1 May: "Do you have a name honey? Good, because we already picked one for you"

Burning Palms (2010)

dir. Christopher Landon

CAST
Rosamund Pike - Pride & Prejudice (2005)
Dylan McDermott - The Mistress of Spices (2005)
Shannen Doherty - Girl Just Wanna Have Fun (1985)
Zoe Saldana - Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
Nick Stahl - Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)
Robert Hoffman - She's the Man (2006)
Paz Vega - Sex and Lucia (2001)
Lake Bell - It's Complicated (2009)
Adriana Barraza - Drag Me to Hell (2009)
Victoria Patenaude - The Last Exorcism (2010)
Jason Brooks - Star Trek (2009)
Victor Webster - Must Love Dogs (2005)
Kate Albrecht - Princess Diaries 2: A Royal Engagement (2004)
Cici Lau - Legally Blonde (2001)
Colleen Camp - Valley Girl (1983)
Tom Wright - Troop Beverley Hills (1989)
Dimitri Diatchenko - G.I. Jane (1997)
Jon Polito - Highlander (1986)

A disturbing collection of cinema vignettes set in L.A. Most of the themes-drug abuse, illicit sexuality, narcissism and apathy-remind of a Brett Easton Ellis novel. However, it doesn't quite achieve the put-togetherness of a Grand Hotel-style movie (that's when there's a bunch of intersecting storylines) because apart from two stories featuring Shannon Dougherty as a psychiatrist with a terrible accent, there is zero overlap in the plotlines. Overall, Burning Palms was fun to watch in a i don't want to admit that i'm fascinated sort of way, because the humor was alarmingly dark and totally sick. I probably won't watch it again but I imagine that I'll bring it up in casual conversation fairly often.

22 Mar- "I do not call myself subject to much at all"

The Last of the Mohicans (1992)

dir. Michael Mann (Heat, 1995)

CAST
Daniel Day-Lewis (There Will Be Blood, 2007)
Madeleine Stowe (Bad Girls, 1994)
Russell Means (Pocahontas (voice), 1995)
Wes Studi (Dances With Wolves, 1995)
Steven Waddington (Sleepy Hollow, 1999)
Jodhi May (The Scarlet Letter (voice), 1995)
Eric Schweig (The Scarlet Letter, 1995)
Pete Postlethwaite (James and the Giant Peach, 1996)
Terry Kinney (Save the Last Dance, 2001)
Patrice Chereau (Time of the Wolf, 2003)
Dylan Baker (Love Potion No. 9, 1992)
Mark Joy (Pecker, 1998)
Tim Hopper (School of Rock, 2003)
Jared Harris (Far and Away, 1992)
Sebastian Roche (Beowulf, 2007)
Colm Meaney (Law Abiding Citizen, 2009)
David Schofield (An American Werewolf in London, 1981)

The Last of the Mohicans is easily one of my top ten favorites movies. Unfortunately, it's hard to make other people believe how awesome it is because the first twenty minutes are notoriously slow and usually folks get bored before they become enthralled in the awesomeness. Here are the reasons why I like this movie:
1) Chingachgook's awesome war club
2) Daniel Day Lewis placing emphasis on unusual syllables (he's "beholden to none")
3) Wes Studi as Magua, probably one of the best characters in film history
4) The score, by Trevor Jones

I've also read the book, but James Fenimore Cooper. I'm always interested in how books are adapted into screenplays, what stays in, what gets cut, what's changed, how the perspective moves from first person to third person. In the book, for example, the heroine Cora doesn't pair off with Hawkeye, Daniel Day-Lewis's character, she marries Duncan, the English captain she arrived in the colonies with. But in the movie Duncan sacrifices himself to save Hawkeye, Cora and Alice, which is good, because from a modern perspective Hawkeye's character is way hotter and deserves makeouts.

I've always liked Wes Studi. Magua, as a character, is one of the best. Magua first appears as an Iroquois scout for the English, but after he betrays Duncan's unit it's revealed that he was actually a Huron captive who was adopted by the Iroquois. His anger at having lost his Huron family due to the actions of Colonel Monroe have set him on a vendetta to avenge himself. He says that he wants to kill Colonel Monroe's daughters in front of him, "so that he knows his seed as been wiped out forever" and then cut out and eat Monroe's heart. But at the end, when Alice is preparing to leap off a cliff instead of going as Magua's captive, he tries to stop her. And it's not that I think it's odd that he had a change of heart, but that I think that's a very human response. It's different, when you're at war and filled with anger and murdering is almost normal, and afterwards, when the fighting is done and the resolution has been made and someone's about to die is very needless and tragic. Nobody wants that to happen. Magua: he's kind of a tragic character.

