And when it comes to the images in the body of the reviews…
I’M-A GONNA KEEP ‘EM!
Thanks for the feedback, folks. I dig ’em too.
RESULTS
– Keep ’em: 16 votes
– Lose ’em: 3 votes (sorry, guys. majority rules on this one)
– T-shirts: 7 votes
Will get back to you on the T-shirts. Got some kickass ideas in mind, but I’m all ears, so let’s hear it. But more importantly, how much would a normal human being pay for a custom T-shirt these days?
…please say $100, please say $100…
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)
VERDICT:
5/10 Whomping Willows
Worked a lot better as a novel.
Harry Potter and Chamber of Secrets picks up during HP’s sophomore year at good ol’ Hogwarts. This time around, a magic elf in a potato sack is trying to keep him out of school in order to save his life from unnamed dangers, Ron breaks his wand like an idiot, the Malfoys are bigger dicks than ever, kids are getting petrified left and right and everyone thinks Harry’s behind it because he can talk to snakes, and something tells me that sonofabitch Voldemort is somehow tied into it all. Just a hunch.
So it’s not quite the identical book-to-film adaptation that Sorcerer’s Stone was, and while I initially considered that a pro and con in equal parts, it’s a lot easier to appreciate someone sticking to a winning formula when stuff starts to get left out and unnecessary additions get put in. If you haven’t read the books, you won’t notice and you won’t care, you’re probably better off for it actually, and even though a lot of my gripes might be on the nitpicky side, something about this story really got lost in translation.
The weird thing is, the biggest eye-rollers here are the ones that haven’t been altered from Rowling’s source material. Maybe it’s just ’cause she’s a damn good writer or maybe I was too caught up daydreaming about how awesome it would be to use memory charms like I was in the MiB, but they weren’t eye-rollers when I was reading through them. Acted out, it’s a whole other story. No idea how I so easily brushed it off before, but there are just way too many deus ex machina/right-in-the-nick-of-time moments going on here to ignore. Whether it’s an enchanted Rent-A-Wreck that barrels out of the forest and saves our mop-topped heroes from a spidery death or a freakin’ phoenix (whose powers are merely whispered in passing) that drops by with the one super rare weapon/super rare cure that Harry needs to avoid a venomy death, it all feels quite convenient.
I don’t know. When I first tried getting through the series, I tore through the first book, couldn’t wait to read this one, and then gave up on it about 100 pages in. I wish it hadn’t taken me so long to realize my mistake, but by page 99, the magic was gone, I wasn’t sucked in and it just felt like another year back at school instead of “HARRY-FUCKING-POTTER, DESTROYER OF WORLDS, IS A-GOIN’ BACK TO HOGWARTS AND NOTHING’S GONNA GET IN HIS WAY! HUZZAH!” And while this adaptation doesn’t really carry that same back-to-school blues vibe as much, I wasn’t smiling anywhere near as much as I was in Sorcerer’s Stone. The story serves its purpose, we’re introduced to a couple key items that come into play down the line, we learn more about Voldy and the whole “wizard bigotry” issue gets addressed, but all in all, it’s not quite as memorable as those before and after it.
There’s also just too damn much going on at once here. Major characters and old favorites are introduced to us one minute, they throw their weight around, and then disappear for an hour only to return to the forefront at some critical point in the story. For the painfully annoying characters like Dobby the house elf, that high-pitched pain in the ass Moaning Myrtle (so damn annoying), and that smug bastard Draco, the hour-long break is clutch, but since it also means less screen-time for Kenneth Branagh as Gilderoy Lockhart, it kinda sucks. Totally forgot that Branagh was even in this, nor can I believe how they managed to rope him into doing this outside of convincing him that “It’s like King Lear…but with muggles,” but he’s awesome as Lockhart. Never thought much of Lockhart in the books since he also falls into the “smug bastard” category, but Branagh’s just perfect and he hams it up like a pro. Definitely a winning change of scenery.
And everyone from the last movie is here too (except for that asshole Quirrell), and not a lot has changed on that front aside from all the cracking voices. Emma Watson’s good as Hermione, Rupert Grint is fine as Ron, and Daniel Radcliffe’s Joker smile gets weirder with each Summer as Harry. Could have used more Snape, especially since Lucius Malfoy comes off as poor man’s bleached version of the guy, but Snape’ll get his spotlight in due time.
But aside from all this bitching and moaning, it’s still a good story. Having finally read through it, Chamber of Secrets ain’t bad in the least, but it’s also at the bottom of the barrel in comparison to the other six. The actual Chamber of Secrets itself is cool, it’s just fun to revisit everything, and up until the last half-hour, this was at a 6 or a 7. Alas, that final Act was pretty weak and I don’t know what Chris Columbus thought he was doing getting all melodramatic on us.
And maybe I’m just forgetting, but does the book actually end with everyone hugging Hagrid and giving him this epic standing O in the great hall? I don’t think it does, but either way, that was a stupid-ass way to end the movie. What the hell did Hagrid do but avoid getting his salad tossed in Azkaban for a night? Damn, Sirius Black better get a fucking parade in this next movie.
