Dead-Alive

For You

Don't kid yourself, this is a genre film. Directed by Peter Jackson, and released as Braindead (why rename it?), this movie is about a hilarious rat-monkey who bites and old woman, and her son who tries to cover the whole thing up. When people say its gross (pretty much the only word I'd ever heard sandwiched next to Dead-Alive), they mean its over the top ridiculous. I was imagining Saw II type gore, but its delightful, fun, and completely unbelievable. No nightmares.

For Me

Even watching alone, I laughed out loud and at one point just stood up I was so shocked by how far Peter Jackson was willing to go. I often rant about how stunted the Zombie genre is (completely enjoyable, but impossibly hard to escape the ending), and Dead-Alive really challenges this. Maybe because its more a horror-comedy movie than a zombie one, but its structure truly surprised and refreshed my wary mind. I also liked that the allegory being told was front and center. I'd rather not have a film take itself completely seriously while trying to convince the audience that the "meaning" was an accident. Ooops!

(Does anyone else remember seeing this at the rental store when they were twelve and having a seizure?)

Dead-Alive Trailer

Good Dick

For Us

This is my new developmentally inappropriate obsession — I haven't been able to watch any other movie for three days. All you need to know is that its a tale about a boy who is crushing hard on a girl. Original? Yes. Watch the trailer (it'll give you a good sense of who these people are), then forget you ever saw it. The characters aren't what you think, and even though the back stories are a teensy bit weak, this is Marianna Palka's first movie. That she directed, wrote, produced, and starred in. What a slacker.

PS Good Dick is being independently released (even on DVD), so if you like it, buy a copy right away from this site. Limited amounts.

Goodbye Lenin!

For You

Goodbye Lenin! was nominated for about eighty billion awards. Which one did it win the most of? Audience! People went ape shit for this movie. Its quirky (coasting on the success of Amelie), makes for great talking points, and has a happy ending. Watchable with EVERYONE, even the people listed in your phone who you never remember meeting. And Moms. My public service announcement is that it takes place in Berlin, between 1989 and 1990. If you are space cadetting on what was happening then, look it up for Christ's sake.

For Me

Cute. Not cute enough. The two plot lines:
1. Family
2. Country
never quite meet. One needed to win the battle, and instead they accidentally collide, both of them feeling unfinished and sloppy. During the "precious moments," when you are supposed to really FEEL something (kill me), what I felt was the need to clip my toe-nails. This is because I'm a BRAT. Honestly, audience award! It'll only be the die hard compulsive alone movie watchers like myself that see wasted potential. And this is because I've seen more movies than you. Which basically means I qualify for Mensa.

Inglourious Basterds

For You

That rumor about Brad Pitt only being in the movie for thirty-seven minutes? Its true. This is also how much of the film is spoken in English. This isn't Quentin Tarantino's WWII movie, its his foreign film. Most of the things you love about his movies, if you do love them, aren't there, and its his weakest "story" to date. If you aren't willing to drink wine coolers with Tarantino, you might as well skip it and have a martini with your friends.

For Me

Tarantino dialogue is BRILLIANT when read! This is not a joke. I heart Death Proof, but I could barely stand the monologues. Too talkie talk talk. Inglourious Basterds is one giant conversation (yea, its violent, but only for twenty minutes and they're spread out like bread crumbs) and I never once got bored. Reading is fun! The Jew Hunter is fab — best thing in the movie, not counting my new lady crush Shosanna — and the opening scene is well worth putting up with Brad Pitt. I hate to say it, but Tarantino is basically a genius, and although this is not my favorite of his films, there is nothing truly wrong with it. Except the story. That's a little bunk, but I already said that. I will fo sho see it again. Preferably in a movie theater. (This will make sense once you see the movie. I hope. Does that put too much pressure on you?)

The Devil's Backbone

Uh, exactly the same as Pan's Labrynth. Since The Devil's Backbone was made first (right before Blade II. ouch), and doesn't have creatures fighting for screen time, I guess they're not EXACTLY the same. Here are some of the similarities:

- protagonist is a kid (but a boy)
- takes place during the Spanish Civil War (Del Toro is Mexican. WHAT is going on here. . .)
- able bodied men make me nervous
- creepy supernatural shit

During the first twenty minutes I couldn't stop obsessing about how the two movies were twinsies, but The Devil's Backbone really takes off, turns into a bit of a mystery for a while, and ends by neatly tying up all of its shoelace plot lines. I liked it, I'd recommend it, and you should watch it. Yes, it has subtitles. The movies I like to watch are foreign. Get over it.

