The Libertine (2004)

  Happy Halloween, everyone!  I know this isn't technically a Halloween movie but absolutely everyone reviews horror movies for Halloween.

I don't know that I could recommend this movie to a lot of people.  Not because it's a bad movie per se but because I think you have to have a certain level of self-loathing to relate to the character and I would hope that none of you have the misfortune to identify.  Suffice to say that I do.

The story is based on the sordid life of John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, a favored poet of King Charles II's court.  He had the dubious distinction of being infamous in his own time due to the very public satires he performed about the king and other exploits, such as abducting a promising heiress from her coach necessitating their marriage.

The film portrays him as a man overrun with his personal demons, a man seeking to lose himself.  He loves the creative outlet of the theater but simultaneously hates it for the fickle nature of its patrons.  He's the kind of man who works to make others love him but never know him because if they get too close they would see the cracks running throughout an outwardly brilliant gem.  To this end, he sabotages every relationship.  He doesn't give a shit about what anyone thinks, not his peers, not his detractors, unless it's amusing.  He craves the attention and limelight but despises the fools stupid enough to give it to him.  Boredom is his constant enemy.  A genius, yes, but a cruel one.

The thing about self-destructive people is that they do eventually destroy themselves.  Rochester dies from a combination of severe alcoholism and numerous venereal diseases.

So, not an uplifting film by any standard.  It does provide a very good public service message for anti-depressants, though.

This will have to count as my Christy experiment for the month.  She originally wanted me to watch either Apocalypto or Crash but I just didn't have time to get to either of them.  Still, tomorrow is another day and another month as it happens.

The Hangover (2009)

Did you ever hear the expression it never rains but it pours?  That's pretty much the tagline for my life.  I will go months without a date, weeks without even making eye contact with a dude, and then BAM!  I'll date like four of them at once.   The last date I had was almost a solid month ago for Machete.  Before that, I think the last one was in June.  Anyway, I'm not here to rant about my sporadic love-life.  There are tons of blogs for that.

I went on a date Tuesday night with a guy I'd been flirting off and on with for a couple of months.  We went out to dinner then he suggested going back to his place to watch a movie.  I know.  That's like the most transparent line ever.  I have personally used it (back in my younger days) to lure the unsuspecting back to my room.  Blade was my background noise of choice. 

But maybe I'm just slutty because he picked the movie and then actually sat through the whole thing without making a single move on me.  As you've no doubt guessed from the title, he picked The Hangover, one of a shortlist of films I hadn't seen. 

I'm not usually into buddy films like Swingers or Old Dogs since they're heavy on male bonding and gross-out humor.  I'm not a male, I don't bond, and I'm not amused by poop.  I had heard the hype about Hangover and I might have gotten around to seeing it on my own eventually but you probably shouldn't have held your breath over it. 

I have to say, it was better than I thought it would be.  I genuinely laughed at several moments in the last half.  Granted, there were a lot of things I could have lived without but I am not in any way the target demographic and I respect that.  I wouldn't put it in the same bachelor-party-gone-wrong category as Very Bad Things but it was still better than I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell.

Tosca: The Movie (2001)

  This is less of a movie review post than it is a wine review post.  As I mentioned in my last post, I do not drink....vine (10 pts if you get that reference) because I'm allergic to the grapeskins but I read a handy little trick about taking an antihistamine before drinking.  I don't know why I didn't try it before.  Probably because being allergic to wine doesn't really impact my life in any way.

Anyway, before we just blindly trusted some magazine article, Christy and I bought a bottle of wine to test it out.  I popped a Zyrtec and waited about an hour while we let the wine breathe.  The choice was a blend of petite Sirah, old vine Zinfandel and old vine Mourvedre bottled in 2007 by Bogle Vineyards.  It's called Phantom.

We hated it.

It could have been that we're not wine connoisseurs by any stretch.  I'm sure we could have researched the label and determined if that was a good year or even been more discerning in our selection by not picking the one with the prettiest bottle.

It had a very flat mouthfeel.  The first taste was very watery but if you let it sit on your tongue you could get flavors of dark cherry, a little bit of current, and the undertone of the cold clammy hand of death.  This wine tasted exactly how I would imagine drowning in a peat bog feels.  We ended up pouring it out and drinking a bottle of champagne I had in my fridge since New Year's Eve.

