King of the Hill

1993 drama

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A kid tries to survive on his own in Depression-era St. Louis.

This is based on an A.E. Hotchner memoir, and after reading his book about Hemingway (Papa Hemingway, a book my dad gave me) and reading a bit about the guy, I think he's fascinating. I'm willing to bet the book that Soderbergh's third feature film is based on is better than the movie. I just don't care for Soderbergh's style here. Period pieces aren't generally my bag, but I have enjoyed movies from this particular time period in American history before. Here, it's almost too tidy of a period piece. There's a sheen to the Great Depression that just shouldn't be there. The visuals lack gristle, and odd camera angles and movements made me wonder what Soderbergh was doing a lot of the time.

It's always nice to see Spalding Gray, and it was fun seeing a young Adrien Brody and Adrien Brody's nose. Since the kid Aaron is in every single scene in the movie--at least I think he is--the kid playing him better not be irritating. Aaron was played by Jesse Bradford, and he's good enough. The young character lies so effortlessly that you just have to root for him. Or at least I did.

I loved the beginning of this, the use of The Mills Brothers' "Tiger Rag" over old-timey opening credits that tricked me into thinking I'd accidentally popped in a Woody Allen movie.

There was also a fart joke that I appreciated.

Life During Wartime

2009 sequel

Rating: 11/20

Plot: Follows the lives of the three sisters from the uplifting Solondz movie Happiness.

If I had known this was a sequel to Happiness, I might have checked it out earlier. It seems like an odd choice to have a sequel without any of the same actors and actresses. And you might assume that replacing Jon Lovitz with anybody at all would automatically sink a sequel, but that character, who is dead anyway, is replaced with Paul Reubens.

There's one great scene with Shirley Henderson (that's Moaning Myrtle), playing the sister who was originally played by the adorable Jane Adams, walking nocturnally in a nightgown while this Devendra Banhart song plays. I kind of wish I had just watched that scene, like a cool little music video, and the scene where the kid asks about baby carrots feeling pain.

The rest of this just didn't work. Solondz doesn't add any depth to these characters introduced in Happiness, the movie's dark humor doesn't work nearly as well, and it sort of hits all the same points thematically although not as effectively.

Sicario (Redux)

2015 movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: I already wrote about this movie and refuse to do a plot synopsis again.

I had to refresh my memory on this movie I saw just a couple years ago before seeing the sequel because I can't remember things. My original half-assed review is here and I have nothing to add.

No, that's not true. I have something to add--a scene where Benicio del Toro gives a guy a wet willie is one of the greatest movie moments of all time.

The Hit

1984 hit movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A pair of hitmen drive an old mobster who squealed on his buddies and was hiding out in Spain to France where he'll be executed. It doesn't go as planned.

This movie ends with a great wink. I love movies that end with good winks.

I'm sorry--I probably shouldn't have spoiled that. Of course, you don't know which individual in this cool cast provided said wink, so I guess I didn't spoil anything.

The cast really is about the coolest you could have asked for in the mid-80s. Terence Stamp brings this playful philosophical tone to his character, this guy clad all in white like a relaxed good guy, one who is either at peace with whatever happens to him or is just pretending so that he can get the upper hand when needed. A very young Tim Roth is all fire and twitches as a hitman apprentice. I love a scene where he proudly shows off his jacket. John Hurt looks a little like Shane MacGowan but with teeth. He's cool, or more accurately cold, and stoic, bad news because of how professional he is. Laura del Sol is either dressed just right or dressed completely wrong for a road trip adventure like this, and I enjoyed seeing Fernando Rey as a policeman in what is mostly a silent role.

A courtroom scene where some mobsters sing "We'll meet again some sunny day!" to Stamp's character after he's testified against them seemed completely ridiculous, but it was based on something that actually happened. Mobsters sure are a fun group.

Clapton gets some early guitar wankery during the opening credits, but it's Paco de Lucia's flamenco guitar stylings that really help create the mood for this one. If I'm ever forced to accompany a pair of gangsters on a road trip in Western Europe, I'm hoping they've got a cd or two of de Lucia's music.

Anyway, I don't feel like I did a great job of selling this movie, but it's really cool. And it ends with a wink!

The In-Laws

1979 action comedy

Rating: 16/20

Plot: When a dentist meets the father of the man who is marrying his daughter and agrees to help him out with a tiny favor, he finds himself on a wild and confusing adventure.

I had to give this movie a bonus point because of the boastful tagline: "The first certified crazy person's comedy." It's unclear to me whether it's a comedy for a person who is certified as crazy or a comedy certified for crazy people. Either way, it's my type of comedy.

It wouldn't take a lot for Peter Falk to win me over anyway, but he did it early on during a dinner scene where he's talking about flies with beaks. From that point on, his character is impossible to read. Is he part of the CIA? Is he a criminal? Is he insane and completely lucky to be alive by the midway point in the movie? Is he completely sane and calculating, the kind of super-agent who knows exactly how to stay alive? Whatever the case, he's the funniest I've ever seen him in this. And Alan Arkin is the perfect foil or straight man. They're the perfect odd couple for this action comedy.

A cool opening heist, General Garcia's collection of velvet paintings and especially the new flag he's designed, an umbrella-wielding child extra who lunges at Arkin during a foot chase, the tooth-loving ramblings of patient Mr. Hirschorn, and an appearance by the always-great James Hong are highlights not involving Falk and Arkin, but it's really the rapport between the leads and the comic action scenes (the "Serpentine!" scene being the most famous) in this consistently unpredictable film that makes it such a great comedy.

I'm going to need a list of certified crazy person's comedies. Or maybe I should make one.

The Crow

1994 goth superhero story

Rating: 10/20

Plot: A rock star comes back from the dead and terrorizes the gang responsible for killing him and his girlfriend. A supernatural crow helps him out.

A piece of information that nobody reading this would possibly care about: This movie is the reason that I'm currently watching movies from 1994 and trying to put together a favorites list from that year. The person who suggested that year is a big fan of the movie and likely will be disappointed when it doesn't come anywhere near my top-ten list.

I hadn't seen this since I saw it in a movie theater on the north side of Terre Haute as a college student. It's likely that I was already too old to be in the demographic this was made for since it's such a childish goth superhero story. I didn't like it then, but I thought I might appreciate it more now for whatever reason. It's a film fueled by style and attitude, and there's a soft spot in my heart for these sorts of style-over-substance movies.

That style, as you could probably guess from an action movie made in the first half of the 90s, is reminiscent of music videos made during the previous decade. There's all this slow-mo crow flow, this almost cartoonish darkness, all this flashy editing with oppressive whooshes, and an irritating 90's score. Whooshes! Add some black and white wavy crow-cam, improbable lighting that creates improbable shadows, and bubblegum action sequences, and you have yourself enough style to excite the Hot Topics crowd, the kind of faux-goth kids who can't remember if Robert Smith was the lead singer of Depeche Mode or not. There's an artificiality to these swooping monochromatic shots of urban decay that foreshadows Sin City, but there's one key difference--it just doesn't look cool.

