i feel like i had to see it to avoid any future uncomfortable silences. It's really cool when the occasional movie comes along that actually is a true story instead of just saying it. The names haven't been changed, there's no "hollywood" ending, invented or composite characters, or inserted scenes to make things more interesting. When movies like this come along and you can trust that they are really true, the story becomes much more engaging. I can definitely see why James Woods got work after this. Not a big John Savage fan, though.
08.17.05	Tell Them Who You Are	Mark Wexler	The son of legendary director of photographer/documentarian Haskell Wexler makes a documentary about his dad. It's actually really good because Haskell's such a colorful character and son Mark gets a huge list of people to talk with him. The interviews aren't really the best part though. The movie itself is made very well, hopping from funny to poignant and including many scenes you don't often see in documentaries. One scene that comes to mind is in a hotel room where Haskell has asked Mark to come in with his camera so he can tell him something. The scene then becomes an argument about where Haskell should be sitting and how Mark should shoot it and we never hear what the thing that Haskell wanted to say even was. It also answers the question that yes, famous DPs do think about angles, lighting, and camerawork every second of their day. Surrounded in a huge anti-war demonstration, Haskell's first words: "You need a high angle!" This documentary is right up my alley because it's about the movies and the people that make them, but I think it's made well enough with enough non-business content to make it enjoyable for non-film buffs as well.
08.15.05	Call Northside 777	Henry Hathaway	More like a fourfather to the procedural shows of today than a noir, this is a pretty good movie starring Jimmy Stewart as a reporter springing an innocent man out of jail. It's one of those "this is a true story" movies where everything about the film stresses authenticity, so you get some pretty nice location work in circa-1948 Chicago. I think I personally still prefer Naked City if only because Dassin photographs NYC way better than Hathaway handles Chicago, but really they're both pretty good. When i first saw this, i really wondered if it'd be any good the second time around. I gave it a few years but surprisingly it still held up for the most part. I really feel the lack of score though; some scenes drag.
08.15.05	Four Brothers	John Singleton	Surprisingly good but that may just be my low expectations. This is really like a modern-day western where the good guys rally together to kick some bad-guy ass and there's really not many layers of gray or complexity at all. That said, it's a pretty quick-moving little story that's well put together. The camaraderie between the brothers is well done and the bad guy is suitably bad. All in all it's a pretty good movie. I'm not sad I saw it at all.
08.14.05	Point Blank	John Boorman	A very interesting good film. It takes sort of a typical noir revenge tale and presents it in a dreamlike remembrance tone that makes the movie really unique. a great performance from Lee Marvin helps as well. Plus some good shots of late-70s LA and Alcatraz. A really well-done movie
08.13.05	The Muppets Take Manhattan	Frank Oz	I'd never seen this all the way through... it was fun.
08.13.05	Control Room	Jehane Noujaim	pretty good documentary but it ultimately just makes me feel bad about my Country so... kind of a downer. i did like how the main mouthpiece of the Army that they interview comes off as pretty intelligent and empathetic though instead of some villainous idiot.
08.12.05	The Pacifier	Adam Shankman	Some days are just not with you. Sometimes when i am feeling down in the dumps i like to pig out on Wendy's and watch a bad movie. For some reason, that's my idea of a picker-upper. So, a monterey ranch chicken sandwich firmly secured in my belly, I turned this movie on and zoned out. it was pretty bad, despite it being written by a couple Reno 911/The State guys.
08.12.05	C.H.U.D.	Douglas Cheek	Canniballistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers. What else needs to be said? I guess I've been giving 80s movies a hard time on here recently so I decided to see a movie made in the 80s that is really pretty bad but I love it anyway. C.H.U.D. yes.... the movie doesn't even have to be good with a title like that. Well, the title and the great opening shot with the woman walking her dog in the middle of the night in the middle of the street, dropping her purse or whatever next to a manhole, and having some rubbery toxified hand grab her. Classic stuff. Also, i remember around this time that toxic slime was like IT. Three Mile Island happened somewhere near this time so there was all sorts of stuff in the news about radioactive waste and stuff, then they found some strange DNA toxic stuff in the sewers or something and it all spruned movies like this and Toxic Avenger and Return of the Living Dead part two not to mention that great scene in Robocop... so toxic waste was the stuff to have at this point... i think they also made a movie about crocodiles that grew to abnormal size in the sewers as well or something... so this really fits into its place in time. seeing it again, there are some actual actors here in early roles. It's got a few choice gore moments but mostly it's just about saying CHUD a lot while watching. Waiting for the CHUD to break through... watching bums CHUDify or get CHUDded to death. The commentary on the DVD is also hilarious, laughing with the cast and crew but also learning bits and pieces about the fiasco this movie has gone through in various forms of release. Such is the life of a low-budget genre picture i guess...
08.10.05	Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry	John Hough	It's so great when you see a movie for the first time and it's really entertaining and great and you're not disappointed or let down in any way. Believe me, the more movies you see the less this happens. Dirty Mary Crazy Larry is about a wannabe race car driver robbing a super market for about five minutes then going on an awesomely seventies car chase for about an hour and 25 minutes. Low budget, not very good acting, but the stunts are shot to really showcase that they're real. It's just a good time... I'd put money down saying it's better than the Dukes of Hazzard movie but... I don't really plan on seeing that so i couldn't be sure.
08.10.05	March of the Penguins	Luc Jacquet	Whenever anyone mentions penguins, two memories pop up. The first is of an old roomate of mine named Bob who one night expounded on all the fact about Emporer penguins that he learned for a report in like fifth grade. For some reason he still remembered everything. The other memoriy is during the last geekweekend when steve started asking everyone their top five favorite ______ and when the question was about which wild animal we'd like to have as a pet, Trapper said penguins. Like, he'd have a little climate-controlled room with some ice and a water tank and hire some guy to take care of them but it'd be nice to just have some penguins at home to hang out with. This movie pretty much proves that. the problem is that parents should tell their children it's rude to talk during the movie.
08.08.05	Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous	John Pasquin	feel pretty silly even typing the full title to this but... you know... Sandy Bullock, who cares that she's married now... bikers always turn super ugly when they get old so i'll still have a chance. someday. the movie was pretty forgetable. It made the first one seem really funny.
08.07.05	Orson Welles: The One-Man Band	Oja Kodar, Vassili Silovic	A feature-length documentary on all of Welles' late-in-life unfinished projects, put together in semi-F for Fake fashion: pretty all over the place and sprawling. I think out of all the clips they showed i want to see his pilot for The Orson Welles show the most. He had muppets on there. Truly an "artist," Welles i think is still above my head in most ways.
08.07.05	Hide and Seek	John Polson	I'm a little conflicted about the last ten or twenty minutes of this movie. On one hand it was good to see DeNiro doing his thing but on the other, it made the whole movie barely make sense. and then the very ending is confusion stacked on top of confusion. Why couldn't it have just been the freaky looking cancer kid from next door's ghost? oh well.
08.06.05	The Legend of Hell House	John Hough	At first glance this would seem like just another Haunting rip-off, but a quality story from Richard Matheson and really great upper lip British acting (including Roddy McDowall) bring enough to this movie to make it pretty entertaining. If you like haunted house stories, that is.
08.06.05	The Mangler	Tobe Hooper	So you take a story by Stephen King, get Tobe Hooper to direct and Robert "Freddy Krueger" Englund to star... should be a great horror movie right? Just one problem: it's called The Mangler. How good of a movie can it be when it's called The Mangler. It's also about a haunted laundry press. Yeah, a laundry press. So this movie pretty much sucks. It's like the horror equivalent of Bonfire of the Vanities.
08.06.05	Beyond the Sea	Kevin Spacey	It's good that people are starting to deconstruc the biopic form a little bit. This doesn't go as far as De-Lovely but it does break up the narrative enough to make it interesting for jaded uninterested viewers like me. Still not great or anything though, i mean he still dies at the end. sort of.
08.05.05	Hostage	Florent Siri	I didn't know the Splinter Cell games were "directed" but looking this guy up on imdb and seeing that explains a lot about this movie.
08.05.05	House of Bamboo	Samuel Fuller	A Sam Fuller picture with some great location work in 1955 Tokyo. It's funny, the more classic movies one sees, the more contemporary movies fall apart. This one is basically Point Break without the surfing. and better. Of course this is also a remake... so i guess there haven't been any original stories for a long time
08.04.05	The Exorcist III	William Peter Blatty	I'm actually not the biggest fan of The Exorcist. Maybe it's because I'm not religious enough for all the devil stuff to take route or maybe I'm too young and raised on gorier horror fare. In any case, I only rented the third one because of that Fangoria book... and it's pretty decent! It's still a little slow, but Brad Dourif creeps the place up and setting it in the mental ward of a hospital always helps.
08.04.05	Casino	Martin Scorsese	I get the excess vibe of this. It's like filmmaking excess to match the excesses of the story and characters. Everything is turned up to 11. I always feel like I'm snorting coke or something when I watch this movie because the pacing is so frantic but the movie is so long that you just get jittery and exhausted by the end of it. Sharon Stone in particular with all her yelling and whatnot... it's just a crazy movie. For those that compare it to Goodfellas, I'd say that this movie isn't secure enough to breathe. This movie feels like overcompensation where Goodfellas feels secure. Goodfellas is the guy who doesn't talk about being able to kick your ass because he doesn't have to. He can just do it. This movie works hard to get to the same place and never quite makes it. That said, there's some great stuff in here... it's a really well-made film... Good stuff with voice-over, really economical shot and scene compositions, it looks great... it's just too cramped, too insecure, and dare i say it too excessive.
08.04.05	The Pirate Movie	Ken Annakin	This movie... is really horrible. I think there should be a large trunk where the country votes on things from the 80s that we'd all like to forget ever existed and those things should be put in the trunk then the trunk should be melted and buried in salt deep under the earth for ever and ever. And i think this movie should go in that trunk.
08.03.05	Oldboy	Chan-wook Park	Well it's not the best movie i've ever seen but it is good. there's a great action sequence with the dude versus like ten people that's really unbelievably cool... then it gets crazy at the end but overall a very very cool film.
08.03.05	My Best Fiend: Klaus Kinski	Werner Herzog	A recollection of the turbulent relationship between actor Klaus Kinski and director Werner Herzog. I love Herzog's voice when he's speaking english... it's so serious and ridiculous, just great.
08.01.05	The Hand	Henry Cass	It's no secret that I saw this movie just because I'm thinking about buying the poster for it. Coming in at a whopping 64 minutes long, I hesitate to even call this a movie... but it is so I am. It's not nearly as supernatural as I would've liked. Three army dudes get caught in Burma during WWII and the first two each get a hand chopped for not talking. Of course the officer talks and now, in "london to-day" the handless are looking for the officer to take "a hand for a hand." in the end the officer gets shot and runs and conveniently passes out with his hand on a train track. duh. Toward the beginning I was kind of liking the cheesiness of their Burma set, wondering what the story behind this little British film was and how it's barely survived to make it onto DVD... but as it went on it got slower and slower with so all the eloquent Brit dialogue and whatnot, by the end i was just waiting for it to end. So this raises a question... now I've seen the film but I don't really love it so... should I get the poster? It is a pretty sweet poster...
08.01.05	Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid	Dwight Little	Well.. i mean, if you accept that the monsters in this movie are badly CG'd unbelievably giant anacondas... just accept that ok... then this movie can be more fun than the original... going on what i remember of the original... which is just that it was horrible. OK I guess this one's not too far from horrible either, but i felt more prepared or something... i mean, it was late. I really don't know what I was thinking...
07.30.05	The Machinist	Brad Anderson	I think Brad Anderson is turning out to be a pretty decent contemporary thriller/horror director. Unfortunately this movie suffers from being a total Fight Club rip-off, but the direction is really good and creepy and Christian Bale is really spooky and hollow and drained and thin, like freakishly disgustingly thin... that bastard.
07.30.05	Hitch	Andy Tennant	Pretty decent for a paint-by-numbers romantic comedy. Kevin James had some good lines and somehow Michael Rapaport got in the beginning titles for being in roughly two minutes of the movie. great.
07.29.05	Sky High	Mike Mitchell	Even though it feels like an Incredibles knock-off, i thought this was pretty fun. Of course, I was a big fan of Clone High as well... so maybe I'm just a sucker for extraordinary highschool stories. In any case, I liked it, a lot because of the actors involved.
07.28.05	The Getaway	Sam Peckinpah	Another burly Steve McQueen movie... I'm surprised at how it ended though... very cool. Ali MacGraw... whoa.
07.28.05	A Snake of June	Shinya Tsukamoto	Occasionally, I'll add a movie to my netflix queue and it's so far down the list that by the time it actually shows up in the mail I've forgotten what it's about or why i even wanted to see it in the first place. Such is the case with A Snake of June, AKA 77 minutes of Japanese monochromatic sexual obsession and a whole bin full of whatnot that I really should've known came from the same guy who made Tetsuo: The Iron Man. whew.
07.28.05	Family Guy: Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story!	Seth MacFarlane	This is straight-to-DVD but still calls itself a movie. In reality it's three episodes of the tv show melded together with some bits and pieces bookending them and making it seem more movie-like a la Kentucky Fried Movie. The laughs are about on par with the TV show: funny but nothing special. You also get to hear them cuss.
07.28.05	Dressed to Kill	Brian De Palma	Even though I no longer actively rent and watch Brian De Palma movies, i am still dense enough to add one to my queue if I hear enough about it to make me feel like i should see it. Every time I feel the same: he has shimmers of quality but takes too much from Hitchcock. In the supplements on the DVD he even complains about being called a Hitchcock rip-off, saying that Hitch has done all of the ideas in the thriller genre so if you want to make a good trhiller you have to take from the master. BS. This movie is like De Palma saw Psycho and said "i want to make my own version." At least Van Sant was crazy enough to make a shot-for-shot remake instead of some psuedo-realized flipside of the Psycho coin. All the Psycho turns are in this movie, it's just told differently (not as well, and with more split-screen). Bah.
07.25.05	The Thomas Crown Affair	Norman Jewison	It's interesting how the remake is so much more plot-centric than the original. I guess without McQueen and Dunaway they couldn't linger on playing chess that much. Anyway, this original one was decent, very 60s-ish. I understand the people who say McQueen was miscast for this one though... he doesn't seem very comfortable being rich and preppy. The dune buggy scenes, when he's ripping up the beach with a terrified Faye Dunaway, seem much more him.
07.25.05	Jaws	Steven Spielberg	Still really great, really well put-together, and really tight. Not sure you could do much better with a Hollywood blockbuster
07.24.05	The Island	Michael Bay	Took my parents to see this at the Alamo. Made them get a root beer float. The movie is more good than bad I think, but overall I think it's a good move for Bay to move away from Bruckheimer. Although he seems infected with shakycamitis, the car/air/building logo sequence was worth the price of admission. The plot was a bit too close to THX 1138 I think, and it seemed like they were almost not gonna do the inevitably "no, HE'S the clone" scene but then some producer or studio voice made them put it in. I guess as long as your brain's not completely to the "on" side of the switch, it works. Either way though, I won't deny that it's entertaining and some parts are spectacular and fantastic to the eye.
07.23.05	Burden of Dreams	Les Blank	a really good documentary on the making of Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo. It's such a great doc that i didn't even see the movie that it's about and i still enjoyed it very much. If you think Gilliam had it bad in Lost in La Mancha, then you should check this out. Also on the disc is the short film: Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, about his fulfillment of a vow made to Errol Morris about finishing his first film. I think both of these docs really showcase how driven by principle and passion Herzog is. it makes me want to check out more of his stuff.
07.22.05	I Spit on Your Grave	Meir Zarchi	So I've finally seen it. When I was in middle and highschool and would go to the little local video store to look for movies to watch. This movie and Zombie had the strongest cover images that I remember. In this case, just the title along with the shot of the woman's back all scratched and stuff just burned into my brain. I mean, I Spit on Your Grave. that's a friggin strong title if I've ever heard one. The movie is just as gritty and rough and unsettling as Last House on the Left. The rape scenes are pretty intense and the following scenes of bloody revenge are cheer-worthy. They should re-make it. heh.
07.22.05	The Night Flier	Mark Pavia	Well, I can't really call this good. The short story was nice and pretty short and made for a good little chuckle of a fright but this stretched it out too much. The end had some pretty decent gore though, which is cool. If seen in the right context this movie could be fun.
07.22.05	The Devil's Rejects	Rob Zombie	I was, for whatever reason, thinking that this movie would be a lot different. I thought that the titular rejects were somehow vigilantes or something and they had some list of bad people that they were killing. Instead it's just a sequel to 1,000 Corpses and it's just more mindless tomfoolery. I guess the message in this movie is: if you're evil then you hate shaving. Once again I'm fooled by a pretty genre-happy trailer into thinking this would be some real fun instead of... whatever it was i just sat through. Oh well i guess. At least Rob Zombie married that hot chick.
07.21.05	The Jacket	John Maybury	I heard this movie was confusing. I wasn't confused, just bored. Since I've already seen 12 Monkeys there wasn't much new here
07.21.05	The Day After Tomorrow	Roland Emmerich	so many problems with this movie... but I have to say those wolves still stand out as completely ridiculous. I think they may become one of the timeless classics of horrible movie-making. Effects were good though.
07.21.05	Scarlet Diva	Asia Argento	The only reason why I watched this movie is the only reason why it's worth watching: Asia Argento's angel tattoo.
07.20.05	Bad News Bears	Richard Linklater	saw this at the Austin premiere in the Paramount theater with Linklater and most of the team in attendance. since i was in the second row instead of the first, the lack of leg room was like sitting in an airplane, although for the first time ever i actually had the experience of having cute girls (sans boyfriends) to my left and my right, and a really hot model-type sitting right in front of me. It made up for the lack of stretching room. The movie was entertaining. I wont say it's the best ever but it wasn't the worst. I think maybe it's on par with School of Rock, depending on how you feel about the subjects. Personally, I got more of a kick out seeing kids rock out than play baseball so i think I prefer SoR, but i bet if i was more into baseball then I'd go the other way pretty easily. The Q&A afterward was pretty funny with most of the questions addressed to all the kids. Some were more talkative then others but they were all really charismatic and happy and funny. One question asked them to say their ages and where they were from and what work they've done so they went down the line, one kid's playing Johnny Cash as a kid in Walk the Line, etc., etc., there was a funny kid that was from Canada, then they get to this one kid who just quietly says "I'm from Texas" and the whole theater breaks out in cacophenous cheer. Texas pride, man; crazy. The afterparty was at Dart Bowl. I still didn't bowl but after hearing about the enchiladas that i missed out on when they screening The Big Lebowski there, I had to show up for the food and free drinks. It's great how the worst mexican food here is better than the best mexican food on the east coast. even the macaroni salad was spicy and good. It's also a bit surreal to be standing in the food line a few people away from Linklater and his daughters, just havin some food after another day of work. Other AFS high-ups were also hanging out and talking to people... now i just have to figure a way to become one of them.
