22 August - "The way out is through love, and you are just horny and lonely"

Twelve (2010)

dir. Joel Schumacher (St. Elmo's Fire, 1985)

CAST

50 Cent

Ellen Barkin (Drop Dead Gorgeous, 1999)

Gregg Bello (G.I. Jane, 1997)

Chace Crawford

Rory Culkin (Signs, 2002)

Zoe Kravitz (It's Kind of a Funny Story, 2010)

Thomas McDonell (The Forbidden Kingdom, 2008)

Erik Per Sullivan (The Cider House Rules, 1999)

Emma Roberts (Aquamarine, 2006)

Charlie Saxton (The Happening, 2008)

Kiefer Sutherland (voice) (Stand By Me, 1986)

Everything about this movie was like reading the diary of an angsty, self-indulgent teenager. I'll bet it's on the favorites list of many a depressed 15 year old, and I bet at least one of them has written a poem about it.

Like a lot of the really crappy movies I've seen, I can tell that at one point there was a lot of potential in this script. Some of the narration by Kiefer Sutherland was honestly insightful. I think the major downfall was the tedious angst pouring out of the main character.

I am a huge fan of movies with the Grand Hotel theme-but they're hard to pull off well. In this movie, very few of the characters received the depth of treatment they deserved. The main problem was the main character, played by Chace Crawford --who is so conventionally handsome that I'm having trouble stomaching this poster I'm looking at. This guy has a shit backstory, his mom and so he's really dark and doesn't talk about feelings and is the dreamiest drug dealer (???) on the mean streets of whereverthehellthisis. Losing moms is way sad, don't get me wrong, but I don't think it justifies a whole movie of the protagonist acting like a tool. I much preferred the bitchy prom queen character, who has one brief moment of self awareness and vulnerability when she confesses to a guy that she doesn't really like the person that she is but nevertheless dies thinking about how nobody will ever stop talking about how cool her death was and how much they'll wish they were there to see it. Insight like that is wicked, it makes good movies.

Depression very rarely makes a good movie. That's because in the real world nobody gets to wear their hearts on their sleeve. Steve Carell can play a depressed guy pretty well (Little Miss Sunshine, Dan in Real Life), and that's because pulls off the necessary degree of black humor. He plays depressed guys who are nonetheless coping and that makes them admirable characters, characters we feel good about watching. This White Mike character sucked because he wasn't coping, he was wallowing-and that's when I said this movie was self-indulgent, because wallowing is self-indulgent. Watching it didn't make make me feel better about anything. It made me angry, not sympathetic.

The next movie I watched is really good, way better than this crap, I promise.

21 Aug - "I'm not saying Uncle Sam can kick back on a lawn chair, sipping on an iced tea"

Iron Man 2 (2010)

dir. Jon Favreau (Cowboys & Aliens, 2011)

CAST

Robert Downey Jr. (Back to School, 1986)

Gwyneth Paltrow (Hook, 1991)

Don Cheadle (Traffic, 2000)

Scarlett Johansson (Eight Legged Freaks, 2002)

Sam Rockwell (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, 2007)

Mickey Rourke

Samuel L. Jackson (Goodfellas, 1990)

Clark Gregg (Magnolia, 1999)

John Slattery (Traffic, 2000)

Garry Shandling (Doctor Dolittle, 1998)

Paul Bettany (voice) (A Knight's Tale, 2001)

Kate Mara (Brokeback Mountain, 2005)

Leslie Bibb (Private Parts, 1997)

Jon Favreau (PCU, 1994)
Evgeniy Lazarev (The Onion Movie, 2008)

How am I finding time to watch all these movies while simultaneously beginning my second year of grad school, you might be wondering? Well, I'm paralyzed into near inaction on almost everything resembling productivity, therefore I abuse my drug of choice in the pusuit of the sweet release into transcendance: cinema.

I enjoyed Robert Downey Jr.'s performance in Iron Man because I thought he portrayed an asshole billionaire very well. Iron Man 2 was more of the same and a little less exciting for it. As is usual for a superhero sequel, a potentially wonderful supervillain was underdeveloped. Here he is in the opening credits giving vodka to a cockatoo.

That's hilarious! I want more Vanko/Cockatoo relationship development. And more Sam Rockwell! Gwyneth Paltrow spent the whole movie acting like an overwhelmed harridan. I think there was supposed to be something resembling sexual tension between her and Iron Man, but I wasn't feeling it. Scarlett Johannson was an oversexualized agent of SHIELD - I think there needs to be a movie law that a character can't have more KOs than he or she has speaking lines (exceptions for actor/director combinations that are actually talented). I think there was a TV movie called Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D but I don't know anything else about that.

If you haven't figured it out already, I'm not a Jon Favreau fan. All in all, Iron Man 2 was unexceptional; I'll probably forget all about it in a few days.