You know what else isn't cool about this? This likely won't be a popular opinion, but it's Brandon Lee. In fact, I'd say he's really kind of a dork in this. Brandon Lee didn't have 1/4 the charisma of his father, and nearly everything he says in this is stupid. I mean, that fits in perfectly with this world director Alex Proyas and (I assume since I've never seen a copy) comic book scribe James O'Barr are creating. All of the characters have these clownish noir lines, half-menacing and half-comic. That's when they're not calling each other names like "stupid asshair," something that one of the bad guys actually says in this movie. "Take your shot, Fun Boy, You got me dead bang." That's another line in the movie. Oh, and "Caw caw bang fuck I'm dead!" is in there somewhere, too. That might be my favorite. So a lot of the dorkiness isn't Brandon Lee's fault, but when one character--the stock surly police chief character played by some guy whose name I'm not going to bother looking up--describes him as a "cartoon character with a painted face," it was hard to argue with him.

The man did have beautiful hair though.

There's barely a plot here at all. It's a stylized revenge fantasy, and even if you weren't lucky to catch this movie almost twenty-five years ago, you'll still know exactly where it's going. One character said, "This is already boring the shit out of me," and even though it was early, I agreed completely. There are lots of moments where these actors, without all the edits and added special effects, had to feel pretty stupid during the making of this. It generally moves as if it's in a hurry to get to the next big shoot-'em-up sequence, but it does slow down for some really schmaltzy parts complete with orchestral music and gaggy dialogue.

Four other things not worth mentioning but that I'll mention anyway:

1) This character Gideon, played by Coen regular Jon Polito, has a great recurring exclamation: "Shit on me! Shit on me!" I might add that to my vernacular actually. Cut off in traffic? "Shit on me!" I'll holler with a raised fist. Can't find a ripe avocado at the grocery store? That's worthy of a "Shit on me!"

2) There are two live bands shown in this movie, and one of them is My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, a band I haven't thought of since 1994. I didn't like them then, but I kind of liked what I saw in the movie. I thought the band with the female lead singer might have been Hole, but I don't think that's right now and am too tired to figure out exactly who it was. They should have gotten Sheryl Crow to do something though.

3) At one point, Brandon Lee alludes to Poe's "The Raven," and that confused me. I already get alligators and crocodiles confused, and now I can't figure out if there's a difference between ravens and crows. Or ravens and writing desks for that matter.

4) Some Coors product placement is fun, but I wish it had been Zima. Brandon Lee holds up a bottle and looks at it like he's never seen a bottle before. It made me laugh, but I'm not sure it was supposed to. And it did not make me thirst for a Coors.

Vanya on 42nd Street

1994 play adaptation

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A play in a theater.

This is Louis Malle's last movie. It starts with a shot of Wallace Shawn chomping on something while waiting on a sidewalk for somebody, and then Wallace Shawn and his actor pals chew on the scenery for a couple hours. The collective had been performing this Chekhov play for several months for no audience in various places, and Louis Malle decided it was worth filming. And now here we are 24 years later where I'm watching it because I think it might be worth seeing before I make a list of best films from 1994.

Honestly, I was bored for the first half an hour or so. I liked the theater they were performing in, this really dangerous but beautiful run-down theater where rats have eaten enough to make the stage unusable. Malle's camera focuses on the actors, but early on, the background with its dilapidated walls were more interesting to me. Gradually, the play and its characters grew on me. I also read a plot synopsis which helped me understand what Chekhov's story was about because I'm apparently not intelligent enough to watch a play and figure that out on my own.

I mentioned the actors chewing on the scenery--just like the rats, I guess. I don't mean that as a bad thing. In fact, they really have no choice as there aren't the usual costumes or props or scenic backgrounds to give you much information. That forces the viewer to focus on the words and the characters saying them, and for a dull-minded viewer like me, that might make the whole thing a little boring. The performances really are good though. Wallace Shawn didn't seem like the right fit for Uncle Vanya, but I always enjoy watching him. And I swear, he really did take a bite out of a table at one point in this. Julianne Moore is the real standout here, her Yelena character being the one that allows a performer to showcase the most range. I was wondering if this was before she'd had a lot of screen notoriety, but her career was already rolling right along. I mean, Tales from the Darkside: The Movie came out four years earlier. Andre Gregory is the "director" of the play within the movie, but he doesn't have a lot to do. There's a break for snacking, but there's no time for dinner in this one.

I think there's a conspiracy afoot though! An actress named Phoebe Brand is in this, and I immediately recognized her as Raymond's mother on the Everybody Loves Raymond show. But that wasn't Phoebe Brand; that was Doris Roberts. I looked up Brand to see what else she had done, and this was actually her only movie. Is it possible that Phoebe Brand and Doris Roberts are the same person? Before you go calling me a racist for thinking all old white women look the same, check out these pictures:

Same person, right?

Hearts Beat Loud

2018 movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A father and a daughter who will soon travel across the country to start college connect through music.

Hearts beat loudly.

As predictable as a pop song, this one hits exactly all the beats that you'd expect, but it does it well enough to not have that predictability get in its way. It's the Ringo Starr of movies, serviceable and maybe even likable if it starts writing gems referencing 8-armed horticulturists. The narrative takes you to expected places, but knowing that they're coming didn't hurt the impact of scene where the band--We Are Not a Band--play a gig, for example. I may have even teared up a little bit, and that's despite knowing the exact shots that would be used or the exact characters who would enter the scene and react in that exact way.

A movie about a cool middle-aged record-store owning dad who forms a band with his daughter better get the music right. The songs that We Are Not a Band aren't horrible, and Kiersey Clemons, who plays the daughter, has some chops. Nick Offerman, assuming he's actually playing the instruments here and I was fooled by movie magic, looks legit enough to make me buy the whole thing, too. But I'm more concerned with the writers knowing their stuff when creating a character who's owned a record store for 17 years. I was happy with references to Brian Eno and Animal Collective, and I had a giant grin on my face in a scene where Offerman is playing Ween's "Ocean Man." The part that made me tear up a little was when the daughter held up a copy of Tom Waits' Raindogs and said, "You can't sell this for three dollars, Dad." It broke my heart.

There's also a Raindogs visual reference in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but this isn't the time or place to talk about that.

Nick Offerman brings his usual likability, and I definitely bought him as a cool dad here. I'm not sure he nails the drama exactly. It's also nice to see Ted Danson behind a bar again, and it's nice to see Toni Collette in a 2018 movie where she's not being harassed by demons.

Thoroughbreds

2018 dark comedy

Rating: 13/20

Plot: I'm not doing a plot synopsis for this movie. Suck it.

Pet peeve: There's a scene with a chess board--one of those big ones that rich people like these characters might have in their yard--but the pieces are set up wrong and the character makes an illegal move with a knight. With this, Lean on Pete, and The Rider, this is becoming the Year of the Horse. This opens with a horse, and it might end with a horse, too, but I can't remember.

Despite a lot of style and interesting leads, this was underwhelming and probably a little pointless. I loved the bizarre percussion-heavy score, almost always unpredictable even when you start to get a little used to the whole thing. That score is by cellist Erik Friedlander, a frequent John Zorn collaborator. There's some visual style here, too. There are some great tracking shots through this immense house, all giving the proceedings a sense of foreboding. The opening single take introduction to both the house where most of the movie's actions take place and Olivia Cooke's character, who gets a great mirror scene. And there's a great use of sound effects, especially during one climactic scene that I wouldn't want to write about and spoil for all the people who are reading this.

I know I said the two main characters were interesting up there, but I think I've changed my mind mid-review. I've seen Heathers comparisons, but there's something a little darker with this pair played by Olivia Cooke and Anya Taylor-Joy. One lacks emotions completely, but she becomes predictable over the course of the movie. It's the other character whose actions and reactions become more disturbing. This also contains one of Anton Yelchin's final performances, and he gets a fun, slimy character to play, one that is so lively in comparison to the more stilted performance of the young women.