13 Feb - "I believe that one should become a person like other people"

Taxi Driver (1976)

dir. Martin Scorsese (The Departed, 2006)

CAST
Peter Boyle (The Santa Clause, 1994)
Albert Brooks (Dr. Dolittle, 1998)
Robert De Niro (Heat, 1995)
Jodie Foster (Freaky Friday, 1976)
Harvey Keitel (From Dusk Till Dawn, 1996)
Harry Northup (The Silence of the Lambs, 1991)
Cybill Shepard
Mary-Pat Green (My Best Friend's Wedding, 1997)

Taxi Driver was a good, if difficult to access, movie. De Niro's character seems disengaged with reality. His inability to see goodness in the world is only matched by his unwillingness to look for it. His only recreational activity is watching pornographic films, and he seeks out the fares that the other taxi drivers are unwilling to pick up. And so when he finally tries to do something normal, go on a date with Cybill Shepard's character, he has nothing of value to share with here, and she is disgusted by him. There is a proverb that says that you have be careful when you choose your enemies, because you will be become them. The climax of the movie is when Travis rescues young prostitute Jodi Foster, succumbing to his own basest instincts perhaps in the hope that one good pure thing can be elevated from the muck and mire that is the city.

12 Feb - "I've tried to live my life without breaking a single rule"

Les Miserables (1998)

dir. Bille August

CAST
Kathleen Byron (Emma, 1996)
Claire Danes (Romeo + Juliet, 1996)
Lennie James (Lost in Space, 1998)
Toby Jones (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (voice), 2002)
Hans Matheson (Sherlock Holmes, 2009)
Liam Neeson (Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (voice), 2010)
Frank O'Sullivan (The Wind that Shakes the Barley, 2006)
Geoffrey Rush (The Warrior's Way, 2010)
Uma Thurman (Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, 1990)
Zdenek Vencl (The Beautician and the Beast, 1997)

I never read the book, I never saw the play, so I was pretty excited to see how the plot unfolded! It's great when somehow I manage to get through my life without having the ending spoiled, especially for a story that's so prevalent in pop culture.

One of the first things I thought was that the character of Jaubert was a lot like Lt. Gerard from The Fugitive. That is, both had an inflexible interpretation of the law and little regard for the spirit of justice. Jaubert knows that Jean Valjean is a good person and yet he pursues him even until his death. On the other hand, I might also suggest that Jaubert's definition of a criminal was equally inflexible, the idea that a good person can do a bad thing, or the opposite, is inconceivable to him, even as Jean Valjean proves himself again and again. Lt. Gerard is the same. Even though in his heart he knows that Richard Kimble is innocent, the letter of the law demands that Kimble be captured again. The idea that Kimble might slip through the cracks and manage to live a benign, unremarkable life is intolerable. The thought of it haunts Gerard.

Therefore it was this relationship that was most remarkable to me. Even though there were others that could be remarked upon. The love story was just fluffy, though.

13 Dec - "Obviously, doctor, you've never been a 13 year-old girl"

The Virgin Suicides (1999)

dir. Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation, 2003)

CAST
James Woods (Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (voice), 2001)
Josh Hartnett (The Faculty, 1998)
Kathleen Turner (Peggy Sue Got Married, 1986)
Scott Glenn (The Silence of the Lambs, 1991)
Danny Devito (Romancing the Stone, 1984)
Hanna Hall (Forrest Gump, 1994)
A.J. Cook (Final Destination 2, 2003)
Robert Schwartzman (The Princess Diaries, 2001)
Kirsten Dunst (Elizabethtown, 2005)
Hayden Christensen (Star Wars: Episode II- Attack of the Clones, 2002)
Giovanni Ribisi (voice) (That Thing You Do!, 1996)

This movie is one of those surprising examples of how Kirsten Dunst can act pretty damn well when she's cast in the right role. In fact, this movie was surprising in a lot of ways, and it was better than I anticipated. It was sort of like a mystery movie, as you know when the movie starts that these girls aren't going to make it, and you keep watching as you're guided through the film by a third-party narrator, studying their words and their faces to try and figure out what was so wrong with life that these five pretty sisters decided it wasn't even worth trying anymore.

I think there are two ways you can look at it. One the one hand, you might think that the girls are a bit narcissistic, and that the drama of strict parents and boys who don't call back (am I right?) was the only impetus for them to make some grand gesture indicating that they were simply fed up with all the bullshit. After all, they were too young to know actually misery. They had nice parents and a nice home and everyone liked them. Right?

But I think that theory doesn't really add up under a closer scrutiny. At least, not in a poetic, cinematic world. I think maybe the girls were suffering from a severe case of ennui, and having briefly tasted love, adventure, etc. were frustrated to discover that this was all life had to offer, and decided to opt out for lack of anticipation. Peter Pan style: "death will be an awfully big adventure."

But the movie was intentionally unclear. Our narrators adore and admire the sisters from afar, intimately collecting the details of their lives, but never actually try to befriend the girls discover what they really are. And so there's also an tone of loneliness to the movie. I suppose that's the nature of loss. Never knowing what lies at the core of someone else's heart, then suddenly that person isn't there anymore, and you're never certain why she left or how life could have been different.

