My expectations for fellow New Orleanian (well, Metairie) filmmakers Mark and Jay Duplass are pretty astronomical. This is totally irrational and unfair, but what can they expect from me, you know? After two such incredibly accomplished films as The Puffy Chair and Baghead, I find it hard to expect anything less than great. And hearing that they'd be distancing themselves even more from their mumblecore peers and making a film with such fantastic actors as John C. Reilly and Marisa Tomei, and with a slightly increased budget, I could only get more excited for their next film.
So now we have Cyrus. Is it good? Definitely. Could it have ever met my monumental expectations? Absolutely not. I wanted a small, funny movie with a big heart, and it delivered just that.... only not as well structured and satisfying as it should have been.
First, the good stuff. The Duplass brothers assembled quite a dream team here with John C. Reilly, Marisa Tomei and Jonah Hill. Reilly is a sad-sack editor still getting over the divorce with Catherine Keener that happened seven years ago. They're still good friends even as she's about to be remarried. Marisa Tomei is a beautiful, fun-loving woman who sees something better and attractive in Reilly. She also has a grown son who still lives at home, and Reilly's entrance into his and his mother's lives is threatening to rip his "perfect" life apart. Jonah Hill.
Hill owns his role and this movie from the moment he's introduced calmly catching Reilly sneaking around his house. His concentrated, unmoving intensity as he plays his synthesizers is easily the film's best sight gag. His character houses a large amount of mental issues, but Hill plays up the funny to great success.
John C. Reilly and Marisa Tomei are also great. Reilly is at his most emotionally vulnerable, and transitions well into the more competitive and nasty scenes between him and Hill. Tomei is, as always, beautiful and the uncomfortable love between her and Hill's character is very believable. But her performance does lead me into things I found less successful about Cyrus.
Jonah Hill's character is creepy and weird, but John C. Reilly's isn't all normal. He's desperate and finding love for the first time in a long while. This explains why he sort of stalks her, but that doesn't make it normal behavior. His relationship with his ex-wife is still more than a little clingy and weird. These character traits aren't a problem, in fact their subtlety is handled excellently by Reilly. The problem is that Marisa Tomei's character seems completely oblivious to his unattractive quirks that he's displaying right in front of her. Her being blind to her son's behavior is more believable as they seem to have never spent more than a few hours apart in 21 years. I blame this more on script than Tomei, as this was most likely just a way to keep them together while keeping Reilly's character rounded and weird.
Script accounts for other issues as well. The film takes too long to get all of its pieces together and for the love triangle to get nasty. Then it doesn't happen for a long enough time. And it goes into a very talky ending that wraps things up, again, much too quickly. The film is only 90 minutes, something I'd often appreciate. Unfortunately I really appreciated the slow and deliberate way the Duplass brothers put everything together. It was often hilarious, and involved some heartbreakingly vulnerable and awkward scenes from John C. Reilly. I just wish the rest had flowed at a relative pace.
As for the quick ending.... not good enough
Still a very enjoyable film from some very talented dudes. I'm looking forward to their next, the Louisiana-filmed Jeff Who Lives at Home.
7.6/10
Also watched: I've Loved You So Long
I don't have much to say about besides Kristin Scott Thomas is incredible in it. The movie didn't really hold me, and I found myself drifting in and out. Kinda sucky of me, I know. Hopefully I'll find time at some point to revisit something I'm sure deserves better than I gave it.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Folklore
Neil Jordans latest, Ondine, uses an Irish folklore myth to tell a beautiful story of finding new love. When Colin Farrell's down on his luck, recovering alcoholic fisherman pulls a beautiful young woman named Ondine (Alicja Bachleda) onto his boat with his net, it sparks new life in his downtrodden soul. She sings in a strange language and all of a sudden he's catching more fish. His young daughter, bound in a wheelchair waiting for an unlikely kidney transplant, starts to believe she's some sort of mermaid. A selkie, to be precise. A mythical seal creature which can come to land and strip its seal skin for a certain amount of time. Selkie women are beautiful and often take a husband on land, but their selkie husband will always come to find them. As Colin Farrell's fisherman falls more and more in love with Ondine, what she is starts to become less apparent, and his surroundings again start to fall apart.
