Rocky Balboa

2006 sequel to a sequel to a sequel to a sequel to a sequel to an original good movie

Rating: 11/20

Plot: The titular former heavyweight champion of the world is adjusting to a new life as a retired athlete whose fame has withered away, a restaurant owner who owns a burgundy jacket, and, sadly, a widower. That's right. They'll killed off Adrian, probably because of some contract dispute with Talia Shire. There's a fire burning (boynin' as Mickey would have said) inside Rocky, and he longs for one last chance in the ring even though he's in his 90s and can't find those ridiculous red, white, and blue shorts still drenched with his buddy Apollo's junk sweat. The new champion, a cocky and unchallenged Mason Dixon (seriously?), becomes disturbed when ESPN boxing analysts suggest that Rocky was a better fighter with a virtual match between the two proving them right. Rocky agrees to an exhibition match. Cue theme music/workout montage!

The best thing about this movie is that it isn't the last movie. This is the first one of these sequels where we don't have to watch a big chunk of the previous movie, presumably because they were all embarrassed by Rocky V. "What? This is how we ended it?" This makes for a more fitting end for our character (though a part of me was hoping this would end in his death) but it really feels like they've dug up a dead horse so that they could beat on it. Like a pinata, hoping that candy or maybe even money will come out. Everything that reminds me of the other movies feels tired, and everything that is different isn't really different. For example, Adrian's gone, but this movie still manages to have her stink all over it. His restaurant's got pictures of her all over the place, and there's a sickening scene where Rocky returns to his old crib and says "I remember when she was standing there" which of course makes an Adrian ghost appear. In the years that have passed since the last movie, Paulie's become a complete cartoon. My favorite Paulie moment is when he's rambling, "I got a watch! I got two watches!" I wasn't sure if that was comedy or tragedy so I laughed and cried at the same time. Another nice Paulie moment:

Paulie: Are you made because your wife left you?
Rocky: She didn't leave me. She died.
(Blubbery weeping)

Mason "The Line" Dixon (seriously, they really went with this?) has the boxing chops, but doesn't have nearly the personality of any of Rocky's other opponents, even Tommy Morrison in that last pitiful movie. There's the obligatory training montage where you get to see Rocky do all the stuff that he did in the previous movies when he was much younger. He even runs up those steps, this time with a dog. Here, it just seems like an excuse to show off how good Stallone thinks he looks as a guy in his 60s. Speaking of that, something artificial has to be going on there, right? And speaking of artificial, I didn't buy the father/son stuff in this. And where was Rocky's son anyway? You're telling me that they could get Skip Bayless in this, but Stallone's son was too busy? And holy cannibalism! There's Mike Tyson's tattoo! Iron Mike gets to say, "You got that midget with you right there!" which makes me wonder why the heck anybody would let Tyson improvise in a movie. And once you've thrown Mike Tyson talking about midgets in a movie, you have nowhere to go but down, so the boxing match that takes place afterward is anti-climactic. I'm not a boxing expert, but I'm pretty sure this fight would have been stopped in the 2nd. This lays the theme on so thick that the whole thing seems like an over-icing'ed cake collapsing under its own weight. It's like a very small cake, a heaping layer of Adrian, a layer of father/son, and at least five layers of redemption.

My two favorite things about this movie: Rocky's new quirk--a "How ya doin?" long after a "How ya doin?" is appropriate in a conversation. He does it twice. And the second is Angela Boyd's performance as "crazy woman who turns all gangsta in the bar" which is quite possibly the worst performance from any of the Rocky movies. And that's saying something! "A fool? I'm the fool? You're the fool!"

Singin' in the Rain

1952 musical

Rating: 18/20 (Jen: 17/20; Dylan: 10/20; Emma: 6/20; Abbey: 6/20; Buster: 5/20)

Plot: A movie studio and its stars try to adapt to the talkie phenomenon.

The first sign this is a movie that Shane will like: Zelda's walk about a minute and a half into the movie. It's not a sexual thing here, more about the flamboyance, making something that ridiculous the focal point of a scene that early in the proceedings. No, the sexual thing comes later with the movement of a green dress and some rhythmic coin flippage. It's so awkward getting an erection on family movie night. The reaction from my family during this was fun. Dylan, during a kid tap-dancing scene in a pool room, said, "I don't feel comfortable about this," and later exclaimed, "Oh no! He's going to sing!" Emma also yelled a "No! Why does he have to sing again?" at one point. Later, the kid who gave Dr. Strangelove a 6/20 and forever ruined his credibility, complained that Gene Kelly was a bad dancer. He also claimed he was going to give this movie a 0/20 for "unrealistic violin playing" but reconsidered later. Jen was really looking forward to the "Singin' in the Rain" number, and when it began, she emitted a for-some-reason gravelly "Alright!" Buster's reaction was the best. She loved watching this despite her 5/20 rating. I wish I would have videotaped her imitating "Make 'em Laugh".

