Conversations with Other Women is the best movie I've seen since Children of Men but completely and wholly different in terms of tone. The technical mastery and sheer interestingness of the shots on screen themselves are comparable, though.

Here's the thing, though: I can't (well, won't) tell you about the plot. You need to trust me. It's quality. But you're going to have to netflix this movie (or just go a head and buy it from amazon) without reading the descriptions. Just do it. You'll be happier for it, I swear. 

The problem with movies primarily comprised of two people talking is usually that there's not all that much to look at. Talking-head movies, they're called. Particularly when you have an unnamed man and an unnamed woman talking about a relationship, current, past, theirs or theirs with others. But here's where the genius comes in: Conversations with Other Women is shot entirely in split screen. It could've turned gimicky but in each scene there's just so much to look at, so many different places to focus your attention, so many different things to see and so many unconventional (and amazingly better) ways of portraying stuff that we've seen a thousand times. You've never seen flirting 'til you've seen it in split screen. Gorgeous.

And the other thing about movies comprised primarily of two people talking is that usually the talking's not all that good. Conversations with Other Women solves that by continually playing with your expectations. (Part of why I won't talk about the plot. At all.) And even once it stops playing with your expectations, the split screen still allows for it to become playful--or, subjective?--with time and space and branch out a little.

And, if you've seen Thank You for Smoking, you know that Aaron Eckhart can be trusted with a large amount of text. Helena Bonham Carter does tremendously well, also.

Fuck, this movie's just excellent.

10/10 

I want it understood: I would be linking to this even if the main characters name weren't Lars.

But it doesn't hurt, either. 

Anchorman

Two things about Anchorman stand out in my head, in retrospect:

1) the ten minute potion of the movie, about an hour in where it devolves into violence. Newsteam on Newsteam violence, then Ferell on Applegate violence. Both are hilarious, but nothing is more hilarious than Steve Carell as Brick killing that guy with a trident. Oh, goodness, that's funny.

2) When Will Ferrell is imagining his future life with Christina Applegate, and she's been "polishing your Emmys and cooking dinner nude" all day. She's wearing a type of apron, though. But when she slaps Ferell, you get some side-boob. And it bounces.

I note these two things because these two things because 1) shows you what kind of humor you're getting, throughout, and 2) was awesome. No, really, though, 2) perfectly encapsulates the target audience for the movie. I can't imagine anyone that wasn't excited by bouncing Applegate side-boob would like this movie.

As for me, I give it a 6/10.

A 4 or 5 /10 if it weren't for Steve Carell, though.  

The Loop

The Loop is also not for everyone. The Loop is kind of dumb. But funny.

Sample plots: Sam needs to work on a presentation on his new low-cost airline, but instead participates in a tequila challenge. Sam wants to take a girl on a date that he previously abandoned, but has to fly to China for work. Yep, it's all about a young executive trying to balance work and play. A good time, so says I.

The Loop returns for season two on June 10th on Fox.

5/10.

Music and Lyrics

Story of Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore being super-cute. No, seriously, though, Grant is a washed up half-a-pop-duo (think the other guy from Wham) who's trying to get back into the game. Barrymore is his substitute plant waterer who gets recruited to act as lyricist for Grant who has had a song commissioned by Cora Coleman (think... Hillary Duff + an early/middle Spears-ian amount of writhing).

As I'm sure many reviewers have noted, the film just as sugary, innocuous and fun as the music it's about. Worth buying? No. But if you're looking for something in this genre (oh, they fall in love? Did I forget to mention that?) that's: a) less cloying than classic, floppy-haired Grant (c.f. "Notting Hill," "Nine Months"), b) new, and c) cleverer than it has any right to be when dealing with both Grant's characters past and present, then this movie could be the romantic-comedy one-night-stand you've been looking for. But please, don't marry it.

