The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, Syndromes and a Century, Mr. Arkadin, Get Smart, & The Jane Austen Book Club

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser is a mid-70s Werner Herzog film. To give you an idea about the film, it is based almost entirely upon the extremely strong performance from Bruno S. And because it's Herzog, Bruno S. is crazy. Here's his biography from the IMDB: "The unwanted son of a prostitute, Bruno S. was beaten so severely by his mother at age 3 that he became temporarily deaf. This led to his placement in a mental institution; he spent the next 23 years in various institutions, often running afoul of the law. Despite this past, he a self-taught painter and musician; while these were his favorite occupations, he was also forced to take jobs in factories such as driving a fork lift. Director Werner Herzog saw him in the documentary Bruno der Schwarze - Es blies ein Jäger wohl in sein Horn (1970) and vowed to work with him, which led to his major roles in Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle (1974) and Stroszek (1977). He was very difficult to work with, though, sometimes needing several hours of screaming before he could do a scene." It's absolutely insane, and it's based on a true story. A guy is found in Nuremburg in 1828, with a note, and saying that he had been kept in a dungeon for as long as he could remember. And he has problems adjusting to society. Kinda depressing film, and I'm not sure exactly how this fits in with my idea of every one of Herzog's films being about someone being obsessed, but it could work somewhat as an outsider, rather than being obsessed, as Nosferatu is more outsider than obsessed.

Syndromes and a Century is by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, a Thai, whose parents were both doctors, and it's basically a fictionalized version of how they met and fell in love. I'm not sure I could do much better than A.O. Scott's opening paragraph of the review of this, "Ever since his films began to attract admiring attention from the international film festival crowd, the Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul has encouraged his tongue-tied Western fans to call him Joe. That friendly, disarming gesture reflects the sensibility behind the movies, which are at once stubbornly difficult — resistant to summary, at times even to understanding — and surprisingly warm and gentle. Unabashed art films that demand patience and close, quizzical attention, they are also generous, unpretentious and funny, posing thorny formal questions in a relaxed, democratic spirit." It's a slightly meandering film, intentionally so, with a final couple of scenes that seem to have little to no relevance to the rest of the film. But if you allow its rhythms to flow over you, it's a very enjoyable time.

Mr. Arkadin is a film that may never be what it should have been. Orson Welles had the film taken away from him in the editing room. The film actually started out as three episodes of The Lives of Harry Lime, a radio show based on his character from The Third Man. Then he started to film it as a multi-European country production, refilming two scenes with Spanish actresses for the Spanish producers. And over the time in the editing room, there were at least five different versions of the film. Two Spanish ones (named for the fake names they've given to Robert Arden) and three versions in English, one for European audiences called Confidential Report, one for American audiences, both of which were butchered from the complicated flashback structure, and a version found by Peter Bogdanovich in the Corinth film vaults. There was also a novelization that was "written" by Orson Welles, but was actually written by Maurice Bessy. So Criterion used all five movie versions, and put together another version in attempting to conform as much as possible to what Welles probably would have done. Unlike with Touch of Evil, where he wrote a 58 page memo detailing the changes he wanted to make, the only way anyone has any idea about what he wanted were some remembered conversations and taking the earliest films as the best indications of Welles's vision. There were some major changes to the structure, including scenes that were put before scenes that clearly said they were after others. The final Criterion Comprehensive version is really the only one that is needed. The film itself is actually pretty good in every scene that doesn't include Guy Van Stratten (played by Robert Arden), and is also good in some scenes with him. When I watched the three versions on the Criterion collection DVD set, I figured he was a terrible actor, mispronouncing words. Now, after thinking about it more, I'm not as sure, thinking that, especially with Welles' tendency to overdub everyone in his films, maybe this was intentional. Maybe he was supposed to be the obnoxious and ignorant American idiot. But man, I was really rooting for him to die.

