Seven Psychopaths

2012 black comedy

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A screenwriter wrestling with a story is dragged into gangster shenanigans after a dog is stolen.

Wow. I watched this a long, long time ago. It's a mess of storytelling, but the characters are a lot of fun, and just like director Martin McDonagh's In Bruges, this feels really fresh. The thing just sparkles, mostly because the characters, though not especially well written, are unique and played perfectly by a who's who of cool, including a so-brief-you-might-miss-'em random appearance by Crispin Glover. Ferrell's the likable straight man stumbling around in the comedic darkness, and it's almost like his character is forced into the situation he's in by giggling gods. The ubiquitous Sam Rockwell shines, his comic timing and mannerisms nearly perfect. He's hilarious. Tom Waits gets to hold a rabbit and shoot people, and it looks like he's having a blast. Woody Harrelson's as funny as he gets, and he can get funny. Love his line "Peace is for queers, and now you're gonna die" in this. Harry Dean Stanton can steal a scene when he's doing nothing but standing around, and he does a great job of standing around in his limited scenes. And then there's the always-fascinating Christopher Walken who is maybe the best I've ever seen him. You just hang on his every word in this. And I love when he shoots somebody and makes the sound effect. Almost enough cool to make the entire movie explode. There's even a Townes Van Zandt song. The ultra-violence will turn off some, and the twisty plot that kind of changes tone about midway through might be a little too much for others. Rockwell's character says, "You're the one who thought psychopaths were so interesting. They get kind of tiresome after a while, don't you think?" at one point, and if somebody told me that they got tired of these psychopaths after a while, I could understand it. I thought the thing was a blast though and would definitely watch it again.

Smoke

1995 dramedy

Rating: 17/20

Plot: The lives of a cigar shop owner, a kid who doesn't seem to know his own name, a one-armed filling station owner, a one-eyed woman, her two-eyed pregnant daughter, a novelist struggling with the loss of his wife, and somebody named The Creeper intersect. The story drifts, like smoke.

Well, look at that. It's an entire movie based on a Tom Waits' song. OK, so that's a stretch, but it's the kind of agility that I'm allowed because nobody reads this anyway. This is reminiscent of those other random-characters'-lives-colliding movies from the 1990s--Grand Canyon, Short Cuts--and although it's advertised as a comedy and does have its share of humorous moments, I was more touched than tickled. See, I can write stuff like that and get away with it, too. Smoke is a very human jumble of stories. You connect with the characters created by Harvey Keitel, William Hurt, Harold Perrineau, Forest Whitaker, Ashley Judd, Stockard Channing. You spend about thirteen seconds watching them, and it feels like you've known them for years. Keitel's performance is just about perfect. The scene where he's showing Hurt his photo album with that "You'll never get it if you don't slow down, my friend." His Christmas story with the slow zoom to his face and sink to nothing but his lips. Wow. More than a few of the scenes in this movie hit me hard. The scene with the kid and his dad, the extended shot of Ashley Judd with the smoke from her cigarette drifting up to her face after her parents leave, the scene at the picnic table that is completely without dialogue. This is a simple story about complex lives, one of those rare movies that somehow manages to seem more real than reality. My question: Is there a movie with a Screamin' Jay Hawkins song that isn't good? I bet there isn't. I can make claims like that on here because nobody reads this anyway. It's also the same reason that I can get away with calling something a dramedy.

Fight Club

1999 movie

Rating: 18/20

Plot: An office worker befriends a soap maker on an airplane. Love triangles and fisticuffs ensue. They form the titular club, something that I'm probably not even supposed to be typing about. It's all fun and games until somebody suggests blowing stuff up and a guy with man tits gets a hole in his head.