What's interesting to me, though, is that Adam Schelsinger of Fountains of Wayne wrote the music in the film, which is weird, because for a film that's all about the transcendent unity of a writing duo, Schlesinger appears here without his FOW writing partner, Chris Collingwood, and, presumably the song lyrics in the film were written mostly either by the screenwriter or Schlesinger, sort of, you know, undermining that whole "transcendent connection between co-writers" trip. The music itself is solid classic pop, and, really, you can't go wrong asking Schlesinger to co-write that.

Overall: 5/10. Good for what it tries to do.

Little Children

...and now for something completely different, eh?

Little Children is adapted from the novel by Tom Perotta, the same guy who wrote "Election." That means, of course, you can expect it to be filled with the startling insights into people that "Election" had but in a far less cartoon-y manner.

But I've got to say this: what is the fucking deal with the narration? Like, ok, so, when Lucy (Kate Winslet) sees Brad (Patrick Wilson) go, the narrator chimes in with something like: "And Lucy suddenly felt a cold sadness well up within her." But, you know, it's film, and Kate Winslet is a good enough actress that I could see the cold sadness well up within her. Sometimes it introduces information which would've been hard to get through filmic exposition, and that's ok. But a lot of times it's just giving us stuff we could've easily surmised from the, oh, I don't know, moving pictures we're watching.

The other problem with the narration is the choice of narrator. I understand they wanted someone who sounded authoritative, and during one of the football sequences it snapped into focus for me who they got: the NFL films guy. Watch the movie and you'll see what I mean. Which, his narrative ability and the context makes the voice-over a lot less awkward (though no less unnecessary) during that football sequence, it's wholly inappropriate for the kind of delicate revelations that go on throughout the film inside Kate Winslet's head.

Ok, though, as the movie rolls on, the narration fades out, more or less, and the actual film is allowed to take over: and it's splendid. The film itself is splendid. From Kate Winslet's red one-piece, to the now-gaunt Noah Emerich playing tightly what could've been a scenery-chewing part, and the deep, creepy love of Ronnie's mother and the quiet, terrible blank self-hatred and unstoppable self-gratification of Ronnie himself (the sequence that ends his date... goodness).

It's a movie about people who do things they shouldn't do because they find themselves suddenly (or not so suddenly, sometimes) needing to. And they weave together in a way that sheds light on each of them, rather than just complicating them (as so many intersecting-narratives do these days). And, sure, this isn't intersecting narratives in the classic sense, but the b-characters are so well fleshed out and so fundamentally... important, and themselves, and illuminating they deserve more than relegation.

Anyway, 9/10. Excellence.

The Lion in Winter
While, yes, I understand that it was a play first, and, yes, I understand that acting was different back then, and, yes, who the fuck am I to question Anthony Hopkins and Peter O'Toole, but, I mean, give me a fucking break. The beginning and ending were nice, but after a while it just all got to be a bit much. There's only so much Peter O'Toole running from one room to another yelling like a mad bastard that I can take. And the dialouge, I felt, was trying just a little bit too hard.

On the other hand: John Castle was great as Geoffery, even though the part is only one note, struck over and over. And the opening sequence, where Jane Merrow's breasts are trucked up into that U-gouge medival neckline? That's a good time.

Oh, and I've decided that I hate Katherine Hepburn.

Overall? 6/10 (Respecatable)

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask)
Based on the book of the same name, this movie reminded me a lot of Woody Allen's "Bananas." In so much as that it was trying very hard to be funny but really wasn't so much. The best sequence was the driest: The take off on "8 1/2" / every other Fellini movie was quite hilarious, to me. Also, I think it spun on Belle de Jour, which I just watched today. Will have to go back and check. If you've seen the films it plays on, this movie's worth it for this one sketch.

The others were forgettable, except the classic capper to the film: Woody Allen as a reluctant sperm as a man's body (run like a navy ship) tries to get it together to have sex. Also choice: an insanely young Regis Philbin during the "Guess My Perversion" sequence, though the sequence itself was pretty crappy.

Overall? 5/10 (Eh.)

