High Tension (2003)
VERDICT:
6/10 Psycho Girlfriends
Without a doubt one of the most brutal and unsettling horror movies I’ve ever seen. Too bad it gets so damn stupid.
High Tension is about two lovely ladies in France that go for a road trip in the countryside to meet the parents. Everything goes off without a hitch, then a homicidal truck driver shows up, kills the parents (buzzkill), and starts hunting down the two lovebirds, you know, so he can kill them, too.
Meet the Parents doesn’t seem so bad now, does it. That Greg Focker had it easy.
So this here movie is directed by one Alexandre Aja. Now, I’ve seen interviews with Aja and for the most part he seems like a pretty ordinary guy; and that is reason enough to never trust ordinary guys. You may now Alexandre better from his other two movies – The Hills Have Eyes remake (featuring what may well be the most disturbing and vile family murder/rape scene ever put to celluloid) and Mirrors (which, according to a clip I’ve seen, features Amy Smart ripping her own head in half at the mouth).
What a charming fellow, this Alexandre Aja.
Just to give you fair warning, a lot of what happens in High Tension really doesn’t stray far from the degree of brutality that those other movies display. It’s not the scariest jump-out-of-your-seat experience, but it will shake you the hell up. I’ve got pretty thick skin and have gotten really good at taking horror movies lightly, but sweet sassy molassy, this mofo takes it to a whole ‘nother level. Right from the get-go, even before that crazy bastard shows up to the house and starts poppin’ heads, this is one jaw-dropping ride. Man, I think I might have showered after seeing this.
Alright, so as a horror movie, I think it’s clear High Tension gets it done. But then again, there’s still the story…
The story starts out well enough and maintains the intensity without a hitch for a good hour or so, it might not be the most original story for a horror movie, but whatever, no points deducted. But then the Third Act comes along and Aja decides this movie sure could use a twist. Why? “Why the fuck not!” laughs Alexandre. Not gonna give it away, but the so-called twist is beyond absurd, makes absolutely no sense, more or less negates the plausibility of anything that happened in the movie before the “reveal”, and nearly forces the movie as a whole to do a hard nosedive from freakin’ awesome to laughably stupid.
But then Aja brings out the big guns (aka: a buzzsaw) and shuts his audience right up. Funny how buzzsaws seem to have that effect on people.
Still, there aren’t a whole lot of horror movies out there I’m tentative to recommend just because they’re so hard to take, but the Alexandre Aja collection sits right up there with the greatest hits of Takashi Miike (the Japanese king of sadism, but a pretty good director nonetheless). The acting is pretty solid, the score is great considering it’s comprised entirely of the sounds of high tension wires (fun fact!), and even though the story more or less blows, High Tension is one utterly horrifying movie.
I need to start reviewing more romantic comedies. This kind of stuff can’t be good for me.
Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)
VERDICT:
7/10 Dracula Musicals
The official date movie of ’08 and the moment where Jason Segel finally got his due.
Forgetting Sarah Marshall is about a hopeless romantic that gets dumped by his A-list girlfriend, decides that a Hawaiian vacation is just the thing he needs to get him back on his feet, and realizes as soon as he arrives at his paradise hotel that his ex is there vacationing with her new British rock star boyfriend, thus making it increasingly difficult and painfully awkward to forget about her.
Apparently this is loosely based off a number of Segel’s failed past relationships, and, man, you can’t help but feel bad for the guy if that’s really the case. Fortunately, I’ve never had to be the guy bawling his brains out over a broken heart, but even so, Jason Segel’s an easy guy to relate to thanks to him seeming like a generally good person both in real life and otherwise.
On the other hand, he’s also pretty shameless about everything in this movie, as some of the best parts come from his wallowing in self-pity to going full-frontal without even so much as blushing. Considering you couldn’t pay me enough to get naked in front of a cat, props to Segel for using his own dude-ity as a punchline.
