(June 19)

——Au Revoir Les Enfants (1987)——

Louis Malle does it again, and oh is this one a heartbreaker. Just try and make it through that last poignant scene without a tear in the eye. Come on, try it. I dare ya. Like Lacombe, Lucien this is another story of occupied France in World War II, but this one pertains to two boys in a Catholic Boys school during the war. The main character leaves his over affectionate mother in Paris at a train station (showing shades of Murmur of the Heart’s Oedipus complex) and starts school mid-semester with the other boys. At first he is picked on by the others as an outcast, but one of the boys slowly warms up to him after discovering that they have common interests. He slowly begins to discover something else. This boy is treated different by the teachers and clergy. Why? Because he is Jewish.

The majority of the film is a very well made coming of age movie about how boys will be boys. Malle picked some wonderful child actors for his leads and pulls amazing performances out of them. It doesn’t hurt that the script and direction are top notch too. And then when the war finally makes its way into their little community…well, I don’t want to give anything away. You should absolutely see this movie for yourself. Get the whole Malle boxset from Criterion. Each film in it is gold. God bless you Criterion. You’ve done it again.

(MUST SEE)

——Nacho Libre (2006)——

Stupid computer ate my first swing at this. Anywho. When I first saw the trailer for this I couldn’t wait to see it. The movie looked hilarious. The comic timing and rhythm was dead on. Unfortunately this is one of those cases where all of the best parts of the movie made their way into the trailer. There really isn’t much more in there. Even the good parts from the trailer don’t seem all that funny in the movie, because the giddy rhythm of the trailer is gone. Don’t get me wrong, there are still some laughs to be had. Nacho’s theme song on the soundtrack in particular delighted me to no end. The bad part is that they seem to have come up with a lot of really funny ideas on paper but failed to follow through with the funny. It’s a shame, since everyone involved is so damn funny.

Jack Black is an orphan who grows up to become a member of the clergy at the orphanage, except that the other Fathers won’t let him do anything other than cook. What’s really bad is that he is given next to nothing to make the food, so all of his meals suck. Enter a really hot latina nun who he feels he has to impress and a lot of hungry orphans. Ever since he was young he wanted to be a wrestler and when he sees a chance to make some money to buy food for the orphans and impress the nun, he goes for it. He sucks at wrestling though. That’s one of the things I really didn’t like about the movie. Sure, it’s funny to see him suck at first. But he just keeps on sucking, never winning. Depressing. Not exactly the feeling you want to have in a comedy.

The whole experience was rather blah. I just kept waiting for the funny to come and it never did. Sometimes a movie just has it, sometimes it doesn’t. This one, sad as it is to say, doesn’t.

(MISS)

——Get Carter (1971)——

Michael Caine is Jack Carter, a slick London mobster, who travels home to Newcastle after hearing of his brother’s tragic suicide, except Carter knows his brother better than that and doesn’t buy the whole suicide story. And the more he digs into it, the more it seems that he’s right about a cover-up. Although the story is a little confusing and slow at first, it picks up quite a bit a steam the more it moves forward as the plot begins to unravel.

Caine is delightfully badass in this film. He has no problem with busting the heads of the hooligans who think they can muscle him out of Newcastle and then minutes later sleeping with the landlady of the flat he is renting to keep her quiet over the trouble he is causing. Caught naked in bed by more tough guys, he still manages to turn the situation around by walking them out of the building at the point of a shotgun, still naked, right onto the street. He’s out for revenge at any price. It’s a slick kind of noir fable. For those who like their noir grim and gritty, or just like seeing a badass Michael Caine in his heyday, this would be a good choice for you.

(I just recently saw a trailer for I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead, the new film by director Mike Hodges starring Clive Owen, which seems like exactly the same movie as this one, oddly enough.)

(SEE)

——Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic (2005)——

Sarah Silverman is a funny lady. I like her. Then why do I find this movie so unfunny? It could have something to do with the extremely lame musical numbers that were added into what is really just a film of one of her standup acts, added into it to pad the time to feature length. Or it could be that the tone of the film is filled with so much negativity and hate. That is Silverman’s style, I should add, but what’s missing is that most of the time you never get that “I’m just kidding!” vibe from her. Some of the time, but not often enough. You all know I’m not a prude. A lot of her material I find really funny. But I don’t know, you get the idea (accentuated by skits with her friends that she absolutely hates) that she’s not having as much fun as she should be. That she’s just being mean to get a rise out of people. It didn’t gel with me.

