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.

Summer of Nicolas Cage Movie # 11: The Rock

1996 wrestler biopic

Rating: 10/20

Plot: A disgruntled high-ranking marine steals some Gungun bombs and heads over to Alcatraz, now a tourist attraction. He kidnaps a handful of tourists and threatens to use his new biological weapon if he's not sent a zillion dollars. Chemical weapons expert Nicolas Cage and prison-escape expert Sean Connery, the latter being the only man to ever escape from the titular rock, sneak onto the island with some Navy Seals to try to thwart the terrorist's plans.

OK. Rest assured I really pay attention any time Nicolas Cage is on the screen, and that's doubly true when there's a Nicolas Cage sex scene. Some things I've noted: all the Nic Cage sex scenes I can remember feature The Jackhammer or Cowgirl, woman-on-top for you squares. And Nic always has a look on his face like he doesn't really care what's going on. In The Rock, he gets to be bored by coitus with somebody named Vanessa Marcil after telling her that "Pigtails are naughty, naughty, naughty" in an accent that could have been an audio outtake from Vampire's Kiss, a much better Nicolas Cage movie in which he gets to be bored by The Jackhammer while the Cowgirl devours his neck.

When Cage the actor doesn't know what to do but knows his character is a little ticked off, he reaches for the best tool in his repertoire: the blah blah blah blah blah (dramatic pause) BLAH BLAH, enunciating each blah and screaming each BLAH like he's trying to melt your face off.

"This isn't HAPPENING!"
"What do you say we cut the chit-chat (dramatic pause) A-HOLE?!" I'm not censoring that. He actually said "A-HOLE?!"
"What do you say you cut me some (dramatic pause) FRIGGIN' SLACK?!"
"How in the name of (short dramatic pause) ZEUS'S BUTTHOLE. . ."
"It might help our current situation (big dramatic pause) MAYBE!"

He throws in a few well-goshes like he's Keanu Reeves, and with his older thespian peers, plows through some really predictable and clumsy dialogue and some silly jokes. Speaking of his co-stars, I've got to admit that I don't actually like Sean Connery most of the time or Ed Harris almost all of the time. Ed Harris is a lame bad guy, and the writers of The Rock (an anthropomorphic cash register and an anthropomorphic stick of dynamite) apparently decided that making him and his motivations really inconsistent would help give his character some depth. Sean Connery looks like he's in this just to collect his paycheck as he stumbles through some jerky handheld action sequences and manages to survive, as you know he would since his face is really big on the poster, while improbabilities are piled on more improbabilities. Gigantic action, a gigantic Hans Zimmer score, gigantic sound effects, and gigantic special effects might have some people reaching for their popcorn, but it just makes me wonder how in the name of Zeus's butthole anybody could forgive the predictability and cliches enough to give this action clunker a passing grade.

I apologize for all the Nicolas Cage sex talk. I'll try to control myself as the Summer of Nicolas Cage continues.

Summer of Nicolas Cage Movie #10: Vampire's Kiss

1988 vampire comedy

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A guy who works at a publishing company is bitten by a vampire woman and then gradually turns into a vampire himself. Or does he? Can his psychologist help him in time or is the poor guy doomed?

What's with Nic Cage's inconsistent accent in this movie? Is he supposed to be English? Whose idea was it to have his character talk with an accent? That's your first thought as you watch Vampire's Kiss, a movie that features a Nicolas Cage performance that might be second only to Deadfall in a Wacky Cage Performance competition. If you haven't seen Deadfall yet, by the way, check it out immediately. Vampire's Kiss is stuffed with Nicolas Cage moments. Observe and be aware that there are probably numerous spoilers:

At the 4:04 mark, you get to see Cage put some moves on a floozy while Stevie Wonder looks on.
6:08--He drunkenly removes a coat and throws it as only Nicolas Cage can throw a coat.
7:00--Dress shoes with no socks, Nic? Classy!
7:34--Cage says, "Shoo! Shoo!" followed by one of the greatest man vs. bat scenes you will ever see in a movie. This is the point in the movie when I got my first boner.
8:04--The way Cage flicks his hair back here. Movie magic!
8:19--Cage demonstrates that he can't laugh like a normal person. At 8:28, he repeats the exact same laugh.
10:01--Cage changes his accent three or four times in one monologue. Let's see Jimmy Stewart do that!
13:03--"Holy shit."
13:24--Cage's character admits to his psychologist that he was aroused by the bat that entered his apartment. It makes me feel better about being aroused by the scene.
15:06--Cage checks himself out in a mirror (the first of many mirror scenes) while the soundtrack to every single 80's movie plays in the background.
16:33--Cage puts the moves on another lady, showing off that irresistible Coppola charm. With the accent!
18:38--Some scatting--"Digga digga digga digga duh duh duh." Awesome.
19:37--"I gotta take a piss." It might be all about the context here, but this line made me crack up.
20:32--We hear Cage's character's answering machine message. It reveals that he can't even make something like that sound normal. It's not the answering machine message of a human being. It's one of a god.
21:13--"Yeah, well fuck you too, sister!" This is how I want to end all of my conversations.
21:55-22:48--Possibly the best dialogue in the history of film, mostly about how "drunk and horny" Cage's character was.
23:32--"Tuesday!" Again, it's all about the context. Poor Alva, by the way.
25:09--A big Nicolas Cage point! If you saw it, you'd recognize it from a few other movies. And with it, a classic Nicolas Cage delivered line: "Am I getting through to you. . . Alva?!"
26:05--"Fucking grease hole!"
26:18--Cage's character is in pain. What's the best way to show that? A rapid biting motion.
26:35--Just when you're wondering if this movie can get any better, it adds mimes. Freakin' mimes!
30:36--Cage's character is nervous and frightened. What's the best way to show that? Rapid head nodding and slamming.
31:56--Close your mouth, Nicolas Cage!
32:36--He develops a speech impediment. Alva! Maybe the whole accent thing is actually supposed to be a speech impediment, too.
33:10: A hop on a desk and another point. Two Nicolas Cage points in less than twenty minutes? I'm surprised the world didn't end.
33:34--Old lady in bathroom. "What are you doing in here?" What a cameo! Helen Lloyd Breed, you just might win yourself a shane-movies blog award at the end of the year for that work.
35:09--Weren't sure about whether Nicolas Cage could laugh normally before? Here's more evidence that he can't.
35:55--Another fight scene, this time with paper. Man vs. paper!
36:24--The fight continues with everything else in his apartment. Man vs. stuff in his apartment!
39:46--I know I've said this a lot before, but here is truly the greatest dialogue ever written, ending in Cage's infamous recitation of the ABC's. No other actor in Hollywood, living or dead, could do this. This scene alone is all the proof you need that Nicolas Cage is the greatest actor of all time.
40:06--"I never misfiled anything! Not once! Not one time!" Again, it's all about the context, but the way he crosses his arms and then quickly puts his hands on his hips, it's probably a plot-hole that his character wasn't institutionalized right away. Cage is so good with over-the-top mannerisms.
41:38--Mescaline? Geez.
43:45--Pause the movie here! Gaze into Nicolas Cage's crazy eyes and completely lose your mind! You will never recover. Never! By the time you push play again, you will also be a vampire.
47:00--You get to watch a bit of another vampire classic, Nosferatu. Keep Max Shreck's movements and body language in mind because it'll make Nic's imitation of him later that much sweeter.
48:28--More scatting and an invitation into Cage's shower. It seems like the scatting would scare most females away.
48:59--More mirror action with a great Nicolas Cage expression as he touches the glass.
49:30--Nicolas Cage eats a live cockroach. Ho hum.
51:19--Exaggerated whistling during a search through a Rolodex.
52:00--I required a break and took a long nap. When I woke up, the moon was gone and it was Tuesday! And a tumor on my back had tripled in size! I do not think this was a coincidence!
55:40--Worst fake puking I think I've ever seen, more golden because it follows some unintelligible yelping.
1:00:03--No reflection! Now we know why those other weird mirror shots were there. This movie is genius! "Oh Christ! Oh Christ! Oh, God! Where am I? Where am I?" This piece of brilliance is punctuated with the words of a disgruntled guy trying to take a dump. Movie magic!
1:00:58--Surely this movie can't get better, can it? Now Nic is doing this weird hiccup thing and holding his arms like he's a bunny.
1:03:23--Head bobbin' and the lamest chase scene down a stairwell that I've ever seen.
1:04:30--I'm laughing at a rape threat! This movie has turned me inside-out. But it was a rape threat made with a wagging tongue.
1:04:45--Another big fight scene, this time demonstrating the inner conflict going on with Cage's character. He begins slapping himself. That's right--man vs. his own palm. There will be no winner.
1:06:08--Ba-hoo! And in case you missed the genius of the Ba-hoo! the first time, Cage repeats the Ba-hoo! at 1:06:14. I pause the movie to Ba-hoo! a few times myself. I become one with Nicolas Cage and the cosmos smiles down upon me.
1:06:49--"I'm a vampire! I'm a vampire! I'm a vampire!" It's hard for me to believe that there are some people who will watch this movie and not realize it's a comedy.
1:07:01--More home destruction.
1:09:30--Nic Cage attempts to eat a pillow.
1:10:38--A phone freak-out. And a Nicolas Cage freak-out is always worth watching, probably twice.
1:11:38--I missed a portion of this scene where Cage's character buys some vampire costume teeth because I had fallen to the floor, drooling. It ends with a classically comic "I will take the plastic" that is hilarious in context. There's a great skipping-alternating-with-jogging thing that makes me giggle.
1:12:35--Now he's talking with inserted plastic teeth and that silly accent? Did this movie just get even more magical? Hell yes, it did!
1:13:49--Bird chase!
1:17:45--And now we have Nosferatu at the discotheque.
1:24:02--Nosferatu freaks out at the discotheque! "I'm a vampire. I can prove it!"
1:24:57--There's a rambling, likely improvised monologue that is mostly about the sun but for whatever reason contains the line "She's just a high school cunt." Then, the sun!
1:26:52--Cage flamboyantly finds himself a stake and tries to have somebody kill him.
1:27:24--I swear to God that I'm not making this line up--"Me vampire!"
1:27:53--Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh! I am vibrating internally at this point.
1:29:04--He runs into a wall. That's always funny enough, but then Cage's character starts a lengthy conversation with it. Touching stuff.
1:30:57--Another actor laughs at Nicolas Cage's performance.
1:32-59--Channeling Keanu--Whoa! Nosferatu as a skateboard punk?
1:35:09--"Born in Philadelphia"? What?
1:36:00--A "conversation" with Sharon--wow. The mannerisms. The voice. This is tragic, comic, and hallucinatory. I have urinated in my pants at least two times and didn't even realize it.
Last line--Ohhhh! I cry uncontrollably, stuff myself into a mini-fridge for an hour, and emerge again to start the movie all over again.

Dead Alive

1992 zombie funk

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A nuts monkey captured on Skull Island (probably not that Skull Island) winds up in a zoo where it bites a woman and turns her into a zombie. Her son, poor Lionel, has to take care of her while trying to nurture a new relationship with the gal who works at the market. It doesn't get any easier for Lionel as his mom begins to infect other people.

Peter Jackson's best movie? None of those Hobbit movies or the King Kong remake even had a guy using a lawnmower as a weapon. Discuss in the comments below.