Get Smart is far too big of a movie for the plot. It's really just too much. The special effects were extremely distracting, and the big action bit at the end was studiously not funny. I like Terrence Stamp, and basically everyone in the cast, but it is never as funny as the original show, just jokes spaced too far apart for any humor to build throughout the film. Sorry film.

The Jane Austen Book Club has a Buffy conference as a punchline (and has a girl identified as only "Girl with a Dog Collar" played by Messy Stench, and that might actually be her name). I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be offended or not. And I'm not sure Grigg is not supposed to make me feel terrible for being a guy who likes Jane Austen, and also is a big fan of science fiction. It's a fairly cheesy romantic comedy, with the Jane Austen hook being the only thing to make it remotely interesting. I didn't regret watching it, but it certainly isn't anything special. Just an inoffensive movie, probably more enjoyable for those who have actually read Austen's books, because otherwise, the parallels will probably be missed. Not that it makes the film much better. Maybe the book is better? Wait, I mean, I'm sure the book is better.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century 1910, Runaways, Preacher, Dollhouse, & Better off Ted

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century 1910 is the first issue of a three-part third volume of Alan Moore's most detailed series. Basically, it's 1910, a new king is going to be crowned, and there's a vision of the future that suggests an apocalypse in downtown London. So the next version of the league has to stop it, meeting characters from the Threepenny Opera (who sing songs based on it), along with Jack the Ripper (along with a surprise answer to who it was, even if it's not a surprise for those who've seen The Ruling Class), a thinly veiled Aleister Crowley, and more (just take a look at this list of characters in the series). Of course, it has it's requisite sex and violence, along with a section at the end which references 2001: A Space Odyssey and then on the next page, The Story of O. Basically, it (and the earlier League books) may not be the most important comics of all time, but they're certainly near my favorite comics of all time. This was better than The Black Dossier, but not as good as the original two volumes. Yet.

Runaways was started by Brian K. Vaughn in 2003, and then restarted a couple of years later, and then taken over by Joss Whedon after Brian took over the Buffy Season 8 comics. So I wanted to read them, and I have. Not as good as I personally would have liked, but a generally enjoyable "Don't trust anyone over the age of 18 (later increased to 19)" story about six teens who see their parents sacrifice a teenage girl and realize their parents are all very, very evil. And then the series continues, adding in new characters to replace dead ones, having a psychically linked velociraptor from the future show up, magic, the 1900s, robots, and have cameos from much more famous comic book superheros (it's a Marvel comic, so it's Wolverine and Captain America (along with Kingpin and The Punisher) among others). Basically, I liked it, I'll continue to read it, but it just confirmed that I don't actually like superhero comics in general.

Preacher is gratuitously violent, gratuitously naked, and gratuitously profane (in both word and religious senses). I loved it. There were vampires, crazy ultra-religious types, horse thieves, inbred southerners, a sex-crazed Nazi Harvard-educated lawyer, a disgruntled astronaut (in one of my favorite bits), a war in Heaven, an orgy, a seriously misguided fan of Kurt Kobain who becomes a rock star, and more. Just a great series, and I'm a little disappointed I won't get to see an HBO miniseries based on this. Read it. I want to apologize for not having read this before the last month, as I read the first two collections years ago, but I wasn't buying comics then, and I never read past that, and then I tried one time after that, but I kept getting sidetracked, so I finally just started over.

