Save the Green Planet!

2003 Korean movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Some guy with some emotional problems kidnaps business executives because he believes they are aliens planning a takeover of the titular green planet. A private investigator and a young cop try to find the latest kidnapped rich guy and the culprit. Meanwhile, aliens might be preparing an invasion.

This movie took a little while to grab me. Once it did, I enjoyed its inventive style, quirkiness, and twists. It's the type of movie where you sort of think you know what's going on, and then you realize that you're not sure what's going on. Fun ride. It's got some blood and torture, but it's also got its fair share of black comedy. And there's a message in the mess about our violent culture, a reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey, and a couple covers of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." I liked the guy who played the disgraced detective, a guy with enough cool he made me want to get my own brown leather jacket and lose some of my hair. The movie's plot might frustrate some because it's a little all over the place, and this shifts from one genre to the next in ways that may give you a wryneck. You've got a little romance, a tale of childhood trauma, the torture porn stuff, the comedy, a crime/mystery thing, a revenge story, and some science fiction shenanigans. At times, it's even fairly emotional. And there's a great scene where a guy shoots bees. Expect the unexpected when you dive into this unique movie.

Hillbillys in a Haunted House

1967 horror comedy country western musical

Rating: 3/20

Plot: The titular hillbillys [sic] have car problems on the way to something called a jamboree and have to stay the night in the titular haunted house. Songs are performed. Spies and a gorilla harsh their mellow.

So in the first shot, they're traveling in Boss Hogg's car with slightly more ornamentation, and they're singing a song about being "on [our] way to Nashville, Tennessee." I should have taken it as a warning, ejected the dvd, and hurled it at a chicken. If you like bland old-timey country and western music, you're in for a treat. There's really about 30 minutes of movie here, and the rest of it consists of musical performances. In fact, the final 20 minutes of the movie is the jamboree, so it's just a series of songs that have nothing to do with the haunted house. You get to hear Ferlin Husky, the guy who plays Woody, sing "Livin' in a Trance," a song which sounds like it was recorded in a cave or something but is at least more awkward than it is terrible. Some random people then show up to tell the hillbillys [sic] that they never come near the house even though they are standing inside the house while saying that, and they perform a couple impromptu songs because the movie's plot wasn't quite ready to get started. They do "The Cat Came Back" which features two gitfiddles, a couple guys just standing around, invisible drums, and a guy hitting a small shovel with a brush before complying with the woman's request for a love song, a song that has her twitching in a way that made me wonder if she was reaching orgasm. That gal--Boots, played by a very fetching Joi Lansing--gets her own random song later during a fantasy dream sequence. "Gowns, Gowns, Beautiful Gowns" might be the most pointless things I've ever seen. Later, a character watches television, and Merle Haggard gets a song. There are probably over 15 songs in this motherfucker! And if you don't like country and western music or don't enjoy laughing at terrible film-making, there's nothing for you to see here. I've seen this on a couple "Worst Movie Ever" lists, and it probably deserves to be in consideration. It's very poorly written. I believe this chunk of dialogue is supposed to be humorous:

Woody: Where are we?
Gas station guy: Sleepy Junction.
Woody: Sleepy Junction.
Boots: Where are we?
Woody: Sleepy Junction.
Boots: Oh.
Jeepers: Hey, Woody, we're in Sleepy Junction.

Jeepers is an actual name of a hillbilly, and he's played by Don Bowman who was the host of some country music countdown show. His only other acting credit is the movie this is apparently a sequel for--The Las Vegas Hillbillys. He plays "Don Bowman" in that though, and not Jeepers. As Jeepers, he gives a performance that manages to still seem like one of the worst performances ever even though the movie is a complete disaster anyway. That first shot with the hillbillys [sic] singing in the car? He isn't singing, merely sitting in the back in what seems to be an illegal way. And he can't even get "just sitting there" right! He looks bored. That's actually the best he gets in this movie, too. Most of the time, he looks like he's got ADD or is some kind of tweaker. He spends most of the movie twitching and squinting, but he does get a moment to shine when he starts yelping about seeing a "weirdwolf" in the closet. Oh, and he does get his own song during the jamboree--"Wrong House Last Night" and it is a thing of beauty, one of those things that has to be heard to be believed. Bowman can't even sit still during a fifteen or so minute scene where he just needs to watch television. That, by the way, is one of those "What the hell?" moments as the country music he's watching is interrupted by the faces of Carradine, Chaney Jr., Rathbone, and Ho--the four bad guys. Why their faces start appearing on the television screen to stare at Jeepers is beyond me. Speaking of those guys. You would probably never expect Lon Chaney Jr. to be any good, and he isn't. Neither is Basil Rathbone, though he's the best of the bunch. John Carradine might be the worst of them all, but somebody named Linda Ho isn't far behind. Her acting consists of reading lines phonetically. I did like this conversation:

Woody: We're entertainers.
Ho: What kind of entertaining do you do?
Woody: I sing and pick a guitar.
Ho: How nice. (With this absolutely disgusted look on her face that I'm not sure was supposed to be there.)

The best performance is by George Barrows as Aniatole the monkey. John Carradine's character really hated that gorilla. It was never actually explained why these spies traveled with a gorilla, but I've never been a spy and don't know much about how these people operate. I guess having a gorilla around would make perfect sense. Anyway, George Barrows is the guy who plays one of my favorite movie monsters of all time--Ro-Man in The Robot Monster. Ro-Man is a gorilla suit from the next down and a deep sea diver's helmet for a head. Barrows has one of those acting careers I love looking at. He acted in 108 titles, and he played 16 gorillas. At least! Some of his roles were just names, and those might be gorillas, too. He also played Monstro in a movie and Slouchy McGoo in the Adventures of Superman television series. And he played "henchman" a lot. Barrows and his suit (I'm going to go ahead and assume he owned his own gorilla suit) are actually the best special effect in the movie. Some wobbling skeletons, bats on strings, and the "weirdwolf" mask are nothing short of embarrassing. There are also some lightning effects in a night sky when the action is clearly taking place in daylight and a couple visible boom mics, but if you have problems with that, you're nitpicking. I almost feel bad criticizing something that I'm sure was made by very nice people for very nice families to sit around and enjoy, but it's one of those works of art where everything just came together so imperfectly to make something so magical and deserves to be seen by connoisseurs of crappy movies, even those who don't like gorillas or country and western music.

X2

2003 superhero sequel

Rating: 15/20 (Emma: 20/20; Abbey: 16/20)

Plot: The X-Men and X-Women have to find a mysterious mutant monkey man who attempted to assassinate the president, and the bald guys' mutant friends have to team up with the Lord of the Rings wizard and his mutant friends in order to stop the government from killing all the mutants. It's thrilling stuff!

X2? Really? That's the title you're going with?

A question: I don't like those outfits on that poster up there. Why isn't Wolverine wearing yellow and blue like in the comic books I've seen? What am I missing there? I do like Rebecca Romijn's costume though. How hot would it be to date lizard girl, by the way? That scene where she's attempting to seduce Hugh Jackman in a tent forced me to make some adjustments in both my pants and my list of superheroines who I would like to have sexual relations with. That's right--I bumped lizard girl ahead of Wonder Woman. More perversity: Can a guy be horny enough to score with Rogue?

