One Hot Geek

Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)

2011-10-10T18:14:00.002-04:00

*gasp*

I'm back up for air. It's been a while, I know. I couldn't possibly hope to update you on all of the movies I've watched between then and now. Water under the bridge. Yet, I felt that continuity insists that I share my thoughts on TRON: Legacy. I wrote an open letter to Hollywood. Demands were issued. How could I not follow up on that?

Oh, TRON. Dear, sweet, phosphorescent TRON. This was the movie for any kid with even a remote interest in video games in the 80s (no pun intended. Power glove. Ha!) I cannot review this sequel without acknowledging a few things about the original. It was not Citizen Kane in a light suit. It was cheesy, it was predictable, and it was a little hokey for a science fiction film. But it was Disney, and it did look to please the kiddies. What made it was the action, the effects and the concept. Man vs. Machine. Could it be any more charming?

And that's how this new TRON succeeded for me. It got the tone right. It had a great concept, man was still up against the icy machine, and the effects are dazzling. It was charming as hell.

The ace in the hole is Jeff Bridges, his acting is light years (no pun intended) ahead of what it was in the first TRON. He is dynamic as both the calculating CLU and the older, wiser Flynn. There's a dash of The Dude visible here. I found it refreshing. It was a reminder that he was unarguably human living in a digital world. Every moment he's on the screen is incredibly gratifying. Garrett Hedlund as Sam Flynn is also pretty good. He reminds me a bit of Cillian Murphy (who is also in this movie for a millisecond) and Chris Pine (who was considered for the role), but I think he lacks in the presence department. He doesn't seem as big as Bridges, or even Michael Sheen, who is quite the hidden treat here channelling Ziggy Stardust. I do think Hedlund will get there. He's very likable as Sam. Olivia Wilde, I think it's hard to separate her from her look here. It's a lot of look. She pulls it off. I'm just not sure she can fill Milla Jovovich's bandage suit when it comes to portraying a female savant. But my favorite part was that Tron is in TRON. He's still the valiant program fighting for the user. He could have so easily been forgotten or written out, but he's the heart of the story.

That's where I have to say: Thank you, Hollywood. Thank you for remembering that what makes us love a movie, what makes a movie a cult classic out of the cheesiest of films, is a great story. A story that appeals to our higher values. TRON lived on past its expiration date because we all want to believe that man can create something better than himself, that technology will not be our undoing, it will be our gift to the world. TRON: Legacy kept that story alive.

My one gripe is that I think the pacing could have been better. The action sequences are good, but they don't transition well to the dramatic sequences. And while I do enjoy Daft Punk's soundtrack, I think it could have been better. Again, I feel a mix of orchestral and techno music was better accomplished in The Fifth Element.

Some faith in the Hollywood machine has been restored. However, I don't think Hollywood can take all the credit. I think they relied a great deal on fans of the original, and when the fans are involved, it's hard not to have a happy ending.

Movies for Travelling: Ratatouille, Airplane! & Tootsie (and don't go see Thor)

2011-06-08T20:23:00.009-04:00

All right- No excuses, apologies or promises this time as it's clear they don't do me any good. I'm just going to blog. Let's do this thing!

Now, I've mentioned before that I have an iPad. I love my iPad. Real love. If it were to break, be stolen, or get lost, I would mourn it like a dear friend. Okay, maybe more like a beloved hamster. I'd be inconsolable for a few days, then probably get a new one.

But that's beside the point.

I've spent a lot of time streaming movies on my iPad, but only recently have run into the difficult situation of buying and downloading a movie onto my iPad. Dan was leaving for Chile and wanted to bring the iPad. I told him I'd buy a few movies so that he could watch them on his long plane ride, seeing as though streaming movies on public WiFi is never reliable.

Little did I know that deciding which movie to download onto the iPad was a far more complicated process than I imagined. It's something like this:

And that's all assuming the movie you want is even on iTunes and you can know exactly what you're looking for. The browsing process in iTunes is maddening. It basically assumes that all anyone cares about is what's new or popular. Anyone who knows anything about movies knows that you're going to have a pretty ho-hum selection if you stick to what's new and popular.

So here are the three movies I currently have on my iPad:

I really do love all three of these movies. I could watch them over and over. They were priced appropriately, and none of them causes a reaction so extreme as to bother anyone sitting around me.

Let me tell you why:

Ratatouille

This is, perhaps, the best movie about food and cooking that I have ever seen. Pixar really hit it out of the park on this one. The animation is incredible, the textures and movements are so rich that you get easily sucked into this wonderful, virtual Paris.

Yes, the plot itself is incredibly far-fetched, but the wonderful characters, the wacky humor and the smart dialogue help you forget about that. But the real star of this film is the food. You can practically smell it right through the screen. The way the characters talk about food and handle food is romantic. This film always makes me hungry, and it makes me want to cook something. I have gotten up halfway through it to make ziti with alfredo sauce. I am a picky eater and a reluctant cook, and this movie makes trying something new seem fun and exciting. And you actually learn a lot about food and cooking during it.

Another reason I find it easy to watch is that it's fun, light and short. The perfect recipe for a travel movie.

Airplane

Now, if you haven't seen this movie before, you probably shouldn't watch it on a plane. You'll laugh too much. It's one of the funniest movies ever made and many of its lines have become phrases everyone knows. The most famous of which is:

Striker: "Surely you can't be serious."

Dr. Rumack: "I am serious, and don't call me Shirley."

Of course, I'm not sure how you can live in the U.S. and can not manage to at least see part of this movie. It seems to always be on television. But trust me when I tell you that the best parts were edited out for time or lewdness.

The jokes come one right after another. Sight gags, puns, wisecracks, running gags- all these and more. Each just as funny as the next. It's the screwiest of all screwball comedies. For its time, it was one of the most daring spoofs. The comedic performances are flawless. Even actors that deliver only one or two lines are funnier than half the so-called comedians you see on t.v. or the big screen these days.

Is it a high budget film with perfect execution? No, but I find that's part of its charm. It's scrappy, it's playing it fast and loose. You can watch it over and over, it's appropriately priced, and you never have to think too hard about it.

Tootsie

I know this is kind of coming from left field. But again, screwy movies are the best kind of movies for travel. And Tootsie is actually impeccably written for having such a weird concept as the foundation of it's plot. This film was a pet project for Dustin Hoffman after he worked on Kramer vs. Kramer:

"Dustin Hoffman first got the idea to do this film while working on Kramer vs. Kramer (1979). He felt his character in that film had to be both a mother and a father, so he started thinking about how to play a man and a woman. Several scripts, several writers and a few directors later, this was the result."

Honestly, most leading men couldn't pass for women, but Hoffman's small frame, small features (except for that nose, but girls have big noses too!), and the mannerisms he adopts to appear feminine are so believable that it's not such a stretch to think he could pass as a woman.

The dialogue is fantastic and most of the performances are fantastic. I think Jessica Lange is a bit of a weak link, but it could be that her character is simply written to be so weak and vulnerable that I can't help but dislike her. But I can tolerate it with ease because she's never on screen without Hoffman, who is simply sublime.

This movie is also funny as hell. All of Bill Murray's lines were improvised, and they are hysterical. The great thing is that there are just as many laughs generated by the reaction shots as those garnered by the punchlines.

The ending is really not so great, so I give you permission to stop it right after the kooky hospital scene ends, which I sometimes do, but the beginning and the build to the climax are so incredibly worth it. Worth it to the point where I'll watch this movie many many times.

---------------

I did go see Thor the weekend it came out. It was utterly ridiculous and kind of irresistibly campy. The thing I kept thinking while watching it was:

"Anthony Hopkins couldn't have possibly read this script. He must have heard the words 'Kenneth Branagh' and 'Zeus' and signed on without thinking."

At least that what I tell myself to help it all make sense.

The worst part about all of it is that the Norse myths themselves are so awesome and easy to understand, and the explanation given in the film about Asgard and the old gods is so ingenious that there's really no excuse for how they patched it all together.

Thor, Loki, Zeus, Asgard- all of their back stories and origins are botched. I don't really know much about the Thor comic books (I know, I know, I call myself a geek and I don't know this) so perhaps they were following that cannon, but I grew up with the old stories. My dad and uncle loved vikings, and read us books and told my brother and me the old Norse legends that are so damn entertaining and awesome that I really can't respect anything else.

Odin didn't lose his eye in a battle with the Ice Giants. He sacrificed it in exchange for infinite wisdom. Loki is not Thor's brother. No explanation is given as to why or how Thor has a Japanese man in his group of warriors in this film. Granted, Tadanobu Asano is fucking awesome and was the star in Ichi the Killer, which is about 60 times better than this movie, but he's still out of place in this movie. In fact, instead of wasting any more of my or your time telling you about the truly forgettable Thor, I will simply tell you to take that $20 you were going to spend on a ticket to see Thor and spend it on a Netflix subscription and put Ichi the Killer on you queue.

So, there.

Til árs og frí ar!

Underdogs: Get Him to The Greek and The Men Who Stare at Goats

2011-04-10T20:08:00.007-04:00

I've always been a fan of cult films. The kind of movies that you can use as a litmus test for new friends. You drop a quote into the conversation at a party, and if the other person can finish the dialogue, you're instantly friends.

I watched two movies recently that are sure to build a small but devoted following for years to come.

The first, was The Men Who Stare at Goats. Ewan McGregor plays a reporter who follows his gut on a story, and finds himself in a top-secret military organization that must be real, because no one could make anything like this up. The plot is so ingenious and the dialogue is so clever that I was smitten by the 20 minute mark. Basically, the premise is that Jeff Bridges, a high-ranking military officer, is sent by the Pentagon into the love-child subculture of the 60s after he returned from Vietnam. His task is simple: Conceive of a method that utilizes natural human gentleness for military purposes. He succeeds, and the new-age warfare techniques he develops are simply far out.

The film opens with a disclaimer that more of the story is true than most would like to believe. But the really fantastic thing is the way that the movie keeps you guessing as to just how real all these psychic powers and new-age fighting techniques are, and how much of it is the shared delusion of the Jedi. When it turns on a dime and makes you start to think that maybe these love-happy warriors really are onto something- the film becomes transcendental. It lifts you up, and keeps you laughing the whole time.

George Clooney, Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey have such an innate sense of comedy that it's strange that we know them best for their dramatic work. It makes me wish that America still had a palate for rat-pack or Marx Brothers-style farces. Surely Clooney, Bridges and Spacey would star in many of them. Watching them in this movie is joyous. I laughed myself silly. A group of masters playing off of each other and taking it all to another level. If only every movie could have a cast like this.

It does feel very much like a Cohen Brothers rip off, but I mean that as a compliment. It reminded me so closely of Burn After Reading and Fargo that I was impressed. Punchy colors, wonderfully simple and realistic sets, and costuming that acts as part of character development. There's also a brave use of narration here that most contemporary movies don't dabble with. Perhaps not since Fight Club have I seen it done so well.

Not too much, (Perfect example of too much: Most episodes of "Sex and the City"- Really, Carrie? You're telling me you just arrived at home while I'm watching you, on screen, arrive home? That's maddeningly redundant. Either tell me what you're doing or show me what you're doing. Don't do both or you'll just annoy the crap out of me. This isn't a damn cooking show.) not too little (I don't have an exact example of too little, but pretty much anytime you're watching a movie and think to yourself "I shouldn't watch movies when I'm drunk because I have no idea what's going on" but then you remember you're not drunk, the movie's narrative is just confusing as hell and some voice-over would really help you out.).

See The Men Who Stare at Goats. It's wonderful.

Get Him to The Greek needs a preface:

I have an amazing friend named Lucie. She's just plain awesome. We became good friends while working at Sephora, especially after she heard me yell in frustration at a hand truck "It goes in the hallway or else it gets the hose again!" She laughed hysterically and I was thrilled to have found someone who can appreciate a well-timed Silence of the Lambs reference. We spent many an evening watching movies together. We have incredibly similar taste and she has an impressive selection of DVDs. Lucie, and her husband, Jon, between them have just about any movie worth watching on DVD. And they are kind enough to rent their collection out to their friends! See? I told you she was amazing. Plus, she's beautiful. That's just icing on the awesome cake.

So, I was at Lucie's, and we were all talking about movies, and I remarked how surprised I was that actually wanted to see the Arthur remake. Lucie agreed, and then we began discussing the strange genius that is Russell Brand. I admitted I had never seen Get Him to The Greek, and Lucie and Jon insisted Dan and I bring it home to watch. they promised we would love it.

OH MY GOD were they ever right.

This movie is riotously funny. What I like so much about Russell Brand is his gift for absurdity. Things are funnier if it seems like no sane person would ever speak or act in that way. And here, he's let loose to play.

Jonah Hill portrays Aaron Green, a normal, if a bit awkward, guy who works at a recording label. Sean "P. Diddy" Combs plays the head honcho of the label, Sergio. (More about this in a moment) Aaron comes up with an idea of having his favorite rock star, Aldous Snow, (who has fallen from popularity after a terrible album) restored to his former glory by playing an epic anniversary concert at The Greek. Hilarity ensues when Sergio sends the starstruck Aaron to bring the hard-to-handle rocker from London to L.A.

Get Him to The Greek is outrageous, but also tender. Aaron and Aldous embark on a journey of self-discovery- but that tired movie cliche is not to be found here. You will see things you never thought you'd see in a movie. Aldous is clearly modeled after Tommy Lee, and his roller coaster relationship with his Pamela is just as complicated, yet so romantic in a really dysfunctional way. Aaron learns that his hero is simply a lonely man, who only yearns for love because he didn't have any as a child. The heart of this movie truly touched me. It really tries to show that most of us don't really comprehend what it is to be a rock star- To leave all of yourself on the stage, for your fans. And the harsh reality of that is that, often times, there's not much left to hang onto off-stage. They drift along, not really living until the next time they get to perform. The drugs and the sex just fill the void in the meantime. It truly reminded me a lot of This Is Spinal Tap in how it balances mockery and empathy.

But it's also just funny as hell. Brand and Hill are a chemistry match made in comedic heaven. Every scene between the two of them is delightful. Brand really gets to show some range here, he's not just a big haired buffoon, he has a soul, and it's tortured. And he somehow manages to carry it off without it seeming tired and cheesy. Elizabeth Moss is effective as Aaron's girlfriend Daphne, but she sort of gets lost between Hill and Brand, literally one time.

But P. Diddy is a revelation. Who knew he was this funny? He's not in most of the movie, but his big scene, the "Jeffrey" scene, is some of the funniest material I have ever seem committed to film. It's Monty Python-worthy funny. It's Mel Brooks-level funny. I was laughing so hard I thought I was going to pee myself. Pure bliss. This is the scene that you will be quoting for the rest of your life and hoping that someone else knows what you're talking about. It's really that good.

So much of what happens is unexpected and bold. There's a lot of gross-out humor, but just like in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, I enjoy it because, hey, that's real life. We puke, poop, have sex- why hide it? It's funny because it's true.

Watch it, you won't be sorry. Stroke the furry wall.

Fighting the good fight: The Fighter

2011-03-26T18:01:00.003-04:00

Oh my, how I have neglected my poor little blog!

I've been neck-deep in a job hunt since January, going on interviews, sending out resumes and praying to the career advancement gods. But I am happy to report that my prayers, networking, sparkling personality and skills landed me a great new gig. I miss a lot of the people from my old office, but it was time to move on. I started last week, and I've been busy finding my place and trying to remember all the new names and faces (the latter is not my strong suit), but I promised myself I would post. The handful of you who read my blog deserve it.
The Fighter knocks out (get it? Ha! Puns!) any other Boston film in recent memory. Actually, I think this story, pulled from the 90s, is the perfect portrait of America right now.
Micky Ward is a down on his luck boxer. The toxic, but well-intentioned hold his family has on his career is preventing him from fulfilling his potential. His brother, Dickie, was a once-famous contender who's losing the one fight he can't afford to lose: His addiction to crack. But a new love in Micky's corner just may be his inspiration to do what needs to be done.

Micky is a lot like Lowell and other small cities in America right now. He has a lot of potential and just needs the right team of people to help lead him to victory. Mismanagement, desperation and greed have done a number on Micky, but he's not giving up. In the wake of the recession, strong management, hard work, and tenacity are the only things that can help our country off the ropes.

The performances in this movie are inspiring. Melissa Leo, Christian Bale and Amy Adams are the most believable Joe Schmoe Massholes I've seen since Blake Lively blew me away in The Town. They fit so well into the neighborhoods of Lowell and the locals used as extras that you almost forget that they're Hollywood hoi polloi off screen. My favorite cast members have to be the ladies who play the Ward sisters. They're simply a lot of fun to watch, like a gum-smacking, cigarette smoking female version of the Goodfellas gang.

Using the real City of Lowell for much of the movie, and using a wardrobe that involves some of the worst crimes against fashion the 90s ever committed, gives this film genuine character. Did you ever think you'd see Christian Bale wearing MC Hammer pants, and not in an ironic way?
The best thing about The Fighter is that it doesn't condescend. There is no irony in it. It shows how junkies, has-beens, nobodys and never-weres have just as many stories to tell as the champions. The empathy you'll feel for these characters will catch you by surprise. This is a feel-good movie that doesn't sugarcoat reality.

I admit that I've pulled some punches here by not hitting you with a lot of puns, but I really I know that kind of thing could put me on the ropes and stop me from being a contender. It can be a rocky road out there that can leave you feeling boxed in or raise you up like a million dollar baby, so I just want you to know you're not fighting alone. I'm in your corner, like a raging bull.

There, I got it out of my system!

Now, I've seen a lot of movies since I last posted. Date Night, Running with Scissors, The Men Who Stare at Goats, Enter the Dragon, and a couple others. I promise to share my thoughts on all of them with you and soon!

Sent from my iPad

The Millenium trilogy: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire & The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest

2011-02-16T14:38:00.005-05:00

We all love that feeling we get when we start reading a book, but then find ourselves unable to put it down. We read it voraciously, consuming the words, plot and characters like a black hole. We suck them in, and they become a part of us. The characters become old friends, and we
cherish their memory.
Rarely do movies afford us this same type of sensation. Only the epic greats like Jackson's Lord of the Rings can come close. And even these can fall victim to producers so eager to profit off of the fans that they end up disfiguring the franchise in such a way that true fans become disgusted, and turn away jaded. (See Star Wars, the Burton-started Batman, and poor Indiana Jones.)

But, just the other day, I found myself sitting on my couch watching three movies back-to-back. Four more than six hours, I watched intently, pausing only for bathroom breaks and small refreshments. At the end of the third movie, I felt a strange sadness. I was sad that there wasn't another movie to watch. I was sad that I would not be hearing more about these characters in the foreseeable future.

I had heard good things about The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The book had been a best-seller, and the Swedish film adaptation was critically acclaimed. I was thrilled to discover, that Sunday morning, that the film was available instantly on Netflix. I was even more excited because I had a new iPad on which I could watch it. I have the cables that hook my laptop up to my HDTV, but I find the picture on the iPad to be superior.

So, I started the first movie and was so sucked in by it that I searched for the second, The Girl Who Played with Fire- available instantly! And then, if I'm in for a penny I might as well be in for a pound, I searched for the thrid movie, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest- also available instantly! I love living in the future!

The Millenium Trilogy follows two characters: The tireless investigative journalist, Michael Bloomkvist, and the hyper-intelligent, gothy hacker, Lisbeth Salander. They are first brought together when Salander is hired to find evidence against Bloomkvist, and Bloomkvist is hired to solve a cold case disappearance. Salander seeks out Bloomkvist because she suspects that he's been set up, Bloomkvist realizes Salander had the intelligence and skills to help him solve his disappearance case. Together, they stumble upon a web of intrigue that, by the end of the third film, goes deeper and more personal than they could have ever imagined.

Noomi Rapace plays Salander, and she is a revelation. She displays an icy exterior, but her eyes show the bubbling rage that lies within Salander. If only there were more roles like this. Salander is a character so well thought-out and rounded that only the most skilled of actresses could bring her to life.
Salander's story itself is distinctly feminist. It shows how easily women can be oppressed, how even the most steely woman has vulnerabilities that can be exploited. The intended title of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was Men Who Hate Women. We see how sadism and misogyny are so often overlooked. If a woman is raped by a man, no one's really surprised, and they wonder what she did to provoke it. If a man is raped by a man, then everyone is shocked. If a prostitute or runaway is tortured, raped and killed, the police don't put in a lot of effort into the investigation. Even in the U.S., rape kits sit on a shelf, backlogged, waiting to be processed, while the rapists freely walk the streets.
Salander's antagonists easily use the patriarchal system to take away her rights. So, her vengence seems entirely justified and logical, because the patriarchal system doesn't give her any other options.

There's also some great villain-casting in these movies. All the baddies are so perfectly loathsome that they turn your stomach.

The films themselves are neo-noirs. Every bit as gritty and artistic as Chinatown and Seven. The light is harsh, the colors are cold, and the characters' environments closely mirror their emotions. It's incredible to see how gloomy and menacing the Netherlands can be, when shot in the right way.
Be warned, there is a graphic rape scene that is brought up in all three films. To say that it is difficult to watch is an understatement. Take comfort in the fact that it doesn't go unpunished, and is not glamourized or fetishized. These movies are not date night material.

What I like best about Swedish movies is the casting. Too often, movies are filled with men and women who look like models, or are certainly better looking than the average person. In these films, the people look like regular people. There are only one or two really good looking people, and that's because it's part of the character. It's not just window dressing.

Of course, the stories are what makes these films so great. Stieg Larsson's characters and plot are well developed and incredibly interesting. He's able to construct conspiracies that boggle the mind, but do not defy logic. Your disbelief is totally suspended while watching, and it feels more like a "ripped from the headlines" episode of "Law & Order" (if they had an all-star writing team) than an episode of "The X-files" (the terrible conspiracy episodes, not the awesome monster episodes).

In short, these are three of the best films I've seen in quite some time. They can hold their own up to The Maltese Falcon, The Lady From Shanghai, and any trilogy out there.
They are so successful that I don't quite understand the need for English versions apart from the fact that a lot of people are too lazy to read subtitles. Dub the damn things if you have to, just please don't dumb down these incredible works for mass consumption. Could you imagine if someone dared to do that to The Maltese Falcon?

-- Noel
Sent from my T-Mobile phone

They don't make 'em like that anymore: True Grit & The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

2011-02-12T14:26:00.008-05:00

I grew up watching a lot of westerns. My dad had always been a fan of any western, and my mom enjoyed the Clint Eastwood and John Wayne classics.

Western is one of the most challenging genres. They are operettas. They share a great deal with Shakespearean tragedies, old world mythology, and Japanese shogun films. Central themes include honor, justice, and, most commonly, revenge. They explore the complexity of the moral spectrum- sometimes the good guys are pretty bad, sometimes you have to break the law to get justice.

True Grit is about revenge. The shockingly intelligent Mattie Ross is on a mission to avenge her father's death. Trouble is, she's a 14 year old girl. So, she seeks out the toughest, meanest U.S. Marshall she can find: Rooster Cogburn.

I don't know how, but the Coen brothers managed to make a true, classic Western. I didn't think this kind of movie was even possible anymore. Unforgiven was close, but Eastwood was trying to give us something a little more modern. The Coens clearly studied the old movies closely to create something that feels so authentic.
The way the camera moves and the way the characters interact with each other and their environment evokes the atmosphere of the classic westerns. Part of this success may be that they were so faithful to the original 1968 serial. The dialogue is the shining star. People don't talk like that anymore.

It's a shame that Jeff Bridges won the Oscar last year, because the work he does in this movie is incredible. He contorts himself into this rugged curmudgeon in such a way that he is almost unrecognizable. He chews on his words like tobacco and growls like an old lion. His familiar face is the only thing betraying his identity.
Hailee Steinfeld is amazing as Mattie Ross. Her intensity and tenacity are pitch perfect. It is impossible that anyone else could have played this role so believably and organically. The casting here is excellent. The woman who plays Mattie as an adult, Elizabeth Marvel, blends with Hailee seamlessly.
Matt Damon is good here because he is not playing a hero. Damon excels when he is vulnerable, but good-hearted, and he wears the character of LaBoef as well as the buckskin he sports.

The cinematography is breath taking. It draws inspiration from classic westerns like True Grit, The Searchers, and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, but it mixes in just enough modern technique to make it all seem fresh. The composition of every shot is lovely. It borrows from both the American western of the 50s an 60s, but it also works in the epic scale and sophistication of Leone's spaghetti western.
The story-boarding the Coens did really shows through. They do it for every film, but here you can practically see the panels. It feels like a graphic novel. Like a less-concept-driven 300 or Sin City. The special effects are used sparingly, and they make quite an impression without distracting from the rest of the film.

Apaloosa and 3:10 to Yuma were noble efforts to try and re-capture the romance and drama of the Western, and truly wonderful films, but True Grit hits its mark without feeling pretentious or boring.

The title itself refers to the quality Mattie is looking for in Rooster Cogburn. He is a lawman, he has morals, but he is not what most would call a "good man". Yet, when the moment calls for it, he is honorable. He has "true grit".
If you love Westerns, or just long for a fresh dose of American mythology, go see True Grit.

Now, for a very different kind of classic, the likes of which you will never see again, get your hands on 1968's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Revel in the glory that is Maggie Smith before we saw her as Professor McGonagall in the Potter movies, or Wendy in Hook. She's a grand dame cut from the same cloth as Judi Dench, Elizabeth Taylor and Helen Mirren, but she just doesn't get the same recognition, and that is a sin!

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is adapted from a novel of the same name and tells the story of an eccentric school teacher at a private school for girls in Scotland. Her romantic and bohemian ideas about truth, beauty, art and love lead the students she mentors to places they never could have expected- and not always in a good way.

This movie is sort of disturbing because you think it's going to follow the path of Dead Poets Society, or To Sir, with Love, but it goes careening in another direction entirely. It's a dark tale about obsession, about living vicariously through others, and about how our own feeling of invincibility or superiority can damage those around us.

I'd put The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie in the same category as Doubt or Notes on a Scandal. But the thing I liked the most about it was how it embodies everything I like best about movies made in the late 60s. The fashion, the colors, the hair!
There is some great foreshadowing here and there of the fates of the characters. I won't spoil it for you, but we all know that sometimes the games of children reflect their true desires or destinies.

A dissection of Black Swan Spoilers Within

2011-01-20T10:15:00.004-05:00

I've been ruminating on my interpretation of Black Swan, and I can no longer wait to share it with you. Spoilers be found here, so if ye hath not seen Black Swan, venture no further.

A lot of people have been panning the movie because they feel it's trite, saying that artistic perfection can only be found in death, the ultimate sacrifice.
I don't think that the movie was saying that artistic perfection can only come through death.
Nina killed herself because the only two futures she saw for herself was that of Winona's has-been ballerina or her mother's miserable never-was ballerina.
The character of Lily was a happy ballet dancer, Nina projected her own issues onto Lily. Lily was serving as the foil. Showing that someone can simply be a ballerina and not a total nutcase.
Nina was not simply a perfectionist. She was psychotic. She was self-mutilating from an early age, and her mother's response was to simply cut her nails shorter. She'd been stewing in her own private obsession for years, and was totally isolated thanks to her mother. Even with the role of her dreams, Nina could not allow herself to relax and be happy.
We were never, not once, supposed to look at Nina as an every woman. We are not supposed to identify with her. She is an anti-hero.

The masseuse in the beginning tells her that she's holding all of her tension in her diaphragm, it's no coincidence that she stabs herself in the diaphragm at the climax. The motion the masseuse makes with her hand into Nina's diaphragm directly foreshadows the stabbing that occurs later on. Whens he stabs herself, Nina is attempting to exorcise her own demons through blood sacrifice because she is not willing to sacrifice her career in the interest of her own health. She isn't trying to heal herself. Her journey of self-destruction is complete, and only that is what satisfies her. Nina had always viewed sacrifice as perfection, in her mother, in Winona Ryder's character- that is why she could never allow herself any small happiness or indulgence. Whether it be a piece of cake or an orgasm.

People have read misogyny into this film. I do not think the director hates women at all. I think he recognizes them as human. I think he was showing how damaging all of the pressure put on women to "do it all" can be. Nina represents our unrealistic expectations of ourselves- you cannot make yourself perfect, you can only die trying.
Perfection is not what we should aspire to, we should aspire to be healthy and happy. Sacrifice and pain is not the path to achievement.

