Time Travel Movie Fest: 12:01

1990 time loop story

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A guy with a briefcase finds himself stuck in a time loop that forces him to relive the same hour of his life over and over again. At least it's during his lunch.

I watched two versions of this Richard Lupoff story, and this short (around 25 minutes) was definitely the one I preferred. It stars Kurtwood Smith (that guy!) as the unfortunate soul stuck in this purgatorial crisis, and his best moment is when he goes completely nuts and just starts screaming. I waited for this to get wacky, but it retains this consistent existential tone. It begins in medias res, and unless you know there's a time-loopy plot, you really don't know what's even going on, just that Smith's character is a little intense for some reason. The explanation for the time loop is all pseudo-science mumbo-jumbo, but the science doesn't need to matter anyway. Instead, you're forced to think about what this poor individual is going through psychologically, and, for me at least, it made the experience a little horrifying. This kind of had the feel of a colorized Twilight Zone episode but without any Rod Serling. I really enjoyed it.

You can find this on Youtube if you're interested.

Time Travel Movie Fest: Premature

2014 teen sex comedy

Rating: 13/20

Plot: A teenager finds himself stuck in a raunchy rip-off of a Groundhog Day time loop ending and beginning each time he ejaculates. He finds himself reliving the same day over and over again until he gets it right.

I can't say I'm a huge fan of the genre, but I thought this movie was pretty funny. That plot synopsis up there probably makes it sound a little cheaper than it actually is. It's one of those movies that's clever while at the same time not being as clever as it thinks it is. The comedy is quick and modern. I don't like references to contemporary things--like Ellen Degeneres here--and not all of the jokes in this are going to stick. No pun intended. But the jokes come--no pun intended--fast and furiously, like a teenage boy, so you don't have to wait around too long before you find something that sort of works.

The protagonist is likable and, more importantly, believable. His dilemmas are your typical high school senior dilemmas--being bullied, finding love, getting into college, having your mother catch you post-jerk-off. I think I like the character more because he's never whiny, dealing with what comes at him with wit. His friend reminded me of Boner from Growing Pains, but a Boner who's freed from television to say whatever he wants to. The friend is played by Craig Roberts who I really liked in Submarine. Roberts gets a lot of the funniest lines. Brian Huskey gets a small but funny part as the principal, some kid named Adam Riegler adopts a unibrow to play an uber-smart kid, Steve Coulter plays the protagonist's dad and gets to say "When I was his age, I could fill a bucket," and there's a hilariously odd Israeli kid played by Jonathan Kleitman. Best of all is Alan Tudyk as the interviewer from Georgetown. Anytime a character can make you laugh at the word "lupus," you know an actor's nailing it.

This isn't for everybody, but if you've ever been interested in seeing an R-rated Boner, it's probably for you. I like these time loop movies, and this one has a nice little embedded lesson that I probably could have used back when I was too young to watch movies like this. It doesn't stray too far from its genre, but it's definitely not a complete waste of time and might be worth it just to see Alan Tudyk cry and ask, "Why were there only one set of footprints in the sand?"

Boner Stabone

Bad Movie Club: Thunderstorm: The Return of Thor

2011 superhero movie

Bad Movie Rating: 4/5 (Amy: 1/5; Fred: 2/5; Libby: 1/5; Ozzy: no rating; Johnny: 3.5/5; Josh: 4/5)

Rating: 2/20

Plot: Some devil worshipers led by a bald guy who overacts have to collect the Dragon's Crotch in order to summon Hel, a mean woman. It's up to a cop and a guy with a plastic superhero suit to save the day.

Libby: "Does this movie come with complimentary lube?"

This seems less like a movie and more like a group of people getting together to pretend to make a movie. It's endearingly cheap. The female baddie's name is Hel, so apparently they couldn't even afford that second L for her name. Her outfit appeared to be grabbed from the Halloween clearance shelves at a dollar store. Thor's hammer seems to be made out of the exact material that those jumbo wiffleball bats are made from. I mean, just look at these fuckers:

Do any of those people look like they belong in a movie? Do they even look like they belong on a community theater stage? The guy on the right is Jody Haucke who played the leader of the people who summon Hel, played by a wonky-eyed Emanuelle Carriere, a woman with the worst evil laugh I've ever heard. Haucke threw everything he had into his villainous enunciation. The hero was played by Ray Besharah who was too lame to be an actual superhero, something that worked in his favor since he was only accidentally a superhero anyway. After all, he wasn't Thor. Thor, or more accurately Thor's head, was played by writer/director Brett Kelly. Besharah played the guy who wore this:

I'm not even sure that picture makes the costume look all that cheap. His friend's bad hair and bad posture probably distracts you. But the bottom half of the costume is just a pair of black tights, and we suspected that Thunderstorm wasn't even able to move his arms in that suit.

Oh, but the piece de resistance:

That is a stop-motion dragon thing, and it's a work of art. It's a stop-motion creation that would make Harryhausen shit himself. The appearance of this thing in the final act of the movie elevated it from bunch-of-people-with-fifty-bucks-and-a-camera-hanging-out-and-making-a-movie-mostly-in-the-director's-garage to something close to award worthy. I'm not sure what awards those might be, but it's worthy of them.

You'll have to get past a 10-minute introductory scroll that is also read to us in a voice made inaudible by a loud soundtrack, but this is a fairly entertaining good-bad movie. There's some terrible fake blood, horrible writing, lame comic relief, henchmen who say "Yeah!" in unison way too much, about 1,000 uses of the word Ragnarok, my favorite line ever ("Whoa! Easy, fella!") following a death scene, and some of the worst fight scenes ever. You almost want to applaud the effort of the people involved with this because they're clearly having some fun; most of you, however, just wants to tell them to stop.

