My Desert Island Mix CD
So my good buddy Castor over at Anomalous Material has me taking part in one of these blogathons that all the kids seem to be into these days. The idea behind this little ditty is that I’m stuck on a desert island with enough rations and hard liquor to last me a lifetime, but I’ve only got one CD with 12 choice tracks on it and a good ol’ Discman with infinite battery power to last me the rest of my days. But since this is a movie blog and I can’t just list my Top 12 favorite songs of all-time, there’s a catch: every song has to be from a movie soundtrack. Not an easy mix to compile, but neato bandito all the same.
Not gonna get too analytical as to why I chose these twelve bitchin’ tunes, but here’s my thinking:
– No instrumentals. Not my style. Sorry, Jonny Greenwood, Clint Mansell and Trent Reznor.
– Can only choose one song from a given movie.
– No repeat bands.
– The movie can’t suck.
Bearing in mind that my Pandora station hasn’t switched from The Kinks for the past month, I was pretty tempted to just go with the whole Rushmore soundtrack, but that’s no fun. In a nutshell, most of these selections are the ones that made my ears perk up and go “Holy shit, that is my new favorite song!” when I first heard ’em in their respective movies, but there’s one or two peppered in there just because they’re great songs matched with great movies. Alright, I’ve babbled enough. Here’s the list and give these songs a listen. Trust me, they kick ass.
1. “Making Time” by The Creation – Rushmore
2. “Where is My Mind?” by The Pixies – Fight Club
3. “Sister Ray” by The Velvet Underground – Brick
4. “To Love Somebody” by Nina Simone – I Love You Phillip Morris
5. “The Pusher” by Steppenwolf – Easy Rider
6. “Trouble” by Cat Stevens – Harold and Maude
7. “Things We Said Today” by The Beatles – A Hard Day’s Night
8. “I’ve Seen All Good People: Your Move” by Yes – Almost Famous
9. “The Sounds of Silence” by Simon and Garfunkel – The Graduate
10. “Cosmic Dancer” by T. Rex – Billy Elliot
11. “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out” by The Smiths – (500) Days of Summer
12. “Under My Thumb” by The Rolling Stones – Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
Tada!
Well, that’s it, folks. Hope that blew your minds ’cause I think all those songs and bands freakin’ destroy, and hey, hop on over to the Desert Island Mix CD headquarters over at Castor’s stomping ground to get more musical knowledge dropped on ya’ from the rest of the movie nerds in the blogosphere.
And much love to Castor for having me on board with this. Big fan of non-movie related lists, even if it is kinda movie related.
High Noon (1952)
VERDICT:
10/10 Men of Honor
Pretty much perfect.
High Noon is about a small-town marshal who gets married to his sweetheart, turns in his badge after five years of turning the place from a crime den into a decent place to raise a family, and gets the wagon ready to head out into the sunset for good. But not 15 minutes after he says “I do,” the marshal gets word that four of the town’s most hardened killers who he helped put away have gotten out of prison are headed back on the 12 o’clock train to get their bloody revenge and turn the town into good ol’ Gomorrah again. Since the new marshal isn’t set to arrive for another day, the old marshal puts his honeymoon on hold, picks up his badge and starts asking everyone in the town that he single-handedly saved to help him fight back.
So I love this movie. When it comes to Westerns, it’s one of the all-time greats and one of a select handful that I’d easily give a 10, but it’s also one that I tend to forget about when the genre comes up in conversation. I guess that’s because this isn’t really what you’d expect from a Western. No cowboys, no Injuns, and if it weren’t for the setting and the big shootout that goes down during the last ten minutes or so, one could probably argue that it isn’t a Western at all. On top of that, apparently John Wayne hated the hell out of this movie, but you know what, Hollywood legend or not, that’s points off for The Duke in my book.
But whatever the requirements, they don’t really matter anyway. Man, if the setting had been switched from New Mexico to Siberia, all the buildings replaced with igloos and all the townspeople turned into with Eskimos, this movie would still be a 10. That’s ’cause it’s not really about any of that stuff for me – even if I do think it’s a Western through and through – this one’s all about marshal Will Kane.
I haven’t come across a whole lot of characters like Will Kane in my time. He’s Atticus Finch, he’s Rorschach, he’s the personification of what it means to do the right thing even if it means you’re the only one doing it, even if it may get you killed on your wedding day. But he’s not a boy scout, he’s not perfect and he falters along the way when the reality of the situation starts to become devastatingly clear to him and everyone else who’d rather save their own skin than risk it for the man who made a living putting his neck on the line for theirs. Although when push comes to shove, he’s always a good man with zero tolerance for evil. He’s not out to be the hero, he’s out to do what his job requires of him even if the only thanks he gets is people taking bets on how fast he’ll get killed, and when his duty’s fulfilled, it’s no surprise that his exit isn’t one of anger, but of speechless disappointment.
Alright, I’m rambling now, but Will Kane is the man. This is the guy you’d want your kids to look up to and whose footsteps you’d hope they’d follow in. It’s a damn shame that I can only think of two other characters who embody that same sense of righteousness, because those are the characters the world needs more of. You root for them not because they’re cool, not because they’re the underdog, and not because they’re likable, you root for them because of what they represent in a world where morality isn’t worth the tin star on your chest.