07.20.05	The Edge	Lee Tamahori	I like this movie... i think i like wilderness movies in general as long as their done well. Shoot to Kill, White Water Summer, Deliverance, etc. Bart the Bear is awesome in this, the scene where he eats Harold Perrineau is still pretty brutal... which is cool. Also, aside from a little ham and eggs at the end, Alec Baldwin's performance is very strong not to mention Anthony Hopkins, who i totally believe as a rich smart guy surviving out in the wild. I think the real Hopkins would be just as burly out there... some helicopter would find him hanging out in some cave eating a fried bat or something, seemingly in no hurry to be found.
07.19.05	Charlie and the Chocolate Factory	Tim Burton	Well, Deep Royal definitely stole the show. Depp is too arbitrarily weird. It works some of the time but the stuff at the end seemed forced. Maybe i just have stronger memories of the first memory than the book. It was ok, the music numbers were way better. Saw it with an Alamo "Chocolate Feast" with four courses of somehow-chocolate-involved food. I learned that the difference between chugging five glasses of wine over a three hour movie and four glasses in ninety minutes is... pretty big. I had to lighten up on the last glass of port for two reasons (the other being I've never been a big fan of port). It was definitely hitting the audience though, old ladies were giggling all over the place.
07.19.05	Wendigo	Larry Fessenden	...well, I thought the actors did a good job in this... the movie would almost be good except the monster doesn't play at all and there's an ominous "soundscape" malaising through most of it that cheapens the feeling for me. Also, it feels like the movie stretches to make ninety minutes, repeating dialogue over and over while we get to see random shots of trees. There are a few cool camera moves and the movie feels like it should be better than it is. I dunno, is it that hard to make a horror movie nowadays?
07.16.05	The General	John Boorman	I believe this was a Showtime movie. It's really good. It's about an Irish criminal played by Brendan Gleeson. This was sort of Boorman saying "hey, I'm still alive, even if i have to work in TV instead of movies" and it's a really competant and well-directed piece.
07.15.05	Boogeyman	Stephen Kay	sigh... i really think that if/when i get serious about making movies and find myself in a situation to make some, genre movies are the way to go. I think there will always be low-budget horror movies, and anything of any quality will really stand out because most of them are so sucky.
07.15.05	Wedding Crashers	David Dobkin	some good jokes and it's cool to see Vince and Owen buddy it up. These "frat pack" movies are beginning to seem a bit cookie-cutter but... i still laugh so i guess it's nothing serious. These were never gonna win any awards anyway, at least they're funny and not crap. what they NEED to do is all get together for a mad, mad, mad, mad world-type movie and make it the ultimate frat pack movie. jam pack it with jokes and cameos, let everyone get drunk while filming, and release a dvd with all of them on a commentary track making fun of each other. that'd be sweet.
07.15.05	Overnight	Mark Brian Smith, Tony Montana	A documentary about Try Duffy, the writer/director of Boondock Saints. Since you know his career died going into this film, you'd think it would be a sad portrait of an artist being crushed by the Hollywood machine. Instead, Duffy manages to be so obnoxiously pompous, arrogant, and condescending, i took joy in knowing that his comeuppance was only a matter of time. I guess Hollywood can be mean and unfair but being a dick isn't the answer. Pretty good, well worth watching.
07.14.05	Rize	David LaChapelle	So the kids basically go spastic and call it dancing. Seriously though, there's not a lot of "discipline" which most other dance forms applaud but this is more passionate, feral, freeform outburst of aggression that I got a feeling was really special about five years ago. Now it's already huge in the hood and already being exploited by hollywood (Be Cool comes to mind, Travolta and Uma standing there sort of afraid and not really knowing why these kids are in their movie). The people subjected in this doc though have real personalities and LaChapelle does a good job in extracting their passion and the positivity that this whole thing is brining to south central LA. Of course, me mr. white boy can only think about the time i saw Boyz n da hood and all the time spent playing GTA San Andreas when i try to empathize, but you know... that's like everyone who's seeing this movie.
07.14.05	Me and You and Everyone We Know	Miranda July	Wow. just wow. what a great movie. It's been a while since I laughed like that. Every part is written and acted so well... it's life how it sometimes feels but never quite is. Really Really great stuff. Everyone who reads this should go see it.
07.14.05	House of Flying Daggers	Yimou Zhang	very pretty, sort of slow, CG daggers. That's about it.
07.11.05	Bewitched	Nora Ephron	um... i'm sure my mom would like it.
07.10.05	Nocturne	Edwin L. Marin	A pretty by-the-numbers noir mystery starring George Raft. I'm not the biggest Raft fan, he always seems to be standing too rigid or his suit jacket has shoulder pads or something. In any case, this was pretty eh.
07.10.05	Female Trouble	John Waters	John Waters, pearl of Baltimore.
07.10.05	Devil Fetus	Hung Chuen Lau	At the beginning of the night, when we were still fresh and innocent, Harry said that the last movie had the best title ever, and neither he nor Lars had seen it. Now here we are. The last movie of the night. Technically it's already daylight out but since we're all in the theater we don't know/care. The numbers have thinned, only the most hardcore are still present. Sitting there for about ten hours, stewing in our air-conditioned horror-adled geekiness. Lars silently approves of all of us with a gleam in his eye. As a treat, he unveils what the rest of the world will know in a few days: that Quentin Tarantino is coming back this September for QT6: the next multi-day film festival programmed by the man himself: Quentin Tarantino. We are the first people in the world (aside from QT and the Alamo folk... and the AICN folk.. and probably some other people too) to know about it. I remember reading about previous QT fests on AICN and being so jealous i would just close the window. I didn't even want to read the titles of the films he showed because all of Austin and their little slice of heavenly cool film community there could go and suck an egg as far as I'm concerned. Well, now I'm in that little slice of heavenly cool film community. In fact, at this moment I am in the red blood-gushing heart of it with maybe a hundred of my closest horror-gonzo bretheren, awaiting a movie with a name like Devil Fetus to start. I should mention that they had vintage horror trailers preceding every one of the films. Some really classic ones too. I can't begin to remember any of them but just believe me when I tell you that they were cool. Devil Fetus. chinese. made in the 80s. Very uneven in extremes. The bad scenes were pretty unbearable but the good ones... oh man were they goooooood. This woman buys this "vase" that really looks more like a giant phallus with a little demon holding onto it than anything that could ever hold flowers. She touches this thing while laying in bed and suddenly this greyish veiny monster is on top of her having his "way." These two kids try to look at it and she snatches it away from them and runs upstairs to admire it again. Her hubby gets home from like six months away or something and walks in to see the devil mid-coitus. He reverts back to the "vase" and he grabs it and smashes it down on the floor. Dust rises up to his face and it immediately begins to turn purple and massive fleshy pustules form all over. He then rips off half his face, revealing maggots and worms, and gets so disgusted that he leaps out the window to his death. The woman also dies. During her funeral, the priest dude sees inside the coffin that her belly swells all up and this titular devil fetus pops out. He puts some ban on it in the form of a few flimsy pieces of paper hung precariously over a small stone plaque and says that it will take her a dozen years before she gets to go to heaven or whatever. That's like, the first five minutes. After that, it's all about the two young boys grown up and blah blah blah, evil possession ensues, more furniture moves around, some pretty crazy stop-motion kung-fu-esque stuff happens, long story short one of the brothers kills the evil-possessed brother and he turns into the devil and he chops the devil's head off and the neck shoots out three or four snake/larva looking things with heads on them that he also chops off and it's all over. thank god. Other highlights include an evil-possessed dog getting the samurai sword, spraying enough blood into this girl's face that she actually spits out like a mouth-full of it. There's also the old help-i'm-caught-in-the-sauna-and-the-walls-are-closing-in head explosion against the glass door chestnut, done adequately well, and a few scenes of the evil-possessed brother chowing down on doggy and human flesh thrown in for good measure. It's pretty safe to say that the movie fit our collective mindset pretty well as a "last movie" and the really really terrible subtitles gave us plenty of laughs in between the gore-outs ("something evil has beaitched your brother!"). And then it was over, just like that. Slowly we scattered out into the early Sunday sunlight, a bunch of zombies let loose on the deserted downtown Austin area. Soon we covered the streets, small groups of black t-shirt wearing horror fans twitching from too much sugar and caffeine each heading to their cars or homes. Just over thirteen hours after leaving, I entered my too-bright apartment. I survived. I'm ready for the next one.
07.10.05	Schock	Mario Bava	Lars gets back up and announces that the next film will be Mario Bava. His last one in fact, entitled Schock. he then says that they retitled the movie Beyond the Door 2 because there was a horrible Exorcist rip-off called Beyond the Door that made money so when they imported this they called it the sequel. According to Lars, this is an insult to Bava and everything he stands for. Aside from that though, this movie has the best screaming ever in it. Now, from what I know of Bava, he feigned sickness toward the end of his career to let his son Lamberto get some experience behind the camera. Schock seems closer to Lamberto's debut Macabre than the other films of Mario that I've seen. The body count is pretty low but it's very odd and very psychological and the few scenes of gore that they do show are pretty worth it. This, perhaps a precursor to that boring-ass movie Birth, is about a woman (Daria Nicolodi, Asia Argento's hot (in an Italian way) mom) and her son (some kid they picked out of the freaky farm) and her new hubby move back to the house where she lived with her first hubby, who we're told was an addict and depressio and died at sea or something. Of course, the kid gets semi-possessed by the dead for-some-reason-vengeful first hubby. The kid proceeds to get mad whenever she screws her new hubby, tries to initiate some mom/son action, and acts weird and possessed-like for the whole movie. At the end we find out that she is psycho and killed her first hubby but her second hubby knows and has tried to hide it all this time but then she kills him too and assorted furniture moves and haunts her to the point where she thinks ghosts are slitting her throat but it's really her. So check my entry for Macabre against my entry for Twitch of the Death Nerve and see if I'm not right about the Mario/Lamberto thing.
07.10.05	The Roost	Ti West	Next up is this low-budget new movie that showed at SXSW this year. The woman who introduced it talked a lot about Larry Fessenden who did this movie called Wendigo (also on Fangoria's list. i'm so knowledgeable). Then she sort of built this movie up a lot and said that Tom Noonan is the star. He's the super tall guy that's really really creepy. He was in Manhunter and Heat and stuff... So anyway, the woman also says that she wont tell us what the monster or creature is, but there is one. So the film starts and Tom Noonan is like the host of a saturday late-night horror movie show... yeah like the grampa in Goonies 2. And he's onscreen for like five minutes then it's four teens who turn off the main road and get their car stuck in a ditch. It's all digital night photography so there's digital grain everywhere. There's also this old couple who are on their way... somewhere... and the old woman says to the old man "hey, are you sure you locked the old spooky barn?" and the old man says "oops, even though it's our barn, not only did i not lock it but i also have no idea of the source of that spooky sound that just came from the pitch dark inside. I guess I will check it out." Then the old lady waits a few minutes then says to herself "well crap, my hubby hasn't returned. That gate must be really hard to lock. I will go check it out and likewise also go into the pitch black barn to investigate the spooky sound." Cut back to the sexy teens walking to the nearest house because their car's stuck in a ditch. They find the old people's house and proceed, one by one, to check out the dark spooky barn. So what's the big monster creature? some bats. I guess in this universe though, bats are actually terrifying and will chase you down instead of just fly away and maybe give you rabies if you try to pelt them with tennis rackets. So the kids try to barricade themselves INSIDE the spooky barn and there's this cop that dies or something and i guess the twist on these horrific bats is that if they bite you you turn into a zombie. So they are zombifying bats. Great. The whole thing is super dark and very digital minicam low-budget. I'd overlook it if there was a good story or something but the whole thing's filled with really loud spooky soundtrack and cheap soundtrack queues to make you jump. I was pretty unimpressed. After, the guy next to me asked how I liked it and I noted a few of my problems. He seemed to defend the film though so I dropped it. Horror fans during the day can be trouble. At 4 am they are not to be upset. Just like bears. bears in obscure old t-shirts. and scraggly beards.
07.10.05	Deathdream	Bob Clark	It's awesome that the same guy can direct a movie like this, Porky's, A Christmas Story, and Baby Genuises. He's like a current-day equivalent of Robert Wise. Anyway, Lars announces that we're moving back to America with Deathdream AKA Dead of Night AKA a pretty good movie made on a budget of like two bucks and free coffee. I finally feel like I belong because, while I haven't seen this film, I've just read about it in my Fangoria's 101 Best Horror Movies You've Never Seen book. It's "on my list." The story, somewhat of a precursor to Jacob's Ladder, is about a GI who gets shot over in the Nam. His family back home gets the dreaded telegram complete with some generic military dude saying sorry. The father is the dude in The Godfather who wakes up with his horse's head in his bed. Surprise Surprise though, Beloved Son Andy shows up late one night, seemingly ok! Hands down the best scene in this movie is right then, when the dad says something like "they even told us that you died hah hah." and Andy replies "I did." What follows is a super long awkward silence, cutting between each character as Andy holds his stone dead ghoul zombie-ish face, then barely a hint of a smile, then maybe what could be a smile, then a small smile, then a completely forced toothy smile and the whole family laughs for like a minute. After that, it's the usual. Andy's actually a ghoul and needs to kill and drink blood to keep his complexion rosy. The mom goes crazy and protects him from whatever while he kills the dog and several people. Finally Andy goes on a double date with his old girl and his sister and her boyfriend and, while the sis and her hunk are going to the lobby to get themselves some treats at the drive-in, he tries to eat his old girlfriend in the backseat. When he gets home, the mother says "I don't care about (sister's name) and takes quickly-decaying Andy on a car chase. Directly before that though comes the second-best moment in the film. Andy and his mom are on the way to the car when a police cruiser screeches up and both cops draw down on them. Cop #1 says something like "Stop!" then cop #2 just shoots Andy in the chest right away. Cut to the two cops, cop #1 looks over at cop #2 like wtf? Just enough of a pause to let the entire theater laugh our heads off.
07.10.05	Three... Extremes	Fruit Chan, Chan-wook Park, Takashi Miike	The next film Harry introduces, an "early" (i guess it's out on DVD) print of a Japanese horror anthology directed by three top greats of Japanese Horror. I'm uninitiated to all three but hear great things about Miike's work and downright amazing things about Chan-wook Park's stuff. I figure this will be a good introduction to them all. The first story is from Fruit Chan and is my favorite of the three. I order a pepperoni pizza and settle into this story called Dumplings. Cutting to the chase, this woman cooks aborted fetuses into dumplings and they have restorative powers. Except she helps this one girl abort and it's an incest baby so it makes the woman that eats it smell like fish and break out in rashes. The chef splits town right after the hungry woman learns that she's pregnant. She decides to take this "device" and abort herself... presumably because she's up for another snack. I'm eating all during this. it's great. Next up is Cut from Chan-wook Park, which manages to flip flop between really heavy thriller stuff and super-light comedy like fourteen times. It's made really well but the story just doesn't compare with the crunchy sound effects of little baby parts chopped up and served in dumplings. Last shown is Miike's Box, which is just weird and mostly silent and incestual sort of and maybe all a dream. I'm not really sure, my bladder took over at one point and i had to miss some of it. I didn't really mind though. it had something to do with ballet dancing sisters that are, in the end, majorly conjoined (although very different in ages. how's that work?). The guy next to me tells me that Miike's other stuff is better.
07.10.05	Devil Times Five	Sean MacGregor	Enter the Dusk Till Dawn Alamo Drafthouse/Aint It Cool News All-Nighter Horrorthon. IF. YOU. DARE. The line was out the door an hour before showtime. It went around the corner of the block before they opened the theater to us gore-hungry band of degenerate nocturnal horror fans. One of the women that works there noted "i hope you all showered. 12 hours is a loooong time." Some guy in line said "i hope we all showered too!" Harry says he basically had very little to do with the movie selection. Ok that's not entirely true, he had a little bit to do with it but not much. Most of the programming credit went to Lars, a tall skinny dude with a huge combined thicket of dark hair and beard. He introduces the first film: Devil Times Five. "Werewolves, vampires... they don't come close to evil children. Nothing is as creepy as evil children. Also, the lead kid in the is Leif Garrett. While you're watching, think about what Leif Garrett's 'thing' is. I mean there's one kid that's a soldier and one likes fire and stuff like that, each evil child seems to have a 'thing' but then there's Leif Garrett. He's just bad vibes or something." The movie also stars the dude who played Boss Hog and Rosario from WIll & Grace. it's pretty horrible, but laughably so. Seeing it in a theater of fully charged horror fans makes it a hilarious experience. The movie does have a completely gratuitous catfight (with boob slippage) and pretty nice pirahna death (how they manage to get a pirahna death into a movie set in a snowed-in ski cabin? i'll leave that as an exercise for the reader). It wont be the last time tonight that I'm surprised by moments and glimpses of really classic movie moments in a piece of crap film.
07.09.05	The Stranger	Orson Welles	Orson plays a nazi hiding out in COnnecticut and Edward G. Robinson catches him. The TCM guy said that Welles insisted on directing to show Hollywood that he could bring a picture in on schedule and under budget to debunk the rumours about him. Apparently he did and the end product is a watchable but not very special thriller.
07.08.05	Odds Against Tomorrow	Robert Wise	Maybe one of my favorite noirs, maybe not. This one pairs a young Harry Belafonte, Robert Ryan, and Ed Begley together for a desperate bank job. It's got a great score and Robert Wise is excellent as always. It breaks down a bit toward the end but for the most part it's a really enjoyable movie
07.08.05	Rabid	David Cronenberg	a seminal Cronenberg classic starring young Marilyn Chambers as a vampire with a sucking orifice in her armpit that sucks blood out of people and make them rabid zombie-esque crazy people. I think I liked Shivers and The Brood more but this was still worth watching. Especially the part where santa gets mowed down with a machine gun.
07.07.05	Sherlock, Jr.	Buster Keaton	80 years later and this movie still makes the whole theater crack up. I guess it helps when there's a live band providing the score. Of course this was at the Alamo, so while i was savoring my root beer float and noshing on fries, the White Ghost Shivers (a local jazz/bluegrass/ragtime/other stuff band) provided everything you'd want in a score to Buster Keaton's classic. They also played Keaton's best short, Cops. Both were hilarious and the score was great. Awesome movie experience.
07.07.05	The Taking of Pelham One Two Three	Joseph Sargent	Man NYC was filthy in the 70s. This is a good little caper picture about a bunch of pros that hijack a subway car. As usual, the caper is way simpler than today's getaway movies but still cool and worth watching.