I have also read criticisms that the characters are too stereotypical. But I think there's a reason for that. I think this film is a bit of an ink blot. Interpretations will vary, and I always love movies like that.
If it was meant to be allegorical, then broadly painted "type" characters are appropriate. We know stage mothers, predatory bosses, bad girls, etc. We don't need that much character development to recognize them immediately. And if the performances or characters are complex, it narrows the room for interpretation.
Was her mother really so overbearing, or was she a projection of Nina's self-destructive emotions?
Did the ballet director really regularly seduce his leads, or was Nina (so afraid of her own sexuality but clearly very attracted to him) simply painting him that way so that she could stay chaste?
We know Lily wasn't nearly as wicked and sexual as Nina was perceiving her, so this makes me give the other characters the same benefit of the doubt.
If those characters were more developed and complex, I wouldn't be able to wonder that. That's the beauty of the allegory.

My interpretation was that Nina's perception of reality was so perverse that none of the characters were operating under the motives we thought they were. It was simply Nina's paranoia and projection that was turning the world against her. I think this is most interesting in the case of Nina's mother. We, as a society, love to blame parents for the faults of their children, but that can be a mistake. Granted, her mother probably should have sought therapy for her daughter when Nina was scratching herself, but her mother could have been simply naive. Assuming the scratches were accidental isn't a stretch, it's realistic. It was also unclear to me if the portraits Nina's mother was painting were of Nina or of herself. I wonder if it was intentionally left ambiguous, or if it didn't matter. If Nina's mother truly was a stage-mother, then she simply would have seen Nina as an extension of herself, so a portrait of Nina is really a portrait of herself, and vice versa. Or, if they were all self-portraits, perhaps her mother was too consumed by her own failed dreams and depression to even notice that something was wrong with Nina. She may have just been going through the motions, supporting her daughter, and not really concerning herself with whether or not Nina would succeed. She did not react critically or negatively when Nina first called her to say that she had not won the role of Swan Queen. Nina's mother seemed supportive in those moments. This leads me to believe that she was not so much an overbearing stage-mother, but depressed and fragile, being supportive but also content to play the martyr because she felt it would benefit Nina. Could Nina have lived on her own? I'm not sure how much a lead dancer in a ballet company gets paid, but it seems that Nina was very happy being in the nest. When she becomes defiant, it's like the defiance of a teenager- she's happy to take what her mother offers, but resents the rules and discipline that go along with it.
Of course the scene with the cake speaks volumes. Her mother is clearly unbalanced in one way or another. I just really enjoy how complex her character is once you truly think about it.

If you have different interpretations, please share them in the comments! All ideas are welcome.

Dancing with myself: Black Swan

2010-12-30T11:25:00.005-05:00

The other day I found myself watching Vertigo while surfing the web. I would momentarily look up and relish the profound intensity and sadness that seems to permeate Hitchcock films. No one is truly happy. The protagonists are always sullen or haunted, the antagonists hide
wickedness behind Cheshire cat grins.
And I was sad for a moment. Sad that they just don't make movies like these anymore.

Black Swan is the closest to new Hitchcock we'll ever get. I don't often leave a movie feeling fulfilled. Aronofsky took on the idea of ballet, and the idea of the ballerina, and used them to construct a staggeringly beautiful piece of film for women.
Natalie Portman is a ballerina, hard working and dedicated, who finally gets her chance at a starring role. But will the pressure be too much?

This film is about pressure. It's very much about women, our relationships with each other and our bodies. For a ballerina, and for most women, the ideal instilled in us creates an incredible amount of pressure.
We want our bodies to be perfect, we put pressure on them, it becomes impossible to have a healthy relationship with our bodies when we view them as a thing standing in the way of achieving perfection. We see perfection or flaws in other women, we put pressure on ourselves and others to compete for the ideal, it becomes impossible to have a healthy relationship with other women.
The ballet is a pure and beautiful form, it is not vulgar or sexual. Nina has rejected or repressed any vulgarity or sexuality in herself.

If our bodies are the enemy, if other women are merely competitors or has-beens, if we cannot even love ourselves- can we live an ordinary life without cracking?
If we cannot accept our limitations and imperfections, our humanity, can we be human?
Can we achieve the ideal, "have it all", the perfection, without completely destroying ourselves and everyone around us?
The Black Swan rises up, it flutters its massive wings, it hisses "No.", and swallows us whole.

Go. See. This. Movie.

"Get thee to a nunn'ry!"

-- Noel
Sent from my T-Mobile phone

The movie gifts that keep on giving

2010-12-19T22:28:00.006-05:00

There are only four shopping days left until Christmas. Five if you count Christmas Eve, but I don't count Christmas Eve. If you haven't bought a gift for someone by now, you obviously don't really like them all that much. You know who I'm talking about: Those people you can barely tolerate, but yet are forced to exchange gifts with because of the suffocating grip tradition and social niceties have on our collective lives.

Here are some gift ideas for those people on your list. You will be able to fulfill your obligation and express your distaste for it all at the same time. Or you'll almost certainly never be invited to the Yankee Swap again. Or you'll be considered the most hysterically ironic person in your group of hipster friends.

Titanic 2- This actually exists. But hey, it's not like they did something so tasteless as to resurrect the first ship only to have it sink again. No, this is the story of an entirely different boat by the same exact name that predictably meets the same end when "a tsunami hurls an ice berg[sic] into the new ship's path...", because these filmmakers have integrity.

He's Just Not That Into You- If there's someone on your list that you want to insult in an incredibly passive aggressive manner, I encourage you to buy them this movie on DVD and really emphasize the fact that "I thought you would just love this. It's so perfect for you." It's like Closer, but with a lobotomy.

Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue- Do you have a child on our list, a child whose parent you greatly despise? Give that child this movie. Not only will you be killing the child's brain cells and thereby ensuring its academic disadvantage, the parent will be slowly shaken from their sanity by their child's repeated requests to watch this movie over, and over, and over, and over... If the child is male and conforms to the western social ideal of their gender role, you should substitute Tom and Jerry Meet Sherlock Holmes.

The Lost Boys: The Thirst- You've got to know someone who deserves an ill-advised third installment to a classically good-because-it-is-bad cult flick which stars Corey Feldman. It promises that "The Frog brothers are back for blood." Think of the look the Best Buy clerk will give the recipient when they try to return this for store credit. For extra fun you could insist on watching it with them so that they can only try to sell it used and you get to see them pretend to enjoy it.

Wrong Turn at Tahoe- I recommend this, not because I have the slightest idea what it's about or how it will bring unhappiness to the person you give it to, but because Christmas is a time for charity. And I think it's pretty clear that when Cuba Gooding Jr (who has an Oscar) and Harvey Keitel (who is just really awesome) are doing movies named after Bugs Bunny's punch lines, they need all the charity we can give. Show them the money!

Have a fantastic holiday. Thank you so very much for reading my blog, and I look forward to all of the movies I'll share with you in 2011.
If I see TRON before then, I'll be sure to let you know what I think.

If you also have some great ideas for terrible movies to give as gifts, or ones you have received, please share them in the comments. Extra points if you can buy it on VHS.

Indie in-demand: Whip It & Scott Pilgrom Vs. The World

2010-12-16T13:57:00.003-05:00

I find it fascinating that "indie" has become a genre. The term "indie" used to refer to any independently made movie, regardless of subject matter and genre. Now, any quirky movie with young characters and certain "it" actors that gives the sarcastically sweet treatment to white, middle-class life (with a soundtrack full of "indie" bands) is deemed to be "indie" regardless of its budget size. I really wish there was another name for this new genre. I propose calling them "suburbies".

Whip It is the directorial debut of Drew Barrymore. It is a thoroughly charming movie with a "girl-power" theme that's pretty refreshing compared to most of what's out there. It tells the story of a Texas teenager, Bliss, who finds a purpose and motivation for life in roller derby- but struggles to gain her beauty pageant loving mother's approval.

Don't know anything about roller derby? Don't worry- Whip It lays out all the rules for you so you're not left wondering what's going on. I was confused by the fact that the features of roller derby that, I feel, are most important to the film's theme are sort of glossed over. Bliss's mother has shoe-horned her into competing in beauty pageants, which force girls to compete over something which they cannot totally control- their body and their face. No matter how great your talent or speech-giving talents may be, if you aren't born with the right body and face, you can't win a pageant. The forces girls to become alienated from their bodies. Their bodies become the thing that holds them back, the thing they cannot change or control, and this manifests in eating disorders and other body image problems.

Roller derby is an athletic sport where different body types are not only welcomed, they are essential to the different positions on the team. Blockers need to be big and strong, jammers need to be quick and nimble. Bliss finds herself viewing her body as a tool, as something she can control and use to get closer to her goals. This creates a positive body relationship that can culminate in body acceptance.
Roller derby players also play up their sexuality, while still being tough athletes. This breaks down the beauty conventions that women are fragile and demure, or must be perceived as such in order to be attractive. Players choose aggressive stage names like professional wrestlers do, but their contact sport is not costume play. They get hit, they knock each other over. Bones are broken, eyes are blackened, and lips are busted. They also have rabidly loyal fan bases who admire the women not only for their physical appearance, but their skill and ability as athletes.
Whip It barely touches these points, and it sort of makes me wish that there were a documentary to go along with the fictionalization. What is great is that the roller derby players in the film have diverse lifestyles, one is a single mom, but they are all equally dedicated to the sport and talk openly about what it means to them to be able to compete.

Barrymore is a competent director. She excels at giving us intimate glimpses into the relationships of her characters. But, as I mentioned, I hope that she learns how to flesh out the parts of the story that aren't character-driven. She is also a gifted comedic presence, and created an ensemble cast that you can tell are genuinely friends off screen, so the chemistry on screen is fantastic. Kristen Wig, who plays one of the roller girls "Maggie Mayhem", is a treasure, and I always enjoy watching her. Juliette Lewis plays an antagonistic derby girl "Iron Maven", and she smolders in every scene she's in. Ellen Page plays Bliss, and it's nice to see her taking a turn as a teen who doesn't think she knows it all. Perhaps now that she's 23, she knows the whole "disturbingly mature teen" shtick could no longer hold any water. It's easy to seem wise beyond your years when you're already actually five years beyond those years.
If you like sports movies and feel like there aren't enough of them starring women (which is disappointingly true), see Whip It. It's a lot of fun to watch.

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0446029/) is a movie is so inventive that I can't help but like it and insist that others see it. It's far from flawless and definitely has some pacing problems, but I don't think I've ever seen a translation of comic book-styling and video game-structure so eloquently portrayed on screen.
The titular Scott is an average Canadian guy in a garage band. Well, except for the fact that his band is actually good and that his ex-girlfriend is now a rock sensation a la Gwen Stefani. Everything seems like it's going to maintain a steady course until Scott meets Ramona Flowers, the literal girl of his dreams, who has a literal league of vengeful exes.

So, this film runs with the literal gag. All the cinematography evokes a comic book feel. The special effects evoke a video game feel. There are bangs, ker-pows, and coins appearing where bodies once were. However, the film does fall victim to a problem that plagues many comic book and video-game inspired films: all that fighting starts to get boring after a while. It's extremely difficult to balance action with plot development, and when filmmakers try to cram a lot of both into less than two hours the results are never that great.
What saves this movie, aside from the aesthetic genius, is a strong cast. Michael Cera is perfect as the average, yet awesome, Scott Pilgrim. Ellen Wong is hysterical as Knives Chau- Scott's teen aged girlfriend. Mary Elizabeth Winstead somehow managed to be a witty, mumbling, effortlessly cool Ramona Flowers without being an Ellen Page clone. She's also simply beautiful and the camera loves her. Kieran Culkin steals the show as Scott's gay roommate, Wallace. And all of the "evil exes" actors- Satya Bhabha, Chris Evans, Brandon Routh, Mae Whitman, Shota Saito, Keita Saito and Jason Schwatrzman- are perfect, growling video game villains. They are terrific comedic foils for the average likes of Scott and his crew.

This movie is tough to wrap your head around while watching. It's very self-aware and willing to make jokes at its own expense, but it has some poignant moments that try to ground it as best they can.
I think Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World is best viewed with a group of friends. I think the action and the comedy will be greatly enhanced by the group experience. Plus it has action, comedy and some romance. It will appeal to geeks and hipsters of all shapes and sizes.

Win, lose or draw (Megamind and The Princess and The Frog)

2010-11-29T14:23:00.003-05:00

Do you like cartoons? I love cartoons.
I'm sure it's because being born in the 80's, I was able to enjoy some of the best animated television shows and Disney's feature film renaissance of The Little Mermaid, Beauty and The Beast, Aladdin, etc. I have a soft spot for hand-drawn and 2D characters following familiar story arcs and bursting into catchy songs.
So, it was bittersweet for me as I watched Pixar usher Disney and the rest of animation into a 3rd dimension. Sure, I love to marvel at the skill and artistry these technologies use to create dimensional and believable fictional worlds. And yes, the stories (at least the Pixar ones) were every bit as compelling and classic as the Disney favorites I had come of age watching- but it wasn't the same. There's something inherently charming about the way those movies could take a character, so obviously fake, made of ink and paint, and turn them into a living, breathing thing that we could relate to, aspire to, and love.
I was thrilled when Disney announced it would deliver a 2D feature film, just like old times. Only unlike old times, this one would feature some ethnic diversity and not so-closely adhere to gender stereotype-heavy "twoo wuv will save me!" story lines as before. I looked forward to The Princess and The Frog. I was disappointed when it received poor reviews. I decided to let some time pass, and then make up my mind for myself.

I should have listened to the reviews. The Princess and The Frog, while refreshingly pretty to look at and features great characters with great values to match, was decidedly lacking.
The story itself was terrible. Many parts of it worked on their own, but let's face it, Disney is at it's best when it's rehashing a classic fairytale. They simply changed too much about the old story about a princess, her favorite gold ball, and the frog who so tirelessly worked to get her to see him for what he truly was.
Tiana is the hard-working daughter of a seamstress. Her friend, the spoiled Charlotte, wishes only to marry a prince so that she can continue to live a life of privilege. Tiana's dream is to have her own restaurant, and she's happy to put in the elbow grease to get it. When a penniless, free-wheeling Prince Naveen comes to town, he makes a deal that changes all of their fortunes.
Of course they all live happily ever after. I'm not giving anything away by telling you that, it's a Disney movie. That's how they always end.

What cripples this movie is that the set-up for Prince Naveen and the villain he makes a deal with, Dr. Facillier, is poorly developed. The prince has just come to town, why would he so quickly strike a deal with a dastardly stranger he's just met? It's also not clear why Dr. Facillier is tricking this man. All that's shown is that he's jealous of Charlotte's father's money, but it doesn't seem very compelling.
To make matters worse, once Tiana and Naveen are turned into frogs, the main plot of movie becomes their quest to be human again. It's too simple. And we all know that they're going to get what they want, so you don't even feel particularly anxious about their quest.
Maybe this wouldn't be as apparent had Disney not already made much more successful "quest for humanity" movies such as The Little Mermaid and Beauty and The Beast. On top of all of that, I felt like Pirates of the Carribean and The Rescuers had the whole "voodoo in the bayou" thing sewed up pretty nicely. It would have been nice if the movie had stayed in the city of New Orleans, but set in a different time period, that would have at least felt less like deja vu.
Disney used to excel at bringing us new and exciting worlds in every movie. Fidning Nemo, Atlantis, The Little Mermaid- all set in the ocean, but it was new and re-imagined in every one. Beauty and The Beast, Ratatoullie and The Aristocats- all set in France (the latter two in Paris) yet they didn't feel stale or boring.

The thing that bothered me the most was the simple fact that Tiana was unmistakably a dark-skinned, wider-nosed version of Belle (this picture shows Tiana with blue eyes, in the film they're light brown) same face shape, same eye shape, same eyebrows, same nose line, and same lips save for the cupid's bow:

Prince Naveen was dark-skinned version of Prince Eric, or a slightly older and darker Aladdin. In the picture you can see the same face shape and same facial features.:

Even Dr. Facillier smacked of Jafar:

It was offensive to me that they didn't give these characters their own style or unique features. Mulan, Pochahontas and Lilo were treated more thoughtfully than Tiana. Belle, Ariel, Snow White and Cinderella each have a look and style all of their own. You could not mistake one for the other. Even Cinderella and Aurora (aka Sleeping Beauty) have features that set them apart from each other. Tiana deserved better.

Bruno Campos (who I only really know from his incredibly disturbing turn on Nip/Tuck) is delightful as Naveen. As much as his physical appearance may not stand very far from other Disney leading men, his personality oozed charm. His accent was funny- but not so funny that it seemed kitchsy- and His character showed some of the best facial expressions in the film.

Keith David (you may remember him as The Cat in Coraline, or as Goliath in the TV series Gargoyles [yes, I am a total nerd]) is magnetic as Dr. Facillier. So magnetic that it makes it painfully obvious that his character is poorly developed and not adequately motivated. He gets the most entertaining musical number.

Anika Noni Rose does her best as Tiana. But terrible dialogue and Belle-all-over-again look and personality make her truly forgettable. Next to Bruno Campos, she fades away. The only supporting characters that truly hold their own are Charlotte, played to hysteric perfection by Jennifer Cody, and her "Big Daddy" (Tennessee Williams is rolling in his grave), voiced unmistakably by John Goodman.

What does it say when the most interesting supporting characters in the movie are white? That the writers just weren't sure, or were too scared, to take any risks whatsoever with any of the other characters. Dr. Facillier could have been more flamboyant, he should have been out to take revenge on the sugar barons for profiting off of the hard work of their slaves and under-paid workers. Tiana could have shown the other side of the struggle, and that she didn't want free reparations, she was willing to work for what she wanted and earn the respect of those around her. Charlotte and Big Daddy could have been more sympathetic to Tiana and her family, in the end promising to give back to the black community and offer loans or support to people like Tiana who wanted to start their own business. Naveen should have been humbled by seeing the struggle of people of color in America while he had lived a spoiled and privileged life in his home country. He could have acted as ambassador and helped with integration. That would have given us dynamic and compelling characters, while still sugar-coating reality enough to be a Disney film.

For a film that was clearly made to be empowering, and with the best intentions, it was not. If you want to see an empowering Disney movie, see Mulan or Dumbo (one of my favorites). Please, do not see The Princess and The Frog. I took one for the team here.

A movie you should see, critics be damned, is Megamind. All the critics pooh-poohed and said "It's like The Incredibles, only not as good."
No! It is not like The Incredibles. Megamind is a more straightforward send-up of the Reeves Superman films, whereas The Incredibles was more teasing at the old super hero cartoons and comic books. Unlike The Incredibles, it has a more adult-oriented cast and humor.
Imagine if Dr. Evil was the star of the Austin Powers movies, that's the angle Megamind is working.
An alien child, Megamind, is sent away from his dying home planet to Earth. His journey is paralleled by a fortune-favored, handsome alien child, Metro Man. Rather than standing in the shadow of his privileged, popular counterpart, the ostracized Megamind decides to become a super villain, and he's pretty good at it. Until he manages to defeat Metro Man. Hilarity ensues.

The brilliance worth seeing here is the dialogue so perfectly delivered by Will Farrell, Tina Fey, Brad Pitt, David Cross, and Jonah Hill. The comedy talent here is peerless. The only way it could have been improved were if those offering their voices had actually written their lines. The thought of them even getting to ad-lib all in a room together is like a wet dream for your funny bone.

Is it a great work of timeless class? No. Is it entertaining? Hell yes! I laughed really, really hard. I found myself repeating the funnier parts later on and still laughing. The more sentimental story lines were sweet but slightly boring, yet not forgettable or tedious.

The thing I really thought was lacking in Megamind was a distinctive visual style. It looked like The Incredibles, and that's what hurt it so much. And seeing as though Dreamworks gave us Shrek, Kung Fu Panda and Madagascar, they're clearly up to the task, so why they simply phoned it in and copied Brad Bird on the visuals, I'll never know.

By the numbers

2010-10-24T14:12:00.004-04:00

A lot of people are saying that the movie The Social Network is a zeitgeist.

Zeit-geist: n. The spirit of the time; the taste and outlook characteristic of a period or generation.

I disagree. Facebook could be called a zeitgeist, but the movie about the creation of Facebook is not.

(500) Days of Summer is a zeitgeist. It's a movie by, for, and of my generation. The best thing about this movie is the creative approach it takes to the traditional plot of any boy-meets-girl film. It's about a young man named Tom, and his relationship with a young woman named Summer.

The story is told in non-chronological order, like Pulp Fiction and Memento. There are also many plays on POV, with surreal, fantastical, or exaggerated sequences that crib from other film genres. Pop culture is woven into the characters lives in such an organic way that it's impossible to tell where the cultural references stop and the characters begin.

This is the way so many millennials, or Generation Y, experience life. We have an endless internal index of movies, shows, music, books and characters with which we can annotate occurrences in our daily lives. We see our experiences reflected in the media that we consume and share with each other. We deepen our interpersonal relationships by sharing our media and experiences. We love to tell people why we love the things we love. I'm doing that right now, right here on my blog. We put an emphasis on sharing similar interests with our significant others. We expect them to like the same bands, the same movies, the same shows. Thanks to Facebook and other social networks, we can now like and share our friends experiences. Our internal collection of references grows, our networks expand, and we find that our lives are inextricable from the context we seek to create around them. A context of cultural touchstones and the approval of others. Our experiences are the sum of their parts, not the sequence in which they happened, which is why we so enjoy nonlinear narratives in books, movies and other media.

(500) Days of Summer is truly representative of my generation. Tom, the main character portrayed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, is frequently seen wearing t-shirts declaring his love of a certain band or film. His apartment is littered with similar references. Even the music he listens to is audible and acts both character development and plot device. One of the first things that makes him really notice Summer, played by Zooey Deschanel, is that she hears a The Smiths song he is listening to and comments about how she also likes that band and song. Tom is floored. He so closely identifies with that music that the simple fact that Summer also enjoys the music means, to him, that they are perfectly compatible. He also takes pride in thinking that The Smiths are vintage and not well-liked by the general public, so he considers his taste, and Summer's taste by association, to be extremely rare and sophisticated.

Considering the fact that The Smiths have almost 900k fans on Facebook, you begin to see how this frame of mind can be misleading. This film also highlights another generational problem: we are in love with love. A large chunk of Gen Y are hopeless romantics, and its no wonder considering the fact that we grew up on John Hughes's work and other movies like Pretty Woman and The Goonies. We take breakups harder than most. All we see is a cacophony of references to our failed relationship. That show we used to watch together. That movie or band we both liked. That shirt I wore when we first met. Our internal index works against us, and we find ourselves dissecting it to try and find the cause of our broken romance. And we blame ourselves. The true romantic in us cannot blame love, it blames itself, and it almost enjoys the suffering- for nothing is quite as beautiful and romantic as heartbreak.

In short, the cinematography is impressive and very emotive. The screenplay is inventive, the dialogue is fresh and believable. The acting is first-rate, both Deschanel and Gordon-Levitt are magnetic and charming. The soundtrack is impeccable, for all of the reasons I list above. It's the mix tape we all made at some point for someone, that described a relationship from start to finish.
(500) Days of Summer is entertaining, beautiful and quirky. I couldn't think of a better love-note written by Gen Y and addressed to everyone. It says "this is who we are. this is what our life is like, and we hope you like it." I liked it. I hope you will too.

If you want to see a love note written by Gen X and addressed to everyone, watch High Fidelity. John Cusack's Lawrence of Arabia.

Why I love sports movies

2010-10-20T14:13:00.006-04:00

I love sports movies. Sometimes in spite of myself, sometimes in spite of the fact that I don't follow sports in real life. There is a charm to the standard sports drama that never fails to appeal to me. It's the underdog story, the inevitability of the underdog to win, and the satisfying righteous nature of that mega-happy ending. Sports dramas are reliable that way: they enthrall, they inspire, and they're usually pretty straight-forward. Sports comedies follow the same plot structure, only the defeats and short-falls are hilarious instead of heartbreaking.

Dan also loves sports dramas. And, since I've been subjecting him to every manner of "I know you don't want to watch this movie, but it's an important movie that you should like", I decided to watch a couple of movies I knew we'd both enjoy.

I started off with The Greatest Game Ever Played. I figured this was a sure-thing. Dan loves golf. Dan loves Boston. This was a movie about a famous golf player from Boston. The fact that it's a Disney movie directed by Bill "Game Over, Man" Paxton, starring Shania TheBeef gave me pause, but I was doing this for Dan, so I put it on my Netflix queue. I'm so glad I did. Most of my family members are avid golfers and I've lived in Massachusetts my whole life, yet I had never heard of Ouimet and "The Greatest Game Ever Played". It's an incredible story and I really feel that this movie did it justice.

The Greatest Game Ever Played is partially a biopic of two golfers (Francis Ouimet and Harry Vardon) and partially about the world of golf in 1913 and how these two players changed golf forever.

Vardon came from humble backgrounds to be the most successful and famous professional golfer of his time. Francis Ouimet was from a working-class family and grew up at the foot of a prominent country club in Brookline. Ouimet was inspired by Vardon at an early age, and Ouimet finds himself playing in the U.S. Open against Vardon. Ouimet and his ten-year-old caddy, Eddie Lowrey, are amateurs, but determined to win. The resulting round of golf was called "The Greatest Game Ever Played" by local papers.

The story itself is so incredible that Dan and I took to Wikipedia several times to see what amount of Disneyfication was going on, but the most unbelievable aspects of the story are the ones that are true. And Bill Paxton is actually a pretty good director. He does an excellent job of character exposition and gives a great moody undertone to balance out this mega-happy ending. Paxton even gets artsy with us, using clever camera angles and cutaways to illustrate the nerves Vardon and Ouimet feel before every swing of the club.

Shia LaBeouf is likable and just awkward enough as the young golfing prodigy Ouimet. But what I liked the best in this film were the supporting performances. Elias Koteas as Ouimet's father, with a flawless French Canadian accent, is a tough blue-collar guy who just wants his son to succeed, but not in golf. Stephen Marcus (you've seen in him as Nick The Greek in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels) is bombastic as Ted Ray, the big golfer with a short temper. And this film would not be half as good as it is without Josh Flitter as Eddie Lowrey, Ouimet's loyal, wise-cracking caddy. My favorite scene from this film is the one where the men in charge of the U.S. Open try to manipulate the pair into replacing Lowrey with "a proper caddy". Lowrey bursts into hysterics, in a way that was instantly recognizable and believable as the way that any kid reacts when they feel betrayed and heartbroken. "They told me you'd want to..." he chokes out between sobs to Ouimet, and it got me. My heart was wrenched.

Another thing I liked about it was how it visually contrasted the world of the rich club members and the world of the golfers. The former is polished and cold, the latter is dingy and earthy.

The other sports film I watched with Dan was The Blind Side. It was good. Not "deserved to be nominated for Best Picture and for Sandra Bullock to win Best Actress" good, but simply good. The real power to this film, like The Greatest Game Ever Played, is that it's hard to believe it's all true. It is simply incredible that anyone could escape the life that Michael Oher was living. It's incredible that anyone would take a person they hardly knew into their family, with few questions asked. That story itself is well worth watching, and leaves you with a good feeling. Other than that, this movie is pretty standard. I think the reason Sandra Bullock won an Oscar for it was because the role proves that she can act and that she can pull off a Southern drawl quite nicely. But she doesn't exactly disappear into the role of Leigh Anne Tuohy. I just think she's so very much like Leigh Anne Tuohy that no one else would have even been considered for the role. The character, in spite of being based on a real person, is very Bullock-esque. I was very much aware that I was watching Sandra Bullock. It's still a sin that she won over Gabourey Sidibe's performance in Precious, but at least now I have a little more perspective. Tim McGraw and Kathy Bates are also in this movie. They're okay, too. I really wonder if those roles were given simply because the real people got to pick who would play them in a movie. I could see Leigh Anne picking Bullock, Sean picking McGraw and Miss Sue choosing Kathy Bates. Nothing spectacular.

