A Simple Tool

Wasn’t this movie supposed to be good?  Because it’s damn irritating and not just because of the presence of that supremely shitty actress Juliette Lewis.  Seriously, the whole thing seems to be an exercise in “what weird ass stylistic trick can I use in this scene?”.  I don’t even want to call it pretentious, because there seems to be no intelligence to it.  It’s like a .9 on the Tony Scott scale, and Tony Scott sucks (at least recently).   And, of course, the whole thing is a ’satire’ (in scare quotes because it pretty much fails at that) which is so damn heavy-handed that it freaking hurts.  I barely made it past the first half hour, honestly.  It’s excruciating.  Not even the Tarantino script is that good, there’s certainly nothing like the Sicilian scene from True Romance, which I was always led to believe was a similar movie.  Plus the protagonists are ridiculously irritating and unlikeable.  I mean, I know they’re serial killers and all, but American Psycho and Henry both did serial killer movies with bearable (and compelling) protagonists (and Henry was really twisted).  Seriously, I can’t think of a single reason to recommend this movie, maybe because it’s some sort of controversial cultural landmark…but, for realsies, just read the wikipedia page or something.  dumb

Ugh ugh ugh, I wrote a whole long review of this movie and it absolutely sucked.  Like here’s the only usable sentence:  There’s a really cool scene (and creepy character moment) where Welles idly doodles a swastika while on the phone, it’s little touches like this that makes Welles awesome.

I really don’t feel up for making another attempt at a readable review so, I’m just going to throw out a couple of notes.

This movie is directed by Orson Welles, but the direction isn’t really anything special.  It really seems like one of his more minor efforts (although I’m not necessarily the greatest expert on Welles filmography).  Welles’ acting, however, (as indicated by the quote above) is pretty kick ass.  The female lead is pretty great too.  She really pulls off the whole “in denial about having married a Nazi” thing (especially at the end).  Oh yeah, the movie is about Orson Welles being an escaped Nazi living in America and Edward G. Robinson tracking him down (yay escaped Nazi war criminal movies!  See: The Boys from Brazil, which was pretty kick ass).  Anyway, it’s a pretty good little 40s thriller, with the added bonus of allowing you to gain +4 film credibility points because of Welles.  Available on watch instantly and certainly worth your time.

Oh, the transfer is pretty sucky on the Netflix watch instantly version, which is unfortunate, but it’s not so bad that you can’t deal with it.

Finally, since I’ve just passed the halfway point of this little review quest here are the top and bottom 3 movies in order from the first 25:

Top 3 (ok this was more difficult than I thought).

1. Let the Right One In
2. The Woodsman
3. Godzilla Final Wars

Bottom 3.

1. Religulous
2. Harold
3. Eagle vs. Shark

Yay! Halfway!

So, Ryan Reynolds is funny, Justin Long is funny, the guy who plays Todd Packer on The Office is funny (sometimes), the guy from Pushing Daisies and Boston Public is good (Chi something?  Chi McBride? looking stuff up is for losers) and a lot of people seem to think Anna Farris is funny (I don’t necessarily see what the big deal is).  The material in this movie, however, isn’t all that funny.  Basically, we have a bunch of talented, funny people in a movie that’s just not well written, like at all.  The result?  A really uneven and utterly forgettable movie.  One of the biggest problems is that a number of the recurring jokes are just awful, such as the angry girl who curses a lot, wow how edgy….seriously, great humor.

The sad thing is that this movie could have been better.  I mean dumb humor can be a lot of fun.  I freaking love Out Cold for reasons I can’t actually discern (I blame Theo, that scuzzy fuck).  But when dumb humor goes wrong, it’s just goddamn boring.  (Sidenote: Old Cold to the top of the queue) This movie doesn’t even really have much of a plot, it’s basically badly written joke only redeemable because the cast is good, badly written joke only redeemable because the cast is good, badly written joke only redeemable because the cast is good, big climatic scene, end.  Color me profoundly underwhelmed.  Skip it.

Ok, a few notes:  I haven’t posted in a number of days (blame Nikolai (who promised me he’d post something making fun of foreigners pretty soon)) I did catch two new movies in the theater RocknRolla and Quantum of Solace, both ok, neither great…Quantum was better then the bad reviews make it out to be, but it was a little disapointing as a follow-up to Casino Royale. Speaking of Bond, the other night I got mildly (extremely) drunk and bought every James Bond movie for 80 bucks on Amazon.  So the plan is, after this whole 50 movies thing is done, I’m going to watch and review every James Bond movie…God I’m sure you just can’t wait.  Huzzah.