If there is only one thing you can love about this movie, it would have to be Christopher Doyle's beautiful photography. His moody lighting and visually astounding underwater sequences leave a lasting impression. And there is apparently something inherently photogenic about small-town Ireland. Between this and Eclipse from a few months ago, it's amazing I haven't just bought a plane ticket already.
Luckily there's more to Ondine than just the visuals. Colin Farrell comes out with an extremely affecting performance. He balances the mix of love-induced joy and prolonged inner sadness very admirably later in the film. Unfortunately, Alicja Bachleda's performance doesn't match Farrell's. It's her first feature film, and she's not too bad, and she's very beautiful, but I really struggled with her towards the end of the film when the intensity really amped up but her performance didn't so much.
But that's not all the bad. Despite the promising setup and overall beautiful story, Neil Jordan's script tends to sag a bit in the middle. And as striking as Doyle's cinematography is, I don't think Jordan can match his talents. Parts of the film feel only adequately directed. But minor setbacks aside, Ondine really is a satisfying and beautiful love story.
8.1/10
I happened to watch another film based in folklore the same day I watched Ondine. Catherine Breillat's Bluebeard is an adaptation of Charles Perrault's famous 17th century story of a monsterous lord whom habitually marries and then murders his young wives exactly one year later. A young woman put against the impossible power of a colossal man seems like it could be right up Breillat's ally. Her films I've seen have involved some form of this theme in some way.
A newly poor family is forced to marry their young daughter (Lola Creton) to the firghtening lord Bluebeard (Dominique Thomas), even though everyone knows his wives always disappear after one year. After the marriage, Creton does her darndest to stave off the fate she knows is coming. Weaved into this is a two sisters reading the story of Bluebeard in an attic in the present day. Fears and emotions begin to sync up and foreshadow each other in a fantastic climax I wouldn't dare spoil.
The bride constantly trying to get one over on the monster is one of the more interesting games of cat and mouse I've seen. It's all very quiet and subtle, as Thomas plays Bluebeard with supreme patience and gentle menace. I also loved what went unsaid throughout the movie. Creton's family gives her away for a marriage they all know will kill her, and the silent knowing is very powerful.
Just like she did with her last film The Last Mistress, she films her period piece the opposite of what almost every other director does. Bluebeard is made to look very plain. She has no interest in beautifying anything in her frame. This isn't say it's not well directed, because it is, impeccably so even. She exerts great control over her compositions.
Bluebeard is special also because it marks the first Breillat film that I've all out enjoyed. I respect the craft and depth of The Last Mistress and Fat Girl, but their emotional coldness has kept me at arms length. I wouldn't call Bluebeard radically different, but the combination of the familiar story, the present day tie-in (which is very emotional), and the great performances make this work on a higher level for me.
8.5/10
Ondine is currently on Cox On Demand
Bluebeard is currently on Netflix Instant.
If there is only one thing you can love about this movie, it would have to be Christopher Doyle's beautiful photography. His moody lighting and visually astounding underwater sequences leave a lasting impression. And there is apparently something inherently photogenic about small-town Ireland. Between this and Eclipse from a few months ago, it's amazing I haven't just bought a plane ticket already.
Luckily there's more to Ondine than just the visuals. Colin Farrell comes out with an extremely affecting performance. He balances the mix of love-induced joy and prolonged inner sadness very admirably later in the film. Unfortunately, Alicja Bachleda's performance doesn't match Farrell's. It's her first feature film, and she's not too bad, and she's very beautiful, but I really struggled with her towards the end of the film when the intensity really amped up but her performance didn't so much.
But that's not all the bad. Despite the promising setup and overall beautiful story, Neil Jordan's script tends to sag a bit in the middle. And as striking as Doyle's cinematography is, I don't think Jordan can match his talents. Parts of the film feel only adequately directed. But minor setbacks aside, Ondine really is a satisfying and beautiful love story.
8.1/10
I happened to watch another film based in folklore the same day I watched Ondine. Catherine Breillat's Bluebeard is an adaptation of Charles Perrault's famous 17th century story of a monsterous lord whom habitually marries and then murders his young wives exactly one year later. A young woman put against the impossible power of a colossal man seems like it could be right up Breillat's ally. Her films I've seen have involved some form of this theme in some way.
