Chocolate, Sex Machine, & World Sinks Except Japan

Chocolate puts forth the interesting idea that the first step to being a muay thai master is to be autistic. It's also offensive in that sense. Let alone all the transgendered individuals in it. However, it was directed by the guy (Prachya Pinkaew) who did Ong-Bak (mentioned in my review of Tom Yum Goong), and stars a young girl as the star, doing ridiculously awesome things in an ice factory, a butcher's shop, and on the side of a building. If you were wondering how people didn't die in the film, just wait until you see the end credits, which is pretty much showing people having serious injuries. It explains some of the quick cuts in the otherwise well-done action scenes. Definitely see this if you like ass-kicking women. Also, it could've been much cooler: IMDB says "The film originally included Zen watching scenes from Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan movies, but these scenes were eventually cut due to licensing problems. The ice factory scene was originally shot as a split screen of Zen imitating the exact same moves she had seen Bruce Lee do in a fight scene. It showed a clip of Bruce Lee doing his fight moves at the same time as Zen was mimicking Bruce Lee's moves. The warehouse scene was shot in a similar fashion, but this time it showed a split screen of Zen imitating Jackie Chan, wherein she would do her interpretation of a Jackie Chan fight routine." I wish there hadn't been licensing problems. I want to see that movie so much.

Sex Machine is a wacky Japanese pinku film about a woman whose son has fighting cockroaches and so do most of her suitors. I honestly cannot recall why I added this to my Netflix queue. It's very short and softcore porn. Only one of those two are things I tend to like in movies. Maybe if it had been more like the original title: "The Strange Saga of Hiroshi the Freeloading Sex Machine". That would've been better.

World Sinks Except Japan is a satire of Japan's relationship with the rest of the world. As a satire it falls flat. As a movie it falls flat. I basically kept watching because I wondered if it actually had anywhere to go. But nope, it just ended with a stupid Dr. Strangelove "homage" and me wasting my time. Boo.

Skins & Futurama

Skins is a British show about the decline of youth and the sex and drugs they get into. The first season is a little strained, but is fairly enjoyable, with kids doing stupid things and having sex (lots of nudity, and many shots of the male cast in underwear) and doing lots of drugs, in a mostly believable fashion. But the plot twist at the end of the first season is clearly a jump the shark moment, and while the first episode of the second season is still ok, the second is terrible (short of the Osama! musical (it's at least the third English spoof of an American musical with an ! after it, following The Tall Guy's Elephant! and Gay! A Gay Musical from The IT Crowd (and by the way, I've since seen the American IT Crowd pilot, and it's terrible, as it's the same jokes as the English version, but Joel McHale as Roy is no good, and the woman who they brought in to do Jen was way off, and although Moss was the same, it wasn't nearly enough to make that a travesty of television), which I think is making fun of Oliver!) which is funny), and it just gets worse and worse. The third season starts over with an almost entirely new cast, so I didn't even bother watching those. So, Skins first series is watchable, but second isn't.

Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder is something I saw back when it came out on DVD. I also realized I hadn't rated it back then. It seems like a good time to do that, now that Futurama has started airing new episodes on Comedy Central. Those two episodes made me very happy, but weren't quite up to the high level of the show pre-cancellation. Maybe still more nudity and ridiculousness than the Fox episodes, but they fit in quite well with the movies. Back to which, it really is very much for fans. Call-backs to previous plots, along with obscure science references are classic Futurama, but it just wasn't as funny as I would've wanted.

The Special Relationship, Blood Diamond, Funny People, Repo! The Genetic Opera, & How to Lose Friends & Alienate People

The Special Relationship is from Peter Morgan (and starring Michael Sheen as Blair), who also wrote The Queen and The Deal. Unfortunately, this is a 90 minute version of Blair and Clinton's relationship, which really doesn't give enough time to do anything other than gloss over details and hit some high points. Also, I really didn't like Dennis Quaid as Bill Clinton. He was much better as a faux-Bush in American Dreamz. Sheen is again perfect as Blair, but there is little else to recommend about this film.

Blood Diamond hits all the major points a good liberal movie about Africa in the 1990s and 2000s has to: conflict diamonds, child soldiers, mutilation to send a message, apartheid, mercenaries, white journalists trying to make a difference, Rhodesians unwilling to acknowledge that their country isn't called Rhodesia anymore. Oh, wait, that last one is just funny to me. It's also way too long, trying to fit all of those things in, and suffers for it. Leonardo DiCaprio's accent comes and goes, and that may be the best thing I can say about his performance. Sorry, Leo, but this was far from your best performance.

Funny People is indulgent. Did we really need Judd Apatow's duaghters in the movie, let alone one singing Memory being a huge plot point? Also, two and a half hours was way too long. There were some very funny bits, but the "emotional" parts were just ugh. He needs someone to take a vicious scalpel to his films to cut them down to a reasonable amount. Some subplots really went nowhere (The charity stuff? What the hell was the point of any of that?), and we really didn't need quite so many unnecessary cameos (the Eminem-Ray Romano bit was funny, though). I'm sure there were many other things you could've cut down or out to make it closer to two hours, or even less.

Repo! The Genetic Opera is utterly unwatchable. I am a huge fan of Anthony Stewart Head. I made it through 20 minutes before I had to turn it off. The songs are horrendously bad, full of muffled lyrics and unnecesary guitar and industrial flourishes. Nothing can save this film from just being aggressively terrible. Do not watch. Do not consider watching. Do not consider considering watching.