(MISS)

(June 20)

——Chopper (2000)——

Mark “Chopper” Read was a real life killer who gained tabloid celebrity by sheer force of personality and went on later in life to write several best selling books about his life. Eric Bana plays him with a cool and collected sense of humor, which after watching the interviews of the real life Chopper Read seems to be really dead on with who the guy was.

The film starts off with Read in prison for some bullshit charge, but using his time to make a name for himself. He’s having a bit of a war with the other half of the inmates in his block, but they don’t want to really fight. So he stabs his counterpart in the other gang repeatedly in the face for no reason, only to apologize to the guy immediately afterwards as he falls down, dying. This really freaks his friends out because they think that he’s gone off the deep end, so his best friend stabs him over and over in the chest, to which Chopper doesn’t even flinch in one of the best scenes in the movie. He just keeps talking to his friend, telling him he forgives him for doing it. He doesn’t die from his wounds, but his friend makes up some bullshit charge that Chopper attacked him and he was only defending himself. After healing his wounds they send Chopper back to his old block, which he knows means death for him, so he gets someone to chop off his ears and then laughs at the police all the way back to the infirmary.

Once out of jail Chopper starts working for the cops as an informer, while at the same time extorting money out of drug dealers. All of this makes him extremely paranoid though. He doesn’t trust anyone, including his girlfriend, and his behavior gets more and more neurotic. When he actually confesses a murder he has committed to the cops he works for, they don’t even believe him.

The movie isn’t perfect, but it’s interesting, and Bana does a bang up job with the role. This one is worth a rent.

(SEE)

(June 21)

——The Right Stuff (1983)——

This movie didn’t originally interest me until I read a Great Movie review of it in Ebert’s latest book. So I got it, check it out, and low and behold I actually had a great movie on my hands. It’s a really interesting film for discussion too. The film is about the first NASA astronauts from the Mercury space program, and yet the film begins and ends with Chuck Yeager, the famous test pilot who never stepped a foot in the NASA program. So why is he in the movie? Well, he is in the book, written by Tom Wolfe. Roger Ebert brings up in his review that director Philip Kaufman apparently had a huge fight with the screenwriter, who wanted to focus the movie on just the Mercury program. He didn’t see the need for Chuck Yeager, whose story had nothing to do with those of the astronauts, but Kaufman couldn’t have disagreed more, thinking him the real heart of the story, like Wolfe did. The fight was so bad that the screenwriter left the film and only Kaufman’s name rests under the screenwriter’s credit. My sister, who watched the movie with me, likewise wondered why Yeager reappeared at the end (it should also be noted that my sister was not pleased about the film’s almost three and half hour running time). She didn’t see why Yeager needed to be in the movie.

I’d have to agree with Kaufman’s choice though. Yeager IS the heart of the film. Even though he has nothing to do with the Mercury program, if we didn’t have him the movie would just be about a couple of guys who went into space. You’d never really understand what kind of guts it took to be those first guys who took a big risk doing all of that. Yeager actually has the best line in the film. When some of his fellow test pilots start joking around that the astronauts are just simply monkeys being rocketed into space, Yeager chastises them for their comments, noting that the difference between them and the monkeys was that the monkeys had no idea how many tons of explosives they were sitting on top of. By having Yeager you get to see what a test pilot is and was and what they did, and then it has a bigger impact in the scenes where the astronauts ask for a window in their capsules and controls in their pods. They’re not monkeys, they’re pilots taking huge risks. When John Glen has problems during his mission and safely flies himself back to Earth, you see the importance of why these guys should be called pilots.

Yeager, it should be noted for those who don’t know, was probably the greatest test pilot the world has ever seen. He was actually the first one to break the sound barrier when no one thought that it could be done. The big shame of it all is that so few people actually know his name, because most of his accomplishments were kept secret from the public for fear that the Soviets would know what we were doing. Once Sputnik went up into space things changed. NASA became very public so that funding could be properly allocated to beat the Russians in the space race we were quickly losing. But Yeager kept doing his thing in private, almost being the first man to fly a plane into outer space. That’s the image Kaufman leaves with us. It baffled my sister who just wanted to the movie to end already, but I got it. And really loved the movie.

(MUST SEE)

(June 22)

——16 Blocks (2005)——

I originally reviewed this one when I saw it in the theater March 7. So, because I’ve already got like a billion other reviews to write, I’m skipping out on this one. Just go see it!

