The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence)

2011 sequel

Rating: 8/20 (Mark: 18/20; Amy: 13/20)

Plot: A sexy parking attendant with a disturbing obsession with The Human Centipede (First Sequence) decides to make his own human centipede out of people he's crowbarred in the head at the parking garage. All he needs is Ashlynn Yennie who played a character in the first movie. Luckily for Martin, she's got nothing else going on with her career.

Thank God this was in black and white. There was a lot of this that I just did not need to see in color--an unfortunate scene with a baby and a scene featuring lots of fecal matter. Well, pretty much all of the scenes. Actually, there was a lot of this that I didn't really need to see in black and white. It's true what they say--what has been seen cannot be unseen. The first movie was a piece of work itself, but it had a fun performance by Dieter Laser as the bad guy, a little bit of style, and some very dark humor. As you'd expect, this has a lot in common with that movie. There is a filthy style to this. The film's got this greasy look to it that fits. The centipede-maker, an obese loner named Martin, is played creepily by a guy named Laurence R. Harvey. His body shape, masturbatory method, weird eyes, bad hair, smile, and everything else--his physical performance really is a good one--builds this character you wouldn't want to meet in your dreams. The character's not played for giggles like Laser's guy in the first movie. There was almost no background on Dr. Heiter in the first movie, at least that I can remember. You just knew he wanted to hook three people together to make a pet centipede. Here, we get enough background about Martin to make him a little more human and a lot creepier. And this second installment of a series has some humor although it's very very sick humor. This movie completely fails, however, because it doesn't know when to stop. After a while, it's like somebody telling you the same joke over and over, each time repeating the punchline a little bit louder. You'd just want to cover your ears and tell that person to go away. You almost want to do the same here. Director Tom Six, likely in an effort to top the shock or raise the torture porn bar, just doesn't know when to stop. The best horror movies work because of the subtleties. Six grabs the back of your head by the hair and shoves your face in the horror, and he does it over and over again. I don't recall seeing a trailer for this movie, but I imagine the voiceover said, "Now with more nudity! More blood! More shit! More bondage! More screams! More graphic surgery scenes! And yes, Human Centipede fans--more centipede!" My brother, who loves these movies, covered up his eyes and refused to watch some parts of this. I'll give him credit though. He ate Hardee's food before this, knowing that he was going to watch this movie. It takes a real hero with a real hero's stomach to eat Hardee's food in the first place. I know veterans of WWII or the 9/11 firefighters are often referred to as heroes, but they've got nothing on my brother. I almost regurgitated Hardee's food, and I didn't even eat any of it. A movie that can make you vomit somebody else's food is some movie, and that's just the type of movie this is. The sequel's concept may have had potential, and I really did like Harvey's performance, almost in a way that makes me feel guilty. Unfortunately, this is a movie that almost begs its audience not to like it. I obliged.

If I give a "Best Beard" award this year, Bill Hutchens will likely win it. He played a perverse psychologist. Martin's mother was played by Vivien Bridson who might find herself with a Torgo at the end of the year. It was one delightfully batty performance. Technically, Harvey could win the Billy Curtis Award for little people because he is called a midget in this by two different characters. I'm not sure whether he's eligible or not and will have to dig up my rulebook. And despite my brother's promise that this movie has the "greatest masturbation scene ever," I don't think it beats the one in Borat's new movie.

By the way, if you were an actor or actress in this movie and played a part of the centipede, would you tell people? Would you put it on your resume?

Oh, and Hardee's representatives, you can thank me for the product placement with cash. I do not want coupons because your food, at least the last time I ate any of it over twenty years ago, is garbage.

In Bruges

2008 fairy tale

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Two hitmen are sent to Bruges (It's in Belgium) following a job. Ray, a greenhorn hitman, doesn't like the fairy tale Bruges while the seasoned veteran Ken digs the chance to chill and catch some sightseeing. They patiently await a call from Harry, their boss, and instructions for what to do next. Meanwhile, Ray meets a woman and a midget.

