04.20.08
Posted in indie, comedy, drama, reviews at 12:41 pm by FilmFemme
Apparently people that give titles to movies don’t actually want people to see the movies that they are titling. Because, let’s face it, even a smart person doesn’t want to see a movie called Smart People. As a matter of fact, I’m going to contend that the smarter you are, the more you hate smart people. All of this points to the fact that I am actually not as smart as I think I am because not only did I go see this movie, but I enjoyed it.
Dennis Quaid is Lawrence Wetherhold, an English professor at Carnegie Mellon. Ah, movies about professors. Thank god, I was starting to think there would never be another one. Oh, except for the last movie that I reviewed on this site. Anyway. He’s very curmudgeonly. He hates all his students. His son hates him. His daughter (Ellen Page) does her best to emulate him (except for some reason she’s a Republican) and he still carries a torch for his dead wife.
But one day all of that changes!! ZOMG!!
He has a seizure while he’s trying to get his car out of the impound and ends up the ER where his doctor is Sarah Jessica Parker on the same day that his deadbeat brother (Thomas Haden Church) moves in unannounced, unexpected and uninvited.
The quirky family story that follows hardly breaks new ground, but the expectedly adequate (and at times amazing) performances and solid writing make Smart People completely watchable and generally enjoyable.
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04.17.08
Posted in drama, reviews at 1:15 pm by FilmFemme
(This review has spoilers. Let’s face it, no one is going to see this movie anyway.)
Do you like M. Night Shymalan movies (”no!”), but you really wish that the twist was spoiled RIGHT AWAY? Like IN THE TITLE? Then Vadim Perelman’s The Life Before Her Eyes is the perfect springtime movie for you!
At the beginning of the movie, Evan Rachel Wood is a 16 year old Diana. She is young, ridiculously hot, carefree, rebellious and confused about what direction her life is taking her in. We immediately see her become BFF with Maureen (Eva Amurri) even though Diana is kind of a slut and Maureen is kind of a goody goody (but she has huge tits, so it’s A-OK). Early on - like within the first 10 minutes, I think - the pair is confronted with a crisis: there is a school shooting at their high school and they find themselves face to face with the killer (played with hyperventilating stoicism by Adam Chanler-Berat [don’t people use stage names anymore? jeez]). This is the linchpin of the rest of the story as we’re then taken into the future where Diana lives peacefully with her professor husband and her daughter Emma, teaching art history to high schoolers and trying to keep the pretty, smart ones from being sluts like she was. Peacefully but for the traumatic flashbacks she suffers as well and the paranoid delusions that ultimately get her hit by a Mack truck (or maybe it’s a bus). Yeah, real peaceful.
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03.19.08
Posted in drama, reviews at 12:24 pm by FilmFemme
Back in high school, I may not have been a popular kid. Or particularly cool. Or into music or art or school or computers or anything that might have taken me anywhere in life. But I did know a lot about serial killers. I have found, over the course of growing up, moving out and meeting other people that I wasn’t the only adolescent girl who a had a mildly creepy and probably disturbing to my parents obsession with guys like Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy. All of this is really neither here nor there except to say that I may have been inclined to like Zodiac whether or not it was good. Lucky for me (and you!) it was good.
The thing about this movie is that it isn’t really classifiable as a typical serial killer movie. Because it isn’t about living in fear like something like Summer of Sam. And it isn’t a hardcore procedural exercise. Instead, it’s really about a guy that, like me when I was 16, is kind of obsessed with serial killers and devotes his life, to the detriment of all relationships, his career, etc., to solving the Zodiac killings that took place in Northern California in the 1960s and 70s. Because even though they’re rare and scary and crazy and evil, they are pretty fucking interesting.
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03.16.08
Posted in drama, action, reviews at 7:20 pm by FilmFemme
What the hell is going on?
Does Daniel Craig wear contacts?
Why is that girl with the machine gun crying?
Fuck it, let’s go get drunk.
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03.14.08
Posted in drama, reviews at 1:22 pm by FilmFemme
When guys get really upset and cry in real life, do they drool? Because that seems to happen a lot in movies. Would an answer to this burning question be worth investing the time and energy it might take to make a guy cry like this? I don’t think so…I really don’t like seeing boys cry.I didn’t get all the way through Bully. I may finish watching it tonight, but maybe not. It’s really bad and made me feel like I should take a shower because it’s so gratuitous in its depictions of teen sex and skin and bodies.
I just went to IMDb so I could start linking in this paragaph and was confronted with the name of the director of Bully, one Larry Clark. Well, duh. If I had known that, I may not have watched it, despite a nostalgic and grief-ridden longing to see Brad Renfro, because I know what a total perv this guy is. Seriously, are people concerned about this? I am. I’m no prude and I like Cruel Intentions as much as the next girl, but the way that his camera devours lithe and creamy teens - especially the girls - isn’t sexy and mysterious, it’s just creepy and gross.
In Bully, Nick Stahl, looking exactly like him IMDb headshot, is a seriously depraved - uh - bully. He beats up poor, defenseless Brad Renfro, fucks his girlfriend (Rachel Miner - of formerly married to Macaulay Culkin fame), rapes this realllllllly skanky chick who let Larry Clark put her labia in the movie (Oh wait, that’s Bijou Phillips? Well, then at least I guess she got paid before she showed her labia so she’s still got a leg up on Paris Hilton in the class department. Still. Gross.) and just is an asshole (it is made apparent that he’s a repressed homosexual…) until Lisa (Miner) decides that they should kill him. I stopped watching after one failed murder attempt, so I don’t know yet if they ice him or not. I’m not sure why I just said “ice” - did it sound cool? I’m keeping it.
I like Brad Renfro and all, but this movie is really over the top. In addition to the really horribly gratuitous nudity, it’s also violent, bloody, poorly written and badly acted. I’m now struck by depressing images of Rachel Miner and Bijou Phillips desperate for careers sumbitting themselves to Clark because he made Kids and they think they’ll be the next Chloe Sevigny or something. I have some bad news for you, girls, Chloe Sevigny is interesting and talented. That’s why she got famous. Not because of this creep.
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03.12.08
Posted in drunk reviews, classic, drama at 9:59 pm by FilmFemme
So, this should probably be called “buzzed review” because I’m not really *drunk* - but that’s getting pretty technical, so whatever.
The Last Picture Show is really beautiful - not just the cinematography which is clean and expressive, but the story and the characters are really made beautiful by their flaws.
There are also lots of boobs.
Something that struck me about the people in this movie is they are all very classic looking. Even though, yes, that is Jeff Bridges, and that’s Randy Quaid and those are Cybill Shepherd’s tits, so maybe that’s why everything seems so familiar, but everyone in this movie seems to have very classic, timeless features. They could have come from any decade and still wound up in movies or sprawled on chaises for Impressionists or something like that.
Random notes I made during my viewing:
Jacy (Shepherd) = JC = Jesus Christ?
Jacy has the same hair as Claire Danes in Shopgirl. Hm.
Tall, Dark, Hottie: Are you a virgin?
Jacy: Guess I am
TDH: Too bad
Jacy: I don’t wanna be though!
TDH: I don’t blame you. Come and see me when you’re not.
Did you want to know what this movie is about? Basically a shitty town in Texas in the 1950s and there are these 2 guy friends played by Timothy Bottoms and The Dude and both of them really want to fuck Cybill Shepherd, only one of them gets to and the other one has to settle for Cloris Leachman. There is also a pool hall, a retarded kid, a hooker, a MILF, a naked swimming party, an alleged molestation and a movie theatre that (spoiler in the title!) shuts down eventually.
It’s great.
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03.11.08
Posted in misogyny, romance, drama, reviews at 1:53 pm by FilmFemme
Sliding Doors is a movie for girls. I am a girl. I love this movie.
It’s one of those WHAT IF movies that starts with WHAT IF Gwyneth Paltrow does a British accent?
WHAT IF she is adorable and misses her train so she doesn’t find out that her boyfriend with the bad haircut is cheating on her with the uber-hot Jeanne Trippelhorn?
WHAT IF she is adorable and doesn’t miss the train, does find out about the philandering, and also does meet the not-so-cute-but-so-charming-and-funny-
even-if-he-is-kind-of-short James?
(Spoiler alert: everything turns out great either way).
And then, WHAT IF you think about this movie and its implications too hard?
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03.09.08
Posted in drama, reviews at 7:30 pm by FilmFemme
The title of Drugstore Cowboy always makes me think of that 311 song that goes “I know a drugstore cowboy / so afraid of getting bored…” Remember 311? Weren’t they from Omaha or something?
This Gus Van Sant movie is a lot better than that song, though. A young and sexy Bob (Matt Dillon) is a junkie who robs drugstores with his wife Dianne (Kelly Lynch), his friend Rick (James LeGros) and Rick’s girlfriend Nadine (a 19-year-old Heather Graham). At the outset, they are run out of Portland and go on the road, picking up drugs that they shipped to themselves via various bus routes. Pretty ingenious, especially for junkies. Yeah, they are a pretty resourceful lot.
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02.16.08
Posted in film festivals, indie, double feature, documentary, drama at 11:36 am by FilmFemme
A Screening of 3 Short Films at the Northwest Film Forum in Seattle.
(1) Documentary about some guy who built some crazy instrument. Documentary consists of black and white digital interview that occasionally zooms in just on his eyes because that’s ‘artistic.’ Second half of documentary is silent footage of said guy while he plays his crazy instrument LIVE. Crazy instrument sounds like something Phillip Glass’ retarded child would make. Only worse.
(2) Silent Super 8 movie in which a woman hires a hitman to kill her husband’s mistress. It’s a good thing the (brilliant) director (of all 3 films) explained the plot before the screening! Thanks, guy!
(3) Silent 16mm movie in which a woman may or may not be the last person on earth. A skeleton follows her around. Then some people make out and drink martinis. Martinis are so cinematic. Also in black and white. And there is a band with a cello in it that plays LIVE.
I never thought that I would long for film school screenings. Mercifully all three films were under 10 minutes in length. After the last one, they tried to trick me into staying to watch the band jam (practice) by not having a pause. Fuck that.
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01.28.08
Posted in best of, thriller, drama, reviews at 1:23 pm by FilmFemme
Name a great Woody Allen crime/punishment/guilt/searching for God thriller:
Crimes and Misdemeanors
Name a Woody Allen crime/punishment/guilt/searching for God thriller that would barely be worth $6.50 somewhere in Iowa, much less $14 at the Arclight in Hollywood:
Cassandra’s Dream
Which is more fun to watch, Colin Farrell as the bright spot in Cassandra’s Dream or Colin Farrell fucking a model on that sex tape?
Trick question! They are both fun to watch in their own way.
Name a woman who is hot and great to see starring in a Woody Allen movie because she’s very womanly (see: a plenty, curves) but still portrayed as “the hot girl” but is not really much of an actress:
Hayley Atwell (you get partial credit for Scarlett Johansson, but the ‘great to see starring in a Woody Allen movie’ part of the question would be wrong wrong wrong.)
Who likes the poster anyway and is going to keep going to see Woody Allen movies as long as they don’t star ScarJo or someone else that I find patently offensive because she loves Annie Hall and Manhattan more than every other movie combined?
It’s me. The sad answer for that one is ME.
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