Keoma

1976 Spaghetti Western

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Keoma, an adopted half-Injun (is that politically correct?) returns after the Civil War to find that his daddy is no longer the town big-wig and that his three corrupt half-brothers are in-cahoots with the mean guy who's the new town big-wig. Plague victims are shunned and sent to die. Keoma rescues one of them, a pregnant woman, and pisses off everybody. A whole lot of people die in slow-motion.

Another filthy cool spaghetti Western featuring the great Franco Nero with perhaps an overuse of Peckinpah-style slo-mo spills from horses or rooftops and a great tone. But I'm going to start with the bad or ugly in this otherwise good film--the music. There's a song performed by a woman who screeches like an inebriated Joan Baez and a guy who sounds like a guy who liquified and then drank a bunch of Leonard Cohen records. The song runs intermittently throughout the movie's duration and works kind of like a Greek chorus where the "singers" tell you exactly what just happened in case you somehow missed it or maybe what the characters are thinking. It's unnecessary and annoying. "Now Keoma has to ride into town to face his brothers." Yeah, Joan Baez, I know. I'm watching the same movie you are! Maybe if I was vision impaired, I would have appreciated that sort of thing. Or maybe I would have just shoved pencils in my ears. Other than that, this is good stuff. I like the mysterious tone, and Castellari, a director I've never heard of, uses sound effects and classic Western shots that take advantage of great scenery to create wonderful atmosphere. He uses some unnatural shots that show the characters framed by debris and dilapidated buildings, and during a climactic shoot-out--one of several--he eliminates all of the sound except for a moaning woman and the wind. Awesome. Keoma the half-breed (wait, why isn't this an offensive word?) is a cool character, not invincible and tortured not only by all the stuff that happens to him in the numerous flashbacks but by his future. And I like how he does this pointing thing that must have inspired Hulk Hogan as he was creating his wrastler persona. There's also this cool shot you'd only get in a spaghetti Western where Keoma tells his four enemies that he has four bullets. He holds up four fingers to illustrate. Then, he counts and drops his fingers to reveal the characters he's about to shoot. This movie also has a guy who looks like Colonel Sanders, and a scene where a guy with the whitest teeth in the Wild West gives a black guy's boot a golden shower. Definitely worth watching for fans of the genre even though that song will make you bleed from the ears. And not in a good way.

Summer of Nicolas Cage Movie #15: Face/Off

1997 action movie

Rating: 15/20 (Jen: 10/20)

Plot: Carousel, Nic Cage with a mustache, blood on the horse, Oh snap!, loose balloons, flash forward, bomb placement, priest-dance-f-bomb-butt-grab-ecstasy-groan, unapologetic coattail flapping, airplane tongue suck, peach bragging, chicken with a damn jet, bad guy gets it, face lifts required, boom--face lifts, vegetable resurrects, Oh double snap!, second face lift, face/off!

You just have to read that tag line to figure out how good this movie is. Go ahead; read it.

"In order to trap him, he must become him."

Let that sink in for a moment. Now, read it again, more slowly this time. What's your hurry anyway? Take it nice and slow.

"In order to trap him, he must become him."

Face/Off has two actors with hammy tendencies who get a chance to act as each other's characters. At some point in the movie, you've got Nicolas Cage acting like John Travolta acting like Nicolas Cage with John Travolta acting like Nicolas Cage acting like John Travolta. Those are the kinds of layers that can melt your freakin' mind! The performances start goofy, turn into something ridiculous, manage to top themselves somehow, and then turn into works of genius. Ridiculous genius. Nic gets some great lines, most of them referencing peaches. "You know, I can eat a peach for hours." That's the type of pick-up line that could destroy a woman, right? I'm also fond of this gem and its delivery: "Someone took my face. . .but it's cool. We're going to deal with it." I don't remember if Cage said that as Travolta's character or if Travolta said that as Cage acting like Travolta who thought he was Cage. The dialogue in this movie took my face, I think. But it's cool. I'm going to deal with it. Other brilliant pieces: "Bra-fucking-O," a line that only Cage can really nail; prolonged laughter (at least five minutes) preceding the words "I've got to go to the little boy's wee-wee room"; and a scene with a mirror that reminded me of Vampire's Kiss (What is it with Cage and mirrors?) where the title of the movie is clumsily uttered about forty-seven times. As the characters engage in what must have been the fifth or six climactic fight scene, they keep saying "Die!" to each other.

The old face-switcheroo plot is silly, but it's submerged beneath so many improbable shoot-'em-ups and 'splosions that you might not even notice if you're a real dumb guy like me. Jen had problems with the science, asking questions like "If their blood types are different, wouldn't their bodies reject the new faces?" What the hell, Jen? You can't ask questions like that during Face/Off! Flow with the beaucoup pseudo-science or cuckoo-science and the assaults on common sense and appreciate John Woo's use of slow-mo, operatic violence, and that unapologetic coattail flapping and slow-motion bird flapping and hope your spine doesn't fall out. John Woo's the only director I can think of who can nearly eviscerate you with his action sequences. After the scene at the beginning where Travolta's character (while he still has his own face with that stupid chin of his) captures Cage's character, I wondered if I had somehow fallen asleep and missed the entire movie until the end. But nope, there were logic-defying action scenes aplenty right around the corner. It's beyond stupid, but it's so much fun.