Infectiously entertaining blend of dark comedy and tense drama. The Waiting for Godot-like first third gradually introduces the town (another case where the setting adds a great texture to a film) and creates a mystery while introducing the main characters. And Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson have chemistry in which the latter becomes almost like a straight man for the former. Good comic timing there. When the film's main conflict is finally introduced, there's a great tension and some fantastic irony as all three main characters find themselves in philosophical quandaries. There's some depth to this one. Plus, there's a midget. One could accuse McDonagh of laziness, trying to get a laugh the cheap way by throwing a random midget into the proceedings, but the truth is, the midget is a really cool character and I like how he stumbles in and out of the story. The final shot is terrific though the actual resolution is a little too much like the punch line of a joke. In Bruges isn't without its problems (I thought the romantic sub-plot sort of got in the way), but it's a fantastic debut from writer/director Martin McDonagh, and I look forward to seeing more from him. Heck, I actually look forward to seeing this movie again.

This movie was recommended by three people.

Beauty and the Beast

1991 Disney movie

Rating: 14/20 (Abbey: 20/20; Jen: 19/20)

Plot: Belle is a beautiful but lazy nerd who does nothing but read about dragons. She's the daughter of a kooky inventor. She catches the eye of Gaston, a burly hunter who hangs around with a midget. He nudges the midget one day and says, "Midget, check this. I'm going to hit that." Attempts to hit that prove fruitless. Belle's dad gets lost on the way to an inventor's contest and ends up the prisoner of the Beast who lives in an enchanted castle with talking furniture and a horny candlestick. Belle sacrifices herself for the freedom of her father, and eventually they fall in love and everybody lives happily ever after. Except for Gaston, who aside from having a bad case of blue balls also plummets to his death at the end.

Beauty and the Beast is a good enough movie. It's got lots of nice color and some great animated landscapes. There's Disney's typical creative energy bubbling below the surface of this telling of the classic fairy tale. Unfortunately, it's got lots of problems. First, it's an old school musical complete with dancing and furniture choreography, but there's really only one great song. This is a short movie, but there are still a lot of extraneous moments, most of them songs. The worst offender is the song about Gaston which does nothing but pound home what we already figured out about him. I don't like him much as a villain anyway. Actually, I don't really like any of the characters. The romance happens much too quickly, too quickly to really feel anything, so the ending, which should have been magical and beautiful, ends up as a ho-hum moment with really lazy animation. Belle is just another Disney princess; she's got nothing to offer other than being a pretty prop. The Beast is a jerk who deserved what he got anyway, and his transition into a loving and gentle creature is really contrived and unrealistic. I always imagine that once he's a prince again, he runs off and finds somebody better since he's obviously just using her to break the spell. And there's not really a likable or memorable talking inanimate object either. They're there mostly for comic relief and are more annoying than necessary. I was really hoping Belle would accidentally drop the little teacup (Chip?) and end that misery. And despite some really beautiful animated moments, there are just as many times when the characters and the scenery don't mesh, making it look more like one of those straight-to-video deals than a Disney big-budget theatrical release. Cocteau's version of the fairy tale, although flawed, is better than this one. And I still don't get the ending to the fairy tale. Why does he need to turn back into a prince? Isn't the point that she loves him for who he is and not what he looks like? And why were all the inanimate objects punished by the sorceress? What did they do wrong?

Troll 2

1990 atrocity

Rating: 2/20 (Dylan: 1/20 [Almost immediately, he finds a movie worse than Yellow Submarine.]

Plot: The Waits family agrees to exhange houses with another as some sort of vacation. So, they pack up and head out to Nilbog, a tiny farming community. Meanwhile, the youngest member of the family, Joshua, is being warned by his deceased Grandpa Seth that going to Nilbog is a terrible idea. The rest of the family doesn't listen. Then the inhabitants of Nilbog, none of them trolls, try to turn them into vegetables and eat them. Can Joshua convince his family that they are in trouble before it's too late? Can Grandpa Seth and a double-decker bologna sandwich save the day in time?