Anyway, I’m not going to review the two movies I saw in the theater.  Instead, Kevin Smith.

A Threevening is the third (duh) of the Kevin Smith q&a storytime happy fun time movies.  So, it’s basically Kevin Smith telling funny stories and taking questions from the audience.  I imagine that most people can figure out if they have any interest in the movie based on those two sentences, but I’ll go on because, you know, I talk too much.  Ok, actually I don’t have much to say.  It’s not like this movie has what you’d call cinematography, it’s Kevin Smith standing on stage and being sweaty.  The stories are pretty damn funny, it’s much better than the second of the series although not as good as the first (which was amazing), probably because it’s all from one event rather than three.  Just like in the other two “evening” films, the worst part is the audience members attempting to be funny, seriously, just let Kevin Smith ramble.  But aside from those bits of loserdom, it’s hilarious.  Go rent it.  Sorry for the lame review.

Oh, I’ll also try to post some academic junk before Thanksgiving (Eriugena FTW!).  Hold your breath.

Yeah, my Friday nights are full of suck…So I watched a movie.  This is one of those mid-90s indies which basically consists of people just sitting around and talking.  Of that genre, this is a member of the “men sitting around talking and agonizing about women”.  Basically, all these movies focus around men who are agonizing about getting married.  Hence, they come off as emo as all fuck.  Seriously, do men actually have these conversations in their late 20s…will I start having these conversations soon?  I feel like if this happens to me, I might as well just shoot myself because I’m an incredible boring and insipid person. Can you tell that I’m not really a fan of the genre?  Yeah, this movie is basically a crappy version of Beautiful Girls (sans pedophile-esque subplot).  Somehow it won Sundance, I can’t imagine how.  It’s boring, the dialogue is stilted, and there’s some true awfulness (Ed Burns’ hair, the really out of place and scattered voice-overs, more hair cuts, the whole weird Irish thing (I’ve never witnessed Irish people behaving like this)).  Anyway, I really don’t feel like expending any real effort on a review.  The movie was boring and for a comedy, it wasn’t very funny.  Yeah, go rent something else…I don’t really get the point of this movie.

Oh, also the sound is awful in this movie, the voices especially are really off.  It’s disconcerting.

Since I’m perpetually lame, I spent my Halloween sitting in my apartment alone and watching scary movies, rather then attending one of the roughly 50 billion parties going on in Hyde Park.  While watching Aliens for roughly the millionth time, I realized that there has not been a single female action star worth discussing since Sigourney Weaver in the Alien series and Linda Hamilton in Terminator (that I can remember…I could be wrong).  This is, of course, not to say that there haven’t been female action heroes (that’s an awkward phrase but the best I can come up with right now) since those movies, just that they suck.  So why haven’t there been any iconic female action stars since James Cameron went off to make documentaries about the Titanic?

I think the key is realism.  Above all else, Weaver and Hamilton’s characters were REAL.  It’s the same reason the Die Hard is still the greatest action movie of all time, realism realism realism (compare to the newest Die Hard (which sucked) with super-McClane). Today we get 90 pound super model looking women (Milla Jovovich comes to mind) beating up 250 pound men who are supposedly bad-ass types.  This is utterly ridiculous.  Just because someone can do some sort of fancy spinning round kick doesn’t mean that they can take down 13 dudes who are all double their size.  Even with the best of these stars (Jovovich, Garner in Alias, etc.) look utterly fake.  Compare these to the two Cameron stars, I’ll speak mostly to Aliens because its the most recent I’ve seen.  Ripley is explicitly NOT some sort of uber bad ass grrrrrl.  She’s a civilian, initially lost among the military types that surround her.  At the same time, she’s competent and cool, a natural leader.  Therefore, it’s not weird that she’s able to quickly pick up on how to use a pulse rifle or that, thanks to her keeping a cool head, the soldiers (who have just been decimated) look to her for leadership.  Still, she’s never portrayed as more competent then the trained soldiers, it would make no sense for her to be more adept with machine guns and whatnot, so she’s not.  Neither Ripley nor Sarah Connor are presented as being able to decimate squads of baddies all by themselves with flashy (read: fake looking) martial arts moves.  Instead, they scrap.  You get the impression that, yeah, they might be able to beat up a huge dude in a fight, because they’d hit him in the face with a fucking chair and that is substantially more badass then a spinning heal kick.  Finally, there’s the looks thing.  Jennifer Garner manages to kick the shit out of 10 super spies without having a hair out of place, where Ripley it disheveled and dirt after about 5 minutes on the abandoned planet.  Plus, Hamilton and Weaver, while attractive, aren’t super models which helps as well.  They look like real people, real people who just happen to kick ass.  Special note also needs to be given to the character of Vasquez in Aliens. On the surface, she’s simply a tough grrrl stereotype.  However, if you actually look at her character, she’s damn realistic.  Of course she’s all machismo toughness, she has to be.  She’s the girl among men, she has to be tougher/better then them, that’s how you gain respect (see: Starbuck in BSG).  More proof that James Cameron kicks ass.