A newly poor family is forced to marry their young daughter (Lola Creton) to the firghtening lord Bluebeard (Dominique Thomas), even though everyone knows his wives always disappear after one year. After the marriage, Creton does her darndest to stave off the fate she knows is coming. Weaved into this is a two sisters reading the story of Bluebeard in an attic in the present day. Fears and emotions begin to sync up and foreshadow each other in a fantastic climax I wouldn't dare spoil.
The bride constantly trying to get one over on the monster is one of the more interesting games of cat and mouse I've seen. It's all very quiet and subtle, as Thomas plays Bluebeard with supreme patience and gentle menace. I also loved what went unsaid throughout the movie. Creton's family gives her away for a marriage they all know will kill her, and the silent knowing is very powerful.
Just like she did with her last film The Last Mistress, she films her period piece the opposite of what almost every other director does. Bluebeard is made to look very plain. She has no interest in beautifying anything in her frame. This isn't say it's not well directed, because it is, impeccably so even. She exerts great control over her compositions.
Bluebeard is special also because it marks the first Breillat film that I've all out enjoyed. I respect the craft and depth of The Last Mistress and Fat Girl, but their emotional coldness has kept me at arms length. I wouldn't call Bluebeard radically different, but the combination of the familiar story, the present day tie-in (which is very emotional), and the great performances make this work on a higher level for me.
8.5/10
Ondine is currently on Cox On Demand
Bluebeard is currently on Netflix Instant.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
I'm gonna suck your brain dry!
The above line is shouted by Michael Ironside in the final moments of Scanners, David Cronenberg's telepathy/body horror nightmare from 1981. The film concerns a piece of cardboard (Stephen Lack) with telepathic abilities, called a scanner, who is forcefully recruited by a mysterious corporation to hunt out others like him. Michael Ironside happens to be one of these scanners, but he's bad. He can make people's heads explode into ketchup with his scanner powers. Plot things happen.
Scanners is fun and often effectively gross. The problem is with the characters. As I said, Cameron Vale is as expressive as cardboard. Thankfully his co-stars act circles around him. Ironside is menacing and creepy, and the corporation's scanner psychopharmacist, played by a loopy Patrick McGoohan, is entertaining as well. But even these and other good performances can't make me care about these characters. Even as the plot got more thrilling and more people's heads started exploding, I was struggling to pay attention.
I'm having trouble mustering up anything else for this. I've never loved Cronenberg as much as I should, loving only Videodrom (1983) and Dead Ringers (1988), but I certainly appreciate him and see why he has such a following. And I'll continue to watch his films hoping to find another classic. Scanners certainly wasn't it.
6.8/10
The Brood, anyone? Is that what I should try next? I feel like I should keep moving backwards in his filmography.
And here's how I rank the Cronenberg films I've seen. From best to worst:
1. Videodrome (1983)
2. Dead Ringers (1988)
3. M. Butterfly (1993)
4. Naked Lunch (1991)
5. The Fly (1986)
6. Scanners (1981)
7. Crash (1966)
8. Eastern Promises (2007)
9. A History of Violence (2005)
Scanners is fun and often effectively gross. The problem is with the characters. As I said, Cameron Vale is as expressive as cardboard. Thankfully his co-stars act circles around him. Ironside is menacing and creepy, and the corporation's scanner psychopharmacist, played by a loopy Patrick McGoohan, is entertaining as well. But even these and other good performances can't make me care about these characters. Even as the plot got more thrilling and more people's heads started exploding, I was struggling to pay attention.
I'm having trouble mustering up anything else for this. I've never loved Cronenberg as much as I should, loving only Videodrom (1983) and Dead Ringers (1988), but I certainly appreciate him and see why he has such a following. And I'll continue to watch his films hoping to find another classic. Scanners certainly wasn't it.
6.8/10
The Brood, anyone? Is that what I should try next? I feel like I should keep moving backwards in his filmography.
And here's how I rank the Cronenberg films I've seen. From best to worst:
1. Videodrome (1983)
2. Dead Ringers (1988)
3. M. Butterfly (1993)
4. Naked Lunch (1991)
5. The Fly (1986)
6. Scanners (1981)
7. Crash (1966)
8. Eastern Promises (2007)
9. A History of Violence (2005)
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
To Infinity...
