Naqoyqatsi

2002 90 minute music video

Rating: 14/20 (Dylan: 12/20; Abbey: 18/20)

Plot: Completion of Godfrey Reggio and Philip Glass's "Qatsi" trilogic collaboration. This one is all about civilized violence and, seemingly, the war against humans and information/technology.

Skulls of tomorrow become geological. Hyperspeed blizzards. Now I'm a computer bored by my own data. "Nice screen saver you've got there, Captain Handpants." "Thanks, little man. Thanks." Kaleidoscopic carpet soldiers and technicolor ebb and flow, the violence of 1's and 0's, a ballet of agile splotches and whirls, redundant athletes. Ya know, you can guffaw, but only if you do it artistically and in black and white. Andy Warhol should have directed Tron, I'm thinking. Pop and circumstances, Wassily Kandinsky ejaculates on a cookie and demands that the people of the future eat it. A flash of Elton John, fireworks, gism, glitter, and then an astronaut baby! Madonna's cleavage just sold me a strawberry and all of the information I will ever need. No, there's all the information I need, coming directly from the mouths of mute wax figurines. Mushroom Claude knocked on my door just to grope me, but at least he did it delicately. No complaints. Now, there's synchronized crash dummy hi-jinks. Is there a good team here? A bad team? A fuzzy middle? "This hamburger is making me God-damn giddy." Wait, who said that? Who even said that? Art dissolves.

This seemed more Fantasia than Koyaanisqatsi, but I liked it a lot more than I thought I would and at least as much as the second film of the trilogy which bored me. Glass's score is good (and features Yo Yo Ma), and the visuals were interesting even if the computer effects used were a little dated and pedestrian. Tortured stock footage, abstract, and at times completely engrossing. Huge chunks of the imagery I could have done without, but not, I repeat, not that extended slow motion shot of a woman laughing at a hamburger. This seems to pea-brained me to lack the singular statement of the previous two in the trilogy, but I was still sucked in.

Me, half computer:

Fight, Zatoichi, Fight

1964 samurai movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Zatoichi is on the run from some hired assassins. He agrees to ride in a palanquin after receiving a discount, but being the nice guy he is, he gives it to a weak woman traveling with her baby. The assassins, who saw their target enter the palanquin, charge in and kill the woman. Zatoichi feels bad about the whole thing and feels it's his duty to take the baby to his father in a distant village as the assassins follow closely behind.

Confession: I only picked this up because I needed something for "Samurai Friday" at school and because it made the third movie in a week and a half or so that has the "____, Somebody, ____" title. There was more drama than samurai hijinks in this one with the Zatoichi-as-father-figure thing driving most of the plot, but it's still a worthwhile piece of the blind masseuse's tale. Some quick sword action (Zatoichi only seems really in danger in one scene featuring a pair of sumo wrestlers) and some of his typical wise dialogue even if this one was more serious and, at least at the end, slightly sad than fun. Although if you really want to see Zatoichi change diapers and get urinated on, this is the film for you. There was more of a focus on the acting in this one, and it forced me to notice just how good Shintaru Katsu is in these movies as the title character. Solid story with some really beautiful moments.

No camera at school=no picture of me on Samurai Fridays. Just picture me sitting in a dark, locked classroom eating from a tub of ice cream and trying my best to ignore the fact that I have a job.

Vampyr

1932 silent (?) vampire movie

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Allan Grey, a wandering soul obsessed with the study of demons and witches and other occult interests, travels to a creepy castle. He begins seeing weird things that may or may actually be happening--shadows move around by themselves, old men deliver packages to be opened after their deaths, a grave being un-dug, general creepiness. Einstein and a woman somehow become involved, and characters read excerpts from a dull book about vampires.

First off, I really had trouble following the plot of this one. It's dreamy, wandering, and hallucinatory, so I eventually shut off the part of my brain that tries to figure out what's going on and just let it soak in the imagery and ingenious special effects. I imagine these are images that hadn't been seen by people when this came out in the early 30's. There are some odd camera angles and movements, most notably in a scene where characters are carrying a coffin with a glass window in the lid out of the castle mostly shown from the perspective of the corpse within. The effects--dancing disembodied shadows, "backwards" digging, wandering lights--work with the use of lighting and almost no sound (there's some barely audible music and a tiny bit of German [?] dialogue) to create an absorbing atmosphere that make this a genuinely creepy experience. My only complaint would be the middle third of the movie in which there's far too much plot development (and confusion) and the interjected reading from a vampire book which disrupts with an almost documentary feel, but the first and last thirds move like a slow-motion dream with lots of images that would work without the narrative as individual artistic achievements. Cool horror movie.