Special Television Show Post: True Detective (Season One)

2014 crime show

Rating: no rating

Plot: Troubled men try to solve a crime committed by people who might be even more troubled.

People who know me know I don't watch enough television. There were years I didn't even have access to television, and for significant chunks of my life, I haven't had cable. I've never had HBO. You hear enough about television shows though, and you want to fit in with the rest of the people, and this was one I figured I needed to check out. This is television that I think people will not only be watching years from now but probably even still talking about it.

I don't really like cop and crime shows, and in a way, this is just a bloated 8-hour episode of one of those. The extra space makes these characters and their sins--because we all, as this show constantly and bleakly reminds us, have our sins--authentic. Even at its wildest or most preposterous, this feels real. It's like an exaggerated version of the darkest and most degraded bits of human existence, but there's still something real about it, and that's because the characters are allowed to breathe. The mystery's allowed to breathe, too. Things unfold delicately, and even though there are definitely some cliffhanger moments strewn throughout the duration of this season, it's really the quieter mysterious bits that keep your eyes glued to the screen.

Those characters. Man, those characters. I'm not sure this works without Matthew McConaughey (have to look it up every single fucking time) and Woody Harrelson. There's not any insane deviation from what either of these guys normally do. McConaughey's playing the same guy he plays in the car commercials, quietly faux-philosophizing and always seeming a little alien. Harrelson's that same earthy male, the type of guy you worry might emerge from your television screen and thrust his belt buckle in your face. Both characters--Rust and Marty--spend considerable amounts of time brooding, and the hate-love relationship they build throughout this story is just terrific. You just know that one of these two guys will kill the other unless, more tragically, they end up killing each other. One thing you see over and over again is a shot of the two detectives in a car with McConaughey (I had to look at the beginning of the paragraph for the spelling this time) saying something wackily profound or profoundly wacky and Harrelson looking disgusted. As many times as that happened during this season, I never got sick of it. These are two characters who don't really like each other and can't really understand each other yet absolutely need each other, probably in ways that don't even make sense to them. And the performances from these dual-leads make the characters memorable and a lot of fun, even when they're at their most monotone. McConaughey gets great lines, most written like the type of thing that would come from an inebriated Raymond Chandler after a really bad series of days.

Reggie Ledoux. I have a theory that the makers of this show came up with that name first and said, "Wouldn't it be cool if Matthew McConaughey said that name?" and then wrote an entire show just to make it happen. I haven't been able to stop saying Reggie Ledoux using my best Matthew McConaughey impersonating skills--an impression that could only be described as horrific--since I first heard him say the name in episode three.

The auxiliary characters add so much color. Old black preachers, Southern white tent revival preachers, police guys with layers of movie grit, prostitutes, mentally-challenged individuals, And beautiful women. Alexandra Daddario is the type of actress who can cause you to start a midlife crisis, and part of me only wants to watch movies with her in them for the rest of my life. Michelle Monaghan makes you wonder what's going on in Marty's head. Beautiful actresses. I would argue that there's a little too much sex in this. I realize that makes me sound old though.

The best character isn't a character at all. It's the setting. This has a moody, Southern gothic feel, almost a Twin Peaks vibe without the backward-talking little people. Post-Katrina Louisiana feels a lot like a purgatory with it's wind-torn trees, flooded lands, dilapidated houses, places that are "like somebody's memory of a town." There are certain locations--a tree, an old fort, an abandoned church--where it seems like they found the location first and then figured out a scene that could be shot there with these characters. They started with Reggie Ledoux and moved on to the settings.

The music really works, too. I got sick of the theme song by The Handsome Family although I'm listening to it right now and like it out of that opening music context. T. Bone Burnett brought attention to some great American folk music with what he collected for O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and he might do the same here with gospel and new-folk weirdness. Burnett has a gift for finding music that is perfect for the setting and probably, if I'd pay a little more attention, the themes. Here, you get a lot of gospel, some blues, some country, the Kinks, little Dylan, Vashti Bunyan, Townes Van Zandt, Father John Misty, and so on. It's an eclectic mix that somehow all manages to sound like this exact place and time.

People keep telling me that television productions have become just as good as movies, and I almost believed them with Breaking Bad. This is tense, impactful storytelling with a philosophical edge, and I'm glad writer Nic Pizzolatto wasn't constricted by the confines of a 2 hour movie. Cary Fukunaga has a great last name and must have had a nice budget to work with. This has many great individual scenes, but there are two that I want to bring up as the best example of how television drama has caught up with movie productions.

First, is a scene where McConaughey's character is working undercover. Things go great, pretty much like you expect them to, and there's an extended sequence shot that was as good as anything you'll see in a movie. The camera movements are sophisticated, and there are so many characters and so much action that you watch the whole thing stunned, not because of what was going on with any of the characters but because of the technical aspects. At least I was.

The second is a scene where they catch they get their man. You know the characters are going to survive because you see them talking in the future and know it's all a flashback, but there's still some great tension. And there's great juxtaposition between the story they are telling the interviewers and the reality that we see on the scene. It's masterfully done.

True Detective is as dark as anything you're likely to see on television, and it's not just dark because of what is happening on the screen but in the way it kind of gets under your skin. You might see a little of yourself in these exaggerated characters, might identify with their situations, and as they progress through this murky story, it makes you feel a little dirty. If you don't see yourself, you'll definitely see that this storyline with its disturbed characters doing disturbing deeds is definitely holding a filthy mirror to society, that the issues raised here and the philosophies and illnesses driving this are burbling beneath the surface of the real world. And that's what really makes things so dark, cynical, pessimistic. You recognize it. At the end, there are characters using a cheesy star-and-sky and light-vs.-dark metaphor. The characters, like they do throughout this entire season, don't agree. I was definitely on the Woody Harrelson's side on this one though, and that's not just because he had a belt buckle and a giant chin.

