The Hunchback of Notre Dame

1996 cartoon

Rating: 14/20 (Jen: 17/20; Abbey: 20/20)

Plot: When I was in fourth grade, I was in desperate need of an identity. So I started wearing leather pants and gave myself a nickname--Quasimodo. Only I didn't know how to spell it. I insisted that all my friends call me Quasimodo--it was Quasi for short--and even my teachers in fourth, fifth, and sixth grade called me that. Imagine how embarrassed I became when I found out that Quasimodo was a lonely ugly hunchbacked character who spent all his time in a belfry masturbating to figurines he's made in the likeness of the townspeople!

This is a very hit 'n' miss affair from the Disney folk. They handle dark and mature very well here, but that butts heads with the comic relief, almost all of it provided by a triad of gargoyles and almost all of it falling completely flat. Timon and Pumbaa have become gargoyles, make a bunch of fart jokes, threaten to spit on mimes, and are--to me, a non-child--extraneous. And contrast those gargoyle gags with scenes where babies are being thrown into wells because they're demons who need to return to hell where they belong, and it just seems to silly. That's pretty freakin' dark for a child though, right? Add Esmeralda's pole dancing, a scene which seemed racy and inappropriate for young viewers but succeeded in making me really horny and a villain who's just a little too complex to be understood by most children and just as horny as I am and you've got a movie that doesn't seem kid-friendly. But then you've got the gargoyles who seem like they're thrown in to say, "Hey! Don't worry because this is a children's movie after all!" This leans more toward opera than it does musical at times, and it takes a while to get used to the style of song. A lot of them are depressingly boring songs, including a big number at the beginning that is probably called The Bells of Notre Dame," a song in which they embarrassingly mispronounce Notre. Notra? Tell that to South Bend, Goofy! The "You're So Ugly So You Have to Stay in the Belfry, Ugly Guy" song is another stinker, but "Out There" is good enough to be considered as a minor Disney classic and the song the villain sings about Hellfire and the number in the Court of Miracles are pretty great. The animation is so-so. The scenery, the streets of Paris and the innards of the church are really well done except they goofed and forgot to put an Eiffel Tower in there. Esmeralda's animated well enough to give a dead gypsy wood, but Quasimodo is kind of ugly. A Disney hero should be better looking than that. What kind of kid is going to want to play with a Quasimodo action figure? Chester McBlondy (I don't remember the name of the other tip of the love triangle) has a bad haircut, so nobody's going to want that action figure either. Add him to the pile of uninteresting, wooden Disney hero guys. I don't really like how the characters move in this either. There's an unnatural glitchiness that shouldn't have been there. This isn't an upper-echelon Disney feature, but it's not bad. Reboot sans gargoyles and they might have something.

The Great Muppet Caper

1981 shenanigans

Rating: 16/20 (Jen: fell asleep; Dylan: 13/20 ; Emma: 18/20; Abbey: 20/20)

Plot: Kermit and his twin brother Fozzie are newspaper men who, along with their photographer Gonzo, aren't doing a very good job. They get one last shot to report a big story and travel to London to get a scoop on a jewel heist.

For my money, this is the funniest of the Muppet movies. And Jim Henson's just showing off here in this more freewheeling and irreverent follow-up to The Muppet Movie. He's got Muppets swimming, a Muppet multitude riding bicycles, Muppets flying through the air, Muppets climbing up the sides of buildings. There are so many moments where you just scratch your head and wonder, "How the hell are these puppets doing that?" Yes, the story is more than a little goofy, and a lot of the puns are very nearly painful. But the cameos aren't as obtrusive as in the predecessor (Peter Falk is particularly funny), and, if I'm remembering clearly enough, there are more Muppets involved in this one. The Swedish Chef, that eagle guy, Stafford and Waldorf, Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, Bunson and Beaker, and a bunch of others not even I can name all have their chance to be funny. A lot of this takes place in a dilapidated hotel called The Happiness Hotel, the only free place Kermit, Fozzie, and Gonzo can find in London. It's a place slightly better--maybe a fourth of a star better--than the motel I worked at. Only it's got a bitchin' bus. And when I imagine that bus without all those Muppets hanging out the window, it makes me want to tell a stranger about it while grabbing him by the shoulders and vigorously shaking them. Charles "Freakin'" Grodin hams it up--in a good way--as the villain while John Cleese and Peter Ustinov are also funny in small roles. Oscar the Grouch also has a brief cameo appearance. But it's really the five guys who do the voice work for thirty-three (if I counted correctly) Muppets that are the stars here. The Muppet movements and, as weird as it feels to say this, facial expressions helps them blend into the settings and make them feel like living things, but it's the voice work that gives them their personalities. Lots of laughs during this family movie night, so much that I'm surprised Jen didn't wake up. Oh, and this makes yet another musical for family movie night. The songs in this are fine if not especially memorable. The Electric Mayhem get to throw down on the bus. I wonder if that bus would have been allowed at the airport. My boss at my motel told me that I had to take the magnet with our name off the door when I picked up customers at the airport because "we are not allowed there." I never asked what the hell he meant by that.