As bad as some of the characters in this are, none of them can compare to one of the worst human beings of all time who makes an appearance on a television--Shirley Temple.

Favorite line: "Fuck no, I am not packing a spork." That was not said by Shirley Temple.

Bullets Over Broadway

1994 comedy

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A playwright might have a hit on his hands if the mob stays out of his way.

It took me a bit to warm up to John Cusack, one of my two favorite Cusacks, in this, probably not helped by the character being a little unlikably full of himself. I like a conversation he's having in a cafe with some snooty artist friends early in this when one mentions a painter that creates one piece of artwork a week and then immediately destroys it. I'm not sure Woody Allen is saying that art should only be made for an audience consisting of the artist and nobody else, but I do think he's probably saying something about an artist being true to himself during that creation process and how there are all sorts of outside forces that can get in the way.

Cusack's character has his motivations mixed up in the early goings, but I like the conflicts his character endures as he tries to get his vision on stage. There's his inability to write realistic female characters, his own ego, issues with his girlfriend (played by the spunky Mary-Louise Parker), a developing infatuation with the actress played by with this great artificial gravitas by Dianne Wiest, the influence of mob money and the insistence on the untalented ditz played by Jennifer Tilly getting a part, forced compromises, his own nerves and insecurities. What I liked most about the story was about how gradually, it becomes more of a story belonging to Cheech, the thug sent by Tilly's mafioso boyfriend to make sure everything is on the up and up.

It's easy but fun to put pieces together to see that Allen might very well be criticizing the industry as Cusack's character's voice is systematically sucked out of this production and replaced by the voices of others. It would all be pretty depressing if it wasn't for a climactic epiphany and the breezy kind of tone created when every actor is playing a caricature. There are varying results, but Tilly is as funny as I've ever seen her and maybe as funny as a character that irritating can possibly be. She brings it right to that line but doesn't cross it. Wiest, Jim Broadbent, and Chazz Palminteri are also really good. Allen gives us mob killings accompanied by pop-jazz numbers and a great death scene that make up for the fact that Cusack's character starts narrating via a diary at one point.

Tag

2018 action comedy

Rating: 12/20

Plot: Adults continue a game of tag they've been playing for decades.

The guy sitting next to me at the theater kept giving me a side-eye and then leaning forward in his seat with his head in his hands. I'm pretty sure he didn't like the way I smelled. Of course, he might have been annoyed when I took off my socks during the previews. Either way,  I might have ruined his theater experience. I thought about apologizing at the end but decided against it. I also thought about tagging him on the way out and darting out of the theater, but I didn't do that either.

This is "influenced" by a true story, and like most movies based on true stories, it has to end with pictures or film of the real people. This time, I actually thought it was charming though. Some of the more far-fetched aspects of this comedy were shown to be not all that far-fetched in that home video footage, and you really see the love these tagging competitors had for each other.

This really is a movie about friendship and the desire to hold on to those special somethings that childhood friends share. For most of the movie, there's one thing that threatens their male bonding and friendship traditions, but at the end, there's a twist that changes all of that. Those last ten minutes or so were completely mishandled although I was actually expecting a twist within a twist that might have made things even worse. This was lacking a feeling of nostalgia that really would have helped its ideas sink in.

The humor is hit and miss. A lot of the slapstick stuff works, maybe even more as action sequences than comedic ones, but the interchanges between the characters weren't as consistent. As these modern comedies typically do, this leans on ribald humor a little too often, likely because mentioning genitalia is always bound to get a laugh out of people. There's nothing particularly creative about any of it, but it's completely harmless.

I think I enjoyed every single performer in this thing, and that includes Jeremy Renner who I don't usually like. Here, I thought he was really funny. Ed Helms and Jake Johnson don't do anything you wouldn't expect them to, and Hannibal Buress, who is on one of my favorite television shows, gets a lot of funny lines. Jon Hamm and the ladies, with the exception of an intense Isla Fisher, don't get as many opportunities to be funny. There's probably too much going on for any real rapport to build up with these guys and there's no character development at all, but there also wasn't really a second in this that I didn't believe they were friends who have been playing the same game of tag for twenty-five years or whatever. And that's probably what matters more.

This was almost exactly as good as I expected it to be, and your enjoyment of it will probably also be exactly what you expect. Unless you're sitting next to me in the theater. Then, you might be too distracted by my odor to relax and enjoy the movie.

The Monster

1994 dark comedy

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A guy who has some kind of unexplained job that has to do with transporting mannequins, due to a series of unfortunate events putting him in the wrong place at the wrong time, is mistaken for a serial rapist and murderer.

There was a time when I wanted get my hands on as much Roberto Benigni as I could after seeing him first in Down by Law and then Life Is Beautiful. I just couldn't find any of his Italian movies, and it was disappointing. I was able to enjoy his version of Pinocchio, one of the most unfortunate passion projects I've ever seen. The same part of me that enjoys Tati, Chaplin, and Keaton, I believed, would enjoy Benigni's early Italian work. Of course, Benigni is a whole lot louder than those guys.

So this wasn't disappointing at all. It was much raunchier and much darker than what I would have expected from this clown. Right from the pre-credits opening scene, in which a scream precedes a shot of a dead woman's leg keeping an elevator door from closing, I was hooked with the darker comedy. Black slapstick isn't something you come across too often, you know.

The plot is simple enough, really just an excuse for the gags. And there are plenty of those! Thinking about how much I appreciated seeing Benigni with a lit cigarette in his pants or Benigni with a coat stuffed with shoplifted items or Benigni trying to get a pair of mannequins in the back of his van or Benigni maneuvering Keaton-like through scaffolding to get to his apartment or Benigni twice using flashlights ingeniously or Benigni using this recurring squat-walk gag, it makes me wonder if I should revisit those Naked Gun movies that my step-father enjoys so much. Maybe my taste in comedy really has always been much dumber than I think it is. 

Evan Lurie, one of The Lounge Lizards and brother of Benigni co-star John Lurie, did the music for this. I liked it, but you have to be able to stomach a lot of accordion.

Nicoletta Braschi, Benigni's actual wife, plays his character's love interest in this. I thought she was as sexy as hell.

I watched this on Youtube when searching for 1994 movies. I really should look for other Benigni movies. I know he's not everybody's cup of clown, but I think he's delightful. If you think he's delightful and enjoy darker comedies, you'd probably like Il Mostro.

All That Jazz

1979 mortality musical

Rating: 17/20 (Jen: 16/20)

Plot: A life of self-abuse and dance choreography and looking in mirrors and not being happy with what you see.

"I look in the mirror, and I'm embarrassed."

I pay attention to mirrors in movies anyway. I think the mirrors of this movie are especially important as director Bob Fosse is taking a brutally honest look at his own life, the decisions that have gotten him to where he's been and where he's at and where he can go, and his mortality. I love how cinema in the 1970's explored that idea of mortality. The decadence, all those drugs and all that sex, almost seem like forces beyond the control of these 70's characters. And the sex wasn't quite killing anybody yet, was it? From the hysterical montages at the beginning where the juxtapositions and editing and transitions develop the character of Joe Gideon to the 70's-flashed finale, one that defiantly puts the "final" in the word, one man's mortality shadows over this thing. It's in the recurring "joke" of a comedian talking about the "five stages of death," which I believe are actually supposed to be the five stages of grief. It's in that omnipresent cough. It's in the wrinkles on Scheider's face and the angelic Jessica Lange, a little too obviously named Angelique in this.

