The Princess and the Warrior (2000)

Der Krieger und die Kaiserin

  I guess The Bank Robber and the Loonybin Nurse wouldn't have fit on a marquee, but it would have been a much more accurate title.

This movie sucked.

I bought it a while back, when Borders started getting rid of all their movies, because it was a German film and I had only seen a couple of those, mainly M, Wings of Desire, and Run, Lola, Run which stars the same actress and was directed by the same guy, Tom Twyker.  He also did Perfume which may have been his magnum opus.

Sissi (Franka Potente) is a young nurse at a psychiatric hospital.  She gets run over by a truck while escorting a blind kid across the street.  A mysterious stranger (who indirectly caused the truck driver to be distracted) climbs under and gives her an emergency tracheotomy, saving her life.  Afterwards, her world just isn't the same so she tracks him down and finds his name is Bodo Reimer (Benno Furman), an ex-army semi-drifter who lives with his brother Walter (Joachim Krol).  The pair have a plan to rob a bank and escape to Australia.  Sissi manages to fuck that up for them and the heist goes wrong.  She hides Bodo in the nuthouse where she not only works, it's where she was raised.  That should explain a lot.

I don't often notice the score of a movie, except in a "there's a score" kind of way but this one absolutely ruined the movie.  It might have been a decent action film if the score hadn't been some weird dreamy piece that's so disconnected from the acting that it was like it belonged to a completely different movie.  It was a very deliberate thing on Twyker's part and I have no doubt that it meant something to him.  Whatever that was was completely lost on me, however.  Did not enjoy.

The Princess and the Frog (2009)

  I missed this one when it came out in theaters and I shouldn't have.  It's a great movie, a return to what made Disney animation such a powerhouse for so long.  None of the songs in particular really grabbed me but I could at least recognize that they were good songs. 

Tiana (Anika Noni Rose) is a waitress who dreams of owning her own restaurant.  Her wish seems poised to come true on the eve of the arrival of Prince Naveen of Moldonia (Bruno Campos) to New Orleans.  The prince has come in order to marry a rich bride after his parents have cut him off for being a lazy snot.  Tiana's friend Charlotte (Jennifer Cody) fits the bill and is desperate to become a princess to boot.  Unfortunately, the prince's put-upon servant Lawrence (Peter Bartlett) makes a deal with the Shadow Man (Keith David) to turn the prince into a frog.  Frog-Naveen convinces Tiana to kiss him by promising her the money to buy her restaurant.  Unfortunately, this turns Tiana into a frog as well.  The two amphibians seek out the Voodoo Queen of the Bayou, Mama Odee (Jenifer Lewis) to change them back.

Oprah, Terrence Howard, John Goodman, and even Emeril Lagasse also voice characters in the movie.

This was definitely a good purchase since I'm fairly certain I could watch this over and over again.  And I'm a grown woman.

Ponyo (2008)

Original title:  Gake no ue no Ponyo

  This is yet another Miyazaki import through Disney's Studio Ghibli.  This one was a little more irritating to me, but I am far from the target age group.  Since Disney has a ton of money to throw around, they have the best voice talent, so I watched it in English this first go-round.

Sosuke (Frankie Jonas, yes, related to those Jonases) is a five-year-old boy who lives on top of a hill with his mother (Tina Fey).  His father (Matt Damon) is a sailor on a fishing(?)-- salvage(?)-- on a boat.  One day, while playing in a tide pool, Sosuke finds a weird-ass human-faced "goldfish" stuck in a jar and names it Ponyo (Noah Cyrus, yes, it's a girl.  Actually, it's Miley Cyrus' sister.  Told you Disney had money to burn).  Anyway, Ponyo licks some of Sosuke's blood and eats some ham before her father, a sorcerer (and Liam Neeson), commands the waves to take her home.  Convinced that she loves Sosuke, Ponyo breaks into her father's study and manages to unleash some very powerful magic, which she uses to become human.  The sorcerer freaks when he finds out and has to consult with Ponyo's mother, the sea goddess (Cate Blanchett), about how to fix everything.  Here's what got me:  they're basing whether or not the world will be destroyed by the sea on whether Sosuke will be able to love and accept Ponyo.  HE'S FIVE!  Oh, and if he doesn't love her, she turns into sea-foam.  Which, I guess wouldn't be so bad considering that the entire world would be sucked back into the sea.

Anyway, it's a weird little movie based on Hans Christian Anderson's The Little Mermaid.  The animation is, as always, superb.  If you've liked other Miyazaki films, or if you have kids under 7, it's worth a rental.

Gilda (1946)

  This movie put Rita Hayworth on the map and she is stunning in it, but I didn't really like the movie over all.