If this had been around for me to see in high school, it probably would have been my favorite movie, something I could watch back-to-back with Evil Dead II whenever I needed to fulfill my splatter-comedy needs. This is definitely splattabulous, splatrageous, and splatterific, a lot bloodier than anything Raimi will ever do. It pushes the envelope and then pushes it more, pushing it so that it goes all the way through some guy's skull so that his brains and blood stain the walls. Does it straddle the line between violence and humor? No. It sort of stomps all over the line until the blood and laughs fuse together into this scrambled mess of joke-telling bowels and slapstick viscera. I felt completely silly doing it, but I laughed out loud so much as I watched this in the wee hours while lying in bed that I woke up my poor wife a few times. And I'll admit that it didn't feel right to answer her "What's so funny?" with "Oh, this character is throwing around this zombie baby!" or "Intestines are chasing a guy around his house!" The amount of gore in this thing has to be seen to be believed, and just when I think I've seen a zombie die in the most bizarre or creative way possible, Jackson gives me something even more ridiculous to see. A mind that conceives some of the imagery in this has to be a deranged one. Dead Alive (or Braindead elsewhere) has nothing at all to say about society. It makes no grand statements and really doesn't even tell its story all that well. But from the appearance of the stop-motion (?) monkey to the thrilling and sloppy climax, this doesn't let up, assaulting the senses with the most creative gore you're likely to see and some sick, sick laughs. Recommended to film lovers who haven't grown up yet or anybody who wants to see what Peter Jackson was up to before he started filming endless scenes of Hobbits and elves walking around.

Summer of Nicolas Cage Movie #8: 8MM

1999 thriller

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Surveillance expert Tom Welles is hired by an old lady to find out if a "snuff film" discovered in her late husband's safe is real or not. Welles gets help from an LA porn peddler, and clues begin pointing to one particular purveyor of violent pornography. It's a long and winding and especially dangerous road.

Bonus points awarded for the loud use of Aphex Twin's "Come to Daddy" near the end and for Peter "Karl Hungus" Stormare, my other favorite actor. Lebowski, Prison Break, "Slippery Pete" in one of my favorite Seinfeld episodes, Carl's partner in Fargo. He's even in Bergman's Fanny and Alexander. You can go ahead and argue that the guy doesn't deserve a lifetime achievement award of some kind, but you will lose. He gets to show off his character acting chops with a great character here, the sleazy Dino Velvet. He has this ability to deliver a line in a way that makes it seem like the greatest writing ever. And his final lines? I don't want to spoil anything, but he's got a great death scene in this. Acting legend Nicolas Cage is fairly subdued here, and there isn't anything I'd call one of those Nicolas Cage Moments I really enjoy. Cage is actually one of the most realistic things about the movie which probably means there's a problem with the other characters, the story, etc. His protagonist is a flawed thriller hero; he doesn't have his priorities straight, he makes more than a few mistakes, and he isn't afraid to weep. He's also more brains than brawn, and it's fun to watch him work. I also liked Joaquin Phoenix as the wonderfully named Max California, and James Gandolfini is always kind of fun. 8MM's story gets darker and darker as it goes along, sending Tom Welles on a downward spiral of perversion, degradation, and violence. The movie's got a layer of grit and sleaze that keeps it intriguing even if it's not always that realistic or if it starts to fall to pieces by the end. There was probably a missed opportunity in here to make a statement about exploitation in cinema, but the writers apparently didn't want to go there.

Wow. I just did a little research and discovered that this has Torsten Voges in it. Who? Why, he's another one of Lebowski's nihilists. That's two-thirds of the nihilists! I'll have to watch this again to see if there's a Flea cameo I missed.

The Draughtsman's Contract

1982 Peter Greenaway movie

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Mr. Neville, the titular Draughtsman, is hired by the wife of a rich guy to draw twelve sketches of his property while her husband is away. The price? Twelve sexual favors, the going rate in 17th Century England. As he sketches, he begins to unravel some secrets about the family, secrets that gradually start to involve him.

I've probably pointed this out before, but I'm not really smart enough to be watching Peter Greenaway movies. I just pretended to like The Falls because it was the first year of this blog's existence, and I wanted all the readers I was going to have to be impressed with my intellect. Other Greenaway movies fly so far over my feeble head that I can't enjoy them at all. And sometimes, they just have too much of Ewan McGregor's penis. This one fogged up the brain, but I enjoyed its characters, their period dialogue as ornamental and frilly as their garden and wardrobes, and the way Greenaway frames his scenes. This is Greenaway's first narrative film, and he came out with his ideas guns blazing. I've criticized him for having way too many ideas, being so intellectually gloopy that there's no way the average person can connect to his movies, but there's something comforting in knowing that the artsy-fartsiness hasn't been something that developed over time but that existed right from the get-go. This puzzling little movie reminded me a lot of Last Year at Marienbad, a riddle that was a favorite from a couple years ago. Like that movie, there's nothing happening that is all that bizarre (most of the movie is a guy drawing sketches with Peter Greenaway's hand) but their interactions just don't seem right. Of course, this movie does have a statue that walks around or sometimes urinates. You can add "Peeing Statue Man" to my list of Favorite Characters Who Don't Get Any Lines. Michael Nyman provides the score. It's a gorgeous and strange film that might give you the most enjoyable headache you'll ever have. Surprisingly, there's not much nudity at all, so you perverts looking for that sort of thing should find something else to watch. Actually, almost all of you should find something else to watch.

Summer of Nicolas Cage Movie #5: Drive Angry

2011 3D mayhem!

Rating: 6/20

Plot: John Milton (oh, geez) is angry as he drives in search of some devil worshippers who killed his daughter and are about to sacrifice his granddaughter. Oh, and he escaped from Hell. That might be a spoiler. Sorry about that. Milton meets a waitress, kills her fiance with an air conditioner, and takes her along on the trip. Meanwhile, a mysterious man known as The Accountant pursues Milton while he pursues the devil worshippers. Cue "Yakety Sax"!

There's a muffin reference in this one.