I'm going to have to re-evaluate my ratings for all these Muppet movies. The Muppet Movie and the new one were both 15/20 according to the blog. Treasure Island was only a 12/20, but it's not very good. I guess Manhattan isn't on the blog, so that might be an upcoming family movie night pick. But that rating for The Muppet Movie seems awfully low, especially since it does have memorable songs and, if I'm remembering correctly, a wild Muppet sex scene.

Trivia time: Charles "Freakin'" Grodin was in one of the worst movies I have ever seen. Want to guess what that was?

Damnation

1988 Bela Tarr existential feel-good movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A somber guy in a gray world wanders around in slow motion. His reason for living is a lounge singer he occasionally sleeps with who, unfortunately, is married. He comes up an ingenious scheme to get rid of the husband for a while so that he can have sex with his mistress in slow motion while it rains outside and dogs scavenge in the streets.

I decided some time last year that I was going to limit myself to one movie directed by Bela Tarr, the likely chipper fellow who directed the best new-to-me movie that I saw in 2011, per year, one that I would watch without my pants on a sunny summer day. They're not exactly uplifting, and as much as I enjoyed Werckmeister Harmonies, more than one movie a year like that would more than likely lead to me taking my own life. This one is just as dismal with its grayness, its long shots, its nasty weather, and its sad characters. Perhaps my expectations were just a little too high, but I was disappointed in this one. The biggest issue for me was that it was too talky. And I'm not sure if it was weirdly translated or just weirdly written, but the philosophical mumbo-jumbo the characters uttered in this was really hard for me to keep track of. I found myself losing interest and then losing track of what the main character was talking about in the middle of his sentences. His story was deceptively simple, so simple that stretching it into a little over two hours might seem excruciatingly boring for a lot of people. This wasn't quite the visual thrill of Werckmeister, and I can't believe I just used the word thrill and the title of that movie in the same sentence. The slowly panning camera, the drab settings, the lingering on objects or characters long after the typical viewer would be done with them, and the choreographed glacial sludge won't fool anybody into thinking this is a different director though. It's all so quietly, often motionless enough to make a viewer uncomfortable, the most exciting movements often being the perpetual drizzle. In fact, when there is activity in some scenes, it's almost shocking. I felt my heart rate go up during a shot when a guy danced on a slab of concrete in the middle of a downpour following a slow pan over all these dismal faces. And there are a couple scenes I guess I would call party scenes--flutes/accordion/piano/drum quartets, holding hands and walking in slow circles, a guy being swung in a chair held by two other guys--that show that Hungarians really know how to throw down. There's another weird scene where the music being played doesn't come close to matching what the musicians are doing which was weird. The mood is also strengthened with sound effects--a reverberating hum throughout the first ten minutes, inexplicable creaks and clicks and drips. In fact, following the alien ambiance of the first couple scenes of this movie, when some somber accordion music begins, it almost sounded like LMFAO to me. It builds to a depressing (of course) climax with a thrilling (oh, there's that word again) fight scene between a man and a dog.

I believe the Hungarian Will Ferrell is in this.

Bela Tarr, by the way, was apparently booted from a philosophy program for being too extreme. He's also announced that he's retired from film making to concentrate on his film school.

Period Piece

2006 thing

Rating: 4/20

Plot: None.

I guess we'll put this in the mondo film or shockumentary genre although it's not a documentary. It's not exactly scripted either though, and it doesn't make a lot of sense. I'm not sure who I should blame for this--Johnny Knoxville, Pink Flamingos, Tom Green, Harmony Korine? All of them. Maybe I should just blame Giuseppe Andrews, the "film's" "director" who, in a brief introduction to this, said, "Well, it's a hard film to synopsis." He also referred to it as a "grenade of wild images, dialogue, and sound" when he could have saved a lot of words and just said described it as "inane garbage." I probably should have heeded the warning at the beginning of the film--"Warning: This film contains senior citizen nudity and dead pigs." Or maybe the appearance of the guy on the cover four-and-a-half minutes into the movie, completely naked and simulating a sex act with an invisible woman should have had me reaching for my remote. This movie feels like somebody flinging feces at you, just shocking scene after shocking scene. It's got a very middle-schoolish "look at what I can say on your television" kind of humor. Or, more accurately, "Look at what I can get old people to say." You get people shooting up in a car wash; all kinds of scenes with people, including a guy in a coon skin cap, having sex with a teddy bear; clowns on stick horses; plays with stop-motion animated tater tots which, of course, evolve into tater tot pornography; smoking pigs; a puppet; a guy eating his own armpit hair; characters pantomiming the cutting and eating of flatulence with a plastic knife and fork. I don't mind experimental movies, and shocking things don't bother me. This is just 80 minutes of pointless nonsense, and 80 minutes which, by the way, seems a little longer than Gone with the Wind. I can't think of any reason why anybody reading this should see this movie. Well, unless you're into tater tots or naked old people. Or stuffed animal snuff films.

