Easy Rider

1969 hippie manifesto

Rating: 17/20

Plot: A couple hippies strike it rich with the resell of some cocaine. They decide to get on their motorbikes and travel across the country to New Orleans. Along the way, the meet some hippies, a bunch of people who don't like hippies, Jack Nicholson, and some whores. Then, they die.

I'd taken all these wonderful notes about Easy Rider, how it's a laid-back indictment of the American dream with a graceful and poetic narrative-within-the-narrative about the history of America and the failure of capitalism. Stuff about the symbolism of Captain America driving a motorcycle fueled by cash and how free sex is more pure than sex you have to pay for and how freely chasing your ideals will only get you shot by some rednecks. Or maybe it was wasting their freedom got them shot by the rednecks. It was great stuff, but you'll have to take my word that it existed because I ended up wadding it up and stuffing it down my pipe and smoking it. I like the three leads--nonchalant and doomed Peter Fonda as Wyatt, the continuously giggling Dennis Hopper as Billy, and the lively Jack Nicholson in that goofy football helmet. I also really like the look of this movie; Laszlo Kovacs' cinematography perfectly captures the American landscape and the mysteries of our past, working almost like a visual folklore. Although I think a lot of the scenes were filmed by stoned locals Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda encountered on the journey. Easy Rider takes a turn for the weird near the end during a cemetery acid trip scene, dating the movie somewhat but nevertheless a nice trippy diversion. This is a movie just flooded with music, probably too much, and people who don't like this movie very much will argue that in addition to the thing being a relic from an era they probably don't like much, about sixty percent of the movie consists of shots of the actors riding their motorcycles while flower power anthems blare. Fair enough, but it perfectly captures the moods and wasted ideals of the time, and if you look a little deeper, you'll see it's packed with meaning. One thing I can't stand though--the blinking transition thing. That's just irritating.

Santa Claus

1959 Mexican Santa Claus movie

Rating: 3/20 (Jen: 1/20 [fell asleep]; Emma: 2/20 [fell asleep]; Abbey: 10/20)

Plot: Pretty much your standard Christmas story. It's Christmas Eve and Santa Claus is somewhere in space or heaven overseeing his sweatshop while children from many different cultures help him prepare for his magical flight. Of course, Satan wants to stop him and sends demon Pitch to tempt kids to be naughty and kill Santa. And of course, Santa has to get help from Merlin the magician to survive the night and ensure that the nice children wake up with a living room full of presents. Even the poor little girl who just wants a freakin' doll!

You have to love a Christmas movie that has the ability to punish viewers who fall asleep while watching it with hellish nightmares of holiday demons and laughing reindeer robots. This is bizarre from the get-go. It starts with a seemingly endless scene with Santa playing an organ while showcasing the variety of countries that the jolly old elf has apparently kidnapped children from to work in his sweatshop. For a moment, I thought I was watching a live-action film based on Disney's "It's a Small World," something I'm sure is on the horizon. Each group of children got to sing a little song that sounded like it could have come from the country they represent, and my favorite was when the American children did "Mary Had a Little Lamb." Seriously? That's the song that best represents America? It's not even a Christmas song! The next scene takes the viewer naturally to hell where the "King of Hades" lights a firecracker and leads a poorly-choreographed dance. Then it's back to Santa where we get a chance to see just how he knows if you've been sleeping or if you've been awake or if you've been bad or good. Apparently, he's got a big machine with giant lips, a telescope with an eyeball, and a satellite thing with a human ear attached. The surreal props and goofy sets show some creativity, but it also makes it obvious that the people who made this thing only had a rudimentary understanding of Santa Claus. I mean, there aren't even elves and his four reindeer are clunky robots. Speaking of those robots, at one point one of them laughs (he he he ha he ha ha ha ho he) and it might be the scariest thing I've heard in my entire life. Santa's almost nonstop maniacal laughter (nonstop except when the devil is trying to murder him) isn't much better though. There's just so much about this movie that is so awkward, and a lot about this movie that is downright unsettling. A pair of dream sequences--one with giant dancing dolls and one with a kid who opens up coffin-like presents containing his parents--are just weird, and almost every scene with Pitch gave me the chills. Of course, Pitch was a poorly-costumed red-painted demon, so I guess that was the desired effect. One of the scariest moments was when the little poor girl was having a repetitive conversation with the devil about stealing a doll. She must have said "No, I don't want to do evil" five or six times. The good characters, absent-minded Merlin and a magic-key-making blacksmith, are fun. Merlin's got this weird bouncing gait that makes Torgo's walk look normal, and the blacksmith has some hair glued to his chest to, I guess, make him look more blacksmithy. Nobody's going to mistake this for a Miracle on 34th Street or an It's a Wonderful Life, but this just might be my new favorite Christmas movie. Like those movies, you get to learn beautiful lessons like how "a dream is a wish that the heart makes" or how people on earth eat "even smoke and alcohol." Fun for the whole family unless some of your family members would rather not have Satan anywhere near their Christmas entertainment.

The Importance of Being Earnest

1952 movie

Rating: 17/20 (Jen: dozed off)

Plot: Two rakish pals, Jack and Algernon, decide to both be Earnest instead in attempts to win the hearts of their beloved. Things get wild, and that pun, ladies and gentlemen, is intended.

