Retro Review: Burn After Reading

 editor's note: In his continuing quest to re-post older reviews that never made it from the old Blogorium to its present home, Cap'n Howdy has been delivering piles of digital bits to me in the hopes I know what to do with it. Some movies are older than others, but most of these come from a period between 2006 and 2009, when the move took place. Enjoy

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I promised Eck's Mass schwag, and we'll get to that momentarily. I wanted to start by thanking Tom for the awesome gift he delivered unto me via my box at work, Burn After Reading.

  About halfway through the last semester, the film students started yapping about how excited they were about Burn After Reading following No Country for Old Men yadda yadda, and it wasn't a total surprise to hear almost all of them bagging on the movie the week after release. It didn't come as much of a surprise because I suspected a retread of the Fargo to Lebowski situation in the late nineties, and having finished Burn After Reading, that's exactly what happened.

  It seems like the bigger a phenomenon a Coen Brothers film is, the more likely they are to follow it up with something totally off the wall. After O Brother Where Art Thou turned into a bluegrass sensation, they made The Man Who Wasn't There, a really bizarre tribute to film noir in black in white that lost pretty much all but the die hard fans. Going back before that, Fargo proved to be something of a curious hit that caught on with non-Coen fandom, and then they released The Big Lebowski, a movie that confounded average audiences and took five or six years to really achieve the cult status it has now.

  Burn After Reading is not likely going to have that kind of cult audience ten years from now, but that doesn't make it a disappointment. If anything, it might be remembered as a sort of Hudsucker Proxy for aficionados down the line*. Burn After Reading is the Coens take on espionage films, packed (like Lebowski) with idiots.

   What's funny is how straight they play the "thriller" angle, down to the way too serious music. But that's not actually what the movie's about. As Adam put it, BAR is about "one woman's quest for plastic surgery by any means necessary", and it's really hard to argue against that, especially by the end. Everything in between is a comedy of errors set in motion by selfish morons trolling around and being generally despicable. It's not hard to see why people find this movie difficult to like.

  Of course, if I boiled down The Big Lebowski to "a stoner who wanders around trying to get his rug back while dealing with a series of selfish assholes", you might not rush to see that either. Plot is rarely the most important part of a Coen Brothers film. They're more interested in seeing how characters interact, and damn do they have an interesting cast assembled.

  By now you've seen Frances McDormand and George Clooney all over the trailers, with a smattering of John Malkovich and Brad Pitt. Pitt's Chad Feldheimer steals every scene of the movie he's in, and you've really never seen him play a character like this. I would liken it to Clooney in O Brother Where Art Thou, where he really cuts loose and feels free to be goofy.

  However, I don't want to take anything away from Tilda Swinton, Richard Jenkins, or my two favorite parts of Burn After Reading, the CIA agents in charge of making sense of the shenanigans you'd call a plot. J.K. Simmons and David Rasche pop in at various points in the film, not so much to catch us up but to further address how ridiculous the plot twists get. Many of you know who Simmons is, but it was a real treat to see Rasche, of tv's Sledge Hammer in the movie.

  The film may never attain "cult classic" status, but it's nowhere near the mess you might have heard it was. Of course, film students who cannot remember their film history are doomed to repeat it...

Five Movies: Year End Recap Appendix

 At the end of 2011, I set out on an insurmountable task: to catch up with everything from the year I hadn't seen but wanted to. As many of you know, I posted a list of the movies I wanted to see before the end of the year. I managed to see a third of those by the time I threw my hands up in the air and said "it's halfway through January so I have to get this thing going."

 Since then, I've seen most of the films nominated for Best Picture and quite a few I wasn't expecting to see but am glad I did. They'll get proper reviews (if they haven't already), but I'm The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Skin I Live In away from hitting all of the major films from last year that I really wanted to see.

 Because I'm not sure quite when I'm going to watch those, I thought I'd take a look at some of the films I have caught up with from last year and see whether my Year End Recap Lists would have changed if I had seen them before writing it. As a rule, I don't amend the lists - where they are is where they stay, but I think it's a worthwhile exercise to consider the films I've seen since in the context of other movies from 2011.

 Very quickly, here is how I broke down the films from 2011:

 My Absolute Favorites (Drive, Midnight in Paris, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Tree of Life, Martha Marcy May Marlene, The Guard, Melancholia)

 Really, Really Great Movies That Didn't Make the Above List (Attack the Block, Bridesmaids, Super, Conan O'Brien Can't Stop)

 Movies That Were Pretty Good, Very Good, but Not Life Changing or Anything Like That (A Dangerous Method, Paul, Drive Angry, Hobo with a Shotgun)

 Garbage (The Thing, Blubberella, Sucker Punch, Scream 4)

 To put this in perspective, I'd put Moneyball in the Movies That Were Pretty Good category (it's a well-made movie that's inherently pointless because of how it ends), and Cowboys & Aliens in the Garbage category (not in the "Bottom Five" slot, but definitely with the likes of In Time, Killer Elite, and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides section).

 There's probably only one movie that would cause me to reconsider the Absolute Favorites, and I'll get to that shortly, so most films not listed below fall right in the Pretty Good to Very Good (that would include Absentia, Some Guy Who Kills People, and My Week with Marilyn). Captain America is probably going into Cowboys and Aliens territory, and Your Highness? Well.... that I'd have to think about.

 The five films up for serious contention are:

 1. Hugo - I really do struggle with whether Hugo should leapfrog Attack the Block and go into the rarefied air of "Absolute Favorites." It's every bit as good, if not in many ways better, than Midnight in Paris (which it shares some tangential connections to) and certainly has more to say about film than Woody Allen's movie does about literature. Hugo is a film that caught me off guard; first I was concerned that by not seeing it in 3-D that I was missing one of the major reasons Scorsese made the film, and then second the initial burst of "kid crap" pratfalls had me worried.

 But this is a Martin Scorsese film, and I should have known better than to have doubted a master filmmaker to lure in the younger audience without pandering to them for the entire film. He hooks them with a tease of dumb kiddie humor and then draws everyone into a world indebted to cinema. I really think what's holding me back is that I didn't see it in 3-D, and even though you forget that it was filmed that way shortly after, I suspect that it would have made a difference. As it is, I look forward to watching Hugo again. And again. And again.
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 2. The Descendants -So The Descendants is probably the least "typical" Alexander Payne film: to be sure, there are maladjusted adults behaving badly to each other in funny but also painful ways, but with a sense of warmth I wasn't prepared for. I've noticed a distinct critical dismissal of the film based on the fact the protagonists of The Descendants are all essentially products of privilege, and that their struggles are accordingly irrelevant because people who are well-to-do don't have problems. And okay, I get that some online critics don't want to watch movies where characters in better life positions than they deal with infidelity amidst the decision whether to make millions of dollars selling land that doesn't belong to them. Fair enough. I'm not sure why you liked Sideways if that's the case, but fair enough.

 The issue of class and rightful ownership was in the back of my mind during the film, but at no point did I think about Matt King (George Clooney) as a wealthy lawyer whose wife was cheating on him because he didn't spoil her. That was the argument that her father made (minus the infidelity - he blamed the accident on Matt's "miserly" behavior). I saw a guy who thought he was doing right by his family but knowing deep down that he was giving them a raw deal, one that he hoped he could compensate for some point "later." Then things fall apart and he finds himself unprepared to be a father, a son-in-law, a husband, or a mentor. Instead, he latches on the role of "victim" when he finds out about Brian Speer (Matthew Lillard), but he's not even sure how to do that the right way. It takes Speer's wife to give King some idea of how to move forward. The "I'm not going to sell the land" was a perfunctory plot line you could see coming a mile away, so when Payne cuts away from the "big speech" to return to the hospital, I was relieved.

 I don't know that I agree with the characterization of The Descendants as a "mom movie," but I can kind of understand the impetus for that. It would fall under the classification were it not for a film about dealing with the death of a cheating wife that exists in the movie for other characters to project on. It ends as well as it can, but I don't know that it's going to supplant The Help as "mom movie" material for last year. For me, it sits comfortably in the Really Really Good list.

 3. Young Adult - I was not expecting to like this movie. Hell, I wasn't expecting to WATCH this movie until several people I talked to mentioned that they liked it, even if it "went nowhere." When I get to my actual review, I'll address that point and try to reconcile my reaction to Young Adult with my feelings about My Week with Marilyn. In the mean time I wanted to let you know that Young Adult, despite my strong distaste for Juno and all things Diablo Cody related, stuck with me. Not in a "why did I watch this" way, but in a "well damn, that hit home in a lot of ways" way.

 I've noticed that this is a common reaction among online reviews, in part because Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) is the misanthropic writer many of us relate to even though we probably shouldn't. The film is concerned with bad decisions, feeling like you "peaked" too soon, and most of all about how perceptions of others affect you at critical junctures in life. The dialogue is so removed from the "hip speak" of Juno that aside from one reference to a combo restaurant, I wouldn't have pegged the film as being from the writer of Jennifer's Body. Like Melancholia, Young Adult is a movie that I've come back to in the weeks since I watched it, and as a result deserves mention among 2011's best surprises.