07.07.05	Minority Report	Steven Spielberg	I guess I haven't seen this since its theatrical run, so for some reason I decided to give it another watch. The stuff I remember thinking coolest about the movies, namely all the nifty inventions that sci-fi people were hired and locked in a room together to figure out, are no longer that cool. On the other hand the bullet-hole-riddled plot and stolen scenes and devices aren't as offensive either. I guess all in all the movie is taking steps toward mediocracy just like 90% of all the movies out there. I still like the scene where Peter Stormare talks about his prison rape as he prepares Cruise for eye surgery. well, ok I like peter stormare's character but the nurse assistant is pretty cheesy. The end shot is also still pretty unsatisfying... when the 'directed by' credit pops up it really felt like Spielberg saying "um... ok i guess it's over now."
07.06.05	F for Fake	Orson Welles	wow. it's really clear to me after watching this that Welles was a genuis. The level that he was working on is just unbelievable, even today. This movie can't even really be described. It's part documentary, part visual essay, part magic show, part recreation; all edited masturfully together to create this cinematic tapestry of presentation that Welles spills over your eyes just as he spills wine on the map in the beginning of the film. It's really great.
07.06.05	Stakeout	John Badham	Not sure if i ever saw this, just the sequel. It's funny how the tone of this one is completely different, much more dramatic. It also makes me wonder what Richard Dreyfus has been up to.
07.05.05	Man with the Screaming Brain	Bruce Campbell	OK I can't really say this was good, but i will say that seeing it in a theater with a sold out audience made it more bearable. I think I would definitely like it less if i had to watch it alone and fast forward through commercials or whatever the sci-fi channel does. It had some moments though and gave Bruce a chance to showcase a bit of his great physical comedy stuff, even though it's basically a low-budget schi-fi remake of Steve Martin's All of Me. There were a few genuine laughs (an exploding vespa, a robot death scene, a hilarious rebuff at the mention of marriage) but for the most part it's the kind of thing you'd see on sci-fi channel. More entertaining by far was Campbell's Q&A. He went off on all the remakes and sequels and bad, bad movies being pawned off as good nowadays. He did a hilarious Star Wars impersonation, he made fun of the few guys who said "i liked it" and even dismissed Batman Begins because it took five tries to get one right (doing another hilarious impression of Tim Burton being bullied by Jack Nicholson's exuberance to overact). Every one of his answers were quick, witty, and funny as hell. You see a real character there when he's just talking... i wish someone would put him in a romantic comedy lead (or at least the smartass best friend role) or something and show off his charisma. When he signed my book I asked if he'd heard back from any of the celebrities he wrote about in his latest book (in which he gets a job from Mike nichols, tells Renee Zellwegger she needs bigger breasts, and hits up Vegas to get Richard Gere laid) and he basically said "nah, fair use. I mean they're in the public eye so people are gonna talk about them, right? besides, I didn't write them as assholes or big dicks or anything, just myself." Too true.
07.05.05	We're No Angels	Neil Jordan	still a pretty underrated comedy i think. I remember that this movie was the first time i really noticed John C. Reilly, he really does a good job here playing off Sean Penn really well. DeNiro is also exceptionally funny. People seem to forget how funny he was in this and Midnight Run which are both way before Meet the Parents or any of his recent blah comedies. The David Mamet script for this also keeps it from aging i think.
07.03.05	Ladyhawke	Richard Donner	The 80s, man. I mean what happened.
07.02.05	White Noise	Geoffrey Sax	Cool idea, not developed enough. I was waiting for some sort of explanation at the end but didn't get any. I could make a way better EVP movie than this.
07.02.05	Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia	Sam Peckinpah	huh. The movie's literally about bringing the head of Alfredo Garcia to some guy. I thought it was just a cool title. It's very peckinpahish, that's for sure.
07.01.05	Seed of Chucky	Don Mancini	Ahh memories. I remember when the first one came out and it took itself seriously. I guess the only difference now is that it's intentionally funny. And Jennfer Tilly's hot.
07.01.05	Night and the City	Jules Dassin	Another pretty good classic noir by the guy who did the great Naked City and Rififi. Richard Widmark is at his best in this one, playing a pathetic lowlife sweating and oozing all around London for an hour and a half before fate catched up with him. His part reminded me of a seedier (if that's possible) and more desperate (again, if that's possible) version of Tony Curtis' character in Sweet Smell of Success. Very enjoyable.
06.30.05	Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban	Alfonso Cuaron	I think this is by far the best movie so far. I'm looking forward to the next book and the next movie now.
06.29.05	Stripes	Ivan Reitman	ahhh, early Bill Murray
06.29.05	War of the Worlds	Steven Spielberg	A pleasant surprise. This movie was pretty devoid of any sap or saccharine, until the last scene. Still though, for Spielberg that ain't too bad. Great effects. it made me want to play Half-Life 2 again. I liked it.
06.29.05	Darkness	Jaume Balaguero	Haunted house movie. It looked pretty generic and for the most part it was but there were still a few cool things in there. Occult architecture is cool. I think there's definitely room to do a very good haunted house movie... there are enough nowadays to compile a pretty complete list of what not to do.
06.28.05	Surviving Christmas	Mike Mitchell	I am always curious about the movies that EVERYBODY says are horrible. Entertainment Weekly is the worst. they will give a film a D- or F seemingly at random. This movie certainly wasn't a D- or F... i chuckled once maybe twice. Of course I didn't think it would be good either... i wanted to give my brain a rest for a bit... mission accomplished. you don't know the history of psychiatry, I do.
06.27.05	Paris, Texas	Wim Wenders	This movie has been popping up a lot lately in things that I read and hear about and stuff; it's always been one of those movies that people assume I've seen but never have. So now I have. The movie itself is pretty close to what I thought it would be: long, slow, but good.
06.26.05	In the Realms of the Unreal	Jessica Yu	A documentary about Henry Darger: a poor recluse janitor who, his landlords discovered when they went into his room as he was on his deathbed at age 81, spent his life committing his imagination to paper through a 15,000 page novel, an autobiography, tons of illustrations to his stories, and a general treasure trove of details concerning this private fantasy world in which he lived. It's genuinely weird stuff, filled with little girls fighting holy wars and fake names rivaling Tolkein. The movie, which only had three pictures of the man, animates a lot of his artwork and tells the story of his autobiography, interviews with the few people who knew him, and the general narrative of his epic fantasy novel. It gets pretty crazy. I think it's a good film but I didn't react to his artwork so by the end i was pretty lost in what was going on. A really interesting story though... this guy leaves behind this monumental amount of stuff that no one had any clue existed. Of course, nowadays his artwork is much sought-after and very expensive. The old poor-while-alive, famous-after-death chestnut. It's a pretty cool ride if you're interested.
06.26.05	A Dirty Shame	John Waters	Yay for John Waters. Seriously. In the state that Hollywood moviemaking is in today, that New line would make a movie like this is a faint glimmer of hope. This is just craziness, I love it. I love the flashing words on the screen, the snake member, all the great terms like yodelling in the dark and going downtown for dinner... movies like this show what can be done, that not every story has to involve Bob McKee templates or sexy teens in distress. This is like Waters' version of a sex comedy and a monster film tussled together in a lewd embrace. Great stuff.
06.25.05	Lady in the Lake	Robert Montgomery	A Phillip Marlowe story starring Robert Montgomery as the private dick. Actually though, the whole movie is shot through Marlowe's POV so you barely see Montgomery at all (just a lot of voice-over as other actors talk into camera). Like you might think, the gimmick gets pretty tedious by the end.
06.24.05	Assault on Precinct 13	Jean-Francois Richet	eh, it was ok. I'm not the biggest fan of the original either.
06.24.05	Land of the Dead	George A. Romero	Wow it's been a long time since Romero's done a zombie movie. Just the way his zombies walk seem so much more classic than all the other non-running zombie movies out there. That and they're actually about something which I think gives them longer legs than just the thrill flicks. This one's no different. Yeah the gore is there and it's awesome (there's a few gags in there that I think will become classics just like the neck bite and helicopter scalping in Dawn), but there's also a thread of zombie evolution which I think is pretty creepy. It's never the actual zombies that creep me out in these movies, it's the feel that society is just over... and there's no happy ending ever. It just never stops. So the idea of the dead starting their own society brought in thoughts about I Am Legend and all sorts of things... it would just really suck to have zombies around. Anyway, I really liked the movie. It felt like a retired kung fu master has been sitting in the background, watching cocky students try to break the boards and being like "yes! look at that crack that i made! did you guys see it bend!?" and finally standing up, clearing his throat, and breaking the board into splinters with his pinky. Funny enough though, the movie ends with a thematic point, leaving the actual characters and plot in a pretty vague place. As i was sitting through the credits, I heard some of the sold-out midnight screening crowd say it was lame. I was a bit sad but also not surprised. The main reason why most movies are sucking these days is because the audiences are sucking. Cinema as a populist artform is really down in the dumps these days, and we as an audience cannot leave ourselves out of the blame. So yeah, some people will probably go in expecting something directed by a music video vet and be disappointed because that's not what this is. This is like... a "pure" zombie film. I think the people that have problems with it now will come to love it in 6 months or a year or two. My one complaint is that Asia Argento wasn't used as much as I would've liked. Of course, she was way better in this than she was in XXX, where she was pretty much wasted and not used to any effect at all. Still though, I am waiting for that neo-Bunuelian fetishistic director somewhere to really use her to her full potential. Just her Angel tattoo... I want a full five minutes of film close-up on that thing writhing and dancing up from her waistline. Someday it'll happen. I hope. I saw this at the Alamo South Lamar at a midnight screening. The pre-show was a bunch of trailers for obscure mostly-bad zombie flicks, along with a few other oddities like a japanese "Zombie Family" thing and a great text-only trailer for a movie called Carnivorous that claimed to have real authentic footage of cannibalism and at the end the voiceover dude said something about no religious beliefs being able to comfort or save you from the terrors inside the movie. Great stuff. They also showed an extended preview for Zombi 2 (USA title: Zombie) with all the noteworthy scenes: the girl getting the wood splinters in her eye, the zombies coming up from the ground all wormy and maggoty, and the classic zombie vs. shark scene that makes certain kinds of movie geeks shriek. Of course, I ended up sitting next to a pair of the worst kind of movie geeks who kept trying to pass off bad jokes during the pre-show and telling eachother erroneous info on each movie in an effort to out-geek one another. Luckily they shut up during the movie except for a few well-time geekagsms of gorish delight. It was packed though. All the gothy dyed-hair black bra/white tanktop Austinites were out in full effect. I love their angsty self-expression.
06.22.05	Destry Rides Again	George Marshall	A fun little western starring a young James Stewart and Marlene Dietrich. One of the many movies mentioned in Bogdanovich's latest book that I want to now see. It's a fun little romp for the most part, mostly due to Dietrich's figure and Stewart's casual persona. Brian Donlevy kept reminding me of The Great McGinty though.
06.20.05	The Full Monty	Peter Cattaneo	I'd only seen this once and remember being pleasantly surprised, then the soundtrack blew up and it was released on divx and I never got around to seeing it again until tonight. It's still pretty good.
06.19.05	Cool Hand Luke	Stuart Rosenberg	One of the all-time best Paul Newman performances... but I think George Kennedy is the guy behind the guy (behind the guy) on this one. Watching it again, he stood out more than Newman... except when Newman's ma dies and he sings that little ditty with the banjo. Anyway, this was a Father's Day feast by the Alamo serving up 50 eggs as an appetizer. So ok they're sturgeon eggs (caviar), but they also served a tasty little bird served with egg, a Caesar salad with eggs, herb-fried pork chops topped with a fried double yolk with garlic mashed potatos, and a piece of banana cream pie. Throw in a couple of pints of beer as well. Not bad if you ask me.
06.18.05	Hustle & Flow	Craig Brewer	Great. Fantastic. Superb. The story about a pimp who wants to become a rapper. It's better than it sounds. Even DJ Qualls wasn't too bad. Right off the bat it establishes itself as an exploitation flick, just by using that font and putting the title in like they do... but then the whole movie raises it up, never letting you feel like it's cheap or false. It even sets itself up for these traps then deftly defuses them, reminding you that these characters are real. The music in it's great and Terrence Howard really raps on his tracks. Hell, even Anthony Anderson's good in this and I was not liking him AT ALL on The Shield this season. It's a really surprisingly good film. Plus everyone in it was all sweaty all the time so it made me feel better because the Alamo had a private party beforehand and made us early birds wait outside in the heat until the party cleared out. Yeah, another Alamo event. They had a freestyle rap contest beforehand that was... well it was what it was... Could've been worse, could've been better. A big white guy from Michigan or Minnesota or somewhere won. After that, Harry wheeled up and introduced John Singleton who said he tried to sell the script to all the studios, thinking that making over two hundred million with 2 Fast, 2 Furious might give him some juice and everyone passed so he threw some money in himself to get it made. After the movie, he showed maybe 10 minutes of his new movie 4 Brothers with Marky Mark trying to grow a beard (he gave Terrence Howard a part in that as well, but it looks like a supporting role (which Howard has been hitting out of the park for years)). Before the movie they showed a few classic Blaxploitation trailers: Black Belt Jones, Truck Turner and Superfly (some applause when Curtis Mayfield appeared. man, his guitar is sweet). After the movie there was a short Q&A where Singleton talked about how the tracks came together and about how now if he ever finds a project like this again, he wont bother with the studios he'll just make it himself, since after they made the movie and it got some praise all the studios had to come back and kiss his ass. Singleton seemed like a real film fan. He recognized the Superfly trailer in like less than a second and threw his arms in the air and shouted "yeah!" before Ron Moore even appeared. Oh, they also had the homestar puppet record a new "Be's quiet, shuts up, seriously" intro. So yeah, chalk up another great Alamo/AICN event for a really great movie. I was surprised at how much it rocked ass.
06.18.05	National Treasure	Jon Turtletaub	I didn't think I'd like this at all but I did. Yes it's a Dan Brown ripoff (even going so far as to use "Paul Brown" as a character name) but my curiosity about the freemasons combined with cool adventure and just that i like thinking that somewhere old but familiar there could be some tiny insignia that unlocks a secret world carried my entertainment through this movie. I have only one gripe: why stone masons would choose to use wood for the stairway winding down to their ultimate treasure chamber... clearly just a plot device and an excuse to inject a lackluster "tense" scene in the movie to make it more... bland i guess. Other than that though, it was fun! Now, if they were REALLY cool, they would've put some clues in the end credits that leads to a goose chase on the internet that culminates in a coupon for a free movie or DVD or something. oh well.
06.16.05	The Professionals	Richard Brooks	Back when they actually used to make Westerns... this is a pretty good one about a motley crew hired to steal back a kidnapped woman that's very busty (Claudia Cardinale). Lee Marvin, Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan, and Woody Strode all play badasses. It's good fun.
06.16.05	Batman Begins	Christopher Nolan	Aside from the usual cripes i have regarding modern-day action movies (way too close and cutty, can't tell what the hell is going on), I think this is a really good movie. Certainly the best Batman since Burton's first. Bale is like, super intense with his batman voice. like, I'd hate to be that guy's accountant and have to tell him that he's lost money or something.
06.16.05	The Longest Yard	Robert Aldrich	I guess it was like illegal of me to see the remake without seeing the original, so I rented it. I'm surprised how close the remake is... it's basically the exact same movie with less split-screen and more jokes. Of course though, Aldrich supplies some classic 70s style and the original succeeds just as well without MTV editing or musical montages. In fact, i found it interesting how the remake felt the need to joke everything up, even the same exact lines in some instances. The original just did it, which i think makes it more macho or something. I still like the remake but also found this very entertaining.
06.14.05	Howl's Moving Castle	Hayao Miyazaki	Free screening at the Regal Metropolitan... friggin traffic. Anyway, the few Miyazaki films that I've seen all have the same creative heartwarming light dramatic touch that's just great and that I don't really see anywhere else. Some of the design in this one reminded me of a webgame that I played: really beautiful, somewhat fantastic and surreal, mysterious but in a non-threatening way. I don't have a clue why there were so many kids there... maybe they enjoy it on a completely different level or something. Anyway, there was this old dog in the movie that was so old it couldn't even bark, just wheeze. Man it cracked me up. Maybe not as iconic or outstanding as some of the stuff in Spirited Away or Princess Mononoke but, the old dog was still pretty awesome.
06.13.05	Faces of Death	John Alan Schwartz	Banned in 46 countries! When i was a kid, like 13, 14 years old, this was the most hardcore ever. It was ALL REAL! I was astounded... then I saw Traces of Death and got pretty disgusted with some medical footage and got over the whole phenomenon. Since hearing about the planned Faces of Death remake, I did a quick look on the internet and found that a documentary had been made discussing which scenes were real and which were fake. So i rented it and watched the movie again. Laughably bad. It's really clear that, aside from slaughterhouse and autopsy footage, it's ALL FAKE. So... the documentary also sucked. it's all "in character" and filled with voice-altered anecdotes of the caliber of "that scene was fake but, while we were shooting it, I bumped into a dead body." I now realize why it was banned in so many countries... they must have some sort of test for a minimum level of quality that this could never hope to pass.
06.13.05	High Tension	Alexandre Aja	I was really enjoying this until they had to throw a damn "twist" in... Then, instead of being tense or whatever, I was re-examining the entire movie trying to figure if the twist even made sense (it's right on the border). So... i dunno, i was pretty let down. Also, in an effort to Americanize it, they decided to dub... but they only dub like 35% of the film so there's still plenty of subtitles throughout most of the movie. All that did was call even more attention to the bad dub-job going on. I'd like to maybe see this in its original 2003 French cut (ooh la la), maybe it will be a little better. Overall, I had some high hopes that this would be a solid thriller and instead i got a trendy anecdote. oh well.
06.13.05	Mr. and Mrs. Smith	Doug Liman	I really liked this. It had some great bits of humor, the actors carried the emotional scenes right, the action was well-done, and man oh man is Jolie hot in this. whew. I also loved the Tank's t-shirt... All in all, it wasn't too dumbed-down or insulting. OK the last blaze-of-glory scene was kind of blahh... but it was followed up with a nice closer so one sour note in almost 2 hours isn't bad at all.
06.08.05	At Close Range	James Foley	I'd heard that this was one of the great Christopher Walken performances, and Henry Rollins said it was one of his favorites too so I thought I'd give it a watch. It was hard for me to get over the horrible music and slow pace... so I didn't really like it much but it did have a few moments of goodness in there just often enough to keep me watching.
