C'est Non Un Blog

Alright, here is part one of what you’ve missed. Lots more to write. I was especially wordy, I think with this one. Took me a while to write. I guess what I’m saying is don’t expect the next one too soon after this one.

Yesterday I cleared out my room for the first time in oh, forever. It looks a lot better now. I threw out a lot a don’t need anymore. About 8-9 years of magazines. That was tramatic. At least it made room for another bookshelf. Yeah! Let the madness continue!

Josh is coming soon. I’ll leave you with this:

(March 27)

——House on Telegraph Hill (1951)——

I like this movie a lot because it manages to come up with a really great idea for a film noir (Nazi concentration camp survivor takes the place of her dead friend to get in with a rich family in San Francisco) and twists that idea so that the story goes in a direction that you were never expecting. You would expect someone in the family would be trying to kill her because they found out that she wasn’t who she said she was, right? Instead, no one knows by the film’s end who she is except for one character and she TOLD him who she was. Our main character actually walks unknowingly into someone else’s drama and her sudden appearance just makes things harder on the person trying to take over.

The rest is pretty classic film noir stuff, nothing exception other than the initial idea, but the whole thing ties together extremely well and makes for one entertaining viewing. Of all of the Fox Film Noir disks they have produced this is definitely one of my favorites.

(SEE)

——Inside Man (2006)——

Although the plot twist of Spike Lee’s newest film is apparent early to anyone who has ever seen a film with a plot twist before, the fun with this film is more in the ride, watching great actors do some great work. I love Clive Owen. I really wish he spent more of this movie outside of a mask. The voice is enough though. If there is anyone who can demand authority as a bank robber who has planned the perfect crime, it is him. Denzel Washington also has a great character, not particularly deeply written, but he still manages to make the most of it filling in gaps present in his character. The film manages to reference Dog Day Afternoon but it is no where near as good as that film. Still, it’s fun. See it.

(SEE)

(March 28)

——Girl Boss Guerilla (1972)——

This was my second voyage into the world of the Pinky Violence Collection, that glorious collection of Japanese girl gang movies, and while Girl Boss Guerilla doesn’t have the classic timeless feeling of the sublime Delinquent Girl Boss: Worthless to Confess this is one of those examples where the sum of the parts is actually greater than the whole. The plot is about a biker girl gang (the Red Helmets) from Tokyo going to Kyoto on vacation and because they are tight on money they just happen to take over the dominate girl gang there. Expect lots of delicious chick fights. Not everyone is happy about the transition. First there is the girl who got her ass kicked. Then there is the yakuza counterpart that doesn’t like the shift in the status quo.

That yakuza gang is where the movie doesn’t quite work for me. These girls are all so freakin’ badass. They never lose a fight. Then the guys come in and bust them up like they are a bunch of little kids playing gangster. Even at the end they have to get their revenge through STDs and a car bomb. Weak. I much prefer the samurai sword carrying girls of Delinquent Girl Boss. But anyways.

When there isn’t some man around to kick their ass, these girls are pretty badass. The film is shot really well too. Any fan of exploitation filmmaking will squeal with glee at some of the compositions, especially the opening shots of the girls on their bikes. The one weakness here is the plot that suffers from being episodic and not building to any sort of satisfactory climax. Oh well. Still an entertaining ride.

(SEE)

——Heavenly Creatures (1994)——

Peter Jackson, director of small low budget splatter films in his native New Zealand, got the job for the Lord of the Rings trilogy based a lot on this film, which really put him on the map as a creative personality. It also at the same time launched Kate Winslet’s career, helping her get cast in a little film called Titanic. He somehow did this by telling a story of two girls who become homicidal friends in the Fifties instead of focusing on exploding zombie heads. Not that there is anything wrong with exploding zombie heads. They just don’t seem to get the attention of those folks with all of the money.

