by ·Comments Off on Triplets of Belleville (2003, Sylvain Chomet)

“Is that it, then? Is it over, do you think? What have you got to say to Grandma?”

Watched this again because Katy had never seen (and the mime sequence in Paris je t’aime put me in the mood). Had never seen on video – still just as good as it’s always been. Last-minute before the picture I tried to mislead Katy into having low expectations, so surely she would come out of the movie ecstatic with joy because it is surely one of the best animated features made in our lifetime, but the ploy didn’t work and she told me it’s okay, watchable but a little slow. Poo.

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I love the parts about the tortured psyche of the dog and his awful lifelong relationship with trains. Love how, when the dog is little, he just looks like a full-size dog hit with a shrink-ray. Love the sad look that a disguised gramma gives the biker when she finally finds him (below).

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A newspaper refers to the French Mafia as the suspects in a biker’s death, which is the clue that leads gramma to their lair… I’d forgotten that bit. I guess our biker was never going to win the tour de france anyway… he’s way in back when he is captured (even though he always outruns the others during the mafia-inflicted games). The DVD comes with a silly music video for M, the performer of the title song (lyrics written by Chomet himself).

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IMDB users have sleuthed out some details in the Tour de France scenes and determined that the movie takes place in 1957.

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by ·Comments Off on Destricted (2006)

“A compilation of erotic films intended to illuminate the points where art meets sexuality”

A real mixed bag. I sat down just to watch the Larry Clark segment (which turned out to be the best) and ended up watching the rest, because the transition from Impaled into The Triplets of Belleville would have been too awkward.

Impaled by Larry Clark
Casting couch for a porn film. Bunch of guys (one, a virgin, flew in from Utah) sit down and answer questions: why are they here, what experience do they have, what’s their history with pornography, and what would they like to do? Then each gets up and shows off his package to the camera. They pick a guy, then the girls come in one by one, but they guy stays in the room and gets to make his own choice. Picks a 40-yr-old mom who will do anal, maybe because she’s the cuddliest to him during the interviews. Awkward sex ensues, with the same lighting and angles as the audition. Strange, enlightening.

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Sync by Marco Brambilla
Surprisingly cool. Just two minutes of extreme editing from one porn image to the next, forming a pattern of similar shots and poses. Must have been awful to make this. Director made Excess Baggage and Demolition Man!! Must have been awful to make those too.

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We Fuck Alone by Gaspar Noé
Along with Catherine Breillat and Todd Solondz, I like to avoid Gaspar Noé whenever possible. Was dreading this one, but even though it wasn’t any good, it also turned out not to be overly traumatic. There’s some standard porn stuff on TV, and the same show is playing in two bedrooms. The girl is masturbating in her bedroom very gently and lovingly with cuddly fluffy teddy bears helping her. The boy is masturbating in his bedroom roughly, treating his blowup doll like a slave, finally sticking a gun in its mouth. Do you see the point we are trying to make here? Goes on for 15 minutes. Oh, with a strobe-light effect on the entire thing.

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Balkan Erotic Epic by Marina Abramovic
Bunch of weirdness involving the recreation of fake-sounding Balkan old wives’ tales. Group nudity out in the fields, men humping the ground, and women with baddd saggy boobs. Abramovic apparently has made a career of this, with her other works called Balkan Baroque and Making the Balkans Erotic.

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Death Valley by Sam Taylor Wood
Single shot of a guy jacking off in Death Valley – I didn’t get it. Katy said the backdrop looked fake. Director is a woman who does video work for the Pet Shop Boys.

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Hoist by Matthew Barney
Barney creates a tractor-machine with a spinning crankshaft in the center that looks like his trademark vasoline on a clay pottery wheel, then hoists it on a crane, while a guy within the tractor who has a turnip up his ass rubs his penis against the vasoline. High-concept I am sure.

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House Call by Richard Prince
As far as I can tell, this was just a short doctor-makes-house-call porn piece, filmed, worn, transferred to video, played on a TV and videorecorded. Third or fourth-gen porn with abnormal music and horrible color. I dunno, I got distracted at this point.

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by ·Comments Off on Offside (2006, Jafar Panahi)

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.

by ·Comments Off on Mondovino (2004, Jonathan Nossiter)

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

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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.

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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).

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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.

by ·Comments Off on Sideways (2004, Alexander Payne)

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).

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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.

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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.

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Katy likes it, and kickball said it was crappy.

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by ·Comments Off on Cabin Fever (2002, Eli Roth)

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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by ·Comments Off on Spider-man 3 (2007, Sam Raimi)

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.

by ·Comments Off on The Valet (2006, Francis Veber)

Still shocked that I liked this, after the awful cheesy trailer. It’s well-played light comedy, a story of little consequence, but kept on a high enough level that I even recommended it to people. The director is well known for quality (The Dinner Game), but I’d so grown to dislike that trailer that my enjoyment of the movie was as surprising as if I’d ended up liking The Italian or the last two Pirates of the Carribean films.

Anyway, valet is standing next to fabulously rich dude arguing with his supermodel girlfriend when a photo is shot by tabloid journalist. In order to keep his fortune from a wife who’d love to catch him cheating, the rich guy has to pretend the supermodel wasn’t with him at all, but with the other guy, the valet. So he and the wife hire competing teams of spies to follow the two around, one group trying to prove the valet and supermodel are not together and the other trying to make it look like they are. Fun premise, and it’s carried through well. Valet ends up with his childhood girlfriend after they get plenty jealous of each other’s new lovers, and model gets her revenge on rich guy, with the closing shot having the same photographer catch him in a trap standing next to a transsexual.

The Farrelly brothers are supposed to helm the U.S. remake in 2008.

by ·Comments Off on The Wind That Shakes The Barley (2006, Ken Loach)

Kind of ruins the Atlanta Film Festival to take a break from their offerings and watch a movie this good.

I don’t know much about Ireland vs. England but it looks like a bad scene. Bros Cillian and Teddy turn to rebellion after being terrorized by brits, then when their guy signs a peace agreement, Teddy joins the new government while Cillian keeps fighting. ‘ventually Ted kills his own brother.

Family vs. country / neighbor vs. neighbor thing plays out very effectively. Movie leaves me with my stomach burning. All shots of countryside are heartbreakingly wonderful. No death is taken lightly. Loach takes his “socialist realism” to a Serious Historical Topic and succeeds hilariously. Best picture at Cannes no duh. I’m only writing so little because I waited too long and have lost some details.