Seriously, Woody Harrelson's chin is huge now.

I easily liked the first 5 episodes more than the last 3 episodes in this season, but the whole thing kept my interest during the two days I watched this. I probably won't watch it again even though I'd love to look for more ways to connect--thematically--the issues with Marty and his family and the criminal acts at the center of this. I will, however, look forward to subsequent seasons to see how they explore these themes further. I'm not sure how they can dig deeper into the darkness, but it'll be fun to watch them try.

By the way, I want to point out that as horrible as I am at figuring out mysteries and seeing twists way ahead of big revelations, I had a hunch about this one that turned out to be correct. Maybe it was supposed to be more obvious than I thought it was.

I should get a belt buckle.

Time Travel Movie Fest: The Last Mimzy

2007 family sci-fi movie

Rating: 9/20 (Abbey: 11/20; Buster: stopped watching)

Plot: A pair of annoying children find a magic box with a stuffed bunny and a bunch of rocks that they keep referring to as "toys" for some reason. They all try to solve the mystery of where this crap came from and why.

Sprite, the preferred soft drink of Mimzies. That and some sneakier Intel product placement are sickening.

This movie has enough ideas for sixteen different movies. At one point, a black guy says, "Am I the only one here who doesn't have a clue what's going on?" I answered my television, "No, you aren't!" I was confused, and it wasn't in that pleasant way where a movie is mysterious and allows you to gradually figure things out. No, this just seemingly throws every idea the writers have ever had at you with the hope that you won't be bored by anything. There are kids hitting golf balls 300 years ("Whoa! We've found your sport!" is one of those reactions that makes it seem like the writers don't know how humans really act), levitation with everybody screaming and screeching, Lewis Carroll allusions (I guess I should have recognized "mimzy" from "The Jabberwocky," but I believe it's spelled with an 's'), aliens that the Doctor Who show would reject for not looking real enough, floating rocks, Hindu ritual symbols, palm reading, techno-bunnies. There's just so much going on all the time, usually accompanied by an unrelenting score. Blame Howard Shore for that.

You can't blame Howard Shore for the acting. Rainn Wilson plays a hippie teacher, and his performance is almost embarrassing. I blame the writing more than I blame Wilson though, and I even suspect that the actor, after spending a few weeks reading these terrible lines, just decided to sabotage the production. Just listen to him yelp out, "What are you doing driving a truck? You're a little boy!" Wilson isn't the worst actor in the movie. No, that blue ribbon goes to Julie the Babysitter played by Randi Lynne. Her lone scene features this freakout, and I'm wondering how many times they had to film it before deciding that they weren't going to get anything that was more realistic.

Maybe I was supposed to think the babysitter scene was funny, but I know I wasn't supposed to be laughing at some of this. The awkward scene where Rainn Wilson's girlfriend is reading palms:

"This is a very good hand."
And later: "This is a very special hand!"

The Roger Waters song that plays over the end credits also made me laugh, but then it made me cry. It's the kind of thing that happens when Roger Waters and Howard Shore combine forces, I guess. Look at these crappy lyrics:

"Is there anybody in there?
Have you heard, it was on the news,
Your child can read you like a bedtime story,
Like a magazine,
Like a has-been out to grasp,
Like afternoon TV.
Why is my life going by so fast?

Hello I love you.
Is there anybody in there?
Put down the phone, shut up the shop, make all the techno babble stop.
We'll find a short-wave frequency,
The wave connecting you and me.
Hello I love you."

You can look at those and probably know exactly what this song sounds like because all of Roger Waters' songs sound exactly the same. It's one of the most awful things that's ever happened.

I also laughed at the seizure the little girl has after seeing those Doctor Who aliens. And really, you should never laugh at a little girl having a seizure. I laughed at how fake-looking it looked when the FBI busted into the house to arrest everybody. I laughed when a scientist ripped the stuffed bunny from the little girl's hands. I laughed at a line--"Do you have a copy machine? We have to figure out a way to document this!"

The biggest problem with this movie is that it forces you to follow around some annoying children for an hour and a half. Rhiannon Leigh Wryn has a pretentious name and plays the little girl in this. She was somewhere around six when this was filmed, so everything she does can probably be forgiven. However, Chris O'Neil is the type of kid you wish you could create a time-traveling punching rabbit for so that you could cheer yourself up on bad days by sending it into the past to attack him. Yes, I realize how cruel that is, and I'd probably think more seriously about editing it right out of there if I ever proofread these things or if I thought anybody might read it. It's not the child actors as much as it's annoying characters. At times, this feels like a public service announcement for getting rid of technology. The kids always have their faces in video games, even a portable device when they're on a boat. They watch television at dinner. And they also cheat on math tests. This movie really does make children look terrible. It would be interesting to send a copy of this movie into the 1950's via a time-traveling bunny just to see how kids in that decade would react to seeing how kids in the 21st Century act. That might actually save future children from their fates. 50's children would turn into adults who think, "No! No! We can't let this happen to humanity!" and make sure emoticons and Pong never happen.

At one point, the dad tells his son that he's the "greatest kid [he knows]," and I was thinking, "Have you seen the beginning of this movie, Dad?"

Ok, I'm in too bad of a mood to write a blog entry about a family movie. Blame Howard Shore, Roger Waters, and Sprite.

I'm guessing this is their reaction to seeing their work in this movie.