The ending just ruined it for me.  It would have been much better as a tragedy (which I don't say often) rather than a tacked-on happy ending.  It just feels like pandering after how shitty the main characters were to each other.

Johnny Farrell (Glenn Ford) is a small-type card sharp who ends up in Argentina at the tail end of WWII.  He is picked up by underground casino owner Bellam (George Macready) and works his way up to head of security.  Johnny knows something is up with his boss but before he can figure that out, Bellam runs off and marries a smokin' hot redhead.  Unfortunately, Johnny knows her and thus begins an incredibly tense back and forth as Gilda throws her unavailability in his face while both of them hide their association from her husband.

Who turns out to be a cartel boss with a tungsten monopoly.

And some patents gotten from two very angry German fellows before the war ended who now want them back.

See, this could have been a darkly dangerous cat-and-mouse kind of movie but they ruin it at the end.  That was so disappointing.

Pan's Labyrinth (2006)

  Also called El laberinto del fauno, if you're interested in such things. Yet another of my weird creepy foreign films, I forced this one on Rob Sunday night.  He was trepidatious at first but grew to appreciate how beautiful it was, which was all I could have hoped for.

Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) travels with her pregnant mother (Ariadna Gil) to an old mill at the demand of her mother's new husband, a Captain in Franco's army, and a total bastard besides.  Once there, Ofelia discovers a magical world just waiting for her, as she is hailed as the long lost heir to the Underground Kingdom.  Her guide to recovering her rightful place is a giant blue faun (Doug Jones, of course) and three fairies.  This is a welcome distraction from the horrors going on around her, as the Captain (Sergi Lopez) is hunting down resistance fighters in the woods and her mother's pregnancy is filled with complications.  The faun sets her to three tasks she must complete before the moon is full.  Can she accomplish them and reclaim her fairy status before her psychotic step-father gets everyone killed?  Watch it and find out.

Before we watched it, Rob asked me if it was a sad movie.  I said "Kind of" which isn't really an answer but it was the best one I could give because 1) I'm not going to spoil the end of the movie for someone who's never seen it.  Are you kidding?  And 2) because it really does depend on which view you'd like to take.  Depending on how cynical you are, the movie is incredibly depressing at the end.  But if  you're a mainly happy person, you'll be able to see the other side, the warm rosy ending.

This is one of those rare foreign films that even people who dislike foreign films watched and liked it.  I think it's because Guillermo Del Toro had already garnered some goodwill with his Hellboy movies.  He is one of those directors whose body of work is distinctive.  I've got a couple of his earlier films in my Netflix queue and I'm looking forward to seeing how his influences have shifted or refined.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)

  Yet another cleaning movie.  This one I did a little better with, I only sat down to watch the giant fight scene over the chest, you know the one with Sparrow, Turner, and Norrington fighting for the key on that giant mill wheel.  Man, I love that choreography.

The second movie finds Elizabeth Swan (Keira Knightley), her betrothed Will Turner (Orlando Bloom), and former suitor James Norrington (Jack Davenport) wanted by the law (or at least the East India Trading Company) for their parts in the first movie.  The oily villain, Cutler Beckett (Tom Hollander) is willing to negotiate their lives for Jack Sparrow's compass, the one that points toward the heart's greatest desire.  The only thing is, Jack (Johnny Depp) had a previous debt with Davy Jones (a squid-faced Bill Nighy) which has come due.  The only way to get out of crewing 100 years on The Flying Dutchman is to find the chest where Jones keeps his heart and stab it.

I do love that Disney managed to get a bunch of people back for the second movie in the series, including some that you may not expect, like the two light-ladies from Tortuga (Scarlet and Giselle) that slap Jack and have apparently become BFF since then.

  These two.

Also, I was pleased to recognize Naomie Harris (28 Days Later, Ninja Assassin) as Tia Dalma, the voodoo lady.  That probably took a shitload of time sitting in a makeup chair every day but God love you, good job.  In the third movie, she starts to get a little wonky but that's a totally different review.

I know these movies are popular fluff and it's become a big deal to hate on them and call them sell-outs, but let's not fucking forget:  they were based on a ride at Disney World!  The fact that they were able to get any coherent scripts out of that is like a freakin' miracle.

Pinocchio (1940)

  Man, it's hard to believe this movie is over 70 years old.  I remember watching it on VHS as a kid and now it's a special edition 2-disc Blu-ray with a DVD and digital copy.  Kids today are fucking lucky, that's all I'm saying.