These two social outcast, overly imaginative schoolgirls find each other and quickly form a bond over a shared fantasy world that only the two of them can understand. Their bond is so tight that it seems that they become almost of one mind, and that bond becomes so intense that their parents begin to worry about it (especially in that it might mean they are lesbians in the taboo Fifties). When the parents finally plan to pry them apart they plan a murder that shocked the nation and got them separated for life.

Heavenly Creatures didn’t knock my socks off, but it is a very fun and addictive film. The two girls seem to contain an unlimited amount of enthusiasm when they are together. You can definitely see how the world might see Peter Jackson a little bit differently after directing this film.

(SEE)

——42nd Street (1933)——

This was my first Busby Berkeley musical but already I was able to see a pattern that is supposed to be apparent in all of his oft-parodied musicals. The film starts out as a funny, if unmemorable screwball comedy about a show trying to get of the ground to become a hit. 42nd Street, probably the most classic of those plotlines, involves the lead twisting her ankle at the last minute of an already chaotic show in rehearsals, only for an unknown member of the chorus line to take the stage at the last minute and pull off the role fantastically. But while amusing (and featuring quite a bit of risque dialogue) the film really doesn’t take off until we get to the last half hour of the film directed by Berkeley.

In his segments something happens that we have not been prepared for by anything that has happened previously. None of the rehearsals give us any indication of the scope and scale of the musical routines that are actually in the show. How could they? We’re suppose to believe that all of this is happening on a theater stage, and yet no stage in the world could hold the staging that Berkeley comes up with. Suddenly we’ve jumped to film world, where cuts and camera angles allow things to happen on the screen that could never actually happen on the stage. Another thing becomes apparent and that is how proficient Berkeley is with his camera. The shots are composed better, the cinematography is photographed better, the people look better. Perhaps his most famous shot is in this film, where Berkeley’s camera goes between the legs of numerous girls twisting in formation until we finally come across the two main actors resting on their elbows smiling for the camera. It’s an amazingly beautiful shot, accentuated by Warner’s excellent job on the DVD. At the very least you have to see the last section of this film, because if you haven’t seen one of Busby Berkeley’s before you don’t know what you’ve been missing.

(MUST SEE)

——The Hustler (1961)——

Shot in widescreen black and white, starring Paul Newman, the Hustler becomes the ultimate pool movie precisely for the reason that it really isn’t about playing pool at all. Fast Eddie is technically a superior pool player to Jackie Gleason’s Minnesota Fats, so why is it that he can’t beat him the first time they play each other? It’s as the great George C. Scott tells him: “You’ve got no character.” That’s what the Hustler is about. As talented as Fast Eddie is, he’s really just a hustler, a nobody. He has the impatience that comes with early talent, letting his emotions get in the way of actual success.

What’s really interesting about this movie though is about how the girl in the movie gets almost equal screen time as the men. After Eddie loses to Fats he drifts off and meets Piper Laurie (who is so fantastic in this movie that it makes you wonder why she never did anything as big before or since) in a train station as a fellow alcoholic waiting for the bar down the street to open. The two seem to pull each other out of their own respective ruts, that is until George C. Scott finds him and agrees to sponsor another shot at Fats. Scott cares nothing about Newman himself, only about seeing him beat Gleason, so he brings him back into the world while poisoning his relationship with Laurie.

The ending is one of those mixed bags, a tragic victory if you will, that helps the movie transcend just being a movie about a pool player. Having seen The Color of Money I can agree that the sequel to The Hustler lacks any of the punch the original had for not having that dynamic ending. While modern Hollywood films (and even The Color of Money) seem to be more plot driven, this is one startling exception where the film is much more about character. Even George C. Scott’s character seems to know that.