You know what, props to Jason Segel for being Jason Segel. He’s the man and it’s about damn time he became a household name as a legitimately funny dude. He was the best part of Freaks and Geeks along with Martin Starr and even though I’ve only recently started watching How I Met Your Mother (which is hilarious), he’s great in that, too. This was a great way for him to finally get his name out there and the same goes for newcomer Russell Brand as the British rock star boyfriend. Like most people, I’d never heard of Brand before in my life, and while I’m still having a hard time believing that this whole Robert Smith look of his isn’t just an act, he actually gets some of the biggest laughs in the movie. Too bad he’s been a nightmare of a host at the MTV VMA’s, but can’t knock him for being nothing short of hilarious here.
Kristen Bell and Mila Kunis are also good and there’s a pretty funny bit role by Jonah Hill thrown in there, but chances are that Segel and Brand are the two names you’ll find yourself remembering.
But as far as date movies go, this is a fine example of a romcom that successfully caters equally to both the men and the ladies in the room. The romantic aspect isn’t corny or lovey-dovey and the comedy is consistently funny even if you might find yourself forgetting most of the lines after it’s all said and done. This isn’t the edgiest humor in the world, but whatever, you don’t have to be edgy to be funny; just look at Napoleon Dynamite.
In the end, Forgetting Sarah Marshall is just a nice movie. Even though it almost feels too run-of-the-mill to be more than just “nice”, it’s endearing and funny enough that it manages to elude being, dare I say it, forgettable (cue eye-rolling). So snuggle up and check it out.
I love you, Jason Segel.
Rambo (2008)
VERDICT:
7/10 Hardcore Retirements
I don’t know whether to be proud or ashamed that this is probably the only movie I’ve seen on its first showing on its opening day while sporting a mean hangover that would normally confine me to a day in bed with The Price is Right, but then again, this is freakin’ Rambo we’re talking about here. No way was Drew Carey and a vice grip around my brain gonna hold be back from seeing this one.
Rambo finds our man Johnny maxin’ and relaxin’ in a slum village in Thailand of all places, playing with snakes for money, transporting crap into Burma on his dingy, and apparently shooting up a wildly unhealthy amount of steroids just to make sure no one forgets how many veins he has on his arms. Then one day these Christian aid workers convince Rambo to take them into war-torn Burma, they get kidnapped, so he grabs his trusty machete, shoots up some more ‘roids for good measure, and more or less proceeds to single-handedly kill every bad guy in Burma, and there are a lot of bad dudes in Burma.
If the other two Rambo movies weren’t indication enough, this plot synopsis should surprise no one. There’s not much thinking to be done here, nor is there much of a story, but, boy howdy, would you just look at that body count rise. But mindless violence aside, this movie is surprisingly closer in feel to First Blood than the other two sequels were; then again, that might not be saying much considering how different Rambo: First Blood Part II was from its predecessor. Rambo is actually not entirely an excuse to blow more people up with explosive arrows as the story has a politically charged backing to it, you know, about Burmese genocide and whatnot (the politics of which are pretty questionable to begin with). But let’s not get ahead ourselves here, this is still no First Blood; I don’t think there’ll ever be another First Blood.
Anyway, I digress.
Even though I still haven’t gotten around to seeing Rambo III, I think it’s more than safe to say that Rambo is without a doubt the most violent entry in the franchise. The action scenes are all insane, and while the violence is beyond over-the-top, arguably to the point where it puts Kill Bill: Volume 1 to shame, it’s not really a turn-off because it’s all expected. No one’s walking in to this movie aiming to get a lesson on American diplomacy in Burma, you’re sittin’ down to see how many crazy ways Rambo can take people out with that machete of his, and shit does get crazy.
The acting is whatever, the writing isn’t as corny as the other Rambos, and unfortunately, I don’t think the storyline is doing any favors for Burma’s tourism either. But it is a damn good reminder that Sylvester Stallone still kicks total ass at 62. It’s not the best thing he’s done in his career, as an actor or an action hero, but it’s hard for me to not see the appeal to John Rambo’s bloody, triumphant return.
