Jack Nicholson Doesn't Get On With His Family

I am Legend

My First Horror Movie Experience

I saw a ten minute stretch of Salem's Lot when I was a three, and boy did it stick with me. I seriously think it has affected me my entire life. I still always, ALWAYS, close the blinds at night. 

The China Syndrome

My Band's Debut Album . . . not really.

• New meme: here's a totally random way to make your new random band's new random album cover. Post one! Go to “Wikipedia.” Hit “random” and the first article you get is the name of your band. Then go to “Random Quotations” and the last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album. Then, go to Flickr and click on “Explore the Last Seven Days” and the third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
  

So I did this twice. The first time was much better, I think.

The Band: Simon James Collier
The Album: Ugly and Work in the Post Office

The second time:

The Band: Guy Stevens
The Album: Dote on His Very Absence


As you can see, the second effort was considerably gayer on all fronts. Also, I don't know how, but I got a person's name both times. I imagine both albums would be very emo, but in different ways.

1929-1930 All Quiet on the Western Front

A friend of mine has decided to watch all the Best Picture Oscar Winners in chronological order. A small group of people are joining him - including myself. Here are a few of the comments made at this year's movie.

• “Not even German accents!?”
  
• “Ew.”
  
• “Gross.”
  
• “They like to open doors and windows to note transitions.”
  
• “Do the French speak English, too?
  
• “Ahhh. He was my favorite.”
  
• “He’s doing a good job of not blinking.” / “His eyes moved a second ago.” / “Oh, did they?”
  
• “There’s a bug on the bed. There’s another one.”
  
• “Blech!”
  
• “That was a pretty good movie.”
  

The angels have the phonebox

The angels have the phonebox.

David Tennant, Doctor Who.

Funniest Rape Ever

The Aviator

1929-30 Broadway Melody

A friend of mine has decided to watch all the Best Picture Oscar Winners in chronological order. A small group of people are joining him - including myself. Here are a few of the comments made at this year's movie.

• “I don’t think I can take a hundred minutes of this. Do you have any aspirin?”
  
• “That was some . . . interesting editing.”
  
• “I keep thinking of Mahoney from Police Academy.”
  
• “There’s sound and we *still* have to read titles!”
  
• “Songs and a comic stutter. The promise of sound fulfilled.”
  
• “There must not have been a lot of competition for Best Picture that year.”
  
• “Of the three, Sunrise is my favorite.”
  
• “The ending is a downer.” / “What are you talking about? Everybody’s happy!”
  

The Sweet Hereafter

Romance Bites for Shy Awkward Girls

My 2008 Movie Going Experience

While overall quality was not to my taste, I thought the summer blockbuster season was very strong. Other than that I gravitated toward movies about the futility of a full life, the inherent evil of my fellow man, and why there’s no place in society for the damaged and broken. Just this morning, I was called out as a “dedicated curmudgeon—the kind of person who sees a dark cloud behind every silver lining” and “unable to accept joy into my life”[Happy Birthday, Mom!]. After looking at my list of favorites, I don’t have a clue what that person was talking about.

My Favorites

Cloverfield directed by Matt Reeves

• Seen on 1.17 (the midnight show) at Green Hills 16
  
• Sample Dialogue: “Okay, just to be clear here, our options are: die here, die in the tunnels, or die in the streets. That pretty much it?”
  
• Genre: Blair Witch-influenced amusement park ride / parade of death
  
• Nature of audience: A theater packed with highly receptive, breathless twenty-something dudes.
  
• Hate pretty rich people? Wanna watch some die? Take a gander at this. This movie is the most anomalous of all the movies on my favorites list. Frankly, if it had been a stronger year for movies, it probably wouldn’t be here. It has problems. The characters are paper thin and boring. The plot concerning dude rescuing his bitch girlfriend reeks of too much emo - even for me. Thematically, it really doesn’t do anything new. But damn, it is fun. And that was an incredibly communal viewing experience (when the helicopter crashes and everything goes silent, you could hear the entire audience breathe out). It starts out like mumblcore with a gimmick, but once the monster appears, the movie never looks back. It is lean and tense and rigorously adheres to its own gimmick -- even finding a way to include generic kissy flashbacks without breaking "character" (until the intentionally overblown overture over the credits). It turns 9/11 into a pop monster movie – all the thrills, none of the exploitive guilt or politics Cloverfield is everything Spielberg’s War of the Worlds should have been: unexplained, nihilistic, tightly paced, and filmed from a ground-eye view.
  
• What does it teach us: Why try to help others? You’re all going to die horrible, painful deaths anyway.
  
• How will History view it: The louder, faster Blair Witch. Of course Cloverfield costs about 300 times more than Blair Witch, but grossed about the same. Go figure.
  

The Dark Knight directed by Christopher Nolan

• Seen on 7.18 (the midnight show) at Green Hills 16
  
• Sample Dialogue: “To them, you’re just a freak . . . like me. They need you right now, but when they don’t, they’ll cast you out like a leper. You see, their morals, their code – it’s a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They’re only as good as the world allows them to be. I’ll show you. When the chips are down, these civilized people, they’ll eat each other.”
  
• Genre: Noirish pulpy superhero actioner / pessimistic meditation on the fragility of goodness.
  