Oh, man. This one's so dense! Dense and endlessly entertaining, a film with the substance to match its bombastic style, one that just shimmers. I remember watching this for the first time back when I lived in a yellow house. It shook me, and I thought about the movie for days and days. I even lost sleep because of the movie. Of course, it did completely ruin Chuck Palahniuk novels for me because they suddenly all had the same exact narrator--Edward Norton. Ah, Edward Norton. I don't know if I want to even like you since my wife's got a thing for you, but you're just so good in every movie you're in. And anytime an actor can make me not hate narration, that's a plus. The way he screams, "The first person to come out of this fucking door gets a lead salad, you understand?" or explains that "This chick Marla Singer did not have testicular cancer" and was a liar. The way he catches a giant bag of liposuctioned fat. The way he stares at a CGI penguin. But mostly that fight he has with himself in his bosses office? That scene is off the hook (as the kids would say). And Brad Pitt is just electric, always about a scream and a point-at-his-own-head away from transforming right into Nicolas Cage right on the screen. The performance is so good that you just can't imagine anybody else rocking that ironic (iconic?) bathrobe or swinging those nunchucks. Both performances bring out the subtle-and-not-subtle-at-all dark dark comedy in this story. And the movie is very funny. Just listen to Helena Bonham Carter (she's about perfect, too, and very sexy in kind of a filthy way) and Pitt's orgasmic outbursts, or better yet, just try to figure out what's going on when Norton interrupts a love-making session of theirs and Pitt comes out of the room with giant rubber gloves. A personal favorite bit of comedy is the look the woman at the thrift store gives when Norton announces, "I want bowel cancer." And Meat Loaf is in this! With tits! Tom Waits also gets a song in there, the delirious "Goin' Out West," and did I hear incorrectly or was there a Wilhelm during the plane crash fantasy? Fight Club's a movie that begs you to watch it again and again, one of those in which you might pick up a little something new during subsequent viewings. Did I notice the Tyler glitchiness the first time? That first non-glitchy shot of Tyler at the airport--what a line there. This is a movie about the balance between accepting life as it is and complete nihilism, about people--especially men--actually feeling something. You know, like a punch to the nose.

Down by Law

1986 somnambulistic Three Stooges movie

Rating: 18/20

Plot: A former D.J., a pimp, and an Italian immigrant wind up in the same jail cell where they chant about ice cream and plan a break-out. Then, they break out.

These Jarmusch films sneak up on you. The genius of them, that is, tapping you on the shoulder and then doing a funny little shuffling dance step when you turn to look. Or sometimes just flashing you a goofy thumbs-up sign and giggling. The genius of Jarmusch is in how he uses the silent moments, spaces. The same part of me that likes the poetic and quietly slow perfection of a baseball game is the part of me that loves Down by Law and Stranger than Paradise. You get space to deal with your own thoughts, crawl in there with the characters, soak in the gray details. Jarmusch is also so good at taking advantage of his settings, here the dirty city and almost hauntingly empty streets (A quick thought: I was surprised to see so many names in the credits. As with his other movies, Jarmusch doesn't waste much time showing us superfluous characters. He's got to have some kind of record for lowest extras to movie ratio.), the architecture, a very limited and sparse jail cell, the bayou. There's just so much for me to love here that I wonder if Jarmusch made this movie just for me--an oily street littered with Tom's broken records and discarded things, the prostitute's giggle after the "bygones be bygones" line, the punky guy, that long pan over the prison bars over Lurie's "fake jazz," the mention of Beepy Rapozo and the imagining of all this insane shit, a brawl scene that makes think I could take Tom Waits in a fight if we came to blows, Waits in a hairnet (a dream come true), the appearance of Benigni and how he changes the film's tone and brings a little sizzle, Benigni's standing around and failed attempts to talk to Lurie and Waits (classic Jarmusch here), the line "Cigarettes don't help with hiccups, not in this country," the aforementioned nutty "I scream for ice cream" scene that makes me smile whenever I think about it just because there's not another director alive who would put that on the screen, Tom Waits' unnatural but engrossing performance that I can't take my eyes off (a scene where Jack tells him that he's going east and Tom gives a little twitch of his hand--it's a brilliant twitch!), "Jack! Jack! Do you have some fire?", the way Waits says "Bob," the amatory dance in the cafe, a sinking row boat, the final Bob Frostian shot that is almost overwhelmingly beautiful and sad. If you don't at least like this movie, I don't want anything to do with you.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

2004 love story

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

Plot: Joel plays hooky from work and takes the train to Montauk for reasons that he doesn't completely understand. He meets a blue-haired gal, and they hit it off. Soon, however, they discover that they not only were an item previously but that they both underwent an experimental procedure to wipe their memories clean of the other person. It's very touching.

