The Master

2012 Paul Thomas Anderson movie

Rating: 18/20

Plot: A Navy veteran doesn't know what to do with himself. He's tried poisoning people, copulating with sand women, and ejaculating into the ocean. He's part of the Greatest Generation! One night, he finds himself aboard the boat of the titular cult-leader/new-age philosopher/self-help author and is pulled into The Cause.

OK, this wasn't one of the fifteen movies nominated for Best Picture? I can't compare what Joaquin Phoenix did here to what Daniel Day-Lewis did as Lincoln because I haven't seen Lincoln. I find it hard to believe that his Lincoln is better than Phoenix's Freddie Quell though. I really do. Forgive the hyperbolizing, but Phoenix's performance is the best and most powerful performance that I have seen in a very long time, one of those that, even if you completely forgot the movie, you'd not forget. The mannerisms, the posture, this emotion that you know he had to dig deep for as this sex-obsessed impotent guy. There's this balance of raw power and wounded weakness that is mesmerizing, and it's a treat watching Phoenix juggle the different dimensions of the character. It's amazing, the kind of character that just grabs you until you think your face is about to be bitten off. Philip Seymour Hoffman's no slouch either, and although it would be hard for me to go Hoffman over Waltz in Django, I do think the argument could be made. The tension these two create with their characters, their jagged rapport, the way they scream and spit all over each other. They're a pair of performances to behold, dear friends. There's a lengthy interview session that should be the most boring thing ever committed to film, but watching these two actors wrestle with it is nothing short of thrilling, a scene that made my heart pound as much as any action scene in the last decade. You'd never think that much suspense could be built up over whether or not a character is going to blink. Amy Adams is mighty fine here, too, even better than she was in that Muppet movie. Her character's an enigma. She's background until you notice, and then you realize that's she's the vertebrae of this thing and appreciate the way that character's created. For the second Anderson movie in a row, Radiohead-guy Jonny Greenwood handles the score. I like the chances he takes with that. I had trepidation going into this movie, but hot damn, how I loved it! It's the kind that will just stick with you, like movies from the 1970s only a lot better looking. This is the best 2012 movie that I have seen in what I'm starting to think was a really good year for movies.

Shane Watches a Bad Movie on Facebook with Friends: Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead

2006 horror comedy musical

Rating: 15/20 (Libby: 18/20; Fred: 17/20; Carrie: 19/20; Josh: didn't rate)

Plot: A fast-food chicken franchise builds on a Native American burial ground. Amidst protesters, those Indian souls take possession of the foodstuffs and eventually the workers and customers. Poultrygeist!

What a terrible punny title. The intention with our little bad movie club, obviously, is to watch a bad movie and make fun of it. Troma doesn't make unintentionally bad movies exactly. They understand their capabilities and the filmmakers are proud of what the disgusting and sometimes downright tasteless stuff they put on screen. And sometimes, as is the case here, they sneak in a movie that could actually be described as good. This accomplishes everything Lloyd Kaufman and his writers set out to do. Josh put it best: "Fun for the whole family: racism, sexism, fat people, geeks, lesbians, h[censored], [censored], handicaps [almost censored that one, too], white trash, rape, shit, vomit, and boobs." And, of course, a whole lot of cock. It's trashy, often looks stupid, and could possibly offend hippies, animal rights activists, Native Americans, liberals, black people, people with good diets, Middle Eastern peoples, women, and really anybody else. This pulls no punches, unapologetically and gloriously. And yes, there is the "choke the chicken" that you could have predicted before the movie even started. At the same time, there's some shrewd satire about our appetites as a society, both our literal appetites and our entertainment appetites, as well as some expected and bitter swipes at the (admittedly, fish-in-a-barrel-y) fast-food industry. The jokes are stuffed into this thing, and while a lot of them are terrible--some funny because they are terrible--a lot of this made me laugh the kinds of laughs that you almost hate yourself for. And did I mention that Poultrygeist is a musical? Because it is! With some standard musical choreography! The songs are good enough to sound like something from Rocky Horror and the lyrics are funny enough. The real fun begins when the mayhem does, and there are a few lengthy sequences where Kaufman and company are very obviously just seeing how many different ways they can think of for a zombie chicken to kill a human being. The violence is nearly orgasmic. Unfortunately for a lot of viewers, they'll miss out on the berserk zombie chicken mayhem because they'll turn the movie off during an extended scene where a bulbous man with gastrointestinal issues makes a mess of a bathroom. That's if they got past the creatively juvenile use of a Native American zombie finger in an opening scene featuring a guy with something other than an ax in his other hand. No, you don't want to know. This is a movie that surprises from its beginning to its end, and you might have as much fun watching it as it looks like the people who made it must have had. It's a real blast but definitely not for everybody. I wouldn't recommend it to my mother-in-law, for example.