There's so much to love about this, the recent subject of a documentary called Best Worst Movie, I believe the project of the kid who played Joshua. For the most part, this looks like a legitimate effort to make a horror film although there are scenes (the erotic corncob scene, most notably) that make it seem like it was a comedy all along. Regardless, I haven't laughed this much at a movie in a long time. I can't believe this movie was written. Seems like the screenwriter would have stopped at one point and said, "Ya know. This just isn't working. Let me get started on something else." Then, I can't believe this movie was funded by a studio. And that nobody at the studio at any time, pre- or post-production, didn't say, "Now why are we calling this Troll 2 again? There aren't any trolls in the movie, are there?" Then they found people willing to ruin their careers by directing Troll 2 and ruin their reputations by appearing in the film. Money was paid to somebody to score the film. The managers at the movie theaters didn't say, "Now wait just a second. . .you realize it takes a lot of effort to put those letters up there on the sign, right?" Posters had to be made. Maybe. I had trouble finding one. Yes, lots of magic had to happen for Troll 2 to come to life. Luckily it did, for Troll 2 is a timeless piece of art. You've got what has to be some of the worst child acting of all time. You've got more quotable moments than you can remember. Dylan and I have been saying, "A double decker bologna sandwich!" since we saw this. But the mother's request to "Sing that song I like so much" followed by the family singing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" was hilarious. The rapport between the entourage of the Waits' daughter's boyfriend's friends made it seem like the script had been written by a person who had never seen a teenager before. There's a great anti-meat sermon delivered by a character who winds up on fire later in the movie. My favorite line might have been from the dad, a guy whose performance probably would have been the worst child acting performance ever if he were a child: "I had an imaginary friend when I was young. But it wasn't your dead grandpa!" There's impromptu dancing, a goblin party complete with a song creepy enough to make the music from The Wicker Man seem like "Row, Row, Row Your Boat," chainsaw tickling, friend-flavored milkshakes, that aforementioned seductive corn cob scene, and a tacked-on twist ending that makes no sense at all. There are some goblins (midgets or children in rubber masks) that I laughed at every single time they appeared on the screen which was a lot because I think they only had about five goblin masks for the whole production. And wait until you see how Joshua stops his family from eating goblin food they find at their vacation home! I could go on and on, but that would take away time that I could be spending watching Troll 2 again. I'm really afraid that anything I try to watch after seeing Troll 2 will just seem boring.

You can watch this on hulu.com for free. And you should!

This Is Spinal Tap

1984 mockurockumentary

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Advertisement director Marty DiBergi follows heavy metal rockers Spinal Tap on a fateful American tour in support of their latest album, Smell the Glove. Conflicts arise due to their waning popularity, management problems, artistic differences, and a lack of record label support.

You know the jokes are coming and can even quote them, but they still surprise and make you laugh. I'm a sucker for both the faux-documentary format and improvised comedy anyway, and this is the one of the best. It all comes naturally, nothing winding up too hammy or strained, so natural that somebody watching excerpts could easily be fooled into thinking it's legitimate. You've got to pay attention though. The first time I saw this movie with Wombat McClain, he wouldn't stop quoting lines before they came (he also wouldn't stop making sexual advances) so I was a little distracted. He also kept giggling in advance and spilling his plate of corn. This helps prove my theory that movies should almost always be watched alone. I do wonder what Wombat McClain is doing these days though. Probably listening to King Crimson and creeping people out! And eating corn, of course. Dude loved his corn.

This is not Wombat McClain, but it might as well be:

Yellow Submarine

1968 animated musical

Rating: 14/20 (Abbey: 20/20; Dylan: 2/20)

Plot: Pepperland is overrun by Blue Meanies, and it's up to Captain Fred to find help. He travels via title vehicle and gets the Beatles to help out. After many psychedelic adventures, they find their way back to Pepperland to fight off the Blue Meanies and their minions in the only way they know how--rock 'n' roll!

Dylan: "This is the worst movie ever made."

This is nowhere close to perfect, but it's always entertaining. This is stuffed with ideas, and sometimes the animation can't catch up with the sheer amount of them. There's so much going on on-screen at the same time that your eyes also have trouble keeping up. I guess this lends a bit of rewatchability to it, but it's also headache inducing. There are moments of sublimity, however. I love the "Eleanor Rigby" sequence. I really like the "Sea of Monsters" sequence, too. The biggest problem is that it needs to be 20 minutes shorter. There's a big fight at the end, the Beatles sing "All You Need Is Love" and get rid of the giant blue glove, and the movie's at a logical stopping place. But then it goes on for another 20 minutes with a couple of lesser songs. Most of the songs actually seem forced into the story of the movie, but individually, they mostly work pretty well as music videos. The main Blue Meanie, by the way, has to be the most flamboyantly gay character in movie history.

