Secretariat (2010)

Okay, I know I missed two days.  Don't ask me how I was able to post from Italy when I couldn't manage it from Alabama.  I've got two movies at home so this weekend we should be able to go back to our regularly scheduled programming.

This was my gift to my mother for Mother's Day.  I am not a huge fan of horses or horse racing, however, I regularly make a point of watching the Triple Crown (that's the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont).  There has not been a Triple Crown winner in my lifetime.  Mother has seen 3, with this horse being the first.

So this movie meant a lot to her since she could actively remember the races themselves.  For the rest of us, there's YouTube.

Secretariat started life as an idea, the product of a long-standing arrangement between horse breeders Christopher Chenery and Ogden Phipps.  Every year, Phipps allowed his best stallion to cover Chenery's best two mares and they would flip a coin over who got first pick of the resulting foals.  After Chris Chenery fell ill, his daughter, Penny Tweedy, took over.  Technically, she lost the coin toss but she ended up with the foal she wanted anyway.

After dealing with money issues, training issues, and family issues, Penny comes up with the idea of selling stock in the horse against his future earnings.  This had never been done with an untried two-year-old.

Obviously, it paid off since Secretariat broke records at two of the three major races, which remain unbroken to this day.

As a movie, I felt like it was just your typical Disney feel-good film.  John Malkovich and Diane Lane do great jobs, as expected, and the supporting cast is great.  For me, it seemed a little too syrupy but I am not the target demographic by a long shot.  My mother loved it.  Watching it with me was her fourth time seeing the film and she still enjoyed it.

I wish I had more praise for the movie but I just didn't think it was as good as Seabiscuit or Hidalgo.  Honestly, if you're going to watch a movie about horses, you'd be better off with one of those two.

Brazil (1985)

Today is my dad's birthday!  Here's a completely unrelated movie.

This is yet another weird-ass Terry Gilliam feature.  Man, I don't know what is wrong with that dude but if I had to guess, I'd say A LOT.

It's a type of crazy I generally like, though, right up until he sucker punches me with the ending.  The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus wasn't too bad, but Time Bandits still makes me a little twitchy when I think about it.

This one falls closer to the Time Bandits end of the scale.  In a dystopian 1984-esque future, the world is governed by the Ministry of Information.  Sam Lowry works in Information Management when he discovers an administrative error that led to the arrest of Archibald Buttle instead of Archibald Tuttle.  He does some digging and discovers that Buttle has been killed during the investiagtion process.  While delivering a refund check for the wrongful arrest to the widow, he catches a glimpse of his dream girl.

He tries to find out more about her but the more he digs, the more involved he becomes until he ends up a suspected terrorist himself, running from his own Ministry. 

Some of it is really brilliant satire of consumerism, fashion, plastic surgery, and bureaucracy and there are some beautiful (very 80's) fantasy pieces when he's daydreaming.  Then there are incredibly disturbing things like the things that look like the trash heap creature from Labyrinth except with dirty Cabbage Patch doll heads that chase Sam around in his nightmares.

...And now in my nightmares.

This is as close to the actual thing as I could find in a GIS.

Then of course there's the ENTIRE ENDING OF THE FILM.  There are different versions of the movie out there, if you'd like to spare yourself.  There's the "Director's Cut" and the "Love Conquers All" cut, which is only 94 minutes as opposed to the almost 2.5 hour run time of the original.

Will not be buying this or ever watching it again but it was worth a one-time view.  And as a bonus, I finally know which specific movie Repo Men was ripping off.

Bridesmaids (2011)

Nominated for Best Supporting Actress and Best Original ScreenplayI saw this on Saturday with my friend, Melody.  I had read positive reviews and then I had also read reviews calling it a "female Hangover" which I don't consider complimentary.  Melissa McCarthy's character is basically the female version of Zach Galifianakis' character but the rest of the movie deviates quite sharply.

Overall, I liked the film.  This type of comedy isn't my usual taste and there were moments where I felt the jokes ran way too long, belabored the point, or were simply gross.  Many of the gags you've seen before.  Conversely, I felt that certain points were completely ignored which was a shame.  Helen, Rose Byrne's character, shows glimpses of a complex backstory but it's totally glossed over as if to say "her step-kids hate her, so obviously she's the villain".  We, as the audience, aren't expected to care about any motivation beyond that.

