Bug (2006)

HolyshitIcan'tgetbackthat101minutesofmylife.

Who thinks this movie is scary and WHY???

Because the dude pulled his molar out with a pair of pliers?

Fuck, I saw that in Cast Away and as disturbing as it was then, at least it wasn't as pointless and bloody as it was depicted here.

You know the only entertaining part? Seeing Harry Connick Jr. play a beefed up, ex-wife beating con, all the while remembering his sweet, sweet melodies on the 'When Harry Met Sally' soundtrack.

What happened Harry??? WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED???

No really. I don't know how ANYone could like this movie.

It's not smart just because it shows how a delusional psychopath can turn a lonely, vulnerable person into the same thing.

It's not smart for depicting paranoia to the Nth degree by providing us with a twenty minute, non-sensical rant at the end that just about made ME blow MY brains out. (Don't worry, they don't actually do that in the movie, though I wished oh so badly that they would).

Ebert, what in the fuck happened to you, dude? Actually, I KNOW what happened, but that is no excuse to recommed lame ass shit like this.

So now that I'm done, if you liked this movie, or even thought it was remotely passable, please provide your reasoning in the comments and by tomorrow I should be able to take them into consideration rationally.

Until then, I'm going to go to sleep and try to forget about the last hour and forty one minutes.

In the Valley of Elah (2007)

DEPRESS-O-FEST. Tommy Lee Jones is fantastic.

I'm confused on the central metaphor (in the Bible, the Valley of Elah is the setting for the battle between David and Goliath). It's clear that when TLJ tells the story to Charlize "Single Working Mom" Theron's son, it's about boys finding the courage to stand up and face impossible odds, and we're meant to see the soldiers in Iraq as Davids giving up their lives and sanity to go to battle. But it's not clear who we're supposed to see as Goliath. Is war Goliath? Is the US military and government Goliath? Is Iraq Goliath? At one point, a recently returned veteran (played by an actual recent veteran) has less than charitable words for the country where he was just stationed, and though from my perspective it seems apparent Haggis wants to blame war itself for the dehumanization of its participants, I don't think any of the "Goliaths" that are keeping the US soldiers in Iraq can be defeated by something as simple as a single rock from a slingshot, however well placed.

13 Going On 30 (2004)

Sometimes I like really cheesy, predictable shit.

As much as I may rag on other people's horrible movie taste, I'm not sure I have much of a leg to stand on when I say things like "I really enjoyed '13 Going On 30'".

Because I did.

OK, so the dance routine to 'Thriller' was super lame. And Jenna's whole "Love is a battlefield" mantra was cliched. Oh, and the fact that the entires plot is about her being catapulted into the year 2004 as a 30 year old woman because of some magic glitter falling on her as she wishes for this very thing is wholly ridiculous.

It's still a good movie.

Why, you may ask?

Well 1) Jennifer Garner is perfect as a tween in a woman's body. Her facial expressions, voice and body language are perfect. And just like Tom Hanks, she eventually learns to be comfortable with her transformation and even starts to act her age. Whatever THAT means.

2) Mark Ruffalo.

3) Happily ever after.

Yes, sometimes I'm a huge sucker for a happy ending. Especially ones that include realizing how much you fucked up over the past seventeen years and then given the chance to go back and fix it.

I'm not saying that anyone who contributes to this site will consider it for a second. But I will recommend it to your wife, girlfriend, gal pal...whatever.

It's cute and every once in awhile that's OK.

Kite Operations @ Functional Displacement, Links Hall, Chicago, 9/22/07

Crap.  This is gonna be just like Seam.

I.e. I'm going to see this awesome band not knowing any of their songs, and then I'm going to listen to the albums and really like them, and then I'm going to not see them again and I'll just sort of remember hearing a few of the songs until they recede into distant memory.  Argh.

So yeah, I bought their albums via MP3 download on CD Baby.  Just listened to both straight through, and they are bad ass.

Not that I didn't have a chance to see Seam @ T&G, but that was a bad month for me.

