City of God

2002 movie

Rating: 18/20

Plot: The true story of how the Brazilian equivalent of the Boy Scouts of America was formed.

This movie starts with chickens. Chickens are haunting me this year. Sure, you expect to see some chickens in a documentary about chickens. But it seems that chickens find their way into about half of the movies I'm watching this year. Herzog doesn't like chickens.

 

See? The beginning of this movie is a stunning look at a chicken being de-feathered and eviscerated and chopped into pieces. Spliced into that are very quick shots of a large gleaming knife being sharpened and a bunch of people who are looking forward to eating a chicken. And then you have a shot of a scrawny chicken watching the proceedings and waiting for its turn, and that chicken gives one of the best performances I think I've ever seen by a bird in a movie. The chicken trembles, gives this "Oh shit!" look at the camera, and eventually makes its escape. Somehow, the camera follows the chicken through the streets. Watching it all unfold is invigorating for some reason, and the scene, one that starts the movie but actually takes place later in the story, really sets the stage for everything that happens in the titular slums. For the protagonist, a poor guy who just wants to take pictures and lose his virginity, this is a place that can be overwhelmingly frightening and seemingly impossible to escape. This movie is entertaining with a vibrantly told story and colorful characters, but its most effective at disturbing you with the harsh realities of this particular spot in our world and really making you feel what some of the characters are feeling. Lots will disturb unless we're all desensitized to seeing a movie with about half of the scenes featuring children holding guns and occasionally shooting each other in the face. Those faces themselves are disturbing, so callous as they go about their violent business. More disturbing is seeing Li'l Ze (actually, Lil Dice at this point) in action for the first time. It's a laugh that, if you don't remember anything else in any movie you've ever seen, you'll likely remember forever. That crazed character is probably more interesting and surely more complex than Rocket, the main character. It's fascinating to watch all these youngsters bounce off each other, dangerous little unpredictable firecrackers in a vibrating cube. It's a world dominated by children--I believe parents are shown in this movie during exactly one scene--but they're not children. They've been shaped into something else. And you think, "I can't believe that people are like this in any part of the world," but then you think about the part of the world you live in and see enough similarities. Your world's got chickens, too. This is flashy and fresh, with a twisty narrative that almost reminds you of Tarantino but with every ounce of hope slurped out. City of God (I think that might be ironic because I didn't see God in this place) is a great film, but it's almost hard to be entertained by it because these characters seem more real than movie characters, and you just know there's not much hope for some of them.

 

 

There were other movie posters for this, but I picked the one with a chicken on it. 

The Tree of Guernica

 1975 war movie

Rating: 10/20

Plot: There's a war in Spain.

This was Fernando Arrabal's third movie after Long Live Death and I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse, a pair of movies that I didn't enjoy or understand. So I'm not sure why I bothered with this one because I didn't enjoy or understand it either. The thing's steeped in metaphors, some that I didn't understand and flew by like non sequiturs and some that were so obvious that they seemed juvenile. Also juvenile was a lot of sacrilegious imagery Ok, Arrabal, we get it. You don't like the church very much. I don't need to see any more characters wiping their ejaculate on a statue. There's a lot of war footage and its grotesque imagery mixed into the barrage of often disturbing imagery. There are also a lot of little people, one with a naked guy who later gets a sex scene while other little people towel him off. And there's a bullfight scene with one of the little people tied to a cart with a bull's head on the front, a scene that I swear lasted ninety minutes. And there's a scene with two guys tongue-wrestling that looked like something that could have been in a Will Ferrell movie. Oh, and a giant ear knife on wheels (I have no idea how else I could describe it) with naked children running around it and a lady saving herself from rape by hurling snakes. It's that kind of movie, and I actually started hating myself in the middle of it. A lot of this has the feel of a snuff film, and although I'm sure there's a point being made with the whole, it was well over my head and I really couldn't connect to anything that was happening enough to even care that I was missing out on something. I would not recommend you watch this although it is a little funnier than The Incredible Burt Wonderstone.

The Master

2012 Paul Thomas Anderson movie

Rating: 18/20

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

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

House

1986 horror-comedy

Rating: 13/20

Plot: A writer struggling with the loss of his son and break-up of his marriage moves into his late aunt's haunted house and has to battle both literal and psychological demons.

