**½ (2.5/5)

Directed by: Aimee Lagos
Written by: Aimee Lagos

I gotta admit, I am super fuckin’ tired of these kinds of movies. More on that in a minute, though.

Two young girls (Brittany Snow and Christian Serratos) are having a pretty rough day. One just found out that her dad can’t make it to her college graduation and the other just found out that her boyfriend is cheating on her and then she promptly wrecked her car.

Two young boys (Evan Ross and Jonathan Michael Trautmann) are having a pretty rough time of it, too. One was just harassed by the cops on his way home from college, the other was just told that he had to go through a pretty rough initiation to become part of a gang that really doesn’t want him as a member.

Guess the race of all of these characters and you win…well, nothing, because it’s pretty goddamn easy.

These four kids meet up in an explosion of violence and accidental racism.

This movie, just like Crash before it, does its very best to show us how terrible racism is and how these kids are stuck in their lot because of where they grew up, but how they could be so different if they only tried…but then it all unravels with one line from the schoolboy’s mouth. That’s the moment that the movie says, “Oh, but they’re really, deep down, all the same.” It actually pissed me off.

The problem is that the movie itself is really well made and VERY well acted. There isn’t a weak link on that side of things. Evan is especially good as the kid who just wants a better life for himself. I REALLY hoped that he wouldn’t turn into a stereotype. Unfortunately, Amiee Lagos didn’t see any other way out for him. Sigh…

I wish that I could fully recommend this movie, but besides it being a “been there, done that” movie, it just keeps the stereotypes going…down to the “magical black man.” (Only older black men are any good, you see. But they still get hassled by The Man.)

I was going to see another movie tonight but, apparently, they gave out badges to everyone in town to go see Super. The badge line was all the way around the Paramount and then split to the other side of the street.

Wow. How much did they oversell this festival this year?

THE CONFESSION (2010)

Directed by: Tanel Toom
Written by: Tanel Toom/Caroline Bruckner

What happens when two young boys find out that they have to start going to confession? Well, they decide that they need something to confess, of course. Unfortunately, the prank that one of them (the troublemaker) comes up with leads to a tragedy. Now they both have something to confess that’s bigger than they could have ever imagined. The good boy wants to tell everything, but his friend doesn’t.

This is a pretty adult story told through the eyes of children. Unfortunately, when something like this happens, we all turn into children. And when things go even further wrong, it’s hard for us to truly understand why.

Great performances from the two kids make this one rise above what could have been melodrama without end.

NA WEWE (2010)

Directed by: Ivan Goldschmidt
Written by: Ivan Goldschmidt/Jean-Luc Pening

This one ties with The Confession as the most harrowing of the lot. It concerns a small band of travelers in Burundi during their Civil War. A Frenchman and his assistant have to jump into a bus with some natives. They get pulled over in a small village and see just what happens when the soldiers don’t like the look of the folks in the bus.

The soldiers (one of them a child) keep looking at facial features saying that the Tutsis and the Hutus look different. Any rational human being can see that they don’t, but that doesn’t matter. They want to kill all Tutsis.

A great short that, even if it’s not the best of the five, will most likely win the award this year. It did prove, once and for all, that U2 saves lives.

WISH 143 (2010)

Directed by: Ian Barnes
Written by: Tom Bidwell

A teenage boy is dying of cancer. He’s visited by a man from what is basically the Make A Wish Foundation. But his wish isn’t for meeting a celebrity or seeing a famous landmark. He wants to get laid.

Who else can he turn to but his friend, the priest. (No, not THAT kind of priest, ya bastard.) The priest wants to help, but it’s not exactly his forte to help a kid get laid. He tries to talk him out of it, but how do you talk a teenager out of sex?

Just the right amount of sweet in a surprisingly funny in all the right places. If Na Wewe doesn’t win, this one probably will.

THE CRUSH (2009)

Directed by: Michael Creagh
Written by: Michael Creagh

A little boy falls for his teacher. When he finds out that she has a boyfriend and is about to marry him, he challenges the man to a duel.

To the death.

When the eight year old and the 28 year old meet, fireworks go off.

This is the antidote to The Confession. It looks like it’s going to go one way, then goes another. Then it goes another way. It even goes another way after that. And the kid is alternately sweet and scary…sometimes at the same time. Great stuff and definitely worth checking out if you get a chance.

GOD OF LOVE (2010)

Directed by: Luke Matheny
Written by: Luke Matheny

The funniest of the bunch, this is the story of a young singer who is in love with the drummer in his band. She, unfortunately, is in love with the bassist, the singer’s best friend. The singer prays for help, even though he’s not really a believer, and gets a special gift. He finds a box of darts that will supposedly make someone fall for the first person they see…but only for six hours, then it wears off. If they’ve genuinely fallen in love, they’ll stay in love. If they don’t, nothing has changed.

Predictable in all the right ways and very funny in even more ways, this was probably my favorite of the bunch. It won’t win, but it was certainly a great way to end the program.

ANIMATED NOMINEES

DAY & NIGHT (2010)

Directed by: Teddy Newton
Written by: Wayne Dyer

I really should have reviewed this when I saw it with Toy Story 3 but, for some reason, I didn’t. So, here goes.

A creature wakes up to a beautiful day inside of him. The sounds of the day are the sounds of his body. (Birds chirp as he yawns. A water fall shows up when he takes his morning leak.) He’s running along with the day when he runs into another creature with the nigh inside of him. The two fight for a bit until they realize that the day and the night both have amazing things to offer.

A super fun little short from Pixar (so, obviously, it will probably win) that shows how much everyone has to offer everyone else. It’s also a great experiment in animation. The backgrounds become the foregrounds within these two guys and are typically more important than the lead characters.

It’s on the Toy Story 3 DVD, so watch it there. I know you own it.

THE GRUFFALO (2009)

Directed by: Max Lang,/Jakob Schuh
Written by: Julia Donaldson/Jakob Schuh/Max Lang
Based on book by: Julia Donaldson/Axel Scheffler

As much as I loved Day & Night, I think this is the one to beat. It’s a rather long short (running nearly half an hour), but it doesn’t waste a minute of it.

It’s the story of a little mouse who manages his way through a dark and scary forest by telling all of the other, bigger animals that he’s going to meet a friend: The Gruffalo, a huge, scary creature that will eat all of the other animals for lunch. When they find out that he was lying…well, look for this one. It’s a lot of fun and could definitely give Pixar a run for their money at the end of the month. The characters are cute and charming and the voice acting (by Helena Bonham Carter, John Hurt, Tom Wilkinson, Robbie Coltrane and others) is perfect.

Check it out with the whole family.

LET’S POLLUTE (2009)

Directed by: Geefwee Boedoe
Written by: Geefwee Boedoe/Tim Crawfurd/Teddy Newton

I completely agree with the sentiment of this short, but I think it’s the weakest of the lot. It’s an instructional video telling us how much fun and how important it is for us to pollute as much as possible. It’s fun in an offhand sort of way, but it really felt like it was trying a little too hard.

Pixar connection alert! Many of the musicians are Pixar employees (including Pete Doctor) and Boedoe, Newton and Crawford worked on a lot of Pixar films. Is this a Pixar production? I didn’t see them in the credits, but it sure does smack of a lesser Pixar short.

THE LOST THING (2010)

Directed by: Andrew Ruhemann/Shaun Tan
Written by: Shaun Tan
Based on book by: Shaun Tan

My second favorite of the animated shorts, this one is about a boy who befriends a Thing that he finds on the beach. At first it looks like an ugly blob of metal and tentacles. As time goes on, though, you start to realize how cute the Thing truly is and how much of a personality it has. When he realizes that he can’t keep the Thing, he has to find a place for it to go. And that’s the really hard part.

The Lost Thing is a great little short about learning to love something and growing up. There’s magic all around us, but we just don’t always see it…and that’s too bad.

The animation is intricate and beautiful in its own strange way. Definitely something that makes me want to seek out the book just so I can have some stills from the short around.

MADAGASCAR, A JOURNEY DIARY (2010)

Directed by: Bastien Dubois
Written by: Bastien Dubois

Bastien Dubois took a trip to Madagascar and found a whole new world opening up right before his eyes. He decided to tell his story through some very interesting animation and a pretty non-linear style. He goes from one beautiful thing to another and can’t take time to breath.

It’s a great short that I’m not sure will resonate with everyone. But it really tries to show the beauty of another culture that we Westerners just don’t really know anything about.

HONORABLE MENTION

URS (2009)

Directed by: Moritz Mayerhofer
Written by: Moritz Mayerhofer

Urs has been taking care of his mother for many years, but he wants something more. He’s a big, strong young man, so he straps his reluctant mother to his back and takes off on a journey over a mountain to a better life. It’s a tough road, though, and it’s going to be tough on both of them.

Coming from any other country, this would have been a generational story. As it’s from Germany, though, it’s not just that. It’s also about how a country has to put its past behind it in order to move on to a better future. Yes, it’s been 65 years since WWII came to an end, but there are still scars upon Germany that need to heal.

According to the website, though, there’s an even different story going on here. It’s about whether it’s ok to change things for the better even when someone doesn’t want those things to change. In that case, the movie could be about the USA and our overbearing foreign policies.

There’s so much going on in this short film that I really do wish that it had been nominated. It could easily have knocked Let’s Pollute! out of the race. Unfortunately, it didn’t.

If you ever get a chance, see Urs. It’s a beautiful short with a lot to say.

THE COW WHO WANTED TO BE A HAMBURGER (2010)

Directed by:Bill Plympton
Written by: Bill Plympton

I saw this one at SXSW last year, so I don’t think I need to review it again. It’s Bill Plympton, so I love it.

That’s it for this year’s Oscar shorts. I’ll see you after the show!

Because we’re awesome. That’s why.

Harry Knowles birthday, while a normal day for most folks, is a special day for around 200 of us in Austin (and, actually, some from around the world). Even if we don’t know Harry all that well, we still get to bask in the warm glow of films that he and his closest friends have chosen to show on the Alamo screens.

This year, the festivities started with the usual ridiculing of Jeff Mahler. This time, though, they had fucked up the only known print of Teen Wolf so often that it was no longer usable. Instead, they had a stuttering insult comic come out and do about 20 minutes about how lame Jeff is. Then he started on Harry’s dad. Maybe he crossed the line. Not sure. Harry was certainly enjoying it. Jay was a bit more stoic.

But after that, it was off to the races.

TRUE GRIT (2010)

***** (5/5)

Directed by: Joel Coen/Ethan Coen
Written by: Joel Coen/Ethan Coen
Based on book by: Charles Portis

How could they remake True Grit, that classic John Wayne western of the late 60s?

Well, first they got two of the greatest directors of our time. Then they got one of the best actors around to replace The Duke. Then they surrounded him with other great actors.

And that, my friends, is how they may have possibly bettered a classic.

Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) is a worn out old US Marshal whose only real goal lately is to find his next bottle of bourbon. Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld in a star-making performance) is trying to find the man who killed her father. His name is Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin) and he is on the run with Ned Pepper’s gang (Barry Pepper).

Once Mattie gets Rooster to actually disembark from his tiny apartment behind the Chinese grocery, they meet up with a Texas Ranger named LaBoeuf (Matt Damon). LaBoeuf is kind of a goofball who takes himself far too seriously and is much greener than he wants to let on.

These characters have already been ingrained into our brains when they were played by John Wayne, Glen Campbell and Robert Duvall. How do the younguns stack up?

Not too badly, actually. Jeff Bridges is an amazing actor and chooses to not just do a Duke impression. He makes the character his own and actually makes him quite a bit darker than Wayne ever could have. Better than Wayne’s Oscar-winning role? Meh. Just different. Matt Damon plays LaBoeuf completely differently from Glen Campbell’s performance. Matt’s version is a lot more of a fuck-up. He’s from Texas and wants everyone to know it. When he gets made fun of…well, he just doesn’t really get it. He knows he’s being made fun of, but not exactly how or why. Barry Pepper and Josh Brolin are really barely in the movie, but they do well with what they have.

The real revelation is Hailee Steinfeld. She handles Portis’ Runyonesque dialogue like a champ and is so much better than Kim Darby was that it’s easy to forget that anyone else ever played the role. While that’s not difficult, Hailee did a great job.

As much as a lot of people think that it’s sacrilege to even think of remaking a John Wayne film, especially one as iconic as True Grit, I think it’s ok…as long as the people involved actually care. If this had been made by Michael Bay, I would have scoffed and been on my way. But the Coens really do care about film. They have taken a film that is beloved by all and made it even better than it was before, as impossible as that may seem. There really isn’t a bad note in the film. I kinda can’t wait to stick a copy right next to my copy of the original.

LE SAMOURAI (1967)

***** (5/5)

Directed by: Jean-Pierre Melville
Written by: Jean-Pierre Melville/Georges Pellegrin
Based on book by: Joan McLeod (uncredited)

I’ve never actually seen any of Melville’s films…I know. Film geek sacrilege! But, whatever. You’ve never seen the glory of a Fulci film, so shut up.

My initiation into the world of Melville (sans whales) was a pretty amazing one.

Le Samourai is the story of Jef Costello (French bad-ass, Alain Delon), a hitman whose latest job went a little awry. He was caught and put in a line-up. After getting out of that (just barely) the guy who hired him tried to kill him.

Before Leon, The Professional. Before any of the other films that show us how lonely a hitman can really be, Le Samourai took us into that world and made it come to mundane life. (Just like Leon, Jef has something that he cares for more than anything else in this dark and dirty world. Here, though, it’s a bird.)

Much better than I thought it would be after all of they hype, this is a French film that I could probably watch over and over again. It was absolutely the classic that it’s cracked up to be.

ON THE TOWN (1949)

***½ (3.5/5)

Directed by: Stanley Donen/Gene Kelly
Written by: Adolph Green/Betty Comden
Based on stage play and idea by: Adolph Green/Betty Comden/Jerome Robbins

Speaking of not living up to the hype. On The Town is one of those musicals that changed everything. It’s kind of a go-to movie for musical lovers everywhere. How do you go wrong with Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly wooing girls in New York City?

Well, you give them second rate songs that are only nearly fun to listen to. With songs like “Come Up To My Place and “Prehistoric Man,” it’s a wonder that anyone remembers this movie. There are a few good songs (“New York, New York” and “You’re Awful” are absolute classics that Frank sang on more than one occasion), but I didn’t like a lot of the songs very much at all. It’s hard to believe that these are Leonard Bernstein tunes!

The story follows three Navy boys (Sinatra, Kelly and Jules Munshin) on shore leave for one day in New York City. They run around, see the sites and, of course, chase girls. Kelly, in particular, is after one specific girl: Miss Turnstiles (Vera-Ellen). The other two end up chasing after Ann Miller and Betty Garrett.

It’s good to see Frank and Gene together, of course. Those two guys could make any lump of coal into a diamond. And they do make this a very fun movie. I just wish that it had lived up to its reputation. The only thing that I can really recommend it for is the location shooting in NYC. It was the first film shot in NYC since the studios moved to California about two or three decades before. Donen had to beg MGM to let him shoot it there. And beautifully shot, it is. If you’re into NYC, this is a movie for you.

If only the music hadn’t been so bad in places.

This is where things get a little bit dicey for BNAT12. Not that it got bad. No, no, no. Not at all. But there were a couple of things that we saw that we aren’t allowed to talk about in full. Here’s the first one:

COWBOYS & ALIENS CLIP (2011)

**** (4/5)

Directed by: Jon Favreau
Written by: Roberto Orci/Alex Kurtzman/Damon Lindelof
Based on comic by: Scott Mitchell Rosenberg

Jon Favreau, producer Ron Howard (!) and writer/producer Roberto Orci joined us for a few minutes to show us 40 minutes of the unfinished Cowboys & Aliens. It was so unfinished that there was still rigging equipment in the background and attached to actors.

Unfortunately, what this means is that I’m not allowed to do a full review of what I saw. All I can say is that it looked like a LOT of fun and maybe a bit darker than I thought it was going to be. This is definitely more Firefly territory than some kind of cartoony “Golly! Look in the sky!” kinda thing.

Anyway, at some point there will be a full review…probably when I see the actual movie. Until then, this review will go unmarked in Movieola. There will be a couple more like that for the day.

RANGO CLIP (2011)

**** (4/5)

Directed by: Gore Verbinski
Written by: James Ward Byrkit/Gore Verbinski/John Logan

Between making movies about pirates, Gore Verbinski and Johnny Depp decided to make a quick foray into animation. (It seems that a lot of name directors are doing that lately: see Zack Snyder and Legend Of The Guardians.)

Rango is a chameleon with delusions of grandeur…at least, after people press him for a story. Suddenly, this meek little guy becomes the guy who killed seven brothers with one bullet!

The 8-minute clip that we saw was basically the origin story for Rango and it reeled me right in. I was ready to see the whole thing. The world that Verbinski and his CGI crew created was intricate and pretty amazing. (The Pepto bottle used as an outhouse was a special piece of set design.) The writing and the voice acting made the whole thing really come together. Johnny sort of sounded like he was channeling Hunter for a moment.

This is the first CGI feature for ILM and it looks like, while they aren’t on the level of Pixar, they could get there if they play their cards right.

SANTA FE TRAIL (1940)

*** (3/5)

Directed by: Michael Curtiz
Written by: Robert Buckner

As you probably remember from my review of Gone With The Wind, I thought that movie was very well made, but a bit morally not quite on the up and up. It sort of treated slavery as “the way things are” and not as bad as it really was. (Not to mention that Scarlett was a complete bitch.)

Well, take those feelings and amp ‘em up a couple of notches for Santa Fe Trail, made just a year later with one of the earlier film’s stars.

Here’s the story of George Custer (Ronald Reagan, who was a much better actor than president…but that’s not sayin’ much) and his friendship with Jeb Stuart (Errol Flynn). Jeb and George are after the same girl, Kit Carson Holliday (Olivia de Havilland), but Jeb is easily beating George to that punch. (Of course, he is. He’s fucking Errol Flynn!)

Meanwhile, in another stretch of history, John Brown (Raymond Massey actin’ up a storm) is going quietly insane while trying to single handedly end slavery in the South. According to this movie (and most history books) Brown was a madman who, while having good intentions, did all the wrong things. He slaughters men, women and children, cleaving heads in twain with a broadsword and has a super crazy beard. He started the Civil War!

Wait…what? Let’s take a step back.

John Brown has been vilified long enough. The man SHOULD be a hero. The violence that he rained down on Pottawatomie Creek was in retaliation for a raid of Lawrence, Kansas by pro-slavery folks. That started a legacy of violence for the Brown family that has never abated. With no mention of the Lawrence killings and paintings of “crazy John Brown,” history books have painted him as a terrorist and a bad, bad man.

Not only did they portray John Brown as a horrible man (albeit with good intentions) in the film, but there is a scene where a black couple talk about how all they want to do is go back to Texas and be slaves because freedom wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

WHAT THE FUCK?!?! This was 1940!!! Not 1840. 1940.

All of this makes me want to see Seven Angry Men, the 1955 film where Massey played Brown as a much more sympathetic character. You got that one, Harry?

The movie itself was alright, although Kit Carson was written as being alternately tomboyish and just dumb as a sack of hammers. It was fun to see Flynn and Reagan verbally sparing to win her attention and I guess there was some good action, although I’ve never been one for the “Cavalry Western.” That’s why I dig on Clint Eastwood more than John Wayne.

Not really a bad film, but certainly not up to Curtiz’s standards that he set with Flynn in The Adventures Of Robin Hood or would shoot past with Casablanca two years later. The man is one of the under appreciated classic Hollywood directors. I wouldn’t start with Santa Fe Trail, though. This was probably the least of the movies that we saw at BNAT this year.

THE FIGHTER (2010)

****½ (4.5/5)

Directed by: David O Russell
Written by: Scott Silver/Paul Tamasy/Eric Johnson/Keith Dorrington

In South Boston (Lowell, to be exact) there aren’t really many chances to get out. You pretty much have to fight your way out. And that’s just what Mickey Ward (Mark Wahlberg) and Dicky Ecklund (Christian Bale) tried to do. Unfortunately for Dicky, after he knocked out Sugar Ray his life went to shit and he got hooked on crack. Unfortunately for Mickey, Dicky is his older brother and trainer. Their mom (Melissa Leo) is his manager. Dicky, you can tell, wants the best for his little brother. He just doesn’t really know how to get him there. Mom, on the other hand, I was never so sure about.

Family means different things to different people and to these two brothers it means a lot. Mickey has plenty of opportunities to dump Dicky and his mom and actually move on with his boxing career, but he doesn’t do it. Why, even though they can be pretty selfish and a bit abusive at times? Because family is all he’s got. If you turn your back on the family, then you’re no good.

Enter Charlene (Amy Adams). She tries to turn Mickey’s life around, much to the chagrin of his family.

All of this is caught on film by a camera crew filming Dicky’s life as it goes further into the toilet. Are they really doing a documentary about his “comeback”? Or is it something darker that they’re after?

Based on a true story, The Fighter could be one of the best films of the year. It certainly has one of the best performances (possibly even one of the best of the decade) in Christian Bale. His portrayal of Dicky is heartbreaking and manic, often in the same shot. This guy is amazing.

By the end of the movie, I kind of got a sense of where the anger comes from in South Boston. Southies have it pretty hard and their families can really fuck them up. Even with the best intentions, the worst can come out.

THOR TRAILER

Even after seeing this expanded trailer I’m not really sure what to think of this movie. It looks like it could be alright, but then it looks like it could be the dumbest super hero movie ever…and there have been some DUMB super hero movies. Ever see Daredevil? Or Ghost Rider? Yeah. This could be THAT bad.

Good cast, though, and the poster that the guys from Marvel gave to Harry was pretty badass. Only members of the cast and crew and Harry have them. It was the Hammer made out of shots from the comic books. I forget who they said designed it, but I want him designing my posters. Not that I’m making movies. Just posters of my life.

THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME (1939)

***** (5/5)

Directed by: William Dieterie
Written by: Sonya Levien/Bruno Frank
Based on book by: Victor Hugo

When the great monsters are discussed, Charles Laughton’s portrayal of the Notre Dame bell ringer, Quasimodo, is always brought up. Here’s the deal, though: Quasimodo is not a monster. He’s just a disfigured and deaf dude who actually only has good intentions at heart.

This adaptation of Victor Hugo’s novel centers on the relationship between Gypsy girl Esmeralda (Maureen O’Hara) and four men. One is a young soldier named Phoebus (Alan Marshal). She falls for him hook, line and sinker, but there really doesn’t seem to be much there in the way of character.

Then there’s Gringoire (Edmond O’Brien). He’s a poet, so he’s considered part of the lower class. He falls in with the thieves, but never loses his love for the dancing Esmeralda. She marries him at one point only to save him from the knives of the thieves, never expecting love to enter into this rather quick and probably unofficial marriage.

The third is the most powerful man in Notre Dame, Frollo (Cedric Hardwicke). He has hate in his heart for everything that gets in the way of him and Esmeralda. He kills Phoebus and, when Esmeralda doesn’t return his love, he allows her to be blamed for it. He’s a high member of the church and intensely believes that “the people” should not be allowed to read the Bible. In the first scene, the King of France (Harry Davenport) sees the Guttenburg Press as an amazing piece of machinery that will take the world into its next phase. Frollo sees it as the Devil’s work and wants it destroyed.

Of course, the fourth man is Quasimodo, who has nothing but love in his heart for all things, unless they want to harm someone else…or his beloved bells.

I was surprised at how political this movie was! I’ve never read the novel, but I’m sure it’s even more political. Dieterie and his writers managed to pile a lot of it in, though, along with a healthy mistrust of the church. (Although the King was the coolest character in the entire movie. That was kinda strange to me.)

I can also imagine that the makeup on Laughton (which was amazing) was pretty shocking at the time. RKO kept it under wraps until the movie premiered. No one saw it who was off the set. No pictures were taken (at least none that were released at the time) and none of the posters showed him in full makeup, only in shadows. There’s no WAY we could do that now. Too many internet creeps out there.

The Hunchback Of Notre Dame was an amazing and beautiful film. I can’t believe it took me this long to see it, but I’m glad that I got to see it on the big screen.

CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT (1965)

**** (4/5)

Directed by: Orson Welles
Written by: Raphael Holinshed/Orson Welles
Based on plays by: William Shakespeare

It’s almost unfair for me to review this film because I really couldn’t stay awake for a lot of it. I’ll try, though.

Falstaff (Welles) is often considered Shakespeare’s greatest creation. He was certainly his most used, appearing in both Henry IV plays and The Merry Wives Of Windsor. (Welles added bits of Henry V, Richard II and The Merry Wives.) While I don’t know a lot about those plays, I do know that Orson Welles was probably born to play the role of the fat knight.

The film follows Falstaff from his mentoring of Prince Hal (Keith Baxter) and becoming his drinking buddy, much to the chagrin of Hal’s father, King Henry IV (John Gielgud). Falstaff is a particularly boisterous knight who really doesn’t have much use for war. He’s pretty much a coward and a braggart.

Welles is, of course, amazing, as is the rest of the cast. The movie itself is very good (I think) and was Welles’ favorite of all of his work. Strangely, it’s completely unavailable in the US on DVD. This print was barely found by Lars of the Alamo after a long search. It’s a very difficult film to see…which makes it all the more sad that I couldn’t stay awake. I may never get the chance to see it again unless I get a region free Blu-Ray player and buy the UK edition…or unless Criterion can get the Welles estate to give up the rights for a little while.

I do remember the film having a very strange and surreal feel to it. There were a LOT of close-ups of Welles’ puffy, bloated face and a lot of Citizen Kanian shots from very low. It was obviously very low budget (Welles was pretty broke at the time) and it sounded like all of the dialogue was recorded in post. The scenery, though, was very realistic and looked like it may have been filmed in an actual medieval village. It was very interesting to look at…just not at 2am. I really want to give it another chance, so…are you listening, Criterion! Get someone on that right away!

RICHARD PRYOR LIVE IN CONCERT(1979)

Directed by: Jeff Margolis
Written by: Richard Pryor/Paul Mooney (uncredited)

This one I’m REALLY unqualified to review. I slept through just about the entire last half of it.

I will say this, though: I really feel like I didn’t miss very much. I know that everyone I’ve seen do this material basically got it from him, but, as I’ve seen Eddie Murphy and Dave Chappelle, I’ve seen all of this material. And, as I’ve seen a LOT of Bill Cosby, anytime Richard mentioned his family, I felt like I had already heard that stuff, too.

Richard Pryor was an amazing talent and I have the utmost respect for what he did. I just feel like his stuff is archival footage at this point. I almost hate to make this correlation, but it’s the only one I can think of. It was kind of like watching Al Jolson. He was amazing in his day. But watching him now is just kind of…quaint. He’s no longer shocking and, honestly, not nearly as funny as he once was. I was not electrified and my brain did not melt. I fell asleep instead. Maybe I’ll give this one another chance when I’m more awake, too.

THE GREEN HORNET (2011)

**** (4/5)

Directed by: Michel Gondry
Written by: Seth Rogen/Evan Goldberg
Based on radio show created by: George W Trendle

This is another one that I’m not really allowed to talk too much about. All I can really say is that it was a LOT of fun. FAR more fun (and violent) than I thought it would be from the trailers. I’ll write a full review of it and post it when the movie is closer to release in January. For now, though, that’s all I’ve got.

Moving on.

Speaking of stuff I can’t review, the next one I can’t even say that I saw. I’ll just say that it was a pretty good replicant of a bygone, much beloved/loathed genre.

Moving on.

DRIVE ANGRY 3D (2011)

***½ (3.5/5)

Directed by: Patrick Lussier
Written by: Todd Farmer/Patrick Lussier

Speaking of genres of a bygone era that are coming back, Drive Angry is a grindhouse film through and through…although seen through modern eyes.

Milton (Nicolas Cage) is a man on a mission. He’s trying to find his baby granddaughter before she is sacrificed by a Satanic cult. Meanwhile, The Accountant (William Fichtner in a role that could finally make him a huge star…if only this movie had a real audience) is hot on his tail.

Piper (Amber Heard), on the other hand, is just trying to get away from a suddenly abusive boyfriend. She picks up Milton and they end up going on a long ride to Hell together.

The movie, brought to us by the folks who brought us My Bloody Valentine 3D, is a lot of fun, if a bit fluffy. It’s not nearly as violent as it could be, although it is pretty damn violent. There’s not a lot that sticks out (hahaha) as being anything really special, but it didn’t matter too terribly much. It was a fun ride and better than MBV by a long shot. Not only does it have a lot of great and strange characters, but the action (car chases abound) is great.

What DOES stick out, though, is Fichtner. The man is A-FUCKING-MAZING! I don’t want to give too much about his character away, but he is smooth, cool and fucking deadly. I never thought that he could be this cool, although I’ve always known that he was a great actor. Sure, this doesn’t call for huge acting chops…just a lot of charm and magnetism. Strangely enough, he’s got those things in spades.

Go to the movie for some fun, stay for Fichtner. Nic Cage is pretty cool in it (although the fuckin’ and killin’ scene is a bit creepy), but Fichtner steals the whole movie.

Just after the closing credits started, Harry got on the mic and told us all to get our butts out of our seats and get on the buses waiting outside…we were going on a field trip. The buses took us to the Bob Bullock Museum’s IMAX theatre so that we could see…

TRON: LEGACY (2010)

***½ (3.5/5)

Directed by: Joseph Kosinski
Written by: Edward Kitsis/Adam Horowitz/Brian Klugman/Lee Sternthal
Based on characters created by: Steven Lisberger/Bonnie MacBird

Almost 30 years ago, Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) created a world inside a computer. He fought the Master Control Program and beat it. He made it out of the computer…but he just couldn’t leave well enough alone. He had a life on the outside, including a young son named Sam (Garrett Hedlund). For some reason, though, he left it all behind and disappeared.

Jump ahead to 2010. Kevin’s old partner, Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner) gets a text from the old arcade…where no one has been since the day Kevin disappeared. He sends Sam there to investigate. Sam gets pulled into the digital world and meets…his dad?

But it’s actually Clu, the program that Kevin created in his own image. What’s his design on the world of The Grid? How will Sam get back home? And why is Kevin protecting Quorra (Olivia Wilde, who makes her second BNAT appearance after the Cowboys & Aliens clip)?

Besides the graphics being worlds better than the original, the whole damn movie is worlds better than the original. I don’t know if you’ve seen the 1982 film lately, but it’s kind of slow and, well…dull. Not a whole lot happens besides the light cycle games. Everything else was just a lot of posturing and talk. If it hadn’t been for those cycles and the “digital” effects, TRON would have been completely forgotten…much like its predecessor, The Black Hole. (Watch for a quick reference to that film…which will be remade by the same director in 2012. I kinda can’t wait. Maybe he can make that one good, too.)

This sequel has action, comedy, romance and even…dare I say it…resonance! I actually kind of remembered it after I left the theatre!

Ok, it’s not a GREAT film, certainly. How could it be? It’s a movie about people getting sucked into a computer and fighting in gladiator games, for Hitchcock’s sake! BUT, it’s a lot of fun and beautiful to look at on the giant screen in 3D. (Not all of it is in 3D. Only the big CGI scenes, really…which is most of the film.)

The only thing that really came anywhere near disappointing me was Clu. He was ALL CGI. There wasn’t a dude playing him with Jeff Bridges’ young face superimposed on his. It was a completely CGI character and you could tell. He moved unrealistically, which may not have been so jarring in the Grid scenes. But they did the same things with the opening scenes that take place when Kevin is younger and Sam is a little boy. At first I thought that they had actually made the whole film in CGI like The Polar Express or something! But it was just him. Not sure how cool that was.

Other than that, though, it was really cool and a great way to end the day.

I really want to get the Daft Punk soundtrack to the film. (Watch for them quickly in the club scene…or people in helmets like they wear. No real way to tell.) It’s reminiscent enough of Wendy Carlos’ original score, but different enough to be its own amazing being. It’s a damn sight better than Journey…who also make a quick appearance early on.

Thus endeth BNAT 12, also known as CineMandom! It was an awesome day and one of the best BNATs that I’ve been to…even if I knew that True Grit and TRON were going to play. (The original TRON played the very first BNAT 12 years ago as a vintage film.)

I saw a lot of movies that I can’t wait to see again and, of course, I can’t wait until BNAT Friday The 13th! (Will Harry be that obvious? Most likely. But it’s really the best way to go.)

I actually even skipped the first movie. I’ve seen Up at least twice, maybe more. It was absolutely one of my favorites of the year and, possibly, even the one that I think should win Best Picture. It won’t, but I think it should.

You can read my review here.

Let’s get right into the first one I saw today.

A SERIOUS MAN

****½ (4.5/5)

Directed by: Joel Coen/Ethan Coen
Written by: Joel Coen/Ethan Coen

Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) tries to be a serious man. He takes his marriage seriously. He takes his kids seriously. He takes his job as a physics professor seriously. And he takes his Jewish faith seriously.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean that things won’t fall apart on him. In the same week that he’s up for tenure at his school a student tries to bribe him for a passing grade, his wife tells him that she’s leaving him and seeing Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed), his brother (Richard Kind) is having some sort of crisis and his son is having his bar mitzvah. How could things possibly get any worse?

When the Coens are in charge of a retelling of the story of Job, you know that things will get worse. This is and isn’t a typical Coen Brothers film. First off, it’s a very personal film. It’s about Jews in suburbia in the late 60s…just as they were. It deals very closely with their religion and the way they grew up. It’s also the story of a man who loves his faith, but he’s about to lose it because so much is falling apart around him.

As always, the Coens manage to make someone else’s pain very funny. It’s not as laugh-out-loud as something like Raising Arizona or The Big Lebowski, but it’s still a comedy. Larry is a schmuck. He’s a loser. He’s a schlemiel. No doubt about that. But there’s something so pathetic about the guy that it’s hard not to really push for him and want things to work out. Stuhlbarg is amazing in this role and absolutely deserves all of the accolades that he’s gotten from this performance. Also better than expected was Richard Kind. He can be a pretty funny guy, but I’ve never seen him try anything else. He was very good here in what could have been a one-note role.

Also watch for Micheal Lerner and Adam Arkin in small roles.

I’m not a Jew, so it’s hard for me to really relate to a lot of this film, but I think I might understand my Jewish friends a little bit better after seeing it.

A lot of my friends who saw this movie with me hated it. Mainly it seemed to be because of the ultra-ambiguous ending. The thing is that they pretty much tell you that the story will have an ambiguous ending about mid-way through the film. And, really, there is no other way for the film to end. I loved it. It may actually rank up with some of the Coens’ best work. Just know that you’ll have to work some stuff out for yourselves.

THE HURT LOCKER

**** (4/5)

Directed by: Kathryn Bigelow
Written by: Mark Boal

“War is a drug.” This film starts with those words. Then it takes the next two and a half hours to prove it to us.

William James (Jeremy Renner) is the new guy on the EOD team. Unfortunately for the other two guys, he’s also the leader. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) are actually scared when he takes over for their former leader (Guy Pearce). Is this guy going to get them killed?

In the RL, the answer to that question would be yes. Actually, no. It wouldn’t This guy would have been fired before he finished his first day on the job. He’s a complete dumbass. He puts on his suit and walks out to disarm a bomb, even after his team tells him that they have robots to do just that. Then he goes out, disarms the bomb and starts yanking on other cables that he finds with no real regard as to whether they might be attached to other bombs. Seriously? I would fire this guy and I wouldn’t know the first thing about disarming a bomb.

Barring that, though, this is a movie and, even though my friend who actually did this kind of work in Iraq called the movie pure fantasy, I’m here to grade it on its merits as a film, not its accuracy…of which there really isn’t much at all.

James is a down to earth guy for a guy who yanks on bombs all day for a living. He does his best to get to know his team and the people around them. He even befriends one of the kids who sells DVDs to the troops. (Right here, I thought, “Dammit. I’m seen MASH. I know what’s going to happen here.”)

The movie doesn’t necessarily have much of a through-line story. There’s no single villain except for the faceless Iraqis who are placing the bombs and shooting at our heroes. It starts 39 days before they’re done with their tour and ends basically at the end of those 39 days. It’s just a string of bomb disarmings put together to form a character study of the guys who do this incredibly important job. Luckily, the characters are interesting enough to hang this film on.

Is it a great film? Meh. I don’t really think so. I think it’s very good, but it’s not great. Maybe what ruined it for me is that even I am smarter about disarming bombs than these guys were. Or maybe it was the fact that I’ve seen a lot of war films, so I knew a lot of the tricks that Bigelow and Boal were pulling on us. (Although, they did kind of pull one new one with the kid. Kind of.) They do know how to build suspense, though. Those disarming scenes were pretty fucking tense. Definitely the best moments of the film.

Definitely worth seeing, possibly even buying. I wouldn’t say it’s Oscar worthy, though. I think everyone loves it so much because it gets into the heads of these guys…unfortunately, they don’t have anything new to say about their plights.

It’s still better than Bigelow’s ex-husband’s movie.

AN EDUCATION

**** (4/5)

Directed by: Lone Scherfig
Written by: Nick Hornby
Based on memoir by: Lynn Barber

England in the early 60s was a MUCH more permissive place than America in the early 10s, apparently. I spent this entire movie thinking about how strange it was that a couple were perfectly ok with their 16 year old daughter dating a nearly 40 year old man.

Jenny (Carey Mulligan) is just such a 16 year old. She meets David (Peter Sarsgaard) outside of her orchestra rehearsal when he offers her cello a ride when it’s raining. The two hit it off and, eventually, start dating. Meanwhile, her parents (Cara Seymour and Alfred Molina) don’t seem to have too many problems with this older man taking her all over town.

Times were different then, though. They were looking to get Jenny married partly because it would save them the money of sending her to college at Oxford. (They’re not quite that cold, but that is a big factor.)

David’s friends, Danny and Helen (Dominic Cooper and Rosamund Pike), seem to have some secrets. Come to think of it, so does David. He’s really good at coming up with reasons for Jenny to come with him on weekend trips. And how does he make his money?

Basically, this is a really good (and more complex) version of Mona Lisa Smile. Jenny fights for her right to have a real education without having to be married off. I mean, why even bother if you have to give it all up when you get married, right? Even her headmaster (Emma Thompson) doesn’t seem to understand that Jenny wants to do something besides get married OR teach. (At the time you couldn’t really do both.) Although, she wants an English degree and, unfortunately, there’s not much else that you can do with that besides teach. Sad, but true.

An Education is a very good movie but, again, not so Oscar worthy. There just isn’t anything new here…except for the creep factor with the major age difference.

DISTRICT 9

***** (5/5)

Directed by: Neill Blomkamp
Written by: Neill Blomkamp/Terri Tatchell
Based on short film by: Neill Blomkamp

I’ve seen District 9 before, but I really wanted to see it again on a big screen. The main thing I wanted to make sure of was my original assessment of the special effects. Luckily, I was right. They are better than Avatar’s.

Wikus (Sharlto Copley who should have been nominated for an Oscar) is a weasel of a man. He works for the MNU, a munitions company in South Africa who pretty much rule the nation now that the aliens are here.

The aliens (“Prawns” to the racist humans) came 20 years ago and seem to be stuck on Earth. South Africa did what they always do: they put the folks who look different into a slum and made them separate and unequal. The aliens live in squalor that they aren’t allowed to get out of and now the MNU wants to move them to a concentration camp.

Wikus is sent in to serve the Prawns eviction notices. He has fun with it at first. He’s just as bad as the rest of the humans. He thinks the Prawns are slime, worse than animals.

Then something happens. Something horrible and amazing. He starts to turn into one of them. As he’s treated worse and worse by his own kind, one of the Prawns, Christopher Johnson as he’s called by the humans, starts to treat him better. Christopher is  a father and just wants to get his people home.

What’s so amazing about this movie is that the CGI creatures are actually more human than the humans. Christophe and his son are much more appealing than Wikus is. As Wikus turns more and more Prawn, he starts to become more human.

I love this movie. It’s not just a morality play about racism and human nature to hate what it doesn’t understand, but it’s a great gore-flick, too. The effects and gru are pretty amazing. The Prawns mix in with the human world far better than the giant blue smurfs of Avatar and the story makes more sense.

So, that’s all of ‘em. All TEN of the Oscar nominated films. What do I think of the choices?

Well, I absolutely think that it could have been whittled down to five. In fact, these ten could be whittled down to even less to let in some more worthy films. Of the ten here, I think that Up, A Serious Man, District 9 and Up In The Air are the best. I love Inglourious Basterds, but I’m not sure that it’s better than those four. In its place, I would put either The Fantastic Mr. Fox or Where The Wild Things Are. There. I said it. That was a great film.

What should win? Up. Hands down, Up was the best of these ten (or twelve) films. It won’t win, but it should. What will win? Most likely we’re down to either Avatar or The Hurt Locker, two of the films that I don’t think belong. It will probably be The Hurt Locker, because it’s more of an issue film. It’s also MUCH better, so I guess I won’t be TOO terribly upset if it wins over Avatar. I just wish that they would give the award to the movie that actually deserves it. Up will win Best Animated Feature and that will probably be it.

That’s too bad, but unsurprising. We’ll see tomorrow night, though!

I know, I know. Everyone (all one of you) is wondering where my Oscar predictions are. Every year, you guys look forward to me saying, “Where is this movie?! What the fuck?!” But this year I got nothin’. And here’s why:

MY FUCKING JOB HAS KEPT ME IN CHAINS FOR 15 HOURS A DAY, SEVEN DAYS A WEEK FOR ABOUT A MONTH AND A HALF! As everyone knows, all Oscar movies come out in December. That is especially true this year. I don’t think a single one of them came out officially before Dec. 15. And, since I was working pretty much constantly before and after that until now, I saw nothing.

Ok, that’s not entirely true. I saw Benjamin Button. So I predict that this movie will sweep. There ya go. My prediction.

But all is not lost! The Alamo, in their infinite wisdom, has picked up the shorts programs that the Academy has released so that people can actually see the shorts! And I made it to them! Awesome.

AND AMC is showing all five Best Picture nominees in one marathon run, so I’m going to try to make it to that. The catch to that is that it’s the day before the Oscars. So I probably won’t have any real predictions up. I will say that Heath Ledger will probably win Best Supporting Actor, though. So I have that prediction in there.

But let’s get to these shorts, huh?

(There may be some spoilers here, so watch out. Consider this your warning.)

LIVE ACTION SHORTS

AUF DER STRECKE (ON THE LINE, GERMANY, 2007)

Directed by: Reto Caffi
Written by: Reto Caffi/Philippe Zweifel

The longest of the shorts and it actually doesn’t manage to wear out its welcome. At half an hour I’m usually squirming, but this allegorical short is much better than I expected.

A security guard at a department store is falling in love with one of the girls in the book department. He watches her all the time. One night he gets on the train that they share on their way home and she surprises him by getting on with another man. She and the man are very loving until he says something stupid, she yells and they split up. Soon enough, a gang of teenagers start picking on the new man and he doesn’t seem to be defending himself very well. Instead of helping, our “hero” gets off the train, ignoring the violence that was beginning. The next day, he finds out that the object of his affection’s brother was killed on the train.

And then he inadvertently uses this to get closer to her.

What’s it all about? Well, German guilt, of course! The Germans who stood by and did nothing as Nazis killed millions of Jews are just as guilty as the murderers themselves. And if you think that I’m just reading things into it, take in that look at the end. You know it to be true.

A very good short that doesn’t belabor its point. Consider it the first of two Holocaust shorts that could win this year.

NEW BOY (IRELAND, 2007)

Directed by: Steph Green
Written by: Steph Green
Based on short story by: Roddy Doyle

Another short about a corrupt government taking over a country…but this one shows some hope.

An African boy is doing his best to enjoy his first day of school. But it’s hard when no one will accept you and one of the kids keeps calling you Live Aid and asking if you know it’s Christmas. It’s also hard when you keep remembering how things were back home with your dad teaching you along with all of your friends.

A fun little short (with some not so fun parts) that shows how children can overcome their differences no matter what. What’s wrong with adults?

SPIELZEUGLAND (TOYLAND, GERMANY, 2007)

Directed by: Jochen Alexander Freydank
Written by: Jochen Alexander Freydank/Johann A. Bunners

A single mother in early Nazi Germany tells her little boy that his Jewish friend and his family are going away to Toyland. You should be careful what you tell your kids because they might just become determined to see it for themselves. When the little boy goes missing, she has to convince some Nazi soldiers that her boy is not Jewish so that they will help her.

I pretty much knew how this was going to end, but that didn’t really matter. It was still a very affecting short and will probably win the Oscar since they love the Holocaust at the Academy.

GRISEN (THE PIG, DENMARK, 2009)

Directed by: Dorthe Warnø Høgh
Written by: Dorthe Warnø Høgh/Anders Frithiof August
Based on short story by: Lars Saabye Christensen

A man checks into the hospital to have his colon looked at. The room is bare except for a terrible painting of a pig. Why is it so comforting? Why does he care so much about it when a Muslim family moves into the bed next to him and makes them take the pig down? And why does he call his lawyer daughter in to start a case about it?

A fairly long short (maybe a bit too long) about religious tolerance that goes both ways. Should we give up comforts for someone else’s beliefs? Or should they calm down and let us have our comforts? Important questions brought up in a pretty funny way.

And the pig is pretty damn comforting. Kinda like Ralph at Aquarena Springs.

MANON ON THE ASPHALT (FRANCE, 2007)

Directed by: Elizabeth Marre/Olivier Pont
Written by: Elizabeth Marre/Olivier Pont

Beyond the obvious Manon Of The Spring reference of the title (and the fact that Manon’s friend is named Jeane), there doesn’t seem to be any other tie to the Claude Berri films from 1986. Of course, I haven’t seen those movies yet (hangs head in shame), but I really don’t think there’s a connection. (There is, however, an awesome jazz cover of Dylan’s “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go” by Madeleine Peyroux.)

This short is about a young woman named Manon who leaves her apartment on her bike only to be mowed down by a car. The rest of the film is her thoughts about what will happen now that she has died. She goes through all of the reactions of her friends and what they will have to do. She mentally wills them her things and basically tells them to not be sad.

This was my personal favorite of the five, but I don’t think it has a chance…mostly because it’s not about the Holocaust. But also because, even though it’s about death, it’s very hopeful. (And we all know that the Oscars tend to not be particularly hopeful.) It’s a beautiful short that shows not only the tragedy of young death, but that Manon was well loved and had a pretty amazing life, even if it didn’t seem amazing in life. It made me want to call everyone I’ve ever loved and tell them how I feel.

But, of course, I didn’t. Because I was about to see some more shorts.

ANIMATED SHORTS

LAVATORY – LOVESTORY (RUSSIA, 2007)

Directed by: Konstantin Bronzit
Written by: Konstantin Bronzit

A toilet attendant is surprised when her tip jar is suddenly filled with flowers. Where did they come from? Who left them here? How the hell did they get away without her seeing them?!

A very funny short done in simple line drawings that shows us that everyone needs love. Even toilet attendants. (This is a pretty foreign concept for me. Are Russian restrooms really like this? Pay a real human to get in? Not only that, but a human of the opposite sex? Very strange.)

OKTAPODI (FRANCE, 2007)

Directed by: Julien Bocabeille/François-Xavier Chanioux/Olivier Delabarre/Thierry Marchand/Quentin Marmier/Emud Mokhberi
Written by: Julien Bocabeille/François-Xavier Chanioux/Olivier Delabarre/Thierry Marchand/Quentin Marmier/Emud Mokhberi

Two octopi in love. What happens when one of them is chosen for sushi? Well, the other has to go save her…uh…him…whatever. At two minutes there was barely enough time to really get to know anything. It was in and out so quickly that I almost forgot that I saw it. Very funny, though. Not so sure that it’s an Oscar short.

LA MAISON EN PETITS CUBES (JAPAN, 2008)

Directed by: Kunio Katô
Written by: Kunio Katô

Um…really? Japan? And the title is French? I guess they’ve come a long way, baby.

An old man lives at the top of a tall house. He has to build a new story every few years because the tide keeps rising and filling up the lower levels. When he drops his pipe into the hatch that leads to the story below, he has to dive down to get it. That’s when the memories come back to him. As he goes deeper and deeper into his past, he remembers more and more about how happy his life has been and how much of his family has left him.

Like Manon Of The Asphalt, it’s a beautiful short about the memory of life. This life was much longer and just as deeply felt. Not the best here, but certainly very good.

THIS WAY UP (ENGLAND, 2008)

Directed by: Adam Foulkes/Alan Smith
Written by: Adam Foulkes/Alan Smith/Christopher O’Reilly

Two undertakers (a father and son) have to get a casket from point A to point B. But everything gets in their way and they have to journey to Hell and back to get the deceased to her final resting place.

Really funny and some great animation. And I KNOW I’ve seen it before! I just don’t know where! Any help here?

PRESTO (UNITED STATES, 2008)

Directed by: Doug Sweetland
Written by: Ted Mathot/Valerie LaPointe/Justin Wright

I’ve reviewed this one before, but DAMN, is it hilarious! This is the third time I’ve seen it and it’s still funny as hell. The Pixar boys have done it again…and again…and again. This one will likely win just because it’s Pixar. But Le Maison may give it a run for its money. We’ll see.

Since the animated shorts were SO short (only about 45 minutes total), the Academy saw fit to regale us with five of their “Commended Films.”

VARMINTS (ENGLAND, 2008))

Directed by: Marc Craste
Written by: Marc Craste
Based on book by: Marc Craste/Helen Ward

A super-cute creature lives in an idyllic world full of trees, grass and beautiful nature. Suddenly, everything changes and nature is gone, replaced by big, ugly, dark buildings and concrete. But our hero saves a piece of nature. Will it be enough?

A bit heavy handed (ok, a LOT heavy handed), but it was my vote for the winner of the Oscar. Too bad it’s not actually nominated.

JOHN AND KAREN (ENGLAND, 2007)

Directed by: Matthew Walker
Written by: Matthew Walker

A couple try to make it work. But this couple are different. They are a penguin and a polar bear. Will it work? John hopes so. And, deep down, so does Karen. Funny stuff if only because it’s a penguin and a polar bear. (“You catch marvelous…little…fish.”)

And, again, I’ve seen this one. But I don’t know where. Dammit.

GOPHER BROKE (UNITED STATES, 2004)

Directed by: Jeff Fowler
Written by: Jeff Fowler

This was my least favorite of all of the shorts. Not that it was particularly bad. It just wasn’t nearly as entertaining as the rest of them.

A gopher tries to get dinner by setting traps for trucks on a farmer’s market road. Every time he scores, though, other animals come out of the woodworks to steal his booty.

This one just tries a little too hard to be like a Road Runner/Coyote cartoon. Unfortunately, the lead character just isn’t charming like the Coyote is. The funniest part of this is when he finally scores a HUGE amount of vegetables and they show him dancing in slow motion amongst falling tomatoes. Other than that, it can be skipped and nothing will be missed. Luckily, it was very short.

SKHIZEIN (FRANCE, 2008)

Directed by: Jérémy Clapin
Written by: Jérémy Clapin/Stéphane Piera

A man is beside himself after almost being hit by a meteorite. Literally…beside himself. He is exactly 91 cm away from where he should be. When he sits on a chair, he looks as if he is hanging in mid-air with the chair 91 cm behind him.

Like most French comedy, this starts off really funny and ends up being about some sort of life problem. Are we missing the point of life? Are we so close, yet so far away?

(Suck on cigarette.) So like life.

HOT DOG (UNITED STATES, 2008))

Directed by: Bill Plympton
Written by: Bill Plympton

–Again, I’ve seen this one, but I’m not sure where. Probably The Animation Show since it’s a Plymptoon. (That’s probably where I saw ALL of these, actually.) I’ve loved Bill Plympton for a long time, but I can’t say this is one of his better ones. Really funny and really short, but not his best.

A small, clumsy dog really wants to be a firedog. He gets his chance to prove himself when a fire breaks out nearby. But, of course, chaos ensues. Really weird, Plympton-esque chaos.

But it’s all in good fun and it’s always great to see so many movies back to back like this…even if I end up sleeping through some of them. (Sigh.)

The themes hardly ever count for anything except MAYBE the number of BNAT that it is. So, this being the tenth BNAT, it was only fitting that the theme was The Ten Commandments. Little did Harry know that those Commandments would be coming to him. One of his writers, Cargill, managed to get ahold of two of the actual tablets used in Cecil B DeMille’s Biblical classic! A group of geeks here in Austin bought the best preserved set at an auction recently and loaned them to Cargill for the festival.

And that’s pretty fucking amazing. Not only were the a pair that were actually used in the movie…but, according to DeMille, they were the ACTUAL TEN COMMANDMENTS.

Uh…sure, Cecil. But they were the ones used in the previews where he explained the purpose of the film. So that’s really cool. Throughout the night, Harry got a few other gifts that were pretty awesome, but none as amazing as this bit of film history.

Then we were ready to start the show. Time League got onstage to introduce the first movie, which was finally going to make a little boy’s dreams come true. He had a special guest waiting backstage who was going to usher in a new era of Universal horror movie monsters, but he would only come out if we all made a lot of noise. So, of course, we yelled and screamed and stomped on the ground and blah, blah, blah. And TEEN WOLF CAME OUT!!!

Ok, so it was Lars dressed as Teen Wolf, but it was a pretty convincing costume. He brought the guy up who, for some reason, loves the shit out of that movie and keeps wanting it to be played at the festival, signed a ball, hugged him and then we started the movie.

And then it broke…again.

Oh well. Maybe next year.

The first real movie indulged Harry’s Fay Wray fetish.

VIVA VILLA! (1934)

**** (4/5)

Directed by: Jack Conway/Howard Hawks (uncredited)/William Wellman (uncredited)
Written by: Ben Hecht/Howard Hawks (uncredited)/James Kevin McGuinness (uncredited)/Howard Emmett Rogers (uncredited)
Based on book by: Edgecumb Pinchon/OB Stade

Fay was just off her double shot of King Kong and The Most Dangerous Game when she had a smallish role in this fictionalized bio-pic of Pancho Villa, starring Wallace Beery as a rather stereotyped Villa. He was big, broad and violent, but had an innocence about him that made you realize that he was really just a big kid.

The movie goes pretty much all the way through Villa’s life from the time that he saw his father whipped to death, through the Mexican Revolution and all the way to his own death. As far as entertainment is concerned, it’s pretty great. The battle scenes were pretty good for a fairly low-budget flick of the time and he and Wray had a really strange S&M type scene right in the middle.

Historically, though, it’s pretty much complete bullshit. And, even though it’s all about Villa and supposed to be glorifying his exploits (however violent they were), it really seems to be a eulogy for the short-time president of Mexico just after the Revolution, Francisco Madero (Henry B Walthall). His peaceful ideas are at the heart of the film.

It’s kind of hard to say how I really felt about the portrayal of Villa. He is one of the few heroes that Mexicans really have and he is portrayed as kind of a violent buffoon here. He’s lovable to an extent and his military expertise is shown pretty well, but he’s also extremely violent and will kill anyone at the drop of a hat seemingly for no reason. He accidentally robs a bank at one point not knowing that he is doing so. He thinks that he’s just taking his own money! Seriously?!

Well, that’s how movies were in 1934. Anyone who wasn’t white was a) played by a white man (there were very few actual Hispanic folk in the film) and b) was portrayed in a not always so sympathetic light.

Other than that, it’s a very good movie. Check it out if you can.

THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON

****½ (4.5/5)

Directed by: David Fincher
Written by: Eric Roth/Robin Swicord
Based on short story by: F Scott Fitzgerald

I knew that I would like this movie, but I wasn’t sure that I would love it. Luckily, I did. A lot.

Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt) is getting younger. He was born at around 80 or 90 and has been getting younger every day. His mother dies in child birth and his father is so horrified by the tiny old person that he leaves him on the doorstep of an old folks home, just hoping that they would be able to take care of him. Queenie (Taraji P Henson), the caretaker at the home, adopts him as her own and becomes his mother.

Benjamin grows up and leaves home to work on a tugboat. But not before falling head over heels in love with Daisy (Cate Blanchett), the granddaughter of one of the ladies at the home.

From then on, the film becomes a love story against time. And, with all of its Forrest Gump-like qualities, it works really well, becoming the kind of timeless film that Hollywood has sometimes forgotten how to make. David Fincher, directing against type here, has used a premise from the F Scott Fitzgerald short story to tell a story about how time sometimes works against us. And how sometimes to show how much we love something, we have to say goodbye.

This ended up being my favorite movie of the day. In fact, I liked it so much that I’m going to take my mom to go see it. So, there you go. If that’s not a ringing endorsement, I don’t know what is.

CORALINE CLIPS

After about two and a half hours of Benjamin getting younger, it was time to see something a bit lighter. Harry showed us clips of the new film from Henry Selick, director of Nightmare Before Christmas and James And The Giant Peach. This time, he is mining the work of Neil Gaiman. It’s the story of a young girl who wakes up in a dream world where everyone has button eyes and are all controlled by her mother. Everything may be beautiful, but there’s a danger behind the beauty.

The animation was, of course, great and the 3D effects were pretty amazing. (This was the first of three 3D presentations we saw throughout the day.) But I felt like there was something missing. There didn’t seem to be any emotion behind any of it. And that may change with a change of music and the rest of the story filled in. But these clips, while making me want to see the rest of the film just to know where it goes, didn’t make me put it at the top of my list.

Nightmare Before Christmas it ain’t. But we’ll see. It could end up being great.

SAHARA (1943)

***** (5/5)

Directed by: Zoltan Korda
Written by: Philip MacDonald/John Howard Lawson/Zoltan Korda/James O’Hanlon/Sidney Buchman (uncredited)
Based on photoplay by: Iosif Prut/Mikhail Romm

Somewhere in the middle of World War II, America wasn’t doing so well. Moral was low and the war efforts just weren’t going where everyone thought they should be going. So the military called on Hollywood to help out. They financed a film that would rally the folks on the homefront and, in doing that, hopefully rally the troops. They got an international cast along with one of the most popular actors of the time, Humphrey Bogart.

Sahara is the story of three Army boys trying to get out of the Sahara desert with their old, beat-up tank, Lulubelle. Along the way, they pick up some British, Australian and French soldiers. They also manage to find an African soldier with an Italian prisoner. Then they’re attacked by a German pilot and pick him up. Finally, they get a change of orders and have to hole up in a fort with no water and 100 German soldiers coming after them.

It’s a great war adventure that pulls out all the stops to try to get people on our side. It shows American soldiers to be good-natured and righteous (even when they don’t really want to be), French soldiers to be brave, Brits to be intelligent and thoughtful, Italians to be basically good people who are led by a weak-willed fool and Germans to be the Devil. Yes, there’s no such thing as a good German in this film. The one that they pick up is a tricky, back-stabbing asshole who can’t be trusted at all.

This was the first point that I actually fell asleep for a little bit. I think I missed about 10 minutes of the movie. And it was still early! But those 15 hour work days didn’t help me much.

VALKYRIE

***½ (3.5/5)

Directed by: Bryan Singer
Written by: Christopher McQuarrie/Nathan Alexander

Just to keep with the WWII theme, Harry decided to show us some good Germans.

Throughout WWII, there were quite a few plots to assassinate Hitler. Of course, none actually worked, but one came pretty damn close. Bryan Singer wanted to tell that story.

Col. Claus von Stauffenberg (Tom Cruise) was fed up with the way things were working in his beloved homeland. He hated seeing millions of people killed for no reason other than their religion and he hated Hitler and everything he stood for. He knew that he could fight either for Germany or for Hitler, not for both. So he and a small group of people did something about it.

And these weren’t just lowly privates and such. These people were high ranking Nazi officials. Generals, colonels…people like that. People who had Hitler’s ear. (Of course, some denied their involvement.)

With an amazing cast including Tom Wilkinson, Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Terence Stamp, Eddie Izzard and Thomas Kretschmann, how could Singer go wrong?

Well, he didn’t really. The movie is actually very good, if not really great. His main flaw is Tom Cruise, who seems to be back to his old self after doing so well in his last few films. I wish that I could say that I forgot that it was Tom again, but I just can’t. He was Tom and there was no getting around that this time. (One thing I’ll give Tommy, though: The movie started with him speaking German and, as far as I could tell, he was doing a VERY good job of it. Maybe he should always act in German…with a bald cap and a fat suit.)

But I really did like the movie and it’s an important part of history that not a lot of people know about. Stauffenberg is seen as a great hero in Germany and has many tributes and memorials around the country. I’m glad that someone in Hollywood finally decided to tell his story. (It doesn’t hurt that it’s a really talented filmmaker and his old writing partner, Christopher McQuarrie getting back together.)

Watch for Carice van Houten from Black Book as Stauffenberg’s wife.

Apparently some people are giving Singer shit about letting everyone use their own accents in the film instead of speaking with German accents. This is, of course, pure bullshit. Who the fuck cares?! I actually noticed it for about five seconds before thinking, “That totally makes sense.” It’s just less distracting than hearing Tom Cruise try a German accent…or a British accent, as they usually do in films like this.

Fuck people.

UP FOOTAGE

Pixar is everybody’s favorite animation studio these days. (And, in many cases, everybody’s favorite studio in general.) So, the news of a new film is always welcome for any thinking human being. I saw the teaser for this one on the WALL-E disc and wondered what the hell it could be about.

Up is, at its heart, about love and dreams and the things we do for them. Carl (Ed Asner) lost his beloved wife, Ellie, a few years ago and is about to lose their home. But if he could find a way to get it to the place that Ellie wanted to move it to, he could save it and his memories. Of course, that place is in the middle of South America. (“It’s just like America…but it’s south!”)

He just happens to find a way, but a young Wilderness Scout tags along for the ride. And they meet some new friends along the way.

Director Pete Doctor (Monsters, Inc.) and producer Jonas Rivera could only show us 45 minutes of the film, so it was pretty frustrating, but amazing at the same time. The movie is nowhere near finished and a lot of the footage was animated storyboards and flat CGI animation. The voice work is basically done, though and it’s on track for its May release. I can’t wait to see what happens to Carl and Russell. “SQUIRREL!!”

METROPOLIS (1927/1984)

***** (5/5)

Directed by: Fritz Lang/Giorgio Moroder
Written by: Thea von Harbou/Fritz Lang (uncredited)

We’ve all seen this one and how amazing it. It’s even more amazing with a live orchestra. I’ve reviewed it that way before, but this version was a bit different. This is the version released in 1984 with a Giorgio Moroder score and songs by Freddie Mercury, Pat Benatar, Bonnie Tyler and Adam Ant among other 80s near-icons.

And, you know, as cheesy as the music sometimes is (ok…always), it kinda works for the movie. It has that same retro-future feel that the movie has. It may not be the best way to see the movie, but I think this is a pretty good way to see it. As Harry said, this is the way to party while seeing it.

This version is pretty short and has a lot of stills and drawings supplementing footage that was believed lost. (All of this is explained at the beginning in title cards.) Moroder also added some color and new visual effects to the film to update the visuals along with the sound.

But wait! Just recently, a full print of the entire film was found in South America (?!) and it is being restored right now, if it hasn’t been already. Harry really wanted to get a copy of that print to show us, but he just couldn’t. Instead, he showed us the version that many of us saw in our film history class at UT.

And that’s ok. I really like this version. Maybe it’s not as amazing to see as newly found footage, but that’s ok. I’ll settle for Freddie Mercury.

MONSTERS VS. ALIENS CLIPS

Dreamworks has come a long way since their early animation movies like Prince Of Egypt. While that one was visually pretty amazing, the screenplay and voice acting sometimes left something to be desired.

Now, with movies like Shrek and Madagascar, they are pretty much the only competition that Pixar has. But they haven’t quite reached the peaks that the boys at near-Disney reached even with their first feature, Toy Story.

Monsters Vs. Aliens comes from a love of the old horror and sci-fi classics of the 50s and 60s. The Earth is under attack from aliens. We know nothing about them except that they seem to be indestructible. And the President (Steven Colbert) is useless. The Secretary Of War, WR Monger (Keifer Sutherland), however, has an idea. His crew have been collecting monsters since the 50s and it may be time to let them go kick some ass.

We got to see a clip of the first contact and a clip of the first monster/alien battle. It looks like some pretty fun stuff, if lacking the Pixar heart that a lot of Dreamworks films are missing. But it certainly looks funny enough and I’m all for it. The 3D worked really well, too.

MY BLOODY VALENTINE

**½ (2.5/5)

Directed by: Patrick Lussier
Written by: Todd Farmer/Zane Smith
Based on 1981 screenplay by: John Beaird/Stephen Miller

Speaking of 3D, this is the only feature we saw in 3D today. It’s a remake of and old 80s slasher flick that I’ve never seen. It is apparently a lot of peoples’ favorite slasher movie, so I might have to check it out.

If the plot matters, it’s about a group of “friends” who survive the attack of a miner who was the only survivor of a cave-in. He killed the other five survivors and was put into a coma. Then, when he woke up, he went on a rampage on Valentine’s Day. He slaughtered a bunch of kids and was thought to be killed in the mine.

Ten years later, one of the survivors is sheriff. When one of the other survivors shows up after a 10 year absence, the murders start again. Is the killer back? Or is this prodigal son responsible? Or is it the asshole sheriff?

But the plot really didn’t matter at all. And, in fact, the script and acting didn’t matter at all. There’s nary a good actor in the bunch except for maybe Jaime King (maybe) and the old folks, who are just as much of victims as the younger folks.

The only really good thing about this movie is the gore. It’s pretty amazing. And, while the 3D effects are a bit blatant for my taste (eyeballs popping towards the audience, a pickax being thrown at us, bullets shot as us), it worked well and, I guess, added something to the experience.

Director Patrick Lussier (Dracula 2000 and its sequels and White Noise 2) said that the gore was much worse and the sex scene about three minutes longer when the MPAA saw it. While I would love to see that version, they actually got the cut that they wanted because all of that extra was filmed specifically for the MPAA so that they would cut what the filmmakers didn’t want and the MPAA would think that they were taking their cuts seriously.

Awesome.

I wish that I could recommend this movie to people besides gore-hounds. But, really, this is a pretty terrible movie with great grue. Nothing more, nothing less.

I LOVE YOU, MAN

**** (4/5)

Directed by: John Hamburg
Written by: John Hamburg/Larry Levin

Paul Rudd can do no wrong at this point in his career. It seems that all of the movies that he’s been in lately, even if they’re not really hits, they’re pretty damn funny.

I Love You, Man continues the trend. He plays a man who has never had buddies. He’s always had girlfriends and put all of his time and effort into those relationships. Now he’s getting married and has no best man. His fiancee wants him to go out and find some friends, but he just doesn’t know how to.

That’s when he meets Jason Segel. Jason is brash and introspective all at the same time. And he’s a dude.

This is pretty much the definition of the term “bromance.” Paul and Jason (whose character names I don’t remember and they’re not on IMDb yet) basically fall in love with each other at first sight, but in a totally non-gay way. They want to hang out all the time.

The best thing about the movie is that, while the impending marriage has a slight rift at one point, it’s never in any danger at all. And it’s almost a side-story to what’s going on with the two guys and how much they grow to love and trust each other. And it’s funny as hell. It’s not an amazing movie and maybe not as good as some of Rudd’s other movies recently, but it’s definitely really good and a lot of fun.

The supporting cast is just as good as the two leads. Jon Favreau plays the husband of Paul’s fiancee’s best friend, Jaime Pressly. He’s hilarious as the asshole who just never really likes Paul. Thomas Lennon is a guy who doesn’t quite get what Paul wants out of his man-dates. Jane Curtain and JK Simmons are Paul’s parents. Andy Samberg is his gay brother. And Lou Ferrigno is Lou Ferrigno.

I loved it, man.

WHITE DOG (1982)

*** (3/5)

Directed by: Samuel Fuller
Written by: Samuel Fuller/Curtis Hanson
Based on book by: Romain Gary

Samuel Fuller is one of those filmmakers that every film geek knows, but most of us have really only seen one of his films. And that film does not tend to be White Dog. (We BNATateers have seen at least one. Pickup On South Street played last year.)

Apparently, this is the film that pretty much killed Sam’s career. It was never released theatrically in the US and had to rely on HBO for any kind of real viewing. Why is that?

Because it’s about a dog that was trained to attack black people.

Wait…really? Is that why it wasn’t released? That seems pretty flimsy. I think someone didn’t like Sam, so they buried the movie.

It stars Kristy McNichol (why the hell do I know her? I’ve never seen anything she’s been in, but I know who she is…weird) as a young actress who hits a dog one night while driving home. She takes it to the vet, puts fliers around and ends up falling in love. Her boyfriend, Jameson Parker, tells her that she needs to keep the dog for safety. What neither of them know is that the dog was trained to kill black folks. When she figures it out, she takes him to two animal trainers, Paul Winfield and Burl Ives. (Of course…why wouldn’t The Snowman be an animal trainer?)

Criterion has recently picked this movie up for a nice DVD transfer and special edition. My question is…why? It’s really not that great of a movie! In fact, it’s kind of movie-of-the-week-ish. The acting is ok, but it just seems kind hokey, even by 1982 standards.

It did, however, bring up a subject that not many people even know is a subject. It doesn’t happen so often anymore, but it was once often enough to make a movie about. Pretty interesting stuff, but not Fuller’s best by any means. Check it out if you’re a completest.

PUSH CLIPS

This movie kind of reminds me of Jumper. We saw two clips of it and I’m a little bit underwhelmed. It stars Dakota Fanning and Chris Evans as two kids who can…do…um…just about anything? They push things around, control guns and bullets with their minds and, apparently, control people…or something. I dunno. They just kind of seem all powerful. They also seem like they’re just now coming to terms with it.

Like Jumper, it’s one that I’ll think about seeing, but then skipping until video. And then I probably won’t see it for a long time.

KNOWING CLIPS

Nic Cage is at it again. This time he’s opened up a time capsule put together by kids 50 years ago. They wrote about what they thought the future would be like. When it was opened up, there was one page that was just a bunch of numbers. When the numbers were deciphered, things look pretty grim for the human race.

We saw a clip where Nic chased some dude onto a subway thinking that he was a terrorist. Turns out that he was a pirate and the terrorists had already put a train onto the same track coming towards them…or something like that.

Again, I might see it, but only after everything else is played out.

OBSERVE AND REPORT PREVIEW

Seth Rogen as a security guard who wants to be a cop. It’s been done, but never with Seth. I’m for it. Absolutely.

TERMINATOR: SALVATION FOOTAGE

McG may be a joke to some, but he does really seem to have a passion for film. When he showed up in his bezippered leather jacket, I thought, “Oh god. He really is a douche.” Turns out that he’s a rather well-spoken and eloquent douche. I gained a little bit of respect for him. Not that I hated him before or anything. I think he’s a competent director. I just think he has a funny name and the second Charlie’s Angels movie sucked balls.

It looks like he might do something pretty good with the Terminator franchise. I’ll see it. The extended preview with rough footage didn’t make my pants sticky or anything, but it was some pretty fun stuff.

And, about his name, he said, “Oh, yeah. And fuck you all for giving me so much shit about my name. I’ve been called McG since 4th grade. It’s short for McGinty. Now shut up about it.” Yeah, a little douchy, but also pretty funny.

WATCHMEN FOOTAGE

This was when Harry brought out the movie that we all really wanted to see…unfortunately, he only brought out 22 minutes of it! FUCK!!!

Apparently the movie just isn’t finished yet…which is funny since everyone in Hollywood seems to have already seen it. Kevin Smith said it was better than Dark Knight.

Jackie Earle Haley was there to talk about the footage and said that this was the first time he had seen anything from the film. What the fuck?! How is it that Kevin Smith has seen it, but the star hasn’t? I don’t understand? (People were saying that Star Trek wasn’t finished, either, but Kevin has seen that, too. Who is he?!)

Well, whatever. The first 22 minutes of the movie were pretty amazing, even if they pretty much consist of the murder of the Comedian and a long scene of Rorschach and Nite Owl talking about it.

Cock tease.

CHE

****½ (4.5/5)

Directed by: Steven Soderbergh
Written by: Peter Buchman/Benjamin A van der Veen
Based on book by: Ernesto “Che” Guevara

Harry is usually pretty good at scheduling, but lately he’s kinda lost his touch. The last film needs to be something to keep people awake. Something to send them home with a bang. Something to hold them to their seats. V For Vendetta did it. The Lord Of The Rings movies did it. Hell, even Passion Of The Christ kind of did it…in a way.

So, this year he programmed a four hour, subtitled bio-pic of Che Guevara. That’s right. This isn’t the version that is going to be released everywhere. This is the roadshow version, complete with program and 15 minute intermission. From the opening moments, we knew that this was going to be a LOOOOOOONG four hours. It starts with a map of Cuba, very slowly showing the different subdivisions of the small country. Then it very slowly shows the big cities. Veeeeeerrrrrrrryyyyyyy slowly.

Here’s the deal: I really don’t think that I’m very qualified to even review this movie. Pretty much the entire audience and I were all asleep through at least the first half of the film. By the second half we were trying to kind of gear up for the end and the drive back home. But this movie was fucking brutal to watch after 20 hours of movies. It was beautifully shot and well-acted. I guess it may have been well written, but it was hard to tell from all the snoring.

I do seem to remember Benicio del Toro doing a very good job (as usual) and Lou Diamond Phillips actually being pretty good. What’s that all about?! But Franka Potente was in it? Really?! Yeah. Not remembering her in it at all.

Even if this was the best movie in the world, it was a terrible way to end BNAT. But I did get a pretty cool program out of it. It kind of looks like an old copy of Life Magazine.

So, there you go. BNAT in a rather large nutshell. There were some great films and some that weren’t so great, but no real groaners, honestly. Even the “just plain wrong” movie wasn’t that wrong. White Dog, for all its supposed shock value, just wasn’t Teenage Mother or Toys Are Not For Children.

It was a fun time and the theme almost held up for the first time ever. I just wish that he hadn’t ended the night with a four hour epic that didn’t involve orcs and talking trees.

That’s right. We only took five breaks in 24 hours. We’re insane. But there you have it.

So let’s start right there at the beginning.

APOCALYPTO TRAILER

Mel Gibson, who so nicely brought us The Passion Of The Christ two years ago in a slightly unfinished form, decided to send us the trailer for his new dead language film. This time it’s about a tribe of Indians in Mexico before the invasion by the Spaniards. Should be fun.

But, even before the trailer, Mel had a pretty funny little intro welcoming all of us to BNAT and telling how absolutely insane we all were for doing this again and again and again. He also proved that he was in Mexico filming by having someone off camera speak Spanish to us.

You know, no matter how I feel about The Jewish Jesus Massacre, I still love Mel. I’ll see Apocalypto in the theatre and I’ll probably like it. It’s an interesting story and it looks like it’s going to be pretty good. I guess we’ll have to wait and see, though.

THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME (1932)

****½ (4.5/5)

Directed by: Irving Pichel/Ernest B Schoedsack
Written by: James Ashmore Creelman
Based on short story by: Richard Connell

Produced by Merian C Cooper just before he started on King Kong, this is based on the classic story by Richard Connell. Most people know the story by now, but, just in case, here it is:

Bob (Joel McCrea) is a big game hunter. But he’s not a crazy big game hunter. He’s on a ship with some of his best friends (and, let me tell you, friendship was shown in weird ways in the 30s…lots of stiff conversation and polite drinking) when it goes down and everybody dies. He’s washed to an island where Count Zaroff (Leslie Banks) has a couple of other shipwreck survivors from a wreck a couple of weeks before. Eve (Fay Wray just before her most famous role) and Martin (Robert Armstrong—the director in King Kong) are a brother and sister who are, strangely, the only survivors left from that wreck. All of the others have mysteriously disappeared.

What is Zaroff hiding? What has he done with the other folks? And why is he so weird?

All of these questions (except the last one…that one is unanswerable) will be answered by this great film. Yeah, it’s a bit over the top by today’s standards, but that kind of comes with the 30s film territory. It’s a great film that sheds some light on the whole “how far from animals are humans, anyway?” question. Check it out. It’s available in a Criterion version these days.

THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM TEASER

Ray Harryhausen is coming out of retirement!!! That’s right. The master of stop-motion has decided that now is the time to put the smack down on all of the newbies out there like Tim Burton and Aardman. He is producing a series of shorts based on Edgar Allen Poe stories, starting with this one.

Now, there have been plenty of movies based on Poe, but these will be BASED ON POE! Every bit of the stories will be in there. And they’ll make as many as they can in the time they are given. I can’t wait to see the finished product. For the sneak peek that we got, check this site out. Looks pretty brilliant.

WAR EAGLES CLIPS

And speaking of brilliant, this is the film that Cooper was going to do just after King Kong. He told Fay Wray that it was going to be better than Kong.

Unfortunately for all of us, he was carted away to WWII before he could really make a dent in production and it was never finished.

Until now…

Harryhausen’s co-horts on the Poe shorts (Arnold Kunert and Marc Lougee) were there to show us a sort of teaser of what is going on with this film right now. It looks like Kunert and Lougee’s crew are putting together everything that Cooper had (which was only drawings, a few models and one short test film of a battle) and trying to make the full-length film. More power to ‘em, I say! I can’t wait to see what this looks like, but it will probably be a few years before anything comes of it.

“Yay!” for finishing other peoples’ dream projects!

KING FREAKIN’ KONG!!!!! (2005)

****½ (4.5/5)

Directed by: Peter Jackson
Written by: Peter Jackson/Fran Walsh/Philippa Boyens
Based on 1933 screenplay by: Merian C Cooper/Edgar Wallace

Speaking of dream projects, this was Peter Jackson’s even before he went to a little place called Middle Earth. It’s the passion that drove him all through the making of Bad Taste and Meet The Feebles and, well, everything he’s ever made. And every bit of that shows on the screen. And, because Fay Wray was making The Most Dangerous Game, she wasn’t available for this one.

Oh….my……GOD!!!!!! King Kong was so freaking awesome. I don’t even have words for it. Even now, two days later, I’m still gushing over how awesome this movie was. Everything about it is great. The Great Ape looks fucking amazing. (There wasn’t a dry nerd-eye in the house for the last 1/3 of the movie. It was amazing how emotionally attached we all were to a giant CGI ape.) The acting was as good as it could get. (Yes, Jack Black was perfectly cast as the over the top, asshole director who would do anything to get his film finished.) Just….just….everything. Awesome. Fucking awesome.

Are there any problems? Eh. I didn’t think so, but some people thought it ran a bit long. Yeah, three hours is a long time to spend in the company of a giant ape (and he only appears for the last, maybe, hour and a half.), but it was a giant ape that we all fell in love with pretty quickly. He’s just an awesome creation that looks so realistic that it’s almost hard to believe that he’s just a computer program.

I fucking loved this movie. I’ll be in line to see it again soon. I have a lot of friends who didn’t get to go to BNAT with me and I’ll see it with every single one of them. Was it as good as the original? Um…I haven’t seen the original in years. It’s hard for me to say. Probably at least as good. Was it as good as Lord Of The Rings? Probably not. The source material there was so much denser that it had to make for a better movie. But that doesn’t make Kong, um…undense? It just makes it slightly less so. So it’s not really fair to compare LOTR and Kong. But I know it will be done, so there it is.

And to think, we almost had to sit through a documentary about the bird flu to get to this. (Ok, it was just another prank that Peter tried to pull on us. But we know him too well by now. We knew Kong would be here and we were waiting for it with geeky crotches in hand.) Go see this movie NOW!!!! It’s worth every penny and every minute. Go one. I’ll wait.

FOOTLIGHT PARADE (1933)

**** (4/5)

Directed by: Lloyd Bacon
Written by: Manuel Seff/James Seymour/Robert Lord (uncredited)/Peter Milne (uncredited)

This is Harry’s favorite musical of all time and, honestly, I’m not really sure why. It was good, alright, but it wasn’t spectacular. But, then, I don’t go in for the musicals set on stages. I like it better when it’s totally stupid for the characters to burst into song. My favorite is still Guys And Dolls. Gangsters singing. Nothin’ better than that.

But I’m not here to review GAD. I’m here to tell you about another gangster who sang and danced: James Cagney!

Yes, Jimmy was a pretty amazing dancer. We’re all just used to seeing him pushing grapefruit into women’s faces and shooting people from the top of a giant, flaming tank. But here he plays Chester Kent, the director of…well, I have to explain this first: Back in the day, they used to have live shows before movies. There would be dancers, singers, chorus lines…all that on stage. Then they would start the movie. According to Harry (who just knows these things…plus it’s mentioned in the new King Kong DVD set), there were seven such shows before the premiere of King Kong. And not one of them was filmed or even photographed. Sad.

So Chester is the director of those little pre-movie shows. The problem is that his company is being infiltrated by a spy who is giving all of his ideas away. So, not only does he have to come up with new ideas, he has to come up with new ideas on how to KEEP his new ideas.

Plus, he’s got three women tugging at him. His on again, off again wife (Renee Whitney), his fiancée (Claire Dodd) and his secretary (Joan Blondell) are all pulling him in three different directions for three different reasons. (Well, actually, his wife and his fiancée both want money. His secretary actually loves him.)

The dialogue is fast and funny (and pretty risqué for it’s time—“As long as there are sidewalks, you’ve got a job.”) and the Busby Berkeley dance sequences are as funny and amazing as always. That boy did like the crotches. And how the HELL did they get that pool on the stage in front of the movie screen and what made them think that the audience could see synchronized swimming routines?!

As far as this kind of musical goes, this one was really good and Jimmy is always fun to watch. I’ll probably be trying to check out more of his movies. I’ve seen a few, but I’m sorely lacking in my Cagney knowledge.

(Preceding Footlight Parade was a 1933 Betty Boop short called Parade Of The Wooden Soldiers. It sort of bridged the gap between Kong and Footlight by including a giant toy gorilla in a musical setting. Heh heh. Clever, Harry. Betty’s always fun and watching her get crowned “Queen Of The Toys” was pretty cool.)

MASTERS OF HORROR – SICK GIRL (2006)

**** (4/5)

Directed by: Lucky McKee
Written by: Sean Hood/Lucky McKee

Next up was a Masters Of Horror installment directed by Lucky McKee and starring his muse (and Austin girl) Angela Bettis. The two of them were there to introduce the film and talk a little bit about it.

I was a little apprehensive about seeing one of these shows at BNAT. I was really excited about the series until I started seeing the actual films. They just kind of sucked. And most of the ones I haven’t seen I’ve heard were even worse than the ones I have seen.

Luckily, Sick Girl bucks the trend.

Ida Teeter (Angela) is a lonely entomologist whose only wish is to find a nice girl who loves bugs as much as she does. She finds a shy young lady (soft-core legend Misty Mundae billing herself as Erin Brown) outside of her office and the two embark on a torrid and passionate love affair that gets a little bit, um, interrupted by a bug that Ida got from a mysterious fan in South America.

Not a bad little horror flick in the tradition of The Fly. It’s gross, funny, and a little bit scary at times.

And it doesn’t hurt that the two leads are pretty hot.

Someone asked Angela where she got her character from. She said that it was just something that she and Lucky came up with, but I saw a lot of Jodie Foster in it. Pretty interesting. And the whole movie is a damn site better than Argento’s entry in the series.

SYMPATHY FOR LADY VENGEANCE (2005)

***½ (3.5/5)

Directed by: Chan-wook Park
Written by: Chan-wook Park/Seo-Gyeong Jeong

When we saw Chan-wook Park’s film Oldboy at BNAT last year, we couldn’t wait to see what he would do next. And with good reason. That film is pretty fuckin’ awesome.

His next work, though, would be 1/3 of Three…Extremes. In fact, it would be the weirdest part that no one could really figure out.

Now comes this film, a head scratcher that for the entire first half makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. One of my buddies leaned over to me just to ask me if he was the only one who didn’t know what the fuck was going on. Apparently not.

Then, at some point in the middle, it all kind of came together.

Guam-ja (Yeong-ae Lee who was in one of Park’s earlier films, JSA) was imprisoned when she was 19 for killing a five year old boy. Years later she is let out and exacts a poetic revenge on the man who actually killed the boy.

I hated half of this movie because it was so fucking impenetrable. I had absolutely no clue who anyone was or why we should care about any of them. We are introduced to every prisoner in Guam-ja’s block, but none of them really matter. Hell, she didn’t even really seem to matter.

Then it starts to make sense. It gets a bit more linear and we start to feel for some of the characters. (No, not any of the other prisoners. They’re just window dressing still.) Guam-ja becomes sympathetic and we understand what she is really doing and how evil the actual killer is.

But it’s too bad that it takes about four hours to get here. And, even after the movie gets good, it seems to take four more hours to get to the conclusion.

If you’re a fan of Korean cinema or Park, check this out. If not, avoid it. You won’t be turned on to any other Korean films. And that’s a real shame.

THE PROFESSIONALS (1966)

***** (5/5)

Directed by: Richard Brooks
Written by: Richard Brooks
Based on book by: Frank O’Rourke

Lee Marvin. Burt Lancaster. Robert Ryan. Woody Strode. Jack Palance. Claudia Cardinale’s sweaty titties. (Thanks, Harry, for putting that phrase in my vocab.)

What the fuck more could you want in a Western?!

How ‘bout beautiful scenery?

Check. (Filmed partly in the Valley Of Fire State Park and Death Valley.)

A great director?

Gotcha. (Richard Brooks)

Basically, all of the elements of a great Western are right here in a movie that no one has ever fucking seen. Dammit. Why not?!

I actually avoided seeing it for a while. NOT because I thought it would be bad, but because a friend of mine told me that it was best seen on the big screen. And he was right. Sure, the Alamo doesn’t have the biggest screen, but it’s bigger than my tv and that’s all that counts. It’s a pretty beautiful movie shot by master shooter Conrad Hall.

It’s the story of four outlaws who are paid for one last job. They are supposed to go into Mexico and rescue the wife of a rich politician from a Mexican revolutionary played, of course, by Jack Palance. ‘Cause when you think Mexican, you think Jack Palance. Believe it…..or not!

It’s very Wild Bunch about three years before The Wild Bunch. It just doesn’t have the gut-slinging violence of Peckinpah’s classic. In fact, I still like The Wild Bunch better, but this is a pretty great movie.

All of the acting is great because they’re playing shades of themselves. (At least, they’re playing versions of characters they always play.) Lee Marvin was a badass. Always was. Burt Lancaster is the epitome of cool. (In fact, I always forget how cool he was until I see another one of his movies. Then I want to see them all.) Woody Strode is the quintessential Western hero. And it’s twice as cool because he was a black man in a white man’s world. Woody is a hero for the ages. And Robert Ryan. Well, I don’t know much about him except that he was in The Wild Bunch and he looks a bit too much like a certain Dumbass in Chief. I was a little disturbed by that, but he played an really nice horse man in this one, so I liked him.

Great film that needs to be rediscovered. Let’s start the cause!

DISTRICT B13 (2006)

**** (4/5)

Directed by: Pierre Morel
Written by: Luc Besson/Bibi Naceri

(If you want to look this up on IMDb, click here. It doesn’t have the English title yet.)

Luc Besson has done more for French martial arts than Napoleon Dynamite did for Idaho Mormons. His films with Jet Li have been the only American Li movies that are really worth a shit. And the first Transporter movie was a lot of fun.

Now he goes back to his native land to produce and co-write a movie that is almost a martial arts film. It’s actually a “parkour” film. Parkour is the art of getting from point A to point B in the most direct way possible paying no heed to obstacles. It was developed by the star of District 13, David Belle. His father (I’m guessing) was a French soldier in Vietnam and used the technique on the battlefield.

Of course, the movie puts some fighting into this particular art. Parkour is not about fighting. It’s just about using the body to get where you need, getting around whatever obstacle might be in your way. You can’t make a movie about that, though, so there’s a story here about the near future of France.

You see, in 2010, the French government has put the slums behind a wall. They call this section District B13. The police have just closed their only unit there and it’s up to one man, Leito (Belle), to clean up his home town. Unfortunately, he’s in jail while his sister (the beautiful and spunky Dany Verissimo) is being held and drugged by the main gangster (co-writer Bibi Naceri).

Enter the police force with a missile that they lost. They send Damien (Cyril Raffaelli—one of the twins in Kiss Of The Dragon) in to a) get Leito out of jail and b) retrieve the missile. Not so easy, of course,

There is so much awesome action going on in this movie that you almost forget that the story is a thinly veiled indictment of the current government. (Whose, I’m not sure. Probably everyone’s. I don’t know enough about French politics (or, anything about it, actually) to know what’s going on there.) It’s actually an interesting story that reminded me a little bit of Escape From New York. (Not so much Assault On Precinct 13 as everyone else has said.)

I loved this movie. It made me believe even harder in the straight-line theory of walking. I can’t wait for it to really hit the states and see kids trying to jump from the roof of their house without killing themselves. Wait…they do that anyway.

2GETHER 4EVER TEASER

I’m not really sure what this is. It’s a teaser for a movie that Harry is producing, but it was put together on the fly and has no footage from the movie because I don’t think any footage has been shot. So it’s just a faceless, hot teenybopper going to her locker, pricking her finger and drawing a heart on a locker with her blood. She walks away and monster eyes show up in the locker.

All this to the sweet strains of “Take On Me.”

Cool in a really weird sort of way. We’ll see what Harry can do.

MASTERS OF HORROR – CIGARETTE BURNS (2005)

**** (4/5)

Directed by: John Carpenter
Written by: Drew McWeeny/Scott Swan

This is John Carpenter’s entry into the Masters Of Horror series. And I think it’s the best one I’ve seen.

It involves a young theatre owner (Norman Reedus from Blade 2) who searches for rare films on the side for his real money. He is offered $200,000 by Udo Keir (from Blade 1) to search for the supposedly destroyed film Le Fin Absolue Du Monde, a film so powerful that it caused a lot more than a riot the one time it played. The entire audience pretty much ripped themselves apart.

Why does Keir want this film? And what’s with the freaky looking white dude with the wounds on his back that look like ripped out appendages?

This was an incredibly weird little film that is probably some of Carpenter’s best work in years. It revisits his themes from In The Mouth Of Madness where fiction mars reality and the two become one. If the films from the series that I’ve seen are any indication, this is the best of the series. Check it out when it airs.

HOSTEL CLIP

Yeah, I’ve seen this one, so I didn’t really think that seeing a clip was anything too special. But I still love the movie, so it was cool to have a clip. The only reason the whole film wasn’t playing (according to director Eli Roth) was because of its inclusion this October in the Fantastic Fest. And I understand that. And, since Eli was there we knew that we would see something from the movie.

And, boy, did he pick a doozie. It involves an eyeball, a scalpel, a screaming Japanese girl and an optic nerve.

Classic.

THE DESCENT (2005)

**** (4/5)

Directed by: Neil Marshall
Written by: Neil Marshall

Six women go into a cave to do a little exploratory spelunking. But how many will come out when the screaming starts?

I should write taglines.

And, no, there is no lesbianism in this movie. (Not on screen, anyway.)

This is a weird little British horror movie that doesn’t seem like a horror movie until the last half hour. And, for what it is, it’s pretty cool. There’s really nothing special about it except that it’s like a chick horror flick.

In other words, The Descent is decent.

I should write taglines.

STUNT ROCK (1978)

[Rating:.5/5]

Directed by: Brian Trenchard-Smith
Written by: Brian Trenchard-Smith/Paul-Michel Mielche Jr

This movie has been carefully placed in the annals of Alamo goers for the last, oh, five years. (And I said “annals,” jackass.) They play the hell out of this trailer. Especially if it’s a Harry event. And everyone has loved it ever since it’s first viewing.

Well, they finally got a print of the actual movie so that we could all watch it and revel in its glory.

The story of Stunt Rock is exactly what it sounds like. It’s got something to do with the band Sorcery (never heard of ‘em, either) and the Aussie stunt man, Grant Page. These two entities get together and are interviewed by a woman who really has no interest in ever seeing what they do. She’s too scared.

It’s all really just an excuse to play loud music and do show-off stunts. There’s nothing more to it.

Really, the only good thing about this movie is Sorcery themselves. They are a Spinal Tap-like band that you know takes themselves way too seriously. They actually think that they are a good rock band. They have a wizard onstage who lights his staff on fire while fighting a dark magician who shoots fire out of his sleeves. And they have long, “Stonehenge” like dirges that end up sounding a lot like “Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You (Tonight).” Just awful stuff. But they’re serious.

It just goes to show that Spinal Tap was not a comedy. It was reality.

Director Brian Trenchard-Smith has gone on to do Leprechaun 3 and 4, BMX Bandits and episodes of “Silk Stalkings.” I think he got what he deserved. Page went from Mad Max to No Escape and Son Of The Mask. I think he got what he deserved.

I fell asleep a lot during this one, so I don’t know that my review holds a lot of water, but the movie was bad and, strangely, pretty boring. The preview holds no mystique anymore.

DAMN YOU, TIM LEAGUE!!!!

DRUM (1976)

*½ (1.5/5)

Directed by: Steve Carver/Burt Kennedy (uncredited)
Written by: Norman Wexler
Based on book by: Kyle Onstott

How ‘bout another one with a Wild Buncher? You want Warren Oates? You got ‘im.

Lars, King of Weird Wednesday, has chosen another one for us that we’ll never forget…if we had managed to actually stay awake through it. Drum is kind of a Son Of Mandingo, and apparently it’s more offensive than Mandingo, too. (I haven’t seen Mandingo, so I don’t know.)

And, yes I fell asleep quite a few times during this one, too. I’m not too good at staying awake for all 24 hours of this thing. But I come by it naturally. I didn’t have any caffeine at all and I didn’t sleep well the night before.

But I digress.

Drum (non-acting boxer Ken Norton who also played the lead in Mandingo) is the son of a plantation owner’s wife and a slave. Warren Oates is a slave owner with a sharp tongue and lots of “wenches” (including Pam Grier). What else happens, I don’t really know. I just know that there are a lot of boobies going on. Other than that, I just saw black people being beaten and the back of my eyelids. Inter-racial sex and the back of my eyelids. Racist violence and the back of my eyelids. The top of my table and the back of my eyelids.

I really can’t tell you much more. I just remember a lot of gasps and laughs from the audience and applause when it was over.

V FOR VENDETTA (2006)

****½ (4.5/5)

Directed by: James McTeigue
Written by: Andy Wachowski/Lana Wachowski
Based on graphic novel by: Alan Moore (uncredited)/David Lloyd (art)

Now that I was in some pain (stomach and, for some reason, shoulders) it was time for the “big movie.” We had already seen Kong, but that wasn’t a surprise, so Harry couldn’t make that the last movie of the night.

No, he managed to steal V For Vendetta right out from under the Berlin Film Festival. He had to call Berlin in order to ask permission to show the movie before they did. Weird, huh?

This movie has gone through a lot of changes and double talk lately because of the bombings in London. Luckily, they didn’t change it very much. They just postponed the release a bit.

V (Hugo Weaving…I think. He could have been anybody, really.) is a vigilante of sorts. He wants the English government to change. Of course, who wouldn’t? It’s the government of the future and they’ve become a Orwellian society. People trust Dear Leader, er, Sutler (John Hurt) and put all of their faith in him. But V, a man in a Guy Faulks costume and mask, wants to put an end to them by bombing them into submission. Or at least scaring them a lot with bombs.

(Guy Faulks, by the way, was a man who, 400 years ago, tried to blow up Parliament. He is now considered some kind of weird-ass national hero or something. They still celebrate Guy Faulks Day on November 5th. Yeah. The English are weird.)

Evey (Natalie Portman) is a young girl who gets caught up in V’s plans by being in the wrong place at the right time. Or is she?

The cast is great (Stephen Rea, Stephen Fry and Sinead Cusack are also along for the ride) and all of them seem to be having a lot of fun lampooning their own (and our) government.

This is actually a really good movie. It’s weird how you can feel so much fear, respect and, yes, even compassion for a guy in a silly mask. Even through the pain I was feeling, I managed to like the movie a lot. Check it out when it finally comes out in March. (JESUS, that’s a long time away!!)

(This was preceded by Donald Duck’s “Der Fuhrer’s Face,” a classic bit of pro-American propaganda doled out by Walt Disney in 1942. And you have no idea how strange it is to hear an entire audience making quacking noises with little duck bills every time someone on screen says, “Heil!”)

So, that was it for Harry’s Numb Butt. I can’t wait to see what he has in store for us next year. There are no sure things anymore since Peter Jackson won’t have anything out. And I doubt that any of the movies Harry is producing will be out by then. Who knows, though? Maybe we’ll get Spider-Man 3!

Heh heh. Yeah. Let’s go for it, Harry.

THE RUN (2005)

Directed by: Shawn Costa
Written by: Shawn Costa

As one guy said right after this film was over, “The credits are longer than the film!”

A kid hears a noise behind him in his deserted high school corridor. When a man comes running at him, his first reaction is to run. Run like hell.

The music gets louder. The tension builds. And then…it doesn’t end exactly the way you (or the kid) would think.

Or, actually, it ended about the way I thought it would end. Still pretty funny, though.

FINISHING THE GAME

*** (3/5)

Directed by: Justin Lin
Written by: Josh Diamond/Justin Lin

When Bruce Lee died in 1973, he left behind 12 minutes of footage for his dream project, Game Of Death. So, of course, someone had to exploit that footage.

Justin Lin (Better Luck Tomorrow, Annapolis) decided to exploit the exploitation. Finishing The Game is a mockumentary about the audition process behind finding the “new Bruce Lee.” Would it be Breeze Loo (Roger Fan), the mega-star who doesn’t do any of his own fighting? Or Tarrick Taylor (McCaleb Burnett), the half-Asian guy who looks white, but embraces his Asian half militantly? Or maybe Troy Poon (Dustin Nguyen), the actor who has tried to find a good role ever since his cop show was canceled? Or maybe the overly gentle guy (whose character hasn’t been entered into IMDb yet, for some reason) whose girlfriend is representing him?

Maybe not the greatest movie ever, but it’s pretty funny. And DAMN, did they get the era right. It looks like it was filmed in the late 70s.

I don’t know how much of the story is true. I mean, I know all of the characters are fictionalized. But I’m not sure about the events themselves. It makes for a pretty funny movie, though. One that is especially worth checking out if you’re a Lee fan. And, of course, Justin Lin puts some Asian issues in. (Constant casting as delivery guys seems to be the big one here.)

Watch for some cameos from James Franco and MC fuckin’ Hammer!

INTRO TO LUCID DREAM EXPLORATION (2007)

Directed by: John Grigsby
Written by: John Grigsby

A short made on an Etch-A-Sketch. Yup. That’s right.

A guy gets on a subway (going right by Coney Island! YAY!!), falls asleep and dreams in Etch-A-Sketch. It’s not the greatest premise, BUT IT’S DONE IN FUCKING ETCH-A-SKETCH!!! THAT’S AWESOME!!!

Check it out here.

RETRIBUTION (2006)

*** (3/5)

Directed by: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Written by: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Japanese horror has really kind of worn itself thin lately. After movies like Pulse and The Grudge, I was pretty much done with it.

But something made me want to see this one. It certainly wasn’t the fact that it was directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Pulse). I hate to bad-mouth anyone named Kurosawa, but Pulse was crap. How it swept Japan, I’ll never know.

Luckily, Retribution was quite a bit better than Pulse. Still not a great movie, but better than fucking Pulse.

A cop is trying to solve a murder, but why does he keep seeing the victim everywhere? And why does she keep telling him that he killed her?

The movie isn’t particularly scary, but the woman is pretty creepy looking. At first, I thought she was hot. Then I realized that, with her face painted white the way it was, she looked a lot like Michael Jackson.

No longer hot in any way, shape or form.

THERE WILL BE BLOOD

***** (5/5)

Directed by: Paul Thomas Anderson
Written by: Paul Thomas Anderson
Based on book by: Upton Sinclair

This was our Closing Night Film and we had no idea that it would play. Not really a “Fantastic” movie, but definitely a fantastic movie.

Paul Thomas Anderson directs his own adaptation of an Upton Sinclair novel. It’s the story of an oil tycoon, Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis doing an amazing Jack Palance impression), who will say anything to get his fortune. He takes over the small California town. His first conquest is the Sunday family, which is pretty much run by Eli (Paul Dano from Little Miss Sunshine). Eli is the leader of a Christian cult which basically runs the town. The more power he gains, the more Plainview tries to wrest it from him.

It’s unclear who the good guys or bad guys are in this. Your sympathies switch from Plainview to Eli constantly. And that’s part of the brilliance of the movie. I pretty much hated Eli as soon as he started spouting uber-Christian junk at Plainview. But Plainview is such an ass that it was hard to really be on his side, either.

With our reliance on oil in the modern world, it’s good to kind of get a vantage point on where it all came from. Oil is the Earth’s blood, and we’ve been sucking it out of her for far too long. And this film shows that our own blood flowed in order for us to get at it. Far too much of our blood.

A very good film that will probably not find a real audience, like most of Anderson’s films. It’s good to see him branch out, though, and do something very different from what he’s done before. Besides a few long tracking shots, it’s almost hard to tell that this is one of his films. But the quality gives it away.

The only “complaint” that I have is that it seems to end in a really strange place. I guess we basically know where it goes after that, but there are loose ends that could have been tied up.

Nitpicking. I loved the movie.

INVISIBLE TARGET (2007)

**** (4/5)

Directed by: Benny Chan
Written by: Benny Chan/Chi-man Ling (as Rams Ling)/Melody Lui

There was a short before this one (Monster Job Hunter), but I got in the movie half-way through it. No review for that. Although, I didn’t really like the “Shut up and watch the movie” short the same people did. So there’s my review.

I love Hong Kong action. It’s pretty much been great since John Woo came on the scene back in the mid-80s. It’s still good, but people have lost track of it because most of the big ones are over here now making crappy movies.

Johnny To is still in Hong Kong, though. So, that’s one great director they have left. And now it looks like Benny Chan could be on his way to being another one. (Starting now, pretty much. His earlier movies, Gen-X Cops and Who Am I? aren’t all that great.)

Chan Chun (Nicholas Tse from A Man Called Hero) lost his fiancee during a bank heist two years ago. The criminals who pulled it off got away and it has haunted him ever since. He teams up with two other cops when the gang shows up again.

That’s the WAY short version of the plot. But a) it’s hard to describe everything that happens in this movie and b) the best way to go into this movie is to not know too much about it. Just know that it’s an awesome movie. Maybe not a perfect film, but it’s so much fun and the action is non-stop. Non…fucking….stop. And it’s all kinds of action. Martial arts, gunplay, car chase…everything.

Like Hong Kong action movies of old, this one is all about loyalty amongst non-brothers. The gang are seven people who grew up together in an orphanage and the three cops become very good friends after they kick the asses of about 100 douchebags in a bar. There’s even a scene where one of the cops bonds with one of the gangsters.

And all of this makes it better than just any old shoot ‘em up, kill ‘em all movie. It’s awesome.

And it was a great way to close the Festival. It was a really fun Festival, but it’s all over now. And I already kind of can’t wait for next year.

SXSW is run and attended by film geeks. We love film, but in a really fun way. Sure, it’s art, but we like the trashy stuff, too. You know, the Tromas, the Fulcis, sometimes even the Bays.

On the other hand, TFF is run and attended by film elitists. They look down their noses at Lloyd Kaufman because he just makes stuff to shock his audiences. They honor people like Arrabal and Angelopoulos. Personally, I had never heard of Arrabal and the only reason I had ever heard of Angelopoulos was because I worked at an Evil Empire Video when his film with Harvey Keitel came out. (Ulysses’ Gaze, in case you’re keeping score.) It’s definitely for the more high-brow filmgoer.

Both approaches work for me. I try to be somewhere in the middle, but I lean a little more towards geekdom. I actually love being a part of two such different festivals, but I’m kind of glad that the one in my hometown is closer to my heart. That way I can learn about the more obscure and artsy directors when I go to Telluride, but I can feel like I know what I’m talking about when I’m at home. Home field advantage, ya know?

Not only did I have that revelation, but I also experienced some of the strangest weather that the festival has ever seen. Usually it’s either cold or hot all weekend. This time, though, it was hot on Friday and turned butt-ass cold on Saturday. In fact, not only was it cold on Saturday, but it rained, it sleeted, it snowed, it groppelled and it snained. I’m not exactly sure what those last two are, either, but I’m told that they happened. It was so cold, in fact, that Ken Burns bought hot drinks for his fans waiting for his film, Unforgivable Blackness. The rain helped the dried up Bridal Veil Falls flow again.

Then, just as suddenly as it got cold, it got hot again. Sunday and Monday were beautiful with fairly cold nights. The snow-peaked mountains started melting. The people who thought that they would need to wear sweaters and jackets stripped. The theatres were cooled off again.

And, speaking of theatres, this was the last year for The Max, the Egyptian themed theatre built inside the high school gym. It’s the theatre that I have worked for the past four years, so it’s a little sad to see it go. But next year we won’t have to build a theatre out of nothing. The high school has a brand new fine arts center (partially donated by the festival so that they can use it) that will be set up with Dolby Digital Surround Sound and a big-ass screen. It’s a nice theatre space and I can’t wait to see if they come up with some kind of theme for us to play with.

The theme this year was (un)officially salaciousness and taboo. Old films such as the scandalous for 1933 Ecstasy (featuring a nude Hedy Lamarr, known at the time as Hedwig Kiesler) and new films like Pedro Almodovar’s Bad Education about priests, kids and cross-dressers held up the theme, but, alas, I didn’t get to see either of those films.

Instead, I saw films that held a secondary theme: kids in trouble. (Bad Education follows that theme, too.) Whether it’s sexual trouble or life and death trouble (or sometimes both), there seemed to be kids in all kinds of peril at this festival. Let’s start with the best of these films.

NOBODY KNOWS (2004)

***** (5/5)

Directed by: Hirokazu Koreeda
Written by: Hirokazu Koreeda

Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Koreeda (After Life, Distance and Maborosi) brings the true life tale of four kids in modern Tokyo whose flighty, but loving mother (You…that’s her name, not a pronoun) leaves them alone for months at a time while she goes off to find the perfect husband. While she’s with them she treats them more as siblings than as her children. Perhaps that’s because each one is from a different father and she just can’t seem to latch onto any of them.

She leaves them some money, but it’s really not enough to keep them for as long as she leaves them. As rent and bills come due the kids start to have to survive by other means. The oldest, 12 year old Akira (Cannes Best Actor winner, Yuya Yagira) has to take over as the father figure for his brother and two sisters. He makes friends with some of the people at the local market and hides the fact that his mother has left them from most of the folks in the neighborhood.

And, just to add to the difficulties, the landlord doesn’t know that there is more than one kid in the apartment. Yuki, Kyoko and Shigeru all have to hide the fact that they even exist.

At two and a half hours, this was the longest film that I saw at this year’s festival, but there was not a wasted moment in all of that running time. The story could have been told in half the time, but it would not have been as rich. We would not have cared as much about these kids. When tragedy comes (as it always must in these stories) it hits us hard and fast because of the time we have spent growing up with the kids.

All of the performances were very good, but 14 year old Yuya deserved his award at Cannes. His portrayal of Akira was sad, but hopeful, just like the film that he’s in. He showed subtlety that most kids wouldn’t know what to do with.

And the final frame reminded me of the final freeze of The 400 Blows. The film is sad and depressing, but there’s an edge of hope that let’s us know that those of us who make it through this kind of life will eventually be alright.

I have only heard of Koreeda’s other films, but I can’t wait to check them out now. This was his dream project and the one that he is the most proud of. He read the story of the kids about 15 years ago and immediately wrote the screenplay loosely based on it. Finally, after financial backers leaving him and studios deciding not to do it, he has been able to bring his vision to the screen. And he does it in a way that is universal. Tokyo is not that different from any city in America. Kids are kids and tragedy is tragedy. When the two meet, we can all relate. I’ve seen a lot of films about kids left alone by their parents (Soderberg’s King Of The Hill, The Cement Garden, etc.), but this is probably the best of the lot. In fact, I think this is the best film I saw at this year’s festival.

WASP (2003)

Directed by: Andrea Arnold
Written by: Andrea Arnold

On a similar note, this short is about a young mother of three little girls and baby boy on the poor side of London. She loves her kids, but she also resents them for taking away her youth. She wants to go out and date, but that’s hard for a single mom. When she meets up with an old crush from school she takes desperate measures to hang out with him at a bar. While she’s inside with the guy (whom she told that the kids were a friend’s) her kids are outside the bar eating their dinner of potato chips and a soda.

Then the title is literalized maybe a bit too much.

(I don’t care if it’s not a word. I like it. Shut up.)

A good short, but it beats its point home with a sledgehammer. The ending is open ended and hopeful…perhaps too hopeful. If this were a true story, it would be pretty bleak. Director Andrea Arnold knows how to make us sympathize with everyone involved, though. Zoe may be a bad mother, but you can almost understand her actions. How hard must it be to be so young and have so many kids? Yes, you have a responsibility to raise these kids and keep them from danger, but there are so many other issues and feelings tugging you in so many different ways at that age.

Now, on to a completely different kind of peril for kids.

PALINDROMES (2004)

*** (3/5)

Directed by: Todd Solondz
Written by: Todd Solondz

In the world of Todd Solondz, kids are never safe. Whether they’re being threatened with rape and ridiculed (Welcome To The Dollhouse), or actually molested (Happiness), they are always victims.

Aviva is one of the biggest victims of Solondz oeuvre. She is a 13 year old girl whose cousin has just died. She doesn’t want to end up like her cousin, but some of her family members see her as just another statistic. Why we’re not really sure, but they see some of the dead girl in this younger girl. Her mother (Ellen Barkin) is a loving woman who doesn’t always know the right things to say. (“Maybe if she had cleaned her face a little more then she would have been happier and more loved.”)

This is when Aviva decides that she wants a child of her own. She has sex with the neighbor boy and gets her wish. Unfortunately her parents have other ideas. They take her straight to the abortion doctor who accidentally takes away her ability to ever have children.

Aviva doesn’t know this, though. She runs away and starts to have sex with who ever will have such a young girl. She sees nothing wrong with her new found love for a trucker who gave her a ride and a quickie. When he leaves her she is devastated.

This is when she meets Mama Sunshine and her crew of young misfits who have found God. They are all perfectly happy with their particular disfiguring disabilities because of their personal relationship with their God. Unfortunately, Mama’s husband and Dr. Dan (Richard Riehle) take their religion a bit too seriously.

Just in case you missed the fact that this could happen to any girl in the world, Solondz pulls a Bunuel and has Aviva played by many different little girls and grown women. That makes the proceedings even creepier.

Aviva is a typical child hero of Solondz’ work. She is quiet, shy and painfully introverted. She almost can’t speak to anyone. Of course, all of the actresses play her slightly differently (the first girl plays her as the opposite of everyone else, actually), but most of them have the same horribly shy demeanor.

For you Dollhouse fans out there, Mark Wiener (Matthew Faber) shows up as Aviva’s neighbor who has been accused of being a child molester.

I kind of liked this movie just because it was so weird and I’m a Solondz fan. Does that make it good? Well, not really. It was very exploitative (all of the kids at the Christian Camp had something physically or mentally wrong with them (like his version of Freaks) and the big, black girl who plays Aviva throughout this sequence is constantly shown in tiny clothes just to show how fat she is) and it didn’t really seem to know what its point was. Was it anti-abortion or anti-zealot? Maybe it was trying to show both sides, but they were both kind of shown as being completely ridiculous. The post-9/11 statement was interesting, but seemed a little forced.

And what was up with Jennifer Jason Leigh showing up for one scene? Did she show up saying, “Todd! I want to be in your movie! What can I play?!”

This is certainly Solondz’ weakest film, but for his fans it’s probably worth it. It’s an interesting experiment that didn’t really work the way it should have.

Now let’s move on to the biggest film of the festival and one that almost had a common theme. At least, some characters thought that it did.

FINDING NEVERLAND (2004)

****½ (4.5/5)

Directed by: Marc Forster
Written by: David Magee
Based on play by: Allan Knee

JM Barrie (Johnny Depp) is a playwright who is in trouble. He can’t seem to write another hit. His latest is a resounding flop and his producer, Charles Frohman (Dustin Hoffman), is wondering where his money is going. He has faith in James, but things are starting to look dim.

His home life is no better. Barrie’s wife, Mary (Radha Mitchell), is losing interest in her husband. She sees him less and less and is just unhappy in general, especially since he doesn’t seem to have any interest in becoming part of “society.” He is a childlike man who has no time for trivial things like dinner parties and manners.

That’s when he meets his new muses. Sylvia Llewelyn Davies (Kate Winslet) and her four boys run into James while he is playing with his dog at the park. He instantly falls in love with the family and starts to spend a lot of time with them teaching them and learning from them. The second youngest, Peter (future Charlie Bucket to Johnny’s Willy Wonka, Freddie Highmore), is that saddest of creatures, a child who has lost his imagination. Ever since his father died, he hasn’t been able to be a kid. When James is dancing with his pet bear, all Peter sees is the big sheepdog.

But a strange thing starts to happen. As James spends more and more time with Sylvia and her family (and more time away from his wife), Peter and James both start to learn how to use their imaginations. Peter learns that he might be able to be a kid after all and James starts to write his greatest creation, Peter Pan. Charles thinks he is insane, but history tells us differently.

Of course, tragedy must strike every uplifting story like this, and it does in the form of tuberculosis. But Kate looks great even if she’s sick.

As manipulative and Hollywood as this movie was, it was actually probably the second best film that I saw at the festival. It was involving right from the start. The acting was great (people are talking about an Oscar for Johnny). It was sad, charming, heartbreaking, funny, magical and full of the hope that sometimes only children can see. The scene where James sees that the oldest boy has grown up right before his eyes is so touching that it makes you forget that growing up is supposed to be a good thing in our world.

Director Marc Forster (Monster’s Ball) switches from James’ Neverland and his real world in a way that is disorienting in a really cool way. At one point the kids and James are playing Cowboys And Indians. Every shot changes between the two worlds. It’s a great scene that keeps you wondering exactly where you are.

If you like Johnny Depp or the story of Peter Pan, you need to check this movie out. Even if you just like movies about plays, this is a very good one.

VIVA LA MUERTE (1971)

*** (3/5)

Directed by: Fernando Arrabal
Written by: Fernando Arrabal/Claudine Lagrive
Based on book by: Fernando Arrabal

Viva La Muerte puts its young protagonist in a completely different kind of peril. Young Fando (Mahdi Chaouch) is without a father (he was killed by the national army), has a pretty strange mother that he has an even stranger relationship with and his country is being ruled over by Fascists. Every once in a while he dreams of what he would rather be doing, whether it be figuring out how his father died or rubbing mud all over his mother and licking it off.

Obviously, this is a surrealist’s look at Fascism. Many of the images in the film are meant to be a child’s view of what was going on in Franco’s Spain. It’s all an homage to Bunuel and Fellini, but director Fernando Arrabal forgot one thing: those guys knew how to keep it interesting. Arrabal let his vision get a bit out of hand and it went on and on and on……and on.

His point is obvious. Religion is sometimes used for evil and Fascism is bad. Fando’s mother is very much against fighting the system. She just wants to go along with whatever is going on and sometimes gets a little too into it, like when she cuts off the balls of a cow towards the end. (No fake cows here. Those are real yarbles. Pretty twisted.) She is the non-fighter of the country. Go with the flow and let them do what they want. She’s just as bad as the Fascists.

Speaking of balls, check out the scene where the priests balls are cut off and fed to him. Funniest line of the whole movie: “Oh, mi cajones. Thanks you, O Lord, for this wonderful treat.”

Um. Yeah. I’ll take your word for that one.

That is one lesson that Arrabal didn’t forget when he was learning from the Surrealist Masters: comedy. Early surrealism was meant to make people laugh and think. Un Chien Andalou was meant to be a sensationalist piece of film, but it was also made to make us laugh occasionally. The surrealists had senses of humor and it always showed in their films.

And this is something that was lost on Peter Sellars, the man who introduced the film. He gave us probably the most pretentious intro. of the festival. It was full of pregnant pauses and deifying of Arrabal (who was in the audience). To him, even the early surrealist filmmakers and artists were trying to convey deep meanings. “Surrealism was never surreal. It was real.” Yeah. That’s why Bunuel and Dali always said that there was no meaning for Un Chien Andalou. They purposefully rejected anything that made any kind of sense. Later surrealists may have had more meaning, but the early guys were just going for dreams. If meaning came out of it, great. That’s your interpretation and they can laugh at it if they want to. (And they often did.)

If you’re a fan of Bunuel or Jodorosky (El Topo, Santa Sangre), check this one out. It drags, but it’s definitely an interesting cinematic experience.

Let’s move on to a younger kid in trouble.

UP AND DOWN (2004)

**** (4/5)

Directed by: Jan Hrebejk
Written by: Jan Hrebejk/Petr Jarchovský

(I can’t find any information about this movie online and it was a sneak preview, so there’s nothing in the festival program. Sorry if my details are a little slim.)

This Czech Republic film starts off with two truck drivers having a typical truck driver conversation. Well, typical for modern movies, anyway.

After they make it through the customs agents at the border, they pull over and let the contraband people out of their trailer. Unfortunately, one of them gets left behind. A little baby boy is still in the trailer and the drivers decide to sell him to a black market adoption agency.

This is where a young couple that can’t have kids picks him up. And this starts a chain of events that involves thieves, an upper class family and their children and racism in the newly Democratic Czech Republic.

I had no clue what to expect from the film since no one knew anything about it, but it ended up being completely different even from what I wasn’t expecting. The first scene made it seem like it would be some kind of heist film involving two guys stuck with a baby. Then it ended up being a dark comedy. Then it was a social drama. And all of the films worked really well. The pace was slow, but it needed to be so that we could pick up all of the intricacies of the plot and message.

The characters were well drawn and didn’t always end up where you wanted them to end up. And the theme even changed mid-way. Racism didn’t show it’s ugly head until a little after the mid-point, but it ended up being the central theme of the film.

If you get a chance, check this one out. It may be hard to find, though, until it comes out on DVD.

Now for a child who is working through her peril through film.

PROSHANIE

Directed by: Mariya Saakyan
Written by: Mariya Saakyan

This short film was considered by some to be the best film of the festival. It’s a 27-minute homage to Andrei Tarkovsky that is about the death of filmmaker Maria Saakyan’s father and the life that came before it. There is almost no dialogue (and no subtitles for the little dialogue that there is) and a collection of images that is sometimes beautiful and other times ponderous.

I like Tarkovsky. His imagery is always interesting, even when the camera sits on it for 5 or 10 minutes. He constructed stories with pictures more than with words and evoked a feeling with these images and stories that was above anything that could actually be put on the screen.

Saakyan tries SO hard to do this, but she is not Tarkovsky. She’s just a fan who wants to emulate her hero. Like Gus Van Sant before her, she wants to be the man (but she doesn’t remake one of his films into oblivion). Also like Van Sant, she ultimately fails to achieve what Tarkovsky could do. In fact, her short felt longer than any of his 4 hour epics.

Some kids may be in trouble, but they may not actually exist.

KEANE (2004)

****½ (4.5/5)

Directed by: Lodge Kerrigan
Written by: Lodge Kerrigan

William Keane (Damian Lewis from Band Of Brothers and Dreamcatcher) starts off as a jittery, possibly insane man. He talks to himself as he roams the streets looking for clues about the location of his daughter and her kidnappers. She was abducted from the train station as he turned his back on her and now his life is shattered. This is all he does all day. He has no job. He has no family. He self-medicates with booze and cocaine. He just walks the Earth looking for his daughter.

Keane is so crazy, in fact, that we start to doubt the fact that his daughter ever actually existed. He’s a heartbreaking figure, but what if his broken mind just made the whole thing up?

Director/writer Lodge Kerrigan (Clean, Shaven and Claire Dolan) has, along with Lewis, created a character that actually gets creepier as he starts acting more normal. After meeting a beautiful little girl (Abigail Breslin from Signs) and her mother (Amy Ryan from “The Wire” and You Can Count On Me), Keane starts to calm down a bit. But then things might be going off the deep end for him. Lewis is amazing in a role that keeps him on screen the entire length of the film. He keeps you on the edge of your seat waiting for tragedy to befall someone and always looks like he’s ready to lash out at the smallest little thing.

I’ve never seen either of Kerrigan’s other films, but I’m seeking them out.

Here’s a movie about something that even kids should know about.

KINSEY (2004)

****½ (4.5/5)

Directed by: Bill Condon
Written by: Bill Condon

Alfred Kinsey (Liam Neeson) may have been repressed by an overly religious father (John Lithgow), but as he grew up he started to realize that sex was something that everyone did and everyone should know something about. That’s why, in 1948, he published Sexual Behavior In The Human Male. It caused a huge controversy, but it was also a best-seller and was the first real scientific book treating sex like the everyday act that it is.

But first, Al was an introvert. He wasn’t exactly sure how to act around people, so he kept to himself. He was great with his students, but didn’t know any of them too well. That all changed with Clara (Laura Linney—recipient of a Silver Medallion at the festival this year). She changed his life and, eventually, decided to marry him.

That’s when his sex life started. The two of them were very open about their sex life and they felt that everyone should follow suit. Why not? We all do it.

As Alfred and Clara get deeper into the research (both with each other and with just talking to other people) they gather a close group of confidants that start as assistants and end up, sometimes, as lovers. Peter Sarsgaard is the most trusted of the group and becomes a lover of both Alfred and Clara. Chris O’Donnell and Timothy Hutton are his other two assistants.

Kinsey, directed by Bill Condon (Gods And Monsters), is a pretty typical Hollywood biopic, but it’s a very good one. It was compelling from frame one and never stopped being interesting. And, because of it’s subject matter, it’s a very important film.

In fact, it’s so important that it was surrounded by security. Why, you might ask? So did we. Someone in line at my theatre said that she had heard that it was because it was being released after the elections. Why, again? Because it’s too politically explosive. Why is sex political? Because our current administration is afraid of it. If it’s not missionary with the lights off, then it’s deviant. And for a film to show someone back in the conservative 40’s who realized that perverse acts weren’t as perverse as we all thought at the time would make their entire sexual infrastructure crumble. They would suddenly realize that about 75% of all people are at least partially homosexual. They would start to see that just about everybody has performed some form of oral sex. And they would find out that everyone masturbates.

This information actually kind of pisses me off. How could a studio force a producer/director to hold their film’s release until after an election? How dare they? This is a very important film that could open the eyes of a lot of people. And now, instead of allowing the people who see it to be informed, they hold it back to where it can’t do any “damage.” And, besides, this film is not a political statement! It’s not like Fahrenheit 9/11. It’s something that states facts about a man’s life. It’s about a man who finally figured out that our culture is based around hiding sex instead of embracing it and he was sick of it. He believed that sex was good, fun and necessary. It’s something that married and unmarried couples do. He also found out that marriage DOES matter. So does love. Once you’re married, that’s it. Your spouse is your partner. How is this a political statement!?

Kinsey said something that stuck with me: “In a more enlightened country, every 12 year old would know what I now have to teach you.” This is a sad comment. Sex should be talked about in an open manner. Yes, you can keep your privacy. You don’t have to tell all of your gory details to everyone. But don’t be ashamed of them, either. And certainly don’t berate someone else for having different details. Or even similar ones.

How about some films about people acting like children?

BEING JULIA (2004)

***½ (3.5/5)

Directed by: István Szabó
Written by: Ronald Harwood
Based on book by: W Somerset Maugham

Julia (Annette Bening) is one of the biggest stage actresses of her time (30s London). And, boy does she ever act like it. She’s kind of a bitch, actually. Her agent/husband (Jeremy Irons) loves her, but they don’t have a true marriage. They love who they love and they don’t really care otherwise. In fact, Julia cares so little that her feelings have pretty much died. She’s just a sarcastic bitch who seems to not have much love for anyone.

Until, of course, she meets Tom (Shaun Evans), a younger man from America who seems to not have anything except for great admiration for Julia and her talents. She soon begins an affair with the kid that causes her to feel love for the first time in years.

But is Tom everything he’s cracked up to be? Or is he just fishing for money to pay off his debts? And who is this new actress (Lucy Punch) that everyone is pushing to the fore-front?

Based on the book by W. Somerset Maugham called Theatre, this is a great story of rising fame and fading fire. Like All About Eve it shows how the theatre world can be backstabbing while it’s smiling in your face. The end is hilarious.

But the movie itself almost collapses on its own wit. It’s almost hard to tell that it’s a comedy because it’s so dry. The acting is amazing all around and very subtle, but I don’t think the movie is going to play too well to a general audience. Definitely worth seeing for Annette and Jeremy fans. Especially for that ending.

AALTRA (2004)

*½ (1.5/5)

Directed by: Gustave de Kervern/Benoît Delépine
Written by: Gustave de Kervern/Benoît Delépine

And speaking of endings, that was about the only good thing about this movie. When one of the actor/director/writers said, “The first 6/4s of the movie are incredibly boring, but that last two minutes are amazing.” I thought he was kidding. Unfortunately, he wasn’t.

The movie from Belgium is about two men (stand up comics Benoit Delepine and Gustave de Kervern) who hate each other. When they cause an accident that makes them both paralyzed from the waist down, they are for some reason forced to hang out together all the time. Why? I have no idea. I would think that they would want to get away from each other. But there they are, wheeling themselves around together.

That’s the whole fucking plot! It’s a movie that really tried to be offensive in the Farrelly sense, but ended up being offensive in a cinematic sense. Boring with a capital BOR.

The one bright spot was a hilarious karaoke scene with a guy singing the old Bobby Hebb song, “Sunny.” But he’s not just singing it. He’s mangling it in ways that only a non-English speaker could do. Oh, he’s singing in English, but he’s singing English words that ALMOST sound like the real lyrics. (“Sunny, once and two. I luff you.”) It’s awesome.

And, just like that, it’s over. Then we go back to five or ten more minutes of these two assholes having what I have a hard time calling adventures. They’re just too boring.

Skip this one unless you can fast forward to that one scene.

And, of course, don’t pay for it at all. I don’t want to encourage these guys to make another “film.”

KONTROLL (2003)

***½ (3.5/5)

Directed by: Nimród Antal
Written by: Nimród Antal/Jim Adler

Kontroll is about a different kind of asshole. In Eastern Europe they don’t run the subway system like we do. It’s mostly on the honor system. But if you get caught by the ticket inspectors, be prepared to possibly be physically thrown off of the train.

Everyone hates these guys. Even children spit on them. Basically, they are the losers of society who have no other place to go for a job. So they go to the lowest place in the country to find employment in what is basically a night world all the time.

Bulcsu (Sandar Csanyi) is the leader of one group of these inspectors. He doesn’t have a life above ground. In fact, he sleeps in the underground tunnels. But when a mysterious man starts running around and pushing people in front of the trains, things really heat up for Bulcsu and his crew. Is one of them doing it? Or is it their rival group who is responsible?

The Budapest Underground is a really cool world to set a film in. It’s cavernous in an almost beautiful way. These guys live down here where there is no sun and basically no happiness. The only joy they get is when they get to kick someone off of a train. And then they feel like kings.

And now, ever since Trainspotting, young directors have been trying to create a kinetic world for their characters to live in. No better world for these characters to be kinetic (and yet still completely stationary) than the Underground tunnels.

This is Nimrod Antal’s first film and it’s pretty impressive for that fact. It’s not a great film, by any means, but it’s certainly interesting and worth seeking out. The murder mystery almost bogs the whole thing down, though. I would rather just spend time getting to know these guys than have some weird-ass outside force take over all the time. And it kind of drags at times. Bulscu runs a lot. And he gets beat up. A whole lot. He’s bloody for most of the movie. Wouldn’t he wash up at some point?

The end, though, is completely up for interpretation. I must have heard at least three different versions of it. I don’t want to give away too much, but the fate of Bulscu is up in the air.

Check it out if it comes to a theatre anywhere near you. And then tell me what you think of the ending. And if you can find the soundtrack, let me know, too. It’s pretty awesome.

BAOBER IN LOVE

**½ (2.5/5)

Directed by: Shaohong Li
Written by: Yao Wang/Zhong Zheng

This was the last Asian film I saw and it’s the weirdest movie that I saw at the festival. (Even weirder than Viva La Muerte.)

Baober (Zhou Xun) is a young girl who has no real ties to the real world. She lives the way she wants to and takes nothing for granted except for sanity. When she finds a videotape of Liu Zhi (Huang Juc) she realizes that she has to save this guy from his loveless marriage. In the video he complains about his sex life and the things that his wife takes for granted about him and Beijing in general. She takes the tape to the wife and, in effect, ends their marriage. And, of course, Liu falls in love with Baober.

At least, that’s what I got out of the movie. Like Kontroll, it has a very kinetic pace that makes it a little bit difficult to keep up with. (Of course, my lack of sleep didn’t help that at all, either. That’s the problem with festivals—too much time NOT sleeping.) And, once the two fall in love, there’s not really very much going on anymore. That leaves about an hour of film, though. So I just sat back and enjoyed the surrealism (pretty over the top for a Mainland film) and pretty images while I drifted off for lack of storyline.

Zhou Xun was pretty interesting, too. At times she acted like she was in a horror movie. It was a very cool performance. Too bad the movie wasn’t interesting enough to really keep up with her.

The movie was controversial in China for its frank sexuality. Are they even more repressed than we are? I saw more frankness in The Road To El Dorado. Sure, he talks about masturbation and he and Baober have sex, but it’s not very graphic.

The soundtrack is cool and the images are cool. That’s really about it. And what was up with that ultra-dark ending?

Supposedly there was a message about new and old Beijing hidden in the film somewhere. I’m not sure that I got it. There certainly was a lot of construction going on, so I saw it there. But was she supposed to be New Beijing shaking up the world of Old Beijing (him and his wife)? I dunno. I’ll let the scholars talk about that one.

In the meantime, let’s move on to the last Asian film and the one that was the most fun.

THE HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS (2004)

**** (4/5)

Directed by: Yimou Zhang
Written by: Yimou Zhang/Feng Li/Bin Wang

From Zhang Yimou, director of Hero and Raise The Red Lantern, comes another period action film that shows that the Asian dramatic directors should cross over as much as possible.

This time out he tells the story of two policemen and the girl who comes between them. Mei (Zhang Ziyi, who was in attendance at later screenings…DAMMIT!!! I missed her!!) is a blind prostitute, but she’s also the daughter of the slain leader of the titular revolutionary group. Leo (Andy Lau) goes under cover to get her to take him to their lair. Jin (Takeshi Kaneshiro) keeps popping up to almost blow Leo’s cover, but he may have ulterior motives.

Like Hero, the visuals are stunning in this film. Director of photography Xiaoding Zhao has an amazing career ahead of him.

The plot isn’t the most intricate, but it’s one that has been ingrained into the Chinese consciousness for so long that it is almost sacred. It’s like Romeo And Juliet. We play with that plot all the time and call it new every time we do it.

I know a lot of people still don’t understand how these people are supposed to be flying through the trees and walking on water. Those people need to understand, martial arts is not really a fighting technique or even a way to protect people. It’s really a sacred discipline. A spiritual endeavor. A way to be closer to your own personal “supreme being.” These kinds of films express that idea better than any other film. They show how these people are so nimble, balanced and disciplined that they can stand on top of a bamboo tree. Sure, it’s not realistic, but it makes sense. I love Jackie and Jet, but these films are for the die-hard martial arts film fans. And what’s so awesome is that they are becoming mainstream. Hero was number one for two weeks. It took this kind of serious martial arts film to put Jet Li in the top spot.

I really liked this movie a lot. It’s not as good as Hero, but it’s still very good and very, very beautiful. I’m sure all of the colors meant something (green is betrayal and orange is love? Maybe?). And when the whole world turns to winter at the end, you can feel the coldness that these two men feel for each other.

Originally there was a part for Anita Mui. When she died, Yimou rewrote the film out of respect for her.

Go see this one after you see Hero. It’s opening at the end of the year.

Thus endeth another year at the Telluride Film Festival. Not a standout year, but not a horrible year, either. Until next time, make more black movies.

This page is dedicated to the memory of TFF Staff Member Tim Gillespie. He was a great musician, teacher and an all around great guy. We missed you, Tim.

This was the first year that I got in and I think it had to be his best one. There wasn’t a single horrible movie (although one came close, but it was still fun to watch until the end) and a couple of HUGE special guests.

As my friends and I descended on the Alamo there was much conjecture about who was going to be there and what movies we were going to see. We knew that Return Of The King was going to play because Harry has always had those and he said on his site that he was going to watch it like he always does: with a bunch of his friends. But maybe Kill Bill, Vol. 2? Maybe Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind? Perhaps even that cinematic epic Cheaper By The Dozen? (Someone on his site kidded about that. I would have been pissed.)

But no one knew what was coming. None of us could know.

We got started about an hour late. Harry tried to get us settled, but we were all too excited. We knew that the conclusion to the greatest fantasy epic was coming at the close of the party (it’s NOT a festival!! Some of these movies have to play Cannes.) and we couldn’t wait. But there were plenty of other surprises that we really wanted to know about, too.

HAUNTED GOLD (1932)

*** (3/5)

Directed by: Mack V. Wright
Written by: Adele S. Buffington

Harry started us off with the only horror movie that John Wayne ever made.

Ok. Horror may be kind of a strong word. More horrific. It was 1932 and this wasn’t exactly the Duke that we all know and deify. In fact, his horse was named Duke. John was just a skinny kid (24 at the time) who was in a bunch of B-movies. This was his 35th movie (according to IMDb) and still no one knew his name.

Haunted Gold is about a young man who is called to the town he grew up in because of a mine that his father owned with a long dead partner. The partner’s daughter, Janet (Sheila Terry from…um…it doesn’t really matter), doesn’t know why she was called here because her dad lost his half of the mine in a bet…or something like that.

But now dey’s spooks around. And dey’s spookin’ the walkin’ talkin’ stereotype that’s-a hangin’ out wit Mistra Wayne. Blue Washington plays Clarence Washington Brown, one of the worst portrayals of a black man I have ever seen. (Then again, I haven’t seen just a whole lot of movies with this sort of thing in it.) He is overly scared of everything and just doesn’t know what to do without his massa. (I seriously believe that ol’ Clarence was the inspiration for Scooby-Doo.) Oh, he doesn’t call him that, but he may as well. I guess back in ’32 he gave a lot of laughter to the audience, but these days, well…it was nervous and guilty laughter. It was more funny because people actually put this sort of thing on film than because it was actually funny. At one point, Wayne is getting put up for the night in the local hotel. He points at Clarence and says, “Well, what about…?” Everyone booed. Clarence had to either sleep in the old abandoned house across the street or, as Wayne said, “You could wait outside.”

Booooo.

Speaking of Scooby-Doo, the plot was a direct ancestor of our favorite scaredy dog. (Watch out for spoilers, but I doubt you’re going to be looking for this flick.) The ghost ended up being Janet’s supposedly dead dad who was just trying to scare people away from the mine. But he was a good guy. And if it hadn’t been for that meddling Duke…

But the movie was fun in a rather cheesy way. And Duke, the horse, did some things that no horse could ever do (“Go back and get the boys, Duke!” “Throw the lever, Duke!”) and Wayne threw some girly-punches. Fun was had by all.

After that Harry told us about his experiences with serials. He wasn’t able to get his favorite one (I forget the name, but I’m sure it’s great.), but was able to get:

THE RETURN OF CAPTAIN MARVEL (1941)

**** (4/5)

Directed by: John English/William Witney
Written by: Ronald Davidson/Norman S. Hall/Arch Heath/Joseph F. Poland/Sol Shor
Based on characters created by: Bill Parker/C.C. Beck

Many consider this the greatest serial ever made. It concerns a boy, Billy (Frank Coghlan, Jr.) who is transformed into Captain Marvel (Tom Tyler from Stagecoach) by a wizard named Shazam. Every time he says “Shazam!” Billy suddenly develops pubes and becomes a middle-aged man with the strength of ten men. And he can fly. And he has all kinds of other super powers. Kinda like Superman, actually. That’s mainly because it was supposed to be Superman, but DC wouldn’t let Republic do it.

The show was gearing up to be good and everybody was into it, but the film stopped about 20-25 minutes into it. Just when Captain Marvel got ahold of a machine gun!

But all was forgiven when the New Line Cinemas title screen came up. The crowd went insane. We all knew it was:

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING (2003)

***** (5/5)

Directed by: Peter Jackson
Written by: Peter Jackson/Fran Walsh/Philippa Boyens
Based on book by: JRR Tolkien

Harry knew he had to surprise us with it somehow, so he showed it to us early.

How do I review a movie like this? Seriously. It’s the culmination of everything that we’ve been seeing and dreaming of for the past three or four years. Ever since I heard that Peter Jackson was doing these films and I read the books I’ve been wondering how he was going to pull off some of these scenes. I’ve been waiting to see what the fires of Mount Doom look like and the Battle of Minas-Tirith and the Halls of Gondor and, and, and….

Well, this is how: he makes the absolute perfect ending to the greatest fantasy trilogy of all time. As great as everyone thought the Fellowship and Two Towers were, this one is twice as good. By about half way through there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. The film would get quiet for a second and you could hear little nerdling sniffles all through the theatre. For three and a half hours we were right there with Aragorn and Frodo and all the rest. When Legolas said to Gimli, “How about dying with a friend?” and Gimli said, “I could do that.” we knew that things could be over for one of them. And we were afraid for them.

If this movie doesn’t absolutely sweep at Oscar time I am actually giving up on Oscar. No, really. This time I mean it. Come on, guys. SHUT UP!!

I can’t say enough good words about this movie. Everyone in it was awesome. The battles are fucking amazing. (You haven’t lived until you’ve seen walls of men and orcs hit each other at top speed. And they’re incredibly violent, too. I’m surprised it got a PG-13 rating.) And if you loved Legolas in the last two movies thinking he was the coolest character, you’ll want to suck his dick after this one. He does some pretty amazing shit here.

I don’t want to say too much about it because I wouldn’t dare ruin it for anyone. But it is the best movie I’ve seen in a long, long time. There really hasn’t been a better film this year. I’m happy to have seen this (happy isn’t even nearly the right word for it), but I’m sad that it’s over. There’s nothing else to wait for until New Line gets the rights to The Hobbit and offers it to Peter. So far, that hasn’t happened, but it could. Who knows? Peter and Ian McKellen have both said that they’re game.

