The Worst Movies I Saw in 2014

 So the year is very nearly over (which year? check the title, I guess...), and as with every Year End Recap, I like to start at the bottom and work my way up. The Cap'n tried very hard to avoid movies that looked like they'd be a waste of time this year, but that doesn't mean I missed all of the rotten apples. I just didn't feel like talking about all of them, and only one had the dubious distinction of being a "So You Won't Have To". That said, unless I somehow muster up the interest to finish watching Tusk before the 31st (outcome: very unlikely), it's safe to say I've watched the worst of 2014 that I'm going to see.

 One thing you'll notice is the lack of obvious punching bags around the internet: as a general rule, if I'm not at least a little bit interested, I'm not going to see it. So that means no Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, no Transformers 4, no Adam Sandler or Seth McFarlane movie. I didn't even watch Jingle All the Way 2, although I did trick people into thinking they'd be seeing it*. That said, anything that makes this list is something I truly loathe, or felt like time was wasted watching. Or, maybe in the case of one movie, one that made me feel stupider, kind of like Lockout did. But we'll get to that one. Aside from the very worst movie of 2014 - which closes out this recap - there's no particular order to this, just a general cathartic primal scream of "Bad Movie! No Doughnut!"

 Shall we begin? (SPOILER: yes)

 V/H/S Viral - Remember how V/H/S was too long and only had a few good segments, but the frame story was fairly interesting even though why would you tape a Skype conversation and put it on a tape? And then V/H/S 2 was a marked improvement in every way, because it was shorter and the vignettes were more concise and creepier, even if the frame story was kind of a mess? I guess when the time came to make V/H/S Viral - which might as well be "3" based on the end of the movie - everyone involved from the producers to the writers and directors forgot that.

 The wrap around story makes almost no sense until the very end, and aside from an amusing cookout gone wrong, there's nothing but gore for gore's sake until the mysterious van that causes people go turn violent is shoehorned into the V/H/S mythos (such as it is). If clips from the first two films weren't crammed in as cutaways, you wouldn't even know it was supposed to be part of the same series. The "tapes" are abandoned completely, leaving us with a combination documentary / found footage story of a magician whose cape gives him real powers, a trip into another dimension that, initially, looks like ours but really, REALLY isn't, and twenty minutes with the most obnoxious skaters you're likely to meet, who are eventually killed by zombies or eaten by a demon the zombies are summoning.

 Of the segments, the second one - "Parallel Monsters" - by Nacho Vigalondo (Timecrimes) is the only one worth watching. That said, it's so over the top that you're liable to start laughing at the "reveal" of how the alternate universe is structured. The Day of the Dead / Skater video only gets remotely interesting near the end, when it's clear they can't kill the cult members in Tijuana. Everything else is an absolute waste of time, and I worry that trying to turn the series from a Videodrome-like vibe to a "viral video" ending (think The Signal or Pontypool, but much worse) isn't going to serve V/H/S well.

 Left Behind - Look, I know that the only reason anyone reading this was even considering watching the 2014 remake of Left Behind is for ironic purposes. You heard that Nicolas Cage was in it and then saw the awful trailer and thought "see you later, Sharknado 2!" Well, I have some bad news for you - this is every bit as boring and sanctimonious as the Kirk Cameron Left Behind, and Cage doesn't go anywhere close to MEGA until and hour into the movie. Even then, it's not for very long, because he's just trying to avoid hitting another plane. The worst sin Left Behind commits - worse even than oxymoron-ic internal logic, wafer thin characters, and groan-worthy dialogue - is being boring. Like, really, "geez this thing is still on?," boring. I can't prevent you from watching it ironically with your hipster friends, or convincing yourselves that you enjoyed it somehow, but I'll never watch it again, nor will I subject an audience to it during Bad Movie Night.

 And I made them watch Things.

 Horrible Bosses 2 - Cranpire and I disagree on this, but I found this to be a perfect example of a lazy sequel coasting on the goodwill engendered by fans of Horrible Bosses. The jokes are lazy, the shock value is lazy, most of the three times I laughed came from surprised outbursts of profanity, and even Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, and Charlie Day seem to be phoning it in halfway through. They dutifully go through the motions, but it's abundantly clear that the new titular characters (a father / son duo played by Christoph Waltz and Chris Pine) are ahead of them every step of the way, and neither Waltz (barely in the movie) or Pine (in way too much of it) can muster the same sense of pure evil that Kevin Spacey does, literally phoning it in from behind a plexiglass wall in prison. You've seen every good joke in the trailer, and when Jamie Foxx's Motherfucker Jones only made me laugh once - it involves driving through a chain link fence - you know you're in trouble.

 What If - I do not understand this movie. Like, do not get it. Who is What If for? Because it feels to me like this is a movie that would appeal to Men's Rights assholes, who believe that "friend zone" is a real thing they are being subjected to. The moral seems to be that if they persevere, she totally wants you and it will work out, but it's cool to have unrealistic expectations and lash out at each other for interpreting deliberately mixed signals. I genuinely am confused about this film, because it makes a concerted effort to be a romantic comedy that portrays both sides (Zoe Kazan and Daniel Radcliffe) trying to "just be friends," but feel ambivalent about it, make overtures to be more than friends (on purpose, because there are scenes set before and after that reinforce we did not see one of them misinterpreting the other) and then get angry at the other one. Rinse, repeat.

