(August 7)

——The Descent (2005)——

Great horror films are hard to come by. So rare that when you finally do find one, you want to shout it from the rooftops so that everyone else will see them. The Descent is one of those horror films. From the very beginning this British horror film outclasses all the competition. And in what is really a great sign, this movie is extremely terrifying BEFORE any of the supernatural stuff starts. If you are claustrophobic at all, this isn’t probably the best film for you to see on the big screen.

A group of adventure seeking Brit women meet in the Appalachia to go splunking in an out of the way cave on the side of a mountain. The backstory is that one of those women lost her daughter and husband in a freak auto accident the year before, and thus might not be entirely ready for this new adventure. They all go anyway. There is great writing for the women, sketching out all their personalities and relationships deftly and with precision so that we can get to the meat and potatoes of the film quicker. And oh, does it. This is one of those movies where the dread starts up almost immediately and just keep pouring it on you until the very end. The tunnel they are in caves in. Oh, and they aren’t in the charted cave their guide said they were in. This one is uncharted. Oh, and there just happen to be cannibal albino monster/men living in this particular cave. Oops. The hits just keep on coming.

I was knocked out and floored by The Descent. I know this movie is just destined to be remembered as a horror classic. If you like horror you better not hesitate to see this film.

(MUST SEE)

——Blackballed: The Bobby Dukes Story (2004)——

I had no expectations that this was going to be any good. I hadn’t heard of it anywhere before I saw that it was coming out on DVD and it didn’t get much of any press, which is never a good thing. All I knew was that it starred Rob Corddry of the Daily Show (sweet) and that it was a mockumentary of paintball. Paintball is filled with lots of comic potential, I thought, so this has got to be worth picking up. I just hope it doesn’t suck.

So you could say I was extremely surprised that Blackballed was a comic goldmine. Seriously folks, this movie is hilarious. If you are a fan of Christopher Guest movies and/or Anchorman/Talladega Nights then this is the movie that you need to put in your NetFlix queue right now. With a brilliantly hilarious, mostly improvised script, a funny cast, and some imaginative documentary-style camera work, Blackballed hits it out of the park.

Bobby Dukes (Corddry) was THE greatest paintball player that ever was. He was a legend, unstoppable. Then in one of the championship games it was caught wiping, AKA he got hit by a paintball and tried to wipe the paint off before the judge could see it and call him out. The judge caught him wiping though, and Bobby Dukes left the sport and his hometown in shame, never to be heard from for ten years time. [Side note: What is it about the name Bobby that is so funny? Between Bobby Dukes and Ricky Bobby you’ve got a bonanza of funny Bobby names. But moving on…] But Bobby Dukes does come back and he wants to get back into the sport that shunned him. Of course none of his old teammates, or anyone else for that matter, want to play with him, so coming up with a team is pretty tough. The oddball group he finally comes up with proves to be a comic goldmine.

There are some really funny bits in this movie. My favorite involves the entire sequence concerning their first qualifying match-up against some gangster wannabe Canadians. They start freestyling. It’s embarrassingly hilarious. Then, well, I’m not sure you can really call Canadian a race, but if you could, you are treated to the most racist rant against the Canadians that I have ever heard. Brilliant. Finally, there is the paintball match itself, which is absolutely the best recreation of Saving Private Ryan that I have seen in any film. I lost it, I was laughing so hard. Those looking for the next big comedy in a sea of unfunny crap need only look to Blackballed: The Bobby Dukes Story.

(MUST SEE)

——The War Game (1964)/Culloden (1963)——

The War Game and Culloden are two short experimental documentaries made for BBC television by director Peter Watkins, packaged on the same DVD.

Culloden is about the last major battle of the English pacification of the Highlanders on April 16, 1746, which also happened to be one of the biggest blunders and massacres in military history. The Scottish were so ineptly led that they walked an army day and night to a battlefield that easily gave advantage to the superiorly armed British. Once there the chain of communication was so broken down that the Scottish just stood there doing nothing under a constant barrage from British canons with no support for over a half hour, which effectively decimated most of their attack force. The survivors then made a blind charge into certain death with few weapons among them. To call it a disaster is a major understatement. Peter Watkins directs the film as if he were really there on the Culloden Moor shooting a real documentary, asking the participants questions about who they were, what they were thinking, and what they saw happen that day. All the while a voice over provides ancillary details to fill in the gaps and make sure we know what a tragedy it really was that day.