Then again, this is a work of fiction so it’s easy for me to sit on my couch and say that I’d have Kane’s back even if it was just the two of us. With that being said, I really dig the different shades of gray that color all the reasons Kane ultimately winds up as a one-man army when the clock strikes 12:00. His wife wants no part of it because she doesn’t want to end up a widow on her wedding day, the deputy marshal is a childish coward, and the rest are siding with the killers, hiding under the cover of their families or getting used to the idea of giving their town back to the bad guys. It’s really interesting watching them all go from enthusiastic to tail-between-their-legs and it adds a whole lot of complexity and humanity to an otherwise simple premise. Nevertheless, you can bet your ass I’d have Kane’s back.
And I’m flat-out crazy about the way Fred Zinnemann directed this. The movie clocks in at a deceptively brief 88 minutes, but the thing that makes it works so well is that the actual story takes place over the same amount of time. That’s right, this movie starts at around 10:45 AM and wraps up at around 12:10 PM. Not only is that plain old unusual to find in a movie because it’s hard enough to find a good story that spans the course of years, but it’s a damn hard time frame to write a compelling script around. And a lot of the credit in that regard goes to screenwriter Carl Foreman who jam packs a ton of substance into such a small space and moves it along at a pace that was decades ahead of its time. I know it was made almost 60 years ago, but saying that this movie goes by in a flash is saying it lightly. The only other movie I can think of from the era that moves along at the same utterly compelling speed is Breathless, and even that was made eight years later. It makes the whole thing so freakin’ intense, Zinnemann does an outstanding job of making the audience aware of every wasted minute that goes by, and it’ll have you biting your nails right down the knuckle.
Bonus points for an effing phenomenal little montage around town that takes place at 11:59. Just flawless.
Nor does it hurt that Gary Cooper blows the role right out of the water as Kane. The guy has grit and character to spare and the fact that he never once loses his cool from an emotional standpoint just drives it home that much further. You’ve also got Lloyd Bridges as his deputy marshal, Grace Kelly as his wife, and a mute Lee Van Cleef as one of the killers, but everyone is great here and there’s more to account for than just these four.
Folks, High Noon is a movie that I just excited thinking about let alone watching. It’s Will-effing-Kane, it’s every value that this movie stands for, it’s the timeless, invigorating story that rarely gets told anymore about standing up for right regardless of the overwhelming forces standing up for wrong. I’d like to say that this a very American movie since , but truth be told, this thing is universal on so many levels. This is a movie that makes me want to get up and scream “YES”, this is a movie that’s deserves to be seen because there are times when I genuinely feel like people have lose sight of what it means to stand up for what’s right even if you’re in the minority, this is a movie that’s just flat-out important and flat-out human in ways that most movies never even get close to reaching.
I don’t tend to get this worked up over a movie and I could totally keep going, but the long and short of it is that this is on my short list of required viewings that everyone should see before they die. If you don’t like Westerns, if you’re not a fan of black-and-white movies, I deem those phobias irrelevant, you need to watch this.
Word to your mother.
Thunderball (1965)
VERDICT:
4/10 Scuba Seans
The only movie you need to watch to get Austin Powers.
Thunderball picks up with the sinister douchebags at SPECTRE stealing two nuclear warheads right out from under our noses and threatening to drop ’em on a major city of their choosing unless London pays up a £100 million ransom. But since England doesn’t take too kindly to jerks who think they’re all that just because they got some nukes lying around, they put JB on the case and send him on down to the Bahamas to check this business out for himself. With sexin’ on his mind and his trigger finger ready to roll, Jimmy grabs his trusty speargun, rocks that orange wetsuit like the total pimp he is, and gets to savin’ the world before these dicks even know what hit ’em. TIME TO KICK SOME ASS!
Before I say anything else, let me just say that even I’m pretty surprised by the low verdict I gave this movie. Coming off the heels of the first three entries in the series that ranged from effing great to could-have-been-effing-great-if-it-hadn’t-been-f0r-that-gypsy-catfight, I was pretty hopeful that this would keep the streak alive. But alas, it was only a matter of time before things started going downhill.
I mean, it starts out well enough with an intro where Bond gets into a knock-down-drag-out fistfight with a SPECTRE agent who’s disguised as a woman (Austin Powers gag #1), and that was awesome. But once Bond finishes chocking the guy out and armed guards start breaking in the front door, he runs outside, straps on the fucking jetpack that’s conveniently waiting for him in the corner and zooms off to his getaway car with nameless henchmen gunning for him in the distance. My point is that up until now, the gadgets have maintained a lovely balance between cool and practical, but Thunderball may very well mark the point where Q jumped the shark.
I don’t know if Q is some kind of future-predicting gypsy himself, but lucky for James that he got outfitted with all the right underwater inventions that continually save his ass in the most unlikely of situations. It’s the pocket-sized oxygen tank that he uses to breathe in shark tanks and deep-sea battles, it’s the rocket-powered scuba tank he whips out in the said sea battle to stab fools and tear off oxygen masks at lightning speed, and, again, it’s that damn jetpack. I can understand the homing device he has to swallow (God forbid James ever has to drop trou and Mi6 starts digging up septic tanks), and I can understand the watch and camera with built-in Geiger counters to let him to know where the radioactive nukes are, but come on, how in the hell did Q know he’d need that other shit?
What makes it even worse is that even if Bond didn’t have these gadgets, chances are he’d still be alright. Take the scene with him in the shark tank for instance. Here we find James fighting with a nameless henchman in the personal shark tank of SPECTRE agent Emilio Largo, also known as “No. 2” (A.P. gag #2). Shortly after he starts splashing around, No. 2 himself shows up with a nameless henchman who’s got an automatic rifle trained on James’ head, but instead of telling him to fire away, No.2 decides to draw a cover over the tank and trust that the sharks will have their way with Bond (A.P. gag #3). So now that no one’s watching him, James kills the henchman, pops in his bite-sized oxygen tank and then swims right past three or four sharks to freedom on the other side of the tank that’s been left completely unmonitored by any of No. 2’s men. End scene.