25 Oct - "I thought you were planning to stay awhile, but perhaps my sense of smell deceives me"

Mary Reilly (1996)

dir. Stephen Frears (Dirty Pretty Things, 2002)

CAST
Julia Roberts (Hook, 1991)
John Malkovitch (Burn After Reading, 2008)
Michael Gambon (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, 2010)
Glenn Close (The Big Chill, 1983)
Michael Sheen (Timeline, 2003)
Bronagh Gallagher (The Commitments, 1991)
Ciarán Hinds (There Will be Blood, 2007)

Here's another spooky movie I watched before Halloween. It's about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, from the perspective of the good doctor's maid, the title character. The twist is that it's also sort of a love story. Jekyll/Hyde loves Mary because of her innocence, and Mary loves Dr. Jekyll as well as his evil incarnation. The big question is why, and how is Mary able to love Dr. Hyde even when she knows that he is a vicious heartless killer. Part of it must have something to do with her abusive father. A connection is established when Mary describes him as having a peculiar way of walking, not quite a limp, and later the housekeeper uses almost the same words to describe the gait of Mr. Hyde. At the end of the movie, however, Mary is unable to forgive her father for his sins, but she has no hesitancy in forgiving Dr. Jekyll. I haven't quite figured that out yet.


I read The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and I remember that no symbolism was more salient than the description of the architecture. Luckily, the filmmakers behind Mary Reilly acknowledged this importance and even amped it up a little. Dr. Jekyll's main house is separated from the laboratory by a small courtyard. The laboratory represents the cruelly analytical and mysterious person of Mr. Hyde. However, in the movie the courtyard space itself takes on a symbolic form. Mary Reilly asks if she can plant some flowers in that area, to brighten it up a little. When the flowers finally show up, they are terribly depressing little colorful things barely penetrating the heavy gloom that seems to hang perpetually over Victorian Era England. Thus Mary herself assumes the role of the bridge that connects Jekyll and Hyde int one man.

What I never figured out, or forgot, about the story is whether Dr. Jekyll was attempting to isolate his dark side in order to attain pure morality in his actual person, or whether he was seeking a release from the enforced sociality of his culture. Either way, I do remember that he is seduced by the apparent freedom of Mr. Hyde and his lack of conscience, but as Mary points to the good doctor, there are no actions without consequences and the burden of Mr. Hyde's crimes, combined with Dr. Jekyll's even weakening resolve to remain his true self, ultimately destroys the man.

12 Oct - "What money I have is about eleven years old"

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997)

dir. Clint Eastwood

CAST
John Cusack (Must Love Dogs, 2005)
Kevin Spacey (The Ref, 1994)
Irma P. Hall (Patch Adams, 1998)
Jude Law (Gattaca, 1997)
Paul Hipp (Face/Off, 1997)
Kim Hunter (Planet of the Apes, 1968)
Geoffrey Lewis (Maverick, 1994)
Leon Rippy (The Patriot, 2000)
Bob Gunton (Glory, 1989)
J. Patrick McCormack (Wag the Dog, 1997)
Rhoda Griffis (Road Trip, 2000)
Michael Rosenbaum (Sorority Boys, 2002)
Ted Manson (Elizabethtown, 2005)
Ann Cusack (A League of Their Own, 1992)
James Gandolfini (True Romance, 1993)

As a northern in the South, I empathize with John Cusak in this movie, because I feel like we're both working on uphill battles. The glory, of course, is that in the end the status quo hasn't changed a bit, because it never does here.

Everybody says exactly what they don't mean.

The movie is about a murder. Kevin Spacey's character, whose one of those elite Southern mansion types who walks around with Ugga, the UGA school mascot, shoots his young lover, played by Jude Law trying his best at a real low Southern accent. Over the course of the trial, Spacey's homosexuality is revealed, but the grand revelation, which should have ruptured the community, doesn't ruffle any feathers because everybody already knew he was gay, so they just shuffle side to side and bury their heads a little deeper in the sand.

They all know what they say they don't know.

Adding a little flavor to the mystery are the colorful side characters including my favorite, the Lady Chablis, a transvestite showgirl, and a voodoo priestess. All the glitz and distractions only remind you that Cusak isn't meant to solve the mystery, because in this place the party never stops and everyone just keeps smiling and smiling as the world around them crumbles. Savannah reminds me of decay and ruined lost cities like those in Mexico. One day tourists will be walking around those Southern mansions and wondering what kind of people lived in places like these.

The movie seems to jump mostly between various parties and courtroom scenes. Even as Cusak is trying to solve the mystery he has to respect social custom and play nice. Another difference between Northerners and Southerners: Northerners get about the business at hand while Southerners are always playing at niceties, but at least when a Northerner gets around to being nice you can be sure that it's genuine. I watched this movie a week ago so I'm not sure what else I wanted to talk about but I liked it. I think I might try to read the book.

