Day 90: Short Circuit (1986)

PG, 1 hr. 38 min.  Directed by: John Badham.  Release Date: May 9, 1986.  DVD Release Date: September 19, 2000.

Today was a bit of a cluster as you’ve probably guessed if you pay attention to my scheduling and realized today’s movie was originally intended to be a new release.  I was supposed to be spending time in my local theater watching Limitless… so imagine my surprise when Bradley Cooper’s latest piece of fluff didn’t quite make the lofty standards set by the five-screen giant in Celina.  So… I came up with a Plan B.  I went online to determine what I was going to see today and I ran across a mention of a Dimension Films remake of one of my childhood favorites that is supposed to be due in theaters in 2011, and if you were wondering, I am referring to Short Circuit.  The stars aligned and this bad boy was available for streaming.  Unfortunately, I keep meaning to get a copy of this for myself, but I never seem to be willing to spend those $5 when I see it on the shelf at Best Buy, Walmart, or Target.  One of these days I’ll own this, but probably not for awhile.

One of my favorite things about Short Circuit is that it doesn’t suffer from problems that seem to abound in sci-fi:  the tech in the film hasn’t become outdated and it’s not set in the near-future.  I always wig out a bit when I’m watching science fiction that takes place in like 1999, or 2010 and I’m like, “well, I’m real glad we managed to avoid that nuclear winter.”  Robotics is still relatively cutting edge, although I think it’s lost some of its appeal outside of East Asia.  The holographic semi-3D map we see periodically in the Nova headquarters has a big brother that lives on Pandora (and I have yet to actually SEE a master status map like this, although it would certainly help military leaders get a better visual feel for mass troop movements or vehicular strikes).  And the lasers, you ask?  I saw an article in The Navy Times that detailed a in-progress design for a new destroyer-class ship that would have a forward-mounted, crazily-rotatable freaking laser gun.  No foolin’.  Good sci-fi inspires technological innovation, not the other way around, and Short Circuit was good sci-fi.  

It’s been 25 years since I first saw this movie and it still manages to make me laugh.  Not SMILE, but actually laugh.  It’s not unheard of for me to hurl friendly insults used by Johnny 5 in his voyage of self-discovery and self awareness.  If I haven’t shouted “your momma was a snowblower!” at you at some point, it’s just a matter of time.  The characters are, with few exceptions, hysterical, and gave me hope for the careers of a few 80s stars that dragged along (and mostly ended with the advent of 1990).  The movie is also… charming, although the dialogue is edged enough to keep this from being some sort of cutesy vomit-fest.  There’s some swearing and a bit of violence, but the whole time it’s done comically, with the slightest feeling of apology.  This is a great family movie if your kids are older… say double-digits and up, although there’s nothing in here other than the language and a couple sporadic bouts of gunfire that might prevent younger kids from liking this as well.  I’m pretty sure I saw this in theaters, and I would have been nine at the time.  It’s pretty hard to find fault with a feel good movie where there isn’t a real bad guy, just guys who don’t understand what the problem actually means.

The cast was potentially a problem for me.  Other than Three Men and a Baby, I’ve never liked Steve Guttenberg in anything, and I wasn’t disappointed when he faded into the glow that surrounds Hollywood like a phantom from a nightmare.  Ally Sheedy was a hit or miss.  Of course I loved The Breakfast Club and I didn’t think Maid to Order totally sucked, but she has a lot of bad movies under her belt.  There were also enough examples of people rehashing the same role from other movies (I’m mostly talking about G.W. Bailey, but there were a couple other folks in that position) and one character that such a parody of stereotypes that, while I think it’s funny, it’s a bit insulting, too.  It should be mentioned that Steven Fischer’s portrayal of the Indian scientist has become archetypal.  I’ve never met someone from south Asia with that exact cadence or speech pattern, but I hear those patterns frequently in other Indian characters in films and television and I haven’t heard that accent being used anywhere prior in American cinema… so I’m giving him credit for that.

Considering the good music that the 80s cranked out, the person responsible for putting together the soundtrack for this movie should have been executed.  Seriously lame.

Day 89: Sucker Punch (2011)

PG-13, 2 hr.  Directed by: Zack Snyder.  Release Date: March 25, 2011.

Before I get in to talking about Sucker Punch, I need to rant.  About Canada geese.  I wandered over to what’s left of the American Mall in Lima and the frigging birds are nesting everywhere.  There are traffic islands in the parking lot that have some sort of evergreen-ish shrub planted in them.  They now also have geese planted in them on a 5 or 6:1 ratio… but the stupid birds are protected in the state of Ohio despite an appalling lack of natural predators and serious restrictions placed on human hunters.  I have it on good authority that the geese are the only example of an animal that has managed to increase its historical range by more than a few hundreds of miles (the goose’s natural territory now includes most of the United States, Canada, and parts of Mexico), so for those of you who think “they were here first,” you’re probably wrong.  Kill them all and feed the hungry, says I.

Now for the actual purpose of this blog entry.  I went to see this MOSTLY because of the appearance of Silversun Pickups’ “Panic Switch” in the trailer.  While it doesn’t make it to the movie, the soundtrack is pretty remarkable, filled with kind of classic rock and 80s favorites that are remade by modern artists.  

If you want to see this because you’re a huge fan of Zack Snyder, you probably won’t be disappointed.  I find him to be pretty much hit or miss myself.  I loved 300 but didn’t like anything about Watchmen but the visual effects.  I had a similar reaction to Sucker Punch.  The story of the film works a little bit like a babushka doll:  a top layer that makes for the “reality” of the film, then an initial “whorehouse” non-reality, and finally a series of fantasy worlds that have direct impact on the middle world.  The only one of these layers that managed to grab my interest was the series of fantasy worlds which represented movie magic of similar quality to Avatar’s Pandora, although the worlds here have a different feel than Pandora did.  Everything “cool” that goes down in the movie goes down in these worlds.  Fans of visually striking movies won’t be disappointed.

Now this probably sounds okay, but the story feels largely unfinished:  the back story, what little is offered, is insufficient to explain the “reality,” and you really have to hope that the logical leaps you make to explain the dialogue-free ten minutes that lead Baby Doll to her friendly neighborhood insane asylum.  That’s about as deep as this gets.  Sucker Punch is almost completely free of substance, although it seems to be both sympathetic and mocking of the plight of women in a male-dominated world.  In the examples provided by the film, women should fight the power, but in the end, resistance is futile. 

So my review is a mixed bag.  There are a few nice things, but unfortunately they’re mostly minor aspects of the film.  The dialogue is atrocious, the acting is mediocre, despite a few big names in the cast, the story is poorly written, and for whatever reason, all the men seem to spend time looking like extras in SNL’s “Old French Whore” skits.  Fans of the Michael Bay “EXPLOSION!” school of movie making should go see this.  Most other people should stay away.

Day 88: Donnie Darko (2001)

R, 1 hr. 53 min.  Directed by: Richard Kelly.  Release Date: January 19, 2001.  DVD Release Date: March 19, 2002.

I don’t remember who recommended this movie to me years ago.  It was someone back in my Navy days, and the type of movie makes me suspect my friend Mitch.  Whoever made the recommendation, I’m glad they did.  There’s very little in the movie that I don’t enjoy, although it is arguably one of the strangest movies I’ve ever seen.  One of my favorite things, now that I’ve seen the movie a few times, is seeing how many of the cast members have appeared in other favorite movies over the years.  Donnie Darko is the reason I pay attention to Jake Gyllenhal and Jena Malone.  It’s also the reason I pay attention to Jake’s sister, but for the opposite reason.  Family Guy said it best, she really is the bigger box office drag and more off putting in a lead role.  I’ve said for years that I’d stalk Drew Barrymore if I had the time and money, and I dig her part in this movie, although it feels vaguely familiar.  I always love Mary McDonnell, and spent a few weeks fiendishly watching her work in the Battlestar Gallactica reimaging, where I think she’s really at the top of her game.  Noah Wylie’s still a loser, but that hasn’t changed since his ER days, so I don’t feel bad about it.  For a relatively small movie released by an independent studio, this represents a powerhouse of star power.  Even watching it this time, I just realized that Seth Rogen has a small part, and I never clued in to who the lifestyle guru was (Patrick Swayze).   Something else I noticed this time around was how much I like the soundtrack.  In retrospect, I believe that Donnie represents the end to the myth that “indie” is a euphemism for “low budget and shoddy work.”

What I love about this movie is the unexpected.  It’s pretty much everywhere… in much the same way that the unexpected rules the story of Alice in Wonderland.  In part, this is to give the perception that the story is being narrated (kinda) from the mind of a paranoid schizophrenic.  Seemingly random events occur, but then are glued together through the winding path of the story, which is very well crafted.    I think the focus on Donnie as a mentally ill character, seems to be fairly authentic, both from the perception of Donnie’s disease and from the perception of being mentally ill (publically)in a small town.  I like that we get to watch Donnie descend into madness, rather than having him already be completely frigging nuts and just getting worse.  There are several moments in the film, where Donnie is portrayed doing normal teenaged boy things where I almost wish he could get better and that instead of a dark, quirky drama, the filmmakers had crafted a coming-of-age tale in the face of mental illness.  No such luck, but still.

The unexpected isn’t the only thing I like here.  There’s a feeling of omen throughout the film, with occasional scenes that shouldn’t be disturbing, but somehow are.  When Frank finally appears to us, I have to wonder if there’s any truth to the rumor that the creator of this story was inspired by Harvey.  Before I saw Donnie Darko, the idea of Harvey had creeped me out.  Frank wins.  Hands down.  As much as I like this movie, I have to wonder why it spawned a sequel.  I reviewed S. Darko, the story of Donnie’s little sister, a few years ago in The Late, Late Show.  It takes place maybe five or six years after the end of this movie, depicting a Samantha Darko caught in the grip of her brother’s mental illness.  The story is similar to a disappointing degree, and while it’s not terrible, I think Donnie would have been better standing alone.

The good news is that this movie regularly appears on Netflix’s streaming options.  I leave it in my queue and watch it periodically when it jumps to my active streaming options.  Unfortunately, I noticed this morning when I decided to put this in that today was the last day to stream it.  Don’t fret, Donnie will be back.  It always is. 

Day 87: Goldfinger (1964)

PG, 1 hr. 57 min.  Directed by: Guy Hamilton.  Release Date: September 17, 1964.  DVD Release Date: November 18, 1997.

“No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.”  I knew the line before I’d seen my FIRST Bond movie, much less this Bond movie.  In many ways, this is one of the more perfect Bond flicks.  It manages to balance the spy stuff against a reasonable enemy and make magic at the same time.  Unlike some later Bond movies (cough, cough Die Another Day cough) the spy gadgets here represent reasonable technology that may not have been available during the time of filming, but much of it is widely available today.  I have a GPS in my car and lasers are common tools in many kids of manufacturing.  I also like this movie because it doesn’t cling hopelessly to the Cold War dynamic upon which the Bond literary franchise depended as a plot tool.  Post-Iron Curtain Bond films have struggled to come up with a reasonable enemy, shape shifting sons of Korean dictators and media moguls turned tyrants notwithstanding.  I also think it’s interesting that this movie remains unfettered by the removal of the gold standard.  There are other Bond movies that revolve around concepts that feel dated.  This is not one of them.

Every time I watch a Bond movie, I get in to the "best Bond" debate with myself.  Not out loud, of course, because that's nuts, but the dialogue runs through my head.  I’m never sure who I think played the best Bond.  I liked Timothy Dalton because I thought his work represented the literary Bond… at least until Daniel Craig took the role all psychotic in the last two films.  I’ve never been a fan of Roger Moore because he’s responsible for most of the worst Bond movies released to date.  Pierce Brosnan made for a cool Bond, but I want something more out of my Bond than skirt-chasing and shopping at the local Brooks Brothers outlet.  Connery… well, Connery made an amazing Bond, and I waffle between him and Daniel Craig as my favorite.  Goldfinger is the reason Connery ranks so far up there.  Hell, watching his face as he’s introduced to Pussy Galore makes me laugh every time I see the scene.

There are plenty of reasons this movie ended up being spoofed (at least partially) by Austin Powers.  Oddjob remains, in my usually not-so-humble-opinion, the worst henchman ever to hold the title and for plenty of reasons that don’t include the hat of doom.  Even the butterfly henchmen from Venture Brothers feel more reasonably evil than that grunting, hat-trick throwing fool who only seems competent enough to take out the frail young women that seem to flock around Mr. Goldfinger. I think in this particular work everyone involved is so busy having a good time that they didn’t take the project quite as seriously as they should have, which tends to make anything ripe for parody... especially if the semi-reality of the plot decides to take a sick day, which happens in several places throughout the movie.  Does anyone really believe that the airspace over Fort Knox isn't (1) restricted and (2) monitored?  If you discount those two attempts to suspend disbelief, the whole "mastermind" plot has to come in to question.  Cheesy but memorable, would be my short response. 

Day 86: The Power of One (1992)

PG-13, 2 hr. 6 min.  Directed by: John G. Avildsen.  Release Date: March 1, 1992.  DVD Release Date: June 22, 1999.

Today has been an odd day for my blogging.  In lieu of watching this in the comfort of my own home, the planned 12-14 hour drive between Minneapolis and my hometown have forced me to do something... a bit more stupid.  I popped this DVD into my trusty laptop and let it play while I cruised down I-94.  I'm writing this from a Barnes & Noble (all hail the free wifi)... and pretending like I'm actually going to be a customer, so I hope y'all appreciate the extra effort. As if, Barnes & Noble.  I have a NOOK, I don't buy books anymore.

I try really hard not to hold a movie accountable to the book that it is based on.  I’m probably going to fail a bit with The Power of One, because its inspiration, the book of the same name by Bryce Courtenay, is my favorite book, without competition.  I was in high school when this movie came out and my parents dragged me to see it because they’d won free tickets from a local (and lame) radio station.

Quite simply, this movie changed my life.  It started a fascination with Africa in general and South Africa in particular that I still feel to this day.  It led to me realizing that one person can actually make a difference and that each individual should… expect to see their stamp on everything they get involved in.  This movie is why I chose to spend my required time abroad during college in South Africa it all kind of snowballed from there.

This is a movie about triumphing over all the hardships that life throws our way, and about doing it without losing your sense of self and it’s about learning that lesson at an early age and having it repeated fairly frequently throughout your life.  The cast is remarkable, although with the exception of Stephen Dorff, Armin Mueller-Stahl, and Morgan Freeman, much of the cast is relegated to cameo parts.  I also liked Daniel Craig’s portrayal of Jaapie Botha, the antagonist of the film (and one of Craig’s earliest film parts).  The story flows nicely and the adaptation cuts through a lot of the African mystic stuff that occurs in the end of the book, making this a much better fit for an American audience.

I’m always a bit sad after watching this movie because it reminds me that apartheid was real, but it helps to know that even in the apartheid days there were people who could have said nothing who chose to stand up to the National government in South Africa.  “Peekay,” the lead role here, may not have been a real person, but I suspect there were many British-born South Africans who grew up in the 40s and 50s who chose to fight against what they thought was wrong with their country, in whatever way they could.

I don’t think there’s anyone who can’t take a positive moral out of this story, or fail to be moved at least a little.  Check it out.  You won’t be disappointed.

Day 85: Megamind (2010)

PG, 1 hr. 36 min.  Directed by: Tom McGrath, Cameron Hood, Kyle Jefferson.  Release Date: November 5, 2010.  DVD Release Date: February 25, 2011. 

I watched this with my nephews on one of those rare occasions when it gets to be just the three of us.  They had a list of movies they wanted to watch with me this long weekend I spent at their home in the Minneapolis area, but reality (and their limitation of TV watching time) kept us from seeing all of them.  Regardless of the ones we missed, I’m glad we got to this one first.  

I had it on good authority that this was one of the better kids’ movie releases of last year.  There are a lot of reasons for this.  I think the premise was fascinating:  a villain decides to become a hero because he finds his life without a hero too boring to continue.  I especially like it because we’re dealing with a fairly ineffective villain who gets a few lucky shots off.  The characters are… engrossing, even those that have been adapted from existing fictional characters (cough cough Superman cough)…. Although truth be told, Megamind borrows fairly heavily from the Superman mythology in order to keep its own back story familiar and adaptive.  I also like (for a change) a villain that’s bad because he managed to lose the roll of the dice at every turn.  He’s still a bad guy, but by the time the movie’s over, you wonder if he’d have been different if even one thing had gone in his favor during his life in Metro City.  The dialogue is intermittently funny, but I suspect there was more adult-oriented humor in the lines than kid-friendly humor, since I was laughing quite a bit more than either of my nephews.  More physical comedy probably would have been a better idea… or maybe more potty humor.  But the PG rating supports my idea.  This one is balanced for the adults who take their kids to the movies.

A bit of a warning here is that it takes this movie a few minutes to get started… like close to 30.  I was a bit worried at first, but Megamind picks up pretty quickly once they get settled in to the main story of the movie.  Dreamworks does some amazing animation and Megamind is no exception to that truism.  Would I be happier if some of it was done by traditional animation cells?  Yeah, but if I have to watch something made entirely of CG, this isn’t a bad way to go.  The shading and glow effects were primarily what made this work for me, but there wasn’t anything I saw in this film that didn’t make me happy.  I also like how they handled the “sci-fi” technology effects that came from Megamind’s use of his ‘eee-vile’ toys.  If you have a kid that loves superheroes, or if you have a kid that hasn’t watched a decent movie in awhile, I’d be on the lookout for this one in your local video store or through Netflix or one of those copycats. I should also mention how much the soundtrack to this ROCKED.

Day 84: Murder in the First (1994)

R, 2 hr. 2 min.  Directed by: Marc Rocco.  Release Date: June 1, 1994.  DVD Release Date: June 22, 1999.

When I was a kid, my parents would take out of town visitors to Alcatraz as part of a day tour around San Francisco.  While I never liked the city all that much (and still don’t, although it does have its uses), I loved the trip to the island prison.  One of the options is the headphone tour, which is a guideless tour that tells you the history of the island and some of the more infamous prisoners.

It was those years of headphone tours that made this film catch my attention, since it’s the real life story of an Alcatraz inmate and probably the inspiration for a Law & Order: SVU episode I saw recently wherein a man claims extensive time in solitary confinement made him crazy, which in turn made him go out and kill someone.  I’m not debating the cause and effect here, although I would think years without nagging would be a wonderful thing.

There were more than a few moments that portray the relationships between the inmates and the prison staff that made me wince.  A few made me swear.  The graphic nature of the story reminded me a bit of Roots, but mostly in that they worked very hard to not pull any punches. It also suggests a good cast, but in the early moments of the film, I didn’t think Bacon’s portrayal was all that good and I got tired of him being naked all the time, but he does improve. I don’t think prison should be a good time, and it burns me a bit that your average prisoner has a higher quality of life than I do right now, but I don’t think that we should tolerate the cruelty or dehumanization that seem to have been regular tools of the penal system in the 30s. 

I don’t always love courtroom dramas.  I tend to think they’re boring.  I didn’t feel that way about this movie even though it felt like they shopped for cast members in the pages of Teen Beat, at least for the leading roles.  This is the kind of angsty courtroom drama that makes me enjoy Law & Order and its spin-offs.  I even enjoy that they managed to show the corruption that was going on without really being preachy about it.

Day 83: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)

Unrated, 1 hr. 31 min.  Directed by: Howard Hawks.  Release Date: July 15, 1953.  DVD Release Date: May 29, 2001.

When I was around 10, I was given a semi-creative writing assignment by Mrs. Loesch, my English teacher that year and arguably my favorite teacher until high school.  Mrs. Loesch liked to give us assignments like that, stuff that was a bit off the wall and that usually required a lot more thought than a normal report would have.  The terms were simple:  in three to five pages, we had to write a fictional story that was based on real events.  Sicko (note:  not ‘psycho’) that I am, I chose the death of Marilyn Monroe, for which I wrote a murder mystery story, proving once again that I read too much as a kid.  I didn’t know anything about her relationship with the late, former President Kennedy.  I didn’t know that she was a famous actress with a range you wouldn’t have guessed if you ever saw her on live television.  Mostly what I knew was that she was the subject of Elton John’s (I think it was his) Candle in the Wind, which was a big deal back in the day, so stop judging.  Strangely, it took me more than 20 years to get interested in the career of one of America's most famous sex symbols.

I should preface this to say that while I don’t mind musicals, I don’t really get them, either.  Are we supposed to believe these people really just broke out into song every so often?  If you’ve been watching Total Drama Adventure on Cartoon Network, which is surprisingly funny, you know they’ve started spoofing musicals for exactly that reason, in addition to spoofing reality TV for all the expected reasons.  So the musicals generally have to work really hard to keep me from frowning every time they start singing.

I have to say that I enjoyed this, which is hardly surprising because it is kind of a classic.  But there were a lot of things I didn’t get.  Like a “relay” team that does gymnastics wearing only short, tight flesh-colored shorts.  The last time I saw that, it was on SEAL and EOD teams at boot camp, and the shorts were so tight that I inevitably winced when I saw them.  This leads me to another realization:  that Marilyn Monroe’s presence usually revolves around what was probably shockingly risqué for the time period.  Gentlemen Prefer Blondes feels like it's basically what Showgirls would have been if it had been made 40 years earlier and if there had been two leading female roles instead of one. 

For me, Jane Russell and George Winslow made this movie.  They provided most of the comedy and about 90% of the interest.  They certainly made up for the lame character traits that Monroe did a fine job of putting forward. While I liked this movie, I really disliked Monroe's character, which I suspect was rather the point.

Day 82: MacGruber (2010)

R, 1 hr. 30 min.  Directed by: Jorma Taccone.  Release Date: May 21, 2010.  DVD Release Date: September 7, 2010.

I had intended on seeing this in the theaters.  I really did.  When a new friend mentioned to me that he thought this was funny, I figured it was time to see it.  MacGruber had been floating around my Netflix DVD queue for a very long time, so, much like Emeril Lagasse, I bumped it up a notch.  The trailers made this look a bit quirky and good-spoofy, in the same way that the Austin Powers trailers managed to snag my attention way back in the day.  Unlike everyone’s favorite international man of mystery, MacGruber didn’t really satisfy.  It’s possible that is because I never watched McGuyver in the 80s and the only thing I knew about the show was that the guy could foil a terrorist plot with string, a stick of gum, tin foil, and a Pez dispenser.  That was one part of the story line that could have been comedy fodder for the film that seems to have been ignored entirely.

It wasn’t that the movie wasn’t funny.  Because it was, occasionally.  But it was funny almost as if by accident, one of those movies where you’re laughing, but it doesn’t appear that the cast or their actions are keeping up with your emotional response.  There was quite a bit of stuff that I might have found funny a decade ago… but overuse of those particular humor devices has left them a little bare for me.  The cast was actually good, at least good for a spoof.  Everyone was sufficiently campy in a way that bordered on bad acting, but probably wasn’t.  But, the spoofy part of the film really outdid itself.  At least in terms of stuff that just didn’t work.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t finish this movie.  At the “upper decker” discussion scene, I got called away (saved by the annoying screech) and decided that I’d seen as much as I needed to see.  It didn’t really matter how the movie ended so long as it did (finally) end.

Day 81: The Perfect Score (2008)

PG-13, 1 hr. 33 min.  Directed by: Brian Robbins.  Release Date: January 30, 2004.  DVD Release Date: June 29, 2004.

Sorry for the late post tonight.  I'm traveling tonight and staying in Madison, Wiscosin so this was the first chance I've had all day to sit down, watch a movie, and find a wi-fi hub or wireless network to borrow.

I’ve watched this movie a handful of times over the years.  It’s always struck me as entertaining and mindless, the kind of movie you pray for when you’re getting on a plane.  This time, I was struck by several different things about the movie:  the first and largest of these epiphanies was how similar this was to The Breakfast Club.  It’s a movie about a small group of kids getting together across the expected social cliques of high school to fight a perceived injustice (in this case, the evil that is standardized testing).  Under normal rules of high school etiquette, these kids might never have said more than a handful of words to each other.  Like in the John Hughes classic, these kids represent an attempt to pigeonhole just about every possible high school student on the planet.  The athlete, the nerd, the stoner, the rebel, the jock, the overachiever, the weirdo… the list goes on ad infinitum and they go so far as to include something that The Breakfast Club cast was totally lacking:  a polychromatic outlook.  Let’s face it.  It was pretty white in that library, and I’m moderately pleased that The Perfect Score doesn’t fall in to that same trap.  The second thing I noticed was that one of the kids is a young Scarlett Johansson.  Somehow I never noticed that before, but I caught it this time.

While I applaud these guys on coming up with a modernized effort at some of John Hughes’ masterworks, I wish they’d found a better focal point.  I don’t remember sweating the SAT, although I did take it twice because I wrestle with standardized test demons myself.  I still insist that a “more correct answer” is either a fabrication of the pompous or a tool of Satan, depending on my mood.  I doubt these particular kids would be so stressed about the test, even given their back story; that they’d result to this Mission Impossible-ish effort to get the answers.  Could I see high school kids today getting this bent out of shape over something political?  Maybe.  My impressions of Generation Y are that very few of them get riled up about anything until you impinge on their social lives… but a poor SAT score wouldn’t do that.  Also, it’s not like it’s possible to keep a secret in a high school… at least, not in my high school, so I’m assuming not in any.  The attempt to break the answers out of the ETS office would have made it on to the internet, or they’d have had masses of people coming in to improve their scores.  That building should have had kids repelling off of every wall.

Despite some cookie cutter characters (which I think were played well by the cast) and a story that didn’t quite succeed at suspending my disbelief, I like this movie.  I didn’t think I liked it well enough to buy it for my own collection, but since I found the DVD among my own movies, I guess I did.  Or, if I borrowed it from one of you lot reading it, let me know and I’ll ship it back.  Perfect Score represents cheap entertainment.  It’s not terrible, but there’s no real reason to gripe about it.  If you like teen flicks, you’ll enjoy this.

Day 80: Wilderness (2006)

R, 1 hr. 50 min.  Directed by: Michael J. Bassett.  Release Date: March 19, 2006.  DVD Release Date: February 20, 2007.

Wow.  Just wow.  I pulled this up on my Netflix streaming and I didn't expect a whole lot.  I'd never heard of Irish horror before and I had some early thoughts that this might be something stupid like campers being beset upon by a gang of pissed off leprechauns and banshees.  What I got was a GREAT surprise.  My initial impressions were that this was a remarkably gritty movie… even before the actual violence started up.   The early scenes seemed to be largely devoted to establishing the dominance hierarchy within the juvenile prisoners, which was like watching a nature movie showing a pack of wolves or lions fighting over the wildebeest or elk they just brought down.  Little effort was made to lighten up the early scenes, with the possible exception of being asked to watch one of the cast “externalize his anger” on a dummy.  The kid tore the thing apart in a way that was either bad acting or intended to be humorous and given the overall quality of this project, I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt.

I had a hard time determining how to classify this movie.  It had elements of a slasher flick and elements of a suspense movie.  There are some genuine scares of the “jump out and grab ya” type… which I generally like.  I liked this movie, even if I had some problems deciphering the brogue on occasion.  Some of the themes are pretty similar to The Greatest Game, the whole hunting humans thing, although I don’t remember that old classic have a vengeance riff to it.

My favorite thing about this flick, without a doubt, was the killer.  That NEVER happens.  Usually slasher flicks have killers that absolutely suck.  But THIS guy was frigging magic compared to others of his ilk.  He ran around disguised as like grass and leaves and half the time even I didn’t know he was in the scene until he struck, slashing or firing flaming arrows with reckless abandon, even worse was when I didn't know he was in the scene until he started moving out of it.  The whole film ended up being me trying to spot him hiding in the underbrush... it was a bit like those cartoons back in the 80s that had "hosts" that would hide in the background and you'd have to try and find them.  The bush killer did look a bit silly when he wasn’t in stealth mode, but he was amazing when he was in the right element and managed to scare the becheebus out of me on at least two occasions.  He got even better when he started adding MacGuyver-like tricks to his repertoire.

This isn’t without its faults, even with the liberal does of sympathy I have for a horror flick.  You’ve survived an attack that involves an unseen man with a crossbow and a man-eating pack of dogs; five minutes later, you return to the scene of the attack… or maybe not.  There are a lot of character problems.  These kids are all supposed to be hardened criminals:  rapists, murderers, drug dealers that all seem to lack not only street smarts, but basic survival skills.  It was also a surprise that the person who was physically weakest of the criminals seemed so adept at manipulating the others and no one figured it out.  Thanks to my love of And Then There Were None, I wondered about what he was up to.  He reminded me way too much of Dr. Armstrong.  Other than that, Wilderness makes me think that I should be watching more foreign-made horror.

Day 79: The Lady Vanishes (1938)

PG, 1 hr. 37 min.  Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock.  Release Date: November 1, 1938.  DVD Release Date: November 9, 2000.

At some point yesterday, the 1000th person read this blog, no doubt suckered in by what I had to say about yesterday's movie.  Since that's about 20% higher than the total traffic of Let's All Go To The Lobby, I'm going to assume I'm doing something right.  Don't forget to ask for the movies or genres you like so I'll put them in my rotation.  Thanks for reading.

Today, I'm writing on the run during a "quick lunch" break after waking up at 5:00AM to fit this in the schedule of the first day of a two day conference in Chicago.  Fortunately, there's wi fi here, otherwise I'd have been hosed, because today will be a LONG day, even though I have plans to have dinner with a fraternity brother I haven't seen in... the better part of 15 years.  It's a shame there aren't more of us here in Chi-town.

There has probably never been a director that mastered the art of suspense like Hitchcock.  This is one of his early works, and while it lacks the allure of some of the films he made after moving to Hollywood, like Birds and Psycho, it’s a great film in its own right.  Even better was that this story has been, in very basic terms, the inspiration for a few good movies and quite a few bad ones.  It also astounds me that this movie is older than everyone I know with the exception of one of my grandmothers, who has about 20 years on it.

It was nice seeing a thriller where no one resorted to massive amounts of violence to get the point across.  I even loved the story and found it interesting that there is a whole scene where the actors spoof Sherlock Holmes, because in many ways this has all the best elements of a Holmes mystery.  The movie was a bit slow to start, and I found it predictable in a couple of the more important turning points in the tale, but I really enjoyed watching everything unravel.

This is one of those rare movies that reveals that the British haven’t always been the stuffed shirts that most Americans credit them with.  We seem to like to think that our pioneering spirit was won on the fields of this country as we built it, but the way these characters come around to do the right thing even though it was not in their best interest makes me think we have more in common that most of us would think.

There are a few things in here that I found a bit terrible.  For approximately five minutes in the beginning of the movie, I was really worried this predated the “talkies”.  There’s a lot of stuff happening in rather high speed with no dialogue.  When the dialogue occurs, it seems to be a mishmash of nonsense and the occasional word of French, German or Italian to make you think those languages are being used… think of someone saying something like “prego tutta rutta frutta ciao!”  There’s a lot of that sort of dialogue and none of it is subtitled, whether due to a lack of the technology necessary to subtitle on screen at the time or because the words are all made up.  I could be wrong, but I’m sure the “French” was mostly nonsense peppered with real French words and I suspect the Italian was the same way.

Day 78: The Adjustment Bureau (2011)

PG-13, 1 hr. 46 min.  Directed by: George Nolfi.  Release Date: March 4, 2011.

I struggled with the decision to watch this movie.  Last year, I went to go see Matt Damon in Hereafter.  It was a long, cerebral approach to the afterlife with an ending that might have been borrowed from The Sopranos.  It was good, but it hadn’t really been what I was looking for from a movie.  If I want to learn, I’m probably going to read a book.  No, really.  Booook.

Let’s just say that I was pleasantly surprised by my reaction to the movie.  I thought it was… oh, hell, charming.  I was charmed by the whole pretense, although I got a bit annoyed at the discussion of how our free will is in appearance only.  I got a bit annoyed when they seemed to be assuming that no one had figured out that human free will was placing our entire planet onto the brink.  I got a bit annoyed at all the references to the “Chairman.”  But I liked this.  It’s really several different stories that mingle together rather flawlessly.  The first is the doomed romance between Matt Damon and Emily Blunt (and I’ll note this is the first time since Team America that I haven’t heard a whispery voice say “Matt Damon” repeatedly while he’s onscreen), which was remarkably good and held together by two very good performances.  There’s the whole conspiracy-action flick involving the Adjustment Bureau itself.  There’s also the man versus God theme… should Mrs. Mack, my Sophomore English teacher read this, I did remember all that crap you taught me.

I’m not getting involved in whether or not Adjustment is this year’s Inception.  That’s a stupid discussion for folks who might consider Passion of the Christ to be that year’s Greatest Story Ever Told.  In that they both try and get us to question our reality the two movies are similar, but that’s about it and that’s really all I’m prepared to say on the matter.  Lord knows at the rate Hollywood’s going Inception 2 will be pooped out in April, filmed in May, and released by July.  Then, THAT would be this year’s Inception.  MIND FREAK! [Criss Angel theme music] 

There wasn’t much about this I didn’t like, but it felt a little long to me.  There was like thirty minutes in the middle of the movie where I really wanted someone to throw a pie or jump in front of a bus, do ANYTHING that would get the action

Day 77: Hangman's Curse (2003)

PG-13, 1 hr. 46 min.  Directed by: Rafal Zielinski.  Release Date: September 12, 2003.  DVD Release Date: March 30, 2004.

This movie was recommended to me by a family member as "Christian horror," the concept of which, at first, made my eyes cross.  After some thought, I realized that there was going to be a lack of anything supernatural in the solution to the puzzle, much like how Scooby and the gang inevitably pulled a mask off the first person they'd met in the course of their actual investigation.  Unfortunately, the finished product was revealed to be a bit like gluten-free bread.  All the elements were in place, but something wasn't quite right.

Like mainstream horror, the acting is bad enough to border on the criminal.  The dialogue is even worse, equal parts run-on sentences and hyper-channeled bits of Clueless.   Yeah, that's right.  I was totally buggin.  Totally.  There were many consistency errors that I spotted, where dialogue or action contradicted previous scenes' action or dialogue.  I'm still trying to figure out how the elder brother had to wait for his next birthday to get his driver's license, but his sister had hers.

The set up is not terrible and gets a lot of use in the genre:  the urban legend spirals out of control until the ghostly corpse of someone gets into a rampage.  That was all fun.  The characters were remarkably believable and with the exception of the dialogue (and the delivery), resembled normal people in normal situations.  Between the details and the rabid aversion to anything that might be considered alternative, like the goth kids and the occult, this was really shy on horror-type conflict and scares.   In a lot of ways, this felt like an old Scooby Doo episode.  I kept waiting for someone to holler "Jinkeys, Mr. Jenkins!".  Don't get me wrong, I dig ole Scoob, but it doesn't scare me or really keep my interest and Hangman had similar issues.


I guess I could quote Clueless myself and refer to this as a “total Monet:”  From a distance everything looked okay, but the details were a mess.  Some research could have been done on the occult, considering how much of it made the script, so that they'd know that EYRE LEBA (which I think was misspelled) wouldn't appear in a room with people chanting in Latin over a pentagram.  It should also be noted that Voodoo and its trappings (five minutes of research taught me that Voodoo dolls don't have anything to do with Voodoo, but it's "N'awlins" cousin Hoodoo) isn't all about raising zombies, satanic practices, and spreading cholera. Both religions would have obvious Christian imagery on their altars because they represent a fusion of Christian and traditional African practices and all I could see were bones.

The filmmakers might have wanted to confirm that (1) cross-order hybrids can actually happen (even if one of the spider species are made up) and (2) those hybrids can breed (mules and ligers are sterile, as are the hybrid sport fish ODNR dumped into my lake last year, so I’m guessing the ability to breed wouldn’t be a norm for hybrid animals), but that wasn't a priority either, apparently.  Goth doesn't mean evil, it doesn't equate to belief in or use of witchcraft, and being goth shouldn't let you make the victims of this story the bad guys.  There was an obvious bias here, which I'd have had more respect for if I spotted tolerance for people being different in any form.

I guess this movie’s about lots of things.  It’s about ghosts and a family of FBI detectives and hybrids and how high school sucks.  Even worse, it’s about 1 hour and 45 minutes long.   It wasn’t terrible, but I could have found a better use of my time.  Considering the rave reviews for the book, I'm thinking that the adaptation was poorly done, and they guys turned what was probably a decent story for tweens into something less.

Day 76: Red Riding Hood (2011)

PG-13, 1 hr. 40 min.  Directed by: Catherine Hardwicke.  Release Date: March 11, 2011.

Her name is Valerie.  Why?  Because "Bella" was already taken, duh!  She’s a self-described “good girl,” although she needs to review the qualifications because I saw what went down in that pile of hay and so did like three other people.  Then she went and bragged about it to her friends, which I thought even bad girls had too much tact to do. She believes that werewolves are creatures bred for their gifts of telepathy. GOSH!  

Okay, seriously.  I had high hopes for this, just like I had with Beastly earlier this month.  Real faerie tales, not the ones involving singing mice and birds like in the Disney movies, but the ones where actions have consequences, are gritty things.  Gritty things tend to make good movies.  A reimaging of Little Red Riding Hood set in a modern urban landscape could have been a thing of beauty, especially if it had leaned a bit to the horror angle.  What we got was some Twilight-ish afterbirth, wherein a moderately attractive, but stiff girl finds herself in a <3 triangle with both of her village’s most eligible bachelors.  In addition we have tepid, angst-filled love scenes in a mostly evergreen forest and a telepathic werewolf.  WHERE have I seen this before, Mr. DeVille?  Like I needed one more reason to hate Twilight.  Now it’s ruining completely unrelated movies.

A red herring works as a plot device.  It really does, so long as you do it right.  Leaving a trail of red herring in your wake suggests you need to reconsider your writing career.  When Gary Oldman states the wolf is living in the village and the camera pans around to the villagers all looking accusingly at each other, I was laughing so hard I got shushed.  I was a little annoyed since the person who shushed ME spent the first ten minutes of the movie on her phone.  Sorry, Keisha, people in glass houses and all that.

What went right here?  Precious little.  I actually loved the wolf animations.  They were pretty slick, even if he could reach out and touch you mind to mind.  Plenty of werewolf movies failed because they opted for the wolfman option as opposed to a ginormous wolf... Red didn't make that same deal with the devil and their selection for their villain was well done.  The movements on screen also suggested that someone had done some research on how real wolves moved.  They also followed the old adage.  Every village has its idiot, and I LOVED this one.  Bravo, Claude, whoever and wherever you are.  You were my favorite part of this movie.  The setting and costuming were well done, I thought, although I would have though blue and purple would be less common in the time this all appeared to be referencing, but I could be wrong.

Day 75: Hands of the Ripper (1975)

R, 1 hr. 25 min.  Directed by: Peter Sasdy.  Release Date: October 17, 1971.  DVD Release Date: September 13, 1989.

A couple of my readers have asked, so I’m trying to get more horror in to my movie diet.  I claim to love the genre, and I do, but I don’t think that there’s a particularly large number of really good examples to choose from.  Periodically, I get a kick out of watching older horror flicks, in seeing how the genre has changed over the years.  Each decade or so since Hitchcock started making his masterpieces has its own signature effects; some of which have survived to modern day, and some of which have not.  And while fear that builds from subtle hints and jabs is no longer stylish, I do appreciate that skill set in older scary movies.  I wish we had them in modern film.

Technically, I thought this movie was beautiful.  It had all the right elements in all the right places, but there was something about it that didn’t quite do it for me.  They used existing Jack the Ripper lore as a base, which can be, when told in the right light, downright terrifying.  Several of the characters are named after people of interests in the Ripper cases, and there was plenty of blood, although I think that there was not much blood at all compared to the actual Ripper attacks.  I guess you could say that there was a “gentrified” amount of blood.    Somehow, all the Victorian trappings dulled down what might have been a sort of silly thriller.  I think this would have genuinely scared movie audiences of its day, but after twenty years of watching slasher flicks, this one wasn’t much more than a look back in time.

The movie’s initial premise is its own worst enemy.  I could deal with Jack the Ripper’s child getting involved with some slaying, just as I could (sort of) get behind Jigsaw finding an apprentice.  At least with the Ripper, I could believe some sort of psychological disorder that led to someone getting all rampagey might be inherited.  I had more of a problem with the supernatural element:  the use of séances and the idea of possession… which I’m not going to call spoilers because it comes up early and often.  You’re not going to miss it when it appears.

Despite the rather flawless base, I did have problems paying attention to what was going on.  In spite of the brutal murders popping up around the characters, they remained so unflappably… British.  It was a major letdown from the histrionics I’m used to seeing.  Despite this the movie is insanely well-acted for a horror flick, especially modern horror films which are so poorly acted that it’s almost laughable.

Day 74: Pride & Prejudice (2005)

PG, 2 hr. 6 min.  Directed by: Joe Wright.  Release Date: November 11, 2005.  DVD Release Date: February 28, 2006.

I should preface this by saying that, under usual circumstances, I would not have chosen to watch this movie.  Stiff, pasty-faced Britons running around after in other in a desperate attempt to produce more stiff, pasty-faced Britons is not exactly what I would call a pot-boiler.  You could say that modern media has given me the expectation of a more graphic and less gentile approach to this problem, although I would say that I just expect people to get to the frigging point and maybe go out in the sunshine once in awhile.  I also have a problem finding interest in a “romance” where the women involved feel certain that they could get past whatever mutant-like appearance this new man in their lives might have so long as his income was large enough.  Makes you wonder if it’s really gold digging that's the world’s oldest profession, doesn’t it?

About a year ago, I streamed a movie from Netflix called Lost in Austen, wherein some ridiculously out-of-touch young woman spends most of her time rejecting the real people around her for the characters in the book upon which that movie, as well as this one, were based.  Eventually, she falls into a magic wardrobe (or some similar plot device) and finds herself not in Narnia, as I kind of expected, but in the middle of this story.  I liked Lost in Austen and it drudged up enough interest in the works of Jane Austen for me to watch this movie.  Okay, Keira Knightley’s presence helped.

The first thing I noticed was that delivery of the dialogue felt… rushed.  It was almost as if the cast was in competition to spit out their lines as fast as possible to see who could finish first.  But other than that, I thought this was really well-performed.  The cast was outstanding, including Donald Southerland in a role I wish was larger, Judy Dench, and Rosamund Pike.  It’s really hard to screw up a decent story, and I found that the elements I liked in Lost In Austen were the same as the elements I liked in Pride & Prejudice.  I might have to break down and read this book.

I’m still not sure that I think a romance amid the setting of Victorian (?) England is a perfect combination.  All those good manners and impassive faces really spoil the passion to my mind.  And don’t get me wrong and assume by passion that I mean sex.  I’m old enough now to understand the difference, and even when all of these complicated relationships work themselves out, I don’t get the feeling that there was any passion, or that it was buried under so many layers of good breeding and civility that it didn’t have enough of a chance to peek out at us.  But, there is a lot of entertainment value in this film.  I particularly like the strike of the nosy matchmakers of Britain’s middle and high societies and the counterstrike shenanigans of those young men and women who don’t really want the interference. 

Day 73: The Goonies (1985)

PG, 1 hr. 54 min.  Directed by: Richard Donner.  Release Date: June 7, 1985.  DVD Release Date: August 21, 2001.

HEY YOU GUUUUYYYS!  Today’s my birthday, and there are few movies I’d rather watch on my birthday than The Goonies.  I love this movie for so many reasons:  it’s iconic for my childhood; in fact, it’s one of the first movies I remember seeing (and owning) on home video… back before everyone had a DVD player.  For more than 20 years, this movie has found its way into my top ten favorite films list, which is forever changing and many lesser movies have found themselves on and off the same list.  This is family fun at its very best.  There’s a bit of action, a bit of scary stuff, a whole lot of fun.  If you’re a kid, there’s not much about this movie that you can’t like.  There are pirates, bad guys, skeletons, some pretty girls, okay.  There’s ONE pretty girl and one girl who’s looks are “kinda cute” when her face isn’t getting in the way.

For a kids' movie, there was a remarkable amount of thought that went in to the characters.  Each of them has their strengths and weaknesses, individual quirks and external relationships that gives them a very 3D feel.  While there is quite a bit of stereotyping in this group (in the same way the kids were stereotyped in The Breakfast Club), I’ve never really felt as if I was watching a walking stereotype of how kids interact and clique.  There also isn’t the feeling that some of these kids overwhelm the others in terms of personality, even though Mikey (Sean Astin) and Mouth (Corey Feldman) are clearly the intended stars.  Each of the characters has at least one moment to shine and to prove their value both to the group and to the story.  If I have a problem with this movie, it’s that the casting directors obviously pulled the cast from Teen Beat.  

What I really think is amazing about this movie is the setting.  Some of this was filmed on the Oregon coast, which my cousin was kind enough to take me to when I went to visit his family in 2009.  We saw Haystack Rock, which features prominently in the hunt for “One-Eyed Willy” and his treasure and we walked along the stretch of beach where the Fratellis speed through the beach race in their attempt to escape the po-po.  But once everything gets started, it’s the underground tunneling that I think is awesome, even though it’s pretty contrived.  

I can’t wait to introduce this movie to my nephews.  One of them is probably old enough, about the same age as I was when I watched this for the first time, but he and his brother are close enough in age that I wouldn’t get away with only watching the movie with one of them.  I’ll have to wait another couple of years until they’re both old enough to watch it.  I just hope they don’t see it BEFORE I get there, since I only get to see them once or twice a year.

Day 72: American Pie: Book of Love (2009)

R, 1 hr. 34 min.  Directed by: John Putch.  Release Date: December 22, 2009.  DVD Release Date: December 22, 2009.

If you read my blog regularly, or even infrequently, you probably know I have a huge soft spot for teen flicks.  Raunchy teen comedies are my favorite subgenre to watch, even though now that I’m in my 30s, I’m embarrassed to find that I STILL think that they're funny.  Once upon a time, I get it.  I can remember being one of these guys, although I’m forever hoping that I wasn’t nearly as bad.  Now, I don’t know.  I feel like I shouldn’t be nostalgic about puberty, but every once in awhile I miss the total chaos of being a teenager.  I miss the uncertainty, the self doubt, the raging emotions and the confusion.  I don’t miss the cracking voice or the acne, but I got off relatively light on both counts, so I probably can’t complain too much.

If you’re a fan of the American Pie franchise, this isn’t a horrible addition.  In fact, I’d arguably say it’s the best of the four films to date that have been issued as straight-to-DVD, although Band Camp might just have more real laughs to it.  This also feels more like the original trilogy than the others and has a band of characters that aren’t totally pathetic, which is a nice change.  I like that the setting has returned fully to the original high school, which probably helps more than anything else to make this feel more like the original trilogy.  If I have a real complaint, it’s that this Stiffler sucks.  The Stifflers… and I think there have been six now, have all been the drivers of what’s funny in this franchise, although Eric Stiffler was funny because he was kind of lame.  This Stiffler got like one potentially funny scene, and it was ruined by a bad CGI mouse. 

 

What this movie really missed was bringing back the original trio for cameos while they attempt to reconstruct The Bible (not THAT Bible, the other one from the school library).  It would have been cool to see those guys again, since none of them seems to have survived like 2003.  If you decide to watch this, just let it all hang loose.  No expectations, no demands.  Because that, you’ll probably get.  If I actually wanted something out of this movie, I’d probably hate it… but for a quick way to kill a couple of hours, there are worse ways to go.

Day 71: Happy Gilmore (1996)

PG-13, 1 hr. 32 min.  Directed by: Dennis Dugan.  Release Date: February 16, 1996.  DVD Release Date: February 24, 1998.

I may have been the only college Freshman who was alive in 1996 and who wasn't in a Bible college that didn’t go see this in theaters, but I managed to miss this movie for like three years.  I vaguely recall that I saw this movie for the first time (along with Billy Madison) on a Greyhound bus traveling between Port Elizabeth and Cape Town along the South African southern coast.  I might be wrong, but somehow I don’t think so.  Back then, this movie would have had me rolling… but 15 years later, I only chuckle a few times and smile frequently.  You know you’ve gotten old when Adam Sandler comedies have started to lose their shine.

Okay, I admit it.  The initial golfing scene where Sandler strafes his grandmother’s neighbor’s house is hysterical, but the rest of it just made me smile.  I also realized that some of my memories of this movie had gotten merged with some of Adam Sandler’s other movies… such as the pool scene that I kept looking for here that I suspect is really in Billy Madison.  I’m going to be even more honest and say that I laughed a few other times, although now I’m really embarrassed that I thought it was funny.

This isn’t a great movie in the artistic or technical aspects of a film.  However, it’s fun to watch and is relatively tame for one of Sandler’s original films.  The story is engaging as are the characters, which, let’s face it, much better movies have failed to make happen.  But, at the end of the day, all of these Sandler movies from the 90s are more or less interchangeable:  some kind of loserish guy whose life is totally ludicrous somehow manages to defeat all odds, hooks up with what you call a “regulation hottie,” and sticks it to the people who have been making his life miserable for however long.

I guess at the end of the day is what I’m saying is that this isn’t a great movie, but it is a good movie.  It’s the kind of movie I’d watch after a bad day, or in my case, a bad week.  It would be the best way to get me out of a funk, because it’s bound to make me smile.  And I really just can’t ask for more than that.

Day 70: Rango (2011)

PG, 1 hr. 47 min.   Directed by: Gore Verbinski.  Release Date: March 4, 2011.

Until today, I thought the most inefficient (and tedious) use of 90-some odd minutes of my time was Chloe.  Unfortunately, I found an even more boring and inefficient use of time in the form of Rango.  I understand that it’s at the top of the box office receipts right now.  I also get why.  It’s a kids’ movie.  They ALL spend some time at the top unless they happen to come into the theaters at the same time like five long-awaited blockbusters hit the theaters.   But really, there are a few things that all good kids’ movies have in common, and Rango didn’t seem to have any of them.  There wasn’t (in my opinion) a single character that I found cute, funny, or even a bit winsome.  The story didn’t really have a happy ending so much as an ending that sucked a little less than the current reality of the storyline.  There were no funny moments.  No humor.  In many ways, I think of this as the animated version of watching the Dust Bowl happen.  I started looking at my watch about thirty minutes in, surreptitiously clicking on my phone in my pocket then looking inside to see how long I’d been stuck in CG hell.  It could have been worse.  I could have been like that group of about seven people that got up and left.  I kept waiting to laugh and waited for something to perk my interest, because I was sure something that's getting reviews as universally positive as this movie wouldn't, well, suck.

Now, I may have hated the story, but I thought the technical aspects of this movie were amazing.  I was more impressed before I did my internet research, which taught me that the animators used real animals to do movement capture, expressions and a bunch of other things that made for realistic (if grubby) characters that had the actual physical traits and mannerisms that we would have expected to see of their natural world counterparts.  But, I have to be honest.  I miss traditional animation.  I don’t have a problem watching cartoons, in fact, most of the day my television is locked in on Cartoon Network, and I’m slowly missing the demise of hand-drawn cells as we begin to favor (more and more) CG over the pen.  Really, if I wanted to watch a movie that looks like real life, even if the story is fantastical, I’ll probably watch, you know, a live action movie.  CG can be amazing, as we saw with Avatar.  But I don’t know that Pixar will really ever beat Disney’s traditional style of animation.

Despite the high technical degree of success I think Rango has, it was boring and lifeless.  I couldn’t get into the characters and I’m only suspicious that there was a bit of environmental propaganda levied against the creation and maintenance of Las Vegas.  If it was, the accusation was so vague they’d have been better off to mention how rerouting all available water in the area to the city has made life almost impossible for the desert life.  The bottom line is that if I ever meet Johnny Depp, I’ll be asking for my $8 back. 

Day 69: Tomcats (2001)

R, 1 hr. 35 min.   Directed by: Gregory Poirier.  Release Date: March 30, 2001.  DVD Release Date: August 14, 2001. 

For a long time, this movie was almost my anthem.  I haven’t wanted to get married in a long time, longer than I care to admit.  The last time I even gave the concept a thought was in my early 20s.  Now, when I should really be thinking about it, I have little interest, and my interest seems to wane with every passing year.  I didn’t necessarily feel the need to womanize my way through what’s left of my life, but the idea of having to change my wants and needs to suit someone else doesn’t appeal enough for me to enter into any marriage that would be less than perfect, or at least my definition of perfect.

I used to love this movie.  It still makes me smile, but a decade has changed the way I look at how callous these guys really are… from about the very start.  I’ve said before that no one plays a douche like Jerry O’Connell but I’d forgotten all about Jake Busey, who is my new best douche actor to ever disgrace the silver screen.  His performance comes way too easy for it not to be representative of at least a part of him.  With O’Connell, when he starts acting like a normal guy, that transition is easy, making me think he’s either one of the most underrated actors of our time (which I doubt), or that he’s kind of a normal goofy guy, which synchs up with what I’ve seen of him on talk shows.  The rest of the cast all seems on about the right scale for their actual talents.  I’ve actually seen Shannon Elizabeth playing herself and come off more awkward than she is here, so I guess in comparison this was a hell of a performance.  The supporting cast is at least humorous, with the exception of Jamie Pressley, who I’ve seen play better parts elsewhere.  I suspect she was ridiculously underused.  

There are lots of worse ways to kill 90 minutes.  I know, because I’ve done most of them.  This is inane late night comedy at its very worst, and its biggest fault is that it exaggerates how raunchy and risqué it really is.  In some ways, this could be considered a kind of sanitized Porky’s, but it’s way sanitized. 

Day 68: Jarhead (2005)

R, 2 hr. 3 min.  Directed by: Sam Mendes.  Release Date: November 4, 2005.  DVD Release Date: March 7, 2006.

I wasn’t a Marine, I was Navy, so I have a different perspective on this.  I remember my first five minutes of boot camp:  some drill instructor screaming at this 18 year old kid because the kid had looked at him funny after the guy had acted like a tool.  Unfortunately, the kid was standing right next to me in line at the time, and so I had to listen to the kid get berated while the drill instructor did his best “Gunny Hartman” impersonation.  Listening to the drill instructors and not laughing became a specialty of mine in boot camp, and it was something I learned fast out of necessity.  I saw pretty quickly that laughing at someone else’s misfortune got you the same punishment.  My point goes back to what that drill instructor was trying to accomplish although I’ve rambled a bit.  I’d pledged a fraternity by this point in my life, so I saw that he wasn’t interested in not scaring the ever-living becheebus out of the kid.  He wasn’t worried about what was going on in anyone’s real life.  He was starting the process of breaking everyone’s individual identity… or at least the attempt to get that ragged group of young men to reconsider their personal ID enough to consider themselves possibly as a Sailor.  

I never bought it.  It might have been because I went through pledging, and frat boys could be both crueler and more inventive than the drill instructors could ever be.  It might also be because I was four years older than most of the people around me (including a couple of the drill instructors), but it could have been because it seemed almost like those experienced Sailors were not even totally buying in to their on-the-job persona.  Now, if I’d have been a Marine, things might have been very different.  Marines have a… single-minded loyalty to their Corps with so few exceptions that you knew the instructors at the Marine boot camps were more successful at their jobs than their counterparts at the Navy, Air Force, or Army boot camps.  A lot of that loyalty, despite the circumstance, shines in this movie.

From what I know about life in Iraq, I found this to be a fair presentation of life in theater for our combat troops.  Someone I worked with who was in country once told me that the boredom scared him more than the mujahideen.  We would talk sometimes by phone, usually by instant messenger in the dead of night, and he would tell me some of the things going on inside the walls of the bases that had been erected.  I won’t say his name or where he was exactly, but some of the stuff was scary.  Quite a bit was dangerous and stupid.  I’m not saying that everyone in Iraq has an experience like the one depicted in Jarhead.  I know plenty of people whose time in country was nothing like it, but this did seem to be the average.

I have two things I really love about this movie.  The first is the cast.  Whether it was the director, skill, luck, or some combination of the above, these guys were really, really good.  A couple in particular are probably showing their best ever performance, some of the bigger names, like Foxx and Gyllenhaal, are probably in their best three or five performances.  The other thing I really like is that they didn’t compromise the reality of the day-to-day life for our soldiers for the kind of glamorized picture that most of us living Stateside seem to have.  Some of the scenes are brutal, and there were very few (with the exception of the crazy air firing scene) that I hadn’t seen or heard of happening.

This movie does have faults, and one of the big ones is that it’s really hard to distinguish this from Full Metal Jacket.  I’m not old enough to have lived during Vietnam, but I was 14 when Desert Storm happened.  In some ways, Iraq has become the Vietnam of my generation... and that doesn't seem to be taken in to consideration in this film.  It's possible that they wouldn't have known it at the time this movie was supposed to be taking place, but long before the film was made, people were making that reference.  I also happen to think it’s a bit long and more than one scene is extraneous (and boring).  I saw an Flixster reviewer say something like "it's flabby in the middle, like people."  Duh.

If nothing else, this movie got me so nostalgic for boot camp that I just sent a Facebook message to a person that I think was my division chief back in those days.  I need to get out more often.