This movie assaulted me--throwing slow-motion bullets, coins, flying cars, baseball bats, severed fingers, pieces of glass, blood, and whatever else its makers could find into my living room. Because you see, just having all hell breaking lose is fine, but it's really nothing compared to having all hell break lose in 3D! I mean, did I enjoy watching William Fichtner of Prison Break walking toward me? Sure, but when I imagine what I missed by not seeing him walk toward me in 3D, it makes me. . .well, angry. And then it makes me want to drive. Angry. By the way, should I penalize this movie for having a grammar error in the title? It should be Drive Angrily. This is the type of movie that doesn't care about that though, the type that if you tried to correct its grammar would get all in your grill and say, "What are you? A fucking English teacher or something?" It's also the type of movie that would probably pick fights with other movies. "You think you're bad ass or something, Real Steel? Watch me throw a car over the side of this bridge! Woooooooooo!" I swear to God that I'm not making this up, but Drive Angry actually threw a punch at me while I was watching. Luckily, I had just bent down to grab an ink pen that I had dropped, and the punch didn't connect. It would have hurt, too, because Drive Angry's fist was all on fire and made of iron. My whole face would have probably exploded! Just the soundtrack of this movie could probably kick your ass. "Raise a Little Hell," a classic played during an opening scene where Nicolas Cage's character shoots a guy's hand off (right into your lap thanks to 3D technology) while things explode and "Fuck the Pain Away," another aggressive song that's played minutes before a scene where a guy punches a naked woman. I need to buy the soundtrack because it would be perfect for times when I need to drive angrily. Or as William Fichtner describes Nicolas Cage: "Angry with attitude." Fichtner's easily the best thing about this movie, by the way. His character doesn't make a lot of sense, but he's kind of cool, and Fichtner understands that he's playing a comic character. The guy who plays the leader of the Satan worshippers (Billy Burke, apparently taking a break from those teenage vampire movies) is really awful. He's got an unidentifiable accent and looks like he's auditioning for a David Copperfield biopic or something. And our hero, Nicolas Cage? Well, this isn't his best performance, and I'm surprised his skull wasn't on fire in this movie. For the most part, he looks exactly like he does on the poster up there--angry. I did like his aggressive-kiss-coffee-drink move though, and there's a great scene in a hotel room where he simultaneously smokes a cigar, drinks whiskey from the bottle, has sexual intercourse, and kills a bunch of Satan worshippers who are attacking him with garden utensils. In case I wasn't clear--that's all happening at the same time. I imagine it's pretty close to Nicolas Cage's honeymoon actually.

My favorite Cage line: "It's still in there. The bullet. I can feel it."

Back to the 3D thing. The ways the makers of Drive Angry try to take advantage of the technology is laughable. The CGI in this movie is some of the worst I have ever seen, and I wonder if it wouldn't look as bad in a theater with the 3D glasses. It wouldn't have come close to saving this movie though. But the next time I have an opportunity to see a Nicolas Cage movie in 3D, I'm watching it with aviator goggles.

Heavy Traffic

1973 cartoon for adults

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Michael Corleone (why does that name seem familiar?) lives in a too-tiny apartment in New York City with his parents. When he's not working on his pinball wizard skills, he spends his time huddled over a desk sketching the humans he's interacted with on the city streets, including his parents. He's an underground comic, and that's what they do. He befriends an African American prostitute.

I don't know. I definitely felt a little dirty after watching this. Heavy Traffic is the kind of cartoon you have to wash off yourself if you see it. I guess that's an appropriate feeling when you watch an X-rated cartoon though. This is Ralph Bakshi, the guy who did Fritz the Cat, those Lord of the Rings cartoons, and the terribly boring Wizards. It's more similar to the raunchiness of Fritz than the fantasy stuff though unless there's some scene in Lord of the Rings where Frodo exposes himself to a goblin that I'm forgetting about. It really makes Bakshi seem misanthropic. He draws all these oddly-proportioned grotesque exaggerations of pimps, hookers, bums, and con artists. It's those seedy characters you can't really find in a metropolitan area unless you find a rock and flip it over. The animation style's straight from the unsavory 1970s for the most part, characters who move around like they're a member of Fat Albert's posse or are on their way to sing a School House Rocks type song instructing children on how to dispose of a prostitute's corpse, how to know when you're a dope fiend, or where to hide your pornography. There's also a fair amount of experimentation with a mix of live action and the animation. Seeing Bakshi's completely unnatural characters walking against photographs of the city streets does look pretty cool actually, and I liked some of that 70's funkadelica when the animator's shapes and colors go completely nuts. This is a little uneven and wears out its welcome before its seventy-six minutes or so are up, but it's not a bad little cult cartoon flick.

Black Swan

2010 ballet movie

Rating: 17/20 (Jen: 15/20)

Plot: Man! Ballet competition is cut throat! Nina is an aspiring ballerina with an overprotective mother. She's also an aspiring drug addict/lesbian. And she's got poison ivy or something. She finally lands a coveted role--Donkey Girl in The Fragrant Codpiece--but begins to lose her mind with the pressures that come with the approaching performance, the demands of the oozing director, and the catty remarks of her jealous colleagues.

Wait a second. Darren Aronofsky is just making the same movie over and over again. Isn't this The Wrestler in tights? Or maybe it's a The Wrestler/Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo hybrid. This should get bonus points for making ballet intriguing. I didn't think I was liking this movie much, but I'm a sucker for folks-losing-their-minds movies or these movies about artistic obsessions, and this one just kept getting better and better. And on any given day, the little Aronofsky tricks to make the experience of gracefully losing one's mind might be too much, but on the particular day, this was a thrill ride of emotions, a visceral and downright haunting experience. My movie-watching companion was freaked out, and at times this does grab you the way a classy horror movie might. Aronofsky distracts with lesbian action, writhing Natalie Portmans, some modern effects that seem straight out of a comic book superhero movie, and some difficult-to-watch body scenes. But the themes addressed are universal, and the story is complex enough to keep the mind involved throughout. Natalie Portman can do more than writhe. She can also look happy, look sad, and moan, and she does all that like an Oscar award winner should. And I know there's a bit of controversy about how much ballet dancing she actually did, but whatever amount of this was her was impressive. A lot of times, it's hard to buy the main character as a great musician or great athlete, especially if they're supposed to represent the very best. I was never not convinced that Nina was the best little swan princess around. And, as a bonus, she writhes! The structure of this is like a powerful rock song. It develops slowly and then reaches this amazing crescendo, all crashing emotions and flurries of intense beauty, perfectly aided by the score, mostly (appropriately)from Swan Lake. And it all looks so good. Aronofsky uses so much blacks and whites that it might as well be a black and white movie, and when you do get some other colors thrown in, especially during the climactic moments of both the movie and the ballet, it's almost shocking. Black Swan isn't perfect, but it's the perfect example of a movie that you finish with your mouth wide open and one that you can't quite shake from your head for a few hours afterward.