Oh, and we watched Tosca.  It's a French movie production of the classic Italian opera of a diva in love with a painter who has been arrested by a corrupt policeman.  It's not a movie based on the opera, nor is it a filmed production of the actual performance, but some weird hybrid of the two.  The black and white bits are the behind-the-scenes at the rehearsal or sound check or whatever and the color parts are the story.  I'm sure it would have been more appealing if we weren't half-drunk on wine made from the blood of dead hobos and bubbly.

Get Him to the Greek (2010)

  As I mentioned, my cousin Christy is visiting.  So last night we went to Rockville, MD for a dinner party with her childhood friend.  I know, a real dinner party!  Like adults!  We brought wine.  I don't normally drink wine ever since I found out I was allergic to it.  Not death allergic, but hives allergic.  Then I read an article specifically about wine allergies.  Turns out you can just take an antihistamine and you'll be fine.  Who knew?

Anyway, after dinner, Christy convinces our hosts to throw in the movie while my back was turned.  Why the underhanded nature, you wonder?  Well, mostly because she's evil but partly because she wanted to see it and knows how much I hate Russell Brand.

It was a terrible movie and, hopefully, it taught her a valuable lesson.  It wasn't that the movie was unfunny (though it was) and it wasn't that it was badly acted (though it was), its greatest flaw was that it was cripplingly boring.  Literally no one in the room was paying attention to what was going on on-screen.  I personally hated every single one-note character equally.  Christy told me that her least favorite was Sean Combs.  At least he had an excuse by not really being an actor.

Also, this needs to be said:  not all movies deserve the Blu-Ray treatment.  I could count every pore on Jonah Hill's face.  Action movies, animated films, and movies with a million special effects?  Yes, yes, yes.  Movies with none of those things do not need to be made into Blu-Rays.

RED (2010)

My cousin Christy, she of The Experiment, is visiting me this week.  Hence the delayed posting.  We went to see RED on Saturday, then drove to Annapolis that night, and yesterday we went to a Renaissance Faire up in Maryland before going to a drag show in Crystal City.

Whew.

So, the movie.  In a word, it rocks.  Bruce Willis is a CIA agent finding retirement to be a drag.  The one bright spot of his life is the burgeoning romance he has with the phone operator at the pension office who, against all probability, looks like Mary Louise Parker.  Then it all goes wrong when some people try and kill him for a mission he did back in the day.  So he kidnaps Sarah the pension worker (for her safety) and drags her around the country to meet his crazy old CIA friends who are Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, and Helen Mirren.

They run around killing people and complaining about how things were better back in the old days and young whippersnappers not showing proper respect.  Karl Urban is one of those whippersnappers, a blindly ambitious CIA operative on Bruce Willis' trail.

We laughed almost the entire way through this movie.   Both of us decided about thirty minutes in that this definitely qualified as a Must Buy.  Christy said that she would possibly even rank it a higher priority than Twilight:  Eclipse which is kind of a duh for me.  I would rank unnecessary dental surgery higher than any of those sparkly bastards.  But it goes toward how awesome RED was for her to say that.

Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988)

In case you're wondering why the Tuesday post, I didn't work on Columbus Day so I got an extra movie in.  You're welcome.
  Creative spelling aside, this was a good movie.  If it had had a better cast of actors, it would have been a great movie.

First, every detail of the Killer Klowns was startlingly perfect.  From the cotton candy cocoons to the popcorn embryos (or seeds or...you know what, it was popcorn that germinated into other evil space clowns, you come up with your own metaphor) to the circus tent spaceship, everything looked as though it was a natural habitat for extraterrestrial traveling performers....that liked to liquefy and eat people.  The costumes were great, the masks actually managed to convey slight expression changes (which is hard to do with one-piece of rubber) and the people inside the costumes captured that creepy/funny vibe and really sold the performances.

They were completely let down by the movie's human cast.  To a one, they were annoying, shrill, wooden and fully deserving of a terrible death by shadow puppet T-Rex.  All they had to do was be moderately attractive youths who could make an invasion of alien clowns seem scary.  It's not hard.  They're clowns!  The producers could have hired people off the street and come up with expressions that were more realistic.  They didn't even have to worry about timing or pacing, since they were supposed to play every line straight.

