Silence of the Lambs

1991 best picture

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Prospective FBI agent Clarice is recruited to chat it up with notorious serial killer and cannibal Hannibal Lecter in order to help the agency capture another guy who kidnaps women for their skin.

This movie has a trio of great scenes mixed into a character study about a character I just didn't find very interesting. The three scenes:

1) The best scene in the movie is where Lecter touches Clarice's fingers. A lot of the film has to do with their complex relationship, and that scene stands out.

2) The second best scene involves Stuart Rudin's character, Miggs. I'd imagine Rudin has had a career trying to not be the guy who flings his jism at Jodie Foster like a naughty monkey a few minutes after he screamed, "I can smell your cunt!" at her.

3) Hannibal's escape scene is thrilling, I guess, but really only if you're seeing it for the first time.

This has about as much style as a television cop drama. It's not gritty, it's not flashy, and it's not unique in any way. The story's just kind of there. And even more disappointing is that the title is really misleading. There's not a single lamb in this movie. I enjoyed the performance from Hopkins, who I don't believe blinks a single time in this movie, the kind of psychopath that a lot of actors have done their best to duplicate for the last thirty years. Foster's fine, but I don't the character lacks dimensions even though they did everything they could to give her a nice Hollywood backstory. I'm sure feminists would appreciate the character, but I don't find it all that believable that she would be sent out on the assignment in the first place. My favorite scene with her character was a shot where she was circled by a bunch of guy cops in a funeral home. Ted Levine's Buffalo Bill was a generic psychopath, but the scene where he's posing in front of a mirror with his Li'l Bill tucked between his legs is one that haunted me for months after I saw this for the first time. The butterfly or moth or whatever thing was a little silly, and I actually laughed out loud when Clarice announced, "He's making a woman suit!" Not my favorite Best Picture winner despite that line.

Halloween

1978 horror movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A lunatic escapes from an asylum, returns to the childhood home where he murdered his sister, and starts killing off teenagers who are having sex. Donald Pleasence chases him around.

Carpenter is so skilled at doing a lot with not much at all, and that gift's on display here. This is cheap and doesn't even really have a story that is all that intriguing. It does deliver the scares, mostly the things-jumping-out-at-you kind of scares, but it's more effective at delivering a creepiness, creepiness with a barely-discernible sense of humor below the surface. This definitely has a little style. The long shot at the beginning with the first-person perspective works really well. I'm sure that sort of thing had been done prior to 1978, but I'm not enough of a cinephile to know when. This also has so many wonderfully choreographed sequences, like one where Jamie Lee Curtis and her friend are talking with the latter's cop father and then pulling away while Pleasence walks up and introduces himself before Michael Myers drives past in the background. It's all one shot and so perfectly timed, and it's got this gritty effortlessness. Myers is very creepy when lurking around, but should psychotic killers really drive around in station wagons? And at what point did they decide to make him freakishly strong? I really liked a shot where the camera lingers on Myers while he's standing and admiring his work killing Bob, the guy with giant glasses. Following that, Myers pretends to be a sheeted ghost, and I still can't decide if that's the stupidest thing I've seen recently or one of the coolest. Jamie Lee Curtis? I'm not seeing any acting potential here ("The keeeeeeeeyyyyys. The keeeeeeeeyyyyyyss!"), and she looks like she's about thirty years old. Her character is worse at killing psychotic killers than Curtis is at acting the part. Why does she keep throwing the knife away? The character is good at locking herself into places. Either that, or she doesn't fully understand how doors work. That's one of the many horror moves in this that either were already clichés or that would become cliches. Also, I wouldn't hire Jamie Lee Curtis to babysit any of my children. Donald Pleasence is his usually awesome self here and lends a certain elegance to the whole thing, best exemplified in his delivery of the line "He came home." Pleasence is taking this movie so seriously, even when his character is parking in a handicap space, and if I see the sequels (I never have, by the way), it'll be because of him. The music, as famous as those "Tubular Bells"-sounding piano tinkerings in the theme are, is occasionally grating. I didn't remember a clicking sound in the theme and thought something was wrong with my device. When I found out it was supposed to sound like that, I was annoyed. What I did like were the cheesy sound effects accompanying some of Michael Myers' moves. Loved that kung-fu electronic springy sound when Myers leaps onto a car, and although I can understand the argument that the sound effects were goofy, I was glad there was a sound effect every single time the killer appeared in the movie. Something else I liked was the complete lack of enthusiasm in whoever was the voice of a teacher during one scene. I haven't been able to put a name to that off-screen role unfortunately. This movie works as a cautionary tale, like a lot of slasher pics do, a warning to teenagers that premarital sex can be deadly. This movie predates AIDS by a few years, but when my peers and I first stumbled upon these horror movies where teenagers were having the sex, the disease, in its abstractness, was almost more terrifying than any Michael Myers could possibly be, no matter how many times he seemed to be dead but got back up. For us, it was almost like Michael Myers put a face on the disease. I think that's why nobody I grew up with had sex before marriage.