This movie really did put me in a bad mood while watching it. And now, while writing about it, it's put me in a bad mood again. I'd like to apologize to anybody whose feelings I might have hurt in this blog entry. 

Not you though, Roger Waters. You're the one who owes me an apology. 

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift

2006 sequel

Rating: 10/20

Plot: A troubled teen moves in with his father in Japan and gets involved with the racing scene. Drifting.

I'd probably have to watch the second installment in this franchise again, but I think I like this one more than 2 Fast 2 Furious. Not that I liked it though. This suffers from the lack of Vin Diesel, something that still feels like a weird thing to type. New protagonist Lucas Black has almost no charisma. He's just a punk kid, and it's not surprising that they decided to leave him out of these other Fast and Furious movies although I think I heard he's in the new one. Shad Moss, better known as Bow Wow, does bring a little more character as Twinkie and has most of the best one-liners. Loved the bit where he hands Black a box of Kleenex before a ride in his ridiculous car--"for when you blow your wad, man." And really, how could you not blow your wad when you're riding in a car that looks like this:

Hell, the thing's got hair! 

Sung Kang's Han character isn't a terribly interesting character in the Fast and Furious movies that follow this one--you know, the Tokyo Drift prequels. I'm still not entirely sure how that works exactly and how the post-credits scene in the sixth one even makes sense, but if you're looking for movies that make sense, perhaps this isn't the franchise for you. Kang spends much of this movie snacking in a cool way. I was most excited to see Sonny Chiba's name attached to this. For whatever reason, he's JJ Sonny Chiba, and he unfortunately doesn't have a whole lot to do. He doesn't even drift! Not even once! 

Here's a confession: I only watched this movie because I thought it would help me with my Mario Kart skills. I've been driving a Mario Kart vehicle that is shaped like a bear which, if you think about it, isn't that much sillier than some of the cars you see in this movie. You know, like the one with hair and fists popping out the side. There's also a scene where a character throws a blue shell at another character. After watching this drift-heavy movie--seriously, if you play a drinking game where you drink every time a character talks about drifting, you'll die while watching this--I started drifting for every single turn in the game, but it didn't help. In fact, I went from my usual 9th place finishes to 10th or 11th place. 

Without charismatic characters--Vin Diesel does, by the way, have a brief cameo at the end, but it's too little and too late--you have to depend on the cars to bring the personality. Things start fine. This movie doesn't waste any time at all and throws the stupid at you right at the beginning with a race that would never have happened and doesn't make any sense while it's happening. Once we get to Tokyo, the cars all look pretty much the same to me, and there really isn't a single race or chase that grabs me like the action sequences in movies 4-6. Maybe those spoiled me since I watched them first. 

Thematically, this feels a little dangerous to me. One character tells another to "make choices and don't look back," and it just seems like that "No fear!" philosophy could get people in trouble, especially since most people are incapable of making good choices. If you're going to live your life following that advice, I guess you'd better make sure you have a good supply of Kleenex. 

Favorite moment: A Snickers commercial in the middle of the movie. It's embarrassing. 

Time Travel Movie Fest: Sound of My Voice

2011 mystery

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Two documentary filmmakers infiltrate a cult led by a woman who claims to be from the year 2054.

This is a movie you either like a little bit or really hate. I'll know exactly why people hate it. Those who hate it will cite its inability to answer questions or its deceptiveness, and I wouldn't blame them because those are the reasons I might actually hate this movie, too. However, there's just something about this one that grabbed me and kept me interested for the duration. There's a mystery here, mostly because characters on both sides of the argument are so sure are so sure about what's happening that you really want to believe them. You want to side with the skeptics because that's what common sense tells you to do anyway, and you've got presuppositions about cults anyway. And you want to side with the people all ready to drink the Kool-aide because their leader is hot and they have a really cool secret handshake.

Side note: I'm probably not going to join a cult although I did attend Johnson Bible College (now University) for 3 semesters which is close enough. But if I ever do join a cult, I hope they don't have a secret handshake because I'm not convinced I'd be able to remember it.

The characters are all so sure of themselves that all the cracks on either side just ooze. It makes it impossible to know what to trust, and Zal Batmanglij (wait a second--Batman with a typo after it?) toys with the audience in a way that, at least for me, didn't seem to obvious or annoying. The mystery evolved organically, and we get the find out things pretty much when the documentary filmmakers find things out.

This could have easily been yet another found footage affair, and I wonder if it wasn't planned to be something like that. As much of a fan as I am of the found footage genre (I'm one of the few who isn't tired of the whole thing), I'm glad this wasn't. The more-traditional storytelling, even though this doesn't have a beginning/middle/end that will satisfy most people, worked well. I also credit this with refusing to become something that you might expect it to be. It could have transformed into more of a thriller or even a horror movie; instead, it just kind of remains mysterious.

The acting's adequate enough to make this all believable enough, and Brit Marling--as the cult leader who may or may not be from the future--comes close to standing out. The control she has over her lines and this character is almost hypnotic, and there's a great moment where she sings a song by the Cranberries where there's this alluring vulnerability. It's one of those cracks that I was talking about earlier, but at the same time, the confidence her character has in the story she's trying to tell mystifies.

The God of Cookery

1996 cooking action movie

Rating: 13/20

Plot: The arrogant title character gets his comeuppance and has to climb his way back to the top with the help of some new friends.