(MUST SEE)

(March 31)

——A History of Violence (2005)——

Hey, it is time for this week’s Cronenberg review! This is the most subtle, graphically, of all of the films I’ve seen of his and yet it still remains just as startling, maybe even more so because of the more intimate context of the violence. Viggo Mortensen does some amazing acting here, much more powerful than anything in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, as Tom Stall, the small town diner owner whose heroic killing of two murderous robbers brings on the unwanted attention of some Philadelphia mobsters who think he is someone else. The second viewing only allows you more time to take in this very focused and nuanced performance. After you know all of the twists and turns in the narrative you can see how Viggo was playing the character we know at the end from the very first frame of the film.

Beyond telling you how great the acting is I really don’t want to tell you much more about the plot of the film, because it is better you go into the film knowing as little as possible. I will say that the wordless dinner table sequence that ends the film is just perfection. So much is said with looks and expressions that no words could have been chosen to make the scene any better. If you need any proof that Viggo was denied that Oscar, you need only look at his eyes at the end of the film. If you are anything like me you’ll go “holy crap, now that’s a way to end a movie!”

(MUST SEE)

——Jarhead (2005)——

I’m still puzzled by Jarhead’s lack of yearend critical acclaim. It is as if the film disappeared or fell off of the edge of the world after it initially was released. You just don’t hear about it at all. When I first saw the film opening weekend I immediately fell in love with its offbeat humor and had decided that it was one of the very best war films about the actual experience of being a soldier. After the lack of critical attention I wondered if I perhaps put too much of myself into the film. I watched Jarhead again, however, after it came out on DVD and I stand by my initial assessment of the film. Only in a war film where the soldier never gets to fire a shot can you really understand what it is like to be a soldier.

Jake Gyllenhaal is our main Jarhead, Swoff, who, we find out, regrets joining the Marines almost instantly after enlisting. He’ll try anything to get out of it, that is until he is selected for sniper training and takes instantly to the rifle as if he were born to use it. Then the first Gulf War starts and he is shipped off to the deserts of Saudi Arabia to spend more than 200 days in the sand waiting and hydrating. While touching upon some war movie cliches about boot camp and life with a bunch of horny testosterone filled killing machines the movie also finds time to really dig into what makes these guys tick and how politics and military bureaucracy kills the modern day fighting soldier.

War does funny things to men. I’m reminded of two scenes in particular. One is before the war starts and the guys are still in boot. They are watching the Ride of the Valkeries scene in Apocalypse Now on the big screen and are reacting to seeing the Vietnamese dies by missile fire in a way that combines seeing your favorite football team score the last minute winning touchdown in the Superbowl with having a mind-blowing orgasm. This is the ultimate rush for these guys, which helps you understand the second scene I was thinking of. For a sniper the ultimate war experience need only be firing that one perfect shot. The pink mist shot. After doing a whole lot of nothing for a long time and watching the war go on from the sidelines Swoff and his spotting partner (played by Peter Sarsgaard) finally get their shot, so to speak. They line up the perfect shot on a general in a tower on an airfield and get approval to take the shot when a bigwig bursts in telling them that they’ve just called in an airstrike to take out the whole complex. Sarsgaard argues with him, pleading with him to just let them take the shot since in the whole scheme of things it doesn’t really matter either way if the whole place is going to be blown up. When he is denied his request he freaks out and attacks the officer. He’s taken away from them the only thing that means anything to them. It’s a startling scene, haunting, that takes the film to another place it wouldn’t have otherwise made it to. The whole film is filled with these moments.

(MUST SEE)

(April 1)

——The Squid and the Whale (2005)——

One of my favorite films of last year, The Squid and the Whale manages to invite you into a world like all of the best novels do, less preoccupied by plot and flashy endings than developing complex, real, and emotional characters. The four leads, parents, Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney, and their two sons, Jesse Eisenberg and Owen Kline, all carry a series of layers in them that is not always instantly available at the start of the film but will be by the end. This is a story about divorce, pure and simple, about how things got to that point, about how people change over time and deal with life, and how the children deal with the breakup, in this case by choosing sides in their parents war.

