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...

A Very Auteurial Meme for Your Amusement.

 So there's this "movie director" meme thingy out there, making the rounds on social network sites (particularly ones with "like" buttons). The rules are actually pretty simple: someone gives you a director, and you list three movies by them: one you like, one you love, and one you hate. You can simply list the films, or provide and explanation. So far, the people I'm aware that do it have a mix of both, usually because film fans that are willing to subject a director's body of work to a like/love/hate spectrum often feel the need to clarify their choices. I know I did when trying to explain that there isn't really a Woody Allen film I hate*.

  I thought it might be fun to continue this in a non-meme format, so I asked the person who pulled the Cap'n into this to provide me with a few more directors. The Cap'n will also throw in a few, just in case nobody thinks of them. It's a fun and harmless meme, and this time I'm not going to ask anybody to do their own. You're welcome to simply enjoy and carry on doing whatever it is you do when you aren't at the Blogorium.

 We'll begin with an easy example: Robert Wise

 A Movie I Like: West Side Story.
 A Movie I Love: The Haunting (although The Day the Earth Stood Still is a close second).
 A Movie I Hate: Star Trek - The Motion Picture. The part of the title that distinguishes the film from the show is also totally inaccurate.


 Makes sense, right? Let's continue with one of the most difficult possible, a challenge I jokingly posed to Doctor Tom: Michael Bay

 A Movie I Like: Heh, in the interest of fairness, not hating The Island counts a "like," right? I also didn't hate Bad Boys 2 (but was kinda bored), so that counts, right?
 A Movie I Love: Okay, love might be overstating the case, but I can watch The Rock pretty much any time, which is more than I can say about any of Bay's other films. I do really like it, and not just as a guilty pleasure.
 A Movie I Hate: Armageddon.

Moving right along, let's try Charles Chaplin.

 A Movie I Like: I like, but don't love, A King in New York. It's fine until the very end, for similar reasons that keep me from loving The Great Dictator. I really like Monsieur Verdoux.
 A Movie I Love: Modern Times.
 A Movie I Hate: A Countess from Hong Kong.


Spike Lee

 A Movie I Like: Bamboozled, or Summer of Sam.
 A Movie I Love: Do the Right Thing.
 A Movie I Hate: I'm not a fan of Girl 6.


Werner Herzog

 A Movie I Like: Little Dieter Needs to Fly.
 A Movie I Love: Aguirre: The Wrath of God.
 A Movie I Hate: Even Dwarves Started Small. Sorry.


Terry Gilliam

 A Movie I Like: The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus or Jabbewocky.
 A Movie I Love: Tough, but let's go with the outside choice - Time Bandits.
 A Movie I Hate: Nothing about The Brothers Grimm works. Nothing. Tideland is very difficult to watch, but even then I wasn't bored.


John Carpenter

 A Movie I Like: Prince of Darkness.
 A Movie I Love: Geez... The Thing. Possibly sets the bar for remakes.
 A Movie I Hate: Hands down, Ghosts of Mars, but because that's universally hated, here's a curveball - The Fog.


Mike Nichols


 A Movie I Like: Closer.
 A Movie I Love: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
 A Movie I Hate: I really dislike What Planet Are You From?

Jim Jarmusch
 A Movie I Like: Permanent Vacation.
 A Movie I Love: Ghost Dog - The Way of the Samurai.
 A Movie I Hate: The Limits of Control.

George A. Romero
 A Movie I Like: Martin.
 A Movie I Love: Night of the Living Dead.
 A Movie I Hate: The Dark Half.

Richard Linklater
 A Movie I Like: A Scanner Darkly.
 A Movie I Love: I know you're expecting Dazed, but Before Sunset.
 A Movie I Hate: Waking Life, for the same reasons I hate Slacker.


 There's not a lot of foreign representation on here, I realize, but I already used up Pier Paolo Pasolini, Luis Buñuel, and gave others Akira Kurosawa, Michel Gondry, and Takeshi Miike elsewhere. I thought about Jean-Luc Godard, Ingmar Bergman, and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, but I'll leave space open to expand later. Until then...

* There are Woody Allen films I don't like, but it takes a lot for me to hate something. I also try to skip out on the universally panned Allen films, so I've never seen The Curse of the Jade Scorpion or Small Time Crooks.

Get those wallets ready, fanatics!

I seem to come back to this every few months, but in the waning days of the DVD market, the Cap'n finally has the opportunity to show you just how tricky it is for a smaller distributor like Criterion to keep movies, let alone get the ones you really want them to carry*. For the first time that I can remember, Criterion sent out an email letting viewers know exactly which movies would be added to the dreaded "Out of Print" list.

The list is as follows:

Alphaville (Jean-Luc Godard)
Carlos Saura’s Flamenco Trilogy (Eclipse Series 6)
Le corbeau (The Raven - Henri-Georges Clouzot)
Coup de torchon (Bertrand Tavernier)
Diary of a Country Priest (Robert Bresson)
The Fallen Idol (Carol Reed)
Forbidden Games (René Clément)
Gervaise (René Clément)
Grand Illusion (Jean Renoir)
Le jour se lève (Marcel Carné)
Last Holiday (Henry Cass)
Mayerling (Anatole Litvak)
The Orphic Trilogy (Jean Cocteau)
Peeping Tom (Michael Powell)
Pierrot le fou (Jean-Luc Godard)
Port of Shadows (Marcel Carné)
Quai des Orfèvres(Henri-Georges Clouzot)
The Small Back Room (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)
The Tales of Hoffmann (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)
Trafic (Jacques Tati)
Le trou (Jacques Becker)
Variety Lights (Federico Fellini and Alberto Lattuada)
The White Sheik (Federico Fellini)

Criterion is losing the rights to these films soon, and they'll revert to Lionsgate, who will release them in their own way as they see fit. I wouldn't be surprised to see several films by the same director released in "no extras" boxed sets, which Lionsgate has done recently with other "art" films. Or they might get Blu-Ray releases. It's hard to say, because as DVD winds down, studios are groping for whatever they can get in order to package quickly and get into stores.

