12.28.07
I Am Legend
Will Smith is ripped.
Dogs are awesome.
Chicks suck at surviving the apocalypse.
12.27.07
Tierney Gearon: The Mother Project
Ok, maybe I’m on some totally misogynistic kick because like, my estrogen levels are depleted or something crazy, but once again, I hated this totally woman-centric ‘documentary’: Tierney Gearon: The Mother Project. So, the movie was actually made by a couple of dudes (if I’m remembering right, because IMDb sure doesn’t know) but it’s about this woman/model/photographer, Tierney Gearon, who goes to visit her schizophrenic mother in upstate New York to take pictures of her. Through the course of filming, she also gets pregnant, moves from London to L.A. and does her very best to completely fuck up her kids. Seriously, I hate hate hate this woman.
Friends with Money
Friends with Money came on TV last night. I had been wanting to see it (I like Catherine Keener and am a little smitten with Jennifer Aniston. I mean, come on, who isn’t?) so I watched it all the way through.
It’s telling that this is the first review where I felt compelled to add an “indie” tag. It’s just one of those movies, you know? It’s funny at parts (not that funny) and sad at parts (never too sad) but mostly it’s just kind of an ambling portrait of marriage and relationships and life for women in Los Angeles.
12.26.07
No Country for Old Men
I can’t remember seeing a movie that elicited more nervous laughter than No Country for Old Men. I myself was completely terrified of Javier Bardem. (See my upcoming review of Mondays in the Sun if you want to know my more lurid thoughts on him).
Seriously, though. I saw this about a million years ago. So: Do you like the Coen brothers? If yes, you’ll like it. Just go, already. It’s probably been spoiled for you enough.
Post-Christmas Schmaltzfest: Love Story & P.S., I Love You
What can you say about a movie that totally sucks? Where the characters are in love, but you kind of hate both of them?
Love means never having to say you’re sorry? That doesn’t even make sense!
Pass the Kleenex. Yes, I cried because Hilary Swank’s husband is dead and she has to find love again, but also, why is it so much easier for her to find love a billion times than it is for me to find it once? Honestly. That is so not fair. Let’s bring enough for everyone.
P.S., Who knew Jeffrey Dean Morgan was so hott?
12.24.07
Guest Review — Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
[Poster not shown because it makes me hate John C. Riley, which is a bad thing]
This movie kind of shocked me by being funny. Funny with a very on-the-nose, Airplane-esque silliness (Riley plays Cox at age 12 and up, which is handled by constantly mentioning his age (”But Dewey, you’re only 14!!!”)). Also, it’s worth the ticket price just to see pamfromtheoffice being funny and hot without just being Pam (finally), and showing a massive amount of cleavage in one scene.
I would see this with a packed house, as the tone works best when the crowd is just giddy with how stupid it all is. That is, unless you want some special back-row alone time with pamfromtheoffice’s ta-tas.
12.21.07
Rockumentary Friday
Directed by Greg Whiteley, New York Doll is a documentary about Arthur “Killer” Kane, one of the founding members and bassist for seminal punk band, the New York Dolls. It seems that after the Dolls broke up, Kane was in a pretty bad state. Hopelessly alcoholic and without any real direction, he went back and forth between New York and L.A. for a while, forming various bands and just trying to eke out a living. Until one day he joined the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He became a fucking Momon! Isn’t that wild?
Anyway, during the course of this documentary, Kane gets a chance to reunite with the Dolls in a show that Morrissey is putting on in London. The extent of the movie is basically just following him around while he works in the Momon library in L.A. and gets ready to go play a show for the first time in decades. Then he goes and plays the show and makes amends with his old bandmates and it’s pretty fucking touching, actually.
The story of his rise & fall was interesting and the way that he is such an unassuming guy is almost mindblowing. There are these 2 really hilarious old Mormon ladies that were like “Yeah, we had no idea Arthur was such a big deal!” Then he dies like, weeks after getting back from the show. It’s kind of sad, but because they had interviews with all these people that were like “All he ever talked about was getting the Dolls back together” the fact that he actually got to have that happen before he died is sort of awesome.
Technically speaking, the movie is kind of so-so, mostly beacuse it seems kind of Ex Post Facto - like the director heard about the Morrissey show and then tracked down Arthur and decided to make a documentary and just got lucky that he died at the end, so it seemed kind of epic and important. I’m sure all the other interviews were shot after Arthur died. There were some pretty cool animations though, but the whole thing could have been a little better.
In contrast, The Devil and Daniel Johnston was clearly a labor of love for director Jeff Feuerzeig who obviously spent years on it. And it was totally worth it, because I thought it was great.
As I have previously mentioned, I was not a cool kid. I’m not claiming to be a cool adult (especially not when it comes to music), but there is no way I would have heard of Daniel Johnston even though a lot of people have. I just like documentaries.
Apparently this guy was this totally brilliant underground singer/songwriter who also happened to be batshit crazy (seriously, majorly, unmedicatedly bipolar). But he was also extremely driven to be a musician and made his way on to MTV and Kurt Cobain wore one of his t-shirts and people definitely knew about him. But once he finally got a record deal, he went all paranoid crazy and wouldn’t sign the damn contract!
Anyway, I really enjoyed this movie because it introduced me to this guy who seriously, even though he really sucks at guitar writes these really awesome Bob Dylan-esque songs that are kind of great! And it’s one of those Better Than Fiction stories.
How to Leave Your Lover
Wondering how to leave your lover?
Make them watch How to Leave Your Lover, then they’ll leave you!
Get it? Cause this movie sucks.
Owen (Paul Schneider) is a single writer in Los Angeles (omg, I’m sure the writer/director wasn’t drawing from his own experiences) who finally decides to “break up with his life” and leave L.A. But in line at the airport, he runs into Val (Jennifer “Jessica Stein” Westfeldt) and they have a drink and he decides that she might be the one. So naturally, he stays in L.A. and he dates her but does that thing that movie characters do when they decide to change their lives and is honest with her (sort of, when it’s convenient to the plot) and meets her parents on the first date and various other ‘quirky’ things. I turned it off about halfway through because I was getting really annoyed.
The 2 possible endings (is it a spoiler if I just guess correctly?) are:
- Things with Val turn out great, happily ever after
- Things with Val don’t work out, but it’s OK because Owen finally hooks up with his best friend Allison (Poppy Montgomery), happily ever after
Also, Tori Spelling plays a lesbian and it is like the grossest thing ever.
12.19.07
The Rachel Papers
I really miss the days when it was totally acceptable for someone who looked like Dexter Fletcher (nice name!) to be the romantic lead opposite Ione Skye at the peak of her hotness. Actually, no, I don’t. But such was the world in 1989 and it was this world that brought us The Rachel Papers and what amounts to a lot of misogyny, not nearly enough Jonathan Pryce, a few jokes and Ione Skye’s tits (nice rack!).
In 80s teen movie fashion, British guy Charles (Fletcher) lives in London, has a computer and wants to get laid. He meets Rachel (Skye) and decides he MUST have her. So he employs all sorts of tricks, including keeping info on her in a database (creep!), and finally wins her over. Then they have tons and tons of sex. Then they decide that she should come to stay at the house that he shares with his sister and her crazy husband (Pryce!). But, despite the really unnecessary amounts of fucking, he gets sick of her. Read that again. HE gets sick of HER. After all the time he spent (dirty) spreadsheeting her and wooing her away from James Spader (Oh, did I not mention that? I thought ‘1989′ implied that James Spader was involved in some nefarious way), he gets sick of her because she’s always horny and expects him not to fuck other girls. GO FIGURE. So he cheats on her. And she finds out because she comes over to fuck his brains out and is like “Oh, get a condom” and he says he’s out and she says “No, you’re not, I just saw them this morning” and THEN HE TRIES TO FUCK HER WITH A USED CONDOM. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew.
She dumps him. She moves to New York. They go to a museum a while later (as friends) where she wears a hideous pantsuit and, I guess he learned his lesson?
I know I learned mine: Don’t ever be hornier than the guy you’re fucking. Because he’ll cheat on you.
Wait, what?
The Savages
First of all, I am totally susceptible to cartoony-posters like this one. I love them and they make me think “Ooh! Quirky but heartwarming with clever dialogue and subtle but deliberate performances!” I am probably reading too much into that. Anyway, the names Laura Linney and Phillip Seymour Hoffman make me think similar thoughts. So I was looking forward to The Savages. I actually didn’t even really know what it was about.
The Savages, written and directed by Tamara “Slums of Beverly Hills” Jenkins, is about a brother and sister (Linney and Hoffman) who find out that their father (Philip Bosco), who apparently was never much of a fatherto begin with, is kind of losing his shit and they have to deal with it.