The Squid and the Whale is definitely a very cryptic title for a movie, and its meaning isn’t really revealed until the final fifteen minutes of the film. There is a literal meaning for it but the metaphor is much more interesting. The squid and the whale are two almost mythical beasts locked in a seemingly eternal struggle, appearing to a child much in the same way two parents facing a separation must appear to them. It is so frightening that you can only see them through the slits in your interlocked fingers covering your eyes.

Jesse Eisenberg in this case is the one looking through his fingers. He idolizes his dad and his early accomplishments as a writer so much so that he thinks his mother’s recent success as a writer in her own right has caused his parents divorce. He wants so much to be his dad that he regurgitates his father’s ideas on books to other people without having actually read those books himself. He lets slip that he thinks Kafka’s Metamorphosis is “Kafka-esq”. He plagiarizes a Pink Floyd song for a school talent show because he thinks it was something that he could have written, so that the fact that he didn’t actually write it doesn’t matter. He hates his mom without ever actually seeing things from her perspective. It is only after slowly realizing what a dink his father is (played superbly by Jeff Daniels) that he begins to remember that he has always been closer to his mother (again, played superbly by Laura Linney).

The Squid and the Whale is all about catching moments and behaviors, of observing without necessarily judging. Despite their comic nature they feel very real. You probably know someone like them. You might actually have been or you are them. Despite its surprisingly short length you get a lot out of it.

(MUST SEE)

(April 2)

——Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)——

A daughter of a dukedom runs off to marry an Italian opera singer beneath her station only to get herself shunned from the family, and when her husband dies, penniless. The son of that daughter watches his mother struggle to raise him and watches repeatedly as his relatives ignore her as if she never existed. The only thing that keeps her sane is the idea that it is remotely possible that her son might become duke one day, that is in the very unlikely situation that all eight of his other relations should die first without producing another heir.

So is the setup for Kind Hearts and Coronets. The entire story is told in flashback as Louis writes his memoirs of his life leading up to his becoming duke, all from the prison cell he spends his last night in before going to the gallows for murder. He writes of his humble beginnings with his mother, of the girl he was in love with and loved him, but laughed at him when he mentioned he might one day be duke. And finally he gets to the point in his life when he makes up his mind to kill his entire family out of revenge for them not letting his mother be buried in the family crypt. Despite these grim circumstances the story is actually a black comedy, helped out by the fact that all eight of the family members are played by Alec Guinness in deliciously deadpan seriousness, and yet all are killed in delightful and absurdly obtuse ways. For instance, Lady Agatha is killed after an arrow (shot by Louis) pierces her hot air balloon, plummeting her to her death. The general is done in by exploding caviar. The admiral…well, he somehow manages to do himself in.

Amid all of the delightful British murder is a love triangle between Louis, his boyhood crush, and the widow of one of his victims whom he decides would make a much better wife of a duke than his crush would. All of the roles are played amazing well, from Dennis Price as Louis to, of course, Alec Guinness as the D’Ascoyne family, and even to both female leads who bring a presence to their performances that make you remember them long after they have disappeared off-screen. I’m tempted to also write about the twist of the ending, but it is too delightful for me to ruin here.

(MUST SEE)

OK, a while ago when I asked how many people were in the same “haven’t done my taxes yet” boat as I was, why didn’t anybody stand up? Here I am, feeling like a procrastinating jackass, when, come to find out, like 90% of the people I know filed their taxes after I did. What’s all of that about?

Although, come to think of it, when I filed my taxes it said that in between 24 and 48 hours the government would email me telling me whether or not they accepted my tax return. They still haven’t done so and it’s been more than 48 hours. I really hope that is because they are real backed up from me waiting till the last second. I would have been OK, but then all of YOU people had to file right after me and screw everything up. Jeez guys.

