Brandon’s movie memory

First of three anthology films in which famed author W. Somerset Maugham introduces short films made from his short stories. Each segment is from a different director, but you couldn’t tell… just plays like a classy studio picture all the way through (so that’s the producer’s name up top).

The Facts of Life - dad tells his college son, going to Atlantic City to play tennis, never to gamble, lend money or get involved with women. Son immediately does all three, wins a bundle, goes home with hot girl who steals it in the night. But he saw her and stole it back, accidentally grabbing her entire cash stash along with his winnings.

The Alien Corn - rich kid wants to be concert pianist, makes a deal with his parents and adoring wannabe-girlfriend, he’ll study piano for two years then play and be judged by someone trustworthy - if they say he’s good enough, he’ll devote his life to it, otherwise he has to quit and do something regular. Well he does, and a famous concert pianist comes to the house and tells him he sucks, to the delight of everyone but him.

The Kite - stupid one, dumb guy with awful parents is in jail for abandoning his bitchy wife because she trashed his prize kite. Wife learns to appreciate kites and they’re back together in the end. Katy compared the guy’s awful mother to my mom because Katy is mean.

The Colonel’s Lady - Katy already wrote a long comment about this one - I agree, it’s the only great piece in the bunch.

A pretty alright little movie, full of British people calling each other “old boy” and acting stuffy and proper to each other.

It’s nearly halfway through 2007, and all the “new” movies I see have 2006 dates on them. Even Knocked Up is ‘06 according to IMDB. Film distribution is a funny thing.

I don’t think anyone liked this except for me and maybe Jimmy. Disappointing, since I thought it was light and brilliant. Simple story, handheld camera, starts with a girl who totally fails to get into the soccer arena and gets led up the long steps to a holding area outside, high in the stadium, and left with some other nabbed girls.

One girl ditches her escort on a bathroom run, one was with her friend whose father shows up asking for help, one’s wearing a borrowed military uniform, one is all cocky talking back to the guards, and one doesn’t even like soccer but came in memory of a friend who got killed at a game the year before. Closing credits reveal that the characters were all unnamed.

Shot at the stadium itself, some shot during the actual game at which the story takes place, so mixing documentary and fictional footage in a Kiarostami / Makhmahlbaf style. These three guys are more interesting than the Mexican trinity of Cuaron / del Toro / Inarritu who the press likes to write about… but I suppose “Through the Olive Trees” didn’t make “Hellboy” bank and “Offside” isn’t in a tenth as many theaters as Children of Men, so why pay attention?

Movie addresses its political concerns without ever getting heavyhanded, without giving this doomed sense, without letting the girls get beaten or mistreated, so it stays watchable, with a mostly comic tone throughout. Ends in a big burst of nationalistic joy, as Iran wins the game while the cops are driving the girls away and their van gets swarmed by a celebrating mob so everyone gets out among celebration and fireworks.

Like all of Panahi’s films, this one was banned from Iranian theaters.

A surprisingly great movie. I mean, it’s Cronenberg so I oughtta like it, but at the same time it’s a late 90’s virtual reality thriller… not the kind of thing you can easily recommend to people, after the blitz that was Dark City, The Cell, The 13th Floor, The Matrix, and to a lesser extent, 1995’s Strange Days / Virtuosity / Johnny Mnemonic. But Cronie has been comfy working with virtually unreal worlds for decades, after Naked Lunch and Videodrome, and his movie easily stands above those others (not to knock Dark City).

It’s not the story, which is fine, or the is-it-real-or-not bits, which are well played and not overdone or inexplicable, it’s the look of the thing, the sleek style and great lighting… the compositions, which are uniformly attractive without calling attention to themselves or drowning the film in stylistic tricks. It’s genre sci-fi filmmaking that is so good it looks effortless. It won a silver bear in Berlin for outstanding artistic achievement, but was understandably ignored everywhere else.

Jude Law and Jennifer Jason Leigh (spoiler alert: last 90 seconds) are underground realists out to destroy the creators of virtual-reality video games. They play the premiere of a new game with its creator (Don McKellar)’s participation, along with gamers Ian Holm, Willem Dafoe and others.

Next level: JJL is premiering her new game to a crowd of excited gamers, but when an underground realist tries to assassinate her, security guard JL comes somewhat to the rescue and they go on the run together. Along the way they meet Willem Dafoe, Ian Holm and Don McKellar, but it’s never clear who’s on their side.

Various sub-levels back and forth. The “game pods” are organic, and plug into bio-ports in your spine, but on some levels it’s a mini gamepod that merges with your spine directly. There’s spy business at a chinese restaurant, acknowledged fake accents, CGI insects, a few killings and close calls, and the deadly spoooores.

