Mini Reviews: 4/22/13

The Nightmare Before Christmas:  1993 stop motion animation musical horror fantasy directed by Henry Selick and co-written and produced by Tim Burton, starring Danny Elfman, Chris Sarandon, Catherine O’Hara, William Hickey and Glenn Shadix.  Jack Skeleton, the Pumpkin King, is the unofficial leader of Halloween Town.  He directs his fellow monsters and ghouls through a rousing celebration each year, but he’s come to find it dull.  While wandering through the forest after another successful Halloween night, he happens upon Christmas Town and becomes fascinated with this new and interesting holiday.  He devises a plan to kidnap Santa Claus for one night so that he and his friends can conduct Christmas for a change.  Only Sally, his creepy ragdoll love interest, sees the potential danger in his scheme.  When his plans go awry, it’s up to Jack and Sally to rescue Santa from the clutches of Oogie Boogie - a maligned resident of Halloween Town – to save Christmas, and return order.

I didn’t know it was a musical.  This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, just unexpected.  It was cute.  Had I seen it in high school I might’ve liked it more.  If you like early Tim Burton then you’ll probably like this too.  Might be nice to revisit around Halloween or Christmas when looking for an alternative to the usual holiday fare.

 The Weather Underground:  2002 documentary directed by Sam Green and Bill Siegel, about the American radical organization.  The Weather Underground first formed in 1969 at the University of Michigan.  Initially aligned with the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), this faction split off with the express purpose of starting a revolutionary group to overthrow the U.S. government.  Apparently feeling that protesting and demonstrating was not enough to bring about the end of the Vietnam War or racism or sexism, they began a campaign of bombings last lasted through the mid-1970s.  These attacks on government buildings and banks were usually preceded by evacuation notices and a communiqué detailing the reason for the bombing: Ho Chi Minh’s birthday, atrocities in Vietnam, the invasion of Laos.  After the U.S. peace accord with Vietnam the group started its slow decline and many members went into hiding.

I thought it was an excellent documentary, and relevant viewing given the current political climate.  Green and Siegel chose to go beyond the usual stock footage to show, very graphically, the images and information that drove these students to desperate acts.  I also appreciated that it’s not all fuzzy hippie nostalgia.  No “civilians” were killed in the bombings, but several members were, and an unrelated robbery by former members led to the death of three police officers.  It’s hard to say what, if any, impact this group had on national politics.  Former members, supporters and critics were interviewed, giving a diverse take on the group’s history.  It’s far removed from the WTO and Occupy Wall Street demonstrations of our generation, and gives a fascinating glimpse into that time period for those of us who didn’t live through it.

21 Jump Street:  2012 action comedy directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, and starring Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum, Brie Larson, Dave Franco and Rob Riggle.  Two ne’er-do-well young cops are drafted into an experimental police division tasked with going undercover in local high schools to crack down on drug trafficking.  And that’s all I’m saying.  You should totally see this movie.  OK, I KNOW, I GET IT.  I was totally over Jonah Hill and never really got the appeal of Tatum Channing in the first place, and it’s based on a TV show from the ‘80s that I never watched anyway and it seemed like it would be a total train wreck.

But if you go in with no expectations it’s actually pretty good.  Like, really actually good.  It’s surprisingly funny, and HOLY SHIT with the cameos.  If you’re looking for an easy laugh, something that requires no thought or attention, give it a go.  You probably won’t be disappointed.

The Invisible Man:  1933 sci fi movie based on the H.G. Wells novel, directed by James Whale and starring Claude Rains, Gloria Stuart, William Harrigan and Henry Travers.  A brilliant and driven young scientist has discovered a formula for invisibility; too bad it’s made him permanently see-through and totally bonkers.  The special effects were pretty outstanding when considered in the context of their time.  The acting is a mixed bag and it’s a little too long, but definitely worth seeing once, if only because it’s considered such a classic.

Argo:  2012 historical thriller directed Ben Affleck and starring him and like 50 other totes awesome actors.  In 1979 a group of militants stormed the U.S. Embassy in Iran in response to President Carter granting the Shah asylum.  A small group of Embassy employees takes refuge at the home of the Canadian ambassador, but it’s only a matter of time before they’re discovered and either taken hostage or killed.  Affleck plays Tony Mendez, a CIA exfiltration specialist, who comes up with a plan to rescue the Americans:  create a fake movie, sneak into Iran, have the Americans pretend to be the film’s scouting crew, and fly them out.  Easy-peasy. 