One question. There's this very strange sentiment that Travolta does with the faces of his loved ones where he places his hand near the top of their foreheads and runs it all the way down to the bottom of their faces. I noticed it the first time and thought it was just a Scientology thing. But then it happened two more times and I realized it must have been in the script. So I started counting them. Do you know how many Travolta face-gropes there are in this movie? Eleven! Eleven, counting one flashback face-grope and one attempted face-grope that fell a little short.
I tried to touch my son's face like that, by the way, and he recoiled in fear and asked me what I was doing. Maybe if I had John Travolta's chin then it would have gone better?

Bad Boy Bubby

1993 cringe-fest

Rating: 15/20

Plot: The titular bad boy lives alone with his portly mother and doesn't leave their humble apartment since the air outside is poisonous and all. He spends his time playing with his kitty and sitting absolutely still until his biological father visits one day. Consequences of that visit force Bubby outside where he makes all kinds of new friends and embarks on a career in the arts.

Challenging, oft-difficult movie featuring incest, fat naked people, cat suffocation, and Bad Boy Bubby's lil bubby--all in the first fifteen minutes. Bubby won't exactly capture your hearts, but parts of his story will make you queasy in your stomach if you're into that sort of thing. I have to give credit for Nicholas Hope's performance of the character. Mentally challenged characters are difficult to pull off, especially when an actor is delicately maneuvering back and forth between tragedy and comedy with the character, and Hope does it very well. This movie is very funny, very very darkly funny, and I always appreciate it when a filmmaker can make me laugh and disturb me at the same time. Bubby's world can't possibly be real, more of an apocalyptic wasteland or the ghost of a third world country than anywhere in wherever the hell this is supposed to take place. Australia? It's a world bathed in gray, drab and dumpy, and there are definitely shots in this movie where it actually does look like the air is poisonous. Bad Boy Bubby doesn't have much depth although I do like the possible satiric jab at rock 'n' roll, but it's a unique and, if you're a little twisted, entertaining character study.

Note: Jen watched a big chunk of this one and really seemed to like it. She missed the aforementioned cat suffocation, incest, naked fat woman, and lil bubby, however.

Daisies

1966 Czech feminist film

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Two girls (Marie I and Marie II) decide that the world is bad. As a result, they decide to be bad, finding various ways to misbehave by conning perverse butterfly collectors, playing with the food, playing with their food more, breaking stuff, drowning, and being general nuisances. Honestly, you're going to be frustrated if you like movies that have plots and characters who aren't named the exact same thing.

Yet another Eastern European movie, Czech even. At times, you could accuse this of looking like a film school project that the professor didn't even like very much. It's an artsy-fartsy dadaistic clash of visual trickery and tomfoolery. You've got rapid and maddening color changes, weird sound effects (like creaking door sounds when the gals move their limbs or typewriter noises when there's nary a typewriter), lots of scenes involving the slicing and dicing of phallic symbols, the best scissor fight you're likely to see, and lots of scenes that seem to go on forever. But it does all add up to something, again with sort of an obvious film schoolish theme, and it is visually arresting and completely interesting considering the time and place it was made. It didn't last long, by the way. Czechoslovakia banned, so nobody would get to see the fantastic scene where the Maries take after Shirley Temple in The Littlest Rebel (a movie that should have been banned in Czechoslovakia and everywhere else; and I'm not even pro-censorship!) and mimic trains while in blackface. There's some Svankmajer-esque animation with the quicky-shots of things like locks, butterflies, word shavings, and colors. This is not exactly a movie that stands the test of time, and the stream-of-conscious delivery and too-lengthy scenes will annoy most people, but I'm nevertheless happy I watched it.

Day of the Wacko

2002 Polish character study

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Exactly as advertised, this is one day in the life of a obsessive-compulsive teacher who doesn't get along with the rest of the world. All he really wants to do is write a poem, but his underwear is irritating his crotch, the woman upstairs is practicing her karate, and a dog is pooping underneath his window.

It's the little things that make this movie very funny. Not that you really want to laugh all that much because the protagonist's life is about as sad as a movie life can possibly be. But there's something funny about watching this guy do everything in sevens or tug at the crotch of his pants before sitting down or take a crap in a neighbor's yard or complain to his mother about his students or confront his enemies or maneuver through a mine-field of dog doo-doo or whatever he's doing. This is one of those movies that goes nowhere. It has a little bit to say about the Golden Rule maybe, or more accurately about the dangers of making yourself some Golden Rule martyr, but there's not much story here. Instead, this is the sort of movie that really digs into a character, probably deeper than most people really want to even go, investigating the minutia of the guy's existence. It's almost more of a biopsy than it is a film. You feel sorry for the guy while not really liking him and laughing at him rather than with him, and there's not really a point in the movie where you feel optimistic about the poor guy's future. Ultimately, I did end up liking and maybe even identifying with the guy. I do wonder if there's anything I'm missing by not being Polish person, and I'm pretty sure some of the subtitles were either untranslatable Polish idioms or just plain wrong. Those who like their comedy dry and miserable might like this; a lot of viewers will like it about as much as they like polka music though.

