#273: Your Lifestyle CD player has a tendency of just stopping in the middle of playing a CD. It definitely is not working right. You call Tech services. They send you an update disk for the system, hoping it will fix the problem.
The Lifestyle system then stops playing the update disk in the middle of updating the system.
Yes, you very well maybe fucked.
Only two days late this time, I give you this week’s Review, filled with a large assortment of movies, covering all sorts of genres, new and old, and from all over the world. I really think there is something for everyone in here, so enjoy all 14 of them, after the break:
(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)
I wanted to make an amendment to one of my previous reviews, after a friend read it and pointed out something vague in it to me that I didn’t realize was there.
(January 18)
——9 Songs (2005)——
I was a little surprised at how much I liked this film. On paper it sounds stupid. A young couple go to nine concerts, we hear nine songs from nine different bands, and in between they screw like rabbits. That’s it, that’s the whole plot. Oh yeah, and the whole thing is compared the male lead’s job as an ice scientist in the Antarctic. Sounds kind of lame, huh? What works is how well the film is put together. The film is really a collection of memories of a relationship from the male lead. You see the good times. You see his confusion when the relationship goes off-kilter. You also see some hardcore nudity and sex scenes. What rings true are the little moments of feeling you are in love. Everything is very artfully done and reflective, so much so that you’ll be thinking about the film for a while after it’s over.
(SEE)
The sentence “You also see some hardcore nudity and sex scenes,” would probably read better if it said, “You also see some nudity and hardcore sex scenes.” Yes, that’s right folks, this is one of the few movies outside of porn and Thriller: They Call Her One Eye where you can actually see penetration. I’m surprised that I was mature enough at the time to write a beautiful review that totally glossed over the whole reason I bough it (uh…eh hem. Forget I said that.)
My sister turns on the TV as I’m leaving the room. A commercial comes on. The commercial’s narrator asks, “Do you remember how good fresh vegetables at your local farmer’s market tasted?” or something like that.
Spontaneously, simultaneously, and in unison, in our best Milhouse fashion, my sister and I both say, “DO I?!“
We were so in sync that at first I wasn’t even sure that she said it too. The giggling kind of gave it away though.
It’s scary that even though we fight constantly with each other, we’re so gawd damn alike.
OK, as you might have noticed lately, the Monday Movie Review has been, how should we say? AWOL. I’ve slacked off the last month and am now paying the price. Sorry guys. You might also have noticed that I haven’t really posted much of anything lately. Sorry about that. I’ll work on it. Try to get better. We’ll see what happens.
Anyway, in the meantime, I give you the last three weeks of reviews. I’m still working on the two weeks before that, but I plan on at least trying to have this weeks reviews in on time before I tackle those. I make no promises (mainly because I always fail to keep them). Anyway, enjoy after the jump!
(May 8)
——Natural City (2003)——
This Korean film takes the best parts of many great American sci-fi films (Blade Runner, Aliens, The Matrix, Ghost in the Shell) and manages to absolutely nothing new or original with them. Despite the flurry of amazing visuals, so little original or engaging is seen on screen that I actually spent most of the film bored, thinking instead of the films Natural City was ripping off instead of what was right there on hand. It’s not that the film is incompetent, it is just completely disengaging. I was bored. Where were the big ideas, the spectacular action pieces, the “Wow” factor? It just wasn’t there. It never dug deep enough into what was actually a pretty decent idea.
In the future, people have cyborgs as companions, domestic help, even soldiers. Those cyborgs usually “die” in about three years, when you have to upgrade to a new model. When some of those military cyborgs revolt because they do not want to die, R, part of the human military police, is sent into stop them. But poor R is in love with his cyborg, Ria, and has secretly been working with a scientist on a way to save Ria before he time is up. This makes him a very bad cop, that is until he finally figures out that the cyborgs want the same scientist that he is using to try to transplant their consciousness into a human host. I like the set-up, but the execution of it all just sucks. Yawn. Don’t be sucked into the hype on this one.
(MISS)
(May 9)
——Karas: The Prophecy (2005)——
I haven’t really seen much anime lately. There was a time when I was addicted to the stuff, but there hasn’t really been much of interest for me aside from the odd new Miyazaki movie. Karas sounded kind of cool though, so I gave it a shot. Fans of animation and specifically anime shouldn’t be disappointed.