06.06.05	Love Liza	Todd Louiso	I wanted to see this because Phil's brother Gordy Hoffman wrote it and the quiet guy from High Fidelity directed it. Aside from one funny sequence with the landlord from The Big Lebowski however, this was oppressively sad and depressing. It's not exactly a love letter to huffing, but then again, what is?
06.06.05	Lords of Dogtown	Catherine Hardwicke	people that aren't into this subject won't see it anyway, but what I think a lot of us who really liked the documentary Dogtown + Z-Boys felt is that this would be a watered-down inaaccurate cash-in on that film's success. Instead, everybody's talking about how it's surprisingly good and a worthy companion to the doc. Things like having Stacy Peralta write it, having the real guys help out with the skating moves, and filming a lot of the scenes on real locations help to win over the doco fans, and the resulting movie just plain works. Call me converted, I really liked it. Also, Heath Ledger does an awesome Val Kilmer impersonation through the whole thing. No matter how much I stared at him, I couldn't tell if it was Ledger or Kilmer.
06.06.05	The Cincinnati Kid	Norman Jewison	I'd say one of the great poker films. Think The Hustler but with mcQueen and poker being as cool as Newman and billiards were a few years earlier. Really great stuff.
06.05.05	The Game is Over	Roger Vadim	Wow Jane Fonda used to be hot. Thanks, Roger! the movie? eh, whatever.
06.04.05	Suspect Zero	E. Elias Merhige	This would have been better if Eckhart was just a normal FBi agent instead of crazy psychic. I liked the idea but the movie didn't live up to it. There was also a few really horrible scenes toward the end but the first dialogue scene and the alternate ending were traces of what I would have liked the whole movie to be. Oh well, too bad it costs so much to remake movies. I'm sure there's a remix of this movie that's pretty good.
06.04.05	The Sword of Doom	Kihachi Okamoto	A great Criterion rental. It's about a samurai badass with a cold heart and no mercy. It's funny though because toward the end they set up this big showdown but then like 50 other people attack the badass and the movie ends without even getting to the showdown, just with him kicking 50 samurai asses. It's a good movie though... if you like samurais.
06.03.05	Steve McQueen: The Essence of Cool	Mimi Freedman	Steve McQueen, so cool. The Tao of Steve was so right.
06.02.05	Freestyle: The Art of Rhyme	Kevin FItzgerald	Back a bit when Scratch just came out on DVD I looked around for a similar doc on freestyling because I thought that art was really crazy and more than a bit myserious. Even though this feels like it was made a few years ago, it finally came out on DVD and it's basically the exact doc that I was looking for. Lots of great footage of freestyling and some new artists I'd never heard of mixed in with some that I have... good stuff.
06.02.05	Forty Guns	Samuel Fuller	I'm finding that Sam Fuller's personality and biography are more impressive than some of his actual films, but nevertheless this was a decent western. I just thought it would be a bit darker.
06.01.05	The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou	Wes Anderson	picked it up on DVD. Now all Criterion has to do is put out Bottle Rocket. I like this movie but it still isn't connecting with me quite as much as Tenenbaums and Rushmore... although I suspect I may still be growing into this. I love Anderson's impeccable compositions and iconographic costumes.
06.01.05	Madagascar	Eric Darnell, Tom McGrath	It's a super nice day out, so I decided to drive for a few minutes and spend some time in a dark room. The only joke that made me laugh in this involved spitting. That's about all I have to share with this one.
05.31.05	The Longest Yard	Peter Segal	So this is both a prison movie and a football movie. Since I happen to like aspects of both these kinds of movies, I was pretty entertained by this. Going in, like my buddy said, I knew it would be decent but I also knew it wouldn't be great. That's pretty much what I got: just a good time but nothing to write home about. Sandler's charm works in this context but it's some of the supporting cast that gets the biggest jokes. I want to see WIlliam Fichtner in more comedic roles because his eyes freak me out when he plays the bad guy. It had some laughs though, some cool tackles, some testosterone-pumped prison male-bonding, etc. Throw in a coke and some nachos and you have a pretty decent time.
05.30.05	The Manson Family	Jim Van Bebber	This is the flip-side to those straight-to-video gems. No budget, horrible acting, cheesy effects, rip-off hard-to-watch unoriginal "filmmaking" Really quite painful to sit through, and not in a good way.
05.29.05	The Final Cut	Omar Naim	This is one of those movies that seems to go direct to video even though it has a good cast, an awesome crew, and an interesting premise. I guess sci-fi is just out of vogue these days unless there are explosions or hip pop culture jokes or something. Half the time these types of movies are shelved because they are horrendous, but every once in a while you get an honest-to-goodness decent movie that you then get to tell all your friends about how awesome it is even though the gun kata is really lame or Willen Dafoe plays the oddest homosexual police detective ever. This movie is totally a movie-person's dream idea of sci-fi. Editors everywhere probably love this movie. They WISH their avid setup was named something as cool as "the guillotine." Basically, the idea is that in the future you can buy an implant for your baby that will record what he sees and hears for his entire life. Then, when he kicks the bucket, all that footage will get turned over to a "cutter" who will pick out the juiciest bits and put it together like a movie so you can always remember him. Of course, they cut out all the naughty bits and make it look like he was all puppy dogs and ice cream. Sort of like Strange Days but not as strange or post-apocalyptic. It's a pretty decent movie. I'd say it's better than a lot of what gets released wide, that's for sure. Yeah, the name is goofy and not good at all, but thanks to that stellar crew, the movie looks really nice and is acted pretty well, aside from Caviezel's fake beard that is. It has enough cool ideas to keep it interesting and perhaps most notably, it ends pretty well. That was a surprise for me...
05.27.05	Metropolis	Fritz Lang	It's been a while since I've seen this, so I was quick to buy a ticket to see it at the Alamo with DJ Nick Nack supplying the live score. The music was a pretty wide range from bleepy-bloopy techno bits to hip hop instrumental tracks to distorted guitar or psychedelic rock riffs. Overall if fit the film pretty well. That film, kooky silent-era quirks aside, stands up pretty well today. Some of Lang's camera tricks are really freakin cool and the sheer amount of design and extras available back then is astounding. There's a lot to be said about those cineasts who believe that sound ruined film... sure they're emoting way to much with their bodies to make up for it, but aside from the acting there was a lot going on back then. Some of Lang's shots are so dynamic and exhilarating that it makes you wonder what film would be like today if Jolson hadn't said "mammy" with such flourish. Another thing i noticed on this viewing is how overtly religious it all was. I remember Lang saying in an interview that the reaso why films are getting more violent is because more and more people are turning away from the Church. Without any sort of ethical or moral fear to instill on the secular audience, filmmakers have to turn to violence, which scares the religious and atheist alike. In his later work, Lang used a fair amount of violence himself (including burning a girl's face to scar-rific horror in The Big Heat), but Metropolis is on a much higher ground with its message and turmoil. It's interesting how things change I guess.
05.27.05	The Shoot Horses, Don't They?	Sydney Pollack	um... so I guess this was good. kind of a downer though.
05.26.05	Blade: Trinity	David S. Goyer	Wow. Parker Posey must have a coke habit to support or something. Jessica Biel seems more interested in zipping and unzipping the sleeves in her costume rather than learning lines or anything as actor-y as that. I think someone told Ryan Reynolds that it was called National Lampoon's Blade: Trinity or something, he is in a completely different movie than everybody else. At least he got dialogue though, Snipes is like a deafmute with a bad haircut. Not as bad as Posey's though... seriously, why is she in this? At least the end credits music was good. Thanks RZA.
05.25.05	Birth	Jonathan Glazer	I was totally uninterested in this movie until it was actually recommended a few times and I saw that the director did Sexy Beast, which I liked. I should have stuck with my instinct. This was creepy, and in a bad way. I could go on with more problems that I had with it but I think it's best to forget it and move on.
05.25.05	The Last Shot	Jeff Nathanson	This is that movie about the FBI agent who pretends to be a movie producer. It sort of slipped through the cracks on release but I always wanted to give it a look. Largely it's pretty mediocre (the best jokes were in the trailer), but I thought Alec did a good job (until the last few scenes) and the movie has cool opening credits, which i always appreciate.
05.25.05	Overlord	Stuart Cooper	A WWII film that intercuts tons of archival footage in with a fictional narrative about a soft-spoken British soldier. It was much less gritty and realistic that I thought it would be, opting more for musical montage and subtle voice-over that makes it much more at home on IFC than HBO. I was reminded of The Thin Red Line but not as sprawling or message-y and in black & white to try to match with the archival stuff, which was pretty visceral. It's a good way to save on your effects budget and the added realism throws a few gut-punches in there when you see the bombs explode or charred bodies and whatnot. Overall it was well worth watching.
05.24.05	They Won't Believe Me	Irving Pichel	A film noir that my mom always brings up as a shining example whenever I mention the genre. It's pretty much unheard of and isn't available on DVD or VHS I don't think, but it's pretty good! It fits most of the criteria very well, with a great inevitable downer of an ending. It had some names in it as well, like Jane Greer, Susan Hayward, and Robert Young. It's basically about a guy who's married for the money and has affairs and makes to run off with one when fate throws the inevitable curveball to make him a criminal even though he really did nothing wrong. It may sound like every other film noir but that isn't really a bad thing in my book. Well worth watching, and it even had a few great lines like "She was a short fuse of dynamite wrapped in nylon and silk, but I'd been close to an explosion before. I was powder-shy." Well worth watching if you can catch it on TCM.
05.23.05	Frazetta: Painting with Fire	Lance Laspina	A decent documentary about fantasy artist Frank Frazetta and how awesome he is. I didn't really know the name but the documentary is right when it says that most everybody has at least seen his work on paperback covers, comics, or as clear inspiration to pretty much all commercial artowork today. He's the guy behind those burly Conan paintings, and all the cool stuff with naked chicks and guys with huge swords battling tigers and stuff. Anyway, this was very interesting. The structure of the movie itself was a bit stuffy and acts as an example of the differences documentarians have over their subject matter, this being pretty flat and amateurish, but the subject matter kept me interested, and the fact that this guy is like Superman. He gets thrown in a looney bin then has all these strokes so his right hand is all numb and stuff and what does he do? he learns to paint with his left hand. And he's good at it. That's just crazy... I can't even sign my name with my left hand, and he's free-drawings badass tigers and sharkladies and stuff. Anyway, I'm glad I caught this randomly on IFC, I feel more cultured now, and not in a snobby way either.
05.20.05	Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory	Mel Stuart	It has been so unbelievably long since I've seen this, I think the last time was like in middle school towards the end of the year when the teachers give up and just show movies for two weeks. So with the new one coming out, I felt like revisiting this one. The musical sequences (except the Oompa Loompas of course) were still boring and Gene Wilder was still awesome. I think every kid has wanted an edible candy paradise at least once in their life. I hope Burton's Marilyn Manson take on the story retains that charm... the story is borderline-creepy as it is without having to goth it up.
05.20.05	DiG!	Ondi Timoner	Another great documentary. I didn't know anything about either The Brian Jonestown Massacre or The Dandy Warhols (other than hearing about one and not the other) but this moviethrows up a really great portrait of these two bands and the guys who lead them and manages to tell a story that elevates beyond music but essentially remains about Rock and Roll. Hearing the BJM guy talk reminds me a lot of some people I know... and hearing the DW guy reminds me a lot about Mozart and Salieri... except it's flipped due to the sordid state of the music industry today where talent and innovation take a back seat to fitting a mold and commercial commodity. ALl in all it's a really interesting story told through all the years and haircuts that give these kinds of years-in-the-making docs extra credit.
05.20.05	Criminal	Gregory Jacobs	I usually like Con movies, and if i didn't like John C. Reilly so much i would've liked this one. They use tricks I just saw in Paper Moon though, and thanks to every other con movie ever I was expecting the big double cross from minute One. oh well.
05.19.05	Metallica: Some Kind of Monster	Joe Berlinger, Bruce Sinofsky	great documentary. how great? I don't really like Metallica at all and I was drawn in.
05.19.05	Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith	George Lucas	So it's finally out, no new Star Wars movies ever again... if you don't count the 3D versions or any other films that will probably pop up after Lucas tries to direct another movie and runs back to his security blanket. I guess I'm being unfair. The movie was not dissapointing. I do have some issues but as far as an absolute just-got-home reaction to the movie, it's pretty fun. My main concern however is that as a stand-alone movie it's pretty disjointed and rough. If i hadn't seen Clone Wars, my opinion of General Grevious would be completely different. If i hadn't played LEGO Star Wars, the battle of Kashyyk would have been disappointinly neglected. I guess Star Wars has always been this way but it's still a complaint of mine: compared to the breadth of the Star Wars universe, the movies don't feel like they explain a lot at all. But anyway, luckily I had seen all that stuff so I understood why Grevious was coughing all the time and stuff like that. I have problems with that character in general too but oh well :) It didn't put me to sleep, it didn't get boring for me, it did end without resolving a few things I thought it would resolve, but for the most part it was good. Some massive CG that's for sure. But anyway, I'll have forever to grouse about the movie which i did enjoy. way more than the previous two for sure. So I saw this at the Alamo South Lamar theater at a midnight screening. Actually i had a ticket for the 11:20 show, meaning it was "first" but all six theaters were running it and people got seated anywhere from 9:15 past 10:00 so the times didn't mean much more than which theater you sat in. I'm not sure if it was just our theater or all six (i suspect all 6) but there were copies of Star Wars Galaxies and the first expansion pack sitting in front of every seat. Apparently, there's a pretty big Star Wars fan group in town and one of the members works for Sony Interactive so... we all got a free (not counting the monthly fee) game and a few people quick on the Star Wars trivia also got a toy or whatever. They had a mini Star Wars menu with three items on it as well and the pre-show started like an hour and a half before midnight. At first they were playing assorted episodes from the first season of Clone Wars interspersed with random hilarious Star Wars bits and pieces. There was a surreal and absurd segment from The Muppet Show when Star Wars was on (tap dancing C-3PO, semi-waltzing Chewbacca, Luke Skywalker in a tux, and Darth Gonzo included), a super early commercial for... maybe panasonic i forget, with Lucas in a field of wheat talking about dreams, then some ewoks meet him and he frolics across the field to the rest of the Star Wars crew. They showed some of the SNL Kevin Spacey as Christopher Walken test screening skit, a trailer for a really poor looking rip-off starring John Boy from The Waltons, and a few other assorted bits and pieces. Alas they didn't screen the entire Jedi Mindwarp that the Alamo screened a few times some weeks earlier, but judging from some title cards it looked like they pulled the choice cuts out. For the hour before midnight they showed the complete second season of Clone Wars, and it's a good thing they did because the beginning crawl hardly mentioned any of that stuff, even though i think it's pretty heavy to the episode 3 storyline. As a final little treat, they cut a trailer for The Last Starfighter in among the new ones. The sound was LOUD and FULL and AMAZING. I don't think it was digital projection but the print was extremely crisp and if it was I wouldn't be surprised. The crowd was great as well, laughing and clapping and whatnot (after the first trailer (The Island) finished with its mega bass and jaw-dropping aural assault, someone way in the back said "great, now I'm deaf" and the entire audience cracked up. The comments dried up as soon as the Lucasfilm logo came up though and you could hear a pin drop. Before that bombastic fanfare of score blared out that is. As far as theater experiences go I don't think I can ask for a better one. On a last note, i had what has to be the best root beer float ever. I am not usually a fan of root beer floats because my taste in root beer is pretty specific but i must say, aside from being a bit on the expensive side this is the perfect root beer float. The vanilla ice cream that they use is Amy's, a local Austin chain, and it was so awesome. It had like small pockets of gooey vanilla goodness in there so it gave off this really strong aroma but the ice cream was completely smooth as well. I think me getting one set the people next to me off because they both ordered one after i finished mine then i had to sit and smell both of theirs... it was so creamy and fizzy and yummy, oh man.
05.17.05	Committed	Lisa Krueger	This is just one of those movies that fell through the cracks for me... but catching it now and seeing the actors that have since become much bigger stars is cool. This is a small casual movie but it's not bad at all and has charm.
05.17.05	Unleashed	Louis Leterrier	The Massive Attack music fit well, it was cool to see a different kind of fighting style in these kings of movies, Bob Hoskins did a cool job, it looked pretty good. Overall though, this could have been just a smidge farther away from Leon on a thematic level. The whole killing-machine-given-humanity-by-innocents-then-forced-to-fight-for-that thing sort of made me compare it to Leon after it was over, which is kind of unfair. Overall, this was pretty good, which makes it awesome for a Jet Li movie.
05.16.05	Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade	Steven Spielberg	Just felt like watching a movie and since i saw Raiders a while ago I picked this one. It's still good, although I noticed a few lines of dialogue toward the beginning and at the end that make this a close second to Raiders instead of dead even. The action sequences are still impeccable though and that sense of grand adventure is still quite rare in movies.
05.14.05	Paper Moon	Peter Bogdanovich	Another Alamo event. The print was fantastic for this, looked brand new... and it's great to see this again. This is really a top-notch comedy and it was great to see it on a big screen and hear stories about it from Peter Bogdanovich afterward.
05.14.05	The Last Picture Show	Peter Bogdanovich	Saw this at the Alamo South lamar with Bogdanovich in attendance. I bought his book and he signed it while i went off on how great another book of his, Who The Devil Made It, was. Then he gave a little pre-screening talk about a few things and an epic 90-minutes of Q&A after the film. 90 minutes! In there were tons of questions about the film, some anecdotes in various levels of connectivity to the film, and a little impersonation thrown in here and there to keep things interesting. Actually, it was all interesting. For anyone into film history, American film history in particular, the guy is one of the luckiest SOBs to still be around. It's a real shame that he hasn't had a hit in a while to get him off the shelf collecting dust, although I'm not really sure what he could do with today's moviegoing audience. He's made a few really great movies though as well as a movie that captures the romantic frontiersman quality of the early days of hollywood that's a favorite of mine (Nickelodeon, John Ritter's feature film debut, check it out if you love the stories of old hollywood), and as Orson said: "You really only need ONE." PS, i also asked Bogdanovich how long he kept his card catalog of all the movies he'd seen going and he said 19 years. 19 years of catalogging every movie he saw with notes on each screening. We'll see where I am with this after 19 years I guess.
05.13.05	Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead	Tom Stoppard	This is a catch-up film for me I guess. Now that I've seen it, I am not too surprised. Clever writing and some long talky scenes about stuff I am not up on my Shakespeare enough to really follow.