I straight up loved this movie.  It’s a nail-biter right from the start, with some appropriately funny moments to cut the crazy tension.  The casting was truly brilliant.  It’s nice to see some of my favorite character actors getting work of this caliber:  Scoot McNairy, Clea Duvall, Victor Garber, Tate Donovan, Rory Cochrane, I could go on.  And John Goodman and Alan Arkin were hysterical.  Sure, there were some historical discrepancies – in reality, the Canadian government had a far larger role in this plan than they do in the movie.  And the airport scene was pure fiction.  But all things considered it’s a very well done movie by an actor who is quickly becoming one of my favorite new directors.  I will say it’s probably better if you don’t know that much about this incident before watching the movie. 

The Mummy:  1932 horror film directed by Karl Freund and starring Boris Karloff, Zita Johann and David Manners.  While working at an archaeological expedition in Egypt, some dumbass assistant decides to read some text he doesn’t understand and accidentally brings the mummy of an ancient priest back to life.  Oops.  The mummy spends some time chilling, regaining his strength, and then 10 years later reemerges with a quest to bring his dead lover back to life.  He finds Helen, a woman who looks strikingly similar to his former girlfriend, and then spends a lot of time hypnotizing people.  Helen needs a good smack in the mouth.  Not only does this ancient creepy dude keep you in his thrall, but then there’s this other guy who you just instantly fall in love with?  Granted, he’s dashing and not thousands of years old, and he’s all trying to save your wimpy ass, but still.  Get your life, Helen.

                  It’s okay.  Another classic definitely worth seeing once.

The Big Chill:  1983 dramedy directed by Lawrence Kasdan and starring Tom Berenger, Glenn Close, Jeff Goldblum, William Hurt, Kevin Kline, Mary Kay Place, Meg Tilly and JoBeth Williams.  A group of college buddies reunites for a weekend following the suicide of their friend Alex.  They’re all leading lives very different from those they’d envisioned while studying at the University of Michigan in the 1960s, and each has a minor existential crisis during their giant weird slumber party:  Meg is a former public defender turned real estate lawyer who feels like she’s given up her principles and wants to have a baby on her own, Michael is a lecherous journalist for a gossip rag who wants to go legit, Karen is an unhappy housewife yearning for a wild fling with Sam the reluctant TV action star, Nick is a Vietnam vet with impotence and cocaine issues, and Harold and Sarah are recovering from Sarah’s infidelity with Alex a few years prior.

                  I saw a lot of parallels with my own former Ann Arbor crowd, now that we’re about 30 and living in post-yuppie hipster America.  We all thought we’d be living in converted industrial lofts, making art or music or writing for a living, or being docents or organic farmers, screen-printing band posters with our spouses and selling them at Renegade, voting for third-party candidates.  And now most of us have real 9-5 jobby-jobs because it turns out we like financial stability and having health insurance.  GET OVER YOURSELF, BIG CHILL.  Despite the sappy, melodramatic, poor-rich-white-pitiful me nonsense it doles out it is, after all, a fairly decent ensemble drama.  Someone told me they thought Meg Tilly’s character was awful, but I found she kept things weird enough to hold my interest.  And the soundtrack is amazing.

 

The King's Speech vs. W./E.

                  A brief primer for anyone not familiar with the Abdication Crisis of Edward VIII of England:  When he succeeded his father George V as King of the British Empire in 1936 Edward was technically a bachelor, but had spent several years in the company of Wallis Simpson, an American socialite.  As their relationship advanced it became clear that Edward intended to marry Wallis, which was a huge no-go for the monarchy.  She was a foreigner and a commoner, she seemed to share Edward’s more modern views on how the monarchy should operate – namely by taking a public stance on political matters.  She was also once-divorced and technically still married to her second husband, which would make marrying her religiously tricky, since among his other duties Edward was also the Governor of the Church of England.  Rumors flew that she had a sexual dysfunction having something to do with her time spent in “Oriental brothels,” that she had been involved with men other than Edward during her separation from her husband, that she was a gold digger, and so forth.  After many discussions with Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin about his options, Edward decided to give up the throne to pursue his life with Simpson. 