This story's derivative, the kind of thing that clashes with the sort of energetic creativity you'd expect from a Stephen Chow movie. This is more manic than your typical action-comedy hybrid, but it's not quite as nutsy, or as polished, as Chow's more famous-in-America later films. A couple years before Shaolin Soccer, this movie feels like a guy still trying to find his voice. Most of my issues with the movie involve the storytelling. First, Chow's playing a character whose redemption is tough to root for. He's just such an asshole for the first twenty minutes of this movie. "Asshole," is the word they use, by the way. There are so many uses of that epithet, and I wasn't sure if it was a recurring joke (definitely possible), lazy writing, or lazy translations. Even when we reach a point in the movie where we're supposed to start liking Chow's character, he still kind of seems a little jerky. I guess they attempted to make the villain, Bull Tong, a more despicable character, but it was still pretty neck and neck. Bull Tong, which isn't dirty at all, sounds like it should be dirty.

There's a character in this named Wet Dream, by the way.

Another storytelling issue is the pacing. There's a moment in this movie where the romantic side plot made things wacky. You suddenly get people being shot in the face, Chow ages dramatically, and you have no idea what just happened. Later, they flashback to explain the whole thing, but it's almost like they had to do that because they forgot part of the story. Of course, even the totally random musical number about honesty sung by Turkey, a woman with jacked-up teeth, winds up factoring into the story, so maybe this storytelling is tighter than I thought.

If Jennifer Lopez played Turkey in a remake of this, you know she'd throw in a "Gobble Gobble" or two. 

The plot or even the characters aren't really what's important with this movie though. This is more about a series of madcap scenes that add up to something fairly entertaining. I enjoyed the cooking scenes, movements accentuated with kung-fu sound effects. A lot of the food prep montage stuff is very entertaining in this, most notably when Chow fries an egg in his hand. You know, because that is a badass move. There's also a fun moment where characters are lined up and have to say some variation of "Scumbag, go shove your beef balls right up your backside" so that a tough guy can figure out how dared say that to him. I wasn't quite mature enough to handle a scene where character discuss "spitting beef balls," or a character named Goosehead trying them, drenching everybody around him with beef juice, and then dancing gaily on the beach in a dream sequence. Some of the dialogue in this is fun, sometimes because of the dubbing/translations. "I will walk all over your dead body in victory!" is the type of line that more cooking shows needs, and I'm going to have to try to remember that if I'm ever engaged in competition of any kind. Best of all is a trio of flashbacked appearances by the 18 Brass Men of the Shaolin Monastery. You've got to like their style, and you've got to like how when they're engaged in fisticuffs, at least two of them just kind of pose in the foreground for no reason. This movie's got a wacky ending with dogs and angels and a twist that I predicted, probably because it was easy to predict. Nothing set me up for "Joy to the World" being played over the closing credits. What the hell was that all about? 

Spitting beef balls. Wet Dream. Nope, I wasn't mature enough to even watch this movie. 

The Conformist

1970 drama

Rating: 18/20

Plot: Marcello wants to be like all the other Fascist family men, but he's having a difficult time after being sent to Paris to assassinate his former professor.

I could easily write a thousand words, but you wouldn't read them, they probably wouldn't make that much sense, and pictures are better anyway. They're better in the case of The Conformist, at least, since the very best thing about this incredible movie is how it looks. The composition, the cinematography, the haunting colors, the camera angles. This is one of the most beautiful movies I've ever seen. Don't believe me? Click on the picture below to go to a site that collects a bunch of stills from this movie.

Everything's so perfectly framed, but it's not in a way that seems artificial. It's dreamlike, visuals that fit the anti-fairytale story, and it's really exhilarating. I think my favorite shots out of all the beautiful shots in this involve Stefania Sandrelli, the woman who plays Marcello's fiancee, a woman in a white and striped dress moving about a room where Venetian blinds cut stripes in the room. Or maybe it's a scene where a painting transitions into a coast, the clouds in the painting lingering to become the clouds in the sky. Or maybe it's a shot in a club where a window above the characters' heads shows pedestrians' legs passing back and forth. Or maybe it's that low-angled autumnal shot of swirling leaves and an automobile. Or maybe it's the shot of an eagle statue and a bust being carried, symbolism that I don't even understand. Or maybe it's lights breaking through winter trees.

Jean-Louis Trintignant stars in one of those complicated roles. There's a humor to the character, or at least a mild absurdity. Ultimately, he's a tragic figure, and that's not spoiling anything because you know he's going to be a tragic figure the whole time. I've liked Trintignant in the past--Amour, The Great Silence--and he's really good here. The woman, Sandrelli and Dominique Sanda, are alluring in their different ways, and they needed to be; otherwise, the story doesn't work. I also liked Gastone Moschin playing this sort of heavy, especially when he was silent. They're all pieces in a psychologically complex story complete with political intrigue, sex, and murder. My knowledge of European politics and especially fascism isn't strong enough to fully understand all the angles of this story. The connection between sex and violence puzzled me, too. The connection seemed obvious, but I didn't quite get what was being said, at least universally.

This isn't all despair though. There was quite a bit of humor in this, too. And I loved this line, one delivered by a blind person if I'm recalling things correctly: "A normal man is one who turns his head to look at a woman's bottom and notices that five or six others have done the same thing." That's a paraphrase, by the way.

Go look at more stills from this movie.

Time Travel Movie Fest: Tomorrow I'll Wake Up and Scald Myself with Tea

1977 comedy

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Nazis use time travel to try to give Hitler an atomic bomb. It's up to one man who pilots for a time travel tourism company to stop them and try his best to have a normal day.

Oh yeah, you know you're digging deep for a Time Travel Movie Fest when you start watching 70's Czechoslovakian sci-fi comedies. This is a clever little twist on the should-we-go-back-in-time-and-kill-Hitler moral dilemma that real time travelers are faced with. In this, the characters are going back in time to help Hitler which, of course, would create your usual paradoxes. But whatever because it's all in good fun. The budget doesn't allow for much, and the special effects are what you'd expect in a 50's B-movie. There's a rocket shippy time-travel vehicle, and there's some sort of mace used that freezes people and turns their skin green. I got a kick out of that actually, and there's a fun bit of physical comedy involving one poor guy who had that happen to him.