This is a classic story, even older than the Disney version so if you really need me to tell you what it's about, hi!  Welcome to the planet Earth.  Please enjoy our smoothies and beautiful national parks and don't forget to stop by the gift shop on your way back to your home galaxy.  You might enjoy watching the movie Pinocchio to while away the light-years on your return.  It's about a woodcarver named Gepetto who carves a puppet of a boy and wishes on a star that it would become a real child.  The star is actually the mail service of the Blue Fairy, a lovely creature that comes through his window and makes the puppet live.  Since it is still just a wooden doll, she gives a cricket named Jiminy the task of being Pinocchio's conscience to tell him right from wrong.  Only by making good decisions will Pinocchio get to become human.  Gepetto is overjoyed at seeing his little wooden boy and immediately sends him to school.  Just as immediately, Pinocchio runs into a walking fox named Honest John and his retarded cat sidekick.  The fox convinces Pinocchio that he should be in show biz and sells him to Stromboli, an evil puppetmaster who locks him in a birdcage.  Rescued by the Blue Fairy, Pinocchio runs into Honest John again and is convinced (it's not his fault; he's a literal blockhead) that blowing off school to go to Pleasure Island would be way better.  But he finds that anarchy isn't really what it's cracked up to be and escapes with Jiminy, only to discover that his father has gone out searching for him and ended up in the belly of a whale.

The animation work, especially the static backgrounds, is impeccable, years ahead of its time and the transition to high-def works in its favor.  This is definitely a classic film and well worth the addition to a collection, especially if you have kids.

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006)

  This was another of those movies that I had to see again to decide if I liked it.  Christy (of the Experiment) gave it to me a year or so ago because "this is a you movie, not a me movie" as she said.  The first time I watched it, the ending struck me as a little cold but maybe I was paying more attention to it this time, or maybe I was just in a different state of mind but I didn't mind it so much.

Jean-Baptiste (Ben Whishaw) has an almost supernatural sense of smell.  Born in the fishmonger's district and almost immediately sold to an orphanage, Jean-Baptiste's life isn't exactly a basket of roses.  At 13, he is sold to a tannery and that's where his talents really come into play.  On an errand into the city, he is captivated by the aroma of a young plum-seller (Karoline Herfurth).  She, obviously, is more than a little creeped out by this dude who keeps trying to smell her and he accidentally kills her while trying to keep her from screaming.  At death, though, her scent fades, distressing Jean-Baptiste greatly.  Not so much that he just killed a woman, but that he will never again be able to smell her.  It becomes his mission in life to learn how to preserve scent.  He gets himself apprenticed to a formerly glorious perfumer named Baldini (Dustin Hoffman) and learns the art of distillation.  It works very well on flowers but not so well on more esoteric things:  iron, copper, the housecat.  Baldini explains that the town of Grasse is famous for their en florage method of preserving scent.  Off goes the journeyman Jean-Baptiste to Provence.  Coincidentally, a string of murders begins in the same place; all young women of surpassing beauty.  The town's fathers are in an uproar, especially Antoine Richis (Alan Rickman), since his daughter Laura (Rachel Hurd-Wood) is the fairest of them all.

You see, Jean-Baptiste has discovered a perfume that captures the essence of Beauty, because beauty is what makes the world go round.  Love follows Beauty and Beauty, Love as a snake biting its own tail. We love things that are beautiful and the things that we love become beautiful because we love them.  We find ourselves eager to do things for beautiful people.  It's why you'll never see a hot homeless person.  Jean-Baptiste has never known love, only obsession.

Anyway, it's a gorgeous film and I encourage everyone to see it.  Even if you don't like it, I think you should appreciate the artistry.  After all, beautiful things should be preserved.

Prizzi's Honor (1985)

  This was pretty much exactly like Mr. and Mrs. Smith but without the happy ending.  Anjelica Huston won an Oscar for her role as Maerose Prizzi, the grand-daughter of a mafia don.

Enforcer Charley (Jack Nicholson) and Maerose used to be an item, but Charley got cold feet and backed out, besmirching Maerose's honor.  For this, she is exiled from the family.  Then Charley sees a beautiful stranger (Kathleen Turner) at Maerose's sister's wedding and, after some digging, finds out that her name is Irene Walker.  They start dating, until Charley's father (John Randolph) mentions that Irene is actually an out-of-town hitter called in for special jobs.  Charley can get past that, though, until he finds out that Irene was involved in a scam to rip the Prizzis off for $720,000.  Then he marries her. Maerose meanwhile, uses this information to get back into her father's (Lee Richardson) good graces before turning him against Charley.  Things go very wrong after Irene shoots a woman during a kidnapping who turns out to be a police captain's wife.  The resulting heat almost sparks a war between the Families and Don Corrado Prizzi (William Hickey) decides that Irene has to go.  And Charley has to do the honors.

Now, I'm not one of those people that believes in fairy tales and picture-perfect endings.  However, I do believe in justice.  I cling fervently to this belief because I am, at heart, a terrible person and the only reason I don't commit unspeakable criminal acts is the fear of punishment.  Therefore, when I see a character like Maerose Prizzi:  a conniving, cold-blooded snake of a woman not only go unpunished, but **SPOILER ALERT** end up getting exactly what she always wanted, to the extent of breaking up a happy marriage by having one of the two murder the other one **END SPOILER** well, it just makes me sad that I can't get away with more things.  That's really my only complaint about this movie.

Pale Rider (1985)

  Yet another of my revenge-soaked Clint Eastwood movies.  This time, he plays a mysterious Preacher who helps a bunch of gold miners keep their claims against a huge mining outfit led by C.K. Lahood (Richard Dysart).  Lahood's hoods (ha! I kill me) have been raiding through their camp, killing livestock, and harassing the miners in town to try to drive them away but after Preacher shows up and whips some ass, things calm down.

Lahood calls in a corrupt Marshal named Stockburn (John Russell) and his six deputies to dispatch the troublesome man of God.

This movie is awesome because it doesn't have to tell you anything about Preacher's past.  He's just a drifter, an answer to a young girl's prayer after her dog is killed during the raid.  He is a man who believes in hard work, community, and a good length of hickory.  You just can't beat that.

Read or Die (2003)

  This OVA was so my speed, it's not even funny.  The main character, Yumiko Readman, is a secret agent for the UK Library special operations division.

That is a thing, people!

Even better?  She's like the Green Lantern of paper, able to shape it into whatever form she can imagine.  She's teamed up with Miss Deep, a cynical older woman able to phase through solid objects, and Drake, the I'm-so-utterly-over-it support guy.  The three of them are out after a series of evil clones, led by a guy named Ikkyu Soujun, who is trying to find two rare books written by Beethoven so he can complete the "Suicide Symphony".

Just go with it.

Anyway, the Netflix sleeves leads one to believe that it's an hour and half long movie.  Nay, nay, my friends.  It's broken into 4 or 5 episodes so don't turn it off after you see credits running.  Also, while I generally advocate watching foreign films and shows in their original languages, I actually recommend watching the English dub.  The voice track is very professionally done, with no weird colloquialisms and since the characters are supposed to be British and American, it's less bizarre than hearing Japanese voice actors randomly using English.

There is also a TV show that I may check out.  Wikipedia says that it is only loosely connected to the OVA so we'll see.

The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)

  This particular DVD comes with an introduction by Clint Eastwood and it's kind of nice to hear his thoughts on it.  I'm not generally one for all the commentary tracks and special features on a movie (I just want to watch the movie) but a little intro like this isn't bad.

Josey Wales is a farmer in Missouri with his wife and son (played by his actual son, Kyle), when a group of Union artillery men ride through and kill his family, burn his house down, and leave him with a permanent scar down the side of his face.  As he sits on the graves of his loved ones and grieves, another group of men show up.  These are Confederate irregulars, led by a man named Fletcher (John Vernon).  They particularly hound the Redlegs, as the artillery men are known for their red stockings, up until the war is over.  Fletcher comes back from a meeting and offers the entire group amnesty if they'll swear loyalty to the Union.  Everyone agrees but Josey.  It turns out to be a trap and everyone is killed except for a young kid named Jamie (Sam Bottoms) who is only wounded.  Josey and the kid set out to dodge their pursuers.  For all of his gruff exterior, Josey ends up with a bunch of strays including an old Cherokee gentleman (Chief Dan George), a Navajo woman (Geraldine Keams), a skinny red hound, and a wagonload of Kansas farmers.  His attempts at building a new life for himself are put in jeopardy as the head of the Redlegs, Terrill (Bill McKinney) tracks him down.

Boy oh boy do I love me some revenge films.  This one is more mellow of a message than most of the ones I watch but it's a great movie with a respectable bodycount.  I'm a fan of Eastwood's westerns and I own several of them.  Eventually, I'll get around to seeing all the Dirty Harry films.  Also, Eastwood is one of a select handful of directors that I actually make a point of watching.

If you're wondering why there has been such an influx of movies I own, it's because I've been busy watching TV shows.  I finally finished the first season of 24, which was pretty decent.  I can see why people really got attached to that show.  I'm still only halfway through season 3 of the animated X-Men but I only watch them on streaming when I don't have any discs at the house.  I just got two new ones in the mail so I'll probably set those aside for a bit.  New fall programming starts next week.  /sigh

I have the pilots for 2 Broke Girls and The Playboy Club set to record already and I have to program the rest.  It's going to be a busy season.

The Others (2001)

  This is one of the best haunted house movies I've seen in years.  The atmosphere it strikes is just perfect and all the performances are top-notch.  I especially loved Nicole Kidman's character.  She has this air of implacability as the mistress of the house, even when the world as she knows it is coming unraveled.

Grace (Kidman) owns a big house in the Channel Islands.  Her husband (Christopher Eccleston) left for the war and hasn't yet returned, leaving her to care for their two children, Anne and Nicholas (Alakina Mann and James Bentley).  The house must be kept incredibly dark during the day as the children have a rare disorder called Xeroderma pigmentosum, which means that exposure to sunlight could be fatal.  As a result, Grace goes to great lengths to explain how things are done to her three new servants, who show up one day out of the blue.  That's when everything starts to go wrong.  Crying is heard in rooms with no one there, doors open and close on their own, and the children swear steadfastly that they've seen a little boy named Victor.  Grace must protect her children from these threats and also confront some very unpleasant truths.

If you've seen the movie before, you'll know what I mean when I say that I really appreciated how it sort of turned the tables on you.  It was very fresh and a great change from more rote examples in the genre.  The lighting, the music, everything just built on everything else to create a beautiful tapestry of suspense.  Even when you know the trick, the movie is a joy to watch.  This was my third viewing since I bought it and it's still just as good.

Once Bitten (1985)

  Man, this movie is so 80's.  This is Jim Carrey's second feature film (the first was Earth Girls are Easy) and easily my favorite starring him.

Lauren Hutton stars as The Countess, a vampire searching for a virgin in 1980's LA.  She must drink from a male virgin three times before Halloween or she'll lose her beauty.  Time is running out, but then she finds Mark Kendall (Carrey), an ice-cream-truck-driving high school senior desperate to punch his V-card but unable to seal the deal with his girlfriend Robin (Karen Kopins).  The Countess embarks on turning Mark and hijinks ensue.

This is one of those goofy little dated movies that is still fun to watch.  I figured that it was a more user-friendly introduction to the type of movies I like for Rob.  He did enjoy it, so that was a plus.  It's one of my favorite comedies.

Pi (1998)

  Man, this movie was weird.  I don't even know what the hell was going on during most of it.  There's math and Kabbalah and ants and all sorts of stuff.  Darren Aronofsky is a weird, weird dude.  He has a recognizable style, though, I'll give him that.

Max Cohen (Sean Gullette) is a numbers theorist searching for the pattern that will unlock the stock market.  There are some stalkerish corporate people who keep trying to give him a ton of money for this key, but he keeps dodging them.  About the only person he talks to consistently is his old professor (Mark Margolis) who suffered a stroke and retired after trying to map out the mathematical end of Pi.  After reluctantly consulting with some Hasidic Kabbalists, Max believes that the 216-digit number he has stumbled across will somehow allow him to understand the universe.  The weirdness comes in the form of "attacks" Max has of what look like either migraines or cluster headaches, also known as suicide headaches (thanks, Wikipedia!) where he hallucinates, his nose bleeds, and there is some sort of godawful noise.

The entire movie is filmed in a grainy black and white with periods of high contrast and others where everything is muddled.  The Netflix sleeve describes it as "jarring" but I don't think that's really the right word.  It is off-putting but not in a sharp or sudden way.  It's a brilliant piece of work, especially for a first-out-of-the-gate film-maker.  That being said, I'll probably never watch it again.

Oliver & Company (1988)

  Sometimes I just put a movie on while I clean my apartment.  I hadn't watched this one in a while and I ended up sitting down and watching the whole thing.

I hate cleaning anyway.

This was Disney's version of Oliver Twist, about a young orphan (in this case, a yellow kitten voiced by Joey Lawrence) who falls in with a bunch of street thieves led by Dodger (Billy Joel) and Fagin (Dom DeLouise), who owes money to mobster Sykes (Robert Loggia).  On his first outing, Oliver gets caught by uptown girl Jenny and moves into her Park Avenue pad, displacing Georgette (Bette Midler), the prize-winning poodle.  Georgette helps the gang "rescue" Oliver, prompting Fagin to think of ransoming him back to pay off his debts.  When tiny Jenny shows up with her piggy bank, he completely crumbles and gives Oliver back.  Unfortunately, Sykes is waiting and kidnaps Jenny.  Now it's up to the animals to rescue her and get back to where they belong.

I know that sometimes I can be overly critical and I have a habit of picking relatively obscure movies to watch and review, but even I recognize that sometimes you just need a movie that's fluffy and light with a fun soundtrack.

Walk the Line (2005)

  I'm not one for biopics, generally, but this one had several things going for it:  1) Oscars 2) a performer I've actually heard of and was curious about and 3) positive reviews from all my acquaintances who saw it.

I didn't dislike it.  I found it to be fairly typical (musicians get drug problems, we know) but not uninteresting.  Joaquin Phoenix plays 'strung out' extremely well and Reese Witherspoon is charming and petite.  I found it more entertaining to see the other portrayals of famous acts that toured with Cash. The guy who played Jerry Lee Lewis had the attitude down pat and the kid who played Elvis looked stunningly like him.  Didn't have the speaking voice, but had that look.

The movie follows Johnny Cash's life from his dirt-poor upbringing and the death of his older brother to joining the Air Force and marrying his first wife, Vivian (Ginnifer Goodwin).  After auditioning for Sam Phillips (Dallas Roberts), Cash is signed to the label and begins touring with Jerry Lee Lewis (Waylon Payne), Elvis (Tyler Hilton),  and June Carter (Reese Witherspoon).  His home life decreases in direct proportion to his success and his drug use spirals.  In fact, the only jail time Johnny Cash ever spent was county lock-up after getting busted for buying narcotics over the border.  Through it all, June remained his best friend and confidante, eventually agreeing to marry him.

I found it incredibly irritating that the movie made a great deal out of Cash's attempts to live up to his father's ideals.  I understand that all children feel that need to please their parents but obsessing over it is just pathetic.  Especially since Robert Patrick's character is flat-out impossible to like, much less wish for approval.  That's more in the nature of a personal thing, though, and has no bearing on the technical performance of the film or the actors therein, who were uniformly excellent.

All in all, it was a decent rental but definitely not a buy.  It made me want to run to iTunes and download even more Cash than I already had.

The Thing (1982)

  It is my curse that the people who like me best are the ones who also hate horror movies.  You would think that you'd need a solid basis in the horror classics and be fairly desensitized just to be in the same room as me, wouldn't you?  Apparently not.  It was my task to get Rob to watch this movie with me.  He had never seen it and resisted my attempts to make him.  The only reason he finally caved was because he saw that it was from the year we were born and (wrongly) figured the special effects would be laughable.

I didn't tell him that Rob Bottin was a fucking genius and ahead of his time.  These creature effects are fantastic and they still hold up fairly well, which I attribute to them being practical (i.e. latex and foam) rather than CGI.  You just can't get the depth of gore with CGI.  Granted, some of the movement is a little mechanical but that's forgivable when the creature is trying to eat people.  Honestly, without the FX, this is just a locked room mystery.

The guys at Antarctic Research Station #31 haven't had radio contact in a week before their boring ass sojourn at the world's end is interrupted by a helicopter filled with Norwegians chasing a dog across the ice.  The helicopter blows up due to a grenade accident and the Americans are forced to shoot the remaining guy after he wings one of their crew.  MacCready (Kurt Russell), the American pilot, and Copper (Richard Dysart) head over to the Norwegian camp and find it gutted and burning.  Now completely creeped out, they head home and start piecing together the mystery.  See, the Norwegians had dug up something out in the ice, which is why we should all leave Antarctica the fuck alone.  When was the last time you heard of something awesome happening there?  Never, that's when.  Anyway, they put the dog in with the others and that's when shit gets real.

Alien.  Shape-shifting alien, to be precise.  It's able to perfectly mimic its host after assimilating it.  In the movie, that means covering it with purple slime and stabbing it with a dozen tentacles.  So, of course, it gets away and then comes an hour of suspense-building where the damn thing could be anyone and everyone goes a little stir-crazy and paranoid trying to figure out who.

Honestly, this is one of John Carpenter's best horror movies.  (My personal favorite is his Vampires but I freely admit that one is craptacular.)  The original Halloween, this one, and The Fog are definitely the top 3.    

Rob was not a fan but I'm working on him.  He'll come around.

Ocean's Twelve (2004)

  There's really only one reason to watch this movie:  Vincent Cassel's dance through the lasers.  Other than that little highlight, this is a formulaic sequel that did nothing to capture the fun of the first one.

The original Eleven from the first movie have been found by Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia) and now only have two weeks to come up with the money they stole from him, with interest, or he'll kill them.  Adding to their dilemma is a French thief calling himself the Night Fox (Cassel) who promises to ruin all their scores unless they settle a debt of honor as to who is the better thief.  Also, Rusty's (Brad Pitt) past comes back to haunt him as the beautiful Europol agent Isabel (Catherine Zeta-Jones) starts closing in on the team while they try to steal a Faberge egg.

One more little note:  Robbie Coltrane who cameos as Matsui and an uncredited Albert Finney who plays Lamark also both played famous British detectives, as Cracker and Hercule Poirot respectively.

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002)

   After having seen a few of his movies now, I kind of want to meet George Clooney.  There are very few movie stars that I would actually like to meet in real life.  Generally, I like the characters they play but not the people themselves.  That way I can pretend that they don't have faults except for cool, interesting ones they have onscreen.  Shallow?  Why, yes, I am.

However, after this and The Men Who Stare at Goats, I am beginning to think that Mr. Clooney might be kind of a fan of the borderline insane stories of the CIA.  At the very least, he has an extremely well-developed sense of the absurd.

In his directorial debut, he takes on the possibly true story of Chuck Barris (Sam Rockwell), a television producer and pop song writer who may also have been a hit man for the CIA.  Using the contestants from The Dating Game as a cover, Barris conducts clandestine missions through the Cold War for his handler (George Clooney).  After a while, the pressure of a double life starts to get to him and he finds it harder and harder to function reliably, especially after the revelation that there is a mole in the organization out gunning for him.

Again, everyone who is anyone is in this movie from Drew Barrymore, Julia Roberts and Rutger Hauer to cameos by Matt Damon, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Brad Pitt.

Dark, cynical, and hilarious.  You know I enjoyed it.  The ending is a bit more depressing than I would have liked which downgrades it from the coveted "Loved it" tag to the more pedestrian "Liked it".  Still, a good time was had by all.

Negative Happy Chainsaw Edge (2007)

  See that poster right there?  Lies.  All lies.

I read Twitch pretty regularly, since I love me some Asian films and they're a great source of some weirdness.  That's where I first heard about Hobo with a Shotgun, for example.  Oh, a review is coming, make no mistake.

From what I read of this film, it looked like a splatter-comedy romance, a la Shaun of the Dead, except with a chainsaw-wielding murderer instead of zombies.  Not so.  It's actually about two depressed teens falling in love with absolutely no bloodshed.

Seriously.  How can you have Chainsaw Edge in the title of your movie and not have a single drop of blood?  It's just false advertising.

Yousake is a teenaged boy whose friend Noto died in a motorcycle accident, leaving him hurt and angry with no idea of how to deal with the loss.  He thinks he wants to die but he's not quite ready to face that concept yet, so instead he lashes out by shoplifting and sneaking out after curfew.  On his way home one night he meets Eri, a schoolgirl with superpowers activated by the presence of Chainsaw Man, a hooded figure with a chainsaw that appears every night to do battle.  Now Yousake has a cause; he must protect Eri while she fights.  He accomplishes this mostly by getting in her way.  Still, Chainsaw Man continues to weaken with every encounter and it looks like victory is imminent.  Then Yousake's parents call and ask him to transfer schools to Sapporro where his dad has opened a new shop, and he has to decide whether or not to leave.

It's very sappy and I say again, THERE IS NO BLOODSHED.  I can't describe to you how disappointing that was to me.  Still, if you are interested in characters over buckets of gore, you'd probably like this movie.

Good Night and Good Luck (2005)

  I'm not as knowledgeable on the McCarthy era as I should be for watching this movie.  I know that he was a Senator who spun people into a frenzy, playing on their fears of a Communist takeover.  In the day and age of terrorists flying planes into landmarks, that seems a little simplistic and laughable but I try to keep in mind that at the time it was a major thing for people.  They felt like their entire lives were hanging in the balance of these two superpowers and that at any moment they could be obliterated by a nuclear bomb.  That's why a man like McCarthy was able to get so powerful, feeding and exploiting people's paranoia, and why it was so important for someone to stand up to him. 

I wasn't alive for any of this and neither was George Clooney, since he was born in '61 and McCarthyism lasted from the late forties through the fifties.  I bet his parents probably had a lot to say about it, though.  My mother was born in '53 and she remembers the scars that left, which had a lot to do with how people reacted later.  Still, his sophomore directorial effort is a stark look at the period as well as an indictment of our own media--so afraid of being shut out that they water down and softball questions to politicians instead of shining a light on them.  Somehow I doubt Edward R. Murrow is pleased with his successors.

Murrow (David Strathairn) was a news reporter already famous for delivering the "This is London" broadcasts during WWII.  He and his producer, Fred Friendly (George Clooney), indirectly take a potshot at McCarthy by taking up the case of an Air Force lieutenant, Milo Radulovich, who was discharged after refusing to denounce his father and sister without a trial or due process of any kind.  Then they took on the big man himself, using his own speeches against him.  CBS executive Bill Paley (Frank Langella) warned Murrow and Friendly that they would lose sponsorship if they continued.  McCarthy retaliated predictably by raising questions of Murrow's loyalty, but the damage had been done.  He was already under fire by the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations and those hearings were broadcast live on rival network ABC.  The Red Scare was waning, but so was Murrow's clout.  His relationship with Paley never recovered.

