(May 29)

——A Woman is a Woman (1962)——

Oh, Jean-Luc Godard. You are such a crazy French bastard. You have a huge New Wave hit with Breathless. You hire the same, now insanely popular actor, Jean-Paul Belmondo, for a role in your new movie. At one point you have him tells his friends that they must hurry up so that he can go home and watch Breathless on TV.

A Woman is a Woman isn’t a great movie, but it is filled with so many delightful quirks like the one I mentioned above that you can’t help love the film that introduced Godard to his future wife, Anna Karina, the woman of the title. A Woman is a Woman is Godard’s take on the musical. Not that anyone really sings much in it. The music just seems to start and stop randomly in the background to whatever fits Godard’s whim at the moment. There isn’t really much of a plot, as Godard wrote the movie pretty much before he shot it each day and still managed to improvise most of the action. What there are are lots of quirky in-jokes and asides to the audience in this very French battle of the sexes. Wink wink, nudge nudge. Karina wants a baby, suddenly, and out of nowhere. Her boyfriend says no. They fight, but not without making you laugh a couple times. My personal favorite moment is when the two of them get out of bed to go find book titles that express their feelings for the other. Before Godard went all political he made an extremely fun film that almost anyone can get into without thinking it too obtuse.

(SEE)

——X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)——

Better than X1 but nowhere near as good as X2, this movie probably could have been really great had Brett Ratner (taking over the reigns from Bryan Singer) taken the time to enjoy the movie he was making. I mean, for such an epic movie with so many characters and plots, it is a little surprising that the whole thing clocks in at around an hour and forty minutes. You couldn’t even hit the two-hour mark? Come on! It’s not like there isn’t enough juicy material for you to dwell on. Which is ultimately the big problem with this movie. It has all of the sugary sweetness of a great summer movie with none of the nutritional value of a great movie. Action. Backstory. Action. Backstory. Action. That’s pretty much how the film moves itself along.

Jean Grey is back. As Dark Phoenix. What this means to someone who hasn’t read an X-comic before is beyond me. Check out the original Dark Phoenix Saga like I did after seeing the movie. Everything makes a whole lot more sense. A lot of really groundbreaking things happen in the movie too, but like Jean’s resurrection, you don’t place too much faith in it. I’ll let you in on a big secret: You’ve probably heard from someone to stay past the credits for an added surprise. Don’t fall for the trap. It’s totally not worth it. Beat the crowd and leave. If you really want to know what it is, just email me after you see the movie.

What works? The special effects. They are pretty kick ass. Jean smashing her childhood home is especially cool. But everything actually pretty cool. It’s too bad there isn’t a more in depth story to go along with it. It’s like a rollercoaster ride. Thrills and chills, but its over too short and just leaves you wanting more.

(MISS)

——l’Enfant (2005)——

This is either a movie you will really love, or feel extremely impartial to, like I did. It was nice. It was well made. Kind of interesting. But other than that, I just didn’t get into it. My opinion: eh.

A young, penniless couple have just had a baby. The girl is in love with it. The boy is more interested in stealing and money. At one point when looking after the child he gets the genius idea to sell the baby to people who would pay to adopt it. His rational? They can always make another. She of course is pissed beyond words. So he has to get it back. But people in the illegal adoption trade don’t really like having to give the babies back. He’s screwed. Thus begins the downward spiral.

The movie does what it does well, don’t get me wrong. It’s an extremely well made, interesting movie. But it wasn’t my kind of movie. Not my style at all. To each his own.

(MISS)

(May 30)

——The Vanishing (1988)——

It is rare that anything in film genuinely creeps me out. Gross stuff, sure, sometimes, but an actual suspenseful ending? No way. That’s why I’m going to go all out and totally recommend this stylish, extremely well made Dutch film to you. The twist ending will give you some quality heebie-jeebies that won’t go away for hours.

The film is about a young Dutch couple who go to France on vacation during the Tour de France to go biking. At a highway rest stop the woman disappears without a trace. The young man spends the next three years with no success trying to find out what happened to her, until finally her abductor comes out into the open to show him what happened to her. Pretty standard plot, right? Well, the genius in this film comes from its structure, since from very early on we know who the abductor is. The chronology of the film bounces around to show us the story of the couple and of the abductor preparing himself for his abduction. You see the trials and tribulations it takes for a successful abduction. You see the motivation for such a thing. The only thing you don’t see is what actually happened to the girl after he got her. The movie keeps asking you: What happened to the girl? What happened to the girl? What fate is worse than death?

