MOAR MOVIE REVIEWS!

Cruising
1980, William Friedkin

A sort of hyper-stylized, De Palma-esque gay fever dream. The plot is deliberately obscure (murder victims arbitrary reappear as murderers so it is impossible to determine who is the culprit in the murder mystery). It’s more or less exclusively about the grotesque homosexual leather rave parties and the highly sexualized grotesque gay-on-gay murders (which are magnificently filmed, by the way – Friedkin outdoes De Palma as his own Hitchcock-reverence/imitation-game). It’s a crude, homophobic freak show; a very entertaining and profoundly affective one.

Jade (Director’s Cut)
1995, William Friedkin

It’s a tough movie to love, I get it. It’s stubbornly slow, stiff and serious. David Caruso’s performance is absurd. The car chase is the worst. It is, however a miraculous achievement for the hard-headed pragmatist who did “The Exorcist.” Friedkin achieves something here he never achieves: beauty. I don’t often toss that word around, “beauty.” It’s awful. But how else to describe black and white footage of Linda Fiorentino writhing against a wall while being eaten out by some guy set to The Mystic’s Dream by Loreena McKennitt (which plays over the end credits and I can’t remember any other time that I’ve sat through the whole end credits of any movie ever).

Rampage
1987, William Friedkin

Rather silly. It’s a courtroom drama that begs the same question as most courtroom dramas, “Is he a criminal or is he crazy?” It shouldn’t be better than any given episode of Law and Order, but Friedkin’s script has a sort of loveliness to it, and it’s directed with the strange, offbeat gloominess as nearly all of his other films.

Inglourious Basterds
2009, Quentin Tarantino

There are worse films. I’ve been lucky enough to have seen only a few of them.

They Live
1988, John Carpenter

I like the metaphor (which I’ve been encouraged to believe is Reagan-era consumerism but putting on the glasses could just as well be taking hallucinogens, whatever the era) but I don’t think it’s quite on the level of Carpenter’s masterpieces “In the Mouth of Madness” and “Assault on Precinct 13.” The most powerful scene is the one where Keith David and Roddy Piper are beating each other up. It, in itself, says everything the movie has to say, which might be what’s wrong with the rest of it.

Sucker Punch
2011, Zack Snyder

Like “The Island,” it’s visually amazing, and it’s by a filmmaker who is clearly, unbelievably talented, but I don’t know who decided this was a script worth filming. I wish it would have been sadder; there was potential there.

Nancy Drew (2007, Andrew Fleming) > Wall-E (2008, Andrew Stanton)

“Nancy Drew”‘s lush colors and costumes, engaging mystery plot and numbingly charming protagonist make for a genuine pop masterpiece (Rachael Leigh Cook certainly doesn’t hurt matters), whereas “Wall-E” is too irresponsibly depressing for children and too relentlessly, cloyingly cute for adults (though Fred Willard’s bits are hilarious).

Swimming with Sharks (1994, George Huang) > Fight Club (1999, David Fincher)

If you’re the kind of person who believe a movie to be the sum of its parts, “Swimming with Sharks” won’t do much for you. The filmmaking is about as lacking in personality as it gets and there is a sort of bothersome hollowness to the characterization. If, like me, you find a movie fascinating even if it is not fascinating on all or even most levels, “Swimming with Sharks” will probably be worth the time it takes to watch it and then some and then even more. Though I don’t think I’ll ever shake my intuitive leanings toward the right, I admire the film for making what must be the most persuasive Marxist case for the intrinsic amorality of capitalism in all of contemporary cinema. The fundamental premise as I understand it is that capitalism inherently negates and denies the importance and relevance of emotional experience in human life and the movie is a vaguely Shakespearean extrapolation from there. The premise might be wrong, but if we take it on its own terms, the movie’s argument seems infallible, and it’s that kind of argumentative trickery that makes it so persuasive. Either way, the ending is more monstrously awful than anything in any Clive Barker movie – if only the filmmaking was better, I might have cried.

“Fight Club,” on the other hand… I guess someone arbitrarily decided that it was anti-consumerist (in actuality, both the consumerist and anti-consumerist lifestyles are depicted as horrible) but it really doesn’t make any pertinent points about any aspect of human life at all. Fincher does succeed in making a tolerable movie of confusing and lousy source material via his sly cinema-rhetoric and this is arguably virtuous in itself.