Too damn long, too. 2 hours and 44 minutes of wizards hitting puberty is no way to start your morning.
The Seventh Seal (1957)
VERDICT:
8/10 Empty Prayers
Man, when did movies stop being this deep?
The Seventh Seal is about a disillusioned medieval knight who wakes up on an ocean shore, looks to his left and finds Death himself walking down the beach in his general direction. Since everyone knows how much Death loves board games, the knight thinks quick and challenges him to a chess match in order to buy some time before his time is up. Ever the gambling addict/Bobby Fischer fanboy, Death accepts the offer and allows the knight to postpone/potentially alter his fate while he travels a countryside rife with the Black Plague in the hopes of finding an answer as to wait awaits him when the lights go out.
So, this is the first Ingmar Bergman movie I’ve ever seen…and the first time I saw it was three days ago. Embarrassing, I deserve to be publicly slapped in an IKEA for this shame I’ve brought upon my family, but better late than never, I suppose. Of all the movies that make up his life’s work, I guess it’s only natural that I’d go with the one that inspired the best scene from Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey, and while it could have used more melvins (same goes for every movie), I can certainly see why so many folks hold this in such high regard.
It’s probably the most redundant statement I use in these reviews of mine, but (shocker) movies like this just don’t get made anymore. And it’s not ’cause technology’s changed, it’s not because we’ve forgotten to be patient with movies both as film makers and viewers, it’s more that movies have stopped thinking in a certain sense. Alright, that’s a pretty unfair generalization, but try to think of one seriously philosophical movie you’ve seen over the past ten years, something that made you actively re-evaluate your own belief system as the plot progressed? The closest thing I could come up with is LOST, and that was a rarity, and that’s not even a movie.
But even more than his direction, even more than the performances from his cast, that headlong struggle to find some kind of answers to some of life’s most inherently difficult questions is what really makes Bergman’s work stand out. It’s funny, I immediately liked the initial premise of this chess duel against Death personified, but as soon as the match started, I had no idea what the hell Bergman was going to do for the rest of the movie or what the purpose of the match was outside of giving the knight a chance to save himself. It takes a little while to get to that next step and there’s a surprisingly good deal of attention paid to a troupe of actors that, while I get their purpose, ultimately just takes away from the heart of the story – the knight and Death.
But then we see start to see how the Plague is tearing its way across the land, we see a parade of infected flogging their bodies for the “sins” they’ve committed, we see a woman who’s set to be burned alive because she claims to have slept with Satan, and with each new ugly revelation, the knight and everyone else can’t help but wonder “Where is God and why isn’t he listening?”
As we start to understand the knight’s motivations and his constant desire to not so much cheat death but instead find definitive proof that there is a God – or at least a Satan – waiting for him instead of just worms, dirt and more worms, we start to ask the same questions ourselves. But the thing is, as people, we’ve always been asking these questions, but as film makers, it tends to be a debate left unaddressed. The unfortunate truth is that life isn’t like “Oh, God!” or Bruce Almighty, we don’t have the luxury of having a back-and-forth with a higher being of our choosing because that’s the give-and-take of faith, that you eventually come up with your own answers and keep talking anyway. Then again, that’s just my experience, but if someone had the answer, I’m pretty sure we’d be all ears.
It was an absolutely brilliant call for Bergman to set this story during the time of the Black Plague where men, women, children and priests are dying off faster than folks can dig out graves, no one knows the cause and everyone is forced come up with their own explanations for why they’re being “punished”. Perfect place to prompt all those cyclical questions of why bad things happen to good people and the inevitable “Why?” that’s pointed towards the heavens and never comes back down. Also love the way Bergman does try to give us answers, answers that his characters may not like and can’t be backed up with any kind of proof, but one thing’s definitely for certain: sooner or later, God or no God, Death is a-comin’.
And an outrageously young Max von Sydow is great as our ex-Crusader with a God dilemma, Antonius Block. Even though I only know him for his later roles from the past couple decades, Sydow is legit, he’s always been legit and he’s got some serious on-screen presence. Hard to say whether Block is a better character than Death, because you can’t get much better than freakin’ Death, but he’s awfully relatable from front to back.
The more I write about this and the more I think about how this is one of the only movies I’ve seen that deals with such impossible subjects on such a profound level, I’m starting to feel like an idiot for giving it an 8. Although if the plot had focused more on Block and less on the troupe of jesters he winds up traveling with, chances are it would be at a 9. All the same, it’ll probably get there on the next viewing.
Alright, I think I’ve run my mouth off enough about Bergman’s timeless script and everything it covers, and while he does film it all with a stark beauty that, like everything else here, doesn’t feel dated in the least, that seems to be the most minor of his accomplishments. The Seventh Seal is fascinating stuff that deserves to be seen and deserves to be emulated on some level by film makers today. Forget about the black-and-white, forget about it’s 1957 release date, forget about the subtitles (Swedish is a relatively hilarious language to listen to anyway), you don’t know what you’re missing out on.