Basket Case

1982 horror sleaze

Rating: 10/20

Plot: Duane travels to the big city with a basket containing the lumpy blob of a brother who was formerly attached to him. They're not there to sightsee though. Oh, no. They're on a mission of revenge to kill off all those responsible for separating them. But Duane finds love, and brother Belial isn't happy about it at all.

What percentage of female first-time viewers of Basket Case (to be honest, I can't imagine there are many female fans of this movie) watch and just pray that there will be a Bilial sex scene somewhere in the sleaze? They'll get their wish with what will undoubtedly win my annual "Sex Scene of the Year" award. As a guy who enjoys both puppets and stop-motion, there's no way that I'm not going to enjoy Bilial. This is one of the cheapest movies you'll ever see, but it's got this grimy style and filthy charm that, although not something that will appeal to everybody, puts this a notch above its landfill-dwelling brethren. The most obvious thing you have to overlook is some of the worst acting ever. Kevin Van Hentenryck, the guy who plays Duane, is like a poor man's Bud Cort, and the periphery characters (mannish prostitutes, hotel managers, shady doctors) are played by actors/actresses who are each worse than the one who preceded them. Bad acting can be entertaining, but the stuff in this crosses a line into a new level of bad. I really enjoyed some over-the-top sound effects and a really weird soundtrack. There's a funny "woo-woo-woo" thing during a scene when the camera reveals an empty basket (Woo woo woo!), and the exaggerated squishes, wickery creaks, and audible drooling give this a disgusting edge. Basket Case isn't played 100% straight, and I laughed most during some flashback scenes, including an operation scene with some hilarious dubbing. This has enough sticky violence, creative garbage cinematography, and fun for somebody in just the right mood.

I'm pretty sure most of the budget for this one was spent on the basket, by the way. It's a pretty nice basket.

The Lickerish Quartet

1970 sex comedy

Rating: 11/20

Plot: In their big fancy castle, a middle-aged married couple watch a pornographic movie with their twenty-something son. The son objects; the father cracks jokes. Eventually, they decide to get out and walk to a carnival where they enjoy the stunt driving of a trio of motorcyclists. When the female driver removes her helmet, they recognize her as one of the actresses in the movie they were watching. At least they think it's her. Naturally, they take her back to the castle, have some really awkward conversations, and then show her the pornographic movie. The next morning [Spoiler Alert!], they all have sex with her. Individually, of course, because together would just be disturbing.

Came across this title in a "Cult Movies" book, and I can't say I'm really glad I did. It drools like the 1970s, weirdly alternating between jerk-off material smuttage to pretentious dick-with-the-audience arthouse flick. It's an Italian movie, and it has the feel of one even though the dialogue's in English. The acting is stilted, forced and awkward, and the writing doesn't help the actors out much. Observe:

Girl: Who has the gun?
Father: What gun?
Girl: To do the shooting?
Father: There isn't going to be any shooting.
Girl: Of course there is.
Father: Of course there isn't!

Actually, with dialogue like that, it's hard to imagine that this isn't a comedy. An artsy erotic comedy! I actually did laugh quite a bit if you stretch your definition of "laugh" to include scrunching up one's face and saying, "What the hell?" I really liked the father's butterfly joke and its subsequent no-reaction. And I agree with the father that watching erotic movies in reverse and at a higher speed is worthy of a hearty guffaw. And how can you really hate a movie with a magic show, a motorcycle stunt scene, a spirited game of hide and seek, and a shot of a python swallowing a baby pig? You can't. I won't complain about the nudity either. Star Silvana Venturelli's easy on the eyes. The taste I can't wash out of my eyes, however, is the visual of the father and the visitor rolling most unerotically on a library floor that happens to have the definitions of sexual terms all over it. That was following the foreplay which consisted of the couple throwing books at each other and the father resenting his son. Yeah, it's that kind of movie. Awesome song during that scene though, all layered psychedelic guitar noodling. There's some neat elements here, but the pretentious camera play, random shots of feet and people falling down the stairs, World War flashbacks, and the overuse of visual motifs just scream artsy-fartsy. It was like director Radley Metzger decided he better make The Lickerish Quartet artistic or risk offending his mother and, after realizing he had no story whatsoever, decided to just befuddle the audience by blending present and past, reality and fantasy, motorcycles and shadow puppets. "See, Mom? It's not pornographic. It's Art!" Unfortunately, the pseudo-intellectual erotic mess it adds up to is no more intelligent than the erotic mess I made while watching it.

How about that tagline, by the way? "Beyond the physical edge. . ."

Taxidermia

2006 family comedy

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Three generations of men who abuse their bodies--a chronic masturbator, a competitive eater, and a taxidermist. A rooster refuses to just be an innocent bystander, a love triangle ensues, and the gaunt guy's grown tired of feeding a bean bag chair with a face.