I had to trick Abbey into watching this instead of Beauty and the Beast or Spy Kids by getting out my Yellow Submarine action figures.

Jubilee

1978 punk rock unpleasantry

Rating: 5/20

Plot: Thanks to a mystic mime with a shimmering crotch, Queen Elizabeth I, an advisor, and a midget are able to travel to 20th Century England. They find that it's a pretty trashy place. Living in that modern England are several filthy punk rockers. Like most punk rockers, they're funny looking. Scantilly-clad Crabs, spiky-haired Mad, the shirtless Amyl Nitrate, Chaos, Angel, Sphynx, and Viv, bored out of their minds, talk a whole lot and then run out and do what punk rockers do best--act punky. They vandalize, murder, pillage, and expose themselves. This likely upsets the midget. Then they play Monopoly. But, since they're punk rockers, they don't follow the rules! Hell yeah!

Made with his non-actor punk rocker friends on a budget of apparently sixty-five dollars and seventy-three cents, Derek Jarman's Jubilee looks exactly like you'd expect it to look. It looks like trash. Now I understand that Mr. Jarman was probably intentionally making a trashy film and that's generally something that I can appreciate, but this was not entertaining or insightful at all. I believe the non-relatable characters rambling long and philosophical, the shocking images of late-70's counterculture, Hitler allusions, and the bad hair were supposed to make me feel something, but that's the biggest problem with this movie--I didn't feel anything at all. Jubilee is a poorly written and even more poorly acted, and with the possible exceptions of pretty boy Adam Ant and oft-nude Crabs (my brother's favorite part of the movie, it seems), there's very little here worth seeing. This is gross, languid, and stupid when it needed to be full of energy and dangerous. It's not shockingly memorable enough to be as "good" as a John Waters' movie, it's not satirical or smart enough to be A Clockwork Orange, and it's not original enough to be truly avant-garde. It's nothing more than an embarrassing pop culture artifact that nearly made me wish I was watching a movie about deviant disco dancers instead.

Sort of recommended by my brother.

9 Dead Gay Guys

2002 subversive comedy

Rating: 10/20

Plot: Two buddies decide to chase after the riches of a homosexual Orthodox Jew, money rumored to be hidden under his gigantic mattress and used to pay his well-endowed lovers. A bunch of gay guys die along the way. Nine of them actually.

This wasn't very politically correct. It wasn't really all that funny either, but I am shocked out of my gourd! Cheap gags, a frenetic style borrowed from Trainspotting, in-your-face off-the-wall characters. It's a wild ride, but instead of being fun or fresh, it just felt like the kind of amusement park ride where you're jerked around for a long time and then you wonder why you stood in line for that in the first place. 9 Dead Gay Guys is cheeky. And I'm not just talking about the dwarf's bare buttocks that almost made this movie worth the effort. No, I use that word in that way that reminds us why nobody really likes the English or their comedies.

Dumbo

1941 Disney cartoon

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

Plot: Dumbo, a large-eared freak, has to overcome obstacles in order to be accepted by society. His mother is imprisoned, he's relentlessly taunted, and becomes an alcoholic. With the help of a down-on-his-luck mouse (a former drug dealer), he learns to fly and becomes the star of the circus.

This is the movie that taught me where babies come from, that elephants are made from rubber, that female elephants are bitches, and how awesome things get when you drink. I really like the way the background music works with the animated action (i.e. rhythmic puffs of smoke from the anthropomorphized train). This looks a little rougher or less lush/textured than Fantasia or, as I remember it at least, Pinnochio. There are some moments when the vocal music really dates things, but the songs you remember are all pretty good. The best, of course, is "Pink Elephants on Parade" which is a timeless classic that will likely still be performed at weddings five hundred years from now. I just wish the pink elephants scene could have gone on for another half hour. Dumbo's got some nice visual humor, sight gags reminiscent of 20's comedies. I don't like all the characters, some of which are just too mean, and I think the high-flying denouement under the big top is a bit quick, especially after the unnecessarily drawn-out scenes from earlier in the movie. Short and sweet.

