Fox and His Friends

1975 movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: The titular circus performer loses his job when his boss/lover is arrested. He scrounges up some money to play the lottery, wins, and is then manipulated by his titular friends.

Another happy German movie. Well, if your idea of happy is closer to devastatingly bleak. Parents renting this to show their children because they think it might be a sequel to The Fox and the Hound will certainly be unhappy. It also has nothing to do with this children's book:

Unless, of course, that children's book has a lot more penis than you'd think by looking at the camera. It's possible, I guess. That pig looks a little randy. But yes, there's an awful lot of penis in this movie. One wonders if Rainer Werner Fassbinder directed this and starred as the titular loser as an excuse to show his penis to a bunch of people. I didn't realize that as Fassbinder as Fox until I looked it up. He's fine as an actor, but I thought he was a portly gentleman. El Hedi ben Salem, one of Fassbinder's boyfriends and the star of Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, makes a brief appearance in this one to as a "Moroccan." Speaking of homosexuality, here's a question. Should I have been shocked at a kiss in the first five minutes of this movie between Fox and the circus guy? And if I was shocked, what does that say about me? Keep in mind that it was kind of an odd moment for a kiss anyway. But it's 2013, and I'm not sure if I should be shocked with an onscreen kiss between two men, especially with the amount of gay porn I watch. Fox says "When I have fun, I want to have regrets." He's a tragic character who has a little fun in this movie and, I'm guessing, a whole lot of regrets. Fassbinder tells his story with a fair share of dramatic irony. I don't think there are a lot of people who could watch this not knowing that Fox is being used by people and that his lottery winnings are going to end up being his downfall. It's a lot like those stories you hear about people striking it rich and ending up with ruined lives. This is a movie about how people, regardless of their sexual proclivities, will use other people and about how money corrupts. It might not be interesting all the time and seemed a little long to me, but there is a lot of penis.

Cloud Atlas

2012 epic

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Six semi-connected stories about human beings spanning from the 1840s to the 24th Century. There's a lawyer on a boat, a slave on the same boat, a bisexual composer, nuclear physicists, a reporter trying to uncover a secret, a publisher in a nursing home operated like a prison, that guy's brother, a clone, a bunch of other clones, a tough-guy rebel, Forrest Gump, a visitor from a distant and technologically-advanced society, and a guy with a hat. I'd like to apologize to any characters I may have left out.

This is the best thing that Tom Tykwer or the Wachowski siblings have ever been associated with, and I can't figure out why it A) wasn't critically lauded and B) the recipient of countless awards. I went into this thing expecting to hate it, partially because I thought it looked kinda stupid in previews and partly because of its almost three-hour running time. And it is an exhausting experience, one that I started too late at night and ended up watching in two installments. I still wasn't thrilled about the length, but when you essentially have six movies packed into three hours, you really can't complain. That's six movies for the price of one, people. This is also exhausting because it does take a little intellectual effort from the audience. The individual plots aren't that difficult to follow unless you, like me, are confused by science fiction. What might be frustrating to a lot of viewers is how these six stories are portrayed--in disjointed snippets, some lasting barely longer than a few seconds. There's a jumpiness that at first I didn't like or understand, but once I got used to the rhythm and started finding connections between the individual stories, it made sense. And a lot of the transitions between these time chunks were pretty brilliant. Also connecting the stories were that the characters in the different eras were played by the same actors. Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, and Hugh Grant play six characters each while Jim Broadbent and Ben Whishaw play five each. Nobody gets away with just playing one character, and some of these performers brilliantly play people of drastically different ages, different races, and even different genders. A lot of times, they're unrecognizable. Well, not Tom Hanks. He's pretty easy to spot. Maybe it sounds cheesy or gimmicky, but it works with the movie's themes and it's all so well executed. Tom Hanks is mostly very good, but he and his forehead were a little distracting. I almost wished those parts were played by somebody not as easy to recognize. Don't get me wrong though--I'm not trying to put down Tom Hanks. I would never do something like that. Hugo Weaving plays villainous dudes, and he plays villainous dudes so well that you suspect the guy tortures small animals in his spare time. I found this whole thing enormously entertaining. There were several of those big memorable moments where you think to yourself, "Man, this is something special." There are fragments of dialogue that are very beautiful. There's action, romance, some humor. There's historical and science fiction, a story that plays like a political thriller and one that is nearly slapstick comedy. And there's a message that, while maybe simple when compared to the complex layout of this beast, is also beautiful. I really liked this! Epic, enthralling, and ambitious, this is a movie that I think people will finally be ready for in ten or fifteen years.

I fully expect at least one of my 4 1/2 readers to disagree completely. I'd love to hear why I'm wrong about this one.

The Times of Harvey Milk

1984 documentary

Rating: 17/20

Plot: The assassination of Harvey Milk by that coward Dan White.