I do wonder if Campbells appreciated the (I assume) free product placement in a scene where a can of clam chowder was used to sodomize a teddy bear.

Permanent Vacation

1980 Jim Jarmusch debut

Rating: 12/20

Plot: Allie wanders New York in search of meaning.

Very much a student film, but considering the student is Jarmusch, it's possibly worth a look-see if you're a fan. There are traces of Stranger Than Paradise and Down by Law, but Jarmusch clearly hasn't found that niche yet. Really, it's a pretty dull 75 minutes although the final scene with an exchange of Babylons is classic Jarmuschian humor, and you do get to see John Lurie for a little bit playing his saxophone, a "vibrating bugged-out sound." There's also some play with characters who don't speak the same language, a Jarmusch motif. I also enjoyed on of the episodes--the "plot" is made up of various encounters the main character has with some oddballs--with actor Frankie Faison who says (I think) "He stop and think to the Doppler effect" at one point and tells a hilarious Doppler effect joke. Other oddball scenes include a war scene beside the building where the protagonist says he was born, a building we also learn was bombed out by China, that is interrupted by a story about a bubble car and a lady at an insane asylum who has the kind of laugh that makes you wonder if Jarmusch actually discovered her at a real institution. The real problem with the movie is the lead, Chris Marker. His character's got a silly name, and his acting is just the kind of acting you'd expect from an amateur film. Worst of all was his voice and his endless references to how reckless he is. After a while, I started to wish that they would have dubbed him with Arnold Schwarzennegar or somebody, and I'm really glad that Jarmusch figured out how to get by with a lot less words by the time Stranger Than Paradise was being made. All is forgiven, however, because of the scene that is featured on the poster up there where Chris Marker shows off some phenomenal dancing skills. Oh, and the soundtrack, which sounded to me like slowed-down wind chimes, was kind of irritating, too.

This was a bonus feature on Criterion's Stranger Than Paradise release if you're interested.

If you're reading this, Mark, you should know that main character reads from Maldoror.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

2004 action-comedy

Rating: 18/20 (Jen: 18/20)

Plot: The titular pop oceanographer barely raises enough money to venture out and make a sequel to the documentary in which his friend and long-time collaborator was eaten by a shark that may or may not exist. Zissou deals with his fading popularity, his possible son who tags along for the adventure, a cute and pregnant magazine writer, and a variety of obstacles that threaten to derail production.

Bill Murray fans--here's your chance to see Bill without a shirt. Murray's the sun for the solar system of this movie. A lot of the humor with his character is the writing, but any future comedy mega-superstars need to look here for a course on comic timing and deadpan perfection. Check the scene where he answers the question about the purpose for killing the shark or the little pause and lean-back before he engages in fisticuffs with a heckler or his "OK, man" answer to Ned's introduction of himself. In Will Ferrell's hands, this character would be lost, drifting through an insipid ocean of slapstick and pointless screaming. In Murray's hands, the character is still lost, but he's lost in this existential funk, in his malaise, in his truths and consequences, and in the chore of being human. And yes, I realize how pretentious that might sound, but if you're going to write about why you like a Wes Anderson movie, you better be prepared to go full hipster or not go at all, right? I've watched this little character study more than any other Wes Anderson movie, I think, probably because I think it's his funniest. Still, I've not been able to put my finger on what it's about exactly. There's a lot of playing around with reality vs. this manufactured reality. You get the documentary footage, all scratchily authentic, and it's so obviously staged that you start to pick out scenes with Steve and his maybe-son Ned that also have to be staged. And then you wonder how much of the action sequences that go unapologetically over-the-top are actually real. And you wonder if all those sea creatures Henry Selick animated are real or imagined or both. I fooled myself into believing that the scenes that are showing Zissou's real emotions and the scenes where he's hamming it up for an audience--call it the real Steve and the documentary Steve--are actually filmed differently, framed in unnaturally stiff and more naturally free ways respectively. Of course, I could just be making that up. Either way, I do know that the big payoff, the scene with all the characters humorously crammed into that tiny yellow submarine, is definitely real, and Bill Murray's "I wonder if it remembers me" really touches me and just might be his finest acting moment. No, wait. Let me take that back immediately after I typed it. Murray's finest acting moment is after he explains how their helmets played music to Cate Blanchett's character and then demonstrated with a little dance. If Murray's the sun, all that orbits around him is about perfect in this. Anderson's usual attention to detail gives us Steve Zissou and crew action figures (which, I believe, I hadn't noticed before), plenty of beautiful sea life including a Crayon Ponyfish and this lovely scene that mixes the pink of fish with the blue of the water--two colors that probably should never ever be seen together like that, all those wonderful Bowie songs performed in Portugeuse by Seu Jorge, a three-legged dog, an acrobatic whale. And speaking of acrobatic, how about the way the camera maneuvers during the scene that gives a tour of the Zissou boat and then later during the scene where they steal from Goldblum's sea lab? Those are both so perfectly orchestrated that it makes my nipples hard just thinking about them. The periphery characters and the actors who portray them are so perfect, too. Willem Dafoe wouldn't necessarily be my first choice to play a needy German, but he's hilarious here. Owen Wilson, Anjelica Huston, Michael Gambon, Jeff Goldblum--all perfectly cast. And I had to give this a bonus point for Bud Cort, and his little smile after they do that little hands-in-the-middle teamwork thing in an elevator has got to be one of my favorite movie smiles ever. But then I had to take the bonus point away because Kumar Pallana isn't in this movie. One more thing--I've always wondered if the beginning scenes at the screening of Part One of the latest Zissou documentary with the ornate theater and the terrific Mark Mothersbaugh music and the giant painting and the way the shots are framed was a nod to Peter Greenaway. It makes me laugh to think about all that formality leading to a guy in overalls coming to grab the microphone from the stage.