Here I am enjoying Vampyr in the last picture before my favorite hat was further molested by the dog:

No Country for Old Men

2007 cat and mouse crime drama


Rating: 18/20


Plot: A hunter with a woman's name and the shadow of a minor league hockey team mascot has lost his shooting touch. His focus is gone as he can think of nothing but his impotence. "It just doesn't work no more," he says to the sands and the clouds. He smells brownies and wanders into a Mexican picnic. Unfortunately, the eatin' has finished and the brownie supply is depleted. The Mexicans are sleeping, but one of them, a somnigrapher, doodles a sketch (or sketches a doodle depending on whom you ask) of a man with a terrible haircut and a Boy Scout sash tuning a piano. The sleep-writer scrawls, "Their [sic] guy take napping be side [sic] tree yonder. Check pant's [sic] 4 brownie lol!" and the hunter wanders to the only tree in this particular part of Texas to hopefully meet a reasonable man. The man gives him the last brownie, or at least the part that he has not yet eaten, but only on one condition--the hunter must transport his suitcase full of prawns to a place that is very far from where they currently were. The hunter agrees. A man with terrible hair, working desperately to earn his last Boy Scout badge before he reaches the age where Boy Scouts, according to the Boy Scout Code, are no longer allowed to earn badges, decides to help in order to get that treasured "Seafood Mobilization Badge" and be named "Boy Scout of the Century" by the Boy Scout Board of Boy Scouts. Ironically (or perhaps not ironically since I'm like most Americans and have no clue what that word even means), the hunter is terrified of bad haircuts and flees from the Boy Scout. The chase is on, the hotel bills are enormous, and the tension is thick as the characters wonder how long prawns will keep in a suitcase!


Brilliant. There was nothing I didn't like about what I was seeing on my television for two hours until the very end when there were some things that I didn't like seeing but then later realized that I actually liked those things, too. Jolted, amused, palpitating, and completely entertained, I watched this and was thrilled that it lived up to the hype. It's stylish without looking stylish--the tight and gritty action scenes, the nearly complete lack of music, those little details that the Coen brothers can draw attention to like no other directors. Great acting, and not just limited to Javier Bardem's role as a character that will never be forgotten. That Chigurh is a bad guy hard not to root for, a guy so completely evil and quizzical and tough and philosophical and mysterious and devastatingly original that you don't even feel guilty when you root for him. Such a cool story, and it moves along so quickly that you don't even realize the two hours have passed. Decidedly non-Hollywood, No Country for Old Men toys with expectations and hammers you with lessons deep and bleak. Brilliant. I can't wait to see it again.


Here I am enjoying No Country for Old Men:

The Simpsons Movie

2007 comedy

Rating: 13/20 (Dylan: 11/20; Emma: 10/20; Abbey 20/20)

Plot: Pretty much the same as most episodes of the television show--Homer makes a big mistake and then the family has to scramble to fix things. This time, Homer doesn't give a hoot, pollutes, and causes the EPA to put a giant dome over Springfield. The rest of the Springfieldians grab their pitchforks and torches to throw down on the responsible family, but they manage to escape and head for safe Alaska. Homer later must return to save both the town and his family.

This was just like the typical episode of the show stretched into 90 minutes. Not a bad episode with lots of funny moments and probably too many current pop references. It was pretty much exactly what was expected with only the occasional annoyances--some pandering to Simpsons fans and some look-at-what-we-can-do-cause-it's-not-on-television stuff. There's no way it couldn't be self-referential and the show is satirical, so I'm not sure how I can complain about that. I could probably complain about Spiderpig, but the seven year old inside me really thought that was funny. I would have liked to see more of the minor characters. They all just sort of popped in and out to deliver their one or two lines. In fact, I'd like to see an entire movie with just Lenny and Carl. It could be just like Midnight Cowboy. But I digress. This is the type of movie where you're really digging the first 30 minutes but then you only sort of enjoy the second 30 minutes and then you keep looking at your watch for the final 30 minutes. Quite possibly the longest credits I've ever seen by the way.

Look! I'm enjoying myself!

Little Caesar

1931 gangster picture

Rating: 11/20

Plot: Rico's a small-time crook with big big plans. Even though he's only slightly bigger than a pretty big midget, he's no longer satisfied with robbing tiny gas stations in the country. He's got his eyes on the riches that the big city has to offer. He joins a gang, gets a reputation as a trigger-happy rookie, kills the city's crime commissioner, and begins to climb the gangster ladder until he reaches the top. But what goes up must come down. Or get shot but fail to bleed.