The story is a little confusing at first, as all of the pieces of the story don’t really fall into view until about the halfway mark of the film. It basically involves a break in the worlds of the living and of the spirit world. Traditionally a Karas protects the balance between the two worlds, but now a former Karas wants to tip the balance so that demons can run free through the world of the living. The new Karas has to save the day. I’ve got no idea if he actually does so or not, though, as this is just the first part of a larger journey. So far, so good in my book.
The animation is really good, especially the battle sequences. It uses a combination of traditional hand drawn animation with CGI and motion capture to give the movements of Karas a real fluid feeling. The action sequences are pretty kick ass, worth seeing even if you are just a fan of giant robot fighting. I’m curious to see where the next part takes us.
(SEE)
——Mission: Impossible III (2006)——
Easily the best of the Mission: Impossible movies, the only flaw seems to be that J.J. Abrams plays this film just like an episode of his show Alias, but even that isn’t really all that of a bad thing. Abrams works his same Sydney Bristow genius on Ethan Hunt, giving him a home life (and thus real stakes if he loses), crazy action sequences in lots of exotic locals, and giving him lots of team based missions filled with humor and suspense. One thing I wonder though, Has IMF thought at all about fixing their traitor problem? Every movie, somebody turns on IMF, and in turn, Ethan Hunt. This guy has turned into a grand master of finding the mole.
Ethan has gone into operations retirement, instead focusing on training new recruits and getting ready to settle down with his soon to be bride. But when one of those recruits (TV’s Felicity, from another Abrams show) is taken hostage by an international arms dealer, Ethan is called out of retirement to get her back. Insert here lots of crazy/awesome action sequences. But what is done really well is that there is actually something at stake. The movie starts nearly at the end, where Philip Seymour Hoffman has Ethan tied to a chair, helpless, with a gun to his wife’s head. We hear a bang, fade to black, start up the Mission: Impossible theme music. Abrams just loves starting at the most exciting point, then working his way up to the artificial cliffhanger he’s created for himself. And it works. I honestly had no idea how Ethan was going to get out of it. But boy, was it fun trying to find out. It reminds me a lot of my favorite Bond film, Goldeneye, where a similar burst of creative energy hit an old franchise.
(MUST SEE)
——The Notorious Bettie Page (2006)——
The Notorious Bettie Page doesn’t dig real deep into who Bettie Page was or what made her tick, which is the only real fault of the film. It stands back at the fringes of her personality, watching and observing her like one does her risque photos that helped change how pornography was viewed in America in the 1950’s. A lot of the film is just that: us watching Bettie pose for this photo shoot or that one. It was weird, but the fact that I was alone watching the film, coupled with the sleazy guy in the back doing the heavy breathing, made me feel like I was in some porno theater from back in the day. It managed to be erotic, but more so…fascinating. And a lot of the credit for that has to go to Gretchen Mol. She adds so much personality and depth to the role that the script lacks that you can’t help getting sucked into the film. She easily carries the weight of the film on her shoulders. The movie quickly becomes a glimpse into a foreign era of American life, where film, television and magazines painted one perfect view of the American nuclear family, while on the fringes of society others explored their sexual desires in private. It’s a fascinating glimpse into a side of life we don’t usually get to see.
(SEE)
(May 13)
——Danger: Diabolik (1968)——
Danger: Diabolik is a crazy, psychedelic movie based on a comic book, and the movie retains most of that comic book energy through odd camera angles, kinetic energy in the acting and the editing and unbelievable locals and situations. Oddly enough the hero of the film, Diabolik, is a master thief, and in the opening sequence he pulls off a daring theft of ten million dollars right underneath the watchful eyes of the government. They take it upon themselves to catch him by any means necessary, but Diabolik has the resourcefulness of Batman and only manages to make them look like bigger and bigger fools as the story progresses. They set up impossible obstacles with priceless objects as bate, only for their master thief to out-trick them time and time again.