The Frighteners

1996 horror-comedy

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Frank Bannister uses his ability to communicate with ghosts to con people. One cloaked ghost is flying around making numbers on people's heads and killing them, however, and Frank has to find a way to stop him before he's put away for the crimes.

I was trying to describe this movie to somebody I work with. I couldn't really articulate what was good about it, and I couldn't really articulate what was bad about it. It's enormously entertaining though. It's that manic sort of entertainment, the kind that can only be created by a charged and creative and loopily unpredictable mind like Peter Jackson's. The Peter Jackson who directed this--as opposed to the one who created the boring King Kong remake or all those really long movies about little people walking around New Zealand--is the same Peter Jackson who directed Dead Alive, Bad Taste, and Meet the Feebles. Here, he gets a little star power in Michael J. Fox who is every bit as likable as he is in every single other thing he's done, even when he's not surfing on top of a van. It's a little hard to buy Fox as any kind of a bad guy. He's sort of an anti-hero here, a guy who is playfully conning but nevertheless conning a community out of money by taking advantage of a gift he received in an accident that took his wife's life. Right off the bat, Jackson's asking you to root for a rather unscrupulous guy. But that guy gets to run around on those little feet of his and make big eyes and say, "Whoa!" a lot, so you end up rooting for him. That, by the way, is what Michael J. Fox does best. He'll be remembered as the guy who could run around and say, "Whoa!" I wonder if Jackson would have made Fox a hobbit? I guess we'll never know. Also really fun to watch is an unhinged performance by Jeffrey Combs of Re-Animator fame. The character doesn't make a lick of sense, but he's hilariously portrayed and as eccentric as any character you're likely to see. I was really impressed with the special effects team behind this. The ghosts were cartoonishly goofy, almost like something you'd see sitting next to you at the end of the Haunted Mansion ride at Disney World, but it was fun watching them splash through walls, manipulate the settings, and suffer disfigurements. The Reaper-esque bad ghoul is effectively sinister and visually cool whether he's rubberizing the carpet or wallpaper (not sure how he makes the setting elastic like that) or floating around as a Cape Monster. There are a lot of fun periphery characters including John Astin's ghostly The Judge and a character played by the son of last year's Torgo Award winner, Jake Busey, a guy who almost won his own Torgo in 2011. A lot of the movie really shouldn't work. Or maybe I should say that a lot more of it shouldn't work because there is quite a bit that seems a little too messy. Peter Jackson spills his soup quite a bit with this thing. Still, it entertains from beginning to end with a strange energy and creative story and was really hard not to like.

Barry recommended this just about two years ago.

Shane Watches a Bad Movie with Friends on Facebook: The Slumber Party Massacre

1982 horror movie

Rating: 5/20 (Eric: 7/20; Libby: 6/20; Fred: 5/20; Bryan: did not finish)

Plot: A guy with a drill massacres guests at a slumber party. Come on. You couldn't get that from the title?

I want to know if there's a record for the most false scares in a single movie. You know what I mean by "false scare," don't you? The moment's intense, the music suggests something is going to happen, and then there's a cat or the completely harmless neighbor you met earlier in the movie. This movie has more false scares than real ones along with the gratuitous nudity and brassiere-free and sometimes pantsless "teenagers" you'd expect in a movie like this. I was surprised that this was both written and directed by women. I wonder what it means that they gave the killer such an obvious phallic symbol for a weapon. There's got to be some feminist subtext there. My pals enjoyed it slightly more than Bee Girls although it's derivative and has humor that just doesn't work at all. I was enamored by Jean Vargas who played a telephone repairwoman and victim. Unfortunately, this was her only movie. I'm not sure fans of the serial-killers-at-a-slumber-party genre would like this one very much.

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.

The Honeymoon Killers

1969 cult classic

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Raymond and Martha, a gigolo and a portly prostitute who met via an online dating service in the 1940s, team up for a series of con jobs that gradually become more violent. Raymond seduces lonely rich women and sweet-talks them into giving him money. Martha tags along as his "sister."

John Waters likes this movie a lot. I'm not sure if I would have thought the lead actress (Shirley Stoler) would have reminded me of Divine had I not known that before watching this. She does though, even her mannerisms and facial expressions. She's not a professional, and neither is Tony Lo Bianco who I almost would have guessed was one of Laverne and/or Shirley's friends a few years later. Their performances, combined with the low-budget feel and late-60's black 'n' white, give this a creepy realism somehow even though I could listen to arguments that it has the exact opposite effect. Both Lo Bianco and Stoler have these little nuances that just work somehow. I really liked them despite how awful their characters are. I think it's how they are played so casually, with a disturbing pinch of comedy. And I like how the characters are played. They're not romanticized at all, and really, with the amount of time we get to spend with the couple's victims, the emphasis is not even on them all the time. The clash with these naive women victims in their cheesy Americana homes and these cold-blooded criminals is jarring, mostly because of the way the characters are treated. It's cold, and it's dark. Very dark. You don't need to see what happens in the basement to put it all together and realize that. There are so many unnecessary scenes that add to the weird cadence of this thing--a new bride singing "America" in the bathtub, a chemical reaction in a hospital during the opening sequence, an attempted suicide by drowning. There's also some cool camera movements including the opening stuff in the hospital and a terrific series of shots in a hallway after the first marriage (while that gal is singing patriotically) that end with a shot of a transom with some copulating shadows. It was hard for me to believe or understand why this was director Leonard Kastle's only movie. He, by the way, took over for Scorsese who probably would have just messed the whole thing up. It's one of the more peculiar one-and-dones I've heard about though. After all, this was Francois Truffaut's favorite American movie. Doris Roberts is also in this for all you Everybody Loves Raymond fans. I don't think she's the character who says, "I'm not so sure Hitler wasn't right about you people," though. How's that for a line, by the way?