To those of you that look forward to the Monday Movie Review every week, I’ve got more bad news for you. Until further notice this week’s column is on hold. I put in the new DVD shelf this afternoon and now my room looks like it puked up all of my stuff. So yeah, I’ve got bigger fish to fry right now. Add to that the fact that I’ll be out most of the day tomorrow and you probably won’t get any new movie reviews until at the earliest, Wednesday.

On the plus side, I have the next nine days off. Which means that once the monster that is my room is finally put under control I promise to dig through all of my back log and get us all caught up for next week, when hopefully I’ll have a lot of movie reviews to throw your way from my week off. Until then…

Sharpen your pencils and grab your trapper keepers–it is time for Ben Math! (Not to be confused with my friend from high school, Ben Mathus.)

Today we will be working on our word problems. Ready? Here we go:

Ben puts five [5] people into a show in his store’s theater. One [1] of those people is an extremely attractive Austrailian woman with her three [3] friends. The show ends and Ben moves four [4] people to the backroom to continue the show.

Question: Which person did NOT see the back half of my show?

You have five minutes. When you are done pass your papers up to the front of the classroom. If you finish early sit quietly at your desk until the other students are done. I don’t have to tell you not to cheat.

So I went to Target and bought another DVD shelf again. That makes four now. I think I have room in my bedroom for it. Well, I do have room for IT. It’s everything else that is the problem. I’m confident that I can make it work. I have next week off. Aside from watching lots and lots of movies, one of my projects is to put the shelf together and make space for it in my room. Pray for me.

A little insanity for you kind folks. Three months have now past in 2006 and I thought that I might give you a little update, number-wise, on how I’m doing. Because I know this is everyone’s favorite part for the same reason that everyone seems drawn to the freakshow tent.

As of March 31 I had seen 125 films (40 in March), 18 in the theater (7 in March) and 112 of those for the first time (36 in March). If I keep at this pace I’ll have seen 500 films by the end of 2006, 72 in the theater and 448 for the first time. [Last year’s records were 427, 76, and 357, respectively.] If you look at the past three years at this time, however, you’ll see that I’m really kicking those records’ asses.

2003: 56, 12, 38.
2004: 89, 11, 77.
2005: 96, 14, 83.
2006: 125, 18, 112.

Think about that for a minute. I’ve more than doubled the number of films I’ve seen in the first three months of the year since 2003. I’m a madman. And for some reason I feel like I’m letting myself down. I feel like I should be seeing MORE movies, that I haven’t seen nearly as many as I could have. Why do I feel this way?

Could have something to do with my addict level of DVD spending. So I saw 125 movies in the last three months. So what? You know how many DVDs I purchased in that same time period? 170. That’s right! You didn’t read that wrong. Currently I own 1,165 DVDs. Crazy! No wonder I can’t find any room for any of them. I’ve already got three bookshelves dedicated to DVDs and yet they still manage to spill out everywhere. Fun, huh?

Alright, so yeah, that was me procrastinating. Procrastinating from finishing up my taxes (which I did finally start) and procrastinating from writing my mountain of movie reviews. 125. You realize that I had to write a movie review for each one of those mothers? No wonder I’m behind. Well, here is another week of reviews, late, of course.

(March 20)

——M*A*S*H (1969)——

I have been a big fan of the television show for years. My sister is an even bigger fan, owning all of the DVDs and watching them obsessively. Until now I had never seen the Robert Altman film that started it all. Verdict? For the most part it is just like the TV show that I remember, just with a darker edge that you get with an R rating. We all can hum the M*A*S*H theme song. How many of us remember the lyrics? (The suicide is painless…)

While the cast of M*A*S*H the TV show has become immortal in our memories and each actor has become the character they played forever, I was still impressed at how the actors Altman picked out seem to work in their own version of this world. Donald Sutherland, Tom Skerritt, Elliot Gould (when I first saw him I was like, “shit! What the hell happened to Elliot Gould?), Robert Duvall and Sally Kellerman are all pitch perfect. The mood and tone of the film is perfect (although, like the show, it is still kind of obvious that this is more about Vietnam than Korea) and the only portion I found a little lacking was the football game that ends the film. Not because it isn’t funny. It’s actually really funny. But it just takes us out of the reality of the world that was created in the rest of the film, and for some reason just doesn’t feel true to me. But I should stop complaining, because it is still really funny.

