Conflict in the Spider-verse

 

Catherine and I went to see the new Spider-verse movie Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse with Alex and his girlfriend, and we all agreed that the film is awesome in all aspects: visuals, characters, and plot-- but the crowd at the theater was NOT awesome . . . a bunch of middle school kids talking and horsing around and making a huge mess-- it was distracting enough that I spoke to them in my teacher voice: "hey some of us are here to watch the movie, not listen to you guys . . . you need to respect that" and they were quiet after that-- I didn't need to go full Costanza on them-- but then, when the lights came up, we noticed that there were parents sitting with these kids-- and the dad was giving us the stink-eye and we were giving the dad the stink-eye . . . both my wife and I were annoyed that we spent all day telling kids what to do and how to behave and then we went out in public and had to do the same damned thing again.

Horror and Lunch Buffet

Last night, Catherine and I watched the horror movie Barbarian and while I will admit that every decision every single regular person made in the movie was stupid and irrational and utterly insane, I was still gripping my wife's leg in terror throughout the film-- I don't really understand the title (although the film did take place on Barbary Street . . . a rundown abandoned Detroit suburb inhabited by squatters and derelicts-- aside form one cute AirBnB?) but there were so many bad choices . . . but that's how horror movies happen I suppose-- and maybe in this film most of the bad choices were made by men, but Tess-- the leading lady-- doesn't fare much better-- nor does the female arch-villain-- but it's still a fun and crazy journey; almost as scary was our ride to Muhlenberg University this morning-- torrential rain-- but the campus was lovely, the weather cleared up, and the free lunch at the dining hall was phenomenal-- since when does college have good food?

On a Highway to Hell or High Water

If you 're looking for a neo-noir thriller with moral ambiguity, compelling characters, and a slow burn, a movie in the vein of all those '80's and '90's classics: Blood Simple, Red Rock West, Fargo, Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead, Shallow Grave,  Natural Born Killers, The Boondock Saints, and A Simple Plan, then you'll love Hell of High Water . . . Jeff Bridges has so much fun playing the archetypal old law officer on the brink of retirement and while there's a bit much on the Robin Hood financial thematics, that may be warranted, all things considered in bumfuck East Texas -- the economy has left many of these folks behind, and their way of life as well -- but everybody gets a last shot (literally) when the Howard Brothers start robbing Texas Midlands Branch Banks to raise a stake for the future . . . Marcus (Jeff Bridges) gets his last chance at adventure and all the law abiding Texas citizens get a chance to use those guns they're toting on some real villains . . . this movie is the exact opposite of Rogue One: quiet and slow in the right parts, with an ominous soundtrack, and enough action to make it exciting, but it's really the dialogue, between the two outlaw brothers and between Marcus and his Native American/Mexican sidekick Alberto that make it something more than the typical: five buried cars out of five.

The Host: Something to Stream on Netflix

If you're looking for a streaming movie on Netflix that is a little edgy but still fairly appropriate for the whole family (there's some violence and some Korean profanity) then I recommend Ba Joon-ho's dysfunctional family/monster flick The Host . . . the movie is tragic, funny, and intense by turns, and you're never quite sure which direction the plot and the tone will go-- it's also beautiful, even the disgusting and absurd creature (Jabberwocky/leech/amphibian mash-up) is mesmerizing-- and pace isn't like Cloverfield . . . right from the start, there are plenty of gratuitous shots of the monster, flinging itself gibbon-like from bridge strut to bridge strut, or causing near-comical chaos in crowds along the Han River . . . this is a great way to introduce kids to reading subtitles, and also to prepare them for films that aren't quite so "American," as there's a little bit of happiness at the end, but it's mixed with tragedy and melodrama, and while some of the monster/horror conventions are followed, others are discarded or toyed with . . . if you haven't seen this one yet, check it out: Nam-joo only brings home the bronze medal, but she deserves the gold.