But I digress. This would be a classic even without that aforementioned green dress and coin flippage scene because of the "What's you hitting him with--a blackjack?" guy. But it's filled with a lot of memorable moments--the talking picture demonstrator, like Vincent Price with bad teeth; the way Gene Kelly assaults Debbie Reynolds a few times, just because he's Gene Kelly and, like John Wayne, he can; Gene and Cosmo's walk through a studio where several movies are being filmed at once, a scene put in there just for movie lovers; that exhilarating seersucker violin tap-dancing number that looked like it came straight out of Spike Jones; lines like "I can't make love to a bush" or "I make more money than Calvin Coolidge combined"; the spoken argument during the silent scene of The Duelling Cavalier; Cathy's dress blown by a fan; a way-too-close close-up of Gene's face, a shot that made me as uncomfortable as Dylan probably was while watching a little kid tap dance; the hilarious sound issues during the premiere of The Duelling Cavalier, the "No! No! No!"; the "Broadway Rhythm" sequence set designs and dazzling colors. The best musicals, at least for me, are the ones that manage to have a buoyancy throughout, not just during the song and dance numbers. This one's got that buoyancy and pours on a little extra during some of those song and dance numbers. I nearly creamed my britches during the "Mose Supposes" sequence, one that makes me realize that the same exact part of me that loves watching kung-fu movies also loves to watch tap-dancing. Singin' in the Rain's got a cool story despite being sort of artificially created around songs that already existed, and it's hard for me not to watch and recall my childhood, the days when people destroyed their homes with lethal tap routines and then collapsed giggling. That happened all the time when I was a kid! The world would be a better place if they'd just stop what they were doing and watch Singin' in the Rain once or twice a year.

American History X

1998 movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A guy with a giant swastika tattoo on his chest goes to prison for curb-stomping a guy who was attempting to steal his car. By the time he gets out, he's decided that black people aren't so bad after all and wants out of the white supremest club he's in. Danny, a little brother who emulates big brother in every way, doesn't understand Derek's transformation. Derek wants to start over and keep his little brother from following in his hateful footsteps.

Fun trivia: The two Edwards grab a bite to eat in the same little coffee shop that they try to kick Walter out of for screaming about toes in The Big Lebowski.

Am I wrong for thinking that this is extremely well done but ultimately pretty pointless? The acting's good, especially Norton who takes on a dangerous role and runs with it. The difference between his body's shape here and his body shape in other movies from around the same time is almost shocking. There's a look Norton gives while being arrested that is one of those movie moments that you'll never forget. It's a powerful performance in a powerful story, but it doesn't really add up to a powerful movie. I didn't like the other Edward in this one, pouty Furlong who is just a bit too feminine in this movie. The colorized present contrasting with the black and white flashbacks thing was an effective device. This really is a great movie in bits and pieces. I just wish those bits and pieces built something a little more meaningful.

Django Kill. . .If You Live, Shoot!

1967 spaghetti western

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A guy who might not even be named Django and his peeps steal some bags of gold dust and are immediately double-crossed and left for dead. With the help of two of the fakest-looking Injuns in the history of world cinema, the guy survives and heads to a nearby town where the double-crossers have already been executed. He sticks around to retrieve his gold.

This oddly-titled spaghetti western has nothing to do with any other Django movie, including this one. This isn't quite the great movie I've waited patiently to see since writing its title on my "Movies I'm Waiting Patiently to See" list, but it's weird enough to at least be interesting for the duration. It's also not as graphically violent as I had been led to believe which makes me wonder if I watched some kind of watered-down edited version. Wikipedia quotes some writers who claim it's "the most brutally violent spaghetti western ever made" and it's got "truly horrendous scenes." There's some bloody weirdness that might have been a shock in the late-60's. There's the extraction of some golden bullets, a scalping, the demise of a guy named either Mr. Zorro or Mr. Sorrow. Then, there's just some general weirdness--a great entrance into a town that "sure don't look like heaven" with weird singing troll children, a crippled rat, a flash of a dress; gay bodyguards in matching black outfits; that aforementioned non-convincing Indian who kind of looks like Dudley Moore in a bad wig; a whiskey-drinking parrot; the use of vampire bats and lizards in an attempt to off our anti-hero instead of just shooting him, almost like they're villains from the old Batman t.v. show or something. Speaking of our hero, a guy who isn't even named Django, he's played by Tomas Milian who is probably good here just because he kind of looks like Franco Nero. A solid score compliments the odd, convoluted, and incoherent meanderings typical of a lot of your Italian westerns. This isn't top shelf stuff exactly and not worth being all that excited about, but it's a nifty enough little oddity.