10 Oct - "I also got an appetite for greater things"

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

dir. Andrew Dominik

CAST
Casey Affleck (Good Will Hunting, 1997)
Brad Pitt (Tree of Life, 2011)
Sam Rockwell (Moon, 2009)
Paul Schneider (Lars and the Real Girl, 2007)

This wasn't quite what I expected! First of all, there was no outlaw-ing, except for one train heist at the beginning. This was clearly about the last days of Jesse James's life. Second, it was less about Jesse James than it was about his buddies, especially Robert Ford, obviously (why on earth was I so surprised about all this?) Ford's character was painfully awkward. He started out a total dork who idolized the James gang, and slowly transitioned into a really sucky adult who was still irritatingly self involved and although he still loved James, he hated him for being the larger-than-life character that Ford himself could never be. I guess the main plot of the movie is that degradation of hero-worship. But through it all, Ford still acts like a petulant teenager, angry that the world doesn't stop to present him with his heart's desire. And in the end, when he makes his desperate grab for fame - he's vilified, and you feel a little bad, but mostly deserves it, because he sucks.

Brad Pitt did a good job playing James as he must have been - a dark and moody man toeing the line of craziness. There's one scene where he's holding two snakes up for Ford to look at, and he says "I name them like my enemies" and then he cuts their heads off and keeps holding them, watching them continue to writhe around. There is no glorifying this character. He's a lousy murderer descending into madness. But he also plays with his children, loves his wife, and in the end, willingly steps up to his own death. It reminded me of a passage from Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans, which I keep lying around, about the death of Magua, who was the villain;

"As the weapon passed slowly into his heart he even smiled, as if in joy at having found death less dreadful than he had anticipated, and fell heavily on his face, at the feet of the unyielding form of Uncas."

Not that Jesse James was stabbed, but I still thought of it.

Last point: Sam Rockwell was awesome, he always is :)

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.

2 June - "Don't expect to be making any friends"

Elizabethtown (2005)
dir. Cameron Crowe (Say Anything..., 1989)

CAST

Orlando Bloom (Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, 2003)

Kirsten Dunst (Marie Antoinette, 2006)

Susan Sarandon (The Witches of Eastwick, 1987)

Alec Baldwin (It's Complicated, 2009)

Judy Greer (Love and Other Drugs, 2010)

Bruce McGill (Collateral, 2004)

Jessica Biel (Valentine's Day, 2010)

Paul Schneider (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, 2007)

Loudon Wainwright III (Knocked Up, 2007)

Paula Deen

Ted Manson (Fried Green Tomatoes, 1991)

Drew Baylor (Bloom) gets fired from his job and attempts suicide, only to have his sister (Greer) call at the last moment and tell him that their father has died and that he must go to Elizabethtown (title drop!), Kentucky to see to the funeral arrangements. En route Drew meets stewardess Claire (Dunst) and then later they have a phone call and fall in love. Things work out well with the folksy southern family and Drew decides that life is worth living after all.

While there's nothing I could precisely pinpoint as unpleasant in this movie, it still fails to stand out in any enjoyable way. I expect that in a week or so I'll have forgotten the storyline altogether, except that the romance between Kirsten Dunst and Orlando Bloom was very, very contrived. It was certainly a charming movie, with quaint characters, but it neither stood out as a romantic comedy, although it certainly elements of such, nor as a narrative of self-actualization, a young man coming into his own, which is certainly a common and always poignant theme in cinema (Like Big Fish, or the always relevant Star Wars). I could not enjoy it as a dark comedy nor as a family drama (Such as in The Squid and the Whale, which succeeded as both.

Instead, Elizabethtown seems to hesitate between two ends of the emotional spectrum, and in so doing fails to make an impact on either front. To emphasize a belabored point, the two highlights of the movie were the interaction between Drew and Chuck, the perceptively wasted groom getting married in the same hotel, and the flashback scenes to Drew's childhood memories of his father as he is beginning his drive back to Oregon (something about saturated photography and child-parent nostalgia always makes me teary).

It's obvious to me now why this movie receded into the background almost immediately after it's release. If you're hearing about this for the first time right now, just let it slide by you. If you're a big Orlando Bloom fan, maybe watch it if you're really curious, but honestly, he's hotter as Legolas.

May 12- "Some people call this hell, but you're still in Oklahoma Territory"

Hang 'Em High (1968)

dir. Ted Post

CAST

Clint Eastwood (A Fistful of Dollars. 1964)

Pat Hingle (Batman Forever, 1989)

Ben Johnson (Red Dawn, 1984)

Dennis Hopper (Waterworld, 1995)

Bruce Dern (All the Pretty Horses, 2000)

I got this one in one of those double feature DVD sets they sometimes sells at bookstores or in Target or something. The other movie was The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, which made me wonder why they hadn't chosen A Fistful of Dollars or, For a Few Dollars More to pair with it instead. I've heard of Hang 'Em High, mostly from a novel I read once about a little girl escaped from a correctional center and that was the only movie she had ever seen (seems like a macabre choice to repeatedly show delinquent kids, but whatever).