Wait a minute…how did that happen?
How come every time someone even gets remotely close to these sharks they get eaten in seconds, but when James dives in they just keep on moving like it’s no big thing? Not even a sideways glance, not even a gnarled tooth to show, it’s just a friendly wave of the fin and a look that seems to say “James! My dawg! How you been, man? Yo, why you actin’ so scared? We ain’t gonna eat yo’ ass, quit playin’. Alright, we gonna go lunch on that guy you just killed, but I’ll catch you later. Word to your mother.” Ugh, I don’t get it, but it happened and it completely defeats the purpose of having sharks here to begin with.
And that final sea battle is just beyond stupid. It’s like something out of Braveheart, only underwater. Dumb idea right from the get-go, dumb idea in execution, and twice as dumb once James shows up with his West Coast Customs scuba gear and single-handedly takes out 50 some-odd nameless henchmen in one fell swoop. Eye-roll city, man. And the camera keeps on cutting from the fighting to all the various sea creatures floating around everyone’s feet for some reason. That was weird.
But as far as the script is concerned, the problem isn’t so much the straightforward premise or its weak sense of humor, it’s how obvious everything is. In the past three movies, the audience only knew as much as JB did when it came to unraveling the terror plot at hand. I really liked that, it was fun being kept in the dark about what was going on until the final Act rolled around and we were finally let in on what the bad guy was really up to even though all the signs had been pointing in another direction. Unfortunately, someone decided that formula was for Commies, so now we know everything that’s going on within the first 15 minutes and the rest of the plot is comprised of us waiting for James to figure it out for himself. The element of surprise has been completely removed and the whole thing becomes a lot less interesting and a lot less suspenseful as a result.
Although I was a big fan of the Bond girls this time around. There’s two or three prominent women in Bond’s adventures this time around, and even though they all sleep with him at some point or other (in their defense, everyone was doing it those days), these gals are tough cookies. Nice to see some women who hold their own, aren’t ditzes, and are legitimately fleshed out instead of the usual requirement that starts and ends with gals itching to fulfill their life-long dreams of knocking boots with a British secret agent. And, hey, they’re pretty easy on the eyes, too.
Folks, I wish I had liked Thunderball more than I did and I know there are a lot of fans who dig it thoroughly, but this felt more like one big running gag than anything else. Maybe I should blame Mike Myers for that one, I don’t know. But either way, it’s a big step down from the bar set by Goldfinger, even if Tom Jones does sing the theme song. At least Connery still kicks ass, just a shame that his one-liners are worse than ever.
Does have a kickass skeet shooting scene though. Too bad it only lasts five seconds ’cause it’s arguably the best part of the whole movie.
Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever (2002)
VERDICT:
3/10 Napalm Orgies
Not quite The Worst Movie Ever Made, but still pretty harsh.
Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever is about a kid who gets kidnapped by a rogue assassin, so his dad – who happens to be a total dick and is probably up to some very shady shit – pulls out all the stops to get him back. Investigating the case is a former FBI agent with a permanent five o’clock shadow who gets pulled out of retirement by his former boss even though the guy’s a fuckin’ mess because his wife died in a car explosion…or so he thinks. So he picks up his shotgun, tracks down this assassin who’s lighting up everyone and everything in sight, and eventually starts fighting alongside her as he realizes that everything is not quite as it seems.
Wild stuff, I know.
So people really freakin’ hate this movie, huh? Even if it did manage to avoid getting nominated for a single Razzie Award back in ’02, the general vibe about this bad boy can more or less be summed up by Rotten Tomatoes naming it the single worst movie of the past decade. Yup, Baby Genuises 2 doesn’t have shit on this, and even though I’ve only got one foot in the bandwagon, I can understand the hate.
For starters, it’s directed by a guy named “Kaos”. His full name is Wych Kaosayananda (which is also a bummer), but since the words “DIRECTED BY KAOS” turn up during the opening credits, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and assume that this is a self-given nickname we’re dealing with. Suspect directing skills aside, that right there is strike number one.
On top of that, it’s written by the same guy who gave us such winners as Spawn, Tekken, and The Marine. His name is Alan B. McElroy, and I don’t know how he still has a job let alone managed to impress some fat cat to the point where they green lit the three Wrong Turn movies he penned, but apparently he’s blackmailing the right people. Whatever the reason, strike two.
I don’t know if anyone out there’s actually had to sit through Spawn or ever tried to give themselves a nickname that uses a “K” in place of a “CH”, but I can personally attest to the former, and that was mighty rough. As you can probably imagine, combining these two cinematic snafus and giving those responsible free access to more pyrotechnics than China on New Year’s along with the perk of making up the story as they go makes for an experience of truly magical proportions.
As far as the story goes, this thing is all loopholes. You can try to follow it, it’s a free country, but just giving you fair warning that it won’t come together no matter how you try to spin it. The explanations that McElroy provides to some of the plot’s bigger mysteries don’t make sense, the relationships amongst all of these characters and what motivates their actions throughout don’t make sense, and for what could have been a really straightforward, mindless shoot-em-up, it’s pretty surprising how much of it doesn’t make sense. But at least the dialogue is fine. Nothing special, but nothing that had me rolling my eyes either.