Dollhouse and Better off Ted are two shows that are too good for network TV. And almost got cancelled as a result. I joined a save Dollhouse facebook group before the show had even started to air, because it was a Joss Whedon show on Fox airing on Friday night. After a rough (well, very rough) first five episodes, with only the previously mentioned Middleman episode particularly good, but once we got to Man on the Street (which Joss had promised would be the beginning of the show being awesome), the show became awesome, and by the end was as good as his earlier shows (Alan Tudyk was great). I didn't even mind Eliza Dushku. Better off Ted was a workplace sitcom. Boo, right? Non-boo. It's from Victor Fresco, who did Andy Richter Controls the Universe (which I purchased on DVD based on the remembering it was funny and my love of the "I'm building a temple to you, made out of shrimp, in my stomach" line, and did not regret that purchase one bit), and stars Jonathan Slavin (also from ARCTU) and Portia de Rossi. The two leads (Jay Harrington and Andrea Anders) are acceptable, but de Rossi, Slavin, and Malcolm Barrett are definitely worth watching the show for. Slavin and Barrett are Phil and Lem, two genius scientists who are like an old married couple, but with science! And de Rossi is the utterly insanely demanding boss. Basically, it's a little wacky, but very funny. I recommend watching both. But it just depresses me about how good ARCTU was, and how pissed I was it got cancelled. I didn't remember it lasting almost two seasons though. So, good on Fox?

Lust, Caution

Lust, Caution is strangely, a movie that would have gotten very little notice, save for the explicit sex scenes. Not that it didn't deserve some of the press, as it's actually a pretty good film, with very strong performances from the good Tony Leung (now matching the not as good Tony Leung as Good Actors Whose Penises (Or Balls) I've Seen (GAWPOBIS? nah, not going to add the tag)), Wei Tang, and Joan Chen, among others much less known. Sure, it's a little too long, and the sex scenes are almost completely gratuitous. Yes, seeing Wei Tang naked was gratuitous (but only in the idea that it does little to show how obsessed with each other they are sexually). I am, however, very proud of everyone who allowed those scenes to be left uncut in the final version. However, the length of the film, along with a fairly basic plot means that it isn't quite as enjoyable as Black Book, which was trashy fun with not as many sex scenes, another movie about a woman having lots of sex with an evil man during World War II. Speaking of sex, the most disturbing part of the film was the initial rape scene. Rape is always disturbing.

Also, for some terrible human people, read the IMDB message boards for the movie, and just wallow in the misogynistic (Wong is a slut for falling for Mr. Yee), homophobic (OMG, thank god I didn't see Tony Leung's penis), and racist (Asians are hairy and weird) postings. And then enjoy the occasional post that's actually intelligent and well-thought out.

Caseus Archivelox: Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones & Persona

2002-05-16 - 11:19 p.m.
I also went to see Star Wars Episode 2, and it was neither as bad as some people were saying, or as good as others (admittedly many fewer were saying that). Lucas set himself up to be trashed with The Phantom Menace. No matter how good this movie was (maybe if he had another Empire, but that's so unlikely that I'll just ignore that possibility), it would be trashed by many, just because it was no Star Wars or Empire. The final battle scenes are really cool, and Yoda certainly does kick ass, as does Samuel L. Jackson. Too bad C3PO is the new terrible character. At first he was just a gay robot, now he's horribly bad comic relief, with just bad puns. Not that there are good puns, but it's like Lucas and Hales couldn't think of a way to add some levity to a serious battle, and thus put C3PO in the Jar-Jar role. Ignoring the fact that in the original trilogy the battle scenes rarely had comedy. There were funny things, but there was not one character that is there only for that. The Ewoks banging on the AT-STs, the tow cables causing the AT-STs to trip, and Porkins were all funny to a certain extent, but back then, they knew that comedy wasn't really for those scenes. When Han and Chewie chase the stormtroopers in Star Wars, that was funny, but it wasn't in the midst of many characters dying and mass mayhem, it was in the middle of comedic rescue attempt of the Princess. Sure, Jar-Jar Binks is the most evil character of all time, for his obvious racist stereotype, but now also because he just was responsible for the downfall of the republic. But that is just one of those things that we have to accept from Lucas. That he's a racist and won't admit it. Jar-Jar is so evilly bad. The dialogue and love scenes were also terrible, while, surprisingly, some of the CGI was also very fake. It's one thing for a movie like Young Sherlock Holmes to have below average CGI (at least compared to now, for the time, it was incredible, even if it was only around 12 polygons), but for a movie that cost $130 million or so and had the top of the line CGI group working on it is almost irredeemable. Lucas is so evil. So, I give the movie a 6 out of 10. Star Wars is a 10, Empire also is a 10, but would be an 11 if I bent the rules, Return is a 9 (I don't like Ewoks and Jabba's palace was terrible (mainly from the Special Edition)), and Phantom Menace is a 4, and that's almost entirely for Ewan McGregor, the pod race, and the final lightsaber duel. Those were good, the rest was bad. Another way to judge the movie is to say that you can pretty much ignore any scene with Anakin until the duel at the end of the movie, because he's just bad until then. Padme isn't much better. Yoda, Obi-Wan and the rest of the Jedi are cool, as is Dooku (Christopher Lee) and Jango and Boba Fett and the rest of the clones. But the movie is just disappointing, not as terrible as the Phantom Menace, nor as transcendentally great as the original trilogy.