Ferris Bueller's Day Off

1986 comedy fantasy movie

Rating: 13/20

Plot: The titular charismatic rascal malingers masterfully, convincing his parents to let him miss his 9th school day of the semester. His sister knows what's up, and so does Principal Rooney who wants nothing more but to catch him. Ferris convinces his pal Cameron, a kid who is actually sick, and his girlfriend Sloane to take Cameron's dad's Ferrari up to see the sights of Chicago--Sears Tower, Wrigley Field, an art museum, an inexplicable parade. It's all fun and games until some odometer problems.

So here's an interesting theory I stumbled upon: interesting theory.

Essentially, it's a theory that Ferris Bueller doesn't actually exist and the whole thing is a Fight Club-esque delusion in the mind of Cameron. Despite the fact that I think Cameron is a far more interesting character than Ferris and there are moments when you do question the boy's sanity, I don't buy this at all. Heck, even Carl Fredricksen thinks this is a bunch of hooey. (And no, I'm not bringing that up [pun intended?] again!) It would add a bit of depth to a movie that isn't nearly as much fun in 2012 as I remember it being in the late-1980s. It would also make the scene where Cameron ponders pointillism a little more than the waste of time it is now.

I don't think this movie holds up all that well. It's a lot of fun right up to the point when they hit the Windy City. The characters are colorful. Stein and Del Close make dull and lifeless into something humorous as Bueller's teachers, Jeffrey Jones overdoes it just the right amount as the principal, and Edie McClurg is hilarious as the secretary. The way she says "dickheads" in this movie should have won her some kind of award. The breaking-of-the-fourth-wall early in this still seems fresh, responsibly for more than a few television sitcom imitations. This just begins to wear thin after a while and lines like "The man could squash my nuts into oblivion" don't exactly make it seem timeless. And what kid, even in the mid-80s, wore freakin' berets? Another issue--Ferris Bueller must have the same gift that Jack Bauer has. There's no way these kids had enough time to do all of these things in Chicago. Maybe that lends credence to the above theory, too. This movie should be better although Broderick is charming, so charming that his character's the kind of miscreant housewives wouldn't mind their teenage boys aspiring to be. And Mia Sara--almost as cute as a button--should have had more of a career after this.

The more I think about it, the more that "Ferris Bueller doesn't exist" theory makes this movie more enjoyable. What do you think?

The Emperor's New Groove

2000 movie where a David Spade character befriends a fat guy

Rating: 16/20

Plot: The titular emperor, a young and arrogant spoiled brat, has plans to build a waterpark on a hill belonging to a gregarious peasant named Pacha. A power-hungry associate named Yzma attempts to assassinate Emperor Kuzco but winds up turning him into a talking llama instead. He has to depend on Pacha to get back to his kingdom and un-llama himself. It's a hilarious adventure!

Sure there' a midget Tom Jones in this, but other than his opening song, this isn't a musical. And thank God for that! This offering seems a little adventurous for the Disney folk. This one's got an ornery rhythm, and although there isn't anything objectionable, I imagine its general attitude might be off-putting to some parents. It's playful and as colorful as Robin Williams' squelchiest brain farts, but unlike his unhinged Genie, the modern references in this--boy scouts, exotic bird bingo--are never obvious. This is stuffed with visual gags, and the jokes in the dialogue are rapidfire, the funny coming so quickly that you really need to see this more than once to catch it all. So much contributes to this unique liveliness this cartoon's got. You've got the good voice work from the likes of sarcastic Spade ("He's doing his own theme music!") who, for at least part of the movie, narrates unreliably; John Goodman; freakin' Eartha Kitt as one of Disney's most inept villains ("Should have thought about that before you became a peasant."); Patrick Warburton as her even more inept sidekick, the rare dumbass character who doesn't get annoying by the end, a character whose every bit of dialogue is funny; even John "Piglet" Fiedler with one of his final roles, an Old Man cameo surrounded by movie after movie after movie in which he has to voice fucking Piglet. The action sequences, those scenes of adventure that must have been the reason this had a "mild peril" warning stamped on it, have both a zip and a wang. The sound effects accompanying all the mild peril were also great, giving this almost a Looney Tunes flavor--wacky and lively. The settings, a variety of gnarled locales with no regard for buzzkills like continuity, just pop, and I like the cool transitions from place to place and scene to scene. The whole movie's got a look that I liked a lot--the characters with exaggerated angles of necks and limbs, the jazzy movement, explosions of color. It's all very refreshing. Buster watched this with me and instantly wanted to watch it again. She was, however, high.