Ringu

1998 Japanese horror movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Japanese teenagers trying to rent Jigoku from their local video store are accidentally given a copy of Japanese remake of Jingle All the Way with Japan's versions of Sinbad and Arnold Swarzeneggar. They quickly learn their mistake but feel drawn to the video and watch the entire movie. One of them had already seen the American original Jingle All the Way and kept pompously talking about how the Japanese remake isn't nearly as good. The phone rings, and a week later, they all die.

I was really disappointed to discover that this movie doesn't have a single Hobbit in it.

This doesn't have the glitz and glam of the remake with Naomi Watts. I actually think that works to make the story eerier. The menacing soundtrack and scratchy sound effects add to the experience. Ringu (and The Ring) has one of those movie moments that will forever be famous; the problem is that you can't watch it for the first time twice. It doesn't take away from the power of the scene or anything, but it's a bit watered down by appearing in two different versions of the story and being spoofed in one of those Scary Movies. It's been a while since I saw the remake, a movie I also liked, but this one seems quieter, more reflective, relying more on characterization and setting a realistic sinister mood than on traditional movie scare tactics. I think I prefer the video in the Hollywood remake, but the one in the Japanese version is sufficiently creepy. And watching either one of them over and over for an hour and a half would be better than watching Jingle All the Way once. But seriously. No Hobbits? That's a little misleading.

Watch on the Rhine

1943 movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Sara's been in away in Europe for eighteen years, presumably because her mother is really annoying. While away, she meets a troublemaker named Kurt and has three children who prove that "annoying" is something that runs in the family. They arrive in Washington for a visit, and a Romanian house guest, a guy who's staying with Sara's mother only because he knows there wouldn't be much of a movie without him, learns some of the family's secrets. He attempts to extract money. Oh, Bodo!

It's always interesting to me to see movies like this out of their context. It's a movie about Nazis and WWII, but it really only touches on the historical stuff lightly, and its themes of dedication, sacrifice, and tough decision making are still relevant today. Unfortunately, this is bogged down by what feel like 1940's movie cliches. You get that oh-no-she-didn't stock mother character used for comic effect. Her loud utterances probably had 1943 audiences' sides splitting. You get dialogue that feels painstakingly written, stagy. You get a romantic subplot tossed in, probably to add a bit of light to an otherwise dark ending. But really, the characters of David and Anise just aren't necessary in this thing. A rousing patriotic score that's just a little too much. And Watch on the Rhine has my biggest pet peeve of all--bad child acting! Now if it was just Joshua, the firstborn who speaks in this terrible accent, I could probably tolerate it. And the middle child, a daughter, is just a girl and doesn't get too many lines anyway. But the third child is intolerable. And his name is Bodo! Bodo! How director Herman Shumlin didn't recognize that Bodo, played by Julia Roberts' brother actually, just wasn't working is beyond me. Seems like a good director would have had Bodo fall off the train early in the movie.

Sara: Honey, have you seen Bodo?
Kurt: Yeah, Bodo fell off the train about a half hour ago.
Sara: What? And you didn't tell me about it? Aren't you concerned?
Kurt: C'mon, Sara. You've met Bodo.
Sara: You've got a good point there, Kurt.
Joshua: Mother? Father? We shall be ever so happy now that Bodo is no longer with us.
Kurt: Shut your pie hold, Joshua, or you're going to be the next to "fall" off this train.

Since Herman Shumlin wasn't able to recognize that Bodo didn't work, he was only allowed to direct one other movie, the only Hollywood director ever to be blacklisted because of a Bodo. Now Oscar-winner Paul Lukas is really good. His quiet brilliance emanates and actually makes Bette Davis into a better actress. He's got this quiet strength, this unspoken but palpable fatigue, and eventually a powerful resolution that makes him heroic in an unflashy way. There's no way this guy would have a child like Bodo. Bette Davis, sure, but not Paul Lukas.

Tales from the Gimli Hospital

1989 hospital drama

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A story within a story with a few stories within that story, this is mostly the tale of a guy called Einar who is admitted to the titular hospital during a smallpox epidemic. His bedside neighbor is Gunnar, and while they're initially friendly with one another, they eventually become enemies as they flirt with the nurses. Tension increases when Einar shares a story that links the two men's pasts. Then, they do this weird butt-grabbing thing called glima wrestling.