Probably a top contender for worst date movie of all time, but if your main squeeze just happens to be into guy movies that could pass for meat grinders, then say hello to Rambo all you lovebirds out there.
SIDE NOTE:
Shout out to Paul over at Paragaph Film Reviews for bringing this badass Rambo chart to my attention that tallies up the body count stats amongst the various entries in the series. Quite enlightening indeed.
Children of Men (2006)
VERDICT:
9/10 Empty Strollers
Isn’t it great when you go into a movie with zero expectations and it ends up being one of the best movies of the year and one of your favorite sci-fi movies of all time? Effin-A right it is.
Children of Men takes place in the year 2027. For reasons unknown, every woman on Earth has been infertile for the past 18 years, and England is the only country left standing in a world completely devoid of hope and teetering on the brink of destruction. This is the story of an otherwise ordinary, good man that takes on the role of unlikely protector to what may be mankind’s only chance of survival.
What I like most about the premise of this movie is actually one of the main complaints I’ve heard from most people about it – that you’re never told why women can’t have children any more. Global warming? Fred Phelps? Commies? No one knows in the movie and no one knows in the audience, and it wouldn’t work as well as it does with an explanation there to clear it all up.
That’s because Children of Men isn’t about why the world went to shit, it simply presents you with a situation, puts you on the same degree of awareness as its characters, and lets the story speak for itself as to what it’s trying to say. It’s actually just like The Road by Cormac McCarthy in that this is a story about the power of hope in the face of overwhelming despair, not about why we’re all gonna be screwed because of the way things are going now. Spending time pointing the finger at our world today and putting an eco-friendly warning label on the movie would just take away from the heart of it all. And that, dear readers, is an example of damn fine storytelling.
Now, this is a dark and harrowing movie, but I love that about it; that’s how the future would be if people haven’t been popping out babies for nearly two decades, and it also makes every little glimmer of hope stand out that much more. I can’t even imagine the amount of effort and vision that went in to taking modern-day England and turning it into the decrepit England of 2027, but when it comes to capturing dystopian futures on film, Children of Men does an absolutely phenomenal job. It’s not like Blade Runner where there’s flying cars and cyborgs and shit, but rather it’s incredibly believable to the point where one can really buy the idea that if the world was coming to an end, this is what it would probably look like in its final days.
The acting is also solid (as usual, Michael Caine is great in this as a doobie-rollin’ hippie named Jasper, and it’s arguably Clive Owen’s most noteworthy contribution to the world thus far as well), and the writing is good, too (even though it’s hard to catch everything that’s being said the first time around, mainly due to the British accents), but the real stunner here is director Alfonso Cuaron – the guy behind Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (the first HP movie that didn’t feel like it was made strictly for 10-year-olds) and the phenomenal Y tu mamá también (DEFINITELY. NOT. FOR. 10-YEAR-OLDS). Like I said, he just does an unreal job of bringing this imaginary world to life to the point where it feels palpably and frighteningly real and he moves the story along at a breathtaking pace. It’s all in the details, you just gotta see it to get it.
And as a film nerd who actually likes to look for these kinds of things, the cinematography in this movie is out of sight. Watch all the chase scenes very closely, the cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki uses this technique of “invisible cuts” so that all these lengthy, outrageously intricate sequences look like they’ve been performed in a single take with a single camera, and it absolutely boggles my mind as to how he manages to pull it all off. I don’t know how Lubezki didn’t win the Oscar for this one, but it’s some of the best cinematography I’ve ever seen.
Alright, nerd rant over.
Look, I’ve recommended this movie to a ton of people after going apeshit over it and hyping it up beyond belief, but even if you could give a crap about the technical aspects of film making, this is still just such an incredible movie and an outstanding example of great storytelling that it doesn’t really matter either way. I’d be surprised if The Road outdoes this, but regardless, Children of Men is the bomb every time I see it.
The Dirty Dozen (1967)
VERDICT:
7/10 Badass Conventions
Can’t believe it took me this long to get around to this movie, also hard to believe that this was my first introduction to Lee Marvin, but man, just check out that poster, what the hell was I waiting for?
