Oprah Movie Club Pick for March: Se7en

1995 horror crime movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A soon-to-be-retired detective breaks in a cocky young detective as a high-concept but psychotic serial killer punishes people for their deadly sins.

This thing's fucking depraved and so devoid of anything resembling hope that I imagine only real sicko could actually be a fan of it. Plus, it's called Se7en with that number in the title, another thing that only those with twisted or damaged souls could appreciate. My feelings are mixed. It's a downer, diving so brazenly into the depths of despair that I'm actually surprised it's so popular. At the same time, it's executed well, artful in its disturbing nature and shameless wallowing in this muddy wretchedness. This seems like the type of movie made in those early days of the Internet for people who would surf the net for celebrity autopsy photos or giggle through Faces of Death IX, but like all artistic triumphs, this is something that sticks in your head and gut for a long time after you've finished the thing and returned it to Carl's Videos. You'll remember that bloated fat man (Bob Mack in his only film role) with his eyes open and a puke bucket under the table that you can almost smell. You'll remember zombie man coughing himself alive, and you'll remember how you jumped a little even though you'd already seen this movie and knew that he was about to cough himself alive. You'll remember Freeman pondering whether he should open that box or not and then his expression when he looks at the contents. And you'll remember Spacey's eyes and wonder how an actor can make his eyes that expressionless.

Part of what makes this memorable is where Fincher places this movie. The first 3/4 of this movie is set in this anonymously decaying city, a bleak place with perpetual rain. It's all creaky fences and half-assed graffiti. When the characters are in their apartments, the outside sounds--cars, crying babies, unintelligible yawping, sirens--penetrate the walls. I watched this movie with headphones, and these outside sounds seemed to surround me and were almost overwhelming, really painting this world of complete chaos. The environments these characters find themselves in are bleak, almost in suffocating ways. There are barely windows in this movie that aren't cracked or broken, dust hangs in the air, walls are peeling and splintered. It is not a happy world at all, visually very far from the "fine  place" described by Hemingway at the quote at the end of the movie. And that rain! Are there any scenes that take place in the city where it's not raining?

The performances are great from top to bottom. Brad Pitt plays a hotshot so well that you'd almost think he was some kind of hotshot in real life. He probably touches his hair too much in this movie, and there are a few times when he probably could have used a second take, but he creates this character, as one-dimensional as the character really is, very well. The climactic "What's in the box?" scene may go down as his most powerful moment in his film career. Freeman is great playing the same character he always plays, a guy who can never ever lose his proverbial shit. I don't think I've ever seen a young and stupid and loud Morgan Freeman in a movie. Does such a movie exist? His opening line--"Look at all that passion on the wall."--almost tells you everything you need to know about his character. Not just the words--the delivery. He's tired and has stopped pretending. The early scenes in the movie have Freeman's character asking questions that people either don't want to hear or don't understand. And he sleeps to a clicking metronome. (Side note: I think movies are automatically better with metronomes. Surely I can't be the only person who finds metronomes sexy.) The clash between Pitt's idealism and Freeman's apathy works largely because of the acting. Paltrow is fine, mostly in the background. She's got a pretty head which is all that really matters in this movie. A lot of her scenes, probably because the mystery and the cat-and-mouse games in the rest of the movie are more interesting, seem like a waste of my time. I also liked R. Lee Ermey (Sarge in the Toy Stories) as the police captain or sergeant or whatever he is. His answering of a telephone with a grumpy "This isn't even my desk!" is one of the very few moments of comedy in this thing. The other would be Spacey's line about a dead dog which is a terrific bit of black comedy although knowing what you know about what's about to happen in that scene, it would almost seem appropriate if Spacey's character looked at the camera and apologized for the line. Spacey is Malkovichian in the role, and though he's only in a small chunk of the movie, he takes advantage of every word he gets to create his character. Oh, and shane-movies favorite Mark Boone Junior is in this playing "Greasy FBI Man." He's perfect at playing a character who doesn't seem to want to be in the movie he's in. And I don't know who plays the guy scraping Somerset's name off the door, but that guy shines in a 4 1/2 second role. He just nails that scene, nearly steals the whole movie as a matter of fact. Unfortunately, I can't find his name.

Quick question: (And I'm sorry for spoilers, but this is the Oprah Movie Club, and you were already supposed to have watched this.) What do you think of the whole library card thing? Is it my imagination or is that a little lame? Chaucer, Dante, Milton, Shakespeare. It's not like these aren't difficult texts to acquire. The killer had books in his apartment. If he's going to go to the trouble of having his freakin' fingerprints removed, it doesn't seem like he would be so careless with a library card.

From the squelchy NIN remix over ominous credits featuring meticulous crazy person activity to the shocking conclusion, this is a movie that your stomach will never forget. It's not pleasant, but neither is the world sometimes.

This is currently the 22nd top-rated movie on imdb.com. I know there's absolutely nothing scientific about those ratings, but for a movie this pessimistic or bleak, that seems so high.

Oprah Movie Club Pick for January: The Ten Commandments

1956 Biblical epic

Rating: 15/20 (Abbey: 12/20)

Plot: The story of Moses, told ad nauseum.

Sorry this installment of the Oprah Movie Club is arriving a little late. It has been a very long time since I saw this and had completely forgotten that it was told in real time like the 24 t.v. show. Seriously, Moses from his birth to his wandering off into the sunset after God told him, "Nuh uh! You ain't goin' to no promised land, Mo-fo-ses," all unfolding in real time.

