The first movie on the Thanksgiving Day agenda was Bad Santa, and I haven't laughed this hard at a movie in a very long time (I may have laughed at parts of Gothika but it was a different kind of laughter). I can't recall the last time I saw a movie so loathsome and unrepentant about it. Billy Bob Thornton plays a despicable, drunken safecracker named Willie Soke, who plays Santa in malls each year in order to get inside and get access to the safe and its holiday cash. He is actually the partner of the brains of the outfit who is a black dwarf who acts as an elf to Soke's Santa, and who is the one who actually gets inside and disarms the security in their capers. Thornton is wonderful, his character is utterly loathsome, yet you get the idea that he has some core of humanity that is possibly redeemable, but it is a very slim core. He is constantly drunk, incredibly rude and insensitive to the poor kids who have to sit on his piss-soaked lap (his own piss, not the kids), and has anal sex with plus-size women in the dressing rooms. Things start to change a little bit when a completely pathetic kid starts to tag around with him, calling him Santa and giving every indication that he thinks Willie is Santa. Of course, when Willie drives the kid home and discovers that he lives alone with his senile grandmother, he moves in. It is the kid's pathetic-ness that eventually uncovers the slim core of humanity in Willie. Even Willie starts to feel bad about being so constantly mean and cruel to the poor fat little boy, who is totally without friends. And this is where he starts to change. Fortunately, he doesn't change very much, but just enough to make you think it could really happen that way. By the way, this is not a movie to take kids to! Some idiot had his little daughter in the theater and heard him keep having to explain what was happening, like when Willie (in Santa gear) was butt-fucking some woman and grunting to her "You won't shit right for a month" she asked him "What's he doing?" in horror. If you have a twisted or vile sense of humor you have to see this movie!
Timeline is a perfect example of how to turn a
perfectly good story into a really crappy movie. I am going to add little
interjections throughout the review to subliminally recreate how bad the movie
was, like this: {subliminal message}, in order to work properly,
you must not really read them, rather let them filter into your subconscious. I
kept thinking during Timeline, "This is what Jurassic Park would
have been like without Steven Spielberg". Timeline is based on a
book by Michael Crichton that I liked quite a bit, and which I had high hopes
for. {wanton imbecility} Like most Crichton books it wasn't
particularly well written, and the characters were sort of cardboard, but the
story was really cool! Well, first off they changed the entire premise of the
novel, and in doing so they robbed it of anything interesting. {hydrocephalic
aphasia} My mind is still staggering at the depths this piece of shit
dredged. As a (amateur) historian, I was shocked at how lame the sets were and
the whole lack of verisimilitude that permeated the film. The "town"
looked like Renne Faire sets and the castle was the most obvious and poorly done
CGI that I've seen in a long time. {moronic claptrap} And the
acting! All the actors had lines, and they said them, that's all I'll say about
them. {rabid enfeeblement } All of the fucking castle interiors
were made of FUCKING WOOD AND HAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I feel a little better
getting that out of my system. I wonder if the movie's makers were aware that
stone working was quite the rage during this time period, and that even the
wooden buildings were probably made of more than sticks and mud. I almost was
crying. {bombastic dullwittedness} Did I mention that everyone in
1357 spoke perfect modern English? This puppy rates at least a 5 on the barbed-wire-o-meter.
I enjoyed Gothika a lot more than I thought I
would. I will explain why momentarily, first let me state that this is a
"dumb" movie, meaning that it was made for dumb people to enjoy and
for dumb people to find scary. Not that you "have" to be dumb to find
something about it to enjoy, but the plot requires that you be kinda slow to
suspend your disbelief. Like, for instance, I am not an expert on the legal
system, but I don't think you get put into maximum security psych prisons after
just three days of evaluation. For that matter, what the hell were they doing
letting Berry's character loose into the general population when they suspect
her of being a violent ax murderess? Wow, I skipped right past explaining the
plot. Halle Berry plays a psychiatrist who works at a horrifyingly 19th
century-looking metal hospital for women. It also doesn't have very good wiring,
since it is very dark and the lights flicker a lot. Which is spooky if you are
"dumb" (see how this works?). She meets a ghost and gets possessed or
something and kills her husband and gets put into the very same mental hospital
she worked at! Wow, what are the odds? Oh, Penelope Cruz (who has a very teensy
tiny voice, she always sounds like ee cummings' balloon man, far and
wee), plays a patient of Berry's who is wacko, yet unrestrained when they are
together in a room (if you're dumb, though, that wouldn't cross your mind).