A Movie Review in Honor of Groundhog Day

You may have heard the premise of Richard Linklater's new film Boyhood: he got the same actors together (Ellar Coltrane, Lorelei Linklater, Ethan Hawke, and Patricia Arquette) year after year for short shooting stints and then he stitched the scenes together to make a fantastic coming-of-age narrative with the greatest special effect of all-- the actual passage of time; the movie took twelve years to make, and follows Mason (Ellar Coltrane) from elementary school to his first day of college . . . and the effect is in no way gimmicky, though it's always exciting to see how everyone looks in transition, but the story carries itself . . . it is the opposite of the great Harold Ramis film Groundhog Day-- where time stands still for God-only-knows how long . . . in Boyhood time is an uncontrollable flash-flood that sweeps Mason's family across Texas . . . and I am always impressed by works of art like this, where the investment of massive amounts of time is crucial to the outcome: I couldn't make it through Finnegan's Wake but I love the idea that it took Joyce seventeen years to write the book and it should take you seventeen years to read it; I am also reminded of Columbine and Far From the Tree, both of which took a decade to write . . . and then, of course, there's Noah, who took a picture of himself every day for six years.

Despite My Disappointment, Zack Snyder Probably Made a Good Decision (But What Do I Know?)

My wife and I watched Zack Snyder's epic treatment of the graphic novel Watchmen, and I assumed that my wife would need my help with the plot-- because she didn't read the graphic novel-- but, oddly, she was able to follow the film without my insight, which leads me to believe that Zach Snyder did a good job for the lay person, and I also think he did a good job for people familiar with the graphic novel-- but don't say this to Watchmen fanatics . . . for some reason they hate the movie, but I can't figure out why-- as in my humble opinion, the movie looks like a comic book and feels like the world of the Watchmen and Malin Akerman, the chick who plays Laurie Jupiter, is about as super-heroic looking as it gets (she's a hotter version of Linda Carter) and Dr. Manhattan, glowing radioactively and sporting a swinging blue tally-wacker, blends naturally into the scenes, which are more like sequences of loosely connected tableaux, but they do the trick and get across the plot . . . and though I was disappointed that the ending varied from the graphic novel, the movie ending is probably more elegant and requires less explanation and back-story, and so, in retrospect, after my initial disappointment of not getting to see a giant octopoid faux-alien transported into downtown Manhattan, I agree that the new ending makes more sense . . . and I give the movie nine blood covered smiley faces out of a possible ten.

My Very Own Original Thoughts on Inception (I Think)

There is nothing new I can say about the plot of Inception that isn't said here or here, but I do have a few tangentially related points that I'm pretty sure originate from my own consciousness . . . although I can't be completely sure . . .

1) In both of his 2010 films, Leonardo DiCaprio plays a role where he is married to an insane woman who detaches herself emotionally from her children . . . I think his agent should recommend a romantic comedy with Jennifer Aniston, not only to lighten things up a bit but also to prevent him from being type-cast as a guy who's always married to a deranged child neglecting filicidal woman;

2) Like Memento, Nolan's other mind-bending film, Inception is a far better idea than movie-- it's more fun to reflect on it than it is to actually watch it . . . and for pacing and action in this genre, I prefer The Matrix, and for shared dreams, I prefer Dark City;

3) None of the aforementioned movies is as good as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and the reason is this: if you are going to be trapped in someone's mind, it's far more entertaining to dash about with Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey than to knock around with Leonardo DiCaprio and his somber crew.

True Grit

Though I wanted to see True Grit, the plan was to see The Fighter: I think the ladies wanted to watch Mark Wahlberg with his shirt off, but The Fighter was sold out, so we had to settle for True Grit, and Jeff Bridges did not take his shirt off, which was probably a good thing, because he appeared to be pasty and fat under his dirty long-johns, but he was an excellent Rooster Cogburn and Hailee Steinfeld played his vengeful fourteen year old sidekick Mattie Ross pitch perfectly and Matt Damon (who also did not take his shirt off, but did pull back his vest to reveal his Texas Ranger badge) was surprisingly droll as LaBouef and Barry Pepper (who reverse eponymously played Lucky Ned Pepper) and the rest of the bad guys looked as snaggle-toothed and depraved as they should have; the movie is faithful to plot, language, drama, and dry humor of the Portis novel and the images of the aged Mattie Ross are unforgettable . . . ten corn dodgers out of ten (my only complaint is that Mattie never said, "Men will live like billy goats if they are let alone," which is my favorite line from the book).