I would definitely recommend this to fans of cult movies, John Waters, movies based on true stories, or people who enjoy the television sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond.

God Bless America

2011 satire

Rating: 10/20 (Jen: Originally, she told me 16/20. After she heard my rating, she changed hers to a 6/20 and said she was "just kidding." I'm starting to think she's not taking my rating system seriously.)

Plot: Frank's more than a little fed up with the state of affairs in the titular country in which he lives. Well, he's fed up with television and the popularity of certain imbecilic reality and news programs. More personally, his wife has left him, his daughter's become a preteen spoiled brat, his boss has fired him, his neighbors are too loud, and his doctor has informed him that he's got a brain tumor that will kill him. He responds like most level-headed fellows would--by taking his aggression out on a teenage reality star. He murders her, befriends one of her classmates, and goes on a killing spree.

Bobcat Goldthwait always shows enough promise and an exciting willingness to take risks as a filmmaker that I keep giving his movies a shot. It almost paid off with the not-so-bad World's Greatest Dad in which we got to see Robin Williams' lil' genie. As established, that was something I've been wanting to see since he nanu-nanued into our hearts in the late-70s. But there's not a penis to be seen in this movie. The biggest flaw with this Bobcat piece is that it is that it's just as objective and balanced as the right-wing news guy he's making fun of. I'm fine with an anti-meanness or anti-vapidity theme, but this is so anti-red state that it becomes embarrassing. Or blue state. The Republican ones. I get those confused just like I get alligators and crocodiles confused. Anyway, I can support a director who wants to criticize America and its entertainers for being generally nasty or contributing to a dumbing-down of mankind. But to pick on Nascar fans? Why was that necessary, Bobcat? Why make fun of people just because they harmlessly like something that you don't like? Goldthwaite's handling of dark comedy ranges from queasily humorous to really clumsy and oddly predictable. Some of the reality show or "news" spoofs are pretty good, but it's a lot like shooting fish in a barrel and after a while seems about as funny as something you'd see on Saturday Night Live. And they're disturbing, probably because despite the absurdity of it all, it's so close to reality. I did enjoy the performances of the leads. Joel Murray is perfectly cast to play this guy who's reached rock bottom, probably because he kind of looks like he could be from Eastern Europe. He spends too much time being too much of an action hero or acting as Goldthwaite's mouthpiece, however, ranting against televised singing competitions and morning radio talk show farts or saying things like, "Why have a civilization if we're not interested in being civilized?" And Tara Lynne Barr, likely because Ellen Page was a little too expensive, played her character enough as a child to make her activities in this even more disturbing. She's as cute as Winnie Cooper and might have herself a career in the movies. Their good performances can't elevate this mess though. Goldthwaite succeeds in offending, but it's because of his preachiness instead of the way he probably intended.

The Wizard of Gore

1970 horror movie

Rating: 4/20

Plot: The titular magician has a gratuitously violent stage show in which he dismembers, decapitates, and disembowels female volunteers from the audience before magically putting them together again. It's really stupid. Later that night, the volunteer's wounds reappear which is even stupider. And the fact that nobody can put the pieces together and figure out what's going on? That would be stupidest. A writer--a female one, of course--is intrigued enough to investigate.