Wrigleyville the Night of a Cubs Game (2007-09-19)

6 GLCs. I had my car hazard-parked halfway into a crosswalk for an hour while we moved our shit into Links Hall for the Functional Displacement show. Parking? Don't even think about it.

Pro: Cubs won, Ron Santo.
Con: Everything else.

Ended up covered in sweat and being all like "argh Wrigleyville."

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Lucky You (2006)

Whoops. Put together some great actors (Eric Bana, Drew Barrymore, Robert Duvall) and a great creative team (co-written by Eric Roth and Curtis Hanson, directed by Hanson who made two awesome movies, L.A. Confidential and Wonder Boys), and watch all the talent totally go to waste. I really wanted to see more of my favorite poker players like Negreanu, Chris Jesus, and Johnny Chan, but all the actual players were relegated to ten-second cameos.

I'm a fan of long, slow dialogue scenes, but not when the dialogue is this atrocious. Also, Bana's character is pretty irredeemably unlikeable, and he just stares at everyone. Weak sauce. It is interesting to watch a WPT final table without Mike Sexton and Vince Van Patten's incessant commentary. Not that their commentary is bad.

Pearl Jam - Vs. (1993)

Everyone falls in love with the music they grew up to.  But revisiting this album for me was a big kick in the pants.  I felt like I was thirteen again, the kid that bought the now-hilarious "window pain" T-shirt
 with the tracks from the album painted on a guy's torso on the opposite side.

This album came out the same year as two other really great albums, Smashing Pumpkins' Siamese Dream and Seam's The Problem With Me. The difference for me between those and Vs is that I only discovered Seam relatively recently (after seeing their penultimate show in 2004 in Milwaukee), and Siamese Dream never really went away for me because I would listen to it every once in a while, updating the context in which I heard it every time. But hearing Vs again after a 12-year absence puts me right back in 7th grade.  And I'm surprised by how much emotion is in Eddie's voice, when my distant memory told me he was kind of hamming it up or whatever.

Delicatessen (1991)

Who knew there was another French movie almost as cute and endearingly unusual as Amelie?

Probably a lot of people, but I'm way behind on my former Blockbuster queue (now being replaced by my friend's amazing collection of burned DVD's, that should keep us entertained for months).

Either way, I have a crush on this film.

And wouldn't you know it, the lead actor, Dominiqe Pinon, was in both films.

Normally, I'm not a huge fan of clowns, but this guy was too sincere and quirky not to love.

If you're into post-apocalyptic comedies featuring cannibals, you'll enjoy this just as much as I did.

Also, I find it interesting how actresses are featured in French films. In both Amelie and Delicatessen, there is the main gal who is plain but pretty underneath, a very attrative woman here and there and then a couple of downright unattractive, overweight types. While I'm glad actresses with not so great looks are given parts, I can't help but feel that both movies point to the fact that the ugly ones are loud, pathetic and completely out of luck when it comes to love.

In addition, men are often depicted as either the sweet, sensitive types, or major assholes with constant erections.

In the end, it's all good.

Eifelheim (2006)

If my dashed-off remarks often feel inadequate in the face of a cinematic achievement (as a student filmmaker-turned-media-worker I KNOW how long it takes to make even the shortest 30-second commercial), they can only be hopelessly more so with a novel, which always astonishes me that it comes from the mind of one person or a few people.

This was nominated for a Hugo Award and so it was available for free as a PDF from somewhere, and it's the first novel I've read in almost two years. It's about aliens crash-landing into the titular small German village during an outbreak of the Black Death. This is juxtaposed with a modern story about a couple, a theoretical physicist and a historical statistician, attempting to understand what happened way back when at that village, now completely deserted. The evocation of Germany in the Middle Ages, from the rhythms of its internal speech to its unequivocal belief in a geocentric universe, is transporting. And the varying reactions of the villagers and their church to the aliens, who some believe need God's salvation and others curse as demons and harbingers of doom, bear a striking resemblance to the diametrically opposed viewpoints people take on unexplainable problems today.