You might be tempted to watch this for the dance numbers, like a Busby Berkeley nightmare covered in film and jizz and cigarette ash and booze. And there are some very good ones. The climactic scene has some wonderful moments as Joe's life flashes before his eyes, seemingly. The risque performance of the work-in-progress for investors is also dazzling, Gideon working a flashlight, legs and more legs on full display, nipples making an appearance. Maybe it's the time period jive-talking, but it felt like watching Travolta, all beautiful body moving beautifully in a grimy world.

Scheider's really good in this. That guy had a nice run in the seventies with this, Jaws, Jaws 2, Sorcerer, Marathon Man, and The French Connection. He even got to play Dr. Benway in Naked Lunch a few years later. I wonder if you could show people this and Jaws back to back and fool them into thinking it's not the same guy in those movies. I guess you have to call that range, going from a movie that is all about a giant phallic symbol to one where he has trouble controlling his own phallus.

Sweet Charity, Cabaret, Lenny, and All That Jazz. That's a nice run for Bob Fosse! Of those, this is closest to Lenny, but that doesn't have the same gritty impressionistic style of this one. This is a late life in fragments, memory bursts, and flashes. Initially, I was irritated, but once I fell into the rhythm, it created this character at this particular moment in his life almost perfectly.

I feel like I spelled Roy Scheider's name wrong in this whole thing. I apologize to his family.

The Last Seduction

1994 neo-noir drama

Rating: 15/20

Plot: After being slapped, Bridget runs off with a bunch of her husband's money and flees to a small town, makes a friend, and tries to figure out a plan.

My next stop on my quest to fill 1994 movie gaps is this movie on my brother-in-law's favorite 1994 list. It was also on Roger Ebert's list, leading me to believe that maybe Roger Ebert is my brother-in-law. It's going to be impossible for this to slip into my top ten because of the score, this relentless light piano and brushed drums.

This isn't a special movie except for the lead character played pitch perfectly by Linda Fiorentino. Bridget might be the most calculatingly nasty character I've ever seen in a movie, pulling strings with a sinister gusto. Poor Mike, played by Peter Berg, never had a chance, and by the time you get to the end of the movie, you realize that poor Bill Pullman, who plays Bridget's husband, never had a chance either. I don't think this is a spoiler because you can see from the beginning that Bridget's capable of chewing up and spitting out anybody who gets in her way. There's exactly one moment of vulnerability in this, and that's when Pullman slaps her. But even that seems like it was part of her plan all along, the little something that would give her an excuse to put this whole plan in motion. So forget I said that. There isn't a single scene where it feels like Bridget is out of control, and watching her twist her way from point A to points B, C, D, E, and so on is delightful.

Fiorentino has all the right moves here. There's a perfect blend of sexuality, bitchiness, greediness, conniving, and apathy to this character that makes a pretty far-fetched plan seem not all that preposterous. She's a spidery gal, and this movie is propelled by the character's attitude. There are a handful of seductions in this movie, and while I'm not sure which of them is the titular "last seduction," I'm pretty sure the first is the way the character seduces the viewer. She's given great lines. Something like "Who's a girl got to suck around here to get a drink?" is pretty typical from her. She's got these great expressions, ones that show just how bored she is with things being this easy for her and ones that show an apparent disdain for humans. I mean, check out her expressions when locals are being friend and saying hi to her. She's got this ease in her manner when she's up to no good and she lies so effortlessly. My favorite Fiorentino moment shows us that even sex is a bit of an annoyance for her, just like the need to get gas a few minutes earlier. It's something approached with an audible sigh and then a pump.

It's fun watching the pieces of her plan fall into place, and it's even more fun watching that character doing anything at all, but I wish this character could have been in a movie with a little more style. But it's easy to figure out why this ended up in the 1994 top ten list of my brother-in-law, Roger Ebert.

Red Desert

1964 sci-fi drama

Rating: 17/20

Plot: A woman goes crazy in an industrialized world.

Maybe it's because I'm a little stupid, but I don't get why this movie is called Red Desert. Can somebody explain that to me? I'm too lazy to look that up on my own, and I'm definitely too lazy to actually think about it.

Michelangelo Antonioni has sculpted himself a science fiction character study here. More accurately, being his first color film, he's painted it. If Monica Vitti wasn't so alluring, the colors might be considered the star of the movie here. There are combinations here that were like abstract paintings, pictures reminiscent of Mark Rothko. There's a real beauty to the fuzzy industrial backgrounds, the colorful maze of pipes, the machinery, the pollution pouring into the clouds. I'm not kidding when I say this is a sci-fi flick. The visuals have a surreal futuristic quality even though they're all real factories and backgrounds that existed in the early-60's when this was filmed. But the opening scene, one with this squelching synthesizer and these rhythmic sounds, sets it all up as something alien. A child's robotic plaything, a gyroscopic toy top, and the idea that 1+1 can equal 1 keep things in this vaguely science fiction world. And those sounds! Everything is angry!

Vitti's character is almost like an visitor to an alien planet from the opening. A large chunk of this movie is devoted to showing us all this smudgy, imperceptible background surrounding a clearly-focused Vitti. Her story begins in media res though we later learn of a car crash that has affected her more psychologically than physically. Well, I have bad news for her--that car was a rocket, and she's a baffled and battered astronaut with a crew consisting of a little kid and a goofy robot. "I have to think that everything that happens to me is my life. That's all. I'm sorry," she says. You don't have to apologize to us, Monica Vitti! You just let your hair do its thing, intermingle with the shapes and those colors. That clash is a visual metaphor for the clash between Vitti's character, a woman who is feeling, and the callous and unsympathetic industrial world she's wandering around completely lost in. Vitti's performance is a little all over the place, likely intentionally. The character's in a stupor one moment and then in a fit of lunacy in another. And watch her physicality in a sex scene, her hands contorting, her body twisting around like she's the alien visitor. The crazed lady foreplay was almost irresistible, but like a real pro, I resisted pressing my penis against the screen.

What to make of these other characters? The husband is around. Richard Harris throws me off by speaking in Italian in a voice that clearly isn't his. It makes you wonder why Antonioni insisted on having Richard Harris in the movie at all unless he was just a fan of "MacArthur Park" like everybody else and wanted an explanation of what happened to that cake.  And then there's the son with his legs that suddenly stopped working. That happened to me once, right around when I was the same age as the kid. I just woke up without functioning legs, and I stayed at the hospital for about a week with doctors who couldn't tell my parents anything about my condition. I read Conan comics my dad brought me and went home being able to use my legs like I always had. So what the hell was that about? Was I faking it the whole time? Did my robot tell me to do it?

Is this about adapting to a changing world or the effects of an industrial world? Antonioni hinted, or maybe he just flat out insisted, that it was about the former. Embrace the industrialization of the planet, kids. Throw your arms around it like it's Richard Harris.

Either way, I think I might start smoking a pipe. I think it looks cool. That has nothing to do with this movie as I don't believe any character actually smokes a pipe.

One visual I really liked in this involved smoke swallowing up characters. Fog as isolation or vice versa. 

