****½ (4.5/5)

Directed by: David Fincher
Written by: Steven Zaillian
Based on book by: Stieg Larsson

Before the turn of the Millineum, let’s see some previews.

CONTRABAND–Mark Wahlberg has had a pretty interesting career. It’s a little hard to understand sometimes, actually. He’s gone from silly white rapper to silly b-movie actor to pretty well-respected actor all within about 15-20 years. He’s still doing some great stuff (The Departed will always stand as one of his best films), but sometime he chooses to just do a fun little action flick like Shooter…or Contraband. Could this one be that fun? Kinda looks like it. I’ll check it out.

THE IRON LADY–I’ve never been a fan of Margaret Thatcher, but I am a fan of Meryl Streep. (Who isn’t?) And I’m pretty interested in the story of this important figure in British (and world) history, no matter how I felt about her politics. Although, this was directed by Phyllida Lloyd (Mamma Mia!). Not too enthused by that. Watch for everyone’s favorite librarian (Anthony Head) throughout the preview.

21 JUMP STREET–Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum may get some butts in seats, but this looks pretty awful. A retread of an 80s series that is basically a footnote in the career of Johnny Depp doesn’t sound particularly interesting to me. Probably give this one a miss unless I start hearing good things…but I doubt it.

Ok. Let’s check out that tat.

When Stieg Larsson’s book about a couple of investigative reporters getting caught up in a 40 year old murder mystery suddenly became a surprise international bestseller, it was really only a matter of time before Hollywood put it onscreen. It didn’t make it before the Swedes got to their countryman’s work first, putting all three of the books in the series up before anyone else could even breath on them.

Good for them, I say. I’ve only seen the first film in the Swedish series (and I haven’t read any of the books), but it is very good.

How does the American version stack up? Well, let me tell you something about what you’re about to read a review of first.

Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) is on the edge of being out of a job. He’s just exposed a multi-millionaire as a crook, but the rich guy got the drop on him. He sued Mikael for libel and now it’s a national affair.

To blow off some steam and get out of the line of fire, Mikael decides to take a job as a sort of historian for Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer). Vanger and his family are among the richest people in Sweden. Rich enough to basically own their own island. But there’s a cut that has never healed. Henrik’s niece, Harriet, disappeared when she was in her teens and is believed to have been murdered. Henrik wants Mikael to find out what really happened. He and his brother, Martin (Stellan Skarsgard) are on one side while the rest of the family seems to be on the other…of course, one of them is a “former” Nazi.

This is truly one fucked up family.

Meanwhile, Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara) is fighting for more than just her job. She’s a bit of a rebel. In fact, she’s just about the most punk rock character I’ve seen on screen since Sid Vicious. She’s not particularly likeable, but you can’t help but pull for her. She’s a bit of a genius, but that doesn’t always help her get out of situations where she’s forced to give a fat man a blowjob so that she can get some cash out of her own account. (She’s a ward of the state at 23 because the state found her incompetent at a very early age.)

She ends up working the case with Mikael. Chaos and death ensue.

None of this really even hint at the darkness that Mikael and Lisbeth uncover in their investigations. This is by no means a happy story. It’s dark, dark, dark and no one but David Fincher could bring it to the screen. He’s become fairly subdued since Fight Club, but he’s still always on the edge of madness and it works perfectly with this story. Between that and the score by Trent Reznor (watch for a reference to his band that’s pretty hard to miss), this is a pretty note-perfect adaptation of a book that I now want to read.

Of course, none of it would be possible without the right Lisbeth. After a casting call that rivaled the call for Scarlet O’Hara (ok, maybe not, but close) and having the originator of the role, Noomi Rapace, turn down playing her again, Fincher and the studio finally decided on Rooney Mara, the show-stealer of the first scene of The Social Network. They made the perfect decision. Rooney is fucking amazing and does things that (actually did) make a grown man cry. If she’s not up for every major award this year, I’m not sure what I’ll do. I know what she’ll do, though. It’ll involve a stun gun and a very large dildo.

There’s nothing pleasant about this movie. It’s not for the squeamish. It’s for hardcore film people and people who love a really good story. As with just about any David Fincher film, it’s not for everyone. But it is a great film that, if you can handle it, will reward you.

One last thing: WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU THINKING, TAKING YOUR CHILD TO THIS MOVIE?!?! I can’t believe that a small family walked past me to get to their seats before the movie started! The little boy couldn’t have been more than 7…probably younger. You know, maybe you should see the movie first! It’s not that there’s sex in the film because, really, small children don’t care about that. It’s the fact that there’s sexual fucking violence! THAT will scar a kid!

Wow. Parents. Just don’t even know what to say.

BUT…

Two movies in and the festival already feels different. There weren’t masses of people standing outside of the Paramount wondering how/when they were going to get in. The movies started on time. The movies were actually GREAT!

Could this be a turning point for the Austin Film Festival? 18 years in and they’re finally kind of getting it? I certainly hope so. It’s only one day, though, so we’ll have to wait and see what I think by the end.

Let’s get to those movies!

BUTTER (2011)

**** (4/5)

Directed by: Jim Field Smith
Written by: Jason A. Micallef

Butter is a movie that really shouldn’t work. It’s a political allegory set in the world that most people don’t even know exists: the world of butter carving.

On the face of it, it’s about Laura Pickler (Jennifer Garner like you’ve never seen her before…a complete and utter bitch), the wife of Bob Pickler (Ty Burrell). Bob was the butter carving champ 15 years in a row. This year, though, he’s been asked to step down and maybe be a judge…you know, to let some new blood in. He’s sort of ok with it, but Laura is livid. This was her road to the White House!!

No. Seriously.

It’s also the story of Destiny (Yara Shahidi-probably the best performance in the whole movie), a little black girl who has been moved from foster home to foster home. The latest is the home of Ethan and Julie Emmet (Rob Corddry and Alicia Silverstone). They’re crazy white people but, strangely enough, as the movie goes on they seem more and more sane and…awesome.

Destiny feels like she’s never been good at anything, but she finds out that she’s good at butter carving. She enters the contest just after Laura throws her own shoe into the ring.

There’s also another monkey wrench: Brooke (Olivia Wilde), the hooker that Laura caught Bob with. She could give a shit about butter or Bob. She just wants her money and she’ll do anything it takes to get it.

This is a movie that I went into not knowing a damn thing about it. It just happened to be starting right after work and it has a great cast, so I went for it. I’m really glad I did. Every single character is fucking brilliant and has at least three lines that I want to start using in my daily life.

I think that even if it was just about butter, it would still be pretty good. But there’s the added level of recognizing every character as someone in the political world. THAT, my friends, is what makes this movie the kind of great allegory that Hollywood should be making in times like this. Screenwriter Jason Micallef wouldn’t say who inspired each character, but that’s probably for the best. He said that he would base a character on one person, then that person would disappear and another would take their place. It’s a never ending cycle of unfortunate entertainment in the political world.

He also said that he would come up with something, think it was too outlandish and then the folks in the political world would come up with something even worse than anything he could EVER come up with. (He specifically brought up the name of Rick Perry’s ranch. Hehehehehe!)

Right up there with Election, this is one of the better political comedies in a long time. I can only hope that it gets a good distribution from The Weinstein Company. Maybe with the star power of Jennifer Garner and Hugh Jackman (who has a small role as “the one that got away” from Laura…and he’s hilarious) people will want to see it. We can only hope.

Jason said that his next film is already being shot. Something about Charlize Theron and dildos in Texas. I can’t fucking wait.

MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE (2011)

****½ (4.5/5)

Directed by: Sean Durkin
Written by: Sean Durkin

What really happens to someone who has been brainwashed? How do they react when they get back into the “real” world? What could possibly make them want to come back?

Those are all questions posed by Sean Durkin in his first feature.

Martha (Elizabeth Olsen in a break-out role that might just make her bigger than her sisters) is a young woman who disappeared about two years ago. She suddenly calls her older sister (Maria Dizzia) and asks her to come get her. The rest of the film is told in broken up flashbacks and non-linear storytelling to let us in on not only what happened to her in those two years, but how she deals with being back in her sister’s world.

This is a harsh, harsh movie. No one is not implicated in making Martha the way she is. The people at the camp she was at for two years are, of course, kidnappers, rapists and burned-out hippies who make her feel like she’s “part of a family.” The leader, Patrick (John Hawkes in an amazingly creepy performance), is a Manson-like freak who is so soft-spoken that you just know that he’s going to lash out at any moment to smack Martha (or, as the campers call her, Marcy May) or something even worse. He’s so good at what he does, though, that Martha thinks that it’s all a beautiful thing. After all, “death is pure love.”