What Is It?

2005 movie

Rating: n/r (Mark: n/r)

Plot: A snail murderer wrestles with himself.

According to the credits, "This film has not advocated the assassination of Steven Spielberg in any way."

My brother and I made the trip to Bloomington to see Crispin Glover again. He showed us slideshow versions of eight of his novels, showed this first movie of the "It" trilogy, and then verbosely sort-of answered some questions. He had a beard this time.

I love this man. I really do. I have a feeling that people think I'm just joking around when I go on and on about him, but I think he's a borderline genius and one of the most interesting of Hollywood people. Having said that, his performance in this is about the worst part of the movie. He and his hair (or possibly wig) are distracting, and being distracting in a movie like this is an impressive feat. So what kind of movie is this? It's oddball avant-garde, cheap but fanciful and full of ideas, and a lot of people are going to find it downright offensive. It takes place, from what I can tell, on at least three levels of consciousness, years before Leo and his special effects team did it in Inception. The cast is made up mostly of unintelligible actors who have Down's Syndrome. There are references to Shirley Temple and Nazis, sometimes at the same time. There are cheap puppet shows. One character, the one who tells us that he's Michael Jackson, is in blackface. One scene right after Crispin Glover's character--either Dueling Demi-God Auteur or The Young Inner Psyche and Id since he plays both--floats in with what has to be one of the best special effects I've ever seen features a Cabbage Patch Kid, the playing of a song that uses the no-no n-word and is mostly about how black people smell, and a naked black woman in a monkey mask manually pleasuring Steven C. Stewart, the guy with severe Cerebral Palsy who wrote and starred in the second film of the "It" trilogy. Yep, that's the kind of movie this is, and if you're not in the right place mentally to see any of that, you should stay away. As I've mentioned many times on this blog, I like my avant-garde or experimental films best when they're a little goofy or at least humorous, and I did find parts of this really funny although I stifled laughter because I didn't know how the woman sitting next to me felt about the whole thing. I mean, I already came in with the guy who had smelly hair, so I already had one strike against me.

I can't pretend to know exactly what this is (pun, I guess, intended) or what Glover is wanting to say, but it's a movie that sticks with you and makes you think which is one of the director's intended goals. It's far from a perfect movie and, in fact, appears to have been filmed in Crispin Glover's backyard or basement, but at the same time, it is unique and almost pretty special. My brother and I are refusing to rate the thing because we're a couple sissies. I neglected to ask everybody else in the theater.

By the way, this is now easily at the top of my list of "Best Shirley Temple Movies" right ahead of The Littlest Rebel.

Spanking the Monkey

1994 movie that doesn't even have a monkey

Rating: 10/20

Plot: Some kid with 90s hair has an internship all set up but instead has to go back home to take care of his recently-injured mother because his dad is a traveling salesman. The dog keeps distracting him while he's trying to masturbate, and he's not having much luck at all with the neighbor gal. Luckily for him, his mother's a lot of fun to hang out with.