This was almost like a parody. The acting was terrible, likely even terrible for a 1930's production, and the story was predictable and formulaic. To be fair, it probably wasn't as predictable or formulaic in 1931, but watching it in 2008 (or whatever year this is), it's hard to ignore just how dated it is. Original? Possibly one of those movies that was so frequently copied following its release that it seems pretty cookie cutter almost 80 years later. Edward G. Robinson's performance was fun enough, but the performance wasn't good enough to really make me care about his character. Gangster movies have never really been my thing (I like mine with swords), probably because my childhood was filled with people depositing horse's heads in my bed. Once, somebody put a zebra's head in my bed, and more than once, the entire horse was left there. A couple times it was the horse's body without the head. Regardless, my mother would inevitably blame me and my "idiot friends" and I'd get in trouble. Bad memories.

Here I am waiting for Little Caesar to get his comeuppance and wondering why nobody uses the word comeuppance much anymore:

Susperia

1977 Italian horror movie
Rating:
Plot: An apparently drugged woman starts dance instruction at a renowned ballet school. A pupil leaves and is brutally murdered the same night she arrives. Weird colors and sounds make the woman wonder if something more sinister is going down at the ballet school. That's right. Something even more sinister than ballet.

This review was deleted.

Laugh, Clown, Laugh

1928 romantic melodrama


Rating: 16/20


Plot: It's another tale of unrequited circus love! Tito is a clown who finds a crying infant who has apparently been stranded. He "adopts" her and she travels with the troupe. As she matures, she learns to art of the tightrope and becomes part of the act. While looking for a rose to put in her hair, she meets the womanizing Count Ravioli who immediately falls in love with her and kisses her bare foot while she's nursing a barbed-wire-fence wound. It's ok. She's of age (14) and he's got a monocle. Tito also rather inappropriately falls in love with his little Simonetta but knows he can not pursue. Tito and Count Ravioli meet through a psychologist they're both seeing, the former because he can't stop crying and the latter because he can't stop bursting into spontaneous laughter. They become friends and the circus love triangle is complete.


"Laugh, clown. . . laugh even though your heart is breaking." Lon Chaney was much better in this than he was in The Unknown, and this also had much better pacing, more elaborate style, and a more emotionally involving story. I had to take a point off my rating because the movie made me feel uncomfortable. I'd commented to Jen that the love interest of Chaney was "pretty hot" and then discovered that Loretta Young was only fourteen when she acted in this. Of course, it didn't seem to be a problem for the male characters in the movie. The denouement is sort of clumsy here, and I'm not sure about the character's motivation at the end, but this still had a lot of moments that silently hit you in the gut. Melodramatic but smooth. One other note: there's barely a wasted title card in this silent film. The dialogue used is poetic, but so much of the story takes place successfully with pantomime and the camera work.


I'm all blubbery eyed:

Rivers and Tides

2001 documentary

Rating: 16/20 (Jen: 16/20 even though she once again couldn't stay awake for the duration)


Plot: Cameramen follow nature artist Andy Goldsworthy as he dicks around with leaves, rocks, sticks, roots, ice chunks, and sand. Soft-spoken and patient Goldsworthy deliberately chooses spots where the art he creates will either destroy itself or be destroyed naturally. Thus, he's often in a race against time to complete each piece as he suffers scratches and wearying bones.


Flows along so gently that you think you might break the thing if you look too hard. Something very Zen about this work that disintengrates almost instantly and sometimes, unfortunately for the artist, before completion. I did laugh (robustly and perhaps inappropriately) when two of the pieces crumbled. The art itself was beautiful and beautifully filmed with sustained shots that showed the work falling apart, floating away, or being threatened by large furry animals or the wind. With a different personality, this could have crossed a line into pretentiously pompous art-fart junk, but this guy's philosophical meanderings are easy enough to swallow (his musings on life/death and how "good art keeps you warm," etc.) and there's really no attempt on his part to make his work seem more important or more high art than it is. The striking visuals speak for themselves. Music by none other than Fred Frith is also pretty well done.


I made Jen stand up to watch this so that she would stay awake, but she eventually sat down. And fell asleep. Six times.

