A Simple Tool

Maybe it’s the drugs talking, but I have to say if Jesus made a movie it would be Godzilla Final Wars.  As I was watching, I discussed the ridiculous amazingness of this movie with a certain lady friend (hi lady friend!).  At one point, I said this: the first one liner? “I’m sorry but I’m a vegetarian” and then the dude shoots a machine gun laser into a lobster monster’s brain.  <—-See? awesome It’s directed by the guy who directed Versus (see my review of Midnight Meat Train), and, yes, it is just as ridiculous.  Example: random American dude, who for some reason speaks English the entire movie, carries around a samurai sword the whole time…Why? who knows, he basically doesn’t even use it (so the movie isn’t perfect).  Basically, there are about three minutes that aren’t a fight of some sort.  These minutes are so unbelievably overacted that it’s actually underacted (just kidding, they’re still ridiculously overacted). I can’t even think rationally about this movie, too much awesome.  I’ll try though:

Plot summary: Are you kidding?  It’s Destroy All Monsters II, only without the character development (if you haven’t seen Destroy all Monsters 1.) you fail 2.) you should be able to guess exactly how much character development Destroy All Monsters has).  Basically, the entire world gets destroyed by monsters, seriously like every city on Earth is annihilated (I’m fairly certain that like 8 people survive).  Then Godzilla fights every monster ever, there’s also Kung Fu.

Ok, shitty parts: No samurai sword fight (as mentioned above), The end of the movie prominently features Baby Godzilla (although I feel like this was partially a joke/homage/we can’t figure out how to end this thing (Versus had the same problem)).  And there is one final sin, one so egregious that it forces me to downgrade this movie from Jesus-made to merely John the Baptist-made….they don’t use the fucking Akira Ifukube Godzilla theme song!!!! seriously, what the FUCK!  Arghhhh, this was about 1 goddamn song away from the greatest movie ever.  Seriously, moronic…It had better have been some legal thing.

Anyway, calming down…if you are into b-movies or Godzilla at all, you need to watch this movie.  Preferably in a crowd, preferably drinking/other activities.  Actually, as long as you’re not completely lame you will love this movie, it’s ridiculous in all the right ways.  Rent it…now.

Val Kilmer is awful in this movie.  Seriously, seriously awful.  Like, starts annoying, goes out the other side to hilarious, and then works its way all the way back to annoying.  He’s trying to do this emotionless bad-ass type thing and utterly failing.  Just terrible.  Unfortunately, Val Kilmer is the main character of the movie.  Without Kilmer, this might actually have been a fairly decent little David Mamet movie (much like Mamet’s film from this year Redbelt, which was pretty darn good, although nothing particularly memorable).  The basic premise of the movie is nothing special: president’s daughter kidnapped, super agent (played horrifically by Val Kilmer) sent after her.  However, Mamet does a pretty good job with this tired premise.  Mainly, by focusing entirely on the perspective of the (incredibly poorly acted) Val Kilmer character.  There’s no “meta” level meetings with top brass, you never even see the president, etc… On top of that, the actual direction is good (very minimalist or, ahem, spartan), the supporting cast is decent, good dialogue (duh)….   Overall, it’s a competent, decent little thriller.  Oh, there are some weird moments (mostly courtesy of Val Kilmer’s extreme suckiness factor), like the scene where one of Kilmer’s proteges is killed and he goes nuts calling her baby even though there’s no hint of a romance between them before that (and he’s extremely unemotional when others are killed).  This scene is, of course, made even more ridiculous by the EXTREME SHITTINESS of Val Kilmer’s acting.  Oh and the end, the final line of the movie?  Awful, simply awful…guess who delivers it?

I can not in good conscience recommend this movie.  You can’t even just mock Kilmer’s performance for comedy value, the rest of the movie is too good for that.

Seriously, Val Kilmer, terrible

Before today, Trainspotting belonged to that embarrassingly large category of movies which I haven’t seen but am ashamed to admit that I haven’t seen.  Godfather II was perhaps the greatest example of this until earlier this year when I finally saw it (BTW, and I’m just putting this on the table, Godfather II = overrated…there I said it).  Anyway, Trainspotting? Not overrated…well I only say that because I’m not exactly sure how Trainspotting is rated…it’s a good movie, Obi One Kenobi (how the fuck do you spell Obi One? oh, Obi Wan…yeah thanks Google)  is all addicted to heroin and whatnot, and I couldn’t understand about half of the dialogue but I enjoyed the bits I could discern.  If I had to complain about anything in this movie it’s that 1.) it drags a little in the late middle (post Kenobi getting clean), I dunno just the whole diversion to London was weird.  and 2.) that dead baby scared the everliving fuck out of me when it was on the ceiling.  So, Trainspotting is a good movie, not the best Danny Boyle movie (I heart Sunshine also Millions) but pretty damn good nonetheless, and to maintain your pop-culture cred you really need to see this movie if you haven’t already.  Consider it recommended.