The box, imdb.com, and the above poster make this seem like it's supposed to be a comedy. It was definitely more disturbing than funny, and the indie-film quality somehow succeeded in making it all seem much, much creepier than it was supposed to be. There's a big shocking payoff in the late-middle part of the movie, and although I liked how it was filmed--well, maybe it should have been a lot less tasteful--when it happened, it really doesn't inspire anything but shrugs. The actors all perform as if they're either really sleepy or maybe hypnotized. Scenes with main character Raymond's friends not only seemed extraneous but interrupted the storytelling. This movie seemed much longer than it actually was. It's really unfortunate that there wasn't a monkey in this movie.

The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence)

2011 sequel

Rating: 8/20 (Mark: 18/20; Amy: 13/20)

Plot: A sexy parking attendant with a disturbing obsession with The Human Centipede (First Sequence) decides to make his own human centipede out of people he's crowbarred in the head at the parking garage. All he needs is Ashlynn Yennie who played a character in the first movie. Luckily for Martin, she's got nothing else going on with her career.

Thank God this was in black and white. There was a lot of this that I just did not need to see in color--an unfortunate scene with a baby and a scene featuring lots of fecal matter. Well, pretty much all of the scenes. Actually, there was a lot of this that I didn't really need to see in black and white. It's true what they say--what has been seen cannot be unseen. The first movie was a piece of work itself, but it had a fun performance by Dieter Laser as the bad guy, a little bit of style, and some very dark humor. As you'd expect, this has a lot in common with that movie. There is a filthy style to this. The film's got this greasy look to it that fits. The centipede-maker, an obese loner named Martin, is played creepily by a guy named Laurence R. Harvey. His body shape, masturbatory method, weird eyes, bad hair, smile, and everything else--his physical performance really is a good one--builds this character you wouldn't want to meet in your dreams. The character's not played for giggles like Laser's guy in the first movie. There was almost no background on Dr. Heiter in the first movie, at least that I can remember. You just knew he wanted to hook three people together to make a pet centipede. Here, we get enough background about Martin to make him a little more human and a lot creepier. And this second installment of a series has some humor although it's very very sick humor. This movie completely fails, however, because it doesn't know when to stop. After a while, it's like somebody telling you the same joke over and over, each time repeating the punchline a little bit louder. You'd just want to cover your ears and tell that person to go away. You almost want to do the same here. Director Tom Six, likely in an effort to top the shock or raise the torture porn bar, just doesn't know when to stop. The best horror movies work because of the subtleties. Six grabs the back of your head by the hair and shoves your face in the horror, and he does it over and over again. I don't recall seeing a trailer for this movie, but I imagine the voiceover said, "Now with more nudity! More blood! More shit! More bondage! More screams! More graphic surgery scenes! And yes, Human Centipede fans--more centipede!" My brother, who loves these movies, covered up his eyes and refused to watch some parts of this. I'll give him credit though. He ate Hardee's food before this, knowing that he was going to watch this movie. It takes a real hero with a real hero's stomach to eat Hardee's food in the first place. I know veterans of WWII or the 9/11 firefighters are often referred to as heroes, but they've got nothing on my brother. I almost regurgitated Hardee's food, and I didn't even eat any of it. A movie that can make you vomit somebody else's food is some movie, and that's just the type of movie this is. The sequel's concept may have had potential, and I really did like Harvey's performance, almost in a way that makes me feel guilty. Unfortunately, this is a movie that almost begs its audience not to like it. I obliged.

If I give a "Best Beard" award this year, Bill Hutchens will likely win it. He played a perverse psychologist. Martin's mother was played by Vivien Bridson who might find herself with a Torgo at the end of the year. It was one delightfully batty performance. Technically, Harvey could win the Billy Curtis Award for little people because he is called a midget in this by two different characters. I'm not sure whether he's eligible or not and will have to dig up my rulebook. And despite my brother's promise that this movie has the "greatest masturbation scene ever," I don't think it beats the one in Borat's new movie.