I doubt this movie is really a 15/20, but it's at least 2 points better than the first one. The effects are improved. The vanishing monkey man effect in the White House was very cool, and the vocal music worked so well with that action choreography. I think monkey man is my favorite X-person although I wouldn't be interested in a sexual encounter with him. My least favorite X-person is Cyclops, but I think that's because his need to wear sunglasses indoors makes him look like a complete tool all the time. I think a flaw in the story-telling with these X-Men movies is that all their superpowers and the way they all come together in these scenes just seems a little too convenient. Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Alan Cumming, and Brian Cox all seem perfectly cast, but again, I'm not a guy who is familiar with the source material for these things. There are a few missteps in this movie--a fight between Wolverine and Girl Wolverine, the weird plastic prison-escape (never understood that whole thing, by the way) with metal balls that managed to simultaneously look cool and be really goofy--but this is better written and has a better look than its predecessor. I'd have high hopes for the third installment, but I've heard bad things.

Shane Reviews the Greatest Movies Ever Made: 2001: A Space Odyssey

1968 nerd space mind pornography

Rating: 20/20 (Buster: dnf)

Plot: Monkeys discover a monolith and beat each other senseless with bones. Millenniums later, mankind finds itself a lunar monolith, and a crew of five--two awake and three in hypersleep--ventures to a distant planet to find the source of a mysterious humming. H.A.L. goes apeshit.

I remember watching this the first time--post Star Wars--and thinking, "What the fuck is with the monkeys?" I think the forty-five minutes of monkeys at the beginning of this kept me from believing this movie is as great as it is. Watching it for a third time as a more seasoned cinephile, I appreciate the monkeys (or ape men or whatever they are) a lot more. In fact, there's not a single shot in that takes place on earth that isn't suitable for framing. And you have to give credit to whoever trained those monkeys because they are great.

Flash forward to space, a bone transforming into a spacecraft of some kind. And it's all so beautiful. I can imagine more-scholarly hippies and nubile astronomers furiously masturbating from the very first shots in space until the mind-melting climax with the color assault and bewildering space fetus, just blasting off and Milky-Waying sticky theater floors like geeky Paul Reubenses. In space, no-one can hear you ejaculate. At least that's what I've heard. Just check out that moon. It looks more moon than the footage of the moon landing. It's so clear and so beautiful and textured that I had an overwhelming desire to move closer to my television set. These are effects that are so good that I don't even think about how they are made--I just assume that the actors and crew are actually in space.

At 25:30, you get the first spoken word, but none of the words in this thing really matter because this film's all about the images. And sound. Kubric uses classical music--Also sprach Zarathustra, Blue Danube, the creepy Gyorgy Ligeti stuff, et. al.--better than anybody. I love the space exploration as ballet, and that combination of the Strauss with that endlessly spinning space station transforms science and technology into something a little closer to art. It reminds me of how Star Wars was originally supposed to have a classical score. Speaking of Star Wars--A New Hope was less than 10 years away when this came out, but does anybody else think the effects for this are even better than the ones in that movie? I might. Anyway, back to that music. The way the movements of the human characters and space things match the music is so beautiful, but when the music is a little more modern and experimental and almost clashes with what's happening on the screen, that's just as beautiful--beautiful in a chilling way. Of course, Kubrick knows when not to use music as well, and the loneliness of some of the scenes without music, especially the ones where Dave's buddy is propelling through nothing on his way into nothing, is almost impossible for a person watching the movie not to feel. Kudos to Kubrick for creating a palpable alienation, loneliness, claustrophobia, and paranoia through his imagery and sound.

The audience also gets to appreciate the minutia of space travel with scenes of the two astronauts sitting around, running around, and sitting around more. The shots of the astronaut exercising is just so cool. Who thinks of including something like that in a science fiction movie? There's an immediate disorientation created, and it's those little details that do help the viewer empathize with the characters and make what could be a really cold experience be a little more profound and emotionally stirring. People tell me that this movie is boring. They're the same people who probably think baseball is boring because there's all this space (pun intended) available for pondering. You really appreciate and welcome the minutia. It might seem boring because of the lack of dialogue. As I mentioned, there's no dialogue until the 25:30 mark, and we learn soon in that conversation that Howard Johnsons exist in space. But almost none of the human dialogue actually matters, and as a fan of silent movies, I love that. H.A.L.'s voice, provided by Douglas Rain, is perfect, and it's that little red light that gets the most emotional dialogue, stuff that even tops the human characters' interaction with their daughter or parents.

I'm not going to pretend what it all means, especially the bewildering last twenty minutes or so--another silent twenty minutes or so to bookend the stuff with the ape men. The anachronistically designed room, the hovering fetus, the flashing lights that would have given me a seizure had I moved closer to the television to see the moon like I almost did. Monkeys, three monolith sightings, what may or may not be aliens, luminescent space fetuses, lots and lots of space funk. It's a staggering work, one that is as mysterious as every other science fiction movie probably should be. It's one of those museum movies, an artsy-fartsy heavy-handed and bulbous movie that is long and slow enough to be boring but manages to be completely watchable and absolutely stunning.

Stanley Kubrick--that guy was pretty good.

New prank idea that I got from this movie: Set up a monolith at the foot of friend's bed while he is sleeping. Wait for him to wake up. When he touches it, hit him over the head with a bone. Laugh hysterically.

The Wizard of Oz

1939 fantasy

Rating: 20/20 (Dallas: 1/20; Rodrigo: 1/20; Treslynn: 10/20; Osni: 19/20; Dutch: 1/20; Lance: 17/20; Breanna: 19/20; Ig'Enid: 20/20; Jonathon: 3/20; Kimberly: 9/20; Reinn: 1/20; Mary: 15/20; Jaidah: 12/20; Kuenton: 8/20; Justin: 2/20; Cierra: 20/20; Matthew: 20/20; Donnyha: 17/20; Daniel: 3/20; Sarah: 14/20; Tyler: 1/20)

Plot: The first movie ever made about the effects of bath salts! Dorothy, as a way of revolting against her elderly guardians who give away her dog, becomes a drug addict, shoe thief, and murderer. She also takes some apples that don't belong to her. She decides to run away from home in the most illogical way imaginable--via cyclone--and meets more little people than I'll ever meet in my entire life. She befriends a stupid scarecrow, an apathetic robot, and a chickenshit lion (Oz trivia: Originally, the Cowardly Lion was called the Chickenshit Lion.) and searches for the titular wizard so that she can get out of a coma.

Monkeys and Munchkins and talking trees--oh my! First off, yes I do have a student named Donnyha. We watched this as school to reward our students for a nine weeks of embarrassing mediocrity. One teacher suggested we watch Beastly, but I threatened to quit on the spot and this one was settled on. 8th graders were not happy that it was a) partially in black and white, b) filled with songs, or c) kind of "gay," but I was entertained as I hadn't seen the movie in a while, so who cares about them? They're all a bunch of punks anyway. I did love one conversation I had with a student:

Girl: What movie are we watching?
Me: The Wizard of Oz.
Girl: (Pause) The Wiz?
Me: No, not The Wiz. The Wizard of Oz.
Girl: Oh. I've not seen that. I've only seen The Wiz.
Me: Right. That makes perfect sense.