"They riddled him with bullets. They strung him up. They left him to die. But they made two fatal mistakes: they hanged the wrong man...and they didn't finish the job."

Sounds cool, right? Well, it is. Sometimes I have a hard time interpreting the endings of these old westerns, probably because the culturally salient themes aren't the same anymore. I think the point was that everybody is hunting for vengeance in one way or another. Our Hero, Jed Cooper, has a tangible scar to prove his point, but his associates, love interest Rachel, and the Judge, are also on a rampage of sorts, trying to figure out how many dead men it takes to heal a scar that no one can see.

Jed Cooper is after nine men who lynched him for a crime he didn't commit. The first one resists arrest and so Jed shoots him in self-defense. Two of them flee the territory. Another one dies in jail. Two more are killed in a shoot out after they tried to finish Jed off, and a third hangs himself before Cooper gets to him. Another is arrested and hanged for murder and cattle rustling. One turns himself in. Because that last guy is repentant, Cooper talks the judge into pardoning him and we are let with the implication that the judge is the worst murderer of the lot. Which I guess is true, in that he sentences men to die. But most of those guys of villains, and someone has to maintain law & order in Oklahoma Territory!

16 April- "They throw a great party for you on the one day they know you can't come"

The Big Chill (1983)

dir. Lawrence Kasdan (French Kiss, 1995)

starring

Tom Berenger (Born on the Fourth of July, 1982)

Glenn Close (Air Force One, 1997)

Jeff Goldblum (Jurassic Park, 1993)

William Hurt (Tuck Everlasting, 2002)

Kevin Kline (A Fish Called Wanda, 1988)

Mary Kay Place (Being John Malkovitch, 1999)

JoBeth Williams (Jungle 2 Jungle, 1997)

My mom picked this out at the Borders when she came to visit me. She said she doesn't like "funny" movies, and can I say, she really hit the nail on the head. More than anything this reminds me of a poor man's St. Elmo's Fire (1985), which is odd because you can see it predates that fine film by two years.

Just like in The First Wives Club (1996), this movie begins with a group of estranged college friends being reunited at a funeral. They proceed to hang out for a weekend, hashing out issues of sexual tension and lost idealism.

Mostly angsty with several attempts at comic relief, some of which are successful. Jeff Goldblum is the funniest by far, and Kevin Kline does okay. The ditzy girlfriend of the deceased is also good for some laughs, she also seems to be the most contented of the group, pointing out, "I don't like to talk about my past as much as you all do."

Feb 14 - "You were ready to do it. That's what counts"

Time of the Wolf (2003)

dir. Michael Haneke

CAST

Isabelle Huppert (I Heart Huckabees, 2004)
Patrice Chereau

Anaïs Demoustier
Lucas Biscombe

Here's a terrible choice for Saint Valentine's day, but otherwise a very powerful movie. If any of you saw The Road (2009), you might enjoy this movie as the premise as well as the tone is very similar. That being said, Time of the Wolf is not a plot-driven movie, but leans upon the emotional reactions of the characters to keep the story going. It is about a mother and her two children struggling to survive in a post-apocalyptic wasteland of sorts. Like The Road, we are never informed about the nature of the disaster or the extent of its impact. We learn that all of the water has become contaminated, but it also seems like there is some hope for reconstruction, the promise of supplies always about to be delivered from the South, and the wait for a train that will take our heroes someplace better.

As for the name, I'm not sure. There aren't any wolves in the movie. There's a bit of a motif with the wild dogs however, and one particular poignant scene where the daughter, Eva, is talking with a boy about her own age, and he says that he tried to befriend one of the dogs, but when they ran short of food the dog bit him, and so he killed it. In another scene, Eva and the boy hide together after he steals one of the milk-goats from the village, when the goat begins to struggle and bleat, he kills it. Eva admonishes him then, saying, "I thought you would help me, but you just ruin everything."

5 Feb - "Jesus drank wine every chance he got"

From Within (2008)
dir. Phedon Papamichael

CAST

Elizabeth Rice

Thomas Dekker (Heroes (TV), 2006-2007)

Adam Goldberg (Dazed and Confused, 1993)

Jared Harris (Lost in Space, 1998)

This movie is about a small, intensely Christian town which becomes subject to a series of apparent suicides. It is soon revealed, however, that the true cause is a curse cast by the vengeful sons of a pagan woman who was lynched for a crime she did not commit. The protagonist is a girl who is dating the pastor's son, but dumps him for the sensitive bad-boy. There's a race to undo the curse before the angry townsfolk kill the cute boy, while our Heroine races to save her new BF and her town, and not strangle herself death in the process.