Jim Carrey's such a good actor when he wants to be. He's got an everyman face that makes you want to root for him. I'd accuse myself of having a crush on him if I didn't already have a crush on Kate Winslet and/or Kirsten Dunst's underpants. This is such a fascinating fractured rom-com, one that is always more touching than it is funny. Intricately written and visually clever, this thing slides down the gullet so smoothly that it almost seems like it's half as long as it actually is. And somehow, even when the goings get sad, things still manage to be joyful. The storytelling feels fresh, and the premise, although there's so much sci-fi fantasy that you're forced to suspend disbelief more than a lot of romantic comedy fans might be willing to do, is creative. Other movies just aren't like this one. Sunshine entertains while making a pseudo-profound statement on love and loss and relationships. It's really a beautiful little movie.

You have to have a good eye, but this movie does contain a Tom Waits reference. And Jon Brion's got soundtrack duties for this one.

Shrek 2

2004 sequel

Rating: 12/20

Plot: The lovably flatulent ogre is back, fresh from his honeymoon with the fat chick. There's no time to just sit around and enjoy his swamp and his new married life though because the poor guy's got problems with his donkey, his in-laws, and an intrusive fairy godmother. And there's a cat in this one.

Dreamworks didn't really take advantage of their chance to make a half dozen or so Puss jokes, did they? I believe somebody at Dreamworks must be related to somebody in the Eels because they're in this movie and the first one. And I heard them in the third one, the Shrek movie I couldn't even finish, a few days ago. Speaking of music, here's the main question I have about this movie--the first time we meet the Captain Hook character singing at a piano in an inn, he's got Tom Waits' voice. But the second time, he's Nick Cave. What gives? I don't really like the more meandering story in this one, and the new characters, with the exception of the cat voiced by none other than Ricardo Montalban (well, he should have been), do nothing for me. The humor's flat, and I think the makers of this make a huge mistake with the kiddies when they give the characters they're used to completely different appearances for a lengthy amount of time. It was probably to sell action figures or something. Too many loud pop songs, too many pop culture references, and yes, too many fart jokes.

Idiots and Angels

2008 adult cartoon

Rating: 16/20

Plot: He goes to work, he's mean to people, and he hangs out at the local bar where he lusts after the owner's wife. And that's about it for our protagonist until he wakes up one morning to discover wings growing on his back. They seem to have an effect on him--making him do good--so he desperately tries to get rid of them. Others try to figure out ways to exploit the wings for profit.

Easily my favorite Bill Plympton feature. Or featurette for that matter. See the color on the poster? Those are pretty much the colors you get throughout the film, but they're beautiful grays and they work well with the dream-like nature of the strange, Bukowski-esque plot, helping to set a definite tone and bringing a focus on the character and his flighty plight. I don't think there are any spoken words, just sound effects and a soundtrack provided by Pink Martini and Tom Waits. But there's still a lot of dark humor featuring the artist's usual shape-shifting characters who we get to spy on at their humorously lowest lows. Regardless of what I generally say about Plymptoons, I do like the way he animates character movement, and here, they move through his typically bleak settings in grossly poetic ways. Plympton's surreal hand-drawn animations are often very ugly, appropriately as ugly as human beings, and whereas I usually think they work better in small doses, this one just connects. I'll have to reread Marquez's "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" to find parallels.

Cold Feet

1989 black comedy

Rating: 10/20

Plot: A couple and a hit man steal some jewels in Mexico and do the only logical thing to transport them back to the states--they surgically implant them inside a horse. Buck decides to abandon his partners and takes off for his brother's ranch in Montana. Or some state like Montana. His jilted lover and the hit man try to chase him down.