Glengarry Glen Ross
Another opened-up play, and this one shows it, too. Never have I found David Mamet so annoying as when Ed Harris is delivering his lines. Watching Alan Arkin do his thing, though, will never get old. So many guys in this movie are perfectly cast: Alec Baldwin is the corporate higher-up, waiting for you to give him an excuse to shit on you. Kevin Spacey is the blank, careerist, seemingly incompetant boss. Jack Lemmon is old, funny and a little down on his luck--he does best with making the dialog sound natural, too. Alan Arkin is the prickly guy. Ed Harris is the dick who thinks he's smarter than everybody else, even when he's not. Jonathon Pryce (of Brazil) is the mark.

And Al Pacino. Al Pacino plays the same role that Al Pacino's played a thousand times since: complete asshole and smooth-talking hustler who could sell water to a well. Ricky Roma is the protoypical Pacino role, and he fucking eats it up.

The cast and the kinetic energy of the dialog keep the movie from getting too bottle up in it's tacked-on-feeling plot or it's general lack of craft in direction.

Overall? 7/10 (if you're a dude) or 3/10 (if you're a chick)

Secretary
A lot of pieces of film-making claim to be erotic, but few actually are. The first spanking sequence in Secretary is truly one of the most erotic things I've ever seen put on film. And subsequent sequences build on, complicate or subvert that first blush of eroticism wonderfully. It's the best filmic equivilent I've ever seen to the blossoming of erotic exploration. Very well-done.

It suffers, a little, from it's time-period and semi-indie aesthetic (the middle-time plot meanderings remind me a little of Garden State and like faire that is solid but has that middle-wander, where the film loses coherence for those five or ten minutes when focus matters most. I don't know if this indicates that filmmaking is harder than it looks, or that these directors/writers go through one too few rounds of polish to clean that out, but it's an important feature of the sub-genre, and I'd like to see someone take it apart).

And it also suffers from the fact that I find James Spader a bit disconcertingly walleyed.

But I stand by my initial assesment: very, very good. A mostly well-made film on a woefully under-addressed subject (Moral, as portrayed by the film: Most people are neither, but some people are doms and some people are subs. There is nothing wrong with this, and good for them when they find each other.) that addresses it's characters with warmth and depth.

Overall? 8/10. (Good, not great. Worth seeing.)

Belle de Jour
Catherine Deneuve is a stone fox. A stone fox's stone fox, if you will. The stone fox of a stone fox's ... well, you get the idea. The woman is attractive. The basic premise: Severine is psychologically unable to make love to her husband. She hears of another woman of her social-stratum who has become a prostitute, from time to time. So she does the same.

What is interesting to me is the ... ambiguity the movie leaves open. What really drove it home were the two trailers included on the DVD. The original, 1967 American trailer: A woman is tempted by the pleasures of the flesh! The 1992 re-release trailer: A woman departs on an erotic journey to find her inner being!
Neither of these one-lines really sum up what's going on in the film: a woman has a problem. She hears of something that strikes her as related to her problem and she undertakes it, she doesn't know why. She is doing what people do: trying something, even though they don't know why because perhaps it will fill a need or answer a question even they themselves can only vaguely define.

So far, it sounds much more like the 1992 trailer got it right, but it misses, too. Her journey is not 'erotic.' Sometimes it is erotic, other times it is horrifying. Some times it is magical and transporting, other times it is crass and harsh. Sometimes when it's crass and harsh it's transporting.

(Severine, here, like Maggie Gyllenhall's character in Secretary, seems to be a bit of a sub by nature... but putting the blonde, aristocratic Severine in the role of a sub rather than the cutter that is Gyllenhall's character in Secretary reeks of drastically different gender politics, which I can talk about at further length, should anyone care.)

So the 1992 trailer gets it wrong, too. Yes, she does become sexually 'enlightened,' but she's also narratively punished for doing so and wishes she hadn't done it, it seems. But would her life have been so much better in her chaste marriage to Pierre? Really the movie is about someone with problems she can't solve, but who tries to anyway. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, and in the end, it comes crashing down on her.