Diabolik is a bit of a James Bond character, driving posh Jaguars during his capers, pulling out exotic gadgets to help him on his way, sleeping with his extremely hot Euro-girlfriend who assists him on his jobs all while hanging out in a secret underground ultra-mod lair, looking like some combination of a 60’s sci-fi set and one of Dr. No’s mysterious hideaways. No obstacle is too big for Diabolik. He pulls a crime boss out of a plane with him, interrogating him the entire way down, when really it was the crime boss who thought he was throwing Dibolik to his death. A giant tower is no obstacle. He just uses a suction cup device to climb it, undetected. In a final act of desperation the authorities melt all of their gold down into one giant twenty-ton gold bar, thinking there is no possible way Diabolik can lift it. I won’t ruin the how, but let’s just say they were wrong about him not being able to steal that ridiculously enormous gold bar. Even certain death doesn’t seem to phase Diabolik. The final image is striking for its sheer absurdity. It taunts the audience, making them think he’s done for when all the sudden a wink lets us know he’s OK, even though we’re left still oblivious to how he actually plans to free himself.
Danger: Diabolik is sexy and sensual, filling the senses with one giant feast for the eyes after another. This isn’t a great film, it’s a fun as hell film. John Phillip Law plays the character exactly as he should, with eyebrows cocked impossibly high upon his forehead. He makes you believe that all the impossible you see is possible in this world. This is a real fun ride, ridiculous, yes, but amazing as well.
(MUST SEE)
(May 15)
——The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave (1971)——
This Italian horror mystery has an awesome title, abundant nudity (always a plus), and a weird story involving a man so obsessed with his redhead ex-wife that he picks up red-haired prostitutes only to beat and kill them, and yet the movie still fell a little flat for me. It came part of the incredibly cool Emilio P. Miraglia boxset just put out by NoShame Films. Unfortunately, the movie isn’t quite as cool as the box. The man eventually decides to stop being crazy and settle down (with a blonde) but soon enough Evelyn is apparently back with the living causing trouble for our “hero” and driving him right back to the brink of madness. It follows a lot of the standard conventions of the Italian giallo film, and while there are a few cool twists here and there, they really aren’t enough to justify watching the movie unless you are a fan of the genre.
(MISS)
(May 16)
——Delicatessen (1991)——
Available for the first time on DVD in America, Delicatessen is one of the first films by the director you all probably know for the delightful Amelie. And if you are like me, and you love Amelie, you’ll probably want to check this one out as well. The story takes place in an apocalyptic future where all food is scarce, but especially fresh meat is a rare commodity that everyone wants. So much so, that some of them have resorted to cannibalism. One apartment building has one of these delicatessens, and what they do is hire a handyman from the city, have him do some odd chores around the place, and then carve him up to split between all of the tenants. I know what you are thinking right now. Laugh riot. Trust me though.
The newest handyman is an ex-clown (played by the actor in Amelie who was the obsessed ex-boyfriend who fell in love with the hypochondriac cigarette girl) oblivious that everyone wants to eat him and who happens to fall in love with the bookish daughter of the butcher/landlord. All of the tenants are given their own screen time and happen to be nice and quirky, much like all of the characters in Amelie. One scene in particular delighted me to no end, in which the squeaking of a bed made by two people having sex dictates the rhythm to which everyone does their chores in the apartment building. As the couple’s pace quickens, approaching climax, so does the activities of everyone else in the building until all action explodes with the orgasm. It reminded me a lot of Beat Takashi’s remake of Zatoichi, where the rhythm of the common people working set the beat to the rest of the film. A really nice stylistic choice.
While I don’t think Delicatessen is quite as good as Amelie, I do really like the film and suggest that any of you who haven’t already seen it check it out. You’ll never believe that you could have so much fun watching a movie about cannibalism.
(SEE)
(May 19)
——Footlight Parade (1933)——
If it weren’t for one sequence in particular I probably wouldn’t have given Footlight Parade any thought at all. The plot isn’t particularly engaging for some reason, and things for the main character (James Cagney) are depressingly bleak up until the ending. Things for this brilliant producer/dancer aren’t going well, as he starts of the movie getting a divorce and no one wants to make musical theater now that talkies are all the rage. He somehow finds a way to work though by making “prologues,” apparently little mini-theater shows that go on before a movie starts. Still, he comes up with all of the ideas while his partners steal all of the prophets from him and his writing partner moves to a rival firm stealing all of his ideas. He isn’t any luckier in love, as his blonde secretary, the only person that truly loves him, pines away only to be ignored and passed over for a hussy just looking for some money. When he proposes to said hussy, the ex-wife then comes back to announce that she never really got the divorce and now wants all of his money. What a bleak story, huh?