The Dirty Dozen is about a renegade Major in the U.S. military that’s ordered to take 12 soldiers who are either on death row or are serving life sentences and turn them into a mean band of Nazi-killin’ brothers so they can win back their freedom and help win WWII for the good guys in the process.
For those of you who have seen Inglourious Basterds and liked it as much as I did, you might want to give this baby a look, the inspiration is pretty obvious. That is definitely a good thing.
But aside from the whole Tarantino connection, there are probably two reasons one would want to see this movie. The first being the whole “badass convention” I mentioned up top there, and the second being that this is a “badass convention” which also happens to revolve around killing Nazis, and those are two kickass reasons to go see any movie.
So the highlighted members of the Dirty Dozen themselves are Lee Marvin as the Major in charge of the operation (who was actually a military sniper before becoming an actor, just thought I’d throw that out there), Charles Bronson, Donald Sutherland, Telly Savalas, Jim Brown (that’s right, football legend Jim Brown) and John Cassavetes make up five of the said dozen, and why not give two bit roles to Ernest Borgnine and George Kennedy while they’re at it. If some of these names aren’t ringing any bells, I recommend you go watch this just so you won’t have to lose any more sleep over what you’ve been missing. There aren’t a whole lot of movies out there that can claim to have what is arguably the most manly collection of guy movie legends of all time and also have them turn out solid performances to drive it all home. Kelly’s Heroes is up there, but then again, that’s just kind of a knockoff of The Dirty Dozen anyway. Sorry, Clint, nothing against you, man. You’re still a god.
But the area where this movie starts to slip is the second reason I mentioned, about this being a WWII movie. Now, from what I hear, World War II was some gritty, hardcore, brutal shit, but for some reason I really didn’t get that vibe from The Dirty Dozen. It takes a good two hours for the dozen to get their asses through boot camp and over to Germany, and only then does it start to feel like a war movie, everything else had me feeling like I was watching a group of guys dicking around and getting into various hijinks instead of acting like the hard-as-nails death row mother effers they’re supposed to be. It’s not an issue of the movie being too long or the actors living up to their badass reputations, it’s just that the writing and the dialogue is surprisingly weak and sugarcoated. Maybe it’s just dated considering how much movies have changed over the past 40 years, but it doesn’t feel serious or mean enough to be the war movie I was hoping it would.
It also has a really abrupt non-ending that I was really surprised by. I was this close to giving it an 8…then the credits started rolling. What the hell’s with that?
Anyway, I can’t say that I was blown away by The Dirty Dozen, but I wasn’t exactly disappointed by it either. It’s definitely got its merits and there are a couple great scenes here that really had me on edge and made me forget about some of the more boring parts, and it’s hard to knock a movie that’s filled to the brim with some of my all-time favorite actors. Might not be the best war movie out there, but damn if it isn’t one hell of a guy movie.
Sex Drive (2008)
VERDICT:
5/10 Cheap Knockoffs
Just another teen comedy about horny kids trying to get laid. Only this one has a Mexican donut suit in it.
Sex Drive follows a High Schooler that steals his brother’s hot rod and drives halfway across the country with his two best friends – a girl he’s secretly in love with and a kid who gets far more play than he probably should – so that he can lose his virginity to a girl he met online.
This might sound familiar, and that’s because it’s pretty much the exact same story as The Sure Thing, which is a pretty funny movie from ’85 about a guy that hitchhikes across the country with a girl he secretly falls in love with, all so that he can get laid by a girl he’s never met. Are you even allowed to rip off a story like that? I don’t know, sounds like some suspect shit to me.
With that said, there’s not a whole lot here that makes Sex Drive stand out amongst the endless amount of gross-out teen comedies that are all trying to be the next Superbad 2 or American Pie 37. First off, we’ve seen the characters before – the main character who’s terrified of girls and blurts out his feelings at the most inopportune times, the secret crush, the dick older brother, etc.,etc. Secondly, the storyline is entirely predictable because, like I said, we’ve seen it all before. And lastly, which is really just a culmination of the first two points, there’s nothing original about this movie.