Chungking Express

1994 love story

Rating: 17/20

Plot: A pair of cops in Hong Kong try to get over break-ups and find new love.

As I put together a list of favorite 1994 films, this is one I knew I had to catch up with. I'm really glad that I saw the other Kar-Wai Wong movie (Days of Being Wild) before this because it helped me adjust to his impressionistic style, the lurid colors, the unique type of characters he creates, and the fragmented storytelling. I wonder if I would have liked that one even more if I had seen it after I saw Chungking Express actually.

This is a pair of love stories that are only marginally connected. They might be connected thematically or they might not, they are connected by space, and they're barely connected by time and circumstance. One could accuse Wong of starting one story with one particular style and brand of criminal violence, getting completely bored with it, and deciding to start a new story instead. I like how this movie that is about missed connections, with two references to characters being within a tenth of a centimeter of each other, has stories that also just barely miss being connected.

I really liked the characters here. The love-struck cops, one who at least thinks he's ripped from the pages of a neo-noir world and has pineapple obsessions and the other who has conversations with bars of soap, have an almost cartoonish heartbreak, but they work almost as straight men to the more animated women who wander into their lives. The first is a femme fatale, sunglassed and trenchcoated, who would likely be arrested just for stepping out of her house because there's no way a woman who looks like that is not up to no good. Brigitte Lin's character, who is called "Woman in Blonde Wig," doesn't need dimensions. She's mystery and intrigue incarnate, and it's easy to read the guy's mind after he's decided to hit on the next girl who walks into the bar he's drinking at and sees her walk in. The other guy's just as mopey, and his love interest, played with a teenage pop star effervescence by a teenage pop star named Faye Wong, perfectly contrasts with that. She's a bouncy nymph, joyfully dancing to "California Dreaming" as she goes about her business in enough scenes to test one's patience for The Mamas and the Papas. She's introduced in abbreviated snippets of that song, and right away, as the cop remains mopey and oblivious, the viewer knows that she's going enter and probably leave his life as effortlessly as a dream. Never has stalking been so cute.

More than the characters and the dueling love stories, it's the visuals that make Wong's movie stand out. An opening scene introduces the principles as they move in this Koyaanisqatsi-esque world surrounded by these blurs of people. Colors melt together, the camera is always zipping around, and montages showing drug smuggling and pineapple expiration dates are lively and ultra-cool. The visual storytelling's so good that I'm not sure I even needed any dialogue at all. However, the dialogue in this is really good, too, with its philosophical language about expiration dates and raincoat/sunglasses combinations.

I had a tough time finding this movie, by the way. I couldn't find it online at all legally or illegally, at least for free. I never checked the local Family Video, and none of the libraries I use had a copy. I ended up finding it at a Christian high school of all places and made arrangements with that librarian to borrow it. Nobody cares about any of this, but that's ok because nobody has read this far anyway.

Spoiler: This will make my Best of 1994 list when I eventually put that together.

The Secret of Kells

2009 animated feature

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Monks try to fend off barbarian attacks using pretty books and walls.

This was nominated for the Oscar for best animated feature in a really stacked year. You had Up, Pixar's best movie and one that was also nominated for Best Picture. And then there was The Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Princess and the Frog, and Coraline. Kells probably deserved the nomination only for having a character based on Willie Nelson.

Despite an underwhelming story, The Secret of Kells works because of ingenious animation. It's 2-D animation, at times reminding me a little of my beloved Samurai Jack more than anything Disney ever produced, but the animation style gives this world an unexpected depth. Watch the way butterflies, leaves, or waves are animated in this. There are layers that give this a 3-D feel. There's also a liveliness to the animation that keeps your eyes glued to the screen. Things are always moving and sometimes bleating, and there are great transitions, also mostly through motion. The style shows that these animators knew exactly what they wanted and had a distinct voice, and there's an unpredictability that makes the short running time go by even more quickly. I can't spend much time in these fantasy worlds--looking at you, Tolkien!--but this was breezy.

I did have issues with the storytelling. The characters didn't really do it for me, and the rules of this world and its magic aren't really explained adequately. Exposition might have taken away some of the enchantment of this whole thing though. The villains were also completely underdeveloped, making them feel more like symbols than anything else. The narrative seems to be in the folklore tradition, but ironically, this would be a very difficult story for me to remember and retell.

The ending is a real nearly-psychedelic wowser though.

It's unclear whether there's a timely theme about creativity and putting up walls or not.

Cronos

1993 horror movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A guy finds some sort of trinket that does some stuff and another guy wants it.

This clearly should have been saved for Christmas as it is a heartwarming Christmas movie about a grandfather and his granddaughter.

I tried giving this a spin once before, maybe even during the holiday season, but I don't think I got through the talky opener. After that, there's enough style and intrigue to make anybody watching this in the early/mid-90's want to keep an eye on this del Toro fellow, though probably not thinking he'd ever create anything worthy of a Best Picture Oscar.

What I appreciate most is the humor. Ron Perlman's performance as a sort of henchman for this old guy craving immortality is a daffy one, probably a little too playful. He's craving something himself--a new schnauz. It's a recurring gag that doesn't really work all that well though there's something about the rest of Perlman's performance that keeps what is essentially a vampire yarn pretty light. Maybe it's Perlman's appearance that made his boss's lair seem like it was from The City of Lost Children, too.

Federico Luppi has the look of a serious actor, or at least one who wants to be taken seriously in soap operas or something, but he's given some pretty weird things to do here as a character tortured by immortality. Jesus--who gets the last line "I am Jesus. . .Gris," something that seemed like a pun--gets a pair of terrific mirror scenes, one where he's checking out his younger self ("Buenos dios.") and another where he's massaging his nipple while claps from a subsequent scene bleed over. I mean, I imagine people clapping when I'm feeling myself up, too, so I guess I can't make fun of that. By the end of the movie, he's sleeping in a toy box and wearing his suit backward.

There are other references to Jesus in this that I wondered about. One character compared him to a mosquito or an ant. I'm not sure what that was about.

This, of course, isn't all fluffy vampire fun. It's supposed to be a horror movie after all. There is one particularly indelible scene involving Jesus Gris and a public bathroom floor, and the effects to show the unintended consequences of immortality are nauseating. The coolest horror images involve the device this movie is named after, a piece of biological technology that I never quite understood, probably because I'm neither scientist or vampirologist. The introduction to the Cronos device is right after a cool scene where bugs are slipping out of a statue's eye with this screechy violin music that a friend was recently telling me has become a horror movie pet peeve of his. I'm an easy man to please, however, and kind of like the screechy strings. With the help of sound design and that music, the scenes with the Cronos device in action, almost horrifically sexual, work well. There are also some shots of its innards that I liked.

I'm giving this a bonus point for a shot of a metronome.

Queen of the Desert

2015 biographical drama

Rating: 9/20

Plot: Nicole Kidman rides a camel around the desert a lot.

This made it on a "Most Anticipated Movies" list a few years back, mostly because Werner Herzog is one of my favorite directors, but after a bad critical reception, I kept putting it off. My hopes were raised with the opening shots, all this cinematic wind and sand. Of course, Herzog's going to film during a real sandstorm rather than manufacture one because he's still got a little Fitzcarraldo in him, and the result is breathtaking. In fact, my favorite thing about the movie--and quite possibly the only good thing about the movie--is how the sand looks. Well, and the camels. I'm a sucker for good camel sequences in movies. The music during that opening scene, as well as the menu screen, was also pretty good. We were off to a solid start!