20 Aug- "I hate most people"

There Will Be Blood (2007)
dir. Paul Thomas Anderson (Magnolia, 1999)

CAST

Daniel Day-Lewis (The Last of the Mohicans, 1992)

Barry Del Sherman (Independence Day, 1996)

Paul F. Tompkins (Tangled, 2010)

Kevin Breznahan (Alive, 1995)

Jim Meskimen (Magnolia, 1999)

Ciarán Hinds (The Tale of Desperaux, 2008)

Kevin J. O'Connor (Peggy Sue Got Married, 1986)

Hans Howes (Seabiscuit, 2003)

A Professor once told me that it would be possible to construct a fairly complete history of the United States using Daniel Day-Lewis movies. I have not attempted to validate his point at this time, but I will say than DDL spends a lot of time dressed in period costume.

This story, though, is very applicable in these times of exploitation by the energy industry, and industry in general. This movie is about Daniel Plainview, a turn of the century oilman who amasses a great fortune but nevertheless ends up bitter, angry, and alone. Plainview lies to the people of the community, tricks them out of their natural resources, and profits from the land they live on. There is an antagonistic relationship between him and the town's preacher, suggesting maybe that religion and business are irreconcilable (there's something about a camel and the eye of needle, dig it?). However, the preacher, Eli Sunday, never seems like a very nice guy, either, and by the end we learn that he has squandered his money, become destitute. He tries to convince Plainview to buy the very last piece of untapped land in the community.

The scenes between Eli Sunday and Daniel Plainview are the very best in the movie. The first happens when Plainview is getting baptized to gain the trust of a community member. The second occurs when Eli visits Daniel at the end of the film. Both of these scenes are highly emotional and intensely physical - you can tell they are throwing their whole bodies into it, and it was at this point that I decided that Paul Dano is a good actor, and not just the awkward-looking teenager in Little Miss Sunshine.

The emotional aspect comes from the anti-hero's inability to create a familial bond. Despite an obvious yearning to do so, he consistently destroys every loving relationship he creates. The first is with his adopted son, who he sends away only to call back, but then disowns him at the end of the movie. The second is with the man who impersonates his brother, who, although deceptive, we can only assume was genuine in his desire for a fraternal relationship. Finally, when Eli Sunday makes the claim that he and Daniel are "brothers," Daniel loses control entirely. For this reason he ends up alone, a loser.

18 Aug - "Grace doesn't try to please itself, accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked, accepts insults and injuries."

Tree of Life (2011)
dir. Terrence Malick (The New World, 2005)

CAST

Brad Pitt (Burn After Reading, 2008)

Sean Penn (Fast Times at Ridgemont High, 1982)

Fiona Shaw (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, 2010)

Irene Bedard (Pocahontas (voice), 1995)

Michael Showers (Traffic, 2000)

Michael Dixon (Cashback, 2006)
Jessica Chastain

What I said to my buddies at Happy Hour is that Tree of Life isn't something that you watch, it's something that happens to you. It was two hours long but it felt like three and I watched the whole thing and I feel obligated to tell you all about because under no circumstances would I recommend this movie to any who is not fully prepared to appreciate film as an art form rather than a form of entertainment, because Tree of Life was heavy on the former and unproviding on the latter.

There are a few dinosaurs, though, that was honestly and truly my favorite part.

What really got my goat though were these four bitches sitting in the row in front of me -you will have to excuse me for being uncharacteristically vituperative- giggling and texting and acting like blonde bimbo pieces of shit and they are certainly lucky that they got up and left 30 minutes in or else someone was going to get some choice words from yours truly. I am above fisticuffs but I will not shy away from a biting repartee.

So - the hard part now is that I have to tell you what this movie is about, and if you ever get around to seeing it you'll realize that this isn't a easy task. The movie begins in a way that sort of sets the scene. There is a father and mother reacting to the recent death of a son. Sean Penn plays the adult version of the eldest son, and we visit with him in the future from time to time. Having set the scene, the movie resets at the origins of the universe, the biblical separation of lightness and darkness. We see the formation of galaxies and the origin of our planet in fire and boiling oceans. We see the origin of life, simple organisms up to jelly fish and sea slugs and then a wounded plesiosaur gazing mournfully at the blood ebbing from its side. At this point I decided that Malick was trying to set up an allegory. The movie begins with the epigram from the Book of Job, "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation?" In the grand scheme, one death is of very little importance, and yet simultaneously it is the most important thing that ever happens. Nobody loves life less because he or she is small and unimportant. When the movie gets back to the part about the family, it is well before any death occurs. It seems like the story of a rather uneventful summer. It concludes with a return to grown up Sean Penn, who comes to terms with the pain of his loss, reconciles with his inner child and the rest of the painful and confusing childhood memories in a moving beach scene. Try not at this part.

You might say that Tree of Life is trying to answer the big questions. Why are we here? Why do bad things happen? We are here because we are the inevitable result of a story that began at the inception of time. We are here to accept with grace our role in this story. Bad things happen because, like the Earth itself, we are born from violence and destruction. Mountains are ground to nothing so that there is a flat earth for us to walk on - of course bad things happen!