But, once Martha makes it out of the camp, her new home life isn’t much better. Her sister and brother-in-law (Hugh Dancey) are modern materialists who absolutely don’t understand what is going on in Martha’s head. The sense of “family” just isn’t there, and that’s a very strange thing to the still brainwashed Martha. Their first clue that something might be wrong is when Martha strips to go swimming. Instead of being even a little but understanding, her sister yells at her, asking her “What is wrong with you?! What are you thinking?!” Granted, she does crazier things later on, but it felt like a super-overreaction.

I’m not really sure how this movie is going to play at the multi-plex. It’s not an easy film at all. Not only is it visually different from most films (it’s shot mostly with soft-focus so it looks kind of like a 70s film), but it doesn’t give ANY answers. It even ends on a really ambiguous note. As my viewing buddy said, “You’re not sure where it leaves YOU. And you don’t like that so much, do you?”

Actually, not sure if I LIKE it, but I do think it makes for great cinema.

Directed by: Andrew Bond
Written by: Andrew Bond

In a land where everyone is dirty, soap is a strange, strange thing. Especially when it has a face. And talks. And has magical powers.

This is meant to be a children’s adventure short about a dirty world that wants to be clean. The Mighty Soap comes along to teach them how. It’s alright, but I think it’s a bit on the slow side for kids…and long for a short. Kinda fun, though. Just super silly.

BODY TEMPERATURE (2011)

***½ (3.5/5)

Directed by: Takaomi Ogata
Written by: Takaomi Ogata

Speaking of super silly, that’s something that this movie actually isn’t. Rintaro (Chavetaro Ishizaki) is a lonely guy. The only love he gets is from his trusty sex doll. To him, she’s a real person. (So much so that, at this point, she IS a real person.)

His perfect relationship is threatened when he meets Rinko (Rin Sakuragi, who also plays the sex doll), a girl who looks just like his sex doll. Could she be better than the fake thing?

Super slow and methodical, Ogata’s very short feature draws things out just like they’re drawn out in real life. This guy’s life is boring and Ogata wants us to know it. (No, really. That was his intention. I’m not just being sarcastic.) Not only are there some long and boring scenes, but there are a lot of really uncomfortable scenes. Rintaro is terrible with real women and…well, sex with a sex doll is kind of uncomfortable anyway. Of course, when you treat a real girl like a sex doll…nevermind.

Not a bad movie at all. It does what it needs to do and then gets out. And I really felt for Rintaro. This guy is a real sad-sack and doesn’t know how to be a real human being. Rinko is his first true link to life. She brings a spark out that even he didn’t know was there.

Heartbreaking and painful, Body Temperature certainly isn’t for everyone. In fact, I think most audiences would probably run away from it. It certainly isn’t Lars And The Real Girl.

By the way, the Japanese don’t truly understand how we Americans laugh at uncomfortable situations. Ogata said that he was trying to make a film that was not funny at all, so he was a little bit disturbed when we laughed a few scenes.

THE ETERNAL EVIL OF ASIA (1995)

*½ (1.5/5)

Directed by: Man Kei Chin
Written by: no one?

Hong Kong must have been a weird place in the mid-90s. I just watched a man rape a woman from another room.

There was a string of films made from the 70s until about this movie that showed how afraid of the outside world Hong Kong truly was. Anyone from other places in Asia were total hicks who believed every bit of the voodoo religions from ancient times and they will kill you with it. Devil Fetus is one of these.

In The Eternal Evil Of Asia, Bon and his buddies go to Thailand for a good time. Bon is totally in love with his girlfriend, May, so he doesn’t do any fuckin’. His friends, though, are fuck machines.

They all meet a Thai wizard, save his life and become his friends. (This is where the flesh-eating placenta comes in. Stick with me, here.) His sister falls in love with Bon, but he won’t love her because of May. Brother tries to put a hex on Bon to make him have sex with her, but it backfires and hits the other three guys. Of course, the four of them have sex, wake up and they suddenly have fuck remorse. Then there’s the “whoops” killing of the sister.

Brother Wizard goes on a ravenous rampage of revenge.

There’s lots of sex, lots of blood, lots of gore and, of course, lots of rape. Can’t have a decent Category III film without lots of rape. Of course, it’s all tied together with a story that is so simple that, even though it’s chopped to hell, it doesn’t matter. Revenge and sex. That’s all you need to know.

Why is the movie choppy? Well, here’s a little something I learned about Hong Kong films:

The production companies would hold midnight screenings the day before the movie was set to release. The filmmaker and producer would sit in the projection booth and take notes on what the audience liked. (Read: what didn’t make them throw things at the screen. The crowds were violent as shit, sometimes beating the shit out of the filmmakers in the lobby.)

If they wanted to at the end, they would get the editor, throw him in a van and have him run from theatre to theatre editing bits out of the film. As the guy who introduced the film said, “They liked the sex at the beginning and the flesh-eating placenta in the middle, but they didn’t like the dialogue between? Oh well. Cut the dialogue!”

Hong Kong must have been a weird place in the mid-90s.

But, let’s get started, eh?

THE HOLDING (2011)

***½ (3.5/5)

Directed by: Susan Jacobson
Written by: James Dormer

“Farmville was never this brutal”? Seriously? That’s all Horrortalk could come up with? And I don’t get paid for this shit.

Cassie Naylor (Kierston Wareing) just killed her husband. We don’t really know why, but she did it with the help of the old man who helps on the farm, Cooper (David Bradley, aka ARGUS FILCH!!). Now she has to keep her head above water on the farm while raising two young girls.

Along comes Aden (Vincent Regan), a lonely drifter who says that he knew her husband back in the day. All of her problems seem to be solved, but is Aden all that he says he is?

There’s absolutely nothing new here. This is the same movie that you’ve seen a dozen times. But sometimes, that just doesn’t matter. Sometimes the same old story works just fine as long as it’s written, directed and acted competently. And all three things are in place here, so it’s a perfectly enjoyable flick.

Special props should probably go to Regan for edging that line between savior and angel of death without tipping the scales until absolutely necessary.

Check it out if you’ve got nothing better to do. If you’re sick of this story, though, you can skip it and not worry too much about it.

LET THE BULLETS FLY (2010)

**** (4/5)

Directed by: Wen Jiang
Written by: Wen Jiang
Based on story by: Ma Shitu

I really didn’t know anything about this one, either. When I found out, though, that it was going to be Chow Yun-fat with guns, I was there.

Chow plays a super-corrupt master of a prefecture of China in the 1920s. When a well-known bandit named Pocky Zhang (writer/director Jiang) shows up posing as the governor of one of Chow’s cities, the bullets do fly.

Pocky and his boys robbed a train with the real governor aboard. Everyone was killed except for Counselor Tang (Xiogang Feng) and the governor’s wife (Carina Lou). The two of them join the fight against Master Wu.

Almost like a Western in structure, Let The Bullets Fly does just what the title says it will, all with tongue placed firmly in cheek. This is, first and foremost, a comedy, which is not something that I’ve seen Chow Yun-fat do very often. He’s pretty good at it, though. One guy at the screening said that it felt like a Stephen Chow movie that wasn’t as good. Honestly, though, this is better than just about any Stephen Chow movie I’ve ever seen. Besides Kung-Fu Hustle, that guy is just not funny. Sorry.

I really enjoyed this one. There were enough double-crosses to go around and the plot moved through the entire 132 minute run-time. It helped that Chow and Wen were so good as foils.

Definitely one to check out if you’re into Hong Kong films at all. Maybe not as good as the heyday films, but still pretty fun.

THE DAY WITHOUT POLICEMAN (1993)

* (1/5)

Directed by: Gwing-Kai Lee
Written by:Ping-Kit Koo/Kwong-fai Lai/Johnny Lee/Desmond Wu

Speaking of Hong Kong’s heyday, this film is from that era…which doesn’t mean that it’s quality.

Let me start this review with this: I love Hong Kong film, especially from the late 80s and early 90s. Classics like John Woo’s Better Tomorrow series (actually, just about any John Woo movie of that time), Full Contact, The Bride With White Hair and lots and lots of other great films were made in about a ten year period. Many of them were better than anything Hollywood was putting out at the time.

Then there were movies like The Day Without Policeman.

You see, somewhere in the late 80s, HK finally decided to join the rest of the world and put a ratings system into place. They created a rating called Category III that allowed filmmakers to put as many boobs and as much blood into a movie as they wanted to. Mr. Woo took advantage of this to make some truly amazing action movies.

Others, however, decided to go a slightly different route. They took a queue from the American grindhouse movies of the 70s and just exploited the shit out of everything they could…mostly women. They had much more greed than talent.

This doesn’t make these movies unwatchable. You see, when HK movies are good, they’re great. When they’re bad…they could be even better. Movies like Sex & Zen (or, as my friends and I like to call it, Two Girls And One Flute), The Fruit Is Swelling (where a six year old girl’s spirit enters an 18 year old girl’s body…and learns about sex) and Erotic Ghost Story (where a guy has lots and lots of sex with ghosts) were the norm.

The Day Without Policeman is on the more violent side of any of those “wonderful” films. It’s an action film. This means that every woman in the film has to get raped, beaten, kicked, stabbed, shot and, otherwise completely demoralized. Most of the men have all of these things but the rape happen to them, too.

And there is lots of blood. Buckets of it, in fact.

This film stars Simon Yam (who was actually in a lot of good films) as the worst policeman ever. I don’t mean he takes bribes or beats people senseless for no reason. I mean he’s completely incompetent and ineffectual…and not in a funny Rowan Atkinson sort of way. More in a “people die because he sits there and watches it happen” sort of way.

He has a reason for it: a horrible phobia of AK-47s. He watched his partner get gunned down by one and hasn’t been the same sense. His wife left him soon after because he folded into himself. He, of course, is still in love with her, but he just can’t get it up anymore. (Yes, this is strangely important to the “plot.”)

Months go by and he’s been demoted to being a cop on a small island off the coast of HK. Mainland Chinese guys come in (with AK-47s, of course) and wreak havoc on the island, basically killing everyone in their path…and he can’t do anything about it because he’s crying in the corner.

I hated this guy. A lot. He was worthless. Luckily, enough outrageous stuff was going on around him that the movie was still…um…enjoyable? It was enjoyable in that “HOLY SHIT! THAT JUST HAPPENED!” way. He watches his soon to be ex-wife get raped. The baddies kill a child. A large man rapes a woman while constantly saying, “Uhbuh! Uhbuh! Uhbuh!” (Apparently, this means “Comfortable?”) Our “hero” tells his wife, “Your sister is with the gays! She might get raped!” (Um…what?)

That’s another thing about these movies: the subtitles are amazing. They make absolutely no sense most of the time, even if you don’t pay attention to the bad grammar. They seem to have been written by someone who didn’t speak English AND was in the middle of a mescaline trip. It’s surreal and, strangely, perfect.

With all of its illogic, strange dialogue and just overall ineptness, The Day Without Policeman is NOT a good film by any means. It’s pretty awful, in fact. Bottom of the HK barrel stuff. BUT, it’s one of those movies that you can watch and laugh at from moment one. It would be pretty difficult to find a copy of this movie at this point (totally out of print and maybe never even released on DVD…only laserdisc), but you could watch it with a bunch of drunk friends and have a pretty damn good time with it.

If, of course, you can handle about 50 pounds of rape.

Well, we’ll see how that goes.

SOURCE CODE (2011)

**** (4/5)

Directed by: Duncan Jones
Written by: Ben Ripley

I seem to be the only person who really liked this movie. As I type, I’m listening to some published critics just tearing it apart. The same folks who said that Duncan Jones’ first film, Moon, was a near-masterpeice.

While I agree with them on that one, I don’t agree with them on Source Code.

Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) is in the midst of a top-secret military operation that puts him into the body of a man during the last eight minutes of his life. In those eight minutes, he needs to find out who put the bomb on the train that is about to explode. And he’ll keep going back in until he finds out. All he knows is what his superior officer, Carol Goodwin (Vera Farmiga), will tell him, which ain’t much. Her superior (Jeffery Wright) will tell him even less…and he’s a sniveling science type.

In the train world, Colter has 100s of folks to choose from, but only one truly interests him. Her name is Christina (Michelle Monaghan). She’s not the girlfriend of the man whose body he’s taken over, but she obviously wants to be. It’s not Colter’s job to save her or anyone else on the train (he’s constantly told that he is unable to do so), but he desperately wants to.

Here’s what I didn’t like:

Jeffery Wright is a great actor and he does his best with this role. Unfortunately, it’s written as a VERY stereotypical military scientist. Screw the life of the soldier, just complete the mission and make this amazing new technology look good while you do it. As an antagonist, it has gotten a little old. As a human being, it just doesn’t work.

Vera Farmiga and Michelle Monaghan are also good actresses. They, however, didn’t have a whole lot to do in this one. Vera even said in the Q&A that all she did was swivel in a chair. When she finally got out of that chair near the end…well, she still didn’t get any action. Michelle just had to be sweet and, occasionally, think that her friend was insane for beating some innocent dude senseless.

What did I like? The story was very interesting and went in a way that you don’t exactly expect. A part of me was expecting an action film. Like The Adjustment Bureau, though, it was almost more of a romance. What we think is going to be the climax of the film is almost an anti-climax…but it HAS to be. It really wouldn’t work any other way. It would have turned into just about any other action/time-shifting flick.

It seems like the bad outweighs the good, but I can take a few underwritten parts if the story keeps my interest. No, the film is not as good as Moon. BUT, I think that it shows that Duncan has some potential to do something great again.

LITTLE DEATHS (2010)

**½ (2.5/5)

Directed by: Sean Hogan/Andrew Parkinson/Simon Rumley
Written by: Sean Hogan/Andrew Parkinson/Simon Rumley

Anthology films are a hard sell. There’s always one great short, one bad one and 14 mediocre ones. Tim League promised us that this one was the difference. Was he right? After a lukewarm beef stroginoff chugging contest, we found out.

House And Home is about a religious couple who invite homeless young ladies into their mansion, feed them, bathe them and then do horrible things to them. They get a surprise, though, when they invite Sorrow into their home.

I’ve seen it before, but it was very well done, which made it worth the watch.

Mutant Tool follows a young addict who can’t seem to get away from the drugs and prostitution. When she goes to see a doctor, he prescribes a drug that make her sicker. There’s also something about a mutant with a giant member whose spoo makes the drug. And there are Nazis.

Um…whatever. I don’t think anyone really understood this one. It seemed to be weird for weird’s sake. That would be fine if it hadn’t been kinda boring. Skip it unless you’re into folks with horse dongs attached to them.

Bitch is about a young man whose girlfriend is the titular epithet. She treats him like shit and then, when he takes care of her during her freak-outs on dogs, she tells him that she wouldn’t know what to do without him. Then she fucks his best friend almost right in front of him. Don’t even ask about the dog mask.

He gets his revenge, though. Don’t you worry.

This was probably the most over the top and, certainly, the most misogynistic. It also had the most interesting story and cinematography. The ending, while not as gory as it could have been, was certainly suggestive enough to let you fill in the worst of it. Unfortunately, there are better endings for this film out there.

It’s pretty hard to really recommend this film because it’s so middling. If you were really a fan of Venus Drowning or Red, White And Blue, then you might be into it. Otherwise, stay away.

Directed by: Simon Rumley
Written by: Simon Rumley

I missed this one at the actual festival, but Tim League was kind enough to show it again after the festival for those of us who wanted to see something else in the same time slot. Of course, he had ulterior motives as it’s the first (I think) film that he produced.

And, true to form, it wins my vote as “Mist Disturbing Film That I Saw At SXSW.” Then again, I didn’t see Serbian Film, which apparently included baby rape…on screen.

Anyway, Erica (Amanda Fuller from Americanese and a couple of episodes of Buffy) is a bitch. Not only is she a bitch, but she’s a promiscuous bitch. Her first line of the film is, “Look, I don’t stay the night, I don’t fall in love and I don’t fuck the same guy twice.” O….k…. Fuck you, too.

She spreads her legs around Austin, but finally meets her match in Nate (Noah Taylor from Almost Famous). His reason for being nice to her involves pulling the wings off of flies and torturing birds just to see what happens. So…again…why is he being nice to her?

Meanwhile, one of Erica’s conquests, Franki (Marc Senter from Wicked Lake and The Lost), is practicing with his band and taking care of his cancer-riddled mom. His girlfriend, Sarah (Lauren Schneider), just told him that she cheated on him once. He, however, doesn’t tell her that he cheated on her, in a foursome with his band, no less. But he stays with her.

Here’s where the spoilers start, so you may want to skip the next few paragraphs if you ever plan on seeing this movie. I have a feeling, though, that you may never get a chance unless you live in Austin and go to the Drafthouse while Tim is trying to make his money back. I’ll let you know when the spoilers are over.

<———SPOILERS!!!!———–>

Franki has been giving his mom blood for the last six months. When they check his blood the last time, they find out that he has HIV…from the one time that he had sex with Erica. This, of course, means that his mom has it, too. He and his buddies run around town trying to find her. When they finally do, they kidnap her, unfortunately leaving a credit card behind. She ends up telling them that, yes, she knew that she was spreading HIV and she doesn’t care. She was raped the day after her fourth birthday by her mom’s boyfriend, so she’s taking it out on the whole male population.

Eventually, Nate finds out where one of the guys lives and absolutely disturbing, bloody havoc ensues, complete with lots and lots of torture.

<———SPOILERS END!!!!———–>

Ok, it’s safe…for the most part.

From the above spoiler, you would almost think that this was an action film. Some kind of Harry Brown-esque vigilante film. But it’s not that cut and dry. There’s no action in it, but it does get very gory, more in suggestion than what it actually shows. (There are some quick cuts of some pretty awful stuff, but it’s so close-up that it would be hard to tell what was going on if that was all you saw. But you know. Oh, you know.)

This is one of those movies that you just can’t unsee. It’s also one that is incredibly hard to review because you know that it means something…you just can’t really be sure what. One of my friends took it to be a “look what can happen right next door” kind of thing. That could be because it takes place in places that we know: The Broken Spoke, Toy Joy, Spider House…all Austin hang-outs. These people could be the people sitting next to you, drinking a cup of coffee.

There’s certainly some of that. Erica’s past and what she does is certainly a cautionary tale. “Be careful who you fuck around with,” literally and figuratively. But there’s something else at work here. The title is Red, White And Blue. Nate, throughout the end of the film, is wearing an American flag on his back.

Yes, this is a political film. What does America do to its enemies? Even the ones that aren’t as evil as they seem? Franki was the protagonist here. He does an terrible thing at the end, but can you blame him? Erica basically killed him. But Nate swoops in and…well…there you go. Nate (America) ends up being the baddest bad guy around.

Funny that it takes a Brit to make this movie and an Australian to play the role. Simon Rumley’s last film was pretty damn good. (It also looked like it had a MUCH higher budget than this film.) The Living And The Dead played Fantastic Fest a few years back and I thought it that it was great. Much like this film, though, it had an ending that could use a little explanation. I would have loved to have been at a screening during the festival to hear what he had to say about it.

Speaking of Q&As, this film had an interesting one, so I heard. A lady accused Simon and Tim of making a film that exploited molestation and rape and kind of made fun of it. I’m not sure what film she saw, but the one I saw made those things out to be the horrible acts that they are. Acts that changed a woman’s life and the lives of everyone that she encountered, and not for the better.

It’s a film that has to be seen to be believed, but it is NOT for everyone. There were some people at my screening who happened to be in the film because they were at The Broken Spoke the night it was being filmed. I don’t think that they quite knew what they were getting into. It was a pretty devisive film at the festival, too. It was either one of the best or the absolute worst film of the festival.

I would absolutely be interested in hearing other peoples’ thoughts on the film. Leave a comment if you saw it.

Pussies.

Anyway, they showed a few previews before Avatar because it’s still playing and we just watched the movie the way everyone who paid a normal price was seeing it.

PIRANHA 3D–Ok, ok. I guess I’ll go ahead and see this. It looks like total crap, but I’ll check it out. BUT it wasn’t filmed at Aquarena Springs, so I’m not sure if I care.

ROBIN HOOD–I don’t care if this is the 4,984th version of the Robin Hood story. It’s Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe and it involves action instead of pure romance. AND it looks to be more realistic than a guy running around in tights or a couple of foxes. I’m for it.

SHREK FOREVER AFTER–Sigh. I will always give this series a chance, although I haven’t officially seen all of the third one. What I saw of it was almost funny, but not so great. This time, Shrek is plunged into a world where he and Donkey never met, Fiona is an outlaw and Puss is fat. I’ll see it at some point. Just not sure when.

KNIGHT AND DAY–Damn you, Tom Cruise, for choosing interesting projects. I so like hating you, but I always want to see your movies. Here he plays a mysterious dude who shows up in Cameron Diaz’s life, shooting people the whole way. Is he a secret agent? Or is he a terrorist. Oh, yeah. It’s a comedy that actually looks to be pretty funny. GODAMMIT!

SALT–Angelina Jolie is accused of being a Russian spy by a Russian defector. Wait…the Russians? We still care about them? Does this take place in 1984? It doesn’t look like it. But Angelina is hot (brunette AND blonde!) and there’s lots of action. It looks pretty interesting. I’ll take a look.

AVATAR (a second look)

***½ (3.5/5)

Directed by: James Cameron
Written by: James Cameron

I know that I’ve already reviewed this one, but I also kind of wanted to see it again. I kept falling asleep during my first viewing (it was BNAT, after all) and I knew that I had missed some things.

Sure enough, I did miss some things…like the entire beginning of the film. I don’t remember ANY of that.

Basic story rundown, just in case you don’t know anything. Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is headed to a new world. He’s a paralyzed Marine who is taking over for his dead twin brother. The brother was going to “drive” and Avatar on Pandora, a planet that is nothing if not completely hostel to humans. Unfortunately, it also has an element that we need called wecantfinditum…or theresnotenoughofitum. Wait, no. It’s called unobtanium. I’m not kidding.

Pandora is peopled by tribes of Navi. They are very tall blue creatures who live like Native Americans and have a very strong connection to everything on the planet. They don’t full understand that the “sky people” will kill them for something that means nothing to them. Grace (Sigourney Weaver) has been trying to educate them and study them. Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang) and Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi) just want the unobtanium. Killing the Navi means nothing to them.

Oh yeah, the Avatars. Those are bodies that Grace and her team have developed for the humans to link into so that they can a) survive in the environment of Pandora and b) blend in with the Navi. Jake’s DNA is just like his brother’s, so he’s able to drive his Avatar. He goes out onto the planet, gets lost, finds Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), falls in love with her and goes native.

Chaos ensues.

I liked the movie better the second time around, but it’s still Dances With Ferngully. My main problem with it is Cameron’s strange disability to create villains. Avatar and Titanic both have the same problem: their main villain isn’t human. A friend of mine says that he knew guys like Quaritch in the military, but I like to think better of humans. This guy is a sociopathic Terminator. It’s not that he’s driven to do his job. It’s that he enjoys killing. He wants to destroy and nothing less. Even when everyone else (including Selfridge…nice name, by the way) looks like they can’t believe what they’ve done, Quaritch is drinking coffee and celebrating a job well done. Childrens’ blood on his hands? Meh. All in a day’s work.

He is a terrible person and I think that if he had had even two dimensions he would have been more interesting. As it is, he was hard to watch and made me actually dislike the movie. He’s FAR worse than Billy Zane’s over dramatic Cal Hockley in Titanic.

Of course, the visuals were amazing and the 3D worked perfectly. I think that District 9 looks better, but we’ll get to that movie next week.

Let’s move on to the first film that I hadn’t seen.

UP IN THE AIR

****½ (4.5/5)

Directed by: Jason Reitman
Written by: Jason Reitman/Sheldon Turner
Based on book by: Walter Kim

Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) really digs being alone. He never wants to get married, have kids or have any real connection with anyone. All he really wants to do is collect millions of frequent flyer miles on American Airlines.

That is, until the reason for his constant flying is nearly taken away. You see, Ryan fires people for a living. He flies from place to place letting people go. He travels almost 300 days out of every year. The time he spends at “home” in Omaha is, he feels, time wasted. His true home is in the air.

Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick) ruins all of that. She’s a young girl who comes into his firm and tells his boss (Jason Bateman) that they could save money by doing everything over video chat. Ryan, of course, tells him that the job needs the personal touch of an actual person being there. So Ryan ends up taking Natalie on the road with him to show her exactly why this is true.

Enter Alex (Vera Farmiga). Or, rather, Ryan enters Alex. (Hehehe. I’m 12, by the way.) The two of them have a bit of a tryst before Natalie joins Ryan and plan on meeting up again…and again….and again.

Will Ryan finally decide that he needs to start making real connections in his life? Will Natalie learn what it means to need to be there with someone? Will Ryan go to his younger sister’s wedding?

This was probably my favorite movie of the day besides Inglourious Basterds. Reitman is great at mixing humor with deep seated human emotions, pulling us into these strange peoples’ lives and then showing us how we’re all really just like them. Strangely, he makes us at once want to travel and settle down at the same time with this one.

Clooney is his normal charming self here, but there’s a depth to this character that I haven’t seen from him in a while. He’s kind of unlikeable, but I felt some true sympathy for him. Anna was the same way. She has a stick so far up her ass that it’s almost hard to like her until something bad happens to her and we finally see some emotion…and she loosens up a bit.

Definitely one of the best films of the year. My only complaint is how much of an American Airlines commercial it seemed to be, but I guess a guy like this would probably have loyalty to one airline, so it only makes sense.

By the way, this is the first movie of the day to feature Young MC’s “Bust A Move.”

PRECIOUS

****½ (4.5/5)

Directed by: Lee Daniels
Written by: Geoffrey Fletcher
Based on book by: Sapphire

I refuse to keep calling this movie by its full name: Precious: Based On The Novel Push By Sapphire. What the fuck? Why would they name it that? Why not just call it Push?

Anyway, Precious (Gabourey Sidibe) is a young inner city girl who has no future. It’s 1987, she’s poor, black, 16, fat, nearly illiterate and pregnant. Not only is she pregnant, but she’s pregnant with her dad’s baby…the second child he’s given her. Her mother, Mary (Mo’Nique), is a complete bitch who keeps telling Precious that she stole her man from her. She verbally and physically abuses her daily. She’s not too nice to her Downe’s Syndrome granddaughter, either. Even her own mother is scared of her.

Precious ends up being sent to an alternative school and is taught to read and write by Ms. Rain (Paula Patton). Also on her side are her social worker Ms. Weiss (Mariah Carey) and, eventually, Nurse John (Lenny Kravitz).

This is pretty much the most depressing movie ever made. Precious’ life is so fucking bleak that it’s hard to imagine anyone getting out of the hole that she’s in. She manages to escape in her own fantasies where she is a huge star and has a good looking guy staring at her all the time. But these are fleeting and typically end with Mary throwing water on her face or someone hitting her.

Of course, this doesn’t make it a bad movie. It’s a really fucking good movie with some amazing performances. (Who the hell told Mariah Carey that she was allowed to suddenly be able to act. It’s crazy, but she’s actually really good!) Gabby and Mo’Nique deservedly were both nominated for Oscars. It would be pretty cool if they both won, but I bet they’ll just pick one of them.

It would be great if we could be told that this sort of thing doesn’t happen anymore, but the whole reason for the book and movie is to let people know that this sort of thing happens all the fucking time. Harlem, Detroit, LA, Memphis, wherever. Young girls are being abused into believing that they are worthless, horrible people. Fuck that. Things need to change…but how do we change them?
This is quite possibly the only good thing Tyler Perry has really had anything to do with besides Star Trek…and I barely count that as something he had a damn thing to do with.

THE BLIND SIDE

***½ (3.5/5)

Directed by: John Lee Hancock
Written by: John Lee Hancock
Based on book by: Michael Lewis

Really? This was nominated for Best Picture? Wow.

Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron) is a young inner city boy with no future. It’s the mid 00s and he’s poor, black, 17, fat and nearly illiterate. His mother is a drug addict who has lots of kids whom she barely knows anything about and can’t keep track of whose father is whose.

Wait…didn’t I just see this movie? The Blind Side is the same fucking movie as Precious! Why am I watching this again?!

Ok, it’s slightly different. This time, the way out isn’t necessarily alternative schooling (although Michael does get enrolled in a Christian school because he’s athletic), but football and a nice white couple. Spitfire mom Leigh Anne Tuohy (Sandra Bullock in what is probably her best role ever) takes Michael under her wing and makes him a part of her family. Her husband Sean (Tim McGraw) is just kind of along for the ride. She really does wear the pants. He just bankrolls everything. Their two kids SJ (Jae Head) and Collins (Lily Collins) get close to Michael pretty quickly, especially SJ who starts calling him his big brother right away.

Eventually, they find a way to make this gentle giant good at football and the rest, as they say, is history. It’s a true story of a guy who still plays for the Baltimore Ravens.

The Blind Side is a really good Lifetime movie of the week, but with MUCH better acting and slightly better writing. Other than that, I have no idea why it’s among the 10 best films of the year. It just doesn’t make much sense, especially since there’s already a much better movie just like it. I guess they just needed something to lighten to load of Precious.

To be fair, though, the acting is really good. Sandra is way better than I would ever expect her to be and Quinton is great. He doesn’t talk much, but he says a lot. (Apparently, the real Michael Oher was a little annoyed that he was portrayed as such a pussy who knew nothing about football. He was already playing before he was enrolled in the new school. Oh well. I guess it made for a better movie? I dunno.) The little moppet that they got to play the little brother was really funny, too.

Not great, but decent. Worth a look if you’re looking for an inspirational sports drama that’s better than Rudy.

Also, this is the second movie to feature Young MC’s “Bust A Move.” What’s up with that song this year?

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS

****½ (4.5/5)

Directed by: Quentin Tarantino
Written by: Quentin Tarantino
Based on: every war movie Quentin has ever seen

I’ve reviewed this one, too, but I can’t resist saying something about it again. I loved, loved, loved this movie. It’s a fun movie about torturing Nazis and helping Jews get their revenge.

One thing I noticed this time out was the great big smile Eli Roth got on his face when Brad Pitt said the word “torture” during his big introduction speech. Torture porn lover.

That’s actually all I’m going to say about this one. My original review pretty much covered it and I’m really fucking tired.

So, I’ve basically knocked two movie out of the running. Avatar and The Blind Side do not belong. Next week I’ll let you know what my final decision is on which five should have been nominated and which five should have been completely ignored by Oscar.

See you at the theatre! I’ll be right behind you.

This year I actually got to talk to Harry and he was about to tell me WHY I was chosen when he was distracted by a shiny object. DAMMIT!!! I need to know so I’ll know to do it again every year!!

Anyway, whatever the reason, I had my butt in a seat at the Alamo for 26 1/2 hours watching some awesome movies. Here’s how the night went:

We had to start off with the annual torture of one of the Alamo friends. Tim always tells him that he’s going to show Teen Wolf during BNAT and, every year, something “fucks up” and he doesn’t get to show it. This year he had a Dolby “representative” (actually Scott Weinberg in a Dolby shirt) guarantee that the screening would go off without a hitch because of their brand new digital system.

Of course, hitches happen and Scott gave Tim a check for $15,000 “on behalf of Thomas Dolby.”

Many yuks were had by all. Then the movies really started.

FAUST (1926)

***** (5/5)

Directed by: FW Murnau
Written by: Gerhart Hauptmann/Hans Kyser
Based on play by: Johann Wolfgang Goethe

FW Murnau’s Faust has always been pointed to as one of the more amazing achievements in silent cinema. The special effects are still pretty awesome to this day.

If you don’t know the story, you’ve probably been living under a cultural rock, but I’ll explain a little bit here. God and the Devil are hanging out and make a bet. God says that Faust (Gosta Ekman), a genuinely good man, can’t be corrupted. The Devil (Emil Jannings), however, thinks that he can, and he sets out to prove it. He comes to Earth as a man called Mephisto and gives Faust back his youth, helping a beautiful young woman fall in love with him.

Faust shuns him at first, but then decides to allow Mephisto to give him a trial run of a day. When that’s not long enough, Mephisto has him and it’s all over.

In its day, it was one of the biggest spectacles that audiences had ever seen. It’s still pretty spectacular, although it’s easier to see how they did all of it now. And Jannings is perfect as the slimy and underhanded Mephisto. He vamps it up and is generally evil in all the right ways.

The organ accompaniment was pretty perfect, too. I wish I could remember the guy’s name, but it’s been a few days. Anyway, he was great.

If you ever get a chance to see this movie, go. And, in going, be amazed.

THE LOVELY BONES (2009)

****½ (4.5/5)

Directed by: Peter Jackson
Written by: Peter Jackson/Fran Walsh/Philippa Boyens
Based on book by: Alice Sebold

Peter Jackson can probably do no wrong in Hollywood right now. Sure, King Kong didn’t do was well as everyone wanted it to do, but he directed and produced fucking Lord Of The Rings! Give that man anything he wants!

So they did. He wanted to do a small story this time out, so he chose Alice Sebold’s novel about a young girl named Susie (Saoirse Ronan from Atonement) who was killed by a neighbor in the early 70s. She narrates the story from a place called The In Between. Not quite Heaven, but definitely not Hell. More like a fantasy land that is almost like Earth, but much more surreal.

Meanwhile, her family tries to go on. Her dad (Mark Wahlberg) is obesessed with finding her killer. Her mom (Rachel Weisz) can’t seem to move on, but can’t stand what her husband is doing. Her grandmother (Susan Sarandon) is a bit of a drunkard who tells everyone that she’s 35. Her younger sister and brother are doing their best, but it’s hard when their parents can’t seem to cope.

Meanwhile still, the investigation is almost going nowhere under Len Fenerman (Michael Imperioli) doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. The killer (Stanely Tucci) is still at large and still living about 100 feet from Susie’s family.

I gotta tell you, two movies into BNAT this year and I was emotionally drained. The Lovely Bones was something that I usually don’t go in for: a beautiful movie. Not only was the story beautiful (Susie’s journey from needing to have revenge on her killer to just wanting her family to cope), but the In Between was beautiful, too. Surreal, dreamlike and heartwrenching at times.

I loved this movie. It’s long, but I don’t expect much less from Mr. Jackson. He knows exactly what to leave in and wheat to cut out, and he knows how to pull the heartstrings without making us feel like we’ve been duped into crying.

Maybe it’s not the best film out there, but it didn’t matter while I was watching it. And it still doesn’t matter to me. I kinda want to see it again. I don’t necessarily believe in any kind of afterlife, but goddamn, this movie gave me hope for kids who die like Susie.

GIRL CRAZY (1943)

***½ (3.5/5)

Directed by: Norman Taurog/Busby Berkeley
Written by: Fred F. Finklehoffe/Dorothy Kingsley/William Ludwig/Sid Silvers
Based on play by: Guy Bolton/Jack McGowan

After Lovely Bones, we were all pretty much beaten down. As Harry said, though, what better to bring a room back up than a Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney musical?

Well, I can think of a LOT of things, but this’ll do.

Mickey is a rich playboy who is sent out West by his father to learn a lesson in life. Unfortunately for Mickey, the place he’s sent is an all boys school. No girls at all! What’s a girl crazy boy to do?!?!

Well, he doesn’t have to worry too much. This small town has one girl: Judy. And he instantly falls for her, even if she doesn’t fall for him so easily.

Of course, her grandfather is the dean of the school. And, of course, there’s a guy who she’s pretty much paired with. And, of course, hardly any of the other guys like Mickey. And, of course, the school is threatened with closure unless they can come up with money/applicants.

Car wash!!

Ok, no. No car wash. But there is a rodea, which they pronounce like Rodeo Drive in Hollywood, as opposed to an actual rodeo.

Hollywood. Psh.

It’s a pretty fun little flick, but I’m not rushing out to rent the rest of Mickey and Judy’s collaborations. There was, however, a pretty good Busby Berkeley number at the end. Busby was supposed to direct the whole movie, but he was fired after they filmed this one scene. Too bad, because the movie could have used some of Busby’s flair.

Of course, the script did have some gems like “The things you see when you don’t have a gun!” and “Money is just like women and popcorn: The more you get, the more you want.” I still don’t understand the gun line. The fuck was Judy saying?!

THE RED SHOES (1948)

**** (4/5)

Directed by: Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger
Written by: Emeric Pressburger/Michael Powell/Keith Winter
Based on fairy tale by: Hans Christian Andersen

This is one of those movies that I’ve always heard about, but never seen. It’s a ballet movie and I have very little (if any) interest in ballet. Why would I care?

Well, it turns out that…um…I was right. This was the movie that I had the least fun watching at BNAT this year. But Harry didn’t program it. I’ll get to that later, though.

The Red Shoes is a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen about a young dancer who wants to be the best dancer in the world. She buys some shoes from a shoemaker that make her dance perfectly…but then she can’t take them off and she can’t stop dancing.

But that’s not what the movie is about. The movie is about a young woman (Moira Shearer, who was really a ballet dancer) who is chosen to be the lead character in a new ballet based on The Red Shoes written by a young writer (Marius Goring). The two start to fall in love, much to the chagrin of the leader of the dance troupe (Anton Walbrook). He is emotionless and feels that his dancers should be, too.

The movie was really good, but I hated the two men. They were both jackasses. And the girl really wasn’t a whole lot better. Add to that a lot of scenes of ballet (which, I guess, were great) and I was just kind of uninterested.

The best thing about the movie (besides Moira being a beautiful redhead) was seeing how amazing the print was! Martin Scorsese’s film restoration crew have really outdone themselves on this one. It looked like it was made last year. The Technicolor was beautiful and made me miss that process a lot.

I’m glad I saw it, but I probably won’t revisit it.

****½ (4.5/5)

Directed by: Martin Scorsese
Written by: Laeta Kalogridis
Based on book by: Dennis Lehane

Now we get to the guy who actually programmed The Red Shoes. Harry originally wanted to lead in to Shutter Island with Sam Fuller’s asylum masterpiece Shock Corridor. He wasn’t even sure if he would get Shutter Island when he got that print. He had to write a letter to Scorsese to see if he could show it and to explain what BNAT is.

Well, Marty wrote him back saying what an amazing idea BNAT is and how he wished that he could join us. But there’s just one thing: don’t lead in with Shock Corridor. Lead in with The Red Shoes. Here’s a print.

How do you say no?

There is actually a very direct link between the two movies, so I can see it. But I would have rather seen Shock Corridor.

Shutter Island, on the other hand, was pretty great. Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a Boston US Marshall in the 50s sent to a local criminal asylum to investigate a missing patient. His new partner, Chuck (Mark Ruffalo), was brought in from Seattle to help Teddy out. Why is it that it almost seems like the missing patient never existed? What is Dr. John Cawley (Ben Kingsley) hiding? Is Dr. Jeremiah Naerhing (Max von Sydow) a Nazi doing crazy experiments? And why can’t Teddy let go of his dead wife (Michelle Williams)?

It took me a little while to really get into this movie, mostly because the editing seems to be really awful in the beginning. Eventually, though, I realized what was going on and it all worked out. The movie is a mind-fuck of the highest order and it made me want to red the Dennis Lehane novel that it was based on in a way that Mystic River did not.

It may not seem like the most Scorsese-iest of movies, but he’s done well again. Keep up the streak, Marty. We like you being back.

LE MAGNIFIQUE (1973)

****½ (4.5/5)

Directed by: Philippe de Broca
Written by: Philippe de Broca/Vittorio Caprioli/Jean-Paul Rappeneau/Francis Veber

I wonder how much John Candy’s Delerious borrowed from this movie.

Bob Sanit-Clair (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is the world’s most famous secret agent. He shoots randomly into trees, hitting hitmen before they even know that they are hitmen. He sees through every disguise. And he always gets the girl (Jacqueline Bisset).

He’s also being written by Francois Merlin (also Belmondo), a writer who just knows that he can do something besides these crappy pulp spy novels. But they make him money to live off of and they’re very easy for him to write.

On the other side of his aparetment building is Christine (Bissett again), the young lady he’s slightly obsessed with. Can he win her over by letting her read his awful books?

The movie is way funnier than it sounds like it should be. It opens with the spy story and looks like the Zuker brothers and Jim Abrahams had decided to make a spy movie. (Oh wait…they did. It was Top Secret. But this is funnier!) It’s full of great slapstick and some awful puns that make you cringe and laugh at the same time. Add to that the Merlin side of the story that makes you feel for this guy and you’ve got a movie that even French haters can love.

Harry has been trying to show this movie for seven years. I’m glad that he finally got to. It was worth the wait.

MICMACS (2009)

***** (5/5)

Directed by: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Written by: Jean-Pierre Jeunet/Guillaume Laurant

I had no idea that Jean-Pierre Jeunet was even working on a new film, much less that he had one in the can! I would have been MUCH more excited if I had known.

Bazil’s (Dany Boon) dad was killed by a land mine when Bazil was very young. Thirty years later, Dany is shot in the head and survives. The doctors can’t take the bullet out without possibly making Bazil a vegetable.

Eventually Bazil falls in with a group of homeless folks who collect junk and make it into amazing things. He also finds out that the weapons companies that made the land mine and the bullet are right across the street from each other. The rest of the movie is a Rube Goldbergian plot to bring down both companies…and yet so much more.

If you’ve ever loved Jeunet’s films before, you’ll love this one, too. He brings his usual sense of humor and (shudder…I hate this word) whimsy to the screen and makes us fall in love with this ragtag bunch of geniuses, which includes his old standby, Dominique Pinon.

***½ (3.5/5)

Directed by: Adam Green
Written by: Adam Green

Adam Gren has a lot of enemies in the horror world, and I’m not really sure why. Hatchet was a fun flick that didn’t try to be anything more and Spiral, while not brilliant, showed us all that he had some talent for something besides gore.

Now he mixes those two things to bring us something like Open Water on a ski lift. (On the fake lineup that Harry always posts, this slot was filled by Lifeboat. I can see why.)