My students poked fun at the special effects, but check out that tornado! I think that's an astounding effect for the late-30s. It looks realistic enough and is such a menacing presence as it gets closer and closer. That tornado, something I saw every single year as a kid since this was on yearly, is one of the reasons I first started loving movies. So yes, this looks dopey in some places, but the painted backdrops, the fact that this is obviously made on a stage, and the dated effects give this a feel that Tim Burton has been trying to duplicate for years while knowing that he never will. That tornado has passed, Mr. Burton. And that color! When Dorothy opens the door, that color just splashes at you. Wonderful!

This also has to be one of the most arousing moments of all time, and I'm really glad that my lower half was hidden behind a desk in a semi-darkened room during this. It starts with Auntie Em. Yeah, she's bitchy, but she's also undeniably hot. And then there's Margaret Hamilton in those dual roles. That voice just does it for me. Don't even get me started on the Munchkins because things might get inappropriate. The good witch singing "Come out, come out" scene where the Munchkins "come out" might be the most arousing moments in cinematic history.

I remember watching this as a kid and thinking that all little people must sound like the Munchkins and always wanting to meet one. That impressive array of costumes and facial hair. And the Lollipop Guild. If I ever formed a street gang, I'd call ourselves the Lollipop Guild, and we would roll pretty hard. Billy Curtis is also in there somewhere.

The performances are so good in this. I've already mentioned Margaret Hamilton. If she's not the perfect witch, I don't know who it would be. That nose and that voice would be enough to get her in the Witch Hall of Fame if that existed, but her posture is also so perfect. My favorite Margaret Hamilton moment is when her image replaces Auntie Em's in a crystal ball and she starts mocking Dorothy--"Auntie Em, come back!" Oh, and that laugh! Frank Morgan is also great in his multiple roles, and he gets a lot of the best lines--his terrific alliteration, calling the scarecrow a "Doctor of Thinkology," the famous "Ignore the man behind the curtain" and the "Oh, you liquidated her" which should be just as famous. Ray Bolger's physical, elastic shenanigans as Scarecrow are fun to watch even for the 47th time. When you see him early on as "Hunk" (Hunk?), he seems like the worst actor of all time, probably because of the way he says "Finga," but then you find out it was Scarecrow foreshadowing and makes perfect sense. The foreshadowing in this is really neat, one of the reasons this is so much fun to watch again and again. I always thought Bert Lahr was one of the Stooges. Jack Haley is the weakest link, but he's still good.playing the more-than-likely gay Tin Man. Of course, there's Judy Garland as flat-chested Dorothy. Shirley Temple might have ruined this movie. What I like most about Garland's performance is that she never overdoes anything. She's the main character of the movie, but you never notice her all that much, and for whatever reason, that's the way it should be here.

The Munchkin hanging himself in the background of one shot (ok, so it's one of those weird birds), the irritable trees who really have a legitimate argument, the "Clever as a gizzard" line, all those flying monkeys that I'm still convinced are mostly real, the Cowardly Lion's "Pullin' an ax on me, eh?" followed by the "Whoo-uh, whoo-uh" growl which might be the worst growl of all time, that giant menacing green hall that leads to the Wizard, the first glimpse of the Wizard's disembodied head with all that fire and all that noise, the Scarecrow holding a gun in one scene (I never noticed that until I watched the movie this time--what the heck is the Scarecrow doing with a firearm?), the wack blinky bird effects, the army of Alan Thickes with their "Ooh-ee-oh" song that has always been my favorite song from this movie filled with all kinds of great songs (although that one Alan Thicke's voice when he says "She killed her" proves that they shouldn't have talked at all), Toto's impression of Lassie (did you know, by the way, that Toto made 125 bucks per week while the Munchkins earned less than half that?), the witch using the inefficient Hourglass Method of Murder which she must have gotten from the Batman Villain School of Villainy, the beauty of the unleashing of the monkeys scene and the dark scenery detail when the characters are atop the witch's castle, Morgan's uttering "Bless my buttons" and the Lion's expression right after. There's just so much here to love again and again which is probably why this should start being shown annually on network television again.

My only two gripes--

1) I've never liked the second solo the Cowardly Lion gets while they're waiting for the wizard, the "King of the Forest" number where it seems like Lahr had an "R-trilling" clause in his contract or something. It might include the great line "The chipmunks genuflect to me," but the song is about fifteen minutes long and just passes time.

2) The poppy field scene also has always seemed extraneous, just a silly distraction.

Other than that, this is perfect. And with the hefty little person bonus, it's easily a 20/20 for me.

Just spellchecked and am pleased that "Munchkin" is a word while "Donnyha" is not.

Oprah Movie Club Pick for September: Showgirls

1995 stripper movie

Rating: 4/20

Plot: Nomi, a long-legged gal with a troubled past, hitches a ride to Las Vegas in order to become a showgirl. She makes some friends and pushes her way to the top, similarly to those ballerinas in that Black Swan movie.

I was a Saved by the Bell fan just like everybody else. Wait a second. Was? I was, am, and will always be a Saved by the Bell fan, or a Bell Head as we call ourselves. And like all the other teenage male Bell Heads, I wanted to everybody on the show naked, probably in this order: Jesse, Kelly, Mr. Belding, Lisa, Screech, everybody else. So this was a dream come true, an answer to our perverted prayers. You get to see every inch of Jesse in this movie. But you know what? It's too much. I almost can't believe I'm saying this, but this movie has almost too much nudity. After a while, she'd start to strip and I'd sigh and say, "Great. Elizabeth Berkley is stripping again." It probably doesn't help that she appears to have been made out of plastic in this movie. And either she's a terrible actor or this was just the wrong part for her or, most likely, a combination of those. I'm really not even sure if she can dance. She certainly moves around fast, especially during the scene where she's dancing with the black guy in the club and looks like she's having an epileptic fit. She spends as much of this movie angry as she does naked (sometimes she's naked and angry), and she really doesn't play angry very well, probably because she's just so polished. And I really never fully understand her motivation or why she's so angry and why she loses her temper so quickly and easily. I was probably distracted by all the nipples though. I'm just never able to buy "tough girl" with her. However, all the bad with her character and Berkley's performance is erased when you see her eat a hamburger at around the 45 minute mark. It's magical. "Thanks for the hamburger!" Right at the hour and thirty-four minute mark, there's some hamburger parallelism, and you can try your hardest to unravel the symbolic layers of that pair of hamburgers but you'll eventually give up and concentrate on where Henrietta Bazoom's boob-poppin'-out-of-dress-wardrobe-malfunction-complete-with-honking-sound-effect trick would fall in a list of Best Movie Moments Ever.