                  Edward and Wallis did eventually marry, and spent much of their time shuttling back and forth from America to France and living off an allowance given to them by the monarchy, and some questionable sales of family real estate.  Never one known for his political savvy or subtlety, Edward made waves during WWII with some remarks that were deemed as sympathetic to the Nazi regime.  Though he and Wallis both denied that they supported Hitler, it was a black cloud over their already tarnished reputations for the rest of their lives.  From the 1950s on they lived mostly under the radar.

Edward & Wallis

                  Meanwhile, Edward’s younger brother Prince Albert became King George VI, a title he never expected nor wanted.  As a child he was often sickly, easily frightened and had a stammer that followed him into adulthood.  Prior to becoming King he had enjoyed a relatively peaceful and quiet life with his wife Elizabeth and two daughters.  Suddenly his family was thrust into the spotlight during a time of international turmoil and after a major royal scandal.  He wrote to Edward that he had taken over “a rocking throne” and tried “to make it steady again.”  Despite the decline of the imperial power of the United Kingdom and the hard years of the war, under his leadership and by his example the popularity of the monarchy was renewed.

George & Elizabeth

                  I know that The King’s Speech won a bunch of Academy Awards while W./E. was pretty universally panned by critics and was directed by Madonna.  I still think it’s worth seeing both of them.  They offer different points of view on the same story, and not only by which family member each movie focuses on; they’re also stylistically opposite one another.

As I said in my original mini-review, The King’s Speech is a big, warm, fluffy blanket of a movie.  Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush are delightful as Edward and his speech therapist, Lionel Logue.  There’s an undercurrent of desperation to both characters – Edward is about to announce his country’s involvement in a second World War and must lead with confidence, Lionel quietly yearns to prove his mettle as a therapist despite his lack of formal training.  HBC is kind of phoning it in but I love her so who cares.  It won’t make you think, it won’t surprise you, but it’s nice and lovely heart-warming and soft-focused and comforting.

          W./E. is a completely different ballgame.   The film goes back and forth between the stories of Wallis Simpson and Wally Winthrop, a ‘90s New Yorker fumbling through a troubled marriage who becomes increasingly obsessed with her namesake.  It’s really easy to screw up a movie that jumps between timelines and I thought it impressively done.  It’s slick and sexy, the music is excellent, the clothing is AMAZING, and the cinematography beautiful and cool – as in “blue-toned”, but also as in “hip.”  It features some fine performances by lesser-known actors like Abbie Cornish, Oscar Isaac, James D’Arcy and Andrea Riseborough.  Wallis and Edward’s potential Nazi sympathies are glossed over a bit too quickly, it’s melodramatic and overdone at times and the ending is a bit weird and hokey but I didn’t care.  It’s worth it for the dancing scenes alone.  Go in with low expectations and you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

 

Mini Reviews: 3/12/13

Planet of the Apes:  1968 American sci-fi movie directed by Franklin J. Schaffner and starring Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, Maurice Evans, Kim Hunter and Linda Harrison.  A crew of astronauts crash lands on a desolate planet after their 2006-year journey of exploration at near-light speed.  Something about time dilation?  Sure.  They set off through the treacherous terrain in search of food and water and come upon a group of primitive mute humans.  Suddenly the group is attacked by gorillas on horseback.  Yeah, turns out they’ve landed on a planet populated by apes with the intelligence of humans and humans with the intelligence of apes.  When Taylor (Heston) begins speaking to his simian captors, it throws the whole religious and scientific theory of the ape society out of whack and he’s deemed too dangerous to live.  I really didn’t think I would like it as much as I did.  Sure, it’s cheesy, but if you can look past the hokey ape costumes and the Shatner-level acting it’s surprisingly interesting and examines – in a campy, sci-fi way – issues still currently relevant:  animal rights, the role of science in a religious culture, etc.

First Position:  2011 documentary directed by Bess Kargman which follows six dancers preparing for the Youth American Grand Prix, an annual ballet competition that earns the winners dance scholarships at prestigious schools and positions at elite companies.  The dancers that Kargman profiles are diverse in experience, background and style:  the orphan from Sierra Leone, the studious young girl and her scrappy little brother, the pale boy ingénue, the Colombian teenager living alone in New York to follow his dreams despite his almost overwhelming homesickness.  It’s enchanting, not too frivolous but not too heavy, the dancing is beautiful, and the kids just seem so nice.