How to Lose Friends & Alienate People is full of a great cast. Including both non-Moss IT Crowd people. It does, however, suffer from having multiple elevator wipes. Plus an all-too-obvious transsexual. Not-too-obvious that they actually showed penis. Maybe the only one in a major film besides The Crying Game. That one was a great movie full of fine performances. This one is... mediocre. Not quite good enough to recommend to anyone, not bad enough to watch as a bad movie. Actually, the faux trailer for the fake Mother Teresa movie was the best thing in it. Otherwise it's a crappy version of The Apartment.

Flesh + Blood, Running out of Time 2, & Le Doulos

Flesh + Blood is Paul Verhoeven doing an utterly ridiculous middle ages movie. Rutger Hauer is the lead mercenary, who kidnaps a virgin from the son of the man who refused to pay him for helping to take back his town. It's violent, full of sex (although a fairly explicit rape scene is disturbing), and kind of funny, exactly what you'd expect from Verhoeven's films. It isn't as good as his last Dutch films, or his later English films, but it's enjoyable enough.

Running out of Time 2 is the sequel to the non-2 movie, but this one isn't nearly as good. It's still kinda stylish, but the plot is just extremely silly. A magician basically shuts down all of Hong Kong by being utterly ridiculous and doing very elaborate tricks. Including a lot of coin flips that all end up the same way. Every times I saw him flip coins, all I could think was that they never actually showed the coins. They didn't have to actually flip the coins and have them end up all the same side. This bothered me. Gives you an idea about how much I cared about the plot when this was all I could focus on.

Le Doulos is a Jean-Pierre Melville noir film, and the Netflix summary says "Fedoras, trench coats, dark alleys and jazz pervade this intricate crime drama", which basically should just be "Noir, noir, noir, noir, noir." It's stylish almost to a fault, with a great interrogation scene, but also lots of characters doing stupid things because they look cool. Can you really blame someone for doing something that looks cool rather than being the most sensible thing at the time? It's not as great as Melville's best, but I greatly enjoyed it anyway.

Babylon A.D., Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Eye in the Sky, Throwdown, Real Fiction, & Otto; or, Up with Dead People

Babylon A.D. is a really interesting idea, although a little Children of Men, but with Vin Diesel instead of Clive Owen. Oh, and a talented director and good script is also lacking. This does have Michelle Yeoh in it. Unfortunately that is about the only thing this has going for it.

Zack and Miri Make a Porno proves that a film marketed as a comedy can be known for two things: comedy that isn't funny at all and impressive lightsaber dildos. Sadly, other things I can remember: Katie Morgan's horrible fake tits, gay people being "funny" due to talking about sucking cock, and... um, the hockey team is named the Zombies? I've now seen Jason Mewes's dick? Ugh. Just a worthless film.

Eye in the Sky was produced by Johnny To, but it is less like his straight up action films than more about the mentorship between a sargeant and his newest student in a police surveillance unit. It's actually pretty enjoyable, even if it does have the not as good Tony Leung. It was fun to see Simon Yam be the good guy, though. Not an amazing film, but not bad.

Throwdown was actually directed by Johnny To, but it wasn't actually any good. Overacting and a nonsensical plot.

Real Fiction is Kim Ki-duk just messing with you. Shot in basically real-time (there are a few cuts that I think slightly elide time), it's about a guy who basically goes around and kills everyone who upset him. Kim really is just a jerk, and he uses the girl who follows the lead around to implicate the audience in the crimes themselves, at least, until he literally beats you over the head with a rock near the end. I'm not sure exactly what the ending scene really meant, if it was just to try to release some of the immense amounts of tension created in the film, or if it's some weird alternate version of the main character.

Ping Pong Playa seems to think it's funny to replace various cursing with the sound of a ping pong ball or a basketball. It's also a typical sports comedy with an added bit of cultural comedy. Actually, replace comedy with "comedy". It's not particularly funny. Sigh. It's really hard to trust reviews I half remember from two or three years ago. Sigh.

Otto; or, Up with Dead People allows me to say something I never thought I'd ever say: "I have now seen a zombie gay traumatically inseminating another gay zombie." If that's the sort of thing you want to say, have I got a movie for you! Bruce LaBruce made a zombie film. He's apparently a controversial gay Canadian artiste who makes films in Germany. Maybe he's found that Germany is more accepting of this? I'm not sure how anyone can really be accepting of a film that says that gays are zombies and that they are mostly interested in turning people into zombie gays. The only, and I literally mean only, thing that was remotely interesting in the film was that one character was basically a silent film star within the overall film, and so she spoke with intertitles, and when on screen with other people was in black and white with film grain. I guess if I wanted to see naked gay dudes having sex, that would have been interesting as well, but I was well on my way to falling asleep by the time the orgy started.

American Swing, 1984, & Slap Shot

American Swing is 81 minutes of messed up. Far be it from me to start going all moral all over people, but having sex with lots of people without protection, on dingy mattresses, in swimming pools, and the like is just disgusting. And the guy at the center of this, Larry Levenson, is a creep and tax evader. With possible mob ties. I was surprised by just how much they showed in the movie, that unrated movie is NC-17, so be forewarned. You will see wangs and hoohas, from not particularly attractive people. The movie didn't take a side as to whether Plato's Retreat was evil or not, and Jon Hart and Matthew Kaufman got some great interviews. Sure, it's a deeply messed up story, but I look forward to seeing what they come up with next. Also, Ed Koch is very, very gay.

1984 is a movie I've been meaning to watch for years. Ever since I first found out that Susan Hamilton was naked in it. This was after I had read the book, and had little interest in actually watching it for class, and so the nudity was not nearly as high on my list of reasons to see it now as it was back in high school. I do want to say two more things about the nudity before getting to the film. One: there's a scene where Winston and Julia are standing at the window, and someone comes in the door, but Winston only turns the top of his body, so you don't see penis. This is both wrong and uncomfortable-looking. Two: Suzanna Hamilton has more hair in her armpits than John Hurt has on his entire body. Anyway, the film is pretty good, conveying the book's message well. That's pretty much all.