05.13.05	The Parallax View	Alan J. Pakula	Wow. My opinion of Pakula just jacked up like three notches. Starting right off the bat with a really great assassination scene followed by an amazing shot from the space needle in Seattle, this is an example of how much cooler movies were in the 70s (with the exception of the Dukes of Hazard car chase scene thrown in there). Of course, Pakula's pacing is still like he's caught in some quaalude haze and can't get his heart rate up past 50 bpm, but in this case (since there's no Jane Fonda to wax poetic about hooking instead of get her damn mullet taken care of) it acts as a slow burn... I constantly want the movie to go faster but also revel in how slow it is. And of course Beatty was in full-on pretty boy superstar mode and really shows why... And ultimately, the ending is sweet and would never happen that way today. It's like the 70s had some great excuse to make movies smart, adult, stylish, and complex... and not wear bras.
05.11.05	Spanglish	James L. Brooks	So maybe Jim Brooks has gone past the edge of the world into that vague category where his movies are too rich and mature for current American audiences... or maybe this one just didn't work. All the characters were written very well but this movie is a hard nut to crack. Sandler, who I think has some dramatic chops, falls a bit short as does Leoni (who I also like), and the story makes for anticlimax by design so there are really no easy points to make here... so that gives it some extra points. So i thought it was good but a little shy of short.
05.10.05	Taxi	Tim Story	I don't want to call this good, but it suited its purpose nicely. 90 more minutes of my life have blissfully drained away in mindless staring at my TV.
05.09.05	Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession	Xan Cassavetes	A documentary about the LA premium cable channel that showed awesome different movies thanks to crazy man Jerry Harvey. The film does a great job drifting between mini-profiles of films that the channel championed, the story of the channel itself, and Harvey's mental problems culminating with his murder-suicide. I had 0 clue what Z Channel was before starting this and I was very interested the whole way through.
05.08.05	Flight of the Phoenix	John Moore	decent.
05.07.05	Raiders of the Lost Ark	Steven Spielberg	Got to see this on a big screen finally, and there was a Pitfall contest beforehand to boot. Only a few people could get past the crocs. It was great to see the original print of this, back when "Indiana Jones and the" wasn't actually in the title. Sure the effects are a bit more dated but it somehow made the movie more fun to watch, like i was back in 1981 for a few hours or something. They showed trailers for Temple of Doom and E.T. beforehand as well to complete the ambience. All in all it was a fun time.
05.07.05	Jeremiah Johnson	Sydney Pollack	That Based on a True Story book interested me in this and I'm glad cuz it's a very decent western. very decent indeed, even if there's no cannibalism.
05.06.05	Closer	Mike Nichols	Damn, beautiful rich people have some problems huh? whaaaaaaaaa...... somebody call the whaaaaaambulance, these pretty people are feeling blue. awwww, someone cheer the supermodels up before they ruin their make-up. gah.
05.05.05	The Big Lebowski	Joel Coen	What is there to say. This movie is one of the great ones... I saw this outside the Dart Bowl as an Alamo Rolling Roadhouse event. It came with a free game of bowling and a free white russian. how cool is that?
05.04.05	Better Luck Tomorrow	Justin Lin	Whoever said this was a comedy is full of crap. This was pretty dramatic, about smart asian highschool kids getting into trouble, and very un-MTV except for occasionally spinning the camera around people way too much.
05.03.05	Baadasssss!	Mario Van Peebles	Perhaps better than the actual movie? who knows... in any case, this is actually a decent film as long as you dont get cheesed out by all the mario-as-melvin-acting-with-some-kid-as-mario stuff... it's cool when people can just make a movie... even if that movie isn't necessarily good... but i guess it was at the time. I'm liking Rainn WIlson more and more though, he's been consistently funny in everything I've seen him in so far.
05.02.05	After the Sunset	Brett Ratner	Holy Crap, a Brett Ratner movie that didn't bore me out. I think a lot of that has to do with the "scenery" though... but yeah I have to admit that I was entertained by this. The homo-erotic jokes between Woody and Pierce were fun and light... I think Cheadle was kind of wasted but his part should've been funnier anyway. Still not gonna win any awards or anything but it was fun and DAMN is Salma Hayek fine.
05.02.05	The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy	Garth Jennings	People always think I am a huge Douglas Adams fan but I really haven't read any of his stuff. There's some unconsciouss reason why it doesn't interest me; I can't come up with a valid reason other than I am just not interested. I would say it's because his stuff seems tailored to geeky inside jokes, but I like Monty Python & The Holy Grail and they are like the kings of geeky inside jokes. In any case, I should've probably liked this movie because I like all the cast involved but it left me feeling like it was wacky for wackiness sake, and the vogons were too ugly to be funny so that confused me and marvin the paranoid android wasn't really paranoid at all so that confused me too. Maybe it's a case of knowing just enough about the source material to get into trouble... for me, the best part was the first scene where Mos Def is drinking all the beer he can. From there it's just too groundless for me I think, or whatever the reason is...
04.26.05	Mayor of the Sunset Strip	George Hickenlooper	This was really really sad. The dude is just so sad and quiet and melancholy... but he's lived this life... Yeah, it's a very well-done portrait of this dude who seems to know everybody but ultimately lives alone.
04.26.05	The Interpreter	Sydney Pollack	I saw this on the strength of Three Days of the Condor, thinking a solid thriller might be good. Aside from one or two scenes (one given away in the trailer, the other expected for the whole movie), it was pretty slow. Penn and Keener called it in, Kidman's still hot but aside from her accent there's not much there. Oh well, maybe all the good movies WERE made in the '70s
04.25.05	James Ellroy's Feast of Death	Vikram Jayanti	Caught this on showtime and gave it another viewing. For an Ellroy fan it's really great... the narrative shuffles between Ellroy's mom, and the black dahlia through voice-over readings from his book My Dark Places, a filmed dinner between a bunch of old wisened cops at Pacific Dining Car, and interviews with Bill Stoner along with everyone else with a visit to the Wisconsin Hillikers, a book signing, a night-time prowl through LA, and a visit to Dealy Plaza thrown in for good measure. I have another Ellroy documentary on VHS and this one pretty much blows it out of the water. It's really well done and goes into some great detail with both his mother's and the dahlia's deaths. For an Ellroy fan like me, this is a great watch.
04.25.05	The Grudge	Takashi Shimizu	So aside from the dude remaking his own movie a year after he made the original... and now remaking his own sequel... this recent wave of japanese horror is just missing me in a big way. Sorry but a girl who can't stop burping is not scary to me. Hmm.. maybe it's not so much that she can't but she won't and that's supposed to be scary? In any case, Even as I watched it I hard a hard time separating this from The Ring or Dark Water or The Eye or whatever... The people I knew in high school who brushed their hair to cover their face weren't scary... they were goth loser-types. Their eyes weren't scary either. Or their burps.
04.24.05	Three Days of the Condor	Sydney Pollack	Oh wow is this music dated. Other than that, this movie was awesome... It's funny how the CIA seemed so devious an byzantine in '75 and how massively different the outlook is today. I guess this movie is also presciently notable for having several shots showcasing the twin towers when it must have been only a few years old at the time. Aside from all that though, this movie is great because of Redford, who can somehow turn on the charm just by calling a picture lonly... It makes his Spy Game performance analogous to Newman's Color of Money character. It's funny but I just don't think The Interpreter will be nearly this good.
04.22.05	Kung Fu Hustle	Stephen Chow	Gong Fu is a more apt title. Coming from someone who thought that Shaolin Soccer was merely entertaining and not the funniest movie of the last five years, this movie seems like the busier, more cluttered next-movie... I'm not saying I didn't like it, but i just know there will be people out there who love it way more than i do. It had some moments though... but the bad CG was a lot harder to get over than when i saw Shaolin Soccer on my computer in already-crappy-compression format. Other than that, my only main complain is not enough hustle. Plus there was this dad sitting behind me that was reading the subtitles to his way-too-young-to-be-watching-this daughter. I wanted to ask him "are you serious?" but... with the kid there it cracked my resolve. I guess this is my first bad audience in Austin... matinee, go figure.
04.21.05	Once Upon A Time In Mexico	Robert Rodriguez	Yeah it's all over the place and there's too many characters and the action is very cartoony but you know, i like it. It's good fun and made better by the fact that Rodriguez made it in his garage.
04.20.05	A Knight's Tale	Brian Helgeland	I really don't know why but this is like the only Brian Helgeland movie I like. For those that know me, I used to really really hate him... and this is the movie that even people who liked Payback didn't like, but for some reason I find the anachronistic music cues charming instead of offensive. I think a lot of it goes toward the supporting cast in this (minus the girl), i like Heath's gang a lot and the dialog between them works really well. It's by no means a great movie but I enjoy it.
04.18.05	Napoleon Dynamite	Jared Hess	This movie is still funny to me. I think it will grow to be a good comfort food. Trapper asked me after he saw it who the woman was that biked up to Uncle Rico's van at the end. I thought it was Trisha's mom at the time but he said it wasn't and now I know it wasn't. I figured out who it was though, and it's pretty sweet: his soul mate!
04.18.05	The Godfather	Francis Ford Coppola	Holy Crap. This is just... like... things like this are a geek like me's dream. Not only do i get to see The Godfather on a big screen in a great new comfortable theater, I also get to be fed five courses of Italian food while I watch it. I snagged the menu but basically it started off with wedding cake, then a bit of swordfish, a salda, linguini with meatballs and awesome sausage, then a cannoli, with wine a different Coppola wine at every step of the way. The wait staff was awesome too, there was like an army of them... scurrying to and fro collecting dishes, handing out doggy bads, and serving up food. The film print was somewhat aged but you know... it wasn't so bad as to stop adding to the ambience of seeing it in a theater and start just annoying you. The film itself, I won't waste words on here. I'll just say that it's great and I'm very glad I got the chance to see it in this setting. Now, I would probably be drunk if i didn't also have so much food to soak it up with. By the end it was trouble but I made it through ok... next up is Roman Holiday for Mother's Day... I think I shouldn't tell my mom that.
04.17.05	Snatch	Guy Ritchie	It's been a while since I've seen this and have forgot how punchy and fun it is. It's very.... punchy... and fun.
04.17.05	Saw	James Wan	Seeing this again, it didn't stand up as well... Cary Elwes' character is way too calm and how did the dude not breath for hours and hours and there seemed to be a lot of photography that was supposed to be pitch black but ends up being like the young guy is blind instead. Granted, pitch-black is hard to pull off on film, but still.. night-shot?? oh well. It still reminds me of Manhunt for some reason, and I liked playing that game so there's some positive I guess...
04.16.05	Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl	Gore Verbinski	um.. i dunno. yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum
04.15.05	I Heart Huckabees	David O. Russell	sometimes I hate recommending movies I like to others because I know they won't like it. On the other hand, when you run into a situation where you KNOW a movie is perfect for someone and then you get to sit there while they really connect and love it, that's pretty awesome. Myself, I find this movie to be more and more of a joy to see with every viewing.
04.14.05	The Amityville Horror	Andrew Douglas	Austin Premiere at the Alamo South Lamar. I had to hang out in a room filled with 25,000 flies to get a pass to see this. The flies weren't that bad... i felt for the kid who had to hang out in the room all day and keep the flies rowdy while people came in for 30 second visits. All of the Alamo employees were more than a little pissed at having to handle all the damn flies, but it made for good movie fun. I got my whole fly-room experience on shakycam video to remember forever. There was no red carpet for this, Ryan Reynolds and the producers just had reserved seats and came in and watched it with us then did a Q&A afterward. I didn't ask any questions but Reynolds was very funny with his answers. Because he waas like totally buff and there were gratuitous shots of him walking around shirtless and sweaty, i totally wanted to hate him, but during the Q&A he came off very funny, very nice, and very cool. Damn that movie-actor charisma... the movie? eh, it was alright. I think if you don't see it with a great crowd it isn't that good. It's very broad and over the top and not very subtle at all. For those that think Nicholson's performance in The Shining is too underplayed, they will like this. However, there's a dinner scene in which Reynolds delivers what has to be the best angry-dinner-scene performance ever. There's also a pretty good worst-babysitter-ever scene as well. The net effect is that I liked him in it just because he's so out there but the movie wasn't that great. On a final note, when asked what they're doing next the producers said they were coming back to Austin to shoot a prequel to Texas Chainsaw Massacre. what the hell kind of story can they make out of a prequel to TCM? I just don't get it...
04.12.05	The Forgotten	Joseph Ruben	This movie has an unfortunate title because it makes such an easy joke. I thought it was ok... it's funny how HBO actors seem to flock together. Is this the casting agents or something? Anyway, the alien "effect" in this movie would be a cool superpower to have... like, if you ever get caught in a boring conversation or an awkward moment, just BAM! fly through the roof for like a mile up in the air ...so cool
04.11.05	Spy Hard	Rick Friedberg	I dunno... I never saw it... and it came on right when i was sitting down to lunch... I thought this was the one with the mission:impossible spoof but i guess that's a different one
04.09.05	Prey for Rock & Roll	Alex Steyermark	yeah... dirty rock chicks. There's definitely something to be said for dirty rock chicks. For instance, they can make you sit through a thoroughly mediocre movie just because they're hot. Next they need to do a movie with a bunch of latex&vinyl goth chicks. Oh wait, that's Underworld.
04.09.05	28 Days Later	Danny Boyle	Aside from the problems i have around this being considered a zombie film (maybe it's because it manages to rip off all three Dead films), it's ok i guess. I still wonder like, how groups of people can die in like the restaraunt and stuff and why they don't come out during the day... are they sleeping in the church? So they sleep but not eat? It all makes not quite enough sense for me... but oh well.
04.04.05	The Freshman	Sam Taylor, Fred Newmeyer	This 1925 Harold Lloyd classic has been on my list since AFI put out their Top 100 Comedies. I finally managed to randomly catch it on TCM and get my DVR to record it, but alas it cut off like the last minute and of course isn't scheduled to run again for like a decade. Hopefully it, along with Safety Last (which i just missed, it was on earlier today) will eventually come out on DVD or will play at an old theater or something and I will get to see him score the touchdown and become popular and read "The End." I'm counting here though because i did see 99% of it and the last minute's footage I saw in when Preston Sturges used it for his Lloyd movie. In any case, I still prefer Keaton. Everyone in here looked like they were 40. I guess college was different back then.
04.03.05	Cheaper by the Dozen	Shawn Levy	felt like watching a movie and this was on... that's all, really.
04.01.05	Sin City	Robert Rodriguez	had to see it again. Yes, some of the luster is gone in the near-empty cavern that was a tinseltown theater on a friday matinee, but the movie is still sweet in my book and I enjoyed myself again. Can't wait for the DVD
03.31.05	Sin City	Robert Rodriguez	I'm cut/pasting the movie review portion from a forum i hang out in where i just typed up my mini-review. First though I'll talk about the experience itself. After standing and waiting for Pretty Boy McConaughey for Sahara, I learned my lesson. I went in, got a drink, and found a spot right inside the door. While I was waiting this woman came up and we chatted for a bit. I saw Harry Knowles come in with his wheelchair and his dad helping him to the same seats they had for Sahara. The downside of being inside is that there's no news crews to stop the VIPs and make them talk, so the guys pretty much whipped on by when they got inside, but Rodriguez was there along with Jaime King (Goldie/Wendy), Nick Stal (Jr./Yellow Bastard), and Frank Miller himself! So i got a few bad pictures of them but then I took my seat... FIRST ROW AISLE, and Louis Black (Austin Figure supreme) came out and talked a bit about how cool the city was and everyone agreed. It was really cool to have the exec. director of the AFS sitting right behind me... I was too ready to see the movie to think of anything i could say to her that wouldn't turn out bad for both of us... so then Rodriguez came out and talked a little bit and then the movie started. The movie IS the books. It's a perfect reproduction of the books with some magical "tweening" effects thrown in to make it move. All the parts are cast pitch perfect (even Elijah, which i was most worried about...), the photography is... completely new. Yes, it does have more midtone than the books but it cuts out to harsher contrast to really drive it home every once in a while. Not to say that they don't match with the rest of the movie, which is gorgeous blach/white in varying degrees of starkness. It never gets full-on gray though which is good The use of color is perfect. It's used just the tiniest smidge more liberally than the books but it's never too heavy... I think the most color is during QT's scene. Seriously though, it's used with spot-on judgement and it ends up always enhancing without overbearing. The structure is for the most part not messed with except for a little bit at the beginning. Anyone worried about it doesn't intercut nearly at all except for the beginning. Yes, some shots look glaringly CG.... I think the lighting on the actors didn't quite match for maybe 3 shots and maybe another 3 twist the camera in a way that you're not used to so it screams CGI. And also, since i'm sharing my grouses... the sweet guitar/rumbling bass music used in the trailers where Alba's dancing is not used in the movie instead it's 'Absurd' by Fluke. when are they gonna stop using that song in movies?. oh well. So that was it. The crowd was great... laughing and yelling and clapping, even applauding between stories as if it were a multi-movement symphony. I think knowing we were mic'd made everyone just a bit more excited. Oh yeah, Rodriguez mic'd the theater (the gorgeous Paramount) and will use our reactions/applause as an alternate audio track on the DVD so you can watch it at home and still have it sound like you're in a packed house with movie-lovers. great idea! So afterward, they all came out, Rodriguez talked some more then opened it up to questions. I wont recount everything except i will mention the last question went to me: when will we get more books, frank? And then I had the pleasure of having Frank Miller look directly at me and say more were coming... he just needs to stop thinking of his characters in terms of the actors! So that's it. oh wait, i also got a book. It's this sizable making-of book written by Rodriguez and Miller. It has the script and character profiles and costumes and all sorts of stuff in it and, oh yeah, it's signed. I was so exhilarated after walking out that i decided against going to the afterparty (where i was supposed to meet up with that girl) because i wanted to come home and get these thoughts on something permanent before the absolutely drunken feeling that seeing a really fun movie brings out in me. THIS IS WHY I LOVE MOVIES. THIS IS WHY I WANT TO MAKE THEM. I am so seeing this tomorrow.