(MUST SEE)

——Cache (Hidden) (2005)——

It’s not often that I say this about a film, especially one with the positive critical response that Cache has gotten, but this movie is absolute shit. I’m serious. This movie is shit. It is one of those movies that asks you to put a whole lot of time and patience and effort into it and yet it offers no rewards. If you see it and don’t want to throw something at the screen like I did, then you’re a better person than I. I hated this movie. It has some good cinematography, great actors, and some good shots but God, is it boring. Stay far away.

(AVOID!)

(March 21)

——Amadeus (Director’s Cut) (1984)——

I generally hate biopics, particularly those of musicians. I have no love for either Walk the Line or Ray, despite the fact that I recognize that there are definitely good parts to both of those films. The problem comes in trying to create a movie narrative out of a person’s life. No matter how interesting a person’s life is, it almost never makes for interesting plot structure.

But then there was Amadeus. What makes this film work amazingly is just the simple fact that the movie isn’t really about Mozart at all. It is about Antonio Salieri, the court composer in Vienna who has the gift of knowing good music when he hears it but doesn’t actually have the gift to create it. He gives his life to God in order to create just one piece of beautiful music. Talent never comes. Then he meets Mozart. Mozart is purposefully made to remind us of a rockstar. His wigs are a little crazier than everyone else’s. He’s loud, brash, crude and adolescent. He has a very loud and annoying laugh, much like a hyena on nitrous. Thus, the exact opposite of Salieri. And yet he can create genius music almost effortlessly. And Salieri hates him for this.

The great irony that drives the film is that while Salieri wants to destroy Mozart out of jealousy, he is also the only one that recognizes Mozart’s genius. For this reason, even on his deathbed Mozart still thinks that Salieri is his best friend because he has noticed that Salieri is the only person to have heard everyone one of his performances. The complexity of Salieri just keeps on going though. On Mozart’s deathbed, even though Salieri is the one that drove him to it, he still helps Mozart finish his last piece because as much as he wants Mozart out of this world, he can’t stand to not have another genius piece of his music in it.

I’ve held back on seeing this film until now because I just didn’t think I would be that interested in a biopic on a classical composer. My mistake. This Milos Forman film is immensely enjoyable from start to end, and not a minute of its 180-minute running time seems to drag. My mother came down a little after I started it and ended up staying for the whole thing. That’s how it sucks you in. Go check this one out now.

(MUST SEE)

——V for Vendetta (2006)——

A great movie for ideas, unfortunately V for Vendetta falls apart when it comes to actually being a movie. There is no real plot, nor is there any major character building. Instead the film consists mostly of exposition, hidden by carefully by clever editing and cinematography. There is lots great going for the film: great ideas, great actors, great contributors. That all feels hollow though if there isn’t a meaty story to go along with it.

V is a terrorist and the hero of our film. Instantly I like this idea. How often does a major American film have a terrorist as the hero? And V has lots of opportunity to cross a dangerous line into making us wonder whether or not we should be rooting for him. But that’s as far as it goes. The film is too safe. Just as V starts to really look dangerous the filmmakers pull back to our action hero stereotypes. When V tortures someone to help them, the film never really deals with the fact that HE JUST TORTURED SOMEONE. It just merrily skips on its way towards our happy climax. Where are the flaws? Wouldn’t the film be more interesting if they were stuck in there? Yes.

What does work for the movie are the ideas. They tend to flow through this movie much better than the philosophy of the last two Matrix films did. How often do you get a blockbuster that dares to ask tough questions about today’s society? That’s what good sci-fi is all about. Unfortunately the film isn’t fleshed out as much as the ideas. You’re entertained, you think about the ideas, but was the film actually any good? Not really.