 What is the purpose of this film? I'm being serious, because I've seen some outlandish concepts for romantic comedies, but What If goes out of it's way to represent the concept of "friend zone" as just another obstacle to true love. It would be one thing if it was just Radcliffe's Wallace being a creep, or Kazan's Chantry being totally misunderstood, but the narrative makes a concerted effort to show both of them acting behind the scenes in a way that you know they'll end up together (she refuses to introduce him to her friends, he tries to sabotage her engagement) and then spending lots of time with them not speaking to each other for doing just that! It has all the elements of a romantic comedy: the meet-cute, the dramatic plane flight to profess your feelings, the friends who set them up in secret (in this case, Wallace's roommate and Chantry's cousin, Allan, played by Adam Driver who playing Adam Driver's character from Girls). There's even the whimsical indie rock soundtrack, and because Chantry works for an animation company, her drawings come to life and float around to convey her feelings. But it all feels so unseemly because the message is that you should not respect another person's feelings about your friendship because they are into you and you just have to wear them down. I guess as long as you're Daniel Radcliffe and she's Zoe Kazan, the Men's Rights assholes are correct: just ignore the "friend zone" and keep pushing, because she'll totally realize what a great guy you are.

 In all honestly, I'd love to hear the female perspective on this movie. It feels like a movie made by guys to reinforce a particularly deplorable view of relationships that turns out exactly the day it never would. It's the meanest romantic comedy I've seen in a while, and no amount of saccharine at the end can take away the bitter aftertaste.

 The Expendables 3 - Take everything I said in my original review, and then compound it. This movie does not get better with repeated viewings. In fact, I'm kinda on the Conrad Stonebanks side of things now, because Barney Ross was a chump in the movie.

 Life After Beth - I've seen this in nearly every review of Life After Beth, but sometimes the oft repeated phrase is true: this would have been a pretty clever short film. I could see it playing at festivals, maybe winning some awards, and you'd have the added bonus of keeping the cast in place. But as a ninety minute feature? No, Life After Beth stops being funny a long time before the titular character-turned-zombie (Aubrey Plaza) goes full on undead. The premise is fun, and Dane Dehaan does an admirable job playing the straight man in what I think is the first time he isn't playing a totally sullen jerk (depending on how you feel about him in The Place Beyond the Pines).

 Most of the rest of the cast are there to play one-joke roles, like John C. Reilly and Molly Shannon as Beth's parents. It's not clear why Paul Reiser and Cheryl Hines are in the film at all until their dead parents show up (it's not just Beth who comes back, although the movie takes a while to get to that). While it's always nice to see Anna Kendrick, her part is so insignificant and underdeveloped that you wonder if the film even needed a love triangle. Plaza seems to be having fun as the increasingly unhinged Beth, who doesn't know she's dead and can only be calmed with smooth jazz, but largely speaking, Life After Beth has a lot of good small ideas that do not sustain its running time.

 The Sacrament - It's maybe not fair to put this in a "worst of" list, but I don't feel like Ti West's retelling of the Jonestown Massacre holds up under its own "found footage" gimmick. If you can't sustain your own internal logic, I don't care how interesting the cast can be or what suspense you manage to generate.

 They Came Together - For the first time that I can remember, I found myself thinking (and eventually saying out loud) "I think I hate this David Wain movie." Say what you will about how over-exaggerated parts of Wet Hot American Summer or The Ten are, at least there's some bite to the way they approach their subject matter. Wain, who co-wrote They Came Together with Michael Showalter, brings a sledgehammer to romantic comedies, and approaches the tropes with all the subtlety that Gallagher brings to a watermelon. It could be funny, like Wet Hot American Summer, except there's a lingering sense of "see how funny we are to skewer these movies?" And by that, I mean literally, the characters look at the camera after saying something stupid or cliché to undermine the entire façade.

 It reminds me of how a friend described the difference between Joel and Mike on Mystery Science Theater 3000: Joel was a guy who made the best out of a bad situation by poking fun at movies, but you got the sense that Mike really wanted to stick it to these turkeys. That's They Came Together in a nutshell: a movie that aggressively tears apart every overused rom-com gimmick and then stands there and says "look at what I did; I really gave them what for, am I right you guys?" What's weird is that Showalter already did this in the much better The Baxter, a movie about the guy who the girl always leaves for the lead character. It's a smarter movie, the jokes are better developed, and the execution isn't as grating or obvious, which makes They Came Together all the more baffling. The film even lacks most of Wain's signature non-sequitur moments, the ones that really make movies like Wet Hot American Summer memorable. Instead of "I'm going to fondle my sweaters," Christopher Meloni's character shits himself at a costume party and tries to pretend he came dressed in a robe. That's the joke. I guess the fact that her parents are white supremacists or that his grandmother wants to have sex with him are supposed to be funny in a shocking way, but Wain is far to invested in sticking it to romantic comedies to go anywhere with either setup.

 Were it not for Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler trying really, really hard to keep me invested, I think I might have turned They Came Together off after twenty minutes. The rest of the cast, who includes Bill Hader, Ellie Kemper, Michael Ian Black, Cobie Smulders, Ed Helms, Melanie Lynskey, Jack McBrayer, Kenan Thompson, Ken Marino, Adam Scott, Michael Shannon, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Randall Park, John Stamos, and Michael Murphy, land mostly on the side of "annoying," showing up for a scene or two to mug shamelessly and then exit the film. If you had told me this was the Farrelly brothers follow-up to Movie 43, I'm not sure I would have doubted you, but it shocks me that I hated a David Wain movie this much.