This movie isn't just bad; it's classically bad. At times, it nearly seems intentional, the kind of bad that can't happen accidentally. There's the guy in the truck who bookends Nomi's story, a character whose driving is almost as bad as his acting. I love how he says, "It was a bad idea!" Early in the movie, there's one of those big movie moments when Jesse runs across a street and nearly gets hit by several cars. It was right after some puking, puking that I think must have been inspired by the movie's score. Those kinds of moments usually happen at the ends of the movies. This one was at the five minute and forty second mark. Oh, and then again at six minutes and ten seconds. There's naked volcano dancing, a show that lasts about two minutes, after which the crowd--probably disappointed that they spent so much money to see a two-minute naked volcano dance--asked for an encore. There's a scene with a ring pop. There's the "I wanna see your ass" guy. There's a character who actually says, "You want a knuckle sandwich?" There's the red-headed Patrick Bristow who played the Wig Master in a Seinfeld episode who at first I thought was named Gay in this but who turned out to be Marty instead. His "THRUST IT! THRUST IT! THRUST IT! THRUST IT!" was award-worthy. There are monkeys, and then more monkeys, and then a sweet catfight in the vicinity of the monkeys. There's a doggy chow conversation and a tender moment involving cheese. Oh, and some great child acting."Can we see the  monkeys?" "Mommy, she said the f-word!" And, of course, a whole lot of nudity. And Kyle MacLachlan.

The best thing about it, for me at least, is that it seems to have been written by somebody not quite as talented as the folks who penned all those Saved by the Bell episodes. These lines are golden:

--"If it happens again, to anybody, you're going to jump to your conclusion. Without your golden parachute."
--"It must be weird not having anybody cum on you."
--Almost everything Henrietta Bazoom says. Her character might have broken a record for saying the word "twat" in one movie, by the way.
--Almost every conversation Jesse and her friend have but especially the one they have about chips and fingernails.
--"She wants to smile her snatch. She probably cut [the g-string] herself." There's no way I wrote that down right. Or did I?
--"Look at these tits. What are they--watermelons? This is a stage, not a patch."
--I want my nipples to press but I don't want them to look like they're levitatin'."

I'm sorry that this isn't more coherent, but the movie isn't all that coherent either. It is sleazy though. It's the type of movie you wouldn't want to eat off of. It's a ball of sleaze covered in three more layers of sleaze. But if nothing else, it does teach you an important lesson--you gotta gamble if you're gonna win. Not that it worked well for Elizabeth Berkley's career.

The Pirates! Band of Misfits

2012 animated pirate movie

Rating: 16/20 (Emma: 17/20; Abbey: 19/20; Jen: fell asleep)

Plot: Pirate Captain (that's his name) desperately wants to win the coveted Pirate of the Year award, but he's terrible at plundering and pillaging. All he's really got is a strangely immobile beard. He befriends a lonely scientist named Charles Darwin (yes, same one) and lucks into a chance to win a science prize because of his pet bird.

Delightfully goofy and manic with enough little details that I want to see it again, this feature from the Wallace and Gromit and Chicken Run people (well, Peter Lord--not sure where the other guy's run off to) isn't afraid to get a little politically incorrect or throw an obscure reference at you. I doubt either of my daughters recognized John Merrick in there, but that made me laugh, and leprosy, in my humble opinion, is always pretty funny. This is stuffed with clever references for adults, and what I like about them is that they aren't necessarily just timely references. And there's a funny monkey. This bursts with creativity--a variety of interesting characters stuff the screen; there's clever movement all over the place, especially in a couple action sequences that can only be created by somebody involved with the Wallace and Gromit stuff; the Darwin-meets-pirates idea is original and very funny; and the visual and verbal humor, some just as juvenile as you'll find in Chicken Run, give this a fast pace. The makers of this aren't shy about putting all of their ideas on the screen, and at times it's almost overwhelming. As with the other features and shorts, the characters are so simple, but their movements are so clever and complicated, and the addition of some CGI sky and water blends wonderfully with the stop-animation stuff. It's a great-looking movie, so good that you might mistake it for all-CGI, and there's just a terrific amount of detail put into each shot. I was sold near the beginning during a scene that managed to combine something called "Ham Night" with the Pogues and moonwalking. This is probably too odd and random to be an instant classic or anything, but I can't think of a recent movie I've seen that I've enjoyed watching more. Of course, I haven't seen that many movies recently, so maybe I enjoyed it just because it was a movie. Cartoon pirates always help though. You know, like in those Johnny Depp Disney movies.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

2011 monkey mayhem

Rating: 10/20

Plot: A scientist experiments with drugs to help Alzheimer's patients and ends up with a monkey who is more intelligent than most Americans. In fact, Caesar probably would have been smart enough to see previews for this movie and decide not to spend the money to see it. After an act of violence forces The Man to separate Caesar from his scientist buddy, he gets angry, gives the same drug to a bunch of damn dirty apes, and breaks out to cause a few explosions.

There's a funny scene in this movie where Franco's character meets his love interest for the first time. Caesar starts making these hand gestures that are very obviously sexual, but Franco's character covers with a "He thinks I should take you to dinner." Other than that lone scene, I can't think of another reason to even watch this movie. It's a big dumb summer blockbuster that's all special effects and no depth. A basic plot outline would sound like something that has a lot of potential, and a prequel to Planet of the Apes to explain how the maniacs blew it all up and why they deserved to have that gun nut damn them all to hell in the first movie isn't a terrible idea. And this is much better than that Tim Burton travesty that resulted in me taking a trip to the zoo just so I could get in a shouting match with an ape. But no, this is just embarrassing. You get a really big start with a buttload of fake-looking monkeys. The CGI monkeys in this look so fake, as a matter of fake, that after watching this, I wasn't even sure if I'd ever seen a real monkey. And there are times when I can see that what the special effects gurus behind this did is really pretty remarkable. The actors' rapport with the fake looking animals, all those monkeys on the screen moving around at the same time, and even Andy Serkis's skills in giving Caesar so much personality all make you think, "Yeah, I'm sure a lot of money went into this and it's really a remarkable achievement." But those monkeys just don't look real at all, and that took me completely out of the movie. And Serkis? I hope he isn't reading this because I don't want to hurt his feelings, but I think what he does is really pretty overrated. Caesar overacts, and it gets worse the older he gets. And the more scenes we get of Caesar (or any of the monkeys for that matter) moving around, the more ridiculously cartoonish they look. The only thing even coming close to that level of ridiculousness would be John Lithgow's distracting performance as Franco's father. I'm just not sure Alzheimer's is supposed to be this funny, but I laughed at Lithgow's delivery of this "Look at him go!" line and then again at these expressions he was making as he was wrecking his neighbor's car. No, I didn't really want to laugh at a character with Alzheimer's. It just didn't seem right. Draco Malfoy (ok, Tom Felton) didn't seem right either. He almost blasphemy screams "It's a madhouse! It's a madhouse!" at one point and then, even tackier, gets a "damn dirty ape" line. Felton better be careful or he's going to be typecast as "young punk bully guy" and miss out on his chance to eventually be a James Bond. All this builds to a silly looking action scene on a bridge that is about as thrilling and realistic as the scenes in that last big action movie you saw. It's violence that takes no chances, likely to avoid an R rating, I imagine. And there's just no real tension or any reason to care about what's going on with either the underdeveloped monkey characters except for maybe Caesar or the human characters who don't even have names. But you'll dig it if you like fake-looking monkeys jumping around and destroying helicopters. I had hope going into this movie, but this was nothing but disappointment. And now I have to make another trip to the zoo to take it out on some animals who had nothing to do with the production of this.