As they mention in the email, Jean Renoir's Grand Illusion has another important distinction for any serious Criterion collector: in addition to being a terrific film, it bears the Spine Number 1. Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai is still Spine Number 2 (and Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes 3), but soon it's going to be tricky to begin your collection. I suspect, like many low numbered items, that Grand Illusion will become the expensive "collector's item" out of this batch, but it's a hefty list of movies to pick up quickly, if that's your steez.

In the mean time, if you were still wondering why your favorite random movie wasn't getting the full-on Spine Number treatment, they have their hands full hanging on to the films they have. Taxi Driver probably isn't going to be the kind of movie they can get ahold of. In fact, the HD release of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas has none of the Criterion supplements; just the barebones Universal dvd "spotlight on location" and some deleted scenes. But, if I may interject, 2010 is the 25th anniversary of Terry Gilliam's Brazil, so maybe Universal and Criterion could cut some kind of Blu-Ray deal. Maybe?

---

Finally, I found at least half of this video - which posits the question "what if famous directors filmed the Super Bowl?" - amusing. The David Lynch joke has been done to death, but the video is totally worth it for the one-two punch of Jean-Luc Godard and Werner Herzog at the end.



If only they'd thrown in some footage from Natural Born Football Any Given Sunday and pretended it was Oliver Stone's "Super Bowl" footage.


* Yes, this goes back to the long-standing "Troll 2: The Criterion Collection" joke, among others, like Cannibal! The Musical.

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!

Blogorium Review: The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

I know. I know. You aren't going to believe me. I wouldn't believe me either, because I stubbornly refused to believe the positive reviews of The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. When it made Roger Ebert's Top Ten Movies of 2009, I still thought there had to be an angle. Surely a movie with such an awe-inspiring sense of "BAD MOVIE NIGHT CANDIDATE" couldn't really be worth paying good money for.

(and yes, the on-screen title is actually THE Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans)

Even the descriptions of scenes, of Cage's verbal tics, or of adopting this bizarre Edward G. Robinson impersonation (which seems to disappear and reappear from scene to scene) had me wondering what kind of epic disaster this film was.

So Adam and I went to see Werner Herzog and Nicolas Cage ham it up. Because that's what you have to expect from watching this:



*WARNING* I say in all fairness that it may be impossible to adequately explain away what you just saw, or to describe The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans in any way that doesn't sound like the stupidest thing you've ever heard of, but I'm going to try.

Folks, let me tell you: the trailer does not misrepresent a single moment in the film. Everything you see in that ad happens, and much stranger. Cage alternates between bizarre and unhinged. There is a lucky crack pipe. There are iguanas (oh, and I'll get to that in a second). And yet it is wildly misleading.

I should never doubt Werner Herzog, especially when his comedy is being presented as a "gritty drama" by whoever markets this film. The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans is by intention a comedy from beginning to end, and anyone who thinks they're going to come in and laugh AT this movie is in for a pretty big shock. It's too weird to laugh AT. You can laugh WITH the film, since that's the design of the movie, but the moments in the trailer that look like "so bad it's good" actually fit into a much stranger narrative.

In the interest of keeping this short, I'm going to list a few things you haven't seen - many of which will convince you I'm selling you a false bill of goods - but that set the tone of this film:

- On two occasions during the film, Herzog deliberately switches to extreme close-ups shot with a hand held digital camera. The first is an alligator hanging out by the side of the road. The second is a prolonged sequence with the iguanas seen in the trailer, made all the funnier by the curious look on Cage's face as he periodically watches them.

- I swear to you that this isn't as stupid as it sounds: the soul IS dancing. Break dancing, to be specific. What you're missing is the context of what character Cage is referring to and everything leading up to this moment. I dare not say more.

- Because this is mostly being advertised as Nicolas Cage (with Eva Mendes), you should know there's some fine supporting work being done by Jennifer Coolidge, Brad Dourif, Tom Bowers, Shawn Hatosy, Farizua Balk, Irma P. Hall, Val Kilmer, and yes, Alvin "Xzibit" Joiner.

As to the "remake" aspect of the film, it's better that you don't even think about it. Put Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant out of your mind going into this. Don't let the wieldy title dissuade you either; it's surprisingly appropriate, considering how important New Orleans is to the story.

Cage is to be commended for using all of the tics and eccentricities he's been derided for over the past few years (of which this blog is no exception) and pointing them towards the story. Every bad habit people chuckle over is used to advance the strange trajectory of Terence McDonagh, who may be more of a Good Lieutenant than you'd ever guess, so in that respect the ads misrepresent what's really going on in this movie.

Look, I'm not going to presume that anyone believes me. There will be no "retraction" review tomorrow, as there was for a far more infamous film one year ago. I honestly found The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans to be an excellent film, and you might be surprised to see where it ends up in the "Best of" list next week.