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- The Full Monty
- Fun, with a wee bit of grit about it. Good soundtrack, mushy-feely
sweet ending, and the joy of dancing and stripping.
- Funny Games
- Billed as a post-postmodern Pirandello-esque slasher/thriller, Funny
Games was kinda scary. Um. Not sure I'd say I liked it, but it was well
done, and I appreciated its well-maded-ness. But, as the guy who
introduced the film warned, it was not enjoyable. Rare that I find a
slasher film that not only scared me, but also really disturbed me, and
this was one of those films. Starts with two people coming by to borrow
some eggs, ends with everyone dying, not in a grotesque, campy,
easy-to-laugh-at-manner like I hoped, but in a realistic (for a senseless
killer movie) scary depressing manner.) It's some Austrian movie. Doesn't
explain the movie, just wanted to say that.
- I took two friends to see it. One walked out because it was too
disturbing. I fear he won't talk to me for awhile. The other friend
said, "I'm not letting you pick the movies for awhile, Steph." I ran
into someone I knew from Tufts at the theater, and he was part of a party
of three as well, one of whom was my analogue, the person who dragged his
friends to see the movie. He kept apologizing to his friends afterwards:
"The film series is much more fun than this, really. Don't think all the
movies are like this one." Dan, Harry, ya shoulda been there.
- Kiss the Girls
- I don't pretend this was a good movie, but I enjoyed it. Fun in the
serial killer way I usually like (as opposed to the movie above.)
- L.A. Confidential
- Good, but not anywhere near Usual Suspects good. Still, Kevin Spacey
was in it with his usual great acting, and there were some pretty good
but not quite unpredictable twists.
- The Game
- I mailed in the last bits of my dissertation. My boyfriend and I had
several bottles of wine. We went to the movies, with those bottles of
wine, and drank them there, to The Game. It was good. Not sure how the
movie would've been sober (you'll notice a pattern with these movie
reviews) but hey, it was there. I was quite hungover the next day.
Thank god we didn't see L.A. Confidential instead. No way would we have
understood that in our intoxicated state.
- In the Company of Men
- Sometimes I just like to see mean, and boy, this was it. I
enjoyed it, but I'm sure I would've enjoyed it more if my former
housemate hadn't told me the ending already. Not that I blame her,
because I asked her to at the time. Still, it was good. What an ass.
Except I kept thinking sure, if I was a true son of a bitch, I could do
that too.
- Barjo
- Whoa! I rented this because I'd heard it mentioned on the Philip K.
Dick fan newsgroup and OH MY GOD it's Confessions of a Crap Artist! Not
that I read Confessions, but really, I meant to. One of Dick's less
science-fictiony books. Crazy Barjo who's sexually ignorant and his
sister Fanfan who's just way too much and completely self-absorbed,
married and hitting on her next door neighbors, a married couple. The
actress who plays Fanfan (Anne Brochet) is gorgeous, by the way, a more
tomboyish Demi Moore. Poor poor poor Charles. I don't want to be like
Fanfan, but I can see within me a tendency to be, even without meaning to.
Sigh. Anyway, the movie was a lot more emotional than I expected it would
be. Hunh.
- The Kingdom
- People say things like "ER meets Twin Peaks" about this Swedish movie
(really a miniseries), and I have to say, that's a good comparison. It
reminds me a little of Kobo Abe's book about the hospital. I'm watching
this movie as I write. Snooty Swedish doctor goes to this weird hospital
in Denmark called "The Kingdom", weird semi-retarded kitchen staff, crazy
doctors, a lodge of ultra-rationalists who really aren't all that
rational, a doctor who makes things more "efficient" (by shifting
materials between departments), and a crying girl ghost. A head that
looks like the head of one of the medical students, except it isn't. All
this and brain surgery!!!! Six hours of this stuff, and it's great.
Beware, the ending can be considered to be somewhat unsatisfactory,
especially if you like movies that wrap neatly up, which I don't.