Three Days of the Condor:  1975 political thriller directed by Sydney Pollack and starring Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway, and Max von Sydow.  Joe Turner (Redford) is a CIA analyst who files a report on a spy novel after noticing some weird plot devices and the unusual languages it’s been translated into.  On the day he’s expecting feedback on the report, an assassin squad hits his office, and after his narrow escape he now feels he can’t trust his own government.  While on the run he takes a woman hostage and hides out in her apartment, eventually involving her in his search for the truth about the attempt on his life. 

                It was just okay.  First of all, Dunaway’s character is not at all believable.  Some rando takes you hostage, blathers on about spies out to kill him, compliments your photography, and then you have the most hysterical sex ever?  Which is essentially a montage of your depressing photographs interspersed with scenes of you appearing to have a conniption?  I appreciated the 1970s-Bourne-Identity thing going on, but the ending was anticlimactic.  Not wholly unsatisfying, but I probably wouldn’t watch it again.

The Hobbit – An Unexpected Journey:  2012 fantasy film directed by Peter Jackson and starring Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Andy Serkis, and Richard Armitage.  This is the first of a three-part film series based on the classic book by J.R.R. Tolkein.  Three parts.  Three.  The CGI-ness was way too much for me; there was a whole lotta time spent in the uncanny valley, guys.  But Freeman does a damn fine job as Bilbo Baggins, and despite my other quibbles with the movie and Mr. Jackson and the hype and the merchandising and the 3D-Imax-Cinerama-Cinemiracle-Cinemascope nonsense I OF COURSE will see all three movies.  And will enjoy them immensely.  I can’t help it.

Pitch Perfect: 2012 musical comedy directed by Jason Moore and starring Anna Kendrick, Rebel Wilson, Adam DeVine, and Skylar Astin (please don’t hold his name against him, he’s adorable and sings really well and I have a crush).  Beca just wants to move to L.A. and pursue a career in music, but her dad has convinced her to spend at least one year at college.  She reluctantly joins an a capella group that is desperately trying to stage a comeback after a disastrous competition performance the previous year.  It’s cute, it’s funny – oh, Ms. Wilson, how you do go on – it’s snarky and a little sharp at times, and of course there’s a lot of singing.  I really enjoyed it, but that might just be my inner choir geek talking.  I recommend it, but approach with caution unless you like musicals or singing-related television programs.

Men in Black 3:  2012 sci fi comedy directed by Barry Sonnenfeld and starring Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin and Jemaine Clement.  The third and hopefully last of the MIB films, in which a dangerous alien escapes from a prison on the Moon, bent on returning to Earth and killing Agent K.

                Excrement.  I have a fondness for the first movie, and there were a few redeeming moments from the second, but this is really, really, really bad.

The Queen of Versailles:  2012 documentary directed by Lauren Greenfield, about the family of Jackie and David Siegel and their quest to build the largest and most expensive single-family house in the United States.  The film opens with the Siegel’s on top of the world:  construction is underway at their giant Versailles-replica mansion, their timeshare business is booming, David is bragging about being responsible for getting George W. Bush elected – in perhaps not an entirely legal way.  And then the crash of ’08 happens.  The economy tanks, suddenly no one wants to buy a timeshare anymore, and they’re forced to live on a much smaller budget.

                It’s fascinating, and for me perfectly captures the triumphs and tribulations of The One Percent during the recession.  They went from building a home with ten kitchens – that’s a kitchen per family member, kitchens for all! – to David suddenly freaking out about the electricity bill.  Jackie is suddenly faced with raising her children without a squad of nannies, flying commercial instead of on a private jet, and dealing with rental cars instead of a chauffeur.  She seems to spend money because she’s stressed or bored, which makes David angry, which makes her more stressed.  Meanwhile, their one remaining nanny is living in an old playhouse (which, okay, is still the size of a studio apartment) and sending every spare cent back to her family in the Philippines.  It’s really interesting, totally messed up, and I highly recommend it.

Mini Reviews: 3/2/13

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Hatfields & McCoys:  2012 History Channel miniseries starring Kevin Costner, Bill Paxton, Tom Berenger, Powers Boothe, Jena Malone and Mare Winningham.  It’s a fairly accurate portrayal of the bitter feud between two families living on the border of West Virginia and Kentucky after the Civil War.  You stole my pig!  You stole my land!  You knocked up my cousin and then ran off with my other cousin!  Seriously.