Note: I just checked the rulebook, and I am not allowed to take away a bonus point just because Kumar Pallana isn't in a movie.

Vibes

1988 romantic adventure comedy

Rating: 12/20

Plot: A pair of psychics, one aided by a friend from the other side and a psychometrist who can know the history of objects by touching them, are recruited to travel to Ecuador in search of a guy's missing son. They find out that that guy, Harry Buscafusco, isn't being completely honest with them. Then, it's adventure time!

Wow, that might win a shane-movies award for worst movie poster. And believe it or not, there was another that was worse. That one had separate pictures of Jeff Goldblum and Cyndi Lauper holding a hand up with the brilliant tagline "Put your hands on our hands and feel the. ..VIBES." Now I know what you're thinking, dear readers--a movie with Jeff Goldblum Goldbluming it up combined with the acting talents of one Cyndi Lauper? And wait just a second! Peter Falk is in this, too? How the hell can this miss? And don't get me wrong--this might not be a great movie, but it is kind of a fun movie. It's a Babaloo Mandel/Lowell Ganz screenplay, and yes, I'm only pointing that out because I wanted to type the name Babaloo. I also noticed during the opening credits that Googy Gress has a part in this. And getting tiny amounts of screentime are Steve Buscemi and Van Dyke Parks, but their names aren't nearly as funny as Babaloo and Googy. Boy, is that Cyndi Lauper a presence. Of course, I would find it difficult to act naturally next to Goldblum, and besides, she probably just took this part because she wanna have fun anyway. Falk's as awesome as he always is, and there are a few good lines even if the story gets int the way of the fun too often. There's just enough wackiness for enough people to latch on and throw his into the cult classic category. Goldblum's got a cult following anyway, doesn't he? Goldblum makes a variety of weird faces which makes me wonder, as much as I like the guy, how he ever had a serious career in Hollywood. There's also a moment in this that made me really uncomfortable where Goldblum touched Cyndi Lauper's rump. He only did it once though, not time after time. Oh, and there's a baseball-playing monkey if that's your thing. He out-acts Cyndi Lauper actually.

A Woman, A Gun, and a Noodle Shop

2009 remake of the last movie I wrote about

Rating: 15/20

Plot: See Blood Simple right below this movie write-up.

I'm really not sure if this could have worked, actually worked, or never had a chance to work. Regardless, I picked this up because I like titles that have commas in them, saw that Yimou Zhang directed it which probably explained all the colors on the dvd box, noticed that it was a remake of Blood Simple, and instantly fell in love with it. I read about it a bit and obviously watched Blood Simple again before I watched this. I got a little scared after noticing that people don't really seem to like the movie very much. And after a Rawhide-esque title sequence and some amazing swordplay from a flamboyant Persian with a handlebar mustache, I wasn't sure what people could possibly hate about this. The style in the opening scenes was just as flamboyant as the Persian with its phallic cannons, bullet forging, gun twirling, and the ridiculous amount of colors that you'd expect from a Zhang flick. And then there is a jaw-dropping dough-juggling expedition that forced me to hop off the couch, fist-bump like a mo-fo, and then walk next door to pound on my neighbor Carl's door until he woke up so that I could tell him about it. Carl was not amused. This is a gorgeous movie, all those colors and bluer skies than even God could create. The cinematography is stunning, one of the best images being some approaching blue police on horses against a background of orangish-brown cliff. Speaking of those police--there are police "sirens" in this, these twirly things on sticks that make a whirring noise when pushed through the air. Do those actually exist? They struck me as funny. I could have done without all the time-lapse stuff which was a bit overdone, but I could watch slow-motion arrows going through things all day. It was a lot of fun watching this almost immediately after the Coens' version of the story to see some clever parallels--the detective's lighter, a reach for a gun, blood dripping from a hand. There are a lot of differences, too, including one gruesome addition that takes place at the burial site. There are also a couple other characters that didn't factor into the original at all. This doesn't handle the dark comedy nearly as delicately, and there's an almost alarming contrast between the comedy--which here is more slapsticky and goofy--and the drama. The Coens are masters at blending comedy and shocking violence. It doesn't really translate well here. The climax of this one also isn't nearly as elegantly gritty as what we get in Blood Simple although I was amazed at how long this could go without dialogue. Most offensive to a lot of people who didn't care for this remake nearly as much as I did was probably Zhang's attempt to pay homage to the great final shot in Blood Simple. The attempt to duplicate that doesn't work at all; in fact, it's really really stupid. Still, despite this movie's flaws, I think this was an interesting concept that was nearly executed brilliantly, and I'd have a hard time imagining why fans of both Blood Simple and the work of Yimou Zhang wouldn't appreciate it.