OK, so this is about more than the assassination. The assassination bookends the story, but the bulk of this is about the life and political career of the titular gay guy, and it's absolutely impossible to watch this and not think one thing: Aside from his sexual proclivities, which for reasons that I'll never understand really bother some people, the world could use a lot more Harvey Milks. At least more people just as caring and compassionate. The leadership skills displayed in this documentary are inspiring, and what he was able to accomplish in less than a year really makes you wonder why more can't get done by other politicians. I was surprised that this was made so soon after the assassination. Six years? Is that right? I'm guessing it helped the story have a wider reach and enough steam to reach Sean Penn. I wasn't very old when this happened, so I'm not sure if this was a big news story nationally. To be honest, I think I first heard of Harvey Milk when the Sean Penn movie came out. I had a wild range of emotions while watching this one. The recording of Milk reading from his will was chillingly prescient with Milk "knowing that I could be assassinated at any time." After the murder and the court case, I was as angry as I've ever been watching a documentary about something that happened over thirty years ago. I had to pause the dvd, go outside, and throw a rock through the window of a Radio Shack. And of course there was the shock in finding out that it was junk food that really drove Dan White to do what he did. And the candlelight vigil brought tears to my eyes, partially because I don't like seeing people sad en masse but also because of the amount of support for, I assume, what Milk represented. And what did he represent? I guess that would be hope since the movie ends with Milk saying that life isn't worth living without it. This is a well-built and moving documentary that everybody should watch.

The Big Bird Cage

1972 women's prison movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Horny Terry is arrested for a crime she did not commit and sent to a prison labor camp for women. Meanwhile, some people who want to raise money to start a revolution get the idea to bust out a bunch of the women at the camp for their cause. The result? Mud wrestling!

How about that tagline--"Women so hot with desire they melt the chains that enslave them!"

So what are you really looking for in a women's prison movie? Sexy women? This has a few of those--Pam Grier at her toughest and the stunning Anitra Ford, a future Price Is Right gal. Nudity? It's got that, too, and not just with the aforementioned blaxploitation superstar or a woman Bob Barker would probably later sleep with. You get a shower scene or two, a genre favorite. You also get a really tall woman covering herself in lard and attacking another woman in a river with floating coconuts. Gritty and brutal prison life depictions? The titular bird cage is a giant rickety mill that gives the producers of this (yes, Corman's involved) an excuse to show sweaty and scantily-clad women climbing stairs and engaging in hard work. Perverse torture scenes? Check, including a great scene where Ford is chained and hung from her hair. How about action? Hell, yes! One only needs to point to the handful of scenes featuring mud wrestling, but there's also a terrific scene where Pam Grier and her boyfriend Django have a chicken vs. knife fight. And does this have the great acting you would expect from a feature like this? Why, yes it does. Sid Haig shows comic versatility as a revolutionary although it's not one of the most politically correct performances you're likely to see. Grier's just a presence. My favorite performance of them all is Andres Centenara as the cruel Warden Zappa. Love how he screams all of his lines with a chunky accent and kicks small animals. The best thing about this movie, other than all the nudity, is its tone. This isn't a movie that the actors or director Jack Hill is taking too seriously. I think it's hilarious how the amateur revoluntaries talk:

Guy: Me and the boys have been talking about the revolution.
Other guy: Yeah, like how to get it started and stuff.

The comic tone, the cool setting, and the gals-in-chains thrills make this a near masterpiece of the genre.

Criminal Lovers

1999 French movie

Rating: 12/20

Plot: Oh, those crazy teenagers! Pretty Alice convinces a naive virgin named Luc to help her murder a classmate. They flee to the woods like Hanzel and Gretel and wind up kidnapped by a guy who likes to take baths. Oh, snap! Seduction occurs.

Watching this Francois Ozon movie left me feeling about the same as I did when watching the other Francois Ozon movie on my blog. There are ideas, a few interesting shots, a general feel that I almost liked. It just doesn't congeal, and I was ready for the whole thing to be over pretty quickly. Apparently, I like my French movies more whimsical and lilting and light. I didn't really have issues with any of the pieces of this movie, but it didn't add up to anything that resonates. It hangs around, festers a bit, has a surprise, clunks along some more, and then ends in a way that left me apathetic and wishing I had watched Bonnie and Clyde or a French version of "Hansel and Gretel" with grotesque puppets. And yeah, I realize that's not saying anything at all since I'm going to choose grotesque puppets over anything else nearly every time. This is colored in a style that makes it all flat when it should be vibrant or suspenseful, and it's realistic in almost a stifling way where Ozon should have taken more advantage of the fairy tale parallels to create something more dreamy and timeless. This is a movie that just nearly takes challenges and seems halfassed because of it. Plus, we never get to see the gal naked. Natacha Regnier, by the way, was married to Yann Tiersen, the guy who did the music for Amelie. And that, friends, is how you end a blog post with information that absolutely nobody cares about. You know, as opposed to the rest of what's on this blog.

Howl

2010 movie about a poem

Rating: 13/20

Plot: It's 1957, and poet/publisher Laurence Ferlinghetti is on trial facing charges of indecency for publishing Allen Ginsberg's lengthy poem Howl. This dramatizes the trial and shows Ginsberg reading the poem and discussing it and his life.

Appropriately, I watched this movie while starving, hysterical, and naked. I wanted to really like it; the subject's interesting and Franco's got Ginsberg's voice and quirky mannerisms down. Mary-Louise Parker's got a small role, and "Funky" Bob Balaban (or, Nabalab Bob backwards) plays a judge. The approach was interesting with all the dialogue coming directly from trial transcripts, interviews, Howl itself, or (I think) letters. There's a mix of poetry reading, the trial stuff, the interview stuff, and animation. Unfortunately, the parts don't really add up to a whole that is all that good. The biggest obstacle for me was the animation of the poem. I thought it was awful, and this is coming from somebody who can appreciate an abundance of phallic symbols. It's got this gross 2-D computer animated thing that just looked cheap. This could have and should have been a lot better, and I know it wouldn't have made much sense, but it wouldn't have hurt to have Mary-Louise Parker naked at some point in the movie. Or Bob Balaban.