The irony of this film is that it condemns film for ruining the theater industry, and yet in this film the Busby Berkeley musical numbers are so big and elaborate that they could only be done in Hollywood. Which brings me to the highlight of this film, a highlight so luminous that the rest of the movie could just be a monkey pooping into a hat and the movie would still be must see. Honeymoon Hotel and Shanghai Lil are interesting enough numbers, but they are just grains of sand in the beach compared to By a Waterfall. This musical sequence will blow your mind, especially if you try to keep in the back of your mind the whole time that this sequence is supposed to take place on a theater stage and was conceived by James Cagney in all of one day, with no apparent sets ever being built for it.
In this sequence two lovers sing to each other on an elaborate hilly forest set, when the man falls asleep and dreams that his woman goes behind the set to a gigantic waterfall filled with water nymphs. They jump in the water and do the crazy hundred girl Berkley thing. Then somehow they are transported to another completely different, more art deco set where the numbers get even more complicated (Check out the cover to the boxset if you want to see what I’m talking about). If you’ve got drugs, you want to take them before this number starts up because the whole experience alone sober will blow your mind. If the whole movie were filmed like this it would be a better known film than Citizen Kane. Jaw dropping. That’s the only way to describe it. For this sequence alone, Footlight Parade is
(MUST SEE)
(May 21)
——Pretty in Pink (1986)——
There is nothing quite like a good John Hughes movie to get you happy and in a good mood. This maybe shocking to most, but I never really got into his films until just recently. Ferris Bueller, Sixteen Candles and the Breakfast Club I all saw on network TV on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon. But I love them all, and do love the Molly Ringwald, so when I saw Pretty in Pink for seven dollars I thought, why not? After getting myself in a bit of a movie rut, it was just the kind of movie to get me back on my feet and ready to see a billion more movies for you folks.
Poor Molly Ringwald. She lives in the 80’s. Regan is in office and everyone’s motto from Wall Street is “Greed is Good”. So despite the fact that she is actually a pretty cool girl with her own sweet pink car, she can’t move into the upper echelons of yuppie power because she’s poor. Her dad (played by an unusually bright and cheery Harry Dean Stanton [seriously, it creeped me out]) hasn’t held a full-time job since her mother left them, and because of that she works at a record store and makes her own cool 80’s clothes. There is just something about her though and all the guys want her, whether it be her best friend Duckie (yep, that’s one of the Two and a Half Men!), slumming skeezbag James Spader (the man just oozes skeez), or yuppie heartthrob Andrew McCarthy, who doesn’t know how to be with her and still hold off the insane amounts of peer pressure flak he is getting. I felt a little bad for Duckie in the end, but all ended up well for Ringwald. Hey, she even got her own Psychedelic Furs song! You probably don’t need me to tell you this, but Pretty in Pink is pretty
(MUST SEE)
——Breakfast on Pluto (2005)——
What an odd, weird little movie. You’re either going to love it or hate it. I fell more in the first category, as I found this Neil Jordan film about a cross-dressing Irishman trying to find his mother in 70’s England utterly charming and engaging. Cillian Murphy plays the unapologetic cross-dresser with such an innocent playfulness that he carries the entire film gracefully on his dainty shoulders. It’s just really funny, really weird.
Patrick “Kitten” Braden was conceived by a priest and a housekeeper who looked like a fifties film star and was immediately put by the priest in someone else’s adoptive hands. He grew up an outsider, showing early on an unusual attachment to woman’s clothes. His life goal becomes to find the mother he never knew to maybe gain some acceptance that he never had. Along the way he has a series of misadventures that balance between the gleefully happy and the painfully sad on his quest through London to find his mother. The whole thing has a bit of a fairy tale feel to it. I liked this one a lot. Hopefully you all will too.