I feel really bad for making my daughter watch this. I tricked her by telling her it was like an Indiana Jones movie, and then we didn't even get a shot of the Ark of the Covenant. That's right--no money shot! I thought that was a huge mistake. Abbey was confused about the overture and the guy coming from behind the curtain to chat with us at the beginning of the movie and then much much later, the intermission. I had to explain to her that going to the movies used to be a lot classier and that some of them would take up to half of a person's lifetime to watch.

Finally, there's a cool opening shot after the half hour of overtures, introductions, and opening credits. This movie's so big, and so much of it looks terrific. The colors pop, the set design is so big and expensive, and some of the special effects are very impressive. It's fun imagining a storyboard of this being shown to studio execs and having them laugh and say, "You've got to be kidding me!" The burning bush looks silly, and I know I'm probably going to hell for typing that, but it's true. You wait five hours and forty-seven minutes to see a spectacle, and that burning bush is the only reward? The snakes are a little cooler, and I liked the sanguine-ing of the river and the greenish Angel of Death mist although the latter could have been a lot cooler. That pull-back through the streets with that green smoky ooze was a cool shot though. I like what Cecil B. DeMille and his team's artistic and moody skies, but the piece de resistance is that parting of the Red Sea. Of course, the pillar of fire is weak, looking like something pulled straight from a G.I. Joe cartoon in the 80s. The obvious green screen, a random kid/master-of-the-obvious who tells everybody around him that the Red Sea has just been parted, and a guy who decides to poetically refer to God's nostrils try to take you away from the scene a little bit, but it's hard not to be impressed with the bigness of that special effect. My favorite part of it is a shot of three awe-struck women who, if he had any interest at all, Moses could have easily banged. And the Moses-standing-on-the-rock scene after the Hebrews get across is a nice movie moment. I also liked the set design for the Mount Sinai scene with God as a fire tornado and the Hebrew slaves--so many extras--showing us that they know how to party. I always liked, by the way, that they were breaking like two of the most important commandments while God was putting them on stone. But fire-stick duels, women riding men like horses, hot chick sacrificing. That's my kind of party although I really would have liked to see something closer to an orgy.

Yes, there's a ton of memorable scenes and fantastic imagery in the second half of the movie. The problem is that you have to wade through over five hours of character development to get there. You get an hour long scene of Moses talking to some sheep, and then they skim over two-thirds of the plagues? I wanted to see a frog rainstorm and cattle implosion or whatever else was in there. Sure, they mention "all manner of plagues," but we don't get to see them. And there's a lot of stagy acting with miscast actors. I do like Yul Brynner as Rameses and, of course, Vincent Price as Baka, but Ian Keith was pretty awful as Rameses' dad and Edward G. Robinson looked like he couldn't figure out what the hell he was doing there. Anne Baxter's a little hottie, at least from certain angles, as Nefretiri, and I nudged Abbey at one point to tell her that I wouldn't mind using Nefretiri as my footstool before realizing she was not the right audience for that. For the most part, it seems like everybody in this is just playing dress up. Charlton Heston wasn't a terrible Moses though. In fact, he's very convincing as Baby Moses, and I wasn't even sure it was him there. He's good as Old Man Moses, too, as he looked more and more like a crazy messenger of God. He gets to say all kinds of cool Moses things in that strong voice of his.

A question: Why does Aaron do all the stuff with the staff? Moses is holding the staff, and he's the voice of God and all, so shouldn't he get to do the magic tricks? But every time, he hands the staff to his brother. Did I miss something when I was fast-forwarding over a scene where Yul Brynner looks pensive for 25 minutes?

Is it just me or does it seem like every time the narrator comes in, it almost seems like he had to be awakened to read his lines?

There are a couple performers who steal scenes with small performances. First, there's Rameses's kid played by Eugene Mazzola, a bad child actor. "Mother, he turned a staff into a cobra." Mazzola's also in Terror in a Texas Town, that Western featuring a gun vs. harpoon show-down at the end. There's also a slave who dies in the mud, and his reaction to being whipped was awesome. Oh, and an old lady who says, "The Chariot! Ahh! Run for your lives!" It's great enough on its own, but I loved the little pose she struck afterward.

Did you know that Herb Alpert is in this movie, a drummer during the Mount Sinai scene? Not sure if the Tijuana Brass is in there. If they were, I might have gotten that orgy that I wanted!

Another question: What's the jackal and hound game they're playing in this? It looked like a blast.

Oh, another question: How many extras do you think were killed during the erection of the obelisk scene? That just didn't look safe.

So there are many spectacular moments in this Biblical epic, but that burning bush should have been in the first fifteen minutes of the movie. If I ever watch it again, that's probably where I'll start it anyway.

Too bad DeMille died after this one. I would have really enjoyed seeing a five-hour version of that story about Jesus meeting the little guy in the tree.

Suing the Devil

2011 Christian movie

Rating: 3/20

Plot: A law student sues Satan for 8 trillion dollars.