Kristen Wiig's character, Annie, is the Maid of Honor and our supposed protagonist but, honestly, it's a little hard to like her since it's patently obvious that she causes 90% of her own problems.  She is still recovering financially from a failed bakery and emotionally from the boyfriend who left her when her business went under when her childhood friend reveals her engagement and asks Annie to be her Maid of Honor.

There's a lot of subtext about how Annie feels inadequate given that Lillian is marrying a rich man and moving to Chicago, which is exacerbated by the glamorous Helen, a couture-wearing, country club member whose husband is Lillian's fiance's boss.  Annie and Helen begin their own little Cold War for Lillian's affections, which happens a lot in Girl World.  My personal method for handling that situation is a supercilious sneer and constantly denigrating the other person's accomplishments through polite sarcasm.  But that's my method for dealing with almost everything.

Helen constantly circumvents Annie's attempts at cost-saving measures with lavish suggestions that end up being more popular with the other bridesmaids.  Annie's life is also complicated by her Friends With Benefits minus the Friend part relationship with (an uncredited) Jon Hamm and also a flirtation with the local cop (Chris O'Dowds).

Wendi McLendon-Covey and Ellie Kemper (the blonde and the redhead) are completely wasted talents in this movie.  One is a mother of three boys who desperately wants to escape her life for a little while and the other is a newlywed who has never been with anyone but her husband.  Female Stock Characters #3 and #7, respectively.  My favorite parts of the movie were when Annie and Lillian (Maya Rudolph) interacted by themselves.  That seemed like the most genuine portrayal of female friendships in the whole movie.

Not one I ever plan to buy but I laughed plenty of times in the movie, enough to justify the price of the ticket but you could just as easily catch this one on cable when it comes out.

My Man Godfrey (1936)

  The movie begins with Godfrey (William Powell) living in the city dump over by the East River.  It is the middle of the Great Depression and he is scraping by as best he can when a pair of cars pulls up one night.

A socialite offers him $5 if he will accompnay her back to the Waldorf-Ritz as part of a scavenger hunt of unwanted things.  All she needs to win is a Forgotten Man.  Insulted, Powell tells her no and advances menacingly until she falls into an ash-heap and leaves.

Her sister (Carole Lombard) jumps in and asks Powell to be her Forgotten Man to keep the first girl from winning.  Curious to see this scavenger hunt and mollified by the ditzy blonde, he agrees.  After seeing the cream of New York dragging around broken spinning wheels and livestock in order to win a worthless trophy, he roundly denounces them and heads back towards the dump.

The ditzy blonde immediately hires him as a butler for her crazy-ass family which includes the put-upon Mr. Bulloch, a shrill vapid Mrs. Bulloch, a free-loading musical "protege" named Carlo, the bitchy sister Cornelia, and herself (Irene).

And really, if you have the name Godfrey Smith, your only choice in life is to be a butler.  Ditto for Alfred, Jarvis or Beale.  Just suck it up, put on a tux, grab a silver tray, and do what God and Nature intended for you to do.

There's no clear sense of how long Godfrey stays with the family but it's long enough for every unattached woman in the house to fall in love with him, a fact he is staunchly oblivious to, despite Irene following him around like a sick puppy and the maid bursting into tears every time he walks into a room.  Cornelia goes so far as to plant a piece of jewelry in his room out of spite, after he tells her what a spoiled entitled bitch she is, and then calls the cops.

Things could have gone very badly for Godfrey, if the necklace had been found.  But our man is no fool and we know why.  Instead of being a raised-from-the-gutter domestic servant, he is the Harvard-educated scion of a wealthy Boston family who absconded south after a bad break-up so his family wouldn't be tainted with scandal.  Intending to cast himself in the East River, he instead found acceptance amongst the Forgotten Men and discovered his own inherent dignity.

This is a great William Powell comedy with some fantastic dialogue...when Carole Lombard isn't crying like a six-year-old whose pony just died.  She was tied with Alice Brady, who played the mother, for Most Annoying Performance Ever.  Every time either of them was on screen I had to grit my teeth so I wouldn't punch a hole in my computer.  Overall, I really liked the film and I would definitely recommend it, just be prepared to really dislike those two.  Honestly, even though she was a borderline sociopath, I was kind of hoping Cornelia would end up with Godfrey just because she was at least stylish and entertaining, if evil.