So I saw this pretty cool action movie last night. You might have heard of it. A little film called Toy Story 3.
It's clever, funny, entertaining all around. So why did I not fall in love with like I did with its two predecessors?
I honestly can't say. Maybe it was just stacked with too many characters. Maybe it was a bit heavy on the plotting, and light on the great character moments between our main squad of toys. There definitely wasn't enough interaction between Woody and Buzz, or enough Buzz in general.
Like most Pixar films, it was paced and plotted so there was never a dull moment. But did it have to feel so slight? Maybe a second viewing will change my attitude. Who knows.
I can say for sure that I had issues with its ending. Not the garbage dump climax, which was maybe the film's best sequence, but the closure. As Andy gives his final farewell to his beloved toys, I shed a tear. A tear I knew the film hadn't earned, but the characters had. I've loved Woody and Buzz since I went to the theater opening weekend in 1995. Having to say goodbye wasn't so easy, even though it happened at the end of a movie not up to the standards of what came before.
7.5/10
I give everyone permission to hate. I know most people felt much differently about Toy Story.
It's clever, funny, entertaining all around. So why did I not fall in love with like I did with its two predecessors?
I honestly can't say. Maybe it was just stacked with too many characters. Maybe it was a bit heavy on the plotting, and light on the great character moments between our main squad of toys. There definitely wasn't enough interaction between Woody and Buzz, or enough Buzz in general.
Like most Pixar films, it was paced and plotted so there was never a dull moment. But did it have to feel so slight? Maybe a second viewing will change my attitude. Who knows.
I can say for sure that I had issues with its ending. Not the garbage dump climax, which was maybe the film's best sequence, but the closure. As Andy gives his final farewell to his beloved toys, I shed a tear. A tear I knew the film hadn't earned, but the characters had. I've loved Woody and Buzz since I went to the theater opening weekend in 1995. Having to say goodbye wasn't so easy, even though it happened at the end of a movie not up to the standards of what came before.
7.5/10
I give everyone permission to hate. I know most people felt much differently about Toy Story.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Mystery Team and the case of the Slammin' Salmon
Silly titles. I live for 'em.
Broken Lizard returned last year with The Slammin' Salmon, a strikingly unfunny film about the craaaazzzy going-ons of an upscale seafood restaurant in Miami. It's owned by a maniacal and mentally challenged boxing champion (Michael Clarke Duncan), with the Broken Lizard guys working as servers along with How I Met Your Mother's resident Canadien, Cobie Smulders. That's about it. Don't bother. The only film from the group I've enjoyed without any reservation was Beerfest, but Club Dread and Super Troopers have revealed more value in repeat viewings. I can't see that being the case here. The others at least had some funny elements the first time.
Hopefully Broken Lizard can find some of the stupid genius once again and deliver something as flat out hilarious as Beerfest. 3/10
Mystery Team is another stupid comedy, but works rather magnificently. I understand that it's based on series of web videos from the sketch group Derrik Comedy. I know nothing of those sketches or the group,but I can say that based on the film it's all really the Donald Glover show. The Community co-star is all over the place with funny in this film. Not all of the gags from his co-stars work, but their obvious devotion to their characters save them from harming the film. I don't know. Maybe Mystery Team isn't very good. There are more spotty performances than good, and the narrative is pretty thin. But it was incredibly funny and a joy to sit through.
7.8/10
Broken Lizard returned last year with The Slammin' Salmon, a strikingly unfunny film about the craaaazzzy going-ons of an upscale seafood restaurant in Miami. It's owned by a maniacal and mentally challenged boxing champion (Michael Clarke Duncan), with the Broken Lizard guys working as servers along with How I Met Your Mother's resident Canadien, Cobie Smulders. That's about it. Don't bother. The only film from the group I've enjoyed without any reservation was Beerfest, but Club Dread and Super Troopers have revealed more value in repeat viewings. I can't see that being the case here. The others at least had some funny elements the first time.