Then again, a movie doesn’t have to be groundbreaking to be funny, it just needs to make you laugh.
This leads me to the heart of the matter as to whether Sex Drive is actually funny or not. The answer is kinda sorta, but not really. There are some pretty entertaining bit roles by James Marsden as the older brother who’s convinced the reason his little bro is still a virgin is because he’s gay, and Seth Green as the world’s most sarcastic Amish auto-mechanic. This kid, Clark Duke, is also amusing as the best friend/sex hound of the main character, but he can do better, or at least I think he can. Everyone else, not so memorable.
As you can imagine, a lot of the humor revolves around crude sex antics aimed at making you shuffle around in your seat because we all remember how outrageous it is to be a 16-year-old virgin. I didn’t find myself laughing out loud at all, but I chuckled here and there, mostly at Seth Green. But a lot of the humor is actually totally random and brought on by a chain of events that have nothing to do with the scene at hand and are just there with the aim of grossing you out instead of making you laugh; granted, sometimes those two things go hand-in-hand, but not so much here.
Eh, I just wasn’t a big fan of this movie. It was entertaining, I guess, but it’s already been done and it’s been done better. Go watch The Sure Thing instead, that was a lot funnier if I remember correctly. Sorry, Sex Drive, but if you’re going to steal a storyline, you should probably make sure you’re doing it better than the original.
And Patrick Swayze’s best movie is…
POINT BREAK!
Good choice, folks. Then again, you really can’t go wrong with Swayze to begin with.
I might sound like a broken record, but, Patrick, you were the essence of cool and you are missed, brotha.
RESULTS:
Dirty Dancing: 5 votes
Donnie Darko: 6 votes
Ghost: 2 votes
Point Break: 12 votes
Red Dawn: 2 votes
Road House: 3 votes
…and sweet lord could you dance.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)
VERDICT:
7/10 Failed Gillette Spokesmen
I’m not really one for musicals, but hey, if Tim Burton’s attached to it, I’m in, baby.
Sweeney Todd is about a barber in London that once had a sweet ass life with his gorgeous wife and newborn daughter, that is until a seedy, a-hole politician decided to shit on it by sending good ol’ Sweeney off to prison so that he could have the nice barber’s family for himself. Flash forward a ways and Sweeney gets out of prison, he’s right pissed off, he shacks up with the creepiest woman in England, he goes back to shaving folks for a living/slitting everyone’s throats so that their fat asses can be used as the main ingredients for meat pies, and all this so that he can get his family back and kill that jerk who ruined his life.
England’s crazy, man. Freakin’ meat pies. What a rip.
So it probably goes without saying that this isn’t really your typical subject matter for a musical, but that’s actually a big reason why I liked this movie. A good deal of the musical numbers revolve around killing folks, wanting to kill folks, and cannibalism, and that’s alright. It might not seem all that entertaining, but it’s one of those things you need to see to actually get the appeal. I think more musicals could use numbers like these to spruce things up, but alas, beggars can’t be choosers.
But the beauty of Sweeney Todd lies in how it continually manages to make a morbid storyline really enjoyable, because this sucker could have been a pretty unpleasant trip in someone else’s hands. With that said, it takes a talented director to make an audience laugh throughout graphic throat-slitting sequences, but luckily Tim Burton is one dark mofo with a sharp and twisted sense of humor. There really isn’t anyone out there who makes movies like Tim Burton, and if there’s anyone who can make a nightmare seem like a dreamscape, he’s the guy for the job.