2002-05-23 - 1:39 a.m.
Then I watched Persona. That is one weird movie. But v. v. good, and it would have made my lesbian vampire film paper v. v. interesting. The paper could have been better, had I had more time to work on it, and an unlimited amount of space to write about them. Like if I were writing a dissertation on it. That would be really funny if I were to graduate from Duke's F/V program and they list all the dissertations in the program, so you'd see "Lesbian Vampires: Empowered Female or Male Fantasy?" in there, next to all the useful ones. That would be good. Anyway, cool thing noticed while watching Persona: the somewhat jarring credits (and music) were reminiscent of Monty Python and the Holy Grail's opening credits. I am positive that they were spoofing not just Persona in particular but Bergman's films in general.

Caseus Archivelox: Salvador, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Point Blank, The Girl on the Bridge, & Y Tu Mama Tambien

2002-05-06 - 11:22 p.m.
Salvador is really good, even though Oliver Stone showed his biases against the American military. Not that they aren't well founded, but it's colored a couple of his movies to the detriment of them. James Woods is incredibly good in it. It's just a little long. And of course, the fact that it agrees with my politics, and views of Reagan, helps it. I felt like I needed to see it, because it's an Oliver Stone film, and he is a very skilled filmmaker, even if insanely paranoid.

2002-05-07 - 8:16 p.m.
McCabe & Mrs. Miller had most of what I like about Altman (with great overlapping dialogue and nice camerawork, which was muted somewhat by the pan-and-scan tape), except that I can't like Warren Beatty in anything. He wasn't that bad in it, but he's such a despicable character that I didn't care whether he lived or died. The whores in the movie were much better, because they at least wanted the men to be clean before they had sex with them. Every time I think Julie Christie, I start singing "Tom Courtenay". That isn't that bad, but just slightly annoying. The Leonard Cohen songs were nice. Still, even with Beatty, the film was good.

2002-05-09 - 12:19 a.m.
Point Blank was a really good gangster type movie from 1967 directed by John Boorman. He also directed some other very good films: Deliverance, Excalibur, and Hope & Glory, and some trash: Zardoz and Exorcist 2. This one had a lot of flashbacks and forwards, partially because it may or may not be the case that the main character died in the first scene. That isn't really spoiling it because I doubt any of you who read this will ever watch it, and it doesn't hurt the appreciation of the film to know that. The movie was really stylish and Lee Marvin was impressively stoic and cool. I highly recommend it. In fact, the knowledge of his possible death makes the film much better than it would have been otherwise.

2002-05-09 - 5:27 p.m.
I watched The Girl on the Bridge this afternoon, and damn if that isn't one of the better love stories I've seen in a long time. It was made for the romantic film fan, with so many things to take a viewer out of the "real" world within the film, that had it been much longer, I would have found it frustrating. But it was so well made that it knew when to stop, when to push the viewer to suspend their disbelief fully, and be the incredibly romantic film that it set out to be. Very good film.