 See No Evil 2 - I'm not going to waste much time talking about this movie. I guess that maybe I thought going from a porn director in See No Evil to Jen and Sylvia Soska (American Mary) could have only have been an improvement, but apparently the only memo they got was "use fluorescent lighting in a hospital and make every hallway look the same." I thought the first movie was underdeveloped on every level, but at least it was grimy. This one is sterile, dull, and the gore is perfunctory. Maybe you could say that it's cool to see Katharine Isabelle (Ginger Snaps) and Danielle Harris (Rob Zombie's Halloween 2) in the same movie, but SPOILER they both die. In fact, forget it, SPOILER everybody dies except Jacob Goodnight (Glen "Kane" Jacobs), who the Soska's can't find anything to do with other than kind of give him a "monster" costume, consisting of a mortician's apron and one of those masks NBA players wear when they break their nose. Forgive me if I sit out the inevitable See No Evil 3, because WWE Films loves to make franchises out of movies that don't need them (*coughTheMarinecough12Roundscough*)

 Lucy - If you hadn't guessed, Lucy is this year's Lockout. It may be the stupidest "high concept" sci-fi / action movie I've seen since, well, Lockout. I guess Luc Besson genuinely didn't understand the "10% of our brains" metaphor, because he literally uses brain percentage as the hook for how Scarlett Johannson goes from normal party girl to transcendent god-like being in ninety minutes. It's a mind-bogglingly stupid movie, in just about every way it can be, and in good conscience I couldn't put it anywhere other than on this list.

 That said, if you have some friends coming over with a case of beer, Lucy is a rollicking good time as bad movies go. Make no mistake, you're going to feel less intelligent by the time it's over, and if you happen to know a scientist (in any field, but I suppose a neuroscientist would be the best), there will be a lot of "wait... no, that can't happen" said aloud. In fact, I can almost guarantee you this will be playing at Bad Movie Night in a few months, possibly with Lockout. I'll see if I can't lower the IQ of the room by a few points. Besson goes all in with audacious stupidity with Lucy, and if you can put aside the improbability of, well, everything, it's a breezy ride of dumb fun. Just don't pretend it's anything else.

 Sin City: A Dame to Kill For - I was just going to link this to my "So You Won't Have To" review from earlier this fall and be done with this terrible movie, but when it came out on Blu-Ray, I read a couple of write-ups from reviewers I normally respect giving Robert Rodriguez a pass for this piece of shit. That I cannot abide. Being forgiving of Sin City: A Dame to Kill for because it has more of a narrative through line than Machete Kills is, to me, unacceptable. It's like saying that Resident Evil 5 is okay because it's not as terrible as Resident Evil 4. No, it's not okay - at the end of either one you feel cheated and that you wasted time that could have been put to better use. Interesting tidbit about Resident Evil 5 and Machete Kills: both are glorified trailers for as-yet-unreleased sequels disguised as a feature film.

 Is it true that Sin City: A Dame to Kill For is better than Machete Kills? Eh, maybe. Does it matter? Nope. Unless you're some kind of die hard Sin City fan that can also somehow divorce yourself from how much cheaper, poorly thought out, and lazily constructed the second film is from the first (let alone the ways it mangles the source material despite that fact that the creator co-directed the adaptation), there's nothing worth watching this for. Nothing. If you really need to see Eva Green naked and don't have the internet, pick almost any other film she's been in. Hell, watch the Frank Miller-based 300: Rise of An Empire, which while also not great, is better than A Dame to Kill For in nearly every aspect. Want to see Joseph Gordon Levitt in a crime movie in over his head? Watch Looper or The Lookout. If you watch Looper you'll even see Bruce Willis giving a shit about his role. For everything else, just watch Sin City. As many problems as I have with the first movie, it still does everything better than A Dame to Kill For.

 I'm genuinely convinced that Robert Rodriguez forgot how to make movies, or maybe just does not care anymore. Maybe he was too interested turning From Dusk Till Dawn into a ten hour miniseries I couldn't finish. The only directorial flourishes in A Dame to Kill For are ones that echo the worst parts of his digital era to the present. This is easily the worst movie I saw this year, and I watched Things twice. This year! At least Things rewards you with this at the end of the movie:

 A Dame to Kill For is one of my favorite Sin City stories, which makes it all the more egregious that Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller butchered it so badly. There's nothing to give this movie a pass for, and I totally feel like it deserves the rotten reputation it has. I don't think critics were overly harsh panning this crap - the negativity is right on the money. Avoid it at all costs, and just read A Dame to Kill For again.

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 Next time we'll go up the ladder a bit, discussing some movie the Cap'n liked, or kind of liked. I might save the movies I had high hopes about for its own column, since it'll cover many of the major releases that didn't get coverage at the Blogorium this year. Stay tuned: the top of the list is a random assemblage this year...

 * Instead, we watched Grumpy Cat's Worst Christmas Ever, which has the distinction of being either the second best or second worst "talking cat" movie I saw this year, depending on how you feel about A Talking Cat?!?!?

Retro Review: Christmas Surprises

 For today's Retro Review, I thought I'd take a holiday trip down memory lane. You see, every year we (that being the Cap'n, Professor Murder, and Cranpire) go and see a movie on December 25th. We've been doing it for so long I can't actually remember when the tradition started. Some years we don't see anything new, but we usually try to go out and give those poor bastards working on Christmas a reason to tear their tickets and pop that horrible popcorn. Here are a few instances where our often assumed "bad" taste served us well...