Has the game-life analogies you’d expect from the genre and the body-horror, sexuality and organic technology mix you’d expect from Cronenberg. Seeing the movie for a second (third?) time, it’s nice to see that the movie really doesn’t trick you, that the ending makes sense. Whether the ending is the really real “real world” or if we’re still within a simulation doesn’t matter, since of course the movie itself is a simulated reality.

Movies: now more than ever!

Maybe I’ve seen The Player enough times that I don’t really need to write about it. One of the only movies that I like Tim Robbins in (besides Mystic River, Shawshank Redemption, and presumably Howard the Duck).

Things I forgot:
Whoopi Goldberg as the smartass detective
The Swedish artist who Robbins picks up was the dead guy’s girlfriend
Dead guy was Vincent D’onofrio
The author and his brother as the excited pitch men at the end

The only other place I’ve seen Robbins’ cute coworker / ex-girlfriend is “Happiness”, although she’s been on TV recently.

Good movie, man. Katy liked the movie but not the character.

Second-and-a-halfth time I’ve seen this. Next time I’ll have to find the longer (miniseries?) version.

Still my favorite wine documentary. Unnervingly unsteady handheld digital camerawork, wandering obsession with wine people’s pets, sudden shifts from one country to another, and interviews that give subjects plenty time to make their views clear or to make fools of themselves.

Movie starts (but does not end) in Brazil, which is apparently a difficult place to make wine. For the most part, the ol’ stickler traditionalists come out looking good (Mondille family, the guy below), the big-money company owners come out looking not so good (Michel Rolland, Mondavi, Antinori), and some other characters add flavor and remain neutral (critic Robert Parker, new york distributor Neal Rosenthal).

I read a great magazine interview with Jonathan Nossiter - was it in Cinema Scope? Will have to find that again. I love how idiosyncratic the movie is - the way the camera restlessly looks around instead of watching the interview subjects, the inclusion of scenes and dialogue that the subjects probably thought (knew!) would be thrown out, the rich v. poor, worker v. owner and globalization arguments stated or implied in every scene.

Katy liked the movie, I think.

Finally the hype has died down enough that I feel safe watching Sideways (still 2 more years to go for LA Crash, and at least that long for Babel).

Giamatti is a schlub with a bad novel, an ex-wife, a wine obsession and a poor social life. His buddy Sandman is a womanizer but about to get married this saturday. Road trip! Out to wine country to golf and drink and fuck strangers! Enter oscar-nominee Virginia Madsen and Sandra Oh to complicate things. Sex ensues, and Sandman gets his nose broken and goes and gets married even though he’s an ass and P.Giamatti ends the movie getting back together with V.Madsen.

Extremely not-bad, but never great in any way. I mean, I love watching Paul Giamatti do things, and nudity is fun and drunkenness is funny and relationships are hard, but the movie’s saying big ol’ nothing and seems a step down from Election (though I forgot About Schmidt came in between). Guess I could go back and read those hundred thousand reviews and discussions about Sideways posted online in 2002 and 2003, but it doesn’t seem like the kind of movie worth going on and on and on about either, god it’s less exciting than Little Miss Sunshine.

Katy likes it, and kickball said it was crappy.

This movie, are you kidding me? 100 percent awesome. Sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, split screens, mobile long takes and a shower scene with a knife. It could only be Brian DePalma’s parody-tribute to Phantom of the Opera.

Winslow Leach is writing a rock cantata of Faust and auditions it for Swan, the hugest most important record producer in the industry. Swan steals Leach’s cantata and adapts it for his new theater (Paradise), auditions some girls (Leach meets one briefly, Phoenix, falls in love, thinks she has a perfect voice for his songs, etc), then gets Leach falsely arrested and sent to prison, where his teeth are removed and replaced with metal ones for some reason I forget.

Leach escapes, returns as the Phantom of the Paradise, and kills the dude hired to sing his stuff (”Beef”). But Swan finds Leach and signs a lifetime deal with him to keep writing stuff that Swan will produce… a bad deal for both of them, I guess. After a life/death struggle for creative control and the love of the girl, they both end up dead dead dead.

Good music, good story, great movie. What in the world happened? Why have I never heard of this before? Why haven’t my coworkers heard of it?

Best part: the phantom stabs himself in the heart, but can’t die because he’s still under contract.

The missing link between Bonfire of the Vanities and Carlito’s Way.

Movie’s chugging along fine for a half hour, then helloooo awkward voiceover. Something must’ve gone wrong in the editing process, or maybe test screening audiences were confused.

John Lithgow:

I love how De Palma keeps trying to make artful tributes to Psycho, then Gus Van Sant just up and remakes Psycho, the dummy. Killing the female lead 40 minutes in… check. Same shot in the police station from Dressed To Kill, also in a police station. Characters named Dante and Cain, heh. With the knife to the hand, the wig/dress costume, the elevator scene and the multiple personalities, this thing has Dressed To Kill written all over it. De P. is referencing himself more than Hitch this time around.