I feel the need to explain a little about how I stepped in this chunk of dog shit before I being describing how bad it smells or how it ruined my carpet. Because this might be the worst movie experience of my year for me. I saw half of a plot synopsis, noticed that Malcolm McDowell was playing the devil, and enthusiastically put this on. I could have done some research. I could have noticed the involvement of Rebecca St. James, a contemporary Christian artist whose name I recognize or maybe looked into the company that made this and realized what it was. I didn't, and I was severely punished. About three minutes into the thing, tipped off by some oppressive music and the production quality, I said to myself, "Uh oh. This feels like a Christian movie." Now, I don't have a problem with Christianity or really any religion. I do, however, have problems with what Christians make when they decide to get creative. The movie I wrote about here is a perfect example. I wouldn't have been surprised to see Kurt Cameron in the credits for this. What I am surprised about is Malcolm McDowell's involvement. Now, he's not awful or anything in this. As a matter of fact, he plays the devil about as well as I expected him to. But he must be either really desperate for work because he looks too weird to be in people's movies or he lost some kind of bet. A few nice lines are scattered throughout this courtroom drama, and McDowell gets to yell a little bit, but there's not really much to work with at all. And there's a scene where [SPOILER ALERT, I suppose, since this is near the end] a Bible reading leads to a marathon of McDowell belching which is far from his finest moment on the silver screen. Or a straight-to-video television screen. Other than McDowell, the acting is universally bad, especially from this Bart Bronson character who played the protagonist. He's either Australian or spoke in a faux-Australian accent for inexplicable reasons, but he's got the type of accent that makes everything he says seem like whining. The performance is brutally bad, made worse because the writing is so terrible. "Don't tell me I left the bullets at home!" is a line that shouldn't have made me laugh given the context, but the delivery and awkwardness of the whole thing did just that. Of course, I also know brain cancer isn't funny [Oh, shoot. SPOILER ALERT!] but a scene in which its revealed that his wife has brain cancer cracked me up. And I learned that brain cancer apparently makes you cough a lot. My favorite Bart Bronson moment: "Oh yeah. Nice magic trick, dude!" Shannen Fields, a woman who plays his wife and can't even spell her first name correctly, might be worse. And then there's a mention of Section 666 and a gavel drop and some awesome special-ed effects featuring twitching demons in hoodies and angels and this nifty exploding head trick, and it all manages to sink this thing even further until holy hell, you realize that this is probably the movie that Satan tried to show Job after God told him he could have his way with him.

Job: "You took my family, destroyed my property, and gave me leprosy. But this movie is too much, Satan! Uncle!"

You can watch this if you want, but it'll probably make you root for the devil. I'm not sure how comfortable you'd feel with that.

The Gods of Times Square

1999 documentary

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A look at religious zealots and street preachers along the sleazy 42nd Street around the time a Disney Store is put in.

This documents a very specific time and place, and it really couldn't be more fascinating. I like documentaries where somebody's just letting a camera roll to capture whatever's captured, and this works best when it does that. A whole sanctuary full of general oddballery here. There's a preacher rapping about "roasting on your roaster while you're toasting on your toaster while you're coasting on your coaster" because "God's gonna treat you like a butterball turkey." Shots of street performers, a woman with two pairs of sunglasses, lots of Calvin Klein advertisements, and strip joint facades interrupt interview snippets with some positively creepy folk, most who seem anywhere between slightly and extraordinarily unhinged. Militant black guys call for a war with whites, and director Richard Sandler and his testicles argues with one of them. There's a guy who claims to be Jesus returned as a grunge musician who is going to first marry Madonna and later get into international affairs. There's a soulful guy who throws in the old "to the break of dawn" rap cliche. There's somebody calling for "faggots hung from lightposts throughout the city" after the faggot Olympics. Mickey Mouse as the Antichrist (I knew it!), Mom and Pop hot dog joint sadness, recurring folk filled with the Holy Spirit. This is a funky montage, filled with characters with eclectic spiritual beliefs. Some of these people even have conflicting religious beliefs within themselves, including the director who claims to be both Buddhist and Jewish at different points. Speaking of him--there are times when I'm bugged by his voice. When he speaks, things get a little frustrating and unfocused, and I thought there were a few times when he was condescending. One other thing that annoyed me was this belligerent fellow who later said he was a substitute teacher. He was so completely rude that I wondered if he was for real. No way a person's going to really act like that. Still, a fascinating document that will very likely make a believer out of you.

Recommended by Matt.

Viva Knievel!

1977 movie

Rating: 4/20

Plot: After breaking into an orphanage, healing one of them, and flirting with a nun, Evel Knievel nearly dies in a motorcycle stunt while attempting to jump over cages full of circus animals. Well, he breaks his arm anyway. He impulsively retires. He's lured to Mexico and back into the jumpin'-over-things game because. . .well, I think it has to do with money. Leslie Nielson, however, wants him dead so that he can use his trucks to transport drugs into the United States. Meanwhile, Knievel tries to bag a newspaper reporter.