Thierry Guetta Is Like Marla Olmstead (Except Not As Cute)

If you have kids or you're interested in modern art, then you should watch the documentary My Kid Could Paint That -- it's about a precocious four-year-old abstract painter named Marla Olmstead; the film investigates what defines art as much as the mystery of whether Marla painted her paintings or not-- but now there is a new documentary on the same theme and it is even better . . . it's called Exit Through the Gift Shop and it is ostensibly about documenting street art-- the obsessive Frenchman Thierry Guetta devotes his life to filming these ambitious and talented vandals on their midnight missions to make odd, skillful, often beautiful and essentially disposable art, but like all great documentaries (Capturing the Friedmans, Street Fight, Mr. Death, etc.) the film takes an unpredictable turn . . . Thierry Guetta transforms into "Mr. Brainwash" and the theme moves from the aesthetic to the absurd . . . I won't spoil it, but things might not be exactly what they seem . . . I'm giving it ten spray cans out of ten and I think Banksy-- the faceless and heralded street artist who directed-- will win an Oscar.

Kids Misbehaving? F#$@ Santa Claus. Just Have Them Watch Shutter Island

If Santa Claus doesn't motivate your children to behave well, and instead of positive reinforcement, you wish to try positive punishment, then I recommend showing them the new Martin Scorcese film Shutter Island . . . and if your kids are anything like me, then they will think it's going to be a fun film-noir romp on a spooky island full of evil experiments and old Nazis, but that's not what it's about at all; it is actually about insanity and filicide . . . the movie may scare your children into being good for a couple of years, but it may also scare you: it is also an extremely disturbing and tragic; I told my wife that it was rather unrealistic and that a mother would never do that to her children, but she reminded me of this news story and this news story and I had to admit that she had me, and then I was even more disturbed and depressed and so I give this movie 8 million rats out of a possible 10 million, but with this caveat: DO NOT watch this movie if you are looking for a good time!

Did I Ever Really See Dark City?

I watched Dark City on Blu-Ray the other night . . . possibly for the second time . . . it's a science-fiction film directed by Alex Proyas that is strangely similar to The Matrix (though it was released a year before in 1998) but more interesting than this comparison is the fact that I felt as if I was living parallel with the movie while watching it-- the movie begins with a naked man in a room (Rufus Sewell) with a murdered call-girl, and he has no memory of what happened to the girl or of the last three weeks of his life and he has only very dim memories of his past, and he slowly realizes-- as he makes his way through his very dark city, that aliens are manipulating not only his memories but the actual world he is living in; the movie is excellent and really looks spectacular on Blu-Ray, but I could only vaguely remember watching it in the past, and not when or where, and then Catherine came home and she couldn't remember watching it with me, and I rarely watch movies alone and it's not on my Netflix history nor have I rated it and there were only certain things that I remembered . . . like Shell Beach . . . and so I am wondering if I never really saw the movie at all, and if Kiefer Sutherland inserted it into my brain with one of his steam-punk memory injections, but now that I've got it recorded here on this blog, I'll be able to refer back to this post and foil the aliens that have been manipulating my brain (and there are the usual internet theories about how The Matrix stole from Dark City, but I find this highly unlikely, since the script for The Matrix was finished when they were shooting Dark City, and as one nut pointed out, all these ideas originated with the movie Tron . . . but at that point you might as well say that all of these type films-- ranging from The Game and The Usual Suspects and The Sixth Sense all the way to Bladerunner-- are an allegory for Plato's cave and forget who stole what from whom and just enjoy the special effects).

What Is The Opposite Of Nostalgia?