Slap Shot is a gloriously profane look at minor league hockey in the 70s. Really, it's a typically 70s sports movie, that many films have tried and failed to be (I'm looking at you Major League). The team is made up mostly of actual minor league hockey players, most of whom are based on the actors themselves, which lends an air of realism that make it work. Of course the stripping during the game wasn't real, but most of it actually happened. I can definitely see why this film has such a huge cult following. I've watched more hockey in the last week of the Olympics than I have in many, many years.

Kung Fu Panda, Up, & Up!

Kung Fu Panda is the perfect example of a Dreamworks animation film: lots of action, comedy, huge famous cast, and much, much less than that should add up to. So many movies out there make me want to keep quoting Shakespeare's "Sound and Fury" bit, but that could just be the description of many films. I think there's a sequel coming out. Ugh.

Up, on the other hand, is Pixar at its best. Famous cast? Ed Asner? Christopher Plummer? Delroy Lindo? Not really, but everyone in it is great. And I, like anyone who has a heart, cried during the opening montage. I also cried when he looks at the scrapbook. Pixar has proven me right. Everything they do is brilliant, short of Cars, which I knew was going to suck. Dug is a great character, and the entire dogs with voices idea was excellently executed. Really, quite a great film. It's a shame that I have this strong desire to compare it to other Pixar films, but that would be a shame. Comparing just leads to madness: is Wall-E a better lead than Carl? What about Edna vs. Abominable Snowman? Could Ratatouille have been better without it's disturbingly pro-rat cooking stance? Sure, those are all minor questions, ignoring the overall greatness of their oeuvre.

Up! is the Russ Meyer film. You can tell it's a different film because of the exclamation mark. Beyond that, however, you can also tell it's a different film because of everything enumerated here. It's a Russ Meyer film, so there's huge tits, unfunny humor, and this one has Hitler. And Hitler's secret daughter. It's an extremely odd film, full of acrobatic sex (every sex scene is set in many, many different places, with no regard for realism), Hitler being sadomasochistic, multiple axings, bloody fake penii, multiple rapes, and absolutely no redeeming value. Not even as fun as Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Sorry Russ Meyer and Roger Ebert.

Diary of the Dead, The Hand, La terza madre, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Mongol, & Stuck

Diary of the Dead is the first in a slightly unintentional horror film fest. George Romero may, possibly need to stop making movies in the Dead world. I know he made another one, which probably won't be released for a while in the US, but he should stop. Because this was just a crappy retelling of the origin of the zombies, from the perspective of a bunch of film students. Movies where characters go through lots of horrible experiences and yet somehow still have a camera available to catch the important plot points are just completely ridiculous. This, Cloverfield, and The Blair Witch Project just strain credulity to such an extent I can't enjoy them at all.

The Hand is an early Oliver Stone film, and is worthless. Somehow, Michael Caine is the best person ever for reasons why he takes horrible movies. He's said, "You get paid the same for a bad film as you do for a good one", "I've made an awful lot of films. In fact, I've made a lot of awful films", and "I have never seen [Jaws: the Revenge], but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific." This one he apparently did because he needed a new garage. This movie has hand cam. And somehow, Michael Caine can make things reanimate. Except for this script. Oh, just ridiculousness straight through.

The Third Mother is the third movie in Dario Argento's Three Mothers Trilogy, with Suspriria and Inferno. Suspiria is a masterwork, Inferno is middling, and The Third Mother (for some stupid reason translated as Mother of Tears) is horribly bad. Asia Argento proves that the only reason she ever gets roles is because of her name. She is horrendously bad. About the only thing ok in the movie is Udo Kier being ridiculous before he has his throat slit and then his head hacked in half. Other than that, the nudity is silly, the kills are eh, and the plot makes no sense.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is the surprisingly good version of the Sondheim musical. As my main problem with Sweeney Todd before was my inability to understand many of the songs' lyrics, I appreciated it much more than I liked it, but with the subtitles, and the impressive acting from Depp and Carter (let alone Rickman being his normally awesome bad guy) make it a great movie. I know that it won some Golden Globes, but eh to thinking they could have gotten anything right. Burton clearly was enjoying himself with some mirrors and differing thickness of glass to make people's faces look Burtonesque, and also loved the visual of the dead bodies falling through the chute and landing. Sondheim does an amazing job writing beautiful, funny songs about some extremely evil people.

Mongol doesn't seem like it fits with my theme of horror films, but it really is when you come down to it. It's about the creation of a mass murderer. Endless torture, having his wife raped repeatedly, you know, all the normal things that lead to mass murderin'. Apparently, the history is a little off, but it works fairly well as a movie. Beautifully filmed and with strong performances by Tadanobu Asano and Khulan Chuluun as Temudjin and Börte, which the movie wants you to believe is the love story of all time. I know that reality is likely to be like this, but I bet it's far more accurate than The Conqueror.

Stuck is the last film in my mini-horror fest. Stuart Gordon fictionalizes the story of the woman who kills a homeless man by driving into him and letting him die trapped in the windshield of her car. It really does work as a slasher film for the sections with Stephen Rea as the homeless man, and a weird, but very different, horror film with Mena Suvari as the car driver. It's quite an effective little film, a quick and dirty movie, with a sick sense of humor.