As far as the directing goes, this thing is all explosions. Looks like Kaos was a big fan of The Matrix and came to the conclusion that if you blow stuff up a lot and go heavy on the slow-mo, everything will be awesome. In Kaos’ defense, every action movie was a knock-off of The Matrix from ’99 to, oh, let’s just say ’06, but all the same, it gets old fast and doesn’t make for anything memorable. Doesn’t help that the soundtrack might as well be called NOW! That’s What I Call A Rave either. Not only does the volume get jacked up like crazy as soon as the bullets start flying, but the music is just awful and continually switches from deafeningly techno to unnecessarily epic. Such a pain in the ass having to lower and raise the volume on my TV by 20 notches every five minutes so I could both hear the dialogue and prevent my neighbors from calling the cops about the shootout in my apartment, but even if that hadn’t been an issue, the music would still exist.
And the acting is whatever.
Antonio Banderas is fine, I guess (blame it on my love for Desperado). The problem in this department mainly lies with Lucy Liu and the way her facial expressions range from Old Navy mannequin to Old Navy mannequin the entire time she’s on-screen. Not that she has much to work with, but it’s pretty wild how uninterested she is by all the guns she gets to shoot.
Look, there’s no getting around that Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever sucks. That much is crystal. But then again, there are worse movies out there and the fact that no one is going into this with the expectation of a watching a good movie ultimately leaves zero room for disappointment. It was one thing to sit through Gigli and have my mind blown by how abysmal it ended up being, but this wasn’t on that same level. Not trying to be a naysayer or anything because I refuse to be That Guy who thinks Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever doesn’t deserve the bad rap that planet Earth’s given it, I just think it’s far more instantly forgettable than it is a masterpiece of awfulness. Left me totally indifferent more than anything else. If it had been unintentionally funny, there might have been cause to warrant a “so bad it’s good” recommendation, but as is, it’s simply a bang-up way to zone out for 91 minutes.
So strike three for anyone who’s still counting.
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010)
VERDICT:
8/10 Family Ties
As strange and intriguing as its weird-ass title.
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is about a farmer in Thailand whose nephew and sister-in-law come to take care of him since his bum kidney is on the way out. Not long after they arrive, they are greeted by the spirits of the farmer’s deceased wife and lost son who has turned into monkey ghost because it just so happened that he mated with a monkey ghost. As the farmer’s health deteriorates, he comes to terms with the karma of his past that has come full circle and makes the most of the time he has left with those who matter most to him.
Any other day, if someone asked me to go a see a movie called Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, chances are I’d tell them to put down the doobie and walk away. With that being said, I don’t know how I got my mom to tag along with me on this one, but I guess starting out sentences with “It won the Palm d’Or at Cannes last year!” is a good way to get folks on the bandwagon. Not sure what other movies this beat out for that coveted title, but if there’s anything to be said about this sucker, it’s definitely memorable.
But let’s not mince words here, because this is an odd one. Probably goes without saying after all that business about monkey ghosts and whatnot, but somehow, all of that is just part of the appeal. It’s written and directed by one Apichatpong Weerasethakul (pretty sure he’s Irish) and I’m not really sure what to say about him or this movie or where to even begin because I still don’t really know what to make of it.
In short, experiencing this movie is…something.
It doesn’t follow any real set structure, it’s not very big on providing explanations even though a couple here and probably would have been nice, and it very much moves to the beat of its own drum. I mean, there’s a point where the plot completely cuts away from the main story line to give us a ten-minute tale about an aging princess who bangs a talking catfish, then it cuts back to the main story line and that whole segue is never mentioned again. Yeah, there’s a lot of that, but the effect is surprisingly more pleasant than it is head-scratchingly bizarre.
For one, the pacing here is mighty slow, but it ends up feeling more like a meditation than a snoozefest. Under different circumstances, I think this aspect would have been a major weak point, but I liked the way the camera spends so much time centered on the gorgeous scenery of Thailand or on quiet moments between characters since it complements the overall tone of the movie and what it has to say.
It’s like David Lynch mixed with Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, and as much as I can’t explain a lot of what happens here, I couldn’t help but find it totally engrossing. I wouldn’t call it accessible, but I would call it inviting. There isn’t a negative bone in this movie’s body, Uncle Boonmee himself is a wonderful little guy with a temperament that never drops below glass-completely-full and an outlook on life that just puts you at ease, and when all is said and done, it’s just really nice. Even when ghosts start walking amongst the living and Chewbacca’s evil shadow shows up for dinner, it works because that’s simply the kind of story this is.
Folks, you just don’t see movies that operate on this kind of spiritual and ethereal level. It’s about living with death, life after death, the soul, the body, the relationship between man and nature, and a bunch of other stuff that you can read into to your heart’s content. And I dig that, it’s a breath of fresh air to find a movie that’s so focused on such universal and mysterious subjects that it in turn becomes a sort of mystery itself.
Geez, I wish I had more to say about this movie after thinking about it for three days straight, but it’s truly something that has to be seen to even border on comprehension. Take that any way you like, ’cause that’s the best I’ve got.
I’m still not sure if I actually liked this movie and I’m still not really sure what I was supposed to take away from it, but by the same token, that’s also why I gave it such a high score. Uncle Boonmee truly is a different slice of life the likes of which I’ve never come across in a film, and that counts for a lot. I hesitate to recommend this movie all willy-nilly because I doubt this is everyone’s cup of tea, but sometimes you don’t need to understand a movie to appreciate how unique and inspired it is. Just gotta go with the flow, see where it takes ya’, and get to talkin’ about what the hell it all means.