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.

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.

30 Minutes or Less

2011 comedy

Rating: 12/20

Plot: A pair of criminals plan the perfect crime but don't have enough money to execute it. So they plan another perfect crime--kidnap a pizza delivery person, strap a bomb to him, and force him to rob a bank. Poor Jesse Eisenberg.

This is the exoskeleton of something that Don Knotts and Tim Conway would have been in with raunchiness and loudness stuck to it. The problem might be that Jesse Eisenberg is no Don Knotts. Nobody is. See, part of me--especially after his really good work in The Social Network and the humorous The Living Wake which might just be funny despite him--wants to push our differences aside, forget that his sister made those Pepsi commercials which did worse things to my stomach than drinking carbonated beverages could ever do, forgive him for a brow which he can't even help, and try to like the guy. But after liking him in a couple movies, this happens. He's not really the problem with this at all though. Neither is Aziz Ansari who I also want to like, probably just because he's on Parks and Recreation. Their chemistry here as BFF's seems a little forced. Then again, I'm pretty sure it would be hard for anybody to stand next to Jesse Eisenberg in a movie and make whatever relationship seem natural. I do like how Ansari is referred to as a "mini-genie" here. Oh, and Michael Pena plays a character named Chang, and he just grabs this character by the nuts and runs with it. This ends up just being another one of those modern comedies, one that takes a clever enough idea and fails to do enough with it. There are some funny individual lines ("You had a lunchables for dinner.") and I thought it was funny how Nick Swardson's character made monkey noises during the kidnapping scene. And I really liked this bit of dialogue:

Swardson's dumb character: Where the hell did all these leaves come from?
Danny McBride's dumb character: Where do you think? Fucking trees.
Swardson's dumb character: That's what she said.

But too often, the humor in this seems like it was collected by spinning The Hangover or Superbad around really fast and waiting for some stuff to fly off so that it could be inserted in this script. I don't think I'll remember much about this movie in a few months, and I doubt I start quoting it this weekend at my 20 year reunion.

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark Redux

1981 adventure

Rating: 20/20 (Jen: 16/20; Dylan: 20/20; Emma: 16.5/20; Abbey: 20/20)

Plot: The titular archeologist/professor globetrots in search for Noah's boat. He runs into some Nazis, a group of people who historically weren't very nice.

I've already written poorly about this movie twice, but Abbey picked it for family movie night. It's not one that I'll complain about having to watch again. That's part of the beauty of the thing. It's more than likely the film that I've seen the most times with the possible exception of Toy Story. Anyway, I'm dividing my thoughts into three categories for this--questions, noticings, and things-I-freaking-love.

Questions:

How can this be rated PG? It's got face melting/exploding. Face exploding, by the way, would be a horrible way to go, wouldn't it?

What's the body count? Next time I watch this, I'm counting.

Where the hell did Belloq get that goofy outfit and that staff? The only thing I can think of is that there must be a Ark-Opening Clothes "R" Us on that creepy island.

Speaking of that creepy island, how's Indy ride on the outside of a submarine for the distance shown on the map? Dylan explained that submarines are faster when they surface, so they probably wouldn't have gone under. If not, then why would they even use a submarine in that situation?

Is that Ralph Macchio preparing dates?

Why don't the Germans wonder why there are people off digging in a different place from everybody else? Belloq eventually notices them, but you'd think somebody would walk up to them and ask, "What the heck are you digging here for?"

How do you get a monkey to Heil Hitler salute? Or are monkeys just naturally hateful creatures? I wouldn't put it past them.

How many extras were in this movie? The big dig, the streets of Cairo. There are so many people in this!

How can Indy fans have so much of a problem with aliens and refrigerators in the new movie but not have a problem with melting faces and burning crates in this one? And speaking of the swastika burning scene, what's up with that rat? He looks like he's about to boogie.

Was Shooby LaBoof conceived on a submarine? I'm going to have to check the date for that fourth movie! If he was, it explains a lot.

Noticings:

All these movies start with monoliths, don't they? Or maybe just a plain rock.

There's a lot of man screaming in this movie. 1) The guy with the stocking cap screams at the statue as they're trudging through the forest. 2) Alfred Molina screams like a woman at a skeleton. I also freaking love how that skeleton turns his head to glance at Molina. 3) Toht (a role turned down by Klaus Kinski if you believe a word that guy says) gives his first girly scream when he grabs the hot medallion. Hot Medallion would be a great band name, by the way. 4) Random guy with turban screams when the Well of Souls is opened. Then there's Sallah's "Eeahahahhaheh" which, at the very least, isn't all that feminine. 5) The cobwebby skeletons in the Well of Souls scream. That makes even less sense than all of those different kinds of snakes living in there. 6) Toht gives the best scene of the movie during once the spirits from the ark start wreaking havoc until 7) the guy who screams after him manages to top it!

Scream bonus: The Wilhelm Scream is used when a dude spills from the back of the truck in the big chase scene.

The natives with their spears and blowguns are as accurate as the stormtroopers in the Star Wars movies. And a bonus question. There were a lot of spears being thrown in that chase scene. Once you're an extra in that scene who has thrown his spear--you know, shot your wad--do you keep chasing? You were probably handed another spear, right?

The guy trying to outdrink Marion looks like George Wendt, Norm from Cheers. I don't think that's a coincidence. All guys who look like that are big drinkers.

Indy almost consumes that "bad date" several times. It's a neat little detail.

The map room has an obelisk. I'm too lazy to see if that is architecturally correct. I had Indiana Jones actions figures and a map room, by the way. That's a really cool scene in the movie with the beam of light and Indy brushing away sand, but it wasn't all that fun to reenact in your bedroom. Also, there's one building in the map room that looked like it had been tagged. Was a street gang down there at one point or did the Nazis mark it?

Things I Freaking Love about This Movie:

That first shot of Indy--absolutely iconic. Framed by waterfall and mist, quick edited shots of bullwhip frenzy, Jones stepping out from the shade. So awesome. To think that Indy was almost Tom Selleck makes me slightly ill.

Indy's shadow on the wall of Marion's bar. Also so awesome. And I love their dynamics in that scene with dialogue perfection. You find out just enough about their past without it seeming like it was written in a script just so the audience could catch up.

Sallah: "Why does the floor move?" At this point, by the way, Jennifer informed me that she had never seen this movie all the way through. What the hell?

Toph! Love his beady little eyes. His little giggle--once when he walks past Belloq after they seal Indy and Marion in the Well of Souls and later after the ark is opened. And his hanger is the most bad ass hanger in movie history. And yes, I'm including the hangers in Birdemic: Shock and Terror. And that bald head of Toph's? It's nefarious.

I love how Indy fights so dirty during the brawl with that big bald Nazi guy--dirt in the eyes, using a chunk of wood as a weapon, the old point-at-your-opponent's-shoe-to-divert-his-attention trick.