13/03/11

I was reading (in this biography on Jerry Seinfeld) that if you limit yourself to five hours of sleep a night, this sleep deprivation produces adrenalin in your body and you become more productive and effectively, it fucks with your brain chemistry in a way that approximates a manic or hypomanic state. I love mania as much as the next guy, I don’t want to experiment with this and here’s why: I don’t think that I could tolerate being awake that long. After twelve hours of wakefulness, I want the world to go away for a while. I don’t really enjoy being awake enough to want to actively extend the portion of a day I’m awake for.

Furthermore, to moderate my sleep cycle, I would have to use an alarm. I have two problems with this: a) the sound of an alarm is probably the worst sound ever in the history of man – the sound of a person knocking on the door and the sound of my phone ringing are also terrible b) whenever I set an alarm, I wake up and I’m too soporific to realize there was a real reason the alarm was not set so I turn off the alarm and go back to sleep. I suppose I would wind up with whatever the effects of interrupted sleep are, which I assume are irritability and tiredness.

10/13/10

“People can’t figure me out. They can’t process me. I don’t expect them to. You can’t process me with a normal brain.”

The weird thing about this Charlie Sheen quote is that I have felt exactly the same way.

Wayans’ World

“Did you just say ‘Merchant Ivory Wayans’?”

- Chris Hardwick to Zach Galifianakis

Scary Movie | 2000 | Keenen Ivory Wayans

With: Anna Faris, Marlon Wayans, Regina Hall, Shannon Elizabeth and Dave Sheridan.

The beginning was really terrible. It is better now that Anna Faris is on screen. She’s really pretty. No one ever talks about this… These are really bad jokes. I’m not angry yet but it’s only been ten minutes. I’m not looking forward to the other seventy-five… You know how you see retarded people in the video store sometimes? The ones with the down’s syndrome faces? This is the kind of movie I imagine them renting… Thinking of Charlie Sheen movie titles. Sheens from a Marriage. Not Another Sheen Movie. Sheen on Me… The notes for the review end here because the second half was interesting enough for me to actually watch it instead of write notes about it.

Scary Movie 2 | 2001 | Keenen Ivory Wayans

With: Anna Faris, Marlon Wayans, Regina Hall, Chris Elliott and David Cross.

James Woods is very funny. Good “Exorcist” parody there… Anna Faris is really adorable. These movies are reminding me of all the things I love about her… Chris Elliott just appeared now. He’s making me laugh maniacally. Now he’s bickering with David Cross. Great movie so far… This is weird. My notes say, “More entertaining than the Oscars.” I don’t know if that was intended to be a joke in itself or if there was an extra part that I forgot to write… Woah, just got back from a stressful argument/discussion with my mom. That was pretty nuts… Amusing ADR line: “There’s some freaky shit goin’ on in this house.”

Little Man | 2006 | Keenen Ivory Wayans

With: Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Kerry Washington, John Witherspoon and Tracy Morgan.

You’re wrong, Armond White. This movie is not about race, it’s about a midget pretending to be a baby and injuring men and sexually harassing women. It doesn’t matter that he’s black. That’s beside the point. It’s a terrible movie. Every joke is bad. Stop making everything a race thing. Everything does not have to do with race. A movie is not good just because black men made it and starred in it.

Dance Flick | 2009 | Damien Dante Wayans

With: Shoshana Bush, Damon Wayans Jr, Essence Atkins, Affion Crockett and Chris Elliott.

Five Wayanses are credited as writers on this film and yet another Wayans plays the protagonist. How many Wayanses are there?

Here’s the thing. I really wanted to review all the Wayans brothers movies but I got sidetracked by Anna Faris so here is a Anna Faris movie.

Smiley Face | 2007 | Gregg Araki

With: Anna Faris, Brian Posehn, John Krasinski, Danny Trejo and Jane Lynch.

A genuinely nightmarish stoner comedy that is better than “Pineapple Express” and “The Big Lebowski” because Araki doesn’t inexplicably allow stoner characters his ignorant and misguided adoration.

Anna Faris is one of the great comic actresses. The character she plays is a lousy human being but she’s very likable. She’s not “sexy” (I’m not going to Google image search her like I sometimes do to Katy Perry any time soon) but she’s so adorable.

I wrote the last two paragraphs while watching the movie and the movie’s over now and it was really amazing. I recommend it.

Freedom

x

Mormons are at the door. I pretend I’m not home. They knock and it bothers me that if I wanted a cup of coffee I couldn’t boil the jug because they’d hear it and therefore know I’m here. The knocking stops. They might be leaving but I don’t hear footsteps. They might be gone but maybe not. I wait to see. A minute passes. Now I’m sure they’re gone. To celebrate, I boil the jug.