When folks discuss using CGI to adapt or update older films or make brand new films with computer-generated John Waynes and Humphrey Bogarts, I always get really excited. I think that sounds like a terrific idea! I mean, they inserted John Wayne into a Coors beer commercial years ago. That was a turning point in my life actually, the exact moment when I decided I was going to start drinking. And I've never looked back. Technology could do wonders with this movie. For example, there are characters I'd really enjoy seeing naked in this movie, most obviously Edith Evans, and I think we're at a technologically-enlightened time when computer graphics geniuses should be able to handle something like that. And speaking of Edith Evans, her delivery of the line "A handbag?" is probably the most perfectly-delivered line I've ever heard, and all 17 rating points (I debated giving it a 17 1/2, but we don't do fractions here at shane-movies) are because of that line. No, that's not true. I liked the performances, almost universally, even though they reminded me of the staginess of movies from the 1930s. I was surprised at how funny this movie actually was, mostly that sophisticated kind of comedy where you don't want to laugh as much as you want to golf clap or chuckle inwardly or say, "I say, that certainly was witty," and then cough delicately into a napkin but not delicately enough to keep your monocle from falling off. The writing is clever and randy. I find it impossible to believe anybody ever talked like these characters do which really makes this, in my mind, the 1950s equivalent of the second Matrix movie except with much less kicking and punching. Maybe the CGI gurus could add some kicking and punching when they update this. This movie benefits from its simplicity. The Victorian setting is a colorful one, and my television screen was stuffed with lots of pretty things to look at, but theres' nothing really flashy or frilly with the direction so that we're focused on what we should be focused upon--these pretty ridiculous characters and their ridiculous dialogue. Satirical , still fresh, shaded with irony, and as expected with something that Oscar Wilde penned, intelligently funny, like verbal slapstick for stuffy squares.

Reportedly, this is Ass Masterson's third favorite movie. I wonder if this really is a link between the dastardly villain and Cory, who recommended it to me, or if I'm just being paranoid again.

Away We Go

2009 romantic comedy

Rating: 14/20 (Jen: fell asleep while we watched it, finished it the next day while I was at school, and then refused to rate it)

Plot: John and Maya, a seemingly happy couple happily living in sin, are expecting their first child. They convince themselves that they're not where they want to be to raise their child and go on a road trip all over America and Canada, meeting with friends and relatives to find the perfect place.

Cute little movie with likable leads and an assortment of quirky extras. I really want to call the movie "sweet" but I'm almost afraid that will offend the movie, and I wouldn't want that. John Krasinski is going to have a tough time shaking his character from The Office. Here, he plays a vulnerable guy, romantic in every sense of the word. It's not an entirely different character from his Jim but it's different enough, I guess. At least he's got a beard. Maya Rudolph--Minnie Ripperton's kid--is really good, too. She's not conventionally pretty, but she still exudes this cute vibe I kind of dig. She lacks a beard. Neither Krasinski or Rudolph over-do things here, and they bounce off each other naturally. The dialogue isn't natural at all, but I liked it. The movie was sneaky funny with the couple sort of playing straight man and woman to some terrifically goofy and sometimes terrible human beings. The majority of the side characters don't seem realistic at all, and it almost works to make the movie seem more like a parable than an attempt at verisimilitude. This movie's got its share of bigger names in some of those almost-cameo roles, and there are some very funny performances in there. I really liked what this movie had to say about trying to make it in a world that is kind of ugly, and I thought the ending really nailed it.

Kairow recommended this movie when we saw Jimmy Tupper vs. the Goatman of Bowie. And it's not even based on a comic book!

I Love You, Man

2009 movie that Cory didn't warn me about in time

Rating: 8/20 (Jen: 6/20)

Plot: Paul Rudd's character (c'mon, you know the guy) has popped the question to his girlfriend of eight months. Zooey says yes, but soon after, she and her girlfriends start thinking that it's odd that Paul Rudd's character has no male friends. He overhears a conversation about their concerns and frantically tries to befriend another male so that he'll have a best man for his wedding. Enter Jason Segal's character (you know him, too). They hit it off wonderfully because they both like Rush. However, Paul Rudd's character has problems juggling his new friendship, his life with his future wife, and trying to sell the Incredible Hulk's house.

This is rated R, and I think I figured out what that R stands for. It's R for Recycled. This is essentially an Apatow clone, raunchy as all get out; a potential frat guy favorite; a smorgasbord of references to drinking, puking on people, sex, and man caves. I would almost swear on my wife's life that almost every line in this movie has been yanked without mercy (for the audience that is) out of a handful of other recent comedies and rearranged, like a William S. Burroughs' cut-up text, into I Love You, Man's script. About 85% of that script is Paul Rudd's character (you know, that guy) being really awkward as he attempts guy talk, slanging it up and trying to match the cool he hears in the banter of other men. He succeeds in being awkward, but he doesn't quite get to both awkward and funny. An ongoing gag about Paul Rudd's character (him) sounding like a leprechaun was actually pretty funny. Pretty funny. But most of the Klaven speak just seemed like an OK supporting actor trying way too hard to be a leading funny man. The best example is in a scene where (that one guy) Paul Rudd's character's fiance finds out that Paul Rudd's character (see: any other movie or television show with Paul Rudd) plays an instrument. He repeats "I slappa the bass" ad nauseam (in fact, Paul Rudd's character [you know who I'm talking about, right?] still might be saying it) while Zooey critiques his attempt at a Jamaican accent. I can understand the scene being in the movie, but I don't understand why it had to be twenty-five minutes long. Part of the problem with this is that it seemed the performers were given lots of room to improvise. Is some of the stuff they come up with funny? Sure. But when you have almost two hours of that same kind of funny, it gets tedious. Watching people in tuxedos and fancy dresses throwing pies at each other might be funny for a couple minutes, too. Would you want to watch a two hour pie fight though? Maybe the producers of I Love You, Man just wanted to jump on the green bandwagon, recycling and reusing what's worked the last few years to assemble this all-too-predictable comedy. Or maybe they're just really lazy.

Now that I think about it, I probably would want to watch a two hour pie fight. But only if Tarantino directed it.