This is shane-movies hero Guy Maddin's first feature and the first I'd ever heard of him. While Maddin still borrows heavily from the imagery of nightmarish silent horror movies, this talkie reminds me more of Eraserhead than any of that stuff. The music's more cheery though. This is understandably not as strong as Maddin's later work, but it's nice to see that he just dove head first into the eerie and surreal. This has the feel of a movie made very cheaply on weekends with whatever friends or neighbors he could round up. I watched parts of this with the commentary, and it turns out that's fairly accurate. I also learned about the coincidentally named glima wrestling, apparently a real Icelandic sport, which was quite possibly the most entertaining thing I'll see all year. I don't want to spoil anything for all my readers who are wanting to rush to the Blockbuster to rent this film, but there is some pants tearing. This is chock-full of the kind of weirdo surreal imagery that is made even weirdo-er by the budget constraints, and like all Maddin's movies, you get some things that seem really odd but are actually remnants of the past of these people whose stories he's recording. Here, it's apparently Icelandic Canadians. An array of animals under the floorboards at the hospital. Well, that actually happened, used as an Icelandic method to heat rooms. Not sure what all that rubbing birds on people's wounds was all about though. I think that's what I like about Guy Maddin's movies actually. They make you nostalgic for things that didn't even happen to you, force you to remember dreams you never knew you had.

Art School Confidential

2006 black comedy

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Jerome enrolls in an inner-city art college after high school graduation. He finds that art's a competitive game. He falls for a girl featured in the college brochure, a girl who, luckily for Jerome, does a little nude modeling for the drawing students in John Malkovich's Intro to Drawing class. An arch rivalry forms with another first-year student, Jonah, who seems to be standing in his way romantically and artistically. Meanwhile, a serial killer is on the loose. Oh, snap!

You have to look closely, but there is a brief Charlie Chaplin spotting in this movie.

This is 1/2 of a satirically fun comedy and 1/2 of a really dark satirical downer. Despite some foreshadowing, some dropped hints that things might turn uglier, it was still a little jarring. It forces you to switch the brain on though. So much of this centers on the main character, a straight man in a movie crowded with some more eccentric personalities. I liked the kid who played him, Max Minghella, a guy you almost recognize, then think you're just confusing him with Justin Long or somebody, and then later find out that he was in The Social Network. John Malkovich has a subtly comedic role as a drawing teacher/triangle artist. I enjoy Malkovich in comedies; of course, I think Malkovich actually might think all of his movies are supposed to be comedies. My favorite periphery lunatic is straight from the lunatic fringe, a failed Bukowski-esque artist played by Englishman Jim Broadbent. He's great and gets the best lines--"What are you laughing about, laughing boy?" and "I have to get back to my masturbation," a line followed immediately by The Facts of Life theme song. Despite this being a bit uneven and pretty thematically heavy, I enjoyed this enough to wonder if I really actually liked Zwigoff's Ghost World more than I think I did.

Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones

2002 sequel

Rating: 15/20 (Dylan: 10/20)

Plot: Well, they'd already committed to making three of these things, and although nobody really liked the first one (Star Wars Episode I: Darth Vader Was Once a Little Kid) despite lovable new characters like Wotto, the fish-faced guys, and Jar Jar Binks; two lightsaber fights, including one extended one with three guys, that blow away anything in the original trilogy; Natalie Portman; and a really cool space battle that is only somewhat ruined by a little kid's presence, they couldn't just not make Episode II. So George Lucas and his pals, mostly puppets, had a barbecue at the Star Wars ranch (you haven''t had barbecue until you've had barbecued Gungan, by the way) and figured out ways to fix the franchise. They came up with the following list:

1) Less of the maligned (unfairly?) Jar Jar Binks
2) Replace the comic relief Jar Jar Binks provided with more scenes featuring the lovable robot duo of R2-D2 and C3PO. Everybody loves them! And everybody loves puns!
3) Bring on Boba Fett. Star Wars nerds love that guy, so they will naturally love to see him as a little kid.
4) More romance. The first trilogy had some romance, including a developing love affair between a guy with his own sister. And the characters in that original trilogy have to be conceived at some point, right?
5) A lot of political mumbo-jumbo, and numerous scenes taking place in a big room with outer space senators. After all, people love watching C-SPAN. They'd surely love C-SPAN in space!
6) Christopher Lee. That guy makes everything better.
7) A scene with a scantily-clad Natalie Portman chained to an obese, slimy green thing.
8) Give Obi-Wan a freakin' beard! He's got one in the original Star Wars, and it might confuse people when he doesn't have one in the prequels.

And from George Lucas's original notes and stick figure drawings, they penned a script in under an hour (Rocky time!), called up John Williams to see if he could compose the exact same music he'd already composed for the other movies, found some random guy working in a deli who really knew how to slice meat and sounded vaguely Jedi-like when he said, "Hello, my name is Hayden. How can I help you today?", and made the magic happen.

This movie loses points every time C3PO has a line. What the hell were they thinking? "I'm beside myself"? "This is such a drag"? Come on. I don't think that idiom is going to survive a long, long time or make any sense in most galaxies that are far, far away. And I don't think a distressed robot would say something like that. It's unbelievably stupid and probably represents what almost all original trilogy fans hate about this next generation of Star Wars movies.