Note: I know this review is considerably less verbose then normal (this may be a good thing, although if you think so I’d like to say: shut up, dick) this is mainly because I’ve been drinking and am extraordinarily lazy.

Note: I believe this is my 100th post (yay!)

All right, I know I said that Midnight Meat Train was a fairly decent horror movie, but this movie kicks its ass in basically every respect (except for the Vinnie Jones knocking dudes eyeballs out with a hammer category).  Then again, there are a few different kinds of horror movie.  There’s the slasher, which isn’t really scary at all, there’s the gore movie, which is sort of a hybrid of the slasher and a more psychological movie (I’d put Meat Train here), and there’s the ghost story/psychological horror movie, which actually attempts to scare you.  The Orphanage is definitely the latter.  So, you really can’t fault Meat Train for being less scary then The Orphanage, it’s a different kind of movie.  Nonetheless, The Orphanage is simply a better movie (except in the aforementioned eyeball splatting category), a better exemplar of its particular horror genre.

In short, this movie is scary as all hell.  Mainly it’s because little kids are fucking creepy.  So are sack cloth masks.  Combine them and bam, scary shit.  You ever play the old game Sanitarium?  This movie reminds me of the evil children level of Sanitarium,  it’s got deformed kids, sack masks, that creepy sound of children laughing, etc etc…(although the movie doesn’t have an evil plant alien that you can light on fire, mores the pity).  The plot in short: lady + husband move into the orphanage where she grew up with their HIV positive adopted son Simon.  Simon has imaginary friends, one (of course) turns out to be a malevolent ghost, Simon vanishes, mayhem ensues.  Not to spoil anything, but what happens to Simon is pretty heartbreaking.  Anyway, the director (Juan Antonio Bayona) does a great job showing us horrific scenes without blinking, none of that quick cut bullshit that infests most American horror.  I’m somewhat at a loss for word right now but if you’re any kind of horror fan you should absolutely see this movie.  One of the best horror movies of the last couple years (still not better than The Descent).  Strong Recommendation.

I have a curious relationship with documentaries.  I rarely, very rarely, go out of my way to watch them, often actively avoiding them.  Yet, I enjoy most of the documentaries I watch….weird.  This documentary is a portrait of Dominic Noonan, a British crime lord who seems to run much of Manchester.  This movie is an interesting case.  On one hand, the subjects are fascinating.  On the other, the editing and stylistic choices in the movie are terrible.  Just a lot of stylistic nonsense that really pulls you out of the film (especially in the beginning).  So it’s a bit uneven.

As for the source material itself: Dominic is an incredibly compelling figure.  He walks around playing the whole “crime boss who cares about his community” role but the danger that lies right beneath the surface is clearly evident.  Oh, he’s also gay.  One particularly chilling moment occurs when the interviewer is speaking with Dominic’s younger associates and he calls them criminals, all the geniality drains out of the 17 year old gangster as they inform the interviewer that they aren’t criminals, in a manner which suggest that there had better not be any further questions on this matter.  It’s mildly terrifying.  Also, fascinating is the underlying seediness of the whole scene.  The houses are decrepit, unfinished, and cramped.  Beneath the fancy suits, the gangsters are uncouth thugs with bad skin and rage issues.

Unlike a “documentary” like Religulous, A Very British Gangster actually endeavours to educate you about a subject, also unlike Religulous it doesn’t suck.  There are layers upon layers here, from the young hungry gangsters who will eventually supplant Dominic to his neglected/tragic family.   I keep using the word fascinating, but it’s probably the most apt term for this film…it’s also available on Netflix Watch Instantly, give it a shot if you’re interested at all, it’s a good movie.

Was this a particularly poorly written review?  it felt like it…Sorry.

Good horror movies are few and far between.  It’s much easier to crank out a 10 million dollar shit PG-13 slasher movie that will make 50 million because idiot teenagers will watch anything, then it is to spend the same amount of money on something unique and challenging that may make very little, or in the case of this movie get utterly shafted (because it was too gory? I forget the story behind the whole deal) and barely get released in theaters.  And it’s a shame really, because this movie is pretty darn good, and not even just on the sliding scale of genre movies  (mild digression: good horror movies of the last couple years: The Descent (which is freaking excellent) 1408, The Mist, and I can’t think of any other, feel free to put some in the comments).