I really have mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand, it's really a terrible movie, a Raising Arizona neo-madcap rip-off failure with some truly embarrassing performances. But on the other hand, it actually is very funny. It's a bit unhinged, and it all starts with Tom Waits' performance, the only time I'd describe him as awful. But he's hilariously awful, completely over-the-top as if he took some acting lessons from Nicolas Cage prior to the shoot. It's almost as if he decided that he never wanted to act again and intentionally took the piss to ensure that nobody would ever again offer him a role. But it's pretty cool. He does sit-ups while hanging out the window of a moving truck, all while screaming, "I'm a man!" He delivers wonderfully written gems ("Cowboys!", "I'll shoot you like a rabbit," "You hardly think that you've done anything wrong when you made a mouse fart at a guy's head," "I'd like some cowpoke stuff.") like a lunatic, and has scenes where he cries like no human being would ever cry (Bahuhuhuh. Bahuhuhuh.) and laughs until something (an organ?) falls out of him. Definitely reminiscent of Cage. Oh, and there's a great moment when he hits a golf ball, turns around, and flips somebody off. Awesome. The other actors aren't much better. Sally Kirkland's apparently only in this to wear a variety of tight outfits. Not that I'm complaining. Keith Carradine plays every scene like his character has to pee. And Rip Torn sleazes his way into the story late to say things like, "Just a minute. I'm taking a piss." A real pro. Add a catfight eruption that made me wonder if every single scene in this movie is extraneous, one of the most obvious boom mics I've ever seen, and a movie marquee that advertises a film called Chicks with Zip Guns, and you've got yourself a movie that is kind of a blast while not being very good at all. It's one of the few examples of a 10/20 (or, truthfully, probably a little lower) that I would actually see again.

Tom Waits fans (Matt!) should definitely check it out!

Summer of Nicolas Cage Movie #16: Rumble Fish

1983 movie made by Nic's Uncle Francis

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Rusty James is the younger brother of legendary gang leader [The] Motorcycle Boy, a 20-something who is on sabbatical in California. Upon The Motorcycle Boy's return, Rusty James is trying his best to keep the gang and its various activities going. Meanwhile, he's balancing love and hedonism and knife fights with a rival gang. But time's are changing, his older brother just doesn't seem into it all anymore, and it might be time for Rusty James to grow up. Rusty James!

I wonder if the name "Rusty James" is said more in this than "Man" is said in The Big Lebowski. I'm surprised I liked this one as much as I did. It's got dimensions, one of those you can enjoy on a lot of different levels. There's style to spare--black 'n' white and smoke machines and greasy shadows in dank settings and time-lapsed cloud drift and fish color splashes and shots straight out of German Expressionism. It's enough style to take this out of realistic territory and place its goings-on firmly in this imaginary movie land. I suppose that could distract, but I dug it as a sort of experimental film for teeny-boppers. I really should have seen this movie in high school. The largely rhythmic soundtrack by Stewart Copeland (apparently, a policeman) perfectly compliments the experimental tone and this streetwise otherwordliness. I could play it for you, and you'd guess it was from an 80's movie, but it didn't leave a bad taste in my mouth like so many other soundtracks from that era. In fact, I think I'm going to illegally download it! I enjoyed the leads, Matt Dillon and Mickey Rourke, the latter just exuding coolness, although I don't think I'd go as far as saying either of their performances was really good. I don't know; maybe I would. You've got a nice collective of performers playing the periphery characters as well. Dennis Hopper is really good in a small role as the boys' dad. Sofia Coppola is also in this briefly, making it a real family affair. Chris Penn, Laurence Fishburne (playing a character named Midget), our hero Nicolas Cage play Hollywood thugs. Even author S.E. Hinton's got a cameo as a whore. Of course, the real treat for me is seeing Tom Waits and Nicolas Cage on the screen at the same time. Waits plays, naturally, the owner of a pool hall, growling at the teens who don't use his furniture appropriately and getting a nifty monologue about time that sits near the heart of this movie. Speaking of time, there sure are a lot of clocks in this movie. I think there's a shot of a clock in every single scene which makes perfect sense (along with those clouds I mentioned before) since this has so much to do thematically with time and how it passes us by. Rumble Fish is a treat for the eyes and ears, and although Coppola takes a lot of chances with the way he shares the story, he doesn't sacrifice its heart or central message. Cool flick!