Entertaining horror-comedy here, but I kept getting distracted. First, it was good to see 80's sitcom superstars George Wendt and Richard Moll. But with Wendt, I found myself wondering how much he weighs now and had trouble focusing on the plot of House. Speaking of Wendt, if I were the director of House, I would have been a little more over the top with the horror and violence and included a scene where William Katt's character enters a hole in the house, stumbles around a bit, encounters a few ghosts, and emerges from George Wendt's rectum. That that scene wasn't in this movie shows that we're dealing with amateurs here. The second distraction was William Katt's V-neck sweater worn with nothing underneath. I'm talking about a deep V here. I suppose there's nothing wrong with the style choice, especially for 1986, but I was distracted because I was wondering whether or not I could pull that off in 2013. The third source of distraction was the appearance of a Masters of the Universe action figure, Buzz Off. I started thinking about the height of popularity of these toys and wondering if I was too old to be playing with them back in the mid-80s when I was entering my teens or when I was in my 20s. Luckily, I didn't need to focus too hard to get this. It's your typical haunted house movie with decaying fiends and silly shocks, but there's the missing child thing and a few Vietnam flashbacks to give this a bit more story. Things are a little too commercial, but the special effects are grotesque enough. A monster in an upstairs closet drips with ridiculousness, a reanimated giant fish, a bunch of tools, and a purple-dressed ghoul all recall Evil Dead 2. I wish that purple-dressed thing wouldn't have spoken though. I also wish "You're No Good" wouldn't have been used during one of the movie's better moments--a dismemberment montage. The music for most of this could have been lifted from any horror movie, and the Vietnam scenes seem artificial. But this has some creepiness and a few laughs. Just not George Wendt's rectum.

The Strong Man

1926 comedy

Rating: 13/20

Plot: A soldier more accurate with a slingshot than a machine gun starts working with a strong man--not really the titular strong man--after the war. Letters from a Mary Brown kept him going during his soldiering days, and he decides to look for her. After an adventure with a different Mary Brown who turns out not to be a Mary Brown at all, he finds the real Mary Brown.

This was Frank Capra's first film, and it's a total mess. It feels more like 3 1/2 short films strung together and called a complete movie. I could forgive that if it was entertaining or funny, but it's really neither. Langdon plays a more heroic character in this one, but it's difficult to sympathize with the character because, as I said in the last post, he's not very likable. The best bits are probably with the fake Mary Brown character played by Gertrude Astor. Langdon does move and react well, and he has a childlike innocence that makes the story work. Well, until the end when his character seems to almost be an entirely new person. There's nothing that will have anybody in the aisles, but this has a couple moments that somebody wouldn't be made fun of for calling them classic moments. One involves a walk up the steps with Gertrude Astor, and another is a toss from a car down a hill with a surprising result. The climactic scene is a mess, but I do like this little pose Langdon keeps repeating.

Mulan

1998 cartoon

Rating: 16/20 (Buster: 20/20)

Plot: The titular feminist, with the help of the talking donkey from the Shrek movies, has to become a man in order to save her father's life and the future of China.

There are animation issues with this one, but it's hard to argue a movie's greatness when it features the voice work of Mr. Miyagi, the dude in the Chinese restaurant in that Seinfeld episode, and Sulu. Is Mulan a Disney princess? She's one of the better role models if she is. I mean, sure she runs away, steals, lies, and befriends a dragon, but she's a good smart and brave character who I wouldn't mind my son emulating. Her army friends--including a little fellow voiced by Harvey Fierstein who, if I made animated films, I'd have do all the voices in one of my movies just to do it--are good comic characters although her love interest is a little generic. The bad guy is menacing and brings some darkness, and I'm glad the Disney people didn't decide to unleash Gilbert Gottfried to give voice to his bird. I also like most of the songs, especially the exciting "I'll Make a Man out of You," a song which, when I first heard this in 1998, helped encourage me to urinate standing up. Some day, I will make an animated movie based on my personal urination history. Tentative title--I Pee: Stand Up for Yourself, Hotshot. Harvey Fierstein will provide the voice of young Shane and older Shane, Shane's father, Shane's mother, Shane's best friend Vernon, Shane's future wife Jennifer, "locker room bullies 1-17," and Rodolfo the Talking Toilet. And his character in Mulan if I can get the Disney people to let me borrow him.

The Mirror

1975 time travel movie

Rating: 18/20

Plot: A guy who may or may not be married to his own mother has his life flash before his eyes while he lies on his deathbed.