Which of course leads us to the startling reveal at the end. I won’t ruin it. I will tell you that it is worth searching this movie out (the original, not the American remake) to see how it all ends. I really dug this movie.

(MUST SEE)

——Summer (2003)——

See many Canadian TV movies lately? No, me neither. That is until I saw Summer. How do I find this crap? Well, check out the cover on Amazon and I think your questions are answered. And hey, the movie’s not that bad either!

The movie is about three friends who have just graduated from college. Real life is out there in front of them. And the opening sequence could be right out of my own life. The three friends are sitting at a bar, depressed as all can be. One of the guy’s girlfriends walks up to them. “Why do you guys all look like you just came back from a wake? You just graduated!” Yep, that was me graduation day. Off to my own funeral. Gawd, was that depressing. These three friends just want to have one last blast of a summer before real life carries them off, kicking and screaming.

The movie isn’t anything special, but it is the kind of fun summertime fluff you just need every once and a while to keep you sane. These childhood friends hold daily “board meetings” at the pool, where they reign as kings and queens, maestros of the cannonball. They put off meaningful relationships and real jobs like we all do, afraid to let real life take over. The ending is a bit predictable and not entirely originally crafted, but up until that point, this movie is pretty darn fun.

(SEE)

——Fallen Angel (1945)——

My goodness. An actual noir title from the Fox Film Noir collection. Heaven’s to Betsy! Fallen Angel is actually pretty good at that. The great noir tough guy Dana Andrews is a drifter con man who walks into a nowhere town between LA and San Francisco when he runs out of money to pay his bus fare. When he gets into town he meets a local waitress/femme fatale who wants a husband, but not just any husband. A husband who’s loaded. Andrews falls for her hard. He plans a grift on the town’s good girl, where he marries her to get access to all of her money. The movie then plays out as a battle for this man’s soul. Who is going to get his heart in the end? Will he do the right thing with the good girl or will he be brought down by the femme fatale? Where the movie starts is nowhere near where it ends, which makes this movie kind of interesting in its own way. This isn’t a standout noir title, but for fans of the genre this one is worth picking up.

(SEE)

——Crazy Love (1987)——

This Mondo Macabro release wasn’t nearly as freaky as I thought it was going to be, much to my disappointment. I was expecting something far weirder, especially based on the quote on the front of the box that reads, “The most astonishing film debut since David Lynch’s Eraserhead.” Don’t be scared off by that quote, because this is almost nothing like Eraserhead. It’s actually a pretty straightforward coming of age film about three key nights in a man’s sexual development over twenty years. Of course, that’s where things get a little weird.

The first story is about the man as a boy, first learning about sex, which destroys his notions of what romantic love is based on what he’s learned from the movies. His friend tries to teach him, with disastrous results, first trying to get him to make out with a girl on an amusement park ride, which ends in humiliation when he doesn’t know how to kiss a girl. Then they try to witness a couple having a sex, but are interrupted by the woman’s son. They go to the boy’s house, find the mother passed out drunk, and our main character goes to have sex with her passed out, but she wakes up with him on top of her and they run away. Finally he sees what sex is…when he walks in on his parents doing it.

Flash forward to the same boy right before graduation. He’s cursed with horrible acne that makes him into a freak. He’s in love with one of the prettiest girls in school, but can’t approach her because of the acne. His friend’s whore of a girlfriend can’t even do the deed with him. Finally he gets the guts to ask his crush to dance in one of the most surreal moments of the film, definitely the one scene that made me want to buy the film. He wraps toilet paper around his head like a burn victim and dances with the girl, much to the surprise of everyone else at the dance. This story doesn’t end happy though. After that dance he goes out, gets drunk on stolen Jack Daniels and gets caught by the police passed out in front of his house.

The final chapter involves true love and necrophilia. Not exactly for the faint of heart. The movie is pretty good though, and if any of the above sounded interesting to you, you might want to check it out. Plus, then you can say that you’ve seen a movie from Holland. That’s always a plus in my book.