(MISS)

(March 24)

——Why We Fight (2006)——

This is one humbling documentary. The first third to a half of it doesn’t seem that way. For anyone familiar with American foreign policy in the 20th Century this is going to cover a lot of familiar ground. As the second half of the film starts to pull all of the strings closer together, that is when the film becomes something else. What I found amazing was how the military-industrial complex has grown into a beast that America cannot easily be rid of. War has become a standard of foreign policy because the complex has made it so that Congress will never vote against it. University think-tanks come up with reasons for America to go to war that have absolutely nothing to do with reality. What is more shocking is the revelation at the end of the film that we might never leave Iraq. We are currently building 14 different bases in the country, presumably not to help out the Iraqis but to solidify our hold on the oil.

One thing that really hit me was our history with Saddam Hussein. In the 50’s England was having trouble with its oil wells in Iran because of political instability. So the CIA went in an assassinated their leader and put in their own. We all know how that turned out. To fight the newly militant fundamentalist Iran and to protect our oil interests in the Middle East, we put an anti-Iranian into office in Iraq. His name: Saddam Hussein. What I didn’t realize was that up until Iraq invaded Kuwait, Saddam was actually a big friend of the White House. As soon as he threatened our oil situation he became public enemy #1. Since Americans know about as much about Middle Eastern history as they do about quantum physics, it was very easy for spin-doctors to paint Saddam as a horrible dictator. The big cosmic joke about the weapons of mass destruction question was that the reason that we didn’t do a thorough search for them was because we already knew he had them. How did we know? Because we sold them to him.

The film is extremely well done, and unlike a film like, say, Fahrenheit 9/11 Why We Fight has as little liberal left spin as it possibly can. The filmmakers prefer instead to let the actions in the film speak for themselves, because there isn’t really much you can do to spin anything the other way. It gives equal time to both sides though, without vilifying any contributors. People who hate Michael Moore might want to give this one a shot.

On my drive home from Images I was listening to Faithless’ “No Roots” CD. The song Mass Destruction came on almost immediately and reminded me instantly of the film I had just seen. That on its own, however, doesn’t deserve mention here. The final line of the chorus of the song is “Inaction is a weapon of mass destruction,” which is repeated over and over at the end of the song. This reminded me instantly of the last line of Why We Fight. People throughout the film are asked the question posed in the title of the film. Your average person on the street has no idea. One of the main people interviewed, a woman who worked both for the military and for the state department, has an answer. To paraphrase (because I can’t remember what she said, exactly) “Why do we fight? Because people don’t stand up to their government and ask why.”

(MUST SEE)

(March 25)

——Debbie Does Dallas: Uncovered (2005)——

This is actually a review of two separate porn related films, this and its extra–Diary of a Porn Virgin–since both together aren’t much more than 90 minutes long and both carry very similar themes. Debbie Does Dallas: Uncovered isn’t really much about the actual film, Debbie Does Dallas, but is instead more about the people involved in the making of it, specifically the actors and the FBI undercover agent put in to uncover its mob ties. Since the movie doesn’t really tell you anything about Debbie Does Dallas aside from give you an idea how sad life is after you star in a porno film, the movie pales in comparison to the much more comprehensive Inside Deep Throat.

It does, however, make for a great companion piece with Diary of a Porn Virgin. Diary of a Porn Virgin follows three Brits who want to make it in the modern day English porn industry. They chose some interesting subjects. The main interest of the filmmakers is a 37-year-old mother and wife who quit her job as a successful businesswoman to fulfill her dream. Not your typical porn star. The most successful of the three is a Muslim woman who has yet to tell her parents of her new career path. Because she is only one of two working Asian women in the English porn industry she is very much in demand and can pick and choose where she works. Finally there is your car stereo installer whose character arc is the slightest of the three. The main (and only) question following him is: “Will he be able to get it up on camera?” [Spoiler alert: He does.]