At times Nanette Burstein's documentary American Teen seems staged, and it times it seems like Mean Girls, but eventually the film makes you remember just how dramatic high school really is-- the romance and sports and college application process and cliques-- and just how heavy the future and the past (i.e. parents) weigh on the American teen; perhaps the scenes that appear to be contrived are actually just awkward, painful, and melodramatic, and from the perspective of age, they feel too raw and ugly to be real . . . you'll have to watch it and judge for yourself, but beware of the feelings this movie will dredge up: nostalgia and it's ugly counterpart, regret.

Tarsem Singh's The Fall: Keeping It Real

Tarsem Singh's visually rich movie The Fall is The Princess Bride on acid . . . on acid, steroids, meta-amphetamines, crack, psilocybin, and-- most significantly-- morphine; it is morphine that fuels the double plot of this frame tale, set in the 1920's in a hospital where a depressed, desperate, and seriously injured stunt-man tells fantastic stories to a little girl in order to persuade her to steal morphine pills for him . . . something else the movie has in common with The Princess Bride is that it uses no digital effects to produce its wonders: Singh traveled the world (the film is shot in 28 different countries) to find the exotica in the film: the intricate forts and castles, the sweeping deserts, the scenic islands and floating palaces, the labyrinthine villages, barren mountains, and verdant jungles are all real . . . you can look them up on Orbitz and go visit them; despite all this spectacular imagery, the story isn't as touching or enthralling as that of The Princess Bride, but the movie is worth watching simply for the images . . . I give it nine swimming elephants out of a possible ten.

What Is the Plural of Barf?

Get Him to the Greek is the first movie I watched on my new Blu-Ray player, and it's worth watching the first half in beautiful Blu-Ray clarity, as Jonah Hill does a fantastic job portraying a regular guy who has partied beyond his means; he looks and acts the part of a hungover, sleep deprived man perfectly-- and this is because of his assignment: a very funny Sean Combs has given Hill the responsibility of getting rock star Aldous Snow (from Forgetting Sarah Marshall) to a concert in Los Angeles-- and despite multiple barfings, Hill accomplishes this, and then the movie goes seriously downhill . . . it's like director Nicholas Stoller forgets what kind of movie this is and decides to suddenly make Aldous Snow into a Character in a Film about Conflict and Relationships and Emotion, despite the fact that all I wanted to see was more high-definition yakking: six Jeffreys out of a possible ten.

Two Trippy Kids Movies (With No Singing!)

I give my kid-friendly thumbs up to both Ponyo and Secret of Kells-- they are animated in the old-school style and contain no musical numbers; Ponyo is the usual from Hayao Miyakzaki . . . a trippy story about an adventurous boy who falls in love with a gold-fish princess, with environmental overtones, and watching The Secret of Kells-- an Irish/French/Belgian collaboration-- is like walking through a medieval illuminated manuscript (the animation looks like the The Book of Kells) and the mood is equally as trippy as Ponyo and there is an equally adventurous orphan boy who ventures outside the walls of his monastery home to collect ink-berries for a George Carlin-esque monk who is trying to illuminate the most beautiful manuscript ever made, but outside the walls of the monastery lie pagan gods and Vikings, and both are equally scary . . . the Vikings are something out of Pink Floyd's The Wall and his battle against the dark pagan god Crom Cruach is spooky and epic; I enjoyed both of these as much as my children and you've got to see The Secret of Kells on Blu-Ray, the detail in the animation is fantastic (I think I am becoming a Blu-Ray snob).

Gran Torino: This Is How The Engine Runs

The characters in Clint Eastwood's film Gran Torino are unrealistic caricatures-- Walt's grand-kids are overly obnoxious, his children are calloused and cold, the gangsters are insensibly cruel, and his neighbors are extraordinarily foreign-- and while I questioned the realism at times during the movie, I now realize the exaggerated characterization is intentional: these people make you just as angry as Walt, which is the purpose of the film, because then you start to feel like Clint Eastwood and want to be tough like Clint Eastwood, because there's no other way to be in a world that is so hard and mean . . . and the movie moves like clockwork, or more like a train-wreck, there's no stopping or pausing, but upon reflection, when it's over, and you hear Clint Eastwood's voice singing the final song, and you remember that Clint Eastwood is 81 years old and has been acting, directing, composing, and producing film for more years than most of us have been alive, and you start to wonder: is Clint Eastwood really that tough? . . . can he really use tools? . . . can he actually fix a sink? . . . can he stare down gangsters a quarter his age? . . . and you realize that though the answer is probably "no" to all of these, it doesn't matter because he looks the part (especially on Blu-ray!) and so I give this film nine push lawn-mowers out of a possible ten.