I should start off by confessing that I have no business writing about this movie. A lot of people who have stumbled upon my little blog probably wonder if I have business writing about any movie. The Mirror is a tough one to write about because it's in a different language. I'm not talking linguistically here although this is in Russian and I did have difficult reading the subtitles because I didn't really want to force my eyes away from doing their job of soaking in everything on the screen. Words were almost distracting in The Mirror. But I'm talking about the language of film. This is almost otherworldly in its storytelling, shifting from the past to the earlier past to the present in ways that make it difficult on the soul. You have to allow yourself to drift, admire the shots that seem like they're borrowed from paintings, and appreciate Tarkovsky's ability to make you feel--even if you don't completely understand--through visuals. There are all these perfectly little orchestrated shot sequences, awe-inspiring. And Tarkovsky is one of those rare directors who can make the wind blow and make birds land on top of kids' heads. It's like he's making magic instead of making a movie. There was some narrated poetry which was tough for me because I wasn't smart enough to understand it, and at times this thing seemed so personal to its creator that I had a little trouble connecting, at least on a superficial level. But then there were shots I couldn't get out of my head as I went to sleep after watching this, and I realized that this is the type of movie that you understand in ways you don't understand. One of those is a shot of Margarita Terekhova--the actress who plays both the mother and the wife in this, a choice Tarkovsky made because, I assume, he wanted to confuse me even more--after she kills a chicken. She stares a haunting stare at the viewer from another time. Time, time, time. That's what this movie is about. Past, movie present, the future when the audience is watching the movie. The final five or ten minutes of this thing has at least two of those coming together so effortlessly and so gorgeously. It's poetry on the screen.

Fog of War

2003 documentary

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Some old guy talks about war.

Cory recommended this about 3 1/2 years ago, but I'm not sure why I didn't watch it long before anyway. It's Errol Morris, and Philip Glass scored the thing. Errol Morris has never made a bad documentary, and there has never been a bad documentary scored by Philip Glass. That's a winning combination. I did like the music here, and Morris's style--which always seems not-quite-professional to me--gives this an interesting pace. It really is an hour and forty minutes of an old guy talking with a mix of archival footage, archival conversations, typewriter simulation, war footage, skull dropping experiments, and close-ups of nasty teeth. There are little touches--a freezing on McNamara's face while he still talks--that give this some flash, but this isn't something that should be mandatory viewing for Americans because of the documentary style. It's the message of these 11 lessons where McNamara talks about things that are scary because they really could happen, things that are scary because they almost happened, and things that are scary because they actually did happen. There's real tension in a chilling story about how we were "this close" to nuclear war, and that's despite me having a rudimentary knowledge of 60's history and knowing how it all turned out. I also found his discussion of Kennedy's death very touching. This one guy lived so much history, and it was amazing to watch him tell about what he's learned from it all. You know, because those who don't know their history are doomed to repeat it, and all.

Transmorphers

2007 Transformers rip-off

Rating: 3/20

Plot: People vs. robots, in the future.

The Asylum is a production company that attempts to capitalize on current movie blockbusters by putting out their own really low-budget, direct-to-dvd movies. There's a Sherlock Holmes one on the old blog somewhere, and although it nearly bored me to tears, I decided to watch this one anyway. I thought there might be some unintentional comedy. But no, director Leigh Scott and his cast of terrible actors only succeeded in giving me something really dull and incomprehensible. The nicest thing I can say about this movie is that the robots look a lot better than the birds in Birdemic: Shock and Terror. And that's surprising since it seems the entire budget for this movie was blown on strobe lights. It's really an ugly movie though. Leigh Scott did discover split screen about halfway through the production and uses it for no reason at all, but everything's so murky. I've seen video games that look a lot better than this. I'm really glad the survivors of this alien robot war are all good looking though. Otherwise, I don't think anybody would have a reason to watch this at all. I'd probably want to watch the movie with my eyes closed. Well, the dialogue's also pretty terrible ("I got a bogey on my ass! I can't shake him!") so I'd probably want to watch with my ears closed as well. The acting is universally bad. Sarah Hall plays Blair, and initially, I thought she was about as awful as things get, but the rest of the acting is so bad that it was impossible for me to have any of them stand out. Although I will say that Michael Tower, the guy who plays a nerdish doctor, makes a pretty good effort to stand out. He's playing the stammering-nerdy-doctor-amidst-alpha-males stereotype like a pro though. There are times when he finishes a line and then looks around like he's expecting somebody to yell "Cut!" and make him do it all over again. Oh, and there's a woman named Amy Weber in this who I could have sworn is related to Elizabeth Berkley. She's not related, but her first acting gig was in the "Screech's Spaghetti Sauce" episode of Saved by the Bell. And she was a professional wrestler. Ok, that's enough time spent with this movie. I can't believe I watched the whole thing. I might be done with The Asylum after this and probably should have been before.

FDR: American Badass!

2012 historical comedy

Rating: 7/20

Plot: Roosevelt fights Nazi werewolves, straight from the history books.