Killshot (2008)

  This wasn't a very god movie.  It's about two pairs of couples.  One is a real estate agent (Diane Lane) and her estranged husband (Thomas Jane) and the other is a professional hitman (Mickey Rourke) and his hotheaded protege (Joseph Gordon-Levitt).  The pairs collide when JGL and Mickey try and shakedown Diane's boss for $20K.  The bad guys get away but Mickey has a rule about never leaving witnesses.  Now he has to flush these two out of Witness Protection in order to finish the job.

Pretty much all of the characters here are scuzzy.  Diane Lane is a shrill paranoiac, Jane just seems really confused by everything, Rourke really gets into the Native American aspect of his character, JGL is expertly unappealing, the very definition of mens rea, and Rosario Dawson (oh, yes, she's in this too) is fragile and weak.

I'm sure that adds up to the movie seeming more realistic but it also makes it fairly hard to watch.  And not in a slightly squeamish this-could-totally-happen kind of way.  More of a damn, this is boring and I hope something blows up pretty soon kind of way.

I cannot stress to you how good of an actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt is, though.  I hated his character but it is wildly different from the one he played in (500) Days of Summer or Lookout or the one in Inception.  I imagine it'll be a much closer comparison to the role he has coming up this summer in Hesher but I won't know for sure until I see it.  This isn't a good film but he is good in it.

(500) Days of Summer (2009)

  This was a cute story recommended to me by Cousin Extraordinaire, Christy, but not part of her monthly series. Probably because it predates the Experiment by five or six months or something. Or because she forgot about it. Or because I'm lazy. 

 
Moving on.

I don't like rom-coms so the fact that this is basically a what-went-wrong kind of story is a good selling point for me. 

Tom Hanson (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) falls in love with Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel), despite her telling him that she doesn't want a boyfriend. 

I don't know what it is about us as a species that makes us immediately discount things we don't want to hear from someone we're attracted to, but I personally hate that trait.  Which is not to say I haven't done the same damn thing.  And it works out pretty much exactly the same way here.

Apparently blessed with a photographic memory, Tom begins to relive highlights of the relationship, from the first time he saw her to the Jack Daniels and orange juice-fueled depression after she dumps him.

There are a few really good moments in the film, one of them being the aforementioned JD & OJ bender and another with a spontaneous musical number but those are carried completely by Joseph Gordon-Levitt.  Zooey Deschanel is extremely lackluster as a leading lady.  She has the emotional range of a decoy duck.

As far as supporting characters, it's a mixed bag. Clark Gregg (Agent Coulson from the Marvel movies) and Chloe Moretz (Hit Girl from Kick Ass) are good, Matthew Gray Gubler (Reed from Criminal Minds) and Geoffrey Arend (the Snozzberries kid from Super Troopers) are kind of crap. This is a good rental that women will like because it's sweet and men can tolerate because it's realistic.

Ink (2009)

  I had no idea what was going on for the first half hour of this movie. For starters, I thought it was animated not live-action. Look at the poster. Do they look real? The answer is no. I was also sure it was foreign, probably Japanese but at least European. Wrong again. Filmed in Boulder, Colorado with an all-American cast. 

So this movie is about a rag-covered creature who kidnaps a little girl's spirit through her dreams.  To the waking world, she is in a coma, beyond the help of everyone, but in the place between worlds, two bands of warriors assemble.  The first are the Storytellers, a pleasingly multi-ethnic bunch who are responsible for giving good dreams.  Then there are the Incubi, vinyl-clad Dark City-looking things with glowing glasses that project funhouse-mirror smiles onto their faces, who give nightmares.  After the girl is taken, the Storytellers get a Pathfinder in order to make things turn out right.  He is blind (and kind of a dick) with electrical tape X's over his eyes.

Of course I loved it.  Need you even ask?

That's not to say it doesn't have flaws.  The editing is choppy, some of the character reactions are over-the-top (using sudden volume swings to denote anger or frustration instead of more subtle cues), not a lot of character development and a fairly predictable plot but I can forgive all of that with the right ambiance.

It reminded me a great deal of Neil Gaiman's Mirrormask in tone and style or maybe a more kid-friendly Donnie Darko.  A subtle sense of wrongness pervades the air, turning familiar things sinister.  The good dreams are shot with a warm amber light, where the in-between world is a flat blue and the Incubus-sent dreams are sickly yellows and greens.  Simple things, but they really make a difference when they're done well.

This is one I intend to buy.  I was very impressed with it overall and I think it's important to reward weirdness done well.

Blood: The Last Vampire (2000)

  I already reviewed the live action movie based on this, but I finally got around to watching the original anime Sunday night. It's only 48 minutes long so there isn't nearly as much plot as the follow-up movie but there were a couple of stand-out differences.