Abbey's review: "I'm curious to know whether anybody's analyzed this with race relations in mind. There are black characters although they get no dialogue and are mostly faceless laborers setting up the circus tent. Elephants are African though. Then, of course, you've got the crows (Jim Crow?) who really end up being good guys although their mannerisms and language doesn't seem entirely sensitive now. All those white-faced clowns and the white ring leader making all those plans to oppress the black man behind closed curtains? Could Dumbo represent the embodiment of white's oppression of the blacks? How about that scene where the angry gorilla rattles the bars of his cage hard enough to actually break one loose! Does he escape? No, he puts the bar back and accepts his imprisonment! What's that supposed to symbolize? And what's Timothy the mouse represent? Magic feathers? Is alcohol the only answer? Female characters are only in the movie to advance the plot with gossip and give birth. Is the wash of snow at the opening of the film supposed to be jism? The train's a phallic symbol? Don't get me started on trunks! And speaking of penii, where are the male elephants in this movie? Subtext!

Now that I think about it, what was the first Disney animated feature with speaking black characters? Was it Atlantis? Lilo and Stich had a black character, but that was after Atlantis. I can't think of an earlier example unless you count animals, like Dumbo's crows or the horribly offensive King Louie in The Jungle Book who speak with African American dialect. See, this is exactly why Walt Disney is in hell right now."

Star Wars: Episode V -- The Empire Strikes Back

1980 blockbuster

Rating: 20/20 (Dylan: 15/20)

Plot: Well, I had typed some really stupid plot synopsis about how this starts with the characters vacationing in "the whitest place alive" and ends with their enjoyment of the galaxy's first taste of racial harmony ever while holding hands and listening to Herbie Hancock's Head Hunters on the hi-fi. But the computer went nuts when I was searching for pictures of naked Ugnauts, and all my words were lost.

By the way, is there anybody else out there who would love to have a t-shirt with a picture of a shirtless Ugnaut and the words "This be how we doin' it in Cloud City, mo-fo!" on it? I think that was a promotional item from 1980. Maybe I should check Ebay?

I think Yoda is superior as a puppet. I really enjoyed the Toshi Station boy being relentlessly teased by a big-eared puppet. I also really think the dialogue is great in this movie. There's only one scene in this entire movie that I don't like. Anybody want to guess what it is? Otherwise, this movie is perfect. Too bad the next one had to have those teddy bears in it.

Did I have an Ugnaut action figure as a kid? Hell yeah, I did!

Limelight

1952 talkie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Calvero, a washed-up theatrical clown, saves the life of fellow tenant Terry the ballerina following her suicide attempt. He helps nurse her back to health, teaches her to walk again (she couldn't psychologically), and gives her the confidence to dance. Meanwhile, he dreams of a triumphant return to the stage for one final bow. Terry mistakes her feelings for Calvero as romantic love, but the old clown knows better.

Well, I certainly expected to like this one more. Muddled by dialogue, philosophically hokey and dippily sentimental, this one just seems so talky and dated at times. Thing is, based on story and sentiment alone, this would have been a fantastic movie to end a career on for Chaplin, but he should have insisted on making it a silent movie. It could have been a beautiful farewell, and the melodrama would have been a lot easier to swallow. Chaplin won a belated Oscar for his score, but the music is actually a little too much at times. This is not to say that there aren't some good moments and some very well-written lines. "Life is wonderful if you're not afraid of it" is a terrific line. This is, by the way, the only feature film with both Chaplin and Buster Keaton, but the latter's role is very very small and you really wouldn't even know it was him unless you knew it was him.

The Girl on the Bridge

1999 French love story

Rating: 13/20

Plot: Adele, a French hottie, has had a tough life. Just as she decides to end it all by depositing herself in the Seine, a professional knife thrower named Gabor wanders onto the bridge. He's probably looking for a hook-up. He persuades Adele to come along with him so that he can throw knives in her direction while bemused spectators gasp, and they find that together they can find luck. But Adele is a whore and runs off to let some other guys pierce her with their knives. Oh, snap!

Stylish but goofily pretentious. Things looked good, but this was definitely a case of seen-it-all-before as it's reminiscent of every other French movie ever made. I did like the black and white, and there were a couple neat perspective shots, one from a fly's and one from a spinning target's). Vanessa Paradis sure is easy on the eyes. I wish I could think of something else to say about this movie. Maybe that's why I can't rate it higher.