Kung Fu Hustle (2004)
VERDICT:
9/10 Ballroom Blitzes
One of the most overlooked and under-appreciated movies of the last decade. At least Bill Murray knows what I’m talkin’ about.
Kung Fu Hustle is about a wannabe tough guy who tries to muscle his way into a notorious gang of killers by throwing his weight around the slums of China and intimidating barbers into giving out free haircuts. In doing so, he ends up unearthing the identities of several kung fu masters who utterly demolish the said gang of killers. Naturally, the gang of killers (alright, let’s just call ’em the Axe Gang) don’t take this ass-whupping sittin’ down, so they seek out one kung fu legend after another in an effort to regain their street cred, take over the slums and ultimately snuff out the one guy who started this whole mess in the first place.
Ah, 2004. A year best remembered for bringing us Eternal Sunshine, Million Dollar Baby and the Jane Austen timeless classic, White Chicks. It was a good year, that 2004, and it was also the fine year I discovered this little gem that I dragged my barely-willing roommates to and still love like a brother to this day. There’s a weird sense of pride that probably comes off more like a “please believe me” shame when I re-read that last sentence, and as much as I’ve gotten used to everyone screaming in my face and punching me in the mouth every time I plug this, it’s a comfort to know that the joke’s on them.
So, I like kung fu movies, not like the Wu-Tang Clan or anything, but I dug Enter the Dragon, I happen to think Sonny Chiba’s one bad motherfucker, and there really is something totally sweet about Jackie Chan from back in the day. Wish I had more than a stock opinion on the matter, but my problem with kung fu movies is that they’ve never been a whole lot more than lip-dubbed, slap-fests. Granted, sometimes all I want to do is pick up a six pack and watch people get their ass beat by pros, but with the exception of Crouching Tiger and Hero (neither of which am I a big fan), the formula seems to have gone pretty unchanged over the years.
And then, hot off the effing gratuitous success of Shaolin Soccer, comes writer/director/actor/dentist/astronaut Stephen Chow who changes all that punch, kick, repeat noise in one bizarro fell swoop. Like any good Bruce Lee worshiper, he keeps everything that works and throws something, like, 400 goddamn fight scenes into the mix, and that’s all as awesome as can be, but then he really shakes things up by also turning it into a ’50s gangster joint, a Three Stooges comedy and live-action Looney Tunes special.
Please bear with me. I swear it’s good.
Speaking of Enter the Dragon, you know that bonecrushing scene where Bruce Lee kicks Han (the dude with the claw) in the head so hard that, had it not been a dummy, his brain would have instantly exploded like a fucking melon? Well that’s pretty much every single second of every single fight scene here, minus the implied gore, and that’s as tame as it gets, too. This baby hits hard, it hits like Iron Mike in his ear-bitin’ days, and while all the choreography is completely outrageous and entirely unbelievable, it’s supposed to be, and it’s a blast. Thugs getting their feet power-stomped into flapjacks, landlords who moonlight as Plastic Man and a human bullhorn, slide guitarists who lop heads with their deceptively pleasant riffs, and a mental patient who can stop bullets between two fingers/turn into a human toad when he’s really, really pissed are just some of the more interesting individuals that continually keep each scene awfully damn fresh.
Although the weird thing is that it’s actually that music which brings it all together so well. The score during the more memorable of beatdowns is entirely made up of rapid-fire Oriental string instruments that’s constantly escalating and ratchets up the excitement like no other, and though I don’t know why it took me so long to pick up on it, it’s absolutely the linchpin that holds it all in place. No idea what to call this kind of music since it’s not exactly jamming up my iTunes at the moment, but it’s recognizable, it totally works wonders and the change in tone is very noticeable when it’s not around.
But this is all about Chow, people, and he’s a man of many talents.
As a writer, he’s a riot, his onslaught of physical and verbal gags are bottomless and he moves this baby along at a gorgeous pace to boot. As a director, I guess he’s a little rough around the edges, but the crazy ideas he brings to life in ways no one’s ever thought of more than makes up for it. And as an actor, he is so on point. He plays our street rat antihero, Sing, and even though he’s a dick on the exterior, he’s hard not to like since he’s trying so darn hard and each time fails even harder. His character arc is pretty predictable, but whatever, it’s epic, and that’s what counts here.
Real shame that he ducked out of co-starring in and directing The Green Hornet. Nothing against Michel Gondry, but I’m hungry for that Chow. God, that was lame…
Folks, I’m all about Kung Fu Hustle. I’m not gonna go so far as to call it as imaginative as Eternal Sunshine, but in a totally different way, it’s kinda there. This is some pure, original fun with a surprising amount of heart and a whole lot of awesome that still makes me laugh hysterically and smile like gangbusters a handful of viewings later. Just a mish-mash of everything that shouldn’t work at all, but thanks to gung-ho “Why not?” attitude that never stop and turns it up to 11, it sure pays off if you’re all for the new and different.