Blood Simple

1984 thriller

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Bar owner Marty gets word from a private investigator who drives a VW Bug that his wife is cheating on him with an employee. He hires the same private investigator to kill them both. Since this is the Coens' world, one in which all private investigators drive VW Bugs, you can guess that it doesn't go as well as expected.

Here's the reason that I like the Coen Brothers' movies so much: it's the non-sequiturs, the little details or asides that have nothing to do with what's really going with the characters but adds that little extra bit of humor or despair or suspense or whatever that gives their stories a unique flavor. It's like they take deliberate detours because even though they know the straight path from Point A to Point B is the easiest way to go, it's just not the most interesting. Sometimes, it's sound effects in Blood Simple--a bug zapper, a blurping computer. And sometimes, it's the visuals--Walsh's smoke rings after decapitation is threatened, Maurice's quick shuffle on the bar in those white Chuck Taylors of his, the shovel dragging on the asphalt, a newspaper hitting the door. And then sometimes, it's a bit of film that some editors, if they come from a newspaper background where skimping on letters can save some cash, would say, "Hold up a second. Is this scene necessary?" I love the one where Ray has forgotten to turn off his headlights and the guy who was flashing at him to let him know as he approached makes this strange little finger gun sign as he passes. And poor Marty who leaves Ray's house with his tail between his legs and drives off only to realize that he needs to turn around and pass the house a second time. The Coens also create suspense so well in this. It's impressive how you still get that feeling in your stomach during the scene when the detective goes to the house where Ray and Abby are sleeping even though you've seen this before and know exactly what's going to happen. That camera following the detective as he rushes out of the house. It's so effective, and foreshadows the Coens' flamboyant style in their following films. You can also see it in the shot when the camera moves over the bar and is forced to hop over an unconscious guy's head and another overhead shot interrupted by the ceiling fan's blades. And back to the suspense. Can you beat that final twenty minutes? Again, you know what happens because you've seen the movie, but it still manages to pack a punch, a lengthy scene that doesn't have any dialogue at all until it does at the end and shocks you with a little dramatic irony. And then you're immediately hit with a bit more irony with the Tops' "Same Old Song." The music, if you isolate it, seems pretty dated, but it's effective here, especially in that scene where the detective goes to kill Ray and Abby and the opening scene with some accompanying ominous windshield wiper rhythm. Solid performances here, too, with M. Emmet Walsh giving a prototypical Coen performance as the dick. "Give me a call whenever you want to cut off my head. I can always crawl around without it." The guy sweats like a pro, too. My favorite bit of dialogue is this one:

Marty: I got a job for you.

Detective: Well, if the pay's right and it's legal, I'll do it.

Marty: It's not strictly legal.

Detective: Well, if the pay's right, I'll do it.

Of course, that's not the very best line in the film because there's "Hey, mister. How'd you break your pussy finger?" in there somewhere. That's said to Dan Hedaya's Marty, and normally, I'd say Hedaya is the type of person you wouldn't want to say something like that to. In Blood Simple, he plays a really interesting character, one who's got this very thin outer shell of tough guy but is nothing but goo on the inside.

A sidenote: I remember watching this the first time and hating the scene where we're shown the detective's lighter under the fish because they drew attention to it twice. I remember thinking, "C'mon, Coen Brothers. I'm not that dumb. We get it. We don't need to see it twice." Then, the lighter turns out to be barely more than a red herring. Cute.

Another sidenote: Did you know that Barry Sonnenfeld did the vomiting sound effects for Marty?

True Legend

2010 martial arts movie

Rating: 13/20

Plot: A war hero retires to start a family. His pissy adopted brother disrupts that, kills their father, and steals his son. With the help of a pair of jovial but mean gods, Su has to train to meet his brother again and save his family.

The line "You killed my father!" isn't in this, but it might as well be. I wish I would have started keeping track a long time ago of kung-fu movies where somebody gets mad at somebody else for killing his father.