John Lithgow:

The fun is to figure out which characters are John Lithgow and which aren’t (spoilers: his twin brother and the kid at the restrooms are, his dad is not). Whole movie is worth it for the awesomely choreographed long-shot slow-motion finale at a hotel.

John Lithgow:

DVD box says: “When Jenny cheated on her husband, he didn’t just leave… he split”. But he was split from the start, and the cheating only got him to try to blame her new guy for one of Lithgow’s murders (it only stuck for about 10 minutes).

John Lithgow:

Looked for a second opinion but it’s (the only one?) missing from Reverse Shot’s De Palma discussion page. Maybe I’m alone, but I think it’s a real cool movie.

aaaaand John Lithgow:

“this has never happened before… what am i gonna wear?”

Starring Steve(n) McQueen as a 28-year-old teenager, with his 25-yr-old teenage girlfriend.

Awful dialogue and delivery, low budget sets, long talky parts, nothing-special cinematography, inept sound editing, really it’s near-mst3k fare minus McQueen’s capable lead and a cool premise and neat creature. I suppose the criterion commentary’s gonna go on about how symbolic the thing is (note: no, just talking about the making-of, giving a little context). Weird movie for them to release… is it “important” or is it just a cool sci-fi movie with a big star to which they could secure the rights? Website says it was an indie movie (unusual for the 50’s) but can’t help throwing in that the blob was “comparable to if not incarnating the growing consumerism of 1950’s America). Probably not a must-see… the 1980’s remake will do fine.

“That guy asked for our help and we lit him on fire”

Wasn’t until the party-man cop arrived that I realized this was a comedy, not just a horror with some funny parts. Was the torture-porn “Hostel” a comedy? Maybe I’ll see Hostel 2 with my funny hat on, and I’ll enjoy it more than part 1.

Kids go off to cabin in rural town after graduation for weekend of sex and drugs and hunting and confessing long-held crushes. But! Local hunter gets crazy skin-rotting disease and goes off to die in the water supply. One kid gets skin disease, then another then another. Awesome fuckin high-kicking kid in town bites one of them, gets sick, his dad and buddies come rippin’ after the kids. Then the cops come, and shoot up the place. But wait, also total stoner dude (played by our fearless writer/director) gets eaten by his crazy dog, which then terrorizes our kids. Kids have no chance, do not escape, last one dies in the river upstream of the big town festival, where some cute girls are selling lemonade made from river water. Kinda like Pirahna but funnier.

Not totally paying attention cuz I was working on the last 20 entries for this here journal, but it dragged me in by the second half. Full of your obvious horror references (even has your Night of the Living Dead ending) but with plenty of original / unexpected bits and Slither’s sense of humor. Well shot, nothing special there, and better than usual writing. Had no idea I’d like it this much.

“You fucking named him elmer??”

Opens with 80’s-sounding music over shots of african masks to set spooky mood. Katy would be pleased. Movie wastes no time setting an utterly bizarre tone, with a very looney looking old couple trying to find their escaped brain-eating creature which has already attached itself to Brian (soap actor Rick Hearst). Creature looks like something between the brain stems from “fiend without a face” and a penis.

Movie sets off making howling sex and drugs references, using hilarious puppetry and video effects. When Brian gets juiced by Aylmer, he hallucinates hysterically. Climbs into an empty junkyard and parties to the lightshow coming off the cars that only he can see. In exchange for the trips, Aylmer gets to kill people and eat their brains. Brian finds out and tries to kick, but his brain juice addiction is too strong and he comes crawling back. Aylmer eats Brian’s girlfriend via french kiss on the subway (which is nothing compared to the blowjob scene earlier, which I am not surprised was cut from theatrical release). Movie has a kickass ending, with Brian overdosing on brain juice as the old couple return and squeeze Aylmer to death.

Along with the African mask bit, I love the movie’s understanding of homeless people. Brian passes a dirty homeless guy who spends his time under a fire escape drinking and crying.

I liked it. Very recognizably eighties, but still a psycho good time… weird enough and good enough to see again sometime.

Feels appropriate that I watched this over the course of a week, since it’s pretty episodic. Apparently (according to scraps of the commentary track that I checked out) it’s about the gradual enlightenment of Jodorowsky’s title character. The dude could use some enlightenment, too, what with his woman issues, his murderous obsessions, his strange attraction to people with deformities, and his tendency to kill animals on-camera.

