Reviews up the wazoo!
It's about time I did a review or two since things are stacking up and I'm sure people really want my non-expert opinion on things. =P Oh and real quick, every woman needs to read this book (it's actualy men that would get the most out of it but I doubt they would ever get through it all), Fear of Flying by Erica Jong. You may not agree with it, or even like it, but as a woman you should read it at least once in your life. I think it might be my new favorite book and if you read it you'll understand why. ~_^ Now, on to the reviews!
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
(aka: the movie that's just as long as its title)- I would really like to sound smart and snooty and say I liked this movie, but to be perfectly honest with you I found it horribly slow and more than a bit drawn out. For a movie that you already know the ending of, they certainly take their time (160 mins long) getting to the assassination. But, being from Missouri, I had to watch it since it was set in and about people from Missouri.
The movie followed, very painstakingly, the last year of Jesse James life up to the point where he's shot by Bob Ford. The acting in it is phenomenal, mostly coming from Casey Affleck as Bob Ford, who has an obsessive hero worship for the outlaw played by Brad Pitt, who puts in a surprisingly decent performance as a slightly psychopathic, depressed, suicidal Jesse James, and probably voicing as close to his actual Missouri accent as he's ever going to get in a movie. It's really the chemistry between the two actors that makes the movie work, despite its two and a half hour running time. Bob Ford first idolizes then wants to kill Jesse James, while James wants Ford to kill him to the point that he actually gives him the gun to do it! It's a strange dance of death they play throughout the entire movie.
All the other actors in the movie playing the parts of James' gang do an excellent job also (though I can't name any of them off hand), and the movie does such a good job of setting up all the people involved with James' death that it seems more like a well acted documentary than a movie, especially when the narrator pops up every now and again to add something just when you've forgotten he was there to begin with.
But that's also where the problem comes in. Most of the movie is very little action and a lot of people talking. In fact I found the last 30 mins of the movie, what happens to Bob Ford after he shot Jesse James, the most interesting part of the movie, but it's also the part that covered the most amount of time and went by the quickest.
The cinematography in the movie was stunning, despite the fact that Missouri in the movie looks nothing like Missouri in real life because they filmed it in Canada, if a little desolate and forlorn. I ended up giving this movie 4 stars on Netflix because, despite the fact that it may not be my kind of movie, I will admit it is very well done. Like so many movies these days it's beautiful, well acted, long, and far too serious for its own good. I'd recommend watching it once, but you probably won't feel like watching it again any time soon after you're done.
Fat Girls - "A candidly funny and off-beat coming-of-age story focusing on the trials and tribulations of a gay, theater-obsessed Texan high school senior who has his heart set on Broadway stardom and an eye out for love. With the help of his 300-pound best girl friend, he embarks on a winning journey of self discovery."
Or at least that's what the summary of the movie says.
What this movie is actually about is a not quite in the closet/not quite out of the closet apathetic gay teenager from a small town who loves theater, has an overly religious mother and an overweight friend who's a bit of a sex addict. Neither the main charcter or his overweight friend is particularly likable, but for some reason I found this an enjoyable movie on some bizarre level.
Even with some of the characters being more than a little cliché (the religious mom, the local bullies, etc.) I still found it to be a slightly more realistic view of high school life then most teen movies. They did the typical teen high school movie things (drinking, doing drugs, sex, etc.) but unlike the huge kegger parties in most teen movies in this one they just sat around in their bedroom smoking weed and getting drunk then jumping on their bed. When the main character Rodney gets up the guts to ask another boy to the gradation dance, hoping to cause a big scene, amusingly enough they show up and start dancing but nobody really cares. It's little things like that that make me like this movie.
It's sort of plot less and doesn't really have a clear ending (think of it as a kind of gay version of Napoleon Dynamite) but it is an indi movie and like most indi movies it's hit and miss with the good and the bad. Though I did enjoy it, after I got done watching it I realized there probably wasn't anyone else I knew who would really like it so I wouldn't actually recommend this movie to anyone. You really do have to appreciate the fact that Ash Christian wrote, starred in and directed this movie himself. For a first attempt at a movie it could have been a whole lot worse. 3 stars and an E for effort.