                  I was so excited when I first heard about this.  I mean, the lineup alone had me apoplectic and C’MON with that storyline!  Yeah.  I doff my hat to Mr. Costner for his general badassery.  But Paxton was not just chewing the scenery; he was gorging himself on cardboard trees.  That metaphor is a stretch, but you get my meaning.  Not even the rampant surliness of Powers Boothe and Tom Berenger could soothe me.  I got through one episode and called it quits.

                  Fun fact:  descendants of the Hatfield and McCoy clans actually went on Family Feud in 1979.  Weird.

Immortals:  2011 fantasy film directed by Tarsem Singh and starring Henry Cavill, Freida Pinto, Mickey Rourke and Stephen Dorff.  It’s loosely based on the Greek myths of Theseus and the Minotaur and the War of the Titans:  the mad mortal king Hyperion (Rourke) is on a quest to find a bow that will help him release the Titans from their eternal imprisonment, so he can use them in a fight against the gods.  First he has to track down a virgin oracle who knows the bow’s location, then he must deal with this rebel kid Theseus who of course is a son of Zeus because like half of Greece has gotten busy with the Father of the Gods.  Keep it in your tunic, dude.  Jeez.  Also Stephen Dorff is there.

                  Honestly, I kind of liked it.  I’m a big fan of Tarsem Singh and his over-the-top visuals (The Cell and The Fall), I like that Dorff’s still getting work, and I wasn’t totally put off by the departures from the actual myths.  It’s a pretty decent action movie.

Dial M for Murder:  1954 thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Ray Milland, Grace Kelly, Robert Cummings and John Williams.  Tony’s wife Margot is having an affair, and he decides to have her killed, apparently hoping that his inheritance will comfort him.  But will he get away with it, or will his efforts be thwarted by her American lover and a fastidious London detective?  It’s really solid.  The acting is decent all around; Ray Milland is fantastic as the diabolical and charming Tony.  The pacing is nice, the twists and turns are believable, and the ending is tense right up to the final moment.

William Shatner’s Get a Life:  2012 self-congratulatory documentary directed by William Shatner, about the Star Trek convention phenomenon.  The interviews with the fans are pretty interesting, and often sweet and heartwarming.  When Shatner can bring himself to shut up, that is.  There’s a lot of supposed soul-searching on Shatner’s part, and it feels insincere and weird.  Skip it.  Unless you’re a Trekkie, in which case please don’t send me hate mail.

The Vanishing:  1993 thriller directed by George Sluizer and starring Jeff Bridges, Kiefer Sutherland, Sandra Bullock and Nancy Travis.  When Jeff’s girlfriend Diane disappears from a rest stop he sets out on an obsessive three-year quest to find out what happened to her.  I feel like I shouldn’t say anything else.  It’s a surprisingly good thriller.  It never drags, there’s a twist about two-thirds of the way through that I really didn’t see coming, and Jeff Bridges is mega creepy.  I highly recommend.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2:  The final Twilight movie with all the Twilight people based on all those Twilight books.  Shut up.  If you like the movies or books then you’ve probably already seen this or plan to.  It’s fluffy nonsense and sometimes I need that so quit judging me.  I very much enjoyed the giant Fuck You to the fans at the end.  Well done.

Lincoln:  2012 American historical film directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field, Gloria Reuben, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, David Strathairn, Tommy Lee Jones, Lee Pace, Hal Holbrook, James Spader, I could go on and on.  Unless you’ve been too busy preparing for the zombie apocalypse/Second Coming/Sequestration to pay any attention to pop culture, you already know this movie is about the passage of the 13^th Amendment.  Look, regardless of the criticisms that have been leveled against it, I stand firm in my opinion that this is an excellent movie.  The casting is outstanding.  Day-Lewis is a beacon unto my soul and I’ll tolerate no besmirching of his name.  Sure, it veers toward the melodramatic at times and it has that Spielbergian sheen to it . . . but what do you expect, it’s a Spielberg film.  I loved it.