Culloden is great and a very effective anti-war statement at the start of the Vietnam conflict, but it pales in comparison to the controversial The War Game. The War Game, in a sense, is a preemptive documentary, showing the British people what would really happen if someone were to push the button and start a nuclear attack. MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) is a very apt acronym for what would happen and the documentary is all about how woefully unprepared the British government would be for an attack, using their own words to do so, and about how catastrophic it would be the clueless British people. Using the town of Kent as an example, it goes step by step through what would happen if a nuclear war were to start and shows how easy it would be to get to that point. The images, although staged, are striking and powerful nonetheless. It’s frightening. Emotional. Graphic and horrifying. And the film will stay in the back of your mind long after you’ve finished the film. Culloden is take it or leave it, but The War Game is absolutely for anyone and everyone,

(MUST SEE)

(August 8)

——Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006)——

Talladega Night was made by the same team that brought you Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, and in essence is pretty much Anchorman remade with NASCAR the focus instead of broadcast news. While it would normally follow that because of that fact this movie is supposed to suck, lucky for us that is nowhere near the case here. Instead, Talladega Nights does for NASCAR what, well, Anchorman did for broadcast news. I’m the hugest fan of Anchorman, so it should then follow that I’m also a huge fan of this too.

Ricky Bobby (oh I love you, Will Ferrell) as a kid took a small piece of advice from his absentee father, “If you’re not first, you’re last” to heart, and later in life when given the chance to drive his own NASCAR car he shows himself to be a natural, winning all the races, marrying the hottest fan, and racking up all the sponsors. Of course this attitude also makes him into a giant prick. His kids grow up to be brats and he constantly screws over his best friend and teammate (John C. Reilly) so that he can be number one. His manager is so fed up with Ricky Bobby’s freewheeling that he hires a gay French Formula One race car driver (Sacha Baron Cohen, also genius) to beat Ricky Bobby. And then when he gets into a spectacular car crash, everything Ricky Bobby thought he had vanishes. Ricky Bobby has to do some self discovering, learn how to be a good person and learn how to speed again (using a cougar!) so that he can win the big race. The gags are constant and always hilarious, but what really makes it work is how much respect Ferrell and director Adam McKay have for the characters and the sport. By not playing it cheap they come out to be the big winners in this film. And thus, this movie kicks some major ass. See it!

(MUST SEE)

——The City of Lost Children (1995)——

Director’s Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Amelie) and Marc Caro pepper this film with some astounding visuals. That’s the main draw of seeing this, bar none. The actual City in the City of Lost Children is a stylized masterpiece, being a cross somewhere between a 19th Century Parisian city and a town out of one of the later Final Fantasy games (I’m thinking 7ish). It’s a magical place where magical coincidental things happen all the time, much like in Amelie or Delicatessen. Everything is curious and childlike. Which is fitting, since this is a movie about children’s dreams.

A genius inventor creates friends to keep him company, including several dopey clones, a lab partner, a wife and a brain in a jar. The lab partner has a problem though. He can’t dream. So he gets rid of his creator and uses the rest of them to trap children so that he may enter their dreams and finally know what dreaming feels like. He’s so scary though that each of the children’s dreams turns into a nightmare, ruining it for him. Thus, he needs to find a child who is not afraid of him. Meanwhile, a circus strongman’s younger adopted brother is kidnapped for their nefarious plot and therefore he has to go out and find him. That strongman is played by a wonderful Ron Perlman as not the brightest guy in the world, but definitely the one with the biggest heart. On his journey he falls in with an orphan street urchin who falls in love with him. Not in a sexual way though. She sees his dedication as a big brother and wishes to have the same thing with someone. He takes her under his wing as his little sister in a way that could have played a little disturbing, but instead is delicate and touching. Aside from the visuals, that’s the reason you watch this movie.

The City of Lost Children is a different, unique kind of movie, so if you are into that sort of thing then this movie is going to be right up your alley.

(SEE)

——Gwendoline (1984)——

What an odd movie. I’m not really sure what to make of it. It’s definitely not a good movie, that’s for sure. But it’s so weird that those into that sort of thing will have to check it out. Hell, if anything this movie makes for a great party movie, when you have a bunch of drunk friends looking for something juicy to go all Mystery Science Theater on.

The premise? This is an Indiana Jones-style 80’s fantasy adventure movie that just also happens to be based on a French bondage comic. Heavenly Tawny Kitaen is Gwendoline, who smuggles herself to China in order to search for her missing father, who’s gone missing after searching for a rare butterfly in the mystical land of Yik Yak. (Still with me?) After being saved from some Chinese gangsters by a Han Solo-esq tough guy, she cons him into helping her and her French maid (played by an actress named only: Zabou) find her father and the butterfly in Yik Yak. He bitches and moans and tries everything to ditch her. She, apparently having never seen a man before, falls hopelessly in love with him. Being the sort of movie that this is, he begrudgingly falls in love with her too, all while the maid lives vicariously through them in the background.

