Movie Reviews

Today, after a trip to the farmer’s market and an afternoon spent quilting (I’m not joking), Cassie and I decided to go see a movie.

I haven’t really been to the movies much this year because they all suck. I can’t even rent new re-leases. The last movie I saw in a theatre was Snakes on a Plane, which was y’know. And I can’t remember what I saw prior.

Let me digress some more: when I was in Winnipeg at this new media conference, all these motherfucking film wanksters were all “I don’t even own a tv,” in these incredibly self-congratulatory way which made me long to smack them. Look buddy, it’s your personal choice what you own or what you do with your time, but you’re not cool because of it. I have as little patience for people who hate low-brow entertainment as I have for people who hate high-brow entertainment. The only difference between Mozart and Springer is a few hundred years;it’s all popular entertainment.

The whole not-owning-a-tv thing may explain why their sense of what’s interesting or what’s new is at least thirty years off; I saw some really dated work getting rave reviews, and some really weak riffs on popular culture coming from people who don’t understand popular culture. Darlings, you’re not avant-garde, you simply avant-garde a clue.

Anyway, back to my evening: We decided to see Marie Antoinette. That particular period in France is not one I’m really interested in (I super-hate Rococo, I’m sorry to all of you Rococo fans), but the clothes were pretty neat and I generally like period pieces as long as the names ‘Merchant’ and ‘Ivory’ are not connected to them. Cassie, also a fan of pretty clothes, agrees with me that this movie is going to suck, but we think the sets and clothes will carry us past the Kirsten Dunst.

Okay, so far we’d made two mistakes: the first, forgetting that this is a Sophia Coppola movie. The second, thinking that there’s anyway Kirsten Dunst can appear onscreen and not ruin your movie-watching experience.

Kirsten Dunst can neither act nor adequately simulate normal human functions. It’s my contention that she’s actually an automaton, put in Hollywood for some mad scientists nefarious purposes. I can only speculate as to what those are.

Sophia Coppola sucks. She sucks, sucks, sucks. She sucked directing The Virgin Suicides, but everyone left feeling like something happened that they just didn’t understand so they said it was good. She sucked directing Lost in Translation, but everyone either fell asleep while watching it or was so charmed by Bill Murray being a pathetic loser that they said it was really good. And she totally sucked directing this movie, too.

Dear Ms. Coppola: ‘Dull’ is not a style, it’s a failing.
MA is only two hours long, but it feels like four. At one point, we get a montage of shoes and
candy that goes on for five minutes. There is no character development. There is a plot, but it struggles under the weight of no dialogue and lots of frouffy dresses and long, slow shots of… stuff. It was quite a bit like watching Paris Hilton’s home movies (you may try to make some clever connections, but believe me, it’s obvious), but without the girl-on-girl action. Look! Here are some nobles eating and giggling. Look! Here are some nobles dancing and giggling. Look! Here are some nobles gossiping, eating, trying on dresses and shoes, and giggling.

There was a lot of giggling.

But the final straw, for me, was watching Kirsten Dunst and her homegirls, plopped down in a field staring dreamily into space as Kirsten read Rousseau aloud. It was like listening to a kindergarten teacher in fancy dress read Rousseau to her students. Pain, pain, pain. After this, I was ready to fire up the torches and sharpen the guillotine myself.

And the, the final outrage: they take you all along the road to the royal family’s retreat from Versailles, and then they leave you there without the payoff of getting to see Kirsten Dunst guillotined!

What do you think I came to see this movie for? To see Kirsten Dunst get guillotined, of
course!

It sure as hell wasn’t for the acting.

10 forks.

I have even less sympathy for the rich than ever, and I didn’t start with much. Fuck you, Sophia, and your poor-little-rich-girl bullshit.

I really enjoyed the Samuel L. Jackson interview on The Daily Show tonight. It made me very excited about the movie – I mean, I don’t like most movies based on fear, but I do really like action movies, and I like Samuel L.’s badassedness, and how much he was delighting in the whole thing. And I like to see a movie achieving its goals. And I think Snakes on a Plane will do that.

Sometimes, it’s delightful to know you’re involved in something ridiculous, to let go of your false
dignity. I remember taking a boyfriend to see Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back with a bunch of friends, and him being all too-cool-to-enjoy-himself; it made him seem really small and pathetic and lame. He didn’t get that it wasn’t supposed to be Kubrick. It was embarrassing to be dating anyone so dense. So yeah – early show, Friday, at Galaxy. Bring friends who aren’t too cool to have fun.

Speaking of movies, I finally saw Boondock Saints the other day, and I was terribly embarrassed for Willem Dafoe. It was trying for the kind of cool carelessness of Pulp Fiction and landed squarely in made-for-tv-movie-lameness. I mean, there were moments where you could see the light of the original idea shine through, and it was probably pretty cool in concept, but the execution was weak. And it wasn’t even conscious of it’s suckiness, as a movie; it thought it was pretty damned cool, like that kid who shows up to a martial arts class in a black trenchcoat. 9 forks.