If Herschell Gordon Lewis was more well known (read: more infamous) outside B-movie/gore circles, this is the movie that would have given him his nickname. He could have gone down in cinematic history as the Wizard of (Cheap and Gratuitous) Gore. It's easy to see that Lewis had absolutely no budget at all to work, and all the funds he did have (fifty bucks?) was used to purchase meat and tomato juice. The stage show violence is so over the top that it crosses the border between Scaryland and the Continent of Goofy and then continues all the way around the world like a squelchy perverse Magellan so that it can scoot over the border another time. The goofiest thing about these scenes is that they're shown multiple times. So you'll see the saw going through a woman's abdomen, then a shot of the audience looking rather bored, then Montag digging around in the woman's viscera, then another shot of the audience, then a shot of the woman's abdomen without any injury at all, then a shot of Montag's face, then a shot of her being sawed again. It's awkwardly edited. It's the same with the spike-in-the-noggin scene and a scene featuring a guillotine. Movies with guillotines, by the way? Automatically more awesome. Orson Welles wishes he had some guillotine action in Citizen Kane, and according to an unauthorized biography I imagined and then pretended to read, that was his biggest regret. Montag is played by Ray Sager, a guy with an arguably respectable career. Here, he's predictably terrible, but straight from the get-go, it's almost like he's lost his faith in the words he's been given. It's hard to say, "And you were expecting a mere handsaw!" in a way that makes you look like a real person. At one point, he mispronounces his own name. He's such a talky magician, going on and on and on about. . .well, magic, I guess. The audience doesn't know how to act during these scenes, so they just randomly gesture. I didn't take the time to verify, but I'm willing to bet the same extras were used for the audience members. Sager's bad, but the auxiliary actors might be worse. There's one guy who discovers his wife dead in bed and shows off what might be the worst acting ability ever. And the delivery of the line "Craig, Craig! Look at your hand! Your hand is bleeding!" is pure classic B-movie bliss, a line that I would have quoted endlessly with my brother if we had seen this as kids right along with "Give me back my hand!" or "Oh no! A bimbo with a gun!" Screenwriter Allen Kahn, whose only other writing credit is the Lewis-directed The Year of the Yahoo, throws a Shamalamadingdong-esque twist into the climax which, on the surface at least, seemed kind of cool until I thought about it a little more and realized I didn't even understand what happened. And maybe that's my fault, but I'm just not ready to take the blame.

Two more notes: 1) I really liked how there was plastic on the floor of a restaurant where the sawed-in-two lady falls apart. "Yes, you can use our restaurant for your stupid movie, but we're putting plastic on the floor so that you don't mess up our carpet." 2) "The guy's no magician. He's just a hell of a technician." It's 1970, and some white dude invents rap music in The Wizard of Gore. Little known piece of trivia there.

M

1931 silent film with words

Rating: 20/20

Plot: A guy with giant eyes won't stop buying balloon animals and other treats for children, and for some reason, adults in the small German town have a problem with it. Maybe it's all the whistling.

I decided not to dock Fritz Lang points for M being situated in that weird transition time between the silent era and the talkies, primarily because I think this is the very best talking picture released in the five years following The Jazz Singer. Of course, like every other thought that I share on this blog, I'm typing that without really thinking about it and just picking an arbitrary amount of time period of five years. I don't like movies from the 1930s, but this one feels so modern. I think it's mostly the use of the montage and some unusual camera angles and this experimental playfulness. There's a montage of emptiness early on, one of those times when normally perfectly beneficent images describe so much more than words could. You get an abandoned ball, an empty chair, a drifting balloon. It's gripping stuff, somehow more disturbing than a scene where you actually see Hans strangle (or whatever) the child would have been. Later, there's an extended shot where the camera maneuvers over a bunch of lowlifes in a room, through a sheet of glass, and into a room with a couple little people and a guy with a peg leg. Lang throws out one of the finest examples of how to tell a story without a lot of words, and this could have easily been just as successful as a completely silent picture. I also like the almost complete lack of music which I think adds to the overall tone. Well, there's the leitmotif (the theme from "Inspector Gadget") which makes whistling sound a little more foreboding than it ever should. At the same time, there's this conflicting playfulness to the way Lang approaches the subject matter of little kids being murdered. There' s a scene where a table of gentlemen are arguing in a restaurant with one guy smoking this absurd pipe and another guy whose glasses keep falling off. Or another scene with titled camera angles during a disagreement between a really big guy and a really little guy. It's almost comical. And the first time we actually see Lorre? He's making faces at himself in the mirror, almost like Soderbergh in Schizopolis. And by the way, how many shots in the first half of this movie feature either two Lorres--like, the real one seen simultaneously with a reflection--or a Lorre seen through glass? It seems like a bunch of them which I'm sure means something. Peter Lorre's so good here although his eyes, nearly iconic, kind of overdo it. It's a tough character because on the one hand, he's murdering children and on the other hand seems kind of dopey, the former making you really want to respect the guy while the latter makes you not care what happens to him. (I'm joking, of course. Dopiness should always be applauded.) But his despicability is mixed with enough vulnerability to make him a pretty daring character for a 1931 movie. It's a great performance, especially for this transition period. These days, Hollywood would take this character to absurd levels and probably give him CGI eyeballs that have a diameter of ten inches or so. (That's another randomly-picked number, by the way.) One of my favorite smaller details from this--during the opening scene where some children are playing a game in the street, there's this kid in the back who can't stand still. He's got to be Fritz Lang's nephew or something because he would otherwise have been kicked out of the movie for being obnoxious. Or maybe he was left in the movie so that audiences would develop sympathy for Hans? I guess that's something to think about.

Eating Raoul

1982 black comedy

Rating: 13/20

Plot: A boring and seemingly asexual married couple need some money to open up their dream restaurant. When they accidentally kill a swinger with a frying pan and find a wad of cash in his wallet, they get an idea to do that for a living. A friendly dominatrix and the titular swindler help them with their business.