 4. The Artist -The backlash against The Artist began almost immediately after the film won Best Picture (and Best Director and Best Actor) and has only increased since many of the competing films landed on home video. I'm not going to pile on the film, which was by no means the best film I saw of 2011 but was a perfectly enjoyable hybrid of Singin' in the Rain and Sunset Boulevard. It's a movie that makes you feel good, and it's fun to watch and is clever at times. It makes you smile, even if it doesn't make the longest lasting impression. That's fine, because the Academy Awards doesn't always reward the "best" film or whatever criteria you want to judge disparate films by. Like The Departed, The Artist is starting to get the "well it wasn't that good" chatter, so whether it deserves the top spot of 2011 or if it was just marketed to win awards is kind of irrelevant.

 I did want to say that while I did really enjoy The Artist, I'm not sure I'd put it in the Really Really Liked list. I thought long and hard about this, and will probably watch it again before I make up my mind, but in the wake of films I've seen since, The Artist continues to be bumped down by movies I was more surprised by, more engaged with, or ones that linger in my memory. I don't want to pile on The Artist, but I'm not sure where it would fit if I had the list(s) to do over again.

 5. Tucker and Dale vs. Evil - This is going to be a strange comparison, possibly the first time it's ever been made, but I kind of feel the same way about Tucker and Dale vs. Evil as I do The Muppets. I wasn't necessarily sure what I was going to see when I watched both films, but had high hopes. The buzz was generally good, but every now and then I'd run into a negative review that made one or two very salient points, and I'd be a little worried.

 Both films are a lot of fun, if not perfect, but set out to do what they intended: The Muppets exists to bring, well, the Muppets back, even if they don't really show up as we know them until more than halfway through the film. Tucker and Dale vs. Evil is a killbilly slasher movie that flips the protagonists and antagonists and pushes coincidences and "accidents" to extreme degrees to maintain that inversion. Both films are clever takes on expectations, with likable leads and slightly unexpected plot twists near the end. In keeping with that, I'd put the two films side by side on the list. That should give you some idea of whether Tucker and Dale vs. Evil is worth your time.

 Keep an eye out for an actual review of Young Adult sometime soon. I'll be back tomorrow with a look back at The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Blogorium Review: The Descendants

 No matter how many times I see an Alexander Payne film, I find myself caught off guard by something in the story. It happened with Election, About Schmidt, Sideways, and again with The Descendants, the film Payne, co-writers Nat Faxon and Jim Rash adapted from Kaui Hart Hemmings novel. I expected some variety of comedy with serious undertones, both of which originating from flawed characters that can't quite connect, so in that respect The Descendants is consistent with Payne's other films. What surprised me was the humanity behind the laughs, and the complications in the narrative that undercut the misanthropy he normally imbues his characters with.

 Matt King (George Clooney) is hardly someone you'd call a responsible father. He's far more interested in his law practice in Hawaii than in his family, and he leaves the task of raising daughters Alexandra (Shailene Woodley) and Scottie (Amara Miller) to his wife, thrill seeker Elizabeth King (Patricia Hastie). When Elizabeth is thrown from her water jet(?) during a race and ends up in a coma, Matt finds himself in charge of Scottie, middle school-aged and prone to acting out, without the slightest idea what he's supposed to do. Alexandra is in private school and probably drinking and acting out, so when Matt brings her home to take care of Scottie, the elder daughter brings along Sid (Nick Krause), an amiable stoner with a penchant for saying whatever is on his mind, regardless of its tactlessness. As Elizabeth's coma drifts into a permanent vegetative state, Matt accepts the provision in her will to unplug life support, and the foursome set out to prepare family and friends for the inevitable. But in the midst of this, Alexandra explains why she's so angry at her mother, and it's going to make Matt's preparations much more difficult...

 That's the simple way to explain The Descendants. It also only covers the first twenty minutes of the film, because the revelation that Elizabeth was having an affair with realtor Brian Speer (Matthew Lillard) and planned on leaving Matt before her accident is the catalyst for much of what happens in the story. Matt becomes obsessed with meeting Speer, to confront him and let him know that Elizabeth is lying in a hospital, dying, if for nothing else than to see the look on his face. With Scottie, Alexandra, and Sid in tow, he follows Brian on a business trip from one island to another, where he discovers that Speer is also married. Brian's wife Julie (Judy Greer) is also unaware of her husbands philandering ways, and Matt has to decide whether he's willing to destroy another family as his is in the process of crumbling.

 Brian also stands to benefit from Matt in a totally different way: King and his family are descendants of the last royalty of Hawaii, and they own 25,000 acres in Kauai. Their trust is going to be dissolved in seven years, so the family has been fielding offers to sell their inheritance to developers, and Matt is responsible for making the ultimate decision on if they sell it and to what interests. If he sells to the local developer his cousin Hugh (Beau Bridges) supports, then Brian is going to make a small fortune off of the deal.

 The film raises the larger question about whether the family, descended from the union of Hawaiian and European / American bloodlines, really has any right to control land they have only the slightest connection to. They treat the native land as property, something they can use to camp on but a financial asset; they'd rather profit from it than lose it altogether, and the decision to sell it upsets families around Matt's home in Honolulu. Most of the cousins want to sell it because they've burned through their financial inheritance; only the penny pinching Matt saved everything, even from his family, which is one reason Elizabeth's father Scott Thurson (Robert Forster) blames him for the accident.

 All of this is the backdrop for dealing with loss, with grief, betrayal, responsibility, and with being unsure that you can be the person expected of you by others. The Descendants is alternately very funny and deeply saddening, but avoids falling into the traps of trivializing the gravity of the King's predicament or reducing the comical nature of these seemingly unrelated, compounding coincidences in service of tear-jerking.

 At the core of this balancing act is George Clooney, who plays Matt King as kind of a spaz. He's somebody who prefers business to interpersonal relations, who is convinced he can make up for all of this later, and who is totally lost when it falls apart. He's also driven purely by impulse: when Alexandra tells him about the affair, his first reaction is to run down the street to Kai and Mark Mitchell (Mary Birdsong and Rob Huebel)'s house to ask Elizabeth's friends if it's true. In spite of everything Matt needs to do, that he tells his daughters needs to be done, he is insistent on finding Brian Speer, to settling the score even though it means nothing. It's more important to him than forgiving his wife, a blank slate he can only project onto at this point.

 Clooney is fantastic in a very un-Clooney role. The screen persona cultivated by Clooney and many of his collaborators is of a man who, delusional or otherwise, is wholly confident in his actions. As Matt King, Clooney is a man out of control, a vulnerable, petty man in way over his head with two daughters asserting themselves in very different ways. Speaking of which, Woodley and Miller are also excellent as Alexandra and Scottie, neither of whom are prepared for the situation they find themselves in. Nick Krause nearly steals the show as Sid, a character that seems at first only to be there for comic relief, but as Matt begins to (inexplicably) rely on his Zen approach to life, we learn more about why he and Alexandra are drawn to each other, and in keeping with the rest of the film, it's more complicated than it seems.

 I say almost steals the film because Judy Greer, in a small amount of screen time, gives The Descendants a heart. Lillard's Brian Speer has a moment or to that keep him from just being "the other man" in the film, but Julie Speer shows decency to Matt and to Elizabeth, even though she has every right to be as bitter as the protagonist of the film. I'm used to seeing Alexander Payne films with emotionally fragile leads who struggle to coexist with their mutual baggage, but Greer as Julie is something different. She's an innocent who chooses not to lash out, but to do right, and accordingly shapes how Matt comes to terms with his life. It's a minor epiphany, not telegraphed to the audience immediately.

 To be fair, when the one thing you expect to happen does happen, I was torn about whether Matt does it out of altruism or to be vindictive. It's not clear, and Payne wisely cuts away from the "big speech" moment and transitions back to the family drama, having wrapped up a more or less traditionally expected narrative thread. Like Sideways, The Descendants is to me a strange choice for the Academy Awards: it is by all means a fine film, but one that spends much of its time dwelling in the worst of human behavior. It's not as hopeless as, say, Melancholia, but The Descendants is concerned more with small, emotional moments than War Horse, Hugo, The Help, or The Artist. It's a decidedly low-key film with fine performances, the kind of movie I think is going to age well, and deserving of its Best Adapted Screenplay, so maybe it's okay it was overshadowed by the competition.

Special From the Vaults: To the Wayback Machine

Okay, wayback might be pushing a little bit, but this is (arguably) the oldest piece I could find that the Cap'n wrote about film. There may be some high school related ephemera, but as I've lost all of the "year end recaps" prior to 2003 to the vast wasteland of outdated email accounts, what I have left is a recap from nearly eight years ago.

To set things up: as it states in the first sentence, the Cap'n emailed my end of year roundups to friends, family, et al. For years, I didn't do much blogging, and what I did was limited to silly things like livejournal that are almost entirely gibberish*, so this is about as "readable" as they come.

That said, punctuation is still a mess, sentence fragments abound, and I had a very hard time capitalizing letters for some reason, often arbitrarily. I opted not to change anything, so what's below can be embarrassing, at least to me. Still, it's a valuable learning tool, or if nothing else an example of how far I have (or haven't) come. Enjoy.