My mom: what a trooper.
Battle: Los Angeles (2011)
VERDICT:
3/10 Recruitment Tools
Perfect for anyone who hates stories and wishes every movie was more like Call of Duty.
Battle: Los Angeles takes place in a near future where aliens strategically crash land in some of Earth’s largest cities and begin running train on us humans so that they can take over and drain our oceans dry since H20 is their version of diesel fuel. Standing in their way is a platoon of Marines who storm into South Central with guns blazing so that they can take these mofos out and let them know the hard way that they messed with the wrong planet, but since these aliens outnumber them like gangbusters and also happen to have space guns grafted into their bodies, it ends up being a pretty tough battle…Los Angeles.
So there were two things that initially peaked my interest about this movie and for some reason made me want to go see it: the trailer that ended up being infinitely better than the final product and the back story of sorts that was tied into real-life events. If that second part is news, the events I’m referring to apparently took place way back in ’42 when the US military unloaded some anti-aircraft artillery off the coast of LA, gave the public no explanation for it, and so folks now think it was an alien invasion. So I guess this movie is about how the aliens have come back to kick our asses because we lit them up back during WWII, but who knows.
The problem is that no one in the movie ever mentions the supposed E.T. cover-up even though it was supposedly the inspiration for this movie. I don’t know why that is, maybe I just imagined that connection in a dream, but either way, the fact that it’s completely ignored is kinda beyond me. Although what’s worse is that it this movie would have been much better off had that aspect been included and it would have been a really easy problem to solve, too. Just put up some text before the opening credits about how aliens once showed up at Long Beach to catch some rays, they turned tail the moment we asked for their beach passes with a fleet of tanks in tow, and now they’re back because we were such buzzkills about the whole thing. Sure, it doesn’t have to be that fancy, but something, anything would have been an improvement.
Instead, we get nothing. Granted, you don’t usually go into a movie like this looking for some seriously thought-provoking shit, but one does expect thoughts, period. This here is a first-person shooter, a run-and-gunner with the attention span of Mr. Short-Term Memory and the depth of a shot glass to boot. I mean, I’m all for mindless entertainment every once in a while, but this is crazy. The only story going for it is that aliens invade and the Jarheads are gonna fight ’em back, and the next two hours is watching them do just that, nothing more. Just an infinitesimal amount of substance to be found here and it adds nothing to what we’ve already seen from these kinds of movies. No body snatching, no Will Smith, no nothing, and who needs that?
And, man, it kills me to see Aaron Eckhart in this movie. This is Nick Naylor, this is the guy whose career should have skyrocketed into the stratosphere from the moment production wrapped on In the Company of Men. He’s one of those actors who has all the potential to be an A-lister and an Oscar contender, but he keeps on shooting himself in the foot by signing up for shit like this. The problem with him here as Staff Sergeant Michael Nantz isn’t that he’s a bad actor, it’s that he’s taking the role so damn seriously. Then again, all his co-stars from Michelle Rodriguez to Ne-Yo (once again proving my theory that giving major roles to rappers is an almost foolproof way to turn your movie into a walking punchline) are also on the bandwagon and absolutely everything about this movie takes itself so damn seriously in a setting that’s about as plausible as a man vs. aliens invasion in L.A. It’s too bad because there is some potential in the idea of “Black Hawk Down, but with aliens instead of Somalis”, but since director Jonathan Liebesman has no fucking clue how to tap into that potential because he’s too busy trying to cook up a new boss fight for his Marines to get into, the whole thing backfires horribly.
With that being said, the icing on the cake really is this gem of a script by Christopher Bertolini. Talk about phoning it in, man. I can’t remember the last time I’ve heard so much macho, corny, bi-curious bullshit crammed into one place. Because this is about Marines and apparently this is how Marines talk, every other sentence whether it be about buying groceries or picking your nose has to end with an “Ooh-rah!”, and every time someone tries to show their softer side because there’s always time for that on the battlefield, they end up sounding like Mary Poppins in urban camo. Bertolini uses every cliche in the book whether its on the battlefield or off, and there were a couple heart-to-hearts between emotional Marines where they got so over-dramatic and so up in each others’ faces that I was absolutely convinced they would start making out within the next five seconds. It’s bad, really effing bad, but the worst part is that it negates everything about this movie that should have been fun because it all winds up feeling stupid and cheesy. Ugh, how do you fuck this up? Such an easy formula to follow at this point.
Folks, if I were in the Marine Corps, I’d be pissed to have my livelihood associated with Battle-fucking-Los Angeles. It can’t be easy to make Marines look like chumps – especially when you’re intent is to make them look cool – but somehow this crew did it with flying colors, and what’s worse is that a lot of this feels like funded by the USMC in the hopes of getting teens to enlist or something. The special effects are good and the action has its moments, but when you keep screwing the pooch with awfully convenient cliches and a script that replaces any trace of story with testosterone levels that rival a Village People concert, it ain’t worth a damn. Doesn’t help that the aliens look like the Black Manta covered in Jell-O, either. I’m sure there’s a target audience for this kind of thing, probably the 13-year-old boys in the crowd who take twice as much pleasure in watching other people play video games as they do playing themselves, but other than that, this movie flat-out blows.
So if this is your first time seeing an alien invasion movie or if this is your first time seeing a movie in general, you might just have yourself a freakin’ time. But for the rest of us would rather just play Call of Duty or reminisce about how awesome it would be if Bull Pullman actually was the President of the United States, save your time and money. Alien invasions should never be this boring.