No character was more irritating in this movie than the pastor's son, who, as the token best friend points out, "is the closest thing to royalty in this town." His radical turnover from a pleasant, trust-in-God's-will, sort of Christian to a kill-all-infidels sort of zealot is alarming and unexplained. By the end, he has replaced his father as the leader of the community and is willing to kill anyone and break any rule in the pursuit of his goal, which is to destroy the sensitive bad-boy who practices an alternative religion.

I can't help but point out that of the six possessions that occurred in this movie, only one of them was a man, and his "suicide" wasn't even an articulated scene, just a cutaway to a pair of hanging feet. I guess I won't go further into that because apparently some people get a little uncomfortable when I discuss the representation of gender in horror movies, and I'd hate for anyone to start thinking I was one of those "uppity" sorts of women that points out totally obvious patterns such as this and asks, why? Why is it so much more fascinating to see a girl covered in blood? Why does it seem so much more insidious when a girl is penetrated by a dark, uncontrollable force?

But we're not going to worry about those uncomfortable ideas, even though there's barely a point in blogging about movies if we aren't going to acknowledge such a blatant recurring theme.

It's a shame that I got all passive-aggressive here. I had some points to make about the title's metaphor. How the destruction manifested by the curse was actually a reflection of the town's dark secret, the murder of pagan woman referred to earlier, and the truth behind the murder she was killed for. She was scapegoated, sacrificed so the town, as an entity, could persevere in the face of irreconcilable iniquity. In turn, the nature of curse is that can only drive you to destroy yourself, it has no power beyond that. So the townsfolk are forced to turn their destruction back upon themselves in order to atone for the violence that came from within. Bang! I figured it out.

2 Feb - "a thousand people freezing their butts off to worship a rat"

Groundhog Day (1993)

dir. Harold Ramis (Year One, 2009)

starring

Bill Murray (Scrooged, 1988)

Andie MacDowell (Bad Girls, 1994)

Chris Elliot (There's Something About Mary, 1998)

Stephen Tobolowsky (Memento, 2000)

Brian Doyle-Murray (Caddyshack, 1980)

Ah! Holiday appropriate movie! I'm so glad I had time to watch you today :)

This is not the picture from the DVD cover, but it's better, so you're welcome. Everyone says they love Bill Murray, but his movies are consistently underrated. Especially Groundhog Day. I love this movie! But a lot of people forget that it gets very dark around the hour mark. Poor Phil here kills himself a number of times in desperation. The trick is that he has to live the same over and over until he gets it right. And when he gets it right the girl falls in love with him, but in order to do so he has to stop worrying about himself, about the girl, and he has to be good and considerate to everybody in Puxatawny. He has to be perfect, if only for one day.

And it takes a long time for him to figure it out. In the interim, he learns how to play piano, and reads a whole lot of books, and learns the life history of everyone in the town. Does that mean it's impossible for us, the one-day-at-a-time populace, to ever get it right?

It's a strange idea for a movie. Why Groundhog day? The plot would lend itself well to Christmas, maybe even better for Thanksgiving or New Year's Eve. Maybe it's because Groundhog day is inherently dual-natured. On one day the potential for spring and winter are equal. Until today we don't know how long the winter is going to last, and our Hero, however long it takes him, gets to learn how to live in the moment. Or maybe the point is that it doesn't matter what the groundhog says, because spring is going to come whether he sees his shadow or not. It doesn't change anything, what the prognosticator says, and nothing that Phil does on his endless day: murder, suicide, sex, love. It doesn't matter, the only change can happen within himself.

23 Jan- "I think the point is to make us despair. To see ourselves as animal and ugly. To reject the possibility that God might love us"

The Exorcist (1973)
dir. William Friedkin

CAST
Ellen Burstyn (The Wicker Man, 2006)
Linda Blair
Max Von Sydow (Minority Report, 2002)

I managed it on the second go this afternoon. And like most things, it wasn't as scary as the anticipation, and it's good that I can cross this off the classic movies I haven't seen yet list (Maybe Taxi Driver will be next).

I was surprised though, by the degree of sexual violence implied by possession. There's one part where the mother runs into Reagan's bedroom and she's bleeding as she stabs the crucifix into her crotch repeatedly, shouting, "Let Jesus fuck you!" after that, Reagan grabs her mother and pushes her head down, saying, "Lick it!" I guess the perversity was startling to me. It's not something I've seen in the more modern movies about demonic possession.

On that note, why is it that only girls are possessed? There's Exorcist (1979) and The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005), The Last Exorcism (2010). Or how about The Reaping (2007), End of Days (1999), Ghostbusters (1984), Stigmata (1999), or that chick who needs to be rescued in Constantine (2005).

Can we think of men who are possessed? Sort of, maybe Constantine can be used again, since Keanu is sort of walking the line between life and afterlife in that one. For the same reason we could use Hellboy (2004), and Ghost Rider (2007), there's also Fallen (1998).