Based on a Clive Barker story from the Book of Blood collection, Midnight Meat Train is the story of a photographer who discovers some shenanigans going on in the subway, shenanigans which mostly involve Vinnie Jones (digression: check out the /filmcast after dark episode with Paul Scheer for some awesome Vinnie Jones anecdotes) killing the everliving shit out of people (seriously he knocks a dudes eyeballs out with a hammer).  (Digression: does anyone know how to do footnotes in wordpress? is that even possible?  I mean not to totally rip off the late-great by some accounts (although I have mixed feelings) David Foster Wallace but footnotes are cool.)  Anyway, while this movie isn’t exactly scary on the same level as The Descent (seriously, watch the fucking Descent), it’s more gory scary, there are some pretty freaky parts, including some jump scares which actually work (as opposed to the cat jumps out at you every ten seconds scares of some movies, such as every J-horror remake since The Ring)  There was also some attempted psychological horror, with the protagonist sort of losing it as he pursues the mystery deeper, but it was short-circuited a bit by the weakest part of the film, the quick breakdown of his relationship with his fiance/girlfriend.  It really feels like 1-3 scenes between them were cut out of the movie, which didn’t really seem necessary because the film doesn’t exactly drag at 90ish minutes.  Holy shit, I just looked at the wikipedia page for this movie and realized that it’s directed by the guy that did Versus.  I will now reprint my review of Versus, which was btw my second ever blog post:

It kicks ass on every level imaginable but don’t take it from me, take it from this brief plot summary:

Two guys escape from prison. One is a Yakuza badass the other is simply an uber badass. They meet up with Yakuza-badasses Badass Yakuza friends and non-Yakuza badass gets into a kung fu fight with them. Then zombies show up, zombies with machine guns, violence ensues. Soon afterwards, two crazy cops with more machine guns and an evil 500 year old wizard/demon/badass guy also show up and everybody start machine gunning, kung fu fighting, and occasionally whipping out samurai swords and stabbing each other. This goes on for about two hours.

If that description didn’t make you want to see the movie then I hope you die. In a fire.

no wonder Midnight Meat Train is good.  Yeah, so this movie has a lot of gore and scary bits.  That should pretty much tell you if it’s worth renting or not.  If you’re a Meredith-level wimp, then don’t, if you’re a fan of horror, rent this movie

Or, as I like to call it, “Bill Mahr wants you to know that he’s smarter then you, oh, and religion sucks and will kill everyone”.  Since, it’s in theaters now I’ll just link to a trailer rather than describe the basic structure (here).  I had a lot of problems with this movie, both as a student of religion and as a fan of film.  Instead of tying them all together into a paragraph, I’ll basically just do bullet points.  Two disclaimers: 1.) I’m normally a fan of Bill Mahr and 2.) I’m an atheist, myself:

• Bill Mahr is obviously coming at the whole subject from the angry-atheist school of Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins.  I am not a fan of this school of thought.  Namely, because Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins have no idea what the fuck they’re talking about.  Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist, not a scholar of religion, but at least he’s educated.  Harris on the other hand is not trained in the field at all and basically just spews angry teenager arguments against religion.  Even better, he’s one of those enthusiasts of “eastern religion”, who posits that the eastern religions are somehow intrinsically better then their western counterparts.  I could go on and on about how this whole world-view is essentially a product of the nineteenth century colonial enterprise in India, but why bother?  Anyway, all these “scholars” (in scare quotes as none of them are actually scholars in the field) suggest that by somehow eliminating religion (and how exactly would this occur?  none of them seem to be able to answer this.  Nor, do they explain how exactly religion exists as a separable part of human society/culture) the world would be improved as a whole.  This is utter bunk, it posits that religion somehow acts as a malevolent force within society, distinct from the forces of culture and human nature.  As if people would be nice, if only it weren’t for big bad religion.  Ugh, I could go on about this point forever, but won’t belabor it anymore.
• Bill Mahr spends a large portion of this film mocking people for being stupid.  This is not necessarily a bad thing, stupid people are funny.  However, there comes a point where it stops being funny and just starts being cruel.  I feel like Religulous crosses this line fairly early, for the reason below:
• Mahr/Director Larry Charles (of Borat) edits the film in what I view to be a borderline unethical manner.  Essentially, they cut in shots that clearly aren’t in context (As in, Mahr will say something then a reaction shot will be shown that is clearly from a different part of the interview) in order to either make a joke or make the folks Mahr is interviewing look dumber.  The question is: what level of distortion is acceptable in a documentary, even a comedic one?
• Bill Mahr gives very little time to anyone who’s actually knowledgable about religion and when they are given time their views are misrepresented.  Here, I’m specifically thinking about the Roman Catholic theologian who states some modern Catholic theology, and is basically presented as an Atheist with a collar (as my friend Jason put it).  This is also a questionable distortion, although I wonder if Bill Mahr even knows that this is, in fact, actual modern theology?.
• Finally, and I’ll make this my last point, Bill Mahr presents some information in the film as authoritative/definitive that is far from it.  Here, I’m specifically (although not exclusively) thinking of the whole Egyptian god’s/Jesus comparison.  It’s crap scholarship.   The problem comes from the fact that people will see this film, take this crap seriously, and then repeat it, spreading bad info outward (see: my issues with the load of excrement that masqueraded as a book: The Da Vinci Code).  The sad part is that a lot of the people that will do this are otherwise intelligent, well informed individuals.  People who will go out of their ways to learn about political candidates, or global issues, but just regurgitate anti-religious crap because it fits into their world-view.  Sigh.

