Month: May 2009

Musings on Movies

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai. Someone give me an objective view. I remember loving it in grad school, but I just tried to watch it with the kids, and they were distinctly unimpressed (“Daddy, Daddy, let’s go see Night at the Museum 2 instead; We hear Reynolds loved it”). In fact, they became quite abusive. Was it that bad? Why did I enjoy seeing Jeff Goldblum in chaps? Why did the lines “don’t be mean” and “no matter where you go, there you are” seem profound to me? Was it the drugs? Or is this a lost masterpiece?

“Always do the right thing.” “That’s It?” “That’s It.” “I got it. I’m gone.”

20 years on… So many great lines in this thing. A movie I loved then, and appreciate more and more as time goes on.

And how’s this for an image? Though like great lines, this one has ’em to spare.

dotherightthing.jpg
Continue reading “Always do the right thing.” “That’s It?” “That’s It.” “I got it. I’m gone.”

Night at the Museum 2

I saw this movie.

Night at the Museum 2 made me want to punish all the children in the theater. To sneak up behind each, and as they expressed some moment of pleasurable engagement with the film, just to scream “What the fuck is wrong with you!” into their ears so that they jumped, or cried, and forever after hated Ben Stiller. Or, rather, to punish all children, to stand outside of every theater in the country, and as children came out, to box each upon the ears. A hard box–a Dickens box, not one of those wussy tv ear-pats but a good Mr.-Gower-making-the-ears-bleed kind of smack. Or, if they looked particularly satisfied, to punch them. The happier they look, the bigger the smile, the more painful the body part targeted. Fuck you, children, for making this movie possible. And fuck you, parents, for actualizing this movie. There’s a reason children don’t have disposable income–they’d waste it on shit like this. So shame on you. You all get kicked hard, in soft tissue. Or maybe I just take one kid hostage, one poor hummel-eyed waif, and I set up a website, and I vow to make that kid watch Takashi Miike with me until gangs of children hunt down Shawn Levy, blood-crazed with fear for my webcammed hostage to rip Levy into unrecognizable bits that’ll never work with Steve Martin or any funny people ever again.

I’d punish myself but sitting through it was penance enough. Ah, shit, I probably deserve more.

Terminator Salvation

Set in 2018, the machines have taken over and they do battle with a fully-formed resistance that has access to submarines, aircraft and secret bases. Skynet is far less omnipotent in this iteration, largely restricted to particular zones, and its assorted machines surprisingly easy to kill. John Connor (Christian Bale) is a local commander at this point, about whom there are vague rumors among the populace that he is the prophet who will save them. He spends his time obsessively listening to old tapes left him by his mother, hoping to hear clues that will help beat Skynet, and inspiring the scattered resistance in scratchy radio broadcasts. Connor’s specific goal is to locate and protect Kyle Reese, now a teenager, but the man who was/will be his father, sent back in time to protect Sarah Connor in the first Terminator. The time paradox implications of him doing so, or failing to do so, are never made clear. Continue reading Terminator Salvation

My fingers grew back!

Some day in the future, someone will write a treatise on the many conventions of the commercial blockbuster in the era of globalization, and they will hit on key elements of the formula: a mash-up of violence with sexual overtones; a heroic protagonist who seeks answers to and resolves that central violence, living on the outside of conventions, and looking damn cool; product placements for McDonald’s, Coke, Red Bull; a seepage of American “cool” aesthetics into everything, everywhere.

And then that someone, basking in the glow of their treatise’s Asimovian precision in explaining all film, will come upon Takashi Miike. And they will see all of the requisite conventions, and the film will still defy any and all commercial sense. Detective Story may somewhere deep down be a conventional serial-killer narrative, but even deeper down it’s got the loony heart of Hammer horror films and its protagonist channels the spirit of Robert Mitchum on mushrooms and while never being horribly gruesome or traditionally gory nonetheless features pureed organs and layers of viscous blood and urine. It is about 1000 times funnier and more enjoyable than every Saw film put together. It isn’t top-drawer Miike, but even as a toss-off its lunatic precision and constant small goofball details and tactics would keep most filmmakers in milk and honey for several films.

Martyrs

Give the French their due. They see an American genre wussing out, and they don’t just sit back and snarkez-vous. Take torture porn. (Please. *ahem*) Eli Roth, Hostel? Wuss-tacular. Let’s have Betty Blue try and get the fetus from a pregnant woman trapped in her home. Let’s have Monica Bellucci’s weird-looking boyfriend play inbreeding hicks (both genders!) enacting some barely-explicable satanic ritual on Parisian hipster douchebags.
Continue reading Martyrs

The Reader

Is there really no thread for this film? I’m still trying to figure out my reaction, and it is all but impossible to write about without spoilers, so I hope others have seen it. I assume we all know the story: 15 year-old Michael (David Kross) begins a relationship with 36 year-old Hannah (Kate Winslet) in 1958. She disappears and he sees her again when he is in law school and she is on trial for being a guard at a concentration camp. Hannah is convicted. The adult Michael is played by Ralph Fiennes, and he struggles with his memories of his time with Hannah, and reconnects with her as she serves her jail sentence. The title comes from the fact that Hannah asks the young Michael to read literature to her. It subsequently becomes clear that she had also asked girls in the camp to read to her. The law student Michael deduces that Hannah must have been illiterate. Continue reading The Reader