And as for the whole Bill Murray thing, here’s a recent GQ interview where he call this ”the supreme achievement of the modern age in terms of comedy,” and that, “There should have been a day of mourning for American comedy the day that movie came out.”
Bill Murray said that. Bill-fucking-Murray.
I rest my case.
Five Easy Pieces (1970)
VERDICT:
7/10 Ramblin’ Men
Nice and quiet and one more reason why Nicholson is the man.
Five Easy Pieces is about a middle-aged, blue-collar Californian oil rigger who spends his meandering days boozing, bowling and womanizing behind his ditzy girlfriend’s back. Then one day he gets word that his father’s dying, so he heads back home for the first time after abandoning his family years prior and comes face-to-face with the life he was born into along with the new life he’s adopted.
My first introduction to director Bob Rafelson, my first introduction to writer Carole Eastman, and they sure do make a fine first impression. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a movie like this, and a lot of that goes back to the fact there’s not enough ritalin in the world to make us dish out 13 bucks (yes, it’s officially 13 bucks in NYC now) for a talking heads meditation on a blue-collar guy with a blue-collar job and a blue-collar life, and it’s a welcome change of pace. Nothin’ fancy, and that’s alright.
Yeah, it’s all about pulling back the surface and reading between the lines with this one, and while Rafelson’s direction isn’t exactly compelling me to jam pack my Netflix queue with his life’s work, Eastman’s doing her thing quite well. Were it not for a couple scenes where Jack flips his lid, this is very much a talking heads joint with some choice one-liners and speeches that speak volumes. Some of it feels like it’s just there for filler, like a hitcher who won’t shut the eff up about anything and everything even though she ends every sentence with “I don’t even wanna talk about it,” and even though I could have done without that noise, there’s enough quality writing here to keep me surprisingly interested in this otherwise humdrum story.
But the truth is, you put Jack Nicholson in front of the camera – especially 1970s Jack Nicholson – and he’s your main attraction. The writing is good, the direction is good, but no one ever did it like Jack and he’s great here as Bobby Dupea. He’s hot-headed, he’s a back-door man, he’s quick to speak his mind without giving a damn about what anyone else has to say, and he’s unsatisfied with life but seems to insist on giving the impression that he’s right where he wants to be.Yet the whole time we really don’t why Bobby acts the way he does, and it doesn’t seem like Bobby’s got the answer either.
And that’s the movie: us trying to figure out what motivates this guy and what the hell his deal is, and the interesting thing is that he’s in the same boat. Even when he tries to make some sense out of it, it still doesn’t seem like he has an explanation for the way he is and that’s why as a character he works.
Nicholson gets a handful of opportunities to bring out his inner madman as he tells off stubborn waitresses like a total badass and gets in barking matches with dogs while drunk off his ass, wandering around a highway traffic jam, and that’s a big reason why he rocks. No one gets pissed like Jack. But it’s the rare instance where he tries to open up to someone and quickly breaks down thereafter that winds up being more memorable than any of his freakouts. That back-and-forth between vulnerability and raging insanity is a hard thing to find in actors and a wonderfully difficult thing to unravel as a passive observer.
And Karen Black ain’t bad as Bobby’s girl, Rayette, but she’s not quite the puzzle that her man is.
Five Easy Pieces is a very no-frills character study about a guy who’s got the potential to be extraordinary and the prerogative to be anything but. May not be relatable to a tee, but it does touch upon some inherently human fears and urges that hold us back and push us forward even when the reasons might not be there. Spends more time meandering around than I would have like and you kinda have to be in the right mood for it, then again, you don’t see too many fascinatingly complex dudes like Bobby any more these days.
FUN FACT: Apparently Melvin Udall from As Good as It Gets is supposed to be Bobby Dupea nearly 30 years down the line. Could be bullshit, but I can see it. Neato bandito.
Mulholland Dr. (2001)
VERDICT:
8/10 Out-of-Towners
Took me two viewings to actually get it, but it was worth all the weirdness.
Mulholland Dr. is about a small-town, bright-eyed girl who moves to L.A. with aspirations to be an A-list movie star on the silver screen like she’s always dreamed of. So she moves into her new digs and finds an amnesic broad already shacking up there, but instead of booting her ass to the curb, she helps this squatter figure out her identity while going on big time auditions around town and such. A lot of other weird shit also goes down that kinda sorta ties into all this, but whatever, better off letting you figure out that noise for yourself.
Boy, talk about some crazy shit. First time I was introduced to this was in High School when I grabbed it from the library thinking it would be something along the lines of The Elephant Man or The Straight Story – the only David Lynch movies I’d seen at the time. Long story short, that’s no way to go into this movie and it took me eight years to finally buckle down, clear two-and-a-half hours out of my schedule and convince myself that maybe this time it would make sense.