Note: I'm currently reading The Outsiders for teaching purposes. Tom Waits is also in Coppola's version of that Hinton book, but Nicolas Cage is not.

Correction: Stewart Copeland was a member of a band called The Police. He was not an actual policeman.

The Source

1999 documentary

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A history of the Beat from when Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs met at Columbia University in the mid-40s, through their rise to pop culture icon status, to their deaths.

This works fine as an introduction to the Beats and their literature, but in covering fifty years in about ninety minutes, it's a huge shallow pool of a documentary rather than anything a fan of the writers can really sink their teeth into. I know that recordings exist of Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs reading pieces of On the Road, Howl, and Naked Lunch respectively, but the makers of this documentary wanted that star power and grabbed Depp, Turturro, and Hopper to do the readings. Not sure how I feel about that, but I have to admit it was pretty cool to see a couple of them really get into the reading. I don't want to mention which two for fear that the other one will stumble upon my blog and have his feelings hurt. Good seeing a really mean and bitter Gregory Corso (my personal favorite Beat poet), Herbert Huncke, the Fugs' Ed Sanders, Ken Kesey, Gary Snyder, Michael McClure, Philip Whalen, Laurence Ferlinghetti, Timothy Leary, and Amiri Baraka. It was especially cool seeing a lot of footage of Beat muse Neil Cassady. Along with the insight from the authors, this is stuffed with a lot of pop culture snippets, an attempt to show the Beats' influence on movies, television, and music as well as art and literature. There was a Lord Buckley spotting (just on a poster), a clip of Groucho, a Tom Waits song, and a little bit of Bob. If nothing else, this movie did make me say, "Hmm. It's been a while since I've read On the Road; maybe I should pull that out," and then later, "I'm going to dig out my Ginsberg discs to hear him read Howl," and then, "Where is my copy of Naked Lunch anyway?"

The Book of Eli

2010 post-apocalyptic Bible lesson

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Eli's got a special book and a gun and a sword thing. He's been traveling a post-apocalyptic wasteland for a long time, goin' out west where the wind blows tall and Tony Franciosa used to date Tom Waits' mother. In fact, he's been heading west for thirty years, fighting off people who are trying to either steal his book or eat him or a little of both. A man named Carnegie, not played by David Carradine, witnesses Eli beating down some suckas and tries to get him to join his posse. He even sends the daughter of the blind girl he's currently banging to seduce him and convince him to stay. Eli ain't having none of that and stays focused on his mission to get his special book into the proper hands.

Denzel's never been cooler, and Gary Oldman's never been slimier. I like post-apocalypse movies anyway, this one a modernized take on the Mad Maxes if you replace gasoline with ideas. This one delivers some nifty, if not too reminiscent of other computer-aided action sequences from contemporary ultra-stylish action flicks, punch-'em-out scenes and shoot-'em-ups. One at a farmhouse, a house that like everything else in the movie is surrounded by enough shades of gray to make this almost a black and white movie, features a long shot where the camera drifts back and forth between the opponents. It's very stylish, very cool, and almost poetic. This also delivers visually. Things are digitally altered enough to make this more Sin City than the aforementioned Mad Max, but it's a look that gives the movie a uniqueness and creates some memorable set pieces. It's the kind of thing where you know the characters are probably spending a lot of time in front of a screen, but you don't really care because it all looks so cool. The story's so simple that there might as well not even be one, but it almost works like a tricky little fable about knowledge and the powers and evils that it can bring. And Tom Waits has a role, a character he nails like he always does, making you wish that he was in there a little bit more. Cool little flick, likely destined for the cult classic shelf more than anything. I do wonder how Christians could misinterpret this one though. After a single viewing, I'm not sure I'm confident in my own interpretation.

Tom Waits note: I read on a mailing list about Jackie "The Jokeman" Martling telling Howard Stern that he was taking acting classes with Tom Waits. I'm not sure if that means Waits was teaching a class or a fellow student of Martling. If it was just The Jokeman's idea of a joke.