First off, the animation is beautifully photo-realistic at some points, making for very crisp visuals.

My chief problem with the live movie was the terrible CGI on the creatures.  Happily, the anime avoids that issue and the Oni (demons that feast on human blood) look all gross and stuff like they're supposed to without making my eye twitch. 

I wish either movie had given more of the backstory of the main character, Saya, such as why she's the last of her kind, where the "original" vampires came from, and why she seems to really hate Oni. 

And, according to IMDB, that's because this was supposed to be a three-part series but due to budget restraints, only the middle episode was released.  Man, I should really do research before I start writing these things.

Assassination of a High School President (2008)

  This is a cute little movie.  I'm beginning to think that the only place you can really get away with noir anymore is high school.  Nowhere else has that level of drama and the sense that every decision has dire consequences.

This is no Brick and Reece Thompson is certainly no Joseph Gordon-Levitt but it's a fun little whodunit concerning the theft of SATs at a private Catholic school.  Bobby Funke is an aspiring journalist whose big break comes with the apparent guilt of the School Council President, Paul Moore.  But, with a scholarship to Northwestern on the line, Funke begins to suspect Moore may have been framed.

Every single move is telegraphed well in advance and no one should be surprised at the inevitable twists but it's certainly an enjoyable way to spend your time.

Stick around for Bruce Willis as the way-too-intense Gulf War veteran principal, too.  It's a small role, but worth it.

Oh, and for a half-second you can see Mischa Barton's boobs.  In case you wanted to, for some reason.

Grey Gardens (2009)

  This is an HBO film based on a 1975 documentary about the lives of Edith and Little Edie Bouvier-Beale, the cousins of Jackie Onassis who lived in a decaying mansion in the East Hamptons.

Honestly, this may have been the first episode of Hoarders.  The house ends up a falling-down wreck with garbage piled everywhere, half a hundred cats, and raccoons roaming free.  It's so bad that a pair of documentarians come down to interview them as kind of a counterpoint to the jet-setting life of their cousins Jackie Onassis and Lee Radziwell.

But I get ahead of myself.  Edith Bouvier (Big Edie) came from money and pursued a career as a singer. She married a lawyer and had three kids.  The eldest, Little Edie, also wanted to be a performer.  The lawyer eventually got tired of paying for everything and divorced Big Edie.  She got Grey Gardens, their summer place.  Little Edie moved to Manhattan to pursue a career.  Big Edie was incredibly insane, however, and sabotaged her daughter's burgeoning independence by ratting out her affair with the Secretary of the Interior to her dad, which causes him to cut off her allowance, necessitating her return to Grey Gardens.

From that point, their relationship starts to resemble Joan Crawford and Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?  To make matters worse, Little Edie has alopecia, a medical condition that makes her hair fall out, that worsens with stress.  Hence the turbans.

The two of them are incapable of caring for the mansion so it falls into a horrible state of disrepair.  Desperate for company, the two invite a lurking photographer in and let him take pictures.  These end up splashed across The National Enquirer, claiming that Jackie O neglects her relatives. The Health Department shows up and condemns the property for failing every standard.

Jackie Onassis and her husband pay for the restoration to livable conditions, and to cart off half a ton of garbage.  That's when the documentarians show up and start filming all the craziness.

This movie was really distressing for me to watch, considering that it was based on real events.  Drew Barrymore is delightful and Jessica Lange is a great actress but nothing was going to keep me from being incredibly creeped out by the clinging desperation and disturbing co-dependency of these two women.

Black Angel (1997)

  I don't know what the hell is going on with Netflix but they have been suggesting some crapfests lately.  Or back in 2009.  Whenever I added this.

Someone suggested (quite intelligently) that it could have been because I liked Blood:  The Last Vampire but just because it's Japanese and has a girl in it doesn not make it similar.  Blood, for instance, had more monsters where Black Angel has heroin gangrapes.

Yeah.  So not kidding about that.

How bad is this movie?  Other than the aforementioned rape, there are squibs (the blood packs that simulate gunshots) that explode a half-second later than the blank is fired.  Bullets move at 1000 feet per second.  This kind of bullshit is unacceptable.

Bad English dialogue.  This is almost forgivable since this was obviously never released in the US and elsewhere in the world no one would care, but the character was supposed to have spent fourteen years growing up in LA.  This was one time where it would have been better to watch the dubbed version, instead of the subtitled one.  And I never say that. 