This movie has its moments, and Brian Bostwick and Ray Wise are good as the titular president and MacArthur respectively. Unfortunately, this thing is just so cheap. And I mean "cheap" in every single sense of the word. The effects are cheap--CGI explosions that I bet my son could make and pasted-on werewolf fur. The humor is cheap, a lot of dick jokes and polio jokes that are the sort of thing I hate the television show Family Guy for. And cheap puns. Marco Polio and a play on "debriefing" somebody. This was written by the guy behind that wiffleball movie  I watched earlier this year. Ross Patterson is his name, and he has a small part in this one, too. I think this guy's got some potential as both an actor and a writer, but he's got to learn to channel things and probably mature a bit. He's probably a little too South Park-inspired for his own good. He could also, of course, use a little more money to work with. There's a whole lot of ugliness here, definitely more than laughs. One scene probably typifies this most:

FDR has just had an affair in which his mistress squirted ketchup and mustard on his "tiny little polio legs" because, I guess, they resemble hot dogs. Eleanor pops in and says, "What the shit?" There's a bit of an argument which ends in Eleanor saying, "Tell them a rainbow took a shit on your legs." Now, I could be completely wrong. That might be historically accurate. Or it could just be completely tasteless. Either way, it makes me wonder why I watched this.

Atomic Cafe

1982 documentary

Rating: 17/20

Plot: A compilation of bomb testing footage, important people saying things, propaganda films, and atomic bomb survival videos from the 40s-60s. Uncle Sam's message was very clear: American citizens don't really have to worry about the atomic bomb, especially if they happen to be turtles.

When I was a kid, nuclear war was on my mind all the time, so a lot of this footage is kind of terrifying. A lot more of it is disgusting or creepy, and a lot of it is hilarious, and that's what makes this such an enjoyable movie experience. All of this sans narration makes it work so much better. It's there, objectively, and although what the filmmakers have chosen to give us might be subjective, the chronological look at the history of the big bomb is really just there for the viewer to put the pieces together on their own. The propaganda films seem so tasteless sixty years after. Blowing up Statues of Liberty, small Wisconsin town exploitation, island natives near bomb testing sites completely understanding exactly what is going on while "You Are My Sunshine" is used in the background. It's enough to make any freedom-loving American sick to his stomach. And then you add a shot of a giggling Truman right before his "two billion dollar gamble" announcement or a crowd laughing after Nagasaki's described as looking "like Ebbet's Field after a double header with the Giants," and it makes you wonder who the bad guys really were. It definitely makes one feel really good about our government. Luckily, there's no dishonesty in our present times. As I mentioned, this isn't all gloomy. The nuclear protection get-ups are often hilarious, and that "God Will Hit Like an Atomic Bomb" song is about the catchiest thing you'll ever hear. "Everybody's worried about the atomic bomb, but nobody's worried about the day my lord will come." This is just stuffed with images that will forever be tattoed in the mind. I don't think I'll ever forget that testing video footage that showed soldiers running toward a mushroom cloud.

How dumb were kids growing up in the 50s and 60s, by the way? Duck and cover? I can imagine what my smartass middle schoolers would say to something like that. And I know how dumb they are!

Black Moon

1975 unicorn movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A teenager flees a war between men and women and ends up at a house inhabited by an old woman, a brother and sister both named Lily, a horde of naked children, and apparently a unicorn. Breastfeeding ensues.

Spoiler alert: I thought things were a little strange when Lily (the girl one) breastfed her own mother, but the end, in which the protagonist prepares to breastfeed the unicorn. I didn't exactly understand this movie. There was the whole male/female conflict which didn't seem to have much to do with the rest of the movie. "Sexual awakening of a young girl" seems lazy, but falling panties, phallic symbols, and the suspicions of incest do lead you to that sort of conclusion. And all the animals allusions in this mama: roadkill in the first shot that sets a dark stage, sheep approach, a snake, a centipede, a grasshopper thing, other insects, a gal riding a horse, a giant pig running with a quartet of naked kids, geese or ducks (like alligators and crocodiles, I can't really tell them apart), a piano-playing kitty, a rat that the old woman talked to, a bird, ants on a piece of cheese, another snake, a chicken pecking at a dead soldier's chest, a decapitated eagle, a yard full of sheep and turkeys. That's a buttload of animals! Malle's up to his tricks again. The guy's virtuosic, a real master craftsman, and I loved a lot of those animal shots, a run through the woods, off-road Pinto action with a windshield wiper knocking out broken glass, a stunning shot of a giant tank with opera music playing behind it, underpants effects, unicorn training. There's also maybe the funniest gag I've seen in a movie all year with a picture in a photo album that that main character looks through. It got a big ol' laugh out of me. And as close readers of this blog know, I really like unusual artwork in movies, and this has a fantastic painting of a guy cutting an eagle in half with a sword while a woman stands crying next to him. This works as a surreal comedy, a little like Lewis Carroll just like it says on the poster, although its goofily avant-gardish dick-around approach might make it a little too silly to take seriously. It's fun for those of you who like more adventurous stuff. And it'll probably be the only movie you ever see with a scene where a woman breastfeeds a unicorn, so that's something.

