Category: movies

I once read a beautiful short story by Lynda Sexson where a female character, who can produce pearls through her skin, touches herself between her legs and feels pearls growing there. Like teeth, she thinks. When I first saw the trailer for Teeth, this was the image I was reminded of.

High hopes, high hopes. The Sexson story works because its tone is consistent; Teeth, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to know what it wants to do and so degenerates into a seedy, at times tastelessly funny, B-movie. Coming-of-age plot, young virgin scared of and then finding power, and even joy, in her sexuality – but then it suddenly becomes American Pie. What the hell. It could have been a serious commentary on rape (Wouldn’t it be nice for women to only accept into their body the person they want, and to have the weapon to bite off those who force themselves on them), a satire, a cautionary tale of sorts. There is a scene about mutations – can it be that after decades of suffering from sexual violence, a female is born with a body part (the example used is the rattle on the rattlesnake) she can use to her advantage?

This could have been a better film. More grit, more darkness, remove the comedy and that stupid sequence where she Googles vagina dentata, and maybe throw in, um, I don’t know, a plot? For urgency? And it could have worked.

(Photo from the NYTimes.com)

I saw it just last night – finally the DVD I borrowed from Jake decided to work. Years ago a friend of mine asked if I’ve seen Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream. I said I haven’t, and he said, I want to tell you something about the ending. No, it’s not a spoiler. It’s just a very beautiful, powerful image.

In the end, all the main characters assume the fetal position.

Here’s the first, here’s the second.

Monsters vs. Aliens

Come on, all of my favorite people are here.

They were even able to squeeze Amy Poehler in there! I knew I should have paid more attention to the Computer character. And I was not able to guess that that was Rainn Wilson at all.

I was so excited when this film’s trailer came out – and I didn’t even know then who the voice talents were.

Well. I should have known: if you found a film’s trailer hilarious, more often than not the film itself wouldn’t be.

Monsters vs. Aliens is still funny, it has its moments, but I found the attack on San Francisco overwrought and tedious and, surprisingly, despite the amazing animation, bland, and really, if I didn’t see the trailer before the film I would have laughed at the theater more.

But the point is the producers need your money, media consumer. Who cares if you didn’t find it entertaining enough? You’ve coughed up the hundred-plus they need. So producers, you win.

Oh, but lay off the toilet humor. Stephen Colbert can be way funnier than that.

Balls of Fury

No, I don’t know what Maggie Q is doing in this darn film but I laughed and I’m not ashamed of it.

Maybe a little bit.

House of 9

Does anyone know this film? Has anyone ever seen it? Plot is simple and the action is engaging enough. Good for a lazy afternoon viewing.

Interesting that they cast Asher D as a rapper out to get his first contract, and then used his own song in one of the scenes. How shameless, and how lovely.

Read the first “mini-reviews” here. And I suppose this should have been “mini-reviews, 2”, but what the hell.

I’ll keep this short because it’s hot and I’m cranky.

30 Days of Night

Boring. Next.

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Well, okay, when the movie first came out I actually liked the idea of vampires terrorizing a small town in Alaska. (And no, not because of her. I didn’t know Palin then.) Cool premise: somewhere in Alaska the sun won’t shine for a month – what if vampires arrived at the place? And what if Josh Hartnett was the sheriff? OMG.

Whatever, my sister lent me a VCD (along with a brontosaurus fossil) and I didn’t even bother to pay attention to the second disc. The biggest action sequence in the film is the overhead tracking shot of the vampire attack that this reviewer liked so much, but the scene didn’t affect me in any way. The gore and the horror at times resembled 28 Days Later , but the film felt empty. I felt bad for the Jake Oleson character in the end for having a stupid big brother, but other than that, I didn’t really care.

The NYT said “the performers have little to do besides spill and drink blood in this tedious, inconsequential B picture.” Yeah. Thank goodness I didn’t see this in the theater. At least with the VCD I could fast-forward.

Knowing

This one unfortunately I watched in the theater.

Knowing teaches us that Google has all the answers, and that when we finally meet the aliens before the world ends we realize that they all look like Spike from Buffy, The Vampire Slayer. There’s a spoiler in that sentence somewhere, but I don’t give a shit. I was hoping to see an intelligent film. Or a really, really stupid film that I’ll still enjoy, like Eagle Eye. Instead I’m given the worst kind – a sci-fi popcorn flick believing, in its heart of hearts, that it is not ridiculous.

I would have forgiven the stupidity if I found the characters engaging. I didn’t. (The “You and me together forever” bit via sign language made me puke in the mouth. I almost expected Spielberg and E.T. to pop up somewhere.)

Roger Ebert loved the film, but I think he’s just giving it too much credit.

* * *

Anywho, I’m looking forward to seeing Monsters vs. Aliens. :) I was supposed to see it on opening night, but I ran out of money. My siblings think their Ate is an ATM.

My father dumped several DVDs back home, and so –

Bobby

On June 5, 1968, Senator Robert Kennedy passes through the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles with his wife, Ethel, and his security detail. He has just given a speech following a victory. He shakes hands with reporters, smiles for the cameras. A young man standing in the crowd raises his arms. The young man is holding a gun.

But this film is not about Bobby. It is not a documentary. We do not learn more about his life, the games he plays with his kids, his favorite breakfast. We do not see him brooding in a roomful of shadows.

This film is about June 5, 1968. It is just like any other day, but to some people the date is relatively more important. There’s a Dodgers game, for one thing. Kennedy’s campaign team is waiting for the results of the California primary. Inside the Ambassador Hotel, disgruntled busboys are working on a double shift, and the hotel’s inhabitants are dealing with their personal dramas. Some of the troubles shown in the film could have happened anytime – 1968, 1988, 2008; others have problems hopelessly connected to their current political landscape. At one point, a young student campaigner, after dropping acid with a friend, wonders aloud what will happen if Bobby Kennedy loses. “I’m only 19, I don’t want to go to Vietnam,” he tells his friend. “Do you?”

The film, written and directed by Charlie Sheen’s brother, Emilio Estevez, is like 22 short stories with the same setting, and the same ending. Peter Travers in the Rolling Stone called it “trite fiction”; I loved it.

Who’s in this film? Apparently everyone: Anthony Hopkins, William H. Macy, Christian Slater, Sharon Stone, Laurence Fishburne, Helen Hunt, Elijah Wood, Lindsay Lohan, Nick Cannon, Joshua Jackson, Shia LaBeouf, Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher, your next-door neighbor, Inday, everyone.

The Hoax

Remember that character Leo DiCaprio plays in The Aviator? So billionaire Howard Hughes was a bit, um…eccentric. Clifford Irving used this fact to his advantage.

Sometime in the 70’s Clifford Irving’s novel gets shelved by publishing bigwig McGraw-Hill. Irving so desperately wants to be published that he tells the firm’s executives that he has met with Hughes, who has asked him, personally, to write his autobiography with him.

Richard Gere, Alfred Molina. This film is love. This is a true story, too. After the autobiography was revealed as a hoax by Hughes himself, Irving wrote his own autobiography, detailing what he did to come up with one of the biggest cons in publishing history. The title of the book: The Hoax. The nerve of the guy.

The House Is Burning

I think this film was invited to the Cannes Film Fest. I don’t care. It’s boring, it’s generic. Just a bunch of sweating teenagers screaming at each other. Nice title, though. Sayang.

Maybe later I’ll see 30 Days of Night. Haha.

Revolutionary Road

Again, American suburbia as setting and cause/motivation—straight lines, white houses, flawed relationships, a slow then sudden falling apart. It is a backdrop and a main character, in this film named as an address of the Wheelers (Kate Winslet, Leonardo DiCarpio).

Revolutionary Road is one of those films where you feel you can pinpoint the exact moment where the characters make the wrong decision, but also know that it will not make much of a difference even if you are there to point it out to them. It is painful to watch, but a joy, too—it does not make a travesty out of a broken life.

Kate Winslet should have won the Oscar for this film.

(Photo from ClicktheCity.com)

The Reader

How frightening, a narrow perspective. “We did not unlock them for the obvious reasons,” Kate Winslet’s Hannah says, referring to a group of Jewish women who ended up being burned alive in a bombed church. “We were guards. They were our responsibility!”

And I’m going to cheat right now and link to a great review by Ebert. The review made me appreciate the film more. Who knows, maybe I’ll watch it again soon.

(Personal pet peeve: I know it requires time and more money, but wouldn’t it be better if movies set in a particular country with characters of a particular race were told in the appropriate language? It’s strange, for example, to hear German characters in Germany speaking in American English with a German accent. Or, in Memoirs of a Geisha, Japanese characters in Japan speaking in American English with a Japanese accent. And even that showed effort on the part of the filmmakers—other movies would just have the characters speak with an English accent, even if they were in France or in Wales, as though having an English accent is enough to communicate foreign-ness. It’s weird.)

(Photo from Cinematical.com)