How Belloq says "idiot."

Head explosion!

"It's not the years. It's the mileage."

The way Indy saves Molina by grabbing his belt. Poor Molina, by the way. This was his first movie, I think, and he starts his career by having tarantulas all over him, screaming like a girl, and getting killed by a booby trap that he had already seen which makes him one of the dumbest characters ever.

That gunfight in Marion's place? The best ever, the type that can make me type in hyperbole! But that motley crew of thuggery, the "Whisky?" from Indy, a guy punching with an arm that is on fire? All sans music, just the crackling fire, the rat-a-tat gunfire, breaking bottles. What a terrific scene.

Another action sequence--the Cairo street brawling. It's lively and exciting in the midst of an adventure story, but there's such a personality with the fight scenes. There's humor mixed in with the mayhem, all while Harrison Ford's got the runs.

And that guy who Marion threatens with a pan only to watch him pull out a knife? The dude's teeth are even scarier than his blade!

I love the mystical guy with the high-pitched voice they visit. You know he's a mystic because he's wearing bright blue and has his own telescope.

Terry Bradshaw's "Waa-ehh" as he gets run over. And before that, the "Let's see how you like it!" toss out the front window. Indy's so pissed. Before that, there's a shot of a guy on the windshield and Indy and his passenger look at each other and laugh. That guy's expression and the shared laugh of enemies makes me smile just thinking about it.

Indy putting his hat on against a sunset backdrop--just beautiful. That is one evil-looking sky as they find the edges on top the Well of Souls.

Not everybody likes the music in this (I'm eyeing you here, Laurence), but I love it. It's the soundtrack for my childhood outside play. That's the music I heard when I ran around my backyard with a fake gun and an invisible whip, and it's the music I heard when I stepped up the plate in the last inning of a baseball game in college with a chance to drive home the winning runs. In this movie--the familiar music when Indy, fleeing from 15,000 natives while dust from the cave flies off him in that terrific scene, swings from a vine like Shooby LaBoof and dives into the water. Boom!

After the booby-trap-packed cave climaxing with a fiberglass boulder chase, I'm hooked forever. If you're not, you're a child without a heartbeat.

Top men. Endless boxes. Where was that shot? That place has to really exist. What's in all the boxes? Other than dead alien bodies, of course.

What did I miss? What do you love about this movie?

The Lion King

1994 Shakespeare adaptation

Rating: 15/20 (Buster: 20/20)

Plot: Hamlet but with talking animals and a gay meerkat.

Ah, this is what the Disney magicians do best--loads of color, anthropomorphized animals, and disturbing parent death. I've not always liked this movie, more than likely because it came out while I put bicycles together at Toys "R" Us and heard "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?" and "Circle of Life"--the former which I would utter breathlessly in my wife's ear while engaging in sexual intercourse with her from 1994 to around 1997--four times an hour which was torture that no Geoffrey's helper should ever have to endure. Not that the songs are bad here. I like what Elton John does there, and "Hakuna Matata," though more than a little annoying after you've heard it more than 1 1/2 times, is a fun little number. If "Hakuna Matata" would have been in the Toys "R" Us radio rotation, I more than likely would have put myself in the cardboard compactor thing and ended it all.

You really see 2-D animation differently now, even when comparing it to other 2-D animation. The colorful "I Just Can't Wait to be King" sequence is great, but it really kind of looks like ass when compared to the stuff in The Princess and the Frog. Disney was always so good with animals, and I like their movements in this and the subtle tricks the animators use to give them personalities. The "camera movements" seem stiff and computery at times.

I'm only half-kidding about the Hamlet comparisons. Clearly, Scar isn't having sex with Darth Vader's wife, Nala doesn't drown herself, and Simba doesn't die at the end. That would probably be too much for a Disney movie. Of course, Scar's the type of villain who also might be too much for a kiddie flick. He's a very adult villain, the sarcasm and venom wonderfully voiced by Jeremy Irons. His song's not very good though. The token gay characters, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, are funny, but they and the "Hakuna Matata" song, so fun and colorful and playful almost seem inappropriate after the darkness of the previous scene. And I've always wondered about how Simba ages during that scene. Were they really singing for that long? Yoda monkey's a fun little character. I got my picture taken with him at Disney World, and I had an unfortunate and obvious erection in the shot. It was the same situation with Mary Poppins at Epcot. My favorite character is Ed the hyena. That mo-fo needs his own prequel, maybe something called The Lion King 1/2. The bird's unnecessary, and his "Morning Report" song is about the worst thing I've ever seen in my entire life. That includes Holocaust movies. I think it was added for a "Special Edition" thing, left out of the original for very good reasons. Simba's dad is kind of a dull character, and I think the feminist would have problems with how little the female characters do in this. I wouldn't want James Earl Jones as a father though! If he's not cutting off his kids' hands, he's letting monkey's hold his newborn children on rocky precipices! I wouldn't be surprised to find out that that inspired new fathers to hold their babies up like that on the roofs of hospitals similar to how people who get on boats have to imitate that whole "King of the World" thing from Titanic. Not a fan of the big fight at the end of this, a scene bathed in far too much red and using too many slow-motion swiping shots.

The Fall

2006 fantasy thing

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A paralyzed stuntman in a 1920's Los Angeles hospital meets a girl with a broken arm and begins telling her a story about five vengeful heroes and a monkey. She enjoys his disjointed tale of a search for the evil Lord Odious, but the storyteller might have ulterior motives.

I had to take a point away from this because the director, Singh, chose to go by a single name, Tarsem, for this production. And then there's the issue of this poster which is one of the ugliest things I've ever seen. I've seen The People's Tongue album covers that are easier on the eye than that. But then there was a really nice tribute to silent film stuntmen with Beethoven's 7th Symphony, 2nd Movement that teared me up a bit. Of course, it made me wonder if that particular piece of music, which I plan on dying to some day, is overused these days. It's no "Beyond the Sea" yet, but it's getting there. This is a movie with so much beauty in its individual parts that it's almost overwhelmingly sloppy. The sheer amount of locations the filmmakers would have had to travel to is impressive enough. Tarsem's visuals are often stunning, and the swimming elephants, dazzling colors, butterflies that morph into islands, and human meat chandeliers can remind a person why they watch movies in the first place. Unlike Alexandria, played by Catinca Untaru in a child performance that ranged from touching and with surprising depth to sort of annoying, I didn't care much for the story the guy was telling or its flat characters. But I was enamored with the visuals, these characters traveling to places that movies can usually only take us through the magic of CGI. I'm just going to assume computers weren't involved because it makes me like the movie more. Just as this movie's story and its story-within-a-story are all over the place, this is thematically all over the place as well, touching on dark thematic issues like depression, child labor, immigration, and suicide and happier ones like the powers of imagination. And movies. This doesn't always work and feels a little too long, but when it connects, it's almost magical. Buster makes a few appearances in that stuntman montage, by the way.

A*P*E

1976 Korean King Kong kookiness

Rating: 2/20

Plot: There's a guy in a poorly-constructed ape costume on the loose. He's beating up sharks, destroying models that are as poorly made as the ape costume, and most terrifying of all, fluctuating in size. The army's called in to help. Meanwhile, the monster goes ape for Kurt Cameron's mother. And God ain't gonna stand for that!