How can a movie with this much camel action be so dull? There are a few great camel sequences, including a couple where they're gurgling in an almost alien way. And there's a fun shot of one camel as it's watching Nicole Kidman take a bath. But maybe Herzog needs a scene where a dwarf laughs at a defecating camel, something that's missing here. There is a dwarf with some horses, but they aren't defecating, and there's no defecating camels anywhere to be seen.

James Franco is the acting equivalent of a defecating camel here though. Somebody really should have told him that his accent wasn't working at all in this thing. I suppose that would be Werner Herzog's job, but there were actors and actresses he had scenes with. Maybe Kidman should have said something to him. She probably just wanted to get to that bathing-in-the-desert scene, something she asked to be included, I read. Those scenes with Franco and Kidman are excruciating, the inane unfolding of an inane romance. It's stiffly acted and poorly written, the kind of romance where a vulture picking at carrion is apparently a visual aphrodisiac. There's one scene where Franco's character sneaks into the room where Kidman's character is sleeping. She says, "Henry, how did you get past the security guards with a ladder?" and he replies, "I know how to do all the important things in life." Maybe it was the accent or maybe it was the generic music that accompanied the dialogue, but the whole thing made me want both characters to gag on sand. It was the worst sand-related romance I've seen since Attack of the Clones, and the two had the sexual chemistry of a book about hygiene and a bag full of camel crap. One interaction, as a matter of fact, may have caused me to swear off sex for the rest of my life. Franco talks about Kidman's smile and how people make the mistake of marrying the "whole girl," and Kidman's response is to spread her legs and say, in a way I imagine was supposed to be sultry, "Here's the whole girl."

Ick! C'mon, Herzog! They're lucky Kinski wasn't on the set because he would have strangled them both as soon as the scene was completed.

Franco's early departure helps somewhat, but it's replaced with a diary voiceover that's almost as annoying. The pace is languid in the wrong sort of way, and the visuals become redundant while the character doesn't really do much developing at all. Any time camels or Nicole Kidman's nipples through a wet sheer white thing weren't on the screen, I was bored.

Herzog's next narrative film is about Henry Ford trying to build a plant in the rain forest. It sounds like familiar ground. My expectations will be high if either Nicolas Cage or a camel is playing Henry Ford. Otherwise, I'm not going to have much confidence in this one.

The Shop on Main Street

1965 drama

Rating: 17/20

Plot: In 1940's Czechoslovakia, a guy's brother-in-law, during the process of Aryanizing the town, gives him a golden opportunity when he puts him in charge of a Jewish shop that sells buttons. Yes, it's a button shop. When Nazis come to get the elderly woman who was the proprietor--and who still thinks she's running things--the guy has mixed feelings.

Were there a lot of button shops in Czechoslovakia?

This is a straightforward story without a lot of flash although it does have its share of symbolism (urinating preceding cock crows, a "Tower of Babel," cranes, the gleam of a cigarette case) and some great visual moments. One of those is during a climax, an extended shot where it almost seems like the main character is trying his best to hide from the audience but can't escape the camera. There's also a brightly contrasted dream sequence or two complete with some umpah umpah circus music, a great sequence where there's a discovery made and discussed with soundless voices, and a hungover awakening scene with an upside-down perspective.

Mostly, this is just the evolving mentality of our main character, a guy whose motivations we understand completely at the beginning of the movie. He's a dynamic character though, changed by his circumstances and the relationship he forms with the proprietor of the titular button shop, and as he becomes confused, the characterization is more difficult to pin down. That relationship is both touching and comical, the latter because the old woman never realizes what's going on and assumes she's still in charge. There's a beautiful irony there. Any tragic moments throughout this movie are more moving because of their relationship.

Incredibles 2

2018 animated sequel

Rating: 15/20 (Jen: 17/20; Buster: 19/20)

Plot: The Incredibles continue to balance their superhero and familial responsibilities in a world that does not want them. 

As a Pixar movie, the expectations for a movie, even a sequel in which they don't have the best track record, is beyond just creating an entertaining action movie about superheroes and superheroines saving the world from bad guys. This movie follows a film that did have superpeople saving the world from bad guys but also dealt with complex issues like family, marriage, disillusionment, and role models. The first movie handled those things in subtle ways, never getting preachy or falling into traps other animated features with adult themes might, never spelling things out or claiming to have any magical solutions. This movie touches on a lot of the same sorts of themes. Our happily-married supers are apart for the majority of the movie, and we spend time watching them deal with new challenges. 

For Mr. Incredible, it's getting used to becoming a stay-at-home dad, not being the breadwinner for the family, being in a situation where he has to focus on children with needs that are much different than the needs he might have had as a child. With daughter Violet, it's troubles with romance, the kind of thing I imagine he'd rather have Mom deal with. He handles things exactly as you might expect a guy fueled by machismo and superficial common sense would--clumsily. With son Dash, it's helping with homework, a "new math" that presents challenges parents remembering their own experiences with math might not be able to anticipate. And then there's the baby. Dealing with a baby is stressful enough, but when your baby shoots lasers out of his eyes, turns into fire, transforms into a demonic thing, duplicates himself, and still constantly shits himself right after you just changed a diaper, it presents new problems. These strange super powers might not be things that most parents experience with their own offspring, but with the pride and fear Bob feels as he's seeing all this develop, it becomes a perfect metaphor for that stage of parenting. Bob's voiced once again by Craig T. Nelson, and both the voice work and the way the character is animated, all these stages of fatigue and frustration that you see, are easy for a father to identify with. And that's even true of a father like me who doesn't spend any time with his children. 

Mrs. Incredible is dealing with being out of the house, starting a new job and being away from the kids and her husband. You see her come to life, her animated action sequences giving her this buoyancy and vitality that she just doesn't have in the scenes of domesticity. It's not that she's a bad parent or anything. It's just that she's not designed to be only a parent and housewife. Watching her in action in this movie was awesome. Other than maybe two memorable scenes in the first movie, you don't really get a sense of what she can do as a superheroine. She stretches, just like Plastic Man or Stretch Armstrong or Mister Fantastic or Gumby. It seemed like an uninspired superpower, although Mr. Incredible's ability to be bigger and stronger than everybody else is even less inspired. In this sequel, you see Elastigirl on her own, and her super abilities give her an unexpected versatility. She's got a cool motorcycle, she can zip around an urban landscape like Spider-man, and she can definitely hold her own in a brawl with any opponent of any shape and size. The animators have a lot of fun with her, but what is more important is that the character really seems to be having fun. Of course, there's a lot going on psychologically with a mother who has to be away from her family, and that aspect is important to the character's story, too. We hear her express doubts about her role and the decisions she's making. That makes her situation identifiable as well. 

And that's really why these Incredibles movies work so well. They can take these characters with these abilities that aren't realistic at all--unless you're capable of producing ice with your fingers--and ground them, make them easy to relate to. It's a neat trick Pixar's pulling off with these characters, the way they hold up a mirror to society. I'm willing to bet any parent can see a bit of themselves in these parents, and any adolescent can watch and see realistic teens with realistic problems in Dash and Violet. 

The movie has a subtext that addresses issues of diversity or the stifling of a human being's abilities. They're not fully realized ideas, but they are there. The X-Men-ish idea of people being afraid of those who are different, a theme that was developed in the first movie, remains relevant as superheroism is still outlawed in this movie. I'm not sure if there's an intent to attach this to any specific people, but there are definitely ideas of control here that are interesting. A second viewing might help unwrap some of that. 

