Keyhole

2011 Guy Maddin movie

Rating: 12/20

Plot: Gangster Ulysses Pick and his gang take refuge in Pick's home. The police have the place surrounded. Accompanying Pick are a tied-up and gagged young man and a drowned woman. While his men bicker, Pick and the two companions venture through the house in search of his wife. They talk to some ghosts and see a penis or two.

Even a bad Guy Maddin film is going to have enough originality and cool visuals to make it worth the time. This is a clash of all kinds of ideas, but it never feels very complete or even all that coherent. It's more like thumbing through Maddin's notepad which is fun in spots and frustrating in others. It's definitely a weird movie although Maddin claimed it was his effort to make "pure narrative." The nods to silent cinema are still present, but this is shot more traditionally and has a lot of dialogue. I think the less dialogue in Maddin's movies, the better. Anyway, there's a ton going on--a noirish gangster tale, a ghost story, a psychological investigation, a surreal dream playground, light science fiction, and maybe the retelling of a myth. It's a lot to take in, and most people are going to think it's just a little too pretentious. But it's a silly pretentious, not a stuffy pretentious with Maddin his usual playful self. In this, you get naked old guy genitalia, backwards talking, weird moving lights, characters speaking to each other in different languages, undergarments with phallic doodles, wallpapering, symbolic green bowls, a bicycle-powered electric chair, a crowded tub, secret tunnels with a "Cyclops ahead" warning turning out to be a glory hole, old man stump licking, weird antique toys, wallpaper love, Mexican banditos, Kids in the Hall alum Kevin McDonald attempting to sodomize a ghost, and a narrator who says cool things like "You don't even recognize your own son, Ned--Milk-drinking Ned." Oh, and a guy in a closet who plays Yahtzee. A lot of the dreamlike visuals are really cool, but that can only take you so far and this ends up dragging a little and frustrating a lot. It's not where I'd start with Guy Maddin's work if I were you.

Thor

2011 religious movie

Rating: 8/20

Plot: Odin's titular kid is too cocky and stirs up too much trouble, so he's sent from Asgard to earth where he falls in love with Natalie Portman and saves humanity from some bad guy from Asgard who is up to evil things that I never quite understand because I'm too bored to pay attention.

If I'm going to eventually watch The Avengers, apparently the greatest movie ever made, I have to do my homework and watch these other movies. I've got Hulk and Iron Man covered, so it's just this and Captain America. I'm not exactly a comic book or superhero expert, but when the most interesting character in the whole movie is "Pet Store Clerk" played by some guy named Isaac Kappy, you probably have a sucky superhero movie. Isaac Kappy's had a great start to a very promising career, by the way. No, he doesn't have his picture on imdb.com yet, but he does have three message board posts on his page and only one of them is his. He just hasn't had the right role yet because his work as "Pet Store Clerk" in this is fantastic. He's played Rowdy Prisoner, Stoner Dude, Geek, Buzter Pie (in Klown Kamp Massacre), and Hustler, but I'm willing to bet his best work is still to come. But back to Thor since this is his movie, unfortunately for him. This is the least fun I've had watching a superhero movie with the exception of Spiderman 3, but Spiderman 3 did at least have a great scene where James Franco is enjoying pie. It's all so stiff and lifeless and the scenes on Asgard taste a lot like the inside of a computer. So many grand swooping fake camera movements over shiny castles. Look at the scene where, accompanied by giant omnipresent predictable music, Thor and his peeps ride horses on a iridescent bridge after these big fake doors open. It just made me wish that I was watching a Western with real people riding real horses. Then, they go to a yellow-eyed guy who watches over the bridge. He turns out to be important, and if more people read this blog, some comic book nerd (Kent?) would tell me what his name was and make fun of me for not knowing it. I could stop all that from happening by just looking it up, but my eyes still hurt a little bit from all the Asgard glossiness. I really hated the action scenes in this. It didn't take long for me to be convinced that this whole movie was just part of a conspiracy to sell plastic hammers to children. But the action scenes confused me, especially the one where they loudly fight in the land of the ice people. There's a lot of swooshing and a lot of crumbling things, but it was mostly too dark for me to figure out exactly what was happening. Or maybe it was my television. I'm too lazy to Google "Guy with yellow eyes on the shiny gay bridge in Thor," so it's not hard to believe that I'd be too lazy to adjust the brightness on my television. Things improve slightly once Thor hits earth, and this part of the movie really could have worked as an entry in the whole stranger-in-a-strange-land genre if ("What realm is this?") it just didn't take itself so seriously. I did chortle when Thor smashed a glass in a diner. I might have enjoyed that part of the movie more, but I was confused about how a taser could take a superhero out, probably because I didn't watch this with a comic book nerd (Kent?) who would have explained it all to me. And what's with all the tilted camera angles in this? Was it the cinematographer's ingenious way of showing that Thor's world had become askew? Was it an homage to the comics? The dialogue in this is very awkward, and that might explain why the acting is almost universally bad (Pet Shop Clerks excepted), especially Natalie Portman who is quickly becoming a sort of pet peeve for me. She needs to stop before she loses all credibility. And speaking of credibility, why is Kenneth Branagh directing stuff like this? Did he run out of Shakespeare plays? Did somebody convince him that this was a Shakespeare play? Another question--isn't the whole Thor-as-a-Christ-figure thing a bit odd? Or is the whole father/son story (that's how Netflix categorized this for me, by the way) an archetype? Anyway, back to the movie. Eventually, Thor magically--and by that, I mean stupidly--gets his hammer back and fights a giant metal man in a tornado. And that's not even the big dumb climactic fight scene that all of these superhero movies seem to end with. No, that pits the sort-of good against the ambiguously evil in a special effects laden bunch of hurls and clashes that succeeded in making me wish I had gone to bed instead of watching this. And it was four in the afternoon!

This is fairly verbose, so let me simplify things for you: Watch this with a comic book nerd (Kent?), give your comic book nerd instructions to wake you up in time to see the scene in the pet store, fall asleep before the movie starts, watch Isaac Kappy's genius, and leave to buy an ice cream cone. You can thank me later.

Hercules in New York

1969 action comedy

Rating: 4/20

Plot: The titular demigod is bored with life in Olympus, so his father Zeus lightning-bolts him to New York City to teach him a lesson. While in the Big Apple, he becomes a successful wrestler and competitive weightlifter with the help of a nerdy streetwise guy named Pretzie and gets himself a girlfriend. Meanwhile, Zeus sends Mercury and Nemesis to retrieve him.

This is worth watching for fans of Arnold Strong as this is his first film appearance. Or Arnold Stang fans, I guess, if there are any of them out there. I liked him in The Man with the Golden Arm enough. But back to Schwarzenegger, the real star of this show. With the screen presence this guy has in this movie, I'm really surprised he didn't have more of a career in movies. Seems like he could have had a nice career as an action hero or something even though the acting he does in this is embarrassing. He's worse in Kindergarten Cop actually. Here, he doesn't have to do much acting. He just has to be big and strong, and he does a fine job of doing that. Now, the version I watched has Arnold Strong dubbed, allegedly because he was unintelligible when delivering the wonderful dialogue that was written for him. The voice used is odd since we all know what Schwarzenegger sounds like. I watched some bits and pieces of the non-dubbed version for comparison purposes, and Arnold's heavily-accented voice would have been pretty brutal for the duration of this one. Honestly, I think this is kind of a cute idea for a movie, and writer Aubrey Wisberg got a lot of the mythology right. This, by the way, was her last writing credit. The writing's bad, but it's the inept direction that really makes this one special. The poster brags about this being filmed almost entirely in New York. Well, they really should have located a more isolated location for the Olympus scenes since you can hear traffic in the background while Zeus and Juno are bickering. The pacing of the story's awkward. Even more awkward is the amount of screen time devoted to Arnold Strong just standing around flexing. The most awkward of those is when he spots a movie poster as he's walking down the street with his lady friend and starts griping that the actor doesn't even look like him. Of course, he takes off his shirt and starts flexing in order to prove it to her. But the scene that makes this movie? Arnold Schwarzenegger fighting a guy in a bear suit! I had to rewind and watch that epic battle twice just to make sure I really saw it.

Side note: I wish Arnold Schwarzenegger would have stuck with Arnold Strong. It's a lot easier to spell.

Black Orpheus

1959 mythic musical myth musical

Rating: 16/20

Plot: In the slums of Rio de Janeiro during carnaval time, Orpheus falls in love with visiting Eurydice. Then a guy in a skeleton costume kills her.

Interesting choice to place the Orpheus/Eurydice myth in this particular location. Arguably, the colors and the music are the real stars in this movie. The bossa nova score gives the film a pulse. You could feast on the colors that compliment the music. Literally! I really like how every inch of the screen is utilized with minor characters wandering in the background or things happening outside windows behind characters. True, some of the scenes of festive dancing could have probably been cut, but I like how they contrast against the scenes with the Death character and Orpheus's grim search for his missing Eurydice in a world suddenly drained of color. There's very little flashiness in the way this myth is told, but its beautiful simplicity makes it a powerful, rewarding experience.

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

2000 Homer adaptation

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

Plot: It's a faithful adaptation of The Odyssey of Homer. In the middle of 1930s middle America, three escaped convicts (logorrheic Everett and his dopey companions Delmar and Pete) try to find their way to a treasure before the valley's flooded and said treasure is submerged at the bottom of a lake. And, of course, before the law catches up to them. Along the way, they bump into blind prophets, sirens, Babyface Nelson, prospective governors, and a cyclops.

I love everything about this movie. I love the comedy which perfectly combines brilliant performances with brilliant writing. I love the music, the timeless folk music that manages to both capture the Great Depression era and seem otherworldly. I love the Homer allusions and the nods to Hollywood screwball comedies. Most of all, I love the cinematography where the settings add so much color and become just as important as the characters. This film's got such a texture, an impossible-to-duplicate texture, that makes this a one-of-a-kind piece of filmmaking that I imagine will keep it around forever. It's got to be close to impossible to watch this movie without smiling often. It's definitely one of those movies I can watch again and again without ever getting tired of even though people watching it with me might get tired of me laughing in anticipation of certain upcoming gags. Both literary and dumb, there's enough here to appeal to nearly everybody, and it'll even teach you a few new vocabulary words. It's hard to believe that this is only the third best Coen comedy. It might have the single best Coen Brother scene, however, with that can't-believe-I'm-seeing-this KKK rally that even has a Wizard of Oz reference. Any discussion of "best movie musical ever" must include O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Jason and the Argonauts

1963 mythological romp

Rating: 16/20

Plot: All young Jason wants to do in life is put together a slow-pitch softball team that ccan ompete for the national title. What's standing in his way? An addiction to medication for hyperactivity and his own phallic hallucinations. Not having any previous problems with hyperactivity, the medication slows him down significantly as it makes him hypoactive and languid and forces him to pay far too much attention to things, sometimes waiting for days for somebody to finish a story that was already long finished. The hallucinations (a giant phallic bronze statue, harpies, a multi-phallic lizard, a grotesquely lopsided dildo, a talking phallic figurehead) also slow him down in his quest to find softball talent as he's thrown him trembling into the corners of his phallic ship. Can he find a starting pitcher before the big tournament begins?

It's too bad there's so much cheese on the edges of this epic. At the heart, you've got some of Harryhausen's best work. The story is pretty stupid and sprawling with that mythological goofiness. There's not a lot to love when there's not monsters on the screen. I'm not sure this story would even make a lot of sense to anybody without at least some background in mythology. The characters are also wooden, and they aren't helped by trite dialogue. But it's easy enough to forgive that when you've got classic action sequences like when the giant statue guy pops out from behind the mountain or when those skeletons start doing their skeletal thang. Bitchin' stuff! Despite its problems, it's at least as good as anything Peter Jackson's done with the possible exception of Meet the Feebles.

Medea

1988 adaptation of the mythological tale

Rating: 16/20

Rating: Based on the play by Euripides, this is the dismal tragedy of the title bitch who, scorned by her lover Jason (the apples and Argonauts guy), goes apeshit and starts killing everybody. After all, hell hath no fury.

This is the realization of great director Carl Th. Dreyer's Medea script by wannabe great but pretentious director Lars von Trier. Dreamy, dreary, and beautiful, this old-looking and almost otherworldly film resembles Joan of Arc and the vampire movie as it lilts through a poetic sludge. The film starts and ends with water, and in between, a whole bunch of stuff--grasses, sheets, character's clothes, clouds--is filmed in a way that also reminds you of water. Definitely not for everybody as the fuzziness and unorthodox camera angles will likely get on most people's nerves. But it works to create a haunting atmosphere and wipe out any memory you might have of any Shirley Temple movies you might have seen. The acting's strong although the script sometimes isn't. I don't know if Dreyer was intending this as a silent film or talky, but I almost think this would have been more effective sans dialogue. Likely, I'll revisit some of the macabre imagery of this one in my nightmares.