Look at that poster! I want that son of a bitch hanging in my living room.

It's 1976. Korea finds out that America is going to release a Kong Kong remake and decides to beat them to the punch with this thing, a half-serious-attempt/half-spoof that ends up a fantastically entertaining affair for mostly wrong reasons. The action's fierce from the get-go in this one as we start in medias res because as most Kong aficionados would tell you, all that stuff on Skull Island is pretty dull. No, here we start on the boat with some characters talking about how they hope the gas will keep the monster out. Cue a big giant monkey hand (great effects, as you could probably guess) and an "Oh shit!" leading into some badly-edited chaos ending in the boat blowing up in a sparkly explosion. And you'd probably guess that an explosion would end the big opening action sequence, but you'd be wrong. The magic is only beginning as we have a fight scene between the guy in the ape costume and a rubber shark (a Jaws reference maybe?) in which the monkey dunks and spanks his foe repeatedly. You could almost say that the movie jumps the shark right here, but you'd have to quickly correct yourself and say that it actually spanks the shark instead. Great fight scene though, almost masturbatory.

The monkey on land is even goofier than the monkey fighting a rubbery shark in the water. Now I'll admit that I've not actually studied gorillas, but I'm fairly positive the guy in this suit hasn't either. I'm not sure apes act like this, and if a bunch of monkeys ever got their hands on this movie and watched it together, they'd get ahold of a bunch of typewriters and a room so that they could eventually type out a letter of complaint to the makers of this movie. The monster in this has terrible posture and kind of humps around awkwardly. Later, during a scene which has to be included just as filler, we get to see the ape throw a snake for no reason (it's not nearly as exciting as the poster makes it look up there) and actually hit the camera. Lesser filmmakers would probably have shot that scene over again, but not the makers of A*P*E.

Speaking of that title, what's with the asterisks? A M*A*S*H thing?

But back to that monkey because believe it or not, there's a scene in this that actually manages to top that ape-on-shark action at the beginning. You didn't think a movie as classy as A*P*E would shoot its proverbial wad too early, did you? This scene involves some parasailors. One points and screams. Then, there's a shot of a cow. Then, there's a shot of the ape lumbering over a fake cow. It's pure bliss, but where I shot my wad (non-proverbially) was when the ape started clapping and dancing. But the ultimate monkey shot (that's a pun though it has nothing to do with anybody's wad) might be one of a peeping Kong with mouth agape that made me laugh for a solid thirty-five minutes because I have time in my life for thirty-five minute fits of laughter.

Other special-ed effects: The makers of this really seem fond of their fake-rocks-on-strings trick, and there's a scene where the monkey vomits blood. It's beautifully realistic.

Just as the makers of this have seemingly never seen an ape, they also have likely never seen humans or heard them communicate. The Korean characters are great as they speak English without dubbing. An American character named Colonel Davis (played stoically by Alex Nicol) seems to be impersonating The Duke with all his lines. Imagine John Wayne saying "Now what kind of bullshit you trying to hand me?" and you've got Colonel Davis. My favorite Colonel Davis tough guy moment is when he yells, "Screw the logistics!" in a way that would make Chuck Norris cower in fear. Oh, no wait. I forgot that he says, "Let's see him dance for his organ grinder now!" That's badass! The curly-headed hero gets plenty of chances to be manly, too. He's the type of guy who jumps on the sides of Jeeps and says, "I'll just hang on here," after all.

But the most awkward or unnatural human moment in this? There's a scene with fleeing Koreans, and you just have to see this one guy running down the stairs. It just has to be the guy who plays the ape without his suit.

Oh, there's also a scene of endless battle preparation, a montage that actually features one soldier who waves at the camera.

You also have to wonder what kinds of movies the makers of this have seen. At one point, the ape disrupts the production of a kung-fu movie that apparently features circus performers. And what kind of movie is Joanna Kerns' character making in this? They show the filming of two scenes of this movie-within-a-movie, both featuring attempted rapes. The rapist, by the way, might get the line of the movie: "Gentle? This is a God-damned rape scene and you want me to be gentle?"

This makes four Korean monster movies I've seen in the last month, and although this is definitely the worst of them, it's also the only one I would wholeheartedly recommend to anybody.

Being John Malkovich

1999 head trip about somebody's head

Rating: 18/20

Plot: A loser puppeteer gets a real job and discovers a portal leading to the inside of actor John Malkovich's head. He tells the cute woman he's crushing on at work about it, and she begins dreaming of ways to exploit it and turn a profit. The puppeteer's life begins to spiral out of control.

Here's a John Cusack movie that I like. I remember watching this when it came out and just digging how fresh it all seemed. It made me laugh, it made me think, and it made me fall in love with Catherine Keener. She's just so playful and cute here, and yes, I'm typing that fully aware that my wife is going to be reading it. Her response of "We'll see" to the question "What happens when a man goes through his own portal?" might be my favorite moment in any movie ever. I already loved John Malkovich although I can't say I was exactly in love with him, and this performance is brave and inspired. It's hard enough to play yourself accurately but when you're playing this satirical inflated version of yourself? Now that I think about it, my favorite moment in any movie ever might actually be when some random driver-by yells, "Hey, Malkovich, think fast!" before hitting him in the head with something. But yeah, Malkovich is brave here. Doing an interpretive dance in a towel, poking fun at his celebrity, possibly convincing audiences of this movie that he's good friends with Charlie Sheen. Actually, that's one of my favorite tidbits from this--learning that Charlie Sheen gets Malkovich's leftovers. Who knew? My favorite moment (and quite possibly the best few minutes of any movie in the history of cinema) is the delirious trip Malkovich takes through his own head. I giggled myself to the point of exhaustion, passed out, and woke up a week later facedown in the mud during that scene. Bonus points given for Keener, a monkey, and puppets, but most of these points come from the raw, arguably film-school-quality creativity and the willingness everybody involved had to take this wild concept and run with it.

For all you Andy Dick completists, he is in this one.

Aladdin

1992 Disney cartoon

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A lengthy public service announcement in the French symbolist tradition about how teenagers should, instead of engaging in premarital sex, pleasure themselves. Aladdin grows tired of rubbing his lamp and getting his genie all over the place and decides to try to get in Jasmine's pants. After all, she seems willing with those little half shirt things and not even attempting to hide her pussycat. Eventually, Aladdin's "snake" gets loose and havoc is wreaked.

Seriously, Disney was so subconsciously dirty during this period (see Little Mermaid). Look at the symbols: soaring towers, water (female genitalia symbol according to most dream symbolism books), snakes, phallic genies with pubic beards, lamps being rubbed until they ejaculate, magic carpet rides (so that's what the kids are calling it these days?), a monkey transforming into an elephant (a boy's first erection?). Sick stuff, Mickey.