I have trouble deciding whether I like this new martial arts movies. On the one hand, this is directed by Woo-ping Yuen, so you might guess (correctly) that the fight choreography is stunning. The story and a lot of the special effects have some issues, however. You almost have to look at this in three parts. The first part is standard stuff and suffers a bit from a whole bunch of those big swoopy majestic CGI effect moves complete with those impressive whoosh sounds to show sweeping landscapes or allow the camera to fly over the top of a giant battle. What was the first movie to use these because I'd like to have a word with it. There are a lot of effects in this first battle scene; still, it's a thrill, magically fast and bloody. And you get to see a guy with horns on his hat kill a pot of water. We skip ahead to the family drama and a brother with armor sewn into his skin who can make his veins turn a dark gray color. The movie's main conflict begins, and our protagonist and wife are thrown into some raging rapids where they disappear in a very weird way with some of the fakest CGI you'll ever see. Maybe it suffered from high-definition, but the effects just looked strange to me. And there was an over-dependence on them. CGI-birds? Why? Anyway, the bulk of this movie is what I'm calling the second part, where we meet some mystical characters who are either hallucinations or deities. The second sighting of those two guys, almost a wacky circus balancing act, is deliriously awesome, and the training sequences where the hero is throwing down with them are pretty great. And it builds to the big showdown where the movie should have probably ended. However, there's tragedy, and a new ending is required so we have a third part featuring wrestlers and David Carradine. I'm not going to complain about David Carradine ever, but this stuff with his wrestling thugs seems anticlimactic after the brother-on-brother action has completed. And one of the wrestlers, a guy with an eyepatch, has a distracting giant hole in the crotch of his pants. I assume that was not a CGI-hole, but it might have been. There's also a scene where David Carradine Barry-Bonds one of his wrestlers which is just dopey. This third part does showcase the drunken boxing beautifully and has an exhilarating sequence in a bar where a fight between a pair of inebriated guys transforms into a breakdance showdown that would put Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo to shame. But since our main story is done, it's all superfluous, isn't it? I liked Wenzhuo Zhao as the lead, especially when he's bearded and disheveled. He doesn't have a ton of charisma, but he was playing a badly beaten character for most of this and charisma probably wouldn't have been appropriate. I'd like to see more of him though. And the God of Wushu character was played by Jay Chou who is Kato in whatever green superhero movie has Kato in it. Either that or he's Kato in an O.J. Simpson biopic.

Kent recommended this. I wanted to like it better.

The Cable Guy

1996 black comedy

Rating: 10/20

Plot: Steven, recovering from a break-up, has cable installed, and the titular character forces a friendship upon the poor guy. The relationship moves from inconvenient to annoying to threatening which reminds me of nearly every friendship that I've ever had.

Un Loco a Domicilio!

This is the perfect example of a movie that hits its peak right off the bat and then gets worse and worse as it goes. Considering that peak is the appearance of a Whammy from the game show Press Your Luck, that's probably not a good thing. The Broderick as a straight man to Carrey's wackiness works for a little bit although Carrey is, as you'd probably expect at this stage of his career, a bit much. Once we're through the exposition, this turns into an interesting enough story with these big clumsy comedy interruptions. The basketball scene, the Medieval restaurant scene, the Jefferson Airplane song. They're not all that funny--just really big. I do like how Carrey mimics the score though. And old people singing karaoke is always comedy gold. And this really is a who's-who of comedy legends--Jack Black, nearly tolerable in a couple scenes; Janeane Garofalo ("There were no utensils during medieval times hence there are no utensils at Medieval Times. Would you like a refill on your Pepsi?"); Kathy Griffin, all-too-briefly; Andy Dick, predictably the funniest person in the movie; director Ben Stiller playing two sort-of characters; Owen Wilson, also briefly; a tiny bit of David Cross; the omnitalented Eric Roberts. But it just doesn't work. It's already lost its way before it switches gears and gets ultra-dark in the last third, and it had already run out of gas before then. And trying to inject a little anti-television theme into the proceedings is really silly. There's a really nutty scene where a guy's television stops working so he picks up a book and starts reading. Come on. That's just nutty.

I had a hard time figuring out why I even bothered giving this movie a second chance. I think I saw it on a best "black comedy" list somewhere and figured I had missed something. Apparently, I only watched it because I wanted to see a large chunk of Sleepless in Seattle again.

Any Italian speakers want to translate that? Google tells me it's "A spot at home" which doesn't make any sense.

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

1971 kid flick

Rating: 18/20 (Jen: 17/20; Dylan: 14/20; Emma: 17/20; Abbey: 20/20)

Plot: The reclusive and eccentric titular candy maker holds a contest to invite five annoying children for a tour of his titular factory and a lifetime supply of his scrumptious titular confectionery treats. The tour ends early for some of the children who have poor listening skills. Grandpa Joe gets gas.

I just now realized that this movie is older than me.