2002-05-13 - 5:56 p.m.
Then I saw Y Tu Mama Tambien, which was really good. I knew I had seen the main woman before, and it was because she was in Belle époque. And Emilio Echevarría from Amores Perros was also in it. But the movie was just good, with long takes, good acting, and excellent camerawork. The historical signifigance of the entire movie was not lost upon me either.

Caseus Archivelox: Spider-Man

2002-05-05 - 2:21 a.m.
I went to see Spider-Man tonight. Pretty darn good. Much better than most movies from last summer. I think the only movie I spent money on last summer was Planet of the Apes. I of course regret that. Bad movie. Bad. Spider-Man had some cheezy lines, and was pretty predictable. The scene where the New Yorkers attack the Green Goblin wasn't as bad as I was expecting. Lucy Lawless had a brief scene in it, even though she was not mentioned on the IMDB. [Ed. note: This has since been fixed.] Which is weird, because she was credited in the film. The special effects were, as advertised, very touch and go, with some impressive parts, but most were obviously fake. But then again, CGI is pretty easy to spot for someone who has seen a lot of it. And for someone who has written a paper about it, it's even easier. Oh, sure, the paper was pretty bad, but I did write one. About three and a half years ago. I wish I had been able to wait until The Phantom Menace had come out, so I could have trashed that in my paper, but I just had to trash Titanic instead. Oh well.

Back to Spider-Man. Tobey Maguire was really good in it. Kirsten Dunst's nipples are perky. Willem Dafoe continues to be one of my favorite actors currently working. The scene where he does both Osborn and the Green Goblin into the mirror is great. James Franco continues to look just like James Dean. It's freaky, but at least he was really good in that movie about Dean. Even when he's not playing Dean, he just channels him. He's good. J.K. Simmons as Jameson chewed the scenery well. Ted Raimi was fun. Macy Gray sucks.

For some disturbing Sam Raimi trivia, apparently he has seen Kevin Costner fully frontally nude, when filming for For Love of the Game, in a scene that was cut out. Because his penis was hideous. Or they just need to have a PG-13 film. Costner is one of those actors that I hate with a vengeance, even if I like some of his work. The Postman was one of the worst films I have seen in a long time as well. I mean, it wasn't as bad as Battlefield Earth (not much is), and I haven't seen Glitter, but it was still pretty darn bad. He was good in Silverado, JFK, Bull Durham, and Field of Dreams. Not much else. And The Untouchables is so overrated. He has sucked in most of his films. I couldn't make it through 3000 Miles to Graceland, because it was just terrible. Or maybe it was because I was bored and playing computer games at the same time. That could be more of the reason, but the parts I saw were bad.

Caseus Archivelox: The Goodbye Girl, Silverado, The Gathering Storm, & The Gorgon

2002-04-28 - 3:00 p.m.
I also had three movies on in the background when attempting to write the paper. The Goodbye Girl, Silverado, and The Gathering Storm. The first was a sort of dissappointing Neil Simon-penned film, with a good performance from Richard Dreyfuss (especially as an extremely fey Richard III). Silverado was a really good revisionist western with an incredibly good cast (Kevin Kline, Scott Glenn, Danny Glover, Kevin Costner (in a good performance outside of a baseball film or JFK, who knew?), John Cleese, Brian Dennehy, Roseanna Arquette, Linda Hunt, and Jeff Goldblum). Very fun film. The Gathering Storm was based upon the part of Winston Churchill's unfinished 3-part autobiography set from 1936-1940. Incredibly good. I'm a big fan of Churchill, and this was good. Albert Finney and Vanessa Redgrave were excellent as Mr. and Mrs. Churchill.

After that I decided to watch the movie I had taped last night, Hammer film's 1964 classic The Gorgon. Combining Greek mythology with great acting from Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee is great. Sure Megara doesn't look good at all, but it has a lot of atmosphere to make up for that failure.