I had an Evel Knievel lunchbox as a kid. Actually, I don't know if I had one or not, but I'm going to go ahead and say that I did for the blog. The stuntman intrigued me, and this is without even getting a chance to see him in this movie or knowing that he had healing powers. That's right. It only takes about five minutes of movie before you get one of the most heartwarming and beautiful scenes in motorcycle stunt movie history when an orphan tosses away his crutches and says (I shit you not), "You're the reason I'm walkin', Evel. You're the reason I'm walkin'!" Brought a tear to my eye anyway. Evel Knievel isn't all heroic in this. In fact, a lot of the movie makes him look greedy and surly. He's mean to Gene Kelly. Poor Gene Kelly, by the way. What did he do to deserve this? He does deliver a powerful anti-drug speech while standing next to a nodding Frank Gifford in which he references Indianapolis and says, "Narcotics will make you blow all to hell!" I was convinced. Leslie Nielson plays the bad guy, cardboardily, and Lauren Hutton is the love interest/newspaper reporter. Also, Marjoe Gortner and his curly hair are in this. Marjoe plays a rival stuntman, and he's about the most interesting character in this thing, probably because not much of what he does makes sense. Of course, I was probably just distracted by that hair and his creepy eyes. Frank Gifford plays himself a lot more naturally than Evel Knievel who at times looked like he knew he was making a terrible mistake but that it would be worth it because a hell of a lot of lunchboxes were about to be sold. For those of you into motorcycle/car chases, the one that makes up the finale of this stunt-and-drama-filled extravaganza seems like it's at least forty-five minutes long. The most thrilling stunt, to me at least, was a spill from a wheelchair though. That might have been the only stunt that Evel Knievel, really not in his prime here, actually had anything to do with. I also laughed outloud when a child fell off a motorcycle. Note: I'm still trying to figure out if this is a real movie.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go not take narcotics.

Urine Couch AM Movie Club: Angels in the Outfield

1994 baseball movie for Christians

Rating: 7/20

Plot: A sad kid roots for his hopeless Angels while hoping his father will come back to spend time with him. God answers his prayers, probably because He knows this is a Disney movie that a lot of people could be seeing and he doesn't mind the free advertising.

The good news for this is that it's not nearly as bad or as offensive as Facing the Giants, the filthiest piece of religious propaganda that I hope to ever see. This doesn't have the heavy-handed religious message, probably since this was made by the Satanic Disney people instead of a Baptist church somewhere in the Bible Belt. It's still the type of movie that could make Jesus into an atheist since it's got writers who, like in the aforementioned Christian football movie, seem to believe that God cares about your sports team enough to answer prayers. Seriously, I've been trying that with my St. Louis Cardinals for years, and it just doesn't work. But again, this is more for entertainment and isn't nearly as dangerous as Facing the Giants or spending a half an hour with participants in an anti-abortion protest. It's got Tony Danza, too, so you know things can't all be bad. As a religious fanatic myself, I was only mildly offended. As a baseball fan, I was a little more offended. The baseball scenes were all pretty silly, and the special effects to make angels come to the aid of Angels looked pretty silly. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays the white kid in this, not as much of a stretch as it would have been if he had played the black kid. The black kid is played by a real black kid named Milton Davis Jr. He's only been allowed to act in one other movie, 1997's Mad City, and I'm guessing that has something to do with him being one of the worst actors I've ever seen. There's creepy but otherwise banal conversation between the two children throughout this, the most sickening being when one asks if his dad and the other's mom are best friends in heaven. That nearly made the Urine Couch into a Vomit and Urine Couch! Lord have mercy!

I wonder what Alyssa Milano thinks of this movie and her dad's performance in it. If she likes it, I might have to reconsider my rating.

Audience of One

2007 documentary that my brother will be pissed I watched without him so I'd better hurry up and type a bunch of entries with the hope that he won't see this

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Because Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat wasn't quite amazing enough, God speaks to Richard, a Pentecostal preacher from California, and tells him he needs to make a science fiction movie based on Joseph's story. His congregation helps fund the project while Richard works hard to find other investors to help raise the fifty million dollars the first-time director wants to work with. Unfortunately, God doesn't seem to like what happens in pre-production and decides not to support the project any more. But Richard and his congregation, still convinced that they've been called to make the film, keep trying to do everything they can to make Gravity: The Shadow of Joseph a reality.

On the one hand, you almost want to commend Richard for his faith and for his creative spirit. He's a man, for better or for worse, who is bursting with ideas. But that one hand is so far away from the other hand, a much larger and more conspicuous and screaming hand. And on that hand, you want this guy to be punished for biting off far more than he can chew, ripping off a flock that really doesn't look like it can afford to be ripped off, and for being about as delusional as an individual can be. Don't get me wrong--I have nothing against delusions. But Richard's delusions are potentially harmful, the best example in this film probably being where one of his crew asks if it's safe for kids to be around some horses and getting the answer "Don't worry about that." There's a wonderful moment in the movie when, after spending a nice wad of movie to film in a neat spot in Italy, they encounter problem after problem. One of the problems is that their camera stops working. Oh, snap, right? Not if you're Richard who announced, "God called us here to shoot this movie, and we're going to shoot this movie--camera or no camera." It's not a leap of faith as much as it's a triple-jump of faith or a pole vault of faith. Later, after the church rents a San Francisco movie studio that they eventually can't afford the rent on after shooting what seemed to be zero hours of footage, Richard starts to get really paranoid, even setting up security so that nobody will bust in and steal their ideas. "It's either God or I'm crazy," he claims at one point, and you'll come away from this believing it's definitely one of those. By the end of the movie, Richard's completely lost his mind, promising his congregation that God has sent him a vision in which they'll be making forty-seven films a year, own eight TV networks, have their own airport, and (believe it or not) colonize another planet. Got news for you, Richard. It ain't God. Since this is a documentary about Pentecostals, you know you're going to be treated or creeped out by some scenes showcasing their religious practices, and there's a nifty scene where they're sanctifying the studio, a process that involves a great deal of shouting and these really strange horns. A lot of the cast is entertaining. The guy who plays the "horned captain" (I went to a Bible college, but I don't remember a "horned captain" in the Joseph story.), actor Daniel who plays Spirf, and a tubby and high-maintenance trippin' stunt man could all be in any movie that God tells me to make.