Now, I can hear you all saying "I thought you said you
enjoyed the movie?", I guess I should explain. Bear in mind, please, that
this is the kind of movie that likes to jump out at you and pop out from
off-camera to scare the poop right out of you. Now, visualize this movie viewed
while sitting behind a gaggle of maybe 12 14-16 year old girls, who, it must be
said, seemed rather "dumb". "Oh my god, how awful" you
exclaim. But, in fact, that was what saved the movie for me. Let me use an
analogy for you, suppose you go see a comedy and you see it with a ton of other
people who are all laughing their asses off, you have a great time and resolve
to see it again. the second time, though, the crowd is quiet and you somehow
don't find it quite as amusing. That is how it was with Gothika for me.
The constant hyperactive shrieking and hugging and jumping out of seats made the
movie more tense for me, because I was viewing it through the eyes of the dumb.
And that made all the difference.
I'm not sure how I felt about this one. It was very dark,
and it often gave you that same feeling you get where you are having a
disturbing dream and yet you can't quite wake up. I feel kinda grimy after
seeing it, and that has nothing to do with the large number of rather graphic
sex scenes, more so from the pervasive gloom that seemed to cling to everything
and everybody like soap-scum. I had heard a lot about the sex scenes and they were
pretty steamy and raw, yet they also seemed kinda sordid, but that is because
the whole film had that kinda feel to it. I am going to go ahead and give
this one the thumb's up, I actually enjoyed it just for the performances and
Campion's directorial style.
If you get a chance you should go see this baby on the big
screen, you get so much more detail than on a TV sized screen. I saw this when
it came out in '78 or '79, and I've seen it dozens of times on video, but I
still enjoyed seeing it up there on the big screen (as an adult this time). The
extra scenes that are added back into the movie are not earthshaking, but they
do help flesh out the characters a little more. And when you have seen a movie a
lot of times, one of the fun things to do is look at all the background details
and stuff on the sets and that is much easier on a full-sized screen than on DVD.
Notice: I am going to proceed from here on with
the assumption that you have all seen this movie and know the story and the
characters to some degree. One thing that this version does is to really drag
it's feet while setting poor Brett up to get killed, there are more scenes of
him looking for the dumb cat, Jonesy, prior to getting taken by the creature.
The story remains pretty much the same, but part of the greatness of this movie
is that the cast are all really good actors (unlike many new horror films, which
feature unknowns doomed to die). I've always enjoyed how Veronica Cartwright
played Lambert's borderline hysteria and the sequence where Ripley can hear her
being killed by the alien over the loudspeakers is chilling no matter how many
times I hear it, with her babbling and then hyperventilating frantically and
then the final scream cut off near it's peak. One nice part of the Director's
Cut is that they show what happened to Captain Dallas after being snatched by
the alien in the airshafts. Anyone who has seen the whole series can probably
guess that he was cocooned by the alien and left near an egg, and they'd be
right! Hmmm, this has gone from review to synopsis, I guess if you have
any interest in this movie you will probably want to see it in the theater for a
chance to see it in its original glory.
The Core sucks really bad.
I just got finished watching it. I sat through the whole
movie, you know, in case something interesting or exciting or funny happened,
even once. I admit, I didn't watch the credits, perhaps those were good, but I
doubt it.
Evidently, the film had to do with the Earth's core ceasing to rotate (caused by
super-secret government types with nasty super-secret improbable weapons). A
wacky idea to set off some nukes in the core to restart it is made possible by a
crazy scientist's ...
Why am I going through this charade?
I don't even care at this point what the
idiotic film was about. It featured, shitty, TV quality special effects and
science that would make a Flat-Earther scoff. The really crappy part, was that
the actors were all fairly good. I usually like Delroy Lindo (the wacky
scientist), and Stanley Tucci (the preening, "famous" geophysicist),
however, they were not able to rise above the garbage they were given to work
with. It also featured Aaron Eckhart as the good-looking down-to-earth
geophysicist and Hilary Swank as the astronaut who pilots the improbable ship.
There is a really embarrassing scene where the camera slowly
crawls up Swank's skinny legs to show her in her Air Force dress uniform. I got
the impression that the director thought that the guys in the audience would
enjoy this display of female pulchritude, but, no offense to Ms Swank, didn't
she win an Oscar for playing a girl who has gender ID issues and acts and
dresses like a guy? She is by no means unattractive, but that scene made me
cringe a little. She is also a sniveling astronaut, she cries and acts like an
idiot during several scenes, not qualities that I imagine get you selected to
pilot the space shuttle.