Need proof that I'm not just a man but a man's man, a man with a golden stomach, and a man with intestinal fortitude? I ate while watching Taxidermia. Had an entire meal, enjoyed a second helping, and munched on a few sunflower seeds. I don't think you could do that. No, that's not an official challenge because I'm not sure you should actually see this movie. Within the first minute of the movie, a guy dabbles in a little foreplay with a candle before pleasuring himself autoerotically, the scene (and the character) climaxing with the ejaculation of fire. Four feet of firey jism! That's in the first minute! It's that type of movie. By the time you get to the competitive eating and subsequent ring of barfing and the Jabba the Hutt doppelganger and the artsy grotesque denouement, your quease organs are overworked and your lobe's been sufficiently stroked. Taxidermia, a film by my new favorite director Gyorgy Palfi (Hukkle), is like gross-out artsy-fartsiness, but it's undeniably shot beautifully. There's an absolutely stunning scene featuring a bathtub and another that starts with a pop-up book about a matchbook girl and ends with astronomical ejaculate. It's beautiful ugliness, and even though the visuals are firmly in the "Not for Very Many People" category, it's impossible to deny that they're artistic. And memorable. I also really liked Taxidermia's score. The movie's also very very funny in very very sick ways, and if that's your bag, then there might be something for you in Taxidermia. Actually, I'm not even sure that's entirely true. I just know that when I think of a scene featuring a hole, lubricant, and a rooster makes me chuckle and then immediately feel dirty. But what's it all about? Or is it about anything at all? Well, add it to the list of Eastern European funk that I don't think I can fully appreciate due to a lack of historical context. I wasn't even sure if Hungary was still a country. However, the more I thought about all this, the more it started to come together. And I read a message board post from a real Hungarian (they do still exist!) that really brought home the genius of this thing. Man, oh, man! I can't wait to see where Palfi goes from here. This guy's a force to be reckoned with!

Note: There were a few poster options I had with this one. One was an image from the fire ejaculation scene which I'm sure made tons of people want to see this movie.

8 Mile

2002 Perry Como biopic

Rating: 13/20

Plot: Li'l Bunny Man (or something) lives in a mobile home with his mother and a little girl who is either his sister or his daughter. He works a tedious job in a factory but has big dreams of somebody making it big as a lounge singer. He goes to his friend's club to participate in rap battles since that's apparently the only there anybody has to do in Detroit, but once on stage, he chokes every single time. Meanwhile, there's a mom's boyfriend, there's a girl, and there's a rival rap-battlin' gang who are up to no good. Where's the Insane Clown Posse when you need them?

This would be a better movie if they gave me some reason to care a little more. They almost got there. I felt for Eminem's character, ostensibly based on the real Eminem. He's set up as the underdog nicely enough, but I never really bought in to that conflict with the New World Order or whatever they were called, and his other girl problems, work problems, and mobile home problems just seemed too much like movie problems. When things really start to go downhill for Bunny Rabbit Boy, it's such a quick succession of troubles. Bam bam bam. Hardships hit the guy faster than his lyrical flow. Eminem the actor is fine, but (and keep in mind that I'm not a rap battlin' aficionado or anything) I really couldn't see how he was any better at the contest thingy than the other guys. Kim Basinger plays his mother like she's unsure about the character, and the late Brittany Murphy might as well have been made out of cardboard. The music's completely appropriate, and I'll let you decide for yourself whether or not I mean that as a positive or negative. I enjoyed watching 8 Mile despite its bordering on either a vanity project or either a rip-off or update of Saturday Night Fever. It almost felt inappropriate to watch this without my b-b-b-boogie shoes near the end. So there were lots of things I enjoyed about this movie, enough to make me glad I watched it, but there was also so much that just caused me to throw my hands in the air and wave them like I just don't care. And by the way, would you call that an indeterminate ending? Unless a sequel planned, it seems that this just leaves Li'l Foo Foo in a situation where he's going to get the crap beaten out of him again, right? I mean, he called them gay and all.

Note: I have informed my principal that I will not be returning next year because I'm going to try to start my career as a battle rapper. 8 Mile inspired me, but a fortune cookie confirmed that the decision was a good one. Wish me luck.

The Room

2003 masterpiece

Rating: 1/20

Plot: Johnny loves Lisa. He treats her right, too, promising her a bright future, bringing her flowers, and having some really awkward sex with some awful background music. But Lisa is sleeping with Johnny's best friend Mark on the side. Meanwhile there's Denny, a seemingly random kid, is having some problems with the drugs. There's no way things can end well. They sure didn't begin well. And the middle part? Yuck!

The Room is very much Tommy Wiseau's baby. He wrote, directed, and starred in the thing. He even put his big ol' face on the poster. Just look at him acting on that poster? Yes, he's that terrific the rest of the movie, especially if you're impressed with poorly-written lines spoken in this unidentifiable accent. It's a performance of Torgo Award proportions, and if this work of art--like a soap opera blended with the crafts of the mentally challenged--isn't the worst movie I see all year, I'll be surprised. This is trainwreck bad, from the opening badly-delivered line "Hey, Babe" spoken as our protagonist (the big face on the poster) walks into the room (variations of "Hey, Babe" are peppered throughout the dialogue, by the way) to the tragic denouement. The story's slow, most of the time threatening to go nowhere at all, yet it somehow still manages to meander like with the superfluous subplot with Denny, a subplot that I don't believe was every resolved. You also get a whole bunch of scenes with characters playing catch with footballs while standing about seven feet from each other. It reminds me of a middle school play production where the director decides he doesn't want the performers to just stand there and deliver lines and feels the need to give them something random to do. These characters sure loved their football though. Apparently, this has grown into a Rocky Horror type cult flick where people go to midnight screenings dressed as the characters. They throw plastic spoons at the screen and toss footballs around while wearing tuxedos. The spoon thing, by the way, is because there are these odd framed pictures of spoons decorating the room. No, not that room. Another room. Actually, I don't even know why this movie is called The Room. Wiseau said it's because he wants his audience to feel comfortable or something, but he also said that his characters play football in the movie because it's fun and a real challenge without the proper equipment. And he apparently claimed that the whole thing was meant as a comedy all along which might make him a genius. All I know is that I really enjoyed watching The Room, and it got more laughs out of me than any Steve Martin movie I've ever watched. And I'm not the type of person who generally finds continuity errors the first time I see a movie, but there's a great one early in this involving an apple, a Denny, and a staircase that is too obvious not to miss. My favorite line (contender for line of the year): "Hi, doggy."