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I send this out every year as an email, but there's no reason you shouldn't see it too, so here you go. comment freely.


i'd be remiss not to note that this year is by and large the YEAR OF SEQUELS. it was a good year for franchises (or a bad one, depending on your opinion) but at any rate we saw a lot of remakes, second and third chapters, and reruns of movies we thought had already come and gone.
as oscar season begins the grand ascension to top of all things media, i'll go out on a limb and offer what i think will end up doing the golden globe/oscar strut. Let's see... The Last Samurai, Mystic River, 21 Grams, Big Fish, Cold Mountain, The House of Sand and Fog, Mona Lisa Smile, and Return of the King. How many of these did i see? just one. (i don't anticipate seeing any of the other ones, except Big Fish. i am as curious as anyone else.)

now that we have oscar hogs out of the way ( i can not and will not vouch for the quality of any one i haven't seen, but expect to see some variation on them this spring, depending on advertising dollars) i'll quickly dispense of other movies i wanted to see but didn't get to: Lost in Translation, Max, Intolerable Cruelty, Dirty Pretty Things, Matchstick Men, and ... well, i'm sure there are more. it's always difficult to remember when you're in the midst of a list.

there are, of course, the movies i didn't want to see, but any raves/pans/etc would be appreciated: Underworld, Gothika, Charlie's Angels Full Throttle, Freaky Friday, 2 Fast 3 Furious, ahahaha yeah you got me, i don't really care if these movies were 5 Star brilliant! i don't plan on seeing them. ever. (try me, davis. try me)

normally i rank these fuckers, but to be honest, i just don't know how to put these above/below each other this year. i enjoyed/hated all of the following for various reasons, so i'm just going to list them and tell you what i thought. (to hell with organization!)

in no particular order:


The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King - with a few minor quibbles, i thought it was great. i anticipate the extended version will fix all of the little quirks i had, but nevertheless you have to hand it to Peter Jackson for setting out to make this epic and succeeding in a way George Lucas and The Wachowski Brothers could only dream of. Gollum/Smeagol looked even better this time around, and the arc of the movie kept my eyes on screen the whole time (this is rare) i can dig it. as an entire series, i expect the lord of the rings will be remembered down the line with all other "classics" and for that, hurrah. the cast was uniformly strong, but special kudos to Miranda Otto, Sean Astin, Andy Serkis, Ian McKellan, and Elijah Wood. and Shelob looked better than i thought she would.

Spider - This is the type of movie Cronenberg hasn't tried since Dead Ringers or The Dead Zone; a character study without the obvious horror manifesting. the slow unraveling of Spider Clegg's mind, the use of images and colour, editing choices designed to disorientate... Spider demands to be viewed repeatedly, there are no other options. Ralph Fiennes gets away from dreck like Maid To Order 2: JLo, and makes this fragile, twisted wreck of a man someone we want unravel the mess inside of his brain. kudos to Miranda Richardson for taking a triple role and not letting anything slide into parody. i don't want to spoil Spider for anyone, so go rent it.

The Rundown - Yes, THAT the Rundown. The one with the Rock. And Stiffler. And Christopher Walken (and Spud from Trainspotting, Ewan Bremmer) It sets itself up early to let the audience know this is nothing beyond a popcorn film, and by that criteria it succeeds admirably. Basically, it's just Midnight Run in the jungle, so if you liked Midnight Run, you'll love it. Dwayne Johnson has a steady career ahead of himself if he chooses the action-comedy genre. (he has an amiable, goofy charm, and a physique that lend him well. oh, and a passing of the torch from arnold. watch the beginning carefully) Stiffler is, well, Stiffler. If you like Seann William Scott in general, you'll have no complaints. Christopher Walken is just CHEWING scenery here, and it's worth watching just to see him imitate the "christopher walken" parody (and during a tooth fairy metaphor, no less) dumb fun.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre - would be less polarizing if it had ANY other name. for one thing, it's just not fair to compare it to the original, because OF COURSE it doesn't stand up. as a gritty, high level hollywood thriller, it works pretty well. the camp value of the sequels is nowhere to be found, and leatherface is scary again, not just some guy in a dress. there's an attempt to tie this in to Ed Gein a little more, and to provide a back story to Leatherface, but honestly, who came to see that? TCM is a decent horror movie, and it will only disappoint those expecting the original or better. speaking of the original...

House of 1,000 Corpses - tries too hard to attain the same "shock value" of 70's horror movies (last house on the left, friday the 13th, tcm, etc) but somewhere along the line Rob Zombie forgot that a horror movie needs a story or at the very least someone you care about. House of 1,000 has neither (nor does it have the 1,000 corpses boasted). Instead, we have some hokum about "Dr. Satan", a family that, aside from being crazy, has nothing to do with him, and a gas station/museum/carnival ride owner who curses with intermittent dialogue. this movie is rife with bad choices, and i can't honestly believe that it has a cult audience. i could go on and on about the amateur acting, the miserable "plot twists", or the longest pull back for a death scene ever, but instead i'll just chuckle thinking about Agatha Crispies cereal.

Kill Bill Volume One - Quentin Tarantino's ode to grindhouse flicks of the seventies is a labour of love, and it shows. From his choices in casting to the music or costumes and editing, Quentin lays his inner film geek on the line here. Uma Thurman is a sight to behold in this movie. Cheers to her for coming back strong and shaking off Mia Wallace once and for all. If you haven't seen Kill Bill, know this: This is a VIOLENT movie. I won't say film. This isn't art, this is a loving tribute to a genre with a built in audience, and Tarantino knew it. He doesn't disappoint, and i expect Volume Two to be even better. As a film maker, he's stepping up his game, and Kill Bill is technically superior without being too gimmicky.

Cabin Fever - Eli Roth learned a thing or two from Evil Dead. That's crucial to understanding the marketing behind this low budget gem. Cabin Fever is atypical of horror movies, and that bugs a lot of horror fans, but this isn't quite a scare fest. It's a genre bender, pitting the cast of a Teen Sex Comedy in a Cabin in the Woods Horror Movie. While it has problems (the movie doesn't know where to end and stumbles a bit in the final act), it's nevertheless a nice first film to build a career of off, and they marketed the shit out of this movie (when i went to see it, great steps were made to replicate set pieces, "authentic" paraphenilia, etc.) plus it doesn't look as cheap as it was to make, and there are some wonderful nods to past cheapie thrillers.

The Animatrix, Matrix Reloaded, and Revolutions - First, let it be known i am NOT a matrix fan. when i saw the first movie, i hated it. It felt like someone had taken Dark City and put kung fu in place of acting chops. That being said, the Animatrix was a nice step towards not hating Reloaded as much. Providing some interesting context to the more interesting aspects of this series makes it head and shoulders better than the movies. Now, onto Reloaded. I was shocked how bad this movie was. The actors were half assing it (even Laurence Fishburne looked like he forgot how to emote), the dialogue was stilted and unecessarily complicated (i'm sorry, you can't try to talk over the audiences head to trick them into thinking that it's brilliant. it JUST DOESN'T WORK) and all the new characters were perfunctory and grating. Speaking of which, what the hell happened to the Twins in Revolutions? They just vanished! The Architect was SO unecessary, as was his scene with Neo. ugh. i could go on about the rave, blah blah shitty movie. BAD BAD MOVIE. the only bright spot was Hugo Weaving, who seemed to understand you can still have fun in these movies. Revolutions was better than Reloaded. i'll give it that. This doesn't mean i didn't have problems with it, but at least the sense of URGENCY was back in this one. people cared about their fate, and it seemed like something was actually at stake. BUT, this does not explain how someone with a pipe CLEARLY sticking out of their lungs can talk for seven minutes before dying. i enjoyed anything involving Agent Smith or the Siege on Zion in this one, but not much else. and the ending.... ugh!


Once Upon a Time in Mexico - seemed to disappoint a lot of people. I'm not sure why. Well, i suppose because they forgot this was the sequel to El Mariachi and Desperado, or they at the very least didn't bother to double check those movies. really. in the opening credits it clearly says
"A Robert Rodriguez FLICK". this is not high art, folks. this is his attempt to create the spaghetti western in mexico, and it adheres pretty closely. the ads were misleading, yes, playing up the epic nature of it, altering the role of Johnny Depp and leading people to believe Salma Hayek was in the movie more than she was (in reality, she was shooting Frida) but this is nevertheless the over the top wrap up to the El Mariachi Series. While Antonio Banderas, Danny Trejo, Willem Dafoe, Cheech Marin, Ruben Blades, and Mickey Rourke are having a ball, this movie belongs to Johnny Depp. He is utterly brilliant here, twisting a plot device character and giving him the type of quirks you can't help but admire. He steals the show out from everyone (again, but i'll get to that later...) Robert Rodriguez helms it all with a love for his craft and it feels like he's having a grand time with this film, just like..

Spy Kids 3-D - Yes, i freely admit to seeing the Spy Kids films and loving all three of them. Get past the stupid trailers; these are top rate kids films that adults can watch and enjoy too. the use of 3-D in this movie is more organic than i thought, and it boasts a higher rate cast than you'd imagine.. (don't believe me? check this out: Antonio Banderas, Carla Gugino, Ricardo Montalban,
Sylvester Stallone, Mike Judge, Salma Hayek, Steve Buscemi, Alan Cumming, George Clooney, Cheech Marin, Danny Trejo, Tony Shaloub, Bill Paxton, and Elijah Wood) yep, that's someone from every robert rodriguez movie represented. and finally, someone reminds us why people liked Sylvester Stallone! See these movies, i promise they're better than you'd think.

Freddy vs. Jason - If you liked the Friday the 13th series or the Nightmare on Elm Street series, you've already seen this. If you don't like them, don't bother. I mean, you aren't going to like it. If you love your horror tongue in cheek, you appreciate a film that balances both series with affectionate nods in both directions, then Freddy vs. Jason will not disappoint. The kills are better than even Jason X boasted, and despite the fact it's not Kane Hodder under the hockey mask, everything works. Can you pass up seeing Robert Englund as Freddy again?