Leningrad Cowboys Go America

1989 Finnish comedy

Rating: 13/20

Plot: The Leningrad Cowboys are a Finnish polka band who, after failing to impress a talent scout in their native land, take his advice to tour America with their shady manager. America, as it is pointed out, will listen to anything. With their frozen bassist brother atop their newly-purchased used automobile, they travel from New York to New Orleans to a wedding date in Mexico, passing by the trashiest parts of the good ole U.S.A. and playing in the dumpiest dives.

Funny bits here, but it all wears thin. They've got funny haircuts, funny music, funny lines, etc., but the Blues Brothers meets Stroszek comedy is a little flat. It's unfortunately too much like a Saturday Night Live sketch stretched into an 80-minute comedy. Jim Jarmusch cameos as a used car salesman, and the style of the film is a little like his. Mini-scenes, lots of silence. Humorous moments, my favorite being the "Is that necessary?" response of their manager after the owner of a club they want to play at asks to hear their music first. I really expected this to be better than it was and the music to be a little worse than it was. Their rendition of "Bad to the Bone" rocked pretty hard.

Note: Apparently, this is followed by sequels--Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses (?), Leningrad Cowboys Go Space, Leningrad Cowboys Meet the Brave Little Toaster.

Me, lamenting the fact that I have worse (but less ridiculous) hair than the Leningrad Cowboys:

Raiders of the Lost Ark

1981 action movie


Rating: 18/20 (Dylan: 18/20; Abbey: 18/20. "I'll give it an 18 because it had a girl in it.")



Plot: Professor and archeologist Indiana Jones is recruited by the government to find the Ark of the Covenant in Cairo before the Nazis can get it and hand it over to Adolf.



This was my favorite movie as a kid, and I can still overlook its faults to consider it one of the best action movies ever made. I've seen it dozens of times, and certain scenes (the iconic boulder scene, the scene with the truck, the fight in the streets of Cairo) are still capable of giving me goosebumps. Spectacular stunts and a well-written script. Best action character ever created, in my opinion. His intelligence and fragility continue to make him appealing, and yes, I'm really excited about seeing the upcoming fourth movie even though it'll likely be more on par with the sequels than the original.



Note: Klaus Kinski claims that Spielberg offered him the role as the German guy with the glasses, but that he turned it down because the script was "moronically shitty." Kinski, however, lied a lot according to Werner Herzog.



I had an Indiana Jones hat as a kid. If I still had it, I'd be wearing it in this picture:

Breakin'

1984Flashdance rip-off

Rating: 4/20 (Abbey: 18/20. "I liked all the moves and the dancing." She originally gave it a 1/20.)

Plot: Kelly is a waitress and wanna-be dancer in L.A. who is having difficulty making it big. She accompanies her homosexual boyfriend to the beach to watch some street dancers, busts a move herself, and leaves with the nickname Special K. She teams up with Turbo and Ozone, two flamingly homosexual urban break dancers, to defeat a duo featuring a blatantly homosexual guy and a more subdued homosexual. A 12-year-old Ice-T raps. They become the dance champions of the streets, but can they win over the stuffy white judges and win a real dance contest? You bet! This wouldn't be a movie from the 80's if they couldn't!

This was a movie so good that the sequel was actually mentioned in the credits. It's hard to miss when you have actors who go by the names of Shabba-Doo and Boogaloo Shrimp. It's got other things going for it, too: lots of people doing the robot, Jean-Claude Van Damme's debut, a sex scene (well, nearly) between a Boogaloo Shrimp and a broom, a character named Bruno Pop 'n' Taco, lotsa fresh dancing, and some of the most absurd trash-talk dialogue you'll ever hear. So completely dated (there's no way it couldn't be) and not nearly as capable of giving that feeling of nostalgia as I thought it would be. I expected to be transported back to my days in elementary school where we'd drag our big piece of cardboard and boombox outside during recess and injure ourselves while listening to the only cassette my friend Brad had--the Eagles' One of Those Nights. This was tepid enough to be a Disney movie. The worst offense of Breakin'? The dancing isn't even any good!

Here are Abbizzle staring our Saturday morning off by enjoying Bruno Pop 'n' Taco's moves:

The Unknown

1927 drama

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Alonzo the Armless is a gypsy circus performer who, using only his feet, hurls knives at Joan Crawford. A circus love triangle develops as Alonzo and the circus strong man Malabar both fall in love with Joan Crawford. Turns out that Alonzo is faking being armless and is actually hiding from the law after robbing banks or something. Luckily for him, Joan Crawford has a hand-phobia and is uncomfortable with the strong man's attempts to grope her. Alonzo's midget sidekick gives him a golden idea that leads to a harsh discovery and a tragic climax.