So, should this be a concern?  I mean Aliens and the Terminator movies (especially T2) are some of the greatest action movies of all time (Alien is, of course, one of the greatest horror movies of all time.  Then again, strong female leads are common in horror.  So that’s a different story altogether).  I think that it is a problem, and an alarming one.  Almost 20 years ago, the leads of the two biggest action movies were women.  Today, there’s been a regression.  Instead of competent, capable, and realistic women stars, we’re supposed to believe the Drew Barrymore is somehow badass.  These modern female characters aren’t real people, they’re just stereotypes…hot chicks who can beat people up.  I have no solutions to offer (aside from the fact that James Cameron needs to make more movies) but I think it’s an alarming trend to note.

An interesting sub-plot to the whole Sarah Connor/Ripley thing is the fact that both are inherently motivated by maternal instincts (Connor to her own son, Ripley to Newt).  I don’t really feel qualified/inclined (after all this is just a blog post not a freaking essay) to speak to that really, but it is interesting.

Shit, I just came up with a good modern action heroine….Uma Thurman as the Bride in Kill Bill, still I think she’s closer to the Cameron realistic heroine mold then the Charlie’s Angel sort, plus Tarrantino is a great filmmaker.  So, my point stands.

Between the AAR meetings and getting a bunch of movies from Netflix that I’d already seen, it’s been a bit since I’ve posted a review (oh, also I saw Employee of the Month, didn’t feel like writing a review verdict: it sucks, avoid).  Fear not loyal readers, I’m back on the job and I have another non-review (but film related) post that I’ll try to finish tonight or tomorrow afternoon (judging by my track record with these things, that means it will be done roughly never).  All right, moving on to Let the Right One In:

This movie is really sweet.  Not sweet in the “aw that’s sweet” way, but sweet in the “holy shit, that was sweet” way.  Basically, it’s about vampires.  Well, it’s about vampire, singular.  More specifically, 12 year old (for certain values of 12, I mean she’s a vampire so she’s really like a billion or something) vampire girl, who a 12 year old human boy falls in love with.  That part of the story is the first type of sweet (although there’s a mild implication that they bang, which is creepy as hell).  As is inevitable in any relationship between a 12 year old boy and an immortal killing machine, there are problems.  This is the plot and it’s damn well executed.  I couldn’t really judge the qualities of the actors, since they were Swedish and all, but the child actors appeared to do a good job, especially the vampire girl (oh SPOILER ALERT, SERIOUSLY: it’s suggested that she might actually be a castrated boy…I was unsure about that part…if so it’s very weird, although it may be developed more in the book /SPOILERS END).  All right, I’m kinda rambling…back on point: The cinematography in this movie is beautiful, especially a few key shots, like the hospital fire scene and the final scene (I don’t really want to spoil more, you’ll know when you see them).  I was also a huge fan of how they handled various elements of the vampire mythos, most notably the whole “has to be invited in” thing (as implied by the title) (also, a beautifully shot scene). Essentially, I have no complaints about this movie at all.  Just expertly made in all respects, even within the constraints of an obviously limited budget (there are still a number of very well done effects shots).

I don’t really know what else to say, this is a really really good movie.  It’s in limited release right now, but it’ll be opening in more theaters soon and you definitely owe it to yourself to check this movie out if you’re a fan of cinema at all.  Anyway, yeah…really good movie.

Oh yeah, just want to reiterate how bad ass the pool scene is, wow.