And the best thing about being Charlie Sheen is…
Believe it or not, we actually have ourselves a tie, folks. And the winners are:
“BEING YOUR OWN DRUG, A DRUG THAT IS SO POWERFUL IT WILL KILL AND MELT THE FACE OFF OF ANY OTHER WHO TRIES IT.”
And…
“HAVING A PERFECT, BITCHIN’ LIFE. DUH.”
I don’t know if we’ve ever had a tie around these parts before, but I guess it’s hard to pick just one winning aspect of Charlie Sheen’s downward spiral of a life. Man, this guy is making Tony Montana look like a girl scout. Not exactly the best road to be heading down if you ask me.
Anyway, good voting, boys and girls.
RESULTS:
– “Being your own drug, a drug that is so powerful it will kill and melt the face off of any other who tries it.”: 8 votes
– “Having a perfect, bitchin’ life. Duh.”: 8 votes
– “Tiger blood.”: 5 votes
– “Being addicted to winning.”: 3 votes
– “The ‘Goddesses’.”: 3 votes
– “Operating on one gear, one speed: GO.”: 3 votes
– “The ability to cure diseases with your brain.”: 0 votes (I’d say that’s a pretty awesome quality)
– Other: 1 vote for “Adonis DNA” (win), 1 vote for “This is sad, he needs medical attention” (win), 1 vote for “Doing enough coke to kill two and a half men, and not even getting a nosebleed” (win), 1 vote for “Being Charlie Sheen” (win), and 1 vote for “Wake me up when Sheen-mania is over…” (yeah, amazing how sad this whole thing got over the course of one week).
Then again, I thought this was pretty hilarious:
Alright, that’s it. I’m done.
The Pianist (2002)
VERDICT:
9/10 Survival Sonatas
Unforgettable.
The Pianist is the true story of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a famous Jewish musician living in Warsaw, Poland when the German army invaded at the outset of World War II and began herding his family and his people into ghettos. After a member of the Jewish Police saves him from being transferred to a concentration camp, he spends the days in his war-torn city working to avoid execution, starvation and sickness by hiding under the Nazis noses, scavenging high and low for food, and relying on his wits as well as his luck.
So it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a Holocaust movie and I think this is the first time I’ve actually written about one. Not sure why that is, but this one’s been on my Re-Watch list for a long time, and since it was on its way off my Netflix Instant queue, I figured I was due. As far as the subject matter is concerned, it doesn’t exactly hit home on a personal level since I’ll never understand what it was live through something like that and I don’t have grandparents who can attest otherwise, but since human suffering and persecution will always be universal, so in turn is the impact they each bear.
The first time I saw this was back in high school when it was still in theaters, and, as you can probably imagine, I was taken aback to say the least. It wasn’t just the violence, it wasn’t just Adrien Brody, it was everything all at once that I wasn’t prepared for, that I couldn’t comprehend, and I still can’t comprehend now. It’s not that I’ve ever underestimated the kind of atrocities that the Nazis committed or that any of their practices is news, it’s just one of those things that I wish I couldn’t believe because seeing and hearing are two very different things. So after a nine-year gap between viewings, I couldn’t quite remember everything that happened during the last hour or so when Szpilman is mainly living in secrecy from the Germans, but when it came to the genocide that primarily takes place during that first hour, the memories were vivid.
As a result, the shock value that hit like a truck during my first viewing was somewhat lost for me during this latest refresher course, but don’t mistake that for a complaint, it’s just a testament to how vicious this movie is. It’s the way the scenery looks more like the back lot from Children of Men than a historical biopic. It’s the ashen, decaying bodies of men, women and children sprawled out in the middle of the street and slumped against the sides of buildings in pools of blood as people walk over them like they’ve always been there. It’s the way the Nazi officers senselessly murder droves of Jews with the emotional reaction of swatting a fly. It’s evil personified and complete devastation that works because at one point and time it was real, and it will stun you far greater than any horror movie could ever hope to. There’s a lot to take away from this Szpilman’s story and the way Roman Polanksi tells it, but I tell you what, you will have no delusions as to the horrors of the Holocaust – in or out of the camps – after seeing this.
But, in the end, this is about Szpilman and Brody really did one hell of a job portraying him. After all, he did nab Best Actor right out from under Jack Nicholson, Daniel Day-Lewis, Nicolas Cage and Michael Caine, all of whom gave some of the best performances of their careers. Argue away in regards to whether or not he in fact deserved it, but regardless, this was some seriously demanding stuff and he absolutely stepped up to the challenge. Since he doesn’t have a great deal of dialogue to work with, the role is almost entirely physical and his body language speaks like a bullhorn. It’s watching him play the piano for a living at the height of his health, then watching him deteriorate to where he looks like a human coat hanger as he stumbles around the rubble that was once his home and is forced to play the piano if he wants to live. So impressive that he actually learned to play the piano this well, so painful to watch him go from the guy in the first image up there to the guy down below, and so emotionally wrenching for such a subtle turn.
With that being said, it’s that very quality of Brody’s performance that crosses over to everything else in this movie. It’s powerful without being overdramatic, and it’s deafening without being loud. Folks, with imagery like this, there’s not much need for conversation to drive the message home. Although I love the way the meaning behind that last sentence gets taken to a whole new level when Szpilman develops an unlikely friendship, for lack of a better word, towards the end of the film. Really difficult and profound stuff to come to terms with and a brutal, yet important, display of what human beings are capable of.