I was impressed with the lead actor--Petr Kostka. He plays dual-roles as twins, and really nails the different personalities--one, a regular Joe and the other a womanizing drunk--to create two different characters. a caricature or slapstick at all. Instead, they use loops of actual footage of Hitler during the opening credits to make him look ridiculous all on his own. If you've ever wanted to see Nazis marching backward or Hitler seemingly dancing to disco music, this is probably your best chance.

Hitler, with somebody checking out Hitler's posterior in the background

The music in this gets pretty goofy, and there are some parts that drag a little bit. But the movie's pretty clever, and some of the humor works. My favorite bit is a poke at America with some time travel tourists wanting to take a late-70's equivalent of a selfie with the fuhrer.

Time Travel Movie Fest: Triangle

2009 mind warper

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A day of sailing goes horribly wrong.

I didn't have high expectations for this low-budget movie and that rating actually seems a little high, but with a clever time-loop narrative and references to The Shining and "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," this Sisyphean nightmare has an intelligence that makes it memorable. Writer/director Christopher Smith has about the dullest name you can think of, but there's nothing mundane about this movie's story, one that starts slowly but draws you in gradually as it feeds you all these intriguing clues. You won't know what's going on at first, and if there's a flaw in the early part of the story, it's that Smith doesn't really do much to make you even care. A lot of the first third of this movie consists of characters walking around a boat saying, "Hello? Hello?!" But there are some key moments--none which I'll give away since the less you know, the more fun you'll have--where you not only start to get it but can't wait to find out what happens next. The mystery of this one grabs you.

I'm not sure how much I want to think about this one, but I was impressed with the amount of work that others have put into interpreting and analyzing this movie. Here, for example, is a message board post on imdb, and it seems like the author put more time into it than I did any of my graduate work. I got a headache sifting through a lot of this sort of stuff and felt that I understood the movie well enough without any of that, but it's the kind of discussion that shows this off as a thinking man's B-movie. It reminds me a lot of Timecrimes or Primer, those time travel movies that, even if you don't like them, you can appreciate for the amount of creativity and thought that went into the storytelling.

It's not perfect. Things do start slowly, at least if you can say things ever start in a time-loop movie like this, and the acting and dialogue isn't always great. Liam Hemsworth is the biggest name in the cast; the rest are unknowns which is probably a good thing. I thought lead Melissa George was adequate even though her character spends a lot of the movie in this shell-shocked stupor. But the dialogue could have used some work. "God, you shot him! He said you shot him! You're a bitch!" is a terrible line no matter how you look at it.

This one's definitely worth a watch if these time-loopy things are your bag. There's suspense, mild horror, and touches of surrealism that drive a really interesting story.

Gangs of New York

2002 movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Gangs in New York fight. One guy tries to get revenge against Bill the Butcher for killing his father.

This is Martin Scorsese's kung-fu movie, sans actual martial arts but with more than enough "You killed my father" and a typical kung-fu hero journey to make up for the lack of kicking. You've got an underdog protagonist, a colorful ornery villain with henchmen, a love interest with ties to both sides, and a build-up to an inevitable fight scene. I don't care what you say. This is a kung-fu movie.

This movie's too long, probably too ambitious, and kind of gets a little saggy in places where Cameron Diaz's character is involved. I guess I can't complain about the length because this movie is really a spaghetti western as well as a kung-fu movie. The story meanders a little like they usually do in spaghetti westerns. I have no idea whether or not this is historically accurate and if things really meandered this way, but none of that matters to me anyway.

The gang names are cool and almost inspired me to start my own gang just so I can name it. You always hear about pop culture influencing young people to make poor decisions. If I do form a gang, go ahead and assume that I did it only because of Martin Scorsese. The Forty Thieves, The Dead Rabbits, The Bowery Boys. Those are cool names. Of course, there's also a gang named the Pansies which, truth be told, is probably the gang I would end up in. I can see myself as a Pansy. And then there are the Shirt Tales (maybe Shirt Tails) which just makes me think of these guys:

I'd like to see a remake of Gangs of New York with those guys actually. I want to see Daniel Day-Lewis stab that monkey to death.

By the way, that Daniel Day-Lewis is a pretty good actor, and he's even better when you give him a ridiculous mustache. The wardrobe helps, but if you take him out of this movie and insert anybody else, the movie's not as good. And that's a sign that you've got yourself a special performance. I mean, I think I would have been happy sitting through 167 minutes of terrible movie just to hear him say the word "excrementitious" in this. The character of Bill is complex, one of those bad guys you almost want to root for just because he's so damned interesting. Poor DiCaprio can't keep up and has a shifty accent, but the relationship between those characters--one filled with subtle and lingering stares and even some hand-holding--is dynamic from start to finish. But man, that Daniel Day-Lewis. It's the kind of performance you love more because he's restrained most of the time, making the really intense moments that much more intense. And it's the type of performance where you want to discuss things like posture and hunching and eyebrows and finger points and the way he can wear a top hat better than anybody else in the history of film. That's why he was chosen to play Lincoln actually. There are other good performances in this movie--John C. Reilly, Liam Neeson (playing himself), Jim Broadbent--but Day-Lewis is always who you want to watch whenever he happens to be on the screen.

Seriously, if you can wear a get-up like that and still scare the crap out of everybody, you should just win all the awards. 