Good Morning

1959 comedy

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Two boys in the Japanese equivalent of suburbia want a television to watch obscenely-hefty scantily-clad men bump bellies. The parents refuse, so the two brothers take a vow of silence which, because they don't understand how annoying children are, they believe will be some sort of retaliation. The neighbors gossip, and a lot of people fart.

Seriously, what's with all the farting? This movie has more farting than all three Shrek movies combined. I'd like to think it's Ozu's shrewd way of proving his point that television "will produce 100 million idiots." Only it's not television. That's wonderfully prescient though, isn't it? If you've seen any clips of Japanese television floating around the Internet, you've probably noticed that it's like one giant fart joke. That's not a bad thing, of course. Neither is the reply of the parents to a visit from their kids' teacher--"Please use Spartan methods. We don't mind." Wow! What a beautiful thing that would be to hear, like a golden ticket for teachers. This is a charming little story despite all the flatulence. It's more charming than humorous anyway. The kids are likable enough, and I like how the story, though not all the way seen through their eyes, is from this naive perspective. There's an innocence there that allows you as the viewer to discover things about the adults in this story. And about a rapidly-modernizing and Western-izing Japan. Don't get me wrong because there's nothing heavy-handed here at all. It's about as light as an American 50's sitcom; in fact, I half-expected Beaver Cleaver to walk out and fart. If I didn't know any better, I'd think Ozu was making fun of Western civilization a little bit. It's a deceptively simple little comedy. My favorite thing about it is how a touching second story sneaks up on you by the end and makes you realize that Good Morning was kind of about something else all along.

I believe this is the only Ozu movie on the blog. I might rectify this by declaring this the Summer of Ozu! Who's with me?

P.S. I may have just farted. LOL!

Italian Spiderman

2007 parody

Rating: n/r

Plot: The evil Captain Maximum is trying to get his hands on an asteroid that has cloning power, and it's up to Italian Spiderman to save the day. Italian Spiderman is chubby.

And then I reached the point in my life where I was watching Italian Spiderman. This sentence will end a chapter in my unauthorized autobiography, and if anybody gets that far in the book (it will be very poorly written, probably with way too many parenthetical asides), they will know that the next chapter will be a major turning point in my life. This is a choppy but really pretty clever parody of foreign films that nab Western superheros or action stars for use in their own movies. Yeah, they're looking at you here, Turkey. Apparently, there were a lot of these types of movies--a few Spidermans, a handful of Supermans. I've seen clips, and those seem like parodies themselves. Some of this, just as you'd expect from a parody of something that is already stupid, gets too stupid. There's a scene where Italian Spiderman and Captain Maximum have a surfing competition, for example. Still, Italian Spiderman is quite a bit of fun and surprisingly clever. The titular superhero doesn't seem to have superpowers. He's overweight, he womanizes, and he smokes, so I'm not sure he's the best role model for the youth of Italy. He does tell you to respect women though. Of course, that is during a scene in which he is punching one, but still. After some cool old-school 70's opening credits featuring women with machine guns, you get a fastly-paced story that in no way takes itself or anything else seriously. Obvious dummies, over-goofed expressions, a fight between the hero and a crocodile (maybe an alligator) man, bad guys in Mexican wrestling masks. It's sleazy psychedelica. It's all very episodic, likely because this was released in installments over the Internet, but that only adds to the charm. And the confusion. I enjoyed the product placement--Il Gallo cigarettes which apparently come from a squeezed chicken. Speaking of chickens, check out this scene:

See? I told you he was chubby. That's right after the fight with the alligator (or crocodile) man. The costume for that villain was probably made by the same guy who made the tiger man costume in Bruce Lee's posthumous Game of Death II. Here's another scene featuring the main villain, the evil surfing Captain Maximum. I'm only showing you this because I want you to see what my life has become. Consider it some kind of warning.

And then there's this:

Italian Spiderman! He's not your dad's Spiderman! He's not friendly, and I don't think you'd want him anywhere near your neighborhood. Unless a crocodile (alligator?) man or thugs in luche libre masks were harrassing you and your neighbors.