But I guess that message is, to be fair, a little complicated for a two minute trailer.

Overall? 8/10.

It's 2027 and no babies have been born since 2009. The first day of the film--which takes place entirely in the span of three or four days--is the day that the youngest human on Earth (still called Baby Diego, though he's 18) is killed. And the film rolls from there.

I've got to tell you this: this film is excellent. It's the best movie made last year. I liked "The Departed" and all. And I liked "Babel" more than just about anyone else I know did. But this movie. This is the first movie I've watched in a long time where I had to stop, take a deep breath and remind myself that it wasn't real. An hour after I finished it, I was still coming down and working on breathing normally. The film is utterly amazing. Utterly fluid and utterly captivating. Utterly beautiful.

Matt refused to watch the movie unless I could assure him it was not utterly depressing. Which I couldn't, because the world of the film has gone to shit. But not because of anything but the infertility. Terrorism plays a part in the film, of course, and government mismanagement (and, as it's set in England, overmanagament) plays a part.

But global warming's not to blame, so that's something. One of the things that makes the film interesting is that it's not about the infertility, so much. It's not about fixing it or finding out what caused it--it's never explained. It's an unexplored mystery, which is perfect.

One of the most interesting things about the film is how it portrays people--particularly the activist "Fishes," but the British Gov't troops as well--that they can't get past their own shit to see what is going on. The sequence, which if you've seen the film I hope you know which sequence I'm talking about, is interesting and dense and deserves to be pulled apart at greater length.

Also, Theo (Clive Owen) and Kee (his charge) weaving with their guide through the Islamic Martyr's parade in the middle of the refugee city was one of the most visually arresting images in the film, in a film full of arresting imagery.

I wholeheartedly recommend the movie.

Veronica Sawyer hates her friends, her bitchy, rich and popular friends: Heather Duke, Heather McNamara, and Heather Chandler. The Heathers, with Veronica's help, make life at Westerburgh high a pain for anyone unfortunate enough to go there. After Veronica meets J.D., though, things begin to change.

"Heathers" is a dark, dark comedy. Dark. Very dark. But funny and worth your time. Seminal, even. If you've ever heard the line "I love my dead gay son!" or "Fuck me gently with a chain-saw," or the phrase "Diet-Cokeheads" or if you've ever heard the word "very" used as an adjective rather than an adverb, "Heathers" is the font from which those things spring.

If you've ever planned on watching "Heathers" but for some reason haven't gotten around to it, rent it right now and stop reading until after you do, because I'm going to spoil it to talk about some aspects of the plot and, frankly, they're better if they take you by surprise. If you don't plan on watching, then read on. An analysis follows the jump.

Continue reading "Heathers" »

I realized something recently: my hatred of Blockbuster had for too long crippled my ability to see movies. It also meant that I rarely every took movie recommendations as the only way for me to see movies was to buy them or to catch them on TV (which I hated more than Blockbuster). And since I am not a man that is made of money, this has made my non-theater movie intake relatively low.

It was time to change that. You want to know why? I'll tell you why: Raging Bull. I saw "The Departed" last fall, and realized that before that, I'd seen only one Scorcese movie, "Taxi Driver." Now, since both were awesome, and since "Raging Bull" got constantly referenced in my Italian cinema class, I decided it might be worth looking into. But I certainly didn't want to buy it. (Now, if I had known it had Nicholas Colasanto was in it, it might've been a different story.)

Around this time I got a lot of positive word of mouth about NetFlix and so now NetFlix gets 15 of my dollars every month and in exchange they sent me movies.

On the right hand side of the main page, below "What to Watch" and "What to Read," is my NetFlix queue. Feel free to send me recommendations for movies that seem to match my taste--maybe they'll show up in the queue soon after that--and warnings or encouragement about any film already in it.

So, let me know what I should be watching. They're sending me movies in the mail!