Ha ha, there I go again, pretending that this movie made any
sense.
The
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (remake)
I am a big fan of the first movie (I even own the DVD),
and I thought that the new version was a damn good film. On thinking back over
it, I was going to say that the newer one wasn't as macabre as the original, but
it was just as macabre, but in different ways. The first movie perhaps had a
teensy bit more suspense, but this version kept me jumpy throughout, even a
little bit during the second viewing. I also discovered that the new version was
not as gory as a lot of the reviews made it sound. There was actually very
little graphic violence (ok, maybe compared to Charlotte's Web it had a
lot), but it didn't have as much as most of the usual slasher films like the Friday
the 13th franchise, etc.
One enjoyable aspect was that they changed the storyline
around just enough that I couldn't use my knowledge of the original to make
guesses about what was going to happen next. So I almost jumped out of my seat
when the first murder occurs. Missing was the low-budget look of the first movie
that gave it an air of verisimilitude that was lacking in the new one. The new
one had woefully few light moments to relieve the tension which was very
good in my estimation, nothing pisses me off more than a movie that is trying to
scare you and then spends half it's time trying to make you laugh to take the
edge off. I hate that. It's like jerking off to a porno that periodically
flashes you a pic of your grandma emptying her colostomy bag.
Oh, my god. First of all, I had heard that half the crowd
at Cannes had walked out of this one during the first 15 minutes. So I was
semi-braced for what would happen. The first thing I noticed was that the
opening sequences were filmed with what seemed like a camera being swung around
in slow looping circles, I actually got motion sick a little until the camera
started to settle down a little bit. I later decided that the chaotic filming
technique was a way of showing how out of control events had become by that time
in the movie.
In case you don't know anything about this charming French
film, it is filmed in reverse chronological order (ala Memento, sort of),
so it starts with the credits rolling and then starts going back through the day
of the protagonists. I had heard that there was a graphic scene early on of a
guy getting his head smashed in, "no prob", says I, having survived
dozens of such events in movies over the years. Ok, there was a prob, because I
have NO FUCKING IDEA how they filmed this fucking scene! The guy gets whacked in
the head with a fire extinguisher and falls back on the floor, no cut, and then
the extinguisher comes back, now the guy has no front teeth, and is flailing a
bit, no cut, SMASH, nose is bent, all front teeth gone, no cut, SMASH, head
slightly squishes and the cheekbone looks caved in, no cut, SMASH, nose now
smashed in, no cut, SMASH, face starts to come apart... this continues for at
least a full fucking minute or so, until the guys head is caved in completely,
with no cuts at all. I flinched every single time the fucking extinguisher went
"Bong" against the guy's head.
We soon discover that this act was a retaliation for the
raping and savage beating of the protagonist's girlfriend (Monica Belluchi).
Then we get to the most awful thing I have seen in pretty much my entire movie
going history. The camera follows Belluchi as she leaves a party and walks
through a narrow tunnel under the boulevard she wants to cross. She encounters a
guy who is beating up a prostitute and try's to get past them, the guy kicks the
prostitute away and goes after Belluchi. What follows is a 10 minute-long,
excruciating rape scene. There are no cuts at all. He pins her down, one hand
over her mouth, rips her clothes aside, and tells her he is going to "fuck
her ass" and then proceeds to sodomize her for at least a solid 7 minutes,
no cuts, just him pumping away and cursing her (the line that sticks in my head
the most is when he snarls "If you shit on me, I'll kill you") while
she struggles and screams into his hand. The camera just sits about a foot off
the ground and never moves. Then he beats her and kicks her face and then
follows it up by smashing her face into the concrete floor. Of course, by this
time you have realized that the guy raping her isn't the guy who we see getting
his head smashed in early in the movie, so the wrong guy gets killed.
Whee, what a fun film.
I have no idea what to think of this movie. I am feeling
traumatized, yet at the same time the "film geek" in me is wanting to
show the head-crushing scene to someone else to share the pain and discuss how
they might have made the fucking scene so realistic. Seriously, I'm not sure I
can advise anyone to watch this. I am kind of glad that I did, but I am
not really sure why.
I did not have high hopes for this movie, and even was
planning on skipping it entirely because of the shitty trailer for the movie.