I remember watching this when it came out and being amazed by the opening fight scene, one that builds in intensity. I had my son watch it with me, setting it up with a "Hey, Dylan--watch this fight scene," but I think he was underwhelmed. It's increasingly graphic, increasingly quick, and increasingly chaotic, and the camera angles and editing made what could have been just another fight scene with characters we don't even know and therefore don't even care about into something that I had never seen before.

Scorsese made an interesting choice to use Sonny Terry in this. That harmonica and whooping is recognizable, and it's therefore anachronistic. I liked hearing it though. Of course, I always like hearing Sonny Terry. My favorite musical moment in this, however, is this guy playing a hammer dulcimer as a fight is starting. He starts playing it a little more uproariously once the fight actually begins. I need a guy with a hammer dulcimer to follow me around just in case I ever get into a rumble.

Regardless of whether or not any of this is true, it does manage to remind us that these were tumultuous times in our history and that our country has a foundation of racism, violence, and criminal activity. It makes the experience a cynical one, doesn't it?

American Beauty

1999 Best Picture

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Various characters look for beauty in America.

I've seen this more than once, but I'm sketchy on its meanings. So instead of writing about the movie and continuing to give my faithful readers the impression that I don't know what I'm talking about, I'm going to try something new and just list a series of questions about American Beauty. Let me know if you have a problem with it. Feel free to answer all of these if you want.

1) What's another well-known, highly-regarded movie that has a dead narrator, the ultimate spoiler alert? I know Sunset Boulevard, but it seems like I'm missing other notable examples.

2) What's it say about me if the most indelible image in American Beauty--more than the rose petals falling on Mena Suvari even--is of Kevin Spacey masturbating in the shower? "Look at me--jerking off in the shower." The high point of your day, Lester? Don't I know it, buddy. Later, bravely pleasuring himself under the sheets with his wife right next to him--and don't argue with me because that does take a certain amount of manly courage--he says, "So shoot me! I was whacking off! That's right. I was choking the bishop, chafing the carrot, you know, saying hi to my monster!" in a scene where he's just a little too unhinged.

3) Masturbation, recurring, has to mean something, doesn't it?

4) Is there a more 90's movie than this? There are certain movies--Fight Club, The Big Lebowski, Trainspotting, The Truman Show, American Psycho, Magnolia, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace--that are quintessential 1990's movies because they deal with that kind of strange decade thematically or the characters just feel trapped there. The themes of American Beauty certainly apply to other decades, but the ennui feels like such a 1990's ennui. It's a decade that requires a selling out and a soullessness. And all that friction in a society that doesn't seem to allow for friction. I lived that decade as both younger and older than the characters in this, but I can still identify.

5) How good is Annette Bening in this? Sure, you remember Kevin Spacey because he spends time in the movie masturbating, but why did I forget how good Bening is? I'm actually pretty sure what she does in this movie, mostly because she goes through a wider range of emotions, is more impressive than what Spacey does. "What do you call this? Is this not a plant?" Her delivery of that line as she's trying to sell a house and the subsequent, slaphappy breakdown is terrific. She almost reaches Nicolas Cage freak-out levels, and when your performance is mentioned in the same sentence as Nicolas Cage, you know you've done something special.

6) The creation of an artificial sitcom world with the appropriate sitcom world tone is intentional, right? On the surface, you've got this halcyon artificiality. I'm convinced that if you turn the sound down for the first half of this movie and showed all the scenes in the Burnham's home to somebody who has never seen this movie, they could assume it's some 50's sitcom family. They'd be confused about their clothing and decor probably, but they'd probably expect that kind of exaggerated serenity. Instead, it's this exaggerated reality, like bizarro-sitcom stuff, creating this irony that can make a grown Beaver uncomfortable.

7) Speaking of sitcoms, how much Three's Company did Alan Ball watch before writing this? Interestingly, Ball's only got one other feature film writing credit in his filmography--Towelhead. He's written a lot for television, but I'm not familiar with any of it. I should check some of his other work out to see if he rips off Jack Ripper with everything he writes. The shocking climax of this one is created from misconstrued words and images like every episode of Three's Company.

8) And speaking of Ball's writing, does anybody else find the drama/tragedy parts of this and the dark comedy parts of this jarring? They clash, almost unapologetically, and when I first saw this, I had problems with it. Now, it feels a little more natural. I like the jarring.

9) With that cheerleader routine--with Spacey and the camera leering, those CGI roses popping out of Angela's chest, that spotlight--do we all become pedophiles? There are scenes in this movie that make me feel like a dirty old man, mostly because I am actually a dirty old man. The feeling is stronger than when I first saw this back when I was in my 20s. Since I'm much closer to Lester's age this time, I connected to what was going on in different ways. And some of those ways aren't comfortable.

10) "Fuck me, your majesty!" Is there a woman on Earth who could resist the King's eyebrows? Is there a man on Earth who wouldn't give his left nut (or his right nut) to have those eyebrows?

11) Is "Would you like Smiley's sauce on that?" one of the most perfect lines from any movie? I think it is.

12) Shouldn't composer Thomas Newman be more of a household name? It seems like everybody in his family, including the more-famous Randy, is a film music composer. I liked the music in this a lot, especially when it was used as a cue for the fantasy sequences or the times when there just ambient noise. It's probably my fault that I don't really known Thomas Newman, isn't it? I mean, the guy's scored some really really good movies. Thomas Newman trivia: He's been nominated for Best Original Score 11 times, but he hasn't won. One year, he was a double-nominee, but still lost. I bet he can't stand being around Randy.

13) So what is "beauty" to each of these characters? Ricky talks about God "looking right at you just for a second," and how "if you're careful, you can look right back" and see beauty. That's a little abstract though. Ricky sees beauty in plastic bags being blown around, so he sees beauty in the mundane. Lester sees freedom as beauty. His wife? She seems to find the appearance of success or maybe conformity as beautiful. What about daughter Jane? What about Mr. and Mrs. Fitts? I mean, other than Nazi plates. And Angela?