I did really enjoy Quinton Aaron as Michael Oher, but the performance confused me. The role is very similar to Precious in Precious, but without the narration, we lose our concept of the character's inner thoughts and feelings. Through much of this movie we are simply left to wonder why Michael is so cryptically stoic. I feel this is the place where the film falls short. Those moments where Michael does express himself, on the field and off, are the ones that really let this movie soar. But we don't see enough of them. The way we see Michael portrayed in the movie, and the real-life clips and photos at the end seem like two different people. The movie-Michael is withdrawn, stone-faced and insecure. The Michael we see in clips and photos flashes wide grins, and seems to have personality oozing out of his pores. This disparity bothered me. I would have liked to know more about how he felt in those times, and seen that big friendly personality emerge more often.

Where I do think the movie triumphs is showing how those of us who live outside of the harsh world of the ghetto are the ones with a blind side. We don't know what it's like for those people who live there. We don't hear or see anything about them unless they're being arrested or killed. And we don't do anything to help them because of it. All Michael Oher, and so many other young people, need a safe environment surrounded by people who truly care about them in order to succeed. This is the same lesson Precious provides, but it's delivery will make most people uncomfortable. The Blind Side is able to deliver the message that love is what saves people while not making people uncomfortable with their ignorance or inaction to "the other America". Which is why it was more successful than Precious. But that isn't important as long as people are taking that idea to heart at the end of the film, and I hope they are.

The Blind Side is a great family movie, and it is heartwarming to see how the entire Tuohy family falls in love with Michael. Kind of made me want to run out and adopt a football player.

If you want a sure-fire, feel-good, mega-happy ending, go with a sports movie every time. Others I recommend are The Natural, Miracle and Rudy.

And feel free to dump some Gatorade on someone the next time they do a good job. Nothing says "Nice work!" like being cold, wet and sticky.

Going BUMP in the night

2010-10-20T10:44:00.005-04:00

Halloween is just around the corner. It's my favorite holiday, because we get to dress up, eat candy, and get a good scare in. I have always been sensitive to horror films, but I love them because they produce such a strong emotional reaction.

So, in honor of my favorite holiday, here are some of my favorite scary movies. Six seems like a good, spooky number:

The Shining- Stanley Kubrick knows how to make hypnotic and violent movies, Stephen King knows how to write stories that evoke our most basic fears. Together, with the ever-talented Jack Nicholson, they created one of the most iconic horror films of all time. Who can forget the blood crashing out of those elevator doors? Who isn't terrified by the concept of your own family being turned against each other? This movie still gives me the creeps, no matter how many times I've seen it. Part of its genius, and part of the reason why any child who sees it at a young age is scarred for life, is that we see most of the action from 6-year-old Danny's point of view. The scenes with him rolling around the vacant hotel on his big wheel, hiding in the kitchen (which Stephen Spielberg later used in Jurassic Park), and the end sequence with the hedge maze will never leave your mind. The acting is stellar and the pacing is flawless.

A young family is hired to care for an old hotel during the off-season, but it seems they are not alone, and some buildings are not composed of simply brick and mortar.

The Exorcist- If you've seen this movie and didn't think it was that scary, watch it again. Once you already know the dark things plaguing poor Regan, the hints scattered by director William Friedkin along the way are like breadcrumbs leading to a place you know you don't want to go. Part of the horror is that the answer to what is wrong with Regan is so simple, but a world of non-believers fail to see it, and the girl suffers greatly as a consequence. This movie scarred an entire generation of people. My mother, and most women my mother's age, refuse to even discuss this film. They won't even joke about Ouija boards. The Exorcist's success in horrifying us is that it makes the most ridiculous concept- demonic possession- seem perfectly real. Linda Blair is a wunderkind.

A young actress calls upon a priest when her daughter becomes plagued by a horrible illness.

Audition- Can there be anything more frightening than discovering the person you love is not who they seem to be? This brilliant Japanese horror film has some pretty powerful thoughts about the dangers of sexism, trust and innocence. I can't forget this movie. When people tell me about acupuncture, this film leaps to mind, its graphic scenes coating my eyeballs like a paint no thinner can remove. It will haunt you. It will disturb you. Click on the title for my full review.

A lonely man accepts his friend's offer to "cast" him a new wife, who turns out to be a much better actress than he bargained for.

Silence of the Lambs- I adore this film. It is incredibly watchable and entertaining, yet sophisticated and creepy. Anthony Hopkins IS Hannibal Lector. Accept no substitutions. He fills up this monster of a man in a way that is totally terrifying. And the final scene with Ted Levine in the claustrophobia-inducing basement is unforgettable.

Jodie Foster plays hot-shot FBI agent-in-training Clarice Starling, tapped by her mentor to crack a serial killer case. In order to get to the bottom of who "Buffalo Bill" is and why he's skinning his victims, she turns to an imprisoned, murderous, former psychiatrist Dr. Lector for clues. The rabbit's hole he leads her down is far darker and twisted than Clarice ever could have imagined.

The Ring- Normally, I don't recommend re-makes. However, the slick sensibility of the American version of The Ring lets the frightening concept of the curse shine. This film is cold and calculating, and it scared the hell out of me. I watched it by myself at 11:00 a.m. on a bright, sunny day, and I was still too spooked at night to turn off the lights. The impending sense of dread this film creates, the inescapable nature of the curse, knocks down every "it's only a movie" sensibility you could hold.

A young reporter is determined to discover the reason behind her niece's sudden, violent death. But, some secrets go viral once they are let out.

Beetlejuice- Okay, so this one really isn't scary, but it's just a great movie that's damn fun to watch and it reminds us why we go looking for frights on October nights. You can't beat this cast: Alec Baldwin. Michael Keaton, Geena Davis, Winona Ryder, Catherine O'Hara and Jeffrey Jones. Helmed by Tim Burton, Beetljuice is the perfect mix of funny, scary and heartfelt.

A recently-deceased, young, country couple find themselves having to share their home with odious city-dwellers. They seek a way to drive them out, but their desperate measures begin to interfere with the kinship they feel with the new family's Goth teenage daughter.

The Doctor is in

2010-10-06T11:51:00.008-04:00

I've got two online courses and weddings, showers, parties and other such happy time-consuming things going on in my life. This is reducing the time in which I can sit on my couch and blog. I'll have to start mobile blogging during my lunch hours to get caught up.

Doctor Zhivago is one of those movies that I felt like if I didn't see it, I would be missing out on this huge cultural icon, like Gone with the Wind or Lawrence of Arabia. These films are epics, they're truly larger than life. They can only be described with words like sweeping, lavish, classic, and grand. They are big in every sense of the word, and they are long. Doctor Zhivago has a 197 minute running time. However, I cut this down by doing something borderline sacrilegious: I skip the overture, intermission and entre act orchestrations. I know, I know, these movies are like operas and each character and theme has its own music and by skipping these things I miss out on the bigger picture. But, there are plenty of movies that achieve an operatic-like soundtrack without needing overtures and intermissions, Lord of the Rings (1) and Star Wars (4) come to mind as examples. So, if you can't quite carve out three and a half hours in which to watch Doctor Zhivago, skip the music bits. The story is strong enough to stand on its own.

Doctor Zhivago takes the story of the Russian communist revolution and uses the story of two star-crossed lovers to frame it. Yuri Zhivago, the titular rich young physician, and Lara, the working class girl. Fate brings them together and tears them apart time and again. In the meantime, they each live through the worst parts of the communist revolution. It is, at its heart, a story of how in a nation where people are forced to share everything, everyone loses everything they hold dear. It is incredibly romantic, but it's so much more than a romance movie.

The cinematography is what makes this movie a masterpiece. The emotion of each scene is told by the camera. My favorite example of this is the first opportunity Yuri sees to begin an affair with Lara. He is draped in shadow, his face obscured, while he makes his shameful proposition. Lara, surrounded by a halo of light, nobly refuses his invitation, even though she admits she admires him a great deal. The dialogue is subtle, and the acting is as well, so if it weren't for the use of light and camera angle the viewer might not notice the power of morality at play in the scene. There are also several scenes featuring the odious Viktor Komarovsky, and the tension is shown in the shadows and cramped spaces in which he always brings Lara.

The costumes are accurate as possible, and flatter the actors without upstaging them. The makeup is the real costuming achievement in this film. The characters are shown to age. They reflect their nation as Russia becomes a shell of its former self. Poverty, fear and the ravages of time are shown on their faces with makeup.

The real stars are the sets and location. Russia herself is the silent character, and by showing the same places over and over again, changed by the revolution, slowly becoming more desolate and sad. The colorful flowers and blue skies seen in the happier times of Zhivago's life are replaced by gray streets and white snow.

The acting is just unbelievable. Not for one moment do you see any of the actors as anything else but their characters. Omar Sharif gives one of the best performances ever seen. If I had to rate performances in a top five, this is number two. The only performance I've seen that can top it is Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia. This isn't entirely surprising. After working together on Lawrence of Arabia, Omar Sharif teamed up with director David Lean to bring us Doctor Zhivago. Sharif originally wanted to play Pasha, but Lean cast him in the lead after Peter O'Toole passed on the role. Best twist of fate ever. Sharif gives a performance that spans a man's entire life and does it with a style that you just don't see anymore.
Julie Christie also astounds in playing Lara. She gives us a character that, in spite of all the hard knocks in her life, remains true and loving. Never bitter, never breaking down. Tom Courtenay is remarkable as Pasha. Courtenay shows the character's progression from an optimistic young man hungry for justice to a hardened war criminal who rules with an iron fist in a chilling and familiar way. If good people can become monsters, this is how it must happen.

The music really is amazing. It captures the scale of the story while still giving a feel of the individuals making up that story. There's no other way to describe the soundtrack, it's epic. It's operatic. It's the strong current in the ocean of this movie.

Doctor Zhivago is one for your bucket list. I'm so glad it was on mine. I'll never forget it.
Here's a little taste:

I'm down with The Town

2010-09-25T13:18:00.003-04:00

It may seem like Ben Affleck has it easy. Gorgeous, famous wife, an Oscar, two cute kids and some good movies under his belt. However, he doesn't have much cred to film buffs. Sure, he was in those great Kevin Smith flicks, 200 Cigarettes and Boiler Room, but who can forget Gigli and Daredevil? He was never destined to follow in the foot steps of DeNiro. Lucky for us, he stepped behind the camera, and he's actually very good at casting himself.

The Town works in all the ways Good Will Hunting works. Affleck has an intimate knowledge of the Bay State state of mind. He excels at portraying a blue collar tough guy whose only fear is that his buddies might find out that he's got a heart of gold. He's that bad boy with a sweet creamy center that every girl kids herself into believing truly exists. The big romantic streak running down the center of this cops'n'robbers movie throws you off. It's like a French romance set in Boston. I'm a little troubled by Affleck's seeming obsession with stories about men who had devastating childhoods. Just how tough was it being the kid from Cali in The People's Republic of Cambridge?

Affleck plays Doug McCray, a crook from a family of crooks who hangs out with other crooks and skanky girls. A big heist has him cross paths with a goody-two-shoes bank manager who just happens to be the girl of his dreams. But can he quit the life, and can the life quit him?

There's some serious talent flashing around in this movie. Affleck is good, Jeremy Renner is explosive as Doug's seriously demented friend, James. John Hamm shrugs off Don Draper to play a frustrated and ambitious FBI agent. But it was Blake Lively who really blew me away. Having lived my whole live in Massachusetts, I can honestly say I've never seen such a perfect portrayal of a lady Masshole on screen as Lively delivers. She's like a white Precious as Krista, only she's crafting her own destruction. She is deliciously tragic and heartbreakingly sympathetic. A product of her environment, Krista is in love with the things that hold her down. Institutionalized and trapped. I know this girl. I grew up with her. I see her on the T sometimes and at the mall. She is the girl next door, who deserves more but never wanted it for herself because she's too filled with self-loathing. Incredible. Pete Postlethwaite and Chris Cooper round out the cast as the grizzled veterans showing the kids how it's done.

The direction isn't anything mind-blowing, but it gets the job done and the robberies and chase scenes are all good fun. I was on the edge of my seat quite often. That's always a good thing. But it sometimes telegraphs its punches, so Affleck isn't at master-level yet, but I think his next one might be.

The Town delivers some top notch, Boston-bred entertainment. If you liked The Boondock Saints, Gone Baby Gone and Heat, you'll enjoy this one. I know I did.

Write on

2010-09-24T17:44:00.002-04:00

Roman Polanski's The Ghost Writer is a slick and powerful neo-noir. Ewan McGregor plays a young writer, ghosting to make ends meet, who gets plunged headfirst into a world of political intrigue when he's hired to help Alan Lang, the former PM of the UK played by Pierce Brosnan, complete his memoir.

Most neo-noirs have a claustrophobic and stifling feel to them. The Ghost Writer, instead, channels THX 1138 and other Wellesian distopia future films. The landscapes and interiors are cold, vacant and hollow.
The houses do not feel like home, and even the island itself seems more like a santiarium than a resort. It's interesting to have watched this film so shortly after I had watched Shutter Island. These movies might seem thematically very similar: a man finds himself on an isolated island for his work and discovers a possible conspiracy. But their visual styles could not be more different and it's wonderful to see how the atmosphere the director creates does so much to enhance the plot and reveal the emotional state of the characters.

The casting is brilliant. Some of the best scenes occur in the beginning where familiar faces, like Jim Belushi, deliver surprisingly masterful performances in their small roles. I was especially pleased with Pierce Brosnan in this film. He gives Prime Minister Lang layers which I did not
expect. So much of the plot relies on his character, and Brosnan shows the tiny cracks in Lang's crafted, slick political facade in a nuanced and believable way. McGregor, as always, is so organic as the naive young, un-named artist. His role is one that closely mirrors the role Polanski played in The Tenant/Le Locataire. His innocence is his greatest flaw as he tries, in vain, to swim against the merciless current of fate. Yet, he is so likable and sympathetic that you cannot help but root for him. His nameless character is a perfect foil of other famous nameless character, like Clint Eastwood's hard Man With No Name. He is vulnerable and anxious, but resolute. Olivia Williams is magnetic as the PM's wife, Ruth. Williams makes Ruth into a mysterious woman whose charms almost conceal her darker motives, almost.

However, the cold, clinical atmosphere of the film makes it a little difficult to get attached to the characters. That doesn't make it any less of a well-crafted film, it's just the reason why it could never be a blockbuster.

Coming soon: Doctor Zhiavago, Bugsy, The Town, and more! I've been doing more movie
watching than blogging, but I'll do my best to catch up.

-- Noel
Sent from my T-Mobile Sidekick®

Island Retreat

2010-09-14T21:55:00.003-04:00

Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island is unlike anything else in his filmography. Based on the novel of the same name by Massachusetts author Dennis Lehane, this psychological thriller is the kind of subject matter we're used to seeing from Christopher Nolan. And the dream sequences are very reminiscent of David Fincher's Fight Club. Scorsese has never done anything as visually lyrical as this before. I'm hungry for more.

Shutter Island follows U.S. Marshall Teddy Daniels as he investigates a mysterious disappearance at an isolated prison for the criminally insane. Only as he unravels the mystery, it only seems to become further tangled onto itself.

Perhaps the most impressive thing Scorsese does is drop breadcrumbs about the twist throughout the film. Much like in The Sixth Sense, this means astute film-junkies will figure out the plot twist before it happens. But unlike The Sixth Sense, you won't feel like you're wasting your time watching a movie when you already know the ending.

I love the visual style. It's dark, but colorful. The Aviator meets Pan's Labyrinth, and even a little bit of Inglourious Basterds. Scorsese shot the majority of this film in Massachusetts. However, most of the settings are totally unrecognizable because of some CGI wizardry that stitches together landscapes and buildings to create a beautiful Frankenstein's Monster of a backdrop. The weather, the buildings, the environment reflect the mental state of the main character. Pay attention to their cues.

The acting here is solid, if not a little melodramatic. I want to like Leonardo DiCaprio, I really do, but I have a hard time buying him as a disturbed, world-weary veteran. His face seems young to me. Or maybe it's the fact that he can't seem to express mature emotion in roles. I really feel the strongest thing he's ever done is Basketball Diaries, a close second is The Aviator, but that was more imitation than creation. I also liked him in The Departed, Gangs of New York and Inception, but mostly because I felt that his characters were somewhat emotionally stunted. So his adolescent emoting didn't bother me as it seemed appropriate. But in Revolutionary Road, and in Shutter Island, they seem tedious. They seem forced. He is acting. Leo lacks the ability to disappear into a role, but I give him credit because he tries so damn hard.
Perhaps his shortcomings wouldn't be so obvious if it weren't for Ben Kingsley, Mark Ruffalo, Michelle Williams (who knew?!) and Ted Levine so frequently upstaging him in this film. Ted Levine had a short but amazing scene with Leo. He plays the sinister warden, and his subtle yet powerful performance stole the movie for me. With turns like this one and Silence of the Lambs, I cannot understand why Ted Levine got strapped into "Monk" for eight unbearable seasons playing second fiddle to Tony Shaloub (who was way better in Men in Black than he ever was in the TV show he's won three Emmys for). Mark Ruffalo is stellar, as always, and Ben Kingsley turns out this movie like a seasoned pro. Michelle Williams is a pleasant surprise. She is perfectly fragile, like a piece of glass, so thin and full of cracks you're afraid to touch it. Hers was a role that could have been overplayed, but she did a beautifully understated performance. I hope to see more from her.

The story is brilliant, and it made we want to read the book. Not since Fight Club have I seen such an innovative and original story brought to life on celluloid. I'm now having wet dreams where Scorsese directs a Chuck Palahniuk novel. Let's make this happen people! I'm thinking Haunted or Diary, what about you?

Lost movies?

2010-09-09T13:17:00.002-04:00

To continue my mission of watching all of Polanski's movies, I'm looking for the following titles that are not available on Netflix:

Cul-de-sac
The Beautiful Swindlers
What?
Pirates (1986)

If you have any suggestions on where I can find these, preferably on DVD, preferably rented, please let me know.

In the meantime, I'll be working on Knife in the Water, Death & the Maiden, The Pianist, and The Ghost Writer.

-- Noel
Sent from my T-Mobile Sidekick®

Yay! One Hundred Posts!

2010-09-08T21:20:00.009-04:00

So, my review of The Young Victoria was my 100th post! To celebrate, I will share with you a piece of advice.

In spite of my love for action movies, I am fully aware that most people wouldn't win a fight in a real world, no matter how righteous or brave they are. I'm one of those people. I'm scrawny, and not athletic in the least. It has occurred to me that at some point, I may be in a position where someone is trying to engage in a physical altercation with me. I have devised an effective and clever response to such a situation:

Dance around like an orangutan and scream crazy things.

I have tested this method on several people, and it seems to do the trick every time. People are so surprised and disturbed by my sudden psychotic behavior that they instinctively move away. This gives me the chance to either flee, or escalate the psychotic behavior in hopes that it will further deter my would-be attacker.

If you have no hope of being too big or strong to fight, you must seem too crazy to fight. No one wants to duke it out with someone who is completely insane. Insane people are unpredictable, and might kill you or fight dirty. But how to appear crazy enough to scare someone away when you're not normally physically intimidating? Nothing makes you seem crazier than adopting a primate-like locomotion while yelling crazy things like:
"I will end you like a dishtowel! My fury is a hot ball of cheese! Get ready for plaid!"
Peppering in curse words where applicable.

And it's really quite easy, you crouch down, knees bent, butt low to the ground, legs and feet spread wide, jumping from foot to foot while swinging your arms up and down loosely like an ape.

When you scream, don't scream like a war cry. Scream like you're on a crashing plane and you're in full flight-or-fight mode. The more high-pitched and irregular, the better.

As I mentioned, my tests of this have gone very well. I ask a person "Get in my face, like you're going to fight me." and once they do, I commence with the crouching, flailing and screaming. They always jump back in alarm. Who wouldn't?

Like the Spanish Inquisition, my chief weapon is surprise. My second weapon is the ability to appear unhinged.

Here endeth the lesson.

The Young Victoria

2010-09-08T15:43:00.003-04:00

I've been meaning to watch this one since it was in theaters, but it's hard to get Dan to watch a pre-20th century romance. I admit, I was dying to see the costumes. I heard they were gorgeous in reviews, and watching the Academy Award Best Costume award presentation confirmed that. So when I saw that the movie was available to watch instantly on Netflix. I was thrilled. It took a little convincing to get Dan to agree to watch it, but in the end we both enjoyed it a great deal.

The Young Victoria is a movie in the spirit of Elizabeth. It tells the story of Victoria's rise to power and her courtship with Prince Albert. The plot is very good, and its interesting to see the precarious way a future and sitting monarch has to live her life. She can't really trust anyone, yet she wants so badly to be close with someone. Any misstep can bring a crowd of angry citizens raging outside the gates of her palace.

Emily Blunt is an elegant mix of vulnerability and determination as Victoria. This film shows how under-utilized she is in movies. We got such precious glimpses of her talents in Sunshine Cleaning and The Devil Wears Prada, I'm so glad that director Jean-Marc Vallee took a chance on her. It paid off big time. She is believable as the 18 year old queen, portraying youth and inexperience well without making Victoria seem incompetent. Blunt carries the film very well, and hopefully you'll be as impressed with her as I was. Rupert Friend is charming and supportive as Prince Albert, his love for Victoria and his need to please her is evident and completely disarming. My man Mark Strong (is he in every movie these days?) is a cold calculating viper as Sir John Conroy. Paul Bettany is the picture of cool British reserve as Victoria's right hand man, Lord Melbourne.

The costumes are incredible. Sumptuous and colorful, I swooned almost every time Victoria had on a new dress or Albert was seen in his impeccable outerwear. You just want to reach out and touch the fabric. I can't imagine how it much change one's posture and movements when one wears such costumes. I could happily watch this movie on mute, it so visually gorgeous. Their award was well-deserved
The sets and lighting are also just beautiful.

The direction is very good. This movie feels intimate and genuine, with a few sweeping epic shots to give you the "this happened and it was a big deal" type of feeling. It could have veered into chick-flick territory quite easily, but the characters of Victoria and Albert are so well-developed and the plot has just enough political intrigue that it holds its own as a true biopic. As I said, my wary husband very much enjoyed it, even though the trailers made him hesitant. The trailers really did not do it justice.

Get away

2010-08-25T21:23:00.003-04:00

Oh my, time flies when I'm not blogging! I've been so busy enjoying the last days of summer and watching movies that I've been neglecting my blog. Well, back to work.

The Great Escape is a fantastic heist film that tells the true story of a group of WWII P.O.W.s who escaped from a Nazi prison camp specifically designed to hold escape artists. The great thing about this film, well one of the great things, is that the escape itself is the plot. Most heist movies have another plot line running and the heist serves to simply move that other plot line forward. Not so in The Great Escape.
We get some lovely character and plot exposition right in the beginning with the Nazi officers discussing the prisoners repeated escape attempts and how this new camp will thwart any new attempts at getting out. We see a few foolhardy attempts at escape right off the bat, but then the big scheme begins to brew. Steve McQueen is the obligatory American bad ass. James Garner brings his real-life P.O.W. experience to his role as The Scrounger. Charles Bronson is the meaty Eastern European Tunnel King with a soft heart. But the shining star in the ensemble cast is Richard Attenborough. If you're like me, you know Richard from Jurassic Park. But here, he's the slick, crafty and much-hyped leader of the Great Escape, Big X. Part of his character development is all the men discussing how they can't wait 'til he gets there and how great he is, so when he finally struts into camp, you're already all-in with this guy. He's like James Bond and Winston Churchill rolled into one.

The set for this movie is an exact replica of the actual prison camp. Produced less than 20 years after the real escape, the filmmakers tried to be as true-to-life as possible and hired several P.O.W.s to act as consultants to ensure authenticity. Some of the facts are fudged, there were many P.O.W.s from countries other than the U.S. and U.K., and the role of the U.S. prisoners are greatly exaggerated, but the rest is all true.

It has everything you want from a heist film. Suspense, action, excitement, and the complicated escape plan is genius. Obstacles are encountered and overcome. The ending, however, is bittersweet. I won't give it away, but suffice to say, this ain't Ocean's Eleven, it's war.

This film didn't win any awards. It wasn't critically acclaimed after its initial release, but its growing popularity has finally given it some well-deserved recognition. If it has one drawback, its that the characters are not very deep. They serve their function as military men committed to their cause, but they don't seem to have many emotions beyond that. We get hints with The Scrounger and The Forger, but that's about it. But it doesn't make the movie fail. It just serves to make them seem brave and larger-than-life.

The Great Escape is a great movie, and clearly influenced many heist movies that followed it. Had it been based around American characters, my guess is that it would be a basic cable staple, but since it's primarily a British film, most Americans haven't gotten the chance to see it. You should.

A song in my heart

2010-08-25T21:01:00.004-04:00

I love documentaries. And if you like documentaries, you should see Young at Heart, aka Young @ Heart

This critically acclaimed documentary tells the story of a senior citizen chorus in Northampton, Massachusetts. Their director chooses diverse song selections from Jimi Hendrix and James Brown to Coldplay and Sonic Youth. While their vocal ability might not rival Mariah Carey or Michael Crawford, their passion and delivery will floor you.

What is most incredible about this is that, on the surface, nothing that extraordinary is occurring. It's a group of 65-98 year old people singing songs. But what moves you is their dedication, and how much this organized activity enriches their lives. When it all comes together in the final performance,e you see why this group sells out shows around the world.

Society so often marginalizes the elderly. We push them to the side, resign them to a role of non-contribution, and very rarely give them a chance to express themselves. This is partly out of our obsession with youth and fear of old age, and death which immediately follows it. But these remarkable, ordinary, people show us that old age is nothing to be afraid of. You can still have fun, you still have something to contribute, and you're not done living until you die.

My favorite scene is when the chorus performs at a prison. The reaction of the inmates is palpable and amazing.

Their director, Bob Cilman, is a visionary. I don't know how or why he came up with the idea to organize this chorus or selects the songs they perform, but it's genius. It's ground-breaking. It makes you wonder why you haven't seen it before and don't see it more often.

The Greatest Show On Earth

2010-08-21T19:49:00.006-04:00

I recently finished watching the two seasons of the show "Twin Peaks" and the movie that followed it.

I must say it was one of the best television series I have ever seen. It was like nothing that came before it and so many of the shows I know and love probably were obviously influenced by it. ("Six Feet Under", "Carnivale", "Picket Fences", "The X-Files", "Dexter"- pretty much every lauded TV series owes some thing to "Twin Peaks".)

Charming, haunting, and refreshingly weird and campy, "Twin Peaks" is one part "Twilight Zone", one part soap opera, one part film noir and one part crime drama. All shaken together with a cast of characters that you'll never forget.

The show centers on the small town of Twin Peaks, Washington. The homecoming queen and popular local teen Laura Palmer is found murdered. FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper is sent to investigate the murder. The eccentric and compelling townsfolk each have a part to play in the plot as the mystery slowly unfolds.

The story and direction is just fantastic. There are so many themes and metaphors, it's one of the most stylistically sophisticated I've ever seen. The look of the show is just gorgeous. The women look like they just walked out of 1940, the men are rugged, and everyone is a little mysterious. The costumes say so much about the characters. Dramatic lighting, dynamic camera angles, and symbolic imagery are constantly showing up on the screen. The other character in the show is the forest surrounding "Twin Peaks". It is almost always dark, foreboding, and hiding secrets.

The acting is just incredible. Kyle MacLachlan (you know him from other Lynch work such as Dune and Blue Velvet) is smooth, cool and the consummate professional as Special Agent Dale Cooper. Sherilyn Fenn is the perfect Lolita as Audrey Horne. Lara Flynn Boyle channels a Hitchcock heroine as Donna, Laura Palmer's best friend. And Sheryl Lee, oh Sheryl Lee. The image of her face, playing a corpse wrapped in plastic, will never leave my mind. She is so powerful and magnetic when she is on-screen that it's no wonder Lynch found another role for her in the show. And in Fire Walk With Me she brings down the house. She's a natural talent. The entire cast create a community populated by true individuals. The cast brings the town of Twin Peaks to life in a way few casts ever do. It seems like a real, living community that you're observing. The way they interact with each other is just perfect. You will never forget Catherine Coulson as the infamous Log Lady (see picture above). She is so delectably weird. When you watch the DVDs you must must must watch the Log Lady intros. The Log Lady will tell you what to look for, what to remember and what to know. It adds a whole new layer to each episode.