By the way, if you were an actor or actress in this movie and played a part of the centipede, would you tell people? Would you put it on your resume?

Oh, and Hardee's representatives, you can thank me for the product placement with cash. I do not want coupons because your food, at least the last time I ate any of it over twenty years ago, is garbage.

The Dictator

2012 comedy

Rating: 14/20 (Jen: 16/20)

Plot: Jennifer, who is not even pregnant, craved movie theater popcorn. I wanted a banana milkshake. We checked to see what was playing at the dollar theater in Greenwood, Indiana, and found something that at least one of us wanted to see. When we first started dating in Knoxville, Tennessee, we drove to the dollar theater all the time, and it didn't even matter what was playing. We saw Last of the Mohicans, a movie that I didn't even like, twice. We saw Cliffhanger, Dennis the Menace, Son-in-Law with Pauly Shore, and Under Siege 2 without seeing the first one. The popcorn was awful, the floor was sticky, and my attempts to make out with my wife were thwarted. It was just like old times!

This is more Ali G Indahouse than Borat or Bruno, but I thought it was very very funny. It's scripted, an actual movie, but it still has that Cohen flavor and is best when, like in the best parts of those more improvised comedies, he pushes buttons and hits you hard with the satire. And Cohen's not the type of comedian who is afraid of pushing buttons, and he luckily has the type of director in Larry Charles who's not afraid to push buttons along with him. There are more than a few moments in this one where you will almost not believe that he went there, my favorites being a scene that takes place in a helicopter that isn't actually even that well written but still works so beautifully and a masturbation sequence that ingeniously incorporates a scene from Forrest Gump that made me laugh a little more loudly that I prefer to laugh in public. The film's plot isn't all that interesting and it's a bit more derivative than I want to see from Cohen. The love story with Anna Faris is a necessary evil, I suppose. The versatile Ben Kingsley's good, and so is Jason Mantzoukas as Nuclear Nadal. Megan Fox, Edward Norton, John C. Reilly, the ubiquitous Kevin Corrigan, shane-movies favorite Chris Elliott, and Gary Shandling also have Muppet-style cameos. Another thing I liked about this were some of the set details which gave this, on top of the slapstick and oft-crude dialogue humor, a little more of a visual element. With each passing appearance, I'm more and more convinced that Cohen is a comedic genius. The writing, the delivery, the flexibility with the characters, the impeccable comic timing. He's just about the best at what he does, and I'll eagerly await his next movie. This movie, by the way, was not one that I had high hopes for, but I'm sort of glad Jen had a hankering for disgusting popcorn.

Antichrist

2009 horror film

Rating: 12/20

Plot: A married couple struggling with a personal loss ventures to a cabin in the woods to try to work through their feelings. Things get graphic.

This is difficult viewing. Like The Wacky and Whimsical Whites of West Virginia, this is the sort of movie that I don't seem to be able to handle very well anymore. I can stomach a lot, but there are at least two shots in Antichrist that I just wish weren't there. Certain things seen, it's been said, cannot be unseen, and I'll admit that I flinched more than once during this one. This is a beautifully-filmed movie and the imagery is powerful for the most part, but von Trier seems to enjoy making me (and I suspect most people) really uncomfortable. Trust me--this one is difficult visually and it's difficult emotionally. A beginning black 'n' white montage, thought stunningly poetic and tragically beautiful, is tough, and things just get worse from there. It's also got Daniel Dafoe who I always have trouble believing is a real person. I'm not sure his penis is real either actually. Charlotte Gainsbourg is solid, and both of the leads wrestle bravely with some of the most challenging roles I think I've ever seen. I don't know why I said "leads" there because with the exception of a little kid at the beginning and some faceless walking symbols near the end, there aren't any other characters. Unless animals count. Talking animals. You know, the kind of talking self-cannabalizing foxes that you're used to seeing in a Disney flick. Ants and hawks, weird subtle wobbly cam effects, a CGI grotesque fawn, ominous acorns, and the tree-root/hand thing you see on the poster up there. I didn't get all the symbolism being shoved in my face, probably because the movie stole my will to live. This one pulls no punches.