Hopefully Broken Lizard can find some of the stupid genius once again and deliver something as flat out hilarious as Beerfest. 3/10
Mystery Team is another stupid comedy, but works rather magnificently. I understand that it's based on series of web videos from the sketch group Derrik Comedy. I know nothing of those sketches or the group,but I can say that based on the film it's all really the Donald Glover show. The Community co-star is all over the place with funny in this film. Not all of the gags from his co-stars work, but their obvious devotion to their characters save them from harming the film. I don't know. Maybe Mystery Team isn't very good. There are more spotty performances than good, and the narrative is pretty thin. But it was incredibly funny and a joy to sit through.
7.8/10
Friday, June 11, 2010
Survivors and Killers
Last week I sat down to watch George A. Romero's Survival of the Dead, having read that it was a vast improvement over his last zombie film Diary of the Dead. Remembering how terrible Diary was, this statement becomes meaningless, but Survival was actually pretty decent.
I'm trying to be generous here. I like Romero, or I try very hard to. Avoiding horror films as a child, I didn't appreciate his classic zombie films until college. I fell in love with their satire and the elegance with which he integrated his social messages into his incredibly entertaining stories. His 2005 return to zombies Land of the Dead lost all of that elegance, and most of the entertaining story. Instead it offered us silly upstairs/downstairs situation in a zombie nightmare land with a hammy and scenery-chewing Dennis Hopper as the evil, rich land-owner, reminding me of his Bowser role in Super Mario Bros.
Survival is most like Land of the Dead. It's silly, campy and mildly entertaining with little character development and a few ideas that don't really go anywhere. It feels overstuffed with characters I feel Romero wanted me to care about, but didn't try very hard to develop into real people. I know he needs people to be zombie food, but he kept some characters around for a while with some important looking reaction shots but without anything to really do.
The plot has a small, tight-knit band of soldiers stumbling into the middle of a generations-long feud between Irish families living off the coast of Delaware. One family wants to kill all of them, the other thinks it is immoral to kill family members and would rather wait around for a cure to present itself. The latter family attempts to train the undead to eat animals instead of human flesh.
It's pretty fun, despite its lack of coherent social messages and lack of memorable performances. One thing I did like is by the end, Romero does give us a little bit of hope. But only for the zombie plague. Humanity? It's doomed one way or another.
6.3/10
I don't believe every film needs some sort of social message. Not everything even needs to be "about" something. But a message, or any sort of higher context would have improved Michael Winterbottom's The Killer Inside Me. Winterbottom has made one fantastic film (Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story) and a couple of good ones (24 Hour Party People, The Road to Guantanamo), but I haven't seen anything that would qualify him as having a real style of his own. Killer suffers from it's flat, boring style. It's dark, noir-ish style echoes other classics like Chinatown or L.A. Confidential. This is no crime, but something new to the table would have been nice.
The real problem is the violence. It's gruesome, hard to watch, but without any real redeeming reason. Yeah, sheriff Lou Ford is secretly a black pit without a soul, but I don't need to see Jessica Alba beaten to a pulp to get it.
Which brings us to the next problem. Alba's not very good. Neither is the rest of the cast. Simon Baker looks horribly out of place. Kate Hudson is boring. The only winner here is Casey Affleck as Sheriff Lou Affleck. His voice doesn't make for a great narrator, but he's got the soft-spoken gentleman with a dark side down perfectly.
But I just really didn't like this movie.
4.8/10
Have you guys got around to The National's High Violet yet? Hot damn that band just gets better and better.
I'm trying to be generous here. I like Romero, or I try very hard to. Avoiding horror films as a child, I didn't appreciate his classic zombie films until college. I fell in love with their satire and the elegance with which he integrated his social messages into his incredibly entertaining stories. His 2005 return to zombies Land of the Dead lost all of that elegance, and most of the entertaining story. Instead it offered us silly upstairs/downstairs situation in a zombie nightmare land with a hammy and scenery-chewing Dennis Hopper as the evil, rich land-owner, reminding me of his Bowser role in Super Mario Bros.
Survival is most like Land of the Dead. It's silly, campy and mildly entertaining with little character development and a few ideas that don't really go anywhere. It feels overstuffed with characters I feel Romero wanted me to care about, but didn't try very hard to develop into real people. I know he needs people to be zombie food, but he kept some characters around for a while with some important looking reaction shots but without anything to really do.