A villain named Screenslaver also touches on our 21st Century need to have screens in front of us all the time. That could have been used more satirically, but I'm probably glad it wasn't. These Incredibles movies are a little busy anyway, and trying to shove in a lot of other ideas on top of the family and identify themes could have gotten way too messy. 

I did like how it picks up right where the last movie left off. That might have just been an excuse to not have to make up a brand new character for Ratzenberger to play. A fun battle with his Underminer character starts this, and although an entire movie with that guy being the villain never would have worked as he's about as goofy as a Spider-man nemesis, it was a great way to reintroduce us to these characters, remind us of the rules of this world, and show off some action animation abilities. Dirt, concrete, billowing smoke. It all looks almost photorealistic in these early sequences, and that's another great thing about Pixar. They don't really have to do that because people going to the movie theater to watch a cartoon about superheroes probably aren't going to care if there's a richness to the animated dirt or the water or the chunks of buildings. But they spend the time to do it right anyway. After that, we meet a pair of siblings voiced by Catherine Keener, whose voice I didn't recognize, and Bob Odenkirk. Jonathan Banks, who plays Odenkirk's pal in Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad, is also recognizable in this one, by the way. These sibllings get our new story going, but unfortunately, that story is a little underwhelming and predictable. 

That underwhelming and predictable narrative didn't get in way though as the animation and characterization is just so well done. There are a lot of terrific action sequences in this. Elastigirl's motorcycle ride, defying both logic and physics, is about as exciting as any sequence I've ever seen in an action movie, and a later seizure-inducing brawl with a masked character is also really cool. A climactic fight scene on a boat is also really well done, a giant jumble of superpowered characters that never feels overwhelming or dizzying because it's put together so well. 

The new superheroes are kind of neat, too. You get to see Frozone in action quite a bit if you need your Samuel L. Jackson fix. There's a variety of others--an owl man, a gal who can zap things and people via wormholes or something, an electricity guy who looks a little like John Linnell from They Might Be Giants, a guy who crushes things telekinetically, and an old dude who vomits lava. It's a fun collective, and most of them get at least one moment to be humorous, exciting, or both. 

There might be a little too much Jack-Jack in this movie. Actually, now that I bring him up, I have a question for you. In this movie, we see each member of Jack-Jack's family discover that he's got these super abilities. They're all surprised. But didn't they find that out at the end of the first Incredibles movie? I could have sworn one of them even had a line that was something like "Jack-Jack's got super powers?!" I'm confused about that. Maybe Jonathan Banks' character wiped their memories of that. 

Speaking of Jack-Jack, one of the funniest parts of the movie involves a battle he has with a critter. It's a neat little short film within the feature, and sure it could have been shorter or maybe even deleted entirely, but what would be the fun in that? 

Anyway, this sequel is at least as good as the first installment and one of Pixar's better sequel efforts. It's got the right mix of action, humor, intrigue, and realistic human drama to make it work for both kids and adults, just like all of Pixar's best films. I'm not sure I would have asked for a sequel to The Incredibles even though it's actually the one that makes the most sense on paper, but I'm happy it finally came out and will look forward to a completion of the trilogy in another fourteen years or so. 

Note: I did not care for the short preceding the feature film--Bao. Jen liked it more, so maybe it's a "mom" thing. 

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

2018 documentary

Rating: 16/20 (Jen: 17/20)

Plot: The career of Fred Rogers, friend of puppets and children.

This movie not only dares you to be a little more like Mr. Rogers but also dares you to look for the Mr. Rogerses who have been in your life and be a little more like them, too. I can't think of a subject for a documentary that could be more timely. I'm sure that if I had been an adult during the years Mr. Rogers' shows originally aired, I'd see that the world was a terrible place then, too, but it just feels like the world we're living in now needs a lot more of Fred Rogers.

This has a treasure trove of archival footage and mixes those with interviews with Rogers' family, friends, and people who work with him. There aren't revelations here if you grew up--and probably became a better human being--watching his show. He was seemingly the exact same way off camera as we're used to seeing on our television screens. And I have to say that there's something extraordinarily comforting about that.

Now the puppet sex scandal? That one was a bit of a surprise.

You could get away with saying Fred Rogers was a talented man. He voiced all of those puppets, something that my wife was surprised to find out I didn't know. He composed all the music for the show. He knew how to interview another person. But I don't think he was talented enough in any of those areas to deserve a documentary. No, it's his compassion, his wisdom, his empathy, his understanding, his subversiveness (yes, subversiveness), his courage, and his love that makes him special. There's a contrast described in the documentary between how cheap and shoddy the production of his show was and just how radical the man was. He took on war, racism, divorce, shuttle disasters, assassination, and a host of other difficult subjects, and, in case you need to be reminded, it was all for an audience of children.

There are loads of highlights. I loved watching him at work behind the scenes with his crew. Watching him try and fail at using a pogo stick or breakdancing was a lot of fun. Watching some bloopers where the crew would switch shoes with him, seeing him interact with a few special guests, hearing from some of his guests like Yo-Yo Ma, seeing footage of him interacting with Koko the Gorilla. I loved the footage where he convinces a surly senator to fund public broadcasting. You just see that senator melting as Rogers talks to him. I also loved this footage of an interview on Tom Snyder's show with a similar melting outcome. Also touching were the details of the relationship between Rogers and Francois Scarborough Clemmons who played Officer Clemmons. A scene with a kiddie pool floored me, the perfect example of just how revolutionary Mr. Rogers could be. And watching him struggle with a PSA later in his life? It was heartbreaking.

My favorite bit was when they talked about how time was used on the show. I laughed out loud during a description of how Mr. Rogers taught children how long a minute was by doing nothing at all on screen for 60 seconds. Kids couldn't tolerate that today!

There are a few little surprises that might make you laugh, and there are a whole lot of moments that might cause you to tear up. You'll tear up because of how special and improbable this particular celebrity was, and you'll tear up that there's such a void left in his absence. This is the type of documentary capable of putting a smile on even the most cynical individual's face. Mr. Rogers might already be one of your favorite people. You might have grown up with him or had your life shaped by him, but I can almost guarantee that your appreciation of the guy will grow with this documentary.

Also--you will see a grown man's ass while watching this movie. And no, you perverts, it's not King Friday XIII's.

Hellzapoppin'

1941 chaotic comedy

Rating: 15/20

Plot: I'm not going to include a plot synopsis for this one.

For those of you who are into the anarchic comedies of the Marx Brothers, this one might be worth your time. I've known about this movie for a while, but I couldn't have told you anything about the comedy duo of Ole Olson and Chic Johnson. They don't quite have the charisma to carry a movie and aren't exactly naturals in front of a camera, but the movie doesn't really depend on them much at all.

The humor, in a lot of ways, is exactly what you'd expect from early-40's musical comedy based on a stage show. I always have a soft spot for that sort of outdated comedy--silent movies, the Marx Brothers, and Spike Jones and His City Slickers. This reminds me most of Spike Jones, who would take a popular song of the day, have his singers and band perform it expertly, and throw in as much chaos as his troupe of mischief makers could muster. This works similarly, taking the popular genre of a romantic comedy and transforming it into an incomprehensible mess with this comedic pandemonium--gags, non sequiturs, 4th wall bursting, and word play. It doesn't all work, of course, especially for a 21st Century audience, but it's rarely boring.