Here's Wikipedia's entry on the Black Death. Sounds ridiculously awful. But I wonder how bad a disease would need to be now to correct human overpopulation, given that we've gotten so good at figuring them out and containing them. Round the time of that Hot Zone book I was all freaked out about this junk. Now it's kind of just like, meh.

Sci-fi's definitely my bag. Time to find another free PDF.

Good Luck Chuck (2007)

I ain't watched this shit and don't plan to. WTF Jessica Alba. If you don't want to be in garbagey, degrading roles that require you to strip to your underwear for some "awesome" 3-second shot that millions of people somehow think is alone worth $10, there are two letters I can sell you at the low, low price of one Fantastic Four movie's salary per letter.

As for Dane Cook...what can I say, man, keep on truckin'.

3:10 to Yuma (2007)

I leaned over and shouted "Frickin' great!" the moment this ended. NO watch checks.

Moral ambiguity? Check. Outrageously good gunfights? Check. Even better acting? Check. Plus. Christian Bale learned how to close his mouth! I hope he kept that lesson in mind in time for Dark Knight.

Stray Dog (1949)

Kurosawa takes a slight and comically metaphorical story (a rookie cop is robbed of his gun during a heat wave) and plays it for melodrama, stretching the premise out for a full two hours without turning it into a huge governmental conspiracy that makes the cop the ONE MAN who can save the world. He does this mostly by taking the time to observe the period of the piece -- postwar Japan, though obviously it was "present day" when it was made. When the cop goes searching for his pistol at a street market, the establishment of the location -- which in the current Hollywood method, we'd be lucky to get in one 1.5-second shot -- becomes integrated with the plot in a five-minute montage set to a series of assumedly diegetic music cues emanating from radios. It's almost a cross between sound and silent film.

Wow, baseball was apparently alive and kicking in late '40s Japan. I wonder when it came there. Also, lol, the crowd actually gets up and stretches for the seventh inning stretch. Like those morning exercises in Gung Ho.

Weird Al Yankovic "Straight Outta Lynwood Tour" BZN, MT, 9/9/07

So I have to say, "Holy Shit."
HOLY SHIT.
There I said it. I don't think growing up it ever occurred to me that I might ever see Weird Al in concert. Ever. When I found out he was coming to town, I decided to go. Even better, my girlfriend bought the tickets. I was more stoked to see this show than any of the other 5 previous concerts I'd been to: BB King, Violent Femmes, Green Day, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Banyan. And the one pending concert: White Stripes.
I had no idea what to expect. What's more I heard from the local producer (a business acquaintance) that Weird Al usually plays for sit down shows and this was set up more like a regular rock show (see Green Day), I was intrigued.
The show was a multimedia blend of old favorites and new stuff I'd never heard in the last five years. Not multimedia like a U2 show, but in-between medleys, Al would leave the stage and play both clips from his "interviews" on YTV, and clips of the general entertainment detritus that people find to be entertainment (sic (I love that)). And then there were confetti explosions and then Weird Al would do full costume changes including wearing the suit for "Fat." No lip-sync. No overt (stress double underline OVERT) political mumbo jumbo about war or starving or debt relief or AIDS messages either for against.
All in all I was just plain entertained. The only short comings were I figured out why after 2.75 hours why they play sit-down shows: all the video interstitials make standing hurt a bit. The other was that the show was in a formerly-open-building-turned-hockey-rink-at-the-fairgrouds. So corrugated metal is not so good. But others said the show sounded fine if you had ear protection to filter out the metal reverb.
Lastly the part I hated about the show was that I had to put chairs away and sweep the floor... and I hadn't even volunteered.
Payoff:
Press the flesh.
And The Pizza Show Ltd Ed DVD showed up on a certain Al's bus.

Balls of Fury (2007)

This is a comedy from the writers of Reno: 911. The story goes that a once proud ping pong player, whose life went on a downhill skid, now must use natural his talents to help the government capture a chinese criminal mastermind. This movie is basically a big spoof of Enter the Dragon but using ping pong as the focus instead of martial arts.