The dialogue is, at times, very cliche. But this is intentional. It ties into the real-life-soap-opera atmosphere of the story and place. it was this obvious soap opera style that, at first, turned Dan off to this show. After a few episodes, when the mystery starts to become deliciously complicated, he became as hooked as I was.

This show is addicting. And now that I've seen every episode and watched the movie, I'm experiencing the crash after the entertainment high. I'm sad because I know as hard as I try, I won't experience anything quite like it ever again. I am also extremely disappointed that the show had to leave off where it did. It was cancelled, so the last episode is not a series finale. It leaves off where the creators intended the third season to begin. Only there was no third season. The movie answered a few of the questions, but there's still a lingering feeling of dissatisfaction. On the other hand, the many mysteries of the show, in a way, are better when left a mystery. We are left to question, to draw our conclusions, to invent explanations, and to interpret them in any way we wish.
The last episode was, by far, one of the scariest things I've ever seen. No one knows how to capture the look and feeling of a dream like David Lynch.

The movie Fire Walk With Me is a whole different animal. This is a David Lynch joint. It is surreal, disturbing, and the perfect end note to the series. It's not as soft and charming as the show, but that's a good thing. It allows us to glimpse at the dark underbelly that was only hinted at in the show. When I say dark, I mean ten times as dark as the show ever was. Plus, David Bowie is in it! So, you know it's worthwhile and the best kind of bizarre.

The only things I suppose I will truly miss about Twin Peaks, besides the high level of entertainment it provided, are the characters. Each and every one was so alive, so unique. Being from a small town myself, it somehow reminded me that all small towns have their characters, their mysteries and their indisputable charm.

Pass the coffee and pie.

Kicking and screaming

2010-08-19T18:26:00.004-04:00

It's very hard to make a good super hero movie. It's even harder to make a good superhero movie about regular people trying to be superheroes. Plus, it's been done before, so you can't even rely on the novelty factor.

Kick Ass is a valiant effort to make a super hero movie about real people. It falls a little short because it relies too much on flashy action sequences that defy the whole "real people" concept.
I really loved director Matthew Vaughn's prior work, Stardust and Layer Cake. And the problem here unfortunately is the direction. The script isn't all bad. The characters are believable. Satisfactory development and "real life only a little better" dialogue. But the look of this film, and the action sequences, are so stylistic and cartoony that they overpower the charming characters completely. The colors are bright and garish, the movements and explosions exaggerated and often defy physics.
This wouldn't be so disappointing if the characters weren't so likable. They have good motives, sad backgrounds and are constantly reminding you that this is supposed to be the real world. They seem totally out of place in this bright, Hollywood world. I wouldn't have been so bothered by it if the characters weren't frequently mentioning that "this isn't a movie", then something explodes or the bad guys burst in, and you see that it is a movie. So don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining, Matthew Vaughn. Don't tell me "this is real life" then show a foul-mouthed little girl whirling through the air with two guns blazing. You can do one or the other, but not both at the same time. It's annoying and distracting.

Nicolas Cage, Mark Strong, Aaron Johnson, Chloe Moretz, Christopher Mintz-Plasse- all the actors are very good. They did what they could with what they were given. I think I would have liked Big Daddy and Hit Girl to have the movie all to themselves, as they were the only two characters who seemed to walk the line between reality/movie well. It was also a shame that Mark Strong didn't have more to do. He's fantastic when you give him a role he can sink his teeth into (See Sherlock Holmes and RocknRolla)

And it's a pity that the action sequences don't match the concept of the plot, because they're awesome. I mean pure awesome. I mean you could easily watch this movie and just skip the parts between the action sequences and be really, really entertained. I just wish the stuff between the action sequences and the action sequences could have happily co-existed somehow, but with a script like that, Vaughn should have known better. I would have even preferred if everything that happened outside the costumes was differed visually than the in-costume parts.

So, I was left wanting more, but not in a good way. On one hand I wanted more action superhero flick, on the other I wanted more "real people try to be superheroes and this is what happens"-type of movie. The balance between the two can be found, see Batman Begins, Shaun of the Dead (not super hero, but supernatural at least) or Boondock Saints. Zombieland had similar issues.

Can we please quit making these "I'm a regular dorky white guy who fights zombies/bad guys/vampires/the mafia" movies? At this point we're beating a dead horse and playing into the very cliches these movies first sought to spoof.

I'm not entirely sure if I can recommend you watch this movie. I'd advise you wait until it plays on some basic cable channel and watch the action sequences. Or just read the comic books, because this looks much better than the movie:

Thank you Mr. Murray

2010-08-17T19:24:00.003-04:00

Ever since I watched Zombieland, I've had an insatiable craving for Bill Murray movies, so the Roman Polanski posts have been put on the back burner for the time being.

Caddyshack is easily one of the most quotable movies ever. It's also a sports movie that doesn't require you be the least bit knowledgeable or interested in the sport. All you have to do is enjoy the unbridled goofy awesome-ness that is Chevy Chase, Bill Murray and Rodney Dangerfield.

Danny is a blue collar kid from a huge family who's working at the local country club trying to scrape together enough money to pay for college. Chevy Chase is the resident eccentric golf ace, Bill Murray the eccentric groundskeeper, and Rodney Dangerfield plays a visiting rich, eccentric developer whose money has bought him the ability to do whatever the hell he pleases.

In fact, Chase and Murray's characters also seem to do whatever the hell they please and that's what makes them so funny. Yeah, there's a plot, but it's of little consequence. The real point of this movie is to bask in the comedic genius of these three performers. I feel it's Dangerfield's best performance in a movie. This is mostly because he's not required to act, he's only required to deliver lines in his signature style. His scenes are so delightfully absurd that they never fail to make me laugh out loud, even though I've seen this movie about 100 times.

The visual style is classic Lampoon. Bright colors, and the camera is always playing into every sight gag.

If you haven't seen this movie, you're missing out on an important cultural touchstone. It's almost always available on TV, so the next time it's on, just sit and watch it. Although I heavily recommend you see it unedited for time and content.

Murray's character doesn't have a lot of screen-time, but he steals this movie.

Ghostbusters is such a well-written movie that it puts most modern comedies to shame. Also just as quotable as Caddyshack. The characters and plot are so well-developed and truly unique that it's no wonder that it was so wildly successful. Visually, it's a little dated, but for a comedy as old as I am, it's jokes are still just as fresh.

Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, who also star, bring us the story of three scientists who start a ghost extermination business just as New York City begins to experience bizarre supernatural events.

This is my favorite Bill Murray movie. He plays the (comparably) straight man to the goofy science nerds played by Ramis and Aykroyd. He comes off as so suave and clever, it's just incredibly. He's a magnetic charmer, and it's impossible to not like his character.

The entire cast is very strong. Ramis and Aykroyd's mix of genius and geek is spot-on. Rick Morranis is able to give us a super-dork without going over-the-top. Sigourney Weaver is amazing as well. She shifts from damsel in distress to possessed temptress effortlessly and the transformation is amazing. Her entire body moves differently. Her chemistry with Murray is very good, and that's an important part of the movie.

The effects look cheesy now, but they were pretty cutting-edge at the time. Still, I wouldn't trade those claymation demon dogs for all the CGI in the world. They are an integral part of the movie's charm.

The theme song to end all theme songs. Whenever anyone anywhere says "Who you gonna call?" there is only one answer.

And to top it all off, this is an excellent family movie. The kids will like the more obvious jokes and the action, adults love the clever dialogue and nostalgia.

Then came Ghostbusters II. With a bigger budget and the entire cast returning and Ramis and Aykroyd writing the script, the sequel does not disappoint. We pick up with our poltergeist poaching heroes a few years after the events of the first movie. The paranormal activity has plummeted and their legal expenses soaring, they're forced to play at kids' parties and work other jobs for cash. Except for Venkman (Murray) who hosts an unpopular TV show about psychics. That is until poor Dana Barrett (Weaver) again begins having spooky experiences, this time centered mysteriously around her infant son, Oscar.

Hilarity and sci-fi ensues. Watching Venkman, Egon and Ray interact with the slime, and the city straights, is simply priceless. The climax, involving a famous NYC landmark, gets me every time. It's just such a fantastic concept that I don't care if it's plausible. I'm having such a good time that my disbelief is completely suspended.

Visually, this film is more sophisticated than the first and the effects are much better. Few sequels can live up to the potential of the first movie, but this one does.

This one's a little scarier, so kids might cover their eyes or shy away from parts. Adults being possessed and a killer marshmallow are less terrifying than evil slime and a demonic sorcerer trapped in a painting that wants to kidnap a baby.

I could go on and write about all Bill Murray's wonderful movies, but three's the magic number, so I'll stop here and cover the rest after I finish what I started with Polanksi.

So thank you, Mr. Murray. Thank you for being you.

I just watched Kick-Ass last night, so I'll be writing about that in a day or two.

If you want something done...

2010-08-12T10:56:00.001-04:00

you'd better do it yourself!

In the ghetto

2010-08-11T21:15:00.002-04:00

The next time you have a bad day and find yourself wondering "How much worse could things get?", watch Precious to get a swift kick off of the self-pity train.

Precious is one of those films that breaks your heart and then fills it back up again. The story of a girl in the worst possible circumstances that rises up the second she is given the chance.

More than that, this movie is the story of the other America. The one that most of us don't know about, don't want to know about, or forget is there. Where people have to make choices and do things the rest of us would never dream us. Hard knock does not begin to describe it. Precious is stuck where she is because she cannot afford anything else. It is only after someone helps her that she is able to really start to live her life. It makes me realize how badly some people need help, and how it seems there will never be enough social workers, there will never be enough caring teachers, and there will never be enough brave neighbors. Precious is lucky, but so many other kids, at this very moment, are falling through the cracks. And our world is poorer for it.

I don't know how the Academy passed over Gabourey Sidibe for Best Actress. She disappears into the role. Gabourey shows us a teen who is beat down, but somehow not completely broken. We see her emerge from the armor she has built around herself. This has to be one of the best
performances I've seen from a young actress. Physically and emotionally, she inhabits the character. Her narration is flawless, and Gabourey gives each facet of Precious' personality a nuanced and believability rarely seen. Too bad Sandra Bullock won the Oscar because she's popular, bankable and skinny pretty. I really cannot wait to see more from Miss Sidibe, and I will be most upset if she is cast as someone's chunky sidekick. She is a star who deserves to shine. This movie rests squarely on her shoulders, and she carries it with ease and care.
Monique deservedly won for Best Supporting. She contorts herself into Precious' monster of a mother with astonishing deft. She is, in turns, horrible, terrifying, vulnerable and pathetic. This will be a role that will go down in cinema history, referenced for generations to come as a
courageous display of pure talent.

The direction sets a perfect tone. Precious' reality is cold, dark and bleak, but her imagined world is vibrant and glossy. Things begin to lighten as Precious finds places to be safe. The viewer sees how Precious has created an inner world to escape the pain and abuse of her reality.
The book on which the film is based starts off with phonetically spelled words and a limited vocabulary, and progresses to show what Precious has learned and how she and her perception of things are changing. The cinematography does its best to mirror that technique, and does it
justice.

If you liked Mommie Dearest, Rudy, Monster, or The Breakfast Club, you'll like Precious.
Please don't miss this one, it is powerful and inspiring.

-- Noel
Sent from my T-Mobile Sidekick®

Playing by the rules

2010-08-11T13:39:00.004-04:00

After watching Zombieland I went to its IMDb page to read the trivia, as I so often do after watching movies. I found out the writer was inspired to write it after seeing Shaun of the Dead. Unfortunately, Zombieland isn't nearly as brilliant, but i give it an "A" for effort.

It is incredibly funny and I love the gory zombie-killing in it. The performances given are admirable and overall the film ranks pretty highly on the awesome scale.
We meet Columbus, a young man who has successfully survived the zombie plague thus far because he lives by a set of rules. He soon joins up with Tallahassee, Woody Harrelson in the kind of role he was born to play, and sets off to navigate his way across the zombie-infested country to find his family. And find his family he does, but not in the way he thought he would. It's a hell of a ride, so it's a good thing that seatbelts are on Columbus' list of rules.
This movie is effortlessly funny, and the running jokes and the gags are very clever.

Visually, it's a lot like Shaun of the Dead. Bright colors, sharp contrast, and the zombie blood is almost black.

Really, the characters are so likable and plot so novel that I really hate to nitpick and point out the gaping plot holes. So, if you haven't seen this movie yet, read no further. Watch it an enjoy it for what it is: a comedy zombie movie where Woody Harrelson kicks ass, a white kid is awkward and funny, and Bill Murray is the best thing ever.

*SPOILERS FOLLOW*

- Gaping plot hole #1 that drove me insane: How in the hell is post-zombie-apocalypse America still enjoying an electricity supply?
Powerplants need to be actively operated by people, and I'm sure that a few utility boxes, poles and/or cables were damaged when virtually all people became the rampaging undead. The fact that the power supply was the sole (albeit inexplicably) untouched man made system in "Zombieland" bothered me a great deal.
- Gaping plot hole #2: Columbus readily abandons or violates his own rules when convenient but takes them up again when the plot decides he should. He readily trusts Tallahassee, Wichita and just about everyone except Bill Murray. After the encounter with 406, you'd think he'd be less
trusting of girls, yet he and Tallahassee follow Wichita into a dark and secluded storage room without properly accessing the risk of doing so.
Double-taps are skipped unless they serve as a punchline. He limbers up only once in spite of the fact we see him enter several potential-zombie-bearing situations. He only once secures an exit before proceeding into a room.
Helpful hint to writers: When you point out rules in order tell the audience that they are important plot points, be sure to follow them.
- Gaping plot hole #3: No one ever stops for gas. I'm interested to know how gas stations were still in operation after the zombie apocalypse. Maybe they're run by the same people who run the power plants.

Other stuff that annoyed me:
- Tallahassee frequently abandoning his weapons after using them once.
- Columbus not taking any food or water from the grocery store.
- We see someone use a bathroom only once in spite of the important bathroom rule. I would have liked to know how they managed the whole bathroom issue, especially on a long road trip.
- It is very easy for a fit adult male to grab a gun away from a waify 19 year old, it's even easier for him to grab a gun away from a little girl. Yet Tallahassee fails to realize this until halfway through the movie.
- Why would Wichita and Little Rock only bring one gun each and no ammo into the amusement park?
- How do you operate amusement park rides without having to stand at the controls?
- Why would you run into a fun house you've never been in before when you have zombies chasing you, being that funhouses are confusing and treacherous?
- Why was Tallahassee the only one who ever geared up to enter zombie-full places, even though a munitions supply was available to everyone?
- Why would you purposefully strand yourself at the top of an amusement park ride with no food, water or back up ammo supplies?
- How does Wichita manage to keep her white tank top- the only one she wears through the entire movie- so clean? No blood-spatter? No sweat-stains? No visible signs that she's been wearing it everyday for God knows how long?
- How does Wichita keep her makeup so fresh? We never see her apply it, yet she and Little Rock even discuss their lack of showers. Is it tattooed on?

This movie failed to rise above most other zombie movies. We are left yelling at the protagonists through our screens and wondering why they have momentarily abandoned all logic. Shaun of the Dead was a game-changer because it avoided that same pitfall by adhering to common sense- what would a regular person do during a zombie plague? Zombieland misses that mark because it strives too hard to be glamorous, but is still very entertaining and worthwhile.

-- Noel
Sent from my T-Mobile Sidekick®

Bad vibrations

2010-08-07T13:30:00.005-04:00

Oh, how I wanted to love The Other Guys. But I did not.

Don't get me wrong, it was funny. I liked it. Will Ferrell was fantastic, Michael Keaton (thank you God for Michael Keaton) was just everything I wanted and more, Eva Mendes was brilliant (I never thought I'd write, think or say that phrase), Samuel L. Jackson and The Rock were pitch-perfect... but Mark Wahlberg, oh Marky Mark Wahlberg...
I cannot for the life of me understand why, after his hilarious turn in The Departed, Mark Wahlberg falls so flat here. Perhaps because the chemistry between him and Will Ferrell is non-existent. You don't get the feeling that they were cracking each other up between takes or ad-libbing for the purpose of trying to one-up each other. It just seemed like they were delivering funny lines. And they do a decent job, it just doesn't feel organic and there's no magic.

The plot is pretty good, not that it really matters. I liked Step Brothers a great deal even though many people did not. The chemistry between the actors was enough to carry an otherwise ridiculously absurd movie. I wish The Other Guys had been more absurd, that it had been as cartoony and out-there as Anchorman, Step Brothers and Talladega Nights. But it just wasn't.

This was a movie in desperate need of a straight man. Someone, anyone, to be the normal person who stands by in astonishment at the melee unfolding. Instead, Ferrell, Keaton and Wahlberg take turns as the straight man, and it doesn't work.

Still, it is still very funny, hilariously funny at points and definitely worth renting, especially if they release an R or unrated version. (Why PG-13 McKay? Why???) The action scenes are incredible.

I feel sad. What could cheer me up? Ah, I know:

The shape of things

2010-08-07T13:13:00.002-04:00

I love when a movie sneaks up on me. This time that movie was Triangle.

It starts off like any other horror movie you've seen. Strange things are happening and the lead actress is troubled and you don't know why. The acting seems sub-par and you wait for the point when her and her friends are tied up and being tortured by some faceless maniac.

But then the plot starts to twist. And it's such an innovative and intriguing concept that it starts to win you over. You begin to try and guess what will happen, going off of what you've seen in other movies in this genre... but all your guesses are wrong!

This is the kind of movie M. Knight Shyamalan still wishes he could dream up. It is chilling, and while the body count isn't that high and it's not as bloody as it could be, it is all the more terrifying because the concept itself is where the horror lies. A concept so terribly wonderful you will have to tell yourself "This could never really happen."

All no-name actors (unless you know who Melissa George is) and helmed by a writer/director that I've never heard of, Christopher Smith, but hope to see more from!

If you liked Memento, Inception or The Sixth Sense you will LOVE LOVE LOVE Triangle.

Holy Cow!

2010-08-04T18:36:00.005-04:00

So I was checking my analytics and saw that over 600 people came to my little corner of the interwebz via my awesome freind Eve's featured seller interview on Etsy.

So I'm scratching her back. Eve has the Etsy shop Thimble and Acorn. The clothes are modern, unique and devastatingly stylish.
A lot of them look like they belong on Holly Golightly, Edie Sedgeiwck or Twiggy. I really can't love on them enough.

Here's one of my favorites:

The Cafe Dress -
Can't you just see Audrey a la Funny Face romping around paris in this one? In a big brimmed sun hat and glamourous sunglasses, no less!

Wild thing...

2010-08-04T13:37:00.018-04:00

...you make my heart sing.

Last night Dan and I curled up on the couch to watch Where The Wild Things Are. I'd heard varying opinions on it, ranging from "great movie" to "very disturbing".
Suffice to say, no reviews I'd read or heard did it justice. It's not like any movie I've ever seen before. Not just aesthetically, but even the style of the plot defies labels. To describe it as a coming of age tale or a kids' movie to to do a disservice to both the film and its viewers.

This is a surrealistic romp into the volatile mind of a pre-teen, Max. At 10 years of age, he is not quite a child, but not quite an adolescent. And that is very strange place to be emotionally and physically.
This world we see is a beautiful interpretation of that limbo that exists within each "tween". It's a place that is both beautiful and scary. Friendly and wild.
Max finds this world after running away from home after throwing a tantrum. The creatures that live there give Max a unique perspective on what it is to live in that place, that limbo that exists.

Spike Jonze is gifted and a truly unique talent. Had anyone else tackled adapting this treasured childhood book, the results would have been nothing like this. While he diverges from the plot of the book, he captures the emotion. This film is evocative and exists not in the head but in the heart. It does not try to be clever or intellectual, it simply makes us feel. And it becomes a living, breathing, warm, fuzzy creature in its own right. It makes you feel all of those times when you were scared or angry that things were changing, that you were no longer a child and the feeling of "everything is going to be okay" became harder and harder to find.

Max Records brings a perfect innocence and accessibility to Max. He is not a heroic figure, he is just a 10 year old boy, and he is charming.
The Wild Things are played with adept skill by Chris Cooper, James Gandolfini, Catherine O'Hara, Paul Dano, Forest Whitaker, and Lauren Ambrose (who we don't see enough of in films, she was my favorite in "Six Feet Under"). They are unpredictable, tempestuous, and perfectly embody every emotion in a way that is palpable and immediately recognizable. They are just big kids themselves, trying to find their place in their world.

Visually, this movie is everything I wish Alice In Wonderland had been. It is bizarre but believable, and the characters are not cartoonish. It has grit, it has soul. It is the place we all went when we played in our backyards or playgrounds. It is that place inside of us all. It is weird and wonderful. It is just strange enough to be a dreamworld, but not beyond our wildest dreams. It's fantastic, but not perfect.
Jim Henson's Creature Shop made the suits for the creatures, and they add something that no fancy CGI ever could. They are real things made from real stuff, not pixels and codes. They are tangible.

Some critics felt it was too dark for children. I disagree. It is honest with children. It makes no illusions about growing up being fun and Max's problems aren't all solved at the end. The entire plot serves to teach Max one lesson: Everything doesn't have to be okay, and you can't make everything okay. Just do the best you can with what you've got.
And I don't think that's something we should shield kids from. the longer we create the illusion that everything is all happy-ever-after and singing animals, the harder it is for kids to adjust to reality. Things aren't always going to be okay. Things are going to suck sometimes. Things are going to be hard sometimes. Sometimes we have to do things we don't want to. Sometimes we lose things. Sometimes the people we love can hurt us and make us angry.
If we never tell them these things, how are we to prepare them for life?

So take the trip with Max to Where The Wild Things Are, bring the kids, and let the wild rumpus into your heart.

-- Noel
Sent from my T-Mobile Sidekick®

I don't care if I'm in Rome...

2010-08-03T16:55:00.000-04:00

Courtesy of http://www.doobybrain.com/2010/04/26/if-you-cant-make-it-good-make-it-3d/

Reborn in the USA

2010-07-27T13:44:00.002-04:00

A UK film critic recently wrote a brilliant blog post about a bloody funnel she'd received in the mail.

This blog is a perfect example of why America is the true vampire, sucking the creativity of other countries and reusing it to make money because it's easier than being creative for ourselves:

"The erstwhile blood funneler didn’t include a note or press release or any identifying details – just the blood-caked funnel. But a few moments of internet research revealed it to be a promotion for Let Me In, the American remake of Swedish vampire masterpiece Let the Right One In. The original film (based on the novel by TK) is a marvel of understatement and atmospheric creepiness, a fantastic convergence of entertainment and art. And since, as far as I know, every single print and DVD and digital copy wasn’t destroyed in some sort of vast international warehouse fire conspiracy, there is absolutely no reason to remake this film. Except that Americans like to make money. And did you know that Americans made exactly zero dollars off the original Swedish version of Let the Right One In? It’s true! This cannot stand! One producer told the Los Angeles Times, “We’re incredibly admiring of the original, but to be honest with you, that picture grossed $2 million. It’s not like we’re remaking Lawrence of Arabia.”
But who knows. Though I object on principle, Let Me In could wind up being a perfectly fine piece of entertainment. But reshooting and repackaging something great so you can sell it to dumb people too lazy to go to an art house theatre and read subtitles is a cheap trick. Kind of like sending me a plastic funnel coated with red dye to trick me into writing about your movie. Goddamnit."

So don't be a lazy American. Rent the original Let The Right One In and enjoy it for all of it's foreign genius. It is a touching and haunting story of a young, lonely boy and the vampire girl who becomes his only friend.

"..and then go contemplate the moon..."

2010-07-24T19:37:00.006-04:00

It is extremely difficult for me to review Chinatown in a brief manner. I wrote a 20-page critical analysis of this film in college. It's one of those movies that is like a mysterious lover: every time you see it you learn something new about it. It never ceases to amaze and entertain me. But I spare you deep analysis in favor of concise description.

Chinatown is a film noir. The story of a private investigator and the woman who hires him. But it is also so much more. In the grand tradition of film noirs, the mystery it unravels exceeds your expectations and shocks your sensibilities. Polanski delivers a vintage noir that reflects the loss of innocence that permeated America in the 1970s after the free love of the 1960s.
Jack Nicholson is a revelation as Jake Gittes, the slick private investigator who thinks he's seen it all and knows it all. Faye Dunaway is hauntingly vulnerable as the mysterious Evelyn Mulwray, whose husband's rendezvous with a younger woman sets the plot in action. John Huston is powerful and chilling as Noah Cross, Evelyn's father and the former owner of Water & Power. Jake and Evelyn are classic examples of tragic characters, every aspect of their being forcing their fateful path. All characters and even the plot are downright Shakespearian in quality.
The cinematography wraps you in the story like a warm blanket. Polanski uses all of the old film noir visual motifs and peppers the film with foreshadowing of what is to come. The common themes of conspiracy and sex are brought to a whole new level. And remember: in every film noir, sex=power.
The costumes are perfection and even act as character development.
The dialogue is some of the best you'll ever hear. Pay close attention to every word. Every syllable spoken helps to develop and advance the plot, and if you miss even the slightest detail, the eventual twist will be lost on you.
This movie is incredibly successful because it is so very subtle. The details are teased out slowly, but the pacing is perfect. To go into anymore detail is to spoil everything.
Rife with symbolism, metaphor and clever hints, Chinatown is a rich viewing experience. You must see this movie before you die. Twice. You must watch it again to pick up all the little hints and foreshadowing, and appreciate the flawless structure of this film.
Flawless, perfect, classic and sublime. "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown."

Bitter Moon is a sexy psychological thriller told in flashback. Hugh Grant and the lady from The English Patient are an average married British couple, Nigel and Fiona, sailing to India. They meet a wheelchair bound writer, Oscar (Peter Coyote) and his beautiful young wife, Mimi (Emmanuelle Singer, Polanski's Wife). The tight quarters and lack of activity gives Oscar the opportunity to tell the every dirty detail in the sordid tale of his relationship with Mimi to poor unsuspecting Nigel.

This one is not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach. While we are spared the reenactment of the most disturbing of Mimi and Nigel's kinky games, the visceral language used to describe it will provide a crystal clear mental image that will have you reaching for the brain bleach. Not a family film to say the least.

The acting is great. Coyote's no-holds-barred narration doesn't take away from the action and Singer is the perfect mix of . Hugh Grant is actually very good because he is required to be who he is- a painfully proper British man who doesn't know what to do with himself in awkward situations.

Taking turns as romantic, playful, sexy, disturbing, sinister, horrifying and thrilling, Bitter Moon defies expectations and explanation. It's a tight little film, full of anticipation and it will keep you guessing right up until the end. It explores the highest high and the lowest lows of the humanity all occurring in one complex and dysfunctional relationship.

swoons

2010-07-23T15:50:00.004-04:00

http://movies.yahoo.com/TRONLegacyRevealed

tried to embed the video, but it won't let me.

YES!!!!!!! Please dear God, let this movie be as awesome as I hope it will be!

Daft Punk is making the soundtrack and it's streaming online currently.

Easter egg

2010-07-20T13:58:00.003-04:00

Sometimes you're reminded why seeing a movie on opening night in the theater far surpasses any home-viewing experience.

I had one of those moments last Friday during the trailers preceeding Inception:

The trailers were rolling, and everyone had high expectations. It was a sold-out show and you could feel the anticipation in the air. A trailer begins, it presents the intriguing plot of a group of people stuck in an elevator, and one of them is not who they seem.
There is dead silence as our collective excitement builds over what they're going to tease at in the trailer, and then the text on the screen reads "From the mind of M. Knight Shyamalan" and a deafening simultaneous groan rises from the crowd. We had not all planned to groan, nor did we groan loud enough for the whole theater to hear. Virtually every single solitary patron in that theater let out a genuine groan to express their frustration and disappointment in Mr. Shyamalan.
Then we all laughed in surprise, because we were not alone in our sentiment, and because we were probably all thinking the same thing: Does M. Knight know that the mention of his name generates that type of response from an audience?

I laughed again when I saw that this was not an isolated occurence in theater 14 of the AMC Boston Common:
http://consumerist.com/2010/07/why-do-they-keep-using-m-night-to-advertise-movies-if-this-is-how-people-react-to-his-name.html

http://filmdrunk.uproxx.com/2010/07/shyamalan-name-is-the-turd-in-audiences-punch-bowl

and there are no shortage of other links to similar experiences. Just Google "Shyamalan groan".