“I’m sick and tired,” Madison says, “of your relentless disapproval of everything ordinary. You don’t work. You think about all the wrong things. You want to create things, to be an artist, but all your paintings, your songs, your stories, everything, they’re all terrible and incomprehensible and abstract and stupid and boring.”

y

My friend Scott and I are at a strip club. A brunette with great tits and a body that is not thin but is somehow perfect is grinding against me. I’m about seven shots in and I’m very tired. I don’t drink often. I’m already drunk.

Scott’s blond stripper kisses him and this is insane; the rules almost certainly forbid this. I realize I’m hard and I’m embarrassed by this.

z

Days later, I’m drunk and alone and I call Madison. I ask how she’s doing then I apologize. She says she doesn’t care (“I don’t give a fuck,” she says) so I apologize and try to explain. First she talks over the top of me then she hangs up. I call her again but she doesn’t answer. I try again. She doesn’t answer.

Lincoln Place

APARTMENT

A woman is asleep. Her ex-husband has the kids for the weekend. In a frame, there is a poem:

Enjoy today, it may surprise you
Do something your heart decides to

This woman (Jenny) spent most of her childhood and adolescent life living with her aunt and uncle on a farm in the middle of nowhere because both her mother and father passed away when she was six. Jenny is asleep because she took two Ambien. It’s three p.m. The TV in the adjacent apartment can be heard through the wall.

She’s dreaming about someone she hasn’t seen in years, a friend from an old job who was a lesbian: Hope.

APARTMENT

David’s tenancy agreement specifies no smoking but he couldn’t be fucked going outside every half hour or so. He smokes always and is smoking right now. There are four ashtrays in the apartment. He’s only been here a few months but already the place smells horrible. David started smoking to alleviate the boredom he felt between jobs once.

APARTMENT

The body of a twenty-one year old woman is suspended from the ceiling. A chair on its side is on the floor. We can tell by the length of the rope and the height (now length) of the chair that her fall was not far enough that the force could have broken her neck. What must have happened was that she must have choked and that must have lasted for some time before she died and the last few minutes of her life must have been agony and suffering and pain. This woman’s name was Katie.

Someone is knocking at her door and asking her to turn her TV down.

Sexual Hygiene

MONOLOGUE #1

Oh sure, I’ve been married. I didn’t want to have sex before marriage so I married a stranger and fucked him then divorced him. He was a loser anyway, working a job that sucked and paid poorly. He was one-eighth Filipino. Can you imagine my shock when I heard that little piece of pie escape from that little cunt’s mouth? I mean, I have no problem with the Filipinos but I don’t want their little cocks inside of me, especially when it’s unbeknownst to me – the true origin country of the little speck-cock!

He was a pedophile too, I promise you that. He and that little cunt daughter of his were hugging all the time and I can only assume that whenever I left or went into another room for a long time they were at it – fucking – like little rabbits. My husband cheating on me with his own daughter… just to think about it makes me sick… in my opinion, it’s disgusting.

MONOLOGUE #2

The first time I had sex I tried to eat the girl out and it was a disaster. Let me tell you, she wouldn’t have fucked again after that at least not before surgery. The whole darn cunt was a bloody mess and let me tell you she was NOT on her period it was all from me tearing at her flaps with my teeth. “Aargh!” she screamed, her fat, vaguely Asian face all contorted with terrible pain. It was very embarrasing and humiliating and weird for me.

The next time I had sex (yeah I gave it another shot – with a completely different girl, obviously) I ate out her asshole and pwoah! did it smell! and taste of poo! Let me tell you, I’m not gonna do that again.

MONOLOGUE #3

I hate guys in porn. I mean, guys in life are fine, not to fuck, I mean, to talk to. I like to be around guys, you know, as long as they’re not penetrating my anus and/or mouth and as long as my cock is not inside their orifices. I like to chat to guys, you know, that’s fine to me. I just hate guys in my porn. They’re all so fucking… like, they have the weird facial hair or they’re bald or they look fourteen or some other thing. It’s so gross to me.

I saw this one porn where the idea was that a gay guy was having straight sex. I mean, it was the same as any other porn but the only thing was that the title was different … I don’t know who it was intended for, me or the gays. Either way, I wound up coming to a different one, a blonde and a redhead sixty-nining, I think. I like the redheads in porn. That’s so cool to me somehow, that there are people and they’re born and they just have red hair, you know, like, with no dye at all.