I think that's the best I can do, and I am by no means claiming authority on the subject. Sitting through this movie was a chore for an antsy girl like me - but I feel a little better having seen it. I feel like I deserve some street cred for having seen it and being willing to talk about. Plus, every single other person who I've asked, "Have you seen any other Terrence Malick films?" has been totally clueless. So there's that. :)

17 August - "Tea can do many things, Jane, but it can't bring back the dead"

Death at a Funeral (2007)

dir. Frank Oz (The Indian in the Cupboard, 1995)

CAST

Matthew Macfadyen (Grindhouse, 2007)

Andy Nyman (The Brothers Bloom, 2008)

Ewen Bremner (Black Hawk Down, 2001)

Alan Tudyk (Knight's Tale, 2001)

Kris Marshall (Love Actually, 2003)

Rubert Graves (V for Vendetta, 2006)

Peter Dinklage (The Station Agent, 2003)

One thing I'd like to point out because it deserves to be an example for the whole entertainment industry, is that while Peter Dinklage, who is a short person, was cast in the role of the deceased's gay lover, this role did not require an actor of any specific height, nor was any humor explicitly derived from the fact of his shortness. The character's height was only referred to in reference to his appearance - no one ever said anything like, "ZOMG a gay dwarf is at this party!" Which is good, because we all need to get over shit like that. If you remember the similar rant I had about whenever Michelle Rodriguez is cast in a role - it's like affirmative action, which sucks. I want to skip the affirmative action bit and get straight to the part where diversity is a thing that happens without such a fucking big deal.

So much was happening in this movie and it was really very hilarious. You'll like this if you enjoyed The Royal Tenenbaums, A Fish Called Wanda, and movies of that ilk, a big emphasis on ludicrous situational comedy and everything going awry. It's one of those movies where everyone's got some sort of drama going on and they are all getting in each other's way trying to resolve it.

16 August - "I don't want to die like that French Poodle!"

Sólo Con Tu Pareja (1991)

dir. Alfonso Cuarón (Y Tu Mamá También, 2001)

CAST

Daniel Giménez Cacho (Cabeza de Vaca, 1991)

Claudia Ramírez

Ricardo Dalmacci

It amazes me how different the cultural standards for sexuality in cinema. In this movie, there's one scene where three children running through the woods stumble upon the protagonist making noisy love with a soon-be-bride, and one of them squirts them with a water pistol. It's hilarious, but Americans would never stand for it. In America, children aren't supposed to know that sex exists, only that males and females have a tendency to pair off and somehow or another offspring consequently occur.

Another thing that sets this movie apart is that it's about a man who realizes that he's pretty much a slut, and feels bad about it. The initial plot is that Tomas isn't happy with the person he has become. He keeps screwing around with these girls and saying alternatively that, "This isn't really me," and, "a leopard can't change it's spots."

The best part is when Tomas has to "entertain" two ladies at the same time, by climbing in and out of the windows of two apartments. However, on each trip he is riveted to the window in between the two apartments, where a third woman lives, the one he is actually in love with. This woman has a man, though, and she doesn't need to play the same tedious games that Tomas is engaged in. That's what makes her so attractive and untouchable.

So one of the ladies gets wind that she's been tricked, and since she's also Tomas's nurse, she falsifies his lab results and makes him think he's got AIDS. So he decides to do the suicide thing, except then the unattainable girl finds out her fiance is sleeping around, she decides to die, too, and so both of them are going to jump off a building together, but they fall in LOVE and Tomas figures out he's not infected after all. The end.

13 Aug - "It's like when people see Jesus in a pancake or something"

Devil (2010)
dir. John Erick Dowdle

CAST

Chris Messina (You've Got Mail, 1998)

Logan Marshall-Green

Jenny O'Hara (Matchstick Men, 2003)

Bojana Novakovic

Bokeem Woodbine

Geoffrey Arend (Super Troopers, 2001)

Jacob Vargas (Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion, 1997)

Matt Craven (Timeline, 2003)

Joshua Peace (Lars and the Real Girl, 2007)

So, Dowdle, who I've never heard of, was the director of this movie, but M. Night Shyamalan did the story. Poor M. Night, I think he's having trouble getting directing gigs since all of his movies made so little money. Personally, I think he's a fine director, it's his stories that are too heavy-handed with the symbolism. Devil certainly has the key characteristics of a Shyamalan film, beside the fact that M. Night himself is not in the picture. First off it is set in Philadelphia, home to both M. Night Shyamalan and myself. Secondly, it's got that final act revelation that really clearly spells out how everything else in the movie is interconnected, because you wouldn't want anyone walking away after the first viewing with any misunderstanding, and that's what kills me. Signs, The Village, even The Sixth Sense had these pandering endings where they flash back to all the relevant bits and hit you over the head with this grand revelation and I'd much rather than the filmmaker give me a little credit as a thoughtful human being and let me put the pieces together on my own. That's the difference between a great film, one that demands review and reinterpretation, and a dumbass one that makes fools feel clever. It's a soft pitch, M. Night, and that's why you weren't drafted into the big leagues.

Apart from that, though, Devil was a pleasurable psychological thriller that kept you guessing for a good long while.