Willard - Is not like the original. the original Willard was, to be fair, bad. It was cheap and not really scary (however it's not a bad as Ben, the unecessary sequel) This Willard is a very atmospheric black comedy, and you really just can't beat Crispin Glover and R. Lee Ermey on screen (Mulholland Dr fans, do note Laura Herring is in this movie too). Don't expect scares and i predict you'll find Willard is hilarious and evil. plus the dvd has the most informative commentary you will ever hear (for the music video of crispin glover's cover of "ben")

Final Destination 2 - I didn't really watch all of it, to be honest. Adam was drunk and just too entertaining. the death scenes were more gruesome (and inventive) than the first one...

Pirates of the Carribean: Curse of the Black Pearl - was as much fun as you can have at the movies and SOOOO much better than i could've guessed. Anythin based on a Disney Ride automatically breeds suspicion (and later you'll see my theory validated) Orlando Bloom, Kiera Knightley, Johnathan Pryce and Geoffery Rush all do wonderful jobs playing in the shadow of JOHNNY DEPP. just like Once Upon a Time in Mexico, he owns this film. how people forget him year after year baffles me, but the mere fact he's involved in the sequel guarantees i'll check it out. Gore Verbinski has settled himself into steady groove of successful genre films, and more power to him for it (yes, this is how you follow up The Mexican and The Ring, folks) entertaining all around. yarrrr.

Finding Nemo - It's Pixar, folks. Need I say more? The most consistent animated film company hits another one out of the park. Where does it sit with the others? for me, somewhere between Monsters, Inc. and A Bug's Life. Not quite Toy Story or Toy Story 2, but a damn sight better than any other american kid's animation.

The Haunted Mansion - Why? because it was the Haunted Mansion or Gothika, and Mission Valley was closer and cheaper. Yes, it's as bad as you suspect, save for two things: 1) if you like to mercilessly rip into Terrence Stamp (and oh boy, do we) or 2) you want to see a film that ends with a BRIDGE FROM LOUISIANA TO HAWAII. that's right. Terrence Stamp can't honestly believe he's on par with Richard Burton when he's in a film this bad. Eddie Murphy! Get back together with Steve Martin and Frank Oz! Make good comedies. Sheesh...

Bad Santa - Cannot be advertised. You need to understand that. Ads do not do this film justice. It's true, this is the most mean spirited Christmas movie you'll ever see. Bad Santa earns its R rating in the first two minutes of the film, and it's as funny as anything you'll see next year. i promise. Billy Bob Thornton is laugh out loud funny, and you get Samir from Office Space, the MOST pathetic kid in a christmas movie ever, plus Bernie Mac and Tony Cox. From Terry Zwigoff (Ghost World and Crumb) and The Coen Brothers. ok? get crack-a-lackin (ohhhh you idiot terrence stamp...)

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind - Which i believe came out at the tail end of 2002, but i saw this year and couldn't then, so there. George Clooney and Charlie Kaufman turn Chuck Barris's "unauthorized" autobiography into a whirlwind of a movie, and anchoring everything is Sam Rockwell is Barris. This movie sinks or swims on his shoulders, and he handles it so well i'm amazed he's not a bigger star by now. look for him to break out big time soon. Clooney is no slacker his first time behind the camera, either. avoiding digital effects, he uses in camera trickery to pull off the more surreal elements of the storyline. not perfect, but a fine effort.

X2 - aka x-men whatever. the movie i saw didn't have the words x-men united anywhere in it, so i'll just call it X2. an improvement in almost every way on x-men (hey, i said almost, but i'm getting ahead of myself) there are plenty of sly references toward the x-universe and hints of things to come (and judging by box office receipts there will be an x3 and 4, etc) alan cumming is spot on as nightcrawler, and it's always a joy seeing Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan on screen together. that being said, the fact that it's a chapter in a larger story means that characters are getting spotty at best screen time (whereas Storm suffered in the first film, Cyclops is pushed almost to a cameo in this film, whereas Logan is still the focus. Rogue doesn't do much but react to Iceman and Pyro, and aside from hinting at the Phoenix to come, Jean Grey isn't particularly important to this movie. the beginnings of the brotherhood of evil mutants was cool, plus a pre-fur Beast, Collosus, and indications of Omega Red and Gambit in the future) a solid, if not perfect, second entry. it won't be the weak link in the series i suspect.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines - Was so much better than it deserved to be. Ok, i'll admit i had ZERO expectations for this film (James Cameron, Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong all drop successively out of this project, early word is terrible) it's true, i never saw U-571, so i didn't know if Johnathan Mostow could handle a Terminator film, but when it's not your franchise, how could you? Yes, this movie is alternately derivative and slyly nodding towards the other terminator films (the sunglasses motif was cute, and seeing dr. silberman again was fun) Nick Stahl and Claire Danes do the best they can with the script they've got, and Kristianna Loken one up's Robert Patrick as the T-X, plus the film boasts the bleakest ending of any summer "blockbuster" you're likely to see. it shouldn't have been fun, but it is.

Bad Boys 2 - Is too much of a guy/buddy cop action movie for its own good. two and a half hours of over the top violence, gay bashing, and car crashes is too much. really. if you like seeing endless shots up women's skirts, digging through corpses, bullets flying or repeated jokes about dating someone's sister, by all means, this is your movie. if you want to see joe pantoliano and peter stormare cash a paycheck, this is your movie. if you need to stop thinking and say "wow, that car flipped twice over the boat" or you love flagrant product placement, whooooa is this your film. it is not something i'll be watching again.

Looney Tunes: Back in Action - I didn't like the movie itself, but Joe Dante has a knack for detail and throwaway gags that is unrivaled. Seriously, just read the names of the Spy Movie Posters in Brendan Fraser's house (all starring Timothy Dalton) or the fact that a new Batman being filmed on the Warner lot has Roger Corman directing it. Or perhaps seeing Scooby and Shaggy berating Matthew Lilliard. Or Ron Pearlman. or the Area 52 scene (complete with monsters from Fiend without a Face, This Island Earth, The Day of the Triffids, Dr. Who, Forbidden Planet, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Them!, The Beast from Haunted Cave and the Man from Planet X) or a scene for scene parody of Psycho's most famous scene. if these things sound interesting to you, see Looney Tunes. otherwise, please don't

Secretary - I can't remember if i reviewed this last year or not. anyway, i'll put it this way for you: it's a more fucked up story about true love than Punch-Drunk Love. Maggie Gyllenhaal needs to stay away from things like Mona Lisa Smile (yes, i just checked imdb, and i came out in 2002, but i don't think i saw it until 2003)

and finally, how can i end this but with the only movie appropriate for such an occasion:


The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - This is a trainwreck of a movie. first, it's crucial to understand if you like the comic AT ALL, you should avoid this movie. or pretend you never read the comic. please, because the logic leaps made in this disaster will send any rational reader into head-scratching territory. let me begin with the premise of the comic, as it's BASICALLY the same as the movie.

Okay, it's the end of the Nineteenth Century. Imagine, if you will, the Mina Harker, Allan Quatermain, Dr. Henry Jekyll, Hawley Griffin (the invisible man), and Captain Nemo are in fact real and living in different parts of the world. MI-6 (yes, the one that James Bond will eventually work for) recruits them to locate a cavorite capable of defying gravity (from H.G. Wells's The First Men In the Moon) that was stolen by a crime lord. Sherlock Holmes is presumed dead but rumours abound he may still be alive. this is the premise of the first volume of the league of extraordinary gentlemen.

LXG (as the movie will be known from here out) differs in the following ways:

-Allan Quatermain is not an opium addict languishing away in Africa, but a retired legend.

-Mina Harker is a Vampire, rather than just a "scandalized" woman.

-Captain Nemo practices Kung Fu.

-Hawley Griffin is not the invisible man, but rather it's a thief who finds his serum.

-Tom Sawyer and Dorian Gray are added.

ok, some of this is curious (particularly Tom Sawyer, who in the 1890s would be in his 40's or 50's, not a twenty something working for the US Government [why? because the adventures of tom sawyer takes place before the civil war, putting it 30-40 years before the events of this story]) but ok, for the sake of a more "interesting" movie, we take these changes in stride. right? why then would you put Mina Harker in BROAD DAYLIGHT not once but twice?? Why is Dorian Gray suddenly unable to look at his portrait? i will forgive the city of venice for having waterways wide enough for the Nautilus to fit through and streets in which to have a CAR chase (not just a car, but a six cylinder 1930's style rolls royce rip off). Why betray the laws you set up? that's just lazy film making.

to be kind to LXG, there are some cute attempts to copy things from the comics (nods towards previous Leagues, etc) but ultimately the film fails because it can't get around the horrible logic holes it presents. (ok, one more, and that's it. but this one is a doozy. the villain of the film is James Moriarty, who supposedly died with Holmes. ok. same in the comic, except in LXG he's no older than mid-thirties! this is a man who by Doyle's accounts was older than Holmes himself. the movie even goes so far to insinuate it's Rasputin! [yeah, that Rasputin] before some Mission Impossible Pull Away tm makeup reveals the true identity) anyway, the cast seems to realize how rotten this is and hams it up accordingly. and if you're ever planning to use Hyde again, just go digital! please. the prosthetics looked terrible, and the transformation is laugh out loud bad.

anyway, don't see this movie. or do, but make sure you tear it a new one. it won't be hard, believe me.


that's it. i couldn't do any more if i wanted to. perhaps dvds in another one, but for now, you've got your hands full. feel free to respond, critique... oh you know the drill.