This was an extremely well done film.  The only problem I had with it was that it dropped you right in the middle of the action and didn't do a lot to set up various characters.  I loved the use of black and white throughout to really evoke that era, and I especially appreciated all the real footage from the broadcasts, including all of the McCarthy appearances.  I wouldn't buy it because I am not a huge fan of dramas and I can't see myself watching this over and over again.  There are a ton of stars in it, though, including Robert Downey Jr., Patricia Clarkson, Tate Donovan, Jeff Daniels, and Ray Wise.  It's definitely worth a rental.

Novocaine (2001)

  Lame tag line but I like the look of the poster.

I've owned this movie for a few years now.  I got it for $3 or $4 before I signed up for Netflix and was willing to take chances like that.  You know how sometimes you watch a movie and you just can't decide if you liked it or not?  That's how this one was for me.  It's got a great cast and it's weird but something about it just doesn't gel for me.

Frank Sangster (Steve Martin) is a dentist with everything going for him.  He's got a beautiful fiancee/dental assistant (Laura Dern) and a thriving practice.  Then a beautiful stranger (Helena Bonham Carter) shows up and scams him out of all his prescription narcotics and his ne'er-do-well brother (Elias Koteas) crashes at his place.  Suddenly, strait-laced Frank is lying to the DEA and trying to get his drugs back, which means a tense confrontation with Duane, the femme fatale's permanently angry, and implied incestuous, brother (Scott Caan). 

Then Duane shows up dead at Frank's place.

I love noir, and I love good riffs on noir and, on the surface, a dentist involved in a murder mystery should be ticking all the right boxes.  It just falls flat, though.  Maybe because The Whole Nine Yards did the exact same shtick and did it better just the year before.  There's not enough comedy to make it a spoof, there's not enough suspense to make it a drama, and it's laughably easy to figure out who the villains are. 

If this movie were an animal, it would be the runt of the litter and everybody knows what happens to them in the wild.

Also, this is my 300th post.  Yay!

The Assassination of Jesse James (2007)

...By the Coward Robert Ford

  Jesus, that's a long title.  It's an even longer film.  2 hrs and 40 min.  You'll never get that time back.

I'm not saying that the movie is bad.  It's well-made and well-acted.  It's just slow as fuck and boring as hell.

Robert Ford (Casey Affleck) is 19 years old and has a huge boy-crush on legendary outlaw/folk hero Jesse James (Brad Pitt).  Most of us don't get to meet our idols in real life, but Bob is determined to get noticed.  Unfortunately, the term 'stalker' hadn't been coined yet.  Bob attempts to ingratiates himself with Jesse's brother Frank (Sam Shepard) but is rebuffed for being 'weird'.   Professional criminals are a touchy and frequently superstitious bunch.  If you have a reputation for being squirrelly, no one will work with you.  But Bob persists, eventually making it so far as to be a lackey.

A stupid man would have been content.  Bob Ford is not stupid.  He doesn't just want to be like Jesse James, he wants to be Jesse James.  Eventually, his obsession leads him to betrayal.

There are a ton of great actors in this movie including Jeremy Renner, Sam Rockwell, and the perennial Garrett Dillahunt.  There are also some cameos from James Carville, Ted Levine, Nick Cave, and Zooey Deschanel.  Mary Louise Parker has really high billing but her screen time is probably less than five minutes total. 

9 (2009)

  This is the inaugural post of the "Rob" tag.  Let's hear a round of applause.

...

Ok, that's enough.  Rob, aka New Boyfriend (you know I must like him since he gets a real name and everything), has graciously given me access to his movie collection which rivals mine in size, at least digitally.  He was also very understanding about my insistence in alphabetizing his DVDs and Blu-rays. What?  It's a disease, I can't help it.

Anyway, this was the first one on the shelf that I hadn't seen before so I borrowed it.

Frankly, I expected more.  Don't get me wrong here, the animation is frankly spectacular especially in Blu-ray.  It practically pops off the screen.  Sadly, the story just isn't compelling:  9 is the last of a series of little burlap and clockwork creations made by a scientist after the future Sarah Connor warned us about comes true and man has been destroyed by machines.  By the time 9 wakes up, there are only the other eight and The Beast, a machine with a cat's skull that is looking for a particular device.

9 has the device and after embarking on a mission to rescue 2 from The Beast, he inadvertently activates The Brain, a machine capable of replicating other machines by stealing life force from other creatures.  Since the numbered ones are the only living creatures left, you can see where this is going.  9 has to rally his siblings and figure out how to stop it.

Now, a movie like this hinges on the characters and it's just really hard to care about these little things.  They don't even have names, just numbers, and as Jean Valjean or Magneto can tell you, numbers dehumanize.  Also, they don't bleed and whatever injuries they sustain can be fixed with needles and thread, making it harder to care about whether they get hurt or not.

I'm a big fan of Tim Burton and I like Timur Bekmambetov's Russian work (though I hated Wanted with a passion) so I was very disappointed in this movie.