Mini Reviews: 2/18/13

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The Innkeepers:  2011 horror film directed by Ti West and starring Sara Paxton, Pat Healy and Kelly McGillis.  Claire and Luke are working the skeleton-crew shift at the Yankee Pedlar Inn the last weekend it will be open.  Claire is a college dropout sort of drifting along, not sure what direction she’ll take when she loses her job, and Luke’s in pretty much the same boat.  According to local legend, a jilted bride committed suicide at the hotel in the 1800s and has been spooking up the place ever since.  They decide to devote their last days attempting to prove that the inn is haunted, roaming the halls with an EVP recorder and spazzing out over every unexplained noise.  McGillis, as the former-daytime-television-actress-turned-psychic does well with what she’s been given, but her character feels like an Also Ran, only there to pop up from time to time and provide expositional details.  It’s not super scary, but worth a few good jumps. 

Contagion:  2011 disaster thriller directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring like a gojillion people:  Paltrow, Cotillard, Winslet, Damon, Fishburne, Bryan Cranston, Jude Law, etc.  A businesswoman returns to the States with a gnarly head cold after her trip abroad, and suddenly there’s a global pandemic.  It’s a fairly decent thriller that shows multiple sides of a global health crisis – the doctors at the CDC who have to deal with federal and local bureaucracies, investigate the origins of the virus and attempt to find a cure, all while dealing with fears about their own loved ones; the families living under military quarantine; the epidemiologist who is kidnapped in China and held for medicinal ransom; and the conspiracy theorist blogger who uses the panic for his own selfish ends under the guise of wanting to speak truth to the masses.  The acting is fairly well done all around, with Winslet and Damon the standouts.  It’s worth giving a shot, for sure.

The Wolf Man:  1941 horror film directed by George Waggner and starring Lon Chaney, Jr., Claude Rains, Bela Lugosi, Evelyn Ankers and Maria Ouspenska.  It’s the classic tale you already know:  a dashing young man is bitten by a werewolf, turns into a werewolf himself, struggles with his new lupine identity, and lashes out at his loved ones.  It’s a little campy, but only a little, and definitely a must-see if you’ve haven’t already.  I wouldn’t watch it over and over, but it’ll be nice to revisit around Halloween.

House on Haunted Hill:  1959 horror film directed by William Castle and starring Vincent Price, Carol Ohmart, Carolyn Craig, Richard Long, and Elisha Cook.  An eccentric millionaire decides to throw a party, seemingly out of boredom, and makes this offer:  stay in this haunted house I’ve rented for a night and receive $10,000.  His grab bag of guests includes a pilot, a journalist, a psychiatrist, a secretary, the terrified owner of the property, and his plotting, money-hungry fourth wife.  The caretakers lock the doors behind them, the guests are given guns for protection, and then it’s up to them to ride out the evening and decide whether the ghosts are real or imaginary.  I know this is terrible, but I have a real soft spot for the horrible 1999 remake with Taye Diggs and Chris Kattan, and I think I liked that version more.  It’s fine and all, but there are far better horror movies from this era that I’d rather watch.

The Exorcist 3:  1990 second sequel in the Exorcist pantheon, directed by William Peter Blatty and starring George C. Scott, Brad Dourif, Ed Flanders and Jason Miller.  Lieutenant Kinderman (Scott) is investigating a strange series of murders in Georgetown that bear striking resemblance to murders committed by The Gemini Killer, who was executed 15 years prior.  He starts to suspect something paranormal is afoot.  It was weird, quirky, and a little off-putting, but intriguing enough to keep my interest.  Mostly I watched it for George C. Scott.  It was just okay, if that.  Apparently far better than the second, but still worse than the first.

Snow White & the Huntsman:  2012 fantasy film directed by Rupert Sanders and starring Kristen Stewart, Charlize Theron, Chris Hemsworth, Sam Claflin and Sam Spruell.  Think Snow White but darker.  Think LOTR treatment of a Grimm fairy tale.  Think modern, slightly less endearing Legend.  Stewart is a dead-eyed cardboard cutout of a heroine, but it kind of doesn’t matter because everyone else around her is so great.  Hemsworth is a lovely, scruffy, heartbroken Hunstman.  Theron is electric as the evil witch queen, and Spruell is delightful as her psychotic brother.  And there are weird CGI cameos by the likes of Nick Frost, Bob Hoskins and Toby Jones!  You guys I loved it STOP JUDGING ME.  The special effects are pretty good, the story is a little more interesting than I expected it to be, it’s mostly predictable and occasionally treacly but I didn’t care.  I really liked it.  It’s perfect Guilty Pleasure fodder.

