(August 28)

——Kicking and Screaming (1995)——

For anyone who has ever graduated from college and then wondered: “What’s next?” this is totally the movie for you. Writer-director Noah Baumbach made one of my favorite movies of last year, The Squid and the Whale, but this was the movie that started his career. And it’s brilliant. I just love this movie.

Kicking and Screaming is insanely quotable, like any great cult film is, about four college friends who all talk the same way and enter a state of arrested development around the college campus for the first semester of school after they graduate. The movie is all dialogue, and amazing dialogue–punchy, sarcastic and bitingly funny. One friend is afraid to go to grad school because it is in a different time zone. Another re-enlists in college to learn all of the stuff he missed out on the first time around because of partying, only to miss it the second time around because of all of the partying. One is just bitter and caustic, until a little love teaches him to lighten up. And the main character pines over his girlfriend who left to take classes in Prague. All of them are afraid of making big decisions and jumping into life.

This movie is soooo funny. Never has a movie about a group of people just sitting around and talking about bullshit been so incisive and yet meaningless. If you loved The Squid and the Whale like I did, here’s another movie for you.

(DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH)

——Divorce Italian Style (1962)——

Marcello Mastroianni is such a great actor. Every time I see a movie with him in it, I end up loving it, if just for him alone. Divorce Italian Style is a fun movie for him. He plays a Sicilian Baron with nothing to do, a boring life, and a homely wife he can’t stand hovering around him. He’s fallen in love with his cousin instead and wants to be with her. One problem though. In Sicily it’s illegal to get a divorce. How to get rid of his wife then?

The solution is to drive his wife into the arms of another man. Then, if made a cuckold, he can kill his wife in a fit of jealousy to defend his honor, and the Italian legal system will go very easy on him for his “momentary” lack of sanity. What’s great about this movie is that while the Baron is plotting a murder he’s also completely sympathetic to the audience. The subject of the satire here is the Sicilian society that encourages this kind of behavior, not the one man. This is definitely a black comedy. The Baron always looks quite exhausted, the stifling behavior of his wife personified by the stifling effect of the hot Sicilian weather. He’s always overwhelmed by it all. He also seems to take the love affair of his wife quite well. While being a cuckold in society would normally be a very shameful thing it is exactly what he wants in order to get what he wants. Life just isn’t that perfect though…

(SEE)

——The Toolbox Murders (1977)——

It took me more than a month to see it, but finally! I finished The Toolbox Murders. My first DVD was somehow defective, in that it just stopped playing about 30 minutes into the movie. I got it to work again by putting it into my laptop, but even then it stopped again just before I saw how it ended. That really pissed me off. So I had to send it in and wait for a new copy to see how it all ended.

The movie is…not bad. It pretty much has a great beginning and ending, with a bunch of crap filler in the middle to pad out the running time. The first thirty minutes are pure horror genius. One naughty girl after another is killed with various tools and not a shred of plot is to be seen. This long chain of violence is finally broken when a good girl is kidnapped by the killer. Then the boring crap starts. Basically the brother and the cops try to figure out who did the killing and where the girl went. None of this is very interesting. It doesn’t get good again until we actually find out where the girl went. The killer is a father who lost his daughter in a car accident. He thinks the good girl is the reincarnation of his daughter. There are a lot of really good monologues with the father, and he is very creepy explaining himself to the tied up and terrified girl. Surprisingly good acting there. Even better is the twist that crazy might run in the family…

A title card tells us at the end that apparently this was based on a true story, which only makes the documentary-like drawn-out killings and the painfully unflinching monologues at the end that much more potent. This isn’t a great movie, but fans of the slasher genre will get a real kick out of this one.

(SEE)

——City of God (2002)——

I really do love this movie. It was one of the films on my short list of great movies that I wanted to rewatch. As Roger Ebert is quoted as saying right on the cover of the box, it is “one of the best films you’ll ever see.” I don’t tend to argue with him on this point. City of God is an amazing film, filled with stunning visuals, a great script, fantastic acting from the mostly non-professional cast, and one of the best editing jobs in the history of cinema. I just love the editing in this movie.

The narrator of the story, an amateur photographer that grew up in the City of God, tells the story of how drugs (aka Cocaine) transformed a ghetto outside of Rio de Janeiro into one of the most violent non-warring places on earth. He tells the story in a fairly unconventional way. The narrative becomes fractured because as he is telling the story, whenever a new important character or situation becomes important the story backtracks to tell this new back-story before moving on with the rest of it. It reminds me a lot of a structure Quentin Tarantino might employ in one of his movies (not surprisingly, he’s a big fan). Gang leaders rise and fall, and throughout it the theme remains how the violence and corruption in the City of God just beget more violence and corruption. The movie can be shockingly violent at times, especially as we see Little Zee’s rise to power. He’s an ugly kid that no one wanted to have around as a gangster, so he goes out of his way to become the biggest most badass gangster ever, killing who ever and whom ever with no remorse. Actions have a way of coming back to haunt you though in the City of God.

This movie is unbelievable and should definitely be on your short list of movies to see if you haven’t already seen it.

(MUST SEE)

(August 29)

——Beerfest (2006)——

Ross wanted to take me to go see a movie for my birthday. Since I had already seen everything worth seeing out at the time, I saw this again. It still made me laugh. Good sign. It’s infantile, but good infantile. See my review of it last week for more info.

(MUST SEE)

(September 1)

——The Gumball Rally (1976)——

Like a gumball, this movie is pure sugar filled fun. You chew it around until it loses its taste, and then you move on to something else. I like the premise of this film though. It’s ripe for potential as a remake. Basically, an eccentric millionaire has started an unofficial race called the Gumball Rally. It’s a very illegal race from NYC to LA as fast as you can possibly drive for the reward of a Gumball machine trophy, that the proprietor of the race seems to win every time. The real fun of the race seems to just be driving it though. Basically you get a phone call or telegram that consists of just one word: Gumball. When you hear that you drop everything and rush to NYC to start the race. It’s silly and very fun.