Fortunately, I read a review on http://www.flickfilosopher.com/
which is the home of the best movie reviewer on the net (in my opinion). Mary
Ann liked it, so I thought I might also. And I did. I was pleased to discover
that the trailer took almost every scene out of context in order to make it seem
like an action movie. What it was instead was a fun, atmospheric sort of
whodunit. I will not spoil the film for the people who might read this, but it
had me guessing til the end. I suppose if I am gonna start saying it is
reminiscent of Double Indemnity I shouldn't have linked to Mary Ann's
site, where she does the same thing. But she is correct, it did remind me
of that old movie, which, by the way, has a wonderful performance by Edward G
Robinson in it.
Underworld is about a war between vampyres (sic +
eye roll) and the "Lycans" (werewolves). Up until now basically
ignored-by-me Kate Beckinsale plays a "Deathdealer" who's job it is to
whack lycans whenever and wherever they are found. The film was shot with a just
a little too much of a "gothic" element; rain, everything gray and
dismal, bluish lighting (you get the idea) and the vampyres are all euro-fags
who dress in a way sure to make people think "Those folks look like
vampires!". I'm making it sound like I didn't like the movie, but it
overcame its cumbersome baggage and provided a very fun shoot-em-up with Matrix-esque
camera shots and line-work. To make it all a little bit easier to enjoy, they
must have sprayed Miss Beckinsale's costume on. The lovely lady that I saw it
with assured me that the guys in the film (who's names I fergitted) were rather
numbly as well.
Oh yeah, the movie revolves around a rather dispassionate
love affair between Beckinsale and Scott Speedman (I looked his name up) who is
a human who carries the blood of some ancient progenitor of both the vampyres
and the lycans (yawn). The shooting parts were a lot of fun and the acting was
passable, so I would have to give it a thumbs up. If you like this kinda shit at
all you'll enjoy the movie. I actually sat through it twice (once again later in
the evening with two different friends), so it can't be too bad. During the
second showing the idiot blimp in front of me kept checking the time on his cell
phone, so it was flashed in our eyes every five fucking minutes, and of course,
being a lard-ass he had his chair back into my lap, which I can live with, but
this fucknut kept leaning his head over so it rested on my knee. he came very
close to being told if he'd like to be useful he should just turn on around and
cop my joint for me, you know, cut to the chase instead of playing all coy and
just leaning on me.
Secondhand
Lions
The second movie of the day was Secondhand Lions which
was wonderful! Duvall and Caine were totally perfect and I do believe that
Osment is gonna actually turn out to be a good adult actor. It was a perfect
blend of humor and drama and sentimentality, but with such good actors they
could read a shopping list and it would probably be a good show. There is a
scene where Duvall takes on four teenage boys in a fight, and the funny thing
is, I had zero problem believing that Duvall could kick their asses. I mean, he
just had to go all Boo Radley on their asses and it was all over. Just a really
good movie! I even had some dust or something drift from the ceiling and set my
eyes to watering in a few parts. Oh, and as a bonus surprise the closing credits
were animated by Berke Breathed!!!!
A sad note of badness must be added. we had heard that the
trailer for Return of the King was going to be shown at the beginning of Secondhand
Lions, yet this was a vile lie! We were very bummed by this villainous
inveracity and only the fact that the movie was so good kept us from being
completely devastated.
Cold Creek Manor
Cold Creek Manor wasn't too bad, but it wasn't
great. It was moderately suspenseful without ever getting me sitting on the edge
of my seat. The movie really boils down to the inability of
"civilized" people to deal with people who have no regard for the
conventions that keep their lives orderly. In that way, Cold Creek Manor
was like a slow-motion version of Deliverance, without a river, canoes or
sodomy. I really wanted this to be better than it was, but it wasn't a total
waste, just not as good as it could have been. I should also point out that
Stephen Dorff was very good at being a sociopath with the ability to charm
people. Another thing; I've come to the conclusion that Juliette Lewis is not an
actress, she is just a white trash weirdo that movie folks periodically convince
to stand in front of the cameras. Someone, please direct me to a film where she
plays someone that is not dimwitted white trash.
Once Upon a Time In Mexico was a fast and fun film.
However, the only thing that made it really enjoyable was Johnny Depp's
performance. I suspect that his one-liners will be bandied about for quite some
time (at least amongst my group of friends). Salma Hayek, while very tasty to
look at, was only in a couple of flashback sequences, which was a major bummer.