The movie doesn't actually live up to the promise of surreal comedic genius it sets up in its opening moments. There's this message at the beginning:

And then there's a series of dancers sliding into hell. That's right--this is a musical romantic comedy that starts us all off in hell. A lyric promises that "anything can happen and it probably will" as a little person demon pitchforks a guy chained to a rock, something that I'm pretty sure I've seen in a Heironymous Bosch painting. There are trampolines, a little person taxi driver delivering the somewhat-boring-by-comparison comedy duo stars, and a racehorse with a tic-tac-toe board drawn on its posterior. It all means absolutely nothing, and that is when Hellzapoppin' works best--when it's not trying to tell a story or be coherent. 

So a Mystery Science 3000-esque bit, sans robots, of course; cartoonish sound effects, including those old-timey springy noises and even effects for the melting of ice; your old stepping-on-a-rake gag, something that you can argue stopped being funny around the same time that people getting kicked in the buttocks in silent shorts from the 19-teens stopped being funny but would be wrong because the stepping-on-a-rake gag is as timeless as they come; some Carrot Top style humor where a coat of arms is exactly what you think it's going to be; an interruption in the form of a notice for Stinky Miller, if he's in the audience, to go home; a recurring gag with a guy carrying around a tree that keeps getting bigger while calling for somebody else who likely has nothing to do with anything in this movie; some nifty special effects with half-disappearing acts; a whole lot of stupid in a climactic stage show sabotage; and Shemp Howard's shenanigans as a camera operator (or projectionist, I guess) named Louie who can't do his job correctly because he's either being harassed by a woman in the projection room or unable to keep his camera on the right subjects because he's distracted by pretty women. Yeah, I'm pretty sure he's both the projectionist and camera operator here, but that might be because the people who made this didn't understand how movies were made. Anyway, there's tons of fun packed into this. 

Like some Marx movies, this is burdened with too many musical numbers. Some of them aren't bad, and most of them always have something else going on that sabotages them. There's some surprisingly good choreography during some of them. The standout musical number is when a group of black performers start playing and then dancing. They blew everybody else in this thing--and maybe in the 1940's--away with dance moves that looked like they were capable of jerking arms out of sockets or giving people concussions. It was really something else. 

Anyway, if this sounds like something you might be interested in, you probably will want to watch it. It's zany! 

American Animals

2018 true heist story

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Four college-aged kids plan and attempt to pull off the robbery of rare books in a special room at a college library.

Before I reveal whether or not I often sat around thinking about whether or not I could pull off crimes, I'd like to know whether or not other people did that. I'm talking about actual crimes here, not just crimes against the written word--like using dashes far too liberally or writing the words "whether or not" three times in the opening sentence of a movie review. Do all people in early adulthood, that time when people might feel at the height of their physical powers and still be immature enough to thing they're invincible, ponder this sort of thing, or was there something wrong with me? Maybe Dostoevsky had an influence on me.

Whatever was wrong with me is the exact thing wrong with the characters in American Animals, the new heist story that, if you believe the opening promise, is not based on a true story but IS a true story. None of the four involved seem all that desperate like the types of criminals you might be used to seeing in movies like this. They don't seem to be after anything. They don't have crime in their DNA. They all seemingly have things going for them--one's a gifted artist, one is a star athlete, one is studying to be an engineer, the other guy has a rockin' bod. But with nothing more than some unhinged creativity, a stack of heist movies, and that kind of dumbass spunk that a guy in his early 20's has, they plan and attempt to execute this plan. With the Oceans movie, including the one that is out right now, people have fun watching how the band of criminals are able to pull off a spectacular scheme in surprising ways. Here, it's. . .well, it's not quite like an Oceans movie. That's all I want to say.

I probably have already given too much away. The fun in this is the unexpected, and that comes not only from the characters and the decisions they make but in the playful style of writer/director Bart Layton in his first non-documentary feature. Actually, it is a documentary/narrative hybrid. The narrative is interrupted as we're introduced to the real people--the four guys, some of their parents, a professor or two, librarians--who tell the story from their sometimes varying points of view. It doesn't have the cheapness of a true crimes documentary that will juxtapose reenactments with interview segments. And it really is a lot more playful. Contrasting memories of insignificant details, such as the color of a guy's scarf, become little visual jokes that help keep this thing airy. Layton takes the audience through all the expected chunks that a heist story is supposed to have, but very little of it is anything you'd call traditional. The outlandish story, told with some visual flair and that intertwining of movie narrative and documentary interviews, has the vibrancy and humor of an angst-ier Coen brothers movie. Layton has loads of tricks up his sleeve, yet it's never too tricky.

I don't really know any of the actors in this other than Ann Dowd, who I didn't recognize; Udo Kier, who I didn't recognize; and Barry Keoghan, the kid who was in The Killing of a Sacred Deer. Though I could definitely see Keoghan's character becoming the real-life version shown in the interview segments, it doesn't seem like this guy has much range. He sort of speaks with the same odd cadence used in Sacred Deer, and I think he was sometimes creepy when he wasn't really supposed to be creepy at all. More effective is Evan Peters, an actor who is apparently an X-Man, as Keoghan's wilder friend, Warren. I fell in love with this character right at the start when he shows off the tattoo he has on his upper arm.

Great Hungry-Man product placement.

Jacob's Ladder

1990 horror movie

Rating: 13/20

Plot: A Vietnam War veteran starts seeing demons everywhere.

You know what Tim Robbins should have done in this movie to keep the demons from getting to him? He should have put together a bunch of booby traps with the help of Macaulay Culkin. This was Culkin's other movie from 1990. Home Alone, without any horrific Vietnam battle sequences with severed limbs and viscera or demon tentacles Trumping Robbins' girlfriend in a strobe-lit nightmare, was a bit more family friendly.

"Trumping," in case you're not aware, is a pussy grab.

There are lots of disturbing images in this, perhaps none more disturbing than the person nearly 50% of voters decided would make a good POTUS sexually assaulting women. The old lady in the subway car, straight from a Norwegian film, it seems; a creep shot of a web; a party edited to make it look like another war scene; the violent head convulsion motif; an ice bath with this dark angelic music. Even Santa Claus winds up being disturbing in this. The piece de resistance, however, is a lengthy scene where director Adrian Lyne unleashes a stream of weirdness during a gurney trip through a squalid hospital. There's a gristly surrealism as we follow Robbins through corridors littered with body parts, contorted figures climbing the walls. It's unpleasant stuff, and very nearly in the right way.

Unfortunately, there's a lot of silliness to all of this, a jarring pace, and jarring tones. And not in the way that jarring silliness could be effective in something like this. Once Robbins is sucked into a military conspiracy, a lot of that charming unease or playful brooding is gone. A mystery emerges, and a twist happens somewhere along the way though if you're paying any attention at all, you can probably see it way before Macaulay Culkin's parents realize he's gone. There's also a tacked-on, and probably a little tacky, history lesson at the end that made me roll my eyes.

Tim Robbins spends a lot of his screen time laughing in this one, and he's got a hair issue. I like how he was always willing to take roles in challenging movies though, and I like him here.

The only thing I remember about watching this movie in the 90's is that Robbins' character was reading the exact same paperback of a Camus book that I was currently reading. It messed with my mind a little bit, and I stayed away from situations where strobe lights could be involved.