Battlestar Galactica: The Plan & Caprica

Battlestar Galactica: The Plan is really pretty darn unnecessary. About the only thing that it added was gratuitous nudity. I'd have to rewatch the entire series to see whether there's any sense made by these "revelations". But Cavil knowing the Final Five I don't think makes sense at all.

Caprica, on the other hand, is just completely messing with the Battlestar timeline. How could the cylons be created both thousands of years ago and 58 years before the events of the show? Just silly. I also found the gratuitous nudity just distracting. It's so blatantly an excuse to get people to buy or rent the DVD of something that you could see on TV, just like The Plan. Basically, I like Stoltz and Battlestar, so I'll watch it, but it's unlikely to either be particularly good or as important as that show.

Outsourced, Perhaps Love, & Wristcutters: A Love Story

Outsourced comes up with a fake Kama Sutra position: Monkey Pulls the Turnip. What could the turnip signify? I need to know, but since it's not real, I got nothing. The film itself is a fairly typical plotted romantic comedy, although this did have the added bonus of Indians in cheese-heads. And some kind of idea of cultural critique of outsourcing and ridiculous Americanness. The lead female had huge eyes, and was in a Doctor Who episode and Attack of the Clones. And there was a poop joke, pretty early on. So, recommend or no? If you see one film about outsourcing leading to a cheesy George Washington commemorative plate wearing a third eye, see this one. It really all depends if you want to see a non-offensive romantic comedy in there.

Perhaps Love is a big budget, for China, musical. It's about a director and actor fighting over the same woman, making a musical about two men fighting over the same woman. I think it's trying to say something, but I didn't enjoy the musical numbers and I didn't enjoy the film. Eh to it all.

Wristcutters: A Love Story stars Patrick Fugit as a guy who commits suicide (SPOILER ALERT!) in the first scene, and goes to a sort of halfway world of no smiles, weirdness, and little color. He meets a family of suicides and starts to wander around, picks up a hitchhiking Shannyn Sossamon, has to search for Tom Waits's dog, and watches Will Arnett be wacky. It's full of Gogol Bordello songs (and other great music) and Eastern European names, along with some strange ideas about what the afterlife would be like. But I enjoyed the film, and even though it's a little cheesy, it's an enjoyable film.

Day of Wrath, Alexander Nevsky, Love in the Time of Hysteria, Quartet for the End of Time, & Wedding Night

Day of Wrath was made by Carl Theodor Dreyer during the Nazi occupation of Denmark. And as such, it's a not-all-that-subtle attack on the Nazi occupation. A young wife falls for her older husband's young son (something that Bergman also dealt with, in much funnier fashion, in Smiles of a Summer Night), and when he dies, she's accused of witchcraft. But basically, it's using 17th century witchcraft and the craziness that came with it to comment on Nazism.

Alexander Nevsky is an anti-German Eisenstein film, with a remarkably wooden performance from Nikolai Cherkasov as the titular character. It isn't a film as much as an excuse for Russians to kill Germans. In the 13th century, which they're very careful to point out a few times. But really, Eisenstein definitely made better films, and the suppression of it after the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact may not have been all that bad. It really is just a horribly anti-German and Christian film. Also, the DVD is crap, with barely legible subtitles.

Love in the Time of Hysteria is an early Almodovar-esque sex farce, but made by Alfonso Cuaron (consequently much less gay sex), as the film that made him famous. And it's beautifully filmed with lots and lots of greens, as Cuaron is wont to do. And funny, but oh so wrong. A cad, who enjoys running down to get his paper in the nude, sleeps with his nurse, who gets very offended when he ends up having sex with a different woman in the next apartment basically at the same time, fakes tests so that he thinks he has AIDS. And then learns life lessons as he unwittingly sexually harasses his neighbor, a flight attendant. And there's a luchador and a conquistador in a bizarre dream sequence. And an American who microwaved her poodle is a running joke.

Also on that DVD are two short films, one from Alfonso, and the other from his brother. Alfonso's Quartet for the End of Time is about a loner. It doesn't work at all, but it's one of his earliest films, and as such, has a built in excuse. Carlos Cuaron's Wedding Night, on the other hand, shows his brother's focus on sex and comedy is a family trait, and is pretty funny.

Charlie Bartlett, Smart People, & Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay

Charlie Bartlett is directed by a guy who has an impressively bad collection of editing credits (note that I'm not including Cabin Boy as a bad movie in it, just pretty much every other editing job and honestly, the editing in Cabin Boy wasn't all that hot either), but it also has Robert Downey Jr. as an alcoholic principal. Basically that's his role now, isn't it? He just tries to find people with addictions and just be extremely awesome in those roles? Anton Yelchin and Kat Dennings (I'm not sure what to say about this head/chest shot) are charming enough, but pretty much everything that wasn't completely related to those three characters and their interpersonal relationships just didn't work well. The writer also wrote Youth in Revolt, which is coming out soon with Michael Cera being a badass. Or something to that effect.

Smart People got no reason, smart people got no reason, smart people got no reason to exist. And this film really, really makes that argument. I like Ellen Page, Thomas Haden Church, and Dennis Quaid, who've all done some good work occasionally, but Sarah Jessica Parker really is terrible. It's not particularly good, it's not horrible enough to laugh at, so it's just there. I guess having Ellen Page be an overachieving Young Republican is an interesting choice, but that's about it. If I'm going to see one film about a misanthropic writer learning life lessons in Pennsylvania, I'm certainly just going to rewatch Wonder Boys.

Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay starts with a fantasy sequence that is interrupted by a real-life White House staffer leaving a disgustingly loud poop. Which should give you an idea of the humor level of the movie. Disgustingly huge pubic hair on a dude? Yep (although that was in the middle of a many merkined bottomless party). Disgustingly stereotyped everyone in the movie? Yep. Disgustingly homophobic prison scenes? Yep. Disgustingly huge tits (on Tits Hemingway, who also likes the only Hemingway book that I think is remotely worth reading, A Moveable Feast)? Yep. All that said, I liked it, but it wasn't nearly as good as the first, since that one seemed to just be crazy pot humor, as opposed to some awkward political satire on top of pot humor. Neil Patrick Harris is great, in everything he does, and I now fully get the NPH on a unicorn in front of a rainbow reference I've seen online for the last couple years. Yay? It was fitfully funny, frequently stupid, and extremely disrespectful to Republicans and their ilk. One last thing, has anyone ever heard of anyone actually interrupting a wedding and having it end happily for anyone? It happens all the time in pop culture, but I have never once heard of it even happening in real life, let alone with a happy ending?

The Inglorious Bastards, Kiss of the Spider Woman, & Cars

The Inglorious Bastards is the correctly spelled original, not the Tarantino reusing of the title. Still haven't seen that. This is... a mess, has the least realistic five guys go around and kill everyone with just a few shots, never reload and never get hit gunfights outside of a John Woo film. But at least there, they're filmed well. It's a late 70s war film with stupid characters, unlikely plot twists, a love story that's completely unnecessary, Fred Williamson there almost entirely so that the Nazis would never believe them as Germans, people throwing themselves off a train, and just general silliness. It's racist, misogynistic, and all the things you'd expect from a cheesy 70s film. It reminded me of the movies I used to watch back when I would watch anything about war. And it reminded me of that one scene in Commando where they burst into the next room in the motel just so you can see some tits. But this time it's naked women firing machine guns, sure to get any red-blooded American male hard.

Kiss of the Spider Woman is really good, and it led to thic conversation:
me: watching kiss of the spider woman
Sally Albright: that sounds terrible.
me: imdb it
me: it's really good
Sally Albright: not what I was expecting from the title
Basically, William Hurt puts forward one of the most impressive roles of the 80s, as an imprisoned gay man, sharing a cell with a political prisoner played by Raul Julia (shortly after his triumphant role in Overdrawn at the Memory Bank), and their brief time sharing a cell. It's a very simple plot, except that there's many layers, with Hurt telling the story of a half-remembered Nazi movie that touchingly reflects upon the action of the film. Definitely see this film.

Cars is... amazingly bad for a Pixar film. I have loved every Pixar film I have seen (although when A Bug's Life and Antz came out, I preferred Antz, but now see one as a somewhat enjoyable film and another as great), and their non-Cars films have been better and better going through WALL-E, but this was just offensive. And not funny or good in any way. There's the hippy who sells organic fuel, the sassy black woman, the Italian who sells tires and is obsessed with Ferraris, the Hispanic who has a low-rider and a bodypainting place, Larry the Cable Guy is in it... I mean, how much more offensive do you need to go? But really, the worst thing is that it is a completely non-funny spin of Doc Hollywood (still one of my favorite PG-13 topless scenes, everyone!). And I made it about two minutes before I tried to figure out how the world worked, and realized that there were no humans at all, but somehow they're able to use phones with dialpads, cars have headsets, cars have tongues, and the thing that bothers me is that helicopters don't have pilots. Basically the movie was one long "Make CV really annoyed". I made it through about an hour of it before others were not interested in going on, and I realized I was only watching it to see if it could possibly either be much worse or somehow get better. But it didn't seem like it was going to change, and watching extremely disappointing films is nowhere near as fun as watching films I know are going to be remotely good. And... um... I couldn't stop wondering how more cars are made? Is there car sex in this reality?

Caseus Archivelox: Firelight, The Best Man, Exodus, Harvard Man, & Time of Favor

2002-11-02 - 12:05 a.m.
The first one was Firelight. A sort of Romance novel filmed. With a crappy female fantasy of finding a rich man who is willing to pay for her and then kill his wife for her. Yeah. Really predictable, and any skill shown by Sophie Marceau or the director is wasted in a completely by the book movie. Except for the nudity. There was no time at which I didn't know what was going to happen really. I sort of expected a slightly happier ending, but eh, sadder ending was not any better. Title (Won't bend down. Wig'll fall off.) is something their butler said a couple times, which, while funny, was certainly not something you'd expect from a traditional film, showing a little too much self-reflexive humor for the movie.

2002-11-03 - 12:27 a.m.
The Best Man, an Italian movie from 1998. It was boring as f---. That's really boring. I didn't like any of the characters, it was slow, the dialogue was bland, and it was probably the worst Italian film I have ever seen. That I can remember. And I've seen Italian lesbian vampire films. So you know it's gotta suck. Maybe the last film will be better. I'll let you know when I see it. Oh, and this one has the stupidest opening scrawl and it has the stupidest last line. I think it was the title. I honestly was bored out of my mind for most of the movie, so I can't really remember if it was it or not. But it was set on New Years Eve, 1900. It just sucked.

2002-11-03 - 10:36 p.m.
The movie was Exodus, a special 40th Anniversary remastered version. And for a remastered version of a film, it was in the worst shape I've ever seen. There were lots of scratches, bad sound (sometimes even unsynchronized with the video), and there were scenes edited out. And the film didn't end, it broke. Can't anyone get a good print of a movie? The movie was still pretty good, if long, and a little too 60s for a movie set in the 40s. The movie was at the local big nice theater, and it was full of Jews. At least they had an intermission. They did give out a nice ticket and booklet full of stories from the production of the movie. It was nice.