Be Kind Rewind - Whatever this movie was, it wasn't what I was expecting. If you'd seen any of the trailers for this movie you probably went expecting some sort of comedy about guys that do their own remakes of movies. What you really get is a feel good movie about a community trying to save a run down video store and finding the joy of working together to make their own movies. As long as you're not going in expecting a laugh out loud comedy it really is a pretty good movie. In fact, I would rather watch 10 low budget movies like this one, that has a lot of heart and soul to it, than say one 10,000 B.C., which is a multi-million dollar waste of film, like most big budget movies these days.
It falls just short of being a must see, you can probably wait for it on DVD, but if you're an aspirating amateur film maker and appreciate old fashioned film making then you'll love this movie. Or if you just want to check out some of the movies that they redid (aka: Sweded) in the movie, arguably the best part of the movie, you can find them here on the movie website(they also have the whole Fellowship of the Rings Sweded up there, but it's not with Jack Black and Def Mos). Oh and I have to give a shout out also to one of the movies that they sweded in the movie The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. A French musical that I didn't think anyone besides me had ever even heard of before. Rock on little known musical reference!
Ohh look a picture! =P
The Plague Dogs - The genre of animated film is rather limited in America to that of children’s movies, and the art of hand drawn animation is now almost next near extinct, but it wasn't too long ago there was still animated films being made with more adult audiences in mind. There are a number of books and stories that would make wonderful movies, but perhaps never have been because of the difficulty in doing them as a live action film. Movies like The Plague Dogs fill that gap and I think it deserves to be in the same company as early Disney and Studio Ghibli films when it comes to classics in animated film, even if it may not be a heartwarming story where everything works out alright in the end.
The lesser known of author Richard Adams animated film adaptations, The Plague Dogs was written for the screen, directed and produced by Martin Rosen, who also directed and wrote the screenplay for the much more well known animated classic Watership Down. The movie stars some of the same voice talents of many of the cast from Watership Down. John Hurt, Christopher Benjamin, James Bolam, Nigel Hawthorne and even a supporting voice role by Patrick Stewart, all bring to life brilliantly this heart wrenching tale of two research dog who escape from their testing facility, only to find the world outside is almost as bad as the world they left behind.
When Rowf (Christopher Benjamin) a mixed labrador-retriever and Snitter (John Hurt) a fox terrier, unwittingly escape from an animal research laboratory they find themselves stranded in the wilds of north-western England. Unable to provide for themselves but unwilling to go back to their life of experimental torture, they start an uneasy friendship with a sneaky yet wise fox known as The Tod, who helps them learn to be "wild". But they soon find themselves being hunted by local farmers for killing sheep, a tracker sent by their former keepers, and eventually the British military when it becomes known the dogs might have been exposed to the bubonic plague.
The movie brings up many themes (the ethics of animal research, the lack of regulation of government research, fear mongering by the mass media) but never clearly being for or against any one thing leaving you to draw your own conclusions. Perhaps its more serious underlying tones is why it was never as popular or successful as its predecessor Watership Down. At its core though it's really a character study of the two dogs involved, who are just fighting to survive in a world that seems pitted aginst them.
The animation style and art direction in the film is both beautiful and disturbing in its own right. The film never shys away from showing the brutally of the dogs life both in the wild and at the research faculty, in particular Snitter's stylized black and white flashbacks of his life with his former owner are especially profound. The film loses a little ground when it has to use voiceovers about what's going on with the humans hunting the dogs to move the plot along, but it does help to clarify the motivations of all the characters involved.
Even a very young Brad Bird (as an animator) worked on this film, who of course went on to do such features as The Iron Giant, The Incredibles and Ratatouille, in which some influence of The Plague Dogs might be able to be seen.
In America you can only find the edited 86 min version of the movie on DVD (the original was 99 mins), but, from what I've heard, very little has actually been cut and nothing that would diminish the dramatic effect of the movie.
Though it may be a bit dark and depressing this is probably one of my favorite movies for, if nothing else, its willingness to unflinchingly tell a story that may be hard to hear but, none the less, is well worth telling.
Tenacious D in: The Pick of Destiny - There’s only two reasons to watch this movie really, A) You’re a Tenacious D fan already and you can actually get the in-jokes going on in the movie, or B) you live in Kickapoo, MO and have to see it since there’s a song about your town in the movie. This movie is full of extremely lowbrow type of humor (cock pushups, totally irrelevant songs about Sasquatch, gratuitous use of power slides, etc.) but if you like heavy metal parody music and don’t mind cussing (a lot) then you might just love this movie as much as I do. Not recommend for everybody but definitely recommend for me. =P 5 stars
Reviews that are coming soon (I hope): "Kal Ho Naa Ho: Tomorrow May Never Come, Across the Universe, Sunshine, and Hysterical (possibly one of the worst movies ever made)"
Later all!
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
(aka: the movie that's just as long as its title)- I would really like to sound smart and snooty and say I liked this movie, but to be perfectly honest with you I found it horribly slow and more than a bit drawn out. For a movie that you already know the ending of, they certainly take their time (160 mins long) getting to the assassination. But, being from Missouri, I had to watch it since it was set in and about people from Missouri.
The movie followed, very painstakingly, the last year of Jesse James life up to the point where he's shot by Bob Ford. The acting in it is phenomenal, mostly coming from Casey Affleck as Bob Ford, who has an obsessive hero worship for the outlaw played by Brad Pitt, who puts in a surprisingly decent performance as a slightly psychopathic, depressed, suicidal Jesse James, and probably voicing as close to his actual Missouri accent as he's ever going to get in a movie. It's really the chemistry between the two actors that makes the movie work, despite its two and a half hour running time. Bob Ford first idolizes then wants to kill Jesse James, while James wants Ford to kill him to the point that he actually gives him the gun to do it! It's a strange dance of death they play throughout the entire movie.
All the other actors in the movie playing the parts of James' gang do an excellent job also (though I can't name any of them off hand), and the movie does such a good job of setting up all the people involved with James' death that it seems more like a well acted documentary than a movie, especially when the narrator pops up every now and again to add something just when you've forgotten he was there to begin with.
But that's also where the problem comes in. Most of the movie is very little action and a lot of people talking. In fact I found the last 30 mins of the movie, what happens to Bob Ford after he shot Jesse James, the most interesting part of the movie, but it's also the part that covered the most amount of time and went by the quickest.
The cinematography in the movie was stunning, despite the fact that Missouri in the movie looks nothing like Missouri in real life because they filmed it in Canada, if a little desolate and forlorn. I ended up giving this movie 4 stars on Netflix because, despite the fact that it may not be my kind of movie, I will admit it is very well done. Like so many movies these days it's beautiful, well acted, long, and far too serious for its own good. I'd recommend watching it once, but you probably won't feel like watching it again any time soon after you're done.
Fat Girls - "A candidly funny and off-beat coming-of-age story focusing on the trials and tribulations of a gay, theater-obsessed Texan high school senior who has his heart set on Broadway stardom and an eye out for love. With the help of his 300-pound best girl friend, he embarks on a winning journey of self discovery."
Or at least that's what the summary of the movie says.
What this movie is actually about is a not quite in the closet/not quite out of the closet apathetic gay teenager from a small town who loves theater, has an overly religious mother and an overweight friend who's a bit of a sex addict. Neither the main charcter or his overweight friend is particularly likable, but for some reason I found this an enjoyable movie on some bizarre level.
Even with some of the characters being more than a little cliché (the religious mom, the local bullies, etc.) I still found it to be a slightly more realistic view of high school life then most teen movies. They did the typical teen high school movie things (drinking, doing drugs, sex, etc.) but unlike the huge kegger parties in most teen movies in this one they just sat around in their bedroom smoking weed and getting drunk then jumping on their bed. When the main character Rodney gets up the guts to ask another boy to the gradation dance, hoping to cause a big scene, amusingly enough they show up and start dancing but nobody really cares. It's little things like that that make me like this movie.
It's sort of plot less and doesn't really have a clear ending (think of it as a kind of gay version of Napoleon Dynamite) but it is an indi movie and like most indi movies it's hit and miss with the good and the bad. Though I did enjoy it, after I got done watching it I realized there probably wasn't anyone else I knew who would really like it so I wouldn't actually recommend this movie to anyone. You really do have to appreciate the fact that Ash Christian wrote, starred in and directed this movie himself. For a first attempt at a movie it could have been a whole lot worse. 3 stars and an E for effort.
Be Kind Rewind - Whatever this movie was, it wasn't what I was expecting. If you'd seen any of the trailers for this movie you probably went expecting some sort of comedy about guys that do their own remakes of movies. What you really get is a feel good movie about a community trying to save a run down video store and finding the joy of working together to make their own movies. As long as you're not going in expecting a laugh out loud comedy it really is a pretty good movie. In fact, I would rather watch 10 low budget movies like this one, that has a lot of heart and soul to it, than say one 10,000 B.C., which is a multi-million dollar waste of film, like most big budget movies these days.
It falls just short of being a must see, you can probably wait for it on DVD, but if you're an aspirating amateur film maker and appreciate old fashioned film making then you'll love this movie. Or if you just want to check out some of the movies that they redid (aka: Sweded) in the movie, arguably the best part of the movie, you can find them here on the movie website(they also have the whole Fellowship of the Rings Sweded up there, but it's not with Jack Black and Def Mos). Oh and I have to give a shout out also to one of the movies that they sweded in the movie The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. A French musical that I didn't think anyone besides me had ever even heard of before. Rock on little known musical reference!
Ohh look a picture! =P
The Plague Dogs - The genre of animated film is rather limited in America to that of children’s movies, and the art of hand drawn animation is now almost next near extinct, but it wasn't too long ago there was still animated films being made with more adult audiences in mind. There are a number of books and stories that would make wonderful movies, but perhaps never have been because of the difficulty in doing them as a live action film. Movies like The Plague Dogs fill that gap and I think it deserves to be in the same company as early Disney and Studio Ghibli films when it comes to classics in animated film, even if it may not be a heartwarming story where everything works out alright in the end.
The lesser known of author Richard Adams animated film adaptations, The Plague Dogs was written for the screen, directed and produced by Martin Rosen, who also directed and wrote the screenplay for the much more well known animated classic Watership Down. The movie stars some of the same voice talents of many of the cast from Watership Down. John Hurt, Christopher Benjamin, James Bolam, Nigel Hawthorne and even a supporting voice role by Patrick Stewart, all bring to life brilliantly this heart wrenching tale of two research dog who escape from their testing facility, only to find the world outside is almost as bad as the world they left behind.
When Rowf (Christopher Benjamin) a mixed labrador-retriever and Snitter (John Hurt) a fox terrier, unwittingly escape from an animal research laboratory they find themselves stranded in the wilds of north-western England. Unable to provide for themselves but unwilling to go back to their life of experimental torture, they start an uneasy friendship with a sneaky yet wise fox known as The Tod, who helps them learn to be "wild". But they soon find themselves being hunted by local farmers for killing sheep, a tracker sent by their former keepers, and eventually the British military when it becomes known the dogs might have been exposed to the bubonic plague.
The movie brings up many themes (the ethics of animal research, the lack of regulation of government research, fear mongering by the mass media) but never clearly being for or against any one thing leaving you to draw your own conclusions. Perhaps its more serious underlying tones is why it was never as popular or successful as its predecessor Watership Down. At its core though it's really a character study of the two dogs involved, who are just fighting to survive in a world that seems pitted aginst them.
The animation style and art direction in the film is both beautiful and disturbing in its own right. The film never shys away from showing the brutally of the dogs life both in the wild and at the research faculty, in particular Snitter's stylized black and white flashbacks of his life with his former owner are especially profound. The film loses a little ground when it has to use voiceovers about what's going on with the humans hunting the dogs to move the plot along, but it does help to clarify the motivations of all the characters involved.
Even a very young Brad Bird (as an animator) worked on this film, who of course went on to do such features as The Iron Giant, The Incredibles and Ratatouille, in which some influence of The Plague Dogs might be able to be seen.
In America you can only find the edited 86 min version of the movie on DVD (the original was 99 mins), but, from what I've heard, very little has actually been cut and nothing that would diminish the dramatic effect of the movie.
Though it may be a bit dark and depressing this is probably one of my favorite movies for, if nothing else, its willingness to unflinchingly tell a story that may be hard to hear but, none the less, is well worth telling.
Tenacious D in: The Pick of Destiny - There’s only two reasons to watch this movie really, A) You’re a Tenacious D fan already and you can actually get the in-jokes going on in the movie, or B) you live in Kickapoo, MO and have to see it since there’s a song about your town in the movie. This movie is full of extremely lowbrow type of humor (cock pushups, totally irrelevant songs about Sasquatch, gratuitous use of power slides, etc.) but if you like heavy metal parody music and don’t mind cussing (a lot) then you might just love this movie as much as I do. Not recommend for everybody but definitely recommend for me. =P 5 stars
Reviews that are coming soon (I hope): "Kal Ho Naa Ho: Tomorrow May Never Come, Across the Universe, Sunshine, and Hysterical (possibly one of the worst movies ever made)"
Later all!