Thank the lord, it actually paid off, and if you’ve got eight years to mull this thing over, I say go for it.
I guess the best place to start is with writer/director David Lynch, because…well, this is all him. The thing with some of Lynch’s stranger efforts, like this, is that you just kinda have to go with them. You won’t be able to explain a lot of what you’re watching or process most of what anyone’s talking about, but you piece it together as best you can, find some appreciation in the fact that you’ve never seen anything quite like this and simply hope for the best. The upside of this is that there’s a method to Lynch’s madness – it might be a method that only Lynch is in on and so we’re just stuck with our own conclusions and nightmares to sort out as we see fit by the time it’s all said and done, but it’s there and I dig that.
Geez, this is a damn hard movie to write about because so much of why it’s awesome comes with just figuring it out for yourself. It’s very open to interpretation, but after you get through the last half-hour, start rewinding in your head everything you saw beforehand and give yourself an air high-five for paying attention when you would have been completely justified in zoning out and drinking yourself to sleep, you’ll hopefully realize that this is in fact a pretty brilliant movie. And as good as the performances are, the only reason it works is because of how Lynch tells it. Pretty wild the way he takes an otherwise cop-out ending and turns it on its head so that it seems entirely new, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
From shady businessmen who barf out espresso when it’s not up to their standards to that horrifying he/she bastard up there on the poster who shows up out of nowhere in a scene that seemingly has nothing to do with the main plot line, it’s all part of the experience. It’s funny, it’s arresting and it’s sure as hell something different, but, love it or hate it, that’s kinda why Lynch is the man. Dude does his own thing, does it well, and when others try to follow suit, they usually end up failing miserably.
But aside from all the weird stuff, it’s still got the electronic piano score and the contrast between the goody-two-shoes 1950s vibe and the ugly reality of L.A. going for it much in the same way that Blue Velvet did, and while that actually just makes things weirder, it’s all welcome.
And Naomi Watts deserves a big fat paycheck for her turn here as Betty – our Hollywood hopeful of the hour. Girl is given one seriously demanding role and she does one hell of a job going from peppy, Leave it to Beaver extra to tortured psycho bitch whose horror movie facial expressions towards the end look way more convincing than they probably should. Laura Harring is also pretty good as Betty’s unknown roommate, Rita, but she gets away with a lot less thanks to her not being able to remember anything. Also a bit ridiculous how naked these two get, actually pretty disturbing after a while, but, hey, at least the end product was good.
Nor does it hurt that we’re treated to bit roles from Billy Ray Cyrus and that tap dancing, backwards-speaking dwarf from Twin Peaks that everyone just can’t get enough of. And where the hell did Justin Theroux go? He’s damn good as hot shot director Adam Keshler, no idea why I’ve never seen him since. Cool glasses, too.
But while Mulholland Dr. is one outrageously strange movie (I would say “weird” but I’ve about worn that word out to death so far), and even though I’ve still got questions that most likely will never get answered, I can’t stop thinking about it. If you asked me eight years ago, I would have recommended you pick up a dime bag on the way home from Blockbuster to have any hope of getting something out of this, but now that I actually have a grasp on what the hell happened after those girls opened up the blue box, I can totally understand why a lot of people consider this one of the best movies of the past decade. Might be another re-watch or two before I’m on the same page, but this is exactly why folks love David Lynch. Can’t guarantee that you’ll like it, but it’s totally worth a watch.
And the best psycho killer is…
HANNIBAL LECTER, M.D.!
Proving once and for all that Huey Lewis rants and bone-colored business cards just don’t measure up to eating someone’s face off and forcing Ray Liotta to eat his own brains. It was a close one, and I really didn’t think the Doc was gonna win it, but it’s about time I had an excuse to revisit that goofy bastard again.
Good voting, gang.
RESULTS:
– Dr. Lecter: 21 votes
– Patrick Bateman: 19 votes
– Michael Myers: 8 votes
– Norman Bates: 7 votes
– Jason Voorhees: 5 votes
– Jack Torrance: 4 votes (arguable front-runner for the Worst Dad poll)
– Freddy Krueger: 2 votes (arguably the most imaginative psycho killer)
– Leatherface: 2 votes
– Damien: 2 votes
– Pinhead: 0 votes (seriously creepy dude, deserves more love)
– Other: 1 vote for “the white rabbit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail” (definitely has a higher body count than a lot of these guys), 1 vote for “Regan from The Exorcist” (I still think she was faking it), 1 vote for “Charles Lee ‘Chucky’ Ray (still hate that ginger bastard), 1 vote for “John Doe” (can’t believe I forgot to include him), and 1 vote for “The Talking Heads” (Ryan? Whoever it was, you’re the real winner this week).
The Social Network (2010)
If you told me a year ago that “the Facebook movie” would turn out to be one of the major Oscar contenders of 2010, I’d probably tell you to go outside and lay off the FarmVille. Shows how much I know.