There's a parade of perverts in this movie and think you've seen it all until the door swings open to reveal none other than Billy Curtis--my favorite little fellow--with a dog and a very funny voice. I'm sure this wasn't his proudest moment. Then again, the guy played Mayor McCheese, so maybe vanity wasn't a big deal for him. Paul Bartel, one of Corman's buddies, directed and starred in this. He looks a lot like Chris Elliott, something that probably made me like his character more. As a writer/director, it doesn't seem like Bartel's had a lot of interaction with actual people because the dialogue is awkward and silly. Maybe it's intentional. He gives it this off-50's sitcom texture with some corny music, the couple sleeping in a pair of twin-sized beds, and this general prosaic feeling. It reminds me in tone of Parents with a dash of A Bucket of Blood but it's too silly and not clever enough. I did pick up a line that I will likely use if I ever have sexual relations again: "Look out! Here comes the duke now!" Oh, and this is only the second movie that I'm aware of that uses the word "pendejo" (Do you know the other?), a word I used in class the other day and immediately regretted it since my Spanish-speaking students ooooh'd like I had just cursed. Anyway, this movie gets a big bonus point boost for the Billy Curtis cameo, but it's otherwise kind of a one-gag movie that in the end seems like just one huge joke with a punchline that's given away in the title. Should I have typed "spoiler alert" before telling you that?

The Ruling Class

1972 black comedy

Rating: 17/20

Plot: After the 13th Earl of Gurney Carradines himself while wearing a tutu, Jack becomes the 14th Earl of Gurney. The problem? He's a paranoid schizophrenic who is convinced that he is Jesus Christ. This does not sit well with his uncle who, along with his mistress, cooks up a plan to send Jack straight to the institution. Meanwhile, his psychologist tries to cure him using a second Christ, a plot that works in convincing Jack that he is not Jesus but something very different than Jesus. Oh, snap!

I need to get one of those galvanized pressure cookers. This movie is probably way too long, and I only laughed a little on the inside, but Peter O'Toole's performance multifaceted crazed performance, the smart little satiric pokes, and the unpredictability of it all make it a unique and worthwhile experience. This juggles genteel and manic so well, with characters acting just like they should one moment before bursting into spontaneous song and dance numbers the next. When the butler or whoever he is starts singing early-on in the story, I scratched my head and thought, "This isn't supposed to be happening, but I'm glad it is." Even the other characters didn't seem sure that it was supposed to be happening. O'Toole carries the film as Jesus and Jack and the other Jack. His entrance with a smattering of halo-ish light around his head is terrific. O'Toole's great at spitting out these absurdist rants ("I can cock my little finger with the best!") but his physicality here is also impressive, whether he's dancing around, hanging on his cross/bed, or being tortured by the Electric Messiah. Man, I loved that Electric Messiah ("Sometimes God just turns his back on his people and breaks wind and the stench clouds the globe...I am the high-voltage man!" is something I'm probably going to find opportunities to quote), and the shots of O'Toole wrestling with a gorilla wearing a top hat were beautifully absurd. Bad night for Christ there, and I think that gorilla stuff might be straight from the Bible although it's been a while since I've been to church. I think this is a movie that Bunuel would have enjoyed, and it reminds me a little of those Lindsay Anderson movies that came out around the same time. No, I didn't completely understand the film's message, but this was a fun ride right until the chilling climactic scene in the House of Lords.

This was kind of recommended by Cory.

Follow That Bird

1985 first Sesame Street movie ever!

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A nosey social worker decides that Big Bird doesn't belong with the Sesame Street gang and needs to live with his own kind. She finds a bird family to adopt him, but he gets homesick for his imaginary friend Snuffleupagus and decides to journey back home. The muppets of Sesame Street, upon hearing that Big Bird is missing from his new home, decide to venture out to search for him.

Did you know Snuffleupagus has a first name? Aloysius Snuffleupagus. Jen tells me that originally Snuffleupagus was an imaginary friend for Big Bird but that they eventually had to ditch that idea because children were confused. "Snuffleupagus" is also apparently a move similar to teabagging where you put your scrotum on somebody's nose. That doesn't happen anywhere in Follow That Bird, by the way, so it's safe to show this to your children. Here's another fun fact: Elmo's in this movie, right near the end when Big Bird comes home. He pokes his head out of a window and says something in a voice that is not the Elmo voice we know and probably despise. Anyway, the movie. Why is it a 14/20 instead of a 20/20? No Roosevelt Franklin. I haven't looked this up or anything, but I'm fairly positive mid-80's movie rules made it clear that you had to have black representation in your movies because black people weren't allowed to vote back then and couldn't be president. Forcing Hollywood to include at least one black character in each movie was the government's way of compromising. Which is a good thing because it really started the healing process after segregation and slavery and all that. The makers of Follow That Bird already had Gordon, the very realistic human muppet from the television show, in a prominent role and had no use for Roosevelt Franklin. Plus, Roosevelt Franklin had a tendency to frighten honkies anyway, and honkies were the main audience for Follow That Bird. How bitchin' would a Roosevelt Franklin movie be, by the way? Damn, my hips are moving just thinking about that. But no, the Sesame Street people are too busy with Elmo, the "idiot" who replaced Sesame Street's original "idiot" (Big Bird) and somehow became the only character who mattered anymore. Maybe it's because I didn't grow up with Elmo, but that little red monster (not to be confused with the little blue monster Grover who my brother refers to as "the mentally-challenged muppet" although if you think about it, they're all kind of mentally-challenged) has "future serial killer" written all over his fluffy little face. Where are his parents anyway? Dismembered in the basement? But I digress. You honkies want to hear about this movie. Anybody who knows me knows I'm a sucker for puppets. I really like the effects that blend these lovable characters into the world outside Sesame Street. No, they don't look realistic. They still look like puppets, but they look more natural flying planes, driving slick-looking automobiles, or using telephones than you might think. Muppet Gordon is especially great to see in such a heroic role, and a death-defying stunt involving a slow-moving truck with a cage on the back of it and a slow-moving Volkswagon Beetle has to be seen to be believed. There's a lot of music in this, much provided by the legendary Van Dyke Parks (Jungle Book songsmith, Brian Wilson cohort) and one song started off by none other than Waylon Jennings. The "Bluebird of Happiness" song and its accompanying imagery might be the most depressing thing I've seen in my entire life. I'd like to see some statistics on how many 3-6 year olds committed suicide in '85 compared to previous years. Anyway, other than the toddler suicides and veiled racism, this is fun for the whole family! Oh, and to bring things full circle: Snuffleupagus has the worst singing voice I have ever heard.