Tokyo Gore Police

2008 gore police movie

Rating: 13/20

Plot: Ruka, a witness to her father's head explosion, overcomes tragedy to become the main mutant-killing cop. Those mutants, known as "engineers," have the ability to turn their injuries into weapons, and Ruka and her po-po buddies have to find out who is behind their creation. Meanwhile, she tries to figure out who was responsible for her father's murder.

Well, this was hard to take seriously. You're five minutes in and you've already got an exploding head, a decapitation, a severed arm that grows back as a slimy chainsaw arm, a guy who gets a chainsaw arm to the mouth, a fight with chainsaws. You have to wonder: Did this movie shoot its proverbial wad too early? How can anything top this? Well, hold on to your scalps, motherfucker, because this is a wild ride down a bloody slip 'n' slide. I was unsure whether or not I was liking this movie and actually had to watch it in a few installments. Around the time a character I didn't recognize Michael-Jacksoned his crotch and ended up at a party where people are wearing inflatable costumes and gas masks and the entertainment is a urinating chair woman and a snail girl, I realized that this is my kind of movie. My kind of party, too! I sighed and realized that I would eventually, when my stomach could handle it, watch all of Yoshihiro Nishimura's movies. I figured that Meatball Machine was one of those, but apparently there are a bunch of people in Japan making movies like this which once again makes me wonder what is wrong with the Japanese. H-bomb dust is the only explanation that makes any sense to me. Since I watched this movie in fifteen installments, I found it almost completely incomprehensible. But its cheap style--lots of askew camera work, assaults on at least two of your senses, a rhythm inspired by shaken baby syndrome--keeps you enthralled, and the mathematical part of your brain has all kinds of fun trying to figure out what the budget for "red squirty stuff" might have been. There are some goofy satirical moments in this with some commercials that ironically seem to poke fun at the masses' need for violence--including a Wii-type game where you slice a guy up--and some commercial propaganda about how nice the police are, but this is either too silly or too completely insane to really make any kind of point. You really can't watch the scene where a guy [SPOILER ALERT] gets his penis bitten off by a woman whose legs later turns into a giant alligator (or crocodile) mouth and take things seriously for the same reason that somebody trying to film my honeymoon to release as a sex tape wouldn't have been able to take things seriously. I'm sure the actor who played the guy who gets his penis bitten off read all the way to the part of the script that said "And then the guy walks in with his new giant penis gun," stopped reading, and said, "OK, I don't need to see anymore. I'm in!"

That penis gun puts us all to shame.

If you're ever in the right mood for something like this, I'm kind of worried about you. But this will definitely be your cup of whatever that red squirty stuff is if you are.

Pi

1998 math movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A brilliant but paranoid mathematician is inspired to get a haircut after a Hasidic Jew and some stock market thugs bully him and try to steal his numbers.

You have to love a movie that gives you the same feeling you'd have if you were watching television and saw somebody standing outside your window and staring at you with bulging eyes. Like a modern update of Eraserhead but with a lot more numbers and a conflict you can taste a little better, Pi doesn't really show us anything that you'd see only in the realm of the subconscious but still manages to feel like a strange little third-person nightmare. Connecting the pieces is difficult, more so for a math illiterate, so you go with the greasy flow and feel this one. And it feels claustrophobic, troubling. Aronofsky comes out with directorial guns a'blazing, throwing tricky camera angles and other gimmicks at us to not only push his story along but to put us right inside Maximillian's scrambled head. There's just something so nerdy and poignant about the whole experience. I also loved Mark Margolis, probably because he reminded me of Patrick Magee from A Clockwork Orange. I wanted to learn how to play Go just so I could sit across the table and play with him, probably touch his knee accidentally on purpose. Aronofsky's usual themes of obsession and lives knocked out of balance by obsession are present here, and for a first feature, this seems very assured and confident albeit artsy-fartsy and difficult to completely connect with. Clint "Pop Will Eat Itself" Mansell's score perfectly compliments. A playfully nightmarish flick.

Everything Must Go

2010 Will Ferrell comedy

Rating: 12/20

Plot: Nick's alcoholism causes him to lose his job and his wife in the same day. Since he's locked out of his home with all of his stuff in the front yard, he decides to just to just live on his lawn. When his police friend tells him that he's not supposed to do that, he decides, with the help of a black kid he befriends, to have a yard sale and get rid of the titular everything.