What's the difference? Besides the fact that the first bunch are, on the whole, better movies, the men who get possessed continue to act from a position of power. They use their new evil powers to fight MORE evil, or maybe they just go on a killing spree. They certainly don't get tied to a bed and wait for the evil to be beaten out of them - because they're men they get to do some beating of their own. Men gain control, women lose control.

I also have a rant about superheroines in movies as compared to superheroes. If I ever subject myself to sitting through Catowoman (2004), you'll get to hear it; unless someone wants to propose a superheroine movie they think it actually good.

22 Jan- "You know, I bring out the best in the men who fuck me"

 Leaving Las Vegas (1995)
dir. Mike Figgis

CAST
Nicolas Cage (The Wicker Man, 2006)
Elizabeth Shue (Back to the Future II, 1989)
Julian Sands (Arachnophobia, 1990)
Richard Lewis (Robin Hood: Men in Tights, 1993)
French Stewart (Stargate, 1994)
Mariska Hartigay (Lake Placid, 1999)
Laurie Metcalf (Toy Story 3 (voice), 2010)

Danny Huston (Children of Men, 2006)

I'd like to recommend this movie as one NOT to watch when you're feeling a little blue. I tried to watch The Exorcist for the first time last night. But I couldn't even get past the title menu - too spooky. The funny thing is that I'll bet it's not even THAT scary. I mean, it was made in the 70s and I think I've got at least a lot of that jadedness towards cinematic horror that the old folks are always complaining about. So I started Leaving Las Vegas and I finished the last forty minutes or so this morning and, damn, I think it's going to be one of those days where I stay in my pajamas and don't wash any of the dishes. It was depressing.

If you're unfamiliar, it's about a man who travels to Las Vegas with the intention of drinking himself to death. He hires a prostitute to stay with him on his first night there, and they fall in love, but he makes her promise that she won't interfere with his agenda, which is to be drunk until he's dead.

It reminds me of a line by Kurt Vonnegut, from the preface of Welcome to the Monkey House, he says something to the effect that he smokes. and he thinks that may other people smoke for the same reason, because, "smoking is a fairly sure, fairly honorable form of suicide." Do you think that might count for drinking as well? Here's another line: "Death will be an awfully big adventure." That's Peter Pan. The whole time you're watching this movie it's like nothing matters. Because he's still going to die at the end, and nothing is going to change that and you sort of get mad at Elizabeth Shue's character for putting up with his ridiculousness, for not trying to stop him and not leaving him either, she just tolerates it and he's dying and she's not doing anything about it. And you know before it ends that the finale is going to be very sad.

Which makes me wonder if he really loved her all that much. Since he didn't love her enough to stop drinking. But I think I'm misinterpreting. I suppose the point is that two flawed individuals (she's engaged in her own willfully self-destructive profession) were able to accept each other for exactly what they were for a brief period of time. I guess the romance is that Elizabeth Shue was able to love Nicolas Cage even though she knew it was going to end in tragedy. Although the he was kind of a dick to her when she was heading out to work, and she kicks him out after he brings home another prostitute. They make up in the end though.

I always like movies about Las Vegas because they never fail to take advantage of that contrast between the falsity and opulence of the Strip and the beautiful starkness of the desert. A silly example I always think of Fools Rush In, with Matthew Perry and Salma Hayak. That movie could have been really good, but poor Matthew Perry always takes down the classiness a few notches. All the same: deserts. I should get out to one of those someday.

Dec 29 - "I'm almost sure she did it on purpose"

Black Swan (2010)
dir. Darren Aronofsky (Pi, 1988)
starring
Natalie Portman (Where the Heart Is, 2000)
Mila Kunis (American Psycho II: All American Girl, 2002) --OMIGOSH THIS EXISTS
Winona Ryder(Girl, Interrupted, 1999)
Vincent Cassel (Shrek (Voice), 2001)

I can't believe I forgot to write about this! I guess probably because my mom took me right before New Years in a desperate attempt to cheer up my glum self. She also took me to a super fancy bistro afterwards where I ordered something super-fancy called Meatloaf Strudel and yes, that was as wonderful as it sounds. The trick though is that when we arrived in the restaurant it was utterly empty, and the waiter/host (a jack-of-all-trades, evidently) asked us about the movie and then practically squealed about how he hadn't been able to talk it over with anyone yet. So we had a chat.

At it was that guy who pointed out to me that Baclk Swan was intended to be a companion piece for The Wrestler (2008), both emphasizing the athlete's struggle with the limitations of his or her body. The gradual degradation of the dancer's body was the key theme in this movie. Then the waiter went off about other Aronofsky films, but I only saw i (1988) and parts of The Fountain (2006), which I did not care for.