(SEE)

(May 31)

——Everything Is Illuminated (2005)——

This is a fun little movie about the Holocaust. What a nice sentence that was, huh? Anyway, Elijah Wood wears freaky high prescription glasses as The Collector, who collects seemingly anything in an effort to help him “remember”. His grandfather is the only one that he doesn’t have anything collected from. Just an insect in amber from when he died. When his grandmother gives him a photo of his grandfather and another woman in the Ukraine, the woman who saved him from the Nazis in 1942, he goes off trying to find that woman, or at least the place where the photo was taken.

In the Ukraine he’s taken to his destination by an English challenged translator/breakdancer and his quirky grandfather/driver who insists he is blind so that he can keep his deranged seeing-eye bitch, Sammy Davis Jr. Jr. Most of the jokes come from that dog, who manages to be crazy as a loon and cute as a button, all at the same time. The movie isn’t great or anything, but it is definitely entertaining and worth at least a rental if you are interested.

(SEE)

——Masters of Horror: Incident On and Off A Mountain Road (2005)——

Ready for more Masters of Horror? This edition, brought to you by Phantasm director Don Coscarelli, would actually be really great if he didn’t rely on so much freakin’ lightning. I mean, seriously, are they in the middle of a thunderstorm or a rave? If there is so much lightning, where is all the thunder or the rain? It’s so damn distracting and definitely took away from the experience. That said, otherwise I thought this was the most interesting Masters of Horror episode that I’ve seen yet.

Basically a woman crashes her car on a mountain road and is chased by a big bad killer guy. Pretty standard horror staple. The twist is that she has been prepared for dealing with such a big bad killer guy. In fact, she might even be the one big bad killer guy has to worry about. The movie is interspersed with flashbacks to a relationship she had with a survivalist before the film started. I won’t ruin any more about what that has to do with being chased by a psycho in the woods, but I will just say that it is a surprise that you’ll probably really dig. And hey, if you don’t, there is also a really good drill press to the eyeball sequence to gross you out. Enjoy.

(SEE)

(June 1)

——The Seven-Ups (1973)——

From the producer of Bullitt (the back of the box actually spells the movie’s title wrong, but I’ll forgive them) and The French Connection, I think says it all. This movie actually feels quite a bit like both of them, more so like The French Connection. It isn’t as good, but still, this is actually a really great 70’s cop movie that I had never heard about before it came out on DVD. And yes, I know what you are all wondering: There is a car chase in this movie and it is awesome.

First to the plot. It’s pretty simple, although the film tries to make it sound more complicated than it really is. Roy Scheider is the leader of the NYPD’s Seven-Up squad (meaning that they work on cases where the criminals get seven or more years in prison). He’s using an old buddy snitch to find information about what’s going on in the streets. The snitch turns on him, using the names of mob guys to operate a kidnapping/ransom business. When the Seven-Ups get close one of them is killed, and Roy Scheider isn’t stopping until he finds out who is responsible.

Which leads us to the action and the car chase, all filmed in gritty 70’s French Connection style. The car chase goes on for quite a bit, from inside the city to outside of it (it kind of looks like they are on the Taconic at the end of it), involving lots of squealing tires, crunched metal, and great crashes. One of my favorite genres is the 70’s car chase movie, and this one doesn’t disappoint.

(SEE)

(June 3)

——The Family Stone (2005)——

I remember originally seeing the trailer for this movie. Cute, funny, great cast…but not exactly a movie you were dying to go out and see. I mean, it looks like every other quirky family Christmas comedy out there. Then I saw the movie at the theater and was completely shocked to find a great movie underneath the stereotypical surface. Watching this movie makes you think of the cliché before it became cliché, and I mean that in the best way possible. This is one of the unsung great movies of last year.

Sarah Jessica Parker, stiff, proper, a little snobbish and stuck up at first, goes home with her boyfriend, Dermot Mulroney, the perfect child who hasn’t yet figured out what he wants to do with his life, for Christmas, only to be tortured by his eccentric, possibly hippie raised family. By everyone, that is, except for his brother played by Luke Wilson, the slacker stoner who doesn’t really seem to fit that persona at all, and for some reason, seems to have a thing for her. The worst with the torture is Rachel McAdams, the NPR loving frump who thinks she knows everything she needs to know about her before really understanding her. Add to that a dying mother and a deaf/gay brother and you’ve got all the classic trappings of a holiday comedy. Except that this movie is actually well written and well acted. Surprisingly so. Even when it is manipulating your emotions you can tell that it is honest and genuine about it. The movie is uber-funny too. This was actually one of the movies I saw late last year that made me want to start writing the movie review again. I don’t think I can give it any better recommendation that that.