Lousy acting, lousy plot, wierd camera angles, and bizarre costuming.  Did I leave anything out?  I don't think so.  Now I have to go kill all the brain cells associated with watching this movie.  Where's the bar?

La Femme Nikita (1990)

I really wanted to like this movie.  You have no idea.  Last night marks the third time I have sat down with the intention of liking this movie.

I just can't do it.

"But, Lucy, it's a classic," you say.  I know.
"You love assassin movies, especially ones that have a female lead."  I know!
"Plus, it's foreign.  French, no less.  You love the French."  I KNOW! 

This movie should be like catnip for me.  Hence the three attempts at watching it.  I don't know why, I just don't like it. 

Maybe I can't get past Anne Parillaud.  I didn't like her as a vampire and I don't like her here.  Her voice grates on my nerves and I just don't believe that she's a 20-year-old ex-junkie.  I also don't think she's that pretty, so there goes the sex appeal factor.  Plus, she cries a lot and that annoys me. 

Maybe I should give the American remake Point of No Return a shot, even though I don't really like Bridget Fonda.  Or I can say fuck it, and wait for Zoe Saldana in Colombiana which is coming out in a couple of months.  Decisions, decisions.

Scott Pilgrim vs the World (2010)

This was a fun movie.  I'm pretty sure Christy only chose it as her monthly feature in an effort to pad her success rate but I'm not going to quibble. 

This wasn't nearly the revelation in movies other people who recommended it to me made it out to be, but that's okay.  I'm not a big Michael Cera fan.  I never saw the comics.  Hell, I never even played arcade games.  I still enjoyed the movie.

Scott Pilgrim is a bassist in an indie band as well as a full-time slacker.  He dates Knives Chow, a high-school girl, as a rebound from the girl who broke his heart.  Then he meets Ramona Flowers, the multi-hue-haired girl of his dreams.  But, to win the heart of Fair Maiden, he must defeat all of her 7 Evil Exes in combat. 

It's cute, it's quirky, and it's got a lot of really good points.

Let's start with the stuff I loved:  1) Kieran Culkin as Scott's gay roommate Wallace.  Everytime he was on screen, he was hilarious.  I could have stood seeing way more of him.

2) Scott's sister Stacey.  She has only a little screen time but she's worth it.

3) Scott's ex-girlfriend Natalie/NV.  I really want to download the song her fake band plays. 

4) The fight choreography.  Every single battle was beautifully shot, frequently hilarious, and epically epic.

5) The Vegan Police.  This was the only part of the movie that made me physically laugh. 
"Gelato isn't vegan?"
"It's milk and eggs, bitch."

Priceless.

As far as the Evil Exes, Chris Evans was the stand-out, followed by a tie between Roxy and Matthew Patel.  Jason Schwartzman got really annoying really quickly and that kind of ruined his battle for me.  I would have liked to have seen a little more personality from Ramona.  She came off as more of a cardboard cut-out of a cute indie chick than a real person.  Also, Scott's band sucked.  I hated every minute they played.

Overall, a worthwhile film to catch on cable but not a must-buy.

Hundra (1983)

  Crap!  I forgot to post this yesterday!  Oops! 
Men are disgusting pigs.  This is billed as "the female Conan the Barbarian", which is bullshit anyway because everyone knows that Red Sonja is the female Conan, but it basically reads as a playbook of male fantasies.

Hundra is one of a tribe of women who have eschewed the company of men to live as nomads, only venturing into society when they need to propagate and giving away all subsequent male children.  You know, your typical Amazon myth.  Well, they all get slaughtered except for Hundra who was out hunting.  So she seeks out their elder, living in retirement someplace warm (we'll call it Arizona), who tells her she now has to breed the tribe back into existence.

Despite her quite natural reluctance to do this, Hundra goes looking for a baby daddy in order to give her life meaning.  I think I just set feminism back 50 years by typing that.  Anyway, she wanders into a city where everybody worships a bull and the local temple culls the attractive women to serve as sex slaves to the various tribal chieftains after some re-education in womanly arts like applying make-up and not wearing underwear.  Hundra refuses to submit until she sees a nice doctor (/eye twitch) who is put off by her barbaric ways, then she readily surrenders so she can learn enough to seduce him and get herself knocked up.