Our big debate though, and I hate to spoil this for those who haven't seen the movie, but whatever...spoiler alert! Did Nina imagine sleeping with Lily or not? I leaned toward the conservative interpretation and said no, Nina was just batshit crazy and imagine Lily to be a subversive, but my waiter-pal thought otherwise, that Lily drove Nina to crazy heights by toying with her sense of reality. Ah! I'm still not sure, I think I have to see it again and watch for subtler clues, including the use or mirrors as symbols, which I'm thinking was more important than I first thought.

IMDB tells me that Aronofsky is directing another X men movie, called The Wolverine, which is about Wolvie's pre-x-men days in old-time Japan. In which, if I'm remembering my cartoons correctly, is when he falls in love with the girl who later become Lady Deathstrike, who I think was that Asian chick with the claws who died in X2: X-Men United. Please, correct me if I'm wrong, but let's all hope that it's better than X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Anyway, at this point there are so many holes in the canon that I guess it doesn't even matter anymore.

Sorry, I'm talking about comic books when I was supposed to be talking about the movie that will probably sweep the academy awards. blah blah blah, it was wonderful! whatever everyone else said blah.

Dec 11- "I saw a guy at the state fair that was a little bit bigger"

What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993)
dir. Lasse Hallström

CAST
Johnny Depp (Benny & Joon, 1993)
Leonardo DiCaprio (The Quick and the Dead, 1995)
Juliette Lewis (From Dusk Till Dawn, 1996)
John C. Reilly (Cyrus, 2010)
Mary Steenburgen (Elf, 2003)
Crispin Glover (Dead Man, 1995)

I pulled an old favorite out of my PERSONAL DVD COLLECTION because I put netflix on hold for the holidays. Let me first say that this movie is iconic Johnny Depp to me. I think what always gets me is how everyone keep telling Gilbert, "you gotta do better." Because poor Gilbert isn't just responsible for his own mistakes, but he has to take care of everyone else too. So there's thing buildup of responsibility and guilt that's really kind of a bummer. I guess it's a good movie for anyone who's feeling stuck in place, because the end moral seems to be that you have excise all of the dead weight, burn your home to the ground and start all over again. Or maybe it's that the confines in which we find ourselves are in fact artificial. You get wedged in so tight that you forget that leaving is still a viable option. I dunno - I'm getting allegorical.

So this has some great performances by Johnny, obviously. And Leo DiCaprio plays the retarded younger brother, and I've read some interviews about him playing this role and I don't remember the details but that it was interesting. This might have been his first major film. My major criticism is that they changed the character Becky from the book into an older, hippy-dippy free-spirit type. While in the novel she was younger than Gilbert, self-involved and meaner. The opposite of hyper-responsible Gilbert and she leaves him at the end. Juliette Lewis plays a nice Becky, and so I'm not sure why she likes Gilbert so much.

This is kind of a lousy entry, considering this is one of my favorite movies. I'm guess I'm just in a gloomy-gus mood. Sorry, gang.

Dec 6- "It's hot as balls, everybody's an asshole. I just wanna go home"

Wristcutters: A Love Story (2006)
dir. Goran Dukick
starring
Patrick Fugit (Saved!, 2004)
Shannyn Sossamon (The Rules of Attraction, 2002)
Tom Waits, (The Outsiders, 1993)
Shea Whigham (Boardwalk Empire (TV), 2010)

The title is deceptive, because there's actually one wristcutter in this movie. Nevertheless, it was a wonderful movie, the best I've seen in a good long while. The movie starts with a suicide scene, and there are a couple flashbacks to other character's suicides as well, but for the most part everyone is sort-of alive in this movie, and there's a really nice redemptive ending.

It takes place in a sort of Limbo for suicides, which is just like our world except it's always hot and never sunny, and nobody ever smiles. In, The Inferno, Dante describes a place called the "Wood of Suicides," or "The Wood of Self-Murderers" (which is heavily drawn upon in What Dreams May Come) where those people who rejected God's gift of life were trapped in oak trees and tormented by harpies. Dante said that when the time for resurrection came, the suicides would still be trapped in their tree-bodies, because they had freely given up their own bodies.

This world of suicides is not so dramatic. Zia, the protagonist (maybe a play on Zion?), says that everything is the same, just a little bit worse, and he thinks about trying to kill himself again, but he's afraid he might end up in an even worse hellhole. The journey is driven by his desire to find his ex-girlfriend, whom he discovers kileld herself shortly after he did, and by the aims of a pretty young woman, who believes she has been placed in this world by mistake.

So I kept making these assumptions while I was watching. I guess I'm pretty full of myself when it comes to guessing storylines. At first I thought we were going on a Dantean journey through the seven levels of Hell, and then I thought that maybe Our young Heroes would discover that they actually in Heaven, once they got over whatever made them miserable in life. What actually happened was much weirder, and I was delightfully surprised. So I don't want to give anything else away, because this is definitely one that everybody has to watch.