So, it’s pretty obvious that I didn’t like this movie.  Was there anything worthwhile within it?  I won’t deny that there are some very funny moments.  However, after a certain point, I stopped laughing as the problems with the film either continued, or grew worse.  The end of the film was especially bad, as Mahr just goes off the rails ranting about how we should go out and destroy religion, this attitude is somehow not as bad as fundamentalists who believe that we should go out and destroy the wrong religions.  Anyway, if you couldn’t tell I do not recommend this movie at all, avoid it.  If you must see it, wait till it comes out on video and be aware of the distortions/misinformation/skewed world-view contained within.

Ok, Religulous tomorrow.  Now: British gangster movie.  Yeah, 3 movies in one day, bold move, bold move.

I first heard of this movie in a review of Guy Ritchie’s new movie Rocknrolla (which I’m mildly interested in seeing), as in Gangster No. 1 is better than Rocknrolla.  So, onto the Netflix queue it went and, through the miracle of watch instantly, here it is.  First off, this is most emphatically not a Guy Ritchie style gangster movie.  I mean there are British people, and crime, but that’s about it.  Nor is it like in the same vein as Layer Cake, although it is much closer to that film then the stylish Lock Stock model with a far more reprehensible protagonist.   I’d locate it somewhere between Layer Cake and Sexy Beast on the grand scale of British gangster movies.  Oh, and the majority of it takes place in the 60s, so maybe it’s kinda like The Bank Job.  I guess the point is, this is not a Guy Ritchie movie.

Ok, that rambling little digression over, let us move on.  The titular No. 1 Gangster in this movie (Paul Bettany as a young man and Malcolm McDowell as an older man and as the narrator), and what I suppose you could call our hero, is a profoundly bad person, essentially an utter sociopath.  It’s a difficult task to have an evil protagonist, you have to make him compelling enough that all the bad shit they do doesn’t turn off the viewer.  This movie does a pretty decent job.  Basically the Gangster (you never get his name) is a psychopathic power-hungry gangster trying to rise to the top, he’s also got a Patrick Batemen-esque obsession with nice clothes.  Right, so it seems like it’s your basic rise and fall of a criminal story (more on the fall later).  There’s a ridiculously brutal torture scene, shot in the first person (with the sound and visuals going in and out as the torture goes on and the victim loses consciousness/dies), where the Gangster methodically tortures and kills the mobster who killed his boss (despite the fact that the Gangster basically sets this killing up so he can take over, also because he may/may not have been in love with the boss’s lady), so that’s intense and unique.  It certainly makes the whole “rise” part of the story interesting, and bloody.  However, I was not a huge fan of the “rise to the top montage” but what can yah do?

Kind of serious problem: Paul Bettany and Malcolm McDowell look nothing alike, Bettany is like half a foot taller.  It’s especially weird because all the other people are the same actors in the 60s and 90s, just with make-up.  It’s like they had Bettany cast and then McDowell signed on so they had to put him in somewhere.  In addition, Bettany is better as a sociopath in the film, he’s got an eerier stare and all.  McDowell does crazy better, but it’s more like angry crazy rather than cold and calculating crazy.  This is something, you’ll have to move past…it’s a little distracting, especially the change in the nature of crazy between the two.