 Last year we didn't see anything on Christmas night - there was talk of Black Swan, but Cranpire was sick and the weather was indeed frightful. We did see Tron Legacy two days later, and True Grit the week after that, but it doesn't really work in this situation. Let's skip back to 2009...

 Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans - technically, we saw this the day AFTER Christmas, but since the widely loathed Sherlock Holmes was the 25th's essential viewing and it still seems like I know five people who like it and nobody else, let's focus on a movie that was the exact opposite. If you've seen the trailer for Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, you - like we did - had a sneaking suspicion that it was going to S-U-C-K. Trainwreck levels of suckery punctuated by Nicolas Cage Mega-Acting. Twas not the case, fortunately: there was an ace in the sleeve, and that's Werner Herzog. Never count out that crazy German filmmaker from being able to take a bad idea ("hey, let's not actually remake Bad Lieutenant or really make a sequel, but give it roughly the same kind of sleazebag main character") and turn it into an exquisitely bizarre but also really great movie. It has iguana POV shots, for crying out loud, and it still works.

  Role Models - There's going to be a trend here of "movies we thought might be okay / kinda bad but went and saw because Cranpire wouldn't come to the really terrible ones" which is exactly how Role Models happened. The film wasn't even still playing in regular theatres - we went to the $1.50 joint on Blue Ridge Road and watched another movie that was much better than advertised. The ace in this sleeve? David Wain - director of Wet Hot American Summer and one of the creative forces behind The State. As I wrote in 2008, it's a "hybrid of Judd Apatow and David Wain sensibilities" and works despite that odd pairing.

 Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story - I've been beating the drum for Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story for the last four years and I'm not going to stop now. I'm so glad we skipped AvP:R because Cranpire (shock) didn't want to come out for our annual Christmas night movie, because I probably wouldn't have given Walk Hard a shot otherwise. It just seemed too questionable as quality went. How wrong I was. Just watch it, like right now.

 Rocky Balboa - The last movie I can remember Cranpire coming with us to see (unless you count Tron Legacy, which doesn't count because it was a few days later). It washed away the awful memories of Rocky V, which always seems to be on television. Honestly, it's been five years and I don't remember a whole lot other than being pleasantly surprised. We tend to be rewarded for taking a shot on questionable movies during the holidays - that's the trend I'm sensing here...

 I don't know what we saw in 2005, because looking at the list there's not a film released in December that I saw until it was released on DVD the following spring. That would include The Matador, Munich, The New World, Santa's Slay, Match Point, and Brokeback Mountain. It's possible we saw King Kong, but since Cranpire hated the Lord of the Rings films, I somehow doubt he's go see another three hour
Peter Jackson joint. Going even further back, I can only find Dracula 2000, which wasn't a good "surprise." I wonder where Bad Santa fit into all of this...

Lost Reviews

I found these the other day while I was cleaning out files. I wrote all of them for a radio show I was working on five years ago, and looking at the reviews, I can't imagine why most of them were abandoned. Oh wait, yes I can. You try reading them out loud.

A Dirty Shame2004
Directed by John Waters

Highly touted prior to its release as the first opening NC-17 film to be advertised on television, most people missed A Dirty Shame during a brief theatrical run, and it was largely forgotten. What a shame, because John Waters most recent effort accomplishes something many thought impossible; A Dirty Shame walks the tightrope between his older, more graphic fare (Desperate Living and Pink Flamingos) and his more recent “harmless” films (Hairspray, Cry Baby, and Pecker).

Tracey Ullman heads up the film as the uptight Sylvia Stickles, a woman who is so embarrassed by sexuality that she locks her daughter Ursula Udders (played by Selma Blair) in her room to conceal her outrageously augmented mammaries. Sylvia’s world is turned upside down, however, when she’s struck on the head and becomes a ravenous sexual lunatic, with the guidance of Ray Ray Perkins (played by Johnny Knoxville with all the swagger of a young Elvis Presley.) Ray Ray introduces Sylvia to the underground culture of sexual fetishism in Baltimore, and reveals that she is the prophet sent to them who will usher in the next level of carnal experience.

While it sounds awfully filthy, A Dirty Shame is actually quite funny, and doesn’t dwell on fetishism (which includes dressing up like a baby, smearing food on yourself, or the “bears”) but plays with the notion that sex is unnatural. The film is largely inoffensive, with the exception of a scene where Sylvia picks up a bottle of water using her you know what in a nursing home, but even that is more in the spirit of fun and less about shock value.

Waters peppers the cast with great character actors, including Chris Isaak, the aforementioned Ullman, Blair, and Knoxville, but also uses his regular troupe, among them Patricia Hearst, Mink Stole, and Jean Hill, plus an eleventh hour surprise cameo from a certain Bay Watch veteran.

A Dirty Shame is nothing to be embarrassed about watching; if you’re so inclined, I’m sure there’s a lot you can learn about in this movie, and at 87 minutes it hardly overstays it’s welcome, and anyway, it’s a hoot. A warning to hankie grabbers: the film’s NC-17 rating exists for the same reason Clerks initially got it, which is to say there’s a lot of talk but not much action.

*note – for those not inclined to be seen renting a movie rated NC-17, an R rated cut exists, but director Waters admits it’s entirely made of alternate scenes and is utterly harmless, and therefore maybe too tame.

Primer
2004
Directed by Shane Carruth

What a first glance appears to be a cautionary tale about the dangers of abusing science, Primer is actually the sort of brain-bending science fiction that rewards multiple viewings, and you won’t mind because a) it’s only 77 minutes long, and b) the film grows richer and richer with each reveal.