(SEE)

——Cemetery Man (1993)——

This is one of those movies that fits into the category of best movies that you’ve never heard of. It reminded me of quite a bit of different horror movies at different times, but never did the film feel unoriginal. It actually felt unbelievably original and I loved every quirky second of it.

Rupert Everett is a moody young man, very Bruce Campbell in Evil Dead II, who runs a local cemetery in Italy. But besides just taking care of the grounds and doing the occasional burial, he also has to take care of the living dead problem. For some reason, at this cemetery, within five days of being buried the dead come back to life and Everett is there to shoot them in the head and bury them again so that no one in town is any the wiser. He does so in a rather detached manner. He isn’t exactly a people person and doesn’t really seem to care about anything. That is until a young, beautiful widow shows up in his life, who he falls in love with and gets to fall in love with him using their mutual admiration for all things morbid. They have sex on her husband’s grave, which as you can probably guess turns into a poor location when her husband rises from his grave and bites her. She dies of fright (oddly enough, not from the bite, which doesn’t turn the living into the undead) and comes back to life and they briefly make love before his hunchback monosyllabic helper kills her while trying to take a bite out of his neck.

Everett is now really depressed, that is until he sees a girl that looks just like his dead lover and starts a relationship with her. That’s when things really start to get fucked up. I don’t want to ruin things for you by giving you more of the plot because there are really a lot of cool twists and surprises in this movie. It is technically a horror movie with lots of gore, but you can’t take any of it too seriously because it is just so damn hilarious. The movie is filled with classic instantly quotable lines. The writing is witty as fuck. The direction is great and Everett is so awesome as the lead in this. He sells the movie like no one’s business. And the ending, well the ending is one gigantic head fuck that will have you talking for weeks. If you love movies, you owe it to yourself to see this one. It is fan-freaking-tastic. I promise you that you won’t be disappointed. My sister even sat through the whole thing, and she hates horror movies.

(DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH)

(June 24)

——The Beast (1975)——

[WARNING: The following review is not for the faint of heart.]

OK, hands up: How many of you have been looking for a movie where a wolf creature screws a girl in the woods with his gigantic erect phallus, complete with amazing amounts of onscreen ejaculate? Yeah, I knew that all of you would raise your hands. Actually, that’s about all that is interesting with this movie (if interesting is the right word…) Apparently this was actually a short film before it was a film, the short film being the infamous 14 minutes of the Beast attack that becomes a young girl’s fantasy at the end of the movie. I’m not really sure that a movie needed to be erected around that. Mainly because there doesn’t seem to be a movie here.

The amount of worthwhile new material in this could only fill another short film. The rest of the film involves a rather banal Bunuel-like chamber drama, involving a duplicitous father trying to marry off his weird son to a beautiful American girl, but her family will only approve the marriage if the family’s Cardinal ordains the marriage, which he won’t because they are all pagans. Got that? 75% of the movie is just them waiting for the Cardinal to show up. Zzz.

To make sure that you don’t walk out on the movie ten minutes or less into it, Walerian Borowczyk makes the interesting decision to film for us a stud horse giving his money maker to a female horse in all of its carnal glory. I really don’t think you’ve ever seen a movie start off this way before. You see WAY more than you ever wanted to see about life on the farmyard. Then there is a subplot where the black servant is constantly called away from doing the master’s daughter before they finish, so that the poor horny girl has to rub herself on the bedpost like a cat in heat. Interesting, but doesn’t really go anywhere. Finally, we have the American bride, who has carnal fantasies after seeing the horses having sex, which leads us to the dream/fantasy sequence, which is honestly one of the most fucked up sequences in film that I have ever seen.

OK, so I know you are all dying to know what happens (because I guarantee that none of you will actually see it unless I force you to). In the 1800s a girl plays a harpsichord in an outdoor veranda when she notices a baby sheep break its tether and run off into the woods. She follows it. The happy music continues. The Beast slaughters the sheep and leaves its remains all over the road for the woman to find. She is frightened. The Beast comes out of the woods and chases her. She runs, gradually losing most of her clothes as she goes. The Beast’s giant phallus grows as he chases her down. She tries to climb a tree but falls out, hanging from the branch. The Beast comes upon her and licks her up and down while her feet unintentionally fondle his manliness, causing the first of many orgasms for him. She runs. He catches her and starts going at it. She’s horrified at first but then, hmm…that’s pretty good. She really gets into it. The Beast must not have had sex in a thousand years, because he’s having the time of his life, if you get my meaning. Soon she’s doing all sorts of things to the Beast that you only see in porno movies. Perhaps not even in most porno movies. This is surreal to the extreme. This sequence is bizarre enough to justify watching the rest of the craptastic movie, although not by much, and definitely not for everyone. In fact, unless you are one of the one percent of the population out there as weird as me, this movie is definitely going to be an avoid for you. (The rest of you sick fucks are probably ordering it as you read this.)