Don't tell Anonymous that I watched this.

. . .And God Spoke (The Making Of)

1993 mockumentary

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Clive Walton and Marvin Handleman--the producer/director team that brought the world
such gems as The Airport, Dial "S" for Sex, She Beast, and Nude Ninjas--decide to make a Biblical epic based on a 2,000 page script. The problem is that they have no budget, and after just a few hours, they're already hopelessly behind schedule. Numerous problems arise and begin to strain Walton and Handleman's relationship.

First off, I have to give the makers of this props (wait, do we still give props?) for the Fitzcarraldo reference. Nice. This pokes fun at the film industry more than Christianity. In fact, I really doubt it would offend too many Christians, and even if I'm wrong, it's still mighty funny. The production's nearly as cheap as the Biblical epic they're trying to film, and not every single gag connects, but it squeezed more than a few laughs from me despite the gloomy mood I was in before watching. Like the best of the genre, it's really the little moments (the ones you almost miss if you don't pay attention) that are the funniest. Everything Fred Kaz (Noah) says is funny ("I was a Klingon for a few minutes."), and I also loved the sound effect guy, a discussion about how many disciples there were, a dead buffalo, some hilarious product placement, and "What lovely Frankenstuff!" Oh, and "I could do it with or without my teeth." This has a few famous faces, too. Soupy Sales, oddly enough, is Moses. Jan Brady plays Noah's wife, and Lou Ferrigno and Andy Dick play Cain and Abel respectively. I'm sure reading about this movie has done little to convince you to watch it. Do it anyway and thank me later!

Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter

2001 religious kung-fu musical horror comedy

Rating: 12/20

Plot: I haven't read it, but I think this might be based on John's the Book of Revelation.

Yes, that's Santo on the cover, side-by-side with Jesus and ready to fight lesbian vampires. And in the middle is Mary Magnum in that tight little red leather number. Fetching. Making Jesus an action hero is dangerous business, especially since a lot of religious folk don't have much of a sense of humor. But I'm not sure Christians would be too appalled with the character Himself since I don't think He does anything Jesus wouldn't have done like Scorsese had Him doing in The Last Temptation of Christ. Unless bad puns are offensive. In fact, even though the title hero is your typical overblown action hero, he is the hero. He fights evil, and he quotes scripture. What's likely more blasphemous is the use of Santo. El Santo in Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter can't wrestle and is portly. When watching this movie, your first thought (other than "This is blasphemous!") would probably be, "I think this might have been made on the cheap." And you'd be right. Your third thought would probably be, "This was made in 2001? No way! It's got to be from the 70s!" But there's a charm to the proceedings, and the script, littered with (intentionally?) bad punnage and silly action hero banter, is funny enough. I found myself laughing more than I really wanted to. For whatever reason, hearing Jesus deliver the line "I'll need to buy some wood. . .for stakes!" was hilarious. I also thought the spinning crucifix used as a Batman-esque transition between scenes was clever. I also liked a scene where about three hundred baddies get out of an SUV. Not all the comedy worked though, evidenced by a scene where Jesus has a conversation with a bowl of cherries. The bowl of cherries actually tells him to find El Santo. I can't decide if seeing Jesus and a priest hanging out at a Hooters-type restaurant is funny or not. There's a lot of kung-fu in this movie, and it won't exactly make you think of Bruce Lee. The fight scenes often seemed endless, and if the guy who played Jesus (Phil Caracas [Wait a second! Isn't the guy who plays Jesus in the Mel Gibson movie named Caracas?]) had any martial arts training, they wasted their obviously limited funds on it. There is a scene where a character uses intestines as a weapon though. I should have started making a list of those movies a long time ago. This is also a musical, and although the songs were only slightly more tolerable than Repo: The Genetic Opera's numbers, there at least was some eclecticism. You had punk, techno-robot-lounge, keyboard blipping, 80s feel-good movie rock, Mexicali funk, cheesy lounge, neo-funk with vocoder, dance music, retarded jazz, and my personal favorite--a really creepy song where somebody whispered the books of the New Testament with cymbal accompaniment. The performers were likely friends of the director, some of them, I think, appearing as more than one character, but three of them were real stand-outs. Josh Grace was deliriously over-the-top as Dr. Praetorious. I checked his resume, and he's been in a few of JCVH director's Lee Demarbre's movies including one where Demarbre includes another Mexican movie legend--The Aztec Mummy. I can't find the name of a screaming woman, but it was one of the best screams I've heard in a long time. But the very best part of the movie is the introduction and musical performance of Blind Jimmy Leper played by an actor named "Lucky Ron" who had about as many teeth as Shane McGowen. He does this scatting number which could probably prove the existence of God to even the most diehard of atheists. Jesus jumped on the stage and did his own scatting, but he couldn't beat the work of Blind Jimmy Leper. And when you're Lucky Ron and can prove in your lone movie that you can out-scat Christ Himself, you don't have to do anything else as a performer to win a lifetime achievement award on shane-movies.

Note: I've heard that there's an Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter movie being made. Joaquin Phoenix is attached to that project. I guess his career is doing just fine!