Tetro

Its been three days and my final answer is I don't know. When someone asks what I think, I pause. . . (thats me, still paused, annoying myself). . . and wind up answering a question with a question. "Have you seen Buffalo 66?" This question MAKES NO SENSE and has NOTHING TO DO WITH THE MOVIE. So, I don't know if I liked Tetro—there is something redeemable in it for the film student or historian; or found it to be a waste of time—the story meanders and ends up overblown; or a work of genius that is so far over my head its floating away like the red balloon. Writing a review would be a waste of both our time, so good fucking luck at the theater. And stop looking at me like I ever know what I'm talking about.

On the other hand, I do want to see Tetro again (at home) to catch some things I may have missed. I also liked how disorienting it was, which seems to happen less and less in American cinema.

If you haven't seen Buffalo 66 yet, now is a great time to play catch-up or revisit it. Vincent Gallo is always fun to watch. He wrote, directed, composed the soundtrack, and starred in Buffalo. He really must have liked this guy "Tetro" to trade him in for fits of control.

The Hurt Locker

I'm putting on my hipster gladiator goddess sandals right now to go see this movie.





"If “The Hurt Locker” is not the best action movie of the summer, I’ll blow up my car." — A.O. Scott

Ghost Town

Nope. Sorry Ricky Gervais, but no one wants to see you kiss Téa Leoni. And No kissing plus romantic comedy equals torture. I laughed a lot when you touched the mummy though.

Ghost Town Trailer

Love Songs

Frustrating. One, I don't want people singing when they're having sex. Two, unless Paris really is experiencing a spike in threesome relationships, this premise was devised for horny Americans. Three, what a waste of my favorite actors. I love Louis Garrel and Ludivine Sagnier, but their performances were overdone and fakey. This homage to Godard just left me wanting to watch old Godard, and nothing more by Christophe Honore. What happened to the director of Ma Mere?

Love Songs Trailer

The Conformist

I can't remember who reccommended this to me, or where I first heard of The Conformist, Bernardo Bertolucci's seventh film. It truly surprised me since I felt that The Dreamers was a movie left unfinished (even though I love Louis Garrell). The Conformist is a visual explosion set in 30s Italy and France. At times I thought I was watching a long lost Felini film, (but not La Strada, more Juliet of the Spirits) although this might have been the fact that its also a dubbed movie in which no ones lines match their lips. Overall, I think I'd tell almost everyone to see it.


I was a little nervous that I liked this movie too much, that perhaps it won me over by cheating somehow. Here is a clip from Pauline Kael's review to back me up.

"Bernardo Bertolucci wrote and directed this extraordinarily rich adaptation of the Alberto Moravia novel about an upper-class follower of Mussolini. It's set principally in 1938. Bertolucci's view isn't so much a reconstruction of the past as an infusion from it; the film cost only $750,000-Bertolucci brought together the decor and architecture surviving from that modernistic period and gave it all unity. Jean-Louis Trintignant, who conveys the mechanisms of thought through tension, the way Bogart did, is the aristocratic Fascist-an intelligent coward who sacrifices everything he cares about because he wants the safety of normality. Stefania Sandrelli is his deliciously corrupt, empty-headed wife, and Dominique Sanda, with her swollen lips and tiger eyes, is the lesbian he would like to run away with. The film succeeds least with its psychosexual approach to the Fascist protagonist, but if the ideas don't touch the imagination, the film's sensuous texture does. It's a triumph of feeling and of style-lyrical, flowing, velvety style, so operatic that you come away with sequences in your head like arias. With Pierre Clémenti as the chauffeur, Gastone Moschin as Manganiello, and Enzo Tarascio as the anti-Fascist professor (who resembles Godard). Cinematography by Vittorio Storaro. In Italian." —Pauline Kael

O Amor Natural

Lordy, this was cute. After the well known Brazilian poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade passed away, they (I think his wife or lover and his publishers) found piles and piles of erotic poetry, which he had never shown to anyone. O Amor Natural is a collection of touching interviews. The filmmakers asked a variety of Brazilians to read aloud from an erotic collection of Carlos Drummond de Andrade poems, and all of them are over the age of sixty-five. They follow up with their own beliefs about sexuality along with some saucy personal histories. Plus, O Amor Natural is short—a quick seventy minutes. And there's a butt montage. Perfect for after dinner on a Monday night.

The Hairdresser's Husband

This was a movie that a friend recommended to me ages ago. It only recently became available on DVD, so thank you Netflix for being on the ball. There isn't anyone terribly famous in The Hairdresser's Husband, it's only 82 minutes, and you'll never figure out exactly what is going on, but it was fun to watch and very poetic. Frenchies make the best romances. If you like Jean-Pierre Jeunet (it's hard to image that he didn't see this movie and instantly love it - in fact, The Hairdresser's Husband, Amelie and The Double Life of Veronique prove that there was some sort of movement happening in French cinema in the early nineties), Bergman, Bunuel, even David Lynch, give The Hairdresser's Husband a shot. In short, if you love movies and watch them all the time, all the time, you'll really enjoy it.

The first three minutes of this movie are fantastically sweet.