Brewster McCloud

1970 bird documentary

Rating: 16/20

Plot: After stealing from the wardrobe of Waldo (of Where's Waldo infamy), the titular Brewster hides out in a bomb shelter deep within the Astrodome. He spends his time studying birds, developing intricate wings so that he can fly, and exercising his flying muscles to prepare for when the big day arrives. He's helped by his guardian angel, the woman in the shower in that one scene in M.A.S.H. Meanwhile, a mass murderer is apparently on the loose in the greater Houston area, and a

Whether or not you actually like this movie (and I suspect there's only a small percentage who will), you've got to at least appreciate how different it is from anything else, even other Robert Altman movies. I imagine there are a lot of Altman fans who wouldn't necessarily like anything about this movie, and a lot of fans of Brewster McCloud who might not like any other Robert Altman movies. But I don't know who those second group of people might be. Part-fantasy, part-social statement, part-murder mystery, part-nature documentary, the mash-up that is Brewster McCloud succeeds as an oddball in the oeuvre of Robert Altman and cinema in general, like a crazy aunt you forget you have until you read about a news story about how she's living in a studio apartment with more than thirty cats and piles of Popular Mechanics magazines with all the eyes cut out of the pictures. About that comedy--a lot of it's the sort of humor where you're not even sure if there's an intent to be funny. There's an odd combination of the old-timey slapstick you'd expect to see in something from the 20s (chase scene with a portly Astrodome security guard and Brewster before the latter has gotten a line), word play reminiscent of a Laurel and Hardy feature (a hilarious exchange between the detective and a guy about the height of a suspect), and really dry humor that you might miss if you blink (opening music credited to Francis Scott Key). The movie begins with a tongue completely piercing a cheek and popping out the other side and never goes back in, a big ol' middle finger of a movie after Altman's success with M.A.S.H. I really like Bud Cort in this, but Sally Kellerman as that sexy wingless guardian angel and the always-sexy Shelley Duvall are also really good. This is a fun movie that gets better with repeated viewings, and I'd definitely recommend it to three or four people, none who I have actually met yet.

The Minus Man

1999 serial killer movie

Rating: 13/20

Plot: Vann drives a brown pickup truck, not particularly with a destination in mind but just going wherever he goes. He stops occasionally to poison people and bury them in shallow graves, but other than that, he doesn't have much to do. He stops for a while in an oceanside town, staying in a room once occupied by the estranged daughter of his landlords. He gets a temporary job with the post office, is gifted a pair of tennis shoes, and poisons some more people. Merry Christmas!

There's some intriguing bits and pieces to The Minus Man, but it really never gets anywhere. Like Vann, it just drifts. As a troubling glimpse into the quietly disturbing mind of the typical "He always kept to himself" and "Seemed like a normal guy" type serial killer, this is fairly effective, and it's fun watching Owen Wilson take on this kind of role. Owen's good here, but it's the type of character everybody's seen many, many times before. I do like the focus on the subtleties, the psychological aspects of this sort of thing that are sometimes drowned in a sea of contrived suspense sequences, chase scenes, and ugly violence in other movies like this. The plot takes a goofy twist near the end, and I didn't feel full afterward. Not that I wanted to follow these characters around longer, but I just wish there was more depth here. Still, it's much more adept than Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer at showing the inner monologue of a screw-up and calmly violent soul.

Manhunter

1986 thriller

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Retired FBI guy Will Graham, the guy who caught Hannibal Leckor, is yanked from the beach by his friend Dennis Farina to stop another serial killer known as the Tooth Fairy. To accomplish this, he has to get inside the killer's mind, something that apparently involves talking to himself a lot.