2002-11-06 - 10:31 p.m.
I watched Harvard Man this evening. One quick thing to mention, would someone explain to me why it says that Ray Allen died in 2000 on the IMDB? I want to point that out before I tell them it's wrong. But it does say that he died on September 15, 2000 in Milwaukee. What's up with that? (EDITOR'S NOTE: This has since been changed.) It was good, nothing too special, except for the absolutely hilarious cameo in the middle of the film. Honestly, it's funnier if you don't expect it, so if you don't want to be spoiled, don't read anymore of this paragraph. I mean it. It won't be as funny if you know. Ok, so Alan took lots of LSD and was running around campus, and he runs into Al Franken and his erstwhile Duke student daughter, Thomasin. It was funny because he really wanted her to go to Harvard, but she mentioned Duke. Which is funny because she went to Duke for a year and then transferred to Harvard. And I saw a naked picture of her. Which is what, I'm convinced, caused her to want to leave Duke. In the movie, he said that she gets too easily embarrassed.

2002-11-13 - 10:41 p.m.
I went to see Time of Favor tonight. It was probably the best Israeli film I've seen. I really highly recommend it. I didn't know enough Hebrew to pick up a lot of the lines, but there were subtitles, even if they were plain white ones, the movie was generally dark enough that I only didn't see one word, and then the camera angle changed, so it was all good. The actors in it were all really good as well, even if the main guy looked like Liev Schreiber, the main girl looked like Amber Benson, the other guy looked like Alan Cumming. And that wasn't all, but I'll let you try to figure them out. Well, except for one, Mookie looked like 1955 Biff from Back to the Future. That should be fun. I can just picture you seeing it now thinking: What is Tara doing going for Cotton Weary? She should be going for Willow. And isn't Alan Cumming gay?

Caseus Archivelox: The Piano Teacher, Blow-Up, The Magnificent Ambersons, Happy Together, Fallen Angels, Kissing Jessica Stein, & Tape

2002-10-27 - 10:11 p.m.
I then went off to Griffith to watch The Piano Teacher. What the f--- is it with the French and pretentiousness films about sex? Baise Moi, Romance, Fat Girl, and The Piano Teacher. I've only seen Romance and The Piano Teacher, and neither were worth my time. Although now I can say that I've seen an Italian porn star's penis. That's not really something that I am proud of though. I just don't see the point in a movie about a sado-masochistic pianist who lives with her mother. And it didn't have an ending that made much sense. I don't see why the French make pretentious sex movies. And then they get praise or notoriety because of said stuff. I guess we Americans aren't completely immune, as we make a hell of a lot of porn each year and percentages say that some has to be pretentious. Hell, some softcore porn I've seen would fit into that category. As in, it tries to have some deep meaning, but it's really just an excuse to see silicone on screen. But at least most wasn't being raised to some lofty height and being suggested that it said something deep about the human condition. The movie was about Schubert and S&M, nothing more.

I went with Blow-Up and The Magnificent Ambersons. Both excellent movies. Blow-Up would've been better had Antonioni used the Velvet Underground as originally planned, because all I could think of when I saw the Yardbirds was how much cooler it would have been with the VU. Mime tennis is also bizarre. Magnificent Ambersons had my new reply when someone asks me what I want to do with my life: a yachtsman. That sounds like a fun job. Neither movie was particularly happy (I choose to ignore the ending added without Welles's blessing).

I checked the online catalog and went with two Wong Kar-Wai films: Happy Together and Fallen Angels. I started with Happy Together, and it's a very gay movie. Lots of shots of the two main characters in tighty whiteys. It is full of wonderfully Wong Kar-Wai touches: fast-mo, slo-mo, freeze frames in the middle of shots, changing grains, going from black and white to color (much better than in the early version of 13 Days I saw), handheld shots, shakycam, very good use of music, lots of overexposure and very bright shots. I was just thinking that the major problem I had with The Piano Teacher was the masochism. I'm not a masochist, at least not a physical one, and I don't like pain, so I just felt incredibly uncomfortable, and I didn't like when she couldn't suppress her gag reflex. I do, however, seem to pick women who are likely to cause me pain. That's not really relevant to anything though. It was just a great movie. Wong Kar-Wai really knows what he's doing, and Chris Doyle is a perfect complement to his skills. I just checked and he also cinematographer for Liberty Heights (a beautiful movie) and for the as-yet unreleased The Quiet American. I really want to see that.

After that, I watched Fallen Angels, originally to be the 3rd part of Chungking Express. The DVD video quality was much worse than for Happy Together, with lots of obvious grain. The gunfights are staged to be as outlandishly over-the-top as John Woo's, but the plot is much more affecting. And the scene where He falls in love with Charlie is one very cool scene. And it hurts all the more afterwards. I mean, it was such a sad and beautiful movie. So if you're wondering what makes me cry: Fallen Angels. That is just a great movie.

I then went to see Kissing Jessica Stein at Griffith. I guess it was good but my friends and I all saw parts of our families on screen, but we also saw almost every plot twist telegraphed. One reason is that we've seen too many movies, but more likely it's that the movie (with the exception of the lesbian angle and the occasionally unnecessary jump cuts and other weird editing and handheld camera choices) was a fairly run of the mill romantic comedy: two neurotic New Yorkers meet, have some immediate attraction, and then have a series of humorous misunderstandings leading to eventual relationship difficulties and an eventual happy ending for all concerned. The only reason this got so much press (mostly good) was that the two stars wrote it and instead of a male and female lead, it was two women, showing that lesbian chic (postmodernly referenced in the movie by the two boorish men before finally driving Jessica into Helena's arms showing beyond a reasonable doubt (as in beyond the clichéd bad date montage) that men are pigs and that's why many women are driven to lesbianism) is still popular. I'll check and see whether I've put my lesbian vs. gay theory here, but I haven't, so here's the short version: anal sex=dirty, oral sex=clean. Thus, gay men are dirty and lesbians are clean. That and the whole having sex with two women at once thing, but if it doesn't concern the man as a threat to his masculinity and male dominance to have a woman probably pleasuring the other woman more than he can, than they are either supremely gifted or supremely deluded. Anyway, that's part of my rant about gays and lesbians. Also, what was with the hardcore rap song when Jessica and Helena were going at it? That attempt to be edgy worked as well as the bickering gay couple (BGC). Although for different reasons: rap didn't fit the film at all, and the BGC is so clichéd that it has its own sitcom.