I am offended and disgusted and yet, I can't stop laughing.  It's just so cliche.  Even for exploitative action fantasy.  The director, Matt Cimber, raised trashy to a whole new level.  And, according to IMDB's bio of him, Quentin Tarantino lists this as one of his favorite films, which explains soooooo much.

Definitely one for the so-bad-it's-good files, possibly under the "Only See While Drinking" tab.

The Hunger (1983)

  This should also be known as The Least Sexy Vampire Movie Ever.

How can you have a movie with David Bowie, Catherine Deneuve, and Susan Sarandon as vampires and it not be sexy?!  There's gratuitous female nudity (in the first 9 minutes you get two different sets of boobs) and a girl-on-girl scene between the two female leads.  For all of you people out there who really wanted to see Susan Sarandon bat for the other team, here you go!  Also, seek help.

Ugh.  So Miriam (Catherine Deneuve) is a two thousand year old vampire with a slight problem.  All her turned lovers only stick around for a couple of hundred years before succumbing to the rapid degeneration of age.  David Bowie is her most recent companion, who grows terrified of his declining prowess and seeks out Susan Sarandon, a doctor who specializes in Progeria research.  Before he can convince her to help him, he gets all corpsey.

Side note:  This is some of the best aging make-up I've ever seen in a film.  That, and Catherine Deneuve's gorgeous wardrobe are the only compliments I can give this thing.

But, because he's a vampire, he can't exactly die, so Miriam sticks him in a coffin in her attic...with all the other, presumably aware, coffin-bound loves of her long life.  Yeah, locked in a box, forever aging but unable to die?  Not sexy.

Doctor Sarandon tracks down David Bowie's information because she feels bad for blowing him off and introduces herself to the grieving Miriam...who immediately seduces and turns her.  Like all rebound relationships, this ends badly and proceeds into one of the most WTF endings I've ever seen.  Seriously, I'm well-versed in the various vampire canons and I cannot account for a single myth that would explain what the hell happened in the last few minutes of this movie.

It was directed by Tony Scott (Unstoppable, Man on Fire, and oh holy shit Top Gun?!  Really?) who has done some of my favorite movies of the last 10 years.  This will not be added to that list.

New York, I Love You (2009)

  Happy Mother's Day!  Here's an unrelated movie!

My cousin thinks I have no heart.  Not true.  I simply find different things romantic.  This movie is about the romance of a city.

I saw the first of the Cities of Love series, Paris Je T'aime, back in 2008 and it resonated very strongly for me.  I knew I was going to see the second film but, as with all follow-up efforts, I wondered if it could match the original.

The good news is that it doesn't try.  The film-makers (both the films are made up of vignettes that are spliced into a larger whole) really captured the different feel of the cities.  As anyone who as been to either place can tell you, Paris and NYC have completely different vibes. 

There are some great moments in this film, from comedic (Anton Yelchin's prom experience) to sad (a shockingly good turn from Shia LaBeouf as a Russian bellhop with scoliosis) to poignant (a Hassidic Jewish woman and a Jain man reflect on the differences that bring them together). 

Look at the poster.  Chances are, unless you've been living under a rock, you know 90% of the names on it.  These are great actors making the most of good material and it combines to make a fantastic film.

According to their website, there are three other City of Love movies slated for release, for Rio, Jerusalem, and Shanghai.  The latter one is expected to premiere in China this year, which means we'll see a US release probably early 2012.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

  I watched this with my cousin, Christy, Tuesday night.  She had never seen the original and is not a fan of horror movies in general.  She suffers through them because her little brother and I love them and force her to share our interests.

I saw the original movie when I was about ten while at a sleepover at my friend Jill's house.  I don't remember if the movie was a tape or if it was just on cable but it wasn't new at that point (it was almost as old as we were).  It was broad daylight when we watched it.  So with those two facts in mind (1) eight-year-old movie (2) daylight, know this:  I didn't sleep for two weeks afterwards.

The original NoES scared me so badly as a kid that I had to teach myself lucid dreaming in order to combat these nightly assaults. 

I say all of that to contrast it with the remake, which is completely thrill-less.

Maybe it's because I'm older and  I've seen many more horror films.  I've seen more horror, period.  It takes a lot more to shock me now.  But I'm pretty sure it's just because all the kids in this movie sucked.  It's not like they had a monumental task ahead of them.  Look sleep deprived, scream, and die.  Hell, I can manage two out of that three on any normal day.