I saw X-Men III this weekend. I know that most of you felt that it could be summed up in one word: meh. I enjoyed it, because I honestly expected that it would be about what it was.

There were lots of funny bits, and for a person who loves bad movies, sometimes more than she loves good movies, it was pretty enjoyable. But my favourite bit was the coda, after the credits, when the most powerful mutant attribute of all is revealed: importance to the plot.

Importance to the plot will ressurect you from the dead, reverse ‘cures’ and generally undo everything that has happened in the last two movie hours. It’s the most kick-ass mutant power evar.

Also, is Storm the lamest character, or is it just in the movies that she has to take twenty minutes to summon up some lightning that doesn’t ever hit anybody? Her powers are along the lines of scented candles and Barry White – “Dammit, we need to set the mood. Storm, could you summon up a little fog please?” Invaluable to movie producers and heavy metal tours, sure, but not so great in a ght.

Finally, c’mon people: Halle Berry is pretty, but she never could act. Which is why it’s such a shame that, out of all the female characters, she’s the only one who has any lines. Jean just stands there for the entire movie, Rogue mopes away, and Mystique is ‘cured.’ Lame. And when Storm has sex with Billy Bob Thornton’s character, I just totally lost interest…

Anyway, 4 Forks. Enjoyably lame, but I paid ten bucks to see chicks kick ass, not just stand there and look pretty.

Last night Cassie and I went to see 16 Blocks, which I have to admit I really liked – I usually enjoy Bruce Willis, and I’m in love with Mos Def, and the story wasn’t what I was expecting, and it made me cry. Generally speaking, Hollywood doesn’t let characters like Mos Def’s live through movies like 16 Blocks.
Well, Hollywood doesn’t let black main characters live through movies, period.
Anyway, I liked it, and I say 2 forks. Some of the editing drove me crazy.

I went to see Walk the Line on the weekend, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. As usual, I’m not
that interested in someone’s struggle to break their addiction; it’s like sex – quite interesting if you’re involved, but not so much is you’re merely a spectator (Also, the projector broke down during that part, so the pacing felt off for me). I loved that Ma and Pa Carter drove off the drug dealer with their rifles. Though I hear that some people feel there’s too much music, I think that when you’re telling the story of Johnny Cash, the music is so entwined with the story that’s there’s no escaping it. I thought Joachim Phoenix did a fabulous job, and that Reese Witherspoon gave her best performance that I’ve seen. 2 forks.

Also rented Orson Welles’ documentary F for Fake, which I’d recommend as something to approach when you’re not feeling particularly linear and logical. If you rent it, don’t give up in the first twenty minutes: go Google Howard Hughes, and once you’ve remembered who he is, just let yourself sink into the odd timing of the edit. It reminded me of one of the things I would do if I had too much money – which is, that I would collect fine art forgeries. Really good ones, anyway. Attached to famous forgers, if possible. I like a good trick.
F for Fake is un-rateable. Trust Orson; he knows what he’s doing, and it’s not his fault if you can’t figure it out.

Hmmm… there was something I was outraged by… what was it?
Ohhhhh… Harry Potter and the Goblet of Ass.
I have a few things to say, and they must be yelled:
YOU FANDOM ASSHOLES CAN KISS MY ASS. WORST DIALOGUE EVAR. MIKE NEWELL IS OFFICIALLY ON NOTICE. JESUS CHRIST, WHO EDITED THIS CRAP? WHY DON’T I GET TO SEE
MORE OF GARY OLDMAN? THIS BLOWS. 8 FORKS!

Ah, holding that in must have been what gave me a migraine yesterday. I had to call in sick; I hate doing that. Everything was too loud and too bright, and I couldn’t see. As a result, I was pretty chipper today, due to the absence of shrieking pain in my head. This accounts for the use of Internet abbreviations and all-caps shouting. I’m more annoying when I’m happy.

The reason I direct hate toward fandom assholes is that I feel that the director spent a little too much time looking at the blogs before setting down to make this movie. Well, okay, I generally hate fandom, and people who spend all of their time thinking/talking about one thing are both boring and annoying. There was no magic in that goddamned movie, because the director was so busy stroking every slash-writing asshole he could think of.

I may have to give up on Hollywood altogether. Maybe Walk the Line will be good.

In happier news, I rented It’s all gone Pete Tong the other night, and it was well done. Didn’t bottom out on the woah-I’ve-gone-crazy-and-am-using-lots-of-drugs sequence, unlike most movies that have something like that. Made by the same guy that did FUBAR (which I haven’t seen).