Meatball Machine

2005 science fiction movie

Rating: 11/20

Plot: Aliens infect humans and transform them into beastly robotic fightin' machines. They meet, they fight, and then the victor gets to eat the loser. One nondescript guy tries to either save the woman he loves by destroying her or prevent his own destruction.

This might be the first movie on this blog that has a scene where a woman is violated by tentacles. I've been looking for a movie with a good tentacle rape scene so that those with that particular fetist (apparently, there are loads of them) will stumble upon my little blog. I've now got Hunger Games fans, women's prison exploitation aficionados, and tentacle rape fetishists covered, and I'm feeling pretty good about the future of shane-movies.

Meatball Machine won't be mistaken for a good movie, but it does have its visually interesting moments, all done very cheaply--spaghetti wire shaking, junkyard costuming, phallic jello. The monstroids (have I coined a word?) are cool, and the violence is splattery if you're into that sort of thing. I couldn't care less about the plot or characters, and the filthy atmosphere, though intially kind of cool, grew tiresome. So did the climactic battle scene which I'm pretty sure is still going on. A tacked-on end scene that attempted to explain everything that happened was really dumb. It's almost like the makers of this wanted to make a movie only so that he could call it Meatball Machine, neglected to tell the audience anywhere in the movie why it was called Meatball Machine, and added an ending just to throw those words in there sometime.

Somewhat reminiscent, by the way, of Tetsuo, the Iron Man.

World's Greatest Dad

2009 dark comedy

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Lance has always dreamed of being a professional novelist but has settled on being a mediocre and unpopular teacher of poetry at a high school. He tries his best to raise his little hellion of a son, a socially-awkward and potentially dangerous young man. Things aren't going great with the art teacher he has a secret relationship with either. Things start to look up for the poor guy following an unexpected tragedy.

I may have given this one a Robin-Williams'-penis bonus point. I've heard rumblings about Robin Williams being famously well-endowed. This movie reveals the truth. But that's a spoiler, and I probably shouldn't have started with it. It's too late now, and there's nothing I can do about it. So Robin Williams' penis is big, and Bobcat Goldthwait is one sick, dark writer. World's Greatest Dad grabs tattoos by the balls and shakes it around until more taboos spill out. More people will squirm at what happens in this more than they'll laugh, but I found the movie engaging for its duration. I loved Daryl Sabara as the son in a performance that spells out awkward with all capital letters. Thinking about a shirt with his picture almost makes me laugh. I thought I knew his face but couldn't quite put my finger on it. Then I found out that he's the kid from Spy Kids, and it's great to see that he's grown up and become the type of actor who is willing to be in awkward masturbation scenes. I know Antonio Banderas would appreciate it at least. Sabara is like the anti-Cera here. Now before you Cera fans jump down my throat, let me make it clear that I like Michael Cera just fine, even when he's sporting a mustache like in this picture. Anyway, Sabara gives us a great comic performance here. Williams is good as well although there are far too many close-ups of him. I could identify with his character as a language arts teacher, especially with the kid who plagiarized Queen/Bowie and recited "Under Pressure" as his own original poem. I had a student do that with Johnny Cash once. I also liked the haiku that a character named Andrew recited. You can almost tell that Goldthwait's got some ADHD issues or something by the way his movies flow. This is no exception, and it always seems like things are threatening to become unhinged at any moment. The movie's good, but there just seems to be missing a big of reality or something that keeps it from being great. I did appreciate the Santa Claus Conquers the Martians poster hanging in the background in one scene.

Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!

1990 romantic movie

Rating: 13/20

Plot: A mental patient kidnaps an actress, suggests that they get married, and refuses to take no for an answer.