• Nature of audience: About a thousand die hard comic fans (NOT an exaggeration) – mostly twenty-something and thirty-something dudes with the occasional chick in tow.
  
• The second highest grossing movie of all time, and temporarily the top-rated movie on IMDB. This movie was like a bomb going off.As far as the zeitgeist of national movie dialogue goes, The Dark Knight created an actual sense of community. Everyone knew about it. Most everyone saw it. And it even appealed to the less middle-of-the-road audience. A dark and complex crowd pleaser with a nontraditional ending – at least as far as blockbusters go. First off, it’s impossible to talk about the movie without talking about Heath Ledger. Lip-smacking. Temperamental. Joyously pessimistic and misanthropic. Laughing wildly as he plummets toward certain death. His creepy runny drunk drag queen make-up emphasizes his piercing eyes. He hunches his lanky frame. His character is smooth and calculated, although he actively denies it. And each tall tale he tells about his scars suggests someone who feels betrayed and abused and forgotten – whether it’s true or not. He doesn’t resort to the usual heavy, Bond villain voice. Instead, his voice is whiny and his thoughts scattered. The perfect foil for Christian Bale’s growlerific performance. This movie vastly improves on an already excellent first film. Initial bit of brilliance: replacing Crazy Holmes with Gyllenhaal, an actress capable of coming off not just as an adult, but also as a strong, feminine woman. Nolan’s direction is confident: not a soft cut in the movie – creating and sustaining a powerful momentum, exciting action sequences (the escape in Hong Kong, the trailer flipping, etc.), and threatening to tip into horror every time Ledger appears onscreen. Unlike a lot of feel-good shit, Dark Knight completely earns its restorative hope-in-humanity-finale while still succumbing to doubt about humanity’s goodness (Gordon and Batman’s plan to cover up Dent’s spree speaks volumes about their own confidence in the populace of Gotham City). And how awesome is it when big mean convict tosses that trigger device out the window? One of my favorite random moments: when Dent screams “Rachel!” causing the Joker to flinch.
  
• What does it teach us:Even the best of us are two-faced lunatics who will kill to get their way.
  
• How will History view it: It is now the gold standard that all subsequent superhero movies, comic book adaptations, and sequels will be compared to.
  

The Fall directed by Tarsem

• Seen on 5.31 at Green Hills 16
  
• Sample Dialogue: “There’s no happy ending with me.”
  
• Genre: High-toned, impeccably art-directed, achingly serious symbolist art with a side of suicidal tendencies.
  
• Nature of audience: An older couple and me.
  
• The Princess Bride’s evil cousin. Suicidal paraplegic tells a friendless little girl a fantasy story, but unlike Princess Bride, the nature of the story is not to comfort or cure. It is to manipulate, to scar, to trick. This movie is incredible to look at. Absolutely incredible. Filmed across six continents – and it shows. Visually astounding with vibrant colors, sweeping camera movements, and complex choreography within each frame – often delving into pure montage. Catalina Untaru, six at the time of shooting, is – ugh – adorable. Barely able to speak English, Pace leads her naturally through scenes – often repeating words and phrases she confuses or doesn’t understands. Sometimes, as when Pace asks her if she is trying to save his soul, she simply smiles.Pace’s tale is violent, vengeful and grim. But there is a dry, dark sense of humor throughout. It involves six men(one of whom is Charles Darwin who uses bullshit sign language to communicate with the mystical dreadlocked native who crawls out of the bark of a tree and vomits birds) seeking to “joyously kill” evil Governor Odious – sometimes pausing to watch clay covered natives dance (in a scene that spans the entire globe) and chant “googley, googley” over and over.Despite the cheerful look of the movie, it is grim, grim, grim. Pace is cynical and adamantly can’t bring himself to tell a happy story no matter how badly Untaru needs to hear one. And boy, is it pretentious. The beauty and shock of the broken leg montage, veers into laughably pretentious avant-garde mode, but it’s incredibly awesome and gorgeous pretentious avant-garde mode. Highlights: one of the best this-is-how-you-dump-a-girl scenes ever! And the perfectly delusional ending
  
• What does it teach us: Adults never have the best interest if kids in mind. Never! And girls are two-timing whores.
  
• How will History view it: The Fall? Never heard of it.
  

In Bruges directed by Martin McDonough

• Seen on 2.22 at Green Hills 16
  
• Sample Dialogue: “I’m going to die now, I think.”
  
• Genre: Guilt driven pulpy salacious black comedy about what it all means with a side of suicidal tendencies.
  
• Nature of audience: An adventurous older crowd with a wicked, dark sense of humor.
  
• This movie is ruthless. It mocks sight seeing. Fat people. Childhood memories. Maturity. Jesus Christ’s Fucking Blood! Tradition. Alcoves. Racist conspiracy theories. Art appreciation. Chinese lollypop men. Canadians. Americans. Fairy Tale Fucking Towns. Skinheads. Amsterdam. Semi-automatics. South Central L.A. Cunt fucking kids. Ticket takers. Poking people in the forehead. Principles. Negotiations. And racist dwarves. The only thing is does glorify (fleetingly) is suicide. I love the cynical, politically incorrect, dark physical humor. And that note the little boy has kills me.
  
• What does it teach us: All we do is go around hurting each other. Let’s hurt ourselves instead.
  
• How will History view it: A new Christmas classic!
  