El Topo, riding across the desert dressed in black, abandons his son in favor of some woman. The woman demands he prove himself by defeating the four gun masters of the desert. Somewhere along the way they pick up an evil hot woman who talks like a man and I don’t know what that’s about. Anyway, Topo tricks and murders all four masters: blind guy; digs a hole in front of him, fall, fire… guy who always hits heart; ash tray in front of heart… guy who lives for love; distract him by crippling his wife… and crazy guy with no possessions, no gun, nothing; shoots himself to prove he has left no material desires!

Okay, but woman leaves him for the other woman, and they shoot him all up on a rickety bridge (give him the five wounds of christ, as a.j. immodestly explains on the commentary), then some mutants drag him into a hole, the end.

No! He wakes up 30 years later all white-bearded. The cripples and deformed have kept him alive as a god, and now he must leave the cave, go to the town and get help so they can all be free. Of course he does this by bringing a short woman with him and performing awful vaudeville routines for money to afford dynamite. Long story short, they free the cripples, the townsfolk mow them all down, and Topo duels his now grown son.

I had not-great memories of this one… remember most of it taking place inside the mountain (hardly any of it does!) and the picture and sound being bad, bad bad. New DVD looks miraculous… the desert sky so bright and blue. Movie not nearly as dull and drab as I remember it (and as recent restoration reviews have been saying), it’s totally watchable, and its horrible weirdness makes it worth watching.

Is it a GOOD movie then? Well it’s got some style (love the bridge scene, the rides through the desert) and it’s weird enough to recommend (most movies could stand to be weirder). I liked it more than I didn’t, so yeah, why not?

Sooooo bleak. Not the normal kind of resistance movie. Their struggle is necessary but hopeless. Movie opens with our main guy escaping from a camp, then having the guy who ratted on him killed. Many small triumphs and large defeats later, we end with the gang shooting one of their own then driving away as the titles tell us how each of them later got killed in the struggle.

Hardly any non-diegetic music, superbly shot, dark and dreary but not in a tiring way, more of a matter-of-fact “this is how things are” straightforward way.

These are not heroes in the regular movie sense of the word. Theirs is not a glorious fight… it’s hardly a fight at all, more a struggle for survival. The problem is that it would be easier to survive by living ordinary lives, by cooperating with the nazi regime, by ratting on their fellows, by doing any of a number of things they refuse to do, by giving in. The movie is about how much it can suck to be moral, to stick to your convictions. While those in the resistance who survived the war can’t have much to be proud of… unlike most residents of their country, they also can’t have much to be ashamed of. A great, great movie. Nice contrast to the portrait of resistance to nazi occupation in “Black Book” this year.

Imamura’s comeback film a decade after “Profound Desire of the Gods”. Flashed back and forth in time and space and starts at the end, rather like most of today’s movies, telling story of a sociopath killer with a troubled past. Iwao Enokizu is on a delivery run when he kills a couple of guys. Goes on the run for a couple months, pretends to be a professor and takes up with a girl at the boarding house he’s hiding at. They seem to like each other, but he ends up killing her (and her distrustful ex-con mother) and I think one other person before getting caught.

Style to spare. Not my favorite movie, but definitely good and possibly great, makes up for the last Imamura movie I wasn’t too sure about, “The Eel”. Happy to see a very modern Japanese movie, not a sloggy period piece. Watched with Jimmy Lo, who also liked. Made about the same time as Days of Heaven, Apocalypse Now, Stalker, Stroszek, Kagemusha, Zigeunerweisen, Altered States and The Elephant Man.

Felt kinda empty and unexciting. Too bad. Bruce Campbell has a longer, funnier scene than usual, but otherwise it’s a big ol’ studio comic picture. The Sam Raimi that brought us Evil Dead is gone. Oh well, enjoy the aerial acrobatics and the sandman effects and wait in line for the next one.

Tobey is still our man, Kirsten is still better to look at than to watch, and Franco is still a rich and vengeful third wheel (feat. a welcome Daddy Dafoe cameo). But we need more baddies with half-assed excuses to dislike spiderman, so we’ve got Parker responsible for photographer Topher Grace losing his job, and we’ve got Thomas Haden Church who apparently killed spidey’s uncle and I think Topher convinces Haden that Tobey did something I dunno it doesn’t matter.

Coincidentally, Tobey turns the dude he fired into Venom, and the dude who killed his uncle turns into Sandman. but first, Tobey experiments with the Venom suit and goes all Chris Gaines in some horrible dance/club sequence. Sandy blows away unharmed, Venom “dies” strangely, and Franco dies by rocket sled, same as his dear daddy.

Also Theresa Russell was Haden’s wife but I didn’t notice at the time, and Bryce Dallas was Topher’s girl.

Anyway, there was some effects and stuff, and I dig Topher’s style. Movie was just good enough to keep seeing the sequels. This ranks somewhere between the grim and badly paced Batman Begins and the surprisingly decent X-Men 3.