However, this movie is a lot of fun, and I honestly can't understand why it wouldn't appeal to fans of the original trilogy. It's a bridge movie, much like The Empire Strikes Back, so it doesn't complete a story. It's got a saggy middle weighted down with politics and the romantic developments on Naboo between dopey Anakin and his not-very-sandlike love interest. But let's take a look at what it does have:

--my favorite shot from any of the Star Wars movies not featuring Akbar or his fish-faced friend when Portman's scratched by one of those Harryhausen-inspired monsters and the trade federation guy does this little celebration
--those Harryhausen-inspired monsters in that ridiculous arena scene
--a really cool chase scene through the Fifth Element-esque city planet "streets"
--pretty funny rapport between the great Ewan McGregor (and he's nearly as good as the great Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan) and Hayden
--a cool new bounty hunter
--Boba Fett's daddy, who looks like a shinier version of the Boba Fett we all know in love but who does a helluva lot more than his son did in Episodes V and VI
--a terrific and intense fight on the rainy planet between Jango Fett and Obi-Wan
--explanations for things in the original trilogy, like where Stormtroopers come from
--Obi-Wan slinking around like a noir movie detective sans fedora
--Christopher Lee as a Sith bad guy, classy and evil
--parallels between future-Vader and his son Luke
--Yoda yielding a lightsaber, hopping around like a banshee. Are you kidding me? I literally urinated in my movie theater seat when I saw that on the big screen.
--more lightsabers at once than you can count, slicing and dicing robots and those waspy-looking things
--some great new settings (the aforementioned rainy planet and the waspy-looking things planet) along with the beautiful Naboo

If you travelled back in time to before the prequels were made, found a diehard Star Wars fan, and told him that George Lucas was going to make more movies with those things in them, that Star Wars fan's nipple would harden. And it's all presented with the groundbreaking special effects you'd expect from a Star Wars movie. Is the story clunky? Probably. Is some of the acting really bad? Yes, and I'm looking straight at you, Hayden. Should Anthony Daniels have stopped the director and said, "Wait a second, boss. I'm not so sure C3PO would ever say this"? Maybe. But despite the film's flaws, this episode, like the other two in the trilogy, were fun enough to make me feel like a kid again, and I loved being able to experience the Star Wars universe with my own kids.

The Naked Kiss

1964 whore movie

Rating: 16/20 (Jen: 15/20)

Plot: Bald Kelly doesn't want to be a prostitute anymore, so she beats up her pimp and flees to dinky Grantville to hopefully start a new life. After sleeping with a cop fifteen minutes after her arrival, she settles down and gets herself an honest job at a hospital where she plays pirate with little boys and girls and sings some creepy songs. She meets herself a rich guy named Grant and accepts his marriage proposal. But is Grant really all that he seems to be? And will Kelly's past come back to haunt her?

More unrealistic Simon Fuller pulp, but this one's not as campily dated or as unintentionally humorous as Shock Corridor. In retrospect, I was probably a little too hard on that movie, by the way. The story and where it takes its hookers, cops, and big spenders is a good one, but I wish it had more of an edge. Seems like for a mid-60's flick, it could have. It's like the aforementioned tale of crazy people, this is daring and cutting-edge for the squares, something that's well written but still very very written, a movie that takes chances thematically but not necessarily cinematically. 1964 is before my time, but I imagine some of the subject matter The Naked Kiss addresses would have been pretty provocative. But it's all presented safely, whitebreadedly. It certainly opens with a bang with a scene that was likely Britney Spears' inspiration to shave her head and attack a paparazzo's vehicle with an umbrella in one of my favorite Britney Spears moments ever. And there are some great scenes here and there including some nice moody lighting effects. My favorite scene: a weird musical number with Constance Towers and a bunch of handicapped children wearing pirate hats.

Greenberg

2010 comedy

Rating: 15/20 (Jen: 13/20)

Plot: The titular New York carpenter ends stint at a mental institution and agrees to house sit for his brother in Los Angeles while the brother's away. He reconnects with a few old friends and an ex-lover and meets his brother's family's assistant, a 20-something year old named Florence. Life, however, is not very easy for Roger Greenberg. He works on a doghouse for his brother's family and tries very hard to know nothing else at all.

I've always liked Ben Stiller even without really liking any movies that he's really known for. Maybe it's because I know he's eventually going to get older and look like Jerry Stiller, a guy whose appearance alone can make me laugh. Then, Future Ben Stiller makes me laugh and leaves me with a good overall impression of Present Ben Stiller. I also really like Noah Baumbach and his particular brand of understated comedies that emphasize all those little awkward characteristics that might not make much of a real difference but that help define who we are as humans. The oft-kitschy soundtrack (LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy), the philosophical focus on minutia, and the life-damaged protagonist that Stiller plays recalled Paul Thomas Anderson's hugely-underrated Punch-Drunk Love. Some will gripe that the characters, especially Stiller's, just don't communicate or respond to life like real people would, but I like how written it all is. While we can definitely understand the rather serious problems Roger's got, they're treated comically, and Stiller's performance helps make a very unlikable fellow somebody who we want to spend the time with and root for. Baumbach's self-referential with his screenplay, bringing back dialogue snippets that seemed pointless, and he's really good here with revealing just enough. I like these sort of in medias res character studies where you aren't given a complete portrait of the character's past (or even future, by the end of the movie) but are given enough to put some pieces together on your own. And it's all pretty funny and, ultimately, even a little touching, too. This isn't the type of comedic character study that will appeal to everybody, but I wouldn't imagine fans of Noah Baumbach would have any reason to be disappointed.