Ah, and then there is Yik Yak. A diamond mine designed by apparently the same dude that built Superman’s Fortress of Solitude, run by a sci-fi Amazons unearthing the rocks for apparent religious reasons. They are all scantily clad, often naked and prone to lots of violence and/or bondage. It’s not a spoiler to say that Gwendoline gets tied up and naked…a lot. Funniest yet there is a chariot race with Amazons in place of the horses. Have I mentioned yet that this movie is WEIRD?

This movie is not good at all in the least. That said, like I mentioned before it is so weird that it does have its own certain–how do I say?–usefulness when it comes to obscure cult films to pull out for your friends. Be warned. Alcohol is definitely recommended before consumption.

(MISS)

(August 9)

——The Fury (1978)——

I was recommended this film, told “it’s not great De Palma, but it’s worth seeing if just for the ending, which is crazy total batshit.” I may be paraphrasing just a little bit, but you get the idea. That recommendation turned out to be pretty accurate. The Fury is a curious film, interesting, but overall not particularly special. If you’ve seen a supernatural thriller from the late 70’s/early 80’s before, you’ve seen this movie. It’s similar even to Brian De Palma’s own Carrie. But then there is that closing shot. My first thought? My, that’s a little excessive. My second? Coooool.

The Fury is about a secret agent (Kirk Douglas, doing his best to not look old) who is attacked by terrorists in Israel (huh?) so that other secret agents may kidnap his “gifted” son. What he’s gifted with at first isn’t readily apparent. But we get lots of clues along the way, up until we meet another girl in Chicago who has the same “gift”, which just happens to be telepathy and telekinesis. The problem is that the gift is so powerful that when used it can cause people around her to start bleeding. She freaks out and goes to an institute for the paranormal, which also happens to just be a front for the government agent that has Douglas’ son. He enlists her help to find his son.

The plot is so-so, but the movie does have its fair share of unintentionally hilarious moments, all courtesy of Douglas himself. My favorite is when he tells one of the G-Men following him to ask head spy (John Cassavetes) what happened to his arm. What happened to his arm? “I killed it!” (Trust me, it’s hilarious.)

De Palma cultists will have to see this. No doubt about that. To those curious, I’d say see it. If I haven’t hooked you on it yet, then this one for you is a

(MISS)

(August 10)

——Tsotsi (2005)——

I don’t necessarily think this is a great movie and yet it moved me deeply nonetheless. Is it possible for a movie to do that? Must be, because that’s how I feel. Damn you, mushy crap.

Tsotsi is about a Johannesburg, ghetto born and raised in the open air, now wannabe gangster. He’s lived the hard life so long that things are just about survival. He doesn’t give a shit about anyone else, not even his friends, in the effort to appear badass. Then he goes into a rich neighborhood to steal a car. He waits until a woman gets out of her car, runs up, shoots her, and drives off (poorly. He doesn’t know how to drive). Once he gets off onto the main road he makes a startling discovery. The woman had a baby in the car. What to do with it?

Tsotsi is not exactly who’d you’d be first to call if you needed a sitter. He feeds the baby canned milk, leaves and comes back only to find the baby covered in ants. Smooth. But something about the baby strikes a nerve in him. He’s reminded of his early days struggling with the other orphans on the outskirts of the ghetto. He takes pity on the child. He wants to take care of it. But almost like a child, he has no idea how to take care of one. He sees another woman with a baby and he forces her at gunpoint to feed his baby. The baby softens him though. He finally learns how to be a human being again.

It’s not exactly anything groundbreaking. But like any good movie, it doesn’t have to be groundbreaking if it just does its job well. And Tsotsi definitely does that. The final scene is a heartbreaker. Powerful stuff. And the director is smart enough to draw the scene out as much as possible. All and all, I’d say this is a very solid, worth seeing flick.

(SEE)

(August 11)

——Roman Holiday (1953)——

I dare you to find a more attractive on-screen couple in film history than Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday. Don’t believe me? Go to the scene where they tentatively kiss in the Roman rain and then you just try and convince me otherwise. When God created Man and Woman, this was probably the mold he used.

The movie itself is a fine piece of heartbreaking genius. It’s sweet, funny, romantic and at times very sad. It’s one of those romantic comedies that earns its emotions by not hiding from reality. The ending is a bit of a shocker, considering how often we’ve been preprogrammed by Hollywood schlock, but at the same time it seems surprisingly right and poignant. Roman Holiday is just one of those classic Hollywood romances, where Audrey Hepburn is a princess whose run away to relax and see the real world as the rest of us do, and Gregory Peck is the American reporter who runs into the incognito princess and strings her along for the story of the century, only to fall in love with her and have doubts about exploiting her trust for his own gain. I mean, we’re talking grade-A girlfriend movie material here, guys.