(AVOID)

——Ilsa: The Wicked Warden (1977)——

The last of the Ilsa movies has a new director this time, Jess Franco, and likewise follows a new formula, different from the other two movies. This Ilsa is decidedly darker and more disturbing, but unfortunately not nearly as fun. It’s also not Ilsa. Sure, Dyanne Thorne is back as a sadistic warden in a South American mental facility for sex fiends/revolutionaries, but this time she’s known as Greta. Maybe after the Nazis fell in Europe she fled to South America and changed her name to avoid persecution, I don’t know. Anyway, she’s back and as sadistic as ever. And her death in this one is particularly gruesome. The metaphor involved in her death is a tad bit overplayed by Franco, but still, what a delicious way for a villainess to die.

The plot (“HA! PLOT!” you say) involves a young woman with a sassy Bettie Page haircut going undercover into the hellhole/institution in order to find out what happened to her missing sister. I think it is pretty safe to say that she doesn’t find very many happy answers. Franco pumps up the T&A quotient by having the girls shower often and wear uniforms that consist of a single button down shirt that just barely covers their money maker when standing upright and nothing else. Greta/Ilsa has two bodyguards again this time, except they aren’t hot and (thankfully) don’t get naked. Instead she has a lesbian mole that likes being hurt to find out information on the crazies/girls for her. Fun! Well, not enough, unfortunately. This one has its good moments but is really more for completests (you sick fucks know who you are. Wait, that’s me!) than for casual viewing.

(MISS)

(June 25)

——Lethal Weapon 4 (1998)——

The final Lethal Weapon movie is, yes, the weakest. You can tell the writers are running out of ways to tell the same story all over again. Joe Pesci is finally starting to get on your nerves. Chris Rock is really only in the movie to do one of his angry black man routines. Jet Li is pretty damn awesome, but he has one of the all time worse mullets. Buzz shaved head, three feet of skinny tail in the back. And did anyone for even a second believe that Danny Glover had suddenly become a crooked cop? I mean, come on, where the hell did that plot line come from? I think the writers just had to come up with an excuse for how his house and boat could be hilariously destroyed in every movie only to be miraculously rebuilt better than ever in the next film.

Despite all of its shortcomings, Lethal Weapon 4 still manages to be a nice sendoff for the series, one every fan of the first three movies will have to see just to see how it will end. Richard Donner keeps on delivering the action/buddy comedy goods. I’m still amazed at how hard an R this movies are. Imagine one of these movies being made today. It would totally be watered down to a PG-13 to cater to a larger audience. But nope, here you will see people get shot and hear the F-Bomb get dropped a thousand times. What I really like about these movies though is how much fun everyone seems to be having. The films have an almost cinema verte (I know I’m spelling that wrong but am too lazy to look it up. Or am I? Damn brain!) style to them, where the movies are less about plot and more about just following Riggs and Murtaugh around with a camera to catch all of the funny things that happen to them. It seems just a coincidence that a plot finds a way to slide itself in there.

In short: If you haven’t already seen these movies, go out, buy the boxset of all four of them, and sit back, relax and have a hell of a good time.

(SEE)

——Super Troopers (2002)——

I didn’t see this for a while until a friend gave it to me last year and told me that I had to watch it. I’m glad he did. I don’t know why the other Broken Lizard movies are so unfunny and this one is so genius, but that’s just how it is. It helps a little bit that this is mostly stoner humor and takes place in Vermont (the main highway might as well be Route 7), but that’s not all of it. The movie is just stone cold funny. The Broken Lizard comedy troupe came up with gold when they thought this one up. Chugging maple syrup? Hilarious. The highway games? Genius. The opening scene alone, where they pull over the stoned college kids and fuck them up good, has become a cult classic. It doesn’t hurt that everyone making this movie seems to be having a blast, up to and including a marvelous Brian Cox. I didn’t even catch the first time that I watched this that Lynda frickin’ Carter was the Governor! That’s right, Wonder Woman! Sweet!

This meowvie gets me too worked up and excited. I’ve got to stop. Go buy this and watch it over and over. Now.

(MUST SEE)