I've got to start with this since I'm a pervert: I have a new favorite sex scene, the bathtub scene in this movie featuring the lovely Victoria Abril and a wind-up diver toy. That's worth the price of admission alone. I guess my problem with this one is that the movie had to be about Antonio Banderas and Victoria Abril and their characters' relationship and not more about Maximo Espejo, the director played by Francisco Rabal. He gets a great line though: "When you put your heart and genitals into something, it always ends up personal." I might have that put on my tombstone. Banderas is fine, but the lead characters lacked depth, and their love story was actually pretty boring, despite all the bondage. Morricone's score is dull, 80's fizz. There is a nifty and colorful musical number with a trumpeter who has a mini-pompadour, cheese-covered keyboards, an old lady, a young girl, and a polka-dotted lead. And there's some He-Man figure decor which, for whatever reason made me laugh a little bit. But if I ever watch this again, it'll be for the toy diver scene which makes me cry just thinking about it.

Urine Couch AM Movie Club: Seed of Chucky

2004 horror-comedy

Rating: 6/20

Plot: Spawn of demented doll Chucky escapes from the oppressive control of a faux-ventriloquist and brings his parents back to life. They go on a murderous rampage in their attempts to use actress Jennifer Tilly to become human beings.

The worse the movie, the stronger the smell of urine from the couch. This viewing was interrupted three times--twice by customers and once when I had to chase away a prostitute. As I recall, the original Chucky movie was a pretty straight horror movie. This abandons horror altogether and goes straight for laughs. Sure you've got decapitation, victims set on fire, and stabbing, but the tone is a sickly humorous one. It's not good humor though, just a few steps from Scary Movie. I'm not sure what's happened with Jennifer Tilly's career. Roughly three-fourths of this movie just seems to be an excuse to show off her rather glorious cleavage. John Waters makes an appearance as a paparazzo and at one point gets to say "A masturbating midget!" when he peeping-Toms at Tilly's home and spots, you guessed it, Chucky enthusiastically pleasuring himself. Oh, I may have neglected to mention it, but Tilly actually does play herself in this. She's also the voice of Tiffany, bride of Chucky. She's obviously having some fun with the roles. Brad Dourif does the voice of Chucky, and he does it with vigor. There's also a cute nod to Ed Wood with the parents arguing whether or not the titular seed (bet you didn't think I'd work that in!) should be named Glen or Glenda. I did like the effects to make the dolls move around, and I did laugh during a scene where one of them was running. I guess I have to give the makers of this some credit. Seed of Chucky doesn't pretend to be anything that it isn't. What it is just isn't very good though.

Tragically, rapper Redman passed away during the filming of Seed of Chucky.

Rubber

2010 killer tire movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: An abandoned automobile tire rolls around the desert and uses its telepathic powers to destroy any trash, bunnies, or people who get in its way. A crowd of people is given binoculars to watch the proceedings.

Like Christine or Maximum Overdrive or Duel but with only a tire. Or like your typical 50's monster movie except instead of a guy in a rubber suit causing mayhem, you just get the rubber. From a technical standpoint, I enjoyed trying to figure out how the tire was brought to life. It may be a much easier special effect than I think it is, and it certainly wasn't a special effect you'd describe as flashy. Most of this movie is the tire rolling around, only stopping to quiver and make a loud noise and make something explode, or people sitting around watching the tire, a meta-cular cinematic joke that's the sort of thing Soderbergh might put together in his spare time between Oceans 19 and Oceans 20. We're told at the beginning that this film is an "homage to the most powerful element of style" in movies--a lack of reason. It frequently falls into annoying cutesy-clever territories, turning into the kind of indie production that you want to take out back and slap around a bit. But was I entertained? Heck, yeah! It's a tire rolling around making bunnies explode! How could I not be entertained? Funniest bit involves a cop taking a tire off a car and saying, "This is what our killer looks like." No, the funniest bit is probably where they set a trap with an explosive dummy. I also can appreciate any movie that has a scene implying that a tire has jerked off while watching an exercise video. I'll give director Quentin Dupieux credit for seeing this ridiculous idea to its end, but his message about movies comes across like a film school student trying to impress his professor who rambles on and on about arthouse cinema every class.