(MUST SEE)

——The Awful Truth (1937)——

Forget about watching The Break-up this weekend with Jennifer and Vince, watch this classic Cary Grant comedy instead. Now, I don’t actually know if The Break-up sucks, as I haven’t seen it yet. I’m just going off the general reviews out there saying it does. What I can tell you is that the Awful Truth is way funny, and very good. One noticeable difference I noted from the reviews that I read is that in The Break-up there doesn’t really seem to be any good reason for the two squabblers to stay together. Vaughn’s character apparently has no redeemable features other than that he is Vince Vaughn. Aniston’s character has good reason to want out.

The Awful Truth, on the other hand, is about a couple, perfect for each other, who happen to take a silly argument too far, the end result being that they file for divorce. You see, Grant is suspicious of his wife’s European pretty boy music instructor and lets those suspicious grow into real feelings of doubt. He’s been no better though about full disclosure, having lied about a trip to Florida. They get the divorce, which will finalize in 90 days. Thus begins a great premise for a romantic comedy. First one, then the other, look for romance in the arms of another, trying to make the other jealous. Of course, once things actually start to get serious for real, the other comes in and ruins that romance for them. Back and forth it goes. The audience knows what they really feel, but they don’t, not until the “Awwww” ending that’ll waken the hopeless romantic in anyone.

(SEE)

(June 4)

——Drugstore Cowboy (1989)——

Drugstore Cowboy would make for a great triple-header with Trainspotting and Requiem for a Dream. If you were to end said marathon with Requiem it would also be a good triple-header for an intervention. That said, director Gus Van Sant keeps the tone of the film refreshingly light while making room for more serious subject matter. It’s the 70’s. A team of two couples go around robbing drugstores and split their takes equally, living off the drugs until they run out and need to rob another store. They get along all right for a while, as good as thieving druggies can, but when the cops come a knocking trying to bust them tensions in the group start to run high.

Want to see some of your favorite actors really, really young? You’ve got Matt Dillon as the protagonist leader of the group, Kelly Lynch, almost unrecognizable as his girl (I kept thinking she was someone else) and Heather Graham as the new teenage girlfriend of the other member of the group, all looking like they just stepped out of high school. I never have seen them all looking so young. And even at that age, they were good actors too. Matt Dillon really is the glue that holds the group and the film together. When a bit of bad luck causes him to ditch the life for a normal one, you can’t help root for him even knowing that things will probably end tragically.

Drugstore Cowboy is quite the realistic depiction of drug addiction interspersed with little moments of levity to keep you invested. My personal favorite moment involves a hotel room filled with drugs and a dead body. The clerk tells them they have to get out today, because the room was already reserved for someone. Who? Well, they just happen to be hosting a sheriff convention at the hotel. D’oh.

(SEE)

——Lessons of Darkness (1992)——

I never really got into documentaries before, that is before I saw Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man. Now I suddenly find myself with plenty of them that I enjoy. Like this one. Which also happens to be directed by Werner Herzog. Herzog is really one talented filmmaker. This documentary is about the oil fires in Kuwait after the first Gulf War and how it reshaped the landscape of the country. Herzog shot as much as he could while in Kuwait, thinking he could shape the film after he got back to the editing room, which leaves the film with lots of long camera shots of helicopters covering the apocalyptic landscapes. Instead of making the film into a straight news story, which could have gotten pretty boring, pretty darn quick, Herzog blurs the line between fiction and documentary, using his distinctive narration to give the audience the feeling of being in Dante’s Inferno or in the middle of a science fiction film, all while using very atmospheric classic music (Wagner) to make the film a mind-blowing, hypnotic experience. Looking down at the devastation of the landscape, buildings crumbled, lakes of oil covering everything, and those flaming oil fires plays all sorts of tricks on your mind. It’ll make you really sad. It will definitely make you think. Most perplexing though are the final images of the film. I really want to know what was going on there, if it was just a trick of Herzog’s. At the end, after the crews have put out the oil fires, you see then throwing torches into an oil geyser, igniting it. Why, I have no idea. Like the rest of the film, it’ll give you something to think about.

(MUST SEE)