(SEE)
(May 22)
——Art School Confidential (2006)——
I wrote a review for this movie. Then my computer freaked out because of how hot it was. Trying to recreate the masterpiece that was my original review of this film is probably going to be pretty tough. Anyway, the gist: I quite enjoyed this film because it reminded me so much of my days as an artist in high school, and then later of my time at an art school very much like the one in the film (except without, you know, all the murders and stuff). The Thanksgiving barrage of comments from the family who knows absolutely nothing about art rang especially true to me. I remember back when I showed some promise as an artist and everyone had ideas about what I should do with that talent (understanding, of course, nothing about the actual business aspect of what they were talking about). I found particularly funny the comments from the grandmother about someone she knew that painted pictures on sneakers and how he should get into that business after school. Yeahhhh. Thanks, Grandma.
I either was the characters in this movie, did or felt something they did, or at least knew that type of person when I went to Bard. I think that’s why I enjoyed it so much. I identified with it so much because it was so true to my own experiences (again, not with the whole murder thing). The only thing that didn’t really work all that well for the movie was the plot. Harry ultimately decided that he didn’t like the film because he didn’t like the choices that the main character made at the end. I can see that. I still liked it though. To anyone who is interested in seeing it, you should
(SEE)
(May 23)
——Modern Romance (1981)——
My previous experience with Albert Brooks? Finding Nemo. Yep, the movie where he is a computer generated clown fish. So yeah, I wasn’t too aware that he made his own films at one point in his career. I’d never heard of Modern Romance, but some others seemed to like it, so I bought it to check it out. It’s very similar to a Annie Hall/Manhattan era Woody Allen movie, but more realistic with less obvious winks to the audience and set in La-la Land instead of NYC. The whole movie is about a movie editor who breaks up with his long time girlfriend (who he’s broken up with numerous times in the past) for good, only to realize that he is meant to be with her. He spends most of the film trying to avoid thinking about her until he then realizes that he needs her back, she’s the only woman for him, yadda yadda. Of course as soon as they get back together the self-destructive behavior starts right back up again…
The movie was quite charming (as long as you can get over all of the neurotic bullshit) and often quite funny. The sequence towards the beginning where Albert Brooks basically has a 15-minute monologue with himself (talking also on the phone and to his bird) is especially brilliant. Super Dave is also in it (as the best salesman ever)! My favorite parts, however, were those where he was doing his job as an editor, putting together a crap low budget 70’s sci-fi movie. The part where he pulls out the “Hulk running” audio clip to give the scientists footsteps more muscle is just hilarious. This would be a pretty good date movie to see with someone who you can’t figure out if you should be together or not.
(SEE)
——Kingdom of Heaven: Director’s Cut (2005)——
After seeing Kingdom of Heaven for the first time in the theaters right after it came out, I was left a little disappointed. The movie was fine and everything, well made, but it lacked any heart or depth. Having studied the Crusades in college I walked out feeling as if I missed out on something. The movie didn’t feel complete or fleshed out at all. It was all too bad. That’s why when I heard that there was a longer, better director’s cut version of Ridley Scott’s film available and that it would soon be released to DVD I got extremely excited. And I tell you, it was worth the wait. Ignore that theatrical cut of the film that’s on DVD right now. This is the only version of the film you need to see.
What stayed in the movie for the theatrical version was obviously the stuff that cost the most money. You’re not going to get one more frame of one of the battles in this new director’s cut. What was lost was what happens to be the most important part: the character building. Once the movie is allowed to move at its own pace everyone’s motivations make so much more sense. While it is true that what was cut out of the film was nonessential to the plot, it is also true that the plot isn’t nearly as colorful or dynamic without it. Take for instance the entire subplot with Eva Green’s son, who becomes king after the other king dies of leprosy, only to soon show signs of leprosy himself. I can’t even remember if he appeared in the original version of the film. And his scenes do slow down the mid-portion of the film. And yet, those scenes add so much to the historical meaning of the film, as well as going to explain some of the character motivations that are otherwise a little confusing in the theatrical cut. Why does Eva Green go so far as to cut off all of her hair and become a nun? It seems a little over dramatic in the theatrical version. But it makes perfect sense in the Director’s Cut and helps explain why it was so easy for Eva’s dink of a husband to become king. I really like this new version. I suggest you all seek it out.
(MUST SEE)
(May 25)
——A Streetcar Named Desire (1950)——
I had never seen this before. Watching it, I was all over the place. At first I didn’t like Vivien Leigh’s performance as Blanche, thinking it too over the top. Then I realized it was a part of the character and actually liked how over the top it was. But then there was the whole ending. To those who haven’t seen this, I’ll just state that it is really depressing.