If you want a great animated feature with Aladdin in it, try The Adventures of Prince Achmed. If you want something a lot louder and a lot more colorful, go for Disney's Aladdin. This really is an entertaining Disney feature with a lot of fun visual gags and some really good songs. It rips off Superman's flight through the city with a magic carpet ride only Aladdin doesn't try to guess the color of Jasmine's underpants. (Or just pants as the say in some parts of the world.) Robin Williams' manic voice work is fun the first time you watch this, but subsequent viewings show you that he's just stomping all over the production. Still, it adds a spunk to what otherwise might have been a same-old/same-old version of this story. I liked Jafar as a villain when he was talking to Gilbert Gottfried and messing up Prince Abooboo's name, but when he turns into a genie at the end and starts making a series of puns that would make C3PO groan, it became clear that this script needed some editing. OK, I'm going to ask you to pause so that you can fully appreciate what I did with the C3PO reference there. I want you to let that want sink in a bit. Part of Disney's appeal is that they're able to take stories that are thousands of years old, inject them with some life, and transform them into something new. Despite a lot of annoyances that get in the way of this being really great, they do a good job with that. One thing I do like about this one compared to most Disney princess/prince movies: the romance is between a pair of well-developed characters rather than one developed character and a prop. Cinderella, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty have a princess and a guy who might as well be a life-sized cardboard cut-out of a prince. Beauty and the Beast and this at least make the prince characters real, probably because they're titular. But my question: Is Aladdin really all that likable? Jafar's considered the bad guy because he's evil and all, but Aladdin is the one whose deceit causes all the problems anyway. As I say with a lot of Disney protagonists, kids could learn a lot more life lessons if Aladdin would have been punished in the end.

Zookeeper

2011 talking animal and talking Kevin James movie

Rating: 6/20

Plot: The titular zookeeper is really good at his job, but he's not so good at love. Luckily, the animals he's been so good to at the zoo are willing to help him attract the attention of his dream girl. But will he like the guy he has to become in order to make that happen?

I think movies with Kevin James in them are become exponentially painful. This one's got talking zoo animals, ones slightly less humorous than the ones in Madagascar. Nick Nolte's a gorilla, Cher's a girl lion, Sylvester Stallone's a boy lion, and Judd Apatow--a guy with nothing else to do?--is an elephant. Adam Sandler gives one of the most annoying voice performances you'll ever hear, and Don Rickles is a frog. And I know what you're thinking--man, that's quite the collection of comedic geniuses! So you'd think one of them would stop everything during the recording session and give the director a heads-up. "Hey, this isn't very funny at all. And I should know because I'm Sylvester Stallone and/or Cher!" The increasingly ubiquitous (wait a second--not sure something can be increasingly ubiquitous) Ken Jeong's in this, too. Hollywood seems to be doing it's best to find this guy things to do. Same with Kevin James. Look, it seems like he's a nice guy and all, and I don't mind nice guys doing well for themselves. But when King of Queens ended, I just didn't think he had that "it" that would make it possible for him to carry a movie. So it's no surprise that he can't. Hollywood writers just keep giving this guy different jobs (zookeeper, mall cop, mailman, butcher, baker, candlestick maker), throwing a girl (or two) into the script, and hoping a comedy erupts. There's a lot of fat-guy-running-into-things slapstick if that's your bag, but I couldn't find a single laugh in this. And when the zookeeper gets his girl (no, that's not the end; the end is more predictable than that), things get entirely too preposterous. The animal-talking effects look stupid, and there's the most egregious product placement I've ever seen. At one point, the movie's plot steps aside to make room for a T.G.I. Fridays commercial.

Watched this at school with 7th graders. They laughed a couple times, but didn't seem to like it very much either. I didn't have time to get their ratings.

Quick, readers--can you think of a memorable Kevin James moment?

Rio

2011 animated bird movie

Rating: 12/20 (Abbey: 1/20; Emma 1/20; Sophie: ?/20)

Plot: Jesse Eisenbird, a librarian's pet macaw, wants desperately to get laid, so he travels to the titular city of sin to find himself a feathered whore. He meets a hot little blue number named Jewel and winds up talon-cuffed to her after a kinky sex act gone wrong. Smugglers are after them, and flightless Eisenbird has to learn to adapt to a harsh new existence in the wild while trying to find his librarian friend.

During a mating sequence, the ornithologist naturally plays Lionel Richie's "Say You, Say Me" because "Lionel Richie works every time." Love that. I also liked the colorful and musically vibrant beginning sequence that opened this movie. Rio de Janeiro provides a lively backdrop to the goings-on in this cartoon from the makers of Ice Age. As seen in Ice Age, those animators know how to create moods with setting details. This covers pretty much everything you'd expect a movie taking place in Brazil to cover--soccer, slum life, colorful parades. Unfortunately, I had a difficult time liking this movie for very long despite my love for both birds and color. I enjoyed most of the voice talent, especially Jemaine Clement and (ahem) Jesse Eisenberg, but I had a tough time connecting with the characters. Especially the human ones. I didn't like how the CGI people looked in this movie, and the human characters all looked like they were overacting. There are also a lot of songs in this, extraneous songs that do nothing more than make the movie seem way too long. The movies got some jokes that the kiddies might enjoy, and a lot of action sequences that zip by very quickly (admittedly, ones that are animated really well), but I'm not sure there's much for adults to appreciate in this one. Watch Rango instead.

Urine Couch Sans Couch A.M. Movie Club: Twelve Monkeys

1995 simian treat

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Bruce Willis's head is sent back in time on a dare to see how many monkeys he can fit in his trousers. Or pants. Or whatever. Somehow, an Elvis impersonator and a pixie are involved, and some French guy gets shot at a train station. The pixie's got her hand down the front of Elvis's trousers AND pants (natch) and Brad Pitt can't stop giggling. They retire to something called a cold room. Bring on the dystopian funk!

All I know is that I show up to the hotel job and the urine couch is gone. No warning, no nothing. There are a pair of chairs in its place, but they just don't suffice because Gene likes to cuddle. The chairs just aren't the same, but I can get paid to do nothing while sitting on any piece of furniture and don't care all that much.

La Jetee's probably better although it doesn't have wacky Brad Pitt. Heady sci-fi with maestro Gilliam turning all his funhouse mirrors upside down. Bruce Willis's butt is in there somewhere, Mom, and I'm pretty sure during this stage of his career, that was in his contract. Honestly, I need to see this again again because I had trouble keeping my eyes open in the new chair. I'm having a tough time keeping my eyes open right now, too.

OK, this is now the next night. I believe I fell asleep soon after typing that sentence about not being able to keep my eyes open. It's either that or a criminal from 2030 or whenever traveled back in time and erased my post.

OK, it's the next night again. I think I might have African Sleeping Sickness. It's really getting in the way of me meeting my number one goal: meeting all of my goals.

I think I'm going to have a Terry Gilliam movie marathon some time and watch all of his movies back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back, even the bad ones. I'm also going to make a spreadsheet and keep track of all of the nouns that end up in his script and see what statistical data I can come up with.

I'm really bummed about the couch. Somebody mentioned during the funeral that the guy from corporate did not approve. Good bye, couch. May you rest eternally in a urine-soaked heaven. Maybe some day I'll see you again if people and couches are allowed to interact in heaven.

Eric Clapton needs to write a song about that!