Caseus Archivelox: The Man Who Wasn't There

2002-04-21 - 1:27 a.m.
I went to see The Man Who Wasn't There, which is one of the funniest films of last year. The Coen brothers really know exactly how to make an incredibly funny film where the characters in the film have no idea that what they are doing is funny.

I was laughing out loud for so much of the movie. The only problem with it was the slightly messed up print that they sent us, with some scratches and other things messed up, but the movie was absolutely brilliant. Better than most Coen brothers movies, although not as good as Miller's Crossing or Fargo. The Big Lebowski is the funniest of their films, but it doesn't have the deeper meaning (if you can say that their films have any meaning, which is debatable) of the previous three movies. But the problem when attempting to rate their movies (as the same occurs when rating any brilliant director (or in this case, directing team)) is that I think of why I like the other movies a lot. So this will probably change the next time I see any of their movies. Like the next time I feel like watching The Big Lebowski. About the only thing that is clear is that The Hudsucker Proxy is their least good. But I like lots of things in it. Maybe Raising Arizona is not as good as that. I'm not sure, stupid mind.

Caseus Archivelox: Mifune & All about Eve

2002-04-17 - 10:16 p.m.
When I came back to my room, I finished off the first thing I taped yesterday, Mifune. AKA Dogme 3. Iben Hjelje (High Fidelity) was really good in it, but the movie suffers from the Dogme filmmaking style. And from an almost unrelentingly sad script full of many unsympathetic characters. At least until the main character gets attacked by prostitutes and dressed up in woman's clothes. That was useful. I haven't enjoyed anything I've seen from any Dogme film. Or anything directed by anyone who has done a Dogme film besides Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark. At least of which I can think.

Then All About Eve again. One of the most brilliant showbusiness movies of all time. Maybe even the best. I can't think of any movies about plays or movies that are better. Few movies are almost perfect. Fewer are perfect. This is one of the few. Even with an annoying rear projection of Anne Baxter and George Sanders walking down the street. But the acting, the script, the directing. George Sanders is one of the great actors of the 40s and 50s. He was great in Rebecca, Foreign Correspondent, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Ivanhoe. The movie was just incredibly good. And I of course recommend it to all lovers of cinema. I also have to eat my words about Marilyn Monroe. She has her talents as an actress. I don't think she is the most beautiful woman of all time, but she has comedic talent.

Caseus Archivelox: Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer & Metropolis

2002-04-16 - 11:22 p.m.
Then we watched Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. Michael Rooker, he of Mallrats, JFK, and Eight Men Out fame (among others) was incredibly good in it. The movie itself was pretty disturbing, but mainly because it focuses entirely upon a homicidal maniac who never feels regret. However, I tend to agree with Roger Ebert, who decried the film's release as unrated, and I support his proposal for a new A rating for adult, for films that are not pornographic, but too far from mainstream for the MPAA to give it an R. Kids and Requiem for a Dream would have been two other films to get the rating in my opinion. The film wasn't scary, but it was definitely disturbing.

Then I went off to Griffith to watch Metropolis. It was a really crappy VHS copy of the movie. Watching VHS movies on the big screen is bad, because the colors bleed way too much. Also, again, the movie took a somewhat muddled plot full of incredible visuals (Metropolis 1926) and made it into an anime movie (i.e. completely incomprehensible plot with nice visuals). Anime just makes no sense. [Ed. note: my opinion has changed slightly since then.]