I love this movie. I’m really a sap at heart and Roman Holiday hits all of the right notes for me. Peck and Hepburn (in her first starring role, an Oscar winner!) have amazing chemistry. Instead of creating fake big moments the script focuses on the small moments and makes them big. Is it any surprise that the best scene in the picture then is that aforementioned kiss in the rain? You’ve got to be one stone cold sonofabitch to not have your heart melt a little bit when you see that. This movie gets one of my highest recommendations.

(MUST SEE)

(August 12)

——The Black Swan (1942)——

Those looking for a good pirate movie nowadays are a little limited in their choices. You could see one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, the porno big budget knockoff, or…uh. Well, before PotC there was quite the draught in good pirate movies. You have to go back to the pirate glory days. I’m very partial to Errol Flynn’s pirate films, Captain Blood and especially the Sea Hawks. If you can’t get your hands on one of those, then Tyrone Power’s The Black Swan is the next best thing.

Pirate Jamie Boy reforms (boo!) when his mentor, Captain Morgan, is made governor of Jamaica by the King in the hopes that a pirate knows best how to catch a pirate. Lucky for us, Jamie Boy doesn’t reform too much. One gets the impression that he only reforms just enough so that he can attract the attentions of Lady Margaret (Maureen O’Hara), who hates him merely because he’s a pirate. Meanwhile the former governor, obviously horrified that the pirate he’s hunted now has his job, does a little pirating of his own, taking information he’s received from Captain Morgan and giving it to other pirates so that they always seem to be one step ahead of the good guys. Jamie Boy, through some ingenuity and lots of swashbuckling uncovers the plot, saves the day, and gets the girl. What more do you need in a movie?

Power is no Flynn, but he does a good enough job filling in his shoes, bringing a great energy to his flirtations with O’Hara. It’s a real battle of the sexes, where he finally wears her down only by really showing that he was actually telling her the truth and that her father and fiance were both tools. Eh. It’s lots of fun anyway. The Technicolor looks great on this DVD, bringing a real life to the events with lots of vivid colors. Those looking for a good pirate adventure won’t be disappointed.

(SEE)

——Broken Lance (1954)——

I guess the easiest way to sum up the plot of Broken Lance would be to say that this is the King Lear of Westerns. Spencer Tracy is Lear, a tough but successful rancher/cattle baron that seems to be too hard on his three oldest sons. The youngest, Joe, is a half-Indian by a different mother, who definitely seems to be the apple of his father’s eye. He seems sure to inherit a big piece of the ranch. The older brothers want to run it a different way, but turn bad seed, even resorting to cattle rustling their own family’s steers. After a big altercation with a mine that has been dumping poisonous chemicals into the river, a good old-fashioned rumble breaks out. Joe takes responsibility for it. The rest of the family thinks that the older brothers will use their share of the ranch to pay compensation to the mine, but they never do and Joe has to go to prison for three years. The father has made all the wrong choices, and starts to pay for them.

It’s not your typical Western, more of a family drama dropped into a Western setting, and thus it is quite interesting and engaging in its uniqueness. I liked it quite a bit. Spencer Tracy chews scenery like a pro. It’s very well written and makes real good use of Cinemascope. Fans of Westerns will want to check this one out.

(SEE)

(August 13)

——Troy (2004)——

Watching Wolfgang Peterson’s Greek epic again, this isn’t the bad film I thought it was when I originally saw it in the theater. Of course, it’s not a great film either. It’s a film with a lot of missed potential. It’s one of those films that by the end of it your review has to be, “eh.”

I kind of liked most of it. What I didn’t like was how condensed the rich Greek mythology was. The entire Trojan War in the film seems to take place over a mere few days. In reality (or at least according to Homer) it took place over ten years. A little detail like that is just filled with potential to make the enormity of the War seem greater than it does. I mean, it’s the Trojan-fucking-War, not the Trojan light skirmish. Where’s the epic part? Instead it does a better job focusing on the characters: Eric Bana’s noble Hector, Brad Pitt’s childish warrior/God Achilles, Brian Cox’s arrogant Agemmenon, Peter O’Toole’s flawed but royal Priam. The smaller moments are really the bigger moments in this film. One things that kind of pissed me off was the depiction of Orlando Bloom’s Paris. For three/fourths of the film he is just this pretty-boy selfish pansy, and it is never mentioned what a spectacular archer he is. All the sudden he breaks out the bow at the end and he’s a man. What’s that all about? I knew what was going on, but anyone who didn’t know the myth would be royally pissed at that.

And that’s basically the problem with this film. It doesn’t capitalize on the big moments like it should. This story should have been multi-layered. Instead, we have to be content to see Hector go up against Achilles. Fun, but not 162 minutes, fun.

(MISS)