Let the Right One in directed by Tomas Alfredson

• Seen on 11.28 at the Belcourt
  
• Sample Dialogue: “Just so you know, I can’t be your friend.”
  
• Genre: Low-boil Euro-horror with a side of suicidal tendencies
  
• Nature of audience: A theater full of art house regulars slumming it and foreign horror fans. Plus one dude whose reaction to one particular act of violence was to yell, “Jesus!”
  
• Excessively bloody and creepy with a sick sense of humor. Put-upon Oskar is a twelve-year-old boy who endures relentless bullying, an over-protective mother, a distant father – even a policeman subtly chastises him for reading “inappropriate” books.With slight shades of George Romero’s Martin (which the movie then tosses out), this is a very different vampire movie – and there was a shitload of vampire crap this year. I love the eerie cinematography (bright snow set against a pitch black night sky). The budding relationship between the children is nicely unsettling They test each other with dark requests, and need each other, but in completely different ways. One is desperate for a friend. And the other is entering the market for a daytime guardian and bloodletting servant. This movie is a cynical indictment of relationships – at least that’s how I interpret a movie about a chick who commits murder to win her man – only to literally throw him away when she’s done with him. To quote Battlestar Galactica, “This has all happened before. It will all happen again.” The highlight: clearly the scene in the pool. Sad, funny, and demented. And it’s the only movie this year to feature a lonely boy giving a girl a Rubik’s cube, only to have her effortlessly solve it.
  
• What does it teach us: Relationships are simply an excuse for girls to drain men dry and then throw them away.
  
• How will History view it: One more movie on the pile of good foreign movies that were remade into slick Hollywood hokum.
  

Paranoid Park directed by Gus Van Sant

• Seen on 4.5 at the Belcourt
  
• Sample Dialogue: “I didn’t like her either, but getting laid is always better than not getting laid.” “True that.”
  
• Genre: Guilt driven gazing emo mood piece wallow with a side of self-destructive tendencies.
  
• Nature of audience: A handful of Belcourt refugees
  
• The latest Gus Van Sant aimless, elliptical whisp in which movement stands in for dialogue and character – complete with a jumbled chronology This movie is super emo-tastic – all tortured boys in low jeans and hoodies moping through life trying to get laid and waste time. But of course, with some darkness lurking at its core. The movie is beautifully shot – the skateboarding footage is especially exciting – often with the background of any given shot just out of focus. As in Elephant, the performances are stiff and impenetrable, which is entirely true to sixteen year olds. The main kid reveals as little about himself as possible. He is kinda vapid, overly stressed, and barely in touch with himself. The camera lazily follows him as he roams the hall or stares into space or writes in his journal (so emo). His survival instincts have taught him to lie – almost out of habit – as having reached the point of not trusting adults. Why should he when they are either deceptive and plotting or just as childish as the kids?Like The Fall, this movie features a fantastic how-to-dump-your-girlfriend scene. The most anomalous moment: the exceedingly gory death scene – straight out of a horror movie.
  
• What does it teach us: There’s nothing that skateboarding and Elliott Smith can’t cure.
  
• How will History view it: Didn’t Van Sant make another movie the year Milk came out? That one where he films young boys interacting for ninety minutes. That was . . . interesting.
  

[Rec] directed by Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza

• Seen in late December in my apartment
  
• Sample Dialogue: “Aaaaaaaarggghh!”
  
• Genre: Blair Witch-inspired amusement park ride / parade of death with a side of suicidal tendencies (maybe)
  
• Nature of audience: Me. Drunk.
  
• I saw Quarantine first – which is nearly a shot-for-shot remake. The biggest difference I remember is that there seems to be more excruciating filler at the beginning of the remake. Quarantine is also naturally slicker and more polished, but that just gives [Rec] a sharper edge. Basically a guided tour through a house of terror, death, and bigotry! All shaky cam, dark corridors, and sudden bursts of violence. Plus hilarious venomous interviews with each tenant pointing fingers. Unlike other first person horror movies, the question isn’t why does the unhelpful cameraman keep filming, as much as why doeseveryone else tolerate it so much? Monsters lurk in shadows – just barely in view – or leap out from the side of the frame – baring bloody teeth and screaming into the camera. This movie is tense, visceral, and deeply unsettling. Character development? Bah!! Subtlety? Who need subtlety when you have blood spurting onto the lens? There are no real answers – only a few hints at a government conspiracy and scientific experiments gone awry. Plenty of clues, but no answers.It also features the best jump scare I’ve experienced in a long time. To quote my mom, “I jumped a mile!”
  
• What does it teach us: Doing good deeds only gets you dead. Painfully, horribly dead.
  
• How will History view it: One more movie on the pile of good foreign movies that were remade into slick Hollywood hokum.
  

Reprise directed by Joachim Trier

• Seen on 7.11 at the Belcourt
  
• Sample Dialogue: “Remember when I tricked you into falling in love, in Paris?”
  
• Genre: New Wave-inspired meditation on what it all means with a side of suicidal tendencies.
  