The plot has a small, tight-knit band of soldiers stumbling into the middle of a generations-long feud between Irish families living off the coast of Delaware. One family wants to kill all of them, the other thinks it is immoral to kill family members and would rather wait around for a cure to present itself. The latter family attempts to train the undead to eat animals instead of human flesh.
It's pretty fun, despite its lack of coherent social messages and lack of memorable performances. One thing I did like is by the end, Romero does give us a little bit of hope. But only for the zombie plague. Humanity? It's doomed one way or another.
6.3/10
I don't believe every film needs some sort of social message. Not everything even needs to be "about" something. But a message, or any sort of higher context would have improved Michael Winterbottom's The Killer Inside Me. Winterbottom has made one fantastic film (Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story) and a couple of good ones (24 Hour Party People, The Road to Guantanamo), but I haven't seen anything that would qualify him as having a real style of his own. Killer suffers from it's flat, boring style. It's dark, noir-ish style echoes other classics like Chinatown or L.A. Confidential. This is no crime, but something new to the table would have been nice.
The real problem is the violence. It's gruesome, hard to watch, but without any real redeeming reason. Yeah, sheriff Lou Ford is secretly a black pit without a soul, but I don't need to see Jessica Alba beaten to a pulp to get it.
Which brings us to the next problem. Alba's not very good. Neither is the rest of the cast. Simon Baker looks horribly out of place. Kate Hudson is boring. The only winner here is Casey Affleck as Sheriff Lou Affleck. His voice doesn't make for a great narrator, but he's got the soft-spoken gentleman with a dark side down perfectly.
But I just really didn't like this movie.
4.8/10
Have you guys got around to The National's High Violet yet? Hot damn that band just gets better and better.
Friday, May 28, 2010
In which I make my return, mission statements be damned
Turns out writing about every movie you watch can be a real hassle. Even when you're not watching a particularly extravangant amount, when they start building up a pile of three films can look seriously daunting. Combine with this with studying for finals and then a crazy 2 job work schedule and it's very easy to find yourself in my position.
Today I find myself with free time, and so I will play a little catch up of all the films I've seen in my silent month, in order of my least favorite to most.
A Nightmare on Elm Street (Samuel Bayer, 2010) - What a lazy, shitty movie. Jackie Earle Haley gives a charisma-less performance as the iconic Freddy Krueger. I don't want to think anymore about this criminal waste of time.
The Big Easy (Jim McBride, 1986) - Another lazy film. Police corruption in New Orleans is what drives this "thriller". It tries so hard to cool, sexy, and witty without an iota of success, and completely fails to deliver any sort of thrilling or coherent narrative. Dennis Quaid and Ellen Barkin in the leads roles also lack any chemistry.
Iron Man 2 (Jon Favreau, 2010) - Robert Downey, Jr. still rocks, Gwenyth Paltrow is the thinking man's sex symbol, and Sam Rockwell is fantastic as the anti-Tony Stark, Justin Hammer. It's too bad these great characters are in a long commercial for upcoming Marvel Studios films instead of a feature film with a strong narrative drive.
Bab'Aziz, The Prince Who Contemplated His Soul (Nacer Khemir, 2008) - I did not like this movie very much. An old, blind dervish and his grandaughter are travelling through the desert to a dervish convention of some kind. While travelling, he tells her stories of a prince who abandoned his kingdom to sit by a pool and contemplate. It's beautifully filmed and features a smart ending that adds a lot of weight to the sparse, yet confounding narrative that leads to it. I am in no way qualified to review this film. It features what I believe is probably a lot of religious symbols that go way over my head. If I every educate myself more in the subject of Islam, I might need to give this enigma another shot.
Kick-Ass (Matthew Vaughn, 2010) - Great characters, fun action, believable adolescent emotions. Kick-Ass has all these mixed up with some instances of bad dialogue, pacing issues, and equally unrealistic adolescent emotional behavior. I still wish Vaughn had just made his own superhero movie. What really keeps me from embracing this film is that it can't completely shake that Mark Millar flavor. Vaughn cuts out so much of what makes Millar's comic a mysogynistic, racist, pointlessly brutal piece of shit, but I still get those Millar whiffs every once in a while.