I think all of my readers should see this movie as soon as possible. You can thank me later.

Hukkle

2002 new favorite movie contender

Rating: 17/20

Plot: A very old, very wrinkled man has the hiccups or, as some people spell it, hiccoughs. Meanwhile, life and death go on around him. Pigs have sex. A shepherdess is leered at. Insects do insect things, and a policeman urinates. And oh, snap! Redrum! Redrum! Hiccup. Hiccup. Hiccup. Hiccup. Hiccup. Hiccup. Hiccup. Hiccup. Hiccup.

Sometimes I take notes on the movies I watch, especially when I get behind and know I'll forget something when I finally get around to writing about it. I wrote "Fahrtmester" in my notes for Hukkle, and apparently that was important enough to draw a box around. Fahrtmester. I don't know what that's about.

I do know that I loved this movie. I tried to watch it about a week before I did, but my wife was annoyed with the repetitious sound of the hiccuping guy. The titular hukkle, I guess. And you do get to see this heavily-wrinkled, half-grinning old man hiccup more than you can probably tolerate it. But that hukkle is just one of a flurry of sound effects. I can't remember a movie I've seen like this where the sound effects are at least as important as the visuals. There's this musicality or rhythm to the sounds going on in this nowhere village, and although there's almost no dialogue in this movie, there's plenty to listen to. Not to say the visuals aren't important or impressive because they are. There are a lot of "special effects" in this movie, things that made me wonder how the heck they pulled it off. There are lots of bug close-ups, recalling Microcosmos actually, and a whole lot of scenes where animals are in places where I don't think the animals would want to be. And there's that aforementioned pig sex scene if that's your thing. There's one scene during what I initially thought was an earthquake--it wasn't--that was really cool despite some dopey CGI. I also liked some stylish scenes involving an x-ray and some gyrating foliage that I liked even though they kind of clashed with the simple nature of the rest of the film. This is a sneaky film, one where nothing significant seems to be going on. You've got the hiccuper, a ladybug flying from a shepherdess to her stalker's nose, a bunch of insects, some guys bowling, that large-balled pig, a dying cat, a urinating policeman, a frog, somebody watching a soap opera. You almost just give up trying to find a plot, but then there's a striking imagery that reminds you that big things usually happen in movies and you start to piece together the clues and it's all so quietly shocking that you almost poop in your pants. I loved it, and the parts of me that loved it are the same parts that love the work of Jacques Tati and Twin Peaks. And movies with close-ups of insects.

See this one, Fahrtmesters! And when you do, stick with it and let it seep into your pores.

Tetsuo, the Iron Man

1993 mind warper

Rating: 16/20

Plot: The titular man accidentally runs over a guy who likes to stick metal rods into his legs. Later, metal starts growing from him including an awesome penis drill. He begins to become more metal than man, and not only will it hurt his relationship with his girlfriend, it might ruin his entire life.

"You want a taste of my sewage pipe?"

Like Eraserhead at twice the speed, a comical nightmare, or vile outsider art, this is very likely the strangest movie I've ever seen. That's saying something. There's not much dialogue in this, something else it has in common with Eraserhead, but at one point, a character says, "What's going on here?" and then, while breaking into tears, "What the fuck is this?" I can imagine that the majority of viewers would be thinking the same exact thing, and honestly, a lot of them would also probably feel like crying. I give it bonus points for sheer audacity, but there's also a thrill in the innovative camera work and effective imagery and atmosphere. Director (and star) Shinya Tsukamoto manages to create something that uniquely creates these moods that you really have trouble labeling. It's foreboding and troubling, but always with some dark humor built in. I'm not familiar with anything else he's done, but with what I'm guessing isn't much of a budget, he auteur-istically brings his wacko vision to life. Chases with lobster-clawed women, rocket heels, metal phalluses, metallic chewing noises, chipmunk laughs, hulking metal men, robot porn. It's demanding stuff, a movie a lot of people wouldn't be able to watch much of, but if you're in the right frame of mind and enjoy the wildly experimental, this could be your favorite movie ever.

Cory, don't watch this one. I'm putting it on the anti-five list.

Nightbeast

1982 sci-fi horror movie

Rating: 4/20

Plot: An alien crashes in the woods, and some guys camping hear it. They investigate and are immediately lazered into oblivion. Who is going to stop the Nightbeast, a being impervious to bullets and seemingly unstoppable? Oh, and there's a Bad Fonzi character running around raping people. Somebody's also got to stop him.

Director Don Dohler directed The Alien Factor in 1978, but he apparently wasn't happy with it and thought he could do better. So just four years later, he remade the story as Nightbeast. If this movie actually is better, I wonder how bad The Alien Factor is. The first half of the movie is jam-packed with repetitive action scenes involving the monster shooting people and them disappearing with some graphics that look like something I could have seen while playing Atari as a kid. The spaceship scenes at the beginning were cheaply artistic. I was all ready to give the guy who played Uncle Dave the Torgo award for the year until I noticed that every single performer in this movie is almost as bad. I'm not sure I've seen a worst ensemble cast. Don Leifert played Bad Fonzi (actually, Drago) with a low-budget intensity that gave me chills, and I'm guessing, since a quick glance at his short resume shows that he only acts in movies from this same director, that he was either a good buddy of Don Dohler or they were both in some club for people named Don. And who do we get to be the big action hero who will eventually save the day? This guy:

That guy! He, by the way, only acted in one other movie--The Alien Factor. But Tom Griffith sure nailed this one, rocking that salt and pepper afro and shooting an insane amount of bullets at the monster during several scenes despite knowing that it has no effect. And to top it all off, he gets himself a sex scene! That's right. You get to see that guy's ass. If I made a top-ten list of awkward sex scenes, this would be in there somewhere. I have to give credit to Dohler for his ability to shock though. Along with that shocking sex scene, there are some pretty gruesome deaths. Well, after the thirty minutes of lazerin'. Intestines make a cameo appearance, and there's a nifty decapitation. Hell hath no fury like a rubber-faced alien scorned, I guess. If you like bad movies, this isn't a bad way to spend eighty minutes. Or three hundred and eighty minutes if you have to rewind and rewatch that sex scene a bunch of times like I did.