The Social Network is the semi-true-but-probably-not story of Mark Zuckerberg, the Harvard computer whiz who got dumped by his girlfriend, drank and blogged his sorrows away, became a minor campus celebrity as a result and then blew the roof right off the bitch shortly thereafter when he invented Facebook with the help of his close circle of friends, the guy who created Napster, and a handful of people who claimed that he stole the idea from them.
When I first heard that this movie was actually being made, I couldn’t have been the only who immediately thought out loud, “You’ve gotta be fuckin’ kidding me.” Because for all intents and purposes, this probably shouldn’t be a good movie, this should be a Hollywood cash cow that probably shouldn’t have the best script I’ve heard all year, and this probably shouldn’t have David-effing-Fincher and Trent-effing-Reznor attached to it in any way, shape or form. But here we are, in a scenario that the Mayans couldn’t have even called, and I am done complaining, folks, because it is so damn good to be proven wrong.
So this is some relatively new territory for David Fincher. The closest thing on his resume might be Zodiac, and that’s still something else entirely. No Project Mayhems here, no John Does, no Ellen Ripleys, no gross-ass freakshow babies, just talking heads spewing geekspeak for two hours straight in modern-day America, yet somehow it still feels like Fincher. Just crazy the way he can make a Harvard dorm room after dark look eerily similar to Lou’s bloody, wet basement and all the charming fixer-uppers on good ol’ Paper Street. The guy knows how to work lighting better than anyone else out there right now and even when the story moves to sunny California, he still does his thing and does it well. Just painstakingly pieced together and brilliantly executed throughout, not that that’s anything new for the guy.
But when you’ve got a movie like this that’s pure dialogue where all the action takes place in front of a keyboard, you’re screwed six ways from Sunday without a good script. With that being said, Aaron Sorkin is probably the biggest reason this movie doesn’t come close to boring. The plot moves along at a mile-a-second pace, everyone talks like The West Wing cast after a week-long speed bender, some of the one-liners he whips out were some of the funniest things I’ve heard all year in or out of a theater and I just could not wipe the smile off my face. I didn’t know what to expect going into this considering it’s a weird task to create a story about real people and real events that you know aren’t true, but the direction he takes it in works wonders. It really is something else to stumble upon a script that makes me want to write and to find someone who really knows how to use his voice. Seems to be an increasingly rare discovery these days.
And rounding out this holy trinity is one of my personal idols. A week or so before I saw this, my friend told me that “it has the best score since There Will Be Blood.” It took me a second to process that statement since Jonny Greenwood deserves a Grammy, an Emmy, a Pulitzer, a Nobel Peace Prize and an jumbo-sized Oscar with the words “Sorry, we were idiots – The Academy” on it for his work on that movie, but then my friend reminded me that this was scored by Trent Reznor, and as soon as I heard that, I was on the level. Even if you weren’t like me and didn’t have a major teen angst phase in High School that more or less boiled down to worshipping The Downward Spiral and The Fragile like every other album I owned was a burned copy of Raffi’s Greatest Hits, Reznor has been one of God’s gifts to music for a while now, one of the few outrageously creative individuals who will help you realize what a joke the music industry is these days. But this isn’t his kind of movie either, the dude doesn’t like Facebook, he doesn’t like Zuckerberg, and it’s a damn far cry from the music video for “Closer”. Luckily, he and Fincher go way back, somehow he got on board for this, and as weird as it may sound to have the guy who single-handedly put Industrial music on the map as the maestro, it’s exactly what the movie needed. Bizarre in theory, seemless in execution. Just stunning.
Also love how the movie opens with “Ball and Biscuit” (the best song of the past decade). I like to think Trent had something to do with that.
And this cast is flat-out stellar, too. I’m gonna be keeping my eye out for Andrew Garfield from here on out (don’t think I’ll be able to avoid him now that he’s our new Spider-Man), he’s fantastic as Zuckerberg’s best friend/CFO, Eduardo Saverin, and my only real gripe with the movie as a whole is that the pacing noticeably drops when he’s not around. And that Just Timberlake lights up the screen as Zuckerberg’s eventual right-hand man, Sean Parker; homey’s come a long way since his frosted curls in *N Sync, more power to ‘im. But I am now fully onboard the Jesse Eisenberg bandwagon, I am on and I ain’t getting off. The kid’s got some serious presence and does a great, great job of turning Mark into this complex, strangely likable, asshole computer nerd who talks as fast as he types and just wants to be liked despite the front he puts on. I doubt that Zuckerberg is at all similar to Eisenberg’s portrayal of him, but as a movie character, you can’t take your eyes of him, and while a lot of credit goes to the lines that Sorkin gives him, Eisenberg just rocks it.