* What I could find in the way of "movie reviews" from 2001-2005 were laughable, incoherent, quasi-write ups.

Retro Review: Out of Sight

Until Sunday night, I hadn't seen Out of Sight all the way through in at least ten years. I'm pretty sure I watched it on video after the film was released in 1998, and I know I at least started watching the DVD once or twice, coupled with the scattered TV airing over the years, but to sit down and watch Steven Soderbergh interpret Elmore Leonard was like rediscovering a favorite movie, one that slipped away into the fog of memory, just waiting to be recalled.

Jack Foley (George Clooney) is a bank robber who has a bad habit of spending time behind bars before he can spend his ill-gotten gains. While in the Glades correctional facility near Miami, Foley piggybacks on an escape attempt with the assistance of his partner in crime on the outside, Buddy Bragg (Ving Rhames). Their scheme goes well until a chance encounter with U.S. Marshall Karen Sisco (Jennifer Lopez) leaves Jack and Buddy with no choice but to take her hostage. Foley is smitten with the headstrong Sisco, and her tendency to go for "bad boys" complicates their impossible attraction of cop and crook. Sisco follows Foley and Buddy from Miami to Detroit, where they're planning a home invasion with a big payoff, thanks to businessman and fellow inmate Richard Ripley (Albert Brooks). An unexpected partner emerges in the robbery, Maurice "Snoopy" Miller (Don Cheadle), a fellow inmate with a sadistic streak. Will Snoopy's involvement jeopardize the score? Will Sisco catch Jack and bring him in? More importantly, does she even want to bring him in?

Soderbergh, working with screenwriter Scott Frank (who had earlier adapted Leonard's Get Shorty and would later work on Karen Sisco, a TV spin-off about Jennifer Lopez's character) wisely eschewed with the original draft's linear narrative. Soderbergh tends to gravitate towards overlapping flashbacks, flash-forwards, and misleading bridges between the two, so Out of Sight benefits from the shift (originally done practically in order to introduce Karen Sisco earlier in the story), where information is slowly doled out as time moves backwards and forwards, finally catching the audience up on the whole story three-quarters of the way in.

I remembered to some degree about having issues with the "love scene" on first viewing: Soderbergh inter-cuts a bar scene between Sisco and Foley with future scenes of the mutual seduction in her hotel room, overlapping dialogue into the flash-forwards. Coming back to the film, it bothered me less, along with Soderbergh's use of freeze frames at strategic points in the film, often used to pause on the situation at hand, giving the audience a moment to consider what they've just seen.

Soderbergh also uses another technique he'd visit again in the future: color coding of sections in the film. Scenes in a penitentiary out west are punctuated by bright yellow jumpsuits, while the Glades correctional facility uniforms are more subdued. Miami light sources are always blown out, and the Detroit section of the film is filtered with a steely blue (except for Ripley's house, which stands out in opulence from the economically drained downtown Maurice Miller claims to run). Soderbergh used a variation in The Underneath and would separate Traffic visually and thematically two years later.

So much of Out of Sight is immediately recognizable, regardless of the length of time that passed between the first viewing and the most recent. Even with the period of time away from the film, Soderbergh and Frank's story is so well constructed that it's easy to feel as though you're visiting an old friend, reminiscing about oft-repeated stories. At the same time, the film is fresh, clever, and funnier than I remembered.

People tend to take George Clooney's status as a leading man for granted now, but when Out of Sight was released, he was very much on the "bubble" as actors go. He'd been in the spotlight on ER, but major film roles were limited to One Fine Day, The Peacemaker, and the disastrous Batman & Robin. From Dusk Til Dawn had hinted to geeks that Clooney could be more than the "Most handsome man in America," but Out of Sight paved the way for more interesting roles in Three Kings, O Brother Where Art Thou, and Ocean's Eleven (re-teaming with Soderbergh).

Likewise, Jennifer Lopez was probably never better than as Karen Sisco, despite the marquee role in Selena and the lurid femme fatale in Oliver Stone's U-Turn. Ving Rhames has a refreshing sense of concern as Buddy, a character that is both unflinchingly loyal yet morally conflicted about his life (a running subplot in the film involves Buddy's need to call his born-again sister to confess, often before committing a crime). Don Cheadle's Snoopy Miller is a real surprise - both comical and menacing without one compromising the other, and Albert Brooks takes a character he could play in his sleep and imbues Richard Ripley with a truly vicious streak on the outside he doesn't have in prison. He's an opportunist that you don't feel sympathy for, even in light of what happens (and almost happens) during his home invasion.

I'd forgotten about the parade of recognizable faces in the film - Luis Guzman as an escapee, Catherine Keener as Foley's ex-wife, Steve Zahn as the perpetually stoned car thief that talks too much, Dennis Farina as Karen's father, Isiah Washington as Snoopy's partner in crime, and Nancy Allen* as Ripley's housekeeper / girlfriend.

There's a small stroke of genius in carrying over Michael Keaton as Ray Nicolette, creating a bridge between the worlds of Jackie Brown (released the year before) and Out of Sight. Add to that a small, uncredited cameo at the end of the film by another actor who played a different character in Jackie Brown, and the intertextual elements between Tarantino's and Soderbergh's films is worth considering beyond the individual stories.

Out of Sight is, after all these years, still a fresh breath of air when so many films of the "new wave" 90s cinema seems dated and stale. It is an easy movie to overlook, to forget, but it refuses to go quietly into that good night. Believe me, that's a good thing. Revisit the film for yourself; you'll be pleasantly surprised.



* By coincidence, I somehow chose two films to watch back-to-back that feature Nancy Allen in small roles with The Last Detail and Out of Sight.

Blogorium Review: The American

I've had a hell of a time trying to sell anyone on Anton Corbijn's The American: despite being highly praised by critics, most people I know seem to have one set opinion of the film, an opinion that prevents any interest in entertaining the fact that what The American is being sold as is not at all what The American actually is. Hopefully this review will change your positions; I'd hate to think you'd miss out on such a fine film because of its marketing.

The advertising for The American does it a great disservice: despite what it may appear to be in trailers, the film is not a Jason Bourne-esque techno-thriller replacing Matt Damon with George Clooney. The American is a quiet, contemplative film punctuated with (literally) muffled outbursts of violence, and while it deals in the world of assassinations, this is far from you run-of-the-mill suspense film. It is, however, a film reminiscent of In Bruges, The Hit, and a far better version of Jarmusch's The Limits of Control. I echoes many elements of these films, while dropping or altering the tone of the narrative to fit a quieter mood, something along the lines of an All the President's Men.

Corbijn, along with writer Rowan Joffe, maintain a simple structure. Information is delivered in The American only as needed: Jack (Clooney) is in Sweden with a woman (Irina Björklund) identified in the credits as Ingrid. While out for a walk, he's attacked by two assassins, kills them and Ingrid, then leaves. His handler / boss, Pavel (Johan Leysen) sends the American into hiding in Castelvecchio, a small town in the Abruzzo mountains of Italy, but Jack decides instead to go to Castel del Monte and sets up as Edward.

Jack / Edward is paranoid, and none of the people surrounding him in Castel del Monte give him any reason not to be: not Clara (Violante Placido), a prostitute he becomes attached to, not Father Benedetto (Paolo Bonacelli), who has his own secrets and may have been following Jack. Not even Pavel, who assigns Jack another job, this time working for Mathilde (Thekla Reuten), a woman planning her own hit. Not to mention the Swedish hitman who finds Jack almost immediately after he arrives.

The biggest misleading element of the marketing for The American is in what Jack does in the film: contrary to the suggestion, Jack designs and builds weapons for assassins. He isn't actually a contract killer, although Universal's advertising division does a hell of a job finding every single shot where Clooney is holding a gun to suggest the film is a "hired killer on the run" movie. Quite the contrary: Anton Corbijn (Control) constructs the film in slow beats, held in place by unbroken takes that don't rely on MTV-style editing. Dialogue is sparse, and often the audience is only given half of the information - we're relied on to fill in the blanks ourselves.

Clooney, as the only American in the film, delivers a fine, subdued performance, one that doesn't trade on his wit or charm as many would expect. The American goes even beyond Michael Clayton in allowing Clooney to be serious without histrionics: we know nothing more about Jack than what is observable through his behavior, his patterns, his interactions. Clooney's insular performance (down to the way he physically carries himself, often buried within the pockets of his coat) as atypical of what many people are expecting of him - and what almost everyone hesitant to see The American expressed to me - and his barely controlled paranoia never overwhelms the character.

The film itself is only loosely a comment on Americans overseas: aside from a few brief references in songs or dialogue to his status as an outsider, no greater critique of American culture is present in the film, any more so than that of espionage among Europeans. Along with small juxtapositions of Clooney's lone American in Italy, Corbijn throws in a clever visual joke: while Jack is waiting in a diner, Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West is playing, the only one of the Italian director's "Spaghetti Westerns" to be filmed in America. One senses a slight nod to Papillon as well, due to a recurring motif in the film: Jack / Edward's nickname "Mr. Butterfly," tied both to the tattoo on his neck, a brief shot of a nature guide he reads while sleeping, and a short but pertinent conversation near the river he returns to throughout the film.

If nothing else, I hope this review helps clarify The American for pessimistic viewers: you're being sold a bill of goods that doesn't match the product, and in almost every way undersells what you would actually see, were you to watch the film. Like yesterday's review of The Town, I can't say that the story will blow your mind - although there are no major "twists" in the film, another element it shares with In Bruges, The Hit, and The Limits of Control - but the familiar narrative is important more in the telling than what's being told. Do yourself a favor and look past the misgivings; I suspect you won't regret it.