The Good The Bad The Weird (Ji-Woon Kim, 2010) - Whoah. What a blast. Korean westerns should come around to these shores more often. This plot is a bit too complicated for me to recount easily, but the three title characters have conflicts. That's about all you need. And there's trains. The action sequences are stylish and exhilarating, and the film has a healthy sense of humor that runs throughout.
The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (Tom Six, 2010) - LKJAHSLDKJAHLDAIUYVGROSS! A former Siamese twin separater becomes obsessed with connecting people into a centipede of sorts. He kidnaps unsuspecting foreigners and then the rest happens. I don't usually go for such gross-out fare, but Centipede is handled with unusual skill. Six knows when to dial back the gore and leave a more lasting psychological impression. This film is scarring, but it's also damn good.
The Ox-Bow Incident (William Wellman, 1943) - I just watched this classic for the first time today, and I found it a very quiet yet powerful western. It deserves its classic status. Its message of the dangers of group-think and mob mentality are as relevant today as ever, and though its message is never subtle, its execution is handled remarkably well.
I've recently started reading Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8. Damn, I'm cool.
Today I find myself with free time, and so I will play a little catch up of all the films I've seen in my silent month, in order of my least favorite to most.
A Nightmare on Elm Street (Samuel Bayer, 2010) - What a lazy, shitty movie. Jackie Earle Haley gives a charisma-less performance as the iconic Freddy Krueger. I don't want to think anymore about this criminal waste of time.
The Big Easy (Jim McBride, 1986) - Another lazy film. Police corruption in New Orleans is what drives this "thriller". It tries so hard to cool, sexy, and witty without an iota of success, and completely fails to deliver any sort of thrilling or coherent narrative. Dennis Quaid and Ellen Barkin in the leads roles also lack any chemistry.
Iron Man 2 (Jon Favreau, 2010) - Robert Downey, Jr. still rocks, Gwenyth Paltrow is the thinking man's sex symbol, and Sam Rockwell is fantastic as the anti-Tony Stark, Justin Hammer. It's too bad these great characters are in a long commercial for upcoming Marvel Studios films instead of a feature film with a strong narrative drive.
Bab'Aziz, The Prince Who Contemplated His Soul (Nacer Khemir, 2008) - I did not like this movie very much. An old, blind dervish and his grandaughter are travelling through the desert to a dervish convention of some kind. While travelling, he tells her stories of a prince who abandoned his kingdom to sit by a pool and contemplate. It's beautifully filmed and features a smart ending that adds a lot of weight to the sparse, yet confounding narrative that leads to it. I am in no way qualified to review this film. It features what I believe is probably a lot of religious symbols that go way over my head. If I every educate myself more in the subject of Islam, I might need to give this enigma another shot.
Kick-Ass (Matthew Vaughn, 2010) - Great characters, fun action, believable adolescent emotions. Kick-Ass has all these mixed up with some instances of bad dialogue, pacing issues, and equally unrealistic adolescent emotional behavior. I still wish Vaughn had just made his own superhero movie. What really keeps me from embracing this film is that it can't completely shake that Mark Millar flavor. Vaughn cuts out so much of what makes Millar's comic a mysogynistic, racist, pointlessly brutal piece of shit, but I still get those Millar whiffs every once in a while.
The Good The Bad The Weird (Ji-Woon Kim, 2010) - Whoah. What a blast. Korean westerns should come around to these shores more often. This plot is a bit too complicated for me to recount easily, but the three title characters have conflicts. That's about all you need. And there's trains. The action sequences are stylish and exhilarating, and the film has a healthy sense of humor that runs throughout.
The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (Tom Six, 2010) - LKJAHSLDKJAHLDAIUYVGROSS! A former Siamese twin separater becomes obsessed with connecting people into a centipede of sorts. He kidnaps unsuspecting foreigners and then the rest happens. I don't usually go for such gross-out fare, but Centipede is handled with unusual skill. Six knows when to dial back the gore and leave a more lasting psychological impression. This film is scarring, but it's also damn good.
The Ox-Bow Incident (William Wellman, 1943) - I just watched this classic for the first time today, and I found it a very quiet yet powerful western. It deserves its classic status. Its message of the dangers of group-think and mob mentality are as relevant today as ever, and though its message is never subtle, its execution is handled remarkably well.
I've recently started reading Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8. Damn, I'm cool.
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