The film begins in earnest with four engineers trying to get their company up and running with something new and revolutionary to the scientific community. As time passes on, two of them slip out of the picture, and the remaining fellows make a radical discovery; they’ve found a way to transport matter six hour backwards in time. They continue to experiment, and then one of them presents the other with a larger surprise: he’s created one that a person can fit in.

At first they use it to make a small fortune using stock market numbers, and then their plan begins to spiral out of control when their ambition exceeds their conscience. What makes Primer work is that we’re treated to science fiction in a realistic way: none of this seems too implausible or outside the realm of what could happen, and the ensuing chaos and unraveling of layers may be confusing at first, but the more you pay attention to, the more fascinating this film is.

First time director Shane Carruth made Primer on a practically non-existent budget, shooting digitally with available light and casting himself and his friends, and while the low budget is on display insofar as film quality, the movie itself gains a grainy realism that would ring hollow in a major studio production.

This is certainly worth picking up and watching once, and if you like it or just wondered “what the hell happened?” give another sit through. You won’t regret it.

Trees Lounge
1996
Directed by Steve Buscemi

A movie lost in the shuffle of the indie revolution, Steve Buscemi’s directorial debut is a confident, laid back look at a man who has nothing worth living for. Consider Trees Lounge as a counterpart to Buscemi’s role in Ghost World, but imagine that instead of spending his money on arcane jazz records, he went over and over again to wean himself of the teat of the local bar. Every town has one; the watering hole where the same faces sit day in and day out, slightly drunk and ready to tell you about the good ole days.

Trees Lounge is the name of the bar in this particular corner of celluloid America, and Buscemi (who also wrote the film) plays Tommy, a local boy who never grew up. His girlfriend left him for his old boss, and he spends most of his time drifting about in the hours between opening and last call. Eventually, he gets a job as an ice cream truck man, and meets a much younger girl (played by Chloe Sevigny, fresh off her role in Kids) and one thing leads to another, but without such dire consequences. After all, this is a man with little ambition, and the outcomes are as muted as his outlook on life.

This is not to say Trees Lounge is boring; quite the opposite. The film is an amusing dramedy about being adrift and getting ahold of your life, but as opposed to most coming of age stories, this one happens to be about being in your late thirties. Buscemi fills the bar and surrounding town with plenty of familiar character actors, including Seymour Cassel, Mark Boone Junior, Anthony LaPaglia, Debi Mazar, and Samuel L. Jackson.

Don’t go in expecting anything flashy, but Trees Lounge is a fine character study from a character actor who knows what he’s doing.

Coffee and Cigarettes
2004
Director Jim Jarmusch
It isn't difficult to digest this movie. In fact, the title alone tells you everything that can be expected. Jim Jarmusch takes small groups of people (for most of the vingettes, two) and provides them cigarettes and, well, coffee. However, let me clarify something here. This isn't improvised, or at least, most of the conversations aren't. Too many little phrases and moments echo each other to be an accident (in particular, keep an eye out for musicians who double as doctors, nikolai tesla, and the shady nature of celebrity.) While Coffee and Cigarettes is slight, the segments are never too long to grate, and the really good ones make up for the lesser bits.

To wit:

-Cate Blanchett is a standout playing herself and her cousin, as are Alfred Molina and Steve Coogan in the same beat.

-The White Stripes discuss Jack's Tesla coil while Cinque Lee looks on (Lee, having appeared in an earlier segment with his sister Joie and Steve Buscemi)

-Iggy Pop and Tom Waits test each other and discover the diner's jukebox doesn't play either one of them.

-Bill Rice and Taylor Mead muse about the late seventies and champagne
and, in what's probably the most heard about segment, The RZA and The GZA offer Bill Murray helpful tips of losing that smokers cough (they also refer to him exclusively as "Bill Murray".)

See what I mean? There's really not a lot after the movie ends, but it's a pleasant hour and a half, and even if the Tom Waits / Iggy Pop scene goes on for far too long, and Roberto Benigni is almost impossible to understand in his scene with Steven Wright, well, it's entertaining enough. Jarmusch fans should enjoy it well enough, and it may appeal to other cinephiles.

Garden State
2003
Director Zach Braff

If there's one problem with Garden State, it's that the movie is too easy to love. This, understandably, is a minor problem, but waiting a few days between watching it and writing this tone my love of the film considerably.

Don't get it twisted, this is a great movie. Zach Braff put together something truly magic here: We're not just talking Wes Anderson's The Graduate (which, incidentally, is Rushmore), but at the same time, comparisons to Anderson are well made. Braff has a great eye of frame composition. Every shot is full of eye catching detail. And he's got a natural chemistry that makes him easy to relate to.

Admittedly, this isn't the most original idea for a movie, but you really don't mind seeing a movie about finding yourself and true love in the midst of tragedy because of how magnetic the cast is. Along with Braff, Ian Holm brings a subdued, nervous performance of a man who just doesn't understand his son, the always reliable Peter Sarsgard plays the affable loser that wants nothing more to smooth things over so well you tend to forget just how good he is at it. Then there's the revelation: Natalie Portman. I'd been so used to seeing her go half-assed in Star Wars that I forgot that this was the same Natalie Portman that blew everyone away in Leon. She's a force of nature in Garden State, but it's a testament to her talent that she never takes it over the top. This is the type of character that'd tempt some to go way past believable, but you never feel like she isn't a real person (even if that real person is a chronic liar who suffers from siezures. Speaking of which, kudos to Braff for avoiding the easy dramatic device of the free spirit heroine being dragged back to earth with a tragic seizure scene)

Garden State works because everyone involved wants it to, and where most movies would drag or take the easy route, things work so very well because we're invested in the characters.