Captain America: The First Avenger

2011 history lesson

Rating: 15/20

Plot: It's the exact same plot as this movie actually.

Either I'm in a really good mood or Captain America: Full Sequence is the best of these pre-Avengers Marvel movies. As always, I went into this knowing nothing of the titular superhero. Like the rest of these superhero movies, this does a fine job of explaining Captain America's origins. It's a lot like the other superhero origin stories, but I really like how the protagonist becomes no more than a goofy propaganda symbol before he runs off doing remarkable things. And the makers of this really nail it with the stage shows and posters and things. They also nail 1940's America which looks stylized and cool, straight out of a comic maybe. The bad guys are the same ones in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Nazis with an interest in the occult, although there could have been a better bad guy than Red Skull Man. The special effects are mostly fine although there is a scene where Captain America, right after he gets his powers and starts dressing like a flag, runs in a way that makes Superman's running in the original Christopher Reeve movie look normal. It's the newly-Superheroed Rubbery Blubbery Leg Syndrome, I guess. I don't know much about Chris Evans, the guy who plays Mr. America here, but he also played Fire Man in the Fantastic Four movie. I'll have to watch that one, I suppose, just in case they're in the Avengers movie. Speaking of those guys. Fire Man, The Rock, Ice Surfer. Who else is there? But I digress. I liked Chris Evans as the hero here. I also liked Tommy Lee Jones who seems to do his best work when grumpy. This is the type of movie that a true patriot, such as myself, would have trouble not enjoying. I mean, watching this red white and blue guy sneaking around in such a dopey superhero costume with the most conspicuous prop ever? What's not to like there? How come I didn't read about any of this in my 8th grade American history class?

I was pretty sure that this contained some inaccuracies and thought I'd do a bit of research to get things right and not offend comic book aficionados who might stumble in and read this. So I looked up the bad guy's name. Red Skull really was his name! I just have to assume I'm right about the rest of this stuff, too.

Oprah Movie Club Pick for May: Schinder's List

1993 Best Picture

Rating: 18/20 (Jen: 18/20; Dylan: 11/20)

Plot: Businessman Oskar Schindler saves a bunch of Jews during the Holocaust. He's rewarded with a tree and a bunch of rocks and, long after he's gone, a movie that nobody will want to see because it isn't even in color.

So here's my question: Why were so many details changed? They're not significant details--the girl in the red dress, based on a real person apparently, survived the Holocaust--but doesn't it damage the integrity of the film? Even a minor rewrite is still a rewrite of history, isn't it? Isn't that what Inglorious Basterds is kind of about? It makes me question the historical accuracy of other things that happen in the movie, like when Fiennes character is shooting at people from his balcony.

Here's something else I wanted to bring up. Here's what filmmaker Terry Gilliam had to say about Schindler's List: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAKS3rdYTpI

It's a two minute clip. I know Cory made us watch a five-hour movie this month, but you can spare two more minutes to see what Mr. Gilliam has to say, right? I have my own thoughts, but I wanted to see what you had to say.

Another question: Spielberg refused to take any money for making this, and he doesn't sign any memorabilia related to the movie. That's noble and all, but a stronger move would have been to keep his name off the screen during the closing credits. Or at least not end his movie with a powerful scene of Schindler's Jews giving him rocks and then immediately splash "Directed by Steven Spielberg" on the screen after it.