Buster Keaton Saturday: "The Play House"

1921 short

Rating: n/a

Plot: Buster works as a stagehand for a play house.

"This fellow Keaton seems to be the whole show."

Not as uproariously funny as a lot of Keaton's stuff, but this is worth watching for the craftsmanship and invention alone. This is a very fragmented "story," and again, the story is more of an excuse just to showcase the physical and visual humor. The special effects during the first sequence in which Keaton plays multiple roles (stagehands, minstrel performers [including two in blackface], a conductor, every member of the band, audience members, even some women) are great, and if one Buster Keaton is funny, twenty of them are probably even funnier. The second bit in which Keaton plays a monkey is entertaining, and there are some strange and imaginative visual gags when Buster must recruit some acrobatic soldiers (two of them midgets!) to replace the ones who quit. One of those includes two one-armed men collaborating on their clapping in the audience.

In case you're keeping score, Jennifer dozed off and couldn't make it through 2 minutes of this 22 minute short. She's not seen an entire Buster Keaton feature-length or short movie yet.

Star Wars: A New Hope

1977 space samurai movie

Rating: 19/20 (Dylan: 14/20; Emma: 14/20; Abbey: 20/20)

Plot: This first installment in the Star Wars franchise mainly focuses on the adventures of intergalactic space hero Jek Porkins who, for the bulk of the movie, is hiding in the background or in multiple disguises. He's hard to spot as a fat Jawa, Jabba the Hutt (special edition only), as a fat stormtrooper, a droid, as Darth Vader, as a musician in the Mos Eisley cantina, as Princess Leia's left bun, etc. Porkins finds himself in a situation where he almost singlehandedly must save the galaxy from the Empire's brand spanking new space station--the Giant Ball of Doom. It's round and it's creepy and it can destroy planets by shooting them with a green light. Luckily, the bad guys built the thing with a long trench that leads to a space station's equivalent of an Achilles heel so that Porkins can lead the rebels in its destruction. Kablooey!

I don't have much to say about this one. I love it and always will. There are always things I look forward to seeing every single time I watch this movie--Alec Guinness's sly little smile the moment before he dies, when Luke interrupts a meeting to brag about shooting womp rats, the surreal visual of C3PO walking across the undulating sands of Tatooine, the climactic assault on the Death Star, almost everything Han Solo says, the sand people. And there always seems to be something new to notice. This time, it was noticing that one of the Jawas is a hell of a lot taller than the others. He's the Manute Bol of Jawas apparently. Check out the leg Princess Leia is showing on that movie poster. And Luke's chest? I bet women were really disappointed when they accompanied their boyfriends or husbands expecting to see a hunky hero and being stuck with "But I was going to Toshi Station to pick up some power converters!" Dylan wanted to watch this.

Chinatown

1974 movie

Rating: 20/20

Plot: I think this one's about a guy (Jake Jake Gittes) who really wants a glass of water. Unfortunately, he doesn't have a glass, and a midget keeps trying to cut his nose off. He gets a Coca Cola instead, but some Chinese man keeps putting pee pee in it, presumably as a joke. Then, a guy gets killed. Then, a woman gets killed. Then, another guy gets killed. Then, Jake finds a glass for his water, but it is dirty. He then cleans the glass and finds water, but the water is dirty. He gets a water filter, a really expensive one from a store in Chinatown. He buys it for really cheap, even cheaper than the advertised price because he's got a coupon. He takes it home to try it out. Meanwhile, another person gets killed. The water filter malfunctions, and Jake drops his glass in despair. Then, he spills antifreeze on his pants. He cleans up his mess, changes pants, figures it's time he pushed a giant boulder up a small but steep hill, can't find a boulder or a hill, and decides to go ahead and take the water filter back to the store for a full refund. But he can't remember where he bought it from or find the receipt. All he knows is that it was somewhere. . .in Chinatown.