03.29.05	The Devil's Advocate	Taylor Hackford	...it was on
03.28.05	Sahara	Breck Eisner	My first Austin premiere. I'm still getting places too early; even with stop-n-go traffic i was downtown and parked in a half hour. I decided, since i was early enough to get there as they were literally rolling out the red carpet, to do the fan w/ camera thing so i could say that i did it. The net effect was i stood in a crowd for an hour watching local news people wait around until finally a limo pulls up and the director gets out then another limo with all these girls i had no clue who they were then finally McConaughey in a big pick-up towing a Sahara Trailer. Then i stood around while the crowd all pushed and rubbed and everyone stuck their arms in the air to get badly-framed shots of him talking to news people. I took my share of badly-framed photos then he walked by and that was it. Since I saw him almost as close-up from my seat while he was on stage, and maybe this is because i'm not a girl, i wasn't that impressed. I think next time i'll just go buy a drink and hang out in my front row seat. Anyway, after everyone got seated the AFS head lady came out and spoke a bit then the UT longhorns coach came out and gave a good intro to McConaughey then he came out then they gave him a pair of bongos and the whole theater had a laugh while he played them (clothed) and commented that the lesson of that incident is to close your windows... He sounded psyched for the movie, and explained that he had just returned from a 38-day road trip with the Sahara trailer setting off from Austin to florida to new york and back again... Then he dropped this "j.k. livin" phrase a few times and i thought it might've been some scientology-esque new celebrity cult or something, but then i found out it's his production company. whew. The movie: it was a fun romp. No Indiana Jones or anything, but it had a fun vibe and the movie switched up from the typical arab-esque score to douthern down-home rock n roll hits every once in a while which was like 30% cornball and 70% fitting... Yeah there were some pretty unbelievable (in a bad way) scenes, but by and large it was light adventure fun... and the movie certainly never claims to be serious. I mean, the guy's name is Dirk Pitt... come on, Cussler. Oh, and I had my first Harry Knowles spotting as well. He's laid up in a wheel chair but he had a whole goon squad with him, including his parents. I'm sure they're all nice people, at least that's what i thought as i passed them by on my way to the FIRST ROW. I saw the director talking to him afterward but didn't feel like hanging around eavesdropping.
03.28.05	The Leopard	Luchino Visconti	...so long ...so not interested I was just like the kid in the long slow dolly while they attend mass: sort of dozing and waiting for it to be over. It felt like watching period italian c-span.
03.26.05	Hoosiers	Paul Anspaugh	Maybe it's because this is my first time seeing this, but I am not getting the whole greatest-sports-film-ever-made thing. A bunch of rednecks are sooo good that they even beat some (gasp!) BLACK KIDS!!! I dunno, I kept wanting Hackman to say more that one line over and over again... like coaching a team is as easy as saying "stay in the game" and making them run back and forth a lot. Maybe this is a case where all the now-cliche things sprang from this film, which when it was released was all fresh and new. Guess I missed my chance to be wow'd by this.
03.26.05	Sex is Comedy	Catherine Breillat	I did it again. So this movie is much more normal... very reminiscent of Day For Night (not as good though), but also being more meta-documentary as well. Not sure this would be nearly as interesting for those who haven't seen Fat Girl... but for those that have, i think she should've gotten the same actor as well as the same actress.
03.25.05	Eulogy	Michael Clancy	It was ok, but it seemed a bit too close to The Myth of the Fingerprints, which didn't even try to be funny and wound up being better i think. Famke though, yummy.
03.24.05	Anatomy of Hell	Catherine Breillat	I'm not sure why i keep renting her movies. Maybe it's because they are so different from Hollywood... with a dash of perverse curiosity thrown in for good measure. In any case, this movie is really confusing and grossed me out, like really grossed me out.
03.23.05	The Ring Two	Hideo Nakata	Instead of having a horse for no reason they have some deer for no reason. After seeing Poltergeist, I spent the entire movie wondering why they'd even have a tv in their house after the events of the first movie. duh...
03.22.05	The Incredibles	Brad Bird	so fun... i totally want a sequel.
03.20.05	Heat	Michael Mann	yay... i like this for the same reasons that i like The Wire, but this is great because it manages to paint all these compelling character portraits in 3 hours rather than 12. I think because there's so much that has to go on in this story in such a relatively short amount of time, the movie never has time to slow down and tell you exactly what's happening. You have to actively follow it and examine what the scenes mean as they play. It makes for a really solid, complete story told very well that i can keep going back to for a long time.
03.20.05	The Thing	John Carpenter	After watching Alien vs. Predator I decided to watch a real monster-in-the-snow movie... so much better.
03.19.05	Shark Tale	Vicky Jenson, Bibo Bergeron, Rob Letterman	I think, for an animated movie, this is like 2 years too late. The Incredibles made being clever not good enough anymore. Shrek 2 made better pop culture references... and these fish are kind of creepy.
03.18.05	Alien vs. Predator	Paul W. S. Anderson	Since we still get regular filmtease mail about this, i finally figured I should see it. As a fan of both the alien and predator creature mythos, i've been particularly reticent to watch this because i loathe paul w.s. anderson. ALl the reasons why everybody else has said this sucks is pretty much true, but i think there's also an added sting when you can easily imagine how cool it could have been. If ever there was a candidate for a filmic do-over, this would be it. Why complete hacks like Anderson, Uwe Boll keep getting projects handed to them is really beyond me. Oh well i guess... there's always fan fiction to restore the majesty of alien and predator goodness. And oh, i'm pretty sure that the life-threatening sub-zero temperatures of the antarctic circle are still life-threateningly sub-zero even when there's aliens and predators around... and i think that the arctic survivalist heroine girl is pretty bad at her job if she doesn't know that and go outside in just a t-shirt and tight pants... Maybe that's why the predators left her ass to freeze to death instead of pick her up in their pimp ride. just a hunch.
03.18.05	Friday Night Lights	Peter Berg	blaaaaaaah. Peter Berg needs a tripod.
03.15.05	Robots	Chris Wedge	there was a problem with my apartment security system that made it beep every ten seconds... like i would totally forget that it was beeping at second 11. So instead of go insane, i went to the movies. This was surprisingly funny. I thought Ice Age was merely OK but this one had a lot more gags in there, pixar-esque references and in-jokes... and spectacular animation to boot. it was pretty good... and like a record amount of people in line for tickets at 2pm on a tuesday afternoon. what is up with that, anyway?
03.13.05	Murder in the First	Marc Rocco	Decided to watch this again because of a book I'm reading. It's worse than i remember...
03.12.05	Gattaca	Andrew Niccol	still a pretty good sci-fi... except all the stuff with swimming.
03.10.05	Thieves' Highway	Jules Dassin	A solid film noir dealing with apples. Richard Conte is maybe a bit too much of a badass for the role but that's alright because Lee J Cobb is more than slimey enough to play the crooked store owner. It's neat seeing noirs for the first time now, especially after reading Dark City. Such a great genre, i love it.
03.10.05	La Commare Secca	Bernardo Bertolucci	The Grim Reaper, Bertolucci's first movie. It's pretty good... sort of like a 1962 version of CSI. The actors are interesting because they are so Italian... I'm not sure I'd watch this again though, ok maybe once more to see the different characters in each flashback but... not great, not bad...
03.09.05	L'Avventura	Michelangelo Antonioni	It's pretty late so maybe this is just my fatigue talking but... jesus is this a slow movie. Maybe that's the reason why everybody loves Blow Up... it's still slow but not nearly as slow as this. They must all be like "yay! antonioni's almost at normal speed with this film... masterpiece! This one though... whew...
03.08.05	Dazed and Confused	Richard Linklater	How could i pass up an opportunity to see this in a theater? Not a crappy little art-house theater like the Dobie either but a huge screen, stadium seated brand spankin new Alamo Drafthouse theater!!! Wiley WIggins was in attendance, doing a quick Q&A before-hand... yes, he's been asked about the touching-his-nose thing... he brought up the drinking game but didn't want anyone to do it in fear of alcohol poisoning/death. I asked the question I always wanted to know, whether Affleck was all Method-y or if he was actually a nice guy to him, and surprisingly enough he was a pretty good guy... Wiggins said he wasn't famous enough to be crazy at that point... They also showed alyssa milano workout tapes and retro commercials like Mr. Microphone. when they played the trailer for the alamo's upcoming Muppet sing-a-long, the whole theater sang along. This town is so cool. the movie: so awesome. It really is a classic... I hope Criterion does it up right some day. i loved seeing it up on a big screen with the sound throbbing the bass into your feet. Something i never noticed before: in the scene where Wooderson is expounding on the merits of high school girls, Pink reveals that his belt buckle is also a pipe, unlatching it to take a hit then putting it back on. I've always been so entertained by McConaughey's performance that i never noticed what anyone else was doing. alas, some girl won answered the trivia question and won the free-movies-for-a-year pass... friggin misfits... oh well.
03.06.05	I Heart Huckabees	David O. Russell	Man i like this movie. It's actually whimsical... it's crazy and philosophical and questioning and entertaining and weird too. Everyone does a great job and jon Brion's score firts perfectly. I want a chalkboard so i can draw hundreds of boxes too.
03.05.05	Get Shorty	Barry Sonnenfeld	yeah this was better than Be Cool. Travolta seems much tougher, much cooler in this. In Be Cool he's a bit older, a bit more tired... maybe that's just Hollywood wearing down on him or something. In any case, i like this movie and am glad I finally have it on DVD
03.04.05	Be Cool	F. Gary Gray	I thought in the beginning that it would be a bit too meta... with all the sequel talk and outlining what the movie would be and all that, but then the actual story kicked in and left that behind. I think i still prefer Get Shorty because it's faster and fresher and a bit more clever... but there are still funny characters being funny and some good music... I liked it well enough, i laughed.
03.03.05	Million Dollar Baby	Clint Eastwood	I saw this because I was there and it looked more appealing than Heffalumps. I walked in knowing pretty much everything that would happen and i was surprised very little but you know... i guess this is a good example of some movies not being the destination but the journey... i can't argue that this was a good movie, but i can say that like the last half hour or hour or however long it was REALLY friggin dragged.. i mean DRAGGED. oh well, glad i saw it...
03.03.05	Sideways	Alexander Payne	to be honest, the clips from the award shows convinced me to see this. I didn't know it was set around Solvang and that area (which I've been to) so that helped as well as the wine stuff and really... I don't know why i hadn't seen this before now. It was a great movie... funny, emotional, about wine, all good things. I think the trailer wasn't very effective for this movie i think.. this movie had great jazz music the whole way through that gave it a light, jaunty vibe that helped tremendously. You get a feeling that that area up there is just this free-spirited, small-town quiet place where people work their vineyards and stay slightly toasted all the time. it works great for a movie
03.02.05	Paparazzi	Paul Abascal	well... at least he got away with it. Still though, the message behind this movie seems very wrong to me... but that's ok. I bet Tom Cruise LOVED this... they didn't use that awesome Xibit song though... oh well
03.01.05	Fargo	Joel Coen	If i taught a film class, this would be on the curriculum
02.27.05	Eyes Without A Face	Georges Franju	oooooh, a doctor dude keeps cutting pretty girls' faces off in an effort to replace the burnt up visage of his daughter. Pretty tame by today's standards... and i think it really shows Hitchcock's influence... it seemed very Psycho-esque to me for some reason. perhaps it was the music. in any case, the menus on the criterion dvd were awesome, perhaps more awesome than the movie itself... and the inclusion of the director's first film, a 20 minute documentary on slaughterhouses, was suitably grisly and real.
02.25.05	Donnie Darko	Richard Kelly	watching the director's cut... it's a mixed bag... the director's cut lays stuff out a lot more... but since i saw the theatrical cut first it seems too clearly spelled out... so does that mean that he didn't communicate well enough for the theatrical cut or did he just wig out for the director's cut. Either way, I think i still like the theatrical cut more... the great directors in the golden age never looked back at their movies and whined until they got to recut it, they just moved on. if they wanted to get it right they remade the whole damn movie, not just add in scenes that were deleted and add some close-ups of eyeballs.
02.23.05	The Royal Tenenbaums	Wes Anderson	I love this movie. The composition and mise en scene are so amazing, the story so rich and fitting with the novelesque tone, and emotion stirring and whimsical. I think Rushmore may be slightly better but this comes in close second as far as this kind of movie is concerned, which is really only done by Wes Anderson at the moment. Love it.
02.23.05	Ikiru	Akira Kurosawa	A dude finds out he's dying and goes through stuff... This is noted as one of Kurosawa's best... and it's really atypical of other films of his that i've seen. Maybe that's just because it's set in modern day. It also really strikes a chord with me an, i suspect, anyone who's ever worked a government job. After that, there are some meatier-than-Joe-vs.-the-volcano similarities. it's very good, but at over 2 hours, not somethng I am in a hurry to watch again. the last hour especially seems like a short into itself...
02.22.05	The Battle of Algiers	Gillo Pontecorvo	man... tons of extras, tons of ululation, tons of yelling and screaming. this movie had to be huge when they made it... nowadays movies get an oscar if they can wrangle over a hundred people for one scene... this movie was huge and sprawling and stark and very docu-styled. I was reminded more than a bit of Rossellini's Rome, Open City... I can definitely see how the Frenchies didn't like this... i'd make a comparison to Fahrenheit 9/11 but Moore looks like a whiney little bitch compared to the authenticity and emotion sweating and bleeding here. I can see why Criterion did this movie up, but I don't think i'll be watching it over and over.
02.20.05	Basic	John McTiernan	second viewing of this military rashoman-esque mystery. I still like it, even knowing how it all ends up. Still not as good as the seminal McTiernan actioneers from the 80s but it's pretty decent i think as a mystery.
02.15.05	Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy	Adam McKay	Still funny. My kind of humor. Who cares about plot, really.
02.15.05	Spider-Man 2	Sam Raimi	Yeah i decided to watch this again. I liked it more than the first time, but i still found a few scenes offensively on the nose and drab. just like the first one, everyone must think that kids are incredibly stupid and hammer the themes into their brains in painfully slow scenes that the kids fast forward through anyway. gee... we sure do LOVE HEROS!!!!! MAYBE YOU SHOULD BE ONE! blah... Good action scenes though.
02.14.05	The Flower of Evil	Claude Chabrol	for being a movie from the "French Master of Suspense" this was surprising. Maybe if it was directed by the "French Master of CRAP!!!" it would be more of what i was expecting. This was soooo slow.
02.14.05	Throne of Blood	Akira Kurosawa	Yay! Kurosawa does Macbeth. It was good... and the Criterion commentary dude was fun to listen to.
02.14.05	Story of Floating Weeds	Yasujiro Ozu	Why is this movie silent? 1934, post Jazz Singer. come on, Japan!!! anyway, the Ozu pacing is... well... slow. I guess i was supposed to be writing haiku or practicing some erotic meditative art or something while watching.
02.13.05	Raging Bull	Martin Scorsese	a great new 2-dvd set... I haven't seen this in a long time and I actually remember it as not as good as it is.I think the first time i saw it i was a bit hung up on Joe Pesci/Robert DeNiro playing so close to Goodfellas but now, after Casino and a healthy amount of time, I can let it go and focus on other areas. the story's still a bit stuffy but the direction is impecable. DeNiro's performance is defining.
02.05.05	Spy Game	Tony Scott	all my DVDs are packed and i wanted to watch one more movie before shutting everything down and moving out. there we go, pretty much.
02.05.05	Spartan	David Mamet	Another Mamet movie lost in convoluted dialogue that masks a simple story. Kilmer was OK in this and I always like to see BIll Macy and Ed O'Neal on the screen but aside from that, nothing much worth noting. Oh, last night at home.
02.04.05	The Manchurian Candidate	Jonathan Demme	I was never the hugest fan of the Frankenheimer version, but i wanted to see this after hearing the commentary on an episode of The Wire where Michael K. WIlliams (Omar) jokes with Dominic West (McNulty) about Liev's brother Pablo's bit part in the movie and how he gets shot in the face. Man that was a funny commentary. Anyway, as usual, this version has a happy ending and seems hollow since i knew what was going to happen. Also, Demme's "style" of having the actors look into the camera was awesome in Silence of the Lambs... now? not so much.
02.04.05	Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle	Danny Leiner	funny... the last time i had White Castle, all i got was the runs. I think if i was gonna try and "break" into hollywood, i'd either make a stoner comedy or a horror movie.... both of them don't have to be too good to become popular for some reason... I think Chris Meloni's the funniest part of this one. (he was also hilarious in Hot Wet American Summer)
02.03.05	Riding Giants	Stacy Peralta	I'm a sucker for surfing movies... North Shore, Point Break, you name it... I also liked Dogtown & Z-Boys so... This was a good docu... it used a lot of good music and quick edits (as he did in Dogtown) to create a sort of flipside to Step Into Liquid, which was all about serene photography and languid philosophy. Giants is grittier, MTV-ier, and of course specializing in big wave surfing (not much is said about the mid 60s-mid 80s). Still great though... seeing those guys as specks on the tableau of these cyclopean waves... they didn't use the underwater shot of the fingers streaking through the wave (i love that shot) but oh well.. great otherwise.
02.03.05	Ray	Taylor Hackford	good music, good acting, too long. very late. sleep now.
02.02.05	Un Chien Andalou	Luis Bunuel	well I've finally seen it. these 16 minutes have been on my list of movies to see for so long... man is it strange... and I still had no clue what was going on... so i listened to the commentary which was horrible-assed. the guy had some serious problems saying more than three words at a time. Luckily, the interview footage with Bunuel's son finally let on that it's not supposed to make sense. cool... I guess.
02.01.05	The Last Starfighter	Nick Castle	it's been so friggin long since I've seen this movie, all i could remember is the old guy taking him back and forth in a interplanetary cab or something. Well, aside from some extra strength '80s cheez whiz, it's a fun movie and the CG is still surprisingly decent... for 1984 at least. I totally don't buy that the whole trailer park community would gather around him and yell and cheer as he breaks the record on the video game though... old people have never been interested in video games and never will. If it wasn't an '80s movie, the kid would just win by himself and like.. mention it to his mom who would dismiss it or completely ignore him alltogether or something... but oh well.
01.31.05	Kids in the Hall: Same Guys, New Dresses	Dave Foley	An interesting and funny documentary covering their 2000 live tour. OK, more interesting than funny, but the commentary track, including bits by Mike Meyers, the SOuth Park guys, Andy Richter, and others (and the kids of course) is really funny. And Conan's got a cameo that's hilarious as well. A very great watch for a KitH fan.
01.30.05	Belle de Jour	Luis Bunuel	The more i see of Bunuel's films the more i like him. He's really very fetishistic and obsessive, which comes out in every shot and cut of his films... Wonderfully perverse, yet never as shallow as sheer pornography... there's always something going on for those that need more than Catherine Deneuve in white undergarments... but he still has Catherine Deneuve in white undergarments for like a good half hour of film. awesomality defined.
01.29.05	Infernal Affairs	Wai Keung Lau, Siu Fai Mak	Oh how infernal... who's the mole!? I think it's Kathy Griffin... I'm trying hard not to bring up John Woo... This was more good than bad, nah i'll go ahead and say it was all good... entertaining, holds your interest, and manages to surprise you maybe... maybe not... but still, well worth watching
01.29.05	That Thing You Do!	Tom Hanks	i have massive amounts of love for this movie. It's so great. I have actually thought about a scenario where i pretend to be a movie journalist and go to a junket for a tom hanks movie just so i can screw the interview and talk to him about this movie for ten minutes instead. There's tons more to say but I'm sure I'll get into it on future viewings.
01.29.05	Daddy Day Care	Steve Carr	yeah I don't want to hear it... i like Steve Zahn and Jonathan Katz and I was bored, ok?