I've also decided to start wearing my hair like Ben Stilller's Greenberg does. I think that's the type of hair I should have.

Lights in the Dusk

2006 Aki Kaurismaki movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: The most pathetic man on earth, a security guard in Helsinki, falls for a blond gal who he doesn't realize is way out of his league. They begin dating, but it turns out she's only using him so that she and another guy can steal jewelry from the mall where Koistenin works. Meanwhile, a woman who Koistenin purchases hot dogs from wonders why he isn't interested in her.

Getting to see an Aki Kaurismaki movie has become like a special ocassion for me. This is Kaurismaki attempting noir, complete with the biggest dupe for a protagonist you'll likely find, a pretty nasty femme fatale, and lots and lots of smoking. The camera floats a little more in this than in some of Kaurismaki's earlier work, but the style hasn't changed much. Things still crawl along at a snail's pace (but in a good way!), slowly enough to frustrate most folks used to watching movies with scenes where stuff actually happens. That's what I like about these movies though. You really get to appreciate the nuances of these quirky, mostly sad and desperate characters. Kaurismaki's characters aren't exactly rushing through life, really making Finland seem like the lethargic place on the planet, and it would almost seem unnatural to see them do much of anything. In fact, it's almost shocking to see any of his characters moving around much at all. The jewel thieving probably has the most rapid movements, and it's shot so that you don't even really see the characters. Another scene involves our protagonist and three burlier fellows taking it outside, and the director chooses to not have the camera go outside at all. Instead, he focuses on a swinging door and, once it stops swinging, just a door. Then, the three burlier fellows come back in, just as we expected they would. It's sad and it's humorous, and that's just what's really awesome about these movies, their ability to be both simultaneously. I don't want to say bittersweet because it would sound like a cliche. I think the only appropriate adjective is Kaurismakian. By the way, this has a poignant sweet ending, the sort of ending that you learn to expect from this guy, so it's not all despairing over the miserable existence of a true loser.

Somebody needs to make this guy's movies more widely available. One a year. That's all I'm asking for.

Why Worry?

1923 silent comedy

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A guy probably named Harold travels to the tropics with his nurse and valet for convalescent purposes but ends up accidentally becoming part of a violent revolution. Viva la Harold Lloyd!

His character isn't really as likable here, but this swiftly-moving excursion is still fun. The protagonist (probably named Harold) is the type we laugh at because he's oblivious to what's going on around him, nearly for the entire movie. I liked the sight gags as he's exploring the town, mistaking men knocked unconscious for men taking their siestas. It's not until near the end that Harold (I'm guessing) undergoes a bit of an unbelievable undergoing and turns into Rambo. I easily could have done without the romantic subplot which seems like it was tacked on in a script rewrite or something. The best part of this movie isn't even Lloyd actually unless you've ever wanted to see what a Harold Lloyd movie would be like if Harold Lloyd was a little person. His costar, a giant named John Aasen, steals the show. IMDB lists his height as a bit over seven feet, but he dwarfs Lloyd and seems a lot taller than that. Guinness apparently had him at nearly nine feet. Somebody's tape measure was broken apparently. The absurd situations, including an attempt to pull out one of Colosso's hurt teeth, between the odd-looking duo are a lot of fun. "Colosso" was the first acting job in Aasen's versatile career. He also played a Giant Swordsman, Giant, The Giant, Circus Giant, Giant Man, Very Tall Golfer, Giant, Circus Giant, Giant, and Shorty. That's some diversity! Wait a second. Very Tall Golfer?

So, Cory...what did you think of this one? Worth seeing, but I reckon you don't like his character all that much. Amazingly, Maltin's got this rated higher than Safety Last! and Speedy.

Battle Royale

2000 cult classic

Rating: 15/20 (Mark: 18/20)

Plot: Forty-two students are transported to an island, given a random weapon (firearms, paper fans, nunchucks, tasers, etc.), and instructed to kill each other off. Their old teacher, "Beat" Takeshi Kitano, is there, too. I think there's something like this in the "No Child Left Behind" act.