Take heed, Mr. Shyamalan.

Inception

2010-07-19T11:12:00.011-04:00

All too often, movies fail to live up to their potential or our expectations. They try too hard to be everything to everyone, and as a result are sloppy. I'm pleased to report this isn't the case with Inception.

This review contains no spoilers. All I'll even say about the plot is that the main characters are in the business of stealing ideas and do so by entering their victims' dreams.

Nolan's trademark, color-heavy visual style is alive and well in Inception. You can grasp the mood of the scene from the tone cast over the film, be it a warm sepia or a chilling blue. This helps a great deal further into the movie when the mis-en-scene has to remind you which
world you're watching.
Inception is a slick caper or puzzle film in the spirit of Memento and Ocean's Eleven. You get all the pieces of the puzzle early on in the film and spend the rest trying to piece them together. Jargon is bandied about by the characters, the true meaning of which you only find out later. It's an excellent and well-balanced blend of action, thriller, drama and sci-fi. The action scenes keep the plot moving forward and the thriller elements keep you trying to solve the puzzle.

This isn't to say Inception is flawless. I would have liked more character development, but I suppose Nolan had some sort of necessary time restraint. This film could have used an extra 30 minutes or so to tell us who these people are and why we should care. The only characters that are given that kind of consideration are DiCaprio's Cobb, Cillian Murphy's Robert Fischer, and Marion Cotillard's Mal, and they are that much more successful and engaging because of it. Mal in particular seems more real than anyone else because of the careful development of her character and the impressive performance given by Cotillard. The other actors make up for lack of character development with effortless charm and likability. Page, Gordon-Levitt, Ken Wantanabe, Rao, Hardy and the rest of the ensemble cast- notably Michael Caine and Tom Berenger- turn in solid performances. However, Murphy and Cotillard steal this movie. When they are not on screen, you long for them to come into the plot again. They are magnetic and vulnerable in ways that DiCaprio never seems to be. Your heart will ache for them in a way that it does not for DiCaprio.

This is the movie of the summer. While not as impeccable as Memento nor slick as Ocean's Eleven, it's one of the best films I've seen this year. There is a lot to be said for subtlety and ambiguity and Nolan tries his best to use them to his advantage. My only real complaints are the heavy-handed naming of some characters and the use of "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien" repeatedly in the film. La Vie En Rose was so powerful and unforgettable that you cannot use t one of Edith Piaf's best-known songs in a movie featuring Cotillard. It was like a big distracting reminder "You're watching a movie!", plus the fact that it was a little too literal for the characters involved. The only songs that would have been worse are "Dreamweaver" or "Dream A Little Dream Of Me".

-- Noel
Sent from my T-Mobile Sidekick®

Comedy and Tragedy

2010-07-10T12:40:00.006-04:00

It's been hotter than Hades in Boston for over a week. This is upsetting to a New Englander such as myself. I tolerate the harsh winters, even enjoy them, with the explicit understanding that at least I don't have to suffer through blazing summer heat and humidity. I feel as if this unsaid agreement with Mother Nature has been broken. I feel betrayed and bitter.

If you couldn't tell, the heat put me in a terrible mood. The only upside to this kind of weather is that I have no reason to be outside. I stay in my moderately-air-conditioned apartment, praying for rain and watching movies.

I watched Zemsta, aka The Revenge, which isn't directed by Roman Polanski, but he does star in it. If you enjoy Shakespearean farce, then you'll love Zemesta. It's a much-loved Polish play written by Aleksander Fredro in the early 1800's. It was adapted for screen in 2002 by the prominent filmmaker in Poland, Andrzej Wajda. It's kind of like Poland's Much Ado About Nothing. The characters are just as strong, the plot is just as clever, and the dialogue is just as delicious. It is all in Polish, so this is a subtitled film, but nothing is lost in translation.
All of Fredro's plays poke fun at nobility and their "first-world problems", so-to-speak.
The Cupbearer and The Notary are the two poles (pun intended) at the center of the story. Each resides in one half of the same estate, and each hates the other. Of course their children, Klara and Waclaw, have fallen in love and conspire a way to make peace. The Notary wishes for a wedding of his own, to the Widow of the late steward. So, The Cupbearer sends for lovable Papkin, Polanski, to act as his liaison to The Notary to attempt to broker peace, and to The Widow to win her hand.
Hilarity ensues as Papkin falls in love with Klara, The Widow falls in love with Waclaw and everything gets impossibly mixed up.
Polanksi shines in the role of Papkin. Papkin is supposed to be a grand warrior and womanizer, but he is really a coward and a ridiculous flatterer. Papkin is a legend in his own mind. Polanski is larger than life and funny as hell as the bumbling little would-be hero. The rest of the cast is also fantastic, they inhabit their characters fully, matching each other in talent and delivery.
The set and costumes are wonderful. 17th century Poland is brought to life, albeit in a sanitized way. There is dirt, but nothing is soiled. Perfect for a light-hearted plot suited more for a stage than a screen. At the end there is a genius curtain call. If only all really great movies ended that way.

Old school farce like this is an acquired taste. Very high brow, no fart jokes, and few punchlines. The best part about that is that it makes for good family fare. You can watch this with your lace-curtain grandmother or your 5-year old nephew (it's like reading out-loud, but a movie!) and no one is going to miss the subtext or be offended. It inspired all the classic sitcom setups that please crowds: If you're here... then that means.... Oh, no!

If you don't like Shakespeare and prefer bloody war films, please watch Polanski's 1971 adaptation of Macbeth. And, no, you didn't read that wrong, Hugh Hefner was the executive producer of this film. Yeah, that Hugh Hefner.
They're not that strange of bedfellows. Polanski's late wife Sharon Tate was a famous Playboy Bunny, and Hugh Hefner was very close with her and Polanski. I can only imagine that Hefner wanted to help Polanski get back to work after Tate's murder in 1969.

And what better subject matter than The Scottish Play? An ambitious Scottish nobleman and his equally ambitious and morally depraved wife decide to kill their way to the throne, and then try to keep the power by killing any who stand in line to inherit it.
And my, my, my, is it bloody! Black as tragedy can get, Polanski keeps this movie in shadow and paints it with blood. The medieval world presented is dark, dirty and sinister. And there is more unsettling imagery than even the most seasoned horror movie lover will say "Eeeewww!"
Macbeth enters a coven of witches (awesome witches, no pointy black hats here) and their cultish and disturbing behavior set the tone for what is to come. Tate was stabbed sixteen times, and Polanski engages in all kind of cathartic release in this film. MacBeth brutally stabs and hacks at his victims. The witches and the Macbeth are a thinly-veiled metaphor for the Manson Family, a cult of power-hungry and ruthless killers. And the fact that they are played by young actors, flying in the face of traditional performances of Macbeth, Polanski is mirroring the young Manson Family members. He said of his casting young actors:
"Directors always portray Lady Macbeth as a nagging bitch. But people who do ghastly things in life, they are not grim like a horror movie."
Indeed, Tate's killers were all under 25, three of them pretty girls.

Most of this movie is comprised of POV shots, so the audience is a participant in the violence and action. I would also guess this was a very gratifying way for Polanski to capture this cathartic piece. The viewer is living vicariously through the cameras, just as Polanski was.

This is as exhilarating as Shakespeare can get. You feel the action in your bones. If every movie adaptation of the Bard's work could be this awesome, no one would ever call it boring. This one is not to miss.

*SPOILER* there is an awesome head-chopping at the end when Macduff triumphantly avenges the murder of his wife and children (if Polanski couldn't so it in real life, why not on celluloid?) and the finale strays from the play to hint that the cycle of violence and ambition will never end. Polanski lets no optimism or hope survive. It is chilling. *SPOILER*

Next up: Chinatown!!!! BEST MOVIE EVER! The Film Noir To End All Film Noirs!

AND as if to reward me for blogging, the sky has just opened up! Huzzah!

Play time

2010-06-29T18:39:00.004-04:00

I've been in Maryland on vacation and also entertaining guests. So I haven't had much of a chance to watch movies or blog about them. But enough about me.

While in Maryland I saw a few movies in part and one movie in its entirety. That movie was Toy Story 3. I paid the $30 for Dan and I to see it in IMAX 3D, and I was impressed. I haven't seen a 3D movie worth the admission price since Up. The 3D is done well, not gimmicky, and moves smoothly.
As for story and acting, I had assumed that the Toy Story franchise would have lost some steam in the third installment, but I was pleasantly surprised.
The best part about this movie is that it breaks away from the previous two movies' plot of "toys attempting to get home have crazy adventure". Granted, there's still a crazy adventure and they are trying to get home, but this film is darker and more mature than the previous two. Here, the toys don't know if they have a home to get back to. Andy is all grown up and going off to college. Like Andy, the toys must go beyond the safety of Andy's bedroom to find their rightful place in the world. It's refreshing, provocative, and surprisingly mature.
All of the Toy Story movies wax philosophical about what a toy is. A source of fun, a comfort, a loyal friend- but 3 raises the question of what should happen when an owner out-grows their toys? Woody and the other toys have so strongly identified as "Andy's toys" that they struggle finding a new purpose for themselves now that their time with Andy is at an end. This is where the story gets dark, but this is a Disney flick, so there is a light at the end of the tunnel. A few moments are so poignant that you forget you're watching animated plastic playthings.
Visually, it's all so colorful and stunning. The humans are cartoonish but believable. The environments are rich and deeply detailed. *SPOILER* The dump scenes are particularly lifelike and breathtakingly beautiful simply because we know every grimy speck of dirt and the hellfire of the incinerator were created with incredibly attention to detail.

The performances are strong, as always. It makes you wonder why Tim Allen doesn't do more, and why Tom Hanks hasn't starred in a comedy for so long. Michael Keaton is amazing as Ken. Ah. Maz. Ing. If I had to pick a stand-out performance in this strong ensemble, its Keaton all the way. He steals every scene he's in. Hollywood, give us more Michael Keaton. We thank you in advance. And if Barbie sounds familiar to you it's because Jodi Benson also voiced The Little Mermaid, Ariel.

I also saw parts of Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen, which was so incoherent and unwatchable that I was glad that I didn't pay to see it. And I'm not linking to it either. If you want to seek out this movie, suit yourself, but I won't help you.
Seriously, Jerry Bruckheimer, how do you screw up two movies about robots from space that turn into cars and airplanes and shoot at each other? Robots are awesome. Space is awesome. Cars and airplanes are generally awesome. Shoot outs are awesome. I thought it would be impossible to take such an awesome concept and make it suck.. But you did. How? You stick Shania TheBeef in there as some meaningless wimpy meat-bag that we're supposed to care about, and make the far-more-interesting, inter-planetary, laser-shooting, sentient robots secondary characters. If I have to choose between robots from space that turn into cars and airplanes and some twerpy privileged suburban white kid, I'm going to choose the robots and hope they vaporize that kid and his silly first-world, cry-baby problems. The franchise is called "Transformers" not "Awkward Adolescent White Boy". We're there for the robots. We don't need a human to identify with, especially if that human is going to be so unforgivably vanilla. The robots are sentient beings, we're supposed to identify with them! That's the magic of Transformers: Robots with souls and emotions that we sympathize and empathize with who just happen to also wield incredible powers! Like Superman, but made of metal. Would they make a Superman movie and have the main protagonist be someone other than Superman? You have entirely missed the point of the original cartoon series!
Stay the hell away from Thundercats, Jerry Bruckheimer!

Then, as if to remind me what a real movie is like, Heartbreak Ridge was on AMC. Clint Eastwood as a hard-drinking, war-hardened drill sergeant, a troop of rag-tag marine recruits in ridiculously short-shorts, and the tale of how he whips them into shape just in time for them all to be put on the front lines. What's not to like? It's like Stripes meets Full Metal Jacket. Watch this movie. Key scene: Eastwood kicking the crap out of a guy twice his size.

The Fearless Vampire Killers

2010-06-14T21:36:00.003-04:00

A title so good I didn't want to think of a different one to headline my review. So let's sink our teeth into Roman Polanksi's The Fearless Vampire Killers. (Yeah, I went there.)

This was an odd movie. They don't make movies like this anymore. It's an absurdist comedy. Part camp, part live action cartoon, part satire. It tells the story of an old professor, called crazy for his belief and study of vampires, and his sole assistant/disciple (played by Polanksi). They have been called to a small village somewhere in Eastern Europe to investigate rumors of vampires, which turn out to be very very true.

As I noted before, this film doesn't really look like any other Polanksi film I've seen. It really is cartoonish, exaggerated makeup, costumes, colors, camera angles. Perhaps the most interesting thing is the use of a fast-forward special effect that gives the illusion of the characters moving at incredible speeds. This is used when people run, ride sleds, and other very physical actions. This is an effect used in many old silent vampire or horror movies, and old silent comedies. So it gives a nod to both these genres in an intriguing way. It is pretty funny, and the way everything is so over-the-top makes it borderline brilliant. It cleverly mocks religion and humans' futile attempts to understand or control the supernatural. I especially loved the scene involving Polanski's character's encounter with a male vampire who is blatantly trying to seduce him.

This is the movie that introduced Polanski to his late wife Sharon Tate. They actually didn't get along at first because he's a perfectionist and she was a new-comer to films so she required many takes to get the scenes right. But, they ended up falling for each other anyway. She's very funny in this movie, reminded me so much of Ilsa in Young Frankenstein- which was so clearly inspired by The Fearless Vampire Killers. She has a charming girl-next-door vibe in spite of her incredible beauty. She clearly would have gone on to great things had she not been brutally murdered.

Be sure to see the restored version. The original theatrical release was butchered by the studio and the editors to the point where Polanski was furious. The restored version has better pacing and lets the comedic performances shine through.

If you're sick of the neo-vampire date rape fetish genre of Twilight, True Blood, The Vampire Diaries, etc. Then this movie is the perfect roasted clove of garlic for you.

-- Noel
Sent from my T-Mobile Sidekick®

P.S. CHECK IT OUT!

You can now see an alphabetical index of the movies I've reviewed here by clicking on the link above "Index of Movies I've Reviewed". Nifty, eh?

Twist the night away

2010-06-09T13:46:00.004-04:00

If you're like me, you spent many a day as a child watching family movies in front of the living room television.
It's those early life experiences that form your relationship with movies. Many of my favorite films are the same ones I watched while sitting on the carpet and eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with my brother. My mom or dad would sit on the couch, ready to answer my questions and comfort me if the movie took a sad or scary turn. The movies selected were always of good quality for what they were, and my brother and I would sit rapt while taking them in. These movies are like old family friends who remind me of the happy simple days of my childhood. There were the Disney classics, the golden age of hollywood staples, and of course, musicals. One of our favorites was Oliver! Because of the fun songs and the young protagonist, and the one and only Artful Dodger. (Has there ever been a more fantastic name for a literary character? It's an identity in itself!)

So when I heard that Roman Polanski was directing a big screen adaptation of Charles Dickens' much-loved and much-adapted book, I was wary. Then I heard Ben Kingsley was cast as Fagin, so I began to hope. I was not disappointed.
Polanski's devotion to set design, costume design and casting brings Dickens' story to life in a way that delights the senses. The worlds of the underbelly of London- the orphanage, Fagin's lair, etc.- are perfectly gritty and grimy in all the right ways. They stand in stark contrast to the elegance of the Brownlows, as they should. The income gap is half the story. Much of the design was inspired by engravings of old London, and the ste was so large Polanski rode a scooter to get around in it.

Polanski also explicitly made this movie for his children to enjoy. It holds close to the plot of the book and doesn't spare much of the violence, but it is still incredibly entertaining and family-friendly. While it may be disturbing to them, it's important for kids to know that many children had- and still have- to endure life on the streets. It lets them know how lucky they are. And seeing as though Polanski himself had to make his way without his parents during WWII, there is no sugar coating. This flm is a little darker than most adaptations, but not unecessarily so.
The acting is good, not a weak link in the cast and it's all very believable, and yet it still has that storybook quality. The bad guys are bad, the good guys are good, Fagin is both creepy and endearing, and all the poor people doing what they have to get by have hearts of gold.

In short, this movie was everything I wanted it to be and nothing I didn't want it to be. It didn't try to re-invent the wheel. Much like The Lord of The Rings trilogy, it built on our collective idea of what the characters looked like and sounded like, influenced by- but not stealing from- the adaptations that preceeded it. Yet, it was it's own film, it can easily stand on its own. It was panned by critics as merely satisfactory. I disagree. Did we really want a big re-booted Oliver Twist? No! Dickens is one of those authors that so clearly creates characters that have a life of their own. We know what they look like, sound like and act like, and they belong to all of us. You need to let them shine through, you can't go wrapping them up in your own ideas or it's going to spoil it for everyone.
Watch this movie and get in touch with your inner child, or your real child. It has all the makings of a classic.

-- Noel
Sent from my T-Mobile Sidekick®

The whole nine yards...

2010-05-29T16:22:00.005-04:00

...all the better to hang yourself with.
I've been delaying the inevitable: reviewing the terrible The Ninth Gate
I wanted to like this movie, I really did. I love Roman Polanski. I love Johnny Depp. It seemed only logical that the combination of them and a movie about the gate to hell would be awesome.

But it's just not. Johnny Depp is great as Dean Corso. Polanski gives us a wonderful winding mystery tour in candle-lit and shadowy old buildings. And as far as secret religious message movies go, The Ninth Gate kicks the crap out of The Da Vinci Code. Because watching Johnny Depp in a not-so-great movie about the occult is better than watching a doughy Tom Hanks in a painfully bad movie about how the last scion of Christ can't defend herself and needs a pudgy middle-aged college professor to save her from bad guys.

The problem with The Ninth Gate is that Polanski's movies usually have a great ending. A big payoff for all that suspense and tension he's been building up over the last two hours. But The Ninth Gate doesn't have a payoff. It's like sitting through near three Jodie-Foster-filled hours of Contact and not even getting to see any aliens!
You spend two hours on the edge of your seat as Corso unravels the mystery of ancient engravings said to lead to the gate of hell. There is murder, mystery, intrigue, and supernatural forces. You're waiting and waiting for something big to happen, but the most climactic thing that happens is Frank Langella lights himself on fire and Johnny Depp has graphic sex with Polanski's wife, Emmanuelle Seiger, next to a burning castle. But then it doesn't end. You think "Here we go... here's the big finish..." and then... nothing!
We get no answers, in particular why a former skeptic- or any sane person for that matter- would want to cross the ninth gate to hell. Granted, Corso isn't supposed to be likable, and that's part of the reason this movie doesn't work, but it still defies logic. Is Corso under the impression that something great is going to happen if he enters hell or conjures Satan? Did he think "Gee, being chased and almost murdered by crazy Satan worshippers was so great, I'd like to meet their boss!"??? I know he's a greedy mercenary, but he's supposed to be a smart greedy mercenary. And anyone with half a brain knows that no one ever gets anything good out of a deal with the devil.
My other issue is that this movie is incredibly cheesy. Rosemary's Baby's creepy cult worked because you didn't see them do any of the cheesy hooded-cloak-chanting-blood-drinking weird stuff. And it seems like the film-noir style of this movie is almost cartoonish. I could only accept this movie if it's meant as a winking satire to the whole occult genre, but it's not. It's like Polanski's Temple of Doom, except devoid of campy charm.

I can best sum up The Ninth Gate in relating this real-life exchange between Dan and I:
Me: (walking into the living room after showering and getting dressed) "What are you watching? Ugh! You're watching The Ninth Gate?"
Dan: "Yeah, why?"
Me: "This movie is awful."
Dan: "I've never seen it. Why, what happens?"
Me: "Nothing happens."
Dan: "What do you mean?"
Me: "I mean nothing happens."
Dan: "Oh, stop it."
(Here, Dan insists we can't leave until the movie is over. So I sit down, comforted only by the fact that he'll realize I'm right in about 20 minutes. So 20 minutes pass.)
Dan: "Who's that girl? Isn't she the one he had sex with? What's going to happen?"
Me: "Nothing. Nothing is going to happen."
Dan: "Stop it! What's really going to happen??"
Me: "Nothing!"
(and then the credits roll after Corso walks through the gate)
Dan: "That's it?!!"
Me: "I told you."
Dan: "You don't get to see hell or the devil, or why he's going in there?"
Me: "Nope."
Dan: "That's lame!"
Me: "Yes. Yes it is."

Trying to explain the criminally unsatisfying end of the movie is like playing some cruel real-life version of "Who's on First?". No one is going to believe the answer, even though it's true.

Some critics say that this movie is underrated and will develop a cult following. Theonly reason I believe that is because every movie featuring a cult develops a cult following. Weird, but true.

Because it feels good to know i'm not alone...

2010-05-27T10:16:00.002-04:00

I give you this excellent opinion piece about rating movies on a star or point scale by Ty Burr of the Boston Globe. Bold and italics added by me:

Critic's Notebook

Star wars
A movie critic’s conflicted, if not disdainful, feelings toward rating films
By Ty Burr
Globe Staff / May 25, 2010

Whenever I get a reader gripe about the number of stars I have (or haven’t) given a movie, I think of that old Zen saw about how the hand pointing at the moon simply ain’t the moon. Then I send them to Movie Review Intelligence, a website (www.moviereviewintelligence.com) that is to movie ratings what Sabermetrics are to baseball batting averages: glorious, statistics-crazy overkill.

There are other rating-aggregate sites out there: Rotten Tomatoes is the one everyone knows about (www.rottentomatoes.com). It remulches each print and online critic’s rating (stars, grades, whatever) into a purely on/off proposition: red tomato good, splatty green tomato bad. I prefer another site, Metacritic.com (www.metacritic.com), for a number of reasons: The 1 to 100 scale is literally 50 times finer-grained than at Rotten Tomatoes, and the editors stick with the major newspaper/magazine/online reviewers.
Movie Review Intelligence, though, busts the entire rating-ology concept wide open. The brainchild of media researcher David Gross, the site collects all the major reviews and ratings for a movie and slices them into infinite pieces of pie. MRI’s page for “Robin Hood,’’ for instance, assigns an aggregate rating (55.1 percent out of 100 possible points overall), then breaks that number down among Broad National Press (56.2 percent), Local Newspapers (60.7 percent), Alternative/Indie (63.9 percent), Highbrow Press (35.0 percent), Movie Industry (43.5 percent), and major, semi-major, and mini-major urban markets.
The approach has its flaws (because Peter Travers in Rolling Stone hasn’t been “alternative’’ in at least two decades, he skews the average for that category) but also yields the kind of wonky, borderline useless insights stat-freaks love. The “review mixture’’ scattergram — a scattergram! — for “Clash of the Titans’’ indicates that critics in smaller cities were more positive than those in mid-size cities. The “review timing’’ bar graph for “Date Night’’ shows that reviews that came out on the film’s opening day were more positive than those that ran earlier.
What does this mean? To quote Pee-wee Herman, “I don’t KNOW!’’ But I’m really glad someone’s doing it and that he’s got an iPhone app to boot. For one thing, it takes the pressure off me when people complain that I gave “Robin Hood’’ three stars rather than two and a half. (Sue me, it was two and three-quarters; I like to grade up.) But that’s only part of it.
I understand the reasons people like visual ratings on movie reviews. Really, I do. We’re all pressed for time and unless you’re a movie fanatic or a member of our immediate families, you’re not going to slog through all six to 10 of the Globe’s Friday movie reviews from top to bottom. We’re a goal-oriented society, and we crave knowing what’s worth it and what’s not. The weekend box office is perceived as a competitive race with clear-cut winners and losers, and star ratings are the Olympic judges holding up numbers. Is it two stars or three and a half? Should I pay attention or move on? But that’s still putting more weight on the ratings than the critics often do themselves. As cultural filters go, the stars are absurdly blunt instruments. They have nothing of value to say about which audience a movie might be best for and in fact assume that all movies want to appeal to all audiences.
But they don’t. A few months ago I met a lovely elderly couple who assured me they only went to movies to which I’d given three and a half or four stars. Needless to say, this had blown up in their faces more than a few times: “Borat,’’ for one; “I’m Not There’’ for another. Whereas other, less starry movies might have spoken to them more clearly and meaningfully than they did to me, a point I often try to make in the body of a review but which by default can’t be reflected in a two or three star rating. They might have preferred “Cheri,’’ say, or “The Duchess,’’ or, who knows, “Shortbus.’’

Another flaw in the star ratings is that they can’t signal when a movie has parts that work and parts that don’t. I recently gave the Annette Bening/Naomi Watts drama “Mother and Child’’ two and a half stars, not because I felt lukewarm about the movie but because what cruises along beautifully for 80 minutes falls prey to overwriting in the last act— too many coincidences until you have to cry uncle. Or I did; as always, your mileage may vary. But the rating won’t tell you that, since it’s a nine-point scale (if you count halves and zeroes) that most readers interpret as binary: yes or no, good or bad. You very well might love “Mother and Child’’ — I wanted to. But first you have to consider it as more than a rating.
A further case in point: “The Art of the Steal,’’ the documentary about Philadelphia’s Barnes Foundation that is woefully partisan yet great for starting arguments about who owns art and what their duty to the public might be. As a work of persuasion it’s flawed; as provocation, it’s inspired. Two and a half from me and that didn’t keep it from running for weeks at the Coolidge, which is just as it should be.
In general, though, does colleague Wesley Morris’s or my giving less than three and a half stars doom a movie — specifically, the kind of off-studio nonblockbuster that depends on reviews for survival? More than I’d care to admit, and the fault lies in part with you, dear readers, as you perform pop triage and try to figure out what to see and what not to see on a Friday night. This drives at least one studio executive I know absolutely crazy, and after a three-and-a-half star review runs he has been known to e-mail me to sarcastically ask if I “couldn’t squeeze another half-star’’ out of my pen.
I understand where he’s coming from, even as I’m helpless to do otherwise. (Do you really want me giving more stars to a movie I didn’t much like just because I think it should be seen by one audience or another?) With fewer and fewer arthouses still standing and with all the movies that get pushed through that narrowing window, it’s pretty much four stars or death. Because anything less is unimportant to you, anything less is useless to the studio executive who wants to sell his movie, to which I have to say “tough’’ but also “sorry, the people you want to talk to are over there skimming the paper online.’’
I sometimes wonder: What would happen if we just trash-canned the things and went the way of The New York Times and Wall Street Journal? Would you read more of the review or none of it? Do you really need the star ratings, and, if so, why? I get it: To request nuanced attention of a reader — regularly, five times every Friday — is almost an affront when we spend most of our days wading thigh-deep through e-mails and pop-up ads. But what happens if by skipping a two-and-a-half star rating you miss the movie that changes your life?
The Movie Review Intelligence website takes the exact opposite approach: It fans the stars out into an infinitude of statistical slices and hopes for meaning and guidance to emerge. It’s a fascinating place to surf through, but I suspect it still misses the point. What draws an audience to any piece of culture, pop or otherwise, isn’t dingbats but words: words of enthusiasm or sometimes even just words of qualified recommendation. If you rest your intake solely on what the ratings say is the best, you risk missing far too much of what’s simply good.
Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com.

http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2010/05/25/movie_critic_struggles_with_rating_films/

In Ford we trust

2010-05-26T14:55:00.008-04:00

Sorry for the hiatus on Polanski posts. I've been watching "Twin Peaks" on DVD, venturing outside, and being otherwise distracted/occupied.
Not that I think you've been holding your breath in anticipation, dear readers. I'm just stating the facts.

In 1988 Polanski teamed up with one of cinema's most bankable stars, Mr. Indiana Jones himself, Harrison Ford. This was a wise casting choice given that the film Frantic rests squarely on the shoulders of the lead actor to carry, as Polanski's films often do.
Harrison Ford is a master of subtlety. He's not the over-acting leading man of Mel Gibson's or Tom Cruise's ilk. You only catch him screaming or blubbering when it's truly called for. In the meantime, he's kicking ass and taking names.

Frantic tells the story of Dr. Richard Walker who's visiting Paris with his wife. She mysteriously disappears, and he must search for her, frantically (yeah, I went there. Deal with it.). The police are of little help, the language barrier complicates things, and with every passing moment Richard feels the situation become more sinister, and more dire.