01.28.05	De-Lovely	Irwin Winkler	Yes! I am not a bastard movie-snob after all! A biopic about a guy i'm not really interested in whose music i'm not really into... All signs point to me hating this movie, except it's too well-made not to like. It really deconstructs and toys with the forms of both biopics and musicals in generaly and comes up with a refreshing way to tell the story. Of course great performances from Kline and Judd don't hurt, nor does the increasing quality of aging make-up. All in all, it's a movie that i didn't think i'd like but did despite myself, which is always a good thing.
01.28.05	Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines	Jonathan Mostow	pow! Arnold crashing through buildings! techno-paranoia! Nick Stahl talking really slow! This third installment still isn't as epic in feel as the second, but oh well. I still have problems with the TX being a woman, but oh well. Arnold is looking a little old to still be kicking ass, but oh well.
01.28.05	Shattered Glass	Billy Ray	Since I find Hayden Christensen imminently unlikable, I found this movie to be quite pleasant. Seeing him crack and fail and everybody being happy about his failure and the fact that Chuck the editor (peter Sarsgaard, who i do like) fired him was very pleasurable. I think the fact that I liked this movie clearly makes that split between "based on a true story" which i think can be good and a flat-out Biopic which i almost never like. Go figure
01.27.05	Hype!	Doug Pray	Pray's document on the Seattle grunge music scene that really blew up in the early '90s is about as energetic and diverse as his exploration of DJs in Scratch. That is to say, it's interesting, well paced, and informative. AKA sweet.
01.25.05	Baron Blood	Mario Bava	more Bava fun. It's a good thing i don't rate these because they're really not good... but fun anyway if you watch them semi-comatose late at night. This one, which fixates on torture chambers and whatnot, has Joseph Cotton playing Vincent Price and lots of shots of smoke blowing through small swiss towns. good times
01.25.05	The Secret Lives of Dentists	Alan Rudolph	man... this was like a horror movie for me. Parenthood and marriage are so terrifying to me right now. I'd like to complain about how there's no movies where people just get along with no problems, but I know those movies would be boring. This movie though, was still not great. Denis Leary's imaginary humbug is a really old and lazy way to inject interior monologue, and it was a very long 100 minutes. I guess i am just susceptible to gut shots by infidelity andadultery. Campbell Scott sure is a good actor though... he can even pull off a mustache. but oh man... scary.
01.23.05	In the Realm of the Senses	Nagisha Oshima	....riiiiiiight.
01.23.05	Sweet Sweetback's Baad Asssss Song	Melvin Van Peebles	I guess back then just getting it up on the screen was enough. Seen today, it's really a poorly put together piece of cinema. I suppose that's its charm though... I can believe how this was rated X. Man they use the same piece of music like 120 times though... didn't that get annoying even back then when it was all shocking and awe-ing to see black people on the screen? I mean it's a decent song but it's like listening to the same riff for an hour and a half... come on...
01.22.05	Napoleon Dynamite	Jared Hess	I understand that this is not a movie everyone gets, and I understand that the film doesn't solve any crimes or address pertinent social issues, but it sure is fun. I love Pablo Ferro's title design. Yeah, it's sort of an updates Revenge of the Nerds (minus the revenge part) right down to the Poindexter haircut... but there is charm here that's original and endearing. Oh, and Kip's song at the very end after the credits is classic.
01.21.05	Gerry	Gus Van Sant	filmic minimalism.
01.21.05	Hero	Zhang Yimou	...not impressed. I mean, that was a pretty damn long 90 minutes, right? come on...
01.21.05	Shaun of the Dead	Edgar Wright	as a fan of zombie movies, I'm glad to finally add this to my library. It takes advantage of the weaknesses of the zombie mythology. Of course it still had those "but it's my mum!" and "go ahead and leave me behind" scenes which I feel are better included as a joke instead of real emotion, but for the most part the movie's fun and definitely needed within the genre
01.21.05	I, Robot	Alex Proyas	Welcome to Erf! Nah, this movie was a decent no-brainer action flick, but it's sad that that's what it is... I kept thinking that if only people would stop going to movies like this, it would force Hollywood to rethink their current mindless drivel... but then again, I just watched it so... I guess I have no room to talk. Also, maybe the people that make the robots shouldn't make the "downloading" light an evil shade of red... just a suggestion.
01.20.05	Stander	Bronwen Hughes	another biopic. great performance by Thomas Jane... but again with the uneven pacing and downer ending. Good music though
01.20.05	A Few Good Men	Rob Reiner	you can't friggin handle the truth, buddy! Wanted to see this again because it'd been a while and I didn't remember much about it. Lots of stars in there and I hadn't known Aaron Sorkin wrote it.It's still good i guess, for a courtroom drama. Yeah, it's good. I liked it.
01.17.05	Predator	John McTiernan	one of the quintessential 80s Arnie actioneers. I love this movie because it actually pulls a bait & switch on you... you watch it and they kill a bunch of guerillas and you think it's just another military action movie but then these badasses all die quickly and it becomes survival, almost horror. Then you get like a good 10 minutes of no dialogue as Arnie learns to camo himself and sets up all these traps. Traps are so awesome. The predator creature is also really interesting and you learn what he's all about in a much more subtle manner than Predator 2 (although i also think that's pretty decent). Just a really top shelf action movie. This and Die-Hard were two of the best action blockbusters in the era of action blockbusters if you ask me.
01.17.05	In Good Company	Paul Weitz	I like how Dennis Quaid is a star again. other than that, this was pretty predictable.
01.16.05	Friday the 13th Part III	Steve Miner	Anecdotally, this was the only Friday the 13th film I haven't seen. The completist in me is now happy. I saw this at midnight; it was my first visit to the Alamo Drafthouse in downtown Austin, TX. I can't really think of a better way to introduce myself to what I'm sure will become a very familiar place to me. Everything about the experience is so great that it will probably make me say something good about the movie itself, which would be wrong because the film is really really terrible. Seeing it in such a great place, with geek food entering my belly and a fellow horror film fan that had driven down from Tulsa, OK to see this in 3D... again... and a theater full of fans that seemed to know when to shut up and when to yell out lines that cracked us all up (I got a moderate round of laughs by yelling "aflac!" when a malicious duck appeared onscreen toward the end) had an overall affect on the film. Because I had such a great time watching it, with all of it's gimmicky '80s 3D shots and horrible horrible acting, I'm tempted to say that the movie was good. It wasn't, but it's probably the best bad movie experience i've ever had. Everybody in there really seemed to love its poor quality. we were all there together. even the people working there, scurrying between rows to deliver food and bills and refills, wore 3D glasses. OK so maybe this entry is more about the theater than the movie, but oh well. The 3D was really pristine. surprisingly great. the seats were comfortable and spaced at a distance. the bar/tables along each row give you ample footspace and even though it's not stadium seating, there is a grade and the screen's big enough not to notice people in front of you. The space feels more like a concert hall/small club than a movie theater. I really can't say enough good about it... it felt like a new home.
01.15.05	The Polar Express	Robert Zemeckis	I'll preface this by saying that i saw it in IMAX 3D format in a fairly nice theater (i guess texas has bigger everything except theater seating... what is up with that?)... Except for about half of the character animation, the movie was visually fun to watch. I think it's like the scariest, creepiest, most twisted g-rated christmas movie ever... I'm pretty sure this movie would scare me instead of make me happy if i saw it when i was a kid... but i am a wussy. it's just a strange thing that's too fake to be creepy but too kinetic to be beautiful. The 3D was awesome though... I don't know if they added shots for the format or not because there were some that just screamed 3D parlor trick. Of course i was sitting next to a kid who kept clapping whenever he was excited... was i as retarded when i was a kid?
01.13.05	The Woodsman	Nicole Kassell	Until tonight, I've always thought of Kevin Bacon as a movie star. In every role, he's really just playing variations of himself... and that's ok because that's what a movie star does. In this however, he really proves himself as an actor. He disappears into this role and lays down a subtle, compelling, and layered performance of a really unlikable guy who you can't help but sympathize with. Secondly, Mos Def has a really really really great scene as well. Thirdly, this is surprisingly filmic considered it was based on a play. If i didn't know how to read and missed it in the credits, I would think it was an original screenplay (a real accomplishment). The film itself is really intense... and very gripping. As a testament to its quality, about a third of the crowd gasped at one point when it takes us to a place we really didn't want to go. In the end, it left me feeling weird and a bit dirty... a really heavy, good film. P.S. i saw this at the Dobie in Austin as my first Austin Film Society screening. The crowd was great, a mix of college-age hot chicks and older bohemian-type cineasts, the theater, although decorated all Egyptian, had short seats and a small screen and a really weird layout (center aisle on a 45 degree angle, like a college lecture hall but without stadium seating). My ass was numb for like a half hour afterward.
01.12.05	Laurel Canyon	Lisa Cholodenko	Kate Beckinsale is so hot...
01.12.05	Kinsey	Bill Condon	My love/hate relationship with Biopics continues. I crab when the real life stories go off in crazy and uneven directions but i also dont like it when the real life stories ARE just like in the movies because... it's just like it is in twenty thousand other movies. Still, it's nice to see the subject matter gain attention. The "funny" scenes in the movie where people are completely clueless about their bodies are actually pretty scary if you consider that it could still be that way if work like Kinsey's hadn't been done. Interesting, but ultimately just another biopic. Oh yeah, i saw this in Austin at the Dolbie theater. The sides were painted up all Castlevania-y and had cobwebby gargoyles on the walls, Unfortunately, they were small seats and a small screen and no stadium seating. Tsk Tsk, but oh well. At least the sound was righteous.
01.10.05	Slacker	Richard Linklater	I watched this to soak up some Austin ambience but quickly realized that this is pre-tech-boom Austin, much less pre-tech-boom-fallout Austin. Still though... I forgot how strange this movie is... but it's great to float through these strange people's lives. It's pretty subjective though by today's standards... lots of anarchy and assassin talk. I also think this would make a good double feature with Waking Life, although this isn't nearly as philosophical as that. nice.
01.10.05	Henry & June	Philip Kaufman	well it's not exactly one woman's erotic journey from Milan to Minsk, but I think it's the type of movie that Seinfeld had in mind. Uma Thurman, then just 20, and the "will you give me oral pleasure" girl from Pulp Fiction are bot so exquisitely hot in this... it's worth putting up with Fred Ward's occasional accent. I like Fred Ward anyway... this movie is hot though... no really, it is.
01.09.05	Anchorman: Wake-Up Ron Burgundy	Adam McKay	I guess this is not quite a real movie since it's just a collection of deleted scenes from the theatrical release of Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, but with the help of a little voice-over and a major subplot that was clipped out of the original, this is about as close to a real movie as you can get. Not sure how funny it would be if you haven't seen the "real" movie, but since I have, I laughed really really hard in a few of these scenes. Like, laughing so long that I thought to myself "wow I am laughing a long time. my sides are starting to hurt" right up my alley comedy-wise.
01.08.05	Starship Troopers	Paul Verhoeven	DIGITAL! REAL! DIGITAL! REAL! Movie cravings die hard... I think the Half-Life 2 antlion design is further away from the arachnid design than I first thought, but they are still undeniably similar. This movie still holds up I think. Yeah it's corny and shameless, but the news broadcasts and direction firmly show that the corn is for a reason. Lots of messages in here about the media, about propaganda, and politics in general, which is surprising considering the amount of explosions and gunfire. I haven't seen the sequels but I am getting more and more interested in reading the book.
01.08.05	Finding Neverland	Marc Forster	during the end credits, the clean-up employees started talking until another one said "shhh! this is a crying movie!" in hushed undertones. Clearly, he has management potential. The movie is as i expected. Depp did another good accent, lots of bits showing inspiration for Peter Pan, and she dies at the end. Another well-execution of a not-my-type-of movie. I'm sure it gets the suitable amount of award nominations... although It's a little unsettling that I enjoyed Dustin Hoffman. again. His role, equatable to Geoffery Rush's in Shakespeare in Love, is pretty much the only comic relief (if you don't count the dog) so I liked it.
01.07.05	Around the World in 80 Days	Frank Coraci	for some reason it keeps going into really bad CG transitional shots. I have to admit it did make me chuckle a few times but for the most part, a few cameos here and there are really all that's worth noting.
01.06.05	The Devil and Daniel Webster	William Dieterle	to be honest, I rented this so an essay in my Horror Film Reader would make sense to me. Man, 1941 was a great year for cinema. Robert Wise edited this and Bernard Herrman supplied a score, the same year that they both sealed their fate in movie history books for working on Citizen kane. This movie is part horror part patriotic propaganda... it's interesting to see that the first pre-released print had eerie inserts of ol' scratch in negative throughout the first "Jabez's hardships" scene, and also interesting that they were cut out, making the devil's involvement with his mishaps much more subtle. It really wasn't bad at all. Walter Huston was great as well, playing ol' Scratch with equal parts charisma and creepiness.
01.03.05	L'Age D'Or	Luis Bunuel	so after so many years of having this on my list of movies to see, and i finally saw it tonight. As expected, it made absolutely no sense to me. I might try out the commentary but my hopes of gaining any sort of meaning out of it are not high. Now i need to see Un Chien Andalou.... but I think it will be as randomly bizarre as this
01.03.05	Garden State	Zach Braff	So i finally got to see it. It's good. Braff pulls off medicated depression pretty well I thought, and Portman is sooooo awesome. Lots of little things to like in this, none of which are coming to mind.
01.02.05	Collateral	Michael Mann	I like this movie. Great photography, great acting, great actors in small supporting roles... Yeah, I like it.
01.02.05	Practical Magic	Griffin Dunne	yeah... I know. I KNOW! but come on... Sandra, Kidman, witches, I hadn't seen it before... it was late and i didn't want to go to sleep. ok no more excuses. let's just move on...
01.01.05	Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle	Alan Rudolph	long, slow, tedious... Jennifer Jason Leigh's voice becomes grating about ten minutes in. A decent movie for Dorothy Parker fans I suppose.
12.31.04	Videodrome	David Cronenberg	man that cronenberg... i hate to use a word like ouvre but his body of work really carves a niche that nobody else does nearly as well. His films continuous dealings with biology, sexuality, and technology (in varying mixtures) always seem to make all three grotesque yet engaging at the same time. This is no different. I remember seeing this the first time and permanently associating James Woods as a weirdo. Seeing it again, after catching up with Cronenberg and getting a few years of experience in, I am surprised by how topical this is; how well it holds up. Woods is still a weirdo though
12.31.04	The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King	Peter Jackson	Happy New Year! extended edition awesomeness.
12.31.04	The Aviator	Martin Scorsese	Masterful direction, great acting, and all that other stuff. It's still a biopic though and, although it's undoubtedly interesting, i found myself ready for it to end when it did. Just my personal tastes I guess.
12.31.04	Fat Girl	Catherine Breillat	from the director of Romance... It's French, so I guess that means it can get away with things like twenty-minute scenes, underage nudity, and random acts of death and violence. the last three minutes of this movie just make me think WHAT!? Before that though, it's slow and all about a fat girl's sister getting tricked into losing her virginitiy. of course at the end, the sister and mother are murdered in a rest area and the fat girl gets raped but not really because that's how she wants it. shocking, i guess. It goes along with Irreversible I guess, that sort of "oh my god i am so shocking because i show bad stuff on film" cinema. The emotion that it's evoking isn't really good, but it's not boredom either. I guess that says something.
12.30.04	The Stepford Wives	Frank Oz	another lesson in why remakes suck. I can see it now... "hey we can't make this the same as the original. We need some twists at the end!" The outcome strips every element which made the original film (granted it was dated and timely) creepy: the passive acceptance of the whole idea by Katherine Ross' husband. Instead, Broderick has to be likable so the whole ending is a sham and ends up being some weak-ass crazy-speak monologue by Glen Close. It wasn't a perfect movie to being with and the remake managed to kill what little charm the original held. Post script: I don't know if it was just for pay-per-view or what but that had to be the fastest end credit crawl I've ever seen. like 30 seconds tops. insane.
12.29.04	The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou	Wes Anderson	Anderson continues to make interesting, funny, melancholy, unique films. This film is less an emsemble (certain parts such as played by Huston and Goldblum are relegated to pretty minor roles), focusing more on Murray and Wilson. The funniest parts were used in the trailer. I found the film to be more serious than wacky. It was still really solid though, with the now-expected top notch mise-en-scene, music, acting, editing, and writing. I loved everything having to do with the documentary filmmaking aspect and the fictious sea creatures which creep and crawl in the film's cracks, but it's still not as fun as Rushmore, which manages to be funny even when its sad. This (and Tennenbaums) is just sad when it's sad, but that ain't bad. Can't wait for a Criterion DVD release.
12.27.04	Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban	Alfonso Cuaron	As Harry matures so do his movies. This is the best so far in the series. A large part of the charm of Harry Potter is seeing magic in the context of the real world. When watching this, it makes the memory of Chris Columbus' two films seem fantastickal and surreal. This also has the benefit of two films' worth of backstory leading into it. Given that we've already seen a lot of this universe, this wastes no time with any recaps and even ignores the change of all the settings and even a new Dumbledore. I don't quite buy the movie vs. filmed book argument that most people throw in favor of this; it's my hunch that Cuaron's just a better director, making much better use of his camera and composition. It does twinge a bit Burton-esque, but only in a good way. I also think that the actors are getting better with each film.
12.25.04	The Bourne Supremacy	Paul Greengrass	Merry Christmas!!!
12.25.04	Dodgeball	Rawson Marshall Thurber	Merry Christmas!!
12.25.04	Elf	Jon Favreau	Merry Christmas!
12.22.04	Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events	Brad Silberling	Great production design, make-up, yadda yadda yadda... It's everything I expected it to be, which includes the bad with the good. I have a feeling that there's something missing in this world that's quite present in Harry Potter's. Maybe these kids are a bit more disconnected and melancholy or something, but it's just missing something. A heart or something. Other than that though, it's an entertaining affair, although I'm not sure I'll be seeing it again. I probably will but that's just because I get bored often.
12.22.04	Meet The Fockers	Jay Roach	yeah I laughed a lot in this one. It surprised me that Dustin Hoffman was so funny. He pulled his character off with great zeal and aplomb. Seriously, I think he was the funniest part, although I liked everyone in this. I think it's a worthy sequel, and probably on par with the first, although i felt the cameo at the end was a bit forced. Actually the entire ending was too happy and wrapped-up, but it's that kind of movie, best not to expect anything more than some laughs. Good stuff
12.19.04	The Great Train Robbery	Michael Crichton	I really like this movie. Again, I watched it this time 'round for a sense of the period as it pertains to the book I'm reading, but it turns out this takes place in 1855, a good century after my book. It's funny to consider that London looked anything like it was portrayed in this movie, since that's through two filters: the film's production design innacuracies, and a hundred years of life. A hundred years makes a huge difference in any other city in the world. But still, I remember the sequence in here where the guy escapes from Newgate prison, which was dealt with somedetail in my book, so I watched it primarily to see that again. As for the movie, it's a heist, it's got Sean Connery and DOnald Sutherland in awesome rogue parts when they were both young, and it's written/directed by Michael Crichton who, critics be damned, I am a fan of. Ultimately, the movie's just really fun to watch.