I saw this in a crummy theater in Terre Haute when it came out, back before they'd invented devices that would enable my wife to check Facebook during the movie. Now I'm not completely sure about this, but I think that makes her almost as bad as a Nazi. Of course, Dylan only rated this an 11, not even twice as good as Dr. Strangelove, so he's probably going straight to hell. He called it "boring," and it is too long, arguably longer than it needs to be. If I had to cut anything at all, I'd maybe lose the big chunk where Goeth is going through a "pardoning" stage after that lengthy conversation that Qui Gon has with Goeth's maid. I guess I know what a scene where Goeth gets a manicure adds to the Schindler's List experience, but it could have been cut without losing much. It certainly is a long movie, but most of what you see on the screen needs to be there. I don't think our director wants humanity to get away without seeing some of this imagery. It's the same reason why people should have to read Night, almost like an act of penance. Also, this much time is needed to make what Schindler does realistic and comprehensible. You lose some of the space this movie gives the Schindler character, and you lose the real person that he was. And speaking of that real person, I'm happy this leaves in some of his defects. What we find out first about the man is that he was a selfish womanizer, and I think that's important. Neeson's so good here, both with those aforementioned flaws and the more emotional bits as Schindler transforms into the person who deserves to have a movie made about him. Fiennes makes a scary villain, a much scarier (and nosier) one than Lord Voldemort could ever have been. Just as Neeson gives the titular character some real flesh 'n' blood, Fiennes also gives his character, a character who puts a face and name on the evil and gives us something more specific to hate, some unfortunate humanity. And he's so matter-of-fact about it all. It's frightening. It's a brave part for him to grab at the age of 30-something, mostly because he's so good at being pure evil that people might not want to see his face on the screen ever again. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor (CORRECTION: No, he did not. And neither did John Malkovich.), and if there was an Academy Award for Best Paunch, he would have gotten that, too. As evil as that character is, he did give me a pick-up line that I'll probably use once I leave my wife for getting on Facebook during Schindler's List and will need to find a replacement wife--"I realize you're not a person in the strictest sense of the word. . ." I don't think many women would be able to resist that.

One other question: Did they really say "fuck" that much in 1940's Poland? This is a legitimate question. It's a word with a fuzzy history.

Spielberg gives us a lot of pictures that are impossible to get out of your head. The handheld camera work during a lot of this startles. True, some of these visuals just seem too easy, the kind of stuff that a director who knows his name will be the first thing you see after the last image of the film might think will get him that Academy Award. The camera lingers on children, and piles of shoes or pictures, concentration camp atrocities, and dying extras get more than enough screen time. The ghetto scene is absolutely brutal. The little boy with the ears trying to find a hiding spot and the shot of him spotlighted in that desperate situation he decides upon is impossible to forget. Of course, there's the girl in the red coat. Ashes, the slow river of blood fighting through snow, the ominous crematorium chimney. One of my favorite moments is in the hospital when the nurse poisons some patients. One woman's grateful expression and that nurse's look of defiance when the SS arrive are both so beautiful. It's powerful film-making, and there aren't a lot of people who can watch this and feel nothing.

One more thing--I think it's a little sad that I have to look up the name of the accountant/factory-manager. It's Itzhak Stern. Maybe it's just me being bad with names.

My thoughts about Gilliam's thoughts: What are you going to leave this movie remembering the most? Is it a Holocaust movie or a movie about how one person can make a difference? Do you think about how evil humanity is as the credits roll or are you remembering the goodness of one human being? If it's the former with those three questions, Gilliam might have a point.

OK, your turn. What do you want to say about our Oprah Movie Club selection for May?

Taxi Driver

1976 movie

Rating: 20/20

Plot: Travis Bickle gets a new job driving a taxi, makes a few buddies, starts a hobby collecting guns, gets involved with politics, gets a pretty girlfriend, and decides to experiment with his hair.

I may have given bonus points for this for being indirectly responsible for nearly getting Ronald Reagan assassinated. Just think about how powerful that is for a moment. Yeah, I know that The Cat in the Hat could probably drive a person to kill, too, but that's different.

Some questions for my readers who have seen this:

1) Is Travis Bickle a hero?
2) Isn't Travis Bickle dead at the end of this movie? Is that meant to be ambiguous or am I missing something? If he's not dead, is it a happy ending?
3) Is this a war movie?

Here's the most disturbing thing, for me at least: Travis Bickle is relatable. Think about that, too. He's a lonely figure in one of the most crowded cities in the world. He's trapped in this insomniac pessimist fever dream. He can't understand why his date isn't happy about being taken to a pornographic movie theater. It's almost like this story was ripped right out of every man's diary.

I love how that Bernard Herrman sax-heavy score and the filthy backdrop of New York City's prettiest bits almost sexualize the parts of a taxi cab at one point in this movie. I was aroused, and I don't even really find cars all that attractive. I think it might be the color yellow. Then again, Cybill Shepherd's hair didn't do much for me at all. Oddly, Albert Brooks' hair did.

Another question: Did Jodie Foster have good parents?

Harvey Keitel and Peter Boyle's characters should have gotten spin-offs or prequels.

Love Gene Palma as "Street Drummer" enough here to check out every other film he's ever been in. That's only two movies, one a documentary about pornography and one a John Ritter movie. He should have also gotten a spin-off.

I love the linearity of Bickle's story. Every scene is a step in the direction this character is going. And every single scene, arguably, is important.