The cinematography and lighting in this film support the building tension nicely. Paris' underbelly is exposed, gritty and garish. This is not a tourism picture. It's what the TV show "Locked Up Abroad" tries so hard to be. Frantic turns the glamourous Paris into a dark and frustrating puzzle that Richard is determined to unlock, though his hands are shaking and sweaty. However, don't expect a frantic, action movie pace. This is a thriller, but not a thrill ride. Polanski builds tension slowly and methodically. Look for his cameo as a taxi driver.

Emmanuelle Seigner (Polanski's wife) turns in a great performance as Richard's unlikely ally, a street punk girl who's gotten mixed up with the wrong crowd. Seiger has a magnetic charm that steals every scene she's in. A quality that is excellent in Frantic, but failed to save The Ninth Gate.

The best parts of this movie are when Richard is trying to get help from the unflappable French police or US Embassy. They are calm, and trying to calm him, and his frustration is palpable.

-- Noel
Sent from my T-Mobile Sidekick®

Wolves in green clothing

2010-05-16T16:17:00.005-04:00

So, I finally saw Avatar in IMAX 3D. By this point, after all the awards season hoopla, I thought I knew what it was about. Nature loving aliens make a marine have a change of heart all Pocahontas style.

Insetad, I caught onto a disturbing subtext that I'm not entirely sure was intentional.

But I'll get into that in a moment. Visually, this movie is fantastic. Pretty blue aliens in a gorgeous CGI world full of wondrous flora and fauna.
If you're looking for great performances and brilliant dialogue- go elsewhere. Sigourney Weaver, Giovanni Ribisi and Zoe Saldana are the only bearable actors. I have concluded that Sam Worthington has sold his soul to the devil in exchange for otherwise inexplicable success in Hollywood. That, or he's a cyborg. Either way, he always looks dead in the eyes and is entirely incapable of inhabiting a character believably.

Okay- now for the disturbing subtext: SPOILERS TO FOLLOW

You see, the plot is that the military has been employed by a corporation to subdue the natives so that the corporation can better access the valuable material found underneath their land.

The natives consider much of their land holy, and these intruders corrupting it for the sake of money is deplorable to them.

The corporation has tried to reach out to the natives and give them technology and education, but the natives are not interested in that. They have their religion and their way of life. That is all that matters to them.

So, the corporation funds an avatar program. They genetically engineer a native's body and make it so that a human can control its nervous system. (The moral ramifications of creating such shell organisms is never covered, and that was troubling to me. How could they possibly not have minds and personalities of their own? But, I'll suspend my disbelief.)

After infiltrating and living amongst the natives, the main character Jake Sully converts and turns against the corporation. Prior to being an avatar, Jake was a crippled marine. His brother was murdered, and he was lost and depressed. A young, unmarried man who believes in nothing and has nothing to lose. This is exactly the kind of person who is most prone to being seduced by an exotic religion with a strict sense of right and wrong. A religion that will give him direction in life. And that direction is holy war against his infidel race.

Bear with me here.

Replace the forest with a desert. Replace the unobtanium with oil. Replace the natives' goddess Eywa with Allah.

Basically, the natives have decided that the only way to stop the non-believers from disgracing their holy land in the name of a valuable material is to start a holy war. Their holy war is successful because Jake converts and Eywa turns out to be real and joins in on the war.

This was extremely disturbing to me. If Allah turns out to be real and listens to the Jihadists engaged in holy war, America is screwed. If all the nations that have issues with us band together and decide to do something about it, goodbye USA.

I'm as liberal as the next guy. I voted for Hillary. I'm not saying I didn't like this movie because it sympathized with people defending their holy land. I thought it was a really interesting perspective. In fact, my only issue was the whole "The army is bad and full of sadists" thing. I don't think we have any business being in the Middle East.

But I don't endorse holy war. I really don't think religion is a great reason to kill people. I'm all about religious understanding and being sensitive to sacred sites and all that. I just couldn't root along for the Na'vi (the natives) while they will killing a bunch of soldiers who were only carrying out orders.

I know that the radical Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan are just trying to defend their home. I know that it's their religion. I know that they believe to their cores that it's the right thing to do and that God is on their side. I know we really have no business being there because we're not a DemocracyMart that delivers fair and functional governments to other people, whether they want it or not. But I don't think the men and women who are serving over there have any say in the matter. I don't think they deserve to die. Not even if a morally devoid Giovanni Ribissi and a maniacal general are giving the orders. Not even if the only reason they're there is to tap an underground resource.

If this one marine could have a change of heart after only 3 months, couldn't they have changed more hearts and minds?

It just doesn't sit right with me. It also didn't sit right with me that Jake Sully never accepted and adapted to losing the use of his legs. He was either fixated on getting surgery to repair them or going into an alien body to escape his disability. I wonder how that made any wheelchair-bound viewers feel? "Hey, not being able to use your legs sucks so bad that any self-respecting person would rather die or live vicariously through another body!"

If James Cameron wanted to make a film about valuing nature, I think making the army the bad guy and hiding behind religion is a lousy way to do it.

Also, science and religion are unlikely allies in this film. The seemingly supernatural way the environment Pandora is interconnected is explained as electro-magnetic pulses, much like our nervous system or brain neurons. Yet, the head scientist, Sigourney Weaver, whispers to Jake that Eywa is real- wait, what? Real as in explainable by science, or real as in supernatural? Because if Eywa is supernatural, then how is the way the Na'vi communicate with her completely explicable? If they are exchanging information via a synapse-like interface, and all their memories and other data is stored in some unseen database, then wouldn't Eywa just be the metaphorical OS of Pandora? Like Master Control Program in TRON? Or is she a long-deceased spiritual leader, like Jesus or Eve who is preserved via the data system like everyone else? Since it was never explained, I'll assume I wasn't supposed to think about it.

I just can't buy science as the ally of religion and an army being the enemy of religion. Historically it's been the other way 'round.

Overall, Avatar is worth seeing. Just don't think too hard about it. Shut your brain off and let the Hollywood glow wash over you.

Dream a little dream of me...

2010-05-08T16:26:00.004-04:00

Sometimes, you have to love something for what it is. And that's why I loved the new A Nightmare on Elm Street.

Yes, you'll be distracted by the terrible acting of all the 25-year-olds pretending to be teenagers. Yes, if you've seen the original, you know how everything pans out for the poor kids. But, Jackie Earle Healy is just so awesome as Freddy. His growling voice playfully turning every line into a wink at the audience.

Freddy's here, let him entertain you.

There are jumps a plenty- and isn't that what you want? Even while you're laughing at the would-be thespians while they telegraph every plot twist like a clumsy boxer, you're on the edge of your seat. The gore is fantastic. I didn't think a Freddy flick could get any bloodier than they already were, but CGI creates a splatter we could have only imagined before.

This film focuses more on the story of Freddy. It even delves a little into the science of sleep deprivation and how it can drive you crazy, make you hallucinate, and even kill you. But all of this is the inconsequential cake of the film. The fans are only interested in licking off the violent icing.

Since the original was so truly original, any reboot that aimed to be a better film would have missed the mark and we'd have another Clash of the Titans on our hands. Nightmare hits it's target audience like Freddy's glove slices his victims: Effectively. It was made to be a popcorn slasher film. And because I haven't seen an honest-to-goodness popcorn slasher film in so long, I can truly appreciate that.

It doesn't take itself seriously, it doesn't try to be a heady thriller, it's the model of self-awareness and acceptance.

Welcome back, Freddy. You haven't lost your touch.

For Rent

2010-05-08T15:13:00.004-04:00

Roman Polanski's "Apartment Trilogy" consists of Repulsion, Rosemary's Baby and Le Locataire/The Tenant. Each movie is subtle and terrifying. They each revolve around an apartment that brings it's tenant into sinister situations. Paranoia, isolation, claustrophobia and evil abound.

Polanski directed and wrote (all or in part) all three films.

Repulsion tells the story of Carole, a young woman whose fear of men sends her spiraling into madness when her roommate leaves for the weekend. This is the only black and white film in the series, yet the imagery is still vivid, and Carole's isolation and resulting insanity are palpable. Here, the apartment is a reflection of Carole's mind. As one deteriorates, so does the other, yet Carole doesn't seem to notice. She is plagued by terrible hallucinations. But her unfounded fear of others keeps her from discovering that what she should truly be afraid of is herself. The cinematography here is striking, and Catherine Deneuve gives an amazing performance as Carole. The hallucinations are so well-done. The rape scene in particular was every bit as scary as the infamous bed scene in Nightmare on Elm Street. But Polanski doesn't need buckets of blood to make your heart pound. Unlike the other Apartment Trilogy films, there are no sinister outside forces. Carole's greatest threat is her own sick mind. Will she be saved?

Rosemary's Baby takes us on a 180 as Rosemary's paranoia is entirely founded. Yet, she is so distrustful of herself that she cannot seem to accept it. Much like the next film, Rosemary finds herself in a horrifying situation all because she was unlucky enough to take an apartment. She is in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I thought knowing Rosemary's fate (and who hasn't heard about it?) would make the movie less scary. But the music, the ever-tightening camera shots showing the isolation and claustrophobia are all the more frightening because I so badly wanted her to get out. Mia Farrow is the perfect blend of innocence and strength as Rosemary. Polanski extracts wonderful performances from his leading ladies. He had wanted Rosemary to be a full-figured, girl-next-door type. Like his wife Sharon Tate. Yet Farrow works because she is so fragile. She seems like a feather would break her. Her struggle is heartbreaking, and you root for her every step of the way.

Now, I cannot imagine what it must have been like, having just experienced huge success on the heels of a movie where an innocent pregnant wife is victimized by a fiendish cult, for Polanski to have lose his own innocent pregnant wife, and their unborn baby, to a fiendish cult. A cult that targeted them simply because they lived in the house of someone who had once wronged Charles Manson. Sharon Tate was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The coincidence is chilling.

Le Locataire/The Tenant takes the fear of ourselves and the fear of others and blends them. It was clear int he prior films what was real and what was not. In this film, it is not clear. Polanski stars, uncredited, as Mr. Trelkovsky. A man who rents an apartment, and learns that the prior tenant met an unfortunate end. From there, he is drawn into a whirlpool of paranoia. The neighbors are paranoid, he is paranoid, and it seems that no one can be trusted, not even himself. This movie has so many twists and turns, and the subtley of everything makes it all very disturbing. We're riding right along with Trelkovsky. Reality and paranoid hallucinations begin to blend. The pressure builds, and Trelkovsky is slowly driven insane, but no one else seems quite sane. His own actions and the actions of others are equally responsible for the tragedies that are occuring.

It is no surprise that the terror in this film is blamed on both the outer and inner forces, seeing as though Polanski blamed himself for his late wife's murder as he did the Manson Family. He was unfaithful, he should have been home that night but chose, instead, to stay in Europe a little longer.

All the three films start out quite bright, and as the tension builds, they become progressively darker and darker, until it seems like it is always night, and the main character is living in a nightmare.

These are the kind of thrillers that put slasher films to shame. Slasher films build to a jump every few minutes, until the jumps come so closely together that you're on the edge of your seat.

These thrillers build and build and build- but the jump never comes. You are left squirming on the edge of your seat, begging for the jump. Begging for a gush of blood or monster to emerge simply so that the suspense can end. But your relief is delayed, and ultimately denied. The knot in your stomach never unties, and the credits roll. You're left disturbed and haunted.

That's something you'll never forget.

Tessie, you are the only only only...

2010-05-03T17:47:00.004-04:00

Rather than start at a high point (Chinatown, The Pianist) or a low point (The Ninth Gate) I've decided to start in the middle with Polanski's films.

Tess came out in 1979. Ten years after the murder of his wife, and shortly after the sex scandal. The last time Polanski saw Sharon Tate, she gave him her copy of Tess d'Ubervilles and told him it would make a good movie. The movie begins with his simple dedication "To Sharon".
Appropriately, Tess is the tale of an innocent, good and obedient girl who suffers unimaginable hardship at the hands of those willing to take advantage of her. This can also be seen as an interesting parallel to Polanski's sex scandal involving a 13-year-old girl. One of the tag lines for advertising the film was "She was born into a world where they called it seduction, not rape..."

SPOILERS TO FOLLOW

Tess's only drawback is pacing. It's slow in places. Beautiful as they are, the lingering shots of peasant life and chores are gratuitous and unnecessary. The establishing shots are understandable, but there are also establishing shots at the end of the scenes as well. It's a little odd. Overall, the film is breathtakingly beautiful. Lovely costumes, locations and composition. Light and weather play a large part in this film. You can usually guess the mood of a scene from the weather shown. It's an excellent period piece, and as such was nominated for six Academy Awards, and won in the categories of Art Direction, Costume Design and Cinematography. If you love Vermeer paintings, you have to see this movie.

Polanski draws an excellent performance from Natassia Kinski, who plays the titular Tess. She carries the film quite well, especially for an actress that hasn't done much before or since. This is a role that runs the gamut of emotions- she goes from naive to scared to raped to shamed to grief-stricken to love to sorrow to cynicism to desperation and back again. Kinski shows them all believably. The other good performance here is Leigh Lawson as Alec d'Uberville. He's the sleazebag you love to hate. Perfectly slimy.
The music is wonderful. A lush and emotive soundtrack necessary for such a quiet film.

Polanski builds to Tess's rape with creeping suspense. From the moment Alec sets eyes on her, you know what's going to happen and you dread every moment leading up to it. Their first encounters in the sunny grounds of the d'Uberville estate has so many whiffs of Polanski's sex scandal: a young girl and a rich older man, alone together on a sunny day. He gives her champagne and feeds her strawberries. She tries her best to shy away, but is too afraid by his position to refuse him. Yet, the rape itself is dark and sinister. It happens at night deep in the foggy woods. In the book, it was unclear if she was seduced or raped- but in our modern times, those words are interchangeable when the situation involves a young girl. But Polanski shows it as plain old date rape. Tess submits to a kiss and Alec forces it to be more. Yet, a relationship follows. Polanski shows Tess as a girl who thinks this man must love her, otherwise why would he rape her? It's heartbreaking. These scenes are confusing given Polanski was charged with statutory rape. They can be viewed as entirely Freudian or as self-defense. Polanski treats the subject with sensitivity, he could have been more graphic. In his past films like Repulsion and Rosemary's Baby (both made before Tate's murder and the sex abuse charges), rape was far more terrifying and violent than we see here. The rape scene in Tess may not be scary or violent, but it is unsettling. The dark fog and foreboding music pale in comparison to the expression on Tess's face, which is the clear focal point of the shot. She is clearly terrified, and hoping this is a nightmare that she will wake up from.

Much of the other (many) sad moments are treated in the same way. It is dark, and Tess is alone in her misery. The most haunting scene is the one in which Tess buries her dead baby. Shunned by the priest and unable to have a proper funeral because the child is a bastard, she buries him herself next to the churchyard. Dark skies, stormy weather, and sorrowful music fill the scene while Tess buries the baby and fashions a cross out of sticks to mark his grave. Free of dialogue, it's moments like this one that make this film so wonderful. Polanski can tell us so much without a word of dialogue. That's the mark of a master.

Polanski's tribute to his murdered wife highlights themes that he has visited ever since her death: Corrupt men snatching the innocence of women. Women who are unable to escape their fate. Men who cannot save the women they love. Love as redemption, but not salvation. Money/Evil corrupting the good and the pure.
It is crafted with love. As I mentioned, it is at times a little self-indulgent, but with good reason.

His films were always a little dark, but after Tate's death Polanski's films have been downright bleak. Even the happy endings are bittersweet. The main characters, shaken to their core, are clearly unable to live happily ever after. They reflect a similar change to the one Polanski wrote about in his biography: that Tate's death had changed his personality from one of "boundless, untroubled sea of expectations and optimism" to one of "ingrained pessimism... an eternal dissatisfaction with life."

Tess is romantic, sad and long. But it is worth the watch.

Roman candle

2010-04-27T13:12:00.003-04:00

Roman Polanski is my favorite director. Some people see this as odd, given his legal troubles and hard knock life. But that is, to me, all the more reason to be fascinated with his work.
His movies teem with paranoia, alterior motives, fear, evil, and innocence. So much can be read into these recurring themes when the man behind them has survived the Holocaust hiding with a family in Poland, his father lived through the concentration camp, his mother died at Auschwitz, he suffered the loss of his wife and unborn child at the hands of the Manson Family, and continues to be embroiled in a sex scandal involving an underage girl.
Few people alive have seen and experienced the dark depths to which humanity can sink in the way Polanski has. Yet, he has achieved great success and has mastered the art of film making. He is neither heroic nor tragic- Roman Polanski is complicated. His movies are complicated. Layered and provocative, I love how they draw me in and make me think. They explore the human condition in great detail. And I imagine that Polanski's life experiences have left him with a lot to say about the human condition.

I'm going through his movies one by one via Netflix. Given Polanski's made 29 films in 55 years, it's going to be quite the undertaking.
-- Noel
Sent from my T-Mobile Sidekick®

Elementary

2010-04-21T18:09:00.003-04:00

I was impressed by Sherlock Holmes. It was much better than I thought it would be. I was imagining a steampunk Tony Stark. But Robert Downey, Jr.'s Sherlock Holmes is just as he should be- all head and not heart. Well, almost no heart. Rachel McAdams is the albatross 'round this movie's neck. She's awful. Just so devoid of charm and depth that it's impossible to see how her Irene Adler interests Holmes at all, let alone keep up with him.
The chemistry between the real couple, Holmes and Watson, is just as it should be. Buttoned-up Victorian bromance at its best.
Mark Strong, who I mentioned was the sole strong character in RocknRolla, is fantastic as Lord Blackwood. Strong has a voice you could get lost in. I hope to see him in lots more movies, where he will hopefully get to explore his depth as something other than total sinister bad-ass.
Ritchie seems very comfortable in the Blockbuster director role. This film shows a lot of restraint and even-handedness from him. Like Britain's enfant terrible director is all grown up now. And it's wonderful.
The story is smart, and very faithful to the books. The only thing I would have liked to have seen was the film given as a narrative from Watson, like the books. But, given Ritchie's failure with narrative-framing in RocknRolla, I guess I'm wishing for the moon. The mystery is good. It was not predictable or confusing. Dan and I had a good time guessing how Blackwood was pulling his "magic", to see if we could deduct like Holmes. And we were pleasantly surprised to have guessed wrong.
Holmes and Watson have tracked down and arrested Lord Blackwood, a man in Parliament who engages in ritualistic murders. He's sentenced to death- but death is just the beginning of this mystery-thriller.

I also took a delightful sail down memory lane with Jason and the Argonauts, which is available to view instantly on Netflix.
I loved this movie as a kid. And it's a great movie for kids. The stop-motion effects may look a little hokey, and the acting is a little campy- but the story is great.
Wicked Pelias murders his way to the throne of Thessaly. Jason, son of the murdered King, is prophesied to take back the throne. He is favored by the Gods, and they aid him in a search for a golden fleece- said to bring peace to any land.
It's a classic adventure film. Without movies like this, we would have never had Indiana Jones or Star Wars.

Strange creatures

2010-04-16T17:40:00.002-04:00

District 9 is really unlike any movie I've seen before. The only thing that even comes close is Alien Nation, but District 9 has more action.
This isn't really a movie about aliens. It's a movie about apartheid. Only aliens are the subject of discrimination and oppression, and being very insect-like, the things done to them are slightly more horrific.
So, I'd heard some things about this film. I'd heard the documentary-style camera-work could leave you feeling slightly dizzy. I don't agree with that assessment. The majority of the meat of this movie are not filmed in that style. The parts that are documentary style are, for the most part, pretty steady. It's the action sequences that are sometimes shaky, but not in a way that was disorienting or distracting. For me, anyway.
Besides the similarities to Alien Nation, the story is very unique, very solid, and very entertaining. I was hooked from the first few minutes and on the edge of my seat for the rest of the film. There are some very disturbing scenes, and lots of violence. There is one particular scene early-on regarding the destruction of alien eggs, and I found it particularly hard to watch.
An excellent plot with good main characters. You've got some cartoonishly sketched minor players, but their dialogue isn't too bad.
The acting is very good. Sharlto Copely, who plays the main character Wikus, is very engaging and touchingly human. He's not the sort of person you'd expect as the main character of an action movie. He's not exactly a hero, either, but you root for him just the same. He's your average guy caught in the middle of a very bizarre and disturbing situation. And Copely makes it easy to sympathize with him. Jason Cope, who plays the true hero, the alien Christopher Johnson, did the herculean task of making a CGI insect-like alien seem full of emotions. His performance is great.
The effects are practically seamless. I was impressed by that. The alien ships are by far the crowning glory. The weapons as well.
The ending begs for a sequel, but I sincerely hope no sequel will be made. At first I was hoping for some great resolution about the ways in which the aliens are treated, but to try and put a nice Hollywood-type bow on the end of such a harrowing tale would be too saccharine. But the movie does avoid a completely tragic ending. That was a relief.
It's sad to say, though, that in real life instances of segregation, ghettos and apartheid, there's rarely some deus ex machina that swoops in to give people hope.

I also just watched Eraserhead. To try and describe David Lynch's pioneer work is an effort in futility. Rich in metaphor, this 1977 cult classic seems oddly timeless. It imparts a deep sense of foreboding, isolation, and desperation. Layered with dream sequences and surreal, well, everything, it is difficult to discern what is really happening. Then again, this is David Lynch. Nothing is really happening. It is a movie in the strictest sense. A moving picture, all plot and imagery, story is an afterthought. Lynch has called it his most spiritual work. Morality plays a large part in this film.
*Disclaimer- this film is very slow-moving for being only 88 minutes long. But, try and power through it. If you're not the art-film type, you might want to skip this one.

From Hell's heart I stab at thee!

2010-04-12T19:38:00.006-04:00

I watched two fabulous movies recently.

First up, from the wonderfully unique Wes Anderson comes Fantastic Mr. Fox. I love Anderson's work and I love Roald Dahl's work, so I was highly anticipating this one. I somehow missed it when it was at theatres, so I was eager to receive the DVD from Netflix.
It is undeniably brilliant and it has mis-en-scene coming out of it's proverbial ears, but I have to say, it wasn't as clever as some of Anderson's other movies. Pacing was it's problem. The story lagged at parts, but everything else was superb.
Casting was excellent, it just may be the best ensemble cast performance I've seen in quite some time, and the stop-animation is charming and gives the characters a soul that most animated movies these days lack. When it shows each animal's eyes, they seem alive. It's just wonderful.
The design itself is warm, creative and incredibly detailed. This is one of the few animated features you'll see where the humans and animals seem to coexist perfectly, neither seems overly-cartoonish when compared to the other.
Anderson also excels at selecting music for his films. The soundtrack is almost always the invisible character, contributing just as much to the plot as any dialogue or action might.
The film's tone, about accepting and fighting one's true nature, is dark at times but has plenty of laughs sprinkled over it. Noah Baumbach's presence is felt in the script, and it's refreshing to see him do something besides painfully awkward family-type dramadies.
It's hard to describe the movie because it's unlike almost anything you've seen before. Think Wallace & Gromit meets Ren & Stimpy meets, well, Wes Andrson. Actually very kid-friendly.

And here is where I let my geek flag fly and nerd-out over Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

This is, in my opinion, the best Star Trek movie. It has, by far, the most well thought-out and engaging plot. It picks up after Star Trek: The Motion Picture with James T. Kirk an admiral in Starfleet. He and the crew of the original Enterprise are invited to be on deck of the newly renovated* Enterprise she and her cadet crew embark on their first training mission.

Meanwhile, a remote, lifeless planet is being explored by Starfleet as the potential site of the Genesis project. But they stumble upon a wrecked ship and it's crew. Chekov, a member of the "away team", discovers too late that there is life on the planet- Khan. A genetically engineered human superior in intellect and strength than regular humans, his fellow castaways are similarly blessed. Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise marooned Khan there in one of the original series episodes. Now he wants revenge.

And so we're sent on a crazy revenge tale epic as Moby Dick. It has whiffs of Blade Runner, which came out just weeks after this movie. It's as campy as Mommie Dearest.

Ricardo Montalban is sublime as Khan. He loved the character so much he did the movie for far less pay than he was offered. The costume designer created his signature open-chested costume specifically to showcase Montalban's impressive pectoral muscles. It's incredible to know that he and Shatner never read their lines together, as the on-screen chemistry is smoldering for two people who, in reality, were reading their lines to a script girl.

The dialogue itself is brilliant.

William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, and DeForest Kelley carry the picture, as usual. James Doohan's Scotty gets substantial screen-time and emotional scenes, to boot.

Granted, you need to know some basic Star Trek before you watch this movie. Basically you need to know the characters and their motivations. If you haven't seen any Star Trek, I'll tell you what you need to know here:

Kirk- He's a womanizing badass that doesn't believe in no-win situations. Clever, but his emotions usually drive his decision-making. Spock is is BFF. His heroic exploits got him promoted to admiral, but he misses the adventure of being captain.
Spock- Half Vulcan, half human. He is highly intelligent and driven by logic. Every once in a while an emotion creeps through. He is cool and steady, the perfect foil to Kirk's hot-headed chaos. Kirk is his BFF. Nimoy is from Boston, so big hometown props to him, and this film is one of his greatest turns as Spock.
McCoy- AKA Bones. He's the ship's doctor, skeptic and wiseass. He loves nothing better than taking Kirk and Spock down a notch. Good at his job and not a fan of screwing around. Loves Kirk, but doesn't trust Spock because he's not a full human.
Mr. Scott- AKA Scotty. He's the ship's head engineer. He's also Scottish. He's kind of like McGuyver and Stephen Hawking rolled into one. And he's usually shouting about what is and is not working on the ship.
Mr. Sulu- The Asian helmsman with the velvet voice. He and Chekov are usually the Tweedledum and Tweedledee of Star Trek.
Mr. Chekov- The Russian navigator of the Enterprise. Usually seated directly next to Sulu. Often part of the away team.
Lieutenant Uhura- The babaliscious communications officer. She knows almost every language spoken in the galaxy.

CORRECTIONS: Kirk was already an admiral *in* The Motion Picture and the original Enterprise was not destroyed, it was taken out o commission. Apologies to fellow geeks, I haven't seen The Motion Picture in a dog's age. Thank you to Ben for pointing out my errors.

The Enterprise in this film is not entirely new, simply renovated.

Dear Hollywood,

2010-04-09T12:53:00.006-04:00

It's your old friend, Noël, here. Remember when we used to bond over action and adventure flicks? When you gave me corny-yet-lovable movies like The Rock and Lethal Weapon? Remember Mad Max 2 and Total Recall? Those were good times.
But we need to talk. I'm concerned that you're no longer content with remaking and rebooting every movie I've ever loved. You seem now to be in some sort of sado-masochistic self-destruct pattern. It's almost as if you're trying to destroy my beloved memories of these films, revelling in your own failure, and you enjoy watching me squirm while I try to endure it. And Clash of the Titans has made me realize that this relationship just isn't working for me anymore.
For one thing, $16 for a movie ticket is larcenous, plastic glasses or no. For another, how could you remake a movie- loved simply because it was so campy and bad- and somehow make something so much worse?
You could have kept the story, reworked the dialogue, and cast anyone else but Liam Neeson to fill Sir Laurence Olivier's shoes. We all like Liam, but he's no Sir Laurence. We know he tries, but that's just it. He tries too damned hard. He's never met a line he couldn't deliver just a little too seriously. There's a reason "Release the Kraken!" became an instant catch phrase once the trailer premiered. It was like Samuel L. Jackson's "I've had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane!" yet, it lacked the winking self-awareness.
Clash of the Titans was all over the place. It went through a lot of trouble explaining certain plot points and left us to wonder about others. The pacing was awful. Slow, then fast, then slow, then fast again, like it had no middle gears to shift to.
Character development? What's that? Clearly you don't know anymore.
The acting was terrible. There were two solid performances: Ralph Fiennes as Hades, who was the only one who seemed to get the tone of the movie, and the witches, who were very Guillermo Del Toro (who should have directed this movie) and successful because they seemed to be from another, better, movie. Everyone else was painful to watch.
The dialogue was hacknied. Characters asking each other loaded questions in an unnatural manner, and the other characters responding in a cringingly pre-scripted way.
I thought after G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra, that remakes couldn't be any worse. But you impressed me with your ability to fail, Hollywood. Rise of Cobra was at least unintentionally funny, but I don't think even MST3K could extract a chuckle from Clash. And releasing such an awful movie while 300 so fresh in my memory, shame on you.
The effects were good, but in a few years they'll look dated and coarse.
The stop-motion of the original has a more enduring quality. Sure, it's obviously fake, but they made those creatures with their bare hands and love.
You should sell shirts that say "I survived Clash of the Titans." So that we, the shocked victims who took in this travesty, can find comfort in knowing we're not alone. It's clear we're all in an abusive relationship with you and we keep going back because we remember the good old days.
So, Hollywood, I'm ending this friendship. You'll get one chance to win me back with TRON Legacy. God help you if you mess that one up, too.
Sincerely -- Noel
Sent from my T-Mobile Sidekick

Tripping

2010-04-04T19:53:00.001-04:00

As you may or may not know, I wear high heels. I wear them a lot.
This is easier said than done. And in Boston, where most of the sidewalks are brick, cobblestone, or peppered with grates and large cracks, it is especially trying.
But I persevere. Because I love heels, I love the way they look and I'm a slave to appearances.