Here's a link I stumbled across that suggests Gene Wilder had a lot of influence on the iconic character created in this. It's a great read, not only because it adds a bit to the genius of Wilder's performance but because it shows how classy that guy is. My 4 1/2 readers know that I love Johnny Depp and don't mind Tim Burton, but when I heard that remake was going to be made, the first thing I said was, "No, that's not right. Gene Wilder is Willy Wonka." And I know that I made the outrageous claim that this movie contained the greatest acting performance of all time, but that was actually wrong. The greatest acting performance of all time belongs to Gene Wilder for his work in this movie. Look no further than the wildly grotesque boat ride which not only gives Gene a chance to show his chops but just might be the greatest scene that takes place on a boat in movie history. That song, by the way, has lyrics that are from Dahl's book. I love all of Wonka's sneaky literary allusions which are not in Dahl's book: "Where is fancy bred--in the heart or in the head?" from Shakespeare, "We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams" from O'Shaughnessy, Oscar Wilde, Ogden Nash, John Keats. It's like a sweet-toothed lit. major's wet dream! Wilder's multi-lingual tour guiding, the deadpan humor, the curly hair, the somersault, the schizophrenic tone switcherooing, the dance moves, his sweet singing voice, the fluidity of his movement. It's all so brilliant, one of the most whimsically dark characters. As I've said many times, Wilder's most fun to watch when his character is angry, and I try to find as many opportunities as I can in life to imitate his "You get nothing!" near the end. I'm also going to start each school year by saying my classroom is where "all my dreams become realities and some of my realities become dreams" before weeping uncontrollably. Anyway, enough about Gene Wilder and his character. You don't need me to convince you that this is the greatest performance in the history of acting.

All the kids are good, even if they're good in really exaggerated ways. You hate them all, except for Charlie, and you're supposed to. Violet's gum chewing and annoying voice, Veruca's whining, Augustus's general shape, Teevee's know-it-all attitude. You don't mind when terrible things happen to these children because they're really awful young people. Their demises work as little object lessons, too, the dangers of not taking care of one's body, of being too prideful or just a little snotty or mean, of greed, of ennui. Those Oompa Loompas. They'll get you, like enforcers of the consequences of the Seven Deadly Sins. If I counted correctly, there were ten Oompa Loompas in the credits. One was in Labyrinth, one was in The Elephant Man and Time Bandits, one was in fourteen of seventeen episodes of The Prisoner and Magical Mystery Tour, one was in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, one not only played three different characters in A New Hope but was in Willow and two Harry Potter movies, one was an Ewok and acted in both Labyrinth and Willow and Time Bandits, one was not only in one of those C.S. Lewis movies but played a character called Dwarf--Eater of Cars in something called Born to Boogie and was also in Magical Mystery Tour, and one was only in this move. And one of them was named Pepe Poupee (I shit you not!) and was actually a woman (I still shit you not!)! What's it say that all the winners of Wonka's contest are Caucasians, by the way? Anything? And I was surprised to find that Peter Ostrum is another of those great one-and-dones and that he didn't have a single other acting credit. He's as perfect for Charlie as Wilder's perfect for Wonka, and I think a lot of that has to do with his hair. Like Wilder, I guess. The only gripe is that Ostrum's belching is wack. If you're about to be dismembered by a ceiling fan because a carbonated beverage is making you float and you can only save yourself by belching, you need to do it like a man. I'll mention one more performance that I like: David Battley as Charlie's teacher, Mr. Turkentine. I used to think that was Paul Benedict, but it's not. He's hilarious anyway, and one of the funniest lines in the movie that nobody would ever mention is his--the "Well, I can't figure out just two!" when he's teaching percentages. Oh, wait! I am going to mention one more character--Toht from Raiders of the Lost Ark is in this movie! Not the actor, the character--the dude who whispers to the children after they win. Or maybe I'm just on drugs.

Speaking of drugs, what a wonderful world the makers of this create without the need of computer graphics or a lot of special effects. The big candy room? 1/3 of it was actually edible according to Gene Wilder. That river? Yep, actual chocolate. Those wacky machines with their funky moving parts. So much color and so much fun. I'll take this old school set design over what Tim Burton did any day.

This is the second musical my family and I have watched for our summer family movie nights. A lot of the songs are great, too--"The Candy Man," a Sammy Davis Jr. staple; "I've Got a Golden Ticket"; "Pure Imagination," another great Gene Wilder moment; all the Oompah Loompah songs. Now "Cheer Up, Charlie" is pointless and shitty, and although Veruca Salt's "I Want It Now" isn't a terrible song, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Why does one of the children get a song before leaving while the others don't? This would be a memorable movie without the songs, but the songs make it even more memorable.

One of my favorite children's movies that are really made for adults. It's not for adults, you say? Well, go ahead and check for yourself what a snozberry is then. Oh, it's just so hard to not love Roald Dahl.

Bonus point for Pepe Poupee.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

1974 actioner

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Some guys in hats and fake mustaches take a group of subway passengers hostage on a subway car and demand one million dollars for their release. One million dollars was a lot more money in 1974. For whatever reason, New York decides to let the guy who coached the Bad News Bears take care of things.