Blogorium Review: Fantastic Mr. Fox

It was silly of me to sit out Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox when it came out. I don't remember why I wasn't terribly interested in the movie. It has three things I enjoy very much: 1) Roald Dahl, 2) George Clooney, and 3) Stop Motion Animation. As I also enjoy (to varying degrees) the films of Wes Anderson to this point, there was really no reason not to see it, but somehow I chose not to.

The good news is that I rectified this last night, and I'm happy to say that this year's Best Animated Film category was truly well contested (admittedly, I have yet to see The Secret of Kells, but I'll get there soon enough). I don't mean to beat up on Coraline* - which I feel like I do every single time I mention the film - but as stop motion goes, I really did enjoy Fantastic Mr. Fox more in just about every respect. There's something about watching the hairs move around on Mr. Fox and every other animal that reminds you just how much work went into the film.

Mr. Fox (George Clooney) and Mrs. Fox (Meryl Streep) are chicken thieves, until one night when, in a trap, she reveals that she's pregnant. Mr. Fox promises to give up stealing and live a crime-free life as a newspaper columnist. 12 fox years later (there is a fox to human time conversion handled in title cards) Mr. and Mrs. Fox are living a life of quiet domesticity with their angsty son Ash (Jason Schwartzman) and visiting Nephew Kristofferson Silverfox (Eric Anderson). Mr. Fox has aspirations, and moves his family from a hole in the ground to a new tree he can't really afford, in part because of its proximity to the farms of Boggis (Robin Hurlstone), Bunce (Hugo Guinness), and Bean (Michael Gambon), three rather unpleasant farmers who specialize in chicken, geese, and cider respectively.

With his new partner in crime, Kylie (Wallace Wolodarsky) - and against the wishes of his attorney, Badger (Bill Murray) - Mr. Fox resumes his life of crime, tempting fate by stealing from the meanest farmers around. All goes smoothly at first, but when the vindictive Bean declares war on Fox, all of the animals nearby are forced underground and face starvation and attacks from Rat (Willem Dafoe). Unless, of course, the newly tail-less Mr. Fox (Bean shoots it off) can come up with a scheme to win the day...

I'm going to focus on two things I really enjoyed about the film in order not to ramble - as the Cap'n tends to do. What's very impressive is that - despite the fact that Anderson was mostly "hands off" during the production, according to most reports - the film clearly fits into his stylistic approach. You can pause the film at almost any point and say, "Yes, this is a Wes Anderson film"; from the title cards to the production design to the use of music, but also particularly the pace of the story, Fantastic Mr. Fox occupies the same universe as Rushmore or The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, just with stop motion animals.

That being said, the other element that I found really astonishing is how, despite the fact that it clearly could fall into "auteur" category, Fantastic Mr. Fox (it's so hard not to put a "The" at the beginning, but that's not the title!) is a film you can show to children without concern. In a world where Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel is raking in the big bucks (I assume), it's a relief to see a movie like Fantastic Mr. Fox where the Cap'n enjoys the film from beginning to end but would not hesitate to show it to a youngster. Aside from (spoiler) the death of Rat, there's not much there to find objectionable. In fact, there's a rather clever conceit of removing profanity and simply saying the word "cuss"; it's a clear enough referent for adults what the word would be, but kids aren't going to pick up any new words you'd have to explain to their teachers later.

The pace of the film - which is only around 80 minutes without credits - still manages to feel leisurely but never dull. The cast are all having a great time and despite the fact that they come in clusters of similarly shaped animals, there's never a problem telling which character is which. Clooney, in particular, seems to be having a ball in what one could call "Fox's Eleven". Even Boggis, Bunce, and Bean have distinctive qualities that carry you through the fact that two of them barely say a thing. I was both impressed and very entertained by Fantastic Mr. Fox, and look forward to watching it again, which is kind of strange; typically, while I enjoy Wes Anderson films, I will revisit them periodically but never in any kind of hurry. I highly recommend you check Fantastic Mr. Fox out, as it's every bit as deserving of its nomination as Up and Coraline (I'll get back to you on The Secret of Kells and The Princess and the Frog).



* Allow me to reiterate that I really did enjoy Coraline, and feel in some part that my ambivalence towards the story has everything to do with me and nothing to do with the film itself. I've read Neil Gaiman's book three or four times, and because I know it backwards and forwards, the film didn't really surprise me in any way. That's totally on me and not at all a reflection of the exemplary work Henry Selick did with his adaptation.

Coen Brothers Midterm - Day Three: Social Commentary

3. The Coen films are sometimes considered "ahistorical" or out of touch with contemporary social reality, more interested in providing "entertainment" rather than serious commentary on political and social problems. On closer investigation, however, a case can be made that there is social commentary in their films, but presented in a way that is inconspicuous, hidden among the layers of detail in their filmic worlds. Expand on this idea.

While it is true that of the Coen brothers fourteen films (to date), nine of them are not contemporaneous with the year they were shot. In fact, even ones that can easily be mistaken – like Fargo and The Big Lebowski – are actually “period” films. This does not mean, however, that they reflect an “ahistorical” perspective. In fact, it could be argued that Blood Simple and Raising Arizona (two of the five non-“period” films which also include Intolerable Cruelty, The Ladykillers, and Burn After Reading) have less overt social commentary than does O Brother, Where Art Thou?.

O Brother, Where Art Thou? could easily be excused as providing escapist “entertainment” over serious social commentary; the film is essentially an “old timey” musical, and on the surface appears to be Homer’s The Odyssey filtered through a nostalgic look at a bygone era of chain gangs, bank robbers, and slapstick violence. What one misses, in part because Joel and Ethan Coen are adept at hiding their messages, is a continued fascination and cynicism for politicians and religious figures, coupled with the dueling power of mysticism and technological advancement in the early stages of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.

Although it is never clearly stated why he felt the need to do so, Ulysses Everett McGill (George Clooney) is not a common criminal, but instead a man illegally practicing law during the Great Depression. His gift of gab is matched only by the oratory trickery of Big Dan Teague (John Goodman), who tricks Everett and Delmar (Tim Blake Nelson) out of their money. Like Goodman’s Charlie Meadows in Barton Fink, Big Dan is a violent psychopath who presents himself as a salesman, a voice for the common man. But instead of selling insurance, the Coen’s present Teague as a Bible Salesman, peddling hope to the hopeless. Alternately, he robs the hopeful – in this case Delmar and Everett – of their funds and possibly of Pete (John Turturro), who they believe to be a literal “horny toad.” That this supposedly religious paragon is also a member of the Ku Klux Klan is an indicator of the level of trust Joel and Ethan have in religion as “non-practicing Jews.”

If Big Dan Teague is corruption in disguise, Pappy O’Daniel (Charles Durning) is the crooked politician personified. Not only are his opponent, Homer Stokes (Wayne Duvall)’s claims of “nepotism” and “crony-ism” true, but every appearance of Pappy onscreen is involves scheming to win the Governor’s election by hook or by crook, even if it means stealing away Stokes’ campaign manager. Like David Huddleston’s “Big” Lebowski, the Coen’s display with Pappy O’Daniel a fondness for overweight, corrupt officials who speak out of both sides of their mouths without fear of the consequences. When Stokes is revealed to be the leader of the local Klan – a jab at so-called “reform” candidates – Pappy is quick to capitalize on the popularity of the Soggy Bottom Boys. The Coens cement the irony of political opportunism when Pappy offers Peter, Delmar, Tommy, and Everett positions in his cabinet, holding the camera on Delmar’s face, who clearly does not understand the concept of “power behind the throne, so to speak.”

At the same time, the brothers Coen juxtapose the mystical elements of The Odyssey with a light-hearted take on the “social realism” John Lloyd Sullivan is hoping to capture in Preston Sturges Sullivan’s Travels. His proposed film-within-a-film, O Brother, Where Art Thou? was co-opted by the Coen brothers and could be read as their take on the film Sullivan might have ended up with. While the looming poverty is always in the background of O Brother, so too is an optimism for the future. The cavalier attitude of George “Babyface” Nelson, like that of the openly corrupt local politicians, is only a precursor of true advancement. Everett’s faith that flooding the valley to create hydroelectric energy – part of FDR’s Tennessee Valley Authority – stands in stark contrast to Pete and Delmar’s quick fix baptisms and the blind prophet’s visions. However, the two invariably collide at the end of the film when progress meets prophecy: Everett, explaining that their apparent salvation from death was practical and not spiritual is nevertheless surprised to see a “cow on roof of a cotton house,” as the blind seer predicted. Despite their cynicism for spiritual figures and politicians, the Coen brothers nevertheless do not dismiss both out of hat in their social commentary.

Coen Brothers Midterm - Day One: Doppelgangers

Greetings, Blogorium readers. As the Cap'n decides exactly how he wants to move forward with life, film, and the blogorium in general, I'm going to share my freshly written answers for a midterm exam in the Coen Brothers class. Since the Blogorium's been lacking in "Critical Essays" for a while, I figure this is apropos.

6. The contemporary figure of the doppelganger (double, alter-ego, shadow self) derives from both literary and cinematic models. Give brief examples of previous models, then compare them with the various manifestations of the doppelganger in the Coens' films. What particular meaning do the Coens attach to these figures?