Finally, the end of this movie made no sense to me.  I mean, I get why what happened happened, but it seemed 1.) extremely rushed and 2.) kind of unnecessary.  I think I would have preferred it if the film had left it a little more ambiguous what happens to the Gangster.  So, basically if you watch this movie you should stop right around the time that he meets back up with a certain guy.  In fact, if the movie had ended there it would have been better.  Mildly entertaining, nothing groundbreaking, overall kinda meh.  This does not give me high expectations for Rocknrolla.

All right, originally this was supposed to be a review of Religulous but I have a lot to say about that movie, and I’m going to save them until I can collect my thoughts.  Quick and dirty:  I think it is a profoundly cruel and troubling movie.  And this comes from the point of view of a non-believer.  In the meantime, The Salton Sea:

Bit of knowledge that I’m dropping on you: This movie was directed by the guy that directed Disturbia and Eagle Eye (spoiler for Eagle Eye so you don’t go watch it:  the bad guy on the phone is an evil computer trying to kill the president, yes, it is as idiotic as it sounds).

Ok, the review, for serious.  This is a drug movie, a small odd little genre that has produced really good movies (Requiem For a Dream) and a fair number of utterly forgettable little films none of which are ever granted a mainstream release.  In The Salton Sea the drug of choice is crystal meth, fun fun.  Val Kilmer is a meth addict/police informant who’s basically living a double life trying to investigate the death of his wife. It’s not a great movie, but it’s certainly not a bad movie.  Some parts are actually rather good, Val Kilmer does a decent job and it has Peter Saarsgard, who’s always good.  The no-nose secondary bad guy is creepy as all hell, I’m not sure who the actor is but his mannerisms were great.  The direction is fairly competent.  There is some lousiness, however.  The opening narration is heavy handed as hell and some of the initial flashback scenes are pretty poorly acted.  Val Kilmer’s plan for revenge is a bit outlandish, however, I don’t want to spoil anything but it seems to rely on some very specific things happening, and is very obvious given the Chekov’s gun we see earlier in the film.  MILD SPOILER Also, he seemed to kick the whole meth habit pretty damn quick END SPOILER.  In the end, I’m not really willing to give this movie a strong recommendation, I mean it’s ok, it’s entertaining, but it’s nothing that I’d go out of my way to see.  It’s basically an “if it’s on tv” kinda movie.  Given the subject matter, though, there’s virtually no chance of it showing up on TV.  I dunno if you have space on your Netflix queue, go for it.

The theme song to this movie, by Iggie Pop, kicks ass. Anyway, onward and upward:

Young punk rocker, Emilio Estevez (who is super, super young in this movie and not quite what you’d call a “good” actor), gets fired, gets dumped, etc etc that whole usual life-falling-apart thing.  Anyway, he becomes a repo man with Harry Dean Stanton, a job which apparently involves a lot of drugs, drinking, and getting shot at.  Then everything gets really weird and there’s this car whose trunk glows like the box from Kiss Me Deadly (or, to reference a more popular movie and not show off my film nerd credentials, the suitcase in Pulp Fiction) and melts people (also like the box in Kiss Me Deadly (by the by, Kiss Me Deadly is a pretty sweet movie) but unlike the briefcase in Pulp Fiction) and may have an alien in it (which is in neither Kiss Me Deadly nor Pulp Fiction).  The whole movie has that nihilistic punk rock vibe that runs through a strand of low budget, pre-Resevoir Dogs, indies.  I’m not a big fan.  It often leads to some crappy comedy bits predicated on people saying the f-word and then giggling.  Now, I’m a big fan of the word “fuck” but I don’t really think it’s particularly funny.  The Emilio trying to get some with the alien-obsessed girl scenes are particularly lame.  Also, the punk rock thieves characters suck, it’s much better after they get melted/run away.  I guess punk rock stereotypes don’t really hold up in the year 2008.  Despite this, the movie has a sort of endearing weirdness and sense of humor, that manages to keep hold of you for the relatively brief running time.  It’s pretty much the exact definition of a cult movie: low budget, crappy acting, weirdness, still somehow decent.  Anyway, it’s pretty hard to review a cult classic.  If you’re into fare like Buckaroo Banzai then you’ll like it, if you aren’t a fan of cult movies you won’t.  I, being a fan of cult cinema (although not as much as in the salad days of my youth) enjoyed it.

Side note: I apologize for any incoherence in my review, it’s hard to write a review while also trying to translate Latin.

Also, someone may have just been shot in hearing range, I’m not sure.