Like I said, Vivien Leigh was pretty interesting. Her performance was like a take off of her character in Gone with the Wind, still the Southern Belle, but now one on the skids. Blanche goes to live with her sister Stella and her husband Stan, as she’s lost all of her money and developed the reputation as a bit of a harlot in her home town because in her old age she has become desperate for a husband. While Stella is just happy to see her sister, Stan is immediately suspicious of her. And what about that Stan? This is a role that could easy have been played wrong, but as you all probably know Marlon Brando made the role famous by adding such a depth of realism to the character that you can’t help sympathize with the rage-prone brute. Brando is just fantastic. He brings a real softness to Stan’s actions up until he freaks out and starts breaking things. His performance, like the character, is totally unpredictable. The writing is really gripping, too. I guess that’s to be expected from something based on one of Tennessee Williams’ most famous plays. But I just love it when you are watching a movie with not much action and yet you are still glued to what’s going on. I didn’t love A Streetcar Named Desire, but it is still very much worth seeing.
(SEE)
(May 26)
——The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1943)——
Not often am I taken as off guard by a film as I was with Preston Sturges’ hilarious The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek. I wasn’t expecting more than a few good laughs when I put it in the DVD player. I hadn’t really heard much about it before watching it and in fact it had been sitting in my Amazon wish list quite some time before I finally took the plunge and bought it. What a dumbass mistake that was. This is seriously one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen. Slapstick heaven, I call it. It’s silliness and absurdity knows no bounds. Fall gags normally don’t do a whole lot for me, but in this movie I was dying. The actors go so far to sell a joke that you just have to admire the sheer audacity of it all. Slap on all of that a brilliant screenplay by Sturges and you’re in for a good ride.
The story is quite risque for the time: Trudy Kockenlocker is the prettiest girl in town and sees it as her civic duty to show all of the boys a good time before they go off to war. Norval is the boy next door who has always been in love with Trudy, even though she never noticed him, and who is feeling real down on himself because he has high blood pressure that prevents him from joining the military to impress Trudy. Well, Trudy makes a little mistake. Drunk on “Victory Lemonade” and dazed from a hit to the head in the heat of dancing, Trudy marries a serviceman and gets herself knocked up, except she doesn’t remember who she married and can’t find out because she used a fake name. She’s gotten herself into a bit of a pickle. She tries to use Norval to get herself out of it but can’t do it once she realizes how much he loves her and then she loves him. So they try to pass Norval off as the missing soldier to get married again to annul it, but all doesn’t go well when Norval signs his real name and gets caught by the authorities.
That doesn’t even let you in on the big secret of the film, the Miracle of the title, which I won’t ruin for you here. I will say that it is a brilliant surprised milked for all of the comic gold possible. The cast is great. Aside from the two leads, also fantastic are Trudy’s stern and strict single father the town cop, and her 14 year old sister, who tries as hard as she can to help her sister out of this mess. Oh my God, this movie is good. It’s been a while since I’ve had this much fun seeing a movie. Please, check this out (it would make for a great double-header with Flirting.)
(DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH)
(May 27)
——Patton (1969)——
Patton is less about the major battles found in Europe in World War II and more about one dramatic figure whose wild personality greatly helped defeat the Nazis and at the same time almost cost him his job when he was at his most successful. Everything about Patton was big, and the backgrounds always accentuate that fact. From the famous opening shot of Patton in front of a giant American flag to the battles of the film being shot from a God’s eye view everything around Patton is larger than life, and instead of making him look small, caught inside of all of these giant landscapes, he always seems to dominate the shot and our attention. This was a man who moved an army farther and harder than anyone else in history and who almost lost the chance to do so because of an incident where he slapped a man for battle fatigue, calling him a yellow coward.
George C. Scott is obviously the main reason why this movie succeeds. He brings a depth of reality to Patton that might have been lost on a lesser actor faced with the many dramatic lines Patton is forced to say. What could have been a one-note caricature becomes the realistic portrait of a real man, a larger than life man, but a realistically portrayed one, nonetheless. The script, co-written by Francis Ford Coppola, is just chockfull of delightful lines that have been quoted endlessly by men ever since the film originally came out. After seeing it I went into work and was surprised to hear how many of the lines from the movie the guys remembered verbatim. It’s just one of those movies.