* I should take a moment to talk about the music. My friend scoffed at my interest in Garden State, calling it "an advertisment for how awesome indie rock is" which, from the tv ads for the soundtrack, isn't that far off base. However, the movie, despite using indie rock as an almost excluse soundtrack, only directly draws attention to the music once. I think it's not as obtrusive as some might expect it to be (think of it as a more subdued version of Simon and Garfunkel's "Graduate" soundtrack)

DiG!

Ondi Timoner’s documentary about The Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre was a seven year labour of love, telling the tale of two bands on the rise; one of who makes it to (relative) success, and the other who implodes. The great joy in watching the film is seeing how each band approaches their rises and falls, and what it takes to stay alive inside the belly of the record company beast. While Warhols singer Courtney Taylor narrates the film, equal time is given to the Dandys and Anton Newcombe, the brilliant but unstable leader of the Jonestown Massacre. The bands pick at each other, are envious, and get together every now and then to play (or in one case, to crash the other band’s house for a photo shoot) but it’s not necessary to like The Dandy Warhols or The Brian Jonestown Massacre to enjoy the film. Better still, the dvd contains separate commentary tracks for each band, so we can hear their reaction to the film, how they’re portrayed, and how they saw things as 1996 turned into 2002.

Me and You and Everyone We Know

Director Miranda July moves from the world of short films to full length with this confident slice of life dramadey. Well, let’s take a step back, eh? July, who appears in the film, made a film that is at times evocative of Wes Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson, Mary Harron, Sofia Coppola, and Terry Zwigoff, with the themes of a Todd Solondz movie. Yes, that is possible, and Me and You and Everyone We Know is a declaration of emerging talent wrapped up in the overlapping stories of a Short Cuts or Magnolia. A warning to the sensitive: this film deals with burgeoning adolescent sexuality, but not in a perverted way, per se.

Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession

Z Channel was a pay cable station based out of California in the late seventies and early eighties, but it’s what Z Channel and its founder Jerry Harvey were about that makes it so important. Z Channel preceded HBO in a number of ways, but more importantly, Harvey was interested in showing movies that didn’t get a fair shake in theaters; films he loved personally and wanted to share with the world. Z Channel was the first cable station to show movies the way they were shot, in widescreen, and in blocks with similar films for marathons. Directors like Robert Altman, David Cronenberg, and Jim Jarmusch saw their films alongside movies like The Magnificent Ambersons, Heaven’s Gate, and Once Upon a Time in America, premiering for the first time in its original director’s cut. Harvey had a passion for films, and the people interviewed in this film rave about him, the least of which is Quentin Tarantino, who lived outside Z Channel’s broadcast range and only saw it through bootlegged tapes. Harvey’s life was cut short in the mid-eighties when his mental problems drove him to suicide, but the impact of Z Channel on what we know as home video cannot be overlooked, and A Magnificent Obsession is a great way to see that.

The Chumscrubber

The Chumscrubber is a bit like Donnie Darko, but with the sensibilities of I Heart Huckabees. There’s our hero who lives in a semi-permanent prescription stupor, his clueless parents and their clueless friends, and then there’s The Chumscrubber, and omnipresent video game, tv, and comic book character who wanders through post apocalyptic suburbia with his severed head at his side. To tell you any more would take away the fun of seeing it for yourself, but don’t expect another Donnie Darko. Just something distantly related.

The Life and Death of Peter Sellers

Stephen Hopkins cut his teeth in Hollywood making sequels to popular sci-fi and horror movies (A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 5, Predator 2) but in 2004 he made something quite different for HBO, something that, while critically recognized, never got the attention it deserved, The Life and Death of Peter Sellers. Based on the book of the same name, Geoffery Rush is Peter Sellers, whoever that is. The film gives us Sellers as a man without any identity of his own, partly the reason he was such a renowned character actor, because he slipped into the roles fully. Jealous to the point of acting childish, Sellers was a fascinating mess of a man and the movie covers his personal and professional life in a way many were never aware of. That and it’s damned good, too. Rush is fantastic as Sellers, who plays the movie as though he’s directing his own life story (and playing all the parts), and there are fine turns by John Lithgow, Stephen Fry, Emily Watson, Charlize Theron, and Stanley Tucci as Stanley Kubrick. A fine post modern biopic in the vein of American Splendor, The Life and Death of Peter Sellers is a must view.

The Machinist

Brad Anderson’s curious blend of the worlds of David Fincher and David Lynch may be best known for Christian Bale’s stunning weight loss, but it’s a hallucinatory trip down the dark corridors of the mind that keep us watching. Bale, who dropped down to 117 pounds, plays Trevor Reznik, a machinist who hasn’t slept for a year and is haunted by ominous visions of something he may or may not have done. As his sense of reality begins to unravel, he reaches out to the only people he knows, a waitress (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón) and a hooker (Jennifer Jason Leigh) who may know him better than he knows himself. If the ending lacks the punch it should have, then at least the journey there was effective enough.

The Jacket

Steven Sodebergh and George Clooney’s production company turned to short filmmaker John Maybury to direct their first major feature, a strange blend of Jacob’s Ladder and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Adrien Brody is a Desert Storm veteran who’s suffering more than a little brain damage from being shot in the head twice, and when the man he’s hitchhiking with kills a police officer, he can’t remember what happened. Assigned to the care of Dr. Thomas Becker (Kris Kristofferson), Jack Starks is subjected to a horrific series of tests in a mental facility, the worst of which involves being put into a straight jacket and locked in a morgue container under the influence of heavy medication. Starks awakens to find himself in the future, and by accident comes across a young woman (Keira Knightley) whose mother he helped out in 1990. When Starks discovers his death is imminent, his mission is a race against time to find out how he dies and if he can stop it. The Jacket benefits greatly from Maybury’s vision as a director: much of the film’s transitions have a Brakhage like feeling, and he has a fine eye and a great cast to sell the premise.

Wet Hot American Summer

Somewhere between when The State ended it’s run and when Stella began airing on Comedy Central, the central members got together and made a movie about summer camp in the 1980’s. Their bizarre sendup, written by Michael Showalter and directed by David Wain, has all the flourishes of the summer camp film genre, but filtered in such a strange way that we’re almost not sure if it’s funny the first time through. It is. Wet Hot American Summer is the only kind of movie we could expect from The State, a comedy troupe so devoted to the bizarre that it’s no wonder the show didn’t last. In addition to the half of the state that isn’t in Reno 911, Wet Hot American Summer also stars Paul Rudd, Janeane Garafalo, David Hyde Pierce, Amy Poehler, Elizabeth Banks, and Christopher Meloni (also known as the guy who looks like Elias Koteas). Don’t be surprised if you find yourself watching it and saying “hey! It’s that guy” more than once, even if you aren’t sure if you like it. Watch it a couple of times and let it sink in.

The Most Dangerous Game

While King Kong was wrapping up shooting and before effects work went underway, RKO decided to put the standing jungle sets to good use and make another movie they could release before Kong, using much of the same cast, crew, and even the same director. Based on Richard Connell’s story of the same name, The Most Dangerous Game is the tale of a trophy hunter who survives a boat capsizing and finds himself of an island owned by the mysterious Count Zaroff, who also enjoys hunting, but in a very different way. Starring Joel McRea, Leslie Banks, and Kong’s Fay Wray and Robert Armstrong, the film is a lean 63 minutes, but never runs out of steam. Do yourself a favor and hunt this one down.



Heavenly Creatures

Peter Jackson’s first foray outside the world of horror comedy was the true story of Juliet Hulme, who brutally killed her mother with the help of her best friend Pauline Parker. Though it sounds right up his alley, Heavenly Creatures is more of a drama with the hint of fantasy than an outright suspense film (the murder itself happens at the very end of the film). The movie proper deals with the growing relationship between the shy Hulme (Melanie Lynskey), and the outgoing Parker (Kate Winslet, in her big screen debut), much to the horror of their parents. Jackson displays an adeptness with the young actresses heretofore unseen in his earlier films, and brings the fantasy elements of their dream world (involving butterflies, castles, and clay knights) to the screen in a way that doesn’t feel hokey. Heavenly Creatures was the first indication to many that Jackson had much more in him than Zombie films, but it never got the audience it deserved.

F for Fake

Orson Welles’ free form film essay on the art of sleight of hand, be it magic, forgery, or film illusion is a wild ride that benefits from watching with a skeptic’s eye. While it seems Welles is pointing the camera at Elmyir, a master art forger, perhaps he’s looking at the man’s biographer, who also wrote a biography of Howard Hughes that turned out to be utter fiction. Or perhaps he’s pointing the camera towards his companion Oja Kodar, and her sordid tale involving Pablo Picasso. Maybe he’s pointing at himself and his critics, who chided him for never finishing his films. Maybe. Watch it for yourself and decided, and while you’re checking out Criterion’s first class dvd of F for Fake, put in disc two and watch Orson Welles: One Man Band, a feature length documentary about a number of films Welles began, but for one reason or another, never completed. The master is at work in F for Fake, so go see what he’s up to.

Movie Night Recap: One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer

Greetings and salutations to all those who could not make it to the first "theme" night that didn't involve horror movies or acts of torture performed on attendees. Quite the contrary, as once a comedy through line had been selected, the choices of "One Bourbon, One Scotch, and One Beer" were quality all around.

Before I get to the movies, a quick note to prove I meant what I said about not providing awful alcohol. While there's certainly enough Wild Irish Rose, MGD 64, Aristocrat, and Bud Light with Clamato to share, none of those were on the menu tonight.

Adam provided Glenlivet Scotch, I provided Knob Creek Bourbon, and the beer didn't actually factor into things much, but if you want to count it Adam brought over some Hobgoblin. Far from the garbage I'm sure you were expecting.

The movies were comparably good stuff, and broke down thusly:

Bourbon - Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

Scotch - Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Beer - Wet Hot American Summer


I don't really feel like giving full write ups to each movie (although I can't find any kind of official write up for WHAS), but I would like to share some tidbits we noticed in watching these films again after some time.

- Chalk this up to a "you just didn't know who he was then" category, but Bradley Cooper (The Hangover) is in Wet Hot American Summer. And not just in a "blink and you'll miss him" way; he's the guy Michael Ian Black is making out with and the co-director of the Camp Talent Show with Amy Poehler. He's also the person who suggests the counselors get together "Ten years later" near the beginning of the film. I honestly had no idea, and it's amusing because current Bradley Cooper fans might be surprised to see him in WHAS.