I cannot wait to see what Peter does with King Kong.

After the movie was over you could tell that Harry was just filled with every emotion. He told us all to be patient and sit down because he had some very small guests coming out. My first thought was, “If he got all four of the Hobbits here I’m going to freakin’ explode.” He told us that we were going to watch The General as a thank you to the guests for making these movies. We all laughed at Harry for starting to cry while he said that. But a laughter of comrades. We all had the same feelings he did.

That’s when he brought Peter out.

Holy shit. Peter Jackson was there along with his writers Fran Walsh (Peter’s wife) and Philippa Boyens (a big fan of the books and the mouthpiece of the writing team). I had heard rumors that Peter and Elijah Wood were going to be there. I just knew that there was no way that Peter would be there because he’s too busy with the extended version of this film and getting ready for King Kong. But he wanted to be here in Austin so bad that he skipped out on a Q&A in LA that New Line really wanted him to do (they forbade him to come to Austin, pretty much) and hopped a flight as quickly as he could. He lied to his production company for us! I love him!! He was off to Berlin soon after The General, but he was a very cool guy.

Elijah wasn’t there.

After that big surprise and amazing piece of film there was no way that Harry could top himself. He had shot his wad (as I’m sure many members of the audience did during the movie and Q&A). But it was no longer about topping ROTK. It was just about having fun.

THE GENERAL (1926)

***** (5/5)

Directed by: Clyde Bruckman/Buster Keaton
Written by: Clyde Bruckman/Buster Keaton/Al Boasberg/Charles Henry Smith/Paul Girard Smith
Based on books by: William Pittenger

I’m sure most of us have seen The General. Hell, it’s required viewing at UT and most film-ophiles check it out just because it’s got such a great reputation as one of the greatest silent films. But it’s one of Peter’s favorite movies and it IS a great film, so that was where we went next.

For those of you who haven’t seen it, it’s about Johnnie Gray (Buster Keaton, one of the greatest silent comedians of all time and Jackie Chan’s main influence), a lowly train engineer in the Deep South during the Civil War. Johnnie’s girl, Annabelle Lee (Marion Mack), really wants him to enlist and fight off the Yankee menace. Unfortunately, the top brass figure he’s more useful as an engineer than a soldier, so the won’t take him. For some reason they wouldn’t tell him why. I guess there would have been no movie if they had. He goes home, dejected, but not before Annabelle’s brother and father tell him that her “good for nothin’” suitor didn’t even get in line to enlist. She tells him that he can’t talk to her anymore until he’s in a uniform.

Bitch.

A year later his beloved engine, The General, gets kidnapped by the North. This is where the movie truly begins. It’s non-stop sight gags that even a verbal comedy lover would love. They’re all classics, from the soaking of Annabelle to Johnnie using one railroad tie to get another one off of the tracks. There’s no calculating how much influence this movie had on comedy and film in general. Watching it today it’s hard to tell just how revolutionary it was at the time, but it’s still funny as hell and should be seen by anyone who likes to laugh even a little bit.

Was Buster better than Charlie as Peter says? I don’t know. I love both of them equally. They really are completely different kinds of comedy. As someone once said (I wish I could remember who), Buster is comedy of the mind, Charlie is comedy of the heart.

The new score by Guy Forsythe and his band was great. Very down-home country and lots of cool sound effects.

The only bad thing about this film is that it really glorifies the South. They are the heroes of the movie and Johnnie is a die-hard Dixie Man. There’s no mention of the reasons for the war at all, but I do seriously wonder if Spike Lee likes this movie. (Although I think it’s supposed to be a direct spoof of The Birth Of A Nation, so maybe that helps.)

From there we moved on to another country. There was a lot of that this year. Of the 11 movies we saw, 4 were subtitled and one other one was from another country. It’s apparently some kind of record. And most of the subtitled ones were between about 2am and 6am. Bastards.

OLDBOY (2003)

****½ (4.5/5)

Directed by: Chan-wook Park
Written by: Jo-yun Hwang/Chun-hyeong Lim/Garon Tsuchiya
Based on manga by: Nobuaki Minegishi

Chan-Wook Park is apparently building up quite a cult following lately. His last film, Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance, got a lot of applause this year and, when Harry said that he liked Oldboy better, everyone seemed shocked.

I’ve never heard of the guy or his other two movies. (The other one is Joint Security Area.) But I liked this one quite a bit.

Oh Dae-Su (Min-Sik Choi from Shiri-you may have seen that one on the shelves of video stores lately) has been imprisoned for the last 15 years. Funny thing is, he has no clue why or by whom. He was pulled into this hotel room and left there being fed and drugged occasionally. Now that he has escaped, he has vowed to find out the whos and the whys.

Along the way he meets Mido (Hye-Jeong Kang), a beautiful young sushi chef, and falls in love with her. He also finds out that the person who imprisoned him is still trying to torture him.

The story takes some very weird turns and has a pretty sickening twist ending, which makes me think that the boys at Miramax (or whoever it is who is buying the rights to this one–by the way, boys, this review was posted AFTER Dec. 8th, no matter what date it says on top.) are going to screw it all up when they do their remake. I haven’t seen a lot of Korean films (Tell Me Something and Lies are about it for me), but none of them would be made in America. The Koreans aren’t afraid of any subject and they show it all. Gotta love that.

This is a very good film with lots of darkness and, of course, violence. It’s the first film of the day that is just rife with violence and the second where someone’s hand/finger gets taken off. But I think it’s the tooth-pulling scene that gets everyone.

This is about the time that we saw a couple of new trailers.

HELLBOY TRAILER

I’ve been waiting for this one ever since I saw Blade II and Guillermo del Toro and Ron Perlman were talking about it so much. I don’t know anything about the comic, but I want to see this movie.

The preview, though, almost seems to leave something to be desired. Yeah, it’s cool to finally see it on the big screen, but everything looks VERY cartoony. Hellboy looks like a kid with sawed off horns. (A very tall and big kid to be sure, but still a kid.) I guess it’s just not as dark as I would have hoped.

But Selma Blair looks great.

SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW

Not so sure about this one, either. It’s about a reporter (Gwyneth Paltrow) in 1939 NYC. She and a couple of pilots (Jude Law and Angelina Jolie…waaaaaiiiiiit a minute…did they let women become pilots back then?) are the only ones who can save the scientists of the world and, in fact, the world. There are robots with lasers and big flying machines and stuff being destroyed.

What I like:

It looks like a movie made in the 30s about the World Of Tomorrow. That’s pretty damn cool. It’s very comic booky (but it works in this one) and even the trailer is done in a comic book style.

What I don’t like:

The whole movie was done on green screen. That means that it may very well suck because it’s sometimes hard to act with just a screen behind you. AND that also means that they’re going to pay more attention to special effects and background than story.

I’m afraid.

More violence? More subtitles? Ok. Here we go!

WASP’S NEST (NID DE GUEPES, AKA THE NEST, 2002)

***½ (3.5/5)

Directed by: Florent Emilio Siri
Written by: Florent Emilio Siri/Jean-François Tarnowski

Who remembers Assault On Precinct 13? Ok, who remembers The Nebraskan? Yeah. Not as many. I had never heard of it until Harry told us that it was the actual basis for Precinct 13.

Why am I talking about these movies? Because Wasp’s Nest (The Nest according to IMDb) is a direct remake of AOP13. (I’m sure Tarantino would LOVE this movie.) A group of cops are in charge of getting an evil killer/rapist/Albanian revolutionary to a maximum-security prison. A group of robbers are robbing a warehouse. Somehow the two get stuck in the same warehouse while a bunch of faceless (literally-they all have gas masks with night vision goggles covering their faces) Albanian mafia troops besiege them, picking them off one by one.

It’s been done many times, but never quite as confusedly. It took me a long time to figure out that the people shooting at the cops weren’t part of the thieves’ group and that the cops weren’t shooting at the thieves. When I finally understood what was going on I realized that the action was great. Yeah, the characters are pretty stock (although they’re cool, too) and the story is simplistic (once you figure it out), but it’s action packed and very violent. Director Florent Emilio Siri is next doing the Bruce Willis action flick, Hostage, and the new Splinter Cell video game. I can see Hollywood loving this guy. I hope Hostage has a better story.

Now let’s move on to a REAL horror movie.

GINGER SNAPS: UNLEASHED (2004)

***½ (3.5/5)

Directed by: Brett Sullivan
Written by: Megan Martin
Based on characters created by: Karen Walton

Yes, it’s time now to revisit Ginger’s little sister, Brigette (Emily Perkins). You remember them from the original Ginger Snaps back in 2000, right? Well, as we all know Ginger (Katherine Isabelle) and Brigette, erm, parted ways…of sorts. But not before B injected herself with some of Ginger’s tainted blood and started to become a werewolf herself. (All of this is sort of explained along the way in this new movie.) Now, with daily injections of wolfsbane, she is able to keep her inner beast under control to a degree. But that doesn’t mean that she’s cured. She still feels the hunger at times and it keeps getting stronger. It’s not helped any when she gets thrown into a rehab center for girls because someone thinks she’s hooked on heroin.

She meets a strange and unlikely ally in Ghost (Tatiana Maslany), a young girl who is in the center to take care of her grandmother, a burn victim who doesn’t seem too happy about Ghost being around. There’s also Tyler (Eric Johnson-not the guitarist), a nurse who trades drugs for sex.

The movie is sufficiently creepy in all the right places and kind of keeps the mood of dark comedy and horror that the first film had. The last half reminded me a bit of Alien because they were stuck in the basement of the center and then in Ghost’s grandma’s house running from a mostly unseen evil.

I also really like where they’ve taken Brigette. She’s not just another goth kid who has something actually wrong with her. Like Sarah Connor in the second Terminator film, she’s highly disturbed by what she’s becoming. She’s all alone in the world and knows it. There’s no going back to what she once was even if she does manage to find a cure, which she doesn’t have much hope of doing.

What I wasn’t all that happy with was the ending. It seemed like they just wanted to tack on a twist ending that would creep us out even more than just another werewolf. And, I guess it is creepy, but it almost seems out of nowhere.

It’s by no means as good as the first one, but I still thought it was better than a lot of the crap that has been called horror lately.

It’s coming out on DVD pretty soon and the prequel should be out soon after that. Too bad the first one didn’t get a theatrical release, because they both look great on the big screen and are much scarier in a dark room with a bunch of other horror fans.

How ’bout some more horror? This time with subtitles!

HIGH TENSION (aka SWITCHBLADE ROMANCE, HAUTE TENSION) (2003)

***½ (3.5/5)

Directed by: Alexandre Aja
Written by: Alexandre Aja/Grégory Levasseur

France has started making horror movies. Well, I guess they always have, but I’ve never seen one that I can remember. Most of what we get over here are the really pretentious French films that end in the death of a child or the diseasing of an entire city. You know: their comedies.

This one, however, is a pretty tense little slasher flick with a twist ending that nearly negates early scenes in the movie.

Ok, it completely negates them. But I didn’t really care. It was a fun ride.

Marie (Cecile de France) and Alex (Maiwenn le Besco…credited as just Maiwenn) are best friends in college. They’re going to Alex’s house for the summer (I think) and Marie couldn’t be happier. We kind of get the feeling that Marie may be a bit happier than Alex really wants her to be.

The first night, though, something horrible happens. An old man comes in a kills everyone in the family except for Alex. Marie sees what’s going on and hides, trying occasionally to save Alex to no avail. The man carries her off in his truck to some horrible destiny. Luckily Marie manages to get in the truck.

That’s the whole story until the twist at the end. Not much there, but it’s enough to show us some really cool gore effects and some horrible, horrible deaths. Director Alexandre Aja has a future in horror films, but he needs to work on plugging up those plot holes.

Now, on to a horror of a different kind.

TEENAGE MOTHER (1967)

[Rating:.5/5]

Directed by: Jerry Gross
Written by: Jerry Gross/Nicholas Demetroules

Jerry Gross made a lot of exploitation flicks in the 60s. Strangely, a lot of them were hits. His biggest deal was actually releasing Sweet Sweetback’s Baaadaaaassss Song. (Talk about exploitation. That one is blaxsploitation AND child porn!)

This is one of the more disturbing of Gross’ films. It’s about a young Swedish woman (with a slightly British accent) who is hired by a small-town high school to start teaching sex-ed. Of course, all of the parents are against it, but the kids love to laugh about it. As soon as the kids become more sexually active, the parents blame it on the teacher, not the hormones. (Apparently they were never teenagers themselves.)

There’s a lot of stuff that happens involving the bad kid, Fred Willard (yes, he’s in it…ask him about it the next time you see him) and the golden couple. But none of that really matters. By the end of it there were only about five minutes that anyone actually remembered.

The hot new teacher is talking to the school board and some parents (which consists of about five people) while they are attacking her. They scream about the books and films that she “makes” the kids read and watch. (It’s all actually voluntary.)

It’s all well and good until they decide to “take a look at that film.”

Oh my God, it’s probably the most horrible birth I have ever seen. It’s an actual birth, but it’s an actual birth circa 1968 when they used forceps and “blades” and salad spoons. There’s fucking blood everywhere and the baby looks dead. There’s no way that can be good. Afterwards I said, “It’s vagina, but it’s ALL WRONG!!” The screams were amazing. People were hiding their heads, but they couldn’t hide forever. We were all stuck watching this train wreck.

Then the movie returned to its normal badness, but by then no one was able to tell anymore. At least the torture had stopped. It was over.

What exactly did Gross (good name) hope to achieve with this movie? Yeah, it had hot babes in it and the tagline was “She was a motorcycle mama!” (No motorcycles, by the way.) But did he expect kids to go see it after their friends told them that there was a real birth in it?! I would have avoided that like a bad date with Estelle Getty! I mean, we all wanted to see pussy, BUT NOT BEING FORCED OPEN BY FORCEPS!!! NOT WITH A GIANT HEAD COMING OUT OF IT!!! NOT BEING CUT OPEN!!! After this we had breakfast.

Bastards.

After breakfast it was time for more horror. This time from New Zealand.

Yay!

UNDEAD (2003)

*** (3/5)

Directed by: Michael Spierig/Peter Spierig
Written by: Michael Spierig/Peter Spierig

What happens when you cross Peter Jackson’s early zombie flicks with…um…well…I dunno what else. This seems to be a direct homage to the master himself.

Rene (Felicity Mason) is the Fish Queen of her hometown. She won a beauty contest that she didn’t even want to enter and royally pissed off the reigning queen.

But none of that really matter since meteors are hitting the town and turning the townsfolk into brain-hungry zombies. The only person who seems to know what the fuck is going on is Marion (Mungo McKay), a farmboy with some pretty tricky gun stylin’s and a kick-ass multi-shotgun.

There are other survivors of the shower/feeding frenzy (my favorite is the cop who spews stuff like, “When I was a kid, we fuckin’ respected our parents, we didn’t fuckin’ eat ‘em!” and “I’ll fuckin’ finish you off faster than a fuckin’ birthday cake at a fat chick’s fuckin’ birthday party!”) but none of that matters. What matters is that this is one fun zombie flick with some great gore and pretty good special effects for a couple of guys sitting home alone with their computers. The Spierig boys (Peter and Michael) obviously know what they’re doing and they love it.

My main problem with the movie is the ending. It made NO sense at all. It was another twist ending that came out of nowhere and then they twisted it two more times. Didn’t work for me at all.

But the ride to that was a lot of fun. If you’re a fan of the genre, definitely seek it out. It’s at least as fun as Bubba Ho-Tep.

And last, but not least:

THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST (2004)

**½ (2.5/5)

Directed by: Mel Gibson
Written by: Benedict Fitzgerald/Mel Gibson
Based on book by: A committee of Christians

Harry said that every year there’s a movie that he goes for that he knows he won’t get. This year it was this one. And, obviously, he got it. And that’s not all he got, but I’ll get to that later.

This is Mel Gibson’s dream project. The man is a very devout Catholic and has been trying to make this movie for a long time. Ever since he was a little boy he thought that it was a strange thing that ALL movies about Jesus were in English. It just didn’t work for him.

So, now that he has pretty unlimited clout in Hollywood, he has made the definitive Jesus movie. It is quite possibly the most realistic depiction of the days leading up to the crucifixion that has ever been put on film. And, in fact, the entire day of the crucifixion is amazing. The bearing of the cross, the nailing to the cross and finally the actual slow and torturous death. It was gory, bloody, disturbing and awe-inspiring.

What I didn’t think was so good was everything leading up to that. The characters didn’t seem to be very different and I couldn’t tell them apart even if they were. Everyone had big, bushy beards and even Jim Caviezel (who is the only known face besides Monica Bellucci who played Mary Magdalane) didn’t look like himself, so I was never sure if I was right that he was playing Jesus. It turns out that they put a very small prosthetic on his nose so that he didn’t look so pretty. But every time I figured that I had the right guy, it ended up being Jesus who betrayed himself. And that certainly doesn’t work right.

Maybe if I hadn’t been so damn tired I would have understood it a bit better. Maybe if I knew the story better. But, since I got most of my Bible knowledge from Jesus Christ Superstar, I’m a little lacking in that department.

This was a good film with great acting all around and when it’s actually projected on film it will look beautiful. (We saw a very rough cut with a few scenes and all of the special effects left to be added in.) But character development was a real problem for me. I’ll check it out again when it comes out for real, though. Hopefully it’ll be better.

Now for the controversy. Will it start a whole anti-Semitic movement in the Catholic church again? Well, I certainly hope not, but here’s the deal: the film does depict the Jews in a pretty disturbing light. They are portrayed as pretty blood-thirsty. They wanted this Jesus guy dead with a capital D. The Romans were actually starting to falter, but the Jews spurred them on.

But what can be done about that? That’s the way it’s portrayed in the Bible as far as I know. At that time and place in history that’s what happened. It’s not like we can change the Jews into a more hate-friendly group like Nazis or Arabs.

Kidding.

Bushes…how ’bout that? The Bushes killed Jesus.

I think that what we need to do is take a step back and say, “Ok, that’s the way that group of Jews was at that time. Of course they are no longer like that.” If people can’t do that then they shouldn’t be allowed to see ANY movie. Hell, they probably shouldn’t even be allowed to read the Bible because they won’t be able to tell that these stories are parables and probably didn’t actually happen.

Oh. Wait…That’s what most religion is based on: these stories being absolute T-R-U-T-H.

Since I don’t know very much about the Bible specifically I called a buddy of mine who knows it pretty well. According to him, this whole controversy of whether or not the Jews are horrible people because they “killed Jesus” should be null and void. Jesus’ death was prophesied to the Jews, so they knew that they were going to have a hand in it. AND, if they had not had that hand in it, there would be no Christianity! Jesus had to die in this specific way. In a way all Christians should be grateful to the Jews because they made Jesus the martyr that he was. They enabled the Christians to live with sin and still get into Heaven.

Besides, if they hadn’t done it (or even existed) someone else would have done it.

So, those are my thoughts on that whole stupid argument. What were Mel’s thoughts? He said that what he believes is not necessarily in this film. The film is completely separate from his religious agenda, so he only put what he saw in the Bible and many other scholarly tomes.

Yes, that’s right. Mel Gibson was at Harry’s birthday party.

Holy shit. I saw Mad Max. Riggs. William Wallace! Fuckin’ awesome! I’m still excited about him and Peter.

Anyway, Mel talked to us for about an hour about the film and where he’s going next. (He actually wouldn’t say what it was, but he “really wished that he could.” He said it was something really cool. Hopefully it’s not something like Waterworld or The Postman.) He will probably be directing again before he acts. Whatever he does, I can’t wait to see what it is.

So, thus endeth my first BNAT. I had a LOT of fun and I hope it happens again next year. It probably won’t be nearly as fun because Harry is starting to produce his film and doesn’t have time to program a party like this. But it’ll still be 24 hours of movies and I’m sure there will be something to crow about.

Until next time, fearless readers, keep watchin’ the movies.