Three college kids (Emma Bell, Kevin Zegers and Shawn Ashmore) are on a weekend ski trip. It’s Sunday and they want one more time down the mountain. They talk the lift guy into letting them go up one more time, but through a chain of events, they end up stuck on the lift. And the resort doesn’t open again until the next Friday. Now, how do they et down? And are those wolves they’re hearing?

That little premise holds a lot more fear than it seems like it should. Not only is there plenty of suspense, but there’s more emotion than you would think of coming from Adam. The two guys have been best friends since grade school and the girl is dating one of them. You can see where that’s going.

Not an amazing film by any means, but absolutely worth checking out. One of my friends who hates Adam said that this is absolutely his best film. He liked it quite a bit. If that’s not a recommendation, I don’t know what is.

THE CENTIPEDE HORROR (1984)

**½ (2.5/5)

Directed by: Keith Li
Written by: Amy Chan Suet-Ming

Hong Kong isn’t really known for thier horror movies…and there’s kind of a reason for that. Most of them are pretty silly. I mean, Mr. Vampire is a great movie, but it’s silly as hell.

The Centipede Horror really won’t win any converts for HK horror. In fact, it will probably make people run from the genre.

The movie was introduced to us as being horribly vile and banned in many countries. I don’t really understand what the hell Tim and Zack were talking about. Yeah, there were a couple of gross-out moments, but it really wasn’t any worse than most Hollywood movies now. Vomiting centipedes (real ones!) is gross, but it’s not as squirm enducing as they made it out to be.

A couple of young girls go from HK to SE Asia (they talk about it like it’s a country) for a quick vacation. They’ve been warned to never go there, but they go anyway and, of course, one of them DIES!!!! She’s killed by centipedes, which apparently have a bite so strange that no doctor knows what one looks like.

Her brother comes to SE Asia to find out what happened and gets trapped in a plot by an evil wizard who hates the guy’s grandfather. He’s cursing everyone in the man’s family to be killed by centipedes.

What’s really interesting about this movie is how quickly everyone is ready to jump on the “maybe it’s something supernatural” bandwagon. Someone trips and their friend says, “Maybe an evil wizard cursed you!”

It’s a pretty awful movie, but it’s funny in its awfulness. Possibly the worst movie of the day, but it was enough fun that I was able to enjoy it. If you’re a fan of bad, weird Asian cinema, see if you can find it. And watch for the broiled zombie chickens.

THE CANDY SNATCHERS (1973)

** (2/5)

Directed by: Guerdon Trueblood
Written by: Bryan Gindoff

The fake lineup movie for this one was The Lovely Bones. Heh.

Candy (Susan Sennett) is a 16 year old daughter of a jewel store manager. She gets kidnapped by three inept criminals who want a bag full of diamonds from her dad. What they don’t realize is that daddy isn’t too hip to getting Candy back.

I really don’t have a lot to say about this one. It’s an exploitation film that I don’t think made a really big impression on anyone except for the weird relationship that Candy developes with one of the kidnappers. It’s not supposed to be sexual, but it’s still a little bit creepy.

And then there’s the ending with the mute kid and his annoying mom. She’s SUPER-annoying. But her kid isn’t much better, really, and he’s suppoed to be sort of a hero of the movie…kind of.

IRON MAN 2 TRAILER

This was the only clip we had all night! I was a little surprised. It started out as an E! True Hollywood Story style bit about Harry with Jon Favreau, JJ Abrams and Michael Fucking Bay talking about how Harry nearly ruined their careers. Then Jon comes back and introduces the trailer. It looks pretty awesome, although I agree with one reviewer: Mickey Rourke’s Whiplash looks like he’s more of a danger to himself than to Iron Man. We’ll see, though. I’ll be there. You know it.

***** (5/5)

Directed by: Matthew Vaughan
Written by: Matthew Vaughan/Jane Goldman
Based on comic by: Mark Millar

I kind of can’t believe that they allowed a movie to be called Kick-Ass, but that’s really the only way that I could describe the movie, to be perfectly honest.

Dave (Aaron Johnson) is a geek. He’s a little bit obsessed with comic books and spends most of his time with his two buddies at a local coffee shop/comic book store. (Why hasn’t someone opened one of these up in Austin?!)

That’s where he gets the idea. The idea that will change his life forever. How come no one has ever become a superhero? So that’s just what he does. He goes out and buys a wet suit and walks around town until he finds some crime to fight…and gets his ass beat.

Kick-Ass didn’t have a very auspicious beginning, but he soon finds out that there are other people doing it…and they’re much better at it than he is.

Damon Macready (Nicolas Cage and his moustache) is a devoted father to Mindy (Chloe Moretz from (500) Days Of Summer and Hammer’s upcoming remake of Let The Right One In). So devoted, in fact, that he has taught her to kick some major ass…and he helps her steal the movie from everyone else.

Frank D’Amico (Mark Strong from Rocknrolla) is a gangster. He’s also a family man. His son, Chris (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), goes to school with Dave, but he’s never able to make friends with anyone. Too many bodyguards. All he wants to do is fit in at school. And, of course, be just like his dad.

The movie wasn’t quite finished, but DAMN was it good! It never let up! The action only stops long enough to let some more comedy in. And there’s more than enough story and character to go around. It’s surprising to me that this was based on a comic book by the same guy who created Wanted.

I’m not really sure how this movie is going to find an audience, though. It’s a pretty hard R what with all of the violence and cursing being perpetrated by small children. (Mindy says things that would make a grown-ass man blush.) But I really hope that it’s a hit.

Kick-Ass comes out in April with a few CGI tweaks and a slightly different soundtrack. The soundtrack was a major source of consternation amongst the audience. It was fucking perfect the way it was! But Warner Brothers won’t let them use the Batman and Superman themes. That’s really too bad, because they’re used in scenes that are perfect with those themes.

Speaking of the soundtrack, there’s one scene where the audience burst out into applause and then started clapping along to the score. I’ve been to a LOT of movies in my life and that is something that I’ve never witnessed.

Yeah. We all loved this movie. It was my favorite of the day. Go see it in April.

Director Matthew Vaughan was at the screening and talked a bit about the casting process. Apparently, there’s a mother out there who was very upset with the fact that there was a masturbation reference on page three. She thought that it would give her 16 year old son bad ideas. Lady! Your 16 year old son had those ideas at LEAST three years ago! And he’s had those same ideas a LOT! Stop worrying about it!

Before I go, one more plea:

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE LET MATTHEW VAUGHAN USE THE BATMAN AND SUPERMAN THEMES!!!!

GodDAMN, I can’t wait to see this movie again!

Ok. I’m done. On to the next movie

Visuals: ***** (5/5) Story: ***½ (3.5/5)

Directed by: James Cameron
Written by: James Cameron

I really wish that Harry had ended the day with Kick-Ass, but whatever. The day ended the way it needed to, not the way we wanted it to.

We all know what Avatar is by now: James Cameron’s new half-billion dollar movie about aliens, environmentalism and 3-D.

But we don’t all know what it’s like. I do. I’ll tell you.

Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is a Marine who is now paralyzed. His twin brother was part of the Avatar project, which allows humans to go out onto a hostile planet without dying from the atmosphere. They are basically able to project their minds into artificial bodies of the local inhabitants. This also means that they can (sort of) blend in with the aliens.

The Marines are there to take a certain element from the planet, no matter what the inhabitants say. The unfortunate thing for all involved is the fact that the biggest deposit is right under the giant tree that the inhabitants live in.

The other unfortunate thing is that Jake is actually a little bit sensitive. While he’s in his brother’s avatar, he falls in love with one of the natives (Zoe Saldana) and decides that they deserve to live their lives the way they want to.

SHOCK!!

The other side of things involves Sigourney Weaver as a scientist who feels the same way as Jake and Giovanni Ribisi as an engineer (maybe?) who thinks that these “savages” need to get the hell out of the way of Earthling’s progress.

It’s Dances With Ferngully! Add in some comments about how “we ARE the terrorists” and you’ve got a modern fable about America and how selfish we are.

I dunno. The movie is decent as far as the story is concerned. Nothing special, though.

No one cares about the story, though. Not really. They’re going for the spectacle. And that spectacle is fucking amazing! The CGI is nearly perfect. (Still a bit cartoony for my taste, but that’s to be expected…kinda.) The 3-D is amazing. The world that Cameron and his crew created is beautiful. It’s absolutely worth seeing on the big screen in 3-D. Probably even on the IMAX.

I just really wish that he had attached a better story to those visuals.