• Nature of audience: The older Belcourt audience
  
• Two childhood friends, Erik and Phillip, discover how much life sucks. They both submit books. One writer sucks. The other gets published. Life being life, something then goes wrong. Each moment of happiness, ephemeral. The movie is wildly elliptical – spitting out rapid-fire flashbacks to childhood (someone’s mom catches him looking at porn on the internet and asks him to consider the possibility that the woman on the screen is her) and lamenting fantasies about sharing a beer or some music and goofing on at the beach versus reality: somberly standing around and struggling to relate to friends. Erik doesn’t let his food touch. Phillip cuts himself. Both hang out with chauvinist (but totally clear thinking) friends who pontificate about poetry and art and writing. The director uses a stream of consciousness approach to chronology to explore fragile relationships, excessive air quotes, and ominous countdowns. At best, people act uncomfortably polite. They stand around awkwardly, dance on eggshells and only know to ask condescending how’s-the-crazy questions? These kids are overwhelmed and emotionally damaged in a way that only upper middle class over-educated kids can be. The Norwegian word for “the end” is unfortunate.
  
• What does it teach us: There is no success. Nobody cares about anything as passionately as you do. Art contributes nothing to the world. Give it up now.
  
• How will History view it: The sure handed directorial debut of Joachim Trier. That kid is going places.
  

Synecdoche, NY directed by Charlie Kaufman

• Seen on 11.21 @ 4:20(!) at Green Hills 16.
  
• Sample Dialogue: “Most of your time is spent being dead or not yet born. But while alive, you wait in vain, wasting years, for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right. And it never comes or it seems to but doesn't really. And so you spend your time in vague regret or vaguer hope for something good to come along. Something to make you feel connected, to make you feel whole, to make you feel loved.”
  
• Genre: New Wave-inspired mindfuck / meditation on what it all means with a side of suicidal tendencies.
  
• Nature of audience: A skeletal baffled older art house crowd.
  
• The latest in Charlie Kaufman’s ongoing string of introspective sad sacks desperately trying to connect with a fascinating yet frustrating world around them. Stuck between stasis and anti-stasis. Chronology denied!Hoffman is Cotard, a self-destructive theater director who gives meta-direction to his actors and struggles through relationships with various women, some who live in houses that are perpetually on fire and some who made her parents proud with her politeness. He spends his entire life dying. Characters regularly cut him off. Others claim they see and understand him when he can’t fathom himself. The movie is rapid fire paced, elliptical, ungainly, surreal, and die-hard melancholy, but it’s hardly void of Kaufman’s signature self-deprecating humor (my two favorite comic bits are Hoffman trying to dial 911 while having a seizure and Michelle Williams demonstrating that everyone has a tattoo!). If Kaufman continues on the path he is on, his films will become so esoteric, no one will be able to decipher them. He barely eschews that now despite adding layer upon layer of absurdities and doppelgangers. As a sprawling epic about life and death and meaning (“It’s a difficult question – preferring how you die.”), this movie puts Benjamin Button and Slumdog Millionaire to shame.
  
• What does it teach us: There is no success. Nobody cares about anything as passionately as you do. Art contributes nothing to the world. Give it up now.
  
• How will History view it: The sure-handed directorial debut of Charlie Kaufman. That kid is going places.
  

WALL·E directed by Andrew Stanton

• Seen on 6.26 (the midnight show) at Green Hills 16
  
• Sample Dialogue: “Wouldn’t you know, rising toxicity levels have made life unsustainable on Earth.”
  
• Genre: Post-apocalyptic Pixar
  
• Nature of audience: A sea of restless kids and teens hopped up on soda and prizes. (I got a plastic watch.)
  
• Human beings have fucked up the world, and left it in shambles. We have left one single robot to take care of things while we are dicking around space. This robot is so fucking precious. It’s like a goddamn puppy. Way to go, human beings! The opening of this movie is incredible. The loneliness of Wall-E’s daily routines and the desolation create an ominous tone that unfortunately never really pays off. Still, the first thirty minutes is“pure cinema”. Naturally the movie eventually gives way to Pixar shenanigans. A bit too much slapstick. Some overreaching commentary about how technology has divided us and distracted us to a dangerous degree. (I think that message is hit harder than any environmental message the movie might have.) Like all Pixar movies, it looks amazing. Also like most Pixar movies, it is ridiculously sweet. I approve of the HAL/Flight of the Navigator/Alien riffs, but I can’t stand that bit of fake suspense near the end. Is anyone in the audience really worried that Wall-E has lost his memory? And it’s the only movie this year to feature a lonely boy giving a girl a Rubik’s cube, only to have her effortlessly solve it.
  
• What does it teach us: Man is incompetent, lazy and deadly, and the machines are taking over. (Doesn’t Steve Jobs have some input at Pixar?)
  
• How will History view it: Pixar’s masterpiece . . . but that’s only because History will probably treat Brad Bird as a red-headed stepchild.
  

Wanted directed by Timur Bekmambetov

• Seen on 6.27 at Green Hills 16
  
• Sample Dialogue: “I am all of these. I am none of these. Who am I now?”
  
• Genre: Absurdist violent middle-class-white-guy angst fantasy with a side of suicidal tendencies
  
• Nature of audience: Ironic, blood-thirsty twenty-somethings, mostly couples.
  
• Grim meditation on cultish loyalty, fate and the abuse of faith. Plus, shit blows up.Some say there are no atheists in foxholes. This movie turns that around and asks how faithful will someone remain to their . . , um . . . faith when it asks for the extreme? The stunts are cartoonishly over-the-top. The humor is cynical and misanthropic. The plot is ridiculous. A magically binary loom gives orders to a centuries-old fraternity who absorbs lost angsty white boy McAvoy into their congregation with excessive flattery, promises of a purpose in this world, and flagellation. Self-confused McAvoy chooses feeling important and needed over feeling like a useless doormat. Violence ensues. He is regularly baptized in a pool of crust. Angelina Jolie walks around naked and head butts McAvoy. Everyone skulks around cocking their guns. Fast cars, curving bullets, hot babes, petty revenge, big guns, orgasmic explosions and a Fight Clubbish disdain for white-collar drudgery. This movie “owns”. By the way, I am apparently twelve-years-old. Ultimately, this movie is warmed over Fight Club-lite, But I’ll take that over warmed over Forrest Gump-lite any day. One of many cons: Why does no one get even a scratch when they bust through windows? Whiskey tango foxtrot!
  
• What does it teach us: There is no God. Everyone lies. Kill, kill, kill!
  
• How will History view it: Fodder to be bashed on message boards for centuries to come.
  

The Wrestler directed by Darren Aronofsky

• Seen on 1.25.9 at Green Hills 16
  
• Sample Dialogue: “The only place I get hurt is out there. The world doesn’t give a shit for me.”
  
• Genre: Lonely character-driven miserablist wallow with a side of self-destructive tendencies
  
• Nature of audience: Thirty-something dudes with the occasional chick in tow, plus one very large tattooed horror fan who had been waiting forever for this movie to come to Nashville so he could see Marissa Tomei naked.
  
• Aronofsky’s funniest movie yet! Good natured sad-sack Mickey Rourke goes about his day hitting all the typical drab indie markers. Trouble making payments? Estranged daughter? Life-threatening illness? It’s all there. But Rourke is so damn likeable. I spent the entire movie worrying about him. And in the end, the movie avoids all the usual quick fix markers that mar most movies of this type. Here is someone who sacrifices his body, his health, and what little else he can still call his for art – which is the only thing he knows to do. The only thing he can bring himself to do. The loneliness, seediness, and isolation are palpable. (I love the scene where he tries to convince a kid to keep playing Nintendo with him). And the whole movie feels so lived-in – taking place in the wrestling ring, a strip club, and various bars. Wrestling is not an obsession. Or a hobby. It’s all that matters. After all, there’s nothing else going his way. Also, Necrobutcher sucks a fat dick.
  
• What does it teach us: There is no success. Nobody cares about anything as passionately as you do. Art contributes nothing to the world. Give it up now.
  
• How will History view it: Mickey Rourke was good in that one movie. That one, what was it?
  

Movies I Liked That Could Grow on Me


Boy A directed by John Crowley

• Two childhood friends, Eric and Philip, discover how much life sucks.– this sounds familiar. This movie would make an excellent double feature with Psycho 2 for films about the societal punishments convicts experience once they have paid their proper debt to society. The story itself is cliché-ridden. It hits all the familiar notes of this particular sub-genre. The movie is overly earnest and familiar, but I dig it.
  

Burn After Reading directed by the Coen Brothers

• I have always preferred the Coen Brothers’ crime films to their comedies. Their tendency for random plot twists serves them better when the outcome carries more gravitas. But Burn After Reading is fun and shocking and swift with an impressive cast.
  

The Edge of Heaven directed by Fatih Akin

• Europeans skulking about, looking for redemption. So connected, and yet to far apart. How tragic yet comforting. How very European this movie is. Normally, I would get frustrated with a movie like this, but I dig this one. Maybe the sudden bursts of violence won me over.
  

The Last Mistress directed by Cathereine Breillat

• I don’t remember much about this movie except that I liked it. A middlebrow costume drama, but all sexed up. That’s okay. I want to see it again, but there’s not even a release date for the DVD yet.
  

Recount directed by Jay Roach

• Technically, I should have included this in my TV junk. An HBO movie about the 2000 election. It throws he entire debacle in a new light for me. And of course nurtures a what-if attitude about the last eight years. And it’s by far the best thing Kevin Spacey has done in years.
  

Repo! The Genetic Opera directed by Darren Lynn Bousman

• There is a lot wrong with this cultish horror musical grotesquerie. It is aggressive and excessively gory. The cinematography is murky. And the performances are terrible. Still, it’s hard to not feel something about the sheer audacity of this thing. Its fetishes of surgery, grave-robbing, and drug use – all set to a thumping score – are at times off-putting, but I would often rather watch an overreaching bad film crazy with ambition and audacity than a dozen solid middlebrow movies.
  

Revolutionary Road directed by Sam Mendes

• Sample Dialogue: “A lot of people get the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness.”
  
• Genre: Dark and angry chamber drama meditation on what it all means with a side of suicidal tendencies.
  
• Nature of audience: Chatty dowagers with snacks and commentary.
  
• Wanna watch folks shouting at each other for two hours? Me, too! It is an aggressive, angry, dark, vicious and obvious attack on all things bourgeois. But you know what: fuck all things bourgeois. There is nothing new under the sun here. Much of the script feels too stagey and theatrical, but the performances are top-notch, and the direction is often ruthless. A Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? where the couple tries desperately to keep the drama out of view – even from each other. Although an unborn child remains the weapon of choice in both films. A cure for the romanticized bon mots of Titanic.
  

Slumdog Millionaire directed by Danny Boyle / co-directed by Loveleen Tandan

• This movie is too sentimental and contrived. But I like the blend of Dickensian melodrama and Bollywood fairy tale. And its framing device gives the entire movie a purposeful momentum that most aimless life journey movies lack. And Danny Boyle’s energetic direction makes it distinctive. Compared to something like City of God, this movie is weak and phony. Compared to something like Benjamin Button, it kicks ass. If you’re going to see one version of Forrest Gump this year, see this one. Watching children get their eyes scooped out is always good entertainment.
  

Wendy and Lucy directed by Kelly Reichardt

• Umberto D - Redux. Michelle Williams wanders around Oregon and Walgreens looking for her dog, and generally trying not to lose her shit (Have you seen my dog? No? Fuck you!). Her car doesn't work and she has no socks. More miserabilist wallow. Not much happens, but what does is a fucking bummer, man. Life sucks. Frankly, I get depressed every time I see a "Lost Dog" flyer. Here's a ninety minute lost dog flyer.
  

Performances I Liked

Robert Downey, Jr.
Iron Man

Leonardo DiCaprio
Revolutionary Road

Anna Faris
Smiley Face

• The scene where she tries to back out of her parking space: fucking hilarious. I was laughing for twenty minutes.

Colin Farrell
In Bruges

• My favorite performance of the year. Farrell plays an excitable, guilt stricken, horny, suicidal, politically incorrect, green hit man with a midget fetish and somehow makes all these characteristics logically fit together.

Nathan Fillion
Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

• The hammer is my penis.

James Franco
The Pineapple Express

• Needy, but sweet and affable. I wish I had a dealer like James Franco – rather than the three and a half frat boys down the street who quit their day jobs to start a t-shirt business, but now spend their days joking about having sex with each other’s mothers and inexplicably have Shortbus in their DVD collection.

Andrew Garfield
Boy A

Brendan Gleason
In Bruges

Neil Patrick Harris
Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

Anne Hathaway
Rachel Getting Married

• Hathaway is completely believable, and even a little sympathetic as this needy manipulative mess.
  

Bill Irwin
Rachel Getting Married

Angelina Jolie
Wanted

• Put Jolie in an old costume and give her an accent and she annoys the crap out of me. Take off half her clothes and hand her a gun? I’m there.
  

Heath Ledger
The Dark Knight

Melissa Leo
Frozen River

Bill Maher
Religulous

• Oh, is he smug. But he never backs down or lets any superstitious speechmaking go unchallenged.

Frances McDormand
Burn After Reading

Lee Pace
The Fall

Sean Penn
Milk

Michael Pitt
Funny Games

• The only part of this movie that really struck me as different from the original was Pitt’s boyish, menacingly calm performance as a soulless maniac.

Sam Rockwell
Snow Angels

Mickey Rourke
The Wrestler

Ann Savage
My Winnipeg

Michael Shannon
Revolutionary Road

Meryl Streep
Doubt

• It’s easy to think of Nurse Ratched while watching this, but while Ratched was a calm, manipulative earthmother, Streep’s character is all primal menace and bared teeth. To allow kindness or compromise would be to accept defeat.

Marissa Tomei
The Wrestler

Catinca Untaru
The Fall

Kate Winslet
Revolutionary Road

• That scene the morning after, she is chillier than in any moment in The Reader
  

Perfectly Enjoyable Movies

4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days
American Teen
Ballast

• I generally like slice-of-life dramas with a washed out sky spilling through windows on gray winter days. There’s a bit too much of everybody shouting at each other in the middle for my taste, but eventually everyone settles down – out of exhaustion(?).
  

The Battle of Seattle
Bigger, Stronger, Faster*
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

• So everybody in Germany speaks with a British accent. Yes, that’s lame. And I can understand why someone would find the movie unforgivably dark and cynical and exploitive. Naturally that’s what won me over. Somebody was in a very dark place when they wrote that ending.
  

Charlie Bartlett
Che

• Soderbergh’s glorification of Che is not as esoteric as I feared. Instead, he employs a this happened, then this happened, and then this happened approach to history. While the movie is fantastic to look at, watching Benicio Del Toro traipse through the jungle for four and a half hours is a little like getting stuck inside doing homework on a beautiful summer day. It was well done and engaging, but I never want to sit through it again.
  

Choke
Chop Shop
Constantine’s Sword
Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father

• Not a dry eye in the house.
  

Doomsday
Elegy
Familiar Strangers

• This movie hits all the usual clichés about a guy coming home for the holidays. It’s not imaginative and it’s not even that well done, but there was something about the (very few) subtle moments and the way it presented Hatosy’s relationship to his family that I responded to. Mostly disappointing with brief moments of shining promise.
  

Flow: For the Love of Water
Forgetting Sarah Marshall

• Kristen Bell was in this movie. Hi, Kristen!
  

Frost/Nixon

• Until the day I die, whenever I see Frank Langella, I will always think of Skeletor.
  

Happy-Go-Lucky
JCVD

• The movie starts out promising, but mostly it’s predictable and settles in for exactly what you would expect from a Van Damme movie. Regardless, the relationship with his daughter intrigues me. Especially in that final scene. I don’t know if it is a result of lazy screenwriting or a genuine aversion to the traditional reconciliation scene, but the antagonism I inferred from that moment was something considerably more gut-wrenching and honest that a character is prone to admitting in a movie.
  

Man On Wire
Mister Foe
Momma’s Man
Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist
Pathology
Priceless
The Promotion
Redbelt
Rocket Science

• Ten years ago, Nicholas D'Agosto played a high school teenager in Election. Ten years later, still playing a high school teenager.
  

Role Models
Shotgun Stories

• Mostly there’s too much tell and too little show. But the atmosphere is dead on.
  

Sleepwalking

• Too many movies like this could drive a normal person to suicide by boredom. Luckily I’m not normal.
  

Standard Operating Procedure
Surfwise
Taxi to the Dark Side
Tell No One
This Way Up

• I saw this short animated film somewhere this year. Either at the Nashville Film Festival or as part of an animation show at the Belcourt. It is now nominated for an Oscar. I read plot synopsis and immediately remembered it. Comically dark.
  

Towelhead
Transsiberion
Tropic Thunder
Trouble the Water
Turn the River
Vicky Christina Barcelona
The Visitor
Waltz with Bashir
Zack and Miri Make a Porno


There was a derth of horror movies last year. This year, I’ve already seen almost as many horror movies in theaters as I did all of last year. Perhaps I just avoided the crap better last year.
Horror Movies

Diary of the Dead
Fear(s) of the Dark
Inside

• A new Christmas classic!
  

Make-Out with Violence
The Midnight Meat Train
Mirrors

• The only horror movie I saw this year that I thought was really terrible.
  

Otto; Or, Up with Dead People

• German gay zombie soft-core horror porn. Not what I was expecting.
  

Quarantine

• See [Rec]
  

Rogue
The Ruins
The Signal
The Strangers
Stuck
Teeth
Tokyo Gore Police
Trailer Park of Terror



Lame Movies

The Air I Breathe
Australia
Baghead

• After I saw this movie, a guy in the bathroom asked me what it was about. I told him, and he asked me why the poster featured four dudes in bed together. I told him that two of those dudes were actually women. He remained undaunted in his curiosity.
  

Be Kind Rewind
Blindness
Bolt

• The worst part of this movie: the little girl in the audience who really had to go potty. Mommy, taking your fucking daughter potty!
  

Brideshead Revisited

• Something really boring happens. Then the characters talk about how dramatic and exciting that really boring thing was. Repeat for two and a half hours.
  

Changeling

• In the last third, we very, very slowly watch all the bad guys get their comeuppance in the most painstaking, drawn out way possible. 

The detective was a jerk only to be a jerk. I know there is sexism at play, and there is a natural bureaucratic tendency to cover up mistakes, but it all felt like everyone was being a villain just because they're supposed to be. That way, when the truth comes out the audience can nod and say "Serves that mean old detective right! That jerk!" Even the mean ole nurses get a talking to! 

I have this issue with Eastwood in general. His style is almost too prestigious and calculated. Individual scenes are well lit and nicely acted, but his movies overall just drag.
  

Chapter 27
Christmas on Mars
A Christmas Tale
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
College

• This movie nearly turned me off of movies forever. However I did really like Drake Bell’s hair. I wish I had hair like that.
  

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

• Dear David Fincher: I can’t tell you how badly you have let me down. Did you make this bit of sentimental shlock just to win awards? You suck. This movie is a toothless, bland Forrest Gump wannabe with not one redeeming moment. I can't believe the two big movies at the Oscars are films directed by David Fincher and Danny Boyle, and I'm not more excited about that.
  

The Day the Earth Stood Still
The Duchess

• I remember nothing about this movie. Nothing!
  

Encounters at the End of the World

• Hertzog drives me up the wall. At one point in the movie, while a interviewee is telling a story, Hertzog’s narration actually cuts him off with something like “And this guy’s story went on and on and on. Let me talk about me for a while . . .”
  

Gran Torino

• Eastwood being liberal.
  

Hamlet 2
Hancock
The Happening
Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay
Heartbeat Detector

• Most boring movie ever made? Possibly.
  

Hellboy 2
Humboldt County
Igor
The Incredible Hulk
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

• Spielberg stole one my ideas with his sword fight / car chase scene. My idea actually involves two guys with swords in a convertible fending off a pickup truck full of zombies with machetes, but the fundamental concept is the same.
  

Jumper
Kabluey
Kung Fu Panda
Mister Lonely
Mongol
Quantum of Solace
The Reader

• Strikes against it: The unrelentingly sappy score – Everyone in Europe speaks English – For the last hour, everyone is on the verge of breaking into tears – Too many epilogues – Do we really need another Holocaust movie?
  
• Strikes for it: Kate Winslet’s boobs and ass – I have a soft spot for characters with her particular “ailment”
  

Savage Grace
Speed Racer

• This is what it’s like to have sugar poured in your eyes.
  

Stop-Loss
Sukiyaki Western Django
Timecrimes
Traitor

• I remember nothing about this movie. Nothing!
  

Twilight
W. - This is funnier.
War, Inc.
X-Files: I Want to Believe

• Couldn’t the Christian overtones have stayed tucked away neatly in genre allegory and symbolism rather than overt lessons and preachy speeches? Barf!
  

Favorite Songs from Movies

“Dracula’s Lament”
Forgetting Sarah Marshall

“Hallam Foe Dandelion Blow”
Mister Foe

"Jai Ho"
Slumdog Millionaire

“Little Person”
Synecdoche, NY


“The Little Things”
Wanted


“My Freeze Ray”
Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

“Raped in the Face”
Hamlet 2

“Zydrate Anatomy”
Repo! The Genetic Opera


Movies That Never Made It To Nashville

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane
The Brothers Bloom
Eden Lake
The Hurt Locker
I am so proud of you

• I found out that this movie was playing in Atlanta the day after it played. I literally made myself sick after discovering this. Hopefully it will play at the Nashville Film Festival this year.
  

The Pleasure of Being Robbed
The Pool
Surfer Dude
What Doesn’t Kill You


Movies I Refuse to Watch

An American Carol
Beer for My Horses

Defiance

• Yet another Holocaust movie where everyone speaks English in thick accents.
  

Expelled: No Intelligence Required
Mamma Mia!

Nights in Rodanthe
Seven Pounds
Sex and the City


Old Movies I Saw in Theaters

2001: A Space Odyssey

• I saw this high. It kicked in at “See you next Wednesday!”
  

The Big Heat
Black Rain
Bound for Glory
City Lights
Double Indemnity
The Exiles

• I actually had to tell a guy to be quiet during this movie. Then he starts explaining to me that he used to live in L.A. and he recognized all these places. I had to tell him to stop again. Old people!
  

Fear and Desire

• According to the legend related at the Frist Center, there are only two prints of this movie that Kubrick failed to destroy. I can understand why Kubrick might be embarrassed by this flick. It is awkward, the overripe narration is of Ed Woodian hyperbole and the acting is cringe-inducing. But there is that fight scene. That was cool. So cool that Kubrick cuts back to it five times.
  

Fight Club

• This is a very good movie.
  

Frankenstein Must be Destroyed

• There was a homeless lady who absolutely loved this thing. She was still talking about it three weeks later.
  

The Grapes of Wrath

• All the assholes who didn’t get my costume the Halloween before last, please see this movie.
  

Killer’s Kiss
The Last Dragon
Lemora: A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural

• This movie is disturbing in all the right ways . . . and all the wrong ways. For instance, I don’t need to see a twelve-year-old’s breasts, thank you very much (in a PG movie at that!). However, it is so bizarre and dream-like and non-sequitor I had to own it as soon as it was over.
  

Let’s Scare Jessica to Death
The Lost Boys
Mean Streets
The Muppet Movie
Nosferatu (Hertzog-style)
Pigs and Battleships
The Pornographers
Raising Arizona
Repulsion
Rosemary’s Baby
The Shining

• I saw this high, as well.
  

Sixteen Candles
Sunset Boulevard
The Taking of Pelham 123
Taxi Driver
Troll 2
Valerie and Her Week of Wonders
Vengeance is Mine
The Warriors


Movies I Saw for the First Time and Rated Five Stars on Netflix
An Angel at My Table

• I usually hate bio movies, but this one all came together for me when, after years of being treated like an outcast and social retard, the counselor tells Janet that if she doesn’t feel like mingling with others she doesn’t have to.
  

Blood for Dracula

Fallen Angels
Leolo
Man on the Flying Trapeze

Never Give a Sucker an Even Break
Who Can Kill a Child?

• The scene where the dude runs a whole bunch of children down with his car: awesome!
  

Special Mention

The Room

• If you see this movie, here are some suggestions for a drinking game. Take a drink whenever:
  
• Somebody gets up and sits down for no discernable reason. This alone will get you smashed.
  
• Anytime you see a spoon in a picture frame.
  
• Anytime someone says, “Oh, hi!”
  
• Anytime someone says, “I don’t want to talk about it.”
  
• Anytime a character laughs inappropriately.
  
• Anytime someone does a chicken imitation.
  
• Anytime someone in a tux tosses a football.
  
• And anytime someone’s lines seem to be dubbed in.
  
• See you in the hospital!
  

Books I Read

2008 Books:
Bottomless Belly Button by Dash Shaw
Lush Life by Richard Price
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski

Older Books I enjoyed:
Books of Blood by Clive Barker (Assorted Stories) – Adapted into The Midnight Meat Train
The Dogs of Babel by Carolyn Parkhurst
Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk
Jernigan by David Gates

• "I toyed with the idea of asking [my son] Danny, point blank, did he love me, but why ruin a nice day?"
  

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

• Excellent book.
  

The Long Walk by Richard Bachman
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Road by Cormac McCarthy – Adapted into a movie that comes out next year.
The Ruins by Scott Smith –

• An excellent book adapted into a mediocre movie. The book got me thinking about that subgenre of horror in which a group of young people venture to an isolated location only to be killed off one by one. There’s something about this kind of story (a weekend getaway gone horribly wrong) that fascinates me. It happens all the time in real life – but with car accidents or sickness rather than sapient plants. At any rate, the movie, in a desperate attempt to manufacture a happy ending, totally missed the point of the book and fucked the whole thing up royally.
  

The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

• Another excellent book.
  

Watchmen by Alan Moore – Adapted into a movie coming out next year.

Not so Good:
334 by Thomas Dische
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
The Prisoner by Thomas Dische
Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow
Twilight by Stephanie Meyer

• A shitty book adapted into (amazingly) an even shittier movie.
  

Sunset Boulevard