Thanksgiving movies and knaked knazis
Paris, je t'aime. Approximately twenty 5-minute vignettes by different directors about that famous city. I was extremely underwhelmed with the majority of the shorts in this film... except the last one, which was wonderful. We (Christian, Grace and I) talked about that last short for a good 20 minutes after the movie ended. The other one that I liked a little were the mime one (cute, but nothing too special). I think there was a second one that was okay, but there were a couple that were really awful: the vampire one (which was not Wes Craven's, to my surprise), the one with the hairdresser of Asian women, and the Nick Nolte one by Alfonso Cuaron. Blech. Overall, middling clips but the last one pushes this up to a 6/10.
Reign of the Fallen. A Star Wars universe movie actually NOT made by George Lucas. Somehow they got away with making this movie, I think because it was a fanfilm that they released into the public domain so they couldn't earn a profit off it. It's only an hour long and the scenery was really impressive (what? that's central New Jersey????) and the costumes were acceptable, as were the effects. If there was anything that this movie lacked, was a story, and that's too bad because it actually could have been really good. The movie lagged and proceeded SOOOO slowly and followed a Jesus in the wilderness story, as well as a typical duel between master and apprentice. The story was very, very bad -- but everything else about the movie was quite good. Very frustrating to see such efforts squandered. 5/10.
Holding Trevor. A gay guy deals with his depressing, druggy boyfriend. An awfully SoCal film, even down to every character speaking in uptalk, you know, when they raise their voice at the end of every sentence? So I knew this was going to be a bad movie, but I wanted to see it because of one of the stars, Jay Brannan, who was really hot in Shortbus. Here he's just a flaky and arrogant princess, which makes him more unattractive than anything. Sigh. What a waste. Actually, the most SoCal part of this movie is the main actor sitting around most of the time with a "dur" look on his face thanks to always having his lips protracted on one side the way a Valley Girl would at the end of "What the helllllll?" Bad movie, bad acting. 1/10.
Trevor. No relation to the previous movie, this is a short about a boy who realizes he might be gay. It's done pretty well in a diary confessional style, but it's very naive and has that 90's frivolity about being gay that reinforces a lot of stereotypes. So-so. 6/10.
Get Real. A gay British guy at a prep school ends up the secret lover of the track star. A pretty depressing movie, simply for the fact that the track star wants to stay in the closet as long as possible. That's fairly realistic -- in fact most of the events in this movie are pretty realistic -- but it's ultimately a bit unsatisfying due to the writing. The track star isn't a very well-developed character, neither are the parents, and even the fag hag best friend is unidimensional. The only character worth a wag is the main one. The cover for this movie also completely misled me, making it seem like it'd be upbeat and witty, but instead the dreariness sucked a lot of the life out of it. 6/10.
Let Them Eat Cake. This was a one season (six episodes) British TV comedy series from Saunders and French about aristocratic life in pre-Revolution France. Jennifer Saunders plays the Comtesse de Vache, an utterly helpless aristocratic who doesn't even know how to open a door and always needs a servant around to assist her. Nonetheless, she's quite conniving in her palace politics in Versailles trying to keep in the favor of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Dawn French plays her maid Lisette and some guy plays Saunders' very homosexual wigmaker. The episodes are moderately funny, but the real appeal of the show comes from the costumes -- de Vache's dresses and especially her wigs are just AMAZING. These are the outfits drag queens would kill each other for. Too bad the series didn't reach the funniness of Absolutely Fabulous, but it wasn't bad either. 7/10.
The Naked Kiss. A prostitute from the city calls it quits and moves to a small town for a second chance at life. Our heroine Kelly displays such firm resolve and uprightness that it's amazing to watch. She's accepting of her past, knowing it's a thorn but not suppressing it mentally either. She evokes such a maturity in her emotions, that it would be a travesty to call her petty or naive. Nonetheless, her emotions are manifold and I never quite knew what she was capable of doing or what path she was actually seeking in this small town. Speaking of the town, the denizens are quite a bunch. There's a Leave it to Beaver wholesomeness, with even Kelly dropping a few goshdarnit looks of corny pleasure. Yet the subject matter and its treatment reveal an underside to what goes on -- not a seedy one, but just one where things like sex happen with commonality. The chief of police sleeps with Kelly the very day she arrives, but their pre- and post-sex conversations have that same layer of professionality and formality that you expect in family fare from the era. The director has injected noir elements into the small-town idyll and they get treated by the townsfolk as just things that happen, a common part of life, which then puts an interesting twist on Kelly's desire to come to this town to leave that life behind. Is it really a respite, or does it just have nicer windowdressing? The camera keeps a fairly wide angle from the action most of the time, which imparts intensity to the close-ups and drives them home as the most memorable moments. Great style, very good story, superb acting. 8/10.
Knaked Knights. A softcore flick about four "knights" who raid a "castle" and are captured, thrown naked into the "dungeon" and then fed to the "moat monster" before rebelling and making a daring escape. Oh god this has to be the worst movie I have ever seen. Even simple things, like actors pretending to stand guard, were screwed up royally. Seriously, no one could act, no one could design a set and it seemed like no one even had a thought going into this production. It's set in what is obviously someone's castle-like mansion in SoCal, except that they did hardly any modifications to the exterior (such as removing the modern landscaping or awnings) to make it seem even vaguely medieval. The director has numerous extended pans of the bodies of the men, from their arms, to their chests, to their naked crotches and asses. It would have been erotic if a) the men weren't steroid pumpers, b) they actually did something instead of extended shots of their limp penises, and c) they didn't move in slow motion all the time so that they looked like robots who struggled to taked off their shirts and shorts. The action was lame until the end when you actually got "chases" and "fights". I guess to spice things up, they intercut the film with erotic interludes of solo action from the different actors. When the first one of these scenes came on, we were completely confused why there was suddenly some guy having erotic urges to caress his body. Could it be the gazebo he was standing in? One can only surmise! The second of these interludes was truly the worst scene in the movie: it featured the short-haired blond actor who played one of the prisoners, and who heretofore I had thought was the only cute guy in the production (especially with his utterly non-functional metal collar). In this interlude, they placed him in a hammock. He looked a bit sunburned and grimaced throughout the entire scene, including pulling off his shorts while trying to not fall out of the hammock, and then turning over to grind his crotch and stomach into the hammock, while looking back over his shoulder at the camera. Too bad his "erotic" facial expressions looked more like "help, my dick is stuck in this hammock!" This was an unbelievably bad movie and all three of us (me, Karen and Mischa) feel like we've been thoroughly educated on just how awful of a movie it's possible to make. This movie earned its score: 1/10.
Hitler-Jugend in den Bergen (Hitler-Youth in the Mountains). What better way to follow up softcore erotica than with some Nazi propaganda? Sigh, not very good Nazi propaganda though, since it wasn't by Leni Reifenstahl, so it was pretty mundane and mediocre filmmaking. The script is a troop of Hitler youth boy scouts going off into the mountains for a retreat, including various athletic activities, competitions (including tug-of-war) and other things to prepare them for being warriors to glorify Germany. Actually, none of the scenes seemed very glorious at all, with the sole exception towards the end of the trio of boys who scale a mountian bare-handed to put the Nazi flag at the summit and then all of Germany salutes them. That scene had the kind of propagandist pride that you'd expect to stir the nationalistic heartstrings, but otherwise this short clip seemed like a not-too-keen boy scouts promo. 4/10.
Deutschland Erwacht (Germany Awakes). A man extensively narrates the political events in Germany and then there's lots of footage about Hitler and the Nazis at political rallies and the funerals of famous people. Really boring -- pretty much unedited footage of all these events and the narration was pretty awful in its dullness. 2/10.
Hitlerjunge Quex: Ein Film vom Opfergeist der deutschen Jugend (Hitler Youth Quex). A boy in the poor Communist side of town finds a secret magical friend in the Nazi Party. It was a little hard for me to follow this movie since my German wasn't good enough (no subtitles) and the subject was rather boring, so I skipped through most of it after watching just the first 20 minutes in full. As far as I can tell, the boy had a mean father and a poor mother; they live in a poor part of town; he gets treated nicely by someone (Nazi, Communist, pedophile?) and goes on a train trip to a special camp for boys and girls. There he gets ostracized, but when he comes back he's a different person and starts attending the underground meetings of the Nazi Youth, who are so persecuted that they have to hide in cellars to have their meetings. But then the Nazis rise to power and he experiences bliss and happiness and good fortune. No more scraping the bottom of the barrel, no sirree! 3/10.
Reign of the Fallen. A Star Wars universe movie actually NOT made by George Lucas. Somehow they got away with making this movie, I think because it was a fanfilm that they released into the public domain so they couldn't earn a profit off it. It's only an hour long and the scenery was really impressive (what? that's central New Jersey????) and the costumes were acceptable, as were the effects. If there was anything that this movie lacked, was a story, and that's too bad because it actually could have been really good. The movie lagged and proceeded SOOOO slowly and followed a Jesus in the wilderness story, as well as a typical duel between master and apprentice. The story was very, very bad -- but everything else about the movie was quite good. Very frustrating to see such efforts squandered. 5/10.
Holding Trevor. A gay guy deals with his depressing, druggy boyfriend. An awfully SoCal film, even down to every character speaking in uptalk, you know, when they raise their voice at the end of every sentence? So I knew this was going to be a bad movie, but I wanted to see it because of one of the stars, Jay Brannan, who was really hot in Shortbus. Here he's just a flaky and arrogant princess, which makes him more unattractive than anything. Sigh. What a waste. Actually, the most SoCal part of this movie is the main actor sitting around most of the time with a "dur" look on his face thanks to always having his lips protracted on one side the way a Valley Girl would at the end of "What the helllllll?" Bad movie, bad acting. 1/10.
Trevor. No relation to the previous movie, this is a short about a boy who realizes he might be gay. It's done pretty well in a diary confessional style, but it's very naive and has that 90's frivolity about being gay that reinforces a lot of stereotypes. So-so. 6/10.
Get Real. A gay British guy at a prep school ends up the secret lover of the track star. A pretty depressing movie, simply for the fact that the track star wants to stay in the closet as long as possible. That's fairly realistic -- in fact most of the events in this movie are pretty realistic -- but it's ultimately a bit unsatisfying due to the writing. The track star isn't a very well-developed character, neither are the parents, and even the fag hag best friend is unidimensional. The only character worth a wag is the main one. The cover for this movie also completely misled me, making it seem like it'd be upbeat and witty, but instead the dreariness sucked a lot of the life out of it. 6/10.
Let Them Eat Cake. This was a one season (six episodes) British TV comedy series from Saunders and French about aristocratic life in pre-Revolution France. Jennifer Saunders plays the Comtesse de Vache, an utterly helpless aristocratic who doesn't even know how to open a door and always needs a servant around to assist her. Nonetheless, she's quite conniving in her palace politics in Versailles trying to keep in the favor of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Dawn French plays her maid Lisette and some guy plays Saunders' very homosexual wigmaker. The episodes are moderately funny, but the real appeal of the show comes from the costumes -- de Vache's dresses and especially her wigs are just AMAZING. These are the outfits drag queens would kill each other for. Too bad the series didn't reach the funniness of Absolutely Fabulous, but it wasn't bad either. 7/10.
The Naked Kiss. A prostitute from the city calls it quits and moves to a small town for a second chance at life. Our heroine Kelly displays such firm resolve and uprightness that it's amazing to watch. She's accepting of her past, knowing it's a thorn but not suppressing it mentally either. She evokes such a maturity in her emotions, that it would be a travesty to call her petty or naive. Nonetheless, her emotions are manifold and I never quite knew what she was capable of doing or what path she was actually seeking in this small town. Speaking of the town, the denizens are quite a bunch. There's a Leave it to Beaver wholesomeness, with even Kelly dropping a few goshdarnit looks of corny pleasure. Yet the subject matter and its treatment reveal an underside to what goes on -- not a seedy one, but just one where things like sex happen with commonality. The chief of police sleeps with Kelly the very day she arrives, but their pre- and post-sex conversations have that same layer of professionality and formality that you expect in family fare from the era. The director has injected noir elements into the small-town idyll and they get treated by the townsfolk as just things that happen, a common part of life, which then puts an interesting twist on Kelly's desire to come to this town to leave that life behind. Is it really a respite, or does it just have nicer windowdressing? The camera keeps a fairly wide angle from the action most of the time, which imparts intensity to the close-ups and drives them home as the most memorable moments. Great style, very good story, superb acting. 8/10.
Knaked Knights. A softcore flick about four "knights" who raid a "castle" and are captured, thrown naked into the "dungeon" and then fed to the "moat monster" before rebelling and making a daring escape. Oh god this has to be the worst movie I have ever seen. Even simple things, like actors pretending to stand guard, were screwed up royally. Seriously, no one could act, no one could design a set and it seemed like no one even had a thought going into this production. It's set in what is obviously someone's castle-like mansion in SoCal, except that they did hardly any modifications to the exterior (such as removing the modern landscaping or awnings) to make it seem even vaguely medieval. The director has numerous extended pans of the bodies of the men, from their arms, to their chests, to their naked crotches and asses. It would have been erotic if a) the men weren't steroid pumpers, b) they actually did something instead of extended shots of their limp penises, and c) they didn't move in slow motion all the time so that they looked like robots who struggled to taked off their shirts and shorts. The action was lame until the end when you actually got "chases" and "fights". I guess to spice things up, they intercut the film with erotic interludes of solo action from the different actors. When the first one of these scenes came on, we were completely confused why there was suddenly some guy having erotic urges to caress his body. Could it be the gazebo he was standing in? One can only surmise! The second of these interludes was truly the worst scene in the movie: it featured the short-haired blond actor who played one of the prisoners, and who heretofore I had thought was the only cute guy in the production (especially with his utterly non-functional metal collar). In this interlude, they placed him in a hammock. He looked a bit sunburned and grimaced throughout the entire scene, including pulling off his shorts while trying to not fall out of the hammock, and then turning over to grind his crotch and stomach into the hammock, while looking back over his shoulder at the camera. Too bad his "erotic" facial expressions looked more like "help, my dick is stuck in this hammock!" This was an unbelievably bad movie and all three of us (me, Karen and Mischa) feel like we've been thoroughly educated on just how awful of a movie it's possible to make. This movie earned its score: 1/10.
Hitler-Jugend in den Bergen (Hitler-Youth in the Mountains). What better way to follow up softcore erotica than with some Nazi propaganda? Sigh, not very good Nazi propaganda though, since it wasn't by Leni Reifenstahl, so it was pretty mundane and mediocre filmmaking. The script is a troop of Hitler youth boy scouts going off into the mountains for a retreat, including various athletic activities, competitions (including tug-of-war) and other things to prepare them for being warriors to glorify Germany. Actually, none of the scenes seemed very glorious at all, with the sole exception towards the end of the trio of boys who scale a mountian bare-handed to put the Nazi flag at the summit and then all of Germany salutes them. That scene had the kind of propagandist pride that you'd expect to stir the nationalistic heartstrings, but otherwise this short clip seemed like a not-too-keen boy scouts promo. 4/10.
Deutschland Erwacht (Germany Awakes). A man extensively narrates the political events in Germany and then there's lots of footage about Hitler and the Nazis at political rallies and the funerals of famous people. Really boring -- pretty much unedited footage of all these events and the narration was pretty awful in its dullness. 2/10.
Hitlerjunge Quex: Ein Film vom Opfergeist der deutschen Jugend (Hitler Youth Quex). A boy in the poor Communist side of town finds a secret magical friend in the Nazi Party. It was a little hard for me to follow this movie since my German wasn't good enough (no subtitles) and the subject was rather boring, so I skipped through most of it after watching just the first 20 minutes in full. As far as I can tell, the boy had a mean father and a poor mother; they live in a poor part of town; he gets treated nicely by someone (Nazi, Communist, pedophile?) and goes on a train trip to a special camp for boys and girls. There he gets ostracized, but when he comes back he's a different person and starts attending the underground meetings of the Nazi Youth, who are so persecuted that they have to hide in cellars to have their meetings. But then the Nazis rise to power and he experiences bliss and happiness and good fortune. No more scraping the bottom of the barrel, no sirree! 3/10.