This really intelligent action picture with a witty script and cool performances from Matthau and Ben Stiller's dad is nothing but solid entertainment from beginning to end, not a single lull. There's an interesting quartet of villains, more intimidating maybe because they're anonymous and underdeveloped, and like in Reservoir Dogs, they have colors for aliases. Of course, Tarantino would never steal another movie's ideas, so that's probably just a coincidence. He's probably never even seen this movie! The script is great with the characters getting some cool one-liners without it sounding obnoxious. I also like the red herring that's thrown in there, referenced more than a few times in generally chauvinistic ways, and the little detail that winds up mattering in the end is too silly not to be completely awesome. It sets up a fantastic ending as well. This is an action movie that manages to be an action movie without much action at all. There's a scene where a car goes really fast, another scene where a guy runs a little bit, and a couple characters who get shot. Oh, and there's a bit of a shoot-out. But it's not the bombast that makes this exciting; it's the thinking required of the characters and their audience. The cinematography is plain enough to keep it all just a little bit gritty, a movie you'd be less willing to lick than a subway bathroom floor. But you will lick it and love the simplicity of the storytelling and the personality in the dialogue. Pretty brilliant stuff!

The Artist

2011 silent movie

Rating: 17/20 (Jen: 18/20)

Plot: A silent film stud named George Valentin isn't ready to embrace the newest cinematic fad--talkies. That which kills his career only makes the career of Peppy Miller, the gal whose career took off because of George, stronger until she's one of the most popular screen stars of all. George gets all mopey.

This pair were funny in this movie that I wrote about previously, one that had a lot more color and talking. I'm not the least embarrassed that I spent most of that write-up talking about how I'd probably enjoy having sexual relations with Berenice Bejo. Now it appears that her star is on the rise and the chances that we'll hook up are slimming. And forget about Jean Dujardin who won Best Actor because I'd have even less of a shot with him. Man, they're good in this. Dujardin doesn't surprise me. He was charismatic and hilarious in the spy spoof, and I was excited when I heard that he was the star of this thing. He did a lot with his face and movement in that movie anyway, and he's classically good looking and really fits as this Douglas Fairbanks type. And anybody who knows me knows that I like silent movies. What you might not know is that I only like silent movies because I like the look of the women. Bejo's got that look, leading with her eyes and pouting, completely impossible to ignore. Shane-movies favorites John Goodman, Malcolm McDowell, and James Cromwell are also in the mix though I didn't recognize McDowell until after the fact. It was interesting to watch this so soon after Singin' in the Rain since there are some plot parallels. This stays true to silent movies--the actors fill the screen, there's just the right amount of melodrama, the effects used seem straight from 1927. It's a respectful homage rather than a gimmick although this story wouldn't have gotten nearly this much attention if it was filmed more conventionally. Of course, nobody in America would have seen it because it would have been in French. Speaking of language, do you think Berenice Bejo would have a problem with me being able to say nothing more than "I am a windshield wiper" in French? This was a delightful little movie, the kind that can make a grumpy curmudgeon like me smile a little bit more.

Blazing Saddles

1974 comedy

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A Wild West town inhabited by a bunch of people with the surname Johnson is conveniently or inconveniently right where somebody wants to put railroad tracks. Some bad guys try to run off the Johnsons, and when that doesn't work, they appoint a black sheriff with the hope of offending them right out of town. The new sheriff has to win over the people with the help of a gunslinger named the Waco Kid.

I don't really think this is a very funny movie. The humor's dated, the meta stuff at the end isn't as cute as Mel Brooks thinks it is, Mel Brooks isn't as funny as he thinks he is and of course gives himself two roles, and the lowbrow comedy is completely unironic in an almost disturbing way. Yeah, I'm looking at you fartin'-and-burpin'-around-the-campfire scene. It's bold in the way it addresses race, but its jabs at homosexuality are antiquated. Brooks and the other writers seem to be attempting to mash together smart and stupid, slapstick and satire, and it only works occasionally. Then again, it's hard to argue with explosions that lead to flying and flailing horses, a pie fight that involves Hitler (a pie fight, Mel? Really?), Gabby's mumbling, and the demonstrations of the Waco Kid's shooting skills. There are also some clever anachronisms, and I like the cheesy Western theme music stuff that they use. And Gene Wilder and Slim Pickens in the same movie? You can't argue with that either. Well, you could argue with that, but you would lose. Hearing Slim Pickens say things like "What in the wide world of sports is going on here?" or "We'll make Rock Ridge think it's a chicken that got caught in a tractor's nuts" or "You use your tongue prettier than a twenty-dollar whore" makes up for the stuff in this that doesn't work. Gene Wilder seems high in the majority of his scenes here. Harvey Korman and Cleavon Little are also good. Korman's finest moment is the list he gives for who he wants in the army being put together while Little's would be when he holds himself hostage.