The Coen brothers have a tendency to use the idea of doubling, or the doppelganger, in subversive ways. Even when they create a set of doubles who must clash – as is the case in Raising Arizona – the doppelganger must always deviate from the classic definition. While steeped in literary and theoretical history, the impish Joel and Ethan Coen cannot resist twisting our expectations of recognizable psychological tropes.

In his essay “The Uncanny”, Sigmund Freud describes the doppelganger as “originally an insurance against destruction of the ego,” in the primitive mind, but manifests itself in the developed ego as “the ghastly harbinger of death” (387). The doppelganger is littered throughout film history, appearing in its most explicit – and possibly literal – form in the expressionistic classic The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, where Cesare the somnambulist carries out the murderous wishes of the title character after dark. Fritz Lang uses a metaphoric representation of the doppelganger in M, where mirrors and reflections stand in for a direct double of Peter Lorre. When the child murderer’s madness takes over, a reflection – or shadow – is never far behind, the manifestation of his “dark self.”

The doppelganger also appears in “the language of dreams, which it is fond of representing castration by a doubling or multiplication of the genital symbol” (387). It should come as no surprise then that in Raising Arizona, H.I. McDunnough’s doppelganger, the apocalyptic rider Leonard Smalls, first appears in a dream. Smalls is the hyper-masculine expression of manhood that H.I. lacks, as a father and husband. His proclivity for destruction of “little things” expresses Thanatos, the death drive that H.I. lacks (all H.I.M’s guns are unloaded), and he wields dual shotguns, a doubling of the phallic image. Smalls is anything but. H.I. must, in order to prove his manhood, destroy his doppelganger – with literally explosive force – and assert himself as potent.

A more interesting form of “doubling” – a word that frequently appears instead of doppelganger in “The Uncanny” – occurs in The Big Lebowski. To be sure, there are many instances of characters doubling for each other: the two Jeffrey Lebowski’s, the Dude, Walter, and Donny and the Nihilists, amateur detectives The Dude and Da Fino, and the polar opposite Lebowski women (Bunny and Maude). However, the most interesting case of doppelganger comes from two characters that never actually meet.

Maude Lebowski (Julianne Moore) and Jackie Treehorn (Ben Gazzara) form a curious set of doppelgangers in The Big Lebowski. Both make their trade in the objectification of sexuality: Jackie is a purveyor of “smut”, and Maude’s art is described as “vaginal”. Treehorn and Lebowski both send goons to The Dude’s apartment, appropriately mixed in ethnic variety.

Were it not for Treehorn, The Dude’s relationship with the “other” Jeffrey Lebowski would not be possible; without Maude, he would be a patsy for a non-existent kidnapping scheme. The doubles each invite The Dude to their homes under false pretenses, and his visits invariably begin with nudity and end with violence. It should hardly be considered a coincidence that the doppelganger’s worlds collapse when The Dude is drugged; his Busby-Berkley influenced dream sequence is at once a parody of Treehorn’s porn films and wish fulfillment involving Maude.

Without these dueling alter-egos driving The Dude’s search for a rug that “really ties the room together,” The Big Lebowski would have no catalyst for its story – such as it is.

Pain in the Wallet

I know you spent most of your hard earned pennies on New Moon last Friday, kiddos, but tomorrow is a kinda/sorta ridiculous day for cinematically inclined nutzoid geeks. Allow me to elaborate:

We'll start with movies coming out on Digital Versatility Disc and Blu-Ray, then move to BD exclusives....

The African Queen - Tuesday marks the first time The African Queen has ever been available on DVD in the U.S. If you've never seen it, do yourself a favor and pick this up, sight unseen. Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn, a rickety old steamboat, and John Huston directing a C.S. Forester adaptation. Just watch it, then read Hepburn's book about going to the jungle to film The African Queen and nearly losing her mind. Great stuff.

Bigger Than Life - Criterion releases another previously unavailable product of the 1950s, this one starring James Mason in a film about the dangers of medication. Also starring Walter Matthau and directed by Nicholas Ray (Rebel Without a Cause, Johnny Guitar, King of Kings), and like The African Queen, on DVD and BD.

The Fantastic Mr. Fox - I've yet to hear anyone breathe an unkind word in the direction of Wes Anderson's newest, and despite my hesitation to see it in theatres, I think I might be sold on giving it a go.

Mad Men: Season Three - the Cap'n can't honestly say he's watched the show, but I've heard great things from those who have, and if I ever get around to it, seasons one and two are in the "to watch" pile.

The Men Who Stare at Goats - You've read my review, now see the film for yourself. I do not believe you'll regret it one bit.

Now, moving on to some Blu-Ray only releases:

Days of Heaven - have you seen the Criterion Collection DVD? Remember how good that looked? Let's try to imagine Days of Heaven in 1080p, shall we? (If it helps, put in the Blu-Ray of the Malick-fied cut of The New World and let that soak in...)

Yojimbo / Sanjuro - While Criterion is putting the finishing touches on Seven Samurai, they're releasing Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune's rogue samurai films. If you consider yourself a fan of the Eastwood / Leone Spaghetti Westerns, there's no reason you shouldn't see where A Fistful of Dollars came from.

Toy Story / Toy Story 2 - Look, I already have A Bug's Life, Monsters Inc., Ratatouille, Wall-E, and Up on Blu-Ray (sorry, no Cars, and The Incredibles somehow hasn't made the leap yet). I even have the Pixar Short films BD, so there's really no question as to how on-board I am with Toy Story and Toy Story 2. As much as I love the first film, the second one really does it for me in some way, so I'm looking forward to watching it again.


Oh, and I guess The Blind Side and Brothers are coming out tomorrow, if that's your bag. I shan't leave them out in the off-chance you were waiting to hear officially. And New Moon, if for some reason you forgot about the midnight sales, or (worse) you were so busy putting together your, uh, sparkly vampire guy costume that you got there too late.

Yeah, I bet he has a name. And I dare you to be the one who posts it in a comment.

Blogorium Review: Up in the Air

Watching Up in the Air, much like the recently viewed Facing Ali, makes me wish I could travel back in time to last week and amend the Year End List a bit. I'd add those, as I suspect that when I do see The Road and Big Fan I'll have two more. Up in the Air isn't quite the movie I was expecting, but to be fair I wasn't quite sure what to expect.

I'd read the Walter Kirn novel a few years ago, when it passed through Edward McKay's, but I didn't remember the book very well. Despite all the movie watching and writing, I do read quite a bit, though most of it wouldn't ever end up in the blogorium. But I digress.

Back to the movie at hand: if you don't know anything about Up in the Air, it's the story of Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) who is paid to fly around the country and fire people so that their company won't have to. He's also periodically a motivational speaker, specifically with a piece called "What's in your backpack?" The movie, directed by Jason Reitman, starts comedy. This is appropriate, because Up in the Air is initially going to remind you of Reitman's first film, Thank You For Smoking. The narration is similar, the disdain for humanity is similar, and it plays the funny for quite a while.

Bingham lives in hotel rooms and in airports. It's where he's comfortable, and his nomadic lifestyle keeps him from having to form long term relationships, even with his family. His actual apartment is embarassingly spartan, down to what I believe is a jar full of Pop Tarts above the fridge and abandoned food containers littering his counter. The life works for Bingham, and he even meets a fellow traveler, Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga), who meets... shall we say, other needs. In between this, he spends his time coaxing people into accepting their status as unemployed by saying things like "Anyone who ever did anything great sat where you're sitting".

One of the first people we see Bingham fire is Zach Galifianakis, the first of several cameos or small roles in the film, which also includes J.K. Simmons, Sam Elliot, Jason Bateman, Heavenly Creature's Melanie Lynskey, and Danny McBride (the latter two play Bingham's youngest sister and brother-in-law to be). We don't see a lot of these folks, but each brings something interesting to the story, which gets a little more complicated after a breezy introduction.

See, Bingham's job is in jeopardy because the company's new whiz kid, Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick) developed a simpler system of firing people via video conferencing. Bingham's convinced it won't actually work, and when he learns Natalie doesn't know how to fire anyone, his boss (Bateman) makes him take her out on the road. This could easily be an excuse for more comedic hijinks, and for a little while there's humor to be mined from the mismatch, particularly a non-PC explanation of which ethnic groups are best to get in line behind.

Then, perhaps predictably (or at least as I was expecting), Reitman gets a little sentimental on us. Movies like this are mean to challenge people like Ryan Bingham's beliefs, so Natalie shakes his resolve not to make a serious connection with Alex, and everyone bonds a bit. Ryan decides to go to his sister's wedding with a Plus 1, and even gets the chance to talk Jim (McBride) out of his cold feet. You can see the movie we're heading towards; life lessons are being learned, conventions are being challenged. Yikes, I thought, this is Juno territory... the other side of Reitman territory, the one I don't like so much.

But then Up in the Air does something else, something that a lot of similar movies wouldn't do, something that won me over. I'm not going to spoil anything for you, but it's nice to see a movie that presents a character with easy outs, but doesn't necessarily make them ones that can or should actually happen. Maybe that big life change takes more work than an hour and forty nine minutes allows for. Maybe it does get messy instead of "happily ever after", and while the ending may not satisfy everybody, it's certainly true for the characters. And I appreciated that.