But, there are times where my lifestyle choice seems foolhardy.

There are the times when I step onto a metal plate on the ground,
And I feel it buckle and sink under my weight,
And I have that moment of panic and think "Today is the day I lose a leg because of my heels."
(Because when you walk in heels, your entire weight shifts from one leg to the other, it's never evenly distributed between the two)
And then the metal heaves up in reflex.
And I bounce forward unscathed.
I click clack my way into the sunset.

Hippity hoppity

2010-04-02T14:03:00.004-04:00

Easter's on its way, so here are recommendations of movies featuring
rabbits:

Harvey- Jimmy Stewart at his best. The heartwarming tale of a man who claims he has a 6ft invisible rabbit friend. A true classic.

Watership Down- The amazing adaptation of the classic book. Serious and at times disturbing, a group of rabbits search for a new home when violence uproots them. This movie haunted my dreams as a child.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit?- Film noir meets farce in this movie. Cutting edge (at the time) technology allowed hard-boiled private dick to team up with a famous cartoon star when a conspiracy threatens to wipe out all cartoons. Bob Hoskins, Christopher Lloyd, and Kathleen Turner's performances are stellar.

Donnie Darko- The cult classic that made us unable to quit Jake Gyllenhall. He gives a performance beyond his tender age as a high school misfit who life is upturned by a series of strange, fateful events. Patrick Swayze steals some scenes.

Bambi- One of my favorites. One of the few early Disney classics where animals don't sing, yet the songs are beautiful. A young deer struggles to survive in the ever-shrinking wild.

Eat lots of candy.

-- Noel
Sent with love from my T-Mobile Sidekick

Out of this world

2010-03-31T15:02:00.003-04:00

Last night, much to my delight, I found that Alien was available free On Demand from TCM on Comcast.
And much to my shock and horror, I found that Dan had never seen Ridley Scott's otherworldly masterpiece.
So, we watched it.
Dan said "I really don't like sci-fi movies."
To call Alien "sci-fi" is to call the Mona Lisa "a painting".
Every single shot in the movie is a work of art. They storyboard-ed the hell out of this movie. Hired H.R. Giger to design the aliens and the alien set pieces. And Scott uses the alien in the same way Spielberg used the shark in Jaws. The less the audience sees it, the more terrifying it is, and the less you notice that it's just a really tall
guy in a costume. And it borrows the same horrifying concept of Jaws:
the creature has millions of years of evolution on its side, you have only your wits and a crew that you cannot trust.
The screenplay is brilliant. Not a word is uttered that isn't completely necessary.
The pacing is perfection. Slow and steady at first, and building the tension until you're watching through your fingers and dreading the inevitable jump.
J'taime, Alien. J'taime.

-- Noel
Sent from my T-Mobile SidekickA?

Like a rock

2010-03-28T19:00:00.001-04:00

RocknRolla is the 5th feature film from director Guy Ritchie. Like the others, he wrote this one too.
Unfortunately, unlike Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, RocknRolla just doesn't work.
The other two films give us some nice charcter development prior to the caper plot. RocknRolla starts in with a ceaseless narration from a charcter and throws you headfirst into the caper plot. Instead of being interesting, it's annoying. You have no reason to be interested in the caper going down if you have no emotional investment with the characters. I'd love to blame this on Mark Strong, the actor who does the narration as the character Archie, but I can't. Morgan Freeman could be doing the narrating, it still wouldn't stop anyone from thinking "wait, what? this movie just started! who are these people? and why am I supposed to care?" There's no one to blame there is the writer and the editor.
And somehow, the frenetic pace in the beginning doesn't stop the movie from having slow points. The timing is very uneven, and the plot lacks the same hilarious wit Ritchie's other films had in abundance.
However, the dialogue is good, and the acting is very good. The characters are even quite good, once you actually get to know them about halfway through the movie. Mark Strong was, by far, the stand-out character.
Unfortunately, the plot is just too muddled. It's like five pounds of meat stuffed into a two pound sausage casing. It still tastes okay, but it's not satisfying.

And I saw Alice in Wonderland last night. It made me sad. Sad because Tim Burton keeps making the same mistakes. Sad because the acting was so wonderful, but the dialogue and plot was terrible. Sad because, I love the stories about Alice, and I really never thought to myself "Gee, I sure wish there was a sequel to Through the Looking Glass that changed the motives of all the characters and stole several plot points from the original works."
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Tim Burton, yet again, tried to fix something that wasn't broken. The same way he tried to fix Planet of the Apes and Sweeney Todd. The end results are always so utterly disappinting precisely because you can see their potential, and how far the project fell from acheiving that potential. Burton now lacks any will power, he cannot hold back. It's strange to see that when Tarantino, as evidenced by Inglourious Basterds (see last post), has learned how to hold back and his films seem more sophisticated because of it. Sweeney Todd was almost there, I thought maybe Burton was going back to a healthy creative place, but instead he's gone in the other direction full-speed.
You'll like Burton's Alice in Wonderland if you think classics can be improved upon. I, unfortunately, do not.

Glory glory!

2010-03-27T17:04:00.001-04:00

Oh, Quentin Tarantino, let's cut the pretense, shall we?
I love your movies, and your movies love me back by being kick-ass.

Inglourious Basterds is one of the most entertaining films of recent memory. Sadly, we don't get a lot of bang for our buck these days at the ol' cinema. Movies get all brainy on us and forget how to be fun. Or they're so concerned with being fun that they have no brain, or heart.
Inglourious Basterds has brains, heart, charm, and a whole load of blood.
If you're looking for a historical re-enactment, go elsewhere. Rent Saving Private Ryan or Letters from Iwo Jima. This movie isn't interested with being historically accurate. It's interested in telling a great story, one that unfortunately isn't true.
A group of allied soldiers have been sent behind enemy lines in World War II. Their secret mission is simple: kill Nazis. But, kill them in a way that will scare the living hell out of the entire Nazi army.
Meanwhile, in France, the lone survivor of a Jewish family murdered by the SS is living in hiding as a cinema owner. The opportunity for revenge comes knocking.
The casting and acting are spot-on. Everyone. Brad Pitt, Melanie Laurent, Christoph Waltz, Eli Roth, Diane Kruger, Til Schweiger, all turn in stellar acting. Even Mike Myers (of Austin Powers, not Halloween) gives a stunning performance.
While watching the movie, all I could think was "Tarantino should have done Indiana Jones 4", because this seemed like the perfect follow-up to the Last Crusade. Unapologetically cavalier Nazi killing (on a scale that's more cathartic hindsight than anything else), dynamite chemistry, a sense of humor, and a heart so big to can feel it beating through the screen.
Now, like all Tarantino films, it has graphic violence. But, for the first time, Tarantino uses the graphic violence in such a sophisticated way that it doesn't seem needlessly bloody. Every drop of blood spilled feels needed. It's war. Dirty, violent, personal war. And it is inglorious.
What surprised me was the cinema sub-plot which was virtually absent from all the marketing done for the film. It was, I felt, a much stronger selling point. Maybe execs thought another woman-seeks-revenge movie from Tarantino would feel redundant? Who knows? But they missed out on a huge audience demographic.
This was the first "new" movie I've seen this year that actually exceeded my expectations, precisely because the sub-plot was totally unexpected, and so well done.
Tarantino is really coming into his own. His next film will bring home Best Picture.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to watch it again!

P.S. If you haven't seen Grindhouse, you really, really need to. Eli Roth worked as a director on it, along with Rob Zombie, Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. They set out to make B horror movies like they used to be. Only these are so much better, because stunt and effects techonology is so much better. Death Proof features Zoe Bell, who did the majority of Uma Thurman's stunts in Kill Bill. To see someone doing their own stunts, and such extreme stunts gets your adrenaline pumping. They are also very empowering to women, as Tarantino's work often is. Maybe that's why I love it so much? Chicks kick ass!

Das Boot

2010-03-16T13:59:00.004-04:00

Kinky Boots is the kind of movie you'll like if you enjoyed The Full Monty, Calendar Girls, and Priscilla Queen of the Desert.
So I just loved it. It was recommended to me by my mother, who is very hard to please when it comes to movies. She's the type of person who'll notice if that wine glass the person is holding changes fullness from shot to shot. She also can't stand plot holes. When she tells me to watch something, I listen.
Kinky Boots is a delightfully fun movie, and a true story, about an old fashioned English shoe manufacturer that must choose to evolve or die when the world of mens' footwear starts to value low price over quality. A muse is found in an unlikely place.
The acting is really well done and the casting is just perfect. No one looks too glamorous to be working in a shoe factory. All no-name actors here. That helps you really get lost in the story.
This movie is also about changing minds and about adapting what life has given us into what we want, or at least something close to what we
want.
Fun colors and great costumes pepper the film. Yet another case of a talented costume designer that pegged both the frumpy factory workers and the Milan fashion scene, yet was looked over because they didn't do a period drama.
I don't know what it is about this type of British movie that's so appealing. Is it the quirky humor? The way the laughs are balanced out with a few tearful confessions? Or maybe it's just the whole you've-got-to-be-kidding-I-can't-believe-this-really-happened element?
I don't really care. If I'm looking for a good way to pass a rainy afternoon, a movie like Kinky Boots will do the trick every time.
-- Noel
Sent from my T-Mobile Sidekick

Push the button

2010-03-10T19:45:00.001-05:00

[REC] is the refreshing type of horror movie. It's not using some tired concept that's been splashed across the screen a thousand times.
It's like The Blair Witch Project and The Andromeda Strain had a beautiful Spanish baby.

This film builds suspense like a good horror movie should. Jumps are around each corner, but well spaced. Exit options are slowly eliminated one by one, and people are dying off one by one. Desperation and claustrophobia seep in. And to quote dead men of Dunharrow: "The way is shut..."

A reporter and her camera man are accompanying a fire department crew on a call to document what a normal shift is like for them. This shift ends up being as far away from normal as possible.

The monster in this film is so incredibly disturbing. I could hardly stand to watch it. So utterly horrifying.

Costumes, lighting, set design and direction are all really coherent. This look slike a real place full of real people. The acting is good, not stellar, but it's a horror film. Manuela Velasco, who plays Angela the reporter, is very very good. She's not a scream queen, girlfriend has chops. And I usually can't stand women in horror films.

There is, of course, a virtual shot-for-shot remake of this movie called Quarantine that was made by the Hollywood machine. I can never understand why they do that. It's either because they're too cheap to release the foreign language original in US theaters, or they think that the US public won't go see a film with subtitles. Even though we all know it's not true.
Yet time and time again, the Americanized version gets it all wrong. The acting is terrible, the plot is dumbed-down and bogged down with needles explanations. Hollywood's never seen a great horror film they felt they couldn't make more mainstream. And they fail to see that it's the very things that make the movie not mainstream are what make it great. People don't want the same old horror movie over and over again. We want something different, something fresh, something that's not just scary, but horrifying.
[REC] is exactly that.

My next review will be Forrest Gump. Should I be brutally honest or forgivingly critical?

Srsly

2010-03-09T21:40:00.001-05:00

I had heard good things about A Serious Man, and being a huge Coen brothers fan, I knew I'd enjoy it. Now, I hadn't planned on watching it Saturday, but it seems I was destined to. I watched Raising Arizona while I cleaned my apartment and The Big Lebowski had been haunting me last week in the form of this amazing t-shirt.
Then, as Dan and I sat on the couch that night, wondering what to watch, Comcast was bragging about all the Oscar nominees it was featuring On Demand. Precious hadn't come out yet, so we chose A Serious Man.

What a great movie. Philosophical to the core. This is a movie that dares us to ask "Why?" and is then bold enough not to give us an answer. The humor and tragedy are momentous. And even though it's set in the '60s, it seems entirely relevent in these tough and uncertain times.
The Coens are at the peak of their game. They have become a well-oiled, great movie making machine. I think what sets them apart is the way every movie is somehow like nothing you've seen before. Surreal in parts, painfully realistic in others, and always making you think. The art direction, casting and use of camera angles are also consistently brilliant in their films. This one is no exception.

This movie pulls a clever trick, because while the character is trying to figure out why these things are happening, you yourself are trying to figure out why the Coens believe they're happening, but just like whatever higher power may be orchestrating the universe, they're not giving anything away.
Your own personal faith and philosophies will color your opinion on the big "Why?"
I know this because the reviewers vary in their answers to the "Why?"

Larry is a physics professor and family man. His life begins to unravel around him. He wants to know why.
The Coens give us many possiblitites: God is teaching him, God is punishing him, it's blind luck, it's a matter of physics, it's for no reason at all.

I believe the reason this film is so haunting and powerful because it really does present the reality of that last possibility. Perhaps there is no reason or rhyme. Perhaps it's all chaos. Maybe no matter how good we are or how hard we try, bad things will still happen to us.

The beginning quote says it all. "Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you." Rashi.

What's the most simple explanation? God? Physics? Luck? Fate? Or is the most simple explanation that there is no explanation?

Most predictable Oscars ever.

2010-03-08T09:57:00.001-05:00

I've got to say, I'm a little disappointed. Meryl was robbed. I guess I
just like to be surprised now and then. I'm really not surprised by any
of the winners. As of Saturday, I felt like I knew who would win. I was
just holding out for anyone other than Sandra Bullock to win.
What the hell was that dance routine all about? For all it's acrobatics,
it was incredibly dull.
My favorite award: Best Makeup going to Star Trek.
Unlike other Star Trek movies, the makeup look in Abrahms' reboot was
entirely cohesive. While the characters weren't from the same planet,
they certainly were from the same time period. Modern, retro, classic.
Reviews on A Serious Man, Kinky Boots, [REC], and Forrest Gump coming
soon!
-- Noel
Sent from my T-Mobile SidekickA?

Come on get happy!

2010-03-05T18:20:00.002-05:00

I had a busy week, thus no posting. I shall compensate now.

I watched Happiness which almost every person I mentioned it to said "I can't believe you haven't seen it." Then they would proceed to tell me how much it disturbed them. Flattery will get you everywhere.
It was the first NetFlix movie that Dan insisted I not watch without him, because he really liked it when he saw it the first time.
So, I knew going in that this movie would make an impression. And, boy, did it ever.
This movie is un-fucking-believably good. I don't throw around a compliment like that. It treads the thin line between humorous and horrific better than any other movie I've ever seen. Ever. Genius casting and every cast member delivers an amazing performance. A script that is funny, sweet, sad, hilarious, disturbing, real and yet so surreal. Set and costume design that is flawless. This is a world you could get lost in, but you don't want to be there. In this world, happiness is fleeting and elusive. It's hard to find, in unlikely places, and impossible to hold on to. A mirror for the real world.
Catherine Manheim's the hidden jewel of this movie. It was her scene that made me laugh the hardest, and the chemistry between her and Phillip Seymour Hoffman is delicious. Jon Lovitz is also incredible.
I wish every movie could be like this one. Unforgettably brilliant. Familiar, yet like nothing you've seen before.
It deifnes dark comedy. 50 years from now, this movie will be a classic.

I also re-watched Moulin Rouge. It's one of those movies, like American Pie and The Matrix, where every time I see it, I like it a little less. The first time I saw it, I was blown away. It was like nothing I'd ever seen before. The visual experience alone was overwhelming. Subsequent viewings make me focus less on the lush visuals and more on the plot, acting, and music. All of which, while better than most movies, I feel could have been better. I've seen better from Nicole Kidman. I also noticed a gaping plot hole that I never noticed before: prior to the moment when he declares that he doesn't "like people touching my things!", the Duke isn't evil. To the contrary, he sees Satine and falls in love, exactly as Christian does. He then attempts wooing her, and she acts enamored with him. Of course he's upset when he finds out she's lying to him and having an affair. Of course he doesn't want the woman he love to be a prostitute anymore. Why does that make him evil? Granted, it doesn't exactly excuse his violence towards Satine in the end, but it was a different time and she was a prostitute.
They could have worked in some source of evil-ness. Like that his fortune came from using child-labor, or that he abused other prostitutes.
That bothers me. I like my villains to have some evil meat on their nasty bones. For an operatic movie, you need an operatic villain. The Duke was lacking. Especially when in La Traviata, the opera upon which the movie is loosely based, the thing keeping the lovers apart is the fact that a former prostitute, no matter how highly paid, cannot be accepted in polite society. Violetta tells Alfredo she doesn't love him so that she won't bring shame upon his family, especially when she will die soon and they will not. A social death is worse than a real death in that society. That's some heart-breaking material right there. Much better than some effeminate, control-freak duke.

I've got lots more movies lined up and I promise I'll be adding to the "See" list. Bear with me.

WOOT

2010-02-24T16:25:00.000-05:00

OMG

The guy who played Rorschach in Watchmen will now be playing Freddy in the new Nightmare on Elm St. reboot!

Aw, kid- this is gunna be good!

Little pig, little pig, let me in!

2010-02-24T15:32:00.002-05:00

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
For all I knew about the film, the thing that stuck in my memory was that its language was deemed so vulgar that it was almost condemned by some Catholic organization. Upon watching it, I realized that after watching movies like Snatch and The Aristocrats, the language in this movie should seem downright wholesome. But it's aaaaall in the delivery.
Let us take a moment and bask in the glory that is Dame Elizabeth Taylor:

She won an Oscar for this film. If she hadn't, God may very well have smited the Academy. Dame Elizabeth is a roaring, venom-spouting hellcat the likes of which you have never seen as Martha. Richard Burton, whom she married twice, is a slimy and sadistic as her long-suffering husband, George. The chemistry is electric. George and Martha have just come from a party, and Martha has invited the new young biology professor and his wife to their home. Then the shit hits the fan, and no one gets out alive. Well, no one really dies, but their dignity and faith in humaity have suffered such a beating that you wonder how they'll ever survive.

After so many years of watching sit-coms, you start off thinking "I know this bit. He insults her, she insults him, they're the typical old married couple that have settled into resentment and loathing."

No. No. You have no idea.

If you just got engaged or married, don't watch this movie. Yikes. The things they say to each other aren't that bad, but the way they say them is incredible. Every word is thrown like a knife that the follow-up twists.

Sometimes all the love and games in the world can't save us from ourselves.

Speak now...

2010-02-23T21:21:00.000-05:00

... or forever hold your peace.

I started the list, but I need feedback.
Am I saying too much? Not enough?
Should I separate by genre? By decade made?

I cannot do a star system or grades. I'm sorry. There are just too many facets to films. What earns an A in cinematography could merit only a D in dialogue.

Go for the gold!

2010-02-22T18:59:00.004-05:00

As I've stated on this blog before: You can't not watch the olympics. Especially when people wear stuff like this:

Every once in a while I explore the past posts on this blog to see what I was watching in 2008. When Istarted this blog my husband worked nights and I was usually bored and by myself. Thus, I had lots to say and lots to blog about. Now, I see Dan every night and talk to my friends more often. My blog is more focused now. All for the better.

Nosferatu is the classic silent film based on Bram Stoker's Dracula. It also happens to be the most faithful film adaptation of the book. Of course, a lot of the action is absent because of the limitations of the camera in the 1920s. But, the plot remains intact. For a silent movie with a melodramatic score, it's still remarkably good and creepy. The direction was groundbreaking at the time. Appreciate the way they sped up action by cranking the film through the camera at a slower frames-per-second rate so that when it was played at regular speed, the action onscreen appeared to be in fast-forward. This is old school special effects at their best. Marvel at the grotesque appearence of Max Schreck as The Count. He never appeared in another film. Was that makeup, or did Morneau find a circus freak or incredibly ugly man to star in this movie? The horror film that begat all other horror films.

The Hurt Locker impressed me because it was not what I expected. Free of preachy politics and action film nonsense, this movie is gritty and honest. So honest, in fact, that when someone dies from being in close proximity to an I.E.D., I remarked "How are they dead?" because I'm so used to the fictional movie world where being 40ft from an explosion will result in only minor cuts and bruises. In reality your organs would liquify. The Hurt Locker reminds you of that. It reminds you of the fog of war, the fragility of life and the need to love what you do and do what you love. This is a heavy contender for Best Picture. If I had to pick the winner from the bloated list of ten that isn't Up, it would be this movie. Solid acting, solid dialogue and a plot that genuinely keeps you guessing. It lacks the typical story arc, so I warn you that it can feel anti-climactic, but it's still satisfying.

I think I'll devote my next post to the oscar noms for Best Picture that I've seen. Not that I care about the Academy Award for Best Picture. The award is a joke that often goes to a film that could never hope to sit among The Greatest Movies of All Time.

I submit the following Best Picture winners as proof:

Shakespeare in Love - Vomit. Scratch that. Vomit beautifully encased in period costume, but still vomit.

An American in Paris - A hundred dancing Gene Kellys couldn't save this movie.

List

2010-02-22T13:03:00.000-05:00

I have resolved to take my dear friend Lola's recommendation to heart and create a list of movies that I feel you, dear reader, should watch.
Upon resolving this, I went to my Netflix to see how many movies I have rated to get an idea of the number of titles I'll be working with.

I have rated 1,180 movies to date, this is by no means includes all movies I've ever seen.
This could take a while.
Stay tuned.

P.S. If I had a nickel for every movie I've rated so far, I'd have $59.00

Hot towel?

2010-02-18T12:56:00.002-05:00

Towelhead was adapted for the screen by Alan Ball. Yes, the same Alan
Ball behind the genius of "Six Feet Under" (best. Tv. Drama. Ever.) and
"True Blood" (meh.)
This film treats the coming-of-age of a Lebanese American girl with
brutal, heartbreaking honesty. As much honesty as The Squid and The
Whale and Fast Times At Ridgemont High (minus the comedic relief).
It's brutally honest to the point where it's uncomfortable to watch.
You'll never look at Aaron Eckhart the same way again. His performance
here is disturbing and brilliant.
The honesty in the plot is that the adults around Jasira, the main
character, seem to be just as bad as she is at making mature decisions.
And all your decisions have consequences. They all learn from each
others terrible, terrible mistakes. And Jasira is stronger for it.
If you loved "Six Feet Under", you'll love this movie. Not only because
you get to see Claire's pretentious art professor being an entirely
different kind of douchebag. The moral and sexual topics will leave you
cringing and ready for discussion (must watch with a good friend).
Especially if you can remember what it was like to be a 13 year old
girl.
-- Noel
Sent from my T-Mobile Sidekick

...His hair was perfect!

2010-02-16T11:53:00.003-05:00

Bear with me. I'm attempting to post via email. Links will be added later.

The Wolfman falls victim to a problem that plagues so many remakes: trying to be unique and different while still being loyal to the source material.
So, the effects are better. The changes to the story unnecessary and lacking because they fail to make the plot any less predictable. The acting is strong.

I have to hand it to the screenwriters and directors: I love how they nobly took the oedipal complex of the movie to a whole new level. Their attempts to make this film cerebral and visceral are to be applauded.
But we all know that all the poetic Fruedian imagery in the world can only class-up a movie with a wolfman-on-wolfman showdown so much. Plus, they telegraphed their punches by introducing Lawrence Talbot to us as starring in Hamlet and estranged from his family. File that under Not Very Subtle.
The gore is awesome. The cinematography and costumes are sumptuous and sensual. Yet, in the end, this movie is schizophrenic. It's visuals and gore appeal to our basest desires, yet it's plot and undertones try and
appeal to our higher consciousness. This balance is carried off successfully in movies like Fight Club and Kill Bill. The Wolfman cannot keep both balls in the air. I think the high-brow intentions of the movie would have worked if we saw less of the werewolf. The low-brow intentions would have been easily achieved if the writers had kept the simpler original Wolfman plot so we weren't dealing with complicated family and psychological issues.
Still, it's worth a watch. Terrific blood, gore, fights and fantastic feats of facial hair. There are so many beards and mutton chops on the villagers that it made me hope Gillette goes out of business. (Seriously, men. Reclaim your fuzzy face rights!) Danny Elfman's score doesn't disappoint and sets up the tension nicely.

-- Noel
Sent from my T-Mobile Sidekick

I die.

2010-02-13T14:57:00.002-05:00

OMG

I am a makeup junkie.
I am a pink junkie.
I am a sparkle junkie.

Tarina Tarantino's makeup line has been launched at Sephora.
I can now die happily O.D.'d on sparkly pink makeup.

The only way this could be more awesome was if it had Darth Vader incorporated into it somehow.

Yes, Mother darling.

2010-02-12T18:31:00.002-05:00

There's no way I can talk about one of these films before talking about the other, and there's no way you can watch one without needing to see the other. You must watch them in this order:

1. Grey Gardens is an amazing documentary created in 1975 about the estranged aunt and cousin of Jackie O. They have been living in squalor at their decaying hampton mansion. "Big Edie" Bouvier and "Little Edie" Bouvier were formally New York socialites. It is incredible to see these women, speaking with brahmin accents and surrounded by the remnants of a fabulous life. They have hermited themselves and you can see the isolation and heartbreaking desperation is leaking out of every crack of their carefully crafted facades. This is easily one of the best documentaries I have ever seen. The only loss is that the Maysles brothers didn't get there until after Jackie O had the house cleaned out and repaired as much as humanly possible. Prior to that, the house was apparently full of garbage and animals. Yet, the Edies' do their best to appear glamourous and classy, like two Norma Desmonds clinging desperately to the life they lost so many years ago.
While watching you will have to keep repeating to yourself: This is all real, these women aren't acting, this is who they are and how they live. You will also be wondering to yourself: How did this happen? How does one settle on living in such a way?

2. Grey Gardens is a dramatization that tries to answer those questions. This dramatization shows us the slow fall of the Edies. The plot structure is non-linear. We jump from the '20s, '30s, '40s, '50s, '60s, and finally, the '70s. We see the red flags popping up along the way: Little Edie has no interest in marrying but Big Edie won't let her leave home because of it, Big Edie has had servants her whole life and has no idea how to clean or take care of a large house, and so many more.
Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange give the performances of their careers in this movie. No matter how big the sobs or outlandish the behavior, because of the documentary we know this is not melodrama. This is how these women really were. Barrymore and Lange do them justice and humanize them. They have revived the spirits of these women perfectly. Big Edie and Little Edie sort of came off as pathetic Miss Havishams in the documentary. Here we see them as they truly were: Two women trapped in a relationship as toxic as their environment. They love each other deeply, but that is perhaps their greatest undoing. They love each other too much to say no and too much to leave or let go. You feel that love in the fantastic chemistry onscreen.
Every decade is created. The Edies' glory days are lush and luxuriouss, deeply saturated colors and rich texture. Their "current" conditions are dulled, dingy and gritty. The set dressings and costumes are impeccable. The commitment to re-creation here is really remarkable.

The documentary is the pre-cursor to the popular TV shows Hoarders and Obsessed. The dramatization is hopefully the precursor to many other wonderful biopics produced by HBO.

WTF?

2010-02-10T16:33:00.000-05:00

Why is Gone With The Wind on a list of romantic movies?
http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/gallery/romantic/

Nothing will get you and your squeeze all snuggly like watching Miss O'Hara use up men like tissues?
This movie also includes the untimely death of a child.
So where's the romantic part? Is it when Rhett lets Scarlett know he's not getting stuck in her honeytrap again? I feel like I'm missing something here...

Help Wanted

2010-02-10T15:44:00.002-05:00

No, really. Wanted needs all the help it can get. Someone needs to do this movie a favor and give it one plausible plot component. For a movie about fabric there are are a whole lot of holes in the ridiculous plot.