I suppose modern television crime shows like all the CSI's make this seem kind of tame. Some of the things I liked about this--an adequate amount of suspense, an intriguing bad guy or two, a really nice attention to detail as the investigation evolves--are things that I could see weekly on those shows. I guess. I never watch them. Manhunter gets pretty gloopy in the middle, taking more than a few incoherent turns along the way and nearly imploding. A silly denouement and an appallingly intense synthesizer score, like I imagine elevator music in hell to sound like, didn't help things. Neither did the cliche-stuffed main character played by William Petersen, a guy who apparently is on one of those CSI shows. There are far too many scenes with Petersen talking to his reflection, his television screen, or his tape recorder. Still, the story has that attention to detail that makes it really gripping, and the film's got more than enough style. The camera seems to have only one movement, but it's a good one, and there are a lot of great shots, my favorite being the first shot of the Tooth Fairy. Character actor Tom Noonan plays that character with a realistic creepiness. There's even something creepy about his posture. Brian Cox's Hannibal Lecktor might not be the best Hannibal Lecktor ever, but he's really good playing the always fascinating villain. This one might not have much depth, and there are definitely things that irritated me about it, but I'm still glad I watched it.

A bonus point was awarded for a Chris Elliott spotting. Unfortunately for my blog readers, Chris Elliott is to movies with "man" in the title as Puxatony Phil is to winter. When I spot Chris Elliott, that means six more weeks of movies with "man" in the title.

It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine.

2007 movie

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

Plot: Paul, a middle-aged man suffering from Cerebral Palsy, is wasting away in a nursing home. All he wants to do is be like everybody else and often fantasizes about just that. Except "everybody else" in this case is limited to men who strangle women after they sleep with them.

This isn't widely available, and a lot of people would argue that it shouldn't be. This is far from a perfectly-constructed movie. Heck, it's far from a competently-constructed movie. But there's a backstory that transforms this from just a movie to a work of art. The screenwriter and lead is the late Steven C. Stewart, a guy who really did suffer from Cerebral Palsy and who spent the better part of his life imprisoned in a nursing home. The great Crispin Hellion Glover brought his story to life. He does it cheaply--with some gross colors, some really obvious classical music choices, and more than a few editing errors. But there's a refreshing naivete with both the writing and the direction (the latter, possibly intentional) that makes this like outsider art. Outsider art made by an insider? When I was trying to put some words together, I had trouble coming up with anything better than "hideously beautiful," cheap and oxymoronic. Typing "hideously beautiful" embarrasses me as much as some of things I laughed at (uncomfortably) while watching this movie. There's a very dark humor throughout the story as well as some unintentionally funny (or are they intentionally unintentionally funny?) moments, especially any time Crispin Glover's dad Bruce is on-screen. If Bruce Glover doesn't win my yearly Torgo for his small role here, I'll be surprised. I really liked the beginning and end of the movie (a framing device), a terrific scene with police detectives and bendy straws, and a final murder scene that stretches so far into ridiculous territory that it hits you in the eye and makes you ejaculate raisins. Literally! Watching this movie with a crowd of people was fascinating to me. I believe most of the crowd liked what they saw, probably because they came to the theater knowing exactly what to expect, but I think it was liked in different ways. I don't frequently watch movies in big crowds, but I can't remember ever seeing a movie that got this much of a reaction, and that's worth something right there. Well, maybe Ernest Goes to Camp.

I saw this at the IMA. Crispin Glover showed a slide show and read from eight of his novels. Then, he showed this movie. Then, he came back out and kind of answered people's questions. My appreciation for America's finest actor has grown. I didn't stick around to have my cd cover autographed and get a picture because I was tired. I really hope he comes back to Indy some time to show his first movie.

One final note: Although I don't think any of you will see this (other than Larst), I do feel the need to warn you. The violence isn't graphic, but there's a lot of sex. This isn't for everybody, but for the right, open-minded audience, this delivers.

Big Nothing

2006 black comedy

Rating: 11/20 (Jen: 12/20)

Plot: Ross has lost his job as a teacher and is looking for a job to help support his police officer wife and his daughter. He gets a job at a call center but is fired before he finishes a single day of work. But he does meet Gus, a scam artist who has an idea to extract thousands of dollars from a reverend. Gus's girlfriend also helps out. Things don't go as planned, however, and the night spirals out of control.

You know how some movies trudge along and don't seem to go anywhere? Big Nothing is exactly the opposite of that. This movie goes everywhere, and that's not really a good thing. The pace is so quick that you have no time to catch a breath, and although there are some fun twists and turns along the way, most of this movie is just relentlessly stupid. There's a fifteen minute chunk of this movie that is really good. The timing between twists and the humor work. Beyond that, this is a mess, the movie falling to pieces like a radio-controlled airplane that you spent an hour putting together and finally flew for the first time with things going well at first until you decided to do a few barrel rolls and fancy maneuvering through the monkey bars and watched in dismay while the toy his a guy holding a picket sign and burst into flames. It's like a Coen brothers' movie without a script, almost to the point where I think somebody said, "Hey, I've got an idea. People like those Coen brothers. Let's make us a Coen brother movie!" I liked Simon Pegg and Jon Polito in this movie, but I didn't buy anything that David Schwimmer was doing. He's not really the greatest of actors, is he? The music in this movie also really annoyed me.