I saw he had Tape and wanted to see that more, so we watched the little DV film Linklater did while waiting on the long postproduction for Waking Life. Ethan Hawke was excellent, Robert Sean Leonard (whom I saw on Broadway with Billy Crudup in Arcadia, one of the best performances of a play I've ever seen) was also good, while Uma Thurman was the weak link, if mainly for the fact that her character is strangely distant. There were also a lot of shots of the soles of their shoes. It's not a good idea to drink, smoke pot, and snort cocaine, because it really messes with your judgment. And the DV looked very impressive, with only some problems tracking quick movements betraying the DV rather than film.

Cashback, The Last Winter, Winter Soldier, No End in Sight, Night and Fog, Tokyo-Ga, & Paper Dolls

Cashback is the extended feature length version of the short I saw a couple years ago. Now, I don't normally see the short film that longer films are based on first, but I have to say that the film works quite well as an extended version of the short, with added bits not detracting all that much. I thought some of them worked quite well, but really, it's just your typical boy loses girl, boy can't sleep, boy stops time, boy gets job at a supermarket on the night shift, boy falls for checkout girl, boy loses a soccer game 26-0, boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy stops time, boy gets girl with creepy stalkery art exhibit, boy stops time with girl. You know, old school romance. But I still liked it. Of course, some of the more explicit shots of female genitalia are darkened in the feature length version, but if you want to see vaginas, the short is also on the DVD, but more importantly, there's this little thing called the internet. Which, as far as I can tell, is for porn.

The Last Winter moves toward the documentary theme that the rest of the movies I've seen in the last couple weeks fit in. It's not a documentary, but it's an environmental horror film, starring Ron Perlman. There are other people in the movie, but who really cares? Global warming has been thawing out permafrost releasing something that starts driving people crazy. Problem is that it takes forever to actually go anywhere. It's just not a particularly effective thriller or anything. Ron Perlman can't save it.

Winter Soldier just makes me more and more annoyed about Vietnam. Seriously, people, if we didn't have Vietnam, this country would be even more messed up, but that doesn't excuse, I don't know, cutting women open for no reason, skinning people, shooting people for no reason, and more atrocities. John Kerry was right, Republicans were wrong, blah blah blah. Look, Americans aren't perfect, hell, for many years, we've been horribly wrong on a lot of things, so stop acting like we're better than everyone else (except maybe at Football). Vietnam was a mess, but we learned valuable lessons that some people in the Bush administration didn't bother to remember when it came to Iraq.

No End in Sight, is of course, one of the best examples of how we didn't learn anything. Not listening to reasonable people, allowing for decisions to be made without any experience on the ground, supporting corrupt people... hmmm, sounds just like Vietnam, eh? It's frustrating to watch people be completely oblivious (or plain lying) about their decisions and how they have led to the current mess in Iraq (and Afghanistan, for that matter). It's even more frustrating to have been right about it ahead of time. As a civilian, I certainly was right about going into Iraq being a terrible thing (you're lucky I'm only reposting my movie reviews from my last blog, because I was full of great vengeance and furious anger throughout most of 2002 and 2003 and 2004 about Bush), but it must feel even worse to have been a member of the administration and not been able to tell your superiors that they're fraking stupid without them just ignoring you.

Night and Fog is a 30-minute-long look at Auschwitz (and other concentration camps) during the war and in 1955. As it's only 30 minutes long, it glosses over things, makes generalizations and the like, but it does have extremely powerful footage and narration about the actual structure of the death camps, and who was responsible. I had no idea it was that short (even after looking at the Netflix envelope), and was extremely confused when it just seemed to end. The lack of in-depth... anything, really, means that it would work perfectly for classroom viewing, but there have to be better ways to cover the Holocaust. Although the enormous amount of documentaries and movies may put the lie to that.

Tokyo-Ga is Wim Wenders (doing his best Werner Herzog impression (and they do sound exactly the same)) going to Tokyo to try to figure out what made Yasujiro Ozu tick but mainly just pointing out how odd Japan was in the 80s. Driving ranges, pachinko parlors, and Japanese people with feathered hair mix with Chishu Ryu talking about his experience with Ozu, Wenders filming kids playing baseball in a cemetary, and, in the strangest scene, a rockabily dance off on the streets. There's also bits where he meets Chris Marker (of La Jetee and Sans Soleil fame) and visits a wax food factory (which was wild). But ultimately, as with most Herzog documentaries, this is less about the ostensible subjects of the film and more about Wenders. I can't recommend it to anyone who isn't a fan of Wenders, Ozu, AND Japan in the 80s, so that really limits people's interest in this film.