I imagine this movie pissed off Will Ferrell fans, as if any of them even know this exists, just like Punch-Drunk Love pissed off Adam Sandler fans. I really wanted to like this one, but the symbolism was a little heavy-handed and things just got so generic and simple in the end. And although there are some humorous moments, this lacks the amount of depth needed to tackle a subject matter like alcoholism humorously. We see Ferrell drinking a lot, but not in a way that is either funny or meaningful. If the latter makes sense. The performances weren't bad, especially since Will Ferrell wasn't very Will Ferrell, and I especially liked the kid's character even though he was played by a guy with too many names--Christopher Jordan Wallace. I just didn't like where this story took Ferrell's character, both the good and bad places. It was all just stuff that could only happen in an independent movie.

I broke my "No Will Ferrell Movies" rule again. I'm just never going to learn.

Fly Away Home

1996 bird movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: After Anna Paquin's mother dies in a car crash, she moves from New Zealand to Canada in order to live with a father she barely knows. He makes his own airplanes. Her new life is dull until she finds a bunch of goose eggs, watches them hatch, and becomes a mother goose. Almost immediately, she begins rapping about anthropomorphized eggs, women who live in footwear, and people putting fingers in (more than likely proverbial) pies. A problem develops when they realize the geese will need to fly south for the winter, something that birds apparently do. Anna and her father use his flying machines to help train the birds so that they can make the trip with them.

I couldn't watch this movie without thinking of Jeff Daniels, who despite his beard in this still manages to be Jeff Daniels, and a 23-or-so-year-old Anna Paquin having sexual relations while an audience of geese squawk. I think there should be a rule, even if it's just an unwritten rule, that once you've portrayed somebody's father in one film, you are not allowed to later film a sex scene with that same person, especially if you're going to sport a beard in that second movie. The Squid and the Whale is a better movie than this one although it has far less geese, and I hope watching this doesn't ruin that one for me.

I think this movie probably had a lot to do with the resurgence of "Yo' Mama" jokes during the mid-90's. It also should get an award for "Most Annoying Song in a Movie That Doesn't Have a Giant Boat in It"--"10,000 Miles"--which manages to be exactly twice as annoying as that one-hit wonder "5,000 Miles" from Benny and Joon. I don't remember that movie much, but I remember that Proclaimers song being in the movie approximately 5,000 times. "10,000 Miles" is only in this movie twice, bookending our goose story, but it managed to make me cringe the first time and nearly commit suicide the second. I did like Jeff Daniels in this movie even though I'm not sure his character should be winning any father-of-the-year awards. Putting your daughter in a situation where she has to watch you flying around in that contraption that probably should have broken both of your legs only a few months after Mom died while using her giant cell phone and driving? Geez, that's just not right, bearded Jeff Daniels! This movie could also be a whole lot shorter because I did find myself checking my watch more than a few times. And I don't own a watch, so I was really just glancing at my arm. I really liked the stuff with the geese though. A lot of the shots of the geese in the sky following that little aircraft around were really beautiful, and even better were all the scenes with the geese running. I would have paused the movie and gone outside to imitate them, but my surgeon has told me I'm not allowed to run or jump or--especially, he noted with a wagging finger--imitate a running goose. I also really liked a touching scene featuring geese hatching which was juxtaposed with a scene where Jeff Daniels' brother is watching wrestling that made me wonder if anybody would ever really watch wrestling like that. I can picture actor Terry Kinney asking director Carroll Ballard, "So what should I be doing in this scene?" and getting an answer similar to "Oh, just watch television and try to look natural." So naturally, he goes nuts. And nobody, likely even people who just watched this movie five minutes before reading this, have any idea what I'm talking about with this "watching wrestling" scene. Just trust me--it's wonderful. Anna Paquin shows us in this how children should act in movies. She's really good. Even better is the woman who says, "I ought to blow a hole in your liver!" This is a sweet little understated family drama with an underdeveloped environmental theme, thankfully underdeveloped since things could have easily gotten a little too preachy. It would have distracted from the greatness of the scene where Terry Kinney is watching wrestling.

Recommended by Cory, who will have to tell me if he remembers the scene with the wrestling.

Oprah Movie Club Pick for May: Schinder's List

1993 Best Picture

Rating: 18/20 (Jen: 18/20; Dylan: 11/20)

Plot: Businessman Oskar Schindler saves a bunch of Jews during the Holocaust. He's rewarded with a tree and a bunch of rocks and, long after he's gone, a movie that nobody will want to see because it isn't even in color.

So here's my question: Why were so many details changed? They're not significant details--the girl in the red dress, based on a real person apparently, survived the Holocaust--but doesn't it damage the integrity of the film? Even a minor rewrite is still a rewrite of history, isn't it? Isn't that what Inglorious Basterds is kind of about? It makes me question the historical accuracy of other things that happen in the movie, like when Fiennes character is shooting at people from his balcony.