I'll probably lose any chance at a Father of the Year Award for admitting this, but I was watching this with a couple of my children until the moment when heads started exploding and I told them to go upstairs. They didn't enjoy the bunny explosions at all and were probably disappointed that their father laughed at it.

Summer of Nicolas Cage Movie #7: Fast Times at Ridgemont High

1982 high school movie

Rating: 14/20 (Jen: 12/20)

Plot: Teenagers at the titular high school titillate each other, take some drugs, rebel against their teachers, get their priorities all wrong, knock each other up, make poor decisions, work toward their likely depressing futures, and masturbate.


This episodic look at high school in the eighties barely has Nicolas Cage in it at all. It is filled with a ton of colorful characters and their various misadventures. A few of those misadventures are interesting and/or meaningful, and unfortunately, a few of those characters are annoying. That's right, Sean Penn. I'm talking about you. I did like some of the interactions between his Spicoli and Mr. Hand though. This movie didn't make me laugh, and I didn't hit me on a nostalgic level since it's a bit before my high school time. As an artifact from the 1980s, it's maybe an above-average teen comedy, but if you're watching it only because you're a fan of Nicolas Cage, you're going to be really disappointed.

Black Swan

2010 ballet movie

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

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

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

Taxidermia

2006 family comedy

Rating: 17/20

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

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

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

Little Children

2006 drama

Rating: 15/20

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

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

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

The Right Stuff

1983 airplane and spaceship movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Traces the advances of flight and the U.S. space program from the time Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier to the training and travels of the Mercury 7 astronauts.

Der Stoff Aus Dem Die Helden Sind is a thoroughly engaging, light-hearted breath of fresh air. There were a lot of ways this material could have been approached. This movie almost fictionalizes the events and characters, and never steers away from an opportunity for a little humor. Instead of inflating the hero aspect, the script makes these pilots and astronauts very very human, and I really liked all the scenes with the bumbling politicians. Their scenes aren't far off from Abbott and Costello routines or an Ionesco play. The scenes with the flights are very realistic without being overly special-effecty, and even though anybody with even a rudimentary knowledge of this period of history knows what happens with the characters, they still manage to hold the tension. At six hours and forty-three minutes, this movie is very long, but it's never boring. The music was a bit much a lot of the time, and the sudden narration at the end is weird. Overall, I really enjoyed this very warm look at the Cold War, a movie that puts a human face on the wacky and wild world of space travel. If nothing else, this movie may have inspired me to incorporate horses into my sex life.

Cory always wanted to be an astronaut as a little boy. Or a shark. Watching movies about them was the next best thing. He recommended The Right Stuff.

Big Fan

2009 sports movie

Rating: 12/20

Plot: Paul's sort of a loser. He lives with mom who wishes he could be more like his seemingly better-adjusted brother and sister. He's content with a dead-end job at a parking garage. He lives for one thing and one thing only--his New York Giants and their potentially bright future with star quarterback Quantrell Bishop. With pal Sal, he tailgates every Sunday before watching the game on a television in the parking lot of the stadium. On weeknights, he carefully pens some words for a local sports talk radio show, trading trash talk with an Eagles fan called Philadelphia Phil. But a violent encounter with the star quarterback threatens to disrupt his routine and ruin the team's chances of winning the division, and Paul is left to sort it all out.