It also helps that the songs are really good and so are the all the actors, which is pretty impressive considering that no one in this movie is really known for their singing abilities, nor have any of them ever been in a musical before as far as I know. Johnny Depp is a cool mofo and a good actor to begin with, so it’s no surprise that he gets it done here as Sweeney, and it doesn’t hurt that he’s done a good 30 other movies with Tim Burton either. Helena Bonham Carter, who I’ve never really cared that much for one way or the other, is good here too as the lady who runs the meat pie shop, and it doesn’t hurt that she’s married to Tim Burton. But the biggest surprise here is actually Sacha Baron Cohen as Sweeney’s rival in the shaving field, and it doesn’t hurt that he was probably chomping at the bit to play someone other than Borat for once. You know what, nothing about this movie hurt for anyone involved.
The only drawbacks I can think of for this are that it doesn’t really have that Tim Burton visual flair to it like, say, Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands have, and the movie kind of fizzles out in the final Act, ending on a total bummer of a note. But when it comes to musicals, in particular musicals about homicidal maniacs, Sweeney Todd is a breath of fresh air. Might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I’d recommend you drink up, folks.
Pi (1998)
VERDICT:
10/10 Screwheads
It might not be perfect, but since I’ve spent an unhealthy amount of time watching and re-watching this movie more times than I care to recall, it’s hard not to appreciate it for the mini-masterpiece it is. This might be a kind of heady review, just giving you the heads up. Bear with me though, it’s worth it. At least I think so.
Pi is about math savant/human calculator Max Cohen, a guy who lives by himself, has horrendous social skills, rarely sees daylight, and studies numbers all day as he attempts to find the numerical patterns that exist in every aspect of the world we live in. His latest project has him popping a vein in his forehead as he tries to discover the underlying pattern in the world stock market to the point where he can predict the gains and losses of shareholders around the world right down to the last decimal.
Then one day, his iMac 5000 prints out a string of 216 seemingly random numbers right before it crashes. He initially dismisses the numbers as a glitch, then realizes that they were exact predictions of the next day’s stock numbers. Suits from Wall Street catch on, so do a bizarro sect of religious zealots, they all start chasing down Max, and he goes completely nuts.
And that’s why I don’t trust math.
Sorry for the lengthy synopsis, but it’s one of the more original and inspired premises I’ve had the pleasure of breaking down to CliffsNotes size. So let’s start there, with the story.
Pi‘s story is pretty strange, but holy crap is it smart. But to really appreciate it, it probably helps to know that this is not your typical kind of thriller before you press PLAY. It doesn’t follow a normal plot structure, it doesn’t have clear-cut heroes and villains, and it’s not very accessible or forgiving to its audience. Pi is a character study of one man and his increasingly paranoid descent into the downward spiral of his mind, it’s a completely unnerving experience, and it will mess with you.
It’s not a flawless story, it’s also pretty hard to follow and might be a little too complex for its own good at times, but from a technical standpoint, yeah, its pretty much flawless.
The reason Pi gets a 10 is because it’s easily one of the most well-directed and painstakingly crafted movies I’ve ever seen in my life. The editing, the camerawork, the stark black and white contrast of the film – all flawless. It’s amazing how every little aspect of this movie was accounted for and how everything ties together, everything has a reason for being there. This is the movie nerd in me talking now, but nonetheless, beyond impressive.
The fact that this was also Darren Aronofsky’s first feature film that he directed, wrote, and more or less financed out of pocket only adds to my sense of awe. Today, Aronofsky is one of the best working directors out there, but this movie made it pretty clear back in ’98 that he wasn’t screwing around. Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain, The Wrestler – check ’em all out if you haven’t already; they might make you want to blow your brains out, but they’re all phenomenal. He’s also signed up to direct the Robocop reboot that’s coming out in a couple years, and it doesn’t get more awesome than that.
The acting is all pretty solid, too. Nothing outstanding, but Sean Gullette does a good job convincing the audience that Max Cohen is not dealing all too well with his current circumstances.
Even though I love this movie now, the first time I saw this, I didn’t get it, went right over my head. It’s really fuckin’ dark, it’s pretty unsettling, and I wasn’t sure what it was actually about. Not saying you’ll have the same reaction, but you really have to listen hard and watch hard to get the full effect of this movie. Pi is not a movie to relax to, but for any of you out there looking for a truly challenging and rewarding movie to dive into, you have hit the mother load, baby.