Here's something else I wanted to bring up. Here's what filmmaker Terry Gilliam had to say about Schindler's List: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAKS3rdYTpI

It's a two minute clip. I know Cory made us watch a five-hour movie this month, but you can spare two more minutes to see what Mr. Gilliam has to say, right? I have my own thoughts, but I wanted to see what you had to say.

Another question: Spielberg refused to take any money for making this, and he doesn't sign any memorabilia related to the movie. That's noble and all, but a stronger move would have been to keep his name off the screen during the closing credits. Or at least not end his movie with a powerful scene of Schindler's Jews giving him rocks and then immediately splash "Directed by Steven Spielberg" on the screen after it.

I saw this in a crummy theater in Terre Haute when it came out, back before they'd invented devices that would enable my wife to check Facebook during the movie. Now I'm not completely sure about this, but I think that makes her almost as bad as a Nazi. Of course, Dylan only rated this an 11, not even twice as good as Dr. Strangelove, so he's probably going straight to hell. He called it "boring," and it is too long, arguably longer than it needs to be. If I had to cut anything at all, I'd maybe lose the big chunk where Goeth is going through a "pardoning" stage after that lengthy conversation that Qui Gon has with Goeth's maid. I guess I know what a scene where Goeth gets a manicure adds to the Schindler's List experience, but it could have been cut without losing much. It certainly is a long movie, but most of what you see on the screen needs to be there. I don't think our director wants humanity to get away without seeing some of this imagery. It's the same reason why people should have to read Night, almost like an act of penance. Also, this much time is needed to make what Schindler does realistic and comprehensible. You lose some of the space this movie gives the Schindler character, and you lose the real person that he was. And speaking of that real person, I'm happy this leaves in some of his defects. What we find out first about the man is that he was a selfish womanizer, and I think that's important. Neeson's so good here, both with those aforementioned flaws and the more emotional bits as Schindler transforms into the person who deserves to have a movie made about him. Fiennes makes a scary villain, a much scarier (and nosier) one than Lord Voldemort could ever have been. Just as Neeson gives the titular character some real flesh 'n' blood, Fiennes also gives his character, a character who puts a face and name on the evil and gives us something more specific to hate, some unfortunate humanity. And he's so matter-of-fact about it all. It's frightening. It's a brave part for him to grab at the age of 30-something, mostly because he's so good at being pure evil that people might not want to see his face on the screen ever again. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor (CORRECTION: No, he did not. And neither did John Malkovich.), and if there was an Academy Award for Best Paunch, he would have gotten that, too. As evil as that character is, he did give me a pick-up line that I'll probably use once I leave my wife for getting on Facebook during Schindler's List and will need to find a replacement wife--"I realize you're not a person in the strictest sense of the word. . ." I don't think many women would be able to resist that.

One other question: Did they really say "fuck" that much in 1940's Poland? This is a legitimate question. It's a word with a fuzzy history.

Spielberg gives us a lot of pictures that are impossible to get out of your head. The handheld camera work during a lot of this startles. True, some of these visuals just seem too easy, the kind of stuff that a director who knows his name will be the first thing you see after the last image of the film might think will get him that Academy Award. The camera lingers on children, and piles of shoes or pictures, concentration camp atrocities, and dying extras get more than enough screen time. The ghetto scene is absolutely brutal. The little boy with the ears trying to find a hiding spot and the shot of him spotlighted in that desperate situation he decides upon is impossible to forget. Of course, there's the girl in the red coat. Ashes, the slow river of blood fighting through snow, the ominous crematorium chimney. One of my favorite moments is in the hospital when the nurse poisons some patients. One woman's grateful expression and that nurse's look of defiance when the SS arrive are both so beautiful. It's powerful film-making, and there aren't a lot of people who can watch this and feel nothing.

One more thing--I think it's a little sad that I have to look up the name of the accountant/factory-manager. It's Itzhak Stern. Maybe it's just me being bad with names.

My thoughts about Gilliam's thoughts: What are you going to leave this movie remembering the most? Is it a Holocaust movie or a movie about how one person can make a difference? Do you think about how evil humanity is as the credits roll or are you remembering the goodness of one human being? If it's the former with those three questions, Gilliam might have a point.

OK, your turn. What do you want to say about our Oprah Movie Club selection for May?