Here's a question for discussion: If you could invite any six movie characters to have dinner with you, which six would you invite? For me, it would be Travis Bickle, Mary Poppins, and four others. I haven't finished my list yet.

When the Wind Blows

1986 cartoon

Rating: 17/20

Plot: An old couple prepare for nuclear holocaust by following the instructions in a government manual. It works fantastically!

I don't know this for sure and haven't researched, but I'm pretty sure the old dude is supposed to be Charlie Brown all grown up. I'm not sure why he develops an English accent though.

File this along with the devastating Grave of the Fireflies in the drawer marked "Cartoons That Might Make You Cry." Like Grave, this one shows how the violence of war affects everyday people, only this one's got a funny old retired couple instead of children. This one also isn't quite as devastating. I don't think. It's been so long since I saw Grave and I don't see myself popping it in again. The animation style is mostly very traditional and very simple; however, there are moments when it ventures into more experimental territory like during a dreamy dandelion sequence or some shots post-bomb. And I do really like how the "camera" moves through the old couple's house in this one. Watching the colorful--though muted--couple maneuver through the gray chaos after the war, like personified naivete wandering through a landscape of hate, makes for some unforgettable imagery. The writers and animators don't hold back--these characters cough up blood, lose their hair, develop festering boils, and soil themselves. It really clobbers you over the head with its point and toys with you emotionally, but I've got the kind of sensibilities that fall for this sort of thing. And even though the Cold War (in my opinion the most boring "war" we've ever had) is long gone, what this addresses is timeless and very very real. The sad truth at the heart of this movie--that old people are really pretty stupid--will unfortunately never go away.

Blood Tea and Red String

2006 stop-motion fairy tale

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Some bird-headed bipods and some upright white mice battle over the fluffy heart of a crudely-made doll. I can see why they're fighting though. That is one hot doll!

Matt knows how much I dig grotesque puppetry and recommended this one to me. It's not very long, and not-very-long is just about the right length since this one wore on me a little bit. I liked the characters and the entirely voiceless storytelling approach, and like most stop-motion geniuses, Christiane Cegavske's got a clever way about her, creatively but in an almost old-school way showing the movement of water or other non-character movement. This really does look like an old-school puppet production for children, only it's a bit too surreal and bloody and just plain weird. They do have the feel of those more kid-friendly Jiri Trnka films though with a fairy tale ambiance. And not unlike a Svankmajer movie, this utilizes sound effects really well. Cegavske does a terrific job creating this imaginative little world of hers, and she makes technical brilliance look so easy. I'd love to see more, but it seems that she's not in a situation where she's going to be prolific.

Urine Couch AM Movie Club: Green Zone

2010 liberal propaganda

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Matt Damon's sent to Iraq to look for Weapons of Mass Destruction, but he can't find any and starts whining about it.

I really wish this didn't have any music. As soon as the big music comes in (and really as soon as Matt Damon's big face is on the screen), I'm reminded that this is just a big Hollywood movie. I kept asking myself, "Who's that girl? She looks so familiar!" which, after I found out who that girl was, reminds me that it's been too long since I've seen the American version (read: superior version) of The Office since "that girl" was Holly. This movie sort of just goes through the motions, depending more on a subject matter that some might consider controversial. The actions scenes are filmed well, and I'm saying that despite the amount of shaky camera use. And the acting is really good from top to bottom although somebody with a smaller face than Matt Damon easily could have filled those combat boots. I was really impressed with Brandon Gleeson and Khalid Abdalla, and I always like Greg Kinnear for reasons that I can never explain. The movie lags and drags a bit and isn't really ever as thrilling as it needs to be as a thriller or as revealing as it needs to be as a revealer, but Gene Siskel's ghost and I weren't unhappy that we sat through it.

I befriended a mentally-challenged prostitute while watching this movie, by the way. I'm pretty sure drugs had taken away her ability to make words, and I could barely understand anything she said. I do know she didn't seem to have any real interest in watching the rest of Green Zone with me. Said it would cost me fifty bucks!

Urine Couch Movie Club: Forrest Gump

1994 retarded man movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Terminally dumb guy Forrest Gump, habitually in the right historical place at the right historical time, bumbles his way through a few tumultuous decades of America. He meets presidents, becomes a war hero, starts a successful shrimp business, hooks up with the hot drug addict who just so happens to be his childhood sweetheart, and runs a lot. It's all mildly entertaining.