Paper Dolls is about a group of people I never knew existed: transsexual Filipino(a?)s who came to Israel to fill jobs that Palestinians used to do before the Intifada caused Israel to close the borders. And they're as mistreated as guest workers in any other country are: if there are any problems or the patient that they're working as nurses dies, they get deported. It's sick. These transsexuals also spend time dancing and lip synching (horribly) in clubs, and part of the plot is that they're trying to put together a show. It would make a much more Hollywood movie if they were great and took the world by storm, but they kinda sucked. And this caused some problems for them, because it just made some of them depressed.

Caseus Archivelox: 24 Hour Party People & Romance

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

The Bank Job, Never Forever, The Savages, Joy Division, Honeydripper, & The Fall of Fujimori

The Bank Job basically exists for one scene and one scene only: near the end, Jason Statham kicks ass. Sure, the parts before it are a pretty good based on a true story heist film. It's really not clear how much of it is remotely true, and my suspicion is that vast majorities are not remotely true. It's a slick film from a lot of people who have been in the industry for years, plus, huge amounts of gratuitous nudity. Yay?

Never Forever is a film about an American housewife who is married to a bigshot Korean lawyer, but they can't have kids, so she starts having sex with a Korean immigrant so they can have a kid. Of course, they fall in love and complications ensue. Also, Koreans+religion=crazy religious. Weirdly, abortion is portrayed as an acceptable alternative for the baby. Vera Farmiga is weirdly attractive and is topless in many scenes. Other than that, there's really very little to recommend the film to anyone. It's not a bad film, but it wasn't really worth my time. Should've just looked for the naked video clips online and watched Hiroshima Mon Amour. Which is the top of the five movies tagged with Asian Man White Woman Relationship on IMDB. I've seen three of the other four, but there have to be other movies that need this tag.

The Savages is a depressing film about a teacher and his writer sister whose father is suffering from dementia. Acting is good from everyone and really it's just a little too depressing to enjoy at all.

Joy Division is the documentary counterpart of Control. As such, I really knew so much of what was going to happen, recognized video, and few things were remotely new. Still, it's good to finally get the versions of the stories from the people who lived them. I don't think that I need to explain how much I love Joy Division. I'm happy that I don't have to wallow for another 90 minutes in depression for a little while though.

Honeydripper is John Sayles's latest film. Somehow he's gone two years without releasing a new film. Of course, Silver City wasn't all that good. This one wasn't all that good either, although the soundtrack was full of blues and early rock 'n' roll. It's disappointing to think of how he's such a great director, and to see him just make a not worth much film is worse than if it hadn't been a Sayles film.

The Fall of Fujimori is about the former president of Peru, an agrarian engineer son of Japanese immigrants who ended up serving as president for about ten years until he stepped down due to being horribly corrupt. Well, his family disagrees, but he did some good, taking down the Shining Path. He comes across as a guy who is completely disconnected from the reality of what he has done, using a loophole in Japanese law to hide there until after the release of the documentary. Of course, he's since been arrested in Chile and extradited to Peru where he's serving maybe 40ish years? He's had at least four trials, so I think that's right. He's also had to deal with running against his ex-wife in the 1995 presidential election, and his daughter is currently in congress, with his ex-wife a former member of congress (after she lost her title of First Lady (given by Fujimori to his daughter)). Seriously, just a weird story.

Batman: Gotham Knight, The Machine Girl, & Rampo Noir

Batman: Gotham Knight is basically a series of short stories about Batman done in an anime style. The first one, Have I Got a Story for You, is a fine story, messing with the Batman mythos, but the animation style is just a very small step above Aeon Flux, distracting me and bugging me until it was over. Crossfire was creepy, and extremely effective. Much better visually, but still not very clear when it comes to plot. This trend is positive, and I liked the rest of them. They're not all particularly good, but they're an interesting twist. I think I'm going to stick with the Paul Dini series when it comes to my animated Batman. I like that this exists.

Rampo Noir is a series of four short films based on stories by Edogawa Rampo, who wrote the stories that Horrors of Malformed Men. These... are pretty much trash. The first one is complete trash, the second less so, the third less so, and the fourth less, but still, why the hell did I sit through the first one? The first story is all silent and has naked wrestling. Completely ridiculous. The second has naked bondage and melty wax sex. Ugh. The third one is about a woman who amputates her husbands arms and legs, puts them in jars, and then has sex with him. Ostensibly this is to keep him out of having to fight in a war. The entire thing somehow was stretched out to 134 minutes. Man, did I regret watching this.

The Machine Girl is a movie with special effects by the guy who did them on Tokyo Gore Police, Suicide Club, Noriko's Dinner Table, and Exte: Hair Extensions. That gives you an idea of how crazy this film is. It's just about halfway between the absolute insanity that is Tokyo Gore Police and Noriko's Dinner Table. Lots of spurting blood, cartoony villains (the main bad guy's wife is comically evil), a tempura arm, drill bra, decapitations, blood soup, a chainsaw foot, many gratuitous panty shots, and the titular Machine Girl who has an arm cut off and replaced with a machine gun. There's a sequel. I need to see it. Along with their new film, RoboGeisha.

Caseus Archivelox: Monster's Ball

2002-08-26 - 9:07 p.m.
I saw a movie that wasn't particularly good tonight. In fact, you might say that it sucked monster's balls. Well, I certainly would. Long, boring, with no characters I cared for. And the sex scene was typical overcutting, out-of or soft-focus crap. If you want an impressive sex scene, watch Bound, the Wachowski brothers' first directorial effort, with an incredible one-shot scene. Anyone can have too much cutting, it takes talent to do an impressive single take. But Billy Bob still sucks, Puff Daddy (oh no, he's going to come and find me and kill me because I used Puff Daddy) can act like I can hammer a six-inch spike through a board with my penis. Not right now, and it's not looking like it's going to happen anytime soon.