I know, I know, I shouldn't expect Oscar-worthy performances from a cast that was probably paid in Ramen noodles but this movie would have been so epic if they had just managed to find even one diamond in the rough.  And no, Christopher Titus doesn't count.

Dangerous Beauty (1998)

  This movie surprised me.  I figured that it would be a sappy piece of schlock based on the Netflix sleeve but it had a lot more to recommend it.

It's based on a book called The Honest Courtesan which is based on the historical account of a 16th century Venetian woman named Veronica Franco who rose to prominence as a courtesan after finding out that she didn't have the money to marry, then had to fight accusations of witchcraft from the Inquisition.

16th century Venice was not a good time to be a woman.  (Basically any time before the Nineteenth Amendment was a bad time to be a woman.)  Unless you were a courtesan.  It was the only opportunity to get an education and to take charge of your own destiny.  If you were good enough, you could stand shoulder to shoulder with the most powerful men of the day.  The only downside is that you'd be an outcast among all the "goodly" married ladies and that you run the risk of being made a scapegoat for a plague and burned at the stake.

At its heart, this is a love story between Veronica and the rich nobleman she was prevented from marrying.  You know how much I hate love stories.  It is not, as some have intimated, because I lack the capacity to love or am incapable of appreciating romance.  It's because most of it is all bullshit and real people don't act like that.

I type this with gritted teeth, but according to the movie, she and her man remained lovers the rest of their lives.  So, yes, I suppose it is possible that two people can be meant for one another.  Are you happy now?

The Ninth Gate (1999)

God, I haven't seen this movie in forever.  Long enough that I forgot who was in it.  Not Johnny, nooooo, I could never forget him....  (wistful sigh)

I'm talking about Frank Langella and Lena Olin.  Those are not generally people you forget in movies.  For some reason, they just didn't stand out very much in this movie.

I have seen at least four Roman Polanski films:  Rosemary's Baby which is a Halloween classic, The Fearless Vampire Hunters which bored me to death and took me three tries to sit through, Death and the Maiden /shudder, and this one which I didn't hate but I don't love.  From this I determine that I'm not really a fan of Polanski's work.  (I'm going to avoid any mention of the man's personal life and legal trouble because I don't think what you do for a living has any bearing on who you are as a person.)  I think some of his camera work is really stunning and his perspectives are interesting and differ so much from my own that it forces me to follow.  I like things that challenge my previously held point-of-view.  I have issues with the pacing of his films.  He has these huge lags where nothing very interesting is happening and that annoys me.

Also, character development.  Like, the green-eyed chick that follows Johnny around the entire movie.
  This one.

Who the fuck is she?  She doesn't even get a name in the credits!  Is she the devil?  Is she a witch?  No one knows.  She's just a freaky chick with awesome contacts.

This movie just seemed so half-assed.  It could have been awesome but settled for just mediocre.

I Hate Valentine's Day (2009)

So, this was the Christy Experiment for September.  I am just now getting around to posting it and I apologize for my tardiness.

Poor Nia Vardalos.  She hit gold back with My Big Fat Greek Wedding but lightning apparently just does not strike twice.  And that's coming from someone who actually owns Connie and Carla.  Where's all my drag queens?!  Holla!

Let me tell you the main problem with this movie.  It stars Nia Vardalos.  Now, that's not a dig on the lady.  She's a very talented writer and a decent director.  She's also almost 50 years old.  That's a bit long-in-the-tooth to be playing a wide-eyed ingenue, especially when the premise of your movie is that your character was so scarred by her parents' divorce that she has made a philosophy out of never seeing a man for longer than 5 dates "to keep the romance alive".  That works when you're 22, not 48. 

If you're almost half a century old and you've NEVER had a relationship last longer than a couple of months because of your daddy issues, you need to cash out that retirement plan and get a therapist on retainer pronto.

So she meets a dude who is opening a tapas restaurant around the corner and whamo!  Plot.  He agrees to her 5 date requirement and then we run into the second glaring deficiency of the movie.  If her window decorations are to be believed, they stretch five dates into a year-long process.  A solid year!  I don't know about you, but if I'm dating someone they better not wait for the next Federal holiday to ask me out.  Hell, I delete people from my phone if I don't get a text at least once a week.  Now I understand the symmetry of the idea, that the first and penultimate dates should be on Valentine's Day, but time does not work that way.