There are tons of things that I really like about this movie. I like the cynical look at the American landscape during the 60s-80s, and there are a lot of funny moments. Robert Zemeckis, when he's not busy giving innocent children terrifying nightmares with those creepy cartoons he's currently unleashing, is real good at creating that artificial movie magic. Most of the credit comes from the special effects wizardry of putting the titular retard in archival footage of presidents or removing Lt. Dan's legs. But the delicate floatings of a bookend feather, the too-clean Hollywoody Vietnam scenes, and the period details are also very well done. I always thought this meandered a little too much and seemed thematically or satirically uneven, but then I read the book which has Gump in outer space and shit which makes the film version seem simple and straightforward by comparison. Great performances from top to bottom. I never really thought Tom Hanks deserved that second Oscar for this performance, but he really does a good job at humanizing this character who could have easily been ruined by a Jim Carrey. I believe this is the first time I ever noticed Gary Sinese, and I liked the depth and arc of his character. This is bursting with music, undoubtedly an attempt to make crusty old hippies all nostalgic. Overall, it's a movie that I can like without really crossing the line into loving territories because it just goes too far too often, yanking at heartstrings like a demented harpist and stretching a character just a little too thin. My favorite part: when young Forrest is running and his leg braces break off. It would have been better if the technical geniuses responsible for giving Clark those rubbery legs in Superman would have done their thing. Pulp Fiction should have won the Best Picture, by the way.

Oprah Movie Club Pick for July: Why We Fight

2005 documentary

Rating: 17/20

Plot: An investigation of American military action in the 20th and 21st Centuries and what really drives the Uncle Sam War Machine.

You know what surprised me most about this whole thing? How reasonable and intelligent John McCain came across. I don't follow politics at all because I'm that type of American citizen. You know, an American citizen. But the snippets of McCain and decisions that he's responsible for (like, say, who his running mate should be) left me questioning the guy's integrity and intelligence. He was a voice of reason on that side of the political fence. My favorite moment in this documentary, by the way, was watching McCain's reaction to news that the vice president was on the phone for him. His eye started twitching, and it looked like he was going to have a heart attack or something.

I blame the Greatest Generation for this whole mess, by the way. I'm also the type of American citizen who, though unapologetically uninformed (probably even misinformed), likes to point fingers.

This is a ton of information, like director Eugene Jarecki backed a dump truck to my lap and unleashed. I thought the structure of it all was pretty complex. That might just be because I wasn't able to turn my mind back on completely after watching Seed of Chucky for the other shane-movies blog movie club--The Urine Couch AM Movie Club--that only the ghost of Gene Siskel, the ghost of Gene Shalit's mustache, and hookers and drug dealers are invited to participate in. And yes, I worry that there are now two too many movie clubs on this blog. Anyway, I ended up liking the structure of this documentary. I think I was expecting chronology when Jarecki was giving me themes. The ideas of revenge, imperialism, government secrecy, oil, and all that are all pretty standard stuff that even a dumb guy like me is aware of. Where this gets really dark and disturbing is when it looks at think tank the propaganda techniques used by politicians to dupe the American people, the propaganda techniques used to get poor or middle-class kids to join that American military machine, and the benefits of war to all those corporations. The idea of America becoming a "New Rome" was mentioned at the beginning and then again at the end, and that's scary. I know as much about history as I do about politics, but I know what happened to Rome--a guy on an elephant burned it down and now nobody dares speak Latin in public venues. Or something like that. So is it inevitable that somebody will burn us down and create a world in which nobody wants to speak American? This also did a good job of explaining the whole Saddam Hussein thing. I knew the bare bones of that situation, but this made it a lot more clear for me. I always suspected that Donald Rumsfeld was more evil than Hussein anyway.

Jarecki keeps returning to Eisenhower's (apparently a president) speech which nicely holds this documentary together. "God help this country when somebody sits at the desk who doesn't know as much about the military as I do." Eerily prophetic, no? And the narrative that surfaces in this flood of information shows that "disastrous rise of misplaced power" that Eisenhower warned against.

Also holding things together in a very touching way: the interviews with the father who lost his son on 9/11. I really felt sorry for that guy, and you can't really blame him for any of the emotions that he had or how he acted upon them in his story. The sad irony that his son's name was on a bomb that essentially did the same thing that tore his heart out has to be something that eats at him every day. The other personal touch this documentary adds is the story of the kid who is joining the air force. I kept waiting for that to end in some big moment, but it never did. He was just absorbed. I don't know. Maybe that is a big moment.

Another irony: We live in a time when technology and the way the media works should make things more transparent to the average Joe, that plumber who Sarah Palin and John McCain kept talking about, but because those average citizens are as apathetic and naive as I am, they are somehow even more in the dark. God help this country when its citizens are too busy watching videos of kitties playing keyboards to care about what is going on with their leaders and our country's international policies.

Speaking of kitten keyboard videos, sorry for the tardiness with this Oprah Movie Club post.