Eva Mendes is also extremely edible and was in much more of the movie, but
doesn't seem like too much of an actress. The action was extremely cinematic (no
fucking duh, you exclaim, it's a movie! However, I am referring to the style of
action violence that is extremely over-the-top and completely outside the realms
of unenhanced reality) but rather fun to watch, with bodies flying for yards
after Banderas drops both barrels of his sawed-off 12-gauge into them. Did I
mention that you don't get to see too much of Salma Hayek? The only other real
gripe I have (and this will show how picky and hard-to-please I am) is some
serious continuity problems with the blood on Depp's face during the closing
scenes of the film. It kept changing color and consistency from scene to scene,
which detracts from things for me. (Though not too the degree that the blood on
Val Kilmer's mouth in Tombstone changed, going from a crimson slicked
chin at one moment to a teensy little trickle in the corner in the next shot.)
I give Once Upon a Time In Mexico a thumb's up, primarily for Depp's
performance.
Cabin Fever was fucking awful! It combined the worst
elements of a whole shitload of horror movies and not surprisingly felched bugs
from three-weeks-dead-in-the-woods ass. I was most disappointed, though I have
no idea why I imagined that it would actually be good.
Well, after debating with myself for the last two weeks I finally decided to go see The New World. The revolved around the fact that I loathed Terrence Malick's last movie, The Thin Red Line. I thought it was a pretentious, disjointed, self-indulgent, interminable piece of shit. I couldn't tell one voice over narrator from the other, and I felt the whole "tone poem" style of film making doesn't work well with a war movie.
So I was very leery of The New World when I saw that it was directed by Malick. I eventually convinced myself that his style (as evinced in TRL) might actually work for a movie involving the early colonization attempts in North America. I was figuring that the (almost) primeval landscape of early 17th century Virginia would be better suited to his unrestrained shots of scenery more than a battle for a hill on Guadalcanal.
And I was right.
The movie begins with just the sounds of trees and gurgling water which slowly gives way to a crescendo of orchestral music as the ships filled with scruffy looking Englishmen hove into view.
I don't really need to synopsize the plot here I don't think, in case you don't know, it is basically the Pocahontas story without any singing or talking animals. Colin Farrell (who hasn't been impressing me much lately) plays John Smith, newcomer Q'Orianka Kilcher plays Pocahontas and Christian Bale plays John Rolfe (who marries Pocahontas after Smith bails).
If you saw The Thin Red Line you know that Malick loves to interupt the flow of the story to show you trees and water and grass and stuff, and while in that movie it made me want to claw my eyes out (while the
10' of barbed wire was yanked out of my ass), it really works here. The scenery is *part* of the story, and doesn't seem intrusive as it did in TRL. He also doesn't subject us to any of the infuriating flashbacks that kept popping up during battle scenes in TRL.
The acting was all pretty good (except for some severe overacting by some of the minor characters) and I could actually tell which character was doing the voice-over narration which fills parts of the movie. I am not sure that I have ever seen a film with so little dialogue. Farrell and Kilcher have long scenes (maybe 5+ minutes) where they barely say a word, doing all their acting with their eyes and facial expressions. They bulk of their romance is played out this way, following the two of them as they wander through the forests and meadows, barely touching or speaking, yet conveying great emotion with these little touches.
Christian Bale does a fine job as Rolfe, but here the film falters just a wee bit. Malick never really shows how Rolfe has come to fall in love with Pocahontas, she just seems quiet and withdrawn, and while Kilcher is certainly lovely to look at, none of the emotional depth you sensed going on with Smith is evident when Rolfe first meets her (she is living in the Jamestown fort after being sent away by her father and she thinks that Smith is dead). There is one scene where Rolfe and Pocahontas are wandering through a meadow and his narration has him asking himself what moves her, and she happens to state at that moment "I like grass". He looks at her like she has made some earthshatteringly insightful comment. Of course, there is always the chance that he just thought she was beautiful, and that was enough.
The film ends back in England where Pocahontas has had a reception with King James and became a celebrity in London, only to die of some disease. After that the same overture of music plays and then fades out to the sounds of water and creaking trees.
I found the movie a little slow (not endless like TRL) in places, but the story actually moved along in a coherent fashion and the acting was fine, and the scenery gorgeous. If you can handle a slow movie, I can actually advocate seeing this if you have 2.5 hours to spare.
Also I got a bit of a chub from some actual musket and pike battle action. The Englishmen deploy a line of pikemen and a following line of musketeers (with matchlocks!!!!!!). Until that moment I had forgotten that it was taking place in the very early 1600's.
The Barbed-wire-o-meter is a way of gauging how bad a movie is. The numeric value is equal to the number of feet of barbed wire you would rather have yanked out of your ass than see the movie again. It can also be used to prognosticate future films, as in "That one looks like at least a 10 footer" while viewing a preview or glimpsing a billboard.