But it’s kind of weird writing about Fincher, Sorkin and Reznor on individual fronts. They all bring their A-game like only they can, but the fact that every scene in this movie feels like they were all actively working together to make the best final product instead of doing their own thing and hoping for the best is really what makes it all work so perfectly. As much as I loved the way Fincher continually cuts back and forth mid-sentence between Zuckerberg’s rise to “infamy” and the eventual depositions he gives after being sued twice over, I equally love the way Sorkin structured it that way. And as captivating as some of these montages are that take something as theoretically boring as watching someone build a website and make it seem like we’re watching a Freshman in flip-flops hack into The Pentagon from his Dell laptop, it wouldn’t be anywhere near as invigorating or awe-inducing without Reznor’s score backing it all up. You watch this movie and there’s no way to ignore what a meeting of the minds this is in every. single. way.
God, I really don’t know how this came together like it did, some kind of voodoo witchcraft must be to blame, but these guys captured goddamn Thor in a bottle and I don’t know why I ever doubted this project to begin with. I can’t remember the last time I thoroughly gushed over a movie like this, but what can I say, credit’s due where credit’s earned.
If you take it as a movie instead of gospel, The Social Network is out of freakin’ sight. It’s a bit strange that this was made now while Zuckerberg is still alive, while Facebook continues to grow and since the only people who know the real story are the only ones who won’t or can’t tell it. Then again, now, in a world where Facebook is still the online equivalent of crack cocaine and everyone and their mother is a junkie, it’s in many ways the perfect time to tell this story. It won’t stop you from updating your status or commenting on your friends latest lolcat picture any time soon, but it will make you take a long hard look at who really belongs on your “Friends” list.
That lolcat kid doesn’t need to know your relationship status anyway.
Paths of Glory (1957)
VERDICT:
8/10 Brian Redmonds
Like the bastard child of Breaker Morant and Gallipoli, and that’s A-okay by me.
Paths of Glory is about a French Colonel during WWI who is given orders from his commanding General to essentially send his men on a suicide mission in order to take a key piece of terrain merely for the sake of landing him a big fat promotion. Realizing that someone else will take his place whether he goes through with the orders or not, the Colonel proceeds with the attack only to find that two-thirds of his regiment remained in the trenches while the rest ran onto the battlefield like fish in a barrel. The commanding General witnesses all this from on high, he orders the French artillery to fire on their own trenches – orders which are immediately written off as crazy talk – and then three of the soldiers who stayed behind are court martialed for “cowardice” as a result.
It’s not a true story, and good ol’ Wikipedia tells me that it’s loosely based off actual events that don’t stray too far from the real horror of this whole situation, but fact or fiction, this is a powerhouse.
So when it comes to Stanley Kubrick and Kirk Douglas, I’m pretty green behind the ears, I’m probably hovering around neon lime at the moment. I plan on taking care of this glaring void in my life as soon as possible, but just going off of what I’ve seen here, these two were great together.
Gonna go out on a limb here, but it seems like Kubrick changed a lot as a storyteller from his days as a budding director to his eventual status as one of the “immortals”. When I think Kubrick, I tend to think of the wonderfully weird shit: the Clockwork Oranges, the Gomer Pyles, the dead guys in bear suits performing fellatio in haunted hotel rooms, that scene in 2001 where a multi-colored eye blinked at me for five minutes. The dude seemed to make a name for himself by waving his freak flag and turning it into the craziest, most brilliant thing we’d never seen before, and while this effort is a lot more straight-laced, a whole lot of people found it pretty controversial at the time. Probably has something to do with Douglas crapping all over the idea of having a Hollywood ending.
Although from a visual standpoint, a lot of Krubicks’ signatures are very much there and come out in full force during an absolutely polarizing, single-shot scene where a stone-faced and silent Kirk Douglas walks the lengths of his trenches that are lined shoulder-to-shoulder with terrified men who can smell death in the endless mortar volleys around them. There are a number of moments in this movie that made me think “Good God…” and thank my lucky stars that I’ve never been drafted, but the way Kubrick puts you in the thick of this horror that most of people will never face is what truly brings the grim reality of the situation to life.
But the heart of this movie really is the story and its resounding anti-war sentiment that’ll shake you right up. It’s a posterboy for the futility of war, the brutal injustices which take place both on off the front lines and it’s equal parts heartbreaking and bloodboiling. No, this isn’t a documentary, but it’s easy to buy the detestable individuals involved who can sit behind a desk and think they know what it’s like to be a soldier.
And that Kirk Douglas is one hardcore mother effer as Colonel Dax. The whole cast is actually pretty good even though I don’t recognize a single one of ’em, but Douglas is just one of those old school guys who doesn’t have to blow his lid to let you know that he means business. Dax is a great character to begin with, one of the select few who actually seems to have a grasp on the difference between right and wrong, but Douglas brings that out perfectly. Now I really need to see Spartacus.
Paths of Glory is a surprisingly short movie for this genre, and while part of me wishes there had been more to stick around for, it’s actually a nice change of pace to find something like this that gets right to the point without wasting any time. At 87 minutes it feels just right, feels consciously selective of the final product, and I really dig that. The biggest thing holding me back from checking out Che and revisiting The Thin Red Line right now are those damn epic run-times, and while I’ll definitely be getting around to ’em, it’s awfully refreshing to find a war movie that doesn’t follow the usual “quantity = quality” mantra.