Dead Man Walking

1995 piece of liberal propaganda

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Convicted murderer and rapist Matthew Poncelet has nothing to do but count down the days to his execution and write letters to nuns. Sister Helen Prejean answers his letter with a visit, later helping him find a way to work on an appeal and becoming his spiritual counselor. She later is forced to interact with the family of his victims.

I thought this was going to be just a bunch of left-wing nutjobs asking me to be sympathetic to violent criminals, but that's not quite what's going on here. Somebody pro-death penalty could claim that director Tim Robbins et. al. are making an anti-death penalty statement with this and probably get away with saying it. However, this is as objective a cinematic approach to an issue like this can get. The death sentence at the heart of this movie is seen from every angle--the guy sitting in death row, the victims' angry families, the folks who work in prison or death row, the nun torn by it all, and even the victims themselves. No matter what you think of capital punishment before the opening credits, I think this movie challenges you to think things over again. Not that it's here to change your mind or anything. But it is thought-provoking. The acting is really good universally (even Jack Black in what has to be one of the funniest movies of his career), but at the center of it all, you've got two of the most powerful lead performances in recent movie history. Susan Sarandon's Sister Helen is just the right amount of tortured, nothing but heroic as a woman of conviction. Her performance is deep and quietly passionate. Sean Penn is one of those actors who I always forget is any good at all. This is the perfect type of role for him since he looks like a scumbag anyway. His thick mumble is tough at times, but he's real good here in a very challenging role, forcing you to see the human being who's almost unrecognizable, smudged by his sins and hidden beneath layers of his own hatred. No, you won't end up liking that human being, unrepentant racist/murderer that he is, but you will find it impossible not to take notice of the human being. Such powerful performances, and the dialogue between them is rich and realistic and rewarding. Where this could have ended up manipulative and sanctimonious or overly didactic, it stays deeply moving and reflective. I was touched by more than a few scenes. I wish Robbins would have shown less of the crime. He intercuts jumpy dimly lit flashes of flashbacks in scenes with characters walking or whatever, and it almost gets to be a bit much at times. But I suppose I know why theses scenes are in there.

Religulous

2008 inquiry

Rating: 11/20

Plot: Funnyman Bill Maher travels the world to have some of his questions about religion answered. Or maybe he's traveling on the world because he's a superior human being who was sent to earth by something (Note: Not a deity) to tell us all what's what in a very smug way.

Points deducted because my research shows that this contains possible misinformation. More points deducted because of the amount of stereotyping and generalizing that Maher does. Not to say this wasn't entertaining because it was. I enjoy when people are made fun of because of their beliefs. I really do. But there was just something about Maher's approach here that rubbed me the wrong way. Part of the problem is that his stated goal with this is so far from what he's trying to do. He claims he's asking these questions because he really wants answers, preaching the "Gospel of I-Don't-Know." He doesn't. He's asking these questions because it gives him the opportunity to be funny and show how much smarter he is than the average person. His well-written diatribe at the end of this, a biased faux-summary of his discoveries, could easily have been written prior to production. As a documentary, this lacks cohesion. I laughed out loud a few times, and if that was his main goal (he is, after all, a comedian), then he succeeded. Somehow, I doubt Bill Maher's main goal was to make Shane laugh, however. If nothing else, this reinforces my belief that I need to visit the Creation Museum. They have animatronic dinosaurs there!

Marjoe / Thoth

1972 documentary

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Follows Marjoe (combines the names Mary and Joseph) Gortner on a tour of Pentecostal tent revivals and churches. Marjoe became a preacher at age 4, exploited by his parents but winnin' souls to Jesus throughout the Bible belt. He resurrects (pun intended!) his career as a rockin' evangelist in his twenties, not as a believer but as a charlatan. He assembles a film crew to chronicle what will wind up being his last revival tour.

I knew of Marjoe because I had a copy of some recordings he'd done as a child. He's a fascinating figure, and I watched this wondering why the heck he was allowing himself to be filmed since it would end his fraudulent career as a half-chicken/half-Rolling Stone
fire-and-brimstoner. I probably didn't need to see him at work so much, especially in the sort of uninterrupted way he's shown, but he's charisma is addictive and it's easy to see why so many are duped by this sort of thing. The Pentecostals are bewildering and fascinating anyway, but this behind-the-scenes stuff is just great. Marjoe shows us the man behind the curtain, divulging secrets of how these little medicine shows work. It's amazing to me how likably greasy this guy is, and I thought the footage from his youth was, aside from slightly creepy, really great. He was even greasy as a kid.

I was going to write about it separately, but Thoth, a documentary short (forty minutes) about an eccentric "spiritual hermaphrodite" street performer, was also included. I really enjoyed watching it, too. Here's a guy who performs a one-man opera in a tunnel in Central Park, accompanying himself on a gypsy's violin and foot percussion. I was blown away by his otherworldly vocals. There's nothing terribly interesting about his life story although I did find it all uplifting in an odd sort of way. The best thing about this documentary might be the footage of the crowd watching his spirited performance. There's one shot where the camera pans over several people with their mouths wide open. Cory, you can go ahead and add this to the list of individuals with whom you'd not want to spend time.

A Serious Man

2009 riddle

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

Plot: Larry's a midwestern physics professor with a wife and two children. One day, his life gets much more complicated. His wife tells him that she is leaving him for their friend Sy. His son is addicted to the marijuana. His daughter steals from him to save up for a nose job. One of his failing students is trying to first bribe him and later sue him. Suddenly, not much makes sense about Larry's life. He seeks the counsel of a triad of rabbis.