The two documentaries go pretty well together. Debbie is mostly about the men, because only one of the women was willing to talk about her experience on camera (and for only 15 minutes, at that). Diary is all about the women. Debbie is about aging pornstars looking back at some bad career choices. Diary is about how pornstars make those choices to begin with. All and all, interesting stuff if you are into that sort of thing.

(SEE)

——Breaking News (2004)——

Some very positive things have been said about Breaking News, which caught my interest and was the main reason for my buying this film. I’ve never really heard of Johnnie To and to my knowledge I haven’t seen any of his other films, but according to the DVD box anyway, he’s a bit of a cult figure. But while there are some interesting camera moves in this film, on the whole the movie isn’t anything special.

The film opens with probably its best shot, one unbroken shot that follows a shootout between cops and gangsters in a crowded Hong Kong back alley. The camera moves around in circles, following each of the participants in the gunfight, even at times moving up into the heavens to give us a God’s-eye view of the action. As impressive as that shot is, however, one thing I noticed is how it doesn’t actually add anything to the scene by shooting it like that. In fact it might even lessen the scene’s impact. I never felt connected with any of the participants in the scene.

That scene kind of typifies the rest of the film. The plot is about how the scene I described above led to a camera crew catching the whole thing on tape and putting it one the news, showing how ineffective the police were at catching the gangsters, who escape on live TV. The police decide that not only are they going to catch these gangsters, they are going to do it on live TV to save face with the public.

The rest of the plot is pretty standard if you have seen any other cops and robbers films, especially any Hong Kong cops and robbers films. While this film isn’t bad by any means, I just rather pop in a early John Woo film instead.

(MISS)

(March 26)

——Five Easy Pieces (1970)——

After Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces is the film that made Jack Nicholson a star. It’s a pretty interesting film. I’m always amazed at the great American films that came out of the 70’s. There is just something so different and unique about them, things that you can’t ever find in even the best of today’s independent film movement. There is just something raw and real about this movie, right down to the surprise ending, surprising not in and of itself, but shocking in that you’d never expect a Hollywood movie to end that way.

Jack is an angry young man. He has talent, which we find out nearly halfway through the film, in that he used to be an excellent concert pianist. It wasn’t what he wanted out of life though, so he ran away and took various odd jobs. When the film starts he works on an oil drill, living a simple country life. He isn’t really all that happy with this either. He has a beautiful, loyal waitress girlfriend who only wants Jack to say he loves her, but he can’t even do that. Instead he sleeps with some floozies he meets at the bowling alley. He’s angry with the world, but more importantly he is angry with himself. He has no direction and can’t stand that fact.

He finds out from his sister that his dad has had a stroke and Jack goes out to the old family house to see him. The second half of the film thus deals with how he handles seeing his family again, seeing his old life again. Jack does some great acting in the film. The cinematography is also pretty fantastic for an obviously low budget film. While I think parts of this film don’t have the same impact that they did when the film first came out and became a pop culture hit, on the whole the film still rings true.

(MUST SEE)

OK, it was no surprise to me that it was going to snow today. That’s been on the news for a couple days now. But of course I thought that just meant that there would be some wet snow falling during the course of the day. I didn’t expect to wake up this morning to a winter wonderland. Especially since it is suppose to get back into the 60’s by Friday.

My constant talk of DVDs must be rubbing off on my co-workers. Yesterday John C. signed up for Netflix and Jeff opened up an Amazon account (w/Amazon Visa). I’ve created some monsters!

Alright, you know you are a DVD nerd when you read an article (on a blog devoted entirely to DVD) about Warner Brothers acquiring Ryko Disk and you get really, REALLY excited.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world scratches their pretty little heads and says, “Huh?”

Jeez Louise, tonight’s Lost was one of their best ever. Start to finish amazing. It kind of makes me wonder why they all can’t be like that. I’d be in TV Heaven.