My favorite thing about this movie: I busied my brain trying to guess how a pair of binoculars and/or a pan lid were going to come into play, and then nothing ever materialized. Battle Royale gets some points for effort. People who don't like it will tag it with a violence porn label. People who do like it will talk about it as a satire of the Japanese educational system and how society demands that children compete against their peers. And maybe I'm just desensitized to this sort of thing, but I didn't think it was all that violent. And I didn't think the satire--muddled and missing a few pieces--added up to much. There are a ton of characters in this, but the ratio of interesting characters to uninteresting ones is a problem. I liked the teacher (and Kitano [Zatoichi in the 2004 version of the blind swordsman movie]is always pretty awesome) and the crazy girl (Chiaki Kuriyama--Gogo in Kill Bill Volume One) and maybe the mean kid who doesn't get any lines. The others, including the rest of the forty-two children, aren't really memorable. I'm not sure I'm willing to sacrifice the quantity and variety of violent acts by limiting the amount of characters, but there sure were a lot of characters to keep track of in this. And, as you can probably guess, they all looked almost exactly the same, which made any subplots or connections between the characters kind of confusing. I did like that this movie wasn't afraid to show not only all those scenes of Japanese pop idols dying tragic deaths but also showing it all with a healthy dose of black humor. The action's paced well, and I liked how this explored the varying psychologies of children put in traumatic situations. This definitely lost a point because of the sickeningly melodramatic score. I have no problems watching a kid with an ax sticking out of his head stumble around on a television screen. However, I have no tolerance for bad film music.

Yellow Brick Road

2005 documentary

Rating: 15/20 (Jen: 15/20)

Plot: A New York program called ANCHOR (Answering the Needs of Citizens with Handicaps through Organized Recreation [Note: Shouldn't the acronym be ATNOCWHTOR then?]) brings together a collective of actors with a variety of disabilities to put on a stage production of The Wizard of Oz. The documentary captures everybody at work as they prepare for opening night and gives a glimpse of a few of the actors' lives outside the theater.

My favorite being the guy who was showing off his stuffed characters from Disney's The Great Mouse Detective. I was touched by this documentary and its subjects. My only gripes? I wish the performers would have done their own singing. The film opens with the mostly-wheelchair-bound Tin Man singing "If I Only Had a Heart," and I really liked his voice, and not just because he reminded me of a certain singer at Johnson Bible College. And I really wish we could have seen more of the actual production and really wonder why we didn't. Even though that makes it all a bit anticlimactic, this is still stuffed like a scarecrow with great moments--the hysterical reaction when one gal gets a part, watching the guy who played the Cowardly Lion show off his acting chops, the Tin Man's curtain call, the mayor of Munchkin Land trying to get his one line memorized. Yellow Brick Road is ultimately a look at some individuals who, despite not fitting most people's ideas about what actors look like or sound like, are given a chance to do something they love doing, and it's an absolute pleasure spending some time with them.

Cobra Verde

1987 crazy man movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Notorious outlaw Francisco Manoel de Silva takes a job overseeing slaves on a sugar plantation. After he knocks up the plantation owner's three daughters, he's sent to Africa to get the slave trade rolling again. The plantation owner and de Silva both know the job will likely end in death, but de Silva decides to go anyway.

"Herzog does not know that I give life to the dead scenery." --Klaus Kinski

You can see the production problems soak through the lush scenery and chaotic and intense scenes that take place in that scenery. The narrative's unbalanced, almost like the story had to pieced together from hours of messy footage. I had trouble following what was going on some of the time. And Kinski's character is wildly uneven. Sure, the titular chap was a crazy bandit, but I'm not even sure Kinski's performance makes much sense in that context. Still, Kinski's his usual electric self, and watching him on the screen is always an experience. In Cobra Verde, the goings-on around hiim are anarchic. Herzog fills the screen with extras and constant movement in a lot of the scenes. Yet Kinski always manages to stand out, like a deranged Where's Waldo? where Waldo jumps up and down and wildly waves his arms and then tries to stab you in the eye with a comically-large pencil. That performance, along with Herzog's eye for filming in exotic and often dangerous locales as well as the inhabitants of those locales, make this an intriguing movie experience despite its imperfections. And Herzog's run of brilliant movie endings continues with a jaw-dropping scene in this involving a boat and a deformed man. Add the Krautrock Popol Vuh soundtrack and you've got yourself another Werner Herzog narrative that is definitely worth watching.

"Arrgh! You don't understand my genius, Werner!"

Manhattan

1979 romantic comedy

Rating: 15/20

Plot: For aspiring writer Isaac, love doesn't come easy. His former wife and current lesbian has written a book containing every damning detail of their relationship. His newest fling likes him bunches, but the problem is that she's only seventeen and still in high school. And to make matters more complicated, he's fallen for pretentious Mary, the woman who his married friend Yale is sleeping with on the side.

It's not my favorite Woody Allen movie, and apparently it's not Woody's either. But I really like the last close-up of Woody, a guy who could really only be a leading man in a romantic comedy in his own movies, and that expression that he makes. As a comedy, this is pretty uneven and not really all that funny. The characters aren't easy to like except for maybe Mariel Hemingway's character and Woody himself. I do like the performers who play those characters even if I don't like the characters themselves though. Still, there's a certain charm and artfulness to the proceedings, and the black and white cinematography creates a sort of intimacy with the story's inhabitants. It also shows off the titular setting, almost working like a visual ode to the city at times. So this one kind of grows on you as it goes along, but it's ultimately such a downer, a comedy too cynical to be all that funny . It's a mixed bag of a movie, one that I've always wanted to like or maybe felt like I should like a lot better.

Hallucinations of a Deranged Mind

1978 film that just ain't right

Rating: 20/20 (Yes, there's a new Coffin Joe Rule. If you don't like it, take it up with him and more than likely have your face eaten off.)

