My mind's been acting kinda weird lately.
Okay, then. I've been on vacation for the past week and while I was away I watched a bunch of movies (surprise!), nearly doubling the number I've seen in theaters that were released this year. Here's the rundown on the ones I saw and what I thought of them:
First out of the gate was Moon, which was directed by Duncan Jones, who also came up with the story upon which Nathan Parker's screenplay was based. Since Jones is the son of David Bowie (his original given name was Zowie -- can't imagine why he changed it), it only seems natural that he would pick such an out-of-this-world premise for his feature film debut: Sam Rockwell plays a technician nearing the end of his three-year haul harvesting Helium-3 (a previously untapped source of energy) on the far side of the moon. It's a one-man operation, though, so Rockwell's starting to get a little punchy, even with the reassuring companionship of the outpost's computer GERTY, which is voiced by Kevin Spacey and comes equipped with a series of situation-appropriate emoticons. To reveal more about the story would require me to give away some surprising developments, but I will say that the attention to detail on the sets and costumes is stunning. (Rockwell's space suit, in particular, really looks like it's been lived in.) For that reason alone, it's worth seeking out on the big screen (and it just expanded to 247 screens last weekend, so you have a better than average chance of finding it).
In comparison, anybody who wants to see Brüno -- Sacha Baron Cohen's latest assault on Middle American values and prejudices -- should have no problem locating it on any of a number of screens in their vicinity. Directed by Larry Charles, who previously helmed Borat as well as the Bill Maher documentary Religulous, Brüno takes Baron Cohen's character -- a flamboyantly gay Austrian fashionista who will be familiar to viewers of Da Ali G Show -- out of the European fashion world and transplants him to America, where he seeks fame at any cost with the aid of his faithful assistant Lutz (Swedish actor Gustaf Hammarsten), who has an enormous crush on Brüno despite the fact that he barely knows Lutz exists. After a shaky start in Hollywood, where Brüno's misadventures include being the most disruptive extra the show Medium has ever seen and pitching a celebrity interview show with more exposed penises than the network's focus group could comfortably handle, he tries his hand at resolving the tension in the Middle East before returning to the States with an African baby in tow, which leads to a hilarious sequence where he interviews parents who will agree to just about anything if it means their toddler will get a modeling job.
Brüno's detractors may complain that it hews a little too closely to the template established by Borat, but what ultimately matters with a film like this is not how the story develops, but rather what kinds of reactions Baron Cohen is able to elicit from unsuspecting participants along the way. (I'm sure when Ron Paul agreed to an interview he wasn't expecting Brüno to start coming on to him, nor did Paula Abdul anticipate being asked to use a Mexican day laborer as furniture.) The film really hits its stride when Brüno tries to go straight, engaging in such hetero-centric activities as joining the National Guard, going hunting with some rednecks and attending a swinger's party (where he can't seem to keep his hands off the guys). Whether his antics will inspire any homophobes to alter their attitudes is an open question, but at least the rest of us get to have a good laugh.
Having spent the better part of the weekend helping to run the Cherry Hill Experiment, during which we showed such awful movies as Star Odyssey (a cheap Italian space opera from 1979), the tortoise-paced Creation of the Humanoids (no wonder Andy Warhol considered it his favorite movie), Collision Course (with oodles of offhand racism courtesy of mismatched cops Jay Leno and Pat Morita) and Fair Game (which was shown as part of our Night on Baldwin Mountain), I chose to unwind Sunday night with one of the free movies available on FEARnet On Demand. Unfortunately the selection wasn't too great because the only thing I was even vaguely interested in was 2001 Maniacs, the 2005 remake of Herschell Gordon Lewis's Two Thousand Maniacs!. (I guess they managed to unearth an extra maniac during the intervening 41 years.)
Co-written by director Tim Sullivan (who was born the same year Lewis's original film was released) and Chris Kobin (who is writing the proposed sequel -- creatively titled 2001 Maniacs: The Sequel -- with him), 2001 Maniacs features a trio of collegiate cut-ups on spring break (who ignore professor Peter Stormare's warning about learning from history), a threesome they run into on the road, and a black motorcyclist and his Asian girlfriend, all of whom wind up as the guests of honor at Pleasant Valley's Guts N Glory Jubilee, which is presided over by sinister mayor Robert Englund (who even has the Confederate flag on his eye patch). Over the course of the film the interloping Northerners get pulled apart by horses, force-fed acid, crushed by a bell, skewered, dismembered, pressed and beheaded by barb wire. In other words, fun for the whole family! I wish I could say I found it enjoyable (after all, it shares the same "surefire premise" as Lewis's original), but I guess I'm just not cut out for these kinds of over-the-top gore films.
While I was back in New Jersey, I made a point of catching Woody Allen's latest, Whatever Works, because it doesn't seem like it will be showing up in Bloomington anytime soon. (Sometimes I think Kerasotes withholds certain movies deliberately to annoy me.) The film is his first set in the States since 2004's Melinda and Melinda (although the return appears to be short-lived since his next one has the working title Untitled Woody Allen London Project) and stars Larry David (who had small roles in Radio Days and Oedipus Wrecks two decades ago) as a conceited misanthrope named Boris Yellnikoff (who doesn't yell so much as he seethes and rages at the world) who tells the story of his oddball relationship with runaway Mississippi beauty pageant contestant Evan Rachel Wood, who is so empty-headed when they meet that she quickly becomes infected by his defeatist worldview.
As latter-day Woody Allen comedies go, this one definitely has more going for it than, say, Scoop or Anything Else. And while Allen certainly could have pulled off the central role, giving it to someone like Larry David somehow takes the edge off the terrible things he says. (A one-time Nobel prize candidate for physics, he now ekes out a living teaching chess to imbecilic kids, all of whom suffer his verbal -- and occasionally physical -- abuse. Somehow I don't think he gets much repeat business.) The film also features Michael McKean as one of David's indulgent friends, Patricia Clarkson as Wood's mother (whose arrival seems to herald a slew of born-again Christian jokes, but then she has a complete -- and completely unexpected -- turnaround), Henry Cavill as the hunky young actor she tries to set Wood up with, and Ed Begley Jr. as Wood's father, who has a similar change of attitude about after meeting Christopher Evan Welch in a bar. (I'm not positive about this, but I think this may actually be the first Woody Allen film to feature a gay couple.) Clearly this is a film that takes place in the realm of fantasy (where every Southerner can be cured of their hickness simply by coming to New York City and cutting loose in a way they never though possible before), but hey, whatever works, right?
The last film on my vacation agenda was Pixar's Up, which I could have easily seen at any time over the past month and a half, but I made a point of waiting so I could see it with ceruleanst (who was feeling somewhat under the weather but joined me anyway because he's that kind of friend). Directed by Pete Docter and Bob Peterson, this is yet another in a long line of brilliant successes for the computer animation giant, which doesn't really need me to sing their praises. Pretty much everything you expect to be a given with Pixar -- the breathtaking visuals, the meticulously worked-out story, the terrific voice cast (including Ed Asner, Christopher Plummer, Delroy Lindo and John Ratzenberger), the mix of warmth and humor -- is present and accounted for. This time around, though, there's an undercurrent of melancholy that keeps everything grounded, which is important when you're telling a story about a crotchety old man who attaches hundreds of helium balloons to his house so he can fly it to South America. Leave it to Pixar to not only come up with such an outlandish idea, but also to pull it off.
First out of the gate was Moon, which was directed by Duncan Jones, who also came up with the story upon which Nathan Parker's screenplay was based. Since Jones is the son of David Bowie (his original given name was Zowie -- can't imagine why he changed it), it only seems natural that he would pick such an out-of-this-world premise for his feature film debut: Sam Rockwell plays a technician nearing the end of his three-year haul harvesting Helium-3 (a previously untapped source of energy) on the far side of the moon. It's a one-man operation, though, so Rockwell's starting to get a little punchy, even with the reassuring companionship of the outpost's computer GERTY, which is voiced by Kevin Spacey and comes equipped with a series of situation-appropriate emoticons. To reveal more about the story would require me to give away some surprising developments, but I will say that the attention to detail on the sets and costumes is stunning. (Rockwell's space suit, in particular, really looks like it's been lived in.) For that reason alone, it's worth seeking out on the big screen (and it just expanded to 247 screens last weekend, so you have a better than average chance of finding it).
In comparison, anybody who wants to see Brüno -- Sacha Baron Cohen's latest assault on Middle American values and prejudices -- should have no problem locating it on any of a number of screens in their vicinity. Directed by Larry Charles, who previously helmed Borat as well as the Bill Maher documentary Religulous, Brüno takes Baron Cohen's character -- a flamboyantly gay Austrian fashionista who will be familiar to viewers of Da Ali G Show -- out of the European fashion world and transplants him to America, where he seeks fame at any cost with the aid of his faithful assistant Lutz (Swedish actor Gustaf Hammarsten), who has an enormous crush on Brüno despite the fact that he barely knows Lutz exists. After a shaky start in Hollywood, where Brüno's misadventures include being the most disruptive extra the show Medium has ever seen and pitching a celebrity interview show with more exposed penises than the network's focus group could comfortably handle, he tries his hand at resolving the tension in the Middle East before returning to the States with an African baby in tow, which leads to a hilarious sequence where he interviews parents who will agree to just about anything if it means their toddler will get a modeling job.
Brüno's detractors may complain that it hews a little too closely to the template established by Borat, but what ultimately matters with a film like this is not how the story develops, but rather what kinds of reactions Baron Cohen is able to elicit from unsuspecting participants along the way. (I'm sure when Ron Paul agreed to an interview he wasn't expecting Brüno to start coming on to him, nor did Paula Abdul anticipate being asked to use a Mexican day laborer as furniture.) The film really hits its stride when Brüno tries to go straight, engaging in such hetero-centric activities as joining the National Guard, going hunting with some rednecks and attending a swinger's party (where he can't seem to keep his hands off the guys). Whether his antics will inspire any homophobes to alter their attitudes is an open question, but at least the rest of us get to have a good laugh.
Having spent the better part of the weekend helping to run the Cherry Hill Experiment, during which we showed such awful movies as Star Odyssey (a cheap Italian space opera from 1979), the tortoise-paced Creation of the Humanoids (no wonder Andy Warhol considered it his favorite movie), Collision Course (with oodles of offhand racism courtesy of mismatched cops Jay Leno and Pat Morita) and Fair Game (which was shown as part of our Night on Baldwin Mountain), I chose to unwind Sunday night with one of the free movies available on FEARnet On Demand. Unfortunately the selection wasn't too great because the only thing I was even vaguely interested in was 2001 Maniacs, the 2005 remake of Herschell Gordon Lewis's Two Thousand Maniacs!. (I guess they managed to unearth an extra maniac during the intervening 41 years.)
Co-written by director Tim Sullivan (who was born the same year Lewis's original film was released) and Chris Kobin (who is writing the proposed sequel -- creatively titled 2001 Maniacs: The Sequel -- with him), 2001 Maniacs features a trio of collegiate cut-ups on spring break (who ignore professor Peter Stormare's warning about learning from history), a threesome they run into on the road, and a black motorcyclist and his Asian girlfriend, all of whom wind up as the guests of honor at Pleasant Valley's Guts N Glory Jubilee, which is presided over by sinister mayor Robert Englund (who even has the Confederate flag on his eye patch). Over the course of the film the interloping Northerners get pulled apart by horses, force-fed acid, crushed by a bell, skewered, dismembered, pressed and beheaded by barb wire. In other words, fun for the whole family! I wish I could say I found it enjoyable (after all, it shares the same "surefire premise" as Lewis's original), but I guess I'm just not cut out for these kinds of over-the-top gore films.
While I was back in New Jersey, I made a point of catching Woody Allen's latest, Whatever Works, because it doesn't seem like it will be showing up in Bloomington anytime soon. (Sometimes I think Kerasotes withholds certain movies deliberately to annoy me.) The film is his first set in the States since 2004's Melinda and Melinda (although the return appears to be short-lived since his next one has the working title Untitled Woody Allen London Project) and stars Larry David (who had small roles in Radio Days and Oedipus Wrecks two decades ago) as a conceited misanthrope named Boris Yellnikoff (who doesn't yell so much as he seethes and rages at the world) who tells the story of his oddball relationship with runaway Mississippi beauty pageant contestant Evan Rachel Wood, who is so empty-headed when they meet that she quickly becomes infected by his defeatist worldview.
As latter-day Woody Allen comedies go, this one definitely has more going for it than, say, Scoop or Anything Else. And while Allen certainly could have pulled off the central role, giving it to someone like Larry David somehow takes the edge off the terrible things he says. (A one-time Nobel prize candidate for physics, he now ekes out a living teaching chess to imbecilic kids, all of whom suffer his verbal -- and occasionally physical -- abuse. Somehow I don't think he gets much repeat business.) The film also features Michael McKean as one of David's indulgent friends, Patricia Clarkson as Wood's mother (whose arrival seems to herald a slew of born-again Christian jokes, but then she has a complete -- and completely unexpected -- turnaround), Henry Cavill as the hunky young actor she tries to set Wood up with, and Ed Begley Jr. as Wood's father, who has a similar change of attitude about after meeting Christopher Evan Welch in a bar. (I'm not positive about this, but I think this may actually be the first Woody Allen film to feature a gay couple.) Clearly this is a film that takes place in the realm of fantasy (where every Southerner can be cured of their hickness simply by coming to New York City and cutting loose in a way they never though possible before), but hey, whatever works, right?
The last film on my vacation agenda was Pixar's Up, which I could have easily seen at any time over the past month and a half, but I made a point of waiting so I could see it with ceruleanst (who was feeling somewhat under the weather but joined me anyway because he's that kind of friend). Directed by Pete Docter and Bob Peterson, this is yet another in a long line of brilliant successes for the computer animation giant, which doesn't really need me to sing their praises. Pretty much everything you expect to be a given with Pixar -- the breathtaking visuals, the meticulously worked-out story, the terrific voice cast (including Ed Asner, Christopher Plummer, Delroy Lindo and John Ratzenberger), the mix of warmth and humor -- is present and accounted for. This time around, though, there's an undercurrent of melancholy that keeps everything grounded, which is important when you're telling a story about a crotchety old man who attaches hundreds of helium balloons to his house so he can fly it to South America. Leave it to Pixar to not only come up with such an outlandish idea, but also to pull it off.