Invictus is Pretty Good . . . But It's No Ruck and Maul

Clint Eastwood's movie Invictus is just as much about rugby as it is about Nelson Mandela, and although the film doesn't try to explain the rules of the game or make a coherent narrative out of game play (which was smart . . . and if you watch highlights of the actual Springbok/All-Black Final, you'll see the film does a fantastic job of capturing the look and feel of rugby, including the "haka," New Zealand's pre-game Maori war dance) it is a sports movie first and foremost . . . about two underdogs, the inspirational Mandela, who survived a twenty seven year training camp breaking rocks on Robben Island, and the Springboks, a mainly white team (with a token black), upon who Mandela bestows the responsibility of bringing honor and reconciliation to South Africa . . . it is well filmed and well-acted but it definitely sticks to the sports genre: nearly every scene is inspirational in some way, and-- as I am a sucker for sports movies-- it had me near tears multiple times (even a scene of the team running in the early morning before the big game got me choked up . . . but show me a movie where some mom dies of cancer with her kids around her deathbed and it has no effect) but it still portrays the characters with a hagiographic sheen that will make the movie ultimately forgettable . . . unlike The Wrestler, a film that I will never forget . . . and all this rugby and film discussion reminds me of "Ruck and Maul," a rugby screen-play that Whitney and I wrote many years ago which was certainly closer in theme to The Wrestler than Invictus . . . perhaps now is the time to pull it back out and pitch it.

My Attention Span is Wack

I didn't make it through The Wackness but that doesn't mean it's a bad movie, it's just a little slow and melancholy and repetitive for my taste, but the the '90's hip-hop soundtrack is fantastic (think De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest and Biggie Smalls) and the dialogue replicates and parodies a time when everyone was trying to infuse some rapper chic into their lexicon, leading to the moment when the cool rich indie girl Stephanie gives the dope smoking and dope dealing main character, Luke Shapiro, some advice about how to live life: "I just look at the dopeness . . . but you, it's like you just look at the wackness, you know?"

Zizekian Aphorisms

I started watching Michael Moore's documentary Capitalism: A Love Story, but it seemed anecdotal in its evidence, without any real theory behind it (although I did like when Vizzini from The Princess Bride-- "Never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line!"-- talks about how the American free-market has evolved into something far different than what Adam Smith envisioned) but if you want to tackle something a bit meatier, try Slovenian super-brain Slavoj Zizek's Living in the End Times; here are two of his thoughts on modern capitalist society: "However once we accept that the economy is always a political economy, a site of political struggle-- in other words that its de-politicization, its status as a neutral sphere of 'servicing the goods,' is in itself always already the outcome of a political struggle-- then the prospect of repoliticization of the economy . . . is opened up," and "Today, since workers can increasingly be replaced by machines or by outsourcing the entire productive process, striking-- where it occurs at all-- is more a protest act addressed primarily to the general public rather than owners or managers, its goal being simply to maintain jobs by making the public aware of the terrifying predicament that awaits the workers if they lose their jobs."

Likeable But Forgettable

Forgetting Sarah Marshall is cute and funny, and the "graphic nudity" at the start and finish of the movie-- that's the explanation next to the R rating-- made me laugh and made sense (which is rare for graphic nudity) but the film never really pushes the premise (that it's hard to get over the love of your life when you are vacationing at the same resort as her, and she's there with an ultra-cool rock star . . . and you are there all alone) and I am afraid-- though I love Judd Apatow and crew-- that Forgetting Sarah Marshall will be rather easy to forget.