But the sad truth about all of this is that as long as there continue to be wars, as long as they continue to be commandeered by self-serving individuals who treat war like a game of Risk, as long as history continues to repeat itself, movies like Paths of Glory will continue to be just as pertinent. It didn’t hit me like a burst of shrapnel in the way that Gallipoli or Breaker Morant did and I’m not quite sure why everyone in the French army has a Brooklyn accent, but whatever, minor details that do nothing to make it anything short of timeless.
Eastern Promises (2007)
VERDICT:
7/10 Painted Men
It’s no History of Violence, but a solid follow-up nonetheless.
Eastern Promises is about a midwife in London who helps a teenage mother give birth before she dies from related injuries. Afterwards, the nurse comes in possession of the girl’s diary which details her life as a drugged-up prostitute in the Russian mob, so for some reason Dr. Quinn decides to bring this choice discovery to the attention of the mob boss himself, and, whaddaya know, she winds up in a real shitty mess and gets taken under the wing of an understanding mob finger man who may be her only hope of survival.
So David Cronenberg’s kinda the man, huh? Truly, deeply embarrassing how few of his movies I’ve covered over here so far and I don’t know how many folks out there agree that he’s one seriously underappreciated dude, but the guy ain’t kiddin’ around. Yeah, a lot of his movies have the same problems that are holding this here ditty back, but they’ve also got a lot of the same strengths that occasionally make this here ditty shine.
I mean, when your first claim to fame as a film maker comes in the form of the most realistic, outrageously gory head explosion that made everyone thank God for whoever it was that invented the REWIND button, the masses begin to expect a certain something from ya’ over the years. So in comes a whole new grisly way to slit your characters’ throats, a complimentary Intro to Body Disposal course so the masses don’t forget the fingers next time they’re aiming to bump off a snitch, and a reminder that stabbing your attacker in the eye is usually a surefire bet when double-teamed by assassins in your birthday suit. Some of the finer points of all this Cronenberg-y goodness takes all of five minutes to get around to (as is usually the case) while the rest peter out at fine pace, and that’s all great, that’s what I like to see.
But the one scene in particular that I kept on hearing about when this hit theaters was the said bathhouse brawl featuring a super naked Viggo Mortensen. Considering that Cronenberg doesn’t have a whole lot of experience with bareknuckle beatdowns, he does a pretty swell job all in all, but the problem is that Viggo is SUPER NAKED the whole time. Apologies in advance for the visuals, it’s just that it’s hard to concentrate on the action when Aragorn’s dick is flying every which way and the camera keeps on going in for the rarely-seen “taint shot” that most actors outside of Larry Flynt’s Rolodex have tended to shy away from over the years. Not even sure the ladies will like this one thanks to all the blood and whatnot, and while I give Viggo some major props for manning up and baring it all, I don’t think I’ve ever had a conversation about this scene that didn’t end with, “…yeah, but I didn’t need to see his balls.” It’s decently choreographed and the best thing Cronenberg does is distance himself from the action movie myth that as long as you’re a badass you can walk out of any fight without so much as a rope burn, but it didn’t quite live up to the hype.
Although if that last paragraph didn’t quite spell it out, Cronenberg sure knows how to get the most out of his cast. Man, from the moment Viggo ashes out a cigarette on his tongue like that’s how everyone’s supposed to do it before going to work on a frozen corpse, Naomi Watts immediately starts playing second fiddle. And that’s not really her fault, it’s just that her humdrum character has no chance of competing with a family of killers and she’s just kind of around because someone has to say her lines in order to move the plot along. But even with the fake Russian accent that he and his comrades can’t quite pull off and just makes things harder to catch than adds to the authenticity, Viggo is quite awesome as Nikolai – the only Russian thug with some semblance of a conscience – and it’s great to have an anti-hero of sorts whose life motto boils down to, “Anger is dangerous. It makes people do stupid things.” After all, the real hard knocks are the ones who don’t have to prove it and, boy, are they something else to watch.
Same goes for Armin Mueller-Stahl as the Russian don, Semyon, but the same does not go for Vincent Cassel who hams it up at every chance as the don’s dumbass son, Kirill. Bummer, ’cause I like Cassel, dig that naturally haggard vibe about him.
So if Eastern Promises didn’t fizzle out during the last twenty minutes and if Cronenberg had a better knack for writing dialogue that rang closer to the way people actually talk to each other, this might have been an 8. The Greco-Roman dudity aside and the fact that it doesn’t really have a whole lot to say outside of giving me one more reason to be thankful I’m not a contract killer, it’s still a pretty engrossing gangster movie with a script that gets better as it goes along.
Sure does make me want to get a tattoo though, but I’ve been saying that shit for years.
Cut The Crap Movie Reviews 
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