14) Is part of the magic of this movie in its way of being difficult to grasp? Unless I just miss the obvious (which is entirely possible), this seems pretty open-ended. There are loose-ends, questions that refuse to be answered, and seemingly a couple fistfuls of ways you could interpret the whole thing. There's satire, there's humor, there's tragedy, there's a chilling final line that could potentially stab you right in the gut.

15) Do I like that there's a single scene in this movie that is out of chronological order? It's the opening scene which doesn't happen until much later in the story. I don't think I like that actually. It's tricky, a red herring.

16) Should I even mention how I like the use of Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower" in this? "There must be someway out of here, said the joker to the thief." It's a song that I've never been able to crack, at least not in any sort of complete way, but the idea of escape really fits with what's going on with the character.

17) Am I missing anything?

Time Travel Movie Fest: The Final Countdown

1980 historical time travel movie

Rating: 13/20

Plot: An aircraft carrier from 1980 is transported to December 6, 1941. Apparently, something important happened on December 7th, but I'm not enough of a history buff to know what that would be.

Random things I was distracted by while watching this movie:

1) The title--I couldn't get the Europe song out of my head. Obviously.
2) This reminded me of the game Battleship and how easy it was to cheat. "B3," guesses your opponent. Well, B3 was a hit until I just inconspicuously lifted my aircraft carrier off the board and put it someplace else. So, miss. Anyway, I kept wondering if that was going to be the surprise twist ending with this movie.

Lloyd Kaufman, of Troma infamy, executive-produced this and has a small part. It's not a tongue-in-cheek movie at all though. In fact, it's about as straight as it comes. I wish it would have tackled the ethics a little more. Here are characters who are faced with a moral dilemma about whether to change history and what the implications of that might be. Martin Sheen brings up the grandfather paradox like he knows what he's talking about, and the characters discuss the rights and wrongs of the whole thing a little bit, but there was so much more that could have been done with the idea. And it's hard to take Martin Sheen seriously because he looks a little too much like Charlie Sheen in this one. I really liked the concept here, but it just doesn't go anywhere.

I will say this--this is one of the few time travel movies I've seen during my Time Travel Movie Fest where the characters don't do anything that would create the paradoxes that often sink these types of movies or at least confuse people. For the most part, their little adventure doesn't change anything at all. I had to give it a bonus point for that.

Of course, that might be what makes the movie a little boring. It's a cool concept, but they go nowhere with it. They could have played with alternate time lines and other funky time-travel things. I suppose the budget limited them a bit. There's one scene that shows modern fighter jets and Japanese kamikaze pilots, shots that are almost surreal. I guess in 1980, it would have been hard to pull off a reinvention of Pearl Harbor with all these modern weapons.

Speaking of weapons, there's a lot of military fetishism going on here. This was made with the cooperation of the Navy according to the credits, and about 40% of the movie is just showing off the Navy's toys. With the over-the-top music, it started to feel like an advertisement for our military after a while.

I liked the time warp thing in this even if it was an antiquated special effect. The time travel itself is screechy and warped. It was pretty cool. But even though this movie won't be difficult to remember, it's not really because any of it is especially memorable.

Note: I have never lost a game of Battleship, probably because my little plastic ships frequently time-traveled.

Bad Movie Club: The 5 Kung Fu Kids

1988 kung-fu comedy

Bad Movie Rating: 2/5 (Josh: 1/5; Fred: 3/5; Libby: 3/5; Kristen: gave up; Alicia: gave up)

Rating: 9/20

Plot: Some kids get their marshmallow handbag mixed up with the marshmallow handbag of some criminals, and Nicole Kidman's not around to do anything about it.

Confession: I have no idea what happened in this movie. That happens when you're watching an Asian movie with no subtitles. Of course, it was dubbed. In German. How's that for an interesting experience? A kung-fu comedy dubbed in German. I can't say I'd recommend the experience. Josh, as a matter of fact, told me that this was the worst experience of his entire life. Or something like that. I'm paraphrasing. This is what happens when you put Fred and Libby in charge of Bad Movie Club for a night, I guess.

Actually, I'm not 100% positive that we even watched a movie called The 5 Kung Fu Kids. The title screen said Lucky Kids: The 5 Superfighters, but I can't find anything called that. I looked up the name of the director--Chu Chen Huang--and found this. Fred and Libby actually wanted to watch a kung-fu movie they caught part of at a restaurant called The Five Superfighters, but they mistakenly led us to this one instead.

Of course, it could be this movie:

Do I have a lot to say about this movie? I don't know. A fight sequence that utilizes bicycles isn't half bad, and the lengthy fight-filled climax has a few good moments. And a lot of people flying out of windows. In fact, it might break some sort of record for the most characters who break through windows in one movie. What else does this have to offer? You've got comical costumes; 4 kids who, if you squint and tilt your head to the side, kind of look like Herve Villachaize; some exaggerated sound effects, bicycle braking squeaks and misplayed trombones and Pacman dying sounds; a second BMC outing featuring Japanese hopping vampires; a soundtrack that can't figure out what it wants to be but does impress by lifting parts of the score from Raiders of the Lost Ark; characters dressed like Mario and Luigi; a trio of rectal gags and one fart attack. It's the sort of thing you imagine Japanese people laughing at, but I doubt it would have been any funnier even if it was in English and I could understand what the hell was going on.

Bad Movie Club has reached a new low.

I think I've seen these hopping vampires in four movies now. I can't say I understand what's going on there.