Plot: A psychologist is troubled by nightmares in which the movie character Coffin Joe fondles his wife. His colleagues try to convince him that Coffin Joe is only a character and even call Jose Mojica Marins to speak with him. Then, on the back of a fish truck that unloads, his conscience explodes.

"Flesh will be blood, blood will become water to bathe my eternal legacy and glorify the pleasure of pain in the bodies of the damned. So shall it be from one galaxy to another from one existence to another. The little forever midget and the great eternal giant."

If God called the Audience of One guy to make the science fiction Joseph movie, I think Satan was probably responsible for this one. Or a buttload of hallucinogenics. This starts with a drumming, spinning hunchback, an image that in a normal movie would probably be the weirdest one. But this is a Jose Mojica Marins movie, not a normal movie, and the hunchback is just a precursor to about eighty minutes that can only be categorized as an unhinged barrage of nightmarish visuals, mostly censored scenes from his other movies that he's recycled. Bugs crawling on people, wind-up toy snakes, really really bad naked dancing, devil figurines, a bridge made out of people, a mustachioed spider puppet, waving feet, snakes and the women who laugh at them, Coffin Joe shooting fuckin' lasers out his fingers like Emperor Palpatine, shots of colorful test tubes and beakers with frothy foaming liquids, walls made of tarp and naked women, laughing and then exploding black guys in Speedos, those curling fingernails, that ominous unibrow, Erik Estrada, people in animal masks, a magically appearing top hat with pyrotechnics, naked guys tumbling down staircases, Satan poking the half-buried with a pitchfork, fire-breathing topless women, nude posteriors with goofy faces painted on them, finger-eating pasty guys, a lot of shots of half-buried people, what appears to be a cannibalism game show with an upside-down guy and a smiling man in a tuxedo beside him, demons with claw hammers, laughing skulls, random shots of frogs, white mice danging in front of bare breasts, severed hands, gelatinous head walls, tongue yankin', and that guy with two different-sized ears I've seen in Marins' other movies. And yes, that's all as badass as it sounds. Low-budget insanity art, toxic and mystifying. I've seen my share of weird movies, and I can tell you with confidence that there's not much out there that is this relentlessly weird. And I know what you're wondering, so I'll go ahead and answer the question for you--No, you can't handle this movie. Sadly, you would probably have trouble finding it anyway.

Audience of One

2007 documentary that my brother will be pissed I watched without him so I'd better hurry up and type a bunch of entries with the hope that he won't see this

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Because Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat wasn't quite amazing enough, God speaks to Richard, a Pentecostal preacher from California, and tells him he needs to make a science fiction movie based on Joseph's story. His congregation helps fund the project while Richard works hard to find other investors to help raise the fifty million dollars the first-time director wants to work with. Unfortunately, God doesn't seem to like what happens in pre-production and decides not to support the project any more. But Richard and his congregation, still convinced that they've been called to make the film, keep trying to do everything they can to make Gravity: The Shadow of Joseph a reality.

On the one hand, you almost want to commend Richard for his faith and for his creative spirit. He's a man, for better or for worse, who is bursting with ideas. But that one hand is so far away from the other hand, a much larger and more conspicuous and screaming hand. And on that hand, you want this guy to be punished for biting off far more than he can chew, ripping off a flock that really doesn't look like it can afford to be ripped off, and for being about as delusional as an individual can be. Don't get me wrong--I have nothing against delusions. But Richard's delusions are potentially harmful, the best example in this film probably being where one of his crew asks if it's safe for kids to be around some horses and getting the answer "Don't worry about that." There's a wonderful moment in the movie when, after spending a nice wad of movie to film in a neat spot in Italy, they encounter problem after problem. One of the problems is that their camera stops working. Oh, snap, right? Not if you're Richard who announced, "God called us here to shoot this movie, and we're going to shoot this movie--camera or no camera." It's not a leap of faith as much as it's a triple-jump of faith or a pole vault of faith. Later, after the church rents a San Francisco movie studio that they eventually can't afford the rent on after shooting what seemed to be zero hours of footage, Richard starts to get really paranoid, even setting up security so that nobody will bust in and steal their ideas. "It's either God or I'm crazy," he claims at one point, and you'll come away from this believing it's definitely one of those. By the end of the movie, Richard's completely lost his mind, promising his congregation that God has sent him a vision in which they'll be making forty-seven films a year, own eight TV networks, have their own airport, and (believe it or not) colonize another planet. Got news for you, Richard. It ain't God. Since this is a documentary about Pentecostals, you know you're going to be treated or creeped out by some scenes showcasing their religious practices, and there's a nifty scene where they're sanctifying the studio, a process that involves a great deal of shouting and these really strange horns. A lot of the cast is entertaining. The guy who plays the "horned captain" (I went to a Bible college, but I don't remember a "horned captain" in the Joseph story.), actor Daniel who plays Spirf, and a tubby and high-maintenance trippin' stunt man could all be in any movie that God tells me to make.

Don't tell Anonymous that I watched this.