This is the kind of film that fills you with questions. Questions such as:
Why is there only one woman in "The Fraternity"? Why would they even have a woman in something called "The Fraternity"?
Why would you suddenly like and try to emulate your absentee father because you find out he's a super-assassin?
I know how you got the rats in the dump truck, but how in the hell did you train them to disperse themselves evenly inside the textile mill once you dumped them in the courtyard? And how is it that the blast from the rats is strong enough to blow out all the windows, yet even the people we saw in close proximity to the rats were not harmed in any way by them exploding?
Why is there a butchery department in the textile mill?
Why would you go downstairs to fight the butcher guy and red-shirt-guy when the guy you really want to kill is upstairs?
If Morgan Freeman has been manufacturing names out of the textile machine for years, why would you believe him when he told you your name came up?
How, exactly, does fate work a textile machine? What does fate do while the textile machine is off? How did The Fraternity get these codes a thousand years ago when they were manually weaving the textiles? When you manually weave textiles, any flaws in the fabric results from your mistake. That's not fate, it's your shoddy workmanship!

Wanted is also the kind of film that makes you realize you're much smarter than most screenwriters assume you are. You know bullets can't curve, no matter how wildly you flail the gun around while firing. You know that the human heart can only beat so many times before it would just explode from pressure. You know that you can't shoot a single bullet through the heads of several people standing in a circle. That bullet would not only have to be curving, but extraordinarily strong and travelling at a speed few hand guns can produce.

James McAvoy's character, Wesley, has a fat lady for a boss, who is cruel to him because he doesn't complete his work in a timely manner. Rather than maybe think that her treatment of him is due to his poor work ethic and productivity, he immediately jumps to the conclusion that she's giving him a hard time because people used to give her a hard time for being heavy. Here's how he tells her off:
   "Wesley: [yelling to Janice] Shut the fuck up!
   [the office grows quiet]
   She has one single iota of tenuous power. She thinks she can push everyone around.

   [grabs Janice's stapler]

   Wesley: You don't need this.

   [throws stapler into the wall of his cubicle]

   I understand. Junior high must've been kind of tough, but it doesn't give you the right to treat your workers like horseshit, Janice. I know we laugh at you, Janice. We all know you keep a stash of jelly donuts in the top drawer of your desk. But I want you to know, if you weren't such a bitch, we'd feel sorry for you. I do feel sorry for you. But as it stands, the way you behave - I feel I can speak for the entire office when I tell you... go fuck yourself"

Now, there are several problems with this. He doesn't know how long Janice has been heavy. He mockingly calls her "anorexic" in the opening narration. Riiiight, because only skinny people have eating disorders.
But the thing that really gets me is that he tells her that "if you weren't such a bitch, we'd feel sorry for you." Feel sorry for her??? Not that they'd like her, not that they'd be friends with her if she were nicer? Get real. She's overweight! Apparently, all you do for a nice fat girl is feel bad for her, right?
It could not be more obvious that this movie was written by a group of men.

Further evidence: Wesley's girlfriend is sleeping with his best friend. Wesley concludes that this is because she's a bitch and his best friend is a jerk. The only time we see Wesley with his girlfriend, he tells us that her voice is annoying. He also leaves for assassin camp and doesn't bother to tell her where he's going. When he finally shows back up, she starts yelling at him. This is understandable. If the person you're living with disappears with no explanation, you'd have some choice words for them the next time you saw them. Then Angelina Jolie breezes in and makes out with Wesley, to show off to his ex. Sure, because if your loser ex-boyfriend, who seemingly never really liked you anyways, dropped off the face of the Earth then showed up with some tattooed brunette, you'd suddenly realize "you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone". Another keen summary of the female condition! The screenwriters must be an expert on women. It's like they're in my head!

The screenwriters also love video games. Wesley fights through the bad guys at the end. Each bad guy has an increased level of difficulty in killing, and he must use different fighting techniques for each of them. After he's killed all the ~~level bosses~~ bad guys, he gets to the ~~big boss~~ leader of The Fraternity. That's when things get interesting, and by interesting I mean defying all logic.

But there's a silver lining. The effects are fantastic, barring some obviously computer-generated rats. The awesomeness of the stunts and special effects is almost enough to make you forget about how insulting the plot is to your intelligence. Almost. Not quite.

You'll love this movie if you liked The Matrix, hate women, and are missing half your brain.

P.S. Morgan Freeman, Laurence Fishburne pwns you when it comes to action movies. Think about that.
Angelina Jolie, I really liked Tomb Raider, in spite of myself. This is how you repay me?

Frost/Nixon

2010-02-09T17:56:00.000-05:00

I don't have a clever title for this review. Big whoop, wanna fight about it?

Frost/Nixon was nominated for a slew of awards. It's a solid picture: Good acting, excellent writing and a compelling true story as its base. The filmmakers made an excellent choice in sparing us the typical true story format. It's not narrated in hindsight by a single character. It's also not single character POV. There are mock-documentary style interviews with all the key players mixed in with the scenes of action.
The editing and direction creats a quick moving tempo and the feeling of mounting tension is so good that you'll forget that you already know how it ends. The viewer feels all the antici... pation of the final interview.

I'm not usually a big fan of recent American history films. Good Night and Good Luck and Capote come to mind as movies I truly wanted to like. I tried so hard to make it through them and while I fully appreciated their storytelling and acting, I was rather bored.

Frost/Nixon suceeds much in the way that Apollo 13 did. There's a chemistry and electricity built into every aspect of the film: the score, the acting, the dialogue, the cinematography. It's palpable and keeps me engaged and even on the edge of my seat. That's what makes or breaks a film: It's ability to keep you on the edge of your seat even if you know how the story plays out.
Like a good book, a good film's story should feel new and enjoyable no matter how many times you've seen it.

Other elements that make this movie great: An actor playing Nixon without a silly fake rubber nose. Kevin Bacon as a character so similar to the one he plays in A Few Good Men that you'll want to shout at him "You're a lousy fucking softball player, Jack!". Grown men having conversations about shoes. Delicious set dressing and costumes.

My so called autism.

2010-02-08T21:34:00.005-05:00

I know what you're thinking: Claire Danes, Noel? You're telling me that Claire Danes is a good actress?

Yes. I am. Don't strap me to the gurney yet, hear me out. See Temple Grandin.

Turns out that Claire Danes can do more than portray angsty misfit women with ennui.

I know what you're thinking now, too: But Noel, is another misfit girl really that far of a stretch?
Yes. It is.

Claire Danes successfully fills out Temple's western shirts and dungarees with raw emotion and boundless charm.

This film is remarkable in very many ways. First is that Temple Grandin is a real person with real autism who is really remarkable. Secondly, Temple's accomplishments are not things that you or I take for granted. Few could do what she does. She doesn't catch up, she excels. Lastly, we watch from Temple's perspective, we feel what she feels. The POV makes her, in every way, our equal. So, this is no Forrest Gump, Rainman or Simple Jack.

Temple Grandin harnessed the unique abilities autism bestowed on her to revolutionize the cattle industry. She was blessed with not only her amazing mind, but a network of family, teachers and friends who compromise her safety net. Them, and a "squeeze machine".

The movie is fun, funny, touching and inspirational. The ways that the director and editor give us Temple's perspective is inventive and poetic. It's enjoyable and exceedingly watchable in a way most biopics can never hope to be. It will appeal to audiences of all ages.

HBO has shown itself to be no slouch when it comes to commissioning biopics. I thought they couldn't top Grey Gardens. I was wrong. Claire Danes has some awards coming her way for this one.
(More on Grey Gardens in the future. Two incredible movies about two of the most fascinating people you can imagine.)

A flock of seagulls

2010-02-08T20:38:00.010-05:00

Get it? "And I raaaan..."
It's okay, I'm aware of what a lame joke that is.

Ran
What do you get when one of the most revered filmmakers of all time decides to make his most expensive production and base it on a mix of true story and one of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies?
One fucking hell of a movie.

Ran is in color. It won a Best Costume Academy Award. Kurosawa was influenced by the beautiful robes used in traditional Japanese Noh theatre. The costumes are gorgeous. When you see Lady Kaede sweep into the room, be prepared to drool over her amazing kimonos. Be prepared to appreciate the three sons, each always dressed in the same primary color in a way that must make the Power Rangers hang their heads in shame.

But that's only the beginning of the stunning use of color. This film is so beautiful that it almost contradicts the insanely ugly acts it depicts.

Kurosawa read that a great Japanese warlord once decided to retire and distribute his lands to his three loyal sons. His rationale being that while one arrow can easily be broken, three arrows bundled together are unbreakable. Kurosawa knew this wasn't true, so he started imagining what would happen if the three sons weren't so loyal. That's where King Lear comes in.

This film was a long time coming. Kurosawa wrote it and let it sit until he thought he was ready to make it. It took a very long time to get financing for this film. It's quite the epic.

The film opens on an aging war lord, Hidetora, his sons and his court all out on a boar hunt. After they fell the beast, they sit and have lunch. The war lord seems like a wise and benevolent ruler. His two sons Taro and Jiro seem obediant and loyal. His youngest son, Saburo, seems like a jerk.
The film's title means chaos. Chaos is basically what occurs after Hidetora decides to divide the kingdom amongst his sons. Hidetora's folly is that he believes all the semblances I just described.

If you've read or seen King Lear, you know how this is going to go down. Except that there's a massive battle sequence with more incredibly red blood tossed over extras than you have ever seen. There's no way there was any red dye left in Japan after this movie wrapped.
Kurosawa shows us war at its ugliest. This is a full-on massacre. It's so epic, so bloody, so unbelievably tragic and violent that you're glued to the screen. After a little while you start to wonder "How is there anyone left to kill?". Kurosawa built an exact replica of a Japanese castle by a mountain for this film. We get to see it ransacked and burned to the ground. You wait for mercy, none will come. Mercilessness is at the heart of this movie.

Hidetora became lord of the country by waging a merciless war against his rivals. He raised his sons on this merciless warfare, he stole their wives for them by mercilessly killing their families and burning their castles. He rules through fear. And now, he must reap what he has sewn. Karma will be merciless.

This film is a brilliant meditation on legacy and loyalty. When we are at the end of our lives, we can see our past clearly for the first time. One cannot leave behind a legacy of peace if one lived a life of war. One cannot expect order when one has created only chaos.

Watch the environment around the characters carefully. The elements themselves belie the action of the film. Fore roars, clouds rumble, wind howls and rain pours. The Gods are trying desperately to do something, anything...

(btw- there's lots of seppuku, I figured it made it an appropriate follow-up to Hara Kiri)

Get ready

2010-02-08T11:36:00.003-05:00

'cause here I come.

After another too-long break from blogging my film watching journey, I will be sharing my thoughts on Ran, Temple Grandin and Frost/Nixon.

To be continued...

To Sir, with honor...

2009-10-14T21:16:00.009-04:00

If you only watch one movie about samurais and revenge this year, it just has to be Hara Kiri.

Hara Kiri takes place in post-fuedal Japan. After the warring lords laid down their arms and the Empire took hold, many samurais were left jobless. In a peaceful Japan there was little work for hired swords.
Now, per the samurai code, there is no honor in a life of poverty and there is even greater dishonor in a death from poverty. Therefore, the only way to meet one's end as a true warrior was to commit hara kiri. If you don't know the deal with hara kiri (AKA seppuku), I give you this excerpt from the Wikipedia article:

"In time, committing seppuku came to involve a detailed ritual. This was usually performed in front of spectators if it was a planned seppuku, not one performed on a battlefield. A samurai was bathed, dressed in white robes, and fed his favorite meal. When he was finished, his instrument was placed on his plate. Dressed ceremonially, with his sword placed in front of him and sometimes seated on special cloths, the warrior would prepare for death by writing a death poem.

With his selected attendant (kaishakunin, his second) standing by, he would open his kimono (robe), take up his tantō (knife) or wakizashi (short sword)—which the samurai held by the blade with a portion of cloth wrapped around so that it would not cut his hand and cause him to lose his grip—and plunge it into his abdomen, making a left-to-right cut. The kaishaku would then perform dakikubi, a cut in which the warrior was all but decapitated (akin to a coup de grâce. The maneuver is done such that a slight band of flesh is left attaching the head to the body). Because of the precision necessary for such a maneuver, the second was a skilled swordsman. The principal agreed in advance when the kaishakunin was to make his cut. Usually dakikubi would occur as soon as the dagger was plunged into the abdomen. The process became so highly ritualised that as soon as the samurai reached for his blade the kaishakunin would strike. Eventually even the blade became unnecessary and the samurai could reach for something symbolic like a fan and this would trigger the killing stroke from his second.

This elaborate ritual evolved after seppuku had ceased being mainly a battlefield or wartime practice and become a para-judicial institution (see next section).

The second was usually, but not always, a friend. If a defeated warrior had fought honorably and well, an opponent who wanted to salute his bravery would volunteer to act as his second."

That's an honorable death. A methodical and glorious suicide.
Go big or go home, I guess.

So, word starts to get around Japan that a samurai went to a lord's house and asked for permission to commit hara kiri on the grounds. The lord and his advisers cringe at the thought of this spectacle, so they give the samurai some money and ask him to go somewhere else.
This story gets to some down-and-out samurai, and they decide to do something very similar, and very stupid, in hopes of receiving some charity.
A lord's advisers and samurai hear of this disgraceful disception and decide to treat anyone who comes to their grounds with a similar objective, very uncharitably. And what goes around, comes around.

What occurs, I really cannot spoil for you, but I promise you that it will be hard to watch.

No one takes revenge like a samurai. This a flawless and artistic movie about honor, desperation and loss. It's about what is worth living for, and what is worth dying for. Most of all, it's about the courage to know when there's no way out except on top of one's own sword.

The movie was made in the '60s but it feels fresh and exciting. It's black and white, but when the blood spills your imagination fills in what the monochrome leaves out.

Watch this movie.

To the center of the city in the night, waiting for you...

2009-01-02T11:53:00.002-05:00

I've got a cold that came over me on New Year's Eve. Not the day anyone would want to get sick, but it was better than having been sick while in Maryland.
Dan and I packed up presents, food, some clothes and the dog into the Chevy Malibu and made the 7 hour drive to Columbia to spend Christmas with his family. We left late on the 24th, by the time we got to Maryland it was already Christmas.
Part of our gift to his family was that we cooked Christmas dinner. Pork roast glazed with an orange cranberry bourbon sauce, brussels sprouts mixed with bacon, butternut squash soup, sweet potatoes, spinach and biscuits. It was delicious.
This Christmas has been extended for us because we won't get the chance to exchange presents with my father and brother until Saturday and my mom and step-dad on Sunday.

Since I've been sick the past two days I've been doing what I always do when I'm sick: Clean the house a little and watch movies.
I've watched Once Upon A Time In China, Hello Dolly! and Control so far.
The first two are old favorites that were available instantly on NetFlix, and just as chicken soup is comfort for the body, these movies were comfort for my mind.
I just adore Hello Dolly! directed by Gene Kelly and I'm glad it's enjoying a sort of rebirth through WALL-E. it didn't do well at the box office and many fans of the musical de-cry the fact that Barbara Streisand was given the role of Dolly instead of Carol Channing. Yes, she may have been a little young for the role at the time, but I think it's a too harsh to dismiss an entire film because of a slight to Carol Channing. Michael Crawford is priceless as Cornelius Hackle and even though Babs may be young, the meddling ways of Dolly seem natural to her.
But we're talking about a movie made by Gene Kelly, so what we really should be talking about is the dancing. So much dancing, dancing for dancing's sake. You'll notice in watching it that it's heavy with male dancers as opposed to female dancers. This is part in parcel to Kelly's belief that men are better dancers, and that dancing is a true athletic pursuit that more men should be encouraged to engage in. The wonderful type of all-style dance that Kelly made famous in Singing in the Rain and American in Paris comes out in full force in every number.
Combine that with the lovely songs sung by Crawford and Babs, and the great comedic performances Kelly coaxes out of the cast and you've got a family classic. Plus, Louis Armstrong makes a cameo, if that doesn't add a little coolness to the movie, I don't know what would.

Once Upon a Time in China, if you like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and would like to know what inspired all that fancy wire-fighting Kung Fu, watch this movie. One of Jet Li's first movies, he plays the role of Chinese folk hero Dr. Wong. Just as Hello Dolly! is all about the dance routines, Once Upon a Time in China is all about the fight sequences. The story involves the beginning of China's struggle to remain true to its cultural heritage in a time when western civilization begins encroaching. We rarely hear the stories of how the Chinese workers who helped build America's railroads and cities came here. Unfortunately, it's not a fairy tale.

Control seems like a documentary. It's called a biopic of Ian Curtis, the late lead singer of Joy Division. It's based on the book Touching From a Distance by Curtis's widow, Deborah. But it's so much more. It's more like a tribute to Curtis. A way to let his fans get to know him, since so many of us have never and will never get to meet him.
It's the first film by photographer Anton Corbijn, who knew and photographed Joy Division. The film was shot in color but printed in black and white, since all of the pictures of Joy Division are in black and white, save for a few film clips. The result is a bleak tale of a man who could not seem to find what he wanted. Sam Riley disappears completely in the role, and you feel as thought, like I said, that you're watching a documentary. Even though Curtis's light eyes are missing (Riley's eyes are brown), his soul seems to be there. Many of the sets are the actual buildings that the real-life moments occurred in. The most sobering of these is the home of Ian and Deborah. The kitchen we see is the very kitchen where Curtis took his own life right before Joy Division was to embark on their U.S. tour.
As this lovingly constructed window into what was Ian Curtis's life and death ends, The Killer's cover of "Shadowplay" plays over the credits. The viewer gets the sense of how iconic Curtis has become, and we're left to wonder if the icon has endured, would he be even more famous and influential? It also seems like a ghost of the story of so many other artists who commit suicide, since the feeling of isolation has seemed to permeate all of their souls.
Sadly, after the film was released and gained popularity in July of 2008, someone stole Ian Curtis's headstone from his grave in Macclesfield. It is inscribed simply "Ian Curtis 18-5-80 Love Will Tear Us Apart."
It's sad to think that while all of us who love his music wish we could be closer to him, someone felt the need to be selfish about it. I hope they return it.
Love Will Tear Us Apart.

White-out

2008-12-21T19:30:00.002-05:00

It's been snowing pretty much non-stop since Friday afternoon.
The Commonwealth Ave Mall is beautiful. The lights in the trees and the snow covering the statues and everything else.
Big snowstorm days are my favorite days in the city. All the non-residents are back snuggled up in their suburbs and all us city folk go about our business as if there were not a flake in the sky. Being steps away from everything you need is most adventageous in a snow storm. Now that I don't have to drive in the snow, I love the snow. I look forward to it.
We Bostonians put on our wellies, pull on our coats and hats and go out into the city.
The best part?
We don't have a driveway to shovel. We don't even have to shovel out our front steps. We go throw snowballs and get some shopping done on Newbury street, free from the hordes of tourists and day-trippers.
Everything is beautiful and white in Boston, and I haven't heard a horn honk all day.

The black knight always triumphs!

2008-12-14T12:08:00.004-05:00

Have at you!

I bought The Dark Knight on DVD. I almost never buy DVDs. There are so many movies out there that I haven't seen that I can rarely rationalize buying one I already have seen with the intention of watching it several more times in the future. My eyes were opened by Dr. Noletti at Framingham State who watches hundreds of movies each year. His voracious appetite for films made me realize that if I resigned myself to buying every movie I liked, I would eventually get to that point where anything new might not interest me.

I now try to watch movies whenever I can, and I don't select the movies based on whether or not I think I'll enjoy them. I'm working my way through the American Film Institute's 100 Greatest list in the hopes of at least getting all of those under my belt in the next year.

I watched Audition, a film that explores the vulnerability and trust that love induces. Much of the film is so surreal that I cannot definitively say what was real and what was imagined by the protaginist. I think something might have been lost in translation. Like A Tale of Two Sisters, I get the feeling that Western films have a habit of tying up every single little loose end in a way that foreign films don't. I'm not sure if this is a limitation or an advantage. It certainly limits the kind of narration a film has. In these two films, it seemed we were only seeing what the protagonist saw. There are dream sequences, and it's implied later that the dream sequences were omnipotent episodes in the narration. The protagonist suddenly gets a glimpse of something they were unaware of, or something that has or will happen. So it's not like a break in narration that occurs in Western film that contains an omnipotent aside that the audience is privey to, but not the protagonist.
The audience has all of the same information as the protagonist. This creates a unique sympathy for the protagonist. Yet, my Western-trained mind could help but wonder: What was true in the dream and what wasn't? How and why does this character have psychic dreams?
It's very A Christmas Carol, the ghosts of the past, present and future visit us in our dreams and enlighten us. Yet, it's not explained explicity so. I had to gather after much thought that these surreal, yet truthful, dream sequences are a deus ex machina to the plot that is readliy accepted by the intended (foreign) audience of this film. It relies entirely on the suspension of disbelief. This is difficult to understand coming from a Western-trained viewpoint, where dream sequences almost exclusively deal with the surreal and UNtrue. The protagonist wakes up and we sigh with relief, it was only a dream. It was not real.
In these films when the protagonist wakes up, we are supposed to feel the building fear. Their dream was surreal, but it was the truth. They must now take action based on their dream, and use their new-found knowledge to get a leg up on the antagonist or at least to fully understand the current events.

I would love to conduct a research study on the validity in the contents of dream sequences in movies in different cultures. Perhaps we Westerners don't give our dreams enough credit. Our dreams could be trying to tell us something.

She blinded me with... keyboards?

2008-12-01T22:18:00.002-05:00

After seeing the newest Little Tykes commercial for yet another pop-star themed toy for toddlers, I had to beg the question: Why would you want your toddler pretending to be a pop star? This could begin a disturbing pattern of behavior that, in the end, you can only blame yourself for.
What about just buying them a toy calculator or science set? Those toys actually teach them skills, skills more impressive on a resume than "can adorably sing along to 'wild thing' with cheap plastic faux instruments."

Four legs good!

2008-11-29T21:24:00.002-05:00

Iams is running a fabulous campaign to help get 1 million animals adopted into loving homes for the holidays. You can find out more about it here.

Normally, I don't endorse or patronize Iams because they test their products on dogs and cats extensively. They are also not the most nutritious food products you can choose for your pet. However, in this case they have their hearts in the right place and I hope they inspire people to adopt an animal in need. I would love to adopt another dog or cat, but cramming any more living beings into this one-bedroom apartment would be cruel to all parties involved.
Dan and I really wanted to adopt a dog when Dan decided he wanted one. Trouble is, if you're young, working long hours and have never been the sole care-provider to a dog before, chances are no shelter or rescue organization will let you adopt a dog. Especially when you want a small dog, which usually have more people vying to adopt them. I completely understand why such standards exist, and I wouldn't trade Max for the world, but I really wish we could have adopted a dog.
So, if you have the room, time and money, please consider adopting a dog or cat. Adult animals, pitbull mixes and black dogs have very low adoption rates, but there's no good reason for it. People usually just have their hearts set on a puppy or very young dog, but a 3 or 4 year old dog has years and years of love left to give. Every adopted dog I've met knows just how lucky they are to have a new home. It's amazing how a dog has such a bottomless capacity for love, even if it's been abused or neglected. All they needs is love, understanding and sometimes a whole lot of patience, but they'll give you more in return than you'd ever imagine.
In a couple of years when Dan and I get a bigger place we'll adopt a friend for Max. I can't wait for that!

Feature presentation

2008-11-22T22:59:00.005-05:00

A few movie recommendations:

A Tale of Two Sisters is the highest-grossing Korean horror film of all time. It's based on an old Korean folk-tale about murder, ghosts and revenge. The plot is a slowly unravelling story of what lead to one of the sisters having to go to a hospital and why a vengeful spirit haunts her home. The cinematography is decadent and rich. One of the things I love about foreign horror films is that, unlike American horror films which show you the ghost/monster for a breif second in order to get you to jump, a foreign horror movie allows the camera to dwell on the terrifying figure. It imitates our nightmares, it moves towards us and we cannot stop it or get away- we cover our face with our hands and squirm while we peek through our fingers. The creature's approach is both terrifying and intoxicating... will it get us?

Aliens: SPecial Edition is available free On-Demand from Comcast. One of the best sci-fi horror movies ever made, and a glowing example of a great screenplay. The reason the plot is so superior is that the writer wasn't burdened with introducing the aliens to the audience. We know what's waiting for Ripley, we just need to know how she ends up having to face them again. The exposition is taken care of in a few tidy briefing scenes, and then the rest of the film can be devoted to developing the relationships between the characters and exposing their motivations. Scenes included in this version that were left out of the theatrical release- scenes showing the treatment station prior to infestation, Hicks and Ripley exchaning first names, Bill Paxton bragging about the artillery and much more!

Run, Fat Boy, Run funnier than you might think and with a great soundtrack. Simon Pegg + Siouxsie and the Banshees? Yes, please! Be prepared to hate Hank Azaria, it doesn't feel right to do it, but he plays a jerk well.

And a little rant:
I am so sick and tired of these silly teenage vampires. Why is the story never based around a mortal man that loves a vampiress? Let me tell you:
Vampires are a metaphor for date rapists. They charm their victims and then force themselves upon them. Their forced penetration results in either death, or infection by the poison they ejaculate from their fangs. This ejaculation results in the "birth" of another vampire- which is always "more beautiful" than a mortal.
Teenage girls often have rape fantasies, these fantasies are indulged by these vampire movies. Rape fantasies should not be indulged, they are unhealthy.
A big plot point in Twilight? A vampire can kill a human accidently during sex, this only makes the heroine want to have sex with one MORE. What kind of message is that to send to teenagers???
"That guy could turn violent during sex, GO FOR IT!"
How many abusive or toxic relationships will result from another generation being taken in by this rape-masquerading-as-romance fantasy?
So the reason these stories never center around a mortal man and a vampiress is because it would imply that a woman can over-power and rape a man. That upsets our traditional concept of the roles of men and women in society.
Tell a teen you know: "Say no to glamorized rape."
And for everyone else who's annoyed with how these new vampires like to violate the rules of what vampires can and cannot do, we are not alone.

Life lessons:

2008-11-08T11:05:00.001-05:00

Never trust a drunk person to be able to lead you home. They might claim to know which way we need to walk, but they really have no idea.

One Hot Geek

Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)

Movies for Travelling: Ratatouille, Airplane! & Tootsie (and don't go see Thor)

Underdogs: Get Him to The Greek and The Men Who Stare at Goats

Fighting the good fight: The Fighter

The Millenium trilogy: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire & The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest

They don't make 'em like that anymore: True Grit & The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

A dissection of Black Swan *Spoilers Within*

Dancing with myself: Black Swan

The movie gifts that keep on giving

Indie in-demand: Whip It & Scott Pilgrom Vs. The World

Win, lose or draw (Megamind and The Princess and The Frog)

By the numbers

Why I love sports movies

Going BUMP in the night

The Doctor is in

I'm down with The Town

Write on

Island Retreat

Lost movies?

Yay! One Hundred Posts!

The Young Victoria

Get away

A song in my heart

The Greatest Show On Earth

Kicking and screaming

Thank you Mr. Murray

If you want something done...

In the ghetto

Playing by the rules

Bad vibrations

The shape of things

Holy Cow!

Wild thing...

I don't care if I'm in Rome...

Reborn in the USA

"..and then go contemplate the moon..."

*swoons*

Easter egg

Inception

Comedy and Tragedy

Play time

The Fearless Vampire Killers

Twist the night away

The whole nine yards...

Because it feels good to know i'm not alone...

In Ford we trust

Wolves in green clothing

Dream a little dream of me...

For Rent

Tessie, you are the only only only...

Roman candle

Elementary

Strange creatures

From Hell's heart I stab at thee!

Dear Hollywood,

Tripping

Hippity hoppity

Out of this world

Like a rock

Glory glory!

Das Boot

Push the button

Srsly

Most predictable Oscars ever.

Come on get happy!

WOOT

Little pig, little pig, let me in!

Speak now...

Go for the gold!

List

Hot towel?

...His hair was perfect!

I die.

Yes, Mother darling.

WTF?

Help Wanted

Frost/Nixon

My so called autism.

A flock of seagulls

A dissection of Black Swan Spoilers Within

swoons