This is a light comedy with lots of great thrills as cars drive in excess of 150 mph. There is the millionaire’s competitor that wants to win more than anything, so he hires an Italian Grand Prix champ (Raul Julia) to be his driver, with the one problem being that he’s an extreme womanizer. There’s also the police chief who wants to shut down the race once and for all, but seems to be the only policeman in the entire United States with any interest in catching these extreme speeders. It’s not a classic, but it’s very entertaining, and worth watching for any and all car chase fans out there.

(SEE)

——This Island Earth (1955)——

I didn’t realize it at first, but I had seen this movie before. Not exactly this movie, but the Mystery Science Theater movie, which riffs on this film. I just assumed this was a sci-fi classic. But aside from a few impressive (for 1955) special effects, this movie is actually kind of a hunk of crap, making it ripe for Mystery Science Theater spoofing.

First there is the fact that almost nothing actually makes any sense. I’m no nuclear scientist, but even I knew that I lot of this science was made up or just plain wrong. The story is basically about a hot-shot nuclear scientist who successfully builds a mysterious, hulking piece of shit two-way communicator sent to him by an alien race looking for smarty pants scientists to help them solve their current energy crisis. After a bunch of hooey techno-babble he heads off in an alien plane to…a farm in Georgia, where he meets a female scientist he used to know (but who at first pretends not to know him) and the alien leader, who is basically running a cult for limitless nuclear energy. After learning that the aliens have less than noble intentions for them they try to escape. The aliens then try to fry them with some sort of laser (don’t they want these scientists to help them?) and then kidnap them again to take them back to the alien world, under attack by…somebody. I have no idea who. I thought it was the crazy bug-eyed aliens on the cover, but no, they are just the slaves of these people. They get to the alien world with just enough time left to see that they can’t really do anything to help and so that a bug-eyed alien can attack the woman. They then go back home. The moral of the story? Well, I don’t actually know what the moral is. I’m not sure there even is one.

The main character is a prick. The woman, even though she is supposed to be one of the Earth’s top scientists, is there mainly for her breasts and for insulting remarks. Granted, she’s got a nice rack, but couldn’t they think of any other reason for having her in this movie? The best part of the movie is when the jock main character beats the bug-eyed alien with a pipe. It’s pretty hilarious. Actually, pretty much any good part in this movie is good because it is unintentionally hilarious. Unless you are up for some craptastic 50’s sci-fi, this one is mainly an

(AVOID)

(September 2)

——Vanishing Point (1971)——

[Note: This is a review of the longer UK version of the film. I haven’t seen the US version, but both are included on the DVD.]

Now this is a crazy, different car chase movie. A driver known only as Kowalski decides to drive from Denver to San Francisco in less than 15 hours, with only a handful of speed to keep him going. No other real motivation is given. It’s hinted at, but I think his reasonings have more to do with higher symbolic meanings than anything else. I think it is really a movie of its time, a hippie movie for the 70’s, after the disillusionment had kicked into full force. Kowalski becomes a cult hero as word of his exploits make it to the masses through a blind pirate radio DJ. Everyone wants to see him stick it to the man and make it to San Fran. But he’s also a tragic character. No one actually expects him to make it, but then that’s why they want him to do it. He’s a hero pushing it to the limits as he sticks it to the Man. Speed is his only God. He’s someone the counter-culture can get behind.

Along the way he meets some colorful folks, from an old prospector/snake catcher, to some snake worshipers turned hippie Christian rock band, to a nude woman on a motorcycle. You could say he’s on a spiritual quest through the purifying desert. He’s tested, and it is only when he gives into temptation that he falls into disaster. But it is more a Christ-like sacrifice than anything else. Let me just reiterate: This is not your typical car chase movie. But because of that this film is insanely interesting. And it doesn’t hurt that the chase sequences with the Dodge Challenger are completely kick ass.

(MUST SEE)

(September 3)

——Paris, Texas (1984)——

If watching every movie were as enjoyable and pure a cinematic experience as watching Paris, Texas, then I don’t think I’d ever do anything else. Oh wait, I don’t do anything else. But you get the picture. Director Wim Wenders (Wings of Desire) crafts a rare film in which emotions are real and earned, unlike the normal Hollywood sentiment that is steam shoveled down our throats. It’s rare to find a movie out there in which the characters seem so real that you forget that you are watching a fictional film.

Paris, Texas starts out with Travis (Harry Dean Stanton) wandering out of the desert like some mythical figure. He stumbles into a rest stop looking for water and faints. Later the local doctor finds him mute and with amnesia, and calls his brother in California to come pick him up. For the first 25 minutes of the film Travis doesn’t say a word. He just wants to go off to…something, out in the distance and keeps trying to ditch his brother until his brother finally gets to him. They drive back to California.

Something happened to Travis, four years ago. He left his wife and child and was never heard from again. His wife (Nastassja Kinski) disappeared too, leaving his son with his brother and sister-in-law. The son has grown up thinking that his aunt and uncle were really his mother and father. As Travis starts to come around he slowly starts to build a relationship with his son until they both decide that they want to go out and find his mother.

There are a lot of long monologues in this film, brilliantly written, directed and acted in long takes. Stanton especially does a stellar job, saying more without saying anything than most actors could ever hope to in their entire careers. He’s a revelation, and if you don’t think he is one of the greatest American actors after seeing this film then you’ve been smoking something. This movie is so engrossing from beginning to end. I definitely recommend you all see this.

(DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH)