Creature with the Atom Brain

1955 walking dead movie

Rating: 11/20

Plot: A Nazi and a gangster with an ill-fitting suit reanimate dead bodies and then use radio control to attack people they don't like. Chet Walker, a guy who is either a scientist or a doctor or possibly both, tries to figure out what's going on before it's too late.

Nifty opening shot introducing the opening credits, one similar to Double Indemnity actually, with one of the zombified figures lumbering toward the camera. This is another 50's sci-fi flick with some daffy science. I never did figure out Chet. Scientist? Detective? Both? His name's Chet, so you'd think he'd be a scientist/detective. He does own a centrifuge, and he keeps a Geiger counter in his trunk. I liked the character. He cracks a few jokes to give this a lighter tone, and there's a funny running gag about him wanting to engage in sexual relations with his wife. I really liked a scene where he comes home and sees his wife bending over on the porch. He eyes her for a bit before getting this giant grin and walking to his house. I believe this was the inspiration for Sir Mix a Lot's song. This movie apparently inspired Roky Erikson, too, since he's got a song with the same title. The movie isn't really all that frightening, but I do like a few shots where shadows are used nicely. My favorite scene, despite the presence of really-bad-child-actor Linda Bennett, involves a child's doll. It made me laugh. So did seeing the news eporter's name--Dick Cutting. This is a movie that isn't nearly as bad as its title.

The Giant Claw

1957 giant bird movie

Rating: 5/20

Plot: A troublesome alien bird that is "as big as a battleship" is on the rampage, wrecking airplanes and destroying buildings. Electronics specialist Mitch MacAfee tries to figure out a way to stop it before the hand of the person operating the beak gets tired.

You might think that a movie that Fred F. Sears (that second F. probably stands for Fred, too) made only a year after Earth vs. the Flying Saucers wouldn't be so bad, but you'd be wrong. No, this is impressively inept filmmaking, a science fiction movie that would probably offend most scientist. Or maybe just confuse them. The bird is described as being made from antimatter, and I guess that makes sense. It all sounds really scientific, and we kind of have to believe the character because he's got a giant model of an atom. You've also got to appreciate when these 1950's B-movies explain what a UFO is to the audience. Maybe the acronym wasn't widely used back then? The story is dull, and the acting is bad. So dull and bad, that they must have felt like they needed to go a little crazy with the amount of bird scenes. In some movies, they save the monster and the big special effects for a little later in the film. With The Giant Claw, it does start out as a fuzzy blob during some initial scenes, but you still get to see the monster early on. Early and far too often, especially since the monster looks like this:

Now I know what you're thinking--that looks realistically terrifying! I'm actually thinking my mother must have seen this still from the film and that it's the reason she refuses to fly. The obvious-toy plane crash is as realistic as "obvious-toy plane crash" might make it sound. None of that's as terrifying as the police officer played by Robert Williams, a gravedigger in Hang 'Em High. He's a cop who can't keep his hands off his own belt buckle, and gets superb lines like this one: "If you see this big bird, it's a sign that you're gonna die [dramatic pause] real soon." Louis Merrill acts squares around the rest of the crash as "Pierre," a French character played by a man who is definitely not French and who's probably never heard the language spoken. Pierre's cool because he's got Eraserhead hair. That hair might be the best special effect in this entire film actually. It's definitely not the child's Play-doh globe at the beginning of this thing, an image followed by a film strip I think I might have seen in my 8th grade science class. But none of that's important, readers, because the giant antimatter bird is coming right at you in 2-D!

You really need to imagine that with the incredible sound effects, my favorite being the chomp-chomp sound that you can apparently hear whenever a bird "as big as a battleship" makes when eating a paratrooper. The Giant Claw is nearly entertaining for the duration. And hey, if you get bored, you can play a drinking game where you drink a shot every time you see a wire to help the bird move or the toy airplanes fly around. It all builds to a stunning climax during which the monster destroys New York City, including a scene where he's perched on the building doing his best King Kong impression. Or maybe he's impersonating that Korean ape from A*P*E. I wouldn't put it past him. Anyway, it's the most damage a puppet has caused since. . .well, I thought I had a joke there.

Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!

1990 romantic movie

Rating: 13/20

Plot: A mental patient kidnaps an actress, suggests that they get married, and refuses to take no for an answer.

I've got to start with this since I'm a pervert: I have a new favorite sex scene, the bathtub scene in this movie featuring the lovely Victoria Abril and a wind-up diver toy. That's worth the price of admission alone. I guess my problem with this one is that the movie had to be about Antonio Banderas and Victoria Abril and their characters' relationship and not more about Maximo Espejo, the director played by Francisco Rabal. He gets a great line though: "When you put your heart and genitals into something, it always ends up personal." I might have that put on my tombstone. Banderas is fine, but the lead characters lacked depth, and their love story was actually pretty boring, despite all the bondage. Morricone's score is dull, 80's fizz. There is a nifty and colorful musical number with a trumpeter who has a mini-pompadour, cheese-covered keyboards, an old lady, a young girl, and a polka-dotted lead. And there's some He-Man figure decor which, for whatever reason made me laugh a little bit. But if I ever watch this again, it'll be for the toy diver scene which makes me cry just thinking about it.

Fish Story

2009 movie without a single fish

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Oh, snap! A comet heading straight for earth threatens the existence of all life on our feeble little planet. Thankfully, a Japanese punk band recorded the titular rock song back in the 1970s. Wait. What?

A second viewing might make large chunks of this seem superfluous, but it was so much fun watching everything come together that I don't mind. I was sold from the beginning with an old guy in a motorized wheelchair pushing over some bikes with his cane before a shot showing the ominous fireball. There's an obligatory Bruce Willis allusion, paranormal record collectors, end time prophets uttering things like "Even if today is the last day of the world, I will still plant my apple trees," fruit tort faux pas, apple pie kung-fu, and a funny nod to The Karate Kid. The real one--not the one with Will Smith's daughter. This is a sharp little movie puzzle, and I'd like to check it out again to see what pieces I may have missed. That song ain't half bad either!

Office Space

1999 comedy

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A guy gets fed up with his office job and decides that he's not going to do it anymore. Results are unexpected. He tries to bag a waitress who doesn't have enough buttons.

Speaking of that waitress, here's an earlier contender for 2012 Most Arousing Movie Moment of the Year: Jennifer Aniston's character saying, "I love kung-fu." Yeah, I got wood. This movie probably isn't as funny as you think it is. I don't think it's worth watching more than once although I know more than a few people who seem to watch it all the time. It's amusing, and I like the laid-back tone that is mostly created by Ron Livingston as our protagonist, Peter. He's like Charlie Sheen without the whores and blow, Sheen-lite. I do really like his line about how "every time you see [him], it's the worst day of [his] life." The exaggerated character types somehow manage to seem realistic which works in this comedy's favor. Stephen Root's fun as Milton, and John C. McGinley's funny in a more natural way in a pre-Scrubs role. The look on his face when he finds out that the boss's feelings about Peter don't match his is really funny. This meanders and loses its way a bit during the final third, and I got a little bored. It's not a bad little comedy though.

Project A: Part 2

1987 sequel

Rating: 13/20

Plot: Dragon Ma is assigned to get rid of some gangsters in town. Meanwhile, some pirates from the last movie are looking for him to get their revenge. Apparently, they understood what was going on in the last movie better than I did and are pissed off about it.

This sequel delivers similar excitement from Part 1 in chunks, but it's not the wall-to-wall action of its predecessor and makes even less sense. There's some cuteness with a pair of handcuffs, an excellent fight scene early in the movie with bruising and flopping that look like outtakes from the first movie, and another 1920s comedy allusion. This time, it's a nod to Keaton and his most famous stunt. Mixed in with all this is a lot of silliness. I did like one line quite a bit: "I'm just wondering what to do with your corpses." That's something I might start saying to my students. The comedy that isn't physical comedy, just like in the first movie, falls completely flat, banging its head even harder than some of these stunt men. I did like this early exchange:

"You can't go around mugging ladies on the street!"
"But we're muggers!"

The motley collective of baddies is fun. There's Fatty, Shades, Stumpy Top Hat, Japanese Alan Thicke, and my personal favorite, Grand Meat Guy who gets all kinds of great one-liners during a Batman-esque "crusher" scene. "How 'bout a little oil?" "You're well lubricated." "I'm going to crush your knob off."

Stick around for the credits or you'll miss Jackie Chan singing a wonderful pop song. Actually, go ahead and miss that. Turn this off right before the credits unless you want to find out the name of the Japanese Alan Thicke.

Project A

1983 kung-fu action comedy

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Gaily-dressed Navy guys fight crooked cops and mischievous pirates. Lots of folks wind up concussed.

I love the nods to my man Buster and Harold Lloyd here, and this will be a ton of fun for fans of kung-fu movies and silent comedies. Since I'm a fan of both, it seems like Jackie Chan made this just for me! I will say this--the comedy in this is awfully silly, and almost caused me to drop this another point or two. The plot isn't anything worth talking about either. It's typical Hong Kong martial arts movie nuttiness with more characters than necessary and a lot of extraneous scenes. The latter exist to stuff in more fight scene while the former are on-screen to get kicked in the head or thrown around. Chan takes his lumps as well because he's never an invincible kung-fu action hero. His stunts are as impressive as they usually are, and the fight choreography is completely ludicrous but endlessly entertaining. Chan et al. showcase fast flailing moves and insane bone-crushing stunts. I've never seen so many heads bouncing off floors, dressers, banisters, or whatever other parts of the scenery that are constructed just so heads can bounce off them. As always, Chan's fight choreography uses the setting and its props in excitingly creative and humorous ways. Vibrant and painful stuff. I liked how the camera would linger on stunt men as they writhe and groan after a particularly painful head bounce. A highlight involves a clock tower.

Oh, and for you Sammo Hung completists, he's in this one as a sort of Jackie Chan sidekick.

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.

Parents

1989 horror movie or possibly black comedy

Rating: 15/20

Plot: In antiseptic 1950s suburbia, young Michael begins to suspect that there's something not quite right with his parents. He's got enough trouble trying to adapt to a new school in a new hometown without having to worry about whether or not the dietary habits of his parents are socially acceptable.

Bob Balaban is a guy with a name I like to say and a guy I always like seeing in movies or television shows. He's directed barely a handful of movies and a bunch of television shows, but Parents is the only thing I've seen that he's directed unless I watched something accidentally. I really liked how he visually told the story. He frames this typical suburban middle-class home in a way that somehow transforms the setting into a perfect location for a horror film, and some playful and surprising camera angles keep this whole thing interesting even when the story he's working with isn't. I'm not totally convinced this is a straight horror film. There's a consistent creepy vibe, even when what is happening on the screen isn't anything threatening, but there's also a healthy dose of dark comedy that give this a different kind of fun than the type of fun your average horror movie is going to give you. Some dream sequences and possible hallucinations give this a surreal flavor and also make the last third of the story a little indeterminate. That, or I'm just slower than the average Randy Quaid fan. Speaking of him (I think it's Randy; I still get them confused), this might be my favorite Randy Quaid role. He manages to maneuver realistically between 1950's sitcom wholesome and unnerving, often in the same scene. I also want to mention Bryan Madorsky, the kid who played the kid. He's really got a kid-from-the-Shining in him, and although they don't really succeed in making him seem like a real kid, he still does a really nice job. This was Madorsky's only movie though. Parents isn't exactly a classic of whatever genre it belongs in, but it's got a feel that makes it seem fresh 20+ years after it came out.

Withnail and I

1987 comedy

Rating: 18/20

Plot: Two unemployed actors go on a vacation to the countryside, apparently because doing absolutely nothing can get exhausting. They have hilarious misadventures.

"We've gone on holiday by mistake!"

So it turns out that the great Daniel Day-Lewis was offered the Withnail role but didn't take it. As good as he is, it's just hard for me to imagine that anybody could top what Richard E. Grant does with this character. That's high praise. Really though, none of the performances in this one really stand out from the others because they're all good. Even that guy's afro gives an award-worthy performance. This movie is so quotable, but typing the lines I like the most just wouldn't do them justice. You need to hear them in the almost no-context context in which they're presented from the lips of these character actors. "No, it was like this long white hat" would probably be hilarious if you read it in the script, but it's magically hilarious when Ralph Brown's Danny says it. Withnail and I makes me laugh, but there's also this melancholy bubbling beneath the surface, and the end really gets me. I think my favorite moment might be a look on Withnail's face following a sharp "Ponce!" Love this movie. It's got voodoo qualities!

The Beaches of Agnes

2008 biographical documentary

Rating: 17/20 (Mark: 18/20--I think.)

Plot: Director Agnes Varda strategically places mirrors on a beach, finds some naked people, converses with an animated cat, and reminisces about her life and work and marriage to Jacques Demy.

Varda directed one of my favorite movies from a few years ago--Cleo from 5 to 7, a movie that nobody saw based on my recommendation because nobody cares a bit about what I write here or takes me very seriously. I'm not sure why I haven't seen any more of her movies, especially since one of her documentaries has been sitting on my shelf for months. Varda is funky old avant-gardist with two-toned hair, a ten-year-old artist in an eighty-something-year-old's body. She's how I like my avant-gardists actually--frothy and whimsical. I loved how this traced her development as an artist, from her photography to her movie making, and I was touched at the stuff about her director husband Demy, the guy who did The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, another flick I really dug. The way she chooses to tell her own story is very playful and borderline pretentious. But that aforementioned froth and whimsy makes this not only a palatable but an absolutely delicious experience. See? Maybe it's sentences like that that cause people to not take me seriously. I was a little apprehensive about seeing this because my brother had promised me Captain America and I thought this might be boring compared to that, but it was definitely not boring. This was a fun little documentary to absorb. I would probably recommend you get your hands on a few of Varda's movies though. You know--like I didn't. Also, for you randy avant-gardists out there: This does have both trapeze artists and a beach sex scene, neither which involve Annette Funicello. Oh, and the animated cat was Chris Marker, director of this and this. They're both good films, but you're not even going to click to see what they are because you don't respect me.

Oprah Movie Club Pick: Gamera vs. Guiron

1969 turtle superhero movie

Rating: 5/20

Plot: As rumors of unidentified sort-of hovering objects swirl, a Japanese kid and Beaver Cleaver stumble upon an abandoned space craft constructed from cheap cardboard and what appears to be pieces of discarded stoplights. The ship takes off with the lads inside, leaving a whiny homely girl behind. While she tries to convince Mom that the boys did indeed fly off in a spaceship, the boys have landed on the tenth planet in our solar system (sorry, I didn't catch the name) where they watch some goofy monsters fight and are forced to endure the annoying voices of the planet's only inhabitants--two gals wearing capes. But these girls have a plan for the boys, and Gamera (a friend to children apparently) is needed to save the day.

Kent picked a classic for our first Oprah Movie Club pick of the year. There's one other Gamera movie on the blog, the superior but not nearly as much goofy or fun Gamera the Invincible. This one begins with some gross effects that look like they could serve as the backdrop for a really cheap Pink Floyd cover band, probably one called The Vegetable Men, and then makes us wait a while before we see any monster-on-monster action. The worst dubbing I think I've ever heard is enough to keep things entertaining though. It's not just the poorly-chosen voices for the characters either. No, there's something terribly wrong with the pacing in the delivery of the lines, almost like that guy from the "Hooked on Phonics" commercial who could barely get through a story about a train is reading everything. The child actors are irritating, but there's an adult actor who actually makes them look like master thespians in some early scenes where they're together. His name is Kon Ohmura, and I'm not sure how he Konned his way onto a movie set, but he's in another Gamera movie and a few other things. His character here (Goonjob? Coonja?) is there for comic relief, just like the rest of the movie, and Ohmura's wonderfully Torgorific as he's threatening to shave the children's heads [Spoiler Alert: That's foreshadowing!] or even just standing around. That's right. Ohmura's the type of actor who can't just stand there during a scene without being a complete distraction. That's talent, folks.

Finally, we get a Gamera sighting when the kids leave the earth's atmosphere. A nearly endless Gamera/spaceship race brings the action hard. You also get a close-up of the inside of Gamera's mouth (Do you ever get to see a close-up of the inside of Godzilla's mouth?) as he, I'm pretty sure, attempts to make out with the ship. But the best action sequence is the superbly realistic scene on that tenth planet between a metallic birdy thing and what I thought was a monster with three-fourths of a dolphin for a head but what actually turned out to be a monster with a knife for a head. Didn't find out until later that the latter was the menacing titular bad monster in this movie. It's not much of a fight. Guiron repels a cheap-looking yellow beam and dismembers the metallic birdy before doing a Jabba the Hutt impression. It's pretty badass and kind-of gruesome for a monster movie intended for children. But honestly, Guiron is so dumb looking that it's hard to take any of it seriously. He could have been raping my grandmother, and it wouldn't have seemed all that bad.

When our hero gets to the planet (because he's a friend of children, and there are children who need savin'), he gets beat up pretty good by the villain. He even bleeds some green stuff. He recovers later on, of course, probably because the producers of Gamera vs. Guiron weren't finished demonstrating their complete disregard for all things logical. First, the heroic turtle is on his back at the bottom of a lake and can't get up no matter how much the boys yell his name or how much he struggles. But then a giant rock hits him in the chin, a development that inexplicably gives him strength. The two battle again (hence the "vs." in the title), Gamera repeatedly racking himself and nearly teabagging Guiron before doing some gymnastics and, as one of the boys explains, "dancing go-go." I love it when Japanese monsters dance. The good guy wins, there's an improbable spaceship repair and some of the worst blue screen work you're likely to see this week, and we eventually get to a happy ending. It's really only happy because we get to see Goobjohn again.

I enjoyed the cheapo set design of the alien planet. It looked like a muted sci-fi train set. The interiors were probably borrowed from another cheap Japanese science fiction movie, and I'm sure the only requirement the casting director was looking for with the child actors was that they were well behaved enough to not run around and accidentally knock down a cardboard wall or two, an act that would have likely cost the studio tens of dollars. As Guiron tries to get to the children and destroys the building their in, large rocks fall all around and even on the children. They don't seem to harm the boys though thankfully, and that makes just as much sense as rocks falling from the ceiling of a building that looks to be made entirely of metal.

It all ends with a nice message about how the world could be a nice place without traffic accidents, the same thing Al Gore's been preaching for years. He probably saw this one actually. I don't know about you, but I was slightly aroused because of the squeaky-voiced alien chicks, even when they were threatening to "eat their brains raw." And you've got to dig the cutesy music. What is it with Japanese children's movies and irritating and inane sing-a-longs?

Ip Man 2

2010 sequel

Rating: 13/20

Plot: Ip Man moves to Hong Kong after the events of the first movie. He sets up a kung-fu school and eventually draws in a few students, but he meets resistance from the other martial arts schools in town. Meanwhile, a British thuggish boxer smashes his way into Hong Kong, insults everybody, and

Well, it's not as good as Ip Man. The first half makes a good run at it, setting up an old-school kung-fu conflict with rival martial arts schools dissing each other. It's easy to love just how good the movie looks and Donnie Yen's smooth ferocity and ridiculous speed. And then look--it's the legendary fatso Sammo Hung. When the fight choreographers just allow these guys to kick and punch at each other, things are really really good. A scene where Ip Man meets some students from one of the rival schools in an attempt to fetch one of his students from their clutches contains a lot of thrills and excitement, and Yen uses props in a way that would make Jackie Chan proud. Then, during a scene where Ip Man battles a few kung-fu masters, including the aforementioned Hung, on a wobbling table, they suddenly decide to lean back on some special effects that make the fighters look a little cartoonish. Don't get me wrong. I was entertained by the whole thing, but it was a little goofy and killed the realistic feel that a biopic like this should have. After all that is almost settled, the movie shifts gears again and turns into Rocky IV. Or whatever Rocky movie has the big mean Russian guy in it. Then, you get a guy named Darren Shahlavi chawing down on the scenery as British boxing stud Twister. He's a weirdly arrogant villain, but the ensuing fights between him and the kung-fu guys never make any sense to me. Let's see--Twister's powerful but boxing-gloved punches vs. a guy who is using his bare hands and feet? I don't care how ripped the guy is, isn't who should win the fight kind of a no-brainer? Yeah, yeah. I get it. It's all sort of symbolic anyway. There wasn't really a moment during this movie where I didn't want to be watching it, but it's definitely kind of a let-down following the great first movie.

There's an appearance by a famous guy at the tail end of this movie. I wonder if he'll be a character in the third Ip Man movie.

Leon: The Professional

1994 hitman movie

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

Plot: The titular hitman, an immigrant living in New York City, tries to keep a flower alive in a harsh world. After his 12-year-old neighbor's entire family is murdered by crooked D.E.A. dudes, he reluctantly takes the girl under his hairy wing and teaches her the tricks of his violent trade.

With a rating as high as this, I sort of prove that I really don't know what the hell I'm doing here. I love this movie, but it's stuffed with problems--things that I'd more than likely trash another movie for. Natalie Portman gives a fantastic performance as a young person, proving that it actually can be done. She shows a range of emotions, all realistic, and has the right face to pull off being simultaneously innocent and bad. However, is her character all that realistic? I realize that girls mature faster than guys and that the experiences in her home might cause her to be a little more sexually curious or open to violence than other 12-year-olds, but I don't completely buy the scenes where she's coming on to Leon. Gary Oldman is also brilliant, just one of those bad guy performances that is so good that you really end up wanting to root for him, but he's brilliantly hammy and very nearly crosses a line here. In a bad movie, I'd likely make fun of the performance. But the entire scene where he's directing the trashing of Mathilda's place? Everything that follows "I like these calm little moments before the storm"? Mesmerizing, one of those examples of acting where you just can't wait to see what he's going to do next. You learn a bit from his character, too. 1) Don't ruin Gary Oldman's suit because apparently he doesn't like that. 2) If Gary Oldman tells you to go inside a place, you'd better go inside a place. Oh, and 3) Gary Oldman isn't going to be killed while he's taking a dump. Jean Reno plays the title professional like he's possibly mentally challenged or, at the very least, emotionally underdeveloped, and it's the only thing that makes the parts of this story nearly a love story acceptable. The goofiness with the Chaplin and Marilyn Monroe references in a game of Charades or what has to be the worst ventriloquist act ever clashes so beautifully with the scenes of Leon working. I think, by the way, that a prequel could work where Leon hits the stage with his pig oven mitt to try to start a career in entertainment. One of the most beautiful scenes in this movie is where Portman is standing at Leon's door and begging for him to open it. "Please open the door." You know he will, probably because you've either seen the movie or you've seen a preview of the movie where the characters are walking through the streets with a plant or sharing a carton of milk. But that doesn't make the opening of that door, an act which bathes Mathilda in light for a moment, any less beautiful. Great stuff. I also really respect such a violent movie pulling it all off with a score that includes so many sleigh bells. One more little oddity: the gray guy that sits in the background of Aiello's place and doesn't do anything at all.

The Help

2011 movie

Rating: 11/20 (Jen: 15/20)

Plot: A woman who wants to be a writer but apparently has nothing at all to write about gets a housekeeping advice column gig at a small-town newspaper. She has a maid write the column for her. That gives her a brilliant idea--collect a bunch of maids, have them share their scatological stories, and then make that into a book. She waffles, thinking maybe it's a better idea to go with her original plan and just copy The Old Man and the Sea word-for-word and put her name on it, but eventually decides to have the maids do her work for her. Oh, I get it. They help her! The Help!

I don't imagine that I'm the audience for this movie. No, this movie is made for white women who have a whopping two hours and twenty minutes to spare, probably a white woman with a maid because white women without maids aren't going to have the time to watch the thing. This is the sort of bloated Hollywood thing made to win some awards and jerk some tears, and everything is just right about the thing. The actresses (The Help trivia: The total amount of time male characters appear on screen for this is a record low one minute and thirty-seven seconds.) act just like their supposed to, the 1960's segregated South looks just like it's supposed to, and the music sounds just like it's supposed to. And the movie takes no chances, fails to challenge, and has almost no depth, just like it's probably supposed to. You don't need substance when you're just there to provide light amusement for housewives, right? Just throw a few "raggedy asses" into the script and a poop joke that would also appeal to most fourth grade boys even though they wouldn't watch this movie on account of all the cooties. They also force-feed the audience a cutesy little catch phrase, something you can put on all the posters maybe (The Help trivia: If you cut out all times a character says "You is kind. You is smart. You is important.", the movie would actually only be forty-three minutes long.), but it just made me want to correct grammar. This is just the type of movie that people will say moved them because it was artificially constructed to do just that. I was just bored out of my mind for way too long and will likely remember nothing about this movie in a few months other than it had a lot of black people in it.

Jen let me know repeatedly that a lot of these scenes "ain't never was in no raggedy-ass book," and I think the dulcet tones of her voice kept me awake.