The only thing that saved this movie from the scrap pile is Jackie Earle Haley.  His two faces of Freddy were fantastic.  Pre-burns Freddy is hunched, high-pitched, and spineless.  Post-burns, he is gravelly, snarky, and disturbingly creepy.  Honestly, they could have cut a couple of the kids' deaths and showed me more Freddy before and after and I would have been satisfied.  That would have also saved them from some shitty CGI, particularly the final death which was so bad that Christy called it fake.

That's how you know your horror movie has failed.  Your target audience should be too terrified to notice that the effects you're showing aren't physically possible.

Murder on the Orient Express (1974)

  Man, this movie had a ton of famous people in it.  It's a film adaptation of one of Agatha Christie's most famous stories starrring Belgian detective Hercule Poirot.  

Monsieur Poirot is called to London after solving a case in Turkey and boards the Orient Express in order to get there.  One of the fellow passengers, named Ratchett (Richard Widmark) offers Poirot $15,000 to solve the mystery of who is sending him death threats, which Poirot declines with the beautiful line of "Mr. Ratchett, I have made enough money to satisfy both my needs and my caprices. I take only such cases now as interest me, and to be frank, my interest in your case is dwindling."

Then the train gets stuck in Yugoslavia and Ratchett ends up murdered in the berth next to Poirot.  Naturally, he has to solve the case quickly to avoid embarrassing his friend, the train line owner.  Things get complicated when it turns out that Ratchett is an alias of a gangster named Cassetti, the man responsible for the kidnapping and death of a child named Daisy Armstrong, the daughter of American socialites. 

(An allusion to the kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby in 1932.) 

Not only was Cassetti responsible for Daisy's death, but also for the wave of misery which swamped the family afterwards:  the mother miscarried a second child and died, the falsely accused maid threw herself out of a window, and the dad shot himself.

You may be wondering at this point why Mr. Poirot would bother solving the mystery since this guy obviously deserved what happened to him. And I would ask you, what is the point of having a detective on board if you won't let him detect?  So, using ingenious methods and having an astonishing wealth of background information, he figures out whodunit.

Oh, come on, you didn't think I would spoil it for you, did you?

The Cooler (2003)

  I've never been a huge fan of William H. Macy.  He's always been just another character actor to me, not really a leading man.  Maybe because he looks so sad all the time.  Look at him.  Even in neon, he's like Droopy Dog.

Which is precisely what his character needs to be in this movie.  Bernie Lootz is a Cooler, a man employed by a casino because he causes everyone at a table to lose.  Casinos like it when people lose.  Especially this casino, because it's owned by Alec Baldwin.  See, Alec is facing some difficulties because his Golden Shangri-La is one of the last few old-school casinos left in Vegas and he is under pressure to show that it can still be a moneymaker.  Ron (Office Space) Livingston is an up-and-coming player trying to take Baldwin's place.  So when Alec's best Cooler decides to call it quits, he hires Maria Bello to honeypot the poor schmuck into staying.

Unfortunately for Alec, she turns out to be Bernie's lady Luck and now he has to do everything he can to break them up.

This is a cute, if dark, film with a great cast.  Alec Baldwin was nominated for Best Supporting Actor (lost to Tim Robbins for Mystic River) and Macy and Bello are both note-perfect.  I have always appreciated Maria's willingness to "ugly up" for a role.  That and she seems to have no problems getting naked either.  It moves a lot slower than I would have liked but still a good movie.

Chess: In Concert (2009)

This is a concert version of the musical Chess that was aired on PBS in 2009.  The musical was written by two of the guys from ABBA and Tim Rice and originally played in London in 1984.  There was an American version in 1988 and revivals every so often that didn't do well until 2010.

Given that it's a musical about a chess tournament fraught with Cold War overtones, that's not so hard to understand. 

So there's this Russian chess player (Josh Groban), who is tired of being used as a political pawn by his comrades, getting ready to face off against the American world champion in 1979.  The American is like the John McInroe of the chess world (seriously, that's one of the lyrics) and his manager/handler/girlfriend (Idina Menzel) has her hands full trying to keep him civilized.  Little does she know that Freddy the champion is getting paid big bucks by Global Television to make the games interesting, to the point of tossing a chessboard in the air during their first match.  Idina goes to have a meeting with Russian Josh Groban and they fall in lurve.  Awwww.

Freddy ends up forfeiting the game, making Grobansky the new champion.  He immediately defects to the West with his new girlfriend.  In Act 2, it's a year later and Groban has to defend his title against the new Russian contender in Bangkok.  Freddy is back, this time as a commentator for Global Television and sings the most well-known song in the entire musical.