This predates Tod Browning's Freaks and sort of covers similar ground. Remove the bizarre armless thing and the love interest's phobia of being touched by male hands and you've got a fairly brown-bag, soap operatic film. Nothing terribly special here unless you want to see Lon Chaney smoke a cigarette with his feet. I'm sure his starring role here is pretty demanding with leg flexibility and the wearing of a corset-type thing to hide his arms from Joan Crawford. Actually, I just looked it up, and Chaney had a stand-in--a guy actually born without arms--who smoked the cigarette and played the guitar with his feet. I generally like movies that take place in circuses or have to do with freaks, but there isn't much character or setting variety here. I think there are only around four sets and five characters, and there's nothing at all going on with the direction to make this stand out from contemporary end-of-the-silent-era stuff.

Here I am, probably thinking that I would give this 10 extra points if it included a scene where Lon Chaney pleasures himself with a foot:

Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart at the River Styx

1972 samurai movie

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Anti-hero Ogami Itto and his child are still on the quiet run from the Yagyu clan. The Yagyus seek help from a group of deadly female ninjas (that's right, deadly female ninjas) who seem eager and well-equiped to chop men into pieces. At the same time, Itto is employed (he is, after all, an assassin for hire) to kill a guy who is going to give away the secrets of a successful dye-making business to the Shogunate. That guy is guarded by three brothers with gigantic hats and deadly garden implements. One straps a rake to his hand! They're the Gods of Death! So, he's got female ninjas to the left of him, murderous gardeners to the right, and more tricks in his baby cart than Inspector Gadget's got in his ass. Limbs get strewn about.

This was even better than the first--bloodier, more action-packed, more stylish. The "Cub" has a more interesting role, sort of like Maggie in The Simpsons in a way, and the minor characters (really only introduced to the saga to die violently) are really interesting (loved the three brothers and the head female ninja especially). But it's the main character who brings the coolness. Eyes like Bronson! Itto is fast becoming my favorite samurai character. Nothing against Zatoichi, but I've never seen that blind son of a bitch chop off this many limbs or split skulls in half. The deadpan expression as the blood sprays is just perfect. There's not much difference in feel between this and the first in the series. There was more exposition in the first while this one could just jump right into the blood spilling goodness. If I'm remembering correctly, this one does have a little more style--nifty shots more typical of Japanese samurai films and some weird camera play and trickery and large chunks of the movie that flow in silence. Can't wait to see part three! I'm hoping the films continue to gradually get more darker and more violent although I honestly can't see the latter being all that possible.

No picture of me watching this is available. I watched it at school on the big screen when I was probably supposed to be doing something else.

Kill, Baby. . .Kill!

1966 Italian horror film

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Inspector Kruger is in a cursed village investigating some mysterious deaths--women impaled, that sort of thing. He calls a doctor to perform an autopsy on the latest fishy death. Kruger dies, somebody else dies, another person dies, somebody else is threatened, and another person dies. A creepy little girl wanders around and touches people's windows. She just wants somebody to play catch with, and gets mad enough to kill, baby, kill when she can't find anybody. A bell rings by itself! Scary music plays very loudly. Fog comes on little cat feet. Kill, baby, kill!

This atmospheric, stylish no-budget horror film is genuinely spine-tingling stuff. Call it horror noir, reminiscent in mood of The Wicker Man. The new one, of course, with Nicholas Cage. Sure, the plot is a little goofy (although the slowly unfolding mystery is interesting), and the acting and soundtrack are pretty over the top, but it's all easily forgiven with scenes authentically creepy and stylishly artistic. Really, every single shot seems perfect--fog moves in at the exact right moments, characters situate themselves perfectly against backdrops that look like sets from 1920's German horror films, angles become disorienting and then more disorienting. Creative cheap special effects and cinematography make an uncomfortable mood. This is the first movie I've seen from director Mario Bava. It's hypnotic and beautiful stuff, and I can't wait to see more. Honestly, I'd never heard of him before, but I can see a direct influence on the work of Tim Burton or maybe even David Lynch. My only real gripe--annoying little girl laughter that I think took away some of that mood and just made things a bit too silly.

Note: This movie is also known as Curse of the Dead, Curse of the Living Dead, Don't Walk in the Park, and Operation Fear. All of those titles are just as bad (the last three make just as much sense) as Kill, Baby, Kill or, as it is also known, Kill, Baby. . .Kill!

Here I am: