Day 365: Mean Girls (2004)

PG-13, 1 hr. 37 min.   Directed by: Mark Waters (VIII).  Release Date: April 30, 2004.  DVD Release Date: September 21, 2004.

So, it’s finally here.  365 movies watched in 365 days.  It’s been an interesting road, and I’ve managed to complete not only my primary objective, but all the little goals I set for myself over the course of 2011.  It’s been a crazy year, filled with changes, good and bad, and quite frankly I’m not only glad it’s done, I’m glad I was able to finish the year off with a movie that I enjoy.

Mean Girls represents one of a large number of guilty pleasure movies for me.  I avoided seeing this in the theaters because I thought it would be a “chick flick,” which it is, although it has an aggression to it that might almost be masculine, despite the pink and purple.  It serves as the high point in the career of Lindsay Lohan, or it might just be the start of her downward spiral into shame and madness.  It is the start of the careers of Rachel McAdams and Amanda Seyfried, who, as always, are entertaining as hell to watch. And, even more interesting, is that both of the latter two ladies used this film to help kick start their careers.

No matter how many times I’ve watched this movie, it never fails to make me laugh, and there are only a few of the cast members that don’t at least manage to make me smile.  It’s also one of those movies that makes me laugh despite of the absurdity of the story and the behavior of the characters, and I frequently struggle with comedies of the absurd.  Sometimes, they just push past whatever humor boundaries I have and become stupid, and I don’t really think that this ever does.

Is this movie characteristic of the life of the average American high school girl?  In some ways, I think that it is.  There is a certain truth to the whole balance between school work, and all the issues that come with society.  But, in many ways, this seems more like a caricature of what people THINK the average high schooler’s life is like than a factual portrayal.  

Mean Girls isn’t complicated.  It isn’t deep.  It’s more than a little silly.  If you’re looking for a film with a bit of mental chew, this isn’t going to be your cup of tea.  If; however, you’re looking for something that’s going to put a smile on your face, this is the way to go.  Today, I was looking for something to get me in the mood for tonight’s festivities, and this was the perfect solution.  I was only surprised that I hadn’t written about it before.

Day 364: Stigmata (1999)

R, 1 hr. 42 min.  Directed by: Rupert Wainwright.  Release Date: September 10, 1999.  DVD Release Date: February 29, 2000. 

It’s almost over.  Tomorrow will end my one movie a day for an entire year project.  The blogging won’t stop, but the urgency to post will disappear and I’m not sure how I’m going to react.  I might watch a movie on New Year’s Day and not blog about it (GASP!).  I suspect that won’t happen, but it’s not unheard of for me to spend New Year’s Day at the theater, sometimes recovering, sometimes not.  But, I’ll figure that out in a couple of days.

I have mixed feelings about this movie, mostly relating to its portrayal of the Catholic church.  Now, I should mention that I’m as dyed-in-the-wool heathen as you get, but I was raised in a Catholic family.  I have a lot of respect for the men and women who dedicate their entire lives to their faith, regardless of what that faith is.  I respect the filmmakers for depicting individual priests who are devoted to helping people navigate the occasionally murky waters of their own faith.  I can’t remember the last time that I saw a priest or nun portrayed as a good person unless it was a biopic on a famous priest or nun.  I didn’t so much enjoy the depiction of the leadership of the Catholic church as soulless pursuers of the status quo and without remorse or regard for human life, because I don’t actually see that occurring, at least not in the last few hundred years.  When I reviewed The Golden Compass, I praised the American Council of Bishops for their wisdom is choosing caution rather than banning the film outright, which is the cheap and easy way to handle something you have a problem with.  Has that approach been used in the past?  Certainly, but even by the time this movie was filmed there were signs that the church had come to crossroads in the way the Church interacted with its followers… and I would have liked to have seen that discussed.

While I generally found this to be an okay movie, I got tired of the constant inundation of religious overtones and symbology, in much the same way I got tired of it in both of the film adaptations of Dan Brown’s novels that have been made to date.  I also wondered at some of their choice of stigmata.  Did anyone else see the first scene in the Brazilian church and have these two thoughts run through their heads:  (1) isn’t crying blood a sign that you’re a vampire and (2) who would actually want all those doves in that enclosed space?  I also wondered how a hairdresser was going to afford all those expensive medical procedures.  I appreciated that the subject of these stigmata was so different from those in the histories of the church… modern Christians seem to forget the “kinds” of people Jesus himself chose to hang with, and the reminder was both subtle and nice.

I don’t always love Gabriel Byrne, although I think he’s a solid performer.  I thought he was really good in this, but to be honest, I don’t think he had much of a choice, as Patricia Arquette wandered in an epileptic fashion between great and terrible, not unlike the man behind the curtain.  I shudder to think that the places where she was really good are when she’s been showing the sign of stigmata, and she was terribad during the “real” moments in her character’s life that we’re allowed to see, I got the impression that she was either stoned or maybe a little retarded.  This feeling is helped along by her dialogue, which is poorly written at best and pathetic at worst.  If they were trying to make Frankie Paige seem like uneducated, foolish girl, even in the wake of these new experiences, then they succeeded, but she bogged down the movie so much that I couldn't help but think that it wasn't intentional.

This is going to be controversial for lots of people.  As I recall, the Catholic church declared this movie to be blasphemy because of the references to what I think were supposed to be the Dead Sea Scrolls and the cover-up conspiracy theories, but, quite frankly, this fits in vaguely with what remain of my own personal theology.  Because religion is a touchy subject, I wouldn’t recommend this to most people, because I know people on both extremes seem to have hated this movie with equal vehemence.  If you have few thoughts on religion to get in your way, this isn’t terrible, but there are better religious-themed movies out there.

Day 363: Star Trek 4 - The Voyage Home (1986)

PG, 1 hr. 59 min.  Directed by: Leonard Nimoy.  Release Date: November 26, 1986. DVD Release Date: November 9, 1999. 

One of the problems I have talking about the Star Trek movies is that it's hard for me to judge where a person who has little to no knowledge of the Trekverse will sit in their opinions on these.  The good news is that this is easily the most approachable of the franchise (from 1979 to 2009) in terms of whether a layperson can get involved.  It's vaguely environmental in a Save the Whales way, because well, in fact, they're trying to save some whales.  It's familiar to everyone because half of it takes place in San Francisco in the 1980s.  Unlike most of the shots of Starfleet Academy or the Federation HQ building that pop up throughout the films during the first few seasons of The Next Generation, this is a San Francisco we know and recognize.

There's little enough science fiction involved in this, but what is there is hard to swallow.  This "slingshot maneuver" was used as a plot device in the original series in an episode that kind of sucked.  But what this use of the plot device gained the franchise was immeasurable.  Until The Undiscovered Country, this was absolutely my favorite of the series, and even now it waffles between my number 2 and 3 spots for the franchise depending on how I'm feeling about the 2009 reboot at any given moment.  

There's a kind of humanity to this movie that we don't see in any of the rest of the Trek movies.  There's no alien politics, no evil mutants, no magic space probes possessing inexplicably bald chicks that spend too much time talking about celibacy.  For sci-fiphobes, this represents a kind of safe harbor.  There's brief exposure to Vulcan and the retraining of Spock in the Vulcan scientific disciplines, there's a stolen Klingon ship, and then the crew is off again.

Even better is that you don't need to have seen other movies in the franchise for this to shine.  You get a bit more if you watch 2, 3, and then 4, but this was my introduction to the Star Trek film franchise.  I had seem some episodes, but wasn't really a fan quite yet.  And, I'm always interested in finding the locations of the nuclear wessels. 

Day 362: Severance (2006)

R, 1 hr. 36 min.  Directed by: Christopher Smith.  Release Date: September 1, 2006.  DVD Release Date: September 18, 2007.

This movie had been in my Netflix queue for months, probably since February or March, before I finally decided to stream it today.  It caught my eye after I watched and reviewed Wilderness, an Irish-made horror flick that I thought was remarkably good, even if it was more suspenseful than scary.  While I don’t know much about the UK horror film biz, I thought this was a very good example of what the tea-and-crumpet set can put forward when the right folks come together.

I had a bit of a laugh at myself created by my inattention to the dual possibility indicated by the title.  I figured this might be a movie wherein someone gets fired and then “goes postal” after locking in all his or her former co-workers.  I actually saw a movie like that on USA once, a long time ago, where a contractor gets fired and then shows up just before quitting time and locks everyone in so he could kill them one by one.  It freaked me out.  In this case “severance” refers to like, having things severed from your body.  

Initially, the set-up struck me as more than a little like Wrong Turn:  people wander into an area they shouldn’t (an area that I will now reference exclusively as “the killzone”).  There are traps, set ups, and an isolated rural area that, for some inexplicable reason, is set in the middle of BFE in what could be Romania, Hungary, or Serbia and where (if you’re interested) there may or may not be bears.  I don’t know why that’s important, but it was like a 10-minute block of dialogue, so there was probably a point other than creating a bit of humor when a bear walks across the trail behind our ragtag little band.

The cast was good, but a distraction in two cases.  I spent the ENTIRE movie wondering where I’d seen Toby Stephens and Laura Harris before.  It took me a trip to IMDB, but I finally have my answer, if you’re interested (scroll down if you’re not):  Toby Harris was the westernized face of the Korean bad guy in Die Another Day, and Laura Harris replaced Rebecca Gayheart on Dead Like Me, possibly in the wake of the latter’s unfortunate appearance in a home, um, adult film.  I could make a joke about the Noxema girl and dirt, but I won’t.  Really.

While this didn’t scare me, it had me mesmerized.  I liked that each victim dies in a different (and fairly vicious way).  I like the twist with the killer, because just when I thought everyone was safe… BAM!  But I was left with a couple of questions, which I thought the movie hinted at, but never came out and answered.  Why were these people being hunted?  I get the whole defense contractor thing, but why did this particular antagonist feel the need to set up a killzone and get rampagey?  Also, why did the killer speak Russian?  My year of Russian is more than a decade out of practice, but even I understood about 25% of what I heard the killer say.  I’ve heard Hungarian, Romanian, and Serbian spoken aloud, and nada, so I’m sure I’m not mistaking the language.

I have to say I didn’t love the politics here.   Movies that talk about the unethical practices of defense contractors always point the finger at (mostly) American and (some) UK companies.  No one seems to mention all the wonderful warlords, “freedom fighters,” and dictators that French, Russian, and Chinese weapon manufacturers have armed in the last couple of decades.  I for one would take their stance more seriously if it wasn’t slanted against (granted) the two largest suppliers of weapons, but those two actually have some standards about who they’ll supply… and the three latter sources don't seem to be all that picky about who they sell to.  Just sayin’.

Political rant ended, I’d recommend this for a bit of fun.  Another inventive killer from a UK source, which makes me think I should be watching British horror more often.

Day 361: Fargo (1996)

R, 1 hr. 37 min.  Directed by: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen.  Release Date: March 8, 1996.  DVD Release Date: June 24, 1997. 

I loved The Golden Girls when I was a kid, but no one did more harm to the credibility of the Minnesotan than Rose Nylund.  Fargo comes in at a distant second, picking up on every opportunity to stress that accent unique to people who live in the Midwest, but close to the Canada border, every opportunity to show emotional responses that were markedly different from those an American from elsewhere in the country might display, and no opportunity to display the folksy wisdom or even more folksy, stereotypical foolishness.  It couldn't be further from the truth of people who live in Minnesota, but if you believe Fargo, Brainerd and St. Olaf must be neighbors.

I remember how much notoriety this film got when it was first released.  Mostly, that notoriety was due to the wood chipper scene, but Frances McDormand's Oscar helped a little bit.  This is a decent movie, but I think it suffers a bit from overhyping.  I have to wonder what's so amazing about a completely inept man getting involved with only semi-inept thugs in a plot to kidnap his wife in order to get his hands on his father-in-law's money.  There are some unusual turns to the movie, but by and large, that's the gist of the story.  I'm also confused about the name of the movie.  Fargo is only mentioned for a few minutes, unless I missed something, because I wasn't wearing my contacts and I might have missed text if it was placed against a snow-covered background. 

The cast is what keeps this movie from being a bit ridiculous, and unintentionally so.  William H. Macy's portrayal of Jerry Lundegaard is so perfectly inept and silly that there are several parts of the movie that I'm astounded that he was able to come up with the plan to kidnap his wife on his own.  Frances McDormand's portrayal of the pregnant sheriff was very good, but odd.  My sister and her family live in Minneapolis, and I know the stereotypes about folks who live up near the northern border, and I'd never heard or seen anything like her. 

The dialogue manages to be quirky in the extreme, and includes some exchanges that were so unrealistic that I couldn't believe I heard them right.  For instance, if you were a frequenter of prostitutes, you probably wouldn't ask, "so you find this line of work interesting?"  There's nervous and then there's stupid, and that line was crossed.  It made me laugh, but not for good reasons.

There were a few things for me to complain about.  Primarily being asked to suspend my disbelief that a man could enter in to a conspiracy and then react so foolishly to the presence of a police officer asking questions, especially after he'd done such a poor job of covering up his paper trail.  Other than that, I got tired of a naked Steve Buschemi.  Watching him inflagrante on not one, but two occasions was way too many.

Day 360: Apocalypto (2006)

R, 2 hr. 18 min.  Directed by: Mel Gibson. Release Date: December 8, 2006.  DVD Release Date: May 22, 2007.

I have a hard time supporting anything Mel Gibson has done in the wake of his behavior the year this movie was released.  But, that being said, this was probably one of the top five movies I saw in 2006, regardless of whether you judge the film by technical or entertainment merits.  And, this was a pretty ballsy move for Gibson:  releasing a movie with dialogue completely in Yucatan Maya to a notoriously monolingual American audience.  I have to give the man credit, and his risk paid off, to the tune of something like 500% over budget.  

In September, this made an appearance in my list for my World In Film Blog-A-Thon as a great movie representing North America.  I chose this for a few reasons, but my primary reason is that the continent has a large pre-Colonial population that is largely ignored in film.  While there’s some debate regarding the historical accuracy and cultural authenticity of the movie, I think Gibson brought to life a people that vanished in the wake of Spain’s colonization of Mexico.  Gibson portrays the Maya at the end of their decline as a civilization, and allows the watcher to make a comparison to what happened to the Maya and what’s happening within a number of the most advanced civilizations in the world in the modern era.  We see the Maya desperately clinging to their way of life by destroying their environment, overcrowding their cities with the resulting disease and starvation, resorting to slavery in order to maintain their lifestyle, and over-consuming resources to the point where it almost appeared that the Spanish arrival in Mexico (circa Columbus’ fourth voyage) did them a favor.  Controversially, Gibson showed us a people who were at once lavish, beautiful, savage, and violent (although SOME of what we see was more common among the Aztec and Toltec peoples to the south, and archaeologists are still trying to determine how much cultural transfer occurred between these people).  

For me, this movie is incredibly satisfying academically.  I don’t necessarily learn something, but the situation makes me think.  However, this movie is anything but dull.  The “smart” portions of the film seem to mostly serve as a staging for what is likely the longest and best chase sequence ever put down.  Watching Jaguar Paw’s flight from the Mayan city back to his home forest is nerve wracking, tense, and filled with occasional low-grade frights.  It also highlights the physical prowess that humans have lost (on average) with the improvement of the technological base.  

I have a few minor problems with the passage of the story, such as my complete and utter disbelief that even a fully healthy human could outrun a jaguar, much less one that’s been injured and dragged to the brink of exhaustion.  I also have to wonder why the rain was such a big deal.  Couldn’t people float back then?  Now, this latter problem could be that I’m unaware of a danger that existed in the combination of factors that we watch Seven and Turtles Run go through.  But, I would have figured that the water wouldn’t be such a big deal.  

This is going to be the movie that makes me break my vow not to put any more money in to Mel Gibson’s pockets.  One of these days, this will be added to my DVD collection. 

Day 359: A Christmas Carol (2009)

PG, 1 hr. 36 min.  Directed by: Robert Zemeckis.  Release Date: November 6, 2009.  DVD Release Date: November 16, 2010.

I've tried to make choices on holidays that I think (in most cases) represent the theme of the day, if not the spirit, and this was a no-brainer.  If you're disappointed that I couldn't come up with anything more tongue in cheek, you're not alone.  I had hoped one of the Santa-based horror films would arrive before today, but no such luck.  I walked in to this movie expecting to hate it for a couple of reasons:  the first being that I don't think there's a better version of A Christmas Carol than the one with George C. Scott made in, I believe, the 1980s.  I actually go out and LOOK for that one when this holiday season begins.  The second is Mickey's Christmas Carol, which I've loved since I was a child and still enjoy.  The final reason is that I possess a deep and burning hatred for Jim Carrey and about 95% of his work.  What I was surprised to learn was that I not only enjoyed this movie immensely, but that visually, this movie seems to have taken many of its cues from my beloved version with George C. Scott.

I empathize with Scrooge.  Probably I shouldn't, but I understand that sometimes something terrible happens on a day or a time of year, and you begin to associate that whole event with the bad thing that happened.  About 15 years ago, and it seems strange that it was that long ago, my grandfather died on Christmas Eve, and now the whole Christmas season seems wrapped up with death.  I struggle to find any reason to celebrate, and I'm sure I make my family absolutely miserable, which isn't my intention, but there you go, if I can borrow an expression from my Southern friends.  I even liked Jim Carrey's Scrooge, although I'm not unsure there would be other actors who couldn't manage a better accent.  

The animation is beautiful and subtle, what you might expect of Disney's adaptation to such a classic.  In particular, I thought the first and third Spirits were very well done.  The first because of the play of light associated with his appearance, and the third because of the changing in texture of the Spirit's form when parts of its body worked in three dimensions instead of two.  With the exception of Carrey, the other voice actors manage better accents.  

As an adaptation from a book, this was faithful to the text, although I did feel a little cheated by the ending, which avoids a few scenes that I have found to be the core of Scrooge's transformation and the vehicle for at least one famous line from the original work by Charles Dickens.  I've read the original, although it's been more than a few years, and I couldn't spot anything I thought was a major deviation.  

My one concern is that this might be way too scary for small children.  Granted, there's no way to make something involving ghosts not be scary for small children, but other versions, notably Mickey's Christmas Carol, have endeavored to lighten up the horror aspects of the tale with humor.  There was little humor here, at least until after the visit from the third Spirit, but all the darkness and writhing ghost stuff stuck around.  There aren't many pieces of Disney animation that I'd term scary, but this is one of them.  So, I guess caveat parentis and all that.

Day 358: Shame (2011)

NC-17, 1 hr. 39 min.  Directed By:  Steve McQueen (III).  Release Date: Dec 2, 2011.

I'm going to be honest.  Shame attracted my attention for the same reason that Basic Instinct and Color of Night did.  Once people make a big enough deal out of something (particularly nudity or sexual content) I have to wonder why they're getting all fired up.  This time around, McQueen delivered an absolute ton of nudity and sexual content, but most of us will have seen more graphic scenes out there.  So, basically, I'm kind of left wondering why people thought this was something worth tittering over (no pun intended).  I suspect that it's because most of the nudity is Fassbender rather than his female costars.

What Shame did that I didn't expect was that it made me think a little.  At first, I expected that Fassbender's sexual addiction spiraling out of control was the shame.  We watch the man have more casual, clearly unprotected sex than any person after the 60s should be comfortable with having.  We watch him chase down women and we see him do things that even he clearly thinks are humiliating, but even that's not the titular shame... or so I think.  I'm thinking that the true shame is the sexually charged relationship between Fassbender's Brandon and his sister Sissy.  Both are clearly psychologically damaged by some trauma that was never discussed and together they form a twisted yin-yang in how they see relationships.  Brandon seeks sex without connection, and Sissy uses sex in a desperate bid to form connections, no matter how shallow.  When they're together, there's a lot of close talking, a lot of naked wrasslin, or long conversations held while one of them isn't dressed, and occasionally they share a bed.

While I found the story to be a little distasteful, I thought that the acting was powerful and intriguing.  I'm now going to be surprised if Fassbender doesn't get tapped as one of the Academy's Best Actor choices this year... although admittedly there's a remarkable lack of competition based on what I've seen this year.  But, I don't mean to detract from what is a truly great performance.  Brandon is a complicated character, and I believed Fassbender lost himself a bit in the role.  He's come a long way since Magneto.

I can appreciate this, and think it is a very good movie, but it isn't one I can enjoy.  I don't really feel like Brandon's spiraling out of control is enough conflict to keep the story interesting.  It doesn't impact his "other" life, and most of the drama uses Sissy as the eye of the storm.  The story is also depressing.  It makes me a little sad to see someone go through something like this, and there was no effort at levity to remove some of the melodrama from the film.  See it once, check it off your list, then move on to something more fun.

Day 357: Dog Soldiers (2002)

R, 1 hr. 44 min.   Directed by: Neil Marshall.  DVD Release Date: November 5, 2002.

Dog Soldiers came to my attention via one of the other film blogs I read on occasion.  I can’t for the life of me remember the blog, but I do remember that the blogger in question, who I don’t know but whose opinion I apparently value enough to add the movie to my Netflix queue, rated this as one of their top 5 (or maybe it was ten) werewolf movies of all time.  I agreed to add this in the wake of Wilderness, in which I realized that not only that there was such a thing as horror from the UK, but that it was really good.  

Personally, I don’t ask for much from a werewolf movie, because I’m generally left completely dead inside by the make-up job.  Basically, and I’m sure I’ve gone over this in the past, I want only these things:  (1) a decent werewolf mythology, (2) no telepathy, and (3) a little blood.  Dog Soldiers delivers all of that and then some.  Like Wilderness, the movie shows a good build of the shivers, but not so much that it feels dull, a problem that impacts classic British mystery.  The set up isn’t terrible, although I have to wonder why a government would send people prepared for something and then not equip them properly… okay, I guess that doesn’t surprise me in the wake of that whole body armor for Iraqi soldiers thing.  But in fantasy, that seems like something that shouldn’t happen.

This isn’t terribly scary, although there are a few moments that made me a little jumpy.  Granted, that’s not hard, since I’ve been jumping at the crocodile attack scene in Crocodile Dundee for more than 20 years.  If you have a more solidly ferrous constitution than I do, you may find this a little light in scares.  However, what it lacks in scares it more than makes up for in gunfire.  Action lovers won’t be disappointed here, and it’s not like anyone actually expects realism from an action film.  The sequences seen in the film are well within the capabilities of even a human in average physical condition, so hecklers won’t be kept too busy.

Well, I’m now three UK horror films down and I think I’ll be keeping up the pattern.  The more I watch, the more I like them.  It’s certainly a break from the run-of-the-mill, mass produced pulp coming from Hollywood studios.

Day 356: LOTR, The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

PG-13, 2 hr. 45 min.  Directed by: Peter Jackson.  Release Date: December 19, 2001.  DVD Release Date: August 6, 2002. 

In the world of British fiction, it is possible to lose yourself in the meaningless words that separate the outer cover of a book from the first action of consequence of the story.  The Fellowship of the Ring drives that point home, then proceeds to beat you over the head with the book for something close to an hour before anything of any real significance occurs.  It's a problem for someone with my limited attention span, but there are folks out there who think this is pretty close to the Bible.

When this movie had stopped being rumor and started being truth, I was excited.  When I learned the date of its opening night, I made plans to see it, and to this day, Fellowship remains the only movie I've ever seen where I had to change my plans because tickets were sold out, even in the little town of Monterey, California.  When I finally got in to the theater, I was stoked.

And then, it happened.  There was one seat between me and the aisle.  The person who sat in that seat was, of course, of the basement troll variety.  Unshaven cheeks were slightly hidden by the wool cloak.  Yes, I said cloak.  Forest green, as I recall, although it could have been any dark color of the "forest" milieu.  The hood was up, making him look a little like the Unabomber.  When he started whispering the dialogue before it was spoken, I checked to make sure my Coke wasn't spiked with something unpleasant.  When it was clear that I wasn't in full-shroom, my temples started to pound.  That idiot ruined this movie for me.  I don't have any doubt.

In the very basest of terms, I find this movie painfully slow and tedious, filled with worthless prose before something of interest FINALLY happens.  It feels like there's a forever spent plodding through the relationships forged in the fellowship and the "history" of Middle Earth.  Even today, I thought I should have found it of interest, but somehow, I did not.  Even the scenes designed to cause tension didn't get the job done.  I've tried to watch it several times in the years between then and today, but I've always had to do it piecemeal, requiring breaks to fight my wandering attention.

That being said, I get why this was Best Picture worthy.  It redefined fantasy in the way that Avatar redefined science fiction.  It's camera work and settings were stunning, even if I found the constant sweeping views to be a bit overdone after the second full hour of them.  Technically, I have few reasons to complain about this movie.  It's the slow, plodding British-style storytelling that drives me to distraction.  In my world, the Hobbits would be throwing the occasional pie at the Ringwraiths, or maybe flashing their junk at them as they fled.  The heroes aren't nearly scrappy enough for my sensibilities.  That's probably the reason I've never been able to get farther than 50 pages in to the book.

Day 355: Sherlock Holmes - Game of Shadows (2011)

PG-13, 2 hr. 8 min. Directed By Guy Ritchie.  Release Date:  Dec 16, 2011.

The good news is that no matter how you look at it, today's movie was MUCH better than yesterday, and it would have been, no matter how bad this one was.  I was hesitant to go see this, not only because of how I've tended to feel about any movies featuring Sherlock Holmes, but because I was only lukewarm on the initial film, and as we know, subsequent movies in a series tend to get worse, not better.

The Sherlock Holmes movies, and I mean, even the ones from the 40s (I think) with Basil Rathbone, have had sort of a love-hate issue for me.  I love Arthur Conan Doyle's tales in a way that I don't love much else.  They attracted me when I was young, probably just before my age hit double digits, and I still find them entertaining and engrossing today.

I love the character and the discussion of deduction in the practice of solving crimes.  I love the classic feel of the detective story that inevitably unfolds around (sorry, Batman) the greatest detective and his loyal friend.  But, I tend to hate the way that the movies have to aggrandize his small works.  Sherlock Holmes was a VERY local kind of guy.  Sometimes he'd work on something that might prevent war, or save London from being overrun with crime, but this was a guy who, more like than not, was handling crimes or even oddities that would be frequently dismissed by the Metropolitan police.  Holmes would not be fighting Nazis, since he would have been dead around the time the Nazi movement started.  He would not be locking wits with Dr. Strange, or whoever Mark Strong was supposed to be.  He certainly wouldn't be actively involved in the machinations of a man whose machinations were for world domination.                                                                                                                                                   

However, I recognized the inspiration for this movie immediately:  The Final Problem, the Holmes story that Conan Doyle used to exit stage left.  But like JK Rowling, Conan Doyle would not be left alone, and later came out with Hound of the Baskervilles.  So anyway, this was all about the final confrontation between James Moriarty and Sherlock Holmes.  The film writers took gross liberties with the basic premise, and expanded Moriarty's reach to the entire world.  They added plot points that I think the story would have been better left without, such as the entire gypsy involvement, and decided to make Watson's wedding a concurrent event, rather than something which had been in order for several years when this story was told, and these two men were beginning to grow apart.  I'm trying to avoid the entanglement of book with film, but I can't this time around.  Too many liberties and too much creative license was used to come up with this story, and they didn't even really bother to change the ending.

What saves Game of Shadows from being an epic disaster for me is the cast.  Law and Downey, Jr are pretty much great together.  They bring a sort of flippant buddy feel to the movie, which, while only vaguely in the spirit of the classic mystery stories, I don't find as unappealing as some of the other things that go down.