The best thing about this movie is that absolutely nothing, it seems to me, is irrelevant. Everything matters here--every line of dialogue, every gesture, every nuance, every plot point, every nipple, every cigarette, every fish, every moment. This is such a well put-together drama. It's humorous when it needs to be humorous and humorless when it needs to be humorless. There's also this existential funk that makes everything completely pointless. Poor Jake is doomed to repeat the mistakes of his previous life no matter what he does to prevent those mistakes from being repeated. There's something deeply unnerving about watching a poor guy who seems to have so much control over everything as it gradually unfolds, no matter how much things threaten to unhinge, but ultimately be nothing more than another unfortunate human being caught in the mechanism. I have always been confused about the bifocals but can forgive something like that since it's just a path leading to the greater philosophical issues anyway. It's hard to imagine noir from the 70's topping the classics, let alone surpassing many of them, but this taut drama has perfect acting, fantastic writing, a plot that is somehow overly complex while staying very very simple, and more twists than a thousand middle-aged dwarfs at a Chubby Checker look-a-like contest for dwarfs. That would be something to see, by the way. A room full of dwarfs who looked like Chubby Checker? Punch my ticket!

Man on Wire

2008 documentary

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Phillipe Petit dreams of walking on a tightrope between the World Trade Center buildings, two really tall buildings that used to be in New York City but have since been replaced with bickering and disillusionment. This documentary details his struggles to plan the impossible and the accomplishment of the feat itself while reminding us all that the French are a gay peoples who deserve to be mocked relentlessly.

"Every day for him was like a work of art." That's what Petit's (pronounced PEA-TIT) girlfriend said of him. It's a joy to listen to the title man on the title wire speak of his dreams and his philosophies as he does it so enthusiastically. The story is cool and I love the ideas at the heart of this, and PEA-TIT is an inspirational figure. That, or he's a dumbass. The documentary style, with loads of reenactments (most bizarrely in a gratuitously reimagined sex scene following Petit's release from police custody), isn't always great, and there are some pacing problems, but you've always got to give credit to a film that manages to keep you on the edge of your seat even though you know exactly how everything turns out. The structure and editing keep things entertaining. It's a narrative documentary, but the story's not told chronologically.

This was recommended by lots of people (RD, Larst?). I was supposed to watch it with my brother but he cancelled with a wide variety of excuses including fatigue, American Idol, and something he referred to as (I'm not making this up), a "jerk-off race" which I imagine he would do very well in. I sort of feel bad for watching it without him.

The Independent

2000 comedy

Rating: 13/20

Plot: B-movie director Morty Fineman, director of 427 films, is in the twilight of his career. He wants to make a movie based on the life of a serial killer (a musical), but is finding it impossible to find financial backers despite getting help from his estranged daughter. He owes loads already and tries desperately to find a way to make money to continue doing what he loves to do--make motion pictures with lots of topless women and some sort of trendy political message.

I'd never heard of this and wasn't sure if Jerry Stiller could really carry an entire movie, but it's really pretty funny and Ben's dad does a great job playing, I assume, the exact same character he always plays. He's not exactly versatile like his son. I like the mockumentary style, but this doesn't stick consistently with that genre and moves into more of a straight narrative and sort of loses focus. The funniest bits are the clips from his movies (titles like 12 Angry Men and a Baby and my favorite title, World War III II) and the interview cameos with people like Ron Howard and Peter Bogdanovich. There's also a filmography running alongside the credits which is amusing; check it out on wikipedia. Venus de Mofo; Neat but Not Clean; One-Eyed Wink; What Planet Is This? (Oh My God It's Earth!); Assassin in a See-Through Blouse; Unknown Epidemic, Run!; A Stranger Wears My Pants; Go Tell It on the Mountain, Just Get the Hell out of My House!; A Very Malcolm Xmas; Talkin' Dirty to the Dead; Pong: The Movie; The Bodacious Oasis; (Steam Rises as) The Hup Swamp; and The Man with Two Things are all movies I'd pay to see. Actually, that list is probably better than the movie. Just read it. And if you think it's funny, you'll probably laugh at least three times while watching the movie.

I wonder what a much-maligned guy who wears poker shirts to poker games would think of this movie. . .

Brazil

1985 Utopian fantasy

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Society is deadened, feelings seemingly forbidden by law. Blueish-collar worker Sam juggles a relationship with his mother that sickens him, a job that is exactly as dead-end as he would like it to be, and his fantasies involving a woman he's only barely made eye contact with. Meanwhile, metallic gods bring the hammer down, and bureaucrats read from pamphlets as thick as bricks.