I expected more straight comedy here, but this is more Fink than Lebowski or Burn After Reading. It's pretty clear early on that watching this movie will be like wading neck deep through an existential funk. Like Old Testament Job, albeit more comically, poor Larry is tested, dragged through shit, and spun in dizzying circles. It's hard to not feel for the guy. Accuse the Coens of being unnecessarily difficult, convoluted, and obscenely quirky if you must, but they have a way of making films that closer than any other filmmakers' works to matching the confusion of human existence. A Serious Man is a film that questions rather than answers, and it does it in a way that is typically Coen while being something completely new. This is the type of movie I'll likely never feel that I've completely grasped, possibly because of what I miss by not being Jewish or by not being smart enough to understand simple philosophical concepts. But I'm fascinated by what seems to be a lack of answers from the three rabbis (faith, mystery, and abandonment?), by the connections with Biblical Job, by the recontextualizing of that Jefferson Airplane song, and by the unlikely marriage of spirituality and science to fool us into thinking the world is a logical place. I need to watch this again and will have no problem doing just that.

Sita Sings the Blues

2008 animated myth

Rating: 14/20

Plot: The Hindu epic poem Ramayana juxtaposed with the contemporary story of the filmmaker's divorce. Sita accompanies Rama into the dangerous forest after his banishment from his father's kingdom. A multi-headed demon guy kidnaps her, and Rama, with the help of a monkey king, has to go get her back. Then, Rama decides that Sita is damaged goods. Meanwhile, in the present day, a couple's marriage disintegrates after the husband is transferred to India.

I really liked the mishmash of animation styles which added a nice variety to the proceedings. The movie is colorful and frenetic, and the mythology is easy to follow. The filmmaker, a woman scorned apparently, also uses the 1920s (?) blues of Annette Henshaw, and the choice of songs blends very well to the telling of the Ramayana. It helps to humanize the story and proves how timeless and universal the themes in the epic poem are. The story's told with a sense of humor, with snarky shadow puppets commenting on the finer details of the tale in between scenes, and the loose, irreverent animation helps keep all of this fun rather than bitter. After a while, I started to get a little bored. The epic poem rambles a bit, and parts of this felt like a series of music videos instead of a movie. I also thought that an intermission was a waste of my time, and hated several scenes that bombarded me with techno music. More than once, I thought this wandered into the too-much-of-a-good-thing territory, and the point was driven home a few too many times. Still, much credit has to be given to Nina Paley who apparently made all of this on her computer.

Danielson: a Family Movie (or, Make a Joyful Noise HERE)

2006 Christian rock 'n' roll documentary

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Chronicles the creative life and work of the Smith family who perform as the Danielson family, from the early days in which principal songwriter Daniel Smith forms the group with his siblings--performing in nurse and tree costumes--to when life takes the members of the group their separate ways. Sufjan Stevens and his stupid hat are also all over this.

Enjoyable enough glimpse at a very creative mind. At times, it seems like Brother Danielson is knocking on the door of wherever the hell Brian Wilson and Daniel Johnston reside. In fact, Daniel Johnston's actually in this. But it's clearly a case of the music and appearances being stranger than the reality as the family seem really grounded and live completely normal lives. The documentary is structured in a frustrating way, and there are some scenes or performances that went on too long. I also could have done with less Sufjan Stevens, probably because his hat was really really silly. I would have been interested in seeing more reactions to this from the Christian community since it seems that a large percentage of their fans are non-religious. I loved the Danielson's music the first time I heard it, but I assume it would be absolutely grating for most people--it's rhythmically bizarre and Smith sings in a strained falsetto. I also have to assume that large parts of this documentary would be grating to most people. There's a lot of concert footage, rehearsal stuff, and recording scenes. But sprinkled in with all that is a look at a loving family with an amazing creative energy, a positive message about being true to yourself, and an insightful peek at the creative process. It's worth a look for anybody with a tolerance for music a little left of the dial.

Note: Smith watches and discusses the documentary Salesman, a movie I enjoyed some time last year.

Wise Blood

1979 American masterpiece

Rating: 12/20 (Mark: 10/20; Amy: 6/20)

Plot: Wounded veteran Hazel Motes returns to the deepest South, buys himself a suit and a preacher hat, and moves to the city to do some things he's never done before. He does them in a very intense way. He meets a bunch of mentally-challenged southerners, sleeps with a fat whore, buys a car that will get him anywhere, and decides to start the Church of Jesus without Jesus.

I really wanted to like this movie. I'm still a little surprised that I didn't like it very much since it's just the type of movie that I generally like. I did really like how this movie looked; there's a richness and texture that brings alive this almost otherworldly South. I don't remember much about the Flannery O'Connor novella, just that I really liked it, so I'm not sure exactly how true this cinematic version of the story is to the text. I do know that this was disjointed, thematically uneven and frustratingly clunky. It's heavily symbolic, but the symbolism is made really silly by what's either a bad script or terribly delivered lines. I'm leaning toward the latter. The cast--led by Brad Dourif who actually made me uncomfortable as the ultra-emotive protagonist but supported by Harry Dean Standon, Ned Beatty, and Dan Shor--do nothing to make their characters resemble actual people, giving really bizarre performances that actually busted my quirkmeter. Those sonsabitches ain't exactly cheap either! If I could be more convinced that this was a dark comedy or if I could put the pieces together and figure out what this is saying, I'd feel more inclined to like and recommend this.