There's a lot of internet talk about how Naomi Rapace steals the show... but I couldn't figure that out.  I think a lot of the critics are still wrapped up in her Girl Who... performances.  I found her character to be poorly defined (as something other than a blatant plot driver) and unfocused and her performance had similar qualities.  Don't even get me started on her accents, which didn't even come close to matching her origin story. 

My only other complaint lies in the absurdity of all the explosions, the abundance of portal automatic weaponry (given that the "gatling" style weapons of the day would have been ginormous), the 20th century style cannons, and the fact that it all appeared in a Sherlock Holmes movie rather than a movie set during WWI or II.

Day 354: Eight Crazy Nights (2002)

PG-13, 1 hr. 16 min.  Directed by: Seth Kearsley.  Release Date: November 27, 2002.  DVD Release Date: November 4, 2003.

I wanted to wish my readers a happy Hannukah, for those who will start celebrating (I think) this evening.  Unfortunately, the only movie I could find that was even moderately Hannukah-themed was this demented piece of crap.  So, please don't take this as anything other than a desperate attempt to match my choice of movies with the date.  If you have suggestions for a decent Hannukah-themed movie for me to watch, I'll keep it in mind for next year.

Adam Sandler's a funny guy, and you'd never know it from this movie.  I own this, but I'd like to say up front that I picked it up in a Sandler bulk set offer.  That's not really an excuse, but I picked up two good Sandler movies and two crappy Sandler movies for around $25, which isn't a terrible deal.  I also have to say that I spent a lot of nights running this movie when I was struggling to sleep and needed something to kind of run my brain into the ground so that I could eventually fall asleep.  It's a rare night when I don't fall asleep with the sleep timer on my television, but it is rare that I use a DVD to do that job instead of Adult Swim.

I've had the discussion about Sandler's journey for self-discovery many times over the course of this blog.  Since he hit his mid-30s, he seems to have floundered, waffling between the adolescent humor that made him famous and his receding hair line.  Eight Crazy Nights is the mean-spirited result of Sandler falling off the raunch comedy wagon.

I've heard complaints about the animation, which I actually thought was beautiful.  It wasn't Disney, or even Don Bluth, but it was attractive and ranks higher up in the artistic meter than say, South Park.  It's really the subject matter which leaves much to be desired.  There's no reason why a man as old as Adam Sandler was in 2002 should be making a living on gross-out and poop jokes.  There's no reason why he had to take a unique holiday event and turn it in to a tragedy.  This could have been a really good way to make a mainstream Hannukah movie, and instead we have a movie that seems to ridicule the holiday season rather than celebrate it.  I don't even like the holidays and I think that's cheap.

There are a few sincere funny moments in the movie, and eventually Sandler's character learns his lessons and repents his misdeeds, but by then, if you've let your seven and five year olds watch the movie because you weren't paying attention, the damage has been done. 

Day 353: The Wedding Singer (1997)

PG-13, 1 hr. 36 min.  Directed by: Frank Coraci.  Release Date: June 1, 1997.  DVD Release Date: August 5, 1998.

There are lots of things I love about this movie.  I love the 80s setting and soundtrack.  They never fail to convince me that I'm unfortunate not to be about ten years older than I am.  I would have loved to have come of age in the mid-80s, would have loved to have gone on my first dates to John Hughes movies, would have loved to have gone through a punk phase or something.  It would have been a great time to be in my teens or early twenties, and the more movies I watch that are set in that period, the more convinced I am to that simple truth.

This isn't a complicated or intelligently written story.  It's a very simple romantic comedy that leans (strangely for an Adam Sandler movie) a bit more towards the feminine side of the audience than the masculine.  It's a bit sickly sweet for my taste, but hey, I'm not the only person who was supposed to see this.  Regardless, the whole story makes me laugh.  Some of the laughs are for the material in the film, and some are nostalgic, with me laughing at things I remember from when I was a kid and those things were brand new.

I have a couple complaints about how closely this sticks to the formula set by It Happened One Night, which I believe was the first romantic comedy in film, although I suspect not the first romantic comedy ever.  Two people are thrown randomly together and while the audience gets that they're made for each, the leading couple spends the better part of 100 minutes going through contrived motions with the intentions to create a rift between the two parties, or to scheme to make it so the other party is actually interested in a relationship.  But, until 500 Days of Summer, I don't think I've seen a single romantic comedy that doesn't follow that explicit pattern; even then, the only major change is a gender role reversal.

By my usual qualifications for what makes a "good" movie, this meets the grade.  It's always fun to watch, it makes me laugh and/or smile, and I rarely go more than a few months without wanting to watch it again.  I know people who have the same reaction to chocolate.

Day 352: Gone With the Wind (1939)

G, 3 hr. 42 min.  Directed by: George Cukor, Sam Wood, Victor Fleming.  Release Date: December 15, 1939.  DVD Release Date: March 7, 2000.

I waited until about two years ago to see it for the first time.  I had heard so much about the film and I wanted that near-universal raving to dim a bit so that it wouldn't taint my thoughts.  While watching this today, I noticed a good many of the same things about the movie that I'd caught originally.

Scarlet O'Hara is a raging psychopath.  There, I've said it.  At no turn do we watch the heroine of this piece ever put her own welfare at risk for the welfare of another, even those people she claims to love... or at least tolerate.  More than once in the truly epic run time of the film, we actively see her harm people who MIGHT get in her way and with routine occurrence we see her go off on people who actively plan to do damage to her or her interests.  There seems to be a complete lack of ability to negotiate or discuss; there's merely the need to do harm, although that harm is rarely physical.

I also think that any movie that comes with its own, built-in intermission, needs to spend more time in the editing room.  Granted, the book this was adapted from is crazy long, but three and a half hours is borderline ridiculous.  I have to say that I'm not always consciously aware of time passing when I watch this, but about every hour or so I notice that I've been involved in the film for what amounts to an eternity.

Despite the quirky, bordering on insane heroine, and the epic run time, there is a lot of good to come from this movie.  The story is epic, spanning years and major (actual) events in American history.  It covers a lot of social and quasi-historical ground, touching topics that few other films of its day would have touched with a ten-foot pole.  The cast is wonderful, as I would have expected.  Clark Gable and Vivian Leigh have this barely suppressed, smoldering sort of chemistry, so much so that I have to wonder if their on screen performance was even a little shocking to polite society of the day... not that I have much regard for polite society, but I do LOVE when people thumb their nose at it.

This is one of those movies that everyone should watch at least once.  I suggest in segments, because I know I struggle to get through it in one viewing each and every time I make the attempt.  Cinephiles in particular should watch this, because Gone With the Wind set the bar for movies for decades to come.

Day 351: Mission Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)

PG-13, 2 hr. 13 min.  Directed By Brad Bird.  Release Date:  December 16, 2011.