Oh, and the story has nothing to do with the number pi itself. It’s a metaphor for the movie as a whole, and a brilliant one at that, but whatever, not gonna get into it because I’m gonna start rambling. And we all know how I get when I start to ramble.
Aiden, you drunk, you…
Mysterious Skin (2005)
VERDICT:
3/10 Mixed Messages
This had been on my Netflix queue for what seems like ages now and, man, I kinda wish I hadn’t gotten around to it. One of those movies you watch and wonder, “What was the point and why did I bother?”
Ugh.
Anyway, here it goes.
Mysterious Skin is about a kid in small town Kansas whose life is changed forever when he blacks out for a few hours on Halloween, has no idea what happened during that time for the ten years following, blames it on an alien abduction, then comes to the realization that a kid he used to be on the same baseball team as ten years prior might have something to do with it. So this other kid who apparently has all the answers to these questions was actually not abducted by aliens, but rather had a lengthy homosexual relationship with their baseball coach and spent the rest of his life turning tricks with the local men in Kansas until he moved to New York City to turn even more tricks with even sketchier men. Somehow this all ties together, and yes, it is strange.
As you can imagine, this is intended to be a pretty challenging movie to sit through in both context and subtext, the only problem is that it doesn’t work, at least not in the way that it should. I’ll explain in a minute.
But first, let’s start with the big reason most anyone is going to seek this movie out – Joseph Gordon-Levitt (let’s call him The G.L. for the time being). Now, I’m a big fan of The G.L., he’s one of the best up-and-coming actors out there today and has really done a good job of establishing himself outside of his role on Third Rock from the Sun (which was a pretty funny show, The G.L. should be proud) with movies like Brick, The Lookout, and (500) Days of Summer. In Mysterious Skin, The G.L. plays the said gay kid mentioned in the synopsis, and if he was looking for a role that would drill into everyone’s head that he’s got more range than a funny alien teenager, he hit the jackpot. But unfortunately, his character and his acting don’t exactly match up the way they should.
What I’m saying is that just because a role is demanding and challenging in that it requires you to say, simulate having sex with men even though you’re straight in real life, it doesn’t automatically make you a good actor just because you go through with it. Granted, it’s easily the most difficult role in the movie, but it’s also a very two-dimensional character that seems to revel in his lifestyle until the very, very end where it turns out he’s actually filled with remorse for the life he’s led. Who knew? I sure didn’t, and it’s a cop-out way to try and add depth to a character while resolving all the movie’s loose ends.
Point is, The G.L. is just alright here, nothing special. He’s been better.
Then again, it’s hard to blame The G.L. because this isn’t a very well-written movie to begin with, nor is it very well-directed. I’ve never seen anything else by director Gregg Araki, but I couldn’t stand his visual style and the way this movie looked like a student project. Really poor editing, really under-developed characters, and a really shoddy plot structure that feels rushed and all over the place. Sometimes you just need to take your time with a movie, sometimes it helps to draw out a scene.
And the message of the movie? Still working on that one. Don’t have sex with kids, maybe? Yup, seems like a message we all kinda knew already.
I’m all for movies that make you feel uncomfortable and challenges your moral compass, but I think my good buddy Fred put it best when he said that, “This movie would make a gay man feel uncomfortable.” And that’s what separates Mysterious Skin from a movie like Brokeback Mountain, where the former almost feels like it’s going for the shock value instead of the message and the latter is going for the opposite. I’m sure it’s shocking for a good deal of people out there to watch two men who love each other have sex in a tent, but it’s something entirely different when you have to watch outrageously grotesque sex acts performed between a grown man and little boy.
Instead of opening my eyes, Mysterious Skin just left a bad taste in my mouth. I’m sure there are some folks out there who will disagree with me on this one, but I wasn’t buying it. Another great reason to watch Brokeback instead, that’s how you mix tough roles with good acting. Word to your mother.
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