Despite these glaring errors, the movie itself is less horrible than most of the ones she picks for me.

Death and the Maiden (1994)

  This was a horribly creepy movie.  And not in a fun way.

I don't know why Netflix recommended this.  Perhaps I had been thoughtlessly cruel to it at some point.  If so, Netflix, I apologize whole-heartedly for whatever transgression I may have committed against you.  Please don't punish me like this any more.

So, the entire cast is white people playing Latin people.  Sigourney Weaver was a political dissident who was systematically tortured and raped before eventually being freed.  She married the editor of the underground paper she was working for and watched him rise up through the ranks of the new more-tolerant government.  At the beginning of the movie, we find that she is pissed off because Hubby just took a job that will allow him to prosecute the people responsible for all the torture ONLY in cases that ended in death.  Meaning she is shit outta luck for justice.

During a horrible storm, hubby gets dropped off at home by a kind stranger after a flat.  She recognizes the stranger's voice as the doctor who was in charge of her terrifying rape sessions.  So, of course, she steals his car, stranding him at the house.  She then proceeds to tie him up at gunpoint and threatens him with death unless he confesses.  But is she just a crazy paranoid woman who snapped?

Now we know he actually is the evil bastard who tortured her because 1) it's Ben Kingsley.  He's always the bad guy and 2) LT Ripley wouldn't make a bad ID like that.  She's killed aliens.

Anway, the movie is ambiguous and disturbing.  Is he just saying stuff to try and get out of there alive?  Did he actually do the things she says he did?  These are questions the movie wants you to try and figure out while Sigourney and Ben try and out-creep each other.  No me gusta.

Kung Fu Panda (2008)

  My neighbor, Kim, gave me this DVD while she was cleaning out some old stuff.  I hadn't seen it since the theatrical release.  I remember being really disappointed that they had gotten this super-talented voice cast with Jackie Chan, Lucy Liu, and Angelina Jolie and then barely used them.  They had maybe three lines apiece.

Watching it again, I was prepared for that and, this time, I enjoyed the movie on its own merits.  Ian McShane was an absolute stand-out for me as the evil kitty.  I still would have liked to see more interaction between his snow leopard and Angelina's tiger.  (And that's not a euphemism.)  It would have been more symmetrical, I think, to have the two of them meet for longer than forty seconds to fight, considering that they both could relate to being child-figures to Cifu, the dormouse.

Also, and this is just a minor point:  They refer to the dormouse as Master Cifu, but, unless my knowledge of Asian martial arts films has failed me, Cifu is Mandarin for Master.  It's redundant, like saying Major Major.  Things like that bug me.

Little Shop of Horrors (1986)

  This is such an awesome musical.  Based off a crappy B-movie (directed by Roger Corman) which was turned into a successful Broadway show, this movie is super fun, campy, and star-studded.

Plus it's got a giant murderous plant that sings.  That's awesome!

Seymour (Rick Moranis) is a sadsack who lives in a failing florist shop in Skid Row.  He's desperately in love with the gorgeous but damaged Audrey (Ellen Greene), even though she's in an abusive relationship with a sadistic dentist (Steve Martin).  He finds a bizarre little plant during a total eclipse and sticks it in the front window to bring in business.  The plant grows exponentially after he discovers its favorite food:  blood.

Plus, singing!

Exiled (2006)

  This movie was so weird.  It was like watching three different films at once.  It couldn't decide if it wanted to be a revenge film, a comedy, or an action movie.

Here's an example:  Very early in the film, we are shown two different pairs of gangsters knocking on a lady's door looking for her husband.  The husband comes home and has a shoot-out/stand-off with the various gangsters.  It's not very apparent where particular loyalties lie or even who the hell anyone actually is.  The wife interrupts the proceedings to feed the baby and not only is a cease-fire called, but the gangsters actually take time out to help the guy they were shooting at furnish his house.  Then they all sit down for dinner and sake.  The wife even takes a picture of all of them together.

That's weird.

The title refers to the husband, exiled after failing to assassinate their mob boss, but recently returned to the city.  The four gangsters were his best friends who are now supposed to kill him.  There are a lot of barely-connected events and random characters.  And violence.  There's a lot of shooting.

So I didn't mind it so much.  I'd never own it, but it wasn't a bad rental.  You could even improve upon with drinking.