- Tampopo
- Saw it again recently with my boyfriend (the first time I saw it was
with my ex-gf Fonda) and it was spectacular yet again. The best food
movie I've ever seen, and believe me, I know food. This was
mouthwateringly lovely. And nonlinear as well, with the camera following
random bystanders to their little food vignettes. In less than five
minutes, the pathos of a dying mother's last meal is conveyed. In less
than five minutes, a young businessman who can read French
and knows French food upstages his old fogey seniors. In the course of
the movie, the various aspects of ramen - the soup, the meats, the
noodles - is revered and hallowed. Wow.
- (I can't believe John's friend Steve suggested we see Courage Under
Fire or Executive Decision instead. Argh! I wanted to scream! As
compared to *TAMPOPO*?!!! WAS HE CRAZY??!!!! Oops, sorry, I'm calm now.)
- The City of Lost Children
- This movie reminds me of a Smashing Pumpkins album. Or vice versa.
Very dream-scape like, combined with the anachronality of old science
fiction movies. A lot of unexplained nuggets to play with in your head,
like a flavorful piece of cud. Miette, for a teeny kid, is beautiful.
The little burping brother is kinda funny. The mad evil genius is a bit
more pitiful than scary, but the twin sisters who move in synch with each
other I thought were terrifying.
- The Young Poisoner's Handbook
- I am in love. I haven't had a favorite movie psycho for awhile, well,
not that long a while, Hannibal Lechter I guess, from Silence of the
Lambs. But Graham Young is brilliant! (And from real life, I guess.
Except in real life I bet the white-power aspects only slightly alluded to
in the movie were a much larger part of the real Graham Young's life.)
Even when he was young he realized he was good at chemistry. His family
life is awful and nonintellectual and stifling. He poisons them calmly in
revenge, all the while studying their decline scientifically. They put
him in jail, and THEN THEY LET HIM OUT AGAIN! Hah. He poisons more
people. He looks like a young male Winona Ryder, all wide-eyed and evil
and blinky. He is fixated with poisons, and everyone is such an idiot
around him. Wow, I love this movie. (I'm writing this as I watch the
movie for the third time.)
- La Jetee
- The movie that Twelve Monkeys was based on. Less than half an hour
long, no moving images (unless you count that pan-in in the beginning),
and emotional without being weepy. An amazing example of how to convey
a good science fiction story with a bare minimum of special effects.
- The Pillow Book
- Okay, so maybe the plot was more linear than expected of a Greenaway
film. And maybe the rectangular inset reminded me of all too many
Macromedia Director CD-ROMS. And there's a bit of Madame Butterflyness
in there too. But gosh it was beautiful. I never realized writing on
each other's bodies could be so gorgeous. And the nude male figure got
star treatment here - so many shapes and sizes of bodies! Lovely. There
was one extra-wonderful shot of Vivian Wu with some classic Roman font all
over her, and the same text projected on her. When she would shift just
so, it would all line up perfectly.
- (The film also reminded me that every single recent movie I've watched
with my friend Dan has included sodomy, violence, and bizarre sexual
fetishes.)
- Twin Town
- I love black comedy! Two brothers, not really twins except in spirit,
swearing revenge and extortion on this rich snooty family. It escalates
(of course, adding to the humor), with some hilarious scenes such as the
brothers stuffing a hot dog (from a sausage stand that they stole) with
pot and shrooms for unwitting customers, and a karaoke scene where this
woman gets pissed all over. There's a little bit of self-referentiality
thrown in in the beginning, too, with the twins in Morocco. Oh, and the
opening scene, the twins careening around town in a stolen car, was
absolutely wonderful! Shots of them, shots of the outside, and (this is
the best) shots of their poor poochie bouncing about inside.
- I saw this movie because my friend Gina bet me that I couldn't find a
new film we both enjoy, and I won. Ha. (we both liked Shallow Grave and
Trainspotting, and the producer for Twin Town was the director for those
movies.)
- Pink Flamingos
- A gross-out queen's delight. Divine eating dogshit, licking things
Awful awful acting with a million eggs smeared all over someone. Red and
blue pubic hair! Hadn't seen something this funny in awhile.
- Crash
- Autoerotic pleasures, slow slow shots, every possible combination of
coupling. All this, and the sheer out there-ness, the unquestioning of
the fetish even by policement and accident rescue people, all make this
movie a long slow ride into yummyville. Okay, a lot of people probably
hated the movie, but I really had a pleasureable time watching it (not the
least reason was James Spader, I have to admit.) Plus, there was some
sort of ironic delight in watching it with one of the few other Americans
I know who also doesn't know how to drive.
- The Mystery of Rampo
- A semi-fictionalized movie about the Japanese mystery writer, Edogawa
Rampo (Edgar Allen Poe, get it?). John and I didn't know it was based on
real life when we rented it, and so it made very little sense, which was
extremely cool. Sort of like how we would start watching Sweating
Bullets in the middle each episode and it would be incomprehensible and
we were like "ooh, how unpredictable! how exciting!" but when we actually
watched an episode the whole way through, it sucked. Unlike Sweating
Bullets, though, The Mystery of Rampo was still good even when we knew the
context. Famous characters coming to life, animation mixed with film, and
a darned darned good soundtrack. A little bit of gratuitous transvestite
sex. Rampo worrying about whether his female character (who kills her
husband) is really the woman with whom he is in love, and whether that
woman wants to kill him.
- Trainspotting
- I could repeat the toilet scene for hours. Heh. Hilariously wacky,
nicely unpreachy.
- I Shot Andy Warhol
- Heh. Andy Warhol portrayed as amusingly vapid and slackjawed.
- Fargo
- Killers, midwestern accents, and lots of snow. Yeah, everyone knows
about it already. Great flick.
- Shallow Grave
- John and I rented this without knowing what it was about. It was
great! My favorite blind rental besides sex, lies, and videotape. Good
with red wine. The interview scene with prospective roommates was
hilarious. The burgeoning craziness of the housemates was great.
- Heroic Trio, part II
- The sequel, more head-chopping, grotesque violence. Even more
disutopian than before, with all the water supply contaminated. Maggie
goes off in search of fresh water, Anita fights an evil religious
political figure. Freaky but over the top at the same time.
- Heroic Trio
- An awesome awesome Hong Kong flick with Maggie Cheung, Anita Mui, and
that other woman I forget the name of. Absolutely gorgeous, in a
disutopian maybe-HK, with a crazy demon who wants to find the
emperor-of-China incarnate, and has a bunch of stolen-baby monsters.
*Boom*! The scene at the end was a little silly (an animated
skeleton-demon), but the rest of it was wonderful. And they weren't
dependent on men either.
- Usual Suspects
- More killers, with Stephen Baldwin being flirtatiously gorgeous with
other men, and with Kevin Spacey and his creepy voice that now turns me
on.
- Delicatessen
- Cannibalism, quirkiness, and a clown in love with a butcher's
daughter. The trailer for it has been cannibalized (ooh, a pun!) by so
many other ads, but oh well, it was a good movie.
- Seven
- Kevin Spacey part two. I love this man. And hey, what I've talked
about for years (a crazy person cutting off their fingertips every day to
avoid leaving prints) finally appears in a movie! Exciting! Yeah, I
often say I don't like formulaic movies, but I guess I do. The formula of
"hunt the serial killer" appeals to me greatly.
- Like Water for Chocolate
- Saw this once with Fonda, once with John, liked it both times, but the
time I saw it with John he was drunk and didn't appreciate it, which
annoyed me. This was the time at which I realized that choice of movie
companion is extremely important.
- Silence of the Lambs
- Like this movie. Jodie (yum), Anthony Hopkins (yum part two),
cannibalism (yum yum yum), and skin dresses (yum). And Memphis too!
Mmm...
- sex, lies, and videotape
- Intro to Stephen Soderbergh (as well as James Spader and Andie
MacDowell, mmm...) Another blind rental by John and I. Another good wine
movie.
- The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls In Love
- Adorable, adorable adorable. They were totally cute, and the movie
was totally sweet.
- Go Fish
- Gen-X lesbians. Cute women. Yeah yeah, it was a romantic comedy, but
I liked it.
no
- Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
- Just borderline bad - I think "disappointing" is a much better way to
characterize it. It didn't help matters that John told me, right before
the movie, that in the book there was sexual tension between Cusack's
character and Spacey's character. I would have loved to have seen that.
(well, more on Spacey's side than anything else. Cusack, well, John
Cusack, annoys the piss out of me. Joan Cusack, on the other hand, I
retain adolescent crushness for, as does my brother, another example of
our intersecting tastes in women.) Instead, John (not Cusack) and I were
left going "WHY THIS FUCK IS THIS BLONDE IN THE MOVIE?!!!" and "boy they
overdid it trying to make Cusack's character het!" Grrr. Kinda nice and
lush, though I would never want to attend one of those parties. Those
are the kind of parts that would bring out supergrumbliness in me,
causing me to get inordinately drunk and yell at people.
- Boogie Nights
- Mind you, this is only barely on the border of the disliked side of
the line. It was not too objectionable, just long and *felt* long. Some
good scenes in the beginning and the middle, but it felt like it just
tried too hard somehow. Fun seeing the fashions of the 70s and 80s
again, glad they're gone.
- Chasing Amy
- Argh. Two things about the movie, no, make that three, sucked
especially. One: I had a weird reverse situation happen to me where this
straight girl kept leading me on (or so I interpreted it) and the girl in
the movie totally reminded me of her, which incredibly annoyed me. (yes,
even down to the voice. no, I don't know why I had that crush because
otherwise this straight girl was not my type, except for, of course, the
nose, and a fish dance.) Two: alternacomics and Ben. 'Nuff said.
Three: (and here's the biggest) - all the protagonist-gal's stuff about
"ooh, I've found *you*! I don't need anything more!" blah blah and
describing all her other stuff as some weird kind of search and then when
you've found the Right Person you're somehow *done*! Argh.
Monagamocentricity is everywhere. And it was so mushy, all of what she
said, too. Yuck. Yuck. Yuck. It was especially annoying because I felt
as if I should've identified with her, but there were too many things
that I *didn't* identify with that were jarring and gaping that it just
almost seemed as if she were incorrectly portrayed, but then, who am I to
say, really? Nevertheless, the movie bothered me. A lot.
- Copland
- I admit it, I keep rooting for Sly Stallone, if only because he's a
pal of Jackie Chan's. The movie was all right, I saw it more for the
company than anything else (plus, yes, I didn't really feel like seeing
something that would've made me cry like the other movie offered to me as
an option that I've forgotten the name of now.) It was okay, like I said,
DeNiro was good, but brief. The silent scene at the end was pretty
good. If I had a neutral category, I guess I'd stick this there, but I
don't.
- Grosse Point Blanke
- God, I hated this movie. I was bored by its cliches, didn't
find the nostalgia amusing (I didn't enjoy the eighties the first time
around, why should it be any better the second time?), and thought the
plot got stale very quickly. The only saving graces were John and Joan
Cusack, both of whom I've always thought were cute. I might have an
overly negative impression of this movie because I got into a fight with
my brother just before.
- Brady Bunch, part two
- What was the hoopla about this movie again? Eh.
- The Vanishing (not the American version)
- I don't see why people talked about this movie like it was all that
(sorry Fonda), because it just WASN'T THAT SCARY! I thought it was kinda
boring.
- Hackers
- I don't know why we rented it, except that John and I thought it would
be good to watch while drunk. It was okay, full of semi-pretty people
wearing wacky clothes. John thought that I was kind of like those people,
which is scary, like I'm some kind of trendy alternageek. Ugh.
- Bar Girls
- Overacted version of Go Fish, with less cute girls besides. Ugh.
- Road to Wellville
- Despite bad reviews, I dragged Fonda to see this with me (sorry!) It
bit. I do like semi-fictionalized accounts of people's lives, and it
seemed like a good idea to see a comedy about Kellogg, me being into food
history and all, but man this movie sucked.