I can't with you basic bitches.

Team America: World Police:  2004 satirical comedy by Trey Parker and Matt Stone.  An American Intelligence unit recruits a Broadway actor to infiltrate a terrorist cell and help them bring down Kim Jong-il.  And they’re all puppets.  Because of course.  If you like South Park, you’ll probably like this.  If not, then skip it.  It’s gleefully and universally offensive.  I feel I should warn you that it involves hilarious but really messed up puppet sex and perhaps the grossest vomit-related scene ever.

 

Mini Reviews: 2/5/13

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Slither:  2006 sci-fi-horror-comedy directed by James Gunn and starring Nathan Fillion, Elizabeth Banks, and Michael Rooker.  A parasitic alien species crash lands in a small South Carolina town and takes over the body of Grant (Rooker), an older man who had been cavorting in the woods, on the verge of cheating on his foxy younger wife, Starling (Banks).  A horde of slug-like alien babies soon infect the townsfolk, who then develop kind of a hive mind thing.  As the dwindling still-human population fights for survival, they must also deal with Grant-Parasite’s love for Starling, and its effect on his plans for Earth domination.  It’s funny and cute-scary.  The main cast is great – can’t go wrong with The Fillion, in my opinion – and Jenna Fisher and Rob Zombie also have hilarious small roles.  Give it a shot if you like Joss Whedon or the humorous variety of scary movies. 

Kathy Griffin: Pants Off:  2011 Kathy Griffin stand-up special.  Look, you either like her brand of celebitchy humor or you don’t.  This is much like the others – she discusses her friendship with Anderson Cooper, dinner with Gloria Steinem, the Kardashian clan, and so forth.  I enjoyed it!  But you might not.

Behind the Burly Q:  2010 documentary directed by Leslie Zemeckis, about the Golden Age of Burlesque.  Like many of today’s quasi-hipster adults, I know more than a handful of burlesque performers and enjoy the retro aspects of it.  So I had high hopes for this movie.  It provides some interesting stories and tidbits, nothing too tawdry or salacious, and the interviews with the burlesque veterans and random other folks like Alan Alda were delightful.  But put all together it was merely a disjointed series of anecdotes which are interesting but all over the place.  It just hops from performer to performer and back again with seemingly no purpose.  I’d skip it.

Tamara:  2005 horror film directed by Jeremy Haft and starring Matthew Marsden, Jenna Dewan and Chad Faust.  It’s like Carrie except terrible.

I can't even hold an ax properly.

His Girl Friday:  1940 screwball comedy directed by Howard Hawks and starring Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell and John Qualen.  Grant plays Walter Burns, a ruthless newspaperman who is about to lose his ex-wife/hardboiled partner in crime Hildy to a rather vanilla insurance salesman.  Fortunately for him, a convicted murderer is on the loose and it’s too juicy for Hildy to pass up.  If Burns can keep her on the story long enough, he just might win her back.

I’d avoided this movie for years.  I don’t like Grant and I don’t like screwball comedies.  There, I said it.  But I was totally wrong; it was quick and light, the physical comedy was subtle enough, the chemistry between Russell and Grant is somehow both outrageous and believable.  I ended up really liking it.  If you’ve never seen it, be forewarned:  there are a few mildly 1940s-racist jokes thrown in.

Margaret Cho: Beautiful:  2009 Margaret Cho stand-up special.  I will always have a soft spot for Ms. Cho.  I saw her live a few times in the early ‘00s, and I can recite I’m the One That I Want verbatim.  That being said, this was almost sad.  It was just the same regurgitated fag-hag jokes she was doing a decade ago.  I didn’t laugh once, just waited patiently for it to turn around.  And it never did.

Hit So Hard:  2011 documentary directed by P. David Ebersole, about the life of Patty Schemel, founding member of Hole.  The film includes Patty’s own home movies, showing life on the road and while on break from tour, and features interviews with Nina Gordon, Gina Schock, Sarah Vowell, and her Hole band mates, including a seriously cracked-looking Courtney Love.  The chronological jumping around is annoying at first, but I got past it.  It’s just so freaking good.  It’s funny and interesting and speaks so clearly and frankly about addiction; I was immediately riveted.  See it if you like documentaries in general or grew up in the ‘90s or are, like, human.  It’s that good.