Well, maybe next time…ten years from now.

That’s it from BNAT! It was actually a pretty amazing day. Harry fully admits that the last couple of years have been a little bit on the lame side. Not terrible at all, but not really want BNAT is all about. He’s remembered now and, hopefully, his mojo is back. We’ll see next year.

See you in the theatre. I’ll be right behind you.

***½ (3.5/5)

Directed by: Mitchell Lichtenstein
Written by: Mitchell Lichtenstein

An old legend has it that there’s a monster out there called Vagina Dentata. That’s right. Teeth in the minge. It’s a deep-seated fear of every man, but we know it’s not true.

Or is it?

Dawn (Jess Weixler) is a young woman with a difference. When she was very young she realized that there was something going on “down there” that she didn’t really want to know anything about. So she took a vow of chastity, joining a high school abstinence group called Promise. Unfortunately, she didn’t realize that not every woman has teeth in their hoo-hoo-dilly.

Two things, though, change her life. First off there is her first semi-boyfriend, Toby (Hale Appleman). The second is a picture of a normal vagina in her sex ed book. Now she has a choice. Does she just never have sex again? Or does she take her show on the road to get some revenge?

Going in, I had no clue what to expect from this movie. The poster is VERY comedy. They were billing it as a comedy at first, I think. But now the trailer looks like a horror/suspense movie. WTF?

The movie is actually more towards the dramatic suspense film, but it is kind of tongue-in-cheek. I mean, come on. It’s a movie about teeth in a box! How could it be completely serious?! They manage to play it pretty straight, though, which is good. Writer/director Mitchell Lichtenstein manages to walk that line pretty deftly. And he never pulls it into exploitation at all. There are gore bits, but they are always aftermath shots. We never see the Twat Monster and Dawn is never bloodied. And as much sex as there is in the movie, she is only nude once. (And I kind of think that was a digital body double. She is very careful to cover herself before and after this shot. It’s very strange.)

The main problem that my viewing buddies and I had with it was the fact that every guy in it is an asshole except for Dawn’s dad. Her step-brother, her boyfriend, her next crush, a doctor, an old man….all are assholes. There is no positive male character at all. (Her dad, while being a nice guy, is kind of weak. Especially when it comes to his punk-ass son who only fucks girls in the ass because of an early mishap with his step-sister.)

This doesn’t make it a bad movie. It’s pretty enjoyable in a twisted sort of way. It just makes it not as good as it could have been. Lichtenstein saw it as a superhero’s origin story. I kind of saw it as a man trying to scare people away from sex…a little bit. It’s hard not to be scared of a toothy quim. But I really do think that the movie would have been much stronger if there had been at least one guy who actually liked her and wasn’t such a bastard.

This movie is opening in NYC and LA tomorrow…but only in one theatre in NYC. Why? Because AMC/Loew’s was offended by it. Why? I have no clue. There really was nothing inherently offensive in it. Not subject matter-wise, anyway. And they played the Hostel movies up there. As much as I like those movies, they were MUCH more offensive than this.

Cooter.

TIME PIECE (2007)

Directed by: Kat Mansoor

No, this isn’t a collection of Eric Clapton videos. It’s actually a rather un-imaginatively titled doc about watch makers. It’s quite good, though, and totally made me want to buy a watch made by a real person. The watch makers make a great case against crappy corporate watches and how we’re losing touch with ourselves by buying these things. “There’s something about having to touch your watch every day to wind it up.” Yes, there is.

KUNG FU WANG (2007)

Directed by: Dan Vest

This would make a GREAT title for a semi-pornographic animated short. Instead, it’s about an Asian guy here in Austin who is one of the top martial arts teachers in the country. He learned it as a child to stop being beat up by girls. And, really, that’s about the only insight I got into this guy. I’m sure he’s a pretty interesting character, but this ultra-short movie didn’t do him justice.

DEATH BY… (2007)

Directed by: Joe Leonard

Leslie Andrews has an obsession with death. She takes pictures of herself in different death poses. This is actually the reason I wanted to see these shorts. The picture with the synopsis was awesome: her head is “crushed” by a stereo. The pictures in the film aren’t quite as interesting, but it’s still a cool film about a girl who sees death as a horrible experience, but wants to control it with her pictures.

ABSOLUTE ZERO (2006)

Directed by: Alan Woodruff

A man is trapped inside of a refrigerator car on a train. He dies, but not before he writes all of his final thoughts out on the walls. This film is made up of archival footage of a British man reading a transcript to a reporter, trying to figure the death out and re-enactments of the man’s final hours. The funny thing is (and the thing that makes me doubt the validity of the “documentary” status of this film) that the car didn’t work. It was only 68 degrees inside. Discuss.

A very interesting film, but I don’t know. I found the story on another website, but I think it’s an urban legend. Snopes doesn’t turn anything up, either.

GIMME GREEN (2007)

Directed by: Isaac Brown/Eric Flagg

What is our obsession in America with grass? Nicely mown, green, watered lawns? When did it start? And what is the price? This would actually be a great full-length documentary subject, but Issac Brown knows what he’s doing and gives us 27 minutes of pure gold. It made me realize that lawns are just about the biggest waste of time (not to mention money, water and pesticides) in America. He makes a good case for artificial turf lawns and makes people who worry about their lawns (and the lawns of others) look like fools…as it should be. Should be shown to everyone who is about to buy a home.

A BLOODY ARIA (2006)

** (2/5)

Directed by: Shin-yeon Won
Written by: Shin-yeon Won

In Korea, there are apparently many, many bullies. I didn’t know this, so I had no clue what this movie was really about.

A professor is giving a ride to a pretty student. He decides to take a detour after having a run-in with a cop. After trying to rape the girl, he finds out that the country folk in this part of Korea don’t like his type too much. The girl runs away and he gets roughed up by some pretty mean dudes. One of them, of course, runs into the girl and inadvertently brings her back to the professor.

Chaos ensues.

There’s a lot of blood and beatings going on here. The hicks have a high school kid tied up in a bag. They apparently beat him quite a bit. So much that he actually doesn’t seem to know what to do when they aren’t beating him.

Oh, and the cop does return.

I spent most of the nearly two hour run-time of this film trying to figure out what the hell it was trying to say. I finally kind of got it at the end, but I don’t know enough about Korean society to know the bullying that everyone apparently takes. So, yeah. The movie was pretty well lost on me.

Oh well. It was kind of fun to watch. And, while the story itself kind of made sense (although, I think it was a bit predictable at times), I didn’t really latch on to the meaning.

THE UNGODLY aka THE PERFECT WITNESS (2007)

** (2/5)

Directed by: Thomas Dunn
Written by: Mark Borkowski/Thomas Dunn

A young filmmaker named Mick (Wes Bentley) is obsessed with a serial killer (Mark Borkowski who co-wrote the movie with director Thomas Dunn). So much so that he follows him one night and video tapes him killing someone. He then uses this tape to blackmail James into being the subject of a documentary that will finally get him out of the rut he’s in.

But, of course, things go horribly wrong when he accidentally lets slip where he lives with his mom.

I really wanted to like this movie a lot. It has everything: good acting, a great premise and serial killing. Unfortunately, it actually starts off a little too fast. We don’t give a damn about these guys until almost half-way through the movie. By then, though, we’re kind of sick of both of them. They’re both assholes.

Then, just as it starts to get really interesting (especially with all of the mother issues), it turns into Weirdsville. Mick is a recovering alcoholic, we learn early on. What we don’t know is that he will apparently take whatever is around. He starts out drinking. Then he pops some pills. Then he’s doing heroine! Not only that, but he’s doing it at the least opportune time. In fact it’s at a time that even this guy wouldn’t be doing it. Totally made me lose any kind of sympathy that I was gaining for this guy.

But maybe that’s the point. Maybe we’re supposed to look at Mick as ourselves…and then be totally turned off by him. Maybe, even then, we’re supposed to see a bit of our voyeuristic selves in him.

Unfortunately, I liked him so little that I couldn’t see myself in him. Even as little as I like myself, I liked him a LOT less.

It was interesting to have James be, besides the whole serial killer thing, a nice guy. He works with kids at a local hospital. He’s always willing to help people out when they’re in trouble.

I also think it would have been a lot MORE interesting if James had been more normal. Maybe with a normal childhood instead of being the product of a horribly abusive mother. Fuck that. Seen it far too often.

One big question, though: was his sister in on the whole thing? She certainly seemed to be at the end. She knew about James kidnapping Mick’s mom, but she didn’t seem to know that he was a killer. Huh?

Watch for Beth Grant from Donnie Darko near the end.