2002-04-16
After the previous few movies (since Peeping Tom) disappointing to some extent (although The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was bad mainly for its length and the fact that I was not watching it on the big screen like I did last Halloween), Henry was a slap in the face. Here is a serial killer movie that does not bother with the normal clichés of the genre, with a pair of mismatched detectives triumphing over all odds and making huge leaps of judgment to catch the wily (but ultimately insane) serial killer. For Henry, it really is a Portrait of a Serial Killer, as it focuses entirely upon the serial killer, his motives (or lack thereof) and his sick sense of quid pro quo. After he seemingly recants his life when running away with Becky in the line “I guess I love you too”, he brutally murders her off screen. My guess would be that he used his razor to do that, but the main clue to the brutality is that she ends up in a suitcase on the side of the road. There will be no happy ending for this killer and no redemption for the audience. Although the audience despises Otis for his incestuous, homosexual, and drug dealing ways, Henry is a mass murderer, and clearly has some serious mental issues, and cannot be a fully sympathetic character, and thus when Becky is hacked up, the audience is symbolically as well, with parts wishing that she had been able to change him into a functioning member of society, parts wishing that she had killed him, and parts wishing she had turned him in to the police. However, the movie is unsure exactly what it really wanted to say about Henry’s deeper conflict. The little that is there in an attempt to explain why he is a killer are told with so many contradictions (baseball bat, knife, gun) that we are left wondering whether there is nothing inside him, and that is shown when he looks into the mirror shaving before the last scene. There is nothing that can save him, and nothing that can save the audience from having to face the reality that there are people out there who kill because they can.

Except for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (where the meaning is somewhere in the film, but is completely irrelevant to anything remotely linked to the semblance of a plot), every film we have seen has had a killer of some sort that had a reason to kill, but for this, we have no real reason for the killing. Few films are as mindlessly brutal as Henry, and few films as completely disturbing. Is it as scary as Halloween or Psycho or the Shining? Not really, but it is much more disturbing than most movies I have ever seen.

Baby Mama, The Ten, Paprika, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, & The Long Kiss Goodnight

Baby Mama is basically like the worst of 30 Rock this season, the generally silly adoption subplot (but still funny), except, you know, without it being remotely funny. Good thing: using Be My Baby over the credits. Bad thing: sitting through the rest of the film.

The Ten is a bad sketch comedy movie about the ten commandments. Done by most of the State, you'd think it would be funny. Especially with Paul Rudd, Adam Brody, John Hamm, Winona Ryder, Ron Silver, Famke Janssen, Gretchen Mol, Jason Sudeikis, Justin Theroux, Liev Schreiber, Jessica Alba, Oliver Platt, Janeane Garofalo, Rob Corddry, Rashida Jones, and Bobby Cannavale in the cast, but pretty much everyone of them does some of their worst work. And anal rape jokes are... not funny. Basically, extremely disappointing. Sometimes I really should just listen to the reviews.

Paprika is a great movie, twisty and turny, an anime that actually works. Probably because it's by Satoshi Kon, who also did Millenium Actress and Tokyo Godfathers. He's really a very talented guy, and he does a pretty good job with a very complicated story of a group of scientists who have invented a machine that allows people to watch and get involved in other people's dreams. This leads to crazy dream sequences and excellent weirdness. Strange and awesome.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall is basically worth watching for three things: the constant mocking of CSI: Miami's David Caruso's ability to be a terrible actor with sunglasses, Jason Segel's comfortableness with showing his penis, and his Dracula puppet musical. Other than that, it's a semi-enjoyable romantic comedy, but I don't quite understand why Russell Brand is a famous comedian. He was kind of enjoyable, but all the stand up of his I've seen has been just vulgar and not actually funny. But man, I would so see that Dracula puppet musical many times. I can't wait for Segel's new muppet film. Him singing the Muppet Show theme song was fun.

The Long Kiss Goodnight is overwritten crap. When every single line is acting like it's the greatest line ever written, and characters are stupid but somehow able to stop time so they can run away from an explosion, then it's crap. There were some good lines, but not nearly enough to carry a film, especially one that basically killed Geena Davis's career. Also it was weird to see Craig Bierko play a badass. He's a musical comedy star.

Bounce Ko Gals, Drunken Angel, In Between Days, The Prisoner of Zenda, Midnight Madness, & The Apple

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