Greaser's Palace

1972 Western comedy spoof

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A zoot-suited Christ lands in the desert and begins healing people, performing miracles, and prophesying. The constipated Seaweedhead Greaser, owner of the titular establishment, and his gang of oddballs do various things, few which make any sense.

This strange little movie has a language of its own. It's rebellious and quietly wild, weird and wacky, and almost completely pointless. You'll scratch your head until your skull bleeds, you'll laugh a bewildered guffaw, and you'll declare that you've just watched the greatest Western ever made and then immediately retract the statement, claim you never said that and that you indeed hate the movie, and get a few band-aids for that skull of yours. I was moved spiritually, nearly baptized myself in a kool-aid bath actually as the credits rolled, but it also made me want to wash my hands with another man's washcloth and drink a cup and a half of bleach afterwards. A unique and wonderful slab of absurdist funk here!

Jigoku

1960 horror film

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A student's life unravels after he and a friend are involved in a hit-and-run accident. He and seemingly everybody he knows then winds up in hell. Oh, snap!

Definitely a more interesting movie than it is a good one, Jigoku reminds me a lot of those old propaganda films warning teenagers about what will happen if you experiment with weed. Here, the lesson is that you should choose your friends wisely and not befriend people who will trick you into killing people. It's ultimately just as silly as Dwain Esper's 30's "educational" films or Reefer Madness. It's really almost two separate films with the first half building sinful characters and the second half punishing them. The second half, of course, is the more interesting half with some low-budget Boschian imagery with lots of severed limbs, rivers of blood, and screaming. The visuals are surrealistic and gross (in fact, this is supposedly the first "gore" film) but they're not any scarier or more innovative than the depictions of hell in films that were made much earlier. Disjointed storytelling in the first half of the movie actually makes that a sort of weird experience, too, like watching off-kilter melodrama. Jigoku leans heavily on color symbolism and also employs some pretty inventive camera angles. This is much better than that horrible What Dreams May Come movie.

Ordet

1955 Carl Dreyer movie

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Old pious Morten had a farm. E-I-E-I-O. And on this farm, he had three sons. E-I-E-I-O. Agnostic Mikkel lives on the farm with his pregnant wife Inger and two daughters. Johannes is nuts, frequently wandering to the fields and announcing that he is the Messiah. And youngest son Anders wants to marry Anne, the daughter of a tailor who Morten doesn't like very much because of differences in their religious faiths. So they cluck cluck there, and they cluck cluck here. Here a cluck cluck. There a cluck cluck. Everywhere a cluck cluck.

Ordet (The Word) is a sneakily dense, slow-moving but intense look at religion, specifically the issue of faith. I didn't completely understand it. I really wish the differences between Peter the tailor and Morten's religious ideas were made a little clearer. Morten was a happy Christian while Peter was more of a depressed worshipper, but what does that mean exactly? This builds so slowly that I initially thought I was bored out of my mind. The camera moves slowly, the characters talk and move slowly, and the backgrounds are static and too gray even for a black and white film. But gradually, I was hypnotized by the thing, drawn into the characters' lives, so that when the pair of climaxes came, they were deep and meaningful whereas they might seem trite and meaningless if I just told you what they were. There's not a lot of camera movement, but when it happens, the movements seem so important. Really, there's something seemingly important about the lack of movements too, I guess. There's a focus on the characters, no setting distractions except for maybe the occasional lamp or picture, and almost nothing that can be described as action. It's that minimal quality that give the relationships and conversations the characters have this quiet intensity. The ending is powerful, but, at least for me, thematically perplexing. I was pretty sure I knew what the film was trying to say (again, re: faith), but the more I thought about it, the more I was confused about why the movie ended like it did. That ending was very well handled, however, with the same dreamy rhythm of the rest of the film, sans music, extraneous movements, or wasted emoting. I look forward to watching this again in another format (I had a vhs copy, so a Criterion release of this would be nice upgrade) to uncover some of the mysteries and symbols (a bird cage? candles and lamps? Johannes stick? the relationship of Anders and Anne as a marriage of religious ideas?) tucked inside it.

Recommended by Cory. And if you're reading this, R.D., I'd be interesting in hearing what you think about this one.

One Nation Under God

1993 gay documentary

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Homosexuality was considered a mental disorder until 1974 when that was corrected by psychologists. A lot of ultra-conservative Christians didn't get the memo apparently. This documentary is about the religious right's attempts to cure homosexuality.

There's a rambling, sort of unfocused structure to this combined with an ending that gets far too preachy, but this is still a fascinating and fairly scary look into Christianity's attacks on gays. On the surface, it looks subjective enough, featuring interviews with both sides and no heavy-handed narration, although it's pretty clear where the makers stand on the issue. A lot of the spotlight is on Gary and Michael, two formerly cured gay men who worked as part of a gay-curing organization called Exodus International who later somehow uncured, probably because the devil got to them. There are other insightful interviews and a lot of neat footage showing the variety of angles taken to get rid of the homosexual desires. The cover alludes to A Clockwork Orange, and that's actually an accurate comparison. A psychologist telling a man to pleasure himself to a picture of whatever until the moment of climax when the picture could be substituted for that of a naked woman? Attempts to associate physical pain or sickness with images of scantilly-clad men? Giving butch lesbians makeovers to make them feel more feminine? Geez, Louise! Simultaneously funny, educational, and horrifying.