(SEE)
(May 28)
——The New World (2005)——
I’ve already reviewed this movie when I saw it in the theater (the best place to see it) in the Monday Movie Review (January 23). I still love it, and think it one of the best films of last year. I really love how Terrence Malick films nature and edits it into the rhythm and flow of the film. Things I noticed this time around was how the cut away shots to nature and their environment directly related to what was going on onscreen. Like how the Indians were commonly paired with flowing water and shots of wind, while the settlers in their darker hours were cut in together with shots of the dead of winter and with spiders. Then, of course, there is the trip to London at the end, which comes as such a shock to the system after all of the time Malick had spent thus far with nature. Amazingly enough you have almost the same reaction Pocahontas does to seeing this “New World”. Highly recommended.
(MUST SEE)
I know some, if not all of you out there watch Lost. How fucking cool was that season finale. Seriously, how cool was that!
OK, was it just me or was last night’s OC season finale bullshit, or what? Terrible. I’m starting to give up hope on that show.
Tuesday. Tuesday, Tuesday. Tuesday night I went with Ross to go see The Lashes, OK Go, and She Wants Revenge up at Northern Lights. And let me tell you, that show kicked ass. The Lashes were merely OK. I didn’t really like their frontman at all, but I thought the band itself was pretty good. Then OK Go came on and they were just pure genius. Totally fun to go see live. They ended their show by removing all of their instruments and doing the OK Go dance. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go download the music video for their song “A Million Ways”. The PA system was cranked up a little bit for the OK Go dance and never got turned down, so that when She Wants Revenge finally came out we were all faced with one giant wall of sound. I could feel my chest being pushed in so much that I thought I was having heart problems. Their set kicked a whole lot of butt though. I had a great time. Did I mention that we were only like four to six feet away from the stage at all times? That is totally the way to see a concert. I’d do another show like that again in a heartbeat.
Smartest decision I’ve ever made in my life was probably buying earplugs before I went to the show. Like I mentioned above, it was incredibly noisy. So much so that as we walked out I was sure that I had some permanent hearing damage from She Wants Revenge. In the parking lot I finally pulled the earplugs out, only to surprise myself with how normal my hearing seemed. No ringing! All you concert goers, if you want to have any hearing left by the time you are forty, wear those earplugs!
I just CANNOT believe that my girl Jonie did not win America’s Next Top Model. Where did the world go wrong?
It’s official: The Tick animated series is FINALLY coming to DVD this August 29th! Just in time for my birthday (well, kinda) What’s that, you say? Only the greatest Saturday morning cartoon ever! If all you know of the Tick is the crappy live-action shortlived series on Fox, you have got to check this out. Oh, I am in heaven.
When I read that George W. Bush’s answer to a German newspaper reporter’s question to name the best moment of his five years as President was:
“I would have to say the best moment of all was when I caught a 7.5-lb. perch in my lake.”
I wanted to be mad. But then I changed my mind. I mean, at least he’s being honest with us. How often does that happen? I mean, if I was to look back at his five years as President and pick out a best moment, catching a 7.5-lb. perch is definitely his greatest accomplishment. That’s a big fish. Way to go, George! You’ve managed to do what only a few million Americans have ever been able to do in history. I’m proud of you, big guy.
If I had to pick out a second accomplishment for that list, I’d probably go with his ability to take more vacation time than every other President combined. That man knows how to vacation. He’ll even vacation through national disasters! Do you think he would have caught that perch if he didn’t take that much vacation? I think not. Way to stick it to those whip-welding employers of yours. Workers of the world, unite! Jeez, I think that President that died 18 days into his Presidency got more accomplished than Bush. Don’t stress yourself, little buddy. I call it trickle-down government. If the people at the top do as little work as possible then the people at the bottom will eventually do as little as possible, thus making it so that everyone can then catch a 7.5-lb. perch in their own ponds. At least, that’s how it is supposed to work…
(You hear last night that the President is sending the National Guard in to help police our borders? Yeah, like those poor bastards don’t already have enough on their plate.)
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