Another interesting thing about Szpilman’s story is that no matter how integral his quick wits and musical talents are in regards to how he survived while so many others died, his story would have ended very early on had it not been for his outrageously good luck. Granted, a good deal of it ties into his notoriety as a pianist, but I really like that aspect because Szpilman doesn’t come off as living proof of deus ex machina, he’s not a hero, he’s just one of the lucky ones who didn’t get randomly picked out of a line and executed in broad daylight. And when you consider that Polanski himself is a Holocaust survivor who lost his mother to the Nazis, it becomes more than just a movie, it’s a history lesson and a dual memoir of sorts that feels far more personal than it does Hollywood.
But since it’s a Holocaust movie, the comparisons to Life is Beautiful and Schindler’s List in particular are bound to come up, and while I do need to revisit those two movies again before giving my two cents on how this compares, The Pianist is nevertheless a story that twice left me speechless. Yeah, I’ve already written a whole review on it so I’ve obviously found something to say, but as much as I can rant and ramble, there just aren’t enough words out there to sum this up in a nutshell. It’s an incredible story of survival, but it’s just as horrific and harrowing in ways that I can’t wrap my head around since I can’t write it off as fiction. One of those things you only need to see once, and once is more than enough to make you never forget it.
Can’t believe this lost Best Picture to Chicago of all things.
Gigli (2003)
VERDICT:
1/10 Turkey Times
Yup. It sucks.
Gigli is about a hired muscle for the mob who finds himself kidnapping the mentally challenged brother of a federal prosecutor and keeping him under house arrest until further notice. Being that our thumb cruncher’s boss thinks he’s too much of a dumbass to handle the responsibility on his own, he hires a cool-headed Jennifer Lopez who happens to be in the same line of work to keep tabs on our guy so that he doesn’t screw up. Ben Affleck doesn’t take to kindly to J. Lo stepping on his toes, nor does he take too kindly to her rejecting his advances since she’s a lesbian, but eventually she wears down his tough exterior and he learns that maybe there’s more to life than holding autistic people hostage for the rest of his days. Such is the power of Bennifer.
God, the redeeming factor of all these shitty movies I’ve been watching lately is that there’s at least some degree of entertainment that comes with how unintentionally hilarious they are. If it had been sheer torture, I would have stopped at Battlefield Earth and never looked back, but there were definitely redeeming qualities to be found, enough so to even warrant recommendations. But then I watch fucking Gigli, and for the first time since I started on this bender, I feel like sobering up.
Going into it, I really didn’t think it could actually be as bad as everyone says it is. The only thing I knew about it beforehand was that everyone hated it, that it showcased Ben and Jen back when they were an item, and that J. Lo says “It’s turkey time. Gobble, gobble,” as a cue for Ben to eat her out. I guess that should have been enough of a warning sign, but I still couldn’t quite bring myself to believe that the script and the acting could be that bad. I mean, this was written and directed by Martin Brest, the same guy who did Beverly Hills Cop, Scent of a Woman and Midnight Run. Martin Brest knows what’s up.
And for a little bit, it wasn’t that bad. Sure, Ben sounds like a total idiot with his Italian “accent” and the gag about people mispronouncing his last name as “Jiggly” gets old the second it starts (definitely wasn’t worth the stupid title, even if I do love calling it “Jiggly”), but for a good ten minutes, there wasn’t much I could finger as being truly horrible. But then Justin Bartha shows up as Ben’s mentally challenged bargaining chip, he quickly becomes a major character and gets called a “fucking retard” a whole bunch of times, and I realize that I was dead wrong in giving this thing the benefit of the doubt.
While I’m on the subject, let’s just talk about this Justin Bartha thing. When Robert Downey, Jr. talked to Ben Stiller about the dangers of going “full retard” in Tropic Thunder, this is what he was talking about. There really is a fine line that separates Simple Jack from Raymond Babbitt, and Bartha effing nosedives towards the former. It’s Bartha singing “Baby Got Back”, it’s Bartha dancing to rap in Ben Affleck’s kitchen, it’s Bartha saying “God bless you” to his penis every time he gets an erection. It’s not endearing in the least, it’s just wrong. The worst thing about it is that I have no idea why it was so important to write Bartha’s character as being mentally challenged. It’s not like Gigli had any established bias against people with autism, so it ends up feeling like it’s there for comic relief or something and it could have worked just as well if Bartha acted like Bartha. Man, this is Carlos Mencia shit. Just awful.
And the problem with Bennifer isn’t so much their acting chops, it’s that the chemistry between them is nonexistent and the lines they have to deliver are simply cringe-worthy. I don’t know who Martin Brest’s been hanging around with, but no one talks like this. No one gives what felt like a five minute soliloquy during a yoga session about why the vagina is infinitely superior to the penis because a penis doesn’t have lips, no one talks about oral sex like there’s Thanksgiving leftovers hiding in their panties, and no one breaks a laptop in half over their knee and then drives the message home by yelling “Suckmydick.com!” There’s a ton of unnecessary yelling here, most of it is from good ol’ Jiggles, and it’s just exhausting listening to these clowns talk because they simply do not shut up.
On top of all this, it just doesn’t go anywhere, nothing really happens. It’s as if someone parked Koko the monkey in front of a typewriter and told her to rewrite Chasing Amy or she’d never eat another banana for the rest of her days. The only character development is Gigli going from a douchebag to a nice guy because he finally gets Jenny from the Block in the sack and grows to love Justin Bartha so much that he can’t even think the word “retard” without welling up, and that’s pretty much the whole movie. All that crap about kidnapping and mob bosses plays fourth fiddle to the Bennifer’s romantic plot line, and that’s about as convincing as Bennifer was in real life.