George Clooney is again excellent, and I found his character arc to be similar to Lyn Cassidy's in The Men Who Stare at Goats, but more resonant. Both films presented themselves in a one dimensional way and then veer off in unexpected third acts. Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick are also great as foils for Clooney, and Danny McBride gets the rare opportunity to play it totally straight, without being a jokester or an asshole, and does so very well. I always enjoy seeing Melanie Lynskey in films, and J.K. Simmons makes a lot out of a very short scene. I don't have anything bad to say about Jason Bateman, who again is playing the straight man role - as in Extract - or Galifianakis, who's in and out so quickly that you might not realize it. I'm not going to spoil how or why Sam Elliot plays into the story.

Jason Reitman, who directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Sheldon Turner, has a knack for great shot composition and organic storytelling, even when working with something that could so easily be a "feel good" film. He makes the best out of the cities Ryan travels through, mostly middle-America, and the aerial photography is at times hypnotic. All is forgiven for Juno, Mr. Reitman. I'll chalk that up to the writer and leave it at that. Up in the Air sits comfortably with my very favorite films of 2009, and because many of you might not check it out, I advocate seeing it on the big screen.

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Maybe tomorrow I'll give a short write up of Facing Ali, an excellent documentary about Muhammad Ali's life from the perspective of the men who fought him. Or I might take a second to talk about a new development involving Warner Brothers and Netflix that continues last night's question about the impact of "on demand" rentals, but this time relating to dvd sales. We'll see when I get there.

2009 Recap: The Cap'n Presents His Favorite Films of the Year!

And here we are, finally to it! I'll keep the intro short, cut to the chase, and so on. As with before, if there's a review, I'll link to it so you can read that.

Before I begin, I forgot to mention two movies which I neither hated nor considered to be "Honorable Mentions": The Invention of Lying and Watchmen. Neither of them really did anything for me, but to be honest I didn't care enough about them to knock them down a peg two days ago. So there you have it.

Without exception, you should see all 14 of these movies as soon as possible.

In no particular order, and absolutely not numbered, My Favorite Films of 2009:

Moon - I've been counting down the days until I can watch Moon again on Blu-Ray. Only a few weeks left, and it can't come soon enough. Duncan Jones, Sam Rockwell, and Kevin Spacey did something very special with this film, one that ought to owe heavily from Silent Running and 2001, but manages to live and breathe all its own. The theatre we saw Moon in had horrible sound, and frequently cut out during important conversations, but I still think the world of this movie, the first of two great science fiction films on this list.

Inglourious Basterds - Somebody's going to have to explain to me why you didn't like this movie. There's so much animosity out there for Inglourious Basterds, and if it's just because Quentin Tarantino promised a "men on a mission" movie and then gave you a film with greater scope and considerably more depth, then boo hoo. If Christoph Waltz isn't nominated for Best Supporting Actor come Oscar time, I'll be shocked. Mélanie Laurent should also be considered, although I fear she won't in favor of better known Americans.

No part of this film was boring to me. No beat went too long, no flourish was unnecessary. Quentin Tarantino took all of his favorite film fetishes and put them to service a narrative that sweeps over you and I, for one, was enthralled from the opening moments. Each game of "cat and mouse", where it's clear that nothing good can come from what's happening on screen, had my rapt attention. There's no way this movie is two and-a-half hours. I don't believe it.

On a total side note: if there's nothing else you watch Inglourious Basterds for, see it for Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt)'s stunningly awful Italian accent. It's hilarious.

The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans - I completely and totally understand why critics are crazy for this movie. The trailers sell you a film that doesn't exist; a complete trainwreck from beginning to end, capped off by Nicolas Cage's batshit Mega Acting. And yes, those are all scenes in The Bad Lieutenant: Unfortunately Long Subtitle That's Totally Appropriate, but Werner Herzog's mad genius constructs a bafflingly wonderful film out of such disparate elements. What you see SHOULD NOT work, but I'll be damned, it does.

Because it's not easy to see, I'll have to recommend you buy or rent it when it arrives on dvd. You'll hear no derision from the Cap'n for doing so.

The Men Who Stare at Goats - Not at all what I was expecting. That's the long and the short of my reaction to Grant Heslov's The Men Who Stare at Goats. You go in expecting something goofy that maybe goes nowhere, but come out on the other side quite pleased at the film. Ewan McGregor is a wonderful comic foil for George Clooney, who in turn gets to pal around with Jeff Bridges' "The Dude" and Kevin Spacey. The secret to this movie, one I continually forget to mention, is that Jedi powers are attainable only with a mustache. Watch The Men Who Stare at Goats and disagree.

Up - If the first fifteen minutes, which set up the story of Carl and Ellie Fredrickson, doesn't tug at your heartstrings, I can't help you. You might even be more of a heartless robot than the Cap'n is, because Up had me from minute one. To its credit, the film quickly turns from tearjerker to adventure and whisks you along for the ride. I have the distinct impression that Coraline will probably take the Best Animated Film award from Up because it's not Pixar, but I cannot agree with that decision. Between Up, Wall-E, and Ratatouille, Pixar is on such a roll that I just don't think that Coraline, as good as it is, is the better film.

Drag Me to Hell - Sam Raimi made me eat crow, and I've never been happier to do it. I hate, HATE Ghost House movies like The Grudge and Boogeyman, and I loathe PG13 horror films that rely on cheap shocks in lieu of good, lasting chills. It turns out that so does Sam Raimi, because he took Ghost House and PG13 horror back to school to show us how it's done. Drag Me to Hell is funny, it's scary, it's cleverly manipulative in scares, and Alison Lohman brings a sense of sympathy that Bruce Campbell could not have (no slight on Bruce, but at this point we revel in Raimi torturing him). The running gags involving horrible liquids going into Lohman's mouth, or the gypsy woman ripping her hair out, to the twisted seance or the anvil!

Folks, you just don't know what you missed by skipping this. I nearly skipped it, and the Cap'n is sure glad he didn't. This is the kind of horror that gets an audience behind it, one that doles out the guffaws and the screams in equal measure.

Thirst - It wasn't until I watched Lady Vengeance several weeks later that Chan-wook Park's Thirst really made sense. I thought the jump from Oldboy to Thirst was a bit odd, even if I really enjoyed Thirst, but all of the black comedy that Park's vampire film carries is evident in Lady Vengeance: the music choices, the bizarre dream sequences, the nochalant approach to violence. I realize that people are pretty "vampired" out right now, but just as seriously as I advocated Let the Right One In, so too must I insist you watch Thirst. It's funnier, for what that's worth.

Anvil: The Story of Anvil - Both hilarious and pathetic. Hilarious, because Anvil has the worst luck in the history of metal bands: This is Spinal Tap couldn't make up half of the shitty things that Anvil have to put up with while on tour. Pathetic, because Lipps and Robb Reiner really want the band to work out. They never got there, when so many others did, and the sense of hope tainted by disappointment really moves Anvil: The Story of Anvil from Behind the Music to something greater.

District 9 - I'm still in awe of how well put together the Johannesburg of District 9 is. Of how the film is not afraid to let characters behave selfishly and betray others for their own benefit. I'm intrigued at the ways the story can continue, and how well Neill Blomkamp toys with your expectations about the "found footage", or the documentary that frames the entire narrative. Like Moon, District 9 is science fiction that's willing to be more than silly "kid's" stuff, one where the violence is disturbing rather than merely gratuitous, and that invites you to go back and follow the details from opening to closing. Bravo.

The Hangover - The sense of impending doom from Bradley Cooper's "we fucked up." at the opening promises you a dangerous experience, and with the three man squad of Cooper, Helms, and Galifianakis, I'm ready to travel down that road again with them any time. There's no real redeeming message about film here, just a ride of pure fun with some true howlers of plot twists.

Observe and Report - After my review, which I feel people took as negative, I stepped back to think about Observe and Report. Normally, something I feel so conflicted about would make it to the "Honorable Mentions" category, but for Observe and Report to affect me the way it did, there's something greater at work in the mind of Jody Hill. I'll be revisiting this film again soon...

Tyson - Mike Tyson, in this documentary, is more than simply the beating machine or the washed up tabloid punchline; he is, at times, an awkward philosopher of his own life. There are very few things he won't talk about, and the portrait he paints is seldom flattering or self serving. Nevertheless, Tyson is the kind of documentary you put on and can't pull your eyes away for one moment, even if you know the "greatest hits".

Zombieland - Like The Hangover, Zombieland makes no pretenses about being "high art". It is a film of pure, unadulterated fun, a zombie film that realizes the survivors of any apocalypse are likely to be just as bent and out of shape as their undead counterparts. Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg are a team that could carry another Zombieland or a dozen other kinds of movies. I love the way Zombieland's opening credits spoof Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead titles, while all the time reminding you that this is a horror-comedy. Sure, it may lack much in the way of deep social commentary, but dammit: Zombieland is fun!

and a special "Finally!" exception for Trick R Treat, my new favorite Halloween movie! - I realize that Trick R Treat was made in 2007, and that it's been traveling around as a "Roadshow" attraction since then, but when the Blu Ray finally arrived in time for Halloween, I understood what the hoopla was about. It is a criminal shame to withhold this film from audiences, when Michael Dougherty so clearly gets and loves what's scary about Halloween and horror films. Plus, it's a great anthology film, something we get so few of any more. I really hope that the success of the dvd and Blu Ray sales (which sold out widely on the day of release) push Warner Brothers to green light another Trick R Treat anthology, but at the very least I now have one movie that's guaranteed for every Horror Fest from here on out.


I wish I'd seen's for 2009: Big Fan, The Road, Up in the Air, The Hurt Locker, A Serious Man, Where the Wild Things Are, Antichrist, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, Best Worst Movie, and The Informant!