American Psycho

2000 satirical shocker

Rating: 11/20

Plot: Patrick Bateman, a Wall Street big shot, enjoys a luxurious lifestyle, sipping rich people things, living it up in rich people places, and enjoying pretentious conversations with his big shot buddies. His nights, however, are filled with sexual depravity and murderous excursions. It's the American dream!

OK, I'm willing to admit that there's a possible Christian Bale bias at play here. He's not actually my problem with this movie though. I just don't think it adds up to anything. As a black comedy, a lot of the over-the-top dialogue and plastic imagery in the first quarter of the film works pretty well. Gradually though, it just feels like somebody's tried to beat an idea into my head. The violence becomes distracting, the sex becomes even more distracting, and after the first twenty minutes when the movie's already shot its wad, there's no place for this to go. It's the type of movie with a nasty habit, a need to continually remind you how mischievously clever it is, a movie with a too-wide grin and hands perpetually rubbing together, a movie that can't stop patting itself on the back. It's also a movie that insults the intelligence of its audience, the type of ultra-modern film that substitutes thoughtfulness and depth for this really glossy provocation. That's why I didn't like American Psycho. Or maybe it's just Christian Bale.

Natural Born Killers

1994 Oliver Stoned movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Mickey and Mallory haven't enjoyed the easiest lives. None of that matters, however, after they meet and fall in love. They marry and take a romantic road trip for their honeymoon.

This is one of those movies like Team America: World Police, Pirates of the Caribbean, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, The Happening, The Life Aquatic, and Punch Drunk Love, the type of movie that I really like but have to answer a scrunched-up face asking, "What? You like that movie?" whenever I mention it. It's wildly imperfect. And Oliver Stone takes so many chances and dicks around so much that it winds up looking, at times, like the cinematic equivalent to vomit. But I really like what this movie says (about society's sick attachment to violence, the way the media feeds that monkey, our willingness to consume crap, the power of love) and I have to respect a movie that takes these kind of chances. When I saw this in the theater, it was so unlike anything I had ever seen. Tinted film, cameras askew, distorting faces, psychedelic imagery, grotesque visuals piled on top of grotesque visuals, the ornery and almost irrational switching from different color film to black and white and back again, headache-inducing tomfoolery. I was mesmerized then and still am when I watch this one. It's completely over the top, but it needs to be over the top. From the beginning bit of darker-than-darkly comic ultraviolence that introduces the two killers to the scenes with Mallory's family and her abusive father (genius casting of Rodney Dangerfield) that parodies a situational comedy complete with canned laughter to the amazingly ludicrous prison escape, it's impossible to take your eyes off the screen. Is it too much for most people? I'd have trouble arguing that it's not excessive. There's far too much going on in scenes. It's an assault on the senses. Your poor inebriated eyes want to separate to watch what's going on in different parts of the screen. Your ears are attacked by what sounds like multiple songs being played at once (which is what literally is happening at one point). Speaking of the soundtrack, it's just as uneven as the movie, but there are some really interesting choices, and this was my introduction to Leonard Cohen. If I remember correctly, Trent Reznor had something to do with the soundtrack. The performances are nearly perfect from top to bottom. I remember how shocked I was seeing Woody Harrelson who I only knew as Woody from Cheers. Nothing will make me like Juliette Lewis, but I can't think of anybody else who could have been as effective as Mallory. Tom Sizemore injects just the right amount of creep to his performance, and Robert Downey Jr. out Geraldoes Geraldo. And Tommy Lee Jones' performance as the warden just might be one of my favorite performances ever. It's one of those complete transformations and so over the top. Jones is constantly threatening to cross what must be a really thin line between mad genius and what-the-heck-is-this-over-acting-bozo-doing territory. The actors really look like they're having a blast making this movie. So much of Natural Born Killers is just plain wrong, and while I'd never blame anybody for not liking it, I can't help digging it. Definitely the feel-good movie of 1994!

Please use the comment feature below to ask "What? You like this movie?" and tell me how it makes you think of the words "cinematic vomit" when you think about it.

W.

2008 Oliver Stone joint

Rating: 13/20

Plot: The high points of George W. Bush's personal life and political career.

This has a tendency to linger and is guilty too often of going for the cheap and obvious (i.e. famous Bushisms). I also question the timing of something like this. However, it's a fascinating two-hour romp, filled with moments of genuine humor and absolute horror. The acting, or impersonations, is very good. Brolin brings a Bush character to life in a way that makes you appreciate him as a flawed human being while at the same time wanting to catch him on fire. Richard Dreyfuss is amazing as Cheney and probably deserved a nomination or at least an offer to do a couple sketches on Saturday Night Live. I also really liked James Cromwell as W.'s dad. The woman who plays Condoleeza Rice is terrible though. I also hated the music in this movie.