And why stop there? For some reason, Christopher Walken makes a bizarre cameo as a detective who drops by to harass Gigli for five minutes and is never heard from or mentioned again, and then Al Pacino shows up with a ponytail, shoots a guy, yells like crazy, and then is never heard from or mentioned again. I can understand Walken being in this because the guy literally will not turn down a role, but I was surprised and sad to see Pacino here. For shame.
Folks, it’s no fluke that this gem won six Razzies, and I’m amazed I sat through the whole thing without falling asleep because it would have been easy peasy Japanesey. Word on the street is that this train wreck was caused by some tiff between Brest and the studio backing him, so I guess that explains some of it, but whatever the cause, Gigli lives up to its reputation. The writing, the acting, the story – all of it sucks ass and if Troll 2 didn’t exist, I’d give it a zero. Can’t blame Brest for dropping off the face of the Earth after this one, and continue to avoid this if you know what’s good for ya’.
Revanche (2008)
VERDICT:
9/10 Ripple Effects
Deceptively simple and utterly devastating.
Revanche is about a handyman at a brothel who falls for one of the girls on staff and plans to run off with her in order to get away from her dangerous pimp. In order to finance their escape, the handyman decides to rob a bank on their way out of town. So the big day comes around, he pulls off the heist with ease, but then things take a turn for the tragic during the getaway and our guy heads to his uncle’s home in the country to hide from the public eye. Before long, he realizes that one of his new neighbors is the very same person who threw his life into a whirlwind, so he bides his time, chops some wood, and starts planning his revenge.
So going off that last sentence and keeping in mind that this movie’s title means “Revenge” in German, you can probably guess what the driving theme behind this movie is. Unfortunately, I can’t be giving away any specifics here as to why our handyman is out for vengeance, but by the same token, revenge is just the tip of the iceberg with this one.
It’s written and directed by one Götz Spielmann – a guy who didn’t know existed before seeing this movie – and if there’s one thing I dig about what he’s done here, it’s the way he makes this experience as subtle as it is intense. When modern-day revenge movies come to mind, I tend to think of The Rock or Nic Cage overacting like gangbusters and killing fools wholesale with no questions asked. This, on the other hand, is as far from that as can be.
It’s not loud or action-packed in the least, in fact, there’s no score at all, there’s nothing flashy about the direction or the script, and it’s a prime example of how less can sometimes be so much more. The whole thing is this slow boil of baited inaction that keeps leading you on and leaves you waiting for the hammer to drop with each new scene that lurks around the corner. It works because as soon as tragedy strikes, the only thing you’ll be waiting for is for it to strike again. It’s the deafening silence that surrounds everything, it’s watching our handyman chop wood like an axe murderer, and it’s never knowing what’s gonna happen next even because Spielmann refuses to slack up on the tension that keeps on escalating until it’s effing palpable.
But that’s the thing. While it creates a mood that will leave you short of breath, Spielmann’s not out for payback. Instead, he focuses on the questions you’d inevitably ask that come with grief, bloodlust, and justifying vigilante “justice”, and that’s what makes this movie stand out because those are questions that rarely get addressed by characters with revenge on the brain. It’s not cut-and-dry and it’s far more complicated than an eye-for-an-eye outlook would ever provide.
In a nutshell, it’s a story of strangers coming to terms with their own demons and finding where to place the blame for everything that went so wrong in their lives while being plagued with rage or guilt. That might not sound like much to get excited over from the outset and it might even sound pretty by-the-books, but it’s surprisingly unpredictable and continually takes its characters down paths that you won’t see coming.
On that note, I love the way Spielmann doesn’t just tell this story from the perspective of the handyman, but from the viewpoint of the neighbor and the neighbor’s wife whose daily lives have all been affected in equally crushing ways as a result of that fated day. There’s no one person to sympathize with, and the more we learn about what each of them are going through, the more you realize that no one here can be easily pigeonholed as “right” or “wrong” for how they’re feeling or what they do. Incredibly well structured and well thought out for a premise that doesn’t tend to get much insight thrown its way.
But it does take a while to get going. The first Act is relatively uninteresting and carries a completely different tone from the next 90 minutes that follow it. There’s nothing very new about the story of an ex-con who tries to run away with the prostitute he fell in love with, and since a lot of it takes place in a dingy brothel, there’s a seriously excess amount of nudity and hooking going on that made it all feel depressing and boring more than anything else. Not the kind of thing that would warrant a 9 and it’s a pretty 0ff-putting way to kick off a story that ultimately turns into something completely different.
Then again, it does provide a pretty eye-opening contrast to everything that comes next. Need to think about this some more. Will report back.
But with that being said, I wasn’t crazy about Revanche when it first started and it was more like an 8 by the time it was over, although the more I thought about it and the more I couldn’t shake it for days after, it eventually hit me that this was a pretty astounding piece of work. The last movie I saw that was so inwardly complex and outwardly simple as this was In the Bedroom, and I don’t know how many people have seen this movie or heard of it, but with a comparison like that, it deserves some attention. Just an effing brilliant script backed up by solid acting and even better direction. Wish I had more to say about the actors who all do a bang-up job, but this one’s all about Spielmann and he kills it on every front.
And in completely unrelated news, go ahead and count this as my 500th review, folks. Sorry I didn’t write about a more well-known movie for this occasion that truly cements the way this blog has completely taken over my life, but alas, it was either this or four other movies that no one’s ever heard of. Still, thanks for reading, gang. Let’s get married.
Cut The Crap Movie Reviews 