Hot Tub Time Machine

2010 time travel comedy

Rating: 8/20

Plot: A couple high school buddies take one of their nephews and another high school buddy who may or may not have attempted suicide to an old haunt to have a killer weekend. Things are depressing until they get the hot tub working. When an import energy drink is spilled on the hot tub controls, it sends the quartet back to the 1980s--the worst decade ever--and they are forced to relieve a vacation from the past in order to not screw up their futures.

Is it just me or does John Cusack look really really depressed. He's features are droopy, and he just looks like all the energy has been sapped from him. I'm worried about him. If working with Crispin Hellion Glover doesn't cheer you up, I don't see what will. Glover, by the way, is the only thing this movie has going for it. In fact, the only reason I finished the movie was because I knew Crispin Glover--America's finest actor--had more scenes. The first and sadly only laugh this movie got out of me was during a scene where Crispin Glover's character is unloading suitcases from a cart. The rest of the cast (other than the terminally-dejected Cusack) is enthusiastic enough, but they've got a script that was apparently written by teenage boys of below-average intelligence to work with. Chevy Chase takes away any bonus points Crispin Glover gets this movie. Craig Robinson from The Office is fine, and I suppose most fans of this movie will argue that Rob Corddry's idiocy is the funniest part of the movie. But the story is derivative (lots of Back to the Future parallels), the allusions are too contemporary to give this movie any legs, and it depends far too much on raunchiness. If any of it was funny at all, I could excuse all that. Unfortunately, this isn't even as funny as Somewhere in Time.

And seriously, somebody needs to help John Cusack before it's too late.

Microcosmos

1996 bug movie

Rating: 17/20 (Jen: 18/20)

Plot: Gnomes, I imagine, use very tiny cameras to record the goings-on of strange and colorful insects, some which I suspect don't really exist.

Has that perverse part of you that you don't want anybody to know about ever wanted to voyeuristically watch a couple snails knockin' coiled shells? Then, stop reading this and grab yourself a copy of Microcosmos immediately. This bug movie doesn't have the narrative structure of the recommended The Besieged Fortress, but it's got a lot more insect variety. It's the sort of thing where you think (a lot), "No, that bug doesn't actually exist. That's computer-animated!" and (a lot more), "What the hell are those bugs even doing?" Bugs are wacky, and this intimate glimpse into their world is an experience and a half. The images dropped my jaw, and several times, insects made it into my mouth while I watched Microcosmos. I suspect it's all part of a tiny conspiracy. It's fantastic stuff, and my only gripe was a theme song (lyrics below) which sounded like it was being sung by a dead child. It was in there three times, and although by the closing credits, I was singing along in a joking way, I was creeped out and couldn't sleep afterward. Hours later, it still reverberated in my noggin, and I had become convinced that I had become possessed by the "The Microcosmos Song" and had to find an exorcist in the yellow pages. That ended up being costly. Terrific movie though, so I guess it was worth it.

"Look at your feet
This funny world
Full of insane small creatures

And listen to
This buzzing chord
Who keenly spreads such keen murmurs.

The sound's buzzing, swarming,
Sliding beetles, snails, and ladybirds

On swarming grubs
On sliding ants.
Open your eyes before you die.

Sit on the grass,
Observe and paint
The toad, the wasp, the dragonfly.

The sound's buzzing, swarming,
Sliding beetles, snails, and ladybirds

On swarming grubs
On sliding ants.
Open your eyes before you die."

Little Children

2006 drama

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Sarah and Richard are in an unhappy marriage. Brad and Kathy are in their own unhappy marriage. Sarah is double-dog-dared by the other moms (creepy moms) at the park to get Brad's phone number. She does and in subsequent weeks, the two get closer and closer. Finally, on a rainy afternoon following the local pedophile's visit to the public pool, they decide to do the nasty. They do it, several times, sometimes while appliances are watching. Ex-cop Larry (yet another quality Larry in popular culture) has a personal vendetta with the local pedophile and leads a campaign to drive him out of town.

This was a really difficult movie to watch with a myriad of difficult and/or creepy scenes. I actually felt a little uncomfortable watching the dynamics between these characters. That was probably the point, so I guess director Todd Field was very successful. For whatever reason, by the way, I would have guessed that this was directed by a woman, but I've never known any women named Todd. The tone's consistently pessimistic, and there's not really a good guy in sight. The relationships between the sets of spouses are troubling. Brad and Sarah's adulterous relationship always seems a bit off (and is creepy with their kids always in close proximity), more cheap thrills or convenience territory than anything resembling love. Everything the ex-cop does is disturbing. And creepy pedophiles are really no good. This movie seems to be exploring the hypocrisy of suburbia and white middle class folk, and like a lot of contemporary movies that this sort of reminded me of that I didn't really like as much (Crash), it succeeds in making you point your finger at the characters and their dubious actions while simultaneously thinking about the shape of your own soul. And you get to see Kate Winslet naked again! I liked Jackie Earle Haley in his comeback role as the creepy pedophile although it's one of those characters that almost seems too easy. 1) Be thin. 2) Be balding. 3) Move awkwardly. 4) Win critical acclaim! That scene at the pool was especially chilling, as was a shocking finale, even though I saw it coming from a mile away with the (repeated?) mention of a key word early on. Strangely, a scene in which Winslet's character shows up surprisingly at one of Brad's late-night football games creeped me out even more though. Perhaps I'm missing something, but a lot of the dialogue and interactions with the characters didn't feel all that realistic, and I was left unfulfilled by the ending. Still, this troubling drama does a great job at holding a cracked mirror up to a fractured society. And, in case I didn't mention it, Kate Winslet's naked again.

I realize I used some variation of "creepy" in this a lot, but I'm not sure it can be overused in describing a movie like this. Cory recommended it. He's not really all that creepy.