The problems with this one are that it requires more viewings than most people are probably willing to invest, that there is probably just too much movie here and it'll likely leave some viewers drowning in it all, and that some of it seems a little dated. But the rest of it--the acting, oddball characters, absolutely incredible sets and more incredible visual appeal, the noirish complex plot, the music--is explosively imaginative. I can't imagine how some of this was pulled off without computer animation. The movie stays fun and funny while all the time being oppressively depressing and sharply satirical. It seems weird to me that there was a time when Terry Gilliam was one of my favorite directors but that I didn't really care for this movie all that much.

Watchmen

2009 movie

Rating: 15/20 (RD: 15/20)

Plot: The times they have a-changed, and in an alternate universe 1980's New York City (in which Richard Nixon is inexplicably still president and American won in Vietnam), superheroes have been outlawed and crime is everywhere. People live in fear of a seemingly inevitable nuclear holocaust. Following the murder of aging costumed hero The Comedian, another costumed superhero called Rorshach runs around in a fedora to warn his former cohorts about a potential threat against all superheroes and try to figure out who's behind it. Comic books explode as invitations to the apocalypse are mailed out.

I was unclear about my own anticipations going in, and coming out, I was more unclear about whether what I watched was brilliant or crappy than I have been following a movie in a long time. I'll borrow from RD, my friend who recommended and loaned me the graphic novels a few years ago (I should add, by the way, that without that reading, I might have been completely lost during this nearly three-hour movie): it was almost as if this movie had two directors, one who wanted to make a silly blockbuster that would make fanboys drool and pee their pants in delight and another who understands subtlety and grace and wanted to focus more on the depth of the graphic novel--the philosophy, the satire, and the dark dark humor.

The brilliance. An absolutely stunning opening scene followed by a gorgeous opening credits with bizarrely artistic visuals that simultaneously shocked, amused, and enlightened while "The Times They Are A-Changin'" blared. The rest of the visuals--seamless CGI, breathtaking imagery, fight scenes straddling the line between over-the-top and over-the-over-the-top. The story itself which retains the difficulty of the graphic novel's narrative structure, unfolding gracefully with flashbacks and (maybe?) flashbacks within flashbacks. There's so much to see; this is an absolutely jam-packed nearly three hours. And this is the exact kind of movie that excites me, the kind you just want to discuss endlessly and the kind which I believe people will be discussing for years and years. Nuances, depth, power, ambiguity. So much of this is so great, transcending comic book movies and blockbusters, baffling and tickling the audience, and holding that mirror up to our world in a way that reflects now, twenty-five years ago, sixty-seven years ago, and two hundred years ago. But. . .

There was so much wackiness, so many times when the movie loses focus, and so many unfortunately embarrassing moments in this. There was a necessary but troublingly campy sex scene, a few too many of those moments where this slipped into goofy action mode (self-parody?), and lots of stuff that should have easily ended up on the cutting room floor. There was some genuinely awful acting. There were some truly odd soundtrack choices ("99 Luft Balloons"? Was that incidental or was that supposed to be on a jukebox since the setting was the 80's?) and some scenes that might have been unnecessarily super-ultra-violent. I also hated this animated creature that was in the movie for no apparently reason. It looked really stupid.

I'll add four more things. 1) I really look forward to seeing this again. It's a feast. 2) I don't see movies often at all in movie theaters. I almost forgot that I had to buy tickets and am lucky RD was with me or I would have probably been beaten and arrested. But I wonder how much seeing movies in theaters makes those movies seem more impressive than they would be on my television screen. 3) I believe this is better than any Batman movie ever made. Add any Incredible Hulk movie to that. 4) My favorite audience member comment: "Doesn't anybody in this movie wear clothes?" I doubt I see more big ol' blue CGI penis this year.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

2008 romantic comedy

Rating: 7/20

Plot: Heartbroken composer Peter Bretter takes a trip to Hawaii to try to forget his actress girlfriend Sarah Marshall. She happens to be there with her new rock star boyfriend which makes things difficult.

This wasn't funny. And I can find no reason why Jason Segel's penis needs to be on the screen multiple times. I guess you know you're in trouble when the best thing about the movie is Billy Baldwin. These movies from the guys who brought us The 40-Year-Old Virgin are getting tired. I did appreciate the puppets near the end though.