The hero of this film, Randy Daytona, played by a guy whose name I don't know, kinda reminds me of the fat kid in Superbad. I guess that seems to be the mold of the new funnyman thanks to Seth Rogen. Anyway, agent George Lopez recruits him to complete the mission, and of course enter the gratuitous training to get better. Along with that, enter the gratuitous babe as played by Maggie Q, more on her later. So Randy trains and goes off to the tournament. He plays some other ping pong greats from other countries that are totally stereotypical in relation to their country of origin. That's not a bad thing in my opinion as stereotypes amuse me. Terry Crew and Thomas Lennon play the best characters in representing their respective countries, the USA and Germany, umm... respectively. As for the outcome of the tournament, you can guess as i won't spoil it for you. But remember, it's like Enter the Dragon, hint hint.

I only liked this movie. It made me laugh at stupid things and I was looking to laugh. Mostly because I snuck into this movie after Bourne Ultimatum an just needed to turn the brain off for a bit. So the fact that I didn't pay for the movie made me like it more than I probably should have. So in this case, I do not recomend this movie for all people.

Only watch it if A) you love the comedy stylings of The State and Reno: 911 and B) if you like ping pong. Notice how I didn't say watch it if you love ping pong. That's because even though it's the unifying theme, the competitions themselves don't carry the movie nor are they technically sound. I myself expected more Prince of Tennis type hits (google that using boolean search criteria "AND anime") but that only happened a couple times.

Ok, back to Maggie Q. She's basically eye candy for this movie. She's got a tight body but is lacking in boobs. This is clearly evident in one scene where she wears a red dress that is way too loose fitting over her chest. But in other scenes when she wears sports bras and tight shorts, she's alright in my book.

One watch look for this movie.

The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)

Ah yes, I'm here to kick it to you mainstream style. Nothing like some good ol' fashion popcorn eating movies. I dunno if anyone has reviewed this yet on the site, but I've fallen off the face of the earth for a while and I'm playing catch up. And besides, if someone already reviewed it, this can open up a terse discourse about it. Sorta like the McLaughlin group, but for movies.

Anyway, this third installment of the series based on the novels by Robert Ludlum (you like that? Sure sounded professional as hell, am I right?) picks up right from the end of the second film. If you didn't see the second one, stop reading and watch it. Jason Bourne globetrotting, trying to figure out his past, is once again being hunted by the US government. This time the search is headed by Whistler from Sneakers. He's one trigger-happy SOB that wants Bourne on a platter.

Needless to say, Bourne does what he does best and kicks some ass without taking names, even though he really wants people's names. Whatever. In any case, I was really pleased to see Bourne be challenged by some of his pursuers. There's one great fight scene that's pretty awesome, one in which lesser men would have been concussed on numerous occasions, but not Bourne. Needless to say, there are other good fight scenes that seem realistically sound with respect to technique.

Julia Stiles in this movie continues to perplex me. It's like she's hot in a weird way, but not really hot cuz there's something just not right about her and I just can't place it. Anyway, she looked agreeable in this movie, so the story could have done more with her but it didn't.

But back to the movie as a whole. It was good and I recommend it. The only thing that was kind of annoying was the shakey camera. I know it's supposed to add to the tension and such, but my god, can you use a tripod a little bit more please? Zero watch checks and I was going on 3 hours of sleep watching this.

Liars - Liars (2007)

This album shows why the Liars are so awesome, because everytime they put a record out, they piss off a bunch of people. This record breaks away from the epic experimental feel of the last record, and trades that in for a diverse group of songs. It maybe reminds me a little bit of The Runners Four because no two songs here really sound alike, and even have quite different production styles. One near-constant is a somewhat akward-sounding electric guitar. At first it just sounds, well, akward, but it really grew on me: i think that the way it's played really emphasizes the melodies and rhythm by making it stick out a little.