- Dr. Strangelove is clearly visible in the War Room for most scenes prior to when he's introduced. It's most obvious when General Turgidson (George C. Scott) is on camera talking to the President (Peter Sellers) off-camera. There is a shot featuring both the President and Strangelove facing the camera (when Turgidson is accusing the Russian diplomat of spying), although I suspect that rather than some split-screen trickery, Strangelove is merely a Sellers look-alike.

- Here's another "Because you didn't know them then" tidbit: look for most of NBC's Thursday Night Comedy Line-Up somewhere in Walk Hard. Seriously, in addition to being able to easily spot Chris Parnell and Jenna Fischer, look for Ed Helms, Craig Robinson, and Jack McBrayer. Additionally, there's Jane Lynch and 3/4's of The Upright Citizen's Brigade (I contend that, though uncredited, you can see Matt Walsh standing in the wings during one of Dewey Cox's early performances).

- Try as I might, I cannot for the life of me notice what's missing in the Theatrical Cut of Walk Hard from the Extended Cut and vice-versa. It should be easy, since there's almost 30 minutes worth of material included in the longer cut.

- There's a typo in the credits for Dr. Strangelove: the film is apparently "Base on the Novel by Terry Southern." I'm not making that up. Put in your copy and check.

Blogorium Review: I Love You, Man

The Cap'n will always be there to deliver, and I've got a "hot off the presses" review of I Love You, Man (as promised).

I also watched American Scary, a documentary about the TV "Horror Host", which I'll discuss at a later date. In the meantime, I suggest you rent it so we can discuss. It's good stuff.

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While attendance was not mandatory, I'm still disappointed in the turnout - or lack thereof - to see I Love You, Man at the Carousel this afternoon. Including the professor, six of us from a class of twenty five or more bothered showing up to see the movie. Personally, I've been wanting to see this since it came out. I waited patiently, assuming other class members would do the same but they couldn't be bothered to go see a comedy on a Thursday afternoon.

Their loss. As it would happen, I Love You, Man is not only an interesting inversion of the "romantic comedy" genre that does some interesting work regarding masculinity in its various guises, but it also happens to be pretty funny. In fact, I'd argue that it's funnier than Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Knocked Up, and possibly even Superbad. While not as crude as Role Models*, Paul Rudd fans have nothing to fear in seeing this movie. If you happen to have a girlfriend, you could even make it a date**.

I Love You, Man splits the difference between "safe for both sexes" and "holy shit dude can you believe what happened in Step Brothers?" Like I said before, the movie is essentially a romantic comedy with the exact same arc: Boy is Lonely / Meets girl / Everything is going great / Boy does something to screw things up / Boy and Girl realize they miss each other / Reunion. It even has the "date" montage reminiscent of the "Speed Dating" scene from The 40 Year Old Virgin or well, any romantic comedy***.

The catch is that the Boy (Paul Rudd) already met the Girl (Rashida Jones) and they're about to get married. The problem is that Rudd doesn't have any male friends, so he goes / is set up on a series of "Man Dates" to find a Best Man for the wedding. While you can totally see where this is going (including the "meet cute" scene between Rudd and Jason Segel), the testosterone switcheroo inverts the predictability and makes things more fun.

I Love You, Man is also helped by a great supporting cast. Don't let the trailers fool you, however: Andy Samberg isn't in the film nearly as much as you would expect from the ads. On the other hand, there are a lot of great smaller roles for J.K. Simmons, Jane Curtin, Jon Favreau, Thomas Ian Lennon, Rob Heubel, Jo Lo Truglio, Jaime Presley, and yes, Lou Ferrigno. Ferrigno actually figures into the film in a much larger way than you'd expect and is in many ways responsible for Rudd and Segel's characters meeting.

Also, keep your eyes peeled for a Matt Walsh (Upright Citizen's Brigade, Role Models) cameo on the golf course.

What I find interesting about the film, critically at least, is the way it moves between understandings of "manhood" within the film. I'd be hard pressed to say the movie is either homoerotic or homophobic although both figure into the narrative in different ways. The increased assumption by some characters that Rudd's "Man Dates" are tied to latent homosexual tendencies (coupled with a very suggestive "bonding" scene in front of a fountain) make it hard to tell what position the film is taking. On the other hand, no particular brand of "masculinity" is examined without some criticism: unlike Role Models, which is explicit in the ways it expresses "maturity", every character - including Ferrigno- has pros and cons in their behavior. It's interesting that Samberg's character - one of the two openly gay characters in the film - is actually the least stereotypical in his performance. Because I Love You, Man flips the script (so to speak) on genre conventions, the relationship between men and women is also less crystallized in the film than it is in say, Forgetting Sarah Marshall (a film that is overtly expressive of male wish fulfillment about relationships).

I'm running long here but the good news is that I Love You, Man is crowd pleasing enough for the "date" crowd but clever enough (and periodically dirty) enough to entertain the Rudd / Segel contingent, of which a number of you count yourselves among. Plus if for some reason you say, dislike Seth Rogen, it's a viable alternative to Observe and Report. I say definitely check it out.


* This is not to say the movie isn't lewd, it's just in strange ways. Frequently the topic of oral sex comes up, but rarely on men.
** Which you can't with Role Models. I promise you that "Beyonce pouring sugar on my dick" scene is a date killer.
** This, like Role Models, isn't actually an Apatow production, but it lives in the same universe. Of course, this branch of the universe is increasingly being populated by cast members of The State, and Upright Citizen's Brigade. Not that there's anything wrong with that.