I certainly wanted to like this movie more than I did. I almost laughed once--at a 50 Cent birthday cake with a "7" candle--but found the majority of what was supposed to be a dark comedy fairly discomforting. Writer/director Robert Siegel and Patton Oswalt take this character to some dark places, crush his bones, spit on him when he's down, and expect us to laugh, but there's not nearly enough of a payoff. Big Fan gets some things right. You could hear a lot of talk show callers (I'm looking at you, Clones) in Paul's scripted phone calls, and I thought Oswalt was excellent in portraying this guy. But too much of this was just difficult to watch--the interactions between Paul and his mother, the building tension as Paul sat watching his idol live it up with his entourage at a club, pretty much every conversation Paul had with anybody not named Sal. Pitiful characters can be funny, I guess, when it feels like they're somehow in on the joke, but with Big Fan, it just didn't feel right to laugh at this guy's pain. Or maybe it just wasn't funny enough. I would have liked some evolution with the character, something to make me think that it was all going to be all right eventually, some glimmer of light that would make it OK to crack a smile. I didn't get it.

This movie also loses a point because of Michael Rapaport. I don't like that guy.

The Hangover

2009 comedy

Rating: 11/20 (Jen: 13/20)

Plot: A groom-to-be goes to Vegas with two buddies and his future brother-in-law two nights before his wedding. The next morning, groom-to-be Doug is missing, and the other three--now in possession of a baby, a tiger, and a chicken--have no memories of the last twelve hours. They try to piece together the clues to find Doug and get him to his wedding on time.

This isn't a completely awful way to spend nearly two hours. There were a few laughs. I liked the baby, Mike Tyson has a cameo, the brother-in-law was sort of funny, I like that guy from The Office, I like the guy from Community, it was fast paced, and there was a breast or two. A lot of the jokes worked, and some of them worked very well. But a little of this kind of humor goes a long way, and after a while, I got pretty tired of the whole thing. It started ludicrously, managed to get more ludicrous, and then all of a sudden surprisingly got even more ludicrous. That's fine, I suppose. It'll impress the college kids and probably even the high school kids, and they'll have something to text about on their media devices that according to a survey I just read about they spend fifty-three hours per week using. But this curmudgeon, a guy who embarrassingly needs at least a half an hour to type out and send the rare one or two sentence text, started feeling like somebody was hitting him with a rubber mallet. Probably a rubber mallet that smells like urine. The oppressive soundtrack didn't help. There were so many songs in this movie that the soundtrack has to be three or four compact discs. And they were all loud songs, too. I have to go to bed now.

Bad Lieutenant

1992 one man show

Rating: 13/20

Plot: Lieutenant No-Name roams around the city, almost lifelessly, performing cop duties. In the spaces between, he gambles recklessly and obsessively, cavorts with whores, and drugs it up. Darryl Strawberry tries to make it to the World Series with his Dodger friends.

It couldn't have helped that I had to watch this movie in fifteen installments. But it couldn't be helped. I couldn't have my daughters walking in and seeing Harvey Keitel's penis. They'd be traumatized for life. And I couldn't have my wife seeing that either, frankly because it puts mine to shame. And although my son is at an age where he's mature enough to watch more mature movies, seeing Harvey Keitel jacking off next to a car or the rape of a nun might give the lad ideas and lead him into a life of jacking off on cars and/or raping nuns. I nearly like Bad Lieutenant. I think Harvey Keitel is frequently brilliant, but the performance is ultimately an uneven one. At times, his character is so bloated by badness that it begins to look like a parody of itself, more comical than anything else. During one final scene, when Keitel begins excessively whining like a wounded animal, I almost laughed, and I don't think laughter was what Abel Ferrara was going for in that scene. I also found a scene with Jesus almost uproariously funny. Lots of religious imagery in this one, far too much in fact. It almost felt less like watching a movie and more like the pope hurling religious objects at me. And I'm not sure if you've had the experience of the pope hurling objects at you, but it's not something I'd recommend. I do like a bunch of the stark and gritty scenes. Bad Lieutenant refuses to hide anything at all, and as uncomfortable as that might make the typical audience member feel, it does succeed in being realistic and at times emotionally charged. But this is Keitel's show. He's the center of every single scene, and when what he does works, which it frequently does, everything works. And when he doesn't, things unfortunately get sort of goofy.

As a baseball fan, why don't I remember this Mets/Dodgers playoff series?