The first track, "Plaster Casts of Everything" (pretty amazing concept) is a real rocker and it's a definite stand out, but what i like even more are the ballady songs that combine falsetto singing with interesting textures. In summary: totally record by the Liars, fuck the hatahs.

Purple Rain (1984)

On Saturday, i saw Purple Rain on the big screen (medium screen actually, theatre two at the Music Box.) Though i had seen it before, a mere dvd couldn't have possibly conveyed the full power of this movie.

The film is just as strange as some of the songs on the album of the same name (like "When Doves Cry") and just as wonderful. It's highly autobiographical; my favoite part is that even though Prince plays a mysterious rock star, known only as "The Kid," and is always wearing luxurious 18th century purple velvet outfits, he still lives with his parents in a suburban looking neighborhood of Minneapolis.

Summary: kind of like Footloose meets Spinal Tap. 100% dumb-strikingly awesome.

The Science of Sleep (2006)

I can't say I was at all disappointed.  In fact, I was enthralled.  My positive response toward the film may have had a lot to do with my watching it to wake me up slowly on a Sunday morning, and because I really needed a surrealist antidote to two straight days of unrelenting rah-rah about learning business via boot camp and forced social networking.

Is it really a problem that we don't know if any of what we're watching is "real" or in Stephane's head?  Were those people who took issue with that also mad when we found out Keyser Soze made the whole movie up?

It's weird how much your response to a movie must depend on your mood going into it.  I used to watch movies that really caught my fancy over and over (ah, eighth grade: waking up to ten-minute chunks of <i>Reservoir Dogs</i>), but now that I know there's so much good cinema out there, I almost never buy because I don't feel like I have time to watch anything more than once.  Whereas they used to be familiar  and comforting companions, more and more they are seeming like passing acquaintances.

The Condemned (2007)

An American version of Battle Royale with convicts instead of kids...because, you know, we need to have a hackneyed dilemma over the morality of this scenario, and at the same time it's much more guilt-free and less unsettling to watch adults kill each other than to watch kids kill each other.

The event, in true American fashion, is also presented as a reality-TV contest broadcast on the Internet, which leads to some incongruous Truman Show / Enemy of the State-style banter among the studio crew and some bizarrely mid-'90s proselytizing on the part of the conscienceless promoter about the numbers a good online video can draw. Has anyone in this movie heard of YouTube?

Still and all...WWE FILMS, BRAH! STONE COLD + VINNIE JONES!

EDIT: Still watching this movie a day later, haahha. These two crazies' first fight somehow had Stone Cold fighting back a Japanese karate dude and Vinnie Jones at the same time...the two not-Stone-Cold guys had blades but when they made contact with SC's arms, they set off sparks...you know, because Stone Cold's got ARMS OF STEEL.

1:30 It makes so much sense that seeing Stone Cold face down in a river with NO BLOOD COMING OUT OF HIM would convince everyone in the world that he died.

1:34 WTF. All subtlety and pretense of complex relationships out the window. Sigh...more randomness to come, still waiting for Stone Cold to experience his rebirth.

1:36 Oop, there he is!

The Live of Others (2006, Germany)

aka Das Leben Der Anderen

I thought i wasn't going to like this movie, mostly because it won an Oscar. But to my surprise and delight i enjoyed it a lot. I don't think it really says much about the Soviet era in East Germany and it mostly focuses on the belabored repression of intellectuals and artists. I suppose that the theme is somewhat more "universal" than all that, and it plays out more like a classic tragedy.

I wonder if Ulrich Muehe hadn't give such a good performance as the surveilance expert Gerd Wiesler, would that character have seemed a bit thin, because it's really his acting that creates the part.

Over two hours long and no watch checks!

Death Proof (2007)

All future action movie stars should begin their career as stuntmen/women. Zoe Bell sets the bar way, way high. I haven't seen the new Die Hard or the new Rush Hour but I'm sure neither Willis nor Chan goes for anything nearly as dangerous as Bell does here. I'm also sure Jackie totally would've done it back in the Police Story / Armour of God days. I need to dig out those ancient import VHSes, maybe the bro's got them around somewhere.

Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag (India, 2007)

aka Ram Gopal Varma's Fire

This is a remake of a classic 70's Bollywood film, probably the most famous and oft-referenced film in India (The original was called Sholay but the name of the remake and the major characters were changed due to copy right stuff. Sholay also had the longest run and biggest box office, i think.) So remaking it was definitely a risky move. It's about two friends, basically happy drifters, who run up against the law, and worse, a totally amoral bandit who's terrorizing a village. The original was called a curry western, cause the action sequences and premise were borrowed from classic westerns (western westerns, that is) but it had a great script and memorable songs (and how many westerns had that... well, there was that Elvis western with Love Me Tender...)

Anyway, i won't keep you in suspense any long, it was a huge crushing disaster, and i wasn't the only one disappointed, the reviewer in The Hindustani Times called it the worst movie ever. It was really poorly miscast, the characters weren't particularly likeable (perhaps as a result), and there was a weird fixation on ass-shots (the crotch-shot wasn't totally neglected either) that culminated in a particularly porn-like musical number. In some films that might not be that bad, but it never works well in Indian movies. It's kinda like the Japanese anime-porn with no nipples... you can't really have people kissing in a Bollywood movie, so somehow all the writhing around in drenched white clothing feels much, much dirtier without the smooching, which would be considered pretty innocent in an American movie.

One thing in the movie i couldn't quite make mind up about was the pretentiously philosophical sequences involving the bad guy (played by Amitabh Bachchan, who played one of the heroes in the original.) Lots of extended sequences of him musing on mortality and love ("Don't they know that even Babban can't trust Babban's words?" [the bad guy's name is "Babban."]) I think he's a pretty excellent actor, so it was sorta amusing, and he and the supporting goondas (bad guys) looked really grungy, so that was pretty impressive too.

Anyway, unless you're a Sholay fanatic and you've just gotta see this give it a pass. Even the music sequences are weak and poorly integrated into the movie... and they omitted the best song from the Sholay! Instead of this one, go see Chak De India! the field hockey movie, it's great!

The Brown Bunny (2006)

Even knowing what's (eventually) going to happen here, it's really unsettling to watch a movie where anything could happen, where the rhythms and angles one is conditioned to expect from watching innumerable standard-issue movies and TV shows are violated on a shot-by-shot basis.

Feels more real. Also, less escapist. I like to watch dumb, predictable movies because it makes me feel more secure in my smartitude. It's also hard to actually want to engage with a challenging film when a lot of the time I just want to see some cool shit blow up.

The Lookout (2007)

3rd Rock kid showing some serious acting chops. I could just be falling for the whole "acting with a disability = good acting" thing. He made me believe it though.

It reminded me a lot of Fargo. Mostly the crime-in-snowy-country aspect.

Next (2007)

I'm actually watching this right now, and without even waiting for it to finish, I can say without a doubt that it's an unmitigated disaster. I can't even take Cage seriously anymore after watching Wicker Man ("I'm a policeman! See ma' badge?"), but beyond that, wtf with the father-daughter romantic pairing with Jessica Biel? (Side note: someone really needs to upload her skydive from Stealth onto YouTube.) Why the continuing mullet-hair? Why is Julianne Moore confusing "hardass" with "irritating as balls"? Why do these Russian bomb terrorist dudes care if some Las Vegas magician sees two minutes into the future?

Deja Vu had a similar faux-sci-fi/action hybrid thing going, but that was enjoyably trashy. This sucks King Kong balls. I'll say "balls" again just to add some more balls for this movie to blow goats with.

Reviving Ian's "number of watch looks" scale for a moment, I'll say that I was watching the time constantly, which effectively brings Next's score to minus infinity.

Ugh, the hair.

EDIT: Just finished it. HOLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE wow. Just when I thought it couldn't have gotten any worse, it certainly up and did. That was a film-school exercise masquerading as a thriller. Really weird.