In fact, "One Night in Bangkok" was recorded as a pop song by Murray Head in 1984 and topped the charts in a dozen countries, making it more popular than the musical itself by a long shot.

The Russian delegation pulls out all the stops to try and crush Josh Groban, bringing his wife out of Russia to confront him (even though she'd just as soon move on with her life) for abandoning her, and then dangling the carrot of releasing Idina's Hungarian father from the jail he's been in for 30 years, if he'll throw the game and come back to the USSR.  So here's this poor bastard, caught between the woman he's married to whose life he's exposed to shame and scrutiny (oh, yeah, and the mother of his two children), and the woman he loves whose father is rotting in the gulag. 

Production-wise, there are no sets because it's a concert, but you do get some decent visuals on the giant TV screen.  There is a huge supporting cast with some decent dance scenes, including a pretty representation of the chess battles between dancers clad in black and white.  Honestly, I found it to be just as good if not better than watching a performance of the play.

Black Books and Borgias and sci-fi, oh my!

I try to keep this blog mainly about movies without adding in a bunch of boring personal crap. Every so often, however, I feel the need to branch out into the small screen and subject you to my tastes in that.

  I just finished watching the most hilarious show I think I've ever seen.  It's a British comedy called Black Books and the first season aired in 2000.  It's most assuredly been cancelled by now but it's available on Netflix and I cannot recommend it enough.  There was one episode where I laughed so hard I fell over and had to rewatch it because I was too incapacitated to hit pause on the remote.  My neighbors probably think there's a feral hyena in my apartment.  

It's about an alcoholic misanthropic book seller named Bernard Black who hates the idea of having to sell books because then he might have to interact with people.  His accountant becomes a fugitive and he hires Manny to do his books.  His neighbor and fellow wino is Fran, who owns a knicknack shop and is constantly searching for love.

It's not on Streaming and there are only six episodes in the first season (or series, if you're British) but each one is a gem.  Rent or buy immediately.

I'm also knee-deep in trying to watch all of the episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K) in order.  This is difficult for a number of reasons.

1)  There were 10 seasons of this show that were originally aired on The Comedy Channel and then on The Sci-Fi Channel from 1990 to 2001.

2)  There were two hosts, Joel and then Mike, representing two different eras.

3)  The DVD rights were originally owned by Rhino and then were bought by Shout Factory.
 
4)  They only release collections of 4 discs at a time, one movie to a disc, and not in sequential order. 
 
5)  Some of the episodes are out of print, and some were only released as stand-alone DVDs.  At least one of them (The Amazing Colossal Man) was only released on VHS and copies of that were $130 on Amazon last I checked.  Yep, one hundred thirty dollars for a format that NO ONE USES ANYMORE.

This is how nerdy I am:  I actually went to Wikipedia, copied a list of all the episodes by name along with what collection they were included in, and have been trying to match them to the collections I own.  (I'm up to Volume XVI.  Shout Factory released Vol XX a couple of months ago so, as you can see, I can't even stay current on my obsessions.) 

So, Black Books came to me on DVD and MST3K is a TV show that is technically a movie per episode but I have absolutely no excuse about the next show I'm watching.  I just started The Borgias on Showtime.

I was so excited when I heard they were making this show, you don't even know.  I tend to cherrypick people or places from history and then learn everything I can about them.  I find it's easier to remember important dates or events if I can put them in the context of someone's life. 

The Borgia family is one of those.  It started with a rumor that Lucrezia Borgia was a sorceress that poisoned several lovers and turned one into a dog.  From her, I moved to her brother Cesare, who was the inspiration for Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince.  Finally, I moved up to Pope Alexander VI, Rodrigo Borgia, father of numerous children and one of the most corrupt officials in the history of the Catholic Church.

I only just watched the first episode on Tuesday (I know, I'm like 4 episodes behind) but I think it's going to be pretty good. 

Christy has me watching Game of Thrones as well.  I read the first couple of books by George R. R. Martin and absolutely hated them.  Again, only one episode in, but so far, it seems to be following pretty closely.  Including the incest.  It's been a few years since I read the books but the plot is starting to come back to me so it'll be interesting to see if the show will go there or not.  I was completely taken aback with the adaptation of TrueBlood because I loved those book (except for number 10 which sucked out loud) but I grew to have a appreciation for the differences.  Maybe because I hated these books so much I'll actually enjoy the show.  Who knows?