The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland

1999 movie

Rating: 12/20

Plot: One day, the folks on Sesame Street decided that they needed more cash, probably to support the drug habits of half of the population and to continue to pay off folks to keep the secret about Bert and Ernie's relationship a secret. One of them said, "You know what? Elmo's enormously popular even though he's about the most boring character we have. Let's do a movie about him!" Somebody else asked, "What the hell are we going to have Elmo do? He just sits in his room talking to himself and acting like he's mentally challenged!" The first somebody answered, "It doesn't matter. We can just have him walking around for eighty minutes." Somebody else said, "No, we have to have him do something!" Then, somebody else said, "I got it! Why don't we just use the same basic plot of Pee Wee's Big Adventure. Kids can't watch that anymore anyway since Pee Wee jerked off in that theater." Somebody argued, "But Elmo doesn't even have a bike. Plus, people laugh when we have these Muppets walk around. Elmo on a bike would look really ridiculous." Somebody else said, "We can have him looking for his blanket then." Then somebody suggested that that they pad the length by making it a musical but was reminded that the only guy on Sesame Street, the genius who penned "Rubber Ducky" and "People in My Neighborhood" and all of the Roosevelt Franklin songs in a single opium-inspired thirty-five minutes, who knew how to write songs was in rehab. They decided to just write a few songs themselves, and though uninspiring and not memorable at all, they decided that Mandy Patinkin, who owed them a favor for helping him cover up a scandal that also involved Bert and Ernie, could give them a little life. They wrote and revised everything in a fortnight, tried to find the Roosevelt Franklin puppet but couldn't, wrote Roosevelt Franklin out of the script, shot it in a few weeks, and released it. It inspired an alarming number of blanket thefts and was banned in a few Eastern European countries. The end.

Masturbating to this turned out to be nearly pointless.

Get your motherfucking hand out of my motherfucking ass!

M

1931 silent film with words

Rating: 20/20

Plot: A guy with giant eyes won't stop buying balloon animals and other treats for children, and for some reason, adults in the small German town have a problem with it. Maybe it's all the whistling.

I decided not to dock Fritz Lang points for M being situated in that weird transition time between the silent era and the talkies, primarily because I think this is the very best talking picture released in the five years following The Jazz Singer. Of course, like every other thought that I share on this blog, I'm typing that without really thinking about it and just picking an arbitrary amount of time period of five years. I don't like movies from the 1930s, but this one feels so modern. I think it's mostly the use of the montage and some unusual camera angles and this experimental playfulness. There's a montage of emptiness early on, one of those times when normally perfectly beneficent images describe so much more than words could. You get an abandoned ball, an empty chair, a drifting balloon. It's gripping stuff, somehow more disturbing than a scene where you actually see Hans strangle (or whatever) the child would have been. Later, there's an extended shot where the camera maneuvers over a bunch of lowlifes in a room, through a sheet of glass, and into a room with a couple little people and a guy with a peg leg. Lang throws out one of the finest examples of how to tell a story without a lot of words, and this could have easily been just as successful as a completely silent picture. I also like the almost complete lack of music which I think adds to the overall tone. Well, there's the leitmotif (the theme from "Inspector Gadget") which makes whistling sound a little more foreboding than it ever should. At the same time, there's this conflicting playfulness to the way Lang approaches the subject matter of little kids being murdered. There' s a scene where a table of gentlemen are arguing in a restaurant with one guy smoking this absurd pipe and another guy whose glasses keep falling off. Or another scene with titled camera angles during a disagreement between a really big guy and a really little guy. It's almost comical. And the first time we actually see Lorre? He's making faces at himself in the mirror, almost like Soderbergh in Schizopolis. And by the way, how many shots in the first half of this movie feature either two Lorres--like, the real one seen simultaneously with a reflection--or a Lorre seen through glass? It seems like a bunch of them which I'm sure means something. Peter Lorre's so good here although his eyes, nearly iconic, kind of overdo it. It's a tough character because on the one hand, he's murdering children and on the other hand seems kind of dopey, the former making you really want to respect the guy while the latter makes you not care what happens to him. (I'm joking, of course. Dopiness should always be applauded.) But his despicability is mixed with enough vulnerability to make him a pretty daring character for a 1931 movie. It's a great performance, especially for this transition period. These days, Hollywood would take this character to absurd levels and probably give him CGI eyeballs that have a diameter of ten inches or so. (That's another randomly-picked number, by the way.) One of my favorite smaller details from this--during the opening scene where some children are playing a game in the street, there's this kid in the back who can't stand still. He's got to be Fritz Lang's nephew or something because he would otherwise have been kicked out of the movie for being obnoxious. Or maybe he was left in the movie so that audiences would develop sympathy for Hans? I guess that's something to think about.