12.18.04	Peeping Tom	Michael Powell	wow intense. Considering that this came out the same year as Psycho, I guess I can't say that I am astounded that this subject matter is in the movies as early as 1960, but it's still pretty creepy for a big budget production. Basically, the main guy is crazy and kills women with a spiked tripod leg while filming it with a special mirror attachment on his lens so the women that he's killing watch themselves die. Then of course he watches the films every night. I've heard lots of good things about Powell's films but this is the first that I've seen. I have to say that I'm impressed. I'll definitely be checking out more of his work.
12.18.04	Outbreak	Wolfgang Petersen	I haven't seen this in a while and wanted to revisit Kevin Spacey's early performance. It reminded me very much of that book The Hot Zone and that period in which viruses and outbreaks were all the rage. I also remember some interview with the book's author where he basically whined about how the movie version of the hot zone was shelved and outbreak stole all of its best scenes. That reminded me of the last part of the book where the author takes a trip back to the cave where Ebola supposedly spawned forth and felt scared. and wrote about it. the movie is still somewhat bombastic Hollywood fare and more than a little unbelievable, but entertaining nonetheless.
12.17.04	Strait-Jacket	William Castle	Joan Crawford chops up her hubby and mistress before the eyes of her daughter and comes back 20 years later in this William Castle precursor to today's twisted slasher horror template. The biggest thing I walk away from this movie is that Crawford looked really scary as she gold older and that Diane Baker was really gorgeous when she was younger. Still though, it has it's moments and the end, despite the obligatory explain-all scene, is decent. A final touch that i thought was nice was showing the Columbia logo with the head lopped off and sitting down next to her feet.
12.17.04	Proof of Life	Taylor Hackford	I'm not sure why I am watching this movie more than once. It's not Meg Ryan and it sure as hell isn't David Caruso. Good lord, is it because of Russell Crowe? Am I a Russell Crowe fan? Best not to think about it. I guess I like the whole procedural angle about it, and I am actually repeatedly engaged by David Morse and the scenes in the hostage camp. It's very Hollywood and not great, but sometimes I'm not in a mood to watch a great movie.
12.16.04	Lost in Translation	Sofia Coppola	You know, it's somewhat strange. I like this movie a lot, but I somehow feel that I will grow to like it more over the years as I transition from Scarlett Johansson's "place" to BIll Murray's. I think it's cool that Coppoloa could write something mature beyond her years. It sparks of Orson Welles. The movie is so low-key and casual and Murray's performance is really understated. I have a hunch that it will come to be known as a real cinematic gem in a decade or so.
12.16.04	Shakespeare in Love	John Madden	I'm finishing up Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle and decided to watch this to get a taste of London around that time. I still like this movie, although I still think the ending is pretty weak, especially considering the ending of Romeo + Juliet, which I think is one of the greatest endings ever told. I guess it's as good as this movie can do though, considering that it is itself just a shadow of Shakespeare's genius. I think I will get in the habits of writing sonnets though, for love both fulfilled and unrequited. Yeah, it's corny but I bet it's the sort of thing that still gets women all hot and bothered.
12.15.04	Macabre	Lamberto Bava	Wow this is messed up. It's kind of slow and the stuff with the blind guy is a bit tedious, but the sheer subject matter, along with the fact that it's based on real events, is really just messed the hell up. An adulterous wife, off to have an affair in a fuckpad that she pays for, unwittingly lets her daughter murder the son (for no particular reason, other than that the daughter's figured out that she's having an affair). Hysterical, the lover drives her to the hospital, only to have a serious accident on the way. Cut to a year later, where the woman is living full-time in the fuckpad, where a blind guy lives downstairs and is really horny for her, but her steady stream of lovers every night keeps him from making any moves. Eventually, we find out that she's kept the dead lover's earlobe with his earring all this time, and that she sleeps with it. Eventually eventually we find out that she also keeps his head locked in the freezer, and pulls it out every night to make out with it and orgasm all night just like she used to. Of course, the daughter finds this out and puts the earlobe in a soup and has her mother eat part of it, but then the mom finds out that the daughter killed her son and drowns her in the bathtub. FInally, we see the woman making out witht the rotting, discolored maggoty head for a bit. The blind guy comes in and somehow kills her by sticking her head into an oven or something, and as he's wandering his hands across the bed, the dismembered head hops up and bites him in the throat. It's said that his death could not be explained by the police and is still listed as "unsolved." Messed the hell up.
12.14.04	Seance on a Wet Afternoon	Bryan Forbes	the story of a psychic who, along with her husband, kidnaps a rich dude's daughter in hopes of making green on aetherial clues. Cool beginning credits but the movie is paced very slowly and there's not a lot of character arc as the woman starts off looney and stays looney through the whole thing. The husband never grows a spine either, so the movie just ends at some point long after I've lost interest.
12.14.04	Total Recall	Paul Verhoeven	So I'm playing Half-Life 2, and since I don't have a copy of War of the World (Striders), or Starship Troopers (Antlions), I decided to watch this instead for the human sheild. As far as human sheild scenes go, you could do a lot worse that the one in here. That poor guy has to take like two hundred rounds by the time he's done, all because he was on the wrong escalator at the wrong time. Otherwise, this is like the last movie before digital effects were born. I think it still holds up as arnie sci-fi action. Verhoeven was also probably at his height right about then.
12.12.04	The Masque of the Red Death	Roger Corman	another foggy/shoddy Poe tale told by Roger Corman. Aside from Vincent Price's ghoulishness, I'm not sure there's much worth noting here other than a curiosity of whether or not Elton John got "Tiny Dancer" from this...
12.12.04	Five Deadly Venoms	Cheh Chang	Hiiiyyyyyahhh! I liked it because of the different styles and importance given to each and that they didn't know each other so there was a very Kansas City COnfidential vibe where we know who each person is but the characters don't, but I didn't like it for pretty much everything else. oh well.
12.11.04	Gremlins	Joe Dante	Been a while since I've seen this. I actually think that I've seen part 2 more than the first. Joe Dante's work has a unique feel. I think he's one of very few, if not the only, people that can pull off horror/comedies with any skill at all.
12.11.04	Ocean's Twelve	Steven Soderbergh	A worthy sequel. I like that, through Soderbergh's career, you can track his different interests and stars, and that they feed into his future work. Stuff with the stars playing themselves like he fooled around with in Full Frontal or re-using people like Albert FInney or Terrence Stamp. I also like how he tries new things cinematically as well. Not a lot of A-list hollywood directors would do a dozen fast zooms in a row. I liked it a lot, alhtough the story will probably keep it under Ocean's Eleven in the fun factor. Still, I wonder if it will remain as imminently watchable as 11 did. Have to wait for the DVD I guess!
12.10.04	White Chicks	Keenan Ivory Wayans	Grotesque. In a bad way.
12.09.04	The Kids in the Hall: Tour of Duty	Dave Diomedi	A concert film, which I guess started off as a pay-per-view special, of some classic sketches. Twas funny but also sad as everyone (but the gay one) has developed beer guts and all of their faces are a bit wider. I ended up laughing the most at a deleted scene: one of Bruce McCulloch's hilarious monologues about never trusting a guy who says "trust me"
12.09.04	Owning Mahowny	Richard Kwietniowski	The story of legendary gambler Dan Mahowny who stole 10 million bucks to feed his habit. That's in 1980s dollars too. As usual, Philip Seymour Hoffman portrays a strong, human character that does things that I can't even imagine doing. His portrayal of Mahowny is top notch, unfortunately surrounded by a low-budget Canadian production. John Hurt and Minnie Driver offer OK efforts, but the sets look nothing like Atlantic City or Vegas so the high-roller-ness illusion is often shattered, which is a shame. It follows the based-on-a-true-story formula of no twist endings and a paragraph of text to read at the end, but overall it held my interest and felt worth watching to me.
12.05.04	Singles	Cameron Crowe	Even though it's probably true, this movie gets a bad rap as Crowe's weakest film. I remember being really disappointed with this when it came out. I guess I was expecting a concert film with all those Seattle dudes that were popular at the time. Now that I'm a bit older and the ripped jeans/long underwear look is out, it still stands as a unique meditation on relationships. Yeah, sounds boring, but Crowe keeps it interesting with a solid supporting cast (Stolz's mime is classic), chapter titles, and occasional breaks in the 4th wall to give the film a novelic sense of multiple dimensions. It's indelibly tied to a specific time and place, but this movie still has a lot to offer.
12.05.04	The Life and Death of Peter Sellers	Stephen Hopkins	I guess it's true that all comedians are sad and all movie stars are tyrants. I don't really know what I expected, certainly I knew this would be no different from all the other biopics. ever. Because it's an HBO movie though, they did a few things that went a little beyond the typical, proving that Geoffery Rush really inhabited Sellers and can pretty much do anything. Personally though, I don't care that Sellers was a crazy bastard, he was sure funny on screen.
12.04.04	I Saw What You Did	William Castle	I originally saw the made-for-TV remake of this starring the main guy from Revenge of the Nerds. Was 1965 really so different from 2004? If this movie is any indication, I'd have to say yes. The film, marred by a horribly uplifting score, shockingly bad acting, and quite possibly the most civil killer ever, is most unsettling because of the innocence and niavete of the world around it. Assuming prank phone calls were even possible now with caller ID, what kind of girl would call a stranger, flirt with him on the phone, then go and drive to his house to eavesdrop into his window? Even if he wasn't a killer, that's some weird shit. Either Castle played the kids intentionally this stupid to scare parents into a "the movie to watch with your children" situation, or people were actually this innocent once. Scary.
12.03.04	Van Helsing	Stephen Sommers	yeah, it's not too good. Serious plot holes, corny dialogue, cheesy effects. it's all here in addition to a mesh of classic horror figures that seems to demean them all. oh well.
12.01.04	Q: The Winged Serpent	Larry Cohen	Aztec Bird God incarnates and comes to roost in the Chrysler Tower. Absolutely horrible. On par with The Stuff.
11.29.04	School of Rock	Richard Linklater	So yeah, Jack Black's on overdrive in this and it's a movie about prep school kids who learn lessons in life through rock and roll, but the cold hard truth is that this movie makes me feel good. It excites me about movies and music. It makes me want to screen capture the rock-web on the chalk board and check out all the bands on there. Jack Black is really a type A Movie Star: you either like him or don't because he always plays himself. Harrison Ford, Sean Connery, Arnold Schwarzeneggar; they all fit this same bill. I really don't mind Black being Black in every movie, just like John Wayne fans didn't mind him being John Wayne in every movie. The biggest thing i like about this movie is its worship of rock and roll as a force beyond just music. It's like a spirit that can possess you and make you speak in tongues. I wish i was a lot more musical.
11.29.04	Confessions of a Dangerous Mind	George Clooney	Still somewhat uneven, still mostly great. I think George relied a bit too much on different film treatments for excitement, but there are definite moments here and of course all the actors turn in great performances. It's a bit long I think, but for a biopic this was great. I also like how Clooney's interested in Michel Gondry-esque deconstructions of shots and in-camera tricks.
11.28.04	Win A Date With Tad Hamilton!	Robert Luketic	awwwwwwwww.
11.28.04	Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World	Peter Weir	Still not sure why people love this. I watched it again because of the book I'm reading (The System of the World) and wanted to see old boats and early science. As far as atmosphere and slang is concerned i guess this is pretty good but the storyline is really basic, the pacing is at a snail's pace, and the whole bit with the cursed guy seems inserted just to make it Oscar-length.
11.27.04	The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King	Peter Jackson	theatrical cut. whew.
11.26.04	Almost Famous	Cameron Crowe	the Untitled Director's Cut. Still love it. Oh how i love it. Love love love.
11.26.04	Garfield	Peter Hewitt	Not much to say on this one. It's as bad as I thought it would be.
11.25.04	Hiding Out	Bob Giraldi	man '80s madness. Jon Cryer madness. I liked this movie when i was younger though, and it still holds some nostalgic interest for me. I think it's the high school fantasy aspect.. you get to go back when you're older, wiser, and richer, and be a natural cool badass. Not only that, but you also get to sneak into the school at night and roam the halls. I don't know how cool that actually is, but in the '80s it seemed awesome.
11.23.04	My Boss's Daughter	David Zucker	Stupid comedy with a surprisingly quality supporting cast. Mostly, it's a slightly teenier and more lude version of Meet the Parents.
11.23.04	Quicksilver	Tom Donnelly	so I'm a Kevin Bacon fan. I'd never actually seen this movie before now. Bacon plays a hotshot day trader who lost a lot of money so he bought a bike and became a messenger. I'm sure the weaving-through-traffic shots were meant to be exhilarating back in 1986. Nowadays, it's pretty cheeseball, complete with an arbitrary bike-trick scene reminiscent of the breakdancers in that one scene of... whatever that movie was... with the girl walking down the sidewalk. Anyway, the 80s music kills it and it's not one of Bacon's best performances either, although seeing him with a mustache in the beginning is funny but not in a good way.
11.22.04	The Hard Word	Scott Roberts	a pretty entertaining crime/comedy from Australia starring Guy Pearce and Rachel Griffiths, it's a trio of bank-robbing brothers getting out of prison and dealing with a double-crossing lawyer. Nothing heavy, but pretty slick and fun.
11.21.04	New Jack City	Mario Van Peebles	When this came out, I actually thought it was good. watching it again now, this is really not a good movie at all. I see where GTA:San Andreas got some of the haircuts though.
11.20.04	Footloose	Herbert Ross	Watched this again to lift samples. Super cheese, and the fact where it's a musical with only the last 3 minutes of it being an actual dance number (not counting the solo Flashdance-esque gymnastics piece) doesn't help it, but still... the music makes this an incredibly '80s movie
11.19.04	Saved!	Brian Dannelly	scary. Jesus Freaks, God Rock, Macaulay Culkin's acting. scary, scary scary.
11.19.04	Dazed and Confused	Richard Linklater	still great. why don't I own this yet? Oh yeah, eve the new "Flashback Edition" sucks and is barebones as hell. I hope that Criterion rumor pans out. this movie totally deserves it. totally.
11.18.04	The Pit and the Pendulum	Roger Corman	aside from Barbara Steele's call to Vincent Price sounding like "Ricola" instead of "Nicolas", this is one of those movies that I'm glad I saw once and probably wont see again. It's a long 80 minutes and all but the last ten are dullish plain.
11.18.04	Bad Santa	Terry Zwigoff	the Bad"der" Santa unrated cut, with approximately 2 minutes of new stuff. I think i like this movie because this is how i picture Billy Bob in everyday life. It's funny in a very profane way.
11.16.04	The Saddest Music in the World	Guy Maddin	This is probably one of the strangest movies that I've ever seen. I didn't know Canadians could be this weird. Well, Cronenberg is Canadian i think... Anyway, highlights include Isabella Rossellini stabbing Mark McKinney with the shattered thighs of her broken beer-filled glass legs and the whole saddest music tournament complete with a slide into the beer pool for the winners. All shot on what appears to be leftover scraps on home-movie film circa 1931. strangeness pretty much defined.
11.15.04	Miller's Crossing	Joel Coen	great movie x8. i love the iconography of the genre, the importance and focus of the hats, how these gangsters spend all day killing and beating the crap out of each other but they follow an etiquette and respect for one another at the same time. I especially love how smart the script is. I feel like I understand just a little bit more with each viewing. man what an awesome movie.
11.15.04	The House That Dripped Blood	Peter Duffell	British, horror anthology loosely tied into the same house. Slow... about five minutes of good stuff in 105 minutes of film. Better title than movie
11.14.04	Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl	Gore Verbinski	I wanted this to not be good the first time i saw it. After all, it was a movie based on a Disneyland ride. Of course, it's a great Disneyland ride, and it's a movie with Johnny Depp and walking skeletons, so I can't be mad that it's a really good fun Hollywood film. It's still holding up too as a movie that entertains and flows really well.
11.13.04	Bram Stoker's Dracula	Francis Ford Coppola	When i saw this in the theater i really hated it. Now, given about a dozen years of growth and change, I really thought this was great. Sure Oldman's performance was a little over the top at times but... come on, he's Dracula. In particular, I really like Coppola's use of very old camera tricks and techniques for effects. moving shadows and shifting sets and simple dissolves and multi-exposure shots still hold up when done as well as they are here.
11.12.04	True Romance	Tony Scott	Still a favorite of mine, even after finding out that the score was a total rip from Badlands. The thing i like about this movie is that a lot of the scenes are almost vignettes or short stories, involving characters that are only in that one scene really. Yet despite it feeling so disconnected, the ending obviously weaves the threads together. Also love the solid actors even in the smallest roles like Sam Jackson and Val Kilmer.
11.12.04	Dawn of the Dead	Zack Snyder	2004 re-make "unrated director's cut". It's unfortunate that this has to be compared to the original. For a re-make it's really good. Of course all of the social themes of consumerism and domestication present in the original are gone, replaced by sprinting zombies and music video cinematography. OK, so the original zombies were slow because they came up out of the ground where they'd been rotting so it didn't make sense when a new death would start stumbling around even though his body is "fresh", but having these zombies still running around after months and months of time bugs me as well. It'd be cool to do a zombie movie where the bodies still break down after death, so quick zombies would start slowing down to the old stumbling pace. In any case, I'm glad I picked this up on DVD, even though the original is still great.
11.11.04	I Bury The Living	Albert Band	A good example of a sub-par movie saved by an interesting story. The non-existant budget hurts the film but the premise about a man who can kill people by marking their cemetary plot with black pins is pretty cool. The map of the cemetary was designed to look almost like a face, and although the end was kind of upsetting, having the groundskeeper turn out to be the killer, i'd love to remake this with his powers being real and him making zombies by replacing the black pins with the white ones.
11.10.04	The Killer Shrews	Ray Kellogg	super low budget. highlights include dogs as the monstrous shrews... nothing really noteworthy here... it's been done better elsewhere
11.09.04	Twitch of the Death Nerve	Mario Bava	AKA A Bay of Blood, precursor to Friday the 13th. Aside from a few moments of gore (and a wack-ass ending with the kids), it's pretty slow and too wrapped up in a convoluted plot. i appreciate that there's not just one killer though, EVERYONE's a killer.