I went in to this with some pretty high hopes:  while I've never seen an episode of the Mission Impossible television series that inspired this and the previous three installments in the franchise, I love the concept.  It's a bit smarter than Bond's shoot at everything, assess the situation, and if something doesn't compute, shoot some more approach to espionage.  Don't get me wrong, I love me some Bond, but I love these guys' use and reliance upon crazy high technology (some of which is clearly not realistic) in order to solve problems and catch the villain bent on global destruction, or whatever the motive is.  What I like even more than the use of technology is that the vast majority of what we see here is more or less believable, which is an increasing problem with the Bond series, with its invisible cars, sonic death rings, and whatever else plugs up the holes in their story lines.

I have to say I really dug this.  It's been a long time since I've really enjoyed a Tom Cruise movie, and I still have my complaint that he's WAY too old to be taking this kind of abuse, but Ghost Protocol packs a techno-action punch that its series predecessors completely lacked.  I generally liked the locations for this, including the Burj in Dubail.  Linguistic note:  saying Burj Tower is a bit like saying Sahara Desert, in that the one means the other once you jump from Arabic to English.  Whether it's spelled Berj or Burj (and I saw it in this movie both ways) following it with Tower is redundant.

Ghost Protocol also addresses some of my complaints from MI:III, namely, that Cruise shouldn't have been able to walk away from half his stunts, regardless of his physical conditioning.  The man must be pushing 50, and well, it shows.  It's been a long time since Risky Business and All The Right Moves, and I don't care how much he pays someone to aerobicize his ass, he isn't walking away from a close range explosion.  He doesn't here, and frequently shows signs that Ethan Hunt is mortal flesh and bone.

Another example of the learning curve at work is that THIS installment of the series makes referent to the prior one, and acknowledges that audience might care about what happened to the characters in between the end of the prior film and the start of this one.  We learn, with some agonizing slowness, what happens to Ethan and his wife, who was endangered in MI:III.  I would still like to know what happened to Thandie Newton from MI:II, and also where the hell Anthony Hopkins skipped off to, but apparently that's just me.

And finally, I really like our four MI agents together.  Simon Pegg (and occasionally Cruise) bring some nice comedic touches to the forefront, and keeps the movie from feeling like it takes itself too seriously.   I'm excited that the indicators are that we'll be seeing more of these movies in the future.  Also, the trailer bonanza in front of this movie is worth getting in early for:  Dark Knight Rises, the new GI Joe, and well, I've already forgotten the other movies previewed, but I'm looking forward to next summer already.

Day 350: Terminator (1984)

R, 1 hr. 48 min.  Directed by: James Cameron.  Release Date: October 26, 1984.  DVD Release Date: September 3, 1997.

It's amazing how the right film can push people in to the spotlight.  It's even more amazing that this particular movie served as the stardom vehicle for two people:  James Cameron and the Governator, who is probably on the downwards portion of his Lohan-esque spiral of shame and career devastation.  This could just be me, but it's a bit weird to see Schwartzenegger so young.  If you're like me, you're used to him wearing what I'll call his "Republican body," which I'm totally stealing from one of the Richard Nixon's head episodes of Futurama.    

When you look at the Terminators involved in this movie, it's interesting to note that, to the best of my knowledge of the series, no "bad" Terminator has ever been physically similar to Arnold Schwatzenegger, who is massive and intimidating.  The trend has been to put him against men (and of course, the one woman) who are in decent shape, but who probably couldn't be physically intimidating if they tried.  That physical dichotomy, because it's a pattern, is interesting, and I would love to see why they chose to do that, as part of that dichotomy is that Schwartzenegger's Terminator is generally not the better model.  Yesterday, I was participating in a LAMBcast with a fellow LAMB blogger who discusses issues of gender and feminism in film, and this might be something she's picked up on as well... although, she could have reacted to these movies in the same way Arianna Huffington did.

Cameron keeps up a fairly pulse-pounding pace throughout the film, and not for the first time in his career set the new bar for an entire genre.  Few movies made in the 1980s impacted the action film like Terminator did, as you can tell by the number of films through the 80s and 90s that tried to go for the same vibe. 

The story is... simply complex.  There's a lot of time traveling and P-38 explosive space modulators involved, but the idea is simple:  return to the past to ensure that one human, the one who leads the human resistance against the machines, is never born.  It's tried and true, and isn't original in and of itself, but this particular take on the idea isn't anything I've seen before.  Well, I haven't seen the same ideas used in a movie that predates Terminator, but I'd say there's plenty of room for comparison between Terminator and The Matrix.

Terminator is certainly a movie to see.  I've seen these all out of order, chronologically speaking:  T3 was first, followed by Judgment Day, then Salvation, which I thought was a borderline travesty, despite it's high-end cast and nifty special effects.  I managed to save the first for last, although I would say it's not the best in the series.  I still like T3 the best.

Day 349: 8 Mile (2003)

R, 1 hr. 50 min.  Directed by: Curtis Hanson.  Release Date: November 8, 2002. DVD Release Date: March 18, 2003

It makes me a bit of a traitor to my generation to say this, but I didn't think that much of this movie.  There's a certain grittiness to the film that I find appealing, and from what little I know of Detroit, there's a more than reasonable amount of realism in how this film portrays life for the people who live on edges of society within the "D."  That's the part I really enjoyed.  I think that as a kind of anthropological study this movie does better than as some sort of homage to hip hop.

The story is a bit of a throwaway here.  I suspect most of this movie's budget went into casting, particularly the big three:  Eminem, Basinger, Murphy.  They barely spared a moment on actually putting together the story line.  There's a heavy dependency on cliche, the whole story of the white guy trying to break into the hip hop business in a place where white guys are rarer than the unicorn.  The underdog rising to victory, blah blah.  By the end of the movie, I was more than a little ready for the trite story telling to be at an end.

This is a bit of a rarity for me.  I don't like this movie, but I think the cast is outstanding.  Eminem, whom I tend to ignore when he appears in the news during one of his blatant periods of fame-whoring, puts on a very good performance.  The story vaguely begs the question as to the legitimacy of whether this is acting for him, or, as I tend to think, he's basically being himself on stage, living out his own life virtually through the camera's eye.  Certainly, there are elements of his own life's story wrapped in this, but I'm not sure whether or not 8 Mile was intended to be a bio-pic or if the connection was made because of the similarities.

Eminem wasn't the only outstanding performer in this movie.  I'm a Brittney Murphy fan, but this really is one of her better performances.  Kim Basinger, who I rarely like, also puts on a decent face playing Eminem's mother (although she goes through the whole movie looking like she hates the idea of playing the mother of some guy in his 20s).  

I'd mostly watch this if I was an Eminem fan, which I'm not, technically.  But, there are several folks here giving worthy performances, so you won't be amiss to keep your ear peeled while you do something productive.

Oh, I also got the link for my latest podcast appearance.  You can find me here.  http://largeassmovieblogs.blogspot.com/2011/12/lambcast-95-holiday-films.html

Day 348: The Virgin Suicides (2000)

R, 1 hr. 37 min.  Directed by: Sofia Coppola.  Release Date: April 21, 2000.  DVD Release Date: December 19, 2000.

There was something unsettling about this movie.  It was an exploration of the causes and ramifications of teen suicide, but the setting was as idyllic a one as you could hope for... which after a bit of retrospection was probably the point.  I’ve seen movies where a scene was lightened up by such an arrangement before.  Inglorious Basterds had more than a few like that, but I’ve never seen an entire movie arranged like that.  It wasn't bad, just vaguely unpleasant throughout the film.  If the film (and the book's) point were aimed at reminding s that something like this could happen anywhere, then I think they easily made their point. 

The cast helped with that odd dichotomy of subject and setting.  Popular young actors were cast as frequently as possible, and there was nothing funnier than watching Josh Hartnett run around in what looked like a reddish-purple crushed velvet suit. I actually laugh every time he awkwardly struts in that jacket during the school dance scenes.  They brought something fresh and made the ending a bit more horrible than maybe it might have been given the sunny skies and pastel colors that swarm around the camera.  James Woods as the quirky dad is likely to be one of my new favorite characters.  You’d never imagine the crazy stuff going on at the home of that crazy teacher who will spend five minutes talking to plants on a window sill.

I have a few complaints about how the story flowed… or how it didn’t.  In some ways, I thought this was an absolute mess.  I’m trying to figure out how, even in the 60s, or maybe especially because it was set in the 60s, neighbors wouldn’t have banded together to save these girls from their insane parents.  I’m not sure how there couldn’t have been enough talk to prevent what happened. I suspect I just don't understand a time where parenting was a private concern... where we, as a people, felt free to tell people how they should (or shouldn't) be raising their children so long as everything was taking place inside the family home.  But it didn't sit right.  People were supposed to be kinder back then, more supportive.  What we witness in this film is really people at their worst.

Regardless, I thought this was an interesting portrayal of life in suburban America back in the day.  The separation of the situation from anything in my experience made this an easy way to kill 90 minutes, even if I occasionally felt like the goal of the film was to make my life a little more surreal.

Day 347: Harry & The Hendersons (1987)

PG, 1 hr. 51 min.  Directed by: William Dear.  Release Date: June 5, 1987.  DVD Release Date: April 24, 2007.

If you’d asked me circa 1987, I probably would have told you that this was one of my favorite movies, which would have been true.  There’s a lot about this movie that would have appealed to me as a 10-year-old: it’s adventurous without being over the top, there’s a bit of magic (not literal magic, but figurative), the story involved a little boy (which was pretty much a requirement back in the day), and it was rated in a way that meant I could watch it.  My mother was notorious for letting ratings dictate my movie watching habits as opposed to determining which movies were rated higher than PG for reasons that could have been avoided through the advent of home video.  Her practice has scarred me for life, and explains why there are so many iconic movies from the 1980s that I have not seen to this day.

From the perspective of the ten year old, there’s not much you can’t like.  It’s funny, the characters feel like people you might actually know, and the story is simple to follow, even if your attention tends to wander.  It’s hard not to like the magic that is Harry in much the same reason it was hard to dislike the magic that was ET.  These are odd things that are humanized through their experiences on film.  Is the movie a little scary from this perspective?  Totally.  There’s a lot of lurking in the dark, and talk of guns, and killing things (animals and the occasional sasquatch).  If you’re working with your kids on reading, this might be a way to drum up some interest… I’m not sure what kind of quality sasquatch books are out there, but it could be easy to start with the bad ones and branch out into other North American legends like Paul Bunyan (who I loved as a kid) or Johnny Appleseed.  From there it’s a pretty short jump to Tom Sawyer and then you’re totally in.  Cara and Mike, if one of you reads this, I remember our discussion of movies that are either based on kids’ fiction or could lead to helping your little guys read it… so when I saw this on Netflix, I kind of thought of the two of you in specific.

Watching this again as an adult kind of took the shine off my dream a little, and not in a way that I liked.  What used to be fascinating and entertaining was a little dull now.  It wasn’t cute anymore.  There are still a bunch of funny moments, but the characters feel a bit too cookie-cutter and the situation is highly unbelievable.  I guess I’m so old now that it’s hard to suspend my disbelief about a sasquatch, which was a little depressing when I brought the realization into the cold light of day. I wish Lanie Kazan’s part in this was longer.  I always love her cameo roles… but then, if her role was longer, it wouldn’t be a cameo.  

If you haven’t seen this before, I’d check it out.  It’s worth seeing just so you can say you have.  If you have kids in tow that are circling around the double digits, this would be something they would probably love.  It might be a little scary for the younger kids, and there are a few off-color words (most of them said by the little boy), but I don’t think it’s anything excessive.  If you, like me, seem to suffering from a lack of imagination and soul these days, for whatever reason, I’m going to suggest you look elsewhere.

Now I’m off to wallow in my disappointment.  I was SO excited when this arrived in my mailbox.

Day 346: Melancholia (2011)

R, 2 hr. 15 min.  Directed By:  Lars von Trier.  Release Date:  Nov 11, 2011

I saw this on Amazon Prime, since it's not playing anywhere near my North Dallas home.  It's being kicked around as the topic of discussion for a future episode of the LAMBcast that I'll be on.  There are lots of people who are flipping out about this movie, but for the life of me, I can't figure out why.

Well, that's not totally true.  Kirsten Dunst, the reigning queen of Hollywood's "hot body, weird face" competition, is... powerful, and much better in this role than I ever would have given her credit for.  I'm not ready to start discussing her as an Oscar hopeful, but if she wins Best Actress, I'm going to lump her in with Halle Berry (yes, that's a boob joke).  To be fair, it's not even JUST Kirsten Dunst that is good.  The whole cast performs these amazingly human, amazingly quirky, amazingly flawed characters as if they're extensions of the actors' own personalities.  The cinematography is stunning.  There's no better word.  I absolutely LOVED how they created Melancholia both as a planet in its own right and before that as an event in the night sky.

But, and we finally come to the crux of the problem, I didn't like a single character.  Justine is nucking futs, and we have no back story to explain the process of her illness.  Michael is clearly a codependent puss.  Claire is alternately controlling, weak-willed, and a coward.  John is a miser.  The parents are a train wreck.  Tim is apparently too dumb to realize that he's basically been sexually assaulted, and then is still dumb enough to assume that because the sex was good for HIM that it was also good for her.  Actually, he at least made me laugh, so he gets a few points.

The story left me with questions that had no answers, and not in that, "oh, you can interpret as you want to" kind of way, but in that, "the story writers are hoping you don't notice this massive black hole that's kind of central to our premise"  way.  These characters have CLEARLY defined roles and serve as plot devices in fairly obvious and leading ways, but there's nothing to discuss what in exactly the hell happens between Justine and Michael, what caused the psychodrama in the early phases, and why real scientists would consider that a planet's "orbit" might go all funhouse mirror.  I know there are "irregular" orbits, but this isn't a Looney Tunes episode.

My other problems centralized around Keifer Sutherland's excessive use of the "GD" term (left out to satisfy those of you more pious than I) and why the first 10 minutes of the film was basically a Calvin Klein Obsession commercial without a half naked man in it.  That whole thing gave this odd, vaguely put upon feeling... like when I'm watching pretentious crap that's trying to pass itself off as not-pretentious "mind expanding" ART.  I'm thinking of you, The Fountain.  I'm also trying to figure out how Alexander Skarsgard got such central billing with such a tiny ass part?  I'm guessing that's to lure in the big True Blood money.  Fans of that show will doubtless be shocked to see Skarsgard kissing (wait for it)... a GIRL!  But seriously... why does his name feature so prominently?  And, having only seen True Blood once, I didn't know who he was until the closing credits.

On a side note -- I've decided that if I have to pay $79 annually for the Amazon Prime service, I resent paying $7 bucks to rent a movie for 48 hours.  I haven't replaced my Netflix streaming account yet, but I know Amazon Prime won't be that replacement. 

Day 345: Black Snake Moan (2007)

R, 1 hr. 56 min.  Directed by: Craig Brewer.  Release Date: March 2, 2007.  DVD Release Date: June 26, 2007.

This movie came up in a conversation I had with a classmate awhile back… like six months or so back.  I’d seen this, and knew exactly what kind of movie this was, so I was surprised that she would have seen it.  Mostly when the two of us talk about movies, Heather has a wealth of knowledge about new documentaries that are out.  We’re not usually talking about movies where one of the characters spends two-thirds of the movie in a state of undress.

In case you missed the memo when she did The Opposite of Sex, Wednesday Addams is all grown up and she’s prepared to fully smack us across the face with that fact.  I like Christina Ricci, and I think this may be a career making role for her.  It’s the first time (to my knowledge) that we’ve seen her suffer for her art, it’s the first time I’ve seen her lose herself in a role because that’s how it had to be done.  And, if you can do a career-making performance, you could find a worse partner than Samuel L. Jackson.

If I have a problem with this movie, it’s Justin Timberlake.  I just flat out have not seen him do anything I’ve liked.  It’s possible that it’s holdover from my distaste for his boy band days, but it’s also just possible that I think he sucks out loud.  I hated his character and was thrilled that he wasn’t around the entire movie to drag things down.

But, what makes up for Justin Timberlake is the hillbilly wedding scene, even though he’s in it.  You take a couple where the bride has (recently) cheated on the groom… with the BEST MAN and you have them get married behind a dilapidated trailer with the idea that marriage will solve all their problems.  Now, I'm not married, and I doubt I'll get married at this point in my life, but I'm thinking that marriage doesn't actually solve anyone's problems.  But, I'm also thinking Prince William should have considered this when he staged that event to show off how he’s starting to age like his father.

Day 344: Frailty (2002)

R, 1 hr. 39 min.  Directed by: Bill Paxton.  Release Date: April 12, 2002.  DVD Release Date: September 17, 2002.

Occasionally, I'll run across a film that you almost have to separate between what you see and what you hear.  Frailty was such a film.  I saw this in theaters, because back then I still thought that Matthew McConaughey had something to offer in the wake of Dazed and Confused.  I didn't expect a whole lot, but I got something intriguing that was repeated when I watched this movie today.  There are times in the film where I caught my hackles, by which I mean the hair on the back of my neck, rising, but what I was seeing didn't quite elicit the response.  I actually watched this twice today, back to back, to see if I could figure out what caused the reaction.  It wasn't until I answered a phone call and stopped actually watching the movie to realize what it was.  The music was the key to my reaction.  The same music that appears frequently throughout the course of the film, but never when something that should be scary is happening.

I've said before (and gotten into long debates with a few of you) that the spatter-fest is generally less frightening than a movie that uses mood lighting and sound effects well.  By creating a mood that inspired fear, even when frightening things weren't on the screen, Frailty manages to be... not frightening, but it certainly had me nervous, when it might otherwise have been a fairly dry movie about a serial killer who may (or may not) have been doing the work of God.  

The story is interesting, and I like that it leaves itself open for interpretation.  Were the male members of the Meiks family predisposed to a certain chemical imbalance or physical defect that made them see and do these things?   A bit more disturbing thought was that they were supported in these rather fiendish activities by a higher power.  After I finished watching this for the second time, I gave it some thought while I ran errands and such today.  Based on what we saw in the movie, it really could have worked out no matter which explanation was used, although I think the ending strongly supports one explanation over the other.

I give Matthew McConaughey a lot of crap.  I tend to use him as the penultimate example of "actors" who couldn't act their way out of a wet paper sack but get roles because of what they look like.  Because of that, I'm going to give him credit.  His part is the lead, but due to the narration of events, he probably doesn't get the screen time that the characters being narrated get.  Even still, the man's really good in this role.  I don't know that he's acting so much, because the confident swagger and grin, and the good old boy mentality that are his personal trademarks are part of his personality, not part of his character's per se.  But he was really enjoyable.

If you're looking for something subtle and spooky, hearkening back to the old classic suspense thrillers, this is worth a watch.

Day 343: Back To School (1986)

PG-13, 1 hr. 36 min.  Directed by: Alan Metter.  Release Date: June 13, 1986.  DVD Release Date: June 26, 2003. 

I actually saw this for the first time the year that Rodney Dangerfield died, which must have been like a decade ago.  I had seen a few of his movies before, like the one he does with Jonathan Brandis where he makes Brandis cross dress in order to take a soccer team to regional championships or something.  It might be called Ladybugs, but I’m also willing to believe that I could just be making that up.  Sometimes that kind of shit just happens to me.  I'd call it old age, but it's nothing new.

I’m not a huge Dangerfield fan, but this is really him at his best.  90 minutes of him running around with one liners like “a body like mine could be donated to science fiction,” and looking like he’s completely out of his gourd.  I suspect it’s just the way he looks, because he’s one of the few people who has been on the big screen in my life time that isn’t there solely because of his looks.  But, Dangerfield is accompanied by a crazy, ensemble cast… some of whom actual power what is basically a mediocre movie to its inevitable (and apparent) conclusion. 

Sam Kennison has a two scene cameo that’s awesome; his character reminds me of a professor I had guest lecture once during a class called Contemporary World Issues I, in which he proceeded to ramble, check himself out in the window, and intermittently scream at the class in Russian.  

Unsurprisingly, I spent the rest of my college career avoiding that guy like he was plague ridden, but I fully admit he was funny to watch happen to other people. 

Robert Downey Jr. was incredibly funny in this movie, and it was the kind of part that I don’t think I’ve seen him in before, by which I mean funny.  For the geeks reading this, you may recognize a very young Terry Farrell in a small part.  I finally figured out who she was, but it took me better than half the movie.  No, I'm not telling you where I know her from.  That would ruin the surprise.

If you, like me, are story-driven in your zeal for movies, this is lacking.  Back To School feels a little bit like every college movie ever had a baby with those body-switching movies where old guys get warped into the bodies of their sons or grandsons.  In some ways, it feels like half of Rodney Dangerfield’s other movies, but I’ve enjoyed those that I’ve seen.  It’s good for a few laughs, and it’s light-hearted enough that even if you don’t think it’s hysterical, it’s still a decent way to kill some time.